Happy T-day!

A few days ago I had the random desire to see the movie "Tremors 3" again. Okay, so it wasn't random--I have the bad habit of quoting from the movie after certain ordinary bodily functions (all right! I admit it! If they stink, I shout 'Blast your own damn ass, ass blaster!'), and it had been a doozy of a day. Anyway, I was overwhelmed by the need to see Bert and company in action.

My family doesn't have a whole lot of traditions, but I feel safe saying that in the Wagner family, nothing says "holiday" quite like the Tremors movies (or tv show). I can remember the long ago Thanksgiving my oldest sister introduced us to the first movie. It was a beautiful day.

Then when I was living with my mom and brother, he was a hardcore Tremors fan, hooking me on the sequels and the show. Wow. That's some good television. Catch it if you still can--I don't think it's on the SciFi channel anymore. But you can still get all four movies on DVD (and if you've only seen the original on VHS, ruuuuun to the video store and get your hands on the DVD; the picture quality is just so much better). In fact, we were able to rent the Tremors pack, which has all four movies on it.

Yes, I did allow my four-year-old to watch Tremors (the swearing was the worst part!). I did try to cover her eyes in the scary parts. However, all that happened is that she said she'd like a pet graboid to keep in the back yard. She thought they were kind of cute.

Is she my kid or what?

Whoah ... Turkey!

I can't believe that Thanksgiving is just two days away! I am super-duper excited. This year, I am making a kale/swiss chard gratin, mashed tatoes & gravy, sweet potatoes and cranberry bliss bars. The piece de resistance: Organic Valley Eggnog. We tried this kind of eggnog at the farmer's market Saturday, and it's incredible. Not too sickly sweet, not too fakey rumish. Not yellow, either. Just mild and nutmeggy.

I love Thanksgiving! I love all those warm happy feelings of Thankfulness. And a full tummy. And our annual trip to the zoo (it's almost all volunteers running the show, so I feel slightly less bad about going out on Thanksgiving). And having breakfast with Heidi! It's just a lovely, lovely day.

The only trouble this year is how to fit in a couple hours of writing in between all that family stuff?

She failed me!

So for years--about 16, now--I've been in love with a book called Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean. It's the most amazing book I've ever read, and I re-read it almost every Halloween. (It's also landmarked in my head as one of the books lost in our housefire, when I was twelve.)

But I've never read any of Dean's other books. I never even tried to find any at the library, and I'm not sure why. I usually pick one author and gulp down every known work in an orgy of author-love. So this year, I decided, what the heck? Why not read more P. D.? And I checked out Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary.

It was fine, I guess. I mean, I love Gentian, the main character, and I liked her friends. But OMG! She used the same tricks! Even some of the same quotes! And once again, she spent pages summarizing plays that the protaganist is reading. Uggh! Uggh! Uggggggh! And to make it worse, the ending was totally unsatisfying, and the girl pisses off her cat. You just don't go around separating a girl from her cat unless it's for a really effective and satisfying climax, and this ending did not merit it. Jeez.

So I put another book on hold by Dean just in case this one was a fluke. I've got my fingers crossed. I don't want my heart to break!

Brain twisters

Why is it so much more tempting to make a blog entry than work on my latest novel-in-progress? Hmmn. I suppose part of it is knowing Fibee will wake up any moment, ruining any attempt of mine to even think coherently. Actually, now that you mention it, that's probably the biggest reason. If a bird makes a clicking sound remotely similar to the sound Fi makes when she turns off her nightlight, I spasmodically save every document and prepare to slam the laptop closed. Whew. It's exhausting.

Another difficult-to-answer question: why do my parents torture me? Why do they keep saying "Why don't you visit more often?" Or "Well if you were up here, I could get you a llama for about $5." Or worse: "Well, if you'd come up and help me build the coop, you could play with the chickens all you wanted." Yeah. Torture, especially when you consider the fact they live in WILBUR, Washington! In case you aren't familiar, it's in the the northwest corner of BFE. You know, the part with no trees. Or jobs.

Sigh. These are the mysteries that torture a woman.

Doo-doo-doo-doo-Dooooora!

I have had the Dora theme song stuck in my head all day. It's painful.

It is so creepy. I have become the face of the Portland Children's Museum. Birthday parties were featured in Portland Monthly, which is kind of my thing (actually, my face is on the birthday party brochures), and now my Bendy Wendy program is featured. And I'm on the newsletter. It's just kind of ... weird. Like almost being famous.

Me! Almost famous!

Holy freakin fong!

I'm online in my very own house!!! Wow! Wow! Wow!

This Tuesday in Garden Club we're going to talk about worms. I am so excited. I actually couldn't fall asleep last night because I couldn't stop thinking about how great the lesson will be! Then I had dreams that the worms in my bin crawled out and I was searching all over the house for the escapees.

Back ... a little bit

So I'm making an effort to get back on blogger. Dial-up is coming soon to our household ...

Do you ever have one of those days when you want to abuse the ellipsis? I think it's because I got up at a quarter to 6 this morning. I could have slept until 6, but I was starting to get nervous about this green thing the museum sent me to for breakfast, so I gave up. And I was right to be nervous. The meeting was at the Multnomah Athletic Center, and it is a frightening wealth-center. I just kept chanting to myself, "You have an invitation. At least it's not the City Club." I was nervous as hell until I saw some a couple of people wearing jeans. There's nothing like a room full of business suits to make you uncomfortable, and nothing like the comforting presence of people who are dressed worse than you.

I am cruising along, slowly, slowly, but honestly with my NaNoWriMo project. I won't make it to 50K, but 40 is not unreasonable, and I'm in LOVE with the book. It is worth waking up early for!

Sorry gang!

For now the only blogging I am doing is on my myspace blog:
http://www.myspace.com/wagnerianbuffo

I miss my blog!

Man, I miss blogging every day. Since I stopped, it feels like my writing brain has just ... shut off.

Last week was an overwhelming kind of week. I had my second meeting with Growing Gardens, and I am super psyched for the class to begin. I am also extremely gung-ho about starting a worm bin. John and I sewed bags for the preschool, which sucked up some time. John set up a stand at the Alberta Art Walk and sold a painting. I had lunch with my sister, and then my neice spent the night. We took the girls to the Polish festival on Saturday. And then yesterday was crazy day at work!

So, all in all, busy. But not too busy to learn how to play Boggle!

Back from outer space

So still no Internet at home, but I am back from vacation. We took a great trip to Eastern Washington--and no, that's not an oxymoron. Stay tuned for pictures!

Back to the 50's!

There it is folks, the image you've been waiting for. The one that's going to change the world, free up the landfills and rock your fridge.

In case you're rubbing your head, wondering what in tarnations I'm talking about, this is a picture of a bowl of leftover macaroni and cheese that's about to go in the fridge. But what the heck is on top of it?

That's right. A saucer. An ordinary, garden variety saucer. Not plastic wrap. The saucer is--get this--like a LID for the bowl. No plastic involved. No matching lids. Nothing along those lines. A reusable saucer and a reusable bowl. Wow.

In case you wondered, that's what people used to do when they had leftovers, before the plastic era came along. If there was no handy crock or jar, they just topped a bowl with a plate or saucer and considered that food covered.

Rock on, housewives of yore!

I was sniffed by a ostospermophilus beechiyi!

And he sniffed John's camera, too! I'm not really into taming wild animals, but this little Californian ground squirrel was so darn cute! He had no fear of people whatsoever and happily scrounged for food in the parking lot. Unsurprisingly, he was at least three times bigger than the other ground squirrels. I had never seen an animal with fat rolls on its arms before--he doesn't look that fat in this picture, but he had double chins AND little pudge-rolls on each limb. Poor guy. I see a short life for him. I thought about bringing him home, but once again, the no-pets rule trumps all.

I am a bad reader

I will be the first to admit that I am a terrible, uncritical reader. Unless I run across a major typographical or grammatical error, my first reading of a text is basically thoughtless. I just read a friend's critique of HPatDH, and I noticed none of the problems she noticed. Plot holes? What? My total experience was this: adrenaline, tears, adrenaline , tears. Giggle. Tears, tears, tears. And that was it.

These things continue even in the world of nonfiction (philosophy and music excepted). Right now I'm reading an amazing and terribly amusing book called The God Delusion, by Dawkins. It's a hard-core denouncement of religion and an appeal to atheism, and I'm eating it up. Six months ago, I was reading The Soul's Religion, by Thomas Moore (the contemporary Christian writer, not the 19th century one) and eating it up.

That's not to say that I never read critically. I practically lived and breathed critical analysis in college, and when I pick up anything on philosophy of mind, the derisive comments are scathing. When I read my own writing or those of people I'm editing, I can be downright brutal (in a warm and considerate way, of course). Some might even use the word 'nit-picky.'

But I guess when it comes to escapist literature, I box up my brain and let it snooze. It's pretty pathetic, and it's a bad habit. A habit I think I should break now, before it causes me permanent damage.

Kt, you've inspired me! From now on, I shall try to be a better reader!

There's no place like home

Sometimes I become overwhelmed by a vast sense of loneliness. It invades me at times I least expect it or at times when I'm feeling a little weak to begin with. It's not a loneliness for any person I know--it's a loneliness for small living things and for tall trees and the sound of rain hitting the ferns. I suppose it's homesickness.

I love living in Portland. It's a charming city, full of all the things that are good about a larger community. There's a great library system, fantastic restaurants, art, music and, most important of all, a good coffee shop on every corner. But it's not home.

Home gets a little mixed up in my head. Mostly, it's Ash Valley, with its narrow canyons and second-growth trees. I spent most of my childhood exploring a space the size of three city blocks: a wonderful expanse of swamp, stream and forest. I can remember a few hikes with Jan Tetrault, who took us kids out of our backyards and up into the hills (they'd be mountains in Pennsylvania). She told us the names of plants. What a gift.

