Awk

Too pretty not to post.

2011-11-11T10:28:00.001-07:00

We went to my friends Mariel and Adam's wedding a few weeks back, out in the Longmont countryside on a beautiful October day. And some young man decided to make friends with the photographer. Future dress shirt model? I report. You decide.

Halloween hijinks.

2011-11-02T13:53:00.003-06:00

Long time, no blog, I know. But October contained two Matt trips, and two shows which opened and closed. With great sales and some rave reviews, so both companies are off to a great start for the season.

I slept for eleven, count them, ELEVEN hours last night. And there were approximately the same number of inches of snow on the ground this morning. Which means I have five minutes to upload photos of the kids' adventures. Because isn't that what every adoring mama does with her copious spare time when November finally comes and it's not Thanksgiving ~~panic~~ break yet?

T's class went to the pumpkin patch up in Longmont the Friday before All Hallows' Eve. The train there was the highlight of his trip. Here he is with a friend in a middle boxcar, and then in the caboose:

Slightly after T's big Halloween trip to the patch, M's school had a costume party and crafts day on Monday, where she made a cute little spider-and-ghost mobile for the kitchen. Here is the Wicked Witch of the West, with SuperGirl:

And the two troublemakers together, on their way to a Saturday night Halloween soiree. For those of you not au courant with Pixar films, T was Dash from "The Incredibles." I love how the costume is one size too big so it looks like he has a very muscle-y potbelly. M is doing her best to look wicked:

Now that we've passed the four-day-holiday-marathon that Halloween was this year, I can clean house and dig out all the winter clothes. Clearly we need them since we're already having our second snowstorm of the year. T tried to sneak shorts under his snow pants at one point in the recent past, but we are now past those days of innocence. Now I have firmly implanted that SNOW = PANTS. His future wife will thank me one day, I'm sure.

Well, if that's the only way that gets results.

2011-09-21T18:39:00.001-06:00

Miranda is sitting on the couch, working on a creative project involving a rocket. Tucker comes over and takes the rocket drawing out of her hands, and says, "Rockets are for boys." I overhear this, and come out of the kitchen, saying in a stern voice, "What did you just say?"

Tucker replies, stubbornly, clutching the drawing, "Rockets are for boys." Then, seeing my raised eyebrows, less stubbornly, and very fast: "And girls. And Mirandas. And Mamas. And anyone who can take away my priv-lid-ges." With a big smile at me.

And gives her the drawing back.

Sigh. Equality, at what cost?

Sometimes the good guys do win.

2011-09-16T07:37:00.003-06:00

This made me cry. Read all the way to the end.

Marine is awarded medal of honor.

Love. This.

2011-09-12T12:17:00.003-06:00

It appeals to the part of me that used to sort my Skittles before eating.

Extreme Tidying Up

Tattoo tales.

2011-09-11T14:29:00.002-06:00

This morning as we were getting ready for church, I realized Tucker still had the temporary tattoo on his arm from last weekend's Labor Day Hometown Fair. (It is an inoffensive tattoo from the Park System with two wild animal cartoon characters, FYI.) I said, "Tuck, I think we've got to take that off your arm before church." To which he replied, lower lip jutting out, arms crossed over his chest: "Jesus loves my tattoo."

Haven't taken it off yet. Hard to find a good comeback to that...

Recap, part I: Road Trip Odyssey 2011.

2011-08-17T21:31:00.006-06:00

I have four more arts grants and a 5000-word article to write before the end of the month. I'm covering for the opera director who's in Italy until after Labor Day, so I'm teaching an undergrad and a graduate class for the first two weeks of class which begin Monday. And we just got back from a whirlwind road trip odyssey of summer family visiting. Oh, and I got a new laptop so am still getting everything synced so I can upload pics from the trip. So what am I doing instead of anything I should be? Blogging, of course!

Matt was kind enough to send me a few photos from his phone, at least, so here's how the T-bird spent his last day of pre-pre-school freedom at the Longmont Museum:

When not dressing up like a buffalo, he's been hanging out with donkeys. One of his grandparents' Wisconsin neighbors keeps donkeys, and surprisingly, donkey costumes.

There are many tales of tractors, airplane rides, horseback riding, and general adventure yet to follow ($%*$%& camera/ iPhoto/ new OSX Lion operating system!), but thanks to Matt's dad, I also have one good shot of both kids with our lovely niece Talia.

Miranda, Tucker, and Talia were largely inseparable during the days we were all together in Wisconsin. They even slept together in a puppy pile of sleeping bags in their grandparents' basement.

(Side note: Talia's little sister Ella is three months old, and Tucker refers to her as "baby-sleeping-Ella" whenever he asks about his cousins. Rather than dealing with jet lag, smart little Ella just skipped the time-adjustment to Central Daylight Time, which made things, um, interesting sleepwise for the adults. Also led to a sort of conservation-of-sleep effect where I don't think we actually managed to have all four children under the roof sleeping at the same time. For five days. These are the things which adults bond over, especially when good wine is also involved.)

Talia understands English, but primarily speaks French, which led to some priceless language-barrier moments for all of us and eventually resolved itself between the children into a sort of Frenglish patois. At one point, when Miranda was asking her to "please say it in English," Talia responded, hands on hips, "Je suis speak English!" Here are the three musketeers, hanging out:

Work break. Sort of.

2011-07-20T13:23:00.001-06:00

Words I would like never to have to respond to again, in current order of loathing: "economic vitality," "diversity/inclusivity," "the underserved," "takeaways," "deliverables."

I am not at all opposed to the concepts underlying these terms. (For example, the arts do contribute economically to their communities.) I am, however, hugely opposed to the idea that in order to merit funding as a performing artist, I must somehow discern and then provide to funders information on the ethnicity, sexual orientation, and income level of every audience member I attract. I am even more opposed to the idea that art deserves funding only when people with certain targeted characteristics (whatever they are) encounter it.

I am truly in favor of finding ways to increase accessibility to the arts, but audience demographics are not a path TO artistic excellence. It works the other way around: if I make truly great art, more people of all types will be interested in coming to see it. But it shouldn't be my job to determine if my audiences match your desired target characteristics.

My "deliverable" is a performance. Your "takeaway" requires you to show up and see my work and then make your own decision about its worth. That job can't be outsourced. Funders, please stop putting pressure on your grantees to run Gallup polls on every audience. Try seeing our work instead.

In case you can't tell, I hate grant final-reports season. Six down, two to go...end of rant.

So good.

2011-07-18T20:29:00.002-06:00

The Medium Chill

This week the T-bird spent about 48 hours in the hospital. We're all still bouncing back in terms of work, housework, sleep, and general sociability. Good things have happened--he is home, he is on the mend, we are all breathing, we have friends in town visiting, and Miranda saw her first professional play at the Shakespeare Festival with me--but right now I'm still spending my last fifteen minutes of downtime on surfing the web.

And this article is about a philosophy too attractive not to contemplate. We have already integrated parts of it into our lives, but haven't articulated it this thoroughly in explicit terms.

So much is happening at all kinds of levels that I need to process. Our archbishop is changing archdioceses--that will be a big deal around here depending on his replacement, and will mean interesting things ahead for Philly where I used to live. I've got an essay on the Tea Party and religion in America due in a few weeks. I'm taking an intensive French-for-scholarly-reading class that is kicking my butt in terms of homework and comprehension, and I'm trying to decide how best to pursue learning to speak and listen to it once this class is over. LiveMocha has been recommended by a few friends so I will look into that and Rosetta Stone.

It's because I have too much too say that it's probably better for me to take a break until my mind quiets down enough to focus on a single topic. But do check out the article, and comment if you like it.

Camping!

2011-06-21T16:10:00.009-06:00

We took the T-bird and the bug up to Rocky Mountain National Park at the beginning of the month, for Tucker's first camping trip and major hike. The camping itself went remarkably smoothly; both children slept like logs and enjoyed sharing a tent with us very much. The hike up to Bierstadt Lake ran into a few snags, though.

This is the year of the slowest snowpack melt on record. As of June 1, the Peak-to-Peak Highway was not yet open because there was still over 13 ft. of snow on the road. So about 1.7 mi into our 2-mile mountain hike, we ran into a snow field, as shown. What you can't tell from the photo is that the snow was at least Tucker-waist deep in many spots, even though it was probably close to 60 degrees outside. So we decided to turn back a bit short of the lake, judging it preferable to losing our son somewhere along the path in a snowbank.

On the way back down, we ran into a couple of other hikers, even more inappropriately dressed and less intrepid than we were, who kindly got the shot below of our entire family.See, we actually do all exist in the same place at the same time occasionally!

We did several shorter low-land hikes over the following two days, flat ones around lakes and streams, saw elk, visited visitors' centers, and generally had a wonderful few days of family time before the summer workload began to hit. I think the kids had the most fun on the rocks quite near to our campsite, which Tuck promptly proclaimed "my fire truck!" and let his sister come along for the ride. Here they are, and someone has borrowed his daddy's hat:

June. Opera. Busy. But...

2011-06-16T12:23:00.003-06:00

A lot going on in and around the homestead since Mother's Day, and since we're almost to Father's Day, I better catch up. Matt wandered afield to Boston and Chicago for various conferences in the past month, so with one hand for each child that left me no fingers free to type. But now he's home until our grand road odyssey begins in August.

My sister's family came out to visit around Memorial Day, and much fun was had by all, especially the cousins. My eldest nephew walked the Bolder Boulder with his dad and another aunt and uncle, and then most of the family came out for the big finale of the professional race, flyover with skydivers, and Memorial Day ceremony. It was really beautiful.

I ran the race myself earlier that morning, and finished in 50:13. I liked the new course although running it with 54,000 of my closest friends meant that some of the turns were a little more crowded than I would have liked.

CU's opera summer program is still running--our performances are next week, and I go into tech rehearsals on Monday. Things are running a LOT more smoothly in our second year, so far, knock wood. This year's world premieres are excerpts from Kirke Mechem's "Pride and Prejudice" and Herschel Garfein's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead." Both literary works I like a lot, which aids me in general enthusiasm for the musical projects. :) The students and faculty are working immensely hard, and our designers are going to make them look good. Very good.

I may eventually post some photos, but would rather post than hunt for the camera cord right now.

Mother's Day race report.

2011-05-08T17:25:00.009-06:00

This Mother's Day morning, bright and early, we went out to the Boulder Reservoir so that I could enjoy my mom's day present: a race entry for the Mother's Day Title 9+K (6.1 mi).

Last night was strike for the last show of the BETC season, so I was stumbling a bit this morning since I didn't get in until after 11 last night. Still, after a good cup of Matt's coffee we were dressed and ready to hit the road, and we left early enough to miss the race congestion. Here we are near the entry to the Res, before any of the day's events really got rolling. The event areas behind us were still being set up, and they had a ton of things for little kids to do, from hula hooping to arts and crafts to a jumpy castle, while older kids and moms ran the main race. The race was limited to moms and kids under 18, so there were a lot of dads hanging out while the women stretched and waited in line at the porta-potties. Which they needed twice the number of (hello, it's a women's race!).

And here is my fabulous cheering squad. You will note that the kids are also wearing race tags. A big feature of the Title9K is the RagaMuffin Fun Run for all kids under 8. The theory was that the 2-3 year olds would run in one wave, the 4-5 year olds in the next, and the 6-8 year olds in the last wave. Tuck thus has a tag that indicates he is a "Rumbling Red," and Miranda is a "Yahoo Yellow." They got to pick their own numbers. Tuck chose the same number I was assigned--42, for all you Hitchhiker's Guide fans!--and M chose 10, hands down the most popular number.

Here's Tuck at the starting line; I'm in yellow right behind him, and the first heat was actually all kinds of parents coaxing roughly 100 2-3 year olds to try to run forward in a straight line when someone gave the "go!" sign. Herding cats? Piece of cake. Herding confused toddlers who want to stay with their mommies and get scared out of their small minds by the starting noise? Um, a bit more challenging. Roughly 1/3 of the kids bailed in the three minutes between line-up and the starting horn, deciding they'd rather be with Dad, or in their jogging strollers. Another 1/3 burst into tears at the start of the race.
This included Tucker, as evidenced by the shot at left. The agony of defeat? No, just the agony of a complete lack of clarity about what the hell was going on. Why was everyone shouting and running and yelling and blowing horns and who WERE all these people who were not his mommy? Where was dad? Where was Miranda? Where was justice?

Luckily, justice was only about 50 yards away, and it was a quick scoop up off the pavement and to parental safety. The tears soon gave way to smiles as our little finisher proclaimed,

"I scared. I scared of race. But Mama chased me all done no more running now. Big kid time."

And so the second wave began, with slightly more success as the four and five year old runners seemed to grok the idea of rapid forward motion without their parents holding their hands and scaring the crap out of them with cameras in their faces all the time. The third wave was for kids Miranda's age, but there was a pretty significant problem right at the start: the kids began to run on an unofficial "Go!"

This was a problem because the volunteers in charge of establishing and holding the finish line had not yet taken their places after the second wave. But the runners were off...and none of them had any idea how far 50 yards was supposed to be. So they kept running through the crowd. And running. And got about 300 yards before they were finally all flagged down by the race organizers who finally caught up with them, sort of. This is a great action shot of M on the run, in the black-and-blue shirt in the middle.

My own race went well, thanks, and I finished at a quite respectable pace of about 8:29/ mile, 79th overall out of 1744 women. (Lots of walkers.) A woman in my age group won the race overall; as you might imagine the 35-39 group was just about the largest age group of runners in the field. And this time I beat the fastest 70-year-old and the fastest woman pushing a jogging stroller, although there was a 60-year-old finisher ahead of me. But the real prize was hearing my family cheering me on just before the finish line, and getting big hugs and "Good running!" from them at the end. And Tuck actually behaving himself at 11 a.m. church, and a post-race post-Mass lunch at the Southern Sun...Mother's Day was basically made of awesome this year. I am very blessed.

Field trip!

2011-05-06T21:12:00.002-06:00

Today we went to Sunflower Farm southeast of Longmont for the annual kindergarten field trip. The farm is a place with a lot of typical rural animals (chickens, cows, llamas) and a few unusual ones (peacocks, a large tortoise). It's got a zip line, several crazy treehouses, rope swings, silos full of sandboxes, and generally lots of outdoor beauty. Here you can see the bug exploring the hay bale maze, which included several challenging board-across-big-gap sections. So lucky we had a gorgeous day for it!

