My Apron Strings

The Party's Over

2007-12-03T23:04:00.000-08:00

It's true, guys. I've had it with trying to make a go of this particular little blog. I started out with such big hopes and schemes a little over a year ago. But it was a tough year (again) (enough of that, already!) and I felt the need these days to not be this person, this blogger, struggling to maintain a sense of okay-ness and upbeatness and show that I was rising above the grief and the drama of the previous months.

Ugh. See, there I go again. Something about this blog just does that to me, these days, makes me into a far more mordant and morbid person than I feel myself to be (mostly).

My 2 monkeys will still get plenty of air time over on the new blog, since they do dominate nearly all my energy still, but I also hope to talk more about the books that are dear to me, and books that I'm reading lately and my random and opinionated thoughts on them. Also, I still hope to focus a bit on my nesting tendencies and the fact that I have a long laundry list of decor changes and upgrades to nearly every room in this house. After all, 2008 is destined to finally, finally be the year of Ikea Kitchen Redo. Really.

Thanks to all who've followed me and offered comments, encouragements and hellos here on my first blogging endeavor. I hope to see you (and more often than twice a month, I swear) over on my brand-new blog, The Reading Nest.

Cheers, and happy trails.

Vote for Me! (Or, Setting Myself Up, Pt. 2)

2007-10-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

It's time again for Apartment Therapy's Fall Color Contest, and once again I couldn't help it -- I just felt compelled to enter. Unlike my entry last year, when I took pictures of the more formal living room area (but really, how formal can it be, with a train table taking residence there?), this year I shot and entered pics of our tangerine-orange family room & kitchen, along with a shot of the entryway and guest bath. What is strange is that last year, the color that was hot and in so, so many of the entries was GREEN. Apple green, grass green, lime green -- you get the picture. Oddly, quite a few of this year's entries seem to feature goldenrod/orange/marigold walls very similar to mine. Am I really that tapped into the zeitgeist? I think not, but what do I know? I'm just bracing for the tangerine-backlash to kick in among the commenters.

I just sent my entry in a couple of days ago, so I was surprised and happy to find that my entry has been posted this evening. (Merely sending in your entry doesn't guarantee you a entry on the contest page, so just being invited to the party feels like an honor.) Thankfully, the comments in this year's contest for all the entries overall are far less snarky and nasty than the year before. (Luckily I was spared any real vitriol last year --- let's just hope I'm not speaking too soon.)

Anyhow, go over there and call me an Insta-Finalist (please!) You do have to register on the AT site, but it only take a sec. Above is a close up shot of my kitchen counter, which I didn't end up sending over to them, although I really wanted to, as it's one of my favorite parts of the whole area (when it's clean, that is).

Wish me luck!

Breezy

2007-10-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still here. I realize I've been starting just about every post that same way, lately. Maybe I'll just post once a month, throw in some lovely but dated picture like the one above (taken around this time, last year) and that will suffice: "I'm still here, here's a view in or around my house, hope you're all well, and adios."

I should tell you that I came this close, this close, to shutting the blog down completely. I had the post and good-bye message written, and all I had to do was hit the "Publish" button, and I could've walked away. But then I decided to sleep on it, and in the morning my decision to call it quits felt like an over-reaction, a plea for attention (from who, I'm not sure, since I think I have all of about 2.8 regular readers) and just a bad idea overall.

So here I am. I won't try to catch you up on th past few weeks since I've been gone. Part of the feeling of being burdened by this blog is feeling like I need to account for and relate all those hours & days I've spent since the last post. Thinking about doing that makes me feel tired, and bored.

I took the picture above on a pristine, blue-sky day last fall -- a day a lot like today. This is the view looking east out the upstairs stairway windows. It was breezy out then, but then it's often breezy around these parts. It's the second week of October, and still 88 degrees out. I'm about over that, but such is life in Southern California -- and the Inland Empire region, at that. I'm all ready for cold days and crisp nights and trying out some flannel sheets and baking a cake to go with the Maple Pumpkin Butter I bought a few weeks back. Ready to wear long sleeves, and socks, and let that deep flip-flop tan on my brown summer feet finally fade away. Maybe next week?

Also -- I think it's time to buy Tucker a big-boy bed. The crib seems to be the last major hold-over from his true baby days, now that he seems to be fully potty-trained during the day. (Unless you count the pacifier issue, which we won't for now.) Lately it seems that two or three times during the very early morning hours, from about 2 a.m. on, Tucker will wake up crying because one or both of his two beloved pacifier's, or fi-fi's, has gone missing overboard from the crib. If it's after 3 or 4 am (which it often is), that means that I am twice woken up from a dead sleep to stagger down the hall, drop to my knees and root around under the crib for the missing fi-fi. This morning, when I went in there around 5:30, it felt cold in the room, so after finding the missing fi and giving that half-reassuring, half-threatening pat on the back with my slurred, "now go back to sleep!," I put a blanket over him and his nestled down and went right out.

Now, this afternoon, there was a call for the blanket again at naptime. Twice before he fell asleep, I was summoned into T.'s room to adjust the blanket because it wasn't covering his toes, and evidently one must have ones toes covered with a thick blankie to sleep well on a toasty afternoon. I see bad things coming from this, a bad precedent that I've set out upon in my misguided doting-mommy ways in the dark chill of 5:30 in the morning. I foresee endless trips down that hall at all hours, to fetch the fi-fi's, to retrieve the dropped "Cars" cars, and now to tuck the blankie in around those poor and naked toes. Oh god.
So yes. A big-boy bed...with tucked sheets and blankie, and maybe even a nice soft pillow, too. We need to get on this, and soon.

Came & Went

2007-09-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

This blog's anniversary, that is. It's been a year, and this here brings my post total up to 49. An average of 4 posts a month, or 1 a week. Several times in the last week I've thought of shutting down the blog completely. I don't think I'm cut out for it. I'm reticent by nature, I hold my cards pretty darn close, and maybe the naval-gazing tendencies inherent in blogging just don't jibe with my Inner Me. Witness my "design week" intentions of posting pics of my house over several days. I made it through my bedroom and powder room, and then petered out.

Still. Here I am, for now. I think that after a year of blogging, I need to accept and recognize that I'm just not the type to post beautiful pictures of my freshly baked tarts, served up on my prettiest china. I want to be that type, of blogger and person, but it's not happening. I could, instead, take some pictures of the slapped together PB&Js I make several days a week, served up on our finest Dora & Diego paper plates.

I am still riding a pendulum of wild emotions these days. I found out earlier this week that my step-grandmother died, a bad death of lung cancer, in rural Oklahoma. I hadn't seen her in about seven years, but still. What I remember is being at her and my grandpa's house in Norwalk as she and her sister sat around the kitchen table, smoking and listening to country music. They both had big black bouffant hair-do's, even in the mid-'70s, and they sat before their hand mirrors and vanity cases and "put on their faces" and gossiped in their thick Arkansas drawls.

It was another life and another time, long gone now. And my paternal grandpa is still alive back there in deepest Oklahoma, ensconced in a nursing home, remembering none of it, not aware that his second wife has gone and left him.

Back here in my own home, things are good. Mostly. If I'd written this post yesterday I might've been all gushy with the thick bliss of our domestic life, and how fall is in the air and the cooler air makes everything seem rejuvenated and fresh. How we went camping with the kids for the first time this weekend, and how much fun that was.

But, I'm writing tonight, after the pendulum has swung again. There is always a flip side to it all, the dark side. Some nights I go to bed beside my husband and thank God and the heavens for our sweet, full, crazy days. And then there's nights like this, when I think of this song, and how it makes me want to lie down and die a little, because it's so true, and the truth hurts.

I said I know we don't talk about it.
We don't tell each other....
All the little things that we need.
We work our way around each other
As we tremble and we....as we tremble and we bleed.

Sweet and bitter, bitter and sweet. It should be required listening for all engaged couples about to take the leap. That, and reading Jane Smiley's novella The Age of Grief. Now that I think about it, perhaps that would be a better name for this blog, considering all the events of the past year.

Oh, don't worry. It won't last. The pendulum will swing back, as it always does, is arcing back over toward contentment and gratitude even as I write these words. Tomorrow afternoon will find me, and all of us, back at Disneyland again, and I'm not even being metaphoric, not one bit.

Writer Envy

2007-08-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

So, a small break from all the decorating talk to say a few words about the book currently on my nightstand. (Actually, there are 3 books on my nightstand, but this is supposed to be a somewhat quick little post.) Even though I've got my Hot New Writer radar cranked down pretty low these days, I still noticed a lot of press and attention given to Miranda July's story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. I always feel that little bit of....frisson when I see that a new story collection is out by some hip young thing. Frisson, which you know, is actually more like a little shiver of unadulterated jealousy.

I wanted to read the book, and yet I didn't, especially after seeing how cute and ingenue-ish looking Ms. July is. Cute, waifish girls with adorable haircuts are not supposed to be good writers, too. That's specifically one of the rules made by the just and honorable Writing Gods. Right? Oh, and then add in that she also made a movie that won special jury awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Really, how good could she be?

Well, turns out the answer is: Pretty Good Indeed. (Dammit.) I'm enjoying the book very much, and as always, when I enjoy a book very much and lay there admiring the writer's wit and graceful turns, I get that old, biting sense that I need to be writing, too. Really, really need to get on that.

If you look over there at my "About Me" square, it says that I'm blogging to tear down a massive Great Wall of China-sized writer's block that's been lodged in my face since.....since a long time. Maybe the blogging is doing it's work, because the writing voice, that little echo in my deepest inner ear, is making itself heard these days, and I'm listening.

In the meantime, I'm glad that I picked up this collection of stories. July's stories are on the short side, and quirky enough to remind me a little of Aimee Bender's work, but without what I consider Bender's love of the gimmicky hook. She has some great lines that resonate and reveal in all the best ways that the short story form is supposed to do. Like this, from a story about two young girls who have run away to Portland together and gotten jobs:

"Everything we had thought of as The World was actually the result of someone's job. Each line on the sidewalk, each saltine. Everyone had rotting carpet and a door to pay for. Aghast, we quit. There had to be a more dignified way to live. We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music."

Lovely. So much for the just ways of the Writing Gods, not that I had any real faith in them, anyhow. (July's website for the book is also super-duper cute without being cutesy, and the "About" entry on her other site is enough to arouse envy and grudging admiration from any soul with creative aspirations.)

As for me, I spent the day daydreaming of and being nostalgic for college campuses I have belonged to and visited, like UCLA and my alma mater, CSULB. I've had some serious longings lately for my county of birth, L.A. County, and for college campuses in general. I realize lately that if I want to get there, to get back to them, then I'm gonna have to play like a salmon and swim terribly hard upstream to escape these suburban, exurban sticks and find my way home. And the only real way to do that, it's becoming more clear, is to become myself, somehow, and buckle down to listening to those narrative- and metaphor- and sentence-lovin' voices in my head, and not be afraid of what they have to say.

Jeez. No wonder it's easier for me to just take pictures of and talk about the john.

Quick Design Lust Post: The Bathroom

2007-08-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

There are actually 2.5 bathrooms in my house: the master bath , the "kids bathroom" down the hall painted bright yellow, and then this one. Since the other 2 are upstairs, this is the most public bathroom, and though it's the smallest, it's also my favorite.

This next picture below shows how the previous owners had the place decorated when we bought the place over 3 years ago (!). It was the primary bath of a teenage girl, which I guess explains the red M&M clock. Even so, if I was her mother, no way would I have let her pair purple accessories against the orange-ish brown tiles:

Not a terrible looking room, but certainly not all that inspired, either. I lived with this same bathroom, with its white walls and cheap builder-grade fixtures for over a year, and couldn't quite figure out what to do with it. This was my initial decor for the bath, which was perfectly okay, but even then, was fairly yawn-inducing:
For a while, I considered tearing out that rather unattractive white wraparound counter and putting in a stand-alone vanity sink. But, the room needs some counter space, as this is the bath that our infrequent house guests use, too. Also, this was meant to be a quick, cosmetic fix-up, not a total design overhaul. I did know that I wanted the feel of the room to somehow jibe with the style of my retro-modern living room. Then one day, I was flipping through a catalog and was struck by a picture of some pretty aqua-blue robin's-egg hand soaps, all tied 'round with a dark brown ribbon. And voila, my inspiration was found. (If you think hand soaps are a strange source of inspiration for my bathroom design, well, I can't wait to show you how the colors in the family room were inspired by a drinking glass from Ikea.)

