This was too funny NOT to post!! (Stolen from my "little" big sister, Michele.)

Weird Al Shares Your Taste in Music

See his whole playlist here (iTunes required)

Too true!!!

I have been entirely too busy this week!! I'm not used to this "go-go-go" lifestyle. Stop the world, I wanna get off!!!

Yesterday morning I was laying in bed, gently snoozing as my alarm went off, and thinking to myself, "It's Saturday; I have no plans. Why should I get up??"

At 9am my phone rings, and it's my good friend HC. She wants me to come see her and watch her kids for a few hours so she and her husband can have a date. Then she offered to take me out to dinner as a thank-you.

I couldn't resist.

I don't get to see HC all that often. She lives down near Tacoma, so it's an hour's drive door-to-door. The distance doesn't bother me. When we were first good friends, before I even had Grace, I would go down about once a week and spend the day with HC, just running errands with her and the kids. She was a stay-at-home mom at the time, so she had a lot more free time. To me, an hour isn't that far away. That's why I get all confused when I have friends who live ten minutes away, and they think it's too far to come see me.

The problem with seeing HC now is she has a full-time job, so her free time is minimal. And of course, her family time is very precious to her, and that's how she wants to spend the time she's not at work. This means that I don't get to see her very often because I don't want to take away her family time.

When she calls me, I jump at the chance to go see her. So yesterday I leapt out of bed, got dressed and Grace fed, and zoomed out the door. HC's kids were thrilled to see Grace, of course. It's so funny -- HC's daughter always calls Grace "Baby Grace."

"Come here, Baby Grace! Don't touch that, Baby Grace! Let's play outside, Baby Grace!"

It's so cute!

Watching HC's kids is really easy, especially since I have Grace now. First off, I'm so more used to dealing with kids now that I have one of my own. I used to watch HC's kids for her every so often before I had Grace, and while I enjoyed it, I was sort of at a loss with what to do with them all day. Now I have a better idea, partly because now they can tell me what they want to do (the kids are aged 5 and almost 8), and partly because I'm used to playing with kids.

The kids love to play with Grace. Both of them, a boy and a girl, see Grace as their own personal living baby doll. So it was actually easier for me to watch three kids yesterday than just Grace by herself. I spent a good hour and a half yesterday in the easy chair, reading my current novel, because Grace was so enthralled by the big kids. It was heavenly.

Finally HC and her husband got home, and HC took me out to dinner at this little cafe. This place cracks me up -- it shares its space with a pharmacy in a strip mall, yet when you walk in, it's all fancified. They even had a pianist playing a grand piano in the corner the whole evening! HC decided to get the stuffed chicken wrapped in prosciutto, which I had entertained ideas of ordering, but since I hate getting the same thing as the other person at the table, I decided on the chicken & wild mushroom pasta.

OH MY FREAKIN' GOD. This pasta was heavenly. The chicken wasn't overcooked, as it normally is when tossed with pasta, and the mushrooms were so yummy. The sauce was a cream sauce with white wine, so it had a lot of body and a lot of flavor. It wasn't just a wimpy white sauce poured over pasta. I about fell out of my chair, it was so damn good.

It was probably about a gazillion calories too. It's a good thing I am not on a diet.

Grace ate a chicken fingers kids' plate. It was three chicken fingers with a huge pile of waffle-cut seasoned fries (my favorite!). She also ate some of my salad (no nuts this time), and all of the olives that had come on my salad. I'm an olive snob -- I only like the ones that come in jars or off a deli's olive bar. Canned olives have no flavor. When Grace had finished all of that, HC and I had just gotten our dinner, so I asked the waiter if he had saltines or something. He brought five packs of saltines to the table, which Grace proceeded to inhale.

You'd think I never fed this child.

I didn't end up getting home until almost 10pm, and by that time, I was just exhausted. I'd been gone for twelve hours, taken care of three kids, and driven two hours. I swear, today I am going NOWHERE. I am going to sit on my butt on the couch and stitch all day. I really need to do housework, but I guess it can wait another day or two. My house isn't messy; I just need to vacuum, straighten up Grace's room, and possibly clean the bathroom.

Grace managed to lose the back off her earring, which almost propelled me to the mall today. She has these special earrings, the only ones I've managed to keep in her ears for any length of time, and the backs of these earrings are actually gold balls that screw onto the earring and stay tight. She managed to lose one of these gold balls, and I have no idea where or when, and even though I looked around the house, I can't find them. So I will have to go to the mall, probably tomorrow, and get her a new pair.

That is, unless I find the back. One can hope!