'Tis the season

Christmas music rings through the house, and the season of Christmas parties is upon us. How glad am I to be back to liking food in time for the holidays! Here's a picture of us before Michael's office Christmas party:























I think it's funny that we usually take pictures of us standing in front of pictures of us. It's hard to find a wall that doesn't feature us. We're terribly vain.

And here's the first in the obligatory Pregnancy Pictures. You can tell this is the third baby by how long it took before we got around to starting this series, and the updates are probably going to happen about once a month or so instead of every week:























This is that awkward transitional stage where I suck it in desperately for the pictures so I can look back later and gloat over how good I looked at three months along, and then protrude as much as possible everywhere else so that no one has any doubt at all that it is a baby and not mere belly bulge.

We're still eating Thanksgiving leftovers, and yet it just dawned on me that Christmas is three weeks from today! Christmas music got short shrift this year.

Third time's a charm

Not that Jane and Ella aren't charming enough in their own right, of course.

In other news, today marks the five-year anniversary of moving into our current home, meaning that I've lived in this house longer than I ever lived in Virginia. At this rate, this house may very well end up being the single place I've lived the longest (the farm in Oregon holds the current record, at seven years).

Last but not least, today is our sixty-third month-aversary. Yes, we've been married over five years, and we still count up the months (when we can remember it).

Another book post

Thanks to Carrie, I have another list to write: All the books I've read from A to Z. I don't necessarily recommend or like every one, and I have to leave off a lot due to duplicate letters, and of course I'll drop 'the,' and I haven't time to mull much so it will be a quick list, but I'll try to keep the favourites on the front lines:

A: Alice in Wonderland
B: [The] Blue Castle
C: Caddie Woodlawn
D: Drink to Yesterday
E: Ella Enchanted
F: Foundation trilogy
G: Gold Fears No Fire
H: [The] House at Pooh Corner
I: I Capture the Castle
J: Johnny Tremain
K: Knight's Castle
L: [The] Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
M: [Les] Miserables
N: Northanger ABbey
O: Out of the Silent Planet
P: Pride & Prejudice
Q: Queen Margot
R: Rumpole of the Bailey
S: Scaramouche
T: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
U: [The Mysteries of] Udolpho
V: Vanity Fair
W: [The] Wind in the Willows
X: ??
Y: [A] Year in Provence
Z: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Consumer rant - Omaha Steaks

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a great deal, and signed up promptly. It's one of those you-had-to-be-there-at-the-right-time deals, like combining a great coupon that doubles with a great sale. Basically, if you fulfilled a particular offer with a particular merchant, that merchant would send you a code for a $25 gift card to Omaha Steaks. Then, you apply that $25 gift card to a then-current promotion at Omaha Steaks, to receive not only an order of burgers, but also a free gift with purchase. So far, so good. I signed up, got my gift card code, ordered the burgers and the free gift, received my confirmation email, and waited for my order to arrive.

However. Never having been one to consider spending phenomenal amounts of money for overpriced (and, according to reports I've heard, not really all-that-great quality) meats and other edibles, I've never actually ordered from Omaha Steaks before. Turns out that their Unconditional Guarantee isn't quite so unconditional after all: apparently, you have to spend a certain amount of money on the order before they consider you a customer worth trying to keep. They certainly will never get my business again, and I will recount the saga in hopes of discouraging anyone else from ever risking getting burned by this company with truly abysmal customer service.

The day after placing my order, I received the following email from Omaha Steaks Customer Service:

Thank you for shopping at Omaha Steaks! We appreciate your business and are confident you will be delighted with your order.

We do show when placing this order, a special offer for a free item was combined with the $25 reward card. As stated in all promotions for free items, offers cannot be combined. Your order will ship without the free item.

If you have any questions regarding your order, please contact us at 1-800-329-6500. We would be happy to assist you.

I promptly replied with the following email:

Excuse me??

No, this was never stated at any step of the promotion. My order confirmation includes both the free gift - which rang up with my order, without EVER stating any exclusion - and the gift card. Furthermore, the gift card code I used is a GIFT CARD, not a "special promotion."

If this was true, the free gift should have voided out of my order upon placement. This is the first I am hearing of your so-called rule. You are changing the rules of the offer on me, and that is fraud.

I was promised a free gift with my order, and you do not have the right to change the terms of the offer on me, especially after receiving my payment and personal information.

I will expect my complete order with my shipment.

To which Omaha Steaks Customer 'Care' replied:

Thank you for contacting us. We appreciate your interest in Omaha Steaks and we apologize for any confusion with our special offers.

All Omaha Steaks free item promotions state that they cannot be combined with any other offer. The Reward Gift Card that you received is a special promotion offered through Geico and while this Reward Gift Card did not stipulate that it could not be combined with another offer, the Omaha Steaks free item promotion did state that it could not be combined with any other offers. Therefore, the free item was removed.

If we can be of further assistance please contact us via email or by phone at 1-800-329-6500.

Meanwhile, my shipment arrived sans the free gift. My card was charged for the amount indicated on the confirmation email, the amount that I had calculated would include the extra burgers. Without the free gift, the order was just a bunch of overpriced meat.

Let's be clear on this. The free gift showed as shipped. The confirmation email showed it as included. There was never any question about the use of a gift card voiding out a free gift offer. It was not until a day later that I received an email informing me that the free gift was going to be removed from my order.

Clearly the response to this offer was overwhelming, and some dolt in Customer Care decided that the best way to cut their losses would simply be to reneg on the terms of their offer, re-define the Geico gift card as a 'Rewards Promotion,' and tick off hundreds (thousands?) of customers instead of accepting the loss of their loss leader advertising. If that's how they do business, they probably won't be in it very long.

Really simply, eh?

I've pretty much ignored the buzz over RSS feeds up until now, deciding that, for my own purposes, the best way to streamline my online time and stop frittering away time reading blogs is simply to spend less time online reading blogs. I really don't waste that much time clicking aimlessly away at blogs and waiting for them to load (we have a fast connection) and I'm usually eating or doing something else productive at the same time, so the time saving factor is negligible.

On the other hand, I've heretofore neglected to look into adding an RSS feed to my blog for the simple fact that it seemed too conceited - to syndicate myself?! To assume that there are hordes of people waiting with bated breath for morsels of wisdom to spring from my keyboard? It turns out, however, that there is at least one person who would appreciate it, so upon request (hi, Lisa!) I've turned on the settings to allow full RSS feeds. I assume that's all I need to do. If it doesn't work or if I must needs tinker more with codes and suchlike, by all means please advise, all you RSS fans and experts.

Dear Scranton Times-Tribune

To Whom It May Concern:

I understand that you recently published a story wherein reporter David Singleton alleged that someone in the crowd shouted "Kill him!" (referring to Obama) at a Palin rally, and that you continue to stand by the story, insisting that "the facts reported are true and that's really all there is," despite the fact that the Secret Service investigated the matter thoroughly and found no evidence that this event actually transpired. I really appreciate how you stand up for your employees, even when there's no corroborating evidence for their stories and all eyewitnesses interviewed deny the story's veracity.

(Actually, it kind of reminds me of the old saw: "If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?" If someone yells, "Kill him!" at a political rally, and no one hears it, did he still say it?)

