a "WTF" moment

A mind-boggling moment at the park, courtesy of Monday being a strange day all-around...

A young woman, probably around my age, showed up with two kids-- a little girl who looked like an older 3, and a little boy who looked like a young 2. She let the little girl run ahead into the park while she talked to the boy as she and he walked in together about how he needed to have a time-out before he could go play.

Barely 2-years-old, I remind you. As in, still in diapers, short sentences only, limited self-control of emotions and VERY limited reasoning skills.

So she's telling him as they're entering the park area and he's thoroughly distracted that he needs to have a time-out for hitting her in the car. He's protesting, of course, in that angry "How DARE you!" toddler voice, and eventually she tells him that his time-out entails him sitting by himself a good 20 feet away from his nanny and sister while they sit together and eat a snack.

So the kid's sitting there, looking thoroughly despondent at being alone but clearly not thinking about having hit the nanny because, well, he's 2 and he's at the park now. And the nanny and older sister are sitting, laughing and chatting and eating a snack.

So this situation with the time-out is WTF moment #1. WTF moment #2? The snack they were eating. This woman brought a can of peanuts to the park.

I'm sorry, what?

I get that both of those children are now considered old enough to eat peanuts. But... isn't bringing peanuts to a public place that's likely to be, I don't know, full of children thought of as a bad idea??? There are peanut-free kindergarten classrooms because kids will eat a peanut-butter sandwich and not wash their hands carefully enough before touching something that an allergic kid might touch, even if at 5 or 6 the allergic kid knows better than to eat a bite of the sandwich.

So the woman calls out in a sing-song voice, "Okay, Callen/Cullen/Kellen/(whatever trendy last-name-first-name the child had), you can come over now!" And the 2-year-old trudges over to eat peanuts with the nanny and his sister.

They all move over to the sandbox across the playground. I walk over to where they were just sitting. I search around on the ground and what do I find? Yup... fallen peanuts. Not for anything, the ground at the playground is all woodchips, so it's not like they were easy to spot, but... well, I guess it would be too much to assume that a person who brings peanuts to the park might still somehow register that young children drop food when they eat it, and that she should check the ground for stray peanuts another child could find before abandoning the area. So I gathered up a good handful and tossed them out.

I know there's a lot to nannying and parenting that people don't understand or even know about until they get there (and as an additional caveat, I know that nannying, even full-time, is not the same as parenting, nor should it even be compared), but I really think awareness about the pervasiveness of peanut and other nut allergies is a no-brainer. It's right up there with "don't give small objects to babies," "don't leave a kid alone in the bathtub" and "keep sharp objects, medicines and household cleaners out of reach of children." One peanut could be just as poisonous or life-threatening as any of the above.

This all goes back to my rant about cute young college girls who decide to become nannies for the summer because it's good money. They all come out after mid-May. But that's a rant for another day.

productivity

Yep, today is September 11th. I'm not going to touch that one today. There's nothing I could say that everyone else on the internet hasn't already.

It's not that I'm disrespectful. I'm just tired of what "September 11th" has turned into... a drop-everything, slap-a-bumper-sticker-on-your-pickup-truck and propaganda-filled day. There's nothing, short of a government conspiracy, that happened that day that we don't already know about. It was a terrible tragedy... innocent lives lost, a war begun, a nation shaken out of fear and grief. It's my generation's "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" But I need a break. I'm tired of this yearly renewal of our war vows. Let's talk about positive changes rather than renewing our angry at "the Muslims" and "the terrorists" all over again.

I guess I did touch it after all. Oh well.

I had a decently productive day, if by "day" I was to imply "after 3pm." I had yet another massive headache this morning... I keep waking up with these awful sinus headaches. It's either some new sort of seasonal allergy or it's something related to air-conditioning. Anyways, I had one, and I had to head over to M's/my new place to drop off some money I had borrowed from him, and then I hit Starbucks for some blessed caffeine and sugar (not too much... I know my limits with caffeine now). One grande Frappucino, two Advils and four episodes of The L Word, Season 2 (brought to me by the fabulous TV Links website; I may never buy TV show seasons on DVD ever again) I was all better. Except I'd wasted a few hours being useless, and continued to waste a few more watching more episodes. That show is so addictive. It made me a bit sad and moody, though... all these people in tumultuous relationships. So I headed out to see M, who was just getting home from a bunch of meetings. That helped :D

