Happy New Year

I started this blog last January with the intent of blogging everyday.  I noticed that with this post I will bring the grand total of "daily" blogging to 200.

Not too shabby I say!  Better than half, give or take 55 percent.  

So now the question for 2009 is, do I aim higher, keep it status quo (as in blogging whenever I feel like it) or stop blogging altogether?

I am so not into New Year resolutions, so I'm not really going to make any rash decisions right now.  I do like to use the start of a New Year as a starting point -- easier to keep track of things, like a year's worth of blogging or a year-in-the-life of taking daily pictures, but I stopped the picture thing a month or so ago ... I just stopped and that was that.  One might think that I was in the home stretch and could pat myself on the back tomorrow and say that I'd done it.  But I did do it.  I took over 300 pictures of myself, I carried a camera around with me EVERY DAY and chronicled my life.

And you know what?  It's a pretty active and exciting life.  I spend a lot of time on the ski slopes, in the woods hiking, I travel a lot ... it's all good.

So really the ONLY reason I am posting this blog today is to have a nice round number of 200.  I am not in a reflective mood, I don't want to do the Best and Worst of 2008 (though that might be fun!)  I just want to check in (to make 200) and then well, I can say I posted 200 times in the year 2008.  Not that that is important, mind you.  No big deal.  TWO HUNDRED TIMES BABY.  Seriously, no big deal.

Two hundred is better than 100!  Not that it matters, of course, to those of you bloggers who didn't reach TWO HUNDRED.  Not a contest.

200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200 200.

HAPPY NEW YEAR (like 200 times!)

Running here and running there

I am all over the place.  It's not that I can't focus -- because believe me, I can.  I can sit down and start writing in the morning and the next thing I know it is dark out.

I know this because I have done it before.  Many times.

I can immerse myself in many things and lose all concept of time.  They call this being "in the flow," and this girl can flow, let me tell you.

But unless I am completely engaged, I tend to be all over the place.  Like this morning.

I have this really strong need to know all I can about alternative foods, supplements, etc. so that ultimately I will know what everything I put inside my body does for me (or doesn't, as the case may be.)  This would seem fairly simple, but I can't just read something that says "this is awesome for you so take it everyday," and be happy.

Oh no.

I have been taking this supplement called MSM.  I ran across it because in my role as Maddie's supervisor in making her feel all that she can be through eating properly, I was looking for something that would help her with her knee.  She tore her ACL last year and while it has been repaired, it still aches after she excercises, etc.  So I came across MSM, which provides sulfur, which is a building block of joints and cartilage and can help athletes.

But it also said it did a whole slew of other things, so I started popping them.  And you have to take lots of them, twice a day.  But people then ask, what does it do?

Well, lots of things.  I just know it is good.

But do I?

So this morning I decided to find out all that I could about MSM.  I mean, ALL that I can.  And I have been reading both positive and negative information on it, and scribbling away in my notebook and definitely reinforcing my feelings that this is definitely more helpful than harmful, when out of the blue I thought, "I know, I would like to Photoshop the picture of all of us on the bed against the background of the ocean view."

So ... I put down my pen, picked up a picture I'd printed off of these various shots and started playing with them, trying to envision how to Photoshop them together.  Since I haven't put any time into actually LEARNING Photoshop, I didn't even begin to play with it that way.  But are you kidding me?  I was doing something!  

Which in turn led me to blogging about my inability to finish a task before moving on to another!

Crazy.

So now I am sitting here, examining all the things I was doing, should be doing and am doing, and have decided I am hungry and need something to eat.

Or not.

Lighting a fire under my Kindle

The Kindle is not my first ebook reader.  Oh so many years ago when my job was to track down all the latest and greatest technology, I came across a company that wrote the software to convert books to several reader's of the time -- one of them being the Rocket ebook.  I had to have one.

