Since Brian and I are both smokers, I buy our cigarettes by the carton at a convenience store/cigarette outlet that I pass on my way to work.

It’s a nice convenience store (as far as convenience stores go). Since it is located at the interstate, it carries lots of  South Carolina goodies and knick knacks for the yankee travelers, and of course, it’s a gas station, too, but I never buy my gas there.

I don’t know anything about the owners, but I’m guessing they are somewhere near my age because of the music aired in the store and blasted outside at the gas pumps – always a nice selection of oldies.

On Thursday, when I stopped there, the song I heard playing as I got out of my car was “Reflections of  My Life” by Marmalade.

I love this song, and although I don’t hear it often, when I do, I like to pause and just listen. So, after my purchase, I stood at my car door until the song was over.

Now, this must be a Murphy’s Law kinda thing, but have you ever noticed that usually when you hear a song that you can’t get out of your head, it’s a crappy one? It’s a song like “Ooooh That Smell, Can’t you smell that smell?
Ooooh that smell, The smell of death surrounds you” (Eww! -yeah, I had that one floating around one day for a few hours!) Or something else equally awful that you’d give anything to forget!

But, Reflections is nice.  I hummed and sang it for the rest of my trip to work. I whistled it while I worked. I looked up the song lyrics and found a performance on You Tube and read about the band on Wikipedia. I encouraged my brain to keep it with me. And, so I fell asleep with it on my mind and woke up this morning with it, too.

And, of course, I can now also share this one tidbit with you.  Reflections was co-written by Junior Campbell and Dean Ford in 1969.   (Ford was the Marmalade’s lead vocalist and had later fame with The Alan Parsons Project, fyi).

So, if you are interested, you can watch Marmalade perform this song on You Tube and keep it in your brain for a few days, too!  I’ve included the lyrics below the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79NiN7ISW7E

REFLECTIONS OF MY LIFE
Marmalade

The changing of sunlight to moonlight
Reflections of my life, oh, how they fill my eyes
The greetings of people in trouble
Reflections of my life, oh, how they fill my mind

All my sorrows, sad tomorrows
Take me back to my own home
All my crying (all my crying), feel i’m dying, dying
Take me back to my own home (oh i’m going home)

(guitar solo)

I’m changing, arranging, I’m changing
I’m changing everything, ah, everything around me
The world is a bad place, a bad place
A terrible place to live, oh, but i don’t wanna die

All my sorrows, sad tomorrows
Take me back to my own home
All my crying (all my crying), feel i’m dying, dying
Take me back to my own home (oh i’m going home)

(fade)

Does this ever happen to you?  Here’s the scenario. A simple question gets asked. No one knows the answer. It becomes like a trivia question and everyone wracks their brains trying to think of the answer. Ding! Ding! Ding! when someone shouts out the correct answer. And, it is fun. And, everyone now has the answer! And sometimes, it becomes truly a game, with more related trivia questions and answers!

But, what happens when no one has the answer? Does it bother you? Does someone look it up? If it’s not that important, can you let it go?

I ask, because when this happens to me, I can’t let it go. And, I ‘m not just talking about a fun question, where there are a bunch of people trying to come up with an answer. I’m talking about the day to day questions that happen everyday. You see, I have a thing about unanswered questions.

For instance, if someone wonders what time it is in Paris right now, I have to look it up. If someone asks who wrote a certain book, I look it up. If someone asks me how to spell a word, I’ll look it up to confirm I’m right.

Here’s a recent example. Brian asked me the other day, “Is Robert Palmer dead?”

I said, “I dunno. Let me look it up.” And, so I did.

Is this normal behavior or a little over the edge?  I mean it really isn’t that important to my daily living to know this answer, is it? But, for me, once he asked the question I had to know the answer.

Brian even said, “Not necessary, Cindy. It’s not that important.” 

And, I said, “Well, no it’s not, but it will only take me a sec to look it up.”

The bottom line is that I do not like unanswered questions. Which takes me to the subject of this blog : Fix-A-Drink.

I was thinking about a drink we had growing up in the 60s. It was a syrup concentrate that had to be mixed with water.  My mind was telling me that my favorite flavor was grape, although it also came in a couple of other flavors. My mind was telling me it was called, Fix-A-Drink.

Now there are a lot of unanswered questions with this thinking, like what other flavors did it come in, where was it made, how long was the company that made it in business, did it make anything else, yada, yada.

Tons of unanswered questions, so, I went to the internet looking for answers. I googled Fix-A-Drink and got nothing! I googled grape, syrup, concentrates, 1960s, western Pennsylvania, you name it and got nothing! Oh, my goodness! I searched for several hours looking for the answers to these totally unimportant questions.

Silly, I know. But, I was driven to find out. While searching I stumbled upon several websites and blogs that talked about old-timey drinks, like Moxie, a favorite in Massachusettes, and NeHi grape and orange sodas. I learned more on the web about Coca-Cola than I did at its corporate headquarters in Atlanta and more about Dr. Pepper than I ever cared to know and Tang and root beer and cream sodas. I learned about the maple syrup diet, where you apparently drink several tablespoons of maple syrup several times a day to give yourself a sugar rush and suppress your appetite! Gee, I had never heard of this one, and I’ve tried a lot of them!

But, not one lousy little reference out there on the whole world wide freakin’ web about Fix-A-Drink, dammit!

So, I called my sister, Bonnie. Before I could get the whole description about the syrup concentrate out of my mouth, she said, “Fix-A-Drink.” So, then I asked hubby, Brian,  if his mom ever bought this syrupy concentrate thing, and before I could say its name, he said “Fix-A-Drink.”

So, I know it existed. But, I’m so frustrated because of these remaining unanswered trivial, meaningless, anal questions. So, please if anyone out there can supply a few answers, help me escape this misery!