Not everyone wears long johns?

Last night I went out with a group that included a recent transplant from Texas, who’s trying to adapt to the whole winter-weather-world. After everyone discussed cold weather car maintenance issues (which frankly, we’ve never really paid attention to), I wanted to ensure she knew about the really important day-to-day stuff, and asked if she had long underwear. She did, and we hiked up our pant legs to compare her cotton to my synthetic silk, while half of the rest of the group looked on in disbelief. A long-term resident (who had been complaining about always feeling cold) said in surprise, “I never wear long underwear.” She had some for camping, but that was it.

I’d been thinking that pulling on long underwear nearly every day was just a standard part of life in the Northeast, but remembered that I didn’t really start wearing it until college, when it was necessary because of the amount of time I spent walking outside. (Unless I wore my flannel-lined jeans instead.) After getting in the habit, I just kind of figured everyone did.

his mother's son

I noticed that there was a request form on one of C's library books from school. While I have the public library set aside virtually all of our books for us, I didn't even know C could do that at school. Turns out he saw the book at the book fair but couldn't afford it. I'd like to know whether he pitched a fit and the staff found a way to appease him, or if he came up with the idea himself.

This is the first time I've ever seen a really good raffle prize.

Maybe I should make C stuffed buildings for Christmas. He never played with dolls or stuffed animals, so maybe he needs a cuddly inanimate object to love.

I read some books

Mothers and Other Monsters, Maureen McHugh

I haven't been reading short stories over the past few years, but this collection made me reconsider. Sci fi/ horror/ alternate history are all represented, but for the most part as means to her ends rather than important elements in their own right. The major themes I was intrigued by were of choice and culpability, but she also focuses on genetic engineering/ medical decision-making. The author has the rare ability to write tight not-of-our-world stories without wasting words with tedious explanation, and to know when to end without giving too much away. Highly recommended.

The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion

The author discusses her mental processing of events in the year after her husband died and her daughter simultaneously became seriously ill. In some parts she does a good job of conveying the illogic of grief, and acknowledges the degree of literal insanity which I suspect is normal after a serious loss. But within the first 20 pages, she managed to alienate herself from me through casual references to the resources of the rich and famous that she drew upon in this period, and it only got worse as the book progressed. I'm not sure if she was intentionally namedropping as a way to keep herself from feeling pitied, or if she's so out of touch as to not realize that her lifestyle is nothing like most of ours, or if she just didn't care about the latter. But she inhabits a completely different world than the rest of us, and her seeming unawareness of her level of privilege made me dislike her as a person. Which of course makes an autobiographical book less powerful.

An Unconventional Family, Sandra Bem

Discusses the author's "experiment" in egalitarian childrearing. I would've been more interested in explicit discussions of the largest barriers they faced and how they overcame them. But it was more autobiographical, and instead went into (painful) detail about the woes of getting tenure. I also realized that while the author and her then-husband may have been very cutting-edge when they got married, they're not to me. I'm always pretty shocked when women don't seem to see themselves as equal partners in a marriage, even though a surprising number of my friends have seemed to think nothing of, say, moving and giving up an entire community they've built for themselves to enable their husbands to take a different job, or care for kids while their husbands work 80-hour weeks, or manage all of his relationship responsibilities (like buying anniversary gifts for his siblings). If anything, my marriage is more egalitarian than theirs was.
So an interesting skim, but not really enlightening.

The Atrocity Archives, Charles Stross

Turns out that nasty creatures from different dimensions are more reliably summoned through computer-assisted mathematical computations than via traditional methods. Turing figured this out, and governments around the world have been covering it up ever since. The protagonist works for the secret government agency assigned to prevent a demon takeover. The intrusion of bureaucracy in fighting the denizens of Cthulu is pretty funny, and I'm just geek enough to appreciate the system admin-speak which dominates the first third of the book. The writing is overly pulpish for my taste, and could use editing, but it's only occasionally intrusive. Good airplane read.

Two Girls Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill

I just didn't get it. There were good parts, but as a whole, I never figured out the point, and the conflicts it gave me to think about weren't too interesting to me. It might've been better for me if I were more interested in Ayn Rand, but I'm not even so sure of that.

A came down with a nasty stomach bug Thursday night, so we had to cancel our monthly potluck. This was especially sad because a lot of people we hadn't see in a while were planning to come, and our next one is at a busy enough time of year that it's unlikely most will be able to make it then. I hate to think that we'll have to hope to catch up in 2008; I've never liked having such busy schedules that seeing local friends is a rare occasion.

