by Heather Plett | May 5, 2007 | google me
To the hormonal teenager who found my blog by googling fumbling her boobs, step AWAY from the computer, go find a soccer ball to kick around the backyard with your friends, and get a REAL life! You won’t find the naughty pictures you’re looking for on THIS site!
The same goes for whoever was googling skinny-dip. Believe me when I tell you, there is no web cam dangling over the sorority sisters backyard pool ANYWHERE on this site.
And if you were trying to find out how skimpy can your bathing suit be for men and women, well, that just makes me giggle. C’mon, have you SEEN my bathing suit? It would terrify you how much fabric there is. Nope. No skinny-dipping, and NO bikinis here.
As for the person trying to find Moody Manitoba Morning lyrics, well, I may have had a few mornings that feel that way now and then, but I haven’t got the lyrics committed to memory. Thanks ALOT though, for making that song (or at least the part I can remember) get stuck in my head ALL afternoon. Next thing you know, I’LL be the one up in the middle of the night trying to find the lyrics because it’s driving me stark raving mad just repeating the first line again and AGAIN. If that happens, I will blame you.
Just one more thing… if you are the person who typed it has been my long time dream to build a home studio into the Google search engine, I’m so sorry. Here you go bravely trusting your dream to the internet, hoping some genie will pop out of the bottle and make your dreams come true, and all you got was me. Bummer for you. I hope you get your studio some day. It sounds like a lovely dream.
(Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea for a post – now someone’s going to find me by googling web cam dangling over the sorority sisters backyard pool.)
by Heather Plett | May 2, 2007 | blogging
10 reasons why you may not see much of me this month:
1. Not much time to blog when soccer takes over your life.
2. Blogging and reading blogs takes up more of my time than I want it to. I feel the need to cut back. It’s all about balance.
3. I’m “fasting” from the internet (and food) every Thursday during the month of May. (If you catch me commenting on a Thursday, you have permission to slap my wrists.)
4. It’s Spring outside.
5. The Thursday fast has something to do with the big launch we’re planning for work, so my time is fairly consumed with that.
6. I’d rather be biking.
7. I haven’t submitted anything for publication for a long time. I want to sink some of my writing energy into that instead – at least for a little while.
8. I just don’t feel much like it these days.
9. I’m starting to think May is my “month of navel-gazing”. Maybe it has something to do with it being my birthday month.
10. I feel inspired by neither deep thoughts nor witticisms right now.
Who knows – I might have a change of heart tomorrow when I’m cut off from the internet and all kinds of posts come flooding through my brain. But for now, this is where I’m at.
Oh – on another note, if the generous person who anonymously left a lovely Ethiopian gabi scarf in my mailbox at church is a blog reader, then thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! I love it! I keep meaning to post a picture, but – well, there’s the soccer thing. I haven’t had time. But know this – I felt very blessed by your little gift.
And, since I don’t have a picture of myself in the gabi scarf, here’s a picture of Ephraim in Ethiopia wearing a traditional gabi. They’re usually large white blanket-like wraps made of loosely woven Ethiopian cotton and trimmed with various colours and sometimes silk fringes. They’re worn by both men and women, especially in the cool morning air in the highlands region. The scarf I got is a much smaller version. (I brought back one of the large gabis, but not a scarf, so this was an especially nice surprise.)
by Heather Plett | Apr 29, 2007 | housework
I may not have vacuumed the carpet for far too long
There may be a quarter inch layer of dust on every surface in my house
And I may not have gotten the back yard raked
But at least my fridge is clean.
There may be dried toothpaste on my bathroom counter
The ring around my bathtub may be bigger than Saturn’s
And there may be little fingerprints on the walls all the way down the hallway
But at least there are no longer apples rotting in my crisper.
The kitchen floor may have more food particles on it than it did two hours ago before I swept it
The windows may be so dirty I can barely see the streetlights
And my dining room table may be cluttered with discarded papers
But at least there are no more unrecognizable green fuzzy substances in Tupperware containers at the back of my fridge
There may be 2 baskets full of rifled-through clean clothing and a mountain of dirty clothing in my laundry room
The leaves on my plants may look grey instead of green because of the dust
And my bedroom floor may be nearly obliterated under scattered clothes, books, and other assorted things
But at least there is no more spilled soya sauce dripping down the back of my fridge.
