I am cursing this daily posting thing. I gots nothin’ creativity-wise today. So I’ll leave it to someone else and delve into my inbox.

I often get readers who are surprised to learn that I served three terms as Parent Organization President. I think this is one of my favorite reactions.

“You? PTA president? REALLY??? Somehow I have a hard time picturing that. You’re my favorite rebel not the cookie-dough selling type! :)”

Tee Hee.

I have had such a piece of hud week. It has been bad, my friends.

But.

There always seems to be something that can cheer me and make me smile. Today that came in the form of packages in the mail. Weirdly, they had a similar theme. One package was a book from my roomie in college, “Amy E.”. It’s a novel about Enrico Caruso, the most famous opera singer of his time.

The other gift was from a reader named, “Tom”.

I love Tom. Tom lives in Tennessee and calls me “My dear LLC”. Tom previously sent me LP records in the mail that included the original cast recording of “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown”.

Today Tom sent me THESE:

My heart is singing! I have always, always wanted a pair of opera glasses. And these adorable! And vintage!! And red!!! I was lamenting the fact that I didn’t own a pair and so wanted to buy some to take with me when I see “Wicked” in London next month.

TA DA!!!!

BEST OF ALL. He wrote me a story. A hilarious, personalized “Tall Tale” about where these opera glasses originated from. It’s long (Yah, yah, yah. No bitching), but I have to put the whole thing in because it’s funny and beyond creative. (Especially if you know Utah and have been reading my blog for awhile.). It made me guffaw.

Dear LLC,

I am sending you some opera glasses from “The Jenny Lind Collection”. (You may remember Miss Lind, she was a Swedish singer of some fame, she also ran “The Jenny Lind Diva, or How to Look Just Like One, School”. )

The glasses were found in the remains of a concession stand in the old burned down Logan Opera House many years ago. It seems that Miss Lind and the famous P.T. Barnum were planning a tour of the west. Sadly, she never got out west because of a series of rather “Sad Events”.

First, let me tell you about the old Logan Opera House. The good people of Logan had heard and seen the fine entertainment places in Salt Lake City (Saltair, etc.). Not wanting to be upstaged by the people to the south (Referred to as “Those Awful Southern People”), the fine Meistersinger’s Guild of Logan decided to build their own opera house and be just as good as the southern people.

Now, being good and faithful people, they had been admonished to store a year’s supply of food in case of hard times. BUT, the only food they had to store was cheese (At this time the valley had more moo-cows than people). As food rotating had not been invented yet, the cheese turned rock hard and inedible. The storage plain failed.

A traveling peddler from the east named, “Bob Kraft”, was in the area selling a clear liquid in mason jars which he labled “Medicine”. He sold nearly all his supply of “Tonic” (Or as it would later be called “Pure Utah Sunshine”. This would later be sold exclusively in stores run by the state).

Since his supply had been sold and since he was unable to find replacement copper pipes for a “Sunshine Plant”, Bob was reduced to taking wagons of people to Promontory, Utah and pointing out various species of sage brush to tourists. (Later some people built a railroad or something and the name was changed to Promontory Point.

But I digress.

Bob and some of the local leaders were sitting around in the failed “Food Storage cave” to get out of the heat (AND drinking some of Bob’s “Medicine”) when they talked about the idea of the OPERA HOUSE. They came up with the brilliant idea of building it out of the ruined and hard blocks of cheese! But how to avoid the “Building Code” which forbade buildings that are constructed of food?

With the help of Bob’s “Medicine” the plot plan was constructed to cover the exterior of the Opera House built of cheese with bits of broken china dishes! This way, no one would know it was built of cheese, it would glow and glisten in the sun and Logan would take its rightful place as the Culture Mecca of the North!

(BE PATIENT. THE PLOT WILL COME TOGETHER, SOON!)

The foundation for the Opera House of Cheese ended up being poured (As it was discovered that blocks of hard cheese could be melted down).

Miss Lind, the famous Diva, was to be the first singer at the “House” and so no expense was spared on drapes, lighting, or the geniune “Faux marble finish”. It was going to be a very special day, planned for April, 18, 1906.

Now, Dear Reader, the SADNESS begins.

April 18th , 1906 was the day of “The Great San Fransisco Earthquake“!!!! Oh, the town of Logan came to rue that day in history! All attention was given to the disaster in California. It also used up all the remaining blocks of hard cheese and left the Opera House a few blocks shy of being finished!! Thus, there were no “Diva Dressing and Fluffing Rooms”! This resulted in contracts being canceled, work stopping, and laid-off workers because IF YOU DON’T HAVE DIVA FLUFFING ROOMS, YOU HAVE NOTHING!

Soon after that dark day, Bob Kraft and some laid-off construction laborers were sitting on the abandoned stage feeling very low, so Bob got out the very last jars of “Medicine” that he was saving for the grand opening of the Opera House.

They passed the bottles around and as the light was very dim on the stage, one of the laborers lit a match so he could see better. The mason jar of “Medicine” BURST INTO FLAMES!!!!! GREAT, HIDEOUS FLAMES THAT DEVOURED EVERYTHING IN ITS PATH!!!!

Within a matter of minutes the Opera House was no more and Great Gobs of Melted Cheese flowed down the streets of Logan! Men screamed! Women fainted!! Children wet their pants!!! OH THE SHAME! THE AGONY!! Or as the Logan Times reported on April 19, 1906 “EVIL DRINK HAS STRUCK AGAIN!”

It was suggested that Bob Kraft get out of town as fast as he could because the people of Logan were looking for a “ScapeCow”, as no one seemed to have a goat to scape.