Myk and others were a little dubious at first of my idea to paint the walls dark brown. My argument was: since there are no windows in this room anyhow, even with bright white paint, you'd still need to flip on the lights to avoid doing your business in pitch-black darkness. Speaking of the lighting -- one of my favorite parts about sprucing up this room was being able to change out the dreaded 4-globe fixture about the sink. (Sorry I don't have a photo of its replacement, which has milky white glass and brushed nickel.) Also, even though I again don't have a photograph, I need to mention the terrific job that Myk did installing white crown moulding around the ceiling. This room has an extra-tall ceiling, and the white up there against the brown really draws the eye up and adds a feeling of space to what might have otherwise felt like a small, dark closet.

We also changed the faucet to a brushed satin nickel, the same finish as the towel rack. Just to the right of the door here, there's a shower with white faux-tile and a glass door. After this project was done, this became one of my favorite rooms in the house, and it alway gets a big (positive) reaction the first time people see it. What a surprise to enter, flick the switch and see all that dramatic contrast and the rich cherry-brown walls. Barring the need for some kind of artwork on the big bare wall to the left of the door, it also feels great to know that this is probably the only room in the house where I don't feel the need to buy anything else to declare it done. No wonder I love it!

Design Lust, Day 1: Bedroom

2007-08-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the slight delay on getting started here on my proposed "design week," focusing on my house. Like I said, things have been extra child-centered around here these days, and like Willie Nelson says...funny how time slips away. But enough dilly-dallying and excuses. Let's just jump right in.

I'm starting with the least finished and realized room in the house, our master bedroom. (Excluding Myk's office, but that's His Domain, and I have no say in there.) My head is bursting with ideas and colors for this room right now, but any plans for a re-do here (or any other room) are on the back burner until we tackle our next major project, The Ikea Kitchen. (Another subject altogether, which will probably deserve it's own week of posts somewhere down the line.)

Still, while the major projects of painting and wallpapering and re-curtaining the room will have to wait a bit, I've been buying things here and there, in anticipation of what this room will need someday. The first of these recent purchases was a new bedspread. Over the winter I brought back out, after a spell of retirement, my beloved patchwork duvet cover from Anthropologie, bought at least five years ago. I loved that bedspread, and got really thrilled when I noticed once while watching Gilmore Girls that Lorelai had the same pillow shams on her bed. However, the patchwork had a rip in one of the squares that only grew larger and larger with use, and it was a bad rip, not something that could be repaired. That one ripped square grew to become a big flapping rip of several squares, hidden only by my fleece winter blanket. Plus, it was a little feminine and girly and shabby chic-ish for Myk's taste, so I promised that the next one would be a little more neutral and less floral.

In May, after much catalog-perusing and heavy thought, I bought a dark tan/linen matelasse bedspread, the kind I'd seen and loved in the The Company Store catalog, but bought at Ross for much, much less. I love the clean and crisp look of this, especially paired against a set of white eyelet sheets (which are out of rotation on the bed this week). Despite my promises of making the bedroom less feminine, I think I'm going to have to take that back. Note the floral, chintz pillow. It's only ONE decorative pillow, though, so I think this is a bit of a compromise. The only problem with the bedspread is that's it just a bedspread, and a very thin one at that. The colder months ahead are going to require something heavier in addition to this, and I can't quite figure out where to go. A throw? An actual comforter over this? More catalog-perusing is definitely in order.

The other, much more recent purchase, was this vintage Turner print that I found on Ebay. I wasn't really shopping for a print for the bedroom, rather I was instead hunting down a Turner flamingo mirror for the living room. (Which I found! More on that later.) Still, when I saw the great price, the nice big size, and the colors in this print, I knew it was perfect for the bedroom, especially for my visions of what the bedroom will look like someday.
So, here are my thoughts for this future master bedroom of my dreams: The word that keep coming to mind when I think of the design and feel of the room is louche. An old-fashioned word, meaning "shady, shifty, indecent and disreputable." And decadent, too. No, I don't want my room to look like a bordello. But I was struck by this image on the home page of visual artist Ray Caesar. (I'd post it here, but couldn't grab it off his site.) Obviously, I won't have the stained mattress, but so much of that image resonates...the wallpaper, the window fan, the very vintage, mid-century feel. This is what I want. A room that Blanche DuBois, that randy old broad, would feel right at home in.

The pine sleigh bed, the side tables, the bed lamps, the paint color...all of them are out. As are the green window curtains, which are pretty, but also remind me a little too much of that Gone With the Wind skit from the Carol Burnett show. (And yes, I AM that old, to remember this from my '70s childhood.) (The curtains framing the room in the above shot are staying. The shot was taken from the bathroom, looking into the bedroom.)

Behind the bed, which will exchanged for the black wrought-iron bed currently used in the guest room, will be an one accent wall that is wall-papered. I am very, very fond of an Osbourne & Little wallpaper I saw in a recent issue of House and Garden. A web search of that design was unsuccessful, but I did find this one, which is quite similar in feel (the other one had birds, too) and the overall look of this shot deserved inclusion here, because it strongly hints at the feel I'm going for:
Those lamps are also very similar to what I see next to the bed, too. The Turner print will move to the left of the bed, above a small loveseat I'll bring out of the garage and slipcover. I'm not sure what will go over the bed....right now, I'm thinking of one large or several small Venetian mirrors.

I realize now, after struggling to write this post, that reading about what I'm planning to do someday is not half as exciting as simply showing you pictures of what I've already accomplished. I have more to say about the bedroom, my plans for which are rooted in the bedroom of my teen years, and my interest in design, which I realize lately has been with me for much, much longer than I recognized. But I'll give us all a break and stop here for now.

More tomorrow (or rather -- soon!) of a much more finished and realized room in our house. Thanks for making it down this far!

**Edited to note: As with all my posts, you can click on any of the above pictures for a much larger, better detailed view of the photos. This is especially helpful with that first shot of the bedroom.

Design Lust

2007-08-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

Boy, am I in a strange mood these days. Who knew that your firstborn starting kindergarten could throw you for such a loop? But it's only been two days so far, so maybe I can't blame it all on school starting. The thing is, somehow, for the last month, starting around our trip to Hawaii, I feel like my childcare and mothering duties have ramped up even more. I'm not sure why this is so. I'm not even sure HOW this could be so. But man, I'm feeling very, very childcentric these days. Perhaps this is why I''m so drawn lately to images of austere, beautiful and lonely rooms, like the one pictured above. I would like to be the woman in that room, with all those beige books surrounding me, dressed in a long skirt and heels and having nothing more pressing to do than to idly leaf through a magazine. In my world, it's 99 degrees every day this week and I'm wearing jean shorts and flip-flops like it's a uniform. When I sit down for a few stolen minutes to leaf through my new issue of Domino, I'm likely to be surrounded by sippy cups and Matchbox cars and random pieces of pink plastic princess accessories. But in my mind, baby, I'm just like that blond sylph on her white carpet, and the only sound I can hear is the distant hum of the maid vacuuming the east wing.

Today Grace at Design*Sponge posted about the Conde Nast image store (and the image on her site is by far my favorite, but damn, she snagged it first.) Conde Nast is the publisher of many, many magazine and they now have an online shop where you can purchase (for a rather hefty price) vintage images and illustrations from the covers and pages of House & Garden. This is where I got my image above, and where I wasted many moments surfing through so many beautiful images of home and decor and food fabulousness that it put me into a rather cranky mood. Upon reflection, I recognized that the true name for this mood is envy. Envy and lust as I perused image after image of pristine and inspired decorating. Who are these people?, I thought. Who are these people, and how the hell do they have so much money to live like this? This is the same exact thought that runs through my mind any time we drive through a gorgeous, high falutin' neighborhood and I stare out at all the beautiful homes, practically licking the car windows and wondering: Who are these people, and what did they do to make all this money? Because, really, there just can't be THAT many doctors and lawyers in the world, can there?

Anyway. I've decided to spend the next week blogging about my own modest home, and the design choices and purchases I've made recently. Including, at long last, some pictures of the couch we ended up buying for the family room, after those posts many months ago chronicling my frustration at all the puffy couches sold at the big retail furniture stores.

I could be blogging about kindergarten, and one very excited and happy little girl, and while I'd love to bend your ear bragging about just how great and confident she was on that first morning, I'm going to stake my claim here on this blog and say this is my space, my own private design Idaho this week, and dammit, we're going to talk about the couch instead. See you tomorrow!

Home (And How)

2007-08-09T22:12:00.000-07:00

We're home. (Thank you Genevieve, for the good trip wishes, and for checking in on me.) My goodness, what an adventure. It's been about a full week since we returned, and we're almost, almost back to normal around here. I was so intent on having a clean house to return to, but in the end, I'm not sure my efforts made much of a difference, once our suitcases exploded forth their musty vacation clothes and all myriad of just....crap that seemed to stow away back home with us. (Not even souvenirs...just crap.)

Above is a shot from our first evening in our hotel room, from the balcony. We booked an ocean view room, but were upgraded to ocean front, instead. Nice!

Another shot from the balcony, of kayaks scooting past
Another day, another gorgeous sunset.
Here's a shot of me, the night we all shared expensive personal pizzas for dinner in the open-air hotel lounge. This is about as relaxed as I felt and looked the entire trip (not counting the massage in the spa, which was a lovely treat, but all too soon forgotten). Note the full-sized margarita in hand.

Why so tense in the land of paradise, you may ask? Why couldn't I feel more relaxed on the vacation to commemorate my tenth wedding anniversary?

I present:
These two.
Monkey One and Monkey Two, we call them, although I think that the sounds they make as they spin and spiral through the world are technically closer to that of chimps. Wild chimps. On acid. Wild chimps on acid who needed to be corralled and sprayed down with SPF 50 each time we entered water and sunshine, in that land of endless water and sunshine. If you're not a mom, or a parent, I probably sound like very whiny, spoiled woman right about now, daring to bitch about a TRIP. For a WEEK. To HAWAII. But, if you are a mom --- well, 'nuff said. It was a wonderful trip, a challenging trip, a beautiful trip. (Note my reluctance to use the word "vacation," though.)

So, yes. We are home now, and how. Home with a vengeance. I knew that it would be an adjustment, having Lily here full-time now that preschool is over and done with, but, sakes alive -- it's so different, and so much....louder in the house this week. It's been hard to get a thought in edgewise up here in my head. You would think that, being home full time and having access to me on an even more constant basis would tone down her deep and unquenchable lust for my full attention every minute of the day, but uh....no. That would be a.....no.

Still. We are home. Kindergarten (only half day around these parts!) is just over a week away. So, one big, Olympic-size adventure under our belts, and one even bigger one, of a different sort, just up around the bend.

We're Off To

2007-07-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

Yes, we're really going! Tomorrow we're leaving for just over a week on the Big Island of Hawaii. Neither of us have been, but we made the reservations back in February, and in a flash...it's here, and it's time. We'll celebrate our 10-year wedding anniversary on Thursday, but this is no romantic escape -- the 2 monkeys are definitely coming with us. (And who would possibly volunteer to watch them for that long, anyway?)

It was stressful getting the house clean, the supplies bought, the clothes laundered, etc. Tonight, after finally putting our two very-wound-up and excited children to bed, I snapped to Myk, "We shouldn't be going on this trip. Only people who know how to relax and have fun should go on vacations."

Ah, sounds like we're all a bit overdue. Aloha! See you in August.

Evening

2007-07-20T15:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still here. (Madly waving.) I really, really need to get on board with posting more often. I've been right here, at home, doing major kid-duty, as always. Anyway...

Last night I went alone to the movies to catch Evening, before it disappears from theaters and comes out on DVD in 3 weeks. (Isn't that about the rate of the theater-to-DVD turnaround these days?) I didn't have high hopes for the movie, yet I really wanted to see it, because I'd read the novel years ago, and it holds a special place in my heart. I read it while on spring break in that tiny little cabin pictured above, just me & Myk and our sock monkey, Fred. (Fred used to accompany us on all our travels, but now that we have children, he not-so patiently waits for attention on Myk's bed table.) I cannot remember what path my brain was traveling on, back in the spring of 2000, that made me decide going to Convict Lake in the high eastern Sierra's for spring break from grad school would be a great idea. It was, um, pretty cold. And it snowed quite a lot. But it was romantic, and we had the the little ring of cabins and the lake almost all to ourselves. One night, we had dinner in the very good lodge, with a fire burning and snow flakes dropping silently out the windows. We took a daytrip up to Mammoth, and the June Lake loop, and my beloved tufas at Mono Lake. And in between, back at the cabin, with the snow and the lake and the massive mountains right outside the door, I was reading Susan Minot's Evening.
This is first section of Evening, on the first page, and after reading it, I was snagged, utterly:

Where were you all this time? she said. Where have you been?
I guess far away.
Yes you were. Too far away.
They sat in silence.
You know you frightened me a little, she said. At the beginning.
No.
You did.
He smiled at that.
You looked at if you didn't need anyone, she said.
But those are the ones who need it most, he said. Don't you know that?
I do now, she said. Too late.
Never too late to know something, he said.
Maybe not, she said. But too late to do any good.