While no longer especially ill, A wanted nothing to do with going outside on Saturday, which was a bit of a problem because we were hosting a work circle with outdoor projects. She watched more television that morning than she had all together over the previous three years. Which we weren't particularly proud of, but it reminded us that videos were an incredibly powerful tool for Getting Things Done, and one reason our neighbors are more productive than we are is because their kids watch several hours of TV each day. Maybe if we plant the kids in front of the television for a week next spring we can get the chimney pointed after all!

redistricting

Because I know everyone is fascinated with this process- at last week's elementary school redistricting meeting, all five scenarios presented had C switching from his current school to one which is significantly larger and not within walking distance. Not the end of the world, but also less than ideal- walkability is important to us, especially since we only have one car, and he has enough social issues without switching schools next year. I contacted everyone I could think of to try to change the boundary lines, but figured it was a lost cause. But at tonight's meeting, it looked like they're going to make the change I requested! Apparently tracking down the e-mail addresses of everyone involved and knowing someone on the committee made a difference. I'm so glad I put in the time to get this fixed. It's still not 100% definite, but I'm optimistic.

More miracles of makeup.

A's birthday

Birthday walk at Blossom's

Roots and Shoots

A and friend at Five Rivers

Halloween Parade at School

Here are a couple images from A's first Halloween Parade at school...

spooky tales

Huck Finn's Warehouse and More!

The kids and I met some friends at the Corning Preserve last weekend, and on the way home C spied a sign for Huck Finn's and asked what it meant. I was perhaps a little too enthusiastic in my description- both the kids immediately begged for the Huck Finn's Experience. Conveniently, we were only blocks away, so off we went.

I've been thinking about getting A a new bed for her birthday, since she's ougrowing the toddler mattress. So after letting them rock all the cradles and sit in all the child-sized chairs and gawp at the cardboard displays intended to represent books or computer monitors*, I directed them to the bed section.

I've always been a big fan of beds with trundles and lofts with an entire bedroom's worth of furniture underneath. Turns out the kids are, too. Huck Finn's has an exciting selection of lofts with futons, and desks, and closets, and shelves, and drawers, and every possible combination thereof. The kids ran from bed to bed, climbing ladders and exploring the built-in tents and slides and cupholders, until they picked their favorites. We all decided that this style was the coolest because instead of having a ladder to the top, it has steps that pull out so they also function as drawers.

* C: Why do they have that there?
S: Because otherwise people might buy the shelves and think they're supposed to put salamanders on them.
C: (concerned) But salamanders need to live near water!
S: Exactly.

Who is the pumpkin king?

little cat A

Halloween Haunts

A's birthday is coming up-

so we're figuring out which ornaments to make for her birthday wreath this year. I'm deciding between a doll or a backpack. How tiny a purple princess can I sew....

At the playground on Tuesday, A filled all the buckets from the sandbox with wood chips and carefully lined them up on a bench. Thankfully no other kids showed up to demand seating or sand toys.

I can’t decide how to manage the kids’ use of public space. I would lean toward letting all but the most obnoxious behavior go, but the parents at Bethlehem playgrounds tend to micromanage the kids’ play. Disapproving comments have been made about rather innocuous behavior: A using trucks outside of the sandbox, C putting wood chips on the slide, both kids climbing up the slide. I understand complaints about their more annoying tricks- monopolizing one of the slides for an hour, hauling buckets of water into the sandbox. But even then I don’t know when to intervene. Yes, I understand you don’t want your kid to get muddy, and it’s hard for her to watch someone else making a moat when she’s not allowed to do so herself- but 75% of the sandbox is still available for her use. (Pouring water down the slide is something I don’t allow, because that ruins the slide’s attractiveness for everyone.) Yes, I understand that taking turns is important, but your kid can take his turn going down after my kid climbs UP the slide. (I was probably lax in letting C sit on a slide reading for an hour last weekend, but given that there were multiple identical slides and that we were at a less rigidly monitored Albany playground, I gave up trying to make him move.) A lot of my enforcement of playground etiquette depends on our exact location, whether toddlers are present, and whether overbearing parents are watching, which means I’m pretty inconsistent. C responds just as poorly to arbitrary restrictions as he does to inconsistency, though, so I’m sort of going with the do-what-you-want-as-long-as-no-one-complains-loudly rule.

This is really strange. It switches direction each time I look at it, but I can't make it switch if I try.

cargo trike