30 Days of Giving Back

Granted, this is from Glamour magazine, but I still thought it provided some useful ways to give back for the holidays or all year 'round. . .

1. Buy a holiday turkey for a family in Baton Rouge (home to thousand of Hurricane Katrina evacuees) for $25 @ brfoodbank.org
2. Offer snow shoveling services to an elderly neighbor. Excellent exercise & there may be cocoa in it for you.
3. Support the troops with warm socks , deodorant, CheezIts: find their wish lists @ anysoldier.com
4. Donate new blankets to kids in homeless shelters @ projectnightnight.org
5. Buy funky gifts @ thrift stops that give back such as Out of the Closet; sales help support the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. For locations, see outofthecloset.org
6. Before you shop online, go to goodshop.com. Then buy from participating retailers and the site donates a portion of your purchase to the charity of your choice.
7. Give manicures @ a local nursing home.
8. Spend an hour or two a week helping an immigrant learn English (check out literacy volunteers.org)
9. Help protect half an acre of rain forest in South Central America with a $25 donation at rainforestalliance.org
10. Donate old cell phones to victims of domestic violence for emergencies (go to ncadv.org and click 'donate').
11. Vaccinate 50 people around the world from deadly diseases such as meningitis, measles or polio with a $50 donation at doctorswithoutborders.org.
12. Provide a month of care for a woman or child rescued from sexual slavery for just $30 at sharedhope.org
13. Get friends involved. To find group volunteer projects, go to thevolunteerfamily.com.
14. Clean out your closet! Then donate old glasses (neweyesfortheneedy.org), shoes (shareyoursoles.org), and even wedding gowns (makingmemories.org).
15. Find projects that help people in your very own zip code at dosomething.org.
16. Make a $10 donation to freethechildren.org and a special matching-funds program will turn it into $100 worth of medical supplies for kids around the world.
17. Mentor an at-risk teen online at icouldbe.org.
18. Volunteer - inside or out - at a national park (nps.gov)
19. Play the Mozart concerto you've (almost) mastered for seniors. For local programs, see volunteermatch.org.
20. Help an aspiring student pay for college at scholarshipamerica.org.
21. Send aDVD or video game to hospital-bound kids via childsplaycharity.org.
22. Tutor a future J.K. Rowling @ 826national.org
23. Staying home for the holidays? Donate frequent-flier miles to injured solidiers' families @ heromiles.org
24. Look at your medical history, then donate to a cause that could help your loved ones, be it the American Heart Association (americanheart.org), Susan G. Komen for the Cure (komen.org) or another charity.
25. Loan money to a budding entrepreneur in the developing world @ kiva.org.
26. Train your pooch to be a therapy dog for nursing homes and hospitals @ tdi-dog.org.
27. Sell gifts you don't need through eBay's Giving Works program (givingworks.ebay.com), which earmarks a percentage of sales for the charities of your choice.
28. Give to donorschoose.org; a small donation can help create cozy reading nooks for underfunded classrooms.
29. Upgrade your laptop; worldcomputerexchange.org will send your old one to a child in one of 61 countries.
30. Give blood (to find out where, go to givelife.org). What better reason to stop and lie down for 10 minutes?

Can't Get Enough

So much good music out there right now: Feist's The Reminder was listed as the best album of the year. yes, yes & yes. John Mayer just released Say. Tori Amos' American Doll Posse. Alicia Keys As I Am only 2 weeks out and an inevitable pick for a 2008 album of the year. All of it therapy for the soul.

Speaking of John Mayer & Alicia Keys, a you tube video is circulating of John Mayer performing Alicia's No One. Love watching John Mayer live, like a long string bean with guitar in hand. I've seen him 3 times in concert and each time he's kept me mesmerized. He's a musician because he has to be, the music is just within him, it just spills out. Brilliant.

