Nativity scenes have long been a point of tension in my relationships with my family members*. Most people think that the nativity figures should be spread around in an attractive display. I tend to think that the display should be more realistic with everyone standing as close to the baby as they can.

I've developed a bad habit of waiting until the family member is out of the room, then rearranging their nativity scene to my preferences. This makes me happy until a few days/hours later when they (usually Mama) notices and isn't quite as pleased.

This year, my mother gave me a nativity scene of my very own for two reasons. 1) So I would stop rearranging hers and 2) She was upset that I used Yoda as baby Jesus last year.**

So, now I have my own, leading up to the subject line of this post. I set it up this afternoon, stepped back and asked "Does that goat seem a bit obsessed to you?"

Picture and Poll behind the cut.

( Pictures and silly poll )

* In this instance, I mean tension in a fun-loving, teasing way. Nobody has ever actually gotten upset at me I think. Though a few have become annoyed. I only do this to close family who love me.

** Last year my Star War christmas ornaments wouldn't fit on my tree, so I arranged them on our mantle. Andres and I decided that it looked like a warped nativity scene and came to the conclusion that Yoda was baby Jesus. My mother was a bit.... perturbed by this story.

Tags: poll, silly
Current State: happy

A lot of my understanding of time and calendars is based on what's going on at my niche of work. Publication deadlines and ahead-of-print due dates, and expected online file delivery. After 9 years of this, the schedule in my head is a bit skewed.

As proof I offer this: I'm pretty sure it is now 2010. I published the last 2009 volume (Financial Economics) Tuesday, and will post the first 2010 volume (Psychology) on Monday. It's time to start being careful dating the checks!

I became aware of this when I started making new years resolutions and thinking of things that I want to accomplish over the next year. When I realized that it is in fact still November, I tried to talk my head back into the normal schedule. However it hasn't worked. This is partially because I find it kind of nifty to have a different schedule from the rest of the world--it seems less crowded. Plus it seems fitting to start the new year with celebrations - Thanksgiving, Christmas and so forth.

So... here I am. One of my goals is to get back in (virtual) touch with people. This means LJ, which I've been ignoring a bit. I've got lots of posts in my head, which I'll probably be drafting today and posting at strange times over the next bit.

Hello again. Happy New Year.

Tags: all about me, being social
Current State: calm
Current Noises: Cooking

(Background: Brooks and I are in the beginning of a long weekend getaway in Pasadena. Today we visited Huntington Gardens/Library.)

paraphrase follows

Suzanne: That isn't really...
Brooks: Um, yes I think it is.
Suzanne: That's ..*points*
Brooks: Yes.
Suzanne stares and stares in amazement, feeling the first tear slide down her cheek and feeling like the biggest literature nerd in the world.
Suzanne hears a snuffle and turns to realize that Brooks is tearing up too.
Suzanne and Brooks turn back to stare at the Gutenberg Bible.

There was also the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales, and one of the Shakespeare Folios. It was.... unbelievable.

Wow.

Current State: calm

Ah, the Christmas catalogs. I like to go to the websites of the stranger ones and check out their outlet stores. And of course I thought I'd share. (Click at your own risk.)

Train your fish to shoot baskets!

Warning! This one's a really horrid pun.

Time lapse plant cam, is actually pretty cool

I kid you not, there's a Dog DNA Analysis Kit.

For an aspiring Martha Stewart with too much time on her hands, there's Christmas-themed chocolate bar wrappers. Chocolate bars not included.

Drumroll please.... Decorative Geese with 12 different outfits.

Current State: amused

First I hear that Marge Simpson is on this month's cover of Playboy.

Then I read that a group of Sixth graders in Sweden convinced their countries advertising watchdog to censure the Toys R Us catalog for gender stereotyping.

Then just to top off my evening, I browse through a serious look at the latest upswing in zombies. (They blame Wall street).

Wait a second, there's a band called the Zombeatles that makes strange covers of Beatles songs? Oh dear.

suzanne

A few years ago Brooks and I were in Chicago over Thanksgiving. It was quite wonderful. On Thanksgiving day we strolled through the main shopping district looking at the newly unveiled Christmas windows. As we stopped in front of one such window Brooks presented the quote of the trip. "Well, it's actually quite pretty. In an 'Oh my gracious it's a Christmas tree made of feathers!' kind of way."

