Divinely Crafty: 01/04

31 January 2004

Breaking it down

I for one have been a bit befuddled by the major news source's coverage Democratic primaries which sounds more like a play by play on a horse race than reporting on the candidates stands on the issues. I love my fellow blogospherians and gain wonderful insight from their analysis and commentary. Yet I realize that this approach is a bit daunting for many folks who don't have hours to spend online sifting through chaf. Well fret no more....Ashley Glacel has translated what is (or more acurately - isn't...) being said by the media or the candidates themselves.

...here's a guide that cuts through the crap and lets you know who the hell the seven remaining candidates really are.

30 January 2004

Do you want fries with that?

Well, if reading Fast Food Nation didn't do it for you, then this might be the push you need to drop the fast food habit. Vomitocious!

29 January 2004

Have you seen Boobah?

I think they are part Kewpie doll, part peep.

To quote Anja......"They are fweakin' me out!"

26 January 2004

Notes To Self:

1) They might be YOUR favorite pair of "PMS-Panties" but other locker room patrons will most likely not share in the love.

2) After 20 minutes in a hot sauna you will be sweating from every part of your body. This includes your ass, which will in turn stick to the paper toilet seat cover. Said cover will only be able to be removed from your ass in a series of small tears with the occasional dig.

24 January 2004

Anyone got a lighter?

Tina gave me the heads up on an upcoming show. Lynyrd Skynyrd is going to be at the Roseland next month. Sponsored by Jim Beam of course.

While I have no real desire to go, it is hard to pass up a chance to see them in a venue small enough that if you were to hold up a lighter and yell "FREEBIRD" they might actually play it. The thought of it brings up images of college parties at The Campbell Club with wasted cover bands playing for an equally as wasted audience made up of a strange mix of mid-80's era hippie wannabes and garage band groupies, made tolerable by large doses of alcohol and various other substances that I am certain would kill me these days.

Sing it with me now - you know the tune...
I'm as free as a bird now....
And this bird you cannot change....

Wow.

We just saw this movie last night. In America

It is not often that I am rendered speachless, but this movie did it. Any synopsis that I could write would not do it justice. You MUST see it for yourself. Bring lots of tissues....even Axel had tears streaming down his face.

Go see it NOW.

22 January 2004

Just in case your head wasn't spinning enough already...

What I just read at BohemianMama has me attempting to pick my jaw up off the ground. Not yet being reported by the major media outlets, The Boston Globe is reporting what sounds to me like Watergate:Take II.

"From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003,
members of the GOP committee staff exploited a
computer glitch that allowed them to access
restricted Democratic communications without a
password. Trolling through hundreds of memos,
they were able to read talking points and accounts
of private meetings discussing which judicial
nominees Democrats would fight -- and with
what tactics.

The office of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William
Pickle has already launched an investigation
into how excerpts from 15 Democratic memos
showed up in the pages of the conservative-
leaning newspapers and were posted to a
website last November.

Democrats now claim their private memos formed
the basis for a February 2003 column by
conservative pundit Robert Novak that
revealed plans pushed by Senator Edward M.
Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, to
filibuster certain judicial nominees. Novak is
also at the center of an investigation into who
leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose
husband contradicted a Bush administration
claim about Iraqi nuclear programs.

Citing "internal Senate sources," Novak's
column described closed-door Democratic
meetings about how to handle nominees.

Though in all honesty I am not surprised that this has happened. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The blog-o-sphere has taken hold of this with its usual vigor, and soon we will start hearing more about it in the news media - well, that is IF they can stop yammering about Dean's battle cry in Iowa.

When I was in middle school we were taught "Hugs Not Drugs"...

Last night as I was making dinner, Dylan came to me in an outrage. She had just read an article in the paper that upset her. The article was about hugging. Yes - hugging. Not a big news story but significant nonetheless, especially to a 13 year old girl. The article itself was pretty thin. Apparently yesterday was National Hugging Day (???) so I suppose it was a timely interest piece. More than likely it was inspired by a press release distributed by the publisher of a book on teenage hugging. After reading it myself, I have to concur with her opinion. More than outrage, I feel sadness. You can read the whole article here.

"Today's squeezes...have become so pervasive that some schools even reprimand frequent or aggressive huggers. Bus and carpool drivers complain of delays brought about by excessive after-school hugging. At a school in Pequot Lakes, Minn., administrators discipline extreme huggers. Before the clampdown, students there were hugging as many as 60 times a day."

