NaBloPoMo - FUSSY

What will happen on Day Three?

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 3, 2012 - 8:46 am | Main

Here’s something interesting you may not know about me (and millions of other people): I am/we are not allowed to donate blood. Because I was a student in the U.K. (at the University of Edinburgh) for a year during the Mad Cow Disease Era, my blood is now suspect. It doesn’t matter that I don’t remember being much of a spinal-cord-and-brain eater at the time*, and feel fairly confident that I don’t have The Madness lying dormant in me (oh my god), but just saying I survived on baked potatoes and shortbread cookies that year isn’t good enough for the Red Cross.

*And never will be no matter what Anthony Bourdain says

My “donate to Charity Water/Red Cross and get a whimsical drawing!” plea is still in full force. However, I have to cap my Red Cross matching funds to double what you wonderful, beautiful people donated during the first two days only. I’m sorry to have to do that, but even as new donations come in we’re still going to end up sending $200 to Charity Water and (as of this morning) nearly $500 to the Red Cross. All new donations will get a drawing from me and the money will henceforth go straight to the Red Cross.

So, FINE, Red Cross, you won’t take my BLOOD so here’s a big pile of MONEY.

I hope it helps.

And now it’s Day Two

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 2, 2012 - 7:21 am | Drawings, Main

Of course I’m doing NaBloPoMo

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 1, 2012 - 12:39 pm | Drawings, Main

9 Comments

I am going down to Camp Mighty next week and in order for them to let me in, I need to bring $200 with me to donate to Charity Water. Last year, the money raised by Camp Mighty attendees helped to bring fresh water to 1,000 people. This year, we’re giving to help build wells in Rwanda, where they will change people’s lives in ways I probably can’t accurately imagine.

However, in light of the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy on people from Cuba to Canada, some of whom are friends of mine, here’s what I’m going to do.

I’m asking you to donate whatever you can to my Charity Water/Hurricane Sandy combo plan. (I’m just the middleman, none of it goes into my wallet.) You can donate $1.00 if you want and I will thank you personally via e-mail and tell you how everyone envies what you’re doing with your hair. If you send me $5.00, I will draw almost whatever you want on a 3 x 5 postcard and send it to you. If you send me $15.00 I’ll frame it as a commemorative knick-knack ready for holiday giving. Below are some examples of what I’m willing to draw (i.e., nothing outright pornographic or disturbingly violent).(This is just stuff from my sketchbook. Your drawing will be brand new and just for you.)

Random California landscapes

Intergenerational laundry-doing

Old ladies thinking about sex

Spiritual beings

Hand lettering of the sentiment of your choice

A nerd in a kilt

Inexplicable channellings of the Universe

Whatever money I receive above the main $200 I need for Charity Water will go directly to the Red Cross, and I will match it dollar for dollar. UPDATE: I am matching for the first two days of donations only, and I’m sorry to cap it like that but I’ve raided my yoga retreat/shoe fund/art-supply-and-lunch-money piggy bank and, as of Saturday morning, that means we’re still sending almost $500 to the Red Cross. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS, KIDS. Keep donating and I’ll keep drawing and everything from now on will go directly to the Red Cross.

Here’s the PayPal button. You know what to do. Thanks for even considering it.

Day Thirty

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 30, 2011 - 11:39 pm | Main

20 Comments

Today I had the strange pleasure of going in for jury duty. I’ve been on call since Monday and I got to that irrationally casual mindset where I thought the whole week would sail by without me getting to sit in a fluorescent-lit room with a bunch of other registered voters and licensed drivers. Then this morning, when I called in to the jury hotline, they told me my number was up and to be there at 12:30 p.m., which was right in the middle of lunchtime at Jackson’s school where I was helping to fill bowls with udon noodles and baking sheets with almond cookies. (It was fancy. Jackson hated it. He is not a “soup person.”)

I was late to the juror orientation but I got there just in time for the video. The last time I got this far in the jury selection process was before Jackson was born so I don’t remember the orientation video being so relentlessly upbeat about what it means to serve on a jury. It’s not all just crime scene photos and night terrors! No, it’s seeing the judicial process at work, helping to make decisions that no one person should have the power to make alone, looking deep inside yourself to find the truth, and making lifelong friends with other jurors. It’s like criminal justice summer camp. (Or business deals gone terribly wrong summer camp, or one long let’s-just-cut-this-baby-in-half high school reunion.)

Then the judge came in. He wasn’t wearing robes, he was in a nice dark suit with a yellow tie and he seemed very kind and wise and I liked him right away. He thanked us all for the sacrifices we’d made to come there, but apparently the sight of all of us potential jurors gathering had made someone on the prosecution or the defense realize that shit was getting real, that their case was actually going to trial, and they decided to settle. The judge said that this sort of thing happens a lot. He said he was glad to see so many happy faces reacting to his news, then he apologized to those who were looking forward to serving on a jury, then he said he was open for Q & A and everyone laughed, and then he wished us happy holidays and we all applauded.

