WHAT A LULU

I’ve been quite busy since returning from my little island sojourn this past winter.  Living in a 28-foot by 8-feet-or-so space for several weeks was much easier than I’d anticipated.

Sure, the quarters seem close sometimes, especially when spouses aren’t seeing eye to eye, but the perks of sunny skies and mild temperatures more than made up for lack of space.  With a pool side chair and a good book, a disgruntled MAD Goddess can be a world away in a matter of minutes. 

Back to the busy.  Less than a day after returning to my cozy, three bedroom cottage the weight of life's accumulations fell down upon me.  What on earth do I possibly need all this stuff for?

Well, rainy, snowing, freezing cold, blizzard kickin’ me in the butt days are my first thought.  Winters in my northern realm are long - very, very long. They are cold, as in twenty to forty below zero for up to a month at a stretch.

Some people living here don’t mind the weather. They like to ski, and ride snowmobiles, and snow shoe and hike and winter camp.  Winter camping - nothing like s’mores that freeze before you can get them to your lips.

Anyway, I don’t like the cold and I don’t go out in it except for dire emergencies - like no chocolate in the house.  Which means I have a lot of stuff to keep me occupied for the duration.  Books, magazines, puzzles, paints (water color, acrylic and oil), needle crafts, bead crafts, and cook books.

The cook books require more stuff, cooking utensils obviously, but there’s also the fitness equipment – a failed attempt to keep the winter weight gain to a minimum.  In Florida, my fitness equipment was a five-speed beach cruiser bicycle.

After a lifetime of collecting junk and junque  - junque being the term for the flea market finds I filled half a garage and an overhead storage space with when I became obsessed with the “Chabby Chic” craze, I’m smothering!

Now that the weather has finally warmed up here, I have more than 1,000 square feet of garden beds to clean, weed and tend.  I have 360 square feet of decking, with associated railing, to stain and seal.  Virtually all of the trim on the house and garage needs painting.  My husband can keep the acre-plus lawn mowed since piloting the lawn tractor isn’t too much of a strain on his heart, but all the edge trimming is my job.

As long as we own this house, that stuff has to be taken care of.  So I’m on a rampage to get rid of the other stuff.  I want the spartan existence of snowbird – if it doesn’t fit in my RV, then apparently I don’t need it.  And the more stuff we rid the house, garage and yard of now, the less we have to worry about when we are ready to sell it.

We (that's the collective we, here, as in you too) don't own stuff.  Stuff owns us.  It takes our money and our time and our attention.  Free at last, free at last, good Goddess help me, I want to be free at last. 

But there’s an unhappy trend afoot here. My hubby isn’t on the same (ram)page as I. To him, all this stuff is good stuff, valuable stuff.  Let me just offer a favorite quote here:

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”
-- William Morris

Or in the words of Red Green, "Remember, if your wife doesn't find you handsome, she better find you handy."

In the meantime, I’m starting with my things, the ubiquitous flotsam of 33 years of home ownership.

I love gardening and home decorating magazines.  I have stacks of them.  Can’t throw these out! they are dog eared and have notations written on the covers for things I am going to do.

Laid low with a nasty cold, bored to tears, I thought it might be a good time to tackle the magazines, at least get them sorted, organized into some kind of reference library. Between the sniffle-nose, sore throat virus and the dust laden magazines, I broke. Some of the magazines were more than five years old. If I haven't  made the whimsical stepping stones, a watering can fountain or rain chains in the last five years, chances are I'm not going to get around to it in the next.

The magazines are now sorted and bundled by category.  I’ll offer them up to home and garden enthusiast friends first, but if there are no takers – off to the recycling bin they go.

I’m planning on tackling closets this week.  I’ve finally given up the idea that I’m ever going to workout hard enough to fit into my skinny jeans again.  Instead, I’m going to splurge and spend more than $19.99 on a pair that fits and flatters the body I have.

