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Loving Your Aging Dog
There’s no two ways about it…Genevieve is an old lady. She takes 8 pills a day to keep her from having diarrhea, which sometimes works. She take 1 pill a day to help keep her from peeing uncontrollably. She takes 1 pill a day to help her appetite and cognitive function. She’s blind. She doesn’t leave the house anymore, except to go in the back yard to do her business. We take her out front sometimes, but after 2 1/2 years of being blind, I think it’s scary for her. I can’t leave her in the back yard, because she might get stuck behind the air conditioner unit or tangled…
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The Leftovers
Laurie Garvey hadn’t been raised to believe in the Rapture. She hadn’t been raised to believe in much of anything, except the foolishness of belief itself. We’re agnostics
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Looking Good
My mom was a big believer in reading. She was addicted to it. She read more than anyone else I have ever known. She loved to read everything, almost any genre, almost any book. LOVED it. When she was trying to figure things out, she would read to find a solution. Recipes, career advice, whatever. Parenting style. She loved her parents dearly, and she firmly believed that they did their best. But she also thought that they could have done better. So when she found she was going to have kids, she wanted to find out how to do things better than her parents had done. For the most part,…
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A Day in the City
Ted and I are both fortunate enough to be able to take the week off between Christmas and New Years, and it may be my favorite week of the year. Don’t ask me about that when I take time off in the summer, because I may change my mind, but for now, let’s say this is the best. The lead up to Christmas is one of hustle and bustle, with hurrying here and there, buying gifts, going to parties, wrapping gifts, sending cards, decorating the house, making latkes (for Hanukkah, which we also celebrate, because we’re atheists and can do whatever we want), enjoying Stollen Bread on St. Nicholas Day…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Young Adult
When I first saw the previews for ‘Young Adult’, I thought it looked like crap. Like another ‘Hangover’ or ‘Bridesmaids’ type film, but without much actual humor, and with a mean spirited protagonist. Then I heard that the people who made it also made two other films that I really liked, ‘Up In the Air’, and ‘Juno’, and I decided that I’d wait and see if the reviews were good. And they were, very good. Charlize Theron is Mavis Gary, a semi-successful writer of young adult books who lives in Minneapolis. We are shown a glimpse of her life, which seems to consist mainly of writer’s-block, drinking, trolling for men,…
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Tea Cake Sandwich Cookies
Saturday we celebrated one of my favorite holidays of the year: Baking Day. Baking Day is the day that the family all gathers together at Ted’s parents’ house, and we each pick a cookie (or other sweet treat) recipe, make it, and then we all take home an assortment of yummy goodness. I like it because it’s not a day for large meals and grand statements (like Christmas and Thanksgiving, both of which I love, but it’s really nice to have such a casual, fun day there in the middle), but instead it’s just a day to come together, bake delicious treats, and at the end of it all, counteract…
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War Horse
I’ve seen the previews for the film adaptation of War Horse, and mostly I wasn’t that excited. I love horses, but I’m not always sure I want to see a horse movie. I read an article in the local paper that pretty much changed my mind by saying that it was a ‘film to watch out for’. Oh, who am I kidding. I’ll see it. When I read it was based on a well loved children’s book, I decided that if I were going to see the film, perhaps I might want to read the book first. Luckily, my local library has it, and there was no waiting list. The…
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Movies
We’re a movie going family. Ted was a film major, once upon a time, and loved seeing any film, even if just to see what was wrong with it. I’m not quite (or nearly) so forgiving, but I do enjoy plopping down and enjoying a story, seeing what they might have to tell me, figuring out if it worked, all of that. So this last week, on our Thanksgiving break, in addition to seeing ‘Like Crazy‘, we saw three other new films, and one old one. First, on Wednesday, we went to see ‘The Descendants‘. I’ll admit that when I first saw the previews a few months ago, I was…
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Like Crazy
Jacob and Anna are a young couple who meet in college. They fall in love and spend a wonderful year together, before they graduate and it’s time for her to go home to England. She’s too much in love, though, and decides to stay through the summer before going home. Mistake. She’s violated her visa, and now she can’t get back into the country. So now what. He’s in Los Angeles, trying to start a business making furniture. She’s in England, trying to start a business doing some kind of writing. She can’t come to him, which she’s willing and eager to do. He could go to her, but he’s…
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Friday Randomness ~ 11/11/11
First off, let’s take a moment to thank all of the Veterans this Veterans’ Day, for their patriotism and service. There is a sad, lovely poem written during the First World War, by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian soldier and surgeon, after he witnessed the death of a friend. Lieutenant Colonel McCrae died of pneumonia during the war, in 1918. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were…
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Fall Back…
Love it or hate it, it’s that time….Daylight Saving. Fall back, meaning that you turn your clock back an hour and get an extra hour of sleep. You’ll come home in the darkness, and perhaps it shan’t be quite so dark when you’re trying to awake in the morning. I like the evening sun, but I also like the morning sun, so I wonder if perhaps the answer isn’t to be found so much in fiddling with the clock and nature, but rather with moving closer to the equator. Either that, or following our bodies’ clocks, which would be closer to sleeping more in the winter and less in the…
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How Progressive Taxation works
(click the tax tables to enlarge) I’ve been hearing a lot about a proposal to simplify the tax code lately, using a flat tax, which would tax everyone at the same flat rate. Cain says 9%, and would add a Federal sales tax to the mix. Perry says 20%, but doesn’t mention a sales tax. The idea is that we should all be taxed the same rate, because it’s more fair, and that having one tax rate would simplify things. Well, before you fire your accountant (job killers!), remember that it’s not the withholding tables that make things complicated. It’s the exemptions and deductions and credits. So really, in order…
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The Solitude of Prime Numbers
The image of Michela playing with a twig and breaking up her own reflection in the water before sliding into it like a sack of potatoes ran through his head like an electric shock. Exhausted, he sat down a couple of feet from the river’s edge. He turned around to look behind him and saw the darkness that would last for many hours to come. He stared at the gleaming black surface of the river. Again he tried to remember its name, but couldn’t. He plunged his hands into the cold earth. On the bank the dampness made it softer. He found a broken bottle, a sharp reminder of some…
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Soft Shell Chicken Tacos
Back before the internet gave me good cooking ideas, in the days of ridiculously slow modems and no real websites to visit, we got a little spiral bound cookbook produced by Sargento Cheese, called Simply the Best, filled with ingredients that utilized their cheesy products. We have a few quick favorites that we find ourselves returning to, again and again. The recipe we probably make move in this cookbook is for Soft Shell Chicken Tacos. It’s stupidly easy, and really tasty. And if you have some of the chicken mixture left the next day (we usually do, because I double the recipe) it makes an AMAZING omelet, with either some…