Hidden In France

Good bye imac, hello life!

A few things have hit me in the last few weeks. Unpleasant things.  Nothing too horrible, be reassured, but painful things, not the least of it being the surprise death of my soul mate and lifeline:  my imac G5. 

I will need a new computer.  At the moment I'm borrowing one. The real important stuff, my writing and my photographs can be salvaged thank goodness, but what will be gone forever are my dear bookmarks. Everything i had lovingly collected for blogging, for further reference, future posts, future exotic travels, future dreams, future recipes, and all the links to fantastic blogs neatly archived and classified by yours truly.  I was so naive to put all my trust in technology.  Please don't be as naive as I am.  I feel lost and robbed. I feel sickened, I feel...

free?

A bit like running barefoot in a field of poppies with no underwear on: refreshing, and possibly dangerous.  I was spending too much time reading, searching and organizing those damn bookmarks, it was bordering on insane.  It took time away from life, it really did. I will be able to start from scratch now.  Clean slate.  The blogging equivalent of re-virginity. 

One of my good resolutions for the new year is the de-cluttering and simplifying of my life.  Maybe this is the universe giving me a little nudge in the desirable direction. All this hogging and classifying of info: it's all brain clutter.  

So today, I had to do it the old fashion way:  read blogs as opposed to searching maddeningly through old posts and archived blog ideas. I was in the mood for spring (I begin to celebrate spring on December 21. Good riddance Christmas and Hannukah, i never liked you anyway.) These are pictures by stylist Eva Lindh, (with photographer Anna Skoog) via Jubela, via Made by Girl did the trick.  Enjoy.

Extremely poor Richard'$ Almanac

I'm off and don't know when i'll be online again. I wanted to leave you in the company of some really thought provoking folks.

Their names are Craig and Marc, two riotous friends of mine and unapologetic hollywood writers who decided that the difficult financial times we're experiencing demanded of them to stop putting whoopy cushions under each other seat, and at long last begin to give back to society.

The result is The Extremely Poor Richard's Almanac, a site filled with unique tips on how to save money on practically everything. You will lose a few friends in the process of following their advices.  You may even been thrown in jail or alienate your children, but the $savings$ will be real.

On breakfast:

'For starters, forget the milk.  After all, did anyone ever say that your corn flakes have to be floating in milk?  Well, actually the powerful Milk Lobby has been saying it for years, but that’s for another blog.  Cold tap water works just as well, the lack of a competing flavor actually brings out the subtle taste of every nugget or flake.  And that’s not to mention the significant price differential between tap water (free) and milk (not.)'

On restaurant eating:

"Arrive at the first restaurant and inform the maitre d’ that your guest is running late, but you’d like to be seated anyway, tough day at the office and all that.  As soon as your tush hits the well upholstered chair, a waiter will bring a basket of warmed bread and other pre-meal treats.  Eat them.  Every bite.  Then pretend to get a call on your cell phone, tell the maitre d’ that your guest got into a minor car accident, thank goodness they’re all right, but you really have to go.  Exit and proceed to the second restaurant.  Repeat the process and then again at the third.  The pre-meal treats should add up to a fairly decent meal. Caution:  Do not attempt this technique if you are allergic to olive tapenade."

There is much more,such as tips on how to save water by showering at friends house, or how to save 100% of your cell phone bill by 'going Amish' I'l let you check it out for yourself.

The Extremely Poor Richar'ds Almanac is a brand new blog that practically feels like public services.  Plus, they're my buddies.  So I hope you will visit them.

Merry Christmas!

I have just enough time and resources to manage a post.  We're soon off to Idyllwild, looking for snow, of which apparently there is enough to require chains (!) I can only picture my husband and I scratching our heads in front of the never opened box.  Hopefully our 9 year old will help, he's great at legos.

Yesterday we had a little French tea with my dear friends and fellow French expats in L.A., Isabelle, the artist who might be abandoning us and moving to Virginia, Marie the reader (who shattered her wrist shopping for a Christmas tree, i knew to stay away from those rascally trees.) and Claire the café owner who never cease to surprise us.  We had traditional Galette des Rois that Claire's mom made, mousse au chocolat and laughter.  Claire's mom was here too and she is the one who brought us the latest Marie Claire Idées, and by extension this post.

All images robbed from the best mag in the whole wide world if you like to make things, aka Marie Claire ideés.

This has been such a whirlwind year, this 2008.  People have been calling it O-Hate for a reason.  But I say and will repeat, and please repeat with me O-NINE IS MINE!  

