This weekend is a big birthday bonanza at Chez Morag. Party and actual birthday and getting ready for vacation. Happy First Birthday Baba. Hope you like the beach, ‘cause that’s where we’re going.

Lucky boy.

I hope this weekend and the following week can help me reboot my brain and my attitude, and come out on the other side of our respite feeling the rest, and less of the spite. 

So, operation “do nothing except the essentials” has proven to me that I have little enough time to distribute, let alone reclaim. After spending less time on the computer (which was easy since I was home with sick Freebird) and more time with my family, less time worrying about things and more time doing them, I’ve come to a few rather startling realizations: I still want more hours in the day to accomplish all the things that need doing.

How is that fair?! What the hell! Wasn’t there a giant time egg that would allow me additional hours if I stopped filling my time with what everyone else was telling me was so crucial?!

Back to work I go.

I"m watching this website (http://www.target.com/johnderian) to see when the John Derian collection comes online. I’m not necessarily in the market for unnecessary dust collectors but the man, he knows his way to elitist mod podge. There’s a blogger whom I cannot stand because she pretends like she’s just like the rest of us, and really, she’s a frickin’ bazillionaire who sells the down home folksy crap like she’s profiting from it. Which at this point she is. If there’s anything that makes me really disgusted in a person’s writing online, it’s artifice, exaggeration, falseness and outright lying.

Anyway, one of the first clues I had that something wasn’t folksy on the plantation that is her site was her continual features about her knick knacks that she just looooves and one of them was a $600 platter from John Derian. I admit that there are many, many people in the world who love a $600 platter from any number of designers, and certainly Derian has some gorgeous, opulent stuff, but come on. It’s mod podge for the upscale - and that platter plus the burgeoning showcase of All My Expensive Stuff took that site off my daily read list almost immediately. Add “showing off my opulent lifestyle and my goods that you can conveniently buy whilst getting me a fat commission” to my list of blog hate.

As I was saying before I took a detour down wrathful, I personally am not going to drop $600 on a platter. But $13 for a set of plates? Or a really awesome frame for my desk? That I might do. But it looks like I have to go to the Target store itself to check out the full line. 

If you know my other site, you know I review books - romances and books of similar ilk. Since this is a book for parents about making better food choices for kids, I don’t have a reason to review it there, since the audience would be like, “Ok, what are you smoking?” and someone might decide it’s time to launch a lecture about modern parenting and nutrition and I so don’t want to hear it.

But oh my hopping john this book is in fucking credible. If you’re like me, and you do sometimes buy processed foods and packaged meals for dinner or lunches, and you’re short on time when it comes to making quick meals for dinner, or you (Holy Cow!) go out to eat at chain restaurants, this book will rock your socks. As one of the review quotes says, once you pick it up, you cannot put it down. It gives you a very simple visual chart comparing the overall nutritional balance of various foods, restaurant meals, and packaged items, from cereal to yogurt to pastas. It’s freaking awesome and so interesting, particularly the explanation of why some foods you might think are “not bad” nutritionally are holy shit terrible in terms of the balance of fat to fiber to calories to sugar.

Seriously. This book is amazing. Check it out. 

Dear Strep:

You’ve been in my house for three weeks now. Aren’t you overstaying your welcome a bit? First there was scabby gross skin rash - very attractive. Then that passed from Freebird to Baba O’Riley, leading to not one but TWO bottles of The Pink Stuff in my fridge. Really, it’s not the hallmark of a good guest to fill the fridge with expensive crap that you require, let alone staying so long we’re all tired of it.

Then I caught it and was so ill with a fever I was hallucinating that the pictures in my office were moving. What was that about? Seriously.

NOW you’re back with Freebird, this time with the standard sore throat and fever, and we’re all so over you, it’s not even funny. Time to go. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, hear?

Morag

P.S. I will you give this one: being home in my jammies with Freebird in his jammies feeling much better thanks to yet another dose of antibiotics is not a horrible way to spend the morning - except for the part where Hubby and I were up until 3am with screaming Baba. If Baba is getting the strep again, I will be forced to take nuclear action against you. 

There are a lot of things that piss me off to degrees I can’t even describe. Big things like the military cover up of the rapes and murders of American servicewomen like LaVena Johnson, and the fact that the perpetrators will likely never be caught. Things like the fact that in the US, if you’re poor, that’s somehow your fault. And other things like the fact that our culture of credit and spending means that I and my husband, who have as little debt as possible, who are aware and careful of our finances, who do not borrow more than we can afford, we will pay for the spending and debt of millions of other people who have ended up defaulting on their mortgages because they can’t afford the payments and their homes won’t sell. Big things like the fact that my right to find birth control is under attack because I’m aborting fetuses left and right with my pesky IUD. (Sorry, that’s not how it works, idiots).

And little things piss me off too. Things like becoming aware of how much energy, time, and care I spend on people who spend none on me. Things like realizing I’m waiting for people to change who aren’t going to change at all, and will continue to be the same self-absorbed people they always are. Things like knowing that people whom I thought were my friends aren’t really, not in ways that count. And other things like not ever having enough time in a day to accomplish everything I want to do before my energy gives out for the day. Things like having endocrine disorders that stand in my way, and make it difficult to take care of myself.

But all my big and little annoyances come down to time and energy. I’ve reached my limit: I’m not going to spend energy on anything or anyone that doesn’t give me the same consideration in return. It’s just not worth it. I have plenty of things that deserve my time and attention and I’d rather devote more of my limited resources to those things than spread myself any thinner trying to remain connected to tasks and people that aren’t freaking worth my attention. I’m done.

It’s time for fall spring cleaning—of my schedule. And my time. And how I spend it: on what, when, and on whom. Because all the big things (and the little things) that piss me off, particularly politically speaking, might be aided by a bit of my time spent working for what I want: the candidates I want, the policies I want, and the safety I want. It’s time for me to devote my time to the things I want, from political volunteering to less time being used as free therapy. It’s time to clean house.

(Also, I need some fall clothing. That’s another rant).

Is there a mandatory khaki pant for NFL sidelines? And must that khaki pant be pleated so as to make the wearer appear as dumpy as possible? No matter if it’s a trainer or a med personnel or some random team douchebag, every single damn one has to wear these dumptastic khaki pants and my GOD are they awful. Meanwhile the players are running around in pants that bring a new definition to the word “Tight.” NOT FAIR. I’m going to form the Society for the Exposure of the Fine Buns on the Sidelines.

The barn stadium, aka Lucas Oil Stadium? KICK ASS. Almost as nice as Heinz Field.

We did gardening on sale today: $100 worth of plants and mulch, plus a random 70 lb. rock that was dug up during construction, and my back patio looks bodacious. Which is good, since family descends soon. How is it I am blind to all manner of little housekeeping neatness problems but the minute I start seeing my house through the eyes of Party Guests - even if they are the same people who come over on a random Saturday and I couldn’t be arsed to give a shit what they think at that time - I’m like WE NEED NEW VACUUM. AND MULCH. OMG GET IN THE CAR.

How is it that every task turns into 12? Buy the mulch - need to pull weeds. Buy pants, NEED MORE PLANTS. Laptop upon which Steeler game is playing doesn’t have long enough cord to reach outlet? CALL ELECTRICIAN STAT.  (Also: Go Steelers.)

OH - best billboard ever, on Route 3 westbound: “J.E.T.S. BRETT BRETT BRETT!”

Last question: will Freebird still have a fever tomorrow, or will he be going to school? Enquiring minds want to know.

No, sorry one more question: What the FUCK Is “BL Lime?” Bud Light Lime?! I’m going to be ill.