Men Are Just Happier People—

What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack. You can be President. You can never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park. Car mechanics tell you the truth. The world is your urinal. You never have to drive to another gas station rest room because this one is just too icky. You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt. Same work, more pay. Wrinkles add character. Wedding dress~$5000. Tux rental~$100. People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them. The occasional well-rendered belch is practically expected. New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. One mood all the time. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat. You know stuff about tanks. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. You can open all your own jars. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend. Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes. Everything on your face stays its original color. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and neck. You can play with toys all your life. Your belly usually hides your big hips. One wallet and one pair of shoes one color for all seasons. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look. You can "do" your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache. You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives on December 24 in 25 minutes.

Jackson Pollock Wannabes

Click here to have fun with modern art!

(just start moving your mouse, and click to change colors.

Pressing the space bar makes it disappear so you can start again.)

OMG, it's ME!

Just randomly blog-hopping and found this ... "7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People" ...thought I would be reading it for a laugh but instead it was like looking in a mirror.

Just finished reading Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez. It was a fascinating look at how a hairdresser from Michigan ended up starting a school for Afghani women to learn to be beauticians, and ended up in an arranged marriage to an Afghan man. It was thoroughly enjoyable but I did find myself wondering about some of the situations she was describing in vivid detail, given the way women are still treated in Afghanistan today.

Turns out I was right to wonder, as I found in a news article. Apparently the women she describes in the book - even though she changed names and details - are now fearful they will be ostracized or worse. One woman actually believes she will be killed because of the details in the book. Very scary.

Seems Rodriguez left Afghanistan after the book was published, even though in the book it is made quite clear she considers Kabul her home and it doesn't sound like she has plans to leave. There is a movie in the works out of the book, and the book itself is on the NY Times bestseller list. But it sounds like there is quite a bit of speculation about the appropriateness of Rodriguez's choices and decisions. Really a shame, if what is being suggested is true - that she went there with a good heart and wanting to help but now is more interested in making a name (and a bank account) for herself, at the expense of those she purported to help.

100 things

I was challenged yesterday by a friend to make a list of the 100 things I want to do in my life. She says it's hard to do - she has been working on her list for a while and is only up to #22.

The first things that come to mind (and the list is certainly not in order of importance!) include:
1. Visit Hawaii
2. Go white-water rafting
3. Visit Alaska
4. Visit Macchu Pichu
(I am seeing a pattern here ...)
5. Live abroad again
6. Learn to play guitar or piano
7. Hold a conversation in a language I don't know today
8. Write a book that actually is published and sells


I think I need to come up with some ideas of things I could actually do within the next 3 months ...

It is hard, she wasn't kidding.

Try it - I challenge you!

I'm disappointed ...

Are my standards too high? I have always thought of Jodi Foster in positive terms. She has avoided so many of the traps and entanglements so many child actors get caught in as they grow into adulthood. She is clearly intelligent, with her Yale (I think?) degree, and her control of her own career.

But lately ... I just don't get it. Her newest movie, The Brave One, is not a movie I would ever be inclined to see. In it, she plays a woman who is out walking the dog with her fiance, and they get mugged and beaten. The fiance dies, and I guess something in her snaps, as she buys a gun illegally and goes around shooting people. The "redeeming quality" is that she only shoots BAD people.

Now, I just read an interview with Ms. Foster and she is asked her opinion on guns - and she said she is very opposed to them and wishes the US had stricter gun control laws, and that she would never want her children exposed to guns.

Yet this is the movie she chose to make. She justifies it by saying it's "over the top", clearly not realistic, and it's what the market wants.

So I'm disappointed.

Back to School

We started school the day after Labor Day and it's going quite well!


Here Ben is working on an art project (mosaics) and Ty is finding Tokyo after I gave him the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates for a history lesson.


They both are anticipating science to be the favorite subject - we got microscopes this year with all our other school supplies, and they are eager to use them.


We have two new teachers through MNVA - new to us, and new to MNVA - so the year will be interesting! We already miss the teacher we have worked with for the past 4 years, but hopefully we will still see her at all-school gatherings.


