So in lately I’ve been enjoying the whole idea of “series”.

The “Big Question” for September and December kept me focused on central themes, which was a lot of fun and kept me coming back to the blog and getting connected again with some other amazing writers.

Even though my family keeps me really busy, I’m keeping up the momentum this month. But I’m publishing in a few other places.

You can see my January series over on my main webpage. This month I am participating in a beautiful series created by Fiona Robyn and Kaspalita called “The River of Stones.” I’ve given my own group of “small stones” a title: “What Details Know.”

Please come over and visit me there. I’d love to hear what you think.

Meanwhile, I’ve dusted off my journalism skills and I’m writing some regular feature posts for the Stratford Patch. It’s been lovely to get to meet and know some of my neighbors more closely this way. Thanks to my editor Jason Bagley for supporting me on this.

Oh, and by the by… there is one cool lady I’d like to mention.

Off the subject but definitely worth a look.

In our recently travels, our family met another very cool family, also with four kids. The lovely matriarch of this bunch is Alma Schneider. She’s a foodie, but her business is fascinating: she a counselour who helps people like you and me back from the brink of convenience food. “Take Back the Kitchen” is just one of her super-cool projects.

No related posts.

On Day 27 of #reverb10, Brene Brown asked:

What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?

My moment was an accumulation of split-second realizations: each about the same and exquisitely lovely. They were those moments when you are looking into the eyes of someone and you suddenly see the glimmer of returned love and friendship.

Because we have passed mile marker “Year 3″ in Connecticut, it seemed logical that some of our friendships have started to stick. But logic has nothing to do with that vast expanse of loneliness that I always seem to forget about when I get all excited by the prospect of moving somewhere new. I was glad this year to start to feel that “safe” feeling with my friends: where you can begin the task of ordinary friendship and all its wonders.

It’s all well and good. After all it should take a LONG TIME to find “the people” again; you know the ones. The people who:

• get me
• forgive me and come back
• ignore me when I forget to flip the “tact” switch
• (Actually find my lack of tact sort of charming, and kind of a relief.. in that “She said that! Hah! WOW! I would never have said that. Hmmm, but it WAS what I was thinking….”)
• laugh AT me at at just the right moments
• laugh with me the rest of the time
• don’t act all that surprised if they find me blubbering over in a corner now and then
• wear their own skin like the most comfy fleece ever!– because those are the only kinds of people I seem to attract
• carry VIP membership to the Generosity Circle of the Universe.

So today, right now, I am thinking of the sweet friends I earned, gained, grabbed, nabbed, or just got lucky enough to nudge into with the minivan in 2010.

I often am unsure why they hang around me, (waiting for Colin to get home and make dinner?) but I am thrilled to have them for any reason.

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I just got back from what I like to call “unshopping” — a painful and ludicrous part of consumer culture.

This is when we de-stuff-ify ourselves. In this particular hour, I made four stops:

1. To the church recycling dumpster, which takes cardboard and #5s, so I don’t have to throw them away.
2. To return cans and plastic bottles, which has the cursed (ker-SEHD) bottle deposit on them. This 5 cent bottle and can deposit went out of fashion like everything else in Connecticut in 1874. However, if I want to get the money back I paid on the containers, I must stand at the automated machine that sucks them in and regularly spits them BACK out to get my loose change back.
3. To the Burlington Coat Factory parking lot, where the Goodwill pickup truck is always parked. To drop off the outgoing clothes, toys, shoes, etc.
4. To the liquor store, to return the beer bottles, because they don’t take them at the automated machines where they take the cans and bottles.

Net result of UnShopping: $6.80 and a temporarily slightly more tidy garage. (It was a big week, as we have recently had a party.)

I know some of you will tell me that I can take the cans and bottles ALL back to the big drop off center. I have done this before. However, this place is a horrific spot, filled lod clanging noises, and with people who collect cans for a living. There is ALWAYS a queue, and inevitably I wait there, squeezed in tighter and tighter between hundreds of bulging garbage bags filled with Diet Coke cans.

As I kick my blue bin of cans forward, other collectors eyeball my bags and sneer.

whywhyhwhywhywhywhywhywhy

I don’t much care for UnShopping, but I do it, because it is apart of putting things away properly, the things that I am responsible for. Also, I want my two dollars!

But ask Colin sometime what he thinks of it and he’ll say something like:

I AM NOT STANDING THERE FEEDING THOSE STUPID CANS INTO THAT MACHINE. I HAVE LOOKED INTO THE THIRD LEVEL OF HELL AND IT IS A STICKY MACHINE THAT LAUGHS AT YOU, COUGHS, THEN SAYS (as Eric Idle), “PARDON ME, BUT I CAHN’T QUITE READ YOUR BARCODE, MY DEAR FANTA CAN! GOODBYE!”

Colin says “Leave em out on the curb… someone will take them!” But I’ve seen the trash guys throw REAMS of cardboard into the garbage compactor and I quake with fear.

It takes a lot of effort to undo our consumer habits. Driving around, following our state’s rules of returns (in order to get the full 5 cents back on beer bottles, they must be returned IN the cases. In order to get money from the automated machine, the machine must be able to scan your retinas and be given a cheeseburger.)

