up mama's wall

Book reviews based on my terrible memory

2010-10-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve missed writing about books. I’ve had a stellar summer and fall, reading-wise, and it’s reignited something in me. I’m always an avid reader (which is why I married a bookstore guy—he keeps me awash in my drug of choice), but lately I’ve had this desperate love affair with the act of reading, as if, along with eating and breathing, it is one of the pillars of my very aliveness. It feels a little like having a crush.

The catch in all this, is that I can't remember shit.

I’ve always been envious of people who can quote lines from their favorite authors or make clever literary asides. I am not one of those people. I am the kind of person who will claim passionately (and honestly) to have loved a book and then recall almost nothing about it except the pleasure of reading it.

The other day I tried to remind myself of the plot and character names of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. I’ve read this book at least twice, probably three times. I’ve written papers in graduate school on it. I’ve discussed it in class, and I can’t remember the basic plot of the thing. An American girl named Isabel Archer goes to Europe—England and I think, Italy—and well, I suppose some bad things happen to her. She has a cousin who tries to protect her.

It’s not exactly a New York Review of Books caliber examination. And it's not the only book I've been awed by but fail to remember.

Some reviews of my favorite books based solely on memory:

Birds of America by Lorrie Moore: there’s a girl named Agnes who pronounces her name An-yez, like the French, and there’s a really funny line about modern dance. At some point some raccoons burn up in a chimney.

A History of Love by Nicole Krauss: Jewish post-911 New York. There’s a key or a lock with a lot of significance. Reminded me a lot of her husband’s novel Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving: A tiny boy named Owen Meany is growing up in a working class granite town in New Hampshire. I think there’s a boarding school in it. I think there’s a scene having something to do with Christmas decorations. His voice is small and strange but people love him anyway.

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros: Mexican-American girl from Texas moves to Chicago. Some of it takes place in Mexico. At one point I think she has sex with her boyfriend in a cheap hotel overlooking the plaza in Mexico City. Rebosos play an important role but I forget how.

The End of Vandalism by Tom Drury: Dry humor. Story of a Midwestern town. There is a water tower and a lot of people drive trucks. There’s a grocery store that closes, I think. And one of the main characters is a high school teacher. There is also a romance. I loved this book.

Look at Me by Jennifer Egan: There’s a model who gets in a car accident and it’s in the Midwest and somehow there’s a terrorist in it. I found it ambitious and prescient.

I'm over here!

2010-10-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Thank you for stopping by. As it turns out, I am finding it difficult to keep up two blogs. But please, stay here a while. Peruse. I'll be posting here on occasion. So you should keep checking back.

In the meantime, check me out here, where I'm posting four times a week about things like bitchy moms, the insidiousness of Disney, and cute hats.

That's BAgina to you, buddy

2010-08-09T11:09:00.000-07:00

Oliver has been really into taking photographs lately. Recently, while at Yosemite, the Mister and I asked him to take one of us with a view of the valley behind.

He snapped this:

Then looked at it and said, "I tried to get you both, but I only got mom's vagina." And that, my dear readers, is the danger of teaching your kids anatomical terms.

Where I answer nearly all your questions and survive house guests

2010-08-04T21:15:00.000-07:00

A couple of things:

I am not dead. I am blogging for Baby Center four times a week and getting ready to take a red-eye to the east coast for a little family vacation. And those two things, along with the twins, are about all I can handle. More than I can handle, actually, if today's parenting techniques (mostly yelling with the occasional vacant stare into space) are any indication.

Oh, plus we had house guests. I forgot about the house guests.

I promised I would link to my Baby Center posts and so here I go. You can gorge yourself. You can live vicariously through me for hundreds and hundreds of words. Or you can buy things. Every Friday I write about cute things on Etsy. Your choice.

Read about:

My kids being total jerks in public

Why I was a jerk to the Mister (hint: I had a good reason)

How I keep from turning into the Wicked Witch of the West

All the other stuff I write about is here.

Feel free to write comments over there. It makes me look good.

Oh, and wish me luck on that red-eye. Maggie has a cold and I have a bad attitude, so it's not looking good. But we will discuss later. At length.

It pays to sit around in your underwear blogging

2010-07-24T21:20:00.000-07:00

The last time we met, my family and I were about to go camping and I promised some exciting news upon my return. Well, I'm back.

And here's the news: I am now a blogger for Baby Center's Momformation channel (just between us, I think "Momformation" is kind of a lame name, but the site is great). I get to do exactly what I do here, there. And they pay me for it. Which is more than I can say for you people.

I'll be there four times a week. On Fridays I'll pick some things out on Etsy and encourage you to buy them. The rest of the time I'll just be rambling on about me and my kids. But in a funny and erudite way.

I do hope you'll join me. Really. I'll even post links to all my posts there, here.

And I'll still be posting here sometimes so you should be sure to check back. We can talk about all the things we can't talk about with them. We can bitch about working for the man.

Oh, and about that camping trip. You can read all about it here. And no, the nail scissors didn't turn out to be necessary, but boy was I happy to have the alarm clock/ipod dock.

Family Camping: Take III

2010-07-09T06:32:00.000-07:00

It's 6 am and I am up baking biscuits. They are from a can, but still, it is nearly impossible to express how unlike me this is. In my natural state I sleep until 9 and go out for brunch. Alas. My natural state is long gone.

I am up at this ungodly hour (it gives me headache to be up before 7) because Maggie woke up to announce her need to pee at 5 and the thought demons took this as the cue to worm their way into my consciousness, where they enjoyed a rowdy game of monkey-in-the-middle until I gave up on further sleep. Everyone else in the house is still snoozing away.

I'm keyed up because tomorrow morning we leave bright and early for Camp Mather. It's a family camp up near Yosemite that only residents of San Francisco can go to. You have to enter a lottery to get a spot. We did. We won. And now I spend my dawn hours making mental lists of things like nail scissors and duct tape and bug spray and all the other 5,011 things that will supposedly help us to actually enjoy this experiment in group family camping.

As many of you know, I've been scarred. I was never a big camper to begin with (I like soft pillows and showers too much). Then I went camping with one-year-old twins. Now I get the tremors when anyone mentions the words "Coleman Stove." Seriously, our track record as a family is bad.

But this is supposed to be better. It's all sing-alongs and lifeguarded lakes and cafeteria dining (no Coleman stoves!). And our kids are four now, not one, or three. And we have a cabin and I am bringing down comforters and Christmas lights and a couple of cute throw rugs (I kid you not), so I think we have a chance. I'm counting on it actually. Because, honestly, I really need a vacation. And a little sleep.

I'll be back in a week or so with tales to tell and an exciting announcement. I'll let you know if those nail scissors came in handy. In the meantime may your days be filled with the comforts of modern civilization.

The pediatric ward hosts a feminist princess party

2010-07-02T22:20:00.000-07:00

I don't know that I've ever been so happy to see my funky little house, bread crumbs on the floor and all. Oh joy, hallway rug that slips and burbles. Oh joy, broken soap dispenser and crowded bathroom sink. Helloo, paint-warped kitchen cabinets that won't quite close, come to mama!

We are home! Maggie, despite still looking pale as a Victorian orphan, is healthy and happy and catching up on her sleep and fresh fruit. Hurray! As grateful as I am for the wonderful care she received in the hospital, that place sort of sucked.

Maggie summed it up best in her thank you card to the staff: "the worst part was the needle. The best part was the playroom."

Below is a sample of how I managed to entertain myself in said playroom. Upon seeing my handiwork, the Mister said: "you really need to get out of here." Duh.

I am also, in my way, grateful for Joan Rivers

2010-06-29T21:01:00.000-07:00

I, like Joan Rivers (have you seen the documentary? It's surprisingly good), believe there is humor to be found in absolutely everything. Your husband committed suicide (as Joan's did)? There's a zinger in there somewhere. Lost your job? That one's just easy. Teenager's a drug addict? A veritable gold mine of jokes. It's been said a million times, but seriously, if we can't laugh, where are we?

Except now I can't laugh. I am sitting in a dark hospital room watching the mesmerizing blinking of my daughter's heart machine while she tries to sleep tangled in the various cords and wires coming off her body. Before you get too worried: she's fine. They are figuring it out. We should be going home with our rapidly growing collection of My Little Pony stickers very soon and that pale, feverish girl with the dark circles under her eyes that they've swapped for my daughter, will go back from whence she came and my vibrant girl shall make her triumphant return. Possibly even tomorrow.

So it's not worry that makes this unfunny. I am surprisingly calm and unflapped about all the poking and pricking and monitoring she's been through in the last 24 hours. It is a feeling of intense gratitude that makes this all so seriously unfunny. I am thankful for everything right now. I'm positively gooey with it.

For medical insurance for one. For pediatric nurses who stand in a line as you enter the ward for the first time and greet your child by name as if they have been waiting all day just for a glimpse of her. For Japanese restaurants that deliver to the seventh floor of the hospital. For handsome Korean orderlies who push you and your daughter around the hospital in a wheelchair. For toy rooms with baby dolls and volunteers who read books. For doctors who introduce themselves using their first names and then take such detailed medical histories you feels as if they really, really care about figuring this out. I'm thankful for ibuprofen and antibiotics and in-room DVD players.

But mostly, of course, I am so thankful to have kids who are not chronically or critically ill. I am awed and bowled over by the good fortune that is good health. Every time I think about riffing on this hospital experience (and it's ripe with cute ice cream jokes and "buh-gina" references, let me tell you), I think about parents who have to spend a lot of time in the hospital with their children and I am snapped right back onto the straight and narrow. Because that, my friends, is suffering. And if you are not suffering in that particular way, you have much to be thankful for. And that's what I'm left with: one giant thank you, thank you, thank you Buh-Jeezus!

Why can't I be more like Angelina Jolie?

2010-06-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

My kids are never sick (knock on wood, throw salt and turn around three times). Except for now. Maggie has been home with a fever all week, poor thing.

What this means, in addition to way too much screen time, multiple readings of Rainbow Fish, and yogurt for breakfast, lunch and dinner, is that I have been home all week with a sick child. Seriously, I didn't leave the house for two days. Not once. No fresh air. No clean underwear.*

Then, on the third day, I got to go to the corner grocer for some supplies and witness the astounding miracle of real adult humans moving about in public. The next day, still high on my recent exposure to the outside world, I also got a haircut and took my kids to see Toy Story 3. I paid dearly for it with much feverish whining and a serious case of popcorn bloat (me, not them).

All this is not so bad.

What's bad is when, on the fourth day, your completely delightful old friend from college comes to visit for the first time since the kids were born and you suddenly see your life in stark contrast to what could have been.

1991.

That's her on the far left. That's me, wearing pajama bottoms and pearls.

Her: Saving the world by doing important global peace-building projects with the U.N and other impressive NGOs.

Me: Trying to remember when I last administered the Children's Tylenol.

Her: Cocoa-colored linen suit with adorable flats.

Me: Ripped jeans, dirty underwear, clogs.

Her: Teaching at Columbia's graduate program in International Studies.

Me: Trying to teach my children to wipe their own butts.

Her: Hobnobbing with the rich, influential and powerful.

Me: Hobnobbing with two four-year-olds and the occasional corner grocer.

Her: Mother of one super-genius, chess-playing 7-year-old.

Me: Mother of four-year-old twins who try to impress guests by toppling the coffee table and throwing pirate hooks in the air.

I think you get the idea.

