I know that I was just ranting about this, but since every media outlet is fixated on it, I can't take it for one more second. It is absolutely bizarre that a press conference had to be called so that Tiger Woods could apologize to the nation for being unfaithful to his wife. I certainly didn't exchange marriage vows with this man, and unless his wife is a secret reader of my blog, neither did any of you. How has society reached a place where we need an apology from him? Is this not completely insane? I apologize to you all for cheating on my wife. Seriously, do we as a society have nothing else going on in our lives? There are so many things we should care deeply about and so many things that should raise our hackles. This isn't one of them. WE DON'T KNOW HIM. It doesn't affect us. Truly, it doesn't. I promise. Your life is going to continue on in the same way whether you accept Tiger's apology or not. Let's instead emotionally invest ourselves in the simple fact that I couldn't buy hot dog buns this morning because I couldn't find one single brand that was made without high fructose corn syrup.

Well fantastic. Tiger Woods is going to re-emerge and speak on Friday. Thank goodness. What do you think he'll talk about? Do you think it will be about...golf?

Because I don't really give a hoot about any other thing he has to say. (Don't get me wrong, I couldn't give a hoot about golf either, but at least he's qualified to speak on that subject.)

Aren't we all tired of this yet? We all need to get on the same page here or else we will continue to be inundated with people's personal failings. Guess how much I don't care that he's a crappy husband and lousy father. And guess why I don't care: because I don't know him. I'm not married to him. I'm not friends with him. I'm not related to him.

Oh, but he's a role model. For whom? Who cares? Who is looking at someone who plays a mean game of golf and tries to model their life after theirs? I think that's weird. And the whole will-he-or-won't-he lose his endorsement deals---really? Who really buys a product based on whether or not some guy you don't know is standing beside said product and smiling? Now, to be fair, I am the first one in line to buy any mascara that promises it will make my eyelashes look so lush they must be false. But I'm not going to buy my cell phone based on which one is being touted by Luke Wilson or Catherine Zeta Jones. And event though I am still mournign the demise of the marriage between my dear friends Brad and Jen, I don't drink water or wear jewelry endorsed by either of them. Just because someone collects a paycheck from a company doesn't mean the product is worth anything. People do know that, right?

I took the real age test on realage.com. I'm 4 months older than my biological age. Not too shabby, you may be thinking. At least in my head, that's what you may be thinking. In reality you may be thinking, Damn! Someone isn't taking care of themselves! And that would be correct. Because the things I have going for me are the things that can't be changed: I have good genes. But the things that stop me from being a decade or so younger than my actual age are entirely under my control and I am pretty disappointed in myself that I've been given the gift of good health from a genetic standpoint and I don't do anything to hold up my end of the bargain. I just coast along.

I don't exercise on a regular basis, especially in the winter. I may go for fits and spurts of trying to get in 30 minutes of cardio every day, but it eventually tapers off at some point. I have a healthy BMI and so it's easy to forgo a little thing like making sure the vehicle that carts you around is in good working order.

I don't eat as well as I should. Shocker, huh? But wait aren't you always yammering on about food safety and organic this and grow your own food that? Well...yes. But yesterday, for instance, I had two yogurts and a veggie burger. Not as bad as say a bag of jellybeans and three trips to McDonald's, but notice the suspicious lack of fruits and vegetables. Not good.

I get points for having a happy marriage, a good support system of family and friends,"owning" a dog, not smoking, and being a healthy weight. But I lose points for not belonging to any organizations and not attending church on a regular basis.(By which I mean I go at Christmas.)

I have to say, I'm feeling pretty ashamed of myself. (Hence the public outing in a public forum.) I do all the maintenance to keep my faulty disc in place, and I do the maintenance to be able to breathe with my 9237 allergies. It's incorporated as part of my day because those things have a minute by minute effect on how I am able to live my life. I can't even walk around for too long in the mornign without doing my back exercises because I will experience pain. But if I would do the maintenance in all the other areas, I will be much less likely to ever even have to know how they could negatively impact my life. I don't really want to get to the point where I have to be in pain to make changes, or where all the changes in the world won't help me regain my lost health.

