It isn't pretty folks, but I believe in authenticity and there are rules to follow.
1) Take a picture of yourself right NOW!
2) DON’T change your clothes, DON’T fix your hair… Just take a picture.
3) Post that picture with NO editing.
4) Post these instructions with your picture.
5)Tag 10 people to do this..
I don't do the resolution thing, but I do enjoy a good retrospective when the New Year dawns.
All & Sundry posted this questionnaire and asked us all to play along. C'mon you know you wanna!
1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Potty trained my child and weaned her too.
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't make resolutions.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
My friend Heather had boy/girl twins in November.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Uncles, an aunt, my best friend's mother.
5. What countries did you visit?
Does Detroit count as a foreign country?
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
I want for nothing... except maybe a cheeseburger...and some fries
7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The day our car got it's windows smashed was pretty memorable.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Starting a blog.
9. What was your biggest failure?
Vegan pumpkin pie.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Oh, I had the usual sinus infections and Mother related stress fatigue.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
My new digital camera and a continuous ink supply system and Obama paper dolls.
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
The voters of this weird, wonderful country.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
My mother's during her summer visit.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Food and shelter.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Violet's birthday and Christmas.
16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
Tomorrow, as sung by daughter.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
Happier
b) thinner or fatter?
Thinner
c) richer or poorer?
It's so low-class to talk about money... let's talk about how much space is in my wallet.
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Playing
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Lying in bed with a sinus headache.
20. How did you spend Christmas?
Blissfully. At home.
21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
I fall in love with my husband at least once a week and my daughter makes me swoon daily.
22. What was your favorite TV program?
30Rock is tied with the Daily Show.
23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don't waste time with hate.
24. What was the best book you read?
The Case for Make Believe.(Okay, I can't remember what else I read)
25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Alison Kraus and Robert Plant.
26. What did you want and get?
A Bamboo tablet.
27. What did you want and not get?
Alabama Stitch
28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Wall-E and Religulous
29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 32 and I can't remember anything else about it.
30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Hiring a maid.
31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Thrift store chic.
32. What kept you sane?
The internet and my blog.
33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Barack Obama
34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Our educational system pisses me of daily.
35. Who did you miss?
The annual onslaught of X-Mas Cards makes me miss a bunch of people.
36. Who was the best new person you met?
Twin newborns Evangeline and Liam.
37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
This too shall pass and it will pass too quickly.
38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
The sun'll come out tomorrow. So you gotta hang on 'til tomorrow. Come what may.
Every Christmas, no matter how happy or easy going, I am assaulted by acne. The severity of the attack varies depending on the weather and my mentrual cycle, but rest assured on Christmas morn my face will be adorned like a festering Christmas tree. This year's outbreak was/is a real humdinger. My efforts to clear it up during the days before Christmas, only made it worse. The powder I applied yesterday to dampen the shine and dull the redness, didn't do me any favors either. So, I am going to shame my pimples by broadcasting them over the world wide web. Seriously, these zits were my only problems this holiday season. We Heathens are happy, shiny (some of us more than others) people with a lot to be thankful for. There were presents for all and more than enough ham and cookies to go around. Violet was indulged beyond measure and yet was not spoiled rotten. She only gets sweeter.
It was a joyful day. I showed this acne a good time!
Remember the other day when I explained my kinship with the 1950s aesthetic? Well, it seems that my domestic powers are in fact confined to the second half of the 20th century. Rachel over at Reservation for Six referred me to a site that can test your 1930s housewife prowess. I did not do well. It might have been this requirement that sunk my score:
 | 34 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor |
The decorations are up. The cookies are baked. The week's groceries have been purchased and put away. All the gifts have been wrapped (and piled up much higher than I anticipated). The DVR is stocked with History Channel holiday goodies like The History of Christmas, so that I can indulge in my favorite drug (TV, not crack) this Christmas Eve. I plan to spend the next couple of days cleaning my filthy house. Christmas Day is much more enjoyable for me if I feel like I'm getting a much deserved break. Otherwise Christmas Day can sometimes feel like just another lazy, stay-at-home day in a really dirty house and that is what January is for.
I am going to take a break for the rest of the week and emerge refreshed and inspired on the other side of the holidays. Don't worry! I'll will supply some canned entertainment and Christmas wishes to see you through.
Times are tough. Beans are on the menu, but some people just can't bring themselves to eat beans when frozen chicken nuggets are at large in the world.
Me: Beans are magic.
The Heathen Family has a fake Christmas tree. With our tenuous financial situation it has never seemed prudent to pay for a new tree every year, when we could have a reusable tree for nearly the same one-time price. We don't live in the country, so there's no peer pressure to get the real thing and besides I'm not a big fan of killing a perfectly nice tree so that I can put it in my living room for two weeks.
Also, I have an irrational and persistant fear that my house will spontaneously combust, so erecting kindling in the living room would only add to my anxiety.
The presence of a plastic conifer in our lives has always been a non-issue. Who cares? We understand that the green pipe cleaners are representative of a greater German tradition. The artificial Christmas tree is symbolic. It's shorthand. Nobody in this house NEEDS to go trekking into the snowy woods with a saw in order to understand what the Christmas tree is all about. Except. Violet has never experienced any of this good old-fashioned, tree murdering, family fun and today every holiday picture book we read mentioned the felling of a noble fir. It made me flashback to my own childhood trauma experience with cutting down a real Christmas tree.
