Random Acts of Kindness

During the week that Doug was gone, Kate and I went to Trader Joe's one day. It was promising to be beastly hot, so I wanted to get it done early, but Kate was fractious and I, feeling harried and apparently more scatterbrained than usual, left the house without my debit card. I did not realize this until later, of course. We got to Trader Joe's and did our shopping--ran into Jessica from church and her kids, and said hi--then we got up to the checkout line and as the cashier was ringing up my stuff it suddenly hit me. That awful realization: Oh no! My card is in my other pants! Aaaaargh!

I reluctantly pictured dragging Kate all the way home and back again (nap time was fast approaching) and then I remembered Jessica. After a quick consultation with the cashier I ran and found Jessica (fortunately they were not very busy and there wasn't anyone waiting behind me at that point) and asked her if she would be able to cover me and I'd pay her back later that day. Jessica was agreeable, so we went back up to the register together, only to discover that the cashier on the next lane had paid for me. Seventeen dollars, minus some change. I was astounded. My cashier said, "Isn't Dagmar awesome? I think I owe her about two grand by now." As I stood there gaping and stammering, Dagmar waved it aside and said, "No no, it's good. Seriously. I'm a mom." I asked about her schedule for the day, so I could bring her the money, and she said, "You can pay me back, or just do something nice for somebody else." She told me she was going to Oregon for the weekend but would be back after that.

I drove home feeling rather stunned. I've had experiences, at times, of having someone there to help me right when I needed something, and I've felt blessed and grateful. Little things, usually. Never a complete stranger to the tune of seventeen dollars. I decided to make Dagmar a card to give her along with the money. She struck me as something of an artistic, free-spirit type (she had long dreadlocks adorned with big ceramic beads) so I thought she might appreciate something like that.

It took me a few days before I got the card done, what with one thing and another (Kate wanted to help, which was not helpful). I put the money inside and wrote her a little note, and wrapped it up pretty. I called to see if Dagmar was working, and we went down to give it to her. She loved the card (said I really didn't have to pay her back), got a hug, and then as I was trying to tell her how much I appreciated it I got all teary-eyed and she said, "Aww! Give me another hug!" When we left she said, "You made me happy! Thank you!"

The funny thing is that when I handed Dagmar the card she had no idea what it was for, and when I reminded her about what she'd done she said, "Oh! That was you?" I honestly think that if I hadn't paid her back she wouldn't have thought of it again. How many people would do something like that for someone they'd never met? I'll think of Dagmar next time I'm able to help out someone who needs a hand. In the economics of kindness, it's a gain to be able to pay it back and pay it forward.

Point and Click

Kate has learned to use the computer mouse! Our baby is growing up so fast. *sniff*



We had a week without Doug, while he was away at scout camp (not this last week but the week before). That was an interesting experience. It was also about the hottest week ever. Boy, we're glad that's over. (On both counts--Kate and I were kind of getting on each other's nerves.) When Doug left Monday morning, Kate was just barely starting to figure out how to use the mouse, and by the time he got home on Saturday she was clicking away like a pro. There's a lot of fun stuff on noggin.com and on starfall that she enjoys playing with.

There are several "Scribblevision" games on Noggin where you color in pictures and then it animates your coloring within a larger scene. That's some pretty cool programing. It's also fun because you don't have to stay in the lines, but can make the picture look like something else. (One page has a bird flying by, flapping its wings--Doug turned it into a flying boy who flaps his arms.) There's also the Upside Down Show's Schmancy Schmashup Game where you create your own drawing and it inserts it into a video. We've had some fun with that one.

Seasons of Discovery

I have a couple of circle journals that have been in my possession for waaaay too long. I got this one done today. The theme is seasons. Instead of doing a page about my favorite season, I decided to take a different approach.



I used some of Anita Stergiou's papers from her Floriade Collection, and decorated it with my Potato Prints and other stuff.

Killer Bunnies and Cooking Rats

Friday we we over to the Tracys' house to play Killer Bunnies. They discovered this game recently and had been telling us what crazy fun it was, so they invited us over to play. It certainly is a complicated, wacky game. I didn't really get a good sense of it, just playing it the one time (and we had to cut our game short because it was past Kate's bedtime), but I was intrigued enough to want to give it another go.