What you can't see in this post is that yesterday on the playground she took a face plant after tripping on a shovel and got a bloody nose, several small gashes on her face, and a mouthful of wood chips, one of which got stuck in her gums according to another parent on the playground. She is recovering quite nicely and we are thankful the damage wasn't any worse. Adventure comes at a cost, I suppose.

Easter season.

2011-04-29T17:15:00.003-06:00

And a few quick pictures from our Easter events. First, the intrepid egg-dyers wait as the tablets fizz.

Second, we went over to our friends' house after Mass for Easter brunch and their annual egg hunt. The big kids had a delayed start, and helped administer justice by re-divvying-up the eggs post-hunt so all the little kids got candy too.

It's much better than you think, actually.

2011-04-28T09:53:00.003-06:00

There have been any number of articles in the popular media within the last few months about how people who choose not to have children are supposedly happier than those who do...I have a difficult time believing that, as I think both childfree and parenting adults have equal shots at happiness. So I was really pleased to receive this in my daily research email this morning:

75% Very Satisfied with Family Life

There are some truly odd findings in the details; for example, 88% of those surveyed consider married childless couples to be a family (so the other 12% don't? Really?). Still, interesting stuff in the data, well worth a look.

Monkey see, monkey do.

2011-04-26T07:52:00.002-06:00

Tuck just not-so-gently elbowed his sister away from the laptop next to me because he "hadda checka e-MAIL!"

[Neither of my children have email accounts, obviously, although we do let the bug email her grandparents and cousins from one of our accounts occasionally.]

His father's morning addictions to email and coffee are obviously being directly transmitted, whether by genetics or example, directly to the next generation.

And a link...

2011-04-20T16:44:00.003-06:00

...to the local Catholic newspaper's story about the basketball game. The print version has a larger picture, and we're actually in it!

Boldness of Faith the real winner in Jews vs. Catholics hoops

Holy week, a winning team, and two openings.

2011-04-18T09:53:00.004-06:00

Palm Sunday was yesterday and my parents were in town, which made it even more special than usual because they were around to come to Mass with me and the kids. Tuck is still learning church behavior and I'm thinking of borrowing my cousin Carey's approach to teaching him. When her little boy misbehaved during 9 a.m. Mass, her husband would take the other kids home, and then she'd keep him there and they'd stay for 11 a.m. too. After three weeks he got the hang of being good the first time. :) Anyway, the T-bird spent about 1/3 of the service in back or just outside, so we've got a long way to go to learning quiet obedience.

He was a lot better-matched to the afternoon's activities. Our parish priests have become friends with the rabbi who leads the campus synagogue, so yesterday afternoon they held the first annual "Jews vs. Catholics" men's basketball game. Yup, on Palm Sunday. I took both kids as it was the first time they've attended a live sporting event that wasn't one of mama's races. They had a blast and practically lost their voices cheering for our team. Oh, and the Catholics won, by the way! Both kids want to learn to play basketball now, so the Little Tykes hoop in our family room got a workout last night.

This week had better be full of "being good the first time." It's opening night for the last BETC show of the season, and thus I'm planning two parties on Friday and Saturday for opening night and for major donors. Then next week the CU Opera is doing Leonard Bernstein's MASS, for one night only, with a cast of 350 down in Denver at the Boettcher Music Hall. Both those shows deserve their own posts, but it's worth pointing out that, hey, it's Holy Week, and there's a lot going on already! I'll try to snap some photos when I can of all the week's events. Depending on your personal proclivities, cross your fingers or say a prayer for me--there's a lot to handle on the calendar, and I'll be happy to see next Wednesday get here.

And a brief news-related complaint.

2011-04-13T20:18:00.003-06:00

I hate the New York Times' recent attempt to limit their site access primarily to paying subscribers.

I probably read at least five articles a day from their site before the new limits were put in place (20 free per month and then you have to subscribe). I know what's cost-intensive: international news coverage. I know what I actually read: opinion columns, food columns, and theatre reviews, with occasional health and Catholic news when I think the NYT coverage is most thorough.

Unless I get to put my subscription dollars toward the specific salaries of the reportage I want to see, though, the internet has spoiled me and I'm not paying for what I can get free elsewhere. If I could be assured my $10 a month would go to keeping theatre reviewers on staff, I'm all for it. But it's probably paying for expense accounts in Riyadh or Kabul, and I'm not following those stories so closely. (They're not actually required for my work or research although I might be curious about them.)

I don't know how to get news to pay for itself, precisely, although I can tell you I certainly seem to see enough ads on the NYT sites that I suspect someone's been concerned with their bottom line for a long, long time. I'm watching this limited-access attempt with interest, because I'm really hoping it goes down in flames within a few months.

Off Hiatus.

2011-04-11T14:02:00.003-06:00

Because when my parents are about to visit, and I have two shows opening within the next three weeks, it cannot possibly be surprising that I'd rather update my blog than wash windows or prepare for theatrical festivities.

In other words, uploading some photos of the fam from my camera and phone is long overdue. Actually taking pictures is longer overdue, so I'll have exactly one good shot with this post, featuring the T-bird with his St. Patrick's Day hat. Yup, that's a shamrock with a sideways smiley face.

There are still four of us, and for those of you who have doted on the blog for visual evidence, you'll be reassured that the younger two continue to grow. Matt took the camera with him to Alaska back in January for the last rocket launch and I have yet to get any pictures on it since then--I know everyone's wondering if we've grown three ears, so I'll try to get some as Easter approaches, since for the first time in weeks we won't be covered in mud or snot.

Matt's been spearheading a major landscaping project in the neighborhood. Two weeks ago we and lots of friends and neighbors moved roughly two tons of rock so that we could turn our mailbox-island into a xeric-landscaped garden area. It will be beautiful once the plants start to grow, and they finished the planting last weekend. Right now it looks like a big lovely dirt heap with some tiny green stuff, though. Thus, my reference to mud.

We've all (except the bug) had the end-of-winter cold for the last week to ten days, too, so continue the mucus removal process of bleaching every available surface and doorknob, and rescheduling all the stuff that got cancelled within the last few weeks. The sun and the sixty-degree temps seem to be sticking for this week, so there's hope.

If you'd like the short reason why I've taken the last six months off from blogging, I have one word for you: FaceBook. (I joined almost exactly when I stopped blogging here.) Short status reports and links with occasional pictures turn out to be way easier for me to generate timewise, and I've reconnected with several friends who were close in high school which is a treat. It's also limited in access to people I approve / designate as my friends which is nice when it comes to posting family information, as opposed to a public blog; I could always make my blog password-accessible only, but I haven't made that call just yet. I'm also required to FB for two of my three jobs, as social media activity is key to audience building for theatrical organizations. Still, I want to keep this blog going so that some day my children can recoil in horror at the tales of their childhood, so I'll still be dropping by occasionally with updates. Drop a line in the comments and let me know if you're still there, readers!

not the new year.

2010-10-15T11:27:00.004-06:00

It's October 15, so a great time for new resolutions, right? I am too impatient to wait for January 1st.

1) I am not going to answer "How are you?" with "Busy!" any more. Being busy does not make me special and it generally means I'm overcommitted.

2) I am going to continue to shed volunteer obligations that do not actually feed my spirit, heart, or intellect. I do not owe anything to organizations that do not know how to utilize volunteers effectively and/or make us feel welcome and valued.

3) I want to get back into writing again, and reading again, as pleasures I have left on the shelf for several years due to a lack of brainspace. Those of you who Facebook know about my recent addiction to the Poetry Foundation website, and I try to spend at least five minutes on it a day meeting new poems and poets through the "random" button. I've got at least one novel and one play in my head that I'd like to begin work on within the next six months, and some scholarly interests as well.

4) I want to be where I am when I'm there, with the people I'm with. I've been working on the "Be Here Now" principle for a few months now and I'm making a little headway, but it stays on the important goals list. I've just finished a book called "Hamlet's Blackberry" and one of the ideas proposed is an Internet sabbath for the family, which I think is brilliant. We'll see if I can convince Matt to implement it too, but I think it would make a world of difference as far as my own attention span goes. I am bringing too much of my work into my home life and vice versa, and need to work on my concentration skills in order to work more deeply on projects in the months ahead.

5) And while I'm thinking of it: I have the intention of writing snail-mail letters to people on my mailing list before Christmas instead of generic cards or e-greetings. I genuinely like special writing tools and fancy papers, and a little thoughtfulness every day would be a lot better for me than a big burden of obligation in late November. There, I've said it aloud in the blogosphere, so now it's official!

Rainy Day Sunday.

2010-10-10T16:47:00.002-06:00

For the first time since September 4, I have gotten to be home with the kids all day long, without leaving the house.

We have played dangerbirdie (think fort-making plus occasional shouts of "Danger!" which drive both children into the "nest"), cleaned two closets, packed stuff up for charity, and are about to make vegetable soup. There have been Goldfish and grapes aplenty, and several Beach Boys dance parties. And naptime for Tuck brought snow-making with Miranda's science kit, and a sewing lesson...she is getting good at straight-stitching by hand, and better at playing with checkers. (It was an unusually long nap.)

After a solid month plus of some obligation every day, today was WONDERFUL. Although you could hear the screaming when I bathed my son at least three houses away...he survived and now has less than a third of the red sauce he started out with in his hair. He's not a redhead, he is just passionate about his pasta!

I am certainly ready for fall and for some time at home. Even if it is slightly less than contemplative, I am filling up on my good-stuff quota. :)

And in more local news...

2010-10-07T12:50:00.003-06:00

The Tuck-meister has taken to attacking us all with oven mitts. But he's so thrilled to watch us scream, I think he may have a future in making horror movies.

Media and obscenity, part I (probably).

2010-10-07T09:59:00.005-06:00

There's a hot story in Loveland, CO about a piece of visual art that garnered public protest and picketers, right up until yesterday when a woman from Montana destroyed it and was arrested. Coverage of the story continues, but honestly, what surprises me a little is that someone would come all the way from Montana to destroy a piece of art she viewed as blasphemous. That's dedication, but it may make it harder for someone to suggest later that the art goes against local standards for decency (a necessary part of building the case in court that an artwork is legally obscene).

For all the news coverage of the artwork, Chagoya's "The Misadventures of Romantic Cannibals," I have yet to actually see a reproduction of the artwork in TV or newspaper coverage of the story. (I did find one through a Google search, which quickly clarified why people would find it offensive; consider yourself forewarned if you do the same.) In media coverage, there are just photos of protesters.

This makes it hard to have an informed opinion on the work itself, but very easy to hold a position on the controversy. It's also clear that many of the people who are protesting are missing facts about the story (for example, the work was donated by the artist to the exhibit and no tax dollars were spent on its purchase, so the people who are complaining about funding the artist with tax dollars could use a fact-check). Some have valid points but most are jumping on the bandwagon with a minimum of information.

Judging by the coverage on the Post website, where it's the most-commented story of the day, people just can't wait to get into discussion about free speech versus blasphemy and public decency. The Supreme Court case heard yesterday about Fred Phelps' church protests at the funeral of a soldier is covering some of the same ground regarding distasteful speech in the public arena. Phelps' protesters followed local laws about the distance from a church that protests had to occur, and then picketed the funeral of a soldier with signs including "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" (for the record the soldier in question was heterosexual). Phelps' lawyer, one of his daughters, has tried to make the case that the first amendment should protect them from charges of causing emotional distress to the soldier's family.

Offending people's standards of decency gets media coverage for your ideas, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum. I am repelled by the idea that the level of public discourse has sunk so low that tactics like these, of obscene images, cruel words, and hate-filled speech, are what it takes to be heard.

However, I think it reflects most poorly on the media that their stories do not raise the really important questions at hand, but simply mirror the polarization of our communities on moral values. I don't expect journalists to attempt answers to moral questions except perhaps on the editorial page, but I would expect responsible journalists to provide what good coverage of the Supreme Court does: accurate portrayals of the positions on all sides of a controversy.

Things you wish someone would describe you as.

2010-10-07T09:49:00.001-06:00

I ran across an editorial in a Pueblo arts paper describing a political candidate as a "plucky policy wonk." I want to be one of those!

In and out of Doubt.

2010-10-06T14:17:00.003-06:00

The past month has been frankly overwhelming. I am so proud of the work of the theatre company that's producing "Doubt" and it has been a great experience to work on the production with such a talented team of actors and designers...once we get production photos taken I will share some here. The big Denver and Boulder reviews are due out tomorrow, although a local student paper already published one that was quite positive.

The play itself has raised some heart-wrenching questions that audiences feel a (sometimes desperate) need to talk about. I have already met three victims of clerical abuse just in the week the show has been open, and am very glad I've had training to fall back on when met with this type of deep sharing from complete strangers. (The university's preparations for its instructors in terms of listening skills and redirecting to local counselling and other resources...well, they definitely generalize to other areas of life.) The play isn't really about abuse, though, and audiences recognize that.

To some extent it's about when humans open and close their eyes to suffering, and how much people choose to know or not to know about the lives of the people around them. It could be positioned as a play about how suspicion leads one to see evil where it does not exist; or as a play about the impossibility of maintaining innocence in a broken world; or in many other ways. I don't have a clean capsule summary worked out yet.

The first Monday after opening BETC sponsored an outreach panel, "Contemporary Catholic Culture: Faith in the Face of Scandal," and three speakers came to talk about Catholicism and the play. Because my blog is googlable I am choosing my words carefully here, but it is fair to say that there was a great gulf in interpretation between at least one of the speakers and the majority of our audiences in terms of the definitions and values of doubt and dissent in American culture.

Some people would like to return to the days of unshakable faith in institutions as well as in God. But study of history reminds us over and over that such faith is inevitably misplaced, and that even the most divinely inspired religious organization is still composed of humans. I see the role of questioning, of doubt and difficulty, as necessary to a critically examined faith, and it's not that the speakers at this event would disagree with me entirely. Perhaps they are further in their examination than I am given their ages and roles in the community.

But while the event was a great success in sparking community discussion, it was personally painful to see such a gap between the speakers and the audiences who wished to question their interpretations. (Audience members were very polite and were not aiming to challenge, but for example to provide evidence for alternate understandings of the play's events.) It is easy for a convincing speaker to dismiss a genuine, valid objection as "immature," for example...or to describe a character's choice as a "false dilemma" when no other options except two morally untenable ones existed within the world of the play. But basically most of the valid questions raised were left on the table without honest engagement, which was frustrating as an event moderator.

