I woke up today old. Not OLD old, as my kids would say, but still old. The “wow, Mom, you must have been around with the dinosaurs” kind of old. Of course, I didn’t realize it until I heard the astonishing news that Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, and icon of my youth and era, had died.

I heard about Michael Jackson’s death shortly after I heard that Farrah Fawcett had passed away. Fawcett’s death was expected. She was seriously ill with cancer, and so, while sad, her passing was no surprise. But followed so closely by Michael Jackson’s death, I found myself looking face to face with my own mortality.

This week my baby, my youngest daughter, is off to drill camp. She is now a member of the SAME drill team where I marched, oh so many years ago. (Just FYI, they don’t really march anymore. Not like we did.) The first parade I ever performed in, as a member of this team, was a HUGE gigantic mess, because our drill mistress hadn’t had us practice with the music she had recorded, making it impossible for us to do our parade routine. We were scheduled to do yet ANOTHER parade that 4th of July, and we were all pretty upset about the music, when I popped in my Michael Jackson CD, and, as always, we danced. How could you NOT dance when MJ was on? We were dancers, after all.

And we discovered that every single song on that CD had a beat that was perfect. Michael solved our problem. We popped in the MJ CD, and finished the second parade without a hitch. MJ saved the day.

Of course, I marched in that parade with PERFECT hair, feathered back like no other, because we all had the Farrah hair in those days. And we KEPT our Farrah hair in place with a LOT of hairspray. I remember finishing my PE class one time, and another girl commented on how good my hair still looked. How did I do it?

Easy. Six quarts of hairspray. That hair could have made it through a tornado, and my limbs might have gone missing but those BANGS would have remained perfectly feathered. My homage to Farrah.

How sad that we have lost both of these icons of my youth, and that today I have realized I am old.

RIP Michael Jackson, 50 years old.

RIP Farrah Fawcett, 62 years old.

Along with all this miserable rain, we’ve had some pretty kick-ass thunderstorms, and on June 15, LIGHTNING struck the Angel Moroni on the top of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple.

I figured this would be BIG NEWS, but it wasn’t. It just sort of floated away, mostly ignored by Utahns, who would surely take a lightning struck on SOMEONE ELSE’S place of worship as a sign from God that they were bad, and the Mormons were good, good, good.

According to a Desperate News story:

LDS Church spokesman Scott Trotter said Monday the lightning strike discolored the Angel Moroni statue, but no other damage was reported.

“A work crew will re-gild the statue as soon as possible” he said in a prepared statement.

I’m taking this as a sign from God, since no one else seems to see the relevance of this particular lightning struck. Oh yeah, I’m GOING there. GOD does not want the Angel Moroni to be gold. GOD wants to the Angel Moroni to be black.

Hmm. Maybe half-black? A mixing of the races?

What message do YOU think God is sending?

Well, thinking about it anyway. It has RAINED for days, with no sign of stopping. That’s not entirely true. It has stopped for a few minutes at a time. Then it comes back. The forecast for the weekend is wet and bleak with a 90 percent chance of wet and bleak, and possible rain and thunderstorms.

Where is summer? This is UTAH and in UTAH during June we have sun and heat. I’ve heard more than one comment about this “apocalyptic weather,” and I find it fairly amusing. It’s rain, people, not acid snow or tasmanian-devil-strength tornadoes.

Although I admit with all the water I am considering honing up on my ark-building skills. Or at least learning how to water ski.

And Grandma pulled out the paint set and the brushes, and the water, and RubySue set to work making a masterpiece (probably a picture of a twister), telling a story the whole time she painted.

And then Fluffy sat down at the table with a paint brush, and the paints, and grandma said, “Do you need a piece of paper?”

And she said, “NO, I fine. Thank you.”

Okay. Stop. Stop right there. You are sitting at Grandma’s house, in the kitchen, with a paintbrush, paint, and NO PAPER. And you’re fine? Let me just stick this paper here under your paintbrush because you ARE NOT FINE. We know you. And love you. And we don’t want the walls and the table and the chairs and the dog DIFFERENT colors. You fine all right. Sheesh.

Have some paper.

I realize that by the very nature of that headline, I will get a TON more of the nasty little parasites of which I am about to speak, but I could not stop myself. I’m sorry. Blame my apostacy.

I have to check in here every few days JUST to delete the penis enlargement spam comments that find their way to my blog. And the MAJORITY of spam comments are just that. Weird.

Just consider me the PP police! MUWWAHHaaahaaaaa. Hmm. Maybe it’s time for some adult activities or a vacation. Could be.

Carry on, PPers…..