Today I received an odd Christmas catalog in the mail. I was looking through it and encountered this christmas tree made of feathers. (The Chicago tree, by the by, was white/silver.) I started trying to imagine the reactions of friends and family to receiving such a gift.

So I thought I'd ask. If someone gave you this tree (and/or the matching wreath) what would you say?


Poll #1457717 Feathers!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

Oh! It's a Christmas tree made of feathers!

Which would you prefer? (explain what you would do with your unique gift in the comments please)

( Velvet poinsettia pillow and dog boxes)

Current State: tired

A few weeks ago my partner Kevin and I were discussing the cuteness factor of baby hiccups. (Well actually we were debating which was cuter, baby hiccups or baby yawns.) Now I have the hiccups and they aren't at all cute or fuzzy. As I was pondering this I realized that I hadn't posted a pointless poll in quite a while.

So while I'm waiting for my meeting to start....

Poll #1446486 Hiccups
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 18

What's your opinion on hiccups?

Current State: stressed

So. I'm culling my book collection and needed an empty box to store the reject books. To get an empty box, I had to unpack a box (presumably of books).

You know how you get to that last hour of packing and you lose all pretense of organization and just start throwing what's left in the drawers into available boxes? It was one of those. Among other random bits, it contained: (in random order of course)

* $3.47 in change
* 2 hair thingies
* 5 pens
* 2 candles
* 1 matchstick in a plastic bag (?)
* Six nails and 2 screws wrapped in muslin
* an orange cat (oh wait, that's a Beatrice**)
* a 1986 yearbook from the Cheshire Academy (!?)
* a spoon

I'm now sitting puzzled on the couch snapping green beans and occasionally looking over at the yearbook thinking, "?"

--------
**Beatrice has an internal radar for boxes. She was in the living room, I was in the bedroom. I turned to throw the match away, turned back around and she was sitting smugly in the box. She looked at me, tilted her head, and Meowed: "It's a box!" This repeated several times.

Brooks and I were on our way to the flea market this morning, chatting about Kiya who is having a baby right now. We were talking about how the family was holding up, and progress, and so forth. Then my brain took an abrupt turn.

Suzanne: Does it have a theme?
Brooks: Startled and confused look.
Suzanne: The flea market I mean. Not the delivery!

But I got this strange mental picture of a Star Wars themed baby delivery. The husband in a Jedi costume, the midwife saying "now repeat your mantra" and mother-to-be hunkered in the pool screaming "Do or Do Not! There is no TRRRRRRYYYYYYYAARRRRGHHH."

Explaining this to Brooks got me a very interesting look. Themed deliveries are a very bad idea. Amusing. But bad.

PS: Oh! you could have a light saber to cut the cord!

All of our cats so far have had a quirk. Eowyn liked to chew paper, she preferred tax forms, medical records, and voting information. Beatrice likes to wake me up at 4:30am and get cuddles.

Julie, our newest cat, creates sock art. She will carefully dig through the laundry (clean/dirty, she doesn't mind) pick out a sock and meow loudly in triumph. She then carries it through the house, still singing, until she finds the perfect place for it to be. Then she leaves it. It's.... profoundly adorable.

Last week, I came home to find the following art installation in our main room:


Beatrice seems amused by the entire thing and has taken to raising her head and carefully watching the ritual placing of the socks:


(Other cat owners have clued me in that Julie may see the socks as kittens. This makes sense to me as she was miscarrying a litter when she was dropped off at the shelter.)

Tags: beatrice, cats, julie
Current State: amused

Pictures of my newest nephew Colton and family under the cut!

( and this would be the before mentioned cut )

Tags: family
Current State: happy

I finally found the camera and got some pictures of our new cat Julie. Enjoy!

( Cuteness under cut )

Tags: beatrice, cats, julie

For reasons too complicated to explain here, brooksmoses was trying to quickly come up with an example of a joke beginning with "... walks into a bar."

The first was an old programmers joke "two strings walk into a bar" but that wasn't really funny so for some reason he came up with "Two mimes and a goldfish walk into a bar...."

But we can't come up with a punchline. Anyone want to try?

Suzanne, amused

I really am planning on coming back and posting a huge thank you to everyone who commented on my last post, and explain a little more about what's going on in my life. Plus I need to write a post about my cat Eowyn who is sick and our experiences shoving pills down her throat and giving her water IVs under the skin.