I will be reflecting on the issues raised for a long time to come, not least of which was one speaker's certainty that when doubt exists, the choice should always be made that protects children even if it means destroying an innocent man's reputation and career. She made this claim on her experience as a mother, but I am one too, and think that the danger of false accusation should not be dismissed so lightly.

Time detection.

2010-09-15T21:23:00.002-06:00

It is currently 9:23 p.m. I feel like it's o'dark-thirty.

Is anyone else's sense of time out of whack after back-to-school? Granted I've been living on an academic calendar almost my whole life, excepting those two years on Tempe time when I lived on a civic service schedule...

and we're not even to the end of saving daylight time yet. (Was I supposed to can it for winter?)

in other family news...

2010-09-11T09:40:00.004-06:00

And for those of you who haven't seen her in awhile, this is my beautiful niece Talia. She's four months younger than Tuck. She lives in Paris with Matt's sister, Elizabeth, and her husband Omri. She visited Wisconsin last month with her mom, where this picture was taken. With luck, the cousins will all be together at Christmas in Colorado!

Ah, the joys of Midwestern desserts.

2010-09-08T13:04:00.003-06:00

Some things take time. Like cleaning up my son, after he practices Jello wrestling. With himself. And loses:

Note the black cherry Jello between the toes. That's a special place he tries to stash it, to hide it from Mama until she's within kicking range during the Time of Great Wiping. It is also behind and inside his ears (not shown), to provide extra incentive for a Thorough Bath.

When bureaucracy actively prevents competence.

2010-09-02T12:59:00.002-06:00

I am organizing a panel discussion event related to "Doubt," to take place in October in a room on campus. Because this event is free to the public, co-sponsored by a student group, and also involves off-campus organizations, it requires going through non-academic scheduling. Because the room holds more than 90 people, it requires the completion of a twelve-page form to reserve the room for two hours.

Stick with me here.

In the past week, I have had to seek and receive approval from the Police, the Fire Department, Parking Services, Facilities Management, Risk Management, and Environmental Health and Safety. (For a five-person panel discussion, led by a priest and moderated by a university staff person.)

Each of them sent me an electronic signature on a separate document, which then had to be printed and collated into a single paper document to be submitted for final approval back to the main office. I have been warned it can take up to three weeks for such approval.

Full disclosure: I may decide to use a sound system so that our speakers can use microphones, but doing that would require an additional three signatures, so I'm tempted just to seat our hard-of-hearing patrons in the front instead and maybe borrow a megaphone from the band room.

Not as an employee, not as an outreach coordinator, but as a taxpayer, I find this process absolutely outrageous. The number of person-hours wasted on this crap is growing exponentially, and the staff people are paid out of salary pools that likely come from taxpayer monies in many cases. I don't believe it's saving wear and tear on the facilities. It's simply putting big old roadblocks in front of public access to university buildings. I'm all for giving contact info, or even putting down a room deposit to make a reservation--I understand the need for accountability if something goes wrong--but this is beyond ridiculous. It's a waste of my time, all the departments' time, and the public's money.

Now I'm going to go walk over my precious electronic-signature-laden document to SPECTRE and collude with the dark side.

The long hiatus.

2010-09-01T13:26:00.002-06:00

Hello there! Breaking out the blog redesign today...still tweaking the visual elements to my satisfaction.

What's new? I begin rehearsals tonight for Doubt. Still have the other three part-time jobs (opera, astrophysics, theatre company grantwriting). Still married, and our kids are still breathing. Still have seasonal allergies fuzzing up the thought patterns.

Instead of apologizing profusely for the long absence, I'm going to try to post more often this month. Many posts may be rehearsal or work reflections, since I've got a lot of thinking and puzzling to do regarding the show.

And that famous playwright I was in Nashville to interview? The interview is now online in several places, but I recommend you check it out right here:

CSC Interview With John Patrick Shanley from Jake Morgan on Vimeo.

So much to say, so much to say...

2010-06-05T09:53:00.003-06:00

I have a lot to write about the conference I just finished attending, and my experiences there, but a quick funny link to another blog comes first:

Couch Fort Architecture

I've never seen a grading system I agreed with quite so completely.

Day 1 continued: The Patterson House.

2010-06-02T20:33:00.010-06:00

Nothing like feeling very, very welcomed on my first day of a four-day visit to a Southern city! This was an uber-lovely place which I will illustrate with some photos, but honestly the dim lighting inside made it somewhat challenging to photograph. For better pics than I could get, see eGullet's summary (scroll down for pics).

It has been open for just under a year, and is the first craft cocktail bar in Nashville. Our bartender was one of the owners, and as both Carolyn and I are conversant in the area of craft cocktails we got to see and discuss some fabulous cocktailcrafting elements and had a lovely conversation with him over the course of the evening.

The bar/restaurant is in an up-and-coming neighborhood north of the Vanderbilt campus, not far from a cupcake shop and other such indicators of contemporary food trendiness. The entryway is a library with multiple bookshelves and a blue velvet curtain, and instructions on the rules of the house:

Second, this is one of the bars that owns one of the, say, two dozen Japanese spherical ice makers currently in the U.S. Our bartender was kind enough to show us a Youtube video, on his iPhone, on how the ice maker produces a spherical cube, which you can also see if you're curious at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6a77jsF9eQ (Hint: it's a copper mold and it presses the surrounding water away from the sphere.)

The two cocktails I tried were The Fox and the Forest (Lunazul Reposado tequila, with a float of Peychaud's bitters, a sprig of spearmint, and a few other ingredients I need to hunt down...) and Vincent's Ruin (Bulleit Bourbon, Lemon, St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur, La Muse Verte Absinthe, Lemon Bitters). Carolyn tried a Cooper's Bright (Plymouth Gin, lemon, St. Germain elderflower liqueur, grapefruit liqueur, and sparkling wine from New Mexico) and a Terra Rica (Inca Gold Pisco, pineapple, egg white, Aperol, and "spring bitters" which were homemade strawberry-rhubarb). Because we were there for a considerable amount of time and ate dinner as well, we also got tiny samples of a third cocktail on the house, the El Diablo (El Diablo Lunazul Reposado, Lemon, House Made Ginger Syrup, Briottet Cassis).

The food hardly took second place; there were lovely warm olives followed by Cuban paninis and then s'mores with local fresh strawberries that were, um, amazing. It was a very, very pleasant evening, and if any of our other conference plans fall through we just may visit again. If you're ever in Nashville, I encourage you to look the place up. It's an evening well-spent.

Nashville! Day 1.

2010-06-02T17:11:00.002-06:00

I am in Nashville this week for the Christian Scholars Conference, which begins tomorrow morning. I give a paper on Thursday, and will be interviewing playwright John Patrick Shanley on Friday morning for a Nashville Public Radio program. They have promised to post a video of the interview on the show's website, and it will be cross-posted on the website of the academic journal Ecumenica. I will share links eventually as they become available, especially if I like the end results.

Today, however, I had the afternoon and evening to enjoy the city, and do nothing else much except rehearse my talk and review potential interview questions. I already found a fabulous coffeeshop with sandwiches, salads, and breakfast food, called Fido. (Imagine if the Walnut Cafe moved into the Laughing Goat, and you've got the vibe of the place, for all you hip Boulder readers.) The hotel we are staying at is just off the edge of the Vanderbilt University campus, so there are good vittles and amenities within a reasonable walking distance (20 minutes), and the free hotel shuttle will also be aiding further exploration. The hotel is pretty nice for a Holiday Inn, recently remodelled with good working treadmills which is key when it is 95 degrees out. And did I mention the humidity? I've conveniently forgotten about humidity living in Boulder County...until arriving today and watching my hair go BOING!

When I say "we" I mean myself and my friend Carolyn, whom I usually attend ATHE with and have blogged about in the past (we went to NYC last summer for ATHE with her husband Greg and another friend, and had an outrageously good time).

Tonight, we're going to a restaurant/bar called the Patterson House, which specializes in craft cocktails of various sorts (rickeys, sours, and other such 30's and 40's-era beverages). I'll provide a full bloggy report after the meal...

Spring. No, Winter. Wait, Spring...

2010-04-29T20:27:00.003-06:00

This morning we had two inches of snow on the ground at 8 a.m.

By 11 a.m. it was 55 degrees.

I love Boulder County weather. Truly, I do. It doesn't usually hang around long enough to complain about it when it's bad, and most days have at least an hour of sunshine. And even a late April snow doesn't stay cold enough for long enough to kill the new blooms in our backyard:

Blistering new study on marriage...

2010-04-17T09:57:00.002-06:00

I came across this new research this morning:

Is Marriage Good For Your Health?

To save those of you with only a few moments of time: Yes, sort of, depending on how viciously you fight. Husbands, hold your wives' hands or maintain another form of affectionate non-sexual touch, and stay on topic. Women, don't try to control (in the sense of micro-manage) the situation at hand. Couples who observed these rules during disagreements had some interesting and apparently statistically significant health benefits. And the more hostile the fight, the longer it took for simple infections and wounds to heal. An interesting piece suggesting that physical health is dependent on emotional health in relationships, with some novel ways of studying that hypothesis. Looking forward to the next generation of results.

Storytime, or: readers and protoreaders.

2010-04-01T15:43:00.001-06:00

A rare moment of family Zen.

Going vertical.

2010-03-31T20:49:00.003-06:00

After much dithering and deliberation, I've got a new direction toward fitness goals. I've been trying to make up my mind between running, doing a sprint triathlon in late summer, keeping my aerial fabric classes going...Boulder is a place with far too many interesting choices for ways to keep healthy.

I spent early spring training for a half-marathon but had to scale back due to injury to a 10K, and even after several weeks off I'm still not feeling 100% after any runs longer than 4-5 miles. I love fabric and hope to go back to those classes someday, but to move from ultra-beginner to intermediate, I need more upper-body and core strength than I've got. (I was the oldest one in my class by at least five years, and probably the only mother, which says something else about the optimal body type, but I haven't given up the idea completely just yet.) And the biggest problem with fabric is that I can only do it once a week with no practice outside class, so it's not a very practical fitness pursuit (although someday I'd like to incorporate it into theatre performance).

Then a few weeks ago I visited a local indoor climbing gym, and I was hooked. I signed up today. The gym has all the usual gymmy things--weight room, treadmills and other indoor torture machines, yoga classroom, spinning classes--plus many, many opportunities to rock-climb indoors on routes ranging from "My four-year-old finished this!" to "Um, are you sure that's physically possible?" It also has a childcare room, on the off chance that I can get to the gym during one of Matt's extended rocket absences. Plus, there are aeroyoga classes--I will blog more about them after I get to go to one but I am very excited about that too.

If you're curious, check it out at: Movement.

A typical afternoon: dialogue.

2010-03-17T15:40:00.005-06:00

"I'm going to play a game called Be Mad at Mama."

"And how do you play?"

"You have to punish Mama for things she did that were bad."

"What did she do that was bad?"

"Things like telling me to eat my bread ALL the TIME."

"And how do you punish her?"

"By making her go outside."

"And do what?"

"Play with us."

"That doesn't sound like much of a punishment."

"Well, it's not a punishment for US. It's a punishment for you."

[Note: it is currently 69 degrees and brilliantly sunny out.]

"What do I have to play outside?"

"Whatever I want to play."

"What about Tucker? That sounds like a punishment for him."

"Then he can pick. As long as you don't get to pick. You're not getting punished anymore if you get to pick the game."

"What do you think he wants to play?"

"Tucker wants to play babies." (Tucker: "Dah!" or, roughly, "That!")

"How do we play that?"

"We sit around and scribble and drink milk and bite a lot. But not too hard."

Race report: Boulder Spring Half.

2010-03-16T10:12:00.004-06:00

Sunday I ran a 10K at the Boulder Spring Half. Its name is perhaps not transparent to those who don't know its history. The same sponsors were in charge of the former "Boulder Backroads," now the "Boulder Marathon," which takes place each September. (That race offers marathon and half-marathon courses.) This year is the first year they've added a spring race, with three courses: a half-marathon, 10-mile, and 10K. I ran the shortest of the courses for a variety of reasons, primarily a recent injury that took me away from training for five weeks.

The transportation and parking situations were great. I cruised in and out of the race site almost without having to stop, and didn't arrive at the Boulder Reservoir until just about 45 minutes before the race start. The race course itself was quite familiar and not too muddy; the Rez is a wonderful place to run with gentle rolling hills, and the course was clearly marked. (And the course came out within .05 of a mile with my RunKeeper, which made me happy in terms of gauging my own race pace and progress.) It turned out I had several friends and acquaintances also running that day, which made it fun to see people along the course.

In terms of off-course details, though, I feel the registration cost should have been significantly lower. There were almost no vendors at the race, very little "free" stuff for participants, and the food available was not very good. (They would have been better off sticking to fresh fruit and sports drinks, which thank goodness were available and plentiful.) The plain-white bamboo technical race shirt was not attractive, and the organizers wouldn't allow me to switch shirt sizes at packet pick-up but asked me to come back the next day after the race and see if they had any of the other sizes left. I understand the issues around shirt size switching because of the necessity of ordering in advance. However, that puts the burden on organizers to do a better job of describing their shirt sizes on the registration site, including approximate measurements, so people don't end up with technical cleaning rags instead of race shirts. (My daughter now will have a new nightshirt.)

I loved running a 10K and don't have any plans to train for a longer race this year. I'm still figuring out the rest of my season but I'm thinking I'll probably do the BolderBoulder on Memorial Day, and perhaps a sprint triathlon in August or September as that will give me the summer to work on swimming and biking. Lots of fun choices ahead now that the days are getting warmer and longer!

Oh, and I managed to finish under an hour--pretty good for me pace-wise after five weeks off!--and 24th in my age group out of 270 finishers. So even though I feel like a turtle, there were plenty of other turtles out there with me, having a great day.

A church inside the church?

2010-03-11T16:26:00.008-07:00

I've been involved in several impassioned conversations over the past few days about recent events at Sacred Heart of Jesus School here in Boulder. The school refused to re-enroll the children of a lesbian couple this week, and this decision has prompted not only major press coverage but letters from across the archdiocese (soon to be beyond, I suspect, as the story has gone national).