We cooked tonight! Our first time cooking in the new house. We'd made rice and beans before with naan and some tandoori sauce, but using a rice cooker is hardly "cooking." Tonight I made a fruit cup from some peaches, nectarines, plums and raspberries; and then we (*ahem* meaning M) whipped together a great one-pot arroz con pollo dish. It was actually pretty easy, especially since M did all the work-- a few chicken drumsticks, wings or thighs seared in olive oil; then add in some rice and brown it; and then add in a mixture of tomato paste, chicken broth, chopped garlic, salt, chopped onions and chopped green pepper, cover and simmer. We had to re-cook some of the pieces of chicken, but all told it was a tasty meal. I chopped up some yellow cherry tomatoes with olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette and chopped fresh basil for an accent. It was a pretty healthy meal, especially for us "eat out all the time" types. Although I did finish off my meal with a slice a cheesecake. Heh.

I'm up early for work tomorrow morning. A has two new classes tomorrow-- a "preschool experience" class at the YMCA, and a recreation department music class in the afternoon. (For anyone just joining us, "A" is a child and not a stray article. My sentence is grammatically correct, I swear!) It'll be so strange for me to drop him off at music class... last year it was a "Mommy (in my case, Nanny) & Me" for 3/4-year-olds... now that he's almost 4 1/2 and in his second year of preschool, he's old enough for the drop-off class. Seriously, nannying is not for the faint of heart... especially when you've yet to have children and you don't even know how much you weep inside when they grow up like this! I'm so proud of him, but it's bittersweet... he's not a little guy anymore...

I'll entertain myself during my two new 45-minute child-free blocks by working on my Great American Novel. That's right, kids, blogging is only my day job... and you thought all this talent was going to waste. ;) The fun thing about writing a fantasy novel is you get to invent a whole world of your own, with your own rules. I'm still working on the social and political climate and world history of this place. It's so FUN.

photo post.

Just some photos I've taken in the past week. I got my Canon PowerShot back in June, and I'm only just starting to figure out the settings (I've been relying on the Kids & Pets filter for everything) and some of these came out pretty well.

The water in town's been so low that you can see the bottom. It's so strange. This particular river has a tendency to flood whenever it rains heavily. The high school down the street got flooded about 6 years ago and the high schoolers had to use the middle school for the rest of the year; it gets that bad. I love how this picture came out. It looks very National Geographic.

A, the 4-year-old boy I nanny, was very pleased with the number of ducks we saw swimming around that day. I suspect he would have been excited had he not been in a melancholy mood. I don't blame him-- the poor kid's mother was abroad for a few days on a business trip, school's starting soon, and none of the neighborhood kids were around to play with. He was feeling a touch emotional and preferred to keep to himself. At any rate, there were a lot of ducks, and he enjoyed watching them swim under the bridge and come out the other side.

A did perk up enough to do a "photoshoot" involving him making funny faces, putting his leg on top of the bench and posing, and purposely "drinking" his bottled water wrong (with the cap on). He's not my child, so I can't post those here publicly to show you, but it was cute. If you have or know young kids, you probably get the jist of it anyways. :)

He found this one particularly funny because two of the ducks had their heads underwater.

A few days later, out at an All-You-Can-Eat Barbecue restaurant with Jay and Jen, I tested out my macro settings (once Jay told me what they mean, heh). Look at the detail! I've been wondering why I couldn't get the sort of clarity other people could with close-ups. I love textures.

A photo out the window at the restaurant. When I first took the picture, I didn't even realize that all those lights were reflections. It looks a touch like I'm dining in Vegas, heh. That's Jay and Jen in the window :)

And, yours truly. Not the best picture, but I think it's a bit cute. Jay took the picture while I was on the phone with M.

Another Expensive Friday...

I picked up my friend Jen today to do a bunch of errands and she commented, "Isn't this the third Friday in a row that we've gone shopping together?" I think she's right... that's where all my money went. Hrmph. Not like I can do much about the fact that, say, my bedroom and living room needed curtains, or that I needed to be fed mid-day (at McDonald's, shamefully), or that I needed tampons and a new blush and gas for my gas-guzzler. Last week I bought curtains for the dining room and-- oh, Jesus, I don't even remember. Something that was very, very important at the time, I'm sure. Oh, and I bought The L Word Season 1 on DVD. (Sooooo worth it.)