Once upon a time, I worked in a used bookstore. It was located near a very popular shopping mall. Starting in October, traffic would steadily increase and by Thanksgiving it would routinely take me 20 minutes to putter a mile up the street to my on ramp. It was maddening. After spending the whole day reminding people that books don't need boxes to be neatly gift wrapped or breaking it to them that their precious Harlequin romance paperbacks are virtually worthless for resale, it was physically painful to sit in traffic surrounded by these same people who had been driving me crazy all afternoon. I would spend the month before Christmas crossing my fingers that my request for vacation would be honored, so that I could go home for the holidays. I would navigate the tense waters of workplace gift giving, while observing the gluttonous shopping habits of my co-workers and customers. It took a lot of emotional fortitude to maintain my positive Christmas spirit.
Traffic not-withstanding, what offended me the most in my retail experience was the drama and complaining and general vitriol I had to listen to about all things Christmas. It was decidedly un-jolly behavior. If you do not enjoy Christmas, why do you participate? And if you don't participate in the custom of giving gifts during the month of December, why are you shopping the weekend before Christmas? Go home and save yourself the aggravation. Oh, and I reject ALL the seasonal religious arguments because I LOVE the Christmas time of year and it has nothing, NOTHING to do with Jesus or super, long-lasting miracle oil or the winter solstice. I like Christmas because we all stop being assholes for a day and we give each other presents and eat cookies and ham together. Period.
When Violet was busy gestating and making me vomit, I celebrated my last Christmas at my family home. We knew that once she was born we would want her to enjoy the delicious custom of leaping out of her own bed and running down the hall in the pre-dawn light to wake her parents with a swift, unintended kick to the balls and an elbow to the face. It is how Christmas should be. I don't whine about the early hour or the black eye. My notoriously late sleeping mother drug her ass out of bed for the sake of me and my sister on Christmas morning and if she could do it anyone can. I don't get all wound up with worry about Christmas, because I simply choose not to. Of course, I no longer work outside of the home and that makes my conviction much easier to keep. When people complain about the this or that of modern Christmas I put my fingers in my ears and start humming Santa Baby. I replay in my head this perfect, composite Christmas morning scene that I have nurtured since childhood and breathe deeply.
On occasion my charming husband Aaron has accused me of giving him the ol' bait and switch. He claims that I was a sexy, free-spirited, modern lady when he married me and I morphed before his eyes into a 1950s housewife. It's true, I no longer willingly pose for nude photographs and I have been known to get control-freaky about keeping track of one's wallet (his wallet) and keys (his keys), but I believe those things are a function of age and wisdom, rather than a fundamental change in my personality. I am more sensible now. The "erotic art" of my youth is really just an embarrassing situation waiting to happen and "misplaced" wallets and keys lead to the haus frau stomping up the stairs and angrily pulling the "lost" articles out of the pocket of yesterday's pants.
Of course, I do covet mid-century modern style. If money was no object I would recreate "The House of the Future" or the home of The Incredibles, and live in it. I like ballet flats and cropped pants. I don't work outside the home. I sew. I bake. I take my daughter to dance class in our lone family car. I say, "Oh, My Goodness!" a dozen times a day.
It's all pretty damning evidence, but I digress. This post is not about my love for ranch homes and Eames' design aesthetic, it is about how I have the choice to live like I do. Unlike, ye olde housewives of yore, I am not being squeezed by outmoded social mores into the shape of a happy homemaker. I AM actually a happy homemaker. I am also a smart ass and a blog writer and an amateur photographer and all of those things are afforded me by the hard work of feminists who wanted nothing more than the CHOICE to bake or not to bake.
To bake or not to bake? That is the question. And this is the weird kind of writing that comes when I spend an entire day communing with my cherry red mixer, happily up to my elbows in sugar and flour, swatting away little fingers from cooling cookies on the table.
I don't DO New Year's Resolutions.
I could use some improvement, no doubt, but January is just not a good time for me. Is January a good time for anyone to start afresh, anew, a-whatever? January might be a good month to start exercising or catching up on home maintenance in Australia, but I live in Ohio. January is most suitably a time for laying on the couch moaning about the cold and snow. I will be too busy finishing off the Christmas cookies to worry about my waist line come the New Year.
I believe in hibernation.
Winter is a time to replenish the body's store, to collect energy for the approaching summer. Before the modern conveniences of electricity and central heat, humans hunkered down for the coldest months of the year. It made them all the more thankful for the rebirth of spring. Rather than resist the isolation and gloom of winter, I revel in it. Fighting nature is just too exhausting.
I resolve to stay inside, keep warm and eat comfy winter food. When the flowers start to poke their heads up in the spring, my ambition will bloom along with them. I will emerge from the chrysalis of winter, a refreshed, chubby, butterfly ready to play all summer long.
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How will you get your act together in 2009? The Parent Bloggers Network and BigTent want to give you a little much needed motivation.
In hindsight, Aaron and I probably should have gone to his work Christmas Party on Friday night. It's the reason we shipped Violet off to a sleepover at Grandma's. We disappointed a great many of Aaron's colleagues by not showing up. I'm sure some bets were won and lost, since I have managed to avoid ALL employee functions since Aaron took this job nearly 5 years ago. I have retained my enigma status, but at a price.
I remember really, really liking Candy Land when I was a child. I can recall the thrill of getting a gumdrop card and moving far ahead on the board. I also remember the grumpy, disengaged look on my adult opponent's face while we were playing. I was befuddled. How could you be bored with this fast-paced, color driven, candy themed game? It gave me the distinct impression that grown-ups were somehow fundamentally brain damaged by the process of reaching adulthood. I felt sorry for the bland, candy-free lives they were forced to live in service to... well, me.
I am constantly finding toys in this condition. They pop up in random places. Tied to a kitchen chair, or the TV table. I am pretty sure that Violet cannot tie a standard shoelace knot, but her bondage skills are developing nicely. If my Dominatrix Parenting Bible is to be believed, Violet is ahead of schedule on this milestone. Her emerging skills include safe words and light paddling. I couldn't be prouder.
