Holiday Shopping DONE!

I've gotten my holiday shopping for everyone except my husband. I got my in-laws and my parents all taken care of and the gifts are on the way. We decided to get one small gift for each person, but I also wanted to support a charity. I had planned to just make a donation in their names, but my mother-in-law decided that she must have a present for each of us under the tree. So I decided that I'd do the same and support a charity at the same time. This years presents come from St Jude Hospital and all are useful. Double win!

Hubby and I aren't really planning to exchange gifts. When we moved we downsized our living situation by almost 1000sq. ft. and we just don't need more "stuff." Spamalot comes to town in March and I'd rather have tickets to that for my present.

The rest of my holiday gifts will involve baking. I'm not exchanging presents with friends or extended family this year. Money is just too tight for all of us. I'm planning to try my hand at making gingerbread people this year. I'll also make some sugar cookie and maybe some stollen too. I haven't made stollen in ages. I usually skip the sugary icing on the stollen and prefer to eat it as a sweet bread instead of as cake.

I'll try to post some pictures of my holiday baking soon!

Giving Thanks

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US. I haven't posted in months due to relocating to Alabama from Louisiana. I have a to-do list a mile long that must be done today. My husband and I are heading to my parents tomorrow for the weekend.

Since I don't have any earth shattering news or thoughts to share, I thought I'd list things that I'm thankful for this year. We often get too busy during the year to really count our blessings and we really should stop to do so more than once a year. Especially in these tough economic times.

1. My husband. He's my best friend and confidant.
2. Our health- all of us are healthy, thankfully.
3. Our family- everyone is happy and healthy.
4. I'm thankful that 2008 is almost over and looking forward to 2009 being a MUCH better year. ;-)

So, what are you thankful for?

Arbeit Macht Frei

Work will set you free. It is on the iron gates of Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. I'm wondering if it also wouldn't be a fitting title over entrance to China.

I'm so glad to see that Hitler is alive and well...and apparently running China. And here we thought he killed himself. [End sarcasm] That was my first thought after reading the article linked in the title. What good can possibly be served by sentencing two elderly ladies to one year in a labor camp? What can they possibly learn in this "re-education" program farce? In case you missed it, they have NOT actually protested, this is just for applying for a permit to protest.

China's labor camps smack a little too close to Hitler's concentration camps for my comfort. The Chinese police can sentence you to up to four years hard labor and re-education in these labor camps. Let's be realistic, the only thing being "learned" is to never, ever question the government. I wonder what kind of physical and psychological torture is involved in this learning process. I'm positive these two ladies will not be enjoying the next year of their lives. I wonder if they will live to see the end of that year.

China had a real opportunity to put a different foot forward to the rest of the world. They had a chance to really show that they cared about their people and basic human rights of those people. So far all they've done is show the world how quickly they can put the smack down on all people instead. China, you blew it. Big time.

I've not watched this years Olympics. I feel that watching would in some way condone China's behavior. The only thing I've kept track of is the total medal count and at last check we had eleven more than China thankyouverymuch!

I can't help these two little ladies. Disagreeing with China and blogging about it will likely get me nowhere except maybe on a "do not allow entry" list from China. And while I'd be glad to make such a list for my beliefs, I'm just as glad that I live in a country that allows me to express my opinions freely.

Staying In Touch

When I was a teenager I was a letter writer. I kept in touch with friends as we all moved throughout life. They would write letters to me. I would write letters back to them. We kept up with each others crushes, schools, thoughts and dreams this way. This was all before the internet. Well before the internet.

Years ago, when I was a teenager in fact, I received a book of poetry from my dad. I would sit and sift through my book for hours at a time reading various poems. Some were poems my father introduced me to like The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service or The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. Others I found on my own. One of my favorites is Around The Corner by Charles Hanson Towne.

