Beginning of an era

I set Madison up with a blog today. She's in seventh heaven changing around all the settings and posting.

I'm not going to link to it, partly because I don't want there to be any public links to it, and partly because, really, it's not that interesting. I mean, what's an almost-9-year-old going to say. Here's her first post:

first post
Okay, I am new, this is my first post, but hey the fact is I stopped spinning round wondering what to write is good right? oh come on! do I really have to write worth writing about? okay fine
I will. well it might be a good idea. what did you have for lunch? hey! that is to worth writing about! well never mind my next post will be okay!

bye!

I think, though, that this will be an excellent motivator for getting her to write. I know it is for me.

Courtesy of Fiddler, I have a new song

Mess-maker, Mess-maker, make me a mess!

Tradition!

We've been watching the movie of Fiddler on the Roof after dinner the last couple of nights.

I am endlessly fascinated by having an adult experience of things I watched or read as a kid. Fiddler on the Roof is a good example.

We had the Zero Mostel record of the Broadway Show as a kid, and I know all the words to every song. I was in the show in a summer production when I was 16 (as Motel's mother, I had one line). I saw it on stage several times. So I knew that show.

I even thought I knew what it was about. Tradition, right? Sure. Now, the show is somewhat ambivalent about tradition, as are, I guess, a lot of people. But for sure, the show was about how letting the father choose the husband for the daughter was a tradition that was no longer useful in the early 20th century, and so would have to go.

Well, okay, fair enough. But the kid Me didn't understand at all about tradition. Well, my kids are in a really different position, with parents who are perfectly happy to Pause and Explain. In our house, Madison is the second biggest fan of the Pause button (David is the biggest fan). We do a lot of Explaining.

What doesn't get brought out in Fiddler is any real commentary on the issue of tradition per se. Yes, the girls end up marrying the man of their choice, even Chava, who marries the non-Jewish soldier...but that's where Tevye draws the line. I think the show is ambivalent about tradition (sometimes it sustains, and sometimes it gets in the way of real life), and that's about the only conclusion to draw.

What we here in the Ross house are thinking and talking about, though, is INTRINSICISM, the relevant issue vis-a-vis Tradition.

Now, don't get me wrong, we love traditions. Traditions, properly construed, are extremely valuable for a family, for kids. We do a Birthday of the Day. We pass the Oplotek at Christmas and give each other best wishes for the new year. We take the girls to the Highland Gathering in June and explore their Scottish heritage and listen to the bagpipes. We go to Brown's Berry Patch with our Cuban friends every Fourth of July to pick cherries and celebrate freedom.

Family traditions give kids a sense of security and confidence in what they can expect. They are soothing. They form a chain of memories, a solid base from which kids can extend themselves.

But! But.

Tradition simply for the sake of tradition is wrong. There must be a reason for any individual or family to adopt any particular tradition. Hear that? We don't make chrusciki simply because the girls are partly Polish, and that's what you're "supposed to do"--we make chrusciki because it's the most awesome pastry in the world, and we also enjoy the story about the girls' great-great grandmother Karolina that goes along with it. We don't eat pork on New Year's because the girls are Cuban -- in fact, they're NOT Cuban! But our dear friends are, and Tatiana's roast pork is delicious, and we think about what pork used to be able to mean to Cubans before the Revolution, and we think about the same things that Americans of Cuban descent think about when they eat their New Year's pork and mourn the fact that their families back in Cuba can no longer get meat.

So! Let's say it loudly:

SOME TRADITIONS ARE STUPID AND HORRIBLE AND SHOULD BE TOSSED OUT ON THEIR EAR!

And the ones that are empty or done for no reason are a waste of time and should be abandoned, too.

An unexamined life based mostly on tradition is not a life well-lived.

I am reminded of a talk I saw Marsha Enright give over 10 years ago, in which she advocated thinking about everything we do in daily life, down to the handshake, and having reasons for each thing. For most things, there IS a good reason; it's just important to be aware of it. It was a really good exercise.

