1- Why are there still tags in T-shirts and sweaters? They’re itchy and can ruin a perfectly comfortable shirt. Old Navy puts a printed tag on the backs of their shirts yet they still have a material tag sewn into the seam on the sides (with washing instructions), which is equally aggravating. (Thanks for this suggestion Gela- you were right about tags!)

2- Kid’s toy packaging is ridiculous (courtesy of my MIL Jo). She’s right – ever try and open a Barbie doll or big car set for an excited kid? There’s the box, the plastic insert, the plastic fasteners, the wire twist-ties, the tape, the chain-link fence, the begging child rushing you along… it’s so stressful!

3- And while we’re on the topic of packaging why do they make medication bottles so tricky? OK, I know they need to for child safety, but when you have a headache and have to open a box to wrestle open a cap to tear through a foil/plastic seal to fish out a loose ball of cotton, it only causes more of a headache.

4- You know what makes me ferclempt? The feeling of static cling or when there’s a hair stuck to my shirt and it’s tickling my arm and I can’t find it.

5- Although it’s no fun if you’re tired, it’s really nice to wake up at the first hours of morning. Today I got up at 4:30 to watch the royal wedding – the sky was a dark metallic blue and the air had a cool damp shiver. Everything was so still and quiet. It was actually refreshing.

I realized the other day when I watched the last-ever episode of Friends that it wrapped up in 2004… seven years ago. For SEVEN YEARS I’ve been watching Ross and Rachel debate about whether they really were on a break, Phoebe sing about smelly cats, Joey eat sandwiches and deliver his “How yoooo doin’?” and Chandler awkwardly roll from one awful relationship (read: Janice) to the next. I probably flip to a Friends episode almost once a day. I wonder how many times I’ve watched the one where Ross says the wrong name at his wedding… I don’t think I’d wanna know the answer.

There are a lot of shows I can watch repeatedly. I love The Cosby Show and Roseanne (and have several seasons of each on DVD). I’m a sucker for corny shows like Little House on the Prairie and 7th Heaven, and I never tire of Sex & the City (quite possibly the total opposite of the two aforementioned programs). Golden Girls is great too – I get nostalgic with all the South Florida references.

What shows can you watch over and over again?

What’s the number-one thing I miss about being a kid? It’s the blissful innocence, believing that anything’s possible, including little rabbits that come to visit and hide candies and eggs around the house, fat jolly men coming down chimneys with bags of toys, magical fairies fluttering into my room to collect lost teeth and leaving money tucked under my sleepy head, and the Sandman, who would sprinkle fantastical sand over me so that I only have good dreams.

Now I’m not a fan of rabbits, which I consider to be more rodent-like than anything else… the idea of a fat man coming down my chimney is a frightening thought that makes me want to sleep with the portable phone perched next to my bed… I guess I would still love it if some fairy would come and leave me money but if it were at the expense of my teeth, I’d probably pass… and sand is quite possibly the most annoying God-made creation, finding its way into every nook and cranny, and I would probably go into cardiac arrest if I had sand in my bed.

Hmph!

I miss make-believe. I think that’s why I absolutely adore the times I get to spend playing with my 5-year-old niece. She has this incredibly imaginative mind and we play in worlds where animals talk and people have pink and purple skin and the most difficult challenge any character faces is learning how to fly. I want babies like my dolls who do nothing but sit quietly and smile. I want to live in a fort made of quilts and work as a veterinarian as well as a book writer and a high-fashion model… all in one afternoon. I want a collection of pinky-orange $100 bills that really are real money and Kaboodles boxes filled with actual gemstone jewelry.

I want to be blissfully naive… I want to live in fantasy and reality.

And you know what they call a grown-up who does that? NUTS!

1- Dear Martha Stewart, I already subscribe to your magazine so you can stop putting those little paper subscription cards in my magazines. They always fall out and take up space in my recycling bag, and they’re a pretty big waste of paper. Want an idea for your “Good Things” section? Give us a craft that involves extra magazine subscription cards!

2- Dear Aging Gods, I can deal with the frown lines or the occasional grey hair, but the bladder control (or lack thereof) is really unnecessary. I used to go a whole day at school and only pee when I got home (this always impressed my mother) but now I have to plan car rides and potential traffic around possible potty stops. Not cool.

3- Dear Upstairs Neighbor, I understand that it’s hard during the week (no pun intended) to find time for a little lovin’, but do you really have to do IT every Sunday morning at the same time and for THAT LONG (again, no pun intended)?? It’s the Lord’s day for God’s sake, a day for rest…

4- Dear Jell-o, Please bring back pudding pops in chocolate, vanilla, and swirl. K’thanks.

