Iwanna Wednesday - Let's Wrap it Up!

So I used to do this thing called "Iwanna Wednesday". Remember that? I hear it was very popular with many of my readers. Alas, I won the lottery and purchased everything in the world and so now I lack for nothing and there is nothing left to lust for anymore...well except for Keanu Reeves! *sigh* I love that man! But I couldn't buy him, he has to come to me of his own free will!! (Yeah, like that's gonna happen.)

So anyway, back to Iwanna Wednesday and the whole winning the lottery thing. (Spoiler alert...I really didn't win the lottery, that was just to catch your attention!)

Ok, so yeah...I did this Iwanna Wednesday thing because I am one of those people that wants EVERYTHING! I can walk into a store and the very first thing I see I say, "I want one of these!". I can drive down the street and look at someone's front yard and say, "I want one of those in my front yard!" So my sister and my mom say I want everything I see therefore they call me "Iwanna". Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm materialistic, I just find beauty and joy in almost everything I see and then I want it. It's ok to want it if it's beautiful and it brings you joy, it's bad to want when you just want it so someone else will be jealous that you have it. And yes...that is the way my mind works!

So I designated Wednesdays as my day to want any "lil ol thang" I want. I don't necessarily have to have it, but hey...I can want it right?

So the other day, I was stumbling with my favorite little friend on the computer; stumbleupon.com and I saw this nifty youtube video. Watch it, it's short and very cute and educational. And the young girl is just so cute! Watch her laugh and dance, she's just cute as a bug!





I've done an Iwanna post about scarves before. Well scarves and pashminas...you can read that one here, there were some real gems in that post! But I don't think one can ever lust too much when you're lusting after scarfs, pashminas, mufflers, gloves, all those things that help to keep us warm. So Iwanna share some more with you so you too can go out and buy a few and use the handy, dandy video above to tie, knot and wrap them 25 new ways!

First...since it's football season and my favorite football team is the Dallas Cowboys (and aren't they doing great by the way?) check out this one. The reason Iwanna this one is because even though I know it represents my team, during non-football wearings it's just beautiful, feathery shades of blue and silver. Perfect for those cold, gloomy, foggy days here in Kern County! This one can be found at www.artfire.com and it's $26.96, but if you're good at knitting or crocheting (Lisa) you could probably make this lickety-split! I love things that are wispy and feather, or lacy or sheer and feminine.

I've seen this next scarf quite a bit in the stores this winter. It's a squiggly scarf, this one is Cashmere and it's from bluefly.com and even on sale it's a bit pricey for me, it's $77.60 on sale. But they are so amazingly soft, even the ones that aren't cashmere and they hug you when you wrap them around you as they are springy, like a slinky...remember the SLINKY? My mother would love this one, red is her color!

My sister came home from a conference in Santa Barbara a few months ago with a scarf knitted with ladder or trellis yarn, which looks like this. We have searched high and low for this yarn in all of Bakersfield and we can't find it, but I did find it online at creativefiberarts.com, this one is Ice Ladder Yarn and it's $3.25 for the ball and I believe you can make the whole scarf with just one ball, so that's a bargain compared to the other two scarves above!

I wish I had a picture of the one my sister has, but it's something very similar to the one below. If you're listening Lisa...Iwanna one the exact same color as in this picture. It reminds me of the tail of a mermaid :-)

On Black Friday, my sister and I went to Big Lots! Iwanna wanted to buy an artificial White Christmas Tree that was going to be on sale. Unfortunately, it was too small for Iwanna, but she is Iwanna after all and can find beauty and joy in EVERYTHING so she came home with the scarf pictured below for $5! (She's such a bargain shopper!)

Pardon the photo, but the only light available in my house at night is on my kitchen table. Isn't this gorgeous? Now the only reason I can think of why it was being sold at Big Lots and for only $5 is that if you will notice, it only has fringe on two sides opposite each other. The other two sides are plain. Why does that make a difference? Well imagine folding this scarf in half to create a triangle? One side would be fringy and the other would not and then on the opposite side you would have the mirrored version. But it's so beautiful and warm and I know no one will notice anyway!

There is only one other scarf Iwanna today on Iwanna Wednesday...it's gray, it's wool and it's wrapped around the neck of that other little item Iwanna. . . *sigh*

Happy Iwanna Wednesday and may all your Iwanna wishes come true!

