Me and my blobby

I've got lots of ideas churning through this big head of mine (literally, big--lots of "one size fits all" hats will not fit on my noggin, and it's not just the big curly hair--and when the H makes fun of it, I retort that it's due to my oversize brain. Ha.) but they're not all going to make it into the 'sphere tonight. A couple of friends and readers directed me to the Gloria Steinem New York Times editorial about Hillary Clinton, and I have some reactions, but not the bandwidth (mental, that is--so much for that big brain theory) to process them tonight. Politics will have to wait until tomorrow. I am planning a dinner shindig (a fundraiser for a local arts group) and the menu mulling has made me reconsider my abandonment of my food blog, so I may try to resurrect that (althought not before I turn in my long overdue book review, ahem. It's almost presentable. I swear) but again, not tonight. Tonight, the only thing I can write about is that dread 1950s concept--the hobby.

The H was all at sixes and sevens today (just to keep the geriatric idiom flowing.) He was tense, bored and a wee bit cranky (and I was anxious about another bad morning drop off scene with the Babe, so my mood was keeping his company.) We went out to lunch together and talked through some of what ails him, and a lot of it, frankly, is being on strike. He was missing L.A., feeling like his career is perhaps, in some impossible to define way, being hampered by our move. I countered that right now, if anything, it would be worse to be in Hollywood, where it's all strike talk, all the time, than to be here, where we can take a walk, look out the window, or run to the post office and see nothing, no reminder, of the Industry and its toll. But, I told him (and I've said this before), he needs to have other interests. To limit his life to his family and his work (which is what he does) is limiting his possibilities for fulfillment and contentment. In short--the guy needs a hobby. He doesn't exercise, doesn't create outside of his job, doesn't cook, garden or fish--you get the idea. He works. He parents. He husbands. C'est tout.

"You don't have any hobbies..." he said to me, munching a cheese steak. Long, long pause.
"Well, I guess you knit."

Ahem. And I cook, and I meditate, and I practice yoga, and I (less frequently lately than I'd like) work out, and I care for my beautiful egg laying chickens, and I am a once and future silversmith...and I blog. I realized, as we talked about it, that this little blog o'mine has become, dare I say it, a hobby. An avocation. And I'm not sure how I feel about that, especially given some input I've had recently, in an email from a dear friend and simultaneously in this post, from a (former?) blogger I've loved reading, about the need to see ourselves not by ourselves, all on our own, self-defined, but instead the images reflected back from others.

And on that possibly profound note--I am off to watch Sopranos (Season 2--we decided to rewatch the whole shebang on DVD) with the H. TV before bed might be considered--his hobby...more on mine --and this--later.