we've got the vision, now let's have some fun

around father's day, i read this post where a sixteen month year old made a finger painting masterpiece for his dad by writing out a phrase in tape and then painting all over it. (you can tell that i'm not all that connected with the creative pinterest side of the internet, because it was the first time that i had heard of this.) after reading it i thought, i have blank canvases at home! i have paint! i will have access to children in the summer! we will do this.

so when my nephews were spending the day with us on thursday, we decided to make finger painting masterpieces of our own. and by we, i obviously mean them. (we stopped by ac moore before chuck e cheese and they chose out some sparkly paints because none of mine were washable and there was no way i was using them with toddlers. [the post i linked to has a recipe for finger paints that i completely forgot about, but check it out and make your own paint at home.] and good thing too, because the two year old was covered in paint by the time he was done. there was one point where he got so into swishing the paint around the canvas that his arms slipped and he fell headfirst into his painting. he thought it was hilarious. they both had tons of fun.)

while choosing out what to write in tape, i suggested that we write their names. they did not think that was a good idea. at all. they had their own ideas.

hamza (four yr old): no, i think we should write elephant.
me: instead of your name?
hamza: yeah. i want to write elephant. mommy will love it.
me: umm... okay. and how about you? do you want to write your name?
omar (two yr old): no. i want to write poopy.
me: no, let's write your name instead.
omar: no, poopy. mommy will love it.
me: i don't think she will.
hamza: oh, come on. let him write poopy.

and that is how we ended up with these:

there were seven different colors of paint, and they both used all of them. mixed together. so it would "be like a rainbow." it took all of my will power to stop myself from telling them to stop mixing the colors. (i also used masking tape which is why the outline isn't very sharp. the paint soaked through a bit.) overall, i'd consider it a success.

*Time to Pretend - MGMT

here comes the sun, and i say it's all right

there's just something about spring. despite the fact that i am swamped with end of semester work (since i did that independent study in a week, though, i've developed some sense that i am amazing and above schoolwork and can procrastinate everything and still put out work worthy of being posted to the department's site. it's very bad for the productive student that blossomed within me during that time. she has withered and died.), despite the fact that human ignorance makes me sad, despite the fact that i have no idea what to do with my life after this summer and that i do not know how to edit and that i simply cannot lose weight, there's just something about spring.

i went out to wait for the bus earlier than usual yesterday. like, way earlier. like, a had a little over an hour before it would come. and the weather was beautiful. right next to my apartment (and coincidentally where the bus picks me up) is this little... town center? shopping center? community place thing? i dunno what it's called, but it's one of those places that has stores and restaurants and a movie theater and a few offices and places to sit and enjoy life. in the sitting area they have this fountain thing in the ground (i am just all over the explanations today) that works from spring to early autumn (in the winter they put the christmas tree in its spot). anyway, it's meant for kids to play in, and kids are always playing in it (surprise, surprise). some come prepared with swimsuits and towels, others take off their shirts and shoes and run right in, and still others just go in fully dressed. (the other day a mom took off her kid's sneakers but left his socks on. i just did not understand. i mean, not only did it make it more slippery for him to walk in the water, but also, how is he going to wear his sneakers now? and wet socks are so uncomfortable. how could he have any fun?)

it might just be me, but kids are cuter in the spring. my biological clock starts ticking really loud the minute the weather turns nice and kids that are magically well-behaved all the time start surrounding me. maybe it's that spring clothes are adorable. maybe it's that they've been cooped up all winter and are just so happy to be outside that they forget to cry about not getting to eat cookies for lunch or having to wear a sweater. then again, maybe it's something in the fountain water that makes kids share toys with their siblings without being asked as their parents watch on in shock, not wanting to make any loud noises or quick movements in case they interrupt this once in a lifetime moment, and invite random strangers to join their games. i dunno what it is, but springtime is really bad for my decision that i don't want kids yet. always has been. (i've been around kids my entire life, and what with little brothers and nephews and cousins and whatnot i know better than to believe this spring illusion. i do love kids, though, in case i'm coming off as a child hater.)

