elva_undine's photo meme.

Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.


Morning

From the other blog, The Playground

Bush is pulling the funding for RIF. RIF is our country's largest children's literacy organization. From the website, "Unless Congress reinstates funding for this program, RIF would be unable to distribute 16 million books annually to the nation's youngest and most at-risk children."

Please read this.

AND

Do something!

I can not describe my disgust.

My first encounter with RIF was in first grade, I believe. My heart just ached that day because there was a massive table full of books and all the other kids filed to the back of the room in turns to make their selections. When my row was called I didn't go and just stared at my desk trying to blink back tears. I didn't want to see everyone else's treasures and I certainly didn't want them to know I couldn't buy any. At some point, my teacher came over and said I should go back with my row and choose some books. I couldn't hold back any longer; tears flooded my face and I whispered that I hadn't brought any money. She hugged me and smiled and said that the books were gifts which meant that we didn't have to give money for them. I was so relieved and grateful I cried again. She took my hand, walking me to the gleaming mountain of FREE books, and we picked two that became my treasures.

After that, all through elementary school, I lived for the RIF days. Who were these magical people that brought in folding tables, erected them in the back of the classroom, and then decorated them with more beautiful books than I could dream of owning? It didn't matter to me then who they were; it only mattered that they were my vehicle through Imagination. Usually we were allowed to choose two books. It was almost too much for me to cope. Deliberation lasted ages while I methodically picked up each book, read its back cover and first few pages. Most of the time I'd select the fattest books that seemed appealing just to prolong the enjoyment of TWO new books.

In sixth grade I picked The Great Gilly Hopkins and Bridge to Terabithia, both by Katherine Paterson. Bridge to Terabithia is on my short list of most moving books and certainly at that point in my life, it was the top - perhaps it still is. That is the book I recognize as a threshold across my timeline; before Terabithia - babyhood, after Terabithia worlds opened and enlarged, pure enlightenment.

Indirectly, I'd say RIF helped establish the course for my life. I've always loved books, but books are expensive and I was poor. RIF bridged the chasm making my love available and attainable. As an adult, I'm formally studying literature and aspiring to become an expert. Ultimately, simply to inspire the same heart-poundings, giggles, and dry mouths that so many of my favorites evoked in me.

And now I cry for the kids who won't share this memory.

Who wants to waste all their pre-Christmas knitting time untangling wispy silver-threaded yarn?

I do! I do!

On to the wisdom:
When someone offers assistance, never decline. It's stupid.

Read my other blog for the full story.

I can't decide whether my kids are especially inquisitive and good analytical thinkers (or they just like to see how tight they can wind my head before I snap) or whether I'm particularly bad at defining the world around them in language they can understand.

My children are having a hard time grasping Television as information scrambling over electrical wires through time and space and popping out on a screen all put together again to reveal the programs we watch. This morning I'm watching The Today Show in which Al Roker flirted with the Radio City Rockettes. When Al started talking to viewers to give the time and date of an NBC and Rockettes special, my four-year-old son said to me, "He is talking to us, right?"

I answered, "Yes."

"But how can he if we are not in there?"

"He knows people are watching, so he's talking to them." I thought that was logic on the level he could get.

"Can he see us?" Incredulity abounded.

"No."

"Then how does he know we are watching?" He was no longer incredulous so much as he was skeptical.

I had to disarm him. "Ok, the Today Show is regularly scheduled programming that is broadcast live everyday at the same time from New York City. They have cameras that record what's happening and send that information to our local network carrier. This is his job - the guys who's talking? - it's his job to give us information and stories everyday so he knows - even without seeing us - that people will be watching on their televisions in their houses."

"Where are the cameras?"

"You can't see the cameras because what we see on the screen is through the eye of the camera. So we see what the camera sees, which means we can't see the camera."

"THE CAMERA HAS EYES??"

Damn it! I knew I should have said lens. Lens! of the camera. But it was the heat of the moment and I was on the spot and he was stressing me out. And it's so hard to decide which word will prompt fewer questions.

I'm so tired of those parenting magazines and books that tell you how and when to potty-train and how many onesies you should have for your newborn and which diapers don't leak and the benefits of breastfeeding versus bottle. These are all things you learn along the way. You don't have to have these answers handed to you because somebody else's fixes for these won't necessarily suit your needs. You'll realize that if you don't want to do laundry everyday, you'll keep at least three onesies per day on hand (which is twice the current suggestion). You'll learn by experiment that the expensive disposable diapers really are the best in terms of fit and leak guard. And plenty of other moms will unload on you their opinion of breastfeeding, bottle feeding, and which you should choose and why.

BUT! No one ever writes a book or website or magazine to parents giving them child-sized physics lessons or grammar guides or chemistry experiments suitable for toddlers who will mix their orange peel with their milk every bloody day to verify all possible ramifications; including, will mom yell today too, will mom still make me drink it, will the milk turn orange, will I get milk and an orange tomorrow too? Children do this because they are miniature explorers and scientists with thousands of unanswered questions.

Which brings me back to the point. Parents are grown-ups. They can figure out the answers to grown-up things as it pertains to children - bottle, breast, onesies, diapers. These are not the problem; they are merely the mundane uncertainties of parenthood that moms and dads are bound to encounter and conquer by default with nary a sweated brow. These are the gimmes, the busy-work, the reasonable service of caring for someone very tiny.

There are bonus questions, though, that books, magazines, and online forums never tell you about. If you even find the bonus questions buried in the small print of layette tedium, you're further along the #1 Mom/Dad path than if you're gorging on Mommy and Me classes, Better Body After Baby, and Including Dad in Breastfeeding articles.

What parents really need help with is answering all those questions that as adults we take for granted and for which there is no child language. For example, jump starting a car when its battery has died because the boy left his little over-the-door light on all night long. First they thought we had to get out of the car and jump up and down, which quickly transitioned more appropriately to we must jump inside the car, then they feared the car exploding (don't know where that came from); then they believed we wouldn't be able to drive anywhere without the neighbor's car in tow by its jumper cables. Finally, they were disappointed that the car didn't literally jump itself up when the engine eventually started.

"But why is it called jumping? I didn't get to jump," was the five-year-old's complaint.

"It's a figure of speech. It doesn't really have anything to do with jumping."

"Then why do you say jumping?"

"Because most languaged beings understand their environment in terms of other things they already know. It doesn't have to actually jump the car for the word jump to be an appropriate explanation of the electrical charges that occur across the cables and in the batteries."

It never ends there though. As much as I'd like to dizzy them to a halt with verbosity, that doesn't result in learning or understanding. So, I am at a loss when the two-year-old counters everything with, "Why?" in this lilting high-pitched and insatiably curious voice. The five-year-old may never understand figurative language because I have no concept how to explain it except by more figurative language. At least I can say with measured confidence that the middle one won't leave his car light on anymore. I hope.

Ok, I know I'm not an actual pioneer - of this territory or any other - but since this is my first time on LiveJournal and this is my first post, I feel like I'm in undiscovered places. So to soothe myself and to inspire new heights of victory over such things as "tags," "userpics," and journal customization, I imagine myself as a clever and tenacious bushwhacker bravely conquering the techno-blogosphere.

Who knows where it may lead? I began in support of a friend's quest to become LiveJournal's next Idol and here I am with my very own journal entry. So I think I'll try again with a substantial entry by playing along with LJ Idol. I can't actually compete because I jumped too late, but I have a nifty LJ Idol "I'm Playing the Home Game" icon that I simply have to use.