Where I'm From

I am from ugly flowered curtains, from Goldfish Crackers and tuna sandwiches and lemonade for lunch on the beach .

I am from the house across the street from the school I never went to, with the mulberry tree, and the ivy, and the stepping stones around the gas-lamp that still shines in my memory.

I am from the phlox, and the apple tree, and the roly-poly bugs under the bricks

I am from all the children playing Elijah, and from flat feet, from Jenny, and Mom, and Dad, and David, and Roz.

I am from the people who talk openly about illness and loudly about politics.

From Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

I am from Jewish Atheists who celebrate Passover and Hanukah and Christmas and who were fine sending me to a Quaker camp

I'm from Brooklyn and all over Eastern Europe, from chopped liver and potato latkes and steamed lobster in the Summer.

From the friendship of Bubbe Hoffy and Bubbe Yetta, and how Bubbe Yetta never knew Bubbe Hoffe wasn't Jewish. From my father's lifelong friends from Camp Kinderland. From blended families, and thirty cousins.

I am from rolodexes of photos on my mother's coffee table that my son and I look through everytime we visit.

for Magpie, who started it this time. Can also be seen at Crunchy Granola, among other places

Fifteen Years (now with pictures)

15 years ago today: We looked like this

10 years ago today: I looked like this

(in a bathing suit in Kauai). And conceived this

6 years ago today: I wrote this.

2 years ago today: we were supposed to go out for dinner, but I went to the hospital instead. Good times.

This year, we ate beef tenderloin cooked to perfection.

Happy Anniversary, Mr. Spock.

First Posts

A bit different from the way I've done it before, the title and first sentence of the first post of each month for 2010.

January: Sweater knitted.
Now I just need to make up the sleeve seams, block it, sew in the snaps and put on the buttons. I loved the way it turned out

February: Gryffindor scarf update.
Knitting done. Weaving in ends 3/4's done. Need to block and add fringe. Wow! I knitted a bunch in the first part of this year!

March: I would say something if I had something to say...
Will catch up here later this week. Sorry for the silence here, but I'm noisy at my other blog and on Twitter. Yeah, my posting everywhere went way down this year.

April: Things I wish I would make time in my life to do

* Hawaiian Dance lessons. I still would like to make time in my life to do this.

May: Cropped!
From this: (pic) To this: (pic) I wonder what he'll do with his hair next?

June:Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Mysteriously Knowledgeable 8-year-old
I would accuse him of reading ahead, but MY SON would NEVER do THAT. He's a reader, that one.

July:Briefing in brief.
We went to Vermont on Amtrak. Ah...Vermont. Ah...Amtrak.

August: Whatever you're interested in, Dick Francis has a book about it (Part 1)
Photography? REFLEX He died earlier this year. I am so glad I got to tell him several times how much I enjoyed his books.

September: View from the Waiting Room
Sitting in the waiting room at the car shop, waiting for them to change the oil, rotate the tires, and do all the stuff one likes to get done before traveling in holiday traffic 6 hours each way. He really is an amazingly patient boy

October: What we're doing around here
MM is acing tests (spelling, math, geography: all A+) and enjoying school immensely. I can't tell you how relieved I am about this.

November: Was gonna post last night for NaBloPoMo
but something came up. That was really not fun. At all.

December: A Scene From Thanksgiving
MM starts a book club: Now that was a really fun time.

The Amazon.com meme

My first order with Amazon.com was placed May 10, 1999. I ordered $102.39 worth of books and cds. Just enough to qualify for free shipping.

In the order was:

• Field of Thirteen by Dick Francis (Hardcover)
• Pete Seeger's Children's Concert at Town Hall
• Steeleye Span's All Around My Hat
• 4 non-Narnia C.S. Lewis books
• The Kinks Lola vs. Powerman and the Money-go-Round
• and Flower Fairies by Louisa May Alcott.

Links will be added later.

It's funny, I didn't remember that these things were in that first order. I still have them all, of course, but I didn't remember that that's when and how I got them. What I DID remember about that order was the bookmark that came with it.

It was a plain cardstock bookmark with a quote from Mark Twain. You know the one:

"Outside a dog, a book is Man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read."

Meeting Haiku

Not allowed to knit
during sales meeting. Fingers
bloody by tonight

Blogging for Choice

Even if no one ever again is faced with an unwanted pregnancy - and I hope we get to that day - we will still need abortion to be safe and legal.

Because there are times when a wanted pregnancy needs to be aborted. To save the life or future fertility of the mother.

So especially late-term abortion needs to be kept legal and safe. Yes, I said ESPECIALLY late-term abortion. For Cecily. And for all the other women who have lost their wanted child, but not yet lost the pregnancy...for those who have pre-eclampsia...for the myriad reasons that a pregnancy can go horribly wrong in the last few months or weeks.

Keep all abortion safe and legal.

