the Anachronistic mom

The Anachronistic Mom Blog has Moved!

2007-04-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

Hi there: With all due respect to Google, I started using Typepad and I just can't go back. So you can see what I'm up to over at the Anachronistic Blog, or you can also check out my postings at the Silicon Valley Mom's blog. Thanks for visiting! -K

A little something on virgin births

2006-12-23T20:43:00.000-08:00

I love Obsidian Wings. Here's a recent posting of theirs all about reptilian virgin births. A little something to carry into family discussions in the next two days...

So how about a Gore/Clinton race?

2006-11-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a delicious article from Mick LaSalle (of the SF Chron) talking about the case (historical and otherwise) for why Gore might end up running for president after all.

Bitch.com? Hoo boy, some mommies should be out gardening!

2006-11-08T16:06:00.000-08:00

Howdy. I have now moved beyond those wonderful toddler years of gardening and making bread, and am back into the computer industry. But I have a great idea for mommies who need to ramp back into the world. Bitch.com. Check it out.

How do you use those 2.0 apps, anyway?

2006-11-08T15:58:00.000-08:00

You know, I'm a busy mom. I am doing some consulting work right now, and I'm right in the middle of trying to swim my way through the jello that is the current web 2.0 world. I hate shopping for tennis shoes now, because there are too many choices. Consider how I must feel about software, or even these new (!!) improved (!!) 2.0 services that I keep hearing about. Some of the products float in my periphery and I have always wondered what they were. I mean, I kind of know, but I've never really used the product. Other products suffer from "2.0 insufferability," which is to say that they have really zonked-out names (zapgidget, wranko, lomar... stuff like that), and when you go to their site, they are nicely put together, with the requisite matching color scheme, maybe a tag cloud or two, but I have no freaking idea what they do. One of the highly irritating things about 2.0 is that they have gone the route of the washing tag. You know, the tag inside of your coat or your shirt that tells you how to wash it? Well... several years ago some morons decided that they would go "GLOBAL SYMBOLS" on us all, so they adopted these really irratating symbols, and nobody knows what they mean! Same thing here at web 2.0. Apparently having a button called "why the hell we exist" or even "our philosophy" is considered outre in the 2.0 set. Imagine. Software so cool that, if you have to ask about it, you're just not cool enough to use it. Cross-posted from my blog titled "But Does it Work." Bye! I'm off to see if I can get damn stumble off of my Mozilla browser, where it apparently glommed itself on without asking, and to install sphere, which didn't install although it should have!

How about that election?

2006-11-08T15:56:00.000-08:00

OK, I'm happy. I'm still a little nervous, but there's hope. As far as I can tell, I have no idea if the Democrats control the Senate yet, but in my humble opinion, making Dick Cheney stand up and vote on every single tie is a wonderful way to pierce that Darth Vader-cool smooth exterior that's been presented to the world these past few years. Hello everyone. Sorry for not posting very often. I've been posting things over at Silicon Valley Moms Blog. Also, I started a new working blog called But Does it Work?

Why Mommy is a Democrat

2006-10-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

I was clicking on some political news sites today, eyes half-shaded as I waited, cringing a bit, for them to load, and I was surprised with a belly laugh. Check this book out! "Why Mommy is a Democrat" sounds like a total hoot.

The complete works of Charles Darwin are now online

2006-10-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

This stuff is so cool. Look what they're putting online now! The complete works of Charles Darwin

strange idea of geek fun

2006-10-19T12:19:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. I'm here, honest. Just not ... here. Part of being a mom. You can read some of my more recent postings over at the silicon valley mom's blog, (under Kate) but the rest are stored up and will probably come out one of these days. Here's a post from boingboing about wierd geek fun that made me laugh out loud. For those of you who have never actually worked in tandem with lab-living denizens, this might sound odd, but it really reminded me of "lab fun" in my younger days.