So...examine your traditions, and make sure there's a good WHY for all of them.

You know you're busy when...

...you sigh with the sinful pleasure of taking two full hours to vacuum, Windex, wash, and Rain-X both cars. And take out all of the crap that's been accumulating in the glove compartment for years.

Maximum Ride

Madison's friend Max has enjoyed the Maximum Ride series of books by James Patterson, so last week I got Madison the first of the three that are out in paperback. She inhaled it, and so on Thursday we made a special trip to Barnes & Noble and got her the second and third. She read all day yesterday and finished both. Keep in mind that these are Young Adult books of 400 pages apiece.

She was in bed this morning rereading the end of the third book, and called to David as he passed her room.

"Hey, Dad!" she said. "Come here, I want to show you something."

She flipped to the back of the book where there was a sample chapter from the fourth book in the series, The Final Warning.

"Look, it says here: 'Now available in hardcover.' And, you know, they didn't just slap a title page on a hardcover book and sell that, there's an actual book."


(It loses something in the retelling, I'm afraid.)

The Final Warning is mostly checked out in the Monroe County Library system, but I've found a copy at a library in the city and we can hop in to get it this morning.

Just ugly naked people

Today's Birthday of the Day is the neoclassical French Painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, who was born in 1780.

This is his famous painting "La Grande Odalisque," from 1814. I remember it particularly from my freshman Art History class at college; apparently, Ingres loved a long, elegant back and neck, and would often lengthen the finished work with an extra vertebra or two.

David was talking about his subject matter being beautiful. "That's not beautiful, that's ugly!" proclaimed Madison.

"Ugly? Really?" David asked.

"It's a naked woman, Dad," she replied with heavily scornful emphasis, as though that should be obvious to everyone.

David -- who, I might point out, is a man -- just blinked in response.

I predicted it

I said on the phone to David as I was finally on my way home last week, "The girls have been so good that I really wouldn't be surprised if they relax a bit and start fighting with each other and complaining and fussing a bit when we're home."

Yep.

They spent the weekend kind of sniping at each other. Throwing (albeit minor) fits over nothing.

But I'm taking my observations last week to heart, and I'm not worrying about it. Managing things, of course, but without worrying about it. My kids are still the best.

Actually, Ella's whining may have been because she was coming down with a cold. She was up for hours last night and she and I are both really under the weather today.

If we have to be sick, it's so good to be home.

When I consider how actually bad things actually happen to some people, it's quite easy to maintain equilibrium, even when minor frustrations appear and kick at my shins. And no, it's not the ex-Catholic rising up in me and admonishing me that I have no right to be miserable when so-and-so has had it so much worse. Really, it's not that. Because I have known and loved people who have had actual tragedies and survived them, I draw on their strength and examples, and decide how I should be in the face of trouble. It has the effect of helping me maintain perspective.

Corn

Since Madison was born, I have had a (sometimes violently uncomfortable) sensitivity to raw corn. It took a while to figure out what was causing the problem, but we eventually narrowed it down.

Every summer or two, when corn season was at its height, I couldn't resist trying just a nibble to test whether it still made me sick.

It always did, even last year. Even the baby corn in Chinese food sent my digestive system into a hissy fit.

But this year, my problem seems miraculously to have disappeared. I tried a few bites about three weeks ago and I was fine. So, two weeks ago, I ate half an ear, because, you know, I couldn't resist, 'tis the season. Again, no problem. And then last week I had actual whole ears of corn on three separate occasions, because everyone served it to us while we were away friend- and relative-hopping, and lo and behold, no reaction whatsoever.

I had some again last night. I'm fine today. Go figure. It's almost as if parts of my anatomy were saying, "Gosh, she's turning 40 soon. Let's console her a bit and give her back the corn."

I wish medical science would catch up and explain the vicissitudes of the human body, but I'm not holding my breath.

Home

I'm...home. Yes.

