Existential crisis

I put the girlie to bed and settled in to watch some of the Olympics, as one does these days. A little while later, she crept downstairs; I walked her back up again. As I tucked her in for the second time, she began wailing:

I don’t want to grow up. I want to be six forever and ever. I don’t care if my friends grow up. I don't want to die. Granny died. I want to stay six. I don’t want to grow up.

How can’t I grow up?

I don’t want to grow up. I don’t I don’t I don’t.

How don’t I grow up?

Deep sobs, many tears, much snot.  Me, snuggled up next to her, feeling at a complete loss. Everyone grows up, everyone dies. How do you assuage the fears of the six year old, when no one wants to grow up, no one wants to grow old, no one wants to die?

Two Answers, A Questions, A Request, and An Apology

Lord knows I am no kind of blogging guru. I know enough to get around, meaning, I only mess with HTML if I have to.

But I figured out two things about Blogger recently that I thought were worth sharing.

Answer 1) Like lots of people, I am periodically plagued with comment spam. Word verification helps, but it's so annoying that I usually leave it off. Recently, the comment spam has all been landing on old posts - which, happily, is easy to remedy. Find your Blogger Dashboard and then go to Settings > Comments > Comment moderation - and enable comment moderation on older posts. Blogger's default is 14 days, but you can set the time frame to longer or shorter. Then, if a spammer tries to comment on an old post, it won't appear, and you can easily delete it from your Blogger dashboard.

Answer 2) I finally got sick of the blogroll that ate my sidebar, a blogroll that was pulling from Bloglines even though I stopped using Bloglines as a reader. It was out of date and out of control. But I'd been reluctant to use the Google Reader widget because it was, to me anyway, ugly and I didn't know how to make it match my template. I figured it out! I started by selecting a handful of feeds and tagging them "Blogs You Should Read" - tagging them let me select a subset of the whole damned list of feeds, and creates a folder with the tag name. Then, in Reader, click on Settings > Reader Settings (towards the upper right of the window). From Settings, click onto Folders and Tags.


Make sure that the folder is marked "Public", and then click the link that says "Add a blogroll to your site". That'll take you to a pop-up window where you can configure the sidebar widget. Leave the title box EMPTY and set the color scheme to NONE. Copy the generated HTML and go back to your Blogger Layout page. Add an HTML widget and paste in the HTML that you just copied out of Reader. If you want a title, add one here. That way, the title and list in your new blogroll widget will pick up the styling that applies to the rest of your blog. Matchy matchy joy!

Question) Sitemeter lets me see a lot of information on a per visit basis - like Domain Name, IP Address, Country, City, Time of Visit, Visit Length, Page Views, Referring URL, Visit Entry Page, etc. Is there a way to get that kind of detail out of Google Analytics? Because if there is, I can't figure it out.

Request) Please enable your email in your Blogger profile. Click on your profile and make sure it's linked to your blog and your email. You can have a separate email exclusively for blog stuff, if you'd like. If you don't have a real blog, you can set up a "blog" without any content so that you have a profile with an email. This also goes for people with other than Blogger blogs - you can have a Blogger profile that links to your Wordpress/SquareSpace/TypePad blog - or even to your Etsy shop. But the email is key - it's what lets me reply to your comment, which I dearly love to do.

Apology) Blogger seems to be comment challenged of late. I can't comment most of the time, at least from the (cough) PC in the (cough) office. So, I may well have been reading and not commenting, but the not commenting isn't my fault. And I still love you.

This is why they invented cellphone cameras

Perhaps "constipation" would be a better word choice than "inconvenience", because if you were looking for the Senokot, you might be more than inconvenienced by its unavailability. And no, I wasn't buying Senokot - I was merely picking up a prescription, for something unrelated to my gastrointestinal tract, if you must know.

