Numbers and Poetry

Dear Vico Bear,

I was happy to hear from Teacher Steph how eagerly you have been applying yourself in Math. Way to go doing Optional Work and Extra Challenges! Despite doing very well the last two terms, when asked your personal goal for Term 3 you wrote, To be better in Math. I suspect you’ll grow up making good use of your passion for numbers and figures. You are my favorite Visual Spatial Thinker, you! As the motto goes… Work Hard. Be Nice. And that’s what you have been doing. And you’ve just turned 8. This serves anyone well, whether age 8, 38 or 88.

To celebrate the school portfolio you have been working hard on in the past months, I’m posting some of your work here. One day you might read this when you are all grown up and get a real kick out of it. This is you writing as a fictional character.

Without realizing it, you made a “dissertation” this year—researched with some help but written independently. In second grade, you and your classmates call it your All About Book. You decided on this thesis statement: "LEGO is epic! Because you can build anything you can imagen." You do love exclamation points!!! And actually, it's i-m-a-g-i-n-e. 


Anyway, thanks to your book Teacher Steph and I know facts about LEGO we didn’t know before.

This is what you came up with when asked to emulate Shel Silverstein’s poem One Inch Tall. Your poem is called 1 Nano Bite Tall. 

This one emulates the Zoe Ryder White poem Inside My Heart, but you chose Sadness as a theme. 

This posterity post is also a reminder to… Keep expressing yourself. Keep the poetry in your heart. There’s a place for it even inside grown men full of patterns, plans and equations in their head. Your words are who you are. Sometimes you’ll feel like no one is listening. That’s okay. Do it just for yourself. Besides, Mama and Daddy will always want to hear what you have to say and we will always want to read what you write. Always!

Endings and Beginnings

Christmas came and went.  Quick. Just like that. And now we find ourselves in the month not coincidentally named after Janus,  ancient Roman mythology's two-faced god that looks both to the past and the future. He is the god of both endings and beginnings, the god of doorways and transitions. Totally appropriate.                                        

All confident I was going to eat 2011 alive I  came in with guns blazing, all cocky with my post I had crossed out #1 on my year's bucket list so early in the game.  Running a new race distance was just one of the several things I set out to do. And then kaput. First helping of humble pie.  #2, for me, just didn't happen. It was a relatively simple goal.  Step into the kitchen and make something. Anything really. I  stepped into the kitchen a lot (half a check for that) only it was to sort and organize.  In all honesty, I'd rather clean the bathroom than cook but  I was more determined than ever I'd whip up some new dishes. I joined a cooking class, listened intently, asked a ton of questions, took down notes, went home and replicated the dish that very evening.  Just that once.  Never again.   Remind me next time to resolve not to make any more resolutions. Or maybe I can keep putting it out here so I'm forced to get around to it. 

But 2011 was,  well,  interesting.  I found comfort in cancer,  in growing old.  I discovered what ice cold really feels like, I breathed the same air as Bono,  I bitched about insensitive souls.  I learned to be thankful, I discovered new places, new spaces, I  even told my children my truth. 

For starters I've learned not to get too crazy with the list. And so for this year I shall, in no particular order accept, listen, read, embrace and reach out.

I want some parts of me to be like this child again: wide-eyed and eager to face the world, less cynical, less skeptical.  


Let's see.  

Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow

Post title and photo are related. Really.

Pico Iyer has an op-ed piece at the New York Times with a significant message for all of us who are plugged in. It's called The Joy of Quiet. In light of Facebook, email, web articles, and work that requires me to sit in front of an online computer... I am taking his words to heart.

The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

I am not giving up Facebook, blogging and other Internet joys. They are useful, relevant, and too much fun. I love mind-expanding gems I find on my Facebook feed—including this article I am urging everyone to read. Plus, I can't give up  work which requires me to use and mine the Web. 

I will, however, take more time cultivating that ability to sit quietly alone in a room. I will allot more time for being unplugged, connected only to real live people and whatever part of Mother Earth surrounds me. My 2012 resolution duly noted.

But here's a clincher: While Pico Iyer's Joy of Quiet rings so true, so do these words from Clay Shirky.

There’s no such thing as information overload — only filter failure.

Only ten words, but so much truth. It's a quote I had  picked  up from a Salon interview of David Weinberger, senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He  talks about how the Internet has revolutionized knowledge, and how we now have a medium that, finally, matches the breadth of human curiosity. It is a fact that is profoundly awesome, but Pico Iyer reminds us of an equally profound caveat in The Joy of Quiet. 

Speaking of curiosity, it's 2012 and I still obnoxiously peddle stuff I've read. Some things will never change. And speaking of obnoxious, if this post's title and photo still don't make sense to you, you probably still haven’t read The Joy of Quiet. Click! Click!

May all our resolutions be fulfilled this 2012!

Love 20x12

Sharing some moments from the last day of 2011.

You will see more of Her than Him... 

Because she just loves to pose...




While he's more a behind-the-scenes sort of guy...

What they both love is cheese, which plays a big part in New Year's Eve gluttony.

