Celebration of Life

Lady with Cigar.
Originally uploaded by **Poof!**

On her birthday, my brother's girlfriend asked everyone to take a picture that day that they believed represented a celebration life. This was my favorite pic from the set. I bet this lady doesn't spend her days working on large spreadsheets.

Early to sleep, early to rise...

Ok, I can't take credit for this idea primarily because Ben Franklin already said it a little while before I did: "Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." (By the way, I don't think Ben Franklin was 100% wise. For instance, he also said, "Eat to live, and not live to eat." I don't think that's right (said the woman who eats mayonnaise out of the jar).). Anyway, I've heard this quote since I was little, but I'm just not and have never been a morning person (but I do happen to be a very good night person). As luck would have it, I took a trip to Europe, and when I returned, operating on UK time, I awoke at roughly 4 AM. And you know what? It was great! I felt so productive. In fact, the idea that I had so much time ahead of me motivated me to be much more industrious than I usually am. I did a yoga workout on video, I made a real breakfast, I went to the grocery store (where I was the only shopper and had to pluck produce out of cartons because they hadn't finished laying them out yet -- and if there's one downside, it's that I couldn't buy lettuce because it was still somewhere in the nether regions of the grocery store) where I was congratulated at being the first shopper in store history to buy a fish from the fish department at 6 AM, and best of all, I wasn't screaming at the kids all morning.

I don't know about you, but mornings at my house are generally crazy. They're probably the worst part of the day, tied with the 5 PM - 7 PM witching hour when the kids start to melt down and I start to look for a cocktail. And one of the reasons I dread weekdays is that they all start off so crazy, trying to make sure everyone gets dressed, brushes their teeth, eats their breakfast, has a lunch packed -- in addition with trying to appear human myself for my appearance at the office. Add to this the fact that there is a punishment for the parent from the school for being late (I won't get into it, but trust me, it is bad), and the whole thing is just plain stressful.

So since I got back from my trip, I've been making myself get up early. And you know what? My whole day is better! I'm relaxed in the morning, I eat a real breakfast, I talk to the kids, and I just have this general feeling that everything is really ok.

The downside is that I'm avoiding social activity, fearing it will interfere with my bedtime...the good sleep habits rule, as suggested by my college professor Dr. James Maas, is that even if you have a late night, you should make yourself get up at the same time every morning. I fear this. I have a known love for sleeping in, and I'm afraid that this will bring me back over to the Dark Side.

Well, sleep tight. I'm sure some of you do this already. I'm a little slow -- it took me about 10 years to notice that Brad Pitt was "kind of cute". You know, by the time everyone else had moved on.

Lemonaise

Sometimes I just want to eat mayonnaise. Not just any mayonnaise -- I like regular mayo well enough, as an accompaniment to a sandwich, or a seafood cocktail -- but this mayo from the Ojai Cook -- called Lemonaise -- is so good that I want to eat it on its own. Ok, I confess -- I did eat it on its own. Tonight, in fact. Off a knife. In front of my kids. I put it out as an accompaniment to a poached salmon, but really, it was all about the Lemonaise. It's similar to the mayo you get in France -- and I think just as good as the mayo my mother-in-law, who used to run a cooking school in France (Why does that have such a nice ring to it? Better than, for instance, "...run a cooking school in Germany?"). Anyway, it's tangy, it's creamy, and it's got mustard seeds in it. It's sooo good. It's so good that you'll see the link I have it going to on this page has it sold out. And one of the reviewers says the only thing she doesn't like about it is that she has to have it shipped.


One of the benefits of living in California is that I can actually find it at my local grocery store (Henry's Marketplace -- I love that place so much it makes me want to cry). I hoard it too -- I always make sure I have at least two spare, because once I really wanted some and they were (gasp) out of stock.

When you know, you know

Remember when people would tell you that you'd know when you found The One? It happened to me last month. Suddenly, with no warning, I fell fast and hard for Botkier handbags -- until the pure supple lambskin-y, design-y perfection of them was too much for me to handle.

I first saw them online during a sale. On sale they were about $475, so I hemmed and hawed about the Botkier Bianca until they were sold out. I then proceeded to kick myself for missing out, for the Biancas are nowhere to be found on the primary market, and I began scouring eBay for them, losing several auctions in the last 5 seconds because apparently other Botkier obsessed are faster typers than I am. Determined not to be defeated yet again, I actioned on a Buy It Now for the Sophie bag in Raisin (pictured), which is now in my possession. It arrived at my door during a particularly bad my-career-is-in-the-toilet-now-that-I-have-kids kind of day, and as my friend Jenny so aptly pointed out, it would match perfectly with the bottle of vodka I'd be carrying.

