If any of you follow me on Pinterest, you may notice that my pinning has been excessive recently. I’ve been cleaning out my Google Reader favorites. I’ve only gotten through November & December 2011, and the favorites go all the way back to the end of 2009. Oy. As you can tell, most of what I save are recipes.
For those of you who don’t follow me, you should. I’m a really good pinner. Seriously. Click the button below.
Guess who is getting reading glasses? This girl. The one who supposedly has 20/20 vision and has never worn glasses.
I went to the eye doctor yesterday for the first time in many years. I’ve been having headaches, and my eyes have been tiring easily (especially when reading computer screens). It’s been interfering with work, because most of what I do all day is stare at a computer. Apparently even though I can read the 20/20 line on the eye chart, I need reading glasses. One of my eyes is slightly farsighted with astigmatism, and the other is slightly nearsighted. The difference between the two is part of the problem, as each eye is fighting to focus in a different way. Essentially things go in and out of focus all the time, which exhausts my poor little eyeballs.
So here I am at 26, after a lifetime of great vision, getting reading glasses. I picked a cute pair by Scott Harris (pictured above), and they should be ready in about 2 weeks.
I am generally skeptical of pop culture trends. I finally saw Napoleon Dynamite about 5 years after it came out and hated it. I won’t touch the Twilight books and was fairly disgusted by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The suspicion of popular fiction I blame on my high school English teacher. He was this mop-headed hipster, and I mean a real hipster from the days when that term didn’t mean flannel and mustaches. To his credit, he taught me how to write. On the other hand, he convinced me that little published after 1960 was worth reading.
On that note, I read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close this week. I adored it. I cried through the last 3/4. And I have to admit that I decided to read it after seeing the previews of the newly-released movie with Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks. That’s right, a movie preview convinced me to read a book. But seriously, please give it a try.
Filed under books
Yesterday on my drive home I listened to this conversation with the Dalai Lama, a British rabbi and an American Episcopal priest. It was a lovely accompaniment to my drive across North Carolina.
Today I was reading about happiness and found encouragement to”increase flow experiences”. While it sounds hokey and potentially is kind of hokey, the idea is to find that state where time seems to stand still. Or, where “action and awareness are merged.” It’s when you’re engaged in what you are doing so that you aren’t bothered by distractions. I feel this way when I’m reading a good book, which is what I wish I were doing all week instead of working.
Filed under personal, psychology
equals…
a new kitten (named Lucy Bean)
+ new hair
…that is sometimes curly!
“All my life I knew I was loved and protected but it did not prepare me for life and what was ahead of me. The tragedies, the disappointments, the challenges and how to live with them were difficult.
“At 85, I think about life differently. I can look at my past life like watching an old silent film. I can’t change anything but I can remember and wonder and think about what if I was more prepared, stronger, wiser, more experienced. Then something inside of me says ‘forget it, try to enjoy the rest of your life.’
“That is what I am trying to do. I don’t want to waste precious days still ahead of me.”
— Regina Titus
From a project by David Brooks called The Life Report.
I haven’t read the stories yet but am really looking forward to it. I’m sure many people see this quotation as sad, but I don’t. Okay, maybe it’s a little sad. But truly it’s how I think life is, and I’m okay with that. I don’t believe everything happens for a reason, but I believe in growth, hope and redemption. Life wouldn’t be what it is if we came into the world knowing everything, and frankly I think it would ruin our childhoods if we did.
Sprout Robot is my new favorite website. You type in your zip code, and it gives you instructions for what to plant when. We’ve been learning a lot in the first year of our garden, and this has given me all kinds of tips and ideas for what to plant next. What we are lacking is a safe, sunny place indoors to start seeds. I might just wait & do as much direct planting as possible.
Filed under home
Not Everyone’s Laughing At “Shit White Girls Say To Black Girls” | Clutch Magazine.
Worth a read. Thanks to Julie for this one. It’s horribly uncomfortable to recognize your own prejudice, and sometimes subtle prejudices are worse. (By the way, I am categorizing this under “feminism” because I’ve found that I can’t identify as Feminist without recognizing other forms of marginalization.)
An excerpt:
“When a group of people has little or no power over you, they don’t get to define the terms of your existence, they can’t limit your opportunities, and you needn’t worry much about the use of a slur to describe you, since, in all likelihood, the slur is as far as it’s going to go. What are they going to do next: deny you a bank loan? Yeah, right. So whereas “nigger” is a term used by whites to dehumanize blacks, to “put them in their place” if you will, the same cannot be said of honky; after all, you can’t put white people in their place when they own the place to begin with.”-Tim Wise
Filed under feminism
Ben and I have developed a coffee habit. The days we don’t make it seem harried and disorderly. I’ve even started waking up a half hour early because I enjoy sitting on the couch, leisurely sipping my coffee.
I am also a tea person. I cannot drink opaque liquids when I am sick. I’m not fond of orange juice, hot chocolate or coffee (I take mine with cream) when I have a sore throat, a cough or congestion. Tea with lemon and honey warms me up and soothes my throat. I love this article by George Orwell on the proper steps to brewing tea. I’m not quite the stickler he is. I don’t take my tea with milk (unless it is chai tea, in which case he is quite right that creamy milk ruins the tea- 1% is the fattiest I’ll use). And I’m not picky about the origin. I rather like Chinese tea. There are, however, a few things he mentions that I absolutely agree with.
I drink my tea with honey and lemon, which I’m sure Mr. Orwell would frown on. The lemon is essential, and I use a lot of it but not so much that it overpowers the tea taste.
Filed under food
My new employer is promoting a holiday campaign to encourage people to buy handmade gifts. I am extra excited about the campaign because I got to design the promotional materials. I don’t think I’d ever want to be a professional graphic designer, as it seems like too much time is spent with companies’ weird logos and moving things a few pixels to the right or left to please customers. However, I love playing in Adobe programs to make cute things.
This image is a 3×3″ sticker that we’re trying to plaster all over. We’ve also reproduced it as a poster and will be silk-screening a bunch to give as thank-you gifts to donors to the non-profit. You can download different versions of the image here on our website.
You can also donate to HandMade in America at our Indie GoGo campaign.
And of course, if you want to re-blog, post the image on your Facebook page, etc., we certainly won’t complain.
