Quotable: Perspective

"It is easier to wax elegiac for the life of a peasant when you do not have to use a long-drop toilet."

- Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist

This quote seems timely, given the recent flap about a NY Times opinion piece about living simply. (Here is my favorite response to that: Wealth< Risk, and Stuff.)

I'll just note that I don't really mind the occasional long-drop toilet, but I think I would mind having to dig and fill in my own.

Weekend Reading: The Infuriating Edition

This week, I've got a collection of links that make me rant-y. I promise not to rant too much... and since it is the weekend and we all want to be in a good mood, I'll end with two videos that made me laugh, courtesy of Mr. Snarky.

First, antibiotic use in farm animals is on the rise. This is the food issue that make me most angry. While we're busy fretting about a hypothetical risk from GMO food, we have a catastrophe waiting to happen in antibiotic resistant food borne illnesses. Gah. (This issue is the sole reason I buy mostly organic meat, milk, and eggs- because those are usually also antibiotic-free.)

Next, the attitude Seth Godin quotes in this post is frustrating, and the fact that it came from someone who helps to run a community college is sad.

I still had this in the back of my head when I came across Tressiemcphd's post about for profit colleges. She writes from both her perspective as a graduate student in sociology and her personal experience work as in admissions at a for profit college. That post wasn't infuriating so much as thought-provoking. I have hired people with degrees from for profit colleges in the past, and I've hired people with undergraduate degrees and PhDs from top institutions. It is true that these two groups of people are not usually in competition for the same jobs, but it is also true that in my experience, a for profit degree provides fine preparation for an entry level computer support position, and I know people whose degree is from a place like University of Phoenix who have gone on to have highly paid careers in computer administration.

But it is also true that I will steer my own children to traditional colleges. I think those give a better, broader foundation to prepare someone for the twists and turns most career paths take these days.

So my opinions on this are muddled, and it was really interesting to read Tressiemc's post. 

Back to the purely infuriating... Avivah Wittenberg Cox's post about gender attitudes/expectations in Generation Y argues against the "all we have to do to get gender equality is wait" idea. This quote, in particular, rang true:

"But for today's young men, it's a whole different story. They have been to female-dominated universities. They have had girls out-performing them in schools their entire lives (the OECD Pisa studies show girls outperforming boys at almost every grade level, in almost every country). They have a deep understanding of the potential competition they face every day from the ladies. If they find that today's male dominated corporate cultures give them a competitive edge, I think it is wishful thinking to assume they will be big promoters of balance. They will, like most ambitious men before them, be big promoters of themselves."

(Emphasis is mine.)

My final infuriating links are the demonstration of the double standard for male and female business leaders that had me ranting recently: can you imagine the stories we'd have read if Marissa Mayer or Sheryl Sandberg talked about parenting the way that Elon Musk did? And why has no one written any articles or posts pillorying Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly as anti-woman?

Double gah.

So let's end with some fun things Mr. Snarky has found.

First, this is an excellent rapid fire debunking of many commonly held beliefs:



And this ventriloquist act had me laughing out loud:



Happy weekend, folks!

Various Other Progress Reports

Why should Pumpkin get all the glory? Lots of other things are going on here Chez Cloud, so I thought I'd update you on some, in no particular order, and of varying degrees of importance.

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My sister is buying a condo. She found the first place she was seriously considering putting an offer on, and tonight I went along to look at it. It was nice, but not the right place for her, so we left without buying a condo. But we went out afterwards and I kept her company while she ate some dinner (I'd already eaten).

Afterwards, I got in my car to drive home and Florence and the Machine's "Dog Days are Over" was on the radio. I like that song, so I turned it up. After it finished, Tom Petty's "Free Falling" came on.

And for a brief moment, I got that transcendent feeling of freedom that makes me love traveling so much.

I should clearly listen to music in the car more often.

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Two more reviews of The Zebra Said Shhh are in, both gratifyingly positive:

Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity liked the book, and people also had an interesting discussion in the comments about whether or not they'd reach for an iPad or other tablet for a kids' book. Personally, I like having some nice eBooks on my Kindle Fire, so that I have options to offer the kids other than games or videos. But of course, The Zebra Said Shhh is also available in paperback for those who feel differently!

Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers had a very nice review, which honestly gave me a great pick me up on an otherwise hard day at work.

As always, if you come across other reviews (or feel moved to write one yourself), send it to me, and I'll put a link to it up at some point.

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Remember the vague post I wrote about feeling lost in the labyrinth at work? Well, I'm happy to report the issue that was the immediate cause of the stress and unpleasantness has been resolved, and I will soon be working on much more fun projects. Monday and Tuesday of this week were particularly unpleasant, though. I am glad that is mostly behind me, but still suspect that the entire incident has damaged my long term prospects at this particular company. I'm not sure I actually care about that, though, now that I don't have to run into the particular wall I was encountering on a daily basis. I'm still learning from my current job, and if I find that I am blocked when I am ready to move on, there are other companies (and other industries).

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On a happier front, remember way back in early 2012, when I resolved to either lose weight or get comfortable with myself at the higher weight? I have now lost 5 lbs. This did not, in fact, take a year. I lost no weight in 2012. I lost 3 lbs when I caught a norovirus at the end of January this year. It was an effective if unpleasant diet kickstarter, but I resolved not to let that weight go back on. I have managed to keep it off and slowly take off an extra 2 lbs. I plan to keep going for another 5 lbs, if I can. That would put me back down to my pre-pregnancy weight. If I could lose another 10 lbs, I'd be at what I currently consider my ideal weight.

How did I do it? Well, I decided I needed to keep track of whether or not I'd taken my asthma meds. I am supposed to do two puffs on my maintenance inhaler morning and night. I often find myself getting ready for work or lying in bed reading and wondering: "did I take my meds?" So I printed out a calendar to keep track:

And then I decided to write down whether I'd exercised or not that day (I don't note the lunch time walks I take almost every week day). And then I decided to note my weight every Saturday.

Somehow, this gave me the extra boost of willpower I needed to ignore a little bit of hunger now and then and to get up and exercise in the morning more often.

Except this week, because daylight savings time sucks. Or, more accurately, the switch to daylight savings time sucks.

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In even happier news, the 2013 Family Fun List and Personal Fun List are both fantastic successes. For family fun, we have gone to The Wild Animal Park and Sea World (yeah, that wasn't on our list, but they lured us in with free admission all year for the girls and they are roughly 15 minutes from our house, so we'll swap it for something else). For personal "fun" I have finally bought some new underwear and cleaned up my jewelery.  I know neither of these sound like much fun, but I am happy not to be wearing underwear that are older than my oldest child and I am really enjoying wearing my jewelry again.

Now I am reading some William Gibson, and starting to gather a list of new music for a playlist. Have y'all heard City Hall, by Vienna Teng? If you haven't, let me make you smile:



Someone needs to put this together with these pictures. And then I would watch it and weep with happiness.

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In the happiest news yet, Pumpkin isn't the only one thriving at school. Petunia is also thriving at day care. She loves her teachers. Her teachers love her. She has friends, and is so excited whenever we see one of her friends outside of day care, be it by chance at a park or by organizing a play date.

She is such a happy, loving child. If I were the type who believed in reincarnation, I'd say she was an old soul. I'm not, so I'll just say that she is a joy and often seems wise beyond her years.

Since I showed off some of Pumpkin's work, here is a photo of one of her recent creations from day care:

Animals in the Grass

Pumpkin got so excited when she saw it. She asked Petunia if she'd share it, and Petunia said "yes!' and showed me where to break it in half. And then they both ate their halves and were happy.

And that seems like a good place to end this post to me.

Spanish Immersion Progress Report

As regular readers know, we enrolled Pumpkin in a public magnet Spanish Immersion school. It is a Title 1 school that pulls kids from all over the San Diego district, but it also happens to be two blocks from our house.

The program is total immersion for K-2: the teachers won't speak English to their kids at all in Kindergarten. If they have something really important that they need to make sure the kids understand, they either bring in the magnet resource teacher or swap classrooms. (Of course, Pumpkin figured out that this meant her teacher really does speak English, since her friends in the other classrooms reported that their teachers only spoke Spanish, but those teachers came into Pumpkin's class and spoke English... ) Starting in 3rd grade, they bring in increasing amount of English instruction. The promise is that if your kid stays in this school all the way through 8th grade, he or she will be fully bi-literate- i.e., able to read, speak, write, and comprehend other people's speech fluently in both English and Spanish.

