{Originally posted on Rimarama}

I’m short.

Not freakishly short, mind you, but short enough that I’ve contemplated disabling my driver’s side airbag, just in case.

During my tortuous school days (when I was short with a boy’s haircut, braces, glasses, a weird name, and plastic hoop earrings), it used to really get me down.

“Dear God, it’s me, Rimarama. Please let me get my period before Dawn Bachmeier, let T.J. Trumpower like me and, even if we don’t get married, please make it so that he asks me to the Howdy Dance. And Dear God, please let me grow at least four more inches in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

I’m a bit more comfortable in my skin these days, but every once in awhile somebody will come along and burst my bubble.

Like today at Jazzercise.

(I left the J-dog with my parents, in case anyone is interested.)

I was minding my own business before class got underway, practicing my deep breathing exercises and copying the warm-up stretches the lady in front of me was performing in a nonchalant “I do this all the time” kind of way, when I noticed the girlfriend to my left was checking me out.

At first I assumed she was coveting my totally kick-ass leopard print leotard and crazy stripe leg warmers, but after a time, she turned to me and said,

“How tall are you? Because you are NOT five feet tall!!!!”

(Fur bristles, talons release. Engage Rimarama fight mode.)

Because excuse me? Did I forget to take down the sign on my back? The one that sez I’m “FIVE FOOT FOUR AND FULL OF MUSCLE” ????

{Originally published on Dadomatic.}

My dad is a great dad. He indelibly shaped my personality, mores, and outlook in life. Now that I am a dad too, I appreciate what he did even more. It wasn’t easy to narrow them down, but these the top ten lessons that he taught me.

1. Don’t take any shiitake from anyone. My dad was a state senator for twenty years, and he never walked away from a confrontation with the local newspapers, labor unions, and government officials. He taught me not to kowtow to anyone just because they are in lofty positions. This is a very useful attitude because if people sense that you don’t take any shiitake, they won’t give you any.

2. Obey your teachers. My dad taught me that teachers knew more than I did so I should treat them with respect. This was a rare exception to the “don’t take shiitake from anyone” lesson. Come to find out, (a) teachers very seldom dish out shiitake, and (b) they truly change the world (and not for the money), so they (c) deserve truckloads of respect.

3. Don’t follow the crowd. Initially, I thought that he was saying that most people were stupid–and I agreed with him. But I now realize that he was telling me not to follow the crowd because the crowd “mentality” can make smart people do dumb things. This is why I don’t believe in the “wisdom of the crowd” to this day.

4. Show some noblesse oblige. My dad was very big on the concept that people who are fortunate (in terms of power, prestige, or money) have the moral obligation to be kind, help others, and even answer their emails. By far, this is the most difficult lesson to implement if lots of people want something from you, but as my father taught me, you just have to deal with it.

5. Read. My dad taught me to love to read. We had hundreds of books around our house, and he bought me any book that I wanted. With his encouragement, I also spent hundreds hours in the public library too. This love of reading led to a love of doing research (in those days, in the World Book Encyclopedia!) and eventually to a love of writing.

{Originally posted on P E N S I E V E}

In its 15th and final season, hospital drama ER resurrected the dead: Anthony Edwards reprised his role as Dr. Mark Green last week in a series of flashbacks by Angela Bassett’s character, Cate Banfield.

When ER debuted in the Fall of ‘94, I had an infant and a two-year-old, and I’m sure escaping into TV melodrama was a welcome respite from the “storms” my little ones ravaged. I remember lying on our sofa nursing my son–right side, left side, right side, left–through ER, the news and then late nights with Leno and Letterman.

During the episodes leading up to his death, Dr. Green takes his daughter to Hawaii, to teach her “important” life lessons–how to drive, how to surf…I really don’t recall much else.

Except a last admonishment to her, one that has haunted me in the ensuing years.

“Be generous. Always.”

It struck me as odd, then, that a parent’s dying words would speak to generosity. It was unsettling for some reason; I judged those words as somehow falling short. In my mind, as a believer, I felt like he should have offered some great spiritual insight, something with eternal value, something … more. Of course, I realized it was television after all, and the series had never before offered anything substantively spiritually enlightening; but still, I saw it as missed opportunity.

Originally published on Lightening Online.

We recently received notification from our electricity supplier that charges are about to increase. No surprises there. The cost of living is really putting the squeeze on the average household. BUT, we are not powerless (hee, hee - excuse the pun). Now more than ever is a great time to work hard on reducing our usage so that we can reduce the overall impact on such increases.

1. Build Healthy Habits

One of the biggest wastages of power is the habit of not turning things off when not in use. Cultivate the habit of turning out lights when you leave a room and turning off appliance (if you can reach the power point) when not in use.

Image via Wikimedia/Copyright © 2005 David Monniaux

2. Make Use of What Nature Has to Offer

In winter you want to open up the curtains (window coverings) on a sunny day and make sure you close them again BEFORE the sun goes down to trap warmth inside and not allow the night chill to enter the house through the glass.

