Last week I went to Goodwill:


I bought the plant, which is plastic but I believe it's supposed to be Texas Mountain Laurel.  The picture was up for auction, which was terribly exciting.  On Saturdays, Goodwill holds an auction, or at least Central Texas Goodwills do. "I've never bid at an auction," I said.

Neither had Sara, but she was game. We returned on Saturday. My picture was item #27. There were two rows of folding chairs between the counter and the first rack of clothes, and participants had little laminated blue numbered cards. I was bidder #18.

The auctioneer did not talk fast whatsoever. Nobody bid on anything for the first 10 items.  I had a bit of stage fright as we got close. How high would I really be willing to go? What if someone gets mad at me because they also (justifiably) love this picture? Who wouldn't love this picture? The bidding opened at $18 and I took it home for $18.  

Hoorays were enjoyed by all. "This lady knows the value of this picture!" the auctioneer quipped when I won the round, by which I assume he means "about $18".


Now the corner of my living room looks like this!  I've wanted to have a big plant in that corner, but it does not get any light. And this plant is so wonderfully goony and story-bookish. (I'm long over my violet walls, but they will stay put for a while.)

They've put down roots.

Last week at gymnastics, Hawaiian Punch and the other three year olds were milling around aimlessly. "Are you all waiting for Coach Jerry?" another coach asked. They dutifully nodded. "She's out today. Coach Nick will be your coach for today."

Hawaii decompensated into a wailing mess around my legs. It was the kind of balls-out, all eyes in the gymnastics warehouse turn to us, total hysterics. Hawaii is terrified of Coach Nick, a perfectly nice college student who doesn't quite get how to handle three year olds who are terrified of him. 

"I'll stay with you!" I promised. "I won't go sit in the bleachers!"  I picked her up. She wailed and wailed and her heart was racing. Finally the class left without her. I kept consoling her but she was straight-up terrified. Finally I said "Would you like to go back to the baby class for today?" and she instantly relaxed and started to get control of herself. Yes, she would very much like to go back to the baby class.

So we did. For the next 10 minutes various coaches kept coming by and offering different solutions, which was not welcome, because Hawaii was so skittish at that point that reasonable solutions were totally off the table. So I stayed with her in the baby class, which is a parent-tot class.  She totally dominated all those babies. Rock on, Hawaii.

On rock, Hawaii

Also I started a grease fire last night. I took the lid off the pan and the oil went up in flames. There's black stuff over the microwave and cabinets above the stove.

I did not know what to do. I cleared away some stuff near the sink, and transferred the pan, on the vague premise that less stuff was overhead. Then it became clear that was nonsense - plenty of stuff is right around the sink, too. I turned the pan upside down. Instantly the fire died. (I got very lucky.)

The pan was blackened, the room full of black air, and the dinner was ultimately boiled rather than sir-fried, because I was skittish about using oil. Today the black stuff is coming off the pan, with a brillo pad.

May 23, 2012 - The official LiveJournal Release 92 has been deployed. Here’s what you’ll find in this latest site update:

NEW

• Particularly long comment threads now collapse with the alert “...and [#] more comments.” Just click on that alert to see the rest of the comments. Here’s what this looks like:


• Notification emails now hide any content that was already placed inside an lj-cut instead of displaying the entire entry.


• Social Capital is now displayed for all communities on the profile page.


• You can now embed the Spotify player into your journal or community style.


• Personal userheads are now available for purchase. A personal userhead is of your own design and is unique to you, unavailable to anyone else. Purchase as many personal userheads as you like; each costs 5,000 LJ FunBux™, and is good for five years. Learn more.

BUGS, FIXED

• Scheduled entries should no longer return errors or double-post.


• Domain mapping should no longer force redirection to the LiveJournal login page.


• The format=light URL modifier works on entry pages again.


• Comment notification emails will send even if the entry has a poll.


• The "Music" section on the edit entries page will let you delete the entire text field.


• The help link next to “Do not add to friends pages and RSS” on the update page now links to the correct FAQ.


• The list of journals and communities added by default for new users has changed to news and lj_releases for non-Cyrillic users.


• Missing navigation items in the Classic journal style have re-appeared.


• Notifications about expiring add-ons will now have correct subject lines.


• The bold/italic/strikethrough buttons in the site default commenting scheme should no longer cause cursor positioning problems in Chrome.


• The Calendar feature will now update properly when you edit an entry and change its date.

PLANNED PARENTHOOD: HELP WITH A VGIFT!
Join us in standing up for reproductive health and education. Through the end of the month, you can send a specially designed Planned Parenthood vgift to your LiveJournal friends to help support this cause. (And if you need someone to send it to frank is always happy to receive gifts!). There are three variations for you to choose from ($1, $5 and $10), but they’d all look good on your profile. Thank you for your support! Learn more.

