Thanks for the fish

are really the best invention of mankind. I woke up this morning and had to think…is it Monday? no… Is it Sunday?…noooo it’s only SATURDAY! ahhh, that was a good feeling. It does seem like all I’ve done is clean and eat, but it’s better than the alternative, by far.

Thanksgiving was really nice. I was in a cleaning mood and cleaned all day long. Then I took a moment to thank J for cleaning all the time, because its’ damn hard work! I was exhausted by dinner time. My parents came over around 5…my mom tried to burn the chicken, but I wouldn’t let her. The Corn Maque Choux was fabulous…my mom’s pecan pie was amazing. I made some hot buttered rum and my parents bought some wine and a good time was had by all.

Yesterday, we went to the gym and worked out for an hour. I know…we’re hard core. Nonetheless, I’m portlier than ever. I guess chocolate cream pie trumps 30 minutes on the elliptical. Oh well…I remain unconcerned. Why, you ask?

We’ve been watching a lot of Joseph Campbell (i know this is all I talk about). He says that mythologically the age of maturity is 35. Up till age 35, we’re products of society, but after 35, you pretty much have gotten everything you need from society and start exploring your own path. Then age 45-75 is when you wisdom (I may not have this totally right, but this is the gist of it). Anyway, this was really enlightening for me. I looked in the mirror this morning at my wrinkles and my big beyond and I thought, well this is what maturity looks like. And I’m cool with that. I’d also be cool with a smaller ass, but I suppose with all this exercise I’ve been doing, that will eventually happen.

I have 2 days left to finish my short story. I worked on it a bit this morning and I know I can finish it. Deadlines help me a lot. I’m excited to get this submitted because this is a true milestone for me. The first step was sharing my writing with a group. That took me a long time to get to that point. Now I’m ready for the next stage of rejection. : ) I fully don’t expect to win anything, but I’ve read enough writing stories from other authors to know that rejection is just part of the deal. But each story I write, and I each story I submit, I’m that much closer to one day getting published. I have 6 more months till I’m 35, so I might as well start “following my bliss” now. Life is exciting when you look at it that way. It’s also a lot nicer when I don’t go to work for 4 days. : ) J had the whole week off and he keeps saying that he’s totally ready for retirement. I can’t say I disagree.

Filled the bird feeder up for the first time this season yesterday. It took the birds a day to find it, but now they have. I coudl really sit here all day and watch them. Chickadees, nuthatches… that’s about it. All day long they fly over, 2 or 3 at a time. The cats sit here at the window and do there “here birdy birdy” call. YOu know, the one that sounds like a “meow” got stuck in their throat. J wants to go for a long walk. He’s getting addicted to exercise. I like it too though. We may find ourselves next spring as fit as we’ve ever been and ready for a long kayak expedition. 

3 days of work this week was more than enough. it’s a total nightmare, but tomorrow is Thanksgiving so let’s find something to be grateful for.

1) I have a job, and as much as I complain, it really, truly is better than being unemployed.
2) My parents live in Maine and are coming over for Thanksgiving! So what if they utterly hate living here…at least they’ll get a free meal out of it. I even gave up my dream of making Cornish game hens because my mother is the pickiest eater on the face of the planet (yes, we’ll be having chicken…organic chicken…. that I waited in line a long time for at Whole Foods amidst massive crowds (but it was kind of fun)).
3) Me, J, and the cats all appear to be fairly healthy. It’s hard when someone in teh family or a pet is sick or dying, and I’m grateful that we are at a phase in our lives where that’s not happening. Sometimes you have to picture the worst in order to appreciate what you DON’T have.
4) My family agreed to spend no more than $30 on everyone. I just can’t afford my normal luxurious $40 gifts to the fam.I just read that the average person spends $800 on Christmas presents each year. Really? I mean, I can see spending $800 on presents, plus travel and hotel, cocktails to put up with family squabbles, dinners that you dont’ expect to pay for, etc. etc. etc…. but just on presents? I’m gonna go out on a limb here and just say…that’s too much.
5) I got my Diane Von Furstenberg dress in the mail today and love it. : ) J wasn’t too enthusiastic but hey, you can’t expect men to appreciate high fashion. I just need some control top pantyhose, maybe a girdle, and I’m all set. It’s super sweet.

