Mamarati

what on earth do they put “beef cheek meat” in?

Beef Cheek Meat Recalled

Watch out all you beef cheek meat eaters!

Jacob is cleaning out his room and he just brought me a Liquid Paper Correction Pen from 1989. (Check out the new style, even. Fancy.) We’re talking typewriter days, here folks. We’re talking I was in college and we turned our papers in HAND-WRITTEN. Or we had to go to a professional typist and have them done. I actually had a typewriter then and typed papers up for folks all the time. I was such a formatting nerd.

This correction pen, that has been laying around this house for at least 3 years and has been moved from an untold number of locations prior to that is older than Jacob. Craziness.

But hey, reduce, reuse, recycle. Right? Does that fit? Yes, sure it does.

And, the crazy thing still works and has not dried up.

Animal Crossing City Folk

Oh crap. I am so excited.

This and Katamari… Patiently I wait for them.

Yes, that’s right. They could contain plastic.

Wait a minute… Have you ever eaten one of those things? Of course they contain plastic… at least that’s what they taste like. Also cardboard and lard.

Mmmmm….

I’m really not that much of a holiday person. Truly, I’m not much on celebrations, period. Holiday days feel much like any other day to me, and it’s rare that I put a lot of energy into holiday type activities and I don’t really talk a lot about holidays before they happen.

Now, that doesn’t mean I’m down on those who do enjoy holidays and do lots of preparation to make a day seem special or who really get in the spirit of celebration. That’s all fine, too. Sometimes those folks can drag me in and make me have a good time. But my natural inclination is toward calm, quiet reflection and time spent alone, with family or with a very small group of people I’m close to.

Today, my son went with his father to swim. Yesterday, my boyfriend, son and I watched fireworks from the car one street behind us. It was a serendipitous occurrence; we were driving back from getting something to eat and saw some cars parked looking toward the railroad tracks. Not something that happens around here on a daily basis. Then we remembered that we could see the fireworks at the lake from our back yard last year and we decided to stop. It was a nice show. About 20 minutes.

When my son was leaving, something got into my nose and eyes and turned me into an allergic train wreck. I took some Benadryl and napped for a bit. My boyfriend and I then went to go get some tacos. We drove by the place where we have made a habit of watching fireworks in the years since we bought this house. It was bumpin’. I thought about driving back, but find that my heart is really not in it. I don’t feel like that’s something I have to do in order to celebrate this day.

As I was eating my tacos, rung up by and prepared by a Spanglish crew… I did think about today and what it means, though. About folks coming over here from other countries. Declaring independence. Starting new lives. Struggling. Having fun. Making new ways. Keeping old ways. Fighting wars.

I thought about Texas and the people who lived in Texas before it was a state. The flags that have flown over this piece of the land… I thought about the border fence. I thought about the Alamo. I thought about this High School.

I thought about how my 12-year-old poked fun at some instructions we got with some new purchase recently. Because they were in Spanish and English. And that’s how he’s grown up. With things in two languages… or more. And he doesn’t take issue with that and it’s funny to him that others are so hung up on it and want so badly to make everything in English.

I thought about a book I read in college. And I thought about how many generations it takes for a group of people to forget where they came from for the most part and only remember here and now. One may know how to make tortellini from scratch, but may not be able to speak a word of Italian (unless you count the dirty words…)

I thought about my Native American roots and also the roots from somewhere else that give me my auburn hair, fair skin and freckles.

I thought about how the song God Bless the U.S.A. always fills me with emotion and makes me cry. And then I thought about how the song America, Fuck Yeah always makes me laugh my ass off.

I thought about the last 8 years of life in this country and my pervasive feeling of despair… mostly about things in government or the political scene… but mostly not things in my neighborhood, say. Those things have stayed pretty much the same no matter the party lines… aside from the bitching and moaning about gas prices.

And then I thought about the recent surge of hope. Oh, the audacity. It makes my every day a little brighter thinking about November…

And that’s how today has shaped up for me. Happy Independence Day… to EVERYONE. No matter how you got here or who you had to kill to get your freedom… no matter what side of the fence you’re on or what language you speak. If you’re here, you’re here. That’s the bottom line for me.

So, have a great day!

No. Really more like a maze. I think I want to make a labyrinth in the back yard. I also am thinking… orchard even though I know I won’t get to see it to fruition. Ha. Pun. This orchard thing may be because I’m all cracked out on Botany of Desire right now. Next thing you know I’ll start growing weed and tulips. Also could be because I’m touched by the rebuilding of Dr. Weil’s labyrinth…

Freeze the omega 3 things for my eye and take them with food, says those who wish to avoid fish burps. The balance should be OK since I get beaucoup 6s in other places.

