Today's entry from the department of You Had to Spend Money on a Study to Figure That Out?!?!

Bike Lanes Are Good For Cyclists

A reminder that there are idiots all over the world--not just in America!

Panda Bites Man; Man Bites Panda

One thing nobody tells you about having kids is that they are going to make you sick. I don't mean "that nose ring makes me want to throw up" sick. I'm talking fevery, shivering, "I can't remember what it was like to feel normal" miserable. The thing is, once they get to school, they spend all day with kids from all over the place, coughing and sneezing on each other. Lots of parents send their sick kids to school because they have no other options. Other parents send sick kids to school because the schools are so damned hard-assed nowadays about absences and losing out on state funds.

In any event, my kids are bringing home ebola-strength colds on a pretty regular basis. They recover from them quickly, but I seem to catch every third or fourth virus that passes through, and periodically one of those will knock me flat on my ass. Which is where you'll find me right now. Flat on my coughing, sneezing, achy, stuffy head, sore throat, fever-y ass. Feeling sorry for myself.

If this is my last post ever, well you'll know why.

Willie's still got it!

According to an AP report. . .

"Willie Nelson and four others were issued misdemeanor citations for possession of narcotic mushrooms and marijuana after a traffic stop Monday morning on a Louisiana highway, state police said.
The citations were issued after a commercial vehicle inspection of the country music star’s tour bus, state police said in a news release.
“When the door was opened and the trooper began to speak to the driver, he smelled the strong odor of marijuana,” the news release said. A search of the bus produced 1½ pounds of marijuana and 0.2 pounds of narcotic mushrooms, according to state police."

DAMN!

I was so sad when I woke up this morning to the news that Ann Richards had died. I first met her when I was a delegate to Texas Girls' State over 20 years ago. That was before she became governor of Texas--I can't remember exactly what, if any, public office she held at the time--but she definitely made an impression on me. I didn't see her again until her brilliant address at the 1988 National Democratic Convention, when she nominated Bill Clinton for president. WOW!

I registered to vote via absentee ballot from Germany in 1990, just so I could cast my vote in the Texas governor's election. Thank God she beat that buffoon, Clayton Williams. Sadly, there would be other buffoons to come that put Williams's buffoonedness to shame, but that's another entry.

The last time I met Ann Richards was almost exactly a year ago. I was walking through Nordstroms when I saw a woman I knew. Based on a lightening-quick assessment of her age and wardrobe, I guessed it was probably one of my mom's country club friends--but one I knew pretty well. Maybe even one who had come to my wedding 10 years earlier. As my brain sorted all of this out in a second or less, my body went into auto mode. I greeted the woman with a friendly "hey!", smiled a wide, familiar smile appropriate for a chance meeting with an old family friend, and threw my arms open for a hug--all in the same moment that I realized this was NOT one of my mom's friends; it was Ann Richards. Ms. Richards didn't look too surprised. She smiled with some amusement and said a friendly hello as I stammered and kept on walking. The whole thing literally took less than two seconds to transpire. I was simultaneously mortified and thrilled. I spent the rest of the day thinking about what I *wish* I would have said to her--but I never quite got it right. "Thank you for being so amazing!" "Did you really ride that Harley?" "How in the hell did you, Texas's very own Wonder Woman, lose to Stupid Boy George W. Bush? Were you even trying?"

I showed her picture to my girls this morning and told them all about her.

Rest in peace, Ann Richards. . .

Ya know, I've been on the fence about Kinky. But not anymore. If Chris Bell had a snowball's chance in hell, I might be persuaded to vote Dem, but as it is, I am honestly starting to believe that Kinky is the best choice.

So there.

Five years ago today. . .

Mia was 4 months old. Zoe was almost 2. We were up and getting ready to go to Jazzercise when Tom D. called and asked me if I had the tv on. I did, but it was tuned to Sesame Street, very likely the one program that wouldn't be interrupted with coverage of what was going on in New York (and later, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania). As I had flipped through the channels to get to PBS, I had noticed the same image of a smoking building on every channel, but considering the ridiculous over-coverage the media had given to every real and imagined crisis since O.J. Simson's famous car chase, I assumed it was nothing important and just kept flipping up to more appropriate programming for toddlers.

Tom told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and just as I was tuning in to see what was going on, the second plane hit the second tower. Unbelievable.

What I remember most about that day--and the days that followed-- is being completely numb. I don't remember crying; I didn't feel angry; I didn't feel afraid; I was empty. I realize now that I couldn't make any sense out of what happened. It was so big in that moment, that I simply couldn't grasp it.

With Zoe being much too young to understand what was going on, but plenty old enough to be disturbed by the awful images being broadcast, there was no question of me watching the days-long coverage out of New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. Besides that, our house was scheduled to go on the market on Friday. We'd already signed the papers to buy a new house, and there was no time to spare. So I was forced, for better or for worse, to keep myself pretty removed from the whole thing. I knew what had happened, but I was not inundated with the images and speculation that many others experienced. In fact, today I have watched much more coverage of the events that unfolded on September 11, 2001 than I did five years ago. With both girls at school I felt like I could safely turn it on. MSNBC ran the original 9/11 tape of the Today Show from from about 7:30 until 11:00 CST and I watched the whole thing. Like most everyone else who watched what happened that morning, I couldn't turn away.