Wordless Wednesday: Snow Day

Is there anything better than a snow day on a Wednesday? I think not. We got the valentines done (the secret ones and a pile for the first grade class), I made a pot of chili (with hidden sweet potatoes), I put the laundry away (that had been sitting around since Sunday), we went for a walk, and the kid went over to a friend's house for an impromptu playdate.  The mail came, though nothing but bills, and the UPS man delivered some new underpants. (Is there anything weirder than ordering underwear on Amazon?) I even shoveled a path up the driveway, but not the whole thing, because, why?

The only flaw in this lovely day is that the newspaper never got delivered - although it could be buried out there.  I'll probably find it in April.

Duct Tape

We have a kind of half-assed set of blocks and chutes with which to build marble runs. I call it half-assed because it's nearly impossible to actually get it to work - the pieces are all too clumsy, and the marbles tend to blow the whole thing apart, and the pieces aren't graduated enough to let you get just the right amount of incline.

So here's my question. Is it allowable to use duct tape and popsicle sticks to make the thing work right, or is that unsporting?

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[What I really want is a Cuboro set, but they are so damned expensive.]

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

I was standing on line, waiting for my lunch, eavesdropping on the people in front of me. At one point, she said to him "oh, yeah, and they want it ay-sap" – which got me thinking. When you say ASAP out loud, do you say "ay-sap" or "ay-ess-ay-pee"? Or do you just say "as soon as possible", which, to me anyway, rolls off the tongue more easily? What about when you see it on paper and read it to yourself?

How about WTF? Do you say "double-you–tee–eff" or "what the fuck"? "What the fuck" has 40% fewer syllables than saying each letter individually, and you get to speak that magically strong multi-purpose word. Fuck.

According to that bastion of definition, Urban Dictionary, "roffle" is a verb derived from pronouncing ROFL as a word. Have you ever actually said "roffle"?

Wikipedia has a staggeringly long and quite fascinating article on Acronyms and Initialisms - which discusses none of these three.

I think, though, my favorite conglomeration of initials is Initials:

LBJ took the IRT
Down to 4th Street USA
When he got there
What did he see?
The youth of America on LSD

LBJ IRT
USA LSD

LSD LBJ
FBI CIA

FBI CIA
LSD LBJ

Luckily the girlie hasn't yet asked me to explain this or any of the other songs from Hair.

Firsts

Her first backpack has fallen by the wayside, a year and a half into her elementary school career. It's developed holes, and terminal grunge, and lining flakiness. I assumed it would last longer - somewhere I still have a backpack that I used in high school, and it looks nearly new. I tell you, things just aren't made like they used to. Planned obsolescence?  I thought about returning it to Lands' End and invoking their unconditional guarantee, but guilt got the better of me, as it has been exceedingly well used. I did buy a replacement in a more dirt friendly pattern.

She sent me her first text message the other day, using her grandmother's phone. Grandma stood by offering instruction, but the girl did all the writing and typing. She dearly wants a cell phone, and claims that other first graders have them, which I find hard to believe. She also wants a DS which other first graders do have. In fact, she came home from a playdate with two games for it that the other kid didn't want any more. This caused a serious rift, because she knows I have a DS, and "why can't I use yours, Mommy?", but I really think a six year old needs to be doing something more constructive. We've compromised for the moment - five minutes a night on not-school nights (yes, 10 minutes a week, I am the mean mommy). And threatening to take time away is proving a good inducement to better behavior. It's slippery, this navigating through the intersection of parenting and technology.

The first grade play was yesterday - a sort of musical revue adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are", with songs written by the school's music teacher (who, incidentally, I've known since fifth grade, and no, I don't live in the town I grew up in). All the first graders participated, singing songs en masse interspersed with Sendak's lines, each one recited by a different kid. The girlie got to be the emcee - opening the show alone in front of the curtain, speaking right into the microphone, memorized lines and all - and yes, those are snow boots she's wearing with capri length leggings under a skirt.



A week of firsts.

Shiny Pretty Hearts and Things

Pretty things attract the eye of the magpie from time to time.

Like valentines, insanely cute, with no branded characters, and free for the printing. Alpha Mom rounded up a whole mess of them last year, and added more this year. I printed out these whimsical vibrant cards for the first grader to hand out; I'll bet you a nickel that no one else in her class will have the same valentines.

