Monthly Archives: October 2010

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At this moment

It is cold, but sunny outside. A lovely day.

The girls are playing with Legos on the floor. B got them Halloween themed playsets (a bat, a pumpkin, a ghost) yesterday, and it has sparked a Lego extravaganza. They played this morning until it was time to leave for preschool, and headed straight back there when we got home.  Apparently, “This is Halloween-town” doesn’t have dragons. They’re only in Easter – town. Just so you know.

Buttefly and caterpillar shaped pasta is cooking on the stove for lunch. We’re out of bread – the grocery store is in my future.

I’m hoping reaaaaaallly super hard that a really awesome opportunity works out for us. You know those times when you pray “please let this work” at every possible moment of the day, as though the sheer quantity of prayers will sway the outcome? This is one of those times.

I’m also daydreaming a lot about said opportunity. When I know anything for certain, I’ll share.

My house needs a major tidying and purging. We just have so much… stuff. It surely can’t all be necessary, right?

I’m thinking about the upcoming week. We have more preschool, 3 different Halloween parties, a play date with new friends, so many things to do and enjoy.

I’m ready to go take a nap. I wonder how plausible that is…

What’s going on with you at this moment?

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Butterflies, oh the butterflies

We went on a grand adventure today to go see the Monarch butterflies in Santa Cruz. Their migration time has just started, and Santa Cruz is one of their stop off points along the way. (Wise little guys!) We met up with about 50 of our dearest friends, (and that’s not much of an exaggeration, I just counted and there were 38 of us) and we hit the Monarch trail on Natural Bridges park. This is what we saw:

See the butterfly? There in the bush? Yeah, the kids had trouble with it too. So we were thrilled when we lucked upon this guy:

He was just hanging out a bit off of the path, on the ground. It’s possible that he’d just come out of his cocoon, as he was shaking his wings a bit and staying on the ground despite considerable danger- he almost got trampled on 2 or 3 times and didn’t fly away. We got to watch him for a good 5 minutes before he flew up into the bush.

I LOVE this picture. He’s coming to geeeeeeet you!

We found the wings of a dead butterfly (we named one of the moms the Butterfly Corpse Scavenger because she kept finding them) and the kids got to look at them up close.

On our way out, we found this fellow having a snack.

Check out his curly tongue! So cool!

I couldn’t get any pictures of the butterflies swarming around in the sky, but it was gorgeous. Once the sun came out and it got a little warmer, they were flying around everywhere, and it really was breathtaking. I could have stayed there all day just watching them. We’ll have to go back again in a couple of months, when there are even more there.

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Major Major Major

My friend Hilary just started a new thing on her blog, where she posts a topic each Weds. to write about that is all about you- the blogger; kind of a reminder that we are people in and of ourselves, not just in relation to other people.  ( Go take a look at her blog, she explains it better over there. I’m fighting off illness today, and my words aren’t coming together so well.)

Anyway.

The topic for today is college majors. What was yours, how did you choose it, etc.

I went into college with the absolute certainty that I was going to major in theater. I was coming off of amazing experiences in high school theater, I’d been awarded the Senior Drama Award, and had been informed that they’d wanted to give it to me the year before as well, when I was only a junior.  I’d looked into fine arts schools, but none of them felt right, and I ended up applying to UCSC and getting in. I pre-declared my major as theater (there are so many people who want to get into the program that you can’t just declare), and set about finding classes. And for my entire first year, I didn’t take a single theater class, a single dance class. (I did take a history of musical theater class, but no performing classes.) I got picked to choreograph You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown, but I hurt my knee and couldn’t do it. And by then, I didn’t really want to. The theater department was super competitive, and I wasn’t as assured in my skills as I had been going in. And somewhere in that first year, I had the very clear impression that theater wasn’t what was supposed to make up my future.

When it came time to actually declare my major, I looked at the classes I’d already taken and enjoyed, and discovered that I was already well on my way to a Lit degree with an emphasis in Pre and Early Modern Literature. It was almost eerie how it all fell into place, classes that I’d just “felt” like I should take, that fulfilled requirements I didn’t know I needed to fill.  And since I love reading and writing, that’s what I went with. And goodness, did I read and write. And only a couple times did I write about a book I hadn’t actually read.

The pre and early Lit program at UCSC at the time was heavily concentrated on the intersection of literature and history- reading literary texts for the historical info that could be gleaned, and reading historical texts (mostly legal documents, like those asking for a court pardon) as narratives. Super fun. (And that’s not sarcastic at all, it was super fun.)  Most of the classes I took were concerned with the Italian Renaissance , but I also took a slew of classes about Shakespeare, science fiction, and Gothic literature… so many fun things. I dabbled in art history, even taking a Grad class about Renaissance painters, but that just convinced me that I wasn’t interested in Grad school. I ended up graduating with honors in my department, and 1 class short of having a minor in History, and there we have it.