We did have two days at the Jersey shore, though, last weekend, in the middle of our adventure. And just to show that actual fun was actually had, here is a photo of the girls with their cousins on my cousin's boat in Bayville.



We had lots of lovely dogs on this trip. Needless to say, it only inflamed the girls' desire for one of their own. That's Brandi, the dog that wears a life jacket on the boat and rides on a boogie board.



I will say this: I do love that Subaru. So I'm glad I got it fixed and we have a few more years out of it. Especially because as expensive as another motor was, it was a small fraction of the cost of a new Subaru. I will take better care of it than I have been doing, because I think that I had skimped a little on maintenance, and the mechanic could tell.

On the other hand, right now I want to take that Subaru exactly nowhere. It's still too full, anyhow. I must unpack. Unpacking is easier than packing. And you're not worried that you're forgetting anything.

Staying positive here in the Super 8 Motel

We're here in Kingston for one more night.

I hope.

The mechanic thinks he can finish the car tomorrow. Which is good because I returned my rental car this afternoon.

The kids have been SOOOOO good. I bought the little goddesses books this morning at Barnes & Noble. If there is one thing I have learned from this trip, it is that I have two kids who, when the chips are down, will go with the flow and stay cheerful and flexible--they'll just follow my lead. So what if they occasionally get a little crabby and whiny when they're at home? I no longer have to worry that somehow they'll turn out to be whiny adults. Because, already, at 7 and 8, they can do it right when it's important.

In the past, some of the force of my insistence that they not act like whiny kids has come from my determination not to raise whiny adults. People who give in to their kids' whining are doing them no service, certainly. I loathe whiny adults. But now, really, I know that I don't have to worry about Madison and Ella. This week has been great proof that they've already got this pretty much under control. It's not that I won't point it out in the future when they are whiny...of course I will...but I can do it with a more relaxed attitude, and a smile. What a load off my mind!

Still stuck

I'm still stuck downstate. I got a cryptic email from the mechanic which included the phrase "talk to you in a few days." But my rental car is up today. My plan for this afternoon is to plop myself and the kids in the mechanic's place and have the girls make sad sheep's eyes at them and talk about how much they miss their daddy and how they wish they could finally go hoooome.

Well, I predicted an adventure

It has been some adventure. We are still in the middle of our trip, but I hope the adventure aspects are over.

Monday: Whacking at rocks with hammers in the rain to try to discover Herkimer Diamonds. Kind of fun in a muddy, physical, futile sort of way. You have to be in a certain mood to spend a lot of time hitting rocks in a search for tiny clear crystals.



I left my driver's license there, though, by mistake taking along three hammers. Didn't realize it until that night when I was camping, two hours away. I called them Tuesday and got my driver's license number just in case I was stopped by a cop. The significance (and prescience) of this move will be clear below.

Monday night to Wednesday morning: Imagine the three of us in a in a leaky tent meant for two people at 41 degrees in the rainy, rainy Adirondack Mountains. The nights were kind of hellish.



It was a tiny pup tent; Madison bagged the idea of sleeping in her own tent, which was the orange one, so we crowded into the green tent together for security and warmth. The girls bore up well. I had a hard time sleeping, what with simultaneous claustrophobia (not really able to turn over for fear of bumping into wet tent or sleeping child) and agoraphobia...just me and the girls out in a tent in the middle of nowhere, where there might be bears. I didn't tell them about the bears, then or ever.

The first night it rained so hard I put them in the car for a while and turned on the DVD player, for a Night at the Movies with David Attenborough's Life in the Freezer. It seemed that cold.

The days were fun, with friends...we went canoeing during a sunny intermission on Tuesday, which was great.



Consensus is: More camping? Sure! As long as there is a nice dry cabin somewhere with indoor plumbing, they're all for it. Especially if we're with Max and Henry again. And, preferably, Daddy. Mommy prefers to have Daddy along, too. Daddy would have come in handy. Though not in that tent.

