Why is all ecologically friendly and sustainable furniture modern, likely uncomfortable, impractical, and ugly as all get out? The environment, last time I looked, was rather attractive. 

Keeping with my eco-ranting, here are some clever gifts should you be looking for a reasonable and conservation-minded gift for yourself or someone else.

Recycled maps made into stationery and envelopes? Cool! A set of 25 sheets with 85 envelopes for $20? Even better! I love stationery and I might be using this as an incentive gift to motivate myself toward doing something.

I love the typewriter jewelry, especially the bracelet, and here’s some on sale. Cufflinks and rings, though you don’t get a choice of every single letter.

And finally, if you want a basic primer on how to greenify yourself (because green, like bitch, is the new black), I’m digging the sample of this book, which says you should use your dishwasher because it conserves energy and water. Which I first learned in Consumer Reports but you’d be surprised how many self-important pretentious assmonkeys look down their noses at me for using it.

Wait, one more thing. Tired of nothing but celebrity news masquerading as real news, and then reading the real news only to find yourself incredibly depressed? Bookmark the Good News Network and read daily. That’s “good news” in the “not totally depressing” sense, not the “Good News of Christ, would you like some humble literature” sense. Jesus and I are homies but I wouldn’t pimp his ride on my site. I keep my religion to myself and appreciate when everyone else does, too.

Here are the top five things I don’t give a shit about:

5. Anything having to do with Madonna, A-Rod, or Madonna’s rod.
4. Whether or not Lindsay Lohan is a lesbian.
3. When and in what part of the world Angelina Jolie gives birth.
2. Anything having to do with Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt.
1. Whether a popstar sings songs (again) about kissing a girl. Between Lohan and this song, I can’t tell if it’s “lesbian chic” or “lesbian?! Eeek!”

Here are the top then things I do give a shit about:

5. Why the state of mental healthcare in this country is so mother fucking awful, even as photographed iconic war heroes die of PSTD? What has to happen before people in the US take mental health care seriously?
4. How is it that people aren’t more interested in simple acts of conservation, even if the cumulative effect of conservation is that they save money?
3. Where is my food coming from? I live in the goddam Garden State. I need to go find me a damn garden.
2. What plants can I put in the new parts of the addition (which is almost finished, hooray) that are perennial and will be happy in part shade?
1. What do I do about feeling unsafe when I walk around in Manhattan? Low plane? Cold feeling in the pit of my stomach. Walking under a crane? Same thing.

Hubby and I are a few years past the age when everyone around us is getting married and we have weddings in multiple to attend each year. One summer, I remember, we had five weddings between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and damn, were we poor after all that travel.

I was just looking at pictures from a coworker of mine whose son got married recently, and little has changed. Everyone has that haze of wonderful when it comes to weddings, and I don’t think anyone has clued in the American bride as to a few points of etiquette. Namely:

If you are thin, and your bridesmaids are not, you look like a first rate asshole by putting them in dresses that accentuate how small you are by making them look hugely, enormously uncomfortable. The bride in question was rail thin and wearing a strapless dress. The bridesmaids, whom I believe were her sisters since there was a definite resemblance, were in short peach strapless dresses made of shiny satin material.

Let me go over that again. Peach. Shiny satin. Short dresses. Strapless. On women of considerable size. The dresses could barely contain their bosoms. The hemline ended at the widest part of their calves. The fabric was wrinkly and hugged all the wrong places and highlighted them. It was one giant, “Oh, honey, no.” And I couldn’t blame a single one of those women because there is no way on God’s green earth that they chose a dress like that. Not a chance.

Jesus fucknuts. I looked at the pictures, and granted I knew exactly one person in the crowds depicted, and my only thought was, “That bride is an asshole to dress her closest friends like that.” The bridesmaids of size looked so uncomfortable, I cringed.

Look, no one says you have to buy bridesmaids dresses from the bridesmaid dress makers who think the rest of the world is a size 6. There are plenty of ways around it. But take it from me, if you’re a rail-thin bride wearing a strapless wedding gown and you dress your bridesmaids in styles and fabrics that are utterly, completely, and terribly awful and unflattering, not to mention uncomfortable, you look like a douchebag who doesn’t treat her friends very well. I could go so far as to say that I suspect brides who do shit like that are subconsciously or deliberately highlighting their own svelte figures against the forms of her closest friends and family members. In short: by making your friends and family look unflattering and uncomfortable, you look like a shitheel.

Just sayin’. 

Here is your embarrassing story of the week. Feel free to enjoy.

We did all the laundry last weekend. Anything that was washable and not nailed down got washed. At some point, a crayon made its way into the hot water wash, and then into the dryer. It was likely among the dark socks and underwear load, which is sizable since Hubby and I own approximately 14 million pair of dark socks. (Sing with me! Black socks, they never get dirty! The longer you wear them, the stiffer they get!”)

So the mystery crayon was bouncing amid the sock and underdrawers, melting and reforming and spreading the technicolor wonderment of itself all over our clothing. Well, no, specifically all over MY clothing. MY undergarments attracted the Crayola love more than, say, ANY of Hubby’s.

And what color was it? Oh, I bet you can guess. Brown. And if I had to name it, it’d be “Shit Brown.”

Because now each and every one of my underthings state without fear that either a shit brown crayon did the dance as old as time in my dryer, OR I have a massive, and rather creative, incontinence problem.

The Lands’ End Packable Tote looks awesome - folds up into an itty bitty square, but big enough to haul home some serious business.

You know that book? Well, it’s not a book yet. It’s a manuscript. It’s too big. I know, wtf? Like someone expected me NOT to be wordy?

So it’s bounced its way back to my desk and I’m now editing. Eventually I’m going to stop recognizing this as my own writing and read it for the first time again. For now I’m puzzling through all the pages trying to chop chop chop some more.

Also, on Canada Day, Freebird decided that he wanted to sing O Canada as his lullabye. My boyz, they are awesome.