Life During Wartime

I'm About to Get Evangelical on Your Ass:

2007-10-19T11:20:00.000-04:00

Revolution in Jesusland.

Why is that interesting/ compelling?

Because this:

I'm wearing my Election Day underwear.

2006-11-07T11:47:00.000-05:00

Watch this:

Then click here:

tap, tap... Is this thing on?

2006-11-05T21:30:00.000-05:00

Well, I'll tell you why I'm posting again.

1. My love is away for almost two weeks. (crying, pulling hair out in clumps, shaking fist at the sky)

2. Besides eating extremely bad-for-me (but delicious) food, I've been knitting like a literal madwoman.

3. Election Day is in two days.

4. I just bought 3 balls of generic cashmere in a mulled wine kind of color on sale, and I'm surprisingly excited about the fingerless gloves I'm going to make with them. I mean. Really unreasonably effing excited. I-can-only-hope-I-feel-this-way-about-my-first-child excited.

My camera's battery is drained (and the spare is with my love, see #1 above), so this isn't a completely updated list, but here's some of what's been happening on the old knitting farm:

October's Bounty: Yadge Jumper & 2 of 5 Noro Kureyon Hats

As I'm sure I've mentioned earlier, the jumper is based on a pattern from knitpicks (and comes with matching dorky hat, which doubles handily as a swatch.) The hats are all in the same yarn and all based on a free pattern by Christy Snell. I'm working out how to line the hats so that they're less... itchy. The colors are much lovelier in real life. It's hard work figuring out which color should go to which loved one.

The Secret Message Inside the Jumper
(aka the only word Yadge had mastered
when I got to this point in the pattern.)

The Cuteness Revealed

To my genuine surprise, Y unwrapped the box and then threw this shit right over/onto her head, instead of making a face and setting my work ablaze with her laser eyes. I have seen her in it once since, though I have the unsettling feeling that her parents dress her up in 'my' clothes whenever we visit. Like I'm a crazy knitting aunt or something. (Me? Never!) Oh, well. I guess it's good to have a role in life.

Knucks!!

These are some kind of miracle. They represent my first attempt at knitting gloves. They represent my first unsolicited delivery of an assload of funky bluepurplegreygreen mohair yarn from a yard-sale-shopping-beloved-friend (which yarn was held together with a strand of black merino wool). They represent probably the coolest thing I've made so far, and also the realization that I am an eXTREME knitter, but not much of an embroiderer. From the knitty pattern by Pamela Grossman.

Finished but not photographed:

One pair Baltic Booties, for a new cousin in the NC.
One pair One-Hour Baby Booties. (That picture is from the first time I knit these. The new ones look exactly the same. Same buttons from same trip to the LYS, even.) The Baltic Booties are not only somewhat ugly (I could use a lesson in colors), but they're made of extremely scratchy wool. The one-hours (cooked up in a super-squishy acrylic) are going in the same package as the baltics as an apology/ compensation for scratchiness.
I took apart the first Noro hat I made, because I wasn't really digging the two-strands-held-together effect. So now it's one soft and attractive hat (made from one strand) completed, and another one still on the needles.
Not that even Future Me will care about this, but my first felted bowl was a bit too wobbly, so I knit a gold i-cord to tack to the bottom as a base.
A shawlf of my own (in the same turquoise color as my grandmother's), with a wildly inappropriate lace pattern on one edge. It looks retarded, but it's warm and I love it.

On the needles:

OMG MY FIRST REAL CARDIGAN!!! (From a book of 1001 sweater patterns passed down to me from my aunt. We may have different politics, but we're both knitters! Yay!) I frogged the original black cardigan. When I looked at it honestly, it was just too faggy, even for me. (When I was young, I learned that 'faggy' refered to the wearing of aquamarine sweatpants and/or cat sweatshirts, not men who love other men. I like my childhood definition better.) The new one was knit in a matter of weekends on my *new* Bond Ultimate Sweater Machine. (woo!) I was trying to finish it for my cousin's wedding at the end of October, but I ran out of yarn. Boo hiss. It's all seamed up -- now I just have to finish the collar, add button bands and a belt, and weave in the ends. It's looking pretty hot, but I could be disastrously wrong about that in the end.
Sizzle. Too cold for eXtreme cleavage cotton. Need wool. Will finish next Spring.
One last Noro hat, plus I really f*cked another one up, so I have to add a few inches to that one in my spare time.
A pair of Manly Mitts for my man[ly] in black & grey. Because, in addition to being a Goth (not really), my man is also a Winter. Which means that blacks and greys don't make him look like an old sponge. (Yes, I mean the contraceptive kind.) I'm also trying to figure out a double-knit hat for him in the same colors, but I haven't started on that yet.
As of tonight, a pair of modified 'Fetching' fingerless gloves. Modified to include a button closure at the cuff (a la this pattern), 'cause that's hot. Fingerless gloves are apparently also newsworthy, as I discovered upon googling the inspirational pattern I linked to just now. I was actually inspired by looking at Urban Outfitters' website. Say what you will about how ridiculously trendy and heinously overpriced they are, they've got better knitwear than most knitting magazines. This is also my first real attempt at cabling, and it's going well so far. I'm loving this merino/cashmere blend so hard, it even feels warm to me when I pick it up after many minutes.

In other news, the worms are multiplying. No videos, sorry. I'm working on getting them to migrate now to the next shelf in their condo.

Work shmurk.

2006-09-13T10:44:00.000-04:00

I don't understand how anyone works full-time and still manages to get anything DONE in this country! I've only worked 24 hours this week but I feel months behind! I may have to hire a personal assistant to wash my dishes, tend my worms, pick out new knitting projects and keep in touch with everyone I know.

Or a robot.

A personal robot.

(I'm still psyched as shit about my new preschool job, which starts tomorrow afternoon. Crying-but-still-adorable-4-year-olds, here I come!)

I've been temping the past few days, but instead of rocking the internet like I normally would, I've been reading homework for my classes all day! I don't know about this alternative-to-the-Phoenix-group-blog idea... my worms definitely come first and even they aren't getting the kind of love and attention they deserve.

But wait... I'm only working 12 hours a week at the preschool and only in the afternoons. Shouldn't that provide plenty of opportunity for me to get the alternaphoenix going before I move into full-time work?

We will see.