- The LiveJournal Team

May 21, 2012: Three weeks ago we officially announced the plan to overhaul Scrapbook, LiveJournal’s exclusive photo-hosting feature for Plus, Paid and Perm accounts. Today we’re letting you know that the new Scrapbook will release this week; in anticipation, we want to give you a bit more information on some additional changes that have been made. The newest additions to the FAQ are under the cut; the original FAQ about the new Scrapbook is in the previous news post.

( Read more... )

Here is something I want to remember:
I was pushing Hokey Pokey in the toddler swing, and it's probably 80° and clear and the sun is past the trees. Our backyard is lush and jungly and noisy. His swing hangs from the awning over the back deck. It's next to a spider plant. I can lean against the railing on the far side of the deck as I give him little reinforcement pushes.

Each time he swings forward, his eyes droop shut, as though from the momentum. Each time he swings backwards, they open again, and he looks dazed and unfocused.  It was so sweet. Like a baby doll with the eyelids that open and shut. Now that I think about it, I'm not exactly sure how those eyelids work. Clearly they're weighted, but the mechanism only requires a 90° shift in position by the doll. 

(I just googled "How do doll eyelids work?" and I came across this eHow site, titled How to Make Dolls That Blink.  Here are the things you'll need: Clay, large doll face mold, blinking doll eyes, sealant, paint, hair, and tacky craft glue. I call shenanigans.)

Eventually Pokey fell asleep:



Awwww.

Want to see something weird? The above photo is un-tinkered with.  But look in the windows, when I tinker with it:



Look at all that stuff in our house! Weird. Not exactly creepy but a decent detective story could hinge on a difference like that.

Let me hear you say Hokey Pokey

When I was blogging on Wednesday, I took a drink of my coffee and there was a fly in my mouth. I spit everything out all over the table and computer. How did I spit out a fly on my computer, and then just keep writing about Hokey Pokey's rash without missing a beat? Without pausing to say "Hey guys, you'll never guess what just did the backstroke on my tonsils...No, this has nothing to do with blowjobs."

Later on I pulled out the fly incident to distract Hawaii when she was in danger of becoming a perpetual wailing machine. She laughed. That was when I had the shock of dis-recognition that I'd had a fly in my very mouth while blogging and hadn't thought to mention it. Who am I?

Let me hear you say who am I?

I had my first swimming lesson today. My instructor is very nice and reassured me that my swimming isn't embarrassingly bad. I have it in my head that my swimming is embarrassingly bad, because everybody in my family laughed really hard when I was swimming laps, super-swollen with Hawaiian Punch, right before she was born.

I guess I just don't like swimming very much. I'll do it, because I like exercising until I'm beat, and this suits my situation. But I don't find the water intrinsically liberating or soulful or dolphin-like.

Let me hear you say you love me

My best friend gave Hawaiian Punch a shit ton of plastic baubles and buttons and little items for her birthday, along with twenty or thirty little clear plastic boxes. She asked me what Hawaii would like, and I thought about how Hawaii likes to organize things, and I remembered a tin of assorted buttons that my mom had when I was little. I liked to dump this tin of hundreds of buttons out on the floor, and then sort them according to type. It was trance-like.

Now Hawaii dumps this ton of plastic shitty toys out, and she organizes them into the little boxes. I love this game so much. It is just a deeply soothing activity to sort through these small items and pick a trait - all the pink jewels! - and hunt for them. And then another trait. Do people who love swimming find it as soothing as I find sorting through buttons? Don't they find it boring? They should try sorting buttons, because that will blow their minds.

When Hawaii puts the piles into the little boxes, she instinctively stops when the box is 3/4 full, and finds somewhere else to put the excess. How does she know to do that? I never know to do that. I'd try to add more and more, and the pile would get precariously high, and they'd start to slip and spill out, and I'd get upset. I jam extra diapers into the diaper bin, and cram too many shirts into a drawer. How does she know not to, at age 3?

Let me hear you say you'll always be true

I found out today that my neighbor's boyfriend is excavating Cap't Morgan's ship. It's off the coast of Panama. She first called him Henry Morgan, and I said "Wow, that's amazing. I don't know who that is, though," and she told me it's the guy on the rum bottles. He took a big fleet from Jamaica to Panama, to sack and plunder and generally be a pirate. The flagship hit a barrier reef outside the mouth of the river they were aiming for, and it sunk. He and his mateys climbed aboard another ship, because they had a fleet, after all.  My neighbor and her boyfriend are studying archaeology.