I'm not sure when i will recover the use of my beloved Mac and if i'll be able to read your latest posts, but in the mean time, I wish you a merry Christmas, happy Hannukah and a safe end of the year.

Peace

MERCURY IS IN *&%$ Retrograde!!

And you know I'm mad when I have to use double exclamation points. 

At the moment I am writing clandestinally from my husband's lap top, using a pirated signal.  I am trapped at home and internet deprived as my beloved Imac has stopped working all of a sudden, taking with him (it?) all the internet connections in the house.

Also, i have been battling the worst ant invasion ever.  I know I always say this is the worst ever, but this time it really is. Have thrown out 90% of the cupboad content. 70% was expired on or prior to 2002 but still.  They had NO right.  It was trash, but it was MY trash.

All was not bad today. This morning I got to meet a blogger in the flesh, and she was every bit as lovely and adorable as her blog.  La Belette Rouge, I can confirm is NOT a 65 year old man in Bengladesh, (as so many of us are suspected of being) and I believe she will attest that neither am I.  

Go to la Belette Rouge's blog.  She's a great writer, so honest and true you will love her. She is also one of those rare writers who can make you laugh and break your heart simultaneously.

This meeting felt good. Two souls sisters eating egg benedict in North Hollywood, without the slightest hint of guilt, wondering how the heck they had ended up in the subburbs of Los Angeles, and lamenting over the distance of our beloved Paris.  

I hope I will soon be able to get back in the swing of things.  Until then, no pretty pictures as they area all trapped inside a comatose computer.

Hugs to all.

Obama's true colors

Sorry. I'm not done loving him yet. 

It looks like The Man had a bit of a hidden agenda all along.  When he was campaining, issues of climate change and green technology felt at times like words I was intent in believing. 

But the Barrack Meister is going above and beyond my wildest expectations in choosing his team.

The last government dismissed, even ridiculed science. They even had us convinced that  green technology was more fiction than science. Obama is not buying it for a minute, and neither should we.

Competence.  Then intelligence.  What's next?  Integrity?

i feel naked

I have no banner !!?! wtf? Why cruel world WHYYYYY!

How long have you guys let me go around blogland looking like this.  I feel toute nue...

The thing is the banner is there, it exists.  I have no idea why it's not appearing. Anyone a Typepad wiz?

Another manifestation of supreme failure on my part this week is that I still haven't gotten a Christmas tree. Aren't we somewhere near the 17TH OF DECEMBER?!  I'm thinking it's toast for this year.

It's just that I'm not looking in the right places.  I'm told I should use my actual feet to get to the actual car and drive to actual stores.  Instead I've been doing all my perusing of x-mass trees online. 

I found some pretty awesome ones right here:

From Atelier XT, of course

the only word that comes to my mind is SUBLIME.

I wonder if Atelier XT could weave me a fresh new banner.  Just like the trees, with ribbons and fabric and little goobledygook. I don't like my old stinking banner anymore, anyway, and it hates me right back.

Note:  Post was written for nothing, the stinking banner got a bit scared of me and popped right back in as soon as I pressed "save".  What the-what the F*&% I understand nothing tonight.  

La pub!

I want to do some 'pub', or advertising in French, for Sandrine, of the french blog Sunrise Hossegor She has to be the most Californian of all frenchies.  I love her style, her spirit, and her blog.  In fact, she's already inspired a few of my posts. (i'm counting four.) 

Sandrine did something VERY impressive, and set up the website of her store all by herself, and in English! It looks entirely professional to me. So now you don't need to travel all the way to beautiful Hossegor to purchase her selection of hip and bohemian products from Rice, to la fiancée du Meekong. 

 

 

And another blogger I would love to do some pub for, is Paola, of mirror mirror in the UK.  here is someone whose taste I love,  here are some product she is selling on her site.

Check out the sites, there is much more there.  This is only the stuff i personally want.

I found my tree!

Love at first sight looks like this:

oohhh....!  I am speechless...

This tree was created by Jane Shouten of  All the Luck in the World. I'm such a fan of Jane's little world.  I wrote a post about her here.  Believe it or not, this chair was reupholstered with old blankets. Wonderful.

Here are other images taken from her Flickr page:

This is all so charming and fresh, all made with recycled material, itty-bitsys of this and that.

I need hearts in my life right now. And the word love has never felt more necessary.  It's the law of attraction I hear. You attract what you focus on.  I have been focusing on the things that make me upset, and they sure have materialized in abundance.

