If you want a sneak peek at the work in progress ... check it out here.

We're reading Same Kind of Different as Me in Sunday school this month. We're maybe halfway through it - it's a book about two guys from poor backgrounds. One "makes it" ... one is homeless. It's a book that takes place primarily in an area I grew up – Fort Worth. And this morning, one of the discussion questions was:

If you were in that situation, how would you want others to respond to you?

The first person to speak up admitted she wasn't sure she could imagine being like Denver – homeless, living on the streets with no education. She wasn't sure anyone who'd grown up as we'd grown up could put themselves in that mindset and truly imagine what it would be like, how we'd want others to respond to us. There was a lot of agreeing.

I'm rarely the first person to speak up in groups. Partly because it takes me a while to gather my thoughts into words – I think in images, little mini-movies and as I grow older, the translation from that into words others will understand is getting more and more difficult. This morning, I was more off-balance than usual because I'd already tried to make a minor point earlier ... and wound up pretty inarticulate and felt that I'd lost respect from some folks I admired. So I was really struggling to piece my thoughts together coherently ... and by the time I was ready to speak, the group had moved on from that portion of the discussion to something else.

Personally, I think while there's truth to saying it's difficult to put ourselves in the mindset of someone who has never had even an opportunity to be educated and is homeless, I think it's a cop-out to claim that we can't do it or at least get close.

I grew up in the 'burbs one town to the east of Fort Worth and at 17, I began making serious plans for running away from home. A part of that planning was to imagine what my life would be like on the street. What would my chances be of getting into a runaway shelter the first night I was out on my own? Would they insist that I return to my parents?

I was contemplating entering a life not just uncertain but completely comprised of chance and uncertainty. I wanted others to see me as invisible.

Now there's a statement of contradictions and uncertainties.

Let me try to explain.

I had quite early on become a master of disguises, showing everyone what they wanted to see - at least to a certain extent. I was by no means the perfect chameleon because I didn't want to be. I always had a very strong sense of self ... but from very early on I also came to understand that it was not socially acceptable to be me. I was too blunt, too matter-of-fact, too practical and too out-of-sync with other children of my age and background. So I learned how to let aspects of my self shine through, but not so much that it overwhelmed people. Elementary school was particularly difficult, trying to learn this balance and still feel true to my self.

But it wasn't just my personality or who I was. It was also what I had – and was continuing to – experience which set me apart from most of my peers. On the surface, it wasn't that different. A lot of kids in Texas had an alcoholic father and an overly religious mother – this was the heart of the Bible belt, after all. But the depths to which the abuses of religion, of body, of mind and spirit went ... tended to set me apart.

I learned how to hide all of that so completely, it was often difficult for me to even remember what I had experienced, much less tell someone else about it. That aspect of my life was invisible, and I liked it that way. Invisible meant no uncomfortable questions about how I knew certain things. No uncomfortable questions about why I was so rarely allowed over to friends' houses and why they were so rarely allowed at mine. No uncomfortable questions about why I didn't "get" the finer aspects of interacting with kids my age. No uncomfortable questions about why I just wanted to be left alone with my Fisher Price to play in my own little world.

So my first reaction while reading this book, was of course Denver wanted to be invisible. When you are noticed, then questions get asked. Well-intentioned questions, but questions that dig up those things which you would like to stay invisible even to your self. It becomes a slippery slope where the better you are at what you're doing ... the more lost you become. The more you have to layer some kind of disguise around you to hide that core of goodness and hope and that spirit of being a survivor and a fighter – because when those things shine through, then you get noticed. And in any kind of combative situation (like the street or prison or the house I grew up in), if you're noticed, you're a target.

Now maybe that is difficult for a lot of people to imagine. I wouldn't know ... it's how I lived for a long, long time. It's still difficult for me to be noticed – I'd far rather be in the background.

So when I first read the discussion question, that was my answer – I would want to remain invisible.

But that's the real paradox of the situation. Because that answer isn't exactly true.