I don't know when it happened, but somehow my girls have gotten old enough to invite friends over to play--and they don't need me to entertain them, or really even to watch them. So I'm sitting downstairs, trying to read, while they romp around upstairs. It's so hard for me to stay away, when I really want to sneak upstairs to see what they're up to. Thump, bump, bang, giggle. Their laughter a fairy tinkle of absolute innocent delight.

My wish is that it would always be this way. That they would always be able to romp and play and whisper and laugh with no inhibitions or concerns.

Although Mia just called down, "Don't come upstairs." So now I'm thinking that fairy laughter might not have been so innocent afterall. . .

This whole JonBenet Ramsey circus makes me sick. Of course, her family deserves justice and the law and order folks should be doing whatever they need to do find the bad guy. But why is this "news"? Until he is charged and tried, coverage of this clown they caught in Thailand should consist of nothing more than a short blurb on the third page of the newspaper. It is absolutely beyond me how a "serious" news show can justify interviewing random people who happened to be on the same plane as the suspect--and playing it off as serious analysis.

That's not news. That's uninformed gossip. And if I want gossip, I'll get it from the Star, thank you very much. I expect NEWS from the "news." Call me naive. . .

I think I'll get all my news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert from now on. The stories on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are at least as well researched as the garbage I've seen on the network news shows lately and at least they're up front about pretending to be journalists.

Bleh!

Today I hit a deer. I guess technically the deer hit my car, but in terms of pure force, the poor deer ended up the worse for it. I'm fine. Zoe and her friend who was in the car with us are both fine (although pretty startled), but my car's gonna need some work.

I was only about a minute from home when it happened, so I was able to bring the girls home and return to deal with the deer. It was clearly dead, but I couldn't move it out of the road by myself. Thankfully, a nice man pulled up and helped me move it. Two other people pulled up to see if I needed help in the hour I stood there. To the other 5,000 people who passed by a woman standing on the side of the road in 100 degree heat next to a dead deer and a disabled vehicle, I'd like to say fuck you!

That's all. I need a drink.

And the correct answer is---

KITTEN.

She's a sweet, frisky little siamese mix, and her name is Blue Jade, Jade for short.

I once had a friend (at one time he was much more than a friend) who made me feel more alive than anyone I've ever known. It might have been the timing--I was young, and invincible, and ready to tie the world up in a kerchief and sling it over my shoulder. But the way he looked at me made me beautiful. And the way he talked to me made me interesting. And the way he touched me made me real.

The "relationship" part of our relationship didn't last long--no more than a month at the most. We had very different goals and ambitions (in that I actually had goals and ambitions) and we also had very different ideas of what it meant to be faithful to one another. But the real part of our relationship lasted for years. He saved me when John F. destroyed me during college--quit his job, dropped everything, and spent the only money he had on an airplane ticket to come rescue me from myself. And then he stayed with me, literally wrapped himself around me, until I was ready to go on. He disappeared for a few years and then reappeared unexpectedly in Austin. I was at his wedding and he was at mine. Davy and I sometimes took care of his beautiful son. And then he and K split up (I'm guessing it was that faithfulness thing again). And then he was gone. I realized tonight that it's been close to five years since I've heard from him. I miss Jeff. But mostly I miss the me I was when I knew him.

Kitten or guinea pigs? That is the question. . .

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.

Mixed Feelings

This morning I played at the Texas State Cemetery to honor fallen war veterans. Apparently, this is usually the National Guard Band's gig, but they're otherwise engaged this year. I don't usually consider myself very patriotic, but playing the Star Spangled Banner for a bunch of war veterans, living and not, was one of the most moving musical experiences of my life so far. I honestly had a hard time getting to the end.

On the other hand, I can completely relate to the following quote from Mark Twain on a friend's Blog.

"O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it. "
---Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"

So, that about sums it up for me. I'm a Memorial Day hypocrite. I totally don't get war--and I don't buy into what we're doing right now AT ALL, but I'm moved to tears by a group of men and women simply because they went to war. Who the hell am I?

What happened to the good old days when Memorial Day meant the lake, barbeque, and a six pack of beer? Okay, admitedly, those were never my good old days, but still. . .

And because all poop and no play makes Robyn an incredibly dull girl (not too mention a very irritable one), I celebrated Mia's intestinal victory today by listening to a recent edition of This American Life. Generally I only allow myself the pleasure of listening to my favorite public radio programs while I work out, but today I figured I'd earned a reward of some kind. And since I found myself with little appetite for chocolate (my usual reward of choice), I decided to break my own rule.

The episode I listened to today ("Fake I.D."---originally aired on 9/20/2002; reaired on 4/21/2006) included a wonderful short story, "This Blessed House" by Jhumpa Lahiri, from her book of short stories The Interpreter of Maladies. The story was read by Mira Nair, who was apparently the director of the movies Mississippi Masala and Monsoon Wedding. I'm not sure why, but I loved this story about a young Indian couple who find kitschy Christian figures hidden in bizarre places all around their new home. It's a strange premise that allows the writer to develop two fascinating characters with conflicting reactions to the items they discover.

If you want to check it out, it can be heard at http://www.thisamericanlife.com/

It's definitely worth the 27 minutes!