chew the cud

SARAH: HERE. CHEW ON THIS. (hands cadence half a vitamin)
CADENCE: A-CHOO! (sneezes on vitamin)

the unbearable cuteness of being...

...of being CADENCE, that is...ah yes, there she is in all her pinkness. this is the tutu from aunt ali and uncle charles. i hear it is essential to every little girl's wardrobe.

...and this is the photo that went out with our christmas cards. i think it's probably one of my favorite photos of her ever. she's looking less and less like a baby. *sigh*...

keep your more to receive your less

...i found this via the emergent village website and i found it quite sobering: http://globalrichlist.com/. go ahead. find out where you're at on the global rich list.

it boggles my mind that i am monetarily richer than more than 99% of the world.

i'm not a red hot chili peppers fan, but i think it's time to 'give it away, give it away, give it away now...'

so here's what i'd like y'all to do...leave me a comment or email me with organizations that you think are worthy of donations and why.

on the flipside, if you've got the money, it may be easy to give (to alleviate guilt) and still not lift a finger (except to click on the DONATE button) to help another person. i'm not saying that giving to charities is wrong, of course not. what i'm saying is that for me, it's not enough. what can i give of myself--my time, my talents, my sweat and tears, not just my money--to alleviate someone else's hunger, pain or loneliness? so here's part B of my request to my readers. leave a comment or email me with suggestions for things that i can DO to make a difference beyond giving financially, including things that can be done with cadence as a family.

whether you're a capitalist, communist, socialist, A-list, C-list, F-list, the inequities of wealth distribution on a global level are not something to sneeze at. i know that being in the top 1% of the global monetary food chain does not equate to being better off than 99% of the world. there's economic mumbojumbo that makes things complicated. what remains is the fact that you and i could have just as easily been born into brothels in india or a drought-plagued village in africa. we didn't deserve to be born into relative wealth, just as those in dire poverty didn't deserve to be born into their desperate situations...

TGIF

...i woke up at 4:30am with the beginning of a migraine...i crawled out of bed, ate some crackers, downed 3 tylenols, grabbed a cold eye mask out of the freezer and crawled back to bed in hopes that the headache would melt away in the next two hours before i had to get up for work...

...unfortunately, that was not to be the case, and i had to drag my sorry ass into the office. on top of that, i forgot my cosmetics bag at home, so when i looked in the mirror sitting at my desk, i looked like an addict on a not-so-good day.

and then it hit me. i AM an addict. a CAFFEINE ADDICT. HOLY SCHMOLES! now THAT would explain why i started getting a headache wednesday afternoon, which mysteriously went away after a visit to metropolis. and why after over 24 hours without any caffeine, i'd gotten another headache early this morning.

it's really hard for me to admit an addiction to a chemical substance. after all, i used to smoke cigs (before getting pregnant) quite often and never got addicted. i took pride in my non-addiction while i knew folks who could barely function without their morning cuppajoe. well, pride doth come before the fall, i suppose, and metropolis proved to be my stumbling block. a very yummy, frothy stumbling block.

i guess this means i won't be trying heroin or crack cocaine any time soon, as i've proven that i AM in fact suceptible to chemical dependency.

...well, thank god it's friday, i guess! i can't wait to go to metropolis tomorrow morning! more! coffee! now!!!!

happy 2007!

can you believe we're almost into day 4 of 2007? 2007!!! i mean, it just doesn't seem that long ago that we were worried the world was going to come to a chaotic end as a result of the Y2K fiasco. i was thinking about that the other day, that the whole Y2K thing was probably some conspiracy to sell survival kits and create job security. it ended up being so...uneventful.

...anyhoo, ted and his siblings rang in the new year korean style by making the traditional new year's day dumplings called mandoo. yes, even uncle jay got his hands all floury and pitched in. we weren't quite sure what we were doing, and i had to make quite a few phone calls to my mom, but all in all, they turned out yummy. of course, i didn't find out until today that most koreans don't make their own dumplings any more because now you can just buy them premade in the frozen section of any asian grocery store. at least that's what my mom told me. i'm still glad we got our hands all gooey making our own slow-food style.

after we ate our dumplings and we'd lounged around for a while, we went to metropolis for some coffees/chais/hot chocolates and hung out until dark. it was a nice, relaxing end to a low-key new years day.

so that's how we began 2007. it's hard to believe another year has gone by and that cadence will be turning 3 this september. i was just reading my friends michele and greg's family christmas letter which highlighted the past year month by month for their family. their daughter anna is exactly a year older than cadence, so it was interesting to think to myself, 'so this is what cadence will be doing in the coming year...' wow. we've got a big year ahead of us...

when you work full-time and have a toddler, it's really hard not to get caught up in the busyness of everyday life. to facilitate more mindful living, ted and i hope to continue simplifying our lives, getting rid of as much stuff as possible to minimize the potential for clutter, and consciously setting aside time for enriching activities like our hobbies or quality time together. when i think about all the stuff hidden away in boxes and crammed into cubby holes, i cringe...nevertheless, we've got to start somewhere, and i think i've been burying my head in the sand long enough.