Stuff I’m Suddenly Peevish About
Jul 18th, 2009 by Sonja

 It all started with a rainy, windy Saturday afternoon.  We took the LightChildren and a friend down to Church Street to see the sights and pass some time because when it’s rainy and windy “dey ain’t nuthin’ doin'” at the cottage.  So off we went to find our fortunes … or perhaps a board game and a fresh book.  LightBoy in particular was in need of fresh reading material.  So once the rain really started we took refuge in Borders.  After finding a board game based on Halo, we made our way to the Young Adult section to find a book or two for our young man.  There we were accosted by shelf upon shelf of book covers that missed the bulls eye of soft porn only by the narrowest of margins.  There were books all aimed at young women wanting to fit in and these days it would appear that fitting in requires merchandizing your body and making an object of it.  That was the lesson I took from the book covers.  It was difficult to find a book which would hold a young man’s interest in that section and we gave up … and got him Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton.  I’m not certain the books in that section would hold my daughter’s interest either … but that’s another story.

Then later in the week two other things happened.  First I had a mini-reunion with my two best (girl) friends from highschool.  We’ve maintained sporadic contact in the (cough-cough) years since graduation and get together too infrequently for all of us.  This was the longest reunion of all … we got to spend eight hours together all at one whack.  It was fabulous.  In a funny coincidence, we all three have two children; each of us have an oldest daughter and a youngest son.  The daughters are all in highschool and the sons are all in middle school.  Among many of the issues we discussed about our children was that of reading and books and from there the larger issue of boys and reading.  So it was with interest that I followed the second happening –  Open Mic at IMonk Cafe:  What Boys Might Read … there was a fairly lively discussion (128 comments at last count) about books of interest to boys at the middle to high school age.

It’s a great thread and is an incredible resource of reading material for all children in the middle to highschool ages.  I’m going to be referring back to it again and again throughout the year for both LightChildren.  LightGirl has read many of the books suggested, but there are many there she hasn’t.  LightBoy would enjoy many of them and has yet to engage them.  But here’s the thing that makes me peevish … what the hell was going on in Borders and why couldn’t I see any of those books that day?   The only thing I could see were dime store trash aimed at girls.  I didn’t say anything, but LightBoy turned to me in frustration and said, “Mom, these are all girls books.  Where are the books I’d like.”  I had to find a computer and do an age related search to find a book.  It was ridiculous.

Girls BikeThen I started really thinking about it.  I remembered back to when I was young.  I had a blue bike.  The only thing that denoted that my bike was a “girls” bike was the cross bar; mine swooped down for my now non-existant skirt.  The bikes my brothers rode had a crossbar that went straight across and if they jammed their crotch on them it was very painful.  Makes no sense.  Given our anatomical differences, boys should have the low, swoopy cross bar and the one for the girls should go straight across.  But back when bikes were first developed, girls wore skirts.  Now, of course, when one attempts to purchase a bike for one’s child one must purchase a pink flowery bike for a girl or a blue racing-ish bike for a boy.  This means that if you have a child of each gender you buy two bikes of every size (or you become adept at painting bikes).

Have you looked at women’s clothing lately?  Particularly outerwear?  Most of it is pink or purple.  Heaven forfend if you want navy blue, then you have to buy men’s sizes.  What if you have big feet?  Then you are relegated to men’s sizes and men’s (boring) colors.  Land’s End/Sears is the worst.  I’m fairly certain there are gay men with big feet who want brightly colored foot wear.  And there are women with big feet out there who want it too.  Like me.  And there are women with smaller feet who don’t want to wear brightly colored footwear, they want to wear the boring colors.  And short men with small feet.  The point is … why the genderism/sexism in all the marketing?

Is this what all of the feminists really fought for?  Is this what equality really looks like?   Really?   Somehow, I don’t think so.  It doesn’t feel right, or just or sane at all to me.  I’m not advocating for men and women to look alike by any means, I celebrate my difference daily.  But the result of this feminist revolution seems to be that we have fewer choices, not more and those choices seem to be based on market forces, rather than justice.

and it all makes me really peevish.

Church Street
Jul 17th, 2009 by Sonja

One of our favorite places to go when we’re up here in Vermont is the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington.  It’s a fascinating place.  It’s always been a draw to me.  When I was young it was just a regular street with cars and shops.  But there was an eclectic mix of shops and they were tantalizing.  There was a Chinese restaurant at the bottom and around the corner on Main Street was a second hand clothing store that had the best stuff in it.

Now it’s all different.  And even more fun.

