zombie hunters

On January 12, 2012 · 1 Comment · In kiddo life

Found this picture on the camera from last fall, the kids and one of their best friends, in get-ups they constructed for the express purpose of hunting the living dead.

I wouldn’t want to be a zombie with this crew hunting me.  They look bad ass.

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luc-fu breaks open my heart

On January 11, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In kiddo life

Luc, 6, went to his very first aikido class today, and oh my goodness, I felt so proud!  I was there with six other moms of little boys, cooing and tittering at every little boy’s adorable move, covering our grins behind hands, trying to embarrass our children, really, I hardly recognized myself.  It would have been gross if it wasn’t all so honestly heartwarming.  I’m serious, my heart was just cracking open and leaking these weird fluids all over the floor while I watched my little guy nervously take his first steps towards becoming a lightning ninja aikido practitioner. In the beginning he was very nervous (don’t tell him I told you), his little face so still, peeking out of his hair…but by the end he was grinning and jumping around. It was an awesome transformation.

Sophie started aikido at four—she’s fearless, she just jumped in, the tiniest kid in the class—she still is the tiniest.  Luc took a few more years to want to try what his big sis was into.  He’s a hang-back-check-things-out-first kind of guy.  Although he has invented his own martial art called, what else, Luc-fu.  He makes up moves and sound effects.  It’s very bad ass.

Shit, I just spent WAAAAAAAY too much time trying to find a picture of tiny Sophie in her white aikido pajamas and they’re GONE, GONE, this is SO AWFUL.  I know I took pictures of her getting her yellow belt and her orange belt and her blue belt, holy crap, it’s a total break down of digital life, I’m devastated.  It’s like they opened King Tut’s tomb and it was freaking EMPTY.  When she started, we got her the smallest gi they make, size 000, and still the sleeves and cuffs were rolled triple.  I was going to have that picture to show when she got her black belt and took over the world.  I can’t believe those pictures are lost, how, how, where—

Okay, okay, moving on.

As a homeschooler, Luc is unfamiliar with many classroom basics like, say, raising one’s hand to speak.  When the teacher asked a question and little hands shot up around Luc, he looked around, puzzled at this strange behavior.  Then he looked at me, like, What?  Huh?

An aside—it was odd that there were no little girls in the class.  Sophie goes to the same dojo and has always been in mixed boys-and-girls classes, but in this intro class it happened that there were six little six year old boys, all brand shiny new to aikido, it was so cute.  Who knows why the forces of small-child-martial-art-education aligned in this way?

Anyway, Luc also had no idea how to “form a line,” or rather, he got in line the way people get in “line” for a movie, kind a loose bunch moving forward, not the militaristic one-behind-another style they favor in school.  But he figured it out.  He even made a little friend, Jack.  I was beaming.

What is it about our small children’s victories that sneak right through our walls of ironic bitterness and into the heart’s inner sanctum?  Maybe it’s all that oxytocin flooding mothers with empathy—since it’s big to our little people, it’s big to us, too.  Or maybe what we truly love grows vast, all on its own?

All I know is that these tiny triumphs in my small people’s lives are epic to me, much to my ironic-jaded-bitter-self’s dismay.  How did I get so ironic, jaded and bitter, anyway?  When does that get fun?  Thank goodness I’ve got my aikido kids to beat it out of me.

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rocket mass stoves

On January 7, 2012 · 3 Comments · In alternative building

I’ve mentioned that at the thunderbolt pace of a sloth riding a glacier across a lake of molasses, we’re building a bedroom.  Well, actually, Paul is building a bedroom.  I just, you know, take pictures.  Paul says I also stand with my hands on my hips and offer “design consultations.”  He also says I nag.  What can I say, although I completely understand that my primary (and only) builder (Paul) also works a full time job and is a very hands-on father, sometimes the sloth-on-a-glacier pace gets to me.  Sorry for the nagging, sweetie.

