Spencer the Super Hero

Unlike his technologically obsessed older sister who videos herself doing all sorts of things in all sorts of outfits (she is 8) and uploads them to You Tube, and his older brother very musically minded who cranks up the key board  to warp speed and prances around doing a Michael Jackson thriller cross moonwalk impersonation, looking like a deranged terra dactyl with his hands shaped like the lego people from his favourite movie, our grandson Spencer the more old fashioned of the trio is donning his cape, superhero gum boots and wielding his amazing garden stick wand with magical powers to rid the world of pain and suffering.  Unfortunately in this story, his mother's suffering, caused in actual fact by the superhero in question.  His Mom unwisely scooped him up to kiss his gorgeous pudgy neck and put him back down only to receive a hard thump on her foot from his super hard boot.  Our hero was not to be thrown by the incident, after a quick 'Thorry Mum' and adjusting of his cape he swung his wand towards the painful foot his mother was rubbing, and with a loud swoosh!! he was off undeterred to save the world.

Eat, Pray, Love

I saw a little bit of Julia Roberts new movie Eat Pray Love a few days ago.  She was enouraging her friend to ignore the carbs and just eat the pizza in front of her.  Julia's character had come to the emancipating conclusion that life is too short to never be able to enjoy pizza without guilt. It made me want to shout Halleluhah! Julia more power to you and break into an adaptation of Martin Luther King Jrs famous speech "I have a dream, I have a dream that a woman is no longer judged by whether she has wrinkle free skin or the size of her dress, but by the character she exhibits.  It is time we stopped being dictated to by what other people think we should be. Our self esteem is bombarded by media images of models, some of who are fourteen or fifteen peering at us from glossy magazines and even their youthful little faces have been airbrushed to oblivion.  Why do we even try to live up to such manipulation. Cindy Crawford was being interviewed by Oprah once and I heard her say, that in real life even she doesn't look like Cindy Crawford. (They used to remove her famous mole from her pictures) 

Most women I know, including me would say they need to lose weight, and with the mountains of diet information available,  diet plans in every magazine, low fat, low carb and my generations grapefruit diet to name but a few, you would think we would all be slim.  I know for myself I could utilize my most powerful weight loss tool, I could use my arms to push myself away from the table a bit sooner.  My food bill would go down, my arms would tone up and I could send the savings off to a world relief organisation.

The last time I checked the world statistic site, it said that in America the year before they had spent $262 billion on diets, and I would think most of the Western World would be on par, and yet as Nations we are all just as fat.  (My husband is convinced that it is the cottage cheese as you mostly see fat people like myself eating it - sorry I probably should be politically correct so would that be size challenged)  Imagine what impact just half of that amount would have on some worthwhile cause like world hunger.

Its a constant dilemma. Should we vote with Julia and stuff ourselves with pizza, or should we go with Katherine Hepburns approach in one of my favorite movies 'Guess Whose Coming To Dinner'  She pulls into a drive thru diner with co-star Spencer Tracy her husband in the movie, it is six o'clock in the evening and they are to have dinner with their daughters in-laws at eight.  The lovely elegant Katherine orders black coffee, and gets annoyed with Spencer for ordering boysenberry icecream, ' you'll spoil your dinner', she chastises him.  On the inside I always imagine that I am a disciplined devotee of Kate and have no trouble just having black coffee and not spoiling my dinner, when it is only six o'clock and dinner isn't  till eight pm.  But the truth is that like pudgy Spencer, I would probably order the icecream and it wouldn't spoil my dinner at all

why me or Security frisking part two

You have to have read my blog 'Command presence' to get this.  I rant about the fact that I always get frisked when going through airport security.  I have tried everything making eye contact, avoiding eye contact,  acting cool, nothing works, I always get frisked.  But, our last venture to the airport had to take the cake, as usual they called me over and frisked me, then made my husband Allan (who apparently looks a lot like Magiver) take off his shoes and belt and unpack his bag which they scanned several times after asking him in a stern voice 'Is this your bag Sir' It turned out he had a tiny tripod in the bottom which obviously looked like a tiny Nuclear Bomb.  I by this time was patiently waiting contemplating the fact that we may miss our flight by the time he packed up all his stuff.  Finally he was finished and I picked up my bag and turned to head off only to find that while all this was going on the man that frisked me several minutes earlier had finished his shift and a new fella had taken over….you guessed it, 'Excuse me Madam, can you just step over here'… You have got to be kidding me (I came close to swearing at him)