Still outbid though on the Botkier Bianca (I wanted it in nude snakeskin), I desperately settled and pulled another Buy It Now on a Cherry colored one. That one is coming on Tuesday, the day before I leave town (it also involved begging the seller to expedite the bag so I'd get it before I left). I then set an auto-search on eBay to show me daily all the new Botkiers that were on the market. This has resulted in two additional bids for Botkiers, as well as a membership in The Purse Forum.

And I can't stop talking about them. I dragged a gay co-worker into critiquing a few I was considering. I email my friend Alice (who just gave birth two days ago) updates and opinion requests. It is truly an illness. Weirdest part is that I was never that into bags.

But then I made a startling discovery: there seem to be a bunch of purse addicts out there, who buy new purses, carry them for a couple of weeks, and then stow them in their original dust covers with their authentication tags, and resell them on eBay once they're back in season again. Brilliant! I felt enabled. Like I had an excuse to buy more bags.

Continuing to troll the net for Botkiers, I stumbled upon the Chloes. Whoa. If Botkiers were my Ivana Trump, Chloes are my Marla Maples. So I'm just waiting for those Koobas to hit me over the head...

My cup of tea

Maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake, but though I always knew that tea was made of dried leaves, it really didn't hit me til recently that they're really just dried leaves. I guess I had always assumed that something special had to be done to them...why else would you pay money for a bunch of dried leaves? A co-worked of mine who is a bit of a tea freak went to a tea tasting in San Francisco Chinatown, walking out with several $30 bags of tea. What was so special about these teas was that they were whole leaves -- so when you pour boiling water over them, the leaves reconstitute and open up (unlike the shredded bits of leaves you get in standard tea bags). He said that leaves that do that actually haven't been dried for very long, and thus are lower in caffeine. I haven't verified that claim -- just putting it out there.

As you may have noticed I'm a little obsessive about efficiency (this drives my apparent zeal for things like recycling, composting and energy conservation, but refer to my previous post for the real story). I get a lot of dried lavender blooms and fallen-off rose petals in my garden. Mostly I throw them into my makeshift compost pile, or chuck them around the garden for slow decomposition, but I'm always looking for new things to do with garden refuse. So I decided to try making my own tea.

My criteria:

• It shouldn't kill me. Before gathering dried leaves for tea-making, I looked online to make sure there were like things on the market (e.g., other people had tried them, hadn't died, and thought well enough of it to market it to a broader audience).
• It shouldn't taste disgusting. I also looked online for combos of leaves that, as in the first bullet point, people tried and liked enough to keep making.

I have a little teapot with a strainer for tea leaves, so I didn't have to bother with sewing tea bags or anything of the sort. So far I've made a couple of teas:

• Lemon verbena. This one gave off a really lemony smell, and was very light. It was a little lemony for my liking, but hey, it was free and didn't kill me.
• French lavender and rose petals. This one tasted like it smelled. I added honey a little bit of cream to it, but I think I went a little too heavy on the lavender.
• Ginger. This didn't come from my garden, but I plopped a chunk of raw ginger root into boiling water and added a bit of sugar -- this was delicious. It was a little spicy, and really soothing.

I put in approximately 1 teaspoon dried leaves for every cup that I brewed. My conclusion: you can definitely make your own tea. Do a little research before dropping the leaves into your pot (hemlock, for instance, might be a bad choice), but for the most part, there's nothing to it. Of course there are always leaves not readily available to you that are worth buying from tea manufacturers, but it is another way to use up the stuff in your garden.

When cleaning should suck

I'm not a vacuum-cleaner hobbyist. I don't particularly like to clean. But I found myself recently in need of a new vacuum, after my old Kenmore lost its suction despite making Darth Vader type noises. Those of you who know me won't be surprised that I spent hours doing research to find my optimal vacuum cleaner -- one that balanced performance with value. (I will spare you the details of my analysis, but for those of you in the market for a great professional-level flat iron I would recommend the Sedu: http://www.folica.com/Sedu_Ionic_Cera_d1560.html)

Here were my criteria:

• Vacuum cleaner must be lightweight. I don't like cleaning as it is, and can be easily deterred by something as simple as lifting a heavy vacuum cleaner up the stairs.
• Vacuum cleaner should last a long time -- 10+ years. I don't want to be researching vacuum cleaners again any time soon.
• Cleaner should work on both hard surfaces (wood floors, slate) and carpet (I have relatively low-pile carpet).
• Bonus points if it's cute.
• Less than $500. I'm not a cleaning pro.

