Assorted Sorting

I hope that everybody had a wonderful holiday! I've been lucky enough to get some time off this week, which has been great for getting a chance to catch up on housework. This Christmas, I've given myself the gift of organization. Hooray for cleaned out drawers!

Rated C for Clean

Doing laundry has gone from a very labor intensive activity, to a down-right easy one. So easy, that it's kind of boring to sit around and wait for our clothes to be clean.

Designer Lee Wei Chen has created a way to simultaneously take laundry back to the time where it was an interactive process, and take it to a more futuristic level. Behold! The Arcade Game Washer:

 The concept is pretty cool. Load your clothes and start playing. The success of your laundering is dependent on how well you do at the game. If you're a noob, you have to add more coins to get to the rinse cycle.

It's a neat marriage of household chores to gaming. However, I am lousy at most old school arcade games. I would probably go broke trying to get my clothes clean this way. I like it's potential as a teaching household item for moms though. It could make doing laundry fun for kids/teens, and every quarter they put in could be put towards a college fund or a savings account or something.

Also a practical place to keep all the pocket change you come across doing the wash.

NO POWER NO PEACE

Or not. I dunno. Today commences the 5th day I am without electricity. I am hopeful it will be back on tonight, but we'll see.

Because of the dangerous nature of the storm and all the downed power lines, we've been keeping kitty inside for safety. This has made her go insane! Her new habits include: Gnawing on the edge of the table, jumping onto the highest places possible, running around like crazy and hissing at nothing, climbing inside the sofa, etc. She's a little wild!

One of the things I've missed is my netflix shows. Considering that some helpful utility worker severed our cable line and threw it across our yard (WHAT.), it will probably be awhile before we have internet at home again. The show I'm jonesin' for the most is Baccano!

It's an awesome 16 episode story with some really wonderful characters and a fun mythology. It tells the story of 18th century alchemists living immortal in gangland NYC. The story weaves together plots from a few different time lines, making for a rich and complex story.

My favorite characters are probably Isaac and Miria, the shows comic relief. They're a pair of over-acting criminals who get away with their crimes by virtue of their silliness.

I also have a soft spot for Jacuzzi Splot, the bootlegger with a tattooed face and big anxiety problems. He's got to have a good cry before he can do anything heroic!

Please South Hadley Electric! I wanna find out what happens  next! Also, getting sick of going to bed at 8. Thanks!

Caturday XXXVI - Avada - cat - davra

Ever since Roosevelt has become an indoor/outdoor girl, I've been thinking about solutions to give her a little more autonomy in her comings and goings. Frankly, it's a pain to have to constantly by letting her in and out,and she's not a big fan of being out all day long. I think something like this could be a really cool solution. AND OMG IT'S THE BURROW!

Heights Workshop Builds 'Harry Potter' Cat House: MyFoxHOUSTON.com

Now if only there were a spell to keep her from bringing mice inside. Yuck!

Spooky Dining

Halloween home decor! I really love these crow/skull salt and pepper shakers. Makes your goulash ghoulish!

Year 3!

Today is my third wedding anniversary! Whoa! That's the traditional "Leather anniversary." Double Whoa! And a wink!

Personally I'm looking forward to 8th year - can't wait to get my salt!

Anyways, another year of awesome and happiness, can't complain. We are celebrating by buying a new dishwasher tonight! Yesssss!

Embarking

Tonight we fly to Germany! One thing we are excited to see are the famous "Mad King Ludwig" castles in Bavaria. They're the architecturally lavish, fairy tale fortresses that inspired the Walt Disney Cinderella Castle.

While these are beautiful, and without a doubt a marvel, I can't help but think we won't be seeing any castles as cool as this one:

Kelburn Castle in Scotland was transformed 3 years ago into a street art masterpiece by a group of Brazillian artists, commissioned by the Earl of Glasgow's children.

The city council only allowed the Earl to make the massive mural on the condition that it would only be up for 3 years. Now time is up, and the land owner is trying to make the work permanent. Unsuprisingly, some folks have a problem with this!

The Earl'ss family have lived in the grand manor for the last 800 years. I'm of the mindset that they should be able to paint their castle any way they want - historical preservation rules be damned.

I just love the juxtaposition of stoic old money splendor and bright colorful graffiti. Very Cool.

I won't be posting for awhile! Have a great start to your September, and I'll see you on the other side!

