Badgermama

How to dye kids' hair funny colors

2010-08-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

My hair has been purple for over 10 years. I bleach and dye it myself. I've also gotten to be an expert at dying kids' hair funny colors. People ask me a lot how to put a colored streak in their kid's hair! For most kids and families, a small colored stripe works best to start with. It's fun and playful without being too extreme.

Here's my way to do it. It's cheap and takes about an hour and a half total, with most of that time being sitting around waiting for the bleach to work. By the way, you absolutely need to bleach the hair before dying it! Otherwise, the color won't be bright and will wash out in a day or two.

1) Gather ingredients. You will need:

* bleach powder
* developer
* a glass or metal bowl (i.e. not plastic)
* a wide, thin paintbrush (optional)
* brightly colored hair dye (Obviously, of a color chosen by your child!)
* tin foil
* rubber or latex gloves
* shower cap, bandana, or knitted hat (optional)
* claw-like hair clips (or ponytail holders, or bobby pins)
* a comb
* a sink
* a towel you don't mind being bleached and spotted with color
* some cleaning stuff to scrub the sink afterwards

You can get the bleach and dye off the Internet, in many drug stores, or in a beauty supply shop. There are small kits, and the best of those is Manic Panic Flash Lightning Bleach. The kits come with gloves and a brush, so that can be handy. If you are confident, just get separate packets of bleach powder and 40-level creme developer. 40 is strongest, and 20 is less strong. Go for the 40! The kits are about $10-12, while packets of bleach and developer run about $3-5 in beauty supply shops.

For fun colored hair, most of the dyes are pretty good. Manic Panic, Punky Color, and Special Effects are all fine. Manic Panic can be quite expensive though. My favorite right now is Creative Image Adore, because it lasts the longest and is the cheapest at around $4 a bottle. A bottle or jar of hair color for my entire head lasts me a year or so. Get weird colored hair dye from the Internet; beauty supply; Hot-Topic-esque places that sell skater things, gothy clothes, and bongs and maybe do tattoos; or simply from a drugstore if you live in an area like San Francisco.

If you use two similar colors, like two shades of green, or different reds, or red and orange, or blue and purple like I do, your results will look a hundred times better than with a single shade! Over the years I've built up a fine stock of colors.

You can also dye hair with Jello, Sharpies, Kool-aid, and anything else you please that you think will stick. I can attest to the effectiveness of all of the above, though they don't come out as bright or as durable as the actual hair dyes.

2) Get comfortable. You might want the kid in a chair, and you standing up. Or seat them on a stool and you sit on the toilet in the bathroom. If you have a mirror for your child to look into they will be happier! Or, for the squirmy, TV works.

3) Choose and comb out the bit of hair you want to bleach. I recommend it be at least a half-centimeter-around chunk of hair for a good-sized stripe. Consider which way your child's hair naturally falls when you pick a stripe.

4) Pin all the rest of the hair out of the way.

5) Tear off a good sized sheet of tin foil for each stripe.

6) Now mix up your bleach. Make a pretty small batch if it is just one stripe, and save the rest of the powder and developer for later. In a glass or other non-plastic bowl, pour in some bleach powder, maybe 3 tablespoons. Then pour in a tiny bit of creme developer. Add more developer gradually while mixing with your paintbrush, until the bleach paste is about the consistency of thick gravy. The bleach paste is now undergoing a chemical reaction! Use it right away!

7) Put the sheet of foil under the hair stripe. Spread out the hair as thin as you can on top of the foil. Now paint the hair with the bleach paste. You can use your fingers with gloves. The paint brush is just for convenience.

8) Wrap up the piece of foil around the stripe so the bleach won't get anywhere else. Optional: put on a hat, a shower cap, or bandana so the foil isn't annoying.

9) Wait about 40 minutes for dark straight or mildly wavy hair. If you have unusually blond hair, it might be more like 25-30 minutes. If you are bleaching very curly hair, for example if your child is African-American and has dark curly hair, be more cautious and stick with 25-30 minutes even if it doesn't bleach all the way out. You can peek into the foil to see how light the hair is, then wrap it back up for a little more time. With very dark hair you might end up with a yellowish or brassy orange tone, and if you try to go all the way to pale, curly hair may get very straw-like in texture or even break off! With my dark brown, wavy hair and my bleaching the hell out of it repeatedly, I have never had a hair-breaking disaster.

10) Take out the foil and rinse immediately in the sink! Rinse your child's hair a lot. Pat it gently dry with a towel. Make sure the bleach is off your rubber gloves.

11) Rinse out your brush and bleach bowl. Pour in some color, or if you have a jar of color instead of a bottle, just use the jar.

12) Carefully separate out the bleached hair from the rest, and put a sheet of foil underneath that strand.

13) Paint that bit of hair on top of the foil all over, very thoroughly, with your dye or dyes! If you put the darker color lower down, the colors will stay well separated as you rinse the hair.

14) Wrap up the foil and wait as long as you have patience for. At least half an hour is good. You can leave it in all night if your kid will stand for it, but it won't make that much of a difference.

15) Unwrap, rinse, and dry the hair! Be sure to use the sacrificial hair-dying towel! Take photos!

Now scrub your sink and counter or your shower or whatever else got splattered with funny colors.

Your child's pillowcases may turn colors and the bath water will be fun for a few days but since you are a VERY COOL PERSON you will not mind at all.

You can do this for around $10-20 at the cost of a little time and some dye all over your sink which will scrub right out. I have also done this entire procedure with no gloves and no foil: just painted the stripes right in. That can work for the dye, but for bleaching, it's best to use foil!

Enjoy your child's fun hair experiment and while you're at it, why not do your hair too? Your kid will be super excited! Try not to match each other though. That's just embarrassing.

Also, please do not bleach your cat.

Leave me a link in comments to a photo if you use my instructions, and let me know how it went!

Bayview to Breakers!

2010-08-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

I'm excited! We're going to Bayview to Breakers today. Though we won't have boats, we'll meet people and cheer on whoever is there with kayaks or art boats or weird rafts made of plastic bottles. I've only driven around this area, so it'll be nice to get out the car and hang out.

Celebrating free public access to the Bay and the maritime history of India Basin and the southeast shore of San Francisco, Bayview to Breakers is an urban flotilla of manual powered watercraft. If the land-lubbers in small towns on small waters in America's heartland can have watercraft celebrations, so too shall the City by the Bay.

I think we'll be going to the starting point, then driving around India Basin to Heron's Head Park, where there is a fairly new EcoCenter -- sort of a nature center about sustainable living. Take a look at their blog: The EcoCenter at Heron's Head Park.

I totally love how the Bayview to Breakers site is full of the overuse of nautical language:

Calling all weathered, barnacled sea captains and rubber-legged would be skippers. Summoning all those with non-motorized, manually powered vessels, from the finely handcrafted to the roughly hewn, from the Bay worthy to the "as yet determined." From the innovative and inventive, to the overly ambitious. To all the works-in-progress waiting to be plied to the open water. Shake off your summer fog -- this is your day in the sun and water. San Francisco's sunny southeast waterfront is home to the finest weather to be found in summertime.

If there's time, we might all go take a peek at the Hunters Point and Islais Creek Studios. While I'm not sure if they're open, I'd like to see where they are! It looks like the Islais Creek Studios are right across the creek from where I like to sit and look out at the broken-down dock, and right near Building REsources, a very very cool Urban Ore type of junkyard where you can buy sinks or doors or weird old pieces of machinery. I think the kids will love Building REsources.

Watching meteors from the roof

2010-08-13T17:54:00.000-07:00

Last night we set up sleeping bags on the roof of the quarterdeck to watch the Perseid meteor shower. I've been thinking about doing this all summer! Two sleeping bags, a lot of pillows, an extra blanket, extra fuzzy socks, and hats kept us warm.

First we took a look at Venus and the moon. The sun was setting behind a line of palm trees. A few stars came out. We yelled back and forth with our neighbor Roy, who had just gone out on his little motorboat. He made Moomin promise to yell out to him if he saw a meteor.

A little earlier it had looked like this:

Rather than stay up on the roof for hours, we came back down to bed. Moomin read from a web page about the Perseids. At the end he did a very funny announcer voice.

We read almost the LAST bit of Swiss Family Robinson, where Jenny Montrose joins the family. Moomin had a lot of sarcastic commentary about it was sexist for them to worry about her not being in a dress, and how Jack would not let her go alone in the kayak. "Oh, come on! What is she, a baby?! She just lived in a hut alone on an island for 3 years! She can kayak by herself!" We also made fun of the non-stop animal killing. In this chapter, they shot some wolves, jackals, a tiger, a whale, and a pair of lions. I thought Moomin was going to have a freakin' stroke when they got to the wounded lioness. Then he asked me to just skip the part about the tiger. The night before, Oblomovka had been making up fake bits about how they meet a Tyrannosaurus Rex. "But dinosaurs are extinct!" "Well, they are now!" This makes complete sense and also explains why they live on an island with wolves, tigers, lions, bears, elephants, ostriches, penguins, walruses, and so on -- perhaps all those animals used to exist in one place. Until they were all shot and stuffed!

After we all read in bed for a while it was dark enough to be worth really looking. The night was still clear. I think we went up on deck around 10 or 10:30.

The iPad star watching app was useful in red-filter mode to let us know what we were looking at. I spotted the Big Dipper, North Star, Cassiopeia, and Cygnus but the star gazing app was great for the names of stars. We tried to imagine the people who sat around night after night mapping and naming the stars visible with the naked eye.

I saw maybe 3 shooting stars, Oblomovka saw more, and Moomin saw one. What a relief! I was afraid he wouldn't see any!

We were talking about memories of seeing meteor showers and fireworks and just being outside at night when we were kids. Often this meant endless driving, parking in giant fields full of people along with some creative car swearing, trudging around in crowds, lying on blankets on wet muddy grass... and then one star, or some super crappy fireworks. The thing is, I liked all of that and admired my parents' organization. There we were in the middle of a strange situation in the night and they'd have my sister in a baby backframe pack, a cooler full of food that my mom would pack in - in the big red and yellow backpack cooler that must have been free swag from her dad's job as a liquor distributor - The fireworks were almost always not very good - Then the surge of crowds on the way back would stress everyone. I liked the way crushed grass smelled in the night, in a crowd. It seemed like we always had everything we needed. I wonder if Moomin will remember being on the roof of the boat? Will he mind that he only saw one shooting star?

Best Punk Rock Songs for Kids

2010-07-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Punk rock is the most awesome music for kids. It's loud, energetic, expressive of emotion, and if you can get your kids listening to it, half your work of political education is done. Plus you'll never have to listen to syrupy "children's music" again. How to get your kids to listen to punk rock? Make them awesome mix CDs and show them YouTube videos. Here's my picks for the best punk rock for kids.

Toddlers and elementary school age:

1. Rockaway Beach - The Ramones. It's happy, repetitive, and makes kids think of happy times at the beach.

2. Underdog - Butthole Surfers. This is a great cover of the Underdog theme song. The trick is to avoid saying the name of the band.

3. Searching to Destroy - The Stooges. It's good to learn all the lyrics to this song. You don't have to really explain what an a-bomb or napalm are. Just say they are powerful explosions.

4. Spiderman Theme cover - The Ramones. You can't go wrong here. Try making up your own words to "Spiderman" but for different animals and screaming along in the car. Slu-ug Man, Slu-ug Man, Does whatever a slug can (which isn't much).

5. Rock Lobster - The B-52s. This may be the best song ever. Act crazy and dance around! Good for stuffed animal mosh pits. Sit on the floor with all possible stuffed animals. At the craziest bits of the song, scream MOSH PIT and throw the animals everywhere.

Older elementary and middle school kids:

1. Teenage Lobotomy - The Ramones. This requires a nascent sense of sarcasm.

2. The Rezillos - Somebody's Going to Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight. Violent, but really, I think your kid can handle it. It's full of cheerful goodwill.

3. Words and Guitars - Sleater Kinney. Perfect chaos. Really good for those stuffed animal mosh pits or for banging incoherently on a guitar along with the music.

4. Basket Case - Green Day. Almost any Green Day song is good. I never loved them, somehow, but can't leave them off this list.

5. James Bond Lives Down Our Street - The Toy Dolls. What a great song. And it's about James Bond. Full of win!

5. Back in '79 - The Toy Dolls. Tie with James Bond for the most awesome Toy Dolls song. It's simple, a bit repetitive, and would make anyone want to dance around.

Teenagers

1. Kill the Poor - The Dead Kennedys. Older kids can handle the irony. It's a perfect introduction to political discourse!

2. I Hate You, I Love You - The Dead Milkmen. Useful to express the agonies of love!

3. Rebel Girl - Bikini Kill. A classic! Has some strong language. Solidarity and feminism in a totally rocking song. Very good to scream along with in the car.

4. Institutionalized - Suicidal Tendencies. A classic. You really shouldn't hit 15 years old without listening to this song over and over.

5. Where Eagles Dare - The Misfits. Has swears. Will always remind me of that one World of Warcraft funeral raid where Serenity Now blasted everyone to bits.

This one time I was at a 3-year-old's party and their rave-head parents thought it was very funny to put on a really dirty Peaches tape while we all drank Cosmopolitans while flicking the lights on and off really fast and the kids danced. Okay, it was kind of funny! But terribly wrong.

Do you think my age ranges are off? Am I missing any crucial bands or songs?

If you think of any other music that would qualify as the best punk rock for kids, leave a comment!

Travel with a kid - and a wheelchair

2010-07-27T10:49:00.001-07:00

I set out to have a perfect day trip with Moomin this spring, right after a stressful time at work. IN fact it was a couple of weeks where I would pick him up from the aftercare at school at the last possible minute, feed him dinner, and say "Sorry... I have to work some more now." How dreary! In an attempt to make up for those weeks, I set out to have the perfect aquarium and beach day of his (and my) dreams.

You noticed the wheelchair? I get a bit prickly about it. No, I don't want any help, thanks. No, I"m not "brave" or anything, just living my life. Well... in reality I do sometimes need help and I have to nerve myself to do things and go places. Going to Monterey is about a 2 hour drive. I'd have to park in a parking garage on a hill, get myself and Moomin down the hill, wheel through a huge aquarium that's very crowded and stressful, manage to feed us, and do it all in reverse to get back home. Driving tends to hurt my knees and stiffen me up, though I love a road trip. Hills, even small hills, are hellish in a manual wheelchair. I would have to get Moomin to push me up any sort of hill! Crowds are difficult as well, as I get jostled painfully, stepped on, kicked, and have to stare at people's butts a lot, all while keeping track of my dreamy-minded child. Sitting up all day with no time to lie down is very tiring and painful for me. I get cranky and snappy when I'm in pain; that's no fun. Then, the beach. Would there be a beach I could manage to get onto on crutches without seriously hurting myself? Also... Moomin tends to get carsick. So I did wonder: is this going to work? Are we going to have a horrible time, will either of us be in tears, what if I can't make it home; who would rescue us if I needed rescuing? Will I pay for this trip in pain and lost functioning, tonight, or for days afterwards? What if, because I tried to have this nice trip with my kid on the weekend, I mess myself up physically so much that I can't make it to work and then I get fired?!

It's all much easier than it might be, because Moomin is so good. He would never run off in a crowd, or at the beach, or suddenly go into the water and be pulled out to sea by a rip tide, or anything like that. I can trust him completely to behave.

So once I realize I'm a bit afraid to do something I have to do it!

We set out for Monterey, and listened to a great punk rock mix tape. We talked a lot about how songs have moods. Even when you can't understand the words, a mood gets conveyed. Moomin labelled many songs "Fierce" or "Happy, but angry". One was "Makes me think of an elephant on a trampoline."

We got to Cannery Row. MIRACLE!!! I got a parking space right on the main street, across from a tiny, perfect beach!

I sat in my wheelchair in a garden full of butterflies while Moomin ran around on the pocket-sized beach below, looking in tidepools and building sand castles and standing on the rocks looking out to sea. Here he is poised on top of a rock.

Then we had lunch in a restaurant called the Fish Hopper, just above the beach. They seated us right away without any fuss about my wheelchair, in a table outside right on the edge of the deck. I let Moomin run down onto the beach while we waited for our lunch.

In the aquarium, we spent a long time at the Kelp Forest. That way I didn't have to move around a lot. I parked and watched Moomin squirrel around, reading all the signs and staring at the giant tank full of stuff.

Museums with Moomin are extra fun for me. I love to read the signs and think about everything I look at instead of racing through. He reads every single sign I have the patience to sit in front of, and he'll read them out loud to me, with commentary and thoughts as we examine at whatever it is. When other people notice them, they freak out a little because Moomin looks younger than he is. I get very proud of how studious and scholarly he is. He doesn't know how rare this quality is. Or, maybe, how much I appreciate the fact that we share it!

Strangers also notice the wheelchair (when they're not rudely bumping into it.) So we get a few looks of sentiment, or pity, or concern, or just kind of "oh look, freak show." I'm used to it and since I have purple hair it's not like I'm really fighting it, right? Still, a whole day of stares is wearisome.

Of course I also appreciate silliness!!!

And beauty...

And wise old sea turtles who might make a person think of their favorite stuffed animal.

Moomin took those last two photos and they're really not bad!

We drove home, I took a painkiller, and I'd like to add that despite my not-unrealistic but still neurotic fears, Monday morning I was in my cube at work.

That one nice day can't replace or fix the weeks I spent putting off Moomin and not even being able to help him with his homework because I was too tired or stressed. But, though it can't make up for it, it at least provides some good memories to go along with the day to day humdrum.

All the way driving home I had this uplifting bubble of angry happiness, just like the punk rock mix tape. Take that, world! Maybe you thought I couldn't do this... AND I DID. I was proud of myself and yes, I did feel Brave. And Moomin doesn't know that I was afraid of our trip or that I struggle, which is as it should be.

Marine Science Camp, day 1

2010-07-12T20:47:00.000-07:00

At Marine Science Camp today, Moomin dissected a squid and thought about working as a non-fiction writer. He imagined a cartoon of the differences between Squidward and a real squid, so I might try to draw some modifications of Squidward to his specifications.
First, have a picture of a squid.

Moomin says:

Basically, this is what Squidward should really look like, for real. First of all, his arms/tentacles would be longer. Then, he would have 8 more arms, except shorter than the tentacles. Also they would all be on top of his head. He would have absolutely no real legs. His eyes would be on the side of his head, his mouth would also be on the top of his head with his arms, also, it would be a beak, not a mouth. He would be about 5 inches long. And to top it off, he would have fins on his butt.

I know about this because I've seen a real squid. A dead one, but, a real squid. It did not at all look like the cartoons said it would look like. It certainly was not very similar to a person, as you can see!

Treasure Hunt with Puzzles: The Big Hunt

2010-05-23T09:08:00.001-07:00

To prepare a good treasure hunt, first look for good hiding places. Then decide what order you want the hunters to range over the territory. Give yourself a lot of time for preparation. In a small space like a backyard or a house, you might lead them back and forth across a space several times. In a bigger space, make the trail more linear.

Write your clues, number them sequentially, and write up an outline for yourself that links them to each other. Some clues might lead to small treasures to keep up morale. In the big hunt I made a diagram for myself, numbered all the clues, and put together a bag with all the treasures and boxes and bags full of juice boxes and cookies.

Visual unity for the clues comes in handy. So, write them all on blue paper, or roll them up and tie them with a string, or put them in envelopes of a particular type marked with numbers or secret symbols. This helps the hunters to know they've found something significant. Plus it's stylish and adds to the atmosphere of a hunt.

It's a good idea to print out a cheat sheet of all the clues and carry it with you if you're hovering nearby... as we were.

We had kayaking and rowing lessons with all the kids before the hunt started. I told them that at some point in the hunt, they would need to get into the boats.

Here's the map of our immediate area:

And here's the clues!

Clue 1 - the pirate flag at the bow

Through wind and spray
I tell my name.
The Jolly Roger
Starts the game.

There are several places on the boat with pirate flags, including the welcome mat, a hanging sign on deck, and the flag at the bow. Only Moomin knew what "Jolly Roger" meant. I figured that would be the case and that it would lend him authority from the start of the hunt. But while he was looking under the mat, Oblomovka's daughter found the clue on the flag -- which, since she was the youngest of the bunch, helped give her ideas some respect.

Clue 2 (leads to phoenix point in the pile of rocks)

Get the point? You'll need to roam
Much further from our watery home.
You don't need to tie a knot
To walk across the parking lot.
Past palm trees tall and towards some trailers
That just might be homes for sailors.
At Phoenix Point we can look out
O'er Redwood Creek, Smith Slough, and other routes
From there you can see the diving coots
And the Marine Science Institute.
Someone there piled up some rocks
Half burned, like muddy, dirty blocks.
Inside that pile, you'll find a box!

This clue had both the end goal directly described with names (Phoenix Point) and a gradual progression, to assure the hunters they were on the right trail. I used this technique several times, and it was often confusing. It's a way of thinking, and not everyone has been exposed to it - like doing British style crosswords - it has its own internal puzzle-logic. Our crew of 10 year olds and one 7 year old tended to fix on the first thing mentioned in the clue and assume it was the goal. Over the course of the hunt, they began to catch on and would argue a lot about the importance of reading and listening to the entire clue before running off to pursue a concept of the FIRST THING MENTIONED.
All of the hovering adults (me included) had a hard time with non-interference. In other words - we often intervened or hinted.

When the kids got to the point, the cookie tin I'd hidden in a pile or rocks had been taken! I drove across the parking lot to catch up with them after some time had passed. Some people may have almost cried in rage and frustration. It probably didn't help that I pointed out someone else may have had an exciting time finding an unexpected treasure. I was able to recite some crucial bits of the next clue. (This is why I warn you all to carry an extra copy of all the clues.)

Clue 3 (leads to bulletin board by laundry room)

A dragon has a golden hoard,
A phoenix a bed of ash.
I'm just letters and a board,
And I wish I had some cash.

I'll be honest, I'll be blunt --
I'm close by to The Waterfront.
Passers-by are carrying soap.
That should help to give you hope!

Stick pins me me and I won't mind.
Come here to sell or here to find.
I tell of cars and things afloat.
So, would you like to buy a boat?

Only Moomin would really be able to figure this one out. The Waterfront is the name of the harbor's restaurant. Near it, there's a little building with showers and the laundry room, and outside that, a bulletin board. Moomin did get the part about the soap, so led everyone to the right area. But it was his friend Andrew who first spotted the big corkboard.

Clue 4 (leads to the cat shelter)

Though the world is helter skelter,
For homeless wanderers, here there's shelter.
A kind heart comes and keeps me well
Each morning at the breakfast bell.

For rodent's bane and fish's foe,
This roof protects our eyes that glow.
Here in the rain near the egret's cry
Our wandering feet and fur stays dry.

Moomin liked this one for "rodent's bane". It was funny to watch the kids all slowly realize this was about cats. Every morning (or nearly) at 7am, a kind lady who used to live aboard at the marina comes to put out cat food for the strays in a shelter she built from a plastic tub and some bricks. This was quite near the laundry room bulletin board and I thought it improved morale for there to be two clue solutions in a row, quickly solved.

Clue 5 (leads to the boat painted like the Italian flag that's on land at the entrance to the harbor)

You've looked around. You might have seen
me guard the way with red and green.
Arrivederci! I always say,
And Welcome to the U.S.A.!
Out of my element, high and dry,
I greet and welcome passers-by.
My heart is rusty, and what the heck,
In some ways I'm a broken wreck.
But cheerful still, sleek like a seal,
Come aboard and take the wheel!

Even though for weeks beforehand I pointed out the "Welcome" sign at the harbor entrance, and the way everything in the harbor is painted in the colors of the Italian flag, nobody got the idea. "Out of my element" finally clued someone in. The next paper was taped to the underside of a shelf you could only see if you got inside the boat. I think at this clue, someone hinted to the kids that it was at the harbor entrance. That backfired, because they thought first of the entrance to the harbor by water and if we hadn't intervened they'd have all gotten into boats!!

clue 6 (leads to the footpath by the condos)

Here you have some paper sacks
Take them with you! And bring them back.

Turn your faces towards the setting sun
which sinks into the sea when day is done.

When you reach the Public Shore
You will see just what's in store.

Though some might think that you would fall,
Feel free to walk upon the wall.

Then read of snails, mice, and clams
Continue in on the dry land.

Find some trash to bring it back --
Your reward will be a snack.

You will see the bridge of birds
If you've followed all these words.

Learn about the salt marsh plains
And the history of the bay.

Play a while, and if you're brave
You might look up -- in a cave!

This clue was pretty complicated. They figured out to face west from the "setting sun" line. I had primed Moomin some days before with a look at the "Public Shore" sign. None of the kids was comfortable going this far afield without adults, walking down a quiet street with a sidewalk but leaving the harbor itself. (Sadly - having "free range kids" is not just a matter of opening the door and shooing them out - this bunch is so cautious you have to bribe them to wander with plenty of reassurance that it's okay.)

Down the little trail along the marsh between the water and some apartments, there were a couple of signs with information about birds and the salt marsh harvest mouse. At a tiny playground - some rocks in a sand pit - the kids finally found a very tiny cave (suitable for 3 year olds) and duct taped to the roof of it, the next envelope.

Minnie, Vim, and Moomin's 3 year old cousin Mr. Pants were at the sand pit already in place. It was too hard for Mr. Pants to keep up with the running pack of 10 year olds, so I thought it might work to place him near the end of the hunt.

Clue 7 (leads to the bulkheads and a little place to hide things at the end of the big field with the pylons in it)

X Marks the Spot

Lead your feet back down the stairs
Cross the street, pass homes of Bairs.

You'll pass a second ship across the way,
Behind a fence and hedge where children play.

A pace is two steps, that's how Romans measure,
And how pirates do when they hide treasure.

Find the pole with anchor's sign,
This is where you draw the line.

Start from here and face the dawn
100 paces across the gopher's lawn.

The grasses wave at pylons over head
That lead the way to water's edge.

100 paces, then a little more,
Will lead you to the pirate's store.

At TP-2, a ledge, beware!
You are near the pirate's lair!

Another overly complicated clue that in retrospect could have been more clear. They went in the right direction -- across the street to the field next to the other condominium complex. But the second ship, in another tiny playground, distracted them and was beyond the pole with the anchor sign that I meant them to measure paces from. My mistake! They instead fixated on the anchor painted onto the playground's ship-shaped structure. They eventually faced the dawn and paced 100 times and realized the entire thing just meant "go to the end of the field to the water's edge." I didn't follow, so I don't know what happened. "TP-2" was painted onto some concrete blocks near the bulkhead. Just under the bulkhead is a very tiny kid-sized path and a good place to store a paper grocery bag full of cookies and juice boxes. (It was a hot day and by this time they were tired in the sun.)

clue 9, next to last clue points to floating bottle with a message in it, tied under the abandoned pier at the end of G dock

ABCDEFG

Every Good Boy Does Fine
And at the end of Good, what will you find?

***

Before a person gets into a boat,
They really should make sure that they can float.

In Hurricane, Daisy, and in No Brakes
And some on foot, you'll raise the stakes.

Raise anchor too; untie the ropes,
And paddle out to raise your hopes.

