Friday Fragments

Hosted by Mrs4444.

It's been a while since I did a Friday Fragments post and I've missed them! So here I am back again with the bits and pieces that have been rattling around in my head just waiting to be thrown together in a tossed thought salad and shared with all you lovely bloggy people out there.

I was pulled up at lights behind a cement mixer one morning and found myself reading a sign on the back of the truck that began like this:

"Attention Please!

Our drivers are instructed to leave the site immediately if they are subjected to verbal abuse or physically threatened in any way."

It makes me really sad that people have to work in environments that make a company feel it necessary to adopt something like that as an official policy.

On Wednesday I went out for dinner with friends I met when I joined a local mothers group after Tom was born. It was quite a large group to begin with but over time it settled down into a group of four of us who still occasionally get together. Very occasionally now as one of us went and moved to Italy! Anyway, Cathy was here in Sydney for a holiday and we seized the moment. I went to pick Cathy and Malyn up from Malyn's house. I was wearing a red t-shirt, Cathy came to the door wearing a red top too (identical shade even), I laughed and said "We match!" Then Malyn came to the door wearing, go on, guess...a red t-shirt. When we met up with Romaine at the restaurant she protested "Why didn't anyone tell me we were wearing red?"

We had a scrumptious Thai meal and talked till we got chucked out of the restaurant. I do not see these people nearly often enough and I completely failed to get a photo :-(

I blame the photo forgetfulness on the ear infection. I blame the ear infection on the weather but I'm counting my lucky stars because for once I did not get the ear infection whilst on a dark ages camping trip. No, this time it waited till we came home from the trip.

The trip in question being Beorgwic, which was wet and awesome as usual. Deb and I taught a glass bead making workshop, Adam helped out with the blacksmithing workshops, the kids played with fire all weekend and we ate and drank and talked and had a fabulous time.

Clara came too this year and had an absolute ball bolting all over the camp with her new bestest friend ever, a cattle dog named Ohana. When she wasn't bolting all over the camp and stealing people's breakfasts she was hiding in the tent from all that horrible wet stuff that kept falling from the sky.

"I'm not moving till you make the rain go away."

There's currently a very large huntsman spider living in my bedroom, probably behind the bookshelves. I know this because when my ear woke me in excruciating agony at 3am a few nights ago I saw it crawling across the ceiling towards me. I poked Adam and pointed at the spider. He rolled over and mumbled "kill it?" Now, I do not condone the killing of innocent arachnids and this one had not yet trespassed beyond the point of no return (ie, it wasn't actually in bed with us) so I considered the disruption to sleep that would be involved in trying to catch it and put it outside and decided that if I hadn't been woken by my ear I'd never have known it was there and that therefore the logical thing to do was turn off the light, close my eyes and pretend it wasn't happening. So I did. Well, I turned off the light and watched in the glow of the clock radio as it continued across the ceiling. I held my breath for a while then breathed again as it veered off to the left and went behind the bookshelf. THEN I closed my eyes and went back to sleep. I presume it's still in there somewhere.

In the morning I described the spider on Facebook as being a little smaller than my hand, Adam commented to assure me that it had in fact been somewhat larger than that. He's so helpful.

Caitlin's bedroom is all done aside from getting the new built-in wardrobe installed.

I actually got a bit dressed up to go out for Caitlin's 12th birthday party, we took 5 of her friends to teppanyaki for dinner. Then brought them back for pinata bashing, ice-cream cake eating and general running around like a bunch of 12 year olds hyped up on sugar before they settled down to watch Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Which they seemed to rather like. My work here is done, mwhahahahahahahahahaaaaa *ahem*

Outfit of the DayWeekMonth?

Dress and cardi - Sara

Tights - We Love Colors

Shoes - Colorado

Necklace - Made by Mim :-) 

And last but not least, the Fuckh8 campaign video (NSFW!)


FCKH8.com Straight Talk About Gay Marriage from FCKH8.com on Vimeo.

Now, off you go to visit Mrs 4444 at Half-Past Kissin' Time to check out all the other Friday Fragments posts!

Friday Fragments and Linkfest No. 12

Hosted by Mrs4444.

A tossed salad of bits and bobs from the week just gone with a touch of things to come for extra flavour. Be sure to pop over to Mrs4444's place for other fragmentary offerings for today!

1. On Wednesday afternoon my 12 year old walked into the loungeroom , smiled at me and said "Hi Mum, you're awesome." I can live with that.

2. The second dwarf gourami is dead and we're down to one rummy nose tetra in Tom's tank. I'm not buying anymore fish till after Christmas, that should give all the tanks plenty of time to stabilise and I'll have more time to pay proper attention to them after that too.

3. On Wednesday night I had forgotten that Adam's mum was coming for dinner and I had done nothing by way of so much as deciding what we would eat. I think I was leaning towards toasted sandwiches but that wasn't really and option with a guest to feed. Emergency pasta sauce time! One diced onion, 2 heaped teaspoons of minced garlic, a bit butter and a splash olive oil - fry till onion is soft. Add 800g tin of chopped tomatoes, plenty of dried basil and oregano, and a small sprinkle of dried chili flakes and simmer. Slice 2 chorizo and cook in another pan, drain fat and add chorizo to sauce. Serve over spaghetti. YUM.

4. Tonight we went to the school's Band and Choir Christmas concert. Caitlin is in the choir, which sang beautifully and was clearly having lots of fun. They have a wonderful director, she's done such great work with them over the year. The Training and Concert Bands played a few pieces each, I usually manage to hear the bands play early in the year and am always most impressed by how far they've come by the end of the year. I particularly liked the Concert Band's rendition of "Born to be Wild" - I count it a win if I come away from one of these things with an earworm I can actually enjoy!

