Last Post of 2008

Today I did the bulk of my annual charitable donations. My main passion is animal welfare...If you are an animal lover and are looking for a 4-star charity to which to donate some of your hard earned money, you can’t go wrong with Pasado’s Safe Haven in Sultan, Washington. Here’s a small bit of their story from their website (after all these years, it still tears me up when I read it):

Pasado the donkey, the 21-year-old beloved fixture at a Seattle area park, died after three teen boys had snuck into Pasado's pasture that April night (in 1992). They attempted to ride him and when he resisted, they began beating him with tree branches the size of clubs. When he fell and could no longer walk, they tied a noose around his neck and pulled him up a tree, strangling him to death. Workers at the park discovered him hanging from the tree the next morning. That day, Pasado's Safe Haven, was founded.

You can read the rest of the Pasado story at their website. These wonderful folks not only provide a “safe haven” for neglected and abused animals, they also worked to pass “Pasado’s Law” which makes animal cruelty a felony in Washington State; and they actively prosecute those who have treated animals cruelly. I’ve been to their facility and they do what they do out of sheer love for animals.

Well, I'll get down off my soapbox now...that's all I have for the year 2008...see you next year!

More snow hatred & HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Everyone talks about how they love the snow…as I’ve said before…I HATE IT. I now have another reason to hate it…we’ve not had any garbage pickup since December 12. We had the snow on December 18, so normal garbage pickup on December 19 was canceled, then canceled again on December 27 due to more snow. Pick up will be delayed an extra day this week due to the holiday. Can you imagine all the garbage out there rotting? Especially with all the extra garbage produced because of the holiday? Many people are ignoring the “new” schedule which was published by Waste Management, and simply leaving their garbage out on the curb in bags, because their bins are full. It’s a mess. My one bin is totally full, and I have a few bags in the garage, which freaks me out because we had a dead rat in our crawl space this fall…we found out he was there because he started to decompose and smell up the downstairs. And where there is one rat, there are more. Our neighborhood is near the water, and rats are just a fact of nature when you live near the water…but they can be controlled if you don’t leave “food,” (i.e. garbage) around for them. Our biggest ongoing problem is our neighbor who doesn’t take care of his garbage. We had an exterminator come and get rid of the critters under our house, but garbage is a big attraction for them to return. This garbage debacle with Waste Management is just another reason I hate the snow.

My cold seems to have come back…either that or I’m developing a sinus infection. Coughing, hacking, sneezing, stuff coming out of every orifice in my head. I know...TMI… I’m sure my husband wants to go out or do “something” tomorrow night. He’s a much more social person than I am. I really would prefer to stay home and veg out.

In the past 10 years, I’ve never been much for celebrating on New Year’s. During almost every other night of the year, I’m in bed…or on my way to going to bed…by 10 p.m. I have to get up at 5:45 Monday through Thursday for work, and I don’t function well on too little sleep. I’ve gotten in this routine of going to bed fairly early, so even if I’m on vacation or on weekends, I go to bed by 11. I love my bed! Buster is so used to us going to bed before midnight that he gets upset if I ever stay up late. He’ll look at me and tremble and shake…”why aren’t we going to bed?” Bed is just about his favorite thing too, but he won’t go without me. (My hubby is a night owl and often stays up until 4 in the morning watching movies or reading…so I usually am dead asleep when he comes to bed later)

Speaking of celebrating on New Years, I have to admit I DO like to drink (in some ways I prefer liquor to food), but as I’ve gotten older, alcohol is losing a bit of its allure. There’s the ever present fear of getting a DUI (and losing my job as well as bringing shame on myself and my family), so I don’t like to drink and drive. And, if I “over-drink,” I feel like crap the next day, and I hate to feel like crap. It takes me a few days to recover, not like the olden college days when I could drink most guys under the table and still be in class the next day at 7 a.m. halfway across campus. Then again, when I drink, I tend to NOT eat, which I think is opposite of many people and I think that’s another reason I like to drink. In the more distant past, my most successful diets often included fairly large quantities of hard liquor. I once lost 15 lbs mostly drinking vodka and grapefruit juice (and not eating) for two weeks. And there’s nothing like a few strong Rum & Diet Dr. Peppers on an empty stomach while watching Judge Judy by myself on a Friday afternoon before my husband gets home from work. Three drinks will usually do it. More than three is too many, fewer than three is too few. Three is just enough to get a good buzz, but not enough to produce a hangover.