but back to the point. while i was waiting for the bus i got a scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream (that and mint chocolate chip are my two favorite flavors) in a sugar cone and sat in the sun listening to kids laughing and reading my book. (i am on book four of the mortal instruments and though i finished the first two in a day each and this one is a lot shorter than those, i'm dragging it out because i haven't gotten a chance to get the fifth one yet. everywhere i see it has it in hardcover, but i want the paperback to match the rest of mine.) and the combination of amazing weather, good ice cream, cute kids, and young adult fiction was just so perfect. no matter how bad things get, a perfect spring day can take your mind off of it.

there's just something about spring.

*Here Comes the Sun - The Beatles

carelessly growing up and growing old

i'm sitting here in teenage mutant ninja turtle pajama pants and a ben 10 t-shirt eating tater tots and thinking about growing up. it seems a little ironic to me. but there are days when i think to myself, "have i grown up?" sometimes, the answer is a simple no and a belief that i will never grow up, not really. i will hold on to the best parts of childishness forever. but then, isn't being able to distinguish between the best and worst parts of being a child a sign of growing up? other times, the answer is a resounding yes. i am too old and have been through too much to pretend that i haven't grown up.

what exactly makes someone a "grown up" though? is it reaching a specific age? is it checking off enough of life's milestones? because i may have passed the age of childhood, but i still have no "real job." i still sit at home in my pajamas reading young adult fiction and watching nickelodeon and abc family. i still eat peeps for breakfast and sneak spoons of frosting when i'm home alone. that can't be very grown up of me.

what is the point of growing up, anyway? i already think of myself as a pretty responsible person (with a huge procrastination problem) whether i'm grown up or not. maybe you grow up when you decide to just be you and do your own thing, but if that was the case then i'm afraid a lot of the grown ups i know are not really grown ups at all. a lot of days, i'm perfectly content with hiding in fictional words with my fictional friends and being a child forever, but sometimes i wonder if maybe i should try this adulthood stuff out.

and these are the things i think about when i should be working on a project.

*We Intertwined - The Hush Sound

i've been locked inside that house, all the while you hold the key

after having it sit in my amazon shopping cart for almost a year after it got recommended to me, i recently bought and read room. finally. and to put it simply, you should all go read it. buy it, check it out from the library, come borrow it from me, whatever you want... but it was a really good book. it's written from the point of view of jack, a five year old boy whose whole world consists of an eleven by eleven sound proof cell that he shares with his mom. he was born in there during his mom's seven year kidnap, and honestly thinks there's no world outside of it. trees, cats, other people, and ice cream are all "TV" - made up, or part of other planets that are floating around in outer space. which starts right behind Door. i think donoghue did a great job in keeping the story gripping and making a believable narrator, not an easy task.

but while the book was great, and i think you should read it, this is not a post dedicated to its awesomeness. there's one point in the book where a character mentions that it was assumed jack's mom had her reasons for running away or something. that got me thinking. i talk a lot about running away. i always have. i talk about getting in my car and driving until everyone and everything i know is so far behind me even the memory of them is faded with distance. but the thing is, i would never really do it (the part of me blind with wanderlust denies this confession vehemently). no matter how great an experience it might be, i could never do that to my family, and i'd probably be too lazy anyway. i like to talk more than do.

but anyway, if i ever got kidnapped, how long would it take for someone to suggest that i just finally ran away? how difficult would it be for others to believe it? would i get the requisite funeral to give my family closure or would i just be remembered as the family runaway? it made me think about how many people have been listed as runaways when they weren't. how many kidnappers have been able to get away with what they've done because of this. and then i thought that maybe i read too many books and watch too many detective shows.