I don’t need a work wardrobe for the time being.  If I need one again in the future, I think I’ll buy new stuff. Long dresses left over from formal occasions.  Hhhhmm.  All but one of my daughters is married, and if she ties the knot, again, I think I want a new dress for the occasion. Out they go.

(THESE DRESSES ARE BAD ENOUGH, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT HAIR? from Dallas Vintage Shop)

Craft supplies.  I hit the jackpot here.  A friend that works with a non-profit in a near-by metropolis is looking for donations of any craft items.  All I have to do is box it all up and give her a call.

I’m tackling one bunch of stuff every week.  Want to join me?  I’ll be posting the details and challenges on my Facebook account. 

Join us - Ladies United to Lighten Up – LULUs

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GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

Some of you might notice that I run Google AD Sense on this blog. It’s making me fabulously wealthy  – NOT! Of course, one can’t disparage Google for that. I think it has more to do with my outstanding number of followers – more specifically, the lack thereof.

My college daughter recently posted an installment on the blog she started as a class assignment for critical writing. She didn’t waste any words in pointing out that the million or so bloggers looking for their fifteen-minutes of fame would do better to stop writing what they think people want to hear, and instead write their passionate, unvarnished, maybe even ugly, truth.

So, for now, I won’t worry about followers or fans, I’ll just try to write closer to the bone of my truth (not always easy when I know the whole fam damily is reading – oh well, sucks to be them.)

Back to Ad Sense. The idea is, that based on the blog post content, random ads for products and services that should interest my readers will display.  Clicks on the ads accumulate cents for me (cents, Ad Sense, get it?).

Let me just say that I never did this hoping to make money.

 Well, okay, I hoped that maybe I’d make some money from it, but I never really thought I would. Looks like I was right about that.

Anyway, I recently noticed a trend in the ads that are displaying.  Weight loss products would be the nice thing to say, but these are blatant  LOOSE BELLY FAT ads.  Then there are the sales pitches for anti wrinkle creams and cosmetic dermatology.

One installment netted me an ad for Goddess Dresses.  Now that’s what I’m talking about! Just one nagging little detail though – it was on a post that contained a picture of my middle daughter and two of her diva friends at their high school prom. Hhmmm.

Where are the ads for cruises to the Greek Isles?  How about luxury health spas, Jaguar sedans and little blue boxes from Tiffany’s?

What on earth did I write that netted me the ads for a popular piney-scented cleaning solution and another well known germ destroying spray.  Yikes!

Okay, maybe I understand the ad for a marriage counselor practicing in my neighboring state. I do rant about the institution of marriage now and again. But am I to glean from this situation that some powers that be, sitting on their sweat-pants clad butts in ergonomically correct chairs at Google headquarters, are presuming that my readers are an unhappy bunch of, germaphobic, desperate housewives who shop
for their daughters prom dresses in the mini-diva, designer department?

Goddess! How depressing is that?

Here I was thinking that my audience was made up of strong, confident, self assured women setting their worlds on fire and dancing across their bridges one step ahead of the flames.

I apologize, dear, loyal (few) readers.  I’ll try, in future, to follow my daughter’s advice and give you a little something to set it off.

. . . . . mid

GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

THE DEVIL MADE ME GET FAT.

 I haven't done any holiday baking yet, 'cause - you know . . .in our midlife and beyond house, sugar, butter,chocolate and taste have all taken on a four letter pseudonym - EVIL.

Did you ever notice the connection between evil and devil (or good and God for that matter?  Think about it.).

Anyway, these things are evil in our house, the devil incarnate that makes my hips blossom and fills my hubbie’s already clogged arteries with more plaque.  They are taboo, forbidden, off limits . . .  

 

 . . . tantalizing little temptations promising to delight my taste buds and satisfy my tummy in a way that indulgences of the non-food variety could never do.

Oops.  Sorry.

But it’s the holiday’s right?  We need to indulge a little.  If my husband croaks any time soon, I guess you can blame me for taking a week or so off from my food-police duties.

