Tots and TV

Posted on 09/18/2010 by chick

Dear Marshall,

Everyone has their own opinions about how to take care of a child, and they can get downright nasty if you disagree with them. This can be quite a problem for new mothers, unsure of themselves, not knowing whether to trust their own instincts or listen to someone else. Personally, I don’t mind advice, but I can’t stand being told what to do, so I usually don’t try to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t do. Except your father, of course. He’s a special case. 😉

So why I got so judgmental on your Auntie K the other day, I don’t know. I ranted about moms parking their kids in front of the television. That was before she told me how much she lets her daughter watch TV, and it’s a lot. Oops. She claims that the television is good because it allows her more time for herself and her child learns all sorts of wonderful things, like how to count to ten in Spanish. In her opinion, television is a free and educational babysitter, so who says she shouldn’t take advantage of it?

The American Academy of Pediatrics, for one. They recommend that children under two not watch television at all. Their policy is to “discourage television viewing for children younger than 2 years, and encourage more interactive activities that will promote proper brain development, such as talking, playing, singing, and reading together.”

Sure, I’d like to have a little more time to myself, but I accepted long before you were born that my personal life would, essentially, be put on hold for a few years while I devoted myself to your care. You deserve to learn about the world in real time, not at the hyper pace of television, and you deserve to learn from real people with real emotions, not actors tossing off prewritten lines.

Without the aid of television, it can be difficult to keep you busy. I have to get inventive. I make puppets out of socks and forts out of sheets. I chase you around the dining room table shouting, “Mommy’s gonna get you!” I bounce you on my knee and play “This Little Piggy” with you. We read together and sing together. Since ranting at your auntie, I’ve become even more conscientious and now we also play games involving colors and numbers. Your father has his own set of games that he plays with you, too.

It’s tiring, but how many of your precious laughs and smiles would we have missed if we’d left you staring vacantly at the TV every day? And if we provide you a strong foundation for an active, creative life, then we’ll have gotten an even greater value for our time.

Don’t worry. This ain’t “Little House on the Prairie,” kid. When you’re a little older, after we’ve gotten your brain wired correctly, we’ll let you watch some television. In the meantime, you can hold the remote control. 😉

Love,

Mom

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Done!

Posted on 09/15/2010 by chick

Today marks the 120th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birth and the end of the Marplethon. Did I finish in time? Of course.  I finished  the last few stories tonight. I will tell you about them some time later this week when I’m not so tired.

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SITY: August Beauties

Posted on 09/10/2010 by chick

I had a hard time finding time for exercise this summer, so I started taking a break in the day that I called my “blackberry walk.” First, I’d check to see if any more blackberries had ripened overnight. There never were very many. It was a weak excuse for a walk, to be sure, but at least it got me outside. After checking the blackberries, I’d tour the rest of the yard, perhaps swing on the swing for a few minutes. Sometimes I brought my camera with me. Here are some of the photos I snapped during my blackberry walks.

Bug

I’m always amazed at the details my camera can pick up. Snap a picture and find that there’s another whole world in miniature!

Dragonfly

I love watching the dragonflies swooping around the yard, snacking on mosquitoes. At this time of the year, they get slow and lazy, and it’s easy to catch one resting on a leaf.

Hornworm

The coolest (and grossest) thing about this beastie, the tomato hornworm, is that it often gets infected by parasitic wasps. Somehow the mama wasp injects her eggs into the caterpillar and then, as the eggs hatch, the larvae eat their way out of the hornworm. You can tell this has happened if the hornworm is covered with tiny little cocoons. It’s sad to see any animal, even a destructive bug, in such a state, which is why I showed you a healthy (or at least not obviously sick) specimen.

Purple

I’m not a big fan of hostas except that I like to pop the buds (snap!), but I like the way this photo came out.

Spider

I love to bring bouquets of flowers into the house, and this picture is another reminder to myself to always check the blooms for spiders first!

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Surprise, Surprise

Posted on 09/09/2010 by chick

Dear Baby Girl,

When you’re pregnant, people always ask, “So are you going to find out the sex?” And I say, “Of course!” Thanks to modern science, there’s no reason to wait. My theory is that knowing in advance gives you time to adjust. I also think that waiting until the birth because you “want to be surprised” is silly, since you can be just as surprised on the day of the ultrasound.

For us, that day was Tuesday, September 7, 2010. Your whole family was there for the special moment. Your brother was sitting in Daddy’s lap, trying to squirm out so he could play with all the “toys” in the room. Your daddy was trying to keep him quiet. I was on my back with a glob of warm gel oozing down the side of my belly as the ultrasound technician scanned you from head to toe and side to side. He looked at your brain and your face and your spine and your heart and your kidneys, all of which looked completely normal to him and completely beautiful to me. And, of course, he looked for the telltale signs of gender and announced that you were a baby girl, just what we had hoped for.

We are looking forward to welcoming you into the world. See you in January!

