Seeing red

One of the many kinds of unpaid work I do at the moment is shelving books in the junior bookroom at H & K's school. There is one in the easiest level called What is Red? and I thought "Wow! I wonder how they explained what red is with such a limited vocab and structure?" Then I looked inside and found out that it meant what things are red.

I was left with the thought - what is the simplest book I could write that explains "What is Red?"

What is Red? (first attempt - you'll have to imagine the pictures)

Sunlight looks white.
Water can split up sunlight.
When sunlight is split up you see a rainbow.

Sunlight is made up of all the colours of the rainbow.
Red is one of the colours of the rainbow.

This white light is made up of all the colours of the rainbow too.
A glass prism can split up white light.
When white light is split up you see a rainbow.

This is a blue light.
A glass prism can't split up blue light.
The blue light is made up of only blue.

This tomato is red.
It looks red when it is in red light.
It reflects the red light.

This is the tomato in blue light.
The tomato looks black.
There is no red part of the blue light for it to reflect.

The tomato looks red in sunlight.
It reflects the red part of the sunlight.
Red is what we see when the red part of sunlight shines on things that reflect red.

Worldview

Some photos taken by H & K on my phone, captions in quotation marks are what they said at the time they took the photos:

"mummy's back"

"purple flowers"

"pretty flower"

"beautiful picture"

"my pushchair"

"Shirley"

"Andy, smile!"

under the painting easel

"washing"

cow teapot

H

Driving the light fantastic

A long time ago, before either of us could drive, I had a conversation with my sister about good drivers in which she said that people who drive like they are part of an overall flow are nice to drive with. I have only been driving about a year and during that time I've thought of this from time to time. I've tried to use the metaphor of a river but it hasn't clicked for me.

The metaphor that does work for me is one of dancing, city driving is like boogieing in a crowd. Both driving and dancing involve physical movement which has elements of both constraint and freedom, both are better when done smoothly and, in both, crashing into others is a bad thing. The main constraint in driving is the road, the main constraint in dancing is the music, both are easier if the constraints are familiar.

My niece, I, likes to drive back from gym a particular way because she likes the shape of it. The sweep of the curves her way is a graceful dance.

The incredible woman

Where am I you may ask? Well I have a terrible cold. H has a terrible cold. K has a terrible cold. My nanny doesn't have a terrible cold but she does have terrible food poisoning so I've kind of been busy.

And doing needlework. Which uses up my evening typing fingers.

You can really tell I've become a lady of leisure (sickness as above excepted): first I went into a toy shop and came out with a needlepoint kit and nothing for H or K, and I've had an odd moment sitting in a cafe sipping hot chocolate and doing it.

The kit is The Incredible Woman designed by Jennifer Pudney. This is a wee picture of what it would look like if I did it according to the instructions:


But I'm planning to add another baby, and make the cat and woman look more like Andy and me. I'm not sure whether to have two babies and a wee man or take the wee man out. I don't feel that D is one of my burdens which makes me think I could take him out but he is important and Andy isn't a burden either...

Let me know what you think.

Ham

I'm leaving work in a week and so I'm clearing out my email. Here are three snippets I thought I'd share:

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1. While sitting down, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles.
2. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand.
3. Check which way your foot is circling.
4. Try to do this without your foot changing direction.

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This is a wee snatch of a song that I started inventing:

Beauty's in the eye of the beholder [intro...

There's a woman of size
with massive thunder thighs

And a woman so thin
who thinks eating's a sin

If you think that they're not beautiful [chorus...
you've got ugly eyes.

There's a man in lace
with a brithmark on his face

...

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From: me
To: D

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh!' he whispered.
'Yes, Piglet?'
'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. I just wanted to be sure of you.'

The poetry of leaving

I just sent out an email to everyone in the company where I work. It said:

Subj: Ruth __'s Leaving Poetry Appeal

After 13 years I am leaving [this company] on 14 September. Instead of collecting money for a gift, I have been inspired by the Amnesty International book Dear To Me (which has 100 famous New Zealanders' favourite poems and the reasons they like them) to gather together your favourite poems, which I will turn into a single edition book. This will be a reminder not just of my time at [this company] but the people who make [this company] special.

To take part, please email me your favourite poem or a link to it, and a short note explaining why you like it or why it's significant to you. All donations will be gratefully accepted, even from those of you I don't know and have never had the pleasure of working with.

I enjoy good poetry and I am looking forward to the results but here I will confess that one of the reasons I did it is that I enjoy playing with engineers' minds.

Workplace guerrilla

Leaving home

At the bus stop

On the bus

At work

What I've learnt so far:

• choose your gorilla mask carefully
• children are much friendlier to strange gorillas than strange people
• adults like to know whose inside and are generous to gorillas
• people are more surprised by a gorilla when the lift doors open than a gorilla appearing beside their desk
• wise gorillas carry safety pins.

Stone age slogans

Inspired by Gary Larson and a little boy I saw today with a T-shirt which I couldn't quite read but it might have said "Save the Dragons". The caveman is borrowed from here.

Pachyderm philanthropy

Looking at this year's Breast Cancer Research T-shirts in the local Glasson's I decided that if I was designing one it would have flying elephants on it. So here they are:


(When I drew this I though this year's theme was 'One Kiss', since then I've discovered it is 'Kiss Off').

True colours?

Today/yesterday was Waitangi Day. After too much chocolate I am unable to sleep so I give you this musing (for background try Wikipedia on New Zealand Flag [and this later post]):

Making waves in me

Special Today - Microwave Endometrial Ablation

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Acknowledgements: The image is made up of a bunch of borrowed parts. Thanks to an illegible fertility clinic via this bad hockey logo post for the best diagram of a woman's insides I could find on the net (now somewhat mutilated), to JCPenney for the cooks pink microwave and to the Wonton Way for putting things in a microwave (if click on the picture it will take you to their video). Finally the cheesy title is the Microsulis slogan on the pamphlet I was given when I booked my operation (the .pdf on the web has "making waves in medicine" which is sadly less amusing and alarming).

Microwaving my body parts? What a sensible idea :-)

This is the second part of my strange coping process. For the first part read a hysterical tale.

A hysterical tale

Warning - contains gynaecological details - my disturb some readers.

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Once upon a time there was a very nice uterus. Unfortunately she had terrible neighbours, the ovaries, who didn't do their job properly and didn't give her the right hormones at the right time. The nice uterus tried to cope with the hormones that the ovaries threw at her but sometimes she needed help. Mostly she needed help when the hormones wouldn't bloody stop. Fortunately when she had some pills the ovaries would stop causing trouble for a while.

One day two tiny, tiny embryos came to visit the nice uterus. The nice uterus loved them. She took very good care of them and helped them grow and grow and grow into big babies. While they were staying with the nice uterus everything was all right.

When they decided to go the nice uterus knew it was the right time and she tried very hard to help them. After trying for a long time she was told that for the good of her babies something terrible would happen to her but it was okay because she'd get better. The terrible thing happened: a huge hole was ripped in the nice uterus and her babies were pulled out. It was hard but she healed.

After a while the problems with the neighbours started up again. This time they were worse. She had the pills again but they didn't work. She had more and more and more of them and eventually it was okay for a while but it didn't last. Some other things got tried too but they didn't last either.

Now she has been told that for the good of the whole neighbourhood something terrible will happen to her and that this time she'll never be the same again. She has been told that she might never bleed again. She won't be like other uteruses. She'll lose her nuturing skills forever. She'll never have any more babies.

She's been told she has until 10 October to get used to the idea.

A love poem

It is too trite
to write
about love.

Flippant Scifaiku

Reading this inspired these:

Oh no,
the time machine
again.

Only
aliens are
abducted.