And Japanese masking tape in a gazillion colors and patterns. I want it all, though I haven't any idea what to do with it. Decorate packages? Make collages? Create handmade greeting cards? I could live in my cellar all day long, puttering around and acting crafty.

Or printable graph paper, variously variable, for doodles or what have you. What's so appealing about graph paper? Well, kind of the same thing that makes a Moleskine notebook jump into your hands - the contained possibility.

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Are you still thinking about Haiti every day? I am. Want another way to help? Lovely SweetSalty Kate has put together an online auction of art, photography, paper crafts, clothing, and creative goods. The proceeds will go directly to the St. Joseph's Family of homes for children in Haiti. Buy something. I've already been outbid once. You've got until Monday.

Do You Wait In Line or On Line?

So, I know it’s partially my own damned fault, for waiting until the first of the month to buy my monthly train ticket. But, honestly, should it have taken waiting on line for thirty-five minutes, while I missed two trains home?

Yesterday morning, the lines were so long that I’d have been late to work. In the evening, I arrived 21 minutes before my desired train, thinking – wrongly – that 21 minutes would be enough time. I couldn’t buy the ticket last week, because my office participates in the TransitChek program, and I didn’t have my TransitChek Visa card until the end of last week – and Friday night in GCT is as crazy busy as the first and last of the month. I couldn’t buy the ticket at my train station, because they closed the ticket office at my train station in the middle of January. I couldn’t use the ticket machines at my train station or in Grand Central; the ticket machines can only take one form of payment and because my $230 TransitChek Visa is less than the cost of my monthly ticket, I have to pay the balance some other way.

So I was stuck, waiting on line, watching the trains disappear from the Big Board, and thinking evil thoughts about the antiquated system by which MetroNorth has you line up to buy your tickets – there’s a single line for each ticket window. So, if you pick the slowpoke line, you’re screwed. A better system would have a single line feeding all of the ticket windows – you can’t pick the wrong window that way. The Whole Foods near my office has an ingenious queuing system, and it works almost flawlessly. But the powers that be at GCT probably don’t want to mar the august glory of the great space with something so pedestrian as queuing ropes.

When I finally got up to the window, I gave the slowpoke rookie clerk my TransitChek Visa and my other credit card – only to be told that I couldn’t put the balance on a second credit card, I had to pay by cash or check. That in itself is insanity – but luckily I’d been to the cash machine at lunch time so I actually had the cash on me – I’d left the house in the morning with about 89 cents in change in my wallet, and I almost never carry my check book.

In concept, TransitChek is a good thing – it encourages and rewards public transit users by giving us a tax break. But you could cut out a whole level of bureaucracy by letting people have a tax deduction of up to that $230 a month, properly documented of course, and eliminate the silly TransitChek Visas and vouchers and hassle.

By the time I finally got on the train, I was hopping irritated, not to mention damned glad I hadn’t waited on line in the morning what with the no cash in the wallet and all.

Did you have a nice day yesterday?

Eleven Into Fifty

In exactly eleven months, I'll be fifty. Yeah, whatever, but damn. Fifty? I'm not much for new year's resolutions - but fifty?  It's that kind of round and divisible number that demands something, something big, special, tangible, memorable. The only time I've ever thrown a surprise party was for my mother's fiftieth birthday. Lauren (a/k/a Mental P Mama) is running a marathon for her fiftieth. And so, I've decided to mark my fiftieth year on this planet with a list of eleven things to accomplish.

