I am not touring for this book but I will be doing one reading/book signing in Los Angeles:

Barnes & Noble at The Grove
189 Grove Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
7:30 p.m. [ Map here ]

I am a little nervous. I haven't done any public appearances since 2006? 2007? And I've relapsed into my cozy hermit shell, where it's pleasant and there is TV. But I am excited to see folks I haven't seen in so long and chitchat and see what ya'll are knitting and look at your cute shoes and thank you for buying my book and also for agreeing with me that dating should come with hazard pay. I will also happily sign any book you buy, not just my books. I am flexible that way.

So there you have it. I will be at the bookstore on February 25th, all of me, so much more to go around this time! We will pretend I am taller, perhaps. Maybe I can find some really high heels. Or maybe I will get you all drunk so I look prettier through the misty haze of your tipsiness. Who knows! Be there or be a granny square!

File under "crazy cat lady" shenanigans: I plugged in the vacuum, walked away for just a half second and when I turned back around the felines had all decided to lounge so peacefully and artfully right in the path of the dreaded scary noise machine that I couldn't bring myself to scare them away.

(Also cross-filed under "Things not to tell potential dates.")

How YOU doin' today?

- - -

It's an El Niño year, which means we're going to have more RAIN. I know, I know, you're digging out under a snowbank and saying don't cry for me Argentina with your silly rain ... but that is because you have no idea how hard it is for us Los Angelenos. We're not accustomed to all this moisture falling from the sky. We like our air to be crunchy, our roads to stay dry and our weathermen to be perpetually bronzed:

Stern Dallas Raines!

Dapper Dallas Raines!

This has been a long, hard winter. We haven't seen an 80-degree day in weeks! I even had to go buy an "umbrella" device. How ever will we survive in such conditions?

Is the cat blurry or did it melt from all the rain? We may never know!!!!

Hard to tell from my crappy picture, but that's Vitello's pizza on the left and just beside it on the right is SweetHarts, the candy shop run by the Hart family (of Melissa Joan Hart). Above both is the world's largest gastric band billboard. Funny?

2) Knitting
I have been knitting a baby sweater and booties set for my friend Courtney's new baby and by now I fear the child is already walking and will soon be driving while I am over here trying to finish a button band. I think the problem is that the pattern I chose looked better in the pictures than it does knitted up and since Courtney is a great knitter, I'm afraid she will think it's cheesy. Do I just finish it and wash it, block it and wrap it up and send it off with love or do I scrap the whole set and make something new? Tough to say. Maybe I'll do both. Send this off with a note that it was cuter in the pattern picture and then try to make her baby something really pretty at a later date.

3) TeeVee
I love television. This year I'm watching American Idol, which I haven't watched in over five years and I'm so glad I tuned in, I think there's something so entertainuplifting about watching people work toward a goal. Plus, I can't carry a tune in a bucket so I admire anyone with the ability to sing. And, just because it was on one night, I started watching the show that comes on after, Human Target. IT IS SO AWESOME. Cheesey fun entertainment in the ilk of Bond-meets-The Bodyguard. I'm also still watching Castle, which keeps getting better, and International House Hunters and all my usual addictions on The Travel Channel.

Last night I watched Anthony Bourdain in Prague and it made me feel a little sentimental about Prague and the great time I had there with Mr. X. But that was a long time ago, and one of the things most happy and liberating about my life now is that I am not afraid to go there by myself and make all sorts of new memories. Being the captain of your own ship can feel a little heavy sometimes, but it is also totally freeing in a way I never would have expected. I guess everything is two sides: the good and the not-so-good. Like the good Doctor Dyer says, every wave has a peak and a valley.

4) Book stuff
Apparently, I have an online book tour. I forgot I said yes to this, and so it snuck up on me. I have never done one of these but I agreed to it because I do not have to leave my house. I was sort of nervous, because I suck at promotion of pretty much every type and I didn't know what would happen. How nice to see the first person on the list was Kristy Sammis, who is like an old friend. So it's all very incestuous... just the way I like it and hopefully they will all be nice, which is all anyone who writes really wants. Forget constructive criticism, that is what the editor is for. Hah! Actually, it just dawned on me they're all doing book giveaways and I should do that too. I just got my shipment of books so maybe if I get my act together later this week or next week we can do that.

