Monday, February 24, 2025

Epic Choreographed Star Wars Fights....

 ....having fun with the kids, doing these epic choreographed fights.

The keys are 

  1. Master the basics
  2. No T-rex arms---keep your arms out wide from you, swinging in great sweeping motions. As you would if you were wielding a death laser
  3. Keep your blocks vertical, and out from your body. As you would if you were blocking yourself with a death laser that could burn you.
  4. Keep your attacks with big forward steps. 
  5. Keep your defense with big backwards steps.
  6. Work in as many spins as possible. (right after a 9 parry is a good place for both people to spin)
  7. 8-1-2-1, 8-4-3-4-8, triangle attacks, look pretty epic. Change up the defense with inverted 1's and 2's to keep things interesting.

Going to put up some videos of me and the kids doing these.

We also put an epic sticker on our van.

 Grand Admiral Josh asked why we are desecrating the Chimera with rebel stickers.

I love the symbolism of it. That the rebellion at its heart, has to carry something bigger than just rebellion. A rebellion whose only definition is what it opposes is empty as a house of cards. But holding the old stamped-out religion, in its heart....it makes sense.




Monday, January 6, 2025

A fairy tale retold. A book review for Rapunzel Let Down by Regina Doman

It's been a while since a book has moved me this much.

After my recent realization that sent Rapunzel from being my most hated fairy tale, to my most favorite fairytale, I was intrigued when I saw this novel retelling of it.

Rapunzel Let Down by Regina Doman. 


What happens to the fairy tale when the Prince fails?

It's a modern retelling of the fairy tale of Rapunzel. 

Not the cute Disney version. The Grimm's version. With a 15 yr old getting knocked up by a Prince (or in this case, a politicians son) who wants to keep his secret. 

It is on my "top 50 books to save if the world burns down" list. 

The only caveat, is parents should pre-read it before giving it to their young teenagers. The story is about a 15 year old getting knocked up (Rapunzel, after all), and a statutory-rape trial. So it is a book on sexual themes. But not in an escapist voyueristic way, but a very thought-provoking and deeply moving way...

.....us human beings struggling with our biology and our ideals of love and our theories of reality and trying to figure out who we really are. 

Parents, read it first and see if it's what you want your kids reading. But I think I would let my own sorta-sheltered homeschooled kids read this, perhaps when they're about 15. Maybe black out a couple sentences. Not sure yet. If kids are already reading the sort of YA novels popular these days, it probably won't be too new to them.

It is a deeply moving story. About clashing ideals of the world, of what the world is, about what we are. Failing at our various religions. Struggling with the nature of reality. About feminism and misogyny. A coming of age story, about women's choices in the face of so much that is wrong in the world---with men, with themselves, with the justice system. And about men's choices, sometimes in a system that feels stacked against them. It was about the prison system, and undocumented/illegal immigrants...the terrifying twisted humanity of inmates, realizing it is ourselves....it was a very very thought-provoking book, but so full of twists and turns that I was turning the pages in an adrenaline fueled-frenzy till 4am, knowing I would have to be up in a few hours with the kids. 

I haven't done that in a few years. This book got me to.

It touched my soul. And made me think. Alot. 

Despite some of the more fantastical things that happened at the end (and it got pretty fantastic) the book felt.....so incredibly real. 

Because the people in it, the characters were so real. The people, their choices, their snap decisions and their failures and their broken dreams and forced to face their own failure....trying to figure out reality, trying to figure out who we are in the world.

I highly recommend it. It goes on my list of "Top 50 books I would save" if I could only take 50 books with me. I never thought I would say that about a YA novel fairy-tale rewrite. (I would urge you not to read the reviews that give spoilers. There are some 'turn' moments in it that work best if you experience it with the characters.)

It was good. Perhaps fantastical, perhaps clumsy in parts, but so real. The inner-monologue of our characters, their bitterness, their thoughts, their prayers....it felt all real to me. So real.

Because its very much about humans, the hypocritical believers, the bitter inmates, the unhinged theater major, the Aspie scientist, the smooth politician, the undocumented immigrants, the vying theories of reality, and a girl having to make her own choices in the middle of all of it.


