....I can say with great accuracy that right this second our refrigerator sounds like an annoyed jaguar.

Also, witness the cuteness:



We went with Sean and Olivia, which was especially great for Beth because she and Olivia are like BFFs. Although Olivia also includes Miles in practically all things, which is something I especially adore about her, and several times I looked over to see her grabbing both of them in a tight embrace. "We are friends, we are FRIENDS!", she yells with joy. My kids get these huge grins and hug her back, and they all three nearly fall over.

Just one of the many, many gems at www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com, a blog that I actually have to pace myself reading because I laugh so hard I’m in danger of peeing my pants. Other favorites include this one, this one, this one, this one, and after seeing this one I’m pretty sure I did pee my pants a little, which was apropos.

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 I like to read blogs via RSS feeds that I subscribe to using Mail. I recently added a few LJ folks to that list, people whose posts I seem to miss on a regular basis if I only go by looking at my Flist. One person posted today, and her post showed up on my RSS feedreader - but it was Friends locked. I noticed the little lock icon when I went to read the post at LJ. 

Obviously I am on her Friends list, but how does Mail know that? Is it publishing all the posts via the RSS feed, even the ones that are locked? 

I was reading the New York Times Sunday Book Review this morning, and saw this:

Paulo Coelho’s novel “The Alchemist” is already a record-holder: with editions in 67 languages, it has cemented Coelho’s position as the world’s most translated living author, according to the 2009 Guinness Book.

I rolled my eyes. I’d wanted to love that book. I’d loved Veronika Decides to Die a decade ago (which is now being turned into a movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar!). I just couldn’t get into it. Slow, slogging, boring, and so full of New Age pap that I could barely keep myself from quitting it altogether. The one thing I liked about the story was the idea that we choose who we are, but that wasn’t enough to make it interesting. The first thing I did when I finished was stick it on my Paperbackswap.com account. I felt guilty about it, unable to muster confidence that my experience of the book had been valid, when “everyone else” thought it was so wonderful and life-changing.

So you’ll understand why I had to laugh when Will Smith was quoted as saying it was his favorite book, and yet:

“It’s real metaphysical, esoteric nonsense,” he said. “But I feel very strongly that we are who we choose to be.”

I’ve been validated by the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, yo! What more do I need?!

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My setup: I have a desktop Mac, and a laptop Mac. I use Mail, which is synched between them using Mobile Me.
 
My problem: My RSS feeds don't sync between the computers, even though everything else about Mail does. Wassup with that?

 Is Half Price Books in Seattle a pretty good place to sell books and movies back? 

I got a message from Flickr that someone had added this photo to their gallery. I didn’t even realize they could do that – apparently it’s a new feature. They were creating a gallery of Colorless Flowers, and for mine they said:

Such a dynamic B&W photo. The range of tones really make this photo shine. Goes to show great lighting can make or break a photo.

I’m extremely flattered, yet while I don’t want to make it sound like all I do is point and shoot (okay, really most of what I do is point and shoot), much of that dynamic lighting is fairly accidental. I don’t think too hard about what I point my camera at. If I shot a gun the way I shoot a camera, there would be little death, and a lot of missing limbs.

Sometimes I think that if I worked at it, I might get to be quite good at this whole taking pictures thing, if so many of my from-the-hip images are better than average. But then I remember the photography class I took in college; the second I was told what to do and how to do it, I stopped taking pictures altogether, a hiatus that lasted several months.

Sometimes I think the best way to keep doing what you love is to just keep doing it.

And I still like the original the best, I think.

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I haven’t been getting email at my ISP, nor Gmail, for the last 24 hours. I’ve tried tech support at my ISP, and they’re stumped. This means all personal mail, LJ comments, Facebook stuff, email lists – it’s all been muted. I’m going to try and enjoy this opportunity for electronic silence, but there are a couple things ya’ll should know:

1. Game night is on tonight! House opens at 6:30, games begin at 7:00, per the usual.

2. If you need me, send a text message to my cell phone. If you don’t have my cell phone number, email cheesepuppet (at) yahoo.com, my very old account which ought to work (hopefully!), and I’ll reply that way.

