I remember, as a kid, my mom suggested that I start a book journal. I started writing down the names of books I read and started a little rating system based on how much I enjoyed it. I am pretty sure I could find those book journals at my mom’s house if I really tried. In 2010, I started using Goodreads – an internet booklover’s social network site. At the time, I thought I’d just start keeping track of my books read and books-I-want-to-read on a going forward basis. In recent weeks, I’ve been trying to re-create those early book journals by marking older books that I’ve read with the year I read them.

The Goodreads tool has been helpful in making me remember which books I’ve read and enjoyed, which ones I’ve hated, and which books I bought for my Kindle and then promptly forgot about.

My newest reading endeavor is a book club of sorts. I’ve never been in a traditional book club. My close friends either aren’t big readers or we have very different tastes in reading material. This little book club – The Beer ‘n’ Books Book Club – grew out of a regular dinner date and the members’ desire to share the books they were reading. The club only has three members. It’s sort of nice because we all like to talk and the small number enables each of us to get our fill of talking.

I got to choose January’s reading selection. I did so during a conversation at a German-style bierstube while we were stuck watching women’s volleyball and drinking imported beer. Odd circumstances to be discussing books, but we were. When I found out that neither of my friends had ever read The Handmaid’s Tale, I knew that it needed to be our first book.

I read Margaret Atwood’s story of a dystopian future society when I was in high school. It was one of the required readings for our 11th grade Advanced Placement English classes. That year, we concentrated on American Literature (even though Atwood is Canadian). It was a year and a class that drastically shaped the adult I would become. I still count this book high on the list of my favorites. I think I may have read it, again, in college for another course. However, my college memories are clouded behind a fog of beer and lots of late nights, so they are not nearly as clear as those halcyon high school days.

The book is the story of Offred, a woman in her mid-30s who lives through the overthrow of the American government and it’s replacement by a militaristic leadership of religious zealots. There has been some sort of occurrence that drastically reduced human fertility. She is a woman of child-bearing age who has successfully given birth in the time before the overthrow. She is selected to be a surrogate mother for the family of one of the new Republic of Gilead’s high-ranking officials. She is to be a handmaid as Bilhah was to Rachel in the book of Genesis. Hers is an odd position – she is vilified, honored and utterly stripped of all free will.

The Handmaid’s Tale, written in 1986 but with eerily current themes, was a nominee for the Booker Prize, a winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel and a winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize for Fiction. It earned a solid five-star rating from me and similar ratings from the two other women in the Beer ‘n’ Books Book Club.

February’s selection is Fear of Flying by Erica Jong. I’m not very far into it, but am enjoying it so far. I’ll be sure to let you know how it turns out for me.

One thing that Pinterest devotees often complain about is that they love pinning all the things, but those pins never seem to make their way into real life. We never buy the kickass wooden bathtub we pinned. We never make the peppermint pattie brownies and we never paint take awesome photos of babies (seriously, why have I pinned so many baby photos?).

Today, though, I did make one of my pins a reality. I’ve been wanting a change in my look, so I started keeping a Hair and Makeup board. I’ve tried some of the hair tutorials with success, but I went for the whole enchilada, today.

I walked into a new salon and told the stylist to make me look like this woman:

Once the stylist stopped chuckling, he went to work. He colored, he glazed, he snipped, and slide cut, he dried, and he worked magic. Despite the cowlicks, I ended up with some fancy new bangs and layers.

Now, I obviously need some better color in my bathroom and someone desperately needs to wash that mirror. However, I’m happy with the overall result. The stylist used a demi-permanent hair color. It covered the gray that’s starting to invade well. He also assured me that it would fade a bit to look less like all-over color and more like highlights and lowlights.

I hear that a lot of people hate the word "moist." One of my good friends hates the word "vomit" and another good friend hates the word "tampon." None of those bother me, but I found two words today that I felt needed their own classification in my brain.