In summer, it’s more important to keep the sun OUT during the day and open up the house at night to take advantage of the cooler night air.

{Originally published on Baby On Bored}

Let me just start by saying if you have an ultrasound picture of your baby stuck on your refrigerator with a magnet, you’re not someone I want to be friends with. And if you have someone else’s baby’s ultrasound picture up there, well, that’s just a cry for help. I’m never sure what I’m supposed to say when confronted with this. “Wow, that’s one sexy fetus?” I got pictures from my ultrasound too but I didn’t wallpaper the house with them. Isn’t it bad enough that we have to see a million pictures of your baby after it’s born? Now we have to see what it kinda sorta looks like before it even comes out?

I knew early on in my pregnancy I wasn’t like other pregnant women. When my husband and I went for my ultrasound, (yes, he came with me: there was like a 95% percent chance he was the dad we figured he should tag along), the first thing the nurse asked me was if I’d brought a video tape. A video tape? I must’ve looked confused because she explained to me “most people want to take home a souvenir of this magic event.” I nodded and said “Yeah, I definitely won’t need that. I’m barely on board with the whole pregnancy thing as it is.” To which the nurse replied that she was reporting me to social services. Okay, she didn’t say it out loud but I could see it in her stare.

Clearly there are many many people who do opt for the ultrasound video. If you are one of them, just know - I don’t want to see it. Oh, and that goes double for your skydiving video. About the only way I’d ever be interested in watching footage of your big jump …is if you don’t make it. It’s like the world is chock full of people with no clue of their capacity to be irritating. And pregnancy just magnifies it.

Pregnant women seem to take one of two paths when they get knocked up, although — being annoying– they’d probably refer to it as a “journey.”

First there’s the woman who loooooves being pregnant. You know her. She’s so excited to join the Cult of Mommy that she’s taking pregnancy yoga before the before the stick turns blue. Anyone who revels this much in being pregnant is suspect in my book…

{Originally posted on Zen Habits}

Every Friday is Health Tip Day at Zen Habits.

I have to admit that I have my ups and downs with the exercise habit.

So I know that it’s not the easiest habit for most people, and most
people’s experiences consist of starting and stopping and starting again. Which is fine — don’t beat yourself up about it. The important thing is starting again.

I’ve written before about how to build the exercise habit (and even have a guest post on it), but today I thought I’d revisit the topic for those who still have trouble.

The Main Problems

So why do most people have trouble making exercise a regular habit? Well, there are probably a number of factors, but here are the main ones as I see it:

1. Too difficult. People set out with a lot of ambition and enthusiasm, and start out with a big goal. “I’m going to go to the gym for an hour a day!” or “I’m going to run 30 minutes every day!” The problem is that the goal is too difficult to sustain for very long. You can do it for a few days, but you soon run out of energy, and it becomes a drag to do it.

Originally posted at My Marrakesh:

It’s morning, and I am meeting my friend Benoit, a French interior designer.

We are meeting at Bab al Khemis, which means Thursday’s Door in Arabic. All around Marrakech’s old city, known as the medina, there are babs, or huge carved entryways. Each bab has its own name, and Bab al Khemis it is the entryway to the city’s equivalent of the flea market. Outside the bab, vendors are beginning to throng, displaying broken bits and bobs, as well as an occasional gem or two.

Benoit arrives, and we kiss, French-style, on both cheeks. For a number of years, Benoit designed interiors for the King of Morocco. Now he and his young family have moved to Marrakech and recently have bought a piece of land. Close friends of ours, Benoit and his charming wife Zoo, also a designer, are giving us a helping hand with our guest house interiors.

In T-shirts and cargo pants, we are ready for action. Today we are looking for antique doors and other architectural remnants that will help give our guest houses some character. We have brought along with
us one of Chris’s employees, Khalid, who can be counted on to negotiate in Moroccan dialect so fast that it makes your heads spin.

{Originally published on PENSIEVE}

I did something yesterday I hadn’t done in a long, long time.

It was quite by accident, I wouldn’t have planned it, and in fact, had I known what I was getting into, I would’ve done whatever I could to avoid it.

Under cotton ball-dotted blue skies during the afternoon rush, I walked into the grocery store. A full shopping cart and an empty pocketbook later, I walked out into unexpected gray and gloom; not just rain mind you, but furious pregnant drops defying gravity with a sideways pour.

The parking lot had been crowded when I arrived, forcing me to park at the far end. “It’s better for me, anyway” I remember thinking.

There were no two ways about it, I was going to get wet.

Person after person in the same boat as I made a run for it; it’s funny to watch someone make an umbrella out of a bag of dogfood. It’s also entertaining to watch people dancing and dodging to avoid the inevitable–this was a deluge, THEY WERE GOING TO GET WET!

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