One thing I do love is how knitting folks all seem to stick together online. It's kind of the way the internet (and the world) should always be. I remember when the Yarn Harlot introduced herself to me at my first Book Expo and gave me a hug and it felt like finding a really solid anchor in the midst of a crazyass sea. Because of the blogtour thingy I've gotten to correspond this week with two of my favorite knitters, too, Wendy Johnson and Wendy Bernard. Knit people are good folks. I've met a lot of fancypants book people since all this started, and the knitters and crocheters are the only ones who are universally supportive, friendly and hoping you succeed, too. Some authors in other genres seem to feel if another writer gets a leg up it ruins their own chances. But with the yarn writers, they all seem to believe (as I do) that when one person gets an opportunity it opens the door wider for us all. I LOVE THAT.

5) Not All Pollyanna Fun & Games, Missy
I did lock myself out of my own Jeep this morning in the parking garage. I was on the phone with Drew and we were blabbing away happily and then I got out of the Jeep, locked and shut the driver's side door, walked to the passenger's side to get out my giganto-purse and my lunch and realized the door was locked. With my keys sitting in my purse pocket. Inside the Jeep. Luckily I know the secret whatsithaveyou to breaking into my own car, so I broke in just as Jennifer walked up and laughed at me (we work in the same building.) I am so happy that my two best friends, Drew and Jen, got to simultaneously witness me breaking into my own car on a Tuesday morning, an auspicious beginning to a day.

Oh, and I ate breakfast this morning. Thank goodness, I needed my strength for breaking and entering.

While I doubt this is as scintillating as, say, knitting content or videos of my cat sleeping, I thought I would post a little progress report at the beginning of each month here in my online diary more to keep me accountable than anything else.

Priority #1: Get Healthy

Progress: This is a tricky subject to write about because a lot of getting healthy is about food but it's so easy to devolve into diet mentality and start listing what you ate and grading yourself like a character assessment ("I ate this and am therefore good, I ate that and am therefore bad...") and honestly there is nothing more cliche or boring in this world to me than a woman blathering on about what she ate that day like a verbal diet diary. BO-RING. Useless. Unproductive. Total diet-brain stereotype.

So, having said that, I'm making good progress in my goal to be healthier. There is a food component, of course, but I'm trying to look at the whole and not be so weird about being ON PLAN or OFF PLAN and just remember you get one life with a lot of days and a lot of meals and the goal is to make basically healthy choices, that's the plan stan. (It is not the two tablespoons of olive oil on the roasted cauliflower that make you fat.)

The immediate challenge was to reign in my repertoire of mostly drive-through and junk food, none of which has any real nutritional value. Since the beginning of January I've been cooking all my meals except the occasional microwaved popcorn. The key is all the prep work on the weekends. I make sure to cook and assemble all my lunches on Sunday afternoon and pack my lunch bag every night before going to bed. It takes a lot of thinking ahead but it's worth it -- lunch is so easy during the week.

Dinners need to be quick -- I commute and I'm starving when I get home -- so I have been making staples ahead of time and re-heating them when I get home which is working out really well. Even roasted veggies re-heat well in the oven (I think they come back better in the oven for ten minutes on 300 than in the microwave.) I've been bringing snacks, too, mostly apples and walnuts because they keep longer and I like them. I'm discovering I'm more of a veggies person than a fruit person. I would rather eat a bowl of green beans than peel and eat an orange. But I like apples and they're portable.

I'm still having a hard time finding a workable breakfast, sometimes all I want is a coffee on the way to work. In February I want to work on getting a better breakfast routine.

All in all though, I'm pretty happy about cooking my own food. I like experimenting with new recipes and finding new foods (Brussels sprouts! who would have guessed it!) and I'm working very hard to keep sane about all this. If I start counting carbs or points or calories, someone smack me.

Exercise: I bought some awesome Nike shoes on sale right before the new year and I ordered the Nike + SportBand which comes with the memory chip you place inside the shoe. You can't feel the chip (it's underneath the insole) and it tracks your mileage and calories and all that, it's awesome. I was getting into a groove until it started raining like crazy and then I just stayed in and snuggled with the cats and watched the weather each morning on TV instead of going for a walk. On the days I was walking, I noticed I slept a little better. Absolutely want to do more walking in February (she says just as the forecast projects more rain this week.)

