That’s the question (with apologies to William Shakespeare).
Quick post:
There’s a lively discussion on NextDoor about a woman who was walking on a local trail with her nine-year-old son when he needed to relieve himself and did so a few feet off the trail in the bushes.
This is not a remote trail, it’s pretty much in the city, paved and well-traveled.
Apparently a woman stopped to stare and made the boy feel uncomfortable. There were quite a few negative comments directed toward the woman who (allegedly) was looking, comments like “mind your own business”…
Mine seems to be the ONLY comment that talked about the possibility that it might be inappropriate for a boy that age to urinate in public.
In my opinion, I think this would be a different story if it was a toddler in the middle of toilet training, but a nine-year-old is too old for that behavior.
Normally I don’t respond to NextDoor because it’s a dark hole like Facebook, but I felt compelled to share my thoughts.
What if it was a nine-year-old girl? Does that change anything?
Obviously, they were in plain sight. I wouldn’t want my son or my grandkids to see someone else’s body parts or something that should be private.
What if there was a predator around?
I’ve hiked a lot in many different wild places and had to find a secret spot myself, but this location isn’t a forest or a remote mountain trail. It’s a mile-long walkway paralleling the railroad tracks with houses and windows all around.
I don’t care how you pronounce it, but I need to share my secret love for potatoes and there’s a recipe at the end.
Specifically, the much maligned WHITE potato: simple, sturdy, earthy.
On the last day of my most recent visit to the Angels, sadly, a very long time ago, DIL thoughtfully made a special going home dinner for me, all from scratch by the way, which made it even more wonderful.
There was vegan lasagna with a side of roasted potatoes and apple crumble. The lasagna was made with chard and kale from the garden and was SO VERY YUMMY and healthy.
Apparently (and rightly so) she thought I didn’t eat white potatoes because for the longest time, I would scowl at anything white: white rice, white flour, white sugar, white potatoes–as the source of empty calories, zero nutrition, and a great friend of diabetes. Not too healthy.
From the oven there emanated a most delicious perfume. I asked DIL what I was smelling and she said, “It’s roasted potatoes but you don’t have to eat them. I know you don’t like white potatoes.”
Not so fast, DIL.
I want to not like them, but I’m addicted to French fries (has anyone ever seen me hoard them? It’s not a pretty sight.) I actually dearly love white potatoes, but I try NOT to eat them and have some semblance of self control, like I say I don’t eat chocolate, only because I have no off switch. Once I start eating chocolate, I can’t stop. I don’t ever have any around because of my lack of restraint, which is also the reason why I buy Halloween candy like Skittles and other stuff I don’t like so I won’t be tempted.
OK, enough of the sidebar; back to the story of the roast potatoes.
Dinner was ready and we were setting the table. I was actually STARVING and had most likely once again forgotten to eat for the entire day.
DIL handed me a bowl of roasted potatoes and before they even reached the dining room table, I had eaten EVERY SINGLE ONE.
I brought the empty bowl into the kitchen and asked DIL where I could get seconds. She took one look at me and the empty bowl and started laughing.
“That was a sharing bowl! Did you eat all of them?”
“Well, yes, oops, sorry! I didn’t know they were for sharing!”
“T, Grandma ate ALL the potatoes!”
“YOU DID? HEY DAD, GRANDMA ATE ALL THE POTATOES IN THE SHARING BOWL! SHE REALLY DID!”
I hadn’t tasted anything so delicious in FOREVER; OMG they were so good, I’ve been thinking about them ever since I came home.
And by the way, I had never heard of the term “sharing bowl” before that day. It must be a British thing, as DIL is from the UK.
I finally broke down and bought two WHITE IDAHO potatoes and since it’s a bit rainy today and not devil hot, I’ll attempt a recreation of DILs heavenly dish. I’m even going to add salt and that’s also something I rarely do.
They tasted pretty yummy, but to be honest, not quite as good as DILs, but maybe that’s because it’s such a treat for me to have someone else cook, ‘cos I usually have that job.
Did you think I was referring to love? I could have been, but nope, not this time.
While this isn’t my photo, it’s worth sharing. In a cool social media twistyturny kind of way, I was chatting with a fractal artist on Twitter and shared my previous fractal post with him, Fractals Freak Me Out.
His book of fractal art is soon to be published and he kindly shared a photo with me, so here it is for a very wordy #WordlessWednesday. I am sooo jelly of creative people.
I wish you every success in your awesome endeavors!
Join me on yet another Odysseus-like journey through my town. I’m not sure what I’m searching for, but maybe like Odysseus, I’m trying to find my way home, facing challenges along the way.
