Lesson 166: Top Ten Tim McGraw #8

Song #8 on Eloise's Concert Countdown Chart:

Felt Good On My Lips

(music appears at the bottom of this post)

Eight days until the concert and Eloise has a spring in her step, although it is a bit too warm for these boots today.  I'll have to opt for my toe shoes because we are heading to the lake soon.

The song landing in my Number Eight spot is Felt Good On My Lips.  It is one of Tim McGraw's newer songs (2010).  The interesting thing I found was that it debuted at number 33 on the Hot Country Songs chart in October 9, 2010.  It eventually rose to Number one by January 8, 2011 and remained in the top spot for three weeks.  Eloise is a girl who likes her threes.  The song must mean something.

I like the lyrics.  It is a song about attraction between a male and a female.  I particularly like the opening verse:

She said her name was a hand-me-down name
From a side of a family that long ago came
Over here on a boat from somewhere in Spain
Sounded to me just a little bit strange, I guess  ----(kind of like Eloise)
But I have to admit
It felt good on my lips


Today's Tim Fact of the day:  Baseball is his favorite sport.  He attended college in Louisiana on a baseball scholarship.  He got his first guitar while there and sang for tips for his side job.


In honor of the song, I made the slide show of some feel good things from the last few weeks:  carnivals, pool hopping, blueberry picking, and speedway races.  The slide show opens with Eloise and her newly wounded finger, picking blueberries at a farm in Western New York.  That was about all the picking I did.  The kids did the rest.  I took up roost under a bush and ate them straight off of the stems, and boy, that felt good on my lips.

I love this one of Ellen.

Unfortunately, lots of things have been going over the lips, past the gums, look out stomach, here it comes!, lately.  Summer is a constant barrage of food temptations for poor Eloise.  I'm a sucker for a carnival candy apple.  Hot dogs and smores over a fire are hard to pass up.  Strawberry jam, blueberry pie--the list goes on and on.  Training for my recent half marathon, I figured I was safe from the extra calories due to all the additional miles I was putting on my Mizunos.  My training plan (self created, as you can figure) called for 33 miles a week.  I'm not good at math, but I can at least figure that's a lot of calories.  I also figured I had a bit of leeway in the eating department.  Maybe not.

My most frequently asked question about the half marathon was if I lost any weight.  Sorry Ladies.  I am sad to report that I actually gained four pounds.  According to my best calculations, the poundage is maybe a couple new ones from more muscle (which I do believe is somewhere under my healthy layer of body fat), but the other two I attribute to just Eating With Too Many Liberties.  No matter how fast or far I run, I cannot outrun the fact that this body does not like too many sugary carbs.

That whole spaghetti thing with runners was something I'd never bought into.  The die-hards make a big deal about eating a big plate of pasta before a race.  I figured I'd be better off eating a hamburger or juicy steak in preparation for a long run; but that was just another case of live and learn.  With some experimentation, I found I did have more energy for the long runs in the hot sun if I did snarf down some pasta the night before. Ask Kenyan or Heather Cass to tell you why.  I still don't understand the science behind it; I just know it worked for me.

Here is my Felt Good on My Lips treat for today:

I made a pie to take to the lake.  It is warm today, so we are going to swim in a place I don't have to ask permission to do so--Lake Erie.  The lake "turned over" this week, dropping the temperature and uplifting tons of sludge from the bottom.  The sheephead are dying and it is killing my mother.  She called the Fish Commission and they told her that it was just a natural part of the Great Lakes ecosystem, albeit a smelly one.  Sorry Mom, there is no rescuing them.

Here are some recent cottage photos:

As for some other Feel Good things:

It's been warm this week, so we've been pool hopping.  I like to make a list of friends and family with pools and systematically attack the list one by one, spreading the pestering out to the point of it being unrecognizable as calculated.  We wind up swimming every day we need to beat the heat, and I get out of maintaining a pool.  Yeah!  As long as you bring some snacks, your own drinks and towels, and don't stay for more than an hour or so, you always get invited back. Plus, when this girl shows up with her beach ball, how can you say no to her?

We also went to the Eriez Speedway racetrack last night.  Sam got to take a friend along.  He loved the cars--especially those little ones, but he and his buddy liked the Bounce Houses the best.  He loves to go in those things and pretend he's a professional wrestler.  Ellen always takes a sneak when she sees him waiting in line, thumping his chest like the WWE wrestlers do before a match.  That is where I get the phrase I often use:  He's as happy as Sam in a Bounce House.

 Slovenians, the temperature in my Great Lakes Region is reading 81 degrees.  No, Eloise isn't burning in Hell--my reading is Fahrenheit.  That is 27 degrees on the Celsius scale.  I'm headed to my rocky shore to cool off and eat pie.  I know what I said earlier about the extra calorie consumption.  But you see, I'm an American.....and tomorrow is Monday.  Diets (and all good intentions) always have to start on Monday, right?

Hope the song makes you feel as good as it does me,

Eloise