March march march march march march march. Oh hell--how did it get to freakin' be March already? I'm still trying to figure out what happened to January. At least my Christmas stuff is put away. March always brings me down because it is when my mother died. This year will be the 7th anniversary of her death. I flat out cannot believe that it has been seven years since I last saw my mother. Heard her voice. Hugged her and told her I loved her. But I'm not going to think or talk about that now. I'll save that for later in the month as the anniversary approaches. No pre-emoting for me.

Instead, I shall make some Observations According to Lobotomybabe for your reading pleasure.

White people should not wear dreds. They're tolerable on black folks (and sometimes I really like them--Whoopi and 1990s Lenny Kravitz, for example) but they just look nasty on white folks. And pokey. But mostly nasty. Do not look directly at them--they may burn your retinas.

If you are missing one or more of your front teeth, do whatever you can to save enough money to get it replaced. Nothing says sub-100 IQ like a missing front tooth. Forego the expensive MP3 player and expensive athletic shoes. Go get a new tooth. And if you're really strapped, go to a dental school--they'll do a decent job for a very decent price.

Those baggy-ass, saggy-ass super-wide leg pants still look stupid. When will boys understand that?

Makers of audiobooks need to stop putting abridged versions on CDs while the tapes get the full, unabridged version. Tapes are out, baby. And you can cram a lot more on a CD than on a tape. Get with the program.

Why, oh why, is there a Cinderella 2? We all know what happened after they got married. It's the stock-in-trade of all fairy tales: THEY LIVED FREAKIN' HAPPILY EVER AFTER. She redecorated the castle, got used to wearing fancy clothes, brought the mice over from the old palace, squeezed out a few puppies and watched her mean, nasty stepsisters grow old and die as spinsters. She had no troubles and the prince didn't leave dirty socks all over the bedroom.

Cast members from Survivor have no business being Miss USA judges.

The red-white-and-blue numbers all the Miss USA contestants wore at the beginning of the pageant were way fugly. Whoever designed them needs to be kicked.

The Miss USA pageant is clearly going heavy for the 15-24 female demographic. Thirty-seven-year-old women should not be watching it. (I hope it hasn't burned my retinas.) Especially since most all were born after I graduated from high school.

Free weekends are good. Very good, indeed.

Chocolate is better.

Having dry eyes makes you look old because you squint and it brings out your wrinkles and it makes your eyes bloodshot.

Everyone around me seems to be making "lifestyle changes." Not diets. Lifestyle changes. I'm sure that many really are. However, I do not believe for one minute that my sister will keep eating the way she is eating now for the rest of her life, despite her many protestations. The changes are too extreme. This is clearly a diet. Maybe later when she modifies it to a maintenance plan, it will be a lifestyle change but for now, why not call a spade a spade?

Mario Batali is too full of himself. If I hear him say "this is where home cooks go wrong..." one more time, I will never watch his pompous, arrogant show again. Alienating your audience is not the way to have a successful cooking show.

Every commercial television program is one-third commercials. One THIRD! Commercials suck. I always mute commercials because they are so loud and so annoying and so in your face. What a treat it would be if they just did one big commercial break at the end of the program. But it'll never happen because no one will watch 20 minutes of commercials all in a row. You have to break them up and put an interesting (or not) program around them.

My older sister told me that as a youngster and struggling college student, she dreamt of the day when she could afford to have all the different kinds of mustard she wanted. That meant success to her. It's not like we were mustard deprived as children--we always had yellow, sweet-hot and Chinese hot in the fridge at home--but she wanted to have a dozen jars of different kinds of mustard. And she does. And so do I. For me, success meant having dozens of pairs of socks and underwear. It always seemed to me, as a kid, that I could never find any clean socks or underwear in the mornings. I remember wearing yesterday's socks or my older sister's socks or underwear (and catching hell for that) to school. I hated wearing her socks because her feet were so much bigger than mine that the heels would stick out of my shoes around my Achilles tendon. Great look. So now I have about 35 pairs of socks and about 20ish pairs of underwear. Joey has about 40 pairs of each. (I'm starting her early.)

Iron Chef is rigged.

Tyler Florence is the hottest guy on the Food Network. Alton Brown's show, Good Eats, is the most educational show on the Food Network. I almost bought one of his fancy heat probes today when I was at Bed, Bath and Beyond but I was already spending $20 on a Silpat so it will have to wait til next time.

Finding out that you have 3 fewer days to do your project than you thought is a bad thing.

~And that is the end of Lobotomybabe's Observations for March 1, 2002. As you can tell from the bitchy tone of more than a few of them, I am riding the progesterone wave prior to riding the crimson wave. I believe the best prescription for my family this weekend would be to keep at arm's length and don't piss me off.

See you all tomorrow.

--L