Kids Say the Darndest Things

Maya (looking at the label on her dad's shirt pocket): Does your shirt say Calvin Kleenex?

The Western Skink

We saw one.



Hiking the New Almaden trail at Quicksilver Park, on a sunny afternoon after extensive rain, we came across this reptile sunning himself in the path. Although we tried not to scare it, this is a pretty skittish reptile. After extensive arguing, we believe that this is the animal we saw -- it's so great that we could look it up on the internet while our memory of it was still fresh. Maybe now we can go to the library for some follow-up research.

Afternoon at the Ballet

As I was leaving the house, Ziad said to me, "Aren't your legs going to get cold?"

As we were standing in the Opera House lobby, Maya said to me, "Why is your skirt so short?"

Sheesh. My dress may have been above the knee, but it was hardly a miniskirt. This is what happens when you spend most of your life in blue jeans. It's nice at my age, though, that my kids can actually make me feel so daring. A short skirt! What next?

The ballet, of course, was incredible. It was Swan Lake. That ballet inspires so much love in people that apparently many ballet companies are heartily sick of it, but there are so many reasons why it's a perennial favorite.



The music is beautiful. The costumes are beautiful. The story is structured so that the ballet covers all the bases -- romantic swans in the moonlight, richly costumed character dances for variety, joyous pastoral celebration, and of course, the beautifully sad ending. It was the perfect choice for the opening ballet of the season. The clip above has excerpts from each of the first three acts, and you should watch it to the end, because that's Yuan Yuan Tan dancing the black swan.

Here is a clip of her dancing in Othello.



Just amazing. She danced Odette/Odile on Sunday. What a perfect afternoon.

In which Ziad apologizes, and I have mixed feelings

Behold Ziad's latest poem:

I'm not very smart and I know it
I'm also a terrible poet
I'm almost as smart
As a blackberry tart
I'm not very smart and I know it

This poem accomplished it's intended purpose, which was to make me laugh. Maya also found it very amusing. Still, I can't help wondering ... am I too hard on the boy?

Science Camp: The Good

A few weeks ago, we were lucky enough to get a week at Science Camp. This is essentially the same Science Camp that public school children get, but the program was slightly modified to accomodate homeschoolers and their propensity for participating as families. So the children got to go off with their naturalist during the day and do various cool project, while the mom and siblings still to young to hit the trail chilled back at camp. It was a good setup.

There were cabins for the families to sleep in (bring your own sleeping bags, natch) and a dining lodge where meals were held. The lodge had a big fireplace, with a fire going all day, and the meals were surprisingly non-horrible. A few of them even attained goodness. In any event, we all ate a ton in an attempt to ward off the cold. Calories! Give me calories!

The meals also featured a surprisingly popular appearance by a recurring character, the Waste Wizard. Who was played by the naturalists, dressed up in ridiculous costumes. The kids went nuts! They loved it. Although the Waste Wizard had various things to say about reducing all kinds of waste, they would also carry around a bucket for the table scraps, which was used to measure how much food people had left on their plates. If, like me, you think the sight of children filling up their plates and then eating two bites is an abomination, then this is the place for you. After the first meal, there was much less of this behavior -- in fact, there was never a meal after that with more than half as much leftover food. Go, Waste Wizard!

We really enjoyed our time in the redwoods, even though it was colder and darker (those trees just don't let much light in, not even at high noon) than we had expected. A couple of mornings we were the first up, so we got to light the fire in the dining hall. There was actually an early-morning patrol, in the words of one regular attendee. She was the mom of a young child who didn't really let her sleep in in the morning, and it was great fun to hear her reading board books to her little boy. There was a guitar-strumming dad and his son, and various other drop-ins. Then breakfast, then off to the woods!

Ziad and Maya were in the same group, at my request. Not having been to this place before, our personal family protocol dictates that I keep them both in my visual sphere as much as possible, which means they HAD to be in the same group, and I had to accompany them. The very cool thing was that, despite the prevailing ethos of "Butt out parent! Your child cannot possibly achieve their full potential with you breathing down their neck!" we managed to land a naturalist who completely understood that I was NOT their to police him, my children, or their interaction, but merely to keep an eye on things and back him up if he needed it. Also to take note of any interactions during the day that might merit some discussion amongst ourselves in the evening. Because, really, no one needs to be in a group where Ziad has decided he is justified in carrying out some vendetta against a perceived slight. I actually think I may have averted that scenario, although, of course it's possible I'm exaggerating my own importance.

The days were very cool. There was a stream day, where they studied the invertebrate population of a stretch of water, and learned that the presence of the caddis-fly larvae, which cannot survive in pollution, indicated clean water. They also learned about a bunch of interesting insects and got to observe the fern-like gill structure of a salamander under a microscope. Then lunch on a huge fallen redwood, featuring runny grape jelly that was the most delicious I have ever tasted.

Next was a forst day, where they hiked up a hill to Big Tree, a large sequoia that we could not encircle with our arms, even though out of the eleven of us there, three were adults. That was also the Professor Trail, or each-one-teach-one day, where every student got to be an expert of one member of the forest biosphere and impart their wisdome, one-by-one, to the other members of their group.

The last full day was the ocean day, where everybody trucked down to the coast to look at the nature center, take a hike on the bluffs, then head to the beach for some habitat restoration. Then they got stainless steel water bottles with an insulating cover and carabiners attached to the tops! Way cool.

The last day ended at noon, and consisted largely of cleaning the cabins, cleaning around the camp, and saying good-bye. It's a very good program, and I would recommend it highly.

Two links

First, second in a series of articles on homeschooling, first appearing in Salon:

Second, an article on women in Iran. Sadly, I can only link to an abstract; however, anyone wanting to read the article in it's print form is welcome to borrow it. Just give me a call.

Life in the Spectrum

Reading this article about autism made me grateful. I'm grateful that my own son's condition is so mild, but grateful also that someone has articulated so clearly what it's like to coexist with such a child.

Interestingly, I just read an article in the New Yorker about a neuroscientist, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, who is looking at autism, among other disorders, in light of brain structure and neuronal organization. This link is to an abstract, but the article itself is good reading if you care to register (It's free).

Time it was, oh what a time it was

My husband's aunt is in town. She is the kind of woman who will always be the favorite aunt -- warm, affectionate, funny, interested in everything, and always open to new experiences. We wanted to have her over to dinner before she went back to her home in Florida, so we bit the bullet, cleaned the house as best we could, and got cooking.

Because she is on a restricted diet, I made some food especially for her:

chicken marinated in fat-free yogurt with onion and spices, then broiled and sliced and served with the baked marinade as sauce

potato salad with olive oil and apple-cider vinegar instead of mayonnaise

apple sauce

string beans lightly steamed and then tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and fresh basil

steamed corn

For everyone else I made

hamburgers stuffed with feta cheese

macaroni and cheese

lavosh rollups with cream cheese and smoked salmon

and lastly, a tossed green salad that was probably enough for about twenty people


It was a lot of food for twelve people. In fact, I had trouble fitting the leftovers into the refrigerator. At least I won't have to cook too much this week!

While I was putting the food away and getting desert out, Maya and Ziad played the piano and the guitar for their family. They sounded surprisingly good, at least the part that I could hear from the kitchen.

For desert we had the plum sorbet I made from Village Harvest plums, a chocolate cake from the bakery and elephant ears from Costco. With coffee and tea.

After dinner we all went out on the deck and looked at the moon through the telescope.

After everybody went home, my husband and I sat at the kitchen table for a long time, just talking about his childhood and his family.

It was a lovely evening.