Archive for December, 2008

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All in the Attitude

A few days ago, I received this email from a coworker of mine. Ed is an amazing guy; a seriously positive human being, despite being from the Bronx and threatening to break kneecaps sometimes. Ed has a tendency to drop these little gems of wisdom around and not even realize he’s done it. I’m not sure if it isn’t just a case of “when the student is ready, the teacher appears”, but Ed’s unconscious commentary on life and how to live it has helped me out more than once.

Here’s an excerpt from a note he sent our team:

You’re all probably wondering why my continuing series of South America travelogue reports ended after my first dispatch from Buenos Aires. I thought that the cruise ship we were on would allow me to send you daily emails through my laptop. The ship had a number of wireless hotspots, but they weren’t all that hot. In fact, I was only able to start a wireless session one time and for just a few minutes at that. Initially, I thought this was a physics issue — perhaps the electrons got perturbed on their way to and from the antipodes — but the wired desktop machines on the cruise ship worked well. However, even though the desktop machines worked, I couldn’t get connected to our Sun mail system.

I’m sure sometime over the last two weeks most of you thought that indeed the world is flat and that I fell off the edge as I neared Cape Horn. But try as I might, I could not find the edge (BTW, I still haven’t found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow either).

The reason I can now contact you is that the cruise ended this morning in Santos Brazil and once again I’m sitting in a hotel room that has a reliable Internet service. To get here, Rita and I took a long taxi ride through traffic-choked Sao Paolo. Unfortunately, Sao Paolo lives up to its reputation as sprawling, ugly, and chaotic. I’m sure there are nice areas of this city, but much of what we saw today in this city was favela (shantytown) upon favela.

But let’s get to the positive. Our cruise was simply wonderful. Rita and I have done quite a bit of cruising. I think this is our tenth. But we’ve never been aboard a ship with such an international set of passengers. We met folks from everywhere — even a young couple from Swaziland. We also saw some memorable places: from the the Alpine beauty of Ushuaia Argentina to the talcum-fine sands of the beaches in Punta Del Este Uruguay. And yes Christine, I did have a Pisco Sour in Chile — it went straight to my head!

I think as Americans we tend be a bit parochial and see the entire world fitting into the area between New York and California . But the world is a much bigger place with a multitude of extremely interesting people and sights. If you have a chance to travel beyond our borders, I strongly encourage you to do it.

And there you have it. Positive, positive, positive. Ed is a citizen of the world, and at 60+ years of age, he’s still throwing himself into new experiences all over the world, and encouraging the rest of us to jump in, the water’s fine.

I honestly don’t know which comes first; the fascination with the world that creates the personal vibrancy, or a certain vitality that allows one to be so incredibly eager to have new experiences in new places with other people. All I know is that in a world where people are ruled by fear and negativity, where bigotry and hatred are standard items on the nightly news, where travel is largely considered to be dangerous and where the world is portrayed as a scary place full of foreigners that hate us, Ed’s ability to do his own thing and wave back at the rest of us is a constant inspiration to me. He’s a breathing example of the idea that you create your own reality, and attract to you that which you put out.

Posted by ElementalMom on Dec 26th 2008 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (3)

I Want To Be Like You

Rowan, Kestrel, and Aurora playing in the morning
As I’ve mentioned a time or two before, Aurora is growing fast. Way faster than her brothers did, mostly because she has them to look up to, and an intense motivation to catch up to them. I didn’t post the other day when she started crawling, but she is. It’s still not super-organized; more like, she moves with purpose in several disorganized ways. But move with purpose, she does.

This morning, the kids were cuddled up in the salon. It’s cold here, and the salon, being the highest part of the boat, stays warmest, so the boys have been sleeping up there, in the “spare bunk”. It’s a neat space for kids, and they’re really loving being up there, not only for the heat, but for the novelty. So as soon as Aurora wakes up, I take her up there to hang with her brothers.


You can see from the first photo to this one, she’s definitely making progress towards Rowan and his Bionicles. Yet another advantage of being a little girl with two older brothers is that she’s never going to have to have the discussion with people that yes, despite being a girl, she’d like LEGOs, thank you. Her brothers have huge collections already, (you can see the bags behind the couch there) and are really interested in sharing with her. Both of them have gotten clear on the idea that the small ones can be swallowed, but that the big ones can be played with, so they’re both making big block creations for her to play with and gnaw upon.

The Bionicle is mine!
And there’s the reach. Aurora has targeted the Bionicle… and you know what’s awesome? Rowan’s letting her. He’s specifically put one of the “big piece” Bionicles within her reach. Is that awesome big brotherness? Oh yeah…

Quite a few folks told me that having three kids was just spectacular, back when I was waffling about whether or not to increase our family size. Two was great, Rowan and Kestrel were awesome, and the boat is not huge, blah blah blah. And I’ll never know whether it’s the addition of the third, or whether it’s Aurora herself that makes it, but there’s something about the dynamic of the three that brings them together into a cohesive unit. I can’t wait to see how things go as they grow up. It’s entirely possible that this could change. But right now, I’m doing this post so that some day Rowan and Kestrel can look back at when Aurora wanted to be just like them.

Posted by ElementalMom on Dec 23rd 2008 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Kestrel Says “Smile!”


Kestrel wanted everyone to smile today. Smile!

Posted by ElementalMom on Dec 22nd 2008 | Filed in Family, Gratitude, Kestrel, Peace | Comments (2)

Says It All

says it all. HT: The Mighty Ellen

says it all. HT: The Mighty Ellen

Posted by ElementalMom on Dec 17th 2008 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Top 50!

Woah.

Some benefactor (benefactress?) has declared ElementalMom to be in the top 50 of Eastern Medicine blogs. Who’d a thunk it?

http://www.nursingdegree.net/blog/39/top-50-eastern-medicine-blogs/

I‘m stoked, but I guess this means I’d better get back into blogging about something other than how fabulous my kids are, eh?

Posted by ElementalMom on Dec 15th 2008 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (4)

No, We Don’t Have To

This post, from the inestimably brilliant Sharon Astyk, had me standing on my chair cheering.
No. Just No.

She’s right, of course. We don’t have to. We have ways of fighting back against the doom. We can do this. You can do this. But please, for everyone’s sake, for the sake of mine and yours and ours and theirs… get going. Now.

Posted by ElementalMom on Dec 4th 2008 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (2)

Growing at the Speed of Light

Aurora Miranda standing supported
I swear, this is not a posed photo.

Aurora was laying on the sofa, and decided to roll off, legs first. She landed, and stayed standing for enough time for Jason to get the camera and take a series of shots. I’m pretty sure she’s thinking "tah-dah!"

She is growing and moving so fast. It’d be intimidating if it wasn’t so fabulous.

Posted by ElementalMom on Dec 1st 2008 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (10)

New Post at LWOS

Yup, another one.

Tipping Sacred Cows

Based on a really interesting conversation I had on an email list. I wonder if the woman involved will remember? =)

Posted by ElementalMom on Dec 1st 2008 | Filed in Uncategorized | Comments (2)