Some Monday observations:

This is an fervent plea to the makers of Lindt chocolate:

PLEASE STOP.

I was fine until they handed me a free sample a couple weeks ago at the new store in Mayfair Mall. I'd never tasted it before.

The milk chocolate balls with truffle center. If there is such a thing as sin, those are. Get behind me Satan.

In an effort to thumb my nose at the lack of quality anything these days I've plugged in an old push button phone from the late seventies with no answering machine. My parents used it in their basement. It's beige with a mismatched red receiver and cord. The buttons are kind of filled with crud and stick a little.
Every portable phone system I've ever had is a cheap piece of you know what that dies after a couple of years. This one doesn't go out when the electricity does. I love it!

The geese left today. Yes! Now I can finally clean the impacted gravel out of my shoes.

If anyone has a videotape of last Tuesday's House, can you please send it to me in care of The Reporter? I set the VCR to the wrong time. Incredible weeping & gnashing of teeth last night.

I'm fighting off the urge today to get another tattoo. Is this what they call mid-life crisis? I almost got my nose pierced last year. I was all ready to go with my daughter to some schnazzy place in Milwaukee when it dawned on me the older you get, the bigger your nose gets, so why call attention to it. The two things I'm not real big on are noses and feet. I have to look away when people wear sandals.

Anyway, most people don't know I have a butterfly tattoo because it's little and hidden under the back of my hair. There was only one tattoo parlor that I knew of in the state in 1975. I was 18 years old and drove to Lake Geneva.

I tend to forget I have it and made the mistake of getting my hair cut short this past year. Never again.

Still there's this need to feed the free spirit.

I don't know what to feed it anymore, but definitely not Lindt chocolate.

Maybe dreadlocks?