Savannah Lee

I found this interesting personality test online. It measures sixteen ways people might operate in the world. My results:

So I guess I'm really independent (i.e. I don't mind eating alone, which is one of the questions), and really abstract, but not terribly lively :)

Works for me.

Now go read the wonderful new blog of one of my editors, the writer and poet Bill Noble.

"Everybody deserves a chance to be happy in their life. You do too."

Still the most revolutionary words on the planet.

"And I would wish you to hell, but...I suspect the vacant, purposeless lives you both live now are hell enough already."

Keith Olbermann on Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh's cruel response to the Haitian earthquake.

Honey? Come here and tell me what I've been bitching about lately so I can put it in my blog.

...Oh, yup, the positively Bush-ian refusal to answer Helen Thomas pissed me off good and proper. Thanks.

What else? I know I've been mad about stuff, this is me after all.

What do you mean, tell them stuff I'm happy about. Happiness is a private, secret blessing. When facing outward at the world, it is our duty to focus on the stuff that's going wrong. Nobody improves by talking about what's going right. Nobody...huh? Able to figure out what's fucked up just fine all on their own? Well...of course, but see, it's still important to...You're getting a headache? Oh. OK. I'm sorry.

#

So: snow tires. I just got some this winter. I love them. I want to have their babies. Even my husband, who for the previous twenty years had staunchly maintained that snow tires make no difference whatsoever, has been forced to concede that they are in fact All That. Snow tires make me happy. Yes they do.

Candles. I just found a package of tapers that I totally forgot we had, and have been burning them ever since. Why? Because I figured out that the thing to do is lodge them in a bowl with craft sand. That fixes a problem which, for some reason, has dogged me forever: every taper holder I have ever used is either too tight or too loose. Sand, however, is just right. That makes me happy.

Knitting. Seriously, who ever knew that knitting was so fun? I like to sit in my window, watching the little chipmunks and bunnies pick through the drifting snow, and knit row after row. Those who know me will at this point be saying "Who are you and what have you done with Savannah," because I never look out the window. I never even open the curtains. Except now I do! And it makes me happy.

DanceSpirit magazine makes me happy. Know why? Because I found a copy in the waiting room of my daughter's dance school which gives you awesome instructions for how to get clean without taking a shower. The key is baby wipes. As a mom, I started laughing out loud while at the same time almost slapping myself for being so stupid. Of course! When you've just come out of a five-hour rehearsal--or you have exactly three minutes to get yourself ready for the day--you can wipe yourself down with baby wipes! How could I not have figured this out during all those diaper changes? (Oh, and sprayable dry shampoo, too. We shall have to investigate that. If such a thing could actually work with my hideously fine, thin, limp hair, it will truly be a dream come true.)

Next, if somebody could invent a set of sweats that truly does look cute while being warm and soft and comfy AND covering one's navel (i.e. you can wear it past the age of nineteen), my life would be downright complete.

So that's the Happy Report: snow tires, knitting needles, candles, faux-showers, and the prospect of The Perfect Sweats.

Now about those melting glaciers and signs of national decline...

After all, there's a 99.99999% chance that you had a Christmas virus of your own, so you really don't need to hear about the unique and exciting properties of the one that decided to get up close and personal with yours truly.

Now that I am shivering slightly less, I would like to pass on the following bits and bobs:

1) A consideration of whether reality TV ("AMERICA'S MOST CHEESE-SHAPED DADS!") is a sign of the Apocalypse, or actually an improvement, gawd help us, on what came before.

2) A Top Ten list of the most terrifyingly stupid and sinister things said in America during the past decade.

3) Something to do to take your mind off your existential despair at the above. (I finally learned how to knit right before my Christmas virus and have been clicking madly away ever since. I'm on my third scarf, and I can't even purl yet.)

4) You will need to make an entire afghan to get yourself through this one: secret detention in the USA! Gives "So I put my hands up" a whole new meaning.

5) Okay, now buy some red, white and blue yarn and celebrate the fact that despite the present darkness, the fight ain't hardly over. With these groups and individuals striving for Truth, Justice and the American Way, this generation will yet redeem the promise.

