Pesach and Weekend

 The weather cooperated on Saturday and we were able to have an outdoor kids-led Seder with my parents. Kids enjoyed showing off everything they have learned, the food was amazing, and we were able to sit and talk for a few hours. We had a bit of a food emergency late night Friday when I realized I did not have dried apricots or walnuts or almonds for one of the dishes I wanted to prepare, so I had to improvise. Luckily, my mom had some walnuts I could use. It all turned out fine. [Why didn't we do a late-night shopping trip? Well... we were tired... and there is the pandemic so we avoid extra shopping trips... and we  were planning to do a Costco run on Sunday to stock up on large amounts of nuts and dried fruit so it really didn't make any sense to go shopping Friday at 10 pm...]

Saturday morning, I snuck out for a solo walk in the neighborhood. It smelled like spring. 

Sunday was rainy and windy, so we stayed indoors and did some chores. Kids and I played one round of "Ticket to Ride", read "The Whiz Mob" for a while, and watched "Charade" with Audrey Hepburn (we all really enjoyed the movie, but it was not quite as kid-friendly as I expected... hopefully I did not scar my children for life - there were a few very dead bodies there).

By Sunday night, I was so not ready for Monday and the workweek. Or the breast surgeon appointment bright and early Monday morning (which went fine, btw; she calculated my lifetime risk of developing breast cancer to be around 30% and wrote a script for MRI to be done in 6 months). I tried going to bed earlier than usual, but then just ended up tossing and turning, mind spinning uselessly, listening to the wind outside. I was dreading the work week and having to jump into the poorly-defined new  projects we recently received from the clients.

Kids are on spring break now and my husband is taking the whole week off. I've got 2 more days of work, and then I have a mini-vacation. I really need a vacation... I need a month (at least) when I don't have to be do anything or be responsible for anything... 

We don't have any concrete plans for the week, just some wishy-washy "depending on the weather" proto-plans with friends and family. We might meet some people in a park. We might sit around the firepit with our friends, we might go to a botanical garden with my parents, and we might visit husband's family and do a hike there. But the weather is iffy and none of those plans will be fun if it it rains, or if it's frigid, or if there is a thunderstorm advisory. So... good thing we have lots of movies to watch, lots of board games to play, and lots of house projects to complete. My son has an airplane kit he is working on (and he is still listening to the Two Towers), one of my daughters has new recipes to try and decorations for her room she wants to work on, and another daughter who has a candle-making  kit she wants to do.

So, dear reader, I intend to have a good week, plans or no plans, and I hope you have a wonderful week, too.

Epic

This morning, I woke up to a super-excited male voice yelling “There is enough for both of us, Legolas!!!” because my son was listening to the “Two Towers” audiobook bright and early. Rob Inglis  does a great job narrating (and omg, singing all the ballads and stuff) but the whole blasting audiobooks all day long (and all night long if we would let him) is getting a bit out of control. 

Maybe that’s why I conveniently forgot to put “The Return of the King” on hold at the library… E. is going to be pretty annoyed when he finishes the “Two Towers”… and there will be nothing else to listen to, but the rest of us might enjoy the quiet. 

Yes, I may be a little passive-aggressive.

And yes, I did add it to our library hold list, in addition to the actual physical book, but it may be a few days before we get it. 

I also have all the Hobbit and LotR movies on hold. I hope to watch a little at a time most evenings during the spring break. I guess we will be having an EPIC week (or two)!

The 7-year old is probably not quite old enough for those movies. I would have been horrified if the older two watched that much violence when they were about her age. But of course she is the third kid – she gets to do everything earlier (including eating candies, watching PG13 movies, and using electronic devices). E has been reading The Hobbit to her, so she very much wants to be part of the experience. My mommy-sense tells me she’ll be fine and there is plan B just in case the movies are way more scary and bloody than I remember (old Russian cartoons). 

Hobbies and Pond Update

Our son has become completely obsessed with Tolkien. He has that kind of personality, where he really gets into something, like 125%. It becomes all he talks about, all he thinks about, all he reads about. It was trains when he was a toddler, then (briefly) Cars, then it was a pirate obsession for a while, then he got into Star Wars, then Harry Potter, then Artemis Fowl. His other obsessions include, on-and-off, black holes, WWII (especially aircraft carriers, fighter planes, and tanks), and time travel.

Our second child is into baking and organizing. She has re-organized most of my kitchen cabinets and our arts cubby. She wants to bake something exciting every day. It’s exhausting – because I need to figure out if she can do stuff unsupervised in the kitchen while the grown-ups work (depending on the recipe), then I need to remind her 200 times to clean up after baking (including washing bowls, measuring spoons, cups, and wiping spills). Lucky for me, she also loves wrapping presents (I hate gift wrapping!!!) – so she’s been volunteering to wrap things for everyone except herself for all the birthdays and major holidays. This also means that she knows exactly who gets what – she does like to stay informed!