But, hey, look, progress is being made because here is my lovely, hardworking husband hammering on the cedar timber frame component of the soon *cough* to be bedroom.

I love the fall leaves in that one!

And here is something more recent.

We broke ground last January, so this is one year in.  The foundation is done, block walls laid for the parts that are built into the hill, lots of drainage in place, and the timber frames up.  Here is the frame the other night….

The sparks are where he is cutting off the end of a metal bolt thingy—looks cool doesn’t it?  The timber is locally milled cedar from a guy Paul knows.  It is soooo pretty and it smells divine.  Here’s a picture S0phie took of one of the beams.

But, hang on, this blog post is not about the bedroom.  It’s about these cool wood burning heating systems called rocket stoves that you can build yourself, use a fraction of the wood of a regular stove, and are super, super efficient.  Because one of the things you’ve got to figure out when building a house—and the bedroom is, in fact, a tiny house—is how you’re going to heat it.

We’ve considered many options, of course. Propane  (expensive, fossil fuel, stinky), under the floor radiant heat (expensive to install, and you still have to solve how to heat the water), tiny wood stove (expensive to buy those tiny woodstoves, although they are terribly cute, but you have to build a fire every time, and then there is wood chopping, dirt and smoke), electric (expensive, nuclear power *shudder*), solar (passive isn’t great when living in a forest, but we do design for as much solar gain as possible, active is too expensive), etc, etc.

We could also, of course, run more pipe from our current waterstove, put a radiator in the bedroom, or maybe some of that radiant floor tubing.  That last one has been Plan A.  But our waterstove is woefully inefficient which means that every year Paul spends a huge amount of time getting a huge amount of wood and, well, he’s getting older.  Getting wood together isn’t the fun exercise it once was.  Our waterstove, too, is also getting older.  We got it used to begin with and time is passing.  It won’t last forever.  What will we heat the yurt with when it rusts out (or whatever it finally dies of)?  Who knows?  But maybe we shouldn’t tie our whole-compound heating needs into an already decrepit system….

Enter the rocket stove, a home built (as low as $20, so they say, !!) wood burning system of various sizes that burns only a tiny amount of wood and puts out almost zero smoke.  The fire burns sideways!  How cool is that?  It’s very exciting to run across something like this, a high-knowledge but low-tech/implementation solution to a building problem.  Here’s a picture of one, but as a DYI item, every one looks different.

Cute, huh?

Here’s a diagram of how they work:

Here is the terrific page of Paul Wheaton’s where I’m getting these images.  Lots of great videos on how it all works on that page, I highly recommend visiting if you’re interested in such things.

I love the vibe of people building their own small spaces, figuring out new ways to solve old problems, jerry rigging and fine tuning and making it their own.  It’s creative to build your own house with your own hands.  You have to reinvent the wheel a bunch of times.  Sometimes you totally fail and have to re-do.  Sometimes you come up with a whole new kind of wheel.  It’s too early to know for sure if this is the heating system we’ll put in the bedroom, but at the moment, I’m thinking, BINGO.

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sick wisdom

On January 6, 2012 · 1 Comment · In mayalife

Ugh.  I’ve spent the last two days dreadfully sick, stomach flu I guess, flat on my back with that teeth-chattering chills, dripping sweats combo pack.  It’s so interesting when I’m that sick, just laying in bed, aching all over—life looks different from that perspective.  Everything that seemed so important gets pushed aside.  Small kindnesses from family make me feel hugely grateful.  I don’t care about so many things I think I care about!  And then when it passes, health itself is suddenly miraculous.

Here is what came to me while I was watching the shadows go across the yurt.  My life is too full.  I crave spaciousness, even just a little.  And to get it, I’ve got to let go of some things.   I let the goats go for this reason and it helped, but it isn’t enough.  I’m constantly feeling like I’m thrashing to stay afloat while many, many things go undone.