So overall I am making progress in the health arena. Mostly little changes here and there, the biggest change being all the cooking and washing and chopping and so on. It is time consuming but it's getting easier each week. One thing I keep reminding myself is to look how fast January went by! And to remember that the small changes are cumulative and over time will make a larger change in my health and shape. At the beginning of the month it felt daunting to cook all my meals from scratch for four weeks but it went by in a blink and now already we're in month two of twelve. It really does get easier each passing day and I'm finally not having those McDonald's french fries detox pains anymore. I swear, I think McDonald's is more addictive than crack. Not that I have done a comparative study, mind you.

- - -

Priority #2: Come from an attitude of yes.

Progress: This is kind of one of those hippdippy resolutions that is so loosely defined it may not mean anything to anyone but me. Basically, I want to focus more on the good parts and less on the icky parts of life, looking for ways up instead of finding all the ways down.

My progress this past month has been ... interesting. I had a few times where I knew I overreacted to something or got upset about something I should have just let go. I want to get better at letting go of other people's crap. The Dalai Lama says you have all the power in your life to choose how you feel about someone else's words or actions. Except I noticed a few times last month that I get all inflamed with emotion before my brain even kicks in! Guess that is why he is the Dalai Lama and I am Her Ladyship PantiesInAWad.

Last week was particularly rocky and I didn't handle a difficult person very well. Luckily every passing moment is a chance to turn it all around. (Uh, it took me the whole week.) The biggest thing I want to work on in February is to institute a cooling-down period. Had I just taken a step or five back and waited to reply or respond to the difficult person, I may have had much better results. I tend to speak without a filter and I also get emotional about stupid stuff that isn't even that important. A cooling-off period helps me put things into perspective.

There were a few times this past month, though, when I started to really dwell on something icky and I caught myself mid-ick and made my brain think other thoughts until I honestly felt happier. So that is progress!! My favorite thought is just a little fantasy picture: Me sitting in a cafe in Paris (I get to imagine what I am wearing, down to my shoes) and I'm stirring a spoon through a steaming hot cup of coffee with milk. On the table is the cup and saucer, a smaller saucer with a few cubes of sugar, maybe a candle, or a place mat, a napkin. I have a guidebook with me, it's sitting out by the cup. Nothing of consequence happens in this scene, I'm just stirring the coffee in a Parisian cafe as the world walks by.

Thinking up that little picture makes crummy stuff in real life evaporate. It reminds me that the globe is large, much larger than the beige office or the crawling commute or the floors that need mopping.

- - -

I'm not sure how this is related to those resolutions, exactly, but it is: ever since I moved I've found it impossible to part with anything. It's only been a few months but still, it's very odd. I know I have tendencies to hoard and I try very hard to be diligent and clean and cull and let go of things when I need to. But I have been unable to let go of anything for a few months (except trash of course). It became very apparent to me the day I received a duplicate of a book I already owned and instead of passing it along I shelved it right up on the bookshelf next to its twin.

WEIRD. Even for me.

Last month I realized it was a combination of anxiety and discomfort and I figured it would work itself out. I'd also just parted with a huge chunk of stuff all at once when I moved, and maybe I needed a little time. I don't know.

Slowly (in the past week and a half) I've started easing up and over the weekend I took a whole Jeepload of stuff to the Goodwill, mostly clothes and things I found when I moved that I should have let go of back in September instead of moving them with me. And of course that extra book! And some other odds and ends. I also cleared out a big bag of papers and magazines and junk and went through my closet one more time and found some winter coats that don't fit and I donated those, too.

It felt good to clean up and clean out. I think it's a positive sign that I can at least tell when something is weird with me and I'm willing to let it work itself out. And it did work itself, I guess, since I felt a lot of relief cleaning the closet and getting rid of unneeded clutter.

- - -

Well, that was January. I ordered a new camera but it hasn't come yet. All empowered by the brilliant idea (after many many moons) to get rid of my lemon camera, I looked around my life for other lemons to eliminate. This weekend I made a list of other funkadelic things that are nagging at me and I'm going to fix or get rid of the irritation. Some will have to wait because of the cost, but some things I can fix myself. That has got to be a good step in the year of yes.