Rocket eBook - Gemstar eBook Group Limited - Planet eBook If you are the least bit interested, you can read the short history of the Rocket, which seemed like it was going to shoot into the world with a great burst of promise.  I spent a lot of money on it a lot of years ago -- because I believed.  I don't think I was ever able to purchase anything current -- though I remained hopeful that one day it would catch on.  And you can still purchase the next generation of the Rocket -- but I can't seem to track down much in the way of content that would be appealing to the masses.

Which is why I decided that a reader attached to Amazon.com might just make it!  It's not for everyone -- and it is surely for the devoted reader who needs a book YESTERDAY because they just have to, no questions asked.  And I was happy as a little clam reading my book when I finished it and wondered if I could give the $10 book I'd purchased yesterday to my daughter, who also received a Kindle for Christmas.

And the only way you can share books is to have the same account.  And right now we have separate accounts.  And I'm not too sure I want the same one because that means it has to go on one credit card ... and gee, I wonder whose that would be!  But we'll have to do that, if we still can (we have both registered our Kindles to our accounts, I haven't figured out if we can change hers yet) because isn't sharing books what you're supposed to do?  I read awfully fast and I would hate to think that only **I ** will be the only one reaping the pleasures of a book, no matter what the medium.

I did an Internet search hoping that someone had figured out a way around this blasphemy, but to no avail.  It appears that avid readers are not necessarily evil hackers.  Harumph.

I had to laugh when last night my father was saying that these ebooks would put printed books out of business.  I tried to explain that these "ebooks" have been around for years -- like ten plus years -- and I hardly believe that our rising unemployment rate is due to a lack of book printing.  They are just like phones -- how many people still have land line phones in their homes on top of every family member owning a cell phone?

Exactly.  We hold on to old technology like the dickens -- we are suspect of it -- we expect it to fail the moment we trust it.  I discarded ebook technology for years and years because it did fail me.  I was sick of reading third-rate novels that were the only thing available (along with the Classics, but come on, how many Classics can you read in a given year?) and so I returned to printed books without a second glance.

But I love technology -- I always have.  The Kindle is the same technology as the Rocket, only slightly improved.  And truly, it's only slightly.  The print is better, but I must admit I miss the backlight of my Rocket ereader which allowed me to read in bed with no lights.  True, it is like reading a computer screen, but I only did it occasionally.  What the Rocket lacked at the time was a behemoth like Amazon to back it up: and that is the ONLY reason I am back in the ebook saddle.

But I am ticked off by this lack of book sharing and I am highly suspect of their small teeny tiny print that says that while their Whispernet technology is free today and maybe tomorrow, they can begin charging for it any time they damn wish.      

Which we all knows means as soon as they have enough people on board.  ::::::::heavy sigh:::::::

My father has the Sony eReader and that seems to have a better design -- the buttons to lead you here and there are smaller so you don't keep hitting them by accident -- which I have done countless times with the Kindle.  But the con on that one is that it doesn't have the ability to download books on its own -- it must be hooked to a computer.  Which, as we discovered last night, is easier said than done because his Norton Security kept blocking the site and I had to disarm that, but couldn't do it permanently without uninstalling it, which was a whole HELL OF A LOT MORE HASSLE THAN I FELT LIKE DEALING with, because I was at my sister's for dinner.  Not a pain in the ass fix another Bill Gates headache.  (I blame everything on Bill Gates, because he is a pain in my ass and always has been!)

Oh, the columns I used to write ranting and writing about how he ruined EVERYTHING.   I should write a column on what our world would be like without Bill Gates.  I'll tell you this, computers would work for the people, instead of for his moronic machine.  Windows schmindows -- piece of crap, always was, always has been.

But I digress. 

 ::::::::::::::::deep cleansing breathes, visualizing no Bill Gates in this Universe::::::::::::::::::::::::

And so ...  an old technology peeks out from behind the shroud of obscurity and thanks to Ms. Oprah, the whole world wants a Kindle and the Power of the O strikes again.  

Whatever.

I just want to hand off the book I just read to my daughter.

Does everything have to be so ... proprietary?  I bought the damn book, it is MINE, and now I should be allowed to share it.

Don't you agree?