Methamphetamine

2006-09-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I helped a girlfriend whose brother is a meth addict. She was looking for information on a new treatment. I used to do medical research as my public service, so I figured I'd help out. I was amazed to see how much methamphetamine use there was. Sure, I'd heard little mentions of it, but when I started doing Google searches, I saw all of this stuff in (what I thought of as) verdant little hamlets in Tennessee, Ohio, Wisconsin, and so forth. I might be wrong about the hamlet thing, but studies are showing that our midwest and our "country" areas are being rocked horizontal by the meth stuff. Here's an interesting article that tells you about "meth" and shows you the affects of it on a user (who has since died, btw.) Courtesy of digg.

Boyfriend Arm Pillow, anyone?

2006-09-06T15:07:00.000-07:00

I just love the stuff that the Japanese come up with. Hilarious. Here's the latest. A pillow for people who like to lie on their boyfriend's chest to sleep - but lack the boyfriend.

Kindergarten Readiness -- OH Yeah!

2006-09-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

Aaargh! Oh, hello there. I was just reading some articles about Kindergarten readiness when I lost it a little. Let me catch my breath. Perhaps one of those nice homeopathic calmness pills, some of my imported Russian tea (in one of those lovely paper-white china cups) while I sit at my imported-wood breakfast table and ... ah, there we are. Where IS my new age music? Or perhaps just a glass of wine. Good morning everyone! I was just reading an article written by the National Association for the Education of Young Children that mentions how, in order to attend Kindergarten, your child should have good basic skills. He or she should be able to resolve conflicts, should know some letters of the alphabet, and be able to sit, among other things. Buttons too. It's a nice article. In particular, I liked this quote: "Kindergarten is a time for children to expand their love of learning, their general knowledge, their ability to get along with others, and their interest in reaching out to the world. While kindergarten marks an important transition from preschool to the primary grades, it is important that children still get to be children -- getting kindergarteners ready for elementary school does not mean substituting academics for play time, forcing children to master first grade "skills," or relying on standardized tests to assess children’s success." Unfortunately, the article also sounds like it was written on a different planet, based on my silicon valley experience. (OK, OK, not just the silicon valley. No need to be geographical here. I guess this applies to many areas populated by type-A suburban-raised-overachieving-parents-who-are-out-of -control -and-and-egged-on-by-wacked-out-pseudo-achievement-oriented-school administrators.) My understanding of the particular brand of achievement-based Kindergarten readiness practiced in this area is that, in order to keep up with the aggressive pressures of local kindergartens, Silicon Valley Kindergarten-ready children (especially those pesky, irritating, constantly-moving boy children, who should probably be drugged anyway) must be able to: * Know all of the letters of the alphabet, including their sounds. * Be able to write them all. * Both cases. * Be able to do rudimentary reading. * Sit quietly during all of the circle times. * Line up like little darlings. * Be able to act interested when the wall of their kindergarten is filled with scintillating letter combinations, like "ng." * Be able to add and probably subtract. Maybe a square root if they want to impress anybody. * Be ready and willing to be tossed into an language immersion program. * If they're in a language immersion program, be prepared to take the alternate school's language offerings, say, after school or during recess. * Be pliant and pleasant if their parents enroll them in yet a third language program, since, after all, the age of 5 is one of the best ages for shoving language knowledge into little brains (like foi gras). * Wait their turn calmly. * Quiescently participate in their soccer, baseball, theatre, fencing, chess, gymnastics, basketball, dance, ice skating, and swimming classes. Oh yes, and piano and tennis. * Start their day at 7 AM with before-school time (so mommy and daddy can work), go to school for 6 hours, and then go into a 3-hour after-school program (so that mommy and daddy can work). Contrast that with the American Acadamy of Pediatrics (AAP) Developmental Milestones by the End of 5 Years. Wow. (Although, for the cost of those designer clothes and lessons, this is kind of an unimpressing list, don't you think? Where is the French? The Tai Chi? Saute skills? HOW WILL MY CHILD GET INTO PRINCETON IF HE ONLY HAS THESE SKILLS AT FIVE????? Oh. Sorry. Homeopathic calmness pills. Breathe.) And of course, the kid needs to be ready for the stresses of ordinary life at five. Like what? Indiana University education professor Mary McMullen summarizes "new child schedules" pretty well when she says that (many) "youngsters