Geisha School Dropout

Mad-Eye Moody

A few days ago, a mosquito wreaked havoc on Emi.  She had bites on both hands, her back, her tummy, and right on her eyelid.  Additionally, she reacted very strongly to these bites, and so her hands grew into bright pink paws and her right eye swelled shut.  I called her doctor just to let her know because I had always read that one must be careful with eye swelling, and she recommended bringing her in.  This is what I presented to her:

Look at the expression on Emi's face!  She had that expression on the whole visit.  Oh man, her pediatrician looked at me like I was the most inept parent in the world, not only allowing a mosquito to defile my defenseless daughter's face, but to cause such a look of forlonness, for shame!

For what it's worth, Dr. McJudgeypants, I got eaten up as well, but I don't see anyone thinking THAT'S a crime against cute-manity!  Harrumph.

After being fussed over and bombarded with stickers and nurse-hugs, Emi was in a great mood as we sat in the pharmacy waiting for her just-in-case antibiotics.  In fact, she was so pleased, she decided to sing a song, one that I had never heard before (sung to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"):

No one has an eye like me, eye  like me, eye like me!  No one has an eye like me; I am very special!

No one has a face like me, face like me, face like me!  No one has a face like me; I am very special!

No one has hair like me, hair like me, hair like me!  No one has hair like me; I am very special!

etc.

Pretty soon, she had a very rapt audience.  In fact, when she got to her last "I am very special," one woman turned around with TEARS in her eyes.  It must have looked so heartwarming to her: this "poor, twisted child, so ugly, so ugly," who felt no shame in her disfigurement.   In fact, it made her special, bless her little heart.  I didn't have the energy to tell her that this was temporary, and let the woman have her moment.

Oy, this kid!!!

Poetry, Oh No-etry!

Tim was toodling around with Garage Band this weekend, and he asked the kids to spit out some song lyrics.  Here is a sampling of what they came up with; I was very surprised (and more than a little heartbroken) by the dark imagery:

there's a flower that's prettier than the others
it spins when the wind hits it
the flower wants to have 18 petals
right now it has no petals
people picked them all 

Isaac (age 7.5)

 

home was home
home was fragile
i saw a sign that said no thank you.
when i was old,
i was strong and i flipped through the air
one day i saw a little star in the morning
i saw a sign that said No!
one day i went into the garden
and i saw myself floating on a lily pad

Emi (age 4.5)

Man, was that depressing or what?  Isaac's little petals ravaged by the envious hordes, and Emi sounds like Ophelia floating down the river!  I resolved to start playing less Radiohead and more Mother Goose around the house.  My poor little babies!

Which reminds me: I have discovered that my kids have huge gaping holes in their nursery rhyme knowledge bank.  When prompted, Isaac couldn't fully recite "Humpty Dumpty," and he had never even heard of "The Muffin Man."  How was that possible?  I totally freaked out and went into intense stage mom mode, drilling him on the last line of "London Bridge" and barking at him to repeat it back to me.  I then freaked Tim out while maniacally singing all EIGHT verses of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," and so I recomposed myself for fear of additionally scarring the children.  I couldn't help the gusto; nursery rhymes were the bread and butter of 1980's ESL classes, and they brought back lots of very old memories!

Apparently the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) also takes Mother Goose and Raffi way too seriously, because they have compiled a comprehensive list with links to full lyrics and MIDI files on their website.  Let the educatin' commence!

Where I'm From

One of my blog heroes, Jenn from "Juggling Life," posted this intriguing meme.  It is set up a little like Mad Libs, but the resulting poem is so much greater than the sum of its parts.  Here is the template; it is easy enough for kids to try, but difficult enough for me to spend a couple hours racking my brains for the right things to say, and I still consider it unfinished!

I am from frying pans with loose handles, from Spam and rice served with a glass of Orange Tang.

I am from upstairs apartments with plain white walls that smelled of garlic, fish, and fabric softener.

I am from the Rose of Sharon, the jacaranda, red geraniums in terra cotta pots, and wind-blown evergreens arched over the Pacific, east to west.

I am from piano, tennis, art, writing, math, ballet/tap/jazz, gymnastics, and swim lessons.  From Jung, who renamed herself Wendy, and Chong, who chose James.