Because this is the kind of job security I'd value, and because I'm starting to get a feel for the kind of sensational yet utterly unassailable stories you run, I would like to submit my own article for publication to your newspaper, recounting the events which I personally witnessed at a local McCain rally. I was there in person, and at one point I distinctly heard a fervent McCain supporter yell, "Tar and feather him! Draw and quarter him! Run him out of town on a rail!" when Biden's name was mentioned. Actually, I also heard another unmistakable McCain supporter yell, "Roast him! Boil him! Squash him into jelly!" *

No one else heard or saw any of this, aside from me, but I was there and I swear it happened. I know you take your reporters' observational skills seriously, so I'd like to get on the payroll quickly and have my investigative skills bolstered and strengthened by the dignity of this great paper. Please advise me of your word limits and deadlines, and I'll get the article written up posthaste.

Sincerely,

Concerned (and Attentive) Citizen

* There was actually a UFO hovering over the platform during this event, too, but I think I'll save that for my next article. As fate would have it, no one else noticed it, so - lucky you! - you'll get a national scoop on that one too!

Fall fun

Here are the girls, enjoying the swings at our little playground.
















Ella can swing on the tire swing all by herself!















Jane loves to dangle. After I helped her across the monkey bars, she spent a good bit of time dangling from the 'Capital A' (you can see it right behind her).



















**************************************************************
Speaking of letters, Jane is all fired up about reading. She sounds out letters on signs, and always asks me what that word says. One of her favourites is: 'C-V-S; that spells kah-VISS!'

On a rainy day last week, I asked her what letter umbrella started with. After correctly answering U, she added, 'It's a short U. If umbrella had a long U, it would be OOM-brella!' This is another one of her favourite pastimes, the random hypothetical. 'But if you said yes, Mama, then I could climb on the back of the couch!'

"They have reconstituted themselves"

Wow, you'd think that the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan were really dehydrated. Obama makes them sound like powdered milk.

Silliest lame comeback of the entire debate: "Well, I have a bracelet too..."

Boring stuff

It seems that we've been terribly busy here of late, but we haven't much to say as there's nothing very riveting about our various cooking misadventures, shopping trips, and following the news with bated breath.

Ella is very communicative. She clearly understands pretty much everything we say to her, shakes and nods her head emphatically, and follows complicated instructions. Jane's sense of make-believe is growing stronger by the day. She now has an imaginary parallel universe in which her name is Elody (sp?) (pronounced L.E.D.) and my name is Aralyn (sp?). Michael's and Ella's imaginary names she tends to make up on the spot. I'll post a few pictures if I can remember to take them. (Must first replace batteries in camera.)

In other news, Michael may be going out of town for a few days for some computer training. (Note to prospective burglars: No, I'm not going to mention which days, and he's leaving all the guns anyway.) (Addendum to pediatricians: Ha ha, no, of course we don't have any guns, and even if we did, we'd keep them locked up and unloaded.) I'm wishing there were someone I could invite over to stay with us, the way I used to hang out with S.J. when her globe-trotting husband was off on office business (speaking of which, only two weeks!), but the sad reality of moving to Georgia as a married woman is that I haven't really had an opportunity to make any single girlfriends. Sunday schools are so pigeon-holed and the nature of mom's groups is rather exclusive, so I'm not really sure where to begin. I just know that I, as a single girl in Virginia, had a lot of married friends. Not that I'm complaining. I just wonder.

Wedding musings

The main reason destination honeymoons were invented, aside from obvious ones like When Else Will We Get To Go To Hawaii, is that it provides a plausible excuse for the happy couple not to go to church the next day. Because, of course, that just Would Not Do. I'm not sure if there's a socially recognised standard for the acceptable lag time after which it is appropriate to appear in public again, but it seems that a week would allow ample time for the snickers to have died down. My theory is that the Sunday wedding phenomenon has taken hold as a clever way to dodge both the heathen approach of not going to church and the tactless faux pas of turning up too soon and having everyone glance away and pretend not to wonder what you were doing last night.

I love eating bountiful feasts at lavish wedding receptions, and I always maintain that you can skimp on the wedding decorations, because no one (except the ten chums who stayed up all night to decorate your palace for you) will notice how many sprinkles of confetti adorn each centerpiece, but what the guests will take away with them is a solid impression of the food. But I know it wasn't always this way, and I'm a bit nostalgic for the old days when cake, nuts, and punch were the standard, because that allowed for more leeway on the guest list. I remember getting invited to a lot of weddings when I was a child, and I'm sure the lack of fanfare on the food front had something to do with it. Weddings are getting more expensive, and the unhappy side effect is that kids don't get invited to weddings as much. I guess, in short, I love to go to weddings. I love great food at receptions, but I'd rather get invited to a wedding and eat cake and punch than not get invited at all.

These thoughts and many others swirled through my mind tonight as I capered about town playing the Wedding Registry Scavenger Hunt. Ooh, look! This perfect punch bowl - which is beautiful, meaningful, and in my price range - was on the registry when I checked earlier, but it's mysteriously gone! What nimble fellow player, racing against the clock, beat me to this prize?? All shall be revealed at the buffet/feast/punchbowl tomorrow!

Stuff and nonsense

Last week I came across this website, and have been mulling over The Story of Stuff ever since. It's about a twenty-minute video, and well worth watching, although I don't appreciate the political potshots which the narrator takes toward the beginning.

(I don't necessarily agree with her assumptions about the limited amount of resources or 'our fair share' of the planetary pie. I guess it comes down to a fundamental difference in worldview - an atheist/evolutionist will see things in the light of chance and survival of the fittest, in which we'd better play the best with the cards we've been dealt, while I believe that God gave us this earth to take dominion over, and provided the resources needed to sustain life in His image. So I'm a little irritated by her trite statistics about the percentage of polluted waterways and the square miles of Amazon rainforest chopped down every day. Treating the water supply and the forests as a finite resource, the draining of which is exacerbated by a growing world population, instead of as a renewable resource that simply needs to be managed better, is a typical alarmist cliche. I am sure that there is irresponsible logging going on out there, but coming from Oregon, where the logging industry is a mainstay and the loggers, realising and respecting this fact - and not wanting to work themselves out of a job - consistently replant at or above replacement level, I tend to resent the all-too-common assumption that cutting down trees is synonymous with trashing the planet.)

Back to The Story of Stuff. Once I got past her alarmist propaganda, I found the rest of the video gripping and enlightening. I am astounded by the notion that our current economic model of rampant consumerism was a deliberate scheme, concocted and constructed according to plan. Apparently the economic advisers of the Eisenhower administration, in drawing up a blueprint for the American economy coming out of the post-war boom, envisioned a long-term model of ever-growing prosperity and expansion, industrialisation and consumption. They developed a shift in the consumer mentality by the precise implementation of planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence is when things are designed to be thrown away, so the consumer always has to keep coming back for more. You can see this principle at work with the obvious disposables such as paper goods, diapers, and the like. (Prior to WWII, disposables were almost unheard-of; cloth diapers, personal care and linens were the norm.) Nowadays, we've moved so far away from that notion that we even have such ridiculous 'convenience' items as disposable mops, toilet scrubbers, and, apparently, BBQ grills. (?!?)