Sometimes, home is the even smaller stretch of Gardiner that I walked with Fiona in her baby pouch. Throughout the cemetery were old garden classics like grape hyacinth and hydrangea and plum trees that were the children of the pioneers' orchards. Then there were the tenacious weed-fields that were slowly taking back the old mills.

Further afield but equally loved was the beach and the spruce forests abutting the shore. I can think of no place more enchanted than the woods behind Haceta Head. The forest spans no fewer than 4 microclimates with varying guilds of plants and lichens, and the duff is so thick that your feet spring up on every step.

And of course home has never been home without the animals. My first real memories include the lambs, butting up against smell and all milky-smelling. After that, there were the cats, so many I can hardly count. Squirrels and deer and rescued baby bats and ducks and snakes and horses. And chickens. And donkeys. The city can feel a little lonely with all the pets just hidden away.

That loneliness is always there. Most of the time, it slumbers, held under the surface by the distractions of city life. But sometimes, when things get quiet, it wakes up. And I am homesick again.

Guerrilla gardens update!

Sorry for all the delays on guerrilla gardening at its finest! But I've gotten things up and running and should have more regular fantastic posts on everybody's favorite topic: the shady side of plants!

So check out what's new on http://guerrillagardenspdx.blogspot.com/!

Survivalist

It's hard to believe, but I think deep down I want to be a survivalist. You know Bert from Tremors? I want to be him.

A lot of that has to do with my childhood out in the Oregon woods (when you put it like that, it sounds sooo rustic). My parents weren't really the back-to-the-land types--mostly because they'd never left it. I mean, right now they live in a house my dad built himself, and he only added a bathroom last summer. His designs for an outdoor shower with a homemade flash water heater were pretty cool, too. And my mom? Well, she grew up without electricity.

Needless to say, childhood memories of helping in the garden and licking jam out of pots aren't all idyllic, but as I get older, I find myself drawn more and more strongly to that life. It's not just nostalgia. Exposure to "The Morning After" and "Max Max & The Thunderdome" at an early age seems to have triggered a profound paranoia about the end of civilization as we know it. Deep down, I'm just waiting for the petroleum to run out and my knowledge of hand-sewing to come into play.

Anyway, if you get a chance, I recommend the book that I'm reading: The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook, by Albert Bates. It's like a summary of all the stuff I'm obssessed with, give or take a few pointers on loom construction and operation of your own printing press.

Oh yeah. I'm getting more Bert every day.

White trash vegan

Tonight I had to dip down into the bottom of my recipe cheats and make something tasty and easy to go with macaroni salad. I was feeling mighty lazy, so here's what I came up with:

Po' White Beets
1 bunch baby beets and greens
1/2 Tb olive oil
1/2 C lemonade
1 tsp white wine vinegar
salt & pepper to taste.

Scrub beets and remove all but 2-3 inches of stems. Heat oil in pan on med. high heat; when warm, toss beets around for about 2 minutes. Add lemonade. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer until beets are fork-tender (about 4 minutes if very small). Add beet greens, vinegar, salt and pepper. Cover and simmer an additional minute until everything is soft.

Lazy Kidneys
1 can kidney beans
1 Tb ketchup
1 tsp onion powder
2 dashes hot sauce

Stir to combine and heat in the microwave.

The creepy thing about these foods is that they turned out the same color. Still, they tasted mighty tasty and took less than 10 minutes to prepare; they were low-fat and healthy. It almost made up for the Safeway macaroni salad. Yummmmmmm.

Best of Opera Buffo

Man, I was doing some maintenance on the site and started reading old posts from my first year as a blogger. What great memories! Some of the stuff Fiona used to do just cracked me up. I might have to repost some of the better entries, because they are worth reading again.

Oh, and if anybody misses the scintillating conversation about water conservation, I'm sorry, but said site maintenance may have eaten it. Oops. Just remember to take shorter showers, and if it's yellow, let it mellow!

Wasting away

John and Fiona spent yesterday in the basement, staying cool. John also tackled an experiment. He decided to see how much water a load of laundry uses.

He recently picked up some fifteen-gallon drums from work, so he brought some down to the basement and placed the outlet hose inside one. When it got full, he moved it to a second drum, which fortunately, was just big enough. A full load of laundry takes about thirty gallons of water to wash and rinse.

Thirty gallons.

A camel will go four months without water and then drink thirty gallons without stopping. It may go another four months without needing to drink again.

According to Missippi State, a productive, full-grown apple tree needs about 30 gallons a day to live and make apples.

According to the Afghanistan Human Develpment Report, 20 liters of water a day is a basic human right. One load of laundry = water for about 5 people for one day.

Thirty gallons, so I can smell good.

Recycling for chimps!

Today's big excitement: I made arrangements to collect the museum's toner & ink cartridges and donate them to Chimps Inc! Chimps Inc is a chimp sanctuary in Bend. I just read about them in the Oregonian today (they are embroiled in a lawsuit to keep two of their ape charges, who may or may not 'belong' to another chimp sanctuary in Texas), and I was so excited to learn that there was a sanctuary HERE, in Oregon! For about twenty minutes, I was all set to move to Bend so I could become a volunteer.

It's funny. Growing up, I was always afraid of chimpanzees. (This might be because of a horror movie with a murderous chimp.) My mother always disliked them, too. But lately, I have become very drawn to chimpanzees. For some reason, of all the creatures who have suffered at the hands of humans, chimpanzees now touch me the most deeply. In some ways, I feel so strongly about them that I really would pack up and move to Bend if I thought that was the best way I could help them. And I don't know. Maybe it would.

Why can't they live in Corvallis? Or someplace that's not the desert?

I'm gonna have the greenest lawn in town!

No, aliens have not confiscated mybrain cells and replaced them with a suburbanite's. See, our landlord included a "you must water your lawn" clause in our rental agreement. He spent about 15 minutes going over it. (You should have been there for the section about signage--political signs are okay, business signs, no. That took at least half an hour.)

Anyway, John has turned into a super water-recycler. He decided he would empty out our baths and put the water on the lawn. That was only a couple of days ago, and already, the lawn in front of our half of the duplex is three shades darker than the anemic stuff by the neighbor's.

I don't know Steve would feel about our littl graywater processing system, but I hope he appreciates that this summer his water bill ought to be a little lower--and his lawn a little greener.

Putting a face on my veggies

At first the subject was "Food With A Face," but since I don't eat foods that actually have faces (i.e. critters), it didn't make sense. What I meant is that I finally got my first box of CSA produce and I got to meet our farmer.

Now, Lyle is not the lovable hippy who first turned me into a CSA nut, back when I was living in Minnesota with my sister. I think he is a recovering New Yorker, and he treats his subscribers with the brusque attitude you imagine when you think "New Yorker." The attitude is essentially "you'll get your vegetables when and where I tell you to get your vegetables, and you'd better like it." I want to take umbrage, but it's pretty hard to complain when you're holding the most beautiful bok choy you've ever touched and the man's giving you instructions on the preparation of Indian Mustard. Which, by the way, is at least as spicy raw as horseradish.

And he stuffed a giant bunch of hot pink wild roses into our produce box just because I said they were pretty.

Yesterday, leaving the farmers' market, my head was spinning. I really wasn't sure what to think about our new grocery set-up. But this afternoon, with the roses on the table and a single purple bloom nodding above the a bunch of chives on the kitchen counter, I feel so smitten I have no room for complaints. And the perfect kale I stirred into our curried vegetables was so tender and tasty, I knew there was no turning back.

My kind of W

I have a confession. I read Vogue. And W. And Teen Vogue. Okay, those are just the fashion magazines that I have subscriptions to. You can put Lucky in my hands, and I’m salivating. Even Town and Country makes me grin.

What is it about me and these magazines? After all, they stand for everything I’m against: consumerism, selfishness, fur. They trade on the frailty of young women’s body images. They substitute journalism for advertising, and worst of all, they are loaded with perfume samples!

But I can’t get enough of them. I can’t get enough of Stella McCartney. Dolce and Gabbana. Alexander McQueen. I can not tear my eyes away from a photograph of Coco Rocha, and if it includes Agyness Deyn, so much the better. (So, so much better.)

On a good day, I like to chalk it up to a love of beauty, art, design. On a bad day—the kind of day I catch myself waxing nostalgic for "America’s Next Top Model," Season 3—I wonder if I’m really the person I think I am.

Then I reach for The Vegetarian Times with a shrug. Everybody’s got their weaknesses. Mine are just a little glossier than I’d like them to be.

Curse of the blogging 'meme'

So Kt got hit with a blogging "meme," which I personally think is a bastardization of the word. The idea was coined by Richard Dawkins and used a lot by one of my favorite philosophers of mind, Daniel Dennett, and really has been used mostly to discuss the parasitical function of religion (i.e., how many religions contain ideas that are actually harmful to the individual organism, but spur along the religion itself--hey, I'm just quoting D.D. from his last visit to Portland, folks). Anyway, I digress. It sounds like I'm supposed to answer the following question:

Why do you blog? Give five answers.

1. Because I am narcissistic and love to subject others to my own rambling thoughts.
2. Because I can vent philosophal thoughts with facing other philosophers--or go back to school.
3. Because it keeps my writing muscles sharp.
4. To share my real thoughts with friends that, because of distance, would probably only get a shallow Christmas-card-level of communication any other way.
5. Because my own handwriting is fairly terrible and I have gotten too lazy to use a paper journal (and hey, it saves paper!).

That's what it's all about

At the museum, there is an area for children to use a computer to take their picture and type a little caption, then print out their document. Today my coworker found one a girl had printed and lost. It said: I am 6 years old. I love my mommy very much. I wish she would come down from heaven so I could see her again.

My little girl is sick and miserable today. I hugged her extra, extra tightly.

Mother's Day!

So today is my *4th* Mother's Day. Whoah.

It's so mind-boggling, I'm still kind of reeling from it. Being a mom is so great! Yes, there are all those tantrums and whiney moments, but 9 times out of 10, it's good stuff. It is just a treat to watch the formation of this special little creature.

