Random thoughts to start your day

Ellie woke up this morning at 3:00. I got her back to sleep, but Kasey was up getting ready for work, so I decided to stay up until he left. After he had gone, I stayed up a little bit longer to read. But then I had a hard time getting back to sleep.

While I was lying in bed, not falling asleep, I had some fairly random thoughts. So, because I'm trying very hard to avoid doing my dishes this morning, I'm going to share those completely random, have-nothing-to-do-with-anything thoughts.

1) Have you seen that episode of Friends with the cheesecake? In case you haven't, or don't remember, a cheesecake is delivered to Monica's apartment by mistake. Chandler is there and he ends up trying a bite. Well, this is the BEST cheesecake ever. (speeding things up) Rachel has some, they fight over the cake, it falls on the floor. But this cheesecake is so delicious that they end up eating it off the ground. So there's the back story.

For my birthday, I made my favorite potato dish. It's know by many names: Idaho potato supreme, company potatoes, creamy potato casserole, and my personal favorite--funeral potatoes. For those of you who have not had it, it's shredded potatoes, cream soup, sour cream, maybe a little milk, onions, and cheese. Stir together and bake. There are several variations of this recipe, but you get the basic idea.

So, yesterday I was reheating some of this to eat for breakfast. I got a plateful and as I was putting the lid back on the casserole dish, I knocked my plate on the ground. upside down. I just stared at the upturned plate. I was so sad. I lifted the plate and then stared at my potatoes on my floor. Then I seriously considered scooping them back on my plate and eating them. They are just that good. I started thinking about how dirty my floor was. I swept it like 3 days prior. Surely it couldn't be that dirty. Maybe I could just eat the part that hadn't touched the floor. So, as I tried to scoop up potatoes that hadn't touched the floor I thought, "This is really sad. I can't believe I'm actually doing this." At which point I wiped up the entire pile of scrumptious funeral potatoes and threw them in the garbage. I may have shed a tear.

2) My thoughts drifted to New York City. I've never been there, but I was thinking that in a city of 17 million or so people, there must be enough restaurants to eat at a different one every day of the year. With so many choices, how could you possibly choose a favorite? I suppose price and cleanliness and proximity to your house/apt would play a big part.

The thought of some place so big was eventually too much for my brain to digest at 4:00 in the morning, so I moved on to a lighter topic. Still, all this while, trying to fall asleep.

3) I'm reading this freaking hi-lar-i-ous book right now. Whatever you are reading right now...STOP! Go to the library and pick up a copy of "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" by Bill Bryson. It is laugh-out-loud funny. Even as I was reading it this morning, I was laughing. I was so tired that my eye lids were drooping, but I was still laughing. It's about this guy who lived in England for 20 years before returning to America to live. This book talks about different idiosyncrasies of Americans. It's so funny because it's stuff all around us, but we don't ever really think about. Some examples are, our fascination with cup holders, the postal system, basements, and garbage disposals. If you need a good laugh today, go get this book. You won't be sorry.

4) The thing that I last remember as I was drifting off to sleep this morning is a boy in my 8th grade math class that always used to poke me in the back with his pencil and sing "Mama's little baby loves short'nin, short'nin. Mama's little baby loves short'nin bread." I wonder whatever happened to that boy....

5) A picture of the sweet girl who woke me up when I would have rather been sleeping.