Cough, Cough, Cough

I went to Las Vegas almost two week ago and unfortunately the things you catch in Vegas...they don't stay in Vegas...sometimes they come home with you!

On the drive home my throat was feeling scratchy and I was really tired. I figured maybe my throat hurt because of all the cigarette smoke in the Casinos and I was sure I was tired because I had stayed out until 2am dancing and having fun with my little posse of cousins (more about that later).

But by Monday it was a full-fledged sore throat with coughing and scratchy eyes and just general "blah".

Tuesday I had to call in sick and I slept most of the day. Wednesday I tried to tough it out but ended up going home half day. Wednesday night I took a tiny little teaspoonful of cough medicine with Codeine and it knocked me on my butt and I wasn't even able to drag myself out of bed on Thursday. I vaguely remember texting in to work that I wasn't going that day. Friday I toughed it out the whole day but I doubt I was of much use...who knows what I might have screwed up that day!

This past week I've been coughing up my lungs! (Hence the picture above, pretty darned accurate to how I feel!). I went home early one day but pretty much I'm just been trying to do the best I can.

I haven't gotten sick since my surgery to remove my thyroid in 2008. So I guess I was about due, but I'm so miserable!!! So anyway, that's why I haven't been blogging. I have lots to share about our adventures in Vegas and some other stuff. Hopefully I can get some rest this weekend and be back to normal soon. Can you believe Thanksgiving is next week?? Oh gosh...I have to drag myself to the store to get stocked up for it too.

I move that we move Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years to April and May...it's much warmer then and people are less likely to get sick, plus it's right after most of us receive our tax refunds so we'd have much more money to spend! Who's with me? Show of hands!

Cough, cough, cough!

Expecting Adam

Being pregnant while in graduate school is no piece of cake and even more stressful to learn your unborn child has Down Syndrome. In her memoir "Expecting Adam", Martha Beck battled almost everyone over her decision to continue her pregnancy. Join From Left to Write on November 10 as we discuss "Expecting Adam". We'll also be chatting live with Martha Beck at 1pm Eastern on November 10 on From Left to Write.

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As a member of From Left to Write we don't do book reviews, we write a post, drawing inspiration from the book. I debated over what to write about in this post as the book inspired so many different thoughts and feelings.

Finally I decided that I wanted to write about abortion. In the book Martha faces abortion as one of the options in dealing with finding out the child she is carrying has Down Syndrome. There was a paragraph in the book that bothered me.

Martha and her husband John, at this point still don't know that the baby has Down Syndrome and they are dining in a restaurant and the conversation comes up what would happen if this baby was less than perfect. Her husband John says, "The worst-case scenario is that you might have to have an abortion, and that's a long shot. Everything is going to be fine." What she replies is what bothers me, "I might have to have an abortion? Since when do you decide what I have to do with my body?" Then she says, "What we've talked about is that I am pro-choice. That means I decide whether or not I'd abort a baby with a birth defect. You steer clear of this one, John-boy. It is not your call!"

Two things bother me:

1. She invited this man into her body to plant his seed and when the baby is born she expects this man to make decisions that involve this baby 50/50. Yet he has no choice, no call in deciding if the baby should be aborted simply because she is the one carrying it? It is her body that is housing the baby for 9 months so he has no say until the baby is born? He has no say in whether or not he wants HIS child's life to be taken?

2. Why do women want to allow a man the chance to "wash his hands" of a child that is to be aborted? If the child is born you can bet the woman will move Heaven and Earth to try to get this man to help support the child financially. Yet when a women gets pregnant, the awful choice of taking a life is left solely up to her? The man is not involved? The man is absolved of all guilt? Seems to me the man gets off pretty easy!

I'm not pro-choice, but to me the argument that women have used about how it's their body and their right to make a choice about what they do with their body ends when you invite a man into your body and you create a child together. Now I'm not talking about situations of rape or incest or any other situation that is not consensual, that's a whole different ball of wax. I'm talking about two people, a man and a woman having sex, making a baby, on purpose or not. They both have a right to decide what happens to that baby; both before and after the birth.

Martha and John chose to have their baby regardless and are richer and happier for it. Would everyone be able to handle a child that had Down Syndrome? No. I don't know if I could have handled it. I'm glad I never had to make that decision, but if it had come to my deciding that, I don't believe that it would have been fair to tell the father to "steer clear, it's not your call."