Driving to the city ... in a blizzard. So?

I am not sure what good a glue gun would have done for my loooooooooooooooooooong drive to NYC on Sunday morning, but Wowsa is all I can say.

Now, let me preface this by saying that I understand that it is not normal to jump into your car amidst rapidly falling snowflakes and countless television warnings about a Nor'easter, and begin a five hour drive.

But ... we had pre-paid tickets to a broadway show and well, how bad could it be?

It was just so slow -- and it's hard to remain "on" like that for hours on end -- and instead of driving out of the weather, we were really driving into it.  It was headed in the direction we were coming from, but it had already begun in earnest, so there was no free ride at all.  Just snow-covered roads followed by slush-covered roads followed by ice-coated roads and at last ... in Connecticut it ended with rain.  

The scariest part was knowing that if I had to step on the brakes, we would go into a slide.  I could feel the car slipping and knew that underneath there was no traction whatsoever ... so it was just a go-slow-approach and hope that everyone else on the road had the brains to understand that the conditions were tricky.

Then this tractor-trailer truck went by at a speed unfathomable for the road conditions and threw up tons of slushy, brown snow that coated my windshield and left me completely blind.  For a second I was totally stunned and fortunately my brain screamed I CAN'T SEE and my hand automatically turned on the wipers, because that could have been it.  Which of course then makes you wonder what the hell you are doing out on the roads in a BLIZZARD that never ends and whose stupid idea was it anyway?

Oh, mine, I guess.  I'M NOT AFRAID!!!!  And let me just say this.  This morning I had to head up north a half hour to go food shopping and yes, it was snowing.  The roads were snow-covered and not for one second did I consider NOT going.  Hell, a half an hour on slippery roads?  What neeny sissypants can't do that?  Hell, I've driven across three states in a blizzard, and I am woman hear me roar!

HA!

I guess you can live your life in fear, or live it believing you can do anything.  (Which I can, by the way!)

So our quick little trip to the city was AWESOME!  Our hotel was awesome, the broadway show was awesome, the weather outside was frightful but everything else was delightful!

We stayed at the Marriott Marquis right in Times Square.  Now, people have always said that they don't like to stay right there because it is too crowded, noisy and not nice.  But I LOVED it.  I loved that I could walk out the door and everything was right there, within walking distance.  The show we went to, Spring Awakening, was right around the corner.  The next show we saw, Wintuk, at Madison Square Garden, was a few blocks from there.  Rockefeller Plaza, right there.  Everything ... it made life so much easier.

And yes, it was crowded and you left the interior of the hotel and entered the moving river of people, but if crowds daunt you, then perhaps a bustling city is not your destination.  I love it.  I don't mind, though it amazes me how irate people get when they turn around from window watching and smack right into you, and then yell at you for hitting them!  Wack jobs.  If personal space maintenance is your thing, then go to Siberia for gawd sake.

We went to the Museum of Modern Art, not so much for the modern art but for the Van Gogh exhibit.  But it was fun to see the girl's reaction to a piece of white canvas hanging on the wall with a square black box painted on.  Or a mirror hanging on the wall with a red dot light stuck to it.   I mean, it is kind of pointless and stupid, but isn't America grand that you can build a museum and put sheer stupidity on the walls and people will pay to go look at it?!!!!

Maddie and Emma also went ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza -- which is touristy but why the heck not.

We had our fun moments -- like when I dropped my mother, Maddie and Emma off right in the heart of Times Square -- just stopped in the midst of traffic and they pulled out all of our bags and stuff and went in to check into the hotel, while my sister and I drove a few blocks to save a few bucks by parking the car ourselves.  But ... when we arrived at the hotel we discovered there was an ENORMOUS area to drop off located underneath the hotel.

Who knew.  Perhaps the cop rapping on my window telling me to move might have mentioned that.  Geesh.

We had our tense moments, like when my mother accidently spilled wine on my sister and Emma and they were furious and made my mother feel awful.

You know, typical family bliss!

