Category: me

make like a tree (and squirrel)

We took Phoebe out trick-or-treating for the first time tonight. Phoebe was dressed as a squirrel, and I was dressed as a tree.¹

phoebe_outside1.jpg

I love getting dressed up, and devising costumes.

My tree costume (which you can see a bit of over at John’s) was an old standby of mine, a creation I’m quite proud of. I wear all brown, wear a twig wreath on my head with a few leaves, and drape some fall leaf garlands around my shoulders. The costume was not only easy to put together, but since I happen to have various plain dark brown clothing items to disguise my body as the tree trunk, it was cheap. It only cost me about $10.00 to buy the leaves and wreath at a craft store.

I was quite happy with how Phoebe’s costume turned out, too. The squirrel to climb on my tree. It was another assembled piece of work. (I don’t really sew.) I found a grey onesie, on sale for about $3.00, and stitched a white oval on the tummy from a robe that had long since been retired to the rag pile. The tail was put together from an old fuzzy snake dog toy, and I used a Toober toy to give it shape. The ears/hat I made from an old too-small pair of Phoebe’s tights. The biggest expense was to buy a new pair of gray tights, which cost about $7.00. What’s more, the way I put it together, it can all be salvaged again, and the clothes worn as normal clothes.

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¹ John was not in costume. Or perhaps he was just a big nut.

missing Red

Those of you who know us in real life know that we once had a dog. It doesn’t quite seem right to refer to Red as just “a dog.” Because he was really part of our family for many, many years. And he was really a remarkably wonderful dog. I’ve wanted to write about him for a while now.

It’s now been 2 years since Red died, and I still miss him very much.

If you ever call us on the phone, and we can’t get to the phone, we have an answering machine. Ever since John and I started living together, in our various homes, our answering machine message was always more or less the same: You have reached [our phone number], home of John, Alejna and Red. Please leave a message. This led many who called to believe that there were three humans living in our household, and occasionally that John and I had some sort of offspring.

At some point in this house, we got voicemail for our home phone, too. I don’t remember exactly why, but it came in handy if the power went out, or if we were unable to take a call that came in on call waiting. The message for that was the same as usual: You have reached [our phone number], home of John, Alejna and Red. Please leave a message. Except during that recording, Red barked.

After Red died, I changed the answering machine message. It made me too sad to reduce the names to just the two of us, so we just got the abbreviated version. You have reached [our phone number]. Please leave a message. But I didn’t want to record over the voicemail message, the one with Red’s bark. You see, it’s the only recording that I know of with Red’s bark. I don’t know if it means more to me than it would to other people since I work with sound, collect recordings as part of my professional work. Maybe any devoted dog-owner would feel equally attached to that one bark.

For the last 2 years I’ve intended to somehow retrieve that recording, and get it onto a computer. I know that there are ways to call phone numbers from a computer, such as Skype, but these generally involve a charge for that type of service. So I put it off. And the voicemail message stays the same.

People don’t often reach our voicemail, but it happens from time to time. Sometimes you just can’t gracefully switch over when a call comes in on call waiting. But I find myself rushing to try to answer the calls, to beat the voicemail. Because I’m sure it’s unsettling for people to get this message from another era, to hear that bark from the past.

just posts (and just posted)

The August Just Posts are up and strong. In case you don’t know them, they are a collection of posts from around the blogosphere where people have written on topics of social justice and all types of activism. Not only are these posts about activism, they are activism. And what’s cool is that you can exercise your own activist muscles, too. Just by clicking on the links.

The posts are on a wide range of topics: race and racism, gender, healthcare, poverty, environmental issues, and more… Have a look. Just visit any one of these folks listed below, now representing 3 continents, for a list of links.

jen   mad   hel   susanne

august_just_posts.jpg

I usually have to work myself up to writing about topics of activism. Even though they are topics that I think about often. I like to write fun stuff. I try to entertain. So it almost feels like an intrusion when I write about a serious topic. It’s particularly hard for me to write about controversial topics. I am a person with strong opinions, but a quiet voice. I fear confrontation, I fear conflict. So the post I just put up makes me feel vulnerable. I just posted something both personal and political, and I didn’t even have my editor look at it first. At the same time that I want people to read what I wrote, I want it to be buried to save me the risk of attack. It’s silly, I know. I’m working on building up that spine. Are there exercises you can do for that?

the eleven-o’clock salad

lettuce.jpgIt’s just past 11:00 p.m., and I just ate a big salad. I realized that before you know it, it will be time for my next CSA pick-up, and I still had 3 heads of lettuce, plus lots of other greens, onions, and kohlrabi. You will be proud of me to know that I opted to make and eat salad rather than going right to the freezer to get out the ice cream which we bought earlier this evening. (Note that I have not yet forgotten the ice cream. Its time will come.)