And I know that here I am supposed to write something about how worthwhile it all is and how I wouldn't trade anything for anything. But that's not true. I would trade being an unemployed stay-at-home mom (not the kids themselves, mind you; them, I like) for a career that required me to travel all over the world doing good work in a second. At this point I think I would trade it for a career that required me to get dressed in the morning and travel to downtown San Francisco.

All of which is to say that, when the time comes, I'm going to strongly suggest that my children don't major in English. Cause it's too late for me.

* having a sick kid does not preclude changing ones underwear, but really, why bother?

I'm back (and not in a Shining way)

2010-06-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

OK, my dahlinks, I know I've been remiss. But, if it's any consolation, I have learned an important lesson about blogging: when you blog often you feel OK about writing a few cute lines of dialogue or describing your love affair with your new pink tights. But when you tell all nine of your readers that you will only be blogging once a week, well, all of a sudden you feel as if you have to have something BIG and IMPORTANT to say. And then you get all squirmy and self-critical and you're all, "No one wants to hear about my trip to the wildlife preserve in Pt. Arena," or "Maybe my children aren't quite as clever to everyone else as they are to me." Then you get sick. Then you get super into writing your novel and feel as if you are close to finishing a first draft.

This is actually not my belly

Then, I don't know, you obsess over your stomach for a while and toy with the idea of throwing in the towel and never dieting again. Then you see that Crystal Light is on sale and you buy some despite your objection to processed food and then it turns out that lemonade Crystal Light is really delicious and, God, you just go along, drinking your powdered drink mixes and examining your naked body in the full-length mirror (it's fine, right? I mean, its not perfect, but it's fine). And also, it's summer, and you feel as if you should be taking advantage of the daylight. And you bought that bench at that garage sale that you should finally just paint already so your backyard can be super cute, especially once you get a fire pit thingy.

Anyhow, before you know it, its been a month (well, 25 days, really) and you have not written anything and you assume that all nine of your readers have moved on (people are busy, after all) and you start to think about Decorno and how she just signed off one day, but you don't want to give up your blog, you don't. You just can't think of anything BIG and IMPORTANT to write. But then, two people write you in one day to say why aren't you blogging and it turns out that's all you needed. Just a little shout out from the anonymous buzzing molecules of data that are the Internet. And you're off again, happy as can be. Not in an every day kind of way, but more often. Often enough so that if it comes up, you feel pretty OK about blogging about socks. I mean, if they are especially cute.

Special bonus video starring moi about a novel that I LOVE and that I totally think you should read this summer:

If mom folds five loads of laundry, goes grocery shopping, washes dishes, and bathes the children and nobody is there to see it, did it really happen?

2010-05-23T19:42:00.000-07:00

Before we get started you should know that the Mister is out of town for a week and I am not at my best. This was my bedtime conversation with Oliver, who is very upset, missing his dad, and having trouble falling asleep.

Oliver:

It's just hard because dad makes all the fun and you just do, like, some things in the house and like, you're kind of boring because you're writer and all you ever do it write books and stuff.

Me:

pretending to be very neutral participant in this conversation

I play sometimes. I just have a lot to do.

Oliver:

I guess sometimes you're not blogging. But dad plays games and plays, like, the matching game and builds towers. But its hard to have two kids because we're always like, "Mommy do this, mommy do this."

Me:

It is hard, but it's great too. I love having two kids.

Oliver:

Well, I just wish you weren't so boring. It's hard.

The conversation continued in this vein for quite a while until I sang one last song and insisted he go to sleep.

Obviously I am horrified in about 27 different ways, not the least of which is because I spend so much of that time when I am ignoring my kids and supposedly writing books lurking on Facebook and trying to find the perfect pair of pumps online (they have a square heel and a square toe).

I am bothered too because this is the beginning of that age-old pattern of fun dad/task-master mom. He plays airplane, I insist on hair-combing. He builds towers, I limit the cookie intake and remind them to say "thank you."

I am chagrined by the sudden knowledge that my kids have heard me bitch about motherhood. At some point Oliver learned that I think having two kids is hard and that is not something he should really have to take on at the moment.

Mostly I am bothered because he's right. I am not a great player. I am sort of grouchy and boring. I'm distracted. I put them off. When given the choice, I almost always choose making dinner over playing with the kids while the Mister makes dinner.

I am often exhausted by simply maintaining basic order and getting everyone out of the house on time (for the record I don't even care if the shoes are on the wrong feet or if the outfits make a bit of sense), but also, I find playing boring.

Go Fish, restaurant, family, pirates—these are all games I am often asked to participate in. Sometimes simultaneously. And I do. For about five minutes. Then I notice that the floor needs sweeping or I feel like checking my email or I just zone out and forget to call Oliver "matey." I adore my kids ferociously but in all honesty, I prefer the company of adults.

Which was all fine and good before my kids got smart and perceptive and developed the power of speech. Now I can't ignore them and pretend they don't notice. They tell me. They think I am boring. They've caught on.

12 good things that have happened in the last 17 days

2010-05-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

photo from here

1. The birds found the bird feeder. Finally.

2. We took the kids to their first Giant's game.

3. The Mister caught a foul ball.

4. I discovered (and devoured) Breaking Bad

5. I had this conversation about marriage and child rearing with Oliver:

Me: Do you want to get married?

Oliver: Oh, yeah.

Me: And what do you think marriage is?

Oliver; It's just like you get to be with your friend forever.

Me: And do you think you want to have kids?

Oliver: Yeah.

Me: Why?

Oliver: I think I will be a really good dad. My dad is the best dad.

Pause

Oliver: Actually, maybe I won't have kids.

Me: Why not?

Oliver: Well, taking care of kids is really hard work.

6. Maggie proposed to me (three times). I said yes. Then she reminded me that I'm already married.

7. My kids discovered photography.

8. My dad and I found two perfectly good nandinas on the street, took them home and planted them in my garden.

9. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer finally came out. I read it in galley months ago and I've been waiting to gush and now I can. It's tremendous. It's important. It's amazing. Read it. You won't be sorry.

10. We went out for pie. In the middle of the day. For no reason.

11. I signed up for a recording and interviewing workshop with these amazing ladies.

12. I bought tickets for this.

Martha Stewart is the devil on my shoulder

2010-05-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, as I was artfully sticking my homemade "Please take me home" stickers on the gift bags I put together for my children's fourth birthday party, I had a familiar feeling. I was sort of enjoying myself, getting a certain satisfaction from the Martha-like perfection of the goodie bags, but underneath lurked a simmering resentment and impatience, a little throb telling me that my cutsie-pootsie project might not be the best use of my time.

As I stuck the stickers I started to suspect that such things, these bourgeois arts so trumpeted by women's magazines and Martha Stewart and a thousand design blogs, were just a giant diversion of creative energy. I imagine that no great artist, and certainly no one who has ever really changed the course of the world for the better, has expended much time or effort into making perfect goodie bags, or butterfly cakes, or wallpaper-covered file folders.

I'm all for an uplifted environment, by which I mean that I appreciate design and believe aesthetics make a difference (you should see my new faux bois rug--OMG). I get as much pleasure from a piece of beautiful Indian craft paper as the next girl. I adore a nice leisurely stroll through Design Within Reach or Etsy or Ikea. I even sort of like Real Simple.

I must admit, I'm sort of proud of my butterfly cake

But I also notice that men make and get credit for most of the "great art" of the world. Ditto on great scientific discoveries, adventures, environmental milestones, and feats of engineering. Meanwhile, women are encouraged to make the world a little cuter one scrapbook at a time. (Again, I appreciate a good scrapbook, but they are not the building blocks of a greater civilization, as least not as we currently view it.)

And the spaceship cake.

Of course not all of us were meant to design bridges or write the Great American Novel or become the next Beethoven. Most of us were meant to live decidedly less dramatic marks. And there is something to be said for doing something out of love, without regard for the praise or attention it might garner. All this magazine-style cuteness—wrapping forty presents, or making a spaceship cake, or laboriously calligraphing the place cards—might all be seen as acts of love. There is nothing wrong in wanting to delight someone else with a small effort toward beauty.

Still, I wonder. All this presentation is so fleeting and so fickle. Today's gorgeous cupcake tower will most likely be tomorrow's pineapple candle salad. Adorable goodie bags get torn open and disposed of with barely a glance. Spaceship cakes take 4 hours to make and ten minutes to eat.

I think of it this way: there are a million aspiring novelist in the country and I bet none of the male ones spend hours of their precious writing time making delightful goodie bags for four-year-olds.

Then again, I don't watch sports on TV, so maybe we come out equal.

P.S. The party was a complete success and much fun was had.

April is National Poetry Month, after all

2010-04-26T08:59:00.000-07:00

This weekend we enjoyed some spontaneous, on-demand street poetry. No corrections. No revisions. First you pick out a scrap of paper. Then the poet asks who you are and what you like and gets tapping. It takes about two minutes and it is sort of amazing. You should hire this Silvi for your next big party.

When asked what they liked, my children answered "mako sharks," and "cribs."

I had this one written for my friend Hilary, who likes to swim way out to sea.

I wrote this one just now. You should try it. And please send me the results!

Street Fair

If your sticky frantic kids are stopped in their tracks

by the tapping of an old red Royal,

a girl with a bob

Stop and buy them a poem.

Then get some kettle corn

You are learning to enjoy yourself with every step.

Samantha

4-26-10

San Francisco

Mark Fiore is more inspirational than Oprah

2010-04-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Did you hear about my friend Mark Fiore (he's the one who got Dengue Fever at my birthday party)? He won the Pulitzer Prize last week. The Pulitzer Prize, people! That's, like, the most colossal and public pat on the back a journalist can get.

I did the voice for this one. It earned him death threats!

I have dealt with my pride and excitement by working the information into as many conversations as possible. I run into a parent preparing snacks in the preschool kitchen and say something like, "Man am I tired; it must be because my really good friend Mark Fiore just won the Pulitzer Prize." I'm out to dinner with some work friends talking about learning to make Chinese dumplings and I say, "That reminds me of my really good friend Mark Fiore, who just won the Pulitzer Prize." An acquaintance mentions she just got back from New York and I say, "Oh, my really good friend Mark Fiore will be going to New York to accept the Pulitzer Prize he just won."

Ahem, I did the voice for this one too

But seriously, I am really proud of him. I tried to make a toast at a party in his honor earlier this week but because of my weeping problem (it prohibits all public toast-making and reading of poetry), I couldn't do it. What I wanted to say was this: I am proud and happy for him not because the Pulitzer is a big deal, super-prestigious prize, but because he was justly rewarded for following his passions.

I got a book when I graduated from college called Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. This, of course, is the kind of soft-minded pap that makes me dislike Oprah (I jumped off her bandwagon around the time of The Secret). But the first part of the title, the part about doing what you love, has some merit. Mark Fiore has done what he loves, regardless of whether the money was following or taking a totally different route. He worked hard, super hard, at doing it well. He invented a form (the online political animation) and he found success. It's positively inspirational.

Mark helped us build our chicken coop. What a stand up guy.

I was waxing thusly to my dad the other day when he reminded me that talent plus hard work does not always result in success. Lots of people do what they love and find neither money nor notoriety. Lots of good, smart people toil away at what they love in anonymity. My dad, by the way, is perhaps the least sentimental person on the planet. He's also right.

But this doesn't mean I can't get a little lift from Mark's reward. Just because in the end very few of us will win venerated awards, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to remember to pay attention to what moves us, to work hard, to practice discipline, to ignore the bullshit, and to follow what we love. That could be pretty rewarding too.

