Random Meanderings at Middle Age

Sticky Posted to the Top because I will really need to work hard to do this!

MySpace Countdowns

irena sendler: rest in peace and thank you.

She saved our past,present and future.  She did so at great personal risk and will be remembered as an angel always. Irena Sendler was a woman who did the right thing simply because it was the right thing, not the easy thing and 2500 children survived to have children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren because of that.

What has always moved me about her story is her efforts to preserve the true names of the children she saved,and her commitment to seeing them united with Jewish family after the war.  Of course, most of their families were executed in the camps.

May her memory be for a blessing.

Um..yeah..whatever.

• Walking in the woods yesterday we spotted some lovely signs of spring: common violet, bloodroot, Solomon's seal (it really looked like it anyway),and more.  I really want to learn more about wildflowers so that I can name them better.  There were also frogs in the vernal pond and the requisite chipmunks, squirrels and birds.  By the way, my backyard turkeys have been completely dwarfed by a friend in a nearby town who has a fox and her kits living under her porch.  She brought some beautiful pictures of them to a meeting we both attended yesterday.
• I am almost to the point in my top down cardigan where I will be dividing for sleeves and the like.  If I keep this up I may actually get to wear it in May (I have probably doomed it now).  No pictures yet, so really this not all that exciting news for most reading.  I should punch up my knitting related posting with drama but am not certain how.
• This is Making Light's thread on Little Brother, or rather it is the spoiler-free thread, they also have one with spoilers ( Thoroughly spoiled Little Brother)
• Why I shop at Target: I love Boden, I really do and all the other cool sites for clothes for young boys (my daughter actually loves Target too, but at 13 she is in control of her clothing acquisitions) , but man they are expensive.  If you look at the two t-shirts I have here the one with the recycle symbol is the Boden, it costs $24 + shipping.  At Target I can get similar shirts (such as the one pictured) for $9.99 and less, and cargo shorts at Target are less then half of what they cost at Boden.  And I have to say, my 9 year old boy could are less and come the end of summer he'll have worn through or outgrown it all anyway.
• You know, my heart really isn't in this post.

Stop reading my blog and go read...

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow.  I mean it.  Read it now.  Have your friends read it now.  And your kids, especially your kids.  It's marketed as YA but it is not a children's book.  It is an important book that shines a real light on the liberties we are giving up and have given up  since 2001, but it's also well-written and has kick-ass characters.

I'm not a great book reviewer and a quick google will bring up countless reviews.  If you can't afford it, no worries, the free download is HERE.

What are you waiting for?  Move along now, don't you have some reading to do?

Edited to include this quote from an essay by Andrew "bunnie" Huang,

    "We win freedom by having the courage and the conviction to live every day freely and to act as a free society, no matter how great the threats are on the horizon."

Random blah.

Oh let's see:

• I'm feeling a little yucky again, I think my policy of the past year or so to let some of the health stuff slide until the mythical "after the Bat Mitzva" is catching up with me.  I had kind of enjoyed pretending I didn't have to deal with the liver and hernia stuff and so really let things slide and mostly ignored any twinges or reminders I got.  No worries, I have appointments scheduled, labs and MRIs to do and the like and fully expect all to be well or at least deal withable.  I'm funny in that I tend to whine about the relatively small stuff and rarely talk to anyone about the really serious stuff.  I could anaylyze why that is but what's the point?  I suspect is a combination of denial and not wanting to sound too TMI (it's one thing to make a remark about a low glucose level, or the flu or allergies, another to give an in-service on hepatic tumors to your friends, family and acquaintances) 
• I have come fascinated with Bento Boxes, not enough to purchase the boxes or make little cute lunches but I love reading about them.  Sometimes I wish I was '"that mom", the one who does make the adorable bento box lunches and hand-stitches every organic cotton frock their child is wearing and well...I'm not. 
• So,Iron Man rocked, if you go don't forget to stay through the credits.  It occurs to me that I have been a comic book geek for almost 37 years now.  My first love was Legion of Super Heroes.  I adored that comic and was completely involved in the lives of he team.  Now, I can see the kind of wholesome kitchiness the classic Legion of my youth embodied, but at the time I thought it was full of drama.  I really did, little did I know that a few years later I'd be sucked into the Marvel universe and the drama that was The Avengers, X-Men, Swamp Thing, The Dark Knight and Iron Man (and Dare Devil and well, you get the idea). 
• I'm happily zipping along with the cardigan (no frogging, no drama) and my Monkey socks (no frogging, no drama).  What have we learned?  Nothing, we all didn't know before, make sure you have the right yarn, the right pattern and the right frame of mind for the project.  A friend showed me her copy of Making Mathematics with Needlework-it will end up on my shelf.  If you're a math geek and like crafts this book will really excite you.  I am horrible with mathematics on a practical level, but on a theoretical level love mathematical concepts and look forward to reading it in depth.
• It's been a wet rainy week and somewhat cold, but banal as it sounds the gardens are happy.  My jack-in-the-pulpit is in full bloom and looks lovely as does my alba bleeding heart.  I have some perennials on order from High Country (ordered with a friend for the reduced shipping).  Even before those come and get planted the beds are filling in nicely and last years moving about of peonies, divided plants and the like seems to have done well.  Um..there is still some mulch left to distribute...let's just blame the rain shall we?
• Work goes well, and soon my Sundays will return to me as we wind down the religious school year.  It's odd, on the one hand it's great to have the whole week end back and to not have to be out before 7am on Sunday and all. It's also easier to get a lot of stuff done without all the hustle and bustle of the kids,teachers, classes and all...and yet, I always kind of miss them and miss hearing the kids doing their thing and running about.  It gets a little too quiet.  It was a year of new things, new boss, new database, and more but it all came together and as I've mentioned umteenth times, the Bat Mitzvah as well.  I honestly can't believe this school year flew by the way it did.  I'm stunned.
• Em mainly uses her camera to take pics of her bird.  Hundreds of them.  I love Pippin too, but how many pictures do we need of one cute, green, fat parrot?  It appears, from my daughter's perspective, you can never have enough.

• What we are reading? Em is reading Twilight, the first book in Stephanie Meyer's YA vampire/romance series.  I read them all on my Kindle, she's insisting on reading hard copies and bought the first one in pb.  Noah is reading How to Twist a Dragon's Tail.  I have dropped everything (even Fowler's Wit's End) to read Cory Doctorow's, Little Brother, I will likely be unable to put it down and this does not bode well for any sleep tonight!  I am also catching up on my trashy para-normal romances both in hard copy and on the kindle and on all my journals and magazines.  John is rereading something he read before..he does that a lot, I don't get it. Once in awhile I'll reread something but usually there's so much new stuff to read I 'm reluctant to take the time.  One of these days I should bore you all (all 3 of you) with my treatise on why different people read and what they get out of it.  All I know is I am delighted that all 4 of us here in Random Central are compulsive readers, we talk to each other at the dinner table..while reading our books or papers or what have you.  We read in bed. We read while waiting and in restaurants. We read on the beach and when we rest while hiking or biking.  We read in the yard.  We just read.  There are worse addictions.
   

Gobble.

We had a visitor to the bird feeders on our deck today.  He ran away when the camera came out but we got two fuzzy shots.

Extreme Musical Chairs...

...just received 300+ pics from the Bat Mitzvah (a month and a half ago?  Can that be possible?).  I had to share a couple from the cutthroat musical chairs that the adults were involved in.  I am on the floor because my beloved cousin hipchecked me got to the chair at the same time I did and pushed me to the ground I fell. I like to think I did so with great panache and dignity. 

Down at the edge, round by the corner...