Of course everyone who still has some hope of making a "better" or "good" life, wants to be noticed. I think unless you've managed to completely and totally give up on life, there is that seed within us which cries out to be noticed that we are still good people who have something of value to contribute. Some of us wear that seed on our sleeve and give it constant care and attention. Some of us learned to create a tiny greenhouse, deep inside ourselves to protect and nurture that seed until it was strong enough and safe enough to not be destroyed by outside forces.

Were I uneducated, not able to read, write or do simple maths ... how would I want people to respond to me?

The same way I wish people would respond to me today. Not fear me because I'm different. Not fear me or get angry or frustrated with me because I can't communicate as clearly or quickly as I'd like. Not get angry when I point out that other ways of thinking and being can be just as legitimate as the way they think or are. Not fear me when I tell my story. Not feel the need to rush in with words where silence is perfectly comfortable. Not feel a need to "fix" what doesn't need fixing.

I would want them to take the time to get to know me. To know me where I am now and not force me to come to them on their terms.

If I'd been living on the streets for years and not really known any other life, I would not want to suddenly be inundated with the trappings of modern, convenient life. It takes time to grow accustomed to a new way of living.

If I, being who I am today, were suddenly homeless, how would I want others to respond to me? If I were under a bridge, sleeping in a box, I would want to be completely invisible. To make no eye contact with others in my shame. During the day, when the situation was new, I would want that invisibility to cloak me as I tried to find a way to clean up, make myself presentable and fling off the invisibility as I tried to find employment, cash and a roof over my head while wrapping that cloak of invisibility over the fact that I was homeless and whatever the circumstances were that had caused that to happen. Eventually, if circumstances didn't change ... that need to be invisible would quite likely envelope me completely.

Maybe because I spent so much time in various states of invisibility as a child and a teenager I don't find this difficult to imagine at all. Maybe I'm the same kind of different as Denver and Ron - the authors of the book.

But I think that was their point - we're all the same kind of different. Far more alike than we can imagine on the surface of it. I think it far more likely that many of us have thrown that cloak of invisibility around this area of "what would it be like to be homeless" because we don't want to look at it. It's too uncomfortable and frightening to contemplate.

And that's where I am different from many people. It is uncomfortable and it is frightening. But I would rather think of it now and begin planning on how to take action ... than to be surprised by it later and forced to only react in short-term ways which aren't necessarily the best.

And that's a kind of different I'm happy to live with.

This weekend I'm hoping to get 'round to the second piece - from The Sneetches and Other Stories.

There's a huge Flickr group of customized Munnys if you want to click through. But here is a regular white Munny ready for customizing:

So I decided it was time to try my first foray into the fine art of Munny-making. My first one is quite simple, but something that was quite meaningful to me. I still have a larger white one to decorate as well as a large glow-in-the-dark one. I'll get more creative with those, I'm sure. I'd like to do some sculpting on one of them, at the very least.

This one is based on a Sunface Kachina doll. We lived in Albuquerque for all of three months when I was three years old, but I was fascinated by the culture then and remain so. The face is a typical Sunface - eagle feathers bordering and the red and yellow quarters. The face is sometimes white, sometimes turquoise. On this Munny, the eagle feathers are white leather. A leather loincloth and belt have also been glued on. I've contemplated doing a kind of "sandpainting" design on the back of the head ... that seems to be a Munny tradition of sorts to do an elaborate paint job on the head ... but in the end, I think I prefer the simplicity of this design as it is. Maybe I'll do another Pueblo/Hopi/Navajo-area-inspired design later on.

It's 7 o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd's still in bed
Photoshop's sitting next to me
Making love to the beachball of doom.

He says, "Son, how good is your memory
Are you really sure how this goes
Which filters you used on which layers to complete
This logo of a dog wearing clothes.

{Bridge}
La lala didi da
Lala didi da, da dum dum dum

{Refrain}
Make us an image, you're the designer man
Make us a website tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for drop shadows galore
And you've got Photoshop, right?

