micheleandtom.com

Home Homework is Baaaaack!

2013-05-09T18:27:12Z

I thought we were safe from intense home projects that parents inevitably get dragged into because both Zs had entered middle school. But, no. Just when I thought it was safe to get back in the water, Zoe, of all people, came home this school year with two large-ish home projects. (Again, belated thank yous to my Mum for all the dioramas she built for me — she was so good!)

The first project was a poster (whew, right up my alley, I’m queen of the posters). Zoe and a friend had to do a social studies assignment in Spanish about ancient China. Awesome! Unfortunately, they spent all day researching and dithering as to what their ultimate topic was going to be, not settling on Wu ZeTian until the 11th hour. Ms. Wu’s story was fascinating and we had some great discussions about her rise from a lower level concubine to essentially ruling all of China from 660 to 705, after her husband was debilitated by a stroke. (Tom and I certainly didn’t know squat about the only female ruler of Imperial China, so Zoe and her friend taught us a lot.)

Of course, the earnest 8th graders didn’t budget much time for the poster building, so it was rather hectic at the end. They did a great job constructing a timeline and describing various elements of her life in Spanish, which can be enlarged upper left.

The second project was very unusual. Zoe was studying medieval times and was supposed to do a project, any project, to demonstrate something from that era. She is an awesome catapult constructor, so she decided to build a working catapult, since they were used to lay siege during battles.

It seemed a little bland by itself, so at the 11th hour (noticing a theme here), Zoe decided to build a paper castle that she could storm with the ping pong ball flinging catapult. You can see them both here. (Click to enlarge.) I have to say, I really love the scale of the catapult compared to the castle. This is truly a medieval warmongers dream (and, apparently, an 8th grader’s).

Zoe got a high mark for this project because her social studies teacher LOVED the catapult. Zoe had opted for a ping pong ball to be politically correct. But the teacher, who kept it for months, was wont to fling rocks and other heavy items across the room. And over time, people would add to it, stabilize it, put stiffer rubber bands on it…it really took on a life of its own!

Who knew?

The key to getting an A in social studies: construct working catapult.

Zoe Pong!

2012-10-31T19:27:59Z

Zoe went to #OSCON (Open Source Convention) in Portland this July, attending a robotics camp for girls. Since most of the stuff they worked on with Lego Mindstorms she had already done at home, she found the most thrilling element of the conference to be swag acquisition.

She came home with bags of t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, and strangely, a ping pong ball. Yes, a ping pong ball. And not just any ping pong ball! This one came complete with a picture of a little masked ninja face on the side, as you can see in the picture above.

One day, this ball provided her with a flash of boredom-relieving inspiration, and she announced, “I am going to make ping pong paddles.”

“Please don’t,” I pleaded, picturing that ill gotten little ball ricocheting around our apartment, and then into my head. By accident, of course.

Big surprise, Zoe ignored me, and with some tongue depressors, paper, and duct tape, she made two ping pong paddles. Amazingly, they functioned perfectly to allow for a robust game of Zoe Pong on our dining room table, since the paddles absorbed enough of the ball’s velocity to allow the game to scale down just the right amount. I hate to admit it, but both Tom and I became big fans of Zoe Pong, and had some epic matches ourselves! (Okay, we don’t officially keep score. We get so competitive, it could get a little too heated!)

After Tom, the Zs and I all took a turn, we agreed unanimously: “Ian is going to love this!” You can see him taking some shots in the picture here!

Bruise Wheels, Black Eyes & Totally Disgusting Weeping Open Wounds!

2012-10-01T04:18:04Z

We were excited this year when Maker Faire came to Portland, albeit in mini form! The kids enjoyed watching the watermelon launched by the giant catapult with the fancy french name…trebuchet! They made some adorable animals out of sculpting chocolate, pedal-powered their own smoothies on some bicycle blenders, and, of course, went in for some obligatory faire face painting.

Only in this case, it was Trackers style. Yes, that’s right. Trackers, or what I call hippie survival camp, which the Zs love. (The girls said they do a zombie apocalypse camp, how cool is that?)

Anyhow, Trackers had a booth at Mini Maker Faire and they were doing some awesome horrorfilmesque face painting that was a draw for old and young alike. Truth be told, it was a bit strange to see wee little tots in line for fake wounds and bruising!