Church Street facing northChurch Street is a street of about 4 or 5 blocks in length in the middle of Burlington, Vermont.  It has end points on Main Street and Pearl Street.  On the Pearl Street end is a very large and imposing brick church which may be seen for the entire length of Church Street, which is most likely the source of the street name.   As I wrote earlier, when I was a teenager it was a regular street.  At some point in the ’80’s the city elders had the very wise idea to brick off the street and turn it into a “marketplace” for pedestrians; an outdoor mall, if you will.  Nowadays, you can drive through Church Street on the cross streets, but you have to stop for pedestrians who may wander out in front of you at will and without looking, but you can’t drive on Church Street itself.  There are shops, restaurants, carts, entertainers and political booths.  One might hear every form of music ever divined by man or God on Church Street in an afternoon.  LightHusband noted as we walked along that, “You could squeeze all of Washington, DC and still not get all the diversity in one place that you have on Church Street on a Saturday afternoon.”  It’s really an amazing place to be.

Yesterday, LightHusband and I had lunch outdoors at the Bangkok Bistro sitting on Church Street and watched the people go by.  I could’ve sat there all afternoon, what an endless source of creative inspiration.  There are people from all walks of life passing by our table, leaving snippets of conversation hanging in the air behind them.  In particular, I found myself noticing shoes yesterday and percieved that a preferred form of footwear has become the flipflop.  But the flipflop has come a long way from the humble drugstore purchase and beachwear of yesteryear.  I was fascinated to see all the different versions of flipflop there are.  I won’t wear them because I have a weird aversion to having things between my toes, but they fascinate me nonetheless.

We just love the place.  And go there to hang out, drink coffee, wander in and out of stores, talk to shop keepers, watch people, day dream, whatever, whenever we get the chance.  If you ever find yourself in Vermont I strongly suggest you do the same.  It’s a wonderful place to spend a day.

What Has Been Going On?
Jul 11th, 2009 by Sonja

Where on earth have I been?

Right where I usually am.  My digs in Virginia.  I could say I’ve been busy and that would be true.  I could also say I’ve been dry and that would be true.  I could also say I’ve been processing some stuff and that would be true too.  So a lot of stuff’s been going on and it’s made for not much writing.  Some of that means that I’m getting more and more frustrated with myself, so that’s coming to an end … maybe.  I’ve got some ideas that I’ve started on and I want to flesh out.  Hopefully I’ll be able to do that.  For now though, here’s what’s been happening in the LightHouse over the past couple of months … well, some of the highlights anyway.

LightGirl’s U16 Girls hockey team finished their season 2nd in their league.  They went to an end of season tournament and played up a step in terms of the level of teams they’d faced all season.  They lost every game, but played hard and learned a lot about where they want to go next year.   They played three games in one day; these were 16 hard playing tired hockey girls at the end of the day.

I think she had a weekend off and then Spring Season began.  She played on co-ed intramural team and had a ball.  There was another goalie on the team so she had someone to share goaltending duties with, and two other girls that were her friends.  I’ve never met a coach who put less stress on his players while still managing to teach them and lead them.  He was really good with those kids.  I have to say … he made a terrible club president, but an excellent coach.

In the middle of that she had tryouts for the 2009-2010 Travel Season.

From the moment LightGirl thought about playing hockey, she’s wanted to play on a boy’s team.  Last spring she tried out as a skater for the appropriately aged boy’s team and missed it because she was afraid to play defense (she’d never played it before).  This year she tried out as a goalie for the U16Midgets.  That is the Midget team that are Under 16 years old.  Boys.  One day I’ll do a post on the nonsensical names for age classifications in hockey.  There were five goalies vying for four positions.  Two of the five were girls.  Another (different) two were wicked good.  It was a high stress weekend that brought on a minor (very minor) replay of pancreatitis for me.

LightBoy also decided that he would try out for a travel team.  His age group is known as the Pee Wees.  Between the two of them … LightGirl trying out for the Girls and the Midgets and LightBoy trying out for the Pee Wees … I believe they had a total of 13 ice times that weekend.  Did I mention it was Mother’s Day weekend?  I spent Mother’s day at the rink and received a soggy rose for my efforts.

By the end of the day on Sunday I could feel the familiar twinge in my upper abdomen that signaled my pancreas was not happy with something.  Fortunately, I know how to handle this now and instead of four days in the hospital I changed my diet and took it easy for a few days.

LightGirl was invited to join the U16Midget Minor team that Sunday night.  And we were left to wonder what the heck that meant.  It wasn’t long before we found out.  The club had a large number of players in her birth year (who will be first year players in that age classification … in other words they can play for two years as a U16 team) and a slightly smaller number in the year ahead of her; enough that they could field two teams.  One is a mix of both years; the other is just her birth year.  She is on the latter.  The club has been waiting to field a team that is year specific.  So it will be interesting to see how they do.