Now John at the bar was a friend of mine,
He got me my wifi for free.
And he's quick with a joke or Clients from Hell quote
But there's something he'd just rather see

He says, "Dude, I believe this whitespace must go"
And the smile ran away from my face
"Well I'm sure that you could fit more up in here
Like a picture of my bar out in space"

{Bridge}
La lala didi da
Lala didi da, da dum dum dum

Now Paula's a real estate agent
Who never has time for a brief
And she's talking brochures with Comic Sans headers
And printing it all on a leaf

And my kid sister is practicing Illustrator
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Building contests and spec work for crappy designs.
WIthout Twitter I'd feel damn alone.

{Refrain}
Make us an image, you're the designer man
Make us a website tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for bevels and gloss
And you've got Photoshop, right?

It's a pretty good gig when clients behave
And the AD gives me that smile
'Cause he knows that it's me they're all coming to see
And I won't have weekends for a while

And their brief reads like a carnival ride
And the Art Director smells like a scotch
And clients smile their best, and refuse to write checks
And say "Dude, we should pay you HOW much?"

{Bridge}
La lala didi da
Lala didi da, da dum dum dum

{Refrain}
Make us an image, you're the designer man
Remove this skyline tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for rotating logos
And you've got Photoshop, right?

Which all reminded me of the toaster we had in Austin, back in the days when a toaster was a major kitchen appliance and cost, apparently, 80 bazillion dollars. Our toaster no longer had a working timer. The toast would not pop up and Mom would not splurge on a new toaster. This one still worked, after all, you just had to stand there by it and count to sixty. Then pull the lever up and voila! Toast!

So, Grandma was visiting and Mom had to go run some early morning errand. She tasked Grandma with getting us fed breakfast and getting us dressed for the day. Presumably so we could all go shopping at the mall, not exactly a great motivator for me. Mom gave me her serious face and told me to {insert booming announcer voice here} "Make sure Grandma counts to sixty at the toaster."

My little sister is in her chair, eating breakfast and Grandma and I retreat to my room to pick out clothes for the day. Honestly, I didn't need help, I was SIX, for crying out loud and I can dress myself, but you know, it's Grandma and any attention is good, so I GUESS she can come help me pick out "appropriate" clothes. Let me give you a hint. It was the 70s. There were no appropriate clothes. *shudder*

My two and a half year old sister (maybe it was 3.5?) comes strolling into my room and I'm puffing up to holler at her about how this is MY room and she is supposed to be eating breakfast, when she pipes up with:

"Grandma, the kitchen is on fire." And calmly walks back into the fiery kitchen to eat her breakfast.

Grandma and I exchanged that utterly panicked look and took off running for the kitchen.

Flames were shooting up out of the toaster, but luckily, nothing else had actually caught fire yet. There was soot on the light fixture and the cabinets, but they weren't even blackened yet. We lucked out.

My sister was back at the table, calmly eating breakfast and just kind of watching Grandma put the fire out and begin the cleaning process. Grandma was trying to get everything perfectly cleaned up before Mom got back ... and of course no one was going to say a word about this to Mommy, right?

And of course, Mom came back just before Grandma could get the light fixture back together.

Somehow the flaming toast was actually my fault ... even though Grandma was the adult who really should have remembered to count to sixty.

Come to think of it, Grandma's the one who taught me to clean up and hide my wrong-doings ....

We did, however, get a new toaster after that fiasco.

That first gig went beautifully until I was putting them to bed and then it turned into an unmitigated disaster.

You see, while we had a dog when I was growing up, she was banished to the backyard. If I played tug with her or ran around with her too much, Mom would insist that I was "going to make her mean." So I didn't have a whole lot of experience with dogs.

The last thing the parents said before they left was to be careful around Honey-Dog the dachshund. The big, fat, cranky dachshund.

To my overprotective and inexperienced mind, this meant I had to protect the children FROM Honey-Dog, not that Honey-Dog would be attempting to protect the children from me. So, we'd all gotten along swimmingly that evening and I went to put the kids to bed. Michael wanted Honey-Dog to come to bed with him and I thought if anyone should pick up the dog, it should be me.

Inexperienced.

With no warning (even in retrospect, there was no clear warning), she leapt at my face and bonked my nose, making it bleed. I shoved an ever-present Kleenex at my face, finished putting the kids to bed and went into the bathroom to figure out why the heck this bloody nose wasn't really slowing down.

