Pink with a Different Obsession

I feel like writing here, yet I have nothing particular to say today.  So, I shall dig into my photo archives, randomly retrieve an old photo, and tell you a story:

 

Pink, it’s Aerosmith’s favorite color.  It’s lots of people’s favorite color.  It makes Molly Ringwald feel pretty.  It makes lots of people feel pretty.  I like it.  It’s so fun and feminine and yet strong and empowering.  It’s like an old lady who’s lived a long enriching life and is comfortable with herself, proud of who she is.  She garners respect not with force, but with peace, with the calmness of having learned what’s really important.  Pink has none of the demanding-ness or insecure attention seeking of red.  No.  Pink is refined and beautiful, and timeless.

Ok, maybe not hot pink, but anyway…

 

Not everyone is such a fan of pink.  Some people are kind of ehh and indifferent about it.  Some people like it a bit but wouldn’t rave about it.  Some people would prefer not to wear it (quite a large number of men I would guess).  But then there’s Munchkinhead; she hates pink.  With a passion.

How badly is with a passion?  Well, if you’re wearing pink and you try to hug her, she’ll run screaming from the room.  Probably something to the effect of, “ewwwwwwwww!!!!! Get away from me!”

If you put one of the pink bowls at her spot on the dinner table, she snatch it up, somehow managing to make it bang into the table while doing so, stomp over to the cupboard, slam the pink bowl into the cupboard with as much racket as possible and return to the table with a non-pink bowl – likely a white bowl with a yellow duck on the bottom of it – loudly exclaiming the entire time that whoever set the table ought to know better than to give her a pink bowl.

If you put something pink on her bed, or worse, dress Gibby in pink, you’re probably going to have to fetch Daddy Bunny out of the laundry chute.

And if you try to dress her in pink… Well, let’s just say I hope you have good medical insurance.

As you can imagine, these sorts of reactions make it rather fun for Daddy and me, who carry the mischievous gene in the family, to strategically place pink items in Munchkinhead’s vicinity.  Just picture this tiny little Munchkinhead turning bright red and stomping and flailing and making such a ruckus, as though she were three times her size, just cuz something’s pink.  It’s so ridiculous!  It’s so funny!

Mommy and Wendy, they do not appreciate this so much.  Maybe they don’t have a sense of humor.  More likely, they’re just nicer.

Part of the reason this is all so amusing though is because pink used to be one of Munchkinhead’s favorite colors.  Pink and yellow.  For most of her childhood.  Yellow stayed, but somewhere along the line pink got replaced with black.  My poor little Munchkinhead!  What terrible thing must have happened to turn her from bright, happy pink, to sad, dark, emo, black.

 

*Sigh*  Well, at least we’ll always have adorable pictures like this, adorable pink pictures like this:

By the way, if you really, really, really want get a rise out of her, use pink paisley.  She hates paisley even more than pink.  One scrap of pink paisley on Gibby and Daddy Bunny will be bunny-napped for sure!

An Unexpected Visit

I wasn’t expecting visitors.  It was late, dark, I was about to crawl into bed, crawl under that warm fluffy comforter, snuggle deep into my mountain of pillows.  But I’m not one to turn away friendly visitors, at any hour.

Some might have thought it unusual for them to come together, the two of them as a pair.  But it wasn’t really.  They had met many times before.  Conversed at so many gatherings and get-togethers over the years, the way in-laws do, connected together by a common appreciation for their children’s love and a playfully rambunctious affection for their grandchildren.  Yes, I was certainly more surprised they’d come at all than that they had come together.  Yet, there they were; they we were, standing together, one on each side, me in the middle.  My heart swelled with happiness and love.

The visit was short.  They lingered briefly, one of those calm, soothing, silent visits you can only have with old friends.  Where the still air conveys as much as any words could say, “Hello. How are you? I love you.”  The still air, a warm familiar hug.  And, then, they had to go; and I had to go to bed.

I crawled into bed, crawled under that warm fluffy comforter, snuggled deep into my mountain of pillows, and smiled.  “Goodnight,” I whispered.  “Goodnight, Grandpa.  Goodnight Buddy.”

Meekrats, Legos and Money (or, I Still Don’t Know What You Do)

Many people have asked me lately “so what do you do?” or “what are you doing now?” having passed the Bar Exam.  That’s a complicated answer with a bunch of pieces, but I can tell you about one part of what I do now.  So I’ll tell you, and then I’ll ask for your money.

I’m continuing my work with Creative Commons, or CC as we call it for short. – oh, great, you’re thinking,   I never understood that anyway.  Well hold on, I’ll try to explain, again. 

CC has these nifty tools that help people share.  You remember kindergarten, right?  That lovely time when you could eat paste and pick your nose and the only thing you had to do to succeed was know how to share.  Well, we help adults reconnect with their inner child and share nicely.  And, since sharing is so wonderful, we work to help the whole world share, too.

Enter our teams and our CC communities around the world.  They are people who like to share and they want to spread the word about sharing, too.  They teach other people about sharing and they teach them how to use the CC tools. 

It’s kind of like when you had the Legos and some other kind wanted to play with them and you showed the other kid how you could both play with them together and then you and the other kid became great friends and made really cool castles with moats and all sorts of things you never would have thought of on your own.

One of the things I do at Creative Commons is work with some of those teams that teach others about sharing, specifically our teams in Sub Saharan Africa.  The teams are working to build sharing communities in their areas.  I help them coordinate with our big top-man office in the City and to connect with other teams for joint problem solving and solution sharing.  It’s super fun and I even get to use my Tonga!

All these teams and communities are made up of volunteers.  They give a lot of time and energy to spreading sharing.  Sometimes, they even give their money because there’s no other money for them to get.

Generally, international grants funded by private organizations and NGOs are HUGE, we’re talking T-Rex huge, multi-million dollars.  Our teams and communities don’t need or want that kind of money.  They just want a couple hundred bucks to do some nifty projects and sessions about sharing.

So, CC has created this neat new program that will allow the teams and communities to apply for little grants, meekrat sized grants, instead of T-Rex ones. 

And all this month, CC is raising money for this program.  (This is where I ask you for money, if you haven’t figured that out yet.)  You can help! Yes, you.  There’s a pretty green box on the top left of my blog.  See that box that says “contribute”?  Click it.  Click it, I say.  Then you can sleep easier at night knowing you’ve made a real difference in the world, instead of sending a T-shirt to Africa ;)  Oh, and you can even get your own t-shirt.

 

“Meekrat” cc-by Brokinhrt2, available on Flickr

“Daddy’s old stash of Legos” cc-by-sa Big Ben, available on Picasa