me rite gud

So….   We moved again.  It seriously cut into my internet surfing time.   So here is my backlog of randomness from the past couple of months:

CGI Lady – Not exactly sure how they pulled it off but it appears to be flash based.  Maybe its time I learn me some flash again.

Decaying Theme Parks - My recent obsession with abondoned places continues.  The story behind Dog Patch USA was fascinating but a time consuming read.   Flickr pools are much more manageable.

Free Range Kids – Blog by

Lenore Skenazy who wrote the article about leaving her 9 year old in downtown NYC to figure out his way home on the subway.  Eden is 9 now. And I think she could probably do it.  But it still scares the crap out of me to not have the kids in view.  Which is completely irrational on my part given the amount of free range roaming I did when I was 9.  I did send Eden across Target the other day to go switch out a shirt for one with a price tag.  I had my eye on the doors the entire time and I couldn’t help thinking that she was lost the entire time.  But she managed to find the shirt and make it back to the register in one piece.  Not sure if the experience was more educational for her or me.

Okay,  time to go sort some more boxes out.  If you don’t have our new address, call us.  Our phone number is still the same.  Not sure how reliable the mail forwarding is.

Found this one on boing boing. While the title of his talk is semi sensationalist, Gever Tulley actually has some good ideas. Thinking about my childhood, I had tons of time to tinker. All of the items on his list were things I got a chance to experience as a kid. Sure I almost burned down the house and rendered our only telephone unusable for a couple days. But I learned to safely handle fire and keep very good track of the screws when taking things apart. In retrospect, the freedom to tinker was one of the best things my parents could have done for me. While I think we let our kids explore things on their own, its really time I start setting them up to do some of the things I did as a kid. Unfortunately I don’t think his book is available yet but I am looking forward to it. While the Dangerous Book for Boys (and Girls) is interesting, its also very tame. Hurrah for having fun playing with fire, knives, cars and big appliances.

The Scene:  Me clearing the spam from my inbox. Eden watching over my shoulder, notices the column that shows the size of each message. 12KB,  3KB, etc.

Eden:  KB stands for koala boy.

Me:  Or key board,  or kernel bug, or krusty barnicle

(eden rolls her eyes)

Me: or kilo byte

(more eye rolling)

Me: No seriously.  It means kilo byte

E: No it doesn’t

Me:  Yeah,  it tells you how big each message is.  The bigger the number the longer the email.

E: Okay, So…

(She proceeds to bite along my arm)

E: You are 7 bites?

(she then runs off shouting KOALA BOY)

This is where you get in, originally uploaded by edenacadia.

Yesterday we got the kids to willingly climb through a very small opening in the ground and go cave exploring. And no coercion was even remotely necessary! Both of them had a fantastic time crawling through the wet chilly passages of the Clarksville Caves. I thought for sure one them would get a little freaked out about the dark but I couldn’t even phase them with a joke about Gollum living under there somewhere. I think the opportunity to get as wet and muddy and gross as they wanted was too wonderful to pass up. It’s too bad we didn’t find this place sooner. We’ll have to get in atleast one more trip before we go.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened but I do believe Eden has jumped over some invisible line.   It kinda creeps up on you.  One minute little kid.  Next moment independent thinking, person.  Not that Eamon isn’t a person and he certainly has plenty of personality to spare.  But with Eden I am sudden aware that she is no longer attached to us with the invisible little kid umbilical cord.  The invisible cord that makes a crying child seek their parents when they have skinned their knees.  Their constant turning back to look at us, checking to see if we are observing the same cool activity they are.  Eamon still has it but Eden has definitely out grown it.

I still feel very connected to Eden but its a much different connection now.  Like we are now on a level playing field and I can no longer play the parent tricks like “Because I said so.”   Its bewildering but exciting at the same time.  I am looking forward to our trip this summer when she and I get to spend some uninterrupted time together.

This feeling has been in the back of my mind for a while but it was so obvious when I picked Eden up from her first babysitting job last night.  My dad had her babysit for a little 3 year old girl whose parents had come to visit with him.  Her parents where just upstairs but still Eden was able to keep her entertained for 2 hours without any help.  Eden was bursting with pride when I came to pick her up. And the little girl said goodbye to Eden with the awe and admiration that only little kids can have for older kids.

As Annika mentioned, Nell, Andrea and I have undertaken the massively masochistic task of looking through all of our old letters and scanning the good/interesting ones. So far we’ve unearthed a few real gems.

One of Eden’s least favorite homework assignments is to write “summaries” of the stories she reads in reading group. It would probably be fine if they really were doing summaries. Instead her teacher is making them recite every detail from the story in their own words. Not sure what the other kids in her group end up with but in Eden’s case she usually writes out a two to five *handwritten, single spaced* pages. While I think its great practice for her to do this much writing, I hope once the year is over we can help her learn what a summary really is.

Letters. Summaries. So far I can summarize the majority of my letters that I’ve [re]read:

• My life sucks
• I am so bored
• [name of town] is the most boring place on earth
• I am trapped in the depths (yes depths) of despair
• Let’s make plans to go to [my house, your house, their house]
• No one understands me.
• Sorry for taking so long to write back
• I suck for not writting back sooner

I really don’t remember being unhappy when these letters were written. In fact I’ve always remember that time of my life as being the good old days when we had a ton of unashamed rockus good fun. We stayed out all night, hung out, lit stuff on fire, had inside jokes, dyed hair, pierced body parts, etc. But to read these letters you would think we were all depressed, tortured souls.

Makes me wonder whether thats just what its like being a teenager. In which case is this what my kids are going to go through? And how is it going to play out for them? We had letters. Now that I am almost 30, err I mean almost 25, I can look back at all these letters and see the contrast. Maybe even learn something about myself? But what will they have? Text messages? Blog comments? I hope teenagers now are saving something so they will be able to go back later.

“OMG life sux ROTFLMAO”

zoom zoom zoom, originally uploaded by tem.

its so nice to have warm sun, green grass, spring breezes and kids scooting home from school.