Pink Prickly Pear

Free Rice!!!

Go!

It's a fun game!

You can fight hunger (if you're smart enough!)

Tell your friends!

Mostly rhetorical questions

1.  If I knew yesterday that I'd be baking a few dozen sugar cookies to decorate today why did I not realize I didn't have enough flour until this morning?

2.  *Why did I leave my camera at home during my morning rush-hour grocery run?  You would not believe the sheer numbers of adult Californians driving to work in full costume.

3.  This is one for the oracles:  Why is tomorrow always a good morning to start decreasing my coffee consumption?

* Mum.  This is probably too small for you to read, but rest assured I do not take pictures while driving.

In which it appears I have too much time on my hands...

Actually, I don't.  Those are No Pudge brownies from Trader Joes ("Just add yogurt!") and I thought we'd test run the stencils before trying them with other people's children at the Halloween Carnival tomorrow.  For some reason, I thought a cookie decorating station would be fun and festive!  And it might have been, except the carnival was originally scheduled for last week, not on Halloween itself (Let's get the kids all revved up on candy!!!  Then we'll let them run through the neighborhood in their sugar-fueled rush for more candy!) and not the day after the Halloween Party at the Dojo (candy, limbo, candy, musical chairs, candy, costume contest, and more candy).  I am tired of making treats and trying not to eat them and I am tired of little boys dressed as ninjas and it's not even Halloween yet.

Incidentally, Mini-Pear won Most Original Costume this evening for her Unicorn get-up.  I didn't get a great photo of it as we were running out the door, but you get the idea.  Made by yours truly - it started out as a pile of white yarn and a pair of long underwear.

Ahhh...

To breathe fresh air again!  It even rained a little!  We spent the afternoon at a local playground.  Mini-pear got to run off all the energy she'd stored up cooped up in the house this week and I got to play with my new camera.

We spent the morning at Fry's.  I think our original intent was to buy a card reader for the camera, but Fry's is simply massive.  They sell everything from soldering kits to vacuum cleaners to computers to CDs to weird little electrical components to office supplies, etc.  Our Fry's is also decorated with gigantic tropical aquariums and plays dated piano jazz over their speakers, but also allows customers to test the speakers on the TVs and stereos and such, so it becomes one of those sensory overload situations.  We ended up buying those little forced air cannisters so I could clean our gunky keyboard and some blank DVDs, but not the item we'd driven there specifically to purchase.  Perhaps because I'd suggested we drive down to the Indian Buffet and really, once the Indian Buffet is on your mind, is it possible to think about anything else?

Indian Buffet was good.  The aftermath was bad.  I'd like to send a shout out to the second toilet.

A poem that has nothing to do with dead mice...

my hair in a braid
is too short for tucking back
toothpaste spit's a mess

The dog...

She did not like the smoke.  Monday she channeled fretful Lassie hard core - lots of pacing and quizzical looks.  She wasn't particularly brave though.  When we decided the time had come to load up the car she first resisted all orders to get in and then, when she finally did, she hopped over into the driver's seat and refused to budge.  She may not be brave, but she's no dummy.  She knows that's where you have to sit to make the thing go.

What I'd really like for my birthday?

Opening some windows around here would be nice. 

Since Mr. Pear couldn't quite arrange that for me (he works wonders, but he ain't sky buddy) he surprised me with a very, very nice present indeed.  Prepare to be bombarded with my D80 test photos!!!  Every year this man surprises me with exactly what I want, without asking what that might be and he's somehow manages to keep it a secret until unwrapping time. 

34 big ones.  I'm off for a birthday bagel with mini-pear.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Actually that's ash swirling around - I think Mr. Pear took the photo on the left Monday afternoon.  The skies in our area are much clearer today, in part due to the wind being on our side.  The photo on the right is Mr. Pear sweeping the ash off the patio prior to hosing it down this morning.  We let the dog in and out of that back door, and keeping whatever is in the ash out of the house is a priority.

We're fine, although active burning has come pretty close - about 5 miles.  Our main issue is air quality - all our windows and doors remain closed.  Mini-pear and I just drove the Mr. to work and stopped at the grocery store.  We wore our air masks and kept the windows closed, but my eyes and throat are feeling even that very limited exposure.