Like I said, I didn't really have high hopes for the movie, and I wasn't wrong. The plot was changed quite a lot, from what I remember. The reason why Ann, the heroine, and Harris, her love, couldn't be together, was not at all the reason suggested in the movie. In the book, Ann's five grown children are not much more that shadow characters, floating in and out of their mother's bedroom as she lies dying and remembering the weekend in 1954 that she met and lost her one true love. In the movie, I was irritated and bored by the sibling rivalries and "life moments" shared by the 2 sisters. And what was up with that ending that totally ripped off The Way We Were? Well, I won't go into all the myriad differences between the novel & the film version. This is usually the case, isn't it? I would like to know, however, why all the commercials I saw proclaimed, "from the creator of The Hours..." True, Michael Cunningham did co-write & co-produce alongside Minot, but why does he get all the credit, when it's not his book or his vision?

Even though the critics have labeled the film a "tear-jerker," I didn't get misty for even a second. Compare that to when I read the devastating final, major scene between Ann and Harris. I remember that I was lying next to Myk on the small cabin bed as he napped, and the little wall heater kept blowing it's warm, dusty air through the room. I started reading and got immediately misty-eyed, and by the end of the scene, I had to bite on my knuckle to keep from sobbing out loud.

Later, I actually got to meet Susan Minot and even sit at the same table with her, at a women writer's conference in Long Beach. I remember shaking her hand and telling her how much I loved her novel. (Oh, how I hate sounding so inane and groupie-like, but just how else does one say these things?) I'm sitting here now, with my signed copy of the paperback on my desk, and it feels like a lifetime ago. I remember also that Ms. Minot had a great purse, and I was in awe of how...East Coast she looked and seemed.

One good thing about the movie: the gorgeous house used for the 1950s scenes, a real family home on the coast of Rhode Island (it's supposed to be Maine, in the book), with wonderful interiors and set decor. I swooned at the beautiful mural throughout the downstairs living room. (I read in House & Garden that it was painted by the home's original owner.) I've been on a real design-bender, combing through magazines and the 'net this week, and my hands are itching to get ahold of a brush and get to paintin'. I have big, big plans for my master bedroom. And after this week, I'm suddenly possessed by one rather startling and surprising word: wallpaper. (Yes, it's true, darling. As always, you just have to trust me on this.) It's going to be fabulous.

Like Palm Springs, Yet Not

2007-07-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

We're in the full swing of summer over here. The days are super hot this week, up over 100 degrees. The weatherman says it'll be 105 today. When it's hot and brilliant and cloudless like this, I can almost, almost squint my eyes and pretend that we're in Palm Springs. Except, well, even though P.S. is just over an hour northeast of us, it's still sort of another dimension and lifetime away, too. Where Palms Springs is lousy with old people and gay realtors (not to disparage either group -- I'm just sayin'), this place is instead lousy with kids, kids and more kids, and the people who take care of them (stay at home moms like me). Also, we still cool down pretty quickly after dark, which I guess is nice for most, but listen -- until you've sat out by the pool, under the stars, on a 95-degrees-at-10pm Palm Springs night, you've never lived.

Speaking of staying home with the children -- I'm also celebrating the fact that as of July 1, I'm no longer serving as Co-President of my neighborhood chapter of this group:
The group whose name I cannot mention here. No, that's not quite true. It's just that the club, for whatever reason seems to operate under a "Fight Club" method of survival, which is "the first rule of MOMS Club is there IS no MOMS Club." At least not out on the Internet, besides their official site. I've run into a few stories out there of people being asked to remove links to their site, or being asked to delete any mention of them. They're a little defensive, officially, and their literature and statement of intent reflect a rather dated, 1980s defensiveness about the choice to stay home with the kids. I have to say, the club, or at least our local chapter, has worked out well for me. For the first time as an adult, I have a fairly steady social life and have even made a couple of real, true friends here in town, friendships that don't hinge on the fact that we're also mothers. A bizarre turn of events for me, the former Official Loner of the world, and also, that girl who didn't get along with women, much. That part still seems true sometimes -- but for a group of over 50 very different women, we get along pretty well. (It probably helps that it's awfully rare to have all 50 together at any point.) As for the fact that I served as Co-President for this group for the last 12 months, all I can say is that my volunteering for the job should stand as proof of what a terrible sucker I am for flattery.

Today, and the rest of the week, will feature more SPF 50 sunscreen for the kids, more splashing in sprinklers and water slides in the backyards of friends, more coming inside at twilight to get washed up from the hot, sweaty day. More June bugs at my front door in the dark, and more clear and starry summer night skies. Ah, we're in the swing of it all.

Happy New Year

2007-06-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

It feels like a brand-new year. I'm so relieved be on the other side of the past one. Last week was heavy on emotions and ruminations about time passing, children, our life together and gratitude for good health.

First, on Tuesday, as mentioned in the previous post, Lily had her Preschool Graduation. I know it's just preschool, and there'll be so many other major milestones on her road, but still, this felt big. An end to being a preschooler, a little kid, and the start of being an Official Big Kid, of having so many expectations placed upon you, by your peers, your teachers, your parents. Sometimes, it's hard to remember that 5 years old is just...5 years old. So little, still. So open and innocent and so full of questions and wonder. Let's not change that part anytime soon.
And then, on Wednesday, was our much-planned family picnic, to celebrate life and love and the good health of our sweet boy. Because Wednesday, June 13, was the one-year anniversary of Tucker's admission into the pediatric ICU at Children's Hospital Orange County. A year ago that day, we'd hurried up the freeway and driven an hour away, on the advice of our pediatrician, who'd taken one look at his overall condition and one listen to his lungs and told us to get him to an ER. (There is a closer ER, but not a better one.) You can read more about it here. I don't want to go into those details again.
June 13, 2007 was a much, much better day. Sunshine and the smell of the scrubby oak trees, homemade brownies and fizzy orange sodas. Forget that I couldn't set out my pretty new picnic blanket, because there was no grass and the park's ground was all dirt and leaves. Forget that Tucker was being a 2-and-a-half year old pain in the ass earlier that morning, practicing his Toddler Tyrant moves on us all. It was just good to be out, together, and blessed with good health and the good fortune to all be together in the middle of a busy weekday.
If I take into account all that has transpired in the last year, from June to June, I can only say that it's been one hell of a year. Sickness and death and way too much time spent in hospitals seeing my dearest loved ones hooked up to scary, beeping machines. Not that it was all bad. But then, it never really is, is it? Even during the worst of times, there is humor, and the grace of family and friends who care, and the solace of the wide blue yonder, the starry night skies.

Sometimes when I look back upon the year, and all the scary, heart-clenching moments, I think about that ubiquitous and cheesy religious poem, "Footprints." You know, the one about how there are 2 sets of footprints in the sand, representing how during the course of your life (the metaphor is the long walk along the beach) you have God (or is it Jesus?) walking beside you all the way. Except for the times when there are only one set of prints, and that -- as the final line of the poems reveals -- that shows how God carried you through your toughest times.

Huh. Well, when I think of that poem, I think that on my beach, there's one set of footprints, and then 2 long, deep furrows behind them -- representing how I was dragged, kicking and squirming and protesting the whole time, behind God (or is it Jesus?) and His plan for me this year. I'm not a Christian, in the strict sense of the word, but I'm not a non-believer, either. I realize my rather wimpy wavering on this is immature and exasperating to both camps, whether full-bore Christian or atheist. I have plenty of doubts, and on the worst days, and even on some so-so days, it would be easy to topple over into non-belief, yet I can't do that. I've prayed plenty in the last year. I've always prayed, since I was a teenager and infused with a real desire to experience the holy. There was something very specific that I prayed hard for in my dad's last days, and it was answered. But during Tucker's illness, there was no room for prayer, no possibility of asking for something to happen. Not when the stakes were so high. I couldn't ask. I think any parent who's been in a situation where your child is gravely ill knows the feeling. There can be no prayer, when every breath and every step you take is already begging please. Please, please, please.

And Tucker got better. Whether through fate or divine intervention or the care of his great doctors, or all of the above, he recovered and has been quite healthy during the last year, save for a few colds. (Furious knocking of wood, at that line.) And all year long, I've felt gratitude, the kind you feel when you've been to the brink and peeked into the other side, and felt that chill, that fear. I think I spent the first few months out of the hospital overcome with all of it -- gratitude, fear, worry -- the kind that made me bolt awake at the slightest cough or noise coming from his room late at night.

Now that the year is over, I'm feeling more of the flip-side of that gratitude and relief, and for me, the flip-side is anger. Anger and resentment. I catch myself lately, on bad days when Tucker is being a screaming, naughty beast of a 2-year-old, feeling guilty for my anger and frustration. My gratitude has turned into a nagging voice, that doesn't let me feel anything BUT gratitude, 24/7. But to be honest? I'm not cherishing every moment. I'm not living for today. I'm really not loving every minute of it. I'm a stay-at-home mom with two very bright, active, intense children, and Gratitude won't let me give myself a break.

So for the record, Gratitude, or God, or anyone else who can pull strings and might be listening: Look, I'm so, so thankful for my beautiful children and my good life, for being blessed to spend my days watching them grow and change. But Gratitude? I could really use a break right about now. It's time to let me off the hook, to stop dragging me behind you in the sand. I want to get up from this past year, and walk all by myself on that beach, and if you want to come along, that's cool, as long as there are also two other very small sets of footprints in the sand beside mine the whole way, along with my husband's big size 11 1/2 boats, even though every time we go to the coast, he swears I'm really just trying to kill him with all of that damp, cold ocean air.

Another Ending, So Soon

2007-06-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

The title of this post sounds rather ominous, but really I'm just feeling a bit overwhelmed and emotional over the fact that Lily is graduating from preschool tomorrow, at noon. Before I was a parent, it was hard to see and gauge the effects of time speeding past. Three years was just....3 years. A little hard to measure, except perhaps by what job I had, or what haircut, or where we went for vacation that year. (Vegas, probably. Back when we lived like adults and could do things like go to Vegas.)

But now I see all that the passing of 3 years (or really, two and half) can bring about. My little tiny muffin of a girl in this picture is now 5, and getting herself all grown up and graduated and ready to join a summer soccer/t-ball class. (She has a whole lot more hair now, too.) What really blows my mind is that Lily in this picture is just about the same age at that Tucker is right now, about two and a half. He still seems like my baby. And yet, with my first child, I was so ready to kick her out the door for preschool -- and granted, she started off slow, at only 2 half days a week. But look at how that backpack (filled with an extra change of clothes and some Pull-Ups, as she wasn't potty-trained yet) seems to almost dwarf the child. Well, I wisely knew that I would need just that little bit of time, even six hours a week at first, to be alone with her baby brother in the house, and to maybe, just maybe, catch a little bit of solitary down-time for myself.

Now she goes to school 3 full days a week, and I'm so thankful for the great time she's had, getting paint and frosting in her hair, tracking home enough sand to practically fill our own sandbox, and even maybe learning a thing or two.

And I almost, almost don't feel too guilty anymore, looking at this picture taken at the end of her first 3 hour day: clutching a tissue, because she was crying and missed her mommy:

Oh, who am I kidding? It tears me up, still. The mommy-guilt. It's a deep well, people, and I'm pretty sure it'll never go dry.

Heartbreak in the Aisles

2007-06-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

The aisles of Target, that is. Back when things were just a little weird and typically crazy, before they got seriously weird and bad, I posted about my giddy love for the blue bunny Easter plates, and my fondness for trolling for interesting design at Target.

