Apparently, the secret to an everlasting good mood, for me at least? Orange Juice. I woke up this morning obsessed with the knowledge that Hubby went to get OJ along with the other staples at the store last night, and brought home my favorite brand of orange juice. There was a huge, cold, unopened bottle of Simply Orange in MY Fridge and I was NOT drinking it? Unsupportable!

Hubby, being The Awesome that he is, got me a glass while I dried my hair and watched Freebird ramble around the room. I chugged it, had another before I left, and drank more OJ once I got to work, though it is not S.O. but Some. Other. Brand.

Right now? I’m absolutely giddy. Seriously. I’m in a great mood, which is a big change from yesterday, when I woke up in a grumpy mood and was a veritable Amazonian Bitchfest. I don’t know what’s in my OJ, but it’s awesome. I think I need more. 

Don Imus is on the cover of a few newspapers this morning, as he faces suspension for his comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.

The part that bothers me, the bigger grievance in this case, is not that he said it, not that he’s said crap like that before, but that he has an audience. He didn’t say anything that the more racist member of your family said out loud while the game was on. Everybody has a miniature Don Imus in the family.

Why does he have an audience? And why do we hold him up as some kind of craggly old voice of racism and bigotry when there’s thousands of people who tacitly agree with him by tuning in to his show every day? He’s on the air because he has ratings, because there’s a base of people who will buy the products advertised on his show. So what about them?

I don’t think we do enough to address racism in this country, and how it ties into every other major problem, from schools to foster care to poverty. There’s this attitude that I’ve talked about before that in the US, if you’re poor, somehow you did something to deserve it. I don’t know if it grew out of the “pulling yourself up by the bootstrap” American dream rhetoric or what, but there’s definitely a dismissal of poverty as something earned or deserved by those who suffer from it. And when the majority of people living below the poverty line in this country are minorities, then it becomes impossible to separate race from economics.

Hubby went to the store tonight for staples - literally, a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and chocolate chip cookies.

What? That’s a staple, right?

According to the site for the Afghani loan applicants on Kiva.org all applicants have been fully funded. Uganda as well.

That is so awesome I’m about to start bawling like a wee girly girl. Holy shit. 

If you’re reading this, you probably know where I came from originally. I’m sure everything here looks familiar to say the least.

Anyway, I can go into the long ass story of why I decided to jump ship, move house, clean up and shove off (etc) but it’s not because of anything specific. It was time for me to stop being so blaze about writing under an easily-identifiable and traceable name, and to pay attention to what I revealed about myself, and by extension my family. So, here I am.

If you’d like to register for member benefits, such as a complete lack of spam from me, please feel free to register using the link on the left. Otherwise, welcome, and enjoy. 

Last night I was enjoying an astonishingly wonderful amount of solitude by watching PBS. First I enjoyed Antiques Roadshow, which I love and Hubby swears will make him exceptionally uninterested in women (if you catch my drift). So I watch it while he’s not around (That, and country music video channels, but that’s another story). PBS keeps showing the same freaking episode so I look like a psychic by knowing exactly how much the drill bits in the round case are worth the moment they appear, but I watched it anyway.

After Antiques Roadshow pulled out of Alabama and that show ended, I left the PBS on since I knew that there wasn’t anything on any other channel for me, and the mellifluous voices of the narrators are so soothing. That channel ought to come with a free masseuse - mellow voice AND a backrub? I will never watch anything else! I was half-paying-attention to the next program until about midway through when Frontline: World started a segment on microloans over the internet to entrepreneurs in impoverished countries. The segment traced the money lent by a dude in San Francisco to a woman in Uganda who was making peanut butter (and keeping herself, her family, and her employees out of the local rock quarry for their living). Seriously, it was so cool, and of course I had a laptop open on my lap (where else would it be?) so as the segment ended after about 10 minutes, I tried to access the microloan site, Kiva.org.

The entire site was knocked off line due to too much traffic. Can you believe that? So many people were (a) watching PBS, (b) curious about microloans to individuals around the world, and (c) accessing the site at the same time that the whole server went kaput, and it takes a good number of simultaneous hits to knock a server offline.

In about 15 minutes the site was back up with a placeholder saying, “OOPS! Welcome Frontline: World viewers. Our engineers are working on getting our site back up, but in the meantime, please join our mailing list.” By this morning, the site was back, and I have spent far too much time checking out the countries represented, the individuals looking for loans, and the things they use those loans for - especially in a country where 5 of my dollars equals a hell of a lot more of their local currency.

I often think it’s an accident of birth that I was born into a very prosperous country and enjoy a very luxurious lifestyle when compared with the average woman my age in several other parts of the world. Having the opportunity to do direct benefit to someone’s goals to support their family, at a relatively low cost to my own finances, is a huge temptation - the good kind. Not the “one more piece of candy” kind. 

There are times when I am so breathtakingly out of touch with the known world that I try to unlock the back door to my house by pointing my car remote at it and repeatedly mashing “UNLOCK.” Then I cuss because it’s not working. And really, my car is out there in the driveway beeping away like, “Ok, already, I’m open! I’m open!” and the backdoor? Still locked.

In my quest to beat this metaphor into the ground (and is it still a metaphor if it’s based on reality?), let’s presume that I am locked in and all the necessary info for me to be a “well informed” person is on the other side of the door. Since it’s the crack-of-ass-in-the-morning, and since I’m deliberately on a news fast, I don’t particularly WANT to go through the door into that assault of information. I want to go back to bed. But no, I have to go outside and slog through the news assault trying to remain ignorant and blissful.

Have I sufficiently confused you? Because I had to reread that twice to figure out what the hell I was talking about.