Yeah. Umm.

There were a couple of claw marks or possibly very slight punctures on my nose, but Honey-Dog had actually managed to open my upper lip, nearly all the way through. Well crap.

All I could think was that I'd failed. I'd messed up. I'd done it wrong. My first babysitting gig and I royally screwed up.

I called home and told Mom, "I think Honey-Dog got me."

She came over with a band-aid and some Neosporin ... since I was not particularly specific. When she saw my face, she did a good job of not totally flipping out, but she was obviously taken by surprise. She called Dad, made him come over with my little sister to watch the kids and then she took me to the E.R. - my only E.R. experience of childhood. I got one stitch and the doctor was ridiculously nervous about getting it just right since it was on my face. I was not all that concerned. I mean, I didn't want a huge white scar, but whatever.

We got back to the house, I made Mom and Dad go home and I waited for the Wortmans to return. I 'fessed up that the dog had bit me, got my whopping $6 and walked across the street, expecting never to be asked back.

As it turns out, I babysat for them a lot over the years. Michael, in a lot of ways, became like a little brother to me. So much so, that I often felt guilty for the fact that I wasn't as close to the girls. I would try hard to make an effort to do what they wanted some days and I was pretty sure they appreciated that, but it was obvious that Michael and I simply clicked. We had a lot of the same interests, whereas the girls and I didn't have quite as much in common.

It got to the point where Michael begged and begged and begged me to come over and run a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for him and a couple of his buddies. And he was crushed when one of the boys (I think they were about 13 by then) thought he'd "game" the girl. Michael pleaded with the boy to "behave."

You can't "game" a DungeonMaster. I mean, come on. After letting him get away with a little bit of bullshit, I confirmed that he moved through a doorway before the rest of the group. Of course, he was mr. leader-boy.

I rolled a die. Came up the way I'd hoped. "Before the others can go through, you are whisked away into a jungle. The doorway through which you came is nowhere to be seen. And men dressed in green, carrying strange metallic sticks are approaching you."

Yeah. I threw him in the middle of the Viet Nam war. (What? Every doorway in that campaign was a portal to somewhere else rather than a regular doorway. I just tweaked the campaign a little ....)

Then there was the day Michael wanted to race me on my bike. He'd gotten a 10 speed from somewhere and it was far too big for him, but he insisted he could beat me to the end of the block.

I turned around in time to see him go skidding down the street on his chin. I felt horrible. I tried to warn him that the bike was too big for him, that he was going to fall ... but geez. He was trying so hard at first not to cry, but it was a hell of a fall and a lot of road rash. But I think the real pain was he was crushed to have done that in front of me. And in front of his dad. He always tried to be such the macho man for his dad. And don't get me wrong, he was a tough kid ... but he was also sensitive, kind, caring. He wanted to please everybody.

When I moved out of the house, I didn't really go back to that house again. There was so much going on in my life at that time, I just wasn't thinking. And, to be honest, Michael was starting high school ... he was hanging out with his friends more and more, as it should be.

I was in my first "real" relationship (whatever that means - in my case it meant 10 years together). I was in my second year of college and had started working full time. I barely had time to breathe, much less check up on the boy across the street.

I was running a web search for a family member only to discover an article about Michael. Well, not exactly an article. More accurately, his obituary. He was just 37 years old. The obituary says nothing about what happened. I know nothing about his life after I moved.

It's my loss.

Sometimes the amount of information available on the internet just sucks.

Her backyard was a thing of wonderment. The patio was covered by a metal roof bent to and fro like a piece of corrugated cardboard. The far ends of the roof were supported by pieces of what looked to me like wrought iron metal. Standing underneath it during a storm, I would completely lose myself in the sounds the rain made on that patio roof.

Staring out at the yard from the patio and the right side of the yard was bounded by a typical chain link fence. The left was a tall, tall privacy fence with slender boards with practically sharp points - it reminded me of an old west fort. The back fence was the same as the left, but only as tall as the chain link fence. I'd never seen a wooden fence so short before.

