All that, plus okra.

We kept Rosemary this weekend while Little Acorn (aka Her Parents)  did a wedding shoot on the beach at Perdido.  It was an interesting one with not much time to rest or reflect -- cutting uppers is hard work -- so here's a handful of things that went zingin' through my brain over the course of the last 72 hours or so.

HERE'S A SHOCKER!!!!

Nobody who knows me would accuse me of being a lukewarm Alabama football fan.  What I also am, however, is a person with at least one foot grounded in reality and a sense of perspective.  So -- here's a newsflash:  we were not going to stay undefeated forever.  We have a young defense who play well when they play well, but otherwise are uneven.  We play in a tough conference, although I'm not expert enough to claim with any authority that it's the best in the nation.  That means all SEC teams will look forward to a slate of tough weekends.   I may be bucking conventional wisdom (what a shock), but I'm happier to have lost to a conference opponent than one outside the conference.  This loss -- and there's no reason to whitewash the fact that we got beat by the superior team on that particular day in that particular place -- is our whetstone for the rest of the season.  

On a mostly unrelated note, Rosemary's parents are Auburn football fans.  This is not a big deal to me.  Our son fell under the spell of his Pap (also an Auburn fan) when he was a little boy, and it gave me silly pleasure to see them share something special together.   When Rosemary is old enough to care, who knows? She may want to share something special with her Grandmama.  

In the meantime, my second favorite college football team for the past several years has been the Oregon Ducks.  I have a friend who is maybe their biggest fan, and she sent me my own Duck Lips, which proves that even I can be rented.  

I have, therefore, been able to devise an elegant solution to this divided household thing, and I am not ashamed to admit it is rather brilliant.  

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Rosemary and I strolled over to my folks' house this morning, and along the way I kept seeing weird things along the sides of the road.   A pair of socks, a sun visor, one baby shoe, hair extensions, etc., etc.  You know you've been watching too many crime shows when your first thought at seeing these things is THIS COULD BE EVIDENCE!

I spare you the photos I might have taken of those sorts of things, and give you this instead.  Those who know me will not be surprised to know I had to ask my husband what you call it.  

It's a caladium!

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I have had difficulty this year reading at the same pace as I normally do, for various and sundry reasons, and it has often been very easy to put a book down that I usually would have kept working on enjoying.  But I finished a book this weekend that was so remarkable, so stunning, that I just had to share, so here are the remarks I made on Goodreads.     Oh, one other thing I wrote about it in the comments section of my favorite book blogger's review of the same book..... 

For 50 years, folks have defaulted to "To Kill a Mockingbird" to provide a literary snapshot of the South, and that tendency has never really been challenged. Until now. It's that good.

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And speaking of literary classics, Rosemary loves Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar so much that she kisses the butterfly at the end of the story.   Every. Single. Time.  We think this is adorable. And that it shows extraordinary good taste in literature.  

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Late this afternoon Henry and I were relaxing on the sofa, listening to the Golden Oldies digital music channel on TV when this song came on.  We don't think they write Teen Drama Themes like this anymore.  It has a great beat, though, and you can dance to it. 

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So, that's pretty much it in an okra shell.