Blue Door

What are You Still Doing Here?

2006-12-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

I found out the other day that not everyone knows we've moved!

From now on, go here:

http://theinnerdoor.wordpress.com

See you there!!

Mama Leone Left a Note On the Door...

2006-12-06T06:59:00.000-05:00

We're movin' out!!

I've found us a nicer place in a better neighborhood.

Click here to join me there, 'cause you should never argue with a crazy ma-ma-ma-ma-mama! You oughta know by now!

100 Things, Part the First..

2006-12-05T08:01:00.000-05:00

Kizz and I were IMing yesterday about the "100 things about me" posts that people have attached to their blogs. Intrigued by the idea, I started a list a while back and am slightly embarrassed to say that I've not made it past item #60. It's possible that I'm not interesting enough to list 100 things about myself.

Anyway she posted a starter list of her own here, and she's inspired me to start putting mine up. I'll do it in ten-item increments once a week. Hopefully, that will apply just enough gentle pressure to get me to think of the last 40 things I need to hit 100....

Here they are, in no particular order (except #1 and #2, which are exactly where they're supposed to be....)

1. I love my husband.

2. My life finally felt right when I had my daughters. I came to this lifetime to be their mother.

3. I very nearly failed algebra in high school.

4. I must start every morning with a glass of Ovaltine.

5. I once thought I might like to grow up to be an archeologist.

6. I am mildly afraid of flying.

7. I fold my family’s underwear (my sister thinks this is hysterical).

8. I have at least four best friends. That fact doesn’t diminish the fierce love I have for each of them in any possible way.

9. I am a sympathetic puker (I literally passed out the last time my youngest threw up in my presence)

10. I think Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food may well be pint-sized bits of heaven.

Getting Into the Spirit

2006-12-04T18:49:00.000-05:00

I'm in the process of getting all our holiday preparations underway. I've already started thinking about the menu (and about delegating dishes for willing guests to contribute), and Husband and I put every table we own (we own three, in case you were wondering) in the dining room to see if we could seat everyone who's expected for Christmas dinner (we can!). I've got a to-do list of things I don't want to forget to get done as December 25th gets closer and I feel more harried - cleaning the downstairs bathroom, cleaning the loft in anticipation of Beloved-Brother-In-Law's arrival, buying, washing and ironing table cloths, that sort of thing.

At least four of my christmas-themed CDs has come courtesy of Hallmark: James Taylor, Michael McDonald and two multi-artist collections. I went to iTunes the other day and bought a Charlie Brown Christmas album and Sarah McLachlan's holiday CD. Over the years, I've managed to collect most of the Very Special Christmas CDs, and have downloaded various classics from the likes of Burl Ives, Johnny Mathis and Frank Sinatra.

I have some favorite pieces. I love most of the Charlie Brown soundtrack, mostly because I have fond memories of watching the christmas special on television as a kid.

My appreciation of jazzy understatement is carried over in the Snowbound album by a group called Fourplay. I love pretty much everything that both Michael McDonald and James Taylor have ever done, so it's no big leap to think that their offerings of holiday music are among my favorites.

I haven't listened to the Sarah McLachlan CD all the way through yet, but the snippet of Song for a Winter's Night that I listened to while trying to decide whether to pony up the ten bucks for the download brought tears to my eyes.

My all-time favorite christmas song comes from Sting. He offered a version of Gabriel's Message to one of the Very Special Christmas CDs (I'm not sure which one, exactly), and I love it. It's essentially just his voice, layered back upon itself at least four times. I haven't figured out how to add audio to blog entries, or I'd post it for you. It really is stunning.

(Note: This is not an official Hot People post. Any similarity to a Hot People post is entirely coincidental.)

We're Not Early Risers...

2006-12-04T16:52:00.000-05:00

I work at Tiny Community College in my hometown. The receptionist for the college is a perfectly lovely woman; we'll call her Ms. Moon. She is exceedingly warm and friendly, and I make it a point to stop and chat with her whenever I come to the main campus.

It turns out that Ms. Moon lives right down the street from me and has been passing by my house on her daily walks through the neighborhood, she tells me, "since before your house was even there!" (In case you were wondering, we moved in on Mother's Day weekend of 1992.

Now, Ms. Moon was delighted to find that *I* live in that house - she's been wondering who occupies it because she swears that she's never seen a living soul in or around the place. She's absolutely convinced that I'm fibbing when I tell her that we're home, practically all the time, and that there's no earthly reason that she shouldn't see signs of life when she walks by.

It was when we were discussing this point this morning when another professor walked by and overheard us. She chimed in with the fact that she was aware that Ms. Moon makes her daily perambulations at ungodly hours of the morning. "Don't you take your walks around five o'clock or so?" my colleague asked.

Well, DUH, Ms. Moon! THAT'S why you never see signs of life at my house when you walk by - there ARE NONE at five in the freaking morning!!

She Is Her Father's Daughter

2006-12-03T17:06:00.000-05:00

Punkin' Pie's been working on a paper chain for the christmas tree for a few days now. This afternoon, my nephews were visiting, and this was overheard at the table where the kids were drawing:

"Punkin', your chain broke."

Punkin' investigates the damage and replies, "No, the chain didn't break. The glue failed."

Can you tell her daddy is an engineer?

I live for this stuff....

2006-12-03T13:41:00.000-05:00

I LOVE This Commercial

I think this may be my favorite commercial (and a good thing, too, because it's on pretty much every time the Patriots' game breaks for ads). I love the positive attitude it has, and it makes me happy every time I see it.

(I also laugh every time the latte guy squeals like a girl, but that's just me...)

The Artist and the Art

2006-12-02T13:14:00.000-05:00

I consider myself a writer.

I've never been published. I've never earned any money for my writing. In fact, I've spent a small fortune in pursuit of an education that would help me become a better writer.

I have no desire to write the great American novel, or a collection of poetry or even a short story in a magazine.

I've never submitted a piece of my writing for a competition or penned a letter to the editor.

I don't think any of these things are necessary, though, for me to claim the title of "writer" for myself.

I live a "writerly" life, if such a thing truly exists. I love language and exult in its eloquent use. I read every single day and am bereft without a book. I write every single day, whether it's a post on a blog, a thought or critique or response to something I've read or seen or heard, a note in my children's lunch boxes, or an email to a friend. I notice things, not so much in colors or scents or pictures, but in words. I compose in my head, turning the things I see or hear or touch or smell into language that I can use to share my experiences with others.

I am forever in an effort to put the ineffable into words.

I love a good story, whether it comes from my own experience or someone else's. I have learned - and continue to practice - the craft of taking the ordinary events in life and focusing in on them, highlighting specific moments or actions, and writing them in such a way that captures their essence, either for myself or for someone else. Some of the highest praise I've ever received for my writing has come from people who, after reading something I've written, have told me that they know exactly what I meant.

I don't have many creative outlets. I can't sing or paint or build things in any way that brings me any joy. I can write, though, and it is in writing that I find out who I am, what I think, and what is most important to me.

I am a writer.

World AIDS Day

2006-12-01T07:20:00.000-05:00

Show your support in any way that you can.

End prejudice and work for education.

Remember those who came before.

*In memory of Jerry Huffman, beloved uncle

Gently Bucking Tradition

2006-11-30T19:32:00.000-05:00

My husband's family has a holiday tradition of serving plum pudding at every Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner.

Before I met Husband, I had never experienced a plum pudding beyond the pages of a Dicken's novel. His family's tradition holds that, after a holiday dinner, the dark, dense-looking mass is brought out on a plate, doused in something very alcoholic - usually V.S.O.P - and set on fire.

Seriously. They light the flippin' thing on fire.

Being ignorant of the stuff, and eager to make a good impression on the family of this guy I was crazy about, I eagerly accepted a plate of the dessert when it was offered to me at my first attendance at a holiday dinner. I then proceeded to scoop on a huge blop of what I thought was slightly over-whipped whipped cream, and dug in.

You know that feeling when you go to eat or drink something, and you think it's one thing, but it turns out to be something else? That happened to me once at my grandparents' house - I came upon a lovely, tall glass of something that looked all the world like chocolate milk that turned out to be iced coffee. BLECH! Well, that's what happened when the plum pudding hit my tongue.

Let me point out here that there aren't actual PLUMS in plum pudding, and the assumption that this dessert would be something sweet and fruity was my first mistake. It's really a bread pudding made with raisins and currants, orange marmalade, a bunch of spices, and a good slosh of bourbon (Julia Child made this recipe famous in Husband's family, if that tells you anything). The whole thing is put into a bowl and steamed for however long it takes to congeal into a solid mass. Then, like I said, more booze gets poured over and the whole thing is set alight. Sometimes, more than once in a sitting. Seriously.

Oh, and that stuff that looked like whipped cream? Hard sauce, which is, essentially, butter, confectioner's sugar and....wait for it....more alcohol! About as unlike whipped cream as something can be.

Not being a big fan of spice cakes in general, and expecting something fruity and, well, pudding-like, I found that my first shocking experience with plum pudding was enough to ruin it for me forever. Though it IS fun to watch them do their pyrotechnics at the dinner table.

ANYWAY! Husband and I are hosting Christmas dinner at our house this year, and we're taking advantage of that fact to sort of nudge the plum pudding off the table in favor of something a little less....harsh. We'd first thought we'd do the whole yule log thing, but then I stumbled across a couple of recipes for chocolate steamed pudding. CHOCOLATE! Now THERE'S something we can get behind! Hell, we could even douse it in Grand Marnier and set the thing on fire, if it comes down to that!

I made this tonight, a recipe from Martha Stewart, as a sort of test-run to see if it satisfied the requirements of a good plum pudding replacement. It LOOKED good, and it TASTED good, but I'm not quite sure it's "it." It's a little too airy and light (yes, despite how it looks like a solid chunk of chocolate, it's actually quite fluffy inside), and I'm not sure it's dense enough to not soak up whatever we're pouring over as accelerant. I've got a couple more recipes to try - including one that's a steamed chocolate bread pudding, which I suspect will be best in the texture department.

When I find a winner recipe*, I'll share.

(*if you have a winner recipe, point me to it, please!)

You'd Better Watch Out!!

2006-11-30T14:31:00.000-05:00

A post in which I come off smug and holier-than-thou....

So, here's the scene:

I'm standing in line at a local mega-mart, returning some things I bought this morning after taking them home and realizing that they were either defective or outright broken. Next to the return counter is a branch of a local bank, and a mom is standing in line waiting for the next teller. Her son, a lad of about five or so, is crying. Loudly. About something he wanted but didn't have (I couldn't figure out what, exactly, he wanted: my Mommy-filter has long since been turned off to such communication as that).

This, in itself, is not blog-worthy. Kids cry when they don't get what they want. Mine did it, and I'm betting, if you have (or had, or will have) kids, yours do (or did, or will), too.

No, what I'm writing about here is how the mom chose to deal with this particular fit. After a few attempts at getting her child to quiet down, she pulled out this little gem:

"I'm telling Santa!"

Now, Ms. Cornelius just wrote an insightful piece about parenting and her experiences, as a teacher, with all sorts of different ways in which people go about raising their children, and I've got to add this bit to hers.

Did this mom stop to think, for a second, that she's putting more power in the hands of an imaginary being than she herself has as a living, breathing MOTHER?! Has she no other means of putting a stop to this kind of behavior and, if not, what does she use as a threat during the off-season? Seriously, what did the mom think this is going to get her? Because I can tell you what it DID get her - a kid who, horrified that he was going to get ratted out to the guy in the fuzzy red suit, only refocused his screaming from wanting something to NOT wanting something.

Sometimes I think that parents get from their kids exactly what they deserve.

Other People's Stuff

2006-11-29T16:12:00.000-05:00

I spent this morning with Organic Mama, helping her begin work on sorting through the enormity that is her study/office.

I had made the offer to help her with this several times before, but she was never quite ready to take me up on it. Last week, she’d finally worked up enough gumption to square her shoulders and plow in, and I’m happy to say that we made some significant headway in the process this afternoon.

Her office had deteriorated to the point where she simply didn't know where to begin and I, recognizing her plight because I've been there oh-so-many times myself, assured her that it's MUCH easier to tackle an enormous task with a trusted girlfriend by your side. Having an emotional distance from both the chaos and the actual items that comprise it, an outsider is far more able to look at things with a critical eye, and far less likely to keep things that will only kick around until the next purge / reorganize cycle. Trusting that outsider when she says “seriously, do you NEED this three year old copy of the LL Bean catalogue?!” makes it that much easier to let go of all the familiar crap that makes you crazy, but that you can’t seem to throw away. I know this because WeedWoman helped me purge my wardrobe a year or so ago, and I ended up with three bags full of donatable clothes. I haven’t missed a single item, and felt so much better when it was all over.

There is a certain attitude that one has to take when dealing with rooms or drawers or closets or any spaces, really, that have taken on a life of their own. I learned this from my beloved mom, who approaches seemingly Herculean tasks with a matter-of-factness that I admire. She's practically brutal in her attack once she sets her mind to it, and it's from her that I developed my ability to divide, process and conquer even the most overwhelming of closets:

Pull everything out.

Separate into: “need and use all the time,”
“need, but use only occasionally,”
“never need, but love for whatever reason (sentimental, ornamental, etc.),”
“never need and don’t particularly love,”
and “oh, Dear God, WHY do I still have THIS?!”

Put each category into its proper place - the first three groups get cleaned, reorganized and put away, items in the second two groups are either chucked or set aside to give away.

There are a few places where I need to do some serious purging and reorganization - my basement and my linen closet being the two most urgent. Mom was the last person to tackle my linen closet - she managed to reorder the entire frightening mess while baby sitting Punkin’ Pie many years ago - and I’m proud and a little stunned that it’s taken this long to get back to a point where I’m afraid to open the door anymore. It’s reached that point, though, and I’m just realizing that denial is no longer a viable strategy for dealing with it. Organic Mama has offered to reciprocate and come by to help me.

I'm totally taking her up on it.

The Mall Decorations Went Up in October...

2006-11-28T10:43:00.000-05:00

I'm still not quite into holiday mode.

I mean, sure, I'm thinking about the holidays; planning menus (at least, in a preliminary sense), thinking about what gifts to get for which loved ones, making sure I know where the holiday movies and music are, but I haven't kicked into full-blown holiday posture just yet.

I know people who see the day after Thanksgiving as the gateway to Christmas-land. The tree goes up on the third Friday of November; the Christmas carols CD gets popped into the car stereo (my sister does that one), and all the holiday sweatshirts with the santas and stockings and festive snowmen are worn with abandon (my grandmother and mother-in-law do THAT one).

Me? I'm not a "rush headlong into the holidays" kind of gal. I'm not a scrooge, by any sense of the word, but I'm not all that eager to rush to - or through - the holidays. I sort of approach it the way I do good, expensive chocolate. Take a tiny nibble off the corner and savor it.

I went into the basement the other day and brought up the poinsettia spray that I hung on the front door, replacing the autumn leaf wreath that's been there since school started. That's enough, for now. The Chili family will go a tree-huntin' sometime around the second weekend in December, and that's when it will really start to feel like Christmas to me. We get an ENORMOUS tree every year (we can, thanks to the high ceilings in the great room). It's right around that time that I'll agree to play the movies and the music that go along with the holiday, and I stop rolling my eyes at everyone ELSE'S decorations that have been up for almost a month already.

Everyone has their own way of approaching this time of year, and I certainly don't begrudge someone else's enthusiasm for the holidays, I just prefer to take mine slowly, and to enjoy it a lot for a short time, rather than a little for a long time...

Trying To Take My Mind Off the Water Bottle...

2006-11-27T15:14:00.000-05:00

We took our girls - ages 7 and 9 - to see Happy Feet last Wednesday. Later, we asked them which was their favorite part.

Get this answer from the seven year old:

"I liked the part where Mumble went off on his own. Even though all his people - well, his birds...well, whatever - even though no one wanted him to go, he said "I don't care. I need to do this, and I'm going to do this." I like that he did what he thought he had to do even when no one thought he should do it."

Seriously. This kid blows my mind on a regular basis. I'd love to take parenting credit here, but I really don't think I deserve it; she came to us this way.

If You're Not Outraged...

2006-11-27T14:47:00.000-05:00

This has rendered me nearly speechless. How would one go about finding - and punishing - the people responsible for this?

Truly, I cannot begin to adequately express how visceral my reaction to this is. I am ashamed, yet again, to be an American.

And we wonder why the world hates us....

Thinking Ahead

2006-11-26T12:24:00.000-05:00

I'm always moved by stories of people who put things aside for children. Not long ago, I heard a story on NPR about a mom who had written letters to her daughter at fairly regular intervals through her childhood. The mom died when the daughter was about 11, and the dad presented the letters to the girl when she graduated college. I was weeping in the car.

I haven't done anything like that, and I've been trying, long before I heard the Public Radio story, to figure out a way to honor the spirit of the idea without stealing someone else's technique. I think I've come up with something that will be meaningful to my children not only because of what it is in the "big picture" sense, but also because of what it's actually comprised of.

I love to cook. I sometimes joke that there are only three things that I'm reliably good at - I am a true and loyal friend, I am a fantastic mother, and I kick ass in the kitchen. My idea of the heirloom keepsake for my girls incorporates all three of these things, I think.

