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The coffee has been microwaved; Hopefully, its the coffee from yesterday and not the day before. The chai cardamon cupcake was supposed to be last nights dessert is todays sugary treat,  It’s dark in the kitchen except for a circle of light radiating from the stove. The kitten yowls through the house begging for attention.

Despite nearing the hour of seven, the inky darkness outside masquerades as an early time.  The heater rumbles on ; if you strain your ears you can hear church bells.

This year we tried  for a non traditional holiday and opted out of all gift buying and gift giving.   As of 12/1  we relocated the household and the event left us feel wallet poor, and belonging rich.   We decided no gifts would be done for anyone beyond the 15 year old and the  6 year old who will get hers in January after her arrival.  There was no Christmas tree, there were no stockings hung by the fire.  Even my typical cookie extravaganza was ratcheted down a  notch as I only made 2 kinds.     A family dinner was held with Aron’s parents joining us   and that was about the extent of the celebration.

To be honest, it was much harder then i thought it would be.  Holiday cards made it out , and on Monday I ventured into the mall. (er maul) I felt the consumerism grab me by the nape of the neck and tell me  what a bad girlfriend I was for not buying everyone something that they didn’t need.  After all, doesn’t  Leah need lip gloss? Doesn’t Patrick need a blanket? Jasmine a new game? Aron a  book? 

I was overwhelmed ducking through the mall watching people buying package after package,  and I wondered, would it all make a difference? Would that lipgloss bought for Leah let her know how much I love her? Would Aron’s book let him know how I enjoy quiet time with him? Would the blanket let Patrick know that I’m pleased at the cozy place he holds in my life? Would a game show Jasmine that I think she’s a kick ass teenager? Of course not. Sometimes its hard to say the words, sometimes its hard to convey how you really feel. I’m pretty certain that adding to my credit card bill is not going to help that though.

Then it came time for dinner yesterday. We cooked, we ate, listened to music, talked with family and just generally relaxed. In the end, it all made sense. Sure I drove folks crazy with the chipmunks and a Cabbage Patch Christmas. Sure Aron was nervous about his family coming over. Leah was a little sore from PMS,  but in the end  it was all satisfying to have 9 of us around the dinner table.

I dont know if we’ll continue to cancel Christmas in the future. I do know that I’ll be more conscious about my purchases though, after all the good feeling for the holidays comes from our family not our pocketbooks.

I try to think of the environmental impact my choices  have. We’ve switched to florescent lights at home, I recycle, and I commute by bus or foot  the majority of the time. I have one downfall though, and thats paper.

1. I love blank notebooks.
I love decorative notebooks, and  utilitiarian notebooks. I love moleskins and mead
i have boxes of  notebooks at home I have notebooks too nice to use, and ones too flimsy to carry. I have ones too small to be practical and too big to be usable. i crave for more. At any bookstore you can find me petting and  poking the notebook selection, convincing myself of my need of another.

2. I love Stationary
From Notecards to Stationary Sets  from postcards to post-it notes . I love stationary cute and functional please! Daiso  is my current  downfall. Cute Japanese stationary. What more do you need?  I send letters occasionally. I like sending cards and writing to people far away even when they dont write back. Yet the paper supply always outweighs the demand.

3. I love magazines.
This is my biggest downfall.
 I love purchasing a small 200 page glossy photo’d tome and then spending time drooling over the pages. Sometimes its gardening advice, sometimes its knitting, but most of the time its a cooking magazine or three.

I always buy Cooking Light, Eating Well
Regularly I buy  Everyday Food, Gourmet,  Fine Cooking , Cooks Illustrated.
Sometimes I buy Martha Stewart Living, Food and Wine,  Vegetarian Times, BBB Good Food, Olive.
Occasionally I buy others. Sometimes its the German language cooking magazines. sometimes its the Italian ones.    Sometimes its the local pacific NW magazine, sometimes its the Weight Watchers magazines.

And those are only the cooking  mags.  We can’t forget the knitting magazines, the sewing magazines. the housewifey magazines and so on.
There are months I’ll go crazy 6, 8 sometimes even 10 magazines purchashed. At anywhere frmo 3.99 to 8.99 a pop that adds up. I take them home, take them to lunch take them to bed, I read them flipping back and forth. Then the month passes and I get new ones.  The old ones get tucked away under the bed, on my bookshelves,  in the closet. A little bit of everywhere . They stack up. They fill boxes, they get pulled out read, used and enjoyed. Yet they overwhelm me I feel like i should discard them, they are quite a bit of baggage to be carrying around. I feel like I should lighten the load and recycle them. Yet I pull them out and see the promise in their glossy pages. I  see the price on the front I add up how much this towering pile of paper has cost me. then I set them back in their boxes, realizing the cost of these and  feeling inexplicably tied to them Unlike books they are worth nothing used to anyone but me.

I’m catching up on Yelps. I’m at 98 reviews now and am saving 100 for a particular event happening on the 28th. in the meantime here is where I have been.

 Pochi bubble tea

Guacanos Tacos

Malabar Restaruant

Medieval Women’s Choir

Uncle Elizabeths

The Byzantion

This may surprise you , as I strive to be ethical in all of my relationships, but I am in a don’t ask don’t tell relationship. This is one of those relationships where  one partner peruses  outside relationships with the  permission of the other partner as long as they  do not tell their partner what happened, who it was with or any other detail.

In a way it’s like saying Yes it’s ok to cheat just hide it from me.

I prefer all of my relationships to be open and crystal clear in regards to whats going on with whom.   Unfortunately, my this partner  feels differently.  She understands that there are others out there that i like to snuggle and pet, that they may reciprocate my feelings with a lick or a rub.  She wants me to come home to her clean , no  tell tale hair, no scent lingering on my person. She wants to believe she is the only one in my life.

Of course this only sends me out to the world eagerly seeking others to enjoy. I’m a slut . I stop on street corners to get sniffed, i kneel down in parking lots and in front of stores to give a good rub. I’ve been known to get a puppy all excited with rubs and scratches. then leave them waiting for their owner

Puppy? Yes Puppy. Tiffa is a demanding cat. She does not approve of dogs  nor of any other mammalian beast that make take my attention away from her. While none of the other cats in the world could usurp her kitten princess spot in my heart she  steadfastly refuses to hear about them. She does not want to  acknowledge even the smallest hint that there could be another   animal that could steal even a fraction of my attention.

So I pet the puppies and make sure to wash my hands well before i go home.