American Idol - Go MK!

It's been years since I watched American Idol at all, let alone paid attention early on in the season. But this year's different! One of my former students, the awesome MK Nobilette, is in the top 30!

I'm so proud of her, and I can't wait to see more of her performances! She's a great person, not just a great singer, not to mention a trailblazer for gay women.

Check out some of her stuff here:

Audition Video (in case my superskill at html doesn't work, she starts around 8:52)

Idol Group Performances (she starts around 3:20)

Pre-Idol awesomeness:

Dangit, Thomas

My kid loves Thomas the Tank Engine. So do lots of others. But it turns out even this show, which I usually tolerate just fine for my kid (aside from the incessant theme song) has a problem with pink.

A conversation I just had with my mother:

I really hope all these conversations about kids' toys, and the messages we send our children about what parts of them are valuable, and which parts are shameful, gets us somewhere, but I'm not feeling too encouraged. Amazon, a pretty good indicator of how shopping looks across America, looks like this:

"Toys" section preview - only dolls and art have any pink in them at all, even though nothing is technically gendered

"Girls" toys - all pink, all the time, except for the one thing that's white with a rainbow. The rest of the page was just as pink

"Boys" toys. No pink to be found. Boys get to have all the other colors, though, including purple.

On the upside, there are Goldiblox, which are pretty awesome. I plan to buy a bunch of sets for the kiddo when he's old enough to understand how to not chew on them. And if I ever have a daughter, I'll get even more of them for her.




Goldieblox gets it - pink isn't what makes girl's toys frustrating! These girls do all sorts of great things, and they still get to like pink! They still get to be proud of being girls, who like girly things! I love it.

PS - here's the original Goldieblox commercial, featuring a version of The Beastie Boys "Girls," which they've since had to take down from most places. I like it with both songs, but it's nice to have the lyrics, too.

A New Series

Ross has gotten started on a new series! Here come airplanes!!!

 He starts by designing the images in a program called SketchUp, which lets him make 3D models of the planes. He loves this, because he loves planes and engineering. It's a perfect match.

Once he's happy with the designs, he prints them out and uses his super cool Huion LED Light Pad to trace the image onto watercolor paper. 

Seriously this thing is so cool - adjustable brightness, flexible, super light and even ever-so-slightly sticky.
Thanks dad!

Then, he fills the plane with masking fluid, which is kind of like rubber cement, but easy to remove. That way, he can paint the sky and the background without having to worry about going outside (or inside) the lines. 

 This is as far as he's gotten on any of them now, but there are 4 different planes in different states of completion hanging out on our lovely dining room table right now. The kiddo is going nuts trying to get at them!

I imagine we'll have a whole series of planes up and listed on Etsy within a week or so! I'm excited!!!

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I'm thankful today for Campbell's tomato soup, because it tastes like my childhood. Also for safe spaces to talk about tricky things, new opportunities, glittery orange nailpolish, and Canada, because they made this awesome commercial:

Let It Go

I'm seriously obsessed with this song right now. Idina Menzel is just amazing, and it's one of those awesome broadway-type songs that just makes your eyes well up. All the feelings have to go somewhere, right?




It's nice to be back home. I had an excellent time in LA, but it's definitely not my city. Alameda is better.

Business Trip, Woah

Tomorrow I'm going on my very first, all grown up, overnight business trip! I'm actually ridiculously excited. I get to stay in a hotel, and visit artsy places, and talk to other professionals about teaching and schools and all sorts of stuff! I get to "expense" things! How neat is that?

Granted, most people my age, who have been in their careers for as long as I have (in education since age 19 - probably about 10 years total in the field, since I took that little break to have hot orange hair and work at Urban Outfitters) have done this kind of thing already. But it doesn't happen nearly so often for classroom teachers.

I'm totally panicking about what to bring - should I wear dresses? I don't have any suits...I usually wear very casual clothes at work, 'cause that's the kind of school I'm at. But these other schools - who knows what they all wear? I think I'm gonna go all Ms. Frizzle, but with less crazy hair. I've got a couple of very teacher-y dresses, and even though it's gimmicky, they've gotta be a better option than jeans, right?

I'm gonna try to take a ton of pictures of cool stuff I see, and I may have to do a total education dork-out post after, because I'm pretty sure I'll be all amped up on best practices and stuff!

And then, after the business trip, it's Kelle's baby shower! It's gonna be so great. Almost all of her boyfriend's family will be there, I think, including his grandmother who just arrived from Vietnam, maybe even planning her trip to be in California for the shower. And all our Liggett aunts! They're the best group of strong sisters ever, and I can't wait for all the hugs and chats and wonderful love they'll be bringing.

I'm super happy for Kel, too, that they're all doing this - I know I loved having my family there for my wedding, and this celebration of a new life is so important too. We really just have the best family - there for each other, so much!

Magic Snow, or how to make a giant mess

I really truly cannot figure out how all these pristine mommy-bloggers do it! They craft gorgeous educational activities, photograph them every step of the way, engage their kids in them (neatly, of course!), put up stunning pictures and still seem to have time to do things like cook dinner afterwards! It's amazing.

