Miracles & Luck Tuesday, Jul 12 2011 


It’s been about six weeks now since we moved into our little castle – long enough for us to get acclimated and learn to stand on our own feet. We passed a couple of milestones just the last couple of days. I’m not big on numbers. As a matter of fact I HATE numbers, and I am the very last person on the planet you would ever want balancing your checkbook. I’m not a big gambler either, though I live in an area where a lot is tied to the gaming industry. From what I know, there are certain combinations of numbers that are considered lucky. 7 and 11 are usually lucky numbers while 13 has always been considered unlucky. There is a wealth of information for anyone interested in the whole superstition, but the actual term for the phobia or fear of Friday the 13th is friggatriskaidekaphobia. I don’t believe in lucky or unlucky numbers but then again I’ve never won the jackpot either. I do know this though, anyone who trusts their life to dumb luck or a crap shoot is a friggan idiot. I don’t believe in luck, but I do believe in signs. And I believe in Miracles as well, ESPECIALLY when Miracles can serve as a sign. When I left six weekes ago, I really had no idea where this journey would take me, but someone once told me that life is about the journey not the destination. If I’d have known where I was going I might not have seen the signs along the way.

Anyone who was following the blog a few weeks ago will probably remember Our Little Miracle. She doesn’t know it, but I learned a lot from watching and speaking with Miracle. She was my little cheerleader, literally. I moved out on my own uncertain of what the future would bring, but I found a little Miracle next door. More than once, she brought out a pom-pom or doll to show me and never just talked about herself. She asked a LOT of questions and freely gave her own answers and advice whether we asked for it or not. One day when she and my son were having popsicles outside, the boy complained about how hot it was and that his popsicle was dripping everywhere. The girl responded matter-of-factly, “Suck it up!” He literally sucked up the melting juice, but I think she meant for him to quit his whining or take his pity party somewhere else.

On her balcony cheering me on...

Miracle told me that her favorite doll is Tiana from The Princess and The Frog. Of course it is! All the little girls, and even the boys around here love that movie. The film is set in New Orleans and just down the bayou where the characters talk like we do, though not all of us practice voodoo. The story is different from most fairy tales though, and that is exactly why I think it is so great. Fairy tales evolve over time and change their cultural relevance, and the Disney version of the tale is the one that holds the strongest meaning to me. Unlike the early versions where a princess kisses a frog who then turns into her prince and they live happily ever after, the Disney animated version shows a hard-working Tiana in control of her own destiny. It was when Tiana chose to try the easy route to fulfill her dreams by kissing the frog that she found herself lost in the swamp. I think I know a lot of girls around here my age who could relate to that! And guess what – I wouldn’t want to be the poor prince responsible for fulfilling someone else’s dreams either. That’s the kind of pressure that bubbles up and pops on the surface of a seemingly stagnant swamp. You’ve got problems and troubles like the rest of us? Well as Miracle would say, “Suck it up.” We make our own choices, and we live by the consequences. When we make a bad decision, life’s not over. Paddle yourself out of the swamp. You’re welcome to just sit there on your lily pad sulking and waiting for someone to come along and pull you out too, but I’m willing to bet my own lily white you-know-what that you’ll be waiting for a while. There are no guarantees that what comes along will be a prince, and if he is who’s to say he’ll want to carry you. Our little Miracle moved away this weekend, but miracles always come and go don’t they? I think I’m strong enough to navigate the swamps and bayous around here on my own now anyway.

Miracle with her Tiana doll from The Princess & The Frog

Yesterday was 7/11. Those are supposed to be lucky numbers, but 13 years ago on 7/11 my dad died. I wrote my first blog post, My Hail Mary, for Facebook in the wee hours of the morning of Friday the 13th, and it was good for me. Maybe the whole numbers/luck thing is backwards which would explain my backwards figures in the checkbook too where I am most certainly NOT lucky. Maybe even God forced my hand, and I’m finally taking charge of my own destiny. Either way you roll the dice, the only safe bet you have is to rely on yourself. How can anyone else count on you if you can’t even do it yourself. I hope my kids at least take that lesson from my fairy tale regardless of how it turns out, and I’ll take notes about my signs along the way for them to read and learn from later.