The notion of a "clampdown on extreme huggers" strikes me as ludicrous. I can think of a million things to be concerned about with todays teens, but too much hugging just isn't one of them. What is worse is the reasons they are concerned. Delays for carpool and bus drivers. WTF is that all about? Has our society really reached the point where parking lot traffic flow is given consideration over expressions of caring and friendship? Sad. Truly Sad.

I was also surprised to learn while dicussing the article with the girls that hugging is indeed a "banned" activity at their school. Being the radical activist that I am I gave them my blessings to protest this rule and hug to their hearts delight. Reminds me of my own youth and the "Great Sock Rebellion of 1984" when me and some fellow 'ludicrous punks' as the school adminstrators referred to us, pinned baby socks to our clothing in protest of a dress code clause requiring us to wear socks.

19 January 2004

New Pictures in from the red planet

Spacial Entrepreneurs should be pleased as punch with the latest discovery on Mars.

17 January 2004

ummmmmmm.....okaaaaaaaay......

Operation Vibration

But will they be able to get replacement batteries? I see a contract for Duracell on the horizon...

15 January 2004

Oh Steve!

If your kids are anything like mine, they LOVE the Steve episodes of Blue's Clues, but get kind of creeped out by Joe, who replaced Steve when he 'went off to college'. Thankfully NickJr. shows plenty of vintage Steve footage to keep us happy.

If you need more of a Steve fix though - you will definately want to check this out! Dylan and Kiah saw this as I was watching it this morning. Their innocent image of him is forever altered. Poor kids.

See - that is what happens when you go off to college!

Where are the pissed of space aliens when you need them?

If there is any justice in this universe, there is indeed life beyond earth, and with any luck they angry. I personally would take one for the team if they decided to just blow our pathetic existence all to bits. What with Bush (and Cheney - who by the way, was in my home time posing for $5000 photo ops last night in case you wondered where he is.) is now announcing the big plan to go back to the moon for exploration of fuels. Bohemian Mama gives the scoop on the surprise benefactor of moon drilling contracts....Yep, our buddies at Halliburtin. I wouldn't be surprised if the next thing we hear from them is that as Dennis Kucinich suggested today - perhaps they are looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Yep, I think it is time someone aimed a laser-detroyer straight at us and stop this madness.

11 January 2004

Deep thoughts at a late hour

I really should be in bed now. It is late and I am just recovering from a hellish bout of gatro-intestinal revoltion. A lovely way to spend the 3rd of 4 consecutive days housebound due to Winter Storm 2004. ("What will they call it if we get another storm", I wonder.) But as the region defrosts and heads into what promises to be a more typical constant drone of rainy days, I am working hard on bringing a bit more sunshine and hope to my days.

The past few months have been very difficult ones for me. I do not deal well with the lack of sunlight that we experience in the Northwest this time of year. I am really able to see how it has affected me very clearly this year. I am working on some very deliberate steps to fix this. My efforts are beginning to show some results and I am working my way through some very tough issues both emotionally and physically. One would think that after the entirety of my life's experience that I would have a firmer grip on the concept that emotional and physical self are eternally intertwined no matter how hard I try to deny, resist, or avoid it.

In explaining to a friend tonight about how she appeared in a dream I had, I actually had a pretty huge revelation about much of what I have been experiencing lately. This is an piece of what I wrote:

You were reaching out with one arm, cradling the baby gently but strongly with the other and turning almost as if you were turning back towards something you were leaving behind. It just left me feeling that I had lost touch with you over the past few weeks and that I wondered how you were.

It seems kind of strange to write it out like that. It was split second fast. Takes more time to read the description of what I dreamt than it did to actually dream it. It was in context of my having asked for dreams about "living in mindfulness" as a way of coping with some very difficult situations that I have been experiencing recently. I saw myself getting lost in fears of the future and regrets of the past and totally missing my chance to live NOW because of it.

That last sentence:

I saw myself getting lost in fears of the future and regrets of the past and totally missing my chance to live NOW because of it.

wow.

The concept of past and future has been a huge topic for me lately. A great deal of anger over things that happened from the time I was a baby (I have both memory of feelings I experienced as a baby - say what you will - I truly do.) up to things that I was actually projecting outcomes of the future and experiencing anger from what I feared would occur.

Now that I have realized this, I can begin to change it.

Now the fun begins!

08 January 2004

Cajones Peloso?

Speaking of wild hairs....You might want to check this out if things are bit, er, uh.....unruly.

Thanks to easy bake coven for the tip.

07 January 2004

AARRRRRRRRRGH!

