I blame the falafel baby for how the twins ended up becoming Hundredaires.

The ChickieNob suggested that we get lunch at a falafel stand; the sort of place that makes you moan with eat bite, “this is soooooooooo good.”  Which meant that I overate, still taking bites when I was full, until I pushed back the chair and announced that I had a little falafel baby in my belly.  It felt and looked as if I had the first questions of a pregnancy bump.

We talked about the falafel baby, how it is the easiest baby: one that doesn’t kick or make me ill and will not require a very painful delivery.  The falafel baby will not wake me up in the night or need a bottle or want a diaper change.  We were laughing, but as we were talking about it, I got sadder and sadder, thinking about how that’s all I will have in my body: a baby made out of ground up chickpeas.

*******

Days earlier, my sister and I had been talking about a pin I once owned that had a moving part — a Halloween mask — that swung on and off the metal girl’s face.  I tore apart my room, trying to find the pin, and in doing so, ripped through a bag of spare change.  I swept all the loose coins out of my drawers and placed them in an enormous Tupperware container, the kind that could hold a pound of cooked pasta.  I filled it to the top.  And then I couldn’t move it.  I shoved it out of the way and thought that I’d deal with it later.

*******

We finished errands after our falafel lunch, and the twins kept bringing up the garbanzo bean baby.  To get them off the topic of the non-baby in my stomach, as we crossed the parking lot, I asked them if they wanted to buy a treasure map from me for $5 each.  If it led to treasure, they could split it.  If it led nowhere, they were out $5 each.  This — by the way — was not a well-thought-out plan.  It was unfolding as I spoke it.

The ChickieNob, always up for an adventure, immediately said yes.  But her brother was more cautious.  He really struggled with the offer, trying to make a few counter offers in return: lower the price, refund the money, show them the treasure map prior to purchase.  Nope, I said.  Either you trust me that it’s a good treasure map, or you don’t.

My father had made a similar deal with me when I was their age.  Give him our allowance and my sister and I could have the contents of the coffee can.  We weren’t allowed to pick up the can or look in the can, it was just a leap of faith.  Did we trust him or not?  My sister took the bet immediately.  I really agonized over the decision until it was time to give him a final answer, but finally handed over my allowance so I wouldn’t be left out.

When we went in the house, the kids went to count their money in order to make their decision, lingering by my room to get a read on the situation.  “Mum has her tricksie glint,” the ChickieNob told him, agreeing that I could be teasing them, “but I’m going to do it.”

I told them that I needed to change, and then I locked my door and quickly scrawled out the WORST treasure map of all time.  Unfortunately, I only had one piece of paper, so even though the map was unintelligible, I had to spruce it up since I couldn’t start over.  I wrote Ye Ancient Treasure Map across the top, and scrawled half of a “poem” in the corner: this is a place to rest your head, the treasure lies underneath the b–.  I left the final word as a squiggle to extend the treasure hunt by a good five seconds and kicked the Tupperware container under my bed.

With a great deal of trepidation, they gave me $10 and took my paper.  Their faces fell when they sank down onto the floor to look at it together.  “This isn’t an ancient treasure map!” the Wolvog accused.

“It is!  Look, it says so at the top.  Ye Ancient Treasure Map.”

“You wrote that!  You wrote this just now in your room.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I sniffed.  “It’s super old.  Are you going to look for the treasure or not?”

“I thought we were going to go into the mountains.  With shovels,” the ChickieNob admitted.

“Well, are you going to read that very difficult poetic clue and find this treasure or not?”

The Wolvog read it aloud, filling in the missing word, and then raced to look under the various beds until he found the Tupperware box.  “Is this it?  I have never seen so much money in my life.”

“So you gave me $5 and you probably made about $100.  You just instantly became a Hundredaire.”

Which is like a millionaire.  Except you only have $100.

They were dumbfounded by their luck, that they had just found about $200 — mostly in quarters and dimes.  We separated the non-US money from the rest (there were a large chunk of Italian lire, inexplicable Barbados currency, and of course Canadian coins) and then made separate bags of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.

The rest of the day, they kept talking about how they became Hundredaires; completely amazed by their luck (and, in turn, forgetting completely to ask about the falafel baby until the ChickieNo returned to the topic at bedtime).  I reminded them of two things, the first something my father told me when he made me that offer that banked my sister and I $88 each, and a second thing that I hope they always remember when they are having a terrible day.

Like my father, I will never trick them; at least, not a cruel way.  I may tease them incessantly and have a tricksie glint in my eye, but where it counts, I will never lie or do anything other than have their back.

And secondly, no matter how bleak things look, there is always the possibility that something is going to come along that you cannot predict and change your luck for the better.  When they woke up that morning, they had no clue they were going to be spending the night looking at a 16 ounce container of glittery coins.

…to be continued.

I’m still sick-ish, so you get a bunch of photos from last week.

Official White House Photo

This is from the reception I went to at the Vice President’s residence earlier in the week.  Why yes, my eyes are closed.  You know what I say: every second is a good time to blink.

On Friday, I took my sick self to the White House to cover a very cool event matching high schoolers with people from Hollywood.  I wrote about the film symposium over on BlogHer.  The White House uploaded the First Lady’s speech on YouTube:

And here are some photos I took from the event.  The guests for the panel discussion were David Frankel (director: The Devil Wears Prada), Ryan Coogler (director: Fruitvale Station), Harvey Weinstein (producer: uh… of everything), Whoopi Goldberg (actress), Blake Lively (actress), Naomie Harris (actress), Bruce Cohen (producer: Silver Linings Playbook).  Todd Wagner (producer: Akeelah and the Bee) joined the panel midway through.  Gayle King moderated the discussion.

Weinstein, Goldberg, Lively, and Harris behind the First Lady.