are forced to deal with multiple transitions throughout the day, which can be stressful for 5- and 6-year-olds. Many of these children go from some type of early morning child care to kindergarten, then to special art, music or physical education classes, then after-school child care, and then home. Many are then shuttled off to sports events or other extracurricular activities. Some even have the added stress of multiple living arrangements because of divorced parents." Gosh, put like that, it sounds mildly insane, doesn't it? But that's life for our kids. What an exciting petri dish for young psyches! Mix that up with lots of television, the new video games (can you say unnervingly realistic gore?) and ... golly, what are we brewing for future generations? But for now, let's think about Kindergarten for a few minutes, since many of our kids are heading into it. Does anybody else out there think that it's time to get a bit militant and take it back? Maybe, like, along with childhood? Here's a great article by Linda Starr from Education Weekly talking about some of the insane things that Kindergartens are aspiring and have aspired to teach by the end of the year. Goals, if you will. And no, it' s not "raising your hand and waiting your turn." I'll pull a few quotes out but I'd urge you to read the article. Starr is a kindergarten teacher who totally rocks and her words should echo in your ears as you look at your own kid's class. One of my favorite mentions is that "The Kindergarten Content Summary for Lombard (Illinois) Elementary School District 44 says that kindergarten students will learn to "identify story elements: plot, setting, characters." The AAP says that five-year-olds should "understand that stories have a beginning, middle, and end."" Do you think that this is just some under-educated middle manager parsing wrong? Or will the kids be working on a playground-sized Hero's Journey model while playing with their poseable Jung dolls? Another example from Ms. Starr's article is: "The Cotati-Rohneet Park Unified School District in Rohnert Park, California, Kindergarten Curriculum requires kindergarten students (by the end of the year) to "count with one-to-one correspondence to 30" and "comprehend relationships between numbers to 30." The AAP says that average five-year-olds are developmentally able to "count up to 10 objects."" Um, yeah. Well, I'm still working on the number relationship thing. I hope my five year old can figure it out. Starr says "In trying to maximize our children's progress, we are ignoring the importance of their developmental limitations -- and we may be jeopardizing their future as well. We need to take a closer look, not simply at the age at which children enter kindergarten or at the experience they bring with them, but also at the developmental stage at which they enter; and then we need to develop a curriculum that meets those needs." She says a lot more, too. And we should all read it and take heed. Finally, she quotes David Elkind, a professor of child development at Tufts University (and a great author ) "To impose a strict structure on children in kindergarten totally violates what we know about early childhood development," Even worse, Elkind notes, "children feel stupid when they are asked to do something that they are developmentally unable to do." I'm done. I won't say more. Well, one thing. Please, as our children start Kindergarten and school this year, remember that it's OK to play in Kindergarten. Playing in Kindergarten, experiencing the world in a broad way while they're still young, and having fun in school gives your child a far wider base from which to live and achieve than trying to be academic before their time. And also, it might just be possible that the biggest goals in Kindergarten should be socialization and learning to like school and learning. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go back to reading Homer onto a tape player so that my child can absorb it subliminally while he sleeps... First published on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Vurtego - just what every 50 year old needs

2006-09-05T05:27:00.000-07:00

There's been a big discussion on the ex-NeXT list about the vurtego site (OK, a tiny discussion, but hey, a blip on that list is as amusing as a deluge from another list. Heck, the last discussion was on the IT techniques and approaches used by porn sites!) The site pisses the NeXT aesthetics people off. It's hard to navigate, it's a poser design, etc. etc. On the other hand, they're trying to prosetylize an extreme sport (says another person). Personally, though, I just find it hilarious (I also wonder if this will kill me if I try it.... I'm not getting any younger, you know?) Read the article (nicely hidden behind the Chihuahua Bites Policeman sign on the home page). It was written in the Arizona Republic newspaper, talking about how a certain fifty year old man is using - you guessed it - a Vurtego to combat the thinning of his bones! Kind of explains the $350 price tag, doesn't it? Is this the future of pre-geriatric aids, btw? Canes, sold to blaring Aerosmith?

