Workouts and Money and Cordial with Triffids

I’m a bridesmaid.
I’m not dressed as one at the moment, but I am definitely a bridesmaid.
Do you realize what that means?
That means that I have to be fitted for a gown which, in my case, is 50% strapless.
Floor length, so my legs don’t matter much, but 50% strapless.
Shoulder blades and biceps are critical, and I need to figure out a way to tone my left collar bone.
Is that a thing? Can you have toned clavicles?
Sure, the wedding isn’t until September, but the fitting is in February (February? It is February, right?), which means that I have a limited amount of time to learn to love pushups (at least pushups aren’t burpees), or I’ll be forced to flex outrageously in all of the pictures.

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The funny thing about money is that I generally always feel like I have just enough for all of my obligations and a few extras (sushi from Hy-Vee type extras)… and yet there’s always some random person assessing my socioeconomic status, playing Sarah McLachlan songs, and demanding that I “stop drinking $4 lattes every day” and GIVE SOME DANGED MONEY TO THE (insert foundation of choice here)!!
Nothing will lock up my checkbook faster than assumptions about where my money is going.
I don’t drink $4 lattes every day, thank you… and if I did, they would be mochas.
White chocolate ones.
With soy milk.
No whipped cream.
I generally find conspicuous consumption to be a bit distasteful at the best of times, so if you want me to support your cause, don’t open with “Did you REALLY need that last pair of Jimmy Choos?! DID YOU?!?! CHILDREN ARE STARVING, YOU MONSTER!!!”
You’re obviously not looking at my feet right now. I mean, Jimmy Choos? Really? I don’t even think Springfield even stocks such things here. Who in this house has Jimmy Choos?
And why do you assume that because I’m not giving to you that I’m not giving to anyone? I could have just started sponsoring a child or contributing to water wells or building hospitals in some place not America!
Why am I even having this conversation with you? I don’t know you! Bad form! Get out of here!

Is anyone still a fan of the hard sell? Am I the only person who will mulishly resist if some random person tries to guilt me into building hospitals for wounded and traumatized spiders?

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I made raspberry cordial for an “Anne of Green Gables” tea that evolved into a “Let’s just talk, since no one actually owns Anne of Green Gables, and we’ll cap things off with the 1963 cinema classic ‘The Day of the Triffids‘” tea.
Maybe next time, I’ll make raspberry cordial and just go straight to the Triffids, because TRIFFIDS, am I right? Nothing pairs better with ambulatory plants than a delicious sparkling raspberry beverage.
There was a lopsided angel food cake combined with the cordial, which is also completely appropriate for “The Day of the Triffids” (1963) because Howard Keel is an angel.
He can’t use an indoor voice, poor darling, but he manages to drive from London to Paris to Cadiz wearing a jaunty sailor’s cap, and he can dance backwards just like Ginger Rodgers (if Ginger had been a massive dude pretending to be an escaped convict).
Kieron Moore (the other rugged, bellowing hero) is sort-of a mean angel… snarly, very upset about not being 100% more drunk (this man will abandon his scientific post because NOT ENOUGH SCOTCH ON THIS ISLAND), but he does defend his beautiful (and mildly unhelpful) spouse from a Triffid housebreaker, so cake for him, as well.
That moment was terribly romantic, by the way.
Throwing yourself against a wall and screaming isn’t the most proactive of defense strategies, so I do very much appreciate a husband’s refusal to stand back and watch his wife get plant-slapped to death.
When people want to get all in my face about refusing to watch something Meg Ryan-y for Valentine’s Day, I throw out all versions of “The Day of the Triffids” like ninja stars. I mean, really… bickering cute people who obviously like each other and are just being stupid, or attractive strangers who have banded together in a mutually beneficial relationship to avoid being eaten by killer plants?

I know which one I would pick.