Dear Gentle Readers, You're in for a very special treat. The Wordcount Blogathon chose today as the day that blogathoners switch it up and do guest posts. My guest blogger  is Tara  of Two Hands and a Roadmap . She's one of a kind. Everyone, say, "Hey Tara!"  Su-sieee! Mac and I didn't know each other until early in the Wordcount blogathon, but we managed to find and enjoy each other's blogs (unless she's lying, which is totally possible). I'm so glad to do my first guest post for her. Because neither one of us was flush with ideas for this assignment, we used a random writing prompt generator. Here is what I got: "Think of a real experience you have had that would be hard to forget. Think about what makes it so hard to forget. Tell what happened." OK, I started to write the story of how one night in the '90s I was in my underwear when a song from The Full Monty came on the radio, so naturally I had to ham up a little Fully Monty sarcas

Not to worry. This is not another post about food as metaphor like yesterday's post about potato salad. I really have a recipe about chocolate croissants. A cheating recipe, that is. Yesterday I had a yen for chocolate. The whole time the husband and I were waiting in line at the grocery store, I was eyeing the candy bar racks. No, I won't moan about the rising cost of candy bars that are smaller than they once were. Oh, I just did. Anyway, the only thing that kept me from grabbing a chocolate candy bar was knowing it really wouldn't taste as good as I imagined. I wanted a true chocolate-taste experience like the one I get when I eat chocolate croissants from an honest-to-goodness patisserie. Unfortunately, we have no patisseries in town. The market where we shopped did sell freshly baked croissants. Not flaky, buttery rich ones, but okay enough. Fortunately, when the husband wasn't looking, I had slipped a package of them into the cart. La, la, la, la. Look over there

I tend to make what I call a tacky potato salad. That means I put in one ingredient too many. Before I added the whatever ingredient, my potato salad would have the right balance of flavor and presentation. And then, bam! In goes that "let me try this" ingredient and now the salad tastes and looks a bit strange. In other words, my potato salad becomes one that you'd like because you acquired the taste to eat it. Visual reference. Think of adding a clown collar to your job interview outfit. My tacky potato salad is my metaphor for when I overdo things. I may have made a potato salad out of my blog design today when I added a signature to my post below. Or not. Doesn't matter really if it does. I enjoy eating my tacky potato salad. Most times. If you're interested in creating a personal signature, check out My Live Signature .  By the way, fellow Blogathoner Tracy Doerr is featuring an interview series of the Word Count Blogathon participants at her blog Tracy Doerr

In fourth grade, one of my favorite books was the Scholastic produced joke book that had a joker on the cover. This joke has stayed with me through the years: What do you call the sun and wind? You call the sun rose and the wind blue.  Ha! Long ago, I thought it would be cool to make a living off writing jokes, gags, and other ha-ha stuff. What happened? Funny-on-the-brain constipation. Turns out I am much too serious for my own good, like lately. Qué bummer! Yeah, I know this slang is dating me. For sure.  Anyway, now and then, some good jokes (from my perspective) grace my mind. So, for today's post, I thought I'd share three of them. What do you call lanes that police race on?  Bacon strips.  Was that a groan I heard? What was the revolutionary soldier's favorite dish? Chicken Catch-a-Tory. Ba-da-bing! Miguel and his auntie were eating in their favorite Mexican restaurant. As his auntie reached across the table for a dish, Miguel noticed her ripped sleeve and asked, &quo

Clouds playing leapfrog across the sky. Today (which will be yesterday by the time I post this) is a brunch day. It was 10:30 by the time I went down to the kitchen to eat breakfast. Why so late? Because I woke up at 10:04. Why so late? Because I stayed up to 4 a.m. doing some gratis work for my high school class alumni scholarship fundraiser , and okay, I kept falling asleep on the documentary The Botany of Desire . (P.S. If you click that link, it will take you to Amazon. Just saying.) The parts I did see were quite interesting. Did you know that apples originated in Borat land, and that Johnny Appleseed dressed like a beggar but was some smart cookie of a business guy, and that the first apples in America were too sour to eat but perfect mash for getting drunk? I also woke up to learn a bit about marijuana. Naturally, it can grow to seven feet or more. I didn't know that. Because folks have been furtively growing marijuana indoors, a new species was created so that the plant doe

Ding dong. "Who can that be?" asked the husband, not getting up from his desk. I scrambled up from mine and down the stairs.  I hoped it wasn't another salesperson from the carpet cleaning or bug zapping service. I also didn't want to get down there and find someone clutching slick campaign material to give me. I doubt it was religious people. They rarely show up around dinner time. Aw, gee. I hoped it wasn't anyone we knew. The husband and I bought hot dogs at the Farmers Market for dinner. There was only enough for the mama and us. Our front door was open. I saw a young man on the other side of the security gate. "Hello," I called, as I walked down the last few steps. "Hello," he said, pressing his face into the gate. I love that security gate. I can see the people on the other side of it, but they can't see me. I'm just a voice behind it. "What do you want?" He stepped back quickly. "I couldn't tell where you were.

"What's with all these Hollister tee shirts?" That's the kind of question folks would ask me when they learned I was from Hollister, California. "I was standing behind this gal wearing a sweatshirt that said Hollister on it. 'Hey, I'm from Hollister, too?' She looked at me like I was some kind of perv." That's the kind of story I would hear from local folks (or folks who used to live here) about their first encounters with the Hollister line of clothing sold by Abercrombie and Fitch. Most of you, dear readers, most likely know that the Hollister clothes sold in stores nationwide popularize a fabricated beach town called Hollister, California. It would be funny if it weren't for the fact that a few years ago, Abercrombie and Fitch came through our very real town and told small business owners to stop selling any and all clothing that have Hollister printed on it. If they continued,  the corporation would sue the small business owners