Walt Disney

Redneck DS Solution Monday, Jul 11 2011 


I have an idea… You know those big wooden planks you have to carry around to the back of the gas station because they are attached to the restroom key so that you don’t lose it or for some bizarre reason try to steal it?? I’m going to find some… or MAKE some… and figure out how to attach them to those little DS games that get lost in the couch cushions. I wonder if they sell those at The WalMarts?? They could say HIS and HERS so they’d also keep the kiddos from fighting over whose is whose. Y’all don’t think that would embarrass them when they bring them over to friends’ houses or anything, huh? Brilliant! This may not make me a lot of money, but I sure think it’ll save me some. Sit tight. I’ll post pics when this works out.

Kinda like this except wooden. I could even put their names on the back in glitter or something:

Mama’s Hobo Handouts Sunday, Jul 10 2011 


I’ve been thinking this morning over coffee, and I think I may have come up with an idea that’s going to make me & Mama rich. I haven’t exactly worked out all of the kinks in the plan yet, but the wheels are turning and I think I may have stumbled onto something brilliant. Allow me to think out loud here.

When I was away at school my last two years of high school and the four years following for college, my mom used to send me makeup and money in care packages. If she had time, she’d even put a sticky note in there saying, “Love, Mama.” Never home-baked cookies or long drawn out letters or anything because Mama was busy. She looked out for her girls though and would sometimes cut articles out of the newspaper warning us of life’s dangers with headlines like, “Why Women Should Always Carry Mace,” or “Pitt Bull Mames and Scars Well-meaning Dog Lover at Festival,” and stuck to the article would be a sticky note that said, “SEE! That’s why you never go around petting OTHER PEOPLE’S dogs!!! Love, Mama.” One time when I was “studying” in Spain for a summer, I called Mama collect and told her I needed her to send me some deodorant STAT. I was running out and decided not to purchase a foreign tube because the same-looking packages must contain different chemical compositions since too many people had offended me with their B.O. She apparently understood the gravity of the situation and high tailed it to K&B and subsequently the post office. When my package arrived a week later, I excitedly opened it in front of my friends and the gravity hung my head in shame when my friends saw the contents. Not one but TWO sticks of deodorant and…. well, no “and.” That was it. No cookies and not even a note this time, but I knew she loved me anyway despite the barren box.

My mama is one of those people who has a very hard time saying no. She also has a very big heart, so the combination doesn’t always produce desirable consequences. Take the homeless people, street corner hobos and the panhandlers from The WalMarts. We really have no way of distinguishing who is truly in need of a hand up and who is simply a con artist and when you walk away. Whether you have donated or not, you leave feeling a little disheartened. Were you duped and therefore perpetuated a practice that the businesses in the area frown upon because it drives away customers? Did you say no and may have just left a needy person hungry? Did you refuse to give money and give someone a box of pop tarts you happened to have with you only to be scolded by your lack of generosity from the guy requesting? I’ve done all three. Mama’s done all three. Mama went so far in a restaurant one time to give a guy $20 for the part he needed to fix his car in the parking lot only to have the staff approach her later and tell her not to do that again since the same guy has been run out of the restaurant many times before always leaving with a wad of cash from his con. “But he looked so nice and honest. He was all nicely dressed and well spoken!,” declared Mama. “That’s why it works for him,” declared the manager. Maybe she feels bad when she sees someone drooling because their mama didn’t catch the Seal A Meal correlation early enough.

One of my friends posted a picture a while back of her little “Hobo Bags – The Halloween Edition.” This girl is the cutest, peppiest thing to walk the planet. She has more energy that the Energizer Bunny and she never slows down. She always manages to take care of the kids, husband, house, business AND herself and she looks great doing it too! She sat down with the kids and made Hobo Bags for the homeless filled with little travel size wet wipes, toiletries, snacks and water and I thought it was a FANTASTIC idea! Win-win! She kept the kids busy and also taught them how to be charitable at the same time while providing something that’s useful and I’m sure appreciated by those who receive the little bundles from the back of her car. If she can figure out how to monogram a Ziploc bag, I wouldn’t put it past her to do it too.