We found the font on the cards kind of annoying, which was one drawback, and we also spotted an "effect" that should have been "affect." Oops. It's one of those games that has multiple expansion packs, and some of the cards refer to other cards that haven't been created yet. Now that's planning ahead.

Saturday we went to see Ratatouille. We don't get to the theater very often--the last movie we went to see was Serenity, almost two years ago. But we are fans of Pixar in general and of Brad Bird in particular, and we'd been looking forward to Ratatouille since we first saw the teasers. We decide to take Kate along, figuring that two-and-a-half might be old enough for her first "big movie," and that a cute little rat might capture her attention. Well, the movie experience turned out much like the wading pool experience--she didn't want to be there. I eventually got her to go to sleep (which messed up her nap schedule for the rest of the day), but at least Doug and I had a good time.

This movie may not be particularly engaging for young kids, but we enjoyed it and will probably buy it when it comes out on DVD. In fact, while I was watching I found myself wishing we had it on DVD already so I could listen to the commentary. The story was solid and the execution masterful, as expected. We particularly enjoyed the stylized animation in the end credits. As my own art tends to lean heavily on the representational (essentially just copying what I see, most of the time), I am impressed by the pure artistry in this sort of thing. It's like a really good dish that you want to savor and study to figure out if you can reproduce it yourself.

Lois McMaster Bujold, and a pigeon (coo!)

We went up to the University of Washington last night to see Lois McMaster Bujold, one of our favorite authors. This was the second "reading and book signing" that we've attended there which turned out not to be a reading, but she spoke and answered questions for a while before signing books. Kate was very interested in the toys at the bookstore and not at all interested in listening to these strange grown-ups, so unfortunately Doug didn't get to hear any of it. I suppose next time we do something like this we really should get a babysitter.



Here's Kate with a big Mo Willems pigeon. We currently have Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus and The Pigeon Finds a Hotdog out from the library, and Kate has been enjoying reading them over and over. (She's been practicing saying "Oh for Pete's sake!" and "Hey, I'm a curious bird!") So I was tickled when I saw this big pigeon at the bookstore. Apparently it was some kind of promotional prop, but they did say that there should be smaller versions for sale later this year.

The pigeon has his own website! Kate and I were much amused by the hotdog game.

Lois McMaster Bujold writes science fiction and fantasy and is best known for her Miles Vorkosigan series, which you could describe as space opera, but very good space opera. The "science" is mostly social and biological, with a few space battles thrown in for good measure. They're very character-driven, thoughtful, touching, at times very funny. And just so well-written. I can't give these books a blanket recommendation, because of some of the content, but I love them and keep coming back to them over and over. Memory is probably my favorite. A Civil Campaign, a close second, is absolutely charming and has been favorably compared to Jane Austen, with its regency romance flavor. We took along our copy of A Civil Campaign and got it signed. (I didn't want to drag the whole stack of books along, so we just picked out that one.)



It's been a few years since the last Miles book--Lois has been working on other things. We have enjoyed her fantasy works as well, but we are eagerly awaiting the next Miles installment next year. Yippee!

Hair today

I donated my hair! I've been thinking about doing this for a while--the last time I got my hair trimmed was right after Kate was born, and it had gotten all ragged and uneven, plus it was taking forever to dry after I took a shower (which can make things difficult when you're, say, trying to get to church on time). So I finally bit the bullet and went and did it. They took off about twelve inches. I wanted it long enough that I could still put it back in a ponytail, for swimming and stuff. I haven't figured out yet exactly what I'm going to do with it, but I imagine it'll be nice for summer. Here are the after pictures:



I told Doug that last one was my Alan Doyle impersonation, but his hair is cooler than mine.

The big 2.5

Kate is officially two and a half today! A quarter of a decade. Wow. I took this picture this morning. She looks so serious and grown up. We can see little differences every day, in the way she's developing more control over her coloring, and stringing more words together in new ways all the time.

Kate has been very interested in letters lately. She points out letters on things and we tell her what they are. We've also been playing with the Starfall site a lot. She knows A, B, O, and S, and probably a few others as well. Her newest thing is that whenever I hold her up to the sink to wash her hands, she points to the knobs and says "C for cold, H for hot!" Except she keeps getting it wrong and says "H for cold."

