This article originally appeared on Ravishly.

In Case Seattle Sinks Into                              The Ocean: A Bucket List

Contributed by Tamarah Rockwood |

Seattle has a long history of shaking the world’s foundations.

Movers and shakers in business like Microsoft and Costco, as well as the keeper of our souls, Starbucks, all claim the Washington port town as their hometown. Artists and accomplished actors such as Gary Larson (Far Side) and James Doohan (Star Trek TOS: Scotty) have called Seattle home.

Besides other notables, such as the infamous Seahawks and the not-so-infamous Mariners (“the who?” we know.), the Sound is also hemp-jam-packed with authors, such as Neal Stephenson (Cryptonomicon), Alex Haley (Roots) and David Guterson (Snow Falling on Cedars) and . . . musicians. Lots of them.

Cobain. Foo Fighters. Vedder. Ann and Nancy Wilson began Heart in Bellevue. Bikini Kill. Hendrix. Hammerbox. Soundgarden.

Sir-Mix-A-Lot.

Unfortunately, we who live near the amazing, inspiring Sound have received devastating news:

Kathryn Schulz from The New Yorker has warned the entire West Coast of an eminent natural disaster. Apparently, the Western coastline has this crazy fault line that has stretch marks called the “Cascadia subduction zone.”

And it is in these subduction zones which we are all going to die.

I mean, we hear horror stories about nature all the time. Tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes . . . but we will survive. All we need is an emergency box in the garage, some bottles of water and a ham radio. Right?

“By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.”

Great.

THANKS KATHRYN.

Killjoy.

So, with all this incredibly uplifting news about our sure and imminent deaths on the headlines, we have to make some hard decisions. About life. About our fate on the earth. Oh sure, we could move to the Midwest, away from this subduction-zone madness, but then we’d have to figure out how to survive under a mattress stuck in the hallway when the tornadoes hit.

No, there really is only one thing for the brave, fearless, visionary people on the West Coast to do:

Make a bucket list.

1. Finally take a trip up the Space Needle, without guests visiting from out of town.

2. Sell all your Microsoft stock.

3. Figure out how to get your jasmine-green Subaru Forester to float and become an innovation in boat-car hybrid technology.

4. Buy out every pot distillery before they are destroyed and you’re stuck with Idaho pot (please).

5. Beg/Bribe the entire NFL to let the Seahawks win the Super Bowl before they don’t have a Safeco Field to play on anymore.

6. Finally find that troll under the bridge and take one last selfie with it.

7. Are you finally going to go on that Ferris wheel by Pike’s Place? Nah. Still think it’s a sellout.

8. Go camping in the rainforests, one last time.

9. One last pub-hop on Capitol Hill.

10. No, really, y’all need to learn how to cook withVelveeta and white bread and move yo pasty butts and homebrewing get-ups out to the Midwest. Seriously. You’re screwed on the coast.

Yeah. That would be something Paul Simon would say.

However.

I am not Paul Simon. And I believe my pens are rock stars.

I am a total dork.

But hear me out.

It all started with a dipping pen Ben bought me many, many years ago. It is unparalleled in beauty, and its elegance is only equal to mythical creatures.

Then he bought me two fountain pens which I have had the luxury of using for grocery lists, poetry, script writing, notes, ideas and simply gazing upon.

At this point in my life, I have accumulated quite a few pens…I didn’t realize how many until the thought crossed my mind that I need an organizer to safely store my pens and inks.

The day I realized I had moved beyond “a few pens to write with” to “I have a collection of pens” was a blue ribbon day.  I was so excited! I was a collector!  I don’t think I have ever been a collector of anything! That takes so much time, and effort, and you have to keep track of stuff…and that’s work, man.

Ben corrected me and said I “was not a collector.”

Naturally, I responded that I  “was too.”

He said, “No. You are not a collector.  A collector does not use her collection. She sets them on a display and looks at them. You are not collecting pens, you have acquired many pens, and you appreciate pens. But you are using them all. You are not collecting them.”

To which…I conceded. For, verily, I love using my pens. They are so much fun.

And just to make this terribly nerdy, I brought my pens with me to our beach day just so I could take a picture of them on driftwood.

It is so geeky, I am almost embarrassed…

But not enough to not go through with it!

Behold! My pens!

This is the whole collection, in ranking order.

Oh, and this is me laying on the beach. 

Glamour shot.

This is my super elite dipping pen, of which an equal cannot be found.

These are my lovely twin glass dipping pens. They are a little tricky to use, because the ink sticks to the outside of the grooves on the glass nib, and you have to find the edge…and so far I keep finding ways to put ink splotches on paper. But I love them so.