Escape! Pass in a Frenzy by the Galaxy,
Go further on to see what you can see.

Beware of Contagious Kootenai,
As you keep searching low and high.

Jane-O rests on triple foot
Providing caves for grebe and coot.

The Killer Duck comes into sight.
You're Feeling Good. And now turn right!

You have gone around the bend.
The last clue's near, then our quest's end.

The pillars of a pirate hall
Stand and brave the seagull's call.

You'll need some skill and also luck.
I'm bobbing in the water like a duck!

Okay here is where they get in boats and go paddling off. It was an exciting part but it caused some trouble. I thought this clue was going to be very clear in telling the hunters exactly where to be and where to look and where to stop. But it wasn't!

The funny capitalized words in the rhyme are all the names of boats , in order as you leave the harbor. The Feeling Good is the last boat on the right and has its name painted very large all over it. JUST past it.... seriously a very hard right turn 3 times... is the tiny abandoned pier with huge pillars that I was calling the Pirate's Hall. I thought they would notice this and turn sharply enough, but they paddled out of the harbor and whooshed past it, continuing up the creek along with the tidal current and pushed by the wind. They didn't get further away than about 10 yards before like 10 adults were yelling at them to come back immediately. We had let Oblomovka's daughter get into a kayak by herself (she had been practicing) but it was stressful to have her even a couple of yards out of reach and my mom and I were yelling at her to come back which ended up (so bad and embarrassing) in me yelling at my mom. Sigh. All was well. The stressed out grown ups just flustered the kids and made them self conscious - and if you have ever watched boats or been in one you will know it seems very obvious what another person should do with oars or sail - frustratingly so. In fact there is not anything bad that could have even happened since the water is like 2 feet deep there (it was middle tide over an enormous mud flat in a marsh), they all had life jackets on, all the parents were 10 feet away watching, and at worst if pushed upstream by the tide (at 1.5 miles per hour) a kid would have drifted slowly upstream (but before hitting the not-very-far shore would have been rescued and towed back by one of us). Anyway, they all paddled back and Jong (her other dad) got in the kayak and did the rest of her paddling for her to improve her spirits. The other problem was that only one boat could really go effectively into the Pirate's Hall area. So everyone who didn't get the clue in the floating bottle was a bit sulky and stressed out. In retrospect, I would have done this differently so that they were told never to leave the inner harbor, and hidden the clue right at the end of the dock (having warned/gotten permission from the people in the boats moored there.)

The other problem that caused hurt feelings and screaming was the next clue, the last one, which was in code and included a pen for decoding.

Clue 10. LAST CLUE leads to presents (look in chain locker)

12 - 15 - 15 - 11 9 - 14 20 - 8 - 5

3 - 8 - 1 - 9 - 14 12 - 15 - 3 - 11 - 5 - 18

So while everyone was boating themselves back to the houseboat (which it wasn't clear they should do, but I just told them to), H., the oldest kid, did the decoding very quickly in the rowboat as another kid rowed and all the other kids screamed at him to stop it because they should decode it together. Moomin was super mad. I should have predicted this and had some way for the clue to be on several cards with several pens.

Despite tiny moments of surliness, resentment, competition, and foot-dragging, all the kids were good sports and got it into their heads that they all had good ideas, all should listen to each other, and that when one person "got" the clue before the others, appreciation and congratulations are in order rather than jealousy.

In the chain locker in the bow at the head of Moomin's bed, all the presents were hidden in bags. I put in the party favors here too.

It was successful and memorable!

I ran a very difficult hunt at my house for grownups a few years ago while I was obsessed with making complicated geocaches. The only clue I remember from it was a paper hidden in a book of Greek Drama that said simply, "Oh, Hero's boyfriend!" and the answer of course was "Leander" with the next clue hidden in some oleander bushes. I wish I had all the clues - they were good. Someday i'd like to do the MIT hunt (which I talked with mako about) and make up very complicated multi-stage clues with more math and elliptical thinking.

Treasure Hunts with Puzzles: The warmup

2010-05-23T08:05:00.001-07:00

Moomin had two parties this year; one big one at his dad's house and a small treasure hunt at the houseboat. He had read and immediately re-read the Elizabeth Enright book "Melendy Maze: A Spiderweb for Two", which has a very exciting treasure hunt with rhyming clues, hard enough so that the full hunt takes months.

So, for weeks I scouted out possible locations and thought of doggerel that wouldn't be completely obvious but would give enough hints for Moomin to understand. There should be elliptical references phrased in over-fancy language - which was part of what he admired about the Enright poem-clues. The hunt should also get him used to the idea of wandering around the harbor and immediate area without adults. (Though, we were all so interested in their puzzle solving thought process that we hovered nearby.) In the Melendy Maze clues, the results were often in the house or yard of nearby kindly old people in quaint cottages who enjoy baking cookies and reminiscing about the old days. So the point of the hunt was for the kids to end up in a huge group of friends who live all around them. Too lofty of a goal, so I stuck to my subtext of noticing things in the geography around us and wandering independently over the territory - for Moomin to come to think of the territory as his.

Since this hunt ranged over a large territory rather than just being in a house and small yard, there was a risk that the clues might be disturbed or stolen. And that happened in one case - sadly, the cookie tin with lollipops and Clue 3 was looted by pirates.

If you're me, or at all like me, you'll need to get over your fear of writing horrible doggerel. The kids won't mind or even notice.

This will now become a very long post, even though it's the warmup hunt!

The day before the party I had a very short, easy treasure hunt just for Moomin and Oblomovka's daughter. That was so that they would work well as a core team, and so that we could give Moomin his new kayak. Here are the clues, which were all on or very nearby the boat:

(Clue 1. The compartment under the seat cushions at the kitchen table.)

Near a place where you might sit to eat
Is where I like to hide.
Can you keep a secret?
I can. I stay inside!

(Clue 2. Outside pinned high up to the piling next to our boat and the floating dock.)

Pelican's perch,
here I stand
as you go up and down.

Slimy or dry,
It's nicer here
Than it is in town.

Put in a pin to mark the tide
And look up high -- find what I hide!

(Clue 3. In my big Spanish dictionary.)

A veces estoy abierto,
A veces estoy cerrado.
Levanto aquí con muchos hermanos,
Y estoy muy, muy pesado.

Tengo muchos palabras
Y tengo muchos páginas.
Soy una cosa, no soy hombre.
¿Conoces tú cual es mi nombre?

(Clue 4. On top of the roof taped to the winch.)

Go aloft to a place to sit or lie
To watch the ISS go by.
To haul up a boat a foot or an inch,
You might need to use a winch.

(Clue 5. In the aft hold, in the vacuum cleaner or taped to it.)

You're going to need a bit of luck
And here's what you have to know.
My main purpose is to suck
And I live below.

(Clue 6. Slip 8 is 2 slips down from us where I have tied up Moomin's new kayak!)

If you should feel like going faster
Then here's the key for you to master.
Hurry up and don't be late.
And go to see what's at slip 8!

The kids ripped right through these clues. They got super excited! At the end, Moomin actually got into the kayak at slip 8 and hunted around in it for the next clue for a few minutes, until we explained that the kayak itself was his birthday present! He was stunned!

Response to a family left homeless by a fire

2010-05-14T10:29:00.001-07:00

I live in a pretty good town. Three families recently lost their apartment in a fire, and the second grade teacher of one of the kids asked for help on a local parents' group list. There was a huge wave of support. I love it that it wasn't just *stuff* donated, but practical help for the family, cash, transport, help to the teacher who was organizing efforts, help doing the really hard bit which is interfacing with the necessary civic bureaucracies, and now continuing work to help find them a place to live.

I learned from the emails that Clifford Elementary has a clothes closet swap room. Isn't that a great idea? Every school should have a swap room! Let people bring in kids' clothes, toys, school supplies, non-perishable food, and anything at all in good condition. Parents would surely volunteer to keep the room organized and clean. And since it's all free, you wouldn't have to lock it up or keep it specially staffed. Have it open after school and after-care when parents might be picking up their kids. I'm curious for the details of how the Clifford swap room works!

I had sarcastic things to say about Katrina relief donations of stuff, though so much of it was well done and well organized and certainly well meaning. This small local effort looks very smart to me, connecting with resources already in place while mobilizing community members directly. What do you think? What would you add to this if you were contributing?

Good Morning Everyone-

I am writing this email today to express my gratitude to all of you who have helped support my student and his family. I am truly amazed at how one email and one Facebook posting turned into a county wide collaboration! My life and my home has been consumed with the generosity of you all. I have received clothing, some of which was bought personally for the children in the family, bikes, scooters, furniture, household items, TVs, toys, books, money, giftcards and a generous donation by PODS to store the items for free! I have also had people help deliver, transport and store items. This has been so helpful as I am just one person.

I want to especially thank all of the parents from Clifford Elementary School in Redwood City. The support and generosity from you all has been amazing!!! You made a difference in the lives of 13 people!!!

My students family is still homeless, as they are having difficulties finding a place to rent. The rental market is tough right now. They have been relocated to a hotel in San Mateo for now.

This is still an ongoing effort. I have written a proposal to the Redwood City
Fire Departments "Give a Smile" Foundation. This is a foundation headed by a fire Captain in the city to help families who have been through tragedy. I am still awaiting a reply from them. I hope they are able to help. Also, on June 5th there will be a BBQ fundraiser in RWC at Spinas Park. Myself, Janet Borgens and the Redwood City Fire Department will be putting on this event. ALL proceeds will go directly to the family. More information to come later. I am still collecting items for the family. I have been making daily drop offs to them and they are truly grateful. The mother said to me yesterday "I can't believe that people want to help us". She was speechless. If you have furniture you would like to donate, please email me directly.

Once again, I want to thank all of you for helping me get this family back on their feet. I am in awe!

Yours Truly,

Michelle Territo
2nd Grade Teacher
Fair Oaks School

A monstrous great brute of a heron

2010-05-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick book-reading update! We've been reading Swiss Family Robinson lately, continuing our nautical theme. Moomin's also re-reading Swallows and Amazons, and he's well into The Edge Chronicles, Volume 2. He read a volume of the Moomintroll comics, some Lightning Thief books, and a lot of other fantasy novels that I can't remember.

In Swiss Family Robinson we are mostly remarking on how the family either kills or tames every animal or fish or bird they see. They see something cute? KILL!!! Use its guts! Eat its liver! Chop it to bits and feed it to another animal! Pierce its nose and ride it! If it's a tree, chop it down after a learned discourse upon its uses!

Today we imagined living on Bair Island just across the harbor but without any Civilization. We couldn't build a boat out of wood, because there aren't any trees there. We would eat raw shellfish, making our own small shell mound, and we'd make a canoe from dried marsh grasses and reeds, like the Miwok or maybe it was the Ohlone. Ducks would not be cute or beautiful to us anymore. They would be FOOD.

This would not be a beautiful great blue heron. It would be a vile, smelly, monstrous great brute of a heron, a bird of prey, competing with us for fish. We would kill it and make a really nice hat and fletch some arrows.

(Instead of floating by it silently for half an hour, staring and waiting, like we did the other day in our kayaks.)

I explained to Moomin one night recently that Swiss Family Robinson is totally my fantasy. He was like, "WHAT? Why? Do you really like the idea of slaying every possible animal and civilizing every kind of natural beauty without even appreciating it?" Me: No! I like the idea of having a pack of completely obedient children working for me 14 hours a day without complaining, and in between, they say things like, "Oh, Mother! Tell me again about the natural history of the teeth of the agouti! What a fascinating lecture!" At that Moomin laughed so hard he fell over and rolled around on the floor rather like a cartoon of a laughing child.

I realized on reading Swiss Family Robinson aloud, somewhere deep into a tree-chopping chapter, that this book is the source of my knowledge about turpentine coming from pine trees. When I was in kindergarten, a relative who was a child psychologist gave me some kind of IQ test meant for small children, with blocks that were somehow math-y, and shapes and a series of questions of increasing difficulty, which I think were supposed to end when you missed a particular number of them in a row. I remember enjoying the tests and questions. But then disaster struck at the question about where turpentine comes from. I said from pine trees, and she got mad, saying that I must have cheated or looked at the answers and she wasn't going any further with the test. Though I told her I had read it somewhere, who knew where!? NOW I KNOW WHERE. Oh, the outrage! Unfairly judged! That sort of thing happened a lot. At that age I was reading a bunch of "kids' classics" including this, Black Beauty, Heidi, and so on. The moral of the story is: don't piss off 5 year olds, for they are unsubtle and slow to anger, and will blog about you many years later.

We started reading Robin Hood, but I might not continue with it and instead will move on to Kidnapped, which I love because it moves so quickly from event to event, disaster to disaster, covering a lot of ground -- and because of how David and Alan become friends and judge each others' characters. I wonder if Moomin will like it? It might be too intense and bloodthirsty.

Kayaking to the laundry room

2010-04-07T07:48:00.000-07:00

We had a grand expedition yesterday for lunch. Moomin and I put in the laundry, then kayaked off around the point from our tiny harbor to a dock accessible only from a huge ladder. It leads to a locked gate on Middle Bair Island, which used to be "reclaimed salt ponds" and is now a wildlife reserve. It was low tide. We picked up trash from the kayaks with our nets, and swooped in to tie up to the barnacled, soggy lower rungs of the ladder. From the top we could see nesting Canada geese and the sparkly ponds on the islands, and across the slough to Highway 101.

We ate our snacks, carefully got back in the kayaks, avoiding disasters of mud & barnacle & escaped boats, paddled another half mile up the slough, then came back to the laundry room docks & put things in the dryer. Then, a quick trip around the point, the current at our backs.

It's amazing to be able to move around so easily. For the first time I understand what people mean when they say exercise is calming and improves one's mood. I feel glowing and powerful. My leg still hurts, but kayaking harder doesn't make it worse, so I don't worry about pushing myself too hard (unlike walking or swimming.) Though reading in bed with Moomin is good, I'm glad to be able to do something new -- this is better than enduring a long drive and grueling wheelchair trips through crowded museums or the zoo (hills!!! ugh) things I can barely stand to do even though I want him to have fun experiences. So, boating! It doesn't hurt!

Last night I went out again for 20 minutes or so and measured the current in the creek with the upcoming tide. It was 3 miles an hour - and I've felt it stronger.

The low tide trip with Moomin must have been nearing slack water because there was almost no current - no wind - almost effortless to paddle.

Moomin's spring break is turning out great, with lots of reading and boating. Here's the rhythm we're getting into: I wake up at 7, work, he gets his own breakfast when he wakes up later, then we eat a quick lunch or pack "provisions" into the boats and take off for an hour or two. Then I work more. We've had some extra reading time together in the afternoons, and then he has hip hop classes till 5:30. I end up working late at night a bit, but as long as I get some good time with him that's been okay.

Rebecca's War at the taqueria

2010-04-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

Moomin and I are reading Rebecca's War, a book set during the Revolutionary War. I loved this book when I was little and since Moomin's studying the American Revolution in school, this seemed like a good time for it.

Rebecca is a teenager in Philadelphia. Her dad is a smuggler and privateer; her oldest brother Will and the ship's first mate Teddy are off with her dad doing work for the revolution, and her teenage brother Tom ran off to join General Wayne's army. She has to keep house along with the family servant, Ursula, and find food for her younger brother and sister. Officers are billeted on the family's house. Rebecca is the only one who knows that 2 million pounds in French gold are hidden under the stairs, the money Dr. Franklin borrowed to shore up American paper currency. With only a sled and her little brother and sister to help, she scours the woods to find firewood and fallen nuts to supplement their diet of corn mush. At some point she figures out how to sell the smuggled French brandy hidden in the family's secret tunnel system. Meanwhile she's doing stuff like ice skating past the British guards to bring food and bandages to the American prisoners.

It's a great book, though no longer in print. Its author, Ann Finlayson, wrote several non-fiction history books for kids. It has some roots in romance novel tradition -- the wounded officer is very much a romance novel hero! It stands out to me as especially good in the genre of YA historical fiction.

Moomin loves the parts about Rebecca's bravery, and all the secret passages and tunnels and descriptions of Philadelphia. I think he is absorbing a lot of details about the street names and the layout of Philadelphia.

The writing is very good and the historical details seem accurate. I've read this book over and over again!

Its pace is probably a little too slow for most kids under 10. It's good to read with a printed out historical map of Philadelphia and some explanations of who the different generals are.

While re-reading it this time I thought about a book I just read about North Korea: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Rebecca and her family are nearly starving and are certainly malnourished as they eat nothing but cornmeal mush for many months. They scour the countryside to find sticks for firewood. Soldiers have moved into all the houses around them and have destroyed fences, doors, anything made of wood, to burn for warmth and their cooking fires. I guess I thought of the North Koreans' stories of their families dying of starvation and disease brought on by malnourishment and the ways they scavenged for tree bark and edible weeds. Of course, the situations don't really compare on a large scale. But the experiences of starvation are described in similar ways.

As we had a late night dinner in La Taqueria on Mission Street he was reading it and I took some photos. The taqueria is lively, warm, and fast-paced and everything is delicious. I love how fast the people who work there make things; their system is super-organized. I imagine the parents from "Cheaper by the Dozen" describing it in therbligs.

The neon signs were bright reflecting in the night time windows...

I had one of those feelings of a magic moment where everything was unusually beautiful and a little bit slowed down in time. It felt like a historical moment where I was part of a city. One of those mini epiphanies where my life and everything about it that I enjoy feels ephemeral.

Moomin had his nose buried in his book so I don't think he was even aware of the food in front of him, much less the beautiful amazing people and place around him. That's okay ... the moments he enjoys or remembers aren't going to be the ones I do, or even the ones I plan for him to enjoy and remember.

All about tiger mice

2010-03-04T21:49:00.000-08:00

Three years ago, Moomin wrote a book: About Tiger Mice.

I noted his comment on the title at the time. "I was going to call it 'All About Tiger Mice' but there's a lot to say about them and I can't say all of it." This is so characteristic of his personality.

Last week I got Moomin Tiger: The Ultimate Guide, an extremely good book by Valmak Thapar, "The Tiger Man". Moomin's been saying for a while that he'd like to be a tiger scientist in India who writes a lot about tigers, so I thought this book would be useful and he could write fan mail to Thapar as he reads the book.

Unfortunately I left the book out on the counter and he saw it before I could hide it for his birthday! Now I have to figure out another birthday present that's just as good!

When I was little I wanted for a while to be an archeologist. Then frankly I switched over to a hybrid, secret future occupation something like "robot-inventing space warrior international spy who also writes and is sort of a hooker" but saying "neurosurgeon" when asked by adults what I wanted to grow up to be. I also thought being a bit like Madalyn Murray O'Hair would be good, but that's when I was 10 and didn't know she was kind of a jerk. I admired her ability to speak up and be obnoxious and go against what so many people thought was the way things had to be. (Based on probably 2 column inches of press in the Houston Chronicle in 1980.) Then in middle school I thought about chemistry and electronics a lot, and computers, picturing my future making some awesome discovery that woudl make everyone else look foolish and me a big genius like I was in a Paul de Kruif book (The Hunger Fighters! The Microbe Hunters!). Somehow, graduating college before I was 20, I'd figure out how to refine aluminum in some way so efficient that people would practically fall over dead they'd be so impressed.

Moomin's imaginings of what it's like to be a tiger scientist must be extremely cool beyond what he can express. Probably he's leaping around like Aung Zaw Oo while soul-bonding with baby tigers and saving them from evil environment destroying hunters with superhero moves, alternated with scenes from the mad scientist laboratory with bubbling beakers where he discovers something amazing that saves tigers even more.

We saw the ISS again tonight, very bright, magnitude -3.1 and going right overhead on from the Santa Cruz Mountains. I checked Twitter and Twisst right at 6:55. It was scheduled to be visible at 6:56, so we ran outside, saw it miraculously coming up in a clear sky, Moomin did a solar panel dance with his arms out, we kind of jumped around and sang "International Spaaaace StATION!!!" like it was a 70s cartoon theme song, went up through the useless pilothouse to the quarterdeck's roof, scrambled up and laid there to watch it pass directly overhead and off to the northeast. I yelled "PEOPLE ARE IN THERE FLOATING AROUND!" and then we laughed really hard and waved at them.

In Swallows and Amazons we're up to the bit where the Swallows are planning their strategy to win the war against the Amazons. Moomin read all the way up to there last night after I put him to bed and had read chapters 1 and 2.

My leg still hurts, not as bad as earlier in the week, I'm off the pain drugs, we kayaked for an hour in the sunny afternoon, but I still worked most of the evening instead of hanging out with him. So the ISS moment was nice to have as a respite from ignoring my kid, working too hard, being cranky from pain, making him get the laundry and fetch me things and take out the garbage and so on.

Axe Cop and the Space Station

2010-03-03T20:45:00.000-08:00

Axe Cop is a comic book story written by a 5 year old and illustrated by his 29 year old brother. In episode 1, Axe Cop and Flute Cop team up to fight some dinosaurs and Flute Cop turns into Dinosaur Soldier. Various themes are established from the beginning. They have try outs to get new superhero team members! Getting some blood on you from a bad guy gives you their powers and might turn you bad! You might want to get either unicorn horns, or huge cool weapons, or both! It's completely psychedelic and great. We sat together and read all of them in a row. Then Moomin came back 10 minutes later with an axe made of Legos.

At 7:41pm we saw the International Space Station! I subscribe to this great thing called Twisst which tweets me (for my location) the next time that the International Space Station will be visible, how bright it will be, what direction and how many degrees above the horizon to look for it. Follow @twisst to get the same service for your location!

We were amazed at how bright the ISS was, coming out of the southwest at around 50 degrees, probably so bright because of the angle of the setting sun hitting it while the sky around it was pretty dark. We lucked out not to have any clouds, too. As it hit 90 degrees it got fainter and fainter and then disappeared. We looked it up on NASA and on Wikipedia. Moomin then went and transformed the axe cop axe into an International Space Station made of Legos.

I worked a lot while he did homework and ate his chicken nuggets, apple, cheese and crackers, and chocolate milk. I think he also read a Nancy Drew book. Then brushed his teeth, cleaned up, fetched me things while I grumpily ordered him around. I was in a lot of pain yesterday and the day before and basically, only moved from bed to get him food and drive him to school and back. I read him two chapters of Swallows and Amazons, then sang him the verse of the Unicorn Song that I always sing. I end it "and loveliest of all was the unicorn" and then he adds other things that are as lovely. This time he gave a unicorn-blessing to the space station, Dinosaur Soldier, Uni-Avocado-Soldier and Uni-Baby, and Roger from the Swallows book "because the book is really about him."

Simply messing about in boats, with maps

2010-02-24T20:47:00.000-08:00

It turns out Moomin is great at rowing. It must be a lot like skill at dancing. He watched us row a bit, tried to correct our technique by bossing us around, and then rowed perfectly straight all the way out of the harbor. A kinesthetic skill he was able to pick up just from watching it done (and done badly.)

Our tiny inlet is perfect for rowing and sailing around. The water is glassy calm at low tide. Once the boat gets out of the inlet where the dock are, we're on Redwood Creek. The few times we've been out, the wind blows from the northwest, sending us straight up the creek.

Our dinghy is named "The Daisy", after the flower on its bright orange sail. The guy who made the sail back in 1965, and who helped to design and make the tiny boat, intended it as an emergency lifeboat for his California-to-Alaska run. It has a hard chine double hull with foam in between the hulls, so it's hard to capsize and floats no matter what. The oars float and are built into the oarlocks. It has a sugar scoop, two little platforms in the back just under the waterline, designed to make it easy to get back in the boat if you fall overboard. To an experienced boat person I think it looks like Frankenboat and extremely silly. But it's so cute!

The sailmaker's art shines out in the boat cover, stitched in patchwork pieces that reflect the shapes of the mast step, daggerboard, and thwarts below - and with another daisy stitched in too. The gunwales of the boat and the oar handles have hand sewn leather linings, I guess for comfort.

We recorded some voyages of the Daisy on Android phones with Maverick, but the tracks didn't upload or save correctly so I can't show you how hilariously we wandered in zig zags and circles around the creek and the mouth of the inlet!

If we take apart the 2hp motor and get it working, I'll let you all know.

For the voyages I packed bags of pretzels for the hard tack. On my list of things for the boat: extra rope for kids to practice tying knots, a laminated chart or two with markers, tiny bird book, extra jackets, a spyglass, string and a stick (for fake fishing). What else would be good for our able seamen before the mast?

The charts are free from NOAA and here's our particular marine charts of the San Francisco Bay.

Here we are on the map!

While geeking out on maps and charts we edited in our own docks on Open Street Map. It's amazingly easy to edit. You make a profile, sign in, then click "edit" on the map. Overlay the satellite image from Google Maps, then trace out paths (ways) and points and label them. The docks I made are type man-made:pier floating:yes. I had no idea OpenStreetMap had gotten so cool. I looked up who else in my town is editing it. The other person who edits my harbor also seems to trace out paths in the zoo and other fun public places.

As in our trip to Ephemerisle, I found that being in a boat was peculiarly freeing. Not being great at walking around didn't make me different than anyone else -- none of us could walk on water! We were all in the same boat. I can scramble across the thwarts and hold the tiller and row as well as anyone else. I felt pretty much like I do in my wheelchair - in a small vehicle with particular constraints that I move around using my arms.

Plans for the Coot Club

2010-02-15T10:04:00.000-08:00

We're reading Arthur Ransome's The Coot Club, continuing our nautical theme. The kids in The Coot Club are boys and girls in a range of ages who sail around small rivers in the Norfolk Broads, having incredibly mild and realistic adventures. Ransome, like E. Nesbit, doesn't have a lot of annoying gender essentialism -- the boys don't constantly think in the background "girls are like that" or "girls can't do X"; the kids cooperate and work together, respecting each others' strengths and weaknesses.

While the Coot Club isn't the strongest in Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series, I started Moomin reading it because it has a conservation theme. The kids band together, not just to learn how to sail, but to observe and protect marsh birds. They also have just gone to live on a houseboat, so I thought Moomin would identify with them even more.

Here are some of the characters:
- Dorothea, who likes to write and imagines everything as if it's in an adventure novel.
- Dick, her brother, who takes notes on birdwatching, isn't super strong or physically competent, and has brilliant ideas.
- Tom, an older boy who has his own sailboat, the Titmouse, which he fixes up constantly. He unties a huge obnoxious motorboat to save a coot's nest, thus becoming an outlaw for the rest of the book.
- Port and Starboard, twin girls about Dick and Dorothea's age, who are great sailors and quite adventurous.
- The Death and Glories -- Joe, Pete, and Bill -- who have a boat painted black and dress as pirates. They run the Coot Club's spy network of kids with bicycles.

Most U.S. kids around Moomin's age would not have the patience for this slightly out of date book, with its slow-developing plot and action, and where every sentence has either some British English term or some dialect (from the townspeople or the Death and Glories) or a mysterious nautical word. In retrospect, I think it would be better to start with Swallows and Amazons!

I enjoyed re-reading The Coot Club to think about social class and to attempt to identify myself with The Admiral, the older woman who comes off as a bit physically frail and who paints watercolors and feeds chocolate to her pug dog. Like the Admiral, I'm on a boat but not always capable of running it, so need to sit and watch the young people scurry around and put plans into action.

