Knowledge likes pants.

I’m here in Shanghai, and haven’t had much time to write. I’m sitting in the back row of a talk, typing this on my iPad. I can’t access WordPress directly in China, as most social media websites are blocked. (On my laptop, I can use VPN to get through, but don’t have it set up on my iPad, and didn’t bring my laptop today.) But I’m going to try posting by email.

The trip has been full of adventures and activity so far. Lots of running around, lots of things done. I feel like I’ve packed in a week’s worth of activities in 4 days. (I arrived in Shanghai On Friday, as did my cousin who was able to join me on the trip. We took the bullet train to Beijing on Saturday, then saw the Great Wall on Sunday, sprinted through the Forbidden City on Monday morning, and walked around Beijing a lot in the gaps between. We took the train back to Shanghai Monday afternoon. My talk was yesterday, Tuesday, the first day of the conference. It went well. I expect the tiredness to kick in today, now that I have that done.)

So, yeah, this has been a packed trip. I haven’t had time to sort through the hundreds of photos I’ve taken so far, but here’s one from Beijing I had to share.

>

“Knowledge likes pants
Invisible but very important.”

>

Things jostling for space in my head.

A week from tomorrow,¹ I need to set the alarm for 3:00 a.m. when I go to bed. Historically, I’ve been more likely to see 3 am from the other side of the clock. What on earth could possess me to get up so damn early? I have to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Newark. What on earth would possess me to fly to Newark at 7 a.m.? My 10:50 a.m. flight to Shanghai. Because I am going to Shanghai.

And also briefly to Beijing so that I can see the Great Wall. (Not that Shanghai and Beijing are all that close together. But closer than Boston and Beijing.)

I can hardly contain my excitement.

However, my excitement must share mental space with my soberingly intimidating to-do list, which keeps rudely poking its elbows into my excitement.

Here are some of the tasks weighing on my mind:

Work & School stuff:

  • finish a 12 to 15 page book review (because it’s already several years late)
  • prepare and practice a 15-minute talk at the conference (because that’s why I’m going to Shanghai)
  • read a large number of articles related to my conference presentation, especially given that the authors of those articles may be at the conference
  • rework images for a journal article by my research group

Trip prep stuff:

  • figure out transportation to and from airport on this end
  • Sort out as many details as I can for home and schedule in my absence (to minimize the hassle for John’s solo parenting. Yet another 11 days for him.)
  • find my multi-country travel adaptor doohickey I got for Hong Kong
  • dig out the unlocked cell phone I got in Hong Kong
  • (Happily, I already have my passport and visa squared away, and hotels, flights, and conference registration…)

Home stuff:

  • Finish dealing with thank you notes for Phoebe’s birthday party, which was now over a month ago. Gah!
  • Pack up a pile of books to donate for the town library’s book sale.
  • (Screw all the other household stuff that’s been clogging my to-do list for months. It will all be waiting for me whe I get back.)

Stuff I want to do before my trip.:

  • Plan out and read reviews for places to go and things to do and eat (this sort of thing is what distracts me the most when I’m supposed to be focussing on work)
  • In addition, I’d really like to finish writing about, and sharing photos from, my Hong Kong trip of last August. (I’d love to get these write-ups written up before I leave, because clearly I’m going to have a lot more to share very shortly.) I owe write-ups of:
    • Day 5, part 2 of my guided tour and harbour cruise from hell (I posted part 1 in November.)
    • Day 6 my fantastic outing/hike with YTSL (YTSL posted about it herself back in August!)
    • Day 7: last day of the conference and conference banquet (actually, there’s not too much to say here, so that should be quick)
    • Day 8: excursion to Macau (This was a big day, and full of minor (mis)adventures. I have a lot to say.)