Bob gathered up a few of his empty mason jars (As no one ever gets rid of good canning jars) and left town.To cover up the mess, the Meistersinger’s Guild that built the Opera House in the first place spun the story that the streets of Logan were paved with gold, thus launching the famous myth that “The streets of America are paved with pure gold”.

Bob Kraft moved back east with no money left. The only food he could get his hands on was some left over “Hard tack” from some sailors on shore leave. This “Hard tack” was pretty nasty, so he got one of his mason jars which still had some of the melted cheese from the Opera House fire in it and spread the soft cheese on his “Hard Tack”. It tasted so good that he passed the hardtack and cheese combination around to the other homeless people. They liked it very much and asked what the name of his cheese spread was and he replied, “Gee Whiz. I don’t know!”, but his mouth was full and it sounded like “Cheeze Whiz”.

The rest is fast food history. As for the rest of our players?

Jenny Lind went back to Sweden and became a “Nightingale” and P.T. Barnum ran off and joined a circus or something.

“Logan, sweet Logan” is now a college town full of “DIVAS GONE WILD” and some say in the still of the night you can see a “Diva” dancing around the town.

(Disclaimer: Names and places have been changed and the time has been compressed to protect the innocent. Soon to be seen on your local PBS Station. Please check your local listings)

COULD YOU DIE? I did. HA HA HA HA.

Thanks, Tom. You’re a gem!

As many bloggers know, when you have a blog, you get emails about your blog. On occasion, I like to share some of these with you all. Some because the are ludicrous and written by incensed and angry Amway representatives, some by wretched trolls, and some by a brother who objects to reading about his baby sister’s purchase of “Naughty Toys” on the Internet.I share other correspondence because a topic has taken off in a storm of emails that light up my inbox, but it is rarely/barely mentioned on my blog and the poor comments section is left with the sound of lonely, chirping crickets playing. I think it is because often people are just shy and/or uncomfortable.

Since I have a strong feeling this is going to be one of “Those topics”(By the 8 emails I have gotten in the whopping 4 hours the previous post has been up. And hey, feel free to continue to email me, I like it. I just can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to get back to you for a bit.), I would like to just address it and nip the rest of it in the bud.

Topic?

Cleavage. Specifically, MY cleavage.

Subtopic?

My cleavage in yesterday’s post photos. Yah. Looks freaking huge, huh?

Thus, the emails start arriving. So far they have all been funny, curious or light hearted. I hope sincerely it stays this way because I really don’t need nastiness or to be told I look freakish.

Here’s a pretty good sample of what most of them entail:

Ok, ok, so you’re probably online right now…and I was just reading your blog…and, um, I don’t know how to really say this without um…saying, dude your boobs are huge?!

Have i just not noticed before? or perhaps it’s the mumu snapshots? :)

My Reply:

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

And I paid dearly for them! ;)

Seriously, though. I noticed the same freaking thing. It’s no secret I had my chest “Done” but I swear to everything that this is the most freakishly huge they have ever looked. THOSE SHIRTS! ACK! It is the reason they ended up in the “REJECT” pile. It looks like someone just took two cantaloupes and shoved them in my bra.

I have never regretted having surgery, but when I saw those photos I did for a bit. Then I looked in the mirror and followed my husband around all day yipping “Are you SURE my breasts aren’t too ginormous??!!” (Yah. I know. Stupid question to ask a husband.)

I am actually getting a few (5 so far) emails saying the same thing. Something new to stress over and laugh about simultaneously

Frick! Frack! Fricken Fracken suckasuckaSUCK.

It’s a quandary, people.

I am pretty open about the fact that I “Reclaimed my bosoms” in a surgical way. I’ve written about it before, so click here
if you want to know the whys the hows and see “Before” and “After” photos (In a very non-naked way. Sorry.).

My chest seems to fluctuate in size. Not literally, but seriously, this photo is also me, after surgery and 10 lbs heavier. SEE WHAT I MEAN?
I didn’t want to be “TOO big” and there are a few times I feel that I am. Not many, mind you, but some. Friday night would have been one of those times. While I think part of the problem was the bra I was wearing, it brings up a more complicated issue. That would be that I don’t really think that I have the right to bitch about anything regarding my surgery. I did it. ON PURPOSE. With giddy, deliberate glee. It’s like someone said once when I was feeling insecure and hulking, “It’s hardly fair to ask opinions on how it looks when you can’t undo it!”. Very true. I can hardly whine and moan that I look like I’m nursing *fetchtuplets round the clock at times, now can I?

Still, I feel an obligation to speak about my experience as honestly as I can because I have a lot of people ask me what having implants is like. I say they are 93% AWESOME.

But. (You knew the but was coming, didn’t you?)

There are times I think “Was it worth it?”,”Man, these things are too big”, “Whoa, that felt weird” or “I look like a paragraph of a romance novel where they start mooning about ‘Bossoms heaving and springing forth’”. (That would be in a bad way, people.)

Usually these thoughts don’t last long because I am genuinely happy with the results of my surgery. But still, when I see photos like the ones I put up yesterday, or I get emails from people who think I should be ashamed that I had plastic surgery, I have insecurities galore.

Maybe it is weird to get emails about your boobs. Maybe it is weirder to write and publish about getting emails about your boobs. Maybe it is weirdest of all to freak out about any of this first place, but that is what I do: I read, I freak, I write, I publish, I freak some more. It’s just who I am, people.

So…There you go. To everyone who wondered.

*Attention, attention! New Loralee word: “FETCHTUPLETS” Definition: 75 trillion babies. Also used in comparisons to describe baby gut, stretch-marks, and/or how big you felt in your previous pregnancies.