My research resulted in the purchase of a Miele S4 Galaxy Series Carina S4210 cannister vacuum. I love it. It is quiet. It is cute. It's yellow. It sucks like nobody's business. At $389, it's the lower-end Miele but all the reviews point to its reliability (I almost went with an Electrolux cannister -- my parents have had an Electrolux for the past 30 years that is still going -- but read that since Electrolux was purchased by Eureka, they suck a little more and not in a good way. Apparently, leaving the vacuum plugged in when not in use can cause shorts, resulting in a need for frequent repairs). It's good on both floors and low-pile carpets / rugs, and has six settings. If you have shaggy rugs, you'd probably want to upgrade to some of the higher end models. Even the guy at the Oreck store said that he liked Mieles.

All food, all the time

I just got back from a business trip to Colombia. You will be pleased to know that because of the constant attention of four bodyguards, a bullet-proof car, and an approximate net worth of $50, I was not kidnapped. I was, however, fed, gargantuan proportions of food, approximately six times a day, with an average of four desserts per sitting (I do not exaggerate). To the right you can see a photo of what was an appetizer...that came before the appetizer that came before the main courses followed by the four desserts. By the end of the trip, I was simply too fat to be kidnapped -- no kidnapper could possibly afford to keep me alive given my new nutritional requirements. One of my most enjoyable experiences included shopping for handbags at a mall while accompanied by bodyguards. I believe the appropriate word for that is "weird".

While we were there we had lots of delicious local fruits and vegetables, which were purportedly pesticide-free. They also appeared not to be genetic mutants, which was a nice change. When I got back a few friends and I got together, and the Oprah-watchers among us brought up a recipe for a pesticide cleanser. See here for the recipe. Apparently this is for people who don't want to be slowly killed by pesticides, yet are also unwilling to pay for organic fruit (I sometimes fall into this camp). I was concerned that the vinegar would make the fruit taste disgusting, but a friend of mine tested it and said it was just fine...the only downer was that she had to plan 10 minutes ahead before serving fruit.

So, spray away! I plan to make the concoction sometime in the near future (you can get the grapefruit seed extract from health food stores and the usual suspects). If you make it, let me know how it goes! Then again, do you really want to live into your hundreds?

You know you're fat when...

• You go to talk to a gay guy at work, and instead of making eye contact with you he makes waist contact with you -- he stares at the muffin-top above your pants the entire time.
• Someone sets up a meeting using Outlook and lists you as the location.

Both these things actually happened to me this week.

I hate exercise. This was moderately ok when I wasn't middle-aged and when I lived in a city and was forced to walk everywhere, but now on occasion I even have debates with myself on the merits of getting up from my seat to go to the bathroom versus...just not. If I were an animal I'd be a sea anemone. I'd have a symbiotic relationship with organisms that groomed me and would wait for food to come to me.

There was a time when I ran. I only run when I'm depressed. Anyway, I kept waiting for this "runner's high" I kept hearing about. Maybe it's just me, but unless runner's high consists of severe cramping and the flab on your face actually detaching from your bones due to all the turbulence, I never got runner's high.

I live in Southern California, so I have to spend a good part of the year in a swimsuit -- and often times, sadly, in front of people I know. So instead of addressing the root of my problem, I ordered 6 tankinis to try on, figuring, the more coverage, the better. I ordered them from Victoria's Secret, which I knew right off the bat was a really bad idea. It is impossible for me to tell what those swimsuits actually look like because, unlike the models, I do not have breasts that resemble a grown person's buttocks. In fact, I could have stopped the last phrase five words in. But I'd venture to say that outside of Southern California, most people don't look like that. So, it is not possible to tell what the swimsuit actually looks like on any normal person based on the photo. As such, it was shocking when I actually put them on. The most fitting phrase would be "female wrestler". I didn't think this was possible, but I looked even worse in those tankinis than in a bikini with my midsection exposed.

