As you know if you have been reading awhile, one of my hobbies is Postcrossing: I send postcards all over the world, and postcards from all over the world come to me. Very pleasing hobby. I recommend it. Unless you don’t particularly like postcards, or sending them, in which case for you it will likely be a bust.

I get my supply of local scenic postcards from three places:

1) Greeting card stores. Many of them don’t carry postcards, but the Hallmark store in my town does.

2) Touristy places. I am fortunate to have a souvenir shop right around the corner from my house.

3) Airports. Whenever I visit my niece, I stock up on postcards at those little airport stores.

I supplement that supply with postcard sets and books. I live in the United States, so I don’t buy, for example, anime cards, or cards featuring French painters. I once received a New York postcard from someone living in Germany, and that was…odd, and also disappointing. So I focus on acquiring postcard sets by United States artists, or featuring United States-y stuff.

Cowgirls: Women of the Wild West postcards (photo from Amazon.com). Surely cows need to be moved around in other countries as well, but I think of cowboys and cowgirls as purely United States American. I love this set of 30 cards (all different): it has posed portraits as well as candid performance shots, and also illustrations, posters, and pin-ups.
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I started a diet this week, so I’m likely to be A BIT CRABBY for the next month or two. My motivation is a combination of health (my knees hurt), vanity (underchin and tum areas), and economy (I have perfectly nice clothes in a perfectly obtainable size).

I find that the various woes of dieting need to be balanced with fun stuff, or else the situation is too dismal to work. The best is to have a new fun diet to try, but I have some other ways to decrease the dismal:

1. A New Motto. I’ve liked “It’s worth it,” “This is what YOU WANT,” and of course various mental images of outfits and bathing suits and whatnot. In the Garfield-poster ’80s I think it was “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips.”

2. A Pretty New Whining Journal.

Provence Journal (photo from Amazon.com)

Keep Calm and Carry On Journal (photo from Amazon.com)

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One of my New Year’s resolutions was to learn to spell the word calendar.

Yes.  Yes, thank you, Amazon.com, I did mean calendars.  I have two more days to learn it, so BACK OFF.

Choosing the New Calendar is fun enough for me that I start thinking of it with pleasant anticipation BEFORE Christmas, as in “Soon Christmas will be over and I can choose the new calendar!”  I go to a big bookstore like Barnes & Noble, and I go through all the calendars and choose a likely armful, usually about ten.  Then I find a quiet place to dither.
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It is time once again for a post on teacher gifts.

I am sighing a little sigh as I begin, because it seems like every time we do a post on this subject we get a few teachers who are depressingly eager to make sure we know they throw away all baked goods (who knows how disgusting the students’ houses are?), or that they don’t want any more “useless crap,” or that really the only thing a teacher wants is cash for putting up with your nasty child. Well, and happy holidays to YOU too.

I am going on the assumption that it is a minority of teachers who feel this way, and that the majority
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It seems wrong to look forward to Breast Cancer Awareness Month just because of all the pink stuff, but THERE IT IS. Breast Cancer Awareness has done a really good job of getting a ton of fun pink fundraising products on the market. For those of us who would buy pink stuff ANYWAY, it’s awesome pink riches—and a nice way to donate a little money here and there.

I was reading Lora’s post about cervical cancer and how it doesn’t get quite the parade breast cancer does. Uterine and ovarian cancer get left in the shadows, too. I’m guessing it’s because you can check yourself for breast cancer so it’s a good idea to make everyone aware of it. Other kinds, it’s more like Annual GYN Office Visit Awareness.

But it’s also a SHOPPING problem: I looked around and there are sites for the non-breast forms of Girl Cancer awareness, but they don’t SELL STUFF. If I can’t buy a pencil or a t-shirt for it, I’m not as aware, is my feeling about it.

Luckily, places like Etsy and CafePress step in where non-profits forget to tread.
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We have family in town this week, specifically ONE family member, specifically my mother-in-law. I’ve been trying to think of some fun shopping-type things to post about here, but it feels like I’m attempting to surf the online stores while clinging to a piece of shipwreck: I am a little distracted by the SHARKS nibbling my TOES.

Some of us have lovely, lovely family members who are a joy to be around, but it seems like most of us have at least SOME family members who drive us batcrap crazy. Surely we can combine forces on this—if not to drive all those family members into a barbed-wire enclosure, at least to make their visits more bearable. I will share my tips with you if you will share yours with me.
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I’m going on a flight this week to see my baby niece, and I am super looking forward to it. Not just because my niece is 6 months old and thus fully ripe for cheek-kissing and tum-nomming, but also because a flight means TIME BY MYSELF.  Here’s what I’m bringing with me for this lovely, lovely time:

Dove Milk Chocolate Almond Promises.  Uh muh guh, these are so yum.  They have little tiny bits of almond in them instead of big huge chunks, so not only is the almond more evenly distributed throughout the chocolate, it’s like having someone else chew it for you!

I’m also bringing apples and pecans, because OMG with the “Please Do Not Feed the Passengers” thing airlines are doing.  Also:  dental floss.
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It is summer. Some of us work from home and may want to call upon “the babysitter” to help us us get through the long days with all the children in the house. Here’s what we’re watching at our house basically all day every day when the need arises:

Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends is a favorite of my 10-year-old and 8-year-old. It includes plenty of all the things they find funny: bullies showing themselves to be stupid and ugly, prat falls, crazy-looking creatures, plans going comically awry, pranks, spitting, insult humor, burping, jokes, everyone saying everything in a screamy hysterical voice. …Come to think of it, I don’t recommend this one. Never mind.
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This is the spider plant that dominates the living room.  Back when my oldest child was in preschool, his class went on a field trip to a greenhouse.  Each child was given a baby spider plant.  I didn’t try real hard not to kill it:  I don’t like spider plants.  Of course it is thriving, and has thrivened for years, and when I am an incapacitated invalid it will be moved to my hospital bedside because my caretakers will imagine that such an old and healthy plant must be special to me.
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I have cheap tastes.  If you’re coming down off the more expensive stuff, I have some recommendations.

I used to work with a couple of girls who were chocolate connoisseurs. They didn’t consider it chocolate unless it was a bar of squished cacao beans imported overnight from Belgium.  Lucky, lucky me, loving Hershey’s and Dove and Russell Stover.  I especially like the Hershey’s Symphony bars.  If you prefer dark chocolate, try the Dove dark Promises.  MMMmmmm.
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