When You're Mining For Coal And You Forget What Coal Is (And You're Sure To Be Fired Because That's Your Job)

2006-09-08T09:49:00.000-04:00

I am not good at blogging when busy. Which doesn't bode well for this particular blog come work-time.

You see, in addition to attending two classes this semester and temping here and there, I have secured some bitchin' part-time work at a Head Start preschool which just happens to be down the block from where I live.

I am SO. PSYCHED.

The basic gist is this: There's a 3-year federal grant that USM is administering to 9 preschools in the Portland area. This grant is designed to provide relief to preschool teachers (6 hours per week) so that they have time to plan and prepare their curricula.
I would basically step in for those hours and act as a substitute teacher. Since there are several classrooms with several teachers in each room, this will keep me busy several afternoons a week. Did I mention how excited I am? (Did I mention I just downed a cup of exxxtra strong yerba matte?)

This is exactly the work I want to be doing right now. And both the woman who interviewed me and the head teacher of one of my classrooms mentioned that this is a great way to get a full-time job at the site! I can't believe my luck!

It comes at a particularly awesome time, too, because:

It has become clear to me that the time for unemployment has passed, and the time for employment is now.
The brand-new childcare center that I was all-but-hired at (and which I notice I haven't mentioned in quite a while) opened two days ago. Without me in it. After emphasizing how excited she was to have me on board, the director realized that she was nowhere near the 40-child enrollment she had banked on. Thus, no reason for me to be in the classroom, and definitely no reason to pay me anyway. I've been advertising the school on craigslist because I would like to work there at least part-time, but so far I've heard nothing. Thus, I am treating the opportunity as "falling-through."
In this spirit, I jumped on another employment opportunity mentioned by one of my classmates at SMCC. The center she works at needs more hands, and, well, I have hands. So I drove out there and got lost and finally found the church the center is located beneath and filled out an application (including the two free-response questions about God) and had an awkward interview with the director who appeared to have never really thought about early childhood (though she undoubtedly loves children) and, long story short, went home very conflicted about the whole thing, ultimately convincing myself that I ought to just take the job because it was experience and even if it was not a high-quality place then at least I could make it better for my kids and even if it was long hours in a basement with people I didn't connect with, well, the children don't have the option of not going there so why should I and even though it would make me late for my classes and have me commuting an hour every day, well... I was generally feeling very down and unenthusiastic about the whole thing.

So now I don't have to take that job. And I couldn't be pleaseder. I'm going in on Monday morning to observe for a while, which should be enlightening, and then starting work on Thursday. (Wednesday I'm temping at the very same insurance company I temped at last time, so you can expect maximum blogination.)

Now all I have to do is find another part-time job (at least until such time as I can wiggle my way into working full-time for this Head Start center). Easy, right?

Riiight. I'm applying to be a substitute teacher at Portland elementary schools (the largest of which is also just down the street from me.) And maybe I can swing a morning slot at the brand-new childcare center, if they ever get some more students.

In other news, I started experimenting with that rug idea I had a few days back. It was all going well until the Kool-Aid. The Kool-Aid dyeing didn't so much work as leave a huge mess everywhere and make me weary of the whole project. Modified project idea: Knit/Crochet/Otherwiseconstruct a rug out of strips of sheet and t-shirt, then dye the whole thing with RIT (inconspicuously, in the laundromat) when it's done. That seems a bit more manageable.

The Pile of Sheets, etc. (my raw materials)

The Stripping Process

Preparing to Dye (Ultimately a Failure)

In more, er, successful news, I felted a bowl! And then embroidered it!

Neither process was done "correctly," but both processes were, in fact, done. Hoorah!

Labor Day Roundup

2006-09-05T13:40:00.000-04:00

Party Party
We started the weekend early with a Thursday night shindig at the Breakaway, a divey bar just at the bottom of the hill. The occassion: cancer. An acquaintence turns out to have it pretty bad, but all of her friends banded together to put on this fundraiser for her medical expenses. Adam Gardner (of Guster) and Pete Kilpatrick (local singing heartthrob) headlined, the turnout was impressive, and fun was had by all. Fun will continue until remission is achieved.

Three Matching High School Girls at the Event,
Jazzed That They're Drinking Underage in a Real Bar

Labor Day Weekend Hijinx
We had some more friends in town for the weekend for very-end-of-summer fun. There was hiking, canoeing, family beach partying, DDRing, and lots of driving. Plus delicious food and games.

As we were driving to Manchester (NH) last night to drop our guests off at the airport, I noticed a single old lady waving at southbound I-95 traffic from an overpass. I waved back and laughed for a while, wondering whether this woman was crazy or just into looking crazy. Then I saw a young couple doing the same thing at the next overpass. It was delightful, like living in an independent movie.

Then Eli figured out what was going on. The last day of Labor Day weekend marks the end of the tourist season in Maine, and the locals were waving goodbye to all the Boston and New York and New Jersey license plates. Ha!

Rambunctious Grannies
Just today, I found this wonderful little blog. It's about worm composting and knitting, if you can believe that, and it's written by an awesome 73-year-old Manhattanite called Naomi Dagen Bloom. In addition to the blog, she has a website called CityWorm. Go her.

Burning The Phoenix
Lastly but not leastly, I'm dreaming up my most ambitious project to date. (Yes, even more ambitious than the hand-made hand-dyed rug you'll read about in my next post.) It's a group blog that will cover Portland news, culture, and gossip. And it exists solely to crush the Phoenix, Portland's "cool" free weekly (think the Village Voice but a million times crappier).

Problems with the Phoenix include:

It isn't a local paper. There is a Boston Phoenix and a Providence Phoenix. Not only does that detract from the local content, but who wants to be associated with Boston and Providence? (Flips hair.) Not Portland, that's for sure.
It has the headline size of the New York Post but the content of my 7th grade diary. If you're only going to have three headlines crammed onto the page, at least make them puns. (See all $0.25 NYC papers.) Or real stories. Anything!

Example #1: An entire front page featuring Paris Hilton's ugly mug. The story inside? A poorly-written article defending her album as "actually pretty good," followed by a list of actual pop musicians in which each individual is shot down on the basis of something other than their musical talent. Avril Lavigne? She has a stupid name AND she's ugly. But Paris's record isn't that bad!
Example # 2: An entire front page featuring a rumor that the Portland Press-Herald might possibly maybe be sold in maybe two years. Which inside sources say is not only completely made up, but NOT FRONT-PAGE NEWS.
Example #3: An entire front page featuring a breaking story on how American civil liberties are being eroded under the Bush Administration. True, but FIVE YEARS LATE. FIVE-YEAR OLD NEWS GOES IN THE BACK OF THE PAPER, NOT ON THE FRONT PAGE.
And this is just the last three issues, people!