Moomin's plans now are to photograph pelicans, and to make a map of Redwood Creek and Smith Slough that will be like the Coot Club's maps of Norwich Broads.

We're on a boat!

2010-01-05T19:40:00.000-08:00

A month ago I moved onto a houseboat at one of the marinas in my town on the San Francisco Bay. The boat doesn't go anywhere, but it's awesome. Moomin and I are now "liveaboards". Here's Moomin looking out of the hatch in his bedroom ceiling:

And me sitting on the bow, grinning:

We have two bedrooms, two tiny bathrooms, a living room, kitchen and eating area, and a sort of enclosed quarterdeck that's like the porch. There's also what Moomin has labelled the "useless pilothouse" in his cross-sectional diagram of the boat. Useless because the engine isn't working!

There's a pair of Western grebes that seems to live here, a grownup night heron, a grown pelican, and a young pelican that never catches any fish. Ducks and cormorants and coots hang out too. We've met some of the other people on our dock, but it's been too cold and rainy to explore very much.

Grand plans are afoot to canoe or motorboat around in a dinghy when the weather's nicer. We could explore Smith Slough, or try taking Moomin to Marine Science Camp in the summer by motorboat. We might start marking off the low and high tide points with pushpins on the pier outside on our finger dock, or try really fishing. So far though it's only lounging, setting up house, and birdwatching!

Boats take a lot of maintenance and polishing. Carrying things on and off the boat is also a chore at low tide when the ramp is very steep from the parking lot down to the dock. So I think pretty soon... don't tell Moomin... he's going to have to do actual chores.

He just read "The Girl with the Silver Eyes", a cool book which I highly recommend! Also, we saw Avatar. It had scary parts and there was a lot of horrible battle and death, and a lot of the political message was suspect as far as being a bit warmongering and white-people-go-save-everything colonialist, but was still an amazing movie.

I wrote more about living on a boat on another blog!

Moomin might join me in blogging soon, with his own photos and thoughts on books and movies and school.

Dancing in the streets

2009-12-12T20:24:00.000-08:00

Watching the parade assemble on the side street by the train tracks was like hearing an orchestra tune up. For two hours in the almost-freezing cold! The marching band, some girl scouts, a jazz dancing troupe, a nursery school, and I think some local politicians in fancy cars were in front of us. Behind, a complete marching nativity scene with incredible costumes, live animals, and palm trees.

Moomin danced with his hip hop group, Community Street Jam, to what I think is a mashup with "Whoomp There It Is" mixed in.

They performed at three intersections downtown. I was in the wake, doing wheelies and hanging out with Squid's oldest daughter.

Moomin was so exuberant and joyful! All the kids were! I was so proud.

We also had a giant shiny red pickup truck with a sound system and a santa-claus grandma in the back:

The town's 4th of July parade is extremely popular. They came up with the idea for a December parade to encourage people to come downtown to shop. It seems to be a success, as the parade combines with a street fair and fireworks for an all day event.

Zombie 80s prom in my closet

2009-10-26T18:58:00.001-07:00

Over the last few weeks of taking Moomin to dance class and watching the "street jazz" girls dance around to "Thriller" I have learned that the latest fashion seems to be very, very tight shirts that go way down over your pants and have sparkly words right over your butt. Oh, we're too modern to embroider stuff on the back pockets of our jeans! How crusty... no, instead we pull our shirts down over our butts and write "SUGARLICIOUS" in pink rhinestone and glitter.

Who am I to blame for this? Please... slow down... I only now just caught up on the whole muffin top thing. Someone stop me before I go to Hot Topic and make a fool of myself. Or worse, end up writing "POET" on my own butt in glitter paint. Better to stick to black leather pants, plaid things, and a purple mohawk, aging gracefully while remaining in my own decade.

I owe a post about the party, but first must ramble about clothes and costumes. E. came over with her sister and friend to help us set up and then was going to leave to buy her zombie 80s prom dress at a thrift store. Hello... who do you think I am? THE QUEEN OF TRASHY CLOTHES FROM THE 80s, that's who.

Within 10 minutes I had her kitted out in red velvet prom dress from my closet, spiderweb fishnets, red and black platform boots and so on. I'm not wearing that stuff and am only saving it for posterity. Posterity seems to have arrived! Yay, someone wants my gothy, trashy, retro junk!

Will E. take my suggestion to make a batch of home-made playdough, plaster it on the part in her hair, and fill it with red karo syrup for an excellent zombie ax wound?

We'll see...

A-maze-ing Halloween Plans

2009-10-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

We're building a labyrinth out of PVC pipe for our Halloween party! The idea is to make cheap, moveable panels, covered over with plastic or paper or sheets, decorate them, and make a maze. We'll run or wheel through the maze with Nerf guns and home made marshmallow guns, shooting each other. So far we haven't made up the rules. Whatever the rules, I'm only going to try to structure games and have rules for a limited time and then it'll be free for all.

As with past parties, I think half the fun will be the buildup to it as we build and decorate and paint.

The not-fun part is cleaning up in preparation for the party. Ugh!

I haven't decided what to be for Halloween. Not Oracle for the 3rd year in a row (an easy costume as it's a superheroine in jeans and a tshirt, in a wheelchair, with a laptop). I'm thinking about being an evil robot. Anything that uses tinfoil and means that my chair gets rocket launchers.

Moomin is going to be a lolcat. Originally this was just "black cat" but by cutting out letters from white felt we can easily transform a black cat into a lolcat.

How about you?

My all time best costume was when I was around 8 or 9 years old and I was Gandalf. Beard, wizard hat, staff, and all.

What were your favorite costumes from years past?

Mittens on a string

2009-10-15T17:42:00.000-07:00

Moomin was reading Farmer Boy this afternoon and came kind of starry eyed to ask me, "You know how Almanzo has mittens, connected by a string, that go up through the sleeves of his coat and around his neck and back out the other sleeve?"

"Yep."

"Did you make my mittens on a string like that because of copying this book?"

"Yep, you guessed it!"

"Cooooool!!!!!!!"

I was wondering if he'd figure it out some day!

Wait till he figures out his blog name...

Making up superheroes

2009-10-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

Moomin had a lot to say today in the car on the way home from dance class, where they were learning the dance to "Thriller". I asked him to tell me it all over again when we got home so I could type it and put it on the blog. Maybe he'll write with me on this blog and we'll all get an education about the secret origins of all sorts of superheroes, a topic in which Moomin is an expert.

Enjoy!

Me and T. and E. play a game now where we're basically heroes in a team where we have nature powers like wolverine and wildebeest and of course, us. Anyway, T. is the leader of the team, which he always tries to be, and has all sorts of forest and nature powers. We can all fly thanks to robotic wings like in Batman Beyond. E. has liquid nitrogen mechanism on his back, well, on him, anyway, which can freeze things with ice. I am called Rockslide and I of course have rock powers,

Just today, the ending part of our playing was when we were flying over a desert and crashed an atomic bomb into it to escape it. I have no actual plot to this, by the way, but there's an episode where an evil revengeful desert spirit enters my mind and I become its host and it tries to take over the world. but first it has to go through the rest of the team. It would be like possession, a little like Karma, the Marvel comics character who can possess people so that their mind is hers and her mind is theres.

I know her secret origin. She's Vietnamese and was in the Vietnam War and a war explosion caused her powers to come out. When a soldier tried to kill one of the villagers, she stopped him by possessing his mind. Her brother Tran had the same powers but while she just saved the boy, Tran made the soldier kill himself. Tran was into his powers but Karma was afraid of them. Tran joined their uncle who was in a criminal organization, in other words, evil. Karma soon went to America with Leon and Nga and went out one day on an errand, but when she went back to the apartment she found it ransacked and her kids gone. They had been kidnapped by her uncle and Tran and if she wanted them back she would have to join their criminal organization. It was part of a Spiderman/Fantastic Four comic. Spiderman and the Fantastic Four help her and soon they capture the kidnappers and get Leon and Nga back. I won't tell you the stuff in between.

Oh wait, did I mention that we all went through a quiz to become the superheroes we were? It talks about what powers you would have if you want to be a superhero, what costume, what team you would join, and so on and so on. T. made it up. We just had B. take the quiz and he chose to be a Fire superhero and he can control fire.

By the way, have you noticed that in books where there's a dragon who's actually good, the people still want to kill it? Even though it hasn't done anything, they're all yelling "You scourge, you pest!" and shaking their fists. And it didn't even kill anything or burn down any houses.

Then we looked at 70 cute baby animals and watched Kittens Inspired by Kittens, which I leave you with,

Street art tribute

2009-09-21T18:46:00.000-07:00

This is a video of the creation of a mural portrait of Ronald Takaki. I think it's a really beautiful way to honor a teacher. The speeded up film and the music go really well - it just works. From reading about his life, it seems like putting the mural right on the beach like that is especially sweet - since he was a surfer before he was a Berkeley professor.

More art & performance by Sahra Nguyen at Riot in the Sky - take a look!

Thanks to Angry Asian Man for the link!

Being dragons together!

2009-09-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

At the game con last weekend I played D&D and ran around with Moomin and some other kids, friends of the family and so on. The night before we played Carcassone and had some great conversations about Python, web page construction, hacking, and password cracking. If your kids have been hanging out at my house, you might want to level up on your password strength, which is a good idea anyway, of course!

Now, this might look to you like some kids sitting around a table in a slightly squalid crowded hotel room with the bed mattress tipped up against the wall:

But it isn't. Actually it's a Sapphire, Emerald, Gold, Topaz, Brass, and Copper dragon considering what to do next in the drama in Io's Blood islands as the Council of Wyrms debates what to do about Vermithrax's mysterious disappearance!!

We had a fantastic game. During the first half, we gossiped at the Council Aerie, took off flying over the sea, and split up into groups to hunt and fish. Some of the dragons took on a wild aurochs and then butchered it to carry it back to camp. Me and the Sapphire Dragon tried to kill a giant narwhal which dragged us underwater and was too big to carry. We ended up with a hundred-pound tuna fish. It was like the practice run of working together and using our combat skills and was completely hilarious! The cleverer dragon in our group went to town and came back with a map to the lair.

At Vermithrax's lair we did a more or less standard dungeon crawl inside a cavern full of brass machinery, glass and silver pipes, and dripping water. We were then sucked through a magic portal into another universe, a sort of mirror universe, to fight horrible swarms of metallic elemental robot crab-spider things.

Thanks Pacificon and thanks to our very patient GM, Tricia, whose storytelling and cat-herding skills created such a great adventure for us all.

The 2nd and 3rd days of the con, Moomin played in a Spy Kids game that involved spaceships somehow, Eliz and Jak played a story about a "very minor mage" where they were naughty elemental beings helping the young mage, and then Eliz, Jules, Jak, and Moomin played in a 12-person medieval fantasy larp (run by Rook).

Pocket microscope + camera = awesome!

2009-08-28T09:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we got a little pocket microscope with its own built-in light that runs off a watch battery. It really does fit in a pocket and works beautifully. Best of all it was less than $15.

This morning Moomin asked if we could take a picture of what we were seeing through the microscope. It turned out that my digital camera lens fit perfectly onto the eyepiece. So, that's how at 7am this morning I was making a cardboard tube, for a sleeve that would hold the lens and the scope together. A little precarious, but it worked. Here's what the cardboard lens sleeve looked like, along with the scope:

We took photos of skin, sand, salt, hair, a starfish, my tongue, and up my nose.

Moomin remarked on this photo of salt and a hair on a black desktop that it was "natural abstract art". I agree!

We made a hay infusion and set it out in the sun. We have read a few chapters of The Microbe Hunters together, the one on Leeuwenhoek, a bit on Spallazani, and on into Pasteur, so maybe tonight we can do the hay infusion and some yeast viewing. If we can see any action with this 20-40x scope, then maybe the video camera will work too!

Hip hop camp!

2009-08-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

Moomin's been going to dance camp the last few weeks and he loves it. For years we've noticed this club, Community Street Jam, in the local parades and downtown performances, standing out from the crowd as they dance well and have a great time. It turns out that in their unpretentious looking gym in the strip mall next to my office building they really are a fantastic community, living up to their name. The kids are hanging out, teaching each other, taking the dance classes, in a warm atmosphere that encourages creativity.

This week Moomin participated in the downtown "jam". Along with performances and dance lessons where the crowd was invited to join in, there were a bunch of informal circles where people were doing freestyle. So as people felt like it they'd jump into the middle of the circle and do some dancing. Moomin loves to dance and is good at it, but is a little shy. I was so proud of the way he jumped in and of all his dancing!

Here, Moomin jumps in around the 1 minute mark - you can see his blue hair. He's interested in doing handstands and spins like some of the other kids his age.

All the dances and performances were great! And especially how the audience joined in and everyone felt comfortable.

This was the finale, with all the kids participating, and very impressive and cool!

This was my favorite dance, choreographed by one of the older boys in the club, Francisco, for himself and two little kids about 6 years old. They work together beautifully and the triangular formations they get into impressed me. I also liked their choice of music, making something old really fresh.

One thing I noticed across many of the kids' performances was the style of starting off with one song, then abruptly switching music, not blended together like a DJ or a mashup might, but just jumping tracks. Once I got used to it, it was interesting and made me think. My expectations would go one way with the first bit of the song, and then I'd get a jolt and have to adjust how I was watching the dance! Very cool!

Votes for women! Baths for kids!

2009-08-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you've told your kid to go take a bath several times nad he's still lounging around in underwear reading a graphic novel about Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Baaaaath time! I mean it this time! In! The ! Bath! Five minutes later it's all about Cady Stanton again. Oh okay! I see how this is gonna roll!

VOTES FOR WOMEN! I sream belligerently. That got his attention.

Then...

BATHS FOR KIDS! I yelled as if directing a protest march right into the tub and yet also into some far distant utopian future. BATHS FOR KIDS!!!!

Moomin cracked up and got in the tub. I felt super happy to have the sort of kid who reads and ignores me. This shows a proper respect for authority!

Too cool for school

2009-08-10T09:32:00.001-07:00

Moomin has been in "science and art" camp for weeks: Camp Galileo. They're really organized and send home daily newsletters (mostly canned...) and at the end of the week, photos of all the kids and a certificate. I think the "science" they do is overhyped, so there is a lot of bridge-building from popsicle sticks, fun but with these things I always wish they would dig deeper and make things more "real".

Meanwhile there is a lot of loafing and comic books and reading going on over here, and we continue to make stuff out of the Howtoons book.

But we haven't made a movie, or started a band, or learned programming, or done experiments with electricity, and and and...

Though on the "experiments with electricity" front, I am giving Moomin a quarter every time he turns off a light in a room no one's using.

Reading: Island of the Aunts by Eva Ibbottsen, which I pitched to him as "kids doing magical marine rescue."

We looked at the Daily Ocean blog, whose author goes for a 20-minute walk every day to pick up trash on the beach. She photographs it and writes beautiful, thoughtful posts. After 40 days of picking up trash, she had collected over 200 pounds of trash. Keep in mind that's only 20 minutes a day!

And we watched The Bots, two teenagers from LA with a punk rock band:

Letting babies bang on the laptop keys

2009-07-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

On the plane coming home from BlogHer I lucked out and got a bulkhead seat next to the cutest baby. When his mom sat next to me, without thinking I went "Oh, awesome, I got lucky, a baby!" and she shot me a look. "No! Really! I wasn't being sarcastic!" A mom with a baby in a sling is sooo much better for a seat mate than some horrid suity person reeking of cologne and playing elbonics. What's a little crying compared to the fun of seeing a baby thinking and learning stuff!?

We made friends. The baby really liked my wheelchair gloves, which have suede, leather, mesh weave, fabric, and velcro textures.

Then as the flight attendant said she would have to take her baby out of the sling for take off and landing and just hold him, we wondered why. Wouldn't it be more secure to leave him in the sling? My theory, which I tactlessly explained, was that perhaps it was senseless and having to do with liability or whatever, but also, maybe having a child strapped to your lap would put them in the classic child crusher position where your forward momentum as your torso jackknifes over your own legs would squash them like a grape. And it might be better for the baby to fly out of your arms and bounce around, because babies are both tough *and* made of rubber *and* have skulls. I don't think that's true, but it came out of my mouth, and luckily the baby's mom and dad still spoke to me afterwards and didn't barf from imagining out the pictures from my neurotic overanalysis.

After a couple of hours I looked up from whatever I was doing and realized they were showing their cute baby a slide show of photos on a Mac. I told them about my cousin Paul's program "Baby Banger" which has a very unfortunate name but that draws shapes on the screen when any key is pressed. You can download it free! But they didnt' have to download it because I had a usb stick and could just hand it to them. Yay! Their baby played with it for about half an hour, clearly overjoyed to be allowed to touch the forbidden magical laptop keys all he wanted! You could see him being all proud and making the connection that he hit a key, and something happened as a result. It's his first hack session!

I really do like babies especially when they're someone else's and I don't have to do any real work other than be amusing! Peekaboo... multi-textured gloves... and "Baby Banger"... it's like the easiest way to be a rock star ever.

At the end of the flight I ended up screaming at some taxi drivers for refusing to let me get in their cabs. "Bigot! Jerk! I have my own car! Which I drive! My wheelchair comes apart! If I tell you I can get in your cab, believe me, I CAN!" I screamed at cabbie #5 in a line of cabs that refused to take me, while double flipping off him and the dispatcher and a very long line of people stared with their mouths open. Cab driver #6 cheered me by being rather gentle and matter of fact but I also clung to the memory of being a rather good person at least with babies on planes and crying children in the airport security line who can be easily amused by my sparkley wheels. I lost my temper and was a mean, screaming jerk, somewhat justifiably but with some level of entitlement and hotheadedness but I decided on the ride home that the baby-amusing might make up for it in the balance of life, or so I hope as I really dont' want to turn all bitter and angry even when I actually am feeling bitter and angry - instead focusing on positive action and things that are good. But- anger. I think it's not my anger I'm uncomfortable with so much as my suspicion that I get to express it by screaming at very angry dudes (they were all out of their cabs yelling at each other) and fairly sure that I'm not going to be punched or arrested on the spot for doing so. I ended up having complicated thoughts about anger, privilege, entitlement, and activism.

The joy of PVC pipe: Marshmallow guns!

2009-07-20T12:50:00.000-07:00

We made another Howtoons DIY project: Marshmallow Shooters out of bits of PVC pipe. It was so amazingly easy!

First Moomin and I made a list of the PVC parts we'd need. At the hardware store, we got a few 3 foot lengths of pipe, which was extremely cheap. We also bought enough slip connectors to build 2 guns, and as an experiment, I bought all the pieces to try making a threaded pipe gun as well. It takes a while browsing all the bins of parts to pick out the right sizes, in this case 1/2 inch pipe and connectors, and to make sure all the joints are slip joints, not threaded!

We bought a small, racheting, pvc pipe cutter for about 15 bucks.

When we got home we laid out the plans and started marking 3 inch lengths of pipe to cut. The pipe cutter was *definitely* easier than using a hacksaw!

The best bit of this was: I didn't have to do anything but provide materials. All of the cutting and assembly was easily done by all the kids who made the shooters, from 5 years old up.

Then, Iz came over with a bag of mini marshmallows. She made a gun too. Onward to the great marshmallow shooting!

Then our next door neighbor came over too. I had to give up my gun! While the threaded pipe made a decent gun, the parts were more expensive, so I'd just stick with slip joints in future.

Everyone wanted to modify their guns and make new things. So we went to the *other* hardware store, the local tiny one, to get more pipe and connectors and ice cream on the way... Pipe was a dollar for 5 feet so I bought 10 feet of pipe and another 10 bucks worth of various connecting bits!

We ended up making guns for all our neighbor's small cousins too. So, if you do this project, I recommend you just buy about 20 feet of pipe and way more connectors than you think you'll need! Everyone will want one! They shoot marshmallows all the way across our backyard, over the fence, and into the driveway over the cars. There were marshmallows all over the roof. It was epic! The only down side was, with the 90 degree weather we had a lot of melty splodges on the cars and sidewalk. Luckily the kids picked up most of the solid marshmallows, and our baby raccoons and probably some rats and possums took care of the rest by the next day!

I think next we may buy a lot more big lengths of pipe to make a huge "marble drop".

Ice cream in a bag!

2009-06-25T21:08:00.001-07:00

Moomin and Rook made Howtoons Ice Cream tonight in a couple of heavy-duty ziplock bags. The cream and eggs and sugar were in a small bag locked inside a larger bag of ice and salt. So, they wore welding and gardening gloves and threw the bag of ice back and forth for a while!

I had the idea to put the bag onto the bouncy horse (the kind on springs that little kids ride), which worked for a while. Standing next to it and bouncing the horse worked better than actually riding hte horse while holding a big wet freezing bag.

20 minutes later they put chocolate chips in it and voila, ice cream!

A good Father's Day present: The Daddy Shift

2009-06-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

Hey! My friend Jeremy from Daddy Dialectic wrote a book, The Daddy Shift! I'm buying it as a Father's Day present. Wow, it's good! I can tell even without having read it, because part of the book is an interview of my brother-in-law talking about his family and his approach to parenthood.

They range from working class to affluent, and they are black, white, Asian, and Latino. We meet Chien, who came to Kansas City as a refugee from the Vietnam War and today takes care of a growing family; Kent, a midwestern dad who nursed his son through life-threatening disabilities (and Kent’s wife, Misun, who has never doubted for a moment that breadwinning is the best thing she can do for her family); Ta-Nehisi, a writer in Harlem who sees involved fatherhood as "the ultimate service to black people"; Michael, a gay stay-at-home dad in Oakland who enjoys a profoundly loving and egalitarian partnership with his husband; and many others. Through their stories, we discover that as America has evolved and diversified, so has fatherhood.

"Kent" is the pseudonym for my brother-in-law, who is geekily obsessed with Legos, used to fix and tune harps for a living, can gut a house and rebuild it slowly and CORRECTLY, and who for many years of his son's life was the dad who carried around a bajillion pound suctioning device to keep my nephew's trach clear so he could breath. There was suctioning, I swear, like every 20 minutes. My awesome, cute nephew talked in sign and used to call me (in sign) "Auntie Lifting Truck" because it sounded like "Liz". His trach is out now and so he talks as well as signs.

But that's off the point. If you want to read what my brother-in-law has to say about being a stay at home dad, and parenting a kid with some health difficulties and physical impairments, go read the Daddy Dialectic blog a little bit so you see what a kick ass writer Jeremey is, and then buy his book. 8-)

Rook has stayed at home for a while now, by the way. Did I mention that on this blog? He quit his job last year, just feeling that he'd had enough of being a software engineer after 8 years of it. I brought home the paycheck, we figured we didn't need to be super rich with two incomes, he could use a break, and he wanted to investigate and apply to schools. So now he's going to go to Stanford to get a teaching credential for high school science and physics teaching. Maybe it's not the best time in the world to try to get a teaching job. We both figure we don't care and everything will be okay. Meanwhile Rook has volunteered in Moomin's classroom doing a special math program, gone to a lot of his choir practices at 7am two days a week, all his choir performances at school, taken him to swim lessons, organized playdates, the works. Sometimes it seems so unfair that I did the main parenting when Moomin was too young to remember it, and now Rook gets to be the Fun Parent most of the time while I hunch over my computer. I never would have had the patience or energy for all those swim lessons this winter (damp and cold! ow! brrr!) so it was very lucky timing for Moomin. I have to note that for at least 6 months I have almost never done the dishes.

That green stuff scrolling on a black window

2009-06-03T15:15:00.001-07:00

Good questions that Moomin's awesome friend just asked me:

Do you feel better yet? Are you only a little bit sick? Are you working in your bed? Are you programming in javascript? What programming languages do you use? What's that? Does this one use PUT statements? Is it like HTML? Are you going to do one of those things where green stuff scrolls across a black terminal window?

Answers: Kind of. Yes. Yes. Yes and no. Php, python, javascript, perl. Unix. No not really. No. Yes, yes actually I am, would you like to watch?

IT'S JUST LIKE IN THE MATRIX, KID!!!

Then I kicked him out and shut my office door!

I swear, this kid has to learn how to use Scratch! I like all his questions very much! I think he's totally ready to learn some procedural thinking!

What I really need here is a sound file that has Majel Barrett going, "PASSWORD CORRECT. HACKING INTO PENTAGON." That would impress him.

Back from WisCon!

2009-06-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

We're back from WisCon, the feminist science fiction convention that we go to every year!

Moomin hung out in the kids' room, cut out Girl Genius paper dolls, went swimming a lot, made enormous room-sized lego battles with forts and spaceship fleets, and read a lot of books. I introduced him to Patricia C. Wrede who wrote the "Dealing with Dragons" series...

And Moomin said "What! You're PATRICIA C. WREDE!? I just want to tell you, actually, I don't like Dealing with Dragons."

*pause*

"I LOVE Dealing with Dragons!"

It was hilarious to see Pat's face fall and then cheer up again with the pause and punchline!

I have a lot more stories from WisCon (and from Maker Faire!) for later!

Secret San Francisco city parks

2009-05-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

I love San Francisco! This weekend I took Moomin to Caffeinated Comics at Mission and 30th, an Internet cafe and comic book store. We had to repeat a bit of comic book store ethics, to wit, don't stand there reading a whole comic book: if you're going to read it, buy it. The food selection isn't very wide at this brand new cafe, but the coffee is excellent and the entire store is "green". The wireless was fast and there are power outlets. Also a plus for me, it is very wheelchair accessible, with no steps, a gently sloping ramp to an accessible bathroom, and very wide aisles, so that I can get to every part of the store. Moomin got a big book of Avengers comics and an issue of Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius. There was not a big selection of comics, but what was there was solidly interesting, and I trust it will expand as the store becomes established.

Then we drove up Bernal Hill a little ways to the corner of Winfield and Esmerelda to the Winfield Stairs Slide.

A metal double slide goes halfway down a city block rather steeply through this narrow shady garden full of flowers. There's rubberized stuff and a sand pit at the bottom of the slide. If you bring a cardboard box or waxed paper then the slides are a lot faster. Moomin and Rook went down the slide dozens of times on cardboard boxes and raced to the top while I watched them from a shady spot on the wall at the top and read my book. (Some other day when I don't mind killing my leg and hip, I might brave the slide and stairs back up.) That would have been enough but... I was greedy to show Moomin more of the city, so we got back in the car and drove up to the top of Bernal Hill to the park where a lot of people bring their dogs.

From the top of the hill park, I had thought Moomin and Rook might wander around or climb the hill while I stayed near the car on crutches. The view at that point in the small parking lot is to the south and east. But we ended up trying the path, which to my surprise was paved! So my wheelchair could get nearly to the top of the hill. I could not quite have done it alone but with some extra elbow power it was fine! We saw a huge gopher snake. At a point where the path turned I stopped at a park bench to look out over downtown and the bay. We could see the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge, all the great buildings downtown, the tree-ish line of Folsom Street, San Francisco General, the harbor and stadiums, and all of Hunters Point. Moomin and Rook continued on up the hill. I watched people running with their dogs along the gravel paths on the ridge of the hill. A guy nearby was playing guitar, there were kids with kites and someone in a tie dye shirt was blowing soap bubbles which floated down over the hill dizzyingly into infinity. You couldn't get more san franciscoish if you tried.