The closest fire to us is the biggest - the Witch fire.  Unfortunately, that fire has merged with another one (the Poomacha fire) and there are fires to the northeast of us that continue to push down towards us - although they are much further away than the Witch. 

This has been an odd experience.  The wind in our area has completely died down over the last day, yet we know from radio/internet reports that they are still wreaking havoc elsewhere and making the fires difficult to contain.  The skies over my neighborhood are hazy blue this morning.  If I didn't have access to the media, I'd think it was all over.  Part of me feels relief that we've stayed in our own home for the majority of this (Monday we de-camped to Mr. Pear's office, just to be closer to the ocean and evacuation routes) and that the winds have pushed the fire elsewhere.  Still, it's hard to focus on anything but the fire. 

It's strange to remain glued to internet and radio reports for the third day in a row - to be this far into a totally upside down week and know that the uncertainty is far from over.  Last night I still set my alarm to wake me up every couple of hours so I could monitor the fires from the comfort of my living room.  Our bags are still packed just in case the winds shift or other factors redirect the fires back in our direction.

Thanks for your emails and text messages and phone calls.  We are going to be just fine;)

Wildfire

The view from our front door this morning.  There are 8 wildfires burning out of control in San Diego county.  The mandatory evacuations are very close.  The Santa Ana winds are not helping.

There's ash all over the patio and it smells like mesquite barbecue in here.

Unschooling Math

My math anxiety has come a long way.  I spent the bulk of my academic life hating (I know it's a strong word) anything that even smelled like math and I could whip out a laundry list of reasons why I was so bad at it.

Did it start with the measles?  By the time I returned to school after my convalescence, everyone else seemed to know their times tables inside and out.  Mr. S's insensitive comment about algebra being so easy a monkey could do it, so why can't you was on the list too.  At some point, someone in my family assured me we just weren't good at math.  That gave me a little breathing room at least.  I think I attempted to take statistics in college three times.  Dummy.  But at the same time, I was paying my way through school tracking and managing a multi-million dollar budget for one of the university's departments.  Something wasn't quite right.

At any rate, I was determined not to pass on this math anxiety, but I wasn't really sure how to accomplish this.  For a time I was sure the answer lay in the diligent application of workbooks and math drills disguised as fun games, but one morning, mini-pear groaned, "I wish we'd never started math because then we wouldn't have to keep on practicing it."

Oh.

Not passing on the math anxiety?  Undetermined.  Bitter hatred of math?  Check.

I hid the workbooks.  We're not formally studying math anymore.  So the other week, I sort of started to cringe when mini-pear and her friend started quizzing each other in the back seat of the car.  They started with some pretty easy single digit addition until mini-pear's friend, apparently very excited that he had someone to play Guess the Sum with, started rattling off multiplication questions and answers.  Mini-pear was suddenly very quiet.  I was in the front seat, racked with guilt.  Was she silent in the face of her friend's incredible mathematical prowess?  Was she feeling inadequate because I'd stopped with the formal math study in favor of some crackpot educational theory that was essentially leaving her to the wolves?

Actually, she was just listening and perhaps waiting to get a word in edgewise.

"7 times 2 is 40!" the friend shouted with glee.  Immediately, mini-pear interjects, "No it's not!"  Her friend righteously proclaimed, "Yes it is!"  And of course, she countered with "40???"  So the friend starts to sing a little rhyme, "7 times 1 is 7!  7 times 2 is 40!  7 times 3 is 21!"  And mini-pear is triumphant, "But that makes no sense at all!"  And they argue back and forth, mini-pear making her case logically, and her friend insistently repeating the memorized rhyme.  Eventually, I got called in to settle the dispute.  I had to explain that actually it was 14, not 40.  "Oh..." he said.  And I'm not sure it meant anything to him really. 

I have to say that mini-pear didn't know the right answer either, but she knew that it couldn't be as large a number as 40 and it certainly couldn't be larger than the sum of 7 x 3.  It's going to be a while before she gets over the idea that math is boring and a chore.  She can thank me and the stupid workbooks and the well meaning thinly disguised drill games for that.  But I think we're getting somewhere, by just noticing math all around us - by estimating time and quantity, playing logic games, talking about (and spending) her money, playing with calculators, cooking, playing with patterns, recognizing and pointing out the practical applications, before breaking it all down into those seemingly baffling exercises.

Math, we will peacefully coexist with you yet!