Rock To Wind A String Around

Ethiopian Orphan Relief Needs Your Child’s Artwork!

Ethiopian Orphan Relief, Inc. (EOR) will be producing a series of note cards, greeting cards and holiday cards for sale on our website. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of these cards will benefit EOR’s Programs, all of which help Ethiopian orphans. We would like these cards to feature the artwork of Ethiopian children, and we have already been gathering submissions from children in the orphanages.

If your Ethiopian child (any age!) would like to make a submission, please mail it to our Vice President, Kim Pasion at 3020 SW Christy Ave., Beaverton, OR 97005 by Weds, August 6th, 2008.

We will be choosing the artwork to include at our Board Meeting in Portland later that week. The top boy and girl submissions will receive a free EOR t-shirt!

We will notify you if your child’s submission has been chosen for inclusion, and let you know what series it will appear in. Along with your submission, please include your address, your child’s name and their shirt size.

Also, please prepare a “bio” for your child. These bios will appear on the back of the art card featuring your child’s submission! Here’s an example bio:

“This work of art was created by Amelie from Colorado. Amelie is 2 years old and was adopted from the Toukoul Orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2007. She was born in Harar, Ethiopia and is of Oromo descent. She loves climbing, running, drawing and playing with her little brother and dogs. The purchase of this card supports projects aimed at improving the lives of Ethiopian orphans. For more information, please visit www.ethiopianorphanrelief.org.”

Thanks in advance for your help.

We’re very excited to see the submissions!

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions…

(completely stolen from my pal, and fellow board member, HabeshaChild

So you know some days you wake up with a hole in your heart that needs to be filled.  I tried to fill this void with closet organization, but the siren song of the fake lemon kept calling.  Yes, I woke this morning with an overwhelming urge to fill a platterin my living-room with fake citrus fruit.  After ignoring the urge through most of the morning, I did a google search for ‘artificial lemons’ while Astrid Meklit napped.  I thought I might be tempted to order some online and decided not to buy anything right away, given my self-imposed ban on frivolous expenses.  I’d rather buy fresh lemons every week or so, but they’re so expensive right now, and I hate to waste food as decor.  I went on with the rest of my day, but the thought of the bright yellow lemons on the aqua plate wouldn’t be silenced.  The gal and I  played, did some weeding, and ran some errands, and of course, by the end of the day, I owned a box of fake fruit.   It has been arranged on the platter now nestled on my coffee table.  

 It is the pop of color I hoped for.  It makes me happy when I walk by the room.   It was 4.94 well spent. 

Last week’s trip to Chicago flew by like a lovely dream.  In between trips to the Millennium Park Fountain, we squeezed in a playdate with some old friends (ok, they weren’t old friends to Meklit, but they were friends she hadn’t yet met…) and dinner at a terrific Ethiopian restaurant in Edgewater the following night.  We met our Rogers Park neighbors there and caught up on the gossip from the  old hood.  We’ve managed to keep fairly up-to-date about K & S through K’s blog   ( a fabulous and thorough retelling of life on Chicago’s Public Transportation) but needed to fill in the gaps for them about our last few years on the lam.  Astrid Meklit was a sport about the long dinner–she preened, ate an obscene amount of gomen and every other dish she could reach, and practiced her Amharic with the other Ethiopians in the restaurant  (ok, so her Amharic is somewhat limited to the names of food, Selam, Ciao, and ‘enalo–short for amesagenalo, but it’s very cute,  and she gets raves whenever she says anything in ‘Eopian’ so she’s highly motivated!)   At one point, she was sitting and chatting with a group of very nice Ethiopian men.  One of the men said, “Oh Meklit, konjo Meklit” (Meklit is beautiful) and she looked right at him, and in this weird deep-throaty whisper that she uses said, “I know.”  Everyone who heard her laughed and laughed, which made her repeat it several times to similar effect.  It’s not as funny in the telling, but she was a riot.  Really.

On Friday, I made another trip to the Benefit Brow Bar (because, after 4 weeks, it was time) and then we took full advantage of Albert’s per diem to grab lunch at Topolobampo before we drove home.   We tried to get into the lower-rent sister restaurant, Frontera Grill, but there were no tables, so we brought the world’s best baby in to dine with the well-heeled.  The Frontera kitchen made a custom dish for allergy girl so she was able to enjoy lunch as much as we did, and there was enough to pack in the cooler for her dinner on the road.   Funny story,  there was a table beside us with two nice ladies who were quick to smile and chat with the girl.  The one woman leaned forward and said to me in a loud whisper, “She’s adopted isn’t she?”  I confirmed, and she continued, “I’m adopted too, and I always feel a kinship with other adopted people.”  She went on, “I am thinking she was adopted overseas, am I right?  That’s just like me–I was adopted from Greece.  See, I always know the adopted ones.”   With her special gift, we don’t know how she missed Albert’s adoptedness, but you know, maybe her gift only works with children, or the transracially adopted…  her insight definitely added a special zing to lunch!