So that was 30 bucks for the comic books and coffee and donuts, which you could get away with $20 less by avoiding buying a giant book, and, say, just buying a couple of comic books and a donut. The parks are free and surprisingly not crowded. I'll be back at the secret slide and the not so secret top of the hill! I'm in Bernal Heights and the Mission a lot because Zond7 lives there. I want to do a bit more local blogging this summer, about the parks and small things to enjoy about those neighborhoods.

Moomin liked the rock formations on the hill. I talked a bit about subduction zones, serpentinite (California state rock) and the Franciscan melange, which is kind of a mess of old, somewhat metamorphosed, ocean floor shoved up by more ocean floor coming in underneath it, like the whole Coastal Range around here. At the other park I pointed out fennel, a jade plant, and mallow, which is a very attractive weed flowering right now; you can tell it because the leaves look a bit like geranium leaves. It is not the same as the marsh mallow (it is Malva neglecta, a good Latin name for a weed found on disturbed soil; the marsh mallow is Althea something-or-other, not Malva, but is related). I stole a piece of jade plant from the inside of a bush where it would not be missed and will try to go back in a couple of months to get an envelope-full of fennel seeds. I want some fennel in our front yard, but always seem to miss the seed harvest!

Anyway, I don't always need every part of a park to be wheelchair accessible, and for me what is more important is having parking and a fairly clear trail and then a place to sit down (if I'm on crutches). So both the slide and the top of the hill worked out fine for me. I can't say this too often: accessibility is not binary. It is not "yes" or "no". For example, on the SFKids site review of the Winfield Street Slide, it just says "accessible: no." Yelp.com also just has a yes/no binary about accessibility. I need to know more than that to find out if a site is accessible. What is the distance from possible parking to where I want to go? Is there a curb cut? How many stairs? Do the stairs have handrails? Is there a place to sit? Are all the paths covered in gravel? That's what I want to know!

Here is an interesting historical tidbit about the slide:

A more boisterous park amenity--the city’s longest pair of outdoor slides--greets visitors to Bernal Heights Mini Park just a few blocks away at Winfield and Esmeralda. In the late 1970s, neighborhood activists, with help from then-Mayor George Moscone, turned the empty corner lot into a garden spot with spectacular views and a twin, 42-foot sloping steel slide. The highlight of its dedication in 1979 was the photograph of Mayor Dianne Feinstein flying exuberantly down the chute.

Recovering from domestic violence - with community help

2009-05-15T12:40:00.000-07:00

This last month I've watched, from a distance, a little bit of what happens when women face domestic violence. Julie from Tangobaby has been blogging about her friendship with K. and her family, a friendship which started back in April. As an individual blogger talking to one other woman she met on the street, she has made a huge difference in K.'s life. WE ARE THE MEDIA, people.

Meanwhile, my friend from WoolfCamp, Gwendomama, was also attacked by her (then) partner. He was arrested and then took all the money which he said he'd used to paid rent and utilities and used it to pay his bail. Her commitment to truth is stunning and beautiful.

But for now, I cannot allow him to take away or hurt this one thing I have left.
Our children are ours. They will always be ours.
But this blog, these words?
They are mine.
This poetic license to be cryptic and have a quirky sense of humor?
All mine.

This is my blog. This is where I can tell my truth, where I can record the awesomeness that is my children, and even record my parenting triumphs and fails.
This is where I have been able to share the 'unspeakable'; the coping with parenting loss...this blog has been what even helped to keep me sane those years of cyclical arguing.
Sometimes people even pay me astonishingly low amounts of money to write things.
I write only the truth (which, perhaps upon reflection, is why the amounts are so astonishingly low).

I'm going to repeat what Squid said:

Gwendomama is one of my favorite people and bloggers. She is a loud-mouthed, small-business-owning, straight-shooting, food-loving, empathetic woman and dedicated mom. She is a wonderful friend to folks both inside and outside of the computer, to parents who advocate for special needs kids, and especially to parents who -- like her -- have faced the unimaginable in losing a child.

The unimaginable happened to her again. Last month, she became a victim, and to literally add insult to injury, she has found herself in a financial hole. Please, please help us help our hardworking friend gather funds for her and her children's immediate needs: food, rent, utility bills.

We are bloggers. Our superpower is connectivity, and when we use that power for good, we can save and change the world. Please forward, blog, connect, and -- especially -- donate. The campaign will end next Friday, 5/22. No amount is too small, and the sky's the limit. Thank you.

Birthday live action role playing game

2009-05-08T22:50:00.000-07:00

Last week E. asked us to run a larp (a live action role-playing game) for her 13th birthday, sort of fantasy medieval-ish and with bandits and heroines, swords and combats. We found a good spot in a hilly wooded park nearby and I drew a map:

The standing stones are picnic tables, the castley wall of Treegarth is actually there, and the spiderweb design is in some paving stones where there used to be a tiny outdoor theater.

Kids will be in three groups - Druids, Royal travelers, and Bandits. Rook is making up a ton of character stuff which I have nothing to do with. But I know the general plot and am good at atmosphere and props! Someone will have to push me up the hill, but once I'm there it's all fairly level and with firmly packed dirt paths. I'll sit in the druid ruins on some pillows and blankets as the Elder Druid.

I made a few props besides the map. $3.99 got me a clear brown-tinted plastic wine glass. It's got black and italian red stripes with gold paint pen on top. If you're making cheesy props for a role playing game it is VERY useful to know how to write in runes!

Runes make everything cooler AND sillier.

Onward to the puzzles and scrolls. Any decent thick drawing paper makes them nicer, but plain printer paper works too. Write whatever you like in black or brown ink. I think brown ink looks best. Then paint the scroll front and back with a mixture of coffee and brown watercolor paint. Let it dry a little while, then roll the scroll while it's still wet. Let it dry all the way tied with a ribbon, or bake it on low heat in the oven. Ketchup makes very good bloodstains, but smells horribly like ketchup if baked. Char the edges of the scroll slightly with a candle. Other paper-browning substances are soda, chocolate sauce, and so on. Chocolate sauce and ketchup impart an interesting sheen of age. If you have a crafty kid who doesn't mind making a mess and if YOU don't mind a bit of paper on fire in your sink then experimenting with scrolls can take up a whole afternoon or weekend to find the best mix. I've always wanted to try oiled paper outer wrappers.

The first puzzle is a simple substitution cipher, but first you have to solve the small math problems to get the numbers. I think a few smart 13 year olds can figure out what the 5th Fibonacci number is.

The second puzzle is a poem written in runes. they're cheaty runes, a mix of half-remembered Futhark and Tolkien. But they work, and I can (scarily) write in them as fast as regular writing. Once the poem is decoded, it's a riddle that I think might take them a minute or two to figure out, and it should lead them on to the next clue.

I didn't want the puzzles to be too babyish. But not as hard as the ones I made for my grown up friends with slips of paper in books all over the house. (I remember one that was like "Oh, Hero's Friend!" and it was "oleander" ie the egg with the next clue was hidden in the oleander bushes. The hint was in a book of Greek drama. I wish I had those somewhere - they were hard!

ONce they get the chalice, the amulet, and the wand, some other stuff can happen. We figure the bandits and the royals will fight for a while and spy on each other, but then work together for the cause.

I want to introduce currency into this game in case anyone wants to play it up. So the royals should have a bunch of money, the bandits less individually but a treasure chest; and the druids (me) might charge for healing after battles. Maybe they'll bribe and hire each other. I don't know! But whoever ends up the wealthiest should get to be powerful in the True Queen's court. So, we need like 12 little bags full of pennies and I think E. is coming over tomorrow with some fabric scraps to make the money pouches. I also need to make a quiver for Moomin's 3 Nerf Rocket Arrows.

Dinner will be in character during the game, as the travellers dine with the druids in an encampment, and then are raided by bandits who take over the feast. I figure a couple of rotisserie chickens, loaves of bread, cheese, honey and apples make a good feast.

We should have some great photos, as long as we're not all eaten by mountain lions. TOTALLY JOKING... there are no mountain lions... it's a suburban park full of people and we'll be incredibly loud and silly yelling ho there varlet & such waving our plastic swords. No one could mistake us for deer!

This is a cheap party to give, as long as you already have swords or will make them, and can scrabble together costumes. The kids have all been in shakespeare plays at school plus Ren Faire, so they had the clothes for it.

If no one gets poison oak then it will all be perfect!

Free comic book day!!

2009-05-04T12:12:00.001-07:00

This weekend we celebrated Free Comic Book Day again. Actually I missed it, but Rook took Moomin to Lee's Comics to pick up a handful of free comics.

It's a great "secular holiday". Moomin gets very excited about it!

Of course, we end up spending more money in the comic book store, but it's worth it.

It's always great going through the 10 cent and 25 cent comic book bins!

But my downfall is the big thick compilation books of old superhero comics.

And relatively new stuff, like Digger, but that should realy get a separate review. It's a great comic for adults and for the YA crowd which could go down to about 9 or 10, Moomin's age... with some ethics, religion, and scary violence issues, and a complicated story, so might not be ideal for earlier readers. I love it so much! It's about a nerdy, tough, geology-loving wombat who gets lost underground and comes up in a country far from her home.

Things to do with rubber bands

2009-04-15T21:49:00.000-07:00

Moomin's friend "Good Landru" has a toy that is basically a board with some nails around the edge and a bunch of different colors and sizes of rubber band. This is going to be my next craft project with Moomin. I ordered this to start with,

Rubber Band Ball kit

Which is nifty looking in itself and he might enjoy. Clearly it is just a big pack of rubber bands with instructions that say "Wrap these suckers around each other till they're all gone" but unlike so many gimmicky toys, it's cheap - only 4 bucks. So, I ordered it, it'll come in the mail as a surprise, and then I can rummage around for a board.

***

We got the rubber bands! I still don't have a board, but we made a great shoebox guitar and a sort of giant box-zither thing. I realized that Moomin doesn't know anything about scales, or what a third is, or anything about music theory. He might like it.

My plan for the board is:

1 board about 1 foot square and maybe 1/2" to 3/4" thick
32 nails (I think finish nails will work best)

9 nails to a side, gives good scope for making complex rubber band patterns.

I'm not sure if finishing nails, with almost no head to them, will be best or not, so I might get a few other kinds for an experiment.

Anyway, I highly recommend a big bag of multicolored rubber bands - it has a lot of possibility for projects.

Watch out that your cats don't eat the rubber bands!

The elusive kilogram!

2009-04-15T18:20:00.001-07:00

Last night I had this conversation with Moomin. "I just want to make sure you actually understand this metric system stuff rather than doing the problems blindly. So let's draw a little chart. How many grams in a kilogram?" "Um... ummm... ummmmmm.... Oh yeah! 1000!" "Okay, how many centigrams in a kilogram?" "There's no such thing as a centigram." "There is!" "No there's not! They didn't tell us that! Look, I wrote it down... Can you just let me finish this page? It's my bedtime!" Bedtime is not a good time to explain the entire concept of the metric system so I gave in.

Later a certain person assured me that Moomin was right! Well, they are wrong! 8-P

And then led me into a delightfully pointless reading: Wikipedia: Kilogram.

The kilogram is the only unit not defined off a physical constant - it's defined from this particular object, the 130-year-old International Prototype Kilogram or IPK. And a whole bunch of other metric units are defined using mass, like newtons, pascals, joules, amperes, couloumbs, volts, teslas, webers, candelas, lumens, and lux. (The plural is not "luxes". I looked it up.) It was created and then defined as the standard. But some replicas of it were created, like the Kilogram of the Archives, and over time they have diverged from each other. The story of what they're all made of, and how they're periodically compared and verified, is pretty cool. And sort of insane. Is that a whole bunch of people's life work? Making sure that we know how wrong our kilograms might be? Eeeeeee! That's so hot!!!!!!

And so are multiple bell jars over a brass-looking pedestal thingie! It's like The International Geek Thingamajig on a Steampunk Cake Stand of Awesome!

Burrow deeply into the kilogram article and you will get to the proposed alternatives that would tie the kilogram to a constant. Atom-counting approaches (I liked the Avogadro project, which would use a silicon sphere); Ion accumulation; and the rather sexy sounding watt balance method: the electronic kilogram!

I am tempted to show all this to Moomin but not until he finishes today's tedious homework, which is three pages of textbook problems of temperature conversion. No one needs that many examples - it is very pointless. At the least I will wow him with the revelation that there are exagrams, zettagrams, yoctograms, and zeptagrams which I will prove through the irrefutability of Wikipedia because we all know the important thing to teach 4th graders is that Wikipedia is totally true.

Flip fantasia!

2009-04-02T23:21:00.000-07:00

After Moomin's school choir concert -- in which 50 kids sang Nickelback's "Rock Star", "Time After Time", "I'll Stop the World", and (again) Bohemian Rhapsody -- I tried to get him to think of some very silly songs for adaptation for a kids' choir. He was underwhelmed by the Langley School Project version of Space Oddity, and didn't think that Sleater-Kinney's Words and Guitars would translate well to choral adaptation. I disagree, it would totally rock and has great lyrics.

Anyway, after that I was treated to this improvised dance to Cantaloop:

After the first minute the dance gets amazingly interesting! I like Moomin's improvisations very much. At some point I couldn't resist dancing a little bit with him so it's rolling shaky-cam time.

In search of ping pong balls

2009-03-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

The two gross of ping pong balls that I ordered online aren't here in time to spray paint them black to use as cannonballs for the party. So I went off this afternoon in search of the cheapest ping pong balls in bulk in San Francisco. It ended up being super awesome.

First I found this place online, AMDT Club. As I drove over to it I couldn't quite picture where it was, somewhere on Lombard St. so either in North Beach or Chinatown or in between. But on the way there I ended up on top of a very steep hill, looking out over all of San Francisco, Coit Tower, and the Golden Gate Bridge. The shop was on Lombard, but on the part of it that feels like a quiet residential street, across from a park and public pool. As I pulled up in front of the store I realized it was a neighborhood center for kids. About 50 middle school kids mobbed the shop on their way home from school, buying trading cards, sodas and candy, and also getting ramen noodle cups and heating them up to eat in the front part of the store. The back of the store was the table tennis club. Kids pay $100 a year to be able to come in and play, and lessons cost extra. They also have home work tutoring. On their site you can see the kids in team uniforms.

I stood around the shop waiting to buy my 144 ping pong balls (the cheapest kind) appreciating the spirit of the shop owner and the people who run the ping pong club for kids, not just giving lessons but really making a community center where kids want to come and hang out. I feel like so many people don't like the chaotic and lively nature of middle school and high school age kids, but here was a place where they were welcome and appreciated. How beautiful!

Birthday mayhem! With ammo and oceans!

2009-03-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday Moomin!

We went to Buck's and opened presents. The staff brought a free ice cream sundae and sang happy birthday while playing on very out of tune tubas and trombones. Moomin looked ecstatic at the same time as being completely embarrassed. I think embarrassed for everyone else and how silly they were!

At home we opened a couple more presents. He got a Meteor Crater t-shirt, a Spiderman blanket, a high powered magnifying glass that is real and not a toy, some science books and a giant Nerf machine gun that has glow in the dark ammo. I got him extra ammo packs for it and instead of having cake and stuff we turned out all the lights and ran around shooting each other with glow-in-the-dark nerf guns. They stick very well to computer monitors, by the way! I was at a slight disadvantage since my wheels glow in the dark when I move my chair, but on the other hand I'm a good shot! Moomin scrambled around with his giant machine gun and trash talked to Rook who was cowering in the kitchen hoarding all the ammo we fired at him!

At dinner and in the car we were talking about being 9. I said when I was 8 and 9 I thought a lot about how I was beginning to think about the fact that I was thinking. Rook said he was older when he began thinking like that. Moomin agreed and said that he thinks that he is a little bit like a cat, independent and curious, always landing on his feet (true since he was a baby) and not always liking the water. I added some memories of my house when I was 9. Rook moved to a different house when he was 9, away from his friends and school and into a 100-year old house on a hill. Moomin said he would definitely remember the time when he was in the hospital to have his appendix out (he does not remember it as horrible, but it was, and I'm glad he doesn't remember the horrible parts) and the time this year when he bruised his head against an iron bar on the playground. I told the story of how a clock fell on my head and I had to have stitches.

Then we discussed how at this age you begin to realize (if you haven't already) that some grownups are either not very smart, or just wrong, or both. Like my 4th grade teacher who insisted that Zeus was the Roman god of the sky. No! Arrrgh! Wrong! (I'm talking to you, Mrs. Jones from Arno Elementary circa 1979!) Moomin said that some adults think that comic books are bad for you and not as good as books. Nooooo! Take it from Moomin, who says that you can learn a lot from comic books. They can be as good as what you read in Language Arts - for example, you can learn about sarcasm, elementary particles, and Alexander the Great!

We told Moomin how he sang ALL the verses to "Spiderman" when he was in nursery school, for their graduation performance. He had forgotten! "Oh my god! I can't believe it! It's like the defining moment of me being a TOTAL comic book geek!"

Very true! I was so proud. As a parent there is nothing like hearing your 4 year old lisp all 8 verses about justice and radioactive blood into a microphone on stage in front of all the other parents. Oh yeah!!!! Score!!!!

Anyway, today was a nice birthday!

Next weekend is Moomin's Ocean party. We'll make undersea life and hang them in streamers from the ceiling. We're going to create a life size game of "Hey, That's My Fish!" in the driveway with blue painters' tape hexagons, and have a jellyfish piñata filled with ping pong balls painted black which then will be the ammo for a pirate ship battle.

Swimming at the rehab center

2009-03-07T21:52:00.000-08:00

I thought it might motivate me to go and swim for physical therapy if Rook and Moomin came too.

We got to the pool half an hour before it opened. Right behind the center, there's a huge park. It looked like hard terrain, with a gravel and grass path, a hill up to a wooden bridge, and then down to a grassy park with (hooray!) pavement. I had to do the gravel bits myself, popping wheelies, but Rook pulled me up the hill.

The thing is: I knew it would hurt, and be really hard, and probably foolish, but I still wanted to do it. Moomin ran around exploring. He climbed trees. It's just that... I don't get to have that fun any more. I get to be *near* people having fun. On one level that's great, and it was certainly better than spending the whole day (again) in bed working. I think Moomin had a good time.

Then in the pool I had to really think about moving my leg around, and work at it. I just wanted to cry. At some point it just feels sucky to be around people having fun if they expect you to also be all fun-having when you can't. I have to go off by myself a little at that point to deal with myself and whatever pain I'm in. I used to be a fun person. Now that barely ever happens. Anyway. I'll get better, it will just take a while.

Moomin can swim like crazy now! It's so great! I love to see the self confidence he has now in the water! I'm really proud of him!

I liked thinking that he will get used to coming to the rehab center with me and will see other people in wheelchairs and with different physical abilities. He seems to just accept that sometimes I can walk around, and sometimes not.

The center has a new display up with stuff about its founder and its history. I had no idea it has gone through many name changes. I like that they put up all that history stuff. It used to be the Community Association for Retarded. They kept the initials but changed it to "Community Association for Rehabilitation" and now it is "Abilities United" which I think is much better. C.A.R. makes me think "Car? Why Car?" while AU sounds like "Alternate Universe", which is what it's actually like to be disabled.

We had dinner and a board game night with some friends at our house. Rook did all the shopping and made dinner and chocolate chip cookies. I was too fried to read to Moomin tonight, but we're on about Chapter 4 of Wind in the Willows now, after finishing Black Beauty with minimal distress (We skipped the Ginger chapter). We made comic book heroes instead.

In the car we came up with good plans for his birthday. He would like an Ocean themed party and I thought up some ideas like a baby harp seal piñata and a life size game of "Hey, That's My Fish" in the driveway with blue tape and candy fish, and streamers for the ocean.

The rest of the day I worked from bed on my laptop. I have to work all day tomorrow too. That's just how it is. I have too many projects - work, book editing, upcoming conferences - and a lot of physical pain on top of that. It's hard to be a good parent right now.

Breakdancing at Bedtime

2009-01-27T21:07:00.000-08:00

Tonight Moomin scolded me because I didn't put him to bed early enough. It went like this.

Moomin: MooooOOOOOM!!! Isn't it awfully close to my BEDTIME? Shouldn't you be putting me to bed?

Me: But wait, you totally have to watch this one awesome bhangra video.

Moomin: No! I don't THINK so. *hands on hips* I really think I should be putting on my pajamas now. It's EIGHT TWENTY FIVE.

Me: Okay fine honey, put on your pajamas. That's great. You know, 8:30 has always been a rough guideline for your bedtime, not an absolute must-be-in-bed-by-that-moment thing.

Moomin: But I have choir practice tomorrow, so I really should get an early night.

Me: Right. Pajamas, then come watch this video with me.

Moomin: *putting on pajamas* No, I have to brush my teeth first!

Me: THERE IS BREAKDANCING IN IT.

Moomin: What?! Breakdancing?!

Me: Yes. Brush your teeth. Then video. Then I'll read whatever you like.

(WE ROCK OUT.... Moomin tries the dance moves)

In our current book, Black Beauty, we read the chapter where Lady Anne is thrown from her horse. "Would you like me to read one more chapter? "Well... no... I should try to go to sleep. "

Inauguration homework

2009-01-20T17:47:00.001-08:00

Moomin is writing an essay on Obama's inauguration speech, for his homework tonight! I watched the inauguration this morning after he went to school, and hoped they were watching it there. Apparently they did. I'm so glad. Now, they're all filling out worksheets and writing paragraphs about what the speech said and their personal connection to it!

As I peek over his shoulder, so far Obama is going to help the economic crisis and global warming and ending wars, but we all have to work hard to help fix things.

I'm trying to imagine this being a homework assignment under Clinton or Bush and completely failing!

Meanwhile, I wrote up my own personal response to the inauguration, which oddly was not at all about Obama, though I was crying with happiness at the whole thing, and loved Aretha Franklin's hattitude.

Instead, I wrote about my deep personal bond with Dick Cheney.

You heard me!

I'd like him to go to jail, true. But you know what? I'd like him to go there in a decent wheelchair and I'd like him to be able to get in the door.

Here's my essay: Deconstructing Cheney's De-Inaugural Wheelchair.

Enjoy!

Black Beauty vs. Thomas the Tank Engine

2009-01-12T23:12:00.000-08:00

Tonight we reached the point in Black Beauty where the horse has galloped for 8 miles and back again to bring the doctor to the Squire's wife, which saves her life *just in time*. The new stable boy, Little Joe Green, has just been set up as a character who is young and small and means well and very much needs the job. In fact in the chapter before, the older stable guy was explaining to the younger how they have to look out for Little Joe and treat him well (keep in mind this is Anna Sewell's advice as a Quaker and a social activist.) I wondered how Moomin would take it when Little Joe Green messes up by not covering up Beauty with blankets and feeding him cold water instead of warm, and Beauty gets sick? Would he be judgmental, because Joe made a mistake and hurt the horse, or take the advice of the preceding chapter, and go easy on him?

I sang him the unicorn song, and at the end he put "and Joe, because he thought he was doing the right thing for Beauty".

I felt proud of him for giving the kid the benefit of the doubt.

I had this book read to me when I was 4 years old and I read it myself many times after that. Until I read it again as an adult, I had thought of it as a sentimental horse story that was perhaps somewhat odd to read to small children. But now that I approach it again, it's a story about social justice -- with a lot of sad bits, but the message over all is that people (and horses) have to struggle to be decent to each other despite unjust situations, bad health, and crushing poverty. So, not really a bad book from an ethical standpoint and a book that certainly teaches over and over that trying your best to help people (or horses) and be unselfish means that other people respect you.

I have said before I find many modern kids' books, ones for younger children, to be very annoying and of questionable effect, because their theme is that when you have a terrible, sad, or angry feeling, you trump everyone around you (often the plot of Caillou, or Arthur, Fisher Price little people, Thomas the Tank engine (Ugh!!!) and even Bob the Builder) That way, everyone will pay attention to you and figure out despite your passive aggressive sulks what is wrong. This does not seem like a great message to send to a 5 year old! What do you think?

Horses that die in a fire, broken knees, the brutality of the hunt, and that horrible scene with Ginger lying in the cart? Or whining little mice and trains who live in a world of whiny drama?

Advice from a grinch: throw it away!

2008-12-08T20:17:00.000-08:00

Minnie and I are going to give each other the holiday gift of throwing each other's crap away. We now have a pact to come over to each others' houses and help the other to get rid of a godawful amount of crap.

I have a cubic ton of ancient tshirts. Minnie has... lord knows what but she specifically mentioned 5 tubs of pieces of fabric and then she kept remembering more and more tubs squirreled away.

Minnie is a ruthless bitch. This is the most useful quality you can have in a declutterathon. A get-rid-a-thon. Trashathon? Divestathon? What to call it?

At her own house she turns into a wavery little jellyfish wafted about by the ocean currents of her own JUNK and the emotional associations that go with it. Good intentions, future projects, nifty memories, and most horribly, the nifty memories of well-intentioned future projects from the past. She has it all. I will throw a pale imitation of her practiced sneer as I hold up her fabric swatches between two fingers. It's nothing to what she's about to do to my bins of completely pointless tshirts.

And the papers! The papers mixed with piles of books!

My resolution is to get rid of at least ONE 6-foot high bookshelf, along with all the stuff in it, on it, and spilling out of it.

It is also time for another brutal round of cutting the punk or ancient-dot-com tshirt slogans out of the tshirts for their sentimental value, and using the rest for rags!

I would like to go through the closet in my office. It has 4 shelves worth of riot grrl zines from the early 90s. Half of that is probably just cruddy magazines, flyers, mostly-empty notebooks, and other things that can be thrown away. It's things that in 1994 I threw into boxes. They were in storage, then in boxes in a closet, then got unboxed 4 years ago. But I never sorted through. Oh, to have the beautiful, wonderful zines harvested out of the muck, and arranged alphabetically in neat magazine boxes! And eventually, to scan them, put them on the net, and donate the paper copies to a university library!

Don't even get me started on Moomin's room. It is just a wall of books and comic books, with sprinkles. And an upper bunk bed entirely filled with stuffed animals.

I am so ready! Help me prune all this stuff! I want to get rid of it and feel all light and free!

If you would like to buy a 1911 set of Encyclopedia Brittanicas I am ready to let go of them and all their wonderous, dusty pages full of incorrect details about the Aether.

Please no one give me any presents. Well, maybe a few books...

"Family Club" steals money from Bay Area families

2008-11-20T12:25:00.000-08:00

My sister Minnie, like so many other moms of young children, was looking for a social group for new moms. She left her Silicon Valley web developer job of 8 years to stay at home with her baby, and could not afford to pay for any extra child care. She found out about Blue Sky Family Club from an advertising flyer at the Emeryville Market in the San Francisco East Bay, announcing a new family club. She was in the "ball pit" with her 18 month old baby, wishing for a nicer environment.

When she went to check it out with her free visit coupon from the flyer, her baby had a great time. Blue Sky was an upscale cafe, with coffee, beer, and wine, and a big play area with a kids' and babies gym and great toys. "It was a large open space with natural light. They had a living room area with couches, an art area, a play house area, rock climbing wall, and gym, alongside the cafe." Sounds great ,doesn't it? Minnie made the decision to pay the $170 fee for a 14 month unlimited membership.

