personalized jewelery I love

Something that drives me crazy:  Before Christmas, I can rarely think of what to ask for.  I usually feel pretty excited about the gifts I gave - so that's gratifying.  But, it's only after Christmas that I can think of a million things I want.  Today, I'm daydreaming about these things:

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And this is the one I want the most...

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Having any second thoughts on Christmas wishes?  

White Christmas (a day late)

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Hope you weren't planning on coming to, leaving from or traveling within New York City today!

I took one of the few trips out that I plan to take today already:

Can you see the bike?

A year ago today...

Lunar Eclipse.

According to the NY Times, for the first time in 372 years, Monday into Tuesday’s lunar eclipse coincided with the start of the winter solstice.  

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A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon passes behind Earth, into Earth's shadow. 


Did you see it?

The Wind.

Today is a very windy day.  How are you keeping put together?

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Low Cost Children's Present

As you know, I'm looking for full-time work and my husband is in Med School.  Read:  I have a lotta time and not much money.  What's a gal to do with this conundrum around Christmas?  Get creative!

I have a 6 year old brother (yup, I'm a LOT older than him - but even older than our 3 year old brother) and it can be a little difficult to shop for him - esp on a tight budget.

I got creative by making him a game book.

I started with images of kids games like this one of tic tac toe:


Then I printed them an pasted on construction paper:

Then I went to kinkos and laminated.  The lamination costs about $2.50 per 8x11 page so it's easily the most expensive part of the process.  But it's important because then you can draw on the pages with a dry erase marker and erase easily.  Plus, I did 3 8x11's so it was only $7.50 total.

Finally, I cut, hole punched and clipped together:

I imagine that this will be great for trips in the car or when his daily alloted computer time is over for the day.

Bonus-- While I was at the stationary store, I found these for my other brother:


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Entering Giveaways Again

So, I'm back at my old tricks and I've won a couple giveaways recently!


I got this cute clutch (oh wait, that's actually a diaper bag - fabulous right? cute for now, useful for later) from Heather of Seamless Mod.  The giveaway was hosted at Hideous! Dreadful! Stinky!  Thanks ladies! (ps. you can buy this one here.)

I also got great greeting cards:

This ny card is my favorite.  The cards were wrapped in twine and sent from Gold Teeth Brooklyn.  Thanks to the function key for hosting.

I totally love these little surprises in life!

How was your weekend?

This will be a short post because I need to be out the door soon.  But!  I had such a fun (and Christmas-filled) weekend that I had to share.

It started out by heading back to Loew's Theater in Jersey City:

Just as gorgeous as ever.
There, we attended a Christmas sing-a-long and watched the "Christmas Classic"  Scrooge (though, I gotta say, I had never heard of it so I can't imagine that it's too much of a classic).

After that, we headed back to the city and met up with some friends.  There were still some remnants of Santa-con hanging around - one of our friends even participated!

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Then, yesterday morning was the Christmas Pageant at our church.

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I was helping out this year.  It was a little stressful trying to herd that many kids in costumes but it went well and the kids were absolutely adorable!

Then, finally, we watched San Fransisco's version of The Nutcracker on PBS.

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I kinda love how every version of the Nutcracker varies just a little.  We plan to go to ABT's Nutcracker later in the month and it's great because I know that watching this on the TV won't ruin the experience later for us!

How was your weekend?  Any big plans for the week?

Fair Isle Sweaters

Every winter I'm usually obsessing over cable knit sweaters.  But this year, I've been dying for a fair isle sweater.  Check out my favs:

  

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And what about for the boys in our lives?

Lookin' Good.

And finally, I am truly adoring these prints.  

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Though, their legs look a little exposed for this 26 degree weather...

What do you think?  Loving the Fair Isle print like me?  Or is it a bit "Cosby" for you?  

