Ordinary Time

An advertising pitch to gain a milk account goes awry. "'It is a waste,' said Daniel in a quantifiable shout, wrenching his arm away from Alan. 'Ours is the most wasteful culture to ever foul the planet! And advertising's to blame! ...'" - Alan Opts Out by Courtney Maum, p. 76 Alan, an advertising executive, having lost the account then proceeds to lose his mind a little bit, moving into the playhouse in the backyard, giving up purchasing anything, choosing only to walk, etc. His family thinks he's mad, all the while his wife is desperately trying to join the very exclusive women's club in their neighborhood and his children are desperately trying to not fit in with that neighborhood's culture.  This is very much over the top satire, but not to the point you despise the main characters. The author gives them too much humanity for that to happen. But it is a cautionary tale about consumerism, worrying about what other people think, and missing w...

Cue music: dum-dum-dumdum... Your mission should you choose to accept it (as if we had a choice): Figure out a driving schedule which delivers three teens to and from work while accommodating parents' work, appointments, and other schedules. There is also a teen's volunteer commitment and H.'s Friday morning activity. Places of work and volunteering are not close to each other, varying from 8 minutes from home to 30 minutes from home.  The second half of dinner was spent figuring out who was going to take whom to work when. There were so many moving parts we needed to keep notes. (This is the quickly scrawled version and the author did not know I was going to post it on the blog.) It will get rewritten so we can understand it because no one can keep all this in their head.  Weekends are not currently terribly relaxing.  And one other thing to share that is only related to the above by it dealing with dinner, have you seen this new cookbook? I checked it out on a whim last...

Does anyone else collect careers they think they might have enjoyed if only they had known about them when such decisions need to be made? I have a running list that I keep adding to, with my most recent addition of experimental archeologist. This was because I was listening to a podcast where Sally Pointer was being interviewed. I've been aware of Ms. Pointer for a while, but this was the first interview I had listened to.  One of her areas of interest and experimentation is bast fibers, of which the flax plant is one. Linen comes from the inside fibers of the flax plant and it is quite an involved process to go from the plant to a spinnable fiber. (Thank you to everyone who sent me the link to the YouTube channel about the woman documenting her journey of growing flax with the end goal of sewing a linen dress.) The fiber from the flax plant is the long and strong fibers found inside the stem. The process involves getting (really controlled rotting) the outside vegetable matter, ...

I didn't care for or enjoy East of Eden, but I can't seem to get away from it. Evidently there is going to be some television version coming out soon, and I seem to be seeing all of the articles discussing the book and production. I truly don't understand why everyone is so gaga over it. Reading a couple of the articles helped me understand why I had so many issues with the book, though. In my first post about the book (linked above), I had mentioned that I didn't buy Steinbeck's assertion that some people are just born evil nor did I enjoy his tacit mysogony. Even as I wrote that post I knew I wasn't really getting at the crux of the problem.  Here's what I think ultimately disturbed me the most. Cathy, the truly evil character in the book, is almost a caricature because she is just so evil without any redeeming characteristics. There are also a couple of male characters who are able to "see through" Cathy because they have evil impulses within t...

I came across an article about an international study a few days ago that I wanted to talk about. It was a study looking at key childhood experiences that predicted emotional well being in adulthood. For the well being piece, the researchers looked at health, happiness, anxiety, life satisfaction with social relationships, and a general trust in others.  There were three experiences in childhood which correlated with positive measures of these components. Just three. They were: Responsive care from parents (or caregiver), ample amounts of free play, and positive emotional climate at home.  It's actually pretty straightforward. You probably guessed that it was the free play item that caught my eye and was the reason I decided to share it.  Before I start making people unhappy, let's do a quick review of what free play is and why it's so important. Free play is child directed activity that is enjoyable for the child. This is not play or activities that are directed by adult...

When J. goes to work he takes whichever children have classes that day with him. They go to class, do homework, roam the school until their father is done for the day and then they all come home. It's a great system with no extra driving needed. It's a great system that is until J. needs to be at a meeting off campus two hours away all day.  While there is a shuttle bus that goes between the end of the Metra line in our little town and the NIU campus in DeKalb, there is no additional transportation from NIU to the community college in a small town three miles further west from DeKalb. (For selfish reasons, I really think there should be a regular shuttle between NIU and the community college.)  This meant I found myself driving children too and from school today. It was a lot of driving especially since I added in a bunch of errands on each return trip... Getting gas, Costco, farm store, equine vet (to pick up prescriptions, and the library all told. The library was the last s...