A couple of pictures of Kate and letters:




At Kids Zone at the zoo (or, as Kate calls it, "the looz,") there's a big rubber-paved area that has words like "SWING!" "JUMP!" "SLIDE!" Kate points to the letters one at a time, and we say them out loud. "W-I-G-G-L-E," and then when we get to the end we say, "exclamation point--dot!" I think she likes that part.

Duck on my head

We've been watching some of the music videos on noggin.com with Kate. There's one called "Pig on Her Head" that has a catchy tune and quite adaptable, if somewhat unlikely, lyrics. We've been playing around with it a bit, like the time Doug was carrying a box of books on his head and started singing "My dad has a box on his head."

So today, we were sitting in church and Kate was playing with the little bean-bag animals that Rebecca brings in her bag. There's a monkey, a koala, a rat, and a duck. It helps to keep Kate occupied, to have toys that she only sees on Sundays. She stood up on the pew next to me and started bouncing the duck on my head and singing "My mom has a duck on her head." Ha! This child is just too clever sometimes. I think that's the first time I've heard her put her own words in a song.

Here, kitty kitty kitty!

The latest project!

Waiting Pool

We've been saying, for a long time, that we should take Kate swimming. She loves playing in the bath and will stay in there for an hour if we let her. She's also fascinated by fountains. We found out that the wading pool at Fircrest pool is free (and open to non-Fircrest residents after 4:00), so we figured this would be a good time to try it out.

I haven't had a swimsuit for years. I found one online that I want to get, but they're out of stock in my size. So, at the moment I am still swim-less. So Doug took Kate into the water. Or not so much into as near unto. It turned out she was not as eager as we'd hoped. She does tend to be a bit on the cautious side. They spent a lot of time sitting on the edge of the pool, watching the other kids. I suppose we should have tried last year. I was impressed by some of the teeny-tiny kids that were just toddling right into the water, and having a great time. Maybe next time Kate will be ready to actually go in the water.

As I was writing this I checked the swimsuit site again, and they had what I wanted, so I ordered it! Woo hoo! I'm getting this top (pink and black) and these bottoms. I have thigh issues and... err... shaving issues, so this should be just right.

What's the magic word?

"Toast!"
"Can you say please?"
"Toast!"
"Say 'Toast please!'"
"Okay!"
"You say it. 'Toast please!'"
"Okay!"
"Say 'Toast please!'"
"Okay!"
*sigh*

Father's Day

I hope all the daddies out there had a great Father's Day! At church they gave out candy bars. (For Mother's Day we got potted phlox plants. Mine isn't doing very well.) When the Primary kids went up to sing for the dads, Kate ran up on the stand too. Doug took her over to stand with the other kids. He said she wanted to sing the ABC song.

We got Doug a make-your-own-tie kit. Now he's trying to decide what to put on it. So many possibilities!

Grandma Mary and Grandpa Al

Doug's parents left yesterday. They were here for almost a week. We got to spend some fun time together, and I particularly enjoyed having someone around to watch Kate while I took a shower in the mornings. One morning they went out for a walk with the stroller and were gone for rather a long time, and when they got back they were pushing a different stroller! That was a surprise. They'd been up near Kmart, going up a curb when a wheel snapped right off. They went into Kmart and got us a new stroller. (The other one was a hand-me-down--the plastic buckle on the seat belt also broke recently, so we'd been resorting to tying the strap around Kate.) They also got a little toy piano keyboard for Kate, that she's been having a lot of fun with. It's the grandparents' job to get noisy toys, right?



We went downtown to ride the Link (the light rail), which Kate calls "the little train." She gets very excited about it. We went to the library, and then ended up at this fountain where we let Kate walk around on the blocks and watch the water for a while. She loves fountains.



We also went to the beach, on another day, and sifted sand while Doug graded papers. Kate likes to walk on the big driftwood logs. Sometimes she climbs up too high and makes us nervous.



On Friday we went to the Indian buffet in Lakewood for lunch, and then went to Fort Steilacoom park. This park has the coolest playground.