One month later, Minnie got an email . The club would be shutting down, and membership fees would not be returned.

When Minnie first told me this story I assumed it was a sad tale of some half-assed Oakland hippies trying to create a co-operative. However, a little research uncovered a completely different story.

Blue Sky is the brainchild of Sheryl O'Loughlin, a marketing executive and former CEO. She is a high powered executive type who has now defrauded an unknown number of East Bay moms of their money. This is a person who has made a profit and a successful career from marketing to women and specifically to mothers. Apparently she and her husband Patrick are very concerned with "saving the planet" and making mindful decisions about buying organic produce. At the same time as they screw the "little people" out of their hard earned cash. What a great business plan!

Everyday I make my daily decisions mindfully – with an awareness of their potential impact on the environment. Whether it’s supporting my local farmers market and buying local, organic food for my family or working with my colleagues to source a new organic ingredient; I know that every decision matters. Each choice I make is a moment of reflection and an opportunity to lessen my impact on the environment. Through consistent, thoughtful and sustainable decisions, we are collectively changing the world.

Nice.

The O'Loughlins announced the closure of their business, but apparently have not filed for bankruptcy.

In June 2007, bizjournals.com reported on the O'Loughlins' plan for Blue Sky to become a local, then a national chain:

It will cost $3 million to open the first club. In addition to investing $100,000 of their own funds, the couple has managed to raise about $300,000 from private individuals in the last three months and they are continuing to look to angel investors and potential restaurant partners for backing. They expect roughly $1 million in leasing and tenant improvement funds from their future landlord. Their goal is to open four additional locations in five years.

Sounds like their venture capital money ran out. I can sympathize with an idealistic business plan and the financial turmoil that comes when an ambitious business plan fails. However, of all the creditors resulting from business failure, the *club's individual members*, and their target market, should be paid back.

How many members were part of Blue Sky Family Club? I can't imagine that membership was more than a few hundred. Say it was 300 members paying around 170 each - that's about $50,000, probably less if you prorate the months of membership that passed for members who joined at different times. Let's call it 35K. Do we seriously believe that Blue Sky's founders don't have that 35K? Why don't they put their money where their business plan was? Sheryl O'Loughlin should make the ethical business decision, sell some of her stock or put a second mortage on her house and pay back her investors. She has committed theft plain and simple. It is the kind of scam that upper class people get away with all the time. And they shouldn't.

"Doing a startup like this takes a tremendous amount of patience," she says. "As a business person used to having things happen very fast, it's like, take a breath, you're going to get a million nos. You just have to keep plugging and believe in your ideas."

This is a professional who wants to continue working in parenting-related products and marketing. She is now on the Board of Directors of a eco-food business called Nest Naturals. O'Loughlin's bad business ethics should be exposed. Why would parents, her target market, trust her business sense after this spectacular failure of capital and basic decency? Who folds a business that has hundreds of members -- members who in effect are micro-investors -- and doesn't even bother to declare bankruptcy? There are laws to protect creditors; in this case, a class-action lawsuit seems quite possible.

Blue Sky and other businesses who serve moms of young children should sit up and pay attention - and should not alienate their client base. Studies show that women pay more attention to the advice and information they get from their friends, whether online or off, than they do to corporate marketing or even other media channels. Moms talk, and moms listen to other moms. I would advise the (former) Blue Sky operators Sheryl O'Loughlin and Patrick O'Loughlin that paying back their customers' membership fees is more than just ethical. It's good business sense.

Castle stories and rainbow drawings

2008-11-16T12:28:00.001-08:00

Here is a snippet from an otherwise trashed 2003 notebook. I wrote down a story as Moomin told it and acted it out with little animals and his toy wooden castle.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful castle with a flag waving in the air. The handsome prince talked and he said "Hello Princess" and she was trying to go to sleep and snore and snore. He waked her up with a gentle kiss. The sleeping beauty came back to her castle. "Hi Sleeping Beauty" said the princess. And she came into the castle. And the witch cast a spell. Let's have a picnic, we can make this a picnic table. They can have some grapes. Stir, stir, stir, stirring the grapes. And (Moomin) hammered the castle roof tight. And the castle floor. And they have a picnic. That's the end.

It's very interesting to listen to kids' narrative structures and the ways they put in snippets of genre! How can tiny humans be only 3 years old and yet know how to make up stories? It's so amazing.

Here is a zebra drawing from that same notebook. Like the castle story has all the elements of fantasy, the drawing has all the elements of a zebra, put together in a somewhat nonlinear way.

My zebra drawing (which I am sure he asked for; I drew a lot of little cartoons on request.)

One more cute drawing, of a rainbow, by Moomin:

I'm tearing out those pages for Moomin's scrapbook, and throwing rest of notebook away!

Being involved in local government

2008-11-11T07:54:00.001-08:00

Here's my town's new General Plan.

I just got this email from a community member, with a list of the committee meetings! I have not done much in the last year and a half, because of health issues, stopped going to school meetings and school board meetings. I think I'll pick a group and try to make all its meetings, and maybe offer to let Moomin pick one and decide. If it were up to me I would either go to Urban Design or Housing and Human Concerns.

I want to let you know that the process of creating Redwood City’s new General Plan is making great progress. We had a wonderful turnout at our September workshop, and at our follow-up Planning Commission meeting in October.

Now, the next two months offer a multitude of opportunities for you to get involved, learn more, and help the City to craft this important “blueprint for the future” of our community.

Please take a look at the schedule of New General Plan-related meetings below and you’ll surely find one or more that you can attend so you can participate, gather information, and offer your comments. Be sure to take a look at www.redwoodcity.org/generalplan for more information, or contact Tom Passanisi at 650-780-7234. By the way, there will also be many more opportunities in the new year for you to get involved and Be a part of the Plan!

Wednesday, November 12:
Planning Commission meeting to discuss Urban Design and Jobs/Housing issues.
7 pm, City Hall

Thursday, November 13:
Historic Resources Advisory Committee meeting to discuss Historic Resources Background Report.
7 pm, City Hall

Tuesday, November 18:
Planning Commission meeting to discuss Corridor Alternatives (Woodside Road, Veterans/Broadway and El Camino Real).
7 pm, City Hall

Thursday, November 20:
Housing and Human Concerns Committee and Senior Affairs Commission joint meeting to discuss aging and healthy communities.
6:30 pm, Veterans Memorial Senior Center

Monday, November 24:
City Council meeting with guest speakers to discuss General Plan and climate change.
7 pm, City Hall

Tuesday, November 25: Planning Commission and Port Commission Joint Study Session to discuss Economic and Industrial Expansion issues related to the Bayfront area.
7 pm, City Hall

Tuesday, December 2: Planning Commission/Housing and Human Concerns Committee Joint Study Session to discuss the Housing Element.
7 pm, City Hall

Thursday, December 4: Neighborhood meeting to discuss General Plan issues related to Friendly Acres and Redwood Village areas.
6:30 pm, Taft School

Tuesday December 9: Planning Commission to discuss land use issues related to the Bayfront area.
7 pm, City Hall

Wednesday, December 10: Neighborhood meeting to discuss multi-family housing in neighborhoods adjacent to Downtown
6:30 pm, City Hall

Thursday, December 11: Neighborhood meeting to discuss General Plan issues related to Palm Park and Redwood Oaks areas.
6:30 pm, Sequoia YMCA

I think Moomin might want to do something more ecology-related. I could also offer him some involvement with City Trees, or at the Marine Science Institute as he needs to start doing a little community service - required by school!

He has come to many meetings with me but usually spends them reading a book or drawing with crayons. He might still find them too boring.

I'm impressed with my town, as usual. This is a good plan and a good web site. I would like more of a community forum to be provided for public discussion, but that will take time. I think still, people are slow to trust each other for public discussion and they don't know how to deal with the moderation and management of online communities. But that will come in time.

Here's a flyer a lot of children made last night, on the spot, in the dark on the street corner, as about 50 people rallied in support of repealing/fighting Prop 8.

Happy Voting Day!

2008-11-04T15:58:00.000-08:00

I've been so happy and excited all day today. We're going to win, win, win! It gives me hope.

I headed out to the polling place about 3pm. It's about 5 blocks from my house, in a Lutheran church. Usually it is the same batch of retired folks running it as poll workers, and they are hard working but not very efficient. Like I have to wait gritting my teeth while about 4 people dither around trying to find my address on a page, while I can find it in 2 seconds even though I'm reading it upside down and 5 feet away. This time it was different.

There were a lot of younger people volunteering and the sense of energy and excitement was quite intense.

I waited in line for about 5 or 10 minutes, really not bad! We all had a choice of paper or electronic ballots.

The voter guides in California totally rock.

The guide to the county and local Measures prints the full text of the measure, then an "Impartial Analysis", an argument in favor, a rebuttal to the argument in favor, an argument against, and a rebuttal of the argument against. All the arguments and rebuttals have endorsements. This is SO useful. I read all of them. For local issues I vote with a former mayor and councilwoman and I always vote against this one guy who is a Libertarian and an annoying nut case -- either against him directly or against anything he endorses. This year the hot issues in our town were Measure V and W, which address property development, zoning, and open space. You wouldn't believe how hot under the collar people are about this. The wars over yard signs, wow! V specifically limits development on the wetlands and salt ponds where Cargill's saltworks were. W is more general and limits development on everything zoned "open space" and the land right next to it. Open space is great but it sounded to me like Cargill is the immediate issue. I think W is going to pass, based on a rough yard sign count. I voted against it anyway. If a real estate development project comes up, we will find out about it in the city and can go to city council meetings and fight it there.

For local elected positions like judges or school board or health board members, I vote for anyone who doesn't sound insane or weaselly, and I don't vote for anyone who is alarmist about crime or sounds like they are frothing at the mouth to put more people in prison. I don't vote for anyone who didn't publish a platform in the official guide. They should have some respect for voters and give us clear information.

The voting guide for all the state propositions is a big thick booklet. It has the full text of the proposition, a summary, lots of clear bullet points, an impact analysis, the "Impartial analysis" and some more rebuttals and arguments as with local measures. I tend to vote with the California Federation of Teachers; not always, but they match up with what I think often enough that their endorsement can sway me.

When I read the voting guides, I think, "This is what public education is FOR. To teach us how to read this, understand it, weigh different arguments, and make a decision."

There were lots of children at the polling place. Some of them were there to draw the lines or hit the button so they could feel like they got to have a hand in this election. I didn't bring Moomin because I wasn't sure how long the lines would be, but he's been with me to many other elections. His school elected Obama today in their mock election; in his classroom, 23 out of 26 students voted for Obama.

Vote however you like

2008-10-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

This is pretty much the best thing ever. Kids having a blast singing and dancing about the elections!

I think it's a beautiful way to teach kids about the political process and being able to talk about different issues!

One mom's response to American Stories

2008-10-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

Tonight Rook and Moomin and I watched the Obama video "American Stories, American Solutions". Here is some propaganda I can get behind. It was pitched straight to the middle class. It was a very effective populist message.
I start to cry whenever he says the words "pre-existing conditions". I believed Obama feels strongly about it and now I know why, that he has personal experience in his family of having to fight your own insurance companies right at the moment when you're ill or dying and unable to fight hard enough.

Moomin liked the parts about civic responsiblity, jobs, health care, education, and Obama's promises to be honest and straightforward. He liked the mention of Harry Potter and homework, too.

It's the civic responsibility message that will turn us around. That it will become unacceptable, unpatriotic, for giant corporations to make obscene profits, at our expense, for them to take our 700 billion dollars of taxpayer money and spend a huge percentage of it on their own executive bonuses, while middle class people lose their homes.

Now, my main criticism of this video is that there is no mention of people who have already slid into poverty or grown up in poverty. I believe Obama's policies will help people in poverty, with jobs and better access to education, and, I hope, with health care. If he didn't mention this entire segment of the population, I believe it was strategic. Am I wrong to believe this? That saving the current middle class from homelessness and immediate situational poverty is a good priority? (I'm not sure it is possible; and what might happen instead is the middle class will change its mind about poverty being the fault of the poor.) Anyway, I am sure everyone will notice he is not speaking about poverty here, other than as something almost unimaginable that is looming over people who thought they were securely middle class.

I picture Moomin growing up within a massive cultural shift, one of civic duty, responsibility, being able to work with and even trust "the system" or government institutions. Not because it is possible to legislate institutions to be trustworthy, but because this crisis and a new government's responses could move people's ideals closer to public service. I want that public service shifted out of churches and into small local government, federally funded and supported, and into things like Americorps, public works projects, renovating schools, building affordable housing. The amazing campaign structure the Democrats have in place now can be used to organize people for community service and really effective activism.

I know this can't happen all at once but I think it's coming. What will happen when Moomin and his classmates grow up believing they can know and understand politics, and can have a part in it? I grew up in the 80s among kids who were apathetic politically and whose "American Dream" was to be rich before they were 30, any way they could. They didn't care who they exploited, or stepped on, or who around them was poor, or if civilization around them decayed and they lived in a gated community, as long as they could make their millions, while sneering along with Ronald Reagan at "welfare mothers". I like the idea that THAT attitude will not be the main rhetoric around my child as he grows up. He might grow up in a society where being a civil servant, and a good one, is highly respected.

I will go even further in my position and say that I think we will end up with compulsory civil service. Pre or post-college. We should also have a civil service corps for retirees and a part time structure for stay at home parents and for teenagers still in school. Get some pay, job experience, do some good. Have some different tracks for people to make something of their lives. Rather than "investing" a disgusting, racist, classist prison industrial complex that declares you a felon if you're poor and lets you walk if you're not in order to have the result of denying voting rights and any basic civil rights to a whole class of the population. Rather than endless wars and forcing people who are stuck in poverty to sign up to die in them, we could have a choice of military or civil service and focus on rebuilding the infrastructure of our communities and schools. What do you all think about that? Because that's what I think is coming.

Civics lesson on our street corner

2008-10-18T20:24:00.001-07:00

This woman thinks she's protecting families, marriage, and free speech:

With her church friends who were out on the street corner by my house this morning, waving their signs that say "Yes on Prop 8". That's what she told me.

My friend Squid came to my door, breathless, her kids in the car. "You have to go out there. I can't do it today... Twitter it, call people..."

So Moomin and I made signs. They said "No on Prop 8 !!!!!" and "Equal Rights for All Families", and "No Homophobia". Moomin drew hearts on his. I drew pink triangles and a rainbow.

And got our rainbow flag.

While we colored our signs we talked about history, and the first Pride marches. I told him about Loving vs. the State of Virginia and how that was fought and won in the Supreme Court, so that our government has a law that people with different skin color can marry each other legally.

Obviously this is not the same battle. But it does have similarities. The opponents of interracial marriage used the same arguments about God, the Bible, destroying the fabric of society, and so on. Those were arguments to explain away and cover up their racism and bigotry. And now, in this similar fight, religion is the cover story for hatred. In my opinion this is a misuse of a person's religion and a dishonor to it. We didn't go into that, because I would get too muddled and angry.

In fact, I didn't have a good explanation for Moomin as to why anyone would fight against other people's rights, other than, "privilege" - they have it, and they want to keep it, and that means, they have to take it away from someone else.

It takes my breath away. These people! In my neighborhood! Right on my street with their signs and their hatred and misinformation. How dare they. There's no way I'm going to let that pass without doing something. I've donated money. But I'll go put my body out there with a sign so that people driving by don't feel alone in their disagreement and outrage. So that they have something to cheer.

We went out to the corner a block from my house at El Camino and Jefferson, where there's heavy traffic.

On our way to the corner, three groups of people stopped us to approve of us, saying "Thank god! I was just thinking of doing something like that!" We got high fives from neighbors and from complete strangers.

There were about 8 or 9 "Yes on 8" supporters on the 4 corners, with printed signs. Our signs, home made signs, were so much better!

People rolled down their windows to give Moomin and I the thumbs up, honking and saying "right on!" and then booed and yelled "NO ON 8" to the others. Their thumbs would go up for us - down for the homophobe bigots.

A mom in their little group, with her kid about Moomin's age, greeted me by name. Sorry lady. I don't know you. Apparently you know me. Maybe you're in my son's school or his old school or maybe we were in the Moms' Club these last 8 years. I don't know who you are.

I don't understand the minds of these people. Why they'd go out of their way to deny other people the civil rights they enjoy. What is in their minds and hearts? What is wrong with these folks?

"Marriage is only between a man and a woman," the woman in the photo above told me and my 8 year old. "We want to protect families, and free speech." Moomin said, "Excuse me. Actually, I don't get it. You're voting to make a law that people can't get married. How is that protecting families again?!" and he made a little "you're nuts" circle by his head.

One lady at a stop light rolled down her window. She was very old and her hair was done in a sort of 40s updo, obviously done on rollers. She was dressed beautifully. I thought she might smile at us. But no - "I feel sorry for you," she said, frowning and looking like she was going to spit, like she smelled something bad. "You just aren't right."

Another man pulled up, got out of the car, and thanked us for our obviously spontaneous effort. "I just wanted to stop and shake your hand. Thank you. Thank you for doing this." He shook my hand, then Moomin's.

We couldn't stay out long, as I was too tired to keep sitting up. We came back by way of the grocery store, where we met two lesbian families with their children, who complimented our signs. Many people talked to us in the store. In the checkout line, an older lady, so bent over she could barely look straight ahead while she walked, carefully picked up the end of my rainbow flag from where it was trailing and tucked it up so it wouldn't get dirty. She patted my shoulder. For once I didn't mind being patted.

I spent most of the rest of the day in bed and did not get the projects done that I intended to do. I didn't clean up the house, and didn't work with Moomin on his school project or play games with him. We both just laid in bed reading most of the day. I took a long nap. I hoped that was okay - how I meant the day to be, vs. what it was. And I wonder what he'll remember of this and other times I've asked him to be an activist with me? And what he'll think later in life? I felt so proud of him, coming with me, making the signs, actually shaking his fist at the folks across the street, and talking with me about what he thought. It's something I'm very proud to share with him.

Red convertible

2008-10-13T18:00:00.001-07:00

liz&halleycar.jpg
Originally uploaded by dawniemom

HELLO!!! From Boston!

I'm having a great time at the BlogHer conference.

I did the blogging workshop in Boston and then in Washington DC, met a ton of people, and had a great time!

This car was so shiny, it was like driving around in a little space ship made of lollipops.

Mom's going on a trip again

2008-10-08T16:45:00.001-07:00

I'll see y'all at BlogHer in Boston and DC this weekend!

I've been so busy. Moomin and Rook and I finished reading the first Narnia book. Now Moomin and I are reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Moomin comments that his nickname for Dudley Dursley is "SSB", which stands for "Stupid Spoiled Brat" and that Dudley is very greedy.

This fall I'd really like to sit down with him and write up some of the beginning episodes of the epic "Godzilla Monsters" stories he plays out in the bath with small plastic monsters. The Godzillas and baby Godzilla start out in the bottom of the tub. The other monsters: Mothra, two Mechagodzillas, Rodan, and a few others he calls Weaponwing, Poison Rachnid, and Manda then meet in various ways, establishing their personalities and some kind of plot. Usually they have to cooperate to defeat the Godzillas, to send them back under the ocean. Story arcs in this series stretch for weeks or months. Usually I'm not the one to hear them! Rook is much better at playing Godzillas and making up stuff for the plot. So, my idea is that I could follow along and write up a few episodes as a screenplay. Then Moomin could use it to film an episode.

He has been very interested in photography lately. I want to get him all set up and independent with a halfway decent camera and his Flickr account.

Notice these are all just wishes. In reality I work a lot, write all the extra time, work on editing volume 3 of an anthology about WisCon, and drive around between cities. Mom WANTS to mess around with cameras and the computer and screenplays but instead Mom is jetting off to Boston for almost a week. AAAAAAGH.

Here are a few blogs I've noticed lately and would like to share:

Whoopee, funny blog with a memorable post about a magnetic c*ckring. The scientific diagram slayed me.

The Prisoner's Wife a writer, teacher, and mom, writing about her life while her partner is incarcerated. Thoughtful posts about life, politics, being a (temporarily) single parent. I liked her poem to Obama.

Occupation:Mommy a very sweet blog by a Christian homeschooling mom who writes in detail about doing Montessori activities with her preschoolers, and about gifted/talented issues too. She writes very well about early childhood education!

Wyliekat writes about half-assededness and being a mom with an extra full time job. Notice her cool ASSymmetrical blog header, we're all loving it here!

Enjoy.

Being naughty for the substitute

2008-09-30T22:10:00.000-07:00

"Our substitute teacher showed me a way to say something isn't equal," Moomin told me today as he did his homework. "See?" and with vast satisfaction he wrote ≠ on his worksheet.

When I asked him how the sub was, he said she was pretty good. "Mom, I have to tell you I've noticed something. In books, people are a *lot naughtier* with substitute teachers than they are in real life."

We discussed this a while. Tacks on chairs! Elaborate tricks! And when have you ever seen this happen? I haven't. It seemed so alluring, like midnight feasts in boarding school novels. Twins also have much better adventures in books when they switch places than they do in real life. Why do some people seem to think it's a good idea to write books that are basically training manuals to teach kids how to be extremely naughty. I wonder if Moomin will think over that idea - the question of why you would write a whole book about kids being extremely naughty? Are they training you to be BAD? He found this hilarious, and appeared to be thinking it over.

What about books where horrible things happen to kids? A friend of mine recently claimed, there are just a lot of twisted people who want to write horrible books about horrible things happening to kids? I thought of her theory tonight at bedtime, as we began reading Harry Potter and I wondered how Moomin would react to the Series of Unfortunate Events. He is maybe not quite cynical enough to enjoy them.

Well, back to the homework. Tonight's homework took us less than half an hour. It was a bunch of not very exciting worksheets, which surprised me since this school is supposedly all about the non-worksheet-doing, but it may be an NCLB thing and they just *have to*.

I told Moomin I would be his "speed coach". He faced this prospect with good cheer. At first he didn't want me to say anything; "I know, I know, I can do it, I know how to do this!" but I asked him to pause and listen first. So, first, look it over and think what is on the whole page, and give a thought to how long it might take. It looked like a 2-minute worksheet to me, with some stuff about homophones and spelling words. So I set a little kitchen timer, an egg timer with a dial that ticks, and sat across the table reading a magazine a little while watching his progress. Whenever he got all stuck, I reminded him to skip it and move on. At just about the 2-minute mark I said he was doing well but that it was clearly a 3-minute worksheet, and dialed up another minute. Hey! Done! He is quite fast. I encouraged him to cross out finished answers (quickly without precison) and skip ones if he was not quite sure; and if he made a mistake and then catches it -- for example writing an i instead of an e in a word - try to remember not to erase an entire word or line, but just write the e over the i a couple of times hard with the pencil.

It's just like the authors who teach naughtiness! I have to encourage Moomin not to be perfectionist in his work, and not to mind being a bit of a slob. Lucky Moomin -- there's no one better to teach slovenly habits than his good old mom.

The next worksheet took 2 minutes. Then we did another one. Booooring! So much better to get it done quickly if it's going to be that boring?

We moved on to math. More worksheets. They were things like (17 + 15) - (8 + 3) = ?? The problems were all crammed together with no room to do the working out. Moomin wanted to draw lines from each set of parentheses, one from the 17 and one from the 15, pointing together in a triangle, and then the minus sign, and then the other bit... I persuaded him it would be faster and less cluttered to jot the answer to 17+15 just above it. (Even though it was horribly crammed in.) And then the other bit, and put in the minus sign to remind yourself what you're doing. Then the answer!

That went much faster.

There were a few unboring problems. One was: Glenn has 6 more books than Bob. Bob has 4 less books than Susan. Susan has 10 books. How many books does Glenn have? He worked it out very nicely with just a hint from me. Not for the first time, I thought to myself that he will really enjoy algebra and geometry.

After homework was done I showed him a book of math puzzles, which he enjoyed until he realized I was sort of tricking him into some kind of Learning Experiment when he would rather be reading his latest Dragonology book.

I think back to the times when I worked as a tutor. I was good at getting people quickly to the point where they realized they didn't need a tutor, but could figure things out for themselves. It was mostly about teaching ways to think, or ways to approach a problem or a task, and of course, self-confidence.

When I need tutoring, it's more or less the same. I get stuck on some bit of debugging and begin to doubt myself, or I need help breaking a big task down into stuff I can understand. It's good to keep my own feelings in mind as I help out another person.

Changing my name to Chrysler

2008-09-25T00:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Moomin,

You know how Dad sings that song to you at bedtime, "I'm changing my name to Chrysler"? It was written in 1980, by Arlo Guthrie, when your Dad and I were about 10 years old. We read the newspapers, or at least I know I did, and thought it was a pretty funny song. Well, now aren't you glad you already know the words? Because it's all happening again! You can substitute "Wall Street" for the word "Chrysler". For an explanation of the bits about Iacocca you will have to go read about it in Wikipedia.

p.s. I am being sarcastic and am not really glad that the country is having economic problems.

I'm Changing My Name to Chrysler
by Tom Paxton

Oh the price of gold is rising out of sight
And the dollar is in sorry shape tonight
What the dollar used to get us
Now won't buy a head of lettuce
No the economic forecast isn't right
But amidst the clouds I spot a shining ray

I can even glimpse a new and better way
And I've demised a plan of action
Worked it down to the last fraction
And I'm going into action here today

CHORUS:
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Chrysler
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a million grand out
I'll be standing with my hand out
Yes sire I'll get mine

When my creditors are screaming for their dough
I'll be proud to tell them all where they can all go
They won't have to scream and holler
They'll be paid to the last dollar
Where the endless streams of money seem to flow
I'll be glad to tell them what they can do
It's a matter of a simple form or two
It's not just renumeration it's a liberal education
Ain't you kind of glad that I'm in debt to you

CHORUS

Since the first amphibians crawled out of the slime
We've been struggling in an unrelenting climb
We were hardly up and walking before money started talking
And it's sad that failure is an awful crime
Well it's been that way for a millenium or two
But now it seems that there's a different point of view
If you're a corporate titanic and your failure is gigantic
Down to congress there's a safety net for you

Santa's a sexist!

2008-09-22T21:01:00.001-07:00

I was just reading the first Narnia book to Moomin, somewhat against my better judgment, when we got to the scene with Father Christmas. The children are on the run, along with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, from the White Witch, when Father Christmas comes, gives Peter a sword and shield. He gives Susan a bow and arrow and horn, with instructions not to use them in battle, and then a diamond bottle of healing stuff to Lucy. Lucy says she's not quite sure, but she thinks she can be brave enough for the battle; Father Christmas replies, "That is not the point... battles are ugly when women fight."

"Oh my god!" Moomin yelled. "SANTA'S A SEXIST!!!" and started shrieking with laughter.

We laughed for a while, he made me show Rook that part in the book and how funny it was, and then we continued. On the very next page Mrs. Beaver starts telling everyone to drink their tea. "Don't stand talking there till the tea gets cold. Just like men." Moomin went "OMG! MRS. BEAVER'S A SEXIST! You know what, Mom, I think a lot of people in books are sexists!" I agreed, but we didn't go into the reasons why. It was bedtime.