I picked up my wedding gown today! I've been calling it "the red pantsuit" when I mention it around M, because I don't want to tip him off about what it looks like by slipping any details. He reads this on occasion, so I can't tell you about it, either. Sorry! Let's just say it's perfect; absolutely the most beautiful dress in the world and I love love love it.

I felt so miserable earlier today. I'm very caffeine-sensitive-- I never, ever drink more than a coffee-cup full of regular coffee (or a Grande, at most, of a Frappucino or some other diluted-with-milk-sugar-and-ice coffee drink) because it makes me weak, dizzy, shaky and heart-racy. Well, I had one of my daily sinus headaches today (I need to figure out if I've developed seasonal allergies) and Jen offered me some Sudafed and some Excedrin for my head. I, of course, accepted, because although I'd never tried either medication before, I was in pain and I'd take anything she'd give me.

I started to feel ill right before we got food, so I figured I was just hungry. Food didn't help. I also had a Diet Coke, which by itself doesn't bother me.

Later in the day, after feeling weak and shaky but continuing to run errands because, well, I needed to do them, I called M while Jen ran into a store. He informed me that Sudafed and Excedrin both have caffeine or something like it in them. It occurred to me that Sudafed is the drug people are always trying to steal to make methamphetamines with.

Methamphetamines. Hmm. Shoulda thought of that.

The next hour and a half left me lying on Jen's bed, half-sleeping and half-reading, trying to ride it out. By the time I left I felt "okay." I still feel "okay," but a hell of a lot better. So I'm going to stay in tonight, and at some point in the evening I'm going to find out about what other products I currently or may use contain caffeine that I don't know about.

Muses.

I'm compiling a list of women who are symbolically powerful for me. It took me a long time personally to get comfortable with my womanhood-- for some reason, I didn't think I was "enough" of a woman for a while... not pretty enough, or thin enough, or seductive enough, I don't even know. But now I'm finding myself drawn to these figures that represent, to me, true female power and strength. I'm particularly interested in historical information/speculation on these women and artistic interpretations of their likenesses. So far, they're all Judeo-Christian religious figures. I think anything linking to Christianity has an underlying power in our society, and of course I was brought up Roman Catholic (although I am currently "on the market") so there's a familiarity entwined with a newfound mystery in these figures, for me.


First on the list is the Black Madonna.







I first saw her in a cathedral in Italy at age seventeen. I wasn't entirely prepared to appreciate the fact that I was in Italy and should have probably been, hmm, paying attention to the breathtaking artwork and architecture and history and life of all those buildings and statues and museums, but alas, I was too busy crouching down in the back seat of a rental car listening to KoRn (yes, with a capital R) and eating gelato three times a day. At any rate, I do remember the Black Madonna, because my aunt was so taken with her presence that she teared up (the only time in her life I've ever seen her cry). Then, a few years ago, I read the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I know some people who read and disliked the book, but I absolutely loved it. The imagery of the Black Madonna Honey... something about dark wood and honey just sounds breathtaking to me. I'm a very visual person. Of course, though, there was the character herself-- a beacon of strength, hope, and power. She still possesses that mystery that draws people to her.


I found a fascinating passage written about her by a fellow Blogspotter, a Gnostic priest:

