I hope that some of my readers have clicked on the blogroll links over to the right side of this page and are passingly familiar with some of the excellent offerings there. One of those, Super Granny, is by Sally Wendkos Olds. Who really is Super Granny, and now has a a book by the same name available for us all to add to our libraries and pass on to our children when they become grandparents themselves.

The subtitle is “Great Stuff to Do with Your Grandkids,” and it’s a regular treasure trove of ideas and projects grouped ever so usefully into age ranges and includes things even the most tech-savvy kids will find to be great fun. Don’t let on to the grandkids, but some of them are even… (gasp!)… educational!

Olds’ conversational style and well-honed writing skill makes the book eminently readable, and since it graced my mailbox my older grandchildren have taken to reading it themselves for fun ideas even when this poor old granny is too busy doing paid work to get immediately involved. They set things up and then all I have to do is join in – does that make my beloveds Super Grandkids? I think so…

Of course, as the weather warms there are enough ongoing projects out in the garden, on the ridge trails and disc golf course, or even in granny’s several major projects for the year – including a nifty solar food dryer the kids are very excited about and planning to describe for their next school years’ edification – to keep them plenty busy for the next few months. Still, they’re becoming familiar with the many great resources and hints, so I’m expecting that during the big gatherings when there are 2-5 year olds here for the teenagers to entertain they’ll be pulling out Super Granny for themselves. As if the book itself qualifies by that title for their purposes!

Again, that’s Super Granny. Get yours today!

In true Rainbow Traveling Show style, there was much fireside sitting, heavy binge drinking, tearful goodbyes and storytelling belly-laughs at Papa Dollar’s Memorial and Wake in sunny Florida on Wednesday, February 25, 2009. With just about every one of the ‘usual suspects’ up to no good from start to finish.

Not the least of which was when the heir-apparent put my daughter Tash in charge of the blank-book in which we were all supposed to write something pithy about our old friend’s multi-storied life and times. She asked him what day it was so she could use her beautiful calligraphic skills to etch the title page, and he told her it was February 29, 2009. She (not paying attention to dates much) believed him. And now the precious family keepsake is forever dated Leap-Day in an Odd Year, something that’s never once actually occurred in the entire history of date-keeping!

But the best – better even than the formal Medicine Show eulogies – was the balloon launch, something Ras Papa was internationally infamous for. For this one it had been decided to launch Papa’s ratty old hat with the balloons. Which the 120 or so people present had to shuttle from his front porch helium tank to the mower polo field so they could be tied together into a freeform… thing. The animal balloons had sat in the sun too long, mostly exploded before they could be filled, but we did get a few. People drew or wrote things on the regular balloons with Sharpees before filling them, each with a personal note or charicature that related to Papa’s life.

As the old-timers and Jason built the construction, Odin the aero-engineer kept trying to tell them that they had to move to the other side of the field in order to launch, or they’d end up in the power lines. But NOOOOOO… mass of shape-shifting balloon sculpture and a ratty old hat finally was let loose, only to become hopelessly entangled in the power lines in record time. I was almost rolling on the grass with laughter, this was something Papa would have been absolutely livid about.

Not to be undone by grief-induced dumb-ness, the perps almost immediately decided to shoot it down so they could start over with fresh balloons from a more reliable vantage point. As we backed up in awe, they began setting off major fireworks right smack dab underneath the trapped balloons, missing them badly while causing the crowd to flee in panic (if they weren’t laughing too hard to move). Once it became apparent that the big boomers weren’t doing the trick, someone brought out the Roman candles. The sheer audacity of the cross-fire was amazing, considering nobody got hit!

More of us fell laughing to the ground, it was just too too funny. Eventually they managed to pop or deflate all but one of the balloons, but the mess was still firmly attached to the power line with a sad and ragged hat dangling forlornly underneath. It’ll be there for at least 20 years, I figure. Or until the next time the power company turns up. The face drawn on that last balloon standing was a tragic clown. Perfectly cosmically correct.

Back to the fire and more revelry, and everything went great until someone (who shall remain judiciously unnamed) set off a box of leftover fireworks on the bar of Papa’s Cantina. I figured it would burn down (and some of us were still sober enough to do a bucket brigade from the hot tub out front), but somehow it survived. The visual of major fireworks secondary boomers coming out from all directions as people were running and ducking is one that’ll stay with me forever. Not cosmically correct, but definitely cosmically incorrect enough to go down in history!

We’ll miss you being in the world every day for the rest of our lives, old friend. But you’ll never be far from our fond (and/or slightly singed) memories. Wooly Bully, Amen.

I encountered a post on the PopCrunch blog this past week, The 15 Hottest TV Moms of All Time, which if you don’t remember what life on planet earth was like before there was television, might be forgiven its “all time” hyperbole.

We do know that casting roles of 30 to 40-something actresses for television fills in the entertainment media ‘wasteland’ in between honest-to-starlet status as a Sweet Young Thing and the usual grandmother roles older actresses can get if anyone in Hollywood remembers their names when they get that old. These glamorous middle-age women all radiated a certain ageless beauty from the small screen that made them memorable, and for some, allowed them to move gracefully into the older-lady roles.

The #1 pick is Florence Henderson as Carol Brady. And while that role was good for her after she grew out of the starlet stage she began with in Oklahoma!, I can’t say she was all that hot in the movie Shakes the Clown. Notables like Desperate Housewives’ Gabriella Solis and Married… With Children’s Peg Bundy are on the list, along with some whose TV shows I apparently missed altogether. Go on over to see if your favorites are included.

Meanwhile, one may wonder about those Hollywood types and how much of their long-lasting good looks, perfect skin and ageless beauty is mechanical – obtained via creative plastic surgery – and how much is attributed to outrageously expensive beauty treatments and cosmetics. We older ladies definitely know that one could spend a large chunk of annual income just trying to defeat wrinkles, dry skin, gravity, split hair ends, etc., and let’s be honest – most of us don’t bother anymore.

So it was with some sense of relief that I found a post on Brainz listing 10 Home Remedies for Beautiful Skin that just happened to include some tried-and-true ingredients this Granny swears by. The sugar and olive oil scrub is honestly the best way to soften tough skin anywhere that I’ve ever encountered, and olive oil is the #1 best general skin treatment out there so long as you’re past the acne stage. Oatmeal, honey, yogurt, lemon, cucumbers, avacado, chamomile and green tea… all the so-natural sounding stuff in the expensive treatments can all be used at home by YOU without having to spend a fortune.

Let us know your favorite at-home concoctions for staying beautiful, or at least less-than-mummified. One thing not on the list that my readers who live outside inner cities can try is a chickweed bath. I gather a good handful of fresh chickweed, rinse it in cold water and tie it into a muslin bag. Run hot bathwater over the bag, let it steep as the water cools to tolerable and take a liesurely soak. The chickweed will give you a slick feeling all over, moisturizes everywhere and stays with you. After drying off, go ahead and apply a little olive oil to make it last a bit longer, and you’ll be soft all over!