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Obviously, I didn't write that. The only chicken I've ever held was one about to be roasted. Guess who did write that? Norman Rockwell!! I just thought it was so interesting. Someone out there who has chickens...does this really work?
Because it's much more fun than asking for red pepper flakes.
![]() "You pick up the chicken and rock him back and forth a few times. When you set him down, he will stand just as you've placed him for four or five minutes. Of course, you have to run behind the easel quickly to do much painting before the chicken moves. If you want to paint the chicken full face, the procedure is even more complicated because the eyes of a chicken are on the sides of his head and when he looks at you he turns his head. I finally got a long stick, and after I'd set the chicken down and gone behind by easel, I'd rap the wall at one side of the chicken and he'd turn his head toward me to look at the wall. It's very strenuous painting a chicken." Obviously, I didn't write that. The only chicken I've ever held was one about to be roasted. Guess who did write that? Norman Rockwell!! I just thought it was so interesting. Someone out there who has chickens...does this really work?
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![]() I have a tendency to skip the beginner level of many things, especially craft projects. When my sister-in-law invited me to go to a glass studio, I picked out a dinner size plate and proceeded to start cutting harder curved shapes rather than easier straight cuts. When I went to a paint-it-yourself pottery place, I went in with an intricate design of dogs and cats for my plate. When I offered to make a quilt for my brother and his wife, I didn’t pick a standard pattern. I decided to work out a color wash art quilt. King size no less. And when I decided to try chalk painting I didn’t test it out on small table, I decided to do my large three-piece entertainment unit with lots of shelves and doors. I’m in the middle of the last project. Actually, more like the first 20%, not even the middle. What was I thinking? LOL. It’s actually going fine, but I thought it was a weekend project and after two days, I can say with confidence it’s a multi-weekend project. I don’t see how it will get done in time to consider Christmas decorating this year. (I should mention that painting project is in the middle of the family room.) This fearlessness does not extend to everything. With great wisdom, I learned to ski on the bunny slope like most people. The consequences of bad skiing are a little different than the consequences of badly painted furniture. There's nothing about "you think too much" that sounds like a compliment, and I've heard it from several boyfriends over the years. But I shrug it off because I don't see why MY thinking should bother anyone else. In fact, I'm rather pleased with my thinking and when people have made this remark, it wasn't acknowledging that I was needlessly ruminating over worries and amplifying horrible outcomes. It was always said when I'd really thought through something and come out with an unexpected observation or relevant question. Maybe, she thinks, they were actually slightly impressed, having not thought of the thing(s) I did themselves.
I can't explain it, but I have this vague, tip-of-the-tongue feeling that I'm working out some great contribution to the world or large personal insight. But I can't put my finger on what I'm solving. I've had this feeling for about a year now. I don't try to figure it out...I just let those thoughts run in the background. If I'm going to "think too much" I might as well use it to serve some human good. I put forth the hypothesis that most creative people think a lot -- I believe it's where ideas are born. Our brains are so amazing and powerful, I wonder why everyone doesn't think a lot. Why leave any part of that gift on the table? But this is me thinking too much. On Thanksgiving, we are thankful for the conventional things… time with friends and family from afar, good health, our jobs…but wouldn’t it be refreshing to mention the stuff we never say out loud? I’m thankful for these things:
![]() Outsmartation -- that thing that happens to you when you think you've found a clever way to do something but you have actually outsmarted yourself and it comes back to bite you. I left work about 2:30p yesterday and because there was a massive traffic problem on Rt. 78, I took to the back roads to get home. It was a warm and sunny November day and so, when I realized I was right near Voorhees State Park and I had sneakers on, I thought, "I'll go for a hike! Let me take advantage of my short work day and this beautiful weather! Why not?" I had a nice time looking at fallen leaves, strange mushrooms, unusual footprints and wondering why a particular stand of old growth trees was dying. I emerged from the woods as I always do -- calmed from the day's stresses. Then I got home. Crap. I still need to make two pies for Thanksgiving. Because work had been so demanding the past week, I had already made the mid-week decision that I would forgo homemade pie crusts. I made a special run to the grocery store and I now had two Pillsbury pie crusts in the frig. They don't unroll well when they are cold. You have to bring them to room temperature. But the house was cold so that would take a while. Seeking to accelerate the warming process -- here comes the clever part -- I decided to warm my oven and set them in there for a short period. Like warming the house...only smaller space and faster. Clever, right? Well, when I was ready to unroll the crusts, I found they had probably softened a little too much and when I tried to unroll the first one, it actually created tears and holes. I wound up smashing it into a ball and re-rolling it. This created more mess (flour on the counter and the floor, more things dirty). In a futile attempt to not have to repeat that, I threw the other crust back in the frig. But it was done. I was outsmarted by my own cleverness. I'm sure that doesn't happen to anyone else, right? In the end, I still produced a nice-looking pie, and I already confessed the store-bought crust to my Thanksgiving host -- who said she likes a French apple pie better. Damn. Need to remember that for next year. I think I can handle crumb topping without any cleverness. Everyday it seems there is something new some group gets offended over. Some of these translate to new workplace rules (no more perfumed body products -- I'm chemically sensitive). Some of these inspire civil disobedience (Black Lives Matter). The worst, we fight wars over (you should die for your cartoon of my God). This morning, it's a story from the University of Ottawa.