I'm beginning to get an idea of how Eve felt, branded throughout time as the inadequate mate who fed her hubby the wrong thing and cast him into abject misery outside his happy little life in the garden.   Uh, he heard the Word too.  Think he might have been capable of saying, "No thank you, Eve.  I'll pass on the apples."

This afternoon, I’m whipping up some of my Aunt Mug’s (Margaret if you must) Toffee Squares.  Auntie Mugs was a Buxom Babe.

A few days ago I started contemplating the word buxom.  While it technically refers to a womanly part of the anatomy that lies above the waist, I believe it’s general implication is of a shapely women in the Reubanesque style.  Let's face it, for the most part, assuming nature is the underlying architect, if the womanly figure is full up top then chances are good she's shapely at the belly and hips as well.

What’s not to love about that?

(FYI, Mattel leveled a "cease and desit order against that ad campaign)

Or this?

Finally, a wonder woman archetype to which I can live up - uhm, out? (I didn't find any information of Marvel Comics requesting a cease and desist on this one.)

And since I’ll be parking my buxomness in Florida soon, for a whole month of decadent deck lounging . . .

how about this?
I like her, she reminds me a lot of the Queen of Cups card in my Tarot deck.
(click on the pic to see more beautiful, one of a kind creations at the artist's website)

This Goddess is growing weary of the pursuit of perfection to be had in a size 8 mini skirt.  I think for the new year, I’ll resolve to embrace by rubenesqueness  (I made that derivation up.  I like the way it sounds) and free the buxom babe I am meant to be.

Now, that's a plan I can wrap my mind around, if not my arms.

. . . . . . mid

GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

MAKING MY LIST AND CHECKING IT TWICE

Truthfully, I don’t have to check this list twice. The only name on it is mine and I know I’ve been a good girl all year long.

Furthermore, I’m not counting on some old fat guy with a white beard to navigate a sleigh full of treasures to me, no matter how jolly he is. I’m letting my fingers travel over the keyboard to some of my favorite shopping haunts – the places that carry all the things a Mad Goddess woman like me could dream of.

Every Goddess needs a good pair of ruby red slippers and these are my choice. Don’t be jealous, just keystroke over to pyramidcollection.com and snatch up a pair for yourself.





While you’re at it, you might want to wander over to uncommongoods.com for this way out shoe rack – high heels easily accommodated.






This seemed like a good hat to add to my collection.

Not too showy, neutral colors. I think I could wear it for everyday trips to the village market. No sense now in trying to convince the locals that I’m not a tad eccentric – but that’s a story for another time.



For chilly nights by the fire, this cozy cuddler will keep me toasty warm and, unlike my prissy pure bread feline companions, it won't shed.

The hat, rose throw and the sign below can all be had from victoriantradingco.com.



Don’t ask me why, but I’ve developed a desire to label my bathroom door. I’ve bypassed many a “powder room” plaques and now I now why. This beauty is far more elegant.

And while we’re on the subject of signs, this little gem from pyramidcollection.com was a must have been made for me. A Goddess has to have somebody’s feet at which to lay the blame.

 

I can’t get enough sparkling, dangly ornaments to hang from my ears. These little gems are just quirky enough to suit me.

Made from recycled depression glass, get them while they last at uncommongoods.com




While there, you might want a sign like this one, stating that the Supergirl cape is in the laundry. I know that’s where mine is.

Of course, while I’m waiting for the cape to come out shiny clean and dry, I can drape this orchid ostrich feather boa from kirksfolllystore.com around my shoulders . . .






 . . .while I sip my coffee on chilly winter mornings from this perfectly befitting cup (pyramidcollection.com)

wearing my red power shoes . . .

. . . with my favorite plaid flannel nighty.

The santa living in this house ought to appreciate that wake up call.

. . . . . . mid

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SHOW ME THE WAY TO SHAMBALA

I’m an eternal optimist – always looking for a silver lining. I turn the other cheek with a firm belief that I won’t get slapped a second time, I believe that good triumphs over evil and I’m sure that a positive outlook is half the battle.