My plan is to ask people who are important to my daughters - aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, family friends and family-related-by-love - to write their favorite recipes. I want the recipes in the handwriting of the people submitting them - that part is important - and I will scan them and have them made into cookbooks for the girls. I love getting recipes from people who love me; the connection I'm able to make not only to the process of cooking, but also to the end product, seems to always leave me feeling warm and well-loved. My hope is that these books will not only offer the girls a good foundation of culinary knowledge, but will connect them to those who love them in a very real and tangible way.

I'm not sure when I'll give the books to them - I suppose a lot will depend on when I actually finish collecting recipes - but I'm thinking they will be given to mark a momentous event; a graduation, a first apartment, a wedding, something like that. I began the process this afternoon by asking my grandmother, who's currently undergoing chemotherapy, to write out some of her favorite recipes. I got a lot of my kitchen standards from her, and I want to keep that connection strong in my daughters.

Despair

2006-11-25T16:19:00.000-05:00

Someone explain to me, please, how, exactly, we're helping? How our being there is promoting freedom or liberty or anything other than grief and anger and hopelessness? So far, no one has been able to convince me that this is a moral, just, or even politically advantageous thing for us to be doing, and the more I hear about how things are panning out, the more angry, frustrated, and sorrowful I become. I'm pouring good energy into the Universe as fast as I can, but it doesn't seem to be making much of a difference....

**author's note: while doing research for tomorrow's blog entry, I came across this quote from Wicked by Gregory Maguire (page 204 in the paperback edition, if you're interested) that says what I'm trying to say better than I can say it:

"The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and violence."

Good News / Bad News

2006-11-24T09:53:00.000-05:00

The GOOD news is that yesterday went exceedingly well. There were no obvious tensions (helped in part by the fact that the downstairs television sets were never once turned on, much to the football lovers' disappointment), the food was excellent, and everyone was in good spirits. It was the first holiday in recent memory that went off so well, and that in itself is something to be thankful for.

The BAD news is that this essentially means I've got no funny stories to tell you.

Today is going to be spent industriously avoiding retail establishments of any kind despite what I will expect to be some pretty enthusiastic efforts on Wayfarer's part to exhort me to join him at the mall to help him pick out new eyeglasses. I may do some online shopping - one doesn't have to fight for parking spots or deal with rude people at Amazon.com. The girls and I will also be engaged in a thorough and complete clean/purge of the their room, and we'll spend the rest of the day generally goofing off at home.

Oh, and Auntie L sent us home with enough turkey to make some really decent day-after-Thanksgiving sandwiches. Guess what's for lunch...

A Thanksgiving Story

2006-11-23T08:14:00.000-05:00

I’ve been attending holidays with my husband’s family for about 15 years now. Up until this year, when Christmas will be at our place, my mother-in-law (MIL) has traded holidays back and forth with her sister-in-law (Auntie L); if one had Christmas one year, the other did Thanksgiving, and then they’d switch the following year.

In the year of which I write, Auntie L had Thanksgiving duty. Now, one of the things you need to understand about my parents-in-law is that they are very keen on formality. They like to have things be proper and respectable and, for them, that means something slightly below high tea with the queen.

As an integral part of this need for nicety, both of my in-laws have a pretty deep-seated disdain for television, particularly when there’s company around. What you should also understand is that my MIL’s brother, Uncle T, does NOT share this particular trait. As a matter of fact, it is true that there is a television in very nearly every room of his house. It is also true that Uncle T and his grown son love football (which makes me love them that much more!). Keep these things in mind as I tell you my story.

My father-in-law has a lovely tradition of putting little kernels of dried corn on everyone’s empty plate just before Thanksgiving dinner. We all stand behind our chairs while he talks of the very first Thanksgiving, of the struggles faced by the first settlers, and of how remarkably fortunate we are to have all of the wonders we enjoy. It’s a lovely tradition, and it chokes me up every time.

Well, this year, there was a particularly good football game going on just as dinner was about to be served. I was in the living room with the men, enjoying the game, when I heard the call to gather in the dining room. Dad went around and sprinkled the corn on everyone’s plate and Auntie L, her daughter Cousin A, MIL, FIL and I stood behind our chairs and waited for the men (my husband, his twin, Cousin C, and Uncle T) to come in to eat.

When it became obvious that the men had missed the call (yeah, right, they missed the call...), I went in to round them up. They were hanging on the proverbial edges of the seats - they knew they had to come in, but the game was this close to being over and it was a good, tight game. When I returned to the dining room (without the men), I found my FIL sweeping all the corn back into the bag and muttering under his breath. MIL had a stern look of disapproval on her face, turned to her husband, and assured him that “Christmas is at OUR house this year.”

It was a very tense Thanksgiving dinner.

Fast forward a month. The Uncle T family was expected at MIL’s place around noon or so, and Husband, Twin and I arrived early so that we could help with dinner preparations. One of the first things I noticed as I put gifts under the tree is that the television had been physically removed from the living room. It was gone! They’d taken it off of its table and hidden it. Seriously.

But that’s not the funny part.

Uncle T and the gang arrive, and the present-opening commences. Auntie L saved Uncle T’s “big” present for last. Three guesses what it was.

Yep. A portable television set. I kid you not. Uncle T spent the better part of half an hour tuning it to see what he could get from his sister’s living room. Luckily for all involved, he could only pull in the local PBS station - his reception was not strong enough to pick up the Christmas day football game, though it wasn’t for lack of trying.

I had all I could do to not choke on my eggnog.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!

What I'm Bringing

2006-11-22T17:35:00.000-05:00

We're celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow at Husband's aunt and uncle's house in the next state over. I actually like having holidays there - well, I like having THANKSGIVING there; Auntie L is an excellent cook and Uncle T and his grown son love football. Of course, this annoys his sister, my MIL, to no end, but we're learning to live around that. Check back tomorrow for a funny story about Thanksgiving and t.v.

In today's installment, I'm going to share a recipe that my mom gave to me several Thanksgivings ago. I’ve modified it a bit, and she modified it before she gave it to me, and it’s truly one of the yummiest things on our Thanksgiving table. It is deceivingly simple in its preparation; don't let the "easy" fool you - this is some serious culinary mojo:

In a large saucepan, melt a stick of butter, then pour in about a cup or so of bread crumbs (store bought actually works best in this application). Stir them around over medium heat until they’re nice and toasty, then dump them out into a plate for later use.

Return the pan to the heat and melt another stick of butter (hey, I said there was mojo. Real mojo requires butter, and lots of it!), then toss in three or four chopped onions. Allow them to swim around in the butter and cook to a lovely, sublime softness - no browning, or you’ll wreck it! Once you’ve reached the magic translucent state, sprinkle over a half a cup or so of flour and cook that until it’s darkened a bit and smells slightly nutty - again, no browning!

Once the flour is cooked, slowly whisk in two cups of your choice of whole milk, half-and-half, heavy cream or a combination of these (two cups total if you’re combining. I do a cup each of milk and half-and-half; Mom goes all out with the heavy cream). Work that around until it begins to thicken, then pour the whole of it into a casserole dish, cover with the toasty crumbs, and pop it into a 350° oven until it bubbles - about 20 minutes or so.

You can make the whole thing ahead of time, too; just let it all cool, cover with foil and stash it in the fridge. You’ll have to add some to the oven time, and you may want to consider leaving the crumbs off until just before you reheat it, in case you need to add more milk/half/cream to the party.

I hope you all have a wonderful, safe, satisfying Thanksgiving.

Gay Marriage

2006-11-21T15:04:00.000-05:00

I watched the second half of the Nevada Day episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip last night.

Yes, I know, that was the episode from last week. I have TiVo, I can bend time.

Anyway, one of the threads of the storyline was that one of the characters, Harriet, played by Sarah Paulson, is an evangelical christian, and was asked in an interview how she felt about gay marriage. Her answer was:

I said, “The Bible says it’s a sin.” I also said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” and that it was something for smarter people than me to decide.

She's been on the receiving end of some fallout about that comment, ironically from both sides of the issue. She was confronted by some gay men outside of a restaurant that resulted in an assault charge for one of the characters, and she was un-invited to a christian event because the organizers don't believe that she made a strong enough statement against gay marriage.

What I'm writing this post about, though, is how the writers chose to handle the issue through one of the other characters. Matt, played by Matthew Perry, is the head writer of Studio 60 and used to be in a relationship with Harriet. Though they've broken up, it's obvious that they're not over each other yet. The big problem is that neither of them can understand why the other thinks or acts the way they do.

Matt's been choking on this whole issue and is trying to reconcile the fact that Harriet really believes the things she's saying. Early in the episode, they have a conversation in Matt's office that goes like this:

HARRIET
You honestly think I’m a homophobe?

MATT
Harriet, I really can’t –

HARRIET
You honestly think –

MATT
Yes, yes, I do, and you know why? ‘Cause you are. Now go to work.

HARRIET
I said the Bible says it –

MATT
Yeah, yeah.

HARRIET
Don’t “yeah, yeah” me! And it seems to me every Democrat on a ballot answers the same question by talking about civil unions and leaving it up to the states and not wanting to –

MATT
I don’t need any reminding that my party is full to brimming of panderers and mediocrity.

HARRIET
What’s wrong with civil unions? And why shouldn’t we –

MATT
‘Cause there’s no way to the end of that sentence without saying that homosexual love is something less than heterosexual love, and watching you fall over it makes me want to hit you over the head with Liberace!

Later on, he confronts her again, this time asking:

But let me ask you something, how is my marriage, your marriage, or anyone’s marriage even marginally affected by the gay couple two doors down also getting married? And if it is, how does that become their problem?

I've been asking this question for decades. Not just since the neo-conservatives have made it into a political issue, but ever since I was a little girl and wondered why it was that my uncles couldn't get married. Banning homosexual marriage didn't make sense to me then, and it doesn't make sense to me now.

I've been listening to the "other" side explain their concerns, and I've got to tell you that none of them has come close to convincing me of the grave threat that gay marriage poses to marriage in general and American society in particular. Really, most of what I've heard on the opposing side of the gay marriage issue has been utterly ludicrous; I remember once, a man called in to the Diane Rhem show to voice his concerns. Essentially, his message was that if we let "the gays" marry, pretty soon people will want to marry their sisters or aunts or brothers, their dogs, their toasters! It will bring about the apocalypse!

Love is love, regardless of what form it takes. Marriage is hard, glorious, soul-fulfilling work, and every successful marriage is a bright spot in the Universe. I say, let there be more light.

They Say You Can't Touch Your Nose With Your Elbow...

2006-11-20T09:27:00.000-05:00

...and I'm here to tell you that it's damned hard to take a picture of your own elbow, too.

I'm scheduled for a doctor's appointment this afternoon so that he can have a look at some weird bumpy things I've got on both my elbows and two of my toes (that's why I was trying to take elbow pictures, by the way).

They showed up a few months ago and I didn't really think anything of them at the time. If I'm remembering correctly, I've had them once before - they showed up for a while, then disappeared without any intervention from me. They're back now, though, and have been around for a while. They're not gross or oozy or crusty and they don't itch or hurt; they're just little raised clusters on both of my elbows, and I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to have them looked at (asshole).

I'm betting that the doctor won't know what they are (that's the cynic in me talking), but I'll feel better knowing what they're NOT. If the guy looks at me and gasps, then tells me I've got two weeks to live, then, well, at least I'll have made it through NaBloPoMo...

UPDATED! It's not elbow cancer after all! It's eczema - or, at least, that's what the doctor thinks it is. I've got a 'scrip for hydrocortizone and instructions to come back in six weeks if it's not changed for the better.

I Miss Him

2006-11-19T12:58:00.000-05:00

Johnny Grier was my favorite NFL official.

He became the league's first black referee in 1988 and officiated games until his retirement after an injury during a game in 2004. It seems he's now working as an officiating supervisor for the NFL.*

I can't really tell you why I liked him so much, but there is something about this man that radiated confidence and fairness to me. He always seemed like he loved his job; whenever the camera caught him, he'd be hunched over, leaning on his knees, paying very close attention to the game. I saw him talk players off of ledges and save themselves from penalties. I saw him laugh on the field. Grier seemed like the kind of guy who was thrilled to do what he did and never took it for granted.

I'm sorry that he's no longer in front of the camera. While there are a lot of fine, fair, and articulate referees on the field right now, none of them makes me smile the way Johnny did.

* Author's note: I'm disappointed by the lack of information I was able to find on the internet about Grier - there was nothing (that I could find) on nfl.com or espn.com or any other source that I consider reputable. Actually, what I was able to find came from Wikipedia. I distrust Wiki, and I need to make the disclaimer that I can't vouch for the veracity of the information I'm giving you here. I'm just sayin'.

Taking Stock

2006-11-18T10:42:00.000-05:00

If I'm figuring correctly (and you all know, given my mathematical skills, this is a questionable presumption), here's what I'll need to procure before Christmas dinner:

-at least five more place settings

-a set of 20 placemats and napkins (the most I have in a single set of mats is six, though I can probably mix-and-match to acceptable effect. I don't have enough cloth napkins to go around)

-a gravy boat. Scratch that - make it TWO gravy boats, at least

-a couple of platters. I'm going to go with two smallish turkeys rather than one ginormous monster turkey because a) smaller birds are more tasty and tender and b) I feel more confident in cooking smaller beasties to safe levels. The LAST thing I want is an outbreak of food-borne poisoning after my first ever Christmas dinner.

-more silverware. Husband and I had two different patterns of flatware when we met, but they were made by the same manufacturer and match well enough to not be obvious if one person gets one of my forks and the next gets one of Husband's. I'm pretty sure at least ONE of the patterns is still in production, so we'll augment our everyday utensils with another box of whichever pattern we can get and run with that.

Though they won't all match, I have plenty of wine glasses and water glasses. The coffee/tea cups will come with the place settings, so I'll have enough of them to go around as well (and, if it turns out that we borrow plates rather than cough up for new good china - my mom has offered to loan me some of her plates - I have plain, white coffee cups that will serve the purpose). I have an electric griddle that can serve nicely as a warming tray and, again, my mom has offered the use of her chafing dishes, so I'm covered with keeping things warm.

Really, looking at this list? I'd say I'm in pretty darned good shape, hardware-wise. Next, we start thinking about the menu.

Holy Crappy Weather, Batman!

2006-11-17T07:16:00.000-05:00

Alternately titled: At Least it's Not SNOW!!

See the upper right hand corner of the country? The part covered with dark green? Yeah, that's where I live.

It's been raining, pretty much non-stop, since about nine thirty last night. And I'm not talking a light drizzle or even a passing squall, either; I'm talking full out, run for cover, flood-watch-on-the-Weather-Channel, wake you up from a deep sleep kind of heavy rain. The kind of rain that WeedWoman's husband likes to call "possum pounders."

We're so far, so good with the basement, though - the walls are oozing water through the cracks in the concrete, but the sump pump hasn't kicked in just yet. I'm hoping that the weekend is at least mild; I still have autumn bulbs to plant and all this rain will have softened up the ground quite nicely.

The Unanticipated Benefits of NaBloPoMo

2006-11-16T15:55:00.000-05:00

alternately titled "As if I Didn't Already Have Plenty of Ways to Avoid My Responsibilities!"

For those of you who aren't familiar with this, November has been declared National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo for short, though I'm not sure that the full name isn't easier to write out). It was the brainchild of Fussy, who, inspired by National Novel Writing Month, tweaked the idea a little bit then put out the call for blog writers to make a commitment to post a new entry every day for the month of November.

A BUNCH of writers answered that call - you can see the list here - and someone put up the NaBloPoMo Randomizer, a site that clicks one through a random selection of participating blogs. I've already put in a request to keep that site running after NaBloPoMo is over - that site is crazy-addicting! Through the randomizer, I've been exposed to a bunch of people I would likely never have encountered. There are a lot of really brilliant writers out there; people whose writing is smart and funny - sometimes one, sometimes the other, most often both simultaneously - people who post gorgeous photos, and writers who really care about what it is they have to say, whether they're commenting (or ranting, as the author of the piece puts it) on the separation of church and state in public schools or ruminating on the role coffee plays in their daily routine.

Here, in no particular order, are the blogs I've added to my bookmarks since November began. If you haven't checked them out already, please do. Oh, and comment, too, please - let them know you're out here and reading.

Two Blue Day

Eats Bugs

Everyday...SimplyStated

Meno's blog

A Tense Teacher

Taterdemallion

The Anonymous Truth

While I'm at it, let me add my old favorites, too (again, in no particular order):

117Hudson

VeryContrary

The Grammar Snob

Verb-ops

New Beginnings

Thrifty Mom in a Consumer World

PTA: Parent Teacher Asshole

It's all about community.

Sorry! Can't Talk Just Now....

2006-11-15T14:24:00.000-05:00

...I'm busy trying to get a handle on things around here.

The completion of my kitchen (or, to be more specific, the DAMNED-NEAR completion - the cabinet door isn't installed just yet) and the approching holidays have conspired to ignite in me my somewhat dormant nesting instincts. I've decided that today is the day that I'll vacuum the entire house (Yes! Upstairs, too!), finish all the laundry, organize and clean the kitchen (a good bit of Windex on the counter tops and some scrubbing powder in the sink ought to do just nicely), pay a few bills, organize my school stuff, make an appointment to have my Puck's oil changed and maybe, just maybe, assemble the two chairs and the art-supply cabinet I bought at IKEA yesterday.

Yeah, I know I'm asking a lot of myself, especially given that I'm almost out of laundry soap, I have a chiropractor's appointment at 3, and the girls had a half day at school today and so are home now (and not exactly chomping at the proverbial bit to help me in my manic housekeeping fit). I'll power through as much as I can, though - a list half-done is better than nothing at all!

