People speak of decades as if they form natural endings, when in fact they seldom end anything cleanly. Human survivors are dragged into new slices of time with which they feel no harmony and in which they are often exposed to rasping change.
-Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out Of Time
This would be a way more appropriate quote if we were, in fact, turning decades this year, but let’s face it: I’m not going to remember this quote by then.
Looks like Casey had a rough night.
Here are your links:
I loved this post at fiftyfourandahalf Our New Year’s Eve Tradition. Last night I was in bed before midnight, just wiped out and grateful to not have to be in the city. Even #5 stayed up to watch the ball drop, but I just couldn’t take poor Dick Clark again. Maybe next year I’ll strive for consciousness and give this tradition a shot.
Yesterday I made a homemade chicken pot pie à la The Pioneer Woman. If you’re not a real cook (like me) but sometimes have to feed your large-ish family (like me), then you should totally get Ree’s cookbook The Pioneer Woman Cooks. If you’re as lucky as me (not likely), your husband will buy the cookbook for you and also make most of the recipes out of it. Here’s the pot pie recipe on her website: Leftover Turkey Pot Pie.PS: I used a pre-made pie crust. Sue me.
One and Done Sunday is supposed to be nice and easy. One picture, and five links that are worth your time.
However, since I’ve been offline for like three weeks, I’ve only read two things and they’re not blogs. They’re articles that CC sent me links to, one with the email subject of “ewwwww” and the other with a subject of “EWWWWWWWWW!”.
The first is an article in Wired about how you can catch the Bubonic Plague from letting your dog sleep in your bed.
The second is an article on Yahoo connecting deaths from brain-eating amoeba to neti pot use with tap water.
The first year the kids lived with us I went on antibiotics five times for sinus & respiratory infections, including a bout with bronchitis that had me largely bedridden for a month with a fever that reached 104 degrees more than once. Then I found a great ENT and a neti pot. They changed my life.
My awesome ENT suggested that I use the pre-made saline solution and heat it in the microwave, rather than making it up with tap water and the salt packets. He said it would be more effective. That just seemed like extra steps to me, so I did not heed his advice and used hot tap water from the bathroom with the salt packets. After all, he said the pre-made solution was “more effective”. AT NO TIME did he mention the phrase, “brain-eating amoeba” in association with tap water. This seems to me a severe oversight on his part, and I may be reconsidering his awesomeness.
A word to doctors: if you want to get your patients’ attention, just use that phrase, “brain-eating amoeba”.
I’m sure the phrase, “flesh-eating bacteria” will have a similar effect.
As for the other links. . . uhhh. . . let’s see here. Well, Erin from Momfog is consistently kicking my ass on Words With Friends and she scored this one word on me that was worth 141 points. I was simultaneously impressed and humiliated. That has nothing to do with anything she posted but I like her blog. Oh, also, if you got a Kindle for Christmas, you should download Elena Aitken’s book Unexpected Gifts because it’s fun and sexy and every Kindle needs some o’ that.
If you wrote or read a post you want to share, put a link in the comments section below. Because I don’t really think that the Black Death and brain-eating amoeba are very festive links to put up at holiday time and my mom might get mad at me about that.
Here’s a slideshow of some pictures I took in the city this week.
Welcome to One and Done Sunday. Short and sweet: one picture, and five links that are worth your time.
Except I’ll blather on a little first. You may have noticed I’ve been sort of quiet lately. It happens when I get overwhelmed; I imagine a lot of people are like that.
I started re-reading a book that I went through probably twelve years ago called One Day My Soul Just Opened Up by Iyanla Vanzant. It’s like a forty-day workbook thing. Something I read in it has been kicking around in my head about slowing down so you can see the truth that’s in front of you (I’m paraphrasing). So I slowed down.
No real wisdom to impart from that, except that I feel calmer.
I didn’t do much this week except help clear our land from the storm. That was actually sort of a lot, but it was only one day. Three weeks since the storm damaged pretty much every tree in our neighborhood, very little official cleanup has happened. We got a letter from the town about ten days ago (before the election) basically saying, give us a break people, we’re doing our best. But don’t dispose of anything yourself because you can’t be trusted.
We did see one truck come to pick up the branches on our street this week.
They completely skipped our house.
So CC rented a woodchipper and on Friday, CC, #1 and I hit it. I have to say it was pretty cool, even though it was a bit disturbing how much CC seemed to like the woodchipper. Also, #1 reminded him that he told her when she was little that if she were ever going to stuff someone in a woodchipper she should do it feet first so it would hurt longer. He doesn’t remember telling her this and said in his defense that everybody knows if you put body parts in a woodchipper they should be frozen.
Anyway, we got most of the trees done. As for the rest on our property, and the other neighbors that they skipped, plus the leaves that they are also not picking up that we’re not allowed to dispose of? I’m thinking bonfire. My driveway. Maybe we’ll get someone’s attention then. Ah, Jersey. Our tax dollars hard at corruption.
Here’s your picture:
Thanksgiving
This was somewhere in the middle of our cleanup and it just kind of made me giggle. The pumpkins that never got carved but also somehow survived a tree landing on them and knocking them off the porch, coupled with the Christmas lights that we never took down until said tree took down the gutter they were attached to. Thanksgiving tends to get treated as the tiny space in this picture between the pumpkins and the lights, largely because nobody puts up giant inflatable turkey decorations in their yard. Oh wait, they do in my neighborhood. I should take a picture.
Here are your links.
Hey, speaking of clearing land like a goddamn pioneer woman, here’s one of my dirty secrets. When I need a lift, sometimes I browse the Charlie archives on The Pioneer Woman’s blog. She’s a rancher; he’s a basset hound. Good times. Here’s one: What Is Charlie Thinking?
What do tubas have to do with zombie burlesque, doom metal, and Genghis Barbie: The leading post post-feminine feminine all-female horn experience? Jacquelyn Adams will fill you in.
EC Stilson’s first book, The Golden Sky, came out this week. Anyone who’s had a baby taken from them too soon, or knows someone who does needs to read it. I love how she describes the closure from having written the book in this post: For Zeke on Crazy Life of a Writing Mom.
JM Randolph, accidentalstepmom 