The Black Madonna is Dark and calls us to the darkness. Darkness is something we need to get used to again "the Enlightenment" has deceived us into being afraid of the dark and distant from it. Light switches are illusory. They feed the notion that we can "master nature" (Descartes' false promise) and overcome all darkness with a flick of our finger. Meister Eckhart observes that "the ground of the soul is dark." Thus to avoid the darkness is to live superficially, cut off from one's ground, one's depth. The Black Madonna invites us into the dark and therefore into our depths. This is what the mystics call the "inside" of things, the essence of things. This is where Divinity lies. It is where the true self lies. It is where illusions are broken apart and the truth lies. Andrew Harvey puts it this way: "The Black Madonna is the transcendent Kali-Mother, the black womb of light out of which all of the worlds are always arising and into which they fall, the presence behind all things, the darkness of love and the loving unknowing into which the child of the Mother goes when his or her illumination is perfect." She calls us to that darkness which is mystery itself. She encourages us to be at home there, in the presence of deep, black, unsolveable mystery. She is, in Harvey's words, "the blackness of divine mystery, that mystery celebrated by the great Aphophatic mystics, such as Dionysisus Areopagite, who see the divine as forever unknowable, mysterious, beyond all our concepts, hidden from all our senses in a light so dazzling it registers on them as darkness." Eckhart calls God's darkness a "superessential darkness, a mystery behind mystery, a mystery within mystery that no light has penetrated."


Note to self: figure out what Gnosticism is, exactly, especially since it's so very unlike anything Christian I've ever experienced or encountered. Maybe I'll ask the priest.


Edited to add: I believe that section posted above was not written by the blogger, but was quoted from this article by Matthew Fox. My error! I really recommend reading the Fox article, though... it's fascinating.


Anyways.


I have also developed an obsession with artistic depictions of Eve.





This one above is, by far, my favorite out of all the paintings I've seen. It's the only one I know of in which Eve doesn't look evil, manipulative, or weak. I also like that the serpent is included in the imagery, but not directly as a puppeteer; nor is he hovering above her in a position of power.

We all know the story... Adam was a good boy, Eve gave him the apple, Adam was weak and he ate it and they were naked and God was pissed and now childbirth sucks. I'm a big Tori Amos fan, and she put a new spin on Eve that I'd never encountered or even considered before in a number of her songs on her 2005 album The Beekeeper. She describes the album concept really well in this interview:

"Maybe being a mom has pushed me to [speak and write about things in a way that I haven't before], without it being a studied sort of exercise. It changes your place in the tribe and in the structure when you're protecting a young voice, instead of being a young voice. So, maybe realizing that I needed to protect a young voice, I knew it was important. Because those voices won't have an opportunity to speak unless we give them access to certain information and civil liberties. So the beekeeper is really crawling inside and maybe creating another garden for people to walk into. Not just the Garden of Eden, or the Garden of Gethsemane- not the garden of original sin, but the garden of original "sinsuality." God's mother's garden Sophia, who is wisdom, who encourages Tori to eat of the forbidden fruit, from the tree of knowledge- And only then will she be able to see what's truly going on in her own life, much less the outside world.


"... a lot of women have had a hard time with holding the archetype of mother and mistress. In clearer terms- holding the sexual and the sacred. Sacred sexuality, which the honeybee represented in the ancient feminine mysteries. And that's one reason why (the album) is called The Beekeeper, because this is a record holding all aspects of women and trying to pull it together piece by piece- which is a reflection of the book.

"... Women have had to choose, even within the Christian story, either the Mary Magdalene path, or the Mother Mary path. The Mother Mary, as I have said, having been circumcised of her sexuality, and Mary Magdalene being stripped of her spirituality. So women have either gravitated towards an archetype of the sensual woman, or the nurturing mother. And it's been very hard to hold both within the being, because there's been an archetypal division. There hasn't been a place where you have a woman who holds both."


I love the feeling of that whole album-- it's this soundscape that feels like an actual place you can go to, mentally, and sometimes I need to be there. I want to embrace this concept of Eve as a real, rounded woman. Stepping back and really understanding who I am is something I've only just started to do, sadly, now in my mid-20's and I'm starting to love myself this way, so this image of Eve is very powerful for me.

Note I included some thoughts on "the Marys" as well. The Black Madonna is already listed above, but Mary Magdalene is next on the list.

Mary Magdalene is the "whore" of the Bible. We all got to "know" her a little better by watching The Da Vinci code, in which (don't read this if you haven't seen the movie yet and plan to) she is revealed to be the secret wife of Jesus. Now, I imagine it had to be difficult to follow a suspected religious wacko around from town to town spreading the word about his alleged deeds and greatness for anyone, much less a woman back then... so I suppose it's no surprise she got slapped with the hussy label. After all, women weren't supposed to be bold back then! I'm a little irritated that I didn't know until now that there was a Gospel of Mary, a fifth gospel completely left out of the Bible. I feel like I should have been told! Argh. But again, I shouldn't be surprised-- apparently she broke some of the rules in writing it.