I could think of more, but that’s probably enough for now. We watched Mythos with Joseph Campbell last night and the first segment was really interesting. It was about the psyche and he talked almost exclusively about Carl Jung. I’m pretty fascinated by that stuff but Jung is very hard to follow so it was a nice overview.

I’ve pretty much given up on Suite Francaise. It’s too long and I just can’t commit to it. So instead I’ve started on a book called “Country of the Pointed Firs” that my parents gave me. It’s written by a Maine author and is very short. I’m having trouble getting into that too though. I guess I’m just not much in the reading mood.

We went to the gym tonight and I’m jogging for about 30 minutes. I usually have to stop about halfway through and walk for a minute or two and do some hip flexor stretches. I go very slowly - 4.5 mostly. I could probably walk faster, but I’m convinced that if I train my body to do the movements for a certain amount of time, I’ll be a real runner in no time. J, who always said he could never ever be a runner, is smoking me. But I still like to give him advice and act like his trainer, because he couldn’t have done it without me. : ) I’m also gaining weight… go figure. I’m portly.

I’m also sleepy but I need to stop going to bed so early. I’ve going to bed before 9 and then I lay awake all night. Maybe I can make it to 9:30 tonight. I need to make some cornbread in preparation for my first attempt at cornbread stuffing tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s cooooolllllld out there! I know it’s mid November, but this seems excessive. I got my parka out, along with my hat and gloves.According to my LL Bean weather station, it is currently 23.2 degrees outside. Nothing much going on here, so I’ll just recap my day:

Thursday night I got about an hour of sleep, so I had some catching up to do. So last night I got my bed preheating early and got in before 9. Then I slept gloriously until after 10 am this morning. I heard J get up at 6:30 and promptly fell back asleep, practically guilt free (but not entirely). One thing I’ve realized about msyelf lately is that I really don’t like conflict and I have an enormous amount of guilt. I’m working on that.

Then I had breakfast (an apple) followed immediately be lunch (it was 11 by then), which was leftover squash soup with a piece of bacon. I noticed a few of the small buttercup squashes were starting to rot. : ( Bummer… I hate to see good food go to waste. Especially good food that i put my blood, sweat, and tears into. Well, it least my sweat anyway.

Then we went to Sears to get some snow tires for the Scoobaru. Never had them before, but I’ve been sockign money into savings since I’ve gone all frugal.I got the Micheline X-Ice, which consumer report says are the best and evey guy at Sears has apparently bought for their wife (did they all get teh same script?) and their wives say the car drives like a tank. Sounds good. I haven’t had any big problems with the scooby…it’s spun out on me a few times, but it’s all wheel drive and has handled fairly well. Most of the problem for me is visibility and not knowing where the damn road is when it’s covered in snow. But I thought… why not invest a littel in my safety and peace of mind this winter? We’re carpooling a lot anyway so I can make J drive…and then we’ll both be safe. He’s been sweeter lately and a little more chivalrous, which is weird. He went into Sears adn took care of everything even though it’s my car. That’s very unusual, but I hate doing car stuff, so I really appreciated that.

Then we went to TJ Maxx just to look around. I just got paid yesterday and have $158 to last me for the next 2 weeks. It’s my own fault though because I put $715 in savings and then I bought a Diane Von Furstenberg dress for my Xmas party. It’s blue and a wrap dress and J says it’s very “70s.” I think he meant that as a bad thing, but I think it’s awesome. Here’s a link. And it was on sale. And I paid off all my credit card bills and darnit, if a girl can’t buy a sexy damn dress eveyr now and then, then this life is just not worth living! (too dramatic? I was channeling Scarlet O’Hara there)… http://www.dvf.com/dvf/browse/productDetailWithPicker.jsp?productId=D7098001G8&categoryId=cat60004 (in the blue trellis pattern)
Ooh la la, right?