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Even before we began packing boxes, a primary personal goal for moving back to Seattle was to find a spiritual community. I’ve leaned (see what I did there?) toward Buddhism for the last twenty years, without actually  committing to a sangha or even a lineage. I have a small library of books that range from Zen to Tibetan, and a zafu and zabuton that sometimes get used. I’m the most accomplished, lazy, armchair Buddhist you’ll ever meet. Except that this isn’t much of an accomplishment. My ass is getting tired, and it’s not from all the meditating.

In the first week we lived here, I made my own Google map of Local Buddhist Stuff. Then I decided to try the closest locations of two different lineages; Zen and Tibetan. First would be a visit to the Blue Heron Zen Community, and after that I’d visit the Sakya Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism (yep, it’s where they shot Little Buddha, a story based on true events, although many of us remember that film simply as The Movie Where Keanu Reeves Had A Really Strange Tan).

Blue Heron Zen Community

At Blue Heron, I chose the Guest Night. Greg and the kids dropped me off, a tall house near Northgate Mall. There’s a hike up a hill, and at first I wondered if I had the right place, but then I saw the back door; a line of shoes. I don’t know why that delights me so much. A small token, something we all give up before we enter. Of course, it keeps the floors clean, too. Buddhism is practical, in a thousand ways.

I met Eric Nord, a teacher, who welcomed me and showed me where to put my sweater. I liked him right away. He has a very genuine openness about him, as if just the space around him is a refuge from the trials of every day life. There was one other person there for guest night, a young man. After donning guest robes (Look at me! I’m official!) the two of us followed Eric upstairs, and arranged ourselves on cushions. We spent maybe twenty minutes chatting, mostly going over posture and breathing and our past experiences with meditation. I felt comfortable, even confident. That is, until all these people began filing in, and Eric explained we’d be meditating with the sangha for their evening sit. PANIC. He got up to get something, and I stood up, following him toward the door.

“But I can’t sit,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked me.

“I mean I can’t sit. I mean my record is something like seven minutes. I can’t get past seven minutes. If you make me sit here with these people, I’ll crawl out of my own skin. My head will explode. And your white walls are SO LOVELY.”

The room was filling with people, arranging themselves. I’m sure they could hear me. I looked around, hoping to see someone giving me the “thumbs up” sign, or smile, or just anything that said they’d been there too. Instead, expressions were serene, and unreadable.

Eric laughed. “You can do this,” he said. Or something encouraging like that. Then he said, “If you have to get up, just rise quietly and go outside, and I’ll come out and make sure you’re okay.”

In the end, I sat through the entire meditation period, which included chanting (in Korean!), a silent walking meditation, and two sitting periods of 13 minutes apiece. My head didn’t explode, and the walls of the zendo are still white. When it was over, everyone went downstairs, while I sat and talked with Eric and the other visitor for awhile. Eric asked how it’d gone. “I hated it,” I said.

“You hated it? Really?”

“Oh, it was awful. It was torture. I’m pretty sure I did everything wrong. I couldn’t remember how to breathe, and I kept looking out at the tree, even though I wasn’t supposed to.”

He was unfazed. He said I did amazing for someone who’d so much trouble sitting before, and he was right, it was a personal best. The torture didn’t faze me much either. I’d read enough to know it was normal, but of course it’s a lot different to read about how cold the ocean is than to leap off the boat. Later, when Greg picked me up, he asked how the meditation went. I told him it was horrible, awful, the worst 26 minutes I’d had in a long time.

“You’re going back, aren’t you?” he said, more a statement than a question. It was the same tone he has when he sees me in front of a slice of pizza. “You’re going to eat that, aren’t you?”

My answer was the same. “Probably.”

Sakya Monastary of Tibetan Buddhism

But I didn’t go back. I didn’t get that far. A week later I went to the Sunday morning meditation at the Sakya Monastery, and it was love at first chant. Jason and Beth went with me. Just driving up to the building, I felt like I was home, a sensation that only increased the longer I was there, even though I had no idea what was going on half the time.

Beth spent her hour in their Dharma School, which is like Buddhist Sunday School. Jason and I spent our time upstairs in the shrine room, listening to chants. I tried to keep up, but much of it was in Tibetan, and I got lost a few times. I didn’t mind. It just felt right.

Toward the end of the service, the Dharma School class filed in, the kids doing their three prostrations, and then sitting down on cushions in front. I was straining to see Beth, wondering if she’d look back and search for me too, but she was watching the Rinpoche, her big eyes going between he and the other lamas seated near him. Someone had given her a mala to wear. Later I asked her if she’d enjoyed herself, and she said it was THE BEST, like the BEST THING EVER, and I almost asked her if it was better than pink unicorns or chocolate chip cookies or white rice with soy sauce, but instead I just asked her if she wanted to go back. “YES!” she shouted.

“Me too!” I replied.

And so we are. I went back this week for an orientation, and joined formally as lay member. On October 4th, I’ll take refuge, which is a ceremony where you declare your intention to live as a Buddhist; “taking refuge” refers to taking refuge in the three jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. That probably needs more explanation than a Wiki link, but I’ll get to it later – I’m already up too late.

I have rarely written about Buddhism in my own life, mostly because it’s been so personal, and because I’ve never felt like I was very good at it. I’m horrible at meditating, and I’m attached to everything. Why now? Well, when I turned 35 this summer, I decided that my motto for this year was going to be GO. That’s it. As in, GET OUT THERE. Go do the things I want to do, and stop planning to do them.

I also recently read, What Makes You Not a Buddhist, in an effort to see whether I was kidding myself. Had I  spent twenty years developing a fondness for prayer beads? Or was I truly on a path that deeply resonated? I wouldn’t suggest using any one book as a “test”, to see if you belong to one spiritual path or another, but keep in mind I’d read several dozen books before this one; and I found this particular book to be incredibly useful. Concepts I’d only barely understood before became suddenly clear, and I felt so grateful to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse for his wisdom. When I finished reading, my decision to take refuge felt even better.

So, there it is, or here it begins. What’s been an interesting journey up until now is getting a lot more interesting.

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I got this notice from my university today. I’m no longer a student, being that I’ve moved a hundred miles away and am taking yet another break from college so I can ruminate on the nature of existence (SO CLOSE TO WRITING MY BESTSELLING BOOK!), but one of the things that happened right before I left was a massive budget cut. My favorite anthropology professor was laid off.

And apparently the English department was eliminated completely: 

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Jason sent me email a couple weeks ago, a forwarded message from the Friends of the Conservatory, asking him to please come to their plant sale and buy plants last Sunday. I’m not even sure he included any commentary, because he didn’t need to, because he knew I’d be ALL OVER THAT. And so I was. While the kids were visiting Grammy and Papa in Ellensburg, we went to the Conservatory, and we brought the van, because I meant business.

We managed to recruit our friend Laurie, who also didn’t need much coaxing, being that she’s getting a degree in landscape architecture. I have a lot of friends like this, a surprising number of green thumbs who walk into a place like the conservatory and are able to pick out the names of things without reading the tags. And they pronounce everything correctly. I’m amazed and impressed with this ability, and liken it to something divinely bestowed, or maybe tied into their genes in utero. It’s not that I don’t like knowing which plants are which, I just don’t remember all the varieties that well – and then there’s my inner child, who doesn’t want to know. She just wants to be in awe and leave it at that.

Of course I took pictures. The whole set is here, but I’ll post a few of my favorites:

These plants have wee buds inside! I was enthusiastic about these. They’re bromeliads, which is latin for CUTE LITTLE PURPLE BABIES OMG OMG!

This one eat children WHOLE! Okay, maybe not children. But it eats mice whole. Which leads me to think there are some pretty stupid mice out there.

This is a rock, with some tiny little plants growing on it. There was no tag nearby, I’m pretty sure this is just Random Green Stuff Covering A Rock, which means I should make up my own latin name for it. I’ll call it: Rockus Coverus. Botanists? You’re welcome.

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Our fiddler crab molted for the second time a week ago, and I took out the shell, placed it on a piece of green construction paper, and took some photos. I didn’t realize how beautiful and stark the image would look when de-saturated, but wow! Pretty nifty:

Did you know that if a fiddler crab has lost its claw or leg due to a fight or accident, that a new one will be there after it’s molted? 

The more squeamish may want to avoid this photo, although it’s neat too. 

