Sweater Obsessed

I won't be talking about shopping here, although part of this sweater obsession has resulted in me being constantly on the lookout for sweaters. And there are some very nice sales out there, my sweater wardrobe is expanding.

The past few weeks in Denver have been chilly. The temperature varies between cold and most extremely cold, and I just can't seem to get warm. This isn't entirely unusual for me, I've always been found heating my bum near the fire, or cuddled up under as many blankets as can be spared. But this year, instead of just dealing with the cold as I've usually done (and in the past I've eventually learned to get used to the cold) I seem to fear the cold. I take extra precautions against the possibility of getting a chill. Each morning I put on at least two layers, top to bottom. If this keeps up, I'll need to buy half my clothes in a larger size, just so I can fit everything underneath. And still, if you believe, with my thickest and nicest long underwear bunched up under my sweaters and pants, I am still cold. Is there some point where too many clothes provide the opposite effect? Perhaps there is a kinetic battle going on between all my layers, and the cold is winning.

I spend a great deal of time at work lately, and the temperature there is never pleasant. I'm still unable to determine if it's colder than most places, or if I'm just the exception. The other workers seem to be split; sometimes they are wearing their coats and scarves, other times they complain of being too hot. Me, I'm sometimes so cold my nose starts dripping.

And outside, I won't be found without my long down coat. Of course, with all my layers on under the coat, I'm starting to feel like Ralphie's younger brother in A Christmas Story--my arms sticking out straight from the sides of my body, and me waddling around like a fat little duck. 

This morning I awoke to a wet ground. It seems that rain fell overnight. This is highly unusual for Colorado this time of year. Yet it makes me feel like spring is around the corner. Maybe my being too cold is psychological. Maybe now I can believe I'll be warm once again.

Merry Christmas!

Here is a list of things I like:

My down booties...I didn't even know they made these things until recently, and I don't know why I was asked so suffer to long. If only I can convince B&N that I need to wear these to work.

Snowboarding...I love the free feeling, swooshing down the hill, passing skiers from Texas. I also recently discovered how relaxed I become when I listen to music, and how much easier and more fun snowboarding becomes.

The beaded birds on my Christmas tree...they sort of remind me of the National Lampoon christmas tree, which actually contained a squirrel, not a bird. But these birds perch on the branch and make me happy. Who puts beaded birds on their tree? I do.

Going on dates...David took me out to dinner the other night. How nice it was to feel singled out and special!

Online shopping...my new vice. Victoria's Secret is my favorite for shopping, but lately I've been branching out. It's fun to have a package sitting outside the door when I get home. I think I like it much better than physically shopping because I don't have to worry about other shoppers.

Sugar cookies. I challenge anyone to make better sugar cookies than I do.

Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace, Anna Karinina. Most Russian writers, I like. You should too.

Guessing what I'm getting for Christmas...David hates when I guess right. He likes me to be surprised. I think I'm getting a Nintendo DS this year. Or a KitchenAid mixer. I'll let you know...I have a pretty good record.

Spaghetti...need I say more?

Driving fast...now that gas costs less, is it ok? 

Lists...I think lists are great. I like making lists to keep organized. I like using lists for logic. I like seeing objects compared in the same list. I love lists.

Retail, re tale, re tell

I'm working in a store. During Christmas. I feel this gives me perspective on the human race, how they are feeling, what they are thinking, and what the general mood is out there. After surviving the pre-Christmas shop, I can say that overall I am pleasantly surprised. I expected the masses to be raging, for people to pass their frustration on me--the lowly worker bee. For the most part, this didn't happen. Many people passed along their "happy holidays" and "merry Christmases" and "thank you for helping me because I can't help myself-ises." Of course, there were those who couldn't help themselves. They were complainy, wouldn't be satisfied if I had delivered the products to their home in my bikini, and could have done with a good old-fashioned throttle (ah, how I daydream!). 

Which brings me to the next surprise of the season. How short-tempered I've become. Oh how short. tempered. I've. become. Seriously. I'm so easily bothered by how stupid people can be. And how quick they are to treat me like I'm stupid. I cried one day, as one lady impolitely asked me to hurry up and just tell her what the total was, and as she took her dear time writing her check, I just looked over the line of people and realized none of them knew me. How much I like to read. How many instruments I can play. What a delightful sense of humor I have. And the tears came for minutes after that. The customers after her pretended not to notice that I was having difficulty controlling my emotions. No one asked if I was okay. No one told me to take a moment for myself. And ever since that day, I make less of an effort to make the customer care about me. I roll my eyes at them as they struggle to remember the name of the book they drove all the way across town to pick up. I walk away from them before they have a chance to ask another question or (heaven forbid) thank me. I interrupt them when they take too long to say what I already know what they are going to say. One day, a man was in a hurry and decided to take it out on me. I proceeded to move as slowly as possible. What little power I have over the consumer, I have decided to abuse.

