Community Supported Agriculture

We love to eat our veggies and we eat them all the time
So I signed up extra-early for our CSA on line.

It was then I saw the check box for a rebate on our dough,
A family health plan kick-back for two years in a row.

Imagine our excitement when we found out it was true.
A prize for buying local, green, and organic too!

But how to spend the windfall? For stimulate, we must.
Obama said we should and in the President we trust.

We thought about more veggies and decided we could not.
A body has it’s limits for kohlrabi and what not.

So, we visited our farmers and sought their sage advice.
What worthy thing could match our rebate with it’s price?

Dave pondered our dilemma as he poured another beer.
It was just the proper temperature, unpasteurized and clear.

Then Tom had an epiphany—he knew what he should do.
He researched all his options, and when that phase was through,

Informed me that that by end of March, and certainly no later,
We’d be toasting to our health from a brand new kegerator.

“It will pay for itself in no time—even faster if we drink more beer.”

CPAP

Everyone who has ever shared a bed or a wall with my husband knows he snores. Since that can sometimes be the symptom of somewhat serious issues, he had a screening in 2003 for sleep apnea. We never heard back, and when Tom asked, his doctor did not seem concerned. All good, right?

Fast forward to 2009. We were talking about the snoring and the screening, and decided it might be a good idea to take another look. "Hmmm," said the sleep study technician of the 2003 screening, "if we had seen this, we would have had you in here right away. You know Reggie White died of untreated sleep apnea. We'll want you in here for the full study."

So, last Sunday, Tom checked into Hotel Electrode. By 1am, his breathing had stopped long enough to kill a small mammal on a couple of occasions, so they slapped the CPAP mask on his face and wished him sweet dreams--REM dreams that is---something he had apparently been deprived of for a long while.

I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing--would it be like sleeping with a coma patient on a ventilator every night? You know the sound I mean--the whoosh thump of someone who is breathing by machine. Tom, on the other hand was elated. A surprising reaction for someone who would soon resemble a fighter pilot at the edge of the atmosphere as he tucked himself in. It was actually easier than I thought it would be and a little harder than Tom expected. The machine noise is more like distant surf and I lull myself to sleep every night by imagining I am at the beach. When the air escape valve is pointed at me, I simply modify the imaginary beach scene to include a stiff ocean breeze. Tom, on the other hand, was disconcerted by the "blowfish effect"--this is when he wakes up with his cheeks puffed out and dried into position. He is learning to keep his mouth shut with practice.

It is the daytime hours that make the minor discomforts worthwhile though. Both of us are experiencing better quality sleep without the snoring and gasping, and Tom has noticed that he has a lot more energy in the evenings. I have also noticed that he is--how to put this delicately?--less grumpy, cranky, ornery, well, you get the idea.

Sleep is such a mysterious state and it is not very well understood. What is clear is that if you don't get enough of the right kind, including REM sleep, it has bad effects on the body, and on other bodies in the vicinity of yours. In addition, if you stagger through life feeling like you have "iron poor blood," it may be oxygen poor brain cells instead. Not breathing is bad for your health (100% of doctors agree on this), but the solution is pretty simple. The mask is your friend.

Coraline

This movie has gotten a lot of attention and it deserves it. I am a little leary of ruining this for anyone by overhyping it, but you can always stop right now if you don't want to be a victim of overhyption...overhyperation...hyperventilation? You know what I mean.

Here is the really important part: SEE THIS MOVIE IN 3D.

I thought this might just be a marketing gimmick to get people to see the movie in the theater. A good gimmick too, for a movie without action scenes and panoramic special effects, but really, wear those little paper green and red glasses like you just left the opthamologist's office? Well, it was a surprise to receive, for only an extra three dollars, some sturdy and stylish 3D glasses that you can wear again and again.

And it was a real thrill when the screen instructed the audience to don the glasses. They have some nifty little special effects to give you a taste of what 3D is all about, and then the movie starts. Well, all I can say is that it is a whole lot of fun for something that is 100% legal, and it has a plot too. Stay all the way to the end of the credits for the visual finale.

Cabin

A couple of weeks ago I spent a long weekend (3 nights, two full days) in a lovely log cabin in Northern Wisconsin. In addition to being relaxing, it was an interesting experience for a couple of reasons.

The first thing was attending the dog sled races. They were held in Land O' Lakes (which is fine for the name of a butter but as I type it, I realize, very awkward for the name of a town). This was a very local event but should attract more tourists than it does. The mushers came from as far away as Canada (not too far) and Alaska (very far) and the teams were made up of anything from the traditional huskies to hounds. The mushers were as young as three in 50-yard mutt dash and a whole lot older for the longer races. I took several pictures of empty space on the racetrack--these guys moved faster than my shutter speed--but I did better at the finish when everyone was tired. There were dogs for sale, but I didn't even look--I will never in my life need as much exercise as those dogs require.