Saturday, November 23, 2024

The Wrath was the Mercy

A few months ago it suddenly hit me, at 36 years old, what the fairy tale of Rapunzel was actually about. 30 years after hearing the story.

I had always hated the story. I thought the Prince was a real jerk. He didn't rescue her from the tower, but rather, kept her there, and visited her many times, and got her pregnant. She was a peasant. He was a prince. He had more power than her.  The Prince in Rapunzel seemed like he wasn't all that interested in getting her out. (Unless he was abysmally stupid, and didn't know about the invention of the rope.) She didn't even seem to know what a man was, let alone sex, let alone pregnancy, by her asking the Witch why her belly was growing. I thought he sounded like a Uppity boy taking advantage of a naive girl. I found the story icky, because of the Prince. I even thought darkly that the ending was suspicously 'too happy' with the blinded beggar prince finding Rapunzel in the end in the wilderness and seeing again. When I read kiddie version trying to sanitize the unwed-pregnancy part of the tale I saw through them as the weak attempts at retconning honor for a disappointing prince ('they sorta had a secret wedding in the tower before she got pregnant...but no, he didn't take her home'  and "she said to the witch 'you are heavier than the prince' so it wasn't that the witch found out she was pregnant....but then she had babies so um, yeah, she was pregnant....")

When Tangled came out when I was 22 or so, I said "Ahh, they fixed it" when Eugene turns out to be a nice gentlemanly peasant-thief who doesn't trick her or climb her hair. She is the princess, she holds the power, Eugene never takes advantage of her, physically or any other way. He climbs the tower with his own strength, not tricking her into using hair, and she's the one always trying to kiss him. I said with relief that it was "uncreepified" from the original tale.

And then, at 36 years old, out of the blue, slightly sick and in my jammies, I started crying one morning at breakfast, when I realized the whole point of the fairy tale.

The point was that the Prince wasn't being above board. And he also makes an infinite amount of sense. After learning a lot more about both politics and history, in blood-monarchies it was of infinite importance whom a prince married and procreated with. Even in the pagan times. Constantius left both his peasant wife Helena and his son Constantine, for a chance to marry the noble woman and be Emperor of Rome. Alexander the Great had a kid with a political nobody, at 16 before heading off to conquer the world and pick his royal bride(s) at 30. This list could easily fill pages.

Then, in the Christian era, when annulments weren't as easy to procure as Roman divorces, there always was the common-law wife on the side. The "wives the Danish [pagan] way" as the Saxons would say. Henry II did it. Many many princes did it. (even dear Harold Godwinson had his 'danish-style' common-law wife before he got engaged to the Northern Lady/Princess at being made king at 40) Noble men resigned themselves to often having to wait over a decade before the official noble wife was found, at the right moment when they ascended to their full power, and saw the most pressing alliance that their country required. Telling a passionate 17 yr old that he has to wait, perhaps till he's 35, to have sex when he marries the right princess...they tried to find ways to have what they wanted but still keep their future political options open.

And so the prince in Rapunzel, was in fact, acting like a prince---historically, realistically, pragmatically anyways. He knew that there would be political complications to anything he did. After all, bastard sons can figure-head factions for the throne. Civil War and differing claimants to succession was an always a looming threat. And then, suddenly, out hunting, alone, here's his chance. He meets a peasant girl in the woods in a tower, completely unconnected to politics, that no one else knows is even there...and now he can kiss and all, with no political repercussions whatsoever. Perhaps he meant to abandon her when he got his political marriage in the vague future. Perhaps he intended to keep her as his 'danish wife' indefinitely, not abandon her, just have both at once (and hide his secret tower family from his eventual noble bride). Perhaps he told himself he would take her away from the tower and bring her home, when he had the courage to do so. But whatever he intended, in the fairy tale, he kept her secret for some time, while visiting her in a conjugal fashion, which is how he got caught by the witch. Rapunzel asks the witch to help her get her dress on, and asks her why her belly is growing, and the whole thing comes down like a house of cards. 