But after watching the video (and discovering I had no idea I was so susceptible to woodenly-acted government-produced films) and listening to the judge (who I suddenly wished were my uncle), I actually was a little disappointed. Not that my life needs to be upended by a trial at the moment, but I feel like a seed was planted in me that hopes someday, before my mind gives out completely, I will be on a jury. But not for something awful; and not for some squabble about property. I think my ideal trial would be if someone famous did something funny and then somebody who was watching it died laughing, but the person who died was really old and so they died perfectly happy, and the dead person’s relatives were all very nice but they felt the needed to sue the famous person so that the dead person’s widow wouldn’t lose her house or something, and at first the famous person is all NO WAY because everyone always wants a piece of her or him, but then s/he sees that it’s the right thing to do and accepts the verdict gracefully. So, some sort of feel-good comedy civil suit. I’m just putting it out there, universe.

And thus ends our regularly-scheduled National Blog Posting Month. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have, which is to say intermittently and with sudden unpredictable spurts of commitment to keeping track of my life and my thoughts. You’re welcome, posterity.

Day Twenty-nine

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 29, 2011 - 2:49 pm | Main, Reading

14 Comments

Here are all the quotes that I keep on my MacBook’s dashboard.

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” Mary Oliver

“The truth will set you free, but not until it’s done with you.” David Foster Wallace

“‘Your father and I just expected so much more from you.’” Sarah Brown

“. . . not until a mother’s womb softens from the pain of labor, will a way unfold and the infant find that opening to be born.” Rumi

“Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that is wrong. They know less, that’s why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.” Margaret Atwood

“Don’t worry about what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.” Howard Thurman

“Build a vivid image in your mind’s eye of what you need.” “Intensify your commitment to mastering the work you came to this planet to do.” Rob Brezsny

“Which decision makes you the better version of you?” Evany Thomas

“The primary moral imperative is to think clearly.” Blaise Pascal

“What is the secret of your serenity?”
Said the Master, “Wholehearted cooperation with the inevitable.”
Anthony DeMello

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Rules for Happiness: something to do, someone to love, something to hope for.” Immanuel Kant

“Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.” Henry Van Dyke

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” Steve Jobs

Day Twenty-eight

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 28, 2011 - 3:06 pm | Main

6 Comments

Me: “You’re weird.”

Jackson: “Weird means oddly fantastic.”

Me: “It does?”

Jackson: “We looked it up in my class.”

Me: “So I can’t call you weird?”

Jackson: “No, Mom. Grammar. People are weirdos.”

And he says he hates school.

Day Twenty-seven

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 27, 2011 - 9:56 pm | Main, Video

12 Comments

In tortoise news today, we’ve been seeing a lot of Peanut as she migrates around the house looking for the right nook to hibernate in for the winter. She’s refusing all food, no matter how tasty (romaine, bananas) or exotic (Japanese pear, raw hamburger). That worried me for a few days, because I think tortoises should be more like bears and gorge themselves before curling up in someone’s Ugg boot for three or four months.

This year, though, she’s having trouble finding just the right spot for her nap. Like Goldilocks, or the Buddha, it seems she’s trying to find the middle way. In front of the warm refrigerator vent is too public; the patch of sun on Jackson’s carpet too transient; and even though that spot underneath Peewee’s dog bed fulfills her requirements for dark, warm, and private, inevitably one finds a dog’s ass pressing down upon one’s shell, sometimes accompanied by an unnecessary amount of scooting and barking.

Day Twenty-six

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 26, 2011 - 5:47 pm | Main, Photos

4 Comments

I took Yoda’s advice and went to see the new Twilight today with Jackson. Afterward, I almost spent $30 on Jacob and Edward action figures (20% off at Metro Comics), but I just couldn’t pull the trigger with Bella missing. Also, $30 on two action figures? The fact that I even considered it points to an imbalance of some sort in my life. I think I need to find a new direction.

Day Twenty-five

By Eden M. Kennedy | November 25, 2011 - 5:49 pm | Main

2 Comments

I’m still a little bloated and hung over from Thanksgiving, and a little ashamed of all the things Yoda knows about me now, but I still managed to suck it up and be productive today. Alice and I did a test-run of the podcast we’re going to start doing next year and I was totally encouraged by how well we made almost all of our technology mesh. (I was especially impressed when Alice figured out how to Skype through her iPad. It’s quick thinking like that that wins wars, people.) We may be the only ones who find us funny, of course, but then that’s what podcasting is about half the time anyway.

When I was done patting myself on the back about the podcast, I finished writing a Popcorn Whisperer post that’s supposed to be about shopping in the movies. I may not have been all that clear about my topic because the thing most people seem to take away from it is that someone needs to start a service that will deliver Johnny Depp to their door. I’m not sure that’s what Dell had in mind when they offered to sponsor the post, but when you hire Mrs. Kennedy, you get a lot of things that don’t necessarily make sense right away. Give it time, though, and it’ll all soak in.

The last thing you might want to see is my post for The Stir, entitled “Pepper Spray: It’s Not Just for Dinner Anymore.” Because I am topical as hell. Also, I wanted to give you something that will make sense right away, in case you’re busy and don’t have time to let your knowledge steep.