As seen at Redzils's: The BBC Book List

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE. (Redzils didn't do this, and neither will I. What I WILL do is put a + on those I've read more than once)
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.(Redzils didn't do this, and neither will I)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X+
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible X
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman X
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X+
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot X
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens X
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh X
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X+
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X+
34 Emma - Jane Austen X+
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen X+
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X+
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X+
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X+
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving X+
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins X
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - X+
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X+
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X+
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X+
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X+
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - X+
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt X
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - X+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson X
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X+
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker X+
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro X
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X+
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle X+
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X+
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X+
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole X
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare - X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo X

My total: 62. I just noticed that there is no #2.
Of these, I HATED two (Secret History and Wuthering Heights), never got past chapter three of Moby Dick and read twenty-nine of them more than once.

Flashback Friday: What was I doing X years ago?

Anne asks, what were you doing X years ago?

Last year, I didn't post anything on the 27th, but I did on the 26th. I'm guessing I was doing homework on this date last year.

February 27, 2007 was a banner day at Chez Mystere!

And three years ago today, I crowed over the awesomeness of my test-taking skills.

Those three posts pretty much sum up what I've talked about here these last three years: School, Muffin Man, and Smiling. With an occasional foray into body politics.

So, what were you doing X years ago?

Flashback Friday - This makes me giggle

Flashback Friday


Is there anything sillier than a child playing dress-up?



Wearing mommy's slippers...
...and boots. He's so stylin'
Gettin' his hair done, rockin' those paper clips.
And sunglasses are always tres chic. Especially when worn upside-down.

He turns seven a week from this coming Sunday. Where does the time go?

Oh no! I forgot about Flashback Friday!!!

So this is Slacker Saturday instead!

This week's Flashback Friday's theme was "Feeling Red, White, and Blue", which made me think of this past year's Fourth of July parade, which I got to participate in, and a certain day in December 2007, and November 4, 2008.

Our country is great because every couple (or 4 or 6) years, we have a quiet revolution. We get to throw the bums out, or keep them. We get to say what we think out loud in front of God and everyone and we don't look over our shoulders to check if Big Brother heard us. It may take us a while to get there, and sometimes we have setbacks, but little-by-little our country keeps getting fairer and more just.

The 2008 Meme

As seen many places, this one copied from Crunchy Granola.

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Graduated College.
2. Did you keep your New Years’ Resolutions, and will you make more for next year? No.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Yes! Look at that little punim! And look at him now!
4. Did anyone close to you die? No.
5. What countries did you visit? I only travelled within the lower 48, and only to states I've been to before.
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008? A President I don't despise. I think I might get that. A legal marriage for any couple that wants one.
7. What date from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? Oh, definitely Election Night. The rally in Leesburg. My graduation.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? My graduation. And helping Obama decisively win my precinct. But that wasn't MY achievement. That was OUR achievement
9. What was your biggest failure? Not being able to keep my mess under control. Losing my shit with MM.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Do colds count? Oh! My doctor diagnosed me with Mono!
11. What was the best thing you bought? The VTech Kidizoom Camera. Though it's actually in the penalty box at the moment.
12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? MM, definitely, MM.
13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? Crunchy Granola speaks for me when she says, "The K of C, the LDS, and everyone else who supported Proposition 8."
14. Where did most of your money go? Paying bills, eating out too much.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? The election.
16. What song will always remind you of 2008? Ummm....None.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:i. happier or sadder? 'bout the same, I guess. ii. thinner or fatter? Yes. Smaller pants-size paired with the Ever-Expanding Rack of Doom. iii. richer or poorer? Richer.
18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Sleeping, cleaning.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of? I like Crunchy Granola's first answer here, "Mindless websurfing (usually too late at night, and addictively unsatisfying)."
20. How did you spend Christmas? The morning at home, the afternoon on the train, the evening at my Dad and Stepmom's, the night at my Mom and Stepdad's.
21. What LJ users did you meet? Like Crunchy Granola, I'll amend this to how many online friends did I meet for the first time in 08: Kathy A., redzils, and Elizabeth
22. Did you fall in love in 2008? I think I fell back in love with America.
23. How many one-night stands? Seriously??? I mean SERIOUSLY? Good GAWD.
24. What was your favourite TV program? The Daily Show and Dr. Who.
25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? No.
26. What was the best book you read? (So glad you discovered Archer Mayor, Crunchy G!)This is a hard one. I think, though, that I might have to give the crown to either Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandilands mysteries or to Colin Cotterill's Dr. Siri Paiboun series.
27. What was your greatest musical discovery? That my son has a nice singing voice.
28. What did you want and get? A job five minutes from home. An election outcome I really really really like.
29. What did you want and not get? Legal marriage for any couple that wants it.
30. What was your favourite film of this year? Forbidden Kingdom.
31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 39. And I don't remember what we did. Do you?
32.What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? If Prop 8 had failed, and the Democratic Senatorial candidate from GA had won.
33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008? Does it fit? Is it stain-free?
34. What kept you sane? Blogging, knitting, reading, snuggling.
35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? Obama and The Yarn Harlot.
36. What political issue stirred you the most? What Crunchy Granola said. "The presidential election, generally, and marriage equality."
37. Who did you miss? My grandfather.
38. Who was the best new person you met? My new co-workers.
39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008. No amount of walking is ever enough the night before an election.
40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. Can't. Sorry. It is too much.

