I remember 20 years ago. I was 15, in the tenth grade and a Cold War child. The Iron Curtain had existed for my entire life. The USSR was that ominous lump on the map that straddled Europe and Asia like a malignant tumor.
In an effort one evening to avoid doing my homework, I turned on the old T.V. in our spare bedroom, and saw that both channels (yes, it only received two channels) were covering the same event. Men and women from age 16 to 60, armed with pick axes and sledge hammers and crowbars were knocking apart the Berlin wall. I watched as West Berliners reached down to help East Berliners climb the portions of the wall not yet dismantled; East Berliners stood in masses where only weeks before they would have been shot on sight. Soldiers watched, impotently guarding a suddenly obsolete border.
I remember having two almost simultaneous thoughts as I watched the events unfold on the 12 inch screen. The second thought was that the world I had always known was disappearing and something new and unknown was being built. The first was that when my children asked me where I was when the Berlin wall fell, I would have to tell them I was skipping my homework.
Well, my glasses arrived from Zenni optical. I purchased two $8 pairs to give me a back up pair. I’ve always wanted a back up pair, but I’ve never been able to afford one. I’ve also been scared to pick up a really fun pair of glasses, because I was scared they wouldn’t work for everything, or I’d get really tired of wearing them. At eight dollars (and flat shipping – you pay the same for shipping four pairs as one) for a complete set of glasses, I could afford to order two pairs and still spent a fraction of what I would have spent anywhere else.
So the glasses are here, and I am in the rare position of choosing which pair of glasses will be my regular pair and which will be my back up.
So what do you think? Tell me which pair you like the best (and ignore the unwashed hair and messy cabinet).
When my sister and her family were visiting, one of the big treats my mackerdoodle received was getting to take baths with her female cousins. Playing in the bath is fun, but playing in the bath with a slightly older cousin who can do cool things like get in and out of the tub by herself is downright inspiring! The mackerdoodle has been talking about it ever since. When I put her in the tub she says, “Beffa (her name for her youngest cousin “Bess”) do byself.” When I take her out of the tub she says, “Beffa do byself.” Sometimes I find her in the bathroom during the day trying to do a dry run.
Tuesday evening she dragged her little stool into the bathroom and managed, in very slow motion and under my constant supervision, to get herself into the tub. She was very proud of herself and talked about it all evening, but Wednesday she didn’t care to repeat the feat. I put her in the tub Wednesday evening and left her to play while I changed the Cheesedoodle into his pajamas in the next room. I could hear the happy sounds of splashing and chattering assuring me that she was safe and content. Then, as I was fighting the cheesedoodle to button the legs of his sleeper (he thinks it’s a game and keeps pulling his legs up and giggling) I heard the distinct “splat, splat, splat” sounds of small, wet feet on hardwood. I turned from the changing table and saw a dripping, smiling, naked – and still dirty – toddler.
She said “Beffa do byself. Mya (her name for herself) do byself. I all done.”
The Discovery Health Channel had a T.V. show called “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant.” It doesn’t take a Ph. D. to figure out the subject matter of the show. For the most part I don’t enjoy watching shows about promiscuous college girls getting pregnant while on the pill, but every once in a while I catch a really neat story.
Last week I watched an episode in which a woman had been diagnosed with PCOS, the primary source of my infertility issues. This woman went full term on a pregnancy without suspecting because she had been told her case of PCOS was so bad she would never conceive. Going to the hospital with what she thought was appendicitis or kidney stones, she discovered that not only was she pregnant, the baby was crowning.
At the end of each episode they interview a doctor about the details of the case. In most cases it’s a doctor trying not to say “basically this girl was irresponsible. Please don’t do this.” but this episode, the doctor discussed PCOS and how its symptoms can mask the symptoms of pregnancy. Then she said “but it is very rare for a woman with PCOS to conceive without an intensive fertility regimen.”
For those of you who didn’t know, or have forgotten, the cheesedoodle, unlike his sister, was conceived without any fertility treatments of any kind.
I just smiled and said “Lord, thank you for my miracle cheesedoodle.”
Today I baked burned a batch of bread. Three of the four loaves were salvageable, but the last loaf is just a bag of bread nuggets pulled from the center of the blackened crusts and labeled “bread lumps for stuffing” in my freezer. I should really do another batch but I’m out of whole wheat flour. The reason I’m out of whole wheat flour? I can’t find anywhere in the entire West Central Georgia region where I can purchase a bag of whole wheat flour larger than five pounds. I buy the 25 pound bag of bread flour at Sam’s Club which lasts six to eight weeks but I can’t find whole wheat in large quantities.
All of the people I know who bake with whole wheat on a regular basis grind their own from wheat berries they purchase through a local co-op. I don’t have (and can’t currently afford to purchase) a wheat grinder because I didn’t see the need, so now I’m wondering: do all the people I know grind their own wheat flour because flour is hard to buy in bulk, or is whole wheat flour difficult to buy in bulk because all the people who use it grind their own?
So I have two questions for you, my faithful few readers:
1. Am I seriously missing a mother lode of whole wheaty goodness somewhere? Can I buy 85 pound bags of ground whole wheat at some obscure little store here in our corner of Georgia and I’m just too new to this cooking my own food thing to know about it? If so, PLEASE enlighten me!