Around The Corner
by Charles Hanson Towne

Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end;
Yet days go by, and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone,
And I never see my old friend's face,
For Life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well
As in the days when I rang his bell
And he rang mine.
We were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men;
Tired with playing a foolish game,
Tired with trying to make a name.
"To-morrow," I say, "I will call on Jim,
Just to show that I'm thinknig of him."
But to-morrow comes- and to-morrow goes,
And the distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner!- yet miles away...
"Here's a telegram, sir,"
"Jim dies to-day."

And that's what we get, and deserve in the end'
Around the corner, a vanished friend.

I no longer write letters. In college I was introduced to email. It seemed like a wonderfully efficient way to keep in touch. Instead of weeks of turn around time on letters, it would be daily! Marvelous! I could keep in touch with friends on an up-to-the-minute basis. Only we didn't. sure we'd dash off a quick email here and there. Or send some humorous email that was forwarded to us, but never anything of substance.

Along came cell phones and the ability to program an endless list of phone numbers. Perfect! I can call my friends from anywhere! I'd always have their numbers at my finger tips. No more losing numbers and keeping an address book. Technology is brilliant! Or it would be if I ever scrolled to that number and hit that little green button that makes the phone call that number. But I don't.

It's not that I don't think of them. Quite the contrary, I think of these friends often, but I still don't write. I still don't call. Just like the poem, it's always on the list for tomorrow. Only if I'm honest I know that that tomorrow won't be the day after today. Or the day after that one.

I keep up with the lives of people I've never met before, on their blogs or various message boards I post to, but I don't keep in touch with some of my childhood friends. Why is that? It's simple really, blogs or message boards are convenient. I'm already sitting at my computer doing other things. It takes no energy to read about someone else's life. I can read those at midnight or whatever other time is convenient. But writing an email of substance takes work (kind of like crafting this post!) and time and energy.

Will I turn over a new leaf? Probably not. Will I still think of them? Yep. Does the thought count in friendship over a distance? I sure as hell hope so.

The Life of a Pack Rat

I admit it, I'm a pack rat. And my husband, well he's a pack rat too. Two pack rats in one house is not good. Needless to say, we have a ton of stuff. We also have a ton of crap to keep all the stuff company.

We moved into our current house less than two years ago. When we left NOLA I tried to weed out a lot of the crap and toss it before the move. I was partially successful in this task, but by my own admission I wasn't nearly as ruthless as I could have been. We are now faced with the possibility that we'll be moving again this fall for my husbands career. This move is going to be different though. There will be professional movers involved. There may also be a weight limit the company will pay to move. Now it's time to be ruthless.

I started this monumental task a couple of weeks ago by cleaning out my closet. Five garbage bags of clothes to Goodwill later and I had a much emptier closet. I could actually find the clothes I want to wear! And the shoes! And handbags! Oh my! We finished hauling the rest of our stuff from the storage unit to the house this week. Those boxes were mostly filled with books. I decided to go through all the books on my book shelves and the ones in the boxes to get rid of books I'll never read again. Why have I been carting around a statistics book for the last ten years? Or that book on mass communications research? Geesh, that was a boring class and I guarantee I'll never crack that book open again! So into the pile they went along with the trashy romance novels that are my guilty pleasure. Now if I can just get my husband to go through some of his science fiction/fantasy collection, we might actually make some serious room on the bookshelves! Yeah, I can hope anyway...even if I know it's not going to actually happen.

All of this purging got me to thinking, why do I keep all this crap? Or better yet, why do I buy it in the first place? Oh yeah, because I'm an American. It's what we do best: consume things. I'm finding it tough just going through stuff, much less asking myself "do you really need this?" They make it look much easier on those organization shows than it really is in practice. So I'm trying to get rid of anything that hasn't been used in the last year with the exception of holiday decorations. I need to stop buying new holiday decorations though. I do not need anymore Christmas decorations whatsoever. I inherited a large majority of my grandmothers things and many my mom and mother-in-law passed down. We won't even start talking about my obsession with Halloween decorations from Cracker Barrel.

