almost missed my train reading this

Two vagabonds take a slow month-long trip from Paris to Marseilles--the result, a book--Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortázar & Carol Dunlop.

future quote

What do you want to be when you grow up? the present.

Bienvenida Chloe Citlali!

(images found by googling images of "Citlali")
I wish we could be there!

fashion police

The other day I saw a couple of youth (this is going to sound like the anthropologist in me coming out) displaying some highly ritualized behavior. Basically, two guys seemed to be very interested in one girl and the friend she was with got chatted up. One of the boys had a huge bunch of price tags and clothing tags strung together on his backpack. He seemed hip, and I wondered "Is this the new thing to do?" I mean I remember tags being left on baseball caps. I thought about the way that baggy pants are increasingly criminalized in many places. Maybe you have heard that in places like Florida youth are spending the night in jail for the way they wear their pants. Doesn't this just fuel the resistance to come up with even more scandalous fashions?

Just as aside, I hate to say it, but I think the color of underwear makes a difference to me see-through white is not as attractive on anyone!

Doesn't this policing violate some civil liberties? Aren't youth working in response to the violent rejection of their cultures, to the state oppression, and their resistance to it embodied and emboldened in its expression?

So don't get me wrong, I will hand out fashion citations for butt crack or see through undies but come on how much more can we really subject young people to for doing their thing?

songs and iron-ons

There are so many amazing things in my brain of late from the boy.

The biggest laugh I've had in a long time was singing almond butter had a farm with the boy(to the tune of Old McDonald). Maybe he has a future in musicals.

We have been doing iron-ons, which we love. He really wants a new one with another character from Cars--Lightning "the Queen."

it's moony outside

Said last night as we exited from our building into the night air.

This photo is actually the north pole.

So often I almost miss the brilliance of a new word or song.

This is a new one that M likes to say. Also, one morning he woke up singing several different refrains after

suco suco suco suco

brano brano brano brano

I've since figured out that it is his version of the phillip glass music that goes with this reamimation of 4 sesame street animation clips edited together. That music must have been something I would have never put together except that the suco part has something to do with the circles. . .

Andrew Goldsworthy Art

I went to see this installation when pregnant with Marcello.



So fiery.



Marcello continues to enjoy arranging objects.

Gingy & potty time!

good start to the school year/weighing in on the mommy wars

M came home happy from school. He told me with excitement about a toy he'd played with. This is a big relief.

All the fuss about Palin and her five kids has the blogosphere in an uproar. I'll come back to her. Here's what happened with us.

We had M with his dad all day at 6 weeks and I pumped. And I ran home at 4pm each day from work so his dad could go to school. People at work mostly understood my need to pump. There were days when I was expected to sub in a class without lesson plans--about half the time I'd say--extremely stressful for schedules changing and roomless I would sometimes have to beg a space to pump. Sometimes my colleagues were sweet and sometimes when I was forthcoming about my needs they were quite the opposite. I think that it is difficult to judge someone on their parenting until you walk in their shoes.

That said, I think this woman is an actress and beauty queen who does not stand for women or stand up for women. ANYONE who mocks community organizing as she and Giuliani did in their speeches should be smitten by the next lightning bolt. It seems that her everyday people act does not hold consistent with their plans to keep the rich rich and good luck to everyday people.

One more thought on the mommy thing: aren't mothers different? At 6 weeks I cried to leave M. These last few years I have been at his side for tons of tests and a surgery and there is no way that his dad would have been as comforting or anyone else. I will stop there because many people may have had different experiences, but for me nothing trumps the comfort of mama being there (and her breast milk) at a young age during traumatic moments. Isn't it weird how they are using the woman card to say that she is shattering a glass ceiling. As mothers everywhere know, you do give up somethings either way. . .But leaving a child with special needs at 3 days old?

Lightning

We are making a lightning cake. M thinks the central character's name in the movie Cars is Lightning "The Queen." We have had a good day of park and bumming around as he sang musical versions of several story lines combined. He predicts he is going to eat chocolates in the park tomorrow.

guess

A binoculars, a blue fish, a gingerbread man, a VW van, and a hairy blue monster--what do they share in common? They are all M's current favorite characters with a tendency towards being strange, beatnik and blue. . .