So LOVE. HAPPY. HEALTH. SNOW (i'm craving snow.) FRIENDS.  LAUGHTER and ABUNDANCE is what I wish, for myself and everyone.

Omygod White Floors!

And because negativity breeds negativity, I will wash down the last post with one of the things that makes me happy (as long as I don't have to wash them)  WHITE FLOORS!  For some it's shoes or chocolate, what can I say.

I found these wonderful pictures in the lovely blog RiverMist Expression, via Shill, but I don't know who the photographer is.  Anyone knows?

The voice of dissent

I'm on of those people who believe firmly in the silver lining of things, so I'm as excited about changes as I am sad about the confusion and the pain all around. 

The week-end was spent in abject mental agony.  Because of something I wrote about my dead father, one of my sisters last week, and my mother this week-end, hurled accusations and insults at me in writing and by phone.  I would love to tell you what those are but they read this blog… oh wait.  NO THEY DON''T ANYMORE!  since my mother said that they had  both DELETED AND ERASED it.   An interesting choice of words.  I guess they hold this kind of power.  

I think what they really would like to do is erase or delete me, and my VOICE.  For them it is much easier to see my different opinion, memories and variation on the official story as Pathological lies. (which was the gitst of the accusation, one that prevents any possibility of discussions.  I mean, would you spend five minutes holding an intelligent discussion with someone suffering from mythomania (definition: an abnormal or pathological tendency to exaggerate or tell lies.)

I know i I wouldn't.

This post has never held more meaning to me than it does today.

I was feeling so hollow and sad yesterday, like I was the the least acceptable creature in the animal kingdom. But thanks to my friend Robyn, I don't feel so alone today.  There IS stranger and more objectionable than me.

There is the blobfish 

 the Aye Aye

the Dumbo Octopus

The axolotl  this one looks happy.

There is the star-nosed mole.  (Actually the monstrous thing I said was about my dad's nose, and the fact that he had it redone to look less Jewish.  The thing is, I might have been wrong about that.  He wanted nothing to do with his Jewish heritage, but it might have had nothing to do with his surgery. For all I know, his nose looked like this before:)

I feel a bit less rotten now.  But I still feel like the sun bear:

And my sister and mother forget one thing:  They do not hold the monopoly on loving my dad.

It's that Tag of the year

I tagged La Belette Rouge yesterday, (I am hooked on her blog, one of the truest blog ever) and today she tags me:

so...

4 things I did today (so far, it's only mid-day)

* Was rear-ended by charming man in big car.  My Prius's humble buttock was no match for his manly Jeep Wrangler.  Looks like I'm getting a brand new bumper for Christmas.

* Spent two hours in Power group with Lenora, Robyn and Susan.  We cried, we laughed, we admonished each other and came out as more functioning women. At least temporarily in my case.

*Found out guests were not coming this week end. Jumped for joy and gladly interrupted frantic cleaning of house in mid vacuuming.

* Wrote for an hour and did this post.

4 Things on my to do list

*Clean the house in time before next guests arrive, hopefully sometime this week or this year.

*Make gougères and melon wrapped in proscuito for our french dinner at Isabelle's house tonight.

* Call my sister, something I am finding extremely difficult to do since this happened.

* Write the next great american novel.  (Though judging from the draft I'm working on, I might have to settle for much, much less.)

4 Guilty pleasures

Going to the movies alone.

Watching Iron chef while drunk on my own concoction of cheap white wine and cranberry juice.

In the car, unbeknownst to them, feasting on my children's faces in the rear view mirror.

Organizing my clothes by color.

4 Random facts about me

*I eat the same food everyday for lunch for six months to a year at a time.  I had the Year of Tamales, followed by six months of cranberry and walnut salad with raspberry dressing.  Lately it's wheat bread, apricot jelly and sharp cheddar cheese.  I eat sloppily in front of the computer while reading your blogs.

* I have huge hair.  Huge.  People sing the theme song of the lion king when I enter a room.

* I have lied for years about being 5' 2".  I'm 5' 1".  Because in my head, that one inch is the difference between being taken seriously and being dismissed.

* I read 5 books at a time, alternating daily.  1 novel, 1 book on tape, 1 historical book, 1 self help and 1 business.  If I don't,I feel I'm missing out on life.  The result of course is that I am blacklisted at the library as chronic late returner.  You think I'm some kind of genius, don't you?  But the truth is that retain pretty much nothing of what I read.