This was an interesting morning.
When I began my pilgrimage, there was so much fog! It was coming down from the heavens like rain. Super cool for walking, not so good for curly hair, but I like to look on the bright side so I braided my curls and wore a hat.
Check out the Halloweeny spider webs on this pine tree, brought to life by the heavy fog.
For a while, I was a few houses behind a woman who was walking her Rottweiler. I was actually across the street, but couldn’t help but notice that she was roughly pulling on the poor creature’s leash/collar. The collar was one of those mean ones that have little barbs in them. I was already upset that the dog had a cropped tail. I believe that sort of mutilation is outlawed in other–more humane–countries, as is that nasty hurtful collar.
OK, I said to myself. Don’t say it, I said to myself. You know what to do, girl, I said to myself, keep walking and don’t speak. Don’t say a word this time, I said to myself. Just DON’T, I said to myself. Look away, I said to myself. Take a deep breath, I said to myself. You can’t protect every animal in the world, I said to myself. This might not go well, I said to myself. Take another deep breath, I said to myself. Mind your own business, I said to myself. Slow down your pace so you’re out of hearing distance, I said to myself. I mean it, have some impulse control; this time just don’t say it, I said to myself.
And then the woman and her dog slowed down, so they were within the range of my voice.
What do you think I did?
Yup. I really did. I couldn’t help myself. I TRIED really hard to get my Zen on, but my one little inner voice was joined by yet another little inner voice and the words spilled out…
“Umm, excuse me, but I couldn’t help but notice how you’re jerking your poor animal’s neck that way with that awful chain around its neck. It looks really painful from my point of view.”
“She needs to learn to listen. It’s just a little pinch.”
I said…”Well, you might want to learn another more positive method of training that poor girl because as I’ve observed during the last two blocks, your way isn’t working out very well.”
I concluded by saying, “I’ve trained a lot of animals, and actually think those types of chains with the hooks on them are banned in other countries. It’s abusive. You might want to research using a harness which doesn’t choke your beautiful dog.”
Well, she didn’t say anything else to me because at that point she walked up a side street, in all likelihood to get as far away from me as she could.
To her credit, we didn’t get into a screaming match. Walking away was her best choice, as she would have lost.
I took a deep breath and felt good that I had spoken truth and possibly opened her brain to a nicer way of training. Or not. Maybe I just ruined her day. Either way, job well done, in my opinion.
I looked down and was rewarded by a treasure! This is the most beautiful hawk feather. I carefully picked it up and placed it in my backpack. I think this might be a tail feather, don’t you?
At the beach, there was the usual non-compliant non-mask wearers, but I wore mine, took my ocean photos, and turned back to walk home.
No wave too small if you’re on a SUP.Still foggy, but beautiful.
The lights were out at the intersection of Carlsbad Blvd. and Tamarack. There was utter chaos with cars and pedestrians, near misses, and impatient drivers. I crossed the street, defying a white SUV who was inching slowly toward running us all down, and saw a few police cars show up to direct the shitshow, so I thanked them for saving our lives and continued on my way.
This was a new sign at the railroad tracks. I swear there’s a deeper, more profound meaning here, but I can’t figure it out. I don’t have a clue. What do you think?
I stopped at RiteAid and bought a couple of cute Halloween decorations to add to my display ‘cos they were on sale.
Six miles or so again. Except for a still sore left arm where I had the injections, I think I’ve fully recovered from the horrible side effects of these vaccinations. I’m no closer to answering life’s existential questions, but the song that came on as I was almost home was Sting’s If I Ever Lose My Faith in You, and I’m even more confused.
The Yiddish word mandelbrot literally means almond bread, a reference to its common ingredient of almonds. It is typically formed by baking a loaf which is then cut into small slabs and twice-baked in order to form a crunchy exterior. sort of like biscotti.
This has absolutely nothing to do with fractals; I just thought I’d toss it in for randomness, like croutons on a Caesar salad.
Fractals freak me out but they’re also super cool and I decided to learn a little bit about them since I’m immobile for a couple of days, recovering from a bad reaction to a pneumonia vaccination. I felt as I imagined it would feel to be run over by a big rig that broke every single bone in my body.
The more I learn, the more fascinated I am by fractals. I even met a real fractalist on Twitter and he gave me permission to use his beautiful art. Check him out! Daniel Travers/ Multimedia Producer & Artist www.redideostudio.com
According to Wiki, Benoit B. Mandelbrot (20 November 1924 – 14 October 2010) was a Polish-born French and American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as “the art of roughness” of physical phenomena and “the uncontrolled element in life”.