Even Though It's Not Too Cold.....Yet.....

2006-11-14T17:57:00.000-05:00

I'm totally ripping this post off from my new best blogger friend, The Grammar Snob. Her tag line is "semicolons make me hot." How can you not love that?!?

Things that I LIKE about cold weather:

Woobie sweaters. (In my house, things that are warm and snuggly and soft and make you feel all safe and snug are called "woobies" and we just love them.)

Woobie socks.

Comfort food. Chicken pot pie, beef stew, hot cocoa, warm pudding; stuff that just doesn't get eaten when the temperature outside is above 50 degrees.

Snow days. Yes, for as much as I bitch about the snow, I love snow days - unexpected do-nothing days when we're forced to stay indoors with no expectations but to stay in jammies, watch movies, and drink the above mentioned hot cocoa.

Listening to snowstorms from the comfort and safety of my warm bed. I had a similar experience last night, listening to a pretty impressive rainstorm rage outside my window. I love the feeling of safety and security that comes from being bundled safely against the elements, and knowing that everyone I love is safe, too. It makes me humble and grateful to the Universe for all that I have.

Things I DON'T like about cold weather:

Black ice.

People who don't know how to drive in snowstorms.

Storms that coincide with events that force us out into them. We had a wicked snowstorm on Christmas a few years ago, and it just made it a headache for everyone who had plans to be out on that day.

That it gets dark at three thirty in the afternoon. I don't function well when it's dark out - all I want to do is get into jammies and finish the day. Sun's down? Time for bed! I've been known to have dinner on the table at 4:30 in the dead of winter. It throws all our timing off.

Stupid cold. By this, I mean the kind of cold where they run warning crawls on the bottom of our forecasts on the Weather Channel and the local weather guys tell us to not let our children wait at bus stops in the morning because they can suffer frostbite on noses and ears in less than three minutes. I mean the kind of cold where your car can't warm up between your house and wherever you're going, and you're not entirely sure it will start up when you're ready to go home again. I mean the kind of cold when your body pukes up the first breath of air because it's too cold for your lungs to process. I hate that.

The Evolution of a Kitchen

2006-11-13T19:38:00.000-05:00

One more day! One more day and my kitchen is FINISHED!

For those of you who may not know (Welcome, NaBloPoMo Readers!!), my family and I have been living through a massive addition to our home. The work started in May of 2005 and isn't quite done yet, though we're definitely making measurable progress.

We added on a family room, a combination dining room and library, a master suite upstairs with a full bath, and extended the kitchen by six feet. Truly, People: we essentially doubled the size of our house.

Now, as I've already stated, the work isn't quite finished yet. We've moved into the living room and dining room, we're putting up bookcases and have installed a new (huge and glorious) dining room table, and my husband has been, bit by bit, putting the kitchen together. There is no progress whatsoever on the upstairs and, really, I don't care at this point. What I REALLY want is a finished kitchen. We're all still cozy and warm in our own bedrooms: I can close the door on the new rooms and never notice they're there. No, what has really bothered me - pushed me damned near the proverbial edge, in fact - is that my kitchen has been in one state of upheaval or another for more than a year. Don't believe me? Here's photographic proof.

The addition work began on May 31st of 2005. The kitchen extension was built outside of the existing kitchen, so we got to live a relatively normal culinary life until about August, when the breakthrough was executed.

Here's me, on August ninth, taking stuff out of the cabinets. Even though we still had a working stove past this point, all the food was scattered around the house in boxes and bins. Don't even ask me where the pots and pans were...

Not long after, the kitchen was essentially inaccessible at varying points. Here, for example, is what I found when I came home from work on August 26th, after the drywallers had their way around my house. If I remember correctly, I cried from the time I walked in the door until my husband arrived home....

My husband disassembled the half wall on the ninth of October. He later kicked himself for doing this because, almost six months later, he was busy rebuilding the wall in essentially the same damned place the old one lived.

We sort of limped around with mostly-instant food and a few key recipes cooked on a two-burner, Wal-Mart hot plate until my husband and his twin took the rest of the kitchen apart in anticipation of the new floor being installed. This was December 21st.

They reinstalled the sink and dishwasher after the floor was put down. Even without a stove, I was surprised by how much I actually used the sink. This is January 3rd.

The now mostly-famous trip to IKEA to get the cabinets happened January 17th, two days after my birthday. I was beside myself with anticipation.

The first cabinet was installed by my beloved husband on the 23rd of January.

By the 28th of February, the cabinet installation was well on its way. Notice that the sink is gone again? It was un-installed and re-installed no fewer than four times in the process.

Then there was a long stretch of not-much-happening. The oven, the stove, and a vent that we later discovered we couldn't use (UGH!) were delivered on the 27th of June.

On August 28th, the countertops were installed. Here's before.....

...and here's after.....

I'm not sure why, but I don't have a photograph of the oven installation - I can't begin to tell you why, because I've been obsessively taking pictures of every little step - but the stove was put in on the fourth of August.

Husband made some great progress on the last little bits this weekend. He finished putting the toe-kicks on the bottom of the cabinets at my insistence...
...we'd thought that we could do without them, but every single freaking time I dropped something, it would hit the floor and roll all the way under the damned cabinets. Ugh.

He also bought and installed the new microwave!

I don't use a microwave very often; it's mostly for reheating Olive Garden leftovers and melting frozen veggies. I DO use it, though, and isn't this a pretty one? Oh, and I found out this evening that thirty seconds on power level three brings a stick of fridge-cold butter to perfect cookie-making softness.

The only thing left to do, really, is to replace the door that we brought back to IKEA because it was defective. Guess what *I'M* doing tomorrow?

There are a few other picky little things - Husband wants to frame the microwave with molding and there are two ceiling speakers that have to be installed, but those are just gravy. As far as I'm concerned? The kitchen is DONE!!

Seventeen

2006-11-12T15:04:00.000-05:00

That's how many people we'll be hosting for Christmas dinner this year. The number could go as high as 19, if Husband's cousin and her new husband decide to come.

I've never had that many people in my house at once. Ever.

I'm not overly concerned about putting dinner together for all those people. I'm pretty good in the kitchen and my not having a full time job means that I'll be able to do a lot of preparation ahead of time. Besides, I'm sure that a lot of my guests will be more than happy to bring anything I ask them for.

No, my biggest worries continue to be how the two different families are going to get along. Well, that's not entirely the truth: I'm sure everyone will be perfectly lovely when they're all together in my house. What I'm not sure about - and what I suppose I shouldn't worry about because I can't control it anyway - is what's going to happen after everyone goes home.

I'm concerned that there'll be fallout from my in-laws, who don't get that my family is really my family.

I'm also concerned that there won't be enough room in our driveway for all the cars.

Well, DUH!

2006-11-11T15:31:00.000-05:00

Dude! You're 100% from Massachusetts!

Dude! Me and Sully and Fitzie and Sean are gonna hit Landsdowne tonight after the game, hang out at the Beerworks. I'll pick you up at the Coop at 6.

How Massachusetts are you?
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What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine.
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The Northeast
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The Inland North
North Central
The South
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

WeedWoman Joins the Modern Age

2006-11-11T12:22:00.000-05:00

I'm posting this from WeedWoman's home. The entire Chili family is visiting - Husband is helping Mr. WW put his new plow together (and I'm a little mopey to think that he's going to need it soon), I'm visiting with WW and the girls are doing their level best to wear out Molly-puppy, though I think the net effect will be just the opposite.

My best friend now has wireless internet connection, with DSL! Just IMAGINE! She can't get cable t.v. or a pizza delivered, but by God she can surf the net with great speed and agility! We were just searching the IKEA website in anticipation of our scheduled hajj on Tuesday, then went around with a measuring tape to see if all the bookcases and shoe racks she's thinking of buying will actually FIT where she wants to put them. Right now, she's perusing a cookbook I brought up with me while ribs cook on the barbecue, the men are out tracking down new tools they need for the plow, and the girls are out running the dog around. It's quite a scene out there - a big black lab with a BRIGHT orange bandanna around her neck (it's hunting season, and I'm not joking when I tell you WeedWoman lives WAY up there in huntin' country) pulling around two little red-headed girls.

Someone's gonna sleep well tonight!

PRICK!!

2006-11-10T15:58:00.000-05:00

Husband and I got flu shots today!

There are a lot of people in my life - a surprising number, really - who disapprove of my getting a flu shot. Some of them disapprove quite vocally, others try to keep it to themselves, but I know they're not liking the idea. My chiropractor, in particular, hates the idea of vaccinations. He won't vaccinate his child for anything, flu or otherwise (which I, personally, think is criminal, but *I* don't say anything to him about that, just to prove I'm the bigger person). He thinks that if my spine is perfectly aligned, my body will be able to combat any nasty beasties that come its way. I make a point of not telling him that I go behind his back for vaccinations.

I'm a total, all-out warfare kind of gal. I'll keep going to my chiro appointments and I'll keep eating (mostly) healthily and I'll keep exercising, but I have NO problem giving my immune system a little kick-start. Vaccinations save lives, People. I want in on that. Even if my life isn't necessarily saved by a flu shot, I'll spare myself a fair bit of misery. I seem to recall a poster in the health clinic of my university that said something like:

"Ten days of vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, headache, fever, chills, back pain, cough and runny nose OR a ten second needle sting. You decide."

Well, DUH!

I've gotta tell you, though; my arm is a little sore.....

**author's note / afterthought - I've been thinking a bit about my "criminal" crack above and I've come to the conclusion that this attitude is a direct reaction to the vehemence with which my chiropractor proselytizes about the anti-vaccination stand of the chiropractic faith. He makes me feel like a child abuser for vaccinating my kids, so I reacted in kind. I understand that vaccinations are voluntary and that a lot of people choose not to participate in vaccination programs. What I'm saying here is that I mean no disrespect to people who make choices that are different from mine.**

Community Involvement

2006-11-09T19:35:00.000-05:00

Husband is out tonight at a town meeting to listen to discussions about waterfront development.

We're really not what you would call "active" in our community. We don't get the local paper (don't get me STARTED on the local paper! I actually bitch out their telemarketers when they call me for subscriptions by telling them that when the newspaper hires writers with a decent command of English, I MIGHT consider a subscription. Until then, they're getting NONE of my money). Though I do research the local political races - to the extent that I can do so without buying a local paper, that is - and I vote in local elections, I don't go to town meetings or watch public access t.v. during school board or planning board assemblies. The MOST I've ever done is gone to a planning board meeting to plead my case for a crosswalk by the girls' elementary school.

There's been a ridiculous amount of development in our little town over the past five or so years. Ridiculous. More houses than we need - a good many of them stand empty with "for sale" signs in front. Far more traffic than our little streets can handle. The schools are starting to get a little tight. We've watched with mingled confusion and anger as development after development gets approved and begun with seemingly little concern for the FEEL of our town.

Understand that I'm NOT like my husband's late grandmother. She moved to Florida and then proclaimed that the borders should be closed - no new residents, we're full, thank you, go somewhere else. I don't feel that way at all - I welcome new people, I LOVE diversity. I'm just concerned that the people in charge of our city aren't really THINKING before they're giving the green light to developers.

Case in point? The city is proposing a HUGE, GINORMOUS, MAJOR overhaul of the "waterfront" district of downtown. It's a river. A small-ish river that becomes unnavigable about 40 yards into town. A river that serves NO commercial enterprises, no real sport traffic and is really little more than an outlet to the Atlantic. The city, though? They want to turn it into THE hotspot of our little village. SHOPS! BOAT SLIPS! RESTAURANTS! CONDOS!

What I want to know - and what I'm hoping Husband will come back to tell me - is WHY? Sure, the developers are seeing dollar signs and I'm sure that the city is seeing them, too. Tax revenue! Permit fees! Really, though? I'm afraid that all this work is going to go for naught. There is, as far as I can tell, NO demand from the town to revamp the area. No one is clamoring for a waterfront condo. No one thinks we need new restaurants. There are plenty of empty storefronts on Main Street, so the demand for retail space isn't what's driving the push for beautification.

And I'm CERTAIN no one's given even a PASSING thought to the TRAFFIC!

Yummy!

2006-11-09T07:23:00.000-05:00

I love this stuff.

I love it on toast, I love it on waffles, I love it right out of the jar. It would probably be really great on ice cream, and I've considered using it as a glaze for tea cake.

I'm fortunate to have a good many Stonewall Kitchen stores within striking distance of my everyday life, and I just found out that there's an OUTLET store not too far away. Even with that, I still use the website quite a bit - I love to send the Blueberry Morning gift set to my Caliornia in-laws for Christmas.

If you're not familiar with the Stonewall Kitchen people, I highly recommend you take a peek.

(author's note: I'll post something more fun this afternoon - I wanted to put something up this morning because I'm going to be busy until after 4....)

Take THAT!

2006-11-08T07:32:00.000-05:00

We woke this morning to the news that the United States House of Representatives is now controlled by DEMOCRATS! My own state, long a New England stronghold for Republicans, booted BOTH its GOP seat-holders out of a job! It's a GOOD Wednesday!

Still Thinking.....

2006-11-07T10:39:00.000-05:00

Over here at Chez Chili, we're still thinking about why we blog. I've gotten some nice comments about the post, and this one struck me:

Meg4Meg said:

When I write, I feel more whole

Yeah, me, too. I think that's part of why I do it, as well - the idea of putting words to whatever is going on and thereby tying it to expression - rather than just leaving it floating up there as amorphous experience - seems to make things more *real* somehow.

I teach English, and have a great and profound love and respect for the power of language. I'm not a "sticks and stones" kind of girl - I recognize the power that words have. Naming something makes it less scary or threatening; we're more afraid of that which we don't "know" than that which we can name and put a face on and come to some sort of terms with. It's what therapy is all about, really - putting words to experiences so that you can deal with them in productive ways. I'm not saying that blogging is therapy - though I HAVE used it to try to work through some tough stuff that I don't understand - school shootings and the like - but it serves much the same purpose of bringing things down to a concrete level so they can be properly mastered.

My best friend, though, doesn't quite see it the same way. She sent me an email that said:

I have to log in as one of those who don't get it, but I respect your need to do this. It seems like you are able to organize your thoughts through this format and it works for you. I admire how well thought out your feelings are. So often I feel like a ping pong ball. I've tried journaling and it always seems to end up as a catalog of confusion and complaints. I have felt this way about therapy too. For me, reflecting too much gets in the way of moving past stuff. I am damn sure I don't want to share that with the world!

This is part of why I blog - I WANT to hear dissenting voices and I want people to question my assertions so that I can work through them myself and decide if this really is the way I think, just as much as I want to know that people understand and agree with me every once in a while. My best friend is my best friend, in part, because she challenges me to think, to consider options I may not have considered, and to investigate not only my reasoning, but my motivations for doing and saying certain things. Many of my blogging comrades do that, too, and I'm grateful for it.

I think that Meg4Meg’s comment feeds right into what I’m trying to say here - though she says it much more succinctly than I do - that we’re all somehow incomplete without some means of expression - of COMMUNICATION - beyond ourselves. I may be misinterpreting her (and, Meg, please correct me if I am), but I think it’s more than just the writing that fills in those spaces - it’s the writing that gets put out there and taken in by other people that really slakes the hunger.

What it all comes down to is that we’re all in this together. Writing for others to see, and reading each other’s words - and commenting, the feedback is vitally important - makes us part of a larger community. I try to comment often. Even if I don’t think I have anything profound or particularly insightful to say, just shouting out from the proverbial shadows is sometimes enough to let the writers know that someone’s out here listening.

Check!

2006-11-07T08:50:00.000-05:00

As soon as the girls were off to school, Husband and I set off to vote. I was surprised that the polls here didn't open until eight - I seem to recall their opening earlier in years past, maybe even as early as seven. It didn't matter, though - we only had to wait outside for about five minutes and it's not too cold this morning.

Here's where I give a shout out to all the people - women and men - who made it legal for me to cast my ballot and make my one small voice heard. Thanks, Elizabeth, Susan, Lucretia, Paulina and all the others who worked and fought and taught until the 19th Amendment was passed. I will not squander, nor take for granted, the gift you've given me.

Heavy Thinking for a Chilly Monday

2006-11-06T14:23:00.000-05:00

Vanx wrote a post about blogging and why we feel compelled to do it. Before you go any further with me, go on over to Vanx’s and read what he said. He got me thinking (as he usually does) and here's my take on this, for what it's worth...

I think Vanx is pretty close to the mark about loneliness being a major motivating factor for blogging, but I don't think it's the "gee, there's no one around and I'm bored" kind of loneliness we're talking about here; I think it's more of an existential kind of isolation- a feeling that, even with masses of humanity teeming around us, we're still dangerously alone.

I've been musing (and writing on my own blogs) about empathy for quite some time now: about how we don't have enough of it, about how we don't seem to value it as a human trait, about how we don't foster it enough in ourselves, about how we don't teach our children to practice it. The need to reach out to others - to make ourselves heard and to listen as others respond to what we say - is, I think, as strong a need as breathing in and out. The web offers us another opportunity to do this, and some of us are taking it up as a means of extending our proverbial village.

I've done a small bit of serious thinking about why I blog - the topic comes up now and then as my husband expresses his discomfort with the idea that I share snapshots of my life with any number of random strangers - and it’s in those times of reflection that I try to get at the heart of why *I* feel compelled to put fingers to keys and reveal bits of myself to the world.