So our steamy week in Chicago ended, and we came back home, to steamy Cowtown.  Marathon man ran 17 sweaty miles Saturday morning, and then we dragged ourselves up to the Farmer’s market.   We planned to grab a few locally-grown veggies and escape to the air conditioning, but it was Market Days, so we shopped more extensively and found a few treasures.  New-to-us vintage cherry table for the livingroom for 40.00, and 2 incredible pyrex bowls from the 60’s (they’re fabulously orange) for almost nothing.    We put all of this largess to good use later that night.  Joel and Amy came to dinner, which included the locally grown veggies served in the orange bowls, so really, they were worth every penny we squandered. 

Albert and I made a huge list of things to accomplish before Elliott comes back only to realize that with just one week remaining, there is much that will not get done.  We didn’t order carpet, or finish our 2007 taxes, or hang the picture in the family room.  The list  is filled with a number of similar items, and as Albert leaves tomorrow morning for a fun-filled, fabulous week at work in Chicago, we’re dealing with this list tonight by sitting side-by-side on the couch (when I was nine, I learned that some people, classy people use the word davenport instead of couch or sofa.  I lobbied hard to call our couch a  davenport too, but here I sit, on my own couch 20! years later…) laptops at the ready and icecream in hand.  The taxes, like the carpet, can wait for awhile.

Wordpress and I are having an argument about photo placement–WP won…

It was 80 bazillion degrees in Chicago today.  We tried to be ladies who stroll down the avenue late this morning, but found ourselves trying to squeeze under the shady awnings along with everyone else on the Magnificent Mile.    After an hour or so of this nonsense,  we skipped over to the Water Tower park for a chance to swing under the big trees and then we drooped back to the hotel empty-handed.  By the time Astrid  Meklit had napped for several hours, the heat seemed less intense, so she suited up, and we walked over to Millennium Park to tumble in the big fountain to cool off. 

Not one to ever tip back in the bathtub, Astrid rolled in the standing water, splashed under the big cascade, and giggled everytime a bigger kid ran by and splashed her (so  about every 15 seconds or so).    We were both appreciably cooler after more than an hour of splashing, and my gal was eager to share her experience with others.  She told the clerk at the White Hen,  other customers at CVS, the homeless guy on the corner of Wabash and Monroe, and her entourage–the staff here at the Marriott, all about her time in the fountain.  “wet, wet me (points to self still in wet bathing suit) splashing, KIDS (said in awed tones) run, SPLASH,  NO DRINK (what I repeated about 40 times as she stuck her face in the water of dubious pedigree) fun!”   With this much going for it, I have a feeling we’ll be back tomorrow.  Astrid Meklit knows where the fountain is, and she’s not afraid to use it…

We’re on another trip to the city of big shoulders.  Usually, Elliott’s schedule dictates that we stay in town.  With the boy in Florida, it was easy to take a second trip to Chi town in less than a month, and without Elliott along, there is more time for shopping, less emphasis on edifying.   This is good, because the Tag outlet has been waiting patiently for my return for the last five years.    We also made a trip to my favorite consignment shop–a cute little place in Lincoln Park that sells secondhand clothes for more than I would consider paying retail.  There are lots of bargains, but there are also many pricey little items from European designers.  We peruse it all, but snag the bargains in the end.

We’re really here so that Albert & I can celebrate  the most delightful of all holidays, Bastille Day!  We love it not because we are Francophiles but because 15 years ago today I agreed to move in with Albert.  I stalled for a long time, not because I was unsure, but because I knew Albert was The One! and I wanted to make sure he felt that way too.  Our pre-Bastille Day history is long and convoluted, so  getting to a point of mutual agreement was no small matter.    We’re usually home to celebrate this momentous day.  I make a fine Frenchified dinner and we turn up the Edith Piaf and reminisce, but tonight we sat in our lovely suite and played cards while eating take-out Thai with Brandy & Erik.    I’m sure it’s just what the French had in mind as they stormed the Bastille in 1789.  It’s definitely the future I might have hoped for in 1993.

I miss this face so much!

 Just 15 days until I can see it in person…

I always feel like I should get a medal for cleaning the bathroom(s) . One for ‘Bravery-while-facing death inducing-Germs’ or something like that. But then I realize, cleaning 3 bathrooms every 4-7 days would mean a lot of medals, and I don’t have a place to put them. Better to soldier on, and be glad that next week’s trip to Chi-town means that someone else will battle the typhoid and diptheria germs that linger on the tile.