Thanksgiving - the anti "holiday"

This is a rant in disguise. I'm not ranting about pumpkin pie and stuffing - it's the Holidays I want to rant about.

I love Thanksgiving. No greeting cards. No music piped into your eardrums until your brain melts - music that would be pleasant once or twice, but I simply can't listen to jingle bell rock seven times a day without getting a little crazed. Thanksgiving comes without trees to haul home, decorate, undecorate and dispose of (how Green is that?), pine needles lingering under the sofa for another month. Thanksgiving comes without bumper to bumper traffic lurching through the parking lot at the grocery store for an entire month, and hot, cranky long lines for the simplest errand.

I've never understood why American culture feels compelled to take three and a half weeks at the start of winter to send cards to everyone they've ever known, photograph the entire family, attend parties with every group with which they associate, cook elaborate meals after making batches of cookies and buy gifts for everyone they feel connected to. And those gifts must be special - they must communicate everything you've forgotten to say all year long.

When you're a parent, the pressure builds ... the Christmas magic fades as children grow older, maintaining the "excitement" created when they were toddlers becomes increasingly difficult. Inevitably, they learn that Christmas is disappointing. Somehow it's not the same thrill to unstuff a stocking at the jaded age of fourteen as it was at age four.

Thanksgiving is four long days of nothing but eating, catching up with family, sleeping and reading. No ribbon, no plum pudding flaming on the table, and no frenzied buildup. Throw a turkey in the oven, open a bottle of wine and relax - you're going to need it.

Happy Thanksgiving.

It's hard to be green.

I want to be green, I really do. I re-cycle newspapers, plastic, glass. I minimize car trips to save gas, although no hybrid vehicle yet, maybe the next time. Plastic containers, not baggies, a canvas lunch bag.

My company's been green and is now getting greener, consolidating servers, turning off monitors when we're not in the office, ramping up recycling programs.

But like Kermit the frog crooned, it's hard being green.

Which takes me to my rant today. The new plastic bottles from a bottled water company that will remain nameless. I'm reluctant to use plastic bottles and when I work from home, I don't. I refill glasses with filtered water from the tap. I should carry a refillable plastic bottle to work, I know, I know, but despite careful washing, they always end up tasting kinda funky. So, when I go into the office, I bring my plastic bottles.

And these new bottles are stealth water ballons. The plastic is so thin, it's impossible, okay very difficult unless one is completely present in the moment, to unscrew the cap without putting pressure on the absurdly thin, ridiculously soft plastic, and thus ending up with a splash in the face, or down the arm, or the center of one's shirt. I can't drink filtered water without mumbling curses? Why? If the plastic is recycled, why do they have to make this thin, nearly plastic-bag like consistency? I despise them. Oh, the bottles have a handy indentation now for improved gripping? Just try it, I dare you, grip the indentation and unscrew the sealed cap - see what happens.

And now that I've written this, and articulated all my excuses for why I'm even using disposable plastic bottles, I guess I've proven I'm not so green after all.

Kermit is right.

I've Caved

After puzzling for years over the question, who has time to read all these rambling opinions, complaints, stories and journals - the endless stream of consciousness digitized?

Why am I blogging? Well, because I'm a writer, I guess. And along the twisting road of publishing on paper, I've become impatient or maybe curious about branching out. The freedom of writing without the editorial voice, ending that last sentence in a preposition, for example. Heck, I can sit down and type out every irritating and interesting and absurd event that pops up during the month.

What's the most irritating thing on my mind today? Air horns at high school graduations. I went to my nephew's high school graduation last night and had the inevitible idiot plasting his little horn because ...? Why? He can't articulate his excitement, clapping is too subtle for the 21st century, impossible to make it heard above the cacophony of reality TV, traffic, music plugged into our ears and cell phones ringing everywhere from the stall in the public restroom to the once tranquil bookstore?

So he blows his blasted horn in my ear, making my nerves twitch, my head ache and my ear go numb. And I want to punch him. Or at least confiscate his obnoxious toy.

I complain about this to my brother-in-law and my father and am hooted and teased into silence. "My liberal daughter wants to restrict someone's freedom of expression?!" Well, yes.

My ear still feels full of cotton balls the day after.