This really goes under the above bullet point, but the stories in the Phoenix are [obvs] more or less completely irrelevant to your average Portlander.
The final problem with the Phoenix is that there's no viable alternative to the Phoenix.

That's where my most ambitious project yet comes in. It will involve research, amateur photography, reaching out to the young hip Portland community, a ridiculously large chunk of my time, and web design. But I think it needs to be done, and I'm going to at least attempt to do it.

Now all I need is a title...
(...and to do the reading for tonight's Child Development class. The text is predictably boring and stupid.)

The Time for Wool Socks is Now.

2006-08-31T10:32:00.000-04:00

But do I knit them or do I buy them from the L.L.Bean Outlet down the street?

I ate cookies for breakfast and I'm posting this on my blog:

Did I fall asleep and wake up back in college?
wtf?

(p.s. This is a great song to have in your head on a Thursday)
(p.p.s. I'm thinking of knitting, crocheting or otherwise constructing a rug using strips of an old sheet that I will dye fun colors. I don't know if this will actually happen, but it would be cool. Inspiration here.)

Activity Club!

2006-08-30T17:23:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of activities lately, none of which include working.

Last week when Eli was gone, I taught myself (with the faithful help of the Internet) how to crochet and how to knit a cable. Neither is particularly hard, but I was proud of myself nonetheless.

(So proud, in fact, that when a group of friends attending an awesome party/event in New York that night texted me to say that I was missed, I responded with something to the effect of "Wish I could be there, but I'm learning to crochet on my couch." I then promised to crochet them all hats for their continued loyalty and friendship.)

I didn't take photos of the crocheting or cables because I worked them on the same ugly yellow yarn and then tore them out, so you'll just have to trust me on that. I'm not so in love with either activity, though maybe I will be after I become a raging creative genius.

It turns out there is no equivalent to knitty in the crochet world. There's crochet me, but they're new and don't have many patterns (so assuming I'm interested in 10% of the patterns like I am at knitty, I have far fewer to choose from). I do often find myself admiring sweaters and things in stores that turn out to be crocheted. So it's worth knowing, is all I'm saying.

What may not be worth knowing, but which I decided to play with anyway, is weaving. That's right. I weaved. Wove. Whatev.

My loom: A box that once held a pair of Rockports

There are surprisingly few resources online about how and why to weave. Maybe it's the next cool fiber art? Mmmmmaybe not. There are a surprising lot of fiber shops in my immediate neighborhood, so maybe I'll stop into the official Munjoy Hill spinning & weaving place to have a go at this thing for reals. The above photo is of a honeycomb pattern I attempted. I'm not so pleased with it. Maybe I can keep my crochet hooks in my new shoebox loom in the back of the closet.

When I was at my office job in New York last year, a coworker (native to Argentina and well-liked by me) brought in some beautiful scarves her sister had woven. They were really very pretty. I think the fact that they were woven added something to the attractiveness. Knitting and crocheting are very pragmatic and utilitarian ways to make a scarf. Weaving one is just plain crazy. And so rarer. And so more desirable. They were also made of this silky, dark, shiny, ribbon-like fiber, so they probably would have looked pretty hot no matter how they had been made.

"E"

I found this today. It's my first attempt at intarsia, done at poolside in the Bahamas last winter. It's for (guess who?)

In Worm News...
I started feeding my worms today. I also turned the compost heap. Both were gross (the heap infinitely more so on account of the slug eggs that were everywhere), but at least my worms are alive and eating! I know there's no such thing as slug eggs, but tell that to these gelatinous larvae hiding in my compost heap. (Please.)

In College News...
My intro to ECE class tonight was not terrible. The instructor looked like she hadn't slept in 16 months (the age of her child), and seemed like a bit of a controlling person. There was a harrowing set of rules about lateness (it seems that if my job requires me to work until 5:30pm and so I am 5 minutes late every class, I will automatically fail.) But she's a knitter, so she can't be that bad.

The control issue made me realize that even though my interest in attending school has nothing to do with getting grades or pleasing anyone, I'm often drawn into that mind set and so turned off to the experience right from the get-go. I think this is because professors have a standard lecture for each new class in which they are heavy on the student's responsibilities and light on the joyful doling out of knowledge.

It's crap. I don't want to earn this woman's approval. I paid my $250 for her to give me knowledge, more or less on my terms. I want to show up when I want, do the reading I want, and generally have control over my experience. This is what I'm thinking now. In class earlier, when we were going over the minutiae of the instructor's grading system, I felt oppressed and bummed out by this system I had unknowingly entered into. That's not fun. I have to remember that this is my thing, not the instructor's, and that the only impact it has on my life will be the impact I allow it to have. So hopefully this semester will be more fun than it seems like it will right now.

(I also just finished watching Brick, which is a movie starring high school students acting out this intense film-noir-genre story. Really good, actually; great cinematography and editing and atmosphere, but also verrrry dark.)

My only successfully flowering plant,
which keeps Eli company during the day

First Day of School

2006-08-28T16:47:00.001-04:00

This evening I attended my first class at SMCC: Child Development. In sum, it is not nearly as bad as I feared it would be. The class is structured just like any other college course and, while I don't think the work will be difficult, the instructor seems like a smart and thoughtful person.

He's a man, actually, which was a pleasant surprise. The other students were not so surprising (though the average gender, age, and preoccupation with making and caring for babies was disturbingly similar to my own situation.) People seemed pretty interested in being there for the most part, and came from a variety of life-walks (which I'm a sucker for; ask me about Hunter College if you've got an hour to listen to me talk about it). There's even a high school student!

(In front of whom I embarrassed myself immediately after class ended. We were let out early and as I was leaving I noticed her hanging back by a wall. I asked her if she had a ride [since I was already transporting one classmate] and she said yes and that it sucked to not be able to drive yet. I responded with a short, enthusiastic sermon on how much high school sucks and life begins shortly after graduation. As I finished giving her my best smug closed-lip smile and knowing look, my brain registered what I had just said and kicked itself.) (My only consolation is that if she is anything like I was when I was 16, she probably thinks that she embarrassed herself and that I am now talking about how fat she is to all the cute boys in her school.)

