Happy Birthday Lucy!

The greatest actress ever born was Lucille Ball. She was the best comedian and I don't think that anyone will ever top her. She was also a very successful business woman. She was so successful. Today would have been her 100th birthday. She was born August 6, 1911.

For some reason I fell in love with Lucy. Starting at a very young age I Love Lucy was my favorite show. I loved Nick at Night's Block Party Summer because Tuesday nights were I Love Lucy. I loved how the show was so innocent and funny and people of every age still love it. Every time that I had to do a report on a famous person or about a biography I would ALWAYS choose to do it about Lucy. I love how her and Ricky/Desi really loved each other. It wasn't just an onscreen romance. Even though they ended up with a very bitter divorce and both remarried, they still loved each other until the day that Desi died. When he was dying it was Lucy that he asked for and she was there. So so touching to me.

This is a picture of the second to last episode of the show. Lucy's face was painted completely white because she was obviously dressed as a geisha girl. This is when everything was happening for their divorce. They had to keep redoing her makeup because she just kept crying the whole entire time. It is a very sad episode to me now. Their lives were falling apart.

I love every single episode of I Love Lucy but my favorite is definitely the Ballet episode. I have probably seen it 1,000 times and I still laugh just as hard as I did the first time. She is so fetching funny. Watching try to dance has got to be the funniest clip of a show ever on T.V. Please go watch it if you've never seen it.

I'm not really sure when my obsession with Lucy first started. It was somewhere before 8th grade though. I know this because of a very traumatic thing that happened to me. I went to California on a family vacation. While we were there we went to Universal Studio. You may or may not know that there use to be an I Love Lucy museum at Universal. I knew. You could go and see some of her more popular dresses that she wore on the show and awards and pictures I'm sure. My mom told me that in the olden days you would be able to actually go into her dressing room. Well my family knew that I loved Lucy and this museum is somewhere that I needed to go to while we were there. Well of course there were lots of rides that we wanted to go on and I was the oldest child and then there were 6 younger kids than me on the vacation and the museum would be boring to them. So while the museum was still definitely a priority, we had other things to do first. It started getting later and we kept riding the Jurassic Park ride over and over. We loved it. Then we went to go to the museum and the Backdraft ride was right next to the museum. It was the last run of the ride before the park closed. So we decided to do that and then do the museum. Well I am very sad to say that when we came out of the ride... the museum was closed. I was very sad. I remember just staring through the glass with my dad trying to see everything. My obsession with Lucy grew from there. My mom said that she really regrets not taking me to that first. Stupid Backdraft.

Well I figured I'd get to the museum eventually. I go to California quite frequently but most Disneyland. One trip to California Alyssa, Bryson, and I decided that we'd go to Universal. Mostly for me to get to the museum but also to just go. We ended up not going. We wanted more time at Disneyland. I still thought I would be able to go.

A few months later I went to Universal with my family. The first stop was going to be the museum. My life long goal of going to this place was finally going to happen. I get to the building and it is closed.

For good. The day before I went there was the last day that it was open. Her family wanted all of the stuff back.

Don't really know what face I'm pulling but obviously I'm heartbroken here.

I still had to get some pictures in front of the museum.

The tire marks were still on the road from the moving trucks. I was literally one day late. I just looked through the window again at the empty building. I still can't believe that happened. I was so sad. I of all people should have went to that museum and it definitely wasn't from lack of trying. I will someday go to all of the museum that they have in Jamestown, New York, where she was born. I am going to somehow talk my husband into going there for our honeymoon.

Lucy has obviously touched a special place in my heart. I collect all of her paraphernalia. I have almost every Lucy doll, all of the 50th anniversary stuff they came out with, every book that I've seen, postcards, magnets, stamps, calendars, planners, etc. I had it all out in my room at one point and cried the day that I bundled it all up and put it in a bin. I still have my barbies and random stuff out but there is too much to have it all out. Tyler use to hate when I would get something Lucy for Christmas because it would take 10 minutes to look at it because I would cry over every gift.

A few examples of the many different Lucy Christmas presents that I have gotten.

Every Christmas I have gotten at least one Lucy item.

A couple of years ago I made my mom and Letia drive down to the Festival of Trees because I had heard there was and I Love Lucy tree.

It did not disappoint. If I was rich it would have been mine.

Some things that you might not know about I Love Lucy:

-Lucille Ball was the first woman ever pregnant on T.V.

-The T.V. station said that being pregnant was considered dirty and so this was a big deal. The episode was called "Enciente" which is pregnant in Spanish. They were not allowed to say the word pregnant. They were only allowed to say expecting.

-More people watched the episode of the birth of the baby than watched the presidential inauguration.

-Lucy and Desi were having marriage issues before I Love Lucy even started and Lucy said that she would only take the part as Lucy Ricardo if Desi could play her husband. It was her idea to save her marriage. It worked for a few years.

-I Love Lucy invented the concept of reruns. It was after Lucy had her baby on T.V. and in real life. She needed time off and so she came up with the idea of showing past episodes again. Everyone thought it was an awful idea. Obviously it wasn't. Imagine if there weren't reruns on T.V.

On a website they are trying to crown the "Lucy of our generation." Some women that they are considering are Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Debra Messing. While I do love Amy Poehler I do not think that it is ok for them to say that there could be a Lucy of our generation. Lucy was a once in a lifetime actress and person. I'm a little bit bitter about it.

Obviously I love Lucy. She was the greatest woman ever on television. She touched my life in so many ways. I wish more than anything that I could have met her in real life before she died. She will be one of the first people that I meet when I go to Heaven. I am going to give my first baby girl the middle name Lucy. Yes my husband will love that idea. I'm so glad that I fell in love with Lucy. I have watched every episode more times than I can count. It is always able to cheer me up whenever I have had a bad day. Every person that I have talked to about the show has a favorite episode and they usually say that they remember watching with a grandparent or something cute. It reminds people of better times when everything wasn't trash on television. I am so grateful for Lucy and hope that my children will like watching it with me.