Katdish.net

In my first post in this series, The katdish ultimate Christmas shopping guide, Part 1, I introduced you all to the Forever Lazy, which is basically a onesie for adults. Incidentally, it is also available in the Bed, Bath & Beyond sales circular:

Today, I’d like to peruse the BB&B circular with you and point out some of the more interesting gift giving options therein.

First up, the Sound Asleep Pillow:

This pillow comes with a built-in speaker and 46″ stereo cable to attach to your ipod or other electronic listening device.

“The Sound Asleep pillow is the perfect gift for teens who are too old for toys, a husband who already has everything, college students who need a restful night’s sleep, or anyone who enjoys relaxing to their favorite soothing sounds.”

Finally! A solution to getting a restless night of intermittent sleep without the inconvenience of leaving the television on all night!

Next up is the Babycakes Cupcake Maker:

“This fun cupcake maker comes with everything you need to quickly prepare a batch of delicious mini cupcakes. It makes 8 cupcakes in 5-8 minutes.”

Thank goodness someone has finally come up with a machine that can bake a batch of cupcakes in 5 to 8 minutes. Because the 17 to 22 minutes it usually takes to bake them is like an ETERNITY! Besides, I have tons of space in my “electronic kitchen gadgets I never use” cabinet since I got rid of my George Foreman grill.

The Babycakes Mini Cupcake Maker: coming soon to a garage sale near you.

I’ll be honest. I’ve never really understood the appeal of this next item: The Lazy Susan Fondue Set

“This innovative fondue set features a Lazy Susan style base that allows users to rotate the bowls around the fondue pot to make sampling easy and fun.”

Fondue sets are seen almost exclusively at parties, and frankly, the concept mirrors the double-dip chip scenario made famous on Seinfeld. When you stick that little fork into the community dipping sauce, it’s like you put your entire germ infested mouth into the pot for others to share.

In the famous words of Hall & Oates,

“I can’t go for that. No, no. No fondue.”

The final item on my list is a product that is sure to be under many-a Christmas tree this year. What do you get someone who has everything that you budgeted spending approximately 100 bucks on?

Why, the Soda Stream Genesis Soda Maker, of course.

“SodaStream Genesis Soda Maker turns water into soda in seconds. Just fizz, flavor and enjoy. It is quick and easy. With SodaStream you’ll save on lugging, storing and disposing of bottles and cans of store-bought soda. You can fizz and flavor to your taste, without high fructose corn syrup or aspartame. Sweetened with Splenda®. Enjoy regular, diet soda and energy drinks, or create your own seltzer or flavored sparkling water.”

Flavoring available separately.

I don’t drink a lot of soft drinks, but I’m pretty particular about which ones I like. Okay, I pretty much only drink Diet Coke. I’m not inclined to drink Diet Pepsi, let alone diet “cola”. But I suppose if you have a hankerin’ for making your own soda, this is the product for you. Especially considering how difficult it is to find ready made carbonated beverages:

One side of an aisle at the local grocery store completely devoted to carbonated beverages.

Then again, in the event of a zombie apocalypse, owners of the Soda Stream Genesis Soda Maker will probably mock those of us who didn’t stock up on store bought carbonated beverages. That is, until the zombies take their flavoring packets. Then we’re all in the same boat.

Merry Christmas, happy shopping, and don’t forget your 20% off coupon!

Unless you’ve been away from all forms of media for the past several days, you’ve most likely heard or read something about the infamous woman with pepper spray incident at the Walmart in Porter Ranch, California.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the unidentified woman turned herself into at a LAPD station on Saturday, but declined to answer questions about the incident. She was not taken into custody and the investigation is continuing. The article also spoke to a defense attorney about the incident:

Defense attorney Dmirty Gorin said the key question is whether the woman used the spray to intentionally cause harm or if she believed she was using it to defend herself.

“Witness interviews regarding the circumstances surrounding the use of the pepper spray hold the key to whether this woman’s actions were criminal or legally justified,” Gorin said. “In a riot-type atmosphere at midnight on Black Friday, there may have been a literal frenzy among the shoppers. The woman in question had the right to use pepper spray if she reasonably intended to prevent serious injuries to herself or other shoppers.”

