mycalicocat

If you could write one book and get it published, would it be fiction or non-fiction? If fiction, what kind? If non-fiction, what would it be about?
If you could play one musical instrument really well. which one would you choose?
If you could be truly good at one kind of dancing, what kind would you choose?
If you could be instantly fluent in one other language than English, which would you choose?

Since we need a new subject to save sPorcupine from the silly giggles, I will now venture a number of opinions (which may or may not be my own) out of the blue, any of which people can agree with or disagree with.
1. When voices on automated telephone systems say, "Your call is really important to us," they really mean, "We hope to annoy you until you hang up."
2. Laura Bush has really gorgeous clothes.
3. Lawyer jokes aren't really funny.
4. Sometimes, no matter how carefully you follow the instructions, Jell-O fails.
5. I have always wanted to try a deep-fried Snickers bar.
6. The harder people work the more money they make.
7. Ralph Nader should run for president one more time.
8. Nobody really likes bagpipe music except people who play bagpipes.
9. I can look at Teddy Kennedy on TV without ever thinking of Chappaquiddick.
10. There is nothing they can add to yogurt that will make me buy it.

Paris asked me to send you this picture of her dog, who is, of course younger than his father.
I consider this the last word on the subject of dogs, Paris Hilton, automobiles and fairy godmothers, because you people are REALLY getting silly.

Here's the new hybrid Camry. Made in Kentucky. Built to last. Built to save gas. Its kid brother Prius can have solar panels added on top to bump the mileage even higher. Left to my own devices, I'd buy one this year. Left with three children to educate (which is actually better), I'll keep our Camry and our Sienna running as long as possible.

Plus, years ago, the county where Camries (Camrys?) are built voted down a bond referendum to build a new and direly needed high school. Two weeks later, the Toyota management showed up at a school board meeting and said, "Look, you needed the bonds because it would take ten years of taxing to pay for the school? How about we just pay our taxes for ten years in advance?" And they did, and it worked, and the school is a glory.

Okay, if you don't want the car, you get this dog.

As self-appointed Fairy Godmother I am giving each of you one of these cars, paid for and fully-insured. This is the Saleen S7, which costs about half a million. You deserve it, as you well know. If you'd prefer another color, just say so.
Please describe the reactions of those who know you, when they see you ridin' around in your new car.

Note to Calicocatters: Blogger will be doing maintenance work tonight so the blog is likely to be out of operation for a few hours.

Princess Whatever used the term "left to my own devices" in her comment under "Bragging Rights." This leads me to ponder the meaning of that expression. What prevents us from being "left to our own devices" ?
The inherent restraints of salaried jobs for one thing. Having to run things past bosses or get approval from committees. Selling our time for a salary -- which can make it possible to do some important things, but also make it impossible to do others. (I can write about local government, but I can't run a campaign for somebody) Maybe a lack of sufficient funds. Maybe other responsibilities that must come first.
Despite living in a power-point, brain-storming, consortium world, I believe that, while true creative teamwork is total joy, most really good things start with one idea in one person's head -- and that no committee can replace the energy of an individual left to his or her own devices to act on a mission (or obsession)
In fact, often committees keep things from happening.
I have also had projects killed by persons above my head. I don't remember or resent the ideas that got hatcheted by a simple NO. The ones I keep grinding my teeth over are the ones that died aborning because somebody else truly liked the idea, absconded with it, complicated it, procrastinated and basically kept it from ever happening.
I'm thinking more and more about such things as I near retirement and ponder routes to independence.
So, let's get our heads together on the subject of what we would do if "left to our own devices," which basically means if we were free to make something happen.
Write a comment that starts, "Left to my own devices, I would...."

Everyone is invited to brag, with sentences that begin, "I have learned to.., " "I own my own..", "I can..", or "I went ahead and..."

I'll start in the comment section.

I do a weekly quiz in the paper which always has an "Eye Q" picture at the top. Since a picture can't be googled, people either know it or they don't.
The question is, "Who is this man?"
I have gotten two correct answers so far.
I have also gotten:
O.J. Simpson
Colin Powell
Tiger Woods
Arthur Ashe
"A young Andrew Young"
"A young Julian Bond"
It may well wind up having the fewest correct answers of any one that I've done. (Hopalong Cassidy got 51)

I want to bake a muffin with super powers -- something on the order of a nutrition blast -- that I can make in a batch and freeze individually. I also want it to taste good, though not like cake. I'm thinking on the order of something with blueberries and walnuts, or cranberries and pecans,. Anybody got any ideas or any recipes?

Here is a painting by Sargent. It is a portrait of a wealthy man's four daughters, and is just as dark as it is shown here. On my computer, if you clickthe picture, it will get bigger, but believe me, this is the way it looks.
I invite you to give the girls names and personalities and perhaps to come up what they are thinking and what kind of home this is. Just whatever strikes you, from real to surreal, from comic to serious.
I have personally always considered it a very odd picture.
p.s. Endub should definitely be consulted on this.