The salad was good. I do like salad. Especially when it’s been tossed with the dressing in a bowl, so that the dressing is all evenly spread around. An equal distribution of wealth, as it were. (I like to eat a good helping of socialist metaphors.) And by the way: boy-oh-boy has our salad spinner been seeing a lot of action lately.

I keep feeling like I want to record more of my life, of our life. I’m not sure why, exactly. Part of it is that I like my life, and imagine that some day I’ll look back fondly on this time, and feel a bit sad if I don’t remember what my day to day life was like. My future self will think things like: “Back when I was a new mother, did I eat enough vegetables?” or “Did I get enough sleep when I was a grad student?” or “I wonder what I thought about pants when I was in my 30s?”

I keep meaning to update the Phoebe Blog more frequently. Phoebe keeps growing and changing, and well, doing things. Again, things that I feel like I’ll want to remember. My memory fades so quickly, and the days blur together. Hell, the weeks and months blur together. I just managed to post a bit to the Phoebe Blog last night, but there are gaps. It’s strange this feeling that I need to record all of it. I don’t think my parents recorded too much about me, or even my sister (the first-born). I wonder if it’s partially my packrat tendencies making me want to store things away. (The packrat in me badgers me to squirrel things away? Can I fit a rabbit into this somewhere?)

The trip plans are coming along moderately well. I have squared away an apartment in Paris. I have filled out the form from the conference organizers to get a hotel room in Saarbrucken, who seem to have reserved every last hotel room in the town so that you must go through them. (Which means you may not actually get a choice about which hotel you’re going to stay in. Which may lead to some difficulties, as we have special public transportation and crib needs due to travelling with a toddler. I sent an email. I think I’ll be known as a troublemaker to the conference organizers. Because I also questioned their request to have a letter faxed from “the head of my institution” stating that I am a student in order to get the student discount for registration, in addition to sending a scan of the student ID. They claim that such a letter should only take “2 minutes” and is standard procedure. Which is a load of hooey.) I also still have to look more into trains.

And I keep thinking it would be nice to watch a movie. It’s possibly been weeks since I watched a movie. Oh yeah, and I’m supposed to be doing work. Oh wait. Now I’m supposed to be sleeping. Crap.

And you know how I felt compelled to write more 7 lists? Well, as I anticipated, I didn’t have much time. Phoebe’s nap ended, followed by needing to get her a meal, and get her dressed, and who knows what all, resulting in a time lapse of two hours. Then we went out a shopping excursion to get a birthday present for John’s aunt. (We’re going to her 80th birthday party tomorrow. Possibly not the 80th such party that she’s had.) We didn’t get home till 8 or so, then it was time for Phoebe to get a bath and get to bed. It was 9 by the time she was in bed. (Way past her bedtime, but she seems to have her parents’ night owl proclivities.) So, no time to work on lists. But since I don’t want to throw them away, or toss them into the compost pile with the beet greens, I’ll lay them on you here.

So, here are some sevens (and sevenths) I thought about incorporating into some lists.

More than seven more seven things.

books:

  • The House of the Seven Gables, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (I haven’t read it, but it seems to have a Phoebe.)
  • The Seven Dials Mystery, by Agatha Christie
  • The 7 habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey (Not that I’ve read it. I have a low tolerance for self-help books)
  • Seven Spiders Spinning, by Gregory Maguire (one of his kids’ books)
  • Seven Daughters and Seven Sons, a young adult novel by Barbara Cohen, based on an Iraqi folktale.

    • music:

  • Seven and the Ragged Tiger, an album by Duran Duran
  • “lucky number 7 passed me by,” a line from Cracker’s “Lonesome Johnny Blues”
  • “Love is the seventh wave,” a song by Sting
  • A line from “Monkey Gone to Heaven” by the Pixies:

    • If man is five (if man is five…)
    and the devil is six (and the devil is six…)
    then god is heaven (then god is heaven…)
    this monkey’s gone to heaven

  • There are also seven days in a week, seven deadly sins and seven wonders of the world. You can be in seventh heaven, you can get seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror, or you can sail the seven seas. Agent 007 is Bond. (James Bond.)

    • If you’ve got more 7s for me, toss them my way. Toss them like a salad.

    enough about me

    Okay, I lied. It’s really still about me.

    A little over a week ago, YTSL lobbed a request over that I should participate in this meme activity by which I list 7 little known things (or random facts or habits, if I trace it back further.) about myself.¹ I like things. I like lists. And apparently I like to write stuff about myself.²

    7 things about me that I didn’t list in that other post with 6 things about me

    1. I used to be able to get into the yoga “lotus” position without using my hands. Oh, wait. I guess I still can. It hurts a bit more than I remember, though…
    2. I once had a collection of dimes. I was maybe 8 years old. They were just dimes. I found them aesthetically pleasing. Their size, their shape, the feel of them. I brought my collection to “show and tell” once, and the teacher asked what was special about the dimes. I was a bit perplexed by the question.
    3. I often have dreams that I can fly.
    4. I have a bit of a fear of moths. They give me the eebie jeebies.
    5. I like heights. I get kind of a rush from being up high. Kind of an anti-vertigo. (Funny. There was a Mel Brooks movie made in the 70s called High Anxiety that was a parody of Hitchcock’s Vertigo. At least one scene was filmed the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco, which had glass elevators that went up quite high. I loved that building, and those elevators.)
    6. I don’t watch TV. For someone who has written 26 posts to date with the tag “TV,” this seems odd. I watched a lot as a kid, but have little idea what’s even on these days. I watch things on TV, but only DVDs. Mostly movies. Some old TV series. The only current shows I’ve watched in the last couple of years have been available as iTunes downloads.
    7. I am fidgety. I have trouble sitting still. You’ll often find me twiddling a pen, shredding a paper napkin, twisting a straw…or doodling. I’ve got some crazy-ass elaborate doodles. Doodles, dood.

    This is one of those things where I’m supposed to tag others. I’ve considered tagging people I don’t know at all, like, say, Kevin Smith or someone else who’s used the tag pants. Or a blog I hit by using the “next blog” function on WordPress, that gives you random blog after random blog. (And hey, if any of you, Kevin, pants person, or even more randomly selected person would like to play along, please consider yourselves tagged!) Or I can play by the self-selection, tag-free rules, as exemplified by the extraordinary KC. Anyhow, if you are reading this, consider yourself tagged. Like a polar bear or sea turtle that scientists are tracking. (Don’t worry. The tranquilizer will wear off soon.)

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    ¹ I also owe another meme to her. Plus I got tagged by NotSoSage for a different meme the same day. Woohoo. Meme me, baby. (I’ll get to that one at some point, too, Sage.)

    ² As we all know, writing about oneself is the prime motivation for 98.725% of bloggers.³

    ³ I made up that statistic. But anyone want to prove me wrong?⁴

    ⁴ Huh? Huh?

    kick-ass women characters I’ve wanted to be (or at least be more like)

    I’m decidely not feeling kick-ass today. I have a nasty cold, and have stayed home from work to try to get some sleep. Unfortunately, sleep eludes me. And my mind keeps wandering back to the Action Heroine Blog-a-thon.

    I’ve spent a lot of time putting together lists of shows and movies with kick-ass women. But so far, I’ve largely avoided committing to any sort of ranking. Sure, the first list of movies and the first list of shows had more of my favorites than the later lists in those series. But I generally have listed things by order of release date. So here I climb out on my limb, to make some sort of ranking.

    Mind you, these are not necessarily my all-time favorite movies and shows, though many of those provide the source of the characters. It seems my list is a bit heavy on TV vs. movies, but let’s face it, TV shows give more opportunity for character development. And this list is about the characters themselves.

    These are kick-ass women I’ve most admired for all their talents, skills, wit and strength. The kick-ass women I’ve most wanted to be like.

    7 kick-ass women I’ve wanted to be (or at least wanted to be more like)

    1. Emma Peel
      The Avengers (1965-1967)
      For me, it all started with Emma. I stumbled across the Avengers when I was in high school, watching late night TV on a local channel. The show, with its British tongue-in-cheek humor and its 60s style, had me charmed right from the start. But the kicker was Emma Peel. I had never met a character like her before. She was in charge. Martial artist, sharpshooter, fencer, scientist, spy. And she had such intelligence, such a keen wit, and style to boot. (And yes, she had stylish boots.)
    2. Charly Baltimore
      The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
      It’s just possible that this is my favorite kick-ass woman movie. Sure, it’s not the best movie ever made. Sure, some of it was over-the-top. But hell, it’s an action movie. We’re not asking for real life. It had what we like to see in an action movie: action. Suspense, chases, fight scenes, unlikely escapes, plot twists, rescues, explosions and quirky characters. Samuel Jackson was great in this movie. So was Brian Cox. But the movie was about the kick-ass character played by Geena Davis. I’ll have a lot more to say on this topic at some point, but not one, but two, cool websites just independently wrote up reviews about this movie that are worth checking out: Heroine Content and The Hathor Legacy.
    3. Zoe
      Firefly (2002-2003), Serenity (2005)
      The show Firefly and the movie Serenity, featuring the same cast of characters, have quite a few strong women. There’s the gifted mechanic, the independent diplomat/courtesan, and the multi-talented and brilliant, if largely insane, teenager. But the woman that I fell for, that I most wanted to be, was the warrior woman, Zoe. I love her attitude and her dry wit. The sense that she was dangerous. A force to be reckoned with. And I love her relationship with her laid-back and playful husband, Wash. This is a woman with serious strength, but serious depth.
    4. Starbuck/Kara Thrace
      Battlestar Galactica (2003, 2004-????)
      When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a pilot. I’ve always loved flying, and couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more. Starbuck is the pilot. An all out kick-ass, ace pilot. Plus she’s got some serious attitude. There is a character who is not afraid to speak her mind, who doesn’t shy away from a bit of confrontation. Qualities I could use a bit more of, myself.
    5. Chief Inspector Yang
      Supercop (1992).
      Okay, so in part I’ve wanted to be Michelle Yeoh, probably more so than this particular character. I don’t know a thing about her as a private individual. But I do know that she’s played some seriously kick-ass roles in a bunch of great action movies: Crouching Tiger, Tomorrow Never Dies, Wing Chun, to name a few. And you just gotta love that. Her role in Supercop was a particularly kick-ass woman: she was daring, competent, calm and man-oh-man, could she kick ass. Plus she had a prestigious job, and was well-respected in her position. If you want to read more about why I liked her character in this movie, I have a lot more to say on the subject.
    6. Samantha Carter
      Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007)
      Explorer. Adventurer. Scientist. Does she have the ultimate glam job, or what? Maybe most of what she talks about on the show is just pseudo-science, but I sure do love to see a strong, smart woman do her job. This is another case where the character’s gender is not really an issue. I can recall very few episodes where the plot was moved forward due to her being, gasp, a woman. For the most part, she’s just part of the team. And a particularly smart and kick-ass one, at that.
    7. Buffy
      Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)
      It may shock some of you that Buffy is showing up kind of late on this list. After all, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of my all-time favorite TV shows. I’ve watched the whole series a number of times. (These are the DVDs that we put on when we go down to our basement to work out.) I love the cast of characters, the dialog, the bizarre scenarios. And the action. Buffy, as I’m sure you all know, kicks ass. However, this list is about women I’ve wanted to be, or at least be like. And well, while I’d love to the have the super strength and skills, be able to jump, flip, spin and kick like she does in so many of those fight scenes, there’s nothing in this world that would make me want to be a teenager again. And there’s the whole weight of the world business. That would be a bit much.

    unceremonious

    Lots of folks are graduating around now here in the US. From middle schools, high schools, colleges. My nephew even just graduated from high school. (No, not the one that was born in January. He’s barely in kindergarten!) All the stuff in the air about graduations has me thinking. About graduations I haven’t had.