On previous outings we'd gotten Kate to go down this slide with a lot of coaxing, but this time she was just zipping down it all by herself. Wheee!



Here's Kate at the top and bottom of the slide. When going in at the top she would turn around and wave and say "See you later!" Too cute.

Living so far from our families, Kate doesn't get to see either set of grandparents very often. We weren't sure how she was going to react to having extra people in the house, but she quickly figured out who her new play-buddy was, and learned to say "Damma!" for Grandma. When she saw these pictures she said "That's Damma!"

Recalling Korea (longing and nausea)

A couple of weeks ago we went down to Lakewood for a Korean dinner with our friends Don and Jill Tracy, who had never had Korean food before. I made this layout and just felt compelled to do all the journaling in Korean (on my tablet). I was waxing nostalgic.

My very favorite meal is a good kimchi jjigae bek pan ("bek pan" is the rice and side dish part), but to be really, really good it has to have kim (roasted laver seaweed) as well. Restaurants generally don't provide kim in their side dishes, so when I'm going to have kimchi jjigae I get my own kim and take it along. This always seems to amuse the waitresses. (Look! It's an American eating kimchi jjigae! With kim!) I tried giving Kate some kim before and she didn't like it, but this time she decided it was good and ate several pieces.

This is not where the nausea comes in (though much as I like Korean food, my stomach often does feel a little weird afterwards, especially if I haven't eaten it in a while). Yesterday we got out our home movies from Korea, which we hadn't watched in years. When Doug and I were teaching in Chonan, we borrowed a video camera and shot a few hours' worth of footage. It was fun to watch our ten-years-younger selves and remember all the fun things that we did, and our teeny apartment with the black-tiled bathroom, and Doug's hilarious bit with the green syrup ("My mama always said that one should always put melon syrup on one's pancakes"). Unfortunately, with the hand-held camera shake, I can only watch a few minutes before I start feeling queasy. Motion sickness is not generally a pervasive problem for me, but there are certain things that get to me. It's a shame. I'm sure I'd watch these videos more often if they didn't make me want to toss my cookies. Maybe one of these day we'll get them digitized and I can post short clips of the good parts.

I've been thinking about Korea a lot. Something will come up--a smell, a feeling in the air, a stand of cosmos flowers in somebody's yard, and it takes me right back. Sometimes I miss it so badly it hurts. Actually as the weather has been warming up, my desire to go to Korea has been waning somewhat, thinking about how beastly hot and humid it gets there in the summer. The urge seems to strike mostly in the Spring and Fall. Fall in Korea is just so heart-achingly beautiful. I always get kind of wistful in the fall, anyway.

I've been lucky--after my mission, I got to go back to Korea twice. Many people never get to go back at all. But it's been ten years now, almost, and the itch returns. I've been trying to figure out how we could go back again. When Doug and I went and taught in Chonan, we'd only been married about six weeks when we arrived. People were surprised that we would do something like that so soon after getting married, but really, when else are you going to do it? We had both recently graduated (Doug had finished his M.A.), had no house, no jobs, no kids--sure, let's run off and see the world! We did, and it was great fun. And after Korea, we got to spend three years in Newfoundland. I miss Newfoundland a lot too, though I don't dream about it very much. But settling down (sort of), accumulating lots of stuff and obligations and two large and complex computer systems, not to mention a child, makes uprooting and taking off a rather more daunting prospect.

I find myself drawn to stories about families who get to raise their kids in more than one culture. There's something very appealing in the idea, an increased richness of experience, a different understanding, perhaps a focusing of priorities, after seeing what things are important to people in different places. I recently ran across the story of this American girl (at least I guess she's American--Belgian father, American mother) graduating from high school in Korea. Rural Korea, even. There's also a video at the bottom of this page. She just sounds so astonishingly Korean to me. I am intrigued. I would love for my kids to have an opportunity like that. Maybe not actually attending a Korean high school, knowing what they go through, but, well, it is intriguing.

I've felt a sense of urgency, for some reason, to go, go, do it now before life gets even more complicated. But I have to keep telling myself that Korea will still be there. It changes, but it will still be there. I'll get back somehow, eventually. Maybe to stay for a while, maybe just to visit--long enough to walk the mountains, to explore, to eat, and of course take lots of pictures. Someday.

