i'm a restless soul

and easily swayed.

moving to wordpress. its all shiny and junk.

http://autumnrouse.wordpress.com/

so...

in the event of the apocalypse

turns out, i'll be well fixed for shampoo.

i think this is weird.

i'm not especially fussy about my hair. i kinda hate it actually. by which i mean to say, we have a very adversarial relationship. it wants to curl, though i wish it was straight. it grows where i do not want it to and will not grow where i do want it to. it's not really the color i'd like it to be... blah blah blah.

that being said, i seem vaguely obsessed with the acquisition of products to pamper, train, or otherwise interact with said adversary. i cleaned out under my sink recently and came up with no less than 18 different kinds of shampoo. not just additional bottles, no. because whenever i am in the store, and i see shampoo, i think to myself "huh, i could use some of that..."





so, i figure, everybody has something they hoard. and i'm not talking about a collection. or something, like, useful or worthwhile in its own right. instead i mean some grooming product, cleaning supply, household item that no matter how much you already have, how many varieties already have tried, you cannot resist the chance to try again, to have a little more.

maybe between the lot of us we can avoid the drugstore for the next decade or so....

hodie's new school

so, after 4 fine years at MLC hodie will be going transferring to our neighborhood school Bridlemile in the fall. we decided this for a host of reasons, and we're pretty excited about it, although i must admit i'll sort of miss the bragging rights associated with being the parent of an MLC childling.

turns out though, that the academtic rating on this neighborhood school is actually better than MLC (which is a magnet) and more than one of the parents i met today had actually pulled their kid out of montessori/private school and applied for transfer into Bridlemile since it's such a good school. sweet!

so, sacrificing nothing in terms of quality of education, we are gaining the following:

1) neighborhood kids & activities. the nature of the magnet is that the kids come from all quadrants of the town and usually don't live near one another. nice for a varied demographic, not nice for playdates.

2) more "authentic" school experience. as much as i loved the touchy feel-y child centered education model for her when she was a kindergartener, the older she gets, the more structure i think she needs. not to mention the concept of grades (which they don't do at MLC) and a less insular social model. moreover they are getting ready to stick her class into 2 years of split grade, which we did not love the last time we did it.

3) SCHOOL BUS! WOOT! i have been driving her back and forth to school for 4 years. i'm tired.

so, on the whole, we're happy! and today was the open house for the school so they could come over and meet their new teacher. i thought after being so used to MLC, the least i could do was let hodie have one day to look around the new school and meet her new teacher so it wasn't completely overwhelming come fall.

and so i sat in my sub-adult sized chair in the library while she went off to meet her new teacher. i spoke with a whole new set of highly-entitled snarky parents (not leaving them behind apparently), and waited for her to come back and give me her impressions.

they had the whole experience set up to try and ease the kids into the transition. one step in this process was each of the outgoing 4th graders from Miss Good's class wrote a letter to an incoming member. you know, give them a little inside scoop, some insight into the 4th grade experience. well, what follows was the letter for hodie. (spelling and tense errors are those of the author and reproduced faithfully)

June 6th, 2008

Dear New 4th grader,

HI! My name is (not actually going to post the name). I'm 10 years olf and I was in Miss Good's class. I don't know how I did it but all I now is that it was torchure with Miss Good.

When I found out I was in Miss Good's class I was freaking out!!! I didn't kno what it would be like. I heard so much thinks about her like "she is the worst teacher ever!" or "She is SO Mean!!" And alot more.

Just to be nice I'm going to give you some tips on how to survive Miss Good's class. One is do NOT I repet do NOT turn in eney thing late!! She hats that. The second one is if you arnt paying attention she will get MAD!!! And the last one is never LIE!! If you do sometimes she knows it. Thank you for reading this note.

Sincerely, (not actually going to post the name)

bwahahahahahahaha. ahem. not exactly the most reassuring note. one must consider the source i suppose, but hodie is now totally paranoid that her new teacher is a tyrant with a lie detector embedded in her head. so, that's awesome.

can't wait til fall!!

