Every family has its own internal language

Quote du jour:
Me: What's this potted plant?
Mother: Oh, Cathy gave me that. It's to replace that plant we had by the front door, the one that died when the weather got below freezing. I forget the name... something that begins with 'P'...
Me: Hibiscus?
Mother: That's the one.

Site du jour: In case you missed it, A Mouse in France wrote a series of posts on how to avoid getting computer viruses. And since she deals with that sort of thing for a living, this is straight from the horse's mouth, as it were. (From the mouse's mouth? Whatever.)

Exercise du jour: 4 miles walking, 15 minutes ellipticalling.
Sigh. Yes, again. This will become a habit eventually. I just wish I had a precise definition of what 'eventually' means in this case.
Done. Finally. Actually, not quite done. I skimped on the walking (2-1/2 miles), because my body decided that since everyone else was sniffling and sneezing, it should join in the fun. Slowest 15 minutes of ellipticalling ever, but I got up and did it anyway, so I'm putting the star up.

Life is grate

3 headaches in 4 days, but who's counting?









(This photo has been making the email rounds. If someone knows of a source, I would be glad to give credit where it is due.)

Eight is enough

Yikes! I've been tagged. Silently tagged. Didn't feel a thing. (Note to self-- be more observant.) Nunhead mum of one, who writes cool (in the Californian sense of the word, not in the way that a meteorologist or Nancy Mitford would use it) little vignettes of life in her neighborhood on Nunhead Ramblings, challenged me to write a series of 8 things.



Seems to me that the best way to tackle lists of these sort is to go at them without stopping to think, to write the first thing that comes to mind. Otherwise you start writing with a view to your audience, trying to impress them. I figure you'd see through that, so you're getting the stream of consciousness version here.


8 things I'm passionate about:

1. Cruelty toward children or animals or anyone innocent or defenseless. (Hmmmn. 'Passionate' here means in the sense of passionately against. Suppose I should probably write a list of things I'm passionately in favor of.)
2. Surrounding myself with a beautiful garden, all green and growing things (hard to do in wintertime).
3. Coming home on a dark and rainy night, lighting a fire to drive back the darkness, filling the house with candles and incense and putting some magnificent music on the stereo.
4. Showing something new to a child, presenting them with a game they've never tried to play, an idea they've never thought about before, and watching their eyes grow wide with wonder (especially fun at Christmas).
5. Stopping each day to think of three things that I should be grateful for.
6. Getting out of the house to walk, or run, or bicycle, anything that will get me out of myself and looking at the world. (Looking at life should be like looking at a window, not a mirror.)
7. My family (oh, I bet everyone says this one).
8. My friends (but that's because it's true).

8 things to do before I die:

1. Become thin-and-fit.
2. Buy a house.
3. Write something that isn't a technical manual.
4. Cycle a century.
5. Run a 5k.
6. Learn to sew without cussing.
7. Become able to speak in public without turning bright red (not a good color on me).
8. Become an organized, confident person.


8 things I say often:

1. Dagnabbit
2. Sheesh
3. Oi vey Maria!
4. Yikes
5. Actually, I like to think
6. that I don't
7. repeat myself
8. all that often


8 books I've read recently:

1. House hunting for dummies
2. House buying for single women
3. An exhaltation of larks
4. Making money
5. Cary Grant: a biography
6. Buying a home when you're single
7. Introduction to Darwin Information Typing Architecture
8. Beginning Runner's Handbook

8 songs I could listen to over and over:

1. Fantasie Impromptu, Op. 51, by Chopin
2. Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini, by Rachmaninov
3. Suite for solo cello No. 1, by Bach
Oh wait. Does 'songs' mean something to sing along with? I can't sing! Oh here goes:
4. Hang on little tomato, Pink Martini
5. Days like this, Van Morrison
6. Fall on me, REM
7. Javano, Javanke, by the Baksheesh Boys
8. Don't be shy, by Cat Stevens



8 qualities I look for in a best friend:

1. Honesty
2. More honesty
3. Humor
4. Loyalty
5. An open mind
6. Intelligence
7. Patience
8. Ability to finish lists. The 8th one is always the hardest, for some reason.

I'm sweet enough already, thanks

What are all the food producers out there trying to do?

All I wanted to do was buy a loaf of bread. Seemed a simple enough mission to accomplish: I had the money, I was in the bakery section at Safeway, each loaf had the words "healthy" or "whole grains" on the label.



What could possibly be wrong with this picture?


