La Moretta

Idea Rat: Motor Mouth

I have been trying to consistently maintain a certain standard of appearance when I go out these days. My everyday standard is quite low -- clothes, deodorant, shoes, unbrushed hair pulled into bun and I'm outta there. (When I meet up with friends I'll wear makeup and brush hair.)

Recently, though, I've been trying to up my game a bit. That means brushing hair, consistently applying sunscreen, freshly brushing teeth and putting on some jewelry even if I'm just running to the store. However, this takes a bit more time, which I don't like. The electric toothbrush takes two minutes, and unfortunately I can't multitask while I'm using it.

So here's my idea:

The motor mouth(tm) -- it's a customized mold (like the trays used for bleaching, except for the full mouth) that you put in your mouth and it brushes your teeth and tongue while you go about your business. It would self-customize -- no need to go to a dentist.

Well, I'm off to the patent office.

 

Photo source: Four Eyes Joke Shop

Anyone know a good intellectual property lawyer?

I'm reeling from what I just read in Variety. 

David R. Ellis has been tapped to direct “Humpty Dumpty.”

The 3-D sci-fi horror pic is about a half-human, half-alien creature who embarks on a murderous rampage after his alien mother is abused by two rednecks in the Deep South.

This is my idea! 

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118002878.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Above: Bwa ha ha ha!

This is what happens when I lose momentum

I've been working hard on a project on corporate social responsibility and I can feel my mental energy flagging. At that time, I start to waste time on the Web rather than stepping away from the computer.

This time I happened upon this photo. This is really, really funny to me.

I wondered to myself, "Why is this so funny?"

So I indulged myself, and here's what I think are the key elements of funny:

• The improbability of a crab attending an auction
• The crab-specificity of the joke -- there aren't many other animals that can get things stuck on their claws or pincers 
• The approximation of human posture -- the crab's claw is positioned like a human's arm would be
• The natural funniness of crabs
• The rather formal nature of auctions and the social awkwardness/fear of mistakenly bidding that some people have

But then the details are important, too. Specifically, the amount of the bill -- a twenty -- was the only one that would work. Fives and ones would make the auction seem inauthentic, whereas a twenty in this economy could be a winning bid. Hundreds or higher would put the focus on the money rather than the crab's odd dilemma. 

Well, I feel better having explored this mystery.

You've come a long way, dolly (or maybe not)

Yesterday's book post reminded me of something else. One of my mother's odd ideas about what was to be expected from young ladies was that we should collect something. I couldn't understand why that was, but it was one of those firmly established ideas. I remember asking her to explain and, thinking I understood, saying, "I collect books." Her disappointment was palpable. 

So I think I was a lost cause. But my younger sister, who asked fewer questions, seemed more pliable, so my mom started collecting for her -- Madame Alexander International dolls. My sister enjoyed these dolls, which she would get as birthday and holiday gifts, and my mother was pleased on her behalf.

Although I did not want to own them myself, I remember being impressed by the dolls and their ethnic costumes. Today, of course, there might be some questions about political correctness, but back then, they were just the most magical things with their amazing costumes.

These are the three I remember the most:

The Netherlands, because of the wooden shoes.

The Freedonian, which I thought was a bit lame, but hey, those were my peeps.

And finally, my absolute FAVORITE:

The Spanish doll, complete with mantilla (I believe it's called) and rose. Now that was a doll who knew how to handle a stiletto.

I checked online to get pictures of the dolls and I found that a few of them had been updated:

Spain now appears to be a flamenco dancer, which is OK, but the hat is no mantilla.

But then, here's what absolutely threw me for a loop. 

This is the old MA Italy doll. 

And here is the new one.

All I can ask is, "Where's the pizza?"

There are more dolls on this site. Some of them are kind of over-the-top, especially the Mongolian one. They do have an Ethiopian one, by the way. 

My sister got a lot of use out of those dolls later in life. Whenever she was short of cash as a teenager or young adult, she'd tell my mom she planned to sell them and my mom would give her the money. 

Certain Sure!

For some reason, a memory appeared out of nowhere today. When I was in elementary school, they used to hand out newsletters about books.There were several -- the more serious was Scholastic, and then there was Weekly Reader. I loved Weekly Reader, although I think we only got it every month. I'm not sure if Weekly Reader also sold books, but I remember there was one newsletter about new books and you could order the books through your teacher. 

I remember that getting those catalogs was really exciting for me because I was a little bookworm who would read ANYTHING. I always wanted to order all of these books. I remember my mother saying, "Oh Moretta, this is $45 worth of books (a veritable fortune). We can't afford all these books!" This was probably true -- I was a children's book junkie. From there we would negotiate down to a few books off my wish list.

To illustrate how universal my tastes were, I even read and somewhat remember this classic:

 

The plot was very simple -- a boy from the country came to the city and joined the local team. His classmates made fun of him because he was a hillbilly and said things like, "Certain sure!"

Here's the book description from the back cover: From the back cover: 

"How much can a guy take?" Wilson wonders. "Thad has been calling me 'Hillbilly' long enough!" Wilson knows that his odd Tennessee way of talking sets him apart from his schoolmates. But he never dreamed that Thad, his own teammate, would jeer at him in the middle of the game! "Will I ever be able to pitch the way I used to?" Wilson asks himself. And he knows the time has come for a showdown.

Looking back on it, I'm very surprised that my mom allowed me to buy Hillbilly Pitcher. It was very open-minded of her, considering that she didn't like people who flouted gender roles (e.g., little girls that read Hillbilly Pitcher). Good for her. Or maybe it just slipped past her.

