Wine Log: Lushness

Been writing- really I have, just not stuff I’m a gonna share here- too personal/incriminating or something. Instead here, have a wine log I’ve begun: Lushness. It’s mostly for my own entertainment because I don’t know wines, but I know what I like or something along those lines. Why yes, I did have glass today, why do you ask?

Poll about dinner

On cold medicines and the FDA

So, being that it’s October (Again? Didn’t we do this like a year ago?) my Dear Son has a cough. And, as with most children, the cough is worst overnight and into the early morning, which makes for less than restful night for him. So, like countless parents on countless nights, I give him cough/sniffle medicine to enable him to breathe and possibly sleep.

Having the annual head-chest cold season start off, got me thinking about something I read the other day. Recently, the FDA decided to review the use of over the counter cold medicines in children. Go read the link quick and come back, okay. If it’s bad, I copied it at the bottom of the post, so scroll down. Go on now. Shoo.

*files nails and contemplates navel*

The Girls in the Yard

I took some snapshots of some of the blooms and foliage we had in our yard during the end of July. I had intended to weave a story around them. However, I have come up short on plot, so I’m just sharing the pictures with the world.

The Rose Sisters

IMPROVED CHAIRS

So, along the lines of my last post, I have this fantasy hobby in which I take old chairs and repair and improve them (read decorate and maybe cushion up) then give away or sell them. In my fantasy, I use photographs, maps, other documents, pieces of fabric, mosaic tiles and paints to Improve the chair- to bring out a theme and say something- poetry in furniture form.

Yes, that’s right, I have a thing for chairs. It is strange because in a house or out in restaurants or even in furniture shops, chairs are not something I immediately gravitate towards, but driving around town on errands, I am always drawn to the old chairs and sofas and to a lesser extent other furniture that is left by the side of the road on garbage day. I always want to stop and see what is wrong with them, see if they are still useful, see if they could be made more interesting.

I think that the reason that new or even in current use chairs don’t draw my attention is that they don’t have stories yet, but old chairs- old chairs have stories to tell, even if the only story you can really get from them is how they were worn out or broken. I want to take old chairs, learn their stories and then make the story more plain – a theme on their seat for anyone to read.

My dear husband dislikes this tendency in me to look at chairs and drool as we drive past. He always reminds me of how little spare space we have in our house and, of course, he is right. That doesn’t mean I can’t keep my fantasy hobby in my head, right?

On Approaching Change

In about two weeks, my daily life is going to change a bit. I’ve been home with my kids for the last eleven years, but last year my son went to all day kindergarten. For about three weeks, I tried to figure out what I ought to be doing with the six hours of solitude this brought me- then, my neighbor, for whom I’d done before/after school care for her older daughter, got a new job and she needed care for her four year old. My days were not solitary again, so I got a reprieve from having to decide what I wanted to do when I grew up. Now, that same four year old is starting kindergarten and my reprieve is over.

I have a large number of things I should do with that time, a larger number of things I could do with that time, and also a few things I actually want to do with that time. And, it’s not as if I need to have it all worked out by the first day of school, but knowing myself like I do (better than most people, but not as well as my husband, I think) I know I should make some plans so I don’t spiral into laziness and depression as soon as the kids are out the door.

So, I start with lists (at this point, this will get boring, so I don’t mind if you stop reading- really, it’s okay- go read some of my fiction, instead).

THINGS I SHOULD DO:

Ruminations on Going Vegan

Currently, my family of four (Dear Hubby, Dear Daughter (10) and Dear Son (6) and little old me) are ovo-lacto vegetarians, however, recent events have got me thinking about going vegan- for myself at the very least and probably encouraging my family in that direction will come into play, as well. A few months ago, I began trying to have as high a percentage of our food as possible be organically grown/produced. I did this as a way of reducing the amount of chemicals my children were exposed to, as well as in order to try not to be part of the problem of factory farms. It made me much more aware of how the animals from which our eggs and dairy products were treated (cage-less/free roaming, grass-fed/vegetarian feed, no antibiotics/genetically modified anything).

I thought I was doing pretty well on the animal treatment front, then some recent events made me think about situations in which males might be considered inconvenient. I decided not to be part of something that effects the bulls and roosters born on the farms that produce my eggs and dairy products, because what do you think happens to most of them? They don’t get to live and lay eggs or make milk, they get slaughtered as poultry and beef. So, while I might not be buying meat, by buying eggs and dairy products, I am still supporting the meat industry anyway. This is my primary inspiration to go vegan. The next bit for me to think about is how…

On My Extended Family’s Transitioning Diet

How great this looks together on a plate.

I come from a large family and we were raised pretty traditionally when it comes to diet- that is to say, we all ate meat and sea food and wheat and nuts and dairy and- the thing is, we were the standard American Omnivores. Over my thirty-seven years many of us have made changes from the old square meal/food pyramid to more untraditional diets. Some of us had to make these changes for health reasons- my mother developed a nut allergy, one sister eliminated wheat and some other grains to reduce her eczema, another sister became diabetic, had gall bladder surgery and found that she had a persistent problem with yeast (she also chose to become a vegetarian)- her diet is very far from the American standard diet. Others of us made changes to prevent problems- my cousin, who was raised like a sister to me, her family gave up beef after the Bovine Encephalitis scares, diabetes runs in my husband’s family (as well as high cholesterol) and those things did figure in with our decision to become vegetarians (though there were so many reasons). We also include in many family celebrations some close family friends who keep kosher. Still others of us remained in the mainstream and continued to eat meat and wheat and nuts and dairy and eggs and don’t much seem likely to budge from that diet. The point is, we are all over the map.

AugNoWriMo Day 15

AugNoWriMo Day 15 word count 12,146(48.5 words over goal).

AugNoWriMo Day 13

AugNoWriMo Day 13 word count 10,336(148.5 words under goal).