More subtle is the planned obsolescence of poor quality goods purporting to be reusable but so cheaply made that they will break often enough to keep the consumer buying and buying again. It's all a cleverly orchestrated balance between having the goods break quickly enough to ensure a steady demand while lasting just long enough to ensure that the consumers will not lose faith in the product. Our expectations have been re-programmed, and we no longer hope for the durability and quality from long-term goods that were the norm a generation or so ago. Hence the very true expression, 'They just don't make them like they used to.' No, and it's no accident.

Perceived obsolescence is simply the cultural pressure to buy a new one, even if the old one isn't broken or dysfunctional. This is the driving force behind fashion, sleek newer cars, bigger houses, and the like. Surely some scientific improvements come with time, but for the most part, the need to buy new stuff is merely imaginary.

The whole thing is very, very annoying to me.

Love a rainy night

'Good thing I didn't mow,' said Michael.

'Good thing I didn't water the tomatoes,' said I.

And we sat and continued to read our respective books, very pleased at how well our procrastinating had paid off.

Wooden silverware

Six years ago today I met the man of my dreams.

Five years ago yesterday I married him.

My, how fast the years have flown.

Somehow trendy

Despite having no cable, we now have one more thing in common with the average American household, thanks to a good internet connection and the wonderful site known as Hulu: we are dedicated Office fans.

I'd heard of the show here and there, and about a month ago we started watching it. We quickly became hooked, pulling too many late nights in a frenzied effort to get all caught up with the past four seasons before Season Five starts next month.

Some of my favourite quotes:

'I'm not superstitious. Well, maybe I'm just a little stitious.'

'This office is cursed! Have any of you desecrated an Indian burial ground recently?'

'We are all about customer service, while machines are about trying to murder people in their cars in a lake.'

'Myth: three Americans die every year from rabies. Fact: Four Americans do.'

It's pretty quirky, and it takes a bit of getting used to. Or maybe not. We liked it right off the bat. I hate laugh tracks, so I'm very proud of this show for standing on its own.

Whew.

It seems that I've been reading a lot lately about the growing trend toward hanging up laundry to dry. People who wouldn't normally strike you as frugality fiends are finding, among other things, that it isn't such a pain as you would expect, that it's nice to get outside and breathe fresh air, that it gives the laundry a clean, fresh scent, that it saves a huge amount of wear and tear on clothing, and that it really does save a ton on the energy bill.

That's all well and good, but I still don't like the thought. I know it would probably be good for us, and I'd get used to it, and I'd get the kids involved someday so it wouldn't be such an onerous chore, but still.

Last week we were researching new garage doors, since a spring broke on our current one. In looking through the covenants of our home-owner's association to determine the requirements of a replacement garage door, I discovered that outdoor clothing lines are banned. Oh, bummer. Guess I can't jump on that bandwagon after all.

Homemaking - drudgery or delight?

Recently I discovered this website, and I've been challenged and inspired by the ideas presented. The most fascinating part was her chart contrasting then vs. now, pointing out the various social elements that have changed in the past few decades, which may cause home-making to seem less gratifying and fulfilling now. The idea of community, of a support network, the realisation that we weren't designed to keep things running smoothly indefinitely without a break, has been touched on elsewhere, but it's very clear and compelling in this presentation.

Even though I grew up in the country, in the sort of environment where you didn't lock your doors at night, I can not picture a community where the children play in the street and the moms rely on each other to keep tabs on them. (Was it really like that in the Fifties? Then no wonder Donna Reed could manage to get a five-course dinner on the table while wearing high heels every day!)

Anyway, no time to mull further, but it's been a source of ponderation for me these last few weeks.

Are we getting too close to crazy for comfort?

Today I read this article on making your own kefir. I've heard of kefir before, here and there, and it always sounded intriguing but perhaps just a tad bit out there, closer to tofu than yogurt. Also it always sounded very expensive, like something the marketing department at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's tricks impressionable health food nuts into buying.

However, reading detailed instructions on how to make it at home inspires me to do the same. If it's really as good as they say (Even better than yogurt at regulating digestion and improving the immune system! Contains five species of probiotic microorganisms, living happily together in a symbiotic relationship!) then we should be downing this stuff every day, no question, and if it's as simple as that, then we should turn alchemist and convert all of our milk into kefir henceforward.

I have therefore made arrangements with a local supplier of kefir to pick up a jar of kefir grains tomorrow. We shall see how the experiment turns out. In addition to all the other wonderful benefits of kefir, I'm rather chuffed to be participating in something that requires a starter - it engenders such a happy sense of community, like friendship bread and farm raisings.

Give a little whistle

Jane has become my little conscience.

Whenever I do something that registers on her morality meter, she pipes up about it.

When I roll through a stop sign at anything less than a full stop, she will say, 'Mama, please stop.'

Whenever I close a door or a cupboard too loudly, she will ask, 'Mama, did you slam it?'

If I say anything too soon after taking a bite, she will inquire, 'Mama, did you talk with your mouth full?'

It's like having my own little Jiminy Cricket around. I can't get away with anything.

Time and space

My snatches of computer time are few and far between these days, it seems. Whenever I have a chance to blog, I can't remember anything I was going to post. And whenever I have those great ideas, I can't get to the computer right away. Somewhat annoying, but less so the busier my life gets; perhaps blogging is - and rightly so - taking a back seat to my real life. Rather than watching things through a camera lens, as it were, to be enjoyed only in rewind mode, I'm actually savouring each moment for what it is instead of constantly sizing it up for blog material. Yes, surely that's it: a lapse in blogging indicates a healthy awareness of the passage of time and a renewed commitment to live life to the fullest.

Ha. Who am I kidding? CVS has become a full-blown craze, overshadowing blogs with a mighty vengeance, and the main things I want to blog about are the incredible bargains each week. But I'm not going to bore anyone with that, and I'm not going to post pictures, because that would look greedy and boastful and because it's already being done all over the internet. (Don't worry, we donate all the extra stuff to worthy causes.) (Um, okay, and then get a tax write-off, yeah. But other than that, it's totally altruistic.)

I tried an experiment a few weeks ago. With the price of gas spiking up every week, I was going to practise contentment by staying at home as much as possible, limiting my shopping trips to once a week or so, and focus on making our home as castle-like as could be. (Did I already post this? It sounds somehow familiar. I think I've gone through this particular resolve before.) 

Well, the experiment fell flatter than a pancake, and not in a pleasant, crepe-like flat-pancake way, either. We did not do well with those long days at home. I chafed at all the great deals I was missing, and felt nervous when the stockpile of diapers dipped down to dangerous levels. It's been too hot to walk to the playground at all but the earliest hours, and there are only so many hundred times one can read the same books without going stark raving mad.

So we ditched the experiment this week, and all are much happier for the result. Turns out I enjoy dashing out every day, and the girls do better with errands to break up the monotony of a long day. Running errands every day shortens the duration of each trip, so the time spent out is a pleasure rather than a torture. And our closets are once more full of tp, diapers, and organic tomato sauce. I think I might just scrape by with only five or six shopping trips next week.

People who CVS are bad-grammaring

There have always been those types who, unable to put themselves to the trouble of finding the right word to use and fitting it into the right context, simply grab onto the handiest approximation of what they intend to convey and slap a good-sounding ending onto it.