Why is it that when someone in my house gets a wild hair up their ass and decides they are actually going to "clean-up" (and I use the term loosely) that they inevitably end up throwing out something that is VERY important to me????? Sometimes help is more of a hindrance....

06 January 2004

Here we go again....

I just got this alert from MoveOn.

MoveOn.org has come under attack from the Republican National Committee (RNC), which has launched a campaign of malicious misinformation to divert attention from the creativity and power of the Bush in 30 Seconds contest....

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie launched the attack on "Fox News Sunday," and the RNC followed it with press releases and calls to reporters. The charges centered on two ads posted on the Bush in 30 Seconds website which compared President Bush's tactis with those of Adolf Hitler. Mr. Gillespie repeatedly referred to the ads as 'the MoveOn ad' or 'MoveOn's ad,' implying that we had sponsored or perhaps even commissioned the ad. And he also claimed that we might spend $7 million to run it on TV....

Not only is the RNC campaign deceptive, it's also totally disingenuous. Yesterday, the New York Post ran a long opinion column focusing exclusively on how much Presidential Candidate Howard Dean resembles Hitler, even calling him "Herr Howie." Of course, the RNC hasn't issued a condemnation of that. When close RNC ally Grover Norquist repeatedly compared taxing the wealthy with the Holocaust in an interview on NPR, the RNC was muted. And in 2002, the RNC and its allies were silent when supporters of President Bush actually aired TV ads morphing the face of Senator Max Cleland, a triple amputee as a result of wounds sustained in Vietnam, into Osama bin Laden. Given such a transparently partisan track record, the RNC's moral outrage doesn't mean a whole lot.

You can read about the RNC's latest attempt to use smear tactics and misinformation against MoveOn's formidable 1.7 million membership base in its entirety here.

While MoveOn has issued a statement correcting the false reporting, the RNC is still working the angle. The only place you can view the ads in question now is on the RNC website! You can help MoveOn track inaccurate reporting on this story
here. If you see reports in your local media, call them to give them hell for falling for such political bullshit.

Beyond that - bring it back around to the positive aspects of the contest that MoveOn intended it to be by sharing the link to the Bush In 30 Seconds contest and their finalists.

These ads reflect the courage, hope, and deep patriotism of our [MoveOn] membership. They're creative, passionate, and totally unlike most of the political ads that are out there. And perhaps most importantly, they were picked in a democratic way. Now that's a story.

One thing I love about wasting time online

Finding things like this makes all the time I waste online worth it. It is only 8:45am, but this makes me want to have a martini while I stroll seductively across the room pretending like I haven't a care in the world.

05 January 2004

Michelle

I just wanted to say thanks to Michelle for her friendship, support, and wise herbal wisdom.

I love you mama!

02 January 2004

Day of Winter Frolick

Ok, so this is the 3rd time I have written that we NEVER get snow in this area. But really, honestly, we don't! Today we woke up to a New Years Day of a lovely covering of white. What a surprise! When we drove home after midnight last night it had just clouded up and started to rain. Typical weather for this time of year in the NW. But just before we awoke (nicely hang over free, I might add... thanks to my post drinking regime of b-complex mega doses, a couple ibuprofen for my aching joints, and tons of water.) it began to snow. And it kept snowing until we officially had the snowiest day in 6 years! Which is not saying much since it was just a matter of several inches of accumulation rather than feet like they would be looking in other areas. But like I keep saying...it just does not snow that often here!

Since I am on a new mission to photograph and write about every little thing that we do, I took the camera outside and braved the ungloved shutter button hand so I could capture some highlights of the day. I love them all, but my personal favorite is the one with the bush with red berries. I might have to do something with that one.

Anja absoltuely loves the snow. That girl is something else. I have such a hard time keeping her in clothes most days even when everyone else is quite cold. She insists that is is not cold herself. Drives me batty. In keeping with what must be a raging internal fire that keeps her from feeling the cold, she dove face first into and rolled around into the snow at every opportunity. When we got back inside her poor little legs were so cold and wet, but she just did not care. My little ice queen. I wrapped her in a nice warm towel fresh from the dryer after I took her cold wet clothes off. She was happy to be as close to naked as she was going to get today.

Happy New Year 2004!!!