I'd like to say that I've learned a lesson about being a pack rat and that I won't continue this behavior. But who am I kidding? I will be in the exact same boat the next time I'm facing a move. I'll just be purging different stuff that is keeping company with different crap. And I'll be asking myself why I keep all of this all over again. I know this because I know all too well that I'm just like my mother and grandmother. It seems pack rat is a family trait, just like our brown hair.

Lemonade, Get Your Lemonade!

I was leaving the house this morning for a late morning meeting and three little neighborhood girls had a lemonade stand set up across the street from my driveway. As I pulled out I had to stop and ask if they'd still be out in about 45 minutes. "Yes ma'am!" they replied. Wow, kids with manners, how refreshing!

I got to thinking about how lemonade stands were once a summertime staple. Now-a-days they seem as rare as... . Or is it just the difference of city life vs. rural life?

I grew up in Los Angeles and you can't get much more citified than me. Neither my friends, nor I ever ran a lemonade stand. After high school I moved to New Orleans for college, another big city. I spent almost 16 years living in NOLA and don't recall seeing children run a lemonade stand there either. The last 5 of those 16 years were spent living in a double shotgun house that had been converted to a single. We lived in a old neighborhood called Bywater near the French Quarter downtown. Bywater is located in the 9th Ward (locals still refer to parts of town by their voting wards) or the Upper 9th Ward if you wanted to distinguish it from the Lower 9th Ward (an area obliterated by Katrina). When children play outside in NOLA, it's usually a football game in the street or something similar, but never far from Momma's watchful eye on the front stoop. It's just not safe otherwise.

Two years ago we moved to Lafayette, Louisiana. Lafayette can be described as a big town or a really, really small city. I personally think of it as a town, too small to qualify as a city- no skyscrapers. Here, we live in a subdivision with neat brick homes and nicely manicured lawns. Most of the neighbors have their 2.5 kids and I'm pretty sure they wonder what's wrong with me as I walk around with 2 dogs and no children. It's different here in a lot of ways. One that I've observed is that the neighborhood kids play outside a lot. They ride their bikes and play ball in the field between my house and my next door neighbor. And they set up lemonade stands. All without the watchful eye of Momma. *Gasp!* I think to myself.

To my husband this is all very normal. He grew up in similar neighborhoods in Florida. For me on the other hand, the watchful Momma's of New Orleans were my normal. I had several moments of panic when I saw small children running around unattended. My husband assured me this was all quite normal and that the children were fine. I had another shock when those same children came running up to us one day when we were walking our dogs. We're strangers! What happened to "stranger danger"? Don't these parents teach their children not to talk to strangers?! Even if those strangers do live in their neighborhood? Again my husband seemed to find this pretty normal.

I always thought this was a way of life that died out sometime in the middle of my childhood. I had no idea that it still existed in some areas. I guess I always figured it probably still existed somewhere in Small Town USA. You know, that place somewhere in the middle of the country with a total population smaller than my neighborhood? Yeah, it might still exist there, but nowhere I'd be living.

After I got over my initial shock, I found it kind of comforting to know that I lived in an area where three little girls could set up a lemonade stand without Mom hovering close by. So now I wave at the kids as they pass me on their bikes and even talk to them without worrying what their parents will think. So when I got back home from my meeting, I went out to buy that glass of lemonade. And talk to the little girls with manners. Both were quite refreshing.

Our environment

I wrote this piece about a year ago.

When did talking about saving the environment become in vogue? We run around in our gas guzzeling, mega sized SUV's, buying material goods as if it were a race. But a race to what? I always think of that phrase "he who has the most toys wins." But what do you win? A ton of debt? Death by clutter? I don't know who wins, but I do know who is currently losing. Our planet. That's right, Mother Earth cannot continue to support our insane rate at which we are sucking up her resources.

In an attempt to reduce my own resource hogging, I've been working on transitioning our household to a more environmentally friendly one. Nothing too drastic, we aren't going off grid anytime soon, I like AC and my computer too much! I thought if I write about some of the things we have done, are doing and are planning to do in our progression to a greener life, it might spark some talk from others about things you may be doing or have read about. I'm always on the lookout for new ideas.