Tomorrow is an intro class to Early Childhood Ed and, despite today's surprise, my expectations remain dismally low. Find out in tomorrow's edition! But in other ECE news, I decided today (and we shall see if I still feel this way in a few months) that I would definitely like to find a position in a Montessori classroom after I get these classes and some preschool work experience out of the way. It just feels like the thing I want to do.

Though the Montessori option still carries with it a bit of a moral trade-off. I get a fun, positive, well-appointed atmosphere in which to teach my bright-eyed, healthy young middle class citizens in exchange for knowing that I'm not delivering my mad teaching skillz to the kids who need it most.

A Spider on
A Log in
A River

Sometimes I feel guilty for wanting to teach at all. I mean: it's clear to me that teaching is one of the most important jobs in our society and that well-educated, mature, morally upright people should become teachers. But well-educated, mature, morally upright people should fill a lot of roles to keep our society moving along smoothly (ha). And when there are arguably more pressing issues that our society needs to deal with than education (like war, for instance), don't those people have a responsibility to put their talents where they're most urgently needed?

So far, I think the answer is yes. And no.

We had some good friends up last weekend for what turned out to be a fun, relaxing and delicious visit. These friends really make their lives around social justice work, and they're smart and thoughtful and pragmatic. I like them. Over dinner one night, I brought up my feelings of guilt about not putting all my energy into more immediate social crises, like they do. They reacted with a fervor I had not anticipated. Even though they happen to be more into crisis management, they were emphatic that teaching is one of the most important jobs in the world. It was a relief, and shaped my new (and improved) philosophy of why teaching is the right thing for me to do. (A series of conversations about this with Eli helped, too.)

Here's my argument, basically:

GIVEN:

Everyone has a responsibility to the greater good that is commensurate to their level of privilege and ability.
People should do work that they enjoy and are good at.
There is a type of greater-good-work that can fulfill this criteria for everybody.
Some people are politicians, some are organizers, some librarians, urban planners, scientists, journalists, teachers, filmmakers. And of course there need to be people who are good at and enjoy construction, hair cutting, inventing things, and organizing files.

AND:

When there is an urgent need (like war or a really scary candidate for public office), people must sometimes step briefly out of their comfort and ability zones (I recently made phone calls to strangers as part of a poll. I absolutely hated it but it took up 15 minutes of my life and it was my small contribution to an urgent need. Not such a big deal, really.)

BUT:
You don't have to base your career/ life on doing unpleasant things for urgent causes because:

if your life's work is merely responding to the most urgent aspects of crises, then you never get to develop a useful, comprehensive skill set - you're left just learning on the fly the skills you need as each urgent thing comes and goes.
doing unpleasant things because you feel guilty for doing anything else is not a good life and:

you should have a good life
you need to be happy to work efficiently

there are always people who enjoy and are good at specific urgent things (see: lifelong direct action activists, doctors without borders, campaigners, organizers)

MEANWHILE:
Teachers with my education and values are absolutely necessary because:

if it's something I'm good at and enjoy, then I'll provide my students with a positive experience of learning
I'm investing in the public education system by being an active part of it
people develop their values and beliefs by being exposed to a number of sources, ideally. As a teacher, I will have a unique opportunity to expose my students to a variety of materials that will hopefully make them more curious, well-rounded, thoughtful and tolerant people. Which then will lend itself to making socially just decisions as adults.

THEREFORE:
It is perfectly moral and just plain good work to be a teacher.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In horrifying old news, it is NOT okay to decide that God doesn't want women to be able to teach men (or even boys) AND keep your job on City Council.

AOL News story here.
Islam Online story here.

It's conflicts of interest (or "sanity," as I think of it) like this that allow things like the Kansas School Board evolution debacle to occur.

I mean, not allowing women to teach in your Sunday school is one thing. (I personally disagree, but religion is an undemocratic institution, so my opinion matters not at all.) But you can't possibly say that even though you personally believe that women are unfit to teach men, you will not let that affect your decision-making in the public sphere.

I couldn't identify the proper vessel for my anger over this, so all I can really do is hope the voters of Watertown, NY will make sure to kick Timothy LaBouf's ass out of public office this November.

Back to School Sale

2006-08-28T15:00:00.000-04:00

Because we don't like too much summer fun up here in Maine, we've decided to start autumn promptly at the end of August. And it's been going swell, with cool breezes and rainy weekends galore. Get your tea and sweaters ready, people.

With fall, as I mentioned once before, comes a return to school. For many. Not everybody. But me? Yes. I attended an "advising session" at the community college I'll be attending part-time starting tomorrow. It was boring and simple, but it was directed at high school students with no idea what college is like. I also visited the building where my classes will be held. It's pretty gross. Really run-down and weatherbeaten. Which is weird because the campus is right on the coast, so there's a really beautiful view just beyond the building. I'll take pictures if I get a chance.

Aaaaanyway, I'm refraining from being overly pessimistic before classes even start. Besides, nobody's making me do this. I chose to take classes at SMCC because I figured I really could use an accessible lesson in child development and care. It'll be good for my job and good for my resume. And if it's boring, so what? I'll bring my knitting. There are worse ways to spend two evenings a week.

I forgot about buying books, though. I'll be dropping about $60 for Infants and Children and another $70 for Beginnings and Beyond. Which is less than I used to spend in college, but more than nothing.

While we're buying books, here are some other books I would like:

The Chalice and the Blade. A study of women and power and femininity throughout the evolution of religion (and society). Highly recommended by Eli's grandfather, who is a smartypants, and probably something I'll like since I liked A History of God so damned much.

It Takes A Nation. A really amazing account of MoveOn.org's hurricanehousing.org project after Katrina. A photojournalist followed evacuees to their new host homes and recorded the experience. A tear-jerker for sure, but there are depressing tear-jerkers and then there are inspiring ones. This book, I think, is the latter. And all the profits from the book are going to ACORN, a non-profit that is working on "rebuilding, recovering, and organizing" New Orleans.

And these aren't so much books as cookies. Delicious, face-melting, vegan cookies:

I am not kidding. These are the tastiest vegan cookies I've ever had in my life. They're better than most non-vegan cookies. They don't taste at all like cardboard. I'm not telling you about them for nothing. They changed my life. Mmmmm.... life changing.