I have forgotten to take the drops all day long. No bueno since I should have done that 3 times by now. iCal? Figure out a way to remember… w/ meals, maybe?

Have to get forum stuff taken care of soon… it’s already the 1st.

I need to get a central location for research going. I’ve got bits and pieces of systems going because I’m addicted to trying new programs. Hate to say it, but I miss OneNote… not enough to switch back to that environment, but still… it was nice. I wish Scrivener was a little more… something. Easy. Intuitive.

Am trying to make Google Notebook work but can’t get in the habit despite having every single shortcut installed… Think I might just need to do it the old fashioned way like I used to… right here, in the blog. Remember when blogs were just lists of the sites and things that people were researching? No, you probably do not, come to think of it, unless you are who I think you are. And you’re not. You’re probably someone who got here later. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… But still.

Twitter reminds me of what blogs used to be. Sort of. Except more chatty / conspicuous depending on who you are following. Sometimes it’s like going to the bathroom at a dinner party with a bunch of people you don’t really know. Sometimes it’s like high school. Sometimes it’s like that point at a sleepover where the lights go out and yet nobody can fall asleep so people just start blurting out what’s on their mind. It’s a lot of things depending on the moment. And I like it. So, I hope they get that shit fixed.

Bath time.

I swear, some days I cannot even believe that Charter is my Internet service provider. What the hell are they thinking?

We got one of those letters a while back about them sucking up and selling all our private information. I seriously thought it was some kind of joke. Boyfriend just sent me this from the Washington Post that says that they are going to stop it… but I don’t believe it. Sounds to me like they are just going to look for a way around it that doesn’t “possibly violate federal law.”

Charter also pisses me off because in Firefox, you can use the address bar to type in one word — like Nabisco or Dayrunner or any other damn word — and it will automagically take you to Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” result. I like this feature because I’m lazy and now, after God knows how long that I’ve been using it, it’s a habit ingrained in me harder than brushing my teeth or flushing the toilet. Now, however, Charter has HIJACKED MY BROWSER and instead of getting lucky, I get a gigantic page of worthless crap:

I mean look at that. How many damn sponsored results need to appear before something actually relevant that I might actually WANT. If what I WANTED and EXPECTED happened instead, I’d get the Wikipedia results for just putting in the word chocolate, and that suits me just fine.

Oh, but noooooooooooooooo.

So, I know there has to be a way to disable this EVIL, HOSTILE TAKEOVER of THE BROWSER THAT I PREFER AND INSTALLED ON MY COMPUTER instead of my request being REROUTED TO ADVERTISEMENTS on a SERVICE THAT I PAY $130 A MONTH FOR… But I haven’t found it yet and so I’m using the BlockSite add-on to manage this so I don’t have to see the AD RESULTS PAGE AND START THROWING THINGS AT MY COMPUTER MONITOR. Now all I see is this:

I know, I know. I could get another ISP. The only other real choice where I live, however, is the NSA AT&T.

And you know, if Charter were providing a free service, I might say, OK, fine. Serve me up your little search results page. I’ll play along for a freebie. BUT I PAY FOR THIS BULLCRAP AND IT AIN’T CHEAP!

It’s not even that great otherwise, either. Dismal upload speeds, constant downtime (including 2 hours yesterday), the digital phone service sounds like crap if anyone is doing so much as checking email or looking sideways at the router and the DVR is doing this absolutely annoying pixelization thing on everything that we record unless it’s in HD. Even if we’re just watching a show and we rewind it, it will be pixelated from then forward unless we fast forward to live TV.

Anyway, I just installed Firefox 3. The beta kept crashing on me, but so far this seems stable… so hopefully with all the new features, I will be able to find a work-around that helps me function like I used to rather than just using BlockSite. (A good add-on, though, and has password protection if you’re trying to keep your kids away from any sites or whatnot… And of course, if you have Charter, just put in http://*.charter.*)

Grr.

So, I just got back from out of town… road trip with the family. Good times. Until… Suddenly my eye starts hurting.

Really hurting.

I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t open my eyes because it hurt. I couldn’t
close my eyes because it hurt. No matter what I did, it hurt.

We started the long drive home (about 12 hours in the car) and I
literally sat with my finger pressed into my eyelid (the only
semi-comfortable position my eye could be) the entire time. It is
really difficult to try and keep your eye closed when it wants to be
open and looking at things. Road trips are for seeing, no?

We got back home and the pain was getting worse, so we headed to Harris
ER (savers of my arm, and quite possibly my life last time) where they
gave me some numbing drops (boyfriend said they must have been loaded
with mood enhancers as well, since my outlook on life changed
immediately upon application) and looked at my eyes with dye under a
black light and said I have a corneal abrasion. Apparently your cornea
is just loaded up with nerve endings, so it’s a bit of a painful thing.