For me, the desire to blog is manifold. Part of it, certainly, is the desire for attention. It’s gratifying to know that others are reading what I write and participating, in some small way, in my experience of the world. I also write, particularly in my “work” blog, to gain the insight and ideas of others. If I know nothing else, I know that my own experience is insufficient to get me satisfactorily through this existence - I just can’t learn enough on my own. I am meta enough to know that I often can’t see beyond my own little life, and getting the input of other people - hearing what they think, understanding their opinions or experiences, working through my own thinking as I defend against a contrary view - makes me a better, smarter, more complete human (and, I’m certain of it, a better teacher). Through the people who come to my sites and comment on my entries, I get to stretch my thinking in ways that I would otherwise never have considered. This is the main reason I blog.

When I go back to Vanx’s musings, though, I come back to the idea that it’s not really a “collective solipsism,” as he so eloquently put it (I LOVE that turn of phrase, by the way. Poetry in two words, that!), but rather an instinctual need to be part of a larger whole. I haven’t quite reached clarity on this point yet - and I may never actually get there - but I’m still struggling with the idea that singularity is not our default position. We were never intended to live as isolated units, confined to a small and static group of family and friends and destined to live within the boundaries of those same influences for all our lives.

I think, really, that we were intended to live as tribal beings; that we need the company of a vast collection of “others” (if such a distinction can be made, but that’s fodder for another post) who can fill in the missing bits of us, can teach us things so that we don’t HAVE to stumble over the lessons ourselves (though many of us still insist on doing so), and challenge us to think in ways that increase our being. Along those lines, we want the validation of being accepted as a member of that tribe, of knowing that our own thoughts and lessons and thinking are valid and valued.

In the end - for me, at least - it all comes down to an investigatory exercise of oneself. I’m relatively certain that the impulse to blog is a shade different in everyone, and that one blogger can have different motivations for posting every different entry that gets published. Sometimes, I want to vent; sometimes, I want to release a bit of creativity into the world; sometimes, I want an answer or an opinion or just to know that someone’s out there listening. The overriding need, though, is to belong. To belong to a vast collection of “others” who have something to offer me - and I to them.

Well, I NEVER!

2006-11-05T12:11:00.000-05:00

Twenty things I’ve never done:

1. I’ve never gone skiing, which is strange, given that I’ve lived my entire life in New England where it’s snowy for the better part of half a year.

2. I’ve never been to 36 of the 50 states in the U.S. (I HAVE been to Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Wyoming and Montana - and D.C., though that doesn’t count as a state, right?)

3. I’ve never pulled an “all-nighter,” whether for college or otherwise - though some of my girls’ infant days came dangerously close to it.

4 Excepting one trip to Bermuda and a drive into - and then directly out of - Canada (I never actually set foot on Canadian soil), I’ve never been out of the country.

5. I was never a Girl Scout.

6. I never went to an overnight summer camp.

7. I’ve never given blood. I was turned away when I tried because I’m anemic. “A damned shame,” the tech said. I’m O-. The Universal Donor.

8. I’ve never had surgery. I still have my tonsils, my appendix, and my wisdom teeth.

9. I’ve never called in to a radio contest.

10. I’ve never been arrested, or fingerprinted for anything other than background checks for jobs.

11. I’ve never been stoned on illicit drugs (though I’ve gotta tell you, the pills I get when I do damage to my back are pretty good!).

12. I’ve never been on a roller coaster that loops riders upside down - and I never will.

13. I’ve never been snorkeling or SCUBA diving.

14. I’ve never been called to jury duty.

15. I’m not a member of the Mile-High Club.

16. I’ve never eaten sushi, refried beans or brussels sprouts.

17. I never learned to read music and, as a consequence, never learned to play an instrument.

18. I never learned to knit.

19. I’ve never taken dancing lessons, gymnastics, or a kickboxing class.

20. I’ve never seen The Exorcist, Gone with the Wind, The African Queen or Apocalypse Now. Actually, there are a LOAD of classic movies I’ve never seen, but that’s another post.

A Night at the Movies

2006-11-04T13:25:00.000-05:00

I love movies. I collect DVDs and have a great many quotes and references from my favorite films always at the ready. I use movies in my teaching, and think of them in much the same way that I think about texts.

Last night, my husband and I took Bowyer out to the movies to see The Prestige. Both Bowyer and I LOVE the Apple movie trailer site, and we'd both seen the previews for this film long before it came out. Bowyer knew that the film was based on a book, so he went to Amazon and secured copies of the novel for both of us. We read the book pretty much simultaneously - which, in itself, was fun; Bowyer is an avid reader and we had some really interesting and lively discussions about our impressions of the text - and we both came to the conclusion that it would make a very fine film.

We bought our tickets, secured popcorn and soda and found some seats. We sat through what seemed like an inordinate number of previews, some of which - this one and this one in particular - looked really good. The lights went down and the film began.

It was almost NOTHING like the book. In the first three minutes, the film took a 180° turn and we were led through a story with familiar characters doing unexpected things.

We loved it.

One of the pitfalls of interpreting texts into film is that there is so much in the written version of a work that just doesn't translate adequately onto the screen. We aren't privy to a character's inner thoughts (without the use of campy voice-overs) and much of the richness of description and nuance is lost when watching a film rather than reading a text. Does that mean that I think books are always better? That answer is "most certainly NOT." Each medium has its advantages and shortcomings, and I'm just as often absolutely delighted at the richness and subtlety of film as I am a turn of phrase or a perfectly wrought description in a novel.

Knowing the intricacies of negotiating between written word and celluloid image, I think, the director of The Prestige took the essence of the Priest story, shifted here, manipulated there, altered a little around the edges, and came out with a topnotch film that did a great honor to the text from which it was inspired. The themes were precisely the same in the film as in the book. The intensity of the characters was skillfully and believably portrayed. It didn't matter to Bowyer and me that there was a trial in the film that never happened in the book, or that the narrating characters in the novel were entirely absent from the film: the story was beautifully interpreted, and was well worth the cost of the tickets.

My one complaint (if you could call it that)? The end of the novel was deliciously creepy. The narrating characters - and we readers alongside - came to realize something that had been hinted at but never revealed, and I was really grateful that my husband was sitting next to me as I made my way through the last 20 or so pages. That same pit-of-the-stomach eerie dread wasn't well conveyed in the film, though there was an excellent treatment of irony for one of the main characters to come to grips with before he died.

Perhaps my (minor) disappointment was because I knew the secret beforehand and, as one of the characters explains in the film, "once they know your secret, you're nothing to them," but I didn't think that end of the film had as much impact for me as the end of the novel. Still, it was a remarkably well worked movie and I'm glad I saw it.

Because I Love You All...

2006-11-03T10:53:00.000-05:00

There's some serious yumminess going on in my oven at the moment, and it's just too good to keep to myself.

My grandmother - a lovely, sweet woman with a mean talent in the kitchen - shared a recipe for blueberry bread with me many, many years ago. I've discovered, though, that this recipe is good for any number of applications if blueberries aren't readily available - it's really a "little black dress" sort of recipe. Anyway, today's incarnation is lemon-poppy seed and here, for your pleasure, is how to get one for yourself:

Cream together one stick of room temperature butter, one cup of white sugar and two eggs. In a separate bowl, combine two cups of flour, two teaspoons of baking powder and a teaspoon or so of salt (I never bother with the measuring of salt - a good pinch will do). Measure out a cup of milk (to which you can add a tablespoon or so of vanilla, if you like) and begin adding the flour mixture and the milk to the butter in alternating stages until you've got a nice, smooth batter.

Once you've finished this, you can add whatever you like - blueberries, strawberries, peaches and pecans, chocolate chips and walnuts, rhubarb and raspberries, or, as I've done today, the zest and juice of one lemon and enough poppy seeds so that the whole thing looks right (today's loaf is a little heavy on the poppy seeds - Beanie was helping me and got a little over-enthusiastic with them. Here's hoping my job doesn't issue a random drug test in the next day or so...).

You can then decide on your baking vessel of choice. Usually, I make muffins, but today we've employed a loaf pan (well greased and floured - it's no good if you can't get it out of the pan). Bake your yummies at 350 for about a half hour or so - use the toothpick method to check to see if you're done. You can then glaze or not - the lemon poppy gets glazed with 10X sugar mixed with lemon juice and the strawberry variety gets a hit of melted jam, but I leave every other choice naked. Though, come to think of it, a bit of rum over the peach-and-pecan might not be such a bad thing....

And Thus, It Begins..

2006-11-02T09:03:00.000-05:00

You know that feeling you get as you first sit down in a roller-coaster car? The teenager comes by and tugs on the restraint and you think "now, WHY the hell am I doing this? This can't be safe. Who talked me into this?"

Then your little train pulls out of the loading dock, turns the corner, and begins its ascent up the first hill. Chink-ity-chink-ity-chink-ity. And you're thinking "ugh. I shouldn't be doing this. I'm going to regret this in a minute, I just KNOW it."

Then, you crest the hill and there's that brief - all TOO brief - moment where you're entirely motionless - poised between falling forward and falling back. Now you KNOW you're in trouble and you find yourself actually envying that mom down there, dragging a screaming, crying, overtired, sticky-from-cotton-candy child around. Sure, she's exasperated and overwrought, but she's at least safely on the ground.

I mailed out invitations to Christmas at my house today. I've just had my restraints tugged and I'm thinking "this can't be safe."

I decided to mail out invitations to certain guests, but not to everyone. MY people don't need invitations - I can call them and say "hey! We're doing Christmas at our house, and we'd really love for you to come!" and they say "Great! What time do you want us there and what can we bring?" My husband's people, though - well, SOME of my husband's people - aren't that easygoing.

I've written about this before. My in-laws are going to be unhappy regardless of how the whole scene goes down; they're lamenting the loss of their traditions, the scattering of their family to four different time zones, and the general passage of time. The invitations were mailed out to their side of the family - specifically, to my mother-in-law's brother and his wife, and their children - because I wanted to give them an easy out.

My husband and I have gotten the unmistakable vibe from these folks that this tradition of gathering three times a year for the big holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter) is getting to be a drag. We ONLY see each other three times a year. It's not that we don't like each other - quite the contrary; I think they're all wonderful people - it's just that our paths never have occasion to cross. The holidays feel forced and formal and uncomfortable, and the only people who don't seem to mind that is my in-laws. SO, I sent out invitations instead of calling. It's much easier to decline a written invite with an email or a voice mail message than it is to have to explain during a phone call or a face-to-face that you'd rather not come.

My MIL has expressed displeasure at my sending out paper invitations, which surprised me a little bit, given how enamored she is of the formalities in life. I think she's really completely oblivious to the fact that we're NOT all close and casual; she doesn't get that sharing blood doesn't equate to sharing intimacy.

Here's hoping the roller-coaster is smooth and fast - and that I'm not left puking in the bushes when the ride's over.

What's This Song About, Mommy?

2006-11-01T07:24:00.000-05:00

I've had Dave Matthew's Busted Stuff in my car CD player for about a week now. There's only one song on the whole thing that I don't really like, and several on it that I really do.

Both of my children are highly literate and, as a result, are very keen on figuring out language. Punkin' Pie, in particular, wants to know what things mean. We've had more than a few conversations, she and I, about song lyrics and the nature of poetry. She's still working with the idea that poetry can mean whatever it means to HER - that it doesn't have to mean only what the author intended. I'm not sure she's quite gotten control of her authority over a text yet, but she's certainly giving it a good workout.

Yesterday, Punkin' was home from school with a croaky cough. We were in the car on our way back from the grocery store to fetch some more Ricola drops when Raven came up on the Dave CD. It's one of my favorites on the album, and I turned it up a bit so we could really enjoy it. When the song ended, Punkin' asked me to let it run again, so I backed the player up to the beginning of the track and we listened again.

When the song ended the second time, a little, froggy voice from the back seat asked, "Mommy, what is that song about?"

"Well, that depends. What do YOU think it means?" I asked.

"Well," she said, hesitantly, "it's about an old man and his son. And the old man is giving his son something that's broken, something that he didn't take very good care of. I don't think the boy wants to forgive his father for being so careless with it, either."

I'm often astounded by how insightful my daughters are.

Raven

What you got what you got in your hand? - a father said to son
I got the whole world here, Daddy, between my fingers and my thumb
Well you take care of it please - it’s the only one
Well, it would take me a lifetime, old man, to undo what you’ve done
To undo what you’ve done

Oh, come on now, boy, think what would Jesus do?
He'd shake his head like an angry mother - spoke the boy - and say I did what I could do
But you take care of it please – it’s the only one you got
And it’d take ten lifetimes, boy, to undo what I’ve done

Boy shrugged walked away
The man stood and watched as he was leaving
Boy just walked away
The man stood alone thinking

One hand is bleeding and the other hand holds a gun
While everything is open everything is shut down, down, down
Begin to ending is really just a go round and round and round
As I stand here - the ground beneath is nothing more than one point of view

What you got, what you got in your hand? Your secret’s safe with me
Well, I found the truth, friend, let me whisper in your ear
Take good care of it please - it’s the only one there is
Can I twist it, please, can I give it just a little twist

Boy shrugged walked away
The man stood and watched as he was leaving
Boy just walked away
The man stood there twisting

One hand is bleeding and the other hand holds a gun
Everything is open now everything is shut down, down, down
No one is holding even if you even if your sure
You never know it all the ground beneath is nothing more than my point of view

Boy shrugged walked away
The man stood and watched as he was leaving
Boy just walked away
The man stood there twisting

One hand is open and the other hand holds the gun
Everything is open now is everything coming down, down, down
No one is hoping even if you even if you know
You never know it all - nothing more than, nothing more than my point of view

Boy shrugged walked away
The man stood and watched as he was leaving
The man stood there twisting

I'm convinced there's an excellent short story to be built around "one hand is bleeding and the other hand holds the gun." That line haunts me.

Insert Spooky Laughter Here...

2006-10-31T20:01:00.000-05:00

As promised: PICTURES! Love 'em while you've got 'em, because I'm going to delete this post in a few days. Having full-face pictures on the internet makes me uneasy, but these are just too good to pass up.

The truffle during the school parade. Notice Mr. VeryTall behind her. Seriously, the man has to duck to go through doorways:

The crew, on the way out to scam some loot. This is the first year Daddy went out with a costume. He liked having the cape - it was chilly last night:

The take! There's one house that, every year, gives out GIANT Crunch bars. Someone in that family must work for Nestle or something, because those bad boys ain't cheap:

Did You Hear That?!?

2006-10-30T13:33:00.000-05:00

That was ME, WHOOPING for JOY!

I came home from teaching this afternoon to find that my husband had come home for lunch and...

...installed my new keyboard and power button! I'm back on MY computer with MY bookmarks and MY files and MY mail program! It's like I've been given a limb back, People. Seriously!

(and this picture? It's a picture of THIS post - kind of like when a hostage holds today's newspaper to show proof of life - just so you know I'm not making anything up)

YAY!!!

PHEW!!

2006-10-29T19:33:00.000-05:00

Well, thank GOD for small miracles!

It turns out that the battery switch a couple of weeks ago DIDN'T kill my computer, as we'd feared. After much tinkering by both computer repair guys (which amounted to exactly zero useful information) and my husband (who, genius that he is, figured out what the real problem was), it's been determined that my power button crapped out.

That's it! No disc failure, no hard drive meltdown, no memory damage, just a wonkey power button!

There is much rejoicing in Chili Land!

Husband says he's ordered a new top bit for my computer; he wanted to replace the keyboard while he was at it - I've worn some of the paint off the keys and my bracelet, my wedding gift from my husband, has worn all the pretty metallic stuff off the right side of the keyboard where my wrist rests. The replacement parts should be in sometime this week!

The Darkness...

2006-10-29T17:14:00.000-05:00

I forgot that with the end of Daylight Savings Time comes the early darkness. It's five minutes past five and pitch black outside. Pretty soon, it's going to start getting dark at three thirty in the afternoon, and I'll be gripped with an almost impossible-to-resist urge to crawl into my pajamas. I'm pretty sure humans were meant to hibernate.

Sigh...

Sunday Love

2006-10-29T11:34:00.001-05:00

I teach two classes at the health club on Sunday mornings: a step class that runs from 8:30-9:30 and a yoga class that runs from 9:30-10:30. I've been teaching these classes for years now - I forget how many, really - and nearly every single Sunday morning, my beloved has rolled over as I've snuck out of bed and made little coughing noises, indicating that I should call in sick and crawl back under the covers.

I won't say that I've not been tempted, particularly on cold, rainy (or snowy) mornings when the pull of the feather comforter is especially strong. Add to that the fact that Sunday is "pancake day" in my house - my husband makes breakfast of some of the best chocolate chip pancakes ever experienced by human beings - and I miss it. Sure, there are leftovers waiting for me when I get home, but it's just not the same. It's almost enough to make me stay in bed.

I don't call in sick, though, because - nearly every single Sunday for as long as I've done this - the people who come to my classes make it worth getting up and braving the cold (and missing the fresh-off-the-griddle pancakes). I have my "regulars" who, just by their presence, make the classes fun and rewarding. I've developed a sort of situational relationship with some of these people, and I really do look forward to seeing them each week.

Today, my step class was populated with seven regulars, and we had a blast. Strangely, the yoga class was packed today - 22 people in all - but several of them are people I see consistently each week. Two of them stayed after the class to tell me how much they enjoy it, how they look foward to it all week, and just generally conspired to make me feel glad about getting out of bed this morning.

