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My Cousin…
I have a cousin, Tony, who I only knew as a small child. He was about 10 or 12 years older than me, and I worshiped him. When I was about 4, we moved to a homestead outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, and we really didn’t know anything at all about living in that kind of environment. He was raised there, so he came out to stay with us and show us how to do all of the things we had to do…(when I say ‘we’, I mean my mom…I was, after all, 4). We had no phone, no running water, a coal burning pot bellied stove for heat, a broken…
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Thoughts on Reading…
I’ve seen this posted a few places, most notably here and here. You fill in the blank, either on your blog or in the comments section. Everybody should read _____________________. So, here’s my list of things everybody should read: 1. This Post, from Angry Black Bitch 2. Chrysanthemum 3. The Lorax 4. The 100 Dresses 5. The Red Tent 6. The Unbearable Lightness of Being 7. Bel Canto 8. A Wrinkle in Time 9. The Handmaids Tale 10. The Mists of Avalon 11. The Forgotten Door 12. The Grapes of Wrath 13. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 14. Invisible Man
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Does this Bother You?
It bothers me. There’s a story on Yahoo today about a computer system you can use to check what your kids are eating at school. And you can limit what they can or cannot eat, how often, etc. I have a couple of thoughts on this. If we don’t want our kids eating crap at school, STOP SELLING CRAP AT SCHOOL. If you don’t want your kids eating crap at school, and the school sells crap, pack them a lunch. Better yet, do it with them, so they can see what healthy choices are. Tell them, it’s good to have some protein, some carbs, some calcium, some fruit, veggies, etc.…
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Dream symbolism?
Has anyone seen “The Straight Story“, about a guy who drives his lawnmower a couple of states over to visit his estranged brother? Well, I kind of had that dream last night, except my lawnmower thing was smaller than this one, with no trailer, and I wasn’t going to visit my estranged brother (I have a brother, but we’re not estranged, even in weird David Lynch type dreams). I was driving across the country, which I have done a few times, but usually in a normal car. With stopping for food and sleep, the drive from SF to Philly takes about 4 days. Well, in my dream it was already…
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Weekend Wrap Up
This weekend was jam packed with fun. Got to leave work early on Friday, in celebration of the long weekend. 🙂 I went home and started dinner, which was fancy tuna sandwiches. We went to Ted’s brother’s house to eat dinner and watch Battlestar Galactica, which we do every Friday now. We don’t get Sci-Fi channel on our cable, but his brother has satellite or something. We can’t get it, because of the trees near our house, and we’re too cheap to pay for the expensive cable that would come with the channel. But it’s fun anyway. Saturday was cleaning day. Ugh. My kitchen was so disgusting, it was embarrasing.…
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My Baby, Then and Now
This is Maya at 15 days old, and Maya 15 days ago. She looks the same to me….my baby.
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A Letter to the Dinosaurs
When Maya was 4 years old, she was REALLY into Dinosaurs. My brother bought her a DVD called “Walking with Dinosaurs” that she had seen on the Discovery Channel, and she LOVED it. Except the end, where the asteroid comes and wipes out 90% of life on Earth, including the Dinosaurs. So she wrote them this letter (dictated, obviously, but the picture she drew…her favorite dinosaur was the diplodocous…she was 4 1/2). This was written in November of 2000, when she was getting ready to go to Autumn’s birthday party. Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to read.
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Have an extra $5? Looking for good Karma points?
Then click over here. POW has a good idea…Read the story, click the COTA page, and do what you can. Just a thought. Happy Friday!!
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Why I’m Moving to Vancouver….
I was walking the other day, listening to a podcast on my beloved iPod. The podcast was of an NPR show, To the Best of our Knowledge, and it was about Canada. One of the segments was with a sociologist, Michael Adams, who wrote this book. It’s all about how the values of the United States are not the same as the values of Canada, and how that is becomming more and more the case as time goes by. For example: In the mid-1950’s, 60% of Canadians told pollsters they went to church each Sunday: the proportion in the U.S. was only 50%. Today, only 22% of Canadians claim weekly…
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This Book Is Stressing Me Out
I decided to read The Woman Who Walked Into Doors, by Roddy Doyle, because Maya has a couple of his children’s books, and they are really clever and well written and smart. So I thought I would try one of his novels for adults. This book is pretty amazing, especially since it’s written by a man. That sounds like a pretty sweeping statement, I know, but he really seems to GET a lot of the nuances of being a woman, especially about the pressures put on us by men regarding sexuality and so on. I mentioned some of this in an earlier post. Well, I am now at the part…
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Sometimes I Miss Philly
You may never hear me say this again, because it doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I miss Philadelphia. We only lived there for 2 years, from 1994-1996, and I never considered it ‘home’, so when I say I don’t miss it often, I’m not saying it isn’t a great city. It is. But when we lived there, I spent a lot of time being homesick for San Francisco. We would come home for Christmas, and we would both just hate the idea of going back to Philly, with its cold, cold winters, and the humid, sultry summers, so far away from our friends and family. But after awhile, we started…
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My Thoughts, Exactly.
Or, close, since I didn’t know about the dinner. But there’s a pattern here. Anyway, Echidne of the Snakes, a lovely liberal blogger, has a great post about the Hunting Accident, which sums it up pretty well, I think.
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Maybe it’s time to stop with the jokes?
The second story, when combined with the first, make for some pretty bad timing, wouldn’t you say? Hunter Shot by Cheney Has Heart Attack White House Finds Humor in Hunting Mishap
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Happy Valentine’s Day
Why do we celebrate Valentine’s Day? Is it so Hallmark, FTD, and See’s can make money? I think it’s right behind Christmas and Mother’s Day as big money makers for the retail industry. You can’t turn on the radio without hearing ads telling you to buy your wife a pearl, diamond, or ruby. If you’re not married yet, the pressure is to get engaged, NOW, on Valentine’s day. Mostly, though, it’s a completely manufactured holiday, full of all of the pressure of shopping and buying, reservations at fancy restaurants and romance. Now I know these things don’t have to be stressful…but for many people, they are, and the burdon seems…
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Weekend Wrap Up
This was a lovely weekend, which started with a brand new Sofa and Mattress set on Friday afternoon. Yay! The sad story of our old mattress is that it was a King, but to get it up the stairs of our low-ceilinged townhome, you had to kind of bend it…which may be part of why it was hurting our backs, that it got damaged somehow when we moved in. Or, it could just be that it was about time for it to die….it was about 9 years old. So, new mattress came, King size, a week ago, but it couldn’t fit up the stairs. 🙁 So they took it away.…