Of course, the girls were instantly smitten with the concept, and placed themselves in line as Tom wandered off to peruse a few uber geeky booths we might find boring.

Zoe quickly made it to the front of the line (the artist was fast), plunked down in the chair and declared, “I would like an open cut on my arm.” The makeup whiz asked me if I had a kleenex, which I did not. But a bystander offered what I hope was an unused napkin, which she declared, “Perfect!”

This Michelangelo of the Macabre ripped a piece of the napkin, placed it on Zoe’s arm, and then sealed it to Zoe’s skin with liquid latex, leaving a line through the center raised and unattached to Zoe. Then, she began to color over it with her makeup brush from a circular palette she called her “bruise wheel!” It looked shockingly real very quickly, the napkin appearing to be peeled back layers of skin.

The icing on the cake, if you will, came when she split open the raised bit of napkin and filled the resulting trough with her special concoction of fake blood (a formulation of chocolate syrup, corn syrup and food coloring). It was disgusting, as you can see in the staged pictures below.

Zelda was next on the docket, and she requested a black eye. The makeup whiz whipped that thing out in a mere minute or two, explaining in detail to Zelda how the bones shatter and the resulting bruise pattern that occurs with a hard strike to the eye socket.

“I don’t know how to do pretty makeup,” she chatted with Zelda. “When I got married, my friends had to do do all the princess work…I only know how to do the scary stuff!”

With my disturbingly wounded lovelies in tow, we set off to find Tom.

It didn’t take long for the tall guy to spot us from a distance, his face lighting up when he saw us approaching. As we came into focus though, his hand went to his heart and he visibly staggered upon seeing the girls, so realistic was the effect. I thought he was going to have a heart attack, which, naturally, was a bonus in the eyes of our darling children!

The walk back to the car drew a lot of shocked glances and outright gawking. Clearly the highlight of Maker Faire for the Zs, and also an interesting experience, to see how fellow pedestrians interacted with their injured selves.

My View During Geometry…

2012-09-04T05:33:26Z

This is the beach of my late childhood. The beach I could see from my high school geometry class, the one that would mesmerize me into a catatonic state, causing me to lose my train of thought…

“Was that interior alternate angles are equal…?”

This is the beach where my best friends and I skipped off to during the wind and rain of winter, dodging out on a practice run to go swimming in the cold ass Pacific Ocean, plowing into the surf in our shorts, t-shirts, and knee-high sports socks.

When my New Jersey-born husband first visited the Oregon Coast with me, he couldn’t believe my high school was located directly across the street from such gorgeousness.

Tom still laughs about his inaugural sojourn to the beach of my childhood. We walked toward the sea from my parents’ place, located roughly a quarter mile from the dunes and grasses, emerging onto some of the most stunning coastline I have ever seen.

I looked left, I looked right, and said…”I can’t believe it…it’s so crowded!”

Now, you have to remember that Tom’s childhood coastal experiences were more along the lines of the Jersey Shore, where a body is hard pressed to find visible bits of sand in the crush of humanity that congregates there.

So, as you can imagine, he found my attitude particularly funny.

“Uhm, Michele…there are…what…about five people here?!?”

“I know…I can’t believe it,” I responded, with no small amount of outrage.

It is lovely for the Zs that this is now the beach of their childhood. They freeze themselves in the water, swimming until their lips are blue. They roll around in the sand (still) until their ears are full of its multi-colored grains. They scramble over the huge piles of driftwood left by surging storms.

Luckily though, they don’t have the resulting drop in mathematical thinking that often accompanied my connection to the beach!

Right…Now, I Feel We’re in Yosemite!

2012-08-20T05:34:18Z

I found myself quite happy with the Hetch Hetchy area of Yosemite, where we were staying, but I couldn’t help but wonder when we might see the iconic granite slabs of rock and stunning vistas that I had always associated with this national treasure of a park.

It turns out, all we had to do was follow the rest of the fam from the Merced Grove of Sequoias back to the valley floor, to find those very views. The winding road carved into the rugged mountains led us to gorgeous lookouts, such as the long range view of Half Dome, below left. A thunderstorm was gathering and the smell of dust kissed by moisture was thick in the air. The foreground of the lookout was so picture perfect, I almost felt I was on a movie set with lovingly faux finished Styrofoam rocks!

