Out of Office

As you may have gathered, I haven’t exactly been near my computer lately. Which I know, in today’s world, is no excuse for not blogging. But I’m using it. I’m going to go see Mickey Mouse so I’m going to spend at least another week not blogging.

Eastern Alberta, July 2010
Or is this my house pre last week’s renovations?

See you all later! I hope you are having exquisitely wonderful summers and that all your wishes are coming true! (I know mine have been. Even those ones I thought were pinned up on the ‘ain’t gonna happen’ side of the fence.)

Word of The Day

Amative: Pertaining or disposed of love. Full of love. Amorous.

Happy Hallmark Occasion, everyone.

You would think for someone who writes romantic comedies I would be a little more…romantic. But I’m not. I am listening to the everso romantic and amative melodies of Alice Cooper at the moment. That gets a girl in the mood.

(Suppressed mirth.)

If you want to read a truly great love poem, or simply the best poem ever, try doing a search for ‘The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife’ by Michael Ondaatje. If I could write like that, wow.

Happy day, everyone.

Too Late?

Is it too late to put out that Christmas website? We never did actually finish it. I’m not sure if anything even got posted. Ah well. There is always next year. Am I going to make a resolution. Damn straight I’m not!

Poor Planet Earth

Christmas sure is hard on the environment. Think about it. We slice down trees and put them in our houses for a few weeks. Then decorate them with lights. So right there you are using up all this extra electricity plus killing a tree for fun. What happens to that tree later? Burned? Chipped and reused as mulch? What about all that goes into growing that perfect tree? Chipping up that perfect tree?

What about outdoor Christmas lights for your home? We put ours out that were handed down to us, but you know what? I can’t bring myself to plug them in for more than an hour or two each year. I just can’t do it. And I am not even an extreme environmentalist. I just can’t see the point of wasting that electricity and money.

And Christmas cards? I like getting them. I reuse them as gift tags the next year. But still, the creation of them, the shipping of them, the energy used to recycle them. My hubby mentioned something I hadn’t thought of which was all the extra weight for shipping the cards around by the mail service. The extra gas? The extra truckloads of them? How about the extra idling time by the mailperson as they drop off all those cards in everyone’s mailboxes? He didn’t think of that one, but I wonder if it makes a difference.

This morning as I was unpackaging the multitude of toys that my daughter received, I realised, not for the first time, how much toys are over-packaged these days. Particularly are Fischer Price Little People. Those little things are taped in, elasticed in and twist tied in. Sometimes they are even screwed in. It took me forever to get her Barbie clothes out of their package. Then to sort and take apart the packaging for the recyclable parts and the non-recyclable parts. And the gift wrap, and the bows and the tags… Christmas is just not friendly to the environment.

What is scarier, is going around town (we live in a fairly educated town) and seeing all the recyclable things in the overflowing garbage bins after Christmas. It is disappointing and disgusting.

It’s tough. What do you do? Personally, I would like to start a door-to-door recycle program in our town. There are bins, but people are lazy. They don’t want to collect, sort and then take it all across town to dump it. Part of the problem is that some neighbourhoods have dumpsters, so how would you encourage the people with dumpsters that they should recycle? If they are restricted in the amount they are permitted to toss out, they may be forced to recycle. But they are not restricted. So then what? Peer pressure?

I don’t know the whole answer. But I can’t be alone.

Merry Christmas Earth, here’s some more crap to tuck under your skin.

Until then…

Merry Christmas Everyone

Wow, the grocery stores are busy today. I hate to think how busy the city is. Yikes! We drove through yesterday on our way to the ski hill and it was surprisingly busy–and it was a work day. Did you know most people work December 24th? For some reason, I thought that was a holiday. I guess it isn’t. I’ve just been lucky to have jobs for the most part where I got that day off. To all of you who work. I am sorry. That really blows.

The Christmas website is still not redone. I am guessing that the make it up on Christmas Eve is going to be a tradition untouched. (oramproductions.ca) I did start a countdown. It kind of got forgotten. Somewhere around our fourth visit to see Santa for the year. Not that I blame Santa for the abandonment of my countdown.

My hubby, I am learning, is a bit of a rule stickler when it comes to Christmas. No wonder he doesn’t like Christmas. He won’t let us open presents early and was, I think, a bit miffed that I took my present out for a run on the trails as soon as I got them. Which was good since the snow has been crap since. We had a big wind that made it all hard and drifty and patchy. I made Barbie clothes for our daughter and he won’t let her open them now. Whereas I am thinking, she has so many presents, if she opens one or two now, she will get to play with them now and they won’t get lost in the opening shuffle. Plus, she has discovered her missing Barbies. (They are wearing their new duds in the wine gift bag under the tree.) It’s crazy, she didn’t play with her Barbies for days and days and now, here I snuck them out seriously, not even six hours ago, and she decides to play Barbies and notices that some are ‘missing’. Crap. So I told her the truth. They are part of a surprise and she will find out soon. If I have my way, that will be tonight after supper.

I like the way my late grandma approached Christmas. She opened her gifts as they arrived. Sure, she didn’t have anything to open on Christmas Day, but what’s the big deal? It isn’t like the day is holy or anything. Okay, it is holy. But, well, okay, there goes my argument.

Merry Christmas everyone.