Don’t Shoot, I’m not a Real Princess!

The thing I remember most about my childhood is being afraid.  I had – and have – wonderful, loving parents who did everything to keep us safe.  I had no reason to be afraid.  But, I also had a very active imagination.  I could turn anything into a terrifying situation.

I was afraid of monsters and ghosts and death, burglars and murderers and wild animals, escaped prisoners – in 5th grade I couldn’t sleep for a week because I was afraid of Jeffrey Dahmer, after he was arrested – you name it, it probably scared me.  Disney movies, closets, basements, stampeding cattle in my bedroom, the bathtub drain, things Daddy got from estate sales because they’d belonged to dead people who might be angry I had them now, streets with tar lines, swimming pools – there might be sharks! – the dark, bathrooms especially with mirrors – Blood Mary was very popular at my school in 3rd grade – my sister dying in her sleep, my parents dying in their sleep, me being murdered in my sleep by those burglars/murderers/escaped prisoners or because I was a princess, like Lincoln.

Wait, wait!  It totally makes sense in princess child logic. 

The old house, as Alfred and I still call it, had a large yellow bedroom that she and I shared most of the time we lived there.   It was bright, happy room with orange carpeting and a rainbow wallpaper border around the top.  The room had a special nook area in it where the ceiling was lower and sloped down to short walls.  This nook wasn’t yellow like the rest of the room but instead wallpapered in a fun primary color plaid/stripe type design.   There was a scalloped white, wood edging around the slanted entrance to the nook. You can see the nook and a bit of the edging off to the right in this picture of Mommy and Alfred.

At some point, we didn’t use the beds as bunkbeds.  My bed was in the nook, head against the back wall, feet sticking out towards the entrance.  It made me feel like a princess, being in this special area with scallops coming down from a point above my bed, with the ceiling sloping down from a point above my bed, it was like the drapery around the princesses’ beds in fairytale movies.  I was a princess!  And I was terrified.

Princesses are the daughters of Kings and Queens.  But in America, we don’t have Kings and Queens, we have presidents.  And being President is dangerous because people may want to kill you, like they did Lincoln.  Lincoln was shot and died in his bed because he was President.  I’m like a princess now and a president is the closest thing we have to that, so I might get shot in my bed, too.

Never mind that Lincoln got shot in a theater and then carried to the White House and died in a bed because that’s where they put him.  I didn’t know any of that.  Never mind that Lincoln was shot for more reasons than just that he was President.  Never mind that a princess is really nothing like a president and never mind that I wasn’t a real princess.  In my young mind, the logic was solid, and I was scared.

I was very glad when Munchkinhead moved into the yellow room and I moved into the nook-less blue room.  Then I only had a giant closet to be afraid of.

My First Insta-Dress

I call it “Insta-dress fabric.”  Munchkinhead probably knows the real name for it, if there is one.  It’s the fabric that’s pre-smocked up top.  Usually, the design is some sort of one-way pattern with lots of stuff going on at the bottom.  I call it insta-dress because all you have to do is sew one seam joining the two-sides of your fabric and you instantly have a dress.  You don’t even have to hem it; the printed pattern goes all the way down to the salvage edge.

Last summer, while visiting home, Mommy and Munchkinhead helped me make my first insta-dress.  It was a little more difficult than it was supposed to be.  Either the fabric was improperly cut at the store, or we didn’t quite have enough, or my legs are just too long. 

When you buy insta-dress fabric, the cutter is supposed to cut through the smocked part and then tear down the remainder of the fabric.  This is so the tear follows the fabric grain and you get a straight edge.  Because of the smocking up top, attempting to cut the rest of the fabric tends to result in a very crooked cut and much narrower fabric at the bottom of the dress.  Narrower bottom means more difficulty walking.  For whatever reason, my insta-dress had a bottom too narrow for me to walk.

Mommy helped me trouble-shoot the narrow bottom.  We had more fabric than we needed at the other end of the dress.  So we, trimmed some from the top and middle and added a gusset to the bottom.  It’s a fairly narrow triangle, about 6” wide at the bottom and 14” high and it’s set into the bottom of the back (and only) seam.  It provides enough room to walk comfortably, though not enough to effectively carry a couch up stairs.

Insta-dresses, by default, are tube top dresses.  I’m not a great fan of tube tops, so I wanted some sort of strap.  We made two long straps and tried them out in various positions.  I decided on having the straps come from the center in the front and go to regular strap spots in the back, rather than tying.  Munchkinhead gave me a beautiful bead from her bead collection that perfectly complimented the black and white floral pattern of the dress.

I love the dress. It fits wonderfully and is super comfy.  Unfortunately, it’s mostly a travel dress as it’s rarely warm enough in the Bay Area for such a summery dress.

I’m working on a new insta-dress fabric dress now, but this one’s much less instant.  Stay tuned ;)

Children, Dead Animals and Morals

There’s this blog post being passed around on Twitter about a 5-year old boy named Luiz who’s beginning to understand that meat is dead animals.  It’s one of those things every kid goes through.  I remember when Munchkinhead was figuring it out.  Being the oh-so-nice big sister that I am, I’d moo every time she took a bite of Hamburger Helper. 

The blog post is essentially a transcript of a video.  Except for the last line, where the blog writer, a vegan mother, exclaims, “Kids know what’s right.”   There’s nothing right or wrong about eating animals. 