We're also involved in a co-op which is studying Minnesota history. We'll have a good mix of reading, movies, and field trips with a fun group of families, every-other-Thursday.


So far so good - hopefully the year will continue this way!

Heard a guy on the radio today ...

"The US will never be destroyed from the outside. The only threat to the US is that it could be destroyed from the inside."

He went on to ask what has happened to this country?

I have no answers.

The Wonderful Land of Oz

A friend of a friend just moved with her husband to Australia for a few years. They have started a blog, which I have been reading, and I am physically aching with a longing to live abroad.

I am just so envious ..... some day I want to live in Europe again ...

School Photos

Well, we have some of the first photos available to see from the opening of Peace House Secondary School -one is above, after each student received a hand-made quilt from Minnesota. Click here, " photos " and then click on "view slideshow." Oh - you might want to have a kleenex! It's quite moving ....

TODAY IS THE DAY!!!!!!!!!

Today is September 10. Even though the day is more than half-gone in Tanzania as I write this, everyone who reads this - SEND GOOD THOUGHTS to Arusha and Peace House Secondary School and especially to Mark & Carla as the SCHOOL IS OPENING TODAY!!!!!

I don't expect Carla to blog about it for a while as she must be totally exhausted ... but she will like knowing there are people back here thinking about her constantly. She deserves it!

SMART Habits SCHMART Habits

OK, I have officially failed. DUMB Habits is more like it for me.

Eating junk this week.

No peaceability in my house.

Another Saturday came and went and did I even notice, much less think of a new SMART habit to start?

Heh. Whatever.

Small world part 2

Today was our MNVA Back to School Picnic. My friend Theresa was going to be there with her son, and Calandria was maybe coming, too, with her daughter. So even though we didn't really feel the need to get any of the "welcome back" information, we were eager to go to see friends and meet teachers.

Well, after the official business was taken care of, Theresa and I were talking (Calandria hadn't arrived yet) and she introduced me to a friend of hers, Lynn, who is starting MNVA for the first year with her 8th-grade daughter. When Lynn said her name and her daughter's, I found myself asking, "is your husband Tony?"

Back when I was in college I lived in a rooming house that was actually a cooperative, owned by the students living there, and it was in the middle of frat row ... and let's just say the people who lived there were not the type to have ever gone through rush. I lived there for a year with my friend Alice, and in a room up on the 3rd floor was this adorable Italian-American young man with dark eyes and dark curly hair. I was smitten, I had a total crush on him ... but alas, he was not interested in me at all because of this young woman named Lynn, who he thought might turn into something serious.

Yes, the Lynn I met today. Guess 25+ years counts as serious! So I said, after she had responded with "yes, my husband is Tony, do you know him?" "I lived in the co-op in college." Both Lynn and her daughter got amused looks on their faces, and they both said "OH! You lived in the CO-OP?!" I said "yeah, and I had a crush on him back then!" and laughed. But the laugh was on me, because they then said that he was on his way there - right then! When he showed up 10 minutes later, everyone at the table looked from him to me and back again. He got a quizzical look on his face and I said we were taking bets as to whether or not he would know who I was. He was tactful and vague and then I told him ... and to be honest I really don't think I would have ever recognized him, either.

But the small worldness doesn't end there. He and Lynn left, then Calandria showed up and we went to the zoo. When I got home tonight I (of course) googled Tony to see what he does these days, and he is an author. His specialty is civic dialog - bridging the divide between liberals and conservatives. Calandria -- sound like anything we've talked about before? Citizens for Civility?

Even back then, in an unrequited crush, I apparently had good taste :-)

Small World Story

OK, Carla posted a small world story so now I have to write about mine.

Last week, a friend of mine from college came to stay with me for a few days, as he normally lives in The Netherlands, but comes to Minnesota a couple of times per year. I'll call him "Ron" (because that's really his name.) Ron has a lot of friends in the Twin Cities, so he is often out and about visiting during his stay here, and on his last day he invited me to join him and two others for lunch. Seems each of the other two have some sort of connection to Africa, so he thought I might enjoy meeting them.