This is not me. I don't like it. Yet, I am unable to stop the behavior. Sure, some days are better than others, and I'm able to pull lame jokes out of thin air for the entertainment of my customer, or I'm able to smile through some small abuse. But others are so bad I can feel the hatred seeping out my pores (and I despise anything seeping out my pores). I think the solution is to quit. To stay in bed all day (or for as long as I want), and to never work in customer service again. Problem solved. 

It's Hard To Catch Up

Ok, here's the whirlwind tour of my life...

I'm in school for web design.   That technically means my blog page should look better than it does.  Maybe it will someday...that's a gauge of my talent-to-be and the capabilities of Blogger.  If you see my official blog switch web addresses, you'll know which one it is.

Next...I'm working at Barnes & Noble.  I'm sad that I've advanced no further than when I was sixteen--working retail.  I'm sad that people call me "hon" to get my attention.  I'm sad that I'm not a good gift wrapper, and some poor soul must accept my excuse for a gift-wrapped present.  I'm sad that I'll have varicose veins by the time I'm 35.  Enough on this subject.

What else...the election?  I'm into it right now; it's important to me.  Please vote for Barack Obama.  John McCain scares me; I'm offended by his choice of Palin; Palin's inexperience makes me wish I was Canadian.  During the first debate I kept expecting McCain to rip off his rubber face mask, or to admit he comes from planet of the apes.  Admittedly, I used to be a McCain fan.  Perhaps that was before he became such a Republican candidate for the presidency.  Perhaps it was before he turned into a politician I don't recognize.  Enough.  Some of my friends (unfortunately) are Republican.  I'm working on them....

What else...I don't know that anyone reads this any more.  If you do, please let me know.  I'll stop pretending like I'm the only one listening.

Love you all (meaning me?)...

Me So Funny ...........................................................................

Occasionally, I will consider a career--really consider it--and decide I would be great at it. For example, I would be an excellent architect, teacher, golfer, professional Boggle player, and writer. But to be an architect I would need to go back to school for an entirely different education, which I can't afford. To be a teacher, I would need to get over my fear of being mistaken for a student, and I would probably need to be more excited about the actual teaching and less about the long vacations. Golf--maybe I wouldn't be a good golfer after all, but I would bring some long needed style to the game. Boggle--I'm not sure anyone can do this game professionally. And writer--ah, well, I'm still working on that one.

The most recent profession, and I think I could actually do this one if I put my mind to it, is to be a standup comedian. I began watching NBC's Last Comic Standing this season, and after seeing all the failures who think they really have something to offer, I decided there no reason I couldn't join them. Now I go around making up comedy routines in my head. I'll start with a not-so-surprising statement like, "I hate picky eaters," and then I'll imagine a picky eater in my head and I'll make fun of them. Then I'll segue into how I'm not a picky eater, but I'm picky about preparation. I won't eat chicken unless it's been so processed that it looks like a bulging finger. Or how Chinese food is so greasy, and, well, I'm still working on how to turn this into a joke. Clearly I'm not stage ready.

But as with most of the other careers I've failed to realize, something holds me back from being a comic. The fear of rejection. I've been up on stage before, enough that I would be able to guage the audience's reaction if things weren't going well. It seems like some comedians never practice the art of translation from their head to their mouth to the ears to the brains of their audience. They never really stop to think if someone else will think their material is funny. They only practice in front of the mirror, playing both parts. They recite their routines to no one in particular while walking down the sidewalk on the way to buy another rubber vegetable for their prop box. And one time, they told their best joke to their mom, and she loved it.

That won't be me. Instead, I'd rather attempt to be funny on this blog, and hopefully, one day, someone will read it and laugh a little.

It's Been Too Long, And I Have So Far To Go .....................

I've gotten that itch again...the need to tell people about the trivial thoughts that appear in my brain. Many moons ago, I taught myself to turn these trivial thoughts into blog topics. For a time, those thoughts disappeared (that's not to say I began having significant thoughts), and alas, in the past few weeks, I've noticed their presence again.

