Thursday, September 27, 2007

Is there a fortune teller in the house?

I need a fortune teller, a soothe-sayer, a medium, a hypnotist, someone to tell me what's gonna happen in my life. I'm tired of waiting around day after day trying to figure it out. Where's that commericial with the EASY button? Major life crisis? Just hit the EASY button. There, there. Problem solved. Someone hit your car? Bang! Fixed. Someone steal your money? Bang! You got it back! Someone steal your spouse? Bang. They stay gone! :)
It seems like the 30's is when life really whacks you. In the 30's you have to start dealing with problems you created in your 20's because you thought you knew everything there was to know about life. So people in their 30's are divorcing left and right, going bankrupt or going in debt, having career crises, looking at themselves in the mirror trying to figure out what has happened to their bodies....
That's it. The 30's SUCK. So what happens if I hit the EASY button? Will I turn 40? Will I go back to 20? Will I vaporize?
Forget the EASY button. I want a fortune teller and a voo doo doll. I want to find out what happens and beat the shit out of whoever caused the problems...muh ha ha ha....ha ha.

Monday, September 24, 2007

My new discovery: Yamuna Body Rolling.

I've stumbled upon a great way to relieve tension, realign your body, and relax stressed muscles. Yamuna Body Rolling. My doctor recommended it and sent me to a massage therapist who was certified in this technique and so far it seems very helpful and easy to do. Check it out at yamunabodyrolling.com. I got my red ball a couple of weeks ago (my therapist gave me one stretch to do with it). My curiousity was intense so I did some research and bought the book over the weekend. I've signed up for a body rolling class now too. I think this will be a great way to be kind to myself and relieve serious muscle tension! Check it out!

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Rain & Music


The first thing I should say is that I saw something pretty amazing today, that I'm sure I must have seen earlier in my life, but perhaps just don't remember...or maybe I just didn't slow down enough to realize how cool it was. A rain cloud. A rain cloud while it was raining. Way off in the distance, it was dusk, and there was just enough light and just enough dark that I could see the mist coming down from the cloud all the way down to the horizon. It was so cool. The second thing I've got to say here tonight is that James Blunt's new CD (All The Lost Souls) is really, really good and you should go out and get it pronto. I think the first song he'll release is called Same Mistake and it's my favorite one but really, the whole CD is pretty good. I rarely just go out and buy a CD without having heard anything but I'm glad I did. Good soul baring stuff. Had I been walking through that shower with this music playing all around me it would have been a perfect moment.

Monday, September 17, 2007

Monday night rant.

OJ is back in jail. It's all over the news. Everyone is talking about it. My question is this: WHY do we care? Why are we so fixated on this apparent superstar badboy? I remember the initial "chase" on television -- saw it live during one late night of my senior year of high school. I remember when the not guilty verdit was announced, how all these people were cheering in the Tate Center at UGA. And today here we go again. Why is our American public, by and large, so caught up with OJ and with people labeled superstars in Hollywood and elsewhere. Don't we have more important matters to think about, like raising our children right, hungry people on the streets, global climate change, and that freakin' jerk who hit my car and just left without saying a word or leaving a note?

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Bate bate chocolate!


Today was a good day and I was feeling rather domestic tonight so I decided to make some blueberry muffins and then some brownies, after Hal exclaimed he wanted to go on a brownie diet. Sarah had never experienced the joy of licking the bowl and spoons and such, so I handed it all over to her and this picture was captured AFTER the first wipe down of her face and arms...!

