Archive for March, 2009

I admit it.  I like dressing my daughter in pink.  When strangers see her, I want them to say “she” and “her” (or “hun” and “hende”) without even having to ask.  I was never into pink before, and my mother hates pink with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but she still relished dressing me in frilly pink Polly Flinders dresses when I was a baby and making sure my butt was always covered in lace.

So I do wonder why she gives me blue and green clothes to put on my little girl.

Not that I don’t think the penguin-adorned “I’m cool” footed sleeper isn’t cute.  Not that I don’t use it.  Not that I don’t think Dagmar is still feminine and adorable when she wears it.  I’m just saying.

For reasons I won’t attempt to guess, every mother of a daughter (at least those I’ve talked to) has had, on at least one occasion, someone use male pronouns in reference to the daughter when said daughter was dressed in unambiguously feminine clothing.  On Monday, I witnessed a couple of people express shock that my daughter was a daughter.  ”Really?!  WOW!”  I mean, how surprising can that be?  I know it’s hard to tell at this age, and I can accept that you didn’t notice the flowers and ruffled sleeves, but could it ever warrant a “WOW!”?

Anyway, I’m just surprised that my mother would want to muddy the waters even further by sending me blue clothes.  That’s all.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

It seems so long ago now, I’m not sure how many in my current circle of friends are even aware of my history in the field of technology.  I received a B.S. in Computer Science in 2001 and was accepted into the doctoral program at University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.  After three years of trying to find a research field I’d fall in love with, and even taking and passing the written preliminary exams, I decided that research was not my bag, and I bailed out with a terminal master’s degree instead.  I then spent several months wallowing in unemployment before accepting a poorly-paid seasonal retail gig that evolved into slightly-less-poorly-paid non-seasonal retail gigs, before I finally said, “screw this!” and left the country to become a housewife.

So why am I celebrating Ada Lovelace Day?  Why do I care about women in technology when my own career as a woman in technology went so poorly?  I care because my own career is just one career.  I love being a housewife and a stay-at-home mom, but I know not everyone does, and I even admit that I might not enjoy it myself forever.  I care because in grad school, as a teaching assistant, I saw the eyes of some of those women light up as they realized, for the first time in their lives, that they enjoyed technology.  I care because I’m proud of the small part that I played in helping some women who were taking a programming class “just because” discover that they really, truly, madly, deeply love programming.  I care because, even though my name will only ever appear in the thank-yous of a single piece of published research [pdf link] (and my maiden name, at that), there are other women named in there that played key roles and continue to make strides in the field.

I dedicate this post to one of those other women, Maria Gini.  I never took a class from Maria Gini, and I’m not sure that I ever even spoke directly to her or her to me the entire time I was at the U of M.  There were several functions that we both attended, and I saw her there.  I heard her talking, both as a computer science researcher and as a “regular” person about what she was doing that day or how proud she is to be Italian.  There were other women that made larger impacts on my life directly and indirectly, but the fact that we never communicated with each other directly but she still made an impression on me at all, speaks volumes, in my opinion.  She’s one of the things that made it so difficult for me to admit that I didn’t want the doctorate.  She seemed to just ooze intelligence and passion for what she was doing in a way that made me really want to be excited about it.  I was looking for reasons to stay in the program because I wanted to have that kind of passion too.  OK, yeah, in the end, it didn’t work on me, but technology needs those women to exist for the others out there that it will work on.  Those women who never thought it could be exiting need to know that it can be.  They need to know that regular women like them can have regular lives, love to cook and eat Italian food, or watercolor painting, or Chia pets, or whatever, and also do tech research.

I raise my glass to every woman who goes to a programming course, Linux User Group meeting, LAN party, or other tech-related meet and stays even when she’s the only woman in the room.  It makes it that much easier on the second woman to show up.

A while back, I did a photo meme involving an embarassing picture of myself on Halloween.  I mentioned my old favorite shirt with fish all over it, and I found a picture of me wearing it.  Thanks to the new iPhoto, I’ve been going through old pics to add locations and names, and it so happened I was wearing the fish shirt in one.  Note this is NOT the way Lindsey recommended wearing it to make it sexy.  I’m fully aware of the lack of sexy in this pic.

Also of note are my yellow and gold Adidas sneakers.  I got so many comments on those whenever I wore them, and I’ve never seen another pair.  I wore them until they looked ratty and was sad to see them go, although of course now, I don’t wear sneakers at all, so I guess it would have happened eventually no matter what.

