A Good Laugh

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Cecelia, happy birthday to me!  I can't believe another one has come around.  Just one more year until Medicare, and even the government will consider me old.  So I made myself a birthday cake...

I've been working on my DJ blocks, and have a few to show you.  I'm up to 108 out of 169, so my rows are filling up, and I'm starting to think about how I'm going to sash and join them.  They are so much fun that even when I struggle with one, I can hardly wait to start the next one.

Now a little Egypt story.  No pictures to go with it, as you'll understand.  First of all, the first temple we visited was the Temple of Luxor, the largest temple complex in Egypt.  I'll show you pictures of it later, but it just set the stage for the story.  Our guide, Sam, told us the story of one of the ancient gods, Ming.  To begin with, he wasn't always a god, but just a man - a man who was so trusted that he was left alone with all the women of the town when all the rest went off to war.  They were gone a long time, and when they came home, there were many many babies.  To punish him, they cut off one arm and one leg and banished him to the desert.  There he thrived, and at some point was named him the god of fertility.  I took a picture of his carving from the temple, but it didn't turn out.  If you really want to see it, you can google it and you'll get the picture.  Since he was the god of fertility, you can use your imagination and get a good picture in your mind.  Now, for the rest of the story I want you to use your imagination so that I don't have to actually write what I saw.
So on with the story, when we were in Hurghada, a very modern beach city, I finally found a shop where I could just look without too much interference from the owner.  However, whenever he noticed that I seemed to be spending much time looking at one thing, he was right there to try to talk me into it.  Anyway, after I had chosen what I wanted, I started just looking around while he wrapped and wrote up our purchases, and the first thing that caught my attention was a very large symbol of fertility standing upright on the shelf.  I couldn't believe it, but realized that it had an ashtray at the base.  I started to laugh, which caught the attention of the vendor who jumped up and said, "Oh, does madam like this? I have larger ones and smaller ones, all sizes. I have brown ones in addition to this black one."  Meanwhile, I'm laughing so I can hardly speak, and he's picking it up and putting it with my purchases!  My first thought was where do you display such a thing?  In your display case with all your other souvenirs?  I was finally able to convince him that I didn't want it and he put it back.  And then, I started looking around again, and I was surrounded by them!  Almost every shelf!  More ashtrays in all sizes, and statues of Ming in all sizes, and other little statues that looked like they were some kind of a pipe.  Again I started laughing, and again, he was right there trying to add them to my purchases.  He was not at all embarrassed to try to talk this fat old woman into buying these very odd souvenirs.  It makes me laugh when I think about it.