Mashed potatoes as a Youtube sensation

Sometimes this blog is literally about mashed potatoes, and sometimes it is about other important issues in life.

This is about mashed potatoes.

How could I not write about it?!?!?! The hottest Youtube sensation of the moment, which repeatedly mentions mashed potatoes!!!  Our march to emerging from a modest clique fondly savoring our mashed potatoes to the most dominant, peace-enhancing, God-fearing, world-improving movement in the world!  And our efforts bolstered by 12-year-old Nicole Westbrook and her "It's Thanksgiving" song phenomenon.

As I've written before, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, focusing on family and food, including, of course, frequent servings of mashed potatoes, easily at the expense of foregoing multiple dessert options.  While Nicole's video is not exclusively about mashed potatoes - - elaborating as she does about turkey and family and happiness and such - - when was there ever such a social media hit that predominantly features our beloved spud sensation.

If you have not yet seen her video, check it out here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSBq8geuJk0

I don't think I need to elaborate much beyond this, but it was too good and too famous and too delicious not to mention here.

Happy Thanksgiving to all....and especially to you, Nicole.   THANKS!!

Making it right

As I cross the threshold to the next decade - - the wild and psychedelic 60's, definitely without the psychedelic aspect - - of my life, two things have surfaced recently that let me think it may be a better decade than the one I'm closing out, and one of those actually involves mashed potatoes, the namesake of this blog. Usn't that special?!

I should preface this by saying that on the day I turned 50, I spent a few hours by myself driving to a Catholic shrine of Mary in Carey, Ohio. It was a pleasantly warm summer day, and I walked around the park grounds by the shrine, reflecting and saying a rosary. While sitting at a picnic table, I was stung by a bee!! It made me realize that it can hurt to be a Catholic (lierally) and I should have taken that as a symble for the mental and financial challenges the past ten years brought with them.  Ah, but for my foolish youth....

In the interest of full disclosure, the past ten years have had some great highlights, such as our sons' weddings and the arrival of our three fantastic grandsons!!!  And while I think I try not to complain, I have felt quite overwhelmed by our fiscal situation.

Anyway, I knew that I was born at three minutes after midnight on September 3, 1952.  For many, many years I have observed the arrival of the minute of my birth with a beer. Usually everyone else in the household was wisely asleep, but I gacve myself a little treat and modest toast when that magic minute arrived.

But in sorting through some boxes of our old cool stuff, I have just discovered the little booklet given to my mother by, I presume, the hospital where I was born. (St. Vincent Hospital, the same place where I worked for 19 years….but not as a baby/child.) In that booklet it lists my weight at birth, my doctor’s name, my nurse’s name, and my time of birth: 12:08 a.m.

What!  12:08 a.m.?!?!?

I was shocked. For decades I made the point of saluting my bith precisely at the moment of my birth, and now I discovered that I had been doing it at the wrong minute for years and years! I had been living a lie!!. I’m such a fool!! No wonder the universe laughed at me and God threw problems my way as he chuckled at my stupidity. Yes, we all have our cross to bear, but God chose to add to my load because he knew my toasts and celebrating were nothing but the empty clanging of a hollow gong!!!

I am glad I found out the truth in time for my crossing into my sixties. This September 3 I will be doing something at the moment of my birth on my birthday that I have often wanted to do: playing video poker at a casino.

Oh, I could have done it before, as there are three casinos a short hour away in Detroit, and I could have driven there and been paying - - 'er, I mean playing - - at 12:03 a.m..   Heck I have been in those casinos a couple times in the wee hours of a morning. But not on my birthday, as I did not want to be driving back that far in the middle of a night on a long Labor day weekend, or on a worknight, which would often be the case.

But now that there is a casino in Toledo a scant ten minutes away, it will be easy to get there, be playing at the time of my birth - - 12:08 mind you - - and then when I am finished make it home in another 10 or 15 minutes. Piece of easy (birthday) cake.

I figure I might as well find out as soon as possible how good the decade of my 60’s will be, so why not test my luck by playing video poker precisely as I begin my 60th year?!?!?!

On another (seemingly completely unrelated) note, the other element compromising "Making it right" is the news that some chain convenience stores are now installing instant mashed potato dispensers! Life is good! I don’t drink coffee, but marvel at how many places sell coffee and pop and pizza slices and hot dogs and more. Now somebody is helping to put the food groups in their proper order and the universe completely aligned by making it as easy to obtain mashed potatoes.

So we’ll see if the stars are actually aligning beginning on my birthday thi year….now that I know the actual exact time to say a prayer, take a sip of beer and play poker. And although I may not be able to quickly and conveniently find a heart and stomach-warming bowl of mashed potatoes, I know that somewhere out there someone is doing that, and that someday that person may be me, whether I win big at the casino or not!!!

Now all I have to do is figure out the important world-changing book(s) I am suppose to write in the next ten years - - assuming, of course, that I really do still have ten more years left - -  how to do it and actually do it, and my optimistic start to this new decade may be justified.