In no particular order, and with nary a nod to work or self-examination, here's my list:

1. Read Gödel, Escher, Bach - which I started about 25 years ago. I just bought a new copy, because the old one had a complete and utter glue failure and had to be thrown out. A book! Discarded!
2. Finish the patchwork baby quilt that I started when I was pregnant - I don't know what we'll do with it, but I'd rather have a finished quilt than that box sitting dolefully in the cellar.
3. Teach myself how to make croissants - probably with Julia's help.
4. Get off my ass and start running - I've downloaded a Couch to 5K app. I still need to buy some sneakers, but I might have wait until it's a teensy bit warmer out - it was 10°F when I went out to get the paper this morning.
5. Learn to play the ukulele - I bought one on a whim. I do need to figure out how to get the kid from untightening the strings - one was loose and floppy the other day.
6. Create printed books for each year of my blog - I've started this a dozen times, and gotten fed up with all of the editing involved to get the photos in the right places. If you know a better solution than Blurb, let me know, okay?
7. Knit my girl a sweater - I've got the yarn and the pattern, I just need the gall.
8. Weed out my closet. You know that rule about "if you haven't worn it in two years"? Well, there are a lot of things in there that haven't been worn in way more than two years.
9. Leave the country temporarily - after all I've got a passport that I should use at least once before it expires. Maybe we'll go visit the Maritime bloggers, Bon and Kate and Mad, if they'll have us.
10. Take the girl to Washington, DC - she's itching to meet the President, and her cousin goes to college there, and maybe Stimey will show us around.
11. Have a quarterly potluck party and invite the neighbors in. You can come too, if you're around.

I plan to post progress reports on the 29th of each month. Wish me luck!

On Not Watching TV

I really watch hardly any television. This isn't a rant for or against TV, it's just that I'd rather read a book. I may find one show at a time that I'll watch with some urgency - like Glee this past fall, and Big Love right now - but that's it. It's like serial monogamy; I can only get involved with one at a time, and there are episodes of celibacy between the marriages. I never watch TV news because it seems thoroughly redundant, and I didn't grow up watching it, and who's home at that hour anyway? I can't stay up late enough to watch The Daily Show or anything of that ilk, and we don't get whatever channel it is that Rachel Maddow is on. And I do rather like watching figure skating, but that comes round awfully infrequently, so it doesn't count.

But there's a downside to the never watching the news. Last night, during the State of the Union address, the cameras were skittering through the audience, looking for sleeping congressmen and inappropriate eyerolling. I was watching, in the good company of the Momocrats, and periodically the camera would pause on someone - and I had no idea who. Well, it's not that I don't know who Harry Reid is, it's that I don't know what he looks like. Oh, sure, I can recognize Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden and Janet Napolitano and Ruth Bader Ginsburg - but most of them I couldn't pick out of a line-up.

It is a hole in my knowledge base.

Transformation

Remember how I said that I'd découpaged an old stool as a Christmas present? The recipient's parents sent me some pictures, since I'd forgotten to take any before wrapping.



All the greenery is from magazine advertisements, catalogs, invitations or brochures. I save seas of green grass, aerial landscapes, stylized leaves, water droplets. I collect stuff without text or figure or structure - but with pattern and texture and color.

The block letters of the name are cut from a glossy brochure that introduced the Gehry building at Bard College - its undulating roof of shimmery steel shingles abstractly blue in contrast to the greens underneath.

I didn't do much to prepare the stool - I roughed up the flat surfaces with some sandpaper, and set to work with the Mod Podge. I'm pleased with how it came out - but even better? So's the nine month old recipient.

Rite of Passage

The other night, we were having dinner when it dawned on me - the kid had cut her hair. It wasn't a complete hatchet job, just a little layering along the left side, but - here's the slacker mom part - it took us almost two days to notice. Yup, Parents Of The Year.

A couple of days earlier, she'd been out at an evening art class with her father. She had a sheaf of papers with her when they got home, and retired to her room, with the kitchen scissors, to cut images out (and make confetti). I went up a little later, to read to her and put her to bed, and found her under the bed with the paper and scissors - where she was, apparently, also giving herself a haircut. Because I didn't have to crawl under the bed to fish her out - as I sometimes do - I didn't notice the little pile of hair and paper clippings. Bedskirts hide all manner of sins.

I realize that it's almost a rite of passage for kids to cut their own hair, and I can't get too worked up about it. I'm stunned, though, that we completely missed it.

What's in a Name?

For Christmas one year, my sister gave my child a book called Miranda's Ghosts. It sparked something in me, and I've since made a point of adding books to her library that include her name in the title.

