Women I Admire

Today, the world lost one of the most ground-breaking women in recent history: Margaret Thatcher. She was one of the first female leaders of a major country. She held her own in a political world dominated by men, where a tough woman was often ridiculed or, worse, dismissed. She opened the political door for other women like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and countless other female world leaders. In her honor, here are a few other famous women that I admire (in no particular order).


Audrey Hepburn

 Not only was she an amazingly talented and versatile actress, winning an Oscar (for "Roman Holiday"), a Tony (for "Ondine"), an Emmy (posthumously, for "Gardens of the World with Audrey Hepburn"), and a Grammy (for "Audrey Hepburn's Enchanted Tales," a recording of children's stories), but she was also well-known for her humanitarian work as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, for which she won a Presidential Medal of Honor.

JK Rowling

Rowling was divorced from an abusive husband, unemployed, a single mother, and struggling from severe depression when she began writing the Harry Potter books. The first book was rejected by twelve - TWELVE!!! - publishing houses. Rowling persevered, and we all know what happened. She was wise enough to retain a significant amount of creative control and financial stake in the many off-shoots of the franchise, and as a result has earned literally hundreds of millions of dollars. She has donated much of her earnings to charitable organizations dedicated to causes ranging from poverty to multiple sclerosis to illiteracy to children's welfare, including penning three books specifically for charities, which have earned nearly $30 million.

Laura Ingraham

Her politics may rub many the wrong way, but she is well informed, well-spoken, and unafraid to take on serious issues even in the face of heavy opposition. She is outspoken about her Catholic faith and her decision to adopt three children as a single mother. She is a breast cancer survivor, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, and a best-selling author. She is unafraid to admit that she is wrong and apologize for her mistakes, as notably illustrated by her essay published in the Washington Post in 1997 where she publicly announced her changed views of homosexuality and her support of legal rights for gays.

Maggie Smith

Dame Maggie's acting career has included stage, television, and movie roles as diverse as Desdemona in "Othello" (opposite Laurence Olivier), the title role in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," a grown up Wendy Darling in "Hook," Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter film series, and the Dowager Countess in "Downton Abbey." Her charity work is equally diverse, supporting fundraising efforts for a New Zealand church that was devastated by the 2011 earthquake, becoming a patron of the International Glaucoma Association, and contributing original artwork to a celebrity auction raising funds for cat protection. She is also a breast cancer survivor.

Rosa Parks

Her single act of civil disobedience may have been no different than similar acts performed by others, but it set off a chain of events that eventually led to desegregation. But even aside from that one famous incident, Ms. Parks' life is admirable. As a child, she walked to school with the other black children while watching the white children go by in school buses. She eventually had to drop out of school to care for her grandmother and her ailing mother. After she married, her husband encouraged her to finish high school, which she did in 1933, at a time when only 7% of African Americans earned high school diplomas. She became a registered voter, despite being refused twice. She published an autobiography in 1992, in which she stated, "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."



Whom do you admire?

The Song of the Stay-at-Home Mom

There’s a zebra in my foyer and an Elmo in my tub.

Daniel Tiger’s on my TV and I’m missing one red glove.
In my purse there are four diapers and a Matchbox car or two,
I’ve a Lego in my pocket and a crayon in my shoe.
My closet’s full of shoes that have no partners in plain sight,
And every one’s a left-hand shoe – what happened to the right?
My fridge has sippy cups where the wine bottles used to be,
My cupboard’s got more Goldfish than are swimming in the sea.
In my car, never pristine before, but now a total pit,
There’s a box of baby wipes where jumper cables used to sit.
Where there used to be a Bach CD there’s “Truck Tunes” now instead,
“Forklift Boogie” has replaced the symphony once inside my head.

Though I never draw a paycheck and though sick days there are not,

Though there is no water cooler where the gossip’s always hot,
Though I’m teaching potty training, not anatomy or phys,
There is something great about this job, and this is what it is:
Despite the moments when I think this job will drive me mental,
It has benefits intangible, far better than just dental.
I never punch a time clock and I’m never late to work,
I don’t dress by a dress code and my boss is not a jerk.
I can take a coffee break whenever caffeine calls to me,
I can eat my lunch at ten or I can eat my lunch at three.
I wake up every morning, not to the beeping of a clock,
But to tiny voices giggling and jiggling the lock.

