Aug 28th 2008 01:51:14 pm

I am definitely a member of the choir in this case, but I am loving the Democratic convention! The speeches have been fabulous. Bill and Hillary were amazing! I also really liked the fun & tough speech on Tuesday from Montana’s governor, Brian Schweitzer. I am really looking forward to Barack’s speech tonight. Travis, Crusher & I are having a party! (Crusher is a huge Obama supporter.)

I want Barack Obama to be our next president. I like him as an individual, as a politician, and as the figure head of our nation. I am ready for diversity, equality, inspiration, opportunity, diplomacy, intelligence, and prosperity. I am ready for change.

7 Comments » Categories: politics

Aug 20th 2008 06:46:45 pm

I read an essay (ok, essay is a bit too fancy a word for a blog post) today about how women who choose to have just one child are criticized by their multi-child peers. I am not so concerned (yet) with the number of children I end up having, but the author brought up one of my biggest turn-offs when it comes to having children at all: The Mommy Martyr Brigade. The blogger explains it this way:

“Which brings me to the Mommy Martyr Brigade, the women with three and four kids who complain and complain about how much they have on their plates. About how complicated it is. About how they have no time for anything and everything is a burden.” (via Burbia, via kirtsy)

I don’t want to choose any life path for myself that will (apparently) make me miserable. But the self-made martyr is certainly not limited to moms. The really scary part is that I have only recently realized that I am one of them! Argh. It took Oprah’s “What I Know For Sure” column in the most recent O magazine to spark one of her trademarked “Ah-ha” moments in my own brain about how I always take on too much and then end up complaining about it all. (No, I don’t subscribe to O. I bought this issue in a weak moment of PMS-induced melancholy.) In her column Oprah is describing how overwhelmed she is with all of the things she has to do - you know, running her school in Africa, trying to find a new CEO for her second television network, reviewing the press copy of her mag, and oh ya, taping her insanely popular television show. As Oprah went on and on about how incredibly BUSY she is all the time all I could think was ‘My God, woman. You don’t have to say yes to everything.’ If one of the richest, most powerful, most successful woman in the world can’t just take time to chill out, what is the point of it all? She, and all of us, have a choice. We don’t have to be constantly competing to be the smartest, coolest, most successful, most beautiful, most busy woman in the world. We can actually choose to focus our energy on only our favorite things, and get this: maybe enjoy our lives a little. Woah. It is sad that that was actually an epiphany for me.

I am not competitive in sports (because I suck at them), but by golly, in life I am going to be the best! Turns out there is no such thing as “best” and even if there was, you don’t get a prize. You just get to be miserable every day wondering whether someone else is doing a better job than you. I think it is time that I drop out of the “all-around competition”. (Did I mention that we have been watching a lot of the Olympics?)

5 Comments » Categories: Magazines, Thinking

Aug 19th 2008 01:09:03 pm

J.Crew just came out with the absolute perfect, slouchy, menswear-inspired t-shirt for fall: the Ringspun V-neck painter tee. I am in love. The fabric weight, the drapey-ness, and the moderately low cut v-neck are all perfect. If you have the cash-money, I suggest buying four: a white, light gray, black, and a yellow. Yellow? Trust me. Wear them with an unbuttoned cardigan, nice jeans, and a headful of gold necklaces and you will be channeling Mary-Kate Olsen’s Katie Holmes’s Amanda Peet’s comfy, casual, hip, laid-back style.

No Comments » Categories: Clothes, Fashion

Aug 16th 2008 01:18:52 pm

I finally went to the doctor and had my blood work done to check for cholesterol problems. (I am high risk in that area due to a strong family history of heart disease.) The results are in and I am NORMAL in all areas! Sweet! Because I am high risk I still want to raise my HDL count (it is currently 56) and lower my LDL count (currently 121). I would like to get my LDL below 100 which is recommended for high risk peeps, but I heard (from an unreliable source) that diet and exercise can only affect your cholesterol count by about 30%. Any doctors (or doctors-in-training) out there know what it would take to really get my LDL count down and HDL up? I already take fish oil supplements, use olive oil, eat red meat less than twice a month, eat only non-fat dairy products (except cheese), and eat high fiber, whole grain breakfast cereal almost every day. I am a moderate exerciser, but could always improve. The big problem is that I sit all day at work… but check this: I have stopped buying sugary coffee drinks! I make coffee at home and use soy milk as creamer. That is a huge change for me, but I have been keeping it up for over a month. What other changes should I attempt?

