Slice of Pink

Red Balloon

I attended a convention over the weekend in Fresno and somehow ended up at a place called John's Incredible Pizza. This place--an astoundingly tacky and overpriced pizza buffet--had about 11 million kids running wild and offered a variety of buffet items clearly geared toward people under the age of eight, from a macaroni and cheese pizza to green cake.

Because a group of friends were eating at the place, Lauren and I ended up at Incredible Pizza (using the term incredible rather loosely here and certainly not to describe the cuisine). There we were, pulling out our credit cards for unlimited slices of pepperoni. Did I mention our "friends"? They are 13.

The cashier (or, rather, the gatekeeper to the pizza extravaganza) rung up my $11 entry ticket and tried to up-sell me some sort of pizza membership--a one time $5 fee that included game tokens and other perks that I'm sure she would have described in great detail had I not cut her off.

"No, thanks," I answered, deadpan and vacant. "I don't live here and I will probably never be back. But we will take a heart balloon from the clown."

The waitress, probably sensing my lack of enthusiasm for the $11 pizza buffet, threw in the heart ballon for free.

Totally worth the $11.

Pink Socks

Of course I love the Mutts comic strip. A black cat in love with a little pink sock? That's about the CUTEST THING EVER in my world.

There's also this special little book by Patrick McDonnell. I had completely forgotten about it, but our recent chat about gift giving reminded me about this wonderful little story, The Gift of Nothing.

Mooch the cat desperately wants to find a gift for his friend Earl the dog, but Earl already has everything. "What do you give a guy who has everything?" Mooch wonders. The answer, of course, is nothing!

It is a wonderful story, with sweet illustrations that you can peek at here. It's deceptively simple, however, because the books packs a powerful message about how the real gifts in our lives are not tangible things that you can wrap in a box and tie with a bow. This Christmas maybe you want to give The Gift of Nothing. Or pink socks. You could always go with pink socks.

What Would Bloggers Do?

Will and I are not big fans of Christmas. We like the holiday decorations and the gatherings, of course, not to mention the food, friends, and family, but we hate the consumerism of the whole deal. We hate the way that Christmas is so much about the presents and so little about the things that should really matter.

The funny thing is, we aren't even religious. I'd say we border on the least religious among our families and, yet, throughout the month of December, I feel like getting out my soapbox and asking the people around us the ever-important question: What Would Jesus Do? I don't read the Bible. I don't go to church. Honestly, I am not exactly sure what Jesus would do, but I'll bet he wouldn't be using his Amex down at Bath and Body Works.

Two years ago, Will and I donated half of our Christmas budget to Heifer, an organization that provides animals to people in poverty around the world. With the other half of the budget, we bought regular, run of the mill presents--mittens, perfume, coffee mugs. Last year, we bought everyone a book and donated the rest of the money to Reading is Fundamental, a charity that delivers books and literacy resources to poor families.

This year, as you all know because I complain about it incessantly, I am a student. Which means I am poor. So, this year it will have to be one or the other--the donation to charity or the regular old gifts.

It seems an easy choice. What would Jesus do? He'd donate the money to charity. But there are some people in my family--people who I love--who would rather get a $20 gift than have a donation made in their name to help somebody in need. I know this because they say so. I know this because for years--this year included--I have suggested that we all just do something nice for somebody else and they have rejected this idea in favor of presents under the tree. These people I refer to, they aren't the people who read this blog, although at this very moment, I kinda wish they did. Because, seriously? That makes no sense. We are talking about a bunch of $20 gifts that, when added up, could make a real difference in somebody's life. But these people? They want that Cherry Blossom Body Mist! They want the matching Old Navy fleeces! I've got two dozen extended family members to buy gifts for and I need your help.

As far as I can tell, I have three options, unless y'all can come up with something better. The options are:

a) Gifts
b) Charity
c) Convert to Judaism

Bloggers, I know y'all are bursting with great ideas and opinions. What do you think? Learn the dreidel song? Buy everyone a copy of Giving? Maybe you know of a gift that is also charitable. Bonus points if you can think of something thematic, charitable, and gifty that everyone on my list will enjoy and that I will feel at least semi-good about paying interest on for the next three months.

(And, no, I will not be making any handmade gifts. I know that is what you are thinking--handmade gifts are the answer, right? The thing is, I have finals until December 21 so crafting is absolutely out of the question. I can't drop my contracts reading to knit 25 darling caps--although, trust me, I wish I could.)

Or, maybe I should just buy two cases of wine? One for the family, one for me.

Easy Being Green

I joined Blog Action Day because I care about the environment. Maybe not in the way that Al Gore cares about the environment, but certainly enough to post something about it here.

Here are a few of things we do to help the environment, from this list:

Use CFC light bulbs
One of the first things we did when we moved into our apartment was replace all the old bulbs with those cute, swirly, compact fluorescent bulbs.

Use cloth shopping bags
We used to be very good about this, although we can't seem to find our canvas bags anywhere. I suspect they are still packed in a box in our office. In the meantime, we have been reusing the plastic bags as bicycle seat covers for when it rains or after the sprinklers have watered the plants near the bike rack.

Try cycling
This is probably the highest impact thing we do. The poor car, it just sits in the carport and maybe gets to go for a ride to Target or Ikea on Saturday, if it's lucky.

Use your oven less
I've used the oven once in eight weeks. How's that for helping the environment?

Take shorter showers
I'm a law student. I'm lucky to get a shower at all.

Will and I try to make choices that are friendly to the earth, but we could certainly do more. I'm sure all of us could do more, don't you agree? Like, we could all move into Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, for instance. Or, at least we could go find those canvas bags for next week's trip to the grocery store. I think I'll get on that this afternoon.