King addressing Goldberg, Lively, Harris, and Cohen.

Lively and Harris.

The whole panel, with Wagner taking Goldberg’s seat.

Not shown: The enormous quantities of used tissues filling my rubbish bin.  My raw, red nose.  The black three-inch high heels I bequeathed to the ChickieNob for dress-up in a moment of poor judgment.  Did I mention my raw, red nose?  The empty bottle of Reed’s Spiced Apple Cider that I didn’t think I’d like at all but was insanely good.  And my very raw, very red nose from all the aforementioned tissues.

I want to give you ample warning that right now may not be the time that you want to read Ariel Levy’s piece in the New Yorker about giving birth to her son at 19 weeks.  It is hard to read.  It could be impossible to read if you are in a certain frame of mind.

But that is the thing about written pieces; they can wait for you.  They can wait until you are ready to read them.

Josh told me that he thought maybe I shouldn’t read the piece tonight.  I was in such a good mood, or a neutral mood.  He didn’t want a weepy mess before bedtime.  But I read it anyway.  Because I thought it was important to read it.

She writes of her loss,

But the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody’s mother were black magic. There is no adventure I would trade them for; there is no place I would rather have seen. Sometimes, when I think about it, I still feel a dark hurt from some primal part of myself, and if I’m alone in my apartment when this happens I will hear myself making sounds that I never made before I went to Mongolia. I realize that I have turned back into a wounded witch, wailing in the forest, undone.

I’m not a mess.  Maybe I would have been if I had read this without warning.

Instead, I’m just quiet.

Every year on 11/11, we state our wishes, and every year, a few of them come true.  While so many wishes are out of our hands, a few of our wishes are within the realm of possibility, and it is so much fun to see people jump into each other’s lives and make dreams come true.

Here’s how this works:

(1) Make one wish in the comment section (and don’t believe that stuff about how if say it aloud it won’t come true. That is precisely when the parts that are within another human being’s control can come true).

(2) Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain. #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc. If the commenter above you didn’t leave an address, just go one above that. The point is to find new blogs/leave a comment – not stress).

The first person who comments on this post gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments. The last person who comments on this post gets … screwed.

It would be nice within your comment to refer to their wish (if it ties in to the post you read and comment on) and if you can grant any part of it, to do so. If you can’t, because their wish is outside of human control, don’t feel badly. But if you have the power to grant a wish, why not do it?

In years past, people have seen each other’s wishes and realized that they have the power to fulfill it. And did so. Which is pretty damn cool.

Image: Pascal via Flickr

 I opened the Lego Wedo program and stared at the blank white screen.

“This isn’t what it’s supposed to look like,” I explained to the principal. I was in her office, planning Hour of Code for December. We were planning to use the Lego Wedo set with the kindergarten and first graders. They’d build Lego robots and then program them to talk and move.

I tried closing and opening the program again, the equivalent of the Fonzie jukebox punch, but the screen remained white. Much to my relief, the principal suggested that we pull the Wolvog out of class to fix it for us. I would have never suggested it myself, but I had secretly been hoping that someone would come along and solve this problem for me.

He popped into the office, took a look at the laptop, and informed me that either Flash was interfering with the program, or more likely, I had outdated software since I had only upgraded it on the Mac. Then he took his chipper little self back to third grade reading.

At home, I left the number for tech support up on my computer for days. Okay, weeks. I knew I had to call tech support in order to get the software upgrade sent to me, but it seemed like an overwhelming task in comparison to simple-for-me activities such as cooking or writing. It would mean uninstalling a program and reinstalling the new one.  Fine, not a big task in the grand scheme of things, but I just didn’t feel like dealing with it.

As I was brushing my teeth one morning, I realized what I was doing. I was waiting — like Snow White and her prince — for my geek to come.

My subconscious game plan was to leave this task until last minute and then ask Josh to take care of it. It’s a strategy that has worked well for me in the past. I often hand over pieces of technology to Josh and say, “please fix this” even though he technically has less technological knowledge than I do. What he lacks in capabilities he makes up for with confidence and a willingness to try things out until he figures out what works.

Once I realized that’s what I was doing, I sucked it up and dialed Lego’s tech support number. Within fifteen minutes, we had uninstalled and reinstalled the new software. Easy peasy with the guy’s instructions over the phone; not really something I should have dragged my heels on for weeks.

There are plenty of other places in life that have higher stakes where I’m willing to jump in feet first and take a chance. Parenting comes to mind. I rarely question my parenting choices or drag my heels despite not having any special child development knowledge. I don’t think twice before playing with recipes despite having no culinary training. There are too many places in life where I don’t wait for someone else to come along and do things for me including home repair. I am more comfortable charging ahead with redoing our bathroom on my own than I am calling Lego Wedo support. What about technology makes me so nervous?

Is it because until recent years, girls weren’t encouraged to engage in the STEM fields so we got the message that we should look but not touch (and certainly not do anything as hands-on as actually taking care of our own computers)? Or is it that technology is actually more difficult than raising human beings or creating a new recipe from scratch? Uh… no.

But now that I’ve identified the problem, there is no way in hell that I’m going to let the ChickieNob grow up waiting for her geek to come. I’ve taken out the snap circuits and we’re starting there; teaching ourselves tiny projects from the booklet. It’s right on par with our lack of technological knowledge, and it’s a good starting place to build from; getting comfortable with sticking our hands amongst wires and switches. When we realize that we haven’t electrocuted ourselves (can one electrocute themselves with snap circuits? I’m not entirely sure), we’ll move on to more difficult things until the day when we’re soldering our own motherboards.

Hey, a girl can dream, right?

Were you taught to wait for your geek to come, or were you encouraged to explore the STEM fields?

cross-posted with GeekDad