I’m paid in tickles, kisses wet, in snuggles and in hugs,

I’m paid in hide-and-seek and tag and rolling on the rugs.
I’m paid in story time, in art, in walks and playground times,
I’m paid in new vocabulary and I’m paid in rhymes.
I’m paid in firsts: first step, first word, first venture on their own,
The first time making their own lunch, or answering the phone.
I’m paid in, “Mama, stay!” and “Mama, look what I can do!”
I’m paid in goodnight kisses and in boo-boo kisses, too.
I’m paid in Candyland, in Chutes and Ladders, and in War.
I’m paid in ways I never knew I could be paid before.

Some days are chaos, some are fine, and most are in the mids,

But every day is perfect when I spend it with my kids.

For My Midlife Crisis, I Got a Minivan and a Spare Tire

Most women in their mid-forties are sending their kids off to college, trading in their SUVs for sedans, and hitting their professional stride. Being the late bloomer that I am, however, I am potty-training my children, trading in my sedan for a minivan, and planning for my second career as a homeschool teacher. I am NOT a typical midlife crisis-er.

But what IS typical about me is that I am finding myself fighting the battle of the midlife bulge. I always assumed that women gained weight because they were no longer chasing small children, because their careers settled into more sedentary positions, because they were no longer as conscious of having healthy snacks on hand for the kids, and because they gave up going to the gym. Now I am realizing that when a woman turns 40, she puts on weight for no other reason than that her metabolism goes on strike.

I have not changed anything about my lifestyle. I'm not eating more or exercising less. In fact, if anything, I'm eating less and exercising more. I'm chasing two kids around instead of just one, and #1 can run faster than I can. I dropped my baby weight from both kids shortly after they were born (that's not bragging; I had 24/7 morning sickness for 9 months with both pregnancies, so there wasn't much spare weight to drop, and with two nearly 10-pound babies, I didn't have to do anything other than carry them around to drop the little weight I did have to lose). But during those intervening years, and particularly over the past year or so, those pesky little pounds have snuck up on me and left me with a jiggly mama-pooch - a "spare tire," if you will.

I don't have a lot of weight to lose. My reasonable goal weight is only about 12 pounds less than I weigh now. The point isn't so much the numbers on the scale as it is the jiggle factor. I used to be able to wear a clingy top without thinking twice. Now I have to do a "visible bellybutton and muffin top" check every time I put on a fitted shirt. I have to align the top of my pantyhose with the waistband of my skirt to avoid a visible bulge. I have to do a little dance to squeeze my thighs into my jeans. My butt rides a bit lower than it used to.

I own a pair of Spanx.

It's time for me to start fighting gravity. And my hormones. I'm not a gym person, so taking a spinning class or an aerobics class or even a Jazzercise class is probably not for me. I need something I can do at home. More importantly, I need something I WILL do at home. So when a friend challenged her Facebook friends to a "30 Day Squat Challenge," I accepted.

And regretted it almost immediately. Especially when I got to squat number 27 on Day 1 and thought I might pass out when I realized I still had 23 more to go. This challenge might just kill me. But if it doesn't, maybe my butt will have stopped sliding down the back of my thighs just a little. If it doesn't, maybe my thighs will have stopped sliding down the front of my thighs just a little. If it doesn't, maybe it will spur me on to spending more time on the treadmill and outside walking with the kids. If it doesn't, maybe I'll have dropped a pound or two of that 12.

And if it does kill me, at least my flabby butt won't be visible in the coffin.

Oh, I'm on Fire

With my fifth wedding anniversary approaching in just a few weeks, recently I have been reflecting on when I first met my husband, the first few exciting weeks of what would turn out to be something of a whirlwind courtship, and the first weeks and months of our married life. After having dated both some nice guys and some duds, I was a bit cautious and hesitant on our first few dates, but our love caught flame very quickly and never died down. And it occurred to me that romantic relationships have a lot in common with campfires.