Blessed are the Cheesemakers

Seeing how wonderfully simple it is to make goat cheese on Serious Eats has totally rekindled my desire to adopt a milking goat for the yard. In addition to getting sooo much delicious cheese, it would make it so poor Paul would never have to mow the lawn again! I would say that that is a pretty solid win-win. Plus, we would get great fertilizer for the garden out of the deal? Are there any downsides? Maybe a few, like this being a lot of work, and having to mate them to get the milk...... but I am ignoring that right now!

This could be me!

Wonkzilla

Big Y's organic line, "Full Circle", has biodegradable cutlery. It's a cool idea- disposable forks and knifes that are made out of plant starches, so you can throw them in the compost pile instead of a landfill. In theory this is awesome.

In practice, well...One minute I'm enjoying a hot n' tasty burrito. The next I'm getting poked in the mouth by a Tim Burton-esque monstrosity! Apparently heat is this inventions only weakness...

Wants

Totem Bowls!

Now you can appreciate the traditional symbolic storytelling of the original Americans while enjoying your cereal du jour.

These are so awesome!

Benchmarks

Spring is here y'all. Proofs:

1. Ample Daffodils in the yard.

2. We cooked dinner out tonight on the grill.

 

We had steaks and aspargus. Our complementary beer was the good as always Allagash Dubble.

 

3.New spring slip-on shoes.

I decided to get some sweet Tom's as my shoe of choice. For those who aren't in the know, Toms is a shoe company that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair that is purchased. They're definitely wooing the "vote with your dollar" crowd. Along with my penchant craft beer, daily ponderings of literary tattoos and my burgeoning love of anime, these shoes make my transformation into an insufferable hipster functionally complete.

So far, I really like them! They're very comfortable and extremely breathable, so it's not gross to wear them as they are intended (ie: no socks!). I like how they're the most basic looking shoe you can imagine, which means you can dress them up or down. They are a lovely replacement for my poor ol' naturalizer flats that died over the winter.

Let's hope for a continuation of this sunny, 70 degree weather!

Car-nage

As many of you may already know, Paul and I had the good fortune to purchase a second car last week. It's a little sad to be ending the era of carpooling. For the last 3 years we spent pretty much every morning and afternoon together, and I'll miss that shared time. It will be really nice though to be able to just head straight home at the end of the day.

Anywho, our new pride and joy is a 2006 Ford Focus Wagon, in "Cloud 9 White" (gotta love cheesy auto maker paint names). I love that it's got more storage room than our Corolla. It will be awesome to be able to bring our bikes up to ME and ride to the beach.

I filled up the tank for the first time today and got a kind of strange surprise when  popped the gas cap:

 

How could they have known how unfortunate this alignment would seem 5 years in the future. It's been exactly one year since the Deep Water Horizon exploded . I can't help but feel like they regret the choice to put this on all their gas caps....can't take that back now!

Want Want Want

Awesome rugs designed to look like UK postage. I want to walk all over the queens mug all day.

Impulse Purchase of the Week

On Sunday, Paul and I decided to go to the Mall, just to have an excuse to get out of the house and do something different. Usually I eschew the aggravating consumerism of the private shopping complex. But hey, we needed a new garlic press.

So, as we were making our way back to the car (AKA "escaping"), we passed by this little Asian knick knack shop that was going out of business. That's when I saw it.

A Maneki Neko, the Beckoning Cat. It won me over with its cuteness and kitsch.

These little cat statues are basically synonymous with Chinese restaurants around here. But in Japan, where these figurines originated, they can commonly be found in lottery shops, banks, pachinko parlors, and other wealth-driven businesses. That's because the Maneki Neko is a symbol of financial prosperity. A raised right paw represents the protection of wealth, while the left paw (like the one on ours) indicates the acquisition of wealth. When I purchased it, the cute old shop owner even said "It's OK you spend money on this, because you get more monies coming in soon!"

The waving paw is supposed to mimic a beckoning motion (hence the name). This is based on the myth that cats are lucky spirits that will guide you away from harm and towards good fortune. That's why when you see one of these guys in a restaurant window, you're supposed to be drawn inside, away from your potential doom!

