2. I am not really a political person, but I seem to be unable to stop ranting about these goings on.  My sister and I have moved on from our “here come the Obamalypse” Facebook friends, abstinence-based sex-ed, and purity rings to scheming how to get fresh veg NOT drowned in cream-of-what-have-you sauces at Grandma’s Thanksgiving.

It was quite an effort to get Grandma’s permission to bring anything, but I am allowed one pumpkin pie.  J3 will offer “breakfast pastries.”  I will also be packing a keg of cran-grape for P, who is a fruit juice vampire.  Grandma makes wonderful things to eat and plenty of them, but they are of a mayonnaise-, bacon fat- and margarine-based nature, which gave us pause once we reached an accountable age. We’ll just have to break up the inevitable family drama with jogging and soccer.

On the non-self-absorbed front, we’re thankful she’s still around and willing to host, as family events are much pleasanter there.  Our poor family camps together in the rec room, while we married couples get the two bedrooms.  We’re going to turn one of them into a speakeasy with a password to get in.

I got up at 9:00 this morning, just in time to catch Alex Guarnaschelli’s cooking show, which I licked up. Spent a satisfying morning running, yard-saleing, gardening, cleaning and visiting the landlady.  P climbed out of his coffin at 2pm, and since we are NOT allowed to do any business work today, it has been a nice, chill Saturday.  AND THEN I ATE SOUP FOR LUNCH.  

Sorry, but I’m warming up to writing at all, let alone daily.  Check back in around the 13th of the month.  I should at least have an amusing poop story by then.  

Let us seek relief from dull writing in weak photography.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

Art by Square Cherry (marker on construction paper) and Julie Waltz-Stalker (oil on canvas). No trick-or-treating for us last night; we did not canvas the neighborhood and no children came to us, even when we left the bowl of candy outside on our stoop. Does this make me a non-spinster, crazy cat lady with no cat? I hope so. Especially if it means I get to yell at teenagers. Leggings are not pants! Note the Christmas candy. Those price-gauging drugstores are selling Christmas candy among the eleventh-hour bins on Halloween night.

oh, wait.

(Pretend there is a link here to the clip in The Office where Tim and Dawn play the “gaylords say no” trick on Gareth. Because I couldn’t find it on YouTube.)

We know it was wrong of us to stand idly by and let Al Gore show all those explicit photographs of what you’re going to look like 30 years from now. But seriously — ease off. Enough with the apocalyptic downfalls of snow mixed with ice pellets mixed with freezing rain mixed with snow pellets. I’m not saying I’m totally sick of winter, but see that animal’s head mounted above my fireplace? Say hello to Punxsutawney Phil. Shadow-seeing bastard had it coming.

Be sure to read the whole thing.  Go on, do it!  It’s not like you were on your way to the beach.

Semelparitous creatures: bamboo, agaves, Pacific salmon. 

Jim Elliot comes to mind. 

 I suppose that’s at least one notable similarity between salmon who goad themselves upstream, upwaterfalls, upwhitewater to get to their breeding grounds where they blow their, um, supplies and die of exhaustion and earnest young men practicing chastity.    Perhaps they don’t all meet such early and unfortunate ends as Mr. Elliot.  Still.

You may not die a virgin, but you may die just barely not a virgin.