Pretending to turn a noun into a verb by appending a suffix to it - for instance, pretending to turn a noun into a verb by suffixing it - is a common and long-standing trick. I know this, of course. Language has been evolving for eons, and eventually the modified word passes into accepted usage. I mean, nobody bothers to police the non-verb-ity (nounity? nouniness?) of microwave or contact any more.

But nowhere has this trend been so starkly egregious as in the recent wave of CVS enthusiasts. 'Had fun CVSing!' or 'Good trip CVSing!' is their motto, without bothering to analyse what precisely it is they did at CVS. Was it, indeed, shopping? Well, then, why not say so, to wit, 'I've been shopping at CVS!'? I know, I know, it takes up so many more syllables that way! 'I've been CVSing!' they declare, with all the pithiness of the good bargain-hunters they are. It stands to reason that those people who are careful with their money would be likewise conservative of extra syllables.

What if we started applying this funny little grammar freehand to jolly well any area of life? The results could save us thousands of wasted breaths a year:

'I'm fooding!' vs. the cumbersome 'I'm eating food.'
'He's bathrooming' vs. 'He's using the bathroom' or even 'He's in the bathroom.' (Because, of course, in our world, no one would ever broach this topic in the first person.)
'I was carring' vs. 'I was riding in/driving/washing the car.' (See how deliciously sloppy and unspecific the first instance is? No need to waste time pinpointing the exact nature of the activity.)
'I'm typing text' vs. 'I'm texting'? Oooh, slippery slope.

The six quirks quiz

Thanks to Queen of Carrots, I get to come up with six unspectacular quirks to share. I do believe that memes were invented solely to pull uninspired bloggers out of writing slumps. And I had to ponder long and hard to come up with at least one that didn't involve language. (I mean, that would have been dreadfully lame, if quite accurate: 1) I don't like it when people misuse apostrophes; 2) It grates on me when people mangle turns of phrase, i.e. step foot inside or making due, etc. Unspectacular in the extreme.)

1) The title of this post makes me think of what the Guinness Book of World Records lists as the world's trickiest tongue-twister, to wit: The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick.

2) Whenever we sing Amazing Grace, I quietly murmur (quietly, so as not to disrupt the mood of reverence), in the last stanza, 'We've no fewer days to sing God's praise...' I can't help it. I just can't bring myself to sing bad grammar. And it works, too, because there are two notes on that word anyway. Why didn't they just write it the right way to begin with??

3) I never tried to play the innocent naive sheltered homeschool debutante, but I'm on ongoing alert to discover just how incomprehensive my education in the seamier side of the ways of the world really was. Michael is frequently put to the task of having to tactfully tell me what, in colloquial language, I just said. Only recently did I learn that the phrase 'knocked up' somehow means, of all things, 'pregnant,' and not, as I had always employed it to mean, knocked about, as in, well-versed in the school of hard knocks, my-head-is-bloody-but-unbowed, that sort of thing. Pity. Apparently the English language is a veritable minefield of double entendres and low-class allusions. Figuratively speaking, mind you.

4) I wax very sarcastic when people misuse the word 'literally,' apparently mistaking it for just another adverb, interchangeable with 'really' and 'like, totally.' ('It literally fell into our laps!' they gush. 'Really?' I inquire, craning my head upwards to look and, possibly, take cover. 'That's amazing!')

5) I have never dyed my hair, but I have boxes upon boxes of hair dye stashed away in my closet should occasion require it. Just a couple of weeks ago I bought a set of fake French manicure nails. I keep staring at them, wondering if I dare try them on.

6) Ten years ago, when I moved across the country, all my worldly goods consisted of a bed, a dresser, and four boxes of stuff. Five years ago, when I was preparing to get married, all my worldly goods consisted of a bed, a dresser, a closetful of stuff, three bookshelves of books, one bookshelf of knick-knacks and other junk, and a hopechest. At least it all fit into one room. Today, my stuff sprawls to fill an entire house. Granted, Michael contributed some stuff and we got a lot of loot at wedding and baby showers, but my oh my where did all this stuff come from? Why doesn't money multiply that readily?

Now the rules are that I am supposed to tag six other people for the meme, but I always like to leave these things open (no pressure and all that, plus I can never keep track of who's already done it.) So it's a self-tagging meme. If you want to play, jump in and join the fun.

I am not cut out for this

We've been battling sickness here for some time, and it's usually been low-grade enough to overlook. Between runny noses for the girls and a sore throat for me, I haven't yet declared it to be a full-fledged cold. Michael, however, succumbed in grand style a couple of weeks ago. He doesn't get sick often, but when he does he does it completely. He was sick over the weekend, and ended up staying home from church as well as from work the next couple of days.

So I got the girls up, fed, and dressed on my own, which I do every day, but this time it felt overwhelming. We drove to church alone, and I got them checked into class by myself and went to Sunday school on my own. I had to unpack the stroller on my own, collect the tired girls after class, and keep them happy on the drive home.

I kept thinking how glad I am not to be a single mom, and feeling slightly ashamed of being so overwhelmed and tired by just a few days of running things on my own, when so many people do this every day of their lives. Military wives do it for months at a time. I admire these people so much, and I'm so glad I have a strong, (mostly) healthy husband to tag-team with.

I was feeling all full of contentment and gratitude when Michael got better, and resolved to be more thankful than ever for my life, now that I'd learned to appreciate how good I really had it. Enter these last two weeks.

Michael has had computer training for work several days last week and this, necessitating a longer drive and late nights (a couple of nights he just stopped off at the office afterwards to catch up on work and the girls never saw him at all that day).

Ever doing my part to save on gasoline costs, I coaxed Michael to take the car so I wouldn't be tempted to run out on frivolous errands. Yesterday I still had a scratchy throat, so I decided to stay home from choir, too. We would stay home this week, make our home our castle, clean up from top to bottom, and learn contentment in our circumstances. Which is a noble resolve, but I was never one to flourish in solitude, far from the madding crowd. The days have been long, and Saturday will come not a moment too soon.

Happy Mother's Day to you, too

Now don't think I'm taking umbrage at all those well-meaning good wishes, but Mother's Day is another one of those heavily marketed Hallmark holidays that I just don't buy into. I certainly do believe in honouring one's mother, but I think it should consist of the same common courtesy and respect that motivates one all year long, and not be reserved for one glorious hurrah a year.

This aversion to all the fuss and feathers may have something to do with the fact that my 'love language' (cleverly hidden in quotation marks so you won't sneer at me if you don't buy into the Five Love Language philosophy either) doesn't lean toward the giving of gifts, and certainly doesn't go anywhere remotely near the giving of overpriced, mass-produced, unoriginal cards and flowers. If I liked expensive, trite, generic cards for my birthday, then I'd probably enjoy getting them for Mother's Day, too.

I don't know why everyone pretends to think it's such a nice treat for husband and children to take Momma out to eat for Mother's Day. Most Americans eat out a lot anyway, so why should it be any big deal? And anyone can spend money - eating out requires no forethought, no sacrifice, no effort. The real treat would be to fix Mother Dear a meal at home, and clean up afterwards.

Finally, I have no earthly idea why so many blessed people - whom I am most emphatically NOT the mother of - wished me a Happy Mother's Day on Sunday. Isn't that something you say to your mother?

There, I've got that off my mind, and can rest easy until next month, when I'll have to get on my soapbox again and explain why I am not spending any money on Father's Day.