As I was driving Mort to school this morning, I marvelled at the wealth of deer and other animal tracks crisscrossing the otherwise untouched snow. All of the freshly tossed beer cans and bottles that littered the landscape? Not so much marvelling, more of the shuddering. It's pretty frightening to realize just how many people are obviously drinking and driving. Or driving whilst drinking. During a snowstorm. Before the plows have even been out. Because if those yahoos are out and about during those conditions, how many of them are steering with one hand and knocking back a beer with the other when the driving conditions are good? Scary stuff. I have to say, it does make me wonder why there is no law in effect requiring car companies to proactively install those contraptions mandated for repeat drunk drivers where you have to blow into the tube and if you're over the legal limit, your car won't start. I mean, who wouldn't be willing to pay an extra $100 for a car if it meant keeping drunk drivers off the road?Granted, people started crying about personal freedom when wearing a seat belt was required, but I think considering drunk driving is already illegal, proactively enforcing that overrides the personal freedom argument. And besides, your freedom to drive while drunk takes away everyone else's freedom to be safe from you on the roads.

Do you see how I can fix everything if given a chance?

I would be terribly remiss if I didn't mention that I've now seen another Best Picture Contender. (at last count, I'd seen Inglorious Basterds[outstanding] Up in the Air[outstanding] and Crazy Heart[really really damn good]---wait are they all up for best picture? Well, they should be.Anyway.)

So, we rented A Serious Man. Do not waste one moment of your life watching this. It will lure you in, you will spend the first 20 minutes marvelling over the movie making genius that is the Cohen bothers and it will let you down worse than being stood up at the altar. I won't say too much in case my warning has only made some of you out there in computer land want to see see it for yourself, but I will say that Joel and Ethan owe me some damn money and an explanation. The only thing I can come up with is sheer laziness. And maybe a desire to see if anyone would would call them out on their Emperor's New Clothes.

In fact, maybe that is just it. Maybe when everyone goes ga-ga over your work and thinks everything you do is praise-worthy, maybe you start wondering if people really like what you're doing or is they just see your name and throw awards at you. Maybe you would have a small niggling fear that people weren't watching your movies and really appreciating them anymore. Maybe you would decide to test them and just see what would happen if you gave them a big old steaming pile of manure and then sit back and wait for people to notice that you were Just Kidding. That obviously you weren't serious with this horrid piece of malarkey. And then you would reward them for noticing with one of your usual genius creations.

But America, you have failed the Cohen brothers test! You have showered them with praise instead of scorn! You have given them four stars and nominated them for prizes instead of crying that they've lost their touch.You have demonstrated to them that you are not watching their movies, you are just seeing their name and applauding. Now, to punish us for accepting such drivel, they may never again make another good movie.

Seeing as how I'm a female and all, of course I am a feminist. And as such, I had always had the intention that Mort and I would not play the card game, "Old Maid,"(And yes, as improbable as it seems, not only do they still make that card game, but they even still call it that. And yes, I just checked and it is 2010.) but rather Crazy Dog, or whichever other person in the pack I picked out for the hot potato. Today, however, after Mort being sick and inside for a week, I just played straight Old Maid. Because some days you are just too tired to fight every fight and it seemed easier to go with the card of the old woman that was on top of the pile rather than sort through and remove the matching football player card and have the object of scorn be the football player. Anyway. Mort, however, is such a wonderful little creature that when he saw the picture of the card we would be avoiding, he exclaimed, "Well, that's a beautiful old lady!" And then I felt guilty for making that card be the bad one and I said, Yes, she sure is. It's silly that no one would want that card, isn't it?" And then Mort looked at it a little longer and asked, "So she's a maid? Like Amelia Bedelia?"

Saw Crazy Heart. Rather, I sobbed my way through Crazy Heart. By the time we got home, my eyes were sore and swollen. However, it was a good movie, albeit obviously very emotional. (Not that you can really go by my usually overflowing feelings. I also cried through Bend It Like Beckham and a myriad of other movies simply because they were nice. If someone onscreen cries, so do I.) The writers and Jeff Bridges managed to accomplish the feat of creating a character who is not necessarily a particularly likable person, and yet the audience still is pulling for him. Good music, too. In fact, despite some questionable judgement on the part of the character played by Maggie Gyllenhal, the only flaw was the casting of Colin Farrell. Just did not make any sense. I can't fathom why they made that call unless there was some type of contractual obligation to fulfill. Really could not have been more miscast. That's all.

Yesterday was the Valentine's Day Party at kindergarten. I love those kids. Most of them. Who else is so thrilled to make crowns from paper plates? Who else so delights in seeing their name on a BINGO sheet and immediately hangs glow sticks from their ears? Who is else is so unselfconscious(is that a real word? You may think I should know, but I don't) that they clamour for hugs and line up to give them?