They gave me a prescription for hydrocodone (my favorite
oh darn!) and some antibiotic drops and sent me home feeling much
better. I slept like a baby after nearly 48 hours of no sleep at all.
I got up this morning at about 11:30 and went to open the front door to
see if White Thing was out there wanting some crunchies and was blinded
by the light. (Though not cut loose like a deuce or wrapped up like a
douche or anything like that.) It was like instant migraine pain
engulfing my entire head. The light was hurting me on the way home but
not nearly this bad. Of course my eyes were closed and covered by
fingers and sunglasses the whole time… but wow, this was seriously
painful. It’s getting worse, too, which I don’t get, since the other
pain is getting better (or is just masked by the hydrocodone?). I am
sitting here writing this wearing sunglasses in my damn house because
even at its lowest brightness setting, my screen is killing my eyes.
I was in the back room doing laundry in my sunglasses.

I feel like Corey Hart or something.

I have an appointment with an ophthalmologist on Wednesday… I’m
going to talk to him about this and also the dry eye thing… because
this pain is not something that’s new. Only the severity of it this
time is what’s new. I’ve been waking up with my eyelid stuck to my
eyeball off and on for about six weeks now. Generally it hurts just
like this episode, but goes away within about an hour or so. It’s been
happening so frequently lately, though, that I’ve trained myself not to
open my eyes too quickly when I wake up so that I don’t rip it. It
seems to be OK if I take my time and allow some tears to build up with
pretend blinking before I open them completely. So, I don’t know if
it’s possible that I have the chronic dry eye thing going on or if
maybe I injured my eye six weeks ago and it’s just never healed
well… We were around a lot of smoke, sun and wind as well as recent
painting and scraping of the house, so maybe that added to the injury?
I guess I’m just trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or
the egg here.

Here’s the scary eye:

Oh, and mental note to self: started period today. Joy.

Tim Russert has died of a heart attack. I’m just completely floored. I mean, he’s come to feel like a friend. Especially when there’s an election going on. The more I’ve grown to care about politics, the more present he has been in that process. I’m seriously a little worried about what this will mean for us out here. He was like the guy who did the tough critical thinking that my mind just couldn’t do with all the information that’s out there. He was so on top of things. I’m sure many Americans feel the same way… I mean, it’s nice to know that someone out there has that job and does it so well.

I’m watching the coverage and I’m really happy to hear that he’s remembered by those around him as not just a great journalist but as a dedicated father. Over and over they keep talking about how involved he was with his son. I hope all those dads out there tempted to give in to the pressures of overworking see that and say “No, I’m going to spend some time with my kids.”

Sad. Sad, sad day.

Olbermann is choked up. Don’t see that often.

So, I read this article in the New York Times about these two couples who had sex every day for periods of time (one for a year and one for 101 days). They both wrote about the experience (365 Nights and Just Do It) and I’m jumping on that bandwagon much to my boyfriend’s joy. (He just tonight renamed it “Sex Every Day for the Rest of Our Lives”).

We’ll see.

So far my biggest worries are those days when I’m feeling not so fresh and being on my period, which yeah yeah yeah for those of you who have no issue with this at all. I’m sorry. I just … would rather not. I’m not scared of my junk and I’m not a prude and I’m not being kept down by the man or whatever… I just am not a fan.

Anyway, tonight is night three and so far, so good.

I mean… so far, sooooooooo good.

I mean, can I really be OK with right now?

I feel like I need to be looking over my shoulder for the next stressful event to happen or for my relaxed state of mind to washed away in an instant.

Self-inflicted or not.

Surely this can’t last.

Whatever. I’m going to enjoy it while it does last.

In other news… we’re painting the house.

And we’re about to go on a road trip.

And Jacob is about to go to camp with his dad.

I wish I had something profound to say but really, I’m just enjoying reading for pleasure lately and pulling myself together after what seems like nonstop GO GO GO for the last 20 or so years of my life. I feel like this is my first break from … ? things in as long as I can remember.

It’s really quite nice.

So, I did something recently that I’m feeling rather strange about. I quit school, basically.

I’m this close to the end and I threw up my hands and said, “I can’t do this any more.”

There are a number of reasons why I did it. It’s actually been something I’ve been thinking about doing since I fell off the roof. I mean, what better time to take care of myself than then? But instead, I did not do that. I took it a little bit slower, but basically kept plowing through. And then all these things started happening with Jacob and the surgeries and the changes in his diet and on and on happened… things I did not forsee. And so, for the last year or so, I think I have been slowly losing my mind.

I mean, there have been actual moments where I have questioned my sanity. Where I felt like I was close to a nervous breakdown or something. I just felt pulled so tight all the time and the only logical next step was to snap. And all the while I was doing that thing… that superwoman thing where you tell yourself that you’ve got your shit together and you can do anything you put your mind to and all that other bullshit that really just means you can be all things to all people but you won’t be worth a damn to yourself.

