See? I can smell the roses

Ten things I'm excited about right now:

1.) The Renegade Craft Fair (I'm a huge sucker for felt)

2.) Taking the kids to see the Nutcracker

3.) Reading Column McCann's new novel Let the Great World Spin

4.) The Fantastic Mr. Fox (I love you, Wes Anderson)

5.) Our new whole-grains-and-veggies commitment (last night: bulgar wheat, tonight: pearl barley, tomorrow: who knows?)

6.) My new iPhone (my precious...)

7.) Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me

8.) Reading about this marriage in the NYT Magazine, especially because I once, many years ago, had a huge crush on the husband

9.) Going to see the Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Miranda

10.) The day the Mister shaves his annual Christmas beard

My life list

Buy this photo HERE

Maggie over at Mighty Girl is famous for her life list and she is encouraging us all to make our own. I've made a lot of lists in my day, but I tend to work on a year-by-year basis. A LIFE list? Like the REALLY BIG THINGS? It's a bit intimidating. But, here goes. And I fully reserve the right to add, edit and change my mind.

The Life List

Participate in a group art project

Have a goat

Spend Thanksgiving serving food to people in need

Raft through the Grand Canyon with my family

Take my kids to Yosemite

Write an honest novel that makes me proud

Learn to apply glamorous liquid eye makeup

Stay in one of those floating homes in India

Eat at the French Laundry

See Willie Nelson in concert

Sail through the Caribbean

Rent a house in Morocco for at least a month

from HERE

Take a tour of the White House while there is a president I like living there

Watch some big wave surfing in person

Sing karaoke with real passion and gusto in front of a lot of my friends

Take my kids to Buddhist family camp at Karme Choling

Go to one of those places where the water is electric blue and perfectly calm

Learn to surf, even a little

Buy this photo HERE

Meet Michelle Obama

Start a tradition for just my daughter and me

Answer the Proust Questionnaire in the back of Vanity Fair

Attend a taping of Saturday Night Live

Take my step-father to see the Giants win the World Series

Throw a fancy, catered party

Start a collective office space for writers

Go to Savannah, Georgia

See a grizzly bear in the wild

Live in a house with fruit trees in the backyard

you can buy this HERE

Throw a kid craft party for no special reason

Take someone in

Discover my real hair color

Be perfectly coiffed from my toes to my hair for one day

Attend a black tie awards ceremony (National Book Awards would be nice)

Get tipsy with Ellen Degeneres

Impress the Mister with my athletic prowess

Surprise the kids with a giant birthday cake when it's not their birthday

Downsize

Attend the Canne Film Festival

Make a movie out of all the video we've taken of the kids

Now tell me some of yours.

Airhead

It's been an age. Thanksgiving came and went and I didn't even get to do one of those "what I am grateful for" posts.

Instead I cut both kids hair (an epic battle never to be repeated), wrote a "family beach towns" article for a travel magazine, ate oysters at Tomales Bay Oyster Company (Number 18. Check) and tried to make peace with my mind, which jumps around like a panicked squirrel these days, unable to focus on anything before darting off all wild eyed and nervous to store some nuts.

It's like this: I will think of something I want to tell the mister and by the time I get into the room where he is, like, say 1.4 seconds later, I've not only forgotten what it was I wanted to tell him, but I've completely forgotten I planned on saying anything at all. So then I start sorting clothes until the cookies catch my eye. Then I eat cookies until I realize the phone receiver should really be cleaned out with a toothpick. Then I clean the phone receiver until I remember that I haven't seen my red scarf in a while. Then I go looking for my red scarf....

You get the picture.

This is disturbing for three reasons:

1. I am too young to be losing my mind

2. I never really get anything done

3. I sound like Erma Bombeck (next I am going to be telling menopause jokes and elbow waddle anecdotes)

Only part of it can be attributed to overload. Yes, I have a lot of stuff stored in there (how many calories in and egg? 90. Annie Lamott's first book? Hard Laughter. Best coconut rice in San Francisco? Mandalay. Renegade Craft Fair? December 19. ) And my mental to do list is like a flotilla of random and unrelated flotsam and jetsam, but lots of people have a lot on their minds and manage to remember their thoughts for more than a fleeting second. But I...I, um, yeah...

Smashing things is anger management too

He will crush you

I just took an online parenting survey to help out with some Harvard child development research and, man, some of those questions made me feel like a real weasel. "I have never felt like smashing something in anger." Um, false. "I never get irritated when people express opinions different from my own." Yeah, false again. "If I thought I could sneak into a movie without paying I would do it." Well, yes, probably. I mean, I think so. I should try that, come to think of it.

My question is this: is there really a person on the planet who has never felt like smashing something in anger? Really? Never?

