Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Wistful thinking

Laurie was right. Snuzzy IS my new favorite site.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Winds of Change

Today I'm proud to be an American; proud to witness this historic moment and excited and thankful my daughter has been born in this amazing era.

Congratulations to our president elect, and congratulations to the people of America - it is you, and only you, who are responsible for this change.

PSA

Get out and vote.

Fall is my favorite season. Not only is it the season of my birthday, fresh donuts and cider, finally cooler temperatures, agricultural bounty, but it's also the start of the holiday season and the time for my favorite annual publications - the thanksgiving editions of the food magazines. Oh there's nothing better - it's food porn and I'm an addict. I love the pictures decorating the shiny pages of perfect food; golden turkeys, fluffy potatoes, browned casseroles, vibrantly colored vegetables.

My addiction to Thanksgiving isn't limited to the food. The seasonal decorations and the table settings are also a focus of my addiction. Autumnal colored linens, elegant holiday china, cornucopias, leaves, pumpkins and gourds, mums; I can't get enough. I hit the store to collect all the Thanksgiving editions of magazines I don't already subscribe to (yes, there are ones that I don't subscribe to thankyouverymuch), then I head to the library to check out all the cookbooks they have too. I plot and plan the menu, the table, the snacks, and the dessert with my mom and sister beginning more than a month in advance - discussing holiday menus past and assigning items for preparation.

This year we have an additional reason to be excited (and thankful) - two new family members trying holiday food for the first time (well, one actually trying it herself, one trying it second hand).

We have favorite dishes that return yearly to grace the holiday table (sausage stuffing, sweet potato casserole) and new items being tested for the first time. What are favorites on your holiday table?

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Shut up and eat your greens

So the government has decided to allow irradiation of your food. OMG! What should you do?

Hysteria!?

Mass pandemonium!?

Riots!?

Hmmm....Too much effort, too little return.

Maybe instead..

Urban homesteading? Buying local? Joining a CSA?

Better...but still requires actual thought and effort. I like to sit on my bum in front of the computer.

Whatever could you do?

How about exercising your constitutional right to do what we do best... Complain! The FDA is currently allowing a 30 day comment period on its new ruling to allow irradiation of commercially grown leafy greens (to begin in September). The information is out there - educate yourself and let the man know what you think.

(Hey, I'm biased, but I'm not against freedom of information. Check out this info too.
Yummy radiation
Shut up and eat your toxic greens
But we promise it's safe (winkwink)
I'm no robot
More shit disturbing

Oh, and BTW, the reason we have to fry our food is because commercial production is in short, nasty. Any wonder why this requirement was suggested by commercial food producers??

Monday, August 4, 2008

Revisiting a basic lesson

With rising gas prices capping now where in sight and well paying jobs moving into the past, many people in my town have turned to a new form of transportation. Their bicycle. Bikes are great. They're small, easy to park, manuverable, free to operate, self cooled (who doesn't like the wind in their hair), and offer an added benefit of providing the operator exercise. Operated according to the applicable laws and with the proper protective equipment (reflectors, lights for riding in the dark, a helmet worn by the operator) bikes are a safe and efficient method of transportation. Well, relatively safe. Unfortunately there seems to be a certain segment of the population who have forgotten that basic Kindergarden lesson called sharing. So let's review sharing as it relates to the road.

1) You do not "own" the road. The road is owned by the city/township/municipality/county and the citizens who reside there. And since we all pay taxes to use the road, whether we're walking, biking, or driving, we have as much right as you to be there.
2) Speed limits are posted for a reason. While you may not care about your safety (and frankly neither do we), we do care about the safety of everyone else on the road, so drive within the speed limits and keep them safe.
2.5) Driving with intoxicated/impaired/flat out drunk is illegal for a reason. Again, while you may not care about your safety, it's usually not the drunkard who gets hurt. If you're drunk, stay off the road.
3) Yelling obsenities is inappropriate, no matter how stressed/angry/tired/much of a jerk you are.

My hubby rides his bike to work, and I've been known pre-pregnancy to ride mine to run errands or to avoid having to find parking. I've had friends that have been hit by cars while riding their bikes, and I'm a daily witness to people harassing/disrespecting/endangering bikers (and everyone else on the road) with their inability to share the road and agressive driving.