Want a fiddler crab of your own? You should be aware that they’re caught wild, not bred in captivity, so if you’re against that sort of thing you won’t want to get one. You should also do some online research, which we didn’t do – we trusted the pet store employee. Having been a pet store employee years ago, you’d think I’d know this was a mistake, but I was exhausted that day, and the kids wanted some pet crabs to soften the blow of having to return a “pet” turtle back to the wild that my son had picked up on a fishing trip with his Grandpa……and there starts many a tale of family pet woe. 

We won’t have fiddler crabs again, and I wouldn’t encourage others to keep them either. They can’t be raised in captivity; their life cycle requires the larvae to develop in deep ocean waters. They are very wild, and they don’t survive well so far from their natural environment. Ours died a day after this last molt, which was its second molting. It was the last of three crabs we bought at the same time, which have all kicked the bucket. We tried to provide a great environment, but there’s only so much you can do. 

If you choose to keep one anyway, the most important thing to be aware is their need for saltwater: 

The fiddler crabs found in pet stores are most likely semi-terrestrial brackish crabs, which means they need some salt in their water as well as access to air and dry land. Unfortunately, many pet stores keep fiddlers in a freshwater aquatic set up, and recommend the same to new owners. They may do fine in a fresh water and fully aquatic set up for weeks, but will eventually become weak and die. If possible, find a store that keeps them in brackish water, or wait for a new shipment so their time spent in fresh water is minimal. Look for crabs that are active and have all their legs and claws.

That’s an excerpt from this page on Fiddler Crabs at About.com. It’s worth noting that the author is a vet, and she still couldn’t keep her crabs alive. So beware – these likely aren’t great pets for kids, and one could easily make a case that keeping them at all isn’t very ethical.

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Greg is working at home today, downstairs in the office. Bethie and I are upstairs, reading Princess books to affirm her burgeoning sense of entitlement, biting the heads off of goldfish crackers while loudly contemplating what sound effects a goldfish might make during its own beheading, and seeing how far she can roll down the hallway while curled up inside a giant bucket. It’s these kinds of activities that get me Mother Of The Year.

Usually I have AIM (AOL instant messenger) open on my laptop so that I can chat with Greg, you know, things like, “THAT CRASH YOU JUST HEARD WAS NOTHING.” Except today he hasn’t had his AIM open. I sent him some warm, compassionate email to this effect:

You aren’t on AIM! And you claim you love me.

RIGHT?

His response, including screenshot, which had me laughing out loud (and yes I’m spelling that out):

I’ve been trying all day, but I can’t!!! I love you with the blazing intensity of a million suns being torn asunder in a cosmic whirlpool of destruction as they circle and fall into the singularity the size of a galaxy.

Okay, he wins. Our love is a cosmic whirlpool of destruction? It doesn’t get more romantic than that.

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Today I was trying to dive back into Livejournal by reading as many people’s blogs as I could, and one blog had a link to this article in Newsweek, about how, “Kids as young as 6 months judge others based on skin color. What’s a parent to do?”  

The subtitle was ridiculously sensationalistic – the study with babies showed how white 6-month-olds will stare longer at a face that’s not white, which doesn’t imply “judging” as much as it implies babies will stare longer at something unfamiliar (hardly news to any parent) – but the article itself was fascinating. It turns out that what many of us are doing to raise our kids in a non-racist way is actually encouraging them to make judgments about others based on color: 

The other deeply held assumption modern parents have is what Ashley and I have come to call the Diverse Environment Theory. If you raise a child with a fair amount of exposure to people of other races and cultures, the environment becomes the message. Because both of us attended integrated schools in the 1970s—Ashley in San Diego and, in my case, Seattle—we had always accepted this theory’s tenets: diversity breeds tolerance, and talking about race was, in and of itself, a diffuse kind of racism.

This is the essence of what our family, and most of the white families we know, have done to encourage our kids to embrace diversity; we try to expose them to as much color and diversity as possible, model how okay with it we are, and let that be the lesson. The problem is, that doesn’t work the way we thought.  

For decades, it was assumed that children see race only when society points it out to them. However, child-development researchers have increasingly begun to question that presumption. They argue that children see racial differences as much as they see the difference between pink and blue—but we tell kids that “pink” means for girls and “blue” is for boys. “White” and “black” are mysteries we leave them to figure out on their own.