If you’ve never built a campfire, you might not realize quite how complicated it can be. There are lots of different ways to go about it. You can build your kindling into a pyramid, or a tower, or just a pile. You can use a firestarter log. You can use a lighter, or a match, or rub two sticks together for that first spark. But no matter how you do it, you’re still apt to get a variety of results – as my sister is fond of describing her campfires, you can get anything from a smolder to a full-out conflagration. Sometimes the wood catches fire right away in a flash of heat and light, but then dwindles down to nothing and goes out. Sometimes you have to work for a long time getting nothing but wisps of smoke until suddenly a tiny flame begins to gradually grow. Sometimes you never get more than those few wisps so you just abandon it and start over. But whether your fire catches quickly or slowly, sometimes it settles into a steady, warm, cozy glow that is just what you hoped it would be. And as long as you are careful to feed and tend your fire, it will continue to keep you warm and cozy.

Most romantic relationships have a parallel in some kind of fire building. Sometimes there’s a flash of intense heat at the beginning, but it burns out quickly without ever catching on. But sometimes that flash of heat can ignite a deeper flame that continues to burn steadily. Sometimes there’s hardly a flicker at the beginning that will go out if abandoned, but if you put some time and effort into keeping it going, sometimes it will slowly grow in intensity and eventually burst into a stronger flame. And sometimes, even with your best efforts, it will fizzle and die and you’ll have to start all over again.

But the most interesting parallel is how each of those efforts that doesn’t quite result in a steady fire leaves its mark on the wood and makes it more ready to burn the next time. If the wood is a bit wet, those early attempts dry it out and temper it so it’s more receptive to the flame. A fire that burns a bit longer before going out may leave deeper, charred scars – but that process has begun to turn the firewood into charcoal: a potent fuel source that is ready not just to catch fire, but to stay burning steadily for a long time.

 

As anyone who has ever struggled to build a campfire can attest, those first, unsuccessful attempts at starting a fire are frustrating, and aggravating, and make you want to chuck it all. But if you stick with it, keep trying different techniques, pat yourself on the back for every spark you achieve, and have some patience, there’s a pretty good chance that eventually you’ll be basking in the warm glow of a fire. And in the meantime, it’s never a bad idea to ask for advice from other campers who’ve got solid campfires burning – not only can they offer you some tips, they might even know of a smoldering twig who can light your fire.

 

Does Anyone Still Wear a Hat?

My husband and I love dressing up. And Easter is an ideal time for dressing up, especially if you like coordinated family outfits. And especially if you love hats. I do love hats, but unless you’re unusually fashion-forward or unusually good-looking, the only occasions when you can get away with wearing a hat are Easter and the Kentucky Derby. So this year, my daughter and I wore our Easter bonnets to church.

Our congregation includes a number of older ladies who are always stylishly dressed, so I was quite surprised (and a bit saddened) to find that the two of us were the only ladies at church on Easter Sunday who were wearing hats. I had been looking forward to admiring some lovely Easter hats!

When I was a little girl, the excitement of Easter was not just the promise of candy left by the Easter bunny, but of a whole new outfit that included a dress, white shoes, white gloves, a white purse, and a hat. I always felt so grown up and elegant in my outfit, mainly because of the hat and gloves.

Another early hat memory is also from my church. I was raised in a large Baptist church in a city with a number of other Baptist churches, and once a year all the Baptist congregations would have a combined service at our church, since we had the biggest sanctuary. It was always a fascinating service for me, since it was so different from our usual Sunday service. My church was quite conservative and sedate, a style that I would learn in college to refer to as “back-seat Baptists.” No-one ever sat in the pews closest to the pulpit, the pastor never said things like, “Can I get an ‘Amen’?”, the choir sang arrangements of 100-year-old hymns, there were no instruments other than the organ and occasionally the piano, and no-one ever stood up or raised their arms or said anything from the pew other than a polite murmured, “Good morning,” in response to the pastor’s greeting. But when Calvary Baptist joined us, the church service was a whole different animal. Calvary was a Southern Baptist, mainly African-American congregation, and they ROCKED. There was clapping. There was a constant chorus of “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” and “Praise Jesus!” and “Preach it, brother!” – even while the pastor was talking. ESPECIALLY when the pastor was talking. There were raised arms and people stepping out of the pew. And if the pastor asked a question and you didn’t answer it loud enough, he would ask it again and again until he got a loud enough response. To a small child, it was fascinating and intimidating all at once. But the best part of all was the hats.