Friday, September 14, 2007

Retrospective Review

It's been one hell of a week and I am tired tonight but for some reason I just cannot wind down. I've almost finished my latest book in this new reading thing I'm doing. Reading, reading, reading. When I finish Into the Wild there are four more books waiting to take it's place in my hands at night. This has been an interesting book. The first two thirds of it moved along nicely, as the strange story about an even stranger youth unraveled. The kid walks away from college graduation at Emory University and instead of taking his twenty four grand and going to law school he decides to hitch hike and live off the land and what few people he meets along the way. For the next two years he does this until he decides to culminate his adventures in Alaska one summer. But then he starves to death. His poor family hadn't heard from him one time since college graduation. What a tragedy, although I have to say I work with this age group and have for years now and I can totally see how impassioned he was and how some people just aren't cut out to fit the mold of modern society. He obviously wasn't out to die, but that is the folly of the extreme stubborn youth I suppose. So this book was sort of depressing. Maybe that's why I'm having trouble sleeping tonight -- because this story is hard to put down and hard to leave. I wanted things to turn out differently but of course they do not. I understand that there is a movie coming about him. Check the book out if you'd like, it's slow in two sections but other than that it's good and logical story-telling.
Reading a book like this makes me even more determined to be a good mother to Sarah. Not to say that this guy's parents were bad, not the case at all. I just want our lines of communication to always be open, no matter how old she gets or how far away she lives. I'd die if I had to go two years without knowing her whereabouts or her condition only to get that call one night that she was no more. I'd just evaporate. I feel totally sorry for his parents. They had a son who had a complete mind of his own and would not stand to reason.
So here I am. I guess I'll lie down and stare at the ceiling for a while through the darkness, listen to the buzz of the box fan that I insist on having nearby, and wonder why some people do the things they do, including myself.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Remembering September 11th, 2001.

Today at the college where I work I hosted a 9/11 memorial for our students and staff and we had a speaker who is a minister. I showed a video on our large plasma televisions from CNN, with lots of footage from that day and the days afterward depicting the tragedy and how our nation tried to grapple with it.

Last night I read an article in USA Today that asked the question, should we continue to remember and mark this date publically, or should we not? How helpful and/or healing is forgetting?

I had just turned 27 when the planes crashed and burned and buildings toppled that day, killing thousands of people. I remember exactly where I was. I was in graduate school at the University of Georgia in the College Student Affairs program and had just left a statistics class. Another person in the program, Tanya, stopped me in the hallway and asked me if I had heard that America was under attack. I cannot remember the last time I saw Tanya, and I don't know where she is now, but that conversation with her, that bit of significance in my life will live in my memory for a long while. I quickly headed back to the dormitory where I worked as a graduate resident and found the large television on in the lobby, CNN tuned in, with hundreds of students watching. Some of them were crying, some were scrambling to call family members or friends in New York, and some were simply mesmerized by what was unfolding in front of their eyes. I started watching CNN almost around the clock, and I had never watched the news before, aside from being forced to sit through it when I was a kid and my father turned it on. I had never felt threatened as an American, even though three of my family members had fought overseas on behalf of America. I was 27 years old, and I had never felt unsafe or vunerable simply because of the soil I stepped onto each day to walk to class. What a priviledged life I had led.

I started keeping up with the national news that day, watching and reading CNN in addition to my usual daily Red and Black student newspaper. I started to develop an interest in people who had to live in countries constantly threatened by suicide bombers or military police, or coup de etats hiding and operating in the darkness of night. I started that day to take more pride in the American flag, the nation itself where I was so priviledged to grow up, and the men and women who defended that freedom at the drop of a hat (or building), risking their lives to do so. I started to think about people whose very job requires that they be willing to sacrifice their own lives to save and help others in danger, such as the hundreds of firefighters and police men and women who died that day.

Perhaps it is okay to forget that which brings us insufferable pain, I don't know. Again, I was lucky. I didn't know anyone who died that day. So for all of you who did, for all of you that need to forget, I will hold the candle. I'll remember the day that changed my perspective on life and death, on sacrifice and freedom, on love and hate, on religion and sin.

Love, Heather

Friday, September 7, 2007

Happy Birthday Boo.


How old are you Sarah?

I'm free years ole Mommy!

I love this little child more than life itself. Motherhood is HARD WORK but it is so rewarding. I never thought I'd be excited to see any other person pee in a toilet. I never thought if offered a booger out of another person's nose, I'd take it so willingly off their hands. I never saw myself cleaning up another persons vomit or being so excited to spend the last dollar in my pocket to clothe or feed them. I never thought I'd be so happy to see another person smile. She's a seperate little being with all her own thoughts and dreams, her ways and her expressions, but she's also a large part of me. Happy Birthday little one.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

Hokey Pokey Morning.