And judgment comes down hard. He's blinded. He loses everything. Because he was keeping it all a secret, his servants don't even know where he is. He's lost in the wilderness, a blinded prince, no ID cards, no servants, no credentials, nothing to prove who he is. The Politics he treasured, that kept him keeping the girl a secret, now have abandoned him.  Not even with the peasant-wife. He's alone. He's a nobody. He's a blind involuntarily-celibate nobody---less than a peasant. He can't even find work in a manual labor-culture & warrior culture, being blind was to be useless. He is wandering around homeless, perhaps begging, or scrounging, trying to find enough calories to survive another day.

And he gets that for years and years. 

But the story doesn't end there. 

Because in the wilderness...like something out of the book of Hosea...He finds his children and his woman, that he would have abandoned for fear of losing everything. Crying on him, hugging him, kissing him, and miraculously, he can see again. 

He loses everything....and gains everything in the end. Instead of a guilty secret on his wedding to a princess...he can hug his children and Rapunzel no longer abandoned.

So that morning in the kitchen, after decades of disliking this fairy tale, I now was sobbing to my confused kids (and my Jenny in characteristic epigenetic distaste of the prince) ---at breakfast three months ago....that was the whole point of the story. 

That the wrath was the mercy. 


Life comes in the in-betweens. Living while dying

 I woke up with a vivid dream that involved a nursing home. There were old people who were giving away free violins and violin lessons and food trying to get kids to come, to see kids. I was trying to help them. Harabojii and Halmoni were there. My mother's parents. My Harabojii (Korean for grandfather) died 14 years ago, and my Halmoni has traveled the long road of widow-hood and prayer these many years. In my dream, it was so good to see them together again. But I knew Harabojii was sick and we probably didn’t have long. I hugged him, then remembered I have a cold.

But I was trying to advise the old people to try giving away guitar lessons, broader appeal. Trying to help them find a way for their scheme to see children around to work. Then Badguys were chasing me at one point. There was drama. I don’t remember what happened.

But waking up with the conviction that---why on earth did we sort people like widgets? For energy efficiency, put all the old people in one room, so we can effectively change diapers and provide “care”. Care like lining them up to change their diapers, brush their teeth, and give them all the same nutritionally calculated puddings.

Why?

People aren’t widgets. That kind of life barely sounds like life. Its all the stuff that happens in the cracks that  makes life feel like life. The inconveniences, the people talking in line at the grocery store, the children, always uncontrollable, nuts, with their myriad ideas and fights and stories and sins, running into and out of our lives like tornado.

Life comes in the unexpected, the inconvenient, the in-betweens.

We manage life, by putting all the kids in a room together, so their crazy ideas can be dissuaded en-mass, not to climb the flagpole, or organize a table leaping-off contest. We make them copy down math and memorize mantras and things. Not that there isn’t a place for education.

But seriously, what are we doing????

We stuff the kids into rooms, and then when some boys inevitably won’t sit still, we drug them to make it more efficient for the vastly out-numbered teacher to keep the kids learning. It’s like a prison.

We manage life, by putting all the old people into a room together (or rather, many tiny rooms in one big building) and give them “care” to make sure they have the proper nutrition and diaper changes in time. It’s like a prison.

Prisons are massively efficient ways for society to stuff troublemakers into one building and hopefully try to keep them from killing each-other. (If there is a Purgatory, I hope it is very different than our model.)

I love efficiency. I love batch-sewing dresses, and batch-producing meals.

But boiling life down a life to nutrients ingested, mantras memorized, widgets produced, diapers changed….what happened to the wild morning wind cold and inconvenient, blowing the barely-opened morning-glories against the pale sky brightening in the dawn?

People aren’t widgets. We need the chaos of children, the inconvenience of human contact, the single woman telling you not to leave the top of the chip bag unsealed, the middle aged reflecting on their life and their drama having to pull it together to interact with a surly teenager….. all of it, all mixed up into life.

And what about the childless? Those who never got to have children and grandchildren? They should not be shunted off into an assembly-line style of senior care.