If you're not a Mom today, why don't you take the chance to reach out to the kids in this world? It might be a pain in the butt to add a volunteering gig to your schedule, but even a one-time stint at your local children's museum or hospital can put a little spark in your life.

Kanzi

I am reading an amazing book: "Apes, Language, & the Human Mind," by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, et al. It is the story of Sues' work with a bonobo named Kanzi. Kanzi's mother was in a language study at a Language Research Center in Atlanta, and because of Kanzi's early exposure to humans and the English language, Kanzi has picked up an amazing ability to communicate. He has a grasp of complex grammatical structures that is superior to many 2-year-olds, and his abilities keep growing. He does not have the brain power of a human adult--for one, he doesn't have a strong short-term memory (at least linguistically). But he can communicate and interact with humans as well as a young child.

Kanzi is more able than most bonobos because of his early-childhood experiences. He was raised in a very rich environment where he was given a lot of language stimuli & great impetus to use it. Reading about his life, I can not help thinking of the chimpanzees at our zoo, who live in a concrete bunker and whose "enrichment activities" are mostly about finding food that's been strung from the ceilings or placed in a box. Of course, it's better than the old way of just locking the poor creatures in a spartan cage. But it's a far cry from the kind of place that could really stimulate them.

What if all the zoo monkeys got to live in a space like Kanzi's? What if, instead of being on display for our entertainment, the apes were allowed--in some safe, appropriate way--to interract with humans? What if they were given a chance to learn English? What could possibly be so wrong about allowing animals to be ambassadors and not statuary?

Blogging to blog

Most of the times I only put an entry on this blog when I have some deep thought or opinion that I want to express clearly and somewhere others can comment upon. That's why there aren't nearly as many blog entries as I wish there were! Of course, the kinds of opinions I have are usually sappy leftish mish-mash, so that might actually be a blessing to anybody who ever reads this.

But today I was reading Snarpinions, the reviewing arm of Snarke.net, and just felt so ... lame. I mean, I always think I'm going to do some writing. I have lots of swell ideas. But then I don't. I have turned into a writing blob. Okay, I do have some notes for the mind-body-yoga project, so I don't suck that badly. I've just been slacking a little the last three weeks. Or four.

Maybe I do suck!

People suck

So Kate, my niece, went into a pet store that focuses on reptiles and fish. And they were selling rats--for reptile chow. Now that's something Kate can live with, even though she's a rat maniac, but when she needed to wash her hands after a close encounter with rat pee, she saw in the back room something sad: clear plastic under-the-bed storage tubs crammed full of rats. That's right: plastic tubs full of miserable, sickly rodents. Is that any life for any creature--no matter what its fate will be?

The pet industry is cruel to animals. Do your research before you give your money to people who sell animals and who sell animal products. Don't allow businesses who perpetuate cruelty to make money!

On that note: Don't shop at the Tropical Hut!

The Scent of Luxury

Luxury smells like an herb from Madagascar. It is a light fruity scent, not cloying at all, and according to the Dior company, that aroma plus a Nobel prize will combat 11 of the 20 signs of aging. The other 9 are battled by a combination of other extracts and acids, also available from the brilliant minds back in France.

Luxury feels like a trip to fairy land. It is the gentle brush of kitten fur against your cheek. It is the soft tap of butterfly toes on your eye lids. It is the soft exhalation of a pretty girl looking over her work, and the little burst of giggle bubbles in your mouth as you take the gold-rimmed mirror and see yourself as you have never seen yourself before, as beautiful as an elf-queen.

Luxury is pretty damn great.

But be prepared for luxury's fall-out when you come back from fairy land. Be prepared for the one-eyed beggar girl and her sweet smile. Be prepared for the wave of overwhelming guilt. Luxury is not for the weak. The faint of heart will succumb to luxury's power or cower away from its persuasive touch.

The better option is to hold it quietly in your heart, a secret treasure. A source of knowing you never guessed at before. Luxury transcendant.

And as you give the girl your last fifty cents, she looks beyond the shopping bags and says: "You have a beautiful smile."

Yesterday's blog-a-roo!

So, in response to yesterday's big blog post about health and energy and the mind, I am really excited about this! I saw on the library catalog a book by a lady who uses YOGA to treat mental health issues in children, and then I found a web page for yoga therapists! I am super geeked out.

Minds, bodies & children

So today I read an article about parents whose 4-year-old daughter died because of a lethal overdose of prescription drugs. Her psychiatrist had diagnosed the girl (and her two older sibligs) with ADHD & bipolar disorder, and testimony for the prosecution claims the parents kept the girl overdosed on meds to keep her asleep and docile for long periods of time.

This case is obviously the extreme tip of the iceberg, but it is indicative of the way the mental health system functions in our society today and I hope it is drawing attention to a critical problem: the massive consumption of prescription drugs for mental symptoms.

The human brain is arguably the most complex biochemical-energy system on the planet, and neuroscientists have barely begun to figure it out. Drug therapies for the brain have come a long way, but they are still crude tools for a delicate situation. Every drug has a complex array of side effects (and intended effects) that change the brain's chemistry is ways we aren't prepared to even analyze.

I believe that when it come to tinkering with the brain, everyone involved should take the most conservative path. Somebody's going into seizures? Fine, give them drugs. Somebody's blacking out and losing memories and completely afunctional? Drugs might be helpful. Somebody can't concentrate in school? Try something else. Feeling down all the time? Don't just reach for a prescription--try something else first. If you're under the age of 25 (neuroscientists have suggested that in our information-heavy society, the brain does not show the signs of final maturity until about that age nowadays), and your brain is still growing-- try something else first.

It is hard to accept that the mind is part of the body, and that bodies have their own healing wisdom. If you take away the things that block the body's healing mechanisms, it will take care of itself. If you fuck with it, you're going to cause more trouble than it's worth.

There are many successful alternatives to drug therapies for many of the mild afflictions of the mind. There are a lot of great psychologists doing work out there, and that's awesome. But let's not forget that the mind is primarily an energy system. As a supplement to work with a pschologist, retraining the pathways of brain and giving patients better coping strategies, most people could greatly benefit from treatment with an energy worker. Systems like reiki, qi gong and yoga can give people the tools they need to change the way energy works inside their body and inside their mind.

I don't feel the need to go into details, but I know for a fact that energy work can change the health balance of your mind. I know that it changed mine greatly for the better.

As for the parents with the dead four-year-old, well, it's a sad story. And whether they are guilty or not, it doesn't really matter. They have lost their little girl in a horrible tragedy for which they are certainly responsible in some way. They'll live with that forever, and that's a long, long punishment.

Busy is good!

Yesterday was awesome. I got a little bit of everything on my list done: did some newbie-yoga; wrapped up the 2nd draft of Part I of the novel; took notes for the potential philosophy project; painted; killed zombies; and ate Doritos. It was such a good day.

Today, I'm not working quite so hard. Instead I'm socializing, which is a good thing. A few nights ago I went out with my co-workers for drinks, and it kind of sucked. Today I went out for lunch with my sister and now I'm hanging with her, which is much, much better. It definitely reflects the difference between socializing with people you know and are very comfortable around, and socializing with people you don't. I have been out with one of the girls before and we've always had a great time, but when you throw a whole group of people together, it just isn't the same.

Jeez, this is a lame post. Time to surf the library webpage and drink coffee!

The Dogs of Babel

Yesterday I threatened John with a long post about how phenomenal this book (The Dogs of Babel) is and how much it resonated with me and how perfect it was. Well, he lucked out. I used up all my fuel yesterday in a forty-minute in-depth summary/plot analysis/symbolism discourse/harangue that made his eyes roll up in his head. Poor guy! Anyway, today all I will say is READ THIS BOOK!

Actually, "The Dogs of Babel" was recommended to me by a co-worker, who also recommended "Ella Minnow Pea." They turned out to be wonderful books. They broke the 2+ year novel drought that I've been in. I can't remember the last time I read a novel in the literary genre that I liked. There was a period of about four months right after Fiona was born when I was reading books from Ed & Claudia & Rekah's libraries (those are some of my brother-in-law's family members) and reading some wonderful stuff. And then ... nothing. Every book I touched turned into crap. Stuffy, pretentious, tedious crap. So I pretty much switched over to only reading fantasy, mysteries and children's books, because they might not be pretty, but at least they don't think they're LITERATURE.

But "Ella Minnow Pea" and "The Dogs of Babel" are pretty. They are witty. And they are wise. Read them!

PS: I know book titles should be italicized, but the italics are being screwy on blogger today. Also, the possessive of "brother-in-law" should probably be "brother's-in-law". I apologize.

At long last!

So after screaming at my computer and threatening to throw it out the window, this blog entry is a little shorter than I planned it to be. I mean, it's my first post in close to a month!

Anyway, here's a silly quote:
"One is never enough for those who shop in the supermarket of crime."
--Moo, The Case of the Missing Jelly Donut, by Denys Cazet

David Wolfe is alright

So I hate to admit that the guy who wrote "The Sunfood Diet Success System" is right about anything, but he really is right about a lot of stuff. (Just don't read the poems. Ouch.) Oh sure, the raw food stuff, he's got science to back him up, but it's his career advice that's really proven itself.

See, he suggested that to figure out what you should be doing with your life, you should look at the things you enjoyed most between the ages of 7 and 14.

It sounds simple, but the other day, it really helped me think through a crazy idea I've had lately. You see, when I was 11, 12-ish, I started taking karate classes. And I loved them. LOVED them. For the first time in my life, I felt excited about doing stuff with my body. I always wanted to be a dancer or a gymnast or an ice skater, but we lived too far away from a place to learn, and plus, I was always sick and I was always fat. But I started to be really good at karate. And then somebody gave me their second-hand gi, and I started feeling self-conscious (because the pants so noisy and attention grabbing) and then I stopped wanting to go.

