Welcome to my Randomly Thinking post where I ramble about, well, whatever.

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Recently my daughter was reveling in the fact that she has soft, lovely, young skin. This was after I was lamenting about my old, dry, scaly skin.

“My skin is soft, isn’t it?” she said with a thoughtful expression.

She sighed and rubbed her hands against her cheeks, then said, “Do you know what calms me? Rubbing my hands across the baby-smooth skin of my face.”

Yeah, yeah. Rub it in, kid. Also — enjoy it while you can.

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Anyone who reads Erin’s blog at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs probably knows she listens to true crime podcasts, but maybe you don’t know she actually listens to them while falling asleep. I was laughing about this a few weeks ago and she told me, “The people’s voices are so soothing as they say the worst things.”

It totally cracked me up, but my son said he totally understood what she meant because sometimes he listens to similar podcasts, though not quite as dark as what we adults listen to at times.

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A recent post from The Babylon Bee referencing an old song by the Veggie Tales reminded me of the time I was at a Christian music festival and over 80,000 people (some estimates had it at 100,000) sang Where Is My Hairbrush at the top of their lungs. In case you aren’t familiar with this song, I am leaving a clip of it below.

All of those people singing this child song at the same time was surreal.

There was a guy in front of us who sang it as if he was in an opera, with an amazing voice and all the gestures to go along with it.

Up until that point, I had never even heard of Veggie Tales, let alone the song.

The video was played while we all waited for Amy Grant to come out on the stage. This was shortly after the success of her song Baby, Baby, which by the way I never liked that much.

During her concert, the power actually went out. Eventually, they were able to get the sound back, but not the lights, so she ended up singing by flashlight and candlelight for part of her performance.

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I went to this music festival, Creation, a few times over my life and always seemed to have a story to bring back with me. One year I ended up with a bladder infection and almost passed out from the heat. I was in pain all the way back home (about three hours) and we had to find a doctor immediately to get me on antibiotics.

 Another year we took a friend and she passed out and she was taken to the first aid tent but then by ambulance because she was extremely disoriented. She was extremely dehydrated and may have had some other health issues because years later she was involved in a horrible accident and could never remember what happened. She suffered massive head injuries, but we do wonder if she might have blacked out before the accident like the day at the festival. She’s doing very well now, by the way. She’s a miracle, quite frankly.

The first year we ever went I lost my first Teddy Bear somehow. I was in the back of a pick up which my dad had stretched a tarp canopy over (it was the 80s, peeps), Dad pulled over to adjust something, and when we got to our campsite (yes, you camped at this festival), my bear was gone. There is a long story after that about meeting my aunt somewhere to conduct a type of drug deal so my grandmother didn’t find out I had lost this expensive bear, but I’ve either told that story here before or I’ll tell it again another time.

One other time I was at the festival with my brother and sister-in-law and their friend, Chris. My sister-in-law disappeared for a brief time and Chris, my brother, and I stood in one place and looked around for her. We couldn’t see her for a long time until Chris said, “I don’t know. Maybe she’s down there somewhere, getting a cold cup of iced tea, fresh brewed, with just a squeeze of lemon and the perfect amount of sugar, wearing a —”  Yeah, Chris has found her and was using a creative way to tell us. That was Chris though, funny, smart, and a jokester. He’s a blog post in himself, but not by me, by my brother who knew him best. Hint, hint, brother.

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A couple of weeks ago I was in the kitchen when my podcast stopped playing while I was cooking dinner. I looked at the phone and it said our Wifi was out. I went to the living room to investigate. Soon my children were standing next to me as we all stared at the modem, which was dark.

We were like lost little puppies without our internet. It was very sad, actually.

There is usually at least a power button blinking on the modem. Not this time. The modem looked dead.

We pondered this predicament for a few moments and then I looked at the power strip behind the TV. It was also dark. It usually has a glowing red light.

I pointed this out to my son who turned it back on and just as I started to wonder how it had been turned off, I looked up to see Pixel, who I also call Fat Cat, watching us from the windowsill. I knew then how the power strip had been turned off. She had apparently put her foot there when she jumped up into the front window.

Our investigation seemed to entertain her and sometimes I wonder if she does this stuff on purpose.

