Lulu Held Hostage

...by salt and German food and Oktoberfest beer....Day 3.

So, I worked all Friday night prepping, and all day Saturday decorating and cooking and prepping and all Saturday night partying.

And now....I'm spending all day Sunday recovering. Not hung over - somehow I kept losing my drinks - just so so soooo exhausted. And needing to wring myself out from the salty food stuff...

Must. Lie. On. Couch.....and watch Tivo of Project Runway shows to catch up. And recover.

Beer hats and Dirndls and Spaetzle....EIN PROSIT!

I do love a theme. Give me a motif, some crafty supplies, food and bevvies, and I'm off!

Just ask my friends and the Pleasantville neighbors - our parties are starting to be popular...if not.....welllllll....maybe a touch legendary. Just a touch.

Cinco de Mayo two years in a row? They were standing around the kitchen island fighting over the mini burritos and the homemade salsa. The kids were in the garage using golf clubs to beat the heck out of the pinatas, after which we gave them a bucket of filled water balloons and a balloon launcher...The adults stayed so long and enjoyed the adult bevvies so much, we had to send two of them off to their own homes to fetch more tequila. Which didn't really matter in the end, because after THAT was gone, we started putting leftover alcohol into the blender with fruit and calling it a margarita. Which was really like a purple jesus party but that's a theme better off left in the '80's...

New Year's Eve? The black and white, flipflops/tuxedos party....again, standing around the kitchen island chowing, while we killed six bottles of champagne, wore plastic beer goggle glasses and topped off the night with a sappy, slurry version of "Stand by your Man" sung a capella by myfriendMK.

Memorial Day - fireworks in the backyard, pointed at the vampire neighbors (honest-to-god-dyin-if-I'm-lyin' - we never ever see any lights on in their house. So we think they're vampires. Only not the good young sexy kind - the older creepy kind. But aren't they all old.....really really old? Hmm...Digressing). Encouraging the kids to have a food fight with the melty s'mores cooked on the outdoor fire, which - combined with fireworks - made the firemen across the field 'take notice.' Hey - it's all fun until someone starts their little brother on fire....

The neighborhood block party? Everyone else brought a dish to pass...we rented the cotton candy machine and put all the kids into diabetic comas...

Yeah. I think they're all 'getting babysitters' and 'having to drop off the kids at the parents' and 'locking them in the house to keep them away from us and our sugar' for the next party....

So - I'm currently painting pumpkins in Oktoberfest colors, getting ready for our big shindig on Saturday!

Yup - decorated beer tent if it's nice, beer cellar if it rains.

We have beer, wine, spareribs and sauerkraut.

Bierrocks, spaetzle and hot German potato salad.

REAL bratwurst, shipped in from our favorite little butcher store in the midwest, where all of my German and Polish relatives live.

Lots of bacon to cook with and top with and wrap food with...and I ordered a new gallbladder with a side of fresh arteries for post-party....

Beads with Oktoberfest medallions, a giant fuzzy stuffed beer hat for Mr. Lulu and a tight dirndl t-shirt for me - couldn't quite bring myself to get the full serving girl outfit....did I mention beer?

OHHH and vintage German beer coasters - how deck is that?

Zicke zacke zicke zacke Hoi Hoi Hoi!!!

Your invitations are in the mail - regrets only.

HA HA Lulu's Blog will create Benefits and Provide Humor and drive Controversy for you won't it? - this is an Important and Witty Post Title

CRAFTING AN IMPORTANT AND WITTY BLOG TITLE is really key to getting people to my blog, I know! Because otherwise, I'm only found through readers googling baby psychic. Or shankapottamus. For a while it was Single Ladies Dance. The Travel Rules still brings 'em in a bit. Phlegm garnered a few hits. And then there were a few for baby phlegm.

Ick.

Phlegm.

I'm back - I had to dump a bottle of Purell on my keyboard. My fives and tens know how I feel about that sticky phlegmmy stuff....ewwwww...

But anyway - apparently there are 226,000 opportunities to get help for 'crafting' a blog title. (In the corporate world at the Huge, we say that it costs more to 'craft' something instead of simply writing it. Good to know if I was getting paid for blogging. So ummm. Back to my point....and I do have one).

I know this because I googled 'blog post titles.' I saw some good tips! Be humorous, create controversy, don't go past 65 characters, provide value, ask questions and personalize it with 'You.'

So I tried to work it all into one title. I can't wait to see how high I am on the google blog title meter!

And oh yeah, I'm still here and it's not November yet (right?) - I was speaking metaphorically or allegorically or sarcasticagorically - take your pick - in my last post. Thanks for potentially missing me! I'll still check in and out during the October road tour - most of my posts won't make sense though, so should provide some BENEFICIAL, HUMOROUS AND CONTROVERSIAL moments - or titles, anyway...

Cleanup on Life Aisle Two

Life is messy and I love it that way - always so much better to be out-of-control busy...but still....

So - at work, I'm co-leading the planning and production of 5 national meetings for over 1500 employees at the Huge, all to take place between October 17 - November 7. And my team is going through some transitions as well - all good, but still requires much care and feeding. And I have to travel for work every week between now and November 7. Besides the meetings.