There are a few origin legends about why these little cat statues started being made. The weirdest of which goes as follows:

"A courtesan named Usugumo, living in Yoshiwara, in eastern Tokyo, kept a cat, much beloved by her. One night, the cat began tugging at her kimono. No matter what she did, the cat persisted. The owner of the brothel saw this, and believing the cat bewitched, cut its head off. The cat's head then flew to the ceiling where it killed a snake, ready at any moment to strike. Usugumo was devastated by the death of her companion. To cheer her up, one of her customers made her a wooden likeness of her cat as a gift. This cat image then became popular as the Maneki Neko."

Ooookay....

But yeah, we'll see if this guy helps us rake in the dough. He has a special home in our newest home improvement.

Doot do do dooo! New built-in bookshelves. Paul's awesome dad made them for us and installed them last Saturday. They really improves the living room tenfold. It was a lot of fun to put out all our books to display too. Between them and the fortune cat, everything's coming up Milhouse!

You're a House Cat

The Daily Mail posted today about a study which found that British women have an increasing desire to be stay-at-home wives and mothers. The article notes that 64% or women aspire to marry a man that makes more than them, and 69% would prefer to stay home and raise children over re-entering the workforce.

It's an interesting and enduring topic of feminism, the priorities and power of women. Whether or not you work after having kids is an issue that defines a woman far more than any other choice does. Not just in your own personal sense of self, but in the way other women classify you in the hegemony of feminism.

There is a fair bit of strength growing in the stay-home corner. Mommy-bloggers are the new voice of the housewife, and there is a lot of power in their organized ranks. One word and collective re-blogging from them can make or break a product. At the same time though there is still derision from the populace, and in the anonymity of the web it is not uncommon to see these mothers dismissed as snobbish and lazy.

The snobbish angle is actually pretty easy to buy, because who else can afford to be a stay at home mom these days but the affluent? Biodegradable diapers and organic baby food are the hip topic du jour because that's the caliber of product a person who can stay home can afford. I think that making stay at home motherhood a more widely available opportunity would really be to the benefit of all people. But I'll get to that...

 

A return to celebrating home making is something that I can get excited about. While I'm no Martha Stewart, I do feel that that there's something immensely satisfying about supporting and perfecting your household. 

There's a part of me that feels like ever since I started working 40 hours a week, that I'm not living up to the wifely standard that I hold myself to. I look around and see the dirty dishes left undone, the projects I've been neglecting, and bathrooms in need of scrubbing and feel truly overwhelmed. When I only worked four days a week, I felt more comfortable in my home, like I was caring for it properly. It gave me time to organize, cook more dinners, and take the stress of chores off the shoulders of Paul, who frankly is the bread winner of the family. It makes me feel good to take care of the homely things. It makes me stressed out when things are left undone.

I don't feel its wrong to take pride in housework and cooking, and I don't think it's wrong to consider the success of these tasks my wifely duty. And heck, I am pretty sure that I'll want to stay home with children once we have some.

I actually think that having more stay-at home mom's would be a positive step for modern a society. More children with an active, strong home life helps assure the moral and societal development of our future. I also see it as a necessity for the propagation of our economic system. We work in a time where labor is no longer imperative. More and more jobs, duties and tasks are being delegated to automation. We have a high unemployment rate, and our rate of creating new jobs falls short of even the number of people initially entering the work force consistently, We should really come to terms with the fact that a full time job for every American is not a realistic vision of the future. It will take a feat of societal re-working, but we possibly could retool a labor-force that is fair but competitive. One way would be to guarantee a living wage, and make stay-home motherhood more feasible for the working poor. The other would be to re-distribute the amount of hours in a standard work-week. If people worked a schedule that is considered "part-time" all the time, it would provide more opportunities for others to work, while increasing the potential for worker happiness through personal development and leisure.

I know in my heart though that these ideas for a Utopian part-time society are pipe-dreams. What with our workaholic, bootstrap, capitalist culture, it would be almost impossible to stop people from working their hardest for personal career gain. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, we've got moxie.

And I'm certainly not yearning for the sexist days of yore, where a career woman's goals were seen as prone to flights of fancy and romance.



I certainly wouldn't criticize any woman who wants to build their career throughout their lives. It's a wonderful goal, to be successful and great at what you do. But part of me does wish that the virtues of good housekeeping were more celebrated as they were in the so-called good old days. Not in a "don't worry you're pretty head way", but in a

kind of way.

Vacation Disaster - Redux

2011 was apparently not the year for Paul and I to have a nice relaxing vakay. After our failure to embark on a cruise ship last month, we though it would be nice to have a stay-cation between Christmas and New Years. Here's a little break down of how that turned out.