Many local Catholics are angry that our religion is being equated with homophobia, and it is difficult to make a case otherwise when decisions like this one come from our church leaders and are reinforced above the parish level. I do not accept Pope Benedict's statement that homosexuality is a chosen behavior that is objectively disordered, but explaining why would involve several detailed, theologically oriented posts on a blog that isn't really designed for that. In short I do not believe this teaching is consistent with Christ's path of love and acceptance. Still, this current episode goes beyond that teaching, as this parish, with the backing of the archdiocese, is now choosing to refuse education to children of lesbian parents.

First, the children have done nothing wrong (even if you buy into Pope Benedict's argument, which I don't).

Second, this seems to cause irreparable harm to a family who is actively seeking Catholic education and values for their children, supposedly because they are in opposition to one of the church's teachings. Are parish schools now refusing to admit children of adulterers? Children of divorce? Children who were conceived out of wedlock? I thus find statements that this refusal is not "political" deeply, deeply unconvincing. A child's right to an education should not be based on the parents' sexual activity.

Third, and perhaps most important, the base teaching underlying this parish decision deserves challenging on a broader theological field, but several Catholic theologians who attempt to do so have been silenced and even removed from teaching positions.

I deeply, deeply regret that practicing Catholics have no voice or authority to speak for ourselves on this and other pressing social issues of our time, and especially that we lack access to a venue where church leaders would have reason to listen. Growing up in a democratic republic has not well-suited me for unquestioning acceptance of teachings that deviate from other theological threads within my church's history.

In just the past year, I've watched families flee two area parishes, some to my own current parish, some leaving the faith behind completely, because of controversies around politics and health care (again, several posts' worth of things to discuss here). During my lifetime the church has moved from the model of "aggiornamento" to a "glowing remnant," and I am no longer sure I belong within that remnant if to remain I must be an advocate for teachings I believe to be deeply erroneous. Survey after survey demonstrates that the majority of American Catholics do not hold the Church's official positions on numerous social issues, but this dissenting "church within the church" is treated as "cafeteria Catholics" who are simply too weak to hew to the official line. Our opposition and reasoned arguments are rarely if ever seriously considered and addressed, particularly at the parish level which is the height of theological discourse most practicing Catholics reach. I'm not being a snob, just pointing out that most people I know don't read papal documents and bishops' conference statements for fun.

If people within a religion who oppose some of that religion's teachings remain in active practice, are we tacitly (and financially, and otherwise) supporting a position which our consciences say are wrong? If people who oppose some of a church's teachings leave active practice of that religion, how will that church change for the better from within, and correct its errors?

Mild state of shock.

2010-03-10T09:16:00.002-07:00

The performance artist I wrote a dissertation chapter on, but never got to interview or meet, is coming to campus next Monday night.

I am rather in shock as the last major piece of hers I tried to write on was only performed outside the U.S. Most of her recent work seems to fall under the same category; she is truly an international artist, and I always thought it was unfortunate that it was so difficult to see her work in the U.S. since much of it critiques U.S. culture specifically. Her speaker's fees at the time I was trying to get in touch with her were beyond what I was able to fundraise on campus. I am surprised and thrilled that she's coming here.

It's been almost seven years since I've given her work serious thought and I'm not really up to date on her latest pieces, so I'll be extremely curious to hear her talk and see how it fits into the context of her earlier work, which I'm more familiar with. I know she's been doing a fair amount of work related to the War on Terror from her website, which is here.

Dispatch from the road.

2010-03-07T13:23:00.004-07:00

Conference time is not like other forms of time.

I am sitting in the President's Club of Continental Airlines, thanks to my friend Carolyn who is a member, enjoying the free-wifi and snacks while awaiting my flight back to Denver which departs in about 90 minutes. This is a much more positive airport experience than I was expecting to have.

It has been a busy few days in Cleveland. I've been here for the Mid-America Theatre Conference, and my main function was to attend two sesssions known as the "AiP" (Articles in Progress). As general editor of the Journal of Religion and Theatre, it was a neat opportunity to come to the Midwest, stay for a few days, and work with seven scholars who are refining their work towards publication. Some of them needed content and organizational guidance while others were almost to the copyediting and proofreading stage before journal submission. It was fun to read articles so disparate from across my field, and to discuss the scholarship in depth in a way I don't usually get to do outside a writing classroom.

I've seen a few former classmates and had a chance to catch up with ladies who have dispersed across the country since dissertating, which was pleasant. Since I'm not in the classroom, though, and not on the tenure track, I'm under less pressure to publish and also have less current interest in pedagogical sessions on how to teach intro classes, so most of the other sessions at the conference were not directly pertinent either to my work or the work of the journal I edit. That said, it was actually the times I spent getting out into the city, and away from downtown, that were the most rewarding sections of the trip.

Last evening, Carolyn, another conference roommate Elizabeth, and I took a taxi to the Velvet Tango Room. I wholeheartedly recommend you visit should you ever come to Cleveland--check it out at:

http://www.velvettangoroom.com/

Unfortunately the online site doesn't reproduce their drink menu, which is incredibly detailed and full of historical anecdotes about the various drinks they serve. It was a very nice, unassuming-from-the-outside bar that specializes in Prohibition-era cocktails. I tried the Pisco Sour, made with freshly whipped egg white and homemade bitters. Other beverages my friends had were similarly fabulous--a real Ramos Gin Fizz (which tasted vaguely like a gin milkshake), and something called an Apricot Lady which also deserves future duplication. There was a live piano player, and the owner was wearing an ascot and walking through chatting with customers while carrying a walking stick. It was a charming place and one I hope to revisit with my husband one of these days. Boulder has recently opened a restaurant called "Salt" at 10th and Pearl that specializes in the same sorts of cocktails, so I welcome the trend in general.

Today, since we both had late-afternoon flights out, Carolyn and I went to the Cleveland Museum of Art and a nearby bakery recommended by a friend in Little Italy. The bakery was fabulous (light, fluffy Napoleons with both chocolate and vanilla creme layers!) and the art museum was considerably under construction. Quite by accident we arrived there on opening day of an American Indian (their term) exhibition and ran into quite a bit of outreach activity, in addition to the main gallery contents which were accessible only after going through a three-story rat maze of construction. The maze had been thoughtfully handled by the museum, however, so that visitors would still be having an art experience all the way through to the actual art (which included a heavy dose of guns and armor as well). My favorite construction moment was a series of three portholes labelled "Past-Present-Future". The "Past" porthole looked onto a period photo of the view out the museum window as it was originally in 1916. The "Present" porthole looked out onto the construction site. The "Future" porthole contained an artist's illustration of what the finished glass atrium should look like when completed in 2012. Quite a neat effect. Also saw my first Damien Hirst piece, a huge triptych of cathedral windows that close-up are composed completely of butterflies, some painted, others left with their natural coloring, all backlit to closely resemble stained glass. I wish they'd had postcards or pictures of that. Several works referred to in a play I worked on last year were also on display, including a Berthe Morisot portrait by Manet and one of Morisot's own works, a painting of her sister Edma reading. It was lovely to see them on the canvas after working with months of them as slides in a theatrical production.

Now, alas but also with some joy, I'm headed home for laundry and the new workweek. I enjoyed the trip a lot but have very much missed my family, particularly Tuck since he is the least articulate on the phone. I'm looking forward to late March when we'll be road-tripping as a family. This was a great break (although unsurprisingly not restful), but I'm looking forward to the family trip ahead after spending this many days without my youthful appendages.

Trading florid prose for money.

2010-03-02T10:39:00.004-07:00

Not quite on the daily blogging train just yet...lots going on this week. I have a major grant due tomorrow, and then I leave for a conference on Thursday so will blog from the road.

A few thoughts on grantwriting, which I seem to be doing at just about all of my jobs this spring:

1. Begging for money is hard work. Begging for taxpayer money is far harder work. I make more per grantwriting hour than I would standing on a streetcorner with a performance troupe and a guitar case, but one of these two is more fun. Guess which one?

2. I don't mind answering questions in the least about why our projects might match your organization's goals. This seems extremely relevant, and I am happy for the chance to build a case. However, I think any questions requiring me to state why my organization is interested in receiving funding from [name of funding organization] are meant to test my ability to generate bulls**t. Come on, say it with me: You have money. We need money. This is why we are interested in receiving your money. (If you didn't have money, we wouldn't ask you for funding!)

3. Please, after I spend 20-30 hours filling out endless forms, could your organization send me any kind of evaluation at all? ANYthing that would help me do a better job if you're not funding my application? Or is it asking too much to receive some kind of meaningful feedback? You have to realize that if your funding categories appear to include our organization, we will keep applying until you either fund us or change your guidelines. I'd love to know the truth or some part of it about the reasons we're denied. "Our new board president doesn't like theatre." "We're only funding companies we've funded before that we trust this year." "Your narrative was dry and boring, and your project sounds uninspiring." "You didn't submit all the info we needed to make a decision." See, two of these reasons get me off the hook, and the other two are really important because it means I need to do my job better.

Now, I go forth to find more adjectives.

Arts advocacy.

2010-02-27T19:45:00.007-07:00

So I spent Friday down at the capital building in Denver, meeting with a few representatives and missing a few senators, in efforts to convince them to vote for a few bills currently wending their way through our state government's halls.

This is less about the bills or the people who met with us than about what I learned, which is that it is darn near impossible to pay any attention to your constituents in the Capitol building if you're someone who actually plays a role in creating state law. I am not a lobbying novice to the extent that I found this surprising, but it was newly disheartening.

Of the five people I contacted to set up appointments, I actually met with two of them. Of those two, I spoke to only one for longer than 30 seconds (we might have clocked in at around 4 minutes, and she was being generous with her time).

And who could blame them? They had roughly 50 bills to consider that day, including animal protection, medical marijuana regulation, land use, water use...and the list goes on. Even when they had something intelligent to say, it was in the context of a crowded hall filled with shoving people in suits all waving cards at men in green jackets and falling on representatives like pirahnas whenever they came off the floor.

Apparently opinions are formed in their offices, in off-hours, and in the off-session, not hard in a state where the legislature is only in session five months a year (January-May, unless a special session is called). Clearly, any real decisions aren't made run-time because it's loud and hot and too airless to think straight.

And the political pressure to reject any legislation offhand that requires funding is immense. It doesn't matter how low our state falls in education rankings, for example (go number 50!); since we have less than no money and everyone's trying to suggest cuts to bridge the state's looming deficit, no policy that requires funding tied to educational improvement is likely to get past a first hearing. There is no money.

I could talk until I'm blue in the face about how this sets up a chicken-and-egg scenario where we keep funding what isn't working in our schools, even though change might cost less and be more effective. Innovation requires time to explain, though, time to make a case. And in a state where the state-level politicians have very few months to create a political identity, and sharp term limits, innovation is unlikely to make the radar let alone get passed. I am unconvinced that this is a good thing for those few tasks that the government basically owns non-competitively: transportation, prisons, and public education. (There are probably others but those are the three that often receive the most attention in CO because they don't have permanent dedicated funding sources or related constitutional amendments (higher ed at least), so their fungible budgets get attacked every single year.)

Basically I'm glad I walked in with very, very low expectations. It is frustrating that even really, really good ideas cannot get the attention they deserve in that kind of everything-gets-30-seconds environment. I was born in, and have lived in, several other states where I found the state government experience more...well, relaxed? "leisurely" is incorrect, you didn't waste people's time, but it seemed more possible to be informed about the arguments for and against any particular piece of legislation.

I think there's something to be said for year-round legislature sessions, or perhaps multiple short sessions. Surely more thought should be put into good governance than sound bites can provide.

today's moment of Zen.

2010-02-25T16:14:00.002-07:00

To-do lists are long, time is short, children are obstreperous (but so darn cute!), so I thought I'd share my favorite snarky news item of the day...apparently I am not the only one craving the sound of silence.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-olympic-internet25-2010feb25,0,899294.story

And here is a toast to whomever thought of posting these on Youtube without the commentary.

In the swim.

2010-02-23T22:59:00.002-07:00

Oh, do I wish I had pictures of this afternoon.

Miranda had her first swim lesson of the session today. Instead of trying to corral Tucker for 45 minutes while she sauntered around the splash playground with her class, I decided, well, the heck with it, and took him swimming during her lesson.

He thought the pool was made of awesome! Even though the water features were turned off during lessons he went up and down the pirate slide by himself, on his tummy forwards and backwards, about a kabillion times. And fell face forward in the water at least twelve times and just stood up and kept going. Absolutely no fear whatsoever, which was seriously inspiring both because of memories of my own swim lessons (painful) and of trying to carry Miranda into the pool at various ages and teach her to float/swim (still painful unless a pool noodle is involved).

I spend a fair amount of time these days noticing how alike, and how different, my children are. Sometimes I try to figure out if "this" is a boy/girl thing, or a birth order thing, or a personality thing...but mostly I try to figure them out in the context of themselves and consistency. If Tucker's cranky for more than ten minutes, he's probably sick or in pain. If Miranda seems moody and cries more easily than usual, she probably needs food because her blood sugar is low, or water because she's dehydrated...she seems more susceptible to those kinds of mood swings. The pool is only one more place where my children approach learning differently. Now, I need to figure out how best to encourage one to take risks and the other to look before he leaps.

The $10K dress.

2010-02-23T09:14:00.004-07:00

So several of you have been awaiting pics from my recent escapades at the Opera Gala. Each year the opera program hosts a big fundraiser at a local hotel. A major donor who used to be a model donated several of her old gowns to the opera program, in hopes that the students would be able to wear them for performances of some sort. These included a few couture gowns including one valued at $10,000. None of the dresses fit our current students, but one of them did fit me--the $1oK one!--so I got to wear it to the ball:

Talk about feeling like a princess! I should also mention the ridiculous shoes--I ended up wearing five-inch heels to be able to keep the dress off the ground. Did I mention I was stage-managing the event? Luckily I had very little furniture to move and a lot of assistance under the circumstances! And I towered over most of the donors during the pre-Gala cocktail hour, including the chancellor and provost, which was really amusing. I was definitely looked up to.