All of my plans are being further irritated by a new cold or spate of allergies, which is leaving me wanting to sleep. A lot. Or curl up in a ball and groan. (You’ll note that curling up in a ball and groaning is not on my to-do list.) And other typical daily things like laundry, grocery shopping, cooking, kid shuttling as well as other family and social obligations, plus occasional attempts at personal hygiene, are also vying for my time and mental energy. (What, I have to brush my hair again? And find another pair of clean socks?)


Yes, I am seriously flying back to Asia less than a year after my trip to Hong Kong last August. I was hoping this conference wouldn’t end up in Shanghai, because I didn’t imagine that I’d be able to swing two trips of this magnitude in less than a year. But end up in Shanghai the conference did. Seriously, if the deadline for the conference submissions had been even in October, I would have said “no way.” But by the end of November, I was already thinking, “well, maybe I can do it.” And then my paper got accepted for a talk, and then I thought, “Hell yeah, I’m going.”

¹ I don’t remember when I started this post, but I’m pretty sure that this once said “in just over 2 weeks,” then various shrinking amounts of time since then. Here’s hoping that I manage to post this before I have to say “a few weeks ago…”

Phoebes, unicorns, and Phoebe’s unicorns

I may not have told you this, but Phoebe is a big fan of unicorns. I honestly can’t tell you when the obsession began. To the best of my knowledge, she has never actually met a unicorn.¹ However, like them she does.



Photos of Phoebe’s drawing of pegasus-unicorns, Phoebe in her unicorn snow hat with a snowball, and Phoebe playing the violin in a borrowed unicorn hat.

When we were planning her 6th birthday party, Phoebe had elaborate and entirely infeasible plans involving building a multi-level fort in her bedroom, complete with a pulley using ribbon to pull her party guests up to the upper levels. She also wanted to wear a unicorn costume, and had ideas about how I could make one for her. For the weeks (possibly even months) leading up to her birthday, the topic of her party came up frequently. Over and over, I managed to put off committing to a definite plan. Eventually, we broke it to Phoebe that we couldn’t do her unicorn-costumed fantasy birthday party.

However I did manage to make some unicorn cupcakes to ease her pain. Rainbow unicorn cupcakes.
rainbow unicorn cupcakes

But now we’ve got something even better. There is a new cartoon out there about a little girl named Phoebe. And a unicorn:

Here’s the description from Go Comics, where the cartoon is syndicated:

It all started when Phoebe skipped a rock across a pond and accidentally hit a unicorn in the face. Improbably, this led to Phoebe being granted one wish, and using it to make the unicorn, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, her obligational best friend. But can a vain mythical beast and a nine-year-old daydreamer really forge a connection?

The cartoon is by Dana Simpson, and called Heavenly Nostrils,² and you should check it out. Right. Now. (Start with the full-color first day strip from Sunday. I’ll wait.)

Is it just me, or does this Phoebe look a little like our Phoebe? All the cartoon Phoebe is missing are real Phoebe’s giant blue cartoon eyes.

John has long been a fan of Simpson’s work, especially the long-running strip Ozy and Millie, and he used to periodically send me links to those. (Like this one.) And now I’m at risk of being a crazy fangirl myself.

I find Simpson’s artwork to be charming and the premise of Heavenly Nostrils engaging. It may not shock you to learn that I was once a nine-year-old daydreamer, myself. (In fact, I was once a 6-year-old daydreamer.³) To top it all off, I think Dana Simpson is super cool. I emailed her to ask to use some images, and she not only wrote back to give permission, but was über nice.

I’m thinking that if John and I had played our cards right, we could have pretended that the whole cartoon strip was a present from us: “Phoebe, we know how much you like unicorns, and so we arranged for this comic strip about a little girl named Phoebe and her unicorn best friend to be made for you. Happy birthday.” The main trouble with this, though, is that we’d have trouble matching this level of gift in future years. She might expect us to have a movie made, or have a museum wing named after her. Better just to give her some new socks and a roll of scotch tape, and then she will have beautifully low expectations.⁴

—

¹ When Phoebe was 3, she was obsessed with fires, firefighters and firetrucks. However, she had seen real firetrucks, met real firefighters, and even seen the effect of a real fire on a real burned-out building. How could a girl resist? But apparently little girls like unicorns, too.
² The title has apparently generated some criticism as being “too silly.” As if there could be such a thing.
³ I was also once a 39-year-old daydreamer.
⁴ Though she really does love to use tape.