Putting the Fun back in Fungi

A couple of years ago, when my family was visiting for the occasion of Kate's birth, I sent my dad out for salad makings and we got into a discussion about who did and didn't like mushrooms. After identifying the fungophobes and fungophiles, we got a little wacky.

If you're afraid of mushrooms you're a fungophobe.
If you like mushrooms you're a fungophile.

Which means...

If you're afraid of people who like mushrooms you're a fungophilophobe
and if you like people who are afraid of mushrooms you're a fungophobophile.

This can, of course, be applied to lots of other words. Think of the possibilities!

Ramblings

I was just commenting on my sister-in-law Karen's poetry blog, and said that "Tim'rous Beastie" would be a great screen name. Things like this pop into my brain every once in a while, and I think, "Wow, that would be a great screen name!" but can I remember them later? I really need to start writing them down. Not that I really need a lot of alternate screen names. But you never know when one might come in handy.

Yesterday Kate woke up around 6:30--much earlier than she usually gets up--and was able to spend a little time with Daddy before he left for his morning classes. That was nice. She sure loves her Daddy. Then when I got out of the shower I found her sound asleep on the floor, right outside the bathroom, with her bum up in the air. She never does this (never falls asleep on the floor, I mean. She does sleep in this position sometimes). I just had to take a picture.



We discovered that Doug doesn't have any classes for summer quarter at his main school, and he's not hopeful of getting any at the other places he teaches either. I guess enrollment is down this summer. So he'll be looking for something else to do for a few months. I suppose there's a chance that he might find something that could end up being a better job for him. Though we do enjoy the amount of time he gets to spend at home, with his teaching schedule. I was contemplating that the other day--there's the uncertainty of the part-time teaching position, but on the other hand we get to do a lot of things together. Yesterday we spent a couple of hours at the beach. Kate and I played in the sand while Doug graded papers. Now we just need somebody to hire him full time. It's not that he doesn't want to teach, he'd just like to do it with a little more stability.

Doug's parents are coming on Monday. I need to finish getting the place cleaned up. Good incentive.

The book of Glorie Jean

Our friend Rebecca has this cute little dog named Glorie Jean that she just loves. I've taken a lot of pictures of Glorie Jean over the past couple of years, so I had this idea to make a little book for her birthday (Rebecca's birthday, that is, not Glorie Jean's birthday. I don't know when Glorie Jean's birthday is). Her birthday was back in March and it took me a while to get the book put together, but I finally finished it. I had it printed at sharedink.com. The finished book came in the mail on Friday, and I took a couple of pictures of it before we took it over to Rebecca's house. The printing and binding both seem really nice.

Here are all the spreads from the book--the way they looked on my computer, before going to the printer. The finished pages had a little trimmed off around the edges. You have to plan for that.









Rebecca loved her book!

Kate-speak 101

We have unraveled the principles of Kate's pronunciation. To start with, G's and K's turn into D's and T's. That part was easy enough to figure out. But also, for words that start with an S followed by another consonant, she puts the S at the end. That one took quite a bit longer to decipher. She does it very consistently, though, so we eventually caught on. Hence, snap, snail, and star become naps, nails, and dars, respectively. Squirrel is dirls, and squish is diss. She and Doug play a squishing game on the bed. It's just too cute to hear her yelling "Diss! Diss!" and shrieking with laughter.

Kate has known the word "turtle" for some time, but recently added "tortoise." One of her books has a tortoise in it. I told her that a tortoise is like a turtle. Now whenever we read that book she points to it and says, "Tortoise! Tortoise like a turtle." One of our neighbors even has a little tortoise in a terrarium, so Kate got to see a real tortoise. That was pretty exciting. She has also learned that a toad is like a frog. Another neighbor has a bird bath with a little stone toad on it, and Kate will go over and pat the toad and say "Toad like a frog!" When watching the Veggie Tales song about Barbara Manatee (from the library) I told her that a manatee is like a whale, which she accepted easily enough, but then Doug suggested that perhaps a manatee is more like a seal or a walrus, so we'll have to see if we can correct that.