But here’s the challenge: wherever I look in my life, there are good things.  As with the goats, to let go of something, it’s going to have to be something lovely.  Who wants to let go of lovely things?

It’s a beautiful problem.  I am so incredibly lucky!

But there is so little time.  Not enough for all the things I want to do in this life.

I hate that.

 

raw for dessert by jennifer cornbleet

On January 3, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In food, reviews

You might recall that Sophie and I went batshit crazy over apple pie last fall.  We baked gobs of delicious apple pies, trying different recipes, attempting to make the perfect crust and consuming butter by the pound.  Literally.  A pound of butter per pie.  This, um, wasn’t so good for us.  I mean, our souls were happy, but our arteries?  Not so much.

An aside:  there is this marvelous baker who lives in a nearby city who makes the most amazing Coconut Pound Cake you have ever tasted in your life.  Oh.  My.  Glob.  The stuff is like mainlining butter and heaven and true love.  The last time Sophie and I went by there I mentioned my undying love of their Coconut Pound Cake and the dude told me—no, first he leaned in close, like divulging a magic secret—he leaned in and he told me that if I really, really wanted to ascend into pound-cake heaven, I should take their slabs of golden pound cake and FRY THEM IN YET MORE BUTTER.  The dude’s eyes rolled back in his head when he said it.  My mouth dropped open at the unadulterated decadence on display before me. I can not WAIT to try this.

Anyway.  After our pie debacle last fall I thought we might ought to come up with some, cough, healthier, cough, dessert options.  So I bought this book.

Raw For Dessert by Jennifer Cornbleet.  All the familiar desserts only with no wheat, no sugar, no dairy, and no eggs.  How is that even possible?  It’s got to be disgusting, right?  In the name of science Sophie and I set out on a voyage of kitchen discovery.  Looking at the recipes it was very hard to believe that the constituent parts were ever going to add up to what was promised, but okay, what the heck?  We gave it a shot.  Look at this:

This is a key lime pie, yum, that we made out of—prepare yourself—avocados and walnuts.  A little agave is the sweetness in the filling, dates in the crust.  The avocados provide rich smoothness (and color).  It has a rich, buttery (how??? there’s no freaking butter in it!) crust.   Delicious, totally lovely, bright flavors, creamy texture, no hint of avocado, you would never know it was made out of avocado.  Sophie ate tons of it.   I ate tons of it.  Even Paul liked it and he is a key lime pie aficionado.  In fact, he and I had a wedding key lime pie instead of a wedding cake when we got married, just to show you that it is no small thing for my man to sign off on this pie.  So, to our great surprise, this pie worked.

But moving on.  Here’s our second attempt:

This pretty pecan pie is mostly dates and pecans.  Some walnuts in the crust.  Again, no wheat, no sugar, no dairy of any kind.  Really yummy, bright pecan flavor, sweet and gooey, though not that toffee-like goo that is in the traditional kind.  The dates (made into a paste in the food processor) in the filling are delicious and very caramelly, but the final effect is light and sweet and crunchy, not heavy and gooey. We ate it all in two days.

One more:

Brownies!  Made primarily of dates, walnuts, cacao, with a frosting made of agave, cacao, and extra virgin coconut oil.  Really yummy.  This recipe is probably our biggest success as Sophie and I have made about four batches at this point and I have the recipe almost memorized.  These are very rich, and satisfy that chocolate craving well—don’t skimp on the frosting.

We’ve also made “caramels” made out of pine nuts (the lumps to the right of the brownie), and “pumpkin” pie out of carrots and avocados—not that there is anything wrong with pumpkin, just that the carrots are sweeter and the avocado again provides a rich creaminess. you would NEVER KNOW that it wasn’t a regular pumpkin pie, that it was just raw vegetables and nuts, I swear on my Joy of Cooking.  Shocking, I know.