Thanks so much for all the tips and input on digital cameras! I hadn't even heard of that Panasonic Lumix but it sounds interesting since it takes video, too. The Canon seems to be the overwhelming favorite. You've given me a lot to think about! This was the best insta-poll ever, thank you!

Oh -- and special thanks to the folks who said they also suffered with a Kodak lemon, too. No one believes me when I first tell them the camera is a lemon. So I hand it over. Then they use it. Days later the expert will give the camera back to me in disgust, defeated by the lemon. The exhilaration of know-it-all-ness is defeated by the agony of the lemon.

This process was especially frustrating because Kodak wouldn't take my camera back without a ridiculous restocking fee. (Lesson learned: buy from a place with a no-hassle return policy.) And I held out hope I could read the manual front to back, search online help forums, stand on my head and make it work. Later it was an irritation that was mildly amusing as a party trick ("Fine then -- you try to take good pictures with this camera! I dare you!") and now it's just gotten to the point where I hate to take any pictures at all. That's crazypants. I used to take hundreds of snapshots a week, especially of the cats or on vacation. And last year I think I only took a few hundred pics all year long. Vacations have gone virtually unrecorded, I ended up with maybe ten usable photos of my trip to Ireland.

Yesterday WorkJennifer and I were talking about this and I realized I felt so much RELIEF just deciding to buy a new camera. It's a small thing, really, and yet it makes me so happy. And the bigger lightbulb here is to stop being such a dumbaii and living with something irritating for almost TWO YEARS. I do not know why I am such a slow learner sometimes!

I'm going to make a conscious decision to pay more attention in my life and if there is something causing me low-grade irritation all the time (like the camera) I'm going to just fix it where it can be fixed. It's silly to let my cheapskatedness or laziness or unwillingness to just immediately chuck something that's a lemon win out over basic harmony. Life is too short to have a crappy camera in your pocket.

Wow, that was like going to church and getting religion. Combine that with the high of online shopping and I am so ready for the weekend. I'll let you know what I finally decide to get and how it works out... and I'll be using that 30-day no hassle return policy if needed!! (I guess I should be happy to see I can still learn from my mistakes, yes?) (Even if it takes me a long, long time.)

Yesterday it was so insane that at 10 a.m. I declared to no one in particular, "I fear I have turned into the Titanic, sinking fast, and I am taking you all with me."

Depending on your definition of better today is "better" as I declared myself to be the iceberg instead of the Titanic, and my icy chill will destroy all I come into contact with!

Awesome.

- - -

Unrelated:

Even though I hate my camera I have not been inclined to buy a new one for all sorts of reasons consisting of laziness and cheapskatedness and general camera eschewingness.

But most of my pictures tend to look like this:

And that's after I have retouched them in Photoshop and done my artsy designery best. This camera is a lemon, and no setting or combination of setting or tinkering by any individual has ever managed to fix it. It is a lemon. For a while it was like a party trick -- complain about lousy camera, and someone in earshot would declare they could fix it. Hand over camera only to get it back by disgusted good-intentioned helper days later declaring, "This camera is an (expletive) piece of (expletive.)" Indeed!

The main issue is that the camera takes blurry pictures. Even using a tripod and a timer, the mere rotation of the earth on its axis is cause for blur. And you know, that is a problem.

So having complained about this for well over a year and a half now I have realized that perhaps eliminating irritations (such as replacing the camera that I HATE WITH A FIERY PASSION) is a good step in my Year of Yes. Wow, aren't I a brainiac? And it only took me a year and a half!

So I am going to buy a new camera. I want a simple point-and-shoot camera. Nothing crazypants fancy, nothing big and heavy, nothing super expensive. I like Kodak products (even though my lemon is a Kodak, I still love the way they render light and skintones) but I am open to other suggestions. I know that you all will have suggestions because you are smarter than Einstein me who needed a year and a half to decide the bad camera had to go and you probably like your camera. If you do have a suggestion, will you share?

La Soba really hates being blurry ... her personal paparazzo needs to upgrade!

Oh, it's the paparazzi again, I see.

Well, let me at least wash my face.

How do I look now?

I'm just so cute I can't stand myself!

Really, I am such a babe.

Being adorable is hard work. I need a nap.