Well, I digress. For New Year’s Eve, I’d prefer to just sit home, drink a hot toddy, or hot buttered rum, nurse my cold, and watch the fireworks at the Seattle Center on TV. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow anyway, so who wants to be outside driving around in the rain with all the other drunken partiers?

Whatever you all decide to do, please do it safely. And please pray for us that we don’t get any more snow before garbage pickup on Saturday. Happy New Year!

DAC is HERE!

Thank heavens! It’s over! I think the Day after Christmas (DAC) is my favorite day of the year. Now I can just enjoy the rest of the year knowing I have 364 days before next Christmas.

During the Christmas festivities, my mom did her usual “say whatever critical thing comes into your head without thinking and then wonder why people get annoyed.” I had asked my husband before we got there not to argue with her, and he was pretty good about it. (They’ve had some run ins in the past, and the possibility always adds another level of stress to any visit.) In general, the day was mostly nice. It was good to see my brother, sister-in-law, and niece. With them there, it creates a bit of a buffer for me. I did overeat a bit, but not extremely so. I usually drink a bit too much, too, but this time I only had a 2 glasses of eggnog and 3 glasses of champagne. (This might sound like a lot. When I'm in that situation, believe me, it’s not).

After we got home, I did have a few cocktails and pieces of candy as my husband and I opened our (1 each) gifts to each other. Bless his heart…he ordered me a Pajamagram. Unfortunately, he ordered a Large, and they were WAY too small. I don’t wear a Large, except sometimes for clothes from Penneys or Sears where the clothes run bigger. I wear an XL or even an XXL. We’ll have to send them back.

Yesterday, we just hung out and watched old Andy Hardy movies on TCM and straightened up the house. I took Buster to the park for about 45 minutes. He had fun running through the snow, which has melted down quite a bit. He definitely needed a bath after we got home, he was so wet and muddy.

Last night, hubby and I went to a movie in the new big mall nearby. We had never been to this mall since it was built a couple of years ago, but we decided to give it a try. It was quite the fantastic place. It was packed, probably due to it being the DAC. I don’t like feeling like I’m being engulfed by mindless hordes, but once we got into the theater, it was very nice with big, comfortable seats. We hadn’t had much to eat yesterday, and I was so hungry I wolfed down a large popcorn. The movie was ”The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Save your money.

Afterward, I was expecting us to go home as usual, but hubby was hungry. He decided he really wanted to go into this nice restaurant at the top of the building. They serve Oysters Rockefeller, which he loves. I felt kind of awkward because I had only dressed to go to a movie, not a nice restaurant. I was in sweats and had no makeup on. Plus I had already eaten all that popcorn and was feeling a bit bloated. I really didn’t want to eat anything else. I was originally thinking of telling hubby I didn’t want to go. He had even asked me if I was okay (“What’s wrong, baby, you seem kind of sad.”). Then I recalled reading on Chubby Chick’s blog about taking any opportunity to do nice things with your husband. So, at that moment, I put on a big smile and said I was just fine. They seated us in a lovely table next to the window. Fortunately, it was dark in the restaurant, so I didn’t feel too conspicuous. I told hubby to be honest I wasn’t very hungry, so we just ordered a couple of appetizers, including the Oysters Rockefeller (which I don’t like, so he had them all to himself). I had a beer and he had a glass of wine. In retrospect, I’m so glad I made the effort to make my husband happy, and I also had a good time myself.

This was just one more experience to file away in my brain to remind myself of what’s important in life.