We first drove in to Minneapolis to pick up friend #1, I'll call him Henry. Then we drove to pick up friend #2, I'll call her Anna, in Brooklyn Park. Then we had to find a place to eat - and ended up at Rocky Rococco because both Henry and I were jumping up and down in the back seat of the car in excitement because we both thought Rocky Rococco was gone from this world.

Anyway. We sat at lunch chatting, and Anna talked about her experiences in Malawi. Then Henry talked about his experiences in South Africa. Then it was my turn. I started by saying I was involved with a small non-profit based here in Minnesota which has been providing scholarship funds for AIDS orphans in Tanzania, and now we are building a school. Without missing a beat Anna asked if I was working with the Augustines. Seems she grew up 4 houses away from them in a small town north of the Cities. Then Henry asked if I had heard of Books for Africa, and when I said how much we love Books for Africa he beamed and revealed he is on their board of directors!

Ron thought we might enjoy hearing each others' Africa stories but I honestly think he felt a little left out when Henry, Anna and I discovered how much we really did have in common!

As Carla said in her blog, you just never know when you might be the cog in the mysterious workings of the universe.

Like a magpie attracted to bright things I am.

Reality television to me calls.

Relaxation do I find when watching contestants I am.

Laughter to me comes after comments from Carla I do read.

Challenge you do I to comment a la Yoda.

My favorite tool is a Todd

I have gotten in to watching Design Star on HGTV this summer and now it's down to the final two. One of the final two, and the one I have been expecting to win all season long, is Todd - from California (of course) who likes to work with his shirt off (of course).

But he really is quite talented in a California-sort-of-way. Bigger than life personality.

I missed the first couple of episodes and got the chance to tape them over the weekend and watch them last night. In the first episode the 11 contestants had to design their own living space. Several of them needed things built and Todd was THE MAN with the power tools. As one of the rather "stereotypical" male designers said with a smirk, "My favorite tool is a Todd."

It was a priceless moment!

Peaceability
"Calmness. Peacefulness. Serenity. The tendency to try to accommodate rather than argue. The understanding that differences are seldom resolved through conflict and that meanness in others is an indication of their problem or insecurity and thus of their need for your understanding. The ability to understand how others feel rather than simply reaction to them. Control of temper."

This is from the site that I was looking for when going through my favorites as referenced in the post one below this, where I found the "So the thing is" blog.

This is a site called Values Parenting, and Peaceability is the September value. It's very possible - likely, even - that I have blogged about this site before, as I really do like it - and I really did like it when I found it the first time, over a year ago. Back then I promised myself I would visit it regularly to learn ways to teach the boys values. Well, here it is a year later and I am making the same promise to myself. Maybe I'll keep it this time.

Whoa.

That reminds me of another promise I made recently. And another promise I have not kept up. SMART Habits. Whoops, where did the time go?

OK, a two-fer. A new SMART Habit. Values Parenting. Yes.

And as for the food SMART Habit - well, I can't say I am totally successful, but I am much more mindful of what I put into my mouth or onto the plate for the boys to eat, so I guess I am making progress. And for now, that will have to suffice!

So, the thing is ...

I found a new blog today. I was looking through my bookmarked favorites for some other website for some other reason, and I found a link to a writer who posts her columns that she produces for some publication or something ... whatever ... but now she has started a blog! All of her columns start with "So, the thing is ..." and then she goes off. So that's what her blog is called, too. This picture is from her blog. Say it out loud. Then enjoy your giggle!

State Fair Champion of Champions

Have you heard of Marjorie Johnson? She is from Robbinsdale and is the most-decorated baker around. She has won over 2500 blue ribbons, and has been a guest on Rosie, The View, The Tonight Show, and lots of radio shows. She is now a special correspondent for Jay Leno - covering sporting events and, I just heard, she will covering the Emmys this year!

She is just a hoot - she stands 4'8" and NEVER stops talking. She has her own website, and this year her cookbook is coming out, and she says she has been so busy getting it written that she hardly had any time to enter any baked goods in the Minnesota State Fair.

So she only won 7 blue and 2 sweepstakes this year.

I'm ordering her book!

How's that again?

Well, Miss South Carolina says it all. And I shouldn't laugh til I cry, but I do. Every time I hear it.