The problem began when I started reading the labels. I rejected loaf after loaf, brand after brand, because each and every one of the dang things had sugar as one of the first ingredients. High-fructose corn syrup, at that. Who the heck puts sugar in their bread? Why would you want to do that?

It's like the frozen pre-made pancakes that I saw in the freezer section. Now I was raised proper, I was. About the only thing my Southern-born daddy taught me how to cook was pancakes, but I learned that good. You do not put sugar into the mix when making pancakes. If you want to add syrup or powdered sugar on top, more power to you. But you don't mess with the pancake itself.

I truly do not understand. I've got a sweet tooth, like everyone else. Doesn't mean that I want everything to be sweet all the time. I like popcorn with salt & butter just as much as caramel popcorn. Even sour foods taste good sometimes. (Pickles, anyone? Argh! No, not sweet pickles!)

Gilroy, California, is famous for their annual Garlic festival. Anyone who's been there has probably tried the garlic beer, or garlic chewing gum, or something similar. But the one food item that the festival is notorious for is the garlic ice cream. Yes, you read that correctly. Not a typo. And people will even admit, reluctantly, that it "isn't all that bad." The problem is not so much the taste as it is the idea of ice cream that's garlic flavored. That's how I feel about high-fructose corn syrup in bread or pancakes.

To me, it's a freedom of taste issue. If I want to go home and put sugar on my toast in the privacy of my own home, well, I'm an adult. It's not against the law (yet). This is not something that should be decided for me by some mindless profit-seeking company trying to corrupt my taste buds, ruin my palate, and restrict my choices all for their own profit. Huh.

Why am I here? For that matter, why are you?

The trouble is that I always want there to be a Reason for everything.

There has to be a point for a blog. I've read that most blogs have only one author and only one reader -- and they are one and the same person. Basically they're online diaries. Why are these people posting their private lives online, making them public?

• Many blogs out there are exercise/diet diaries; the poster putting the minutiae of their daily life out for public view for anyone or no one to see, presumably as a way of keeping themselves on track for their goal.
  
• Writers post blogs that serve this function too, as well as keeping their readers involved in their progress.
• Some blogs are public rants; the poster holds forth on their opinions about all and sundry.
• Some blogs are private parties; the poster or posters hang out online with their physical and virtual friends. (I've enjoyed a couple of these blogs myself; you meet some good peoples online.)
• Some blogs are the online year 'round equivalent of a Christmas letter: the poster uses the public forum to keep their friends and family au courant.

Some of these blogs are well written, some are not. A lot have spelling errors and typos, so many that the impression is given that the poster doesn't care what they look like to the world. (It's the editor in me, but I can't fathom that. Would these people go out in public with their hair unbrushed or their clothes wrinkled and askew?) But all of these blogs seem to be posted by people who really believe in what they're doing. There's the rub.

Maybe the problem is that I can't quite believe in myself enough to think that my musings will hold much fascination for anyone else. Even the dog curls up for a nap when I start telling her my troubles. My family nods politely, eyes glazed over, when I tell them about my exercise schedule or dieting struggles. Why would posting a blog be any different?

Perhaps the only way to find out is to blog about something. Here. I'll tell you what, Dear Reader. (I'm presuming you exist.) I'll try a slice of life (low cal, just a dash of chocolate on top):

I'm sitting here typing and out my window I can see planes flying back and forth, jets passing low overhead, helicopters buzzing the trees. (Okay, one helicopter.) You'd think I was in the middle of a Baghdad neighborhood, but in reality it's just the local air show. The small airport is actually about four or five miles away, but there's always some overflow. Usually I enjoy looking at the planes going by. When I go shopping, I can see the acrobatic biplanes doing loops and crazy stunts, safely thank Heaven. I'm hoping to catch sight of the Blue Angels. But this year I'm also a bit nervous. My newly developed fear of flying has extended to when I'm on the ground and they're in the air. Last year a friend of mine went on a garden tour with another friend. When they got back to the other woman's house, they found it on fire. A plane had crashed into it, killing the pilot and setting two neighboring houses on fire. My friends had been running late that day; they'd originally planned to have returned about fifteen minutes sooner, in which case she wouldn't have been around to tell me about it. The moral of the story, to me, is that's it's not always a good thing to be on time.

There. I've now created a slice-of-life blog post. Maybe next time I'll try posting my diet and exercise schedule.

p.s. I've just discovered a blog that has tips on how to blog, if you're interested.