Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Things about Suisan 1. I love crystallized ginger. 2. I love crystallized ginger dipped in chocolate more. 3. My favorite crayon color is periwinkle blue. Don't much like the gold, silver, or copper colors. They're not convincing. 4. I can make myself forget something. Usually I only use this to make myself forget that I have to use the bathroom so that the full bladder sensation doesn't bother me until I get to the next bathroom. But then as I'm driving past the Rest Area on the highway I remember that I had to use the turn off, and then I have to start the whole cycle again. 5. My favorite horse color is bay, and I keep meaning to look up why "bay" means brown. Is it related to the color of bay tree wood? 6. I keep meaning to look up the root of the word "pruning" but I keep forgetting. (Query: Is it related to the fruit? Like "appling" or "cherrying"? Or are the similarities between noun and verb simply coincidence?) 7. Vacuuming makes me angry. 8. Folding clothes makes me tired. 9. Doing dishes used to make me angry, but I retrained myself to simply do them with no emotion attached. But it took so long, I'm reluctant to start in again on the vacuuming and laundry issues. 10. I have a little figure of Zorro on his horse near my computer. (Which is neat because he stays balanced in his fencing pose if you take him off Toronado.) My kids keep walking off with him, but seem genuinely contrite when they return him. 11. When I grow up I want to live by myself with some cats for company. But I worry that I may become a shut-in. 12. I keep forgetting how old I am. But I don't think I'm forty yet. 13. I had to buy a guide book so that I could understand how my daughter's iPod Shuffle worked. This makes me feel aged and rather dim. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!


The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Better and Worse

I heard on the public television self-help program that in order to make yourself a better person, you should surround yourself with better people. Playing a game of tennis with a better player will make you a better player because of the challenge.

But how does that work, exactly? How do you go about finding people who are better than you? And wouldn't they want to surround themselves with people who are better than them and not muck around in the dirt with slothful trolls?

There's an unbalanced equation there which is making my head hurt.

In other news of recent imponderables, I took a large group of relatives to a local tea house. We stuffed ourselves with sandwiches, salads, tea, lemonade, and bread puddings. And when they came back to my house, one of them said, "Ugh. I'm so full. Would it be possible to ask you for some tea?"

Joking?

Serious?

Ended up making her tea, and she enjoyed it immensely.

Tahoe

My husband went to New York last weekend and brought back his mother. On Thursday afternoon I left my kids in her capable care and drove to Lake Tahoe to retreat into a cabin my friend leases up there.

I was all by myself from Thursday afternoon through Saturday morning.

And I did nothing.

Well, actually I kept a fire lit, drank a bottle of Ravenswood Zinfandel, knit a pair of socks, and read Kate Rothwell's Somebody Wonderful and Somebody to Love, and Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels. Somewhere in there I took a long bath.

It was thoroughly delightful to be up in the woods, listening to the fire pop and the creek rush behind the cabin and not be beholden to a soul.

Of course, now that I'm home, I'm starting to tell myself that I should have used the time to get some writing done, or knitting-pattern calculations completed. Oh, Please! Just shut up, internal critic!!

I did learn how to prop a paperback open while knitting--it unfortunately involves cracking the spine, which I'm not that happy about. But hey, now at least I can tell ole bossy boss in my head that I did get SOMETHING done while I was away.

(And they deserve their own reviews, but I loved Kate Rothwell's books. Especially Somebody Wonderful. I'll have to go back to skim so I can remember details about what I liked or noticed, but the shortest possible review would be--read them. In terms of Loretta Chase--I think she's a bit heavy for me right now. I've got drama going on up to my eyeballs, and I can't quite tolerate her drama on top of my own. But I can tell that Lord of Scoundrels is a great book--I stayed up late to finish it. But it sort of wore me out. Or maybe that was the Zinfandel.)