Apparently it takes very little for kids to form preferences for their own group, to make judgments about who they belong with and what that grouping means: 

We might imagine we’re creating color-blind environments for children, but differences in skin color or hair or weight are like differences in gender—they’re plainly visible. Even if no teacher or parent mentions race, kids will use skin color on their own, the same way they use T-shirt colors. Bigler contends that children extend their shared appearances much further—believing that those who look similar to them enjoy the same things they do. Anything a child doesn’t like thus belongs to those who look the least similar to him. The spontaneous tendency to assume your group shares characteristics—such as niceness, or smarts—is called essentialism.

Basically, conversations about race need to start a lot earlier than most parents probably think they do, and they need to be specific and detailed. Instead of giving small children statements like, “Color doesn’t matter,” or “Everyone is equal,” we need to be talking instead about what color means. Why is someone white or black or “extra tan”, as my daughter puts it? Why does someone have red hair? What does ancestry mean? What did people believe about race before, and what do we believe about race now? 

The article talks about a study in which white parents were asked to discuss race with their small children as part of the experiment, and how many of these families dropped out because they were uncomfortable bringing the topic up. I was shocked to read that, and yet when I thought about our own home, I realized we don’t discuss race in a very specific way. How can you understand why your parents are crying tears of joy that an African-American man has become President in our lifetime, when you don’t understand why his skin color is different in the first place? 

My own kids have had some discussion of this in terms of Native Americans – my husband has dark skin and is often mistaken for being from the Middle East or India. In our house we talk about this, about how Daddy is darker because his family came from the Blackfeet tribe, and how that’s one of the Native American tribes, and how the kids have that heritage, too. But we’re surprisingly quiet about people with different ancestry than our own. Talking about someone else’s ancestry feels very personal, and almost taboo. 

Yesterday, after Beth’s swimming lesson at the YMCA, we were walking out of the locker rooms past the gym, where she saw two men playing basketball. They were both African-American, and very tall (easily over seven feet), and Beth stopped in her tracks, staring, totally enthralled. “What are they doing?” she asked me, like they were leading unicorns around or teaching turtles how to fly.  

“That’s basketball, babe. They’re just playing basketball.” 

“I WANNA PLAY!” she yelled, so loud it echoed down the hall. I laughed. 

“Seriously? You want to play basketball?”

“YES YES YES!”

I was ecstatic to see her wanting to do something that did not relate to Disney princesses. I asked her if she wanted to go inside. “You want to ask the guys if we can watch?”

“YES YES YES!”

So we went in, and said hello, and I asked if Beth could watch them for a few minutes. One of the guys said “Sure,” and then to Beth’s utter delight, walked over and handed her the ball. Here’s this giant guy towering over my midget kid, and I thought to myself, “Please, if she has to comment on how different he is, let it be his height rather than his color.” But she didn’t say anything. She was just happy. He even picked her up and showed her how to slam dunk, and then let her slam dunk, and as we walked out she was BEAMING, talking about how she was going to play basketball and become the best basketball player ever (we checked – basketball lessons start in the winter, and we’ll definitely sign her up). 

The relief I felt leaving, that she hadn’t drawn attention to any, you know, COUGH COUGH, differences in ancestry, made me feel like a complete ass later. I’d let myself feel proud that she didn’t notice, when of course she noticed, how could she not? She didn’t ask about it not because she didn’t see it, but because she probably didn’t have the words. Daddy is the color of a perfectly toasted marshmallow because his family is Native American (and Irish, too), and Mama is white because her family is Irish and German, but why does this guy look different? What does that mean? 

I understand why those parents dropped out of the study, although I think they did themselves a disservice by doing so. Kids say the most embarrassing things, especially when you’re a Good Liberal Parent and you do things like teach them the right words for their private parts (Liberal Parenting Manual Chapter #14: How To Explain The Body). Nothing like a discussion of what their brother’s penis looks like in the bath and how it’s SO DIFFERENT from a vagina – did you know how different? Can we talk about penises and vaginas for awhile? – as you’re checking out at the grocery store to make you want to OMG DIE. Here kids! HAVE SOME CANDY! Meanwhile the checkout girl is laughing so hard she’s giving you the wrong change, and everyone in a four block radius knows that your four-year-old daughter thinks her vagina is SUPER COOL, even though it doesn’t stick out like a penis does. 