The author talks about how Luiz is so logical and it’s this logic that brings him to understand that it’s right to not eat the animals.  Luiz’s logic is something like this: this octopus had to die for me to eat it;  I like animals better standing up, so I don’t want to eat any animals.

Ok, that’s logical as far as why Luiz doesn’t want to eat his octopus.  I’m a vegetarian; my reasons at 10 were probably pretty similar to Luiz’s reasons at 5.  I don’t want eat animals, so I don’t.   Little Luiz doesn’t want to eat animals, so – honestly, I can’t tell if his mom lets him off the hook or tricks him into eating it.  But this reasoning says nothing about morals; it says nothing about the ramifications of eating or not eating animals, whether to the animals, to Luiz, to the environment or to anything else.

Does a 5-year old like the animals alive because he thinks it’s better for the animals, or because feels guilty for harming the animals?  Luiz says “These animals, you gotta take care of them;” I’m sure he was taught that.  Most of us are taught to be nice to living creatures, taught not to harm, taught that killing is wrong, and taught to feel bad (guilty) when we do something we were taught not to do.  When you put all these things together with a child’s logic, it’s easy to see how eating animals becomes “bad.”   But it ignores a whole lot of other things about life.

If you want to be vegetarian or vegan or raise your children on those diets, that’s fine.  I’m right there with you, eating my tofu and Morningstar Farms.  But if you’re going to say it’s morally wrong to eat animals, have some reasons beyond “I like the animals better alive.”

The Top 10 Reasons Pit Latrines are Better than Toilets

In follow-up to yesterday:

10.  House is safe from bathroom odors.

9.   No pipes to burst.

8.   Don’t need a garbage can nearby. 

7.  No water wasted on flushing. 

6.   Doesn’t clog.

5.   Very little time and energy required to clean it.

4.   You can’t flush porn down the toilet.

3.  Lots of exercise walking all the way out to it. 

2.  Much stronger thigh muscles.

… and …

1.  No fights about leaving the seat up.

No Place to Pee

It was our first week in Zambia.  Our third day, actually.  Site visit; our first taste of “real Zed.”  We were divided into groups of three or four and sent out with the PCVLs (Peace Corps Volunteer Leaders who were each in charge of a province) to visit currently serving volunteers at their sites for a few days and see what it was like to live as a volunteer.

My group was going to Northwestern Province, an 11-hour drive(covering 372 miles) just to the province’s capital, Solwezi, and then another 9 hours out to the volunteer’s site the next day on mostly dirt roads and bush paths.

The first day was long and fun.  The second day was long and not as fun.  On the first day, we were on main highways; we stopped at small roadside restaurants and ended the day at the very nice PC house where we had electricity, plumbing and beds.  The 10 of us, packed in the Land Cruiser with camping gear and our luggage bags, rode along excitedly.  We sang along with the PCVL’s cassette tape of 80s hits and oohed and awwed at the gorgeous country-side.

The second day, we left the main highways and headed onto the very bumpy dirt roads.  We drove through thick grass and frightenly close to trees.  The countryside was even more gorgeous but also more intimidating.  Vegetation was thick.  The road disappeared behind and ahead of us.  Red dust swirled all around and coated the vehicle and everything in it, including us.  As we passed near villages, children ran alongside the Land Cruiser yelling “Byepi! Byepi!" (hello) and “Muzungu! Muzungu!” (white person).  Some of the other trainees yelled back out the open windows, “Byepi"!’  Waving as enthusiastically as the children.

My daddy raised us to always use the restroom before getting in the car – we took lots of road trips as kids – so I’d taken care of that before we left.  But on this day, there were no roadside restaurants to stop at.   We stopped a few times for “restroom breaks” that consisted of pulling over to the side of the road.  I was amazed at how easily the other female volunteers in my group could exit the Land Cruiser, wander off into the grass, and take care of the business.  I stayed close to the vehicle and waited.  The hours ticked by, 3, 4, 5.  It wouldn’t be long before we were at the first volunteer’s site to drop off half our group.  She’d have a muzungu-appropriate bathroom, I was sure;  I pictured a full ceramic throne in a small hut.

Hour 6… Whew. We clamored out of the Land Cruiser and began unloading the items that belonged to the group staying there.  The volunteer had made us lunch so we stayed a bit and also received a tour of her two-room hut.  I asked if I could use her restroom and she pointed me to a small brick and thatch structure around back from her hut.  I snuck away and found the entrance. 
On no!  The small square shelter had a dirt floor and a small hole in the corner.  That was it.  “This is the bathroom?!”  I stood there for awhile, too embarrassed to go right back outside where the volunteer would know I’d been too scared.

We got back in the van and headed to our site visit location where I hoped I’d have better luck.  Despite the drastic increase in personal space after dropping off half the group, my physical discomfort was growing exponentially. 7 hours, 8…  It was only a couple hours to our site, I could make it.

“Well, I suppose this is slightly better.”  Our host had a stone floor and a bigger hole but it wasn’t less-scary enough to matter to my body.  9 hours, 10 hours, 11, 12. 13… That night was very restless and attempts to sleep did not go well.  The next day proved better.  27 hours…  Fear of the cimbuzi, conquered! 



At my own site, my Bataata built me a very nice cimbuzi, with a cement floor, a cover and raised feet holders.  By the way, there’s a darn good reason for women to traditionally wear dresses and skirts.