Hobo Bags - The Halloween Edition

Here’s where my mind is going now though.I know a whole helluvalotta people who simply don’t have the time or don’t THINK they have the time or don’t want to SPEND the time doing this. BING! Why couldn’t Mama and I mass produce these little bags of joy and then sell them at a small mark-up to the LAZY charitable people?? I think there’s a whole market there that hasn’t been tapped yet. I mean, we’ve all learned to give back through time, effort and money aimed at charitable causes, but we’re still stuck wincing and walking around people sometimes at The WalMarts and city street corners. What if we ALL had Hobo Bags in our cars – even the Lazy Givers? Mama and I could make an assembly line at the kitchen table with Kendall Jackson and churn out a bunch of these puppies that the LGs (Not lesbians and gays although I’m sure there are plenty of lazy giving lesbians and gays too because I know some) could then PURCHASE from US to keep in their cars!! The LGs would feel good about handing out their bags, the truly needy people would be appreciative, the con artists would be PISSED, and Mama and I would make a nice little profit. Everybody wins!!! And then we could put a nice little sticky note in there that said something like, “Love, Mama ♥” People would get all warm & fuzzy, and Mama could make up for all the “practical” care packages she sent me and my sisters in college that I’m sure she feels just terrible about, bless her heart.

Y’all get ready because I think this is gonna happen. I’m going to get my people on it (as soon as I get “people”) so be looking for them on the shelves at The WalMarts. I think I’ll call them Mama’s Hobo Handouts!

Back To The Future – The Triple Challenge Friday, Jul 8 2011 


I signed up for this whole blog thing just three weeks ago and I guess I jumped in with both feet. Now I’m part of a “Post A Day” challenge and receive emails for inspiration. The photo challenge headline was “Old Fashioned” and the post challenge was “Write about your earliest memory.” Since I don’t have a lot of time here, I’m going to try to be creative to combine both while also keeping my Facebook peeps in the loop with what we are up to in Our Town. It’s a triple challenge! So I’m going to take you back to 1955, 1985 and possibly into the future as well at EXACTLY 88 miles per hour because at PRECISELY 10:04pm lighting is going to strike my clock tower with the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need to hit the bed and be re-charged for tomorrow. That gives me one hour to compose my tale and meet all three objectives so buckle up and get into my DeLorean because we’re going to go fast…

I took Brother out for some special one-on-one time when Sister started Art Camp this summer. We hit up an old battleship and managed to get a private tour in the middle of one of the hottest days of the year through a steel oven that had no open doors or windows for circulation. It was built sometime near the end of WWII and we were actually informed that it was a destroyer quite aptly named as you should have seen my hair and makeup by the time we left. We got to check out the innards of this hot box on water and got to climb every ladder and go down every “hole with a pole” so the kid was in heaven. I left with one of the images burned into my brain. My kid actually had to ask me what this was and the conversation went something as follows:

The old typewriter from our Battleship Tour

What’s that?!?

Well, Brother, it is a typewriter.

It looks weird. What’s it for?

Communicating with other people. Like… writing letters and then putting a stamp on them and delivering them through the postman.

They didn’t have email, huh? Or computers. Or electricity. Did YOU have to do that to talk to your friends before there were telephones?

Oh, Brother. You’re in for it.

Who invented it?

Um. Well. I dunno. But I’m pretty sure it was another Brother who marketed it and put his name on it: Brother. Ha! See! I do know something kid.

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Alphabet Soup Thursday, Jul 7 2011 


My Soup That Stirred The Pot

So after yesterday’s post, all kinds of comments were generated on Facebook regarding proper food safety, storage & heating methods. Clearly too many of you were not fortunate enough to have a mama like mine and have already killed incalculable brain cells with your NOT SO best practices and methods, bless your stupid hearts! I’m going to spell it out for you so that you don’t throw those mutated brain cells down to the bottom of the bowl to be scooped up and carried along by another generation, and I will consider it my public service announcement AND blog for the day. Here are a few rules from my mama that you should follow to the letter:

A – Never ever store things in plastic baggies and then reheat & eat them! That’s dangerous because those thin little plastic things leach into your food and come out of your mouth later. Haven’t you ever seen those people that sit in corners and just drool?? That drool is actually the melted plastic coming out of their mouths! We decided this only after Mom bought that Seal A Meal thing to vacuum seal all those little bags of spaghetti. It makes total sense, and we count our blessings that we discovered the correlation in time. How is this not common knowledge? I’m sure you’re all going to think about that the next time you see a drooling hobo on the corner, huh?! I bet THAT GUY grew up on Seal A Meals! You are only supposed to use those things to store dry food snacks one time only and they are never to be washed and reused.