But I've been distracted by tea given to me at Christmas. I love tea and the associated rituals.[1] I love herbals and infusions, and most of the colors. I tend to be a bit skeptical about fruit-flavored teas though. I'm a bit of a snob and tend to buy my tea loose from Tea Time in Palo Alto. I've brewed various teas for my mother, and gifted my sister-in-law with my favorite herbal brew last year. (It's pretty! If she didn't want to drink it she could use it as potpourri!)

My family has translated this into "Suzanne loves all sorts of weird tea!" So I get weird tea, most of which I turn out to like well enough, since you know .... it's tea.

For Christmas my brother and sister-in-law gifted me with Lemongrass and Mulberry teas from Satira (which I'd never heard of before.) I'm posting about it because the description on the boxes amuses me (italics are mine and mine alone.)

Lemongrass: "...noted by herbal professionals as a cooling herb and is known to help stabilizes body temperature, cleanse and enhance immunity."

Mulberry tea: "It may help restore health from ailment caused by kidney conditions, such as migraine, insomnia, diabetes, and normalizing blood pressure."

Um. That's all. Gotta go hook up Eowyn's IV now.

[1] Hmm. I should host a tea party.....

That's strange tea.

Tags: all about me, random

One of the things I work on in therapy is methods of detecting and derailing harmful trains of thought. I've gotten pretty good at recognizing bad/unhelpful/negative thoughts, and I'm getting better at stopping and replacing them.

The past couple of days though I haven't been able to stop spiraling. (a term I use to mean one bad thought leading to another and to another and... ) I'm sinking into a place where I'm finding it difficult to think anything positive about myself. I'm starting to withdraw too. It doesn't feel like I can do anything right, so I want to hide and just stop so I won't make things worse.

You may not realize it, but you guys are one of my back-up systems. I know it sounds strange and self-serving but I did promise my therapist I'd do this if I found myself here. So even though I'm embarrassed and hesitant here I am.

*sigh*

Please help me think positive things about myself. Tell me one (or two if you wish) things you like about me or something I've done that made you smile. I promise I won't argue with you this once. Posting here or sending me an e-mail would both be fine.

Tags: all about me, not-dealing, positive thoughts
Current State: sad

Remember what I said about the mis-timed meds? Here I am at 3:46 am. It isn't that I'm wide awake, I'm not. It's like I've taken a sleeping pill with a couple cups of coffee.

Yuck.

suzi

I guess the keyboard equivalent of thinking out loud is typing out loud

Situation:
During the week I have a fairly good schedule. When I wake up in the morning I take my thyroid medicine. I wait an hour then eat breakfast at my desk. At lunchtime I take my anti-depressant. I have an e-mail alert set up there to remind me to eat. After dinner I take my other meds.

This makes sense because I have to take the thyroid on an empty stomach, the anti-depressant wakes me up, the other meds make me a little bit sleepy.

However, on the weekends my schedule goes completely random. I still take my thyroid meds when I get up, though that's much later than my normal schedule. Because I can't eat for an hour after taking that I usually forget/skip breakfast. But then I forget lunch until it's late and either just wait for dinner or eat late enough that I'm not hungry for dinner. Plus I forget to take my anti-depressant and take it with the rest of my meds - which keeps me up late.

Thyroid/anti-depressant/birth control pills all work best if taken at the same time every day. Moving them later triggers headaches and strange sleep patterns. And I suspect that taking the anti-depressant with the bcp is making me queasy.

Solutions/thoughts:
I /have/ to stop skipping meals on the weekends. If I take my thyroid med as soon as I'm mobile then I can go back to sleep if I want, or piddle around. Making an actual breakfast (as opposed to cereal or fruit) for me and Brooks sounds like it would be a wonderful thing too. Not only to make sure I eat, but to spend time together.

I've set my cell phone to beep at me at 1pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Hopefully that'll remind me to take my anti-depressant (and to have at least a snack-type thing.)

I've also set an alert to revist the problem in a couple of weeks.

Tags: health, lists
Current State: grumpy

Me: Eowyn! You do not like Popcorn!
Eowyn: nabs piece of popcorn and happily eats.
Brooks: Of course she does, it's edible paper.

That's all.

Tags: cats!

Tags: in the news, politics, positive thoughts
Current State: busy

There's about five of us, with our laptops, camped out in the boardroom with our laptops watching 5 different live feeds on 3 highres "small" screens and 1 large screen.

There's cookies and coffee and lots of smiles. Good day.