Best website for crafts

I do a lot of crafts. I sell stuff that I've sewn and designed and I'm just starting to sell lavender eye masks and potpourri sachets. I bought a bunch of supplies (dried flowers, oils etc.) from this website. Not only that, but for our wedding I ordered our centerpieces from here and they were perfect! So perfect that after we returned from Bermuda I ordered more (we left them at the resort) and ordered more so when we entertain we can add them as decoration.

Their prices seem very reasonable to me and everything has arrived in tact, and exactly as they describe.

Save on Crafts.

Happy crafting.

Respectful disagreement

These are just thoughts that I'm pondering as I trundle off to the gym today, it's bloody freezing cold in NYC today and I'm not looking forward to the gym or the post office, both things that I must do today.

In the past couple of days a friend of mine published a blog post about her belief in being pro-life and wanting to volunteer towards that purpose. If you have read any of my political posts on this blog, then you know that I hang very far to the left, if you will, and am obviously rabidly pro-choice.

It gives me pause to think about how to communicate my feelings on this subject. Not to my friends and close family- they all know how I feel and pretty much all of them are also very much pro-choice. Even my minister father is pro-choice. I grew up in the church and I know how that can affect people's personal and political beliefs. The fact that I no longer associate myself with the church is only part of a multi-faceted part of how I see the world as an adult.

(If you are or know the person whose blog started my thinking on this, I am not addressing it specifically. It just got me thinking. I am not talking about you!)

How to explain that I'm not only pro-choice but I don't really see the point in trying to deny women's rights to have a legal, safe abortions?

I mean, there are so many problems in this world - a lot of them pertaining to children who most definitely are alive and have tons of problems: poverty, abuse, poor education, poor guidance at home... feeling protective of them I can understand. But a child that doesn't even exist yet?

Nevermind that once that unwanted child DOES exist what the hell are we going to do with it? I have to research the stats again, but an overwhelming amount of people in jail have been in foster care at some point. I don't think that's a coincidence. If we save souls by not aborting them, who is going to save them once they are stuck in a home that is resentful of his/her presence or using them for their own gain?

There are people who are foster parents who rape their children, use them for drug trafficking etc. What, exactly, are we saving them for? If, in fact, you can call not aborting them, saving them.

If you want to see what I mean check out these links that show some of the current stats for Foster Care (in New York):
"Fewer Children in Foster Care, but They Stay Longer" NY Times City Blog
Child Welfare Watch
"City Slow to Act As Hope For Foster Children Fails" NY Times

And I'm not saying I buy into all of this guy's rationales, but if you're interested in potential crime/abortion ratios and "Freakenomics" check this out.

There are literally thousands of children all over the world starving to death right now. Right NOW. Dying of malnutrition and unable to receive proper medical care - in this country and in others. And we want to save more that someone doesn't even want? These tragic facts are real people, real kids who need homes and guidance to learn how to build a life so they don't end up jobless and pregnant by 18.

Our planet is overpopulated. In my nefarious fantasies I dream of the government making a law that forbids people to have over a certain number of children. I would never actually support this because it goes against my other, much stronger conviction that we should be able to do pretty much whatever we want. The whole making-laws-to-protect-people-if-they-can't-protect-themselves thing is a luge straight into Hitler territory.

And then there's the fact that women will continue to have abortions (which we've been doing for thousands of years, I might add) regardless of whether or not it's legal which means more women will die due to unsafe abortions. Yuck. Unnecessary and yuck.

And then there's this part. The pro-life movement denies me the right to make a decision about my own life and own body. Why anyone would choose my unborn baby (and let's not talk about partial-birth abortions, people...they are illegal and should remain so) over my rights is beyond my comprehension. I am fully formed, functioning (at least most of the time) adult. Sorry, "baby", but in the who-gets-the-right-of- -way contest... I win.

It's like the pedestrian has the right of way laws in California. People just stroll out into the crosswalk during a green light and assume that I will stop because it's illegal not to yield to pedestrians. Well, I hate to break it to you, foolish pedestrian, but if I don't see you for any reason it doesn't matter what the law is: you're gonna die. My car is much, much heavier than you and no matter how entitled you feel to be able to walk across the street, it will crush you like a bug. So you might wanna move your ass.

Reality trumps, as my brother says. And the reality is: if I'm an adult and don't want to have a child, then I shouldn't have to. Call it what you will, but it's my life. I don't walk around telling people with six children to get an abortion when they get pregnant for the seventh time (although part of me would like to). Because that would be denying that person's right to make a decision on their own, for themselves. Do I think it's foolish and irresponsible...nay verging on criminal? Yes. I begrudge that person their decision. The woman who just has octuplets after having six children? Ridiculous. Completely selfish and irresponsible. Buy ya know what? Her choice. We all suffer because of these decisions, but still it remains her choice.

If someone else gets to tell me when I can't have an abortion, what else can they take away from me? Why do I not get a choice? Because I disagree with you? Imagine that kind of world... oh, wait. We don't have to. It's happened a few times. And they are regarded as some of the darkest times in History.

Okay, I'm done. Off to the gym.

Woof, meow, chirp!