The Calvary ladies would not have dreamed of going to church without a hat. It was as unthinkable as showing up in your underwear. Or even worse, PANTS. I loved to look at the ladies in their beautiful jewel-colored suits and their magnificent hats. To my small-town eyes, they looked like flock of beautiful, exotic birds.

 

 

 

My simple, white garden hat adorned with a single pink flower doesn’t even attempt to match the striking stylishness of the hats of my childhood. But I will continue to dip my toe in the pool of millinery in the hopes that others will join me in attempting to bring back the hat. Derby Day is coming, and maybe I’ll be brave enough to wear something closer to the church ladies’ hats of my memory. Maybe something like this?

 

Hmmm, I think I might not be ready for that one quite yet.

 

Charades

My daughter has reached that exciting but frustrating stage where her mental development has outstripped her verbal skills and physical abilities. In other words, she’s in the pointing and grunting stage. Since 20% of her vocabulary is comprised of the words “hat” and “shoes,” it’s rare that she is able to say the name of an object she wants. (Granted, about 50% of the time what she wants IS a hat or a shoe, but that still leaves about 49% of the time when she doesn’t have the necessary word at her disposal.) She knows what she wants but is often not able to get it herself, and struggles to communicate verbally with others to get them to help her get it. She’s in the age of charades.

She’s actually quite creative in how she expresses her wants. If she wants something to drink, for example, she has a whole arsenal of techniques to let me know. If she has a sippy cup that she’s finished, she holds it up in my general direction and shakes it. If she’s in the kitchen, she goes to the counter where the cups are and reaches up over the edge in an attempt to knock one down. If she succeeds, she brings it to me and shows me that it’s empty (usually accompanied by a woeful expression and a sad, “Uh-oh!”). If she can’t reach a cup, she comes to find me, takes my hand (well, technically, my thumb), and leads me to the refrigerator, then looks at me expectantly. If I still don’t get it, she grabs onto the handle of the refrigerator door and tugs with all her might.

If she wants something that she can see but can’t quite reach, she also has several techniques in her arsenal. The most common are the crab-pincers and the point-and-grunt. If an object is almost within reach, she uses the crab pincers. She has developed a great fondness for jelly beans this Easter season, so if she walks up to the piano, reaches up, and flaps her hand open and closed like a little crab’s claw, I can be sure she wants a jelly bean from the dish that lives up there, and not a closer look at a framed photo or a piece of sheet music, which are the only other objects in that general vicinity.

And if she’s strapped in her high chair and there’s a toy that’s just out of reach, the crab pincers aimed in that direction are enough to indicate what she wants.

If the item is a bit further away, or if it’s part of a group of objects, she does the classic toddler point-and-grunt and waits for me to guess what she means. If she wants a toy that’s inside her playpen, she’ll lead me over, point at something, and then look at me with a quizzical expression and a grunt. So I begin showing her different objects: “Phone? Lamb? Truck? Baby? Giraffe? Beads?” At each wrong answer, she chirps, “Noooo!” in an increasingly annoyed voice, and stabs again with her extended index finger. It reminds me of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” when the Ghost forces a reluctant Ebenezer Scrooge to look at his own gravestone.

(She’s not very intimidating, so it’s definitely the Mr. Magoo version that comes to mind.)

The complication in this scenario is that since she doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp on what the word “no” actually means, even when I show her the item she wants, I’d better be watching her instead of just listening to her response because she will say “no” even when she means “yes.”

At times it can be frustrating for both of us, but most of the time we both see it as a game, a creative challenge, and a fun problem to be solved. Plus, when we do it right, sometimes we both get a jelly bean.