Congratulations, Mark! Woot! Woot!

Why not just practice the rhythm method and see what happens?

2010-04-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

from here

A lot of my friends are currently trying to decide whether or not to have a second baby. Actually, they are writhing in a sort of tortured late '30s angst trying to decide whether to have a second baby.

I get it. Here you are, you've got your mate and your career and your one completely, ridiculously doted upon offspring. You still get to go out with the girls every now and again. You're having sex once or twice a week. Your body is more or less back where it belongs. You've got it worked out. Why mess it up?

It's not a bad question to ask yourself. But I find that I have little patience for the dithering. Maybe because giving birth to twins knocked me off my axis so profoundly that I never really got to the part where I felt like I had it all worked out. Maybe because I'm jealous.

I imagine life with one baby as a kind of gauzy, pink-tinged Gerber commercial in which you have hours a day in which you are required to do nothing more than suck on perfect little infant toes. If I only had one baby, I tell myself, I would never lose my temper, or yell, or say things like, "when you learn to cook your own dinner, you can start complaining about the food" to three-year-old children.

I suppose what I am saying is, I am not the person to ask when you are considering having a second child. I always knew I wanted two children. I was wholeheartedly committed to the idea of two from the beginning. But that's not why I am not the person to ask.

I am not the person to ask because there are many times when I want to grab my friends by the shoulders and shout, "Don't do it." I want to tell them that it will indeed mess everything up in all the ways they suspect. I want to warn them about never really being able to enjoy a lazy Sunday, or eat an uninterrupted meal, or have twice weekly sex again. I want to tell them about that weird shrewish voice that will come out of their mouths when their children are bickering, and how the idea of going out to a restaurant with the whole family will seem like an impossible dream.

Half the time.

The other half of the time I want to tell them to quit their hand wringing and get knocked up already. Join me in my messy, wonderful suffering. Enlarge your heart. Join the human family. Get in here and root around a little.

Mostly I don't say any of it. Mostly I shrug and say I don't know. Because, of course, I don't. If you are waiting for the right answer, forget it. There is no right answer.

I am of the best-guess-and-no-guarantees school of decision making. Go with your gut and hope it works out. That's how I approached my marriage and my career and the decision to become a parent in the first place.

And really, the big decisions are just a mixed-bag of emotions anyway— moments of despairing defeat and moments of profound and blissful joy. And in between lots and lots of moments of folding the laundry or watching crap TV or running out to the all-night Safeway to buy milk. Sometimes you are the luckiest girl in the world, and sometimes you look over and think, "This? Really?" And there's probably nothing more we can ask for.

I sound AMAZING in my car

2010-04-08T15:23:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a rock and roll concert, stayed out too late, and witnessed my first doobie smoking in a long time. As souvenirs I have a fading "Over 21" stamp on my hand and an exhaustion headache that probably has a lot to do with drinking three glasses of the Fillmore's house white, served in plastic tumblers.

But it's all worth it because Patty Griffin was a revelation. I didn't just love her, I lerved her, which is like love, but with extra feeling and much welling up.

Here she is, singing Heavenly Day (which, by the way, should totally be your first dance song at your next wedding).

I spent most of the concert fantasizing about being able to sing. I sometimes think people who can really sing must never be sad. I've spent a lot of time thinking this about Aretha Franklin. I mean, why cry when you can belt? Of course, history does not bear out this philosophy. A lot of people who can sing are tortured and depressive and end up choking on their own vomit. So, there's that.

Still, I wish I could learn this song so I could sing it to the Mister on our upcoming 10th anniversary. Wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't you just get all choked up? Not on vomit. In a good way.

------------------------------------------

Next time on Up Mama's Wall : Should you have that second baby (or please join me in the exhausting chaos that is my life).

How we finally decided not to get cable

2010-03-30T16:13:00.000-07:00

Last Friday night my BFF Sarah and her second-grader Georgia had a sleepover at our house with Maggie and Oliver. It was an all-out preschool rager complete with banned movies and copious amount of hitherto forbidden foods. Something called "fruit gushers" was smuggled in. Rice Crispy treats were introduced. There was—I can barely stand to say it—morning television. Needless to say, the kids were in the sort of Heaven where you float around on clouds of cotton candy and big girls give you their undivided attention. The kind of Heaven dreamed up by three-year-olds.

Fruit Gushers. Some consider them food.

But what this story is really about is the Mister's and my night away. We couldn't go far in our precious 17 hours, so we Pricelined a San Francisco hotel and hoofed it over to the financial district Hilton. I know, it doesn't sound that great.

Like me, you may be picturing balding businessmen overeating at the complimentary breakfast buffet, possibly an irritable family from Des Moine on some extended and unhappy vacation. You might, like me, be so worried about the business grimness of it that you might, like me, lie to the man at the check-in counter about it being your anniversary. You might shamelessly ask for and receive an upgrade and then you might get this view:

And when you got this view you might start to realize that this was going to be a good night, even if neither of you had bothered with dinner reservations or negligee of any kind (and how I love the Mister in his negligee). Because, really, it's hard to have a bad night when you're in North Beach playing "when we move here," and then you stumble upon the cutest bar in the world and have the adult version of a fruit gusher, only better. And then another.

Go here and order a Pim's Cup. You won't be sorry.

When the extremely friendly Syrian cab driver talks to you about how much money Jennifer Aniston makes you really know its a good night. And then, when you get into this surprisingly delish restaurant even though you have no reservation of any kind and you eat meatballs and cold cuts made from duck, well, this pretty much tops it off. It's one hell of a date night. It's perfect.

Until you get back to the room, where you are very much looking forward to indulging in a little cable TV and eating the dessert you ordered to go.

The Mister won't pay $15.99 to watch The Blind Side on pay per view (and I can't blame him) so we decide to do a little channel surfing in the land of a thousand shows. And guess what? There is nothing on. We spend, nay, waste, and hour flipping between E! Twenty Top Celebrity Body Part, MTV's Spring Break and HBO, where they are showing the Best of YouTube. Not only is it bad entertainment, but what it says about our culture is so grim, I begin to regret bringing children into the world. People pay a lot of money to access the Twenty Top Celebrity Body Parts. This makes me want to eat fruit gushers until I explode.

The bright side is that we were just about to break down and finally get cable. And now we don't have to.

And now, for something completely different, a kid story that's not about one of my kids, but about one of the kids of one of my friends. It goes like this.

Three-year-old kid is in the bathroom with mom while she's changing a tampon.

Kid

Mom, when I get a vagina can I have tampons?

Mom

You already have a vagina, but when you get your period you can have tampons.

Kid

Do you think I can have Hello Kitty tampons?

And that's really it for the week. See you in approximately seven days.

Naughty dreams

2010-03-18T19:47:00.001-07:00

I've been dreaming about men other than my husband. Last night, for example, Dave Eggers and I, each chastely in our own sleeping bags, laid face-to-face discussing trucker hats and real estate with a most delicious and thrilling intimacy. The night before that, I went to the Laundromat with Avi Avital, an Israeli mandolin player I met recently through a friend. We may have held hands, but mostly we were just in the laundromat, enjoying each others company.

As you can see, these are not hot and heavy sex dreams. They are hot and heavy getting-along dreams. Dreams in which mere conversation can be thrilling, a sexless buzz of electricity quite enough. They are dreams about being seen in a way that it is nearly impossible to be seen after nine years and seven months of marriage. They are, I think, a form of nostalgia.

I've been feeling nostalgic about a lot of things lately. I wept embarrassingly during a preschool slide show set to Prince's Purple Rain. It was as if I could see this marvelous and amazing moment in my sweet children's lives slipping away and I was missing it in advance. I find myself feeling intense pangs of college-withdrawal. I make lists in my head of all the things I am now too old to become: Olympic gymnast, ballerina, stripper, Jane Goodall's star pupil. It's all very un-Buddhist of me, this mourning for the past, this clinging to the present.

It stems in large part from being 40 and wondering what I am going to do with my life. I'm working on a novel, sure, but I've been down that road before. I'm raising kids, but if I am to believe what all the 50-something women are constantly telling me, that's going to be over in a flash. And then what?

Seriously, then what? All suggestions most welcome. Extra points if you can come up with something that saves the world and requires very little extra schooling and allows me to live in a place with indoor plumbing. And I don't want to be a teacher, so you can forget that one.

And then there is this, via Decorno. I had never heard of Neko Case (what?!) but if I could sing like her all my problems would be moot. Please listen to it. It's enough to make you weep.

I am 48.7% successful

2010-03-09T14:17:00.000-08:00

Way back when I was only 39, I made a list of things to do before I turned 40. Some of them were simple (eating hot dogs) and some of them were not so simple (writing a novel). Some of them I accomplished, some of them I didn't. Some of them I really wish I had tried harder to accomplish, some I let go without a second thought. The Yuba River, after all, will be there for a long time. So will Shakespeare plays. The gig is up, however, on getting the kids into backpacks (the good news is that they have hiked two miles on their own two legs!). In all, I managed to do 19 out of 39. Plus a few almosts that I didn't let myself count.

So here we are. A review:

1. start some meaningful and ongoing volunteer work

2. re-read some Shakespeare plays

3. ~~learn to sew, even a little~~

4. make a headboard for our bed (not yet, but I bought all the stuff and put it in the garage!)

5. ~~throw a party~~

6. ~~visit a state I've never been to~~

7. ~~reunite with some friends I don't see very often: Tara, Vida, Kate, Hilary~~

8. publish at least one piece in a national publication (I'm not counting my freelance magazine work. I'm only counting fiction and essays. So, no. Not this year)

9. ~~go sailing~~

10. ~~take my kids to the circus~~

11. eat hot dogs on the pier at Chrissy Field with my family

12. swim in the Yuba River

13. ~~take my kids to play in the snow~~

14. ~~take my kids to see a dance performance~~

15. ~~go to Vermont~~

16. host a brunch/clothing swap at my house

17. ~~follow the sun more when it gets foggy~~

18. ~~eat oysters at Tomales Bay Oyster Company~~

19. spend a weekend by myself

20. make ice cream and then sundaes with Magnolia and Oliver

21. ~~finish landscaping my front yard~~

22. find some more good, cheap restaurants to love in San Francisco

23. go the Alameda Flea Market

24. take a dance class

25. do some more encaustic painting

26. go hiking with the kids in backpacks before they really get too heavy

27. take the kids on a ferry ride to Angel Island

28. ~~clean out the garage~~

29. eat pupusas

30. ~~plant a few veggies (pickling cucumbers!)~~

31. ~~spend a weekend away with The Mister~~

32. write a letter to my representative

33. have a movie marathon day at a multiplex

34. write a rough draft of the novel I'm working on (*please see NOTE below)

35. ~~bake bread~~

36. get a massage

37. ~~organize the closets~~

38. ~~make a new friend~~ ~~(Hi, Miranda)~~

39. ~~have a San Francisco day with my family: cable car, Swensen's, chowder in a sourdough bowl, Fisherman's Wharf~~

All of the things leftover are on my rollover list. I still want to paint more encaustic. I still want to make it to the Alameda Flea Market. I am still planning on writing my representative (I mean a real letter, not a click-here-to-sign), and I still have a gift certificate for a massage that I haven't used. It's looking pretty good for 41, I must say.

* NOTE: Although I am still a long ways from completing the novel I have been working on, I am 120 pages into it. Which is enough to know that I want to finish it.