And what else is on our shopping list?

A neti pot of course! I mysteriously ended up on the jala neti wikipedia entry (this happens not infrequently) and was pretty sold on the idea. Only I think I might have a deviated septum so it might be more trouble than it's worth. Which is why I made a shoddy practice pot:

Which I am going to use riiiiiight.....now.

Life During Wartime

2006-08-24T23:57:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about renaming this here blog, for two reasons:

Life During Wartime doesn't exactly capture the essence of what I write about. The only posts in which I mention war involve a milder kind of war, fought by government representatives with [unfortunately] few casualties. I think it would be helpful to any would-be readers if I had a more accurate title.
Life During Wartime is a [fantastic] song by [my favorite band,] the Talking Heads. I just today "friended" David Byrne on MySpace. Some small, weird part of me is convinced that DByr is going to both look at and be so taken with my profile that he will stumble upon my blog (here). He will then immediately realize that I'm an unoriginal tool. Or worse, an embarrassingly HARDCORE FAN!!! (I am a hardcore fan, but only in the silence of my heart. It's not like I go around naming my blogs after songs I like...) And then he will never ask me to be his girlfriend.

Anyway, after much consideration I've decided not to rename the blog after all. While the Talking Heads certainly influenced my choice of title (and I'm not alone), the real reason I chose Life During Wartime is that my country is at war. And what I am doing, and what millions of other Americans are doing, is living. We're going about our daily lives like nothing happened. (Which is not all bad - if we were all struggling through each day under the weight of the world's problems we'd mostly starve or die of broken hearts.)

This war - within the boundaries of my country anyway - only serves as a convenient rhetorical battleground on which partisans can run around and play. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for politicians playing on a rhetorical battleground if it's actually in the name of amending this monstrosity. But the truth is, the war is easy enough to forget (as long as you don't come in contact with any news from the outside world.) (Which is surprisingly easy to do.)

So I think it's important for me to remember, every time I look at this thing I'm doing here, that I'm blogging in a time of war. I'm surfing the internet, and growing worms, and knitting my days away, and expending energy in a million other ways while a real, actual war goes on. A war in which soldiers from my country have killed an unknowable number of civilians, and a war which has broken down into almost civil strife in which dozens of Iraqis are killed by each other every. single. fucking. day.

If anything is worth remembering, this is. So I'm not going to change the name of this blog until the war is over. Which I hope and pray will be soon.

If you'd like to remember the war in another way, go ahead and write to your representatives with your demands or suggestions. Better yet, bring all your friends to the polls on Election Day (November 7, 2006) and vote the Republican Party out of office. (Democratic fumblings aside, it's clear that change isn't going to happen with Republicans controlling every single branch of our government.) Though almost all relief organizations have been forced out of Iraq due to increased violence, you can still give a few dollars to places like Human Rights Watch or Doctors Without Borders. They're amazing organizations that are providing critical assistance all over the world, and when Iraq is stable enough, they will surely be back.

And last but certainly not least, let's not forget the welfare of the men and women in our own military. As the child of a disabled Vietnam vet, I know firsthand that war remains hell long after the battle is over.

"You can send marines back for a third or fourth time, but you have to understand you are destroying their lives."

Paul Reickhoff, quoted above, runs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an organization that was founded on the belief that:

Troops and Veterans who were on the front lines are uniquely qualified to speak about and educate the public about the realities of war, its implications on the health of our military and on the health of our country. These Troops & Veterans should be given a voice in the national dialogue and connected to the American public.

There you have it. Donate a phone card to a deployed soldier at any U.S. Post Office, go and volunteer at your local VA hospital. When you write to your reps, mention that our "heroes" need support after they come home, too. These people are literally used up to compensate for the failure of political diplomacy and then they're thrown away and forgotten about. It's one of the more disgusting examples of hypocrisy in this lifetime.

I'll end with this, a much nicer version of Life During Wartime:

The House Across the Street

2006-08-24T16:05:00.000-04:00

"I wanna go inside!"

"No!"

"I WANNA GO INSIIIIIDE!"

"Stop screaming!"

It's 4pm and Mia - the little girl across the street - is in her pajamas, sitting on the front stoop of the house across the street. She's sitting with a woman who I think is not her mother.

I think this because I usually see this particular woman sitting on the stoop with a different little girl. A significantly overweight little girl who seems perfectly happy to sit on the stoop and talk quietly with this woman all day. That little girl is typically wearing what I think (with horror) is a muumuu, but I now realize it's probably a nightgown. I feel bad every time I see that girl and this woman, thinking about all of the developmental opportunities she's missing while she's chained to the stoop and her lazy caretaker.

But today that little girl is nowhere to be seen. Mia's outburst and subsequent shushing drew me to the window, where I spied on the pair for a good 15 minutes. I watched as Mia complained about being bored, sang to herself, messed with some ants, thrashed about, and chattered away about everything she could think of. Her caretaker - the woman on the stoop - completely ignored her the entire time in favor of a magazine.

Today is Mia's birthday. She's telling every person who walks by, and each person congratulates her and says, "Happy birthday!" After a short pause, she screams, "Thank you!!" How old is she today? 8? 9? I don't know.

I wonder what's going on at the house across the street. The only adults I've ever seen over there are three obese women. One of them is Mia's mom, one is Mia's mom's partner, and one is this woman on the stoop. There also appears to be a brother in his early adolescence. And there's the muumuu girl.

The first time I noticed the house across the street, it was after rushing to the window upon hearing Mia's mom screaming at her. I learned, from spying, that Mia had peed herself in the car, and was lingering there, looking crummy. There was a wet booster seat on the stoop, and mom told Mia that she had better pick it up because mom sure wasn't going to touch that disgusting thing.

So, in my mind, all signs point to a bad situation at the house across the street. I've heard Mia talk about her first and second moms, so she's probably adopted. (Besides the talk about multiple moms, she looks nothing like the rest of the family.) But is this family the best she can get? What's going on over there? Emotional abuse? Neglect? Bad parenting? Nothing? What can I do?

As usual, I want to march over there, grab the child (who, despite the apparent disdain of her guardians, is extremely sweet and lovable), and bring her over to my house. We can eat cheese sandwiches and play developmentally appropriate learning games and hug and high-five the night away.