Being a conscious consumer is the perfect recipe for madness brought on by inanity.

I want out!!

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My friend Bonnie wants to know what is wrong with our town. Well, I have an opinion about that. Here it is.

The Pieces

First, there are a bunch of us liberals that live in one area of town, up North here. We are mostly white, Judeo-Christians, or has-beens like me who jumped ship and became a Unitarian. We have a certain amount of money and we live in the neighborhood we live in because, whether we admit it or not, we prefer our houses to NOT be rundown or NOT be nextdoor to the former Mr. Ps shooting gallery and bar.

Second, there are a bunch of conservatives who live in the SAME area of town. In fact, there are MORE of them than there are of us. They live here because they like the school systems, they like their privacy, they like white people like themselves and they will ADMIT that they NEVER wanted to go inside Mr. Ps shooting gallery and bar, not even out of curiosity.

Third, (but not because it’s LESS mind you!) there are the social liberals who ALSO voted for Obama who live at the other (south) end of town. They may or may not work at the former Mr Ps shooting gallery and bar, and they live in whatever type of abode a service wage can afford them (after all, this is Connecticut and us whiteys like to be served).

Which isn’t much. And it IS rundown, because they have NO time to fix it up because they work 70 hours a week and have three kids to take care of. They are exhausted and even if they rent, they can’t be bothered to call the landlord, unless it’s dire. They TOO would like to have time to plan their youngest birthday party, and also have to fill out all those friggin’ kindergarten registration forms that require a PhD that NOBODY has.

The REALLY South End

Fourth, there’s Lordship, which is basically Texas. Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE, including them) secretly wants them to secede and take the airport with them. Only problem is they are attached to our beach rights, which is the only reason any of us live in Stratford.

The REALLY North End

Fifth, Oronoque. OK, everyone has SOMEONE they know and love who lives a-way up there on Assisted Living Island, so it’s hard to say anything bad, right? Respect thine elders, right?

The best solution would be to distract them all with a really great reality television program featured there, because as we know, every vote in town is skewed by the Black Hole District–where voters have all the time to vote and complain, but no time to actually be involved in the town and do anything of use.

Sixth, the big Fat Middle.  These include all of the following:

1. There’s the guys on the couch. The armchair conservative quarterbacks who slam beers and bitch about everything but only vote when one or two issues chap their hides. Like gun control and pencil skirts.

2. High-horse liberals who are busy homeschooling their kids and feel the lousy government doesn’t include them. So they “drop out.”

3. And we all know the people who say “Politicians are all corrupt. I just don’t vote.”

You want to know what’s wrong with our town? We are the perfect image of America. We are plagued with apathy. We reject and disconnect from anyone of another race, culture, or socioeconomic class– even if their values and ideas are the same as ours. We are frozen, because we believe we are right.

We are Narcissus, staring at our lovely selves in the pool that is about to drown us.

We are living on our 1/4 to 3/4 acre islands of anger, frustration and oblivion, texting and messaging only the people who agree with us. And when we disagree, we say:

“People should never talk about politics or religion.”

We talk and we don’t act.  When we act, we are filling out forms for soccer, pouring asphalt in potholes, and driving our cars in traffic.

That’s what’s wrong.

And I know… this is a lot of talking and not acting. I know. But Bonnie asked.

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I overheard my brother-in-law refer to our current President as a “c*cksucker” during a recent stay at my parent’s house. This sparked a political dance/conversation on Facebook between myself and an old friend from high school.

The curious bit about this conversation is that I haven’t seen this women since high school. I have no idea what her political beliefs are, but I have no problem expressing mine to anyone. I don’t tend to hide my open-minded, liberal nature.

The gist, though, was my friend N indicated that “there are 2 things families (and friends) should never talk about…religion & politics.”

Are we really supposed to shut up at our family gatherings or lunch with the girls? Is it really the best choice to ignore our unlike-minded family/friends, especially when they are casting slanderous remarks at the Commander in Chief?

Friends and family must be the playground for political arguments and conversation. Who else knows you? Who else do you know so well, so well you can manipulate with a few choice rhetorically savvy comments? I mean, only you know how committed you great Aunt Jean is to enforcing capital punishment for retards! Memorize a few choice stats and you could easily get her thinking about an issue or a candidate she might never have considered before.

Right now, in Stratford, our police, mayor and town council are in a HUGE political in-figthing mess that involves the police stealing medical records to stop the mayor’s brother from being hired onto the police force, while the town council whines about the “absolute power” of the mayor and tries to get nasty about a — wait for it –  community garden (egads!) that he approved without talking to them. The horror.

No wonder people hate “politics” — except that we  “people” (re: citizens, voters, Americans) are getting just what we deserve. The more people with the mindset like my friend “N” withdraw from involvement in their own community and the knowledge of their own government, — or refuse to even talk to their own friends and family about what they believe in — the more our governments become a isolated havens for corruption.

Our towns, states and our nation’s governments are breaking down the same way a car breaks down when you drive it into the ground, ignoring the the pings, clunks, and engine lights telling us at every turn it needs service — oil changes, tire rotations, and a good clean out — serious, committed attention from its OWNERS to achieve longevity.

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3. It’s No Secret…