But all in all it was a successful, fun and fabola trip, and the only thing missing was Hallie!

What is perfect?

Usually we have these fabulous Christmas trees.  We have a cathedral ceiling living room and can get monster trees -- and have for years.  Last year I recall the tree not being all that spectacular, but it was fine.

But this year somehow we seemed to forget while picking it out that we have a large living room, and this tiny misshapen tree seemed quite lost in the corner.  And the shape of it, well, it looks like some Grinch-type being stole into our house and shaved off portions of this tree so that it would look ... wrong.

Last night we put on the lights and the cranberry and popcorn strings.  I kept glancing over at it and almost shuddering at its sheer ugliness.  Maddie said "fine, this is your fault, you don't have Christmas spirit and now we have a sad tree."

Geesh!  The pressure!

I tried, let me tell you, on the Christmas spirit front.  I bought stuff to make a gingerbread house, I strung popcorn and cranberries and Charlie and I rolled out gingerbread and sang christmas carols -- we were a commercial I'm telling you.

But what a disaster!  I don't know what went wrong, but the house kept collapsing, I was covered from head to toe in the "glue," which is a sticky concoction of egg whites and confectioner sugar that didn't seem to be hardening on the house, but it had no problem doing so in my hair, and no matter what we did, it wouldn't stay up.

Finally, as we desperately tried to apply gumdrops and other pieces of candy to the sinking house, we decided that it was a "disaster house," and had been hit by a vicious snowstorm and killed all the occupants.  (Which was kind of the truth, because we had little mini gingerbread people all around who had been crushed by the walls of the structure.)  And!  Charlie was fine with that.  He even laughed.

Phew.

When I came home from the most fabulous of fabulous hikes in the woods with the new fallen powdery snow, I found Charlie rehabbing the poor little house with a glue gun.  It doesn't look half bad, and the kid loves the glue gun.  I know he had more fun putting the pieces together with that then he did with the sticky other "glue," that was torturous and messy and didn't work to boot.

I glanced at the tree and realized that a little glue gun magic needed to take place in this arena as well.  Now of course I didn't use glue, but with a little rearranging of furniture, a strategically placed poinsettia and rocking chair, our little tree with its numerous flaws has been transformed into a beauty.  It also looks bigger surrounded by things, so it's all good.

Really good.

And I am off to New York City tomorrow in a supposed snowstorm.  But nope.  It will be fine.  

But I'm taking the glue gun just in case!

The haunting of plastic

A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of plastic stew that is entering the food chain.

Ever since I saw a report on this where sea turtles and birds are dying because their mothers are feeding them what they think is jelly fish and the like, I have had a real problem with plastic.  A scientist went through the stomach of dead turtles and birds and their stomachs were full of plastic -- primarily those bags we put our groceries in.

And since my consciousness has been raised to this new level, it seems that I too am swimming in these bags.  I am loathe to throw them away, so I have bags full of these bags tucked all over the place.  I use re-usable shopping bags when I shop, but I am often in a situation where I don't have them with me.  Even if I stack them up and leave them on the counter before I leave to shop, I will forget them.  Or they will be in the wrong car.  I have loads of them -- it's crazy, and absolutely inexcusable, but those plastic bags keep creeping in.

I need to remember to ask for paper.   I had read that from a recycling standpoint, there was no difference to the question "paper or plastic, ma'am," but the paper bags are far more sturdy and able to perform another purpose, even if it's to act as a container of more garbage. Oh, there's just so much waste.

Plastic doesn't biodegrade, it photo-degrades, which means it is broken down by sunlight into smaller and smaller pieces, all of which are plastic polymers, eventually becoming individual molecules of plastic which are still too tough for anything to digest.  These molecules are then eaten by plankton and jelly fish who are then eaten by fish who are then eaten by bigger fish ... and well, then we eat those fish.  So we're potentially eating plastic.

It boggles the mind.  Like the plastic that deformed this turtle.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

This is a picture of a dead albatross, you can see all the plastic that it has ingested.