B – Only morons cover their food in the microwave with a thin layer of plastic wrap to keep it from splattering chunks all over the microwave. That’s a fact. If the sturdier baggies leach chemicals, then can you IMAGINE what that little film can let go of? That is not steam coming off your food while you eat, Honey. It’s your brain cells evaporating. Use a paper towel next time.

C – ALWAYS pop out your healthy frozen dinner onto a microwave safe plate before heating it in its self-contained cancer-causing receptacle. You just turn the tray upside down and twist it out like an ice-cube tray. Sometimes it breaks up a little bit and the tray falls apart, but you just throw the little black shards away before you heat so that they don’t sink into your delicious sauce or vegetables or whatever and make you choke. I wonder if it’s a big conspiracy by Big Frozen Foods to make us sick which in turn causes us to look for Healthier Choices and Leaner Cuisines in the freezer section to boost our immune systems. Big Frozen Foods = B.F.F. which does NOT mean the same as giggly little preteen BFFs.

D – Do NOT pop styrofoam into the microwave. It WILL pop! I thought everyone knew this?!?! Apparently not. If you choose to risk it, then you’d better be sure you have on your good panties because when the fire department shows up to rescue you after too much smoke inhalation and toxic FUMES from the melted styrofoam they will bring you to the emergency room for resuscitation. Now all of those people are going to have to cut off your clothes to revive you and if you have holes in your underwear then you’ll embarrass your mama by making her look like she never taught you any better. We learned this when Mama used to watch George Clooney play a doctor on E.R. You know what? It’s really just best to cover your ass by not even attempting the styrofoam-heating-cause-you’re-too-lazy-to-get-out-a-real-plate method to begin with.

E – Metal never goes into the nuker. This is a serious matter with heavy consequences. I mean, do they even make metal plates anymore? This topic is probably moot because I think the only people that use metal serving dishes are prisoners who have those nice little divided metal trays for their bland food, but I’m going to include my heavy metal advice just in case I have some secret admirer inmates still following me since college when I was too stupid to refuse their collect calls just in case it was a friend that got busted at a bar with a fake I.D. and needed bail or something. (Mama would DIE if she knew that!) (more…)

Married… With Children & Miss um…Erica?!?! Wednesday, Jul 6 2011 


OK. Let me tell you what I did. I sat down to blog about my outing to The Walmarts this morning and how I felt like Al Bundy parading around through the store with nothing but a toilet plunger and a box of coffee. I even tweeted about it like a total twit because I’m just now trying to figure out the whole twitter thing and its codes and weird symbols since I think that ALL famous bloggers must tweet. So I planned out my little diddy and then got distracted making a big pot of soup for lunch and had to take the kids to the pool. (And I mean literally TAKE THE KIDS TO THE POOL. That’s not a Bundyism for potty humor.) So I brought my little notebook and pen to the pool and wrote out what I wanted to say and even giggled a little to myself. When I came back to the computer this afternoon to put it all together and find a picture of Ol’ Al in the internet, I flat out deflated like the brand-new-piece-of-crap-nearly-made-my-kids-pass-out-from-blowing-up-because-I-don’t-have-an-air-pump-like-a-GOOD-mom “sun lounger” I bought just YESTERDAY at the The Walmarts. Who would’ve thought there would be such a treasure trove of websites, pictures, videos, Facebook pages and OTHER BLOGS dedicated to the iconic ’90s character. Nuh-uh. No way. I cannot do some tired old thing that has been done before if I expect people to read what I have to say. So I’ll just tell you about my soup, OK? I’m still keeping my original title though because I still think it is clever and looks really nice and symmetrical with all the dots in it.

I have this super awesome really great recipe for Spicy Vegetable Soup. Like every other soup, I make it in a big pot. And it is delicious, and there is A LOT in THE POT. In typical fashion, I failed to plan ahead and prepare for what I would do with the leftovers. See, I have a new kitchen now with about half of what I had back at the old house. I took a big POT, yet a leftover container I did NOT. So when I went to save the leftovers, I swear to God, I heard my mom’s voice in my head warning me of all the dangers of putting metal into the refrigerator. Unlike my mom though, I have the internet at my fingertips and decided to Google her old wives tale. (Nobody tell her I said anything about her on the internet especially that I used the words OLD and TALE/TAIL when referring to her, OK? She’ll just get all flustered.)