A bicyclist was hit early this morning and killed on Sprinkle road by a driver (and alcohol is suspected to be a factor). Please, let's have this be the last one.

Monday, July 28, 2008

How to make your businss warm and fuzzy the Walmart way

I'm not a Walmart shopper so I'm a little behind in their logo rebranding news but here's an interesting article on how their logo change is being analyzed.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10424677/1/small-biz-change-your-logo-like-wal-mart.html

Home Gardening on the rise

Check out this article on the rise in home gardening from GMPro.

http://branchsmith.typepad.com/project_green_industry/2008/07/home-gardens-ga.html

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Hear ye, Hear ye

I have a new water softener and I'm excited. Which is kind of sad now that I think about it. I still remember the days (thankfully pregnancy brain hasn't caused me to forget everything) when I was excited for new Barbies, Christmas presents, first dates, and gossip. Now all it takes for me to get worked up is my husband doing chores, new water softeners, and reruns of Law & Order. Oh, and not having to work tomorrow (but who wouldn't find that exciting.)

The hubby will be having a birthday this weekend, which I still think is exciting though he's insisting he doesn't want to celebrate. I don't understand this refusal to have fun on birthdays thing that's come up lately. I mean, think about the alternative. Sound more fun? Didn't think so. So suck it up and have a good time. In my opinion you're lucky to have one.

The only downer to this birthday-shmirthday jazz was the following conversation I had with the hubby (recorded below for your shock and appall).

Crappy Hubby: "You realize I'm still going to be in my twenties when you're in your thirties?"
Fantastically Irritated Me: "Yes. Thanks for the reminder."
Crappy Hubby: "And you're going to be in your fourties while I'm still in my thirties?"
Fantastically More Irritated Me: "Do you want to see this birthday that's coming up or are you looking to end it right here?"

No one likes to be reminded of their own mortality.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Suckerpunch

Let's get one thing straight. I don't believe that all problems can be solved with violence, nor do I believe it should be a solution even considered in the majority of situations. I do believe that education and appropriate consequences are the best and most effective solution in most situations. However, there are a few situations where I find a straight up punch in the face to be the most effective method for dealing with the offending parties.

1. Animal abuse (see this article)
2. Spousal or child abuse
3. If nothing else works

Seriously though. If you think abusing animals is fun, or you believe in doing it just because you can, you deserve to have everyone you meet punch you in the face until you realize what a j--k a-s you are. And if you don't realize it, well you'll still get what's coming to you.

Monday, June 23, 2008

Question

What does a loving wife get for a husband who claims he wants nothing for his birthday (but Jack's Naturally rising crust pizza and corn)?

Life is beautiful

Not much to report on of late. I enjoyed a fantastic Friday lounging at the beach with my fellow bloghers JoJotheKnitster and Punk Rock HR, as well as my fantastic hubby, who insisted on driving the gas guzzler as the check engine light is once again on in the vdub. A minor irritation however I'll let it slide as long as it continues to get me where I need to go on 28 mpg.

After our beachisode we were desperately in need of snacks and beverages so we headed to the Idler to waste the rest of our day in nothing to do luxury with our much more motivated friends (who had just woken up from a nap after biking the 34 miles from Kalamazoo to South Haven). And I thought waddling my phat pregnant ass around all day was tough.

I just took a glance around and noticed laziness seems to have taken over my household this evening. (And shakiness apparently has overtaken my arm.)


Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Let's play a game

First I totally admit this post is stolen from Notes from the Garden Spot of the World.

Next, let's play this game. I love to read - love it- and am always reading something. Last week it was The Bradley Method of Childbirth, over the weekend it was Eat Pray Love and Super Natural Cooking and this week it's Family Dinners.

