Cream of wheat (since I made it upon request then the kid decided she wasn't hungry for breakfast) , coffee, coffee ... OoooOh, then fresh cherries from my pseudo-csa (I.e, I give my retired neighbor $15-20 to hit the local farmers market for me, since he goes anyway) What, pseudo csa included a pie ?!!? We talked about this yesterday!! Only fruits & veges! I'm dieting! I'm at my "scary" weight! Le sigh.

I felt like a cad returning the pie to him, my friendly neighbor. 

Leftover tortellini, handful of sunflower seeds. Iced Tea. Hot Tea (Fighting a head cold)

Fresh Corn on the cob! , leftover 1/2 a porkchop. Cherries, cherries cherries! And 2 fresh strawberries as I chopped up the delivered pint.

also, 1.1 miles on treadmill. And ate a few more cherries

hungry, and the interwebs keep showing me food posts tonight. Going to bed early.

In all earnest, this tee is not at all an inappropriate gift from my ex. Yes, it is a funny funny life I lead. 

So, it was Easter. And I have a 4 year old, the only kid in our extended family. So of course we plan an Easter egg hunt for her enjoyment. All told about 2 dozen hard-boiled eggs were colored and about a dozen plastic eggs were filled with treats.

After the kid went to sleep, and before my brother Thomas and I got too far into our evening drinking (he was working on a case of Millerlite, I was working through a bottle and a half of pinot grigio), we decided to put out the eggs. Thomas put out the eggs - all 30+ of them, making a nice looping path around my backyard.

I live in the part of suburbia that has sprawling parklike backyards, btw.

Come morning, the family gathered to watch my kid hunt Easter eggs. And she found one. Then two or three. But they were few and far between. At which point it dawned on us that perhaps leaving the eggs out overnight was not the wisest idea. She did find all the plastic eggs, which almost all still had treats inside. But only 5 of the 24 hardboiled eggs made it through the night.

Ah, wildlife. Don't know if it was squirrels or foxes or groundhogs or what, but I imagine they are fat and happy critters now. Love my home.

Anne Mollo recently posted an entry including the "What Taking My Daughter to a Comic Book Store Taught Me" link, and the ensuing snottiness of person B. And it's also popping up in my feed in that other social media site. (Aside: I sometimes think comments are the bane of all happiness. Still I read them, even when I know better.)

And it has me thinking - in the shower of course, where I do my best work - I see a lot of stuff lately about girls needing more female role models/heroes they can identify with. And across the years, posts on <insert socio-ethnic-racial group here> needing more <insert socio-ethnic-racial group here> role models/heroes they can identify with. 

And I think to myself: do I want my kid picking only female role models/heroes? And only nominally white ones at that? No, I don't. What am I missing here?

Ideally, I want a pantheon of role models available, representative of all the cultures, creeds, orientations, for kids to choose. I don't want the kid pigeoned holed into choosing only ones that are most-like-her. But life isn't ideal. We work to make it better, but we play the cards we're dealt. Possibly I have this mindset because I didn't have any Half-Paki, Half-German Female Engineer role models in my life?

My shower musing turns to: there is usually an incumbent (cue dissertation on privilege). Railing at that fact doesn't do much to bring more light. Denying that fact is generally ignorance or assholery.  Adding more options, that is a path I support. Meanwhile, I will tend my own garden. 

“There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short,

• had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund;
• had you not been put into the Inquisition;
• had you not travelled over America on foot;
• had you not run the baron through the body;
• and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado,

you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts.” “Excellently observed,” answered Candide; “but let us take care of our garden" -- Voltaire (bullets added by me for readability)

Day 13, rest day.  Check!

day 14 is suppose to be 90 secs. I put it off all day. Finially, full on ice cream and shoeless just before bed, i gave it a go. And gave up at 64 secs. 

Day 14 again - this time I blew it off completely. 

Day 14 again - first thing in the morning (shoeless again, but at least an empty stomach), I made it to 80sec. And wow, that hard. I'll keep at it.

while I wasn't working or planking, I was painting this:

10 - 60 sec plank before bed on the hard cold hotel floor

X - well I had one of those too damn busy days again - from oversleeping and rushing out of my hotel to catch a ride to work at 7am to walking in the door at 11pm I literally had no time/place to plank. I guess I could have found a spot in the airport, but it was pretty crazy. At by 11pm Planking was not a priority. Collapsing into bed was all I was up to.

10a - repeated 60s of day 10. My feet seriously objected.

11 - another 60 seconds, this time at the local park's playground - yes it is near freezing out, but kids gotta play. So we went out for some running around time. And I planked on one of the flat areas. And hey, with shoes on, it doesn't hurt the feet! Doh. 

12  - so I put it off all day. Afraid of the 90 seconds. I got me excuses - too full, no shoes on, gotta make swords, and armor. But yay! Just finished my first 90 second plank! Woot! I think I'll reward myself with my first beer of the year.

8 done - 45 sec plank mid morning.

9 done - 60 seconds! In hotel room right before bed. I remembered! And didn't talk myself out of it!! Pat back.  My legs protested most durning, my gut nowprotests in the aftermath.  60 is hard, but still not as painful as day 2.

Done, done (rest day) and done. Still planking on, up to 45 seconds.

Ok, my progress:  I skipped day 4. Well, I didn't so much skip it as I was TOO DAMN BUSY, and I ate too much. I have one of these thinking jobs that consumes me, then meetings which I try to be on time for. And usually I'm a driving force in a meeting, so can't really plank in the middle. Not complaining, it's what I do. Plus I had a dentist appointment, and it snowed. So added cleaning off the car to my rushed day (I admit it, I drove to the dentist with snow blowing off the roof - but I did get the windows scraped so I'm calling that a win.)  After getting my teeth thoroughly cleaned, I got lunch: BBQ sandwich with coleslaw AND broccoli salad. And after eating all that, I was too stuffed to plank.

Back to work, to meeting prep and meetings, which ran all the way to 5:35PM. At which point I was running late for my 5:45 non-work meeting across town.  At least the car was no longer snow covered.

5:45 I meet up with a friend to brainstorm on Art. I had an O'douls and we sketched. We go camping at a regional burn Playa Del Fuego twice a year, and they want more Art (so they claim). Burner Art is not fine art. It's go off and build something interesting or engaging or whimsical or burning, and we'll call it art.

ASIDE: I read a lot about kids since now I have one. This struck me, and I repeat it often: Ask a room of 5 year olds "Who's an artist, a singer, a dancer?" and they pretty much all raise their hands. Ask a room of high-school seniors, and almost none will claim to be one.  What's with that? We can again all be those things; we just need to embrace the bravery of our inner child.

So two Art ideas later (An evolution on the hanging ball cube I made last fall - now to include lighting, more balls and goodness gracious adequate balls of fire. and 2. A lighted PDF marquee sign), we went out to a local pub for half-price burgers and 2 more O'douls.  Home at 9:30, I was WAY TO STUFFED to plank.

What I decided is I would repeat day 3. So I did so 30 seconds in the morning when I woke. And I did day 4 just this morning, again 30 seconds.  Neither was that hard, nor easy. Doable. I explained to my kid what a plank was shortly thereafter, detouring through "walk-the-plank" pirate talk to explain what a plank was. And she said, "I can do that!"  Then she laid flat on the floor, pretending to be a board. "This is easy!", she said.

Instead of working this morning, I'm writing up art grant proposals and creating this OPW post.

Per request from Jenny Hill (who I can't link to, since we aren't friends), here is the 30 day plank challenge.  It's simple: just do a plank for a certain (increasing) amount of seconds.  Here's the site with the details:

I blame Thomas Boutell, for posting a plank exercise challenge on that other social site. Here I will log my progress (until it stops) in unneeded detail. And pretend you all read it and care, so I will stay motivated.

Day 1 20 second plank was easy peasy. I did it Saturday early evening to break up the tedium of playing "Frozen" with the kid. Apparently my ability for imaginative doll play has atrophied. I'm always assigned the role of Christoph. Occasionally I also get to be the villain Hans, who is now reformed and sells noodles. We never do anything interesting. There is some running away from people (I.e., other dolls) that we don't know. And occasional getting stuck on mountains or coffee mugs. But the kid's familiars always rescue themselves. 

Day 2: Mid morning Sunday. Again playing Frozen. This time the 20 second plank was hard. Whine, ouch hard. Hurts! Snivel whine. . . But I did it! 

Day 3: oh no! Now planks are 30 seconds! I avoided it all day. But eventually, after work, after making her a cardboard sword, missing her since she's at her Papa's tonight, I got down by the dollhouse to plank. And 30 seconds wasn't that bad. Easier than day 2, not as easy as day 1. Cool.

I wonder what the future holds.