Fall Back

2006-10-28T19:43:00.000-05:00

Daylight savings time ends tonight. I always feel strange this time of year: I dread the impending winter with the cold and snow and the darkness that comes ever earlier, but I LOVE warm sweaters and woobie socks and the holidays.

And the extra hour of sleep I get tomorrow morning.

Today - or, rather, tonight - is one of my favorite days. It seems silly and insignificant, but I really dig the extra hour of sleep. For the first few weeks, until I start getting used to the shift, everything seems easier. I have more energy, I feel less rushed. My logical side (and yes, wise-guys, I have a logical side; I just choose to not use it too often. Don't want to wear it out, you know) tells me that it's only an hour. What possible difference can an hour one way or the other make?

My body tells my logical side to shove it - it makes a hell of a lot of difference. Talk to me in the spring when I'm always late for everything and dead tired for the first week or so of DST. I pry myself awake at what, yesterday, was FIVE-FREAKING-THIRTY IN THE MORNING. That's just not right, and I resent it for longer than I should, despite the freshening weather and the extended play time in the evenings.

Falling back is, by far, my preferred direction.

Items of No Particular Note

2006-10-27T06:22:00.000-05:00

So, I really don't have anything interesting or exciting to say, but I feel the need to write, so you get this:

*While on a whirlwind vacuuming tear across my house yesterday, having finally gotten fed up with the bits of dried leaves, myriad spider webs, and cat hair tumbleweeds, I found Beanie's home folder! It's been missing for more than a month and I've been giving her regular doses of shit for not having it. Anyway, I left it in the middle of the great room floor for her to find when she came home from school and when she saw it, her eyes lit up and she said, "MOMMY! You FOUND it?! You must be MAGIC!" Why, yes, thank you. I am.

(and the magic of a clean house didn't last. I babysat my two nephews last night, and all four of the kids spent about an hour in the leaves in the front yard. My house is back to looking like the enthusiastic start of a really good compost pile. Sigh)

*Today is Hallowe'en in the girls' school. Punkin' is going as a "rose fairy" - she's got a light green formal dress (a hand-me-down from a friend's daughter) and fairy wings. Beanie is going as a Lindt truffle. A milk chocolate Lindt truffle, to be more specific. Daddy - an engineer - designed and built a contraption using under-floor heating pipe, tin foil, Duck Tape and acetate gift wrap. She's going to look great. I MAY post a picture of them - a real, face-on picture - so you can see for yourself what gorgeous children I have. You'll have to look quickly, though, because I won't keep the photo up for long.

*There's a change that has happened at the health club where I work that I want DESPERATELY to blog about, but the Universe is telling me "NO!" in rather emphatic fashion, so I'm going to refrain. I even had a whole section written about it, but the voices in my head screamed at me to delete it. Better judgment wins out over the desire to bitch.

*I'm spending the morning with Organic Mama. We're going to do some in-service work for TCC and then go shopping. On Wednesday, we co-wrote a kick-ass final for the grammar classes we teach, but we didn't get around to the homework our bosses gave to us, so that's on the agenda for today (because I think it's due on Monday). Even if we blow through the in-service, we won't have time to get to Trader Joe's, and I'm a little disappointed about that. A Target just recently opened in our general neighborhood, though, so that's where we're headed. I need to remember to pick up some girl-mittens and some dishwasher soap.

That's about all I've got for you this morning. I promised you content - I never made any claims about the eloquence or excitement thereof...

Kizz's List, #15: Friends

2006-10-24T19:17:00.000-05:00

(author's note: I reserve the right to re-visit this list item. I am profoundly blessed in the friend department and don't think I can limit my posts on the subject to just one.)

I spent yesterday with someone I love and care for very much, and I'm feeling so much better for it.

WeedWoman is someone I was guided by the Universe to meet; looking back on it, I don't think I really had much choice in the matter. She used to work at the health club and I distinctly remember seeing her every now and then but not really thinking much of it: we never had occasion to speak to one another. Then, one night, we were attending the same (boring) staff meeting and the Universe was insisting, rather emphatically, that I introduce myself.

I was, I will admit, a little hesitant to do this. WeedWoman looks, on the surface, to be a crunchy-granola, Earth Mother type, and I'm none of those things. I wasn't sure I could handle a relationship with someone who looked likely to be a strict vegan; I wasn't interested in subjecting myself to the disapproval of someone who lived a cleaner, more wholesome life than I do. Still, I promised myself that I would LISTEN when the Universe spoke to me, so I took the chance, walked up to her after the meeting ended, and thrust myself rather unceremoniously into her life.

She is now someone I can't live without, and wouldn't choose to even if I could. While she does have her Earth Mother tendencies, she is neither militant nor judgmental about them (I remember very clearly asking her, early in our friendship, if she was a vegetarian. "Oh, GOD, no!" she replied, "sometimes a girl's just gotta have a burger!" It was sometime around that point that I knew she was a keeper.)

There are a lot of reasons why I love her. She's smart and observant. She's practical and trustworthy. She appreciates the simple pleasures and she's a walking riot. I cannot spend five minutes with this woman without laughing. She cracks me up all the time, and I do the same to her. I think it frightens our husbands a little bit that we're always laughing together. They don't always get what's so funny. I kind of like that, come to think of it.

I am so grateful for her presence in my life, and am finding out just how much I HATE that she's moved. We're not within easy distance from each other anymore. Seeing one another requires forethought, decent weather and a full tank of gas. Gone are the days of a "Hey! Whatcha doin'?" phone call followed by impromptu lunch or shopping. It does mean, though, that I treasure all that much more the time that we DO get to spend together.

Le Chat Noir

2006-10-23T12:58:00.000-05:00

In many things, my beloved and I have a very yin-yang thing going on. He is very often quiet and reserved and I am, well, not - at least, not often. He is math and science smart and I'm all about the language and the literature. He wants to know HOW things work and I just want to know THAT things work. He revels in the process, I'm more focused on end results. For the most part, these differences in how we operate work out quite nicely for us; we fill in the missing pieces and complement each other very, very well.

Sometimes, though, it's not such a perfect fit.

The fact that I blog makes my husband uneasy. I respect and appreciate his reasoning; blogging can be an extremely risky undertaking. He's seen me get dooced. He worries about cyber-psychos and stalkers and identity theft and the like. All of these are well-founded concerns; the internet can, indeed, be a dangerous place. Still, he recognizes that blogging is a creative and intellectual exercise for me and has come, I think, to a grudging respect for the medium and my use of and affection for it.

In the process of blogging, I've come to "know" a few people through their own writing and their comments on my sites. Contrary and her husband, Pookie (who, I'm betting, is nothing like what I imagine a "Pookie" to be). Blue (whose site I can't link to, because everytime I try, it locks me out of my browser!!**) and her husband, Asshole (who, I'm betting, is exactly like what I expect an "Asshole" to be, but in the best possible ways, like "you call me "Asshole" like it's a bad thing"). One of these, Vanx over at Verb-Ops, is a particular favorite of mine. He's smart and funny and, over the course of about a year now, we've had conversations about everything from hair styles and hot sauce to Frankenstein and the nature of human existence. I can tell, from our correspondence, that he's someone I can really like and respect and, as such, I've been a little less careful about keeping my secret identity a secret from him (the fact that he's so smart that he kind of outed me once is beside the point, really).

Vanx has made a couple of trips to France in the past year, and one of those journeys resulted in a photo on his alternate site, Foto-Ops, of a store that featured posters of Le Chat Noir. I commented on this picture that I have always wanted a copy of that poster. Dear, sweet man that he is, Vanx scored one for me on his most recent trip! He emailed me early last week to find out how to best get it to me, and I sent him my address.

The poster arrived on Saturday and my husband, seeing the tube, asked what it was. I told him it was a poster. He asked if I'd gotten it from eBay and I, not in the habit of lying to my husband (or to anyone, for that matter), told him that it had come from Vanx.

Suffice to say that this did not go over well.

I don’t think that the problem was so much that Vanx had bought me a present, but that I gave him my address so he could mail it to me. After a very short and uncomfortable discussion about the wisdom (or lack thereof) of divulging such information to strangers, Husband made a dismissive comment about it being "my life" (the unspoken implication of which was that I could play fast and loose with it if I wanted, but that I was doing so very much against his will) before he left for a police auction and I left to teach a yoga class.

He left first, and I spent a little bit of time pacing the floor and fuming. It wasn't long, though, before I was struck by a moment of clarity and saw this confrontation as an opportunity for us. Before I left, I wrote this note and stuck it to the door for my beloved to find:

Dear You,

I am, by nature, outgoing and friendly. These things are essential parts of who I am and part of why you love me. I need for you to trust me to make sound judgments about the people I choose to let in. Good friends are worth a little risk.

-Me

We haven't really spoken about this since I left the note. I suspect that I made my point well and that he's taking some time to process the idea that it's not his concerns for our safety that upset me, but his lack of faith in my ability to judge character and to make decisions about who I invite in as a friend. One of the things that I adore about my husband is his ability to really consider new things and his willingness to change his thinking if presented with a valid reason to do so.

Wait: that’s TWO things...

(**Blue, if you're reading, check into that for me, would you? I haven't been able to properly congratulate you on your clean amnio results because your blog freezes my computer up solid!)

We're Experiencing Technical Difficulties; Please Hold.

2006-10-21T07:45:00.000-05:00

The replacement battery for my laptop, one that's not supposed to be prone to, well, explosion, came on Thursday. Thinking that it was a good idea to have a stable battery in my computer (he's sweet like that), my husband removed the old battery and replaced it with the new one.

I was planning on taking the computer with me to a seminar I attended on Friday, so my husband shut her down so I could pack her into the briefcase for the trip. I'm not sure what caused him to do it, but he hesitated and said that he'd better try to restart it, just in case.

That's when all the trouble started.

The new battery didn't explode or anything (I just thought that the picture above was pretty dramatic and would get your attention), but it seems to have scrambled the brains of my laptop. It won't turn back on. It's not responding to anything. Husband tried everything he could think of; he put the old battery back in, he plugged the power cord in with the new battery, then the old battery, then NO battery. He called the tech support line for Mac and was given a couple of secret-code-ish things to try ('press this, this, and this button simultaneously while pushing the 'on' button and whistling the theme to Star Trek"). Still nothing.

Our local Mac repair place is in the midst of moving from a location in our town to a new store a few towns over and won't be able to take a look at the computer until at least Monday. I'm hoping that they'll be able to flip a switch or press a magic sequence of buttons or whisper some magic Mac Voodoo to wake her up again. In the meantime, I'll be posting from WeedWoman's old laptop, because I just can't be unplugged for too long.

Problems I Can't Solve for Her...

2006-10-19T13:46:00.000-05:00

Damn! This Mommy business is tough stuff!

Last night, I went into the girls' room to sneak a couple of nighttime smooches when I found Beanie crying. I scooped her out of her bed and took her to the couch with me where I held her until she was able to tell me what was wrong, and it seems that she's having trouble fitting in at recess. She'd mentioned that this was a problem a couple of weeks ago, and we made the typical suggestions ('try joining in with what the other kids are doing, rather than insisting that they play what you want to play' and 'start a game of something fun and see who wants to join you.') but, so far, her best efforts to remedy the situation have come to naught.

She's sat down with her teacher and talked about the problem as it concerns a specific girl who is nice enough to her "when grown-ups are around," but who snubs Beanie on the playground. I should mention here that she talked to her teacher because she was looking for advice on how to manage her feelings about this girl, not because she wanted her teacher to intervene on her behalf in any way: we're teaching the girls to deal with things as best they can on their own, but to go to trusted grown-ups when the situation is more than they feel they can handle. Beanie thought that going to Mr. VeryTall was a good idea "because he's been teaching second grade for a long time and maybe he knows something special about us that I (Bean) don't know." It was an inspired thought, and we encouraged her to run with it.

Anyway, I emailed the teacher again this morning, both to mention last night's trauma and to bring him up to speed on some other things we're working on with our precious seven-year-old. Here's what I wrote:

Hi, Mr. VeryTall,

Please don't think I'm a crazy stalker or a helicopter mom. I'm neither, but Bean seems to be in a developmental stage where she needs a little extra attention.

Three things: 1 - it seems she's still having playground problems. I wouldn't worry about it so much, but it's enough to have had her in tears last night. She's trying to invite kids to play with her, and it doesn't seem to be working. I've suggested that she try to join in their play, or to invite kids to play with her BEFORE recess - to make 'dates'. She said she'd try. I just want you to be aware that this is something going on for her.

2 - on Tuesday, I found two bad bananas, a bag of dehydrated apples (that were never meant to be dehydrated) and a bag of grapes nearly turned to water in her back pack. I didn't send her with a snack today because I don't trust her to not leave it in her bag. Eating well is an issue for her - if you notice, can you encourage her to eat whatever fruit or dairy Mom sends in, please?

3 - She still hasn't found her damned home folder! I found her spelling test in her bag this morning - bust her about getting it back to you late, please. We're working on issues of personal responsibility, and it's a tough sell at the moment. Any encouragement she can get in the classroom would be well appreciated.

Thanks!

-Mrs. Chili

I got this in return:

I'm on it! If it is any consolation a lot of the second graders have social problems at recess and accountablity is always an issue.

I have been checking in with her about how recess has been going. I 'll do a better job.

Thanks.

It IS a little bit of a consolation that this is a typical second-grade problem, though it still rips my heart out to hear my outgoing, lovely, social baby cry because she can't find a friend to play with. While talking to Organic Mama about it this morning, she mentioned that "second grade is the puberty of elementary school" and that there's so much going on developmentally, socially, and cognatively that it's a wonder kids survive.

I say, it's a wonder the mommies survive.

Kizz's List, #5: Christmas

2006-10-17T18:52:00.000-05:00

Christmas is going to be held at our house this year.

This is a huge deal for me. Huge. Let's just say that the addition wasn't specifically built to accommodate our having yule celebrations at our address, but it was certainly one of the contributing reasons we refinanced ourselves up to here and have endured what seems like an endless transition period.

For as long as I've been alive, I can't recall a Christmas that hasn't involved getting dressed up and going somewhere. Well, there wasn't always the "dressed up" part - my parents weren't the "dressed up" type - but it ALWAYS involved going somewhere. No one ever came to us, ever. There would be the Christmas morning, opening presents routine, then all the new toys and books would have to be abandoned so we could all pile in the car and make the rounds to the various grandparents.

This didn't change after I moved out, either. Every December 25th, for my entire life, has involved driving to see someone, even after Husband and I were married. His family has a tradition of sharing the two big end-of-year holidays between his mother and her sister-in-law: if Thanksgiving is at Auntie El's house, then Christmas is at Mum's, then they switch for the next year (and they pass the same plum pudding between the holidays. I'm here to tell you that brandy can preserve ANYTHING! But I digress...)

The addition is built and - mostly - put together. We went to IKEA a couple of weeks ago and bought a gorgeous table with two leaves that can seat 12 people without cramping anyone's style. My kitchen is fully functional and I have absolutely no doubt that my culinary skills are up to the task of cooking for the masses. So what's the problem?

The shifting of traditions and the bruised expectations that come with it.

While agonizing over who to invite to our Christmas celebrations over a couple of slices at our local Pizza Hut a couple of weeks ago, Husband and I stopped ourselves short and looked at the children. Really, the main reason we want to have Christmas at our house is so that the girls can have the memories of their own house filled with family and friends on that big day; so they can remember NOT having to leave their new books and toys behind to get in the car and drive to someone else's house for the better part of the day; so we can all be together and in intimately familiar surroundings without having to watch the clock or worry about who's offended that we didn't chose to spend a certain portion of it with them. Feeling proud of ourselves that we'd made that grounding realization before the whole mess spun out of control, we put down the pizza and asked the girls to compile a list of people they want to have with them for Christmas celebrations.

We four, of course.
Uncle Corkie (Daddy's twin)
Auntie (Mommy's sister)
Grandmom and Grandad (Daddy's parents)
Nana and Grampa (Mommy's adopted mom and step-dad - more on that later)
Uncle Naked (don't ask) and Auntie Bobbie
Gramma C and Grampa B (Mommy's adopted grandparents)

(then they mentioned that they wanted the Bowyer and WeedWoman families to visit in the afternoon, "after they're done spending time with their other families," which was beautiful. The girls love these people as family - there's never been any question that they were ever anything less.)

That's it. That's the girls' dream team for Christmas day.

My in-laws really are lovely people. They are kind and smart and worldly. They are polite and know how to behave in public. They are not going to be happy about any of this. First of all, Auntie El and Uncle Tee and their grown son, daughter and son-in-law don't appear on the list. While I'm going to make an executive Mommy-decision and invite them anyway, I have to say that, were I making a dream-team, I'd probably leave that part of the family off, too. We only see them for major holidays, weddings and funerals. They are perfectly nice people; we're just not close. Uncle Tee is Mum's brother, though, and there is a sort of obligation they feel - drilled into them by their own mother - to gather together on "important" dates, even though they'd all probably rather be somewhere else. Still, Aunt and Uncle don't DETRACT from the environment, so I don't have any issue with inviting them beyond the fact that they'd bring my dinner guest number up to 19, and even WITH the addition, I'm not sure I'd have the space.