*Be My Escape - Relient K

just sitting around, hanging out this afternoon

okay so i know i've mentioned the whole, this younger generation is not looking for waldo but seeing as this is my blog, i can talk about it again if i want to. my brother had to go in to the doctor for a test the other day and when he came home, me and my sister obviously asked about it. his response, "it was pretty boring and pointless. they put me on a treadmill and the nurse was like 'okay look at this poster and keep walking until you find waldo.' i walked for like two hours before i said i found him, and i dont think i even did." we laugh and say that, yes, finding waldo could be hard. he says, "um.. who's waldo? is he some kind of baseball player?" me and my sister die. of course, not knowing who or what he was looking for obviously made the search harder for him, and there would be know way he would admit to the nurse that he didnt know what he was looking for. this kid likes to think that he knows everything. and something about doctors/nurses make him up his i-can-do-everything levels. a couple of years ago he came home and admitted that he "cheated on his hearing test at school because he had failed the eye one and couldn't fail twice."

on another note, while watching cartoons with my brothers the other day, i realized that the commercials have changed a lot from when i was the targeted audience of cartoon breaks. instead of a hundred commercials for awesome looking toys that immediately make you run to your parents begging for them only to be told no, there was just commercial after commercial of online games. this has been happening for a while, but it didnt really hit me as strange till then. mixed in with the online game commercials are yogurt and cereal ones. then you have a few nintendo ds ads and occasionally there will be one about robotic hamsters or something. and then we wonder why kids sit on the computer all day instead of actually doing something.

*This Afternoon - Nickelback

embarrassed by the crowd

The reason that I haven't been writing in this book for so long is partly that I haven't had one decent coherent thought to put down. My mind is, to use a disgustingly obvious simile, like a wastebasket full of waste paper, bits of hair, and rotting apple cores. I am feeling depressed from being exposed to so many lives, so many of them exciting, new to my realm of experience. I pass by people, grazing them on the edges, and it bothers me.

~Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath: Journal 38

she said it better than i ever could. but today, i have thoughts! yay me. sooo we went to my old high school to watch my brother get an award for student of the month. and then we watched the sixth grade graduation because they put them together because "the graduation is not an accomplishment that should stand alone" according to the elementary school principal. in their teacher's speech she said she was proud of them for becoming a "community of people." as opposed to what, exactly, none of us were exactly sure. did they start out the year as animals? 

you know the best thing about watching elementary school award assemblies? well, first you get to comment on how cute all the kids are. dressed up in suits and ties and looking all proud of achievements that won't mean a thing to them a couple of years down the road. and then, once you're done with that, you get to make fun of all them. and what is there not to laugh at about a bunch of children acting kinda awkward cause they are taken out of their natural environment and thrown under the spotlight in front of an auditorium full of people. of course, i think some of the parents around me and my sister got a little annoyed by our comments, but we pretty much balanced every "mean" thing with an awww so they had no reason to get all huffy. 

*Killing Me Softly - Roberta Flack

don't wanna be an american idiot

okay, so enough with the mindless babble that has been filling my brain and therefor my blog lately. get ready for a serious post. or semi-serious. or a post about something that should be taken seriously but probably won't because it's summer and that means seriousness is scarce. moving on.

as some of you probably know (and some of you probably don't), i spent ninth grade in saudi arabia at a british school. aside from adjusting to the fact that suddenly the letters IGCSEs inspired more fear in the hearts of students than SATs and that i was suddenly getting points off for writing "my favorite color for airplanes is gray" (note: i always preferred grey with an e) some of the classes seemed to be a lot more advanced than what i was taking in america. it felt like these british kids were getting education shoved down their throats. i reasoned to myself that it was just the different grade system, what with them stopping at tenth and going on to a-levels which in my head were like APs. i mean, they have to shove in more if they're taking less time, right? so my younger self figured, our schools aren't that much stupider than theirs, and i didnt give it anymore thought. i mean, the two biggest computer companies in the world are both american, so we must be doing something right.