My own borrowed plumage aside, everyone looked stunning--the male singers were in tuxes and the ladies were in evening gowns. One of our students was Miss Montana 2006 so she had a great gown collection to choose from. It was a really memorable night, and the opera program did very well so the purpose of the evening was achieved. On a side note, I am really glad I don't work in a profession where my success would be based on looking glamorous. I like sensible shoes too much. It was really fun to play princess for a night, though.

Additional degrees of difficulty.

2010-02-22T11:29:00.002-07:00

Two brief tales of yesterday:

First, our morning paint spot-check led to the discovery of a few inevitable drops of blue paint on an off-white ceiling. And the eventual related discovery that we have eight different shades of off-white paint (!) stored in cans downstairs from the previous owners. And the later discovery that none of these shades were distantly related to the upstairs ceiling, after multiple patch tests (!!). And the eventual resolution whereby Matt chipped out a small section of the ceiling and took it to the Depot for a paint match, which will now be close enough to use to touch up. We were briefly confronted with the possibility of painting the whole ceiling, then of course basically re-doing the room because ceiling paint always splatters onto the walls...speaking of brief moments of despair. So hurray for the modern miracle of paint matching, and we'll hope to get the touch-up work done tonight and tomorrow.

Second, the Tuckmeister had an incredible meltdown, even for him, at the grocery store yesterday. Sunday afternoon at 2:45 p.m. is apparently an incredibly busy time at the Soopers, so we were four deep in line with everyone's full carts. By the time we were next, he lost all patience and indeed his tenuous grip on reality. (It is worth noting that the people in front of us took this opportunity to fill out the form for a discount card, then to pay by check--I am not kidding, almost 10 minutes of forms--they were NOT HELPING!) He threw a full-body tantrum and when I picked him up he hit me in the face repeatedly and sent my glasses flying. Luckily they did not break. But we seriously had an audience of at least 25 people when I put him down for a second to grab my glasses, and he rolled over and LICKED THE FLOOR. Of the grocery store, on a very muddy/ slimy/ snowy day, the week after he recovered from pneumonia. So I picked him up again and let him flail over my shoulder for a few more minutes before he finally went limp. The man behind me was heard to comment that he would have been beaten at that age for acting like that, right before he congratulated me on doing a great job for not hitting him. That was sweet, really.

I love my son even when he has completely lost his tree. And he did calm down and give me big sorry hugs and sloppy kisses afterwards which did restore our equilibria considerably. Still, I would be the first to invest in a toddler-arm-restraint system of some sort if a humane option were available. Imagine, say, a vest with wristbands that would restrict arm movement by pinning arms and hands to the ribcage with strong magnets after 5 seconds of arm-flailing trigger the system. Any takers? Thoughts for improvement?

Obligations.

2010-02-20T20:21:00.003-07:00

The painting is well underway upstairs, although we will be doing the final spot check in the morning with good daylight before the final room cleanup and reset begins. The bug put in an hour's worth of heroic effort painting the edges near the trim with a small brush, and she got a special painting hairdo which meant she actually let me put her hair in a ponytail for approximately 2.5 seconds. She does not approve of hairstyling in general, although she will occasionally let me put some curls in her hair on truly momentous occasions like Easter and school picture day.

This will mean night 2 of sleeping on the floor/couch in the living room due to room rearrangement, and this is unlikely to be restful but it's better than the alternative of sleeping in a not-quite-dry-latex-smelling room with the window open during a mild snowstorm. The children are both in bed and nominally asleep which is great but also unlikely to last. Tuck learned to make siren noises yesterday afternoon and made sure we knew he had gained this valuable knowledge this morning at 2 a.m. which was mildly alarming until I realized there wasn't an ambulance outside in my half-awake fogginess.

Tomorrow church, then the cleanup. And perhaps a few long-overdue thank-you notes, and grant writing, and a few minutes of bliss visualizing a blank to-do list...

Change of scene.

2010-02-19T11:41:00.002-07:00

Tomorrow we will be painting the master bedroom an actual color. This is hideously exciting to me because our walls throughout the house, except for the kids' rooms and our bathroom, are all blah beige. It may be officially called "vanilla creme" or something like that, but it's blah beige with white trim.

Before-and-after pics will be forthcoming, but I am excited for the transformation. After so many years of frequent moving it has taken over four years in this house before it's started to feel like it's really ours. The paint is just a sign of taking ownership, and it was fun to pick something without worrying about resale potential or alienating buyers (not that it's not a great, livable color!).

And because they are beautiful...

2010-02-18T10:43:00.004-07:00

My gorgeous husband and our sweet (sick at the time) little boy...even rough mornings at our house aren't all bad. :)

And Matt with the bug at the National Western Stock Show, watching a rodeo clown. He wasn't a very funny clown but it was still an educational experience for the family.

Breathing.

2010-02-18T10:22:00.003-07:00

It's about time that I attempted a return to blogging, methinks. I just caught up on several friends' blogs--about a month or two worth from each--and decided that I'll be trying daily blogging for Lent. More or less with the goal of doing something extra to connect to the special people in my life (friends and family) because I am way behind in all forms of communication, written, emailed, blogged, Facebooked, or otherwise.

To me Ash Wednesday has always seemed like New Year's Day--an excellent chance to begin again, to reflect on the past year, and to begin coming up with new organizational systems for improving myself, relationships with others, and my faith in the year ahead. And you all know how I love organizational systems!

Today I am especially thankful for my family's health. For those of you keeping up with other family members, you know the polliwog is just getting over pneumonia and Matt just about lost a finger this week. Today I am so glad we are all breathing regularly and are in one piece! I have a few minutes in my office to breathe before sprinting off to the next meeting, and want to know: how do you fit "breathing" into your daily routine? (And what does "taking a breath" mean to you?)

New improved mad skillz.

2009-12-18T16:13:00.002-07:00

The polliwog has achieved spoon!

Well, he stole my yogurt off the table yesterday,

and then (once approved) was allowed to work as hard as he wanted to feed himself. His eyebrows won't be hungry for days:

First haircut!

2009-12-06T15:21:00.004-07:00

Well, the cold I mentioned in the last post turned into a nasty sinus infection, but I am now on good drugs and finally coming back to update you all on some of the events of the past month.

Among which was the polliwog's first haircut! We took him to a real barbershop and at first it looked as though he might enjoy the event:

But that illusion was soon to be dispelled, as his suspicious investigations revealed that the hairdresser Maria actually had a secret identity as an evil villainess who sought to take over the world by terrorizing small boys into stillness and submission while freezing them in place with large plastic neckbibs:

So Matt took a turn as evil sidekick, holding him while the evil villainess chased his ears with the Scissors of Doom:

He finally calmed down and stopped shrieking when I took a turn holding him, so she could get the back of his head and give him that lovely puppy-tummy-type close razor shave:

What a handsome little guy! Seen here, with a post-haircut, post-dinner celebratory cookie face:

Even the daycare ladies commented that he looks like a little boy now and not a baby anymore. Today, the haircut, tomorrow, the world.

The descent begins.

2009-11-20T06:31:00.002-07:00

As my husband begins a few days of choice deer hunting, I can feel the polliwog's cold has taken root and is affecting my own immune system. The little guy was out of commission last weekend and the first part of this week, and so it's really not surprising that I'm next in line. He has a tendency to sneeze everywhere at the worst possible times, such as directly into my mouth when I pick him up...

It's amazing to me sometimes how much motherhood has risen the bar for what it takes to actually gross me out. Human feces? No problem, dealt with that three times before 10 a.m. Vomit? Been there, done that. Blood? A little more disturbing, yes, but not gross. Another person's snot? I just can't even dedicate energy to getting disgusted by that, really. None of these are a stranger's bodily fluids, which appears to make a huge difference, oddly enough.

Still, when it's my own nasal passages at stake and I can feel the general grumpitude set in, preventative measures are needed. So, we'll head to the store this morning for the usual cold rations of orange juice and some form of decongestant, and hope these aid me in maintaining some form of functionality for the next couple days until the height of mucus production has passed. At least I should be better by next week for the actual holiday, which is nice.

The usual suspects.

2009-11-07T16:37:00.005-07:00

Here are the guests at the bug's 5th birthday party, post-climbing wall, splash playground, and cupcake attack:

She climbed higher than anyone else on the climbing wall, and although she didn't even notice at the time, I was proud of her. Here are a few shots of Spidergirl in action:

The white line is the one-story mark; she got her feet just above it before she came back down. We are DEFINITELY taking her there again on a non-weekend-busy day, and I'm going to climb with her:

And here is a (slightly damp and probably fuzzy) shot of the splash playground, where they all ran themselves silly and soaked us by pulling on ropes tied to firehoses:

Particular time was spent on the pirate slide, which the bug and her friends definitely enjoyed:

The party was at the local recreation center, and the staff were great with the kids, friendly and patient, even when all seven of them had to wait in line for almost half an hour before getting to the climbing wall. Go team Montessori kids, is what I have to say about that--they were very well-behaved (to a practically miraculous level) in spite of the initial wait to climb. They had a blast! It was a really great birthday, according to the bug, who is currently using one of her multiple art-supply gifts while I type.

The polliwog also attended but besides eating Pirate Booty had little to contribute, as Matt kept him home through nap, which ended after the party started. Then we made the executive decision not to let him into the pool, as I could be responsible for seven bug-aged kids, or one polliwog, and the ratio of polliwog-to-adult would not have changed if Matt had joined me in the pool. He didn't mind at all and seemed to enjoy watching the older kids splash around, having spent many hours watching the bug's swim lessons from a similar perspective.

I am having some difficulty believing the bug is actually five, but I'll get there. It doesn't seem like a real number yet but she's certainly ready for it.

Today's amazing artist story.

2009-11-05T12:57:00.003-07:00

Just in case you need some of your faith restored in humanity:

Public Concert, Private Music

You might just tear up right in your office.

All Hallow's Eve

2009-11-01T11:31:00.004-07:00

It has been a glorious few weeks of fall here, and the kids are really starting to enjoy each other's company which is a joy to watch. Even if the boy is often a "ruiner" when it comes to Lego towers and train tracks, he's a pretty great brother in a pile of leaves:

I'll blog more about the angst-filled month of October shortly, but let's begin with a few "blizzard" shots from last Wednesday and Thursday, and the polliwog's discovery that it is awfully hard to toddle in snow:

His mood quickly improved upon being removed from the waist-high drifts by his dad, though:

In other recent child-oriented news, we all survived Halloween! And our little Tinkerbell and farmer had a blast.

There was a neighborhood parade which both children enjoyed, one walking and the other riding in style in the wagon. Then in the evening the bug ran from door to door to door while the polliwog rode in the wagon (pulled by me) and waved from the sidewalk, thus ensuring the bug got extra treats, as in, "and one for your cute little brother." This resulted in us covering approximately four blocks before her pumpkin was filled to bursting and we returned home for the evening.

And can I just say Daylight Savings Time came on a much-needed night of extra sleep? What were all your little ones for Halloween? (Do tell, in the comments field, and link to pictures if you've got any to share!)

A brief race report.

2009-09-24T10:16:00.002-06:00

The short answer: No, the training didn't really pay off. :)

I did finish the race, and in the top half of my age group and of men/women overall. However, I got muscle cramps about 10 miles in, and ended up walking about two miles I didn't plan to and finishing a good twenty minutes behind my goal time. Which was somewhat sad.

However, in the last mile I met three very nice people who were also just trying to get across the finish line, and we all motivated each other and cheered each other up the last big hill and through the finish chute. One of them was a mother of three who turns forty in six months, and she was running her first half. The second guy, Kevin, was also running his first and had a baby and wife yelling encouragement and promising hugs at the finish.

The third man was my running partner for most of the last mile; he and I had been playing walk/run tag since about mile 10, and finally struck up a conversation to compare cramps and try to judge the remaining distance while jogging through the last mile. He had a fabulous attitude and completely cracked up the "runners" around us several times, especially when we jogged through a bunch of walkers and he said, as we barely outpaced them, "Thanks for making way for us--you can't stop this freight train a'runnin!"

Really, it was hard to complain too much when Matt and the kids were waiting for me at the finish line to cheer me on! It was really sweet to see the bug in particular jumping up and down and yelling, "There's mommy! Run faster!" After the finish I was reasonably useless for a few hours, but oddly the long walking/jogging cooldown ensured that I had very little muscle soreness the next day which was a great discovery.

Next year I am going to do 10K's instead and try to get faster before going long again. I stop having fun around 90 minutes into a run at this point, so maybe if I spend a year getting faster I can get further in 90 minutes. :)

An unusual media analysis.

2009-09-20T07:32:00.002-06:00

I've made the connection between conservative talk radio and performance art before, very briefly in terms of their shared desire to shock/ inflame an audience and their tendency to preach to the converted.

That said, this is brilliant. And funny.

Call it Ludacris: The Kinship Between Talk Radio and Rap

I'm about to go run my last race of the season, the Boulder Marathon (before you ask I'm only doing the half!) and find out if all the training has paid off. The weather is beautiful and the course is just a few miles from my house, so if I can stay awake afterwards I may yet post a race report, especially if my faithful fans come to support me at the finish. :)

So, go and be nice to someone already.

2009-09-14T09:53:00.002-06:00

Call that friend up from high school you haven't seen in fifteen years. Get in touch with your college roommate.

Am I being nutty? Nope, I've got the power of social science to back me up!

Is Happiness Catching?

And special thanks to my happy friends who are supposedly each increasing my happiness by 9%. You can theoretically spread joy throughout your spouse's office just by making sure you both leave for work happy. This stuff is great.

By the way, it also appears to influence your weight, but I have different opinions on why that might be true than the researchers in this article put forth. Most simply, if you have active friends, you're more likely to spend time with them doing active stuff like walking, hiking, biking, or even doing triathlons (that's how I got started!). If you have sedentary friends, you'll probably tend to sit around and visit. Also, adults tend to congregate over food so there's a big difference between going out for sushi and going out to the all-you-can-eat chophouse which is probably strongly influenced by your companions' dining preferences. And spouses don't have the same influences that friends do, apparently. Can't wait for further research into these ideas to separate out the correlation from causation (if that's possible).

And a delayed birthday post!

2009-09-08T09:26:00.002-06:00

Now that, several weeks later, I've gotten all the film off the camera and through iPhoto, you too can witness the moment where at least one of my children likes my baking. :) Those of you present at the bug's first birthday party will remember that she HATED the cupcake and HOWLED when presented with her birthday dessert. Here, a far more satisfying outcome from the polliwog:

After this he devoured it completely, but at least you can see in this piece that he is at one with the possibility of more frosting.