All right, who wants to play?

Because I want to know more about them I tag:

La Porte Rouge

Aurea

whenever she is done giving birth, no rush at all: two wishes

Love Shill

Canelle et Vanille

Things I learned in 2008

Was 2008 as challenging a year for you as it was for me?   2008 might be remembered as the year when the bottom finally fell out. Globally, it also feels like the year when we are finally sobering up to the fact that things were indeed too good to be true.  2008 might also be a turning point.  Maybe we caught things just in time, heh?

On a personal note, I'd like to think that I came out of 2008 just a little bit wiser.  Here are a few things I learned his year that I was clueless about last year:

* Perfect strangers can be as effective as life-long friends at lifting your spirit.

* Very little in life than can be considered a constant

* Except maybe for love and the joy of reading

* Ikea will not take back furniture that has been assembled, even if you disassemble it and put it perfectly back in the box-- those a-holes.

* I am more of an optimist than previously assumed

* I should never have watched that one episode of House.  Now I'm hooked.

* Same for almond chocolate chips from Trader Joe's

* America is the kind of country that elects a black man

* It is less stressful to clean my own house than to deal with the guilt of having a housekeeper

* Real estate is not the best investment

* Money in a 401K is not safe

* I am more vain than I thought I was

* Sibling rivalry dies hard

* The whole time I thought we were fighting, we were actually communicating

* It is possible to fall in love with a baby that isn't yours

* America's reducing of mindless consumption results in gigantic global problems I had never considered

* We said 'never again' and believed it, yet we are unable to stop genocides happening today

* My cat isn't that cute. He might in fact be the worst cat ever.  But I totally love him

* This applies to Self

* Being open minded takes hard work

* Now this is going to sound CRAZY, even to me, but I'm pretty sure that I am finally happy.  Happy!After a lifetime of hoping but not being sure happiness existed at all. No exterior cause created that. When I looked for exterior cause I was looking in the wrong place. Also, I think I was happy long before I understood I was.

... Okay, so those are a few things I learned in 2008.  But may I tag some of you?  May I? I don't usually do this but I'm curious.  About you. You could do this, and then maybe tag a few more.  You know the drill.

I tag: 

La Belette Rouge

Cushti

Liberty Post

Color Informal

The twenty second line

a tree made out of chalk

Hey, I'm not all talk.  I'm mostly talk. But sometimes I make something, yes I do.  

I wish I knew how to take better pictures.  Here is a little tree i drew out of chalk on my kitchen chalkboard. A made the chalkboard a few months ago by painting a masonite board (lighter, smoother than plywood) with 2 coats of black chalkboard paint.

The design is not mine.  I found it online while googling "sapin de noel blanc' or white christmass trees.  I think it's pretty cute.  

ewww... not quite ready for a close up, he?

Well, at least it was done fast.

Here is the original design: 

I know, much better.  

and in red:

They are 95 Euros and are hand painted on linnen  and cotton and for sale on the

 Decoclico website, where I also found those great scandinavian candelabras. (The picture is horrid but I did not take it.)

Holiday decor

 I still haven't come up with a tree concept.  I love real ones, but they feel wrong (always that guilt.) I'd go for an artificial tree, but aren't those made out of terrible ozone-depleting-puppy-killing material?  Target has a nifty white one I love but it's $200, so no way.  I'm sure it will go on sale on December 26th.  I guess we'll have to decorate then. 

A few years ago I bought a potted lemon tree heavy with fruit, and decorated that. I though it was brilliant, though the kids looked at me like i was a loony. To my defense, we've been eating lemons from the garden ever since.

I like the earthy simplicity of this holiday decor, via Bo Bedre and the beautiful Keltainen talo ranalla. 

This looks exactly like my wood floor.  Mine is made of 8 inch planks american walnut.

Beating procrastination, yes we can!

La Belette Rouge offers particularly precious advice to writers, which really can be applied to any project. 

I used to be the mother of all procrastinators. I did not know how to get anything done unless my boss was breathing down my neck. Then I began working at home and I was absolutely lost. It took many, many year of agonizing, of guilt, of wasted time and getting little accomplished. Procrastination is a foul smelling beast and, if you ask me, the root of all evil. I'm happy to report that I finally tamed that beast after tackling it to the floor and kicking it violently in the groin.  

Here is how I get my work done. Just like Belette, my present boss (he's a real asshole too) is a simple kitchen timer. Day after day it's just him (it?), me, my desk my computer and my chair six hours a day. Together we can get a lot done.