Books that matter for entrepreneurs

2006-08-10T06:06:00.000-07:00

This week Business Week Business Week asked entrepreneurs which books were most influential in helping them build their companies. This list list includes book suggestions and commentary from Carol Bartz, Harvey Mackay, and Larry Spear. - thanks to Marylaine Block for this. It's from Ex Libris: an E-Zine for Librarians and Other Information Junkies.

I've got the McMansion Blues

2006-08-09T21:06:00.000-07:00

We live in the beauteous and restful neighborhood of Lindenwood, in Atherton, California. Today was another lovely summer day. We were awakened at 8 AM by a parade of dump trucks, a bulldozer, and a roller - approximately forty feet from our bedroom window. It’s almost 11, and the parade hasn’t wavered. Four years of these noises. Ah, the birthing pangs of another McMansion. My husband, a gentle soul, said this morning that our welcome gift to our new neighbors (in the flag lot behind our home) should be a stack of Marshall amps and an electric guitar. Given to our six year old. My personal preference is recreational jackhammering. I wouldn’t mind so much, but the neighbor dropped by our home a week and a half ago. “The house is done!” she said. “We’ll be moving in this week!” Great. Nice to hear. The original due date for the project was in February, but July is fine. Today at 8 AM, I got up in my bathrobe and walked to the back of our property. I climbed onto a tree trunk to look and groaned. There is no driveway in the house behind us. We have figured out that the parade of dump trucks probably belongs to the new swimming pool, and … there is no way that this project will be done before October. Really poor expectation setting there. Now I can’t blame the nice new neighbors. After all, they bought this lot for an exorbitant amount, and then didn’t touch it at all for four years. Lovely, quiet years - on the back side of the house. They are very nice and we’re looking forward to having new neighbors. The house is beautiful – a veritable mansion – and I shall be tempted to genuflect as I walk into it. But I am so very tired of the noise thing. When we bought this house I was 8 months pregnant. There was a quiet, wooded lot in the front of the house, across the street. When our son turned three months old, they broke dirt on that lot and kept building for our first three years. Napping during the jackhammering phase was a big challenge. Eight months after the front house was finished, the rear neighbor started. We are praying that the side neighbors stay healthy and happy. Despite the irritations of McMansion construction, I guess you could say that the benefits outweigh the pain. Sort of. I mean, such entertaining design choices. For example, the new house down the street. Despite being on a full acre, they have cleverly designed it so that you can see right into the neighbor’s yards from every upstairs window! Like many in the silicon valley, we do recreational house tours on Sundays. It’s been amazing to see how large and gothic window frames are getting, and to learn more about modern suburban living styles. Feels a little like "building materials of kings past," if you pay attention to all of the marble and stone. Apparently the latest trend is to buy a full acre lot, build a house that protects you from being overwhelmed by the yard (concrete, after all, is so much more civilized than bushes), and then build a full garage-cum-basement underneath the house (because, with such a large house, you don't have space for a garage.) My favorite example is in our neighborhood. It's a large home. The beautiful concrete/tile drive area in front allows the owners to drive into their property, make a full circle, turn and drive into the underground parking garage, and happily park fifty cars! This, indeed, is progress. The biggest driveway on their street. Certainly a masterful indicator. Took years to build! I have always wondered if the designer suffered from botanophobia. And what is located in the new, underground layer of these McMansions? The last one I looked at had a large exercise room (empty), a large movie room, a big hallway, a few other miscellaneous rooms and a laundry room. My first thought about the space was that it seemed like the perfect place to deflower the daughter of the house when nobody was looking, but that's probably just mom paranoia - forget I mentioned it, ok? We had thought to stay home today and enjoy the back yard and summer. Now I think I’ll go somewhere peaceful. Like Costco. Maybe they sell Marshall amps. This posting originally appeared on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