Flux goes squarely on the I DO NOT LIKE IT list. I don’t like the way it sounds – all short and terse and blunt-edged. It was interesting, though, to read the official definition and realize that when people say something is "in a constant state of flux" that they are saying something redundant. They should say that it is "in a state of flux."

Flummox, on the other hand, is a word that I LOVE. I like that it even sounds bewildering when you say it – almost like it is an onomatopoeia of what your stomach must sound like when you are bewildered or totally confused all of a sudden.

What are some words you like or hate?

Are you kidding me that I haven’t had a post here in 2012? That’s ridiculous. I’ve been doing all sorts of things! Fun things! Not fun things! I’m going to try to make a point to update this space more regularly. Even short, snippety things are better than no things. Is that right?

Today, I made my first “green” smoothie. It was actually purple. Maybe I did it wrong since I just tossed stuff into the cup and went for it. It tasted good, though, even if I now have a million strawberry seeds stuck in my teeth.

I used:

1 C fresh baby spinach
1 C frozen strawberries (no sugar added)
1 C frozen organic blueberries
1 squeeze from the honey container
water

What are your favorite smoothie ingredients?

Breakfast foods and I have always gotten along. I love breakfast. It’s my favorite meal of the day. I think that’s why I’m pretty adept at cooking breakfast. I can make omelletes. I can make a mean bowl of oatmeal. I can even make french toast. If I had to, I could probably make biscuits and gravy, but it’s not one of my favorites.

When I saw this recipe for Baked Oatmeal on The Nourished Kitchen, I knew right away that I wanted it to be one of the first breakfast meals I attempted. To paraphrase Joey Tribbiani, “Oatmeal? Good. Cranberries? Good. Six eggs? Gooood.”

This recipe also showed me that I need to plan out my preparations. I got all set to whip up this dish on Tuesday night, so it would be ready for breakfast when I went back to work on Wednesday. Then, I read the recipe and realized I needed to soak the oats overnight. Oops. A small delay in the plans. Since I was rushing to prepare the baked oatmeal before dinner, tonight, I totally spaced on taking photographs.

Here’s the finished masterpiece. You guys! Seriously. We need scratch-and-sniff monitors.

Obviously, that is a lot of baked oatmeal! The recipe makes a full 12 servings. I’ll be eating on this for days! I’ll actually probably need to take some in to work to share with my co-workers. It’s a skeleton crew around the office this week.

I made some adjustments to the original recipe. I probably shouldn’t do this, but I was reluctant to buy some new items when I had perfectly unspoiled substitutes. I also just plain couldn’t find some ingredients at my local grocery store.

The recipe calls for yogurt, kefir, whey or buttermilk. This time, next week, I’ll have some whey, but I didn’t prep any before making this. So, I used some Fage yogurt. I know that I should probably use whole yogurt, but the store only had 2% or non-fat. I grabbed the plain 2% and called it good. I also substituted 2% milk for whole milk because I had some in the refrigerator that was about to expire. No sense in wasting it. The recipe calls for maple syrup, but considers it optional. I like my oatmeal sweet, so I knew that I needed a sweetening agent. However, I’m not a huge fan of maple syrup. I substituted local honey, instead. Now, if our friend, Mike, taps his trees for syrup, again, I may reconsider!

Finally, I ended up using regular old dried apricots. The recipe calls for dried, unsulfured apricots. Our grocery only had one variety. The package read  “prepared with sulfur dioxide and potassium sorbate as a preservative,” though, so I’m pretty sure they aren’t unsulfured.

Thanks to my handy-dandy spreadsheet, I can give you the nutritional stats on this recipe. Using my ingredients and the above substitutions, here’s the breakdown of the big categories per serving (see the sheet for more details):

Calories: 367
Carbs: 43.4g
Total Fat: 16.5g
Protein: 13.5g

This blows my normal breakfast of two Pop-Tarts away in all categories (except fat, this has 2.5 more grams). This has fully pronounceable ingredients of wholesome, good food. I’m betting that it tastes about a million times better, too.