5 Comments » Categories: Food, Health

Aug 15th 2008 09:24:26 pm

Things have seemed completely out of my control lately. In a desperate attempt to feel like I am in charge, I went on a crazy, lunch-time shopping spree at my favorite local shop. I bought a turquoise Latico bag (not the one pictured above, but close), a Paddywax Raw Honey candle that smells like sugar and summer and deliciousness, and a glass bottle that looks like a plastic bottle. The things did make me feel better, but sadly, did not solve my “issues.” The good news: I have found the motivation to create the life I want. No one else is going to create it for me, right?

I really don’t want to become one of those people (really, almost everyone) who thinks their stresses and/or problems are the absolute most important thing in the world, so I am trying to chill out and stay calm. It is not working. Chilling is not on the itinerary. Eugene is super-hot right now and without air conditioning our house is a sweaty mess. Oh well. At least we have the Olympics. Michael Phelps can save us!

btw: Crusher is loving the Olympics. His favorite sport is synchro (that’s short for synchronized diving for those of you who have not been watching five hours of Olympic coverage each night).

2 Comments » Categories: Accessories, Crusher, Lovely Things, Television

Aug 2nd 2008 07:20:51 pm

Well, maybe not 911, but we did take a trip to the puppy ER today. Sweet, little Crusher got stung by a bee in our backyard and then proceeded to have a nasty allergic reaction. His little muzzle and eyes got all swollen. I was so worried! (I cried a little.) He was also acting really sick and shaking, so we decided to take him to the 24-hour veterinary hospital. The photo above was taken after he got his medicine shots (hence the green bandage) and the swelling had gone down a bit, but you can still see it around his eye and lip. Poor guy! He is resting and doing much better now. Whew!

6 Comments » Categories: Misc

Jul 29th 2008 06:55:38 pm

I despise sunscreen. I don’t think I can express accurately how much I hate it - especially face lotions with sunscreen. I have tried just about every brand: Neutrogena, Oil of Olay, Clinique, Bobbi Brown, even Creme de la Mer (!), and most recently, Philosophy’s When Hope is Not Enough SPF 20. Every single brand causes my skin to break out terribly. Neutrogena’s “non-pore-clogging” stuff is the worst! I have been forcing myself to wear face sunscreen lately because I have been walking to and from work each day, and because all of the annoying dermatologists quoted in all of those lame and repetitive woman’s magazine and the overly made-up women at make-up counters say that it is an absolute must. Right now my skin is so messed up that my despair over the situation has caused me to turn to conspiracy theories - namely that sunscreen was purposely created to give you acne so that you are forced to buy more face cleaners and special acne lotions. There is also a fairly large number of people who believe that the chemicals in sunscreen actually cause as much cancer as the sun. I am neither a chemist nor a doctor (although I know a second-year med student), so I am not going to jump on that bandwagon just yet…

I am not to the point of swearing off sunscreen for good. (I don’t want to sound like a crazy person.) I just think I am going to lay off the daily face moisturizers with added SPF for a while. They make my face feel disgusting and the acne is really getting obscene. The reality is that I am outside for less than 40 minutes a day. It is actually depressing how little my skin gets to see the sun. Our species evolved under the sun, don’t you think I should be able to handle 40 minutes of it a day? I need the Vitamin D, right? How about I make a deal: I will never sunbathe again, ever, if I don’t have to wear daily sunscreen. Deal? …Ok, I am starting to sound a little crazy… What do you all think? Am I crazy? Do you wear sunscreen every day? Do you know of a brand that does not cause skin to break out? Help me!