Anyway, so I looked around TJ Maxx and realized why I don’t go window shopping more often…because then I realize all the things I could use. They have really nice stuff there and please dont’ judge me for saying so. It’s true! Stuff from all over the world, like for instance, German nutcrackers. nice! I could totally use one of those Adn then I looked for appropriate presents for my 2 year old nephew. I don’t know what the hell kids like, but I had fun looking. And then I remembered that I wanted to buy him a Redskins outfit. I also looked for things for my in-laws. But I’ve gotten my own family free books from bookmooch.com and some photographs, so I don’t want to spend more on the in-laws. Then we looked at bath and body works and I put on some lotion called “sensual” something to see if it turned J on. He did unzip my pants as we were making dinner, but still no action. : (

Anyway… then we went to Borders, where I ran into A, who is the girlfriend of F, who is one of J’s good friends. For a short time, I used to go to the gym wiht her and I like her. She invited us out/over tonight but F is working late, so now we are trying to stay up long enough to have a social life. Shouldn’t be so hard when you sleep till 10, but hey, I need a lot of sleep. I didn’t buy anything at Borders (of course, because I have a will of steel), but J bought Joseph Campbell’s “Primitive Mythology” that I already have, but whatever. I try to encourage him to like all the things that I love, and he’s come around to many of them…buddhism and Joseph Campbell being the major ones. In fact, he professes on a daily basis “Joseph campbell is a genius!” and I jsut say “yes, I know.”

Then…the gym. I’ve worked out 3 times this week, but twice on teh stair machine for 30 minutes. Hadn’t gotten a good run in so I thought I was due. It sucked though and was super boring. I did 20 minutes of very slow jogging, watching every second pass by, then walked a bit and managed to eak out 7 more minutes of jogging. Finally threw in the towell. I’ve lost no weight (in fact, I think I’ve gained some) since this “hard core” (accroding to my standards) exercising began, but what I’m really concerned about is setting a pattern for teh future. Getting in the habit of working out. And for the most part I like it. We went in Brunswick today and that’s a smaller gym. In Portland, there’s much better people watching so the time goes by faster.

Then we went grocery shopping, made dinner, took care of the in-laws cat and now I”m trying to warm up by drinking my Constant Comment. I turned the thermostat up to 65 which is super hot for us, but it’s so cold out there… I need to splurge. We have enough food in our freezer to last a nuclear holocaust, providing the power doesn’t go out.

or a lemon! Even though my husband says that I am. Just because I have rheumatism sometimes (I swear it’s going to snow!), and I’m grumpy and irritable… I don’t think I should be traded in for a new model. : (

Yes, I’ve hit the winter lows. I’m grumpy as all get out. My body hurts and just doesnt’ feel right. I’m unmotivated at work. My body is falling apart. I’m wasting and pining and my own husband doesnt’ want to have sex for teh first time in FIVE MONTHS because he’s working out too hard at the gym. My cat dumped over my last cosmopolitan. I’m gaining weight the more I exericse. oh my god… whine whine whine pout!

Big sigh… well, what else is there to say? Winter is here.

So I’m love with both Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. I’ve been watching, via Netflix, The Power of Myth. You know how there is always that question that gets asked…who would you have dinner with if you could have dinner with anyone? And I’m always at a loss here. there are people I admire. There are people I lust after. But I’m an awkward person and I really don’t want to actually meet most of my “heros.” Not that I really have heros. I admire the dalai lama. I admire Hillary Clinton But I don’t really have any “heroes.” But watching this series (from 1983 or something) I realize that damn! would I like to have a really good conversation with someone… a conversation about myth and psychology and Jung and the collective unconscous and the meaning (or non meaning) of effing life! Joseph Campbell is the person I’d like to have that conversation with. Or Bill Moyers. He is so damn cute! I mean I get totally lost in their conversation so I give him credit for even keeping up.