The local mountains are covered in snow, you can see them so clearly, it's beautiful. By now we've had dark skies and torrential rain for so long that the city has gone into mass sunlight deprivation and we're all turning into vampires, albeit ones who slurp down soy lattes instead of blood. Does blood have carbs? Do vampires wear Ugg boots?

Last night there was a huge storm in the Valley with lightening and thunder and hail! It was like being back in Mississippi, except inside an apartment meant to withstand things like sunshine and smog. I was worried the skylight would crack. But everything withstood the elements and all was well. The cats got freaked out, though, and I still cannot find my camera so you'll just have to imagine our snow-capped mountains and the sleeping furballs.

- - -

I'm almost finished with a baby sweater for a friend who had her baby over a month ago and now I'm afraid the sweater will be too small. Bummer. Tomorrow I'm going to JoAnn's fabrics to find some cute buttons -- I love buttons, and if I find my camera I'll even (finally) take pictures of my super-dooper-no-fail button sewing method which is really simple and not worth the build up. But that's how we roll here in tabloid land.

And I want to dig through my stash and figure out what my next knitting project will be. It's so cold outside that it's perfect knitting weather! I have a whole bin of wool yarn in different colors that I bought on sale almost five years ago when I first learned to knit. Because I was a beginner and just yarn-excited, I bought without knowing what to do with the yarn, so of course I bought too much for a small project and too little for a big project but I kept it all this time because it's so darn pretty. I was thinking I might get it all out of the bin in the closet and use all the different colors to make a gigantic felted bag like one I saw in AlterKnits Felt.

I've really liked making baby sweaters, though, they're small enough not to get boring and they're so cute. I do want to make a sweater for myself at some point but not yet. I think my next project should be something felted. I love how the fabric shrinks down like magic and gets so dense and fuzzy.

- - -

Finally, I read an article yesterday online that was really interesting (read it here) about the well-meaning folks who are showing up unprepared in Haiti. I get it -- I also feel that deep urge of wanting to do something, anything, to help but then I remember who I am. Which is to say I don't speak Creole or French well enough to be a good translator, I have no medical experience or disaster relief experience, I don't know the lay of the land, I have no real ties to an established relief organization in the country and while I would be of no help at all I would likely try to bring home every person I met which of course you can't do unless you know how to get a passport and visa for everyone you meet.

In other words, the best way for me to help is with my pocketbook. I feel ridiculously lucky to have what I have in life and it's good to give generously to well-known groups who really can help (I chose the Red Cross.)

All this week I worried it was a little flippant to be joking about the rain and the flying palm trees when real devastation is happening somewhere else but obviously this website is built on the hard journalistic basics of whining about cat poop and weather and the trials and errors of reading a knitting pattern. That news article was a good reminder that even if I feel I am falling short because I am not helping with my hands, the reality is that my cash donation is more useful than my body ever could be.

- - -

Have a good weekend!

Thing #1:
Drew and I were talking about roasted vegetables, my newest cooking obsession, and we were talking about all the things I could roast and then I asked, "Do you think these vegetables retain any nutritional value after being cooked on a high heat like that?"

And Drew thought about it and we started talking about the nutrition and all that and midway through the conversation I just stopped.

"Wait," I said. "No, no, no. This is how I get myself into trouble! I start focusing on these ridiculous details and trying to be perfect when really all I need to remember is that eating a delicious dinner of roasted vegetables is healthier and better for me than eating a quarter pounder with cheese and a large order of fries."

"Amen to that," he said.

See what a lifetime of dieting has done to my head? This is how I get off track and overweight, by focusing on rules and regulations and trying to be on some kind of plan and then when I find ways I am failing I fall into a ditch. For those of you who have never struggled with your weight this will make no sense. But I know at least one or two of you know exactly what I am talking about.

I was pretty happy I snapped out of my stupid analysis of the nutritional value of a vegetable. It's so unproductive to get caught up in diet-mentality, but if you have been on a diet since you were eight years old it's difficult to break out of the habit. We make it so hard but it's not supposed to be. As Michael Pollan says, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." (His newest book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual is a GREAT read for anyone who has been freaked out by a lifetime of dieting. It's so sane. I highly recommend it, you'll feel better about food after you read it and you can finish the whole book in an hour.)

So, that was my epiphany.