Last night I was back there again (honestly, I only go 2 or 3 times a month), in the children's book section, just randomly looking around. While I didn't feel very moody and touchy when I left the house after dinner, I found myself feeling awfully moody and weepy once I got there. I think it was because I stopped in the card aisle, looking for Father's Day cards for Myk from the kids and me. But of course, I couldn't help but see all the other Father's Day cards, the ones I'd normally be perusing for my own dad. Then there were also all the "Papa" cards, that I won't be buying for the kids to give to their great-grandpa this year, either. And then I felt rather silly, for getting upset at such a rather...obvious situation. I didn't imagine that Father's Day, or at least Father's Day cookie-cutter-sentiment greeting cards, would provoke me, but yet there I was, getting all misty under the fluorescents.

Anyway, later in the trip, after the dipes/wipes/vitamins, etc. had been checked off the list, I was in the children's book aisle, and I casually opened up a hardbound book for older kids, called, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. I didn't read the jacket to see what it was about; instead, my fingers just rifled through it and ended up on the dedication page, where there was this quote from a poem by Stanley Kunitz:

"The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
It is necessary to go through the dark and deeper dark
and not to turn."

Yes. Yes. So, this time -- no surprising modern design. Just a bit of truth and poetry, at a big-box retail store on a Tuesday night in the late spring. I don't think Lily, despite her advanced reading, is quite ready for the story of Edward Tulane, yet. Evidently it's about a cold and arrogant toy bunny who finds love after being very lost. All I know is that I'm grateful for the sentiment from Mr. Kunitz ( a late poet of great renown in the literature world), and I hope to be reading more of him -- and more poetry, in general, very soon. Wild emotion, tamed and distilled into perfect words and stanzas, is exactly what is called for, these days.

*Aisle of tall trees, taken in Oregon.

Back from Up North

2007-06-04T22:36:00.000-07:00

We've been back for a while now. 2 weeks? 3? It's so hard for me to pick up the blogging ball again after I put it down. More than once, I've thought about officially quitting or deleting it all. Maybe I'm just meant to be a Constant Lurker, like Dorothy Parker's Constant Reader. It's hard for me to hone in on what to talk about. I need to remember that my favorite blogs often just focus on one small, good thing at at time. Like Alicia's pillowcases or porch blinds, or Emily's pretty bluebird teacup.

Oregon was...green. So very green. And the moisture, and change of scenery, were a really good change. And I finally got to see the very beautiful Multnomah Falls, seen above. However, it was not so much a true vacation, at least for me. My in-laws live and thrive in an atmosphere that feels very foreign to me -- one devoid of much emotion or opinion, or much joy, either, for that matter. It all felt so stiff and forced, and I felt often like such a stranger in their midst. They treated me like a very volatile stick of dynamite, even though I've never exploded or even sizzled much in their presence, ever.

Also. The cats. My mother-in-law loves her some cats. It used to be a bit of a joke, but she seemed a little more defensive about her crazy cat love, this time around. There are roughly about 10 cats living inside the house, and at least a dozen or so more on the property. And I, I am a little allergic to cats. Not instant-hives allergic, but mildly allergic, if put in a house with one or two long-hairs. But a house with 10? It was rough. At night, sleeping with my family in the cat-free guest room, I could here a very tiny but distinct wheeze coming from my lungs. And though I went up there with that cold or sinus infection, it quickly morphed into this terrible, rumbling, hacking cough. Consumption? No -- CATsumption. This week I got low on sleep and the catsumption made a reappearance. I wouldn't be surprised to find some fur balls on my pillow, really.

But the trip is over, and good God, June is off and running in full swing. I'm a bit in shock at that, staring at the calendar and watching the days fill up with places to go and people to see. One thing I could see about that rural life in Oregon, versus this busy one in exurban Temecula -- life is much slower and less frantic. It even felt that way in downtown Portland. I've been thinking a lot about how to slow things down, just a tad. I'd like to focus more on some smaller moments, and not the big, sweeping life-changing ones that have been the norm for the last year. More on that soon, I hope.

Anyway. This is why we went to Oregon -- so the kids could get to know their other set of grandparents better:
Which I think they really enjoyed doing. Even if it meant that for the course of the week, I felt like the cranky, hacking, touchy Bad Witch of the South.
(Above taken at the Enchanted Forest theme park in Salem, OR.)

Heading for Some Moisture

2007-05-09T21:37:00.000-07:00

Let's be frank for a moment: I feel like shit. I feel like a tired and wadded up piece of Kleenex, one of the dozens I've used up in the last few days since I came down with my cold that immediately turned into a sinus infection. A sinus infection that makes me sound like I'm setting myself for a joke when I moan aloud that my face hurts. (Yeah? Cuz it's killin' me!)

These last few months have just been a bit...much. The death of my grandpa, the roller-coaster of worry and optimism with my dad's hospital stay, and then his death, and everything in between has left me just....tired. And dry. It is the great thing about daily life with small children, yet also the very brutal thing about daily life with small children. Yes, you can lose your grief and laugh and smile at their darling ways and the cute things that pop out of their mouths, but you also are forced into forgetting your grief, or at least putting it on indefinite hold, while you meet their never-ending demands for juice, kisses for boo-boos, trips to the park, juice, bedtime stories, breakfast, lunch and dinner and always, always, more juice.

I feel very dry, both inside and out. Nothing left for tears, and not enough lotion to cure this tightness in my face. Yes, I have a cold, and yes it's that time of the month, too, which brings with it yet another zit on my once-nice complexion, and then there are the near-constant twinges of back pain from either my lower back or my shoulder blade (they take turns), and that thing that happens when I'm rushed or anxious with the kids (and really, when am I NOT?), feeling like I need to gasp for air like a fish out of water -- pant, pant, pant. Oh, and today my right eyelid has a very relaxing and attractive twitch, too, which has lasted for about the last 12 hours.

God, what an old lady! I was thinking today, that yes, I finally feel my age. At least my age. All those years of laughing with girlfriends: "oh, I'm 34, but I feel exactly the same as always!" "36? Last time I checked I was still 27!" But today, ladies? Today, I feel every second of my 38 years. And then some. I'm feeling about, oh, 43. And it is not good.

I know that all this aridity of the soul is not because I live in a very dry near-desert climate. But I'm hoping, hoping, that when we arrive in the Portland area in a few days, that some of that greenness and wetness and moisture will have some effect. It has to. Traveling from the land of record-low rainfall to the land where they've had record-high rainfall this winter has got to be good. And we have plans to go to this place:
Nice, huh? That's Multnomah Falls, in Oregon. Yes, there are in-laws waiting there too, but I like my in-laws and now is not the time or place to mention that my first-ever panic attack happened when visiting their home for the first time. I need a change of scenery so badly, so badly. I hope this little jaunt up to the Pacific Northwest does the trick, at least for a while.

Like, Wow

2007-05-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

So I finally got my hands on a copy of Little, Big, and finally finished reading it this weekend. What a long book. I felt like I've lived a few lifetimes since I started it, sometime back in early April. It was a world and a landscape unto itself and excuse me if I blush just a little bit when I say that its main plot is about a family who seem to be related to, or at least are very close to um, the wee folk. As in fairies (faeries?).

But the book and it's many subplots and tone are about so much more than just the fairy-folk, and the reader is given only passing, sly glimpses of them throughout most of the story. Since I have a nasty sinus infection and my head feels too stuffed with cotton to create a single, lucid sentence, let me just give you some of the critiques and credentials listed on my copy: Let's see...the book and it's author, John Crowley, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel back in 1980. The Washington Post writes that it's "the greatest fantasy ever written by an American." And finally, the esteemed and very crotchety academic and critic, Harold Bloom, says, "It is literally the most enchanting twentieth-century book I know."

So there. Let me not spin my wheels any longer justifying my reading of this 538-page work that concerns a very old and powerful deck of tarot cards, a grandfather trout who lives in a deep, cold pond and surfaces when summoned by members of the Drinkwater family, or a very old and powerful wizard of a woman who turns into a stork in the book's final chapters. Or the fiesty Puerto Rican girl who lives in the City and has a Destiny, which turns out to be turning into a fairy princess and sailing upon a craft made of spiderwebs and acorns.

Forgetting the plot entirely, I was enchanted early on by the gorgeous prose and lovely, crafted sentences, and also the humor and intelligence that guided my way. I smiled and leaked a happy little tear onto my pillow when I saw that I was in the care of someone who could write:

"The gregarious weeds that frequent roadsides, dusty, thick and blowsy, friends to man and traffic, nodded from fence and ditch by the way. Less and less often he would hear the hum of a car; the hum would grow intermittently, as the car went up and down hills, and then suddenly it would be on him very loud and roar past surprised, potent, fast, leaving the weeds blown and chuckling furiously for a moment; then the roar would just as quickly subside to a far hum again, and then gone, and the only sounds the insect orchestra and his own feet striking."

Yes, exactly -- the weeds blown and chuckling furiously. For some reason, this mix of high intellect and lowbrow, sort of slapstick humor reminds me of Annie Dillard in her nature essays -- abstract, obtuse and terribly brainy, and then she throws in a knock-knock joke to prove a point. I'm such a sucker for that sort of thing, and I suppose that's why Dillard is high on my list of all-time favorites.

But I digress. Little, Big was a great read, a good companion for a lot of late and troubled nights of late. I only wish I'd read it first in darkest December, for it's mysterious big house of Edgewood that the story revolves around reminded me of winter nights and crackling fires. But I hear that many people, Harold Bloom included, reread this book often to uncover further meanings and discover new things, so I suppose a winter reading isn't out of the question.

A Little Like Peggy Lee

2007-04-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

Look, I'm here, after a month of not-posting. My last little frivolous post was all about my excitement over buying some cute Easter-themed paper plates & napkins at Target. As it happened, I never even got to bust out those supplies, because Easter was hosted by my aunt this year, instead. My dad was in the hospital at the time of the holiday, and no one, especially my mother, felt like driving 80 miles away to my house for ham and chocolate.

So -- well, I don't know how to say this, so I'll just lay it out plainly -- my dad passed away, two weeks ago today. About two weeks and two hours ago, as I write this. It was painful and terrible -- for all involved, but especially him, and so there we were, mouthing all those cliches at the end, that turned out to be true: "he's not in pain anymore," "he's at peace," etc.

As for me -- his favorite (really, I can say that now without feeling guilty, right?), his eulogy speech writer & deliverer -- I'm left sort of numb and reeling, and feeling a little like Peggy Lee: "Is that all there is to your daddy dying?" Let's break out the booze and have a ball. Well, I could go for the first part at least, and my dad would approve, too.

I feel it coming, the pain and disbelief, like storm clouds gathering on the horizon (cliches, again!), but for now -- Eh. Sometimes I walk through the house late at night, after the lights are out, and this very surreal feeling slices through me and makes me feel like I'm breathing in the atmosphere of some entirely new planet -- a planet that does not find my father walking and talking upon it -- but then it passes, and I go to bed and lie there and replay again some of the events at the hospital, and I think for some reason of the lines from Shakespeare's The Tempest, "Full fathom five my father lies, what once were blah blah pearls that were his eyes blah blah...." Although really, my father doesn't lie anywhere now except in a pile of dust, collected into a very handsome wooden box, on his own bookshelf, amongst his beloved books on the photography & history of the West. (Someday in the future we'll take him out to the desert and deliver him to the wind and big sky of his favorite landscape.)

Well, anyway. That is where I have been, lo these many weeks since my last gushings on the cuteness of blue bunny rabbits. But regardless, spring is truly here, and April is the cruelest month and all, but I don't find it terrible, those roses bursting open in the backyard, those bees drunk on the waving lavender. It's just -- life, as usual, going on, as it tends to do.

Hoppy Spring

2007-03-24T12:47:00.001-07:00

When I found out earlier this week that I'd snagged the "hosting Easter for the extended family" duties this year, I hightailed it over to Target to get these adorable plates & napkins before they sold out. In fact, now that I reflect on it, I think the chance to buy & display these cuties was maybe the chief motivating factor in volunteering to host. Yes, I could've bought them "just because" when I first saw them a while back, but I get weird & cheap sometimes. Especially when my Target basket is already filling up fast with those necessary packs of diapers and wipes and toilet paper, etc.

Anyway. I LOVE these bright colors, and the over-the-top cute graphics of all the fuzzy little animals. I couldn't resist, at the dollar bins at the front of the store, the cute little erasers either. So now Lily's preschool class will get treated with erasers at her Easter party in a couple weeks (and whatever else I can manage to scrape together to put into the treat bags....I'm thinking....pencils?)