I can hear him laughing to himself in bed and I think I know why. The outrage! Santa! A sexist!

What could Mr. Lewis have been thinking!

As I lie here in my bed listening to Moomin giggling in outrage I am thinking of all the ways Santa, of course, is amazingly sexist -- I think he shops at Toys R Us where the aisles are all pink on one side and soldier-in-training on the other!

But more than that, I think of the deeper sexism in the Narnia books, the way everyone "just knows" the Witch is bad, for one thing. Witches, moons, nights, shadows.

Hurricane Iron Chef

2008-09-15T19:12:00.001-07:00

My dad is in Houston, out by FM1960 between 45 and 290, closer to Spring than Tomball, a few blocks from Cypress Creek and Strack. If that doesn't mean anything to you: It's the northwest side, far off from downtown, far away from the coast, and the eye of Hurricane Ike passed over to the east.

He's got a cooler and a neighbor who gave him a bag of ice. Sunday was steak day. Today was chicken day. Tomorrow is hot dog day and then there is a summer sausage. After that there's rice and beans, bread, and other canned stuff for weeks, velveeta, and butter.

Today he experimented in the back yard with solar heating and water. He had a lot of coffee cans and bottles, some metal containers, some plastic, experimenting with putting the small ones inside the big cans. Tomorrow he'll try to figure out which experiment is the best heating system.

He had some vague memories of the Boy Scout Handbook from 1956. Isn't there a handy way to boil water, with some trick to it, other than putting a plain old metal cup over a candle?

He also spent the day imagining episodes of Hurricane Iron Chef. You've got some hot dogs, a can of beans, velveeta, and a votive candle. What will you cook?

He's worried about the hummingbirds. The flowers have all been blown away, so the hummingbirds have nothing to eat. He's rigging up some sugar water dispensers out of red plastic bottlecaps.

Another guy on the street has a generator on a hand truck and has been wheeling it between his friend's fridge and his own. One of those families has two baby squirrels they're trying to keep alive.

He's going to drive over to a nearby barn where he and my mom take riding lessons, to help with the horses. The fences all blew down, and the horses need exercise.

Our family friends (now living in San Antonio) had a summer house on the Bolivar Peninsula, two blocks from the beach, now likely washed away.

My dad had some choice words for "those FEMA jerks" but I will not repeat them, I've said plenty about them already and I try to keep this blog relatively free of swears. He did mention a few hundred police who were sent in as relief workers, who were based out of a nearby high school, and who did not get fed; what a screwup, doesn't anyone think of supply and logistics?

It occurs to me someone should make Hurricane, the board game -- not a go-around-the-board style of game but a simulation war game style with hex maps, roads, resources, etc.

My last report from Dad was that he wishes there were better news and information on the radio, reliably at all times. Periodic weather and status reports, for example, rather than talking heads saying stuff meant for a political audience and fools calling in getting answers from worse fools. (I am trying really hard not to swear; can you tell?)

Good luck to my Dad as he continues to "hunker down". He is very good at living without luxuries, camping, and eating nothing but beans every day, from his time as a cowboy and two years in the Army. The only thing I really worry about is him getting stung by bees since he is very allergic and not good at keeping his Epipen around.

I have followed the news very closely the last week on The Houston Chronicle online. Thanks to the Sci Guy Eric Berger, to Dwight Silverman who does a lot of good blogging, and to Jeff Masters and others at the Weather Underground for amazingly good reporting.

If you are nearby you might want to call the Houston Food Bank or go help them. Or, in Austin, the Capitol Area food bank needs donations and volunteers, and in San Antonio, another food bank. I would say if you are in the area, work with immediate neighbors. But if you are from outside you might want to find a way to donate or volunteer.

Where the Wild Things are Gay, Gay, Gay

2008-09-10T14:57:00.001-07:00

Maurice Sendak just came out as gay to the New York Times. To me this is mommyblogger news.

Was there anything he had never been asked? He paused for a few moments and answered, “Well, that I’m gay.”

“I just didn’t think it was anybody’s business,” Mr. Sendak added. He lived with Eugene Glynn, a psychoanalyst, for 50 years before Dr. Glynn’s death in May 2007. He never told his parents: “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.”

Children protect their parents, Mr. Sendak said.

Think on that a little bit if you have a child who is gay or bi. Or who might be someday. Would you really not want to know?

If you express homophobic attitudes in front of your kids, this could happen to you -- they might cut you out of an important part of their lives. Don't let that happen!

I think on how successful and famous Sendak has been, and yet, look at this pointless barrier that affected his ability to be close with his own parents. I find that to be so sad.

Down with closets!!!

Down with homophobia!!!

Thank you for coming out, Maurice!!! It makes my day! Thank you!

Practical Cat poems and a game of Blokus

2008-09-09T22:14:00.001-07:00

Tonight Moomin and I read poems. I pulled out some books we haven't looked at in a long time. One is an old, slightly dusty hardback from 1963 called "The Birds and the Beasts Were There", with very nice woodcuts. In the cat chapter, we read:

"Cat" by Eleanor Farjeon (Scat, / cat! / That's / that!)
"Cat and the Weather" by May Swenson (Cat takes a look at the weather: /snow; / puts a paw on the sill; / his perch is piled, is a pillow.)
"That Cat" by Ben King
"The Kitten" by Ogden Nash
"Diamond Cut Diamond", a concrete poem by Ewart Milne
"The Kitten and the Falling Leaves" by William Wordsworth (I note the book left out the first two lines, for the better)
"Poem" by William Carlos Williams (Moomin commented the words went down like cat paws) A lovely poem. If only I had not sat through 800 poetry readings of people trying to be WCW, a jillion years too late. I kept that comment to myself, cynical mom should not ruin the poem! He can do that himself when he's 15 or so!
We skipped "Death of the Cat" as too depressing and "My Cat Jeoffrey" saving it for next time because it's long
"Macavity: The Mystery Cat" by T.S. Eliot
"Cat on Couch" by Barbara Howes (My cat, washing her tail's tip, is a whorl/ of white shell, / As perfect as a fan / in full half-moon...)

I thought of the Pangurban poem by the anonymous Irish monk, but didn't get up to find it. Here it is for you in two translations: the one translated by Robin Flower I remember hearing originally, and another that doesn't identify the translator. Flower's translation is light years better! What will Moomin make of the two translations?

Then, my old copy of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats finally got some use. We read the Jellicle Cats poem. I left this book by his bed. He will likely have read it all before I wake up tomorrow. How could I have forgotten this book - it is just right for him and his age, and the illustrations by Edward Gorey are perfect.

Then I realized Moomin didn't remember A.A. Milne at all. We read "Three Little Foxes" and "Missing" (the one about the mouse with the woffley nose) as they were my favorites. His comment on "Rice Pudding" was pretty great: "Oh my god! Why are they so stupid! OBVIOUSLY Mary Jane does NOT LIKE rice pudding!"

Then it was bedtime! Oh wait! It was waaaay past bedtime!

You know what, I only found the Howes poem online in one place that looked uncertain. I'm going to post it, and hope she doesn't mind from beyond the grave. Moomin liked it very much. I do too but could do without the word "visage" and think that "pirouette" is a bit ham handed. Sorry Barbara! (Argh, as you would expect from the slight pretentiousness and preciousness combined, she was a crony of D.G. We will try not to hold that against her either.) Here's the poem, and a link to a book of Howes' Collected Poems.

Cat on Couch
My cat, washing her tail’s tip, is a whorl
Of white shell,
As perfect as a fan
In full half-moon . . . Next moment she’s a hare:
The muzzle twitches, blurs, goes dumb, and one
Tall ear dips, falters forward . . . Then,
Cross as switches, she’s a great horned owl;
Two leafy tricornered ears reverse, a frown
Darkens her chalky visage, big eyes round
And round and stare down midnight.
There sits my cat
Mysterious as gauze, – now somnolent,
Now jocose, quicksilver from a dropped
Thermometer. When poised
Below the sketched ballet-
Dancers who pirouette upon the wall,
Calmly she lifts the slim
Boom of her leg, what will
The prima ballerina next
Perform? – Grace held in readiness
She meditates, a vision of repose.
– Barbara Howes

Earlier, Moomin and I played Blokus Trigon, two colors each, playing both our turns at once. He lost by only 7 points. There was some point in the game where I said, "I can't believe I'm going to do this to my own child, my flesh and blood, but I'm blocking in your blues...." and he said, "I can believe it! It's because you're fierce and competitive!" I was gobsmacked. "Yes... I am... I hope that's okay... I'm ruthless..." "I know, I don't mind, I think I'm doing pretty well." We discussed the strategic abilities of the kids in the game club at his old school. Only Moomin and one other kid could almost beat me. When he does beat me, he'll know it wasn't because I let him win. I look forward to that glorious day. Only 8 years old and he gives me a run for my money at Blokus! Do you think it's terrible that I don't let him win? Perhaps next time we could decide on a suitable handicap and start the game that way. Then he would have a chance to win, but would know it was still fair, and he can choose to play and try to beat me without the advantage.

Fantastic Mr. Fox and Wiretapping

2008-09-05T20:49:00.001-07:00

Inside AT&T TSD-3600E Telephone Security Device (Clipper Chip)
Originally uploaded by mab @ flickr

We went out for pizza and arcade games and air conditioning tonight, and brought our books.

Moomin described his book, Fantastic Mr. Fox. "The farmers are SO DUMB. They wait and wait and wait by the holes and they will probably wait there until they die. But Mr. Fox and all the animals are just going to keep living underground and they have everything they need, practically a whole world under there." I broke into an enormous grin, happy that Roald Dahl has subverted my child. That's right honey, the state will just wither away while we make our underground "redistribution networks"!

Rook's book was Diplomatic Immunity by Lois McMaster Bujold. Moomin was intrigued by the spaceship on the cover, and liked the ideas Rook described of a mystery novel in space, about people who don't have any legs and instead have 4 arms (the "quaddies").

I explained my book, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government as true history, not fiction, about people inventing secret codes to use on computers and phones, and about the government wanting to keep the keys to all those secret codes so it could make sure no one was doing anything bad. I wasn't sure how Moomin would take this. He hates the idea of anyone being bad. We got into an argument the other night about whether Loki was cooler than Thor, for example. I like Thor but was rooting for Loki, thus pissing off my child; why would I like a Bad Guy? So while he can tell which side *I* think is right, he is not swayed by me from what he thinks.

His response to my description of Crypto: "WHAT!! They can't do that! The stuff on our computers and cell phones should be PRIVATE! It's like the government wanting to watch you go to the bathroom! " He shook his fist angrily at the ceiling, the TV sports game flat screen tvs, and the pizza parlor hanging lamps in an impassioned way. Wow, it was awesome !! I love to hear his opinions!

First day of fourth grade

2008-09-05T19:51:00.001-07:00

first day of fourth grade
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry

"Mom, I like Mr. Rockclimber. He's nice. But I am a little bit *suspicious*."

"Oh really, how come, did he crash into your car or something?"***

"No. What? Actually, he did not TEACH. He just TALKED. Talk, talk, talk. All about what we were going to do. Talk, talk, talk, talk. I wonder if he is going to actually teach us anything."

"Did he talk about anything interesting?"

"Well... maybe about himself. But he's supposed to TEACH."

How well I remember hating that first-day syllabus reading and policy declaration jawing from every first day of school all the way through college! Talk, talk, talk! OMG, give us a handout and get on with the job!

On the other hand, as a teacher of college freshmen I realized that only about two people in the class would read the handouts, so it was best to read everything out loud to them. Boring!!!

And as a student, did I keep those handouts and refer to them? NO! I lost them as promptly as possible. I was horrible. Even when I had them, and they were read out loud to me, did I follow their rules? We all know the answer to that one...

Moomin is very excited to think what he will learn this year. To me he seems more alert and interested in the world and in various subjects. His electives, or as they are creepily called here in the land of ultimate capitalism and anxiety about social class, "enrichment", will be Dragons, Sailing, and Gardening. But first... a little brush up on the basic math facts as we seem to have drifted off into Arty Superhero Gamer Land and forgotten our 6 + 12s and our 4 x 9s. I say "we" on purpose. I am bad at remembering my basic math facts and sneakily use a calculator, write things down, or type "bc" at my Unix prompt to do the simplest arithmetic.

I was so proud of Moomin and felt all emotional as Rook and I stood there with our Parent Club donuts watching the kids file off into school. The mystery of what they do all day! Don't you wish you could do a Freaky Friday and try out fourth grade for just a day or two?

***Mr. Rockclimber and I had a little fender bender in the parking lot last year... I sure hope his insurance didn't go up from it.

Monster smash!

2008-09-02T22:42:00.001-07:00

We had a great time this weekend at the game con. In the kids' room, Moomin played in two short games of Dungeons & Dragons and in an excellent game called Monster Smash.

I loved the idea of Monster Smash. Here's the recipe!

Get a bunch of kids. Give them a ton of play-dough. Get them to make a monster that will fight for them in the monster arena. Stick the monsters onto index cards.

On another index card, name the monster. Give it some stats, like this:

GIANT SPIDER
Move: 4
AC: 15
HP: 70
Poison Bite 1d10 +2
Pounce (ranged) 1d6 +1
Spider Smash 1d4

If you want a special ability like flying or tunnelling, or an extra movement point or point of armor class, take away one of the three attacks.

Put your monsters on the table. Take turns. When it is your turn, move and make an attack. (Or, don't move and take 2 attacks.) You might move 4 lengths of the index card, or could mark off squares or hexes for your monsters on a big sheet of paper. Battle till a monster loses all its hit points. The monster who deals the killing blow gets to smash its foe. SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!

Here is how combat works. The attacking monster rolls a d20 to attack. In this case we might attack with a poison bite. To hit our opponent, we have to roll higher than the opponent's armor class. If you roll higher than your foe's AC, roll the 1d10 for damage, and add the +2 bonus. This was a simple enough combat system for Moomin to handle on his own. The 5 year olds in the game could still handle it but needed help or prompting.

In our game, there were about 10 players. Defeated monsters were allowed to beg for mercy. Victors were persuaded not to smash the defeated monsters of other kids who were going to cry otherwise. (No one cried in our game, but we heard there was trouble the day before.)

The AC was too high for most attacks to hit. The game might have taken us all day! No one could hit, and when they did, ack, the monsters all had 70 hit points. Our intrepid GM, Jen, handled this beautifully by making the Wizard who Ruled the Arena declare in a grand voice, "I WEARY OF THIS TIRESOME COMBAT!" All monsters would be zapped by a glowing green cloud or hot lava or something that made them lose 10 hp and a point of armor class. I saw the genius of Jen's setup. Everyone felt tough and invulnerable and confident in the beginning. They weren't afraid to go on the attack! Then once they were engaged in combat, hit them all equally and speed up the game.

The kids loved this game!

Their monsters were so creative!

Rocket Dino (I think by the parent, but to their young kid's specifications)

Solios Already flat. Clever!

Syrith You might call him "Striking"!

Quacker

Giant Spider, by Moomin

Rook's "Horrible Hornet", smashed

My Dalek vs. Rook's ~~pretty butterfly~~Hornet (Note, the hornet is flying)

And here is a Great Smashing for your enjoyment!

Thank you ConQuest/Pacificon and especially Jen and the other volunteers who organized the kids' room. It was fantastic!

Comic book camp!

2008-08-24T10:37:00.001-07:00

day at camp
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry

Moomin's comic book camp turned out to be pretty good. As foretold, their "outdoor activities" were sitting on the lawn playing checkers and walking to the Stanford bookstore. Maybe I'm projecting my own desires here, but that sounds like more fun than playing sports in 100 degree weather!

The camp was in a giant dorm or frat house on campus, sort of a mansion. The downstairs rooms were set up with folding tables and computers, enlivened greatly by bright green plastic tablecloths on the tables. That made such a difference, they should try it at SuperHappyDevHouse to give it a more festive and less gritty atmosphere. Tablecloths and computers! Ha!

The first day, they talked about comics and drew a storyboard, nothing fancy, just a sketch on a sheet of paper. The counselor asked the kids to think about ordinary stories from daily life, and how they'd draw them in a comic.

Moomin told me later that he thought of Jeffrey Brown's Cat Getting Out of a Bag as his inspiration. Brown draws little black and white strips, mostly about his cat Misty. I think I heard someone call him "The Chris Ware of the Cat Comics World", or I might have made it up. Anyway, I thought Moomin showed good taste in his inspiration! It seems a bit tough to narrate your own life observations when you're only 8. That seems like right on the edge of when people do construct lasting narratives about their experiences.

The kids used Photoshop and several other programs and then Comic Book Creator for their finished comic.

Here's Moomin's:

Me and My Cat

The intentionally funny part is where I say "blah blah blah" in a too-long explanation of how the cat didn't mean anything bad by nipping him during a petting-frenzy.

I love how he put in the blue stripe in his hair, and the accurate color of the blankets on our beds, and the cats' siamese-blue eyes!

This weekend we set up his computer so that he has Comic Life and Skitch to make his own comics, and a little color printer that we had lying around from a year ago and no one was using.

I spent a while floundering around trying to figure out an easy and useful image editor for kids. Most of what is out there is utter crap. TuxPaint and Pencil didn't work out well. And KidPix is ... well what can I say, it's crap, it was being used like 15 years ago and has the feel of a cluttered lurking behemoth, it also feels to me like it cuts off pathways of creativity rather than teaching much of anything. Feel free to contradict me.

And Photoshop, well, good luck. That is too much junk for an 8 year old to mess with.

I use Skitch myself for screen caps and LOLcat-making, and it is very simple and usable. So I taught that to Moomin first. It is on my radar to try Doozla since I like every other software product Plasq makes, this one might be good for kids! Comic Life itself was just perfect. It's amazingly fun to use, including the funny little sound effects that come on when you manipulate images - like a balloon expanding noise when you stretch out or distort text. It's easy to use - and it's elegantly designed.

Night terrors

2008-08-17T22:20:00.001-07:00

The past two nights Moomin had episodes of night terror or "pavor nocturnus". He had them a lot when he was younger, from 2 or 3 to around age 5. Basically, it's a sleep disorder like sleepwalking, but instead of walking around in a confused way, the sleeping person feels a very extreme emotion of fear; absolute terror.

With Moomin, it would start with some mild coughing, and gasping or sobbing, starting out slow. Always just around 11pm or midnight, right when we were about to go to sleep ourselves. When we were tired and a bit ill tempered at having to get up.

After a bit of coughing Moomin would sit up in bed. He'd start to howl and scream. His heart would race and pound, he'd break out into a sweat, he'd be shaking and clenching his fists like he was in horrible pain.

It was really scary!

There was no way to snap him out of it or talk him down. He doesn't really wake up, but might answer a couple of questions or babble nonsense. When he was younger it was scarier because it was hard to tell if he was actually super sick or not. It's hard to see him terrified and apparently in pain. He'd also sometimes talk so incoherently, that was scary in itself. Last night he was saying "No!!! NO ELECTRIC!" But night terrors apparently aren't coherent nightmares -- they're not bad dreams you can remember.

We try to comfort him, though it doesn't help. When he was younger and we didn't know what was happening I know sometimes we tried to snap him out of it. We'd be begging him to tell us what was wrong, what hurt, what was happening, if he was okay. I wish we had known about night terror as a sleep disorder, but I didn't realize it till he was around 4 or 5.

It may have worked sometimes to get him to either drink something, or go to the bathroom, like it helped to snap him back into reality. Mostly though, we have to hold him and comfort him for about 20 minutes. He'd become truly conscious for about 5 seconds and then fall deeply asleep, no longer fitful and sweating.

That's a long time!

Sometimes he'd get up and walk, or struggle to get out of our attempts to be comforting.

After he falls into normal sleep, he doesn't remember what happened. If he woke up for a minute or two in the bathroom or living room he'd be confused and disoriented.

We had to warn people who were babysitting him. Just wait it out, hold him or reassure him he's asleep (though that doesn't help, it feels horrible to do nothing.)

For the last few years, his night terror episodes have been rare. A few times a year, maybe.

These episodes became somewhat less scary for me after Moomin had his appendix burst! Now *that* was scary! On the other hand, now when he has these midnight episodes, I am spared the worry that he might be dying of appendicitis. His appendix is gone already. Whew.

Anyway, if you're a relatively new parent and your toddler or young child wakes up and screams in terror, don't read "nightmares" into it or necessarily think they are having a severe health crisis. Also don't assume they're misbehaving or in hysterics. It might be night terrors -- and isn't their fault, or your fault.

It is scary and... I have to say... exasperating.

I wonder if tiny babies have this happen too, but people assume it's colic or general infant fussiness? Surely it's been studied.

Here's a good description of http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/sleep/terrors.html

>pavor nocturnus from kidshealth.org:

Night terrors typically occur about 2 or 3 hours after a child falls asleep, when sleep transitions from the deepest stage of non-REM sleep to lighter REM sleep, a stage where dreams occur. Usually this transition is a smooth one. But rarely, a child becomes agitated and frightened — and that fear reaction is a night terror.

During a night terror, a child might suddenly sit upright in bed and shout out or scream in distress. The child's breathing and heartbeat might be faster, he or she might sweat, thrash around, and act upset and scared. After a few minutes, or sometimes longer, a child simply calms down and returns to sleep.

That's exactly what we experience with Moomin. How comforting it was to find out that nothing serious was wrong, even if it does seem horrible for him to go through.

In the morning he never remembers that it happened.

Moomin goes to snack camp

2008-08-04T22:47:00.001-07:00

M. at camp
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry

Moomin: This camp is GREAT! This is the best camp ever! They had Honey Nut Cheerios!!
Me: Hahahaha! Awesome! Hahahaahah!
Moomin: AND they had raisins.
Me: No way. Hahahaha. Raisins!
Moomin: Yes! At the first snack time before the aftercare they also had Cheezits!
Me: *DIES LAUGHING*
Moomin: Oh! I get it.
Me: Heehehehehehe
Moomin: You're laughing because I sort of should be talking about the Marine Science part of the camp. And not the snacks.
Me: You are correct, my son. I do love good snacks. On the other hand did not pay freaking four hundred bucks for you to attend Snack Camp.
Moomin: Well, let me tell you about the sort of British things. They're very tiny and live in salt ponds. I think, sort of British, but not really...
Me: Brine shrimp?
Moomin: YES! Sea monkeys! I learned about the ecology of estuaries! There's this very, very bad thing, called acid rain. I petted a shark. And, we made a model of pollution, and then we smashed it!
Me: Oh well okay then, definitely $400 well spent.

D&D grows up too much

2008-07-24T09:26:00.001-07:00

Between the old school AD&D Monster Manual with amateurish cartoon drawings and the latest one with glistening 3-D-looking fangs in living color, Moomin chose the older book. I thought about why and realized that the design in D&D looks too grown up.

Compare the covers. Here's the 1977 version:

It's cartoony, childish, stylized, and shows a range of nifty magical creatures, some scarier and some, like the unicorn, benign or friendly.

Here's the new one:

It's... a door with an eyeball in it?

Inside the images are sort of glitzy and porntastic and make you think more of something in a horror movie than a game. They're scary!

It seems worth pointing out. The audience for the original game grew up, the game's being marketed to them or to 20 year olds, and the elementary school kids are left out of consideration of the books' art and systems.

This while the miniatures and the idea of the game itself remain excellent for kids!

That's what Grandmas are for, I guess

2008-07-23T20:35:00.001-07:00

My mom just gave Moomin an earful of stories from her childhood. I tried to get my great-grandma to tell me about her childhood once. "Come on, Nana, what was it like, what was different? What was it like being a little girl in 190-whatever?" She couldn't think of anything to say but finally said that she missed the fun of chasing the iceman's horse-drawn wagon and begging for chips of ice. Since she got so embarrassed and her story made it sound like her childhood utterly sucked, I never asked again!

Not so with my mom. She regaled Moomin with stories of how her sisters and she would brutally gang up on each other for elbow and kick fights. Usually she wasn't the one ganged up on, because she was the middle sister. She always tried to be the goody goody.

Life was incredibly unfair. She had eczema, so she couldn't wash the dishes. Instead, one sister would wash the dishes one night. (Mime a sister daintily doing the dishes, nose stuck in the air, lording it over Tiny Grandma-to-Be and then flouncing off.) And the other sister would do the dishes on the other night. But *every night* my mom had to set the table, clear the table, dry the dishes and put them away, take out the trash, burn the trash! "Now I ask you, is that fair? Why didn't they just buy me some fucking rubber gloves and let me take my turn washing the dishes!" (By this time Moomin is on the floor laughing, rolling around and holding his stomach.) Never mind the part about having to leave off watching Perry Mason 5 minutes early to set the table. How is THAT fair. Why didn't they just have dinner 10 minutes later?

Every time she said "We were BRATS!" it was the funniest thing in the universe.

We ended up with some 50 year old resentment from the middle sister that she had to wear her (taller) younger sister's hand me downs and constantly endure people's surprise that she was the older one because she was so short. Then, a grim tale.

"And one day we were waiting for the bus after school and I got SO FED UP. I pushed her off the steps, and a teacher saw me. She said "K---!!!! You go right inside and tell your teacher what you did!" (Look of disbelief and deep consideration-of-not-doing-it.)

Moomin was hanging on every word... he completely understood...

"And I thought, what the hell! I'm going to feel like an asshole! So I went in (miming it) and told her (high little voice) "Teacher I pushed my sister down the steps." And my teacher said "Did she get hurt?" and I said "No!" and she said "Why did you do it?" and I was like "Because she's a little bitch! She's a 5 year old bitch!"

Moomin was in physical pain from laughing so hard at his hilarious grandma. I followed him to his room where he kept trying to unfurl himself from laughing-too-hard-position. "OH MY GOD I can't believe she SAID that" he screeched. "Please help me stop laughing!"

"Do you really think she said that when she was so little?"

"No!!! Why I can't I stop laughing?"

I think of the bit in Louise Fitzhugh's book "The Long Secret" where the grandmother tells Beth Ellen, "Shy people are angry people." Certainly true for both my mom and Moomin. I think her stories are awesome, because little kids like Moomin don't really hear enough about the actual feelings of people and instead a bit too much about what we want them to feel or think they should feel.

I'm not sure what he will conclude about the olden days. Maybe that little kids in crinolines swore a lot and went around brutally elbowing each other over rolls of Lifesavers.

Geeky cultural references

2008-07-22T08:46:00.001-07:00

Yesterday Moomin tried to explain the joke from Knights of the Dinner Table, a comic book about a group of people in a role-playing game, to my mom. "And then he says, 'I waste him with my crossbow...' and that's funny, because..." is the only bit I overheard.

I didn't even know that Moomin had been reading KODT! I'm so pleased! He has not played a lot of role-playing games himself yet, but he's been around ours ever since he was born. He must think it is totally normal for a bunch of grown-ups to sit around in the living room saying things like "I go for him with an axe while you cast your sleep spell" and rolling dice. That's got to be weird. In one of his favorite games, we borrowed his dragons and godzilla monsters as our "miniatures" to play out an enormous battle from a Korea-in-1864 "His Majesty's Dragon" game.