The following list of books are the top 106 books tagged "unread" at LibraryThing . Let's see how well read we are.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment
Wuthering Heights
Catch-22
The Silmarillion
Don Quixote
The Odyssey
The Brothers Karamazov
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
War and Peace
A Tale of Two Cities
Jane Eyre
The Name of the Rose
Moby Dick
Emma
The Iliad
Vanity Fair
Love in the Time of Cholera
The Blind Assassin
Pride and Prejudice
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: A Novel
The Kite Runner
Great Expectations
Life of Pi
The Time Traveler's Wife
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Atlas Shrugged
Foucault's Pendulum
Dracula
The Grapes of Wrath
Frankenstein
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mrs. Dalloway
Sense and Sensibility
Middlemarch
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
The Count of Monte Cristo
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Sound and the Fury
Brave New World
Quicksilver
American Gods
Middlesex
The Poisonwood Bible
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dune
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Satanic Verses
Mansfield Park
Gulliver's Travels
The Three Musketeers
The Inferno
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Fountainhead
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
To the Lighthouse
A Clockwork Orange
Robinson Crusoe
Persuasion
The Scarlet Letter
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Once and Future King
Anansi Boys
Atonement
The God of Small Things
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Cryptonomicon
Dubliners
Oryx and Crake
Angela's Ashes
Beloved
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
In Cold Blood
Lady Chatterley's Lover
A Confederacy of Dunces
Les MisƩrables
The Amber Spyglass
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Watership Down
Beowulf
The Aeneid
A Farewell to Arms
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Sons and Lovers
Possession
The Book Thief
The history of Tom Jones
The Road
Tender is the Night
The War of the Worlds

Ramblin'

It's been a loooonngg week. I'm not sure if its the pregnancy or my zeal for over scheduling and packing as much as possible into every day, but I'm feeling a little worn down and over tired. So far this week I've worked, cleaned, made cookies to celebrate a birthday, walked the dog, swam, volunteered, knitted, shopped, gardened, and tried to sleep - though the heat is kicking my ass. Miser that I am, over the weekend we ran the central air AND the window unit in our bedroom and I was still dreaming of a bathtub full of cold water. It's interesting how all winter I dreamed of laying out in the hot sun on the beach only to find myself this summer trying to find a walk-in cooler to crawl into.

I've also noticed this week that it seems like I'm having increasing trouble breathing - almost like I can't get enough air in. It's likely due to the baby taking up more and more space but this doesn't help to quell my already high anxiety level at all, but I just keep thinking about the 15 more weeks to go.

Thanks to the slightly less humid weather this week the garden is finally mostly in - I do need to stop and get some straw to mulch the onions and greens but other than that most of the hard labor is done. The tomatoes, zucchini, and cukes are quickly making twining the supports necessary, and the eggplant and brussel sprouts are creeping higher and higher. I'm hoping to get some pictures up this weekend when I get the mulch down.

On another pregnancy caused accident prone note, last weekend I endured an almost injury - while sleeping. I had just gotten back to bed after spending some time in front of the tv - I was having some problems sleeping so I had gotten up extremely early and gone down to watch some tv until I was able to snooze again - and I was looking forward to a few delicious hours of sleeping late with nothing to do. The hubby and the critters were of course still snoozing away as I snuggled into my (tiny) spot. I had no sooner started to drift off when the hubby started to snore - loud. Frustrated and half asleep, I flopped my giant pregnant self over (which is getting to be a production) and ...fell off the bed.

NO, I wasn't hurt at all, but I was a little "surprised" to say it nicely. On a brighter note, it woke the hubby up so I was able to get back into bed and asleep before he started snoring again.

Friday, May 30, 2008

Working on Fridays is for Suckers

I love lazy Fridays. Let me rephrase. I love not working on Fridays. I love having a day of laziness that isn't on a weekend and getting to laugh at all the suckers spending their last day before the weekend slaving away.
I'm spending the day in girlish luxury. A massage and a movie with friends. Relaxing in the yard with a new magazine and a delicious iced tea. Eating leftover Chinese food cold out of the container for breakfast. (Hey, I didn't say it was YOUR idea of luxury.)
The hubby is spending the day in bed, recovering from food poisoning. For the second time this week. Yes, after eating something that gave him food poisoning earlier this week, yesterday he proceeded to then eat the leftovers, causing him to be sick yet again.

Don't ask me, I wouldn't have eaten it.

I'm thinking about heading to the library for some perspective widening new reads. And doing some volunteering. Isn't it fantastic to have a day where you can choose what to do?