The first idea that pops into many minds is hybrid cars. So, if money happens to grow on trees at your house, give some serious thought to buying a hybrid vehicle. (By the way, if money does grow on trees at your house, please root me a clipping from that tree!) Well, as much as I'd love to just go out and buy a new car, it's not going to happen. My main reason (besides the lack of that tree) is that I already have a relatively new car and it's still under warranty. I should stop now and admit, while I call it a car, I drive an SUV. It's a small SUV, but it's an SUV all the same. My husband drives a VW Passat and his car and my little SUV get comprable gas mileage. We are fortunate though, we work at the same location and carpool together. This save a huge amount of money on gas and wear and tear on our cars. Not to mention less emissions into the air. Add to that the fact that most hybrid vehicles are running about 10k more than a comprabely equiped gas only model of the same car and for me, at this piont in time, a hybrid just isn't feasable. I'll do my part for the environment by keeping my vehicles in good working order and getting their regularlyy scheduled maintenence.



1. Electric bubls. If you haven't gotten yourself some of those cute little baby florescent bulbs for all your lamps at home, do yourself a huge favor and get thee to the hardware store! They not only use less energy, but the last forever, which will save you money in the long run. Yes, they are more expensive initially, but you buy them far less frequently. Who says you can't be money conscious while being earth conscious?

2. Change your filter on your AC unit regularly. Get the quality filters too, if you can afford them. The AC has to work a lot harder when you have a dirty filter. This means more polutants in the air as well as more money out of your pocket.

3. www.greendimes.com This site claims to be able to assit you in reducing your junk mail. Given how much junk mail that we recieve in a week, any bit helps. The tremendous waste of paper for all of this junk is a shame. Paper comes from trees. Let's keep the trees standing and less crap filling up our mail boxes.

4. Shopping bags. Buy reusable fabric bags or make your own. Whole Foods and lots of other markets sell the fabric bags. If you Google "eco bags," you will come up with a plethora of sites that you can purchase bags. A lot of recycling companies will not take the plastic grocery bags and then they just end up in a landfill. Yuck.

5. House cleaning. I hate cleaning house. I can come up with about a 1001 different things I'd rather do, including stare at a blank wall, but sadly we can't avoid cleaning forever. Cleaning with environmentally friendly products is not only good for the environment, but they are good for you too. Do you really want to expose yourself to all those nasty, harsh chemicals? I've been using the Seventh Generation products that I can get at Whole Foods. I also use the Mrs. Myers products too. The Mrs. Myers can be found at Whole Foods, World Market and lots of little mom and pop natural food stores. Plain old vinegar and baking soda can also be handy cleaning products too!

6. Feminine products. Yes gents, we need to touch on this too. You can purchase good quality reusable pads these days. In a vast array of patterns! Don't laugh. Check out http://www.newmoonpads.com/ or http://goddessmoons.com/products.htm just to get an idea of what's out there. I have to admit that I have not purchased these myself. Due to working outside the home, I've been kind of reluctant to give them a try, but I am going to order a few to try it out. I have recently switched to the organic cotten tampons that you can get nowadays. The packaging is all recycled paper. Every bit helps in recycling. If you are gutsy enough, you might try http://www.keeper.com/ for those that prefer tampons.

7. This next one is kind of inline with #6. The reusable pad idea got me to thinking about make up. In particular, those cotton squares that I use every morning and evening to apply the astringent or clarifying tonic to my face. I could do the same thing with some soft fabric, like flannel or something similar. Those could easily get tossed into a mesh bag to be washed with the towels. After the initial investment in the flannel material, it would save you money and cut down on the amount of trash your produce that ends up rotting slowly away for a milenia in a landfill.

