I keep a list of ideas that float thru my head at night. Some weeks they become starting points for blog posts. This week, i could find no thread to tie them together, but there were exactly 20 of them. That seemed like a sign. So here you go, the things on my “thought list” this week. Maybe they will make you laugh. Or maybe they will just make you grateful that your brain is less scattered than mine:

1. Retail managers are always genuinely surprised and pleased when you go out of your way to give a compliment to the staff. I need to remember to do it more often.

2. I got PIF’d at Dunkin’ Donuts this morning. The person in front of me paid for my order. I paid for the order behind mine. Maybe, at some point, someone who needed a break got one. I need to do this more often as well.

3. Because i knew my son would be looking thru every closet in the house (All three of them), i wrapped all the holiday gifts and put them under the tree the same day i brought most of them in from the car (They had been living in my trunk)… None of them have tags. I have the wrapping paper coded to each weedling, but i won’t tell him which weedling has which paper. It’s driving him nuts. The evil part of me takes pleasure in that.

4.  People may argue over who was the best James Bond, but no one ever picks a Doctor other than David Tennant.

5. No matter how meticulously i clip the birds to the holiday tree, they always end up hanging upside down.

6. Cat’s in the Cradle is the saddest song ever written. And the older my weedlings get, the more i cry when it plays.

7. In which circle of Hell do the makers of cheap, industrial toilet paper live?

8. Apple brandy is wonderful in Celestial Seasonings’ Gingerbread tea.

9. It is proof of God/Goddess/Universe’s sick sense of humor that a woman can have more acne at 50 than she did at 15.

10. Listen to the news here in Tennessee – severe drought followed by vicious wildfires, followed by even more vicious storms – and it’s hard not to think that Mother Nature is pissed.

11. If time is relative, and our measure of it man-made and imperfect, then why are specific dates so important? Why do we feel deprived, for example, if we can’t celebrate Christmas on exactly December 25th?

12. Who was the first person to look at some milk that had gotten old and gone hard and thought, “Well, that looks tasty. I think i’ll eat it and call it cheese.”

13. And why do we call hokey things “cheesy”?

14. I am pretty certain that any kid who only got two front teeth for Christmas would be both grossed out and disappointed.

15. Imagine the immeasurable amount of awesomeness if you could have a casual dinner with Eleanor Roosevelt and Maya Angelou together.

16. A baby ferret is called a “kit”… So  the food, cage, and accessories for said ferret would be a kit kit.

17. I will never understand how i can find myself halfway to work and unable to remember if i put on deodorant, but i can still recite the “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” speech, and i haven’t read Julius Caesar in over 30 years.

18. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but if its name was “mucus”, no one would stop to smell it at all.

19. Is there anyplace creepier than an abandoned mental hospital?

20. Am i the only one who lays awake at night thinking about these things?

Don’t answer that last one.