On the receipt, I noticed that these were listed as "Fiona tablewear," so when doing the web search to grab these images, I continued my search and discovered that all this eye-popping loveliness was designed by English graphic artist Fiona Hewitt. I've seen her work before at boutiques that sell her line of "Miso Pretty" bath products with the pretty Asian graphics. This is why I love to go shopping at Target: because amid the toothpaste, diapers and snack foods, there's always the fun of discovering some cool, modern or just plain purty designs to fluff the nest with. There are a lot more items in this collection not featured on the Target web site...like little 3-D place card figurines, candles, wooden nesting eggs and big tin buckets. I'm thinking one of the buckets, filled with a cluster of silk blue hydrangeas & yellow daffodils, will be a great centerpiece for the Easter buffet table. Eventually I'll get around to actually planning what my dear family will actually eat at this Easter shindig, but for now...I've got my plates.

Happy Spring to you....

Queen of My Heart

2007-03-13T22:51:00.000-07:00

My baby turned 5 on Saturday. Five years old? How did that happen?

It's a cliche that time flies quicker when you have children, but it's a cliche for a good reason. Five years old means that she has officially left the land of babyhood and toddlerhood and even preschooler-hood for good. In five months she'll be starting kindergarten and beginning her long odyssey of public school life. No wonder my heart is filled with such dread. I quake with my dark imaginings of what peer pressure and standardized testing pressure and fit-in-the-box pressure will do this brilliant, funny, fearless, imaginative, confident beauty.

But I guess I'll save that post and more of those musing for later in the year. For now...I present to you my girl, my wonder, my first born, my only daughter. "Mommy, you're the queen of my heart," she told me frequently this past year.

I once had the thought that Lily was born in Technicolor. How I love to look at old movies and musicals from the '50s, if only to admire the lipstick reds and intense, vibrant hues of the costumes and sets. "Why can't real life be in Technicolor?" I've thought more than once. At yet when I look at this girl, its seems that she is indeed made of all those larger and truer-than-life colors. She seems to pop against the background of our everyday lives.
How I love to rest my eyes upon this child, and marvel that she is my own. Happy Birthday, sweet Lily. I know that you spent a lot of time when you were four telling us about how you're tired of being a human, and that you're ready right now to turn into a mermaid OR a pixie, but you should know that we're quite pleased with the form you've taken in this life's incarnation -- magical little girl -- and hope you stay this way for a good while longer.

Love,
Your Mommy

...Followed by a Weird, Long Week

2007-03-07T21:56:00.000-08:00

Funny now to think about my last post and the good, long day I had with the kids. That day will be 2 weeks ago tomorrow, and what an eon ago it feels like, now. The day after, I got one of those calls we all dread. When your mother calls before 7am in tears, you know to brace yourself, even in that half-second before she begins to speak. And so that's how I came to find out that my dear grandpa had passed away earlier that Friday morning. He was 88 and died at home, after a bad week, which was really more like another episode in a long, bad year of slow decline and increasing frailty and complications. "He was so tired," we all said, which was true, but that still stopped short of offering much in the way of comfort.

And so my good, long day was followed by a weird, long week that involved a few drives out to L.A. county and the home my grandparents shared for over forty years, for the better part of their nearly seventy years of married life. It also involved having to have the "death" conversation with Lily, who has never had to deal with anything like that before -- not even with a more simple lifeform, like a goldfish or hamster. (She had far fewer questions than I anticipated, even after the open-casket funeral.) It also involved me, getting up in front of all those I hold my dear, every single member of my immediate and not-so immediate family, and giving my grandfather's eulogy last Thursday morning at the memorial chapel in Rose Hills. My family kept calling it a "family memory" to make me feel a little less stressed about the duty I'd been charged with, but whatever you want to call it -- it was stressful. I was convinced I'd either have a panic attack or faint clear away, but I did neither . People said they liked it, that it was good. I hope so. All I know is that it was immensely draining and took a lot more brain power than I typically use these days to write. At least I've got this blog, so the writing gears up in my noggin hadn't completely rusted over from disuse.

In my eulogy/family tribute, I used Yosemite as something of a metaphor for what my grandfather was to me, and to my family -- an ever-present, seemingly permanent feature on the landscape of our lives. I said it better then, and I don't want to rehash it here, but you get the gist.

I'm glad my children got to know him, and even more glad that he got to know my children, whom he adored. I could say that life has returned to normal around here, but that's not entirely true, either. Perhaps for Myk and the children, but for me, there is still that loss. It surprises me daily, a missing tooth that stuns my tongue and jolts my routine, even for that second. Outwardly, life keeps trucking on, as it always does, and especially with two small children in the house. No time to reflect, no time to even mourn, somehow, it feels. Miss Thing is turning 5 on Saturday, so there's a party to plan and gifts and cake to buy, for a different and better kind of celebration of a life this coming weekend.

The picture above is of Yosemite's famous Half Dome, covered in April snow. It was taken the last time I visited Yosemite, during spring break from grad school, in 2001. What a long time ago that feels, yet it's barely a half a blink in the long, enduring lifespan of Yosemite valley. I can't wait to go back and introduce my children to this beautiful place, someday.

A Good, Long Day

2007-02-22T22:03:00.000-08:00

Today was a good day, for some odd reason. Even though, or perhaps, it was dark and gloomy outside, and I had errands to run and Lily was home, too. She only goes to preschool three days a week and I am sometimes made to feel -- albeit very subtly -- from mom acquaintances that I'm not quite fulfilling the terms of the stay-at-home mom agreement because I've put my child in school for 3 full days out of the work week. I have gotten looks. And comments. And it isn't cheap either, 3 full preschool days on a one-worker income. But, what price sanity, eh? Having Lily at home is not a bad thing in itself, but it does make it harder to get dressed and out of the house before noon.

But it was a good day. We hit Starbucks for a gift card errand, but also sat and shared some chocolate milk and watched the big trucks go by in the rain. And then we hit the new, pretty library, with it's still nearly-empty shelves in the children's section (and probably in all the adult aisles too, although I couldn't tell you). What books they do have are all so new and crisp and the jackets are so shiny, though, which is nice. And then we came home for lunch and I made canned chicken soup with leftover breadsticks and the kids were literally rubbing their tummies and declaring, "this is soooo good, mommy!"

While Tucker napped with his stuffed kitty beside him, Lily perused her new books and let me get almost fifteen minutes of alone time on the bed with my new issue of Domino. Then we went downstairs and made white chocolate & oatmeal cookies together, which is always a patience-trying endeavor, and this session too was not without tears, and yet I didn't actually lose my temper in a bad way, and Lily was being legitimately naughty and stubborn and deserved the scolding she got. (Read: no bad-mommy guilt on my end.)

Part of the reason I made cookies was because I wanted to test out my newfound information on how to avoid flat cookies. I won't bore you with the details, but for years I baked cookies just fine, without too much thought. Yet recently, all my cookies are coming out much too flat and crisp, with the bottoms sort of concave and full of airholes. I may blog further about it tomorrow, if I take some pictures, and share the results. Basically, the first batch was just as bad as ever, the second was much improved but a little overdone, and the third came pretty close, but not quite. (They all taste pretty good, though.)

So it was a good day, but a little long. A fourteen hour day, beginning at 7am with the sound of my personal, shouting alarm clock down the hall, and ending at nearly nine -- the children were in bed, yet both were still yelling out their final comments and demands of the day, making sure they used up those last few drops of patience going to waste in mom's reserve tank.

The other reason I made cookies is because I have a friend coming over tomorrow, just for coffee and talk. She is a mom and will bring her little guy along with her, but thank goodness, she is a real friend, and not one of the moms who would ever make innocent-yet-snide comments about the fact that my daughter has gone to preschool for the last two years, and so I'm busting out my favorite pretty cups, with the best batch of cookies, and hopefully, it'll be another good day. Only maybe just not quite as long.

And now a word about Neko Case.....

2007-02-20T22:37:00.000-08:00

It's shocking now to think that just a couple of months ago, I had no real idea of who Neko Case was. Because I like alt-country and indie rock, I'd heard her name in the background for quite a while, but never connected it to anything. What's even more surprising is that my husband was the one who turned me on to her. I sometimes tease Myk that he has the musical taste of a 14-year-old boy. That's not really true -- he likes a broad range of stuff -- but he does seem to be a sucker for bands who make videos of themselves running through the woods wearing scary masks. Bands like Mushroomhead and SlipKnot, those love children of Marilyn Manson.

But Myk would play her CD for me in the car, and at night, on those long drives home from L.A. or Orange County, I found myself wide awake and listening hard to each song, and then wanting to hear it again. And again. My first introduction was with her latest album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which was released in 2006, and made many critics lists as one of the best albums of the year. Even Rolling Stone had it listed among its Top 50. Now I wonder, how did I ever live without her?

At the beginning of this year, I made a resolution to see her perform live, so you bet we were thrilled to get tickets for her February 17 show at the Henry Fonda theater in Hollywood. And I was thrilled when, before her set began, Neko came out and introduced a Very Special Guest, who turned out to be country legend Porter Wagoner. Now, I admit that I couldn't name you one of his songs off the top of my head, but still I knew all about his TV show and how he helped make Dolly Parton a star, and of course those swanky, glittery Nudie suits. He was there with Marty Stewart, who produced his latest album (on the same small label that Neko records for), and then Dwight Yoakum and Billy Bob Thornton came onstage, too, and I nearly froze to death from the freakin' coolness in the room. And then they were done and we had to wait some more and it was almost 10:30 and my feet in their narrow black flats were killing me, standing there on the hard concrete for two hours. But then Neko came out with her band and opened her mouth and sang, "Oh, lie, I thought you were golden/I thought you were wild...." and our hair blew back from the force of her voice and the walls seemed to tremble when she hit the highest notes and I think I heard something about how the back wall of the place was blown out, too. And it occured to me halfway through the show that I'd never been at a concert before where I'd heard my favorite kind of music played so loud and so well....all that sweet ache of the slide guitar and power of the guitars right there in my chest, finally, after thirty-eight years on the planet.

It was a good show.

I don't know what to say about Neko's voice that hasn't already been said better and more eloquently elsewhere, but I'll try. She has a huge, huge voice, a physical force of a voice. It's been compared to Patsy Cline's voice many times, and I agree -- Patsy at her most hurt or fiesty, like in "She's Got You," or "Seven Lonely Days." She's not a singer, so much as a belter. Neko is often put into the alt-country or "noir-country" (whatever that means) genre, but really, she doesn't quite fit there, even though her music is full of banjos and slide guitar and deep, plucky bass notes. Highbrow honky-tonk, maybe.

Here's a comparison that I haven't read elsewhere: not so much in the earlier, twangier CDs, but in her last few albums like Fox Confessor and Blacklisted, the evocative mood and sound of her music reminds me very much of the intrumental tracks by Angelo Badalamenti on David Lynch's Wild At Heart soundtrack. Retro-edged, dark, spooky sounds to play on your car radio while driving very late at night. Also, a more literary comparison: the feel of Fox Confessor makes me think of Richard Ford's story collection Rock Springs, the cold, windswept, near-empty streets of his rural Montana in the 50s, and the ever-present dive bars that his characters (even the children) always seem to end up in at some point. And speaking of cold and windswept: I'm not the only one who finds Fox Confessor to be very much a winter album. The tone and texture of the songs remind me of bare trees, empty, steel-gray skies and a stripped-down landscape.

(Sigh. This is why I never became a music writer -- it's all comparison and similes, and nothing you can write can really evoke or come close to touching the work -- unless maybe you're Lester Bangs. And even then...).

But before I sign off on this love letter, I need to touch on the other element that makes Neko so amazing, which is her songwriting. Even if you ignored that voice, much of what keeps me coming back over & over to the songs is the power of her writing. I've already used the words evocative and moody and haunting way too many times in the post, and I'm really, really hesitant to use the word poetry unless we're talking about Bob Dylan, but....man. The best songs on Fox Confessor are no simple, catchy love jingles, but tricky and complicated narratives that tell stories, yet leave a lot of wide open spaces between the lines to fill in on your own. At first, I thought my favorite song on the album was "Hold On, Hold On," if only for this line:

"The most tender place in my heart is for strangers/
I know its unkind but my own blood's much too dangerous."

And then there's the pure storytelling in "Margaret vs. Pauline," about two girls from opposite sides of the tracks:

"Two girls ride the blue line/Two girls walk down the same street/
One left a sweater sittin' on the train and the other lost three fingers at the cannery...."

