I work near the Salt Lake airport. It's about a 5 minute drive away.

The same freeway that takes me to work is the freeway I take to pick up or drop off my boys with their dad. Same freeway I take to get into Salt Lake.

Almost every day, I see planes coming in or taking off.




I wonder where the passengers are going, if they're going some place fun, exciting, exotic. If they're going to a favorite place they've been to multiple times or some place they've never been before. Whether they'll be seeing loved ones: their friends and family.

I know that not every airplane trip is for a happy reason. I also know that many people on a plane taking off from an airport are actually going home rather than going on vacation, or perhaps are going away on a business trip.

But that doesn't factor into my dreams.


My heart tells me they're going some place fun, like Disney World. Or they're going to the beach in the Bahamas. Or they're heading for a long trip to Europe. Or a cruise around the Caribbean.


I long to get away from the drudgery of life, of working 40 hours a week making barely enough money to pay down my debts, buy groceries, and take the boys to a movie once a month.

I long to be on a plane, heading to a destination far away where the sun in shining, experiencing the world around me, seeing new things or enjoying favorite activities with loved ones.



It's really about escaping. I sometimes just feel bogged down by every day life. When I see a plane taking off, my heart is going with it, flying away from the cares of the world to a place where, for a short time, I can be care-free.

Brad has a hobby. Well, he has a hobby besides computer programming. This hobby, however, is something that makes me insane.

When I first met Brad, he had a motion sensor in the bedroom so that when you walked into the bedroom, a light turned on automatically. It didn't turn on during the day and it didn't turn on in the middle of the night, so I believe it was programmed for evening use.

I thought this was pretty cool.

I asked him, when we moved into our new house, if he could set that up again.

He didn't.

He set up some automatic functions for some of the lights in our house. Only, I don't know what half of these functions are and I don't know how to use them. I know some of the lights switch on at a certain time in the evening. Which sounds cool when you put it that way. But with the changes of the seasons and what-not, the lights don't always come on at the best time.

And most of our light switches don't actually work like normal light switches anymore.

This is what our old switches looked like. And honestly, we do still have a few that look like this.

Normal looking switches, for the most part. Up is on, down is off.

The switches that operated our living room lights were identical to this.

Now, they look like this.

Wait, what?

Yes, two light switches have now been replaced with 5 switches. Why do we need 5 light switches to operate what two used to do?


It used to be when I came into the living room, I could push the light switch and the light would come on. Instantly. When I left, I would push the switch again and the light would go off. Instantly.

Now, I push a switch and.... nothing happens! *grumble grumble*

Me: Brad! The light won't come on!

Brad: Use the remote.

Me: Ugh. What number is it on the remote?

Brad: Number 5.

I look at the remote.


Do you see numbers on this remote, excluding the number on the Schwan's sticker? No?


Me: Uh... there are no numbers on here! Which one is number 5?

Brad: The fifth one.

Me: The fifth from the top? The fifth from the bottom? Left? Right?

Brad: *condescendingly* The fifth from the top on the left. Left is on. Right is off.

Me: *thinking of different ways to murder my husband*

Once in a while, I forget that I have to use a freakin' remote to turn on the damned lights in my living room. I flip the switch. Nothing happens. *grumble grumble*

Me: Which one of these stupid switches turns on the light?

Brad: That first one.

Me: I flipped it and nothing happened!

Brad: You have to give it a few seconds.

Somehow, multiple switches which take several seconds to respond to being turned on or off and a remote control is supposed to have simplified our control of the light switches.

This is directly behind our house. We don't get to see the pelicans too often, just a few weeks a year.

I love these dudes!

Super cool pelicans

Used Picnik to play with the picture a bit.

A few years back, I was listening to some young female relatives talking about food. They were talking about the nutritional value of certain organic foods they purchased, which brands were better than others, the best kinds of supplements to take and which ones and how many they were taking, and which whole foods-type stores to go to for the best values and on and on.

I remember thinking to myself that while yes, they looked fabulous, they seemed to be obsessed with food. I couldn't help but find myself feeling relieved that I didn't spend that much time obsessing over food and supplements.




In my quest to eat healthier and lose weight, I have discovered that I, too, have started to become obsessed with food. Oh, not to the point that I'll have half day discussions with people regarding organic foods and the benefits of supplements.

I'm not even going to pretend I know anything at all on those topics.

But I have searched the internet for healthy food recipes. I've read articles about how to reduce my sodium intake. I've tried to figure out how to increase my protein without increasing my carbs. I've looked for foods that increase the amount of fiber I ingest on a daily basis, comparing one brand against other brands.