The top 100 games of the 21st century

2006-08-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

Like many silicon valley couples, my husband and I communicate via email. We have two offices in our home. Mine is called the "toy office" and I share it with our son, and is is called the "fire hazard" and he shares it with approximately fifty billion wierd technical books, CD's, games, and so forth. Did I mention games? Check it out. Here's a list of the top 100 games of the 21st century from Next Generation, ranked wholly on unit sales. Maybe I can get my husband to visit my blog with this one.

50 Albums that Changed Music

2006-07-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

I don't have much to say about this, other than I enjoyed it. Check it out. They looked for 50 albums that really changed the direction of things. This is a fun list. This was originally from: Neat New Stuff I Found This Week http://marylaine.com/neatnew.html

A whole new wave in transportable tech: Pimpstar Rims

2006-07-08T20:06:00.000-07:00

Have you seen the Pimpstar Rims video? Check it out. And you can change what your "rims" flash from a software program WHILE YOUR DRIVE! Soon, this will be t-shirts, my friends. Or shoes. Oh my.

Happy Bday USA - Our first Blast Off

2006-07-04T22:22:00.000-07:00

Today, NASA put a tent up right outside the Moffet Air Base so that NASA employees and the public could watch the space shuttle launch. A friend who works at NASA told us about it. We got up today and wondered what to do. Hmmn. At 10 AM was a parade in Redwood City, 11:30 was the kid's parade in Menlo Park where you could ride your bike with the other kids, , and at ... lemme see ... 12:30 or so was the launch. This is what we did. We had breakfast and hung out at home. At noon, my husband got into the shower. I did not harm him. I snarled a bit, and mentioned, using my family's patented "waspy clenched jaw" approach, that the shuttle was blasting off in THIRTY DAMN MINUTES AND HE BETTER HURRY. He did. Shower finished at 12:15. My son and I were dressed, and we finally got dad out of there at about 12:20. I personally have lost years of my life because I married someone with this particular style of living life. Shall we say, on the edge? We drove out and get onto the freeway. Yes, it's a freeway drive. Got there at exactly 12:30. Did I mention that the shuttle blastoff was at 12:38? But we didn't know that, actually. I think our interaction was: "Doesn't the shuttle blast off at 12:30? Honey, it's a blast-off. Those happen on TIME. We need to be there!" [insert chart of wife's blood pressure rising here] Response: "Nope, it's not 12:30. It's some other number." Brilliant, huh? Aargh. The next forty years should be a real learning and growing experience. But I digress. We walked in, and ... it was perfect. It was a lovely tent. There were about 150 people there, maybe more. There was a curtained-off area that was full, where a real, live astronaut was talking with people, surrounded by three large screens. For the rest of us, there were about five more screens, all over the place. There was a really neato cool 10-foot long model of the space shuttle, which we pointed out to my squirmy son. There was a totally nifty real "insides area" of the space station, including the vaunted frog egg experiment which a profoundly didactic woman managed to explain to us at amazingly great length, considering the fact that we only had 7.5 minutes to blast off. My son interrupted her to tell her his version of reality, but I picked him up to go and look at mission control and the launch on TV. So different from when I was a kid, but so similar. I remember watching this stuff on little tiny TV sets and now here it is on a big, six-foot screen. It's not funky little module now, either. It's a sleek, beautiful little airplaney-looking thing, that looks a lot like one of the Star Wars robots, if you consider the finish. I looked at my son. He seemed a bit nonplussed. Aren't little boys supposed to get stars in their eyes and try to salute or something when they are exposed to things like this? Important things? Cool things? Positive things that the whole country is proud of (rare though they are in today's nasty climate?) Still, he fidgeted. Until suddenly he stopped and looked around him. "Twelve, Eleven, Ten ..." The whole building had begun to count down with the mission control man. This was little boy territory; why were the adults doing it? I pointed toward the screen, and we watched. It was a wonderful experience, being in a room with all of those people who were fans of our country and of what we'd made and what we were doing. And mommy's a bit of a softy. "Three, Two, One, and we have blast off." He watched while the giant rockets left the earth, taking the beautiful little shuttle with them. And he listened while the entire crowd broke into loud, enthusiastic applause. We live in the Silicon Valley, surrounded by "thing-makers." The space shuttle is one of the coolest, highest-profile engineering projects around, and we thank the entire team for making it work. Wonderful to see such a great project in action. Thank you for the tent, NASA. It was way cool. And happy birthday, America. May that shuttle of ours come down safely, and may our country traverse this difficult time and come out strong, and fair, good, and safe.