Am I doomed to be a control freak in this particularly annoying way? Will I always want to take people's children and raise them myself?

What makes me think I can do any better?

Protein Tuesdays!

2006-08-22T13:10:00.000-04:00

This morning I woke up, showered, scrutinized the new Knit Picks catalog that arrived yesterday, and then set to breakfast. Breakfast consisted of an incredibly strong cup of coffee, washed down by a Real Canadian Bagel covered in peanut butter.

I'm not really a peanut butter on my bagel kind of person, but what I ate today was not only yummy - it was a complete protein.
Peanuts [legume] + bagel [grain] = delicious AND nutritous.

Strangely excited about protein, I decided to make some quinoa for lunch. I had never actually made quinoa myself, only had it on a FANTASTIC veggie taco at Snackdragon on the Lower East in NYC (which, sadly, is now closed). Mmm... Snackdragon tacos. Given the opportunity, I would eat one million of them.

Quinoa is something of a naturally-occurring superfood. Unlike almost any other non-animal food product, it contains a complete protein, which just means that it provides all the essential amino acids a human needs for normal body functions. It's small, versatile, a little nutty, easy to digest, and, at one time, highly prized by the Incas, who called it "the mother of all grains". (Whether this name was ironic or not, archaeology cannot tell us. Although that would be hilarious.)

Anyway, bulk bag of quinoa in hand, I set out to make some sort of tasty dish. I found a recipe for Curried Quinoa in the Moosewood Restaurant New Classics cookbook. My only criticism of this cookbook is that there are no photos. How am I supposed to know what my curried quinoa is going to look like? What if it looks gross?

I set out to answer these questions for you, with no regard for copywright law. Here, in all its pictoral glory, I present:

An Illustrated Guide to Curried Quinoa

1. Chop up half a cup of onion (or shallots, in this case), half (or less - this can get awful spicy) a hot chile, and a teaspoon (or more for excitement) of fresh ginger root.

2. Mix up some spices -- 1/2 teaspoon each of turmeric, coriander and salt; 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

3. Heat up about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a smallish pot. Add the onions and sautee until soft, about 5 minutes.

4. Add chile pepper and ginger.

5. Add one cup rinsed and drained quinoa. Sautee, stirring constantly, for one minute.

6. Mix in your spices! Cook (stirring constantly) for another minute.

7. Add 1 3/4 cups water.

8. Bring to a boil.

9. Cover, lower heat, and simmer for 15 minutes.

10. Add half a cup of frozen or fresh peas, recover, and cook an additional 5 minutes (until water is mostly absorbed).

11. It will look like this:

12. Now, if you've got it, go chop up a few tablespoons of fresh cilantro.

13. Throw in the cilantro (or not), fluff you quinoa with a fork, and serve!

et voila!

When I told my mom I was getting into vermiculture, she told me to get a job.

2006-08-22T11:26:00.000-04:00

She was right about the job thinng, but I went and dropped $160 on a Worm Chalet anyway, plus another $20 for some local Redworms.

(Little did I know at the time that I could have made a perfectly respectable worm bin out of a simple plastic box.) (I console myself with the fact that I am landlord of a condo for worms.) (I plan to paint my chalet condo-style.) (Maybe put up some ugly vinyl siding.)

This is completely beside the point, but at the time of Chalet purchase, I also didn't know about this little piece fof composting magic: The Naturemill Automatic Composter. So... cool....
le sigh.

Anyhoo, back to my worms.

Here's the whole system on my back deck:

Pretty sweet, huh? Check out those
amazing extra shelves! Technology!!

Here's an emotional shot, representing how I feel about my little garbage-eating tenants:

Awwwwww.

And you're wondering what that little tag is on the right corner, yes?

Timestrip. Pretty awesome little device,
but it hasn't actually been a month.
So I guess that means this guy didn't work.
Maybe they only work in the fridge?
I dunno.

Here's one of my new worms in action:

(That action being squirming away desperately to get away from the cursed light.)

I just put the worms in the bin yesterday, and I'm already dealing with a common issue: too much food (which is a euphemism for too many non-worm organisms hanging about).

The instructions that came with the bin said to create some bedding from moistened shredded newspaper and soaked coconut husks (which obviously also came with the bin because would I ever purchase coconut husks on my own? No.) Then I was supposed to dump a pound of worms in and let them check out their new home for a few days before feeding them my old food.

The fella I bought the worms from sells them right out of his own compost bin, so the worms are already in some bedding and compost. He told me to put some old fruit and veggies in my bedding and allow them to decompose a bit before I picked up the worms.

Long story short, the bedding I made was way too wet and I put in way too many food scraps (we have a lot of scraps, what can I say?), so I ended up with a thriving fruit fly farm which smelled like (you guessed it) rotting veggies.

This helpful website suggested that I mix in some more dry bedding and stop feeding the bin for a few days. They also suggested I add some lime - which I don't currently have - so hopefully just the drying/ mixing/ notfeeding will work.

More as the story unfolds.

I'm expecting to have that FREE AWESOPMELFKEH!!! Pattern ready by the end of this week, since I had to wait on someone for sweet gadget cozy photos. Prepare yourselves.

And because this post is about worms, here is a commercial featuring worms (with subtitles!):

12 Minutes of Nerdiness

2006-08-18T16:47:00.000-04:00

Welp, there are only 12 minutes left in my first temp job. It's been... boring.

I don't have the necessary visual aids to complete my Free!!! Gadget Cozy pattern, so that'll have to happen next week.

In the meantime, in case you've forgotten why Net Neutrality is so hilariously important, check out the folks over at WeAreTheWeb.org. Remember this guy? How about this guy? They were definitely brought to your homes by The Internet, and life hasn't been the same since.

Here's a taste, compliments of Leslie Hall, keeper of the gems:

Lovely weekend, then. Chim chim.

Monsters in Maine!

2006-08-17T17:39:00.000-04:00

OMG Hybrid Mutant Found Dead!!!!!!

And then... disappointment:

'Hybrid' Creature is Just a Dog

Maine. Worth a Visit. Worth a Lifetime.

Knittins!

2006-08-17T11:40:00.000-04:00

I love living in a state that has only one area code. It reminds me for some reason of childhood, when I didn't know anybody's phone number.

