Do the Yak

All gone in the Big Apple...

Mimi, one of my favorite bloggers had a recent post that cracked me up more then usual. Every year since 2000 there have been children in my life, which means there's actually a point to Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever, and every year they understand more about the holidays' significance and especially about the PRESENTS I WANT TO OPEN THEM NOW! So why is it that every year I seem to be more and more lame at getting it together vis a vis said holiday(s)? (Disclosure: I just did a Freudian-slip typo and transposed the consonants in "lame" – really.) This year we had the added element of visiting in-laws, which was very wonderful and familial, so between the cooking and house-cleaning (read: removing only life-sized dust bunnies and toothpaste sink-boogers larger than my thumbnail), when the hell do I have time to actually procure and wrap presents? Thank God for Amazon.com even though most of the stuff still arrived too late. Then there was the office holiday party yester...

Oh the absurdity... Barbie now has a dog that eats its own shit . How educational! I am not making this up. The Amazon.com product description says in part: "Finally, Barbie has a dog that eats and makes a mess! Tanner the dog eats and ejects waste from his body. At this point, Barbie can pick it up in a scooper, and then Tanner will eat it again -- just like your real dog!" See, it comes with these little "biscuits" that Barbie pops in Tanner's mouth and they magically reappear out the other end as... another kind of biscuit... ready for re-eating. Yummy! And just in case anyone is offended, she comes in an African-American version too. I simply HAD to have it. We just got a generous Amazon gift certificate and you can guess what was the first thing I flung into my virtual shopping cart. And no, it is NOT for the girls. This goes into our cherished up-on-a-high-glass-shelf collection of cultural artifacts, most of which are bobble-head dolls. The most recent i...

I meant to comment on this development a while back, but better late than never -- just to state the obvious that the Catholic leadership is STILL full of shit despite their latest doctrinal blah-blah . The highlights: "homosexual acts are immoral" and "the homosexual inclination is objectively disordered." Needless to say, the ban on same-sex marriage, civil unions and adoption are still in full force. "Because homosexual acts cannot fulfill the natural end of human sexuality, they are never morally acceptable," says the chairman of the bishops' doctrine committee. This of course is also a reflection of another "stay the course" sentiment regarding use of contraception, including by married couples. Since sex outside of marriage is verboten and as we know, the only reason to have sex even within marriage is to have so many kids that you financially and emotionally destroy the marriage, not to mention the older kids who get less time and f...

Those old family photos can come back and bite you in the ass. What's with the neckties? And was it just too burdensome for Future 43 to put down the cigarette for a minute?

Interesting commentary on NPR yesterday about why everyone is so taken with Barack Obama. The commentator's view ( Steven Barnes ) is that Obama projects hope and positivity across racial divides because he is a black American who does not carry the psychological baggage of being African-America (i.e., descended from slaves). The holidays are coming, which means the domestic-goddess thing ratchets up with holiday cards (arrived via Shutterfly but not yet addressed and sent), planning meals for in-laws (I'll take the 10-pound bag of potatoes for muchas latkes), various end-of-year school functions of a social and/or charitable nature, and mixing a playlist for the office holiday party. Fortunately I keep my sense of humor by playing this little ditty now and then. Batteries not included! FI-I-I-I-VE months of bills!

I few months ago I linked to this compelling bit of nature news (though the photo really says it all). After some careful forensic analysis by National Geographic, it appears that the python did NOT pop from the size of the gator it had swallowed. Seems another alligator bit off the python's head some time after it had chowed down on gator #1. But questions remain on... CSI Everglades. Had another of those (how did I wind up in this movie?" moments the other day when I found a scribbled to-do list I'd made some time ago. The things to do were: buy new calendar [specifically, this family uber-organizer model ] make holiday cards put away laundry cooking sew up stuffed animal Am I a domestic goddess or WHAT? Fortunately the list also included two other items that indicate some slightly wider mental range: do self-evaluation [a masochistic component of our annual performance evaluation process] blog Still, at this time of year, no one can hold a candle to Martha for making...

OK, so maybe it was a bit unrealistic to expect myself to post every day during Thanksgiving break. Which was a lot of fun, by the way, but we basically spent every waking moment at my dad's, which was a tightly scheduled sessions of eating, talking and drinking (usually all three at once), so I just fell off the NaBloPoMo wagon big-time. Better luck next year -- though would it kill these people to make it some month other than November? Or December. And probably August. I'll have my people call your people. So... Thanksgiving. The Texas clan seems happy and remarkably calm, all things considered (three boys under 6 and two very full-time jobs). Nothing much happened, aside from the above activities plus a rousing game of Pictionary. I was so inspired that subsequently volunteered to help plan the office holiday party. Yes, there will be Charades, and yes, and I'm quite sure I will embarrass myself while playing even though I will be completely sober. In other news, I'...