Cold Spaghetti

Beware an evening on the beach.  Sure, the sand is warm and the sun is gently fading.  The light may be perfect for those family photos you’ve been wanting.  Maybe the breeze has picked up and your husband wants to fly his kites and your kids want to play in the sand?  All of those things are tempting.  And possibly so distracting that you won’t notice much else.

Until 3am that night.

Before bed they were tiny pricks of red, almost like a rash.  EVERYWHERE.  And then when I woke up with fever and nausea and intense itching, they had arrived.  I counted over a hundred just on my lower right leg and lower right arm.  When I lifted my shirt and saw my abdomen and chest, I started counting proper, but lost count somewhere in the 400s before getting to my back or hands.

Here is my lower right leg now.  I had some prednisone (enough for a proper dose and taper) and began taking them as soon as we got home.  Antihistamines, of course, are part of my daily regimen.  Topical anti-itch, camphor (Calamine), and some-sort of topical antibacterial are all part of the arsenal… along with scalding water and freezer packs.  Anything to dull the burn and itch.

There were no-see-ums (also called sand fleas, midges, and a bunch of other things I can’t remember but are equally horrible) in Honduras and they were BAD… but I knew they were going to be there and wore proper repellent (which helped), avoided the beach as much as possible (never left the water), and wore long garments covered with DEET.  I had no idea there were in Pensacola Beach… the very beach where we’d spent the past week plus previous weekend.

Here is the public service information about them:

Sand fleas feed on organic and decaying plants. A favorite treat is seaweed on the beach. Whenever seaweed washes to shore, there will be a large number of sand fleas around and a sand flea bite is likely to occur. In general, the sand on the beach is a popular location for these fleas to live.

A sand flea bite is most likely to occur at dawn or in the evening and night time hours on the beach or other sandy areas that are near water. Wetlands, swamplands, creeks, and lakebeds are other areas where sand fleas can be found. Sand fleas generally stay close to their breeding ground. They never wander more than 350 feet or about 100 meters from their breeding area.

The fleas will jump onto the feet, ankles, legs, and then bite. They are very persistent and quite annoying. Because of their small size, a sand flea bite occurs before individuals even know any sand fleas were in the area. Like a mosquito, a sand flea bites to suck blood. ….  The sand flea bite involves the injection of saliva to thin the blood, making it easier for the flea to take blood from its victim. This same saliva triggers the body’s immune system to react.

Despite its size, the bite from a sand flea is quite painful. In fact, most of the time the bite is more painful than one from a typically larger mosquito. In addition to pain, the bite causes a large welt or rashes on the skin that can persist for several days. A fever may also occur. The welts or hives produced from bites are very itchy.

Also?  On my arms, in the middle of all the bites, I have (relatively small, comparatively) jellyfish stings (these don’t bother much).

And?  The edges of the plastic tubes of anti-itch cream make for excellent, eyes-rolling-back-in-your-head excellent, scratching.  It’s about the only thing those darn things are good for.

Was the beach angry that we were leaving?

Am I really that tasty?  (I’m the only one with bites.)

Is this just really, really bad luck?

Suggestions.  Ideas.  Stories.  Information.  People with long, sharp nails.  All are welcome.

It is Break Week.  The week between school’s end and summer camp’s start, when families are suppose to take off and Be Families.

Here’s our secret: find owners directly and work out last-minute deals.  Granted, even if this weren’t my secret mode of finding fabulous rates, we’d end up here since we can’t seem to make any decisions about travel until the last minute.

Beach trivia and travails:

— Will reports having “like, 102 girlfriends” to his potential beach buddies.

— We may need to go the Speedo route for Will, who is prone to salt/sand rash on his inner thighs.

— Kate’s preferred hat is Will’s swim cap.

— We saw the new Grand Canyon IMAX at the Naval Aviation Museum.

— Paul and I (finally) watched “Juno” and are going to watch Slumdog Millionaire next.  I think that seeing these two will completely catch us up on current films, right?