Kung Fu Panda

took hodie to see this one on saturday and really enjoyed it.

i am a fan of jack black, so this definitely must be considered in that context. and this film is a very typically "Black" comedy. lots of fat jokes, goof humor, and general silliness.

the opening sequence has a sumptuous stylized look that i really liked; very asian chic al-la samurai jack. charming, funny, fast-paced narration from jack lead to giggles galore.

once the dream-sequence opening is over, we're back to the typical post-pixar CGI with which some people are so enamored. while i understand the appeal, i'm pretty much over it. anymore i'd just as soon see an honest-to-god cartoon in the more traditional sense. that being said, this film contained some of the loveliest imagery i have seen in recent memory. atmospheric shots were rich with detail and color. landscapes shone with light and shadow. shots of the skies and horizons were especially gorgeous. it was almost incongruous to be giggling and awestruck by beauty at in the same breath.

voices by dutin hoffman, angelina jolie, david cross (woot!), and jackie chan add an amusing component of "where the hell do i know that voice from?" to the film experience.

worthwhile and enjoyable, definitely. i do tend to set the bar a little lower for kids movies, but i still think i'd recommend this one to anyone with a fondness for silliness and an appreciation for rich imagery.

i just decided

bsomething crazy, but exciting.

the clinic has been really slow, and we have more help than we need over the summer so dr. anne made it clear if i wanted some time off over the summer we could do that with ease. i wont get paid but i can have the time if i want it.



turns out i do.



neko case is my most favorite singer in all the land. and i find her music incredibly inspiring and her courage as a songwriter leaves me breathless and spurs me on. so. i want to see her in concert. she's coiming to bumbershoot, but i hate festival shows. with a passion. and i've been to seattle 900 bajillion times.



i've never been to reno, though...



i bought myself a ticket this afternoon. i'm taking 4 days off. i'm going to drive so i can see southern oregon. i'm going to do this. i cant decide if i'm more scared or excited.



guess i'll find out.

i will readily admit

i have a fairly unsophisticated understanding of market forces and the delicate balance of the world economy. i also know that current trends are making survival more and more difficult for a great many people in the developing nations. hearing about the price of rice and grain skyrocketing, and the concomitant increase in food insecurity weighs heavily on my mind indeed.

yet, somehow, i feel this trend, as an overall tendency, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. in much the same way i feel the increase in gasoline prices are causing profound changes in our consciousness around how we consume energy, i want to believe the increase in food prices might bring about the same kind of evolution around how we consume other things.

while listening to NPR last week i heard a story about how the spike in the cost of grain is beginning to effect people in the rural areas of Afghanistan. how it is becoming more difficult for families to feed their children. and while this is hard to hear and makes me think we as a global community need to step in to address the immediate crisis, the side effect of the overall increase in food prices has made more profitable to grow wheat than opium poppies.

this delights me. there is something inherently noble, as far as i am concerned, in growing food. but more, it is beautiful to me that it is now a more practical choice to feed people than to feed a craving for oblivion.

most of human history has put us in the position of having to spend the greater proportion of our resources (time, physical energy, money) on the acquisition of food and shelter. in the relatively recent course of western culture, there has been a profound shift in that we have more and more resources to allocate toward other pursuits. it has not necessarily made for a more fulfilling human experience. we have become indolent and insensitive to the notion that toil in the pursuit of survival can be a rewarding thing in its own right. that greater freedom to reflect on all we do not have or need to have, has created an acute sense of entitlement and dissatisfaction in generations of people that seems only to be deepening the longer it goes on.

and so it seems to me that the rise in the price of food may cause us to begin to again reflect on the origins of our sustenance and all the ways we hope it will nourish us; what it is we value in our day to day lives and why we place such weight on certain components of our life and so little on others. food and eating are almost never just about food and eating these days, so perhaps we could begin to place a higher worth on this aspect of living, as not only what allows us to survive, but brings significant satisfaction and pleasure as well.

because i feel as though if we were to acknowledge the true worth of our food, that we would place a higher value on it than we have previously and that in so doing, we could acknowledge that it is appropriate to apportion a greater part of our means toward it. the notion being that we should be paying a high premium for food. we should place greater value on being able to feed people than to make our cars go. we should see providing food as a worthwhile investment which also serves to promote wise stewardship of resources.

and I realize this is probably a naïve and overly simplistic way of seeing the situation, but honestly it is one of the few comforts i can retain in an otherwise increasingly distressing atmosphere of scarcity. i think it serves me best to learn to value the things i fundamentally require and appreciate their true worth in my life.

i suppose it’s the socio-economic equivalent of “if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with”

Stardust

I like Neil Gaiman well enough. Coraline is a fine example of his writing and I enjoyed it immensely. I think I was operating under the assumption that Stardust was likewise, a decent read for a fairly sophisticated 9 year old (of which I am possessed). Turns out, not so much.

Actually, to be fair, it probably would have been ok, but when I turn a page in the middle of what seems like a fairly innocuous scene of romance and have to stop dead in my tracks so as to avoid reading aloud “he brushed her firm nipples” to the aforementioned 9 year old… well I guess I just gave it up for lost at that point as far as she was concerned. besides, i think there’s a little too much unicorn death in it for the average adolescent girl.

Apart from that, it was an amusing enough romp. nothing very inventive here, but a decent way to pass a handful of hours.