Even just a trim to deshaggify feels good. I loves me my Traci at Bangz. I decided to be fiscally responsible and not color my hair this time. Color this Summer!
The birthday celebrating has begun. I got my first prezzie in the mail. An album memorializing our trip to Barcelona. Love.
Sag has been getting a lot of mileage out of The Encyclopedia of Immaturity. It has been a few years since their Auntie Sandy gave it to them. This is a book he goes back to regularly for entertaining, creative fun.
Gem went back to Pokemon TCG play at the comic book shop yesterday. He is raring to go. There is a pre-release tournament next weekend he is planning on attending and he has dreams of one day making it to the World Championships.
On our way out the driveway, we saw the UPS deliveryman. Gem's long awaited comics had arrived! This Sonic fanboy spent the bulk of his sizable holiday gift money on a big batch of Sonic back issues. 106 of them, to be exact.
And now, off to some girl fun. My annual meeting with the speculum (warmed up, thank you very much :-)
Just one more before I shut Lula down for the night. I was poking around my iTunes today and listened to this...a song that never fails to make me smile.
This caught my eyes at Bridget's place. It made me really happy. She got it at The American Visionary Art Museum, it is now on my list of places I'd like to visit someday.
Vinny is pushing me to practice. More and more intently. My body continues its wacky responses to things stirring in mysterious ways within me. (Sag in the waiting room today.)
We had an impromptu visit with Melody and her family tonight. They leave for northern Cali the day after tomorrow. I was very happy that things worked so we could see them. We will miss them!
My latest semi-obsession: lattes. I have started considering buying an espresso pot so I can make my own. I can get great lattes made with organic whole milk at Terra for $4+tax a pop. If I were to indulge twice a month, in a year, that'd be in the vicinity of $100 spent on high quality lattes. The above espresso pot costs $175. I created a "Want" bookmark folder on Lula yesterday just for the page it rests on in the internets.
If I stopped getting lattes out, this thing would pay for itself within two years. Food for thought. Why does it cost so much? You can read about it here.
I crept out of bed just past 7:30 which is early for us these days. My plans for the morning included getting Beyond Easy Pulled Pork into the slow cooker. The kids and I will be going out this afternoon and I need the timing of turning the heat down to "low" to work for while we're still home.
I didn't have chipotle powder or onion powder so I used the last of my Arizona Dreaming sample from Penzey's as a sub. This recipe is super simple. If the pork comes out as succulent as promised, I will agree that it was "beyond easy". Buy a big ol'pork butt, mix up the dry rub, rub it onto the pork, slice up two onions, put it all into the crock pot, and slow cook it for the day.
It's a quiet, gray morning here. The rest of the family has appeared one by one.
Reproductive rights is something I often take for granted. Commemorative activities, acts of remembrance, are good ways to acknowledge that nothing should be taken for granted because things always change.
I recently heard from someone that she thought she might be pregnant. What surprised me most about our conversation was my hesitance to say out loud a point I found she was not making.
She had a choice.
Don't get me wrong. This, ahem, pregnant pause was not about a shift in my belief that women should have the right to choose. It was about wondering why she wasn't voicing the availability of choice to her. It was about wanting to give someone a wide berth as she shared something with me that seemed to carry with it the shadow of barely articulated. It was about waiting to see if I was being asked for advice or rather, simply, to listen.
It was the first time I thought about choice, as in reproductive choice, in a long time. Yet, it is something that women and girls, boys and men encounter and are affected by every day. The exercise of reproductive choice is highly personal, but it speaks volumes that we live in a society that, for now, protects this choice as a right.
I never did speak my bit. But, I will, if the occasion calls for it. I am grateful for the opportunity to offer support to any girl/woman/couple/family dealing with the issue of what to do when challenged by an unplanned pregnancy.
It then filled and filled and filled. Cooking, cleaning the bathroom, folding laundry, cooking, washing the kitchen floor, minding the kids, cooking.
My mom arrived after dinner and then we drove up to campus. (We landed last minute complimentary tickets, shuffled plans and got my mom to come out to sit with the kids.)
Tonight we saw Bill T. Jones. I loved seeing him. The performance was enigmatic and resonant. His stories were warbles and wails. Words are failing me. Here's a link to a NYT piece describing the show. (Barbra, of course I thought of you.)
Here I am giddy with art and snow outside the theater post-performance.