Grades were due Monday. I'm FREE! On Tuesday, I took the kids to daycare and was immediately re-imprisoned. On my way out the door, they handed Hokey Pokey right back to me because of a rash on his neck and a cautionary "Hey, hand-foot-and-mouth disease has been going around his room."

It turned out to just be a rash, so he does not have to stay home for days on end. Just yesterday. He's very cuddly when it's just the two of us. I got to do lots of smelling his hair and nuzzling.  I also got bit a lot, and I got to watch him make a holy racket with some metal pots and pans, and pull books off the bookshelves, and upend chairs, and generally be a nonstop nuisance. Raise your hand if you're glad you don't work at a daycare.

Hands to the sky

I consulted various people over email about my ideas for projects, namely the math-biology connection and a new children's book idea. The responses said that neither idea is so terrible that it ought to be trashed out of hand. Which is terribly exhilarating! In addition, there are songs to record, old papers to get written up, and Honors Programs to work on. (In addition, there are housing tasks that I procrastinate mightily on.  All this excitement bodes poorly for the projects around the house.)

I signed up for swimming lessongs. My first one is Friday. I am not super excited. If swim lessons make you more efficient, doesn't that decrease the workout? Do I really care how far I travel while swimming? I just want to be tired when I get out of the pool, no? Eh, learning and lessons are generally fun and I only signed up for four, anyway. 

Hands on your hips

From Hawaii: "I cut your penis off and put it on my nose! AaOOOOOga!"  

From Hokey Pokey: Listen to me repeat "no more, no more, no more, no more" to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Also I can say "Up-and-down!" quite articulately, to refer to absolutely everything - I want up, down, I want this box open, I generally want that thing and I'm too small. Help.

I made a comic for my mother yesterday, who has believed in my abilities longer and more fiercely than anyone else. You can find it here.

Arthritis may be incurable…but it is preventable. At the very least, it can be minimized; there are a few sites that say it can be managed with a lowfat plant-based diet.

There's a very good documentary that came out maybe a year or so ago called Forks Over Knives that proposes that most "Western" diseases of excess can be reduced or eliminated with a plant-based diet. (And diabetes is on the list.) I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom that says that for some—even many—conditions, a high-fat, animal-protein based, ketogenic diet is one of them. For instance, I'm not about to argue with my friend in California who's treating his epileptic son with such a diet.



However, when you consider that Asian people who were basically free of heart disease, cancer, and most degenerative diseases are now developing a Western-style disease profile now that their diet is changing from a plant-based one to one that's heavy in meat and dairy, you have to question the wisdom of such a system. Large-scale animal production also causes many environmental problems that would simply not be present if the land were used for growing plants to feed directly to people, rather than to feed to animals who are fed to people.

There's a documentary called Vegucated which follows three meat- and cheese-loving New Yorkers when they agree to give up meat and dairy for six weeks:



I realize most people aren't inclined to change, but I just wanted to put this out there. We can't continue expanding animal production, especially in the regions of Asia and South America where they formerly ate a plant-based diet. I know that only about 3% of all people in the world are vegan, but that number has to change, or we as a species will die out, and sooner than later. Maybe that's a good thing.



This entry was originally posted at http://franklanguage.dreamwidth.org/161939.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

I desire to spend my summer inculcating myself in the creative class. Isn't that some pretentious bullshit?  Wouldn't it be romantic if my soul was seized by inspiration so dear that I must hole up and slave away in creation for days on end? I have not trained to be a musician, or a writer, or a cartoonist. It would be so romantic to be Gertrude Stein, but without all the hard work.

I have spent time training to do math. I have a loose idea but I need to talk to someone who knows about chromosomes. 

Look at these:

  and  

Super gross! Hokey Pokey's class was studying chick decomposition. Or that was my joke, at least. In reality they planted lima bean seeds in some damp cotton. That's Pokey's on the right, looking particularly bloody and gruesome.

Hawaii says: "Do you want to play Starbird and Dark Vader? You play like this:" and then she sings "BOM BOM BA-BOM, BOM BA-BOM, BOM BA-BOM," or something recognizably similar to the Emperial March. It's cute.

Lately Tu Ti Tu is on rotation at this house. It's so dull. It might have been someone's senior capstone project. A hovering car (Tu ti tu) slowly deposits parts of an object (yes, like pooping, only not quite). Each part slowly rolls around and gradually the object assembles itself. If this is all it takes to entertain 3 year olds, I know a other shows which might dial back their effort.

I googled Tu Ti Tu to find a picture but turned up this:



Hoff! You're always trying to pretend to be boring Israeli animation for young children, silly! You're not Tu Ti Tu!

You're Tu Ti Tu:



The background music is kind of hypnotic: