California on Fire

This is what the area in front of my door looks like.

So, in case you were wondering? I am covered in ashes. Every year there are wild fires, and every year, no matter where they are, the smoke and ash comes sailing on over Long Beach and out to the ocean. This year we have fires above us, to the east and to the west, so you can imagine how gross it is outside. Instead of a blanket of soot, you can actually see wood particles and grey ash. I was horrified watching the news yesterday morning, since my family lives out by one of the fires. But once I found out that everyone was OK, I calmed down a little. Still, the photos and footage are heartbreaking. So many people are having a hard time managing life with this recession, and with the holidays coming, just..there are no words.

Since the fires are burning so close to my work, a couple of students have taken it upon themselves to use it as an excuse to not come to class tomorrow. One said that it might be too difficult to make it to class because some freeways are shut down, so am I going to cancel class? Hello? Detours? Get up earlier? And one actually asked if I was going to give an extension on the paper due Wednesday because he has spent all of Saturday watching the fires on the news. Great. Way to tell me that you put off writing the paper until the Saturday before it was due, even though I gave you over a month to do it, and then further flaking by watching TV. Nice going. Also, who in their right mind would ask a professor such a thing? I'm sure there are some students who have actually lost their homes, or who have family that are displaced. It strikes me as quite insensitive to use this tragedy as a way out of a paper or one class meeting.

I spent the weekend recovering from my godawful cold. I am still coughing and sniffling. The hot ashy air does nothing for a cough, let me tell you. We closed up the house and plan to stay in as much as possible. I have my strength back, which is nice. I managed to get back into the swing of things by cleaning, my favorite pastime. I cleaned the fridge and freezer top to bottom. I usually clean out the refrigerator by tossing old food and wiping down the shelves, but this time I went to town. I took out shelves and washed them in hot water, I scrubbed the walls of the fridge, and I got rid of some condiments we never really use. And then I did the freezer too! Crazy. But after days of laying in bed looking up at the ceiling, it was almost inevitable that when I got up, I'd be a force to be reckoned with.

If you know me, you know I love to rearrange furniture. When you don't have a lot of money for new stuff, and you want to redecorate, rearranging is a good substitute. We rearranged the living room (pics over at Flickr) again. Just a few adjustments to help us feel a little less cluttered. Now that M. spends more time here, he really notices that stuff. He actually started it this time! It's nice to have a rearranging partner. Living by the beach has is luxuries, but one of the only complaints I have is that there is a layer of sand/oil/soot that comes in with the dust and covers everything. When you rearrange, it requires cleaning and vacuuming. You realize everything has a layer of dirt that requires more than a wet rag. I haven't used so much Simple Green in a while. But when you move a lamp and see a ring, you gotta take care of the whole piece of furniture. At least if you're me.

Hopefully this week will be a bit more interesting. The blog has been kind of ho hum lately. I'm going to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving, so things will pick up, I'm sure. Also, I am making some progress on a few projects (culinary, academic, and design), so I promise I will get more interesting.

St. Mom

I spoke to my mom today about my whole eye thing, and the first thing she said was, "I can give you my cornea," to which I said, "you can't just give your cornea away. You kind of need it." Her response was, "What do I need one cornea for? You can have it. I don't have to see out of both eyes, but you do." How crazy is that? My vision is a little blurry. It's not like I wear an eye patch! This struck me as a very "mom" thing to say. I thought it was incredibly amusing, but she was serious. She kept reminding me that she was serious on the phone before we hung up.

What does this have to do with McCain's VP choice or the Virgin Mary? Well, it made me think of moms and the expectation of sacrifice and devotion that is rarely applied to fathers. Palin is a mom, and one that is getting put through the ringer in a way I kind of expected. Now, I dislike this woman's policies, and I would never in a million years vote for her and as an American am pretty embarrassed that she could be the first woman VP (what with the ties to big oil, her anti-abortion stance, and her apparent hatred of Alaskan bears- both the animals and the gay men). That being said, there's all this discussion going around the webs and tvs concerning her ability to be a good VP and be a good mother at the same time. She's got a special needs infant, a teen-aged daughter that is pregnant, and I think three other kids that are so freaking glad right now that they aren't "mommy's little PR problem." I keep hearing about "how could she do a good job with the country if she can't run her family right?" Or, "how could she focus on VP duties with an infant and pregnant daughter?"

Curiously, these are not questions that anyone ever asked of the men who have run for VP. "Who is going to take care of your kids, Dan Quayle? Al Gore?" "Don't you think they need a father more than the country needs a VP?" I can't think of even men in managerial positions in offices that I have worked in being asked these questions. "Bill, are you sure you can handle being accounts manager of the entire company what with three young kids at home? Isn't it a little bit selfish?" How weird is it to think about those questions applied to men. It is 2008! I can forgive the lack of flying cars and food that zaps into existence out of nowhere, but the whole "women are nurturers and men are providers" stuff is way too behind, culturally, for me. And this is a big question for political pundits (who, by the way, are all such bottom feeders).

Some days I just wish we could appoint Amy Goodman as Journalism Czar. She could go from network to network and hit bad reporters and pundits on the back of the hand with a ruler and make them write ethical standards over and over again until they get them right. She could ban all hairspray from TV news broadcasts. She would erase Lauren Sanchez and the entire My 13 news team from our memories. They'd just be a bad bad dream... Oh Amy, I wish it were so.

Skate or Die No Longer a Choice

Nothing gets you ready for fall like deli slices of people's bodies! Yesterday I went with my friend Trista to see the Body Worlds 3 Exhibit at the California Science Center in Exposition Park. Wow. I was excited to see it because I had heard so much about it. But when I got there, it felt very strange. Not strange like "bodies!" but strange like "these were people." I was remarking to Trista as we were waiting in line that I bet the people who donated their bodies to science had no idea that they would be displayed in positions like "flamenco dancer" or "skateboarder."

I wanted immediately to amend my donor status, as I have the little pink dot on my license. Do you think you can put some restrictions on it? Like, "no plastination positions that involve crouching, bending over, or touching other plastinated bodies. Also, in no way is my body to be displayed in association with defects or diseases (especially relations to being "fat, overweight, large in size, etc.)." I think it's a new priority for me. I was disturbed by the posing, and by the effects used to make them seem more human; for instance, their faces had added skin parts in areas like eyebrows, noses, lips and they had glass eye balls.

It definitely brought them to life, and made me wonder if the learning that was happening around me was worth the questionable dignity of the exhibit. Men's naughty bits were hanging out all over, and ladies breasts, but the vulva was shrouded in secrecy. There were reproductive organ displays, but there was no equivalent to the plastinated penises. No outside lady parts, just uteruses (uteri?), fallopian tubes, and ovaries. Cross sections of obese people and cancerous lungs made for a cautionary tale. So afterwards we immediately had to wash off the ick factor (and the serious B.O. going on amongst the patrons) with a little shopping and eating on Santa Monica's 3rd St. Promenade.

My bounty from the shopping trip was a few bird things:

It was a good gals night out, and I did some learnin' which makes things worthwhile. I have to say, as someone who was kind of weirded out by the exhibit, I can only imagine the dinner discussions that followed amongst the families that were there. There were infants, toddlers, little kids, and tweens there. I probably wouldn't have brought my kid to horror central. My drams last night were not about bodies, though. I dreamt that Jason Statham and I were in a literature class together and he asked me out on a date even though he knew I was married. What is THAT about?