Dorie’s Different Reality

It was 16 degrees this morning (-16 Celsius!) 57 in the house! I keep seeing that commercial with Joe Kennedy (son of Bobby) touting the free heating oil from the “people of Venezuela”. I just see it as a ploy of Hugo Chavez to point out that there are still cold, hungry people in America. Not hungry here; kinda cold though. Still, I’d rather put on more clothes than run up the electric bill.
Not sure if it’s still true, but to watch British television you get the feeling it’s a lot colder over there all the time. The men will be wearing sweater vests AND sportcoats. I’ve seen a lot of nice cardigans on the ladies. When I watch “Harry Potter” movies I oooh and ahhh at all the nice knitwear. I read somewhere that the producers buy unique handknit items to give the actors a special look. Works for me- I want Molly Weasley’s Coat of Many Colors!

I feel bad about Britney! I’ve criticized her often enough, because it’s sure hard to get away from all the news about her….all bad for the past year. There’s another incident in the news today. She was taken to the hospital. What NBC didn’t say on their news this morning, but that TMZ.com reported, is that the baby Jayden was admitted to the hospital too! It doesn’t say what happened to him-injury, illness or some sort of abuse-but that will probably come out in the next day or so. The TMZ story goes on to say that Brit is on a “danger to herself or others” mental health watch. I’m a “judger” and I’d jump down the throat of anyone who’d drink or take drugs, especially around children. What the TMZ story says is that it isn’t substance abuse. She’s mentally ill, had a breakdown, chemical imbalance; a disorder like that. The most important thing is, if she’s that sick, absolutely do not let her near those little kids. If they can just convince her to stay in the hospital, Brit might get better. The bad news is that there are lots of mentally ill people who never get better. You can see them walking the streets all over America.

I’m pleased as punch about the Iowa caucus results. If Obama and Huckabee were to get their party’s nominations, it would really be a horserace. They could debate on all sorts of things, and there would be a clear-cut choice in November. I like it! Time will tell though.

Update: I “frogged” the shawl for now. As the rows increased, I realized I don’t have enough yarn. Plus, as clothing goes, a shawl isn’t the most practical item. That’s the nice thing about needlework, you can always start over! So I’ve started an open front vest, knit mostly in stockinette, that I can throw on over my tops. It’s going well. The back is almost done. I want to be done. I have lovely sock yarn waiting!
Reading: Truth be told, but I didn’t read every word of Clapton by Eric Clapton, but I read several passages. Mostly it’s about the story of his life as a musician, with his addictions getting in the way. How close he came to being “an addict that used to be a musician” One story that didn’t have a happy ending was his relationship with Alice Ormsby-Gore. She was just 16, a beautiful little thing, from a family listed in “The Peerage”, when she became his girlfriend. She became a heroin addict just like him. He left her for Patti Boyd aka Layla. Someone needs to write Alice’s story too. I’m sure there were other boyfriends, and surely lots of adventures since she was from a wealthy family. By the early 90’s years of addiction had taken a toll on her. Eric was sober and straight by then, and as a friend, tried to help her get straight. It sounds like when she did sober up, she didn’t like herself much. She took a massive overdose of heroin and killed herself at age 42. Ronnie Wood’s (Rolling Stones) first wife, Jo, killed herself too. JoJo, former wife of Denny Laine (Moody Blues and Wings) died too young as well. I see a sad pattern in the lives of these women who were the beautiful wives/companions of rock musicians.

I haven’t started another book yet. We have a big canvas tote and we’ll load it up with books when we go to the library. Later today, I’ll look at what’s in there and see what I want to start next.
Also, I have an idea for a character for a murder mystery! I have a whole bunch of ideas for her. I’ll have to give some thought to the other characters, a crime and the suspects. My friend Richard wrote FOUR mysteries after he retired. He didn’t have any luck getting things published, but still the whole creative project must have been fun for him. I own a cookbook put together by a grandmother than gathered up all her best recipes and had it printed up by a small publishing company. The inside of that book says they’ll print as few as 20 copies. I can see it now, “Merry Christmas. Here’s my new mystery!” Fun!

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 11:54 am and is filed under Culture, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.