The Hindu American Foundation runs a campaign called, "Take Back Yoga" that's trying to stop the commercialization of yoga by going after non-Hindu yoga instructors for "cultural appropriation" -- as in, "That's MY religious practice and you are not qualified because you are not from India and you are not qualified to provide spiritual guidance. You are oppressing my culture by taking over aspects of it to suit your own need." Peaceful, zen yoga, practiced by the calmest people you know, under attack! A non-Hindu instructor (teaching disabled students I might add) has had her class at the University of Ottawa cancelled after 7 years and 60 students/week. Maybe it's my middle-class, white and privileged upbringing that makes me not see these problems. I'm a 'live and let live' kind of person. I might think your stuff is weird, but whatever…. So, I think I need something of my own to be offended about. My heritage is German. Beer was invented by the Germans. I am starting a campaign against the likes of Budweiser, Miller and Coors for cultural appropriation. It's the Germans who are best qualified to make beer, host Octoberfest and encourage drunkedness. Who's with me? As inanimate objects go, garden hoses and I do not get along. I have 6 of them, which right away tells you there is a problem. Only 3 are attached to the house and get regular use. The 4th is a previous dead hose that I had to cut the non-working sprayer off -- but it went on to have a second life dumping my hot-tub four times a year. Hoses 5 and 6 were particularly useless choices that I just haven't gotten rid of yet.
If I had a billion dollars, I would sponsor a huge prize for someone to redesign hoses to make them bend to my will. Right now, there are none that will behave. Yesterday I tried to put them away for winter - banish them out of my sight is more like it. It was 50 degrees out, but despite violent jerking, pulling and throwing the thing around like a jump rope, they willfully remained the same shape they were. Even on a hot summer day, they are only slightly more agreeable. If they coil up nice, they go flat on a corner. If they don't kink, they also don't coil up nice. I've tried many devices in the hopes of taming the hoses. I need a hose whisperer...someone who has the patience to sense what they really need and nurture them gently into submission. I lack patience with hoses. And they can sense this...retaliating because they can. They allow water to trickle down your arm, or they drip on your shoes. Pull too hard and they close right up on you and refuse to play. If we can put a man on the moon, why has nobody figured out a better hose? I sometimes get them to stop dripping -- a combination of a new washer and pipe tape -- only to be completely unable to remove the sprayer at the end of the summer. Two hoses went in the shed with sprayers stuck on this year. Sigh. Out of sight and mind until spring when the Hose Games will resume. Today I registered for the Rutgers University Big Chill 5K race. You always declare your age and sex when registering for a race -- so they can make awards to runners in different categories and you can see a fair comparison to 'like' runners. But I wasn't expecting this: Non-binary? Prefer not to disclose? Wow. The world sure has changed.
My bird feeder has spent the last eight months in a Rubbermaid tub in the garage. Two minutes ago -- not exaggerating -- I filled it with seed and hung it up and there are already like 30 birds out there eating black oil sunflower seeds and pooping on my deck. Did one bird by chance fly by it and tell the other 29? Do they smell it? Or -- dun, dun, dun -- are they watching me?
I don't think birds have a highly developed sense of smell so I conclude they are watching me. Maybe they were here last year and they've been impatiently waiting in the trees and wild, prickly overgrowth that is my back yard -- tapping their beaks like Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, simulating her expiring biological clock. A grateful downy woodpecker, and later a tufted titmouse, fluttered for a long several seconds at my sliding glass door, where I am sitting just two feet away. I believe they were saying thank-you (or maybe just admiring themselves in their reflections). I thanked them out loud for coming back. They amuse me throughout the winter with their chaotic flight, endless hunger and fussing at one another. And it's a magical thing to hear a bird sing in the dark of winter. I do rather feel like I must start closing my curtains at night now. All those beady bird eyes.... Geeze...it's six days till Thanksgiving and this is the headline. A Consumer Reports study has found that antibiotic resistant bacteria, called superbugs, are common in our meat supply, particularly in turkey meat. And a new gene that makes bacteria highly resistant to a last-resort class of antibiotics has been found in people and pigs in China - including in samples of bacteria with epidemic potential.
That kind of sucks the wind out of Thanksgiving doesn't it? This is the 152nd Thanksgiving Lincoln declared it a national holiday. Of course, the first celebration with the Pilgrims was almost 400 years ago! And the turkeys were wild, not farmed. What have we done to ourselves? We cannot keep poisoning the planet. Antibiotics have saved billions of lives, but like with most things, it has come at a cost that we are only beginning to pay for. I'm going to eat turkey on Thanksgiving, but there will be a part of me that enjoys it a little less. |
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July 2017
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