• It appears that Yes, is on tour again.  I noticed a full page ad in the Sunday Times.  It's seems so strange to see all these old bands on tour again, it's like I'm still in High School.  Along that vein, Richard Thompson will be heading up the Lowell Summer Music Series at the end of June and I don't suppose it surprises anyone reading this to hear that I'll be there. There's a whole lot of great music there this summer, but if I can only afford one or 2 it will be this one and likely John Hiatt (although the Indigo Girls and Lucinda Williams and Levon Helm and-and-and well, you get the idea). Hmm..all this thinking about those bands from the past has put , ELP's Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends... on endless loop in my brain. 
• I spent most of yesterday trying to shake the cold I got from Noah (and that's my plan for today as well). I woke up from a nap to discover the kids helping John mulch.  The pile you see in this picture is more or less the size you're looking at, as I snapped these pictures from the bedroom window towards the end of their working on it.  I got 3 yards of mulch dumped.  We have mulched the beds in front, on the side and in back...although I have determined a couple of more spots we could mulch I suspect we will be dumping the rest around the big rock in back of the house.  It does help keep down some of the growth there and looks nice from the kitchen.  Still, it's as though this pile grows again every night.   
• At some point I decided that I could be a couch potato outside as easily as inside and sat in the screen house with Em to read, listen to my knitting podcasts and knit.  Em was alarmed to hear me laugh periodically when listening to Lime and Violet.  it appears that mothers are not permitted to giggle and certainly not to laugh out loud in their backyard where "anyone could hear".  If she isn't careful and if the ELP ear worm persists she'll return home today to hear me singing "There behind the glass is a real blade of grass.  Be careful when you pass..move along, move along".  That'll show her!
• I wound up 3 more balls of the Flash for the not-Capri I am knitting.  I really like Knitting Pure and Simple's pattern for this cardigan and it's coming along nicely.  I am concerned about having enough and may make a trip to the warehouse this week to see if more of it is remaindered there.  I should have enough.  A friend suggests knitting the sleeves when I divide for them and then continuing on with the body (it's knit in one piece to the sleeves, top down) and that way, worst case scenario it's a little shorter than planned.  I think this may be the way to go.
• I made an amazing loaf of bread yesterday.  I used the European Peasant bread recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day (it uses rye, whole wheat and white flour) but added crushed walnuts and sunflower seeds.  Yum!  For dinner tonight I'm making Pecorino Chicken from Martha Stewart's, Everyday Food Magazine.  lately, this has been my go to magazine for cooking week day meals.  I rarely have a problem with the recipes and they are easy to adapt to my dietary needs.   

Right now though I am going to go back to sleep and will away this cold I have.

Birdies...

and stuff.  Yeah, how original.

I was happy to finally get some shots at a few of my regular backyard feeder diners.  The goldfinches come in droves, usually in the morning and again at twilight.  The nuthatches and titmice follow, the blue jays chase them away and the mourning doves settle in for a bit soon after that.  The various woodpeckers and the cardinals come and go when they please and the finches and chickadees are always happy to eat and in the case of the chickadees they don't care if we are around.

Every morning I am awakened by the sounds of the birds outside as well as our 3 birds inside.  Whenever I travel and am away from the birds it seems strangely quiet and unnerving.

Knitting alert!
I completely frogged the Rowan sweater, Capris, that was giving me so much trouble.  I realized it was not meant to be.  I think that after restarting it a few times in order to get gauge, having to frog and redo the shaping over and over and still not liking the stitch definition it was time to admit the truth...this sweater was not meant to be.  I called a knitting friend (Hi Judy!) and frogged the whole damn thing while we chatted.  I have since cast one for another summer sweater, Knitting Pure and Simple's, Neckdown Summer Cardigan.  I have 12 skeins of flash I had picked up at the CEY warehouse in Lowell last year (at $2 a skein!) and it's looking great.  No problems so far and the yo increases make a nice decorative touch.  In fact if this sweater works out as nicely as I think it might I plan to make it in the salmon colored Jeannie I was going to make Capri in.  Once again the lesson we have all learned so many times in our knitting travels is reinforced: JUST FROG IT IF IT ISN'T WORKING!!
End knitting alert.

    The kids head back to school tomorrow, the kitchen needs restocking and I suddenly realize I seem to have Noah's cold/flu whatever he had this week.  So, I think all my plans for the day will trickle down to a nap, purchasing of groceries and more napping.  That's all I got!

Fishies...

and stuff.

Well, we had a fine time at the New England Aquarium last night.  While I will intersperse this post with some pictures from the visit I'm not planning on blogging about it very much.  There isn't a lot to say about a trip to the aquarium, a place we love, that I haven't already said.  We are glad we're members and get to go often.  The kids love the penguins.  Emily was especially happy to see the penguins again and reflect on her donation to sponsor one.  We learned a little more about why approaching seal pups that appear to be stranded (but in all likelihood are simply waiting for mom to come back with fish) is wrong and unsafe for the pup and for the human (it's also illegal).  We watched "our" beloved sea turtles meander about the giant tank.  You know..we had a fine visit to the aquarium.