5. This Saturday we will be attending a rally in the city in support of same sex marriage

6. Linkfest time - a collection of stuff I think is worth sharing.

Does Twilight deserve any "feminist defense"? from tigtog at Hoyden About Town.

Hoydenizens About Town - a skills showcase and marketplace for the Hoyden About Town community.

Greta Christina on Atheism and Friendship.

Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy on Giving Thanks.

And to finish off, some light entertainment. No doubt everyone has seen these already but I'm sticking them here anyway 'cause that way I can find them again later!

Muppets Bohemain Rhapsody

Click here if you can't see the embedded video.



Five Star Wars status updates - Star Wars comes to Facebook on CollegeHumor.com

Prop 8: The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

via Shakesville.

Teaspoon update

Caitlin talked to her teacher and the group was asked to change their name.

They're now called the Gummi Bears :)

No-one was difficult about it. The girl who had originally chosen the name and given the explanation of its meaning protested that she didn't mean anything by it, which I take to mean she was a bit embarrassed to be called out on the matter. I'm also pretty sure she's never given any serious thought to the issue, she's just following along with the mob. I wonder how many teaspoon nudges it takes to get a mob to change direction?

Wielding her teaspoon*

Caitlin's class has recently re-arranged their seating and each table group gave themselves a name. Caitlin is sitting with the "Gaybo" group. I asked what the hell that was supposed to mean. Apparently, according to the kid who suggest the name, it means "we're not gay."

*sigh*

I was glad to hear Caitlin had no part in choosing the name. David tells me that "gaybo" is used as an insult by kids at the school, so how it also means "not gay" isn't quite clear to me, but either way it's problematic.

Thing is, if my "that's dodgy" radar went off, why didn't the teacher's?

When I pointed out the problem with the name, Caitlin instantly said she should go to her teacher and tell her "that it's homophobic". It's pretty cool that she wants to do that but I can't help but feel apprehensive about the possible fall-out for her. Guess that's what letting your kids grow up is about, at some point you have to step back and let them take risks and I do think it's better coming from her than from me.

This'll follow on nicely from the class discussion that was had last week when the scripture teacher was away. They all took turns talking about their beliefs about religion so Caitlin found herself proclaiming her atheism to the whole class (I think there were a couple of others who also said they didn't believe in god, so about 10% of the class, which I found interesting).

*the teaspoon reference comes from here.

Prop 8

Yesterday the Californian people voted for change when 61% of them gave their votes to Obama. But they also voted against change when they passed Proposition 8. It seems 52% of Californian voters could not find it in their hearts to say no to a constitutional amendment that would say to some of their fellow citizens "you are not good enough to share the same rights and privileges that I have".

I had hoped.

I had hoped that logic and compassion would prevail.

I had hoped that the bigotry and hatred of the Yes on 8 campaign would be seen for what it was and rejected by the voters in California.

I had hoped because where the US leads Australia often follows and the rejection of Proposition 8 would have been a strong step in the right direction.

I had hoped but when I saw the results coming in that hope was replaced by a feeling of deep sadness.

To everyone who is affected by the passing of Prop 8, I am so sorry.

California Proposition 8:
Ban on Gay Marriage
This measure would amend the state constitution to specify that only marriages between one man and one woman would be recognized as valid in the state. If passed, the measure would trump a May 2008 ruling by the California Supreme Court that legalized same-sex marriage.

Well, there's nothing wrong with that

I had a long conversation with my daughter recently which was sparked off by a couple of things that had come up at school. It started with her recounting a conversation that took place when the word "gay" was used an insult by one one of the boys to one of Caitlin's friends, the friend responded by asking him if he knew what gay meant and he replied "Yeah, it means happy". Caitlin's friend said "No, it's when 2 boys or 2 girls love each other" and Caitlin chimed in with "Well, there's nothing wrong with that". Then Caitlin's friend came out with "Yes there is, it's disgusting and wrong!" (I believe that after a couple more "no it's not/yes it is" exchanges the subject was dropped without resolution.)

Sigh.

Next came the revelation that one of Caitlin's friends had told her that she (the friend) believed that other kids at school didn't like her because she looked different to everyone else.** This friend is Chinese. I was, rather naively I suppose, quite surprised and very saddened by this, as was Caitlin.

Sigh again.

Anyway, it all led into a long discussion about the problem of prejudice and the issues of homophobia and racism. David joined in too after a while. Both the kids were coming up with some great ways to explain their understanding of the issues. I even overheard them going over the same ground amongst themselves - Tom included this time - at the breakfast table the next morning (which had me calling out "Less talking, more eating, we're going to be LATE!).

Let me share one of the arguments they came up with.

They've learned about how left-handed kids used to get into trouble for writing with the "wrong hand" at school through their history studies, so when I explained that some people are just made differently when it comes to sexual orientation, they made a connection.

"Being homosexual is like being left-handed, you're just made that way, it's not wrong, just different. People used to believe that being left-handed was wrong, it's not, they were wrong. There's nothing wrong with being different."

I was proud that Caitlin was willing to take a stand against homophobia, I hope all my kids will be willing to speak out against hate and bigotry and I dare to hope that their doing so might help their peers to understand a little more and hate and fear a little less.

*I have gay friends and family, the kids are pretty disgusted by the idea of homophobia.

**My kids' school is a bizarrely homogeneous Anglo-Saxon enclave considering that there is quite a large proportion of Asian and other immigrants in the surrounding areas. There's a Chinese church one block from our house for one thing.