The same thing happened when I took karate when I was 23. I loved karate, but I got sick a lot and missed a lot of classes and just felt really self-conscious and awkward and got too ashamed to go. It didn't help that I was still the fattest person in my class. I always felt awful about being fat in karate class.

Lately, I have really missed karate, but I have also been busy exploring other things in my life. But about a month ago the weirdest thought crossed my mind: I'd really like to be a yoga teacher. What? I've never even taken yoga. But the thought started rolling some balls in my head, and they connected with some other balls that were set in motion a while ago by chance interactions at the museum. And now I am really thinking that I want to study Qi Gong and eventually become a Qi Gong practitioner.

Qi Gong is a lot like tai chi (in fact, tai chi is a subset of qi gong) and is connected to Kung Fu. It can be a martial art, but it is also a form of energy work and can be done silently without moving. Qi Gong experts can use the movements of qi to heal people.

I have really been interested in Reiki, which is an energy healing practice from Japan, related to qi gong. I am planning to save some money and take a few Reiki classes. I would like to build my own Reiki practice. But I think qi gong would really help me in many, many respects, and would only build my Reiki abilities.

All of these thoughts draw on experiences I had when I was between the ages of 7 and 14. Not only did I fall in love with karate, but I had a number of strange interractions with sick animals that made me want to learn more about alternative healing modalities. After years of not knowing what to do with my life, I feel really excited to reach back to these dreams that have haunted my memories. I am finally in a place where I can start to work toward making those dreams happen.

Joy from the mailbox

The Seed Savers Exchange catalog came today! Yippee! Hooray!

Do you think my landlord would notice if the back lawn disappeared?

Carbon continues!

Kt, your comments are so great! They just make me want to think!

About third world countries: I think there's a lot of evidence out there that suggests the US has heavily "encouraged" third world countries to be so dependent on their exports. Think about all the nasty stuff England did to the Colonies to keep us an export-based economy--we are doing all that and more. Our fellow American nations (okay, I mostly mean Latin American nations) are in a situation that goes far beyond my ability to make a prescription for their betterment. But I do know that they are not going to be able to help themselves until we stop trying to control their governments and their economies. We need to treat our neighbors like equals and not like ... well, the way we do.

I think that refocusing our efforts towards local production of EVERYTHING (as much as feasible) is the most important step to creating transparency in the production system and breaking down the crippling grip of corporations. To make a fresh stab at my analogy to the American Revolution, England's control of the Colonies was eroded by the efforts of the citizenry (and by that, I pretty much mean women!) who mobilized to create and source colonial produced goods. Groups like the Daughters of Liberty worked together to make the Colonies self-sufficient.

Right now, we give up the production of everything we consume to manufacturers and mega-corporations who manipulate us though advertising and who work against us to make a profit. Things like protecting our resources are not a priority for these companies. The only way to be sure that your money is not conspiring against you, your values and your best interests is to source your goods from people you can really trust, that can show you where your stuff came from. Make it easy for yourself: do it yourself!

Also, if all this posting about food production seems a little theme-y, it's because I'm reading a book called "This Organic Life: Confessions of a Suburban Homesteader," by Joan Dye Gussow. She is a seventy-year old lady who grows all the vegetables (and a lot of fruit) that she and her husband eat all year long in her own New York State backyard. That's right, when she goes to the grocery store, she's stocking up on grain products and milk, and that's about it. It is incredibly inspiring, and I hope that everybody out there can take a page (or even just a paragraph) from her book and start growing even a little bit of their own food. It will connect you the earth; it will please your tastebuds, and it really will help the environment. And it's fun. And it's good exercise!

Addendum

And yes, before any wiseacres get on here and scold me for driving to Freddie's, let me just say that my family is working to use alternative travel resources. I use mass transit to get to work, John rides his bike 3 times a week, and Fiona and I have started carpooling home from school on Mondays. And all last minute trips to the grocery store are done on foot, at the food co-op. Some weeks I do our real shopping there, too.

See? We're working on it!

Internal combustion power

So my friend Kt pointed out that the biggest producer of greenhouse gases, the biggest contributor to the carbon load, is the internal combustion engine. I think she was trying to draw my attention to things like driving habits and the need for mass transportation, but I of course saw it as the perfect way to simplify all my talk about food. (Yes, I really do think about food 98% of the time. Okay, that might be an exaggeration--but not much of one!)

You see, pretty much anything you buy was produced, processed and shipped to you using an internal combustion engine. The wheat in my sprouted wheat bread today was harvested using a (probably diesel-fueled) combine, which shot the wheat berries into the back of an idling truck (also probably diesel-fueled--if anybody needs biodiesel, it's a wheat farmer). The truck takes the wheat to the farmer's grain co-op or grain buyer, which probably sells the bulk of its grain to an international food conglomerate, like Archer Daniels. They're the middleman. My wheat somehow went from the grain co-op to Bob's Red Mill, who probably doesn't shop from Archer Daniels. In fact, my wheat was very likely magically loaded by a mysterious middleman, trucked from the middleman to a barge on the Columbia River (because my wheat is probably from Eastern Washington), and then barged down to Portland. The barge was also probably diesel-powered. From Port of Portland, it was trucked to Milwaukie (this is the best possible scenario; there is a good chance this stuff wasn't sent directly to Bob), where it was put into barrels for the bulk bins at Fred Meyer. Then Bob's loaded the barrels onto a truck, which probably went to the central Fred Meyer werehouse, was sorted into orders for the various stores and finally trucked to my Fred Meyer, 1 mile from my house. John drove me to Freddie's, and I bought it, drove it 1 mile home, and began sprouting it 2 days ago.

[Sidenote: This whole process, with a little planning could have gone like this:
ME, on the phone: Dad, could you buy 10 lbs of wheat berries from your neighbor when you help him with his harvest? I'll give him $.89/lb, plus $6 for Priority mail.
DAD: (choking on his coffee): $.89/lb? Are you crazy? I'm going to start growing wheat and selling it to you crazy cityslickers! I'll be a millionaire!]

Now these are raw wheatberries. The flour in the bread went from Eastern Washington on a diesel-powered train to the Midwest, where it was processed into flour, then shipped back to Oregon ... etc, etc.

We're talking about food with mileage, and that's not even food that was grown in another country. I shudder to think about the trip a banana takes, or how much gasoline was used up in its journey. BTW, non-food items really get nailed. My laptop, for example, when you take into account the trips the original raw materials took to the US to be made into components, then the trip the components took to China or the Phillipines to be assembled, then the trip from China to the US port, from the port to the regional werehouse, from the werehouse to the store, to my house, has more mileage on it than your average second-hand Honda Civic.

So what I'm saying is, you don't even have to own a car to use gallons and gallons of gas just about every day. Everything you buy is guzzling the stuff like crazy. You have to remember that it matters where things come from. It matters who sells it. It matters how much it's been processed.

So this summer, when I turn my back porch into a vegetable garden, you'll know why. I like knowing my tomato only had to travel 5 feet before I ate it.

Carbon

So my New Year's resolution this year is to reduce my carbon load. Amazing, isn't it? I mean, I remember hearing that term at OMSI eight (ten?) years ago and thinking "Carbon load? Who comes up with these names?," but now everybody uses that term, and everybody's got it on their mind. [Okay, maybe I should clarify: everybody worth knowing, that is.]

Anyway, it's amazing how many different things you can think of that jack up your C.L. This morning, I was thinking about our pancake syrup, which is organic goodness brewed up from maple and corn syrups. Tasty. But it takes a lot of energy to turn tree sap into syrup. They cook down something like 16 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon syrup. And I shudder to think how much energy it takes to make sugar cane juice into sugar crystals for my coffee.

Speaking of coffee, how much fuel was wasted shipping that stuff here from South America? And then on roasting and grinding and brewing? Yikes, I've got to stop drinking the stuff!

Showers. Travelling. Watching TV. Farting. Breathing! It all adds up. And every single choice you make, every single day--it adds up. What am I going to do about it? And what are you?

Snowy

So my family is out playing in the snow right now, and I'm snugly at home, drinking tea and looking up recipes for digestive biscuits. I can't say there's anything more wonderful in the world!

I was just reading The Fat Free Vegan, who was discussing how much has changed in both her world and the online vegan world in the last year, and I definitely agree. I feel like in the last year or so, more and more people have become accepting of vegan eating. Here in Portland, we have vegan restaurants and grocery stores and even raw-food options--all over the place. They have exploded this year. And that is great. That means that the world is becoming more accepting of a beautiful, loving, healthy lifestyle. If people can do that on the visceral level food, what can they do if they open up at other levels?

We saw people take these thoughts to the polls this year. I hope we see them take these thoughts and values into their families and their shopping habits and their hearts, because if they do, the world is going to get a lot more beautiful.

Terminal Airhead

I tend to do a little "New Year's thinking" around this time of the year, and I usually find my best insights have come from the January thoughts that I stir up out of the winter mud. And this year, I think I've come up with a doozy.

I am going to give up being smart.

Let me explain that one. You see, being "smart" has been a big part of my identity for as long as I can remember, and the last few years, it's been a serious weight around my neck. Yes, I have a fine mind. It can do a lot. But I am also an airhead. A serious head-in-the-clouds, floating around in outer space, at-one-with-the-birdsong-and-rainbow, airhead. And when the airhead and the "I know everything, damn it" parts of my life come together, the result is not pretty.

I feel dumb a lot.

You see, while I do know a lot about a lot of stuff, I also don't know a lot about a lot of stuff, and I often don't like to admit it. And then when I've half spaced out what's going on and then try to pull a "I know everything" off, I just wind up looking like an asshole.

There are a lot of other good reasons to let the know-it-all go. You see, knowing everything gets in the way of learning new things. It gets in the way of being open. It gets in the way of letting the universe sweep you along its glorious plan, and that creates a lot of suffering. Being a know-it-all has really kept me down.