Image credits: Heavenly Nostrils artwork by Dana Simpson from Ink & White Space, used with permission from Dana herself, because she is that cool. Pegasus-unicorns flying among clouds and rainbow artwork by Phoebe Lenore, used without her permission because it’s 10 at night and she’s in bed right now. The rainbow unicorn cupcake photo is mine, all mine. And the two of Phoebe in unicorn hats. But neither of the hats is mine.

spring fever

Spring has definitely arrived here. Possibly with a vengeance.

I’m not generally prone to seasonal allergies, but there have been a few times in my life when I have wondered if I’ve been beset. This being one of them.

This week is Phoebe’s school vacation. On Tuesday morning, we had Phoebe’s annual check-up scheduled. (Almost 2 months after her birthday. We’d had to reschedule a couple of times.) I was going to take the kids to the dentist in the afternoon (way to vacation!), but the hygienist had to reschedule, so we had an unexpected free afternoon. It was a beautiful hot, sunny day, and I thought we should spend some time outside in the window between lunch and Phoebe’s karate class. A trip to the town playground was in order!

We got ourselves together and over to the park remarkably quickly, given my reduced ability to nag. (And I totally felt like a responsible adult when I remembered that we should wear sunscreen. I have to pat myself on the back for these rare moments.)

The kids had lots of fun. Phoebe dug up a worm and picked dandelions. Theo climbed and jumped off rocks.They slid on slides and swung on swings. Both kids ran around and interacted with other kids.

But I was zonked. I think we were there for a little more than an hour, but it felt like an eternity. I tried to occupy myself by taking some photos, something that can usually keep me quite content for long stretches of time, but I barely had the will to focus, what with all the coughing and the sneezing and the blowing of the nose. I fantasized about being at home, curled up on the couch, box of tissues at my side. Happily, Theo started to get overheated! Yes! I suggested we could go home and watch an episode of Scooby Doo. This was effective at luring Phoebe away from her enjoyment of the great outdoors as well.

So we went home to sit inside and watch some TV.¹

Brought to you by Great Moments in Parenting.

—
¹ For the record, I did decline to give them bowls of candy and potato chips to munch on. And I hardly let them have any beer or crack.

Ce matin, un lapin…

This morning, as I went about my business, which included doing tasks which I shamelessly attributed to an imaginary rabbit, a song popped into my head that I remembered from when I was little. “Ce matin, un lapin…”

I don’t know when the last time I thought of this song was, but there is a good chance it’s been many a year. For one thing, I don’t think I ever googled it before, so that may be an indication.

Back in 1980, I moved to France (along with my mother and sister). My sister and I went to an international school outside of Paris. We weren’t exposed to a huge amount of contemporary popular French culture, as we didn’t have a TV, and went to a school with primarily non-French students. However, at some point in the year, I went on a trip with my class into the French Alps. I don’t remember how long of a trip it was (2 weeks, maybe?), but there was a bit more cultural immersion, staying in a dorm run by French employees. There was certainly more music played than was typical of our regular school. I’m pretty sure this was when I would have heard the song, because those are the memories it triggered.

It probably shouldn’t surprise me that I remembered the lyrics a little wrong, or perhaps that I’d misheard them in the first place. (I was 9, and not a native speaker of French, and I don’t remember how often I would have heard the recorded version of the song, and how often I would have heard it sung by other kids.)

I’d thought it went:
Ce matin, un lapin. Ou tu es un chasseur. Ou tu es un lapin qui avait un fusil.
(“This morning, a rabbit, or you are a hunter. Or you are a rabbit who had a gun.”)