Here’s video of the store in the aftermath of the incident I found on YouTube:

People are understandably outraged about what happened, and I suppose this woman is an easy target for such outrage. At least 20 people sustained minor injuries. But honestly? What do you expect when people act like animals?  All in the name of half price electronics and other Black Friday deals?

Alejandra Seminario, 24, said she was waiting in line to grab some toys at the store around 9:55 p.m. when people in the next aisle started shouting and ripping at the plastic wrap encasing gaming consoles. The store was supposed to open at 10.

“People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray,” the Sylmar resident said. “I guess what triggered it was people started pulling the plastic off the pallets and then shoving and bombarding the display of games. It started with people pushing and screaming because they were getting shoved onto the boxes.”

Whatever happened to peace on earth and good will toward men?

Or perhaps the better question would be,

What is the price of your dignity and self respect?

You can keep your half-priced X-boxes and 50% off flat screen televisions.

I’ll keep my dignity intact and settle for less life-endangering Christmas presents.

Gift cards, perhaps…

“Presents are the best way to show someone how much you care. It is like this tangible thing that you can point to and say ‘Hey man, I love you this many dollars worth.’” – Michael Scott, The Office

November 9, the official release date for Paper Angels has come and gone. Thanks to everyone who has helped spread the word about Billy Coffey’s second (and in my opinion) best book to date. I considered ending the giveaways after the release date, but I truly believe this is the kind of book that, once you read it, you will want to share with others. . You may enter as often as you like, and there are several ways to enter:

• Leave a comment here or on subsequent “Best of Billy Coffey” posts each Monday indicating you would like to be entered into the drawing.
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to this post and/or subsequent posts. (Please be sure to let me know you’re doing so by adding @katdish and the #PaperAngels hash tag to the end of your tweet or sharing the Facebook link with me.)
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to the Paper Angels Amazon page letting people know it is available for pre-order.
• Ditto Barnes & Noble
• Ditto Books-a-Million
• Ditto Indie-Bound

Each of the aforementioned actions will constitute one entry into the drawing. If you don’t win this week, each of your entries will go back into the drawing. Winners will be chosen at random and will be announced the following Monday. Enter early, enter often, and check back here each week for new opportunities to win.

This week’s winner is Louise Gallagher. Congrats, Louise!

Since I’ve yet to pull out the Christmas decorations, I thought I’d revisit this post from Billy in the hopes that it would inspire me to do so.

The heart of the tree

I’m a linear guy when it comes to decorating for Christmas. That means working from the outside in. Lights on the trees, garland on the porch banisters, wreathes on the windows, spotlights in the yard. When all that is done and right—and it always has to be right—we’ll move to the inside: nativities, candles, lights.

The tree comes last. Always has, too, even when I was a child. I think that’s as it should be. The manger is the soul of Christmas and the reason we celebrate our blessed assurance, but the tree is its heart. I firmly believe that. It is in most instances placed in the room in which we gather and spend our time together, whether living room or family room. We wrap them with lights that by some magic seem to cast a glow upon us that seems warmer than any sun and more comfortable than any blanket. We place stars or angels at the apex to remind us of what shone in that bright sky so many years ago as heralds of the Good News to all men.

But if the heart of Christmas is the tree, the heart of the tree is its ornaments.

It was only this year I realized that, and I have my children to thank for it. The tree had been set and straightened in its stand, the lights had been strung, and the star had been put up. Both kids were in the throes of the seasonal hyperactivity that seems to pour out of them once the Xs on the calendar creep toward December. But the constant torrent of that excitement began to ebb and flow once the box of ornaments was opened.

They quieted.

It was not the sort of silence that signifies boredom or joyless work. It was instead an almost holy stillness, the sort of which I would imagine accompanies some great discovery long buried by dirt and time.

They didn’t reach for the shiny baubles purchased on sale at Target, not even the Star Wars or Winnie the Pooh ornaments from the Hallmark store. What my kids reached for were the treasures wrapped in paper towels and tissues that had over the last eleven months slipped through the cracks to the bottom of the box. The ones that cost nothing but time and effort. The ones they made themselves.

Chances are you have the same sort of thing on your own trees. The house made out of a school milk carton. The reindeer made out of clothespins. A bell made out of a Styrofoam cup.