Small reality check

Well, we've had a bit of a setback -- in lieu of layoffs, Ken's company is asking all employees to take a 5% salary cut. They've also changed a few of the other benefits, including 401K match. We are trying to figure out if we can still pull off Alaska.

We're also going to be looking at cost-cutting measures, many of which we should have been doing all along. For example, we should look at our cell plans, which aren't really suited to our current lives. Enough economies should help to make a big difference.

In the grand scheme of things, this is the tinest of challenges.

Another way to make a difference with Kiva

I am a veritable Kiva power broker -- I have done 31 loans totaling $1,050 (the same $500 reinvested) to entrepreneurs in Indonesia, Peru, Uganda, Lebanon, Bolivia, El Salvador, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Togo, Mexico, Tajikistan, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Cambodia. All of the loans that have come to term have been paid in full.

 

The picture above is of one of the most recent entrepreneurs I am helping to support. Her name is Yawa Doute and she is from Lome, in Togo. She is a 40-year-old married mother of three and this is her first time. Mrs. Doute buys yams from farms and resells them to retailers and pub owners. I will be rooting (no pun intended) for her and her family to succeed. (Note the adorable little boy peeping out from behind his pregnant mom's back, and of course the chubby little baby.)

If I were on a different life track, I'd love to be involved in some sort of microfinance nonprofit.

Each lender has a page in Kiva that describes them, their business and provides status updates to lenders, and very occasionally, a note from the entrepreneur via the loan agent. Other lenders often post encouraging comments saying, "Good luck! We're rooting for you!" and the like. It's rather pointless since I doubt that these entrepreneurs are aware of these sites. But the happy persistent enthusiasm of the commenters makes me think every once in a while that I should write some advice for the entrepreneurs in the comments fields of the lender page. For example, I could suggest that Ms. Doute call her business Yawa's Yam-boree and that maybe for a promotional magazine ad that she put her baby in a yam costume like those Anne Geddes pictures of babies. I don't know why but that just makes me laugh my head off -- probably because I've dealt with more than my share of people who've made such suggestions in earnest before. 

Hey, you want a baby? (Part 2 Resolution)

Well, after a very stressful week or so, we have decided against it and informed the mother. There were simply too many things that made it seem wrong. The first and foremost was that we would not be able to adopt the two children we already feel so committed to -- rules surrounding the adoption would have made that nearly impossible. The second is that I was not convinced that the mother had thought this through. The child's father was (and is) behaving terribly, and she was feeling very hurt and alone and overwhelmed. The third was that we would not be the best parents for this child in any case, because there would always be the strange interactions that come when the adopted child remains in the immediate family and in the circle of the birth mother. There would have been literally dozens of other serious ramifications -- how the children in the family would cope with seeing a sibling given away being one of the major ones.

Another thing that bothered me was something that I'm concerned about with our Ethiopian adoption -- my feeling that if there is a mother who is having trouble due to lack of resources, our goal should be to help the mother, not to take her child. So that's what we are going to do -- provide emotional support.

We believe in stepping up to accept challenges like this (for example, we have talked about what we would do if a sibling materialized for the children we plan to adopt -- a fairly common occurrence), but this solution just didn't feel right.

This has been a very useful situation for me in terms of developing compassion. I have known a few people who have been faced with similar situations, and I admit I judged them based on their decisions without knowing the full story.

Hopefully this is our last offer of a baby for the moment. It really takes it out of me. For the next few days I will probably be worried that I'll hear a knock on the door and find that someone has left a baby in a basket on the doorstep.

Not this again, but it's for your own good

The New York Times has a thoughtful piece by a woman chronicling her last months with her husband. It is personal and touching.

One of the things that they did while her husband was fighting cancer was watch the five seasons of The Wire, the HBO series that I have raved about many a time. The couple had lived in Baltimore for years and had seen many of the things the series depicted.

It reminded me again that this work was a genuine masterpiece. If you haven't seen it, WATCH it. It is a perfect use of the medium, and well worth seeing before you die. It's available via Netflix. Now get to stepping.

New neighbors

It looks like the birds that make their nest near our house have had their babies. The adult is no longer flying away when we open the door or "beep" the car lock. Also, I see gray tufts of something at the top of the nest. I have tried not to be intrusive, so I don't make eye contact, nor have I gazed long on the sight. But it might be time to put up the "Beware of Bird" sign because a little bit after the babies are born, the mother or father bird starts dive-bombing anyone who approached the front door. That parent bird is pretty ferocious.

There was another sign of the joyous arrival -- by my car's side-view mirror,some bird droppings. This is because either the father or the mother bird will get into intense fights with the terrible and ferocious bird it sees in the side-view mirror, and when birds get really upset, I think the upshot is increased droppings. Some years this is worse than others. I try to remember to cover the mirrors with bags so the parent bird doesn't have to deal with that stress.

And finally, a sad note -- there is the tiny body of a newborn bird on the driveway. It is all beak and legs and its body is tiny and twisted and frail. I don't know how it ended up out there, but it was very sad. It looked so vulnerable. I'm going to bury it this afternoon if it's still there when I check back. (Part of me feels like this would be a nice treat for a neighborhood cat, so I'm giving them a quick shot at this. Perhaps that is wrong, I don't know.)

I have been told that these birds are wrens. Well, wrens have earned my respect -- they build a nice nest, they are good parents and they have been good neighbors. They are incredibly brave in defense of their children. I hope that the loss of the baby bird was not sad for them.