Livin' the dream. (requisite "I don't mind the travel, corporate work gods so don't think I'm whining okaaaay???!!)

At home, I'm throwing an Oktoberfest party for multiple friends, neighbors and generations in late September, doing all of the crafting (sewing pirate bean bags for tossin,' girl and boy pirate bandannas, painting buckets for pirate loot, etc...) for a special Pirate birthday party in early October, having the daughter of friends stay with us for another early October weekend and trying to keep up with the etsy store, my blog, two email accounts and of course, remote Mom.

My mosaic farookas is gone.....for now. (ominous music)

My hard-fought 5 lb loss....is not gone. (even more ominous music)

The fitness center is sending me overdue weight loss messages. (wa wa waaaaaaaaa)

I have stabbed myself fourteen times with the needle on my sewing machine. (laugh track)

My new worry from Dr. Google is that if my husband were to spring an Alzheimer's test on me I would not be able to name more than 5 four-legged animals (zebra always comes to mind...over and over. Can't remember farm animals) so I've got a new Nintendo DS and I'm working Brain Age and Professor Layton puzzles before I go to bed.

Hot flashes wake me up between 4 and 6 am like clockwork ( and everyone KNOWS that women need a solid eight hours...according to MORE magazine.)

Shwew. That's the update. That's all I've got. See you in aisle ten......like, in November some time!

Mosaic Farookas

Exchange with my very nice, extremely smart doctor:

Dr. Smarty: "Huh. Yup, you have kind of a rash there, on your elbow."

Lulu: "Yeah, and it really feels like I was bitten-"

Dr. Smarty: "Nope."

Lulu: "Yes, I felt a stingi-"

Dr. Smarty: "Nope."

Lulu: "But I felt like a stinging and I slapped my arm and then-"

Dr. Starting to be Irritating Smarty: "Uhhhh no."

Lu Starting to be Irritated Lu: "STOP with the noping!!! I'm still pretty new to the SOUTH and I KNOW there are brown recluse spiders and this friend of mine got bitten in Maryland one time and he didn't notice it right awaaaaaay! And his wife had to takehimtotheERandhealmost DIEEEEEEEEEEEED!"

*Breathing hard, still holding elbow up for inspection, starting to sweat (although that could just be a hot flash, different doctor need altogether) and glaring at Dr. Irritating McSmartyPants*

Dr IMSP: "It's not spider bites."

Panicking Lulu: (gasp gasp) "What?"

Voice starting to echo in my head: "It's its not not not spider bites bites..."

Panic rising Lulu: "Is it a TICK?? DO I HAVE LYME DISEASE!!?? Do I have malaria, yellow fever, dengue fever, Japanese B encephalitis, filariasis, leishmaniasis, chagas disease(caused by ASSASIN BUGS!) typhus or the PLAGUE???????!!!!"

Voice of James Earl Jones coming from overhead: "Luuuuuuulu. I'm not your faaaaathuh and you DO NOT have ANY BUG BITE DISEASE AT ALL!! Stop reading WebMD!"

Lulu: "Oh."

Red-faced Lulu: (mumbling). "Then ahhh. It's just a rash, right? No big deal? (nervous chuckle) Just - it'll go away, right?"

Dr. McSmartyPants: "Yeah, it's fine. YOU'll be fine. It will go away."

Dr. Smirking McSmartyPants: "Unless it's mosaic farookas."

AAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......

(Yeah, bet he'll need some 'topical ointment' now too - for that stab wound I gave him with the tongue depressor....)

Enjoy a bug-free weekend!!

Mom Called...

...and told me that she enjoyed her lunch on Tuesday. :)

She also told me to get my fanny - Mom never uses the word ass. She also doesn't like 'pea' as in 'I have to...' - she told me to get my fanny off the couch and get back to blogging.

Riiiiiiiight. Mom and the internet age? Not so much....I haven't told Mom yet that I didn't send a written thank you note to a friend for an event last month...shhhh. Don't upset her any further by telling her that I sent an email instead.

Hey, one thing that did get me moving out o' the house was the Kenny Chesney concert on Sunday night - well woooo hoooooooooo!!

I have always considered myself to be a rocker chick, but concerts like that could seriously change my mind. It was really cool - at an outdoor amphitheater and the weather was great, acoustics and background videos were cool. Also fronting for him is Lady Antebellum, which I helped book for a meeting for the Huge a few years ago when they were relatively unknown and didn't even have a record label yet- omigosh!

When I waved at them from my lawn seat?

They waved back!! I'm sure they remembered me!

But anyway. It was fun and the music was good and everybody sang along. So I've got that going for me.

Hey, check out the new MORE link over there - it's about trying to take ownership of the title 'cougar.' And....I'm not really sure how I feel about it.

But - Jo from The Fifty Factor is PUBLISHED AT MORE.COM!!!!! Go check her out.

Shwew....I'm exhausted.....back to AGT.

TaTa for now, as Tigger would say. Or Save the TaTa's, as we used to say in the mammography department.

Wow. I think I just took a wrong turn in Digressionville again.....