Whomped upside the head.

2009-09-05T21:14:00.002-06:00

That pretty much sums up the first two weeks of the school year. My three jobs are slowly cycling back into some sort of whack, now, so perhaps I'll get some posting and updating to the blog done over the holiday weekend. Quick update: we are all still breathing and aging normally, and have not been attacked by vampires, werewolves, or zombies in spite of their current media domination.

That said, a few amusing links now that I have a few moments to be amused:

For those of you with GPS systems in your vehicles (we don't have one but we know some of you do), check out this sample conversation from The Bloggess. The language is a bit salty for work, perhaps.

On the concept of being psychic, this comic has a few choice words.

And for a much more family-safe link, check out these top ten performances from Sesame Street.

At Grandma and Grandpa's, Wisconsin edition.

2009-08-17T17:43:00.003-06:00

So I found a frog in the corner of the house in the backyard there, when I was in the grass. My Dad told me to make a cave with my hands around him, and grab him, and I kept trying. I tried to catch him a lot but he felt slimy so I touched him but didn't catch him a lot of times. And he jumped on my finger. And then I caught him. Then Mom took a picture of him and me. I let him go out into the grass. I was supposed to put him into the bush but I put him into the grass instead. I let him go. And that's the end of my story.

Tomorrow we are going to have fun and go to the zoo and see some friends. And maybe go swimming. And play PBS Kids.

Weekend adventures.

2009-08-02T17:54:00.005-06:00

Yesterday was jam-packed with kid stuff to do, to say the least. In the morning, the bug was invited to a special tea at the Teahouse in Boulder. Here she is, all dressed up in her twirly costume dress from the garage sale down the street a few weeks back:

We got there to meet with the other girls, and discovered they'd told us the wrong date. Well, seven moms and seven girls and seven far-away parking spaces on a busy farmer's market morning later, the girls got their faces painted instead. The facepainter's son was a pretty good advertisement (his eyes are closed, look carefully):

The lady who did the bug's face also painted eyeballs on the back of her eyelids, so when she blinked it looked like she had cat eyes:

Well, she was the rock star of the farmer's market after that. We went to the art museum since it's free on Saturdays and located in the middle of the farmer's market, and complete strangers were asking my permission to take a picture of her facepaint. (Mostly grandmotherly women, oddly enough, although one woman said she wanted to run a booth and do facepaint like that for her upcoming church fair.) Here she is with a few of her friends:

In the afternoon, we went to the local county fair, and the bug went on her first carnival ride:

The pictures don't quite do it justice, as the rickety too-big-for-kids-to-ride-alone-but-not-really-big-enough-for-parents ride was a little scary for both of us. (The bug because she'd never been on a ride before, and me because I had, and was hoping the carnies had stayed sober long enough to get through the mechanics check that morning.)

The polliwog, who does not appear in these pictures as he was generally riding in the stroller or the backpack looking rather warm and half-asleep, still appeared to have a largely good day full of fresh air and sunshine. Matt managed to miss out on the morning adventures but did enjoy poking around the fair in the afternoon with me. We only regret the kids are a bit too small still to enjoy the demolition derby--maybe next year!

All in all, a fabulous day, and one that resulted in a good deal of child sleep that evening which is the hallmark of raging success in the Beasley household.

Vision of the future?

2009-07-27T12:50:00.003-06:00

Just prior to the filming of this clip, his older sister finished her piano practice for the day. The polliwog wanders over to do a little practicing of his own, then proclaims, "All done, Anda." (He's not quite up to his older sister's full name yet.) Just wait until he's tall enough to see the keys!

A must-read article.

2009-07-16T06:40:00.002-06:00

Why We Must Ration Health Care

There's going to be a lot of discussion in the weeks ahead as the Senate and House move toward votes on their proposed plans. This is one of the more intelligent pieces I've read on how our current system already rations health care, and proposes a way to do it that could be more ethical and fair in practice.

I particularly enjoyed the final paragraph, as someone who's sick of seeing the word "socialized" constantly equated with "coming of the Anti-Christ."

Launch trip, part ii...in more ways than one.

2009-06-25T09:44:00.003-06:00

So, an hour before launch, the launch was scrapped. Apparently there were systems communication problems out on the East Coast somewhere which made it problematic. It's been rescheduled for this Friday, so another road trip to New Mexico may well be in the works.

After that temporary disappointment--not new to me, as I've been to White Sands five times now and have yet to actually see a launch!--we took our time getting back to Colorado. We spent the night in Santa Fe, then drove up through Salida and stopped at Bongo Billy's and the local river playground on our way home. This desperately sought time out-of-car yielded some great family pics:

While the bug was perfecting her tree-climbing skills, the polliwog rocked out on the swings:

His dad has a hip new hat and the two of them clearly had a great time:

Further documentation of our travels will be forthcoming as events progress.

Father's Day/ Rocket Launch Madness!

2009-06-21T15:47:00.005-06:00

It’s Father’s Day in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and also the day of launch for one of Matt’s graduate students. So, we have the whole family down to see (hopefully!) launch tonight/tomorrow, scheduled for midnight. They close the interstate down here for an hour in case the rocket decides to disengage its guidance systems and head for Albuquerque at ten feet above the ground. Getting onto base is likely to be an adventure, but I’ll be taking what pictures I can of our trip tonight and sharing that as a separate post.

I want to post instead about two great dads I’m lucky to have in my life. One is my father, who is probably eagerly checking my blog in hopes of new photos of the grandkids. He and my mom hauled us all over the country, by car, about this time every summer, and we saw more museums, parks, and tourist traps than anyone should have to endure…and the rest stops, wow, don’t get me started. (Kansas has GREAT rest stops.) Anyway, I don’t remember him ever having a particularly peaceful Father’s Day, as we were usually either on the road, or home doing a lot of gardening and yard work. I hope this year’s Father’s Day is better for him than some of the ones where I was little. Like the one when I was eight or nine and got food poisoning in Canada somewhere…road trips and upchucking children do not make such a stellar combination.

So as not to disappoint him, here are some candids from the first half of our trip. Yesterday we drove out to White Sands National Monument, where Miranda had her first White Sands dune experience:

We went to the legendary Chope’s Café in La Mesa last night for dinner and got photos of all of us to commemorate the occasion. They no longer have the $4 Petron margaritas they did when we came for Matt’s launch—prices have adjusted to the market—but the food was still most excellent.

The polliwog is recovering from a nasty cold for which he’s on meds, so he looks a little bleary and puffy-eyed due to the two nights of practically no sleep he was still catching up on.

The bug was doing great, however, and especially enjoyed the homemade tortillas.

Meanwhile, the parental units were thankful that the place retained its liquor license as well as its fabulous refried beans:

This morning, Matt and I took the kids to Mesilla Valley Kitchen. It’s reasonably difficult to celebrate the other great dad in my life, the father of my children, under the current conditions. It’s the day of launch, we have two children under five with handmade gifts that were a bit odd if charming (“Dad, it’s a can! With nothing in it! But you can decorate the inside!”), and everyone here is several hours short on sleep already even before tonight’s adventures. But this morning’s breakfast was at the very least at one of Matt’s favorite breakfast places on earth, so we commemorated the event with a photo once we got far enough in line to actually be inside the restaurant:

And already, you can see how much better the polliwog was doing at recovery after one passable night’s sleep. Next weekend, I think we’ll celebrate Father’s Day late—Matt can have a morning to sleep as late as he wants and I’ll take the kids somewhere they can’t wake him up. It’s funny how the most useful gift parents of an infant can give each other just might be sleep. Anyway, here is to the two fabulous fathers I love!

Someone gets the giggles.

2009-06-04T18:47:00.004-06:00

Because the only thing better than getting your first pair of shoes is having a sister who picks them up for you every time you throw them on the ground. No matter how many times you do it, it remains hysterical.

Stardate 52009: Mother of the Year.

2009-05-20T17:53:00.003-06:00

Two incidents from my day:

I'm sweeping up the floor after afternoon snack (chex mix for the bug, cheerios for the polliwog), which has left considerable debris underfoot. Halfway through area recon, I realize that my son is crawling across the floor at top speed, not to observe my progress, but to try to snag the cheerios out of the refuse pile. I never envisioned myself sliding my nine-month-old across the floor with a broom, but he is super-fast and I couldn't quite get the sweeping-into-the-dustpan done before he'd managed to get at least two into his mouth. Ah, germs. We know them well.

Later in the evening, the bug is begging for media time, specifically for a movie neither Matt nor I want to watch. It is just before dinner, and using my best imitation-sad voice, I say, "Fine. Go watch your movie for ten minutes, while I get dinner ready, all alone, without any help." She instantly bounds back down the stairs over to Matt, and says, "Daddy, won't you help Mama make dinner? Are you going to make her make dinner by herself? You should help her." (Note: she did not get out of kitchen-help duty, but she did get bonus points for the subtle approach to passing the buck that she's clearly learned from her mother.)

Hell has not actually frozen over.

2009-05-20T12:32:00.006-06:00

However, all four of us have been captured on film in the same shot:

While the photo captures some of the polliwog's slack-jawed yokelness and the bug's best smarmy make-me-smile qualities, at least we are all dressed and not leaking any bodily fluids.

This is good even for the adults, but the polliwog has been more like a slug in the past month as he's both learning to crawl and gaining four upper teeth at once. Thus, our family room hardwood floors are covered in little slime trails as he progresses across the floor between Matt's magazines (which he's not supposed to suck on) and the stereo cords (ditto) with many age-appropriate distractions in between (by which he is neither absorbed nor distracted). We were outdoors at the playground by White Fence Farms in Lakewood after a lovely big fried chicken lunch when the photo was taken. Perhaps in future photos Matt and I may be in body positions which indicate we know and like each other, but hey, you can see our faces! Thanks to Liesl for sharing the photo for bloggy consumption.

It's May, it's May, the merry month of May...

2009-05-13T20:50:00.002-06:00

Updates since my last post:

Two shows I worked on, one opera and one romance, have opened and closed. Both were sell-out hits and did very well with the critics, which should hopefully improve funding on all fronts in the year ahead.

My parents came to visit and got to see one of the shows, the world premiere of Morisot Reclining, and to meet some of the theatre friends I've been working with for the past three years. It was a treat to have them here to see our work.

Matt went to the shuttle launch in Florida to watch COS go up in style. He has promised pictures to me for future blog posts. We'll see who returns images first, Matt or the newly repaired Hubble.

Mother's day was the day both my parents and Matt left town, so it was truly a mother's day as I spent that day and the next two with the kids, except for work. We've made lots of trips to lots of parks and playgrounds in an effort to exhaust the bug and air out the polliwog. He, by the way, appears to have "man of the house" syndrome. While Matt was away, he was unusually hard to get down to sleep, and wouldn't stay asleep unless I stayed upstairs in my bedroom. Literally the moment his dad's plane touched down, he took a 2.5 hour nap at daycare (VERY unusual, he's usually an hour-or-less guy) and another mid-evening nap tonight while we went for a walk. Yup, he's been taking care of the women and it's been exhausting. :)

Perhaps most relevantly, I started Facebooking which has sucked my recreational computer time away from blogging. I will attempt to be better about maintaining the longer blog post format more than once a month, especially since I have family members who rely on my blog for photos. (Ah, faithful readers!) This is why I haven't gone near Twitter--I've already gone from blog posting to 250-character updates and the lure of brevity is way too attractive for me to consider seriously.

Seven years.

2009-04-27T13:11:00.002-06:00

Today is our seventh anniversary. For those of you who may remember our wedding day, it was a pretty darn fabulous party. We are so blessed to have so many family and friends who could be with us that day who are still a meaningful part of our lives.

Matt and I went out to lunch to celebrate at Ras Kassa's today, as I have to work at the Opera stage-managing auditions tonight. We were talking it over and we realized that we are basically still the same people we were when we got married, except for parenthood. That's a pretty big "except," I realize, but we both agree that parenthood changed us more than marriage did. I suspect this is especially true for me, since motherhood has been approximately like having two additional internal organs that are now capable of existing a considerable distance from my body and acting independently without permission.

Still, I married a pretty amazing guy. He makes the best coffee I can imagine drinking in my home, short of morning delivery directly from the Blue Bottle Cafe in San Francisco. He lets me put my cold toes on his warm legs when I come to bed later than he does. He does a whole lot of housework and probably more of the cooking than I do, which make him an excellent roommate as well as husband. . . the amount of mush I could put into this post would be frankly shocking if I got around to it, but rather than displaying tons of overt sentiment to my reading public I'll simply wish him a happy anniversary--we have had so much happiness already that the years ahead are sure to hold even more than we can imagine.

Word of the day: graupeling.

2009-04-17T14:27:00.002-06:00

So, hail starts with a raindrop freezing.

Graupel begins with a snowflake instead, creating a sort of weird styrofoamy pellet-like snow that melts quickly on ground contact.

It's been graupeling on and off here since yesterday. Sometimes snow, sometimes rain, sometimes (this new lovely word) graupel. The bug had teacher in-service today so it's been very mellow: late wake-up, waffles with berries for breakfast, cookie-making and CD-listening, and probably at least one kids' movie in the works after quiet time.

A lovely not-quite-snow day, to say the least.

i would add a photo...

2009-04-16T12:45:00.002-06:00

but it would make me sad.

The polliwog took a header off the chair in his room yesterday, and we ended up at the doctor's office in the late afternoon. No stitches needed, thankfully, but some major band-aidage and a tense 12 hours on concussion watch. He is just fine today, in good spirits, and things look like they were relatively superficial and will heal well. Still an important brief list of lessons (re)learned:

1) Head wounds bleed like hell.

2) Four-year-olds cannot move to the car fast enough for a mom carrying an injured infant, even if they are completely cooperative and sprinting at top speed. That said, the bug was AWESOME in terms of taking direction and moving fast without asking too many questions until we actually got to the doctor's office. (Then she kept asking whose fault it was. Mine, child. I took my hand off him and reached for the diaper wipes when he shouldn't have been up on the chair alone. Now shush.)

3) Blood doesn't come out of carpets. Or car seats. Or running shoes. Or indeed most things it comes into contact with.