Sometimes you just need to lower your standards.
by Heather Plett | Apr 27, 2007 | fasting, Hunger
(The last one was just a warm-up – this is the real thing.)
We’re starting a new campaign at work, and it’s primarily centred around the idea of fasting. We want to invite people to engage in the work of ending hunger by considering different kinds of fasts. This quote from Isaiah 58 is our inspiration:
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?”
According to Walter Brueggemann, fasting is ” … the disciplined withdrawal and regular retreat, in order to break the familiar linkages and dependencies and loyalties.”
Some of the ideas so far are:
Fast from Food – giving up a meal once a week, or giving up a portion of a meal (like meat)
Fast from Over-consumption – for a week a month buy nothing but absolute necessities
Fast from Faceless Food – buy only things that are locally grown or fairly traded
Fast from Speed – parking your car and walking once a week (yeah, I know this seems like more of an environmental issue, but climate change is having a huge impact on hunger, so it’s all related)
Fast from Silence – speak out about hunger, write letters to people in power, etc.
It’s a way of getting people to consider what they can do or what they can live without in order to bring more balance to the world. It is largely symbolic, because deep down we know that giving up a few meals does not directly impact the person with no food in Ethiopia (hence my question about solidarity in the last post), but I think that if more people in North America at least begin to think about their over-consumption and waste we might get somewhere. (Did you know, for example, that if everyone consumed as much as North Americans do, it would take 4 to 7 earths to sustain us all?)
I’ve already written several drafts for the material we’re producing for this (brochures, website, etc.), but now I want to write a longer background piece about why people should fast, what the benefits are, what might be accomplished, etc. That’s where you, my friendly blog readers can help. If this is something you’re interested in, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. Write whatever you want, or respond to these questions:
1. Have you ever fasted before? If so, what was your experience with it? Was it a positive experience? Did anything change as a result?
2. If you’ve fasted before, what influenced you to do so? Biblical text? Advice from a friend? Something you read?
3. Do you think “fasting” is a familiar language to people? In what context – religious or health-related?
4. I’ve mostly heard of it in a religious context, but I’d be interested in hearing from people who live mostly outside of organized religion – is it a concept you understand at least partly? Are you comfortable with it?
5. What would you consider fasting from to participate in the work of ending hunger?
Thanks! Even if you’re largely unfamiliar with fasting, I’d still welcome your comments.
by Heather Plett | Apr 26, 2007 | Thursday thirteen
1. Do we REALLY have a right to hear Alec Baldwin’s private conversation with his daughter, even if it IS shameful?
2. How do we as parents guard against this kind of icky materialism? What do I do with an eleven year old who BEGS to go to the mall because all of her friends LOVE shopping and most of them have much more money than she does?
3. Is it really necessary for my kids to practice a lock-down at school? Does a handful of shootings in the last few years REALLY warrant that kind of paranoia? Or am I just being a naive parent?
4. How can a person POSSIBLY keep her house clean when it’s Springtime outside?
5. Why is there so much disposable stuff in our culture? What will it take to wake us up and start insisting that manufacturers make stuff to last so our landfill sites don’t choke out the earth?
6. Where can I sign up for the Yann Martel book club? Will Stephen Harper really read those books? Perhaps at least the brilliantly written letters?
7. Is it better to push my girls to continue piano lessons under duress or let them quit when they want to?
8. What’s another word for solidarity that doesn’t have the same political baggage? (This is a serious question – I need it for an ad campaign at work)
9. When will my children realize that begging for things the minute I walk in the door does not usually make me want to grant their requests?
10. Why do I feel like eating ALL the time?
11. Why oh WHY did I let Marcel sign me up as a volunteer soccer coach for the Tiny Tots? Have I lost my mind?
12. When will I get a chance to take another pottery class? Or an art class? Or join a writers’ group again?
13. Why am I blogging when it is beautiful outside and I should be hanging out with my children?