Bill quoted the beginning of this song in one of his stories. I did not know this artist till he mentioned her name tonight and I thought the lyrics might be from a rap. (They had this prescient/precise feel to them that I associate with rap.)
When I was young I lived in a world of dreams,
of moods and myths and illusionary schemes.
Though now I'm much more grown up,
I fear that I must own up.
To the fact that I'm in doubt of,
what the modern cynics shout of.
They say it's Spring,
this feeling light as a feather.
They say this thing,
this magic we share together,
came with the weather, too.
As I was gathering my thoughts while writing this post, I remembered enough to find the song by Googling. And, boy, was I ever wrong! I am absolutely tickled...about having my mind expanded, about these different genres of music being bridged in my little corner of the world, and about being introduced to a new-to-me musical artist.
Sag calls this The Claw. His big Christmas present from us this year was the Lego Mindstorms robotics set. We also gave him a nifty companion book which is full of ideas and instructions. This is the first robot he has built at home (using a plan from the book).
Our football team, the New England Patriots, are in the NFL play-offs. During the game they played last weekend, I noticed the hat Tom Brady was wearing and thought it looked cozy. I bought one for Cap and when it arrived, Sag and I both loved how comfortable it was. Here is Sag wearing Cap's cap. I got a coupon code from the website yesterday so ordered Sag his very own.
The kids did some storyboarding this afternoon. This is homework they never complain about! We finished Wildwood today, they did their Vinny exercises, and they did Rosetta Stone. Later, Daniel is coming over and he and Sag will go to Robotics class.
It's amazing how quickly a kitchen can get messy when both adults in the household fall behind the eight ball.
I am counting the hours till I see Vinny tonight. Very happy I was able to get an appointment.
The pain stopped after about two hours last night. I am wiped out. Eating carefully. Not much of an appetite, really.
We are expecting snow tonight into tomorrow though the sun continues to shine at the moment.
Bill T. Jones tomorrow night up at the University. Comp tix. Excited!
Not sure I like the new blog template. It is what it is...for now.
Here's a Kathleen Edwards tune that Cap introduced me to awhile ago...before I realized I loved her voice hearing the NPR stream of her latest cd a couple of weeks. Funny how life is.
Within minutes of finishing dinner (a very rare occurrence I only ate two meals today), my stomach/gut started to hurt. It still hurts over an hour later. It's actually worse now that it was when it started. Stop me in my tracks pain. It's a good thing I'm sitting.
At the moment, it feels like there's a baby alien in there trying to bust itself out. o.O
I am in awe of my body. Of all bodies. My body has healed enough in the last four-plus months that ingesting a half of a piece of toast is offending my system mightily. And it is letting me know in no uncertain terms.
I had not guessed that my digestive system was so inured to gluten/wheat that I could experience this kind of pain after eating some.
I had not guessed that eliminating certain foods/food groups could so effectively transform me. (I am, truly, a feeling is believing kind of gal.)
Wow. It's getting so intense I feel like I might throw up. Later.
So...I am having some buggy issues with what I think is the Blogger - Chrome interface. I've been using Chrome since I got Lula and have had no issue other than these glitches that are starting to happen when blogging.
So...please pardon the appearance of the previous post. I don't know how to fix it, and after trying for awhile, don't want to spend any more time on it. I am not even sure how some of the glitchiness happened, which is, in a way, more frustrating than when you know you did something wrong that you can't fix.
I have a feeling using a blog template with a white background would solve this particular issue without figuring it out the actual glitch...more of a workaround.
Blogging with another browser, going back to Firefox or giving Safari a try, is another solution.
I finished my first (non-YA, non-graphic novel) book of 2012! Nocturnes was the perfect way to ease into this process. Thank you to Cap for this collection of stories. I loved the beautiful cover art and totally dug how the brand new paperback felt in my hands. (This kind of tactile love just can't be found with a book borrowed from the library or an e-reader.)
Here's the review I left on Goodreads (you can find me over there as Äiti):
A great first book to ease into my 2012 practice of reading more fiction and non-fiction outside of the YA and graphic novel genres. This collection of stories had interesting structural elements (recurring characters and ties to music theory). And some of the plot lines were unusual and detailed in a way that caught my attention. And some of the narratives paths, both external and internal, resonated with familiar tingles and pangs.
