You are Woodstock!


Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
found at kane's who got it at shirl's.
Not a lot of free time today, but I will make the time to visit my top few favorite blogs.

It's Ash Wednesday today which always reminds me of years ago going into work with ashes on my forehead (Episcopalian) and having to explain what it was about. The palms from Palm Sunday are gathered, saved and burned to ashes; almost a year later, we use them for the Ash Wednesday ceremony, if I remember it correctly. And soups suppers every Wednesday until Easter. We stopped going when Skyler became pagan. Which is fine since she's exploring her true feelings about everything now. I feel like as her Mother, I gave her the foundation of church, as happened to me. And now it's time to turn it over to her to do her own thing concerning religion.

I'm curious about Mel Gibson's, The Passion Of Christ. I can't wait to hear about it from others. Maybe I'll get a chance to go, too.

For those who wish to go across the water, may I be a boat, a raft, a bridge.
~The Way of the Shantideva

Looks like we have another snow/rain storm heading our way in 24-48 hours. It's an absolutely grey day today and this old crone's bones are aching, which is usually a sign of 100% humidity on the horizon. Bursitis, arthritis. It appears to run in your family. And you don't have to be old to be afflicted. My first experience with joint pain came when I was 26 years old.

You're Anarchy, State, and Utopia!

by Robert Nozick

If it were up to you, there would probably be no government at all.
But then you'd have to deal with there being no government, and nobody likes that. So
you've decided that hiring a few security guards is okay. Getting rid of that nasty
tax collector would sure be nice, though. He keeps getting in the way of you making
the money you so richly deserve! Everyone who believes in you happens to be fairly
well off.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

found at Runes who found it at Shirls.

True Confessions
Some of us were discussing the "hell hath no fury..." and I confessed to a wee indisgression, or so I thought.

It all began when I was getting divorced. Before I moved out, I got his keys and had copies of them made. He was a real party dude at the time and went bar-hopping each evening with his friends. Soon he was drinking pretty heavily. So I'd go by the bars he frequented and move his car over to the opposite side of the parking lot. Once I returned to the apartment to retrieve some of my clothes and other belongings and I also took some of his clothes with me. I dropped them off at the cleaners instructing them to make the waist 2 inches smaller on all the pants and have the neck and chest altered on a few favorite shirts.

A year later, I heard he'd quit drinking and was attending AA. And he looked like he had lost a little weight, too.

Yankee Or Dixie Quiz - found at Shirl's

My Results: 89% (Dixie). Did you have any Confederate ancestors? That seems about right.

One of my passions. Collecting sock monkeys. After a life of being a drug addict, I had to find other things to get passionate about. So I collect stuff, root for basketball, and sometimes sew. I collect sock monkeys; old and new. My favorite one is a tiny 5" one that sits on top of my monitor on a velcro strip I glued there. I take it off and pop it into the washer occasionally. It brings me some strange degree of comfort. I also have other old toys. I'm nuts about all things related to "The Simpsons". I root for Duke University basketball mostly, but enjoy almost all sports. And I also love to sew. As long as I have my machine in working order and some fabric, that's where I'll be. I used to be fanatical about exercising. It's now a much healthier relationship. There's more passions...ballet, playing guitar and singing. Writing on my weblogs, too. And the obvious-- being a mother and a woman and the heart of my family.

I'm still learning about me and my passions. I had arrested development because of my drug abuse. So I'm still growing up in many ways. Why don't you tell me a little bit about what you are passionate about? I may be able to guess for some of you.

Ahhhh. I got the best neck snap, crackle, pops this morning. I arrived early to yoga class, and I was stretching and warming up on my little mat overlooking the lake outside the window. (when it's warm, we go out on the deck) It's not done that in years and feels great. Let's see. What's newsworthy that my friends and relations might want to hear about?

No Pants Day?

My husband asked me years ago not to use his real name online, and I'm thinking hubby and husband sounds a little condescending. His name also begins with an "S", so I started calling him any other name that beginning with an "S". Stu, Stan, Sam, are some I've used. I just felt a little annual clarification was due.

So anyway, Sylvester's sugar numbers were 130 last night. This is good news. Between 100 - 150 are normal, I believe. He's been over 200 for several weeks now. After adding insulin shots and changing insulin pill doses recently, I believe he may finally be stablized. It sure has been hard on him this last year.

