A dog & a smile & a grateful heart

Sometimes I forget to be thankful for the simple things.

I was reminded of that the other day when I was downtown and found Max the bulldog. I'd seen him on TV before, but never in person. I watched him for several minutes, smiling the whole time.

So today, I'm thankful for people and things (and dogs) that bring a smile to my face.

Thanks for the reminder -- and the smile -- Max.

Wishing all my readers a Thanksgiving full of smiles.

Best dumpster ever

It gives a whole new meaning to "take out...the trash."

Rainy day surprise

It's raining here -- has been since last night. Despite the gray and gloomy and wet conditions outside, a couple of friends at work and I decided to walk to a nearby Thai food restaurant for lunch.

The walk there wasn't bad. A little chilly, but not very rainy. The rain was coming down harder when we left to return to the office, but I didn't mind so much because this little surprise was there waiting to greet us as we walked by:

I couldn't help but smile. I hope it has the same effect on you.

I wish I rode the Oscar Mayer wiener (and I did!)

The e-mail came from Dyl-icious Dylan, asking if I wanted to hop aboard the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile and show him around Indianapolis. Frankly, he didn't have to ask me twice! I told him I would relish the opportunity.

Dylan and his partner, Ketchup Kylie, are in Indy for the week and had some down time. They were looking for someone to introduce them a bit to the city. So Dylan googled "Indianapolis bloggers" and came up with me. Hot diggity dog!

It turns out that Kylie was feeling a little under the bun, so Dylan pulled up to my house by himself. There is nothing quite like seeing the Wienermobile driving down your street.

The boys wasted no time running out of the house and taking their seats in the hot dog on wheels. I'm just glad Clifford the big red dog wasn't around to chase down this treat. Dylan, being a very conscientious Hot Dogger, insisted everyone buckle their "meatbelts" before we headed out. I decided to ride "shotbun" so I could help Dylan navigate our way to our first stop.

We headed to a nearby shopping center where Annie and about 29 other teenagers were due to return from a day of service at a camp for kids with disabilities. You should have seen how excited these kids were to see the Wienermobile, get Wiener Whistles and stickers that said "I saw it!"

I'm afraid, for these kids, any other surprise just won't cut the mustard after they've experienced the Wienermobile. And it wasn't just the service day kids. People came out of stores, pulled up in their cars, and followed us into the parking lot just to get close to the legendary Wienermobile (which is actually one of 6 Wienermobiles on the road around the country). 

We had so much fun spreading hot dog smiles that we decided to take the smiles across town to our friends at Joy's House, an adult day community. For security reasons, the guests at Joy's House couldn't come outside to visit the Wienermobile. Instead, Dylan pulled up along the dining room windows, so the guests could relish the view from there. Then we all got out and went inside to visit with the guests and hand out Wiener Whistles and I saw it! stickers.

Of course, we took some time for a few photo ops:

Laura & Tina at Joy's House -- What you might not be able to tell from this picture is that Tina was about to strangle Robbie if he blew his Wiener Whistle one more time.

Once she took the shotbun seat, we weren't sure if we were going to be able to get Tina out of the Wienermobile. 

And despite the fact that the heat was beginning to ketchup with Robbie, we piled out of the HDOW (hot dog on wheels) to pose for a family picture. I'm pretty sure I'm going to send this one out in our Christmas cards.

By the time we were wrapping things up at Joy's House, we were getting pretty hungry. Despite the fact that you're driving around in a giant hot dog -- did you know the Wienermobile is 60 hot dogs long and 24 hot dogs high? -- there's actually nothing to eat on the Wienermobile. So, where do you take the Hot Dogger who is graciously driving you around town in a grilled fiberglass hotdog? To a hamburger joint, of course!

After a dinner at Boogie Burger, we decided to introduce our Hot Dogger to the hottest dawgs we know -- the Butler University bulldogs.  We pulled up outside of legendary Hinkle Fieldhouse and snapped this postcard-perfect picture:

Just as we were getting ready to leave Butler, there was a knock on the side of the Wienermobile, which Dylan said is a pretty common occurrence. What was uncommon about this knock, however, was it came from the father of Butler Blue 2. They (Blue 2 and his pop) had been following our tweets and knew we were on campus. So we introduced Butler's hot dog to Dylan and the Wienermobile. Even our seasoned Hot Dogger was impressed. 

First Blue 2 checked out the Wienermobile -- that's just mustard. Blue 2 was perfectly behaved. 

Then Dylan tried out the Blue 2 mobile.

It was a mutual admiration society. 

By that time, we were all getting pretty tired. So we rolled on home and said goodbye to Dylan and the wiener on wheels. But before he drove away, Dylan left me with my very own beanie weenie -- a stuffed Wienermobile!

Of all the things I've gotten to do as a blogger (and there have been plenty), I think my afternoon in the Wienermobile has been the best yet. (Even better than flying upside down in an airplane!)

Stay tuned for an exclusive interview with Dyl-icious Dylan, the Hot Dogger and Wienermobile driver.

My favorite day of the year

Today is National Ice Cream Day. It's my favorite day of the year -- even though I just learned about it 10 minutes ago. But seriously, how could you not like National Ice Cream Day (unless you are lactose intolerant, in which case we appreciate you not joining in the celebration).

While my diet is much healthier than it was say 5 years ago or so, ice cream is still my favorite food. If I could only eat one food for the rest of my life, it would be ice cream. If I were on death row and could choose anything as my last meal, it would be a smorgasbord of ice cream. And the beauty of having ice cream as a favorite food is that if, when I'm older, I have trouble chewing and swallowing solid food, good old-fashioned ice cream will not let me down.