    Nope.  That's not what I felt like blathering on about this morning.  This morning I felt like delving into the nature of blogs and blog like entities (such as Live Journal, MySpace etc) and how they can suddenly, within certain communities, all break out in a tizzy over one topic.  I'm a knitter and my first experience with this was in the context of a shawl called Charlotte's Web. Almost simultaneously it seemed as though every knitter blogger was purchasing Koigu by the dozens and making this shawl.  I had to make it.  I had to acquire the koigu to make it.  I wanted to blog about it like all the other "cool" knit bloggers and if you read that post you see I was in way over my head. I had never knit lace before and had dived into a project based on the infectious enthusiasm I caught reading about it. This still happens, I have a wonderful winter sweater I wear for mucking about outdoors when it's very cold, it was a Knitty pattern called Banff.  I have yet to knit a pair of Jaywalker's but I have the pattern.  In the case of knitting obsessions it's pretty harmless, in the worst case it leads to uncontrolled stash enhancement, but that's a lost battle anyway.

In other contexts though all sorts of mini dramas (or in the case of the awful MySpace Suicide a larger tragedy that brought on a huge public condemnation of the adults involved) spring up and become all you read about for a day or two and then die away.  It's odd because in some cases it really seems like a virus.  You read about something in the blog or journal of someone who you would expect to have an interest in said topic, then someone else links to it and once in awhile it just takes off with everyone and their mother chiming in with their thoughts and opinions.  Often this takes the original posters meaning or intent and runs with it into whatever directions fits the agenda of the person now writing.  The latest was a mostly LJ thing and involved the playing (by adults) of a game that involved consensual and clothed touching of breasts link here to brief description with further links to original post and many comments (many,many comments)).  This game happened at a convention or two and on the surface the concept of grown people indulging in what to me is a childish concept is baffling  but my attitude is that as long as no one makes me have to be involved than I don't care.  Now, before I expand on this, the thing that amazed me is the huge numbers of comments, blog posts, comments on those blogs etc related to this "game", most of them by people not present.  The range of comments  were what you might expect, some thought the whole thing silly but harmless, some thought it was akin to assault and raised the specter of  patriarchal privilege (and the assumption that woman who chose to participate clearly were unable to say no to the (literal) "man".) As I said, I simply felt that it was childish, I myself would not have been the least bit interested in participating and that I believe that such "games" or any kinds of excessive adult PDA should not take place in public spaces where non participants are forced to be a part of things.  What amazed me though was how many people managed to ride off into rhetorical sunsets of rage and outrage even with repeated posts by the original poster and participants that refuted or laid to rest their "concerns".  For 24 hours it appeared, that on LJ at least, this topic was the only one I was reading about.

I kind of love this stuff...not the particular topic, or knitting pattern, or political rant etc, but I love seeing some innocuous topic go from one bloggers little space on the internet and into the minds of so many people.  It's fascinating, it's often a train wreck when it concerns things like the above kerfluffle and for all the good or ill it can engender it is a way that community happens and evolves, even a virtual community.

    In the more benign and good sense, you have an "A list" blogger like the

Yarn Harlot , who started out posting (and they are funny, instructive and insightful posts) about her knitting life and is now a published author who packs in halls when she is on tour and who, via her blog has raised over $430,000 for Doctors Without Borders (all from knitters who read her posts, or read posts about her posts from others).  There are blogs like Making Light, which not only always have something interesting to say, but where the commenters are as erudite and readable as the posters. There are bloggers who are struggling with something (infertility, diabetes, cancer, loss etc) and find others with whom they can share their thoughts,dreams,obstacles and triumphs without worrying about boring them with too much information or minutia.  When I was adopting my first child 13 years ago this online world was still in it's infancy, but the support I got was invaluable and some of the people I originally "met" online are still friends and we marvel at how naive we were then (about parenting) and how much things have changed.