But the best part was the old willow trees. The one practically in front of the patio was okay, but a bit sparse. The one off to the left, though ... I played jungle in the branches hanging down every time I went out back. It was interesting how the yard was exotic and somewhat forbidding on the far side - by the tall privacy fence, but open and clear near the chain link side.

The interior of the house excited my imagination just as much - the floor in the den was a wood parquet that I was always dying to take apart. After all, it looked like a floor made out of thin wooden blocks. I always wondered what other designs I could make with the floor if I could just be left alone for a few hours ....

The hallway back to the bedrooms was always dark. The carpet was old and red and had a path worn down the center. I was fascinated by this and would try to walk against the wall, where there was still loads of cushy padding, just to be different. Even the walls were odd. A bit of molding created a frame every so often on the wall. And inside that was some red wallpaper. Maybe some day I'll find a picture of that or try to draw it from memory ... but the pattern of the wallpaper was raised and flocked ... and apparently I was not supposed to pet it.

The front room of the house was a combination living room/sitting room and dining room. The carpet was white. There was a HUGE blue velvet couch underneath a large painting of little boats on a European beachfront. The end tables and coffee tables had magazines carefully arranged, a few tasteful knicknacks and a couple of candy dishes with lids. My first foray into learning to be quiet was trying to remove the glass lid from the blue candy dish to have one piece of hard candy. It was a game I played with myself even when I had asked and been given permission to have a piece of candy.

It really wasn't about the candy ... it was about the challenge.

Everything in that house was a challenge to me of some sort. An exploration of new things. I would crawl underneath the dining room table - a gorgeous Heywood-Wakefield piece with legs curved like the rib bones of a dinosaur - and be lost in my own adventures for hours. Sometimes I was in a submarine, a rocketship or a dinosaur's belly. Sometimes it was a cave.

In retrospect, I was often so overwhelmed by the experience of my grandparents' house in Oklahoma, that I was rather lost in my own little world when there.

This mostly kept me out of trouble.

And like most little kids, I thought Grandma was perfect.

In retrospect that was a combination of a couple of factors. As a child, I largely wanted to be left alone to my own devices. That's not to say that I didn't fall into the tedious "I'm bored" trap, because I did. I did want some attention from adults. But for the most part, if you gave me a project I was interested in, I was pretty self-sufficient and content to be left alone for hours.

Grandma was good at that. We'd go shopping for a few toys or books and then she'd expect me to entertain myself thereafter. She'd give me toys that she felt my aunt didn't want any more (while most of the time she was correct about that ... she also screwed up rather royally more often than I'd like to admit). She gave me my aunt's Mego Batman and Robin and then took me to the store to get some vehicles (and maybe a bad guy - I'm a little fuzzy on that now). These were things my mom considered "boy toys" and Mom would never let me have them. Frankly, I wasn't sure how they were truly different from the Barbie dolls she handed down to me from her childhood, but there it was.

Of course, the stereotype of the grandma in the U.S. is that grandmas spoil grandkids. So naturally she got me special things.

Looking back with adult eyes, though, it was more than that. She would purposely buy the things that Mom most wanted me to not have. A six-shooter. A drum (she'd been very specifically told NO DRUMS on multiple occasions). Various "boy toys" by Mom's definition. All things that made Grandma look good ... and Mom look like an ogre. And it wasn't so much about making me happy ... although she did enjoy making me happy ... but it was often about the adulation and attention she got by gifting me with these things. As well as the opportunity to make Mom feel bad - or make me feel like Mom was in the wrong.

For years, I saw her as my protector. Where Mom seemed arbitrary and overly controlling, Grandma was sure to let me march to the beat of my own drum (that she gave me, of course). Where Mom always seemed to interrupt my playtime (or project time) with an arbitrary chore that for some reason had to be done RIGHT NOW OR THE UNIVERSE WILL IMPLODE, Grandma had no chore agenda for me.

And as her grandchild, that was exactly what I needed.

How do they irrigate your eye? I'm glad you asked. One end of a tube is attached to the IV saline. Then they slip this "contact" lens onto the eyeball:

It was an exciting Saturday.

Particularly after we finally got home and then had to dig and then push the truck out of a snowbank because someone wasn't paying attention to that either.

