Mustard Seed

Getting Clean

Melissa G — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:26:38 +0000

Suave Kids 3-in-1: $2.79

VS.

Philosophy 3-in-1: $22.50

(neither are vegan or organic. both do animal testing. both get you clean. both smell good. the former has a fun animal fact on the back. the latter has real recipes on the front. maybe you feel better paying more for a non-environmentally sensitive consumer product. maybe you feel better paying less for one. i don’t know how it works. maybe you feel better having “nicer” stuff. maybe you feel better saving money. maybe you make up your mind to feel better either way and anyway.)

MORAL: WHATEVER. I GO TO ULTA AND SMELL ALL THE PHILOSOPHY FLAVORS. THEN I GO TO TARGET AND BUY SUAVE. I NEVER REGRET A SHOWER.

Re: New Year’s Resolutions

Melissa G — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:29:20 +0000

1. Oops… Oh well

2. Nevermind

3. Already done

MORE AND BETTER BLOGGING COMING SOON

STAY TUNED WORLD

New Year’s Resolutions (Duh)

Melissa G — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:42:02 +0000

1. Don’t buy any more stuff (UNLESS it breaks down and I absolutely can’t fix it or UNLESS it’s edible and I’m hungry)
2. Take shorter showers (how are we going to do this? Well I am going to pick a 5-minute-long song on my iPhone and use that as a timer and that way if I take too long a shower I steam up my iPhone and my iPhone breaks. The idea here being that short showers > $600 of out-of-contract iPhone repairs)
3. Run more (shouldn’t be hard considering I run zero right now)

THAT IS ALL

Christmas Card Scorecard

Melissa G — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 17:22:59 +0000

(wrote this yesterday)

So I know it’s Christmas Eve and you’re not supposed to be blogging during this time of year … but I’m not trying to get tons of traffic on this blog or anything and it’s not like anyone in my house is going anywhere until Dad finishes watching football anyways, so everyone else is just laying around doing whatever. I just finished reading every single Christmas card we got in the mail and in doing so came up with a system for explaining my favorites. ERGO the Christmas Card Scorecard:

- No Christmas card: ZERO points (how will we remember you exist?)
- Christmas card: +1 point
- Cool stamp: +1 point
- Custom address labels: +1 point
- No return address: -1 point
- Lined envelope: +1 point
- Glitter or sparkles: +1 point
- My family’s names (surname and/or individual first names) are spelled right: +1 point
- Anyone’s name is spelled wrong: -1 point per misspelling
- Card itself is an update letter: +2 points
- Card itself is an update letter with family photos printed on it: +2 points
- Card itself is a family photo AND separate typed letter: +3 points
- Update letter is typed in Comic Sans: -1 point
- Card showcases a tastefully selected/placed Bible verse: +1 point
- More than 1 Bible verse: -1 point
- Euphemisms and/or PC language (i.e. “Hope your holiday has lots of smiles” instead of “the Son of God was born today, enjoy”): -1 point
- Card has multiple family photos: +1 point per photo
- Photo has explanatory caption: +1 point per photo-caption pair
- Explanatory captions are handwritten: +1 point each
- Family photo obviously taken especially for Christmas: +1 point
- Family photo is from family vacation: +1 point if it was intentional (i.e the time my family spent an hour in front of Old Faithful in July to get the “perfect Christmas picture”), -1 point if it was just a last-minute Xmas card idea (and yes you as reader get to decide)
- Vacation place is listed on card: +1 point
- Family photo from wedding: -1 point if I was invited, +1 point if I wasn’t (if I went then I already HAVE that photo on my iPhone and if I didn’t then I want it for my fridge), -1 point either way for manipulating Christmas festivities into a post-wedding-announcement
- Family photo involves snow: +1 point
- Photo includes timestamp in bottom right corner: -1 point
- Photos with children wearing clothes with their college/school name on them: +1 point (efficient)
- Photos with people wearing clothes with their sport/activity/organization on them: +1 point (efficient again)
- Photos with children wearing clothes with their school and activity on them (i.e. “Stanford Baseball): +2 points (efficient AND accomplished)
- Everyone matches in the photo: +1 point
- Absence of adults in family photos: -1 point
- Unexplained children in family photos: -1 point
- Unexplained marital status of attractive older children in family photos: -1 point
- Cute kids in family photos: +1 point
- Cutest kid of all time in family photo (thanks Cousin Colin & Rheena for deciding to breed): +5 points
- Photos of pets: +1 point
- Pet included in signature: +1 point
- Pet PAWPRINT included in signature: +1 point
- Pixellated photos: -1 point
- Pixellated anything: -1 point
- Anything handwritten: +1 point
- Only “Love, (Name) or (the ____ Family)” handwritten: -1 point
- Handwritten in different color pens: +1 point
- 8 1/2 x 11 pages are folded lopsided: -1 point
- Flyer for your company included: -1 point
- Flyer for your mission/ministry support included: -1 point
- Typos: -1 point EACH
- Written by person over the age of 60: +1 point
- This elderly narrator uses the word “friggin’”: 3 points
- People in photos look more attractive than you remember: +1 point
- People in photos look legitimately happy: +1 point
- People in photos look forced: -1 point
- Over 1 paragraph of update letter spent on any one subject: -1 point
- Over 1 paragraph of update letter spent on medical issues: -1 point
- Children get unequal amounts of update time in the letter: -1 point
- Makes you LOL: +1 point per LOL
- Makes you cry: +3 points
- Makes you jealous: -1000 points for the reader, you should be happy to hear about people doing well

