Hikaru Dorodango - The Ancient Art of Mudballs

This is sooo cool! I am going to do this as soon as I get a chance. Hikaru Dorodango are balls of mud (!), molded by hand into as perfect a sphere as you can get it, dried, then polished with more dirt to a depth of shine that seems impossible. The process is simple and straight forward, but the results are pure magic! Check it out here: http://www.dorodango.com/about.html

I'll let you know how it goes.

Take a Beating Sunday

My teams lost. Totally bummed on both the Padres & Chargers. And I don't want to talk about it any more - it's just too painful. Yeah, I know, dontcha just hate those people whose lives rise and fall with their teams score? Me too. I've become kinked from living in an all male household. Fall Sundays are all day sports fests, broken only by frequent trips to the frig for beer and only slightly less frequent sojourns to the bathroom to expel all that beer. Between games or at a convenient half-time we barbeque then eat in front of the tv with our fingers. We don need no steenkin forks! Ours is a vegetable and carbohydrate-free repast. MEAT. Ribs of every variety, fish, weenies (for all the kids), chicken and of course, no Sunday Game Day is complete without the shrimp appetizer. Every once in a while, as a concession to the women, a bag of chips (carbohydrate!) and a tiny bowl of guacamole (vegetable/fruit!) is thrown on the coffee table as an afterthought. Woohoo!

I'm striving for balance in my life and still looking for my inner girl. But I'm not gonna find it on a Sunday at my house.

Done! Fini! Case Closed.

I quit my job. I did not give 2 weeks notice. I have never done that before. I am responsible. I am considerate. I do the right thing. Well...mostly. I absolutely unequivocally HATED my job. It was none of the things I'd been led to believe throughout the interviewing process. My first thought upon waking was 'how can I get out of going to work today?' If I could only have a car accident and maybe break an arm! On my way to work I began to unravel; dizzy, unable to breathe and my heart would pound in my throat. Just getting through the work day was an exercise in doggedness. By the time I was out of there I was exhausted. Bone weary and mentally wasted. It wasn't that the work was so demanding - it wasn't. It was that I HATED it and the energy expenditure of that was greater than my reserves. The work was boring and pedantic, involving little creativity, interaction or even thought. Did I mention I hated it?

I resigned on a Tuesday. My eye stopped twitching! I feel great! I'm broke and I don't care! I think I'll go to school and learn Web Design. Maybe. I might decide to twirl signs on the street corner. ? I don't know what I'll do but it for damn sure is going to be something I enjoy. Life's too short.

Bling for Uber-dummies

$90.00 for a bottle of water! Water for the uber-rich. Doesn’t it trigger your gag reflex that some people have so much money to waste and so much ego to feed they will buy water that comes in ‘limited-edition, frosted and corked bottles, hand-decorated with Swarovski crystals’. It’s called Bling H20. The founder of Bling H20 says “he noticed that you could tell a lot about a person by the bottled water he/she carried.” Like what? They drink water? Some people are pretentious douchebags? Shallow people need to flaunt their wealth to fill their self-esteem gage? Some people are so insecure they use a water bottle to define themselves? The world needs a reality check paid to the order of all the countries around the world that don’t have clean water to drink.

Let me be the first to say I waste money and I buy things that are frivolous. But this doesn’t seem simply a matter of making a frivolous purchase. I think it goes deeper than that and is indicative of root societal problems. I understand buying comfort, beauty and ease. But this is none of those. It’s a symbol of decadence to which many will ascribe lest they be found unworthy. To me it's not so much a matter of the haves & have-nots; it's about emptiness, a bald and desolate spirit striving to fill itself and settling for banality.

Sorry for the dive into the philosophical - it just struck me as a sort of social compass and it seems we're going in the wrong direction.

I AM Grateful...I'm Just Not Good At It

It’s November, the month that we count our blessings. A time of year we reflect on how thankful we are for what we have. Right now what I have is a dirty house, a door that needs painting, a floor that needs tiling, a crooked curtain rod and a bunch of relatives coming over. Early in October when I suggested that we have Thanksgiving dinner at my house it sounded like a good idea. Now I’m thinking a protracted stay in the hospital attached to life support sounds better.

