Welcome to my Randomly Thinking post where I share random tidbits from my life. Read on at your own risk.

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There is a crack in the wall at my parents that has grown some and now a part of the wall has chipped off. The last time I looked at it, I noticed there was hair poking out of it.

“Uh, Dad? Did anyone from your family ever go missing?”

Dad sighed. “No. I would assume that’s when they added horsehair to the plaster to make it sturdier.”

Of course, this took me to the internet, not to look for a missing family member, but to read about horsehair mixed in plaster.

So, yes, back in the old days of construction they used horsehair in walls.

According to the National Association of Realtors, plaster walls constructed before the 1950s were “sometimes called “horse-hair plaster” because it was common to mix horsehair into the wet plaster to add strength, and to prevent cracking with minor flexing. Heating and cooling a house will cause plaster to expand and shrink slightly, so the hair helped keep the walls a bit more flexible.”

Huh. So that probably is horsehair in there and not the decomposing body of Great-great-aunt=so-and-so after all. Hopefully anyhow.

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The crack in the wall made me think of Doctor Who and that first episode with the eleventh Doctor.

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I have a bit of an issue with those videos popping up all over the internet of the grooms crying when they see their bride coming down the aisles. The romantic in me would love to say it’s because they are so moved by the beauty of their bride they have been brought to tears. Or maybe it is because they simply can’t believe their bride has chosen them. I would also love to say it is because it means he has decided he will devote his entire life to this woman. Really, though? A crying groom could mean anything.

I once watched a groom cry and hoped this would mean he was turning his life around, going to be a better husband than he had been a boyfriend, be a real father to his girls. Instead, a year later he was cheating on his bride, a few years later she’d taken him back and he was still cheating. Then a year after that he was in jail for various offenses.

Eventually, he was divorced, his children adopted by another man, and he was in jail for manufacturing and trafficking meth. Sometimes tears mean everything. Sometimes they mean nothing at all.

I still choose to think the crying of the men in most of those videos means something, though, and that something is very special. The romantic in me isn’t dead yet.

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Can’t remember if I ever shared this photo of my shocked pickle on here. It looked this way right before I ate it.

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I don’t know why this was on my mind last week (gee, I have no idea why) but I was thinking about when I was in elementary school and our teachers had us do drills where we had to hide under our desks in case of a nuclear attack. Apparently, they believed that those old metal desks along with our trapper keepers placed over our heads we’re going to protect us from the apocalypse. We also had to do tornado drills where we went into the hallways and crouched down together so if a tornado ripped the roof to our little school off, we’d all go up in the air together, I guess.

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I spent the one day a couple weeks ago, editing Beauty From Ashes more and finding all my overused words or phrases. For example, my characters have eyebrow and chest problems. Their eyebrows are often “furrowed” and their chests are always “constricting.” Oy.

I went in and changed a lot of those, if not for the readers’ sake then for mine. I’m also removing a lot of “sighs”, “eye rolls” and “nodding moments.”

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Little Miss just told me she wants to keep her wisdom teeth when she gets older because “I think that’s where your wisdom is, and it keeps you from talking stupid later.”

I suggested wisdom is found in a person’s brain instead and she said, “Maybe, but I think there is a little wisdom in both places.”

I told my dad her theory and he said, “Well, I still have my wisdom teeth and I still say stupid things all the time so I don’t know . . .”

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I was raised by a very nurturing woman, so it has been a challenge for me over the years to live with men in my house who don’t want to be nurtured when they are sick. If I offer to make them tea or soup or anything I often get rebuffed with, “I’m fine. I don’t need anything. I’m not hungry.”

They walk around the house talking about sore throats or their heads hurting or how they think their nose is going to explode, but when they’re offered some help they deny being sick enough to need assistance. If I don’t pay attention to them, though? Well, then there is simply a lot more sighing and comments about how bad they feel and the cycle starts all over again.

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On Monday of last week, I went back to that bank where the crazy car accident that I mentioned in a recent Sunday Bookends post. To give you the shortened version, a woman pulled up next to me at the bank, hit her accelerator instead of her brake and drove the car straight into the curb in front of the bank a few times, ripped the car into reverse without taking her foot off the accelerator and the car shot back, past my van, somehow missing it and a stop sign, did two doughnuts, then turned around the right way and slammed into the front of our local newspaper office. Somehow, neither she or anyone else was injured.

I have to admit that I was pretty nervous about going back to the bank two days later to cash a check, but I figure lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice so I should be good. This, of course, is a fallacy that people toss around all the time since this summer a man came into my husband’s newspaper office to tell my husband how he, indeed,  had been struck by lightning twice. Luckily, this did not happen to me and I was able to complete my business and leave without incident.

The ladies at the bank and I still don’t know how the woman avoided my vehicle when she yanked that thing into reverse, and we chatted about that as I cashed my check.

The woman who works there, a family friend, said it was nothing other than “God’s protection on me.” I think she’s right and I’m thankful for it.

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We finally received some warmer weather this week and yesterday the kids and I went outside, swooping our caps in front of our faces and screaming, “The sun!! The sun!” because we felt like vampires after being inside for so long.

Our animals went out with us and as is common with them all three of them followed us up and down the street. We look like some weird animal trainers or something, the way they follow us up and down. Of course, when I try to get the kitten back in the house (so she doesn’t get hurt or climb up a tree again) she takes off on me. She’s not even a kitten anymore, but I still call her the kitten because she is younger.

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I’m sure I’ll mention this in my Sunday Bookends post this week (because I really have nothing else very exciting to write about) but this week we went from snow on the ground on Monday and the kids playing in it, to 60-degree temperatures and going for walks with thin jackets. Spring in the north can be so weird.

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So those are my random thoughts for this week.  How about you? Is anything random going on in your world? Feel free to let me know in the comments.