The start of the school year was tough on Pumpkin. In retrospect, I think two things were happening at the same time. The first would have happened in any Kindergarten: she was struggling to learn the rules and rhythms of the new school, and to adjust to being the little kid again. The second was unique to the immersion program: she didn't have a clue what the teacher was saying a lot of the time, and she wasn't used to not knowing something.

In short, she was struggling to overcome an academic challenge- which is exactly one of the things we want her to experience. So intellectually, I knew that was a good thing. But emotionally... well, emotionally, I was a bit of a wreck, too.

But now- wow! Things are awesome. We just had our second parent-teacher conference today, and Mr. Snarky and I walked out of that so very, very happy with our choice for Pumpkin's school.

Pumpkin is now happy and thriving. She also learned what we hoped she would out of the experience at the beginning of the year: that sometimes things are hard, but that if you keep trying you can master them. I have even heard her prepping Petunia for her eventual entry into the school, telling Petunia that is hard at first, but after a few weeks it is a lot of fun.

So she's happy.

She talks about friends at home, and we hear her friends greet her and welcome her into their games when we drop her off at the onsite before school care. Several parents of her classmates (the ones that volunteer in the classroom) tell me that they think she is nice and caring.

So she has friends.

And her friends are from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnicities. This was important to me, because I really appreciate that aspect of my own early education. I got the experience in my neighborhood school just by virtue of the fact that we weren't rich and our neighborhood was moderately socioeconomically and ethnically diverse. Pumpkin's neighborhood school is a great school, but would not have provided that diversity. I think that the chance to learn how to relate to peers who have very different assumptions and expectations and whose experiences are different from yours is a valuable educational experience. I think it has served me well in life. There are literally some things I learned from my friends in grade school about how money and race matter in our society that have stayed with me to this day. Of course, there are other ways to learn those things. But I still feel lucky that Pumpkin gets to have this chance to learn from her friends, too.

But all of that is the extras- the academics are the most important thing about school. Today, the teacher reported that she was thriving academically. She is reading Spanish at the level expected of a child finishing up first grade. She has mastered all the math concepts expected of her. She writes well above what the teacher expects- so much so, that her teacher gave her a blank notebook and is encouraging her to write her own stories in it. (I can't wait to tie that in with the fact that I've published the bedtime story I made up for her!)

Here is a sample of her recent work. It is a "book summary" she did for The Ugly Duckling (El Patito Teo):

I love the sad duck drawing in the first panel.

Her teacher assured us that she truly knows all the words she uses, and that her comprehension is excellent- and then she showed us examples of her social studies work that demonstrates that.

We left the conference with recommendations for resources for more advanced math problems for her to do. I'd been just writing extra problems for her, but wanted something a little more structured. We aren't pushing hard on this, though, since she is so far feeling enough challenge with the language acquisition aspect of school. To help with that aspect, the teacher also loaned us a children's Spanish dictionary she can use to look up words from the Spanish books she brings home from the school library.

We've also had a chance to observe the overall programs at the school more closely, and so far, we are impressed (with the exception of the silly fundraisers). The school fielded several teams in a recent Lego robotics competition and in a recent math competition, and they did well. We see evidence that they are really serious about giving kids a well-rounded education, just in Spanish. And we love the culture of the place: watching the behavior of the older kids at the two holiday programs we've seen so far has impressed me.

So, hooray Pumpkin! And hooray being happy with our school choice. We may eventually find that the Spanish immersion isn't providing enough extra challenge, and that the school can't give her the challenge she needs in other areas. But we can deal with that if we come to it. Whatever happens, though, I am glad she did her Kindergarten at this school. It has exceeded our expectations.

Mini Rants

I had a rough day at work, I broke one of my favorite earrings tonight, and the kids were little nightmares at the end of the evening because of the whole daylight savings issue- tired, but not sleepy, etc., etc. So I feel like letting some little rants out into the world. We will return to our usual happy, upbeat programming tomorrow. Or Wednesday. Or sometime soon.