What did I get from it? How do I use it now? Goodness knows. I learned how to analyze things in a different way, how to write more concisely, how to extrapolate information from the little bit that I’d read and turn it into a whole paper. But really, I think I gained strength from the experience of losing something that I really cared about and had planned on spending my life doing, and realizing that there were other things that I loved and was good at. There was a period of time in my 3rd year when I was a stake missionary, and was working with the missionaries almost every day. I have no idea how I made it through that year with good grades, because I certainly wasn’t concentrating on my classes, and would routinely skip them to go to discussions. But it all came together, and I was able to witness some really amazing conversions. If I’d been in theater, chances are that I wouldn’t have had that time.  I took a class in Comic Art and Graphic Novels in my last quarter that got me interested in the whole subject, and that was how I came to meet Joe and work for him at the comic store for 5 years, and meet Bruce and get married, and go on to work with awesome people in the comic industry for almost 10 years. So for me, it’s more about what my major set me up for later and the opportunities it afforded me that weren’t about a career in my field, necessarily.

Um, that’s it.

:)

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A lovely realization

As I was getting into the check-out line at the grocery store today, the cover of Oprah caught my eye. (That magazine ALWAYS tempts me. ALWAYS.) The main headline-y thingie said something along the lines of “Find Out What You Were Born to Do”. There was a time in my life when I would have snatched it up based on that alone. I love quizzes, especially those intended to shed light on my deeply meaningful purpose in life. But today, I looked at that cover, and my first thought was, “I’m doing what I was born to do. Right now.”  I’m being a wife, a mom, raising two little crazy people the best I can, trying to help those around me, trying to improve myself and move forward. And that, really, is what I’m here to do.  Sure, writing a book would be nice, but that’s not why I’m here. Sure, I could apparently be an engineer, architect, or physician (so sue me, I went to Oprah.com and took the tests. Apparently I’m really strong in structural visualization. I remember that I scored really high on that when the Army recruiter people came and tested us in high school too. Although, I scored pretty high on everything else too. I can be ANYTHING!) but again, that’s not why I’m here.

And that’s a really nice realization. I heard it worded once that we all need to figure out what our ministry is meant to be here on Earth. I LOVE that. Who am I supposed to minister to – not what huge amazing world changing thing am I supposed to do. Because ministering to the people around you can be pretty world changing.

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At this moment

It is hot in my house. I have the doors open, trying to get a breeze through, since it’s not too bad outside. We’ll see.

Even thought it’s hot, there is water boiling on the stove for some lemon tea. I read to the girls for a solid hour and a half tonight, and my throat is going to die. So lemon tea it is. I even have honey from local bees to put in it. (Hooray for the produce stand!)

The girls are in bed. Hopefully they stay there. I’m bribing Z with being able to finally wear panties to bed instead of a pull up if she can go to sleep in her room and stay in there until she falls asleep. Well, and then stay in there when she’s asleep. :) We’ve only just started having the girls go to sleep in the same room, and Z would come out multiple times in the 10 minutes after they got in bed to inform us that Tiny was talking. Tonight she only came out once, for a hug.  But she has to stay put on 7 nights, and so this one doesn’t count. I know, I’m a meanie.

The house is pretty decently clean. I think the time right after the girls go to bed, right after I’ve done the last general pick-up of the evening, is one of my favorite times of day. Order is somewhat restored, and won’t be disturbed until the morning. It’s like resetting the stage for the next performance.

I’m listening to a Tchaikovsky concerto. Amazon had a $5 deal on certain CDs today, and The 99 Most Essential Tchaikovsky Masterpieces was one of them. So I bought it. I’m still unclear as to why they didn’t just go for a whole 100 – could they not find another they deemed “essential”? But anyway. I also got the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, which is just so lovely.  Zoe really wanted me to get Shakira (I was listening to a sample and she piped up, “This music is GREAT, mama!” I think she liked her growly voice and that it was fast.) But the last thing I need is Z running around singing that her hips don’t lie. Seriously, the girl has a memory for lyrics like a steel trap. Although she also has her auntie’s uncanny ability to completely mishear lyrics which, we recently discovered, had her (Zoe, not my sister) convinced that Ghostbusters was a scary song – because she thought it was “Ghost Monsters”. HAHAHAHAHA, I just remembered, the other day we were in the car (after she knew what the right words are) and she heard, “Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!” and said, “Momma, they really should say to call the police or the fireman or somebody.” I love it. :)

I have a 25 lb bag of pinto beans sitting on my kitchen floor, waiting to be divvied up into small bags, so that they can be distributed to lovely ladies who want to make them into bean bags. Well, put them inside bean bags. I also have fabric, which they will, in fact, use to make the bean bags. And I have receipts which miraculously total just around the amount said women paid to make the bean bags, even though I totally miscalculated the amount. Costco saved the day. Should you need mass amounts of dry pinto beans, they’re your store. 25 lbs for $13. Woo hoo!

I am drinking my tea. It is lovely and of good report. Praiseworthy, even. My throat feels much better.

I’m going to go watch Company, starring Raul Esparza, on Netflix on demand. I LOVE that guy. I could listen to him sing all day. I could listen to him sing the phone book, for goodness sake, as long as he had an arrangement that let him get up all high and vibrato-y.  Want to listen? Here’s him singing   Being Alive from Company. It’s well worth your time. He’s a genius, singing a genius’ work. Goodness, I LOVE it. I’m going to go watch now.

