Quick Takes

1. In one of the many inflight magazines I have perused over the last year, I read a story about a computer game writer who lives in New Mexico somewhere with his family.  He doesn't earn much and he doesn't want to, although his games are very successful.  Something about being an artist and putting them online for free.  Anyway, I think about his family a lot because they have three or four kids and they manage to live off of $14,000 a year.  They don't own a car, they grow their own vegetables, maybe they turn their waste into cooking gas, who the heck knows.  How do they do that?

2.  Usually, I think about that family as I hang up our laundry on our line.  I also think about how it used to be that only poor people line-dry and how having a dryer is still somewhat of a status symbol.  However: more and more folks are doing it now to be "eco-friendly" and so now it is the smart thing to do and not just the poor thing to do. 

3. A facebook friend listed "Faith, Family, Exercise and Beer" as her main interests.  All I have to do is write a post on beer and that would sum up the content of this blog.

4. Saw a sad bumper sticker today: "Someone I Loved Was Murdered."  Yikes.

5. I like this headline from the Navajo Times from July 28th, my birthday. 

6.  It's been a very busy week and I feel like I have barely had a chance to sit down.  In the middle of it all, on Wednesday, we decided to paint the dining room.  I wore shorts and an old t-shirt and, at one point when I looked down, I remembered a fleeting thought from my shower earlier in the day about how there was no time to shave both legs.  "I'll just do one today and one tomorrow," I thought and then I must've gone ahead with that plan because sure enough, there to the East was a dense and fertile forest, and to the West it was clear and pure, like the still surface of a mountain lake. 

Jeremy almost died laughing.  Hey, I'm just glad I got a shower, ok?

7.  For the last few weeks, I've ended up at the laundromat right when the show, "The Doctors" is airing.  Good grief, she's still talking about laundry.  No, I'm not!  I want to talk about fertility symptoms!  Apparently, there are some Apps. out there that help you keep track of your menstrual cycle.  There are even "his" and "hers" Apps, where "his" warns him of the onset of PMS and makes helpful--though maybe a little condescending--suggestions (like, "today would be a good day to compliment her outfit or appearance").  

Anyway, it bugs me a little that this software was only mentioned in the context of sex because I can think of about a hundred reasons why it is helpful for any woman, sexually active or not, to chart her fertility symptoms.  I guess it's still a good thing that folks are out there talking openly about women's cycles, and encouraging men and women to get in touch with Mother Nature a little bit more. 

more takes at Jen's and hers are as hilarious as ever.