I spend way more time thinking about healthy food and how to improve my food choices than I spend actually eating food.



This is so not me.

Well, I do like the picture of the cat and think it's very cute and maybe if I were a cat, that would be me. But that's something all together different.

Honestly, I don't like to spend a lot of time thinking about food choices. I don't like scouring the internet for healthy food recipes. I don't like spending a lot of time comparing my food choices to determine which is healthier for me. I don't like creating menus and shopping lists.



I spend more than enough time working, what with my job and cooking dinner and getting cleaning done and trying to exercise and taking care of animals and kids and pleasuring the husband....

Sorry, I think I may have said too much.

*ahem* Anyway, I think this is why I've started to dislike cooking. I spend too much time thinking about food. I want to spend less time thinking and more time eating!

That attitude is probably the reason I have so much weight to lose.

I don't want to have to think about it and if I pick up anything to eat that requires less thinking, the worse the food seems to be.

I don't know how to strike a balance between eating healthier and not spending all my time thinking about eating healthier. Is that even possible?

Are you food obsessed, too? What do you do to eat healthier?

So there's this woman I work with who is one of those kinds of people.

The kind who is lazy and will do minimal amounts of work and try to pass duties off on other people.

The kind who seems really nice and friendly but you can't help wondering if they're really talking smack about you behind your back.

The kind that always needs to know what's going on behind closed doors all the time.





So anyway, she is very sick. She has discovered this recently. She makes it to work every day but she has appointments and stuff that she has to go to once a week.

And the really horrible thing that is going on in my mind, and thankfully in my boss' mind as well so I know I'm not the only one who is having these evil thoughts, is that I seriously believe that she is using her sickness as an excuse to get out of doing things she doesn't want to do.


I want to feel sorry for her. I do feel sorry for her. I'm sorry she's sick. What she's going through is just not fair because she has had to deal with a lot of rough stuff.

But?

It's wrong to use your sickness as an excuse to get out of doing things you don't want to do. It's wrong to put the burden of work on others because you can't be bothered to do it yourself and then use your sickness as an excuse.

And of course, no one can say anything about it because.... she's sick. You can't complain about it not being fair that she dumps her work on you because it's not fair she's sick. And how dare you complain?

So you just pick up the slack because life isn't fair. Not fair for her for being sick. Not fair for you because you find yourself having to pick up her slack more frequently now that she's sick.


Yes, I know this is not nice of me. I fully expect this to be what happens to me some day, although I'll hopefully be a lot older and will probably look less pleased.

11 year old Frank and 15 year old Dweezil. Dweezil is growing mutton chops. How'd he get that old?

Last Saturday, Brad and I were having a "discussion" about several different things we have going on right now, particularly how Brad feels put upon by me sometimes.

Brad and I have been proud foster parents to a variety of puppies over the last year and a half. Our two dogs, Sunny and Logan, have been good at socializing the puppies that come into our home.

Okay, honestly? Sunny has been good at teaching them lots of hyper behavior (she's a terrier mix) while Logan sleeps and eats his way through life.

It's not that Sunny is a bad dog.

She's just a bit unruly sometimes.

One of the bloggers I follow, dooce®, recently was asked to visit Bangladesh as a guest of Every Mother Counts, an organization that works "to increase education and support for maternal and child health" around the world.

She was asked because she's a popular female blogger and the hope was that she could help draw attention not only to the organization as they strive to get women around the world the help they need, but more importantly, draw attention to the women themselves.

Women whose lives are at risk during pregnancy due to a lack of proper medications and medical assistance, including proper emergency assistance that most of us in industrialized countries take for granted. They don't have access to adequate maternal care, post-partum care, and family planning.

The Maternal Mortality Rate is "an assessment of the probability of becoming pregnant and the probability of dying as a result of that pregnancy in 171 countries with populations of more than 250,000, cumulated across a woman’s reproductive years. This is the lifetime risk of maternal death."

Yes, it's a bit confusing but suffice to say, the lower the ratio, the worse the risk.

In Bangladesh, the MMR is 1-51. In Ethipoia, the MMR is 1-27.

So you can see why an organization such as Every Mother Counts wants to bring attention to these women around the world, so they might be able to receive the care they need. And why they would seek out different voices, like dooce's, to reach audiences they may not otherwise reach.


Apparently, though, some people take offense to this. Really. People such as this irresponsible blogger with The Guardian, who took aim at not only Dooce but what she calls "poverty tourism", without even actually talking to Dooce and without making sure her facts were straight about pretty much anything she posted. She just made assumptions. Really.

And on Twitter, a few concern trolls started coming out of the wood works to take shots at Dooce, because, according to them, she's "doing it wrong."