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Magic Shoes?
Has anyone else heard of MBT brand shoes This weekend, while dropping Maya off at a ‘High School Musical 2’ sleepover extravaganza, I started chatting with M’s BFF’s mom BFF’s mom had these huge looking, yet still kinda cute, shoes on her feet. She has told me in the past of her back problems. She goes to the chiropractor, takes muscle relaxants, does stretching and yoga…nothing helps. It’s gotten so bad that a few weeks ago, she went to a movie with her husband and daughter, and they had to leave because she was in so much pain. This is no way for a 34 year old to live her life, let me…
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The Road
What if you lived your life for just one person? And that person lived just for you, so you were ‘each other’s world entire’? I think there’s a romantic sense of that feeling, of being consumed by a new love affair, a new baby, a feeling that without that person, life would not be worth living. But we all have other reasons to live, whether we acknowledge them or not. There are family, friends, helpful strangers, animals, nature, books, work, music, whatever it is that gets you through. But what if you didn’t? No family, no friends, no helpful strangers, no faith in God, not enough food, no clean water,…
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Anti Racist Meme
I was tagged for this one by Shelliza. She doesn’t say if she was tagged, or if she made this meme up herself. But I’ll go for it. 1. I am: Mostly British. Some of my family came to the U.S. as recently as maybe 4 generations ago, from England. Some of them came over back in the mid 1600s. I remember growing up saying I was English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. I did our family genealogy a few years ago, and couldn’t find any Welsh, and the Irish and Scottish were both disputed. Some of my family came over as indentured servants, some as farmers, I don’t think any…
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Walking a Tightrope
The other day, when we were in Tahoe, Maya was trying to pick out a t-shirt as a souvenier, and this t-shirt had to be SPECIAL, because she was getting one for herself, and a matching one for her BFF, Jackie. I noticed that the one she had picked was an adult size (they didn’t have any kids shirts), and it looked kind of long…a huge NO in the book of Maya. So, I pointed it out to her, and she got mad. And snippy. And rude. Which escalated into a fight, in which we told her that she has every right to feel picked-on and angry, but she does…
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Own or Rent?
Conventional wisdom seems to dictate that it is better to own your home than to rent it. I’m here to debunk that wisdom. Owning SUCKS. Here’s why. When we rented, if we wanted to move, we moved. End of story. When we rented, if two of the burners had gone out on our stove, the landlord would have bought a new stove. For us, we had to wait until we could afford a new stove, and suffer with the old one for awhile. When we rented, if we wanted to move, we moved. Did I mention that one before? Sorry. It’s at the top of my mind right now. Owning…
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Sepharad
Susan over at West of Mars has an interesting reading challenge…find a book that you would consider a ‘Hidden Treasure’, that has never been on any best seller list, read it, and let the world know about it. That sounded pretty good to me, because so often I see the same books popping up on people’s lists, over and over again…and while I love the feeling of community that comes from reading a book that other people know about, and can talk about together, it sounded like a great idea to search out something new. So I started looking around, and found a list at New York Magazine, The best…
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Proust Questionnaire…
Who knew that Proust was into memes? Not me. I guess that’s because I don’t read Vanity Fair, where they have the famous Proust Questionnaire, in every issue, answered by a different famous person. I came across it over at Buffy’s blog. I copied a few of her answers, because they applied to me as well. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Ted and Maya murdered and their bodies thrown into a mass grave. (Sorry, I’m reading a book about people escaping death camps in WWII right now…) Where would you like to live? San Francisco, but with parking, a washer and drier, and good (and…
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Whew!
For those of you bloggy friends who also read Cherry’s blog, and know that she went in for surgery today, please know that she came out OK. I’ll go see her tomorrow. I won’t be posting on it, because I feel like it’s her story to tell, not mine, and kind of personal…but since she put it out there that she was going under the knife, I thought I would put it out there that she is out of surgery and it went well. 🙂
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Playing Possum
Late last night, I let Genevieve go out front to use the bathroom one more time before bed…and saw something dash off to the left, which she promptly went and chased. I thought it was a cat, expected to hear a hiss or at least its claws climbing the fence quickly. Instead, I heard nothing. I went outside, and peeked around the corner, and I saw something very much like this picture…a little dead critter, is what it looked like! I’ve never seen a possum in real life before, at least not that I remember, so I wasn’t exactly sure WHAT it was…and I wondered how in the heck our…
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Vacation Wrap Up
Maya on the lake, enjoying the view of blue, blue water We’re home now. We had a lovely time in Tahoe, though we were limited in our activities by Ted’s leg. (The antibiotics are doing their job, and he’s much better now.) So Ted couldn’t swim, not really up to hiking, that kind of thing. Thought we might see a dinner show at a casino, but there weren’t any while we were there. We did rent a motor boat and go out on the lake one afternoon, which was FUN. It was a pretty powerful boat, and we were going pretty fast, which was fun, though Maya and I got…
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I’m Greg?
I’m copying Beenzzz today, and putting up a quiz thing. I never thought of myself as the Greg type…more the annoying middle child. But hey, I’ll take what I can get, because Greg is WAY cooler than Peter or Jan. Maybe. You Are Greg Brady Outta sight! Suave and all American, you tend to be clean cut and upstanding. You’re friendly with most people and a huge flirt (sometimes even with family members!). What Brady Are You?
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Retail Therapy
Monday night, home from SF early, but not yet on our way to Tahoe, I decided to watch the third movie in what I like to call the neuroses trilogy, Going Shopping. The director, Henry Jaglom, has made two other films using very similar style…a storyline that outlines the neuroses affecting some women, interspersed with little snippets of women telling their real feelings on the matter, with much more honesty than you would likely see in real life. The first film in this ‘trilogy’ was Eating, which came out in 1990. I remember liking that film quite a bit, and thinking that the women in it were all pretty much…
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Vacation, Interrupted…
(click to enlarge…) …by an evil spider bite…some dirty nasty mean spider bug had the nerve to bite up poor Ted, and his leg got swollen, sore, and infected. So we cut short our time in San Francisco, went to the doctor, took it easy, and we’re leaving a day late for Tahoe…but still going, which is what’s important to us. Now it’s time to relax by that beautiful lake… 🙂 Catch you on the flipside!
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My Name Is Red
My Name is Red is a somewhat convoluted murder mystery that takes place in late 16th century Istanbul. The main characters of the story are miniaturists, artists who draw and color the illustrations for books prior to the printing press, when books might be taken apart and rebound in a different sequence, depending upon who is paying for the story that is being told. The Sultan has commissioned a a new book, and he wants part of it to be painted in the new European style, showing things as they appear to people, rather than in the Ottoman tradition of showing the world through the eyes of Allah. For instance,…
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Groove is in the Heart…
OK, we’re on vacation, it’s the 30th anniversary of the Summer of Love, and we’re in San Francisco. I put this post together before leaving, but I’m hoping that vacation feels pretty much like it always feels, and San Francisco feels pretty much like it always feels, which is groovy. So, to go along with that, here’s a video I remember watching way back when I was in SF, when MTV still played videos. LOVE IT! Isn’t the faux french at the beginning…deee-licious? [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKTCW4oxS6I[/youtube]