And yet, it's hard to undo using something that is so convenient, I get that.  But I just can't throw them away -- I see them going to sea, and it just feels wrong.

I have stopped using plastic water bottles and I recycle as much as I can, but our family still produces so much garbage.  Everything I throw away I look at, and think all this can did was hold this food for a short amount of time, and now it is useless forever.   Or this plastic container held yogurt and now it is useless, forever.

Forever.  It's not going anywhere.  In fact, it might just end up back in our bellies.

You want any salt with that?

Christmas countdown

It seems to sneak up every year.  You think it is weeks away, and then suddenly it is only DAYS away.  This year, for some reason, it is coming very quickly, and even though I was quite proactive in ordering gifts quite some time ago, I still have that feeling like there is SO MUCH TO DO and i don't have enough time to do it.

I am, of course, talking about Christmas.

Once upon a time I used to get into decorating the house for Christmas.   And this year, well, let's put the Christmas tree upside down!  Nah.  But these days I have no interest whatsoever in it.  Zip.  Zilch.

My children have accused me of being Scrooge.  They say I have no Christmas spirit.

But what exactly IS Christmas spirit?  Does it mean that like most things, it's all about ME creating something for everyone else?  Decorating the house, purchasing and wrapping gifts, stringing popcorn and cranberries for the tree (I have to FORCE people to help do this since Hallie left, she always helped!) and making sure everyone has special holiday meals and plenty of hefty doses of Christmas spirit?

You know, that makes a whole lot of sense when you have little kids.  But my kids are no longer little and I see no reason for having to be the creator of something they can also contribute to.  If it is not inside of me to fill the house with lights and decorations and spend hours on something I have no interest in ... then guess what, it's not gonna happen!  If that is Scrooge-like, then guilty as charged, but I have done my best to purchase gifts that they will all love and enjoy and of course I will wrap them and decorate the tree and string popcorn and cranberries and feed them food that is all happy and Christmas-like.

But it's not what it's all about, and I can't seem to figure out how to impart that, other than to just stop doing the things that to them make Christmas.  Like the gifts.  My kids don't need anything -- and you hear this from countless other people.  We buy our children everything they need and then some more after that.  It's just the way things are (even if you can't afford it) and so it's really, really hard to ignite the spark that has already been fanned into a full blown forest fire years ago.  Whatever gifts I have for my children, they will not get all that excited about.  Because it will be disappointing because it won't be more than they've had before.  That is impossible.

They have it all.  Hard to top that.  And so, let me tell you, it's not all that fun to buy them.  It feels more like an obligation -- because everyone else does it.  And let me tell you even louder that THAT reason is the best reason for me NOT to want to do it anymore!  Ick.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I have a few items that I am excited about giving, but not across the board, and it's those presents that I have purchased out of a sense of obligation that do not sit well with me.  And this isn't new, I've felt like this for a while -- as each year I tried to top the year before, until it became impossible.

And it's a situation I can't figure out how to solve.  But then again, I can't change the way I feel either, and with each passing Christmas I become less and less inclined to feel obligated  to be the perfect Christmas mother -- fa la la la.

And it's hard to purchase more stuff to bring into a house already brimming with stuff.  I say this, as I sit in my office surrounded by piles.  No matter how hard I try to muck out from underneath the accumulation of years of junk, it seems to return as soon as I turn around.  And when I go shopping, I see all this stuff that I so totally NEEEED (not at all) and end up buying it and then wondering what the heck?

Yeah, I guess that all sounds quite Scrooge-like -- but it doesn't come from a place of evil Christmas past's lurking in my psyche -- it comes from wanting to evolve a commercial holiday back to its origin -- of Christmas spirit being about love and peace and happiness and joy.

NOT STUFF!

It's there, inside me.  When we went to get the tree, I inhaled the wonderful aroma of greens surrounding me.  It's all right there, at the surface, but I think that if everyone wants to wallow in Christmas spirit, then they should bring a little to the table -- because it's not all about one person doing everything all the time.  

Or it shouldn't be!