A little learning

Jane is prodigiously proud of her rapidly expanding vocabulary and cognitive skills, and never misses a chance to trot them out.

Yesterday, when she walked by, I remarked, 'Hi, big girl!'

Jane grinned and replied, 'Hi, medium woman!'

Then she turned to Ella and said, 'Hi, little baby!'

She paused. I could almost see the wheels turning in her head. Then she looked at me. 'Where's big man?'

Three years ago today

Five years ago today

Dangerous cheapness

It's been growing on me lately, as our cost of living has gone down while our standard of living seems to be going up, that free stuff has a sinister side effect. It seems like the perfect win-win situation, the ultimate symbiotic relationship between manufacturer, retailer, and consumer (and can a symbiotic relationship even go three ways? -or is it strictly a two-party deal?): the producer gets name recognition and product awareness, the retailer gets business, the consumer gets free (or cheap) stuff.

But ponder a little while (and I am willing to ponder anything late enough at night) and it becomes apparent how the ready availability of free stuff can erode morale. It's a known fact, of course, that we prize highly that which costs us dearly. Scarcity, or even the appearance of scarcity, causes us to hoard resources, while abundance encourages us to live it up. And even my efficient nature is struggling against the impulse to grow callous and lax in the face of apparent plenty. It's becoming harder and harder to wrestle with extracting the last few dregs of toothpaste from the tube when there are two dozen fresh tubes in the drawer, and last week I tossed out half a spoiled loaf of bread with far less gnashing of teeth than would have occurred if it hadn't been free to begin with.

There are a couple of reasons why I still won't give in and be a totally wasteful consumer. For one, I'm not sure how long this spate of feasting will last - I keep thinking that the deals must dry up sooner or later - and I don't want to have gotten too comfortable at an unsustainably high standard of living when reality sets in again. For another - well, I still don't like wasting things, even if wasting free stuff hurts me less. That's just my personality, and quite possibly those feelings would erode entirely given enough time - many people seem to have no qualms about tossing away things which cost them little effort to acquire.

I wonder whether this is an attitude that we're seeing challenged and shaken up by the recent climb in grocery prices. Perhaps American consumers were getting too spoiled by low prices of
cheap goods, and that had a lot to do with the wasteful consumerist mentality that ran so rampant. So is this rise in gasoline and milk prices really a blessing in disguise? An unwanted lesson in character development?

I've also been re-thinking a lot of my opinions on the importance of maintaining a low cost for goods and services. Well, my evolving opinion on Wal-mart is a post for another day, but in short, I've come to see the value of high-priced, quality merchandise. As Ma Ingalls would say, 'Enough is as good as a feast.' All other things being equal, and in a free market where the end price is a natural result of supply and demand, why shouldn't it be just as good to spend a given amount of money on fewer but higher-quality food items that will all get eaten, as to spend the same amount on far more stuff half of which ends up going to waste?

(I had to toss in the remark about the free market as an expression of my irritation at the ongoing farm subsidies, which make corn syrup so cheap to produce and hence so readily available. So now cheap and deadly high-fructose corn syrup is in everything, but it's an artificial construct, because it really wouldn't be that cheap otherwise.)

Oh boy

The ever-wise and all-knowing Pearls, having solved the problems of modern marriage with their previous best-seller, now turn their attention to another troubling matter: the case of the rebellious teenager. How can you be sure that your children will not jump ship 'as soon as they think they can survive without the family—some as young as sixteen years old'? Buy this book to find out.

(I'm guessing that this book doesn't have the answers for those unfortunate parents whose kids jump ship under the age of sixteen - bummer. Maybe you'll have to wait for the sequel on that one.)

Me was homeschooled

67

It's not just thinking of all the countries, it's getting them spelled right. If I hadn't worried about capital letters, I probably could have done more. Not to mention all the time I wasted trying 'THE Bahamas' and 'THE Philippines.'

Love and war

An interesting conversation last week touched on a long-standing debate I've had in my mind, and the issue is still unresolved. But first, a bit of background.

You may remember Michael's brother Eric, who got married last June. He had a month with his bride before being shipped off to Iraq for several months. He returned in February, and we found out last week that they are newly expecting. Great happiness and all that.

When we shared the good news with friends, it led to a discussion on marriage in wartime - specifically, what would you do if the love of your life was about to be shipped off to war?

On the one hand, waiting might sound prudent because you will have the chance to test your love for each other. You don't have to get trapped in limbo between feeling single and married. Being separated for such a length of time would put an incredible stress on the first year of marriage.

On the other hand, it might seem better to get married and have at least what time you can together. This line of thinking prevailed quite a bit in WWII.

Then someone mentioned a further point. Suppose you did get married, and the love of your life did in fact die. Would it affect your future eligibility to be a young heartbroken widow, as opposed to a young heartbroken fiancee?

And then we fell into further speculation. Suppose you did decide to get married first. Would you try to get pregnant before he leaves? On the one hand, if you're fairly certain of his safety, you might decide to wait, so as not to have him miss the child's arrival. On the other hand, if there's a significant chance that he will die, you might want to have a tangible reminder of him - pass on the family name, and all that - some bright hope to comfort you through the grief and loss. On the other hand again, much as you might want a reason to go on living, single motherhood is really hard - wouldn't a framed photograph do nearly as well?

I've very glad I've never had to face those tough choices. I'm grateful that Eric is home safe and sound, but now my young cousin Angela, who got married last Thanksgiving, is in much the same situation. Nothing I can do about it but pray for the collective safety of our brave troops over there.

Sticker shock

When we were in Holland, we felt the pinch of the falling dollar, especially as everything seemed more expensive than it should be to begin with. My brother calculated that gasoline, at 1.52 Euro/liter, worked out to about $9/gallon. Now, of course the Dutch can just bicycle everywhere, and many of them do. The towns are very small, and the way the streets are laid out, on the same cobblestone grid from the Middle Ages, it's faster to get anywhere by foot or by pedal than by car. Moreover people routinely bike to work, up to 20-mile commutes. So perhaps they don't feel the high price of gasoline as keenly as we do.

The groceries, however, there is no getting around. Did I mention that things are smaller in Holland? The portions are smaller, the refrigerators are smaller, and the egg cartons are smaller. (Standard size is six eggs; large is ten eggs; you can't buy a carton of a dozen eggs anywhere.) Everything is on the metric system, which is handy for calculating the price per liter or gram, but you're still stuck not knowing how many lbs. of potatoes you're buying.

Fortunately we had brought most of our groceries with us - dried beans, packs of tuna fish my family smuggled past customs (apparently you're not supposed to take meat into the country, but having lugged provisions across the Atlantic, they were not about to jettison their precious cargo, so it came in undeclared), canned fruits and vegetables, TVP, rice, noodles, and assorted oddments. We frequented the grocery store for our daily bread, the potatoes (which are government-subsidised and hence fairly cheap), and the occasional half-kilogram of butter and liter of milk for coffee.

It was with relief that I anticipated the return to American prices, only to discover that these had shot up alarmingly in our absence. Gasoline has topped $3/gallon, and by a very wide margin indeed. Therefore I am making a concerted effort to stay at home these days.

You've heard that Holland is a small country...