Day Twenty Two

It took us 22 days, but we finally did it.

Today Will actually unplugged the television in our hotel room.

There's a limited amount of Survivorman that a person can watch and we have officially reached our limit.

Public Service Announcement

I will probably get kicked out of Southern California for admitting this to you, but I absolutely hate tanning. I hate sitting on a towel at the beach. I hate slathering up in baby oil by the pool. I hate tanning salons. I have been blessed with easy-to-tan skin, but every time I try to go bronze it up by the pool, I'm back inside within 5 minutes. I just don’t like being baked.

Today, a group of my summer school students were discussing their junior high physical education teacher. Overhearing her name, and recognizing her as my physical education teacher 14 years ago, I jumped into the conversation. The teacher must have in her early twenties when I was a junior high student and she was beautiful. She had shiny hair, a petite figure, and a great tan from hanging out on the junior high softball field day after day. But ten years later--the time when my students had her--she had become weathered and wrinkled and had taken to wearing a giant straw rather than the cute ponytail I remember, undoubtedly to block the harsh rays of the sun. Except too late.

Coincidentally, I was cleaning out a drawer today and I found a photograph of myself taken with a UV camera. It was taken at the First Lady's Conference on Women and the dermatologist had been impressed with my results--barely a spot of damage or infection could be found. The photo isn't lovely, in fact it is pretty weird and unattractive, but here it is:

The bad stuff, which you can't see on me because I use SPF 15 on my face every single day, is indicated by dark, visible spotting or freckling. Bright white spots indicate scary infection. The cameras do not exaggerate normally visible freckles; they penetrate 2 millimeters under the skin to the place where sun damage lurks. If current trends continue, one in five Americans will develop skin cancer, and it seems to me that dermatologists should be using these cameras like crazy to scare all sorts of people into purchasing Coppertone 50 in bulk at Costco.

I might be kicked out of Southern California for saying this, but the sun ain't fun if you ain't wearing the SPF. And, anyway, So Cal can kick me out because, baby, I’ve already got one foot out the door.

Taking a Hike

During my final quarter at UCSB, the quarter when I was completing my undergraduate honors thesis, I commuted two hours each way to Santa Barbara twice a week to meet with my professor. I had been offered a job in my hometown and it required starting in January, before the completion of my degree, so I worked three days a week and made the long commute to college the other two. Every week I would check out books on tape from the meager selection at my local library to make the commute time worthwhile.

One night--I remember this clearly--I was driving back home, down Highway 101, listening to Dr. Phil on tape. He was discussing living by design--that is, taking accountability for your life, deciding what you want, and then making it happen. Dr. Phil was taped while talking to a live audience and he asked the audience this question: "How many of you live in the town you grew up in?" By the sound of his voice I could tell that a majority of the audience had raised their hands. "What if," he asked then, "your town really sucks?"

Something about that line really stuck with me. I had just moved back home after living in two amazing cities--Santa Barbara and Washington, DC--and compared to those two place, my hometown did really suck. For me. I receive a lot of flak for wanting to move out of my hometown in the Antelope Valley--even more so now that I am actually starting to pack up my crap--and even though I definitely don't feel obligated to explain my reasons for moving, I am going to do it anyway. This is mainly for the people who can't understand why we would move, the people who think we are snobby and vainglorious, and the people who think we are AV haters. Which we are, but only because we have different values. Not better, just different.

After the jump, some of the reasons we are moving away and some of the reasons we probably won't move back.

Turtle Power

After all these years, I still have to look at the keyboard when I type because I do not put my fingers in all the right places on the keyboard and only vaguely know the location of the keys. I can only type three things really fast, without error: sliceofpink, Janet Wallace, and the password to my email. I am worried that this is going to be a problem when I get to law school.

Perhaps more blogging is the answer! And makbe I shoulf try typing here wothout lookong at the ksyboard! Think how awesome my posts will be!

This weekend we volunteered at The Painted Turtle Camp, a camp for seriously ill children. We spent the day getting the camp ready for the campers, which mainly involved cleaning and organizing. Our group was responsible for the arts and crafts room and my husband about died in sheer joy when he was assigned the task of cleaning and organizing an entire arts and crafts shelving unit. With permission to throw out things! And to reorder the entire Painted Turtle crafting system! Dream job!

All those turtles behind us are going to campers this summer and all I can say is thank goodness I wasn't in the group that has to sew all those little guys. My sewing is worse than my typing, and we all know hof that goes.

Party People

Despite the fact that I was less informed this election than I have ever been since the day I turned 18, I did my civic duty and voted after hastily researching everything on the ballot half an hour before I went to the polling place. I voted almost straight party ticket, not wanting to take any chances, and I did not vote for the things on the ballot of which I had no knowledge. I can see how people who are uninformed might vote for the person with the most famous sounding name, which also leads me to believe that my husband, William Wallace, could win an election on name recognition alone.

Will and I went to the polling place just in the nick of time tonight, mere minutes before the lady running our polling place--a lady wearing rolled up sweats and a Snoop Doggy Dogg Concert Tee--hollered out into the street, "The polls are closed! The polls are closed!" She then took down the American flag, which was identifying the polling site, and laid it on the sidewalk to roll it up. God Bless the USA.

The Kitchen Pink

How could October have passed by so quickly without my posting all kinds of fabulous pink things that donate a portion of their proceeds to finding a cure for breast cancer.

Like this adorable tea kettle from KitchenAid.

And, lucky us. There are lots more KitchenAid appliances and goodies, all fabulously pink and charitable.

Click