Guess Who Knows How Not to Drown

"Miss Purser was a good teacher," Rapunzel always said.
Usually my mom is right, but I had to disagree on this point.
Miss Purser, or Satan as I liked to call her, was my swimming teacher.  I was four years old and terrified of the water, so naturally I would cry.  "She knew that if one child cried, they would all cry, so she had to stop you from crying," Rapunzel would say.  "The best way to do that was to toss you into the water."
Miss Purser/Satan was a terrible teacher.  She was supposed to teach me how to swim, and here I am at forty-five years old, after all these years taking private lessons and learning how to swim.
My current swimming teacher doesn't throw me in the middle of the pool when I get scared and cry.  She says nice words and waits till I calm down and then teaches me all the things.  I can float on my back, and swim on my stomach, and put my head underwater, and jump in the deep end, and hold my breath till I resurface, and not be afraid, and prevent myself from drowning.
Rapunzel is usually right, but Miss Purser/Satan was a terrible teacher.  Mrs. Kooy is an excellent teacher.  Jeremy Renner is an excellent actor.  I hope Miss Purser gets chlorine water up her nose.

Everyone's a Critic But I Don't Care

I couldn't resist Facebook's offer to show me my personal Amazon review.  Yes, I know that every time you click one of those quizzes, all my friends' savings account balances are transferred to Kim Jong Un, but everyone knows I'm a terrible friend so if they follow me on social media they ought to expect it.  Besides, we all know what Zoltan Kaszas has to say about K.J.U.  Anyway, I only have three friends, and none of us have any savings.
Back to my Amazon review: I got one star, which is way more than I expected.
"I think mine is faulty."  I figured whoever bought me would know that, going in.
"I've heard that owning a Chevrolet Mama would be a dream."  Heh heh!  If something sounds too good to be true, people, it usually is.  (Meanwhile, "You Don't Own Me" pops up on the radio.)
"More like a nightmare!"  Excellent!  That's what I was going for.
"It's sarcastic, wild, and eats all my food..."  Yes.  Yes I am, and yes I do.
Come now, if you wanted a five-star purchase, you should have ordered yourself a nice Jeremy Renner.

A Senior, I Do What I Want

I'll admit I went into mild shock when the nice girl behind the counter asked me, "Do you qualify for the senior discount?"
Like an idiot, on the outside I said, "No."
Internally, I was more like, wait, what?!  Do I LOOK as if I qualify for the senior discount?  At what age do I qualify for the senior discount?  How much money would I avoid spending with the senior discount?  I'm dressed in sexyboots and skinny jeans, and I have great hair.  How could even a teenybopper like her be so ridiculous as to think I might qualify for the senior discount?  If I look as though I need to be asked if I qualify for the senior discount, just gimme the stupid senior discount!
At first I laughed it off, then I went home and put the mirror through some deep agony, and after that I got distracted with real life and forgot to be concerned with my appearance.  For a few months...until another store clerk asked me the same question.
For the record, I'm younger than Jeremy Renner.  But Itellyouwhat, everybody else is trying to get ahead in life, so I'm going to do it too.  I'm embracing this.  I'm closer to forty than I am to fifty, but henceforth I'm skipping the rest of my youth.  Senior citizens get away with murder because they're old.  So here it is, people.  I'm a senior citizen and I do what I want!

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

I was so jacked up when skinny jeans returned to fashion.  I was extra jacked to be able to fit into a pair of skinny jeans.  I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to pull off a stunt like skinny jeans, but bestie danilb says I kick butt in skinny jeans, though Hunneypunkin says, "ehhh..."  But who am I going to trust for fashion sense, a lady or a working man?
My happiest moment was finding a pair of not just skinny jeans, but SPARKLY skinny jeans.  Back in the late 1900's I would have traded all the boys in the world for a pair of sparkly skinny jeans.  (Being as I was a teenage girl back in the late 1900's, you can imagine how sacrificial trading all the boys in the world would have been, so you KNOW how much I wanted those jeans.)  But alas, sparkly skinny jeans were expensive.  The best I could do back in the day was sew the legs of my faded Levi's 501 handed down straight legs to the point of burning two hundred and sixty-three calories to get my heels into them.
But good things come to those who wait, as they say.  A couple decades later, here we are in skinny jeans again.  And not just any skinny jeans.  Sparkly ones!  And because I waited patiently for them, I didn't have to trade in all the boys in the world.  Which is pretty great, because now I have sons, and they're even better than all the boys I knew back in the day.  Plus, can you even imagine a world without Jeremy Renner?

One Last Cross

Pixie has collected cross necklaces since she was little.  (-er.  She hasn't become large.)
Naturally her great grandad collected them for her.  I mean, if you were a great grandad whose pixie collected cross necklaces, wouldn't you collect them for her?
Pixie's great grandad passed away recently.
One day I commented to Pixie that the necklace she wears every day may be due for a replacement.  The pendant had long since broken and fallen off, and the chain was tarnished and discolored.
"I KNOW THAT," she said, wearing her best Jeremy Renner face.  "This was the last cross necklace Grandad gave me.  I'm not taking it off."
Among Grandad's belongings, a cross necklace was discovered, and the family sent it our way.
Pixie changed her necklace.

Catching More Comments Than Dreams

My full blood Native American friend who calls herself an American Indian gave me a dream catcher as a gift.
My millennial friend scolded me for referring to my Native American friend as an American Indian.
My caucasian friend who identifies as a Chippewa condemned my dream catcher as a fake.
My liberal friend disowned me as a racist because I had the audacity to display a piece of art not belonging to my culture.
My conservative friend said my dream catcher was cute.
My superstitious friend suggested I remove the dream catcher from my home because it could invite evil spirits.
My pagan friend lectured me on the history of dream catchers and their difference from mandalas.
My Catholic friend saw the dream catcher and crossed herself.
My non-Jewish friend who identifies as a Jew also identified the dream catcher as an idol and claimed I must destroy it.
My Jewish friend says that if I'm not worshiping it, the dream catcher is neither an idol nor a statue or graven image, so I can keep it.
My Jewish friend who identifies as a non-Jew displays in her home a dream catcher with the Star of David in the middle of it.
My African American friend who calls herself "black" and does not originate from Africa admired the variance of eras and ethnicity she found represented in my life.
My white friend who identifies as African American shushed me when I referred to my African American friend who does not originate from Africa as "black".
My prepper friend built me a bomb shelter and stocked it with three decades' worth of food and water and didn't notice that my family room was sporting a dream catcher.
My church friend came over to assist me with a service project and we were too involved with our work to concern ourselves with the dream catcher.
My BFF brought me a caramel mocha and commented on my dream catcher, and we visited for hours about the wonder of cultural diversity in America.
Jeremy Renner doesn't really give a monkey's butt.  He just keeps cranking out movies.
My cat climbed the wall, assaulted the dream catcher, and ate the feathers off.
I repaired my dream catcher, hung it where the cat can't get to it, and smiled about all my friends.