Greetings, blog fans. I decided to take a day off from blogging yesterday. Well, I did post something on the travel blog, but it was short and kind of sweet, because I’m still experiencing our current excursion and I’m not quite ready to write about it yet. So far, it has been an interesting trip, though…

For instance, today’s post title was contributed by Bill. It was inspired by a disgusting song on one of Red Peters’ compilation albums. Bill and I both enjoy off color humor. If it involves body functions, so much the better. Red Peters specializes in that kind of humor, whether it’s in one of his original songs, or a song he puts on one of his compilations, done by another artist.

Some years ago, I went looking for the song “Poo Poo, Pee Pee” on YouTube. No one had uploaded it, so I did, using pictures and video of our recently departed Arran and his old buddy, Zane, who died in 2019. I was probably inspired by one of Arran’s messier indiscretions. By the way, I can play this song on the guitar, now. Maybe I’ll redo it and sing it myself… and play along, too. Why not?

Arran never really did get the hang of housetraining 100 percent. He was about 90 percent reliable. I think he did know better than to go in the house, but for some reason, he just didn’t think it was important enough to avoid having accidents. I had to be very vigilant about making sure he went out and actually did his business. Otherwise, I might get an unpleasant and stinky surprise.

Anyway, the above song has a line that goes “Put a bow on that load…” or something like that. When I was talking to Bill about the post I wrote two days ago, about the high school senior who applied to 70 colleges and got into 54 of them, Bill quipped “Right. You don’t need to put a bow on that load.”

I laughed, because it seemed like sort of a backward way of calling what the young lady did “gilding the lily.” I remember when I was in college, finishing up my bachelor’s degree. I had two minors– one in speech, and the other in communications– and could have taken just one more course for a third, in journalism. My advisor, the wonderful and departed Dr. Massie Stinson, said in his very courtly, gentlemanly, southern accent, “I think that would be ‘gilding the lily.'”

“Gilding the lily” refers to the practice of trying to decorate something that is already beautiful. One doesn’t need to paint a beautiful flower with gold, because it’s already magnificent. Putting gold paint on a beautiful flower would turn it into something garish, tacky, and gaudy. Let the flower’s virtues stand alone…

Of course, if I had wanted to take the journalism class, that would be something else. In retrospect, maybe I should have taken it. If I recall correctly, it was taught by the recently departed Mr. William Woods (although people called him “Doctor”– he didn’t actually have a doctoral degree). I took two classes with Mr. Woods, and found him to be very entertaining. Journalism class with him would have, no doubt, made my GPA a little better. Certainly, it would have helped me with my GPA in English. I was a pretty mediocre English major.

But, at the time, I didn’t want to take that class. I took journalism in high school and was actually pretty good at it. I like writing, as you can see. I think I was put off by the prospect of having to talk to people, especially after a tragedy. Isn’t it funny that a few years later, I would earn a master’s degree in social work? Which… as you can also see… I don’t use. If I had actually launched my career as planned, I probably would have aimed to use the public health degree… and I don’t know how successful I would have been, because it probably would have meant working with scientists or hospital administrators a lot. I likely would have been fired.

Fortunately, I found my husband, who finds it advantageous to keep me around, if only so we can laugh at our many private running jokes and enjoy scatological humor together. Otherwise, I might be living in a van down by the river… or a box under a bridge. And instead of going to our high priced dentist today, I could be sporting “summer teeth” (summer here, summer there… 😉 ). I’m kidding, of course. I have absolutely no doubt that if I needed to survive, I would, and my survival would neither involve homelessness, nor poor oral hygiene.

Sometimes, I just like to stop and muse at the complete absurdity of my life and how it’s turned out. Quite a lot of it is, frankly, ridiculous… Like, for instance, how I met Bill in the first place. It was not the kind of scenario that I’d want to tell my mother the truth about… although his mother knows, and has no issues with it. Bill’s mom isn’t like my mom, though. She’s more of a woman of the world. Actually, my mom is also a woman of the world, but she has much less tolerance and patience for my bent toward vulgarity. Certain topics are off limits. However, she doesn’t mind when I cuss. I think that’s interesting. She will fuss about cursing at my eldest sister, who is 64 years old, but I can drop an f bomb in from of my mom, and she truly doesn’t care. She probably figures it’s a lost cause… “sigh”.

Every old sock needs an old shoe, though, and I guess I’m Bill’s. He likes me, and he comes up with funny lines, often based on nonsensical things in our lives. And instead of “gilding the lily”, he said “you don’t need to put a bow on that load…” which is sort of like calling what the high school student did “bullshit” and saying that a load of bullshit doesn’t need a big fancy bow on it to make it “prettier”. I don’t know that I would necessarily describe applying to that many schools as “bullshit”. To me, it seems more to indicate issues with compulsion or anxiety… or maybe it’s just a statement that our higher education system is complete bollocks.

The book I’m reading right now kind of addresses the phenomenon that a lot of young people think they HAVE to go to some big name college. They put all their eggs in one basket, and ignore less famous places that can give them a perfectly good education. That means the lesser known, but still excellent (or adequate) schools struggle to stay alive, and the really big ones are inundated with applications from way too many qualified students. And then we have wealthy people paying huge “donations” to athletic departments, falsifying records, faking credentials, and winding up in minimum security prison camps for fraud.

I look forward to reviewing the book, so I think I’ll stop here and finish it. I think I have about 30 percent to go… You can look forward to more of a rant about this subject in the coming days.

Hope you have a good Monday. Ours will be punctuated by a nationwide transportation strike and a date with the dentist. Joy of joys… but we’ll go home tomorrow; I’ll write up this trip; and maybe post a new book review. Ciao!