I love Fridays.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Long days ahead

My hubby installed the air conditioner in our bedroom window last night insisting he was too hot to sleep anywhere but the basement without it. It's going to be a LONG summer at this rate.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Food not lawns

I finally planted some things in the garden this weekend - tomatoes (yellow pear, roma, currant, paste and beefsteak), eggplant, cukes (pickling and burpless), zucchini squash, and brussel sprouts. This week I need to get in the peppers (sweet and jalapeƱo), greens (lettuce, kale, spinach, swiss chard and collards), herbs, beans, onions, beets, and radishes. I'm trying a new "caging" system for the tomatoes and vine crops that was recommended in my Veg Gardening 101 class through MSU's extension program - it involves building "fences" for the vines to grow up, reducing the amount of horizontal space they take up (and allowing hopefully for more plants in a smaller space). Courtesy of my overzealous hubby our garden is also larger this year - almost double the space of last year and slowly encroaching over more and more of our yard. (Food not lawns!) We've also got plans in the works to add a new back door to the house onto a new back patio - to be complete with space for a fire pit and seating area, so I'm slowly inching closer to my goal of no wasted lawnscape.
I spent Saturday afternoon volunteering at Gull Meadows Farms in Richland and we all know no trip to a greenhouse can be complete without a purchase...hence two new shade loving perennials joined me for the trip home. Though we disappointingly didn't get very many questions (other than where do I find x?) I did enjoy my time wandering among the greenhouse plants and watching people excitedly fill their carts. It's nice to know people do care about and want to add to their landscape - I did even see a couple filling several carts with perennials (awesome) for their house.
As much as I'm still dedicated to it, it is harder this year to work on the yard - harder to bend over and I'm so much slower at working through things. The heat definitely is having a greater effect on me as well. I'm determined though to spend as much time as I can on it hoping it will have a positive effect on the little person in utero and they'll come out a little garden loving dirty footed hippie child.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Pregnancy

Pregnancy is such an magical process. One day your body is it's own, strong and flexible and energetic. Suddenly it becomes a vessel for a tiny idea, a promise months from becoming reality. Your body swells and changes shape, still hiding a treasure that it feeds and protects, encouraging it to develop and grow. And suddenly in a act of true strength and physical endurance, it opens to allow this tiny idea to become a reality. And even after your body no longer carries this treasure in it's cocoon, your body still provides it food and comfort as it returns to it's more normal shape.

I want to say being pregnant is one of the best times of my life. I want to say I feel strong and beautiful and sensual. I want to say I'm proud of my body for being able to accomplish this wonderful act of creation, to grow and nourish and change. Unfortunately the way I feel is mainly tired and full and unattractive. I feel ashamed of my stretch marks and uncomfortable in my own changing shape.

Today at a birthday party I reconnected with a wonderful girl full of love and excitement and energy. She's also a doula. She reminded me what a fantastic adventure the next 20 weeks (and beyond) should be. How amazing and natural this process is. And I'm trying to remember. I want to remember.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Luck of the draw

I have strep throat.

And I'm 11 weeks pregnant.

How did one girl get so lucky?

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Like really?

I threw up 5 times yesterday.

For reals.

This baby better be worth it.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Truth in Advertising

I'm all about preparation and an open and honest flow of information so for all you non-mommies (yet or ever) I've decided to break the momma-code-of-silence that we're convinced is the only way to continue the permanence of our species (there's enough of us anyway) and tell you what my journey to mommahood is really like...

It sucks.

Morning sickness (as you all know) is a misnomer - there's nothing restricted to the morning about it and it's not sickness - it's the overwhelming urge to immediately (if not sooner) barf no matter where you are (for me parking lots, at the grocery store and at work all have been wonderful places) and it strikes randomly and suddenly at any time of day. Yum.

Cocoa butter does not prevent stretch marks - it gives one an incredibly itchy rash on one's stomach that persists for days (and days).

Pregnancy does not give you a glow - scrubbing your face aggressively to try to banish the crop of zealous acne that has suddenly popped up all over your face gives you a red tint that is often mistaken for a glow.

32 more weeks (and updates) to go and counting...

LOVE

Happy VD!

How will this pregnant fabulousita be spending her VD? Making a delicious homemade dinner and dessert with the hub (and then trying to keep it all down and not fall asleep by 8:00 p.m.)

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

September 27th

Yes, that's the big day, though statistically it won't be. Babies hate to be predictable you know, and I'm sure mine will be as crafty as the rest of them.

So I'm two months today and doing relatively well minus the heartburn. I'm dreading having to purchase new (stretchy) clothes and having to spend the entire summer completely covered (there's no way I'm wearing a bathing suit).

On a brighter note, I dropped my friends off at the airport this morning bound for LA and they've promised to bring me George Clooney when they return. So at least I have something to look forward to.