Catolog Shopping

Whenever people want to commiserate with me about moving to a small town, it's always the shopping that they bring up. "Oh, don't you miss the mall?" This is a surprisingly big factor in people's choice of local. People need their Wal-Mart, JC Penney, and Target. This I don't get. To me the mall is a fairly undesirable place you endure only to get cool stuff. With all the great delivery options out there, it seems to me that online shopping is the way to go. They'll even send you catalogs just in case you forgot about all the neat things you didn't know you needed. This is the major downside of online shopping. As you buy, the catalogs start multiplying in your mailbox. Today, I got this bizarro catalog in the mail called Free People.

I've never even heard of this place, but perusing the catalog taught me a lot about what I can only assume is Tibet. Like, it's warm enough to sit in your tent fashioned from designer sheets and quilts wearing your underwear, but not quite warm enough to do it without a hat.

Also, the hip thing is to wear your child's winter mitten/hat ensemble over your disco minidress when you're off to do heavy manual labor in your work boots. Tibet must be a fascinating place. (Okay, I do realize that it's run by the same people that run my beloved Anthro, but I can still make fun).

Uberinformed husband of mine found this service you can supposedly use to stop the mailings. So far we've requested to stop Anthropologie, Athleta, Sundance, Garnet Hill and many, many more. In actuality I'm not sure we've stopped anything. We still get like 6 Victoria Secret catalogs weekly (two copies of each issue). The problem is that they're smarter than we are. The other day I returned an ill-fitting pair of shorts to Athleta only to have the replacement pair come with two more catalogs from that company. Also, even iron-willed Keith is not strong enough to overcome the temptation of the beautiful catalogs. As I opened the browser to start this blog, this is what I saw. What can you do?

Yard Beautification

This week our lives focused on our yard. First these guys (and their monster crane) were kind enough to hall away the infamous Scheffler stone that has marked this yard for so long. Now we have a gigantic crater in its place.

When it comes to yard work, Keith may be a little out of his element, but Lucy turned out to be a decent hauler awayer of branches (of course she takes as many out of the pile as she brings to it -- we're working on it).

Unfortunately our compost pile was quickly overrun with what can only be termed a shit ton of leaves. And you don't even see the huge piles that were hauled off to the dump.

You'll have to trust me that our yard was pristine, because here's what our yard looked like the very next day. As you can see that tree is magic and produces an endless supply of fresh autumn leaves daily!

Keith's dad was kind enough to contribute to the beautification with some flowers. Is it just me or are these guys looking a little tired? Especially that little blob up front. I'm not even sure you can recognize it as a living plant in this pic. I'm sure T.G. knows what he's doing.

Happy Halloween.

Super Sized

We officially started work last week. Keith has been toiling with the new electronic medical record and working up an appetite.

I'm not sure the photo does justice to the sheer mass of spaghetti on that plate, but believe me, it's impressive.

And half a loaf of bread too.




Look at him go!





The puppies are enjoying making a mockery of our pricey new fence by ramming it with all their body weight until the slats pop out allowing them their freedom. Such ingenious puppies!

Living with Keith is not making me smarter

It would seem that Keith is the smart one and I am the approachable one. Since this post I have recieved two emails from friends asking me what Twitter is. Yesterday my dad emailed me to ask how to get his gigantic video clip down to a size that could be posted on YouTube. Three years ago people never would have dreamt of asking me these questions. Simply living with brainiac man does not make me a brainiac. I'm better with pondering the meaning of life or living room color schemes. Please direct questions accordingly!

Anthropologizing

No, that's not a term for expressing remorse for something relating to ancient cultures. It's what's I'm doing to our house because of my addiction to/affliction with shopping at Anthropologie. I have a love hate relationship with this store. I love everything in it and I hate how overinflated the prices are. But I'm one up on them, because I have almost never payed full price for one of their items, so I am only paying slightly more than what each item is worth. Ha!

You may have already seen this on Keith's blog, but here's our latest addtion.

Then there's these.



(The last ones are gifts from a fellow Anthro addict.)

If I don't get to working soon, our house will so be chalked full of sunbursts, lava swirls and other colorful, contemporary mish-mashes, it'll make your head spin.

The Good Life

Keith and I continue to settle into our new home here in Nebraska. As we have not started working yet, our lives are pleasantly simple if a bit isolated. These past few weeks I have filled my time with internet shopping, puppy walking, and town meandering. Happening upon a set of recycling bins at the Jack and Jill grocery mart is by far the most noteable event in my life as of late. Here's Keith packing cardboard boxes from internet retailers around the country into the tiny cubby. Just stuff, stuff and bye bye consumer guilt!



Also, the weather's nice here, so we had a little barbeque.



A very little barbeque. Keith is shaping up to be a fine grill master. Maybe next year we'll promote him to a more appropriately sized grill.

T minus 8 days until mountain biking vacation part deux. Colorado here I come... back.

Whakapapa

I dedicate this philosophical post to M.Standridge, in commemoration of and grievance for the end of his great blog.

The other day I was listening to Terry Gross interview Sekou Sundiata (he died recently, so the interview was re-aired). Sekou Sundiata does spoken word poetry, and he has this rich, deep voice to complement his great poetry. While I really enjoyed his readings, what piqued my interest was part of the interview where he told Terry about coming home for a family reunion. During the reunion a story about his great grandfather emerged. His relatives described his defiant great grandfather who had escaped cruel slave owners only to be turned in later by his fearful family. It was a story Sekou had never heard. He found it terribly interesting in its own right , but it also held special interest to him because it was about one of his ancestors. He wondered how his relatives could have kept such a great story from him, and what other treasures they may hold in their memories.

When Keith and I were in New Zealand we heard the native Maori speak about their Whakapapa (Fa’-Ka-Pa-Pa). It is the word they use to describe their tradition of passing on oral heritage. Even in a modern age of television and internet, the oral tradition was still alive and well and talked about with regularity. A ski area we went to even bore the name Whakapapa.

I’ve thought about this some with regards to my family. I think it’s relatively rare that we get much oral tradition around my house. I think part of it is cultural, but part of it no doubt is because a lot of the memories are so painful. Nevertheless, when I do hear my parents recount the story of how they sold all of their material possessions for silver coins and bought a burro to ride to California, or about how they lived on cantaloupes from their garden and home brewed root beer for almost an entire year, I get that same sense of interest and joy that I think Sekou Sundiata was describing. I wonder what other stories my parents have that they haven't thought to share. Even if some of it is as horrible as a southern lynching, along with the stories come threads of bravery, humor and everything else, and it’s all worth passing along.