— I found a whole sand dollar (dead, not live) at our last beach trip and do not believe I will trump that shelling moment on this trip, despite trying.

The view is a little different this time (1 floor down, on the other side of the building, interior unit.)

Other plans: Pier walk and sailing.

Will has completed Kindergarten.

And will enter 1st grade in the fall.

Aren’t I too young to have a child in 1st grade?

Will made necklaces for his teachers as a thank-you for the year.  For a last minute OH SH!T gift idea that came to me at 11:40pm 2 days before the end of the school year, I think we pulled it off well.  It was just enough time to get the kids to make necklaces (“Mommy, can we make cookies?” “NO, YOU’RE MAKING A NECKLACE.”  “But I don’t want to make another right now.”  “TOO BAD.  GET TO WORK.”)

A.H. and Lulu: we owe you big-time.  Your b-day gift for Kate SAVED MY LAST-MINUTE ASS.

Here are Kate’s necklaces.  She got some help from Will (read: Will did it) on the one with some symmetry.  (Will LOVES symmetry.)

We had a bit more time for Will’s necklaces (he was in school one week longer than Kate).  Thank goodness, as we needed a few more ho-has to stretch our necklace-making capabilities.  The necklace to the left was made with pieces from another kit I got to stretch our supplies.  The only reason there is a necklace not done in a symmetrical fashion was because I encouraged Will to mix it up.

I adore the necklaces but what really got my heart was how he drew the flowery circles and hearts when he wrote out the envelopes.  (Can you tell he has a very special place in his heart for his English teacher, Roxanna?)

Will gave them out the day before school ended, which makes me feel pretty certain that he passed Kindergarten of his own academic merit, not for bribing his teachers with jewelry.

Weekend trip, Friday afternoon to Sunday evening.

2 Dads.  3 Moms.

7 kids. Ages 12, 7, 6, 5, 3, 3, and 2.

Out of tequila the first night.

Will rocks the beach.  He’s all about the accessories.

The beach was incredible.  I learned that winds from the north make the best beach days.  Absolutely no surf, perfect.

Our empirical findings were that ear plugs remain in the ear for 2.2 minutes longer with the head gear.

Plenty of time in the sea kayak.

Even for Bait.  I mean, Kate.

Kate loved the boat.  Plenty of opportunity to order Paul around.

Paul and I took a few trips out in the kayak together; once with the camera.

See the fish jumping?  They do that when there is a predator in the water.  We didn’t see anything.  Of course, I didn’t see the shark on the sandbar I happily swam out to, either, so my observational qualities may be lacking.

View from the 16th floor.  Bay on the left, gulf on the right.

See the sandbar?  It’s close.

We didn’t get out to the pier this visit.

We saw plenty of sailboats, particularly on the bay.  Maybe we’ll try and go sailing again next time we’re at the beach?

Kate asked to be a mermaid.

She LOVED being a mermaid.

I brought Plaster of Paris and the kids made hand prints (foot for Kate) in the sand.  They stuck shells from the beach in the plaster casts as they dried.  We did this last year so I guess it’s our new beach tradition?

That’s Kate’s foot and Will’s hand.

Paul brought the stunt kite, so when the wind picked up from the south on Saturday afternoon, he flew the kite a bit… with an audience.

Next week is the week between the end of school (tomorrow is Will’s last day) and the start of summer camp (on the 22nd).  We’re considering going back…?

A few Just Posts ago I posted a note from our dear friend Carmen, who recently began her job with the Peace Corps in South Africa.  Earlier this week I spoke to Carmen via chat — our first “live” conversation in 6 months. We talked through some ideas, challenges, and experiences. Not necessarily all connected to her current situation, but about the characteristics of “the work” in general. The realities of rural poverty. Being aware and at times surrounded by gross inequalities. The struggle of whether a problem is local or regional or national or global… and what it means to work at each level. Many of us involved in poverty work are called to it from a deep seated mission of social justice — yet are often asked or forced to work in ways that can codify or sustain the systems that create the inequalities we would like to address. There is a lot to struggle with, personally and professionally. There is always so much need and the desire to help, to give, to serve… it can get overwhelming. I want to find ways to help her and her new home; making the world a little smaller through our connections and friendships and trust in each other just feels like the right thing to do.

