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Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Am I a hippie?

Veronica did an awesome post about whether she's a hippie or not and I thought I'd do one too because I'm nothing if not a perpetuator of blog memes. Which this isn't. Yet. But maybe with MY HELP, it will be! Who knows? Ahem. To continue:

IS RACHEL A HIPPIE?

Pro:

1. I compost.
2. I have a vegetable garden that's bigger than my house.
3. I homeschool my kids.
4. I don't trust the government.
5. I breastfed my two children for a total of three and a half years, including one child who was old enough not only to ask for it by her own special name for it ("zurse!"), but who, one time when she asked to ZURSE and I told her she needed to eat something and asked (rhetorically, I thought) what she would like to eat, pondered for a second and then said, "A mambinger. And fwies."
6. I used cloth diapers with one of my kids.
7. If I wear skirts, which I usually don't, they must reach my ankles and give me adequate room to move.
8. I only wear makeup maybe fifteen times a year.
9. I hang my clothes on the line to dry.
10. My hair is long and straight, never hairsprayed, never blown dry. (Well, I cannot lie; in the year and a half I've lived in this house, I've used the blow dryer one time.)

Con:

1. My two-year-old daughter once asked for a mambinger and fwies. Come ON.
   
2. I eat meat every day, sometimes more than once.
   
3. My children are current on all their vaccinations.
   
4. I used disposable diapers with one of my kids.
   
5. I have never used recreational drugs.
   
6. I voted for Bush. Twice.
   
7. I remove excess unwanted body hair.
   
8. I am an ardent supporter of military veterans, military spending, military awesomeness, and generally of blowing up bad guys who try to kill us.
   
9. I also have a Gadsden flag flying in my front yard.
   
10. If I am going to protest about social policy, it's probable that the people against whom I am protesting will be hippies.
    
11. One of the many reasons I homeschool my kids is that I think the school system is too liberal.
    
12. I do not like tie-dye.
    
13. I do not care if my food is grown "organically", and I put that in quotes because I am really annoyed by the way a perfectly good word was co-opted by a food trend.
    
14. I really am much more Backwoods Home than Mother Earth News.
    
15. Reading Ronald Reagan quotes or, even more, watching footage of his speeches, makes me get all misty-eyed.
    
16. I am a really good shot with a rifle.
    
17. My favorite line from a Clint Eastwood movie is "Shut your face, hippie," and I think my kids could quote that before they knew their own middle names.
    

So the final verdict seems to be that I am an antihippie in hippie clothing. Why am I not surprised by this?

Now it's your turn. Are you a hippie? I am on the EDGE OF MY SEAT waiting to find out.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

25 random-ish things about me

Because it was there. (hi, by the way. Garden is mostly fine. Summer is hot. I am a rollerskating maniac. T has been gone three out of the last five weeks. I have at least three abandoned blog posts on my desktop. Also: am totally lame.)

1. Some things I like: Owls. Waterwheels. Windmills. Chickens. Reptiles.

2. Some things I dislike: Turkey mullein. Blowing dust. Insulting jokes. Faithless film adaptations of novels*.

3. I recently took up roller skating (OK, so I've been twice in ten days and I'm going again this next week) with my daughter and my niece. Before last Friday, I hadn't skated since approximately 1989. We are having SO MUCH FUN.

4. I am sad that Twitter and Facebook have killed my blog and I frequently resolve to Do Something About It. But then I don't.

5. I sometimes freak out and just KNOW that I am failing as a parent. Recently this has been because my daughter is becoming concerned about her weight. Maybe it's just part of being a woman, to always think you need to lose weight. But if it is, that sucks. I am sorry, daughter, to have been careless about allowing my body issues to become your body issues by osmosis. I did not want that to happen.

6. I am a mediocre housekeeper, as a rule (laundry and clutter are my dual nemeses), but I'm good at getting stuff done outside and I like special projects like cleaning out the fridge and canning stuff.

7. Things I look for at yard sales: Books. Canning jars. Cast iron cookware. Knitting stuff. Lately: exercise equipment.

8. I have never truly lived the life of a single adult. By the time I was nineteen I was engaged. All of my actual singlehood experience occurred during and just after high school, which hardly counts. So single women, please disregard my advice because I have NO CLUE what I'm talking about.

9. I say "I have NO CLUE" very, very often.

10. I love filling in forms, especially by hand. Buying a house ALMOST cured of me of this but not quite.

11. Skills I possess: Canning. Reading. Studying hard. Mathematics. Cable knitting. Teaching.

12. Skills I lack: Confrontation. Drawing. Anything having to do with social interaction. Writing fiction.

13: Things I miss doing: Making music. Going for walks in town. Riding horseback. Living in the middle of nowhere.

14: Top 10 most-played songs in my iTunes library:

1. "Glittering Clouds (Locusts)" by Imogen Heap
   
2. "1-2-3 Go!" by Belanova
   
3. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg, performed by the Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra. (Oh my gosh, watching that video - that is not the orchestra that performs the version I own, btw - makes me want to be in an orchestra RIGHT NOW.)
   
4. "New Soul" by Yael Naim
   
5. "Calling You" by Blue October
   
6. "Music Box" by Regina Spektor (you know, the only reason this one has more plays than "Fidelity" or "On The Radio" is because while I'll sometimes skip those songs if my son's in the car and he asks very nicely, I'll never pass up the opportunity to torment him with "Music Box". Regina Spektor's unique style is on full display in this song, and it's not for everyone, especially 13-year-old boys who sometimes need a little lesson in whose iPod is this, anyway.)
   
7. "Congratulations" by Blue October and Imogen Heap
   
8. "You are Goodbye" by Holly Conlan
   
9. "Blessed Be Your Name" by Matt Redman
   
10. "White & Nerdy" by "Weird" Al Yankovic
    

(compiling all the links for that list took a REALLY long time. You're welcome. Also, this represents the number of plays over about a six-month period -- I reset all my playcounts periodically if I get a lot of new music, so it gets a fair shot at the top 50 -- and so might not be accurate as far as what gets heavy rotation right now.)

15. Many of the things I do would be considered "green" or otherwise granola-ish (recycling, hanging clothes on the line, using cloth diapers -- well, with one kid anyway -- reusing everything I can, avoiding waste, growing a garden, keeping animals), but I actually do these things for reasons having to do with self-reliance, sustainability, and frugality. It's fine with me if the environment is better off as well, but that's certainly not my focus.

16. My memory is so faulty nowadays that I sometimes worry seriously about myself. (Vascular dementia? Multiple sclerosis?) Stuff will happen, and then even just a few hours later I will not be able to remember details until my daughter -- who is very handy for stuff like this -- reminds me when I ask her to. The distressing thing is that I used to have a phenomenal memory.

17. Things to which I am possibly unhealthily addicted: Diet cola. Facebook and Twitter. Reading into the wee hours.

18. I really, really, really need to get some regular exercise. I'm not obese (although I'm overweight) but I am badly out of shape.

19. I am not allergic to anything.

20. I have an appalling appetite. If unchecked, it's truly staggering in its scope. So unladylike of me.

21. I am an staunch advocate of breastfeeding, and of extended breastfeeding in particular.

22. My house, my car, and my older brother all date from the same year.

23. I was an adult before I knew that "Another One Bites the Dust" was a Queen song.

24. My biggest faults: Knowitallism. Laundry laziness. Overtalkativeness.

25. I was the California state elementary-school spelling champion in 1987. The winning words were "simoom" and "frondescence". It was my fifteen minutes of (local) fame.

*with a few notable exceptions. Mansfield Park, I am looking at you.