8. Eat less meat. No, I'm not trying to convince you to go vegetarian or vegan, just to eat less meat. Factory farming is hell on the environment. The waste and crud that is produced as a byproduct of factory farming is disgusting. It seeps into the lakes, rivers, streams etc. Besides, just about everyone in America could stand to have a healthy, low fat meal once or twice a week. It wouldn't kill any of us.

9. Buy quality products that will last you a long time. I don't mean buy the most expensive, but rather, do your research and find products that are well made. Expensive doesn't always equal good, just as cheap doesn't always mean bad quality. Look at websites such as Consumer Reports, Edmonds and any place else you come across product reviews. It'll be worth your time in the long run to do a little bit of leg work ahead of time. This might even save you some wasted purchases, which will cut down on clutter!

10. Bottled water. No, I'm not going to sit here like the esteemed Mayor of San Fransisco and tell you that tap water is just fine to drink. However, if your tap water does taste just fine to you, consider yourself lucky. The tap water here is well, foul. What I will suggest though is to consider one of the big water coolers that you can get the 3 or 5 gallon jugs to use. Those big jugs are reusable and the cost of renting the cooler part really isn't that much. You can even buy the coolers at Lowe's and Home Depot, so I'm sure a lot of other places sell them too. If you buy a reusable water bottle, like a Nalgene or a Sigg bottle, you can refill many times from home. This will cut down on the amount of individual water bottles that often don't make it to the recycling truck. My office doesn't have the water cooler yet, so we have to buy the individual bottles. We also don't recycle (another I'm working on), so I collect my water bottles and bring them home to recycle. But I keep forgetting to actually bring them home. Last count I had about 6 bottles sitting there waiting to be recycled.

11. I recently made the switch to cloth napkins in our house. We have used paper napkins for ages, even though I've always kept fabric napkins that match my place mats for the holidays. So it got me to thinking, why not just buy some plain white cloth napkins that can be washed and bleached (in non-chlorine bleach) when needed? They don't have to be fancy or even match a table cloth or place mat. My husband and I eat most of our meals on TV trays in the living room anyway. I use fabric dish towels all the time, so cloth napkins just made sense to me. If you are creative and motivated, you could even buy some material and make them yourself. Sadly, I just don't have that kind of time and my package of 6 cloth napkins came from World Market for $9.99. Well worth $10.00 bucks in my opinion. Eventually I'll buy a few more packs, maybe even in a few colors.

As you no doubt have noticed, I'm a photographer. I love film photography, but the chemicals are not nice to the environment. They probably aren't horribly nice to me either. But as a fan of black and white photography, I have always just dealt with the chemicals. Enter digital photography! While I still love playing in a dark room, I have to say, the new age of chemical free photography is nice. Digital photography has spoiled me with the instant gratification of knowing whether or not I just captured that one shot I wanted. The digital age has changed photography, as a profession, drastically. We can have photos from weddings and portrature sittings in the matter of hours or days instead of weeks. Photo journalists can have photographs for news stories on websites minutes after they snapped the shots. Printing digital photos has never been easier, you don't even have to leave your house! You can print from home or upload your shots onto one of literally thousands of sites and have high quality enlargements shipped to you. My personal favorite part of digital photography, never having to worry about a scratched negative. :-)

What's with the title?

When I was in grade school and learning to write, I liked simple, clean sentences. I did not like any extra things in my sentences, such as commas, hyphens, apostrophes or much of anything else that my strange little mind viewed as making a mess in my clean sentence. I repeatedly heard, "Don't forget the comma," from my teachers. A lot.

Luckily I've gotten over that odd little dislike of punctuation in a sentence. In fact, now days I tend to err on the side of too many! I try to edit them out when I go back and reread through my stuff, but I'm not always successful. My writing skills are rusty these days. Somewhere after college I stopped writing much of anything of worth and like any skill, if you don't use it, you lose it. Email doesn't count.

So here I am once again trying to find my muse. I'm not sure where she's gone off to, but hopefully with some time and effort I'll find her again. I'm not sure yet what the subject content of this blog will be. I guess we'll find out soon enough!