He referred to himself as a “fractalist” and is recognized for his contribution to the field of fractal geometry, also coining the word “fractal”, as well as developing a theory of “roughness and self-similarity” in nature.
Toward the end of his career, he was Sterling Professor of Mathematical Sciences at Yale University, where he was the oldest professor in Yale’s history to receive tenure.
Fractals are also found in human pursuits, such as music, painting, architecture, and stock market prices. Mandelbrot believed that fractals, far from being unnatural, were in many ways more intuitive and natural than the artificially smooth objects of traditional Euclidean geometry:
Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line. (Mandelbrot, in his introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature)
A fractal is a never-ending pattern. Fractals are infinitely complex patterns that are self-similar across different scales. They are created by repeating a simple process over and over in an ongoing feedback loop. Driven by recursion, fractals are images of dynamic systems – the pictures of Chaos. Or in my opinion, of heart-centered LOVE, an infinite woven pattern of infinity. Not finite. Not at all.
A curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.
The most famous fractal equation is the 2D Mandelbrot set, named after Mandelbrot in 1975.
What is Mandelbrot set zoom?
It’s an image made purely of mathematics. It is formed by converting the coordinates of each pixel into a complex number and then iterating it with a simple equation. We can actually zoom into the picture by narrowing the range of the axes and get a better look at the detail along the edge of the set.
The spirals of florets on a Romanesco broccoli form natural fractals.
As it turns out, a lot of plant life grows in patterns that mimic the Fibonacci sequence with petals, leaves, or (in the case of Romanesco broccoli) tiny buds called “meristems” that have 1,2,3,5,8,21 and more spirals coming from the center.
A special type of fractal is a Koch Snowflake.This fractal starts as an equilateral triangle. With each iteration of the pattern, the object becomes more and more like a snowflake. You could say a snowflake is a natural example of the Koch Snowflake fractal. Other examples of fractals patterns in nature include trees, mountain ranges, lightning, and coastal lines. http://www.enf.org/outdoor-academy-blog/snowflakes/
This year, October 10 is known as Columbus Day. Some states have proposed legislation to legally replace the holiday, but as of today, none have passed.
I don’t acknowledge Columbus Day because it’s more of the same; entitled males making unilateral decisions without regard for anything but their own selfishness.
They continually attempt to push candidates and legislation that will eventually completely strip women of any right to autonomy over our own body.
Even the grandkids know what this day really is all about: good for my son/DIL talking TRUTH.
No one can pinpoint the etymology of this phrase with regard to our extremely precocious almost 4.5 year-old, but yesterday was the first time I heard it.
We were FaceTiming so he could tell me about their week-long camping trip. He was regaling me with how much fun he had and how he went surfing and how his baby sister enjoyed her first time living on the feral, as we say.
As an aside, he started referring to his almost one-year-old sister as “Missy” and when I asked him who he was talking about, Mom took the phone and said he started calling her that after I sent an Amelia Bedelia book where the child she babysits for is called “Missy.” T has a very active imagination.
As, we’re chatting and he shows me some new crystals he got at a yard sale–green and purple, his two favorite colors–I heard Dad in the background say, “Tell Grandma about the lake we went to this morning.”
“Oh yeah, hey man, I jumped all the way in from really high, you would have been too scared, little Grandma!”
I said, “What lake?” and “What did you just say?”
And he replied, “Let me ask Daddy.”
He walks over to where Dad is sitting on the sofa (I’m dragged along on FaceTIme) and says, “Hey, man, what was the name of the lake we went to?”
My son started snickering and said. “It was Kachess Lake”.
T said, “Hey man, it was Kachess Lake”.
I replied, “Oh, I saw the pictures and thought it was Green Lake.”
He corrected me, “No, man, it was Kachess Lake. Hey man, did you see me jump?”
“I did. You are a brave boy. Hand the phone to Dad for a minute, please.”
“Hey J-boy. What’s up, man? Where did he get that?”
*snickering again*
“We have no idea; he must have heard it somewhere or maybe on Sesame Street, that’s all we can think of, but literally EVERY other word out of his mouth is ‘man this or man that’.”
“Hey man, I’m gonna hit the red button now. Is that OK, Grandma?”
“Yeah, man, that’s cool. Catch you later. Bye, Angel Boy.”
Have you ever heard a little one use that term in the proper context? He sounds so grown up, so sophisticated. SOOOO precocious. Heaven help us when he’s an actual teenager.
A young couple purchased their first home since they got married. It sounded like this was going to be a welcome addition to the ‘hood, but things took a 180 degree turn when they made a decision to host party after party after party Friday through Sunday from about noon to whenever. With loud music, drunk friends, and a pool, what could go wrong? Think Animal House.