I’ve had a few very friendly notes recently regarding the difficulty or inability to post comments on my blog.  It’s become increasingly obvious that it’s not an isolated occurrence due to using an obscure browser or not understanding the written language.  It’s a serious impediment to my friends giving me their reactions to my ramblings, and we just can’t have that.

I’ve changed my settings so you’ll be taken to a boring blogger comment page instead of my pretty blog, but if you can’t see the catcha on their boring page then I can’t possibly be responsible for it.  I’ve also added the ability to do anonymous comments, because even some of my friends with accounts are getting strange errors.  I’ll think you’re much cooler if you identify yourself in some way when you comment though.

If anyone is still having problems commenting, IM or email me so I can try to figure out what else could possibly go wrong.  Thanks!

Why do baby names seem to come in waves?

This is not a criticism, and if you named your child one of the names I mention, I don’t have a problem with you, the name, your child, or the process you used to come up with the name of your child.  I’m just wondering how this works.

Why is it that in 30 years of existence, I only knew of two people named Liam: one a famous actor born and raised in another country, and the other a friend who paid to change his name to it as a an adult, but now I can think of five American babies off the top of my head who recently were bestowed the name?  Why was “Liam” suddenly thrust to the forefront?  I’d never heard the name Adelyn at all, and now I know of three baby Adelyns born within the last 6 months.  Why?

Before my niece was born about two and a half years ago, as far as I knew, Avery was a boys’ name.  It never occurred to me to name a girl Avery.  My niece was named Avery, and my mother and I commented how funny it was that there was even another girl named Avery announced in the local paper the same day as my niece’s announcement.  Now I see baby girls being named Avery all over the place.  It’s not just me.

The Baby Name Voyager is one of my all-time favorite sites on the net, and it has been ever since I discovered it years ago, long before I was naming any babies myself.  I’m just that kind of nerd.  Anyway, BNV agrees with me that Avery was a boys’ name for a long time, and then out of nowhere it became a girls’ name.  The slightly lighter pink tip at the top of the big pink “Avery” spike is for the spelling variant, “Averie.”  I see this, and I wonder how this happened.  What happened in the world that made Avery suddenly become a girls’ name, and not only that, but an incredibly popular one?

It’s not a unique situation.  Boys’ names become girls’ names all the time, and I have no idea why.  It’s about a billion times more likely that a girls’ name becoming a boys’ name.  If you don’t believe me…

It’s happened with Leslie/Lesley.

It’s happened with Tracy.

It’s happened with Rosario.

It’s currently happening with Addison.

Once a boys’ name becomes a girls’ name, the boys never really get it back.  You can see the boy version persisting for a little while but eventually petering out and letting the girls run with it.  It hasn’t happened completely to Avery and Addison yet, but the trend is already there.

Is the acceptable pool of boy names constantly shrinking? Or does the creation of new names, like the recent explostion of “rhymes with Aiden” names (why? why did that happen?), make up for the girl-to-boy name transition factor?

By the way, if you know any exceptions to the rule, where boys start encroaching on girls’ name territory, I’d like to hear about it.  The only one that’s come to mind so far is Teagan.

It’s not exactly stealing the name from the girls at this point, but it wasn’t even on the map for boys until AFTER it got popular for girls. This seems to be pretty unusual from what I’ve seen!

A few notes for people who try to interact with me via various online media:

1) If I don’t respond immediately, and I know who you are, I’m probably not at the keyboard and/or my baby requires more immediate attention than you at that moment.  Even if I’m not set to “Away,” I may, in fact, be away.  Sorry.

2) If I don’t respond immediately, and I don’t know who you are, I’ll probably never respond to you.  If you have any reason to think that I won’t know who you are, I recommend stating who you are in your very first communication to me.  We don’t have to already be good buddies, either.  ”I stumbled across your blog and thought you seemed cool,” tells me you’re a reader, which is a lot more information than, “Hi!” and a lot more likely to get a response.  I only respond to random “Hi!”s when I’m in a really weird mood, and you just can’t count on that.  My response will likely be along the lines of “Who are you and why are you talking to me?” anyway, so just do me a favor and get that part out of the way right at the beginning.  Thanks!

3) Yes, I am married, yes, I do love my husband, and no, I’m not polyamorous.  If that answers all your questions for me, and/or you are incapable of writing in non-txtspk, then don’t bother with even a “Hi!”  Many thanks.

4) If you’re following me on twitter, and I’m not following you, I confess that it might mean I don’t find your tweets interesting, but it probably means I haven’t logged in and clicked on your link.  I normally tweet from my iPhone, and I just don’t take the time to follow people from my iPhone so I wait until there’s a bunch of new people and then I log in on my MacBook and do a slew at once.  And even if I don’t find your tweets interesting, it doesn’t mean I hate you.  I’m not offended if you don’t find mine interesting.  Not everyone wants to see pictures of my baby the moment I take them.  At least, I imagine that must be true….