6) Enough politics. Time for some New Year's resolutions! I hereby resolve to:

--Take more hot baths
--Spend more time in Paschimottanasana
--And Ustrasana
--Did I mention baths?
--And baths.
--Eat more lentil soup
--And more cookies
--Get to all the remaining Alexander McCall Smith books on my list
--While taking hot baths
--And making a sweet god of kindly laughter.

Happy New Year.

These guys made my day.

They put on hijabs and chadors to show solidarity with an Iranian activist AND with Iranian women.

Gentlemen, I salute you.

Dear Universe,

Whose idea was it that grown people, who have to work, raise kids, take care of aging parents, manage their finances, and try to stay in good enough shape that they don't have a heart attack at forty, must also cook, clean, mow the lawn and do laundry?

I ask you.

It's estimated that Americans spend twenty hours a week maintaining their homes. That's a whole other part-time job! No. This is stupid.

I hereby declare that every home in America shall be transformed into a luxury garden condo. Every building which houses these units shall have a dining hall, a laundry service, and a housekeeping staff.

Although the mortgage/condo fee will be larger, I bet that economies of scale will mean overall savings to families who will no longer have to shop for groceries (or order in Chinese). Plus, maybe families can volunteer on cleanup or something to get a discount.

Regardless. What I'm trying to say is, it's not 1725 anymore. The DIY household no longer makes economic or time-management sense. We live in a dual-career, long-commute, over-scheduled world, yet our living arrangements cling to the fantasy that there's endless amounts of time (and money, in the case of retail groceries) to shop, cook, clean, wash, and fold. Why?

That nice, big kitchen with the granite countertops? That's not an opportunity, folks. That's a relic. That's a $50,000 chunk of cognitive dissonance.

Instead of a kitchen, we need a doorway--a doorway to the downstairs dining hall.

Besides, the best way to honor the domestic arts is to professionalize them. That's a language everyone can understand.

Family Illness Drama '09 combined with Midwestern Weather Drama '09 was enough to sandbag my blogging this week.

More life-changing decisions for my sick relative (and more procedures in his immediate future).

Ridiculous amounts of snow.

Just gotta ride it out.

(Sorry to have missed blogging yesterday. It was one of those days.)

Regular readers will know that I've been wrestling with my Myers-Briggs type.

The search is over. Extensive reading, dialogue, discussion, and road-testing in online communities have convinced me that, l'INTJ, c'est moi.

INTJ women are believed to be .5% of the population. Yep, it's us and the crickets.

Near as I can tell, INTJ women are wildly overrepresented on Teh Intarwebs, where we flock to get down with our bad logorrheic, intuitive-yet-analytical, tough-minded, secretly vulnerable and yearning selves.

What does it all mean? Not much. But it's fun :)

The New York Times asks, "Is the Spirit of Competition in the Soul of Yoga?"

To which this startled yogini can only respond, "God, I hope not."

The article reports on the yoga competitions which are springing up like mushrooms.

I'm with those who view this as a catastrophe worthy of the Apocalypse.

How well you do an asana is NOT measured by how far forward or backward you can bend. Leave that to the contortionists.

In strictly physical terms (not even touching the spiritual issues), how well you do an asana should be measured by how correctly you're moving biomechanically. The cause. Not the effect.

Here's what my teacher taught me:

If the asana comes from the right wellspring within your body, if you're nutating when you're supposed to nutate and counter-nutating when you're supposed to counter-nutate, if your psoas is doing its job and your thigh muscles are not overcompensating for everything on planet earth, then it really doesn't matter if you move two feet or two millimeters. Seriously.

I fear, however, that competitive yoga will crush that already poorly-understood fact and give people the idea that they have to hyperextend from here to Pluto.

My worst nightmare is if yoga does indeed become an Olympic sport. It will become YET ANOTHER honey-trap for perfectionistic, self-hating 15-year-old anorexics with loose joints.

Stop and think what a competitive yoga studio would be like.

ASSISTANT COACH: I saw you sneak that Skittle, Melanie. Give me twenty Sun Salutations with full Chaturanga and go weigh yourself.

MELANIE (drops dead of heart failure in the middle of Up Dog)

ASSISTANT COACH: Hey! Did I tell you to do Prone Mountain?

Seriously, people. Let's just not go there. Okay?