Month: December 2015

Christmas Catalog-o-Rama

 

Catalogs we’ve received in the past ten days.
 
Winter, and the impending Christmas holiday, are heralded in Florida not by cooling temperatures, but by the arrival of catalogs. I estimate that Studly Doright and I began receiving between four and eight of the glossy mailings daily beginning around the first of November. Today there were 12 catalogs in the Doright Manor mailbox. Twelve. I almost needed to make two trips to carry them all.

 

I’ve recycled four times this number.
 
Some of the catalogs go straight into the recycling bin, while others are put into a stack for future browsing. Generally, the future browsing pile never gets browsed, but I like to give them a sense of hope.

  
The Hickory Farms catalog is one I always take a few minutes to thumb through. Back when Studly and I were newlyweds the Hickory Farms catalog was about the only one we’d get in the mail. I’d read each page and daydream about someday hosting a Christmas Eve party where I’d serve all the cute little cheese and sausage trays. I’d be the hostess with the mostest for sure. 

One year I scraped up the money to place an order and was so very disappointed in the sizes of the cheeses. I had looked at the pictures and not the dimensions. So much for my hostessing abilities. Nowadays I know to have plenty of wine and beer on hand so nobody cares about the size, quantity, or even the existence of the hors d’oeuvres.

That’s why my new “go to” catalog is the one from Wine Country Gift Baskets:

  

Of course I don’t often buy anything, but I’m still planning that perfect Christmas Eve gathering…chestnuts roasting by an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose…

Peace, people.
  

Instead of Mittens, How About a Job?

Good thinking here! Redswrap.wordpress.com

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

It’s that time of year again when we are collecting up things to give to people who are homeless. Gloves, mittens, hats, scarves, sleeping bags.

Here. Doing a little urban camping right now? Here’s a nice blanket. I sound cynical. I’m not really, I’m just questioning this approach.

The other day, someone tied new scarves around lamp posts in a downtown park with a card inviting people who needed a scarf to take one. I love that. I love all charity. I love giving things to people who need them, no questions asked. I do two donation drives myself. One is called Time of the Month Club. Conducted in the fall, I, along with a network of other women, collect a ton of feminine hygiene products for distribution to women in shelters. Sox Rox is what it sounds like, a sock drive for men, women and children who are homeless…

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John Scalzi Presents Your Day to Promote Charities!

Whatever Holiday Shopping Guide 2015, Day Five: Charities


Friends, so many of you are passionate about charities you’ve started or organizations you support. Today is your day to submit information about your charitable organization to John Scalzi’s Whatever Holiday Shopping Guide.

Go to the link posted at the top of my post and carefully read the instructions for submission. Do it. ‘Tis the season. 

Peace and gratitude, people!

Irrelevant photo of me and either a baby brother or cousin. It’s all about me anyway.

Dread

  

i wait
those four typed words hanging between us:

we need to talk

with trembling hands i key in your
number,

voice mail, my reward.

what cruelty has led us to this awful
place?

how much more can my sanity take?

i jump as a ringtone signals your call.

hello? i answer so softly that even i struggle to hear.

hey, you say, i wonder…

please, just end this agony! get it over with already!

well, i just wanted to know if i could have your recipe for lasagna.

oh, well sure. no problem. glad to help. 

let’s talk again soon.

  
  

Sometimes Pain

pain is now televised
pundits ponder the
circumstances

terrorist ties?
white male loner?
more gun regulations?
fewer gun restrictions?

does any of that matter anymore?
have we accepted this as the
usual business?

sometimes pain
overrides the well-worn
patterns,
overcomes the malaise.

i find curses slipping from my lips like wine from a carafe:
emboldened red,
dizzying,
potent.

but please,
don’t show me
i’m all pained out,
the story remains
the same.

John Scalzi Presents Day Four

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/12/03/whatever-holiday-shopping-guide-2015-day-four-fan-favorites/
Day Four of John Scalzi’s Holiday Shopping Guide gives fans an opportunity to provide input.

Do you have a favorite author, artist, or musician whose work you want to promote? Go to the link above and check out the criteria. Then make your pitch. 

Almost an irrelevant photo; alrhough, I am a big fan of this guy who’ll be 13 on Dec. 6.

Ungrateful Wenches Like Me

they let me vote
even pick out my own clothes
i can also read
whatever, whenever i choose,

but they tell me
this body i inhabit isn’t mine
they try to tell me
i have no right to decide.

they let me think
but on some issues my thoughts
do not have weight
though mine’s the changed life.

one day they’ll find,
this powerful contigent of “theys,”
that wenches like me
don’t listen to theys like them.

  

Yes, I got all political today after reading that a lawmaker in Colorado blamed Planned Parenthood for the recent shooting that occurred at a clinic in that state. Instead, we should blame the domestic terrorist who broke numerous laws and took the lives of innocent people.  We should blame the lies and anger-fueled rhetoric of far right conservative politicians whose pandering to the lowest common denominator among the Republican party lead people to believe that they have the right to break the law of the land. 

Keep your hands off of my reproductive rights.

Peace, people.

Watching San Bernardino

I fear we are all being held hostage by the NRA and their puppets in congress. Here’s how redswrap.wordpress.com feels. Great piece.

Jan Wilberg's avatarRed's Wrap

Here’s how I feel tonight.

I feel like it’s 1955. The polio vaccine has just been invented. People are dying from polio. Kids are in iron lungs. My sister is upstairs in her bedroom and the doctor keeps coming and going and my parents won’t let me go up there.

I feel like the United States government knows there is a polio vaccine but it won’t do anything to help people get it. It won’t help manufacture it. It won’t educate people about it. It won’t do anything to save people from dying and being in iron lungs even though it could.

That’s how I feel tonight. Our government is just abandoning us. Even though it has the power to save us.

When polio threatened to kill and cripple us, the government acted in all our interests. The public health departments of every city swung into action finding common cause…

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John Scalzi Presents Day 3!

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2015/12/02/whatever-holiday-shopping-guide-2015-day-three-arts-crafts-music-and-more/
Are you the artistic type? Do you create art for others, either photography or paintings or any other item that the public needs to know about?

Here’s your opportunity to get attention on a site that receives literally thousands of views every single day. I’d like to say that describes my blog, but no. It’s John Scalzi’s “Whatever” blog site. 

Scalzi is a science fiction author who has followers all over the world, and who at this time of year accepts submissions from writers and creative types who want to get their work in front of a wider audience. Go to the link above and get your name out there. 

He explains the submission criteria in detail, so go. Tell him I sent you. That won’t help your chances of being accepted because John Scalzi has no idea who I am, but if he reads my name often enough he might just remember me next year when I have something to submit.

Good luck, and as always, Peace, people!

Irrelevant photo of me in Guatemala