Love,

Mom

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Libraries and Hotel Disappoint

Posted on 09/07/2010 by chick

The realization that I had fallen behind on the Marplethon prompted me to figure out exactly which books I had left to read and where I might find them (hence the recent post). On Saturday, I discovered that a nearby library contained all but one of the books I needed, so I checked their website, discovered that they were open on Saturdays, and jumped in my car. It was a beautiful day for a drive and I found the building with no problem.

Only there was a problem—the library was not open. Did I misunderstand their website? No. I checked again when I got home. There was some fine print about Saturday hours only happening during the school year, but the school year began in August in most towns around here. Checking other local libraries, each of which had at least one book that I needed, all claimed to have Saturday hours, too, and all phrased in such a way that you would believe they were open now. But what they really meant was that Saturday hours start after Labor Day. You’d think that librarians, of all people, could use words accurately. Hah!

So I’m still waiting to get my books, which limits my remaining reading time. To make things just a little easier on myself, I purchased At Bertram’s Hotel. Like most Marple books, it is fast reading, and I was able to finish it that very night. But I am sorry to say, particularly as I did buy it, that it is one of the worst so far.

At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie
Grade: C

Am I being too harsh in giving this Marple book a C? Perhaps, but I was bored during several stretches, puzzled during others, and disappointed by the ending. Miss Marple did not feature as prominently as I might have wished, and as was the sad case in some of the other novels, her sleuthing consisted mostly of eavesdropping.

Modernity was an intrusive presence in the novel. I have always enjoyed the fact that the Marple books are outdated. They take place in the distant (to me) past and Miss Marple is old-fashioned even for her time. I like to step back into that time, so to speak, and so references to things like The Beatles and plastic just rub me raw, probably rawer than change did Miss Marple. Christie herself had to grow and change with the times, I know, but I wish she had left Miss Marple living in the distant past, not growing older and feebler in an ever less charming world. That’s just too much like real life.

But change was a sort of theme of At Bertram’s Hotel.  The more things change, the more they stay the same, mused Miss Marple at one point during the novel, and she also thought the reverse must be true: the more things stay the same, the more they change. It was her attempt to recapture her own youth that made her want to vacation for two weeks at Bertram’s Hotel. She discovered that one can never really go back, and that if something seems just as it did during one’s childhood, there’s probably something wrong with it, as there was something decidedly “off” about the beautifully restored old hotel. It was simply too good to be true. By the time one of the staff members got shot on the street, Miss Marple had pieced together enough information to steer the police in their search, not just for the murderer, but also for the head of a crime ring. That’s not a spoiler, by the way. Christie let most of the cats out of the bag early, which is another one of my complaints against this mystery. I recommend At Bertram’s Hotel only for completists like myself who plan to read all of Christie’s novels, stinkers included.

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About the Future

Posted on 09/06/2010 by chick

Sometimes I attempt to capture my thoughts as they rove from subject to subject. I scribble down the thoughts on random pieces of paper, which then generally drift around the house for months, becoming more and more tattered, until I finally either put them away in my memory box or toss them. My blog is as good as my memory box, so here are the words from a scrap of paper that I just found in my office.

When we were young and the future was a complete mystery…

Before we made the decisions (or lack of decisions) that formed the cement of our lives…

Back then we could dream of anything.

Now we can look forward and and see the general shape of our future, and if we did not shape the cement well, if we did not leave ourselves enough air holes and exits and room to grow, we may feel as if it were a prison.

But what if it were a jungle gym instead? Or a tree? Or a crazy labyrinth with potential surprises at every turn?

Grab your chisel, because you just never know how you might change the future.

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Wherefore Art Thou, Marple?

Posted on 09/05/2010 by chick

I am so far behind on the Marplethon. I don’t know how it happened. One minute I had all the time in the world, the next minute it had been almost a year. Time doesn’t just fly, it hauls ass.

On the bright side, I finished two other books from the list: Nemesis and The Murder at the Vicarage. It has been so long since I read them that I don’t have much to say. Here’s a little something to give you an idea what they’re about.

Nemesis by Agatha Christie
Grade: A-

Nemesis is sort of a sequel to A Caribbean Mystery, which I also enjoyed. In this story, one of the characters that Miss Marple met on her vacation in the Caribbean has since died. He left her an intriguing letter, asking her to use her sleuthing abilities to look into an old murder case, but without telling her whose murder to investigate! She accepts and, as always, rises to the challenge. I was fooled into suspecting the wrong character. When the happens, but you don’t feel that the author cheated, it is the mark of a good mystery.

The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie
Grade: B+

In The Murder at the Vicarage, Miss Marple is portrayed as an interfering busybody, which is perhaps part of why I just can’t make myself love it. A disagreeable man is found murdered in the study of the local vicar. Everyone is a suspect, even the vicar, but with Miss Marple’s talents, which include gossip and eavesdropping, the murderer is sure to be found.

Now here is an updated Marplethon list.