4) My boy is amazingly precious, cheery, and sweet, and has rebounded from his injury very quickly. I'm the one who wants to cuddle him 24 hours a day and keeps having nightmares with the injury repeated in slow-mo.

Snow pix.

2009-03-26T15:45:00.002-06:00

The backyard, as of three p.m., with at least another eight inches expected:

And a bonus picture of the children. They're either playing nicely together and pretending they're riding on a train, or they're smiling in frozen shock as they realize I'm about to mail them away in order to get five minutes of adult time. (It's option A. Really. We're having a good day today and it's cozy watching the snow from inside.)

Snow. Lots of it.

2009-03-26T10:26:00.002-06:00

We're at ten inches and counting, and both kids are home from school and daycare today. It is the final day of proposal season for Matt (shhhh....he's hunting wocket money....) so he drove into work in spite of the blizzard. Submissions are due at 4 p.m. today so with luck he may get home before they start closing the roads.

Even campus is closed.

The bug and I are playing school at home right now, and I am looking forward to tomorrow when everything everywhere will be closed. If I can locate the camera after our recent Omaha trip, I'll post some pictures of the snow soon. This storm looks to be epic.

what we look like.

2009-03-06T07:50:00.003-07:00

Given the recent reportage, you'd be getting a lot of pictures that looked like this if I were to provide an accurate visual record of the past 1.5 months:

So I've carefully winnowed the recent pictures to demonstrate that there were, in fact, days when at least two of us were well. A few weekends ago, it was the children:

And in this photo, the perpetually bug-eyed polliwog displays a smile, rarely caught on film after months of attempts:

And just a few days ago, both the boys were in fine form:

Perhaps by next Christmas there will be a picture of all four of us in good health, wearing pants. We'll work on it.

Blank verse and illness.

2009-03-04T07:38:00.003-07:00

My blog page is empty because I haven't yet posted this month. In an effort to alter that situation, a brief update:

Both children are home sick today with the plague. The last day all four of us were healthy was January 14. There's no point in complaining about this, so I'm simply recording the fact.

The polliwog has been to the doctor twice in three weeks and is still on eyedrops for pinkeye. The bug had the flu (fever, chills, vomiting) which has now evolved into a cold (runny nose, cough). Matt and I have taken turns with colds and flu ourselves. We haven't left the house as a family unit in over a month.

One of my shows closed on Saturday, so now I have nights at home for awhile which is a serious blessing with all this illness. My first opera on the job opens next week. The rehearsal schedule for the next one is already falling apart, and I can't even get parking spaces for the first one yet.

So I was looking for a bright spot in the day yesterday--something like Day 42 on illness watch--and a book I've been waiting to read for months finally came up on reserve at the Boulder library. (It's "Eclipse," yes, the third in the teen vampire series. I know, guilty pleasure reading. And don't tell me why you hate the author yet, please, let me get through the last two books first.) I drove all the way in from Longmont last night to pick it up, only to find that someone had STOLEN MY BOOK OFF THE HOLD SHELF. Seriously.

I began composing an ode to the person who did this, beginning along the lines of

Soulless whore.

Why didn't you go to a big box bookstore

And steal one from

their mile-long displays?

Stealing from libraries

is stealing from the public, the poor,

and the patient.

I hope you never reach volume four.

The moaning sick await my attentions, though, so that's as far as I can get at this point. Soon it will be spring and we'll no longer live in a house of infirmity. I hope.

Check list.

2009-02-10T16:24:00.003-07:00

Morning!

Early morning, between 1 and 7 a.m.:

Double ear infection for the polliwog.

Flu-like virus and nightmares about losing Nemo for the bug.

Hugs and coffee from my amazing spouse.

Keys? Wallet? Phone? Nursing equipment? Bus pass?

Drop off polliwog. Give instructions to give only one bottle if possible. Use jar food.

Wait for bus. Board bus. Bored on bus? Not a chance.

Morning, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.:

Contracts to financial.

Bios and cast list to marketing.

24-hour essay to marketing to replace not-being-written director's notes. (Note on this note: I never researched and wrote so much so fast, even as an undergrad!)

Packages to the office.

Emails to the production team.

Emails to the other production team at the evening job.

Stop by the dean's office. Smile. At least I'm working.

Keys? Wallet? Phone? Nursing equipment? Half-full bottle for the polliwog for tomorrow?

Wait for bus. Board bus. Breathe on bus. Dismount.

Get the polliwog. Plus two (!) empty bottles plus blown-out poopy clothes.

On-route meditation:

Copies of tonight's plans? Printed for cast and crew?

Crap.

Boy sleeps. Girl naps. Mother types like crazy, fixes food, cleans up bottles, tucks in sleepers...

Lovely begging email to husband, with attachments...

Keys? Wallet? Phone? Nursing equipment, newly cleaned and assembled? Extra bottle? (of gin? if only...) Dinner just in case?

On-route meditation:

NPR. Fund drive. (Curses! Fund drive during tech week!)

Nope, hip-hop for energy. Nope, adult contemporary for relaxation. Nope, jazz for positive attitude.

Silence.

NPR. Wait for fund drive to end. Pull into parking lot just as they return to headlines.

Evening, 6 to ?? p.m.

Props off stage, in place, for top of the show.

Liquids in bottles.

Monitors on.

Crew in places.

Actors in places.

Boards on and running, equipment tested (patience tested?).

GO, go, go.

Hold! Fix.

Designers taking 1,001 notes.

Go from...

Lights. and End.

Notes. notes, notes, notes.

Evening meditation:

Please, God, no deer on the road.

How fast was that guy going?

Have the cops reached their speeding quota on the highway for the month yet?

Wash face.

Brush teeth.

Stumble into kids' rooms to hug and nurse good night.

Snuggle exhausted almost-asleep spouse.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Three days to opening.

The gift that keeps on giving.

2009-01-30T19:39:00.002-07:00

One of the outfits we received for the polliwog as a birth present was from my lovely sister-and-brother-in-law, who have recently spawned as well. It is a blue one-piece outfit with a pithy saying on the front: "Outer space exists because it's afraid to be on the same planet as Chuck Norris." On the rear of the outfit, strategically placed, is a silhouette of Chuck Norris:

He's finally grown into the outfit and wore it for the first time this week, which has led to several statistically improbable conversations in the past few hours.

Exhibit #1:

"He's got a spider on him! Mom! There's a spider on him!"

"No, honey. That's not a spider. That's Chuck Norris."

Exhibit #2:

(after a bowel movement has noisily announced itself and is testing the boundaries of his diaper, and he is sitting on my lap getting wiggly while simultaneously looking extremely satisfied)

"Could someone get me a diaper?"

[wind whistles through the kitchen as no one responds]

"Could someone get me a diaper and some wipes, please?"

[continued lack of family response]

"If SOMEone doesn't get me a diaper and give me some help, there is going to be poop on Chuck Norris. And we don't want that."

Rehearsal report.

2009-01-28T18:20:00.003-07:00

So we're three weeks from preview, and tonight is the night of costume fitting. As someone who worked in a costume shop for two years, this is one of the real magic moments or tense moments of the production process. It's magic if the designer is on the same wavelength with the director and actors, and all of a sudden people are transformed into their characters. It's extremely tense if the designer has a different vision than the direction the production is going in, and you can read the disappointment on an actor's face when she hates a costume.

Tonight's going well. Most of the pieces are a good fit with these actresses, and the ones that aren't are quickly falling to the wayside. I've been on all sides of this particular negotiation and it's really tough. As the designer, you know you've looked a hundred places for that particular purple shirt, in that size, and it is more than a bit frustrating when one of the actresses doesn't fit into that perfect piece. As the actress, it absolutely sucks to wear costumes that don't fit and try to adjust yourself through posture to make it work, whether it's too-small (too-pointy, too-big, too-tiny-heeled) shoes or too-big jeans with a crappy belt. It's even worse when whatever the costume is fits you exactly as intended, but you feel like you look awful in it and don't agree with the designer's intention. Perhaps the worst role in this set of negotiations belongs to the director, who has to read both the heart of the designer and the faces of her actors in order to say what stays and what has to change. Me? I'm the stage manager, I just take notes so everyone remembers what's been decided. No dog in this fight.

I love that this part comes early in this process compared with the sets and lighting. Tech week begins for us on February 8, and between negotiating the moving of furniture, lighting and sound cues, and the addition of the real actual props (now with liquid!), it is SO GOOD to have the costumes worked out in advance. This play has 23 short scenes and thus has roughly 21 quick costume changes for one actress who's in almost every scene. The more I can map out in advance in terms of who is wearing what when, the easier tech weekend will be in terms of mapping the 22 transitions between scenes.

Did I mention that there are roughly 11 different locations in the script? Set shifting is going to be fun...but the production is in a rather minimal style so it will definitely all work out. The play's events are not in chronological order, which may prove challenging for the audience. The trick is to provide just enough visual information to set each scene without cluttering up the stage with unnecessary stuff that takes forever to get on and off, thus bogging down the scene transitions. I'll keep you posted on (if?) how we pull it off.

Split shift.

2009-01-25T11:34:00.002-07:00

The work goes well, and the family survives.

In a bit more detail: I'm now working school hours (about 8-2:30) four days a week, and have rehearsal four nights a week and one weekend day. Both my opera work and my rehearsals are on campus, so I'm going back and forth from Longmont to Boulder...let's see...twice a day on most days. I'm with the kids from 2:30 to about 5:30, and then Matt watches them until bedtime and my arrival home. Fridays and Sundays are both days completely off, at least until tech week begins 2/8.

While the current arrangement does keep both kids out of full-time day care, which is a huge plus, it means I rarely see my spouse during the week at least before we're both exhausted. I'm glad this is not going to be a permanent arrangement. My show opens 2/12, so after that I'll be working weekdays and weekend nights for three weeks which will be much better. The show closes 2/28, and then I'm back to working days only! And nights at home after the kids are in bed, writing, of course, but I mean work-on-someone-else's-preferred-schedule type of labor.

What do I do at the opera, you may ask? Who's in charge of me? Great question. I've been there two weeks and don't know the answer yet. Lots of people need me to get things for them from other people, but it looks like I will have three different supervisors over the next three months and then a fourth new person will become my permanent supervisor in August. Basically, whoever is directing the next opera is my boss, except for right now when the music director is my boss...I'm still meeting all the faculty who I'll be negotiating with regarding schedules and such in the months ahead. It is a lot of fun, though, and I'm already getting my hands dirty in box office data analysis and past budget review and preliminary budget work for future seasons. Good stuff, and so far everyone seems like fun, creative, energetic people to work with. We'll see what happens the first time those energies are aimed at cross-purposes.

Where I've been, and where I'm going.

2009-01-05T13:56:00.002-07:00

Hello, all! It's been a screamingly busy few weeks since the last post. Actually, it's been pre-busy, as nothing much has changed here yet but big changes are coming next week. The bug returned to school today, so I have a few minutes to share my news.

I'm going back to work next week, and will be juggling, um, four part-time jobs for the next two months.

1 and 2) I'll still be doing my grantwriting and administrative work for the local theatre company I've been working with, and I'm also stage-managing their next show which goes up in February.

3) I start Monday at the CU Opera, where I'll be their production assistant. They currently have no director of opera, only guest directors, so I will be keeping the ship afloat until a permanent leader arrives on the scene next fall.

4) I will be doing some grant and administrative work for CASA, Matt's place of employment, precise start date still TBD. This one promises to be much fun as I've been proofreading and editing Matt's work for years and am looking forward to doing so with the work of his peers.

I found a lovely daycare center for the polliwog last week, and he'll be going four days per week while the bug is in school. All these jobs are partial, can-work-from-home, no-set-schedule type of stuff except for stage-managing. It will be quite tricky to keep all these balls in the air, especially at first, but by March I'll be down to three of them and my evenings will free up and I may once again resume oxygen intake...in short, postings are likely to be sparse until then. Any free time will go right to my family, and probably also to sleep. :)

Mandatory Holiday Cuteness.

2008-12-18T20:15:00.003-07:00

Today was the bug's school holiday program. Her school is secular, so it was very definitely a holiday program and not a Christmas program. Last year's Kwanzaa tunes, however, were conspicuous in their absence this year and all songs were in English which kept the grandparents from nudging the parents and saying, "What's wrong with 'Jingle Bells'?"

The theme, very loosely, was "Peace," which apparently includes the kind of social-climbing reindeer love involved in the grand finale, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." Despite the lack of coherent plot or unifying production concept, we had a wonderful time, and we loved seeing her up on stage belting out the holiday hits.

The bug's class sang "Suzy Snowflake." Below, we join the show already in progress. The bug is wearing a green dress, and is the third one in from stage left. Spoiler alert: it's a bit long for non-relatives to enjoy every second of, but the final bow definitely demonstrates that the bug's yoga practice is finally paying off.

Kudos!

2008-12-16T19:15:00.002-07:00

So the show I stage-managed last spring and summer, right up until I went into labor, has been nominated for an Ovation Award!

Ovations are basically Denver's local version of the Tony Awards, and our production of The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) is up for Best Comedy. I'm so proud of my boys. :) One of the three actors is also up for "Best Year by an Actor," meaning that he turned in at least three remarkable performances in plays across the metro area, which is also pretty cool. The suspense builds...I'll let you know after all the envelopes have been ripped open on December 28.

Our budding gourmand.

2008-12-13T14:07:00.004-07:00

While other people monitor their turkey intake over the holidays, or pore over Christmas cookie recipes, our own little polliwog has entered the realm of the non-liquid.

Surprisingly, we actually managed to document the initial event without having to fake a historical re-enactment. The ratio of rice consumption is about 3 parts in: 2 parts returned to sender, but we suspect the processing will kick in successfully in the weeks ahead.

A guest post from a petite blogger.

2008-11-29T12:20:00.003-07:00

The bug got a camera for her birthday and we've just pulled the first batch of pictures onto the computer, so she'd like to tell you a little bit about the best of her pictures.

This is me. Mom was trying the camera to be sure the buttons worked.

This is my brother in his carseat on the way to my school. I took it because I like him.

I like this picture of him because he's being quiet.

This is my brother and my mom and my daddy. I like the way he's looking at my dad.

This is a picture of him happy after breakfast.

Bargain hunting.