How To Handle Winter

Melissa G — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 20:55:19 +0000

I’m writing a story by the same name as this post but… that’s a different can of worms. The point is I’m not super good at it (it being: existing happily in temperatures under 85 degrees Fahrenheit) so I’m trying to figure it out as best I can, and keep records for the next time I’m anywhere under 40 degrees.

1. Hot showers (!!!)
2. Hot chocolate (+ Baileys?)
3. Hot yoga (bonus: if you do it later in the day, you get to take another hot shower after!)
4. Hot coffee
5. SAD lights (I actually don’t have one but… I’m thinking about it)
6. 100 blankets
7. SPACE HEATERS
8. Slippers (I don’t even know why they make ones that AREN’T leopard print)
9. Get so excited about seeing all your family and best friends that your heart rate triples and your metabolism keeps you warm all day and all night

Addendum to Last Post Re: Making Decisions and Having It All

Melissa G — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:14:47 +0000

Two more things:

1) I think the most important thing about playing games is practicing how to lose. You could write papers and papers and papers about that and I hope someone has and will because I have other things to do, like practicing losing.

2) Another important thing, both about and not about games, is sometimes you don’t have to lose. Sometimes you really CAN have it all. I.e. for example: “What color should I paint my nails?”

EVERY COLOR.

*note: #2 does not apply to Gin Rummy. Only #1 does.

Why Games Are Important, or, What I Learned From Gin Rummy

Melissa G — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:27:57 +0000

So I learned how to play Gin Rummy yesterday. I might have learned how before, I’m not sure. I pick up things like this pretty quick and then forget them just as easily. This is also the case with media, for me; I forget what happens in books and movies right away and can’t really tell you very much about even my favorites unless you really sit me down and make me focus. I think this isn’t so much that I’m a bad reader or viewer or stupid so much as it is a defense mechanism I’ve developed — I’m so affected by those experiences that if I can’t forget them I’ll a) go insane and b) never get anything done (those two are kind of the same thing, I think; I realize I just equated productivity with sanity and I hope you all know I mean the healthy kind of productivity, not the manic pointless kind that isn’t really productivity at all). The point is the only card game I can ever remember the rules to is Egyptian Ratscrew and that’s only because it’s pretty much all muscle memory and I always always win at it and so have really good mental associations attached to it. This means there’s a steep learning curve for re-teaching me any game, and little time in between that and when I start getting super good, super competitive, and super annoying at it. I am only really fun to play games with for like… one or two rounds of anything, or after I’ve been playing a game consistently over like ten years and I’ve tempered out all these emotions (I.e. soccer, for example, or Mario Kart).