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I can not accurately convey how little I care about whether or not any other woman changes her name when she gets married.

Last week, the discussion of this topic was all over my Twitter stream and some of the blogs I read (and like!) and all I could think is: Really? With all the issues facing women today, this is the one we're going to fight now?

Don't get me wrong: I did not change my name when I got married and I'm grateful for the feminists before me who fought that battle and made that an option.

And I get that there is still work to be done normalizing that as an option in some circles.

But still, I'd prioritize equal pay, real maternity leave, better protections for breastfeeding women in the workplace and out in public, more women in C-level jobs, better awareness of/protections against rape and domestic violence, and end to the stereotype that women aren't "good" at math and science, and probably at least five other things that aren't coming to mind right now over the issue of whether or not a woman who changes her name when she gets married is still a feminist, or even work towards further normalizing the idea that a woman does not need to change her name when she gets married.

Heck, I'd change my name right now for equal pay and a promise that no one would ever again try to tell me that the reason there aren't more women in STEM fields is that girls just don't like/aren't good at those subjects.

And sure, I get that the name change situation is a symptom of a larger culture that minimizes women and their identities and their contributions... but that's just it. It is a symptom, and not even a very annoying one, really. I'd rather we tackle the causes, or at least the more annoying symptoms.

But that's just me. If you want to fight the good fight about women not changing their name when they get married, carry on.

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To all the various people yelling that businesses "should" do something- be it allowing workers to work from home, or paying for better health care for their workers, or reducing their environmental impact, or anything, really:

Businesses do things based on business cases, not vague "shoulds." Sure, sometimes a business leader thinks something is the moral or right thing to do, and just does it, and hooray for them. Except, of course, when I disagree with whatever they decide is the moral or right thing to do.... (Yeah, I'm looking at you, Chick-fil-A.)

If there is something you think a business should do that they aren't doing? Try making a business case for it. As in, try to explain why doing this thing will make the business more money. Because- news flash!- that's what businesses exist to do. Make money.

And if there are things we as a society want to have businesses do, but that won't make businesses more money? Well, that's why we have government. We make laws, and then the business case is "breaking laws is risky/potentially expensive." (And yes, I realize this hasn't worked so well in the past, but I'd argue that is a problem with weak laws/weak penalties/weak enforcement, not a problem with the general idea that laws are a way to change things.)

Other things we can try: moral outrage/shaming, consumer boycotts... but really, in most cases, laws are the most effective.

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A little bit more about expecting businesses to provide things that are in the public good... I think this is a big part of why our health care system is so completely screwed up here in the US, even for people like me, who are rich and have employer-provided health insurance. Think about it: the people who make the decisions about what insurance options I have available have to make a business case for the options they choose. I think this skews the market. The people making the decisions are optimizing on price and the appearance of good coverage (to keep the employees happy). And so I end up with plans that cover all sorts of extra fluff I don't want or need (discounts at gyms that have no location within 20 miles of my house, 20 acupuncture visits a year, and whatnot) but that make me jump through 8 different hoops to get the nasal steroids that DON'T make my nose bleed. Or maybe I'm supposed to try acupuncture for the nosebleeds?

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WTF is with these "build a basket of random crap to auction off" fundraisers? Pumpkin's school is doing one, and we've been guilted into contributing to a basket, but it just seems like the least efficient way to raise money ever. All the parents buy some crap to put in the basket and then there is a silent auction among the parents to buy the baskets full of random crap. I really doubt that the baskets will be auctioned for an amount that covers the cost of the random crap in them. Wouldn't it be much more effective (and less time-consuming!) for all of us parents just to write the school a check for whatever amount we can contribute?

I guess this is supposed to be a "fun" fundraiser and get more parents involved. The illogical nature of it really bugs me, though.

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Somebody keeps parking waaaay too close to my car at work. It is always the same car that does it, and they leave me so little space that one day I had to climb in from the passenger side. Part of me wants to figure out who it is so that I can hate them. Part of me thinks it is probably better if I never know, since whoever it is, I have to work with him/her.

The rational grown up part of me will just start parking in a different area of the parking lot.

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Add your own mini rants in the comments!