Tuesday Thor's Day

A bit of useful advice when living with Thor. If you hear a funny noise (that isn't the plug being knocked over in the bathtub), it's usually a good thing to check it out. It begins with the painter's tape I put up so I can freshen up the paint on the door frames and floor boards in the hallway.

So, I hear a funny noise. Look in the hall to see this:

"Whatcha doing Thorbish?"
"Nothing."
"What's with this here?"

"I dunno, ask Loki, I was just sitting here, taking a bath You always blame me."

A few seconds later:

"Taking a bath, huh?"

"It's all your fault anyway, human, you know I can't resist tape, so why'dya leave it there, tempting me?"

Fired Up!

Yesterday I took my mother for a little spot of fun in an otherwise dreary, rainy day. We ventured to the hallowed hills of Mt. Pleasant where the Center for Women was holding its 3rd Annual Lowcountry Women Writers Holiday Book Signing. There were over 50 local women writers there signing their books and meeting their fans.

I also got to see a few people I know. Kelly Love Johnson was there with her book, Skirt! Rules for the Workplace, which would make an excellent gift for any young lady about to graduate from college or anyone who works.

There was also Beth Webb Hart who I had met once before at a seminar at the Center for Women. I bought her new book, The Wedding Machine as a present for myself.

I got to see Mary Alice Monroe again. She loves Jason (well every one who knows him loves him) because he provided her with some research on her latest book, Last Light Over Carolina. If you pick up a copy, read the acknowledgments and you might see a familiar name. And I have to give her some serious respect because when I walked up to the table she said, "I've met you before." Which was exactly once for about two seconds last summer. As I am horrible with recognizing people out of place (if I know you from the hospital, I'll recognize you there, but not in WalMart) and even worse with names, I was in awe that she just knew that she'd seen me before.

I spoke briefly with Mary Edna Frasier about the cause she is involved with - saving from development a spit of barrier island near Kiawah - and thanked her again for the party she held at her studio for the cause where we sang protest songs.

And perhaps most exciting, I saw two women that attended the same writer's workshop as I did. Cleo Scott Brown has written the fantastic story -Witness to the Truth- of her father and family in Louisiana and his involvement in the Civil Rights Act and trying to get registered to vote. Amazing story. The other lady, Cree Foreman, who at 84 has just put out her second book. Her first, Phil and the French Country Inn, is a memorial to her husband who was a self taught French chef who traveled France to learn the art and opened a French restaurant in a small North Carolina town.

(File under the learn something new everyday: New rules for bloggers. Angie, I actually saw you and your adorable little man. My mom and I were standing behind you while you talked to Beth Webb Hart. I will echo your sentiment that I am merely a fan, an aspiring writer, and the books I purchased, I did so with my own money and have received no compensation for any of my comments above. I have, however, received much encouragement which does my soul better than any amount of money ever did my wallet.)

Now I'm fired up, ready to write, using all three of my names. After coffee.

Thor sez: But look how cute I am, don't you want to play with me instead?

Loki Sunday

Dramatic Loki

Old Fogey Alert!

Last night at work, one of the women was describing a game she was going to get her children: "It's called Operation and it buzzes and lights up when you touch the side."

I told her, "That was HIGH TECH stuff when I was a kid. We were all amazed that the nose would light up the same time the buzz went off."

Then another woman chimed in that the game hadn't even been invented when she was a kid. She jokingly said what was high tech in her day were paper dolls.

Which reminded me of (was it?) McCall's Magazine that had the new paper doll outfits in each issue and how much fun it was to cut them out and try them on the doll. I think the doll's name was Betsy?

Which led to an interesting discussion of low-tech toys and toys that spark the imagination as opposed to toys that children passively interact with that do not require much imagining on the child's part.

Which reminded me of an interesting article that I saw about the demise of helicopter parenting..

I often (not so jokingly) wondered where this nation would get its writers and artists from once an entire generation had lost the need and ability to use imagination as a part of play.

Yeah, baby let's get back to cutting out paper dolls, playing with dress up clothes, running around in the backyard pretending it's a distant planet or the wild west and letting our kids get dirty and sweaty and chipped up a little bit.

Loki sez: I'm imagining I just ate a Smurf.

Thor's Day!

Living with Thor, you just never know what you are going to walk in and find going on in a room. This is why the camera is left near at hand.

Never mind that he knows full well he is not allowed on the counters. (Also never mind my filthy window that yes, I will clean as soon as I am not coughing up a lung. There's a HomeEc101 question - why does the outside glass on my kitchen window get dirtier a hundred times faster than other windows?)


No, Thor, getting in the sink is not allowed either.

Thor sez: Fine! I saw a huge monster and I'm just trying to protect you, but fine, I'll get off your precious counter and no, I did not step on your coffee spoon.

The Best of America

I was on call last night and caught this awesome documentary on PBS called "The Way We Get By".

It is about a group of people in Bangor, Maine who have, since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, been sending off troops and greeting home coming troops at all hours of the the day and night at the Bangor Airport.

So far, these mostly elderly, mostly veteran citizens have thanked something like 900,000 soldiers.

It says so much about the generation they belong too. None of them simply slapped a yellow ribbon on their car and went about life as usual. They are sacrificing large chunks of their lives to simply be there, in person, with a smile, a handshake and a face to face thank you to our soldiers.

I cried my eyes out.

Watch it if you can.

Loki sez: I cried when the doggie had to go to the Rainbow Bridge.

It's Tuesday?

Ugh. Got to suck it up for real and go back to work. I'm starting to think that in spite of my negative flu test, that I really did have some variant of flu. I've not been this sick for this long in forever.

This morning there were bluebirds checking out the bluebird house. I feel sort of bad, because apparently, my backyard is a bad neighborhood. One year a bluebird baby fell out of the house and got eaten by a snake. The next year, a raccoon ripped the house down and ate all the babies. Not a good track record. I've meant to take it down until I can get a post set where it would be safer, but just haven't gotten to it yet. Maybe they are just looking for a place to spend the winter.

Attempting to get the mountain o' laundry cleared away.

I'm really getting annoyed with the let's-make-some-thing-out-of-nothing news media and our increasingly idiotic culture of leaping to any conclusion that supports our bias without even attempting to apply common sense.

Oh, and I've lived in Asia, thank you. The president's bow to the emperor was, while awkward and not done entirely correctly, was simply an attempt to respect another culture's customs. Whether he should or should not have is moot as it essentially means no more than Bush holding hands with Saudi royalty.

What irked me was one of the "news" channels was using footage of Obama talking to an older woman as their proof of his "repeated bowing".

I am tall -5' 8" - and have a hard time hearing in crowded situations. So when I am talking to a shorter person in a crowd, I will be seen to repeatedly lean in/down to catch what they are saying.

I am not bowing. For Pete's sake.

The boyz say: You mean you aren't bowing down to worship us whenever you lean down to pet us?