Here’s what I found on answers.yahoo.com:

Does storing food in pots and pans in the refrigerator poison the food?

My mom used to always tell me to put left overs in a tupperware and place in the fridge. She said the if you put the pot or pan in the fridge to store the left overs, it would poison the food. My boyfriend does this all the time and I’ve always refused to eat the food. Well, now I’m sick and he made some chicken soup. He put the soup in the fridge, in the pot and gave me some for work today. I’m scared to eat it because of what Mom used to always say but I can’t seem to find anything on the net about it. Has anyone heard of this? Is it true that refrigerated food in pots poisons you? The soup was made Monday night and has been in the pot, in the fridge, since about 3am Tuesday morning. How do I know if the pot is aluminum?

ANSWERS:

  • No. But do not cook acid foods like apples or tomatoes in aluminum pots. The aluminum leaches out into the food and aluminum is found in the plaques in the brains of alzheimer’s patients. I don’t want to take any chances.
  • Only if it’s stored in aluminum. Stainless steel or enamel is ok
  • i do not like to store food which is cooked always make it fresh……….or make in small quantities
  • I always store my food in the pots and pans I cook it in because I always lose my Tupperware tops! haha
    Eat your soup!

So OBVIOUSLY I am not the only person that has heard this and the questioner sounds like a really smart girl who used proper spelling and punctuation and all. The answer givers just talked about bad things that happen to people’s brains and I’m all like, “There are TOMATOES in that soup!” And what about the ones who said not to worry? They don’t have any vested interest in the health and well-being of this girl! Who’s to say they are not some crazy sadists that surf the net looking for people to poison?? So I went to Facebook. Where else?!

Here’s how the thread went (I’m going to block out their names so they won’t be embarrassed to be friends with me) : (more…)

The Gift That Keeps On Giving Tuesday, Jul 5 2011 


Only the FANCY moms get a gift like this: A SCARF made from a PAPER TOWEL that was decorated with an ORANGE MARKER and deliberately soaked in APPLE JUICE to make it smell NICE! It’s not even my birthday! 🙂

20110705-094320.jpg

Fireworks in “Our Town” Monday, Jul 4 2011 


What did YOU wake up to today? I woke up at 5:45 to the sound of my daughter rummaging through the bathroom. I almost – ALMOST – got out of bed, but the sound of gagging would be required to make my feet hit the floor. Then I remembered! She told me last night she was setting her alarm on her little DS so that she could wake up before Brother and me to SURPRISE us. Maybe that little thing has some value to it after all. (The DS, not the kid. She has immeasurable value.) I’m a totally freakin’ responsible parent so I made sure to set parameters for the surprise: Do NOT scare Brother from his slumber, NO oven/stove & NOTHING electrical. The fire brigade works around the clock, but I did NOT need them to be called for our own set of fireworks here at the castle where I’m celebrating my own newfound independence. “Gotcha,” she said.

So I waited and dozed until Brother slid into bed and snuggled up with me. Shortly before 7am, she entered fully dressed and announced that the surprise was starting. She was ready for us and had in fact changed and slept in her clothes after I tucked her in so that she wouldn’t have to waste any time in the morning with such trivial necessities. I opened my eyes and said, “Good Morning, Lovebug!” to her and her hat. The chipper little doll was wearing a headband with a sign cleverly attached that said, “Happy 4th of July.” Let the fireworks begin. Brother and I walked down the hall and entered the “Fashion Cafe” from dinner 2 nights ago which had now been transformed into some sort of street carnival. Brother’s sleepy eyes lit up and just about exploded when he was told there were PRIZES at stake for the early morning games to come. Whatever. I’ll let you win Dude and maybe they’ll keep you occupied until I’ve had my coffee.

First game: Trivia. A little book was filled with page after page after page of questions so it appeared my sanity was in Jeopardy. She’s so stinkin’ cute though that Brother and I followed the rules and answered the questions.

What are the colors on the American Flag?

What is our official bird?