These are my 3  Waterman fountain pens, which get used the most frequently.

This is my Pilot Prera Demonstrator Fountain Pen, name engraved.

Because, it is BOSS. 

These are my lower quality pens. One is a Conklin Glider, and the other is a Bic.  Obviously the Bic is not a fountain pen, but I am going to use it to show you sticky ink, vs. quality ink.

These are all of the pens and the names of the nibs/pens.

The fountain pens are easily the best to use on day to day basis’.  They are uncomplicated to use, and they don’t leak.

The dipping pen is the most fun to use when writing poetry, but I generally stick to the C-4, or maybe the C-3 nib, because it is a reasonable size for writing.

The glass pens I am still working on. Clearly.

And I let the kids use the Bic pen.Those are my pens, so far!

After I was done being nerdy, we had lunch. W00t!

 

This article originally appeared on Ravishly.

Contributed by Tamarah Rockwood |

This article originally appeared on Ravishly.Contributed by Tamarah Rockwood | 07.31.15 12:00am

Last night, I had a beautiful dream.

I was in a cafe in SanFrancisco that was furnished in all Victorian decor. The wallpaper was faded roses with wide lace pillars that went all the way up to the vaulted ceiling.  The ceilings were creamy Victorian ornate designs garnished with draping crystal chandeliers, and I remember just laying on the couch and staring at how beautiful it was. There were varnished oak endtables everywhere with reading lamps gently glowing next to the low bookcases filled with old books, and leaning against the overstuffed and comfortably worn couches, on which I lounged in ecstasy.

The waiter kept bringing me glass mugs filled with frothy lattes, and plates upon plates of wonderful layered cakes. Just endless cakes and lattes, all night.

It was like this, except neverending.

There was a bluegrass band in the corner who were practicing quietly, and I was in heaven.

WHEN SUDDENLY….

I realized it was 6:31 in the morning, and I still had the kids with me, and Ben had gone to work hours ago….like…as in yesterday… to fix an emergency, and I had been lounging in this beautiful SanFrancisco cafe all night and the kids were still awake, and I had to get home before Ben got home, and it is going to take an hour to get home, and there is already morning traffic, and we can’t find the car in the garage, and we keep trying to go down more stairs in the garage trying to find the car, and the kids are miserable because I have had them out all night…and what was I thinking, staying out until 6:31am. Worst.Mother.Ever. 

That’s what Mommy Brain looks like.

You can’t even keep a dream with endless cakes and lattes without remorse kicking in.

I might retaliate with cake and lattes tonight, just to show it who’s boss.

Revenge is served… with steamed milk.

I remember when I was in the 4th grade I was in Mrs. Dawson’s class. She was a pleasant teacher with a warm smile who was very interested in educating her students.  She had a blonde helmet of hair that was as immovable as her tenacity for teaching.

She also gave me my first C in Math. But, that’s beside the point.

Mrs. Dawson had a spot in the mornings when a few other classes crammed into our room before we started Language Arts, and we all watched an hour of Reading Rainbow.

I loved Reading Rainbow. LeVar Burton was pleasant and charming, without being puerile or condescending. He showed us how the flint of a book could spark the imagination, and take you all across the world on the flame of the story.  Reading had always been my favorite pastime, and I remember at the time going through the length of Nancy Drew books we checked out of the library.  So, listening to LeVar Burton tell us how exciting books were was right up my alley, and I was able to see other kids who loved reading almost as much as I did! They had to be the luckiest kids on earth, just reading books and doing book reviews all day.

This was definitely my first aspirational dream: to read for a living.

So, how excited was I to find out that Reading Rainbow was now available on Netflix??

SO. EXCITED.

Laundry Day… kind of half-happened.

What I would like to teach my kids is how reading is crucial to life. Through reading, we learn about what has happened in the world, what some people think will happen in the future, what is happening now, and more importantly how people feel about it all.  We are able to hear the voices from across the world tell us what the wind smells like in Nepal, or how the bread tastes in St. Petersburg, or what the caribou sound like in Manitoba. I would like my kids to see books as the perspectives that continue to carve out the story of mankind, and the instrument that represents the soul of the world.

I still have a set of books I got from a month-by-month book club when I was a kid.  These were only about 20 pages long, and heavily illustrated; but they were the deeply abridged stories of Classics. 

However, when I read these books, I found I was drug into the stories so deeply that I forgot that time existed.  The noises around me were silenced. All the problems I had in school disappeared, because no longer was I an average kid in LosAngeles…now, I was was on the submarine in Jules Verne’s books, or sailing down the Mississippi with Huck, or being scared of ghosts in James’ gothic stories.

The doors of possibility kept opening with each turned page, and my ideas of what the world was developed into what the world could be. 

Reading opened doors of imagination for me in ways other media can barely fathom. Reading has been a gift of creativity that has sparked the incurable flame of curiosity in me.  There is nothing more I would love than to put the gift of flint into my children’s hands so they can spark their own curiosities.

We already have a weekly library routine, and the kids have read through a few short volumes of books available on their shelves.  Already, I have seen their tastes in literature change and grow as they read more and explore further down their reading rabbit hole.  So, how much fun would it be to incorporate the spark of Reading Rainbow into the reading routine, where they get to see other kids, who are reading different books, and  who get excited about reading along with them??

So much fun.

The only thing that makes reading better is sharing your ideas and experiences with friends!

According to a book you can find in the Reference section of the library, the definition of friend is:

I am so excited LeVar has continued to share his experiences with reading well past our childhoods, and into the lives of our own children.  LeVar is absolutely a friend for life  🙂

pencils. my favorite smell.

Mmmmmm…..back to school season.

There are a few things I sincerely love more than chocolate. Shoe sales, dress sales, free gluten free pizzas (I’m a cheap date, what can I say), and back to school shopping.

There is a primal thrill of grabbing a fresh pack of yellow pencils and throwing them in the shopping cart, right next to the stack of new spiral notebooks just waiting to be filled with doodles, hearts and tropical landscapes dripping with mermaids.

…and schoolwork. Around the doodles.

Fresh binders, new packs of binder paper, pink erasers…I love them all!

And I am buying…them all!

Because we homeschool, and we are not going through a charter school or receiving public funding, we are buying everything for school.  The paper, the projects, the pencils, the erasers, the notebooks…as well as the desks, the chairs, the teachers’ log, the math curriculum, the language arts curriculum, the science curriculum, the history curriculum…

You get the idea.

Every time this back to school season comes around, I will admit something very, very selfish:

I am awfully jealous of teachers.

This is why: “DIY Teacher Appreciation Gifts!” “Back to School Gift Ideas For the Teacher!”

image link

I have been homeschooling my kids for 8 years now.  We have kept up with the 3 S’s: standards, socialization and schedules.  I was a teacher before my husband and I started having kids, and I have my degree and have passed the state certificates/tests necessary to be a public school teacher, and I also enjoyed some private school substitute teaching, as well.  I loved being in the classroom with the kids and teaching them about the Constitution, or doing math games on the blackboard. I remember this one time when I was substituting for a few days in a Kindergarten class, there was a little girl who was always goofing around during math, and I could tell she was just stalling on her work because she didn’t understand it. So I took her to the front desk during naptime and we quietly worked out how to add apples from apple trees together on the whiteboard. All of a sudden, there was a clarity in her eyes as she finally realized what addition was. Suddenly, she was finishing her entire math worksheet…and I helped her get there! That happened well over a decade ago, but that moment when I helped her understand the concept of addition is a magical moment I will never forget.

When we decided to homeschool, I was excited…and terrified. It seemed like there was a safety net in a school classroom that mystically exuded knowledge; but at home? Would school just be on the chore chart, or could we actually make this work? Could I still hold the authority of a teacher when I was still wearing pajama bottoms at 4 in the afternoon? Would the kids learn how to read under my guidance?

Not only have they, but I now have 8 years worth of magical breakthrough moments under my teaching belt; which is awesome.

There are the very little details which the schoolroom has, which doesn’t come with homeschooling. My kids don’t come home with hand turkeys at Thanksgiving, they don’t bring home paper plate snowmen in January, and they don’t bring handmade cards for Mother’s Day.  There have been times when I had no idea it was Columbus Day, or that some schools take 3 weeks off during winter break.  I take homeschooling very seriously, and sometimes I have to remind myself that all the knowledge and information my kids have learned is not going to fall out of their heads if we take a day off…or a week off!  They need a break, and I need a break. Otherwise, we are all going to burnout; and that won’t help anyone develop the love of learning, which is the entire point of this adventure.

Yet, around this time of year, seeing facebook and sundry websites littered with the teacher appreciation gifts, I do get a little forlorn about missing that aspect of school.

So, what should I do.

Am I going to mope around, and drive very slowly past elementary schools?

No. That’s creepy. Come on.

I am going to do what I always do…

go to Oriental Trading and buying myself some bootstraps, baby!