My new strategy is to appear in locations where I am comparatively in shape. For instance, our next vacation is going to be in Palm Desert. Next to most octagenarians, I look young, firm, and in shape. I appear lively and full of energy.

Anyway, I eat well and I try to be healthy minus that moving-around part. You can't win 'em all.

It Ain't Easy Being Clean, Either

Ok, sorry for the posting mishap. I think I just made a blank posting. Not that that's any worse than my usual postings.

I'm at home today because theoretically we are getting recessed lighting put in. I say theoretically because the electrician is 2.5 hours late. He called about an hour and a half ago to say that he was going to be here in 30 minutes. It seems (see my previous post) that if left home alone, I stray to the dark netherworld of cleaning supplies. Since I'm down to my last few drops of the Method cleansers I bought a few months ago, I found myself on this website: http://eartheasy.com/live_nontoxic_solutions.htm . Inspired, I decided that I was going to refill my Method bottles (recycling) with some of these non-toxic recipes (cheap). Going down the supply list, though, the only recipe I could make with what's in my house was a 1:1 water/vinegar combo. Then, to make myself feel more commercial, I put in a few drops of red food coloring (which promptly stained my hands to a murderous hue as the bottle, which had been unopened since 2003 which was the last time I baked, exploded). Then, I gave my counter a squirt. I was pleasantly surprised at how little it smelled like vinegar -- and then thought it might be nice to add a few drops of essential oil for fragrance next time (which I would have done if I had any).

Anyway, I'm really excited about these cleaning supplies. They're cheap, and they won't kill you!

It Ain't Easy Being Green

So over the past few years I've slowly begun to go green...not for the right reasons, like caring about the environment or anything, but to satisfy one of my neuroses: I have this thing about efficiency. I can't stand it when things aren't efficient. Once when I was in college (and obsessive about recycling; again, because I can't stand waste) I had a dream about eating paper. I was eating the paper because it was too inefficient to throw it away.

I was home from work today because my kids were both sick. It's a really good thing that I'm not a stay-at-home mom because I ended up buying $75 worth of household cleaner (Xtreme Kleen)from a door-to-door salesman after he drank some of the all-purpose-cleaner to prove to me that it was non-toxic (and biodegradable, and environmentally sound, etc). But I just wanted him to stop drinking the solvent. I had already purchased some Method cleaning supplies thinking that it would be better overall for all of us (including the housecleaners I have) to have more environmentally and theoretically safer products. $75 later, I started doing some research on cleaning products. Here's what I found:

• Manufacturers of cleaning supplies are not required to divulge their ingredients. This makes it kind of hard to figure out if what you're buying is good for your health or the environment.
• Biodegradable and environmentally friendly does not equal good for your health. For instance, a lot of biodegradable products (like butyl cellosolve) are fine for the environment but can cause a whole host of problems for humans (like liver and reproductive damage, to name a few). Butyl cellosolve happens to be in many household cleaners, including Xtreme Kleen and other more common brands. Method didn't disclose particulars; their ingredient list says things like "biodegradable solvent". Hm.
• There are no regulated labels for claims like "environmentally friendly" and other phrases that make things sound like they're good for you / the earth. I bought some "environmentally friendly" laundry detergent and the ingredient list was no different from the Costo Kirkland brand laundry detergent I had purchased previously.

So what's a girl to do? The best thing to do is to live in filth. No, actually, the safest thing to do (which I have yet to do, and maybe I'm willing to risk my health in order to optimize idle time) is to make your own household cleaners. If you're inspired to do this, here's a link. It is a whole lot cheaper, but -- let me know how it goes.

Since I won't be making my own household cleaner in the next couple of hours, I was looking for some easier efficiency projects to concentrate on. A few months ago I already switched out 1 in 3 of our lightbulbs for energy efficient types. Surprisingly, it made a pretty significant dent in our electric bill. More efficient! I stumbled upon my latest idea on the National Geographic Green Guide site. I haven't subscribed yet to the Green Guide because 1) I'm lazy and 2) it seems counterintuitive that I would subscribe to this thing that is printed on paper, but I'm sure I'll get over that. The idea is to stop using paper napkins at dinner. I do happen to have about a thousand cloth napkins that get used about once a year sitting in the linen closet upstairs. I don't know why I never thought to actually just use them. I mean, I have to do laundry anyway, so why not. And I'll argue that I don't have to press them because I'll use up less energy using them wrinkled.