Musings
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Tax Day
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00u6qUelp6c[/youtube]
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Friday Randomness
First off, Happy Friday the 13th. I’m not very superstitious, though I’ll admit to a few silly ones. I don’t open an umbrella indoors. I don’t walk under ladders. And I make wishes on white horses. Silly, I know. Anyway, Friday the 13th is a good day in my family. First off, it’s payday (yay!), and secondly, I remember the year my mom got pretty lucky on Friday the 13th. Saw this on Facebook. I don’t know the original source, but I liked it enough to share it here. What’s with the apostrophe s? Who is this SnackWell that owns the company? I’m confused. Or grumpy. Or both. I…
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Milk Vacation
My mom liked to say that we were broke, not poor. The differentiation is that being poor is generational, and most likely lasts at least a lifetime. You come from poor, you’re poor, your kids are poor. Broke, however, means you’re not living up to your economic potential just now, but you may not have been broke last year, and you don’t think you will be next year. It’s temporary. You don’t act poor, you still act like a lady or a gentleman, whatever that means within your family. Growing up as the child of a single mom, one who loved teaching in private Montessori schools and working for social…
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100 Years Ago Today*
Today is my darling Maya’s 16th birthday. I can’t believe it’s been 16 years already. Wow. The weekend is going to be full of birthday parties, family and friends and cake and fun. Part of having a daughter, in this time when things have gotten so much better for women than they were in the past, and yet being aware of how far we still have to go (birth control, harassment at work or on the street…why are these still issues? Insane and frustrating.)…part of that is seeing articles like this, and having them cause me to think of her. Of my hopes for her, and my dreams for her,…
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You’re Boring Us…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGDmBLAPikU[/youtube] (Title sung to the tune of ‘Notorious’ by Duran Duran) Ahem. Sorry, my blog is boring the heck out of me. Looking at a picture of orchid buds for weeks on end…whatever. So let’s see if perhaps I can come up with something else to talk about. I fully admit that I’ve posted most of these on Facebook already. But maybe you didn’t see them there, or maybe you’re not on Facebook, or perhaps you’re there, but we’re not friends. What a thought. Saw this chalkboard sentiment, and thought I’d share it here. Really, I couldn’t agree more. Please, live your beliefs. Unless your beliefs happen to SUCK, in…
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Friday Randomness
(Lovely painting of our local mountain, Mt. Diablo, by Mary Lou Correia, found here) The weather here in Sunny California has been, well, mostly Bright and Sunny, so I’ve been taking a lot of walks. Often I walk along the bike trail to the grocery store, pick up a few things, and walk home. It’s 3 or 4 miles round trip, I think. One thing I’ve noticed on the trail is little plastic bags full of dog poop. At least, I ASSUME that’s what they’re full of….I don’t open them and check. But they’re the little bags that are dispensed periodically along the trail, often next to a garbage can,…
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Omaha Steaks
For quite awhile now, we’ve been sending my Grandma and Great Aunt Omaha Steaks as a Christmas gift. They’re on a very limited income, and this is an easy way to make them feel spoiled. A few years ago, I found out that my Great Aunt doesn’t really LIKE steak much, so now we mostly pick the seafood items, with a few steaks thrown in for Grandma, who DOES like steak, though she likes it so well done it probably tastes like a hockey puck. No matter. This year when I was planning my gift giving, I decided to send some Omaha Steaks to my brother, Richard, and his wife,…
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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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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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Body Image for Girls
Starshine wrote a post a little while ago about the hyper-sexualized advertising she sees at the local mall, and brought up her concerns about raising her sons to be respectful of women and not objectify them, when they are surrounded by these images. She brings up a good point, and it’s important to raise our boys to understand that this is just advertising, and that the majority of women and girls do not go around in their underwear, with ‘come get me’ looks permanently on their faces, bent into unnatural positions. It’s a fantasy, and not even one that’s very interesting or original. As the mother of a daughter, my…
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Friday Randomness
I don’t have a lot to say, but I feel like I should say something…I mean, I like blogging, so I need to blog, right? OK. Here are a few random thoughts coming through my head right now. Is anyone else exhausted by the coverage of the anniversary of the attacks on September 11th? I know I am. That day will never be forgotten…it was a horrid horrid day, and it was captured on video, played over and over again for all to see. I don’t want to see those buildings falling, or people jumping to their deaths, or people covered in ashes, or the desperate ‘have you seen this…
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Bodega Bay
We decided not to take a regular vacation this year, partly because money is kinda tight, and also because Genevieve isn’t thriving, and we would feel weird asking anyone to take care of her for several days. Blind, kinda confused, not a lot of appetite, questionable tummy issues, etc. And since we live in a beautiful part of the country, we have been mostly staying close to home, and adding in a few day trips. Monday we went to San Francisco to see Another Earth, which was really good. Wednesday, we drove to Bodega Bay. I’d never been before, and Ted hadn’t been since he was 5 or 6. Bodega…
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Yay New York!
(photo found here) Someday, equal rights to marriage for all will hopefully be the law of the land everywhere. For now, at least, gay and lesbian couples can get married in New York. (That’s 6 states that have gotten there before California. People think that’s strange, but California is actually a very conservative state, with the exceptions of the Bay Area and the greater Los Angeles area.) Good going, New York! Just in time for Pride Week, too. Rocking good news.
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Miscallaneous
Back in February or March, Issa mentioned on Facebook that she was going to do the 30-Day Shred. What, I thought, is the 30-day shred? Perhaps I even asked her. Or perhaps I looked it up. Either way, I thought it might be good to mix up my workout routine a bit and try something new. I’m pretty good about taking walks, but I need something that builds a bit more muscle, and gets my heart rate up higher, since I rarely walk as fast as I could/should. It’s cheap on Amazon, and the reviews are great, so I went ahead and ordered it. The first time through, I really…