Lost in My Own Head

It sort of took me by surprise the other day when I realized my blog has been very quiet recently.  While I haven't posted much, I've been learning and thinking a ton and somehow thought all that would osmosis onto my blog.

One of the main inputs filling my days is an intensive class on attachment by Gordon Neufeld.  Bill and I are taking it with a dozen other parents from the Attachment Parenting International Seattle group.  22 hours of lectures (via DVDs) on attachment, development and maturation is seriously re-focusing how I see my kids, my marriage, myself and the world.  Having my brain rearranged excites me at many levels, but boy howdy is it all consuming.

Our adoption process went on hold for a few months.  Bill needed some time to think it all over, and I really wanted us both to be on the same page before moving into any potential situation.  We've learned and grown as individuals and a couple much over these few months.  Which is also rather painful and all consuming.

Homeschooling wrapped up for the season mid-June.  It ended with a frenzy of activities including guitar performances, soccer games and final tests.  The kids did great over the course of the year, and I'm proud of how much they learned.  I'm happy to brag that I've even submitted Theo's work to a certified teacher and gotten her approval back to satisfy our annual assessment requirement. Now we're down to a bare bones schedule that allows the kids to either dilly-dally and spread a little work painfully over the entire day or finish up quickly and go PLAY.

Theo read 274 library books last year.  Really, just library books - I don't record any reading of the many, many books we own, no comic books (of which we also own quite a few), none of the books he consumes at other people's houses.  I don't know whether to be prouder of him or our wonderful children's librarian.  It's quite a feat on both their parts.

Cake making with All Cakes Considered is one of the highlights of my week.  We're on cake 11 tonight (it's cooling as I type) - the Glorious Ginger Cake.  The cakes taste great, usually look wonderful and make me famous at our homeschool group's weekly park day as I tote in the leftovers.  So far my favorite is the Drunken Monkey Cake, but several of the recent coffee cakes made me moan with happiness.

Pact Camp starts in a few weeks.  We travel down to California each year to learn more about transracial adoption and figure out what is the next step for our family.  The staff and other families at camp bring so much knowledge, information and heart to the week, I feel honored to attend.  And looking, really looking, at where our family is at in meeting the racial identity needs of our children takes a lot of courage for me because I think we're always far behind where I wish we were.  I deeply want to be and provide everything my children need.  So preparing mentally for camp is a bit wrenching and quite consuming for me.

Good thing brains have high plasticity because mine is getting a serious stretch. Maybe I'll do NaBloPoMo in August and see if I can get some of these thoughts more fully formed onto the page. Maybe I'll just sit in the back yard, drink lemonade and watch my kids run through the sprinkler.

Women are Not Men

Duh.

But I'm fascinated by how NOT the other sex we are.  Being human, it seems reasonable to clump us all in the same category when trying to understand male and female homosapiens - either emotionally, intellectually or physically. However hormones and cultural conditioning hugely divert us from some imagined norm.

This article reports an interesting study that finds differences in how women and men's bodies handle protein.  The results are so reasonable and blow my mind all at the same time.

I am encouraged that the scientific community is stretching itself with viewing men and women as similar creatures that need to be studied independently.  I can't wait for the day when we begin to see results of studies on high vs low testosterone and estrogen people.

That'll really blow our minds.

More on Racebending: Avatar releases July 1.

Forwarded from my beloved hubby, check out this *great* post about racebending and "Avatar: The Last Airbender" at Floating World.

Take a few minutes to look around the rest of the site - it offers some delightful writing and interesting point of view.

The Nicest Thing

Yesterday, at a birthday party, a friend and I noticed Rosie march off to engage with her buddies.  My friend watched her for a second, then laughed and said, "she walks just like you do."

I got all teary.  That may be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

Turns out, my mama heart longs to know my girl is "just like" me, even when we don't physically resemble each other.

Beyond Richie-Rich and Archie

Reading comic books falls into one of those slightly secret things I do, and I when people find me reading one they often seem quite surprised.

When Bill and I got married, I very much looked down on comics.  Over the years, he took up the challenge to find graphic novels could suck me in.  He won - I now own most of several series.

The first character and story line that won me over was Usagi Yojimbo.  Simple line drawings matched with a complex and admirable hero seeking honor and justice in the world hooked me.  Just reading Stan Sakai's work isn't enough for me, it turns out this delightful comic ignited an interest in feudal Japan.  I've read many great books from the young adult fiction section on the subject, but this rabbit samurai is by far my favorite.

Elfquest, introduced to my by one of the plethora of Jen's in my life, captured my interest, both for the storyline and the lovely art.  Additionally, Theo took up reading it and it was the first comic interest we shared. This is a long running series and there are something near a trillion of them.  So far I've stuck with the earlier books as the story takes some twists and turns I'm not sure I'm ready to follow. I really love the art.

Girl Genius combines compelling art with a smart, strong and sexy heroine.  Theo and I both love the storyline and the creations by the inventor heroine.  So far, I'm current on all the books and anxiously awaiting the publication of the next.  I was years into enjoying this book before it occurred to me I'd fallen prey to the enjoyment of a serious sub-genre called steampunk.  I fear I grow geekier by the minute.


How about you?  Any comic book lovers out there?  What do you read?

Racebending

Do y'all know that my husband works as a cartoonist?  He's very funny.

Being married to a cartoonist means that our life and home swim with superheroes, comics and pop culture.  All of this being mostly foreign to me, I have learned over the years to enjoy and embrace quite a bit of it.

One of the scandals in the community right now comes from the release of The Last Airbender movie.  Turns out the cartoon features Asian and Inuit characters but Paramount chose to cast white actors for the roles.  After serious public outcry, they did manage to pick one non-white person as a main character.  In the role of the bad guy, of course.

People outraged by this whitening of their beloved heros mobilized online - and very cleverly named their site Racebending. Go check it out to learn more about the specifics of The Last Airbender, but also prejudice casting behaviors and how Hollywood's racist practices affect us all, especially our kids looking for heros that look like them.

I'm really impressed by the work by the Racebender crew. Seems like every in real life (IRL) discussion and virtual discussion group should all agree to follow the guidelines outlining racism discussion policies.

Song of the Week

    

An oldie but goodie from my 1970's childhood: Porcupine Pie by Neil Diamond.  Can't say the associated video does much for me.

Traveling to Philly several years ago, I happened to see Neil Diamond on some good morning show.  Somehow over the past 25 years the man got old.  Yikes!

Some of the lyrics surprised me as they differ from what I sang as a kid. I always thought you had to "eat it with love so you'll hands'll turn green."

Porcupine Pie, Porcupine Pie, Porcupine Pie
Vanilla Soup, a double scoop please.... No

Maybe I won't, maybe I will, maybe I'll have
the tutti fruit, with fruity blue cheese

Ah but Porcupine Pie, Porcupine Pie, Porcupine Pie
don't let it get on your jeans

And though it sounds a little strange but
you gotta eat it with gloves or your hands will turn green

Ah but porcupine pie, porcupine pie, porcupine pie
weaves its way through my dreams

I do believe I'm gonna try some and
leave enough room for dessert, the chicken ripple ice cream.


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(and yet again, here's the whine about formatting in blogger.  Pictures NEVER show up the way in the final post as they do in my preview window.  Sigh.)