If I were limited to just one flavor, I'd choose chocolate, though I do enjoy a good vanilla bean where you can see the bits of the beans in the ice cream. My default combo when I just can't decide on anything is one scoop chocolate, one scoop mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone.

Also, always a cone, never a dish. Unless it's a sundae, which I very rarely eat.

I have different favorites depending on where I go:

Baskin-Robbins: Peanut butter chocolate -- a perfect go-to flavor

Maggie Moos: Dark chocolate and Cinnamoo mixed with almonds -- a sophisticated, grown up taste

Ben & Jerry's: Chubby Hubby -- delicious and the name makes me smile

Marsh Supermarket: Marsh brand light Moose Tracks -- all of the goodness, not so much of the badness

Graeter's (although I've only been there once): Buckeye Blitz -- similar to, but smoother than, the Baskin Robbins peanut butter chocolate

Steak 'n Shake: Chocolate milkshake, straight up. No fancy mix-ins or crazy side-by-sides

Dairy Queen: Dilly Bar -- Not too fattening and I love the crunchy chocolate outer shell.

McDonald's: The 49-cent vanilla cone hits the spot without hitting the pocketbook

You'll notice I'm not real big on fruit in my ice cream. Once, we were in Nashville, Indiana in the fall and I had pumpkin pie ice cream that was surprisingly good. Sometimes I get adventurous like that.

My favorite ice cream story of all time is from college. Our friend Beth had been raving to Mike that Ben & Jerry's had a new pepperoni pizza dough flavored ice cream. She kept up this charade for several days. Finally, she got Mike to go to Ben & Jerry's with her. He stepped up to the counter, asked to taste the pepperoni pizza dough ice cream and got back a very confused stare in return.

I think tonight we might have a make-your-own-sundae buffet after dinner. Heck, we might have a make-your-own-sundae buffet FOR dinner.

So, wherever you are, today raise a cone in praise of ice cream and know I'll be doing the same.

Smile-worthy

The big achievements in life are great, but they really come once in a great while. The past few days, I've been trying to notice the little things that I can always count on to make me smile.

Smile-worthy things in my life

1. The first sip of Diet Coke in the morning
2. A Netflix movie arriving in the mail
3. An e-mail that lets me know someone commented on my blog
4. A bingo in Scrabble on Facebook
5. Putting on my pajamas
6. Finding money in the pocket of a pair of pants I just put on
7. Graham crackers with peanut butter dunked in milk
8. Finding matching socks in the sock basket
9.  Putting my head on my favorite pillow
10. An unsolicited hug or kiss from one of my kids

What's smile-worthy in your life?

Pop Art

You all know that I am a Diet Coke girl through and through. But these Pepsi-brand displays at the grocery store near my house do make me smile. The guys at the bank told me the store manager designs the display, then the Pepsi guys come and build it out of 12-pack cases.

There's no mistake this Santa is watching:

Now that's talking turkey:

I thought I'd snapped a picture of other ones, but I can't find them. I think there was a jack-o-lantern and maybe an Easter bunny. Hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

Friday Frags: Feelin' Fine

Goooooooooood Morning Froggy Friends! (said in my best Adrian Cronauer voice...hmmm, wait while I go add "Good Morning Vietnam" to my Netflix queue...) It's Friday and I am feeling F-I-N-E! So good in fact that I'm going to link this post up to Friday Frags and Feel Good Friday, just to mix it up a bit.

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While I've really enjoyed my week off work, I had a meeting this morning that reminded me how much I like working, too. I'm so glad I can work part-time and have the best of both worlds.

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Have you ever had the experience of one person doing something simple that brings a smile to your face? It's happened to me twice this week. The first was the guy at the ice cream counter in Kringle's Kafe at Holiday World. I asked him if he could give us a single dip cone, but with two flavors on it. He said sure. (These are the biggest single dip cones I've ever seen.) That's not what made me smile. What did it was him asking if it mattered which flavor went on the cone first. If you are a.) an ice cream aficionado or b.) a parent of a child whose ever had a meltdown over the fact that the chocolate ice cream was not on top of the cookie dough ice cream, you would smile at that question, too.

The second person to make me smile was a lady cleaning tables at the Central Library this morning. I said hello and asked how she was, to which she replied "Comme ci, comme ca." I recognized this from my high school French class, but I couldn't recall exactly what it meant. She sensed this and told me "that means so-so." Then we had nice, but brief, conversation about languages and her home on the Panama Canal. It was just such a friendly, and unexpected, exchange that I had to smile.

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When I opened my e-mail this morning, I had a note from the blog Quoteables in the Blog World alerting me that I'd been quoted. The honored snippet was "One piece of anatomy I didn't need help locating was my right ovary -- because I'm pretty sure I dislodged it trying to do a move that should only be reserved for professional members of Cirq de Soleil," which came from my Namaste post. I did notice that most of the "quoteables" were a little risque in nature. I didn't dig back to see if they are always that way or if the Qoddess was going for a theme this week. But you can submit funny quoteables if you find some that should be shared.

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Yesterday, one of my children said something that made me sad and proud at the same moment. I can't say who or where, but let me just say that it's good to know that even in the process of messing our kids up, sometimes we can do something right and take small comfort in that.

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Tomorrow my sisters and I are taking our mom out for her Mother's Day gift. Can you believe she's never had a pedicure in her almost 62 years? So it's pedis and lunch and maybe a movie. My feet and my I've-spent-all-week-with-the-kids psyche are smiling already.

Hope your Friday is leaving you feeling F-I-N-E, too!