5- Dear Michael, I love you and all but you need to learn how to replace a toilet paper roll. You go as far as taking a new one out from under the bathroom sink – that’s really the hardest most time-consuming part. Just click it into place on the roller thingy. If you need a lesson on how this is done, click here.

I love animals. I also love steak.

As a teenager I definitely went through my fair share of times when I wanted to go vegetarian. And I would… for about a week. Then my mom would make her breaded fried pork chops or me and my friends would be passing through a McDonald’s drive-thru and I’d crack.

I was also very underweight as a teen so doctors warned against my giving up meat altogether.

But lately I’ve been giving it a lot of consideration. I don’t want to be unrealistic here – I don’t think I’d be ready to give up all meat entirely, but I’d like to try preparing more vegetarian dishes and cutting down on my meat intake. There are so many health implications associated with eating meat, not to mention the negative impact meat-production has on the environment.

A few facts I learned:

- According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off U.S. roads.

- A Harvard study found that women who eat more than 1.5 servings of red meat per day are nearly twice as likely to develop hormone-related breast cancer compared to women who eat fewer than three servings per week. The American Journal of Epidemiology also found that there’s a solid connection between heart disease and meat consumption. In recent years, health concerns have been raised about the consumption of meat increasing the risk of cancer – in particular, red meat and processed meat were found to be associated with higher risk of cancers of the lung, esophagus, liver, and colon, among others.

- More than 8 billion chickens are killed for their flesh each year, and 280 million hens are used for their eggs. Ninety-nine percent of these animals spend their lives in total confinement.

The arguments about why meat consumption is dangerous, unhealthy and somewhat unethical can go on and on.

Now like I said, I don’t think that, at this point in my life, I could give up on meat entirely, but I could definitely cut back. I could experiment with other ingredients (pastas, rice, beans, and more) and try to eat a few more meatless meals. And I could definitely make more of an effort to buy my meat and eggs from free-range local suppliers. I’d like to spend the summer checking out more markets and farm stands.

If everyone put in a little more time and consideration when consuming meat, if we all took a moment to really think about the animal who gave up their life to give us that steak or chop or cutlet, then maybe the way in which we raise and eat animals would become more responsible.

Food for thought…

I spent the last two weeks with the fam in Ottawa. I usually only go for weekends at a time but I had some work stuff there so I brought the pup, the lappy, and stayed put. It was so nice to have lunches with my dad and bro, to go shopping with my mom, and to spend weekday evenings sitting around playing Jeopardy and eating dinner on tray tables in front of the TV. I did some cooking and little chores around the house to lighten the load on my parents when they got home from work, and it felt awesome to do things for them for a change (like make dinner and do laundry). All in all it was a really nice two weeks, and I can’t tell you how much the pup loved having a yard with trees and birds to run around in. It was like a mini vacay (with some work thrown in).

But it’s funny how I can sit around the living room with my mom, dad and brother, watching sitcoms and having dessert after a dinner of fried pork chops my mom so classically made, and feel like nothing has changed… but yet a lot of things have changed. We are all individually set in our own ways since going on to lead separate lives. My parents have a certain way they like to keep their house, my brother is a popular guy and spends his fair share of time texting, and I definitely require a certain amount of TV time in my day or I don’t feel like I’ve had a chance to unwind. Dad loves listening to music, Mom loves errands, Matt loves working out and eating A LOT, and I’m an internet-social networking fiend. But we all love to laugh, talk over each other, play games, give unwarranted advice, and spend time with each other. The times I spend with those three people are truly some of the best times of my life.

So would I consider moving back home? Yes and no. But one thing’s for sure – you can always come home.

1- What’s up with towels that don’t absorb water? I mean, there is one sole purpose of a towel – to DRY things. I don’t understand bath and dish towels that just schmear the water around instead of absorbing it. FAIL!

2- Things you should never buy at the dollar store: batteries, lipstick, unrecognizable brands of chocolate, tupperware, condoms, and pregnancy tests.

3- Best things to buy at the dollar store: wrapping paper, brandname chocolate bars, seasonal items, foil pans, and whoopie cushions.

4- Alex Trebec is so condescending on Jeopardy… he always corrects people and the way they pronounce answers. “What is an annoying game show host?” I’d like to see how smart HE would be if HE played Jeopardy.

5- If I had a million dollars, if I had a million dollars, I’d have fresh flowers delivered every week…

Sticking to freelancing full-time was a decision that did not come easily. It was one of those hold-my-breath-and-jump sort of things. My heart was telling me to work for myself while my head was saying, “What are you CRAZY?? Just take a full-time job somewhere for the stability.” But last summer was fantastic – I worked hard and made just as much as I ever did at an office but I also volunteered for a number of months at an old folk’s home, I went to the pool every day, I met 9-to-5 friends for lunches, and I’m really looking forward to this summer, especially if we get a house.