 

Toys: Boys vs. Girls (The Second Child Edition)

Back in July 2010, I wrote a blog entry about the difference between how boys play with toys and how girls play with toys: http://sandysmotherhoodblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/toys-boys-vs-girls.html Revisiting that entry now that I have a child of each gender only serves to reinforce my belief that boys and girls play differently. It’s certainly true in my family, at least.

My son has been obsessed with cars and trucks ever since he was small. Even before he could walk, he would crawl over to anything with wheels and attempt to spin them – a grocery cart, a stroller, a skateboard. I always made sure to keep a matchbox car or small truck in my purse to keep him entertained. And since his obsession continues, my daughter (who is almost 2 years younger than her brother) has grown up surrounded by cars and trucks. And when she was tiny, she was also content to zoom them across the table and to watch their wheels spin in fascination. But now that she is old enough to be interested in what toys are or represent, rather than just their physical size and feel, she is much less interested in cars.

Her toys of choice are generally soft items like stuffed animals and dolls. She loves to hug them and coo to them and make them kiss each other. For her, I keep several small plastic animals in my purse. Giraffe and tiger often make an appearance at a restaurant, hiding behind cups and salt shakers and playing peek-a-boo with her, and just generally allowing themselves to be kissed and pawed and snuggled and loved. If on occasion I have forgotten to put a car in my purse and I give my son the same toy animals to play with, instead of kissing each other and playing nicely, they will roar ferociously and attempt to eat each other.

There are also huge differences in how they choose to play with the same non-specific toys. Give them both a box of Legos and my son will alternate between building and knocking down towers and designing some kind of gun or cannon, whereas my daughter will stick a single Lego on the index finger of each hand and click them together with fascination, and then pick out all the flowers and animals that are part of the Lego set.

If you let them choose from the same group of toys, they rarely choose the same things. At a local play area, my son runs directly to the train table where he immediately starts redesigning the track while my daughter makes a beeline for the play house and begins to “chat” on the phone.

 

Of course, there are often similarities in their play, especially when it comes to imagination games. They both love to run, and squeal, and be tickled, and play hide-and-seek. They both love to dig in the sand and splash in the water and scribble with crayons and chalk. They both love to strum the guitar and pound on the piano keys and bang on anything that bears a passing resemblance to a drum. They love to make an old paper towel tube into a trumpet. They are both fascinated by sticking stickers on things.

But when it comes right down to it, their play is fundamentally different, because THEY are fundamentally different. And although I would never tell my daughter that she can’t be a construction worker or an engineer simply because she’s a girl, and I would never tell my son that he can’t be a nurse or a teacher because he’s a boy, I do believe that their future interests are going to be very divergent from each other just due to their natures, which are in part due to their gender. Because they’re different. And viva la difference!

 

I Saw the Sign(s)

Since this morning was sunny and relatively warm, and since my kids (and myself) seem to be suffering from a bit of cabin fever and a desperate need of fresh air, I decided that it would be a good day to take a long walk. And since I’ve been reading up on homeschooling lately and am getting inspired, I also decided that it would be a good opportunity to learn about spring. So as part of our walk, we looked for signs of spring. This is what we found!

1.      Puddles

We traced some puddles back to clumps of snow that were melting. We traced other puddles back to hoses coming from people’s basements. Both sources of puddles are definitely a sign that the snow is melting and spring is coming!

 

2.      Mud

Much like #1 above, mud is a sometimes unpleasant sign of the coming of spring. Melting snow mixed with road sand and clots of dirt thrown up by careless snowplows results in fascinating mud sculptures in the shape of everything from tire ruts to fantastical cityscapes. And, of course, muddy footprints. Lots of muddy footprints. A sign not only of the arrival of spring but also of the need of spring cleaning in its many forms.

 

3.      Easter decorations

We saw several houses with Easter flags or Easter baskets or Easter bunnies or spring wreaths hanging on their front doors. We saw one house with two bushes out front covered with brightly colored plastic Easter eggs. We saw a neighbor hanging up a big Easter bunny flag. He asked my son if the Easter bunny was coming to our house and what he would bring. My son said that he WAS coming and would bring us Easter eggs with candy inside! Anticipation of Easter candy by small children is a sure sign of spring.

