Funny of the Day

This was funny, in a slightly scary way. During bedtime snuggle, Mopsy was talking about a friend of hers  and confided:

"I don't think she likes my style."

Her style?! She's five years old, for the love of Pete!

She was, of course, referring to the hair. I should have known. The "poofy" "crazy" hair which she's convinced makes her an outsider in the land of the silky, straight-haired girls.

I know where you're coming from, sweetheart.

Dancing, No More

I'm confused.
What's with all the dry ice on the Dancing with the Stars final? And what's with Nicole and Evan being dropped down on the dance floor in some sort of glass pumpkin, spherical thing? It's all very Solid Gold, and not in a good way.

And then Kate Gosslin ended her silly dance by jumping up on some sort of platform that raised her up above the floor. Baffling. Also, the camera must have been convex (or concave?) making her face look really weird.

I mean, come on. We've had fans and spotlights and feathers and people being lowered down from the ceiling. And were those plums of fire at the end? Or fireworks? Enough with the gimmicks, already. I liked it better when this was a dance show, not a cheeseball extravaganza.

And on the subject of Kate, I was so excited when I remembered she'd be back tonight, just because I evilly love to watch her botch up a dance. And she delivered on that. The opening number was hilarious! First, they had her bopping in place on the stairs. She wasn't even on beat. Then, at the end of the dance, all she had to do was walk up to the front of the stage and do a simple little backwards skip with her partner Tony. Instead, she clomped up toward the camera and just stopped, as if she was waiting for someone to tell her what to do next! Tony was pulling her backward, trying to get her to join him in, I don't know, actually performing some dance moves instead of stomping around the floor aimlessly. Priceless.  If you recorded it, you've got to watch that part again.

She did look pretty, though.

But Buzz might have been more embarrassed than Kate tonight. They put the poor old guy in a jumpsuit covered with rhinestones and had him "dance" to the Star Wars theme. Hard to watch, that one.

But Nicole. Nicole rocked it as usual. Anyone with eyes could tell that she'd be the winner within the first 3 seconds of her very first dance. Evan is graceful and smooth and coordinated, but there's no comparison.

The rest of the season has just been academic.

Crazy for Silly Bandz

My Sunday column last week for Westport Patch:

"If you have no idea what this headline means, I'm willing to bet my house that you don't have school-aged kids. Either that or you've been on an extended vacation in Reykjavík.

The "Silly Bandz" are little bracelets that most kids in town – girls and boys – are wearing. They come in a variety of colors and shapes — tons of them: coyboy hats, dinosaurs, ballerinas — you name it. There are even some with glitter, some with scents, and some that glow in the dark, which are not all that conducive to getting a 5-year-old to sleep, I've discovered. The vast number of different rubber band bracelets kids can buy is sheer brilliance on the part of the manufacturer and is particularly grating to parents, who are dragged to the toy stores repeatedly to pick up yet another pack of the buggers.

Oh, and did I mention that we're talking about rubber bands, here? Rubber bands, for Pete's sake! I'd love to buy an economy-sized box of the old-fashioned variety at the office supply store and call it a day.

Even though Silly Bandz have been around for a year or so, someone apparently decided that they were suddenly very cool and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kids are collecting as many as they can (we're talking hundreds) then trade, swap and evaluate their collections for volume and product selection all day long. They wear so many they go from their wrists halfway to their elbow.

The wave hit our hood about two weeks ago. One day, a trend-setting 2nd-grader wore them. And about 24 hours later, almost every kid on the entire street had joined in.

The teachers probably hate them as much as the parents do. About a week ago, they faculty at our school started banning them class-by-class. The kids were way more interested in glow-in-the-dark doggie bands than they were in the difference between acute and obtuse triangles. My daughter assured me that in her kindergarten class, Silly Bandz were still permitted as long as the kids didn't play with them. Look, but don't touch, was the policy.

Then last Tuesday, word came down from above. Our principal sent out an e-mail blast announcing that the bands were no longer welcome at school. The principal himself sounds like he's fallen under the Silly spell as well, referring to the bracelets as "clever," "charming," "creative" and "whimsical" in his e-mail.