I'm putting together a massive pattern for a fairly straightforward gadget cozy. I'm totally unimpressed with myself, but it's my first pattern and writing it will help me write better ones in the future. That should be up by the end of the week. Here is a tiny preview:

And now...

Knittins!

Let's start with...

The Noro Hat

a.k.a. My first experience with knitting real lys-wool (I usually buy the cheap stuff from KnitPicks) which was really hand-dyed by real Japanese people. Two skeins cost me $17, but I pretty much had to buy them. I was all alone in the store with the owner and the yarn was sooo pretty. Not soft though, and I don't really dig stripes, so I used two strands held together to mix up the colors and dull the striping a bit. Big up to Christy Snell for the pattern and photos she posted. I didn't use her pattern exactly, but there's nothing like seeing a knit hat made in 4 different colors to convince you that you really want to make a hat!

Thanks Christy! I like your stylez!

This also, incidentally, marks the first hat I've knit that will comfortably accommodate a human head. (So what if I knit the whole thing and then tore it all out to make it bigger? I was on vacation!) So big up me, as well.

The Mom-In-Law Scarf!

Remember that huge lace monstrosity I started a while ago? (Click the link above if you don't.) Well that got torn right out and I decided not to make it at all. I just gave mine own mother her fuzzy birthday shawlf made from Suri Dream (just like the one I gave my grandmother last Christmas) and I wasn't up to another one for Eli's mom. Especially not in lace on size 8 needles, thankyouverymuch. (And I don't even have a ring!)

So we went out and bought her a tablecloth. It's real nice, from a fancy French & Italian bourgeois goods store downtown. But I had promised her a knitted thing last Christmas, and who am I to withhold turquoise coziness? And besides, I had no ribbon for the sparkly red box I put the tablecloth in. So: A scarf!

(which doubles as a ribbon!)

The Snail's Pace Cardigan!

It is like a snail because it is moving very slowly. That's mostly because it's not cardigan weather yet, and I've got other priorities. I hope I learn to love this thing, because right now it's looking a little bulky for me.

Half of a Fitted Shirt!

The opposite of bulky! Look at those darts! I finished the back of Sizzle a few weeks ago. All that's left is grafting the shoulders and picking up stitches for some sort of respectable neckline. (Respectable in the back anyway. Much of what I like about this shirt is the Xtreme cleavage that it reveals. You don't often get to see cleavage in a handknitted garment...)

The Other Half!

Which I am currently working on, though I'm worried the weather will turn cold before I finish it!

The Zombie Cute Baby Jumper!

This is the thing I hadn't picked up in months. Turns out I had 7.5 hours every day this week to do nothing but knit (and, uh, blog), which is good because this is a 2nd birthday present for the Yadge. And the Yadge's birthday is coming up in October!

Nothing exciting. I've gotten to do two decreases this week, and at some point I'll engage in Linen Stitch for the first time. Woo?

**********************************

And that, folks, is all I've got. Can you believe JonBenet's parents didn't kill her? Matt Stone and Trey Parker are feeling prity sheepish right now, I bet.

In local news, the Center for Cultural Exchange in Portland had to sell its building to "meet financial obligations." I'd heard nothing but good things about the CCE, but I never had a chance to visit it before they moved out. Now it seems that the owner of SPACE Gallery has bought the building and is looking to do something performance-spacey. Cool!

Look Around You. Look Around You.

2006-08-16T13:30:00.000-04:00

Please watch with great solemnity and reverence for the god of British humor:

Thants. (I wish I had seen this before I got my state-mandated custom vanity plate! Imagine me, THANTS, driving around perplexing all the noobs. Sigh.)

See also:
Look Around You Module 1: Maths
Look Around You Module 3: Germs
Look Around You Module 4: Ghosts
Look Around You Module 5: Sulphur
Look Around You Module 6: Music
Look Around You Module 7: Iron
Look Around You Module 8: Brain

RSS! (sssssssssssssssssss!)

2006-08-15T14:03:00.000-04:00

Update: Harsh temporary employment reality sets in after lunch

2006-08-15T11:50:00.000-04:00

This actually occurred yesterday after my last work-related post, but I didn't have time to update for reasons which will become clear momentarily.

There I was, tra-la-laing my day away on the internet (sans email access, sadly), when my supervisor - who is blissfully absent most of the time - came over and told me to open all the general office mail and stamp any checks I found. Noooooo proooooooob I told her. I'm totally killer at opening mail and stamping checks.

The little business-sized envelopes typically contained one insurance policy and anywhere from one to three checks. Sometimes the checks would be stapled to the policy in exactly the place I needed to stamp them. Enter staple remover. It then occurred to me that I didn't want to be responsible for any missing checks. Enter stapler for restaplization. When I got to my third or fourth envelope I realized that I was in an actual office and there must be a letter opener at the reception desk, forchrissake.

Enter letter opener. I opened a whole stack of little envelopes, removed their contents, and smoothed their folds for easy stamping during phase two of my process. I began phase two. The crazy and counterproductive unstapling and restapling cycle was beginning to wear on me, but no matter -- I was almost done with the little policy envelopes and there were only a few large ones.

Enter large envelopes. I slice open the first one and discover, to my horror, that it contains at least a million policies with checks, all stapled in exactly the place I need to stamp them. I take them out and begin another phase one pile. The letter opener breaks. Enter sticky notes. I write Sorry! on the sticky end and stick it on the opener, which actually belongs to the woman with the boyfriend and cat and dog whose desk I am temporarily occupying while she takes a well-deserved tropical cruise with her boyfriend, dog and cat. I must push on, for there are billions more checks to be stamped.

Enter tape. I tape the two halves of the letter opener together, creating a fairly passable Frankenopener. I try to open the next envelope. The opener jams immediately, but I force the exposed razor to try and cut through the tough paper skin surrounding my reason for being here.

Enter papercuts.

Enter more papercuts.

It is at this point, with two hours' worth of slicing and bleeding and unstapling and stamping and restapling before me and one hour until quitting time, that I realize I have been duped. Being a temp still sucks, even if you do get to spend the first 6 hours of every day reading random Wikipedia articles.

Today I am making four hundred million copies of the [11-page] Sample Desktop and Portable Computer Security Policy for my host insurance company.

An article about David Bazan (formerly of Pedro the Lion) from Sojourners!

2006-08-14T21:21:00.000-04:00

Read it here!

