Month: June 2014

A Gal, A Blog, and Her Pictures

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Behind the pictures is the gal writing this blog,  while behind this blog is  the gal taking the pictures. Some time ago, my Chicago based bloggy friend, domesticatedesk, encouraged me to start matching up my posts with a picture taken from my point of view to help illustrate a theme, in place of relying on Google and Bing Image searches to help support my content.  Of course I had a friendly point of contention:  Where will I take a picture of an old couple arguing if that is what will perfectly illustrate my life as a wife frustration at 9pm?  Why fret when there are definitely stock photos of a flaky croissant for free use because I already ate all of mine, thus my need for said croissant photo?  If I think I am at my wit’s end from overwhelming annoyance and stress, who best to provide a visual than Kristin Wiig? Using stock imagery has allowed me the freedom to write about topics in mind even though they lack a visual presence in my life.  I …

Coffee Table Lunch

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Two days later, I woke up craving fried chicken, but the next best thing I could think of was to dredge the cod fillet in my refrigerator with chana besan and whip up a salad from the fantastic greens grown in our school yard garden that I picked the afternoon before.  I was HUNGRY and it was only 10am.  Luckily my neighbor has a hearty appetite thanks to nursing her little one, so we plopped around the coffee table and dug right in.    Cod sticks & garlic aioli. Avocados & greens. Homemade pesto atop quinoa pasta.  Red peppers & hummus. Before noon. Excuses.  I believe not having my bags sorted out is excusable since they don’t get in the way of the fun of having friends over.  Now the excuse for needing the bags in the first place?  Like I said, some more thought and another post altogether for that one, I suppose! Have a great start to your summer!  Can you believe it?  Clearly I am way behind on spring clearing, not cleaning.  …

Chivarly: Is it dead, or just different?

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A lady shouldn’t have to light her own cigarette. Photo c/o BingImages. On the plane earlier this year I was in tears.  I was having a very emotional moment while working on a post and the tears just kept streaming down my face.  Luckily, I wasn’t gasping, sniffling, nor gulping, but wiping my cheeks and eyes from the constant stream that was running down my face, as bad as a water faucet, just saltier. I was thankful that my neighboring seat was empty and that I was surrounded  by men otherwise.  Not one of them would dare ask me if I was okay, which I guess I preferred.  If this were forty years ago, I thought, would one of them have offered me a handkerchief?  Would a mid century gentleman have called a flight attendant to check on me? On the shuttle to work each morning there are more and more employees and less and less seats available.  This private shuttle, full of well educated and professionally creative types, is stuffed to the seams with …

The Bag Lady

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I have bags of stuff everywhere.   Prior to having company over, a good hostess will spend her time tidying up her apartment,  mainly concentrating on the bathroom and the crevices of the floors, and legs of furniture where dust accumulates if she needs to get her home party ready in a flash.  She also needs to get rid of clutter.  I read once in an entertaining guide in the 90s that you could potentially use the tub for surplus storage, but your guests need only to draw the curtain and you will be busted on the spot.  So I think women started filling their  tubs with water and burning floating candles there instead.  Neither has ever been an option for me, but that is not the point of this post.     Whole Foods, TJs, Vanessa Bruno, what have you… Gotta bag? I likely have crap to store in it. I have crap everywhere and I simply dump whatever is scattered on the dining table into reusable shopping bags or totes I have stored …

#GirlGoneWildbpstyle

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I went pretty wild over Memorial Day Weekend … bp style.  I went camping.   Here are just a few of the pictures in the wild taken by Husband, by our buddies Petit Parachute and Gadmachine, and by yours truly.  I pulled some lines (in italics)  directly from the journal I kept during the weekend, which will give you a small peak into what the experience was like.  So lucky we are to be living in California.  More power to the Department of Parks and Recreation.   Journal entry excerpts May 26-27, 2014 Fallen Leaf Campground, South Lake Tahoe, California  (all times of day) Thank goodness for melatonin, but it was a gorgeous, quiet sleep I had.  Save for the strong cold air blowing through the tent – hubby says we need to get one of those extra covers that goes over the tent for added insulation- I dare say I was pretty prepared last night and we fit nicely on top of our air mattress in our sleeping bags.  Do I shower now or later? I …

It Started Out Promising

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The day started out promising and though it is only 2:00pm, I am already feeling like the day has swallowed me up logistically.  Had my things to do list all set.  All easy.  All attainable.  And then a phone call from my ticket agent has yet to be returned, a piece of paper with important info has gone missing, my breakfast frittata had some weird oily gunk in it (and I made it myself, go figure!). My in-case-of-emergency-anti-anxiety-flight-meds which I carry as a security blanket and haven’t used in a very long time has expired and I have a trip in a few days… my vitamins this morning made me puke, and I woke up at 3am and didn’t fall back asleep til 5:30 for no good reason. When I DID wake up, I was on my face – pillow case lines, numb hands, bad mood.  Good Morning. Just now I found out that the security installation team for the building locked their box of individual spare apartment access keys in one of the apartments.  Really?  What …