It’s mortifying when it’s body parts – as a child I once asked a relative whose lap I was sitting in whether she had false teeth, and I think I saw my mother die inside just a little bit – but what happens when it’s skin color? Can open, worms everywhere. People are conditioned to be sooooooo careful when discussing the experience of someone of a different ethnicity, that it’s incredibly daunting to imagine trying to discuss it with kids without them asking questions that would make us cringe. In public. With an audience. (Ironically, I think a lot white people fear the judgement of snarky white intellectuals a whole lot more than they fear people of color – I know I sure do.) It’s safer to just model how we don’t see color. See how we don’t notice it? SEE THAT? Do that, okay?

The implication of this, though, is that we’re essentially teaching kids how to appear as if they aren’t racist, rather than have the discussions with them that would lead to them actually not being racist. As horrifying as it might sound, we’re teaching them that our image is more important than our courage to communicate. Which certainly isn’t a lesson in line with my values. 

From the article: 

Is it really so difficult to talk with children about race when they’re very young? What jumped out at Phyllis Katz, in her study of 200 black and white children, was that parents are very comfortable talking to their children about gender, and they work very hard to counterprogram against boy-girl stereotypes. That ought to be our model for talking about race. The same way we remind our daughters, “Mommies can be doctors just like daddies,” we ought to be telling all children that doctors can be any skin color. It’s not complicated what to say. It’s only a matter of how often we reinforce it.

Here I thought I had it down, I’m so comfortable talking about bodies, fat and thin, straight and gay, transgender, rich, poor, and so many things in between. I wasn’t paying enough attention to how we acknowledged (or didn’t) color. I never thought an article in Newsweek would impact me in any real way (oh sorry, was that snarky and judgmental?), but this really has. We’ll be changing how we talk to our kids about color. 

Care to join me? Here are some good links: 

- 6 Tips to help parents talk to kids about racism
- How should we talk to kids about race? From antiracistparent.com (lots of good discussion material on that site)
-  Parenting, preschool, and prejudice
-  Teaching children about diversity

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Don’t you think every personal blog should have a confessional portion? Neither do I. Yet here we go. 

I just went to get the mail, and while sorting through it, noticed my copy of TIME magazine, oriented upside-down. A person’s face was on the cover. My first thought was, “Why is TIME putting William Shatner on the cover, and hell, WHAT TOOK SO LONG?” 

Then I flipped the magazine over and was horribly embarrassed to see that it was a photo of Ted Kennedy.

Sorry, Ted.

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One of the things I’ve loved the most about moving back to Seattle is the ease with which we can meet up with friends. We just get a call, like, “Want to come swimming with us at Lake Sammamish?”, and instead of saying, “Uh, that would be a two-hour drive over the mountains, with toddlers, and my head is exploding just thinking about it,” we get to say, “YES! Bring on the lake! Bring on the togetherness!”

Except usually we just say Yes. 

A couple weeks ago Greg and I took the kids to the lake with Sean and Llyra and Critter and Sonja, with Jason stopping by after work. I took some photos, of course. I wasn’t super pleased with most of them, but like playing the guitar (where you have to work to get an ugly sound – this is the exact opposite of playing the violin, fyi), it’s hard to take un-cute photos of these little people:

I kept telling Llyra how cute is scapula are. That’s part of being a massage therapist; you hear yourself say things like, “What adorable little scapula!”, or, “Awww! Such WEE THENAR EMINANCES,” and parents look at you like you have Problems.

She’s taking blackberries out of Jason’s hand. This girl has lived on berries since she was born. Blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries. She sings songs about them. I’m pretty sure she was a Disney chipmunk in a past life.

I asked him to smile, and this is what I get. I’m going to put together a mosaic of his facial expressions and monster poses; at this point they number somewhere in the hundreds.

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Cheerleaders: 

The University of Connecticut replaces cheerleaders with “Spirit Squad”: 

The new team will wear outfits similar to what the cheerleaders wore, but will focus on leading crowds in interactive cheers and spend time in “tailgating areas handing out spirit buttons and other kinds of spirit supplies,” at football games, men’s and women’s basketball games, and other school events.