This year, I decided on a whim after completing Timmy the Red-Nosed Reindeer Monkey, that I would do a Sculpey project for each of my co-workers. My boss was relatively easy - she collects snowmen. (Click for a bigger image - new window)

Then there is the co-worker who likes Hello Kitty. Of course, I had to tough-up Miss Kitty ...

And then there's our supervisor who is about as diverse as me. She told me about a nickname of her husband ... so I decided I'll make him a panda later on ... and her a bear for now. (The pattern for this sculpt comes out of one of my books on Sculpey - it's not an original design.)

Another one comes from the Sculpey website:

If you've never seen the Monkeehub animated video of Radiohead's acoustic version of "Creep," you have to go see it. Seriously. It's incredible. I decided to make that character for another co-worker.

And then another co-worker does some really nice vector illustrations ... I decided to do his sculpt as one of his own characters. Check out the wallpaper here.

They were surprised, I think. And it was fun. Now just watch ... next year I'll probably freaking forget to do anything.

And one morning, I got it into my head that all little kids run away from home and I had not yet done this. I couldn't have been more than five at the time, but I already felt like I was behind the curve.

But where do you go when you run away? I mean there's all these pesky details about it. You need to have somewhere to sleep, you have to find food ... and how is a little kid supposed to do these things alone, for Pete's sake?

So, I decided to go next door. To Megan's house.

I walked out into the winter morning ... and left the sidewalk! Oh the blasphemy of it all.

I knocked on Megan's door. Her mom answered ... pointed out that Megan was still sleeping and that perhaps, just perhaps, I should go back home. Not having any clue where else I could safely go, I returned home. On my way back in the house, I snagged the morning paper and put it on the kitchen table for Mommy.

She never knew I'd been out of the house.

Know this - my mother was ANAL about keeping track of me and my little sister. Most of the time, our every second was accounted for. This was long before the internet. My mother was not so involved in tv as most stay-at-home moms. Her job, as far as she was concerned, was watching our every move.

But a mother has to sleep. In fact, if we're really honest about it, there are many things that we adults must do every day that take our attention away from the things ... or people ... that are most important to us. Ultimately, it's just impossible to watch anything, even our children, for every second of every day. We blink. We sleep. We answer the phone while they wander off into the other room.

No matter how diligent you are.

Life happens when you least expect it.

My sister and I were adept at getting up in the middle of the night. My sister went for the cheese - I went for Mom's Dr. Pepper. We were all lucky. Neither of us was determined to leave the house and wreak havoc. The toddler across the street, on the other hand, was notorious for escaping her stay-at-home Mom, big sister and big brother, running out into the front yard and throwing off all her clothes.

Now, most toddlers go through a "nakkies" phase when they just don't see the point of clothing ... or diapers. Still, it's startling to see a naked toddler in the front yard, running around like a mad thing, enjoying her freedom. Depending on time, we'd either step back in the house and call over to the Koskas' and let them know she'd escaped again or head over and try to corral the errant toddler and walk her back in the house. It's not that the Koskas' were negligent, but there's laundry to do, dinner to make, life to live. And it's simply physically and emotionally impossible to eyeball a child every second of the day.

So a mom and two of her boys were out back the other day. Mom was working with the animals and the older boy was helping. She tweeted from a mobile device a couple of times about her animals and the chores. The toddler was "helping" her and his brother as toddlers are wont to do. Mom sent the older boy to do one last thing and head in while she finished up something else. The toddler had been shadowing big brother. Mom figured both boys were in the house as she headed in.

The youngest wasn't. She ran back outside. The older boy suddenly dove into the pool.

The toddler had fallen in.

Paramedics were called. Arrived. Took the baby to the hospital.

From the chapel where she was panicked and grief-stricken, she posted to Twitter again, the equivalent of "please pray, my baby fell in the pool."

An outpouring of sympathy began. People do tend to be good and sympathetic.

But almost as quickly, came some people recommending caution. After all, how do we know this person is telling the truth? Maybe it's a scam for attention. Maybe it's a scam for donation money. You never know. It's happened before.