- - -

Thing #2:

While Drew and I were talking I mentioned that right now is an excellent time to book a vacation since everything is on sale, and I offered (so generously) to search for a cheap flight for him from Houston to somewhere (and I guess mysteriously I would also be there, too, how fun to invite yourself on other people's vacations!) and so I started plugging in cities. He said to try flights to Manchester, which I did, then we both started singing, "Manchester England England, across the Atlantic sea..." which is a song from the musical Hair. Which reminded me of something funny.

About five years ago I was in my Jeep on a perfect summer day and I had the top off the Jeep and the stereo cranked up SO LOUD and I was bumping the cast recording of the musical Hair. Because I am cool that way.

Something happened to my Jeep -- I can't remember what it was, the radiator exploded or the battery died or something, so I had to pull over on the side of the road and wait for the tow truck to come. The car was not operational. But it was just what happened back then. Things broke a lot.

The tow truck took my Jeep to a local garage and they pulled the car inside the garage and I signed the papers and then I went inside where they were trying to get it started. Finally, they managed to get the engine back alive and as it started back up, so did the stereo which was on full blast -- now inside the garage, so it was REALLY loud -- and everyone got an earful of:

Black boys are nutritious
Black boys fill me up
Black boys are so damn yummy
They satisfy my tummy...

All seven or eight guys in the garage turned at one time and stared at me.

"Yes, I just love musicals!" I said.

Then I quickly went outside. Far away outside. I smoked a cigarette (oh I do miss smoking) and I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, I wonder what they would have thought if I'd been listening to track number two on the CD when my car stopped."

(In case you don't know what I mean, here's a link to Hair: Original Soundtrack Recording - Special Anniversary Edition)

Ah, memories.

Manchester England England across the Atlantic Sea! And I'm a genius genius ... I believe in God and I believe that God believes in Claude! That's me ... that's me ....

Yesterday midday we had a big storm cell pass right through downtown and there was even thunder and lightening. When the big clap of thunder came, people got out of their chairs to go look out the windows. One of my co-workers asked, "Is someone filming down here? Did they just do an explosion?" and we all said we thought it was thunder, but there was some discussion about it because there had been filming down on 5th street last week.

"No, it was thunder," someone finally said. "I remember hearing that sound once when I went to Mexico on vacation."

We're a wacky city, aren't we?

But it was GREAT for traffic, since I guess people got scared by the thunder and what it might mean for rush hour and apparently everyone went home early because I coasted home around 6 p.m. in under 40 minutes flat, which is a record even on a clear day in the summer when school is out and traffic is lighter. My coworker K. lives in my neighborhood and she and I were comparing notes about the commute and after we both said how good traffic had been she looked at me, stricken, and said, "Oh crap, I bet we just jinxed it."

We are very superstitious here about our traffic!

There were waterspouts as Dallas Raines predicted, like tornadoes of water, and they chewed up boats in the harbor and ripped up some homes and cars. In the Valley we had some wind and rain but my neighborhood is all clear and even though I am watching my roof and waiting -- knock on wood -- it's still holding for now. Just last week I was lounging on my rooftop patio thinking how great it was in January to read in the sunshine up on the rooftop and now my patio is a swimming pool. It's very exciting.

Tonight we're supposed to have rain of Biblical proportions and since K. and I jinxed traffic I can only imagine what lies ahead. But I still like the rain, it's so different from our usual sunny hallucination and it makes the city clean again, so downtown no longer smells like a human cat box and all the sidewalks are washed and even my Jeep gets a little bath.

We've gone from Storm Watch to Storm Track in just hours! So exciting! Live team coverage! It's the biggest story of the day, especially for the reporters forced to stand on overpasses in slickers and that one guy who always has to stand on a frozen street somewhere in the mountains while it spits freezing rain at him. Although it was typical for Los Angeles that while the news was heralding the storm of the century and had live team coverage around the city, this was the weather outside:

Sunny. For now ... (she said ominously!)

The weather outside looks frightful, though. It did rain and gust and so on -- real rain, not mist -- for a big portion of the day yesterday and the rest of the week looks insanely soggy for the sity of sun and botox:

It's raining cats and dogs and waterspouts!

Unless you live in the Valley where it's raining cats and dogs and palm trees! Raise your fist and represent!

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "Self, why Is Los Angeles having a hissyfit over a few inches of rain? We get two inches of rain an hour here in the summertime. Five days a week."