The season of giving thanks followed by the season of giving has become the time of year I am struck with Alzheimer’s. My perpetual chant throughout November and December seems to be, “What did I forget?” and “I wonder where that is?” and “I’ve got to remember to ...!” Yes, I make lists. I’m the Queen of Lists. Unfortunately, my lists don’t seem to be where I need them when I need them. It’s a rule.

Of course, I must come up with a menu. Given that Thanksgiving is a traditional meal that’s not hard. What is hard is negotiating what each guest will bring. If Cousin Kathy wants to bring Apple Pie and it’s well known her crust chews like a popped basketball, it’s my job to remind her how much everyone is looking forward to her green bean casserole. And does anyone actually own 21 matching placemats? That calls for shopping at the Dollar Store. They have Christmas stuff; that means I will be seriously sidetracked from my goal. Where’s that damn list!

I tell myself to breathe and work on my gratefulness skills. I take a deep breath and swoosh it out slowly and try to think thankful thoughts. Oh Crap!! Mark STILL hasn’t fixed the front step! My mom’s going to break her leg before she even gets in the door. We’ll end up spending Thanksgiving in the ER trying to snort out that ammonia-funk smell while pleading for forgiveness. That’s IT. Mark’s a slacker and he’s not getting any pie. Assuredly this approach will lead to bickering; which in turn will become sniping and bottom out with him getting no pie!

This Thanksgiving will end like the last one and the one before that and the one before that…Dinner done, the last guest gone, tired to the point of exhaustion, my husband and I will be draped on the couch like overcooked noodles. We’ll smile in that shared agony sort of way and I’ll say “I’m so thankful that’s over!” And he’ll say, “Only 31 more days till Christmas.” Do you hear that? That is the sound of my husband swallowing his roasted nuts!

Hmmm, just a thought as I stand in the checkout line …maybe I could wander off somewhere, lost to family and friends, only to be found some months later in a briar-covered mansion deep in the forest with a wait-staff of 7 (if so, I don’t know you, Alzheimer’s, remember?)

Arlo & Me

Arlo: Short, happy, brown-eyed, male
Me: Short, happy, blue-eyed, female

Run, Run as fast as you can...from Silent Hill

Just coming down from my coffee/candy high. Whew! Those bite size bars will ruin you; especially the ones that are too little to do more than pop the whole thing in your mouth. Tomorrow when I’m shimmying to pull my pants over my fat ass I will moan and groan about ‘em or when I’m thinking about installing a ‘to go’ pipe from my computer to the bathroom, but while I’m throwing them down I don’t bother to count. It wasn’t till my son said something about the silver Christmas tree I was building with wrapper balls that I even noticed.

I love holidays. All of them. Halloween was a slide this year. No hurrying, no mess of makeup, pins, and wigs strewn everywhere. Mark lit the fire pit so all the witches, Snow Whites, Darth Vaders, Pole Dancers (!), Magicians, etc. could warm themselves while awaiting their fistful of candy, my son manned the candy bowl and off we went to dinner. That’s right! Dinner out on Halloween.

I saw a lot of cute outfits but the Starbucks girl, wearing blue scrubs with random patches of white webbing and sporting a spray bottle at her hip won the prize. She was ‘cloudy skies with a chance of rain’. Yeah, I got ‘rained’ on when I asked her what she was.

With all the kids tucked up in my bed watching Beetlejuice, it was time for FrIgHt. We chose to watch Silent Hill because it looked creepy, properly scary, but not too blood and gorish. Understatement follows: this is a very bad movie. It was scarier watching my neighbor pick his butt than it was watching this woman try to get her child back. From where, you might ask. I don’t know, I would reply. Sorry movie – one of the worst I’ve ever actually sat through. By the end I was ready to suck wrapper balls up my nose just so I could pass out.

Pants on Fire

As this is my first post I felt I should write a little about myself. I am wealthy enough not to even consider the cost when acting on my purse fetish. My children are all cum laude graduates of world class colleges; navigating the highways and byways of life with ease and aplomb. While minor irritations and disagreements may mar our marriage, my husband and I never go to bed angry and are always in accord on the big issues. And I am tall.

Well, wish in one hand, shit in the other...