conuly

The point of which was to guess a word the meaning of which was being doled out in one word clues. You try not to guess on the first clue.

So our team had decided on "boat" for our word, and to start off I said "orange", thinking of the Ferry, of course.

Cue the excited nieces, simultaneously:

An orange!

Sadly... no.

Incidentally, I'm pushing to get a tree this year. It seems like we never have one! I finally suggested that if a tree doesn't happen we can just paint Ana green and have her stand in the corner with her arms out. She's okay with this, but warned us that we may not see our presents again. Gulp.

1. I don't actually like Jerusalem Artichokes. Blech.

2. Jerusalem Artichokes cause gastrointestinal distress in some people. Like me. Add that to sinus congestion (read: massive dizziness), two sick children, and the hiccups (seriously?) and it was a bit of a letdown for Thanksgiving. AND THEN ANA ATE ALL THE LAST OF THE ICE CREAM!

However, the actual dinner prep went well. Jennifer complained that it's hardly "special" when I routinely cook two or three sides per dinner, but the advantage of that is that I have it all down to an art by now, and am not panicking as I try to time everything correctly. (Plus, it means we get to have lots of vegetables at every meal. Veggies make it healthy!)

I also learned that Jenn liked my twice baked sweet potatoes much more than I did, but it wasn't very high quality blue cheese. (I should've warned her before her second one, though, that they're something like 500 calories each. Not that counting calories is what we all do, but you should know before you chow down on 1000 of them in one sitting, right?)

Happy Easter :)

Because we suck, mostly.

But we did have it, and it was good, and everybody was happy.

Not long after St. Nicholas Day Evangeline came home and told me a story. She said "Today my teacher told us something that I know isn't true. She was just pretending. Mrs. Dulligan said she was home with her husband, I forgot his name, maybe Mr. Dulligan? Yeah, that's his name, they were home and she said she heard a noise outside, and she looked outside and she saw a reindeer! With a red nose! And I know she really didn't. I think she just said that so that the other kids who think Santa is real would think it was fun. That's silly! Reindeers ("Reindeer, sweetie, not reindeers") reindeer don't live here, and definitely not Rudolph."

Of course, if you don't remember previous years you might wonder about why we bother with St. Nicholas Day if the nieces Know About Santa, and that's because it's fun. The night they put out their shoes-with-celery we went to the store. And as we were there Ana said "Can we get some of that pomegranate juice? Mommy really likes it, and she'll be really surprised to find some in her shoe tomorrow."

That's magic, right there. You can keep your Santa is Real, and you can do whatever you like to maintain the lie illusion for yourself. If you want to make "snowy" footprints on your carpet or if you want to tromp around on the roof at night ringing bells, be my guest. (And please use all appropriate safety precautions, thanks.) I will take the simple magic of "Let's surprise Mommy by getting her something she likes" over that any day of the week.

I can barely keep track of all of these anymore.

Also, happy Hanukkah, and happy birthday Jenn :)

1. While the rest of us were all having a, uh, lively discussion (and let me just say that we didn't have any real fights at ALL and my mother didn't storm out even ONCE) Ana burst in to chastise us:

"I'm the only one trying to have a real Thanksgiving! You guys don't even care! It's about being thankful, not about everybody FIGHTING and YELLING at each other!"

Yes. I LOL'd.

2. Later in the evening, upset at being asked to do something, she went "I have to do EVERYthing around here, and I'm just the MAID, you don't do ANYthing!"

What was she asked to do? She was asked to get a cup of water. For herself. Because she'd said she was thirsty and nobody else felt like getting it for her.

I laughed for a good two minutes over that, much to her consternation.

She's supposed to research the first Thanksgiving and write two pages on it. Internet research is OK, in fact, they gave her three sites to start from. They misspelled "Plymouth", btw. There's no "i" in it, no matter what you think. (In fact, they may have put it down as "Plimoth", but I can't check.)

Naturally, I'm a little... doubtful about the... well, about the perspective and the accuracy of the information. And, secure in the knowledge that the teachers will (probably) not read what is handed in (seriously, would *you* want to read 23 homework assignments? I'd just check that they filled out two pages and give it a sticker), I'd like to, well, be a little better. No reason to teach the nieces lies! (Unlike that stupid, stupid, STUPID syllable work Ana's doing. No, sweetie, I don't care *what* your teacher told you, in English we don't typically end syllables on a consonant unless not doing so would force us to start the next consonant with an illegal cluster. No, it has nothing to do with whether or not the vowel is short. But, you know, slightly more important than that.)

So! Who has a better website to direct me to, one that has a more accurate and complete picture up?

(Actually, what really upset me about the syllable homework is that it's all busywork. Giving children a list of 40 words and telling them to mark them up is one thing, but when each word is marked in the exact same way I can't figure out what, if anything, they're supposed to be learning.)