I bet even the Dali Lama has had his moments. He's having a bad day and then he gets his robes caught in an escalator and one of his monks laughs and then he spills his green tea all over his crotch right before he has to go on stage with Richard Gere and he knows everyone is going to thinks he's getting old and incontinent, and then someone raises their hand during the q&a portion of the program and asks a rambling question implying that he is really naive and not doing all he can to save the world and he's, like, totally jet lagged and celibate and he hasn't had time to meditate in days and, you know, it's just finally too much for one man to take. And somewhere in his huge and peaceful heart he feels like smashing something. You can't tell me he doesn't.

If you want to to feel like a weasel (or, what do I know, maybe you're an angel) you can take the survey yourself right HERE. Good luck.

Bless this mess

Since I seem to like airing a certain amount of dirty laundry online, I thought I'd share with you what my house looks like after three days of single-parenting (the Mister is on a very bromantic hiking trip until 5PM today).

I used to get so irritated at my mother's poor housecleaning when I was a kid. I would mop the kitchen floor and wipe down the oven doors just to satisfy my own standards of clean (oddly, laundry didn't concern me and instead of washing my clothes, I took to dousing them in Jean Nate and going to school smelling like a molding citrus).

But now I have a little more sympathy. In order to keep this place clean, cleaning is literally ALL I would be able to do. And frankly, washing the sippy cups, and cleaning up the wooden train parts, and folding the laundry, and vacuuming up the sand, and sweeping the crumbs, and putting the books away gets old real fast.

So, here you go, a before and after. Boy, will I be happy to see the Mister (and not just for his superior dish washing skills).

The house as it is normally (or a little better than usual)

living room

Our bedroom

The bathroom

The house after three days of going it alone.

The living room

living room (with diapers)

Our bedroom (Maggie peed on the sheets 48 hours ago and I haven't changed them yet)

The bathroom (why pick up the bath toys

when you're just going to get them all out again tomorrow?

The hall (sadly, you cannot see the grime on the rug)

The kitchen (this is looking pretty good, actually.

I recycled the paper and put the oatmeal bowls in the sink)

Riddle Me This

Our preschool does not allow "superhero" play. You can be a superhero (capes, super powers, and jet packs are okey-dokey, but you can't run around reenacting the last episode of Spiderman or shooting people). But that doesn't keep my kids from being very interested in the idea of super heroes ("they save people") and, even more intriguing, bad guys.

Today they were asking me about bad guys on the way home from school. I was trying for the life of me to remember what was so terrible about the Penguin (was it the scary waddle?), until I thought to ask them to tell me about bad guys they know. And here, for all you struggling comic book writers out there, is a list of the best bad guy names ever, courtesy of Oliver and Maggie. We want royalties.

1. Elias Battle (he'll lure you with promises of honey but then he'll "take your honey bunches")

2. Tiger Roseshoe (same thing, but with ice cream cones)

3. Horesey Tatorsey (not exactly sure, but he does have guns and a mean laugh)

I am woman, hear me dither endlessly

I just had my 80-minute Healing Hiker's massage (nyam, nyam) and although I do hate to leave my Four Seasons suite, I miss my family and am looking forward to a little three-year-old action. Plus, this desert air is murder on my lips; they feel like bark.

Flying over the Grand Canyon

Flying over the Grand Canyon

While I was off hiking the Grand Canyon and kayaking the Salt River and climbing the Praying Monk and dining on seared scallops with butternut squash ravioli, my kids were kind of missing me. Maggie especially.

The Mister told me this morning that she woke up at 1am last night crying and saying, "I need someone to talk to. I miss mommy." I know. The heart. It hurts.

I've always been a firm believer in taking a break. Being away from the kids for a few days always felt like a good thing, a much-needed refueling for me. But as my friend Vida pointed out to me long ago, your kids don't care about your success or your career or whether or not you need to refuel. They don't even care if you ever publish a novel. They just want you to be soft and loving and available.

This is the rub of motherhood, I suppose, the place where your sense of who you want to be and your sense of who you should be stand across from one another glaring and whispering cruelly. One says, "You cannot make anyone else happy unless you yourself are happy and fulfilled." The other one says, "Shut up you selfish twat and make me a pie."

It's a place where I feel particularly judged. I get a lot of raised eyebrows and disapproving comments disguised at declarative sentences. Things like, "Wow, you are so lucky. I could never leave my kids for five days." Or, "I just feel like I've lost a limb when I'm away from my little darlings." Comments that simultaneously fill me with guilt and murderous rage (I'm not even going to discuss the sexist double-standard here. Fathers, as we know, are pretty much free to come and go as they please).

I don't know what the solution is. I miss my kids and it pains me to know that they miss me. But I doubt very much that the next time someone offers me a free trip to, well, anywhere, I am likely to turn it down. Traveling is one of the great joys of my life. Free traveling is one of the great bargains of my life.

I am almost certain I am not doing my children any permanent damage by leaving them with their loving and capable father for a few days here and there. What that bilious combination of guilt, freedom, joy, sadness and self-recrimination is doing to my own psyche, however, I cannot say.

I could say this picture is about being on the edge

of something, but really I just want to show you again what a badass I can be