I don't know about all that. They're rubber bands!

The reason I don't like them? My daughter wants to spend all of her money procuring more and more of the blasted things. (And no, I'm not paying for any of these purchases.) No matter how many she gets, I doubt it will ever be enough. Some kid out there will always have more. Or they'll have cooler ones. Silly Bandz have even sparked a full-blown melt-down one day after school when I declined to drive her (again) to the toy store. For me, anything that produces a temper tantrum loses any remaining scrap of appeal.

So now, they're school-time contraband. Which is sure to boost their coolness-rating exponentially. What better than an official ban by the authorities to make them even more desirable?

But I have an idea. If all the parents started wearing Silly Bandz, the fad would surely be dead before the week is out. Anyone with me?"

westport.patch.com

Funny of the Day

This was Mopsy the other day when a neighborhood friend gave her a children's book written in French:

"Charlotte gave me a book and it's in a different English!"


And then yesterday, she mentioned there's a new kindergartner at school.

"In Mrs. Burns' class, they have a new customer!"


Customer. Student. What's the difference?

Time Warp

My column on Westport Patch today:

"I was going to go to the beach last weekend, to enjoy the crazy warm weather, until my neighbor reminded me that I needed a beach sticker. Say what?

Sure enough, Saturday was May 1^st.

It's May? Then someone else mentioned that school gets out in six weeks. That really threw me. How is it possible that another year has flipped by already? It seems not long ago at all that last summer was wrapping up and the kids were picking out backpacks and lunch boxes. I know to them the past year was probably an eternity, but to me it passed in a moment.

There was so much I was going to get done this past school year: Tackle those photo albums, sort through the kids' old schoolwork, organize that mess of an art cabinet. Haven't gotten to much of it yet.

Is it just me, or does it seem like as we get older, time speeds up? It's adding insult to injury.

I've heard a few explanations for this time warp phenomenon. The first is that if you're, say, 35, a year in your life is proportionally smaller than a year when you're 5. It's just 1/35^th of your life, as opposed to 1/5^th, so it seems faster. Makes sense.

Another rationale is that when we have repeated experiences that aren't all that different from ones we've had before (like, say Christmas at the parents' or summers at the beach) our brain doesn't take much note of them. It says, in effect, "Yeah, yeah. Beach, pool, camp. Already got all that stored away. No need to think about it again."

Completely new experiences, however, make a bigger impression on the brain and it stocks away new memories. Looking back on it, those new experiences won't feel like they evaporated into thin air the same way repeated events do.

So maybe the way to put a stop to this whole disturbing time issue is to take up a radical, memory-jarring hobby. BASE jumping, anyone?

Here are a few other things that have happened lately that make me feel, well, old:

-- Aghast at how fast kids grow, I've caught myself saying things like: "I can't believe how big you are! The last time I saw you, you were this tall!" I've turned into that annoying lady already?

-- I had to explain to my kids that when I was young, we didn't have computers at home. I wrote school papers on this antiquity called… a typewriter. They looked at me like I am, myself, an artifact.

--Later, my daughter asked me – with a straight face – if cars had been invented when I was born. Thanks, kid.

--I caught the Hansen brothers on TV. Those little boys who sang "Mmmbop" a few years back – are now married and have kids. A lot of kids.

--Maybe worst of all, next weekend is my 20^th college reunion. When I first got the invitation, I was certain someone had made a grave mathematical error. Must be the 10 year reunion. 15, tops. But no, it appears they were correct. I'm hoping that if I don't go, it won't count.

I know I'm railing against the wind here, I just wish I could do something to slow this ride down a bit. There is one consolation if the BASE jumping doesn't do the trick. I can always go into Fresh Market where they card me when I buy beer. Ah, I get a big smile on my face every time I'm asked for my license. Me? Under 21? You're too kind.

Just don't tell me that they card everyone, please."

www.westport.patch.com

Artistically Challenged

My Latest column for Westport Patch on the ArtSmart program I'm involved in at my kids' school. Exciting side note, my friend Tammy, whose project I mention here, just told me she got a part-time job teaching art because of this latest publicity. (I'm sure it had a little something to do with her talent, too.) Go Tammy!