I just frosted the carrot cake my husband wanted for Valentine's Day. I've always made him a special cake each year, and because of his diabetes now, he can't have sweets. But he does indulge just a wee bit. It's certainly not easy for someone who used to eat lots of sweets. I used to make him a Red Velvet Cake each year. In 2-layer heart-shaped pans and make a cream-cheese icing sometimes and sometimes another icing; can't remember the other one right now, but it's on my recipe card. It was such a big hit the first time I made it, it's become a ritual. I thought better of it this time, but he persuaded me to make a more "healthier" carrot cake for him and I relented if he'd promise to take it easy on it. Now I find low-sugar, low-fat recipes for the Red Velvet cake, so I may try that next time around. I really like to cook and so does he, so we trade off in the kitchen.

Where'd that snow storm go? I had an early appointment in the city and got a hotel room with other friends so I could assure a safe arrival because of the snow storm we were expecting. We were to get 6-12 inches between 3 and 6am. When I got up at 6, we had about 2 inches and traffic was breezing along nicely. After the appt, we went to Bruegger's Bagels and indulged our caffeine and sugar fixes. So I've not been to sleep yet, but I wanted to unwind a moment online and then I'm putting it to bed. Right after I visit a couple of blogs....just a few. Then. I. will. sleep......

We've got a winter storm coming sometime late tonight or early tomorrow morning. I have to go out early in the morning and I'm worried about driving in it.

I'm downloading the new Mozilla Firefox. I've been using the Mozilla Firebird. I log onto the internet with AOL, minimize it, and then pull up Mozilla to use for my browser. I've tried many browsers, but I'm favoring Mozilla lately.

At 3 minutes til 6:00 last night, Skyler says, "Oh, Mom, I've got to be at gym at 6:00!" We rush around looking for shoes and coats and hairbrushes and are out of the door by 6:01; at the school by 6:07. Fortunately, we're 2 miles from her school. Love those last minute scrambles.

Kane's cat came home. Wilson was missing for about two weeks and it wasn't looking real good. Cat love is different than dog love. Dog love is reciprocal. Actually, you don't have to even give dog love to receive dog love. But cat's are so fickle. They don't usually express their love the way we'd like them to.

You watch a film for many reasons. Content, usually. Or to see the actors in the film. And because their talent transends the screen, pulls you in, and their voice echoes throughout leaving you transfixed with the characterization so pure you never want the performance to end. Like Dame Maggie Smith's portrayal of Mrs. Emily Delahunty in My House In Umbria. Simply enchanting.

A dozen long-stemmed red noses for your Valentine Bozo.

Sister Stacey Patrick has a fun quiz to try out. Your birth date describes who we are, what we are good at, and what our inborn abilities are. It also points to what we have to learn and the challenges we are facing. I was #5-The Nonconformist. What a surprise.

Snatching more goodies from Shirl today!

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. Identity:: crisis
   
2. Reveal:: poker
   
3. Live:: at Leed's
   
4. Attitude:: adjustment
   
5. Night:: falls on Manhattan
   
6. Nevada::brothels
   
7. Weekend::warriors
   
8. Write::instead of wasting time. =)
   
9. Friend::life's hearbeat
   
10. Seventeen::Janis Ian
    

From Unconscious Mutterings

Ballet shoes- beautiful, graceful, and creative,
you enjoy dancing writing and music. You are
often very poetic and sometimes dramatic. You
keep to yourself aside from a few close friends
that you can relate to. [please vote! thank
you! :)]


What Kind of Shoe Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Found at Shirl's. That's appropriate, I suppose, having had several years of dance. I have an old pair of black shoes like this picture I still wear around the house. They're leather with suede patches on the bottom, so they're not made to wear outdoors. As a matter of fact, Robin and I have a pair of silver tap shoes saved, with about a 2-inch heel, and a thin strap, that each of us claim as our own. I've not tried to sullap-ball-change (tap), do a walk-over (acrobatics), or grande jet� (ballet) in a long, long time. It would not be a pretty picture.

Anathea left a good soup recipe in a post below with mostly squash-- a family favorite. We really enjoy fried squash. Sliced thinly and dipped in egg/milk, then dregged in corn meal with a little salt & petter. Fry it in the skillet with oil. Same as fried green tomatos. And if you cook it just right, the calories will magically disappear. You know we flour and fry everything here in the South. You learn it at your Mother or Grandmother's knee. Fortunately, we stopped that tradition after we became a little more informed and probably only eat something fried about 3 or 4 times a year.

