Anosmia's Profile

I have a red bedroom (garnet colored), which is probably considered to be stimulating. I sleep 7 hours a night on weekdays, 9-10 hours a night on weekends. There could be some validity to this study, but I'm inclined to think that sleep amounts stem more from myriad factors: a person's stress level, the comfort of the bed, the amount of light in the room, the amount of ambient noise, temperature, a person's general ability to sleep (some people are naturally poor, fitful sleepers), a person's need for sleep (some folks need 10 hours a night to function, others can easily survive on five hours), etc. Lately I've been sleeping rather poorly but my bedroom has been the exact same shade of red for 5 1/2 years and I didn't have trouble until recently. I chalk it up to me being stressed--not my wall color!

I wish my friends/relatives put themselves in their holiday photo cards! I respect that they choose to only feature their kids, but by excluding themselves they kind of give off a "the kids are the only ones who matter" attitude.

As for me, I'm single with no kids and yes, I send out photo cards of myself. A few years ago I wasn't finding any cards I liked, so as a joke I made photo cards showing me standing over a steaming mine fire highway fissure in Centralia, PA (I had just been there a few weeks earlier), with the message, "Much like this steaming crack I straddled in Centralia, I hope your holidays are smokin'!" People LOVED it. They thought it was funny and random and I got so many compliments on it. Thus, a new trend was born. For example, my visit to Chernobyl last year inspired my 2011 holiday card. I used pictures of me in Chernobyl, holding my dosimeter, etc, and the message was "Hope your holidays are hot hot hot!"

If anybody thinks it's hokey or bizarre for a single person to appear in a Christmas card photo, oh well. Being single and childless shouldn't meant that you're obliged to retreat into the shadows and avoid appearing in a photo card. If the person has fun with it and does something imaginative with the card, I love it--especially if it revels something interesting or fun about what s/he did that year. My own cards give me a chance to be creative and irreverent and share my adventures, and since I always write a personal message on the back of the card, it remains a personalized way to reach out to loved ones.

These are all wonderful ideas! I own a condo and line-dry my clothes in my guest room, since it doesn't get used very often.