This raised some issues in our house.  LightGirl has played with the same girls for three years now and made some great friends.  It’s a close team.  The parents know each other fairly well; we do spend quite a fair amount of time together, afterall.

It was a hard decision in some ways and others a no-brainer, but LightGirl decided to play with the boys for the coming season.  So this summer has been about that transition.  Discovering who her new teammates are.  Off ice conditioning so that she can keep up with the boys.  And the emotional fall out of leaving her friends behind.

In the meantime, LightBoy has discovered a certain talent for marksmanship and computer programming.  So even while he is working his hockey skills, he’s also learning archery, guns and is building computer games using a program called Scratch.   He’s also decided that he wants to take on Linux this year, so he’ll be figuring that out along the way.  Twelve is an awkward age for boys, in particular.

He’s also been very interested in paintball and airsoft.  He has a lot of equipment and goes out with his friends to both official fields and backyards on missions.  They spend alot of time plotting, planning and strategizing.  He has also engineered at least one new gun for airsoft out of pvc and other parts including duct tape.  Yes, it does work.

I have been working with two friends (one of which is BlazingEwe) to start a new business.  Quilting, of course.  We have a website and we’re taking it slow.  We’ve sold two quilts on commission thus far.  It’s probably not a great time, economically speaking to start a quilting business.  Oh well … Our business is called Needle In Peace and that link will take you to our website.  Once there you can get to our Flickr site and see many of our quilts.

I also discovered back in March that my thyroid is failing.  This seems to be a family trait as my father, his sister and my brother all have the problem as well.  My primary care physician was attempting to handle this, but I’d prefer to see an endocrinologist who knows all the signs and symptoms as well as all the blood tests to look at.  So I have that appointment scheduled when we return from Vermont as I’m still not feeling quite well.

So … there you have it, in a very large nutshell.  Where I’ve been and what’s been going on.  More to come soon.

Four Years! Is My Term Up?
Jul 10th, 2009 by Sonja

Sometime around this time of year marks the fourth anniversary of my blog and I’m once again in Vermont writing from my beloved porch overlooking the bay.  There is a southerly breeze, some puffy white clouds scudding over the mountains and wavelets lapping on the shore make a wonderful white noise for pondering.

For having written for so long, you’d think I’d have hit the one thousand post mark.  But no.  I might have, if I hadn’t hit this slump earlier this year.  Ah well … some day soon.

LightBoy is sitting next to me, working on his latest project: a programming language out of MIT called “scratch.”  He’s doing quite well with it and has made some cool little computer games.  He’s decided that when we get home he wants to learn some linux.  Alrighty, then.  Sounds like a school project to me.

LightGirl is off running (literally) with her friends and will go swimming their return.  She is drinking up their constant presence like water in the desert.   Her transition to the boys hockey team this fall is likely to be somewhat rocky and she will not have the company of the girls she is accustomed to each week.

LightHusband is next door helping a neighbor with a computer problem.  He’s been fishing, fishing and more fishing.  He has done some catching this year but has been too lazy to do the cleaning necessary for eating.  Last evening he saw an osprey catch a fish that was almost too big for the bird to fly with.  The return of more osprey to the lake is a good sign.

I am reading novels again for the first time in years.  Returning to some of my old favorite authors and old favorite themes.  John Steinbeck has been a favorite author since I was a teenager and I’ve read nearly all of his books, some two or three times (or more).   But I found one I’d never read (To A God Unknown) and gulped that down in one afternoon/evening.  Then, because I loved the original (Pillars of the Earth), I picked up Ken Follett’s World Without End.  This one took a little longer to read, but I’d forgotten how satisfying it is to drown in a novel.  And I do.  The characters become friends, the words swim by creating scenarios rather than sentences and paragraphs.  I can’t explain what happens, but it’s not really reading so much as it is living within the book.  And I am always bereft when a book ends.  What will happen to the characters next?  I tried next to pick up Night by Elie Wiesl, but couldn’t make the jump from 12th century England to the 20th century concentration camps.  I’ll read it soon, but have to transition.

So … I’ve been doing this with sometimes more and sometimes less enthusiasm for four years now.  Is my term up?  I don’t think so.  I know I have more to write and feel it burbling up more and more frequently now.  But the writing I want to do is deeper, more complex and takes more of me.  So I think it will happen less often but be of greater quality … perhaps.  I hope it will be more thought-provoking or thought-enhancing or maybe just thought-ful.  So there will be more to come here in my tiny few mega-bytes of the tubes.  I hope you’ll enjoy it.

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