Mort and I have been making Valentines over the past week or so. Save for the last two that became a struggle of me begging, bribing and coaxing him to write his name until he suddenly had a happy change of heart and decided to turn them into baseballs and footballs, we had a lot of fun. We grabbed a pile of scrap paper and construction paper and we cut hearts of every shape, size and color. (Oh, yes, when you have the two of us crafting, hearts can take on varied shapes). We glued on wrapping paper and letters. Mort drew and colored and wrote across them. We giggled. We marveled. It was a nice time.

And yet I was surprised when he opened his bag 'o Valentines last night and discovered all the other cards were store-bought. And that made me sad. Not because the other kids didn't hand make their Valentines, because that doesn't matter, but rather because it made me wonder if next year Mort wouldn't want to make his either . Will he want to skip it and pick out his favorite super hero cards instead? Did we just have our last year of making Valentines and I didn't even know it? I hope not. I hope it was fun enough to him that we have more years of doing this before he finally looks around and announces he wants to do what everyone else is doing.

And yes, I fully recognize that will happen at some point. Obviously it happens to everyone or else all these people wouldn't be wearing skinny jeans when I have come across only two people in all of America who actually look decent while doing so. I thought the extra big pants were a silly trend, but skinny jeans---no one looks good. And all the kids are wearing them. Have been wearing them for years. It's time to face facts and make this go away. In fact, I was complaining about this to my sister and loudly declaring how no one can look good in skinny jeans (are we sensing I may have the teeniest bit of I-look-like-an-overstuffed-sausage-in-skinny-jeans envy? Yes, make no mistake about it. There has never been a day in my life where I could have acceptably donned skinny jeans without ending up in the pages of Vice.) Anyway, my sister seemed puzzled by my claim and replied that she's seen people who look great in them. I just assumed she was lying. And then later that day I met two of her friends. Both of whom were so tall I looked directly at their shoulders. Both of whom seemed to be wearing no make-up and yet looked like they had stepped from the pages of a fashion magazine. They were jaw-dropping, double-take gorgeous. They weren't even related to each other. Two different families of gene pools had the capacity to produce this kind of phenomenon. And needless to say, they both wore skinny jeans. As they well should.

Sometimes I like to step back and marvel at how I started writing about Valentines in the world of kindergarten and finished up with how amazing skinny jeans look on some of my sister's friends.

Duke and I rented a movie last night. We both fell asleep during it. And then Mort beat us both at Go Fish this morning. We suspect he cheated, but we were too not-yet-caffeined to figure out the scam.

Wow. Three posts in one day. I must be snowed-in.

My to-do list isn't going so well. I got some unexpected, but very welcome editing work this morning. Check. I made chocolate chip cookies. Check. I used the snow blower on the driveway and shovelled out the garage and shovelled out a Stella spot twice. And lured her outside with a cookie to use it. Check. Mort and I colored, but he is adamant about not doing any Valentines today. Laundry is almost done. Check. I did get Mort outside for a bit, but it's blowing pretty hard. Mmm. Not a full-check on that one.

How many chocolate chip cookies does two hours of snow blowing and shovelling burn off? One and a half?

I am honestly too tired to clean. I was all ready to go. Took an allergy pill and everything this morning. But it is going to have to wait until tomorrow. Please. Please let them have school tomorrow. Thank-you.

I found SUCH a great bathing suit. It is so retro Barbie. But it has a price-tag that is a bit hard to justify. Must mull it over. Maybe.... Oh, who am I kidding? I'm totally getting it.

The other shame of this is that I actually HAD that Barbie Doll. My aunt had the whole original collection and passed them our way. I think we got rid of/donated them when my mom moved and thought it was time for my sister and I to get our stuffed animal and magazine collections out of her attic. And in my sister's case, her 17 boxes of trophies. And in my case, a pair of mud-encrusted Birkenstocks from the last Grateful Dead I concert I attended before Jerry died. Just because we own our own homes and can store our own junk. Selfish. Anyway, who knew that there would one day be such a thing as e-bay and Craig's list and we could have sold that collection for a zillion dollars and never told my aunt and instead bought a storage facility to cram all the new junk we bought with our windfall.

Today's Lofty Goals:

1) Sew patches on Mort's jeans because the iron-on ones are already curling at the edges. In trying to not be wasteful, I sure am creating alot of extra work for myself.

2) Laundry. How have we depleted the napkin supply so quickly? I'm guessing it revolves around the increase in Mort's cocoa intake aka chocolate mouth and chocolate all over the table and whatever clothes he happens to be wearing.

