Pleasure Notes

What is the best gift of 2009? What is a gift you’ve given yourself this year that keeps on giving?

This blog, right here, is the gift that keeps on giving. I return here to vent my thoughts, share ideas and discoveries I think you might appreciate, and continue a conversation with you, dear readers and friends, that is more valuable and rewarding to me with each passing day. Through the trials and tribulations that 2009 brought, I have been incredibly blessed. You help me remember that. So, perhaps, you all are the true gift. I am filled with gratitude.

Much love and joy.

xo -em

What is the best blog find of 2009? What is that gem of a blog you can’t believe you didn’t know about until this year?

Aw, hell. This question is so simple and yet so IMPOSSIBLE to answer! The fact is that until a VERY LITTLE over a year ago, I had never read a blog. ANY BLOG. So pretty much EVERY SINGLE BLOG I now know about and read with any regularity is a gem that I can’t believe I didn’t know about until this year.

by MadeByGirl/flickr

That being said, I will select one blog to highlight, of the many I have loyally followed through 2009. I choose this one because if it did not exist, and I had not read the post uploaded a mere week ago, I most likely would not be writing today. And for today, writing is – without exaggeration – saving my sanity and very possibly my life. So, thank you Gwen Bell for being a gem without which I would be bereft.

And to all those other amazing blogs I’ve discovered this past year, whether I’ve commented on what I’ve read or not, thank you for being out there and for inspiring me, and moving me, and making me laugh every single day. I feel very rich, and very lucky.

And to those astounding bloggers who have come here to my little corner of the world, whether new or “old,” and take the risk to read something from me when I start off a stranger to you, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I feel very honored, and very grateful.

xo

I’m just going to say it… I really love money. It brings me great pleasure. The acquisition of it. And the spending of it. What keeps me up at night, however, is the lack of balance between those two pursuits. I seem to be exponentially more skilled at spending the stuff than acquiring it. I’ve been working on changing that, but it’s a very slow, painful process.

Image from Treehugger.com

I’ve cut up all of my credit cards. I’ve created a budget. And I now have a full-time job. But, truth be told, I still live beyond my means, and continue to practice a elaborate routine of dancing on air in a frantic juggle between when payments go out and paychecks comes in. With an astronomical debt, unexpected expenses and weak P.O.P-avoidance control, I live in the red. I haven’t seen a saving account or a 401K or an IRA except in books. I get panic attacks when bills are due and the salary check won’t be here for another week. Today, that means waking up at 4 a.m. and venting my fears here.

I don’t want to carry this anxiety into my day. I really want to go back to sleep. I don’t want to begrudge others their successes. I don’t want to think the system is out to get me. I don’t want to live with a warped world view that has me splashing in a pool of self-pity and mistaking it for an ocean of real poverty. So here’s what I have to remember today:

1. I have a roof over my head. It’s a pretty cute roof. It’s paid for through the end of the month. And, though I think it’s tiny, it would house three families in two-thirds of the other countries on the planet.
2. If things got really, really, really bad, I have friends and family on whom I could lean without destroying their own stability. I would just rather eat nails.
3. A bounced check will not kill me. A missed credit card payment will not kill me. Another PB&J using the cheap bread will not kill me. Hell, even bankruptcy, if it comes to that, will not kill me. Anxiety about it all, though, just might.

Do I still want a sugar daddy, or a fairy godmother, or a newly-discovered, unlimited trust fund. HELL YES. But I’ll just have to settle for getting them in my dreams. I think I’ll head back to bed now, to work on that. I may actually be able to fall back asleep.

Red Straws by TheTruthAbout/Flickr

I love straws. All kinds of straws. Bendy straws. Straight straws. Colored straws. Striped straws. Curly-cue straws. Animal shaped straws. Day-glo straws. Cocktail straws. They bring me pure pleasure. It may have something to do with an oral fixation of mine. Or it may be my inner-child. I just know that any drink is better if drunk through a straw.

I like chewing them, too. And tying them into knots.

But I got to thinking about how environmentally unfriendly they probably are – the costs of production and disposal, you know. So I decided to see what other things straws might be good for, other than making me happy (which, while super vital to me, may not justify the destruction of the planet)… I’m happy to report, I found enough to alleviate my guilt.

Post-modern artists and designers help me do that for almost anything, since they create their masterpieces with almost everything. In fact, I may owe Scott Jarvie a soda, in gratitude for his imaginative use of my favorite sipping aid.

Clutch Chair by Scott Jarvie

I’ll just ignore the fact that his conceptual floating lounge chair is a commentary on our disposable society, and instead marvel at how much patience it must have taken to align the 10,000 straws incorporated in this little beauty.

Clutch Spotlight. Designed by Scott Jarvie

The wall lamp he created is even more awesome, don’t you think? And you know how much I like cool lighting fixtures.

Mr. Jarvie isn’t the only one who thinks straws make great home decor, either. Tal Gur, one of Isreal’s leading designers, created a chair and table for Promise Design that remind me of those little bottles of colored sand you can buy at any beach town souvenir shop. I can’t even imaging how many straws were used.

Tal Gur at Promise Design

Not as many as Tara Donovan needed to create her wall art. It doesn’t even look like straws from far away, does it? More like snow, or cotton balls, or a really bad plaster job. But I totally dig it.

By Tara Donovan

And it really is made of straws.

Detail of Tara Donovan installation

But now the guilt is seeping back in, because I’m guessing that all those straws weren’t just slowly collected over twenty years of culling garbage dumps. Only aliens would do something like that.

Instead, I bet all those thousands of straws were created specifically for Ms. Donovan’s project. And that’s not going to help preserve nature’s straws at all!

Photo by Dave Bunnell

Beautiful, no? Soda Straws are the most fragile of stalactites, and hollow, just like the plastic one in my iced tea, which I guzzled because it is so damn hot. Probably due to global warming. Or the forest fires. Which are also probably due to global warming. Or the fact that it is summer.

Venezuelan NesTea Ad

It’s all so overwhelming, really. I’d love to continue drinking my iced tea without pondering whether it will somehow end up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or if my niece will end up having to live with landfills full of my straws. That said, I’d also love to eat cheese straws without getting horrible gas or high cholesterol. And suntan without running the risk of skin cancer. And wear pretty four-inch heels without looking like a new-born giraffe or getting numb toes. And dance naked in the rain without freaking the fuck out of myself and my neighbors.

Okay, maybe not the last one. The heat has clearly made me loopy. Perhaps I’m dehydrated. I need another iced tea. And it’ll go down better with a straw.

For now, that’s just the way it’s gonna be. I’ll worry about saving the planet once I’ve quenched my thirst.

Thank you, Mr. Stone, for making that so easy.