The second issue is that I'm adopted. Not LEGALLY, though I suppose it would be an easy enough thing to do at this point. I was taken in as a teenager by Uncle Naked's (don't ask) family. They wrapped themselves protectively around me and propped me up and kept me whole and alive through some things I still can't remember with any reliable clarity. They ARE my family - far more than anyone related to me by mere blood. My mother-in-law, though? She just doesn't get it. She can't get through that I belong to these people - and that they belong to me. She can't reconcile the fact that my husband (HER son!), our children and I are far better off without my biological parents anywhere NEAR the picture. She refuses to see my adopted family as anything more than "just friends," and it's not right to spend Christmas with "just friends." Christmas is for FAMILY, and she gives off the distinct feeling of disapproval when she realizes that, yet again and for as long as I've known her, we're leaving their place to go and visit my adopted family.

What all this is leading up to is that I'm worried that combining our families for Christmas, particularly if Uncle Tee and Auntie El don't accept our invitation, will leave my in-laws feeling like strangers in a strange land (which is highly likely, as Aunt and Uncle's daughter was married this past year and it's likely that their holiday traditions will change as a result). I don't know if my in-laws will accept the presence of my people in a gracious and open way.

Now, don't get me wrong: part of me doesn't give a flying you-know-what if they can be gracious or not. We're talking about MY house. MY family. MY children and MY husband (their SON!). If they want to come and be lovely, they're more than welcomed. If they want to be all uppity and tongue-clicky and disapproving, they can just stay the hell home. The other part of me, though, the part that recognizes that my in-laws are aging and very likely frustrated (and probably frightened) about the evolution of tradition, wants to be as accommodating as I possibly can. I'm just not sure that I can be accommodating enough without sacrificing something that I - and my children - desperately want: a Christmas in our house with people who love and care for us.

"The most wonderful time of the year," my ass.

My Space!!

2006-10-17T12:20:00.000-05:00

No, not like THAT!! Jeez! What kind of girl do you think I am?!

Check out my new desk!!

Up until last weekend, that edge of the counter was loaded with Husband's tools and random miscellanea related to the assembly of various cabinets, remote contolled helicopters and IKEA furniture. Husband cleaned all that stuff out, though, and I've moved in!!

I'm trying to figure out how to best settle into the space. I think that the calendar (the thing with the mulit-colored note paper on the side) may just lay flat on the counter because there's really no good way to mount it. I'm going to move the coin jars from behind the computer to another spot - I have no need for money while I'm sitting here. I love the stereo speakers in the corner - I just reach over and hit the iPod's "go" button and I'm in business. Husband has promised to engineer a way of keeping all the various chargers and cords off the top of the counter - he's planning on drilling holes and expanding the outlets under the desk, but it's really not a huge priority right now. I really dig the magnetic container thingies on the wall to the right - only one has anything in it just now (binder and paper clips, in case you were wondering. I'm not sure what else will go in there). I've also got to figure a way of keeping paper and writing implements handy but not in the way, and I definitely need a more comfortable chair.

The point is, though, that I've got a space for my computer and my school books and everything! One step closer to the Holy Grail of having the house put together and relatively organized!

Almost Too Sweet

2006-10-16T06:23:00.000-05:00

Here's the scene: It's morning, 7 a.m., to be exact. I walk into the dusky dawn of the girls' room, quietly singing the "good morning" song ("good morning to you, good morning to you, good morning, pretty babies, good morning to you" sung to, of course, "happy birthday"). I get to about the second "good morning" and a sleepy little voice from the top bunk says " It's morning ALREADY??"

They are so beautiful, and I'm so grateful they chose me to be their mom...

A Good, Old-Fashioned Ass Kickin'

2006-10-15T18:00:00.000-05:00

Or should I say "ass whippin'"? Courtesy of Tim Haft and his Punk Rope program.

You may or may not know that I'm a fitness instructor. I teach primarily step and yoga, though I can also teach strength/resistance training, aqua aerobics and BoSu. I've been teaching fitness classes for about six years; I got into the profession after joining a health club after Beanie, my second (and last) baby, was born. I took classes for about six months before I started teaching. Now I work in that same fitness center and at the university from which I graduated.

My teaching style is pretty laid back; I shy away from the boot camp style classes and the high-energy indoor cycling classes because I really don't have a go-go attitude and, well, I hate killing myself - especially in front of people. I recognize, though, that, just like my classroom teaching, I have to vary my fitness teaching every once in a while. Shake things up. Challenge myself and my students. Try new things. In fitness - as in life - it's very easy to settle into the comfortable and familiar. I don't want to get old.

I signed up for a Punk Rope certification workshop today and it was a lot of fun, though I'm pretty sure that I'm going to SERIOUSLY regret it tomorrow because my shins are already sore. I worked very hard and was occasionally embarrassed by how difficult it was to keep up. For one thing, I haven't jumped rope since I was a little girl. I took a couple of boot camp classes at my club last year and discovered that I'd outgrown my ability to jump rope smoothly. I re-discovered this today, when I managed to leave whip marks on the fronts of my ankles, the backs of my shins, and my butt. Yes, my butt. I whipped myself in the ass, dear readers, and it wasn't fun.

I was also amazed to find out just how much work it really is to jump rope and run interval drills. I can teach back-to-back step classes no problem. Skipping rope for two minutes? No can do. It requires a cardiovasuclar fitness that I don't currently possess, though I'm sure that I could build up that kind of endurance pretty quickly. This is an intense program that really encourages c/v conditioning if the participant can just stick with it.

The program is FUN, though, and an amazing workout. The interval training and rope jumping are all set to punk rock, and I was a little hesitant about the music at first, but quickly learned that the genre is perfectly suited to this kind of workout. The songs are fast-tempo and often very short - sometimes as quick as 90 seconds. Also, Tim points out, audiences at many punk concerts dance by simply jumping up and down - the "pogo," he called it. It was kind of fun, too, to hear some familiar music: I spent the better part of last year listening to my builder - who adores punk and ska - blaring both through my stereo system, sometimes loud enough to shake the walls, as he built our addition. My tastes are decidedly more mainstream and a good bit quieter. Again, it's good to shake things up.

I'm going to wait until the pain in my shins subsides before I decide how to incorporate this program into my teaching. I'm pretty sure the university will offer Punk Rope classes, but I'm not sure my club will. I was the only person from my club to take the certification, and the fitness director isn't likely to add a class to the schedule that only has one qualified instructor. I can probably get them to offer special one-of classes, though, and that will be fun. Regardless of my whining, though, I HIGHLY suggest that you take a Punk Rope class if you can. Your cardiovascular system will thank you for it, even if your shins and calves might be a little put out.

**author's note, Monday, 6:50 a.m.** Well, here it is, the "morning after" and I'm pleased and more than a little surprised to say that I'm not completely incapacitated! It took me a little while to loosen up, but a little edge-of-the-bed stretching and I'm fine; I even managed to make it down the stairs without having to ease myself down on the railing. Woo-hoo! (or perhaps I should say "Hey, ho! Let's Go!")

Peer Pressure! (but the good kind!)

2006-10-14T19:31:00.000-05:00

It seems that the approach of autumn brings with it the need for activity and creatitivy. Or maybe it's just a fear of crawling under the proverbial covers for the duration of winter...

ANYWAY

Kizz over at 117hudson has posted a list of 100 writing prompts and is going to try to make her creative way through them all. I HIGHLY suggest you mosey on over and check out her effort for #17 - it's a beautifully written snapshot.

Mrs. Kennedy over at fussy.org has put out a call for bloggers to post a new entry every single day of November (it was mighty sweet of her to give us a half month's worth of notice - I need to start thinking of material NOW!).

I have accepted Fussy's challenge - I'm going to commit to writing something every single day of November, though I reserve the right to bail out on Thanksgiving if I have to - you won't be reading that day, anyway, because you'll be all strung out on triptophan and apple pie and zoning in front of the football game. Admit it. You know you will.

I'm thinking that, on days when the muse has decided to sleep in, I'll use Mz. Kizz's suggestions and do a little creative writing. I'm not making any promises about quality, but you can count on the quantity.

I've also decided to go one step further (because I'm an overachiever and I'm like that) and am going to try to READ something new every day and to COMMENT somewhere every day. I'm figuring the worst that can happen is that I find another blog to add to my already-too-long list of places I go every day - the best that can happen is I manage to lure someone to my own blog by virtue of a particularly witty or intelligent (yeah, right) comment I leave somewhere.

Anyway, that's the plan. And I'm letting you all in on it so you can hold me to it!

That the Best Ya Got?

2006-10-12T10:37:00.000-05:00

I'm having trouble with this.

I usually shy away from political blogging, mostly because I don't have a sufficient grasp of the topic to speak intelligently about it, but this has just steamed my dumplings.

This moron has nothing better to say about the Foley-underage-page-sex scandal than to dig up the ghost of Chappaquiddick? I mean, COME ON. This is nothing more than grade-school finger-pointing, and it's disgusting coming from the elected officials who are supposed to represent us as a people. The fact that Shays actually said that "Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody" leads me to believe that he's got exactly zip-point-shit to say that's helpful or intelligent.

"Don't look at the bad stuff WE do! Teddy over there did something MUCH worse thirty seven years ago!"

I hate it when grown-ups act like ill-mannered six-year-olds. I hate it even more when grown-ups act like ill-mannered six-year-olds in front of television cameras and newspaper reporters.

There They Go

2006-10-11T14:49:00.000-05:00

As I'm making spaghetti sauce for dinner, I'm listening to CNN as they try to figure out exactly what happened in New York this afternoon. The announcement was made about a minute ago that NORAD had ordered air cover over "certain U.S. cities." At least six fighter jets just roared over my house, and I can hear the engines to more aircraft firing up at the Air National Guard base near my house.

May they come back safely...

Breathtaking

2006-10-11T09:49:00.000-05:00

I give you a glimpse of autumn in New England. I took these pictures in my neighborhood (and some in my own yard). I'm feeling lucky to live here.

Plant Identification

2006-10-10T15:41:00.000-05:00

Can any of you out there tell me what these are?

I took this picture at Downtown Disney in Florida, where the stuff was growing out doors and was just about as happy as I've ever seen a plant. I bought one at the Home Depot a few weeks ago, and I'm not sure it's very happy with me. The ends of some of the leaves are browning, and the middles of other leaves are turning yellow.

A friend of mine, who loves to root around in the dirt, told me that these problems are probably due to something the plant suffered before I even got it. She said that a lot of issues with plants take about two weeks to show up and that I should just be patient and see what happens once the thing has a chance to acclimate to my house. I'm hoping she's right because I really like this plant. It reminds me of Florida.

"Aaaaarrugh!!!"

2006-10-08T06:44:00.000-05:00

True story: Yesterday was "Harvest Day" in my little New England Town. It's essentially a street fair where a bunch of local merchants haul some of their shit into the street and people from all over come to wander aimlessly up and down Main Street while eating candy apples and popcorn.

While we were among the wandering crowd, I noticed that one of the merchants, an art shop, had an inflatable Silent Scream; you know, like the Bopp It toy clowns from the 70s? - lashed to the pole of the tent. The thing was swaying back and forth in the light breeze, beckoning fair-goers to see what wonders were in the offering under the tent.

Anyway, also among the crowd were a startling number of dogs on leashes. Dogs of all sizes, to be accurate - we saw everything from tiny little bits smaller than my cats to a gorgeous all-black Great Dane that was, literally, taller than my youngest child.

One of these dogs, a little mop-head of a thing, had taken an interest in the Scream Bopp It and was jumping up and down, spinning on her leash and yapping as ferociously as she could manage. What had captivated her interest so completely, I do not know; perhaps she knew it was a singularly odd thing and wanted to be rid of it, maybe she saw it as a threatening presence, perhaps she has a Bopp It at home and thought that the art store had merely provided for her own personal entertainment. Regardless of the reason for her obsession with the toy, it was no easy thing for her human to haul her away from it.

Finally giving up on pulling the leash - and nearly choking her dog - the woman bent over and scooped the still-growling beastie away. Following closely behind was the woman's husband, muttering haughtily that he'd told her to just leave the damned thing at home.

Not Exactly a Day LATE...

2006-10-07T08:12:00.000-05:00

My phone rang yesterday afternoon. It was Jessica from IKEA telling me that the stop-sale had been lifted, that they'd been restocked and we could come and get our new doors right away.

Not Good....Not Good at ALL!

2006-10-06T06:09:00.000-05:00

My beloved and I made a hajj to IKEA yesterday. We rented a van and headed down with the intention of buying a new dining room table and chairs, a bunch of bookcases, something upon which to place the t.v. and various entertainment-related equipment, and maybe even a small couch and a couple of chairs. We also had a bunch of kitchen things we needed to return: several shelves that we found we had no use for, a set of drawer fronts that we didn't need (we miscounted) and one of the two door fronts that lives under the sink had gotten some water on it and had already started to delaminate - we wanted to exchange that one for another.

The returning part went well until we got to the bumpy door. The girl who was working that return desk started out by giving me a gentle hard time, saying that they can't accept returns or exchanges unless the item in quesiton is in its original packaging, blah, blah, and I pointed out that a) we have no original packaging for this item as it was already installed and b) these things are guaranteed against defects like the one this particular door is exhibiting and it's unreasonable for the company to expect consumers to keep EVERY SINGLE BOX to an entire kitchen suite. It was at this point that she stopped and said "Wait a minute - this is a Kelsebo door, right?"

"Yes.." I said, cautiously. "Is that important?"

"Yeah, they've put a 'stop sale' order on this style. There's a problem with them."

Oh, dear God.

It turns out that the company itself has noticed some manufacturing defects; namely, the lovely corners - which was one of the details that sold us on these particular doors - are having trouble staying together. Consequently, they've stopped selling them.

Now, you need to understand that this entire exchange at the returns desk happened while my husband was downstairs parking the van. When he appeared at my side, the first word I said to him was "BREATHE." He turned an alarming shade of paste and did the mental calculations of just how many doors with pretty corners we actually have in our kitchen (and how many hinges and handles he's going to have to take off and replace).

The girls (we had plural girls now; the woman in the next desk over saw our alarm and consternation and jumped in, trying to be helpful) explained to us that all we had to do (pfft! ALL we had to do!) was go upstairs to kitchens and pick out and purchase new doors - it didn't matter WHICH doors, either, they explained; even if the doors we chose were more expensive than the doors we currently have - and then bring our old doors back for a full credit on the new ones. I, not so kindly, pointed out that we don't have the original boxes for any of those doors, either, but they said that, in this case, that won't be a problem. Resigned to the idea that we were going to have to change the look of our kitchen before it was ever fully installed, we made our way up to kitchens.

The department manager, a Frenchman named Frederick from whom we bought our original kitchen, wasn't going to be in until after two, but we were able to get some more hopeful information from Ivy, a lovely woman who took pity on us. She explained that the company is not actually DISCONTINUING the door style we have; they're simply re-designing and re-tooling how the problem corners go together and will start selling them again when they've got it all worked out. We were thrilled to hear this because, really, we were crushed at the idea of having to choose different doors. I'm sure that we could have settled on another style and been happy with it, but not yesterday. Yesterday, we were angry and frustrated and overwhelmed at the idea of having to replace every door in our kitchen.

SO, the story continues. We are going to keep our kitchen together until Frederick calls us to say that the doors are being sold again, at which point we'll take them all off, unscrew the hinges and handles and make another trip to the store to get their replacements. We are going to be missing the one under-sink door because the return girl took it back but, because of the stop-sale order, couldn't replace it for us. We bought our bookcases and dining room table and chairs, but we didn't get a couch - the decision-making mechanisms were a little jammed by the kitchen door trauma we'd suffered earlier.

In Anticipation of Colder Weather...

2006-10-05T16:47:00.000-05:00

...I bought myself some hats. They arrived today. From Israel. From a website called, of all things, Modest World.

It should probably be noted here that I am neither Jewish nor particularly modest.

The hats on the site appealed to me, though, in that they are designed to cover the whole of a woman's hair. I've got some hair, and one of the reasons that I haven't really worn hats in the past is that they've all been slightly less than up to the task of keeping all that hair in one place. I have high hopes for these.

I'm pretty sure I found the link to this site on Blue's blog, but all her archives are coming up as "page not found," so I can't give proper credit. Anyway, the post was about some of the more severe rules about women's attire in some cultures and religious groups, and she'd mentioned this site as being the most fashion-conscious of those she'd come across.

I got this just the way it looks in this picture:

and this in the "black with white flowers" choice:

I plan on being warm and pretty this winter!

**author's note: I emailed Blue and her husband found the post in question. Thanks, Asshole!

Musings

2006-10-03T15:47:00.000-05:00

A good portion of my intellectual and emotional energy has been devoted, in the last few days, to trying to comprehend some of the horrifying violence that I've been watching on the news. I think I may have come to something important.

When I was teaching the Holocaust to high school freshman last year, we watched a film called Nuremberg. A well done TNT production, the movie focuses on the Nazi war crimes trials and the effect the trials had on some of the key figures who took part in the tribunal. One of the characters in the film, a Jewish-American army psychologist, struggled through the entire experience to try to understand how such evil can happen: what makes people not only capable of carrying out atrocities, but believing that it is right and good to do so? The answer, he decided, is that certain people lack empathy. This lack of human feeling and connection - this soullessness - he conjectured, can be the only explanation for what happened during World War II.

I'm beginning to agree with that idea.

I've been paying close attention. I've been watching people around me for quite some time now; I've been seeing how they behave with me and each other, I've been seeing what they teach their children and how they treat their animals and how they conduct themselves in business. Now, I'm not saying that I'm living amongst a band of vicious savages, but I do have to say that I've noticed that there aren't a whole lot of people really looking out for each other. I'm only seeing a tiny bit of 'love thy neighbor' in amongst a whole lot of 'survival of the fittest.'