Yesterday morning I was sleeping peacefully when I heard a whine at the side of our bed. It was my little tot of course, wanting one of us to hoist her up into our bed, so my husband quickly obliged. I heard him several times trying to shush her whining but I knew I was going to have to come out of my slumber, crawl out from underneath the warm covers, and make the morning trek to the fridge to get the little whiner a sippy cup full of milk. So I did. And she drank it down and Hal cuddled her again, shushing her, shhh Sarah be quiet, it's not time to get up yet.

Oh but it was. Within moments after I'd slithered back twixt the sheets and she'd gulped down her milk, I felt her little bony elbows digging into my chest. She was crawling on top of me, and soon after the gouging elbows she was sitting right on top of me, my c-section scar underneath her rear end.

"Mommy, mommy! Let's sing!" Then instantly she starts bouncing/dancing and I begin to laugh and groan, (a) because I haven't gone to the bathroom yet and my bladder is full, and (b) because she's a 32 pound wrecker ball pummelling my mid-section.

"You put your right han in, you put your right han out, you put your right han in and you shake it all about! You do da hokey pokey and dat's what it's all about!"

Hal laughs and stares through the dim light at her, shaking his head in disbelief.

"Why is she so happy in the morning?"

Answer: Because she doesn't have to go to work darling.

She bounces some more, and loudly sings what we refer to as the Sarah Medley: a lovely rendition of Finkle, finkle little star, the ABC's, and Where is Thumbkin?

Finally Hal is able to drag her off of me and get her to slip back underneath the "cubbers" and snuggle somewhat quietly with him. I roll onto my side and look at my sweet little child with her eyes closed and her thumb in her mouth and I silently hope that it's not time to get up yet.

In that instant the alarm goes off. Welcome to another day.

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Save the World, part 2.

Here are some more suggestions from the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 essential skills to stop climate change -- or live through it, by David de Rothschild.
#38: Paper or plastic? Neither. Take your own cloth, reusable, bag to the store with you. Like, duh. #39: Plant a tree. Again, DUH. #45: Take a bath together. Now this one is funny to me because I remember as a 4 year old my father told me that he was taking a shower with my step mother to save water. Uh huh, right, I thought eleven years later. Turns out, he really was saving water, and therefore, the world. He'd just found a mutually beneficial way to do it. #46: Build a straw house. What? Did David de Rothschild ever hear of the Big Bad Wolf? I think not! #48: Green your roof, e.g. plant a garden on the roof of your house or office building. Hmmm. Lemme think. NO! #54: Pronounce "nuclear" correctly. Ahem. George Bush?
Useful stuff I feel absolutely responsible to pass on...
Use rechargeable batteries, stop buying bottled water, buy recycled paper products and things made of bamboo, use old rubber tires as building materials, buy recycled polyester clothing or organic cotton clothing (Patagonia!!), wash your clothes in cold water with eco friendly washing powders, wear vintage (a.k.a. recycled) clothing and accessories.
Also, #68: Buy a Camel. Not a bad idea...but you'll have to read the book to find out why. Interesting creatures!
Wait, wait..one more. Send my blog to ten of your friends. Sorry, that one was just my ploy to become a famous writer...again.

Monday, September 3, 2007

Stay at home, save the world.

I get 3 straight days off work and think that I have all this time to do leisure activities so I go out and buy 5 new books to read. One of them is the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook. I'm about half way through this intoxicating little read tonight and because I am completely dreading the work day tomorrow I've decided to share with all of you suggestion number 21 in this book. Work at Home! Check it out! Work at home. Of course my problem would probably be that I wouldn't crawl out of bed until I absolutely had to, and I'd be distracted most of the day by my under-organized house. However, when the mood did strike to churn some work out, I'd be happily alone and not surrounded by people, and I'd get more done. And I'd help save the world from over-heating. Since my job sort of requires that I be amongst the students, I'll just have to save the world in other ways. Bank online. Grow tomatos in my backyard. Change my incandescent lightbulbs to compact florescents. Those are easy. Composting worms and weighing my garbage? Not so much. Get the book. It's extremely interesting.