Here is some exciting news!  Carmen has started a blog. Right now it’s a place of photographs and brief descriptions.  Her emails reflect the richness of her experience and the tremendous need she encounters each day in her work. I’m hoping to write more about her work on THIS blog, and link to it in THIS space… and hopefully, maybe, possibly… get some ideas, suggestions, and contributions to her work from the wonderful readers and writers who participate in the Just Post social justice round table.

As for Ga Gona Mathata?  It means no worries*.

The Just Posts Roundtable for May 2009:

• Becky at I‘m Just Sayin with Racism? Really?
• Claudia at The Bottom of Heaven with Creative Freedoms and the Not Now Book
• Erika at Be Gay About It with Fingerprints make a family and day of decision
• Girlgriot at If you want kin, you must plant kin with Roundup and Please tell me
• Her Bad Mother with Humanity I Love You
• Holly at Cold Spaghetti with You don’t want to meet the new boy in town and Pondering Fate
• jen at One Plus Two with Everyday Piscasso and school daze and at Blogher with Bird by Bird
• Julie Pippert at Using My Words with Women with Big Dogs (and infertility)
• kittenpie at Life of ‘Pie with No Less
• Matt at Matt, Liz, and Madeline with yesterday…
• Mouse at The Mouse’s Nest with A pre-Blogging for LGBT Families Day rant
• Neil at Citizen of the Month with Proposition 8 and the California Supreme Court
• Paul Newnham at Give a damn about poverty? with Fairtrade fortnight begins and What is going on in Canberra?
• Skye at Heroine Content with On Anachronisms, Sexism, and Reality
• thordora at Spin Me I Pulsate with I’m sorry, is The Mother’s Act trying to help women? My bad…
• wrekehavoc with Guilty Pleasure Monday: Goodnight Saigon Billy Joel
• Zack Ford at Zack Ford Blogs with Why the Prop 8 Decision Inhibits Equality
• Zoom at Knitnut with Warts, wars, and the language of cancer

May Readers:

de
girlgriot
jen
painted maypole
alejna
holly

Please send love to Alejna, who has great music to go along with your JP reading.

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If you have a post above, or would just like to support the Just Posts, we invite you to display a button on your blog with a link back here, or to the Just Posts at Collecting Tokens. If you are unfamiliar with the Just Posts, please visit one of our information pages.

* Well, according to Carmen: “literally it means ‘there are no problems’, but it does also mean ‘no worries.’  Setswana – along with Sepedi and Swahili, among others – are in the Bantu language family, and they all share similar sayings, made famous by a certain Disney movie.”

When I poured water over her head last night to wet her hair in the bathtub, I noticed that Kate was really overdue for a trim.  As in, her bangs were actually getting caught in her eyelashes.  What kind of mother would I be to allow my daughter’s eyes to sustain an injury from the uncooperative hair I am guilty of giving her?  I grabbed the scissors.

My caveat here is that I do this often.  Yes, in part it’s that I’m being cheap to save money because Kate’s hair is so very, very straight that she needs her bangs trimmed more than once a month.  And in part it’s because finding the time to get her hair cut is a tremendous challenge.  I’m not great at it, but considering the circumstances of my grade-school issue scissors, the bathtub location, and the moving head of my child, I figure I do okay.

And then last night.

Oof.  The mullet with uneven bangs, choppy ends everywhere and even a strand in the back of her head chopped a completely different length (must’ve gotten mixed up with another part of hair).  It was bad.