I'm not sure if anyone reading this will get the joke about the crossbow but it has to do with a character from the comic book who is sort of a dork. His role-playing character doesn't have a lot of depth or character, and when his party encounters anything at all, he tends to respond by trying to kill it. So actually it's something nerdy that I say in random situations. If I'm in a business meeting or running into a hard technical problem I might totally mutter "I waste it with my crossbow" meaning that the idiotic beavis-and-butthead part of me has an ignoble impulse to just stand back and shoot whatever it is, treating it as a hack and slash approach to a Wandering Monster rolled up from the Random Encounter Table, instead of properly dealing like a grownup with a complex situation. I'm not sure if Moomin even gets the whole joke, but maybe. I consider how much I liked to sing "National Brotherhood Week" when I was 5, and figure he will find it funny for his own reasons, and fill in the gaps later.

Just a mommyblogger

2008-07-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

First of all I had a blast at BlogHer this year!

Now here's the rant. I kept hearing people say they were "just a mommyblogger" or "not just a mommyblogger". Come on, people! To the women who say they're "not like those mommybloggers", think what you're saying. Why do you have to distance yourself so carefully from that? Do you think it devalues what a person has to say, because they have a child and write from that as part of their identity?

This Military Mama and her baby

Mommybloggers are diverse. Moms write about politics, activism, technology, business, health, and everything you can think of, along with their work as parents.

It's like saying "just a worker". "Just a steelworker." Would you dismiss a whole class of men that way, because they were talking or writing?

It's a job. We write about it.

One of my favorite moments at the conference came during the session on national security, blogging, and the war, "Talking about War and Peace: How Women Are Changing the Security Debate" moderated by Lorelei Kelly. During the course of the session, everyone in the room described their interest in the topic, ranging from professional interest, having family in the military or having a military background, being political journalists, or anti-war activists. A young mom sat against the wall in the back of the room during the entire discussion, soothing and breastfeeding her tiny baby, listening with great interest. When it was her turn to speak, she said, "My husband's on a submarine right now. I'm a Navy Wife. And the other navy wives I'm around all day on the base don't understand why I'd be critical of this war even for a second, or have any doubts." That's why she blogs. It gives me chills to think of it.

And my mom told me after the conference that she usually doesn't notice people much, but that now, post-BlogHer, she never could look at another woman she passes on the street without thinking, she has her own individual experience and perception, and is a uniquely interesting person.

Those two statements combine for me into one thought. As women we have rarely had moments of public interaction without being mediated and filtered by editors. Part of the power of our storytelling and unmediated position of having access to the means of cultural production, now, is that our voices are heard -- for example, Military Mama's descriptions of her own life -- and we also see each other as people with voices -- as my mom described her epiphany of others' subjective position.

Farm camp!

2008-07-14T17:24:00.000-07:00

Moomin loved farm camp! They skimmed cream off the milk, churned butter from it, got eggs from the henhouse, fed some goats, and saw lots of other animals.

He has a choice at pool time of being a Cat, who doesn't go in the pool; a Heron, who goes in but has to stay behind the 3 foot line, and a Dolphin, who can go anywhere. Today he was a Cat but he says tomorrow (if he can prove he will put his face in the water without panicking) he might become a Heron!

He made friends with a couple of the kids, and talked with them about Magic Treehouse books and about an obscure movie he described to me (Mister Something's Magical Workshop?) and about loving animals.

He really really liked it!

I wish I could go see the camp, but it is down a gravelly hill path and up another hill, too scary for crutches and not possible in a wheelchair without a very strong person pushing (and a bit scary even then, or impossible, on the downhill bits). Maybe I can ride one of the larger goats.

So, I had emailed to ask about the access situation, but got no answer as my question was last minute, and then at drop-off time I asked if I could have a cell phone or a number to call so that I could call when I got there at 4:30 or 5 to pick Moomin up and alternatively, could they make an exception for him for sign-out and have another parent (sent by me) bring him to the parking lot. They said they would call me that morning to let me know. No one called and I did not bother to follow up, trusting to luck. I got to the camp at 4:50 figuring that I'd hang around in the parking lot till I could catch someone and ask them to bring Moomin back up the path. This sort of thing usually works just fine. INSTEAD, oh instead, they had some counselor wait with Moomin in the (hot, dusty, boring) parking lot from 4pm till I came! And she did not speak quite fluent enough English to explain or understand me, or to explain to him, so he was upset because he thought I was an hour late. So picture me putting on my patient face while I go back and forth with this lady about it. "No, it's okay, he can stay here until 5. It's okay." "No, it's not okay." "Yes, is okay." "It might be okay with you, but it's not okay with me. Basically you're making my kid sit in the parking lot bored out of his mind for an hour because I'm disabled? Not okay!" "No, you do not understand, you cannot walk up the hill." "I KNOW I CAN'T WALK UP THE HILL."

I'm glad I kept my temper in front of Moomin!

I gave up explaining and thanked her, left, and called the camp director, who agreed Moomin should stay at the camp from 4 till 5 with all the other kids, the books and toys, in the after care that we paid for! I did not pay for "Parking Lot Boredom Camp!" (I was super polite to the director and she was super polite and nice in return!)

Just a note that I don't expect Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory to be nicely paved with a 3% grade special for my wheelchair! I just want people to LISTEN to what I ask for, and maybe THINK once in a while... and then when I explain what is wrong, LISTEN again...

*Rant Over*

I had a good day, some difficulty tolerating pain, but it was my second time crutching not wheeling into my office from my work parking lot and I did manage to make it through the day! Then drove half an hour and back again! Go, me!

Moomin told me all about how he loved the camp in the car and sang me songs from last week's camp, including one about milking a cow and going bananas.

When we got home:

Me: Hey, so do you want a popsicle?

Moomin: YES!!!!! (does a sort of air guitar jump of victory)

Me: Hahahaha! Red or purple?

Moomin: You're the BEST MOM EVER!!!!!

Me: Flattery will get you everywhere. Keep it coming baby!

Moomin: I didn't mean just for the popsicle. You're also a great mom about other things. But, mostly right now, the popsicle.

The Clean Up Message and the I Message

2008-07-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a school handbook for new Kindergarten students and came across a page on the "I Message". That, I know what it is. It's when you go "I FEEL... BLAH... WHEN YOU... BLAH." That prevents you from blaming the other person and makes you take responsibility for your own feelings. For example, "I feel like you're being a jerk when you're acting so jerky."

Just kidding!

So, I'd never heard of the Clean-Up statement before, but it looks very useful and good.

The Clean-Up
1) I KNOW that I ...
2) I APOLOGIZE.
3) What can I do to MAKE IT RIGHT?
4) I will DO MY BEST to...
5) (Optional) Will you FORGIVE me?

I know quite a few grownups who could stand to learn that basic formula! It's something I've learned from listening to meetings and thinking about group dynamics, and from feminist and anti-racist activist stuff.

I should remember it more often myself, and make less explanations & excuses.

I think it's great that schools are teaching this kind of skill and such a range of emotional vocabulary.

Packing light for my summer trip

2008-06-20T20:51:00.000-07:00

Everything for Europe and at least 3 conferences has to fit inside two backpacks, one big and one small daypack! Help me out with some advice!

I was inspired by the Own 100 Things idea and various "packing light" sites including onebag.com.

I'll be in three cities: London, Brussels, and Budapest. And, am moving around a couple of times within London. And I will be working full time, and keep in mind I'm mostly going to be getting around in a wheelchair and with taxis, so the less junk I have to carry, the better!

Here's my packing list:

To wear on plane: jeans, tank top, guayabera, long sleeve flannel shirt

Clothes - in big backpack
==========================
- 1 pair of jeans
- 1 pair black pants
- pajama pants
- 4 tank tops
- 3 tshirts
- 1 other guayabera to wear over tank tops
- 1 nice suit jacket
- 1 fancy sleeveless shirt for suit
- 7 pairs of underwear
- 5 pairs of socks
- bathing suit (really, wind shorts; wear with tank top for bathing suit effect)
- cute skinny tie, bandana
- belt

Gadgets (mostly in small backpack)
==================================
- phone + charger
- camera + charger + mini-usb cord
- flip video
- eeepc laptop + cord
- folding cane with velcro strap
- Moleskine notebook
- pens
- at least 2 books
- crossword puzzle book
- small headphones

Bathroom stuff (attempting to be super minimal)

- prescrips
- hair wax junk, face scrub, antiperspirant
- nose irrigating squeeze thing
- eyedrops, lotion, qtips, earplugs, tampons
- kleenex (need lots on plane)

It looks like this, unpacked:

and here it is all bundled up in those "cube" compartment things, which I bought at the camping store in hopes it would turn me into one of those neat, organized people:

Here are my dilemmas. Help me out!

- skirt? (medium, black, utilitarian, house-dress-ish)
- miniskirt? (long-ish but above knee, black, pleated, cute)
- fancy black pants for suit? almost too tight, but still good
- big comfy tshirt for sleeping in?
- MacBook (ie big heavy computer, i would work faster from it)
- Fluevog boots, so cute, vanity, rather heavy
- hot pink psychedelic spats
- I will miss my big folding crutches
- I consider cutting one of my foam pillows in half and squashing it up
--- because I am so fussy about pillows and my neck hurts at night

I don't wear skirts much, especially since they are hard to manage in a wheelchair or on crutches. I could go without the big heavy boots. If I wanted a skirt, or even crutches, I could buy them in London.

Note that guayaberas really are the perfect thing. They are good over a tank top so you don't have to wear a bra or sweaty tshirt but are still somewhat modest about your armpit hair and bralessness. They have lots of pockets! And they look cute!

But about those big heavy stompy cute swirly comfy Fluevog boots... Here's where I need your advice.

What should I leave out? What have I forgotten?

How Texan Are You?

2008-06-15T18:39:00.000-07:00

Here's a silly meme quiz! I have gotten drunk on 6th Street, and I have ridden a horse. I know when the Battle of San Jacinto happened! And where they make Bluebell Ice Cream!

You are 77% REAL Texan!!

You're way more Texan than average. You're parents were probably from here too. We're glad to have you. You probably go to the border for Christmas shopping and are well versed in BBQ, Mexican Food and .. well thats pretty much it.

How Texan Are You?

So, are you Texan or not?

Secret texting at the school talent show!

2008-06-10T20:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the video of the 3rd grade dance act in the school talent show! An eighth grade girl choreographed it and coached all the 3rd graders through many practices. They dance to the James Bond theme, Soulja Boy, and then What Is the Sun? by They Might Be Giants.

I giggled a lot during it because it was SO AWESOME. Especially at the bits where the kids are all sneaking around like they're James Bond spies with finger guns.

The whole show was impressive. A crew of middle school kids organized everything and ran the show, including practices, planning, stage crew, sound and lighting, getting the auditorium, and selling tickets. I enjoyed the piano solos, the many middle school girls doing solo dance routines, the group dances, the heartfelt songs sometimes sung a bit softly & deer-in-the-headlights. My mom friend who shall remain mercifully nameless kept texting me naughtily during the show and together we invented the camera-flask, perfect for all PTA type of school events so you could video your child's song AND discreetly take a nip of soul-restoring tequila. It went sort of like this, (heavily fictionalized)

6:35 omg need drink
6:36 where iz flask
6:37 flask camera!
6:38 aaaaaagh
6:45 not my fault i do not allow hannah montana in teh house
6:46 bwahaha sucka
6:47 KILL ME
6:48 hahaha killing would be too slow
6:50 you have to admit they are sweet
6:50 no i dont
6:51 cynicism melting halp snif

Meanwhile the little kid next to me was all like "I know breakdancing. Why do you have a wheelchair? Can you do tricks? I think breakdancing is really cool. I know that girl! I know that girl too! I know her brother! Oh I can't believe they're going to do this, why, why why!" (said for anything mushy & sentimental) I think for him the show needed more explosions.

I remembered how I used to watch my friends make up dances and create mildly too-sexy outfits for our middle school talent shows. I could not fathom how to keep up with their dance moves and would not even try. They danced one year to "Jukebox Hero" and the next to "Controversy" which I couldn't believe they got away with.

The other things I gleaned from the talent show experience were fashion-related. I really really really wanted the one guitar duet kid's outfit with its vest, buttons, baggy pants, and ska-ish tie. Oh wait I have that outfit already, it's just that I'm not 13 or 6 feet tall, and can't play the guitar or stand in that sort of guitar player attitude. Oh well! (Their guitar solos were smoking!!!) The other fashion insight was that the 80s have come again in mutated form in a somewhat hideous way. Of course they were all cute as bugs and YET... the mutant halter-top-vest thing, over the long tank top, please god make it stop! But, finally now I understand all the teenage girls' outfits as described in super bad Harry Potter fanfiction. So, I felt old and detached from things that girls wear in junior high, which is probably a good sign of almost-maturity, or that other thing where I am stuck in my decade, the way certain women in the 70s and 80s were stuck in 1945.

Oh also? Kids are awesome and I get all teary eyed and sentimental at the thought of how much nerve it takes them to get up on stage and sing a rock song or play the flute or dance around with everyone watching. I thought they all were amazingly cool. As a bonus, some of them had massive amounts of performing talent, the ability to connect to the audience and belt out a song -- like this girl singing a country and western song with perfect self possession, or these girls dancing:

But the performances were good no matter what the level of ability was. I thought about karaoke bars and Rock Band and how we are more willing these days, maybe, than at some points in recent history, to stand up and perform for the fun of it and as a social activity rather than as perfect experts.

*UPDATE* And now I'm listening to the Langley School Project album. Trust me... go listen to it... at least to Space Oddity and Desperado.

Review of GE Caulk Singles: sad sink, happy sink

2008-06-09T13:36:00.001-07:00

This is both a product review from a free sample, and a contest entry for BlogHer.

First off I have to tell you about the total disaster of my caulking project...

READ MORE about my caulk review on Badgermama Reviews!

Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do a fandango?

2008-06-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

Moomin's school choir sings Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". Ambitious of them!

If I didn't totally love his choir director already, this would have done it. I'm taking suggestions for what they should put on their repertoire for next year. "Nevermind" would be just perfect.

The kids have worked incredibly hard this year. Every Monday and Friday, they got up and went to school an hour early for choir practice. I'm so impressed even with the difference since Christmas, in their timing and harmony.

Oh and... a sneak preview of next Monday's talent show. I caught the 3rd grade at their dance practice, with an older kid as their choreographer and coach. They're doing a dance to Soulja Boy.

Here's the instructional video if you want to learn the dance. I can't wait for this show!

Meeting Tamora Pierce - WisCon with kids

2008-06-02T18:59:00.001-07:00

We had a great time at WisCon last weekend. There was a costume party night with the theme of academia; so, any outfit that was from a science fiction or fantasy school. Moomin dressed as a squire from Tamora Pierce's "Protector of the Small" series, set in the fantasy world of Tortall. The hero is a girl named Kel, who has a knack for befriending animals, mostly because she is kind to them. She has a loyal, smart, and strong horse who's grumpy and often bites, a dog she rescued, and a huge flock of sparrows.

Moomin's outfit was his knight outfit but with small artificial birds wired all over it. He was dressed as a friend of Kel's who goes to the same school and who also has sparrows.

There were duct tape wristbands, also with birds.

Oh, and I got the birds online, 12 bucks for a dozen, from a floral trim shop.

I also made him a duct tape sword belt, with a belt pouch for his hotel key card, at the last minute. For his crest, I drew a shield with a sea serpent, because he loves ocean animals and dragons and thinks sea serpents are the coolest.

So, it was just one of the coolest things about the con for him, that he got to meet the author of the Tortall books:

How cool is that! He got to meet one of his favorite authors, while dressed as one of her characters!

Now if he could just grow up to collaborate on a book with Dav Pilkey!

Meanwhile, at the con and afterwards, all our photos including these were made fun of, reposted, photoshopped, etc. by some people. That more or less already happened; I am pretty pissed off about it, but, nothing I can particularly do about the permanent trail of rude comments about my child. I said my say about it elsewhere, and now am carrying on as usual.

Here we are in our own context, anyway, having a fantastic time!

I always feel a bit odd at WisCon in that I am not one of the parents who spend a lot of time with the kids. I do a fair amount of playing with kids otherwise, including at ConQuest, but when I'm at the WisCon I want to see all the adults who I otherwise don't get to see. So, Moomin mostly hung out in the Kid's Room -- they have childcare for the tiny kids, a kid's room with legos and activities and trips for ice cream and swimming for older kids, and a teenagers' room with a ton of video games. It's a very nice set up and I appreciate the people who volunteer for it. I do other work for the con, but still, a bit of guilt that I don't behave in a proper cooperative manner and chip in to help with kids!

Each year also, I want to go to parties and late night panels, so we've gotten a babysitter for evenings to hang with Moomin as he's asleep in our room. This year, friends of our regular WisCon babysitter helped us out, two sisters who go to U. of Wisconsin. They were fantastic - took him out for pizza and ice cream on evenings we didn't all have dinner together, played with him outside in the park around the Capitol, read with him, and were just generally awesome. If you need a babysitter this summer in Madison, Wisconsin, talk to me and I'll give you their info.

On Sunday night at the con, we watched the Mars Phoenix landing coverage as news of the lander came in. We watched several channels including the usstream video in NASA itself, and the fantastic realtime information from dmuller's site, which added exciting data & countdown information and told us what was going to happen next. More about Mars in my next post, I promise!

Math and stories!

2008-04-30T21:23:00.001-07:00

sea turtle shirt
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry

Well, Moomin raised $565.10 for St. Jude Hospital with his Mathathon! I'm so proud! Thank you to everyone who pledged and donated.

Tonight he had to write a "silly story" with his spelling words and he was somewhat flummoxed. "I make up stories with superheroes all the time, but they're more serious. But somehow, when someone's telling me to make up a story, I can't think of anything!"

Much less when you're told to include the words:
- flies
- donkey
- monkey
- early
- noisy
- messy
- berries
- chilly
- happier

I suggested putting Godzilla into the story but he looked at me like I was bonkers. "The rules don't SAY you can't put in other things. It doesn't have to be just about the boring old things in the spelling words." Moomin would have none of this.

9:15 and he's still not in bed. He was so devoted to the story!

His teacher told him that she liked the idea of the pencils with his name on them. He used to lose at least 5 or 6 pencils a day. Now, he still loses them, but because they've got his name stamped on in gold letters, some of them find their way back!

Lately, he has enjoyed reading "The Twenty-One Balloons" and "Dragonology". He's in the middle of Marguerite Henry's "King of the Wind".

I came back from Seattle with strep throat. Actually, I left here with strep throat, but I didn't realize till Sunday that it must be strep since it had been days and days and hurt more than I could have imagined throats are capable of feeling! So, I haven't read to Moomin for over a week, and we are *right* at the exciting end of Farmer Boy.

I know that when it gets to the point where the mean, stingy rich man gives Almanzo a nickel for returning the wallet full of money, Moomin will be unbearably excited at the injustice of it all. And the end! I get little shivers when I think of the line, "If it's a colt you want, I'll give you Starlight" and how Almanzo nearly faints with joy. Well, I can't wait for Moomin's smile of happiness at that ending.

CISWY reading in Seattle, this weekend!

2008-04-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

Liz Reading at Queer Open Mic
Originally uploaded by Liz.

I am road tripping up to Seattle this week! If you are there please come see me at this event ! I would love to see you all and would love the support. April 25, 8pm, Annex Theatre, 1100 East Pike Street.

You will hear me say the word "Lezzie" in a Texas accent. Also, I promise to wear leather pants. There will be bubbling, and silliness, and insane talk of poems and roadside geology and the roots of the Klamath Mountains. I will pop a wheelie for you and you may pat me on the head and tell me I am brave (JUST KIDDING about the patting).

I will not have my child with me, but you can bring yours, as long as you keep them out of the bar area and don't mind them hearing some intense stories of playground bullies and maybe some cussing, plus you realize my story is about being queer, queer, queer. All the stories are AMAZING and are written about elementary school and early middle school experiences & with that audience in mind!

Get info & buy tickets here: Can I Sit W/You reading

Tickets are priced at $5 and $12, which means you can choose how much to donate. Money all goes to my hometown Special Ed PTA.

Inconceivable: the really intense reactions

2008-04-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

It continues to amaze me how people are reacting.

- The arguments that if a woman did this project just once, or if she had been pregnant by accident, and then aborted/miscarried and documented it, then it would be okay. But, repeating it, is not okay.

- The arguments based on the person reacting's own desire to have a baby, or that they had a miscarriage themselves and find it shocking, horrifying, disgusting, inconceivable (pun!) that a woman would get pregnant on purpose, then abort.

- The way almost no one doubted the story (though the "herbal" thing is so thin.)

- People who are in theory, pro-choice, but who still found this inconceivable, to the point of violent anger, and wishing death, illness, or permanent infertility upon the artist, also maligning her sexuality, calling her slutty, questioning her class background, calling her elite, an idiot, even calling her *name* "pretentious".

- People's lack of awareness of cultural relativity in general. Might it occur to some U.S. & other women who use birth control at all, that their own decision to limit their fertility in that way, might look shocking, inconceivable, appalling, disgusting, to women from other cultures, and in the U.S., from strongly fundamentalist religious backgrounds? Might some woman who is actually oppressed because of her inability to conceive, be offended to the point of anger and disgust, by your condoms or your tubal ligation?

The entire project and the responses show, that though we have a strong current of "pro choice" politics in the U.S., it does not go so far as to actually attribute choice to women about what to do with their bodies.

* We can choose to work in stressful, toxic jobs.
* We can choose to get cosmetic surgery.
* We can choose to drive our bodies into the ground and risk our health by being professional or amateur athletes (ruined knees, anyone?)
* We can choose to risk our bodies in extreme sports.
* We can choose to do risky work, work with people with contagious diseases, and so on.
* We can choose to smoke, or be alcoholics.
* We can choose the risk of carrying a pregnancy to term.
* We can choose to get an abortion, if the fetus has spina bifida or Downs or for any arbitrary reason.
* We can choose to get pregnant over and over, even if our chance of miscarrying is very high, as long as we "want a baby".
* We can choose to get pregnant, and then change our minds and abort.
* We can choose to get pregnant and then give up the baby.
* We can choose to get pregnant in order to harvest the baby's bone marrow if it is a match for our other child who is ill.

All those things are our "choice" freely. Supposedly. If that is freedom.

And, we can choose to get an abortion, only if our intent is pure by some nebulous standard. Only if we say that we didn't mean it, that we weren't sluts, that we weren't careless.

Only if we don't do it for art.

Oh, wait, we could probably get an abortion if we were strippers or supermodels and needed to get one in order to keep making a living. Those things are art... right?

But to get one to make an artistic and political statement -- Somehow, that is creating a visceral disgust in many people.

If I have actual agency and choice and control over our bodies, then, my body is my canvas. What I do with it is up to me.

How I talk about it, and document and video and photograph it, is also up to me.

Next time your friend confides in you that she had an abortion, will you ask her why? Will you make sure that her motives are pure, that she was careful in some way not to get pregnant in the first place, before you feel something of the disgust with her that people have been expressing for Shvarts?

And your disgust, your blogging, your explanations of your own life, your conviction that it is wrong and must be stopped, your frenzy of hate and outrage, where will it be when you next see one of those white panel vans with the giant anti-abortion billboards with bloody fetuses on it, parked in your town? The huge number of pro-life web sites, videos, and so on, on the web? What will you do? What action will you take to express your feelings? Is what they do a cry for attention, a feeble, laughable attempt to make a political statement? If not, then why is what Shvarts described mocked, reviled, belittled? Are those pro-life people insensitive, elitist, outrageous, unacceptable with their grief-triggering images? If that's what you think, pro-choice or anti, then, what are you saying about that use of imagery by anti-choice activists?

I challenge people to think a little more about it all, and give their reactions more analysis and time. And, about the project, I certainly realize it is upsetting, perturbing, "triggering" for many people. I respect that, but it is not good justification to lash out with hostility at another woman's choices. As with blogs and fanfic, art gets to push boundaries, and can carry "trigger" or warning labels to let people know.

Contraception and miscarriage art

2008-04-17T12:35:00.001-07:00

I really like Aliza Shvartz's art project. She has done some videos of herself bleeding into the bathtub and I think some paintings with her blood, described thusly:

a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself 'as often as possible' while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages.

Now, that description could encompass having an IUD, or possibly being on low-dose birth control pills, and having heterosexual penis-in-vagina intercourse with no condom, and doing some art with your menstrual blood.

I'm just here to tell you it is the same thing.

It is what she is calling it -- "miscarriages" -- and her stated intent.

An IUD does not prevent sperm from fertilizing your egg. Birth control pills don't always stop you from ovulating -- they also change your endometrial lining so that fertilized eggs can't implant. For example, Norplant, and the mini-pill do not necessarily prevent ovulation or conception.

Morning-after pills like Plan B and others with progestin + estrogen also prevent implantation.

I am very interested in this performance piece and in the reaction of hatred and horror it is bound to provoke. I think that will be very interesting to expose people's attitudes towards abortion and contraception.

Contraception, morning after pills, and abortion, are legal in this country. So is IVF and so are drugs like Clomid. Both IVF and "fertility drugs" have a high rate of miscarriage. But because the intent is to have a baby, and not to create art and make a statement, there is not a huge reaction of shock and horror (except from people who are against abortion in general, I think.) I will bet you that a lot of people who think IUDs, minipills, morning after pills, IVF, and fertility drugs are okay, will react in extreme ways to Shvarts's artistic statement. So, I am pointing out that would be an inconsistent position.

I had an IUD for over a year and I had sex while it was in. How many "miscarriages" did I have? Was I an evil babykiller who deserves to die and have like 100 commenters in Jezebel wish lifelong infertility upon me? Look at the comments on the Jezebel piece, and the hatred there. Look how quickly people leap to judge. If I documented every one of my period when I had that IUD in, and called it art about miscarriage and abortion, what would you think?

You may not agree with me or how I feel about the project, but I hope I have made you think twice about your initial reactions.

I suggest that instead we direct our horror and hatred and disgust towards people like Princeton professor Peter Singer, who believes in euthanasia for elderly and disabled people and that it is ethical to kill disabled infants because their parents might be unhappy at the burden of caring for them. Though I don't know the details of Shvarts's piece and haven't seen it, I am impressed already. Yes, miscarriage can be hard and terrible, and abortion can be a tough decision. But, we have abortions. We should not be ashamed of them, and we should be able to look at what we do, right in the face, or in this case, look at the blood and look at the decision making process.

Thank you Alisa for this thoughtful and intense documentation project.

My son the poet!

2008-04-15T18:28:00.001-07:00

It is a little silly but I am wildly excited and proud that Moomin is a finalist in his age group in the city-wide poetry contest!

For the past few years I have helped judge that contest, because it's incredibly fun and it seems like my civic duty as a poet to be poety for my community. Hundreds of kids enter it from all the schools in the district. The librarians look them over and eliminate all but 15 or 20 for each age group. Then a small panel of judges spends a few hours arguing about who should win!

This year, I had bronchitis on Poetry Judging Day and so did not make it down to the library. And... Moomin is one of the winners!

I have a whole somewhat silly fantasy of how, if I had been there, I would have seen his poem in the batch for 3rd-5th grade, and my gentle smile of false humility as I cleared my throat to recuse myself as a judge for that group. And how I would have been bursting with pride, poorly concealed.