At the moment I am working on 5 projects. I start at 9 (i exercise or carpool before that) I set my boss timer. 55 minutes per project. 15 minutes break. I usually don't work longer than 55 minutes on projects. 55 minutes is all the juice i have for any given topic. I have found that after 55 minutes i flounder and waste time. Also after 55 minutes I need to pee in the worst way and check my comments and e-mail which are my personal crack.

I have a soundtrack of music for each project. That's a fantastic way to trick the brain. There is a pavlovian effect to hearing the music, it puts me right back in the space I was in when I left off. (I even have a soundtrack to get me psyched for paying my bills: anything from Madonna--don't ask.)

I don't believe in writers block one bit. I open the file and begin by reading my last 200 words, compulsion forces me to correct what I read, and this somehow triggers the desire to write and the inspiration.

After 3 pm I take care of the boys, I clean, i cook, I shop, I garden and enjoy life the best i can.

I reward myself. Once or twice a month I play hookey. I give myself a day of wandering, day dreaming. I go to the movies all by myself. I shop. I meet a friend. I binge on blogs.

On the week-end I write my blog posts but I don't work on my projects.

Those tricks I learned little by little. I didn't use to know I needed a plan, or that I needed to get organized. The key for me is to work some on everything every day. I wish there had been someone who offered great advice like the one La Belette Rouge is giving us, so I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, so I thought I'd share mine.

What are your tricks?

Camille Soulayrol

I have been meaning to post those images by French stylist Camille Soulayrol, but I forgot where I saw them first.  I know it was one of your blogs.

Apparently I am not entirely ready to post holiday colors yet.  I'm still blogging like it's Easter 2007.

Maybe it's because I'm nostalgic of that time of insouciance back in the days.  Do you remember two winters ago when the big news in the papers (and the collective fear in our hearts) was ... bird flu.

Censorship and sisterhood.

Now this blog is anonymous, as you know.  That means that I'm under the impression that when I speak about someone in my family, even in negative terms, you guys will never know who I'm talking about.

The problem with this reasoning is that those family members know about my blog, might read it, recognize themselves and hate me. Or worse.

It's exactly what happened with one of my sisters last night.  She read something I had written about our dad.  And now she hates me.  Or worse.

I deleted the offending portion of the post, and had to delete her comments which repeated many elements of the post and also hurt my feelings.  A lot. I never thought she liked me very much but this was over the top.

She went item by item and said in a nutshell that I was a lying sac of shit, spreading lies and accusations about a man who is dead and cannot defend himself.

The reason I am deleting the post is because I hate myself for hurting her.  Though our experiences of childhood are vastly different. (Also, he loved her.  And she loved him.) It was wrong of me to express my own feelings in such a public way. She says I was fabricating to make it more interesting to my readers.  Here is that old spinning accusation again.  It's starting to sound familiar.

Maybe I am a lying sac of shit after all.

I think it isn't unusual for families to break up over such things.  Writers are dangerous people. We write our memories, our experiences, our pains, and those close to us are left absolutely powerless to reclaim their own memories and experiences and tell them to the world.

Though I will argue with her in private that every word I said was true, I will be more careful in the future not to impose my vision of my reality to others.

Unless of course this is more of it?

Amy Butler's holiday decor

Christmas issue of Mary Englebreit Home companion mag is here.  A guilty pleasure. I missed it when it was gone. This issue features Amy Butler's house.  I thought her holiday decor was pretty charming. Read here for the article and more pictures. 

Why Andrew Sullivan blogs.

Still mulling over the many e-mails and comments you have sent me about this post.  But mostly marveling at how GOOD they felt and what a wise bunch you are.  Wondering also, about ethics, about playing with fire (and perhaps even a marriage) by confusing honesty in blogging with a lack of impulse control.

And then Charlie of So Lovely sent me this link. It's Andrew Sullivan author of the Daily Dish doing a podcast about his reasons for blogging, to accompany his article titled "why I blog."

For all of you hooked-on-blogger who sometimes have to ask yourself why? or what for?  Andrew Sullivan conveys quite brilliantly the pressures of the blog, its joys and pitfalls.  Also, its relevance to society.

Note: I already suspected my ideal man was bold and gay, now I think he is both. (And a conservative.)

Here is the interview:

And here is an excerpt from his article in The Atlantic.