They sorted these ornaments into their own separate pile. Only after they were secure (and only after repeated pleas by both of them for me not to sit on them) did they reach for the fancier accessories. They tied bows and plugged in the mechanical ornaments. My daughter hung the colored bulbs by rainbow order. It was all lively and punctuated by jokes and cheer—the flow. But every few trips to the tree would be to hang one of their own ornaments onto the tree, ones made in kindergarten or pre-school or even last year. Those trips would be made in that awed silence–the ebb.

I didn’t ask my children why they acted such. I wasn’t sure if they knew, and I wasn’t about to spoil their unknowing. They’ll learn that soon enough.

In a few short years what my children see as the magic of Christmas will yield to a new understanding. They will know that Santa isn’t real, but that their memories are. They can see them each year as they hang them on the tree and all their outward talk turns to talk directed inward. They’ll remember where they were when they made them, whom they were with, what they were feeling. They will glimmer in the sun during the day and in the bright lights during the evening. They will look and they will remember.

Maybe that’s where all the warmth of a Christmas tree comes from. Not from the lights, but the thoughts.

That’s what I think now. Christmas is a time where memories are made tangible and we glimpse the thin line of life that connects our yesterdays and tomorrows, all wrapped up in milk cartons and pipe cleaners.

They’re fragile, like us.

Precious, like us.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I’ve been cooking and getting ready for my extended dysfunctional family to arrive, so rather than write a new post, I thought I would share my daughter’s turkey project from a couple of years ago…

Please Do Not Eat Me

As a parent, I secretly delight when I see my children take interest in or excel at something that I’m into. Just as I cringe when I see a less desirable trait that I share, like forgetting where they put anything, rear its ugly head. But in all honesty, as long my kids are true to who they are, I’m good with that.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

If you were to show up at my door on Thanksgiving day, I would welcome you into my home. I would offer you a cold beverage and invite you to stay for dinner. The main dish would be a delicious turkey most likely cooked to perfection and filled with delicious stuffing. But if you were to compliment me on the deliciousness of said turkey, I would have to confess that I had nothing to do with the preparation of the bird.

I’m a 46 year old wife and mother of two.

And I have never even attempted to cook a turkey, nor have I ever offered to do so. It seems so daunting. So mystical and wrought with salmonella poisoning potential.

On any given Thanksgiving, I am either in the company of my mother and sisters or my mother-in-law and sisters-in-laws. All of whom are better cooks than me. I am usually relegated to setting the table, making iced tea and putting ice in glasses, and I do so without complaining. Much.

I have also never baked a pie from scratch, made a sweet potato casserole or any number of side dishes considered regular fair for a Thanksgiving dinner. It’s not so much that I can’t cook, I just don’t enjoy cooking. I am perfectly happy to surrender my kitchen to more experienced cooks, help where help is needed and provide comic relief as necessary.

Because I’m quite sure my first Thanksgiving turkey would turn out something like this:

So, what about you?

Are you an experienced turkey cooker?

Any Thanksgiving confessions you’d like to share?

November 9, the official release date for Paper Angels has come and gone. Thanks to everyone who has helped spread the word about Billy Coffey’s second (and in my opinion) best book to date. I considered ending the giveaways after the release date, but I truly believe this is the kind of book that, once you read it, you will want to share with others. . You may enter as often as you like, and there are several ways to enter:

• Leave a comment here or on subsequent “Best of Billy Coffey” posts each Monday indicating you would like to be entered into the drawing.
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to this post and/or subsequent posts. (Please be sure to let me know you’re doing so by adding @katdish and the #PaperAngels hash tag to the end of your tweet or sharing the Facebook link with me.)
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to the Paper Angels Amazon page letting people know it is available for pre-order.
• Ditto Barnes & Noble
• Ditto Books-a-Million
• Ditto Indie-Bound

Each of the aforementioned actions will constitute one entry into the drawing. If you don’t win this week, each of your entries will go back into the drawing. Winners will be chosen at random and will be announced the following Monday. Enter early, enter often, and check back here each week for new opportunities to win.

This week’s winner is Joseph Baran. Congrats, Joseph!

This week’s post is from August of 2009. Billy reminds us that big plans and good intentions are all well and good, but the mere act of showing up often first and foremost.

Showing Up

Confession time. I’ve been a bit consumed by the political process lately. But rather than write about it and risk offending some or possibly most of you, I think I’ll just keep my discourse to myself. For now.