So, I totally caved and had a serving of the baked oatmeal last night while watching the UK basketball game. It was really good. Surprisingly, it was not really sweet. I thought the 1/4 cup of honey would make it almost too sweet. Nope. It’s a good level, not too sweet, not too tart. I may drizzle just a bit of honey over the top before serving, next time. It does have a little tang – I assume that’s from soaking the oats with some yogurt.

I chose to use almonds in my version. I chopped them up, coarsely, using the food processor attachment on my blender. I love almonds, but they don’t really fit in this recipe. They aren’t soft, so they offer a crunchy contrast to the oats. I’m not sure it’s a good contrast. I can imagine that a lot of people would prefer walnuts in this dish. I’m not a walnut fan, but I think the flavor and consistency would be more traditional.

The cinnamon and dried fruits totally makes this dish. I think you could substitute or add in some pumpkin and traditional pumpkin pie spices for a good autumn dish.

This is a dish that I’ll be making in the future. I’m going to enjoy eating it over the rest of this week!

I’m just warning you!

This week, I’m easing into this learning-to-cook-with-real-food thing (with the roasted chicken and some baked oatmeal), but I’ve already got next week’s menu plan. I’m working on trying to lay out a schedule of when things need to get done. Yes, this is probably overkill, but I like to have a clear plan. Otherwise, it’s time to make stew and I realize I should have prepped and put it in the crock pot 8 hours earlier. I’ve got my trusty Google Spreadsheet detailing what needs to be done on which day. Eventually, this will probably make it to some sort of Google Calendar just so I can have it at my fingertips at all times. (Do you see that I can be obsessive?)

One thing that is majorly cramping my style is trying to feed all these recipes into the recipe builder at MyFitnessPal in order to figure out the nutritional information for each serving. Needless to say, some of the ingredients are a little off the beaten path and not readily available in your Diet Website Food Database of choice. So, that’s a whole other spreadsheet I’ve got going on to calculate the information for each one.

I just ordered some cooking supplies on Amazon. This is not surprising. When I get a new hobby or interest, I like to accumulate ALL THE THINGS as soon as possible. So, I bought (affiliate links):

• Cheesecloth (for making my own whey)
• A 14-piece Pyrex storage set (I have two pieces that I often use for lunch, but my current storage situation is dire)
• A 12-jar set of 16-oz Ball jars (for storage of said whey and other future science projects)
• A 4-in nylon mesh strainer (for some reason, a lot of the recipes call for non-metal strainers. I have no idea why. Probably some sort of reactive something-or-sciencey-other?)

I’m currently on the hunt for a sourdough starter. Of course, a close weirdo hippie friend might have one that I can use. I thought about trying to start my own, but that sounds scary and like it probably might not work. In the meantime, I think I’ll be making Almond Flour Bread, next week, instead of sourdough.

I’m also wondering if the local foods cooperative in Lexington might have some of this stuff. It would be so handy to live really close to that store. I love their bulk bins and natural health and beauty products.

I started taking some weirdo hippie supplements, today. I’ve done some research, online, and these seem to be a good place to begin. I don’t want to go crazy with supplements, because I think that it’s probably best to get your important vitamins and minerals through the food you eat. You know, like people did before modern medicine. I almost never go to the doctor, but if I do, I’ll be sure to let them know what supplements I’m taking so I don’t end up with a second head growing out of my ear or something. Right now, I’m doing:

• 100% Pure Defatted Dessicated Liver capsules – I know that liver is really good for you, but I’m not sure I could bear the taste. I’ll try it someday, but until then, I’ll get the benefits from these capsules.
• Butter Oil/Fermented Cod Liver Oil capsules – a good source of healthy fats and Vitamins A, D, E & K2
• Bio Kult Probiotic capsules – Ever since Jayme Lee’s yogurt commercials, we all know that probiotics are beneficial to health and building a strong immune system.
• Fish Oil capsules – high in Omega-3 fatty acids

Now, I also don’t want to become one of those people. You know the type. They can’t shut up about their new thing. Those people bug me. So, indulge me, here, just a bit while everything is fresh and new and exciting. Then, feel free to tell me to shut up.