Well, we did get just around two inches of rain yesterday in the Valley and here is what two inches of rain does to one of the most traveled freeways in the United States:

It's a panic in your pants!

And here is a picture of the backup on the 101:

I am beyond happy that yesterday was a bank holiday and I got to stay home all day and do my little hermity home things and take pictures of traffic on my TV instead of sit in traffic on my fanny. It wasn't raining this morning so I drove in but I assume that tonight I will be sprouting butt-roots into the seat of my Jeep as I inch home along the 101 River.

- - -

In other news, having a long weekend I assumed I would get a bazillion things checked off my to-do list and I was very wrong about that. There are many great things about having a larger home but cleaning it is not one of them. It was so much easier to clean 800 square feet than to keep this behemoth clean, and I planned to clean the apartment top-to-bottom all weekend and found myself feeling not as energized about scrubbing as hoped, and more excited about knitting while watching movies as the cats stretched out in front of the fireplace. I did manage to take down my Christmas tree on JANUARY SEVENTEENTH, by which point it had become part of the decor and I was seriously asking myself if I could just remove the really Christmassy ornaments and leave the rest up all year round.

I did spend a lot of time in the kitchen, though. It was cold and blustery outside (for us, anyway, this is more winter than we see in five years time!) and I decided to cook some of my favorite winter foods, like pot roast in the crockpot and mashed potatoes with kale:

First you mash the potatoes (I use yellow potatoes so it seems like they're drenched in butter) (tricky, no?) and then I add sauteed, chopped kale:

Yummy.
(whoops! I pressed publish before I was done!)

Anyway, I read this article that says most people make New Year's Resolutions and they're going strong right up until the first or second week of February and then they fall off the map. I generally last a little longer but by March I may be jonesing for a cheeseburger. I thought I would plan ahead and cook some of my favorite foods and freeze them so I have a whole store of Resolution-ready stuff on hand when my desire for a quarter pounder with cheese becomes stronger than my desire to cook. Pot roast and mashed potatoes is a favorite, definitely.

I also continued my roasting madness by taking on the asparagus:

It was good. I forgot to take an after picture. I roasted some broccoli, too, and did all of it the same as the cauliflower: preheat the oven to 375, cut the vegetable in small pieces, give it a good drench of olive oil, add a pinch of salt, pepper and a bit of cayenne and add chopped garlic and top with lemon juice from half a lemon. Spread on a pan and roast until tender on the inside and browned on the outside. Asparagus is not my favorite vegetable but it was great roasted. Just a guess here but I think pretty much anything tastes good when it's drenched in olive oil and garlic and topped with Parmesan cheese.

So that was the weekend and the week ahead looks soggy with a chance of pot roast. Beware of waterspouts and flying trees!

The rain keeps pattering down, we're having what's supposed to be crazy amounts of weather -- a whole week of rain! It started yesterday and there's no end in sight. For a place that usually gets between two inches and five inches of rain all year, getting that amount in a two or three day period is quite a newsmaker.

Luckily today is a holiday and I can stay home and listen to the rain and drink coffee in my pajamas and knit. A perfect day!

To give to the Red Cross, phone users can text the word "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10, and when prompted, hit "YES" to confirm the donation.

The donation is added to the cell user's bill, and receipts are available.

Other text-message codes for donations include:

• Text the word "HAITI" to 20222 to donate $10 to the Clinton Foundation Haiti Relief Fund.

• Text "HAITI" to 25383 to donate $5 to the International Rescue Committee.

• Text "HAITI" to 85944 to donate $10 to the International Medical Corps.

Of course you can always donate any amount to the Red Cross at www.redcross.org.

Also, check with your job to see if the corporation will do matching donations -- the company I work for is matching colleague donations dollar for dollar. It made me feel really grateful and happy I work here.

Oh, and the next time I start getting myself riled up thinking about those crazypants people who shout "Death to America" and try to stuff explosives in their panties and blow up airplanes, I'm going to make myself focus instead on the mass of people in this world who give freely to help folks they have never met in a country they have likely never visited and may never see.

In my year of yes, I have decided I need to focus a whole lot more on the giving spirit and not nearly so much on the little faction of those whose spirit is programmed to take away. Truly the desire to alleviate suffering is so much stronger than the few people who want to create it.