There are many reasons why I am a slow writer. Motherhood is one of them. So are The Sopranos on DVD (yes, I started over), general fatigue, and maybe a smidge of self-defeatism. But what really slows me down is worrying about keeping up this blog. I love this, but I am starting to believe there is no greater impediment to writing a longer work than blogging (well, maybe Tweeting). There are only so many hours, as they say, but more than that, there are only some many creative impulses, only so many times you can hurry-scurry from one thing to another and retain any sort of depth or focus.

So, in an effort to actually give this book a chance, I am committing to blogging only once a week. Maybe twice if I'm feeling chatty. I'll still be here, just less often. We'll call it quality over quantity. Kay?

Please stand by

2010-03-06T08:29:00.000-08:00

We are in the mountains, accomplishing (a little late) number 13 on the list of things to do before my 40th birthday . (Yes, we are still going to review the list together to see how I measure up to my ambitions). I've never quite seen anything so harmonious as Maggie + Ollie + snow. It's a match made in heaven. And the sledding! Oh, the sledding.

While the view is spellbinding, the Internet connection is patchy at best.

Tavis McNally, where for art thou?

While we are away, please amuse yourself with my 1988 prom picture. Be sure to appreciate the crimped hair; it took more than three hours to accomplish. This is part of an ongoing series I'm starting called "Cleaning out the Garage." I think you will enjoy it.

Literary Death Match Smackdown!

2010-03-01T19:46:00.000-08:00

I could see that photographer shooting me

from below and I knew it was a bad idea.

Finally! The Literary Death Match (otherwise known as the best night of my recent life) recap.

Listen to KFOG's Peter Finch describe it here (including an interview with yours truly).

(link not working? try this: Download Kfog - Ldm)

For the truly committed, here's the longer, 29-minute radio show produced and aired on KFOG. It's very This American Life. You can hear entire readings by both me and Joshua Mohr as well as the judges in secret discussion to decide who wins. It's pretty fun stuff. If I may say so myself.

That's my friend Miranda holding Danielle Steele

Mexico redux: ailments, injuries, and issues

2010-03-01T07:10:00.000-08:00

I believe I promised you gringos falling into holes:

In addition to all the fun and sun in Mexico, there seemed to be quite a few ailments, injuries, and issues in our group. Some of the usual stuff: upset stomachs, hangovers, bug bites. But also a few more dramatic problems like painful relationship woes, major road rash, and one nasty case of what is either Dengue or Typhoid Fever.

It all started when my sort-of sister, Jenny, fell into a giant hole in the cement while walking home in the dark. One minute she is striding confidently across a little pier/deck thingy over the lagoon, the next second, she is up to her hip in a hole booby trapped with rusty pieces of rebar, all of which miraculously missed tearing her open in any life-threatening way. Still, I've never seen such impressively multi-hued bruises or a rawer, oozier-looking wound.

If I had been the one to fall in the hole, you can bet your last peso that I would have been able to speak of nothing else for the entire week. I would have had people waiting on me hand and foot. I would have demanded gauze and pain pills and constant, fluttering attention from all parties. But after some initial crying, Jenny bounced back like nobody's business. Only to be felled the next evening by all-night vomiting. From which she also bounced back with gusto. They don't breed no sissies in rural Vermont, apparently.

Oh sure. I look tough.

In between Jenny's accident and Mark's case of tropical fever, Maggie was stung by her very first bee, I had stinging jellyfish larvae stuck in my bathing suit, the sun broiled the tops of my brother's feet, I barfed in the sink, Donna whacked the s-h-i-t out of her shin climbing out of a boat, and, as if that all wasn't bad enough, there was one day when the pie ladies ran out of pie before we could get to them. The horror.

And now, to Sayulita:

We arrived on Sayulita Day. There were 15 marching bands

playing simultaneously and dancing horses in the streets.

Sayulita is a dusty surfing town about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta. It is also, suddenly, like the hottest, most talked about place in Mexico. Daily Candy just wrote about it. I have a piece on it in this month's Travel & Leisure. Every young hipster with a henna tattoo and Frida Kahlo beach bag is suddenly smitten with the place.

I've been there only once before, six or seven years ago, but because it gets so much hype, I've wondered lately if maybe I've been missing something. Maybe, I thought, we should start spending our vacations there. Maybe we were fading away like last year's papel picado in Yelapa. Maybe Sayulita was the place to be.

from HERE

So we went. Just the Mister and me. For a little romantic getaway, sans twins. Mark and Chelsea were already there.

As I said, dancing horses in the streets

And this is what I say: "Eh," shrugging my shoulders in the universal Jewish gesture meaning I could take it or leave it. It has its charms: taco stands, palm trees, good coffee, nice boutiques, a very reliable surf break. But its beach is a sea of sizzling flesh and pushy vendors. The beach-front restaurants charge you $15 a day to sit in their beach chairs, even if you are eating there. The town is crawling with the aforementioned hipsters, swarms of young parents wrestling their Bob strollers over the cobblestones, and boomers in Guatemalan vests and baggy shorts. Plus, it has that I'm-more-local-than-you vibe that tourist towns get thrumming through it like a pulse.

Don't get me wrong. It's a perfectly fine town, and our hotel was charming, indeed. But the fuss? The cache? I don't get it. Which means we can stick with Yelapa. Whew.

Chelsea and I follow directions by lounging in

our hotel's rooftop lounge, my favorite place in Sayulita

This brings me very nicely to the problems with travel writing I wanted to discuss. But I think I'll save that for another day. Along with news of my spray-on tan. Please stay tuned. There is audio of my Literary Death Match appearance coming soon as well. It's going to be a big week. Promise.

Turning 40 in Yelapa. Ole!

2010-02-27T16:28:00.000-08:00

Last time we met I was off to Mexico and promising in my haste to discuss a million important things (such as the success or failure of my spray-on tan) upon my return. Well, I'm returned. The larder has been restocked. The laundry is in various states of washing and drying and waiting to be folded. The junk mail has been tossed, the checks endorsed. The sunscreen and bug spray have been put away. Let me just pour myself a glass of wine, and we'll settle in for a nice long chat.

We have so much to go over, so many adventures and mis-, that we're going to need a real working week to get through it all. Plus, as regular readers of this blog will attest, I've been a bit slack of late. And what better way to get back into the frenzied American pace than to commit to five full days of writing? I will picture you all as cranky overworked editors in soup-stained ties impatiently slapping the backs of your hands against your palms, demanding I file my next missive.

It was the Mister and Mark taking the kids up dangerous rocks

Let's start with Yelapa, Mexico, where I went with 17 family members and friends to celebrate turning 40. How was the trip, you ask? Well, it was so many things.

It was watching the chubasco from our open-air apartment

It was sunshine and blue sky, and it was unseasonable pelting drops of rain. It was hanging out with my dear friends, and it was fighting with my mom. It was our kids eating only white food for ten days. It was a pod of eight whales putting on a show, and it was a kidney-damaging boat ride on the pounding waves. It was heaven-sent piña coladas and a little touch of the Mexican revenge. It was bug bites, bee stings, and tetanus shots.

It was the invention of beach cereal

It was eating pie on the beach everyday. (That's right, I wrote "pie on the beach." And then I wrote, "every day.") It was turning 40. It was a shower of birthday Haikus recited in an outdoor disco. It was me feeling slightly anxious about making sure 17 people, ranging in age from 3 to 67 were having a good time. It was 17 people having a pretty great time in one of my favorite places on Earth.

It was customized birthday match boxes

It was Maggie forsaking her dinner for a lollipop

It was Julie reciting her Haiku a little tipsy on mango margaritas

It was me looking ridiculously drunk while Jono and

my dad discussed grant writing (I was sober)

Tomorrow's missive: Sayulita, boutique hotels, and why I regret ever becoming a travel writer. Plus, gringoes falling in cement holes prickling with rusty rebar, and, finally, the verdict on my spray-on tan.

Happy Birthday to Me

2010-02-16T20:25:00.000-08:00

It's a long story, but let me just start by saying that today is the last day of my thirties and tomorrow, I will turn 40 and fly with my family to Mexico. And by my family I mean my husband and our two kids, the same ones who have been vomiting uncontrollably all day. I also mean my mom, my dad, my brother, one ex-step-mother, a former half-sister (it's a long story), and 8 friends.

We will be converging on Yelapa like a huge pile of buoyant, white flesh. We will eat so much fish and drink so much beer. We will have so much fun.

But we will not be blogging.

Because we will be remote. And having said fun.

But I will come back in 10 days and then I will tell you all about how my spray-tan worked out. And together we will revisit this list to see how it went. We will discuss my appearance on Friday at Literary Death Match (preview: it was fun. KFOG liked me).

In the meantime, enjoy the Olympics. Wish us well. Be nice.

Three things I know, like, almost for sure

2010-02-03T20:47:00.000-08:00

This is how I know I'm raising city kids:

The other day Oliver brought me the empty cardboard oatmeal box he'd filled with sand and dirt and called a "shaker," and asked me to write "free" on the lid. He then put it out on the sidewalk. This is how he thinks you get rid of unwanted things. And it's true: We've unloaded everything from coffee tables to Styrofoam coolers to boxes of baby clothes by leaving them out on the sidewalk. So far, we haven't managed to entice anyone to take the free cardboard cylinder full of sand. San Francisco can be kind of a yuppie town like that.

This is how I know I may have dropped an F-bomb within earshot of my innocent children:

Maggie is an extremely helpful child. She can be a major piece of work at times, but when push comes to shove (and it nearly did today) the kid loves nothing more that to scurry around at the service of another. Need that table wiped off? Maggie's got it. Have a baby in need of a paci rinse? Maggie's your girl. Decide to put together the IKEA table and chairs that's been sitting in your garage for eight months? Maggie is by your side, handing you the unpronounceable screws.

The Mister is away for a few days and in his absence I decided to prove my capability by finally tackling the daunting Levsack. It is a universal truth that assembling IKEA furniture does not go well, and this, my friends, was no exception.

ME:

(grumbling under my breath)

This can't be right. Wait, is this right? Why won't it fit? This is supposed to fit.

Never again. NEVER AGAIN.

MAGGIE:

(pointing to the part that won't fit in the other part despite what the directions say)

Mom, is this the fuck part?

ME:

What?

MAGGIE:

The fuck part. Is this the fuck part?

ME:

Um, what do you mean by that?

MAGGIE:

(looking a little self-concious)

Just, you know, a really fragile part. It's just, um, nothing. Fuck.

ME:

(seeing no need to make a big deal out of it)

I think I've got it now. Thanks.

This is how I know the laser was on:

Yes. Those are burns. On my neck. It cost me $100. And it hurts.

Also, I'm HERE today, talking about reality TV and how the Biggest Loser makes me cry.

Icarus melts into a puddle of snot

2010-02-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

So, one day you are bragging to the Mister about how lucky you are, and about how it's not just luck, but probably a form of super-humanness that has kept you from being sick all winter even though you spend two days a week working at your kids' preschool.

You muse about your superior cells and how you are being justly rewarded for living so well, for exercising so diligently, for simply being a really great addition to the human race. God is just sending you a personal little thank you note in the form of your virus-free season.

And then—BAM—the next day you are flat on your back, whimpering, ready to barter all future happiness for some medicine that will make the pain and the snot and the misery go away. You're thinking Oxycontin might be strong enough. You toss and moan through fever-dreams of Wurdle. You watch Papillon through blood-shot eyes and think solitary confinement, sure, but could Steve McQueen survive this cold? You fill trash can with your snotty tissues and miss your family trip to Tahoe.