One last quick little thing. I made my first batch of homemade chicken stock today! It’s currently cooling on the counter, but I’m looking forward to tasting it!

I’m learning to cook. This is BIG. I’m not only learning to cook, but I’m attempting to learn to cook the same sorts of meals my grandmothers and great-grandmothers cooked – traditional, whole foods that are full of real and natural foods.

As is usual, I caught a cold over Christmas and am sniffling and sneezing around the house. They say that chicken broth is a natural booster of the immune system, but that the real key is to make your own broth from the carcass of a chicken – none of that canned soup for me!

Nothing like starting off with a small project, right?

The first step in making chicken broth is to cook a chicken. So, I’m using a recipe for Roast Chicken from The Nourished Kitchen (where I’ll be getting a whole lot of the recipes for this endeavor).

Before I left for the grocery, I made sure to wash and soak my new clay baker. I bought a Reco Romertopf 3-Quart Clay Baker.

Then, I settled down to get my chicken on. I should tell you that I have an EXTREME aversion to handling raw meat and I dislike eating meat with bones in it. Obviously, these things are pretty silly, and I’m going to have to overcome them. Oh, did I have to face that first aversion quickly.

I bought this smallish chicken. There is no such thing as a free-range, pasture chicken in my grocery store. Maybe in Lexington there would be, but I’m not willing to drive 35 miles for a chicken. So, I picked up this one:

If you can read that label, you’ll see that it is a whole chicken with giblets. If you’re playing Lydia-Learns-to-Cook Bingo, at home, go ahead and mark the spot that says CALL MOM&SISTER TO ASK QUESTION. Apparently, giblets are the innards (liver, gizzards (?), neck) that are wrapped up in a bag and stuffed into the cavity of the bird. You should extract them before you cook the bird. Extraction involves reaching your hand up into the chicken’s nether regions and pulling out a bag of nasty-looking things. I think this must be what obstetricians feel like.

You can go ahead and mark OBSESSIVE HAND WASHING on your Bingo card, too.

Once I got the chicken out of the packaging and the giblets out of the chicken, I needed to rinse the bird. Let me tell you that grabbing that chicken under it’s little wings and giving it a bath in the sink had me feeling like a mom to a newborn. Except, I was preparing to roast and eat my newborn. The stupid bird actually feels like you’re holding a baby. Then, it’s really slippery when you turn the water on it. Also, for total gross-outness?, some of the little down feathers are still attached, so the baby bird looks like it has hair.

I threw that bird into the roaster as quickly as I could. I did not truss it up with cooking twine, as instructed in the recipe. (oh, hell, go ahead and mark the NOT FOLLOWING RECIPE spot, too.) Then, I scrubbed my hands. A lot.

I gave the chicken a rub down with olive oil, sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

(This is how the food bloggers do it, right?)

Once that was all done and more hand washing was completed, I poured in some chicken broth.

The bird was ready for some roasting. Normally, I’ve always been taught to pre-heat my oven before cooking. However, I’m glad I read the directions for the clay baker, because you are supposed to put it in a COLD OVEN. Very important. My limited knowledge of science and common sense tells me that it might crack if it goes from one temperature extreme to another.

I’m sure that, after three hours, the house was smelling lovely. However, there’s no way I would know since all the mucus in the world has taken up residence in my head. When I heard the timer ding!, though, I ran to the kitchen to see how my bird had fared.

Ta da!

It looks totally gross. Or is that just me? I could finally smell it, though, and it did smell good.

The next thing to figure out was how to carve the darn thing. Of course, I googled it on my smartphone and tried to follow along with the illustrations. That didn’t work because the meat was, literally, falling off the bones. It was at this point that I also found out that I know jack about chicken anatomy. The whole time, I thought these pictures were of the front of the chicken. I was a little freaked out that the breasts were so small. I’m such a dip. As soon as I flipped the sucker over I realized that the breasts were on the underside. I think that was a lucky mistake, because I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to put the breasts where they’ll get the most liquid. Right?