 

4.      Birds

We heard lots of birds singing their spring songs: the distinctive “chim-chim-cherreeee” of a red-winged blackbird, the “sweeeeeetie” call of a lovesick chickadee, the serene hooting of a mourning dove. We saw a robin hopping about searching for worms. We saw a bird’s nest in a tree. Seeing and hearing more birds than we have in a while, and especially hearing the change in their songs to their spring mating calls, is one of the earliest – and one of my favorite – signs of spring.

 

5.      Budding plants

The tree in our front yard has fat, fuzzy buds all over it. There are a dozen or so dwarf irises peeking their little green noses through the dirt and snow by our front steps. We saw some forsythia that was starting to bud. One of our neighbors has clumps of some kind of decorative grass that has some fresh, bright green tips poking up among the dead brown leaves from last year. In a year when we’ve been taunted by warm weather interspersed with snowstorms, new green leaves are a reassurance that eventually the snowstorms will stop coming and the warm spring weather will be here to stay.

 

It felt good to get some fresh air and exercise, it felt great to spend time talking and learning with my kids, but it felt spectacular to prove to myself that spring really is on its way. I know it is, because I saw the sign(s)!

Lovely is as Lovely Does

It’s a relatively common occurrence for a stranger to approach me in a store, or a restaurant, or a playground, or at church, and tell me, “Your children are just lovely.” I always accepted it as a sweet commentary on their looks, as my children are – in my entirely biased opinion – quite good-looking.

 

But yesterday I was in Costco with both kids, and when my son got a sample of some treat or another, he immediately told the lady giving out the samples, “Thank you.” She seemed quite surprised and told him, “You’re welcome!” then said to me, “Wow. Most of the adults don’t even say thank you.” And it occurred to me that what is unusual and striking about my children is not so much their looks, but their behavior and their manners.

Now, I’m not quite egotistical enough to assume that my parenting skills alone are what make my children unusually pleasant to be around. They're just naturally very good-natured, happy children. But I am egotistical enough to believe that without my making an effort to teach them politeness and proper social behavior, even my sweet-tempered children would not behave as well as they do. Without guidance, my son would probably say hello to other people, because he’s social and he likes people. But he certainly wouldn’t know to offer someone his hand and say, “Hi, I’m Ryan. Nice to meet you!” Nor would he know to say, “Excuse me,” and then wait to be spoken to rather than interrupting a conversation. He certainly couldn’t know to say “please” and “thank you” without being taught. And my daughter wouldn’t know that throwing herself on the ground and screaming when she doesn’t get her way is not proper public behavior. (Or private, for that matter.) Nor would either of them instinctively share toys or take turns at games with other children. But my husband and I have made a very deliberate effort to teach our children to be pleasant and polite. We’ve taught them how to behave in church, how to behave in a theater, and how to behave in a restaurant. Are they perfectly behaved in all of these venues? Of course not. But they know what they’re aiming for, and they know there will be trouble if they don’t make the effort to be polite and use their manners.

So the next time someone comes up to me and tells me how lovely my children are, I’ll think, “Lovely is as lovely does.” And I’ll say, “Thank you.” Because my Mama taught me how to be polite.

 

In Other News, Water is Wet

My son, being three years old, is naturally fascinated with water. Any time I need him out from underfoot for a few minutes while I make dinner, or fold laundry, or unload the groceries, I can always keep him busy by letting him play with water in the sink.

His fascination with water started very early, in the bathtub. Many babies hate baths at first, but my son loved the water as soon as he could kick his feet and make it splash.

 

When he got big enough to play with bubbles, tubby toys, and bathtub crayons, he would gladly have stayed in the tub until he shriveled up like a raisin.

And when summer came and he had an entire pool to play in, my otter baby was in his glory.

