Driving, Shoes and Mardi Gras, a Random and Happy Tuesday Post

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It's time once again for a random and happy Tuesday, linking up with Stacy's Random Thoughts at Stacy Uncorked and Sandee at Comedy Plus.  

I'm going to start by dispelling what seems to be a misconception about Carl.  He is a special needs adult, there are some things he cannot do and he will never be able to pay his own bills and live totally on his own.

He does drive, however.  His mother, Ms. V, worked with him for almost 2 years and trained him to be a good, safe driver.  He has never caused an accident and has only received two speeding tickets his whole life, one for going 5mph over the limit in a small town known to make money by churning out the tickets for even the slightest infraction.

It helps he notices anything if it moves.  He can drop something on the floor and leave it because it's not moving and doesn't grab his attention.  A tiny bug crawling on the floor over in a corner is going to be seen and summarily dealt with, as is every other car moving on the road.

Carl is trying his hand at flowers.

Too bad he blocks them with the mouthwash bottles, although i took care of that little problem.

When i arrived yesterday he was already having breakfast, and wearing breakfast.  I found the apron he had grabbed lying over the back of the kitchen chair.  At least he's trying to remember to grab an apron, now we just need to get him to put it on and keep it on.

He asked me about fasting while having his usual everything-but-the-kitchen-sink breakfast, i'm guessing since Lent starts tomorrow his pastor mentioned it at church.  I told him fasting didn't have to be from food.

"What do you mean?" he asked, and i told him some people, such as diabetics, can't go without food for long periods of time without becoming ill.  They can fast from something else, such as watching favorite TV shows.

He was quite intrigued, and i'm sure he's going to mention it again.

Yes, i made him change shirts while i went to hunt up lunch.  His fridge was quite a sight this week.

I made the mistake of opening it without clearing the top first and got this falling on my head.

He wonders why his CDs get scratched.

Once i got in there, i did find a sandwich he'd made.  

One sandwich.

He was not willing to go into the big kitchen to get a sandwich bag, so he just put it in one of the many grocery bags he has.  It was one slice of ham and a string cheese torn into strings because he couldn't find sliced cheese.

I'll spare you the details of what i found in the rest of the fridge except to say the corn and callous pads are now in the bathroom where they belong (or were there when i left the house, i can't vouch for now).

Then there was the hunt for the missing pajama top and the shoes.  The pajama top was found in his sleep chair in the living room, along with one shoe wrapped in a sheet.

As for the shoes:

No mates in sight.

Where i found one of the missing shoes.

We ended with one old pair which is supposed to be in the trunk of the car in case it's raining and he needs dry shoes for driving home and three single shoes.  Ms. V is going to hunt those down.  Good luck!

In honor of Mardi Gras, some funnies and a bit more of the local decor.

It's a pizza box tree, decorated for Mardi Gras.
Sorry i had to snap it through the car window.

Have a blessed and beautiful Tuesday, everyone!

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Today is:

Anniversary of His Majesty the King -- Bhutan

Anthesteria -- Ancient Greek Calendar (three day Festival of Flowers, feast of the dead, and drinking festival; date approximate)

Card Reading Day -- because greeting cards can be fun to just stop and read, can't they?

Day in Honor of Dr. W. H. Lini, Father of Independence -- Vanuatu

Feast of the Feralia -- Ancient Roman Calendar (final day of the Parentalia, with picnics in the graveyard that included libations to the departed)

Feast of Tou Tei -- Macau (earth god; celebrated on the second day of the second lunar month, so if i've mixed up the date in Gregorian, i'm sorry, i tried)

International Mother Language Day -- UNESCO     

International Pancake Day

Losar/Loshar (Lunar New Year) -- Bhutan; Nepal; Tibet (this is Tibetan Year 2150, and it's dominant element is water, and dominant animal is the rabbit)

Mardi Gras -- Fat Tuesday, Carnival, the last day to feast before the Lenten fast begins tomorrow, greeted with revelry in many parts of the world; related observances and names:

     Scotland, Fasten's E'en or Bannocky Day

     Portuguese, Terça-feira Gorda

     Italian, Martedì Grasso

     Swedish, Fettisdagen

     Danish, Fastelavn

     Norwegian, Fastelavens

     Estonian, Vastlapäev

     Spanish, Martes de Carnaval

     German, Faschingsdienstag

     Hawaiian, Malasada Day

     Lithuanian, Uzgavenes

     Icelandic, Sprengidagur (literally, Bursting Day)

     also Pancake Day or Bursting Day, the day to eat the last of the eggs and butter in the form of some kind of fried cakes, and to eat until bursting

Mother's Day -- Israel (Shevat 30)

National Sticky Bun Day

Remember the Funniest Thing Your Kid Ever Did Day -- in honor of Erma Bombeck's birth anniversary

Sandino Day -- Nicaragua (assassination anniversary of Augusto César Sandino)

Shaheed Dibosh -- Bangladesh (International Mother Language Day/Language Martyr's Day, for those who died in the Bengali Language Movement in 1952)

Shrove Tuesday -- Christian

St. Peter Damian's Day (Doctor of the Church)

Zhonghe/Longtaitou -- China (Double Second Festival and Blue Dragon Festival, the time to wake the dragons that control the rains; celebrate the 2nd day of the 2nd lunar month the modern way now by cleaning the house, getting a hair cut, and eating popcorn, pancakes, and noodles)