The most fantastic dessert, however, has been a creme brulee-like custard (no cooked sugar on top as I don’t have a torch, so we skipped that part) made out of fresh, young, coconut meat and vanilla beans that was really amazing, and sorry, we have no picture of that one because we ate it out of the food processor.  It was that good.

So, all our attempts so far have been…delicious.  Surprisingly so.

But also…lacking something.  It’s a little like decaffeinated coffee.  I don’t mean that these desserts are like fake food, in the way “diet” food can imitate a high-fat, or low-sugar item by using chemicals and weirdness to imitate the real thing.  (But then you bite in and it’s disgusting.)  No.  These pies and treats all feel like real food, real delicious food, MORE real food than the “real” desserts, if that makes any sense.  I mean, if you eat a piece of regular key lime pie for breakfast, you probably aren’t going to feel like you got much good food out of it, but eating a piece of this pie and I do feel satisfied food-wise, not just sugar buzzed and blitzed on fat.  And that’s the rub.  These desserts don’t give that high-fat stupor, high-sugar hit that a regular brownie/pie/dessert does.  That emotion-smoothing chemical thing that regular desserts do is missing.  These desserts are like eating a salad.  They have all the food, plus the sweetness, flavors, and beauty, but none of the drug of a regular dessert.

This is probably a good thing, right?  I mean, if Sophie wants to eat brownies for breakfast, with these babies, why not?  It’s like giving her a small handful of organic dates and walnuts.  Go ahead, kid, knock yourself out. Like I said, the flavors are fresh and bright and lovely. We can’t keep these desserts in stock—they disappear fast.

But compared to Sari Sari’s all-butter pound cake, these desserts don’t make my eyes roll back in my head.

Sometimes a girl wants her eyes to roll back in her head.

But I like the idea that if you put all the ingredients out on the counter, you want to eat any of those ingredients as is.  In comparison, placing all the ingredients of a regular dessert on the counter and you don’t want to eat that stuff: eat a stick of butter straight-up?  Disgusting.  But eat some dates and cashews?  Nice.

Verdict: these desserts are fantastic, beautiful, and satisfying.  Consumption of same allows me to go longer between visits to Sari Sari’s Sweets, and probably live longer as well.  Win!

You know I’m still going to try that pound cake fried in butter thing, though.  I mean, come on.

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happy 2012!

On January 1, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In mayalife

Woo hoo!

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my secret identity revealed!

On December 30, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In making things

Another of Paul’s creations showed up in my inbox this morning…

It’s true!  I’m an auror! Tonks and I go way back.

I know some of you won’t be surprised about this, but to the few who are, watch out.  I’ll be checking to see if you are naughty or nice.  (And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, go read/watch Harry Potter for heaven’s sake!)

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things to cross off the list in 2012

On December 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In mayalife

Holy cow, 2011 is almost done.  Isn’t the world supposed to end next year? Or something?  More importantly, did I do what I wanted to do last year?  And what do I want to do next year?  Swirly thoughts, lots of questions, winter always makes me ponder everything.

The kids built a giant fort that takes up a quarter of the yurt, uses all of our chairs and two giant sheets—they slept in it last night with their sleeping bags and new headlamp flashlights.  It’s incredibly annoying because you can’t walk through the yurt, can’t get to the desk, and we have no chairs to sit in around the table—but it is also wonderful and hilarious to see the whirling flashlights against the sheet/roof and hear them talking in there, playing these elaborate Harry Potter-based games, and having a grand time in their pillow-and-sheet fortress.