Caution where your money is concerned, I understand. But why be so cautious with a word of sympathy?

Unfortunately it only grew worse from there. Someone, probably several someones, took it upon themselves to use this as an opportunity to bitch about how other people parent. All of these mommy-bloggers spend too much time online. They spend too much time not practicing the CONSTANT VIGILANCE that Mad-Eye Moody recommends in his parenting tome, Parenting Without A Magical Eye. Nothing would ever happen to wee little baby children if these mommy-bloggers and tweet-addicted women would just get off-line and pay attention.

And of course, the so-called "mommy-bloggers" grouped together and defended a woman who had only tweeted for prayers. For support. She reached out through Twitter much like a mom in the 50's might have reached out to the church prayer circle. She thought she was reaching out to friends.

The arguments I've heard now are both that she was trivializing her child's death (not long after posting that tweet, she was told he had not made it - so she thought he was still alive when she tweeted) ... and that she was wasting time on the internet when she should have been watching the baby. And, of course, the inevitable tirades about pool safety.

It seems that there are far too many people who would prefer to believe that we are 100% capable of guaranteeing someone's safety.

We live our lives with a thin veneer of fantasy. That we won't be the one to go through a green light and be t-boned by someone running a red light. That we won't be present when our bank is robbed at gunpoint. That we won't be on a bridge when the structure fails and collapses. That our airplane won't fall from the sky. That our building won't collapse and fall.

These things happen to OTHER PEOPLE. Not us.

And it's a necessary fantasy because you cannot live a life ruled so completely by fear of everything that could go wrong. At some point, you have to trust. You have to believe. You have to make a decision and move.

Yes, there are certain measures you can take to be more safe. Yes, you can be aware of your environment and watch for signs that something is off.

But we're human. We are going to get tired, get busy, get caught up in a moment and miss something. If we lead lucky lives, no one gets hurt or at least hurt too badly.

We're discovering more and more that some of the decisions we've made to protect our children are actually harming them. If, for example, they come from lives so clean they're practically sterile, the child is less likely to develop basic immunities. It impairs their immune system and makes them more sickly adults. Of course, a filthy living environment doesn't make them stronger, necessarily.

It's all about a delicate balance. And until something tragic happens, no one really knows where that tipping point of too much/not enough actually is.

Have you seen the movie, Dead Poets Society? The dad in that flick thinks he's building the perfect life for his son. He's going to force him to be a doctor come hell or high water. (Spoiler from hell if you've not seen the flick .....)

The boy tries to lead his own life for a bit, and seeing no way out of the stifling protection his father has created, he kills himself.

(Oddly enough, that actor has grown up to play the doctor Wilson on House, which I find hysterical.)

Our lives are about balance. About doing our best to maintain the balancing act of a thousand different pieces - pieces of history and circumstance that no one else knows anything about. Hell, sometimes we don't even really know what all the pieces are, just that we have to keep them in check, balanced, in order to keep moving forward.

For someone else to judge a mom based on the tiny slice of pieces that her Twitter stream revealed is a ridiculous conceit made by, in my opinion, a narcissistic personality who is sure they know the answers to everyone else's life-puzzle.

And how far this particular story went? Wow. I wish I had the leisure time and then disposable cash to go calling around the country to verify stories I hear on Twitter and Facebook and even on other people's blogs.

There was another, similar scenario this past week.

The headline battered about news services and Twitter was something to the effect of Drunk Four Year Old Steals Christmas Presents.

And of course, everyone starts judging the mother and the father. Without even knowing anything beyond the headline.

The story is heartbreaking, to be sure. But not quite the story you might think from the headline.

The story is generally presented sensationally - drunk four year old breaks into neighbor's home, steals Christmas presents and is found wearing a brown dress, beer in hand.

But a story containing more of the pieces is more sad. Turns out Mommy and Daddy are getting a divorce. Daddy is in jail.

And the four year old wants to be with Daddy.

His four year old's solution was to break the child safety device off a door in his house, escape, snag one of Granddad's beers from a cooler outside and walk in through an unlocked door of a neighbor. There he stole presents, one of which was a brown dress, which he put on, and then wander back out into the night, waiting to get caught and go to jail with Daddy.

