OH, HENRY!

Well, here we go again....off on another obsessive compulsive TeeVee watching tangent that will cost me 39 hours of my life and about sixty bucks at amazon.com to own the set.

It all started innocently enough. My stupid cable company was stupid enough to give me Showtime for a week for free. And since I'm stupider than the stupid cable company, it wasn't four minutes before I was on the phone with the customer service representative ordering it for Chez Spinster on a permanent basis.

At first, Aunt Chrissy and I got hooked on Nurse Jackie, and we both marveled at the fact that Carmella Soprano and Fr. Intintolla could look so completely different without the priest's collar and the acrylic nails. (I got those reversed, I think, but you get the idea.)

Then...very innocently, Aunt Chrissy says to me "You know, I hear that The Tudors is supposed to be pretty good. Wanna' watch it?"

Four days later and I am stunned into submission. At first I was disgusted with myself that I seemed to have fallen asleep for most of the time I was supposed to have learned all about this stuff in school, but then it dawned on me that the versions of Tudor England that the nuns taught us looked NOTHING like a nekkid Jonathan Rhys Meyers and/or his many conquests.

(In my Henry VIII delirium, I even called my friend Kavanaugh and shouted into the phone: "Hey Kavanaugh! YOU HAVE TO WATCH THE TUDORS ON SHOWTIME!!! IT'S THE SOPRANOS FOR YOUR PEOPLE!!!".)

(Oh, and in the event that dear Kavanaugh is reading this...yes, about two seconds after I hung up the phone I smacked myself on the forehead and realized that you are, in fact, Irish, and NOT English.) (Or British.) (Or whatever you say when someone was born in England and not Ireland.)

But back to the nekkid Jonathan Rhys Meyers. (And just about everybody else in the series by the way..my goodness, but these people were frisky!) If history in this form would have been available to me as a young scholar, perhaps I would have actually paid attention? And the intrique! The backstabbing! The shenanagins that would make Paulie Walnuts look like Mister Rogers! Why couldn't I have learned and/or appreciated this when it was time for me to actually learn it? Why? Why did I think that the goings on of boy/girl relations at St. Charles grade school were so much more interesting than Henry VIII changing the entire course of human history?

Anywhoose...I am enthralled with this and am happy to report that I've stopped feeling ashamed that I am so completely dense when it comes to history (well, anything really), and I've set about the task of learning a little more. (This thought came to me in the middle of the night as I was tossing and turning over what an ignoramus I am...I bolted upright in bed and said (God knows, to no one in particular)....I CAN READ! I CAN READ AND I HAVE A KINDLE!!!).

So I've downloaded a few books that are all history-like and maybe, just maybe, I will actually learn something.

Oh, and just a quick note to you Brits....I envy your fascinating history and the fact that you could spend your entire life examining the inner workings of various kings and queens. Now before you reply that we have a little history over here, may I just point out that reading about Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower comes nowhere close to seeing King Henry VIII go completely off his nut for Anne Boleyn?

In addition to all of this Tudor obsessing and TeeVee watching, I did manage to get a fair amount done on Love the Spring:
Yes, I know that the name on the bottom of my sampler is NOT the name that is on the bottom of the chart, but I decided to put Mom and Dad and the year they were married on this. I don't think I've ever stitched a sampler that is supposed to have a name on it, and since I'm not cavorting about the country exhibiting my "official reproduction samplers", I didn't think anybody would mind. (And yes, I know that my dad didn't have an "s" at the end of Robert, but the name Vaceila Roberts is very very dear to Aunt Chrissy and I for a super secret reason, so I went with it.)

Nothing much to report on the Stewey front, other than the fact that Aunt Chrissy was amazed at his torpedo-like blazing speed as he chased after a duck. We have a little family of three ducks that frequent our houses and when Aunt Chrissy opened the back door to let Stewey outside, he took off like a shot and almost caught one. She was completely impressed with his athletic prowess, and has promised not to make fun of his fussy little gentleman tendencies anymore. He, on the other hand, has promised to leave the ducks alone and not break up what appears to be a rather interesting combination....a female and two males. We've speculated that it might be a mom, a dad, and a son still living at home, but it could also be a husband and wife and the brother-in-law Phil. (For the sake of conversation, let's just assume that Phil's wife Betty is off in Vegas playing Keno and having a few rounds of tequila shooters. The thought of this poor little guy not having a mate is too sad to bear.)

So that's the report for today. Just the usual crazy antics of a spinster and her little dog. I hope that your weekends were full of something delicious...