I think we've been steadily losing our sense of our place in humanity. The "greed is good" attitude of the eighties seems to have morphed into a dangerous kind hedonistic, selfish, demanding madness. Of course, I recognize that the extreme cases of this get all the press, but I do think that we're losing touch with each other. Kizz likes to refer to the pre-flight safety speech that tells us to put our own oxygen mask on before helping others. I'm not sure that most people are getting past the "put your own mask on" part - and some, I think, are taking the masks off of others.

I'm feeling helpless and vulnerable and small in the face of all this violence and randomness and fear. There's only so much I can do, and I try to be mindful of doing it every day: I strive to be kind to everyone I meet. I am mindful not only of what I TELL my children, but of what my example teaches them, as well. I give what I can of my time, my money and myself to the people and projects that resonate with my sense of humanity and harmony with the Universe.

It's all I can do, yet I still find myself asking if it's really enough.

I Have Daughters

2006-10-02T19:06:00.000-05:00

I was IMing with Kizz this afternoon, chatting about how well my first day of teaching went, when she asked me to turn on my television and find CNN. She wanted an update on a story she'd heard on her lunch break about a shooting in a one room schoolhouse in Amish country.

This is the third school shooting in less than a week.

How do I know this? Kizz posted an entry on her blog about gratitude on September 20th(it was she, not Oprah, who got me started on the daily gratitude kick). I posted a comment on that entry about how grateful I am for our relative safety.

Three Amish girls were killed today. One girl died on September 26th. Their parents sent them to school and they will never come home.

I'm beginning to reconsider how safe I really feel.

Driven by this awful combination of fear and sorrow and sympathy for the parents of those girls, I wrote a letter to my daughters' teachers, their principal, and the superintendent of schools for our district:

Dear Messrs. Superintendent, Principal and Second Grade Teacher, and Mrs. Fourth Grade Teacher:

On September 20th, a friend asked me to list five things for which I was grateful. Here's one of the items in my list:

*Our relative safety. I don't have to worry too much about my children's school being stormed by hostage-takers or about someone walking into my local Panera and blowing themselves up. I'm not so arrogant to think that those things could NEVER happen here and am watching with increasing horror as our nation's policies continue to ignore the idea that they COULD, but for now, I'm grateful that they don't.*

I'm writing to you in response to the three school shooting incidents that have happened in the U.S. since September 20th to ask what kind of safeguards and policies are in place should something like that happen in our schools. I've been listening to a lot of news lately (the wisdom of which, at the best of times, seems in question) and it's becoming startlingly obvious that my fears should not rest with Chechen-like terrorist, but with the random hostage taker with undefinable motives.

We never think it could happen to us. My point is that if it can happen in an unknown rural schoolhouse filled with Amish children, we really have to stop thinking that it can't happen in Small New England Town.

Forgive me for being - I'm not sure how to describe what I'm feeling; "alarmist" doesn't quite cut it, as there's clearly cause for alarm, neither does "paranoid" work - let's go with "cautious," shall we? I'm certain that you can appreciate that my children are literally the most important people in the world to me and I need to feel that I do everything I can to ensure their safety and well-being.

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

-Mrs. Chili, Mom of Punkin' Pie, Grade 4 and Beanie, Grade 2

I got a response already from Beanie's teacher. I'm choking back tears. Here's what he wrote:

I want you to know that I treat and care for all my students the same way I do my own children.

I admire what you wrote and I agree that we should live life but also keep certain incidents/scenarios in the back of our minds.

Thanks for sharing.

I completely believe that he would do anything necessary to keep "his" kids safe and that does offer me a certain sliver of comfort.

It may be all I can ask for, but I'm not sure that's enough.

It's a Good Day for Soup

2006-10-01T14:43:00.000-05:00

So, last week Organic Mama and I attended a seminar at a not-so-local university (it's a two hour drive; next time, I'm going to stay over the night before because I really suck at the whole get-up-early-to-drive thing). Anyway, when the seminar broke for lunch, the host gave us the rundown of what kind of offerings were available in the immediate area. He mentioned some local restaurants (and one in particular which I think he's fond of as he mentioned it - and the "pints" - several times), and told us that the dining hall across the way was available to us as seminar participants.

I wasn't crazy about the idea of eating in a dining hall - I mean, come on, cafeteria food?! - but I didn't want to schlep all the way back to my car and risk getting lost in an unfamiliar town, not to mention the fact that I wasn't really in desperate need of pints, so Ms. Mama and I headed over to the dining halls. We paid our $5.50 and were let in and I've gotta tell you, I felt a little like Dorothy when the guy opens the big door.

I was expecting a "grab a tray and walk the line" sort of set up. What I GOT was a staggering array of all-you-can-eat choices that ranged from - I kid you not - pizza to soup and salads to custom made sandwiches and paninis to pasta to pot roast. There were at least five different restaurant-type fronts which offered up the fare: the feeling was very much like a really food court in a larger airport. College kids are eatin' GOOD nowadays, I tell ya!

I headed right for the soup-and-salad place and got myself a bowl of Canadian Cheese soup and a plate of yummy salad with balsamic vinegarette. I was so in love with the soup that I went back and got another helping. While I was up there scooping out another bowl, I accosted a woman in a food services smock and asked her if the soup was homemade. Not only is it homemade, she told me, but if I accosted yon man over there in the big, silly chef's hat, he could probably be convinced to give me the recipe.

It's cold and rainy in my part of the world today. Guess what WE'RE having for dinner tonight!

The McIrony Continues

2006-09-29T16:13:00.000-05:00

So, earlier this week, I posted a link to the funny lady over at Yogabeans who wrote a deliciously wicked post (no pun intended) about the irony of McDonald's putting the image of an American woman in a yoga pose on their bags. McDonald's is working hard on an ad campaign that is trying to get us to associate their products with healthful living. Sadly, I think that some of us may just be willing to believe it.

Well, the campaign is going one step further. This afternoon I went to the health club where I work: I had to teach a class and pick up my pay stubs. Stapled to this week's deposit receipt is a series of four McDonald's coupons, good for everything from free egg McMuffins to free large sandwiches, with the purchase of another.

Let me restate - I work in a HEALTH CLUB.

I received complimentary McDONALD'S coupons attached to my paycheck.

Does anyone else see this as fundamentally wrong?

(I suppose, in the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I do, on occasion, eat at McDonald's. I'm a child of the 70s and 80s - my parents believed that french fries and the pickle on my burger counted as vegetables. Even taking into account the fact that I've been known to consume a Quarter Pounder (no cheese, extra onions, please), I am not immune to the profound - and slightly alarming - irony of McDonald's coupons attached to a FITNESS INSTRUCTOR'S paycheck. Maybe they're figuring to keep us in business?)

My Life as a Movie

2006-09-28T16:30:00.000-05:00

My life is rated PG-13!

Your life is rated PG-13!

What is your life rated? (MPAA Scale)

Take Other Caffeine Nebula Quizzes

I'm betting it was the honest answer about the "minor of-age drinking" (I like a vanilla-rum-and-root-beer on the occasional Friday night) and the question about which "bases" I've gotten to (I'm very happily married and have two kids. It doesn't take the proverbial rocket scientist to figure out that I might just make my way around the ball field on a fairly regular basis. Who's your Papi?) that kept me from being a straight PG.

Oh, who am I kidding - it's my, um, colorful language that pushed me into the realm of PG-13....

Thanks to Kizz for this one!

Taking Care of Business

2006-09-26T17:25:00.000-05:00

Okay, I've got a bunch of things to take care of, so I'm doing it all at once. Pay attention - participation will be expected at the end.

1) Gratitude, a day late: Here's my list for Monday
-Dunkin' Donuts. 'Nuff said.
-good, gooey hair conditioner. Beanie's got some wild hair, and it's so much nicer to deal with when it's properly conditioned.
-speaking of hair - my hair. When it's cut just right - like it is right about now - it does this curly, wavy, chic thing that I just love.
-down comforters. It's getting cool here at night - just the right temperature to leave the bedroom window open just a bit and snuggle under the warmth of the cover.
-houseplants. I've got a bunch of them, including some fig trees I've had for nearly 20 years and a bunch of fun new additions purchased over the last few weeks. I'll post a picture of them soon - go to the magic flute post to see a bit of what they look like.

...and my list for Tuesday
-people who actually show up for my 8:30 step class at the University. I hate making the effort to come to a class when no one shows. That didn't happen today - I had two girls with good attitudes this morning, and I'm grateful.
-NPR. I LOVE National Public Radio. I listen in my car and feel like I actually know something about what's going on in the world.
-Elementary school teachers. Punkin' Pie is in fourth grade and Beanie is in second, and tonight was the open house at their school. I'm SO grateful to their teachers for being smart, dedicated, funny and willing to spend their day with 20 or so little people. I certainly couldn't do it, and I'm glad that there are good people out there who can.
-Sharp cheddar cheese. I made real mac and cheese for dinner tonight, and used about twice the cheese the recipe called for. There's nothing like real, homemade mac and cheese to show your family how much you love them.
-Granny Smith apples. Well, apple season in general, really. I love tart, crisp apples; I love to eat them out of hand, I love to cook with them, I love to shove sticks in them and slather them in caramel. Mmmmmm.

2) I've just got to get this off my chest, because I can't stand it any more. For the love of God, it's:

DUH!!

HONESTLY!!

3) I've been thinking about changing the template for this blog. What do you think? Time for a new look?

Today's Five

2006-09-24T18:40:00.000-05:00

Today, I am grateful for:

1. The fact that I have a washing machine and dryer. I've managed about four loads of laundry today, and I'm mindful that many, many people - including more than a few I know personally - have to leave their homes to clean their clothes. I'm thankful that I don't have to do that.

2. My Sunday morning fitness classes. I have two great groups of people who drag themselves out of bed on a Sunday morning to work out with me, and I really do look forward to seeing them every week - and I miss them when they decide NOT to drag themselves out of bed.

3. Kizz. She posted a Grey's Anatomy Hot Person entry just for me over at her blog, and I've had a few back-and-forth emails with her today. Despite the fact that we live almost 300 miles apart and have almost polar opposite lives, she is still one of my most precious friends. Oh, and add Instant Message to this gratitude item: It's because of IM that I get to "talk" to Kizz almost daily, and I'm sure that helps to keep our friendship strong.

4. Thomas' Blueberry Bagels. Now, you need to understand that these aren't actually REAL bagels. They're big and puffy and soft and really don't even come close to a poor imitation of a real bagel, but they are yummy, nonetheless - particularly when they're right out of the toaster oven and soaked in just a little too much butter.

5. My husband. Really, he's always Number One on my daily gratitude accounting, but today I'm particularly grateful for him because he re-wired all the downstairs light switches so that every single lightbulb down here can be dimmed. For those of you who don't know me - or who don't know this particular bit about me - I am part vampire. I really don't LIKE a lot of artificial light. Having dimmers all over really makes me happy, and I'm grateful to my man for gettin' it done!

Yogabeans!

2006-09-24T06:50:00.000-05:00

Our plastic action figure friends over at Yogabeans have posted a perfect entry about an American institution. Go see...

To What End?

2006-09-24T06:24:00.000-05:00

As of yesterday, September 23rd, the United States military death toll in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan met, and then immediately exceeded, the number of dead in the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Saturday Gratitude

2006-09-23T15:15:00.000-05:00

1.I have a job. How cool is that?

2. Grocery stores. I love that I can go to one place and get pretty much anything my heart (or, more to the point, my tummy) desires.

3. Automobiles. This morning, I drove three towns over to visit my grandparents. It took me half an hour. As I motored my way to my old people, the thought struck me that, on horseback, this would be an all day trip, and horses don't come equipped with heaters, windshield wipers and CD players.

4. Grey's Anatomy. I'm with Kizz on this one - the writing is TOP NOTCH.

5. A warm bed and a good story. I'm rereading the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and have made it to book two - Dragonfly in Amber. There's little that's more satisfying than a seriously good read on a rainy "clean sheet" day.

Daily Gratitude

2006-09-22T07:21:00.000-05:00

I really do like Oprah Winfrey. She's got a book club. She calls attention to social issues that need to be addressed. She calls out politicians on their bad behavior. She's trying to make a difference in the world, and I can get behind that.

Oprah has put out a call for gratitude. Specifically, she wants us to start keeping Gratitude Journals. The point, as Ms. Winfrey sees it, is to:

"list five things that happened this day that you are grateful for. What it will begin to do is change your perspective of your day and your life. If you can learn to focus on what you have, you will always see that the universe is abundant; you will have more. If you concentrate on what you don't have, you will never have enough."

This works for me.

Kizz was the one who clued me in to this campaign. She's been running gratitude posts for the last few days and it's been good to share my own five items on her comments. What I discovered today, though - when I found that quote - is that the things you're grateful for don't have to be huge, monumental things. They can be every day things. You can (and should, I think) be grateful for your toaster, or for the smell of a crisp autumn morning, or for the purr of your cat at your feet.

While I may not POST five things every day, I will certainly pause to reflect on them. Here's what I posted on 117Hudson this morning. Play along with me - let's see if, as I suspect, it really does work:

1) my gizzy (aka Sidekick II cellular phone). It has a lovely alarm feature that can be set to any volume (or simply to buzz) and wakes me very gently. Love that.

2) fuzzy socks. I bought a pair at Eddie Bauer Outlet yesterday and they're just yummy.

3) this was in my last list, posted on Kizz's site, but I'm really, really grateful for it: hot water in the shower. I'm headed up to wash as soon as I hit "log in and publish" here.

4) the new tv season. We watched the newest CSI last night (and WHY was there no mention of the whole Grissom / Sarah thing?! It's what we've all been waiting all summer for!) and have the new eps of Grey's Anatomy and ER on the TiVo.

5) my cats. I have four of them - Te, Bear, Toeses and Small One - and I love them all. With the advent of cold nights, they've started coming in before we go to bed and staying in all night. When I went in to love my sleeping babies goodnight last night, Small One was curled up with Punkin' between her knees and an enormous stuffed dog that takes up residence at the foot of the bed. We were all safely tucked in. I love that feeling.

Feast or Famine

2006-09-21T14:23:00.000-05:00

So, while I was finishing my graduate degree, I didn't make much time for fitness. I still taught my Sunday morning classes - one step class and one yoga class - and I did an occasional yoga class at the university, but that was the extent of my physical training. I also stress-ate. A lot. Anything that I could eat one at a time - M&Ms, chips, nuts, pretzels - nothing was safe.

As a consequence, my butt expanded and my cardio-vascular fitness level plummeted.

Having graduated - and not having found a job - I find myself with more time on my hands. I promised myself that I would start working out again once I finished school, and I have. In the last 12 days, I've taught seven step classes, three yoga classes, and one strength class, and taken three step classes. This afternoon, I'm going with a friend to the gym to take a strength class and a step class. Tomorrow, I'm going for another step class before the new employee orientation at the college.

I've stopped stress eating, too. Here's hoping it take less time to work my butt OFF than it took to put it ON...

The Magic Flute

2006-09-20T15:48:00.000-05:00

As a fourth grader, Punkin' Pie was invited to join the band at school. There was a band demonstration a week or so ago where the students got to see a band in action and to look over the instruments to decide which they might like to try. Punkin' came home with a list of available instruments and instructions on where to go in our town to rent them (and warnings about buying instruments online - I guess there are a fair bit of counterfeit instruments out on the web). When Daddy looked over the list, he mentioned that, when he was little, he played the flute.

"REALLY?!" Punkin' asked.

"Yep," Daddy said. "As a matter of fact, I bet that Grandmom still HAS it."

"REALLY?!? Can we call her? RIGHT NOW?!?"

SO, Punkin' Pie is the new owner of Daddy's flute - all cleaned up and properly fixed and ready to play. This post is written to commemorate the playing of her first "real" song: she's been blowing "Hot Cross Buns" for the last half an hour.

I'm SO glad she didn't choose the trombone...

Zoom, Zoom!

2006-09-20T12:18:00.000-05:00

Something big must be getting ready to happen. There's be an AMAZING amount of hardware flying out of the former Air Force base, now Air National Guard base, nearby. Our house happens to be in direct line of the landing path, so all that metal flies over us on its way back home.

I can't really tell you what all the planes are (because then, I'd have to kill you... no, not really) because I don't know for sure what they all are. I've heard Husband spit out letters and numbers (Husband: "oh, that's a P141 Starlifter." Me: "Really? Oh. Okay.") but I CAN tell you that some of those planes are HUGE. And I mean even up in the AIR you can tell they are ginormous planes. It makes one wonder how, exactly, those monstrosities of metal and fuel manage to stay up.

One plane that I DO know how to identify is the F15 fighter. As I write this, they must be practicing touch-and-go because they're essentially running loops around my house. I'll hear them take off from the base (10 miles away by road - a lot closer as the proverbial crow goes). Then they'll TEAR over my house - I very often miss them going by because they're moving faster than the noise they're making and I can't get to the porch in time. Five minutes later they'll come by the house again, going in the other direction, on their way back to the runway, then they'll do it all over again. And when I say "they," I mean THEY - there's rarely one jet at a time, though one just went by all alone - there are usually at least two, and I've seen as many as four flying in formation.