 That is so not how crafty fun time goes at my house. I had been wanting to try this "magic snow" recipe and activity for ages (since before Christmas) but I always had a feeling it wasn't going to go as smoothly as it looked here, where I found it first (lovely photos of this activity happening indoors are about 1/3 of the way down the page).

I was so right. The kiddo had a great time, don't get me wrong. But neat and pretty this was not. My back porch is still recovering, and I'm pretty sure there's cornstarch in all the crevices of my phone.

We did two "scienspeewments:"  magic snow and oobleck. Of course, I didn't take the proper ingredients picture until after the hurricane of kid fun had ended.

Hopefully your kitchen ingredients don't look like this! 

To make snow, mix together baking soda and shaving cream until it's the consistency you want. It's actually cool stuff...smells like clean soap, feels a bit cool to the touch, and is kinda squishy but moldable. I'm sure there are actual amounts you're supposed to use, but we kept adding more shaving cream about every 5 minutes. Mostly because E would get ahold of the shaving cream and put more in there. He's way too good at reaching things. It did seem to dry out fairly quickly, though, so I think he was on the right track.

Squish

 We made a snowman. I used parts of the plants I have growing on the porch for the eyes and nose.

It looks like he's stoned and vomiting.

 Oobleck was next. I was excited about this, because I used to love teaching about this stuff when I worked at a preschool. Simple stuff - just corn starch and water, mixed well. I have no idea about amounts, but you've probably made this before, because I think most everyone has, so you should be ok. Just mix til it does that weird thing where it looks like it's a liquid but when you press on it, it's not.

About 3 seconds after I got this picture, he dumped the bowl on my pants

We had a good time with the Oobleck for a bit, but he kept finding the darn shaving cream and trying to add it to stuff.

All proper back porches should have an unusable desk chair

 Finally, we decided to mix the snow and oobleck together. It turned out just about how you'd expect. Half snowy play-dough, half gooey fake liquid stuff. Totally fun to play with.

Mixing, very messily

 And then, the kiddo realized the hose was right there. So he added water. Then sprayed me.

See, if I hadn't been trying to take pictures, I would've been able to get out of the way of this!

 After that, I realized any semblance of neatness was totally lost, and just let him go for it. And it was adorable! He splashed and giggled and got this stuff all over the place.

A seriously happy kid

 So to all you parents who can do this kind of stuff inside - I commend you. You must be incredibly good at multi-tasking! Or you have 8 arms. Or maybe you're cyborgs who can just take photos by blinking. And have children who actually stop spraying you with a hose when you shout "No no no stop please hey kiddo you're getting water in the house!" Mine just giggles. But then again, I did too.

How can you not smile at that happy mess of a child?

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Today, I'm thankful for Pinterest, cause I wouldn't have found this fun project without it. Also for gummy bears, Diana Krall albums, ginger ale, and most definitely our washer and dryer.

List #8 - News Round Up (With Commentary!)

So there's been a ton of awesome stuff in the news this week. I've been talking current events non-stop at work, and wanting to on Facebook, but it doesn't seem to be a place where people want to engage about politics and issues anymore. So now I'll do it here, with the things I've been talking about the most.

1. Richard Sherman - his rant after the game on Sunday was shocking, and a bit uncouth, but I think that's what football is! They spend hours trying to kill each other - why would we expect them to just want to be friends afterwards? Maybe I don't get sports, but I think the expectation that someone should be polite to/about their rival, especially when said rival had just rejected an overture of politeness, is silly. Seriously, watch the video at that link if you have any doubts. Sherman didn't swear, he didn't threaten violence, he just yelled a bit. Totally ok by me. And while I'm at it, lay off the word "{thug" when talking about him. It's been talked to death by now, but I'm sick of people saying "But I don't mean it in a racist way." It doesn't matter what way you mean it. The meaning has changed, and you need to learn, and then stop using it (unless you want to be racist - then go for it, I guess.) This article in particular was a good summary.

2. Justin Bieber - I will never ever ever ever ever ever let my kid be a teen star. Just, no. There was an interesting piece a while back by Mara Wilson, the adorable kid in Mrs. Doubtfire, about why teen stars go off the rails. You should check it out. Bieber's parents probably should have, too, before he turned 18. Hope the kid gets some help. And some decent pants.

3. The Olympics in Sochi - Obama's sending a gay delegation, Jon Stewart's doing an amazing job of mocking the homophobia in Russia, and of Putin in particular, Germany is wearing all rainbow, and I just know there are going to be mini-protests all over the place. The Olympic Committee really needs to figure out that it's not a political statement to be out and proud. If we had network TV, I'd be glued to it for the next month.

4. The Raiderettes - I had no idea how little professional cheerleaders were paid. Seriously - $1250 per season? That's crazy! I can't imagine working that hard, let alone smiling that hard, for what amounts to about $5/hour. I hope they win gigantic piles of money, because cheerleading is a highly physical and demanding sport, and if the football players get millions and become stars, the cheerleaders should get that chance too.