Several people have asked me about the “side effects from medicine” that I mentioned in my last post, so this is the TMI (too much information) part of the post, feel free to skip ahead. It turns out that at the age of 30, I have developed the beginnings of adult acne. When I realized this I went immediately to a wonderful dermatologist who has me on the Retin-A cream. This makes my skin peel. Its very tiny peeling but I feel like it makes me look like I have a kind of peach fuzz, and it is embarrassing to me!! I have been trying to remind myself that this means it’s working. Hopefully it will stop soon.
OK, so now for a few reviews.
In our efforts to go progressively more green, we have stopped using plastic grocery bags altogether for our groceries, but were still using plastic in our kitchen trash. I had read about BioBags, which are biodegradable and compostable, so I picked some up at
Green Living last time we were there. This is my second week to use them. Due to the amount of things we can recycle and our curbside recycling program here in Dallas, we only go through about one kitchen trash bag every 7-10 days. I am not actually composting anymore but that is a different and longer story. The first week, right before I took the bag out of the trash can and to the trash bin behind our house, I emptied an entire kitty litter box into it in addition to the trash already in it. This was a bit harsh, I know, but I wanted to test it to it’s limits! FAIL. It sprayed a fine line of kitty litter throughout the house on the way out the door. I thought, OK, that was a little too much. This week I only put our regular trash into it. (I guess there were some wooden BBQ skewers too) But when I went to pull it out of the trash can – it had already started decomposing! Oh no! Half of one side of the bag had disintegrated into nothingness. I had to carry the whole kitchen trash can out to the trash bin in back. Then I had to hose out the kitchen trash can. Gross!! I have 10 more bags left in the box, so I am going to keep using them. If it gets any better, I will let you know. But my early conclusion is that these bags would only work if you change out the trash every 3-5 days before the bag has had a chance to disintegrate.
“Flavors of Entanglement” by Alanis Morissette * 
OK, so I love many of the songs on this album, currently my favorite is “Straitjacket”, because it talks about someone who drives her crazy because they don’t listen and I feel like that at work sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work, but I do work with some completely insane people, too, mostly because they don’t listen. I think that
Garrett would like the song
“Citizen of the Planet”. The song about missing someone (
“Torch”) is so real and sad that I can hardly listen to it without being extremely glad I am married and won’t ever have to go through that again, but also filled with sadness thinking this might be how I feel if I were to be widowed when I am old. She still has several songs about her struggles with people-pleasing (
“Tapes”,
“Moratorium“) and control (
“Incomplete”), which I think is what I always identify with in her albums. Anywayz, thumbs up to this album! 🙂
* rant * Look here, if you start reading this thinking of Alanis Morissette as only the artist who sang “You Outta Know” in 1995, you might as well stop reading. In my opinion, although that was her biggest hit, it was the worst possible portrayal of her music and her attitude toward life. Even if you only listened to the rest of that one album “Jagged Little Pill”, you could tell that she is actually a spiritual and peacefully seeking person. She has had many albums since then, all of whom have outlined her increasing spirituality, if not her continued failure in love. This is not to say she is a Christian artist, far from it. But, I think the way she writes of accepting things and letting go is very much a characteristic that those of us who follow Christ should have. * rant *
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I love Alanis’ Flavors of Entanglement. It really depicts conflict of all kinds, like you mentioned, control, people-pleasing etc.
Her lyrics are witty and truly worth reading even if you DON’T listen to the album.
I think every song has the ability to stand on it’s own and this will be the album to put Alanis Morissete back at the top of the charts!