Congratulations everyone!

If you want to know what our family is rocking out to, it is The Obama Song by Michael Franti and others.
What a glorious day, to witness history and be proud to be an American.
Now please, any forces for good, protect this man and his family, and let him get to work.
And let this country sit up and pay attention.
please.
#44
Barack Obama
Our President!!!

Happy New Year!!!

Silent Month

In my race to keep up and catch up with all that I am hoping to do (which of course, will never happen) I have neglected the computer. The christmas holiday was fun this year, being at home and quite mellow-- even with the kids and the many presents. My favorite part is the stockings. If we could somehow just have stockings that would be perfect for me.

I got a really nice pair of clippers from Santa George AND my very own compost turner, retrofitted with an extra long handle. One lucky gal I am, and that wouldn't have fit in my stocking, so I take it back.

My best present? George sitting across from me at the table with drawings and lumber take-offs for the new compost bin he's building.

Which brings me to my rave of the day.... DENVER! We are the lucky members of the City of Denver's new compost pilot. They come and take so much stuff, it's silly. ALL food scraps (yes, meat, cheese, etc), takeout boxes, takeout coffee cups, tissues (no, not toilet paper), all kind of yard scraps... I'm in heaven. Now if they would just recycle all the kinds of plastic things, not just many of them, our trash bin would go even much longer.

Go denver. Now, if we could get that lady across the street to stop throwing her newspaper IN the plastic bag into the dumpster, I would feel a whole lot better about the state of the world.

Once again, we felt amazingly blessed by this season. We have a warm and cozy house, we can pay our bills, we have good food to eat and we aren't being bombed by anyone, which I'm thinking that many in Gaza can't say ANY of those.

I managed to compress my usual writing for our yearly letter into the back of a postcard, (using every single character, thank you) and if you didn't get one, just write me a note, and I'll send it to you. No offense-I'm just always barely holding it together here. ... Don't write me a note yet- I just ordered the cards, slipping in just before the very end of 2008(so give me a few weeks to address them and get them in the mail). I think most will say good riddance to 2008, but I will reserve good riddance for W. January 20 can't get here fast enough for me, and no-I don't think that Obama is going to work magic, but he can (at the very least) speak in complete sentences, and can chew and think at the same time. I think that should be the bare minimum required in a president.
I'm hopeful for the new year, I'm hopeful for our future, and I'm hoping that I make it another year and a half to graduate!!!!! We hold those hurting and struggling close to our hearts, and send our love and care for comfort.

I'm off to plan my garden plots. Are you doing this already too? I got my first Seeds of Change catalog, and I'm dreaming dreaming of lots of land, and much food being brought forth from our little patch of dirt.

Seriously, folks

Do I need to say more? This greeted us Saturday when we returned from our lovely (and shopping free) trip to Seattle. The story about the worker who got killed by a WalMart throng? I mean. Really.
And that horrible picture on the cover of RMN/Denver Post of people heaving flat screen TVs out into a crowd? It's truly embarassing. I can't tell what bothers me more? All of the coverage of our "recession" where this kind of shit happens, or the suits from Michigan rolling into DC on their private jets to beg for millions of our money. AFTER debuting a freaking HUMMER the year that the Mini Cooper was introduced. Think there might be something wrong with that take on what's happening around the world?
And what a terrible place to be in for politicians... let them fail, and see the fallout of the thousands of workers, or encourage the ridiculous practices that they employ. Shitty, I tell you.
But at least Bush is going away, and to celebrate, we have gotten a subscription to the NYT since even though it's mostly bad news, it is not the worst news you can find every day. There is a small ray of hope. On our first day with the paper, we actually looked up a word in the dictionary. How often does this happen with the good old Denver Post? Exactly never in our years of reluctant subscriptions.

My favorite day is coming up

No, not thanksgiving! (Although i like that quite a lot too.)

It's BUY NOTHING DAY!!!!!
http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd

Take a look at the fun video spots they have, especially the pig.

I love the day after Thanksgiving because it is always spent lounging around, hopefully playing outside, and generally completely avoiding the need to go to a store. Join me this year in celebrating Buy Nothing Day. I try and make it the whole weekend actually.

And BND always brings me to thinking about Christmas, and how I'm going to deal with it this year.

I read a bunch of ideas in Wondertime, (I'm really surprised that Disney is letting them talk about anything besides buying more) and some of them were really good. My favorite I think is a little ryhme. "Something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read."
I don't' know if my family will ever let me dictate how the presents get given, but I am bound to keep trying. One of the ways I am doing this for my self, is I'm creating a list of which organizations I want to support and trying to decide if I should split the amount of money I can donate among them, or choose two and send them bigger chunks.
Here is my current list, but I know I'm forgetting some. It feels good to know that I can spend money and time thinking about other causes besides our very very lucky family.

American Farmland Trust
Obama
Southern Poverty Law center
NARAL
Access Fund
Simple Living
Planned Parenthood

I'll add yours if you comment on this post! ;)

Survey

You're welcome to chime in, but my readership (all four of you) is AWFULLY quiet in the comments section, so i'm okay to just survey myself.
Question: How much is the change in the global financial market affecting your decisions surrounding the holidays?
Answer: Not that much.
We already had our plane tickets, and reservations for where we're going for Thanksgiving, and I make all sorts of desperate appeals to my family to limit the number of gifts and stuff every year. Every year I exasperate my sister to no end, as I propose new gifting rules, and in the end, the only people I really truly can buy/get things for with absolute certainty that they will love them are the three and ahalf year old and one year old men in my life. George? never quite sure what will make him thrilled. But maybe that's just because I can't give him a big bike ride in the middle of a workday as a present! Oh by the way, his BIRTHDAY is tomorrow!

Oh yeah,

I did forget my other passion, language, which was all but slaughtered by the lady with my name (ugh) check out this post about the Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla . I thought she was the most horrifying part of the last three months, and I have this picture from the Obama gathering in October that I thought summed it up.

And for those of you who werent utterly beside themselves watching this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbQwAFobQxQ well. I just don't know what to say.

In other better news, the boys got BUNK BEDS!!!

and I'm done with school until January!