You have this conversation with your three-year-old son:

OLIVER:

Mommy, I don't want you to die.

ME:

(looking up from my spot on the couch, crusty but somehow lovely)

Don't worry, I'm not going to die.

OLIVER:

Never?

ME:

No, never (no need to worry him now)

OLIVER:

Good. Because I think you are fantastic.

And then you emerge to blog another day. Your nose is scaly and your cough still gurgling, but you emerge from your cocoon of self pity. And thankfully, there are chai lattes and that weird kale and peanut butter soup the Mister made to ease your way.

Hello, world. It's nice to see you again.

* buy those pretty tissue box covers HERE.

If you want to kiss Betty White's butt, you're going to have to get in line

2010-01-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

Over HERE, kissing up to Betty White. I'll be back to myself soon, keeping this blog alive. In the meantime, you could watch more TV.

The drunk Oscars could've used more booze

2010-01-19T15:55:00.001-08:00

I'm HERE today, writing about the Golden Globes. Do you think Ricky Gervais hates me now?

Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails (and princess shoes)

2010-01-15T16:17:00.000-08:00

Last month, on the way to meet Santa, I decided that Maggie's scuffed, red, hand-me-down, patent-leather shoes simply would not do. In a pre-Christmas fit of unchecked spending, I ducked into StrideRite to remedy this imbalance with a shiny new pair of Mary Janes.

The offending red shoes, seen here

What I didn't expect to discover is that I had been shoving the poor girl's foot into shoes that were a size-and-a-half too small. Suddenly, my maniacal shoe-shopping became just another case of responsible parenting. I love that.

Because I am smart like this, I deduced that if Maggie's feet had grown gargantuan, then Ollie's probably had too. A quick trip to Payless a few days later confirmed my suspicions (I can not afford to replace all my kids shoes at StrideRite, let's get real). We were on! Sneakers, school shoes, maybe some boots; all of it was suddenly so necessary and blameless.

I let them lose in the aisles of cheap Hannah Montana blinker boots and sinfully ugly "water shoes" to pick what they wanted. Here's your size, go crazy. By which I meant, "Here's your size, now pick out something that lives up to my own self-image as a hip mom. Preferably something retro and orange."

Now this I would let him go out in

It was in this way that I came face to face with the ways in which I am conditioning (read: screwing up) my children.

The first shoes Oliver brought to me, breathless with excitement, were a snazzy pair of white patent Mary Janes. "Aren't they beautiful?" he asked.

After I confirmed that while they were indeed beautiful, I believed they were for girls, he brought me a pair of pink, blinky princess sneakers. Again, breathlessly in love.

This time, my declaration that those too were for girls was met with a bit more suspicion and some palpable disappointment. Maybe even a lip quiver.

The third pair? Silver flats with a cross weave and a kicky little tassel.

By now I was feeling like a monster of gender propriety. I realized I should have just let him get what he wanted. There could even be a certain panache to a pirate t-shirt paired with pink, blinky princess sneakers. But I also suspected that very soon after exiting the store, some bigger child was going to put him in his place and embarrass him right out of his new shoes. The shoes would be not only a waste of money, but Oliver's very first lesson in shame. I couldn't do it.

This time, his disappointment got the better of him. "All the shoes I like are for girls," he cried, real tears running down his face.

Earlier experimentation with accessories

And what do I say to that? It is a universal truth that girls get nicer clothes and nicer shoes. It's a way of the world thing. But why, at 3, must he be denied the simple and pure pleasure of a pair of pink blinky sneakers?

Had all the hours of listening to Free to Be You and Me as a child meant nothing? Had William Wants a Doll fallen on deaf ears? Apparently.

Our compromise? A pair of black and white blinky sneakers and some camouflage converse low tops that were on sale for $7. And I don't even approve of camouflage; it's done the world way more harm than princesses.

In my defense I also nixed Maggie's Hannah Montana Uggs.

A snowsuit made of fat

2010-01-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

I'm over HERE again, writing about grunting. Please comment--it makes me look good. Which is more than I can say for the three chocolate chip cookies I consumed while watching.

Reader, I married him

2010-01-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

I've had a couple requests for pictures of the Mister's annual Christmas beard. So here you go, a pictorial history.

You remember where we started.

Well, we shaved.

And shaved a little more.

And in the end we decided to go with 1920s pugilist...

...which is way better than Bath House Pete, which is what we went with a few years ago.

This shirt says: "I have a healthy penis"

And there you go.

Just take my word

2010-01-08T16:40:00.000-08:00

Do you have a notepad? Go get a notepad. Seriously. I'll wait.

Now write down these two things because they are going to make you very happy.

1.) Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. It won the National Book Award this year and it is so brilliant and moving and heartfelt and just plain awesome that I want to run away with it and live in exquisite, illicit bliss with it forever. Seriously great novel. Oh, and rent Man on Wire first. Once you read the book, this will make sense.

2.) Crazy Heart. Everyone knows you can't run away with a book and live in exquisite, illicit bliss. But, Jeff Bridges? He could work out nicely. If any part of you has ever liked country music, not the big-haired, spangly crap, but the Townes Van Zandt-Johnny Cash-Waylon Jennings kind of country music, go see this movie. Or, hell, go anyway. It's good.

Now you have a lot to do this weekend, so go. Go.

I am not the Biggest Loser. I am only a medium loser.

2010-01-06T12:02:00.000-08:00

I'm HERE today. The new gig requires that I sit on the couch for two hours every Tuesday night watching reality TV and taking notes. The eating chocolate pudding* while I do it part is entirely my own idea.

*If you comment on the TV.com site, chocolate pudding will appear in your life within 24 hours. Do NOT pass up this opportunity. Comment now!

She can do it!

2010-01-04T20:02:00.001-08:00

Maggie has been working on this for months, years really. And now she can cross the monkey bars all by herself, just like a real girl. Oh the years of competition and broken arms we have ahead of us. The lying flat on her back in the tan bark, unable to catch her breath.

I am so proud. But she is really the proud one. When she hops off at the end of those five bars, her pink smiling cheeks glow like the skin of a bubble gum bubble.

Oh, Mags. You break my heart a thousand different ways.

Everything I've been meaning to tell you

2010-01-04T09:00:00.000-08:00

Nice of Rambo to help with the lights, don't you think?

There were so many, many things I wanted to tell you while I was on my blogging hiatus.

I wanted to tell you about Ollie deciding that Leon Redbone is his favorite singer (based on a Christmas compilation album we listened to ad nauseum in the car).

I wanted to tell you about the Mister having to put together the ginormous play kitchen Maggie received from our former nanny and how, I really, really hate the way it looks in my living room, this big piece of green and beige plastic as big as a love seat.

I wanted to tell you that Oliver has decided he's going to be a writer when he grows up and that we are going to share an office (swoon).

I wanted to tell you about how Maggie just says, "I'll try it when I'm a teenager," when she doesn't want to taste a new food.

Oh, and and I was going to gush about the amazing new home decor shop I discovered in Hayes Valley. And how I just really want to move in. I could sleep on the pile of felt rugs in the back and be happy forever.

And, speaking of home decor, I'd be remiss if I hadn't mentioned my new silver Christmas pouf, aka: best Christmas gift of 2009.

And I wanted to make list of all the vendors I loved at the Renegade Craft Fair.

And I wanted to admit the fact that I always get sick of having a Christmas tree about a week after we get one (too big, too many needles).

I was going to transcribe this conversation:

Oliver: Mom, how good are you?

Me: I'm good, Ollie. How good are you?

Oliver (in laid back surfer voice): I'm good. I am definitely real good.

I wanted to tell you about how Maggie fell in love with Santa and how she is in the Christmas photos of at least three other families because I could not detach her from his side.

Oh, and the Nutcracker. How my kids sat through the entire thing and Ollie said, "I loved Clara because she was so beautiful when she danced in the snow," and how my heart just about died.

But now, here I am finally blogging again and I feel as if I have nothing to say. Isn't that always the way?

In with a whimper

2010-01-02T16:40:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! I hope the first three days of 2010 were awesome. I hope you were one of those deservedly smug people up before 6 on the first day of the year, doing your calisthenics and looking forward to that big, refreshing glass of beet juice you like to reward yourself with on special occasions.

Me? I wouldn't know much about those first three days. I did see 6 o'clock on the first day of the year. Just the pinkish hint of it before I dropped off to sleep, the glitter from my cheek making a smear like the milky way across my pillow.

That's right people, I, 39-year-old, type-A, mother-of-two-with-mini-van shook it all night long.

Seeing as I value sleep over almost all other things, it's been, um, maybe 20 years since I've stayed up all night. Maybe 22.

from here

I blame the karaoke machine, which functioned as a sort of vortex, spewing out tunes from the'80s and sucking us right into the void. I totally ruined my hairdo singing AC/DC with a butch lesbian named Five Star. It was that kind of night.

Anyhoo, I'm finally back to normal, after three days of catching up on sleep in fitful bouts between building block towers, reading The Day I Became a Pirate, and dressing and redressing Maggie's new doll, Gingerbread.

I was so tired I would have gladly slept here

I'm going to skip the resolutions this year because I've made enough lists lately and, as everyone knows, resolutions exist to make you feel bad about yourself (here are last year's. I succeeded with number 2). Resolutions are the pursed-lipped headmistress of your own little uptight English boarding school of the mind. They tsk and cluck and whap you on the back with a ruler for not sitting up straight. Who needs them?

I also have no real plans. I'm going to start blogging about fat people on TV here starting this week. I'm going to celebrate my 40th in Mexico with a lot of friends and family in February. I'm going to take my kids to the snow (see #13). I might attend a clothing swap at the end of the month. Maybe I'll finally paint the bathroom door that we scraped fours years ago.

This is certainly a worthy resolution

But, really 2010, I'm open. Bring it on. Keep it coming. Have at me. All I ask is that you play fair. And keep me away from karaoke machines.

I will miss you. I will

2009-12-18T19:52:00.000-08:00

That's Leonard Cohen with his hat in hand too.

For an entirely different reason, I'd imagine.

I come to you with hat in hand. I have no excuses for not writing. No good ones, anyway. I'm just sort of harried and grouchy, rushing around buying gifts and finishing up stories and filling out unemployment forms and playing Wurdle on my iPhone (I've mentioned my new iPhone, right) and trying to work off my gut in time for my 40th (it's not looking good).

But I think about you, I do. Every time my kids say something wonderful I think about you, and every time they are horrible wretches I think about you too. But here's the thing: I need a little vacay. I need to write some fiction and wrap some presents and maybe, just maybe, steal a little guilt-free down time.

from HERE

And then I will be back. I will begin 2010 full of vim and vigor. I'll be a blogging fool.

Until then, I hope you are happy and warm and busy in a good way. I hope you have a chance to watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and please, please, whatever you do, don't save all the wrapping until Christmas Eve. Beacause I love you too much to see you hurt yourself like that.

xoxo Samantha

You too can kill a chicken

2009-12-11T14:26:00.000-08:00

Right after we got our chickens the Mister met another San Francisco couple interested in raising poultry and invited them over to see our little operation. We later sold them all our chick equipment and lo and behold, they became urban chicken farmers too, complete with small blond children and a chicken chronicling blog. I like to say we started something (even the Tipsy Baker learned from us!). The Mister likes to say they are on the ride.