But. (Could you detect the big but coming?) But...there was something of "trifle" which permeated the collection. And imbalance...times when I wanted more, times when I wanted less.Damning bottom line? I don't think this collection would have ever been picked up if it didn't have Ishiguro's pedigree backing it up.
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I have jumped on the Downton Abbey bandwagon. It was hard not to notice, and then ignore, the groundswell. Season 1 is streaming on Netflix now. I've watched the first two episodes and in a word, LOVE. Yes, it's another English period piece about rich people and the servants who work for them...but it works. The writing, the acting, the sets, the clothes...
The combination of incisive verbal zingers contrasting against lush visual eye candy is intoxicating and satisfying. In typical (and admirable) BBC production fashion an hour packs an incredible, dense punch and unlike American telly fare, I have not yet been inclined to watch more than one episode per sitting.
Believe the hype.
:: :: ::
The kids and I are wrapping up our read aloud of Wildwood. It has been a long journey and we have one chapter left. These final chapters have been intense and emotional.
:: :: ::
Met Tiina for a cuppa this morning. Time to hang with friends is so important to me and my sanity.
The eggs were not to my liking and the toast was underwhelming. I had half a piece. It proved to be a most excellent vehicle for the butter. (Maybe it was the butter I was craving?)
The complicated is working with the whole look-smell-taste sensory thing when in an eatery and dealing with an at once more varietal and more limited menu than what I make myself at home and desire.
The simple is that I am realizing my home cooking is more and more to my taste. And what I can get out is increasingly unsatisfying/unsatisfactory.
Which gives rise to another complication...how to adjust my own cultural tendency to view going out to eat as a treat and as a nice break from the mundane. With each new dissatisfying venture out lately, the cognitive dissonance grows. Will I find something new to replace the wilting pleasures? Or will my need for this particular brand of pleasure transform?
If this were a Wordpress blog, it would be going dark tomorrow. Blogger has no such plug-in. I will not post tomorrow, nor will I use the internet tomorrow, in solidarity. You can read this piece which has further linkage/information, if you'd like.
And just like that, I woke up this morning feeling significantly better. Retrospect lightbulb went on: this latest energy dip may have been connected to/exacerbated by ovulation/my cycle/hormones.
Gem was completely shocked when the Starburst he was chewing pulled out a tooth. The molar was loose, but nowhere near the loose his teeth usually get before they fall out (he is not a puller).
One from the vault. I got a friend request on Facebook recently from someone in this photo (my sixth grade birthday party). January, 1978. When the request came through, I did not recognize his name or face. He'd changed his last name and I haven't seen him in over 30 years.
I did some digging on Facebook and Google and discovered who he was.
My first boyfriend, John. My brother is sitting on his shoulders. And for those of you who know Sag, you can see, he really does resemble my sister. That's me with the big, goofy, happy smile. Sitting in front of me is Danielle. Next to her is Lauri and next to Lauri is Karen. They were my besties.
Ahhh, memories. Anyway, now that I have been found by John, my Facebook bucket list is complete. I have reconnected with everyone who I've wanted to. It's all gravy from here.
Sag has been singing this song a lot lately. So sweet. He first heard it in The Simpsons Movie. I truly enjoy seeing and hearing what songs and music catch the kids' fancies as they grow into the age that I was when I began to love popular music myself.
I am caught up on Portlandia now. Here's one more sketch. For me, not as funny as the Aimme Mann one, but close to my heart nonetheless because it's about Battlestar Galactica!
Onto Downton Abbey next...(which I thought was Downtown Abbey till a few days ago!)
A walking hibernation. A waking hibernation. I think it's SAD in full force. I'm not stressing or feeling depressed. But, I feel like I am under the thumb of this thing. Wiped of energy, light snuffed out.
Yesterday I finished reading the last of my library books, Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths, a graphic novel based on the author's own experiences as a Japanese soldier during World War II. It was difficult, but I appreciated the inspiration to bear witness.
Today I started reading Nocturnes, a collection of stories by Kazuo Ishiguro (link to a none-too-positive review from the NYT written by the late Christopher Hitchens). Cap gave me this volume with a beautiful cover for our anniversary last month. I've the first two stories. They strike me, so far, as quirky.
The second story, called, Come Rain Or Come Shine is shaped by and around a Ray Charles rendition of the song. I liked this, theoretically, quite a bit.
This is one of my Books for 2012. I am excited and pleased to be underway.