Being an airhead, however, has done nothing but bring me joy, a fresh and happy mind, lots of friends and the gift of magical insights that take me to new and glorious situations. That's pretty good in my book!

The mold, the mayhem

Another delightful day spent combating the onslaught of mold around our windows. Ahh, the scent of rotting wood trim in the air. I just love aluminum frame windows that no one has taken care of in 40 years!

I did think of one cool idea: the condensation that collects on the windowsill is essentially distilled water. If I could just run it straight from the window frame to a clean jug, I could be generating my own drinking water WHILE I SLEEP.

Jeez, I think even Martha would be impressed.

Suckage

So I seriously suck on blog updating. Um, yup, that's about it. My ability to spin fun words about my life is cramping. Maybe I need some word yoga to get back in the saddle again.

On the plus side, I've really been getting a lot of mileage out of my birthday sketchbook.

Suckage

So I seriously suck on blog updating. Um, yup, that's about it. My ability to spin fun words about my life is cramping. Maybe I need some word yoga to get back in the saddle again.

On the plus side, I've really been getting a lot of mileage out of my birthday sketchbook.

double-plus ungood day

Today was not a good day. Today was a bad day. Today was my worst idea EVER.

Do not take Trimet to the most distant, most enormous fabric store in town and then expect to get any shopping done. Expect to waste 4.5 hours of time, spend $4 in bus fare, $6 on lunch, get totally pissed off at everyone who lives east of 52nd Ave, nearly get hit by an SUV (causing you to scream expletives so loudly your nearly lose your voice), make your kid cry AND NOT BUY A SINGLE PIECE OF FABRIC OR ANY KIND OF CRAFT SUPPLY.

Then you will have to eat two pieces of fudge to recover from the entire experience.

Blind as a bat

In the weakest move of the weakest of administration that has ever set foot in Washington, DC, the Bush administration today did its darndest to keep money out of the hands of blind people. They are appealing the court mandated redesign of US dollars so paper bills would be usable by the visually impaired--and they actually argued that the blind didn't need to use paper currency, because they could just use credit cards!!!

Wow. That's just . . . amazing.

On a separate note, I watched two great movies on Saturday! Now, I don't usually watch 2 movies in one day, but I was sick, so I made an exception. And both of these films are worth making exceptions for! 1) Because of Winn-Dixie--this is just cute and precious enough without being so cute and precious you want to throw up. Plus Dave Matthews works in the coolest pet store in the whole world. 2) Bad(der) Santa--okay, this movie is brilliant. It was so awful and cringe-inducing that it turned out wonderful. And the kid who plays Therman Merman is AMAZING.

Pop ups

So I'm trying to get used this new computer, and I'm telling you, sometimes it's nuts. I mean, pop-up blocker is built-in to this edition of Explorer, which sounds great, but really it turns out that 9 times out of 10, I want pop-ups! I mean, I wouldn't click the Barney's button if I didn't really want it to pop up!

Hot dog, I love style.com.

Brain fluff

I feel like such a feather head. I honestly have not read a novel in close to 3 weeks. First October W came. Then September and October Vogue came. Then November W came. Then November Vogue came. Somewhere in there November Martha arrived.

I am a bubble brain.

Okay, I guess I did read Vibrational Healing by Joy Gardner. That has to count for something.

And now I'm back ...

... from outer space, or at least the OHSU Richmond Clinic. I can breathe sort of clearly now, the snot is mostly gone. Gonna be a bright, bright, breathing day!

And now I'm back ...

... from outer space, or at least the OHSU Richmond Clinic. I can breathe sort of clearly now, the snot is mostly gone. Gonna be a bright, bright, breathing day!

End is near

So in the rush to finish ten zillion things, of course we all have colds. So now my costume will be Princess Leah/Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Grrr.


The biscotti I made for the party taste super tasty when dipped in coffee.

On animals and why I don't partake

So my friends have been chatting a bit about the ills of non-organic eggs and dairy, and then I had to butt in my head about how badly the animals live, and I realized I had to clarify something. It is easy to overstate the suffering of farm animals, and it is easy to overstate the health benefits of a vegetarian/vegan diet. It is easy to twist and rationalize both of these claims and make them trivial. So I want to point out that the reasons I decided to stop eating animal foods have to do only with myself.

Since I had Fiona, I have been trying to accept myself fully and live the fullest life I can create for myself. For years I have struggled with parts of my personality that weren't acceptable: I have always been told that I am too sensitive and too emotional. I have always felt that I was too weak and too silly to really get along in the world. But I decided that attitude wasn't helping me, and was only crippling my abilities. I found that being a little extra sensitive was actually useful when I became a mother, and that gave me the extra confidence to start exploring my weenier side.

One thing that has always been difficult was my tenderness toward any kind of pain and suffering. Just thinking about an injured child makes me want to cry (and horror stories about child abuse have been known to keep me from sleeping for days). When it came to thinking about killing and injuring animals, I have always been upset, but I felt like if it was for food production, I was expressing illogical thoughts, weak, stupid thoughts. My father (and Fiona's father, too, now that I think about it) made it a particular point of harassment. He taught me to feel stupid and inferior for questioning the massive consumption of meat, and we ate it every night.

Finally, after years of being interested in a vegetarian diet without any serious action, and during a period of serious spiritual activity (meditating, reading, stuff like that), this May I decided that I couldn't keep pushing those feelings under the rug when it was so much easier to just stop eating meat. John was very supportive. I couldn't have broken out of that horrible mold without him.

Also during this extra spiritual period, I realized that I wanted my lifestyle to better match my values and my goals. I want to live a life based upon kindness, and I want to be a kind person. Is killing an animal just for human usage kind? Is it kind to reduce a life, human or animal, to only its economic value? No matter how I look at it, it doesn't look kind to me. It is particularly unkind to do so when there are so many easy vegetable protein sources for me to choose from.

Since I made this decision, I have not experienced the crippling bouts of emotional pain I used to deal with weekly (or more often). I haven't felt the deadening of depression that used to grip me so firmly. I don't feel worthless. I feel like me. I feel ... okay.

I also feel ten pounds skinnier. That's okay, too.

Really good book!

So I just started "The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community," and boy howdy is it a nice book. I feel very hopeful.

Got nothing

Okay, so today's post doesn't really have any kind of topic. Yesterday I was full of brilliant blog posts, but today, nothing. It's like an echoing cavern up there in my head.

I am feeling tremendously vain, however. I am wearing my cool $1 vintage dress and have gotten lots of compliments from folks here at work. I've probably checked myself out ten times today.

Tiny slacking moment

So I'm taking a moment to slack and post on this blog. I should be scrubbing screens to get them ready for some serious screenprinting--after all, I have 75-120 horses to print before Halloween. But dude, the Internet is so much more fun!

Anyway, this Friday, I had a wonderful pie moment. Pie is my favorite food. Scratch that. Pie is the single greatest food stuff ever created by man. It is a magical gateway to a world of gustatory oneness. When it touches my tongue, I can hear the OMM of the universe gently humming in my ears, translated from the gentle pulses of my happy cheeks and gums and tastebuds into sound by some miracle. Yes, a miracle. Pie is truly, blissfully miraculous.

Good pie, that is. Bad pie is like cardboard left out in the rain, topped with malingering fruit or an evil lunchlady's idea of pudding.

But this Friday, I had wonderful pie. Crisp, crumbling crust, gently salted, with the mellow flavor of fresh fat--perhaps part butter, but mainly shortening. The crust of my childhood. Not fancy, but right. The custard, soft and lusciously brown with dark corn syrup, cradled the perfectly salted and crunchy pecan topping. I closed my eyes and ate slowly.

Screw yoga. This is my gateway to the spirit.

Apologia

I love Blogger; Blogger is not evil; I retract all cruel statements regarding Blogger and its eating habits.

Things and Stuff

First off--an apology for last week's absolute blather. It was unusually lame. But here's a good quote on a similar subject, from a book I am reading:
"The current trajectory of globalization contains at least one very grave threat to the future of local community stability--namely, reduced legal capacity of localities to shape their own economic destinies." (27, _Making A Place For Community_, Williamson, Imbroscio & Alperovitz--emphasis mine.)

I don't know why, but I just love that expression: shaping their own economic destinies. It's succinct, it's beautiful, and it captures that sense of empowerment so many communities are starting to lose. Look at my hometown, Reedsport, Oregon. The entire town is fading away into despair, because the economic glue of the community--a lumber mill and a paper mill--bit it in the 90s. The town lost many of its most active townspeople (and towns need those busybodies and do-gooders!) and it still hasn't found another major employer. It's heartbreaking.

The junk dress is coming along. I hoped I'd have all the back issues worked out today, but I don't. I think I have a good idea to shape it so it's more flattering (i.e., less like a hospital gown) without using yawn-ish old darts, but I will need John's help. Speaking of John, he had a brilliant notion about our merry-go-round lamp, and I am super excited. It's going to rock.

Speaking of rocking, chicken-fried seitan rocks. It is sensational. I will recommend it to every single person I know--unless they have a gluten sensitivity. Other than that--yummm.

The Anti-Federalist

Okay, so I was reading the paper today and heard about a bill up in the senate (S 3128) which would "prohibit states or local governments from enacting any food-safety law that differs in any way from federal law, including setting more stringent limits on toxic substances.... the FDA would be the sole arbiter of permissible levels of toxics in foods, overriding hundreds of existing state and local food-safety laws," (Wolke, LA Times-Washington Post Service).

It's tempting to like the idea because then all the food safety issues in this motley nation of ours will be codified and made uniform. But I hate it. I hate the idea that my health and safety is even more dominated by the power of the FDA, an organization so heavily controlled by the chemical industry and the corporate food giants that we already can't trust them. I hate the idea that my state government, which shows a stronger connection to its constituents, will no longer be able to protect me from the FDA's blind and greedy grasp.

This law represents everything I hate about the United States and its current state of government. Lately, I've been thinking that we should de-federate our nation a little. Put more power in the hands of the states--localize it. Pull the teeth of big corporations by establishing tougher trade barriers between states and regions (not to mention nations).