I think 9-year-old me interpreted the song to mean something rather philosophical, and somewhat twisted, along the lines of: “Today, will you be the rabbit, or the hunter? Or will you be a rabbit with a gun?” The tenses don’t really make sense for my interpretation, though.

It turns out the song was much more literal:

Ce matin un lapin a tué un chasseur.
C’était un lapin qui avait un fusil.

“This morning a rabbit killed a hunter. It was a rabbit who had a gun.”

Yes, a perky little kids’ song about a homicidal rabbit.

Happy Easter!

When red + white = blue. (Experiments using red cabbage to dye eggs blue)

Abstract:
+ =

Introduction:
A couple of years ago, I learned that it was possible to dye eggs blue using red cabbage.¹ Typically, we have used a variety of artificial coloring options for our egg-dying needs, whether liquid food coloring or the store-bought Paas-type kits. Last year I was determined to try my hand at doing some natural dyes with vegetables. In the end, I gave up on my plans for using onion skins or artichokes. (The water from steaming artichokes is often an intense bright blue-green, but not from the particular ones I made that day). But I followed through with the cabbage.

I had forgotten how long it took to dye the eggs, but looking back at the photos, I see that it did indeed take a lot longer than the food coloring. So be warned: The eggs took a good couple of hours of soaking to get blue.

Methodology:
I started by cutting up some red cabbage and boiling it in some water.²

The resulting juice was quite purple, and I was doubtful that it would produce blue. It was, however, quite pretty. (6:18 p.m.)

We dunked the first egg and let it soak. 16 minutes later, a peek showed the egg looking somewhat lilac-colored. (6:34 p.m.)

At some point, I added a bit of vinegar to the cabbage juice, inspired by the instructions for dying eggs on the box of food coloring. The purple cabbage juice turned even redder, which made me even more doubtful of achieving blueness. So I poured some more cabbage juice into another glass to have one without vinegar, and dunked another egg to soak.

Here we are, almost an hour after first dunk. Getting to be the kids’ bedtime. Time to break out the chemicals. Here’s Phoebe, squeezing out some blue food coloring. (7:22 p.m.)

I don’t have a time for when the first egg (from the vinegar mixture) came out, but it did indeed come out blue eventually. Having read up a bit on red cabbage (as one is wont to do), I had learned that red cabbage juice changes color based on pH levels. Acid leads to redder colors, and adding something alkaline, and raising the pH, should make it bluer. I then tried adding baking soda to the cabbage juice with the vinegar. The change was instant and dramatic, turning from red to greenish blue.

Here we are, hours after the first dunk. (11:27 p.m.) The two glasses show “neutral” cabbage juice (left), and alkaline cabbage juice (right). In the background are the rest of the completed eggs, mostly dyed with food coloring. (I think the first cabbage dyed one is there in the photo, too. Second row, left, behind a yellow egg.)

Results:
Here are the chemically-dyed (top) and cabbagely-dyed (bottom) blue eggs arranged together. The lighter-colored leftmost cabbage-dyed egg is the one from the baking soda solution. (Blotchiness is due to condensation that happened from putting the previously-refrigerated eggs outside for the egg hunt.)

3 of one, a half half dozen of the other.

Discussion
In the process, I realized why it is that it helps to add vinegar to dye eggs. Egg shells are composed primarily of calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is commonly used to neutralize acidity and raise the pH level: it is the main ingredient of antacids such as Tums, as well as agricultural lime. Acids can dissolve calcium carbonate. I’m guessing that adding vinegar starts to break down the egg shell, allowing the color to permeate and bond more quickly to the shell.

This would explain why the redder cabbage juice with added acidity led to a bluer shell (or got there faster) than the bluer-appearing cabbage juice with baking soda added.