2008-11-20T12:35:00.002-07:00

Because so many of us are grappling with the downturn in the economy, and also because I so rarely post on fashion:

Zappos.com, which some of you web shoppers may use on occasion (free shipping both ways! for designer shoes...) has a secret sister website.

www.6pm.com has all the designer shoes that Zappo's can't sell in the first six months they're on the market, at 50% off or more. Great brands--Dansko, Aerosoles, Uggs, Columbia--the kind of stuff that you might look at when you go to REI or the Walking Store and hope that it someday goes on sale. Some of you may also wear high heels and dress shoes occasionally--that is not my current life, but hey, they have some pretty girly shoes too.

So if you don't care about having last season's shoes, check it out. I have yet to experiment with actually buying shoes online but the prices here mean I may look into it for my winter boots this year. End of consumer site plug.

Oh, and if you have any fave Christmas bargain-hunting secrets, pass them on in the comments, will you? I tend to stay away from shopping on Black Friday unless I'm looking for something really specific that I know from ads I can purchase really cheap, but I'm always up for suggestions, especially for the kids.

Someone is 4!

2008-11-11T11:49:00.005-07:00

For reasons of mail speed, party suitability, and overcleanliness, the bug's birthday stretched out over three days this year. Here she is on the morning of her actual birthday:

We went out to breakfast at the Brewing Market and stopped for ice cream after school as part of her special day. A few presents were opened, but the U.S. Postal Service was late in delivering her two non-plastic-gifts-over-$5, even though they'd been in Denver since Monday according to the "track your package" on Amazon...sigh. Regardless, she enjoyed the jump rope quite a bit, and it's clear it's a skill she'll be working on for awhile:

Late into Friday night and early the next morning, we got ready for her birthday party, which we had at our house. Most of the other children at her school have birthday parties at various local museums, pavillions, art studios, and the like, but we decided to go for the traditional at-home, play-games, sugar-overload approach to 4. She had a lot of fun decorating with purple streamers and balloons, and helping make the pizza crusts and cupcakes. She had four little guests, two girls and two boys, and most of their parents stayed too:

In addition to Play-Doh madness, there was pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey (now with stickers and no pins, for safety reasons, apparently--I tried to find an AUTHENTIC, possibly pain-filled, version but failed). Other games and organized activities were planned but it was really nice out and that all sort of fell apart and they mostly played in the backyard:

That was Saturday. On which I got a few phone calls from family who were wondering if we had opened her birthday presents yet. My side of the family tends to shop for Christmas in, oh, say, March, and they're already all done with their present-buying before it turns cold and they might have to shop in the snow. (I did NOT inherit this particular pre-buying trait and I'm usually still out on the day before picking up something for someone I forgot.)

Turns out the same thing happened with her birthday presents, and I'd put a bag of them away with the Christmas presents my parents delivered in late October when they visited. (See, I get too much into tidying, and I start misplacing things I didn't even know I had. There's probably an important lesson here.) So, Sunday morning the bug finished having a birthday and opening her last few gifts. I think this was optimal, actually--not the three-day birthday festival, but the slow discovery of new toys so she doesn't just have a big pile of stuff too overwhelming to play with. I hope four is an awesome year for her, and I know this is when she'll start having memories of childhood, so I'm looking forward to all the places we'll go.

All Hallows' Eve: the Dehatting.

2008-11-10T20:55:00.005-07:00

This year we went with an unintentional garden theme for the children's costumes. The bug repeated her desire to be the same bunny she went as last year, and the monkey through no will of his own went as a peapod. Here they are at the bug's school, just after the Halloween parade:

The monkey deeply disliked the hat portion of his scheduled costume...

...and was not subtle about his displeasure...

...but he mellowed right out once I took it off:

I think the hat was reminiscent of a knight-of-the-round-table floppy plume, and perhaps he just wasn't up to all that chivalry. Or, it might have been that he has a huge noggin and the velcro chafed under his chin even though it's supposed to fit babies up to six months. Either way, he went forth to his sister's parade hatless. She took off the bunny ears and threw them in the stroller as soon as she was allowed, so perhaps the temperature of the parade day also played a factor (76 degrees!).

Otherwise, he helped me distribute treats (or at least didn't protest while I did so), while the bug and Matt went after neighborhood fat lootz. They came home an hour later, muchly candied, and with an oddly large number of Chinese fortune cookies. I then discovered that the owners of the Chinese takeout restaurant in Niwot live right down the block, and are the sweet older couple I often see out walking in the mornings. Neat to get to know the neighbors at last, and we saw a lot of cute costumes in the parade of kids that came by the house.

If you're wondering why it's taken me this long to post the Halloween pix, the next post may explain as it will be of the bug's birthday festivities. Baptism weekend + Halloween weekend + Bug Birthday weekend = too many clean-house days in a row for me to post anything. More soon--and I've loved seeing your kids' costumes, fellow mamabloggers!

For your election day enjoyment...

2008-11-04T08:49:00.002-07:00

Get out there and vote, people!

In my house, we tend to cancel each other out, so participation is the thing. Regardless of your party affiliation, you may be able to blame your great-great-grandparents for the policy failures of today...well, sort of:

Born to Party

Here at the residence we're between the monkey's baptism and the bug's birthday, so party planning and housecleaning and endless seas of spitup laundry have been occupying my days, rather than blogging. Perhaps November will be a more reflective month once we get through today and see who gets to gloat in the morning.

2008-10-31T07:37:00.002-06:00

Women Buying Health Insurance Pay a Penalty

When are we going to move past the "children are a choice" argument and realize that the continuation of society depends on at least some women having babies?

The worst part of this is that many of the women who are paying more are childless but are paying as potential childbearers. Yes, pregnancy and childbirth are more expensive than not having children. Yes, I am a "redistributionist" for suggesting that the costs of pregnancy and childbirth should be distributed over the full insurance pool instead of over one gender. I also want future generations to exist and I'd prefer it if they had adequate prenatal and postnatal health care so I'm not paying their emergency room bills. Grrrrr.

Old faithful.

2008-10-22T09:39:00.002-06:00

The Times published an article on the new fall cookbooks this morning, but the comments on the article are far more insightful than the piece itself. The question raised was, "What cookbooks do you find yourself returning to over and over?" If you know my family at all, you know my mom collects cookbooks from all over the country, and that we all love to cook and really enjoy sharing recipes and cooking techniques with each other.

I have several new ideas for cookbooks I'd love from reading the first few hundred comments--if you're interested, you can look through the list here--but thought I'd share the ones we use most in our household:

1. Cook's Illustrated, The Best Recipe. Goes through the science behind each recipe and explains things like "Why use butter instead of margarine for baking?" and "Do you have to sift the flour for cakes?" and "Why braise meat before roasting?" The idea is that they cooked many, many versions of each recipe to test out the most effective techniques.

2. The Best Make-Ahead Recipe. Same basis, but this time you can refrigerate or freeze things and serve them later. Great for feeding larger groups of people, and the cinnamon roll recipe alone is worth the price of the cookbook.

3. Joy of Cooking. I don't think we'd get through two weeks in the house without it, and I love all the explanations of ingredients and techniques.

4. Patricia Wells' cookbooks. We haven't started working our way through the Bistro Cookbook yet but have made at least half of the recipes in the Paris and Provence Cookbooks even though some of them have rather exotic and expensive ingredients. She makes meat taste incredible.

5. Luscious Lemon Desserts. My go-to cookbook for spring and summer desserts as Matt doesn't like anything too sweet so lemon desserts are an acceptable compromise.

What cookbooks do you use most? Where do you get your recipes?

Tagged!

2008-10-17T09:53:00.002-06:00

So I'm home with a sick preschooler, a two-month-old just starting to sniffle, and a cold. Recipe for a great weekend, no? But so far, today, so good. One is napping and the other is watching Mary Poppins. God bless a spoonful of sugar.

My friend Jenni tagged me to write a meme, but I realized I'd done a similar one before. So I kept the number of items on each list the same, but switched up the list headings a bit:

20 years ago I was:
1. In seventh grade "junior varsity" volleyball.
2. The tallest girl in my class...
3. With the earliest acne. (Darn puberty.)
4. Practicing piano 1.5 hours a day.
5. Obsessed with INXS, Tretorn sneakers, Esprit de Corps jeans, and Yo! MTV Raps!

5 things on my perpetual to-do list:
1. Clean out old papers in the basement
2. Write my mother a thank-you note
3. Job-hunt
4. Count my blessings
5. Family snuggle time

5 snack foods I don't understand why people eat:
1. Butterfingers
2. Pork rinds
3. Twinkies
4. Caramel corn
5. Powdered-sugar-dipped donuts (I ALWAYS inhale accidentally and get it up my nose)

5 things I would do to save money in a recession:
1. Get a job.
2. Go mostly vegetarian (meat is EXPENSIVE).
3. Turn down the thermostat to 67.
4. Re-evaluate "necessities" and "wants."
5. Clip coupons for foods we already eat, and use them.

5 places I would love to live besides here, at least a few weeks a year, if I had the means to do so:
1. New York City
2. North Shore, Hawaii
3. Omaha, Nebraska (in the penthouse apartment just off ConAgra Park in the Old Market, or in a big old fixer-upper in Happy Hollow)
4. Salida, Colorado
5. Minneapolis, Minnesota (especially in the summer)

5 jobs it would be fun to have some day:
1. Spa service-quality tester: Just how good is that facial and hot-rock massage?
2. Yoga instructor: fit, flexible, and getting paid for it.
3. Restaurant critic: see #1, but with food instead, preferably paid for by the place I work.
4. Director of American Revolutions: Theatre in-joke; it's the job title of the person at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival who is in charge of a series of new plays about American history.
5. Helpdesk technician at the Pentagon. (I stole that one off best-of-Craigslist, but seriously, can you imagine the phone calls?)

Road trip!

2008-10-14T19:15:00.008-06:00

Last week we drove to Nebraska, in part for my aunt and uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. In spite of a tanking economy, increasing job insecurity, my new status as a stay-at-home mom, and general reasons to freak out, a road trip is still a beautiful beautiful thing. Especially when we got to see friends with new babies, like this gorgeous gal:

And we got to catch up with some (young) old friends for a break from the drive:

Of course, the drive was pretty arduous, and led the bug to sleep in some unusual positions:

Reaching the grandparents in Omaha provided numerous opportunities for high-quality grandchild time. This unsurprisingly led to some new perspectives on the world:

Cousins also played a meaningful role in the weekend. First, the bug and monkey got to hang out with their cousins:

Then we headed north, and cousin-wise I saw relatives I hadn't seen since before Matt and I were married. Our extended family is even cooler than I remembered. The anniversary party was up north in the town I grew up in, South Sioux City, at the Knights of Columbus Hall. So, further driving led to travel back in time as I revisited the scene of my eighth grade graduation dance. Mom had also been to her share of dances at the KC Hall, but never before with so uncoordinated a dance partner. At least he couldn't step on her feet:

And here are the amazing couple. I should really write another post at some point about my Aunt Jo and Uncle Ray, but their family of three kids and multiple grandkids and their love for each other are really inspirational. No joke. They love each other so much and have stayed really close to their kids and grandkids, which is a beautiful thing to witness. It's hard to capture them in a brief post, but my aunt is the kind of person who could never let a stray kitten go to the pound, and my uncle is the kind of guy who is patient when a 7-year-old terribly uncoordinated girl is just learning to play pool.

Here they are opening their present:

In short, a lovely weekend was had by all Beasleys, and we returned to Colorado much refreshed. Thanks and love to everyone we saw along the way!

Bug entry, stardate 10.4.08.

2008-10-04T07:33:00.002-06:00

I'm sending a big email. No, not that kind of email. A different kind of email. I want to blog. Mom, I have to type it. I will try.

vniey4687yn7n5n785yy7u8yttunyiujtnigujorgoutjrdli hbbifhgiuyhrtunfknesr4feshiuysfsdshrhdfu

How do you cross out? How do you get away the line? Delete it?

Oh, that button is how you do it.

I want to write something and you're not letting me to. You're not being nice. This is not yours.

[time out threatened] Oh, okay.

crocodile. stop picture.

mouse.

I'm spelling more words after crocodile and mouse. I want you to help me spell them. Up there where we already typed.

Mom, I don't want to think about the words before I type them. I want my own blog where I don't have to do what you say. Or think.

All for a good cause.

2008-09-24T12:49:00.002-06:00

Last Sunday was Left Hand Brewing Company's 15th anniversary. For those of you who have not visited us since our move back to Colorado, this is our neighborhood tasting room. It features around eight types of beer, some of which rotate seasonally; water or Izze for the bug; and free pretzels. The bug LOVES Left Hand, largely because of the pretzels. They have take-home growlers which can be refilled at a slight discount, so it is not only very good beer but very reasonably priced. And they are also a major sponsor of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival...so you can see the multiple family connection points.

Anyway, last weekend they sponsored a marathon, of sorts, and a charity fundraising event. Matt ran the marathon, which consisted of drinking 26.2 ounces of beer before, during, and after a 5K. The proof, as taken by our friend and volunteer photographer/ fellow beer drinker Niall:

Exhibit A: The pre-race 9-ounce beer, at the starting line prior to the run.

Exhibit B: The second 9-ounce beer, with a slightly less enthusiastic and slightly more sweaty runner mid-race.

Exhibit C: Matt, mid-run, nearing the finish line.

While I can't document the moment of his historic finish, he mentioned finishing in under 20 minutes, which kept him in the top quartile overall. If you know anything about local footraces in the Boulder area, you know this is where the Kenyans train for the Olympics, so EVER finishing in the top quarter of any footrace in the county is quite a feather in one's cap.

After his accomplishment, he kicked back to listen to some local bands for a few hours before swapping out with me so I could work the Colorado Shakespeare Festival's charity booth. Left Hand invited all the local charities to which it donates to sponsor a booth at the event. Everyone who came in got a bottle cap that they could use to vote for their favorite charity, and the charity with the most bottle caps at the end of the day got the biggest cut of the proceeds. Unsurprisingly, the Humane Society was the day's big winner (darn cute puppies!), but CSF did walk away with quite a few bottle caps and some charity cash as well. We gave away t-shirts and mugs, and emailed people digital photos of themselves in Renaissance costume. This of course required us to display at least a token garment or two ourselves:

It's amazing how fast people let you cut in the beer line when you're carrying a sword. I'll have to remember that if they host any large events in the future.