Back at last

Our impressions of Holland are much the same as they were last time - impractical plumbing, small spaces, friendly people, wonderful food - so we needn't go into all that again. Possibly the most memorable part of the whole trip for me was coming down with a horrific cold the day after we arrived and fighting with said cold the whole blighted trip, thus rendering all my memories overshadowed by a fog of sneezing and sniffling which left me wondering why on earth people ever took snuff so as to do this to themselves on purpose.

We're getting back on track now. Jane and Ella are still waking up rather early in the mornings, which is probably good for us all. Oh, but it's good to be back!

JAMBOG, Phase II

(See here for rules.) (See here for Phase I.)

Scenario #3: You're imprisoned in an old castle dungeon. Guards stand outside your cell. A moat surrounds the castle. How do you escape?

Katy shivered in the cold darkness of the old castle dungeon. Dressed only in her pyjamas, she rued the day that she had come begging to the gates of Castle Bruster. 'Only a little scoop of ice cream,' she had implored, but the merciless Baron had thrown her into the dungeon rather than part with one scrap of his lavish medieval feast.

Presently Katy took heart. Surely she might contrive a way of escape. She scanned her cell for inspiration, and noticed, to her surprise, a cup of coke sitting on the bars in the window. An idea struck her with blinding force, but she quickly recovered, and called for the guard:

'Oh! Guard!' Katy called out, trying to think of a plausible excuse. The guard unlocked the cell door and came in to see what was the matter, and Katy quickly threw the cup of very flat coke into his eyes. He staggered and tripped, and in a trice Katy seized the keys, swung the great door to, and locked it behind the guard.

Quickly she ran down the flagstone hallway, looking for a way out. Just as she reached a larger passage, she heard a clamour of loud shouts and footsteps. Katy looked about her for a hiding place, but there was none. At the last minute, she seized the large, silver globe of a light from the hall lampstand. When the patrol of guards came around the corner, they saw what appeared to be a gypsy sitting on the floor, waving her hands mysteriously over a magic ball.

'Come! Look ye into my crystal ball and see what your futures shall hold!' Katy intoned.

'That ain't crystal - that be silver,' protested one of the guards, licking his ice-cream cone, for they had just come from the medieval feast.

'Well, come look into its silver depths, and see how crystal clear your future shall become!' Katy replied. Interested, the guards all peered downward. Katy set the ball spinning at the guards, who dropped their ice cream cones, slipped, and went down like ninepins. Katy darted around them and rushed up a stone passage.

She found herself in the castle kitchen, where the roaring fire sent out a cheerful glow. There were cod sizzling on a pan over the fire, sending out deliciously tempting smells. But Katy had other fish to fry. She spotted a huge colander of alfalfa sprouts which the cook had left out, and an idea flashed into her head. Gathering up bundles in her arms, she ran up to the highest turret and arranged the sprouts into a rough semblance of a bird's nest, which she curled up in the middle of.

Within a very few minutes, the giant rocs circling the castle caught sight of her and came swooping down. One of them clutched her in its talons, whisked her across the moat, and set her down gently in safety. And thereupon was she at liberty to continue her quest for free ice cream.

Fashion Tirade

Of course there's no such thing as objective fashion, because what we inherently find attractive is inevitably going to be coloured by the pervading fads and trends that have shaped our cultural awareness. But it is slightly frustrating to me to be so completely unable to find a decisive answer on what specific looks actually look the nicest, without regard to what sleight-of-hand they're trying to accomplish.

The driving force behind most fashion 'looks' seems to be mainly concerned with creating the illusion of tallness and thinness. Vertical lines (not stripes! Because that would be too obvious!) are supposed to lengthen and slim the figure. Skirts that stop just above the knee are supposed to make the legs look longer, as opposed to the drab, mid-calf length, which makes the legs look dumpy. Boot-cut jeans balance the legs, making the thighs look narrower in context. Skinny jeans give a slimming line and make the legs look longer.

I have yet to read a useful piece of advice on which look actually looks the nicest for its own sake. Since I am pretty happy with my shape, I really don't feel compelled to resort to optical illusions in my wardrobe; I'd much rather not waste time agonising over whether a particular style causes me to look - even if ever so slightly - like something I am not.

This annoyance of mine carries over to the perpetual articles in magazines and what-have-you, where we're regaled with Tips For Disguising Figure Flaws and Ten Easy Ways To Look Up To Five Pounds Slimmer. My thought is, rather than waste all that time and energy and effort studying these principles, buying new clothes, tanning, etc., why not just go ahead and lose the five pounds? I mean, if it's a legitimate figure flaw that needs to be fixed, then fix it. Otherwise, stop worrying about it.

Redbox rocks!

A few weeks ago I gave Redbox a try for the first time. I'd read about it online and heard great things about it, but when I finally got around to trying it out, I was less than impressed. The 'free' code I'd been proffered didn't work, and the customer service rep with whom I spoke seemed ambivalent about solving the problem for me and even suggested that the code malfunction might be a common problem. I wrote a very thorough email to customer support, listing my perturbations and suspecting them of pulling a bait-and-switch by deliberately offering free goods/services which were merely designed to lure new customers in.

Customer service responded in fine style. I received a very courteous and apologetic response, explaining that the glitch with the code was a temporary issue, that Redbox really is in the habit of offering absolutely free rentals, and giving me two free codes on the spot as a goodwill gesture. Their reputation properly restored, I gave them another chance, and now commence to sing their praises. Both codes worked like a charm, and I became hooked.

Redbox, in case you haven't heard of it, is like a vending machine of new release DVDs located in various popular locations such as Wal-marts and McDonalds. Check their website to find one near you. The cost is usually $1 a day, but there are so many free codes emerging that you can pretty much get one for free any time you want.

It works for Redbox, because if you are late returning your DVD, you get charged $1. Still, that's not much for a movie rental (and hey, last I checked, Blockbuster was charging $4.29 for new releases!) So far we have always been prompt about returning our movies on time, and the location is very convenient. We are definitely fans.

Reflections

Ten years ago this year I left Oregon.

My oldest younger brother, now twenty, was ten when we left. That means that he's spent half his life in Oregon and half in Virginia. The others, still younger, have spent most of their lives in Virginia. For some of them, Oregon - my childhood home and all my growing-up memories - is but a distant memory.

The children I used to babysit are now old enough to babysit my children.

And here's the real kicker: as of next month, I will have lived as long in Georgia as I ever lived in Virginia!!

Oh, and while we're at it...

Since we're going back to Holland next month, I thought it high time to post these neat pictures of European-style lights (that, and the winter games are on):

JAMBOG time!

(See here for a list of rules.)

A Drink
From Days To Come
"We checked in with the hostess and sat at the bar to drink a Coke and enjoy the cigarette smoke while we waited. Scott was talking about something at work and I was sitting in the bar stool leaning on the bar and sipping my Coke ..."

A Light
From Focht Tales

A Food
From The Real Food Revolution
"I tell my kids that we're going to have bird's nests for lunch."

Something Cold
Need I say more?

Free ice cream is here again!

I will not miss this again, quotha. (Somehow I have missed it every single year I've lived where there are Brusters.) Michael was aghast when I told him, all gushing and bubbly, about my discovery and my plan to dress the girls up in their pyjamas, and wear my bathrobe over my sweats, because that's the closest thing I have to actual pyjamas, at least that could be worn in public.

