Musings
-
Happy HNT
When I was a little girl, my mom was a Montessori teacher. She has told me about how they taught the preschool kids their left from their right. They would paint an “L” on their left shoe (maybe it was an “R” on the right shoe? Maybe it was the back of their hand? I was 5, cut me some slack!) Anyway, any time a child wanted to know whether that was their right foot or their left, all they had to do is look for that “L”, and then they knew that was the left, and the other one was the right. Nice, huh? Well, the CEO at my…
-
You Can’t Go Home Again….Well, not completely…
Yesterday I went to San Francisco with my friend Neva for the day. We both took the day off of work, and went in to play hooky. What fun! First stop was Macy’s, because I wanted to bask in the glory of the Union Square Macy’s, which has at least 10 times the offerings of my local suburban Macy’s. Breathed it in. Loved it. It reminded me of being a teenager and coming in to the City to shop there, and also how I used to go there on my lunch break when I worked at a nearby hotel. We had an early-ish lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, which was…
-
The weekend so far…
This is a four day weekend for me. 🙂 Friday, Ted and I both went on a fieldtrip to Sacramento. Why both of us? Because it’s better than working, that’s why. So we drove 3 kids to Sacramento. First the class stopped at the old Governor’s Mansion, which was pretty interesting. It’s an old Victorian house, with 23 rooms, and they have it done up like it would have been in the early 1900s. Our tour guide was full of misinformation, which made us wonder, does he know what he’s talking about with this place at all? He told our class that MLK was shot in ’66 or ’67, that…
-
The place where you’re from…
I’m reading a short story called “Post and Beam“, by Alice Munro. The main character has moved away from her small town and her small town family, and is now living in the city. Her cousin hops on a bus and travels across Canada to come for a visit. One of the themes of the story is how we leave part of who we are at home when we leave. So here is Polly, the country cousin, who has come to visit Lorna, and is a bit put off by Lorna’s ‘post and beam’ house (reminds me of the Eichler homes that are popular around here…the picture above is of…
-
Your Epidermis is Showing…
My friend NYJ (That’s New York J, as opposed to me, CAJ, for California J) is addicted to this procedure called Microdermabrasion. She says they basically sand blast your face to get the dead skin and stuff off, and your skin is SO much softer and absorbs moisturizer much better. The process is performed at a spa, and supposedly makes a world of difference, which is why the full series is worth the approx. $1,000 you pay. I’ve seen pictures on the web, before and after type photos, and yeah, it looks amazing. But I saw NYJ recently, and she looks the same as she did the last time I…
-
Back woes…
I have been suffering from some upper back pain lately, which has been travelling down my arm and into my thumb. Not fun. So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I have begun seeing a chiropractor. It’s helping, but not as much or as fast as I had hoped. I switched from cute high heels to almost flat comfy shoes. It has been suggested to me by both my husband and a loyal reader, that perhaps my problem comes from the way I sit at the computer. Well, people HAVE been known to make fun of me and the way I sit at the computer, because I hunch over…
-
Short and Sweet
I have to keep it short and sweet today…Maya has homework that she forgot about last night, so I have to wake her up soon to do it. I have a deadline at work. And, most importantly, my friend Rosemary is coming into town from Pennsylvania! HOORRRAY! So I’ll be hanging with her and her family this afternoon and tonight, before she departs for Lake Tahoe. Sigh. Nice weekend ahead. So, in the political turn that this blog has taken in the last two days or so, I’ll bring this up. Then maybe no politics for awhile, OK? OK. There’s a law suit that has beenn filed by the National…
-
New Shoes
So I’ve been having some problems with my back as of late…a pain right next to the shoulder blade. Mostly I ignore it, because I’m lame that way. Anyway, recently it has started to spread down my left arm, through the elbow and the thumb. Ouch. One night, I couldn’t sleep because of it. Well, only little infant babies have an excuse to come between me and my zzzzs, so I decided to finally do something about it. What to do, though? Go to the doctor? The chiropractor? Physical therapy? All good options, with me leaning more toward the chiro or the PT. For no real reason other than I…
-
Misc Thoughts…
I don’t have a central theme today…just thought I would pass on some things I have heard about, that may be of interest. 1. I was listening to the ever-beloved iPod this morning, to a podcast of To the Best of Our Knowledge, and one thing they mentioned in passing was these genetically modified flowers that have been developed in Denmark. Not so hot on the genetically modified agriculture, but these are good in a way that few things in this world are good. What do they do? You take the seeds to a country that has been at war, like, say, Afghanistan or Iraq, and you plant them in…
-
Best to NOT be Poor. Remember that.