Take this current economic downturn. Could it possibly have a more optimistic label? What our grandparents called a Great Depression, our parents called a Recession. Leave it to the Baby Boomers to call it an economic downturn, just a little obstacle along The Road to Shambala.

Or perhaps, it’s a redirection from the detour that had us traveling the fast lane to play-now-pay-later, where the credit card companies set the pace in a pied piper’s parade.

Maybe as a midlifer unafraid to sieze opportunity, you were on the route to early retirement with a high yield, high stakes, quick return investment portfolio. That didn't exactly turn out the way we'd hoped.

If there is any good that can come from this financial crash, I am hopeful that it is the return of a couple of old concepts – cash and carry and slow and steady.

When my parents passed on a few years ago, they left a house full of furniture, appliances and electronics. I’m not talking faded flora sofas, an avocado refrigerator or the old Hi-Fi record player. In my mother’s life-long quest to remain young at heart, she refused to let her lifestyle, or her home, date her. At eighty-plus years old, Mother still took every chance available to redecorate, rearrange and restock.

I was often the recipient of this or that piece of furniture or some small appliance, which she told my father I needed. Usually, it was indeed something I could use. The fact that my mother then purchased the new and improved version (or maybe just a different color) certainly didn’t negate her generosity and resulted in a houseful of some pretty good loot at the end of my parent’s days.

When that day arrived, being firmly ensconced in middle age with all the accompanying accoutrements, my siblings and I wanted little more than a few keepsake pieces. With six adult-on-their-own-children among us, we opened the house up to free shopping. Three floors of inventory was reduced by a few glass end tables, a bed frame and some small kitchen appliances.

Then came the estate sale. We couldn’t give the stuff away. Two, almost new 27” televisions finally sold for $10 a piece – to go in a cabin on the lake (this was long before anybody knew about the digital change to come). We did manage to give a computer away, just to save us the disposal fee.

I’m not trying to imply the stuff was worth a fortune. I was just shocked that there weren’t young people anxious, dare I say grateful, to find a kitchen table with four matching chairs for $25. They spend that much to go to a movie or have a manicure.

And then I got it. They can’t shop estate sales with a credit card – that little, magic piece of plastic that allows them to purchase a new kitchen set at three times the price, for the promise of making a payment less than half of what we were asking.

Except now, too many people are realizing they’ll be making that payment for the rest of their natural life-time. Or that all of their pre-tax dollars invested for fast growth, fat retirement accounts, might have been better kept in a simple (FDIC insured) savings account – or maybe used to pay cash for all their stuff.

So where is my bright side? First, there’s the satisfaction, of course. As a parent who never stopped nagging her kids about the dangers of accumulating credit card debt, I have the time honored privilege of saying “I told you so.”

Second, these financial challenges we face are forcing all of us, across generations, to take a look at what’s important in life.

We have to ask ourselves, is that bigger house with granite countertops and quarried-tile floors, an SUV or the latest electronic, virtual experience game worth the price owed in the end? Do my children or grandchildren really have to go to Disney World?

How about the simple pleasures of life? How about having time to spend with family? How about a day at the State or County Park (there are plenty to choose from around the Twin Ports area).

Instead of granite and tile – a weather worn picnic table and sand will do just fine. Let’s actually throw a ball, jump rope or just play tag, instead of exercising a joy-stick. As for Disney World, we saved, we went, we saw. In my opinion it’s overcrowded, overpriced and overrated.

As Dorothy discovered, if you can’t find happiness in your own back yard, you won’t find it Oz, or for that matter, Disney World, Shambala or anywhere else. And as we are all discovering in the aftermath of easy payment plans, the more you own, the more you owe and off to work you go, and go and go.

. . . . . . mid
GET A ^ LIFE at MAD Goddess

ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK

The other night I was surfing the channels hoping to catch the latest, relevant, political news. (An aside here, CNN’s Keeping Them Honest is a ray of sunshine in this hurricane season of misinformation.) Indulging in a bit of nostalgic gratification (oh, for the days when the choices seemed as black and white as our television screens), I lingered on Nick at Nite. There was the lovely Elizabeth Montgomery, twitching her little, upturned nose and creating chaos in Darren’s life.