Besides Miranda's Ghosts, we have What Is Miranda Looking At?, Miranda the Explorer, Miranda the Great and The Secret in Miranda's Closet.  I quite like the first three, but I can't vouch for the last two as we haven't yet read them.



I've poked around Amazon and put a handful of other titles on my wishlist:

• Miranda and the Cat
• Dancing Miranda
• Miranda's Beach Day

Incidentally, there are a stunning number of bodice rippers about Miranda, a goodly assortment of books about Miranda v. Arizona, and a set of Carmen Miranda paper dolls.

And, though Miranda isn't in the title, I was thrilled to learn that Miranda is the protagonist of When You Reach Me, the winner of this year's Newbery Medal. I put that on my wishlist too.

Do you seek out books that feature your child's name?

Edited to add: It goes without saying that we have several copies of The Tempest around, and yes, she knows she's Prospero's daughter.

Styrofoam vs. Staffordshire

I'm in some kind of blogging slump, combined with way too much to do at work, and the sloth of the deep dark winter.

In the meantime, I need to share a passage from yesterday's New York Times, from an article titled Therapists Report Increase in Green Disputes - that is, you want to compost, your husband doesn't want to bother. Or, you want fluffy dryer dried towels, someone else is okay with crunchy air-dried towels.

Anyway, here's the passage I had to read aloud at the breakfast table:

If Ms. Petso prepares a vegan meal for the family, her parents prepare hot dogs to go alongside. Her parents serve on throwaway Styrofoam plates; she grabs a plate that can be cleaned and reused. Her mother, who says she prefers the way food tastes when it is served on Styrofoam, notes that washing dishes has its own environmental costs.

Please. Explain to me how food tastes when served on Styrofoam, because I am at a complete loss.

Haiti / Heavy Heart

The earthquake in Haiti has unsettled me in many ways, and I have a hard time articulating why. Perhaps it's that I've known, and still know, friends and co-workers from Haiti. Perhaps it's that a college friend adopted a Haitian baby not long ago. Perhaps it's that it's here in this hemisphere, not that far away from this city of mine that supports a large Haitian population. Perhaps it's remembering Tracy Kidder's New Yorker profile of Paul Farmer.

Yesterday, I made a contribution to Partners In Health - Paul Farmer's organization - the subject of an op-ed piece, by Tracy Kidder, in today's New York Times:

...There are effective aid organizations working in Haiti. At least one has not been crippled by the earthquake. Partners in Health...has been the largest health care provider in rural Haiti. It operates, in partnership with the Haitian Ministry of Health, some 10 hospitals and clinics, all far from the capital and all still intact. As a result of this calamity, Partners in Health probably just became the largest health care provider still standing in all Haiti.

I know that there are a lot of organizations doing good work. PIH has its "boots on the ground" already - which is why I sent my donation there.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The friend who adopted a Haitian child sent out an email last night in which she talked about her daughter's orphanage. Because I thought it was interesting, and that you might too, I've made it into a pdf which you can read here.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

And my daughter. My little philanthropic child. After school yesterday, she and her daddy watched a little of the news coverage - they talked about what had happened, what an earthquake is, where Haiti is, what the people needed. Her response? "Let's collect money and send it to them. I want to get my class to help, and all of the first grade." She rounded up three quarters and a nickel and a penny, and handed it to me: "Mommy, I want this to help."

It breaks my heart.

Trading

One of my 4 and a half year old nephew’s Christmas presents was a switchblade comb – wildly inappropriate, thoroughly amusing. He ran around the house whipping it open and menacing folks, having a grand old time.

Some while later, I caught my six year old daughter attempting to trade him a gold drawstring bag of Hanukah gelt AND a pirate charm for the switchblade. I put a stop to it – thinking it’s kind of unseemly to trade out your Christmas presents on the very day on which you receive them – not to mention the fact that I really didn’t need to have a switchblade living under our roof.

Later, when I asked her about it – amused, mind you, not rattled or horrified – she explained that “Tiny didn’t want to trade because he already had a bag of gelt”. Okay then.

