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Pickney Gone…
Maya’s gone to Science Camp for the week…or, truthfully, she will have gone in a few hours, right now she’s still asleep in bed. But once I take her to school today, she’s off for a week of hiking in the woods, exploring tidepools, looking at different biomes and ecosystems…fun fun fun. I don’t know if most states/areas do Science Camp, but I gotta say, it was the BEST week of my whole elementary school education. It was the first time I was away from family for that long, which is a pretty liberating feeling. No homework or regular school stuff to do, which is also awesome. Nature, hanging out…
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Sad tales of ears…
(See the tasteful little earrings on her ears? Not the ones in question today…) Anybody remember how Maya got her ears pierced back in August? How I struggled with the decision, because I wasn’t allowed to pierce my ears until I was 16, and here she was, 10, and I had to decide whether this was one of those things where things had changed since I was that age, or not? How we decided to pierce the ears, but only little studs, no hoops or danglies to make her look older than she is? OK, so now you’re up to date. Well, since then, her ears got infected once, so…
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Congratulations to Big Sis!!
Today, Laluna’s eldest daughter, Big Sis, is graduating with her BA from Berkeley. We are all bursting with pride, as her hard work, dedication, and all around smartness are clearly paying off. Go, big sis, go! You rock!
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Winning an Argument Meme
The astute and hilarious Ploop has come up with a group meme, in which we discuss our methods of winning arguments, and link to his post. If you haven’t been to Ploop’s blog, Plooptionary, let me tell you that Ploop is able to explain concepts both trivial and complex through the use of charts and graphs, and has made me want to embrace the art of the Venn diagram. He tagged me to play, and I will happily dive in. First off, I must confess that when it comes to political arguments, I don’t often win. If you’re louder or meaner than me, or if you start quoting obscure factoids…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Does God Speak to You?
He doesn’t so much speak to me, as he sends me emails….like this one (see the return address…does this mean that God is processing loans in Russia? I thought he had a better gig than that?), that I received yesterday…what I kinda wish, though, was that he would use my home email, rather than my work one. It’s more personal, right?
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7 Things That Happened to Me as a Teen
(El Capitan – See number 5 – I got this picture from mariposa.yosemite.net.) I was tagged for this meme by Michelle over at Scribbit. She morphed it from one of those “7 random things about me” memes into the teen thing. I’ve written plenty of random stuff, so I’ll stick with her morph, as she intended.  So, here we go…7 things that happened to me as a teenager. 1. We finally stopped moving. This was huge, because prior to 6th grade, we moved pretty much every year (or we might as well have, because even if we stayed in one house, we were put in different schools). Moving that often taught…
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Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day is traditionally a day for honoring our mothers, our grandmothers, our wives if they are mothers. We do this by taking them to lunch or dinner, giving them flowers and gifts, making sure we understand how special they are to us, how important they are, and that we appreciate all of the things that they have given us, and what they do for us. It was interesting for me to find that the original purpose of Mother’s Day had nothing to do with Hallmark or FTD, crowded restaurants and long buffet lines…it had to do with searching for peace. Julia Ward Howe (hey, that’s almost my maiden name!)…
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Misc. Linky Love
Meandering around the blogosphere, dipping into worlds unknown, I come across some things too groovy not to share. So here we are, I’m sharing them. Because I’m nice like that. 1. Check out Ms. Mama’s bathroom. I’m seriously impressed, and Ted and I now want to pay for her and Snowflake to come out and give us a cool room like this sometime. Seriously cool. 2. Ally Bean has a groovy sign in her ‘hood. Check it out. 3. Curiosity Killer has a cautionary tale about what people do when they find out they only have a short time to live…and then find out that it was a mistake… 4.…
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Five Friday Thoughts
 Five things I’m thinking about today… 1. Even though we haven’t gotten any offers on our place yet, it’s really nice having it SO CLEAN all of the time. I kinda miss our stuff, but not the clutter, if that makes sense. 2. Is Locke really dead? Hmmm. Could be. Sure looked that way.  Doesn’t mean we won’t see him in ghosty form, does it? 3. We got Genevieve groomed last Friday, and she’s soooo soft and lovely. It’s different when we give her a bath at home, for some reason. I don’t know if it’s the conditioner they use, or if it’s the brushing, or the blow drying, or…
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A Witch!
(Picture from Salemweb.com) I’ve told you before of my famous and semi-famous relations, the cousins of ancestors, who turned out to be Presidents, Poets, writers, scholars, and adventurers. My straight lines of ancestry, though…those that don’t branch off into cousins and second cousins, are fairly low key. There are a lot of farmers, some school teachers, salesmen, construction workers, oil men, whatever. On my father’s side, the illicit rumor is that the Marquis de Lafayette had his way with one of George Washington’s slaves, and she had his child – one of my ancestors. Hard to prove without exhuming him and checking DNA, and I sort of prefer the rumor…
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Wordless Wednesday
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Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow…
A few weeks ago, I found myself at a crossroads. One of the complicated (well, it doesn’t HAVE to be complicated) moments in a woman’s life…to cut my hair short, or not to cut my hair short? Way back as a young child, circa preschool, I LOVED long hair, but I wasn’t allowed to have it. Once I was old enough to care for it myself,  I was allowed to grow my hair long (not that much later, actually). Since then, it’s been a back and forth, a dance, long hair for a few years, short hair for a few years, grow it out, long hair for a few years, always…
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Living in the 20th Century
A few days ago, C-Lo called me to ask me to make a recording for Ted’s birthday, which she then ran on the radio. Cool idea, right? Lots of his friends and coworkers wishing him a happy day on the air. 🙂 That C-Lo, she’s full of good ideas. Anyway, when she called, she thanked me for answering the phone. I thought that was an odd thing to say, but I just said, “You’re welcome”…she must have heard the confusion in my voice, because she explained that when she doesn’t recognize the caller ID, she often figures it’s a sales call, and won’t answer. Crickets. This is when I had to explain that…
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What’s in YOUR Freezer?
Part of getting our place ready for an open house has been cleaning and decluttering all of the places that nosy people might peek. Since the refrigerator and freezer are included in the sale of the place, I suppose they have a right to peek in there to see what kind of science experiments we might be growing. The answer? None. That is one CLEAN fridge and freezer, let me tell you. After cleaning out the freezer, and throwing away a lot of half eaten boxes of Popsicles, things like that, I was making Maya’s lunch yesterday, and I saw this lovely box of popcorn chicken. “Hey,” I thought, “I…