Anyone who knows me can tell you I am a complete sap for animals. I volunteer at my local animal shelter and have worked very hard to reduce the feral cat population in my neighborhood, which is significant. I, myself, along with my husband, have adopted two cats that used to be feral and they are some of the greatest pets I've ever met.

I go to the animal shelter sometimes to walk the dogs that are stuck in cages, but mainly to pet the kitties who are also trapped in cages and cannot run around ever which I can only imagine is exceedingly hard on their spirits.

I buy them toys, I coo at them, and pet them and tell them it's going to be ok. It sometimes takes a long time to get the older cats adopted and you can tell a lot of them have seen some shit. Right now there is a cat who used to be feral at my local shelter who had to have one of his front paws removed. He still has stitches where his front paw used to be. The head of the shelter tells me he is very sweet. He is a grey tiger.

Today is such a nice day out... I think I'm gonna go to the gym and walk a little dog and pet some kitties before I get to work. There is nothing in this world that makes me feel better about myself and the world than to take care of animals. Nothing.

Yesterday my friend, Christine, introduced me and my husband to Kitty Half-time during the Superbowl. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it. I personally don't care much about the musical performances during half-time. And on Animal Planet they have what is called "The Puppy Bowl" which is basically a room decked out with puppy toys in a game-theme with a ton of puppies running around playing with one another. It's absolutely adorable. And halfway through that show they have Kitten Half-time which is a similar set up, but for baby cats. I couldn't believe how strange and wonderful it was to watch.

So I'm off to pet animals. If any of you are reading this and want to know how you can help out the animal world, I will put some links below where you can find information about where to volunteer or make a donation.

I recently had a holiday party and put out a jar with a photo of one of the kittens at the local shelter and got $22 in donations. I brought the money over to the shelter and they were so grateful for it. It's not the amount that counts, it's the effort.

Humane Society
ASPCA
World Wildlife Federation
Want to find a pet online?

Katzenjammer

So... as a direct result of my experience in the previous entry, I went over to my good friend's apartment last night, had Ethipian food in Harlem (OMG go to Zoma if you can), and then proceeded to get drunk as a skunk with her in her apt listening to music and smoking WAY too many cigarettes (I quit, dontcha know).

I will tell you, it never ceases to amaze me how much booze I can drink when I'm wrestling with grief. It literally is three times what I normally drink. And I'm feeling it today. Oof.

So I went to Staples on part of "get my life organized" plan. And when you have a significant hangover, Staples can be... hell.

SO many pens! Holy crap, which one do I fucking pick? I just wanted it to be over. Why are the bloody tab inserts in a different isle from the plastic zipper-pockets that also go in binders? And where the fuck is the compressed air?

So many problems. And while I was struggling with these mountain-molehill issues, The Cranberries came on. I used to love them in college and it was the over-played "Do you have to let it lingeeeerrrrr?" song.

So I am walking through the isles of Staples, sweating, wearing sunglasses because florescent light was NOT going to happen, and singing my own lyrics. Instead of:

Do you have to,
Do you have to,
Do you have to let it lingerrrrrr

I was singing:

I think I'm going to,
I think I'm going to,
I think I'm going to fucking vommmmmiiiitttt!

I recommend it if you need to grasp a thread of sanity while trying to decide what kind of tab inserts to buy.

distant constellations

This morning I had a dream that I was with my mother. I had missed her so much, was so glad to be with her. I was walking with her somewhere slightly familiar and also new. She was with me, close, so close that speaking was almost not necessary. Almost.

In real life my mother passed away seven and a half years ago. Even writing that today seems insane. As I told my good friend a few years ago, when in tears in a taxi cab on the way to meet some friends for dinner, "You think 'If someone told me I would never see that person again, I would die... I would just die'...but you don't. You just get up and look at the sun and keep moving and fall apart and cry in the back of taxi cabs".

In my dream she was back for a reason - she had been brought back for a singular purpose... my father's death? I can't remember. I was walking with her and remembering how simply walking slightly behind her I could smell her, feel her presence.

When the purpose for her visit was over she said she had to go again. I was ravaged with sadness. But I also knew it could be no other way. In the dream I asked her, "Do you think when you're dead?" and she looked at me with a deep sadness mixed with a sense of acceptance or... peace? And she shook her head. Then she said, "There's such an overabundance of... everything." And she was gone.

Then it was my husband. I was walking with him much in the same position and he was telling me he had to go. I felt that same sense of fight in me that had torn me up when I was watching my mother die and that sense of rebellion of "I WILL NOT LET THIS HAPPEN" mixed with a deeper, more still, realization that it would be no other way.

He was crying in the dream, but had already started to fade away from me. I kissed him one last time and whispered something - maybe "I will find you"? I can't remember.

This dream is different from the dreams I had when she was dying, and for the first year and a half after she passed I had nightmares every night. I would be underwater with dead bodies, gaping mouths, flesh floating as fish swam by, I would be screaming so long and loud for doctors to save her that I would start choking, and my gag reflex would silence me. I would vomit up blood over and over as doctors in lab coats stood over me, cold and silent.

