Making it Up As I Go

Zoe’s about to wake up any second, but I haven’t posted for a while- so, some quick notes.

Comic-Con is this weekend and we’re not there; there just wasn’t a way to pull it off around Zoe’s schedule this year. Hopefully next year. Instead of being there, I’ve been volunteering doing name extraction from old Census records for Family Search (which is totally awesome and I’ll write more about it later) and making a treasure box for Zoe to hold all of the Mardi Gras coin treasure that her daddy got her.

Harry Potter 7: We got it the day it came out and I started it at 7:30 and was done at the stroke of midnight. Really. It was really enjoyable and I thought she tied things up nicely. I won’t write more at this point in case Becky is reading this because she hasn’t read it yet. (I don’t think.)

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez: I was conflicted about reading this memoir, because I’d read something about how Rodriguez hadn’t recompensed the people she wrote about like she said she would, but I got over it, and I’m glad I did. it tells a powerful lesson about life in Afghanistan and about the difficulty of trying to affect any kind of change. So many things are broken there, but Rodriguez shows that even the smallest efforts are important. (Her effort was pretty dang big though.)

She went to Afghanistan with a relief effort and wound up feeling for a while that there was nothing she could contribute because she was “just” a hairdresser, not someone highly trained in a skill that would really lend itself to relief effort. But she came away realizing 1) how difficult the lives of the women she met were, 2) that if women could have their own salons they could have a lot more independence, and have the ability to support themselves and their families, and 3) a lot of beautification was being done that was really unsanitary and was harming people’s hair. So she got a lot of help and started a Beauty School to teach women all the skills they would need to open a salon, from hair cutting to money management. The stories of the women who attend the school are heartbreaking, but the hope they receive by learning the skills to allow them to work is just awesome.

Rodriguez’s experience is interesting because she doesn’t allow cultural differences to get in her way– sometimes to her detriment as she kind of bulldozes through them– but mostly to her benefit and the benefit of others. She marries an Afghani, and their cross-cultural relationship is fascinating. Overall, I greatly enjoyed it, and felt enlightened without feeling lectured.
Martha Stewart’s new craft line: If any one has the deep desire (or even the shallow desire) to spoil me absolutely rotten, I’m in love with so many products from Martha’s new line. Which disturbs me slightly, because I’m kind of anti-Martha on principle, but maybe not at heart. She’s just got such an amazing aesthetic. I’m reorganizing all my craft stuff, and I want want want her organizing boxes for my closet. I can picture it in my head, and it is beautiful.

And last but not least,

Congrats to Jennifer de Guzman on winning the Friends of Lulu Woman of Distinction Award. I don’t really know Jennifer- just know her through other people, but oh, I couldn’t be more pleased. She’s the editor-in-chief at Slave Labor Graphics, and she deserves this.