But there are definitely cons to being self-employed. You have to “prove yourself” a lot more, not only to banks and financial people but to yourself. It can be a lonely existence without the company of co-workers. It can be really hard to put yourself on a schedule and not stay up until 4am watching infomercials and eating Ben & Jerry’s fudge brownie overload ice cream. You constantly find yourself reassuring loan specialists and mortgage brokers and yourself that you’re a valuable asset.

There’s no one there to bounce ideas off of (at least not directly – my Facebook and Twitter friends know how often I use them as sounding boards). What should I charge for a contract? Does this picture illustrate the article properly? How would you paraphrase this quote? Is it complement or compliment?

Unless you live in a space with extra rooms where you can set up a home office, your workspace is wherever you happen to be. I’ve worked on my couch, in bed, on my balcony, in a park, at a cafe, on the bus, at restaurants, at friend’s houses, and on vacation. There’s no giant desk calendar that’s always handy so you can set appointments, and no corkboard to hang mementos and pictures and other keepsakes (and anyone who has ever worked in an office with me knows my cubicle is always littered with toys, memorabilia, and more). You find yourself relying on an agenda as much as you do air. If I ever lost my datebook I would also lose an address book, all of my birthday reminders, a cookbook, and an “Aunt Flo tracker.”

Your personal and professional life inevitably become one. You have to give out your home address so PR companies can send samples (because the samples are one of the best parts of journalism! I kid, I kid…), while editors and interviewees have to leave messages on your home voicemail (where you’ve possibly recorded a corny personalized message… not that I’d ever do that).

And finally, your fashion sense disappears. You find yourself living in sweatpants and wool striped socks with your hair in a scrunchie. You change from PJs into, well, PJs. By the time you go somewhere that calls for a little makeup, you pull out your glitter eyeshadow only to learn that that look went out of style three years ago. Don’t get me wrong – I still shower and brush my hair and teeth and keep up with my personal hygiene… that’s not what I’m saying. But why would I go to the trouble of picking out an outfit with accessories, etc. if the only person who is going to see me is my landlord when I run down to get the mail?

Self-employment has been the most rewarding part of my professional career, but it doesn’t come without challenges. When you’re crammed into a cubicle and dream of working from home, you don’t think of the long days where editors on east and west coasts keep the assignments coming in well past 5pm, or making major career decisions completely solo, or staring at a computer screen for hours lost only in your thoughts and work – you can imagine my surprise when I answer the phone at 4pm and realize that it’s the first time I have spoken out loud all day (ME!).

But I still wouldn’t have it any other way…

So we went on an outward-bound-type trip this weekend- me, the hubs, my brother and my dad. We hiked 4.4km out to a cabin with everything we needed on our backs, explored a nearby beach (that was partially frozen over still), played some snowball baseball, listened to the radio, cooked our stew on the wood-burning stove, and slept in bunk beds. We went to bed at 9pm, basically because it was pitch black and there wasn’t a whole lot else to do. But it was sorta refreshing to get back to basics, to be far away from civilization, to test our skills of fire-building and making do without technology (despite the fact my brother was texting and my husband was playing the hockey game on his BlackBerry). It was one of those trips that I agreed to, then second-guessed all the way until we had arrived (after a pretty up-and-down hike out there), and then loved.

We forget how much technology (or electricity, for that matter) we use. We lose sight of how much garbage we produce until we have to carry it 4.4km. It’s easy to take for granted niceties like flushing toilets or running water. And I think it’s important for us to do the camping/cabin-renting roughin’ thing every so often.

So I wanna do another outward-bound trip, take in nature, walk in the woods at the crack of dawn, pee in a hole, stoke fires, and curl up in a sleeping bag… in a year or two…

1- Lines follow me wherever I go… somehow I always pick the slowest grocery store line where the person is buying 14 cases of soda and wants to pay for each one separately, and I get caught behind some bubby at the bank who can’t hear the teller and wants to cash a six-year-old check every time.

2- I love new office supplies. I love the sound of a notebook’s binding cracking when I first open it, or that fresh bright yellow swoosh of using a highlighter for the first time… does that make me weird?

3- My printer at home turns on all by itself. At 4am it will start warming up and yet none of the lights on the front of it are on (including the power light) – now what ghost is out there haunting printers? What a boring thing to haunt!

4- “Off The Map” is an awesome show and yet I never hear people talking about it. It’s so well done and the storylines are great!

5- I hate that feeling when you put on a pair of earrings for the first time in months and you have to actually kinda push the back of the earring through the back of the hole because it’s started to seal up… it makes this nauseating popping sound.