I was awake at 2:30 this morning. There wasn’t any problem. I just couldn’t go to sleep and the longer I couldn’t go to sleep the more worried I was that I wouldn’t go to sleep at all etc. I don’t know how much later I was awake because I try very hard not to look at the clock. To me, the worst part of insomnia is trying to keep my mind off what time it is. Also I usually reach a point where everything bothers me. My feet will be cold and I’ll get up and put on socks, and then the socks will feel rumply and hot . I thrash around and get tangled in the sheets and get up and remake the bed. The pillow case feels rough. I’m too cold or too hot. Last night the roots of my hair hurt. I’ll decide to read, and start dozing off, but when I turn out the light and close my eyes I’m wide awake again
I always sleep like a two year old the following night.
Are there other insomniacs in this group? How do you deal with it?
Or, if you’d rather just write about the horribleness of it, please feel free. I’ll save it to read when I have my next bout of insomnia.

The eleven-year-old boy is asking questions about Tom Clancy stories, apparently because Clancy inspired some video games. They kid reads very well, and is trying to figure out about being powerful and dangerous, and some mighty plots would probably delight him. But I can't remember the Clancies I read years ago. So can someone tell me if the kid would be horrified, either by intense violence or by anything event faintly like sex?

I’m trying to eat right without getting ideological  about it. Also my doctor said to try to eat a high-fiber diet.  So I’m staring at nutrition labels and reading on the net about how fiber lowers cholesterol and all that stuff. There is no martyrdom here for me since many of the good-for-you foods (excepting tofu) are foods I like anyway.  I even like lentils and barley.
My main conclusion after much label-reading is that if it wasn’t around in 1940, it probably isn’t good for you, I’m going to make an exception.
The pre-sliced fresh apples in a zip-lock bag that Dole puts out - are great to have at work, and all my co-workers agree. I know I could accomplish the same thing by squeezing lemon juice on slices I made myself, but the thing is that I WON’T, so I’m going to indulge in these with the money I save by not buying Xaxby’s chicken salad sandwich basket or racks of sizzling sweet ribs at Sonny’s.
Anybody got a favorite that’s actually good for you, too?

I moved this up from a comment under the Pounding Chicken post to make sure you all saw it.

It's from Last Grey Poet, who used to write for the HHJ

The parrot joke is an old favorite. Thanks for refreshing the memory.
As for chickens who are members of the family: My younger sister and I grew up on a fairly sizable piece of land on the edge of town, and our father occasionally took it into his head to put this land to use housing various farm animals. Invariably these urges led to mishap, though in one case this was not apparent for many years.
This was the incident of the chickens.It happened in the mid-1980s, a time when I was just entering the double-digit ages and my younger sister was (as usual) a few years behind, that Dad -- well, he was still Daddy, then -- struck on the idea of keeping chickens.
The plan was a combination of saving money, and, of course, teaching the kids the value of working.There were an even 10 of the birds, and we kept them in a smallish fenced area, complete with hand-made coop, which cost me a Saturday morning of cartoon-watching, as did so many of Dad’s construction projects, for which I was combination lumber carrier, tool caddy, and whatever other role a small-for-his age boy could manage -- your general all-purpose “go-fer.”
For the duration of raising these fowl, my younger sister and I were responsible for feeding them (not so bad) and keeping their coop relatively clean (bad.) This went on for many months, until Dad judged them ready for the table and, on a Saturday when Mom -- still Mama then, of course -- and my younger sister were away, I was put to work as chicken holder while Dad set about employing an axe.
Even now that day comes back to mind whenever I hear someone use the old Southern expression, “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”
Let’s just say it was not pretty and leave it at that.
Nearly two decades later, as I’m in the process of moving from one small Georgia town to another, leaving one little newspaper for another, the moving day conversation ranges -- as conversations among friends and family, especially those made when very tired, are wont to do -- from one strange topic to another, and, among them, we hit upon Dad’s penchant for keeping critters.
My younger sister espouses the belief that he just had some weird fascination with raising animals, but I (in a rare moment) come to his defense, saying at least some of the animal-keeping had a legitimate purpose. For example, we ending up eating the chickens.
And my dear sister, all of 25 years old, successful, semi-cynical woman of the world, drops two decades in a second, and I’m looking into the eyes of child, one who has just lost a pet.
“We ate those chickens?” she asks, lip atremble, eyes so very large.
“Yes,” I confirm, unable to say more.
She nods, slow acceptance creeping across her face.
“They were my friends,” she says, voice small and sad. “Dad told me some nice farmer came by and gave them all a home.”
I think all parents mess with their kids’ heads, intentionally and not, in ways subtle and obvious.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, unable to put into words my guilt over my complicity in the demise of her beloved birds.
“Did we eat those cows, too?”
I nod, fearing what this confirmation could bring.
“Well, good; I never liked them, anyway.”
Ah, practical; we get that from Mom.