Oh, and we finished Harry Potter, the last one Christmas night, WOW, what a great series of movies!  What an accomplishment!  I mean Rowling, of course, but also these movies, all the people who made them and the actors who spent ten plus years inhabiting these characters and bringing them to life.  The four of us have had so many conversations about everything you can imagine since starting with Sorcerer’s Stone early last week, days later things are still coming up.  Luc just asked me, “Was Voldemort a death eater?” Sophie, “He was THE death eater.”  Me: “I think it had to do with desiring immortality.”  Luc, “Can there be bad wizards who are not death eaters?”  Etc, etc.  Earlier this morning the kids resuscitated an old toy castle they haven’t played with in forever, set it up on the bed, found all the knights and monsters and dragons and wizards and busily got down to the work of playing Hogwarts.  I love how they inhabit, so effortlessly and shamelessly, any story that attracts them, playing out endless variations.  Is fanfiction the same impulse in a slightly older person?  I certainly want to know what happens next in the story—not 19 years later, but right after, so much work to do rebuilding and putting right what was damaged by Voldemort’s year of power.  After eight movies, and 1,084,000 words (that’s in all seven books, I just looked it up), I still want more.   That’s amazing, it really is.

Buy we’re talking about goals here.  Stay on target, Lassiter.  In 2011 I e-published two novels, 190,000 words, and am just about to finish edits on a third novel, about 85,000 words, that’s 275,000 altogether edited this year, for anyone who’s counting (that would be me).  All of these projects are books I had written in the previous years and brought to life this year because I love them, and believe in them, and want them to live.  Long time readers will remember that 2011′s new book crashed and burned around the 50,000 word mark, in early summer.  Sigh.  That sucked.  Never the less, starting in January, I’ve got yet another brand shiny new story in my head that I’m going to start, the first new material I’ve worked on in quite a while.  May I have better luck with the 2012 novel than I did with the 2011 novel!

So, that’s two goals for 2012: survive the coming 2012 Armageddon, and write one new novel.

Oh, also, decide what to do with You, Who Are Made Of Light, the novel I’m finishing now, and do whatever that is.  So that’s three goals.

And how about a semi-decent backbend? That would be awesome.  Is it shoulder strength that would allow me to stay up for more than a few seconds at a time?  Or would more upper-back flexibility allow me to get my hands under my shoulders, which would let my bones, rather than my muscles, support me?  I’ll let you know if I figure it out.  But a spine only opens as fast as it opens, so I hesitate to make a backbend a goal, since it isn’t entirely in my control.  Something to work towards, for sure, but accomplishing it may not be possible in 365 days.  The better goal might be maintain the practice, show up on the mat, five days a week (the current schedule).  Just do it, and all that.  Goal number 4.

Did I mention I’m meditating now?  As in, sitting on a fancy cushion for 30 minutes every morning before everyone wakes up?   Mindfulness 101.  Follow the breath, yada yada.  I know, I can’t believe it either.  Let me tell you, meditation aside, two years of Ashtanga yoga goes a LONG way to making just sitting on the dang cushion for 30 minutes a doable project.  No back pain, no leg pain, the two big boogie monsters of beginning meditators, so that’s something, anyway.  We’ll see if I keep it up, or make any progress, so it’s not a 2012 goal exactly, more like a 2012 project.  But man, I want some of that samadhi, the Big Silence, jnanas, whathaveyou, and maybe this is the way.  Is it reasonable to put samadhi on the goal list?  Okay, probably not.  Probably just clocking cushion time on the assumption that such will get me there…eventually.  Maybe.  I hope so.

So, let’s see. (1) Survive Armageddon, (2) write a novel, (3) do something with Light, (4) hit the mat five-ish times a week, (5) hit the cushion 30 minutes a day, and my ongoing goals, (6) be a kind person, (7) don’t yell at my kids and help them do what they want to do, (8) be sweet to my husband, (9) have fun.  Is that enough of a list?  If I get to the end of 2012 and have accomplished these things, will I feel like it’s been a good year?  That I showed up and did well?

I’ll tell you one thing:  I am really glad I don’t have to put find Horcruxs and vanquish Voldemort on the list.  I’ve got enough challenges as it is.  I don’t know how Harry did it.

 

merry everything!