Our third child loves playing with toys. She sets up elaborate structures and scenarios and can play for hours. She also loves to tell stories and to make jokes. She is super competitive, so board games can get intense. She wants to start playing soccer again (once we feel comfortable… maybe after everyone in our family is vaccinated) but for now she seems content running races with her siblings and improving her animal-catching skills (frogs, mostly – older brother and sister are teaching her).

Husband and I don’t have too much going for hobby-like activities. We read for fun. Non-fiction for him, fiction for me (I just finished re-read of Ender’s Game). We have been watching 1-2 episodes of Mentalist almost every night. He goes running and biking and I go on walks (and bike rides once the weather gets a bit warmer). Most other things we do (cooking, yard work, taking care of the house and finance) feels like chores, not hobbies.

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There is a goose nest at our pond. Kids were feeding geese and ducks yesterday and saw one egg there – they were so excited! H. said that mother goose covered up the egg with some old leaves before she went off to get some food. Hope we get some goslings this spring! Hope they make it to adulthood… (There were a couple of goslings last year, but we think the foxes got them). Kids also saw a few tadpoles!

Weekend Report

On Saturday, we explored a new park. It is only a couple of miles from where we live, but we've never been there before. The kids absolutely loved it. There were ponds with frogs (yes, already!), they found frog eggs that they ended up "transplanting" to our pond, there was a stream, and there were shiny rocks for their ever-expanding collections. The trails were somewhat neglected, with lots of trees down, so we had to climb over things, or detour, or make our way through the brush. From kids perspective - extra excitement. There was also a cave (that looked like it may collapse any moment, so kids were forbidden to go in), a few dilapidated structures (an old boy scout camp) in different stages of ruin, and random weird stuff, like an abandoned tent and shoe. My husband and I weren't so keen on the park - there was a giant power transmission station there that was giving off a rather off-putting vibration. The giant electric structures are kind of a "meh" sight during a hike. I  prefer my parks away from major roads, power plants, or electric transmission lines.

My husband's parents came for a visit on Sunday. We haven't seen them in months! The weather was beautiful, so we ended up going for a hike and were able to have lunch and dinner outside. After the sun went down, the air turned chilly, so we had the wood-burning stove going. Sitting around it and chatting was pretty awesome. Kids had a blast catching up and telling all about their recent interests, books, and adventures.

I got around to doing some cleaning while listening to a podcast about Hugo-winners in science fiction. Kids watched most of the Hobbit Part I movie. I started re-reading Ender's Game. I read is as a teenager and liked it back then, but I wasn't sure if it would still work for me now. I am semi-surprised to find that I like it very much! It is well-written, the world is interesting (even if I don't totally buy into it), and it's written with compassion. Initially, I got it for my son after he complained that yet another book I got him from the library (Legend by Marie Lu) had too much romance. He liked Ender's Game OK - he thought it was very sad because of all the harsh stuff Ender had to go through (interestingly, he hasn't said much about the ending).

In other news - I got my first dose of vaccine through our hospital system. My sister-in-law and her husband are getting vaccinated through their school districts. I feel like most people we know either already received at least 1 dose or are about to get vaccinated. This doesn't go along with the numbers - our county only has about 20% of population with 1st dose, so maybe it just feels like most people around us are getting vaccinated.

Vultures on the Roof

When I was growing up, there was a song that loosely translated from Russian as “Stork on the roof means happiness in the house and peace on Earth”. A bit cheesy, perhaps, but, if I see a stork on the roof, I would definitely think of it as a “good omen”.

It looks like there is a family of black vultures that has taken up residence in the near-by pine trees. They are odd birds – large, silent, and somewhat ungainly. When I saw one hanging out on the neighbor’s roof, I thought “Hmm… That’s got to be bad luck omen right there.” And then we saw 2 perched up on our own roof. Today, there was a large group of vultures (maybe 6 or 7?) hanging out in our back yard. Just, you know, walking around, spreading their wings every so often. One seemed particularly interested in a bright yellow ball that the kids left out. The more I watched them, the more I liked them. They are eerily quiet, there is occasional bickering, but overall, they give off a feeling of a good family dynamics, where everyone gets along. I don’t see bad omen any more – I see intelligence, curiosity, and playfulness.