So, no. I cannot be all things to all people. I cannot handle all this stuff on my plate. I cannot do it all. For now, I have got to focus on my family, my work, my relationships and myself. I wrote to my adviser and let her know I was losing my mind dealing with everything and talked a bit about the stuff going on with Jacob (more on that later, it’s all getting weird with doctors and such) and she was cool and agreed that I need to focus on family stuff. School will be there whenever I’m ready to go back.

The other thing is work. I feel like… Due to the flexible nature of my job, I feel like there have been times when I have given it my all and really thrown myself into it. And I enjoy those times more than anything. But then when things come up like they have lately, I feel like my work suffers greatly. It’s the thing that can bend the most, so I let it absorb the shock of any trauma or stress in my life. I’m lucky to have such a job. But I really miss working. School was not allowing me much room for that. And it’s like, for years I’ve been trying to finish school and something always happens that cuts into it. But still, I keep chasing down this thing that I want to be. This future occupation or career or whatever. And suddenly, I’m like, “Why?” Why do I keep chasing down something else when what I really love to do is what I’m already doing? If I’d just DO IT already. Like, if I would just go on and really give myself to it…

I had the fortune to go to an event recently that was for other folks who do the same thing I do… actually two events. One was specifically for folks that work at About.com and the other was for mommy bloggers. And I talked to other folks who felt the same way I did. Folks who may also have other jobs and maybe right now they are asking themselves if they are ready to take the plunge and do it full time. Leave the day job behind and just do THIS. I talked to some people who had already taken the plunge and they talked about how scary it was to finally realize that they were writers and that they didn’t have paychecks that were written in stone but that if they dedicated themselves to it, they would make it just fine and maybe even be more than just fine. I talked to moms who were contemplating never going back to corporate America in favor of staying home with their kids and blogging their lives and interests. There are sacrifices to be made, for sure… trade-offs. But I think they might be worth it.

And I’m feeling so many things right now… Anxiety. Fear. Excitement.

But mostly I’m feeling this amazing sense of relief. Like this huge burden has been lifted and the pressure is gone. I feel refreshed. I’m sleeping better. I’m thinking more clearly. I don’t feel like I’m running around in a fog. I don’t feel like a time bomb about to go off. I feel like I can finally relax for a moment and maybe even enjoy a few parts of my life. Even though there are still stressful things going on and there’s still that element of chaos, I feel like I can handle it now.

There is not single clean spoon in the house. So, I am eating Honey Nut Os with the tablespoon measuring spoon. Lovely. Jacob did the dishes yesterday but there were two loads, so no room for the overflowing silverware basket. It sits on my counter now, because I am resisting the urge to do all the things that my kid is completely capable of doing. This is all in an effort to make him more responsible and me less tired and pissy that I do everything and he does jack and squat.

At any rate, I did too much research and then checked my work mail and then forgot I hadn’t eaten today and then…

So I’m going to have to go to the library on Monday because we’ve got to go do allergy shots after school. There just are not enough hours in the day. Especially when you are behind.

Also, today is report card day, so the weekend could be dramatically changed based on the misery level of the boy if he gets grounded for poor grades. I’ve got my fingers crossed. He’s been working so hard to keep up and get all his make-up work done… he’s been working hard on his writing… Please, Lord, don’t make me have to ground him.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/24/untitled-1.html

Email from rep regarding the powdered sugar in Newman O’s (doesn’t break the ingredients down):

Stephanie,
There are some corn ingredients in the NewmanO’s. the vanilla is grain
distilled (probably corn), but you are correct about the powdered sugar-
there is about 2% cornstarch in the powdered sugar.

Newman’s Own Organics pretzels (all varieties), Soy Crisps (4 varieties)
and 3 varieties of Hermit cookies are corn free. There is corn present
in the manufacturing facility.
I hope this is helpful.

Peggy Westenhofer
Director of Customer Relations
Newman’s Own Organics
831-685-2866

—–Original Message—–

Posted At: Monday, March 24, 2008 6:44 PM
Posted To: Web Inquiries
Conversation: ‘Talk To Us’ Information Sent!
Subject: ‘Talk To Us’ Information Sent!

This was sent from the ‘Talk To Us’ page of the Newman’s Own Organics
website.

Name: Stephanie Brown

Do your Newman Os have any corn ingredients? My son is allergic to corn
and it\’s in everything. I\’d love to find a safe cookie for him. I\’m
thinking if it\’s in anything it\’s in the powdered sugar (sometimes
contains corn starch) unless you process your own from straight sugar.
Thanks a bunch!