Gold and dross

I'm sure you all have seen (or heard of) that little demonstration of time and priorities using a box of sand and some bricks. Someone performed it in our Sunday school class a few years ago, but I'd read of it elsewhere, and I think it's a terrific visual presentation.

Basically, you have a box full of sand, and a stack of bricks, and you're told to make them both fit into one box. If you try to cram the bricks into the box full of sand, you will discover that they will not fit: they simply will not occupy the same space. But if you put the bricks into an empty box (Ha! I caught you, a la Sherlock Holmes! I never told you that you had an empty box! [but then, as I told someone recently, who was complaining about S. H.'s habit of making himself look clever by withholding important information so that the reader could not out-guess him, Come on! This isn't Encyclopedia Brown we're reading! You're not supposed to figure it out on your own!]) , and then pour the sand in around it, then it will fit (at least more so). The idea is that you have to start off with the really important things in life, and fit the less important things in around them, or else the unimportant things will crowd out the important things.

Such is the way I feel about this season of my life. The more bricks I try to cram in, the more swiftly the sand flows out of the hourglass of my life...oh, well, never mind the metaphors. This is not, by the way, a roundabout (and that word always makes me think of England) announcement of the end of my blog, merely a meandering mulling over the sparseness of posts recently.

Sometimes blogging is sand. Fun sand...sandcastle-building-worthy sand...lie-lazily-in- the-sun-and-ignore-my-cares sand...but sand nonetheless.

All right, now I shall go off and do the dishes. Again.

I couldn't have said it better myself...

...especially about the imposting and the sorcering.

Fetch and carry

One of the most mind-numbing aspects of keeping up with little people, whose energy and creativity seem limitless, most especially in comparison with my own, is the setting things to rights by insisting on believing that everything has its proper place, and should, ideally, stay there.

Far more minute - and thus more irritating and camel-back-straw-breaking than the endless repertoire of dishes, dusters, and laundry - is the unending courier duty of patrolling the hallways, counters, couches, tables, and tupperware drawers to ensure that used tissues, clean laundry, dirty laundry, foodstuffs, hairbrushes, papers, utensils, and the like didn't get misplaced by little hands. Jane and Ella are fond of picking things up and just following me around the house, distributing random items in their wake, quite apart from their intentional foraging expeditions, where they hide the magnets under the bathroom sink, because they are making popcorn. As if in space, objects drift casually through the house, coming to rest peacefully in the odd nook or cranny.

There seem to be two possible destinations for these unfixed objects: in full view, which is annoying to me because it gives the appearance of clutter and makes me feel, no matter how much time I spend running around putting things away, that my house is falling apart and I just put that away three times already this morning and what's the use of it all, or out of sight, which is only slightly more dire, because it may turn out to be something that we may require before we happen to discover its resting place. Asking Jane where she put the nasal aspirator is decidedly unproductive.

Legs and letters

I am constantly amazed at the little bits of profundity Jane pops out with. I should be writing this all down in her baby book. But at the rate I am going, I am doing well to remember to share it with Michael that night, let alone blog about it. Two clevernesses come to mind, however:

This morning she was admiring herself in the mirror and reading off the letters on her shirt. Now, she knows all her letters and the main sounds they make, but we've kept it simple thus far and only introduced her to the short vowel sounds. In absence of formal school time, I've taken to spelling out short words whenever I can and walking her through the sounds. Her shirt read, 'Dept. of Cute,' and she was happily reciting the letters.

So I decided to make a giant leap forward and introduce her to the concept of long and short vowel sounds. Leading her to the garish letter magnets on the fridge, I spelled out CUT and explained how, without an E, the U made an uh sound, but when you add the E, it makes the YEW sound! Never missing a trick, she said, 'Let's add the Z!' And then proceeded to line up all the rest of the letters, in order of colour.

Then this evening, she was running around sans-culottes. As I washed the dishes, I overheard this ensuing conversation:

Jane: Jane's legs are naked!
Michael: Yes, they are.
Jane: Jane is wearing no pants!
Michael: No, you're not wearing pants.
Jane: Just legs!

Silver linings (or not)

Sara's recent post about grey hair, and our response to it, reflects a lot of similar thoughts I've had on the topic. On the one hand, of course I want to accept my age. (But of course, I don't want to look too old while doing so.) Of course I want to age gracefully. (But just not too soon.)

I've wondered what I'll do when the time comes to deal with it. Aside from all the problematic health concerns linking cancer risks to darker hair dyes, and the problematic costs associated with the natural (e.g. henna) dyes (well, for that matter, surely even the most dastardly carcinogenic hair dyes must get expensive after a while), there's the old Institute baggage of the notion that we must accept ungrudging our ten unchangeables, such as aging and death.

(I don't actually believe this anymore, by the way. Death is inevitable, but that doesn't mean we don't strive to fight it every chance we get. It's a product of the curse, and therefore not something that we should just accept glibly without protest.)

Of course there seems something inherently dishonest about dyeing one's hair, just to pretend that one looks different from how one really appears. But that hurdle can be quickly resolved by pointing out that it's just as dishonest to wear makeup and coloured contacts, or to shave one's legs, or to get braces, or wear high heels.

No, my biggest problem with the notion of dyeing one's hair is the societal concession to an inflated standard of beauty. Just as the popular advent of make-up ('Painting like an Indian,' as Dad Gilbreth jeeringly called it in Cheaper By The Dozen) last century leveled the playing field for the masses and undermined the relative natural beauty of the genuinely good-looking, so the widespread and almost universal dyeing of hair gives us an inflated notion of youth. Most women who would otherwise go grey do dye their hair, because everyone else does, so we have come to associate grey hair with an exaggerated sense of oldness.

For that reason alone, I'd be eager to see society re-establish a rational, sensible acceptance of grey hair as compatible with vibrance and youth. But am I going to participate in countering the current trend? Probably not until the backlash grows to be a widespread phenomenon. No blazing of fashion trails for me.

I read recently (maybe in a review of this book?) that various tests and studies had proven that grey hair only advances the perception of one's age to the average viewer by three years. Whatever. I don't need to look three years older than I am. When I am thirty, fair and square, I will be perfectly happy to look thirty, thank you very much. Meanwhile, I will try very hard not to stress about it, since stress is supposed to bring on ye old hoary head.

Snow!

We had a winter storm warning on Wednesday, which was shortly followed up by the winter storm itself. Atlanta promptly shut down; as the first flurries of white flakes came down, every activity was canceled and the stores ran out of bread, milk, and toilet paper. I thought it was an urban legend when I moved here, but it's true: whenever it snows here (not too often, granted) people flock to the stores to stock up on supplies.

Meanwhile, Jane and Ella enjoyed their first brush with snow:

I know things have been slow with the recent writers' strike...

But honestly, is this the best they could do?

I won't tell you what movie I just finished watching, because that might give it away, but in the fit of scoffing that resulted I came up with the following obvious plot devices employed by low-budget and apparently desperate writers:

- In the dramatic confrontation scene, where the Hero confronts and fights with the Villain, sufficiently immobilise the Heroine so that her role is reduced to helpless screaming. For best effects, rig it so that her screams coincide with the most tense moments of the struggle, to further distract the Hero and highten the suspense. Give her enough of a free hand that we can waste precious screen moments by cutting back and forth between the epic conflict and her frantic struggles, but not so much that she breaks free and does something actually productive, such as clobber the Villain.