With Passover coming up, I’ve been thinking about plagues… so 2020 was Coronavirus, 2021 is supposed to be locust (at least on the east coast). Perhaps our neighbors the vultures will somehow play into some sort of over-arching story of darkness and doom. This is the stuff myths are made of! (I don’t want to think what 2022 will bring… meteor showers? Toad falling from the sky? – I’ll take toads over meteors, I think…)

 What do you think about vultures? Do you have any superstitions about birds?

Thoughts on "Axiom's End" by Lindsay Ellis

So the book was… OK. There were certain bits that were interesting, certain bits that took a shot at being profound (with mixed results), then there were the boring bits, and the eyebrow-raising bits.

First contact - what could be more exciting, right?

But here's the thing, as explained by the alien named "Ampersand":

“One species is only comprehensible to another species as it understands itself. But with all species, there are attributes one possesses that the other does not share. Where attributes are not shared, inevitably both parties will try to shape the other into a form they can understand. … It is in the nature of all organisms, intelligent and non-intelligent alike, to understand other entities only through their own prism of existence.”

The idea that two civilizations could be so different that contact could be unwanted and, possibly, disastrous brings to mind Strugatski’s Space Mowgli (or The Kid – in any case, the English translation that I saw was pretty terrible). The story included a civilization so different from ours that, initially, it was not recognized as something alive. Humans thought it was some sort of weather phenomenon. That civilization had absolutely no interest in having any contact with humans (because they were so different and profoundly un-curious about humans, if I remember correctly…).

And then, more ominously, the alien in Axiom's End says the following:

“The more powerful superorganism will always try to reshape the less powerful superorganism in its own image. If it does not, the value systems the more powerful superorganism finds repugnant are exterminated or assimilated, or the less powerful superorganism is neutralized altogether.”

Yes, this happened throughout history (ie, colonialism and the like). It was interesting to think about it on the level of extraterrestrial civilizations. 

My favorite part of the books was the realization by the main character that the alien she has encountered is as terrified of her as she is of it. Boom – they have something in common, there is a frame of reference, now they can attempt to understand each other.

Then there is the whole bonding and caring thing, and there is touching that may be purely comforting and platonic but still made me raise my eyebrows and seemed… weird. Perhaps both human and alien were so stressed and freaked out by everything that happened that it seemed natural that they would become all sorts of friendly. Still, weird.

There is a lot of other stuff in the book: conspiracy theories, alternative history, family dynamics. It’s just that the theme of contact with something so completely alien that mutual understanding may not be possible (or desirable) at all – that’s my thing.

What if we walk right past something without realizing it’s alive and self-aware? What if something walks right past us without realizing we are anything more than flesh-eating “bags of mostly water”?

Daylight Savings Time

 Dear reader, this was a rough weekend.

First, the good things.

My parents got their 1st dose of vaccine and they are scheduled for the 2nd dose in mid-April. This is such a huge relief. I've been obsessing about this for weeks, hounding multiple websites, putting them on waiting lists, trying to get a spot with Rite Aid/CVS/Wegman/Giant. I had a breakthrough (felt like a lottery win!) on Wednesday night - I was able to schedule my dad at Rite Aid. I was so happy. And then, two days later, my parents got a notification through their hospital system that they could schedule vaccine appointments - and they did. 

It feels strange that I no longer have to spend hours vaccine-hunting. It almost feels... empty.

Also good: we had a family movie night and watched Back to the Future. Total hit - everyone enjoyed it.

Other things on the good list: a brief hike, a bit of yard work to prepare our garden for planting, baking bread, reading (a bit).

Not so good:

Our kitchen sink started leaking - we noticed Sunday morning. That meant, plans to relax and take things easy went out the window. Husband spend all day long trying to fix it (only one trip to Lowes, though). He did fix it, more or less, but we are keeping an eye on it for now...

Also, I defrosted ground turkey instead of chicken thighs... not the end of the world, but annoying because I was really looking forward to roasted chicken and vegetables for dinner...

But the worst is that I've been feeling so irate and annoyed with everything. I've been getting angry over trivial things. The worst is that I am not sure what I need to get back to my regular self: alone time? exercise? sleep?

Also - we moved our clocks an hour ahead and lost a whole hour this weekend. Not fun.

And today is Monday, and its back to a work project that I am really not looking forward to...

I feel like I have to end on a positive note.

First flowers are up and blooming!

March

Days are getting longer Kids found a few itty-bitty flowers in our back yard.

We are so behind on trimming our trees. Why didn’t I put it on my schedule for January or February? With everything going on, it completely slipped my mind that our fruit trees need some work.