Only by refocusing money and power to a regional level will we see greater citizen involvement and government that reflects HUMAN values, not corporate. Only by making the federal government accountable to local governments will we see the kind of development that we, individuals, desire.

Amen.

Reviewing the fridge

So it's fall now. We had our first big September rainstorm, and yep, it's fall. So what do I want--desperately, earnestly, painfully want? Pork, of course. Nothing says fall like bacon, pork chops, pork loin, pork ribs, pork fat in all its glorious, sticky-greasy-irridescent chip wonder. It hit me today, and I wasn't prepared for it. I mean, I nearly my footing in the kitchen.

I should have seen it coming. The last few days have been rough. I was reading a great book by Ruth Reichl (former NYTimes restaurant critic) called "Garlic and Sapphires: the secret life of a critic in disguise," and it was like 400 pages of the most beautiful food writing you could expose yourself too. At least ten meals included foie gras. And reading it was great, but also really horrible, because I had to remind myself that I have given all that up. I am no longer a gourmet eater. I am a conscientious eater, a healthy eater. I am an eater who weighs *70* pounds less I did when I was a serious gourmet eater-- and 15 less than when I was an amateur gourmet eater.

I have to bring an image of a long-lashed sweet-faced piglet into my mind to shake off the painful need for bacon.

Sometimes being a near-vegan is really hard. There is a certain lack of variety in my food world, because I'm still developing my recipe repertoire. And there is a difference in tastes. I made krautranzas the other day, and they were not the same delicious as the sausage-kraut wonders I created in my previous food life. Tempeh can do wonderful things, but when you are reaching out for the flavors of your childhood, there is so only so far you can go. I try to appreciate these foods as new foods, not replacements, but sometimes, it's hard. Lately, I've cheated a lot. Fiona and I had a milkshake yesterday. It tasted wonderful, with that salty, creamy, sweetness that only cow milk can provide. The most gifted blend of soymilk lacks that quality. Usually, I don't want the high sodium funk of cowmilk. Usually, I prefer rice or soy. But right now, I miss dairy. I miss the splendor of egg whites (although I don't miss the weird dry skin they give me). I miss the easy flexibility of baked goods with eggs. I miss the salty intensity that urea and hormones and enzymes give animal foods. Vegetables are just too damn nice tasting. I want to eat raunchy, damn it!

Is being a vegetarian with vegan intentions worth it? Of course. I feel so much better these days. I don't feel a secret well of guilt boarded up within me any longer. I have more energy. I am more in touch with my spirituality. I can taste and smell things with a newfound clarity. I can pet a cat, and not be completely creeped out by the similarity between a cat's thigh muscles and a chicken's.

I love animals and I love myself. If being a real foodie means giving up those things, then I'm glad I've put that behind me. Best of all, I know I'll never have to look a plate of foie gras and try to forget how it was made.

And now I'm back

... from September closure, if not outer space. It feels weird to be normal work after all the fun of cleaning and painting. But all the staff is more friendly and fun now. I am actually feeling like I love my job and my coworkers. Sniff. Sniff

John, however, does not feel the same about his workplace:
http://slvk.blogspot.com/

Computer talk

WoW! It's been forever since I posted an update on this baby. See, I dowloaded an update for McAfee, and since then, our computer crashes when we start up the internet. Oops. Also, I got a new boss at work, so I've been slacking much, much less.

Not that I slack at work. I am an excellent employee and constantly search for new projects and ways to maximize our visitors' museum experience.

August already?

Whoah. It's August. Where did June go?

So I finally met Elias, my sister's 2-month old baby. (See what I mean about 'where'd June go'?) He's cute. But just as importantly--drumroll, please--John met my dad!

See, my dad was spending the night at Kristina's, and she had us over for dinner. It was much fun. John and Kristina entertained my dad while Bert & I cooked and drank pina coladas. Yum, yum, yummmm. Then, after dinner, we all joined in a rousing game of chickenfoot! What a hoot.

Anyway, John said Dad was cool; Fiona and Amelia played dress-up; and Isaac pestered "Uncle John" non-stop. Good times.

Crazy cake

So yesterday I made my very first fat-free, sugar-free cake (and recipe-free, may I add). Okay, so it was more like a pumpkin bread. Anyway, it turned out pretty good, although I regret not adding any honey or apple-juice concentrate, because prune juice just doesn't make things sweet enough for my liking. Of course, that means it might be sweet enough for any normal person--you're talking about a woman who has been known to add 2 and 1/2 sugar packets to a diner-sized cup of coffee. But the cake is fluffy and tender and yummy, just as a good cake or quick bread ought to be, and boy is it yummy with the (sooo not sugar-free) frosting I plopped on top. It's the best of both worlds this way.

And of course, since it's sugar-free and fat-free, I didn't feel guilty about eating a big chunk for breakfast.

Bye-bye, SCSC ...

So, I'm re-reading one of my all-time favorite books (The God Particle, Lederman), and realized I hadn't heard anything about the super-colliding superconductor in a long time. So I looked it up.

Did you know they're just letting it rot away in the desert? ? ? ?

I mean, they never finished it. They never got the money, they threw their hands up in the air and they just left everything to turn into dust down there.

I am so worked up about this that I used a comma splice in that last sentence.

I know that some day, people will get their heads out of their asses about big science--big important science, like astrophysics and particle physics, not craptastic money-making environmental-trashing schemes like fricking genetic engineering. I know that someday, someone will say: let's get a bunch of money and smash atoms until we finally have some experimental proof that support GUTS. Or at least find the Higgs boson.

See, this is the kind of science that is important. It's not important because it leads to technological breakthroughs (which it does), but because it is the research that feeds the human soul. It represents humanity's great journey through the eons, a journey with but one end: to understand the universe, its beginnings and our place within it. Particle accelerators are not a tribute to the hubris of humankind, but a testiment to our desperate need to touch the miracles of God. The miracles get smaller and smaller the more we keep looking. Bosons and photons and gluons and quarks are truly miraculous.

Big science is like big operas, big orchestras and haute couture. People see all them as a waste of money, economic idiocies, and the toys of the privileged class. But anyone who witnesses them in action is awed.

We need awe. We need it desperately. And I wish with all my heart that we could move out of this period of puritanical, money-grubbing, soul-sucking thought--and get back to more human (and more godly) endeavors.

New Alchemy & Frustration

I started addressing this on my myspace blog, but that's my dumbied down blog. This is my more insightful page. Not that many of my insights have really been that great, for the most part, but what the heck, a girl's got to have standards.

ANYWAY, I've been reading a lot of great stuff about sustainable development, and the changes we need to make in our economy and the way we design communities and the way we think about resources. And our needs. It's great. Since Jarusha gave me this cookbook (The More-With-Less Cookbook--check it out), I've really been thinking about the expenses behind the littlest things we do.

It started with food, obviously. Basic expenditure was just the first step; then I read more, and I started thinking about the moral expenses behind my meals. That was when I decided I was definitely going veg, and I was going to seriously work to get rid of my use of dairy and egg products. I feel really great about that move. All the energies of my body are happier, and I feel less clogged up and depressed. Also, I know that what I'm eating is using a much smaller footprint than my old one.

Lately, still on the level of food, I've started thinking about the energy and waste behind the processed foods in my life. Not just convenience foods like frozen pizza, but other, more subtly processed things: soy milk; bread; sugar; maple syrup. Just about everything we eat, unless it's a fresh vegetable or fruit, is pretty highly processed. And there's a lot of waste involved. You definitely notice how much energy food takes when you start making more of your own stuff from scratch.

Hmmn, hold that thought. The kid is waking.

slackah!

See? I'm so busy slacking, I can't even be bothered to capitalize the title of this blog entry.

I haven't updating this blog very often lately because I have been so busy getting crazy with myspace. It can be a little ... time consuming ... but it has proved worthwhile, because I am reconnecting with my brother Jak. He is not having a good time in Lemoore, CA, and I really feel for him. Still, it's only for a few months, and then they will probably send him to sea.

I am working on the *3rd* reconceptualization of my little novel. I've been sitting on the second draft, not quite willing to commit to finish the fix (I needed to re-enter all the changes from the last half of the book after my ancient computer ATE them), and I was finally able to put my finger on the vague feeling of wrong which has troubled me for a very long time. So I'm completely revisiting the story and I'm really excited about it. Hooray!

Also cool and noteworthy: I am cutting out the pieces for a skirt I patterned myself and I finished a painting (which actually looks like a person). Oh yes: I've also been making my own breads, seitan from scratch, and my own rice milk. Whew! Good times this summer!

Word drought

I've got nothing lately, but this put a smile on my face!

Oh--we went to Blue Lake Park and had a great time today. They don't let midgets swim in the lake, but they had this awesome sandbox/water sprinkler play area that we spent about two hours in. It was so fun! We dug rivers, built castles and totally immitated the Army Corps of Engineers. Erosion really does suck.

ugggggh

I have a cold. Arggh. Sniffle.

Fiona has a cold. Arggh.

On the plus side, I got to watch Ghostbusters 2 twice in two days. Colds do have their perks!

Hero of the WEEK

Marisa, my totally cool co-worker was on the jump-rope team in elementary school, and here was her trick:

Jumping into the Double Dutch ropes, on a pogo stick, juggling scarves.

Oh yeah, people. This woman is my hero of the week.

I can't really be mad at Fiona just because she told me she loves John more than me. But I still want to go lay in bed and cry for the rest of the day.

Tee-hee

It feels good to give the old blog a facelift. I'm still not totally satisfied with it--I mean, where did that weird dot just above the photograph come from?--but I am leaving it as-is for a bit.

The weekend was ... rotten ... or at least contaminated. . . . A lot of family issues, none of them great, and a disagreement with the old sweetie pie. Nothing feels worse than a disagreement with the sweetie pie. Sigh.