2. Where do you fall on grinding your own flour? If you’re for it, please try to convince me, and if you’re against, please present your arguments on that side. Is it worth my time and money? Are the health benefits really as good as everyone says? Do I *really* want to add “grind my own flour” to my list of out of the mainstream things I do? Is the price of a grinder really worth it?
A lot of bloggers do lists. Scribbit does a list every Thursday, Amanda does one a week, you get the point. I’d never considered doing lists here until I did my Power Ballad post which elicited more hits and comments than any other posts apart from the announcements of my pregnancies. Since then I have rolled around several list potentials in my head. I’m not going to do them weekly or anything, but when one sparks my fancy I’ll drop it in the mix.
So here are my five favorite bands that never really existed:
5. Spinal Tap – Okay, this one doesn’t strictly count because Spinal Tap did eventually both tour and release an album, but they are made up entirely of comedians for the mockumentary “This is Spinal Tap.” It is one of the funniest movies of the 80’s. Just the thought of the movie makes me laugh out loud and I want to do an entire post of my favorite bits. But I won’t. I’ll just say this: how can you not love a band that has amplifiers that go to eleven?
4. The Lone Rangers from the movie Airheads – Brendan Frasier, Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler as metal heads who hijack a radio station with water guns filled with hot sauce. And this line: “Well, there’s three of you. You’re not exactly lone. Shouldn’t you be the Three Rangers?” I don’t recommend the movie but the band certainly makes my list.
3. Pop from Music and Lyrics - Just watch the opening credits from the movie, and if you don’t laugh out loud, you’re either too old or too young.
2. Josie and the Pussy Cats - How can you not love a band that has been fake in three different mediums? A comic book band with a television show that has also been in a movie yet is still entirely fictional. The movie is actually a great parody of the music industry (like the last three movies) but is clean and wholesome.
1. Love Handel from Phineas and Ferb – What’s not to love about a band that has an overweight librarian as the drummer and includes the lyrics: “I put up barriers to shield my emotions. A wall that you could never break apart. But like a ninja of love repelling down from above, you snuck your way right into my heart.” In fact, this song should have been on my power ballad list.
Who knew there were so many bands that never really existed? Have any favorites of your own?
I love it when I stumble across blogs that are dedicated to the ridiculous in life. Being ridiculous myself, it’s nice to know I have company. Today I stumbled across a blog that does nothing but scan and post funny things found in newspapers. I laughed out loud at several of them, (and yes, Elizabeth, I thought of you and your former newspaper career) but this is my favorite. I think when you read it you’ll know why.
Five years ago, or so, while I was still working in real estate and we were those “double income no kids” people, my husband bought me a Tungsten T5 Palm Pilot. I LOVED it and lived my entire life by that thing. Everything was in the schedule, everyone was in the address book, and I didn’t go anywhere without it. One of the applications prepackaged with the palm was called eReader, and I remember thinking “who on earth is going to read anything on a screen this tiny?” Shortly after taking possession of this treasure, I was sitting in a driveway waiting to show a house to someone. Bored with poking through the other apps, I opened eReader and found that it had come with two free classics: the Count of Monte Cristo and H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. I began reading and figured out that I was someone who would read on a screen that tiny.
It’s great. I always have a book with me (usually several). It’s backlit, so I can read at night. I can read at night without rustling pages. I can read Atlas Shrugged without needing a weight training routine. Now that I’m a full time Mom, I don’t use the schedule anymore and I’ve got addresses on my laptop now because I don’t ever need them anywhere but at home. In fact, the only part of my Tungsten T5 that I still use is the eReader program. The palm is a little beyond it’s lifespan. The touch screen is loosing it’s touchiness, the battery life has diminished a little and every once in a while it doesn’t sync with my laptop. But I can still read, so I’m a happy camper and I don’t see any need to replace a palm pilot I’m not actually using for its intended purpose. When Amazon introduced the Kindle I was interested in an academic way, but didn’t feel the need to change my digital reading tools.
Several months ago, eReader, my favorite way to read, was purchased by Barnes and Noble, my favorite bookstore. This was an interesting triviality that affected my life in no way whatsoever until last week (the day I became the temporary host for the virus block party we had last week) when I got an e-mail announcing this:
I’ve spent a week coveting a Nook every time I fire up the Tungsten eReader. It’s everything I love about my eReader, but nicer, and newer and owned by Barnes and Noble. It’s also almost more money than I spend on groceries in a month. So I’m not even thinking about buying a nook. I’m blogging about it instead. Doesn’t that make it so much better?
5. 
Five years ago, or so, while I was still working in real estate and we were those “double income no kids” people, my husband bought me a Tungsten T5 Palm Pilot. I LOVED it and lived my entire life by that thing. Everything was in the schedule, everyone was in the address book, and I didn’t go anywhere without it. One of the applications prepackaged with the palm was called eReader, and I remember thinking “who on earth is going to read anything on a screen this tiny?” Shortly after taking possession of this treasure, I was sitting in a driveway waiting to show a house to someone. Bored with poking through the other apps, I opened eReader and found that it had come with two free classics: the 
