Oh, that closet!

"Hi, mom!" Bigger Girl said as she came into the house.

Hi, sweetheart.  How was work? i asked.

"It was fine, and I got my oil change on the way home.  They didn't vacuum the carpets really well, but since there's a fly in there that won't get out, at least it will have something to eat!" she laughed.

Yes, until it dies in the heat of the car tomorrow! i noted.

"Yeah, I know.  Maybe it will fly out in the morning when I open the car, though," she said.

Maybe, was my comment as i grabbed the last paper towel off of the roll.

"Oh, and guess what else happened today?" she asked.

There's no way i can guess, so you'd best just tell me, i told her.

"Well, you know my friend Vera?  The Kentucky Fried Soldier with PTSD and a bad back and knee?  Well, when they lived at their old apartment, someone in the building brought in bedbugs and the landlord didn't do anything for so long that their apartment got infested, and they had to throw away their bed when they moved.

"So ever since then, Vera has to sleep on a pallet on the floor and she is always hurting, and so she tries not to go to bed until she's so tired she has to go to bed, so she will sleep through some of the pain.

"But I wanted to do something, so I asked Miss Lizzie if she had that old air mattress, and she said she did but we couldn't get together to get it to Vera, so I sent out a text to all of my friends asking if anyone had an old air mattress they didn't need, and why I needed it, and Pat told his mom and dad and they went out and bought Vera a brand new air mattress!"  She was beaming with excitement.

That's wonderful! i exclaimed.

"Yea, and when I brought it to Vera and told her, she cried!" 

Well, you know I would have bought her one, too, if you had told me, i said.

"Yea, but I thought if somebody had one already, that would be easier," she noted.

Could you go get me another roll of paper towels from the closet? i asked.

"I'll do it!" Little Girl called out to us from the hallway.  We heard the closet door open, then she exclaimed, "SissyCat!  Why are you in the closet?  What was SissyCat doing in the closet?" she continued as she came into the kitchen with the paper towels.

"Because she's not comfortable with the idea of coming out yet!" Bigger Girl quipped.

As we all laughed, Little Girl said, "Oh, that closet!  That explains it!"





Today is:

Accession Day -- United Arab Emirates (accession of H.H. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan)

Best Elf Awards -- Fairy Calendar

Canadian Open Old Time Fiddle Championship -- Shelburne, ON, Canada (through Sunday)

east of Everything Green Except Money -- Hooray for veggies! You'll need them before you have that root beer float.

Festival of Nut and Ra; Chief Festival of Thoth -- Ancient Egyptian Calendar (date approximate)

Festival Wednesday -- British Virgin Islands

Hiroshima Day

Independence Day / National Day -- Bolivia; Jamaica

Miss Crustacean USA Beauty Pageant and Ocean City Creep -- Ocean City, NJ, US (crowning the most beautiful and fastest tree crab on Earth)

National Fresh Breath (Halitosis) Day -- shouldn't that read, anti-halitosis?

National Root Beer Float Day -- A&W Root Beer really gets into this day

Peace Festival -- Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima, Japan

Sts. Justus and Pastor's Day (Patrons of Alcala, Spain; Madrid, Spain)

Tanabata Festival -- Sendai, Japan (Japan's largest Tanabata 'Star Festival', through the 8th)
 
Teinne Festival -- Ancient Celtic Calendar (Teinne, the Celtic Holy Fire, sometimes called Tan; date approximate)

Transfiguration of the Lord -- Orthodox Christian

Wiggle Your Toes Day -- internet generated, and my suggestion is to celebrate it with a cool drink out by the pool!


Birthdays Today:

Romola Garai, 1982
Melissa George, 1976
Soleil Moon Frye, 1976
M. Night Shyamalan, 1970
Michelle Yeoh, 1962
Catherine Hicks, 1951
Dorian Harewood, 1950
Shirley Ann Jackson, 1946
Peter Bonerz, 1938
Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob, 1934
Andy Warhol, 1928
Robert Mitchum, 1817
Lucille Ball, 1911
Clara Bow, 1905
Hoot Gibson, 1892
Alexander Fleming, 1881
Louella Parsons, 1881
Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, 1861
Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809
Daniel O'Connell, 1775


Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Help"(Album debut), 1965


Today in History:

Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada founds the city of Bogota, Colombia, 1538
Holland (The Dutch Republic) sells Brazil to Portugal and the two
countries sign the Treaty of The Hague, 1661
The first private military school in the US, Norwich University, is
founded in Vermont, 1819
The Russian Geographical Society is founded in Saint Petersburg, 1845
William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed by the electric chair, 1890
Alice Ramsey takes three friends (none of whom could drive) to become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, 1909
Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, 1926
Prometheus, a bristlecone pine and the world's oldest tree, is cut down by the US National Forest Service, for reasons even they cannot explain, 1964
The Federal Voting Rights Act is signed, 1965
A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimeters (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney, 1986
The United Nations Security Council orders a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, 1990
NASA makes the still disputed announcement that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms, 1996
The incoming coalition government of the United Kingdom discontinues the use of the controversial ContactPoint database of all children in that country, 2010
After a century of silence, Mount Tongariro in New Zealand erupts, spreading volcanic ash across the country's central North Island and affecting airports, 2012
The Curiosity Rover, controlled by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, lands safely on the surface of Mars, 2012