But in the end I think my favorite song on the album is "Star Witness," and it's dark tale of life and death among the lower-class. The sheer imagery in the song takes my breath away and reminds me, more than any book I've read lately, of the power words have to create whole worlds in just a few precise, brushstroking lines:

"Trees break the sidewalk/And the sidewalk skins my knees
There's glass in the thermos and blood on my jeans/
Nickels and dimes of the Fourth of July roll off in a crooked line/
To the chain-link lots where the red-tails dive/
Oh, how I forgot what it's like...."

My. Goodness.

Lately when I go out at night by myself, finally away from the demands of the children and the care and keeping of this house, I find myself driving effortlessly down the long streets of town, listening hard to Neko, and alone, alone, in the most perfect and empty way. I feel like I could keep on driving all night, across the freeway and hundreds of miles of open road, and not get tired with that voice in the car with me. Since Myk recently made me a big mix CD with four of her albums on it, all I can say is -- honey, consider yourself warned. Next time it's a really bad day, I might just get in the car, fill up the tank and keep on going until I'm at that surfboard shop in Mexico.

And finally -- finally! Let me just say this, which is true for all of my favorite writers and artists, the ultimate compliment, because it means I'm so deeply inspired:

She makes me want to write, to get it all out, and not stop until the story is told.

"And I said, "Amen..."

A Very Vintage Valentine...

2007-02-16T15:23:00.000-08:00

...to you. Yes, I know it's belated. That's just how things go around here these days. But I loved these Vintage Valentines a whole lot, so I had to share. Lily (okay, I) punched them out and we gave them to her playgroup friends earlier this week. (Although now that I look at this cover a little more, it seems a bit creepy to me, with Howdy Doody boy coming after Miss Apple Cheeks with those extra-long shears.)

Some parents force their tastes and attitudes on their kids by making them wear "Punk Rocker" baby onesies or Sex Pistols t-shirts. Me, I just make Lily give out retro Valentines. Cute, cute. As in, I wish I could tape one to my forehead-cute, if I could only pick which one.

We have quite a few left over. Maybe I'll save them and be on the ball enough to send them out next year. Ha! Good one. So instead, here are my Valentines to you out there in blogger-land. Along with my sincere wishes for love and sweet dreams and cherry-filled chocolates.

My own real Valentine's date was deferred until tomorrow night -- grandma is watching the kids while we go out to dinner and then here, to see her, my new musical love & obsession. Nearly every morning lately, I wake with one of her songs playing in my head, which is not a bad way at all to greet the day. With any luck I'll write a longer post on the subject very, very soon. Like in a few hours. But if not, you can at least bet that I'll be back with a post-show review.

January is Gone

2007-02-10T22:19:00.000-08:00

And none too soon for me. Yes, I know it's been a while since I've updated the blog. It doesn't feel like that long, but look at the date since the last post -- that's what? Almost 3 weeks ago now? And so just what have I been up to that I couldn't take the time to post?

Not much, beyond a low and vicious funk, such as I hadn't experienced in a while. I can't say why it happened, really. All I know is that I was okay, getting through my days, feeling a bit of those January blahs, but maintaining quite well. And then -- bam! I was slammed by some terrible speedball of bad hormones and bad karma and bad mojo and I don't know what else. But it just felt bad. When I was a kid and got into funks like that, my mom would sing me a little rhyme: "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll eat a worm." I felt like eating a lot of worms, as January came to a close. And if nobody liked me and everybody hated me, they'd have to get in line behind ME first, as I was the one hating myself the most, hating feeling so low and touchy and irritable and straitjacketed tightly into the mood, struggling against my self and those damn voices in my head. Gosh, they can be mean.

But it's over now. January is over, and February is here, and look at all the plans taking shape: plans for a concert date next week and plans for Lily's fifth birthday party and plans to re-do our kitchen with new cabinetry, and plans to take a big Hawaiian vacation to celebrate our 10-year anniversary later this summer. Plans! How I love you. Let's get crackin'.

The picture above isn't recent at all, since we haven't had nearly any rain this season. But this is the park that's right next to our house. It looks so peaceful here, after many days of showers that flooded out all the neighborhood children for a couple of days. I thought of this picture this past Thursday, when I took the kids down to play for a bit. I had our big tote bag of sand toys, a couple of juice boxes, and also one of those freebie parenting magazines that I grabbed as we walked out the door, just to have something to read. The kids ran to the park, and both started in on digging and shoveling the sand in the shade beneath the play structure, and I sat in the sand beside them and started flipping through the magazine.

Moments later, Lily got bored of watching the sand slip through her fingers, and started in on me:
"This is a ship, okay? [Meaning the play structure] And you need to get up on the ship. Right now."
Me: "No, not right now. I'm reading this."
"So, okay, when you hear the bell ring? That means it's time to get on the ship. Mommy? I hear the bell! Get on the ship! We're going to the beach and you need to get on the ship!"
Me: "Lily, we just got here. I'm reading my magazine and I don't want to play. YOU play, okay?"
"Okay, so, how do you want to get on the ship? 'Cuz there's a ladder, or these gray steps here, and so which way do you want to use to climb up on the ship?"

This is my daughter, fruit of my loins, with a will and a stubborn spirit even greater than my own. And I'm pretty damn stubborn. I mean, really stubborn. You know damn well I got up on that ship, right? You don't think I WON, do you? I never win, but I still try, and you'd think after nearly five years I would have learned the lesson this girl tries to teach me nearly every moment of every day, but no. Sometimes I think Lily was sent here simply because the universe is telling me that what I really need to do in this life is just roll over and shout "uncle!" up to the sky. And maybe I could try that, but Lily would ignore that too, and remind me it's time to get on the ship, mom, okay? Okay! Fine! I'm on the ship! Here I am, having fun. And yes, I see the beach over there, too. But don't think you're going to make me start yelling my McDonald's order into that damn intercom-speaker thingy again, because I'm really not going to do it this time! Okay?

(But where was Tucker, you might ask? Tucker was under the structure for most of all of that, happily pushing his trucks through the sand. This is the only reason that I'm not actually in a real straightjacket, yet. For if he had the same will as his sister -- or rather, chose to use his own formidable will to push mommy around like his sister does -- , I really would be shouting "uncle," over and over, to those nice men in their clean white suits.)

In case I needed outside proof that my daughter really is a tiny bit more demanding than most, five minutes after I returned to the sand and my magazine, two other moms arrived, each with a little daughter who looked about three. And while I sat there, flipping through articles about ADD and healthy snack options, I marveled as the two women sat on a bench beneath a tree and carried on a long conversation -- without any interruptions from their kids. Oh sure -- a couple of times one of the little girls called out, "look mommy!" across the park, and the mom would cut her eyes for two seconds at her child and say, "mmmm-hmmmmm, that's nice," and once, one of the girls asked to be pushed on the swing. "Okaaaay," the mom said, but she never got up, and the kid didn't ask again. What parenting book are these women reading?? What drugs are they giving their kids? I need to get in on this action. Now!

Meanwhile, I, ever the sucker, was up and yelling into the intercom-speaker thingy, insisting that no, I really didn't need a strawberry shake to go with my order of McNuggets and fries. Okay?! Okay. Well, maybe just one shake.

And because January is over now, and a new month is here, I can tell you that this was a good day and that I didn't need a shot of tequila, or a hit of smack, or even time alone in a dark closet to recover from our outing at the park. February, I'm loving you.

Sunny Day Nest

2007-01-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking that although my "About Me" space over there on the right states that part of the slant of this blog is about me trying to nest with style, I've actually had very few posts devoted to the subject. Back in October, there was this post, after I entered Apartment Therapy's Fall Color Contest, but that's been about it.

Unless, of course, you count my disastrous recent riff on puffy couches. (And I don't.) But, happy news on that front: we ordered a couch this weekend. It'll be here a week from now. No picture yet, but I will say one word, which is a bit of a surprise: sectional.

Anyway, despite the lack of posts, we've been adding a few new items, including the sunburst mirror above my fireplace. I love it, and love how it opens up and changes the whole feel of the room, especially compared to the the big, oblong wood-framed mirror it replaced. I know that it's placed a bit high right now in relation to the fireplace, but we plan to add a floating shelf/mantle soon, and that will fix the problem. (I'd show you the entire fireplace area for context, but then you'd see the collection of 3 large plastic fire trucks that were parked in front.)

Also, we finally replaced my awful oval, country-style kitchen table. You know those kind that have the white tile squares on top? That was mine. And I was so happy when I first bought it, because back then, it replaced the truly heinous dark faux-wood table with steel legs, circa 1978, that my husband owned when we got married. But my country table with its country chairs no longer fit the space or my vision at all...especially with all that horrible rubber grout that was impossible to clean.

Here's my new table. It's big. It opens up with a leaf and gets even bigger. Sorry for the bad picture -- I took it late in the afternoon and the light in the room was awful. Finally, here's my new old Belmont radio that my dad gave us the last time we visited. It's occupying a proud place on the living room bookshelf, and despite some dings and having survived from at least the middle of the last century, it still works, just needs a new cord, so that my house won't burn down if we leave it plugged in. But what I love most is that the channel-changer things display the call letters of some of the old radio stations here in the Southern California area, like KHJ, KNX, and KFI. You push the buttons, and the dial goes to that station's frequency.

Pretty high-tech, huh?

As far as the AT Fall Color contest went, I didn't even place, but did make it onto their site, which was honor enough. I sent in my entry just hours before the deadline, as did many, many people that day, and only a very few of us procrastinators made the cut. Unfortunately, I really wasn't thrilled with their First Prize winner. It's so....studied and careful for me, and has that very chilly space-pod look that many people associate with modern design. Is it me, or does it remind you of a very flavorless watermelon? But that's subjective taste for you, as many, many people loved the winning entry. And there were so many wonderful, creative entries overall, beyond even just the other runner ups.

So, there's my nesting update for you. We have many plans in the works for this year, including, of course, incorporating the new modern sectional into the great room, turning our sadly un-visited and largely wasted guest room into a playroom, and even (gulp) an Ikea-flavored kitchen redo. Fun, fun, so stay tuned.

First Book of the Batch: Pattern Recognition

2007-01-18T22:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, first I should give the disclaimer that even with a B.A. and Master's in English and being a lifelong, die-hard bookworm, I really kind of suck at writing generally about books. I hate giving grammar-school type book report summaries of plot, and I just don't have the time or inclination to go deeply into all the academic whatsis of what makes a book work. Or not.

That said, I'm happy to say that I loved reading this first book in my Christmas-gift batch. I had a great time with it, and it reminded me that it's a pity when good books and good writers are slapped with a genre label, and then people like me tend to turn up their noses and move on down the shelf. Although it helped that the book was covered in glowing reviews from esteemed places like The Washington Post, and The New York Times, as opposed to, say, CyberGeek Monthly (I'm sure it exists, somewhere).

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson, was not on my Amazon wishlist. Myk bought it for me because he'd listened to the audiobook a couple of years back and liked it and wondered what my take would be. I knew of William Gibson more because of his cool visionary-of-the-future image than because of his actual writing, and of course I'd heard of Neuromancer. (Another book Myk speaks well of, that I've yet to pick up. Although that will probably change, now.) Just thinking about Neuromancer gives me the heebie-jeebies, because although I have no idea what the plot is about -- except that it takes place in the future -- the title alone reminds me of all that creepy, alien-scary artwork by H.R. Geiger. And Geiger's artwork, as experienced by the few wall calendars Myk has displayed over the years, reminds me in turn of all those dark, scary, herky-jerky Tool videos. Taken together, all those associations and biases and generally creepy vibes kept me well away from any of Gibson's work.

Back to the book. So, Pattern Recognition is about this young woman named Cayce (after Edgar, which I guessed before it was explained), pronounced Case. She lives an austere, modern life in NYC where she works as a freelance cool-hunter for major corporations and advertisers, who want to tap into that mojo she has for knowing what young, net-savvy consumers will go for. Cayce has some quirks, the most noteworthy being her "allergy" for brand logos and labeling, from designer clothing labels to the Michelin man. Mickey Mouse makes her queasy, and the Michelin man gives her some serious panic attacks. She pays a locksmith to grind the Levi markings off the buttons of her black 501s, and favors black clothing that is intentionally without reference to any major trend or era. Cayce is also a follower of "the footage," a series of brief, non-linear film clips that have begun to mysteriously appear in random dark alleys of the web. She and fellow Footage junkies spend lots of time on an online forum dissecting the meaning and trying to guess the creator of the films. Oh, and Cayce's dad, a security expert with ties to the CIA, disappeared in New York on 9/1l.