So you see, this dream is relatively calm in comparison. And in these dreams she feels much farther away. She has moved on. But when she returns our connection has not diminished at all... it's a strange combination.

I woke up and today is Thursday in NYC which means on my husbands favorite radio station it is time for my favorite dj's show - Trouble in the Modern World on WFMU. He turned on the radio when I was waking up and after he had left for work she played a Euro-tech dance type of song whose main lyric was "Resuscitation" being repeated over and over with the beat. The female singer says, "Give me the kiss of life... resuscitation, resuscitation".

I stared at the radio and got dressed. Now I'm trying to shake off that feeling of an old, deep pain that will never go away. And a feeling of trying to reach out beyond the grave.

Dust ourselves off, pick ourselves up...

So we have a new President. Someone I am proud to claim to be the leader of our nation. Maybe for the first time ever. I am not as much patriotic as I am emotional and loyal to my family, friends and experiences. I love the land of the United States because it is so varied and vast.

Whatevs. No one cares about my political affiliations and I shouldn't print them on the internet anyway. What I'm trying to say is: Yay. Obama's President. The winds of change are blowing and they are long overdue. For this, I am grateful.

I'm not a particularly religious person. I don't subscribe to any faith of organized religion or worship any deities. But I will admit there is a lot about this world we don't understand. I just don't necessarily believe that is what most people refer to as "God".

I don't know what to call these moments of transcendence, coincidence or awareness. Perhaps they are just that. Perhaps there is a pattern related to something we can only sense on a rudimentary level. Perhaps it is related to the time-space continuum, and we fumble about bumping into other forms of existence or levels of consciousness and get deja-vu or experience epiphanies or nirvana. I don't know. I love reading about quantum physics, philosophy and religion to imagine what the code, pattern or story is that we can't see. It's fascinating. But I try not to worry too much about it, since I'm pretty darn sure we'll never find the equation, formula or unlock the secret to Heaven during my lifetime.

But sometimes... the world catches my attention. I see patterns forming and I don't know where they originate or what they mean, but I can't help noticing them.

For instance, here is a small one. Yesterday I was at the gym working out on the elliptical machine and I glanced at one of the two tvs positioned on either side of the machine I like to use (I hate watching tv while I work out and choose the machine that has a somewhat straight view out a window), and saw a brief moment of gloppy, glossy, thick peanut butter being scooped out of a jar. I glanced away and then back and couldn't decipher why it had been there, it wasn't a commercial, but part of a news report. I guessed it was about American obesity and forgot about.

Today I rented via HBO On Demand a horrible movie called "Wanted" with Angelina Jolie and watched it. If you have seen it, you know that there is a plot line that involves peanut butter. And in the movie there is a brief moment where one of the lead actors is "pouring" peanut butter out of a can. It's thick and gloppy and remarkably similar to what I saw on the evening news last night.

Not a big deal, but almost the same image.

When I was a young teen one night I dreamed my mother and I were cleaning out the coat closet on the first floor of my then home and I turned to her as she handed me a fedora that was my father's from a shelf high above. I didn't even remember the dream when I woke up, until later that week when we did in fact clean out the coat closet and as she handed me the fedora from a shelf I got a prickly sensation up and down my neck and back. A psychiatrist two decades later would tell me I had the experience first and the dream later, that my memory is flawed. Perhaps it is.

Four years ago when my dear friend called me one night to see how I was doing (I had just moved back to NYC after living away for several years). She asked, "What have you done tonight?" I said, "Well, I decided to take myself out on a date to Turkish food to the restaurant down the block since I had never had Turkish food and now I'm knitting and singing to the radio". She asked, "What songs are you singing along to?" and I answered, "Right now I was just singing along to 'My Cheri Amor' by Stevie Wonder". She said: "That's strange. My work had a benefit tonight and they served Turkish food, which I'd never had before, and Stevie Wonder was there and he sang that song."

Perhaps it is a coincidence that last night both my husband and I dreamed about past lovers, meeting up with them and comparing that love in different ways to our current life together.

Perhaps not.

But when I see an almost replica of 2 images of gloppy peanut butter within 17 hours of one another I have to wonder - is there a pattern?

The meaning, well, I will leave that up to other people. We always want things to mean something, lest we be lost in a sea of randomness and icy cold indifference. I suppose even that has it's reassurances. Many times, I find that sea quite comforting. I am, after all, only someone who will be forgotten, until one day someone in the future hears my name twice in one day, or sees my photo too many times to be explained. And then maybe he or she will wonder... is there a pattern?

A new year, a new era, and some photos of old & new

Happy 2009!

I couldn't be more excited about the change in political climate. So far, 2009 has brought with it some great times, some difficult changes for me and those around me, but it has an optimistic feel.

Here are a few photos from the end of '08 and the beginning of '09.

Today, I was walking around midtown after an appointment doing errands and I passed the Empire State Building to see a collection of police and emergency vehicles. That's never a welcome sight for a New Yorker... it makes me nervous. But by the time I had picked up my items from Staples and come back to the same corner, everyone had disappeared. I managed to get a couple of photos with my iPhone. For some reason I thought the sight was worth catching.





Here are spattering photos from the end of 2008 and the start of 2009.