Wednesday afternoon: On the way down the NYS Thruway to visit my friend Anne, the car engine died, violently. No accident or anything, but a sudden giving way with loud noises when I was traveling 65 mph. Got over to the side, girls safe, got car towed. Engine deader than vaudeville. I didn't have the presence of mind to take a picture of the car, because I was too busy charming the rental car people to take my BJ's photo card and the driver's license number I'd scrawled on a piece of paper the day before, in lieu of an actual driver's license. It WORKED. I think it was because I was a cheerful confident lady far from home with two little kids and a dead car and it was a young, not-yet-cynical guy. I smiled and smiled at him.

Wednesday and Thursday, some relatively blissful camping out in the living room of my friend Anne's house, seeing her wonderful kids and generally getting absorbed into her busy, happy family. They're always so welcoming. Most of this time was spent on the phone with AAA, various car towing agencies, mechanics, etc. trying to find out what was up with my car, two hours north. Thursday, they found a used engine that would work with my Subaru Outback. Good thing, because I love that car and I would vastly prefer not to have to get a new one right now. Even with the 132,000 miles. The idea of never getting in that car again sent Madison on the edge of hysterics, she hates getting rid of anything. It looks like the car will be saved. But not until NEXT WEDNESDAY.

So I've been cooling my heels at various friends'. Tomorrow is my cousin's beach house for (I hope) a couple of days. Maybe some actually good photos where I'm actually relaxed. Then back up north. Fingers crossed that the car is actually ready on Wednesday, but of course who knows. Meantime, work will be piling up.

And, I miss David.

I wrote this in my weekly email out to the KidsOutAndAbout.com list:

Have you ever noticed that sometimes, it's all in how you tell the story, both to your kids and to yourself?

Approaching a stream of bad luck as an adventure, a challenge that you can cheerfully work through together and talk about later really beats letting your kids see you frustrated or dejected. Like, yesterday...

I realized what a difference it makes to a situation to focus on the positive, especially while we were waiting on the side of the Thruway (BEHIND the car on the other side of the guard rail, not in front of it...really important tip, in case someone hits you). We were LUCKY, I told the girls. It was a beautiful sunny day in August rather than a snowy midnight in February, we had just come back into cell phone range, and the Thruway Authority came within half an hour. We read Calvin & Hobbes on the side of the road. I was able to rent a Kia nearby and load in our camping stuff. An adventure, truly. If I can find a replacement motor, so they say, they can fix it...next Wednesday. We shall see. In the meantime, we are getting by on sheer cheerfulness fumes, and the generous hospitality of an old friend--seven hours away from Rochester--and the fact that no one is sick or hurt, so nothing can be that bad.

I'm not sure when I'll have internet access again until Thursday. I will probably post an update...after I sleep, sometime near the end of the week.

It should be...an adventure...yeah, that's it!

Starting tomorrow morning, I'm off for a couple of days camping in the Adirondacks with the girls, and some good friends who have kids the girls' age. Tents. Two small pup tents. And, rain is forecast all three days, with highs in the 60s.

Rain. In a tent.

Good fishing weather, right? So I bought a couple of fishing rods (our friends are bringing theirs), and I really do hope that if actual fish are caught, that an actual grownup other than I would be okay with doing the actual removal from the hook and tossing them back in. I know, I'm an actual wimp.

We're starting off tomorrow going to the Herkimer Diamond Mines (if I write it up, trip is tax-deductible!) and seeing if we can dig some up. Then up north to the Adirondacks.

Then several days of meandering through the northeast visiting friends and my newly rediscovered family, who as it happens have a house at the Jersey shore.

I am so not packed. Why is packing so hard? I hate packing.

In other news, I am two chapters in to my next Frontier Team book, and a fair amount into the first round of editing the first book. When I get back from the trip, that's when I'll start querying publishers.

It's 9:30. Better get cracking. I mean, packing.

Dave Barry

Dave Barry is in China for the Olympics, writing columns so that the trip is tax-deductible.