recently, i was talking to a friend when she mentioned, all normal and offhandedly, that a british summer vacation is six weeks. six weeks! and suddenly, the generally three month vacation handed out to kids over here seemed a little like overkill. i mean, do they really need to stay out of school that long? (i can say this now because i am no longer in school so a shorter break would not affect me in the least bit.)

if you know me in real life, you may have heard me complaining about the way kids are taught now. remember when we were little, learning to read, and were told to sound out the word? guessing every word that started with "l" before landing on "light" usually got me in trouble. now, my brothers are told to look at the picture and guess what the words are from the starting letter. um, what?? that was just peachy when they were still in picture books, but moving on to chapter books, this means that words they hadnt previously learned are pretty much just skipped over because they (a general they, not just my brothers) cant read them. they cant even sound them out to try and learn them. also, what's with not correcting spelling or grammar because it interferes with their creativity? i learned how to spell and the proper place to capitalize and punctuate and still managed to retain some creativity in elementary school. and my brother's class all had trouble with some science homework, so what does the teacher do? does she explain it so that they actually learn something for once?? no, of course not. she tells them all to just throw it away. that's helpful.

and now with some schools switching to a four day school week because they can't afford to pay teachers for five, well, i just think it's ridiculous. it's always a big joke about how stupid people can be here. we'll post videos of beauty queens who know nothing of geography on youtube. we'll laugh at kids who know more about the history of a video game character than of their country. we roll our eyes at their inability to form a complete sentence or write with legible handwriting and blame technology. what we should really be doing is blaming ourselves and trying to do something about it. the future generation is going to turn out a huge mob of fat, stupid people, and we are letting them.

okay, i'll get off my soapbox now, but think about it. when you are old and depending on this younger generation with your life, i kinda wanna know that they can read and tell the difference between two different medicines.

*American Idiot - Green Day

they sit back and watch the evil grow from the youth

i have this problem with taking showers first in a place no one has lived for at least a month... i cant do it. sooo while waiting for anisah to get out, i'll do my rant on stupid arab parents. note: i'm not calling arab parents stupid; i'm ranting about the stupid ones. the ones that have so many kids they just start numbering them and never bother to even glance up occassionally from whatever they are doing to make sure kids 1-45 are still alive.

so on the plane, in the rows next to me and my parents a family comes: a mom, a dad, and like 7 kids all under the age of 7. two were twins. i'm pretty sure the wife was pregnant. mashallah by the way. don't get me wrong, i had total sympathy for the parents. having two little boys could be a commotion so i could only imagine the nightmare life with that many children could get into on an off day. but at the same time, if you can't handle it then space em out a bit. birth control people. anyways, since the kids were all really small, they didnt get seats for them. i thought only a couple didnt have seats, but my mom told me that none of them did. luckily for them, they pretty much cleared out the two rows, except for this one dude who had ear plugs and drugs and didnt mind. these kids were awful. the second that other dude sat down one of the boys went through his stuff, found a lollipop, opened it, and said thank you. the guy was staring open mouthed but recovered, pasted on a smile, and said your welcome. of course, this made the other two kids in that row cry for candy. the guy looked and didnt have anything else. this did not make the kids happy, especially since their bratty brother was rubbing it in their face. of course, the dad was ignoring all of them. the mom was struggling in the row behind them with the younger kids. i felt bad for her, but at the same time, all she had to do was sit them down and buckle them up. kids that age can not for the life of them figure out how to unbuckle plane belts. but she didnt. so the little girl kept disappearing up and down the aisles and you hear the mom call out "youmna! youmna!" from her seat till the girl showed up again. they were crying, screaming, and fighting the entire time they were awake. having two kids in the house, i realize this is pretty common. but when you are on an airplane at least pretend to try and deal with your kids. anyways, they slept like angels mashallah, for which i'm sure the parents are very thankful. imagine having those as restless sleepers. *shudder*.