And now I'm getting tired and overwhelmed with the book report-ish aspect of the above, and I thus send you here if you want a better summary. Suffice it to say, I thought the novel was pretty rip-roarin', and just plain fun., although the general mood of the story itself is rather somber, gray and melancholic, with all the references to graves, and ash and the looming presence of the Twin Towers, in their absence. But reading this also made me feel kinda hip, in that its main setting, in spite of all the world travel to London, Tokyo and Russia, is really the Internet itself, and I think it captures pretty well the feeling of having what sometimes feels like half your life and contacts floating apart from you out there in cyberspace (a word Gibson himself coined back in Neuromancer). Also, since none of the other online summaries seem to mention it, I should at least bring up the weird ESP and psychic stuff that occurs at a few key moments, too -- referencing cleverly back to Cayce's name and namesake, I suppose.

I kept thinking that this would make a great movie, if it was treated right and they actually kept to the story. Usually having that feeling while reading a novel is a bad sign overall, but I think in this case -- and, let's face it, Gibson is still primarily considered a genre writer, even if he did create the cyberpunk genre himself -- having that "this should be a movie!" feeling doesn't mean that the writing itself is dashed-off pap.

And now, having gone over to the Wikipedia site, I see tantalizing news that Gibson's new book, Spook Country, will be released this year, and also that director Peter Weir is working on a movie version of Pattern Recognition. Now if only they don't cast Reese Witherspoon or Angelina Jolie to play Cayce.....

Anyway, bottom line: Good book. Thanks, honey. (But I'm still not going to be reading any of your Douglas Adams books anytime soon.)

Winter Bounty

2007-01-17T14:50:00.000-08:00

It's been so cold here, and it's lasted for several days, which is the odd part. Usually in SoCal, we'll get a couple of really chilly nights every winter, but this snap has lasted for what? Nearly a week now? I'm good with it. It's winter, and I'm not ready for hot again, not after the endless long summer. Hard to recall now, but we were still having days that were up in the 80s, in November.

This weekend my sister and nephew came for a visit, and what did we do with a chilly Sunday afternoon, but decide to drive up to the mountain community of Idyllwild, about an hour away, where it was even colder. There was a thin layer of icy, crunchy snow on the ground, and the kids loved it, and couldn't stop playing with it, even with no snow-worthy protection for their hands. The icicles above are from that day. I wonder if the children will possibly remember any of it? Lily, at nearly five, is probably the only likely candidate, since both Tucker and Riley are only two. It was a good day -- even with that episode of car sickness with Tucker (which happened right as we arrived into town), and chubby red nearly-frostbitten hands, and only patches of grimy, crunchy snow to play with.

Yesterday was not such a good day. In fact, yesterday was very very much like the day I had in this post. How does that phenomenon work, that the more conscious I am of trying to keep my cool and stay pleasant and not crazy, the worse the day becomes? Why does it have to backfire into a Day from Hell, parenting-wise? Voices were raised, crying was frequent (but not from me, at least), my hand connected with soft skin, and still they kept comin' at me, undeterred and ready for the next round of whining/squabbling/fussing/. Lily, who is morphing into a teenager the closer she gets to her fifth birthday, was the worst of the two, as usual. At one moment, I said to her "okay, I was just asking. Sorry." And her reply? "I'm sorry you asked." Snap! The effort required to refrain from slapping the child at these moments just sucks the life force from me and leaves me feeling like a very used, very tired and very bitter-looking dishrag.

All of this makes me realize that I truly am in the midst of those January doldrums mentioned previously. I'm suddenly aware that for the last week or two I've had this background tension, this stress that keeps my shoulders tight and my mouth set at an unhappy angle. There is nothing really wrong, of course, except my own mild dissatisfaction with the status quo of the days. There is a chaotic closet waiting for me to finally clean out, and Christmas gift books to ship and return to Amazon, and boxes piled in a corner from Christmas of those gifty-things that I don't really have a use for (such as my Relaxing Vibrating Cow Pillow), yet I can't just throw away, either. Yes, this is that January-state I knew was coming.

But December! Let me tell you about December. It was good. I was happy and peaceful and felt that by making some lists and trying to plan ahead, I got a small gain on the chaos of the season. I took so many pictures of things I meant to blog about -- perfect, breezy weather, crafts and baking with Lily that did not end in tears or anger or even tensed shoulders. A birthday dinner alone with my husband, and a trip to Disneyland. All good stuff. But even more than those events, there was a feeling I kept meaning to write about, that feeling of bounty, of being filled to the brim of the good stuff in the universe. The deep and abiding joy of having a husband who offers up his warm legs to me under the covers, when mine are freezing cold. The tears that sprung to my eyes at Lily's preschool Christmas party, as I watched Tucker running after the older kids and laughing, and my gratitude for his good health and happiness. The cold and starry nights, as I stood at the window while my family slept in peace, and sensed the coming of a holiday that celebrated the birth of a baby -- that everyday miracle deemed special by men for just that one day. So, yeah. December? December pretty much rocked, looking back.

So. Now we are deep in the midst of true winter and although the days are slowly getting a bit longer and the sunlight lasts a few minutes more each day, I need to be patient. I need to lean into the season and remember that all those good things are still just as true -- happy, bright children, cold starry nights, and warm hubby limbs, waiting for me when I finally shake off the unhappiness of merely another January day, and put my cranky, weary self into bed.

Chankity-Chank!

2007-01-15T16:44:00.000-08:00

So, as mentioned, I drove in to OC on Friday evening to go see a man about a horse, otherwise known as the Tony-award winning play Equus.

It was at the tiny Stages theater, not that tiny is such a bad thing when it comes to puttin' on a show, but...well. I'm not sure what to say about the play. I was all geared up for some real drama, darkness, and violence. And I suppose all of that was present, too, but what was most obvious to me was the play felt dated, referencing back to an era a few decades ago when therapy and psychiatry were the hot topics of conversation at New York cocktail parties. (Unlike now, when the hot topics are real estate and equity). (Or so I hear tell.)

Anyway, the play is about a psychiatrist treating a disturbed young man who has taken a spike and blinded six of the horses at the stable where he's employed. But really, it's supposed to be about passion, and religion and how the shrink feels like maybe he shouldn't try to "cure" the kid, since he feels passion (albeit for the Horse God) on a daily basis, whereas the shrink hasn't kissed his wife in six years. Yadda yadda yadda...

Okay, so maybe I should insert here that the six wounded horses were ever-present at the side of the set, as portrayed by six shirtless men wearing close-fitting Juicy-type brown sweats, their heads adorned with heavy, open-air metal replicas of horse heads -- with the wire mesh on the eyes ripped for effect. They were also up on half-foot metal stilts that ended in what looked like real horseshoes. Every once in a while, when the drama onstage called for it, the horses would paw the ground, making a harsh, metal scraping sound on the concrete floor. And occasionally, they would also prance around the perimeter of the boxing-ring like set where the drama unfolded.

But this isn't what made me giggle. No, what made me want to start giggling in that bad laughing-at-a-funeral sort of way, was the impassioned cries of the actor playing the young man, as he lived out his Horse-as-Jesus reveries and called out the names of the horses, something like: "and the Fleck! and the Flick!" (And the My Friend Flicka?) And, referencing, the metal bridle or mouthpiece thingys that horses wear: "And the Chankity-Chank!" Lord. Maybe I would've been okay if I'd only heard that phrase once, but I heard "chankity-chank!" a good handful of times...and that's even with us leaving the show at intermission.

No, we didn't stay until the end. I sat there, worried, feeling like maybe moving seventy-plus miles from any kind of cultural center really has started to turn me into some kind of puffy hick. So I was quite relieved when the lights rose for intermission to see Christina roll her eyes and say that she was quite ready to bail, too.

But the evening was hardly a wash. There was my time browsing alone at the cool Out of Vogue thrift store, where I bought a vintage tweed coat and two atomic-esque dinner plates. Not to mention lots and lots of catching up and man-dishing with a good friend that I don't see hardly enough of these days.

A man about a horse, indeed.

Reset

2007-01-15T14:58:00.000-08:00

It became increasingly clear to me over the weekend that my last few posts needed to be removed. I was terribly tired of thinking about them, tired of making further explanations and justifications, even if they were only in my head. I felt like they were sitting out there in cyberspace like so much space debris, polluting the universe like defunct old Russian satellites. And no, it wasn't that one angry comment that was the deciding factor. Or rather, maybe because my posts only generated that sole angry comment. Now, if I'd gotten scores of hate mail over the silly issue of puffy couches, I'd feel kinda cool, like I was a kindred blogger with Dooce, and her hysterical post about all the hate comments she received after she riffed on the perceived need for free-range chicken broth. But I am not Dooce, with her millions of site visits per day. I'm just lonely me, over here in my forgotten cubbyhole of the 'net. Which is fine. But one angry comment, versus a hundred, or even fifteen, just felt a little too....personal.

Therefore, the posts are gone. Whew. I feel better already.

I am still in need of a new couch set. I am still frustrated about my inability to find something close to my needs at the usual major furniture retailers. But, I am not going to combine that complaint with my bitching about the inordinate amount of puffy, trashy, Nascar-watchin' folks in my town. I cannot blame that crowd for my furniture problems, much as I really don't need to point out to the world that they live here in the first place. Otherwise, I may as well call my next post "The Sky is Blue."

Outta Here

2007-01-12T00:04:00.000-08:00

I'm going tomorrow to see a production of Equus with my dear pal Christina. Dinner, dishing and mutilated horses. A girl can't ask for too much more. [Insert bad horse pun here.]

Details to follow.

Meh

2007-01-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that's right. You heard me. My first blog in over a month, the first of the new year, and all I have to say is: Meh. (I'm a blogger now, you know, so I can say that.)

Big plans for the new year. Things to learn, things to read, places to go. Obsessions to blog about. For instance: I got a sewing machine for Christmas. A sewing machine! I told my mom about it on Christmas night, and she nearly spit out her drink, a perfectly reasonable reaction to that astounding fact. I OWN a sewing machine. I don't know how to use it. I go to visit it sometimes, and touch it's cool white plastic case, but right now, I feel like Myk may as well have bought me a....carburetor, say, because I have about as much clue as to what to do with the thing. It's important to note that I asked for the sewing machine. I have big plans for things such as pillows and curtains and maybe even aprons. Yes, I said aprons. That's another post entirely

But today is January 3. The staging area for the rest of the year. I hate January. So.....meh. The learning curve to the whole year is before me, and it feels like the sheer face of El Capitan at Yosemite. I have to learn how to use my new machine. I have to reseach and surf the web for literal hours until my eyes start to bleed until I find the perfect vacation for us to go on later this year. I have to pick the perfect color to paint the kid's playroom. This will all be lots of fun when the time arrives, but it's all out there, waiting, in the days and months ahead. But today, on January 3....not so much.

Also. I'm feeling really, really "meh" about Temecula again. I like the cold nights, the open sky, the views of distant low mountains from the upstairs windows, the excellent API score of the elementary school down the block (because I hear such things are important to the eternal souls of my children). I don't like the puffy blonde women with their puffy fat flip-flopped French manicured feet with the "NOTW" stickers on their SUVs who seem to make up so much of the population. Or their husbands, in their big white pick up trucks, either. And while I've meant some fine, fun people to spend an hour or an evening with, overall I'm left with that frustrated, champing-at-the-bit feeling I've felt throughout life from about fourth grade onward, when I feel like I need to reign in my vocabulary, my comments, my general IQ, to fit in with the crowd. It sucks and I'm tired of it. (Yeah, I know what a horrible elitist snob I sound like, but give me a break. Because the fact remains that while you sit in your town reading this, I am, in fact, still right here in Temecula. The place, I admit, I decided that we should move to three years ago.)

In light of all that, I'm thinking maybe this image would be great to put in my guest bathroom, which needs a new spot of art. A conversation piece, no? It's from the Art & Ghosts shop on Etsy. I actually really like some of the photographs very much, but admit that I'd probably be a little creeped out by this number above if I was alone in the bathroom after midnight. And I also realize that putting them in my bathroom would be a little too purposely eccentric, and I'm not seventeen anymore. I'm supposed to have outgrown that urge to perturb the grown ups, right?

Anyway. So, sorry if the first blog of the year is sounding a little bored and hostile. I'm just feeling a little bored and hostile today. Which, y'know, just all adds up to a big Meh. (Especially as described in definition #4)

Cheers!