One on tubeless toilet paper

One on sending leftover Halloween candy to the troops. Of course, it seems odd to Support Our Troops by giving them cavities, but I suppose they get free dental, don't they?

And finally - what percentage of people are making more than $250k a year?

This has been linked around a bit today.

We observed Columbus Day by finishing Ana's homework (her teacher doesn't know it's late because I simultaneously forgot about it and, in a bid to be helpful, tossed the wrong folders into the bags. D'oh! This is why they're supposed to pack their OWN bags!) where she's supposed to fill out "The five W's" on a book - WHAT happens, WHO is there, WHY does it happen, WHERE and WHEN does it happen? This is so not the right order, but that pales compared to the fact that she's supposed to write in little boxes that don't have lines to write on. She needs the lines still!

At any rate, the book Ana picked actually happened to be A Coyote Columbus Story, which... *giggles*

It's a pretty good book.

If this is not your holiday, you can still be happy! Be happy every day this week for all I care : )

And wherever you are, take a moment to be kind to your web-footed friends, thanks. Man, that song used to confuse me so much. Here you are, watching TV, and a commercial comes on about a mattress or car sale (what patriotic holidays have to do with selling mattresses or cars, I don't know, but let's move on now) and in the background... Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends! It took me a L O N G time to figure out why they did that.

MY FINGERS ARE ALL BLUE! And today we (me) hid them and the nieces found them. I wrote down a list, just in case, but we didn't need it, they found all the eggs. (Good, because I can't figure out one of the locations on my list!)

Listening to them scream in delight every time they found an egg? I love it! (And Ana doesn't even LIKE eggs, but she loved finding them!) This time of year, I think Easter is my favorite holiday.

After we found the eggs (at one point, while digging through the toys, Evangeline accidentally tossed an egg to the floor. When she picked it up she stared at it in befuddlement. "WHY IS THIS ALL CRACKED???" Gee, I don't know, because you threw it on the floor?), I told them to take their favorite eggs down and show Nanen and Bonne-Maman.

Evangeline: Connie? Can I eat one of the eggs I don't like that much?
Me: Yes?
Evangeline: Okay, thanks.
Me: But GO DOWNSTAIRS FIRST, your mom and I are talking!

*a few minutes later*

Jenn: Guys, go downstairs!
Evangeline: But you said I could have an egg!
Us: Later!
Evangeline: But then WHY is Ana already peeling it?
Me: Ana? That's for later.
Ana: It is?
Jenn: Yes.
Ana: Well, it's a little late for that now, isn't it?

I love my nieces, I really really do. ♥

An editorial about bees and bee-pollinated crops

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An article about morals, sharing, and the world

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"Want to Use My Suit? Then Throw Me Something, Mister!"
Pictures

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Finding a possibly new (old) human species

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"The hidden histories that shape the way we live now" (I'm not going to hide this one behind a cut)

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Useless question. I try to explain this every year, and every year not enough people hear me, clearly.

The Groundhog Day tradition runs like this:

IF he sees his shadow, it's six more weeks of winter. IF he does NOT see his shadow, it's six more weeks until spring. The first is supposed to mean "long winter" and the second "long spring", but anybody with any sort of mathematical ability whatsoever should be able to tell you that the two statements - six weeks until spring, six weeks of winter - add up to the same thing. This is what I like to call a joke, except that some people don't understand that and take it all too seriously. And even when they don't (because really, that's absurd) they still do in that they think that the holiday theoretically means something when really it doesn't.

Now, as it happens, we celebrate today because it's halfway between the winter solstice (Midwinter) and the spring equinox. We have six weeks on either side. This is something no groundhog can change - in six weeks, we'll all be talking about how we can balance eggs on their ends but only on the equinox, an equally silly statement.

So go! Tell your friends!

I put the nieces to bed by 8:30 - Jenn and 'dul are out partying.

At 11:00 they came downstairs saying they couldn't sleep. I spent 20 minutes putting them back to sleep before thinking the following:

1. This is ridiculous
2. It's almost midnight
3. I can not beLIEve how hard it is to make them sleep!
4. You know, their parents will want to sleep late tomorrow
5. Might as well let them stay up another half hour to see the ball drop

So I dragged them downstairs to my grandmother's TV, and we watched Word World until 11:57, when we watched the ball drop. I dragged them out to the porch to bang pots and pans half-heartedly (might as well do this right, right?) and then brought them back to bed.

And spent the next hour and ten minutes of my life trying to make them sleep. D'oh! I guess you could say that I really dropped the ball when it came to bedtime! (Yes, yes, I have been trying to make that joke several times all day.)