I’ve always liked Elizabeth Montgomery or more accurately, Samantha Stevens. I like what Sam stood for in the midst of fast changing social values. Okay, so the writers had to employ devices like witchcraft and a “twin” cousin to reflect the burgeoning independence of the American woman. And her mother, Endora – a divorced, independent woman, not on the prowl for a replacement hubby? Pure progressive genius.

Over the years, I’ve held Elizabeth /Samantha up as an example of a healthy, mature woman with a normal body weight. In her stylishly simple “house dresses” one could easily see that below her waist were curving hips and extending from her sleeveless bodices, shapely upper arms. And yet, in the animated credit roll for Bewitched, Samantha was drawn in the exact proportions of a Barbie doll.

Fast forward to 2007 when AMC debuted it’s critically acclaimed hit Mad Men, giving us the real skinny on what Darren was doing at the ad agency office in the 60’s. The little woman at home might have had some healthy meat on her, but the men of Madison Avenue were all agog at the perfect doll image. And thus began the quest to remake ourselves in the image of a man’s fantasy.

Bringing us to 2008 where the ugly beast (man’s fantasy) rears its head and roars, “She is WOMAN!” If you haven’t seen the picture of Sarah Palin’s head photo-shopped onto a 20-something, stars-and-stripes-bikini clad body toting a rifle . . . you haven’t missed much. Puhleese! Every woman in America knew that photo was a phony. No mother of five has an abdomen like that.

A male coworker, who at best is very discriminating in his political opinions and at worst is down right cynical, responded to my inquiry as to his thoughts about Palin as VP, “Sticks and stones might break my bones but a woman with a gun excites me.” I have no doubt. But what about her qualifications, experience, ethical action in the face of opposition?

In her biography, now running on the aforementioned CNN, Sarah poses for a model’s shot, completely wrapped in the American flag. Truly offensive. Does its hoped for effectiveness lie in the anticipated certainty that men will be captivated by the thought of what she is wearing (or not wearing) beneath the flag? So captivated that they will be oblivious to her lack of qualifications? Forget about Sarah P capturing the women’s vote. She has men across America fawning over her they way they secretly fondled their sister’s Barbie dolls. They want to keep her image in their minds; they want to see more of her when they turn on the nightly news. If that means voting her into national public office, so be it.

Yes, Governor Sarah Palin is the dream girl of the Mad Men, and we all know sex sells. She might stop long enough in her whirlwind photo op tour (her appearances on the campaign trail can be considered little more than that in light of her refusal to take questions) to ponder this. If her running mate can laugh at an accomplished, powerful woman being called the B-word, what might be the so-called locker room exchanges directed at her?

SARAH PALIN IS NOT EVERY WOMAN

The Republican Party plucked Sarah Palin from obscurity and served her up on a platter as super woman-mom-politico. Her meteoric rise over the national landscape is far less due to any political acumen than it is to her own blind ambition.

Her supporters like to say that she is “Every Woman”, meaning (I think) that she represents the common every day mother and working woman. I am a mother, grandmother and working woman. Sarah Palin does not represent me in any of those aspects. She does not represent my best interests in areas of the economy, education or family values.

Really? What kind of values is a mother teaching when she delivers almost her entire acceptance speech, in front of her children, from a bully – or lipsticked pit bull’s pulpit? Our schools are enacting zero tolerance on bullying – why isn’t Sarah Palin demonstrating that family value?

She certainly does not represent the advancement of women’s concerns in America. I fear that what she does represent for women is the worst of gender-biased, stereotypical character traits that have kept women from breaking that glass ceiling for so long. Sarah Palin is not every woman, but every woman has known someone like her. If you are her friend, you are golden. Just don’t oppose her or stand in the way of her ambition unless you want to feel that proverbial knife in your back

It seems an astute blogger has discovered the facts in the book banning, librarian firing myth. “Turns out Sarah requested the librarians -- who was a big supporter of Sarah's political opponent -- resignation before she ever broached the subject of a potential book boycott.”

