Are you a liar, thief, cheat, or drunk?

Never lie, steal, cheat or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away. Old Irish Drinking Toast - also quoted in movies like: Hitch, Leap Year, Love is a Four Letter Word, etc.

Here's the original toast from the Irish:
"May you never lie, steal, cheat or drink.
But if you must lie, lie in each other's arms.
If you must steal, steal kisses.
If you must cheat, cheat death.
And if you must drink, drink with us, your friends."

I like it. It's the best kind of "degenerate" to be. If I'm going to be a liar then I want to be the kind that spends my life lying in the embrace of my husband. If I'm going to be a thief I hope, I pray, I'm only the kind that steals away the negative and bad from the lives of others so that joy can replace it. Cheating death is not really an issue with me, however. We all die and our days and the length of them are determined so I don't think you can cheat death. But I do think we should cheat a life lived in mundane ways. (Seems to be a theme with me this week - perhaps my travels overseas inspired this talk of living a fuller life.) And I want to drink deeply the life I've been given. I want to take long gulps and let it drip down my chin even. I want to be drunk on this life that is waiting for me to grab hold of it and savor it. If I'm going to be called a liar, thief, cheat or drunk then I certainly hope it's in reference to living life large.

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A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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