It's difficult to describe the rush that I get when these fighters whiz over my home. I'm not overly fond of flying, myself, and I'm not sure that I would WANT a ride in one of the planes, though I would think long and hard before passing up the opportunity should it ever come my way. The sheer speed and power that they boast seems to find its way under my skin, though, and I feel my own pulse quicken as they roar overhead. I certainly won't be one of the neighbors calling the base to complain about the noise, though I find that my running to the porch to watch the planes zip past is making it very difficult for me to get anything of substance done these last few days...

Which Are You....

2006-09-20T05:57:00.000-05:00

A "windows open, breeze in your hair" kind of person?

Or a "windows up, A/C on" kind of person?

Guess which kind I am....

Snapshot of a Tuesday Morning

2006-09-19T06:52:00.000-05:00

6:40 - Mommy wakes to the sound of the train passing through town. The whistle meshed oddly with a most unpleasant dream I was having about aliens and the election of a president who promised to send away the youngest child of every family.

6:57 - Mommy wakes girls and informs them of the general weather conditions and asks what they might like in terms of lunch for the day

7:02 - Mommy realizes that Beanie hasn't brought home her lunch box. Discusses with Beanie the importance of bringing the lunch box home and decides what to do about her lunch arrangements for the day

7:09 - finally settle with Punkin' Pie that she can make her own damned lunch as she answers "no, thank you" to every option that comes her way

7:19 - Beanie comes downstairs from chatting with Daddy while he takes his shower. Punkin' Pie is busily making peanut butter cracker sandwiches ("HOW is this different from the sandwich I offered you?!") and being generally fussy about what else to have for lunch

7:27 - Beanie decides on toast for breakfast, then realizes that today is her field trip day. Well, then! That means you CAN'T have lunch in the cafeteria now, doesn't it? Mommy hastily puts together a half a sandwich, a container of yogurt, an apple and a box of juice and wraps it all in a plastic grocery bag.

7:32 - Beanie realizes that the pretty skirt she's wearing is inappropriate for a field trip to a county fair to see animals, so she interrupts her toast preparations to change into pants. Complimenting her on her good thinking, Mommy takes over the toast.

7:34 - Punkin' Pie is STILL making her lunch, wandering aimlessly around the kitchen wondering what else to have. Note that she still hasn't begun to think of breakfast. Mommy takes over at this point, including a cup of yogurt and a juice box, while sending Punkin' toward the cereal cupboard.

7:46 - while the girls leisurely munch on toast and Life cereal, the bus drives by. Daddy's eyes, not unjustifiably, roll.

7:53 - finally shod and jacketed, and complete with lunches (such as they are) and backpacks (which, hopefully, contain all the necessary homework and accessories), the girls and Daddy begin their (unanticipated) walk to school.

sigh

Weird

2006-09-18T19:26:00.000-05:00

My lack of techno-savvy has rendered me incapable of altering the date on a post I started the other day. If you're interested in a native New Englander's musings about the coming of autumn, scroll down past the love note to the hot water kettle...

Our New Toy

2006-09-16T08:15:00.000-05:00

We have a new electric kettle.

I'm a little surprised by how much I LOVE this thing. I mean, how hard is it to get out a glass measuring cup, fill it at the tap and pop it into the microwave for a minute, particularly when said microwave has a designated "minute" button? Not hard at all, I tell you! In spite of the former ease with which I magicked up hot water, though, I have fallen into quite a state of love for this little gadget.

In the two weeks we've had it, it's boiled up a whole dining table's worth of after-dinner tea, not to mention the single cup that Husband likes to enjoy with cookies in front of the t.v. at night. It has provided a jump start for the girls' thermoses when soup was the bring-to-school lunch meal request. It makes short work of instant oatmeal and will, I'm betting, but just dandy when hot cocoa season comes around (though I imagine that it will only be pressed into cocoa service occasionally for the gotta-have-it-now cocoa emergency. We here at the Chili household like our hot chocolate REAL - milk and chocolate and vanilla - not that out-of-a-can powder, though such stuff does make it into the pantry and is good in a pinch). It was also handy when making WeedWoman's birthday cake last week.

I think part of my infatuation may be due to the fact that I'm re-reading Outlander and vicariously living the life of a time traveler who finds herself in the 1700s. It makes me glad to be living in the time that I do. What wonders we have at our fingertips! Automobiles! Hot showers! Antibiotics! And electric kettles that cleanly and efficiently meet all one's hot water needs!

How To Tell It's Autumn in New England

2006-09-13T06:09:00.000-05:00

You would think it would be a pretty easy thing to determine; one simply looks at the calendar to see that autumn begins on September 23rd. Here in New England, though, we've come to understand, after hundreds of years, that the calendar doesn't always know what it's talking about. No, if you want to know when autumn REALLY begins, you have to look for the usual signs like:

.....Football! You bet!...

....School starts...

and

....the first leaves change colors...

But then there are the less obvious, but far more telling, signs:

....the cats (all of them, even noisy "Don't Fence Me In" Toeses) insist on coming in at night - and staying in until morning...

....the children are asking for oatmeal for breakfast and soup in their lunch boxes...

....Jackets on the way to school (though Daddy holds out with the shorts until damned near the first snowfall)...

....and the local ice cream joints start closing up shop...

Yep. It's autumn in New England, no matter WHAT the calendar says.

It's Been a GOOD Day!

2006-09-12T14:57:00.000-05:00

WOO HOO!! Mrs. Chili has had a GOOD day today. Not just an okay day, but a GOOD one! There is much rejoicing and gatitude-offering!

Item number one - I got a job! I'm an adjunct professor of English at Tiny Community College. I was interviewed and hired in one fell swoop, though the director won't accept my answer to his offer until tomorrow - he wants me to "sleep on it" and get back to him in the morning. I suppose that means that, technically, I don't have the job yet, but I'm not up for splitting those hairs at the moment. Regardless, he sent me home with a new-employee packet. It's a done deal - I start in October.

Item number two - I'VE GOT THE PUCK BACK! Observe!

and

Isn't she BEAUTIFUL!!

I'm feeling as though my Universe has re-aligned ever-so-slightly, and I am grateful.

How We Remember

2006-09-10T14:14:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking an awful lot about what has become known simply as "9/11" and about what the events of that specific day - and everything that has come after - have meant to me as a citizen of the world.

I live about 300 miles from Ground Zero, in a semi-quiet little city on the coast of New England. I don't know anyone who died in the planes that crashed in New York, Washington or Pennsylvania. I don't know anyone who died or was injured in the buildings that were hit by those planes. I was mercifully spared any direct injury - physical or emotional - on that day, even though I live very near where two of the planes originated. I sometimes feel as though 9/11 should have no impact on me at all - my life wasn't significantly changed by the events of that day; my world was not rocked by sudden, wrenching, mindless loss; I wasn't even inconvenienced by the immediate aftermath of heightened security or delayed or canceled flights. Even so, I am a different person now, and I feel that, regardless of how much 9/11 did or didn't touch me in measurable or tangible ways, the experience still belongs to me.

Kizz lives in NYC and she was my first thought when I found out what happened on that Tuesday morning. My husband assured me that she was fine - she had called him just after the first plane hit the north tower, though I wasn't able to reach her for days after. She and I have never talked about the attacks beyond a brief phone call a few days later so that I could hear her voice for myself and find out if there was anything I could do to help her or people she knew. She doesn't talk about that day - go here for an eloquent explanation of why - and I find myself cautiously respectful of her right to silence. This truly IS a case of "you wouldn't understand," particularly because I'm not sure anyone CAN understand the magnitude of something like this - it's entirely unprecedented and very likely a few steps beyond what we, as humans, are capable of comprehending in any meaningful way.

The fact that I lived through 9/11 via my television screen doesn't diminish my relationship to the event, though - my experience is just as valid as anyone else's. I'm sure that a lot of people would take issue with that statement and accuse me of being arrogant to even consider putting my experience of 9/11 on an even plane with someone who had to run for their very lives from the wreckage of the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, or to someone who died in the aircraft that caused the destruction. I'm not talking about that experience, though; I'm talking about how the enormity of it all affected who I am as a person, as a parent, and as a citizen of my country and of the world.

As a result of 9/11, I am far more careful about my patriotism. I watched with mingled horror and shame as the rampant, mindless nationalism infected this country in the days and months following the attacks, while at the same time being proud of how well and quickly we as a nation came together to help in any way we could, from driving to NYC and DC to offer our physical labor to making donations to the Red Cross and charitable groups to wrapping up and mailing nutrition bars and bottled water. I called a Muslim organization at our local University to offer my support and assurance that not ALL their neighbors harbored feelings of hatred and hostility toward them. I wrote a letter and mailed a small check to the owner of a pizza parlor in the Boston area whose store was fire bombed because he is Afghani. My husband and I are taking pains to raise our daughters to not think in terms of "us" vs. "them," regardless of what our government would have us think. While it may not be a very popular stance, I vehemently oppose the "war" in Iraq while, at the same time, trying to be supportive of the troops who are there doing the job they agreed to do when the signed up for the armed services. I'm paying attention. I vote.

On that Tuesday morning, I was at the health club in a step class. I didn't have much of an idea of the extent of what was happening at the time; I had only heard that "a plane hit a building in NYC" and I thought that a small plane had veered off course - perhaps the pilot had suffered a stroke or heart attack - and that nothing much would come of it. I tend to avoid crowds and dislike participating in gawking, so when I left the class to find nearly everyone in the club clustered around televisions in the lobby, I headed up to the showers. When I was done, I gathered up the girls, then 2 and 4, and headed home. On the way, I was listening to NPR and beginning to understand that it was something far more than I had originally thought. A group of young men had congregated on an overpass of the highway already, waving flags and shouting to passing cars, and I knew that something had "snapped" and things would never be the same. I remember feeling a deep sense of dread.

As I pulled into the garage my husband, who had been working from home and watching events unfold live on the television, came out of the house. He opened the car door, knelt on the garage floor, buried his face in the baby's lap and was overcome by wracking sobs. I got out of the car, unbuckled Punkin' and told her to go hold Daddy, then I took Beanie out of her car seat and we all sat on the driveway, huddled together and crying while fighter jets from the nearby Air National Guard base took off overhead.

The world had changed, irrevocably and forever, and we had changed with it. Something did indeed "snap," and we now bear the responsibility of raising children in a world where fanatics will use the intelligence they were blessed with to think up new and unexpected ways to kill those whose ideas and beliefs don't align with their own; a place where presidents and world leaders use the fear and grief of their own people to rally them to war. It takes a lot of levelheadedness and love to counteract that kind of insanity. My dearest hope is that we are able to contribute in some small way to healing all of this pain and fear by practicing mindfulness and caring, and by raising strong, smart, gentle and loving children who will take those lessons in kindness and tolerance into the future.

I'm not sure there's anything else we can do.

Up, Up and Away!

2006-09-09T16:13:00.000-05:00

The space shuttle Atlantis took off safely this morning.

I wish them a safe and successful mission.

Do Not Drive or Operate Heavy Machinery

2006-09-08T19:15:00.000-05:00

...A post which I write to you from the edge of a drug-induced haze.

I've done something to my back - again. I have no idea WHEN it happened, I only know that it did because, well, I'm in pain.

I don't mind so much when I know for sure that I did something - even if it's something stupid - that caused my discomfort. I've thrown my back out flipping a towel off my wet hair after a shower or snapping out sheets while making the bed; I've done it reaching into a grocery cart for a soup can; I've hurt myself trying to gently lay sleeping babies in their beds or tripping on the stairs. When I can point to some event and say "THERE! THAT'S where this all started!" and know for sure that I'll be more careful when doing whatever "THAT" was again, I don't feel quite so indignant at being nearly incapacitated by my lower back. When I have no CLUE what I did to bring me to this place, though, it makes being here all that much less pleasant.

I took a Flexeril about 20 minutes ago, and the excruciating spasms across the top of my butt are starting to give way. Of course, the pill also makes me stupid and fit for little else than an early bedtime. I'm hoping that a good night's sleep will contribute to a less painful tomorrow, and that my chiropractor will just happen to come into his office tomorrow morning and find the message I left on his machine this afternoon. But that may just turn out to be a wishful hallucination...

Tonight's Dinner....

2006-09-06T17:05:00.000-05:00

...BREAKFAST!!

Scrambled eggs and cheese.....

(some cheese for the kitty....)

Waffles......

Bacon (cooked in the oven because I'm too afraid of popping grease to cook it in a pan).....

And, for dessert, IKEA cinnamon rolls.

YUMMY!!

Well, What Do You Know!

2006-09-06T13:03:00.000-05:00

I'm a centrist!

My husband's cousin sent me a link to the "World's Smallest Political Quiz." This man is usually responsible for sending me very funny, if slightly off-color, jokes, so I went into this thinking that the punchline was going to be quite different. Turns out, it's for real.

I'm not overly surprised by my score, though I think some of my friends might be (particularly HamRadio, who believes I'm the most Lefty Humanist he knows). Frankly, I kind of like being in the middle. It gives me more options.

More Lessons in Patience

2006-09-05T06:21:00.000-05:00

Sigh.

The Puck is still not quite put together yet. I called Ed, my car guy, this morning (I was going to say "body guy," but didn't want to deal with the flood of inappropriate comments that I know you're all clever enough to come up with (grin)...) and asked him for a percentage chance that I could take my car home today. He, very kindly but with a slight edge of humor in his voice, said "Zero!!"

It turns out that the Puck needs a new tailgate. Ed had hoped to be able to use the gate I already have - there's only a tiny dent in it from where it came to rest against a sapling - but I gather that, after he put all the new bits and pieces on the car and pulled everything back to where it's supposed to be, the gate doesn't close closely enough for his taste (he is, if nothing else, extremely meticulous - I trust this man to give me my car back better than new). It also seems that the parts distributer hasn't coughed up the part yet - he's going to call them this morning to find out what the holdup is.

Maybe Thursday

Right About Now...

2006-09-04T14:18:00.001-05:00

...you should be wishing you lived with me.

There is much excitement and rejoicing at the Chili household, friends and neighbors. We have a STOVE!!

Isn't it GORGEOUS?!

The inaugural dinner will be cheese souffle with a choice of steamed asperagus or french cut green beans, followed by a dessert of dark chocolate baby-cakes with tea.

I'm starting to feel better already!

**author's note - it was fantastically yummy. I love, Love, LOVE my new kitchen!!!

Can You BELIEVE It?!

2006-08-28T15:11:00.000-05:00

Check it out!!!

Before:

And:

AFTER!!!

And:

And, on top of all that, the last two cabinets have been installed!!!

It turns out that the counter boys were too chicken to cut the hole for the downdraft vent system that we bought, so Husband's going to try to do that himself. You should have heard the man trying to break the news to me that the part he wants to have before he installs the vent won't be here for another week, and he doesn't want to risk installing the stovetop before he cuts the hole....

I'm hoping to have the sink installed tonight, though. I've lived with the Wal-Mart two-burner hotplate since December; I think I can manage another week without my fancy-dancey stovetop.

More later - for now, I've gotta go clean up the "post-construction trauma" left in the wake of today's activity...

Maybe Monday

2006-08-24T18:34:00.000-05:00

Grrrr. The counter guys did not come today. I was told they would come today, and though I tried REALLY hard not to get attached to the date, here I am, disappointed that my kitchen won't be done this weekend.

When Husband called this afternoon, the woman he spoke to said that, "from the looks of the board, I'd say maybe Monday." Somehow, this does not offer me comfort.

sigh. The Universe serves up yet another lesson in detachment.

Big News (with pictures!!)

2006-08-23T14:36:00.000-05:00

We have a new great room floor!!

After a bit of unpleasantness on my part last week (Mamma had a meltdown; it wasn't pretty), Husband enlisted Bowyer's help and ripped up, then reinstalled the wood in the great room! It's GORGEOUS!

I spent Friday out - first having lunch with my old graduate seminar group, then driving up to the hinterlands to spend the night with WeedWoman - and I didn't know that a floor install was in the plans. Bowyer came over on Friday afternoon and the two of them ripped the old floor up, rented the necessary compressor and staple gun, and bought the paper. What's the paper for, you ask?

We don't know, but the contractor who put down the other wood floors used it, so my men did, too.

The men managed to get through about a third of the job by the time I got home on Saturday afternoon. From there, we all worked well together: Bowyer worked the stapler and the big hammer, Husband did all the exact measuring, and I was the feeder, handing wood to Bowyer so he could staple it down.

We had EXACTLY enough wood to do the entire thing. See this little pile? Nine pieces. That's all we had left over. That's what you get when you're not too picky about how every piece looks ("Bah!" Bowyer said to yucky pieces, "Bury that one in an edge!") and you've got an engineer working the chop saw.

I am SO excited that things are really moving along now. The counter guys are supposed to come back tomorrow to install the finished countertops, which means I'll have the stove and new sink installed by Sunday (hopefully!). For all intents and purposes, my kitchen will be DONE; all that's left is the installation of some handles, a couple of high cabinets to install over my desk, and toekicks.

Then we move upstairs.....

2006-08-23T13:01:00.000-05:00

Obadiah Parker -

A friend sent me a link to a completely silly video of a cat flushing a toilet and, after many convolutions, I found this. Go here (http://obadiahparker.com/) for their website. I like the original of this song, but I LOVE this remake.

I'm Still Here...

2006-08-22T07:07:00.000-05:00

..I've just been hectic-busy. I'll have a post for you in the next day or so - complete with pictures! There have been big doings at the Chili household, which is part of why I've not been posting with my usual frequency (and what the pictures are about!).

Keep checking - there'll be something here soon...