Future study:
This year, I’m hoping to try the cabbage dye again, and also to experiment with beets, carrots, berries, and turmeric. I also may play around with acidity levels of the dye solutions again, as well as using brown eggs in addition to white. I wonder if pre-soaking an egg in vinegar would make it more permeable to dyes. (Did you know that you can dissolve the shell off an egg with vinegar? That’s another science experiment for us to do.)

Conclusions:
Can you tell I’ve been wrapped up in academic writing? I need to get to bed.³

References:
More resources on using natural food dyes for eggs can be found at various places around the web:
Natural Easter Egg Dyes on about.com, Making natural Easter egg dye, Three ways to dye eggs, Natural Easter Egg Dyes

Appendix:
Here are all of the photos from above, plus a few more.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

—
¹ I think it was from NotSoSage, who sadly, has purged her blog archives. I’m pretty sure she also made red/purple eggs using red onion skins.
² That’s not entirely true, I started by buying a red cabbage. And there were steps leading up to that as well. I had to get up in the morning, for example. Sometimes that is the hardest step.
³ Seriously, I need to get to bed.

How many months does it take me to change a lightbulb?

Today I succeeded in changing a lightbulb. It only took me about 3 months.¹

You may wonder why it took me so long to accomplish this. Was it some sort of hard-to-reach lightbulb? Or maybe a case of sort of hard-to-find replacement bulb? No, it was more of a case of some hard-to-find motivation.

You see, the lightbulb in question was in my bedside lamp. The one I primarily use when going to bed at night. Almost exclusively at that time. You see where this might be a problem? The only time of day when I would be reminded of my lack of functioning lightbulb was when I was making that final push to go to bed. Not the time of day when I wanted to exert myself.

Exert yourself, Alejna? To change a lightbulb? You may well wonder. Let me explain.

At some point in recent months, we moved our stash of lightbulbs down to the basement from the kitchen. I didn’t remember what was down there, lightbulb-wise.

This matters as I have a dimmer switch on my bedside lamp, of which I am fond for 2 main reasons: 1) I can be courteous to John by keeping the light dim when he’s sleeping, and 2) the switch is easier for me to reach than the one on the lamp. The lamp is on the top shelf of a 5-foot high bookcase. The dimmer switch is on a cord, which I have positioned such that I barely have to lift my arm to turn off the lamp when I am lying in bed.

Lately we’ve been buying compact fluorescent bulbs rather than old-fashioned incandescent ones. However, they don’t work with dimmer switches. I couldn’t remember whether we actually had any old-fashioned bulbs. Given that I am someone who doesn’t want to have to even sit up in bed to turn off the light, I am definitely not someone who wants to go rummaging in the basement right before bed. Especially on a potentially fruitless mission that would leave me wringing my hands and still left effectively bulbless. Screw that!

Better to work with the known consequences of bulblessness. I had worked out a system, using other light sources. (My iPad, for one, let me read things with the light off, and doubled as a flashlight.) But I didn’t have to go down to the basement at bedtime.

Eventually, John ordered me a dimmable LED bulb. It arrived about a week ago. I had become so accustomed to not having a functioning bedside lamp that even a trip down a single flight of stairs was too much effort at bedtime.²

This afternoon, however, I had a breakthrough moment. In trying to get Theo to have a rest, I offered to have a rest with him on the big bed. He eagerly brought a few pre-nap books to read. The dim light coming from the shaded windows was not cutting it, though. I couldn’t read the damn books! Also, I was slightly caffeinated, and not even close to falling asleep.

Full of resolve and self-mockery I went to get the new lightbulb and screwed it in. It took all of 2 minutes, most of which was taken up by freeing the energy-efficient-and-therefore-environmentally-friendlier bulb from its somewhat excessive plastic packaging.³

I am the stuff of which lightbulb jokes are made.