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The news in Haiti is also a really good reminder to those of us who are fault-line-adjacent to make sure we have a plan and some supplies on hand ourselves. When I'm out and about this weekend I plan to pick up a case of bottled water, a few Lara bars and some extra pet food and write the date of purchase on the item, then stash it somewhere. You don't have to go overboard planning but a few flashlights, fresh batteries and some water will go a long way towards preparation.

If you work in an office and you wear high heels to work there is one thing you can do right now that will cost you no money at all: dig through your home closet and find an old pair of sneakers or loafers or comfortable shoes and put them in your bag and take them to work. Leave those shoes in your desk drawer.

Because I work in a high-rise building we have frequent fire drills. I know they're just drills, but the more ladies we have clopping down the stairs in their high heels the longer it takes to get outside and finish the drill. It's ridiculous how slowly the whole thing goes. In an earthquake there's glass everywhere so going barefoot may not be an option. Take five minutes this weekend to unearth an old pair of comfortable shoes and bring them to your job next week. So simple! So easy! You will feel so prepared.

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Have a great weekend!

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Edited to add (3:30 p.m.):

I know the methods of giving or donating above may not be your personal preferred method of giving and I appreciate that each person gives in the way that is best for them. You should do whatever feel right with your money, your time and your hair.

I just wanted to highlight how easy and simple it can be to donate $5 or $10 for those who may not have a lot in the bank right now to give. One thing I know for sure is that even when you have very little in your pocket, you still want to help when you can and I know from personal experience it may feel embarrassing to call some 1-800 number and try to give five or ten bucks. That's how I felt during Katrina, back then I was broke five ways to Sunday but still wanted to give anything I had. So how cool is it that you can give through a simple text message! Small amounts do add up, and technology has made it so much easier. I just got an email from a friend who said the texting campaign may have raised close to ten million dollars since Wednesday!

While there is a billing cycle (I guess this was on the news, too) of up to 90 days, the Red Cross isn't waiting 90 days to act. Like most charitable organizations I'm sure they project their incoming donations and send immediate aid based on projections of incoming cash flow. And all those texts are adding up, almost ten million dollars! That's amazing!

Just got this email from Annie T.:

I just donated to the Red Cross through my local grocery store (Lucky). They can add it right on to your grocery bill. Another easy way to give. The man behind me in line heard me donate, and so he did as well. That feels good.

Annie, that is so cool! Thanks for sharing that tip!

Also, I got so many nice notes today from people saying they were also surprised and happy hearing about the people all over the world willing to donate what they can to help and how it just makes you feel hopeful.

I could not agree more. Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

We did get our promised five one-hundredths of an inch of rain, just enough to make the city feel like winter and the traffic to come to a dead halt on the freeways. The streets of downtown are empty, though. Guess everyone is still trying to get here.

Dallas Raines says that we're going to have BIG winter storm on Monday and Tuesday of next week, with maybe a whole inch or two of rain! We sometimes only get four inches of rain in an entire year, so you can imagine that people will be calling in sick and there will be a run on frizz-ease at the Rite Aid. I love this goofy place.

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Are you watching American Idol this year? I haven't watched it since season four or five, it was just too much of a time commitment. It's a lot of TV. But since this is Simon's last year and since Ellen is the new judge I thought I'd tune in. Last night was the first set of auditions in Boston and I can't believe I am telling you this but I got teary eyed a few times, just watching people get so excited about giving a great audition and making it through to "Hollywood" (which is really "Burbank" but whatever.) I'm a sucker for seeing people with a dream get a break in a business that seems impossible.

Mostly though, I was astonished at how thin Victoria Beckham is and how she manages to stay alive and still be that skinny. It was kind of alarming.

Our celebrities keep getting skinnier and our population keeps getting inversely fatter. Obviously I am not drawing any groundbreaking conclusions here, this is all stuff we already know, but this is probably the first time in my life I've started to let go of my hope of ever being really skinny again and instead I am just holding onto the goal of being healthy and getting back to an average size. My goal in the past has always been to lose weight and get skinny. Now I'll just be happy to buy my clothes in the regular section of the store and call it a day.

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So that's Wednesday. Tomorrow should be sunny again, with moderate winds and less navel-gazing.