After a few weeks of enduring this disrespect, I mobilized my other neighbors to see if they were as annoyed as I am, and I discovered that they were, especially the couple on the OTHER side of the frat house with a new baby.
This is a family community; we live close to an elementary school. Whether it’s a fam with kids or people like me who have lived here for 35+ years, one thing I know for sure. It is NOT party house friendly. If that’s what they were looking for, their realtor dropped the ball.
Once in a while, a loud party is not a problem. Multiple days every week? NOPE.
It was so unpleasant that I felt held hostage in my home; I couldn’t even go outside in the garden because of the noise. Apparently other nabes felt the same way. It’s been so hot that it’s not possible to close doors and windows. Last night they partied until after midnight.
I was on my LAST NERVE.
Similarly frustrated neighbors and I met (with masks). We strategized and decided to first have a friendly chat and if necessary, follow up with other actions.
We had the chat; there were a few dumb excuses and a bit of denial, but that didn’t last long, then a begrudging apology. Fingers crossed, peace is once again established throughout the land –at least my little world.
This is the first Saturday afternoon I’ve been able to go outside and not listen to their LOUD music and intermittent bouts of increasingly more raucous laughter. The more they drank, the louder they were. PEACE and SERENITY.
“Serenity NOW” as George’s dad said on Seinfeld. “Serenity NOW!”
In honor of the sounds of pure silence, I gave my Peace Lily a sunbath on the deck.
This is just a random post to test the waters with the new WordPress format WHICH I HATE HATE HATE. For me, it’s taking all the fun out of writing. It’s clumsy and NOT user-friendly.
By now if you have read even a couple of my posts, you know that I am unapologetically a MOM first and foremost. All I ever wanted was to be the mom of one boy, and my wish came true. Not only is he brilliant and kind and a great dad, he’s one of the funniest people I’ve ever known.
He’s a professor of German language and philosophy. That’s actually what his Yale PhD is called: Germanic Language and Literatures.
At my insistence, he’s been teaching it to Angel Boy 2.0 but it’s harder than it seems. We do refer to raccoons as Waschbär, though, so that’s progress, I guess.
I don’t speak Deutsch, I do better in French or Spanish, but I used to help when he was first taking German in high school, like conjugating trinken to getruken.
We practiced with 3X5 cards every day until his conversational skills surpassed my ability to decipher even a single word.
When he did his junior year abroad in Goettingen, I visited him (as the good Jewish mommy-drone that I am) and was continually impressed by his fluency and beautiful accent. People thought he was a native speaker, and I was/am so proud of my Engel Junge (Angel Boy).
I learned to say Tschüss instead of auf Wiedersehen every time we left a store, and that’s about it for my language skills.
He wrote a book entitled The Geological Unconscious GERMAN LITERATURE AND THE MINERAL IMAGINARY
It probably won’t be read by too many people but that’s OK ‘cos I’m mentioned in it, so my life’s work is done.
My little guy and I LOVE LOVE to search for rocks and seashells and feathers and other treasures.
It doesn’t matter if we’re walking in the neighborhood or at the beach or in the mountains, we make time to search for Mother Nature’s precious gifts.
Holding a rock in his little (but almost as big as mine) hand, he says, “Is this a keeper, Grandma?”
I take a look, think for a minute, and reply, “No, not that one. It’s not asking me to come home. Let’s leave it for someone else to find and bring to their house.”
“How about THIS one, Grandma?”
“Oh YES, T! That’s exactly the kind I love. It’s perfect.”
“OK, you bring it home with you and I’ll see it when we come to your house.”
“Why do you love rocks so much?”
“Great question, T. I love them because they make me happy and I like to collect pretty things. Why do YOU like rocks?”
“They make ME happy, too, Grandma!”
“OK. Think about this. You like it when you get presents in the mail, right? Well, this is getting presents too, but they don’t cost money and we get to have so much fun finding them together, so when we’re not together, we can remember what fun we had.”
“Hey, T, is this the kind that you like?”
I’m holding a pure white oval rock.
“Oh yes! Do you want it, Grandma?”
“That’s very kind of you to think about me, T, but this one is for you. Let’s look for more.”
At this point, all my pockets are full and weighted down by rocks and seashells, and my backpack has no more room, either.
“T, look at me, I’m all loaded down! Let’s leave some to find next time, OK?”
“Grandma, we love rocks so much, don’t we? I put the special ones in the little box you sent me. Where do you keep yours?”
“My special favorites are on the windowsill in my bedroom, so I can see them every day and think about you.”
“Can you take a picture of them and send it to me?”
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 