And so now I come here to store those thoughts. It makes me wonder though--will these thoughts add up to anything one day? Why do I bother? I suppose I like to humor myself, and occasionally, if my internal comedy button is turned up to high, I like to humor other people. And now I feel too indulgent, so I will stray back to my original intended topic.

All I can think about lately is gasoline. And since I drive a little ol' Honda, this whole gas conservation thing is new to me. Two weeks ago, my husband purchased an old bicycle for me to ride around town to complete my errands...I've stopped running errands. I only drive my car to work, which is now 20 minutes away compared to my previous job which was only seven minutes away. On this drive, I constantly watch my speedometer, edging away from the maximum speed posted on the highway. Since I've begun this, I've noticed my car uses a noticeably lesser amount of gas, and I am pleased.

But how, I constantly wonder, can I use even less? Every time I turn on the radio, some reporter is telling me that the cost of a barrel of oil has risen again. Who knows when it will end? Today I heard that John McCain is in favor of offering up a $300 million prize for the first person to develop an engine that doesn't run on oil. I'm beginning to hear of alternate fuels more mysterious and complex than cars running on corn or McDonald's grease waste: like Brown's Gas, a device that can be attached to your engine that converts water to a gas that raises the octane level of the gasoline and causes it to burn much more efficiently. Translation: less trips to the gas station, more trips to the grocery store. Phew, this stuff makes my head spin.

I'd like to end this blog with an anecdote. I'm working at a day camp with school aged children for the summer. We talked about oil spills one day, and I began by explaining where oil comes from, and how it is used after it is drilled. Essentially, as I told the children how much our daily lives are dependent on this mucky stuff dredged up from the depths of Earth, I was overwhelmed. I suddenly wanted to pick up a huge sign and protest somewhere. Get in people's faces and make them face reality. Accidentally spit on them during passionate speeches. Really feel like I can make a difference in the world on this subject.

But where? And how will I get there if it is too far to ride my bike?

Eat Me .......................................................................................................


If anything worth doing is worth doing right, then why do people give Christmas baked goods that were made with the flair of an five-year-old? What kind of message does one mean to send when they gift gingerbread that breaks your teeth, unidentifiable blobs covered in shredded coconut, and fudge that never hardened properly?

Maybe I'm being too picky. It's possible that in this Martha-Stewart-crazed world I've come to expect nothing less than perfection--especially in presentation--from any homemade product. But I think Martha would agree that burnt cookies say "I don't have time for you. These cookies are as stale as our friendship."

Today I beheld one of those cookie platters that was wrong on so many levels. First, it was cleverly disguised beneath a sheild of colored saran-wrap. This served to spare the giver from the receiver's scrutinizing eye, because anyone can judge a cookie platter in an instant, and the results of that instant analysis are displayed facially almost as quickly. Beware the plastic wrapped cookie platter, it means the giver knows the cookies it contains are flawed.
Under the plastic (yes, I ventured to explore the platter's entrails), there were clusters of cookie subspecies. One grouping were balls rolled in coconut, which was burnt. Not being able to see what lay under the coconut layer, I counted this cookie unfit for consumption.
Next was a loaf of some sort, wrapped in an additional layer of plastic. The extra plastic may have been used to spare the other cookies from contamination. Loaf: inedible.
Nearby were cookies with Hershey's kisses in the center. Kissed cookies are often delightful treats, but the cookie portion of these were so flat and over-cooked that the sugar had undergone a transformation in the oven, producing a dark and bitter glaze so horrible it would prevent anyone unlucky enough to try and eat it from ever reaching the chocolate center.
And lastly, there was some fudge among this bunch. The fudge was also wrapped in plastic--stay away. I do suspect that if I had unwrapped the fudge, it would have had fingerprints all over it. Fudge is delicate, and should be handled properly.

Here are some tips for those who insist on bestowing their baked failures upon us.

• Spread the holiday cheer with skillful strokes of white frosting, not with gloopy improperly mixed frosting that looks like melted candle wax.
• If your baking is infamous, stick to one kind of cookie, avoiding a platter which only gives people the choice of what kind not to eat.
• Simplify, simplify, simplify. Don't hide bad baking under layers of coconut shreds, sprinkles, discolored frosting, red hots, gum drops, licorice, or colorful plastic wrap.
• And finally, everyone knows you keep the good cookies for yourself. Why not prove to us you really can cook, and that you really do care? Tis the season to share the tastiness.