Here is his first:

Dave Barry: Is this wall great or what?

Pretty much classic Dave Barry.

Happy Birthday, Amazing Randi

James Randi, champion of all things rational, turns 80 today. He is most famous for offering a (still standing) $1 million reward for anyone who can prove psychic ability, paranormal activity, or the existence of a supernatural.

Happy birthday, Amazing Randi. Madison really, really wants to meet you.

Actual camp, actual quiet

It's a week of actual camp for both girls, and actual quiet for me. Kind of blissful, although I feel guilty to admit it. I'm getting a lot done, although, let's be fair, I could do about 3/4 of this work even when they're around, as long as my head is down and they're doing things reasonably on their own. And, I only get until 2pm, when I have to leave to pick them up.

I'm glad Ella opted to go to camp, and not just because of the time this gives me. She's been having such a hard time doing classes and things that don't involve me since January ("I have that feeling in my belly, Mom"). I had originally decided not to send her, just Madison, to this terrific nature day camp this year that they've gone to every year, but she said in June that she'd like to go. So, good. And both girls have a lot of fun. (The people who run this camp are really great, they're naturalists who promote science, not politics -- this camp has less of an environmentalist focus than Madison's engineering camp did at the beginning of the summer.)

So why does it annoy me so much that every single morning this week, Ella asks me in that whining way if she HAS to go? It shouldn't, it really shouldn't, given that this is difficult for her and I'm the Extraordinarily Understanding Mommy. I swallow my annoyance and cheerfully say, "Yep! What are you going to wear today?" while thinking to myself, "Isn't it about time that you stop whining at me, you 7-year-old, you?"

Okay, back to work.

Pride in math illiteracy

Erin O'Connor, a professor in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania -- boy, I wish she'd been there in 1990 when I was scandalizing that department with my refusal to bow and scrape before the PC literary theorists and my insistence on publicizing this fact -- ponders the detrimental effect of the pride many humanities scholars take in their math illiteracy. From her blog:

Someone somewhere--perhaps even on this blog!--is going to say that Orzel is a self-important catastrophist and that it really does not make sense to blame those poor math-challenged, absent-minded humanists for a problem that might better be pinned on the usual suspects, the leaders academics love to hate. So let's just skip that step and talk about how it is the duty of college professors to embody an ideal of intellectual inquiry, awareness, curiosity, and ongoing learning; about how that requires a humbleness about what one does not know as well as a sober firmness about what one does know; and about how, within that obligation, a grandiose dismissal of entire fields of knowledge--as too hard, or too obscure, or whatever--such that the person doing the dismissing somehow elevates his or her academic cred with disciplinary colleagues, is way, way, way wrong. It sets a devastating example for students--and it does have an effect on the intellectual viability of our nation.

She said it better than I could.

MV

And the bestest picture of all from Martha's Vineyard...



This is from the ferry coming home.

They really are mostly that way, those two.

God, I love them.

Update: Oops, no, wait, maybe I like this one best:

No problem, I'll just use a little physics here and...

...get Ella's surprise new armoire up our front steps?...



No, sadly, this will have to wait for David to come home from work.

I had planned for the whole thing to be a fait accompli while the girls were at a friend's house and David was at work. You know, to get that in there and totally reorganize Ella's clothes and room. (She's had my grandfather's cheap old smallish particleboard dresser with the drawers whose bottoms are coming out, for far too long.) It fit perfectly in the back of the Subaru wagon. But I was just too cocky to think I could figure out how to get it up the front steps alone. Actual muscles turned out to be necessary for the whole enterprise. So my fait accompli is still a big fat non-accompli sitting in the driveway.

Yeah, I had some sense that wrapping 2/3 of it up in a tarp would help, somehow. Don't ask.

It wasn't the bird references that caught me, though

More people should read

John Enright's beautiful poem that he posted yesterday.

I don't think John would mind if you were to print it out and thumb-tack it to the wall beside your desk, as I did.