I had a mammogram and a visit with an oncologist. Everything looked OK! I was so surprised when they didn’t call me back for any ultrasound. I feel relief, but also anxiety. Like, I dodged the bullet this time, but there is always another time… I’ll be up for MRI in 6 months. After mulling things over and reading a bunch of literature, I decided to do preventive pharmacotherapy. There are potential risks and side-effects, so I’m cautious. Typically, it’s a 5-year treatment, but I can always discontinue early if there are issues with side-effects. According to the oncologist, most people tolerate it well.

My parents still haven’t gotten their vaccine shots. I put them on multiple waiting lists. They are signed up with the state and county. Last night (or, this morning?) at midnight, I tried to get my dad a slot at Ride Aide. I got through and filled out his info for a slot next week, but by the time I was done typing in his primary physician’s name and clicking through a bunch of other questionnaires, when I clicked “submit” – the slot was already taken. This is insanity. I am disappointed in our country. I am disappointed in Biden administration. Healthy people my age are getting the vaccine (because they click faster than me?) but my parents, who are elderly and have health problems (hello, cancer!!!) are left out. Why the **** did they allow anybody under 65 to get vaccinated before all those in the highest risk group? (Rhetorical question)

And how is your spring coming along?

Weekend Report

 Our schools are expected to open later this month for all students 4 days a week (instead of current hybrid plan, where kids attend school in-person 2 days a week and then have virtual lessons the rest of the week ). There still will be an option for all-virtual learning. Our kids have been all-virtual since beginning of the school year, and we are going to stick with it until the end of the school year.

My husband and I had a fight about this yesterday. I was considering sending the oldest one to school. Husband just assumed we would be on the same page keeping kids home for the rest of the school year and possibly for the summer. The depressing thing is, I am not sure when we will feel completely comfortable sending kids to school (or camp, or sports, for that matter). 

The kids are doing OK. The grownups - not so much. I am sort of on the fence about it. I agree that squishing all kids together in classrooms, especially with the potentially more transmissible and vaccine-evading variants on the rise, is risky. My parents haven't been vaccinated (they've been trying for months - that's a rant worth of its own post). We are unlikely to get vaccinated any time soon. So, once again, we are playing it safe... for better or for worse. Will things be different in the fall? I really don't know and I am afraid to think that far ahead.

Other than that - we did some work in the yard. We pruned fruit trees and blueberry bushes. We read. We watched some shows. I took a 2-h nap on Saturday.

Not the best weekend ever... 

American Spy

Lauren Wilkinson, American Spy

This is a strange book. There are so many difficult themes raised here and there are even more themes that are just hinted at. There are stories, and sub-stories, and back-stories.

I don’t get the narrator who tells these stories, switching between different times. I admire her but I don’t like her and at this point (3/4th into the book) I am not sure I can respect her. Usually, when you are going on a journey with the narrator, you grow to understand them. This woman – she repeatedly claims to be good at reading people, she is smart, she is fearless… and she is blundering, making decisions that do not make sense (to me). 

On the other hand, the way she describes her experiences in Burkina Faso – that’s brilliant and rings so true. 

“Like all cities, Ouagadougou was segregated by class, and I stuck to the handful of places where the wealthy hung out…. I had no anxiety about that as I would’ve at home… Every day I spent in Burkina Faso was a reminder of how American I was. … There was the language, the new culture, the fact that in the United States I thought of myself as black before I thought of myself as American. In Ouagadougou, routinely, those designations were reversed: People saw me as American first.”

The way the power struggle between the USSR and the USA is presented – that’s brilliant, too – with the action taking place, as if on stage, in African countries, and who pays the price (people…), and how those fights shape up with complete disregard to the actual cost (people…). 

I really appreciate how ambiguously communism vs capitalism regimes are presented. The narrator believes Communism is evil and a communist dictatorship would not serve the people of a country well in the long-term (even if some good is done short-term, like improve literacy, medical services, etc). And yet:

 “The CNR has improved the lives of millions of Burkinabe in just a few years. …Thomas Sankara had made it his goal to vaccinate as many Burkinabe children as possible… Sankara had helped save the lives of thousands of children…increased both the literacy rate and school attendance. Before he’d taken office, less than 10 percent of the population had been literate; in two years, the CNR increased that number to 25 percent… [Sankara] committed himself to women’s rights: banning forced marriage, polygamy, and female genital mutilation.”

I only just scraped the surface there, brought up a couple of obvious in-your-face themes from the book. There is also racism, sexism, homophobia; there is manipulation, and abandonment, and abuse, and the reality of being trapped by who we are. There is family – and what we are willing to do for those we love. There is anger and there is hate – for others, for those who deserve it, for those who don’t deserve it, for Otherness. There is a lot of hate for Self and for consequences of choices made under duress.