I made a total mess of carving that bird, but it was okay. I’m the only one here to see that, and I’m not posting a picture of the horror-show gore-fest that was the chicken carcass. Instead, see all my meat?

Once I was assured that the chicken was successful, I whipped up some not natural or wholesome or traditional green beans from a can (yay, BPA!) and box mashed potatoes. I should mention, here, that I do know how to make mashed potatoes, because my mom taught me. Hers are the best. The only explanation I have for why there are potato flakes in my pantry is that The Husband must have bought some along the way. This probably makes the second or third time I’ve ever had them. They were okay.

I’m feeling pretty proud of myself! This roast chicken was a total success. It needed more salt, but that’s about it. The leftover meat will serve as leftovers for at least one more lunch and dinner. The carcass is currently slow-cooking its way into stock.

Everyone, including me, is fresh from a holiday season that inspired them to become better people. A new year is, seemingly, a fresh start. I’m making my resolutions and goals public, here. Feel free to comment on them or tell me I’m crazy. I’m not sure, exactly, what the difference between a resolution and a goal is. A resolution feels a little more intangible, a work in progress that maybe can’t be measured very well. A goal is more concrete and can be worked towards. There is a clear achieving of a goal.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of my resolutions and goals have to deal with physical and mental health. In order to make this a bit more fun, I’ve joined Health Month, which is a sort of online game that helps players to track their progress and offer support or commiseration with others. You can play for free with up to 3 goals per month or pay $5 for more than 3 goals. You can read more about it, here. You can find me at username: kylydia, if you’d like!

Five Resolutions

1. Make it work or move on. If you aren’t happy you need to do something about it. This is going to be the over-arching theme of 2012. Be happy in all aspects of life – career, home, friendships etc.

2. Post a full Post-It note pad of Operation Beautiful notes. Have you heard of Operation Beautiful? I love the idea behind it. The goal is to end negative self-talk and to help others by leaving positive post-it notes in public places for them to see. Hopefully, readers of the notes will take the messages to heart.

3. Learn to cook whole, traditional, seasonal foods using Nourished Kitchen. I’ll be planning out and cooking three meals a week. I hope to do lots of prep work on Sundays, because it just makes sense to do it that way. I expect this to be a big feature and focus of this space during 2012. I am going to need help and tips and pointers on how to do things. Can I get some cooks on speed-dial? I have my sister, but I’m sure I’ll annoy her before I get all my questions answered.

4. Stop deleting a ton of emails every day and start going through the process of unsubscribing from them. I open GMail, each morning, to about 25 different emails that just automatically get deleted or archived – unread. That’s dumb. For companies that send coupons via email, start a new tag and automatic rule for those in GMail.

5. Faithfully keep a personal journal. I’ll be using 750words.com which is a site that encourages the daily writing of 3 pages (about 750 words) of personal reflection. I plan to use it as a way to get things out of my head so I can know that those things are somewhere safe and not in danger of being forgotten or lost in my brain.

Five Concrete Goals

1. Run 500 miles. That sounds COMPLETELY insane to me. Just totally and utterly insane. However, since I started running in the middle of August, I’ve run 175+ miles (and I’ve majorly slacked off in December). This year, I’ll be training for my first half marathon. That training plan, alone, calls for almost 200 miles of running in the first 3 months of 2012. I think this goal is doable.

2. Finish up the credit card debt snowball. I’ve been relapsing into my old Charge! Charge! Charge! ways in the last few months of 2011. If I want to meet this goal, it will need to involve some pretty strict adherence to the plan and dedication of any bonuses or tax returns to the goal.

3. Lose 30 pounds in 2012. I’m hoping this goal gets totally blown out of the water, but I need a goal that I can imagine. This would put me hovering around a nice round number. It’s hard to remember/imagine anything lower than that, right now.