11 Comments » Categories: Make-up & Beauty, Thinking

Jul 27th 2008 10:09:01 pm

To be totally honest, I have not been feeling very perky this month. I have been feeling discouraged and down on myself… not exactly fantastic blog fodder. Luckily, I have also had lots of distractions to keep me busy:

• Dexter, Season 2 - Oh, baby! Hanging out with a sociopath serial killer is so much fun! I am actually disappointed that we finished the series because it was so suspenseful and entertaining - I really looked forward to watching it each night. It is definitely a very adult program (blood, nudity, f-word, you know, the works), but the plot twists are so insane that I actually was yelling at the tv at multiple times. Love it. Definitely recommend it. (Siidenote: Travis downloaded the whole series from iTunes and we watched it via the AppleTV. Success!)
• The Assault - My mom sent me this book by Harry Mulisch, which is apparently THE ultimate Dutch literary classic. I didn’t realize that fact until after I completed the book and was reading online reviews. The novel is a concise, beautiful account of the effect of WWII on an ordinary, young man. The events in the story are profound, but the characters are extremely easy to relate to - and that is saying a lot because no matter how many things I learn and read about WWII it still manages to seem like a quaint, old-timey event that never feels totally real. Maybe that is disrespectful, but I don’t think it is possible for those who have only lived in the changed world to ever really know what the world-changing event was like to experience. Anyhoo, I marked a random favorite quote:
  

  “Time passed. His hair turned gray prematurely, but he did not grow bald like his father. As the proletariat was vanishing, the appearance of people all around him grew more proletarian, but he himself continued to wear English tweed jackets and checkered shirts with a tie. Gradually he reached the time of life when he met old people whom he had known at the age he was now. This was a strange experience. It made him look differently at both old and young, and himself as well.”

• Black Kids - Their first album, Partie Traumatic, was just released last week and I am in love. I found them originally via The Hype Machine and was really looking forward to a full cd. So fun and talented. The lead singer’s voice totally reminds me of Robert Smith, but the music is not goth. More like dance-pop. They are my second favorite band of the year (next to Vampire Weekend).
• Wow - Mainly just to distract myself from doing much-needed work, I started playing World of Warcraft again. They recently changed the rules so that you could get a mount at level 30. (Mounts make your character run faster.) For some reason I felt driven to finally get a mount. Don’t ask me why. I am weird. I got some sort of bird for my character to ride (see above). Ya, I think that might be as far as I get in that game…
• New “media center” - We need a new fence, but you can’t put a 46″ flat screen tv on a fence. We opted instead for the Rhys Modular Media System from the barn. The tv stand and two bookcases miraculously fit in our living room and it looks much more classy than the old tiny tv stand we were using. The only downside is that we find ourselves with an overabundance of shelf space. There are worse problems… Oh! Have you noticed how the barn is trying to get all mid-century modern?! I will give them credit for trying to update their style, even if I don’t really love any of the new stuff. Maybe that is a good thing…

That is basically what I have been up to. That, and going to work, stressing about Swap-bot, and trying to kick my butt into gear exercise-wise. I have been extremely unmotivated lately, so I am sorry if you are disappointed. I’m just trying to hold it together.

5 Comments » Categories: Books, Home, Just for Fun, Television, music

Jul 25th 2008 12:21:26 pm

I made a quick profile for Crusher on Dogster. If you have a dog, let’s be pup pals!!

Crusher is still just as cute as ever. He sleeps with us and every morning he rolls over for a tummy rub. So adorable! He has also learned to Shake, which is so funny. I love him!

2 Comments » Categories: Crusher, Cute Things

Jul 12th 2008 12:38:59 pm

I feel guilty taking money from the government considering that they seem to need it more than me (did someone say $9.5 trillion in debt?), but Travis and I have already managed to use some of our stimulus check to stimulate the economy despite the guilt. (Isn’t it against the law to save that money? Ya, that is what I am telling myself…) I bought some new flip flops from J.Crew. They are really comfortable. I had two pairs already, but Crusher chewed through the thong part of the left sandal from each pair rendering them useless. Bad baby dog! Anyway, I got the flip flops on sale for $9.99 so I think it is a reasonable purchase. Travis, on the other hand, is currently out purchasing a second Airport Express (to extend our home wireless network to pretty much cover the whole neighborhood) and an AppleTV, which he stressed that we MUST have. Apparently the reason that we MUST have a AppleTV is because it communicates with his new, white, 16GB iPhone - yes, he stood in line for four hours yesterday. You can use your new iPhone as a remote for the AppleTV, and i guess that alone is reason enough to need a $300 movie rental system. Travis is obviously much more skilled at stimulating the economy than I am.

2 Comments » Categories: Just for Fun, Shoes, Travis