Random Giggles | Page 37

Course materials

29 April 2014, 8:25 am by Giggles

Categories: Education

Last week I received an email that read:

Dear Professor Giles,

Do you have a few minutes in the next week or two to discuss your upcoming courses?

I would love to learn more about your materials and if creating a customized print or digital reader (with content such as cases, book chapters, journal articles, out of print books, or original work) might be a good fit for you. We also publish original manuscripts and anthologies for the national market.

Please let me know when you are available and I will look forward to hearing from you soon!

All my best,

So I started thinking about the course I’m teaching right now and what materials I use. While it is an intense course, I’m pretty sure the materials are not exactly the type that could be printed out in book form or compiled for a digital reader. The “manuscript” is definitely an original one though, but I hardly have time to edit it these days.

For example, yesterday’s lessons for this course involved listening to a lizard rustle through the leaves in a bush, watching birds fly overhead and the tree get blown around by the wind, knocking down stacks of blocks, and learning how to turn the corner when cruising around the table.

I’ve seen the results of some studies recently stating that programs designed to teach three-month-old babies how to read don’t actually teach the baby to read, they just trick the parent into thinking the baby can read (Study finds ‘educational’ products can’t make babies geniuses — or even give them an advantage). That seems like a “duh” thing to me. Right now we’re teaching Iddo books are awesome by letting her see us with them all the time. She’s real good at turning the pages on her board books when we read them to her. And she’s picking up on the cadence of speech by listening to us. And that’s exactly what she should be learning with regards to “reading” right now.

Right now she’s not learning her letters and numbers, she’s learning the physical and chemical properties of the world. She’s learning about texture, is something hard or soft, rough or smooth. What do things smell like? What do they taste like? What does it sound like when you bang it against different things? Is it heavy or light? Does it roll? She got real upset when she first discovered wooden blocks do not roll like a ball.

I’ve taken and taught some interesting courses in my life. But this current course I’m teaching is teaching me a lot.

5 Shared thoughts

Knowing more

24 April 2014, 7:34 am by Giggles

Categories: Infertility

It was hard for me to be around pregnant women or new moms the two years we did infertility treatments. It was hard to hear them talk about morning sickness or infant milestones. I declined to attend more than one baby shower. I hid people on Facebook.

There was one place I enjoyed seeing pregnant women though. And that was in the waiting room at our infertility doctor’s. I knew those women knew exactly what I was going through. Because they had been there too. Seeing them come out of the exam rooms holding their ultrasound photo always filled me with joy. And hope. They’d walked their own version of the infertility road, but they knew the road. They were my people even if I didn’t know their names or their stories.

Then it was my turn. I walked into that waiting room and the receptionist, who I knew so well she almost made the Christmas card list, asked me I how I was feeling. I told her I felt pregnant and then pulled my home pregnancy test from that morning out of my purse to show her the positive result. They passed the test around the office for everyone to see. Everyone was so happy.

In the coming weeks I was one of the women walking out with an ultrasound photo, first of just a pole with a vibration in the middle, than a little gummy bear, and finally something that was really starting to resemble a person.

The people in that office, the women in that waiting room, never took a pregnancy for granted. Each one was to be celebrated, shouted from the roof tops. Because they knew.

They knew that a positive pregnancy test did not always mean a baby you could hold.

They knew that while statistically your odds at a procedure might be good, those statistics mean there are people who it doesn’t work for.

They knew how your body was supposed to work and all the different ways that it often didn’t.

They knew that sometimes you just don’t have enough. Enough emotional strength to try again that month. Enough insurance coverage for one last try, or even a first try. Enough time to wait and see.

At 11 weeks pregnant we graduated from our reproductive endocrinologist’s office. A week later we had our first appointment with our obstetrician.

Sitting in the new waiting room the feeling was different. It felt innocent. It felt naïve. It felt ordinary. The receptionists, the medical assistants, the other women in the waiting room, they didn’t know.

They didn’t know the heart ache it took to get us there.

They didn’t know the true statistics of multiples from different infertility treatments.

They didn’t know not to say certain things, that they weren’t funny, that they weren’t appropriate.

They didn’t know the intense fear and amazing joy I greeted each day with, terrified the pregnancy wouldn’t last, grateful I was still pregnant.

And in a way I envied them. Their ignorance allowed them a certain amount of bliss.

I do not want my infertility to define me. But knowing what we know I can’t help but be shaped by it. There is power in the knowledge we have gained.

6 Shared thoughts

Someone stole the MOON!

21 April 2014, 3:22 pm by Giggles

Categories: Science & Tech

Last week I took some photos of the moon at the start of the eclipse and then again during totality when I woke up to feed Iddo. I love looking up at the sky with wonder. You can see Spica and Mars in some of my photos too, like in this photo that was taken with a better camera than mine. I thought the eclipsed moon looked more orange than “blood” red actually.

3 Shared thoughts

Not because He died. But because He lives.

18 April 2014, 2:09 pm by Giggles

Categories: Gospel

Random Giggles: Not because He died. But because He lives.

We lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for four years when I was growing up. Every September the city celebrates Fiesta, commemorating the “peaceful” reconquest of the area by the Spanish. The festivities are kicked off each year by the burning of Zozobra, a 50 foot tall marionette. The idea is to give all of your troubles and woes to Zozobra and then they are burned up and you can celebrate worry free for the weekend.

Early in the evening groups and families spread out blankets in the park where Zozobra is set up and eat dinner and enjoy the evening and the mariachi music. As it gets later and darker the crowd gets bigger. Blankets get picked up because there isn’t much room left for them. The crowd gets drunker/higher. People press closer together. Zozobra gets more animated, starts waving his arms around, his head moves back and forth, his eyes move, he groans. The crowd is a mass of humanity. Someone starts up the chant, “Burn him. Burn him.” The crowd picks it up. Zozobra groans louder and waves his arms even more. The fire dancer comes out. The crowd is even louder now as they chant “Burn him. Burn him.” The fire dancer lights Zozobra on fire who groans and waves his arms to the very end. The extremely drunk/high crowd disperses, satisfied with the night’s destructive entertainment.

We only went twice. We watched it on TV after that. However being in that crowd has stuck with me.

Two thousand years ago Christ knelt quietly in a garden and willingly took my troubles and woes, my worries and pains, upon him. He stood silently in front of a crowd. Someone started up the chant, “Crucify him. Crucify him.” The crowd picked it up. Without complaint he suffered, bled, and died. And the people dispersed, most not realizing what they had witnessed.

But it is not because he died that my troubles and woes can become peace and hope, that my worries and pains can become joy.

It is because He lives.

4 Shared thoughts

Personality quirks and quizzes

4 April 2014, 1:06 pm by Giggles

Categories: Life

According to a personality test I took in a college class, I have the type of personality that hates personality tests. Which to me just proves the point.

I don’t like them because I don’t think people can be broken down into four categories, or however many categories a particular personality test has. I don’t like that several of them ask you to answer as you would have as a child and do not allow for personalities to grow and change, because they do. There are approximately 7 billion people on earth. Find me a personality test with 7 billion categories and maybe I’ll like it. Maybe.

A personality quiz, especially the online entertainment variety, tell us as much about ourselves as knowing your zodiac sign does, which is basically nothing.

So I was interested to read this summary of why online personality quizzes are so popular – Our Obsession With Online Quizzes Comes From Fear, Not Narcissism. It seems humans have a general need to quantify their experience. We need to be able to show others who we are. By finding out you would be the same Disney princess as your friend you are able to bond. We have to declare ourselves, we can’t just be ourselves.

Maybe I’m really comfortable in who I am without declaring it to the world. Or maybe I really do have the personality that hates personality tests, but I still don’t see the draw of these quizzes. I’d rather not be quantified. Thank you very much.

You will, however, find me in Ravenclaw house on Pottermore.

4 Shared thoughts

Riot culture?

31 March 2014, 12:33 pm by Giggles

Categories: Random

The local university basketball team lost Saturday night. And the locals held a small riot in response.

Of the 15 people arrested, 9 are current students at the university. The newspaper reported that the dean of students said the riot in no way reflects the culture of the university nor the town.

I don’t think the dean of students understands what the word culture means.

The newspaper also reported that the police have been preparing and training for this possibility for months. There were 60-70 officers already on hand before the game ended. And the online version of the newspaper had ready links to photos of the 1997 (when they actually won the whole thing) and 2001 (when they came in 2nd) basketball related riots.

All that sounds like a building riot culture to me.

5 Shared thoughts

Walk WITH Hope

26 March 2014, 8:23 am by Giggles

Categories: Family, Infertility

Saturday, along with over 250 other people, we participated in Resolve’s Walk of Hope in Scottsdale, Arizona. As a group more than $40,000 was raised. The money supports outreach groups, support groups, promoting legislation to make family building easier and stopping legislation that would make it harder. The theme is that no one with infertility should walk alone.

Infertility sucks. It can feel very isolating. It can be extremely depressing. Hope and faith are often the only things getting you through from one day to the next, from one blood draw to the next, from one procedure to the next.

Last year when we walked I did a slow shuffle because I was 2/3rds through my third pregnancy and my hips had started falling apart 3 months earlier. This year we walked with Iddo, our 9 month old expression of our hope. She is “The Embryo Who Lived.” And a darn cute embryo at that.

Last year we walked for Iddo. This year she walked (ie, rode in the stroller) for her frozen siblings and Brett and I walked for her and our potential children, otherwise known by the rock group name “Iddo and the Frozen 8.”

We set a fundraising goal for our team of $300 and our friends and family came through big time and we raised $320! Each donation felt like a huge hug of support.

We also set the goal to win the best team t-shirt. And we did! Iddo was really happy with our sign marking our win.

Our infertility journey has not been easy. But with the support of our family and friends, with our faith, and with each other, we’ve been able to walk it with hope. And we’re going to keep walking.