Thursday, February 19, 2009

Blue Day

This is the first day in my rainbow week. If you want to play along, I'd love to have you join me. As I walked through the house looking for blue things, I loved how this was making me look at my house in a different way.
First are my aqua globes. These things are great. They're pretty and my house plants are looking better now that they're getting regular water instead of just when I notice they're wilting.
This photograph is of Kayangel, an atoll in the South Pacific where Sweetie lived for a short time with his family when he was fourteen years old. It hangs in a prominent spot in our livingroom.

I hated Crocs, but Pipsqueak broke me down, and I bought these for her. I've got to admit that they're cozy and convenient.

This is the first blue ribbon Pipsqueak won. She got it in a horse show last summer in the walk/trot event. I was so proud of her.Here is the wallpaper in Pipsqueak's room. It's so bright and cheery looking, even on a cloudy day. It was put up just before she was born, but I think it's going stand the test of time and she'll continue to love it for a few more years.

But this is my favorite blue thing in the whole house...
Tomorrow will be red day.

Only the Lonely

I put Sweetie on a bus today. From there, he'll go on a plane and another plan, then a train. Eventually, he will end up in Austria... for nine days. Now before, you start bashing him for being a heel and leaving me behind, you should know that he's going skiing with his uncle. They are expert skiers and I am a beginner. The sort of beginner that feels pretty certain she could face plant in the snow at any time. Sweetie gets stuck skiing with me and Pipsqueak most of the time; he works hard and he deserves to let it rip with the experts.

But I'll miss him. He's been gone four hours, and I already miss him. It's nice in a way... I probably take his company and companionship for granted, but with him gone, I'll appreciate him more. We've been married over 10 years, but he still makes me laugh every day, I love his warm feet against my cold ones in bed every night, and I love being near him, even if we're sitting on the sofa clicking away on our laptops.

When he goes away (which isn't often), I always get the urge to change something while he's gone. I'd love to paint a room or remodel the closet, but I'd get way in over my head, and things might look worse instead of better. I'm going to try to clean out a few neglected areas before he gets back. I've got a few ideas for something a little bigger, but we'll see what happens.

In blog news, Liz at Quilted Turtle has inspired me with her yellow photos this week. For the next six blog-days, I'm going to feature photos from each color of the rainbow. I'll start tomorrow with blue.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Remember When-sday - Kids Today

Just in time for Remember When-sday, I received this in an email. If you're over 30, you should be able to relate to this...

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning... uphill... barefoot... in the snow... BOTH ways... yadda, yadda, yadda. And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it, and how easy they've got it! But now that... I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today don't know how good you've got it!

When I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue or an encyclopedia!! There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps cost 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! No where was safe!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and 'eject' it when finished, and the tape would come undone.

We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal; that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your Bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent... you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens; it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder, and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel! There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove ... Imagine that! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Staycation, Day 1, Part 2

Saturday evening, we went to our town's Tiki Torch Trek. As darkness was falling, we snowshoed around the well-groomed trails, all lit with tiki torches and marked with famous poems on the subject of nature. It was a beautiful, starry night with mild temperatures of mid-20s. That seems pretty comfortable after dealing with sub-zeroes.

Pipsqueak has the modern, light-weight, short profile snowshoes, but Sweetie and I prefer the old-fashioned, wood and rawhide version. Their only drawback is slippage on steep inclines.

After our hike, we returned to a roaring bonfire and tables of food provided by local restaurants and grocers: cheddar cheese soup, chili, an array of sandwiches, hot chocolate and hot cider, and enough desserts to rot our teeth or give us a monster stomach ache.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Staycation, Day 1, Part 1 - Aquatic Center

Since we're not going away this school vacation, we're having lots of fun locally. Saturday morning was spent at the new Aquatic Center. It opened a few days ago. We had so much fun, we joined for three months. I had all sorts of happy endorphins from warm and humid feeling in there. I think this video that Sweetie put together illustrates it best...




The new Upper Valley Aquatic Center is Bahamas. Without the baggage. from Rick Read on Vimeo.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

It's NOT All Greek To Me

Have you tried the Greek yogurt yet? It's so good! There are other brands out there, but my favorite is Fage (pronounced Fa-yeh). It comes plain or with honey. I love the addition of the honey, and it's really good, flavorful, ever-so-slightly granular honey.
The first time I had really good yogurt, it was 1999, and I was in France. Our run-of-the-mill yogurts (Yoplait and the like) are an entirely different product from this creamy, smooth delicacy. It tastes indulgent. This Greek yogurt is very close to that, but I've got to go back to France for the genuine article.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Remember When-sday - Babies and the Prevention Of

Until I run out of material, Wednesdays are going to be for waxing nostalgic and remembering the way things used to be. I hope they will bring back some memories... some good, some thank-God-we-don't-do-it-that-way-anymore.

Remember....
  • plastic pants that went over cloth diapers
  • cloth diapers when that was all there was instead of the "green choice"
  • diaper pins
  • before EPT
  • hearing someone say, "The rabbit died."
  • before the pill
  • before Lamaze
  • fathers-to-be pacing in the waiting room, instead of camcording in the delivery room
  • diaper pails
  • metal strollers and high chairs with sharp edges
  • walkers that could roll across the floor (and down the stairs)
  • copper coil IUDs
  • new mothers staying in the hospital for a week instead of 24 hours
  • first shoes of white leather with hard soles

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