I actually like the idea of the Spirit Squad, in the way I like many concepts that look right at home in a TV show from the 50’s (everyone knows about my inner hippie, few know about my inner WASP), but I don’t see why they had to replace the cheerleaders. Cheerleaders have worked so hard to lose the stigma of being weak, empty, bobble-headed objects of teen boy fantasy. Instead they’ve become the group of female athletes most likely to suffer catastrophic injuries. It’s an entirely NEW stigma! Why do we have to take that away? Can’t we have BOTH? 

Hydroponic Plant Carousels: 

Jason found this tonight, and was showing it to Greg and I. It’s a carousel that you can grow plants on. Doesn’t it make you want to eat a funnel cake or something? It’s like SCIENCE. At a CARNIVAL. Sadly it doesn’t play music or give you a nice view of the city, but it does light up, and if you pick your seat partner right, you might get someone to kiss you as it spins around. 

I’m going to get one, grow catnip in it, and then let Jason’s cats use it as a Kitty Wheel. Exercise and entertainment at the same time! The hilarious part will be watching them get all drugged up and then try to get out of the wheel. 

Opera and Twitter and a story that made me cry: 

Oh, I totally lost it over this one. A guy in Portland (my hometown!) won a contest where the contestants had to explain an opera in 140 characters or less (is it just me, or is Twitter’s influence on EVERYTHING scaring you too?). He came up with a couple great ones, and ended up winning! 

He selected two box seat tickets to the Washington National Opera production of “Turandot” and two tickets to the Opera Ball the following evening. “Which I’m told is the social event of the season in Washington, D.C.,” Stephen says.

He knew without question he’d give the prize to someone in the D.C. area. A friend of his, Holly Hein, suggested he give it to a music teacher.

HE GAVE THE TICKETS AWAY. On top of that, he added $500 to cover babysitting and expenses. And this is where I note that I’m pretty sure I know a Holly in Portland whose last name is Hein, and I need to ask her if this is her doing….

Anyway, the guy decides that isn’t enough: 

“Except that night I’m lying in bed and I can’t sleep, turning all this over in my mind.” Suddenly he realized: “This ball is the primary event of the year in D.C. It’s not a cocktail party, not a tea dance. Where are we going to get her a ball gown?”

So the next morning Stephen called the head costumer at the Portland Opera, who happened to know the head costumer at the Washington National Opera. Who agreed to provide a gown for Priscilla.

“She says, ‘Mr. Llewellyn, I will dress her to kill.’”

Next Stephen called the office of Placido Domingo, the general director of the Washington National Opera. And yes, he also happens to be the greatest living tenor in the world.

Next thing you know, Priscilla was set to be escorted backstage after “Turandot” to meet Maestro Domingo, who would conduct.

Stephen just couldn’t stop himself. He wanted this to be an amazing experience for Priscilla. So he spoke with the manager of the Four Seasons Hotel in D.C., who agreed to provide a room for Priscilla and her husband, Larry, for two nights — and to provide a limousine.

But then Stephen realized that the Opera Ball would begin at 9:30 in the evening and would provide only dessert. So he called Michelle Pendoley of the Washington National Opera, who solved the problem: Priscilla and Larry would dine at a dinner at the home of the ambassador from Belgium.

There was more. Placido Domingo wanted Priscilla and Larry to have dinner with him after “Turandot.” The Washington National Opera’s costume department was going to create a gown from scratch for Priscilla and loan her jewels.

You think that’s incredible? It goes on from there. I was crying when I got done. I had to swab at my eyes with my shirt and hope that no one noticed. If I had loads of cash, or the ability to summarize operas in 140 characters, I would do stuff like this. Man, the next Ridiculous Haiku Contest is MINE! He must have just been lit up from the inside for months after, not to mention how Priscilla must have felt. And all for the love of art! ART! The world needs more art! 

 

pluvio.us

In 1994, while hanging out at a friend’s house, I went into her room to use her computer. As I sat down, I noticed there was a sticker on the bottom of the screen that said, “That which does not kill you, makes you stronger.” I remember my reaction to that, my ridiculously literal brain immediately thinking how, really, that which doesn’t kill you probably weakens you for the next thing. And then realizing I had probably just missed the point.

That phrase stuck with me for years. It was the first time I’d heard it, although I’ve heard it a hundred times since then.