In the meantime, while we can probably always find SOMETHING to complain about, this old post reminded me that if nothing else, at least I’m not Dwayne…

Anne Geddes image courtesy of photobucket.com

I was recently the recipient of one of those emails that your sweet Aunt Martha tends to forward to you.

You know the ones I’m talking about.

Those emails that have been forwarded so often and to so many recipients that you have to scroll down half the page before getting to the body of the email, only to find that much of the body is filled with cute pictures of babies dressed as flowers and/or those annoying flashing emoticons?

I’ll be honest. I usually delete these emails unread. But for whatever reason, I was feeling generous and decided to read it. You’ve probably read it before, or one very much like it. It was one of those well intentioned object lessons which are supposed to make us count our blessings and be grateful for what we have:

To realize
The value of a sister/brother
Ask someone
Who doesn’t have one.

To realize
The value of ten years:
Ask a newly
Divorced couple.

To realize
The value of four years:
Ask a graduate.

To realize
The value of one year:
Ask a student who
Has failed a final exam…

That’s just a portion of it, but you get the idea: Maybe things aren’t as bad as you think, because someone has always got bigger problems than you do.

I’m not a big fan of this kind of reasoning. Mostly because for me, there’s just something inherently wrong with making yourself feel better because someone is eating a bigger crap sandwich than you are.

Comparing ourselves with others–whether their lives are easier or harder–is never a good idea. If you’re struggling, rest assured there are others who are also struggling. Life is a series of peaks and valleys, and while no two life experiences are identical, we all have our share of high and low points.

Sometimes life is savored and enjoyed.

Other times it feels like an act of endurance.

And even though I just finished telling you that comparing yourself to others is never a good idea, I’m about to ask you to do just that.

Because on my very worst day, I could have honestly said,

“At least I’m not Dwayne.”

Editor’s Note: I may or may not have written that entire introduction just so I could post the above commercial.

“Man, that thing does not like Dwayne.”

Snort!

On the off chance you don’t get enough of me talking about myself, my twitter friend Chris Goforth aka @pacnwdado6 asked me a few questions over at his place today. You can find my interview here: The Empire of One: Who is @katdish?

Hope to see y’all over there…

November 9, the official release date for Paper Angels has come and gone. Thanks to everyone who has helped spread the word about Billy Coffey’s second (and in my opinion) best book to date. I considered ending the giveaways after the release date, but I truly believe this is the kind of book that, once you read it, you will want to share with others. . You may enter as often as you like, and there are several ways to enter:

• Leave a comment here or on subsequent “Best of Billy Coffey” posts each Monday indicating you would like to be entered into the drawing.
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to this post and/or subsequent posts. (Please be sure to let me know you’re doing so by adding @katdish and the #PaperAngels hash tag to the end of your tweet or sharing the Facebook link with me.)
• Tweet or post to Facebook a link to the Paper Angels Amazon page letting people know it is available for pre-order.
• Ditto Barnes & Noble
• Ditto Books-a-Million
• Ditto Indie-Bound

Each of the aforementioned actions will constitute one entry into the drawing. If you don’t win this week, each of your entries will go back into the drawing. Winners will be chosen at random and will be announced the following Monday. Enter early, enter often, and check back here each week for new opportunities to win.

Thanks in advance for helping get the word out about Paper Angels. If you’re not big into contests, I still encourage you to head over to Amazon or another online retailer and order a copy. I know once you read it you will recommend it to a friends and family, and word of mouth advertising is the very best kind.

I chose this week’s post because Mr. Chen shares a common thread with the main character of Paper Angels, Andy Sommerville in that he is broken and trying to find his way. Both serve to remind us that God’s light often shines the brightest through those broken vessels and that we need not be whole in order to help others.

Mr. Chen

image courtesy of photobucket.com

His name is Mr. Chen.

I would never know of him if it weren’t for the article in GQ, a nine page account of despair and hopelessness that, when finished, convinced me of this one irrevocable fact—Mr. Chen is an overweight, black-toothed, chain-smoking, borderline alcoholic. And he is also my hero.

Most days you will find him on the South Tower of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China. A big bridge, that one. One hundred and thirty feet high and four miles long, with a four-lane highway on the top deck and two railroad tracks on the bottom. Five hundred thousand tons of cement and a million tons of steel.