As we continued to follow the switchbacked pavement downward to the river, there were magnificent mountains of black granite across the canyon from our car’s path, which are shown in the center photo below. Without anything to indicate scale, it almost looks like a closeup, instead of the massive stone formation it actually is! Such beautiful lines.

And, as we neared our final destination (dinner with Ian, Deborah and my parents), we were met with evening light, a waterfall, tumultuous clouds, green green grass…a perfect moment. The graceful outlines of these multicolored rock edifices on the valley floor were breathtaking (pix are above left and below right).

Now we’re talking, I thought…this is the Yosemite of my mind’s eye.

Now That’s a Big F#%$ing Tree! (Or, Those are Some Tiny People!)

2012-06-24T21:47:53Z

This is me throwing down the gauntlet at Evergreen Lodge: “I need a trail that is halfway between here and Yosemite Valley, that won’t be packed even though it’s June, and isn’t too hard or too easy.”

Their recommendation, without hesitation, was the Merced Sequoia grove accessed from the Highway 120 entrance to the park. “A smaller grove,” they said, “but it is the least traveled Sequoia trail in the park.”

Bingo! We had a winner. Zelda, the rest of the fam and I set a date to commune with some of the oldest living things on earth on a 3 mile round trip jaunt on what we here in the Pacific Northwest would call a loggin’ road.

These mighty trees did not disappoint. So much so, in fact, that we quickly realized it was impossible to truly capture the scale of this mammoth flora without wee little folks in our photographs for comparison. For instance, in the picture above left, you don’t really process how big the trees are until you notice the positively ant-like Zelda and Deborah at the foot of a mighty Sequoia on the left.

Their bark was a vibrant shade of rusty orange and it felt almost like a padded coconut, fibery and airy at the same time.

All in all, a fantastic outing…well, except for the fact that this hike was 100 percent uphill on the way home. We were sweaty and hot…but still happy to have had such a solitary experience in the Merced Grove.

Thelma & Louise, Butch & Sundance, and now, Mich & Zelda!

2012-06-20T05:36:19Z

What was to be a family vacation to Yosemite, in part to attend a family reunion, ended up becoming a mother-daughter adventure instead.

How? Why?

Well, Zoe’s school put together an 11th hour Chinese exchange program for students…and their departure date? Right smack dab in the middle of our reunion. Which meant that half of the Offermann/Reeves family now needed to stay home, so Tom could put Zoe on a plane for Shanghai with 14 other middle schoolers last weekend.

Meanwhile, Zelda and I took off for Sacramento, where we spent the night before meeting up with my Mum, Dad, Brother and Sister-in-law for a family caravan to Yosemite.

Condensed highlights of the drive to Yosemite:

We got separated several times.
I lost the new camera Tom had purchased the day I departed on my trip.
I had to stop and call every place I had been in Sacramento onward to try and locate camera. I was unsuccessful.
I found the camera…in the car…in a place Zelda and I had looked about a thousand times. Oopsy.
We ate lunch in a Costco parking lot in Manteca outside my parents’ cute little Casita. (pictured above)
We had to navigate without GPS toward the end. (How did I live without my turn-by-turn voice navigation on my telephone?)

Never a dull moment.

Finally though, we made it to the Evergreen Lodge, which is near the Hetch Hetchy entrance to the park. We loved it there. Even though it was high season, Evergreen and surrounding attractions were blissfully remote and quiet without the hullabaloo found in Yosemite Valley. In short, the perfect spot to enjoy a major national park in June.

I think one of my favorite moments was Zelda making herself at home in her room. All she needed were her books on the nightstand and her stuffed animal on the bed, and she was good to go! My little traveler.

Making Your Own Longboard — It Doesn’t Get Any Cooler Than That!

2012-05-29T09:16:23Z

Zoe likes to build things. Hence our excitement that her public middle school has managed to retain something resembling a shop class.

(A minor miracle in these days of endless budget cuts. Next thing you know, they’ll be bringing back slate and chalk for all the kiddos.)

The teacher is pretty hands off, letting the kids do what they want — from building worlds in Minecraft, to using GarageBand to put together a soundtrack, to creating three dimensional models of real buildings in Google Sketchup for budding architects, to making wooden nameplates. (I picture them creating signs such as “This is my room, stay out!”)