Anniversaries Today:

Dudley Moore marries Brogan Lane, 1988

Liz Taylor marries Michael Wilding, 1952

The Washington Monument is dedicated, 1885

Birthdays Today:

Corbin Bleu, 1989

Ashley Greene, 1987

Ellen Page, 1987

Charlotte Church, 1986

Jennifer Love Hewitt, 1979

William Baldwin, 1963

Christopher Atkins, 1961

Alan Trammell, 1958

Jack Coleman, 1958

Mary Chapin Carpenter, 1958

Kelsey Grammer, 1955

Christine Ebersole, 1953

William Petersen, 1953

Olympia J. Snowe, 1947

Tyne Daly, 1946

Alan Rickman, 1946

David Geffen, 1943

John Lewis, 1940

Gary Lockwood, 1937

Barbara Jordan, 1936

Rue McClanahan, 1935

Nina Simone, 1933

Roberto Gomez Bolanos, 1929

Erma Bombeck, 1927

Hubert de Givenchy, 1927

Sam Peckinpah, 1925

Ann Sheridan, 1915

W.H. Auden, 1907

Anais Nin, 1903

Andres Segovia, 1893

Alice Freeman Palmer, 1855

Charles Scribner, 1821

John Henry Cardinal Newman, 1801

Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, 1794

Debuting/Premiering Today:

"Die Physiker"(Play), 1962

"A Woman to Remember"(TV; first soap opera), 1949

"War as it Happens"(TV), 1944

"Green Pastures"(Play), 1930

"The New Yorker"(Magazine), 1925

"The Communist Manifesto"(Publication date), 1848

"Cherokee Phoenix"(Newspaper, first US Native American paper), 1828

Today in History:

England begins the trial against Joan of Arc, 1431

John Wilkes is thrown out of the English House of Commons for his pornographic poem "An Essay on Woman," a satire of Pope's "An Essay on Man," 1764

Freedom of worship is established in France under its Constitution, 1795

The first locomotive, Richard Trevithick's, runs for the first time, in Wales, 1804

The first Native American Indian newspaper, the "Cherokee Phoenix", begins publication, 1828

The first known sewing machine in the US is patented by John Greenough of Washington, D.C., 1842

Sarah G Bagley of Lowell, Massachusetts becomes the first US woman telegrapher, 1846

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels publish the Communist Manifesto, 1848

The US Congress outlaws foreign currency as legal tender in the US, 1857

Edwin T. Holmes installs the first electric burglar alarm, in Boston, Massachusetts, 1858

The first Roman Catholic parish church for blacks in the US is dedicated, in Baltimore, Maryland, 1864

Lucy B. Hobbs becomes the first US woman to earn a DDS degree, 1866

Benjamin Disraeli replaces William Gladstone as English premier, 1874

The first telephone book is issued, to 50 subscribers in New Harbor, Connecticut, 1878

Oregon becomes the first US state to declare Labor Day a holiday, 1887

The North Carolina legislature adjourns for the day to mark the death of Frederick Douglass, 1895

Dr. Harvey Cushing, the first US neurosurgeon, performs his first operation, 1902

Gustav Mahler conducts his last concerto, 1911

The Battle of Verdun (WWI) begins, will last until Dec. 18; over a quarter of a million casualties, half a million injuries, 1916

The last Carolina parakeet, Incas, dies in the Cincinnati Zoo, in the same cage that had held Martha, the last passenger pigeon, 4 years earlier, 1918

The Constituent Assembly of the Democratic Republic of Georgia adopts the country's first constitution, 1921

Great Britain grants Egypt independence, 1922

The first issue of "New Yorker" magazine is published, 1925

The first instant developing camera is demonstrated in NYC, by E H Land, 1947

The British government, under Winston Churchill, abolishes identity cards in the UK to "set the people free", 1952

Watson and Crick discover the structure of the DNA molecule; according to legend, they walk into the Eagle Pub in Cambridge and Crick announces, "We have found the secret of Life," 1953

The Peace symbol is designed and completed by Gerald Holtom, commissioned by Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1958

Malcolm X is assassinated, 1965

The Convention on Psychotropic Substances is signed at Vienna, 1971

The Soviet unmanned spaceship Luna 20 lands on the Moon, 1972

Former United States Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are sentenced to prison, 1975

Steve Fossett lands in Leader, Saskatchewan, Canada becoming the first person to make a solo flight across the Pacific Ocean in a balloon, 1995

Euro zone finance ministers agree on a second bailout for Greece, 2012

Scientists discover that bumblebees have the ability to sense electric fields around flowers, enabling them to identify specific flowers for pollination, 2013

Turkey sends troops to Syria to rescue 40 guards and relocate remains from the tomb of Sulayman Shah, which is now surrounded by ISIS militants; the site is internationally recognized as Turkish territory, 2015

The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa-2 touches down on asteroid Ryugu on a mission to collect rock samples, 2019

Israel launches the Beresheet Lunar Lander with a Lunar Library, a 30 million page digital library, with the aim of storing a back-up of much of humanity's learning (a "civilization backup") on the Moon, 2019

Englishwoman Jasmine Harrison, age 21, becomes the youngest woman to row across an ocean arriving in Antigua as part of the Atlantic Challenge after 70 days, 3 hours, 48 minutes, 2021

Australia's border reopens to vaccinated tourists after almost two years, 2022