I have a cousin, K, who is poor. She has made a lot of mistakes in her life, stupid decisions, and is stuck with the consequences. So she finds herself the single mother of four young children, trying to get off of welfare, two dead-beat dads, etc. (One may pay some child support, I’m not sure.) How to get out of this situation, you may ask? Well, let’s assume that education is the way to go. So, she goes to the local community college to take classes to get into nursing school. What about the 4 kids? Who takes care of them while she’s in class? My grandmother, who is…
-
Do you ever wonder…
Have you ever been walking along on a sunny morning, maybe with your dog, maybe the kid, maybe both, and you’re maybe walking through a parking lot or something, and you see a used condom sitting there? Of course you ignore it, and if the dog is with you, you make sure they don’t do something gross like eat it or whatever. But then later, you wonder…this is a very intimate thing, it was, literally, the only thing between two people…and here it is, in this very public place…how does that happen? Ever wonder that? No, me neither. But, as I was coming home from walking Genevieve the dog last…
-
Car Shopping & Left Bank
Last night, since Maya was out of town on business, Ted and I decided to go crazy and do those things we can’t do when she’s around…that’s right, we went car shopping and then to dinner. 🙂 We are a two car family, one of which is a 2005 Camry, complete with car payments, while the other is a 1986 Volvo (It’s a classic, right? At 20 years, it’s a classic? Why would anyone call a Volvo a classic? It’s a box!) Anyway, we went looking at cars to perhaps replace the Volvo. Sigh. It’s probably a good idea, because the car is wearing out. But we went from no…
-
Car Shopping & Left Bank
Last night, since Maya was out of town on business, Ted and I decided to go crazy and do those things we can’t do when she’s around…that’s right, we went car shopping and then to dinner. 🙂 We are a two car family, one of which is a 2005 Camry, complete with car payments, while the other is a 1986 Volvo (It’s a classic, right? At 20 years, it’s a classic? Why would anyone call a Volvo a classic? It’s a box!) Anyway, we went looking at cars to perhaps replace the Volvo. Sigh. It’s probably a good idea, because the car is wearing out. But we went from no…
-
Pining….
Maya left this morning for an overnight ‘camping’ field trip with her class. I say ‘camping’ in quotes, because they get to sleep in heated cabins. That’s MY kind of ‘camping’ too, by the way. I remember going to science camp when I was in 6th grade, which was a 1 week camp that all of the school kids went to. It was SO FUN, perhaps the most fun legally allowed for kids who haven’t gone through puberty yet. So I’m sure she is going to have a GREAT time, hiking and singing around the camp fire (if they don’t get rained on…storm scheduled for tonight or tomorrow early), giggling…
-
Yoga thoughts…
A few months ago, during my yoga class, my teacher talked about a philosophy that kind of threw me for a loop. This was before I started my blog, so I didn’t write about it then…you all know I can’t have a thought without writing these days…and since I have no new thoughts today (outside of sorting girl scout cookies and what’s for dinner), I thought I would try to bring some of those lost yogi thoughts back to my conscious mind. Now, I don’t know what any of these philosophies were CALLED, because I was doing yoga, not taking notes. So don’t ask me. But…here it is…a lot of…