What’s going on with you at this moment?

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Changing the story

We read a lot of books in our house, and often times I’ll change some of the words or minor-ish plot points (like, “the evil Queen told the huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and leave her there” instead of “kill her”). Usually it’s because of something like violence or to soften the story a bit. Tonight, however….

So we’re reading an adaptation of The Frog Prince. Everything is going according to the original story, with the princess making a deal with the frog, the frog forcing her to keep her end of the bargain…

When the princess was in bed, the frog hopped over and tugged on the sheets. “I’m tired, and I want to go to  sleep. Lift me up, or I’ll tell your father.” said the frog.

The princess became angry. She picked up the frog and threw him against the wall as hard as she could. “There, you ugly frog. Now you’ll sleep,” she said.

A bit violent, but still ok. But then, mind bogglingly, we go to this:

When he dropped to the floor, the frog turned into a handsome prince. He told the princess a wicked witch had cast a magic spell that had turned him into a frog. He had lost all hope until the princess came to play by the well.

The princess looked into the prince’s beautiful eyes. She believed him. The princess let the prince become her dearest friend and husband. They went to his father’s kingdom, and they lived happily ever after.

WHAT? That makes NO sense at all. None. She throws him against a wall in disgust, and THAT breaks the magic spell? And she “believes” his story (like he made it up?) and “lets” him become her dearest friend, now that he’s a prince? How convenient!

Really, I’m offended on two levels. Both from the viewpoint of a lover of stories and a believer that they should be accurately preserved, and as a mom. Has this adapter ever read the original story? How do you go from the prince needing a kiss of true love and the princess having to overcome her prejudice of his “ugliness” and come to love him, to her trying to KILL him and him magically becoming a prince and her saying “ooh, a cute prince, I’ll marry you!” And him going along with it! The woman just tried to KILL you! Do you still have the brain of a frog??

As B pointed out, it’s writing like this that makes people think that Twillight is good. (And I don’t mean the people who enjoy it while acknowledging its flaws, I mean the people who think it’s legitimately amazing literature.)  The plot jump is sloppy, it’s careless. But more than that, what’s the moral of this story? The take away, if you will? Not just that it’s ok to be mean to ugly people/creatures, but that romance is easy, that there’s nothing wrong with violence in relationships, that all it takes is a look and it’s love.

Now, I realize that some reading this may be thinking, “Maryanne, you are WAY over-analyzing a 32 page book intended for preschoolers.” But I was a lit major. And words and stories are important. And the stories that my girls hear are important. The stories that I tell them are important.

So what did I do? Here’s how I ended the story. (Picking up right after the princess threw the frog at the wall)

When he dropped to the floor, the frog turned into a handsome prince. He told the princess a wicked witch had cast a magic spell that had turned him into a frog. He had lost all hope until the princess came to play by the well.

The princess looked into the prince’s beautiful eyes. She believed him. And she said, “Let me be your princess!”And the prince said, “No. You were horrible to me when I was a frog. You said mean things and didn’t keep your promises, and tried to hurt me. You are not a nice princess. I’m going away.”

And he did.

When I finished, Zoe just looked at me and said, “That was mean!” I asked her what was mean, and she said that the prince was mean for leaving. So we talked about how the princess was mean, and how the prince shouldn’t have to stay around someone who was mean. THIS is exactly what I mean when I say that stories are important. Through them we (especially kids) learn how we can expect to be treated, how we are expected to act. And the LAST thing I want my little girls thinking is that they’d be mean if they got themselves the heck out of dodge in a bad situation.

And… wow. I started this post intending it to be a funny little story and got all indignant along the way. But it was a stupid book.

To end on a more positive note, if you’re looking for a princess book that’s not stupid or overly Disneyfied, I suggest Usborne Stories of Princesses, which I can’t find a link for at the moment, but this version of The Princess and the Pea is in it, and is fantastic.

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Halloween is coming!

Current happenings around our home:

Invitations to Zoe and Tiny’s Halloween party. Z drew on the front with pastels, then I sprayed them with glimmer mist, and glued a white piece of paper (edged with orange) on the back that contains all the party info. Simple and cool looking.

My Halloween banner. It stretches all the way across the wall, around the corner, and down another wall. That wasn’t really purposeful, I really have NO sense of length, so 9 yards seemed about right when I really only needed about 6. But I love it. The other side is Thanksgiving/Fall themed, so when Halloween is over I can just flip it and I’ll have more prettiness.

The little misses. Z has known for ages what she wanted to be for Halloween, so I figured we better get out and get her a costume before it got too late and we couldn’t find one. Tiny has been all over the place with what costume she wanted, Cinderella, Tinkerbell, Snow White… luckily we already have all of those costumes, so she could flit around all she wanted. When we went today and got Z’s costume, Tiny saw this one and declared that she had to be a “busy bee”. She is seriously so freakin’ adorable. Check out this awesome picture B took.