Ultranormal

  • Hope

    I just want to write this down so I remember it later. I woke up at 5:30 this morning full of nervous energy, thinking about today and what’s happening around the country. I’m excited, but most of all, I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful that Obama will win, and not just with a slim margin like the last two elections, but a real mandate to start the process of fixing things.\
    I’m looking forward to watching the returns tonight, and seeing what happens. I smiled this morning, at 7:45AM, as I drove past our local polling place and saw a line out the door and into the parking lot.\
    I’m tired, but happy, because unless all the polls are wrong, and really wrong, Barack Obama will be the President-Elect tomorrow morning. That makes me smile. It makes me downright giddy.

  • Holy cow!

    A friend in Florida spent 7 HOURS in line to vote yesterday. That’s crazy, right? Good for her and everyone else for actually sticking it out though.

  • My Little Internet People

    Max and Brian dressed up as Pip and Kitteh from the Laugh Out Loud Cats

    I’m not sure what to say about the boys’ costumes this year, other than, I think I’ve broken my children. Did they want to be characters from mainstream popular culture? Nope. They wanted to be the main characters from the very funny, but very internet-y Laugh Out Loud Cats. Did anyone in the neighborhood have the slightest clue who they were? Nope. I don’t think that bothered the boys a whole lot, but I do worry that I’ve done irreparable harm to their pop culture repositories by showing them funny stuff on the internet like Homestar Runner instead of more mainstream fare. I don’t know, but they’re so damned cute as niche web comic characters, I kind of don’t care.

  • Mark It Zero, Dude

    me dressed as Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski

    I haven’t dressed up for Halloween for years, at least since Max was born. This year, for some reason, I decided that I should be Walter Sobchack from The Big Lebowski this year. Why? I’m not sure.\
    I grew the beard just for Halloween… that’s how seriously I took it. And again, I’m not sure why. But, here we are, and I think it came together quite nicely. See?

    me as walter vs. john goodman as walter

  • Baby, you can drive my car

    A friend of a friend is trying to win SUPERBOWL tickets to surprise her awesome husband (no, it isn’t me or mine, heh, but I only have super cool friends so it is easy to see how you could get confused) from work. You can help her out by texting 57533 with the message P00077804. The person with the most texts wins! If you’re in the mood, help a girl out, ok?\
    This brings back memories of my first Christmas with Kevin, before we were married. I stood in the RAIN for FOUR HOURS to get tickets to a basketball game with the REIGNING NCAA Champion team, Arizona. Woot woot. Fun times. So, yeah, if you can help, that would be great. Thanks!

  • Admit it, you’re a little jealous

    I have the coolest husband ever: Clicky.

  • Learning and Junk

    • Brian really likes a song called “High School Confidential.” (It has already been established that I am a bad mother.) He doesn’t hear the words correctly though, so when he sings along or requests the song he says, “Ha stu compadoo.” He comes by his misheard-lyrics heritage naturally, as I have been known to mangle a few songs in my day. (My favorite is thinking that “Raspberry beret” was actually “Rags, baby, hurray.” Which is totally supported by the line that follows. Of course, had I only known what the title of the song was, I probably could have saved myself some embarrassment.)
    • Max has been “provisionally” put back in the gifted program at school. He has been tested, and received passing scores, so they are letting him back in. I think the scores still need to be formally evaluated or something and then he can be in for real. He had to meet 3 of 4 requirements for ability, achievement, creativity, and motivation to be eligible for the program. They took last year’s CogAt scores for the ability portion. The accepted minimum is 96, he scored 99. He received a 98% on the creative test, the minimum accepted is 90. They tested this by having him draw pictures from various doodles. (True story.) They used the Hawthorne test for his motivation score. I have no idea what this test is. He needed at least a 90 and got a 97%.
    • As part of his nightly homework, Max has to read for 20 minutes and write about what he read in a journal. Last week he was reading one of the Harry Potter books. He wrote, “The introduction Luna Lovegood foreshadowed” a specific occurrence. His teacher was all, “Whoa” when she read that. Because, really? A third-grader talking about foreshadowing?? Crazy! I wasn’t overly impressed though, because I assumed Max had read that thought online at the Potter wiki and then unintentionally plagiarized it. So I asked him about it. Turns out he came up with it all on his own. Momma says, “Whoa!” For the record, he learned about foreshadowing from Homestar Runner. (It’s already been established that our kids are weird.)
    • In other Max school news, he is working on his first research paper! He picked the topic of “How laws are made.” This has led to many political and historical discussions at the dinner table. Kevin is pretty much in heaven. 🙂 I remember my first paper was in the third grade too. My topic was Botswana. I don’t remember anything that I learned, except its location. Heh.
    • Kevin and I voted on Saturday and it was exciting to mark my choice for The President of the United States. I haven’t been that excited since the first time I voted. There are reports that over one million people in Ga, about twenty percent of the eligible voters, have voted already. There is early voting going on at our local library this week too. Every time I drive pass, which is several times a day due to its location, the parking lot is overflowing, which is very unusual.
    • I went used-book shopping last week and bought many, many trashy beach reads. Stuff like Tom Clancy and Dean Koontz. They are fabulous in their utter lack of anything educational in them! I also bought a collection of classic short stories by American writers for Max. I started reading the book, to check its content. What a snoozefest! There are probably only half of a dozen good things about being middle-aged, but not having to read “classic” literature anymore is definitely one of them. (Thanks, Mom and Dad for my college education. I appreciate it, really.) Excuse me now while I snub the book I got for Max and read about a genius dog who can play scrabble instead.