Then today, he gets this email:

I hope you are well! Sorry it has been a while since we checked in. Our flock of four chicks have grown into a happy little family. They are almost three months old now. They live outside in their coop and we move them around the yard in a little play pen. Here is a link to a family blog I started (but have neglected for many weeks!): http://philosophersegg.blogspot.com.

I'm writing today because one of our birds, Timmy (E. must have been prescient in her naming of the bird), has started to crow. Turns out he is a very handsome rooster. We could take him back to Half Moon Bay Feed and Fuel and they will turn him into soup. We also thought of you both.

Any chance you are interested in harvesting another bird? It is going to be a bit hard for me, as I'm quite attached to Timmy (he is really quite handsome), but I would rather he ends up in the soup pot of friends, than strangers.

If one chicken killin' experience was enough for you and you'd rather pass, I understand!

Hope you are your family are well! perhaps we can get together and swap chicken stories after the holidays.

Followers of this blog know we've entered this territory before. And while I cannot tell you how happy I am to be the go-to family for backyard chicken slaughtering, and as much as chicken and dumplings would really hit the spot right now, we're just not sure we can do this one.

Our problem is our lack of slaughter buddies (the Mister's friends are not available for throat slitting and feather pulling on such short notice and I need to be out of the house with the twins so they don't witness our gruesome bloodletting). So, wanna help? Like tomorrow? Watch THIS to see if you're man enough and then let me know. The dignity of Timmy's death lies in your hands.

P.S. The Mister wants me to add that he's no expert and that you may absolutely NOT make fun of him if he squeals like a little girl.

See? I can smell the roses

2009-12-06T19:28:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-30T21:20:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-30T20:06:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-24T13:46:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-20T12:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-18T14:14:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

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

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

I did this today

2009-11-13T21:40:00.001-08:00

Be the only girl in the group who makes it to the top of the Praying Monk? Check.

Happy weekend. May you summit a few things.

Why you should always put on a little lipgloss before getting on a plane

2009-11-12T16:38:00.000-08:00

This photo has nearly nothing to do with the post.

I'm just fascinated by its origins.

Who bought him that shirt? Creepy Uncle Orlan?

There I was, minding my own business with the latest Us Weekly (Angelina is such a bitch!) when someone two seats away from me perks up and says, "Samantha?" And who should be seated with me in row 17 on US Airways flight 14 from SFO to Phoenix, but Heath H., the boy I thought I would surely die of love for at age of 14. He was the first boy my age to get a hairy chest.

Poor Heath. There was a time in 9th grade when I called his house every evening. Every evening. I could practically hear his sister rolling her eyes as she shouted, "Heeath." Not that I cared what she thought; my love trumped all other impulses, like dignity and self-restraint, for example.

Once he got on the phone I would open with "Hi." Then I would sit there silently all tied up with desire and self-consciousness, totally unable to think of anything else to say.

But he was so nice to me. He never asked me to stop calling. He never said one mean thing to me. Instead he sat on the other end of the phone trying his best to make conversation and get the hell on with his life without hurting my feelings.

Once, he invited me over to dinner and made me frozen pizza and a salad with large hunks of carrot that crunched excruciatingly as I chewed. I was almost too nervous to breathe. It was our first and last date.

When I saw him today he was still so nice. And I was still so awkward and twitchy. I think I have residual embarrassment about my extreme lack of cool back in the day. It's been 24 years since I masticated those excruciating carrot hunks in the presence of Heath H. and yet it doesn't take more than a second to transform me back into that horribly self-conscious girl neurotically wiping her nose of phantom boogers and robotically repeating "that's cool" like it were some sort of mantra.

Hello, 1984. It's been a while.

The Business of Being Born

2009-11-10T14:28:00.001-08:00

My kids have already asked me what God is (not an easy question for a Jewish/Buddhist/Super-secular girl like me to answer), what it means when you die, and how babies get into their mommy's tummies in the first place (well, it happens when they are very, very, very tiny).

Yesterday, they finally thought to ask how babies get out of their mommy's tummies. Aha! An easy one.

Except that when you explain the birth process to a three year old they totally think you are lying. Oliver just looked at me with smiling apprehension and said, "Nahh." Maggie said, "Oh, yeah, they turn into pee pee and come out your vagina," in a voice meant to convey that while I was indeed hilarious, she could not be so easily fooled.

After a second attempt to convince them I wasn't kidding, I figured out that it was pointless and let them draw their own conclusions. Someday they will know the ugly truth about so many things.

Besides, that's not how they were born.

They were born under blinding lights, attended by masked men bearing scalpels. They were tugged from my body by gloved hands. The first people to hold them were nurses we will never know. They were whisked away to beeping incubators while I lay strapped down and prone and unconscious and the Mister stood pacing furiously outside an OR he had no access to. I didn't get to see them for ten hours. It left us all feeling powerless and incapable and totally blindsided.

"holding my kids" after their birth

Their birth was one of the most awful experiences I've ever had, and to this day I feel like weeping every time I think about it. When you tell people this, that you had a bad birth, they try to make you feel better by saying, "But you got two healthy, beautiful children." This is true. We did get two healthy and beautiful children. And for this I am more grateful than I can possibly ever express. It is a blessing and good grace that boggles the minds, and that, frankly, makes me a little nervous.

This is no way to first see the world

But the fact remains that their birth and all its attending medical intervention and bullying has left me with a bit of sadness and shame I am not quite sure how to shake.

It's been three-and-a-half years and the pure envy I feel for women who have those empowering, I-am-woman-hear-me-roar births is nearly unbearable.

And here's the thing: I know I would have been good at it. Under other circumstances, with a less complicated pregnancy, I would have gotten my wool-clad midwife to light some candles, sunk down in the birthing tub, and pushed those babies out like Ina May Gaskin herself. I would have worn braids. And planted the placentas under magnolia and olive trees.

Ok, maybe not the placenta part. But afterbirth fertilizer or not, it would have been, I think, a better beginning for all of us if it could have been a little closer to how God intended. Alas.

If you are a pro-vagina, groovy mom like me, you will probably have the same love/hate relationship with this movie that I do. I can't even watch the trailer without crying.

"I have to think these things up, you know"

2009-11-08T10:32:00.000-08:00

The kids and I spent the weekend with my mom, helping her do things like open jars and wash dishes because she had surgery on her thumb and her arm is wrapped up like a burrito, a giant, gauzy, arm-y burrito.

The weekend has been an opportunity to take over and secretly throw away some of the papers my mother passively collects. So far a bunch of coupons for carpet cleaning, a stack of 30 or so catalogues for cheap crap (singing Christmas bath mat anyone?), and a pile of brightly colored pamphlets about Honduras she picked up at some political rally have met their fate in the recycling bin.

I dutifully kept the newsletters from every non-profit she's ever given money to, and made a neat pile of the remaining 143 mail order catalogues (self-warming toilet seat anyone?)

My fever to sort through her junk mail started last night, after we watched Grey Gardens and I started to get a creepy feeling. My mother is about a 100 cats and as many marbles away from being even close to Big Edie. But still, a stack of expired coupons and a collection of old real estate listings is a slippery slope. Pretty soon we could be wearing old sweaters on our heads, sharing a tub of melted ice cream and throwing our cat food cans in the fireplace. I'm just saying.

Date night. And, he paid!

2009-11-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

I think I’m going to blame my absence on the mountain of mini Snickers I’ve been buried under since Halloween. My goodness, but it’s easy to take candy from small children. You just put it on a high shelf and they forget about it within 12 hours. Meanwhile, you toss and turn in a frenzied lust for Kit-Kats for a full week. One of the many benefits of maturity.

There was also a visit from my dad (number 39? Check!), a massive fight about fighting with the Mister, and, um, I don’t know. One minute you’re folding five loads of laundry in front of So You Think You Can Dance and the next minute it’s Friday and you haven’t blogged in an age.

That's Oliver ringing the Hyde & Powell cable car bell. Ask him about it. He's happy to talk about it.

But I’m back.

And I want to tell you about our date night last night. We used to be really good at this. Once a month we’d schedule a day date, hire a babysitter for 8 hours, and try something fun. I read somewhere that the key to dating your spouse is not simply going out together, but trying new things, actually having interesting experiences. You know, so you can have something to talk about over the dinner table the other 29 days of the month.

We hiked a lot on our dates, once we biked around Angel Island. We went to museums, had martini-soaked lunches. It was fun. But somewhere along the way—right around the whole stop working/preschool shift—we stopped dating and started arguing and communicating via our shared Google calendar.

So last night we had our first date in a while and, because we needed some serious kindling, we decided to do something spontaneous. We went to a dance performance by a dance company we had never heard of. Just like that, we looked at the event listings and bought tickets.

I have So You Think You Can Dance to thank for the Mister’s newfound interest in performing arts. He actually says things like, “Technically it was good but there was no real feeling or connection between them.” Swear to God.

But he didn't say that about the Printz Dance Project because it turns out we really like the Printz Dance Project.

If you live around San Francisco, you should consider going to see them this weekend. Because, eh hem, something about watching all those lean bodies (and one fat one I couldn't take my eyes off) leaping and sweating, really puts you in a good mood. If you know what I mean. Wink. Wink.

The Eighth Habit

2009-10-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

It's sort of amazing how capable the Mister is considering he keeps all his to do lists on little scraps of paper—the torn edge of a newspaper will do—that he tucks into various pockets. At any given time there are at least three of them going at once.

I just saw one of his lists (it was in the back pocket of his jeans) and one of the items says, "make moonshine." First chickens, now moonshine. We are going to start punctuating our sentences with "coot coot" pretty soon.

Feel the burn

2009-10-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

For much of my life I poo-pooed exercise. My single foray into team sports was in 8th grade when I played basketball for half a season, traveling around rural Vermont in the freezing school bus so that I could sit on the bench and cheer on the astonishingly popular Leah of the long wavy hair.

I hate riding bikes (scary!). I'm not much of a swimmer. In fact, I spent many of my young adult years exhaling cigarette smoke and making fun of people shallow enough to sweat on purpose.

Don't get me wrong, I did a little Jane Fonda back in the day. And I could skate backwards like nobody's business in elementary school. For a while there in middle school I was quite the jazz dancer (I was in a dance troupe called the Kicky Birds). But in total, my athletic life doesn't add up to much.

Which is why my sudden religious-like devotion to the joys and benefits of exercise is so weird. It started about two years ago when I was feeling depressed. Like, the Golden-Gate-Bridge-is-looking-pretty-good depressed. I went to a therapist for a while. She was a tiny Lithuanian who kept saying, "You seem ok to me," and suggesting I get rid of my dog.

Since that wasn't exactly perking me up, I decided to look into antidepressants. But then the idea of going on antidepressants made me so depressed I decided to just suck it up and take the advice of all those annoyingly perky people who bounce around from foot to foot in their wicking fabrics talking about endorphins.

Long story long, I signed up for boot camp, got a free wicking shirt, and felt much better. And although I still don't believe in wearing running shoes unless you are actually running somewhere, and many of my muscles are still hidden under my muffin top, I have been like all gym-y ever since. I have been known to grunt while lifting weights. I've spun. Me!

I mention it only because sometimes the answers are so simple.

Me + the Taliban = one degree of separation

2009-10-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

David Rohdes, the New York Times journalist kidnapped by the Taliban and held for more than nine months, is married to the Mister's cousin, Kristen. They had been married two months when he was captured. Oof!

We have never met him and we had no idea he had even been kidnapped until he was released (they were keeping it a secret to avoid publicity that might put him in danger).

THIS is the six-part, first-person story of what happened. Aside from the pure drama of the story, I found it to be one of the most compelling and telling stories I've read on the whole Taliban/Al-Queda/Afghanistan/Pakistan thing. It's complicated stuff. And bleak. But this made me understand it all a little bit more. And it made me thankful for good journalists.

You should read it. You'll probably cry.

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

2009-10-21T10:20:00.000-07:00

from HERE

First, let me just remind you of how much I love comments. Comments are better than brownies or endless fields of mustard in bloom. Better than airshows. Better than shoes you buy at Nordstrom Rack because they are so cheap. They are better than being stopped by a stranger and told you look like Kate Winslet. They are better than making every green light and better than those new 100 calorie York Peppermint candy bars.

They are not better than trips to Venice or the way the tummy skin of my kids feels. They are not better than renting a house in Stinson for the weekend and cooking dinner with a bunch of friends. They are not better than this conversation I had with Oliver on the way to school this morning. Still, keep 'em coming.

OLIVER

What school does Georgia go to?

She goes to big kid school. She's a second grader.

OLIVER

What's a second grader?

When you are six you are a first grader, when you are seven you are a second grader, when you are eight...

OLIVER

And I know another important one that is sharp! A cheese grater!

I blame the Mister for what is obviously a genetic trait toward puns.

Good people doing good things

2009-10-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

If I looked better in a feed cap and boots I'd be a farmer. In the meantime, I'm content to track chicken shit into the aerobics studio at my gym on the soles of my shoes and leave the hard stuff to these good people.

GH_Peek in Progress from The Greenhorns on Vimeo.

If you want to help get this film finished, go HERE and give them some moolah.

What a difference a year makes

2009-10-19T12:12:00.000-07:00

I am constantly amazed at Maggie's and Ollie's pace of growth. If I could learn and develop at even half their rate I'd have won a Nobel Prize by now, in multiple categories. I'd also be, like, a thousand feet tall with really big boobs.

This weekend we went to the pumpkin patch. It's one of those slightly tawdry places where the jumpy houses are filthy and the guy filling up the $2 balloons has a cigarette dangling from his mouth. But, the kids love it. Despite their rapid rate of development, their snob reflex hasn't kicked into gear yet.

2008 Oliver

2009 Oliver

The first thing Ollie did upon arrival was go running excitedly up to the wooden cutout of Homer Simpson shouting, "Dad! Dad! This is the guy who loves beer!" He then proceeded to have a conversation with wooden Homer that went something like this. "Mmm, beer. Woo hoo!" Which is more or less the sound that the Mister's Homer Simpson bottle opener makes.

2008 Magnolia

2009 Magnolia

It was such a change from the year before when they were only two-and-a-half and still wandering the world in a sort of babyish daze. Now they're all kid-like and confident. Now they take those jumpy slides by storm and approach really, really famous celebrities to talk about malted, adult beverages.

Read this

2009-10-15T14:42:00.000-07:00

Read THIS if you are struggling as a parent, or if you are having a hard day, or if you are in any way a human being. It's beautiful. Thanks, Laura.

On the dole

2009-10-14T11:15:00.001-07:00

I have a very fuzzy memory of standing in line at the Welfare office with my mother as a young child. I remember playing with those movie-theater ropes that swung like hammocks as we slowly made our way toward the impassive face behind the glass-fronted window. My mother had a stack of papers in her hand. Most likely she was wearing her burgundy-colored Levi's Bend-Over slacks (when read as a command that sounds awfully dirty). I was probably in my bright yellow Big Bird overalls, the very first piece of clothing I remember caring about.

My mom was not on Welfare for long. Just in those first bleak years of single motherhood in the early '70s. Soon she would be donning her polyester dickie and her lab coat and heading off to clean people's teeth while I went to the house of that scary babysitter who washed kids' mouths out with soap (child abuse! my mother claimed), and tried to feed me egg salad with sweet relish.

She's still at it! But with better clothes

Then today, I was back. Ok, not Welfare exactly, but the Unemployment office. More specifically, the buzzing, fluorescent-lit Employment Development Department, where I had to take a class this morning to satisfy the requirements of my $440-a-week checks from the government.

Sitting there in that windowless room, listening to Jack walk us through how to fill in boxes (no check marks! God, please, no check marks!) I couldn't help but think of The Full Monty. Since watching that movie is the closest I've come to this type of place since the Big Bird overalls days, it sort of made sense. And besides, my entertainment choices were pretty much whittled down to daydreaming about British working class male strippers, listening to Jack make stale jokes about the Govenator, or gnawing off my own hand.

Please watch this extreme charmingness in action:

And I have to say, aside from the fact that today's visit was seriously lacking in good disco music and pelvic thrusts (would a little Donna Summer kill them?), it wasn't really so bad. In fact, I'm actually quite grateful for my government handouts. And believe me, I've done way worse things for $440 a week.

Why I don't wear thongs

2009-10-13T13:49:00.001-07:00

One time, back in those halcyon days of flying alone on planes, I was seated in a middle seat next to a woman with a screaming baby. She was alone, sitting in the aisle seat and struggling to calm her baby. As he wailed miserably, people all around were emitting audible puffs of disappointment and impatience. There was much eye rolling and why-me sighing. Our fellow back-of-the-planers were ringing their little flight attendant buttons and pleading to change seats, all right in front of this poor woman with the howling infant.

I was doing my usual thing, which is to say I was reading a book and pretending not to be there. I don't normally speak to people on planes. I'm not good with strangers and I generally don't like to get involved. So, although I wasn't requesting a seat change or rolling my eyes like some entitled jerk, neither was I offering much in the way of a sympathetic ear.

Once we all got settled and buckled in, the dreaded delay announcement came from the pilot, and on top of the infant howling and the adult moaning, there was a collective why-does-this-always-happen-to-me exhale. The baby took it up a notch, as if the plane delay were just what he needed on top of the day he was having. It was all quite highly agitated in our little aluminum tube.

This was when the guy sitting in front of me with all the hair gel turned around, removed an earbud, and asked the mom if there was anything she could do to quiet the baby, as if maybe she were napping and enjoying an in-flight movie while her child screamed away in a concerted effort to interfere with his Green Day album.

The whole thing was just too depressing for words and I plummeted into one of those the-world-is-such-a-shitty-cruel-place kind of funks at which I excel. I didn't like the sound of the baby crying any more than anyone else, but, hey, there are babies in the world. That's why there are also earplugs in the world.

At the height of all the depressing social shunning of the mother and her baby, a woman approached from a few seats back, leaned over and wordlessly took the screaming baby in her arms, held him over her shoulder, and walked him up and down the aisle until he stopped screaming. The mother watched in awe. It was if harps started playing and fairy dust rained down upon us all.

from here

At the risk of sounding a little like one of those mysterious Foundation for a Better Life ads, I am convinced this angel in a tight perm and elastic waist jeans descended to Earth to show us all how easy it is to make things better. All you have to do is help out a little.

Which is more than I can say for the old lady who descended during one of my more stressful parenting moments.

It was pouring outside and in an effort to allow my kids to blow off a little steam, I took them to the mall, where everyone in San Francisco had had the exact same idea. The place was thronged with people in dripping boots and damp jackets. And, lucky for me, my kids had recently decided it was positively hilarious to run away from me in two different directions.

I was at the very end of my already frayed rope, physically holding down Oliver as I strapped him into the stroller (aka child containment device) while I begged Maggie to stop and watched while she disappeared into a forest of legs. I was sweating so hard I could feel droplets running down my sides and into the waist of my jeans. The only reason I was not crying was fear of public shaming.

It was at this moment that a smiling old woman in bright pink lipstick touched my shoulder to get my attention. I looked into her face, expecting a word of encouragement or an empathetic story about surviving motherhood. Instead she pursed her lips and said, "Dear, everyone can see your butt crack when you bend over like that."

The Circle of Life (with pieces of ham)

2009-10-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid my mother used to say "Children's waste goes to mother's waist" as she picked at my leftovers. I am embarrassed to admit that I did not understand this little play on words until adulthood. Probably post-college (I can be a little slow sometimes).

Having chickens has made me realize how much food our own kids waste. On the counter we have a bowl into which we scrape all scraps considered delectable by chickens (basically everything but garlic, onions, coffee grounds and egg shells). It's a lot of food.

Here's the breakfast and lunch contributions for today:

(poppy seed bread, pieces of ham, pita chips, radish tops, nibbled apple slices, cheese, milk)

But here's the good news: they turn all this into eggs. Everyday. Garbage into food!

(That egg on the left is the normal size for our chickens.

That egg on the right is some monster birthed after much loud squawking yesterday.

I'm betting it's a triple-yolker. Poor dear. )

Okay, so I'm leaving out the poop part. If I'm perfectly honest I have to admit that mostly, they turn our leftovers into poop. But does this bother me? Does it gross me out? It does not! Because we turn the poop into compost which we use to grow the vegetables that our kids won't eat. The vegetables that end up in the scrap bowl, and are fed to the chickens, who turn it into eggs...and poop. We're like our own little biosphere over here.

What I needs is a secretary

2009-10-06T19:59:00.000-07:00

I am not the only one parked at Ocean Beach, sitting in my car and watching the wild Pacific through the windshield. The old Chinese man in the car to my right is napping, mouth wide open. The suburban-looking man two cars away in the silver highlander is smoking a cigarette, (I'm thinking his family still thinks he quit for good back in 2001). On my way in, I passed two old ladies sitting in a Civic, arguing.

Me? I’m blogging, catching the last 27 minutes before it’s time to pick up the kids from the hula-hooping babysitter and make dinner. And really, I can’t complain about the office space. I mean, I have a minivan, and as work carrels go, it’s pretty spacious.

This is what my time is like these days, little snatched moments that I try to stuff with something productive (I have a productivity disease and can only feel happy if I can list some worthwhile accomplishments for the day; this isn’t as hard as it sounds since I sometimes allow myself to count showering among my achievements.). Today my patchwork went like this: two hours on the couch while the kids were at school, then three more hours at Peet’s until I got kicked off the Wi-Fi. Now it’s Ocean Beach, with surfers tumbling in the white water right in front of me and the crazies sticking yet more old seagull feathers in their dreadlocks.

And in the killing-two-birds-with-one-stone category, I’m pretty sure the sun baking me through the windshield is good for my cold.

Playing Catch Up

2009-10-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I'm not exactly winning any Blogger of the Year awards for frequency lately. I apologize for my dereliction of duty. The good news is, my freelance life is booming. The bad news (for you, at least) is, with the exception of about 9 hours a week, I am taking care of my kids. Those precious free nine hours are spent writing about hotels or interviewing people who know stuff. Every once in a while they are spent watching You Tube videos forwarded by my mom.

But here are the four most exciting things that have happened to me and my family in the last week. Because, you know, I want you to feel up to speed.

1.) An MFA creative writing class at DePaul University in Chicago is using a short-short story of mine called "Why You Shouldn't Have Gone in the First Place," as an example of "time and place." I know this because one of the students wrote me an email to say he liked it. Isn't that nice? It's in this book, along with many, many good short stories. I wrote it a hundred years ago. Maybe a thousand.

2.) I had a minor but important parenting breakthrough after my total Sylvia Plath collapse last week. Here it is: I don't have to follow one parenting philosophy word-for-word. I can pick and chose and figure out what works for us. Like, I can give time-outs AND involve my children in decision making and conversation. I know, it sounds elementary, but for me, freedom from thinking I am a failure at being the perfect "positive discipline" groovy parent has been revolutionary. Peace reins in the household. Also, I think the fact that my children saw me just sob my eyes out has made them realize that I do have a breaking point and that they probably don't want to see it again. Proof once more that fear is as good a parenting tool as anything else.