This afternoon I took Kate with me to the mega-mart to stock up on beach food (we’re going to the beach this weekend with friends… 3 room condo, 6 adults, 7 kids).  I realized that a lot of pictures would happen this weekend and cringed.  I was desperate.  So I took her into the family haircut station in the mega-mart…

… where I told them her older brother had cut her hair and asked if they could help me fix it.

Yup.  I tossed my first born (who knows better than to even THINK about cutting his sister’s hair, sohelpmegod) under the bus.

I guess I could argue I had to.  I mean, it was BAD.  How bad?

When the hair stylist started, she asked me if I wanted, “to keep the mullet look.”

First, there is only one answer to that question.  So if someone is asking you to clarify your mullet intents on your 3-year old daughter, it sounds more like an assessment of child endangerment than personal preference.

So the kind Mz Connie cleaned up Kate the best that she could.  Her bangs are still uneven (much shorter on Kate’s right side) and very choppy.  (Shown below.) She took a good 2 inches off the back to help stop the mullet.  Now she’s working an almost bowl cut.

As for me?

Well, I guess I totally deserved it when we finished the cut and Kate peed all over the floor in the middle of the sunscreen isle.

This is Kate and her hair, two days ago.

This is Kate and her hair, last night.

Ohdeargoddess. 
My child looks like Billy Ray Cyrus.

It rhymes!

I know.  Kate, I know.  And I am so, so, SO SORRY.  There will be extra in this month’s college savings plan for your pain and suffering.

Did that belly dancing class make us uppity?  First we’re umming, then we’re all blinging out, and before you know it, we’re having drinks and splitting burritos at young co-ed haunts on Saturday nights.

Oh, and then?  We’re going out for live music and dancing.

This is Katie Herzig.  If you’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy, you’ve heard her — she’s wonderfully talented, plucking out those mellow chords and lyrical phrases. Here’s the song you’re likely to have heard (a-la Grey’s):

KATIE HERZIG & MATTHEW PERRYMAN JONES “WHERE THE ROAD MEETS THE SUN” (LIVE) from SITUATION OPERATION on Vimeo.

She was a Lagniappe, the unexpected opening act.  I truly had no idea that the headlining act wouldn’t START until 11pm.

We chugged huge vats of iced coffee before the show, just in case.

I know I’ve gone on and on about the Photovoice project cameras.  And while I’m not saying that my recommendations are powerful enough to produce dramatic market changes, I do find it incredibly suspicious that these cameras (which we bought for the project at $109 a piece — on sale marked down from $139) are now $300 on Amazon.  (Office Depot is selling them in the $130s.)

At first, I played around with the ISO (this is the 800 setting) and then with the shutter priority mode.

All this trouble was completely justified.  It was for the Indigo Girls, after all.

I didn’t realize it, but Emily (the musician on the right) went to Tulane!  She gave a big heartfelt shout-out to Tip’s, mentioning her own first music experiences in the venue.   Both she and Amy took every opportunity to remind the crowd of the groups they were there to support.

The venue, Tipitina‘s, sits on the corner of an Uptown neighborhood street, near the railroad and docks.  Once upon a time it was a neighborhood bar and juke joint.  It’s been home to many (if not most) of New Orleans’ beloved musicians — but the club is dedicated to Henry Roeland Byrd, (a.k.a. Professor Longhair), one of the most revered rhythm and blues musicians in the legacy of New Orleans music.

Tipitina’s holds a wide range of community activities and runs a Foundation that brings instruments to local kids.  They sponsor events where musicians mentor students, including training in musician business skills and industry internships.  They hold events that raise money for organizations dedicated to preserving the unique heritage and traditions of our city.  The concert was part of an “activism night” for Tipitina’s and local organizations that the Indigo Girls support.

(Also?  The camera does video…!)

Untitled from Cold Spaghetti on Vimeo.

It was my first night inside Tip’s.  The two story space is like a big barn — U shaped second floor with open center and big dance floor below.  It has that special mix of history and intimacy one expects in New Orleans; you feel the energy of the evening on the back of the energy from the day before.  It feels familiar and exciting all at the same time.