When I lay in the hospital after being gutted and stitched, hovering between life and death, unable to sit without assistance, the tube draining on my side sending spasms every time I had to sit up. Having to hit the nurse button to bring a bedpan…when it was a terrifying thing knowing I would have to sit up in 30 minutes… the fight to hold on to my walker, and make it across the room…they all felt like huge and terrifying obstacles. It was like being suddenly old. My youth---when things like eating, sitting up, walking about---felt far away and impossible. Part of me doubted I would ever be able to do those things again.

To want to live---was so hard. And I knew deep down somehow, that I had to want to live if I was going to live. Perhaps it was melodrama, but I felt that if I gave up, I would die. I was in grief over Anthony, and the pain was the worst in my life. Worse than the 7 unmedicated labors. It felt like transition when I tried to poop. But what got me though transition was yearning for my baby in my arms. And this time, I knew my baby was dead. And that there would never be another new baby from me. It was hard.

To be old, is so hard. To know that the days of possibility and birth are behind you…and before you lies pain to just to continue to exist.

Back to my point.

I yearned to see green things, and my children’s faces. The dawn sky. I strained to see that little flap of a green palm leaf in that courtyard, the window facing a stucco wall, and the bed facing the wrong way. Prison cell room. I tried to stare at the fake wood pattern on the door, thanking God for making woodgrain. I needed to see beauty so badly.

 When I was moved into the blue room with the big window, and could see the horizon lit wit the dawn and dusk glow…it was like I could breathe again. The art on the wall of the raindrops clinging to a leaf. I stared at every nature picture I could get. And children's faces. Seeing their faces was like a burst of color in a grey world. I'd stare at their faces...they almost felt like they were shining with LIFE.

When the ileas blocked my intestine, the pain was so intense....begging God not to listen to any prayers to die I might make, that my statement was I wanted to live, and I was tying myself to the mast....hearing that child cry out for his mommy, his daddy reassuring him that wasn't his mom....me getting there, the bowel scan....then coming back...the pain subsiding [had they started the Dilotted at that point?] looking up and thinking there was so much light afterwards...not sure if I was really aware of reality...and I saw this very goodlooking shape of a man's beautiful shoulders standing there in the brightness [If I remember...half of me wasn't sure if I was seeing Jesus in heaven or some person and I shouldn't be thinking this as a married woman....and especially if it were Jesus...it was very confusing]...and then realized it was Josh with the window behind him.....then afterwards, somehow, the pain meds taking enough edge off, the relief. But still having to fight to live. Telling Josh how we were going to have picnics with the kids in Europe. Imagining going to the park with a picnic with the kids. Imagining the children, and nature, out of that hospital prison. Hospital is a prison. I thought of Harabojii, talking about our trip to Korea, and to the beach, and the picnic, how we were going to have it…all those long months in the hospital, when he couldn’t even eat….I understood better. How he felt. So hard. You need to look forward to something. To children’s faces and green.

I thought about the nursing homes for the childless. We need to make every room have a big window, to see the dawn. No prison rooms. Force people to eat together at least once a day. Sing together. Chapel. And put it in an orchard. So families can come and pick the fruit, and hangout with the old people. They need to see children. They need to be part of a community.

Make it a community. Like Rivendell. Host craft nights, dances, etc. Things for children. Old ppl need to see new life. And new life needs the old. We need to be in it, together. Inconvenient and all. It’s life. Somehow, we have to un-divorce the care of the old from the rest of society. Never have we had this much voyeuristic living, distortions of reality, Instagram replacing long hours shelling beans with octogenarians. We watch dramas and cry our eyes out. And don’t know how to talk to our grandparents. [this is me]

We have lost so much. And we have skyrocketing rates of depression. We need to shell more beans. Have that awkward long walk with someone in a walker who needs to pause every 10 ft and have that rambling conversation that may repeat itself. Life is in the cracks. In the in betweens of leaves against a sky.

Because we are humans. We weren’t meant to die in prison cells of efficiency, alone. We were meant to struggle along, inconveniently, often painfully, together.

Even if they’re grumpy. Even if it hurts. Even if its hard. We need to do it together. Because its important. The children need to know how to live, how to reflect on the story of life---one day, their own life---and the children need to learn how to die, how to make peace. How to live while dying. All of it.

Because we're all living while dying. We're all in this strange riddle, put together, to get through it, together.

The old need to be around children. Around new life. We are the human race, the human family. We were made for each other.

****************

After writing this, I want to volunteer at a nursing home or something. I am not sure how. I know these organizations exist.

Or a prison. And make a garden.

Friday, October 25, 2024

Weekly Meal Plan

 Because I keep misplacing it. [constantly updated]

Weekly Meal Plan

MAKE AHEADS THAT SAVE ME TIME (1x week)

  • mid-week, 2 heads of Cabbage Salad. The kids love it.
  • Instantpot-full of boiled russet potates (1 c. water, 8 min, fill with potatoes). Stick in Fridge. Slice them up and fry them
  • Josh's Lunches 
    • Burritos [cheese, refried beans, meat, sour cream. Fry in butter]
    • Pizza Hot Pockets [Pepperoni, Mozz, Pizza Sauce, Sausage]
    • Steak n Cheese HotPockets
    • Cornish Pasties [Ground Steak, ground onion, carrots and potatoes in chunks, garlic]
    • ??"Breakfast Biscuits" gravy and sausage, egg+sausage+cheese.
  • Make Ahead Breakfasts
    • High Protein Low Carb Casseroles [meat+veg+cheese]
    • Sheet Pan Eggs, Ham n Eggs
    • Egg Cups w/ shredded sweet potato "crust"
    • Hummus n vegs

Breakfasts

  • Mealprep Breakfast Sandwiches in the freezer for Josh Important note: Let it come to room temp BEFORE freezing, minimize air. Wrap in plastic wrap, then put in freezer bag.
  • Kids breakfast 
      • Make Ahead High Protein Casseroles
        • https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B7jpWE_HpTw
        • My standard Casserole
          • bottom---blended onion/garlic can do celery/carrot too
          • Middle: Bulk Veg ---blended Cauliflower Brocolli Cabbage, Beets, Carrots   PLUS FIRST CHEESE LAYER, and possibly skinned lentils
          • Top Seasoned Chicken chunks or Beef Chunks
          • Liquid: pour milk+ gelatin+glucomannan, Bone Broth + 1 T. gelatin per casserole to help with drippy casseroles  +bouillon 
          • Tippy Top  CHEESE [cheddar, parm etc]. [can do frozen hash browns?] OR SOUR CREAM
            • Try Factor Meal Inspired [creamy Salsa Chicken]
            • Cornish Pasty Inspired
            • Chicken Pot Pie Inspired
            • Farmer Breakfast [Beets, cabbage, carrots, onion]
      • m-- MAKE IT AHEAD BREAKFAST---not messy, protein
        • peanut butter milk powder energy balls OR 
        • Breakfast Burritos[Cubes. From a casserole]
        • Egg Cups [cheese, sausage, bell peppers, onions, spinach]
      • t/w/r/f
        • REHEATED CASSEROLES
        • Yogurt with Berries&Nuts (Parfait) or Chocolate Yogurt or Buercher Muesli
        • Cheese&Veg or 
        • Hummus&Veg
        • steelcut oatmeal w/ eggs + butter
        • custard//Panne Cotta
        • overnight Chia pudding
        • Omelet
      • sat---FARMER BREAKFAST: Hash Browns & eggs/Toad in holes/ French Toast/Pancakes Crepes/Eggs/Cabbage&Carrots&Onions/Biscuits Sausage n Gravy
      • sun-- BREAKFAST CASSEROLE [Prep night before, bake morning of] 
        • Baked Egg Breakfast Casserole [Egg, cheese, veg--brocolli
          • Ham, Cheese, Frozen Hash Browns
          • Quiche Style [Onions, Brocolli, Spinach, Cheese, Bell Peppers]
        • Baked Grits + Side of Sausage + Cabbage Salad
Lunches

M

Leftovers

·        Josh & Isaiah eat burgers

·        Left Overs//Chicken Ceaser Salad/ SweetGreen Salas + Protein

·        Chicken Ceaser Salad

·        Cabbage Salad

T

Ground Beef

·        Smashburgers

·        Tacos 

·        Shepherds Pie

·        Chili [white bean or red] + Rice

·        Falafal + Hummus

·        Lettuce & Spinach Salad.

·        Fresh Salsa

·        Cabbage Salad

·        Hummus Vegs

W

Chicken + Fried Potatoes

·        Oven Turkish Bone-In Chicken

·        Basil-Lime Chicken Breasts

·        Shawarma Style Chicken [Cook bulk]

·        Fried Chicken Strips [Chik Fil A]

·        Factor Meal Sauce Chicken [herbed creamy sauce, salsa creamy sauce]

·        Chicken Soup

·        Lettuce SALAD

·        Frozen Broccoli, Green Beans or Peas

·        Riced Cauliflower

·        Cabbage Salad

R

Italian

Korean

·        Fauxsagnia w/ extra Ground Beef [Crock/Instapot]

·        Meatball Sandwiches [Crock/Instapot]

·        PIZZA [Make Ahead]

·        Bibimbap w/ marinated eggs & Banchan

·        Garlic Green Beans

·        Tomato-Basil-Cheese

·        Cabbage Salad [Asian, Greek, Chicken Ceaser]

·        Banchan

F

Lentils

·        MomSadarLentils with Beef

·        Indian Lentils

·        Tomato Soup + Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

·        Falafel + Hummus

·        Lentil Soup

·        Peas, carrots

·        Cabbage Salad

·        Raita

·        Salsa/Chutney

S

Tuna/Cold Cuts

Mac n Cheese

·        Mac n Cheese w/ extra Parm.Tuna Sandwiches

·        Hannah’s Subway [Tuna or Chicken or Beef]

·        Philly Cheese-steaks wit ONIONS

·        Farmer Breakfast [hash browns, eggs, sausage, eng muff, bacon]

·        Subway Veg Fixin’s

·        Peas

·        Cooked cabbage

·        Cabbage Salad

Lord’s Day

Beef

·        Beef Pot Roast.

·        Braised beef.

·        Hobbit Stew.

·        Steak Fajitas n Bell Peppers

·        Philly Cheese-steaks wit ONIONS

·        BEEF SOUP: Hannah’s Pho, Beef Soup, Meukguk

·        Leafy Spinach Salad

·        Frozen Veg

·        Cabbage Salad

 

Ideas to boost protein Content in foods: [for bulking]
Add lentils to all meat dishes. Add extra parmesan and cheese to all cheese dishes. 

?Bulk eggs?
?
?Tuna?
Samsclub Rotisserre Chicken sold at a loss [cheaper than buying raw chicken]
LENTILS N BEANS

Mon

Charcuterie Board

(Romanian)

Veg & Cheesedip&meat

Cheese Sandwiches & Bell peppers

Sausage & Kraut

Tues

Charcuterie Board

(Mediterranean)

Veg & Hummus&crackers

Falafel & Hummus & Cilantro & Yogurt Sauce

TACOS

Wed

Yogurt Parfait

Taco Salad

CHICKEN

Make Instapot Potatoes

Make Cabbage Salad

Make Bibimbap fixins

Thurs

Bibimbap & Cabbage Salad & Korean Cucumbers

Chicken Ceaser Salad

Pizza/Fauxsagnia

Fri

Cheesy Grits

Leftover STIR FRY [Chinese]

Lentils

Sat

Farmer Breakfast

Fried Potato Wedges/Hash browns

Bacon & Sausage & eggs

Fried Cabbage & onion [&carrots]

Mac n Cheese & Peas

Coldcuts/Tuna Sandwiches

Sun

Oatmeal

Bake L.O. Mac n Cheese and Lasagna [w/ extra cheese]

Beef [beaten pan beef]