  1. 4.50 From Paddington
  2. At Bertram’s Hotel
  3. The Body in the Library
  4. A Caribbean Mystery
  5. Greenshaw’s Folly (short story published in Double Sin and Other Stories)
  6. The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
  7. Miss Marple’s Final Cases, which includes Miss Marple Tells a Story, Sanctuary, and the 4 Marple stories from Three Blind Mice and Other Stories
  8. The Moving Finger
  9. The Murder at the Vicarage
  10. A Murder Is Announced
  11. Nemesis
  12. A Pocket Full of Rye
  13. Sleeping Murder
  14. They Do It With Mirrors
  15. The Thirteen Problems (a.k.a. The Tuesday Club Murders), which includes The Tuesday Night Club, The Idol House of Astarte, Ingots of Gold, The Bloodstained Pavement, Motive vs. Opportunity, The Thumb Mark of St. Peter, The Blue Geranium, The Companion, The Four Suspects, A Christmas Tragedy, The Herb of Death, The Affair at the Bungalow, Death by Drowning
  16. Three Blind Mice and Other Stories, which includes the following Marple stories: Strange Jest, The Tape-Measure Murder, The Case of the Perfect Maid, The Case of the Caretaker

I reordered the list to remove all the repeats and separate the short stories from the novels. I also removed Agatha Christie’s Marple: The Life and Times as it turns out to be by Anne Hart, and while it may be interesting, it isn’t a necessary part of the Marplethon.

My path to the finish line is much clearer now. I have only four novels and three short stories left. I don’t know if I can finish them all in so little time (the deadline being Christie’s birthday, September 15th), but I’m certainly going to try!

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Another Rant

Posted on 09/04/2010 by chick

There have been so many irritating stories in the news, I feel like I have to say something.

So let’s talk about the mosque thing. An Islamic group wants to build a community center near Ground Zero in Manhattan. Opponents feel that it’s insulting to the people who died at Ground Zero. Some of them even think it’s a deliberate insult, like rubbing salt in a wound. Rush Limbaugh, who I’ll use as an example of “they,” thinks that the Democrats and the Liberals and the Socialists and the Left and “every person in this country who has a problem with this country,” all of whom he lumps into one big group, want the mosque built because they’re trying to destroy American values, including the religious freedom that they claim to espouse.

I have to say first that I was made ill by reading the transcript of Limbaugh’s August 17th show, the segment entitled “Why This Mosque on This Spot?” I have never seen so much venom, blame-gaming, generalization, name-calling, and political legerdemain all in one place. Limbaugh has his horrible shtick down to an art. For example, he doesn’t even have to explain what his issues are with Obama. He just calls him “Imam Obama” and expects that his listeners will both understand and agree. And with that one phrase, that one little alliterative phrase, he links Obama to Muslims and, by association, with terrorists. So even if the listener didn’t have any real cause to hate Obama, Limbaugh has just given him one: Obama (Limbaugh implies) is not just a member of the Terrorist Group for Men, he’s the President.

Name calling is not just childish and mean-spirited. It’s also lazy. Limbaugh should have taken the time to explain what he meant by “Imam Obama.” It is probably a reference to the commonly-held, but very mistaken, belief that Obama is a Muslim and also perhaps a reference to what Obama said publicly about the mosque. Obama’s original comments on the subject are not easy to find on an “official” website (i.e., a major news site, and not something like a blog). What I did eventually find is this, I hope it’s accurate:

Let me be clear: as a citizen and as a president, I believe Muslims have a right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country, and that includes the right to build a house of worship and community center on private property in Lower Manhattan.

I think this statement is perfect, and it’s a shame that Obama felt pressured to backpedal later and state that he wasn’t commenting on the “wisdom” of putting the building on that site. But Obama’s comment about “wisdom” brings to mind another point that so many opponents are making. They say it isn’t about the right to build, but rather about the rightness (i.e., morality) of building. In their minds, it would be immoral. I could potentially see their point if Islam itself were responsible for the terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center. But do we hold Christianity responsible if a Christian nut job kills a bunch of people because “God told him to do it”? Of course not. So why would we hold Islam responsible for the acts of a few extremist Muslims?

It’s hard for me, having read Limbaugh’s words, not to return to him as a subject and rant about how wrong he is, both in his opinions and his unfair rhetorical tactics, but the mosque is the real subject and real issue is religious freedom. A lot of people think that by limiting the rights of others, they strengthen their own positions. That’s not how it works, though. The best way, and perhaps the only way, to preserve your rights is by preserving the rights of others, making sure that each individual or group gets exactly the same rights, so that yours will never be questioned. That is why we must all fight for the right of this Islamic group to build their community center anywhere they please so long as they have the legal right (which they do). If you don’t fight for their religious freedom, then next time it may be your religion that is singled out, your church or synagogue that can’t be built because of someone else’s fear or bigotry. Protect yourself by protecting them. Let them build their mosque.

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Empty

Posted on 09/03/2010 by chick

I’m so sorry that I haven’t written anything lately. I look at the empty post screen and a sort of panic comes over me. I can’t focus enough to write, but I feel time slipping away and memories fading from my sleep-deprived brain. It’s September now, a beautiful month, the month of my birth, and I don’t want to look back at my blog and see it end here. So I promise to come back soon and write something to fill this empty screen.

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August

Posted on 08/17/2010 by chick

The blog in August: a lot of nothing with a very little something here and there to break up the void.

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