    No, no, I’m not lamenting the fact that I’m still in school. This prolonged incarceration educational endeavor is largely by choice. And I’m making progress on the schemes for tunneling my way out.

    The graduations I’m recalling, or not recalling as the case may be, are ones from my past. Or that weren’t in my past. Here’s a weird thing I realized about myself that I hadn’t disclosed in my recent confessional of weirdness: I don’t have a high school diploma.

    However, in spite of not actually having technically “graduated” from high school, I have both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Ha! How’s that for weirdness?

    Okay, here’s the story. My family moved around a lot when I was growing up. I actually went to 4 different high schools. The first was in Colorado, the second in Hawaii and the third in California. When I was a junior in high school, which was while we were living in California, my mother remarried. And my mother and I moved in with my new stepfather. In France.

    So, high school number 4 was in France. It was an international, bilingual school on the IB system. I was due to be a senior. The last two years of the IB (International Baccalaureate) program were actually cumulative. But starting in the last year of the program (terminal) would have had me going in a year behind in all my courses. So they put in me première, basically junior year. I had just finished 3 years of American high school, and didn’t want to wind up in high school for a total of 5 years. However, the powers that be assured me that completing my 4th year of high school at the new school would suffice for finishing my high school education, at least as far as American universities were concerned. I could get some sort of stamp on my transcript saying I’d finished 4 years of high school.

    So that’s what happened. I finished that last year of high school, and apparently got that stamp on my transcript. I never even saw the thing. But it was enough to get me admitted into the American university of my choice. (Brown, if you were wondering.)

    But there was no high school graduation. I was never a senior. All my school friends in France were just finishing their penultimate year of secondary school.

    Another 4 years went by, and I was scheduled to graduate from Brown. Except for the fact that I took a semester off along the way. (Following extreme burnout from working 3 jobs and raising 6 puppies. Another story.) So, in May of 1993, I did not graduate from college. However, this time, I went through the ceremony. (Hey, all my friends were doing it.) I was scheduled to finish in December, 1993 anyhow, and it wasn’t uncommon for folks to attend the commencement ceremony a semester ahead.

    And yes, I did finish Brown in December of ’93, as scheduled. There was some sort of ceremony that December for the midyear grads, but really it was more of a gathering in a hall. No diplomas. Because they only got awarded in May. So hey, I got to have the graduation ceremony all over again in May of ’94. And this time, I got my diploma. Well, actually, that’s not exactly true, either. What I got was a formal-looking roll of paper with a note inside saying that my actually diploma was being “engrossed” and would be sent to me in the mail. (Yes, it the paper actually did say “engrossed.”) (And yes, I did get that diploma in the mail at some point. In fact, I just found it tonight, stumbling across it while trying to find an old journal. It’s been sitting, gathering dust, on the bookshelf next to my bed for probably several years. I had no idea it was there.)

    Fast forward 10 years . I finally finished my master’s project at my current school in August of 2004, making me eligible for September graduation. I’m not even sure if they had a September ceremony. (Again, I could have “walked” in the May 2004 ceremony, but this time I opted not to. For one thing, my program doesn’t have a department, so you have to leech yourself on to some other department’s ceremony.) September came, and nothing much happened. As far as I knew, the completion of the degree had gone through: master’s project submitted, paperwork submitted, official admittance to the PhD program. But no actual evidence of a degree.

    And then at some point that fall, I checked my online transcript, and the magical words had appeared:

    DEGREE AWARDED
    Master of Arts
    Major: Applied Linguistics
    September 25, 2004

    Woohoo! Call me master, baby! But still no diploma.

    And then finally, on October 23rd, 2004, a tube appeared in my mailbox. I remember the day well, as it was the day before my wedding. (My second wedding to John.) My mother and sister were visiting. And I had gone out to walk the dog and check the mail. In my pajamas. Flannel polar bear pajamas. And I came back in with that tube. Still wearing my pajamas, I gathered my mother, my sister and my husband (who I was about to remarry), and I sang a wordless (dooooo doo doo doo doooo doo) version of “Pomp and Circumstance.”

    I opened my red cardboard tube.

    I had been awarded a master’s degree.