Since it’s the end of the year I thought I would take a look at how it went for me, and what things have changed or just been interesting. No particular order here, just as I think of them.

1. Sold my car and didn’t replace it.
   My husband and I now share a car, which has worked amazingly well. It’s not as hard to be a one car family as most think when one of the people works at home.
2. One of my sisters got married.
3. My grandmother died.
4. My sister-in-law had a son.
5. Took the kids to see snow for the first time.
6. My daughter started kindergarten.
7. My daughter lost her first tooth.
8. My sisters and I painted our mother’s house for a birthday present
9. I started In Mother Words to allow other parents to share funny parenting stories.
10. My son started speech therapy.
11. Took my daughter to Disneyland for the first time.
12. We had to deal with frozen pipes
    In the San Diego area, this is particularly exceptional. I’ve never had to deal with frozen pipes before in my life, and last January we had them twice!
13. My cell phone survived being dunked in a sink full of water by my son, while powered on.

It’s been a fun year, all in all.

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1. Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. - Anonymous
2. The problem with winter sports is that - follow me closely here - they generally take place in winter. - Dave Barry
3. Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do - or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. - Stanley Crawford
4. I was just thinking, if it is really religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheists in the wintertime. - Will Rogers
5. Winter is nature’s way of saying, “Up yours.” - Robert Byrne
6. Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look what they can do when they stick together. - Vesta M. Kelly
7. To shorten winter, borrow some money due in spring. - W. J. Vogel
8. There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think what to do with the long winter evenings. - Quentin Crisp
9. Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face. - Victor Hugo
10. I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood. - Bill Watterson
11. If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. - Anne Bradstreet
12. Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
13. One kind word can warm three winter months. - Japanese Proverb

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Eep! Christmas is getting really, really close and I’m not ready!

1. Buying the kids’ presents.
   I’d be done with this except we have to do the shopping this time for the presents from my inlaws. Considering we’re also currently working on decreasing the total number of toys and the kids have plenty of clothes, this is tough.
2. Decreasing the number of toys.
   Been meeting some rather natural resistance on this one from my daughter but I think she finally is getting the idea that if I have to do it alone she will lose more toys than if she helps. It’s slow having her help but a very good lesson.
3. Putting up the Advent calendar.
   Not sure why this one keeps slipping.
4. Getting the house ready for company.
   I get to host Christmas dinner this year for the locals, and my mom gets the big dinner when everyone else finally gets into town a couple days later. I am SO not ready.
5. Planning Christmas dinner.
   Have to start plotting with the locals to see who’s bringing what.
6. Finding a gift for my husband.
   I have a bit of stuff but I need to finish.
7. Putting up the Christmas tree.
   This, at least, is deliberate. Our living room is too small to have it up the entire season. But this weekend or next at the absolute latest it needs to be put up.
8. Putting up outdoor decorations.
   We bought them, but they’re still in boxes. No lights since we don’t have an easy way to plug them in out there. We have plastic decorations we’re going to hang. Not as pretty at night, but should look nice during the day.
9. Feeling like it’s Christmas.
   It just seems too soon!
10. Posting on my sites.
    No, doesn’t really have anything to do with Christmas, but all the running around for Christmas is making it harder to keep up with my regular schedule. Oh well. All in a good cause.
11. Making raspberry chocolates.
    This one is going to be a surprise for the family gathering. Not even my husband knows about it. Good thing none of them read this blog either. They’re more aware of my other sites. Then again I could be wrong and may have just blown the surprise. But I doubt it, and none of them read any of my sites regularly.
12. Being evil enough for my niece’s gift.
    I think I’m doing pretty well with it, but will it be enought? Bwhahaha!
13. Coming up with things I’m running behind on.
    Because what can I say except it’s really not all that bad.

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Yes, we’ve taken the kids to a lot of tide pools. Most of these, however, were taken either in La Jolla, California or near Haystack Rock in Oregon. It’s a lot of fun spending time watching the kids discover the various animals.

The Haystack Rock tidepools are particularly delightful. The starfish are so big and bright. You aren’t supposed to pick them up there, but they’re still a lot of fun to look at. And of course all kids seem to enjoy sea anemones once they get past being nervous about touching them.

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The BBC is reporting on a study that shows that women with curvier figures are more likely to be intelligent than women with fewer curves.

Amazing how much silliness there is in the world.

The study claims that the larger the difference between the hips and the waist, the higher the average intelligence. A part of the idea is that the fat includes more omega-3s, which are believed to good for the brain.

This study doesn’t delight me, nor does it delight many others. But it also wouldn’t surprise me if there’s some serious misinterpretation of the data coming from the BBC, as the article is very short and simple.

Quite simply, I don’t like using physical appearance and trying to correlate it with intelligence. It’s a risky game, and too often the results of one study flat out contradict another. There are a lot of highly intelligent people of all weights and figures. Even when you consider that this kind of thing is talking about averages, I find it improbable.

There’s an interesting new recommendation for how to dispose of old medications. Pour them into used kitty litter, bag it up and throw in the trash.

The old recommendation of flushing them down the toilet has environmental implications, as the impact of drugs in the water supply has been seen in fish.

My favorite part of the article:

“Ferret waste, like nearly any other form of pet waste, can be effectively used to help prevent the abuse of unused prescription drugs,” SAMHSA spokesman Mark Weber said.

This news delighted the American Ferret Association.

“The U.S. government declares ferret poop to be an effective weapon against drug abuse,” the group said in a statement.

That’s finding the positive! Then again, here in California you can’t keep ferrets. Guess the kitty litter will just have to do.

Of course people can still complain about the environmental impact of the plastic bag, but I’m guessing the drugs would break down before the plastic dissolves, and if you have a pet you may well be plastic bagging the litter already, so I don’t know that you can say there’s an added environmental impact. And while I could be wrong about the breakdown time of the drug, something does have to be done with old medications.

But if you want to take the time, I understand many pharmacists will take back old medications and dispose of them for you. Certainly worth asking about at your local pharmacy.

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