You've all been waiting for this: The Gifted and Talented Adults Blog

2006-07-02T19:00:00.000-07:00

Remember when you were in school and you got labeled? Kind of comforting, wasn't it? Like, you're exceptionally good in THIS, and you get a little gold star on your forehead and you really don't have to worry about track because you can (enter your "star" quality here ______________) Or did I just have a wierd school experience? At any rate, I just found the Gifted and Talented Adult Blog! I swear to you that I thought it was a dating service, but (!) it's not! I personally find it highly entertaining (for five minutes), because it seems to describe what's wrong with a series of gifted and talented people (and types.) I know these people! Parts of it even sound like my dating diary from a few decades ago. "Extremely bright, but seems to belong locked in a closet somewhere." "Very bright, seems to be addicted to everything, including the new one: breath mints." "Will undoubtedly become a multimillionaire which is good; he'll be able to afford a LOT of therapy." I'm not sure if it's the Silicon Valley, or just bright people, but the diagnosis thing is just too easy. Naaa. I'm probably just over it. Like I said earlier, this stuff is probably best left to twenty-something dating women (I refer you to a classic from my twenties: If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?) But it's always good to have a tool that provides social lubrication and entertainment. Can you find yourself in here? How about your business partner? cheers!

Recipe: Grilled onions with blue cheese

2006-07-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

We get the San Francisco Chronicle, and I read it every day. Assiduously. Mostly to check Ann Landers and of course, the comics. We get the NY Times on weekends and I tend to read THAT paper for content. [meow] At any rate, the Chron has an absolutely stunning food section. Seriously. Did you know that they have two cookbooks? Here's the first one. A VERY good cookbook. On Wednesday (Unless they changed "food article day" and I missed it) I looked at the paper and something snapped. It was this recipe, which I made, and can report that it was wonderful! Here you go. It's not often that I read about something over breakfast and make it for dinner! Blue Cheese Onions 4 large red or white onions, sliced into 1-inch thick slices and skewered together, edge to edge, so they look like a row of large flat disks. Brush both sides with oil and put salt and pepper on them. Put them on a grill and cover loosely with foil. Cook them on low, turning occasionally, until cooked. about 30 minutes. The rest of the ingredients are: some balsamic vinegar (and a small brush) 3/4 cup panko bread crumbs 4-5 ounces crumbled blue cheese That's it. Brown the panko in a skillet on the stove, just to toast it. Mix the blue cheese in and put this on top of the onions. When the onions are almost done, brush them with balsamic vinegar, then top each slice with the blue cheese mix and press down firmly. Re-cover with foil and allow the cheese to melt. They are utterly awesome. I have another recipe where you hollow out small onions then fill them with 1 tbsp or more of balsamic and some butter, cover them, and bake for ... Oh, I don't know, maybe an hour? Until they are melting. Very nice. Plus a single, balsamic-glazed baked onion looks lovely on a plate. Just make sure to cook them a LOT.