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A friend of Little Miss’s, who is a year older, says the most interesting things sometimes. For one, she loves to be outside, loves to have fun, and is full of a confident spirit that matches Little Miss’s, which either strengthens their friendship or creates friction between them.

I told the little girl we had a playground near us, but it wasn’t very exciting. It’s very small without many things to play on.

“I don’t care what kind of playground it is,” she told me. “It doesn’t have to have a lot of fun things. I’ll make it fun.”

I wish more of us adults had her attitude.

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I have been forgetting things lately, mainly because I am distracted when I am doing them. Or maybe I still have Covid-brain. I don’t know. Anyhow, one day my husband placed the ibuprofen on the counter in front of me but a few minutes later I went to the medicine cabinet to retrieve it. He told me it was in my purse, where I had tossed it. I didn’t even remember doing that. Well, I vaguely did, but I was also talking at the same time and thinking about the fact I had to get our daughter to gymnastics on time. It was also PMS time (I know. Too Much Information.)

Later that night my daughter asked me to open a water bottle. Apparently, I did and handed it back to her but five minutes later I told her to get a water bottle so I could open it for her. She reminded me I already had.

Two nights later I reached for my toothbrush, brushed my teeth, and went into my daughter’s room to read to her. The Boy came in a few minutes later and asked me why his toothbrush was wet.

“Did you use my toothbrush?” he asked.

I told him I used mine but when I went in to look, he was right, his toothbrush was wet and mine was dry. By this time, I was starting to freak out a little. Was I losing my mind?

I’m still not sure and it is possible. I do have hormone and thyroid issues. For all of the incidents, though, I was pretty distracted at the same time I was completing the task.

I told my husband about the toothbrush incident and said I was talking to Pixel, who likes to jump up on the sink and drink out of it before bed, at the time.

“She must have distracted me,” I said.

I said I was asking her if she was going to take a drink or not because I needed to get to bed and while I was talking to her, I was reaching for my toothbrush. I must have simply grabbed the wrong one. This made me feel better because then I could be assured I wasn’t losing my mind. That was until my husband looked at me in confusion.

“You have conversations with the cat?” My husband asked. “I never talk to our cats.”

I shrugged. “That’s why they like me better than you.”

And it’s true — I do have conversations with our cats. Very often, in fact.

They also seem to communicate back with me, even if it is a leg rub or a nose bump or a good, long, hard stare.

Then again, I have been having brain fog issues. Maybe I just think they’re communicating with me.

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When my son shows me a gaming-related meme, I am torn between telling him I have no idea what the meme means and just smiling and nodding. If I smile and nod at the Gen Z humor, then he laughs and moves on. If I tell him I have no idea what that is referring to, I may be trapped for 20 minutes while he explains to me what the meme means. I usually just smile and nod.

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Earlier this week, I told my son I thought I might try my hand at meatloaf again for dinner. I’ve only tried to cook it once before — three years ago — and apparently the experience was so traumatizing to my son he couldn’t bring himself to admit to me how bad it was until now.

He said it was a hunk of meat with crushed bread inside and no flavor. It was so awful he couldn’t eat it, so he took the plate upstairs and hid it under his bed for two days until I left the house and then dumped it in the trashcan. I asked him why he didn’t just tell me, and he said it was because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.

He honestly looked quite pained telling me this story. He had backed himself against the wall and was rubbing his face, as if the memory of the wretched meatloaf had left him scarred for life. I was waiting for him to hug himself while rocking back and forth.

“Okay, then,” I said, turning to go back down the stairs. “Tonight we’re having tacos.”

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My son decided he would have stuffed rabbit for Easter dinner this year:

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I forgot about this hilarious moment from the Fall but found it in some notes this week:

One of Little Miss’s friends tried to call her early one morning, but Little Miss was barely awake. She reached for the phone anyhow. I told Little Miss she needed to be awake before she could talk to her friend, so to take some time to wake up and then answer the call.  Little Miss looked at me for a second, slammed her head off her pillow, face-first, twice, looked back up and me and said, “Okay. I’m ready now. Hand me the phone.

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Those are my random thoughts and events for the week. How about you? What random events have happened to you recently? Let me know in the comments and maybe I’ll share it in my next post. 😊