We’re decking out our schoolroom with classroom management posters,

Scientific Method posters,Dry erase schedule keeper magnets,First day of school picture frames,

And, of course, turkey crafts for later.

It’s going to be a great year, I just know it  🙂

There was some breaking news from Iowa today:

“Donald Trump is willing to fork over a billion bucks if that’s what it takes to win the White House…

 Trump answered: “I would do that, yeah, if I had to.”

He added: “I make $400 million a year so what difference does it make?”

Ugh. The chutzpah on this guy, I swear.

I can’t get any of this out of my head. It’s like brain-tar…it just sticks onto your brain and rots it into a toxic goo just thinking about it.

Money is clearly not an object to Donald Trump; but that isn’t big news. He has been loaded ever since, forever. And he isn’t royalty, like Prince Albert II from Monaco, who is estimated to be worth 1 billion, himself. Even the Queen of England has a personal net worth of $500 million (not counting her government stipend of $12million per year, nor the property she owns, which comes out to something like 20 billion; and probably a few other things, like countries/planets).

But just the notion that Trump would pay 1 billion dollars, like it was a drop in the bucket, to buy…I mean win…the presidency is just disturbing.

At a time when the middle class is being threatened, food prices are skyrocketing, unemployment is a serious problem for people, education budgets are out of whack, Social Security is being threatened and the national debt, alone, is somewhere around 19trillion dollars….

There are so many things families forgo in order to make a home for their kids, and Trump is basically taking a $1billion vacation by running for President.  A trip to the Bahamas? Nah. Too much sun.  A Mediterranean cruise? Nah, there is no yacht big enough for his ego. But a helicopter trip around the USA, running for President? Oh, sure. Why not? YOLO, amiright?

“I’m fairly certain that YOLO is just Carpe Diem for stupid people.”
― Jack Black 

But this entire brain-tar thought train has me thinking.

What else could a billion dollars buy you?

1. Cars– For 1 billion dollars, you could buy 56 of the most expensive Ferrari. “The top car by sales price was a 1964 Ferrari 250 LM that went for $17.6 million.”  image link
2. Property- The most expensive castle in the world is not located in Transylvania, Austria or even Itally.  It is actually Ashford Castle in Ireland, and is valued at $68million.  So, for 1 billion dollars, you could buy 14 of these, no sweat!site link
3. Teachers- According to Forbes, the “average” salary of a teacher is $56,740. So, for 1 billion dollars you could pay for the salaries of 17,724 teachers. Maybe in North Carolina, perhaps? As we can clearly see here, there is nothing on the budgets for teachers! Next question?
4. Food- Let’s get more real, though. Food prices are skyrocketing, and all of us are feeling it at the store.  So how much does the average family spend on food every week?  According to Gallup, it ranges between $146-$289. So, let’s just say it is on the high end at $289, which would be $1144 a month.  How many homes could 1 billion dollar feed? 874,125 homes. Zillow
5. The Presidency of the United States of America- According to Politico, “Barack Obama, Mitt Romney both topped $1 billion in 2012. That’s the final fundraising tally in the most expensive presidential election ever, according to reports filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission by the rival campaigns and party committees.”

Straight outta corporate.

So, there you have it, folks.

1 billion could, actually buy you the White House!

 

Marriage is more of a “I love having coffee together” than “let’s braid each others hair”

The other day I saw a post on a (younger) friend’s facebook wall that said, “Can’t wait to move into a simple apartment with the love of my life & cook dinner with them & have random midnight trips & be spontaneous.”

And the only thing I could think is, “So, you want to have a sleepover.”

My husband and I met in the same grade in high school, and we got married 3 years after we graduated. He tells people that he was ready sooner than that, but I “made him wait.” Which is kind of true…we both come from dysfunctional, broken homes and we met in high school.  That is just fraught with statistics saying the relationship wasn’t going to last; so, I wanted to get married after I turned 20. I didn’t want to get married as a teenager. That was my condition, and, so, 6 days after my 20th birthday he proposed to me and we were married a couple months later.

We have been together for 21 years, as of this May, and we have been married for 16 years, as of this July.

And I don’t really have the heart to tell girls, who are  in their early 20s and have Pinterest pages dedicated to their future husbands, how it isn’t going to be.