    From a personal level? This week has had a few difficulties that I won't bore you with but that have stressed me a great deal.  I fully expect to get a handle on them in some fashion or another (mainly because I don't really get a choice-the joys of being a grown up) but when I have a sleepless night or suddenly feel as though I can't cope, the internet and my blog roll is there to amuse and enlighten and sometimes annoy me.  I can get  advice from knitters about my silly knitting issues, over involve myself in some mini tempest in a teapot and so put aside thinking about my own troubles for a few moments, I can discover that a friend of mine has great news that lifts my spirits and I can pray for the health of a friend who's news is not as great.  I get to catch up on all the babies who are 13 year old girls now and the long (and yeah it's a cliche, but, strange,) trip it's been from those villages in China to our homes in America today.  I check in with other mom's of young boys and we commiserate about how the current climate in education is doing them a disservice (a post for another day). The internet counts.  It's a real community.  I don't mistake time spent here for time with my family, friends and others in the face-to-face world and I am pretty good about limiting my time, but it is a community with all the good will, negativity and cynicism, hard work and benign neglect that most communities are made up of. all that said..I won't miss it too much when my time with it dwindles to a trickle during our time on the Cape in the summer.  Last summer, it only took a couple of days for the kids and I to adapt to no reliable internet access, minimal tv access and the like.  I look forward to more summer nights on the couch reading or at the kitchen table playing board games.  The internet IS a community and it's a valuable one but my family and time spent together is often all the community I need.

I got mostly nothing.

...and yet, I feel a strange need to blog anyway.  Sorry.

• I think these Sephardic style charoset "balls" were a big hit this year.  I basically pureed dried apricots,dates and figs in the food processor, along with a dash of ginger and a splash of red wine (Red Truck if you need to know).  I rolled them into balls and then in sesame seeds.  They were rather addictive I must say and tasted quite yummy on matza (or as my youngest nephew calls them, "crackers", he liked the "big crackers")

• Still, the biggest hit was, as always, the chicken soup with matza balls. My brother's children were very eager for their matza ball soup, something they only get at our house and apparently something they really like!! I had no idea!  John has, in recent years, taken over my recipe and makes the soup.
• In general, Passover was very nice.  I hosted the Seder on the first night.  This year it was just family, I had been worried that Noah's chicken pox might be a longer term problem than it was and also, this year, the holiday fell at the start of spring vacation and many folks are traveling.
• The second night Seder was held at a friends home.  This was a lot of fun, in addition to the creative seder designed by the host, all the kids present created Passover related "commercial breaks" to perform.  Em and Noah worked up a routine (which I have on video but have no idea how to embed in a blog) in which they claim that Matza has many more uses than one might suppose, including enhancing one's martial art techniques (at this point Em held a piece and Noah karate chopped it into crumbs), the punchline: Matza-It's not just for Pesach anymore.
• We did more biking on Sunday and Monday.  6 miles on Sunday and just 2 yesterday as the trail we went to totally kicked my butt in the hill department.  Sigh.  I knew we were in trouble when the first mile was so easy!  Eventually you have to turn around and head back up hill.  I was smart and suggested we turn around after a mile or so because I knew it would get hard.  I've been having some trouble with my glucose going low without much warning lately (probably because I'm getting an extra hour or so of biking in a day and I need less insulin and it takes time to adjust all that) and figured that I wouldn't push it.  As it was I was pretty wiped from the hills and the low blood sugar when I got back home and slept for 2 hours.
• Which brings us to today.  I'm hoping to convince the kids to head into Boston for lunch and a trip to the ICA or some other museum.  I'm not feeling great so if they really want a lazy pj day I might not fight them too hard on it.  It is my anniversary but I haven't made any plans (and I know John hasn't because when I pointed out to him it was our anniversary he was clearly surprised).  I will point out that the traditional gift for the 13th Anniversary is Lace and so maybe the kids won't mind if I pop into Woolcott's for a skein of laceweight?
• Well, it's not even 9am and the kids are sleeping so I think I'll get off line and do some reading.  Michael Chabon's. maps and legends is wonderful.  I have always enjoyed reading essays of any kind (although personal essays are probably my favorite) and this collection is completely engrossing in that he covers genres (such as the graphic novel, comics, Phillip Pullman's novels etc) that I enjoy to begin with.  I want to say a little something about the actual physical book as a physical object though, it is stunning.  The dust jacket is in 3 layered pieces and forms both a whole small mural and 3 separate illustrations.  Jordan Crane has created a beautiful work of art that makes buying a book a necessity.  I speak as a lover of my Kindle and it's ability to give me so much reading in a small package-if more publisher's would take the time to make the actual book a work of craftsmanship then we will both put it on our kindles AND buy it for our bookshelves.