So, back at the beginning of this blog, I was want to ramble on about all this mumbo jumbo and I’ve stopped recently to talk about health problems and the fact that I hate work, etc. etc. But this stuff is what gets me excited! I just fall in love with anyone who can help me access this part of my brain. It’s the eternal mystery. Once, I had a (part of a) night with a man, who was just a man, but I thought for a moment that he could teach me something about the mystery. I guess that’s what I’ve always been looking for. But I guess the point is that you have to find the mystery for yourself. But damn, that felt good for a night.

I’ve been doing weird things lately. Weird anonymous things that will have no bearing on my life, but ulitmately show that I am bored and am in need of some excitement in my life. Is this a cyclical thing? Or am I just forever discontent? I appreciate J more and more as time goes on. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thanking god (or whoever, whatever) that I wasn’t stupid enough to let him go. And yet, I still have some rogue part of me that wants to throw it all away for a little bit of something else. But I know that whatever I’ll get from someone else won’t be what I’m lookign for. What can I say? I have high standards. I want it all… I want to fulfill my lust, discover the eternal mystery, have some excitement, yet retain all the comforts and joys of my life as it is. It’s quite a conundrum.

Anyway, I’m going to reread a book I have called “the power of coincedence” or something like that. I’m also trying to read “suite francaise” but am not getting very far. I’m also trying to finish up a short story to submit for my first ever writing contest entry but I rewrite it every week in a slightly different way. There are just too many possibilities. The thing with telling a story out loud is that you can change it every time (and I do!). But writing it down… you have to pick an end. I’m brilliant with beginnings…oh the possibilities! But the endings are death. You pick one and that’s it. It’s hard. I’ve written 6 different versions and none have ended. But…even if it sucks, I’m paying my $12 and will submit this sucker. I am also going to go back to my writing group, who I have ditched.

Ramble ramble ramble. I took the day off exercising and decided to have 2 cocktails, which is all crazy for me lately! That’s a good sign. I’m shitfaced off of TWO cocktails. And I love Ritz crackers, which I got free at Hannaford with a web coupon this week. And I hate work. Amen. That’s all I needed to say.

Fair warning! (you know what that means)…

Ok, so me and J are on quite the little exercise kick. It’s gotten to the point where he says “are we going to the gym tonight?” (translation: here’s your out, then I can blame you for not wanting to go) and I say “Hell yeah!” I think I’m addicted. We’ve also been showering at the gym, which is something that I would never have done before. I admit, there’s something a little skeevey about the whole thing…  I mean, god knows who else has been in there. Plus, I’m the type of person who can’t even change in front of other people. I’ve gotten some puritan modesty from somewhere (though i don’t have it with J who constantly says to me “do you have no shame?”) Anyway… so I did 30 minutes on the stair machine and skipped off to a have a shower. Now, every single time I forget something important…hair brush, ponytail holder, change of panties. Well tonight I forgot the TOWEL, the WASHCLOTH, and oh yeah…the change of panties. So after a nice vigorous workout I dried off wtih my sweaty T-shirt and then just went commando. Like I said, I’m a puritan, so this is a new experience for me. But I actually kind of like it. I may stick with it.

What else? Well all this exercise seems to be having absolutely no effect on my body. I suppose I’m eating more to make up for it, but it’s a little discouraging. But I’m also listening to an audio book called Spark (or something like that ) that talks about the benefits of exercise on your brain. There’s a lot of this kind of stuff: the synapses dendrite dopamine epinephrine rats study scientist blobbedy blob blah blah blah. So yeah, I’m convinced! Plus it helps with the stress, though I admit, I’m still having the nightly cocktail(s).

Still having weird sleeping problems. Waking up very alert at about the same time every night. It might just be winter seeping into my bones and making me crazy. But it’s got me a little freaked out. Racing heart, etc. etc. I don’t like it.