On that note, music i can't stop listening to:
Destiny/Zero 7/Simple Things
Bouncing Off Clouds/Tori Amos/American Doll Posse
Apologize (featuring OneRepublic)/Timberland/Shock Value
Long Ride Home/Patty Griffin/1000 Kisses
Car Crash/Matt Nathanson/Some Mad Hope
Until the End of Time/Justin Timberlake & Beyonce/FutureSex Lovesounds Deluxe Edition
Say/John Mayer/Say - Single
Like A Star/Corinne Bailey Rae/Corinne Bailey Rae
I Can't Make You Love Me/Bonnie Raitt/Luck of the Draw
In the Margins/Ani Difranco/Reprieve
Back to Black/Amy Winehouse/Back to Black
Lesson Learned/Alicia Keys/As I Am
Killing Time/Jonah Smith/Jonah Smith
Sea Lion Woman/Feist/The Reminder
And in honor of christmas: River/Sarah McLachlan/Wintersong

Unemployment

We wait for the baby to arrive; for gasoline prices to drop; for retirement; for the moment and the money to buy a new house or the latest technology; kids wait for christmas just like their parents wait for date night; wait for that acceptance letter to our 1st choice college; wait for the promotion or the job of our dreams; single girls wait for the large diamond ring to be slipped on their finger; wait for a honest politician to finally take office; wait for wars to be over and peace to rule; wait for the ball (and the other one too) to drop; wait for happiness to come because we are tend to taught that it's more of a physical state than an emotional one.

And sometimes we wait for the inevitable.

This was one of those things that was inevitable, I just didn't want to see it that way. It's hit me harder than I thought or would have ever wanted.

One month in, life throws us a curve ball and declares the honeymoon over.

"ok," you say with eyes set forward, "on to the next best thing." I know you you're not broken- up about this (stressed, yes, but not broken hearted), hated that crummy ass job, with its loads of paperwork that made you stuck in a cubicle day after day. I know you hated being treated like a puppet, always under the direction of someone else. I know you anticipated this day, anticipated what you forsaw as the inevitable. FEMA was a way to delay it.

I on the other hand kept my head down, denied the obvious, didn't want to feel or think or even make a hypothetical out of all this. So I didn't, I charged forward believing that paperwork meant safety; that people, out of the goodness of their hearts, would spare us; that happiness can/should be compromised for a paycheck.

And for that i am deeply sorry.

I'm also sorry that you're comforting me. Reassuring me. Having to be the strong one when it was your job. It should be the other way around, I know that. But, no matter how hard i try, i just can't be that person today. Not even tomorrow. But I hope I can soon. For you.

Where to now? What next?

One big question mark.

When It Rains, It Pours

strange how hard it rains now
rows and rows of big dark clouds
when i'm holding on underneath this shroud
rain

strange how hard it rains now
rows and rows of big dark clouds
when i'm still alive underneath this shroud
rain rain rain

from rain/patty griffin/1000 kisses

Tuesday Update

The dog has finally tuckered out. Only after chewing a whole box of paper and forcing me to throw a ball for him only, huh, a gazillion times.

I think i'm ready to give up on technology. N and I (ok, mostly him) have been trying to fix a glitch in the audio of my computer for about a week now. We bought an external hard drive because the memory on my computer was so low and we thought that that might be a contributing factor, however, $90 later it has not made a lick of difference. Poor N has really been beside himself with the whole ordeal, I think he's tried everything under the sun to try to fix it but the problem persists like a bad headache. Itunes has just not been the same since . . .

In good news, we get our brand new Samsung 26" LCD HDTV today via Amazon. We will finally be able to watch our beloved Netflix in style and retire the 12" that i've had for about 10 years. The new TV marks a milestone for N, it's the first TV he's ever bought. Watch out, there will be plenty of pictures to come at the time of installation and well, celebration!!

Speaking of pictures, I finally posted a few pictures from the Halloween party @ A & H's. In case you were wondering, N & I went as Miami tourists, hence the gray wigs and capri pants with cherries (they are my mom's and she still thinks they're pretty hip!). N is wearing a Florida Key's tee-shirt which ironically enough was purchased @ Goodwill in Michigan. And if that isn't insipiration enough to click on my flickr than maybe this will: a (fuzzy but equally hilarious) pic of N comparing bellies with our friend who is 6 mo. pregnant.

Enjoy!

Maybe I Should Just Become A Music Promoter

It's been out a while now, but if you haven't picked it up and added it to your collection, it's defintely worth it.

Amy Winehouse / Back to Black