I enjoyed catching with the Barely-Sheba tangent on weather channel people, which reminded me to mourn the loss of Bill Hemmer.

So how about some UNFAVES?

Who's your unfavorite singer?

What's your unfavorite food?

What's the worst movie you ever saw?

Bigindiancreek.blogspot.com

I’m going to explain that headline at the end of this column, but let me start at the beginning.
Back in October I learned that there was such a thing as a free blog, courtesy of Google Blogger, and I started one of my own which has evolved into an rambling conversation that starts up at about nine most evenings and enriches my life.
The people who turn up on my blog most often are some you may know, like Emily Johnstone, Terry Everett and Tish Mims, and some you don’t, like my daughter Susan and her husband Beau from Kentucky, and my sister-in-law, Yvonne from Atlanta. There are others who’ve popped in and out, including friends and relatives and an occasional complete stranger, but those are the regulars.
We’ve written back and forth about everything from childhood memories to what the funniest commercials are. We went on at length for several nights about the best meals we had ever eaten. We’ve differed vehemently on the subject of malls. Some people, to my astonishment, actually like malls. Some, to my delight, have the same low opinion of cell phones that I have.
We’ve told each other about technical deficiencies, our cold remedies and our remarkable children. We’ve gone off on plenty of tangents, too, starting off on one subject and winding up on something else entirely.
Without the blog I’d never have known that Emily’s grandmother used to ask her, “Who do you think you are? The Queen of Sheba?”, that Public Defenders use sideways smiley faces for punctuation, or that my own daughter once “murdered” a pot roast by forgetting it was in the crock pot and cooking it for 18 hours!
I also wouldn’t have known Tish’s definition of “Captain Crunch mouth” which is “you know, when it shreds the roof of your mouth while you're eating it and watching cartoons”
We’ve been serious, too. A discussion of what each of us would do with $13.5 million wound up not being a imaginary shopping spree but an illumination of some of our deepest concerns. We also got our heads together at one point on the subject of St. Paul’s admonition to think about “whatsoever things are lovely,” and came up with a Whatsoever List that wound through 25 comments and over 40 “whatsoevers” including Beethoven’s Ninth, giraffes, laugh lines, the tops of babies heads, Elberta peaches, pipevine swallowtails, mochas and wireless, “any story written by a first grader,” boiled peanuts, “Hey, Jude,” and apples barns in North Georgia in the fall.
If you’d like to start a blog of your own with family and friends, it’s easier than you think (and way easier than setting up a Web site, which is a matter I don’t even want to discuss!)
To prove my point, I’ve set up a blog just for those of you who are reading this column. It took me all of 15 minutes and part of that time was taken up trying to think of a blog name that nobody else was already using.
Just go to bigindiancreek.blogspot.com. You’ll find a post from “No Spring Chicken” -yours truly- when you get there, so pick yourself a blog name and let’s see what happens conversationally.
You can use your own name, of course, but choosing an blogger’s alias makes it more fun, and less self-conscious.
Then if you want to start your own blog, you’re already in the right place. You can click on “create a blog” and follow the directions.

Written for the Thursday Houston Home Journal

Hey, what is your fav commercial of all times?

A while back I asked Chef Audrey why grilled chicken breasts always tasted so much better in restaurants than they do at home, and she said, "Because we pound them." I finally got around to buying a $3 pounder at Kroger (It was called a "meat tenderizer", with one side flat and one pointy.) I put two chicken breasts in a zip lock bag and pounded them thoroughly with the flat side. Then I added some Balsamic vinaigrette to the bag, zipped it up and let it sit in the fridge for two or three hours. Then zapped them in the George Foreman grill, although they'd have done fine under the broiler. Result? I will never cook one un-pounded again. I have eaten one. The second will go into a salad to take to work tomorrow.

Did everybody else already know this?

I go back to work tomorrow after the two-week vacation that turned into three weeks. Is everybody else settling back into a routine now? Or putting it another way, after Christmas and time off and all that, do you find that you like your work?