There is another quote from the book, about Marie’s childhood friend Robbie (who spent some time in jail) that struck me as so very American.

“In too much of what he said, I heard overconfidence about his limited life experience and in his aggressively average intelligence. He was the type of guy that, had he been born white, especially if he’d grown up with a little money, would probably have wound up at an excellent business school.”

Then how many so-called successful white guys would end up in jail or dead if they were born black?

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Is this who we are?

Is this what it means to live in a capitalist society?

Is this what it means to live in a democracy?

(Than how is this better than a communist dictatorship?)

Music Lessons: Part 2

Our kids started taking music lessons when they were about 6 years old. I love classical music and (before pandemic) I made sure we went to hear the orchestra and that the kids got a chance to hear and see the different instruments up close (Philly orchestra has very nice family programs). My husband and I were on the same page – it would be good to start kids with piano lessons (or, maybe, violin) and then see how things would go and, potentially, support and encourage a switch to a different instrument.

E. would listen to the same track on one of my old CDs over and over again: 1^st movement of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata (violin and piano). When we asked him what he liked better, violin or piano, he would say “violin” (but he seemed open to piano, too, to be fair). Because we thought Kindergarten would be stressful enough, with new teachers, classmates, and expectations, we waited until the summer before 1^st grade to start lessons. I found the names of a couple of teachers – both violin and piano. I talked to them. One violin teacher preferred older kids and felt it worked better if kids started out learning piano, first. Then, there was a husband and wife team, one teaching violin and the other teaching piano. I took E. to their students’ recital (I wanted to get a feel for the teachers and see the dynamics between teachers and students). The piano teacher did not have any openings at the time. The violin teacher did – E. and the teacher talked and they seemed to have a good rapport going. So… I signed him up. He’s been with that teacher for the last 6.5 years. It may not be perfect, but it is good match right now.

Then there was H. Strong-willed, sensitive, and difficult to parent. She wasn’t particularly interested in violin, but, when my parents came to visit, she seemed to enjoy informal piano game-lessons with my mom. I figured piano would be a good place to start (and I admit, I secretly hoped she would play duets with her older brother). The piano teacher we knew (the one married to E’s violin teacher) had an opening, but… I was so worried it wouldn’t work out. She seemed like a very no-nonsense person, not particularly gentle, very strict, and with a strong personality. I was worried they would clash a few months into piano lessons and then that would be the end of it for H. So, after looking around some more, I found someone else, and she is amazing. H’s piano teacher is very caring, strict enough to not let H get away with subpar work but wise enough to not push H. too much. They get along really well and respect each other. They tried different music styles and found something H really likes (jazz and blues). H. talks about quitting piano from time to time… but at the moment she seems content taking lessons and practicing (almost) every day. She definitely loves performing for others and the praise she gets showered with.

C. just started piano lessons this fall. She has the same teacher as H. I don’t know if that’s ideal – but having 3 different music teachers feels a bit overwhelming right now. My main concern is that C. could use someone who pushes her – and I hope that that her piano teacher is willing to do that. I love her teaching style, I am just not convinced it is the best one for C. We are going to see how things go – C says she wants to switch to learning guitar at some point… Or maybe she’ll want to play one of the strings or one of the band instruments in a couple of years. Or, maybe, she’ll end up loving piano and will stick with it.

 

Weekend Report

 Snow is melting. There are puddles everywhere and the mud is taking over the world.

So - no hikes on local trails. We did go on a neighborhood walk - the kids complained and bickered and the grownups felt exhausted and frustrated.

I've been moody and snappy all weekend. Too much stress, too many unknowns. That said, I got through the necessary chores, cleaning, and cooking. We cleaned up the study/attic/playroom, too!!!

The girls and I played a round of Aggravation. Husband and E played a couple of rounds of chess in front of the fireplace (1:1). We are reading "The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid" with the kids - they all seem to like it. I am reading Lisa Black "That Darkness" and I put the next book in the series on hold at the library.

E. picked "The Fencer" for his movie night. It was good, even if a bit saccharine at times. The kid actors were amazing. The scene of the final fencing match in Leningrad was kind of meh and felt dishonest. The school principal was delightfully villain-esk. The love interest was sweet (but not too sweet).

The kids also played on their own quite a bit (while I read or daydreamed or cooked) - with some fights, but nothing too bad. There was a fort, there was a gymnastics lesson, there was a puddle-stomping expedition into the back yard.

The vaccine situation is driving me bonkers. I've put my parents on waiting lists at 11 different places. No luck. This whole thing is just... madness.