Up until around 6:00pm last night our plans were to stay low at home, watch some bad television, and see if we could manage to stay awake until midnight. But the melancholy that led me to write my post below was getting mighty thick so I did the best thing I know to do in such a situation. Call someone who loves you and will do anything for you. I called my girl Tina, who was also having a day on the verge, and we decided that we should get together for a little celebrating with our familes together. And the night was on....
I jumped in the shower then quickly put on something that I did not sleep in at any point during the previous week. Tina was dressing up a bit, but I just couldn't bring myself to wear anything besides blue jeans. I did choose a black t-shirt to go with them so that was kind of in keeping with the color of the night. Axel grabbed the bottle of Stoli along with my organic unsweetend cranberry juice, tossed it in a bag with Anja's night pants and jammies, Dylan fluffed the sweatshirt that she lives in these days, and we were off on our night's adventure. Kiah left for a couple of days at the coast with a friend so she missed out, but I am sure that she had her own great time.

You can catch a glimpse into the revelry and mayhem that ensued. Miraculously enough, Anja stayed awake until the end without suffering a total meltdown. Dylan had a much harder time staying awake than Anja did. Axel embraced his role as designated driver quite nicely and put up with the rest of us lushes quite well. We trashed Tina's house - I definately owe her a big one! What could have been a horribly depressing night of staring at walls or crying in dark rooms turned into a bonifide Patsy and Edina moment. We toasted the new year with a tribute to Tina's big 4-0 and the 4-0 in 04-04 New York Tour we have planned.

THIRTIES NO MORE IN 2004!

(and in case there is any confusion - **I** am still hanging desperately onto my 30's for another few years, so we get to do it all over again then if we survive this year!)

Happy New Year!

01 January 2004

Thus goes another year...

As I sat down to wax nostalgic over the events of the past year, I became even more painfully aware of just how much I do not remember. Not just "oh, I forgot about that...." type of memory slips, but honest to goodness amnesia type lack of memories. That is after all, the point of subjecting someone to ECT. I have hesitated in the past to bring up my experience with this in a public forum. Afterall, only the most insane of the insane are 'treated' with such drastic measures, right? I do have a life to live and revealing such a horrible dark secret sets me up to be shunned by those who fear things they don't understand. After giving it much thought though, I decided what the hell - it's not like I have throngs of admirers who are going to be sadly disillusioned wtih my brilliance once they learn of the depths of my insanity. I suppose there are some who may even elevate my status as a great thinker since history has shown that many of the great minds have also suffered similarly. How glamorous, eh? Think what you will. I assure you that whatever picture you create in your mind it is most likely not anywhere near how it really happened.

I can only tell you bits and pieces of what did occur - memory loss being what it is and all. I got my first treatment in the summer of 2002, the last in the early spring of 2003. I wrote an entry in my journal from my hospital bed as I awaited my first treatment. Scared. Depressed. Hopeless. I wrote down some vital bits of information 'just in case' I didn't remember them after my brain zap. Name, age, kids names & ages. I joked that I was a plus-sized super model with homes in Paris and Milan. If you have to reinvent your past, might as well make it a glamorous one. As it turns out, I didn't forget my name, or the names and ages of my kids. It seemed at first that I had not forgotten anything of significance. How lucky I was! Or so I thought. It wasn't until promising Dylan and Kiah that I would take them to Disneyland some day that I realized just how much I did not remember. As it turns out I had already taken them to Disneyland. There are pictures to prove it. Thank god for the pictures or else I am not sure I would believe it. I look at them and feel as though I am looking at photos from someone elses album. Someone else's life. But it is mine. That was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. My life is full of gaping holes. I read old journals, look at old photos and feel like a voyeur. On the bright side - I get to go places, meet people, and do all sorts of things for the 'first' time all over again. Oh, yes, lucky me.

On that happy and uplifting note, I give you my list of things I realized I DON'T remember in 2003. Not everything on this list occured in the past 12 months, some of them happened many years ago. It is only in 2003 that I realized I don't have memories of these events.

The birth of my children

Axel proposing marriage to me

My wedding

How to find my way around in a city that I spent most of my adult life living in

Favorite places

Vacations

Places I have lived

Years of studies, job experiences, and other 'resume' items

Lovers and boyfriends

Details too numerous to mention

There is so much more that I have yet to realize I have forgotten. That is the nasty thing about losing your memory. If I didn't tell someone, write it down, take a photo, or have a witness to it, I may never know that it happened. Never know I had something to forget. Just today I learned that New Years Eve circa 1993-94 I threw "one of the best shin-digs ever" per my good friend Tina. Good to know.

With this all I look forward to the new year. Creating new memories. New adventures, new places, new people. A new life. I will also take as many pictures as possible and write about every little thing. Precious memories to be reflected on in the future - good and bad.

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