- When the relationship threatens to drag, bring in an additional potential love interest. Make her blonde. Trot her out and let her run her paces for a few scenes, then dust her off and return her to the wings from whence you plucked her so that the main characters can get on with their spectacular misunderstandings.

- Throw in a few sunset scenes. Zoom in on close-ups of the Hero's and Heroine's fake sobbing (didn't any of these people read Encyclopedia Brown?? Come on, we all know that when tears run from the outside corners of the eyes, they're not real!) in an attempt to distract from the obvious paintedness of the sunset.

- For good resolution, simply pair off characters with the likeliest candidates. Kill off all the leftovers so that nobody ends up alone.

$100 sapphire...check. Now what?

When we went on our Alaska jaunt last summer, I think I mentioned that the high point of the trip, aside from the abundant food and the midnight chocolate, was dashing about from shop to shop at every port of call, collecting free trinkets. My plan was to work some of these into nice little Christmas presents, which didn't pan out so well, as a recent cleaning frenzy unearthed the crumpled bag of treasures buried under some obscure pile of Deal-Withs. Ah, memories!

One of them is a blue sapphire. It was billed as genuine, and touted as being worth $100. Is Alaska really so short on tourists, and long on sapphires, that they've taken to giving these little gems away as a thank-you gift for visiting their humble shores, you wonder? Not quite - rest assured that they have a plan. When I entered the store, flourishing my stateroom coupon, I was offered the incredible chance to have the free stone mounted in a ring or pendant for only $50. Never one to throw good money after...um...well, no money, I declined the offer and walked out of there with my head held high, clutching my $100 sapphire, with no notion of what to do with it but with a very strong fondness for it, as, after all, it was Genuine, not to mention worth $100.

(This is not an isolated incident, by the way. Another store promised free freshwater pearl pendants, and then spent several minutes explaining to me why I needed to buy their $10 sterling silver chain to wear the pendant on. Finally they just gave up and let me have the pendant. I still haven't figured out what to wear it with.)

Now we're being followed by rocks

Just finished watching Pirates III and all I can say is, What? That's it???

No, seriously, now what? Is there going to be yet another movie to tie up all the rest of the loose ends satisfactorily? Hate to wreak havoc on this nice trilogy motif we had going, but there has to be a better resolution than once every ten years.

This is the woman scorned like which Hell hath no fury.

A minor diatribe

Internet shorthand will always be with us (at least as long as we have the internet), but that won't stop me from gnashing my teeth at all the little expressions I find particularly irksome. And the one which at this moment has aroused my derision is the phrase dh, shorthand for, I can only suppose, Dear Husband.

A small part of me (a very, very small part) wants to like the convention, because it sounds so charming and refined to refer to someone as Dear. It also sounds almost British (as in, 'Dear Charlotte,' or 'Dear Mamma'), and anything British is sure to score high points with my passing fancy.

Another part of me wants to stop being annoyed by it, because some people whose writings I otherwise like tend to employ it, and I don't want to catch them in the crossfire of my snide and possibly quite irrational dislike.

Another part of me wants to encourage any instance of niceness and civility in our language that I find, because of course it is laudable to consider one's husband dear, isn't it?

But mainly I just find it annoying. It's a very tiresome cheapening of the language, like a case of chronic italics in an impressionable teenager or the overuse of the word 'love' to mean all things from mildly be interested in to passionately adore.

And why the need to perpetually tack on the chirpy adjective? It almost suggests some kind of insecurity, that one needs so flamboyantly to wear one's heart on one's sleeve and insist how dear one's husband is. It seems to imply a kind of superiority, in stark contrast to those of us poor saps who are so blase as not to publicly call our husbands dear at every opportunity. If you're content to let your husband off with the mere title of husband, which is nothing if not prosaically descriptive, without any reference to the state of your relationship with him, well then! We can see just how loving a wife you are!

In fact, why stop at dh? Why not go gung-ho for this Positive Speech thing and make up all kinds of cute little acronyms to demonstrate vociferously just how wonderful and healthy and enthusiastic we really are? How about my brat (beautiful righteous adorable tot) or my lunk (loving unselfish nice kid) or my gross (gorgeous reliable opinionated svelte spouse)? Yes, why don't we start scattering these little tidbits throughout our conversation and see if the wonderful trend will catch on?

Or is the point to be deliberately unintelligible? Is that why the lazy but somewhat onomatopoetic LOL was abandoned for the more obscure, erudite, and hence now wildly popular ROTFLOL? Because if it makes too much sense, then it wouldn't be clever and original enough to use it, now would it?

Goldilocks

Jane is quickly getting the world all figured out and, per her perfectionist nature, methodically and systematically putting everything in its place.

It happened a few weeks ago that she noted a difference in heights by commenting, 'Jane is little; Mama is big.' Mama did not like this depiction, and promptly informed Jane that while Papa may be big, Mama is medium. So Jane dutifully took in this tidbit of information and proceeded to run with it (in a very methodical and systematic way, of course).

Many days later Michael coughed, and Jane commented, 'Papa's big cough!' She then turned to me and observed, 'Mama has a medium cough.'

Jane is not satisfied with one-sided conversations, so I must not only acknowledge what she says, but agree with her whole-heartedly:

Jane: Papa has a big cough!
Mama: Yes, Papa has a big cough.
Jane: Mama has a medium cough!
Mama: Yes, Mama's cough is medium.
Jane: Jane has a little cough! (cough, cough)
Mama: Yes, Jane has a little cough.
Jane: Ella has a smaller cough!
Mama: Yes.
Jane: Ella has a smaller cough!
Mama: Yes, yes, Jane, Ella does have a smaller cough, doesn't she??

These conversations happen fairly frequently now, and they tend to be rather predictable.

Jane: Papa has a big sneeze!
Mama: Yes, Papa's sneeze is big
Jane: Mama has a medium sneeze!
Mama: Yes, Mama's sneeze is medium
Jane: Jane has a little sneeze!
Mama: Yes, Jane has a little sneeze.
Jane: Ella has a smaller sneeze!
Mama: Yes, she does.

And the possibilities are endless. Jane will never run out of gambits.

These boots were made for walkin'

There is a little sketch somewhere by a famous artist of a man with multiple limbs doing cartwheels inside a big circle, the point of which is to prove that the length of the arms, fully extended, should exactly match the height of the body, or thereabouts. There are also optical illusions out there involving top hats and brims, which have something to do with ratios of height to width and all that.

Apparently footwear manufacturers draw their inspiration from these tidbits and decide that the circumference of a woman's calf must exactly match the length of her lower leg, from knee to heel, even including, say, a four-inch stacked heel for good measure (stop and admire my self-restraint for not ending that sentence with 'to boot.' Ha, ha!) From which you are to conclude that my long quest for a good-fitting black boot (or any colour boot, for that matter) continues unfulfilled.

I don't have particularly skinny legs. I am not plump, and I think my calves are about right for my height, and so it bothers me no end that absolutely no boot out there exists which will fit properly. All I want is a nice pair of basic leather (preferably zip-up) boots. I am past caring about price and will gladly pay any amount (and I already checked, and they don't sell boots at CVS) of ready money just to buy a good pair of boots that could last me a few seasons. Seriously, this search has been on for most of my married life, and you would think that at least one season they might come out with a normal boot for a normal-sized leg.