Mommy woke up at 1:45 a.m., in a panic, trying to find her little escape artist.

And the comments I've seen people make about this story? Utter bile blaming the mother for not watching him.

I'm sorry, folks, but you have to sleep sometime.

Why do we feel such an intense need to judge others' lives?

There, but for grace, go I. There but for grace, go you and I.

What really kills me ... is the people vomiting forth the most bile, judging the most, vocally lambasting anyone who disagrees with what they've decided are all the pieces and the solution ...

... are the ones most likely to claim that they are fervent Christians.

And as they prepare to celebrate the birth of the Christian messiah who preached love, understanding and cautioned against judging others ... who repeatedly preached on fixing yourself before "fixing" others ... they are spewing some of the most horrific bile.

Honestly, I just don't get it. Rather, I don't think that they get it.

Life happens when we least expect it. Due diligence, preparation, even CONSTANT VIGILANCE ... none of these render anyone safe from harm. Perhaps safer ... but life is as much about luck in circumstance as it is your skill in living it "perfectly."

News Articles:
An article from Florida Today about the toddler who drowned
An article about the four year old who wanted to join Daddy in jail

Remember, if you want to leave a comment here, to enter only the first LETTER of the Turing-Test word. Not the whole word. Just the first letter. :)

But I did manage a good snap of Timmy in his natural environs:

I think you can see the full effect of his glowing nose a little bit better here maybe. Certainly better than last night's too-dark and orange shot.

First, ThinkGeek's mascot is Timmy the Monkey. Being a Red Monkey myself, of course I like any site with a good monkey mascot. Being a pixel monkey myself, I appreciate the site's look and aesthetic. (What's not to like about that gorgeous robots to zombies background fade?)

Second, any site that uses nice renditions of my favourite puppet or claymation characters also has my full attention.

So to see Timmy the Monkey done up as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer from the 1964 Rankin-Bass movie just delighted me and I knew I had to have a Timmy the Red-Nosed Reindeer Monkey of my very own. Preferably one with a light-up nose.

Also, after being sick as all get-out for a week with this damn sinus infection from hell, I needed a project I could immerse myself in and yet remain quiet and still and restful. So, I grabbed some bricks of Sculpey and Fimo and cleared off the glass drawing table and began kneading the polymer clay. The light colours on Timmy are just plain tan Sculpey. The darker area is tan mixed with chocolate and the antler nubs are chocolate Sculpey mixed with black Fimo. The black eyes and red nose are also Fimo.

The problem with working in Sculpey is the stuff is ridiculously soft. That makes it exceedingly difficult to get it completely smooth and exceedingly easy to get small flecks of other colours embedded into each other. The head construction was fairly easy, but smoothing out the seam of the ears was difficult without leaving further marks in the soft clay. It went pretty well, though, including the inlay of the tan into the ears.

Then I started the body. I toyed with the thought of using aluminum foil to take up some of the bulk, but to be honest, I've never had success using that method - I just never seem to get the clay smooth again over the crumpled foil. So, his body is a massive chunk of Sculpey. Then I cut a diagonal line to create the joint for one leg - just to see if this method would make a better joint for the legs. It did. I was pretty happy with that ... and then it was time for the damn arms. Really, the arms weren't so bad, but trying to do the hands in the incredibly soft Sculpey was an exercise in masochism. Eventually I got it. Unfortunately, during the baking, both arms sagged downward more than I'd anticipated.

So he turned out pretty well, but that wasn't quite enough for me. I wanted a light-up nose, too. So, I carved into the back of Timmy's little head. I needed a slot big enough to slide a 3V 2032 button battery (often found in watches or super-slim remotes). I also needed a hole to insert the LED. Wiring him up was far easier than I thought at first - the area was small enough that all I really needed to do was slide the battery in between the wires in the LED - no additional wiring really needed. I could just take the battery out to turn it off. Far simpler than trying to embed both wiring and a switch inside the Sculpey head - particularly since I didn't want to bake the wiring along with the Sculpey.

There ya have it! Timmy the Red-Nosed Reindeer Monkey.