"Did you ever have to finally decide......"

Bleah.

Sometimes when I am mourning a loss, particularly a great one that I basically caused myself, I undergo this period of sick, stupid, horrible nostalgia. Not even just for the person/place/thing I no longer get to keep. I go WAAAAAAAY back, hoping to find myself again in old metal lunchboxes and stuffed Grover dolls. It's an illness, I think, and I hope I don't end up like that old crone in Dicken's Great Expectations with forty-year-old wedding cake cobwebbed up like gray lace sitting in her parlor and a perpetually pissed-off, hopeless character sketch. Sheesh.

But I don't think that'll happen. I don't feel too pissed off or hopeless right now. I'm super, super sad. And I hate all things Groundhog Day. What a stupid holiday. Oh man....to even think that I would have to relive this year's Groundhog Day over and over and over and over again sends bile to the back of my throat. At least I can be grateful I didn't wake up to Sonny and Cher this morning...It's definitely February 3rd, hallelujah.

What I was going to say, though, is that it's getting to be spring around here in Mesa. And how can anybody really be all that glum when your parking lot smells like new plants and there's the constant whistle of birds in the background? So I watched a bunch of dumb YouTube videos of classic Sesame Street. I doubt any of you will actually go in and watch them, but look, that's all I'm offering this off-week. I think. All I'm offering today, anyway. In the buzzing, dramatic, swollen recesses of my bloody little heart, these clips resonated a little bit of good cheer back into me and I feel completely confident about advertising them here, on my blog, to you, my good friends.

The first is a creepy one about getting honey from bees. I remember it had the same effect on me as a kid as nature shows about spiders did. Uneasy background music and it sounds like it's being narrated by one of the Children of the Corn. I love it. The second is a strong, meaty classic--Madeline Kahn and Grover hang out together. This is probably the strongest attachment I have to Sesame Street, this clip I mean. This is part of the reason I still carry that damn dirty Grover doll with me wherever I pick up and move to and also the reason I love Kahn so much. Sesame Street was such a sweet show.....why and when did they let Elmo take it over? Everything good in the world these days is losing heart to the sucking maw of commercialism. Damn you, Tickle Me Elmo. Damn you to the fiery depths of hell's seventh circle.

Finally and thirdly, how do you guys expect me to act this foolishly and immaturely and NOT throw on a clip from Pete's Dragon. So here's Petey and Helen Reddy singing sweetly and taking me back, all the way back to my old house in Salt Lake, the one where I had a lovebird named Bird G. who used to play in my hair while I sat in front of this stupid movie with my perpetual little kid snotty nose. I'm so damned glum. And don't get me wrong....I know my life is barrels and bushels and trenches better than most people's--I'm thick with good friends and plush blessings and sunshine. But somehow that still doesn't make this any less crappy. You guys know how I am about letting things go, even if I am lucky enough to keep a good friend out of the whole ordeal. If I were Harrison Ford in the Last Crusade, I'd STILL be lying there with my middle finger just barely grazing the edge of that wooden cup.

If anyone needs me I'll be making myself sick off Jim Croce and trying to find a copy of Better Off Dead. Jen, where are you with Steel Magnolias when I need you? I need a good Weezer to sock in the nose (laugh, laugh, laugh then cry some more...you know the drill).