Two noses

Lookit my new wool bear hat with ear flaps to keep my ears from freezing!

Signs of the Christmas season

Here at the Smoot household, there are three sure signs that we’re feeling the Christmas spirit:

1. The Christmas tree has been obtained.
2. Mommy tortures the dog.
3. Mommy breaks out the reindeer socks!

My beech, my beech my beech my beech*

I can has sho much lub for her!

Heh heh… Why did the Japanese call their drink Calpis?  When she told me what it was I was like, “Cow piss??”

Yeah, I can be like that sometimes.  Or a lot.  Depends on who you talk to, but Beech would tell you that I’m like that a lot.

For the love for my bags

The things in this case are my purses.

I don’t mind some bags sitting on the floor at dinner or at the side of the table or behind me between the back of the seat and my butt.  Then there are some bags that, if accidentally dirtied, would cause me to cry… and crying is something I’d rather do behind closed doors, not in a restaurant.

Simple, cute, and cheap!

Only $10 at Target!

Greasy Chinese food

You jump out of bed, read and answer your messages as fast as you possibly can, speed-walk the dog, do your hair and make-up, throw ten outfits into a suitcase, run out the door and drive an hour for a two-hour photoshoot, then drive back in slow-moving dinner-time traffic.

Sometimes, it’s the perfect remedy for a tired body after a long day is greasy comfort food.

Except this greasy Chinese food came from Whole Foods, so it’s been made with organic oil with no lard and no trans fats, so it’s not as terrible as it could have been.

Those comedians!

The guys at Magnani’s Poultry crack me up.  It’s so nice to stop by when I do my grocery shopping.

They like to put little toys among the ground meats and chicken breasts.

This time the crocodile had a little friend, and that friend had something to say:

Strawberry milk!

Finally, there’s a nice alternative to regular strawberry-flavored milk.

I wish Odwalla had come out with it sooner!

Lots of protein, real strawberry purée, and so much yumminess!

What’s good for the soul

My newest resolution is to do things that are good for my soul.

Face it: dragging ourselves to a job we hate, fulfilling pointless obligations, and exposing ourselves to negative things are soul-sucking activities.  I know this for a fact.

The last 11 months have been a long recovery process from the damage I had unwittingly done to myself.  There is no way to undo the damage, but there are ways to heal.  One way to heal my soul is to buy myself a $3 bunch of gerbera daisies, my favorite flowers, in the empowering color red.

What have you done lately that was good for your soul?

Tuesday delights

A great day consists of the following:

• a refreshing run at Tilden Park
• an award-winning parallel-park
• sushi for dinner
• Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon

Sushi with salmon and avocado, miso soup, and chicken kara-age.

A reply!

So remember I sent out a bunch of letters a while ago?

I got one physical reply!

My friend Dana wrote his letter (in his usual scrawl that’s mostly capital letters and written with a black felt pen) on the back of a ripped-out photo:

How creative is that??

And what makes it more awesome is the photo is of ME!  Those are my feet and my fingers.

Day made.  That is all.