The inventory of what three women bring for amusement to a cabin in the woods is also worth noting: 44 CDs, 8 magazines, 3 newspapers, 6 games plus a deck of cards, 13 books, 2 extra books borrowed from the lodge, and three knitting projects (the latter all mine). That is indoor amusement--there were also three pairs of snowshoes and, in a different category, about 40 pounds of food. I would argue that our supplies for three days would have been identical to what we would need for three weeks. The main difference is that we might have played more of the games and CDs if we had had more time. I might have also read a book or learned Norwegian--I am not being facetious--the "Learn Norwegian in Three Months" program was tallied on both the CD and book counts.

I think this is practice for eventual retirement--we assembled all of the ingredients for a life without work, but we just ran out of time.

Color

I have been knitting a baby blanket since June. It used to be for a particular baby, but she kept growing while I kept knitting, and now it is for a different baby who can't be born until I finish it. I am estimating 2011 at the moment but it could be longer. I like the pattern, but failed to notice that it is knit on needles with the girth of toothpicks. The other problem is the color--or lack thereof. It is a lovely cream, and as December turned to January, I couldn't stand the absence of color in my world a minute longer.

In a fit of color deprivation, I logged on to Virtual Yarns and ordered the yarn needed to knit the lovely Alice Starmore baby bonnet featured on the cover of Piecework magazine last month. I had to hunt around for the colors, which are arranged by categories of nature--plants, birds, water, etc. The prices were in pounds, so I knew it wasn't local, but I was unprepared for the package that arrived less than a week later.

It was wrapped in brown paper with a faint stripe like packages of yore, before bar codes became popular. It had a Royal Mail of Scotland sticker and a customs sticker signed by M. MacLeod of the Isle of Lewis. It made my husband nervous, as do all packages that bear customs labels and finish our address off with "United States of America." I was unable to reassure him as I still haven't done the pound to dollar conversion, but I have to say, it has been worth every shilling, ha'penny, etc. I went right to work on winding the skeins (Mara, Golden Plover, Kittiwake, Poppy, Red Rattle, Whin, Witchflower, Sundew, Summer Tide) and a few days later finished the bonnet. I found out that Alice Starmore achieves her effects by using several hues of a color that are gradually added and subtracted from the pattern. The process is addicting with both "one more row" and "one more color" keeping me going.

It was the perfect antidote to the cream knitting project that never ends, and the perfect project for the middle of winter. And whoever will end up wearing this bonnet can go ahead and be born--I'm ready for you!

Communication

It is almost too much of a good thing these days. When I was young and living overseas, the only practical mode of communciation was by letter. Telephone calls were saved for emergencies and bad news. When I was stranded alone in the Miami airport for three days at the age of 13, my parents were reduced to calling Braniff pilots for insider information on flights and passenger manifests. These days it would be infinitely easier to access flight information via the internet and probably impossible to find out if a minor child was aboard any of those planes. Of course, losing a minor child for three days is probably unthinkable for the airlines now, no matter how tall she is. Times change.

Anyway, back in the day (other than for emergency situations), one had time to reflect, to choose one's words, to limit the message to a narrow audience. Today the communicative landscape has changed so dramatically that we are drowning in words and pictures. Don't get me wrong: I am very happy that I can call my daughter in El Salvador and my son in Minneapolis and not think twice about either call. I can email them, and the rest of the family, at multiple email addresses, layered one on top of the other to escape the spam bandits. I can, as one connection who I have never met put it, "passively spy on my friends" (as well as their friends, to some extent) through Facebook. I have connected with high school classmates, with the interesting person I met on a flight to Madrid in 2003, with my children's friends, and with my peers and relatives. Never mind blogging, IM, Gmail Chat, and telephone texting and email interface--who has the time--and the manual dexterity--to keep up with that? Oh, and did I mention that all three phones in the immediate household work, until they run out of batteries?

This week I accidentally spilled news on Facebook, and my daughter emailed more news that prompted my son to leave the following status on Facebook: "Chris--Oh you didn't know?" I think really, the status should read "you didn't know immediately?"

Again, don't get me wrong. I love communication and there are individuals out there who will attest to that. But I think we are losing the subtlety, the exclusiveness and the individual tenor of our communications. We can stay in touch with everyone within three degrees of separation but we are becoming more generic in order to do it.

Here is the last bastion of individual and idiosyncratic communication. I am looking at a note, in handwriting, on the desk. It says:

The roots of love
What becomes of the broken hearted
Dr. Vu Tues 4pm??

What can I say? Excuse me, while I check my email and Facebook for recent updates.

Cheney

I didn't see this myself, but I understand Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair for the inauguration. Rumour has it he was trying to establish a Worker's Compensation claim before leaving office...