4 Days Spent Driving to be with Family and Friends/ At Holiday Celebrations
3 Days Spent Fleeing Carbon Monoxide and Stressing

Leaving only 3 Days to really have to ourselves. Our 10 day vacation was reduced to a long weekend peppered between busy-ness and panic.

On Monday Night, our house started to smell like exhaust. Our 3-month old, multiple thousand dollar oil burner was clogged up, and spewing copious amounts of exhaust into our basement. At 4 AM on Tuesday, we fled to Paul's office with the cat, where we sat until 9 waiting to get a hold of somebody to address the problem.

Long story short, the trial of it included climbing on the roof to sweep our own chimney, 2 different technicians coming out to fix the problem, the fire department coming, and lots of stress. We were finally able to get back into our own home on Wednesday night. It was just bad.

I shouldn't complain about the parties and stuff, because it was great to see family and everything. We had a nice Christmas and received many wonderful thoughtful gifts.But we did have to drive far and away a lot, so it didn't feel like vacation.

Ugh, here's to hoping that in 2011, we'll finally get to have a vacation that doesn't get ruined. Maybe that will be my resolution.

Pluto's Christmas Tree - 1952

 This Christmas themed Disney cartoon features Chip and Dale in their feral, pre-Rescue Ranger days. Poor Pluto gets a Wiley Coyote-esque raw deal as he attempts to evict the chipmunks from his beautiful tree.

This one reminds me of a story my dad (a Nursery Manager) told about a customer he had at work, who would always vigorously shake his trees before buying them. Why? One time he bought a tree that turned out to have "monkeys" in it, and the monkeys came out and bit him. The perils of buying live flora!



@2:20 - This has forever fueled my desire to be able to walk around inside a giant Christmas tree

And for the heck of it, here's our Christmas Tree:

Almost as nice as Mickey Mouse's.

Year 2!

Paul and I celebrate our second wedding anniversary today! It's hard to believe another year has come and gone. Keeping this blog though has really helped me keep track of the things we've experienced and accomplished over the last year though. A moderately successful garden, many good books read, 3 new jobs, and lots of fun adventures. I am very much looking forward to spending more years like this one with my husband, who I love.

I figured since I posted about Monty Python sharing our anniversary last year, this year I'd do something similar too.

Aside from being the birthday of our nuptials, October 5th is also the birthday of Louis Lumiere, one of the early pioneers of cinema (also, probably this guys namesake).


Louis and his brother Auguste patented the perforations on film that make it's advancement through camera and projector possible. They were also among the first to popularize seeing movies as a public social activity, when they started doing public screenings of their films in 1895. Most of their short films were very very short, usually not longer than 1 minute long.

From 1896:



Aside from making revolutionary moving pictures, women around the world can blame, um, I mean thank Louis and his brother for the invention of forceps!

Ouch, thanks a lot guys.

On a lighter note...

Yeah!

The Almighty Dollar

I would consider myself a person who is more attuned than average to the dangers of materialism, on ecological, psychological and economical levels. That being said, I am always loathe to call my self a consumer. This week I think proved to me better than most that I am just as bad about acquiring stuff as any other American. I blame the heat wave, it made being inside an air conditioned store seem like a better option than sweltering in our house.

The first thing I bought was even to help us keep cool. Paul and I ran through the sprinkler the other day and it was awesome. I run it for a little while in the afternoon too, to keep the vegetables alive.


I was also fighting a really nasty cold earlier in the week. I decided that taking vitamins would probably help my immune system kick it. I opted for the gummie type, because I'm secretly 5. The name of this brand is a big oxymoron. "One-a-Day"....but you take two of them!

We finally decided to resolve the not having Mario Kart issue once and for all, and broke down and bought a new copy of the game. I missed playing so much!

A Hula Hoop. Paul and I are going to the Gathering of the Vibes music festival at the end of the month, and people often bring hula hoops to these types of events. I had always been bad at hula hooping, and wanted to see if I could get better at it. I'm still pretty terrible, but I like to think I'm improving...The check out guy asked me if I went to Hampshire College when I bought this.
These hot shoes. I could not resist them, for they were only $7.

Mmmm....Trader Joes Vegetable Gyoza are AWESOME!

Annnd in spite of them losing the summer beer taste test, A Harpoon UFO is still nice on a hot hot day.