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!