3) Cleaning. I know I just did it two weeks ago, but somehow the bathrooms are grimy and dust reigns. Yes, I am well-aware that many many many people clean a bit more regularly than this. I prefer to think of it not as being a slovenly housekeeper, but rather as purposefully building up my family's immunity.

4)Baking chocolate chip cookies.

5)Helping Mort finish-up his Valentines for his party at school.

6)I'm hoping to sneak outside at some point and shovel so that Duke doesn't get to end his already jam-packed workday with some additional work. I'd like to take Mort outside with me for fresh air and exercise and comic relief but he seems to be on the verge of a cold, so I'll have to do the old wait-and-see on that one.

Hmm. If I had started the list out with "Making a list of today's activities," I'd already be done with one of them.

Why must I have a romantic notion about how delightful it is to live where there are four seasons? Two of which I don't really enjoy? Yes, winter and summer, I'm looking at you. You are just too long. I like the transition seasons that appear with an infusion of hope just when I thought I couldn't take it anymore. A small shoot of green appearing through the snow, waiting impatiently to unfurl into a daffodil. A cool breeze and smell of turning leaves snaking through the oppressive heat. So, I live where I live because I enjoy the weather for 1.7 months out of the year. I may want to rethink things.

We all know the snow this year has been horrid. It's so snowy, it's not even fun as those of us who are only four feet tall or less disappear into the white stuff and reemerge missing a glove and/or boot that will not be found until the spring. And shoveling the yard for the Princess Bear is a bit ridiculous. But no one said having a dog friend was easy.

The township supervisor released an interesting statement yesterday with the claim that all the roads had been cleared of snow. But that is a big fat lie. Because I live in the township and I have to drive for about ten miles in every direction before I can see any road poking through the snow. If I am driving at 15 mph with 4 wheel drive on and I'm still fishtailing and slipping all over the place, I'm going to go ahead and make the statement: The roads are not clear. Because clear would insinuate that they are easily drivable. And they really really aren't.

Not that you would know that by the piles of teenagers in SUVs driving like it's a joy ride on a summer evening in a stolen car. Or the school bus drivers! Yikes. Because our roads have been so woefully not plowed and cleared, I actually mulled over the possibility of Mort taking the bus to school. I thought perhaps it would be safer for him to be in a large bus than in a small SUV. But then Mort and I saw a bus that was obviously racing the joy-riding teenagers. Or maybe trying to outrun the

cops. Because it was flying. Maybe it had hit a patch of back ice?

"That bus is going so fast!" Mort gasped. "I hope those kids don't fall out of their seats!"

Because he had. Quite a few times. And thus ended his bus-riding career. I just can't put my child on a bus when he is sitting three to a seat with no seat belts and he tells me he falls onto the ground whenever they go over a bump and/or pothole. Plus, we live ten minutes from the school and his commute was an hour one way and forty-five minutes the other. I do know some of the school bus drivers and if he had one of them, I would feel a million times more comfortable. But he didn't and so I don't.

How did I get on this topic?

Some mornings, isn't my blog just too fun and cheery for words? Do you think you've stumbled upon the laundry list of complaints as compiled by your friendly neighborhood of angry old people with no lives? Would you like to hear about my horror at discovering the bread I've been buying ("Because I don't like seeds!!!" Mort shrieked, thus leaving me no choice but to seek out whole wheat bread that does not look like whole wheat bread.) has high fructose corn syrup in it? Or how our house humidifier isn't working and you get zapped every time you come in contact with any object in the home? And Mort was waking up with a sore throat? And Stella's allergies are flaring up? And Duke and I look like our skin is peeling? Or how my car's computer is channeling HAL and going stir-crazy from being in space too long and is insisting my tire pressure is low(it isn't) and my taillight is out(it's not)?

But we did make this while we were snowed in. So that will be lovely in about a week to 10 days. Check back with me then. I may be in a better mood.

And in the life lesson of Listen to Your Mother! Mort was walking down an ice covered ramp, purposefully trying to step on every patch of ice. "Try to avoid the ice," I kept saying in that broken record way mothers so often have. "My shoes are ice-proof!" he insisted. "Nothing is ice-proof and your feet will shoot out from under you and you could get really hurt, so I need you to be careful and listen tome and try NOT to step on the ice." Can you guess where this is going? Luckily, it was jean-patching day and what's another hole to patch amongst moms? And in case you were curious as to whether or not this little lesson has taught Mort that ice is better avoided, it has not. "Don't you remember that the last time you were fooling around on the ice, you fell?" I asked just this morning as he purposefully leaped from ice patch to ice patch. "Yeah, I remember," Mort replied, puzzled. "I didn't mind."