This afternoon I went to her Facebook page, and laughed out loud when I saw the note box under her picture:

“That which does not kill us, makes us stranger.”

So true! Things have changed a lot since 1994.

pluvio.us

Greg is taking a quick nap and Jason is making some window screens with the kids, so I have a few minutes:

We went to the Seattle Aquarium this morning. Me, the person who has panic attacks just driving to the grocery store: I WENT TO THE AQUARIUM. Downtown Seattle. IN A CAR. I was happy. THE ENTIRE TIME. I was bouncing around like a kid again, breathing in that fresh air, looking up at that clear blue sky, watching the ferries motor to and away from the docks, watching my kids run around looking at fish bigger than their heads, watching us all laugh and point at things and drag each other from one exhibit to the next. It was pure and total bliss.

I know I’m supposed to be writing about the move, and how we’re all doing, and a hundred other things big and small, and I owe, like, a dozen people email, people I’ve been sending short messages to that say something like, “Sorry, life is sort of a big jumbly mess right now, can I get back to you in a few days?”, and for some people that was two weeks ago, and I apologize, but I have to tell you: this whole LIVING thing is pretty dang great.

Last night I was so tired, and because my brain couldn’t do anything remotely smart, the guys made dinner. I sat in my chair (they call it “Hollie’s Serenity Corner”), and I listened while Greg and Jason put together grilled pork chops and risotto, thinking how I’m pretty sure I’m the luckiest person in the entire freaking world. Then we ate, and then the kids went to bed, but not before we got their water and cuddled and said our goodnights, and then we sat up and watched some Red Dwarf and some Chuck, and then I went to bed and fell into the most blissful sleep.

This morning we all climbed into the van, drove downtown, and saw SEA LIFE OMG. Which is pretty much what the kids were feeling the entire time, going from tank to tank to tank, Beth asking me why we couldn’t just jump in the water? I mean really Mom, WHY NOT? And I had no good answer except to laugh and say because then they’d have to fish us out, because we’d never want to go home we’d be having so much fun.

Because the Aquarium runs on saltwater and money, they let you escape only by way of the gift shop, which was fine because we’d walked by two hours earlier and I saw a little stuffed orca dressed in a tie-dye hoodie and I went SQUEE. I grabbed my hippie orca, Miles got a bag of sea animals, and Beth got a stuffed mermaid. I also grabbed a brochure on adopting your own orca in one of the local pods, SQUEE AGAIN!

We walked down the boardwalk until we found a spot to eat outside. Jason got some peach lemonade, and I got some raspberry lemonade, and the kids got “lemon lemonade”, and then we all ordered lunch (Greg got his favorite: french onion soup – I need to learn to make this someday) and watched boats and parasailors and smiling tourists, and discussed how we all wanted to go see Ponyo later this afternoon.

Climbed back into the car, and found my cell phone which I’d left there earlier, and my friend Sean was calling to see if we wanted to go see Ponyo with his family (I get to meet his family! YAY!). So we are going to the theater in half an hour! Because you know what?

LIFE IS JUST AWESOME.

We have friends again! And stuff to GO DO! And a whole giant amazing city to do it in! And while yeah, I’m still anxious sometimes, I also feel happier than I have in forever, and the kiddos are being introduced to one exciting experience after another, and as Calvin and Hobbes would say, the days are just packed!

I’ll get back to everything else later.

pluvio.us

Tomorrow we take the kids to the Seattle Aquarium, an event we planned a week ago, and which has caused Miles to refer to it as Aquarium Sunday. I hope he realizes we don’t always go to the Aquarium on Sundays. I try to tell him this, and it’s like talking to, well, a 7-year-old.

“We’re going to the Aquarium THIS Sunday.”

“Right, it’s Aquarium Sunday!”

“But we don’t go EVERY Sunday, you get that, right?”

“Right! Just on Aquarium Sunday!”

“You realize there is something called Regular Sunday, right? Without aquariums?”

“But it’s Aquarium Sunday!”

The kid reads at a 5th grade level, but he has trouble with Sundays. We are also apparently going to the zoo every Wednesday. Life gets busier by the day. I’m going to write about the move and how we’re all adjusting (very well and very well!), but it will have to wait until after Miles has seen all the fish.

pluvio.us