The Coffee Tasting

So, it turns out my husband has 4 ways to get coffee every morning:

1.  Old, Big PotCoffee Maker
2.  New, Single Serving Coffee Maker
3.  French Press
4.  Dunkin' Donuts

But, I don't drink coffee.  Doesn't it seem silly to have so many coffee makers?  Well, I thought so.  So, I figured it's time to do a coffee taste testing to see which he REALLY likes (and which we can get rid of).

We brewed all from the Dunkin' Donuts blend and bought one cup from DD.  Then I set them up and numbered them 1 through 4.  My husband then tasted each and took notes.  He ranked the coffee and put which cup he thought went with each maker.  He thought the results were like this:

Maker 1:  Old, Big Pot Coffee Maker = Rank 4
Maker 2:  French Press = Rank 1
Maker 3:  New, Single Serve Coffee Maker = Rank 3
Maker 4:  Dunkin' Donuts = Rank 2

He was close but critically wrong in one thing.  He mixed up Makers 1 and 2.  So, Maker 1 was really the French Press - and he really liked it the least instead of the best.  And Maker 2 - his favorite - was really our oldest Coffee Maker.  SURPRISE ENDING. :)

It was a fun Saturday morning activity and a great way to wake up!

The Biological Clock.

Be prepared for a long post.  I read an intriguing article in New York magazine:  Waking up from the Pill:  Fifty years ago, the pill ushered a new era of sexual freedom.  It might have created a fertility crisis as well. - by Vanessa Grigoriadis.  (Direct quotes in italics)

The article begins at a birthday celebration.  The guest of honor?  The Pill.

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One of the speakers says, "Today we operate on a simple premise - that every little girl should be able to grow up to be anything she wants and she can only do so if she has the ability to chart her own reproductive destiny."  Basically, all of the guests celebrated its creation and the freedoms it allowed to women.

I started taking it when I was nineteen.  My then boyfriend (now husband - yes, we dated quite awhile before marriage) and I had just started getting sexually active and I didn't want to rely on only one form of birth control.  But everyone has their own story - my best friend in high school started taking it to control acne (among other things).  And, as the article points out, the pill is the most popular form of contraception in the US.

But what is that doing to us biologically?  On the Pill, every woman's cycle is exactly the same, at 28 days, even though that is rarely the case in nature, where the majority of periods occur every 26 to 32 days but can take up to 40, even 50 days.  This is a nice effect but it's not real.  And there's a cost to this illusion...


What is that cost?  According to the article, the big cost is that we lose touch with the biological realities of being female.  And the reality of being female is that there is a relatively short window in our lives where we can conceive.  A couple decades ago, women in New York would be married w/ kids by age 28 and with the pill women have shifted their attempts at conception back about ten years.  So, with this shift, one anxiety - Am I pregnant? - is replaced by another: Can I get pregnant? Because, let's face it, prime baby making years are ages 18-35 and you are INCREDIBLY less likely to conceive at 38 than you are at 28.


And I can imagine what a lot of women think by this line of reasoning:  Wait, so we're finally able to have sex like a man and now the media is telling us we should be making babies??

But, I think it's something worth chatting about.  And, as the article points out, these days, there's not as much pressure to procreate as one may imagine.  For instance, most people know not to pressure a woman about when she's going to have children - even if pesky relatives might put their foot in their mouths from time to time.  And, of course, bosses would rather women were around all the time, thumbing their Blackberrys in the off-hours. 


So, infertility is an issue.  And on the pill, it's easy to forget the truths about biology.  And here's the thing, the pill tricks your body into thinking it's pregnant so the period that you're getting is artificial with NO medical reason for it.  And something that I, personally, think is shocking is that so few women take pills that abolish the period all together.

I take Loestrin 24fe and I haven't had a period since 2007.

It's true - and my best girlfriends find this shocking.  I always get questions like, "Is that safe?" and "How will you know if you're pregnant?"  And I've had extensive conversations with my ob/gyn about this and he says it's perfectly safe and that if I wanted a period, we could discuss a different pill.  But, really, the only reason I would be getting my period would be because I WANTED IT.  And, truly, I don't.