4. Once and for all give up the diet soda addiction. This might be even harder than learning to cook. I did it for a month back in September of 2010. It was really hard. I was really happy to have that first Diet Dr. Pepper after the month was over. I’m hoping that the new foods I’ll be cooking and the increased running I’ll be doing will make me feel so fabulous that I won’t need the caffeine pick-up of soda.

5. Finish every single unfinished quilt in my house. The real plan is to not start any new ones until all the previous ones are finished. Without going and tallying up, right now, I think this would be about 6 finishes.

Of course, I’m still plugging away at my 101 in 1001 list. That endeavor actually ends in September of 2012, so I’ve definitely got some work to do. However, I like these 10 items to set my sights on and really work to achieve.

However, I wanted to relate to you a similar story in which I have a sudden stroke of genius, but then utterly fail to follow through because I don’t believe in my own genius strongly enough.

A few weeks ago, our HR department announced a holiday gift swap/luncheon type of thing for the office and management folks. Everyone at work is extremely busy and overworked, right now. My complaints of a 13-hour work day a few weeks ago pale in comparison to what some of the other people (mostly focused on the actual production and movement of our products) have been going through. This little party could be a nice little distraction from all of that. A $20 gender-neutral gift should be purchased and wrapped and contributed so that we could do a little Sneaky Santa gift swap sort of thing (also called White Elephant Swap or Yankee Swap).

I’ve been trying to be less of a hermit at work, so I figured I’d pony up the gift and participate. There’s always the chance that you’ll get a toilet plunger, or something similar, but I was guaranteed a free lunch. I’m in.

Let me tell you that gender-neutral gifts pretty much suck to shop for. Gift cards are too easy and boring. There are too many ranges in personal taste to choose a book, movie or CD (do people still buy CDs?). Food could be good, but, again, personal tastes with the additions of dietary restrictions or allergies. I found myself struggling to think of an appropriate gift for this group of people who range from office types to manufacturing-floor supervisors.

On a trip to the big box hell that I try to avoid, I found myself wavering between the automotive section (everyone in the group drives a car and has to maintain it), the home repair section (a nice set of handy tools might be good) and  the outdoor section (which I would love a gift from, but maybe not everybody). I stumbled over one aisle into the fitness section, and was hit by a sudden flash of inspired genius. There it was on the shelf, for only $19.95.

THE SHAKEWEIGHT

I posted this genius on Facebook and some people didn’t even know what it was! If you own a television, how have you managed to avoid shitty infomercial-style commercials such as those for the Shakeweight? Seriously, I want to know your secret. If you happen to be someone who doesn’t know what it is, please view the following two videos and report back to this post afterward.

The actual commercial:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/xXHUdvvHTkw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

The South Park episode that parodies the item:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/MUgObhgVwbE” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

I was conflicted on it’s inclusion in an employer-sponsored gift swap. I would intend it as a joke, but would it be received that way? Would some people maybe think the joke was offensive or not appropriate for work? I try to stay far away from that type of thing – especially when the entire HR team and the Plant Manager would be in attendance.

In the end, I didn’t buy the Shakeweight. I bought an emergency car kit filled with useful sort of things like jumper cables, road flares and the like. Boring. Practical.

The morning of the gift swap was utterly crappy. I woke up too late to take a shower, so I tried to mask my greasy hair in a bun or a ponytail. I drooled toothpaste all down the front of my first outfit, so I had to change. I hurriedly wrapped the swap gift and headed out the door. I was met with a downpour. No problem! I am a responsible adult who keeps an umbrella in her car! As I trekked the mile or so from my parking spot to the security shack, I juggled my bag, my umbrella, my swipe card, my breakfast bowl of oatmeal (that couldn’t be put in the bag for fear of leakage) and the awkwardly-shaped wrapped gift. My umbrella, while maybe responsible, is not quite functional and will not stay in the closed position unless held that way or the velcro straps are affixed (likely some sort of faulty spring or other mechanical doohicky). So, while trying to simultaneously swipe into the building, open the door before it locked, put down the umbrella so I’d fit through the door, not get soaked, and not drop the oatmeal I DID manage to drop the already badly wrapped present. In a puddle. It might as well have been a lake.