Can you believe it’s already almost Thanksgiving? then christmas, new years, and then it’s 2009. jeez… Well, I’m in a piano phase… I feel like playing a lot, so I guess I’ll take advantage of that. I need to finish my short story in 2 weeks but I keep (as usual) changing the plot. I like it though. I get very attached to my characters. Those ingenues and rakes…

I’ve become a bargain shopper. The bad news is that I keep spending money. I had a shitty day, beginning when my brown bag lunch broke open and fell in the rain first thing this morning. Not only did that destroy my lunch, but it also destroyed my hair, giving me a frizzy afro for the rest of the day. Then my shitty week of rewriting every damn thing I do six effing times, ending with my new interim boss just rewriting something herself. And what really pissed me off was that she didn’t do a half bad job. So why do I go to work anyway?

So all day I hoped and whined for a glass of red wine to take it all away. We decided not to go to the gym tonight and I had some coupons for a lounge at a hotel. Ok, so I knew it wasn’t going to be a super cool hangout spot with the very best food, but I had $50 to burn so what the hell. I ordered red wine and the waitress/barmaid looked at me like I was nuts. I tried to get specific…pinot noir? blank stare. Ok, just bring me something red, I dont’ care what it is. Needless to say, I got a cheap merlot in a very small glass. Nearly in tears by now. But the crappy nachos and mealy chicken fingers helped a little. J got a second order of chicken wings, I decided the cheap merlot wasn’t all that bad, and we left paying $10, keeping a $25 coupon for next time (cuz I was so good and I’m dying to go back) and leaving happy.

Then J wants to go to Sears because they have some sales on electric blankets (we live riveting lives I know). I’m chatty because of the wine so ask the first guy about snow tires. The regular kind would cost $320 but there’s a new super duper michelin kind that can help your car scale stalagtites for $450. Seems pricey and I’ve never had snow tires before, but I wouldn’t mind getting some this year. I drive long distances in crappy weather, and besides, they would last several years. But I didn’t buy any since I didn’t have my car.

Next salesperson I asked about servicing my sewing machine. It’s been all jammed up for about a year now. Even my mom tried to fix it but couldn’t. I guess they have a service cetner down the road but they couldn’t tell me how much it would cost. Mabye I’ll try one more time on my own and see if I can fix it.

We found the electric throws… 40% off and we keep our house pretty cold (around 60-63) and that would be nice for watching movies. I bought one. J bought a heated mattress pad, which I didn’t even know existed but now am totally thrilled about. The thing I hate the most about keeping the house so cold is getting into a freezing cold bed. i hate it i hate it i hate it. This thing rocks. It was 50% off and you can adjust each side of the bed separately. My side is preheating right now!! It’s not even very cold tonight but I don’t care.

Then… this afternoon as I was very classisly pacing on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette I realized that even though my lovely LL Bean red wood coat is very warm and comfy, it’s not super sexy. I feel like a linebacker in it. So I wistfully thought about buying a new coat, but you know, I’m on this frugal thing. So I’m wandering around in Sears and even though I wouldn’t normally look for clothes in Sears, I wandered into the coat section and found an absolutely adorable wool twead coat. Orginally $180, on sale for $69, plus I had a coupon so I got it for $62 including tax. It’s so cute I could die.

Well, I’m pooped and poor so I guess it’s time to jump into a hot bed. I can already foresee what my nights will be like. 1) get home 2) get in bed. Good night!

a day off in the middle of the week…especially a day by myself. Something about the weekends are too hectic. I know I have a lot to do, I know J has a list. I feel overwhelmed, then I feel guilty, then I rebel and nap all weekend, because damint, that’s what you’re supposed to do on the weekends! And then I let j do all the work around the house, then I complain that he doesn’t know how to relax (because I feel guilty). Wouldn’t the psyche be such a nicer place without guilt?

