Potholders

This morning mrguy took me to Carrows to help feed my cold the egg breakfast it desired. We returned to find our mailbox full of rain-soaked campaign mailers. Why couldn't the mail carrier get them all into the box?

I felt one of the envelopes, a puffy envelope marked "a gift for you"...

Yes!!!!


I am now the proud owner of a potholder from city council member M., up for reelection. His potholder wins my affection, but not my vote. I'm no fool.

"Hardworking Joe C.," however, totally got my attention a few years ago by sending us gardening gloves emblazoned with his motto. How funny!

Back to the potholders, though. I wanted to know more about the tradition of the campaign potholder. From info on the Internet it appears that Gerald Ford gave out promotional potholders when running for Congress. Calvin Coolidge may have also used the promotional potholder. And Magi claims to have started the political potholder trade.

There is little hope that city council member M. will not be re-elected. That may be sad, but I'll buoy myself with the thought that the next time his term is up, there may be a potholder in it for the guy family.

Election Bunker in Action, Part 2

I can't believe that I woke up and it's still true.

Yes, the potholder candidate went down in flames. But the biggest carbuncle on the flank of our city council got enough votes to last for another four years. His anti-yoga mailer (I'm not kidding), intended to harm one of the other candidates, did not work. That candidate got the most votes.

In other political news, The Sun has scrapped its "Page 3 Girl" today for Barack Obama.

Pantheon of Dudes

Last night we went to a party at our neighbors' house. Their tree was a classic beauty -- tasteful ornaments, nice tree with lots of space between the branches and (a guilty pleasure) it was flocked.

They suspected I'd have an artsy tree, so they inquired about it. I think they'd be horrified. It's a Nordman Pine, which is perfectly normal, but my tree is all about sentimentality. I didn't even have the energy to be very artful this year, but all the elements are in place.

The glass garlands came from a structure in the backyard of a house that had housed shipyard workers during WWII. Some of the older ornaments did, as well. The color is coming off a bunch of them because the oil from flocking spray must have broken down the paint, but some of those decomposing balls are my favorites.

There are some ornaments that I got from the five and dime near the diner where I worked when I had my first apartment. Some more recent Santas came from the estate sale of an acquaintance. 

The two caricatures of Iris Apfel, star of the documentary Iris, are tags that came off my bracelets from her collection at Macy's.

The potholder is a tip of the hat to my sister, whose tree used to sport a photo of the same Democratic candidate (she'd cut it out of one of his expensive glossy mailers and used it as an ornament).

 And then there are the dudes. Last year when I had to clean out the ancestral toy drawer at my mom's house there were some random dudes left behind. 

 
Their heads were all floppy and they didn't have the cars, horses or motorcycles that they'd originally come with. I fell in love with them. Now those dudes are wired onto the tree. By their chests, mostly. I tried by their necks, but that was too disturbing. Anyway, today I passed by the free pile at work and saw these two dudes. I couldn't resist. They will join the Pantheon. The Pantheon of Dudes.

I also found an anatomically correct hog (male) but I'm saving him for mrguy. There is no Pantheon of Hogs today, but if a hog finds a friend, suddenly there is a Pantheon of Hogs where once the category was unaccounted for.