Needless to say, my poor, dilapidated (but still perfectly good!) gift sat, unloved, on the gift swap table until the very end of the swap. All 28 people looked at it in disgust, some squeezed it before abandoning it, and chose a nicer, prettier gift. There were lottery scratch offs, gift cards, ornaments, a plethora of flashlights, a pretty cool hummingbird feeder, and other assorted non-offensive, non-inspired gifts. I feel like a Shakeweight was exactly what that party needed to really get off the ground. That and some of the product that we produce that makes every party better.

When it came my turn, I chose the big gift that was enclosed in a really awesome, holiday-themed reusable shopping bag. I opened it to find snacks galore – all things I should be shying away from – M&Ms, mints, gum, Chex Mix, Christmas Tree Cakes (!), Oatmeal Creme Pies (!), etc. I deflected my joy by making a self-deprecating comment about the fact that I’d need to run a million miles after this gift (thereby letting people know that I know I’m fat, I’m working on it, and I’m better than them because I’m running – I have no issues, at all, why do you ask?). That gift was promptly stolen. I had to pick another gift. Nothing is worse than opening gifts in front of 30 people you work with but don’t know very well. That second gift was a little Santa mailbox (“Oh, cute!” I exclaimed, with a plastic smile) filled with lottery scratchoffs (“Sweet!” she said, with genuine fervor.)

Yes. You guessed it. Stolen the very next round.

I was left with very few options. I could take my sad little gift for myself – which would be pretty useful – or I could choose from the remaining three smallish gift bags. The likelihood for good gift cards or more lottery tickets was high. I made my choice. I opened it to find a MICKEY MOUSE WATCH inside. Black and white. Mickey Mouse. For adults. The fake plastic smile was as wide as ever. It hurt it was so wide.

Then, I realized who was the next in line to choose and was overjoyed. She would steal my gift. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Mickey Mouse is probably her spirit animal. In fact, she’d probably been the purchaser of that gift and planned it, elaborately, to really just buy it for herself.

I was right. She jumped out of her chair and literally ran to my seat to steal my gift with glee.

Thank god.

I ended up with a gift card to the grocery store. Useful and practical and saving me money!

I like it.

I still think the Shakeweight would have been a hit. Let’s hope it’s still topical, next year.

Today seems to be a day for lists. It is rapidly approaching that time of the holiday season when I start making lists of my lists, and I am not even one of those crazy holiday people! I give gifts and have travel plans. I don’t need a list to coordinate the holiday food I’m making because I don’t make anything. Nor do I need a Christmas card list because I don’t send them. Currently, I have a weekend to-do list, a master gifts list – with sub-lists of gift ideas, gifts bought, gifts wrapped, gifts delivered and gifts to be made, and I have a travel list/calendar.

Last night’s run didn’t happen. I got all dressed, got all my gadgets (iPod and Garmin) charged and got halfway down the block before I started feeling really dizzy. I promptly turned around and went home. I showered, thinking that might make me feel better (it usually does), and then surrendered to dinner and the couch for the evening. Dinner made me feel marginally better, but turned the dizziness into a dull headache. Today, I’ve felt mildly dizzy for most of the day – with the exception of mealtimes and for about a half hour after eating. Very weird. I was feeling dizzy the weekend that we went to a funeral in Northern KY, but wrote that off as being in close quarters with perfumed people. This is a little different. I bit the bullet and made a doctor’s appointment for this afternoon – mostly because we have FSA money that needs to be spent before the end of the year. I greatly dislike going to the doctor and am not fond of the current medical group that I go to. Finding a doctor you like is a lot like finding a hairdresser you like. For me, both are nearly impossible.