Allow me to poorly conceal it even more here on my blog. It is the first poem he ever wrote, and I am very proud!

My Canary's Talking

My canary's talking,
it's copying me,
I think it's done it
since March 23.

It clomps like my shoes
and has my own voice.
It chatters when I'm cold,
and sighs on choice.

I don't understand it
my mind is all blank
I'm going crazy,
it sometimes goes clank!

It crunches when I bite a carrot.
Hey, it's squawking now!
Oh now I understand,
it's actually a parrot!

The meter is not too bad, though not perfect, and the rhyme is good! It's funny, too. He clearly gets the idea of the genre of humorous poetry with a twist at the end. His penchant for knock-knock jokes and bad puns is developing in yet another direction. As a keen-minded, harsh judge even of third graders, I do note the slight awkwardness of the phrase "on choice", chosen in a desperate attempt to make the rhyme come out while not quite making sense. However, that is ... of course... the note of authenticity that proves to us the poem was not copied out of a book and so as far as I'm concerned it is the flaw in the diamond that makes the diamond priceless.

Melons, wars, and the global economy

2008-04-09T22:17:00.001-07:00

Moomin and I have had interesting talks all week. He has a project from school to look around at many household objects and find out where they were made. Malaysia, Sri Lanka, China, China, China, England, Taiwan, China, Japan, Italy... and China. We looked at food, and talked about how things were for Almanzo in Farmer Boy and for Abraham Lincoln. Almanzo ate melon when it was ripe, in the summer - and he grew it himself from seeds. We can have it all the time because it is always in season somewhere, and because we have fast, huge cargo ships.

He kept asking me questions, and at one point I was explaining why a lot of things used to be made in this country, but now aren't. You might laugh... but I said that working conditions were bad in the factories, talked about child labor laws, toxic chemicals, injuries, low pay. And that people joined together in unions to try and fight for laws to make better conditions in the factories. But over many years, the greedy factory owners (I did not go so far as to describe multinational corporations) realized they could put their factories in other countries where the laws did not protect people so well and so it is easier to exploit the workers.

"So.. they are like supervillains."

"Well, yes, we don't really have real supervillains, but if you looked around for some to fight, they would qualify."

I went on to say that people in some of these other countries really want jobs and the factories get built and they work in the factories and get paid... But that the conditions aren't very good... and we still get to buy things for very cheap prices... and the people don't get paid enough.

"So, I bet in China, they didn't have Cesar Chávez!"

*I beam with pride at his making this connection*

"Well, not quite... hahaha... no... um... it is so complicated to explain that I think it would take me a YEAR."

César Chávez gets talked about here because we drive down the street named after him and he is in all the murals!

We kept on a while about farms and factories and the way that everyone buys stuff from everywhere else, and when you are all buying and selling and trading stuff it is called economics.

This was a good school assignment. It has him curiously looking at packaging and at labels of clothing and all sorts of things that he never thought about before!

I can tell I am going to have to do a lesson on history of China in the 20th century. Wish me luck. I wonder what they're teaching elementary school kids about World War II, these days?

Also I realize he and I have not talked about the war we're in, lately. It comes up every once in a while. But we need to get in there with maps. Maybe my "global economics" lesson will extend a little further.

Pledge for our Mathathon!

2008-03-30T18:46:00.001-07:00

Through his school, Moomin is participating in the St. Jude's Hospital Mathathon. He will have a workbook of math problems, and will have 1 week to do up to 250 problems. I pledged him 50 cents per problem!

If you'd like to pledge, please send me an email and let us know how much you'll donate per completed math problem. I think we would also need your full name. The sponsor form asks for 5 cents per problem as a mininum. You would have to then snail mail us a check for the amount in mid-April, with the check made out to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Moomin says:

You should pledge for my Mathathon because the school wants to raise money for the hospital for kids who have cancer. I pretty much really like to do all kinds of math problems, and I'm pretty much hoping that there will actually be some challenging ones. Like some challenging multiplication. I'd like that!

Spontaneous mini road trip

2008-03-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

beach day
Originally uploaded by Liz.

Moomin and I took the long way back from SF to home. We ate bagels at the cafe in Montara, talking about whales. He brought my bagel and his and my latte to the table and was complimented by the cafe people for helping out. It is nice to see him brace up, his proud smile, the way he says quietly, "I know. Thanks!" He told me a joke that he made up and we talked about storytelling and stand up comedy. Here is the joke:

- What has 6 legs, works very hard, and goes "Ho ho ho?"
- Anta Claus!

Moss Landing was perfectly at a very low tide, but it was windy as hell. We had all kinds of extra jackets and fleeces and hats from my trunk, but the strong north wind was unbearable even in the sun, even huddled in my picnic blanket. So after a bit of tidepooling, admiring seals, and him gathering rocks-with-holes-bored-through while I lounged, we left.

On the way back we resolved to stop at every interesting place that even MIGHT be interesting. The pony farm was rejected as too boring and babyish, even though ponies are cool. I could not really walk around and around the ring holding a pony's halter, anyway, so that was a relief. The fruit stand and farm thrilled him strangely. He bought a peach and strawberries. The scrap metal dinosaur place, we've always wanted to stop at. Its statues are neat, but have some fatal flaws. You can't climb on them, and some of them are tipped over which makes one doubt the stability of the rest of them. Considering the strong wind, I must have heaved those fucking T-Rexes off my son with heroic sudden strength in my imagination as he lay broken and bleeding, about 100 times in the 10 minutes we were at the place, and it wasn't really a scrap metal sculpture Place but was instead a garden shop with urns and fountains.

We discussed geology, fault, plate tectonics, how you know if a tsunami is coming, what to do, how to weave baskets out of pine needles, what it was like to be a seal or a whale, and many other topics in the car. He was not carsick at all, I think because he slept well and wasn't bored or restless.

I was very hobbly and unsteady - and I am exhausted - and I have been lurking in bed for several hours now while he reads from his Spiderman DVD (with all the back issues - thanks Squid!).

I felt good that I keep living up to my promise to make up for the year of not taking him anywhere. I did it a bit over Spring Break with the gardens and museum and exploratorium - and I was super happy to take him to the beach. Even if it was too windy. It was nice to see that he believes me that I will bring him back lots in the summer. I love it when he says, "All RIGHT! You rock, Mom!" This just curls up into me and expands until I feel like I could do anything and that I have at least sometimes done something right.

Reptile birthday!

2008-03-23T19:44:00.001-07:00

millipede
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry

The reptiles at Moomin's party were a hit. The reptile party guy brought several kinds of boas and pythons and a green anaconda, along with a monitor lizard and a tegu. There were also hissing cockroaches, a giant millipede, scorpions, and a rose-haired tarantula. We got to pet and hold lots of them!

The super hilarious part for the grownups was how the Reptile Guy played up the fear factor with bizarre and sometimes edgy stories. He talked about myths from the movies about reptiles, but they were all movies like Anaconda, Boa vs. Python, Snakes on a Plane, and other stuff that little kids were unlikely -- in my world -- to have seen!

Then a lot of his humor depended on really sexist comments that also did not quite fly with our little yuppie hippie Bay Area kids, about girls thinking that boys have fat heads, or girls waking up and thinking only about what they will wear and decorate themselves with, or offhand remarks about how boys think girls are gross but will change their minds when they get to be about 10 years old. Pssst, kids, we know that was sexist, right? The highlight of hilarious wrongness was when he explained to us that we should not be afraid of rose-haired tarantulas and that most tarantulas were completely harmless to humans. BUT if you were a nice little BIRD... asleep in your nest... then it's another story. So, say you were a nice little bird peacefully asleep in your comfy nest, thinking you were completely safe, dreaming nice dreams about your girlfriend bird, and her cute little beak and her beautiful eyes and her long sexy legs, and then a BIRD EATING TARANTULA comes up and turns into your WORST NIGHTMARE and eats you up.

Um!

The kids were wide-eyed and the grownups were laughing nervously with horror!

Lulu, one of the youngest kids there, raised her hand and said, "Um! My sister is really afraid of spiders, I mean really afraid!" Her big sister had turned ghost-pale and looked like she was going to hurl. It was interesting to see her conquer her fear. I'll have to ask her mom later about the nightmares.

Then in another edgy gross-out moment that the kids kind of liked, the Reptile Guy explained how cockroaches and millipedes are good, and save our lives, because if we didn't scavengers who ate all the tons of garbage and pizza and rotting corpses of dead animals that build up in the world, we'd all DIE BURIED IN ROTTING GARBAGE.

Nice one!

You would all have loved it! And so would your kids!

I have never had an Entertainer at Moomin's party before - and when I was growing up certainly never went to a party with one - but around here, it happens fairly often. I don't think I'd do it as a regular thing every year -- it is way too expensive -- but it was interesting to try it, and a treat for Moomin.

After our wonderful and scary kids' party entertainer left with his scary and exciting yet harmless animal pals (with their cute little muzzles and their smooth, sexy scales, hahaha) we all sat on a sheet on the back patio and painted some little jointed wooden models of snakes and lizards. I got them cheap in bulk, and got brushes and big bottles of tempera paint at the school supply store. This went over amazingly well! None of us grownups could believe that a whole party full of kids were sitting there in complete silence for so long, concentrating on painting their snakes.

Then I had a bag of tiny rubber snakes and lizards - I think it was 10 bucks for 96 of them. We had hidden them all over the front and back yard. The lizards were about an inch long, so very difficult to find - often very well camouflaged. The kids collectively found about 85 out of the 96. They clamored to get to be the one to do the math of adding up and subtracting and figuring to see how many were left to find. Along the way, it was clear who had found the most, which caused minor resentments... which I think is also fine... In fact as they get older I swear I will have competitions and give prizes just to give them some opportunity for glory AND practice in getting over themselves. (Which is very hard to do - and which takes practice.)

In the meantime they all ran around like mad and played with the stuffed animal lizards and opened presents and played with the presents. Remarkable peacefulness prevailed!

We also made snakes and lizards and other things from pipe cleaners.

I pride myself on thinking of good Activities! I like to have ones where you just give the kids some stuff, and it is fairly clear what to do. I hate things that require a lot of step by step instructions and help from adults. Like, it is somewhat nifty to do something like "create plaster casts". But, not if it is plaster casts of ticky little fossils that require an elaborate process, and you have 20 three-year-olds and their parents in your back garden, and there are 20 ways of doing it Wrong that will make all the children be confused and cry while the parents micromanage them. In fact, I will outright boast that I am a kickass Activity Creator. Here are ONE THOUSAND pipe cleaners. Make some snakes, or whatever you like. Have at it, kids. You can't go wrong with that.

I was highly gratified that a couple of kids mentioned how they still thought of how great the dragon quest and box-stomping Godzilla parties were, 2 years ago and 3 years ago! And, the 3 kids who were at Moomin's minimal sleepover party last year are still using the giant plastic test tubes from our orange juice, milk, and chocolate syrup Mad Scientist experiments.

I think that throwing good parties is my best quality as a parent, so I have to boast a little.

We had pizza, and lizard cake.

After most everyone went home, J. and Nukie, Moomin, Peanut, et. al. went in the hot tub.

I think Moomin really liked it all, and it was just what he imagined when he asked for a Reptile Party. (Though I think he expected a piñata and it is the first year we didn't make one.)

Minnie and I talked about how our parents would do our birthday parties. They were very good at it. In Texas, our parties were "weird" because there were planned and organized party games, like egg and spoon races or pin the tail on the donkey - plus always a piñata. (Other kids' parties in Detroit were all like that, or more so, without the piñata but with party hats and an element of on-your-best-behavior-because-warned-hissingly-by-parents, and best-dresses-wearing, formality. We sat down and ate some cake and ice cream and there was maybe a game of musical chairs. Then there was some playing with the kid's toys and we all went home. ) Other kids' parties in Texas were like, 3 kids at a sleepover making prank calls, painting their nails, and eating microwave nachos, or all being dropped off at the mall to see a movie. (Once I was in TX I don't remember ever going to a boy's party or having boys at my party, which was annoying; that wasn't true in Detroit which was culturally different and also I think more working class.) Anyway, what I remember is that despite being a complete social outcast in school, other kids liked coming to my birthday parties and would grudgingly admit they were Fun Though Very Weird and "Gay".

My parents clearly had a blast doing the party prep and giggling at our antics during the parties. They thought of great stuff to do and would play along with us in everything. The process of making the piñata took about a week, which added to the excitement of the idea of having a party. We made them from balloons or paper bags, covered them in paper mache made of flour and water, and then waited for them to dry before using paint and crepe paper to make them super awesome. My dad was good at making the piñata dance around, and my mom equally good at blindfolding all the kids, spinning them around, and playing up the process of piñata-bashing!

Oh, and if you want to spend way too much... maybe go in with some other parents... here is a list of all the San Francisco Bay Area party entertainers who will come to your house with reptiles. At least, all the ones I found in a 5 minute online search.

The Lizard Lady http://www.lizardladyreptiles.com/
Python Ron http://www.pythonron.com/
For Goodness Snakes http://www.for-goodness-snakes.com/parties.htm
Desert Dave http://www.desertdave.com/
East Bay Vivarium http://www.eastbayvivarium.com/

I don't know what Moomin will remember or what he'll think of all this - maybe the small sleepover was the best in some ways for him - but I hope he has good memories.

That is my party report! Maybe it will amuse you or will give someone ideas for their own kids' parties.

LIke a mighty stream

2008-03-18T22:06:00.001-07:00

Moomin and I went to the SF MOMA with Minnie today. Moomin made some great comments, snarking at some of Friedlander's photos, "Did a KID take this or what?" (This specifically about one of the "Letters" series, a photo of an "A" in coiled wire on a grungy wall.) He liked the photos of reflections, especially of trees and koi in a pond in Kyoto. The paper wall with bright colors was good too, and Magritte. It made my heart explode when he looked at Georges Braque painting of the violins and said "That's so weird! It's like being in three dimensions!" God... exactly... that is exactly the point. It's seeing from many perspectives at once! Moomin liked all the San Franciso and Silicon Valley photos by Gabriele Basilico -- and I did too.

I thought of Keith Haring and how iconic he was in the late 80s early 90s for me, and liked it that my kid would grow up knowing something about that.

After Minnie left, we went up into Yerba Buena Gardens. Moomin frolicked in the grass, climbed trees, hopped on stones, & then we went through the waterfall, something I have looked forward to doing with him. In museums and at monuments, he always likes to read all the signs and displays, and so I got to hold him on my lap, with the water roaring all around us, in the cool grey cave of deliberate stone, while he read out loud,

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

Photo by opticallyactive

I hope he will not be satisfied, and that he takes these words to heart. It was a good moment. I knew he was thinking hard. We talked about how powerful water is, how it can knock you off your feet, how it doesn't stop, like the ocean doesn't stop. I said that our feelings and our struggle for justice can be like that, for what is right, and fair, and for equality for everyone, and it is little things in every day life, not always big things, like drops of water that will combine to be powerful.

Usually I'm just the benign-neglect mom that says Yes you can have a popsicle and watch another episode of Avatar while I am writing. But sometimes I whip out the preaching, just for a minute!

I am a sucker for monuments and have been known to burst into tears while writing poetry in UN Plaza in front of the statue of Ashurbanipal.

Anyway!

At the top of the ginormous 3 stage ramp we looked down at the waterfall. A guy wearing an "I work for the park" vest walked up to offer to take our photo together! It was so nice of him. I went, "Hey Moomin, come over here, either this nice man is going to steal our camera or it's picture time" and Moomin cracked up. You can tell the guy was cool too, because he laughed instead of giving me a strange look. A while later he yelled "Hey, you! Mom over there! Do you know there's a playground?" I didn't really. He pointed us in the right direction, letting me know there were ramps all the way! I asked him "Hey dude, why are you carrying a plastic plate?" He's not only a nice urban park ranger; he also does circus tricks, like plate-spinning. Oh, I love San Francisco.

Moomin sat on my lap for the ride down a couple of stories of ramp.

The playground was GLORIOUS. I appreciated the wheelchair access very much. Fuck sand and those goddamned wood chips. I have not been on a playground for a whole year! On this one I could go right under the monkey bars. All the levels of the playground were accessible, so when I was at the top of one of the big ramps, I was still on the playground, still in the middle of a little maze of ramps and bars. Someone obviously built the whole playground with wheels in mind. I was very happy to see it was not "skateboard proofed" either.

If they had thought just a BIT more they would have made one of those rubberized slopes just a little bit less steep and I would have gone ZOOMING DOWN IT. It almost happened, on the south side of the pit, but I chickened out.

It means a lot to me to have this good day of bonding with Moomin after a hard year, as I described earlier in this post:Pain, Disability, and Parenting.

Moomin made friends with a girl who had hot pink cowboy boots and a bold attitude. She started riding him about how to be careful on the bars as they were climbing on the outside of the slides. (Giant two-story slides!) He explained back all the ways that he was careful, and they had a long long conversation back and forth about carefulness and how careful they were until I was about dying with laughter. They also discussed Spiderman vs. Batman, which I was curious to hear but I didn't want to follow them around the playground too much. Later as they were playing I overheard him demanding her phone number and asking where she lived. Then, he gave her his email.

I am so smooth I followed his example and exchanged emails with the hot pink boots girl's mom, who gave me her card and seemed a kindred spirit sort of person; academic, literaturey, mentioned women's studies in breath one. Lo... I got home and she had ALREADY BLOGGED HER DAY.

This caused me to love the Internet so, so hard.

I love you, Internet! I love you, world!

Coffee with badass mamas

2008-03-13T13:16:00.001-07:00

pool
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry

This morning's coffee hour was particularly nice. I was bummed about being back in the wheelchair today, and I was in pain. But then everybody made me laugh. My hurting bones baked in the sun. The cherry pie and bacon rocked my world.

There was blog gossip, gossip about blogs, gossip about everything unbloggable, talk of all the upcoming readings and events for theCan I Sit With You? book, "my kid said this cute thing" stories, and I heard that the fabulousLiz Ditz is setting up to do some "kindergarten readiness" consulting.

I got into a great conversation with jennyalice about relationships. In a conversation with her partner she ended up saying to him, "Hey, you know why we feel uncomfortable and out of control? It's because we're actually sharing power and no one's in charge." This is a great thought to chew on. From talking about the whole "domestic discipline" thing with hilarity and sadness, we quickly moved on to talk about power, housework, and responsibility.

Meanwhile, I played with Rocketina, B.'s little daughter. She took off her boots and I put them on again while we discussed gravity, "up", and "down". I suggested that her rubber boots would make a nice hat. One year olds are good for the ego; I was totally a comedic genius for that minute of putting a boot on my head. Little Rocketina (20 months!) then wowed me by pointing at the table marker and saying "Dat's a ONE. And dat's a FOUR. Makes FOURTEEN."

I'm back in bed now. While my leg is still hurting, I'm buoyed up by sun, pie, and a huge dose of my awesome friends.

This photo is of the indoor aquatic center in the East Bay - just across the Dunbarton Bridge in Newark! We went this weekend & it was great!

Redshirting kindergartners: a rant!

2008-03-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

When I saw this headline about redshirting kindergartners, I thought it had something to do with Star Trek, but could not figure out how on earth the metaphor could be stretched - was someone sending 5 year olds out to get killed first on an Away team to the planet Rigel Beta XI? Or what?

No! It is a sports team metaphor. I never get those! Redshirting means sitting a younger player on the bench and saving them for another season.

But here it means this: Keeping your kid out of Kindergarten for an extra year. Basically it means you flunked preschool. (Or, your parents did.)

Now, I understand if your child has some developmental delays or some kind of health problem that means they are truly "not ready". In that case I am totally understanding and I think a family should do what is best for them and the child. So if that is your child, I'm not talking to you.

But... in my experience over here in yuppieland it does not mean that. Instead, it means people who think one or more of these things:

- their child is too bratty to know how to behave
- they want their child (almost always a boy) to be bigger and stronger for sports and for playground fights
- they want their child (again usually a boy) to have an advantage academically

This is bullshit! It is all bullshit! I call it out on the carpet in a ranty way!

For one thing, if your 5 year old kid is too misbehaving to hang out in a classroom for a couple of hours, I seriously doubt they will improve by being home with YOU for a whole extra year. Since you clearly have done a shit job so far in civilizing it. How hard could mostly-behaving-yourself in kindergarten be?

For another thing so what if your child does have a bit of a behavior problem in kindergarten? What is the big deal here? It's not going down on their Permanent Record is it? So they were bratty in class one day and cried, or threw a tantrum, or scrunched someone's owl. Big whoop! They're in kindergarten! They're tiny kids! Send them to the principal's office ! They don't always behave! And that's okay.

As for the parents who want their nasty little boneheaded brutes to be even huger and more thuggish so they can kick my kid's ass around the playground, screw them!

And the ones who are dooming their kids to a future of being 20 year old high school seniors, for the sake of a possible football scholarship again because they are hulking thugs more physically mature than the other kids, whatEVER... And don't you think that sends a bad message to your kid, down the line?

As for the academic readiness, once again let me remind you this is kindergarten. That place where you learn to sit in your chair for 15 minutes, you learn the alphabet, the names of the shapes and colors, and how to hold a crayon. Come on people. How "ready" do you have to be. Kindergarten usually last for like 2 and a half hours and that is half recess, story time, and snacks anyway. I think your kid can handle the pressure.

Mostly it pisses me off because it is an argument that people turn into something so gender-based and because it is rooted in privilege. It is people with the privilege to pay for a whole extra year of child care or lose the wages of the person caring for the child while it's not in school. So if you are doing this you are throwing your privilege around in a really ugly way even if you think it is "best for little Connor" or whatever, what you are doing is saying that you can't stand even for a second that your misbehaving, too dumb to hold a crayon, hellspawn does not have the maximal privilege known to mankind. Put them in school to get socialized like a regular member of our society and shut up.

Also my solution to all of this hullabaloo is to pay teachers more, so that we get amazing, competent, happy teachers, and they will be able to handle a class full of 5 year olds just fine.

How not to talk to your teacher

2008-03-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

Moomin had his second report card of the year and got very good grades. I went to the parent-teacher conference thinking "THIS time I'm going to keep my mouth shut. I'll listen to what the teachers have to say, since the point of this is for me to find out what they think about how my kid's doing in school."

Did I keep my mouth shut and listen... NO. I started babbling right away, knowing that BS was coming out of me, mostly defensive stuff and long pointless explanations of Moomin's psychology. They don't want to hear it! And it doesn't do any one a bit of good!

Knowing that didn't help me stop doing it. It pokes me right in my tender mom-spot for other people to even vaguely imply that there is a flaw in my child... or in what I do as a parent.

Next time I *swear* to shut up and listen.

They said good things about his imagination, creativity, and depth of knowledge, which was nice to hear.

What not to wear: No to Knives!

2008-03-10T17:23:00.001-07:00

Things you can get away with wearing if you are not a parent, but might want to use your judgement about, if you are around kids who can read:

Stabby McKnife

This got me thinking. I mean, about 2 percent of my brain thinks "Oh, hahaha, this is a great shirt, I'd totally wear it." Then I think it over for more than a second and decide against it.

What's the most inappropriate tshirt you can think of for a PTA mom of a 3rd-grader?

Please help me satisfy my inner Bad Mom with suggestions. I don't need to wear them or even buy them. I just need to have them to think about.

I'm still tempted by this one , which I've wanted for years. That, or its companion, would be a good one to wear to those mom's club general meetings.

No, wait, my all time worst tshirt to wear to a PTA meeting is.. drum roll...

MILF Hunter

Barack Skywalker rules the back seat

2008-03-02T17:53:00.001-08:00

Moomin's friend Hamster asked me today who I was going to vote for. Then he asked if I knew who Dick Cheney was and if I thought that "Darth Cheney" was a funny name for him because he wasn't a very good person to be in charge. Of course, I laughed and said yes. There were some more questions about my politics and about Clinton vs. Obama vs. McCain.

Great, I have a cold, and nasty cramps, and I'm driving down 101 trying to explain about the War and health insurance and abortion rights to two 7-year-olds in the back seat who spend most of their waking hours discussing which Pokemon could kick which Transformer's butt, or saying the word "wiener" over and over and giggling...

It cheered me up hugely when they made up a new movie!!

In their funny movie, George Bush would be the Sith Lord, and Dick Cheney would be Darth Cheney. Clinton would be Princess Leia and Obama would be Luke Skywalker. They could not figure out who would be R2D2.

Power to the skate punks

2008-02-07T17:19:00.001-08:00

this is my wtf face
Originally uploaded by Liz Henry

I would like to say thank you to the nice middle school skater punks outside North Star Academy who at my request walked through the building to open the door on the other side for me so that I could park close to the elevator and go into the building on my crutches.

If any of them ever read this, I chewed out the mean teacher in room 142 who chewed them out and I complained about her actions to the school administration. She clearly assumed I was a juvenile delinquent just like she did for you. IMHO you are self motivated athletes and should be proud and also should get some respect from adults... not treated with hostility.

This is of course the same teacher who never opens the door for me when I bang on it or when I make motions at her through the glass and I am on crutches or in my wheelchair. She yelled at me a bunch last fall for opening the door on the Forbidden Side of the building and for using the elevator and she also has more than once challenged who am I and what am I doing there and would not believe me when I said I was a parent of a student at the school.

GRRRRRRRR.

Also I do not care if skaters sometimes damage curbs. Why not just build a couple of extra curbs or rails good to skate on? But no... on the one hand school districts complain that kids are not exercising and then when they do... ban them. SO UNFAIR. I hear that walking on sidewalks also wears them out. Also that driving on roads causes potholes. Also that if you put benches in a park people might sit on them when they are tired. Ummm whatEVER. Things.. and places... they are meant to be used by people.

The principal was nice and listened to my complaint, but he didn't get it... I ... and those kids... are community members and should not be treated like criminals. I have gone to the playground behind the school for 8 years now and so do a lot of other local people. It's a peaceful place and I've never seen anyone doing any vandalism or anything wrong. Instead people show up and play basketball, ride bikes, skateboards, and use the playground. So to go on about "liability" is nonsense.

Diorama time!

2008-01-20T12:24:00.000-08:00

Moomin is making his first "diorama project" for school! It's for a book report on Max and Me and the Time Machine, about two kids who go back to vaguely inaccurate "medieval times", meet an alchemist and some knights, and see a joust. One kid becomes a knight or squire, and the other his (talking) horse.

After about an hour and a half of painstaking following-the-directions from 123 Draw Knights, Castles, and Dragons there is a very lovely, tiny, knight on horseback all colored in and cut out!

Construction paper sky, bleachers, and grass, and a small clear plastic box colored with different colored Sharpies made the time machine.

There's one more knight to go. Will it be faster this time? Will I be able to curb or at least mask my impatience and my desire to make the diorama myself?

Must keep reminding myself... it's not ME who is in third grade... It is Moomin's vision and skills here... not mine...

No matter how much I love to make tiny craft projects, this one is not for me!

I consoled myself by making a space helmet out of tinfoil, for a stuffed tiger.

While I'm more than a little annoyed that the teacher spelled "diorama" as "diarama" on the homework instructions, it's a great opportunity to point out to Moomin how teachers can be wrong as well as how to look things up in the dictionary.