Why do I blog?

Let me make one thing clear.  I don’t blog to express a political opinion.  As a novelist, my taking a stand on anything political or religious is disastrous.  When I talked here last week about civil discourse, it was to vent not about what we say but how we say it.

So there you go – one reason why I blog.  I blog to vent about something, be it civil discourse, airport security, or plastic bags.

But there are other reasons.  I mean, it’s not like I’m sitting around with nothing to do.  I have to put blogging on my calendar, or else it gets lost in the shuffle of the daily writing, in this case, of Sweet Salt Air.

A glow-in-the-dark passie? You’ve got to be kidding.

Let me be clear.  I hate the look of a pacifier in a child’s mouth – hated it when my kids were little, hate it now that their kids are little.  I like seeing that little mouth and hate having it hidden.  I also like the convenience of a thumb.  Pop it in, take it out and smile without worry of dropping it on the supermarket floor.

That said, I saw the bright side of passie use during our last visit with our nine-month-old granddaughter.  We were having a birthday dinner, nine of us eating after the baby was asleep, and, naturally, there were bursts of noise.  During one, the baby woke up and began to cry.

When to take the car keys from elderly parents

I need to write about this, if only to get it off my chest.  There was a piece on Nightly News recently – actually, it aired on February 16 and has haunted me ever since.  How do you know, Brian Williams asked, when the time comes to take the car keys away from elderly parents?  Dr. Nancy Snyderman was the medical expert here, and she sited statistics on the number of auto accidents among elderly drivers.  She also talked about why this happens – slow response, confusion, deteriorating spacial judgment, and so on.  The focus of her piece, though, was an interview with a 94-year-old man who had made the decision, with his family’s approval, to limit his driving to daylight and his own neighborhood.

Downtime

I did nothing last weekend.  Nothing.  And it was hard.  I am fully serious when I say that.  I’m not used to doing nothing.  I kept jumping up,ready to do laundry or pay bills or check email or blog.  For me, doing is a visceral thing.

The right way to load a dishwasher or make a peanut butter sandwich

BEFORE

AFTER

Thanksgiving turkey is the best, except when it comes to cleaning up.  It’s big and greasy, and between that and the casseroles, salads, veggies, and pies, we use more pots, pans, dishes, and utensils than on any other single day of the year.  This being the morning after Thanksgiving, cleaning up is fresh in my mind.  So here are some thoughts.

First, flashback to Tuesday night.  As the official cleaner-upper after dinner, my husband had his work cut out for him.  With the troops landing Wednesday morning, we’d been waiting til the last minute to run the dishwasher, meaning we hadn’t run it in four days, and it was a tight squeeze.

Shopping for the holidays

I’m not thinking about Christmas catalogues, free shipping offers or Black Friday hours.  I’m still on Thanksgiving, and it has to do with food.  I’ve been poring through cookbooks, clipping recipes from the paper, and making lists.  The troops are descending next Wednesday morning, and they’re all staying here, so Thanksgiving dinner isn’t the only meal I’ll be making.  I have to keep bellies filled for four days, and my shopping list keeps growing. There are the unusual suspects – fruit, salad makings, cold cuts, bread, eggs.  There are also a bunch of staples we don’t usually buy:

Working weekends

Yes, we did have the baby here this weekend – and yes, it was fabulous – but I did work, just like I do most weekends.  I never spend hours at it, just one or two right around dawn, in this case before the baby was even awake, and mostly I edited what I wrote last week.  Still, I had a sense of accomplishment.  That’s a nice way to start the day.

Gearing up for baby

Baby gear.  It’s a whole other world out there.  We have a six-month-old coming for the weekend, and the house is suddenly filled with stuff.  Remember the high chair you saw in my basement?  It’s now in the kitchen alongside the jumperoo.

And the Pack N Play?

That’s my assistant’s office, where we can close the blinds to assure darkness and quiet.  The baby will be cozy sleeping there.

My daughter-in-law is bringing the stroller in which the carseat is embedded, removable for attaching to a base anchored in the back seat of my car.

The junk man cometh

I’ve decided that the next best thing to steam-in-the-bag veggies is the junk man – you know, the guy with the 800 number and the truck, who comes on a day’s notice and picks up all the stuff you don’t even want to touch.  Seriously.  I have no idea what dead things lie in and around those boxes, carpet remnants, extension cords, and such.

We use our basement a lot.  I work out there nearly every morning, and my books are all neatly arranged, chronologically, on shelves.  Near the foot of the stairs are weekend things – highchairs, potty seats, the Pack ‘n Play.

Getting a jump on Christmas

Amazing, the number of knitting books that come out each year offering speedy knits for Christmas.  I wish they applied to me.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, to judge from the finished product, IMOSHO) I like knitting with fingerweight or DK yarns, which is thinner and finer than bulky, requires thinner and finer needles, and takes a whole lot longer.  So waiting until the last minute isn’t an option.