3.) We went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival where my kids sang along to "This Land is Your Land," got filthy dirty, and learned the phrase "jump the fuck up." Thank you, Steve Earle.

4.) Green Apple Books has a candy drawer in the office and, as the wife of one of the owners, I have access to it. I will now be working here every Monday morning.

Peace and chocolate, my people.

Why hand washing is important

2009-09-28T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a conversation I just had with Maggie:

Maggie

sniffing her hand and wrinkling her nose

Smell my hand

P.U. Stinky. What is that?

Maggie

Shrugs

Well, let's go wash your hands.

Maggie

No, that's okay. It's just cream cheese that I got off my belly.

What?

Maggie

It's just stinky cause it's old. I wiped it off my belly.

What?

Maggie

shrugging like I'm out of my mind

It's just, you know, some old cream cheese.

I just want to add for the record that I have not given Maggie any cream cheese in days and that I know for a fact that her belly is cream cheese-free. The source of her stink-hand remains a mystery.

Random Observations on DC

2009-09-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

I promised a little more about DC, so here it goes, random observations.

1. The Newseum makes most other museums feel pretty Podunk. It's pretty much six floors of awesomeness, especially if you are sort of a First Amendment junkie, uber-nerd (my favorite kind of people). The Pulitzer Prize photography room alone is worth the pricey admission. But bring your hankie because no one wins a Pulitzer for taking pictures of healthy, well-adjusted children feeling joyful.

Photo from here.

2. DC is a very black city (54.4%). San Francisco is not (6.5%). In DC, white people and black people are together a lot, doing business, hanging out, going to school, conversing. In San Francisco, they are not. In DC there are black people across the socioeconomic spectrum (hello, Mr. President). In San Francisco there are also middle class African Americans, but the majority of black San Franciscans live in poorer, marginalized neighborhoods. I guess what I am trying to say is that race relations felt much more relaxed in DC than in supposedly super-liberal, groovy SF. Here, it feels like a bunch of stiff white people trying to be PC about the black people they don't actually know. There, it just felt like a completely natural mix of people doing their thing. Which is what my dad always said about Southern cities: that despite a reputation for and history of racism, there was actually a lot more regular, day-to-day interaction between races. And that completes my portion of the national conversation on race. Now watch this mazing video.

3. In DC it seemed as if there was a larger percentage of young women who dressed as if they were on Gossip Girls. They were all so blond and shiny and barely clad and slutty looking. We saw lots of Daisy Dukes and stilettos. Where, I ask you, were the dowdy policy wonks in sweater sets? I know, I'm so totally old and prudish now.

I go where Obama goes: a weekend away

2009-09-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

If you've missed me, I'm sorry. We went to DC. Washington DC. Cross number 31 off this list. and let me just say, this is one great city. I sort of expected a lot of suited up blowhards, but it turns out that's only inside the Capitol Building. Otherwise, nice place.

It's Sunday. We're still recovering from last night—the Mister's 20th High School reunion. And a word of advice on that (you can thank me later): let him go to his all-boys Catholic school reunion by himself. You can watch a movie and drink vodka sodas by yourself for one night. He can drink beer in the cafeteria and talk to guys named Stevie. You will both be happier for it.

This is the man I married

More later on such topics as drink 40-year-olds at weddings, the FDR Memorial, the Newseum, Georgetown's cuteness, Obama obsession, race relations, and 20-somethings dressed like hoochie mamas. In the meantime, love from Obamaland (sigh).

The weird thing is, other people think our kids are nice

2009-09-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes motherhood feels exactly like being the live-in maid to a schizophrenic narcissist with a Napoleon complex. Except that you don't get paid so you're more slave than servant.

One minute your masters are cooing about how much they love you, the next minute they are slamming the sub-par pasta you made to the floor and telling you in a cool serial killer voice that they hate you. The only real constants are the messes and the whining and the pee droplets in front of the toilet. The small dollops of sweetness are just enough to keep you from quitting and running away to Corsica where surely someone will really appreciate you.

Or am I doing it wrong? Are other people's homes just filled with all the cooing sweetness of a Sears Portrait commercial? Are we the only ones who have three-year-olds who tell us they hate us? If we aren't alone then why isn't anyone else speaking up? Why aren't we all shouting from rooftops about how hard this is, and how painful, and how, sometimes, it just plain sucks.

By the way, as I write this Maggie is yelling a story to me through her bedroom door. It goes like this: "I love you so much and I'm you friend and I want you and I love you as big as the world."

And that's how they get you. It's sick.

It's not mom jeans but it's not good either

2009-09-13T14:38:00.000-07:00

photo from he re

The worst thing about not working? My outfits, hands down. Now that I'm an urban farming co-op mom who doesn't work outside the home, things have really taken a nose dive in the fashion department.

It's a small price to pay for my freedom, and I hate to get too cliche about how much chicks love shoes but, well, I sort of love shoes a whole lot, and at this particular moment my life really only calls for shoes I don't mind getting spattered with poster paint or filled with sand.

Even looking at clothes has lost its luster. I'm like a depressed person trying to muster the will to get out of the house. What's the point? I think as I pass racks of really cute, black Japanese-y tunics and big ol' Beyonce earrings that would normally have me filled with a rekindled will to live.

I have recently been inspired by a bunch of the preschool moms who manage to pull off these cute yoga wrap/clogs/jeans ensembles, but then I remember the pendulous muffin top that I am working with these days and my fashion slump comes back.

What I need is a uniform. It must involve black Dansko clogs because in a fit of wanting to fit in, I bought a pair. All suggestions welcome. Photos especially appreciated.

Eggs! Eggs! Eggs!

2009-09-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

Mm mm mm

It worked. Nature, I mean. On September 8 we finally got not one, but two little brown beauties from our chickens. The whole family went a little nutso with excitement. We even attracted the neighbor girl with our egg-citement (sorry about that).

So, Ms. Samantha B. is our contest winner with a guess of September 5. Congratulations! Email me and we can figure out if you get the dozen eggs or the Eggling herb planter.

Woo hoo! Omelets for all.

Maggie checks compulsively (like we all do)

Finally, our labor pays off

That's our first prize egg next to a jumbo supermarket egg. Ours is cuter, don't you think?

Watching eggs fry is not at all like watching paint dry

Shook me all night long

2009-09-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

Most nights these days my kids invent a hundred different ways to stall before bed. "I'm hungry." "I have to go to the bathroom." "I want the light on a little more." "I need to ask you a question." Etc, etc. until we end up having to just close the door in their little faces and wishing them goodnight.

Lately they've added a few fears to their expanding repertoire. Last week I had to go into the backyard and get rid of an imaginary rat for Maggie. Yesterday Oliver asked me to make sure there were no owls outside. Later, he called me back in to ask where the volcanoes were.

Then, tonight, Maggie called me into the room where she was sitting up in bed whimpering with fear. "Mom," she said, lips quivering. "I see a rock star outside. And I don't like rock stars."

For just a millisecond I got excited, thinking maybe, just maybe, this rather trying and exhausting day was going to end on a bright note and I would pull away the curtain and Angus Young would be standing in the backyard admiring our chickens in his little shorts and suspenders ensemble.

But no, it was only Venus, or the North Star or whatever, and I had to explain that it was just a regular star and not a rock star and there was nothing to be afraid of.

Oliver & Maggie doing a serious and avant garde "robot"

Come on, eggs!

2009-09-06T17:31:00.001-07:00

Ahem, it's September 6th and our chickens are still no-good lay abouts intent on eating our table scraps and giving us nothing in return. They're like your belching brother-in-law who drinks all your beer and leaves a funny smell on your couch.

That's right, no eggs yet.

All the dates for the Guess the Date of the First Egg contest have come and gone. Wanna have another go? Leave your guess here. It's week 21, if you're the type to do research into these things, and we are dealing with two cuckoo morans and one barred rock.

Prizes still stand.

Ladies and gentlemen, good luck.

Camp at your own risk

2009-09-05T08:21:00.000-07:00

When the kids were not quite one-and-a-half we went on a family camping trip to Mt. Lassen with my dad and brother. I also happened to be writing about it for Sunset. The trip was an unmitigated disaster from the filth-encrusted toddlers smearing their own excrement around the tent, to my normally low-key dad telling my brother to go "f**k himself." I cried all the way down from the summit, but not half as loudly as the kid I was carrying on my back.

Nine months later, the story came out, pretty and slick as can be.

Mt. Lassen, 2007 (total b.s.)

We haven't spent a night in a tent since. But on Thursday, we decided to give it another go. One night. Close to home. We were scarred, but ready to heal.

I'm not sure why it is so important to us that we camp with the kids. I don't even like it that much. I like the idea of it. I wish I liked it. But really it seems like a whole lot of work topped off with a terrible night's sleep. I prefer a nice day hike followed by a good meal, a warm bath, and a soft bed. My step-dad calls me "Mrs. Davey Crockett." It's ironic, in case you didn't get that part.

But I do like the outdoors and who am I to instill in my offspring my prissy dislike of dirt? So off we went, to China Camp State Park. Camping.

A word of advice: unless you have the types of three-year-olds who will run off to poke things with sticks and explore creek beds without you, don't take them camping for a while. You will be busy setting up the tent-Mahal you borrowed from your friend, and trying to start a fire, and dropping your pillow in the dirt, and blowing up the effing inflatable mattress. All the while your demanding preschoolers will be whining for food you did not bring along, peeing in their pants, tracking dust into the tent, absconding with the pocket knife, and asking if it is time to go home. You will fight with your spouse and yell at your kids and your feet will be cold once the sun goes down. You will deeply regret not bringing alcohol.

Sure, the campground is lovely, set as it is among the Bay Laurels on a bluff overlooking the Bay. And, yes, there were those pleasant 10 minutes when you got to point out the raccoon tracks and the flattened grass where the deer sleep.

But I recommend you think hard and you think long about whether all the work, the resulting loads of laundry, and the massive and unprecedented post-trip meltdowns were worth it. Because I suspect they are not.

Then again, maybe you don't have twins.

I think I may even prefer the "C Word"

2009-08-31T21:52:00.001-07:00

I should have written today but I am too upset. I just learned that some parents call their daughter's vaginas "front butts." Is that not the grossest, prissiest, weirdest, yuckiest, most unappealing thing you've ever heard? I know, me too. I'm gonna need some time. Maybe by tomorrow I will be whole again.

Photo from here.

In my next life I will be a music teacher

2009-08-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Again, I'm late to the party here (8 million You Tube view, Tori Amos), but I just can't resist these kids. First, they are totally singing music of my generation, secondly they are just so unbelievably awesome (check out those heartfelt hand motions). I weep over and over again when I watch them. Here's the skinny on them and their cool teacher.

Read Olive Kitteridge, please

2009-08-29T15:21:00.001-07:00

Looking for a book to read this weekend? May I suggest Olive Kitteridge, the novel in stories that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction? I just finished it an hour ago and it is the most deeply human, empathetic, smart novel I've read in a while. I'm sort of speechless in its wake, actually.

You should try it. You won't be sorry. Thank me later; we'll have a good cry and a cup of General Foods International Coffee.

Dude!

2009-08-28T13:20:00.000-07:00

May you stick all your landings this weekend!

xoxo Samantha