The real action, and the gory stories, are with the power tools though. Zoe loves to tell the one about a kid hopping on the power equipment when a substitute teacher was leading the class (supposedly happened years ago), and getting injured. I’m not sure if it’s true, but the potential for grievous bodily harm is apparently irresistible when you are in 7th grade, and they all love to complain about subsequent band saw and sanding restrictions when substitutes are in residence.

A sampling of Zoe’s work this semester:

A bird house for my Dad’s 70th birthday! Pictured below.
A toy wooden car…sort of an old fashioned dragster.
A desk jockey for her, and a desk jockey for me (gift for Mother’s Day). An example of the jockey is pictured below. She heated, bent and sanded the plastic so it was smooth; cut, beveled, sanded and finished the wooden base; and then attached all the accoutrement!
A freaking awesome longboard. I think this is the whole reason she was excited about taking the class in the first place. And, we had to sign a waiver of liability in order for her to make just the skate deck!

After Zoe made the board, she raced home and immediately ordered trucks and fat longboard wheels. When they came in, she grabbed the drill, installed it all, and took it outside…only to discover she put the trucks on backward. If she leaned the board to the left, it would turn right, and vice versa! It was hilarious watching her try to ride it anyway. (Talk about exercising your brain.)

She eventually gave up on her backward board, took another pass at truck installation, and voila, she had a fully functional, fantastically fearsome, longboard.

Tea, Timers, Starfish & Coffee

2012-05-01T03:44:46Z

Sometimes, the old fashioned way just feels better.

Tom and I have developed a bit of a tea habit. We like white teas, and green teas, and black teas, and ginger teas. (Although I am lazy about loose leaf. I tend to buy high quality bagged tea, such as Mighty Leaf and Tea Forte.)

We like tea pots too. The small Japanese tea pot. The smaller Chinese tea pot. The big dragon-themed tea pot that I inherited from my Grandmother (which has the faces in the cups, I posted about earlier).

What we don’t like is boiling our water, steeping our tea…and then forgetting about it. For some reason, we just don’t use our watch timers, or our electronic kitchen timer that sits right by the stove.

I’m not sure why, but digital just doesn’t seem to jibe with the process of making and sipping and appreciating tea.

So there we were, middle-aged farts with the short-term memory of fruit flies (we like to blame this on the children) who were letting their tea over steep…sometimes for half an hour!

What to do?

Tom found the perfect solution in my Christmas present last year: an old-fashioned, totally retro, bright yellow mechanical timer. We all love it, and somehow, it seems to fit perfectly with the ceremony that is tea drinking.

As an added bonus, the sound of the timer reminds us all of the bell that rings at the beginning of Starfish and Coffee, by Prince.

Perfect, since it’s one of our favorite family songs!

Three Bunnies and a Bald Eagle

2012-04-23T01:54:53Z

Tom and I had a lovely taste of two things yesterday: spring, and unexpectedly being child-free for much of the afternoon and evening!

We took advantage of this windfall and hoofed our old asses out to Sauvie Island for a stroll along the Oak Island Nature Trail, which takes visitors around the peninsula of the same name.

It was dusk by the time we finished, the light was incredible, and I was lamenting the fact that I hadn’t thought to bring my camera. We could see Mount St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and Mt. Hood as if they were a mere few feet away, but unfortunately I only had my less than stellar phone to try to capture the moment. The picture on the upper left is the best I could do, with Adams and St. Helens reflected in the still waters. We basked in this truly stupendous view for awhile. (click to enlarge)

Our highly underdeveloped bird watching skills really paid off, as we were able to spy a GIGANTIC bald eagle surveying its domain high in a tree just off the trail. I’ve seen a lot of osprey, but not yet a bald eagle at that distance. It was enormous, and amazing. Later, as we rounded the point, we came to an area where the branches were literally festooned with large nests, and then, standing apart from them all, was what appeared to be a freaking tree house. Being natural…well…naturalists, we figured that must be the home of the bald eagle, and a palace it was. (Second picture below shows the nest if you enlarge.)

In communing with Gaea, we enjoyed the refuge meets farm view (bottom left) and the wild grasses (bottom right). On our walk, we also spotted three bunnies hopping down the trail, across the trail, and into the bushes.

I love Portland, that such amenities are nearby. That it is relatively bug free, so I don’t have to slather myself in insect repellent. And, that as a community, the public and private sector are dedicated to the preservation of our natural environment.

Happy Earth Day!