"A reporter can wait—must wait—until every source has confirmed. A novelist can spend months or years before committing words to the world. For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

You end up writing about yourself, since you are a relatively fixed point in this constant interaction with the ideas and facts of the exterior world. And in this sense, the historic form closest to blogs is the diary {..}  But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before."

Sheesh, Andrew.. now you're telling me?

As I told Charlie, I hope he has better luck than most of us at getting his husband to read his blog.

Love and war in blogging.

I have a burning question for you:   Do your loved ones read your blog?  Do they approve?  Do they resent it?  Do you find yourself censoring what you write? Do you find yourself spinning (I call it writing).  Do you find yourself resenting the hell out of them?

in love

Here is what it would feel like:

and this would be the soundtrack:

cocoon art and gold maggots

All week my nine year old gets out of school at 12:39.  Not 12:30 or even 12:35.  Nope.  Twelve, thirty NINE!  You just have to love the arbitrary.

I've had little time to write a decent post, but there will always plenty of time to surf the www.

I though those were really pretty and delicate.  They are from Jo Pond, an artist, designer, jeweller and silversmith and genius award honoree.  

Made with silk worm coccons

This I don't know what it is made of.

This either

Now a bit more strange:

One of the luck of being an artist is that you suddenly have a perfectly reasonable explanation for hoarding dead bees.

Oh, and did you see this in Paul Pincus? And yes it is art, honest to goodness museum quality art, wether I understand it or not.

And yes, those are gold maggots coming out of the stuffed fox's ears.

When taxidermia meets Scoleciphobia * you get EGAD!  (* look it up on this favorite website of mine.)

Fall color change

  As I mentioned in this rant, the message I got from Nadia, Pia and so many of you is that you start by decorating the house, and that is what triggers the ever elusive and mysterious ‘holiday spirit’

 So on Thanksgiving day, while the turkey was cooking, I decorated the house.  Not in a big way, but I hung leaves over the dining room table, added lights here and there. 

I'm just noticing the kleenex box and the pillow on the floor.  Oh well.

Didn't buy anything new, only rotated the kick knacks.  Put the old ones in a box for a while.   Changed the color scheme, added forgotten slip covers and curtains around the living room to something more festive.  

My guests had to ingest a hefty serving of bright pink and chartreuse along with the turkey and sweet potatoes.

It was a good idea to redecorate a bit. By the time everyone arrived I felt human. 

A side effect of the color change is that the pink curtain have given the living room a warm glow that feels a little like things are candle lit even during the day. Very mood enhancing to me.

They say cats and gods are color blind.  Well, they are now!  Such camera hogs those two.

Have a merry neurotic Christmas

I don’t like what the holidays change me into.  Oh I get a holiday spirit all right, only mine is the kind that spews toads and wears horns. 

It starts with holiday confusion (A variation on gender confusion but as applied to the holidays) I never could figure out if I should celebrate Christmas, Hannukah, both or neither. 

How to decorate?  Blue and silver or red and green? Menoras or Christmass tree?  Both at once and on top of each other?  Which one should be more prominent?  Which presence of which proves that both are suddenly meaningless?

Though I am usually a generous person, Holiday gifting expectations transform me into a selfish tightwad who hates to be told what to do, when to give or what to give.

 Conversely, I become horribly controlling as to what others should do, and what and when they should give to me. (Respectively: everything, nothing, and never.)

 And I’m absolutely outraged over displays of materialism, consumerism, overindulgence. What about the indignity of those poor Turkeys being gruesomely slaughtered? (especially yours of course, mine, not so much.) How many pieces of electronics do spoiled American children really need? (My kids being the exception to the rule: they really must have that PSP-ipod-flat-screened hovercraft.)

 My neurosis in action looks a bit like this:

 I bark at everything that moves.

 I grow zits.

 I shop, yes, but only the day before and under terrible strain. When it comes to Hannukah it means spending the whole day procrastinating, then driving around aimlessly in a state of pure dread in the search of the absolute perfect little something.  Repeat that times eight nights of Hannukah, times this to the tenth power for Christmas

 By the time new years arrive I look like this.

Picture of post holiday self borrowed here.

On January second I have myself a party and breathe a gargantuan sigh of relief.  

All this to say that I'm thinking I should try something different this year. Reading the comments to Nadia’s post I realized that the holidays are a bit like sex.  Maybe one doesn’t have to wait to be in the mood to get started, one gets started and that puts one in the mood.  I’m hoping Blogging can change me. Your good influence will transform me, heal me.  Change me from Grinch to the fairy godmother.  I'm working on it this year.