I wanted to do a load of laundry this morning, as I do every morning, but ran into a slight problem.  The water is turned off.  Again.  Have I mentioned how much I hate the construction going on in the building, and how even though we own this condo we have no control over crap like this and it burns my bum?  Well, anyway, with the laundry not actually being washed at the moment, I was able to pull out the sweater from yesterday’s Wardrobe Wednesday and snap a lovely picture so you can appreciate it more.

I totally forgot to do WW last week, and I realized it on Friday but by then it was too late. I’m new to this regularly-scheduled theme posts thing, so please forgive me. This is not the best picture of Dagmar, and unfortunately it’s not a great picture of her outfit, but it is sadly the best one I’ve got right now. She’s wearing a sweater that I got from a friend who got it from her mother-in-law who knitted it herself. It was created in the 60s, and though you probably can’t tell from this crappy picture, it is adorned with feminist symbols. My little daughter is getting her girl power on at a young age.  She’s also inadvertantly sporting three-quarter-length sleeves because her arms and legs are long and her torso is skinny, so it’s hard to find onesies that fit properly.  I really wish I could find the same onesie in a size 68 because the 62 is really pushing it, especially when she’s in a cloth diaper, but I really like the colors on it and it goes great with the sweater.

March 7, 1978:
My father was about to retire from the air force and take a civilian position doing the same thing for more money. They decided to induce labor so they could still get nearly-free maternity care at the hospital on base. I was born about a week before my due date, and saved my parents a few thousand dollars in the process.

March 7, 1979:
Mom baked me a cake shaped like Winnie the Pooh. I reportedly dove both fists in the middle and attacked with gusto. My two older brothers protested, and my mother replied, “it’s her cake. She can do whatever she wants!” I think I wore it well.

March 7, 1989:
I kept asking for a birthday party, and my mother insisted I was too old for one. I was upset with her about it, but never suspected she was planning a surprise party behind my back. Sneaky mommy. I couldn’t find the picture of me with my arms up and mouth agape as people threw streamers at me. Sorry!

March 7, 1996:
This was the first day I ever got sent flowers. My brothers surprised me with them and an attached balloon. Before that, though, I got a cake, and blew out the candles in my pajamas. At least I think I’m in my pajamas, because the rest of the pictures from that day have me wearing a green shirt.

March 7, 1999:
My mother and I landed in London at around 8 a.m. My then-fiancé met me at the airport, with not so much as a balloon to commemorate my transatlantic journey on his behalf, much less my birthday. Is it any wonder I ended up calling that off? I was 21 in a country where that didn’t matter, and my mother still complained when I ordered a beer. Not my best birthday.

March 7, 2002:
I don’t really remember much about this birthday, but it must have been my birthday because I’m wearing my birthday button. You probably can’t read it, but it says, “Today’s my birthday! Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” I’m standing in the kitchen of Munir and Samir’s place, before the three of us moved into a different place, which is the only way I’ve come up with the year. Grad school is a bit of a blur now, since I was mostly miserable the entire time.

March 7, 2003:
Despite repeated reminders from yours truly, Samir never spayed his cat. Nimra was pregnant on my birthday, but the picture with kittens is cuter, so you’re getting a picture from the day they were born, on March 13. Munir and I kept the orange one, named her !, discovered ! to be inadequate since it can be neither yelled nor whispered, and changed her name to Tzeitel !. When Munir and I broke up, I would lose her in the custody battle, not that it was much of a battle since I got to keep Lidja and we both believed we got the better cat.

March 7, 2004:
I had a successful birthday party this year. Many people came, and it was fun. I’m over by the fishtank, looking happy. I lost the original of this picture somehow, so this is the thumbnail. I have a large number of pictures only in thumbnail, and I can only guess that I did something uncharacteristically stupid for that to happen, but oh well. Anyway, at this time in my life, I think I had more friends than at any other time, and I’ll probably never have a birthday party that large again, unless you count the ones I may throw for Dagmar in the future.

March 7, 2007:
I had to work on my birthday, so I celebrated the day before by going across the street to Sisu Coffee and getting Italian wedding soup, a three-cheese sandwich on fresh herb bread, and a large, hot chai. Sadly, Sisu Coffee went out of business shortly after I moved to Denmark, because the landlord tried to screw them on their rent. I really loved their fresh food, including traditional Finnish pulla and piirakka as well as more traditional American fare, and they used their walls as a gallery for several local artists. There was always new art on the walls, and on one occasion, I even bought some.

