Blame Bud

Bud Buckley hooked me into the Frappr mappy thingy, so now I must drag y'all with me. Add yourself by either getting your own free account or by adding yourself to mine. I'm the little blue pointy one in Illinois. You don't have to give your exact location. In fact, I prefer you not. Just put in the nearest big city so no one can stalk you.

I already have seven friends but I'd like to appear much more popular so get on with the show. Yes, you too. I know you come here to Home Fires every single day. I see you on my little narcissistic site meter. I know you are shy and like to remain hidden and I'm cool with that. Hell, I'm not even asking you to comment. Just stick your little pushpin thingy into my map thingy (and don't tell my husband).

While I'm thinking about this, who wrote the blog post recently "Can I buy a vowel"? I tried searching and wasted a bunch of time. Please give yourself credit in the comments. Whoever it was, and I really am sorry, was asking what happened to vowels. You got Flickr and Frappr and we all know they are missing one teeny tiny thing.

So this mystery person who I can't know right now, got my wheels cranking. The first thing I thought of was my dad. When he was annoyed, instead of swearing, he would always say, "Frickn, frackn.."

But the more I thought, I wondered, "What's going to be next? Flappr? Is this going to be all the rage? Will bloggers be flappng about all willy nilly? Will bloggers who Frappr and Flickr and later Flappr also Fluggr and Floggr? What the Fck?"

As you can tell, I was up late again fantasizing about Dr. Seuss. Give me your best made up version for the next new vowel lacking craze in the comments. The best of them will be posted next week.

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My sister Mary had her surgery consult yesterday. They evaluated her and said she has a "quite impressive blood clot in her aorta" somewhere between her chest and groin.

They made her walk down the hall and back. When she returned, they checked for a pulse in her legs. She didn't have one. The clot is completely cutting off her blood supply, which means surgery to remove the clot is inevitable.

She has to be off of the blood thinners for a week before she can have the surgery, so it hasn't been scheduled yet. Thanks to all of you who have e-mailed asking about her. Mary is 41, much too young to be facing these types of problems. I can't say she got the best news but her spirit is good.

She was telling me about a dream she had on the phone this morning. Before I tell you, I have to give you some background on my sister. She is the Peanut Butter Queen. She has always loved it even plain. I'm not even kidding when I say she likes to just dip a spoon into the jar to get a little fix in the middle of the day.

When we were kids our mom would occasionally let Mary make lunch for the rest of us. It always involved peanut butter. Sure she'd offer us peanut butter and jelly, sometimes. But she was testing her peanut buttery wings and we were her guinea pigs. Peanut butter and bacon on rye toast was originally created by my parents but Mary tried to reinvent the wheel with her rubbery version. She also gave us sandwiches with peanut butter and lettuce, or her famous peanut butter and Fritos. We ate it and we liked it. Sorta.

Waffles, celery and English muffins also were things she fed us with peanut butter on top. To this day, she still eats this shit. And likes it. Really.

Back to her dream. She said, "I dreamt that when they opened me up instead of a blood clot, they found a big glob of peanut butter."

That was by far the funniest thing I heard all day!