Here is a recording of the full song in the clip above:

Indigo Girls – Land Of Canaan (Official Music Video) – Click here for another funny movie.

The concert was fantastic.

I was thrilled they played Land of Canaan AND Watershed, neither of which I think I’ve heard them play live before.

They played quite a bit from their new album, which is fantastic — it goes back to the sounds of some of their older music.

Actually, they played nonstop for 2 hours… from 11 until 1am.

One of the fundraising activities for the night was the opportunity to sing “Closer to Fine” on stage with them… and get a recording of it… to the highest bidder.

It went for $9,000.

I know. WOW.

And of course someone in our group knew the winner.  I hear she’s an OB-GYN?  She actually bid with a group of friends, so all four were on the stage, but she sang the second verse all by herself.

They played a couple of encores… the last one was Galileo.  Bonerama was hanging around, so they joined the Girls on the stage.  I’m not sure if the members of Bonerama had ever really heard the song before?  But whatever.  Everyone was singing so loudly I’m not sure if mattered.  You decide:

Indigo Girls and Bonerama from Cold Spaghetti on Vimeo.

Either way, it was a way cool concert and an awesome New Orleans’ night!

Thanks, Chrissie, for getting the tickets and EVERYONE for making it great!

Alejna and I are sending out the call for Just Posts for May! We’re hoping to get the round table up early(er) this month… so please send on your nominations!

Rounding out the triumvirate of part-time employment I have distracting me from writing That Damn Paper (the new official title of my dissertation) is a teaching position in the School of Social Work.  Last week I lectured alone for the first time, on material new to the course and to me.  I’m one of three with teaching responsibility for these classes, which is an absolutely fabulous set-up; low stress and interesting all at the same time.

On Tuesday, the students will have an in-class simulation of a UN Global Humanitarian Forum based on a variety of readings on Human Development.  To give them a primer of what is expected, one of my colleagues sent out links to videos from last year’s UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in Bonn.

This is the sort of stuff that gets passed around my collegial circles all the time… climate change, gazillions impacted, always the lowest on the totem that get sunk… yeah, yeah.  It buzzes around back there as we focus on whatever tiny section of the Global Health pie we’re devouring.  It’s not that we’re not interested, it’s just that well… sometimes it feels like folks in this field tire of the gore and horrors. And sometimes you get so caught up in just doing a job and just getting ahead that the senses get dulled. Passion is not something easy to sustain. Then, sometimes, an ear picks up a few words and slowly lifts the head around to attention.

The discussion of the Himalayas, and the ONE BILLION people who live on either side, is what turned my head. Because that’s right, of course. One third of our roughly 6 billion earthlings call either India or China home, so it’s right to throw those numbers out there. At least a billion people live to the north and south of the Himalayan range and rely on it’s freshwater runoff.

I know. His tongue is a bit serpent-like. I hope it didn’t distract too much from his arguments. By the way, this guy, Yvo de Boer, is the Executive Secretary of the UFCCC. Like most folks at the UN, I feel like he’s caught in a battle of conscious and politics… wanting to get tough and present vision and do all those hard-line things that Greenpeace (et al) slam him on, but having to deal with arrogant leaders (ahem, GW) who aren’t having it and would simply shut it all out if he did go that route. I dunno. Maybe this is me dreaming? I always want to believe that people long to do more than they are able.

A statement made by 17-year old Rishika Das Roy, from Kolkata, India, was also sent to students. Here are some photographs of her community, the Sunderbans. I wonder what her statement would have been if she had attended the meeting as the Executive Director of the UNFCCC for the day, rather than a “witness”?

Watching the two speakers — their different roles, ages, positions, passions, intents, and approaches — the hierarchies in it all just stood out. This young woman is poised to be a leader in some capacity. Will 30 years of working with International organizations dull her passions, force her to recognize the compromises in politics, shake her down to broad numbers of impact? Is this fate for all go-gooders? That we become jaded, pessimistic, burnt out, fed up?