Celebrating Life

Today is a very special day.  Today is the second of September - meaning my niece, Isabella, is 7 years old, and my sister, Lori, is 20-something-ish. 

How cool for my sis, to share her special day with the most special lady in her life.  Bella loves it, too.  She and mommy always wear tiaras together and have to explain to everyone that they really do have the same birthday.  They are so much like each other and are very close, and this is just one more thing to solidify the mother-daughter bond they share.  My biggest birthday wish for them is that this bond only gets stronger as the years go on; that no matter how many birthdays pass, Bella will never be too cool or too busy or too grown to appreciate how neat it is to share this day with the sweet one who birthed her.  So, I raise my glass (of water - still no drinky for Nikki) and toast to my best friend and favorite girl.  You two are amazing together, and you both bring so much joy to my life individually.  Here's to many more September seconds!!

Batshit Crazy

I envisioned a peaceful, happy pregnancy.  I just kinda figured I would be rational and calm, as this is how I tend to be the majority of the time in life.  


Instead, I am like this:

And this:

And this:

Pray for me y'all.  Pray for poor Carlton, too.  Thankfully, my sweetheart is too terrified to leave me so madly in love, he'd never leave me.  

Goonies Never Say Die

Being a grown up is slightly overrated.  Bills, taxes, work, cleaning, cooking, traffic, other adults, maintenance on the car/house/yacht/etc... It all adds up to a boatload of irritants that most of us have only been dealing with for a few years.  It starts easily enough.  You get your first car or apartment and it's fun and exciting.  Your silly young self is eager to piss on the leg of society and mark your territory, never realizing the beginning of the end of a carefree life.

Remember when the floor was lava?  Jumping from couch to chair to footstool and back to couch with your throw blanket cape on was the most stressful part of the day.  Because the floor was freakin' lava!  Should you misjudge the distance to safety and a toe touch the lavafloor, you were done.  No more play for you.  You got to watch your siblings or friends continue the game while your bones were reduced to ashes in the bubbling lavaland that the family room had become.  And it sucked.  You knew you were better at the lava game than that!  You knew it should have been one of them.  They suck at this game.  Not me! 

pray the cat stays upstairs

Things aren't that simple anymore.  I'm not implying that things aren't good.  They are.  It's just that then, things were awesome.  The streamers on my handlebars, Saturday morning cartoons, Garbage Pail Kids, taking the change from the couch cushions to the corner store for Warheads and Nerds; all awesome for reasons that should not have to be listed.  Things were easy.  Maybe you didn't exactly view them as such at the time, but they were.  Who of us wouldn't jump at the chance to go back, if only for a day, and have nothing to do but play kickball and hang upside-down from the monkey bars?  I know I would.  I would tell Little Me that she wasted a lot of precious youth on worrying about being cool and fitting in and wondering what she'd be like as Adult Me (who still worries a surprising amount about being cool and fitting in).  I'd tell Little Me that very soon, the floor will no longer be lava.  It will just be a floor.  A floor that she will have to sweep and mop because Mom won't live with her anymore.  I'll tell her to enjoy that game and to jump with all her might because jumping isn't going to be that easy for very long.  I'll tell her to plan every jump strategically and thoughtfully, as not doing so will result in a fiery lava cremation, which is simply not an option.  Little Me was a Goonie.  Goonies never say die.

Cherry Poppin

So this is the first.  I have never written a blog.  Actually, I've always been opposed to the whole idea.  It seemed silly and self-indulgant to me, until I considered the fact that I am perpetually both silly and self-indulgant - so a blog it is.

The name "Those Rhymes Were Delicious" is something I stole from my niece.  She, at 5 years old, decided she was going to be a rapper.  Now, this is not a career goal.  As of now, she believes she will be a veterinarian but if she's anything like her aunt and everyone else I know, that will change a thousand times in the next couple decades.  No, her rapping wasn't for money or accolades.  She didn't want to floss with any iced out Jesus pieces.  There is yet to be a Grammy acceptance speech written or a photo shoot for some magazine that pretends to know what good music is.  Her Power Wheels remains rimless and still has the stock AF/FM radio and a noticeable lack of TVs in the headrests.  She is a rapper for the love of it.  She likes to weave words (actual and made-up) together into little blurbs of musical awesome that describe what life as a kid is really about.  And she's good.  Not Jay-Z good, but for a kid who was, until very recently, still on training wheels, she's got a glimmer of potential.

Anyway, she, my roommate, and myself were having a "cypher" in which we took turns spitting our lyrical genius one random summer day and after I spit my 6 bars of child friendly nursery rhyme worthy lyrical venom - she excitedly declared that, "those rhymes were delicious" and now we work that into any conversation where it could even sort of make sense.  Cool ass Bella with her cool ass five-year-old vocabulary and her cool ass kindergarten backpack bounce.  

So I'm gonna write delicious shit.  I will document it here for no good reason and hope that someone will read it and chuckle.  Maybe when Bella gets a little more delicious at her typing skills, she can contribute, too.  

A dope rapper with skills to pay the bills