It was fun watching them be excited about the new year. Me, I found it much more interesting back when I didn't routinely stay up past midnight.... Of course, that's always the way, isn't it? When you're a child, you promise yourself that when you're a grown up you'll stay up late just because you want to and you'll buy those temporary tattoos and tubs of "slime" and choking-sized jawbreakers at the supermarket every day or even more often with your own money, and you'll eat cake whenever you please.

And then you grow up, and you can do all these things, and - cruel trick of time! - you find out that you just don't care anymore and you were a fool as a child to spurn naps in favor of being "grown up". Oh, it's disheartening to be a grown-up sometimes.

Here's one thing you have to understand about my family: My mother? Hates holidays. And my sister, whatever she says, tends to be somewhat apathetic about them. I myself love holidays, but it's hard to do much when I'm the only one who really wants to. Every year I say that if I didn't push the whole family to put up decorations and do things, nothing would ever get done, and every year they apathetically argue with me.

So listen.

This year, around Thanksgiving, I mentioned that I felt we really should put up a tree. You know, for the girls. And Jenn was all "Oh, no, it's a lot of work, and where would we put it, and we have a lot of other stuff to do", so I said fine. First week of December, around my sister's birthday, I said that I really wanted a tree, and maybe some decorations. "Oh, you know, we don't really have the money and we have a lot of work to do preparing for Bonne-Maman and it's not that big a deal". Fine. Second week of December, I pointed out that if we were going to decorate at all we have to move on this NOW. "Oh, you know, it's expensive, and who's going to put it up, and it's a lot of work, and it's really not that big a deal". Sure, whatever. Week before Christmas, I pointed out that we'd yet to do any sort of acknowledgement of the holiday, and since it appeared we had just enough money to get the girls some real presents instead of just boots and undershirts it'd be nice to put something up. (We had legitimately worried we wouldn't be able to swing gifts this year, and when we found out we could we bought for the kids first, all of us, so I actually ended up - no joke! - with nothing wrapped for ME for this holiday. But I'll get to that.) "Oh, you know, it doesn't really matter, and where would we put it, and we've been working hard for Bonne-Maman and all...." Now, I knew better, but I dropped it.

The day before Christmas, Jenn comes to me in a panic and goes "We didn't put up a tree! We have to put up a tree! Why don't we have a tree????" *headdesk*

And now, in the future, when my sister or my mother complains that I nag them to put up decorations, I'll point to this year. If I don't make them do it, it doesn't get done.

My father used to get very into the holidays as well, I guess I take after him. Every holiday is my FAVORITE if it's the one coming up :) Not the year after he died (when we all went through the motions), but the one after that, I put up the tree and decorated by myself. At the age of 11. Saddest thing ever and the tree stayed up until June. But it's not that my family didn't do it because of Daddy being dead, they just aren't as into it as I am, even then.

I've read some complaints online about the "trend" of "Americans" (it always seems to be Brits making this complaint, and some cranky old people with no kids or grandkids) making a "big deal" out of things that "aren't a big deal" and how "graduating from kindergarten doesn't count" and it's stupid.

Let me make this clear, to anybody confused by the phenomenon. Kindergarten graduations (this one was technically referred to as a "stepping up" ceremony) do commemorate something important - your kid is entering Real School for the very first time. However, that's not why we have them. We have them because, damnit, this is just about their last cute year, and there's nothing more adorable than dressing little kiddies up in grown-up outfits, in this case gowns and mortarboards!

It's not much different than taking pictures of bunnies with pancakes on their heads, except that you get to pretend it's srs bzness when we all know it's not. They came in, they sang three different songs (the last one had a whole dance routine and was just beyond awesome), they pretended their diplomas were telescopes, and then we ate cookies and juice and cadged photo ops off of everybody.

Though I do think making us sit an hour and a half so they could fit in two different renditions of Pomp and Circumstance was a bit much.

I actually used this same recipe for cupcakes yesterday for Ana's in-class party, but they weren't as divine. *shrugs*

Here's what I did:

1. I used the recipe from the back of a Hershey's cocoa box, except I used cake flour instead of all purpose, and I used half raw sugar, half white. Oh, and of course we used goat milk.

2. I took my two cakes and, once they'd cooled, pasted them together with a jar of raspberry jam (all fruit).

3. I made a frosting with margarine, vegan margarine, and goat butter combined with scrapings from vanilla beans, some extract (scraping beans SO wasn't worth it), cocoa powder, and powdered sugar. Query: Can one get powdered raw sugar?

4. I frosted and refrosted my cake. In the past, I've had a problem with dryness, so I wasn't sparing with the frosting. Lemme tell you, this cake was anything but dry. Rich, moist - mmm! But the frosting was yummy alone anyway.