He's learning well!

2006-07-01T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'm sending my son to the German American school where the poor dear is rolling and bobbing in German immersion this past two weeks. I asked him how it sounded to him and he said "blab blab blab blab blab." Not with attitude, just reporting. My German is coming back, too. It's in my brain now, and I find myself trying to parse sentences, thinking "aaargh. This is the WORST grammar!" It's baaaack!!! I speak Danish, which is pretty darn simple. (Well, not the political science or technology parts of it, but you can avoid those.) I found myself wondering what wurde meant the other day. Is it, like, the past participle of "will," used by the first person? Oh my. Ah, well, it's just another voice in the background of my mind, except instead of mulling over interpersonal relationships or being screwed by garden stores (excuse me), this voice is saying things (in German) like "I need to practice so that I can brush up on my German ... um, how do you say brush up in the German vernacular?" No wonder I like learning other languages. Much more pleasant (if you have to obsess.) I really like the children and parents at the school. I haven't found a single woman who looks as though she's in Junior League! Nice (for me). Not scary. They look normal and act normal. And the children are nice, too. They told me not to put any sweets into my son's lunch, which is fine with me, since we're not a real "sweets" family. However, I found a box of, like, dragon fruit gummy thingies that I bought at Costco (so I have 50 of them), and put one into his lunch yesterday as a treat. It's the only sweet processed thing that I let him eat. His other lunch treats are: a home-packaged small baggie of potato chips, applesauce in a tube, and yogurt in a tube. Wooo. I have looked for years, but can't find anything else that I'll feed my kid in all of the fun packaged stuff, so that's it. So get this: I went to pick him up in aftercare and they were making pancakes! (Pfannkuchen to you). They gave one to my son and sprinkled it with chocolate powder. He ate it up. On the way to the car, he said ruminatively "they won't let me eat the fruit gummis, but they feed me chocolate powder? That doesn't make sense. There's a lot of sugar in the chocolate." I agreed with him, and stifled an internal laugh. Yup, I think he'll be juuuuust fine in life, thank you very much!

Great male writer/awesomely nasty amazon wish list

2006-06-29T03:27:00.000-07:00

Just a note about a wonderful writer, Jim Harrison. I love this guy. One of my favorite writers is Alice Adams, even though she's a bit dated, I suppose. Lots of San Francisco and Marin County in the seventies and eighties with deep roots-female writing. Harrison feels like her counterpoint for depth. As female as Adams is, Harrison is masculine. Like Hemingway, but without that icky fifties cultural role stuff. If you haven't read him, I'd suggest Legends of the Fall, which contains a stunning novella called "Revenge." "Revenge" kicks butt. Here's a description of a movie that was made out of it, which apparently Tarantino adored. See? Masculine. Um, or something. "(The story of) an ex-Navy pilot squaring off against a wealthy Mexican and his goons, who left him for dead and tortured his mistress." The review goes on to describe, from what I can tell, the entire movie industry in about 4500 words, but I'd highly recommend the book. Speaking of which, check out this book list. I love it. Listen to what she says about Paradise Lost: "Milton is a pompous jerk, and his writing is irksome. Even worse, his theology sucks." Incidentally have you noticed that, with the advent of online writing, with the links and all, the old ways of using quotes feels increasingly outdated? I just took the quotes OUT of the book title and decided to italicize it. Nah. I'll just link it. And of course, if you put quotes around something you link to, it looks positively lousy. OK, back to the reviewer. She sounds like a real book lover. I am so sick of palliative thinkers. Give me someone with a meaty opinion. Well, unless they're some medicated wacko railing on the local "I hate Americans" right-wing radio channel. Those folks I can do without. Besides, I asked for an opinion, not a recital of the latest "Rapture" messages. Have you read the reviews on Amazon's listmania? They are hilarious. Here's one, about The Metamorphosis: "This book is amazing despite the main character being a giant beetle." Cool.