 

So what is it about water that is so fascinating? Is it how it looks, how it feels, how it sounds, how it moves? I think it’s all of those things, and more. Water can run through your hands, fly into the air, separate into tiny droplets then join together into a puddle. It can make a sprinkle of sugar or salt disappear, turn a blob of soap into a froth of bubbles, and change a pinch of dull-colored powder into a cup of brightly flavored drink. It can make your shirt stick to you. It can transform boring dirt into delightful mud. It can be as huge as an ocean, with waves that knock you over. It can be as tiny as a drop of dew sparkling on a flower petal. It can be a home to snails and tadpoles and sea stars and sharks and octopi.

(Photo taken by my son at the New England Aquarium.)

It can fall from the sky. It can bubble up from the earth. It can turn hard, crunchy pasta into delicious, chewable dinner. It can cool you off on a hot day – either by pouring it on your outside or by pouring it into your inside. It can make a beautiful rainbow in the sky.

When you stop and think about all the things that water can do, it’s surprising that we adults don’t spend more time playing with it. It is pretty amazing stuff, after all. And best of all, it’s WET!!

Google Me

I am fascinated by Google. I am fascinated by its search paradigms. I am curious about how it tries to predict (usually incorrectly) what I am searching for. I am often bewildered by its choice of results for a given search. But above and beyond all of that, I am positively mesmerized by the results of googling myself.

Not long after I was married, I googled my name and came across a breeder of vanilla Labradors, my mother-in-law, my husband’s ex-wife, and eventually myself (listed on a theatrical board of directors and in a video of my engagement). Just this morning, I did a Google image search of myself and came up with the following:

·        Actual photos of me – exactly what I would expect (and want) from such a search.

o   My Facebook profile picture

o   A few of my elementary school photos

o   Photos from theatrical productions in which I’ve performed

o   The book I wrote on the history of my in-laws’ dance studio

·        People who share my name – an obvious connection and a reasonable result.

o   The web page of a woman who recycles used leather jackets

o   A group photo of scientists

o   My mother-in-law’s most recent professional headshot

·        People connected or related to me somehow – a shared surname or a reference to me, and another reasonable set of results.

o   My stepdaughter’s college photo

o   Various candid photos of my kids and my husband

o   Some vintage photos of my parents and grandparents

But here’s where it gets weird: There is a whole series of photographs that seem to have no relation to me or my name at all. Check out these random hits:

·        Food.

o   A breakfast dish at a diner in New Orleans which involves bacon, a soft-boiled egg, home fries, and green olives

o   A plate of deviled eggs

o   Homemade Jello fruit snacks

o   A pan of chicken alfredo with artichoke hearts

·        Random people.

o   President Obama (several times)

o   A stylist at a salon in Texas

o   People at a fundraising auction in Alabama

o   A bride and groom at a shooting range (bride is carrying a large shotgun)

o   A Bates College basketball player

·        Totally random stuff.

o   A photograph of what appears to be four empty flagpoles on fire

o   A vintage birdcage

o   A poster for a museum discussion on why Jane Austen never married

o   The schedule for a Sports Medicine symposium

o   A white picket fence draped with Mardi Gras beads

I have no doubt that if I delved deeper into these seemingly unconnected pages I would find some kind of connection. Perhaps the birdcage was pinned on Pinterest by someone who also pinned something from my Pinterest board; perhaps the deviled egg recipe is courtesy of a cook who shares my first or last name; perhaps whoever was attending the discussion of Jane Austen also linked to a blog entry I’d written about Austen’s books. There may even be some more distant connections: perhaps the basketball coach at Bates studied under my husband’s uncle, a well-known college athletic director; perhaps the pattern of the plate on which the deviled eggs were served somehow incorporates my last name; perhaps the people at the auction were raising funds for a non-profit organization to which I have made a donation.

It serves to remind me that as big as the world is, we are all more closely interconnected than we sometimes think. After all, me to Kevin Bacon is only six degrees of separation: I’ve performed in a show with Matthew Solomon, Matthew’s mother Nancy Kerrigan was on “Skating with Celebrities” with Kristy Swanson, who was in “Hot Shots!” with Cary Elwes, who was in “The Crush” with Alicia Silverstone, who was in “Beauty Shop” with Kevin Bacon. And of course, me to President Obama is only one degree. It’s true – ask Google!