5. Now, I have the same problem with frosting cakes as I do with wrapping presents - for whatever reason, it tends to come out a bit sloppy. (I must remember to start chilling my frosting before putting it on the cake.) However, with a little creativity you can hide this. With presents, I add strategically placed bows, cards, and little goodies (everything from candy to scrunchies to nail polish, preferably something that coordinates with the present inside). For the cake, I decided to just smooth out the top and add raspberries. I would've put more on than I did, but Evangeline stepped on them :( (I have one rule, one rule regarding bags - DON'T STEP ON THEM. That's the rule the kids always break, naturally.) So I just spaced them around the edge and in the approximate middle, and filled in the rest of the space with grated chocolate. Not very *much* grated chocolate, as it's definitely not the candy that melts in my mouth. (Note to self: Next time? Freeze the chocolate first.)

6. We stuck in trick candles (ha!) and dug in. Mmmmmmmmmmmm! This was the bestest cake ever, bar none. If I'm gonna keep making cakes (and I can't, it'll kill our health, seriously) I'm gonna need to get a cake stand so I can frost them better. Hm. And some friends to eat them. Anybody up to come over for free cake next time I bake?

Ana made me nearly die laughing as she played hide and seek. Looking RIGHT AT Evangeline sitting at the table and declaring "I wonder where Eva is! I wish I could find her!", and, when I ran to pick her up, screaming "AH, it must be a crazy robot thing!"

Jenn wants to use natural dyes next year. Which is *awesome* if she gets it all together.

Paas makes more Easter egg kits than I would ever have imagined possible. Wow. Of course, for all that I buy special kits every year the fact is that they never are as good as just dying the eggs plain. The glitter makes them hard to crack, the foil stuck all over my fingers, the stickers fall off, the speckles run, the tie-dye ends up muddy...!

Deniz and Su have gone home with their dozen eggs, and we have four dozen eggs to hide... whenever. Kidlets are going to see their grandma for Easter, which really is the sort of thing one ought to know before making plans.

That's the holiday where you celebrate by going out and getting stinking drunk, right? While making lots of noise? And dressing up in costumes?

Man. Jewish holidays have got to be the best.

(Although Holi is, what, tomorrow? Throw colored powder and water at each other. That might just be better than Purim... okay, fine, I just think everybody has cooler holidays than I do. You all have that greener grass, and I want it!)

Oh, and all of you in the midst of Lent, good luck with that. You have my support, though I'm sure you're managing. That covers almost everybody, now, right?

( The instructions - they're so much longer than they need to be! )

( My wishlist... not following the structure precisely )

If you tell me your wishlist, or even just post a few requests in comments, I'll link to it here if you like.

BTW, if you're actually going to get me something? You really don't have to, but email me at conuly AT yahoo and I'll send you my address.

There's a recent kerfuffle about it, you know. Some (Native American) woman out in CA is upset that her son's kindergarten dressed up in Pilgrim and Indian costumes for the holiday. She says they're inaccurate and offensive. (And they're no more accurate for the Pilgrims than for the Native Americans, let me just note.)

Cue the responses: Oh, PC has gone too far! Oh, whatever happened to teaching children history? Oh, she just wants to ruin children's fun!

Now, the first just annoys me, because what people call "PC going too far" is what I like to call "good manners" - don't do things that you know upset people unless you have a good reason for it. (What constitutes a good reason is something I'm sure you'll enjoy figuring out for yourself.)

It's very funny when you consider people going "PC! TOO FAR!" are often the same people decrying the lack of manners and morals in today's youth. I don't know about you, but I always thought manners and morals started at home. How mannerly and moral is it to teach your children that it's okay to do and say offensive things just because you've always done it?

As far as history goes, I'm all for it. I agree, we should teach children history. Teach them accurate history. And, as much as possible, get rid of textbooks and work from first-hand accounts. That's not happening here, though. The "history" being taught is simply stories. Why teach children fictions that they'll simply have to unlearn later? (And for that matter, why does it matter to teach children the history behind Thanksgiving? Isn't it more important to teach them why we celebrate it now? To talk to them about feeling thankful and appreciating what they have? About sharing with others and helping people with less? Why do we have to bring the past into it at all at that age? Focus on the important things first, then do the history when they're old enough to get the unexpurgated version.)

And the last, "ruining children's fun", that one just pisses me off. (Especially when phrased, as one lovely person put it, as "the needs of the few trampling on the needs of the many". Since when is "dressing up" - no matter how inoffensive the costume - a need of children? It's pleasant, but surely they don't need it? (Surely they can do it on their own time?) Of course, this person went on to say that the NA woman should "go back where she came from", so I'm not entirely sure he got the point.)

As I see it, children won't have their fun ruined if they don't realize they're supposed to be having fun. If you spend the day before Thanksgiving telling stories about what other people you love do for you (and what you do for them), if you make handprint turkeys, if you make pumpkin pudding or popcorn in class? The kids won't realize they're "missing out". In fact, they won't be missing out. They'll be having just as much fun *without* being inaccurate and potentially racist.

But that would require changing instead of whining, I guess.