And one last noteworthy item on today's agenda: I was looking at Valentine's Day cards when I noticed the "From the dog" section of cards. That in and of itself is not noteworthy.What I was struck by however, was that some of the cards were labeled"From the Dog: Funny" but not all of them. Is that because some of them are serious? Some of the Valentine's Days cards that one may buy and give to someone else, pretending that they are FROM YOUR DOG are not supposed to be funny? Dear Human Companion, On Valentine's Day, I would like to take the opportunity to tell you how I really feel... Goodness. What will they think of next?

I want to start composting (yes, I am aware I've been talking about this for several years now. And so of course it's normal for you to be all, What the what? Why don't you stop flapping your keyboard, get off your duff and do it already?!?) but it just seems so daunting. Even with the lovely step-by-step picture book my sister gave me for Christmas. I can figure out the inside part. Instead of scraping plates into the trash and/or garbage disposal, you scrape them into a small covered container on your counter. I've seen people do it. I can do that. It's just the next part that confuses me. What do you do next? Build a contraption in your yard? How do you prevent flies from littering it with maggots? How do you prevent it from smelling? What about the whole turning business? And then what do you do? Spread it in your garden? Isn't that kin of gross? I mean, eggshell and leaves in my garden are fine, but Mort's leftover sandwich crusts from September might be a little nasty.

So very done with the snow. It's not fun. It's not good snow. Spring. Please. spring.

Hmm. I had a very funny photo of our half-buried snowman (I'm not being politically incorrect and/or using sexist language, it really was a snowman) that looked as though it was waving its stick arms and yelling for help, but all of my thousands of photos in iphoto seem to have disappeared. I think this is a job for Duke.

Well, so I saw Food Inc. I'd been avoiding it because I knew it would be depressing and upsetting and make me privy to things I'd like to pretend weren't happening.

And although I did cry through a good bit of it, it did strengthen my resolve to be even more pro-active about the food I bring into this house, to be even more hyper-vigilant, to stop buying foods that are out of season, to absolutely 100% boycott certain brands, and to go out of my way to hit farmer's markets over grocery stores. I think I'm going to ask around and look into local farms that I can actually go to to buy things because after seeing the way chickens are treated, I am beyond glad that I buy our eggs from a friend who raises her own chickens that have the run of the yard, eat insects, grass, clover, organic feed, have names, can be held by the children...I'm not a vegetarian anymore, but still, there is a way animals can be treated with respect and kindness during their lifespan, even if you are going to eat them eventually.

I think my biggest shocks (which will undoubtedly paint me as woefully naive) were how deeply entrenched in this mess was not just the government, but the FDA, the people I thought tried to protect us and keep us safe. And I was definitely bummed to learn that what I think of as "safe" companies, like Tom's of Maine and Kashi are owned by giant corporations who most definitely do not give a rat's if our food is safe or comes from a sustainable-practicing source. But then again, how in the world did I think these brands were suddenly mainstream in our grocery stores and no longer simply dusty brands at the local health food market? How did I think they were competing with the big kids? Of course they were owned by their competitors. Dumb me for thinking otherwise.

So, in hindsight, even though it was extremely sad, I'm glad I saw it because I want to be an informed consumer. I don't want to keep on the blinders and pretend that our food is safe when deep down, I know that it isn't.

Our visit from our Italian pal last year confirmed it, as I have written before but will subject you all to again. he was here for a week, eating standard American take-out food (ie NOT food that I cooked) and while Duke didn't gain any weight, our friend's pants got so tight he couldn't button them and he gained six pounds. In a week. Because there's something f*ed up with our food! It's not fresh. In Italy, our friend's family goes to the market every day or every other day to pick-up fresh produce, fresh cheese, fresh pasta, and fresh bread. Everything is fresh. It doesn't have preservatives. It's not genetically modified.It's not meant to travel. It's not meant to hang out on the grocery shelves. It's not meant to languish in your kitchen. It's meant to be eaten. And it truly does taste different and better and is better received by your body because they eat giant portions of what we deem "bad" food and people simply aren't overweight as they are here.

Anyway, so there's that.

Also, a story I sent out for publication was REJECTED. Ugh. I haven't submitted anything for so long, I forgot how terrible it feels to receive a rejection letter.

Time to thwart the food companies and make a healthy breakfast.