Marriage is great. My husband and I have been able to conquer things together that would have been impossible on our own.  When I was 20, it was my husband who happened to see a poster in a doctor’s office explaining different types of seizures, and he went to every EEG and MRI with me when I was  finally diagnosed with epilepsy.  Before then, I just thought I was crazy; you see, I didn’t have grand mal seizures. I didn’t haven have complex seizures that result in a physical seizure. I had partial simple seizures, so my aura is panic and my symptom is hallucinating; and I had been having them ever since I was 11, after a car accident; I just didn’t know what they were.  As a junior high and high school kid, I had to accept that I was crazy, and I couldn’t tell anyone, or I would be “sent away.”

I had warned him  that something was wrong with me before we got married, and I told him he needed to be prepared for it.  However, I wasn’t prepared for the unconditional support he gave me in finding a diagnosis, and ways to control the epilepsy. It has been with his support and his holding my hand the whole way through that has gotten me through the worst times, and by now I haven’t had a seizure in about 5 years.

In our marriage we have never gone to bed at the same time. He stays up to study and work late in the garage, and I tend to wake up much earlier than he does.  In our marriage we have put each other through college and stayed up together to watch “Blacklist” after we put the kids down for bed.  We haven’t had spontaneous midnight trips to…I”m not really sure what’s open past 9, so it would be a spontaneous midnight trip to realize everything is closed at midnight?  He doesn’t braid my hair while I am watching  a movie, and I don’t fetch him beers while he watches F1 racing.  We don’t have pillow fights in our pajamas, and we don’t paint our fingernails while talking about friends.

We do go exploring with our kids a lot, and we do spend hours on the front porch drinking whiskey and talking about theology.  We do ask the other person what they think about what we are wearing…and what we aren’t wearing. I love cooking dinner for the family, and he loves taking the kids hiking in the forest.  We enjoy laughing together and debating together, and living together.

Marriage isn’t a sleepover, I’m sorry to break it to you.

But sleepovers end when the sun comes up; marriage lasts past morning coffee, and that is what makes it great.

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.”

-Virginia Woolf

Despite Elizabeth Taylor’s infamous play, the actual script had nothing to do with Virginia Woolf.  The author, Edward Albee, had written the play and was still struggling with a title for it.  He actually saw some poor Lit major’s frustration scrawled into the wall of a restroom, that said, “Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Now she lives in infamy through Albee’s play.  And if you know anything about Woolf, I’m sure you can imagine how delighted she would be by this.

 

“There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”
― Virginia Woolf 

That all being said, Virginia Woolf is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. I remember when I first read some of her essays in college, and reading the societal frustrations she railed against.  While reading her essays, I was appalled to discover that although women were granted the right to vote only in 1920, which in my opinion has been a blemish to the history of our country; but, women were continually forbidden from libraries well into the 1970s:

link

So, there is no space for women in the library. I’m sorry, there are just too many women who want to be well educated! If we took one in, we would have to take them all in!

They also simply do not have enough books to fulfill the needs of women. However, the boys are still allowed into the girls’ library, since “boys cause less disturbance in a female environment than vice versa.”

And finally, the official Harvard opinion in 1966 is that the men at Harvard were not emotionally ready to be around women yet.  Even though “boys cause less disturbance in a female environment.”

However, women may be allowed in the library from 2 to 5am. That makes sense. I have no idea why some women have been upset over silly things.  Like being allowed into a library.

 

“Like most uneducated Englishwomen, I like reading–I like reading books in the bulk.”
― Virginia Woolf

Reading is not only very important, it is crucial.

It is crucial to becoming a well balanced person, and especially a person who has the desire of education.

This is why I take my kids to the library once a week. This is why I am constantly finding good literature to download onto my Kindle for us.  This is why we have a sitting room with big squishy chairs for reading.

The love of reading doesn’t come easily to everyone, though. So many people have been stuck with literature in school that never spoke to them, and the stories just became “words on a page.” And the thing is, there are thousands of books out there…more than enough for everybody!  There is literature out there that speaks to every individual. Sometimes you just have to have someone else show you where they are; and invite you in.

Which is where I come in…

This is my kids’ reading corner.

I was displeased with the way the schoolroom felt…it just felt like a room. No life to it. So, I took all of my boxes of fabric from out of the closet and the kids helped me pick out some decorations, and we created their own reading space. It is well lit, has comfy pillows with matching reading mats, plus a reading cupboard handy for the books they are going through.

This opens the room up, so instead of being a large box…it is now a reading environment!

Now the kids have their own special place to read, and they have been super excited about designing it with me.

Making a reading room for one’s own is vital to creating a safe place to let your mind explore. It doesn’t need to be fancy or expensive.  It just has to be comfortable and inviting; and with many, many books available.

I would heartily recommend a reading room of one’s own for everyone.