I am currently haunted by a potential writing project. On one hand, it keeps sneaking into my head, taking up vital space. Irresistable. On the other hand, if there's one story I don't want to live with for months and months (and this story would take months), it's this story. It's the kind of story that makes you feel ucky inside. I just keep dragging my feet about it and not getting anywhere. Maybe this afternoon is the afternoon to start it. Or kill it, if that's possible. Somehow I don't think this one is going away. And I also have a feeling it's the story I've been practicing for.

Well, S.P. called in sick to clean house and find some curtain fabric. I should get off the comp and play with my boy!

Jak update

My life is boring (I mean, the biggest excitement was making my own seitan from scratch), but my brother's is going well. He called me today, in recovery from a 36 hour "Battlestation" drill. He'd been awake for 36 hours, maintained by one muffin, a bagel, and shouting some song for 34 of those hours. I missed the song title, because his voice was, unsurprisingly, mangled.

Anyway, he's graduating in a week-ish, top of his class. I am so, so proud of him!

PS on books

Here's what I am reading: Dominion

"Dominion is a horrible, wonderful, important book. It is horrible in its subject, a half-reportorial, half-philosophical examination of some of the most repugnant things that human beings do to animals.... The book is wonderful in its eloquent, mordant clarity, and its hilarious fillets of sanctimonious cant and hypocrisy.... Dominion is important in large measure because the author, an avowed conservative Republican and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, is an unexpected defender of the animals against the depredations of profit driven corporations, swaggering, gun-loving hunters, proponents of renewed 'harvesting' of whales and elephants and others who insist that all of nature is humanity's romper room, to play with, rearrange, and plunder at will.... This is a beautiful book, and a balm to the scared, lonely animal in us all. -- Natalie Angier, The New York Times Book Review

And it is SO SO GOOD!

A prescription for books

Earlier today, I was reading with Fiona and it suddenly struck me just how excited I am to read her some of my favorite books. I've thought that time and again since before she was born, but today, I couldn't stop thinking about great it will be to share Meg and Charles Wallace with Fiona. I just don't think she can be a fully moral human being until she has read those books. And I got to thinking about all the other wonderful stories that have taken up residence in my heart and mind and created me, and I just can't wait to read them with her--if only so that she can look back as an adult and say: "Ah. Watership Down at age 5. That explains everything." So here is a short list of some of the books I'd like to share with my child over the next ten years of her life. Please post any books that you think are great books for kids, and maybe a suggested age for exposure.

A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, & A Swiftly Tilting Planet, L'Engle. Maybe when she's 7 or 8. What a wonderful portrait of doing right and facing down evil, no matter how much we might want to turn away.

Anne of Green Gables, Montgomery. 6-ish. Anne is just plain funny; I re-read her about once every three years. And she lives in such a wonderful, wonderful world that I wish I could move in!

Watership Down, Adams. 5-7. Because even rabbits can be heroes.

Charlotte's Web, White. 4-5. Eloquence is important. So is kindness.

Bunnicula, Howe. By the end of the year. If it had a few more pictures, I would have checked it out the other day. Under all the humor, wonderful messages of tolerance.

The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings: it's hard to know when she'll be ready, but it's the most important adventure in print!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone: 6? Some of the language is heavy, but the story kicks @!! The messages about friendship and love are important, too.

Alanna, Pierce. 8. My first introduction to chicks-can-kick-butt fantasy action, and I can't wait for Fi to check it out.

I can't wait to see what you guys will add to the list, but it'll be good. And just so you have a little bit of a grasp on Fiona's reading level/interests (no, she can't read yet, but she holds still very well), is that we struggled through James & The Giant Peach a couple of weeks ago. It took us about 6 days, and she kept trying to turn the pages to see the next picture, but it worked great in the car. She really liked it and followed the story well.

I am really looking for some suggestions of books on that level or a bit easier so we can start diving into meaty reading!

Rant

Why is it so hard to find videos of whales and dolphins swimming around and being cute? Here I am, trying to brainwash my child and boyfriend into being animal-loving freaks, and I can't find any movies about animals being cute and adorable and heroic. Sheesh. I guess I'll just rent Free Willy.

Full brain

My head has been so full of thoughts lately. Some of the thoughts are simple: must finish reading Nevada Barr mystery, NOW. Must eat chocolate ... Some of the thoughts are ugly: I'm going to strangle that kid if she doesn't leave me alone/be quiet/stop [insert irritating behavior]. (I think that one a lot lately.) Some are useless: Why can't I get Fiona to bed by 9:30? (Usually linked with previous thought.) Some are painful: They do WHAT to pigs who are too skinny? But all the thoughts are crowding together and hurting my head. I feel like my skull is just too small for all of them. I am tired, tired, tired of thinking. I just want to curl up with a (soy) cocoa and read a novel and be lost for a little while.

On the other hand, here's a thought WORTH thinking about, and I really hope I can go down and visit this place: http://www.lighthousefarmsanctuary.org. This is a farm in Salem that rescues animals from abusive situations and gives them a new life. And boy are the critters KEEY-UTE!

Get your bonsai on!

John bought me a bonsai yesterday! It is soooo cute--it's a dwarf Japanese Holly tree, and it has these tiny little shiny green leaves, and I love it. It is still in its baby pot, so now I can start browsing for a cooler pot. I've probably got a year before it'll need replanted. Also, it looks like it's already developing little exposed, fat roots at the top of the soil, so I am very happy.

We really looked like Japan nuts yesterday. I was wearing my Japanese clogs and buying shiso seeds, and John was buying bamboo stakes and two baby bonsais. Wow. We're seriously geeks.

Puttering

Today, while puttering around in the potted plants, I decided to take the shears to the bee balm. I mean, 2 foot tall bee balm is just ... unnatural. Creepy. And smothering the dill, too. Anyway, I think that plant is possessed. I put the cut parts in water and within half an hour they were just as perky as they were on the plant. It's a little disconcerting. I've never even fertilized the dang thing!

Speaking of fertilizer, I've decided that's just what my baby apple tree needs. The poor thing has spider mites and looks kind of terrible. I'm going to make it some seaweed plant food and see if I can perk it up any.

That's right, I said 'make it some seaweed plant food.' I went online and looked up vegan organic fertilizers, and that's the quickest, least stinky one I found. See? I'm serious about this no animal business. And while I've had some unsuccessful cooking experiences this week, I am still feeling pretty good. The first day, I just focused on the fact that beer is vegan, nobody has ever made genetically engineered barley, and that hops prevent osteoporosis. Then I cheered up when I discovered that tofutti cream cheese is signicantly tastier than nonfat cow cream cheese. Then I tried my first 'cheese' sauce made from soy milk and nutritional yeast. Um, yuck. (Although I'm blaming the soymilk. 8th Continent = weird tasting) But today's pancakes totally rocked, and the vegan corn chowder I made for lunch was great, too.

While I'm really excited about this new cooking experience, I do want to make it clear that my family is not going straight-up vegan. John gets to eat eggs, and I'm not going to fuss about them too much, especially if they come from less-cruel sources. And we're still eating cheese, just not as often. And when we're out, nobody is going to flip out about non-obvious animal products (such as those in baked goods and dressings and the like). So the goal is about 95% vegan, which still isn't great, but is obviously way better than our mostly lacto-ovo-vegetarian-but-once-a-week-or-so-meat-eating past.

One side note about veganism: I have always found vegan cooking fascinating and attractive. To a food-nut like me, it's like the haiku of the culinary arts. You purposefully limit the possibilities to spur creativity. Now that's beautiful.

On my mind

Animals have been on my mind lately. I haven't been up to blogging about it--I still don't feel ready to write it through--but I have come to one certain conviction: it is wrong to eat animals. There are times and places where necessity can override right and wrong, but we lucky 21st century humans have the luxury and wherewithal to choose our foods. Maybe Ice Age people lacked vegetable foods, but we don't. And for us to torture, rape, maim, confine, cut up, brutalize and deform creatures who share 90+% of their genetic matter with us--for us to do such terrible things to life forms that are all but our family members--for us to do such terrible things for the sake of flavor and fun and convenience is completely sick, fucking sick.

I've spent the last couple of days having spontaneous sobbing fits about it. Oh, and spending a lot of time on http://www.theppk.com.

Eek, eek, whew ... yum?

I have spent my life feeling iffy about fish. There were fish dishes I tried and enjoyed, but there were also bad memories of aging smelt and dolly vardens that I usually just try to push out the back door of the mind. Suffice to say that as a child, I learned the hard way that there are some flavors nothing can aid or cover up, not ketchup, not tartar sauce, not even Tabasco. Now that's knowledge I'd spare my kid.

That said, Fiona likes fish--she gorges on tuna salad and fish sticks, the fish things I can be persuaded to cook. So I walked down to New Seasons last night and let Fiona pick out some fish for dinner. She picked a trout. With its head still on.

The fish guy obligingly cut off the head and threw it away, and we finished our shopping. Fiona wanted to carry the fish packet for a while, until we picked up a cucumber, which she adopted as a new baby doll. The I brought the groceries home, whipped up a salad and prepared the silvery swimmer of lakes.

I rinsed it and patted it dry and seasoned it with kosher salt and pepper and placed some onion in the cavity and wrapped it in bacon and placed it under the broiler. I only gagged twice (and my friend Elizabeth, a vegetarian, was kind enough not to laugh at me as she listened on the telephone). Discarding the wrapping from the fish packet was pretty ugly, but I kept my gorge controlled.

It actually tasted pretty good. Bland, but good. John loved it. Fiona ate a couple of bites. I even had seconds. So I guess I'll try making fish again some time, although next time, I'm putting parchment paper down in the broiler pan.

No way am I scrubbing fins off of that thing a second time.

Hummingbird

This morning's coffee, and I am sipping from my special hummingbird mug. It has a lot of history. My friend Katie, who has a special talent for gifts, gave it to me when I left I home for college. She had filled it with quarters--enough for a term's worth of laundry. It was a brilliant gift.