There’s some moral in here about capitalism and big bags of money and giving the people what they want, but I can’t figure it out.

Pointless Feckless Aimless and Graceless

Yesterday, I got a Facebook message from someone, which read follows:

Some fun is going on.... just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the color, nothing else. And send this on to ONLY girls no men .... It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.. Haha

It pissed me off, for a number of reasons - the silliness, the sexism, the trivialization of cancer. It’s like junior high school or something. First of all, how the hell is this supposed to "spread the wings of cancer awareness"? If you see a status update that says "black", are you going to make the cognitive leap to cancer? I don't think so. Second, I'm irked by the men vs. girls thing in the text. The opposite of girl is boy. The opposite of men is women. Grown-ups are men and women (unless they’re ballet dancers, in which case they’re girls and boys – but that’s another day). Third, is this supposed to be about breast cancer? What about lung and prostate and pancreatic cancer? What about lymphoma and melanoma? Not sexy enough because lungs don't wear undergarments?

Susan (Why Mommy) weighed in with a post today – reminding us that women who’ve had double mastectomies don’t wear bras. In her post, she linked to a Newsweek blog post about this whole Facebook meme, in which the author points out "This isn't awareness or education; it's titillation". And Barbara Card Atkinson got all hot and bothered on Facebook – privately, to me, and publicly, where she said: "Instead of listing your bra color, why not send a donation to the cancer fighting foundation of your choice? Everyone *is* aware - so go make an actual difference!"

That’s it, people – we’re aware of cancer, we need ACTION, we don't need to know what color bra you are or aren't wearing.

Argh.

To Cut Apart / To Cling Together

I bought my husband a copy of Julie Powell’s book, Cleaving, for Christmas. I didn’t buy it because of her blog (which I never read) or her other book (which I haven’t read) or the movie (which I didn’t see until after Christmas). I didn’t buy it because of Julie Powell. I bought it because of the butcher.

Because, you see, that’s our butcher. All of the beef we’ve eaten in the past couple of years has come from Fleisher’s. We've got ground lamb, lard and stock in the freezer from Fleisher's. We had their Rockin' Moroccan sausages for dinner the other night.

I have to say, though, if I'd read the review first, I might not have bought the book. Because, whoa - the marriage and obsession parts of the subtitle are pretty squeamy making. She's totally not likeable, and her cheating on her husband is revolting, not least because the lover is also revolting, and anonymous sex in a stairwell? Yuck.

That said, the butcher shop parts - which make up the bulk of the first 80% of the book - are interesting. She gets the meat, she gets what they're doing, she brings the cutting and the grinding and the roasting alive on the page. Knowing that butcher shop from the front of the house, as I do, it was fascinating to read about the back of the shop antics and practices of the owners and staff.

The last 20% is a travelogue of meat 'round the world - and it feels lame and irrelevant.

I have to hand it to her though - as much as I loathed her person, for the infidelity, for the texting on the Taconic, for the whining, I finished the book in a kind of breathless whirlwind of "what's she going to cut up next?".

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Incidentally, the title of the book is one of those cool autoantonyms, with two distinct and opposite meanings:

CLEAVE: To cut apart / to cling together

Clearly the butchery is the cutting apart. The obsession is the clinging together. Is the marriage coming apart or sticking together? Ah, language.

O Tannenbaum

Tomorrow I have to go back to work. It's been a nice week and a half off - with Christmas celebrations that began on the 24th, and finished today. There was champagne, and good cheese, and excellent beef, not to mention raised waffles and candy cane crisps. Oh, and bagels and wine and clementines and pistachios.

Our tree is still up, though most of the presents have found their places around the house. And I hate taking down the tree. It takes so long, and it sucks all the glitter out of the air. And then there are needles to vacuum up, and boxes to carry down, and the tree itself to be dragged, unceremoniously, to the curb.

If I were brave and had a back forty and some explosives, I'd rocket launch the tree instead.

After all, a Christmas tree deserves a good send off as reward for filling our hearts with gaiety, no?