But that's me.  According to the article, many women turn down the chance to abolish periods is because women are half-consciously rebelling against the artificiality of the Pill's regime.  So, perhaps, by getting a period, women feel more connected to their bodies.

Problematically though, fertility is linked to youth and health.  So, if you're getting that artificial and regular period at age 38, you think you're still young enough and healthy enough to conceive.  And, let me repeat, it's artificial.  The body you wake up with after fifteen or more years on the Pill is, in significant ways, not the one you started out with.

So, let's apply this to my own life.  When I was 19, I had regular periods.  I'm 26 now so that's 7 years since I had a natural period.  I gotta tell you, I have NO idea how long my natural cycle is - and this would be true even if i were getting the artificial periods.  Further, it might be possible that I would have cycles in which I didn't ovulate at all.  And the thing that really gives me pause is that by tricking my body into thinking that I am pregnant, I'm not getting the signs.  If I am getting signs, I'm not paying attention to them or don't know what to look for because I'm not in tune with my body in the way that I would be if the pill didn't exist and I were forced to look at ovulation cues such as body temperature changes.*
*Note:  the article does discuss the rhythm method, it's past failures and current trends/advances.  In the interest of length, I'm not going to address it here.**
**Update:  As Brittany pointed out, it doesn't discuss Rhythm so much as FAM.  Check out her comment - VERY worthy of reading.

A big problem, then, is that it is so difficult to predict how hard it will be for any individual woman to conceive. So, it's possible that women who have spent their 20's and early 30's avoiding pregnancy will find that in their late 30's that they can't.  Unfortunately, fertility doctors have a surprisingly small suite of options for women who are having trouble conceiving.  For instance, as the article points out, IVF has never been more effective than it is today, but cycle by cycle, it still fails more than it succeeds.


This is a quote from Dr. Jamie Grifo, the program director of NYU Langone's Fertility Center, "I've got 44 year olds who show up in my office after trying two months and say, 'I don't understand, my gynecologist told me I was fine.' Now, he didn't say, 'You're going to be fertile forever.' But they don't hear that part - they heard the part where he said they're healthy.  And for these women, if IVF doesn't work, it's very hard to recover.  They have to grieve and mourn and make a life.  These women, the 44 year olds, are the ones that struggle the most, because they are so angry.  And they're angry at one person, but they won't admit it.  They're angry at themselves."

That quote really hit me.  Because the harsh fact is that for some women, if they wait too long they will not conceive. Ever.  Like I said, that's harsh.

That doesn't mean there aren't options for having children.  For instance, one female economist made headlines with a suggestion that women would be better off having their kids in their twenties and entering the workforce a half-dozen or so years later.  Yes - that's controversial but not without merit.  Or, another suggestion comes from an inventor of the Pill turned sci-fi novelist.  He imagines that we'll deposit our eggs in a bank around age 20 then get sterilized.  Once we're ready to have a baby, we'll make a withdrawal. Easy peasy - though, he does admit that this is a long-term vision.  Of course, for those that are not concerned with passing on their genetic make-up, there are options such as surrogacy and adoption.

Finally, I'll leave you with one last quote from the article.  Sexual freedom is a fantastic thing, worth paying a lot for.  But it's not anti-feminist to want to be clearer about exactly what is being paid.  Anger, regret, repeated miscarriages, the financial strain of assisted reproductive technologies, and the inevitable damage to careers and relationships in one's thirties and forties that all this involve deserve to be weighed and discussed.  The next stage in feminism, in fact may be to come to terms, without guilt trips or defensives, with issues like this.  

Baby, it's cold outside.

So I'm inside dreaming about new snow boots.  Check out my favs so far:


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I love how these manage to still look cute while they're clearly also impenetrable.  Bring it on, winter storm.  These boots are ready.