But Call Me Betsy

Did you ever have one of those days where you spend half your time putting off the things that you know you need to do? Or are you like me and those days are every day; this Scarlett O'Hara mantra playing out again and again, "I'll think about that tomorrow..." That is how I am about some of the promises I make to myself, like eating better, exercising, responding to emails right away, pursuing my life's dreams, etc.  This blog, for instance. I keep telling myself that I need to do a post, and then I go read an article about procrastination. For real, because I just found this blog called Life Hack that is rife with lists of ways to improve your life or things to avoid or ways to be happy. And a part of me hopes that if I read enough of those articles, one or two if the ideas will stick. At the same time, it reminds me of this article from The Onion that reads "Man has life changing epiphany and forgets it on the ride home."  No matter how many inspira...

We don't often go to the movies, and when we do, I almost always get to pick what we see and Dan goes along for the ride. The last few times, I've chosen movies that are too long and ultimately dissatisfying. The one before Gone Girl was the Tom Cruise blockbuster where he keeps having to live the day over and over, an action packed version of Groundhog Day , minus any attempts at humor or logic. We didn't hate that one--but it was another in a long line of what I call dick flicks, where the cast includes hundreds of men and two women. In this case, the two women neatly fell into the mother/whore dichotomy. One was the mommy of the evil doer and the other was a lovable prostitute. There may have been a third who was a little stronger--the main ninja trainer or whomever, but ends up not being quite as smart or wily as TC, and I think he gets to save her in the end. There's this thing called the Bechdel Test developed by a woman comic where the movie isn't totall...

Dan's mom visited last weekend, and she and I went to West Elm, because we both felt we were in need of more things to make our lives complete. In my case, I was looking for decorative pillow cases. I told myself that I could not actually buy yet another throw pillow (we have a dozen), but I could buy a cover. But then I saw a pillow that completely matched the other two I got at West Elm a few months ago (go figure). It had a tag on it that read $34 and another that read $12. This made me think that the pillow was on sale for $12, in part because the helpful worker told me that though the insides of the pillow weren't included in the price, they also weren't that expensive. Imagine my surprise when I checked out to discover that not only was the pillow not on sale, the cover itself was $34 and the stuffing was $12, bringing this impulse buy to $46 plus take for something you can't even really rest your head on. He gave me a chance to reconsider, but I still mistakenly ...