So Gin Rummy. The learning curve, this time, was not only really steep (wow, SO MANY RULES) but also overly emotionally involved. Which is expected given that it’s the end of the semester and so a point of reflection over my latest chapter in life, and all the little integrity-conscious parts of my brain are running everything through an evaluative “how does this all fit together in the grand scheme of things” filter. So I just CAN’T figure out Gin Rummy at first. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m having the hardest time figuring out which cards to keep, which cards to play, which cards to discard. It feels like instant death every turn. And everyone else thinks it’s sooooo fun but I don’t see how that can possibly be the case, and then my subconscious and conscious selves bump into each other in some hallway in the back of my head and then I get it: the whole thing is this big jokey metaphor for how awfully unpracticed I am at making decisions.

Then I get really excited and I want to, have to learn how to get good at this because I realize it’s not just about winning a game, it’s about being able to live. That is a huge jump to a huge conclusion I know, but it’s not untrue that games like this teach and inform our understanding of the world around us and how we interact with it. At the Glen West fiction workshop this summer, Melissa Pritchard told us to make a list of all the games we played as a kid — she said it would help us understand the way we understand power structures. She’s totally right. Games are like war and love, but no one dies or cries. Well, sometimes — and that’s how you know they’re not just games and all that. They mean something. There are reasons we have fun.

The guy teaching me Gin Rummy, when I quickly glossed over this whole theory with him, pointed out: “Yeah, you’re having a really hard time discarding stuff.” He’s totally right… I kept ending up with a hand full of almost-awesome-but-never-played straights, and negative points. The analogy here being: the problem I have in life is that I want it all. That this results in an inability to make decisions which ultimately plunges me into paralysis, where I can’t finish my turn and so other people can’t take theirs. We never get anything done. It becomes insane. It stops being fun for everyone.

We gotta get things done, though. There is a lot to do in this world. So I will try to remember Gin Rummy. Practice picking cards up and discarding them. Keep playing, keep having fun. Crying and dying and all.

What Happened Today

Melissa G — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 06:14:21 +0000

“Writing Is A Dangerous Undertaking”

“It is not enough merely to love literature, if one wishes to spend one’s life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For, it seems to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It entails the ongoing courage for self-discovery. It means one will walk forever on the tightrope, with each new step presenting the possibility of learning a truth about oneself that is too terrible to bear.”

- Harlan Ellison

via Advice To Writers

Winter Reading List

Melissa G — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:39:51 +0000

I gotta make this list now or I won’t finish any of my work for finals.

1. Every Man Dies Alone — Hans Fallada
2. Bel Canto — Anne Patchett
3. The Phenomenon of Man — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
4. Wonderboys — Michael Chabon
5. Staying Put — Scott Russell Sanders
6. The Spot — David Means
7. The Geography of Nowhere — James Kunstler
8. The Poetics of Space — Gaston Bachelard
9. Refractions — Makoto Fujimara
10. Waiting for the Barbarians — JM Coetzee

BONUS: Books to finish during finals week…
1. The Angel Esmerelda — Don DeLillo
2. Brief Interviews With Hideous Men — David Foster Wallace
3. High Tide In Tucson — Barbara Kingsolver
4. Bear Vs. Shark — Chris Bachelder

If We Are Careful

Melissa G — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:49:47 +0000

If we are care-
ful, if we stick
close to the on-
ly road, if we
don’t make any
more. If we watch
where our toes hit
and keep them out
of nests and things,
keep them off of
heads and tails, keep
the growing young
alive and well.
If we walk with
gentleness and
grace when we go
to meet the lean-
ing stalks. If we
stay on barren
ground and if we
don’t impede the
newest shoots, if
we let the lit-
tle locust sit
in place and we
be sure to step
aside — then the
curse will go on
by, and the bus-
y sliding heart
will die. The eggs
will grow to fly,
the buried mess
will come alive.