Happy New Year!!!

First lines

I try to do it every year. The first line of the first post of every month last year.

January: I've introduced MM to the joy that is Bugs Bunny. (Wabbit season!)
February: First off, my SIL is profoundly awesome. (party! Again!)
March: He was well-behaved and very, very quiet. (I brought my six-year-old to a three hour class)
April: Nearby U has a slot for a student speaker at Commencement. (alas, it was not me)
May: MS shakes me to get me out of bed this morning. (I'll never hear that song the same way again)
June: This morning we woke up and we knew... (we've made it three times since then, yay us!)
July: Tomorrow I'll be marching in the parade with the Obama section, wearing my husband's name emblazoned across my chest, holding my son's hand, and smilingsmilingsmiling. (That was fun!)
August: I'm gonna work Five Minutes From My House! (They'll have to pry me out of there with a crow bar)
September: 1. Eating his lunch that he brought from home in the cafeteria. (He still loves bringing his lunch. As long as it's not pizza or taco day)
October: I woke up at 4:30 to leave at 5:30 to drive 4 hours to a place SW of me in my state to attend a conference on my volunteer committee work. (That was definitely worth the trip)
November: I have knocked my last door. (damned funny how the first post in November two years running is about my tired tootsies.)
December: I scored the sole Boston Cream donut at the cafeteria today! (mmm)

As seen at Ham-I-Am

Capture the Moment. Rules: Take a picture of yourself RIGHT THIS MINUTE.

Hi! Please to notice that it is right humid here abouts. Thus the little curlies.

And here is a picture of me from yesterday.

I was soaked. Just a few moments before, I was standing under a waterfall thing at the Amusement Park while MM got dumped on.

7

Ramblin' Red tagged me for seven random things....

1. We got an Aero garden for Christmas and it came with Herbs growing kit: chives; mint; parsley; dill; two kinds of basil; and cilantro. And you all know how I feel about cilantro, right? So, guess which one didn't sprout? MS keeps joking that I gave it the evil eye.
2. I have a weird habit of smelling my hair. I hold a bunch of it in front of my nose and hold it there when I'm thinking. This is one of the reasons I get fed up with longer hair and cut it off periodically. Then I forget and grow it again. I do like the smell, but I hate this habit. It looks ridiculous.
3. The other habit I have is not so easy to break. I've been chewing my fingers again. Not the nails, the fingers themselves. Quite painful, really. But, apparently not painful enough for me to just flipping quit it already.
4. We've been doing a pretty good job of keeping the downstairs presentable for company (though right now it looks like a toyshop exploded in our living room).
5. A friend of mine just told me that she's lost a lot of weight in a very short time on an 800 calorie-a-day diet. Then she said, "and I'm going crazy." I sent her to Junkfood Science.
6. I've felt like crying ever since. Why do we do this to ourselves? She's a beautiful, tall, voluptuous woman. She has a beautiful, tall daughter who is going to be voluptuous.
7. And I've been thinking about this kind of shit all week anyway because MM's pediatrician was concerned that while MM is in the 50th percentile for height, he's only in the 10th percentile for weight. So I said, "He's growing, his skin tone and color are good. He's eating well, from multiple food groups. He's active and energetic. He's got good muscle tone. I'm not worried." She conceded those facts. I told her that if any one of those facts changes I will bring him in pronto. She said that would be fine. I want to keep MM feeling good about himself and food.*

TAG! You're it if you want to be!
*I will offer him more snacks during the day on weekends, since he gets one snack in the morning before lunch and then two snacks in the afternoon at school and I forget 'cause I'm not hungry, but he often is.

It's that time of year again.

I did it last year and here it is again. The first line of the first post of each month from 2007.

January: ...Picked up his stool, carried it to the cabinet near the sink, climbed up, opened the cabinet that holds the drinking glasses, got one of his plastic tumblers, closed the cabinet door, climbed down, carried his tumbler to the fridge, opened the fridge, got out the jug of filtered water (only 1/3 full), handed his tumbler to me, said, "Would you please hold this while I pour?", poured the water, put the jug away in the fridge, returned his stool to its home, retrieved his glass of water from me, drank it, and put the tumbler in the sink. (he's my big boy)
February: Was at The Little Gym. (paaaaarteeeee!)
March: Chores done by my 5-year-old: (yes, yes, I know. It's a sentence fragment. Sue me)
April: Monday: Computer shuts itself down without warning while I'm in the middle of writing a paper due yesterday. (my flesh still creeps thinking about it.)
May: I find there are three things that keep me posting regularly(ish): (yes, yes, I know. Another sentence fragment. Sue me)
June: God, I love my cable modem. (don't we all?)
July: Mostly, I've been working on unbloggable stuff and have nothing to say. (so very, very glad I figured out a way to blog about that!)
August: I got three A+'s and a B+ for the semester. (but man can not live on grades alone)
September: "Find your hook and hang up your backpack." (or, RTFM)
October: I can't believe the amount of gunk my sinuses can hold at one time. (or, TMI)
November: I walked. (oh, how I walked)
December: I made them. (latkes, that is)