Anyway, so it’s Veterans’ Day and I got the day off from work and J didn’t. My plan, of course, was to sleep in late, get up, have breakfast, take a nap, tootle around, eat, take another nap…you get my drift. Yes, I am in fact the laziest person on the face of the earth. But unfortunately, home depot was set to deliver 4 tons of wood pellets sometime “in the morning.” So as I lay in bed around 6 am, I keep going over and over in my mind how fast I can jump out of bed, throw on some jeans, put on a bra and shirt, brush my teeth, put on shoes and socks once the doorbell rings. I have this thing where I hate to keep people waiting.So eventually I decided to just get out of bed and get halfway dressed, then go back to bed. But once I was up, I just got up… at 7 am. On a day off!

Then somehow I decided to organize the coat closet. I hung a hook (yay me!), though I did take me longer than it probably should have to figure out how to get a drill bit in a drill. But I eventually did, and hung up all my grocery bags on the hook. Then I organized all of our hats, scarves, and gloves neatly on the shelf. Then the shoes and the rest of the winter wear. : ) I keep walking over to the closet and admiring my work. I actually like organizing, it’s just one of those thigns that always gets pushed to the bottom of my priority list. I also have a hard time keeping up with my organizational systems after I set them up, so it sometimes seems like a pointless task. But it has to be done every now and then.

So then the pellet guy arrives. Super nice guy. J told me to tell him to stack them in the driveway, so let me do the math for you. 30 feet from that spot to the door to the basement, plus going down the stairs (or since we’re buying a building to put out back, the same 30 feet to the building X 200 forty pound bags of pellets = one bejesus of a backache for me and hubbie. But the house (and garden…and leech field…and trees) is configured in such a way to make it really hard to get a vehicle over to the spot in question by the back stairs. But mr. super nice guy walks over with me and asks me if I mind if he runs over my compost pile with his forklift (didn’t even realize he had a forklift till he said something). I said no and he stacked 4 pallets of pellets (sounds like a nursery rhyme doesn’t it) very neatly right by the back door. He got a good tip.

Very pleased with myself after the pellet incident, I continued organizing. I got my gym bag all together with a separate set of toiletries, makeup, etc. so I can start having a shower at the gym and saving on water/heat at the house. Found my flannel sheets and got those on the bed (thank god…it’s been hell getting into a cold bed lately). Then I ripped about 50 cds onto my computer so I can get rid of all the cds. And I practiced piano.

I also walked around my garden and really enjoyed it. It’s getting pretty chilly out there, but I love this time of year because the garden suddenly seems manageable. I just give up on it in the summer because it gets all overgrown and out of control and it just seems like I’ll never be able to tame it. But now everything’s dead. : ) Thank god for winter! Now I can actually envision some projects and see what I have to do. I want to build some brick edging between my garden and the “lawn” (mowed down weeds) so the weeds don’t creep into my periwinkle. I also want to plant some more patches of periwinkle so eventually J can stop mowing down weeds. There’s one big field where our leech field is, which will probably always be mowed weeds, but at least he can doing the sides and back. I’ve got this weird thing against mowing. I feel like it’s somethings no one should have to do. It just seems so pointless.

Anyway, I think I will actually take a well deserved nap now adn then I’m going to meet J at the gym. We’re exercising fools. He is actually jogging for 30 minutes straight. He’s fit and skinny, but he could never run before and didn’t think he could. Now he’s doing it, and I’m not too far behind him. I did 20 minutes of very slow jogging last time. It’s hard for me, but I like the challenge of it…even if the progress is deathly slow.

I bought some rolos on the off chance that we might get a trick-or-treater for halloween (didn’t happen). Ok, actually I bought them because I was strolling the halloween candy aisles at Target and it was after work and I had pms and I wanted CHOCOLATE. Love those rolos. And I’m sure everyone is impressed that there are still some left on November 8. huh? Am I right?

Red wine has become a bit of a luxury for me, with all my frugality lately. After pinching pennies for a month, I dropped $168 on getting my hair done (doesn’t look all that different either) and then I skipped the gym, filled the car up with gas ($2.49 a gallon!) and then like the classy chick that I am, I picked up a bottle of Ravenswood Merlot…at the gas station.