He stands guard there, sometimes up to six hours a day, armed with a pair of binoculars and a moped. What Mr. Chen does isn’t his job. That’s reserved for the transportation company in the city proper. I suppose it couldn’t be considered a hobby either, given the seriousness of what he does there. Consider it his calling, I suppose. A holy one.

Because every day, every day, at least one of the citizens of Nanjing comes to the bridge for one purpose: to jump. And Mr. Chen is there to stop them.

It began some years ago when he read an article in the newspaper about the suicides on the bridge. Mr. Chen took up his post at the South Tower soon thereafter. Since then, he has pulled 174 people from taking the leap into the river or onto the concrete below.

There are others he cannot reach in time.

“…middle-aged man jumped off bridge where the body fell to the flower bed,” says one of his blog entries. “…died on the spot.” “Speaking in northern accent, man gave me a cigarette, said: Alas! Wives and children…” “Next to statue at southwest fort, man died jumping to concrete, one leg thrown from body, only blackened blood left behind. Meaningless life!”

Day after day this man stands guard, peering through the smog with his binoculars, looking for someone who lingers just a bit too long at the bridge’s edge. He will calmly speak with some, offer a cigarette to others, and some, he says, respond only when he hits them. Whatever it takes to get them off the bridge.

Mr. Chen scoffs at the idea that he’s a guardian angel. He’s no angel, he says. Yet for those who live in a city full of emptiness and empty of hope, that’s exactly what he is.

I read that article and wondered of that emptiness. I remembered the kind I felt once upon a time. The sort that now at a distance seems small but then certainly seemed jump-worthy.

And I wondered this, too:

The emptiness Mr. Chen fights is the same emptiness that lies not just in me, but in everyone.

The question isn’t whether we have holes.

The question is what we do with them.

Mr. Chen came from a broken home. An empty one. He says it’s that brokenness that keeps him on that bridge day after day. I wonder if he’d be there if his childhood had been full. Somehow I don’t think so.
That’s what I want to say to you today. Yes, you. Because I can’t take a peek into your life, can’t see what you see or feel what you feel, but I know you need the reminder. Your troubles and worries may lead you to believe you’re meant for the river or the concrete, but you’re not.

You’re meant to be a Mr. Chen.

You’re meant to heal your wounds by bandaging the wounds of others, to pull others from the brink while knowing you could well be there yourself.

Like him, you’re not perfect. That’s good. You’re not supposed to be.

Because I think only the broken can help the broken.

image courtesy of photobucket.com

This has been a busy, crazy week. As most of you know by now, I spent much of my time in the virtual world helping to promote the release of Paper Angels, Billy Coffey’s second novel. It’s been an atypical week in other ways as well. Work has required that my husband travel out of town more frequently than usual, and the stress of single parenting–albeit temporary–has left me more than a little emotionally drained at times.

In the midst of a rather chaotic morning, I received an email notification for a post I had written last year. My initial assumption was that it was a spam comment which had made its way through the filter.

It wasn’t.

It was an author who took offense to the title of my post, which happened to be the same as a book she had written and claimed to have copyrights to. Mine was a silly post about ugly Christmas sweaters with a deceptively serious title (Y’all know how I am.) Her book, which shared the same title as my post was her story of child abuse and prostitution. In the comment, she informed me that I did not have her permission to use her book title as the name of my blog post, that “she would contact her copywrite  the following day”, and that “it was not something I wanted to get involved in”. She also stated that her (past) life was hell.

I could have argued with her, because the title is a very common phrase, and since I didn’t even know of the existence of her book when I wrote the post, my blog post title mirroring the title to her book was completely coincidental. For the briefest of moments, I considered challenging her, but sometimes the best argument is no argument at all. She was obviously upset, and challenging her would only serve to upset her more, especially considering the serious nature of her book versus the lighthearted nature of my blog post. I removed the post and sent her an email telling her as much. She sent me a brief but gracious email thanking me for doing so.

That brief exchange this week served as a much needed reminder that we all carry burdens, we all hurt, just because we don’t intend to hurt anyone doesn’t mean we don’t, and that sometimes we say we’re sorry not because we did something wrong, but simply because we didn’t know any better.