i feel so LOVED!

i know, i haven't been blogging at ALL recently, even worse than my usual not-writing streak. it's just that i'm working so much and something has to give if i'm not going to let my house fall into disrepair and eat out every night. but THANK YOU faithful readers for all your snail love!! i got a lovely sweet letter from sarah, i feel like a pen-pal... and today a box arrived from germany! jamie has sent me tiger und tigerente backformen! so now i can bake tiger and tigerduck shaped cakes! yummy!


thank you, thank you, both of you! i promise to visit you each in the next year!

in the bleak midwinter

oh, this weekend! it's been so lovely. d and i went to christkindlmarkt after work on friday, and ate potato pancakes and drank glüwein, and bought zimtsterne, and were careful not to break any glass ornaments, and had a lovely seasonal time.

saturday we woke up to snow! d had to go to her square dance class, but i watched it fall, and blow, and OH! how cozy it was! in the little window above my sewing machine. i sewed bags and listened to cindi lauper (holiday) station on pandora and then bundled up and tromped around in it to meet d to buy yarn for her xmas gifts. when we came home, she made the perfect supper. i had found mache,my favorite lettuce, at wholefoods, so she made mache beet salad with goat cheese, and a root vegetable soup, with lentils (which i know are a legume, not a root vegetable, but are hearty just the same) and parsnips and celeriac and carrots and shallots. and there was wine and candles, and over the rhine's snow angels album, and i didn't know it could get more cozy, but that there was coziness maxed out. i feel like my winter asignment of being seasonal and celebrating holidays happened.

today was more bags, and i sent out party invitations. come party with us december 14th! leave a comment if you want an ivitation.

she's so blue...

dear germans,
what do you want from america? i want german tampons. i want, to be precice, o.b.leichte tage comfort tampons. the blue ones. they're perfect. i mix an match a box of american pink ones and a box of german blue ones and i'm good to go. except- 2.5 years after my last german stockkpiling i'm running low. and i've been trolling the internet trying to find an acceptable u.s. substitute. and, well, there's good news and bad news.

the bad news is there is nothing that looks similar and easily accessable.

the good news is, it looks like they've discontinued the stupid nasty silk ease in favor of something pro-comfort. i am FACINATED by what this says about the influence of america. once you bring the product here, just comfort isn't good enough. it has to be PRO. and then there's the size comparison. america's all clinical about it, giving absorbency in grams. in german, they just have little raindrops. but the names! the smallest ones in both contries are pink. but in germany they're called minis, and in america, they're regular. the next size up in germany are the ones i like, the light days. in america the next ones are super. no way do i need SUPER. or maybe that's the german influence, because the next two sizes in germany are normal and super, then there's also a super plus. you may wonder what america has after it's super. it goes super plus and then ultra. only in america do we have the ultratampon!

so what do you think? do germans bleed more than americans, that their light days are our super days? or do you think we have taken super sizing to such an exreme that we can't even talk about TAMPONS in rational terms?

if i was mimi smartypants, i would sign off here in a clever way referencing the vanity sizing of everything an american woman wears.