I have two thoughts about that. First, as an elected government official, Palin is sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America – including all amendments in place. A move on her part to ban or otherwise remove books from a public library is a direct freedom of speech violation. Private citizens can question and take proper channels to remove materials that may be deemed objectionable – but Sarah Palin is no longer a private citizen.

Second, her effort to fire the librarian who didn’t support her during her campaign and/or in areas of ethics (and when she became Governor – a cop who wouldn’t cooperate with her very private, family agenda), is abuse of power. If that's not bad enough, it is divisive and reminiscent of the high-school-girl-drama antics most adult women have long since abandoned.

Sarah Palin has used her power to repeatedly advance her own agendas, often times in opposition to her ticket’s slogan – County (substitute neighborhood, town or state) First. She won her mayoral election with the promise to rebuild her town’s crumbling infrastructure. Instead, the self described “hockey mom” pushed through the building of a multi-use sports complex (big ice arena) that one citizen describes as a “huge money pit”. When she took office in Wasilla, Alaska “she inherited a city with zero debt.” Despite raising the amount of city collected taxes by 38%, “she left it with an indebtedness of over $22 million.”

Her new battle cry is for drilling in the Alaskan Wilderness. Whether this is a wise move or not, remains to be determined. It has the potential to provide short-term relief from the burden of rising energy costs in America. It also carries the threat of allowing us to become overly complacent in our continuing dependence of oil, thus pushing the advancement of new energy technologies to the back burner once again. It also contributes to the growing concern of greenhouse gasses and global warming, all of which is not the future I want for my grandchildren – even if it would make my tank of gas more affordable now.

Also, consider her motives for drilling in light of the fact that their family income has never come from her husband’s commercial fishing business. He works a high-paying union job on the North Slope for BP which allows him the flexibility to take a few months each summer for fishing.

In a move straight out of Pygmalion, Sarah Palin is being packaged as something she is not, nor ever has been – a common woman driven to public service. She might know how to talk the talk, but it seems she is barely beyond baby steps in learning to walk the walk.

DRIVING THE MAD GODDESS

I’ve decided that, As the MA’d Goddess, I should have a chauffeur. In recent weeks, the hubby and I have been carpooling for our 30-minute (one way) commute. I rearranged my work schedule to fit his cardiac rehab appointments. We’re conserving fuel (and cash) and reducing our carbon footprint. Yeah for us!

First, I’ve had to give up some of my independence. Most husbands don’t have a lot of patience for changes in the scheduled stops. For my husband, with his lingering fatigue, running errands isn’t on the list of things to do. Second, when I do get to make the occasion solo trip (see running errands above), I’m annoyed when I have to readjust the seat and the mirrors, and tune the radio back to my favorite station.

Yet, what I’ve gained almost makes up for the loss of autonomy and small irritations– an extra, stress free hour each day while he drives and I sit back to enjoy the ride. I’ve been able to (finally) read my favorite magazines that have been languishing in stacks all over the house. I can do my nails or finish my face. Mostly, I just recline the seat, close my eyes and catch an extra 30 minutes of restful thought wanderings. All of this is much better than starting the day in a full out middle-aged sweat from running a dead heat to get myself pulled together and get to work on time.

Cardiac rehab ended a week ago. The car is all mine again. I’ve decided I now want a chauffeured Jag. Honestly, what I’d really like is one of those traveling throne thingys like Cleopatra’s, with four buff and burley guys to tote me around. Of course that would mean I have nothing more pressing to do than sit on my ample back side hanging out poolside at the palace with buff and burley guys at my beck and call.

Okay, that dream might be a long shot, and even the chauffeured Jag may be a bit far off in my future, but I am definitely prepared. I’ve got my personalized license plate all picked out –

YD ASS