Ode to Trudy's Fish Tacos


Well nevermind. I can't seem to come up with anything, but damn they're good. A perfect combination of flavors and textures. YUMMMMMMMM.

My tummy is comfortably full and I'm enjoying some terrifically bad TV alone in my clean house. I love my husband and kids, but I'm really, really enjoying my weekend home alone. I've gotten a ton of work done and caught up on my sleep. I've done things on my own time and have not had to consider the needs or desires of anyone but myself for the past 48 hours. This is the life!!!

Of course, it's only so good because I know they'll be home and everything will be back to chaotic normal tomorrow afternoon. But in the meantime, back to the sofa for some more awful television.

Overheard. . .

A conversation I overheard tonight between my two angelic little girls. Really--if you've never seen them--they're as cute as kids get.

Mia: Wow. Are you pooping?
Zoe: (with obvious effort) Yes.
Mia: Gosh. That was a really big plop.
Zoe: Oh yeah! I think I just pooped a manatee.
Mia: Let me see. Oh yeah, that's big! But I think Mama could make a bigger manatee.
Zoe: Oh yeah. Definitely!!

Sigh. . . They make me so proud.

Shades of Gray

There's a big controversy in Austin right now concerning a high school art teacher who is facing termination for posing (sometimes nude or semi-nude) in some photographs that were posted on the Internet and discovered by students. All of the media coverage seems to take the side of the teacher, namely that the photos were artistic in nature, and that they have no bearing on her ability as a teacher.

On the other side of the controversy, the AISD, who has been relatively closed-mouth about the whole issue, is taking the position that appearing in the photos violates the moral turpitude clause in the contract that all teachers sign.

Needless to say, the whole thing has people up in arms--and mainly on the side of the teacher who, in their opinion, has been unjustly punished for taking part in an artistic endeavor.

I haven't seen the contract. I have no personal connections with the photographer, the model, or the AISD. But I accidentally know more about the story because before any of this happened, I had been to the photographer's website and I've seen many of the photos. I saw them in a completely different context. I wasn't there to view art. I certainly wasn't there looking for photos of a cute naked art teacher. I was there because I was curious about the source of an interesting photo on a good friend's soon-to-be-ex-husband's my space page. And that's a whole story in itself. But what I found on the photographer's website was a lot of beautiful and edgy portraiture. And a lot of what I would consider pornography.

As defined in Miriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition), pornography is the depiction of erotic behavior intended to cause sexual excitement (definition 1) or the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction (definition 3). Completely withholding all moral judgement, I would have to say objectively that many of the images I saw on the photographer's website fit one or both of these definitions. They weren't the in-your-face trashy sex pictures that one might find in Hustler or its ilk, but they were definitely and explicitly erotic. Incidentally, some the photos of my friend's soon-to-be-ex-husband were in-your-face trashy sex pictures like the ones in mainstream sex magazines--and, well, ick.

But back to my point, most of the photos I saw originally are gone. They featured both nudity and sexual activity, involving heterosexual and homosexual couples. The photos that remain are very, very tame in comparison. The photos you can see on the photographer's website are very likely NOT the photos on which the AISD is basing its decision. But they are the photos on which the public is basing its outrage against the AISD. And upon which the media seems to be basing its coverage.

Seeing what I've seen, I can't decide where I stand. On the one hand, I think it is pretty clear that this teacher exercised some extremely poor judgement (as did, I would argue, my friend's soon-to-be-ex-husband--who actually has a child old enough to accidentally find him on the Internet--double ick!) and I'm guessing the AISD is well within its rights to terminate her. On the other hand, she was apparently a good teacher, and bad teachers do much more harm every day than exposing teenagers to nudity or sensuality. AND, she's apparently NOT even the teacher who exposed the kids at all. Allegedly, another teacher with whom she had a disagreement is the one who visited the website--AT SCHOOL and WITH STUDENTS. Is she in trouble too? I wonder.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm not the one making the decisions. I don't know what the answer is. . .

I think my DNA made me stupid.

National Geographic and IBM have teamed up for the Genographic Project https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html a "landmark study of the human journey." I got all excited when I heard about it, so Davy bought me a participation kit for my birthday. I swabbed my cheeks and sent in my samples and I waited, and waited, and waited. And while I waited, I fantasized about what my results would tell me. Mainly, I couldn't wait to find out about my racial makeup, which would tell me once and for all whether the story my Nana liked to tell about some ancestor (Her grandmother? Her aunt? Why can't I remember to write the important stuff down???) being part Cherokee had any truth to it at all.

Well my results came, and WTF? I don't understand a freaking word of it. Apparently my mitochondrial HVR I sequence varies from the Cambridge Reference Sequence at two points by a nucleotide base mutation in which a pyrimidine base is exchanged for another pyrimidine or a purine base is replaced with another purine. Like me, you'll be comforted to know that this mutation, called a transition substitution, is the most common type of single point mutation.

Oh yeah, and this mutation apparently means that I'm a part of Haplogroup H--which I think means my ancestors came from somewhere in Europe. See for yourself: https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/report.html

(Really. Log in as fwn95d6c9v and see what you can make of it--free lunch to anyone who can 'splain it to me. . . )

So anyway, I could have told you without a DNA test that I had ancestors from somewhere in Europe. Now, finding out where in Europe I originally came from would have been of interest to me. Finding out whether my I was part Cherokee would have been way cool. But finding out I have ancestors from somewhere in Europe was not what I was hoping for.

Maybe there's more there and I'm just too thick to figure it out. On the bright side, I've never been more sure that skipping a career in genetics was the right move for me. . .

Zoe has a rash. A bizarre, non-itchy, bumpy, red rash that is now covering most of her body. The doctors don't know what it is, and, unbelievably, they don't seem too concerned about it--mainly because it doesn't itch and she doesn't have a fever. But it scares me. It scares me like all her little health idiosyncracies scare me. I worry that they're all interconnected in ways that the doctors can't understand because they won't put it all together. Perhaps it is because I've watched her almost die twice, but I often fear for this child's life. Most of the time I'm able to push the fear aside. But sometimes the most minor fever, cough, or non-specific viral full-body rash brings the fear screaming back to my consciousness. Especially late at night, when I've spent too much time online looking for an explanation. And then I go sit on the side of her bed to make sure she doesn't, in fact, have a fever. And she wakes up and smiles at me and goes back to sleep holding my hand. And I think about what a force she is, and how different she is from most children her age, how much more she sees and understands, and I become convinced that it's all because she's meant to force her whole life into a shorter span. The thought is almost too much for me to bear.

Six years into this gig, I should really know better by now.