This photo I will call, "Mama and Dada by the Tree"

All those photos are meant to go with RAC's remix of Love U More, as sung by Sunday Girl. Although it reminds me of carefree college days when Sunscreem first sang it, I Love It More Now (pun totally intended) when it is cheesily dedicated to  all the loves of my life--including those who aren't in the pictures above. All of you, I could not love more. You know who you are. Now click play if you want to dance and be happy!

Isn't that just one of the happiest songs you have ever heard? I am still celebrating the arrival of 2012, so this post is extra mamamushy and indulgent. Thank you very much! Happy New Year, blogosphere! 

December Days

...more like December daze, really. 

We've welcomed a new little girl to the clan (my brother's daughter) after a serious shortage of girls. I've turned a year older, sent out the gifts in record time (finally!)  and managed to eat every single cookie and cupcake that has crossed my front door.  So help me.  

The other evening, while hosting friends over at our place, we got a frantic knock at almost midnight.  There was a fire in my next door neighbor's house.  Yup, for sure it's one of those thoughts that have crossed your mind - the what-would-you-take-with-you-in-case-of-a-fire scenario.   I always joked half-joked with MacDaddy that we'd each run off with my two favorite sculptures.  It would probably feel like us bench pressing our body weights but I always assured MacDaddy the adrenaline would give us that extra push.  Thankfully, with quick thinking on the part of the neighbor and the fire department, no one was hurt, the fire didn't spread and a smoke-filled place was all I had to contend with.  It was also a relief to know that both MacDaddy and I, at that point,  wanted to take the boys out to safety and absolutely nothing else.  Talk about putting  Christmas in its proper perspective.  It's way too easy to lose sight when you have those crazy carols playing since September, you've wrapped your hundredth gift and you're nowhere near done and Christmas commercialism is out of control.  Sometimes, just sometimes a little jolt like this all we ever really need.  

Flashback. This is our very first Christmas with the boys. 2005.  We're brand new, giddy and wide-eyed all psyched for parenting thinking Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Perfection.

These are a few other Christmas photos over the years.

Look below. 2009. Am I the only one noticing we're losing our hair?  Tato has a bandage on his forehead after sixteen stitches and surgery. Did we really think easy peasy? Really?

It's 2011, I don't have a decent Christmas photo and you're not getting a photo card this year, sorry.  If you can get them to sit still long enough without one sticking out his tongue, or looking away or whining or wrestling,  I'll give you my arm. 

So here we are settling for a booth shot equipped with ample warning and about a twelve-second allowance to get the money shot.  We still can't seem to get that done right.  But we've learned to both laugh at ourselves and go easy on ourselves because sometimes that is the only way. Easy peasy, my a$$. We are perfectly imperfect at this parenting bit but perfectly happy and blessed we get to have a go at this. And that is viva la vida mama. 

Merry Christmas!

Falalalala

Ten days to go. Getting the Christmas vibe in our little corner of the Internet.  Although it's already 2011 and the Richmond Book Drive is over, Deck The Halls Pomplamoose-style still sounds really good. This is my kind of Christmas song.

And by the way… in case you come from a highly dysfunctional family, notice how the season tends to up the crazy ante? 


As my Tito Cholo had told me, Just face the music and dance!  I'll take that advice. It can be fun and quite a learning experience having Christmas in Space (incidentally the title of Pomplamoose's Christmas album!) with all the aliens around. Shall we dance?

Let's all rock this Christmas!

Giving Back

I've done the shameless plugs selling my little Christmas card projects here and here so what the heck. I shall be shameless again.

This Holiday Season give the gift that keeps on giving with the ICanServe Contribution Card. We got so many requests to design another ornament to adorn your tree this year we just couldn't refuse.

With your purchase of each card you share our commitment to promote early breast cancer detection.  More importantly, you will  help subsidize cancer patients on treatment.

For more information about ICanServe Foundation and the work that we do, check us out at www.icanservefoundation.org.

A minimum donation of P200/ card is requested.  For orders call 636.5578.

Thank you.

Stop Bullying

In every lunch and dinner I've had in the last couple weeks  the topic of the out-of-control state of bullying always seems to crop up.  I've talked about it before.  I know a little bit about what it feels like to be bullied.  I was six and so was my bully.  Looking back now I suspect she was raised thinking she was extra special, a superstar just like her parents  and that she could get away with anything.  I quietly took in the name calling. I said nothing to anyone when she carried me and threw me across the room. I quietly watched the teachers give in to her at my expense.  One day I fought back.  I told her she was adopted. Unfortunately for her, the whole world knew but her.   I didn't use any physical  force to hurt her but I knew by the look on her face that morning that she would have preferred a slap on the face or a yank on her ponytail.  I wish I had never done it but she pushed me against the wall.  Well, literally that morning up against the classroom door jamb she did but you know what I mean.  Bullying in school, at home, in the playground, through social networking sites or anywhere else is a horrible, horrible  thing for everyone. 

If you aren't already among the three million plus people that have viewed eighth grader Jonah Mowry's video,  you should.