a beautiful gift

2006-06-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

I am a fifth-generation Californian. And I have never seen nor heard of weather like this year's. Today, however, on the 28th of June, for heaven's sake, it began to rain in the middle of the day. It was awesome. I bicycle my son to school when possible. I live in Atherton and his school is in the Menlo Park/Palo Alto area, so I was biking through the Menlo Oaks neighborhood, which is the nicest neighborhood in Menlo Park. Little drops began to twinkle down on me. "Did you feel that?" I called to a man walking down the road. "Yup," he yelled. "Wonderful!" As I bicycled, I held my arm up, palm flat, in the time-honored "it's raining" way. A truck coming up from behind me beeped a soft beep and the driver gave me the thumbs-up sign. And the next four cars were driven by people with huge smiles on their faces. This was a gentle summer shower. We just flat-out don't get those here. It felt like balm, like a gift. And even more like a gift were the shared grins, thumbs-up, and smiles with my fellow Americans. How long has it been since THAT happened, folks? We share far too few smiles, waves, and grins with our neighbors. It was great to have an excuse for them today.

I love askapatient.com

2006-06-16T22:52:00.000-07:00

Last year, to continue the "gardening" theme, I, um, exhibited poor judgment. It was a hot day and I was alone with my son, being enthusiastic about outdoor life. At some point, I decided that I needed to climb up on top of the pool house and, with a hand saw, try to trim the oak tree. Not a huge problem. This particular branch, however, was about a foot above my head, and was about six inches in diameter. So there I was (at this point, I start sounding a bit like Arlo Guthrie...), jumping up into the air and at the same time pushing as hard as I could because, heck, sawing UP is a lot harder than sawing DOWN, when I got a crushing headache. A real doozy, as we said in the mountains where I grew up (this is AFTER I grew up on a farm in Minnesota). So, um, I climbed down from the roof as fast as I could, luckily not breaking a limb, walked inside, and put my son in front of a video. This in itself, illustrates that I should have gone to the hospital, incidentally, since I'm not a bit fan of the evil death box (TV to you normal folks.) Then I called my husband, told him that I'd done something, and went to bed. Unusual behavior for a mom of a 5 year old. We don't typically go to bed, leaving our children alone in the house. Yikes. Luckily it was a mighty compelling show and nothing got burned down. At any rate, I ended up with one heck of a migraine. For three weeks. The only thing that worked was to take four ibuprufen's and a couple of tylenols. Every five hours. For three weeks. It was an interesting time. I went to see three doctors (the last was a neurologist, who gave me a MRI - yuck.). Each doctor loaded me up on painkillers. When I would mention these painkillers to people, I would be met with the bizarre response "oooooh, DARVON (or whatever) how cool." This puzzles me. My personal painkiller of choice is ibuprufen because it doesn't make me stupid. I've never really gotten into the stoner mentality, and the concept of codeine as something "nice" is just flat-out wierd in my book. Like, who are these people, anyway? At any rate (I'm almost here). The BEST WEBSITE for me during this time was a little website called www.askapatient.com. Especially since nothing worked. None of the migraine meds that I was given did a THING for this headache - BUT when I tried them, I'd be floored by pain for six hours, while I waited for the drug to get out of my system (at which point I would take some ibuprufen.) www.askapatient.com let me go in and read reviews of meds (like something or other with codeine) BEFORE I took them. Awesome stuff. The site was started by a doctor and I applaud her. The problem? Ah, yes. After the MRI, my neurologist told me that I'd apparently torn the dura covering of my brain. Only a little tiny bit. Kind of like what a weight lifter does during one of those jerk-pulls (or whatever they're called) Nice, huh? Some women turn their legs from wearing high heels. I tear my freaking dura from trying to pull he-man stunts on the top of the pool house. At any rate, it went away after three weeks, but I'm on a strict health program now. Agatha Christie novels. Yup. And finally, at the ripe age of 45, I'm starting to like chocolate!