—

¹ I think. I didn’t actually mark the calendar when the previous bulb went out.
² Bean, I think you appreciate the sway of laziness.
³ Whose bright idea was that?
⁴ This footnote doesn’t go to anything, but I couldn’t figure out where to put my alternate post title: “Dim and dimmer.”

a dweam within a dweam

I admit that I have some mixed feelings on marriage. Having seen some marriages that were less than ideal, I grew up thinking that I probably wouldn’t get married. Marriage wasn’t really a goal of mine. I’m a firm believer that a person can be happy and whole without being married.

When I first met John, I certainly didn’t entertain ideas of marrying him. It wasn’t love at first sight. In fact, we were each dating other people when we met. (If you must know, I was dating his roommate.)

But I think I can pinpoint the moment I fell for John. It was over a year after I first met him, and some time after both of our earlier relationships had ended. The moment I fell for John was was, remarkably, right after I fell on my butt.

It was the winter break of my Junior year of college, late December. I had just returned to the US from a semester abroad in Brazil. I went over to my by-that-point-ex-boyfriend’s house to catch up. John was still one of his housemates, and hearing that he was home, I went up to his room say hello. His door was open, and I poked my head in to say hi. Then I glanced at the papers he had taped up on his door, a long vertical banner of dot-matrix printouts. (Did I mention this was 1991?) First was a set of Dan Quayle quotes. Below that was a bunch of quotes taken from insurance claims. I started reading. I snickered. I laughed some more. I read some more. I bent down to read the pages lower down on the door, eventually squatting to read those at knee-level. I read: “I saw a slow-moving, sad-faced old gentleman as he bounced off the hood of my car.” I tried to read it out loud, but was laughing so hard I couldn’t. I laughed so hard I lost my balance, squatting there on my heels. I fell right onto my butt.

You might think that this would be somewhat of an embarrassing turn of events for a reunion with an acquaintance. And perhaps it would have been, except that John, seeing me laughing so hard at things that he had found funny enough to print out and hang on his door, was laughing along with me. And while he may well have been laughing at me for falling on my ass in his doorway, I didn’t mind. I was laughing too hard. And when our eyes met, both of us laughing at the quotes and my clumsiness, I’m pretty sure that was the moment that I knew I had found someone I wanted to know better.

We didn’t get married that night. But we did start seeing more of each other. Then we moved in together. Got engaged. Bought a house. We made some attempts to plan a wedding, but were foiled by various scheduling conflicts with key family members.

We ended up getting married by a Justice of the Peace eight years into our relationship, and shortly before I planned to quit my job. (Die-hard romantic that I was, I wanted to have health insurance.) We’d had a long engagement, and what with living together and owning a house together, even, I felt that we were largely as committed as we needed to be. What with my luke-warm views on the institution of marriage, I didn’t see how being married would change our relationship. I remember commenting to an acquaintance, a married woman a few years older than me, something to that effect. She replied: “Marriage does change things. It gets better.”

I have to say that she was right. It was a subtle shift, but having our commitment be officially recognized made things a bit more settled, and a bit more comfortable. And when we had our party (several years later), the wedding ceremony to celebrate our marriage surrounded by our friends and family, it got even better.

Sometimes, when you are lucky enough to find someone who shares your sense of humor and your worldview, someone you love passionately and who loves you right back, someone who lets you feel at home with yourself, that conventionalized connection marriage gives you makes you feel just a little bit more together and a little bit more at home. It’s a declaration to the world that you know who’s going to be there to help you up when you fall on your butt.

—

This post is dedicated to Flutter, a remarkably strong, strikingly beautiful woman with a great sense of humor, to share in her joy at getting married. Flutter, I wish you and Clay many happy years full of love, health, comfort and humor. May you laugh your asses off together with abandon. (Emily has invited those who know Flutter to join in on the celebration. To see more of the well-wishing, go see her post “Mawigge is what brings us together today.”)

This post is also dedicated to John, love of my life, who has been there for me, on more occasions than I can count, when I have fallen on my butt (either literally or figuratively) over these past 20+ years.