I am from hot-tempered self-sacrificers and a people who pass down their sorrow along with their hair color.

From "pretty for a fat girl" and "smart for an airhead."

I am from a God who was absent as I fell to the depths of despair, which taught me to never mind eternity and focus on what is on earth.

I'm from "the land of morning calm," from seaweed soup and fermented vegetables covered by two layers of plastic wrap, sealed inside ceramic tupperware.

From the boy who almost lost his family at the train station while fleeing the North Korean army, the little girl who first tasted chili and cornbread from the GIs who served their rations to the children at her school, and the family who landed in the heart of Texas so their daughter could have a good life.

I am from ancestral mementos stolen by thieves, faux-leather-bound photo albums, yellowed report cards in dusty portfolios, stories retold at every gathering, flashes of unsorted memories in my mind.  I am from life lessons learned the hard way and the endless search for kindred spirits.

I encourage you and your kids to try it out for yourselves!  

I Think I'm Allergic to Summer

What is it about summer that brings out the extremes in things?  

Take my garden, for instance: birds, butterflies, and bees flit and flutter past in pairs, reeling under the influence of nectar and hormones.  Every flowering plant is a-flower, every fruiting tree is a-fruiting, and if you stopped right there, you'd be able to write sonnets about how full of life summer is.

However, my eyes see danger and doom.  Our grass has browned, and our chickens miss nibbling on it.  The grapes and tomatoes can barely keep standing under the weight of all their leaves and not-quite-ripe-yet fruit.  Once the fruit ripens, the grapes' leaves will fall and the tomato plants will die.   Food spoils faster both inside and outside the house, thighs get burnt on car upholstery, sweat and oil clog pores and flatten hair.  And of course, the heat is inescapable: it is in the air, the ground, my skin, my eyes.  

The sun, giver of light and life, also doles out pain and disease.  I got sunburned on Monday playing in the pool with the kids, and now I feel flu-like symptoms as my skin starts to peel.  

I feel sorry for my kids: they love the outdoors and don't mind the heat.  Meanwhile, I feel like a BBQ pork bun about to burst. 

Maybe this is why I went through a goth phase, and why I enjoyed living in Seattle when I was 20.  Oy.

Where do you stand on summer?

Fourth of July Flag Cake

Nothing says "Happy Birthday, America!" like a good, old-fashioned flag cake!  The quintessential flag cake is Ina Garten's and it looks amazing, so go there for perfection, but here is my good-enough version.  But hey, it does the job, and I promise it tastes awesome.  

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Do you doubt me?  You know, some of us got engineering degrees instead of perfecting our pastry skills!  

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Okay FINE, I admit I could have learned how to cook and bake during all the time I spent dying my hair and listening to depressing music.

ANYWAY, my defensiveness aside, I bet Ina Garten didn't let her kids anywhere near that cake until it was serving time.  In my version, Isaac and Emi decorated the whole thing (except for the icing, that crookedness was all me).

Easy, Good-Enough Flag Cake

Ingredients:

• 1 cake baked in a 9x13" pan (we used 1 box of Dr. Oetker's Organic Lemon Cake Mix)
• 2 pints strawberries
• 1 pint blueberries
• 1 batch of whipped cream frosting (we used this recipe)

Directions:

1. Leave your cake in the pan.  Cool your cake down to room temperature.
2. Wash your fruit.
3. Slice about 1 cup of the strawberries, set aside.   Cut the rest into quarters, set aside.
4. Top the cake with the sliced strawberries, half of the blueberries, and 3/4 of the frosting.  It's okay if you can still see bits of fruit through the frosting, just make sure it's relatively smooth.
5. Scoop the rest of the frosting into a sandwich bag, then make a tiny snip in one of the bottom corners with scissors.  This will be your ghetto cake piper.  Of course, if you have a real piping set, feel free to use it, rock star.  It will come out much nicer than mine!
6. Outline a square in the top left corner of your cake with blueberries, then fill that square in with the rest of the blueberries.
7. Make your stripes by lining up your quartered strawberries end to end, followed by a row of frosting.
8. Take pictures, then refrigerate before it all melts.
9. Serve with beverage of your choice.  Ina would probably mix up some kind of fruity, fizzy champagne cocktail; I recommend beer.

As an extra piece of sunshine, here is Emi with an Independence Day greeting for you all: