A Great Christmas!

Besides the technology inundation, I'd say it was a perfect holiday! Christmas Eve full of food and laughter. Meg and Crys, Cia, Larry and Larry Jr and Richard, laughing and singing right along with Matt, Nana, the kids and me. I always wish that I took better or more pictures on Christmas Eve but I guess I am too busy having fun.
Christmas morning is just always magic. I think its the cinnamon rolls and the feliz navidad chihuahua!

And now for the endless videos...I couldn't choose and I know Bebe and Cami and Feee will love them!
...the crazy kitty...

...fruits of jolly...

...christmas morning, 6:30 a.m....

...2 hours later, they forget to check the last day of their advent calendar!...

I am still freaking out that Mac has a cell phone and we own a Wii. Yikes. Both came with a lovely set of parent-rules...

All in all, a GREAT Christmas!

It's Christmas Eve Day!

December 2010



Emmett at his Class Christmas Party singing "Country Roads"
good friend Riley.


Merry Christmas everyone.
The minestrone (for Nana) and potato soup (for Mac) are on the stove.
We are stocked with olives and dips and crackers and salad and cider and pies and cookies.
The kids have made an actual CHART of how many presents each person coming to our house is getting and they have made most of them! Silas every now and then will wrap up something random and add it to the pile.
We've made the gingerbread house and we are almost to the last day of the advent calendar (today was a slip of paper that read "lets make SUGAR COOKIES"...so we did).
Last night Nana and I took the kids to see "Little Fockers" and, oh my god, was it inappropriate for Emmett. Oops! (He's been telling jokes about it ever since. I am cringing!!!)
Papa is working until 2:00 today and it won't feel quite right until he's home...but this is a lovely Christmas so far. (Despite the December pitfalls... the flooded heater under the house, the broken computer, the branch that fell on our Valentine Apricot Tree, the leaky cabin roof, the handyman that jipped us for $240, the little leak that turned into a nightmare and last weeks flat tire- the 5th this year!! Yes, we will be completely happy to say good bye to this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
But this moment is magic and I am taking note (or taking blog).
I love all you beautiful people out there. May Your Christmas be
Peaceful and Cozy and full of LOVE!

School Pictures, 8th and 4th grades!

(I know I'm not supposed to say it but, dang, they are cute!)

While I was dealing with an online banking issue....

...doing this....

...Silas found my camera and decided to do this.

Cam, remember when we were talking on the phone about the power of words?!

Well, here is some Saturday morning reading that has some truly brilliant parts.
It is by George Lakoff, a professor from UCBerkeley who has written extensively about "The Political Mind" (his most recent book)!
Here's the entire article.
I visit the website Common Dreams quite a bit. Check it out. Great writing, interesting progressive perspectives every single day!

Perspective and Love

Hey Darrin....

...lets talk trees...
THIS is the kind of tree I think is just sososososo beautiful! Like an Ent!


I like these too. They look like they came out of the woods.
I don't think they sell trees like this in California! I wonder if these are live trees or
fake...hmmmm.

OUR TREE!!!!!!!!!!

WATCH ALL OF THIS VIDEO!!

Bernie Sanders gives an amazing speech.

political reading. always important.

Read these two articles. One an opinion that I, sadly, happen to agree with. And the other, from PRI's 'The World'.


OP-ED COLUMNIST
Freezing Out Hope
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 2, 2010


After the Democratic “shellacking” in the midterm elections, everyone wondered how President Obama would respond. Would he show what he was made of? Would he stand firm for the values he believes in, even in the face of political adversity?
On Monday, we got the answer: he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.

So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.

READ THE REST HERE

And here is an article with a little perspective about the deficit and how we ARE NOT comparable to what's happening in Ireland or Greece.

By Jason Margolis from PRI's The World

President Obama’s deficit-reduction commission is trying to dramatically trim federal deficits in the coming decade. But how does U.S. debt compare with other nations? The U.S. public debt is north of $9 trillion dollars.

On its own, it doesn’t say much. But that number does mean a lot when it’s put in context. Economists like to measure what they call the “net debt to GDP ratio.” That’s basically the amount of money we, the taxpayers, owe compared to the size of the economy. That figure is about 60 percent. (we owe 60 cents out of every dollar, that is)

“At the end of World War II, America’s net debt to GDP ratio was 113 percent, and the equivalent ratio for Great Britain at the end of World War II was more than 250 percent,” said Economist Lee Branstetter from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “Even if you compare our current net debt to GDP ratio to other advanced industrial economies that are not fighting major wars like Belgium or Japan, it’s still not particularly large.”

Today, the United States is somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to debt ratios.

But at the simplest level: What does this figure really tell us? And is running up a big debt such a bad thing?

Read the rest of the article here.

The Goodness

It's been busy, as usual. And there has been a whole lot of goodness along with a decent amount of dealing with the regular old day in and day out grind... but when I think of this family and of Thanksgiving and Christmas...this is what comes to mind. Making things, being outside, reading, eating, snuggling, listening to music...even if it's Frank Zappa . I realize that these little video snippets make it all look picture perfect awesome which we all know is never the case in real life. But the fact that we can have so many delicious moments, many more than I could or would ever capture in a picture or video...well, that truly makes me thankful!!!
A whole lot of gooooooooood.






("thank you universe for most this amazing day and the leaping greenly spirits of trees and...")

It's True!

We
are
officially
the
same
height!!

(but Mac's legs are longer!)

love love love this movie, of course

No spoilers here.
Sweet and dark and serious and action packed and scary and sweet again.



Mac, Emmett, Nana and I went tonight...the first night of Thanksgiving vacation.
Papa and Silas stayed home and rocked out on maracas to ACDC I have been told.
A great night!

I love making things.

facebook life. weird.

No wonder everyone is having a mid-life crisis. According to most popular movies AND this clever video the interesting parts of life are dating, breaking up, dating, drinking, dating, hooking up, documenting your new love, marrying, procreating, documenting your procreating and then within seconds....being an old guy and logging out. Damn.

We Love You Lucy

Thank you for all your 18 years!
We know you had a good life with family that loved you
and the best people/cat mama there is!

ah, more light reading....by Paul Krugman

November 10, 2010, 1:43 PM
The Conscience of a Liberal
From the New York Time Opinion Page

Unserious People
OK, let’s say goodbye to the deficit commission. If you’re sincerely worried about the US fiscal future — and there’s good reason to be — you don’t propose a plan that involves large cuts in income taxes. Even if those cuts are offset by supposed elimination of tax breaks elsewhere, balancing the budget is hard enough without giving out a lot of goodies — goodies that fairly obviously, even without having the details, would go largely to the very affluent.

I mean, what’s this about? There is no — zero — evidence that income taxes at current rates are an important drag on growth.

Oh, and they’re talking about raising the retirement age, because people live longer — except that the people who really depend on Social Security, those in the bottom half of the distribution, aren’t living much longer. So you’re going to tell janitors to work until they’re 70 because lawyers are living longer than ever.

Still, I guess this is what it takes to get compromise, if by compromise you mean something the center-right and the hard right can agree on.
Paul Krugman

My One Problem with the New and Improved Jon Stewart...

...and an example of why I don't feel I "malign" the other side...
(you have to click off a bunch of adds to get to the video!)

... because for the most part
I think there's no substance or consistency in a majority of their arguments. A lie is a lie. And sheep are sheep. There aren't two sides to every story, there is one truth and many perspectives. It's hard to value the standard right perspective when it is so out of whack.
If anyone wants to have a nationwide conversation about reality, I am there. But I refuse to sit at the table and try to reason with birthers, those who don't believe in climate change, those who think unions are all bad and corporations are all good, those who will never vote for anything that increases taxes one cent, those who think that if the government is involved its bad, those who think democrats are socialists etc etc.
Bill Maher, A COMEDIAN not a newscaster, has some good examples of why its hard to play nice with the other side and give their point of view consideration when it's
often illogical, backward, hyperbolic, ill-informed, under-vetted propaganda.
The right has fed its base endless untruths... Obama taking away guns... Obama killing jobs in the private sector with tax increases...health care will hurt grandma etc etc etc How do you argue with lies? I know there are people who come at the issues from a different philosophical perspective than mine. What I am hearing is not that.
It seems that they have decided to lie or manipulate the truth because it works, time and again. How else do you get the masses to believe that it is in their best interest to defund the EPA and public education and instead put their hopes in the crap shoot that is the charter school system. (Why not work on fixing the public school system to incorporate charter school principles??...that's the kinda debate I'm talking about...) How do you get Americans to vote against people who are fighting for health care for all? or those who want to make college affordable? Jeez. Instead they've somehow convinced many Americans that their freedoms are in jeopardy, that their #1 priority is lowering the deficit and taxes. Always taxes. The very most a middle class American could save in the tax breaks Republicans want couldn't pay for half of the services they will lose.
Truly, the only way they get these folks to vote for them is by scrapping the truth and letting them all connect their not-so-subtle-dots that lead to our country to the fear-fact.... America will completely fall apart. Come on. Nothing Obama is doing is leading to that.
And I'd like to see how very different 2 years of Mc Cain would have been. Even with a completely different economic plan, I can't imagine two years looking that much brighter. No one could. I remember the republicans talking about realistic expectations for the economy in 2008 when they were imagining John Mc Cain winning. They were definitely cautious.
But that's politics right? Wrong.
Right now the most outrageous and contentious and relentless misrepresentations come from the right.
I do not approve when it comes from the left either, by the way. (GOP is not trying to dismantle social security, or is it?, and the deficit has risen considerably since 2008 and Obama does want to lift the taxes on the rich to where they were under Bush Sr. True True True.) I am also sure there are many more misrepresentations, especially during elections. I hate it.

I still assert that most of the maligning seems to be coming squarely from the other side. And our side has to waste valuable time in news hours (to compete and counteract...), in lawsuits (check out the new investigations targeting Obama, reminicent of the Clinton years), in selling and re-selling ideas that people voted on but have been continually encouraged to question (healthcare reform, the existance of climate change, Obama's birthplace etc). Anyway, this video snippet is pretty much how I feel. I am not, however, fond of fat jokes.






NUTMEG

After 3 months of missing Zarina today we were finally ready to look for another kitten.
We are happy to introduce our newest Dreyer kitty.
Nutmeg.
She is very tiny and a bit younger than we wanted. But the dude we got her from just couldn't keep her. So Emmett made her a felt pouch and Mac carries her all over the house.
She cries when Mac leaves the room. She is only just starting to play and is a bit wobbly.
Isn't she cute!

This one from Mom!

Signs

I woulda went with..."socialism: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

But here are some others. Pretty funny. And yes, I realize there are a lot of people out there who are truly suffering and THAT is nothing to laugh about. But tomorrow the democrats are about to lose badly, I fear, and I am sad about it and in the mood to laugh.