  • Spare Eight Minutes

    Lawrence Lessig provides a great argument against Proposition 8. It’s reasoned, has a sound legal backing (because, he’s Lawrence Lessig), and is profound in its simplicity. It perfectly echoes my own feelings on it, and does a great job of dissolving the rationale for the proposition without insulting those who support it. Great great stuff. Please watch it.

  • Too early to be coherent

    It’s about 6:45 am and Brian and I have been awake for almost an hour and a half. Booo. I can’t imagine what our mornings will be like after Daylight Savings Time ends. Waaaaaaaa.

  • It’s In Every One of Us to Be Wise

    It’s in every one of us
    To be wise
    Find your heart
    Open up both your eyes
    We can all know everything
    Without ever knowing why
    It’s in every one of us
    By and by
    It’s in every one of us
    To be wise
    Find your heart
    Open up both your eyes
    We can all know everything
    Without ever knowing why
    It’s in every one of us
    By and by
    By and by

    from It’s In Every One of Us by David Pomeranz

    I should be going to sleep now, but I started watching Big Bird singing It’s Not Easy Being Green at Jim Henson’s funeral, which led me to the Muppet’s Tribute to Jim Henson, and then to Frank Oz’s lovely eulogy. In the second video, I heard a song I don’t remember, the one above, and it got me thinking (and yes, crying a little) about my heroes, and why they hold that position.

    I love Jim Henson. He’s one of my heroes – a man of amazing creativity, warmth and love, who created so many great characters. More than that, though, he opened up imaginations by sharing his, and everything he created has at its core a gentleness, decency and humanity. You can tell right away that there’s a piece of him in everything he did. He died long after I’d outgrown Sesame Street (I was fifteen), but I still got choked up whenever anyone played Rainbow Connection (still do).

    My second hero is Mr. Rogers. I used to watch both shows as a kid, but didn’t really understand who Mr. Rogers was as a “real” person until much much later. Mr. Rogers was seemingly without guile, someone totally in touch with their emotions and with the emotions of those around him – and like Jim Henson, the adjective that jumps to mind when I get past the things they created – the artifacts of their professional lives, is “gentle”. I love that Mr. Rogers dedicated his life to speaking softly to children without speaking down to them, to teaching them about the world without fear or cynicism. I told this to a friend today and she looked at me like I was crazy, but I think Mr. Rogers may be the most Christ-like person to live on the earth since, well, Jesus.

    And last, but certainly not least, my dad. I certainly don’t tell him this enough, but he is my hero. He is the most patient person I’ve ever met, and set a great example of what a husband and father should be – one that I don’t measure up to, but aspire to. He is kind, and gentle. I think the only times I heard him raise his voice were either on the golf course or home repair “mishaps” with heavy tools, and they were never directed at us (the only reasons my brother and I ever went golfing with dad were: to hear him swear, and to drive the cart).

    It all comes back to being gentle, something I’m not very good at, but want to be. All three of my heroes are good men: creative, smart, compassionate and charitable gentle men , who leave those around them better for having known them. They are who I aspire to be.

    Thank you, dad, for being there when I need you. And thank you, Mr. Rogers and Jim Henson, for being examples of where imagination and decency can take you in a sometimes dark and always imperfect world.

    And to get back to the song, it is in all of us to be wise. It’s in all of us to be better than we are, to aspire to being more like our heroes and to choose leaders more like we aspire to be instead of those that feed on our fears. I saw a sticker today Love More. Fear Less (you can get your own), which is what started this whole train of thought.

    We, I, have been afraid too long – driven by fear to compromise our dreams, our futures and to choose leaders who feed those fears. It’s time to be led by love, to stop being afraid and embrace the future as a challenge to be better, to live our ideals instead of preaching them to others and doing the opposite behind closed doors when we think no one is looking. I’m tired of being angry. I’m tired of hearing politicians claim that the people who disagree with them aren’t “real” Americans. I’m tired of the pandering and the lies. Anger is fear turned outwards, a blind response to things we feel powerless to control, and anger is not love. I’m no hippie. I know I’ll still be angry when I wake up in the morning and catch a glimpse of the news, but I’m going to try to be wise. I’m going to try to love more and fear less, and I will keep my heroes that embody those qualities.

    I don’t know that this makes any sense at all. It’s late, and I should have been asleep two hours ago, but I couldn’t go to bed with all this trapped in my head.

    “It’s in every one of us to be wise. Find your heart, open up both your eyes.”