so anyways, i hate the parents that have no control over their kids. the ones that dont even pretend to be parents. the ones that pop out a kid a year and still act like it's only the two of them. compare the americans at the airport with the arabs... the parents of course. the americans have their kids in death grips. hands are held, leashes are buckled, children are labeled with name, phone number, and address. a little extreme, but at least attentive. then you see the arabs. the kids are running around on one side of the airport while the parents are getting coffee on the other side. of course, there are the good arab parents, too. but for my point i'm just going to generalize. and it's not only at airports. i have neighbor children stories that are hilariously ridiculous, but the shower is free and this post is long enough already.

*Nothing for the Kids - The Holloways

there's so much sad gonna flood the ocean, we're all in tears for a world that's broken

there is something really wrong with the children in the world today. they have gotten way too vicious. this whole bullying thing has gotten way out of control. articles about the victims of bullying flood the media lately. and it's really really sad. kids have resorted to suicide as a means of escape. does no one else see a problem with a system where ten year old children are found hanging from a belt in their closet because they couldnt take the bullying anymore??

this article hurt my heart. a five year old boy was attacked by a group of older kids, one of them his "buddy" that was supposed to protect him because he had complained of being bullied. the kid was "chased into a brick wall and scalped, prevented from using the toilet to the point he wet himself, and was a target for stone-throwing. He was also hit, kicked, teased and ridiculed." who would do that to a five year old?? people are messed up.

how many stories like this are we going to have to hear before schools do something about it?? yes, i know that most schools are "dealing with the problem," but really, how well can they be dealing with it when stuff like this is still going on?? a lot of what i hear is just laying the blame on everyone and trying to get them to fix the problem. fingers could be pointed at lots of people, but maybe everyone should focus more on helping the kids now and finding who to blame later.

*We Cry - The Script

there's nothing for the kids to do today

i say 'where's waldo' and it's like a wave of nostalgia. cue the wavy fade out into memory. we all remember searching for that little man in the red and white stripes at circuses, parks, and busy city streets. you would think that anyone dressed like that would just jump out at you. but for some odd reason everyone in those books wore stripes, most people wore funny hats, and everything in the background was varying shades of reds and whites. not to mention how crowded they all were. for something so integral to our childhood memories, it's hard to believe that there are people that havent wasted hours of their life searching for waldo or looking for seven paperclips hidden within the pages of an I Spy book.

but, believe it or not, there are. a whole bunch of them in fact. i spoke to a group of girls who didnt even know where's waldo books existed. "i thought it was just a saying from a movie or something," one said. children who have never been introduced to waldo?? granted he's hard to find, but... seriously??

but these same children all had email addresses at the age of 5. they all had cell phones way before i even thought of getting one. they all spend the hours they should be looking for waldo chatting and surfing the web. they play sports through video games, start lemonade stands online, and even pop virtual bubblewrap! for many kids these days, the days of fresh air and nature are just stories from the past of 'old people.' sure everything is still out there, but you can get it all inside your house too.

when i was young, i was never online. ever. true, it didnt really exist back then the same way it does now. but i spent time travelling back in time to egypt, playing doctor to trees, and starting very unsuccessful lemonade stands where our only customer who wasnt family was a lady who stole our lemons.

yes, technology is great. it has done lot to further mankind and whatnot. but at what cost?? is it even really worth it??

overdramatic?? probably. but children these days should experience what we got to experience. sports. games that don't use any type of screen. imagination. my childhood was amazing, and i cant help but feel that kids these days are missing out. they have their whole lives to immerse themselves into technology, but there is only so much time that you can jump off the couch and try to fly without looking completely insane.

cliche as it sounds, children are growing up way too fast. and where does that leave waldo?? hiding at a circus waiting to be found with no one even looking. poor waldo... :(

*Nothing for the Kids - The Holloways