"I've been an Art Smarts volunteer at my kids' school for a few years now, and I'd have to describe it as a learning experience — for me, not the kids. For those of you who aren't familiar, Art Smarts is a nationwide art enrichment program in which parents give a presentation on a famous artist and the students then create artwork in a similar style.

But of course they learn about artists such as Van Gogh, Calder and Matisse in their regular art class, too. Why they need a few untrained moms to come in and try to give a quick tutorial on, say, impressionism, is a bit of a mystery.

But no matter. Thanks to my artistic ineptitude, it's almost always good comedy. I've learned to let go of my expectations, because you just never know. In my son's third grade classroom, we recently did a felting craft tied to Matisse. We were sure it would be a disaster. Two of the three of us on the committee had no idea how to felt. We didn't have black wool (essential to Matisse's work), and it turned out it took 25 minutes of serious elbow grease to transform wool into felt. Regardless, the finished works were amazing and beautiful— far better than we ever could have imagined.

Then there have been projects that have gone horribly awry. For a second grade class, I organized a project based on Niki de St. Phalle, who built enormous, colorful sculptures out of papier-mâché. Her work was inherently child-like and was sure to appeal. And what kid doesn't like papier-mâché.? I gave each kid a rock and a coil of wire. The idea was to use the rock as a base, wrap the wire up and around it and form a shape that then would be papier-mâchéd. Except it turned out it was a lot harder than I expected to create a sturdy wire sculpture above a rock. Kids tried to make their creations about two feet tall, which promptly fell right over, bringing the gooey strips of newspaper and glue with them.

"I just don't know how to help them," their teacher fretted, dismayed over the project's difficulty, and probably the floury mixture that coated every table in the room. I went home frustrated that I'd put so much time into the project only to field complaints. Why bother? But she was right. I'd forgotten one cardinal rule: What's easy at home working one-on-one with my own child might be quite a bit more challenging when I've got a 20 kids diving into the project head first.

For every flop, there's the occasional breath-taking success. Last year, Saugatuck mom Tammy Winser spearheaded a much buzzed-about project in the vein of Vik Muniz, an abstract artist who uses food in his work. She asked her second graders to glue jelly beans onto small squares of clear acetate, following a pixilated color pattern she placed underneath. Individually, each child's sheet looked like, well, candy, not art. But then the children brought their squares together, lined them up in order and stepped back. After a second or two, they saw it: a 3-½-foot by 3-½-foot portrait of their teacher.

"The kids screamed, 'Oh my God, that is her!' when they got it," Winser said. "They just couldn't imagine how a sheet with jelly beans glued on was going to turn out to be a picture of anything."

I'd be willing to bet that was a lesson on pointillism and collaborative art the kids will remember for years.

And maybe we don't even recognize our successes. One project I led was based on Gaudi, the Spanish surrealistic architect who used mosaic in much of his work. The kids made clay lizards, painted them in bright colors and then attached tile and ceramic chips. As often happens, some of them really got it, some of them maybe didn't. The lizards were colorful and lovely, even if the kids couldn't have cared less about the presentation on the artist.

Then a week or two later, the mother of one of those students told me she was flipping through an old photo album of a trip to Barcelona when her son stopped her and pointed to a picture of the local architecture.

"Hey," he said, "that looks like Gaudi." And in fact it was.

Well, what do you know? Maybe some of it sinks in after all. We'll keep gluing and felting and splatter-painting in the hopes that every once in a while, it really does."

Geez, Mom

Here's how I knew my sweet little toddler/preschooler/little boy is long gone. On QB's 9th birthday last week, naturally, I wished him a happy birthday as he went off to school. Here was his exasperated response:

"Mom, you've said that, like, eight times!"

Sadness. He locks his door every time he's in his room. I'm not allowed to kiss him in public anymore, either.

But oddly, he still likes me to snuggle him at night. We have our best talks then about all sorts of random things. I'll hold onto the bedtime snuggle as long as I can.