Sojourners is making Christianity cooler than it's been since Christ.

p.s.
According to a former lover of Osama bin Laden, via this month's Harper's, ObL apparently has a HUUUUGE crush on Whitney Houston -- so HUUUUUGE that he spake of assassinating her beloved Bobby Brown and installing Whitney in her own palace.

Whitney Houston

Temping and Google Books

2006-08-14T13:17:00.000-04:00

These two things are related, I swear.

I'm at my first one-week temp assignment and, at the risk of inviting fiery death and destruction to rain down upon my head and neck, things seem to be going pretty well. There is nothing to do, of course, but my supervisor acknowledged this to me and suggested I surf the internet or knit to pass the time between phone calls. I left my knitting at home, and all email websites are blocked, but I'm managing pretty well with...

Google Books!

Yes, read books for free online. It's like how libraries will work in heaven. Unfortunately, much like libraries here on earth, the Library of Heaven is seriously lacking in titles. But I'm finding all kinds of publications [often institutional or governmental reports] on early childhood education that I wouldn't otherwise see. And maybe someday -- someday I'll be able to read all the books in the world using Google Books. On company time.

The keyboard I'm using lacks a functional end-parenthesis. Parenthesi? Parentheses. Parenthesus. Parenthisis. Thisisisisisiisisisisisiisisisisiis. See? I just pressed the key and nothing happened. I'll do it again. Nothing.

Right now I'm reading the above-linked report on preventing and responding to child maltreatment. One of the recurring messages to early childcare providers is to ensure a well-trained and experienced staff because 1. You and the parents will have to be able to trust them to act appropriately when alone with children and 2. Parents [specifically parents at risk of maltreating their children] are very likely to ask their childcare providers for child rearing advice.

Jinkies. I happen to fall into the no-training-no-experience category. I'm of course not worried that I would treat a child badly - where my academic understanding of child management ends my intuitive hippysense of respect and fostering development kicks in - but it would be nice to have mastered actual early stages of development so that I could tailor my hippysense for maximum efficacy, and answer parents' questions with ease and authority. After all, high-quality childcare is important to me in part because I believe it's an excellent way to model and pass on good behavior to clueless parents.

At least my ECE classes start a little earlier than work at the preschool. But somehow I don't think the first week of classes will be devoted to an urgent overview of proper behavior management techniques. Besides, I'm not busy right now and I'd love to start reading up on some concrete advice for managing kiddies while fostering a positive learning environment.

The Internet has failed me on this one, though I still love it and hold out hope that it will come through in the end.

Amen.

p.s.
Some more inspiring kitty action.

Ahhhhhh (NY VT ME)

2006-08-11T10:23:00.000-04:00

Noisy and smelly as it is, I'm finding something very luxurious about being in New York. Maybe that's because we're staying with a particularly luxurious pair of friends in the West Village and I have done nothing but eat delicious food, nap, and hang out with loved ones. Or that right now, I am sitting in a sunny nook in the Soy Luck Club, sipping a latte and reading the news on a borrowed iBook.

Life is good sometimes, even during wartime.

We are broke. But I just got a call from the temp agency I *auditioned* for on Tuesday, and I will be starting a one-week receptionista gig come Monday. There's some cashmoney right there. (I wonder if it will be the standard surf-the-net for 8 hours job or if I'll actually have to earn my pay? I guess we'll see how much I blog next week, and we'll know!)

I've always been theoretically very principled about not needing money. I grew up in a house with no disposable income, and had a very happy childhood anyway. But this is the first time in years that the outflow of dough has exceeded the influx. It's subtly stressful, and that plus the feeling of being proven wrong is frustrating. I knew it would be. This is one of the reasons poor people die sooner. Besides having no access to quality health care, they live with the constant nagging stress that is money. The shit will give you ulcers.

I was noticing recently that as you get older, your affairs become more complicated. First of all, you develop "affairs." And then they multiply, and all of a sudden you're investing in worm farming and adding data service to your cell plan. This is why a magazine about living simply can stay in business. People can't handle all these bills and services and commitments and stay sane.

I can't, anyway. I'm fantasizing about buying some land outside of Portland and building a house and raising babies and worms and chickens. That's my kind of complicated affairs.

Chicken affairs.

Luxury aside, though, I don't miss living here. I mean - I do, but not really. It's the same way I might miss heroin, or fame. A deceptive kind of attraction. It probably comes down to attraction to money. Which is on my list of personal tendencies to own and destroy.

The random disgusting smells are really not glamorous. Practically inexcusable. The extreme wealth tromping about over extreme poverty is not nice. The big targets painted around significant businesses and landmarks is unsettling at best.
It's a nice place to visit, all right. But I'll be happy to be home.

First we stop in Glover, VT to see a little Bread & Puppet theater action with some friends from Virginia. There will also hopefully be naked swimming.

Oh, and hey - Lieberman lost the CT primary! I am somewhat surprised and quite satisfied. Nice guy, but time for him to go.

No pictures today. I'm too caffeinated to even write long sentences. Clever and relevant photos are not an option.

New School Joygasm

2006-08-07T15:55:00.000-04:00

As the title of this post gently implies, I am
1) Going to school and
2) Excited about going to school.

I just signed up for two evening classes at SMCC - the local community college. For a long time, in my head, community college was the holding pen where everyone I hated in high school was corralled, bleating dumbly and humping each other all the time. Lately I've been kinda psyched about it. I know I was fundamentally changed after my first day of college, and community college grants that experience to anyone who wants it. Even if you're not able to get into a 4-year school or college just isn't your thing, the act of choosing your own experience of education is so liberating.

Bread and Puppet is all about the cheap art, I'm all about the cheap education. (Did I mention I went to a really cheap public university? Oh, yes? Sorry.)

So I'll be learning about child development and the history of early childhood education at the same time as I dip my toes into this preschool job I just accepted. I really don't expect a whole lot of insight to come from it, but I refuse to knock it until at least the first class (which is at the end of August.) I already purchased a new spiral-bound notebook and wrote my name and phone number in it. I just wish I could go shopping for new school clothes!

In that vein (the money for new school clothes one), I'm hoping to get some temp office work between now and September. Staying home these past three months has been tough for a lot of reasons, but the brokeness didn't show up until now.

Oh, money. You bastard.

Slow news day in South Portland...

2006-08-06T10:32:00.000-04:00

The Farm Detective Agency and the case of the missing clients