I don't know exactly who she was or what she's done. I do know, though, that she must have been someone amazing to have done what she did, and I think there's a lot to know about her that may have just been lost to history. I can't imagine anyone will ever know (or admit) the impact she may have had on early Christianity. That's huge.

And finally... there's Dinah.

Have you read this book? That's all I can say for a description. Read it. You'll get it. Essentially, I feel like she's the first woman to tell "the woman's story," and I think anyone who grew up horrified by some parts of the Old Testament will feel a bit better to "hear" another perspective. I don't even know why it makes me feel better. It makes it more real, at the very least. But I feel so connected to her.

tickling the ivories.

I've satisfied a small portion of my need-to-create-art-longing by playing the piano with my eyes closed. I've got two songs down now-- a dumbed-down version of Tori Amos's "China" and an improved set of chords and melody for Coldplay's "Trouble." I need to finish learning "Fix You" as well; that's my favorite Coldplay song.

I figured out the chords to Justin Timberlake's "What Goes Around," too.. it's pretty simple. All it took was a glance online and a little improvisation. It's just Am, C, G, Dm over and over, with the Dm replaced by a D when he sings "... and I guess I was wrong" right before the "don't want to talk about it/don't want to think about it" bridge. It's amazing how many songs are built off of such simple chord progressions... did you know that Avril Lavigne's "My Happy Ending" and Sarah McLachlan's "Building a Mystery" are nearly identical?

I've really gotten into Maria Mena lately. I found a link to a MySpace for this random 16-year-old girl that played one of Maria's songs, and I followed it to Maria's MySpace Music page. She's this amazing young Norweigan singer with a low, husky, airy voice. It's strange how some small quality of her voice reminds me of Bjork despite her not really sounding like Bjork at all. Maybe it's an accent thing, but Maria doesn't sound like she actually has an accent to me. The lyrics in her songs are really incredible... I love the line "I will no longer be disciplined by the frustrations of an insecure man," especially coming out of an 18-year-old (she's 22/23 now, I believe). Deep relationship-related songs for a young girl.

If you listen to Maria's stuff and really love it, I recommend Martina Sorbara and Imogen Heap as well, although I'm a fan of both women's older work and not the newer work. Martina Sorbara's 2000 album was golden but she got married and started an electro-poppy band with her husband which puts her floaty, birdlike, hearty voice to absolutely no good use at all; and I never really got into Imogen's work with FrouFrou nearly as much as her solo songs like "Come Here, Boy." I can't even find good links for either of them because it's all new stuff. Bleh. I think I need to order Martina's 2000 album before it goes out of print.

What the who now?

Oh, Google. How you bring the crazy to my fingertips with one click.

I've been researching a tattoo design that I'd like to put together and I found, under a number of fairly innocent-looking keyword searches, the following gems:

Firstly: Dan Gayman, a former high school principal, leads the Schell City, Missouri-based Church of Israel, and is widely regarded as one of the theological leaders of the Christian Identity movement. He has popularized the “two seedline” theory -- widely accepted among Identity adherents -- which purports that Jews descend from a sexual union between Eve and Satan (only white Christians descend from Adam and Eve). He has been credited with inspiring such groups and figures as The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord; James "Bo" Gritz; and Eric Rudolph, who pleaded guilty to bombing three abortion clinics, a gay nightclub, and the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. Gayman’s ability to provoke violent action through his teachings makes him an important force in the extremist world today.

Again, I say... what the who now?

And this one: The Bible is clear: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:27) But what about the different races and skin colors? How did they come about?.... One idea that has surfaced comes from Genesis 4:15. After Cain killed Able the Bible says that Cain felt insecure about life and God said, “Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.” and “the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him.” Some have concluded that this “mark” was black skin. First of all, we don’t know what the mark was, but is it possible that the black gene was started with Cain and carried onto the ark in one of Noah’s sons or daughter-in-laws? Not very likely at all. That would be a very prejudiced viewpoint in our opinion, and a view that has no Scriptural evidence.

I almost forgot that you can completely take something back with a disclaimer at the end. That might come in handy!