On December 24, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In food, kiddo life

What we’re doing right now:

Here’s the recipe from Post Punk Kitchen, a site I ran across on google this morning while looking for gingerbread people options.  The cookies are coming out fabulously, nice and spicy with a chewy, crispy texture.  Yum, yum, nom, nom.  They’re vegan, too, bonus for us, but don’t let that stop you if you’re a-feerd of such things.  These are top notch gingerbread folk, eggs and butter or no.

I hope you’re having a lovely holiday!

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power over harry potter, or, it’s a very harry christmas

On December 23, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In kiddo life, mayalife, reviews

Last week at the library, we checked the first Harry Potter movie on a lark.  I had read the first book to the kids last year (I read all the books when they were coming out, adored them) and Luc has the Lego Harry Potter game on the ipad, so they were familiar with the world and the beginning of the whole story, and I knew what was coming.  So, in spite of there being some concern that the later stories get kind of scary, we settled in a watched.  Big surprise, we all loved it.

So, back to the library we went, totally stoked for the next movie, only to find, to our delight and surprise, they also had Harry Potter 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.1.  A moment’s consideration and yep, we got them ALL.  Plus, 7.2 is on its way from Netflix.  We’ve been watching part of a movie a night, finished the Order of the Phoenix (5) last night, and, at our current rate, will sit down for the last installment, 7.2, on Christmas Day.

Full on Harry Potter Christmas Marathon for the win!  Woo hoo!

But it’s tricky.  One of the (many) cool things about the Harry Potter series is, of course, that the stories age and mature as Harry does, in both complexity, depth, and intensity.  This means, however, that the books about Harry as a sixteen or seventeen year old really aren’t written for the eight or nine year olds who might have loved the first books when Harry is eleven or twelve.  I hear parents talking about “holding off” on Harry because they are worried that the stories are too scary or intense for their kids in the later books.  But, of course, the readers (the kids) often want to blast through them, no waiting.  What to do?

Luc particularly can get scared by something in a movie and then be troubled at night by visions of monsters or just feeling spooked by the dark.  But he really, really wants to watch these movies, is totally into the story at this point.  I can’t blame him!  Our approach has always been power over media, rather than media having power over us—and couple that with a strong conviction that a person should decide for themselves what they want to think, learn, experience, read or, in this case, watch, and what we have here is an opportunity to help Luc watch Harry Potter in the least scary way possible for him.

Because here’s the thing.  I really wanted to see Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because, although I haven’t read the book, I had heard amazing things about the main character and the actress playing her (all true)—BUT I also had heard there were several intense scenes of sexual assault.  NOT something I want to see, at all.  But imagine how silly it would sound if Paul were to say to me “I don’t think you can handle this movie.  You aren’t allowed to watch it.”  I’d laugh, or slug him maybe.  How dare he think he can decide what I can watch?!  He knows better, haha.

Luc, a human just like me, deserves the same freedom to watch Harry Potter and not be impacted by the bits that are too much for him (his choice what those bits are) just as much as I should be able to watch the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and not watch the bits I don’t want to (my choice, the sexual assault scenes, too dark for me).  And I want to help him do that.

So, how does one have power over a movie?  Easy.  First and foremost, the Pause button.  If a scene gets too intense, we pause, get up, get some snacks, thus breaking the emotional build up created by the images/sounds.  We talk about what is going on in the story, or about how the effects were made, or how the acting, or the camera angles, or the color palette, or the sounds, or the set design, create the mood, and the talk breaks the trance of the movie, which automatically makes it less scary.

Also, for Luc, talking about the CGI artists who make a monster (like the Basilisk, say) puts it right in the world of Luc drawing on Tux Paint, something he does almost every day.  He starts thinking about the choices they made for, say, the scale pattern on a dragon, or how its leg joints work, decisions he’s faced when drawing his own dragons on the computer, and he gets it.  He’s a digital artist too, who loves to draw spooky monsters.  And digital monsters aren’t really scary.