What is the name of our National Anthem?

What dance does Mickey do on the Disney Movie? And Donald??

The million dollar question was, “What do you call a pig with lipstick?” Answer: An ugly pig.

Please don't send me to jail. I just copied it from Google

And PLEASE don't send the Secret Service after me! Someone much more evil than me made this picture and I found it when I googled Obama Lipstick. I don't want to go to jail. My kids need their mother.

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Mayhem and Me Sunday, Jul 3 2011 


You know that guy from the Allstate commercials, Mayhem? Well I’m friends with him on Facebook. He’s with me in all my states of waking consciousness in life. I think one the best decisions I’ve made was finally accepting him as a friend and quit running away from him. He’ll chase you through the house, embarrass you in the carpool line and make your kids throw their chicken strips across The Olive Garden resulting in total mortification when the THUD hits the floor in front of the Cleavers at the next booth leaving you with the stabbing pains of guilt and humiliation. Just when I think I’m about to lose my ever-loving mind – which by the way I must say often enough that my boy has taken to repeating my tag line verbatim to Mario every time he crashes – Mayhem comes in and says something funny to break the tension.

Here’s the deal. Mayhem will let you embrace him. He just wants to be recognized. I pretended for a long time like he wasn’t there standing next to me pulling at my strings like a puppet master that caused me to look like some comedic poltergeist had taken over my body and those of my family for far too long. We hid him away like a crazy Aunt Edna that we kept in the closet so that we could all look perfect and proper. Well, guess what. Not anymore! Dude is coming along with me EVERYWHERE because he’s funny. He’s WAY funnier than his cousin Despair. I’ve made the mistake of actually INVITING that guy in and I’ll never do it again. It was my own fault really because I was the one the let that guy into our castle. The husband and the kids and even the dog had to pick up his mess. That’s the guy that you do NOT want around. He’s the one who makes you cry and sleep and cry again until you fall asleep. He’ll plop his tush on the couch and settle in with a bag of Cheetos and then have the nerve to ask you to bring him a beer and wipe his orange fingers on your lovely upholstery and there won’t be anything funny about it. (more…)

My Daily’s Post Saturday, Jul 2 2011 


I just signed up for this challenge where I’ve committed to posting DAILY for the rest of the year. Sometimes I feel inspired and sometimes I don’t. You’d think that after witnessing the guy in the trailer park behind me ride his LAWNMOWER to his buddy’s pad that I’d have something to say. Not really. All that did was make me want to go to The WalMarts when he didn’t return thinking maybe the guy had rambled on over there. For SURE a trip to Wally World was gonna set something off in my brain then, right? It’s an aspiring writer’s PLAYGROUND with characters waddling about doing things the rest of us could never DREAM of doing and saying things the rest of us can’t even comprehend. Literally! Nah. There was nothing for me to ramble about. It wasn’t until I returned home with my Great Values and opened my freezer that it hit me. There it was! My Daily’s Inspiration!

Look, at this stage in my life I know a lot of women who keep little frozen bags of breast milk in their freezers. Not me! Nope. No more bottles for this baby unless they have wine in them. When I run out of things to say, I may rip the top off of one of these babies and see what flows from my brain as the sweet frozen goodness flows from its pouch. Since it’s summer and all, maybe these little pouches should be consumed Daily, you know, just to keep my own creative juices running and maintain my sanity. I think that’s what the name implies. Maybe they are like those anxiety medicines that actually need to build up in your system to maintain maximum effectiveness and proper dosage is required. They are only like a buck too. Not a buck FOR TWO, but The WalMarts is known for rolling back prices though so keep a look out. How ’bout that. A dollar a day could keep the writer’s block away.

My friend says they look like Caprisuns for adults and she’s TOTALLY right!! The kids can have their lemonade pouches while you enjoy your own. You can even enjoy them straight from the bag without looking trashy because it says so right on the back of the pouch. These don’t come with straws though because they’d probably have to charge an extra nickel at The WalMarts for that kind of luxury. I think I may have an old Burger King cup in my car though and be all GREEN, ya know. I mean, not like green MOLD or anything cause I’d be sure and wash it and all. I mean green like recycling because I’ll get extra uses from the BK sucker. I bet I could think of lots of OTHER uses for this little bag too: (more…)

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