March 7, 2008:
I was pregnant, and finally starting to feel a bit better. I forgot until it was too late that round birthdays are a big deal in Denmark. I planned nothing for my 30th birthday, when it should have been an occasion for inviting everyone I’ve ever met to a big dinner and having them sing about me. It’s just as well, since I hadn’t actually met that many people yet, but now I have to wait until 2018 for a big party. Sniff.

March 7, 2009:
I’m at the in-laws’ in Nivå, and so far I’ve been treated to warm leverpostej, chocolate cake, ice cream, hot chocolate with whipped cream, and several items from my birthday wish list. We’ve also taken a stroll around town to get Dagmar to nap, which was fun and relaxing. Later, I will get flæskesteg. I may never get a surprise party again, or a bash with dozens of people, or Italian wedding soup made by friendly, art-loving Finnish-Americans, but this is still my best birthday ever. I really love my life right now and feel exceedingly lucky to have it!

I don’t mean romantic relationships, like the one Thomas and I had in the years before we could inhabit the same continent.  I mean relationships with your friends and family.  A lot of people live their whole lives without ever living a significant distance from their friends and family.  There may be that weirdo in the family that lives farther away than everyone else.  And you may be that weirdo.

My family was the weirdo family.  My entire extended family lived in Texas.  My parents, brothers, and I lived in Florida.  Everyone else knew each other better than they knew us or we knew them.  Although I guess we never talked about it, I imagine it was easier for my grandparents to buy presents for my cousins than for me, since they were around more often.  It was more of a guess about what I might like and what my tastes might be several months after our last encounter.

As a kid, I didn’t think much about these things, but it’s come more to the fore recently.  I’m the weirdo even in my weirdo family.  They’re still the weirdos in Florida, but now I’m the ultra-weirdo in Denmark.  Since my parents used to be in the same house, then in the same country and time zone, and now not even in the same continent, I’ve seen how distance has changed our relationship.  I never lived close to my cousins or grandparents, so getting irrelevant Christmas presents from them was just a fact of life, but my mother used to get some pretty good ones.

My parents don’t get to see me very often anymore.  Every interaction we have, no matter how small or short, is of immense importance.  Every comment I make changes things.  Every word I say is clung to and collected and analyzed for clues that can be used later.  Since we may only get the chance to talk once a week, or maybe not even that often if one of us gets sick or unexpectedly busy, those few moments are golden.

It makes sense, of course.  I look forward to talking to them too, and I only know what’s going on in their lives if they tell me.  But it’s easy to forget how one conversation or even one sentence can have such a huge impact on my parents.  I say, “I’ve had some trouble finding nice maternity clothes,” and that gets extrapolated into, “Denmark is a vast wasteland with no shops.”  My mother was flabbergasted when she arrived here and discovered an H&M within walking distance of our flat.  I had no idea she had spent the past few months thinking I lived in the middle of nowhere.  She has to form her vision of my life based on so little, it’s understandable she’d get some things wrong.

I commented once that I missed good Mexican food.  I’ll try to explain a bit of what was in MY head when I said it.  I can’t claim to be a Mexican food expert.  I’ve never actually eaten anything in Mexico.  But I do have a closer relationship to real Mexican food than most people in Denmark.  My grandmother was a Ramirez.  Both of my parents were born and raised in Texas, and I in Florida.  Both states have a large central American population and an abundance of decent Mexican restaurants.  Even when I lived in Minnesota, I didn’t have to go very far to find a Mexican restaurant where none of the staff spoke English and I could order my tacos with cactus or beef tongue.  When I say Mexican food, that’s what I mean.  I thought that my mother, the daughter of a Ramirez, would understand this.

The next thing I know, I’m getting taco seasoning packets up the wazoo.  Every care package sent to me has at least three.  My aunt gave me taco seasoning packets for Christmas.  It’s spreading.  The whole family thinks I’m in dire need of taco seasoning packets.

Not only is taco seasoning something that I can handle without a pre-made packet, but Denmark has taco seasoning packets.  They aren’t incredibly awesome, but neither are the Taco Bell ones I keep getting in the mail.  I don’t need taco seasoning packets.  I just ate taco-seasoned beef on a pita, just to use up some taco seasoning because I have so much of it.  And I still miss good Mexican food.

It’s not that my mother is stupid or crazy.  It’s that she wants to help me and has so little to go on when trying to decide how to do that.  She gives her paltry knowledge on to the rest of the family, and it’s a game of telephone.

It’s a good thing my second cousins don’t send care packages or who knows what I’d be getting in the mail.