I also bought a bottle of Smirnoff at the grocery store today. I just can’t live without my vodka. And J needed his Krill oil capsules ($30!!) so it was an expensive week. But overall, I’m spending less and totally seeing a difference.

Our hardwood pellets have arrived and we have no stove to burn them in. We also bought a big building for outside. It’s 16 feet by 8 feet, so pretty large. The plan is to put the kayaks in there, the pellets (maybe), all our gardening stuff. It was a bit of an investement ($2300) but it was made locally and sold locally and is a lot more reasonably priced than the stuff at the home depot. It will be nice to have a building, then we can clear out the basement and start focusing on finishing up a room. The plan is to get a room finished, unearth some furniture that’s been under plastic for 4 years, put the pellet stove in there, cut a vent in the ceiling/floor and organize the rest of the basement too. Good winter project, no?

Tonight’s netflix is Dr. Zhivago. I love this movie for many reasons. 1) my russian obsession 2) i love the music 3) the main character has my name 4) i’m a hopeless romantic. I have to share all these movies with J from my youth. Pollyanna, Sound of Music, Airplane, Dr. Zhivago…then tehre’s the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. He doesn’t appreciate it at all, but it’s part of who I am. Yes, Dr. Z is 3 hours long and depresssing as all get out, but shit.. what else do we have to do on a Saturday night?

We just had haddock sandwiches (haddock was $3 per pound off at hannaford) with sweet potato fries and green giant asparagus. I do try to eat seasonally. It just seems like the thing to do. I’ve been eating a lot of bread and cheese and meat and squash. But damn, lemme tell you, when my body got a hold of that asparagus, there was some hallelujahing going on…big time. My body was like Vitamin B! Green Vegetables! party time! It’s pretty obvious when your body is missing something. It’s unnatural, but oh well.

We’ve been watching the Power of Myth with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers. Damn if he isn’t the most brilliant mother effer on the face of the earth (dead now) I’ll be goddamned. Brilliant!

about my health problems? really? Sweet because I’m just DYING to talk about them and for some odd reason no one else wants to hear about them.

But first, I guess I must talk about the election. yay!! Let’s just say I’m really happy. Ok, fairly ecstatic. Rather hopeful. Somewhat teary eyed (still). But mostly the whole thing seems totally surreal to me. How could the american people vote for Bush twice and then suddenly do something so wickedly smart? I don’t get it, but I’m thrilled beyond belief. I was also very glad to see my former home state of Virginia finally grant a democart a win (something that never once happened while I lived there). Also, please note that my current home state of Maine voted democrat by a wide margin. Go Maine! I will also say that I didn’t vote along the party lines entirely last night. I voted for Senator Susan Collins, who I think is a fabulous woman, a great leader, and oddly enough, a republican. And one last thing, I think John McCain showed his true colors during his concession speech and frankly, I don’t think Republicans deserve him. I think he was forced to run a dirtier election than he wanted to and I think that really he’s a good man. But I’m glad he lost.

Anyhoo, I’m making homemade vegetable stock tonight. I bought the veggies over the weekend (celery, fennel, carrots, fresh thyme (that smells soooo good), fresh parsley, peppercorns (guess that’s not a vegetable) so I had to use them or lose them. I’m so tired tonight though from staying up last night, so I’m not enjoying the delicious smells as much as I could be.

Ok, now to the fun stuff! Yeah, so my health problems are soooo horrible. ohmigod. But… I’m starting to think they are all caused by too much sugar. I always have a theory. I’ve been waking up at night with these weird feelings…sort of alert, like when you think of something really really important that you forgot to do (like you left your kid at the grocery store or something) and I sit up in bed, except that there is no mental thought attached. J thinks its a panic attack. I think maybe it’s too much sugar, which could be causing my other chronic problems too. Anyway, we upgraded netflix to 3 at a time so now we have to watch a Joseph Campbell thing that I put on the list!