I kept my laundry money in it for years, but the mug was updated at one apartment to holding toothbrushes. The delicate shape and beautifully worked design brought a touch of class to the bathroom. It stayed in the bathroom through several moves, but when I moved in with my mother, the hummingbird mug was packed carefully and I didn't see it for a while.

On my most recent trip home, I found the mug and brought it to my new place. It was crusted with years of mineral build-up, and I imagined it would remain only decorative. But with enough soaking, and John's tireless scrubbing, it came clean, and now, for the first time in its history, it is coffee mug. It is light, and it is beautiful. It brings a touch of class to my mouth every sip.

You say it's your birthday

Okay, so it's not my birthday. It's not even Fiona's, not really, but since her birthday is on a Sunday (my work day), we're letting her think it is.

The family came and ate sandwiches and strawberries and strawberry cake, and drank strawberry-pineapple-apicot fizz, and doled out presents. Fiona's favorite present was the doll crib from Aunt Kristina and kids, although Amelia was heart-broken to leave it. She nearly pulled her mother's shoe off in an attempt to keep them here longer. Pretty clever kid!

Now Fiona is painting with her new watercolor set. This is her second painting of the day. The first one took two sessions to complete. During the earliest, John went down, asked her how the picture was coming along and she told him "it's not where I'd like it be yet." Wow.

Then after she got up from her nap she asked to watch John's Craftwerk video and got started on another painting. Is she cool 3-year old or what?

Anadama

Yesterday Fiona and I made Anadama Bread (from a Martha Stewart recipe), and it turned out phenomenally. It's the best bread I've made in a very long time, although I imagine part of it is that I really kneaded the bejeezus out of it.

I thought I would write a fantastic post about the joys and wonders of bread making, but I can't bring myself to put two words together this morning. I think I am still routed to music. John gave me a lesson about his sound-editing program, so I was mixing up some tunes. Okay, one tune.

It is amazing how long it takes to edit music. I am taking two tracks from a videogame soundtrack and editing them together to make a soft, electronic song. It's my lullabized version of Ico (that's the game). It's not as easy as you'd think! Lots and lots of cutting and pasting; lots and lots of listening. My ear muscles are so flabby--it almost hurts to tone them up. Also, I'm sure there are a lot more features on the program that I just don't know how to use yet that would make the process more fun. Still, it's addicting!

Kinda like making bread.

Thought

Has anybody else thought that when it comes to money, the flimsy one dollar bills have men on them. The long-lasting coins are women!

*$%! Technology

So the computer is having a little trouble with the Internet at home. I have thought of a couple of super posts, but they'll just have to wait until I'm not illicitly posting at work.

Ahh. The slow beauty of a spring day. So many people want to go to the zoo--the museum is quieter than the library. My boss is taking a one hour lunch. I am slacking. And boy does it feel great!

A fine, fine day

My boss bought us Easter candy! We are chowing down on Robins' Eggs. Aren't those the single best reason to celebrate Easter?

I used a clever line today: I don't celebrate Easter, but I do celebrate chocolate. Actually, I love Easter. My family never, ever made a fuss about the Jesus side of things (since neither of my folks are Jesus followers), and always made a point to focus on the important side of the holiday: eating. Always lots of chocolate, lots of eggs (deviled, of course) and either ham, or lamb. Usually potato salad, peas and some kind of green veg--in good years, asparagus.

The beauty of spring vegetables can not be over-praised. Delicious, tender, brilliantly hued and green! Freshly green, and not the whites of starchy roots or the yellow of the squash family. For the first time in months, green is dancing on our plates.

Happy spring! Happy Easter!

Wicked

Today, a book review/rant. I finally read the book Wicked, by Gary Maguire. [I might have his name wrong, because I am typing this in a hurry, and don’t have the book handy.] What a disappointment! Maguire took a thrilling, menacing figure of children’s lit and turned her into a flat, neurotic mess, the product of a broken family and personal disfigurement. Elphaba–his name for the Witch–is powerless, defanged (literally losing her dangerous baby teeth and growing only standard-issue chompers), and merely reactionary.

All the critics said this was such a fantastic portrait of evil and wickedness. I felt completely let down. Elphaba was no more evil than my shoe, stinking after a long walk. If Maguire had written a story about a truly cruel and dangerous woman, and not the passive, flopping green thing he created, he could have made a really great book.

Oh! I almost forgot! Maguire also ruins Oz. All its creepy, wonderful enchantment is smoothed over into an unhappy America/Kafka realm. I liked it, actually. It was a dark and dangerous place to visit–and it was the right realm for Elphaba. It’s the sort of place that encourages re-acting and not acting, paranoia, not proactivity.

So I guess my problem isn’t that "Wicked" sucked or was crappy. It’s that it’s a fine tale on its own, a fine tale that didn’t need to stand on the shoulders of any other book. There was no need to lift Glinda, Oz or the lamely applied "Wicked Witch" labels–his characters would have been fine on their own. Better off, really. It all comes off as a lame marketing attempt that waters down the real story, which is neither wicked nor witchy, but simply sad.

Wicked

Today, a book review/rant. I finally read the book Wicked, by Gary Maguire. [I might have his name wrong, because I am typing this in a hurry, and don’t have the book handy.] What a disappointment! Maguire took a thrilling, menacing figure of children’s lit and turned her into a flat, neurotic mess, the product of a broken family and personal disfigurement. Elphaba–his name for the Witch–is powerless, defanged (literally losing her dangerous baby teeth and growing only standard-issue chompers), and merely reactionary.

All the critics said this was such a fantastic portrait of evil and wickedness. I felt completely let down. Elphaba was no more evil than my shoe, stinking after a long walk. If Maguire had written a story about a truly cruel and dangerous woman, and not the passive, flopping green thing he created, he could have made a really great book.

Oh! I almost forgot! Maguire also ruins Oz. All its creepy, wonderful enchantment is smoothed over into an unhappy America/Kafka realm. I liked it, actually. It was a dark and dangerous place to visit–and it was the right realm for Elphaba. It’s the sort of place that encourages re-acting and not acting, paranoia, not proactivity.

So I guess my problem isn’t that "Wicked" sucked or was crappy. It’s that it’s a fine tale on its own, a fine tale that didn’t need to stand on the shoulders of any other book. There was no need to lift Glinda, Oz or the lamely applied "Wicked Witch" labels–his characters would have been fine on their own. Better off, really. It all comes off as a lame marketing attempt that waters down the real story, which is neither wicked nor witchy, but simply sad.

The Lonely Doll

About a year ago, Fiona and I checked out a book from the library. It was called Edith and Mr. Bear, and I was immediately enchanted by the story. Edith could have been me as a child: a natural liar, fearful, pouting, charming. She was an utterly believable child. And the photographs looked so real that I had to marvel at them. We sought out other Edith books, and bought the first in the series, The Lonely Doll, for Christmas.

On that shopping expedition, I found a book I couldn’t afford at the time. Called The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll, it was a biography of the enigmatic photographer who captured the story of Edith and her bear companions. I finally read it this weekend. I was blown away by Dare Wright and her life’s story. It was not a happy life, but it shared something with the lives of other women I have admired, and I found it inspiring.

Dare, like my heroes Tasha Tudor, Georgia O’Keefe and Frida Kahlo (of course Frida, and always Frida!), crafted a world that supplemented her own specially grown identity. She spent her lifetime carefully pruning her self to make a creature as desirable and as adorable as a doll, and she tweaked her surroundings to support that fantasy creation. And while that eventually led to her own miserable ending, I can’t help but admire the achievement. What strength of will to change the world to suit yourself!

Side note: I began painting yesterday and could do no wrong. Today, I practically butchered the damn thing. Why, why are hands so hard?

Loose thoughts

Not a good day to generate a real post. Fiona has a cold and I have brain scramble. I start a project, forget it, remind myself about it, forget it again. I did manage to get my beebalm planted and mix up some homemade cereal. It smells good, but so far tastes bland.

I'm trying to get back into my old writing project, but the going is rough. The old computer ate about 8 chapters (the best ones, of course), and since I haven't done any writing in about a year, I am rusty as all fong. It hurts to be this lame again.

Well, that's it. Sort of a jive first post, but what the heck. At least it leaves the door open for improvement!

Back in the Saddle Again

Wow. After a whole year, I'm back in the Internet business, and ready to get going on some serious Blogger butt. Sniff. I've missed it.

Oozing pustules and Sugary snacks!

So I learned the hard way that strep throat can actually happen to me. I was under the impression it only happen to other people, people who go to doctors and put up a fuss about stuff like a sore throat. You know, chumps. I finally caved when the glands under my tongue were so large speaking and breathing were difficult, and the nastly white spots on my tonsils were oozing green pus down my throat. It is horrible to choke on your own ooze.

Anyway, after being dosed with foul antibiotics (my guts are soooo miserable right now), I felt up to the big trip South, and am posting from my mom's house. We have already had doughnuts, and are prepping for a trip to Pie Heaven. I have so missed home!

A Stable Internet Connection

Finally! I can get on-line! I will try to make it a weekly post.

The last few months, I've been painting a lot, dabbling in writing (essays and philosophical thought, primarily) and helping my sister with her laundry. That's how I keep the kid in diapers: I help my extended family with household chores. It's a living! I'm thinking about taking up palm reading on the side. Sure, it's just a step above pan-handling, but I REALLY need to make my September student loan payment.

greensnot

(to the tune of "Greensleeves")
Alas, my nose you do me wrong
to swell and puff discordantly.
To choke me nightly with nasty stuff
and drip down my throat so often.

Green snot was all I sneezed.
Green snot was all I sniffed.
Green snot was everwhere--
oh where is my Vick's Vapor Rub?

Well, tomorrow I move. I won't be posting very frequently for a while, because my sister's house is not internet compatible at this moment. I'll miss blogging a lot!

Wish me luck!