Rare reading bonanza. Barelyblogging brought me a shopping bag full of books a few days agao , which appeared to be a whole lot of popular paperback murder and mayhem, including some I thought I hadn't read until I got five pages into them. Finally, I dumped the whole bag out on my bed and found, AHA!
1. "Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose" by Brian J. Mahan, which is one of those wonderful Catholic books, with a lot of Thomas Merton tucked in and includes this wonderful quotation from Frederick Buechner: "The place God calls you to be is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." (Which I have now read all of.)
2. "The Last Word" which is a collection of obituaries and farewells from the New York Times with lots of fascinating essays on people I never heard of. Which I have read about half of and will continue with a bit at a time. Really good journalism and personal essays more than obituaries. Most of the people written about are not famous, but fascinating.
3. A book by DonaldMcCullough, "If grace is so amazing why don't we like it?" I've never heard of McCullough, but I going to take to bed with me now, since it has a cover blurb by Anne Lamott, and Anne Lamott is just crazy enough and spiritual enough to make a good recommendation. So we'll see.
I'm wondering if Barely knew those were in the bag, but she's not getting them back until I finish them. :)

I'm doing much better today, and have actually been out in my car and gone to the grocery store. but will tell you a funny medicine head story. On Tuesday I made three calls to make three appointments and wrote what I believed to be cogent information on the back of an envelope. I wrote "2:30, 3:30, Thursday." I wound up having to call all three back!

I just bought a book called "The Sonoma Diet" which appealed to me because all the foods you can have are foods I happen to like -- whole grains, fresh fruit, olive oil, almonds and lots of bell peppers, tomatoes and fresh spinach (It's really a California version of the Mediterranean diet .)

Who has some healthful recipes to share?

Fitz the kitten has taken to leaping high in the air and flipping so that he's complete horizontal when, say, he tumbles into a seated guest's arm. Or when he crashes into the side of my bed. Or when misses the couch back and hits the window behind it.

It's better than his first week, when he thought our legs were tree trunks for climbing. Still it's startling to see a fur-bomb fly by at waist-height and crash into something halfway across the room. We're hoping that he'll gain weight and have to give up that particular trick.

I'm trying to figure out what's a good normal length for a blog post. My current idea is that I'm more willing to read a post if I can see beginning and end on the same screen. That's more like a short feature in a newspaper than like any true article or opinion piece. What do other people think?

After two weeks vacation and this surgery stuff I am really bored. This a rare experience for me, so I thought at first it might be depression or the flu, but, I realized a few minutes ago that I was delighted to have some bills to pay on-line. Something to do. Wow!
Has anybody got any ideas for a food article?
What do you cook in January?
Or what would you like to know how to cook?
I'm thinking about finally writing my long-planned artsy-artisanal bread-baking article, and probably buying a perfect loaf from Publix to use for the photograph. My bread-baking theory is this: that it mostly takes patience, which most of us don't have. You need to knead it a good long time, and you need to be patient while it rises and you need to cook it the right length of time. If it's all done right, then it's wonderful -- bread you can eat all by itself just for the breadness of it. (If that's a word)
Comments on bread baking welcome.
Also any suggestions for food articles.

Note that the posts that follow are not just from noredhat. If you're one of the members follow the instructions below, and you can do likewise. You are all welcome to invite others to participate provided they are calicocatcompatible.

Sporcupine has done it. (See below)

What you have to do is go to http://www.blogger.com/home. You will see the green cross there. Click it and you'll be posting.

What phrases carry special meaning in your family? I'll start with examples from my family:

1. "Would anyone like something to read?" That one means, roughly, "Let's pretend the recent uproar didn't happen at all." It comes direct from "A Child's Christmas in Wales," right after the fire department hoses down an entire living room.

2. "I put it in a nice safe place." That means, I haven't the faintest idea what the place is.

3. "Hannah in charge!" That's newly minted, from my toddler niece. Her mother started out trying to assert her own authority with the phrase "Mommy's in charge here," but it backfired. Both of my teenagers have used it in the last 24 hours.

4. "Supper trash" means "succotash" and "cucununu" means both cucumber and loony person, because small family members long ago pronounced the words that way.

What phrases float that way in other folks' homes?

Today's the day for resolutions, but I've found it easier to keep irresolutions, to stick to my guns and stay the course on certain things I will NOT do in 2006.

1. I will not read Moby Dick. I probably have this blog team's record. I have managed not to read Moby Dick for nearly 67 years. It's been tempting, but I have resisted.

2. I will not play ping pong.

3. I will not get a cockatiel. (Been there. Done that)

4. I will not eat beets, Vienna sausages or tofu.

5. I will not read any self-help books.

6. I will not tell any Alabama jokes. (This one will be hard.)

I think something we all may have in common is having lived both in rural and urban settings. I’ve lived 12 miles from New York City and also on Harner Road in Kathleen.
If I could pick a perfect place to live, I think it would be a small New England town nestled between mountains and the ocean within easy driving distance of a big city with museums and bookstores. It wouldn’t really be in New England except in the fall, though. (New England is unbelievable in the fall). It would be in Georgia in the spring. I’m not sure about winter and summer. It would have a “flowin’ well” with ice cold artesian water in the middle of the downtown, but the downtown would have a coffee house that offered chai tea and biscotti.
Anybody else got a fantasy of the best place to live, or are you already living there?