Hearing on CNN, (rather reading the crawl running below before anyone said it out loud,) about Carli Bruscia, the 11 year old girl's body had been found in Sarasota, FL, I'm still hurting for that family. I'm hurting for all the children who've been abducted. As a mother of a daughter, 15, it's so unnerving to see that tape of how easy it was for her to go with that man. In just a scant few seconds, her whole world would change. Was she scared? Did she consider running, yelling? My husband says, "Look at that ugly asshole." And I respond, "No, he's just a normal looking guy. That's what's worse. He's your average, next-door neighbor looking guy. It'd be easier if all child abducters looked like monsters, but they don't." sigh

Update on Family:
A few people have asked about my family members lately and I thought I'd go ahead and address it now. Robin now has cellulitis in her legs, but is trying to get around with a cane. She previously had worn a hearing aid in one ear, but after the 3-wk hospital stay around Christmas, the antibiotics she had to take were so strong that her hearing is almost totally gone now. Mother, after a hospital stay with pneumonia, is now using a walker as she's not very steady on her feet, her appetite is picking up somewhat. She barely weighs 100 lbs. We're all short and little bitty in my family. And hubby, as a newly diagnosed diabetic, went from the insulin pills to the needle today. He thinks it's the end of the road but I'm trying to reassure him that he should now feel better on the insulin shots without so many ups and downs in his sugar levels.

Skyler called from school and wasn't feeling well, so I went to pick her up. I heard her coughing last night from 4:30 until she got up for school. Anyway, I was doing laundry and she asked me where a certain pair of jeans were and I told her they were in the dryer. She started worrying about it because she said she had left money in them. I had to assure her that the only thing that happens to washed money is that it gets clean. Light years ago when I was married to Jamie, we were getting ready to leave for Charlotte, NC, 3 hours away, to see Led Zeppelin. And all our traveling cash was in the pockets of my jeans which were in the dryer when I remembered it. I'll never forget how much I worried about that $60.00-- 3 twenties, in the dryer. I was certain it would disintegrate or something.

I've been discombobulated for days now. I'm so set in my ways in my old age, it's not funny. When I get up, I come to the computer with my morning java, read my email, the news, then onto the blogs for posting and reading. All the while, fueling up on caffeine in the quiet of the house and doing the whole waking up thing. Getting my head on straight. Well, getting my head cleared. (former hippies never say "straight" ha!) Then, my day goes forward with chores, errands, etc.

Now, if I'm interrupted in my morning routine, my whole day is off kilter. Skyler has been out of school today and they came home at 9:00 yesterday. Hubby wanted to stand over me and hold forth all morning Monday and I couldn't keep a thought in my head. Skyler wants her eggs cooked just "so". It seems a little selfish, but I need, or enjoy is more like it, those few morning hours alone with myself and the computer.

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Funky Stylist, Brini Maxwell gets it done in retro style.
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We were talking last night about getting back to vegetarian eating around here and reminisced about what derailed us all before. Skyler was a vegetarian until age 3 1/2 when we caught her going into the trash for a discarded chicken leg. I succumbed to a slaw dog and hubby got weak with Hickory House bar-b-que. So we're going to give it a go around here again. Anyone got any good recipes?

Half-Time Peep Show
"Oh, you nasty boy." (pic NSFW) The US really is just one giant small town. We saw the boob, which was beautiful, by the way. But can't we just acknowledge it and move on instead of talking about the horror of the breast? [more pics of janet and the streaker]

I've set up an RSS feed for this site. Blogger makes it easy by going to "Settings", then "site feed" and following the instructions for 'Atom'. I've listed two feed URLS for s u s a n * j a y n e. http://susanjayne.blogspot.com/rss/susanjayne.xml. Many people prefer to read weblogs through an aggregator, and I've been trying out Bloglines. It makes for much quicker blog reading, I must say, although you sometimes lose the pictures and other nuances of the site if you're depending solely on it for your viewing.

My Saturday
We stayed in yesterday and last night, with the exception of taking Sky and her best bud, Jess, to the mall for awhile. Jess spent the night and they're still sleeping, Don't know how long they were up. It's a blast to watch those two interact. It's easy to see what makes Skyler fun to be around. She'a always the life of the party and keeps everyone going. It's like it's her mission.

I watched basketball yesterday on ESPN. Duke played Georgia Tech and Tech was tough early on, but Duke prevailed and won by about 8 pts, I believe. I think they're 16 - 1 now. Then I watched Michigan State University, play Indiana. Shirl went to MSU and has gotten me interested in them. They've had one of the hardest schedules in NCAA so far, but they ended up beating Indiana by about a dozen points. They were celebrating 25 years of ESPN, so they dressed up like it was 1979...afro wigs and wide ties, etc. MSU must have been a great place to be yesterday, and I look for them to be a vital part of the playoffs again this year. Today we have football, or Super Bowl. I don't watch football as much as I do basketball, but will root for the Panthers. To think they were 1 - 15 two years ago, got a new coach and have turned it around to be in the Super Bowl this year is already a great feat. I'll also be tuning into CNN at 8:10 and 8:35 to watch the ad that CBS won't show.

J-Mo posted this Scrabble link today. Someone. Make. It. Stop.