Kate has been finding animals in her food. The other day she held up a bit of cheese from the pizza we were eating, and informed us that it was a seahorse. Tonight her bits of naan bread contained a hippo, a whale, a wolf, and a horse. This seems like pretty advanced abstraction for a two-and-a-half year old, but Doug told me that she had some bug-shaped graham crackers in the nursery at church that made quite an impression on her, so maybe that's where she got the idea.

Poor Man's Cake

I made a Poor Man's Cake this afternoon. It's kind of a family staple (from my family, when I was growing up) but it's been a long time since I've made one. In fact I don't think Kate had ever had it before. It's called Poor Man's Cake because it doesn't use eggs or milk. Actually it does use eggs, but they're optional. We always put them in. So I guess it's only half-poor. The real point of this cake is that it's made with whole wheat flour, and honey instead of sugar. This was almost always what we had for birthdays and such.

Somebody at church once asked me for the recipe and I never gave it to her, so I thought I'd post it here.



Poor Man's Cake

In a large bowl, mix together:

4 cups whole wheat flour
½-1 tsp salt
1½ tsp baking powder
1½ tsp baking soda
½-1 tsp cinnamon

In a blender put:

¾ cup vegetable oil
¾ cup honey (I have reduced this to slightly less than ½ cup and it's still plenty sweet for me)
1½-2 cups water
2 carrots (optional)
2 eggs (optional)
(I like to add a little nutmeg too)

Blend ingredients in blender. Beat both mixtures together. Add ½-1 cup raisins if desired.

Bake in a greased and floured 13"x9" pan at 350° for 30-35 minutes or until done.

Memories of Lloyd Alexander

Once upon a time, lo these many years ago, I was at BYU--this would have been the 93-94 school year, I think. My roommate Christy, who was an Elementary Music Ed major, was taking a Children's Lit class. Now I pretty much never stopped reading kids' books, so I had a great time talking to her about the stuff she was reading and recommending books, and reading the ones that she brought home. The class sounded like so much fun that I decided to take it the next semester. At the same time Christy found out that Dr. Tunnell and Dr. Jacobs were going to be teaching an evening seminar on Lloyd Alexander. Dr. Tunnell and Dr. Jacobs are both Lloyd Alexander nuts, and have written extensively about him and had a lot of contact with him in the process, and they had convinced Lloyd, who never went anywhere, to come out to BYU and speak, and they had planned this seminar in conjunction with the visit.

We both decided to sign up for the seminar (Christy took it for credit--I audited). Most of the other people were children's librarians and teachers. We read most of his books (some of which I had read before, some I hadn't), heard a lot about Lloyd's life, and were treated to readings from the delightful and out-of-print Janine is French, about how he met his wife. I was taking a bookbinding class at the same time, so I made a link-stitch book with a pig on the front (copied from Eveline Ness's cover illustration of The Book of Three) and a matching clamshell box.

The day of Lloyd's visit, he spoke during the afternoon to a crowded concert hall full of elementary school children. He read from The Arkadians, his most recent book, and answered questions from the audience. I remember one boy asked, "What does Gurgi sound like?" and he replied, "Gurgi sounds like what you think he should sound like." In the evening he came to our class, visited with us and signed all our books. One lady handed him a book open to a specific passage and asked, "Could you read this for us?" It was a bit of Gurgi dialog. Lloyd looked stricken and everybody laughed. Dr. Tunnell said, "There was a boy this afternoon who asked what Gurgi sounded like." And the lady said, "I know! That was my son!" Lloyd did read it for us (I think it was a bit about smackings and whackings on his poor tender head), sounding properly pitiful and squeaky, and we all applauded.



Several people had gifts for Lloyd, and I gave him the book and box I had made. He exclaimed over it for a while and gave me a kiss on the cheek (awww!).

We had watched a film in class earlier where Lloyd talked about answering fan mail, and showed off a few things that readers had made for him, like some little figures of the Prydain characters. So I pictured him keeping my little book in his office and maybe showing it off to somebody else later. Shortly afterwards I got this letter.

Best known for his Prydain Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander wrote nearly forty books, many of which feature cats and/or spunky redheads. He passed away May 17th at the age of 83, at home in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. His wife Janine died just two weeks ago. They were married for 62 years.