Basically, when the emotional impact of a scene isn’t something you want, you don’t have to just succumb to it.  Choose and pick the bits you want. Leave/break the rest.  Power to the viewer!

Other tricks….watching an intense bit with the sound off reduces the scary a LOT.  It’s surprising how much of the mood of a scene is created by the music and the sound effects.  Once Luc knows what’s going to happen, the shock factor (a big part of being scared in movies) is gone, and we can rewind and rewatch with the sound back on.  Another way of diffusing the intensity.  The scary bits are usually only a few minutes long, it’s really no big deal to rewatch a little bit.

Or you can reverse that approach and just listen—the classic Cover Your Eyes strategy.  Luc will sometimes listen only and have me tell him what is happening.  Then, when he knows what to expect, he can rewind and watch the scene.  I did this with Dragon Tattoo (being, as I was, in the theater and unable to pause)—I covered my eyes for a couple of scenes and got the gist from the dialogue (or the, um, screaming. ugh.).

We could skip whole scenes, too, but usually reducing impact is enough.

Sound like a lot of work?  It’s not.  And for Luc, if he wants to watch, I want to help him do it in a way that makes the whole thing a success for him.  I loved Dragon Tattoo, amazing acting, powerful character (Rooney Mara ROCKS), but, in the theater, I wished for a pause button when the tension was getting too high.  At home, we have all the power, and we use it.

“So, would you just let your kids watch anything?”

Yes, if they wanted to watch something, if the desire came from them, I want to help them do that.  That isn’t the same as having R rated movies running in a room they are in, and it isn’t the same as them watching silently, on their own, without our help in processing whatever it is.  They don’t WANT to watch just about any adult movie they’ve ever catch a bit of as they scroll through the channels.  They aren’t interested.  Harry Potter is an example for Luc, just as Dragon Tattoo is for me, of a story we want, even though some parts are more intense than we want.  So far the Harry movies haven’t been a problem for Sophie at all, who is sucking them up, just like me.  And Paul was untroubled by the violence in Dragon Tattoo.  Everyone is different.  Everyone gets to pick for themselves what their boundaries are.  And we all help each other with our choices, because why not?  We’re all friends.  We’re all on the same team.

Huge upside: the four of us have had some amazing conversations as a result of our Harry Potter Marathon.  School (Hogwarts), corporal punishment (Snape, and then Delores and her quill that writes in your blood), changing views of children by society (how beating children used to be the norm, for example), the press (the Daily Prophet), slavery (Dobby and the house elves), racism (mud-bloods), economic disparity (the Weasleys vs. Harry), the afterlife (Nearly Headless Nick and other ghosts), sports culture (the Quidditch cup), and friendship and loyalty (Ron and Hermione)—all these topics and more have been discussed, sometimes heatedly, over the last few days in the yurt.  Not to mention the story, and the art, writing, and meta-level of creating the movies.  I wouldn’t trade these conversations for anything.

Really, anyone who thinks watching tv/movies is a “passive” activity has not watched anything at our house, that’s for damn sure.  The idea of it is downright laughable.

I’m sure 2011 will go down in our memories as the Harry Potter Christmas, haha.  It has been a tremendous amount of fun.  I bought Luc a Gryffendor hat yesterday for a last minute Christmas present.  Heck, I dreamed I was at Hogwarts last night.  We’re all in deep at this point.

Half-Blood Prince tonight.  If it really gets to be too much, we’ll put it aside for another time, but so far everyone is loving it, including Luc, who knows he has all the power he needs to control his experience of the movie.  Which, if you ask me, is a heck of a lot better than seeing him as a potential victim who needs protecting (who wants to be seen, or see him or herself, as helpless?), and much better than controlling him (saying no) and thus setting us up as adversaries.  This way I’m his ally in watching as much as he wants, in the way he wants, and he gets to feel powerful, AND watch Harry Potter with his family. It’s a win for us all.

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