Happy Birthday, Baby

2006-11-25T22:35:00.000-08:00

Tucker is turning 2 tomorrow. Two years since he came into this world, on the day after Thanksgiving 2004. I had big plans to enjoy some turkey and pecan pie, but ended up getting sick and nauseated after two bowls of Frosted Flakes that morning, and it was all downhill from there. I was suppposed to be induced on his birthday, but went into labor on my own and was already well on the way when I arrived at St. Joseph's hospital at around six in the morning. Anyway. Tucker is turning two, and if you know us, you know that it was a rough year, at least for two weeks in the middle of it when he was so sick. But I don't want to dwell on that. It happened, and it was terrible, but he's all better now and full of that robust, endless energy of toddler boys. Run, run, run all day, and then crash into bed at night.

I want to celebrate this beautiful boy, this little charmer. I'm so fascinated by the sweetness of this little boy. It's like this rich vein of sugary goodness running right through the core of his personality -- his sweetness and loving nature. How a little boy who loves to cuddle with his mommy and give her big wet smacking kisses can eventually turn into a macho guy who grabs his crotch whilst reaching for the remote and /or a beer is a strange process, but I'm thrilled to have this front row seat to see how it all happens. I dare you not to agree that he's destined to be quite the heartbreaker, no? Plus, he a Sagittarius, like his mama, and I already know what unrepentant flirts we can be. Watch out, ladies of the world.

Happy Birthday, my dear little boy. I hope it's a fabulous year of sunshine and laughter and music and lots of playing with your beloved trucks & cars. And lots more chocolate pudding, too.

Settling In

2006-11-16T22:31:00.000-08:00

I know it's been over a week now since my last post. It's not that I have nothing to say, quite. A lot of it is time and inclination, and also a certain intimadation factor. Just as in my "real" writing, I hold myself to a high standard set by those I admire, and so it goes with this blogging business, too. Just like a baby duck will waddle after the first warm, breathing thing it sees and call it mama, so it goes that some of the first blogs I read and modeled myself after are done by some awfully creative and/or talented and/or funny folks who obviously have huge stores of wit and creativity and time that I can only aspire to. (Insert reminder here that I have an almost-two-year old and extremely spirited four-year-old. But still.)

I never set out for this to be a so-called "mommy blog," in which I detail every day's new adventures in snot and tears and hard-earned wisdom. There are already plenty of women out there doing that, not that the blogosphere doesn't have room for one more. I really hoped that I'd write a little about the kids, and a lot more about my interior life, and what I'm reading, or listening to, or baking or buying or decorating this week. It's just that, well, the kids really do take up such huge chunks of my mental and physical focus and energy, that by the end of the day, it's hard to form a coherent thought -- much less a sentence. And then I click over to one of the crafting blogs I frequent, and see this sort of thing. So much for using the kids as an excuse, when this woman has the skills & organization to make birthday gifts ahead of time for her children's friends. And here I can barely get my lazy ass to Target the day before a party that Lily's been invited to. It can make a girl depressed and a little self-castigating. (But what doesn't?)

Anyway. So, I'm still around and still feeling my way around this blogging business. I think about my little blog a lot, and compose posts in my head, but I know that's not quite the same. Trust me, it's all up here (she says, tapping noggin mysteriously).

Speaking of settling in -- this week I sent out a little feeler e-mail to three women I know about having them and their spouses and children over here for a little festive get-together next month. That may not sound like much, but to me, it's pretty huge. Most of my entertaining has revolved around my warped and stunted extended family, so having real people over -- well. Get me the Prozac prescription now, because I'm not sure I can handle it. It's another example of how much I've come to regard Temecula as home. Last night, I remember having some snippet of a dream in which I was standing before a large stand of trees swaying in the wind, and knowing it was Temecula, and thinking how I didn't want to leave. Huh.

The picture above was taken a few weeks ago in the early morning, before Daylight Savings Time ended, when it was still a little gray and still out when I'd wake up at 6:30. I like the way the trees look, with that warm, golden, sun-just-cresting-over-the hills glow, and that second balloon in the distance, half-hidden in the wispy clouds. The children were both still snug in their beds, and I got to savor this for a moment or two, before Lily called out "mommy??!!" in that panicked way she does every morning, and another day was off to a roaring start.

Election Day

2006-11-07T21:23:00.000-08:00

Did you? It's hard to tell, living in this very conservative hamlet in the midst of otherwise-liberal SoCal, whether or not all the hype about the populace turning against Bush is true or just, you know, the crazy lefty media trying to brainwash us all into thinking so. Being a die-hard Dem myself, I still felt a little paranoid voting tonight. I was sure a right-winger was standing behind me in the crowded and stuffy polling room, peeking at my choices, and planning to harass me out in the parking lot. After all, this is the town where I was convinced that, if I'd put a Kerry sign on my front lawn two years ago, someone would have egged our house. And I still worry about the hubby, driving in his little rice-burner up the freeway every morning with his "WTF" sticker proudly displayed, amongst all those pickups on steroids with their River Rat and Glamis decals. Ah, Temecula. Someday I'll write a longer and more thoughtful post on my love/hate (or rather, grudging acceptance/general dislike) relationship with my current hometown.

But for now. Yes, I voted today. And didn't accomplish much else. We went to the park, the kids played hard and got dirty like kids should, we came home, they took a bath together, and I made lunch. At the end of the day, the kids were still alive with no missing or broken limbs, so I guess if nothing else, I accomplished my job as a mother, and as an American, too. No wonder I'm pooped.

R.I.P., Halloween 2006

2006-11-01T22:49:00.000-08:00

Lily and Tucker gaze upon the grave of Halloween 2006.

It was hectic, it was crazy, it was much too expensive with those damned Disney costumes, but it was also fun to be out last night in the cool autumn air with all the other trick or treaters, watching Tucker understand after just the first house that this holiday was all about the candy, man. And Lily was so polite, remembering at every house not just to say "thank you," but wishing everyone "Happy Halloween!" too. And it was interesting to see how she was more aware this year of the bigger kids, how they wore scarier costumes, and were allowed to go out all by themselves.

And no, the Halloween Witch or the Halloween Fairy will not be making a stop at our door. Have you heard of her? She's the invention of plucky parents who don't want their chidren's teeth to rot from all their hard-won candy. How it works is, you let your kids keep just a few pieces of candy, then leave the rest of the bag on your front stoop overnight. In the morning, poof! The Halloween Witch has come and taken your Butterfingers and Smarties and all those lemon-flavored Tootsie Rolls, and in their place is....a new Tonka truck! Or, a Barbie doll! Or...a coloring book about healthy dental habits! Fun!

My thinking on the matter goes something along the lines of this: it's already enough to ask my little girl, who is oh-so-curious about the natural world, to maintain her belief in Santa Claus, and that he is keeping track of her naughty or nice behavior. Not to mention the whole concept of God and heaven and angels. Just tonight, I had to try explain to her what the Devil is, after she saw a cartoon illustration of a kid in a devil costume. (Lily: So, he's like the bad God?
Me: Uh....yeah. Kinda like that.)

So maybe my children will have a few more mercury-based fillings in their wee little heads, compared to their non-sugared peers. But maybe, just maybe, I can get them to believe in Santa, and all things magical and unseen, for just a little longer than average, too.

Word Of the Day: Mabinogion

2006-10-29T21:55:00.000-08:00

I was able to extricate myself from the house for a few hours of solitude on Sunday, and headed first to one of the two used bookstores in town. If you're into paperback mysteries or romances, this would be the place for you, but since I'm not a fan of either, I found myself, after spending fifteen minutes in the children's section (because as soon as I'm away from the kids, the first thing I tend to do is shop for them), looking through the non-fiction historical section. I picked up an old book, something to do with Celtic history or lore and felt something rumble deep, deep within a forgotten passageway of my brain: "Oh right....yeah...that's like the...what's it called? what's that word? I used to know that word, that big word, that book...Rhiannon....Stevie Nicks....M...M-something....?"

After I left and was driving to my next retail destination, I remembered the word, and it flashed across my brain it its original, Welsh spelling with all those extra "y"s, which would read something like, "Mabynogwyian," because that's just how my brain likes to file things: the more arcane and hard to spell, the better. I used to know this word well, and was proud of knowing it. I remember once, perhaps in a college class, or in a crowd of other English majors, rolling it off my tongue and making reference to it in context with some other old book and giving myself a little pat on the back for my ability to flash my academic wit on cue.

But the truth is, I didn't come to know this word through any academic research, discovered while hunkered down late one night in a library study carrel, poring over forgotten texts from the basement. Instead, all the credit for knowing about the Mabinogion has to go to the White Witch herself -- Stevie Nicks. A long, long time ago, back when the world was full of unicorns and rainbows and crystals and white lace, there was me, in a bedroom, alone with my copy of Stevie's Belladonna album. I could probably write another post detailing my love for Stevie, and how I admired her billowing gowns and her rings and just her whole darn tambourine-shakin', girl singer-songwriter gig. For a while there, before I caved in to the pressure to be dark and ironic, and way before I got seriously down and gritty with my rock and roll, Stevie was my It Girl, and I devoured every bit of information about her that I could get my hands on.

Ah, Stevie. For a while, it was just you and me, girl.

So anyway. With my desire to inhale every bit of Stevie lore and trivia, I'm sure this is how I first learned of the Mabinogion. Maybe it was in some old copy of Rolling Stone from the 70s. Maybe it was in one of her late-night radio interviews with Jim Ladd on KMET (Whoo-Ya!), that I recorded by holding my tape recorder up next to the radio. Somehow, I learned that her Fleetwood Mac song "Rhiannon" was based on a character from Welsh mythology. I'm about 98% sure that Stevie didn't reference the word "Mabinogion" herself, but that little tidbit about the Welsh myth would have been enough to send my nerdy, obsessed little self scurrying to the library or bookstore to look it up and learn more. Basically, the Mabinogion is a collection of some very, very old Welsh legends, some based in historical fact, and some supposedly pre-dating the King Arthur legends, and if you want to know a little more, you can click here.

All of this led to a pleasant little stream-of-conciousness moment, just thinking about Stevie, and the Mabinogion, and the novel The Mists of Avalon, which, for some forgotten reason, prompted me to ink a blue crescent moon on Stevie's forehead on the very large poster which took up a wall in my bedroom. And all of that led me to think of all those gothic-y British things, of druids and castles and wuthering heights and Kate Bush singing "Heathcliff! It's me, Cathy, let me in at your window!" And I remembered all my passions, how large they were back then, all of that adolescent stuff that filled the room, the emotions that buffetted me about helplessly like a little sailboat. God, it was intense to be sixteen. And then I thought of how it will be November soon, and for me, November has always been the season for listening to Zeppelin's "Battle of Evermore," in all of it's Tolkien references-mandolin-strumming glory. And then I remembered that if it's November, and it's Zeppelin-medieval-gypsy influences and mandolin strumming that I want, then it's obviously time for Heart's Little Queen. Another album cover that I spent many an hour gazing upon:
I miss having all of that time on my hands, hours and days and weeks of crushing boredom that I filled by staring at album covers and memorizing the lyrics to sweeping ballads and posing in front of the mirror and reading novels about Lancelot and the Lady of the Lake. I miss the time, but I certainly don't miss the age. And thank goodness I finally did grow out of my Stevie obsession, otherwise, if I'd held true to the vow I made back then, my daughter would be named Rhiannon Jade, and I'd still have my ribbon-bedecked tambourine hanging on a nail above my bed. (It really was lovely though, the way the low winter sunlight would hit the big round crystal hanging in my window just so, sending shards of rainbows scattering about the bedroom walls.)

Push It

2006-10-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

Myk likes to remind me sometimes that I am a big, walking red button just begging to be pushed, like the "Easy" button in the Staples ads. This is in reference to the fact that I'm ultra-sensitive and high strung and completely incapable of keeping my emotions, however fleeting, off my face. I hate this. Not only does it mean that I'm never going to beat Jennifer Tilly in a world poker tournament, it also means that, on the days when I least want to talk or explain myself or otherwise engage, I get people asking me what's wrong. And somehow, it's always the people who refuse to accept "ah, nothin'," as an answer, and keep prodding until I spill some beans and talk it out a little and invariably feel a wee bit better. God, I hate that too. Sometimes a girl just wants to wallow, y'know?

So, there's that element of my red-button self. But then there's also the other part, the high-strung, jumpy, nervous wreck part. As a passenger in a car, I've gasped and ducked when the wind whipped a stray leaf across the windshield. I sometimes gasp because I think I see some weird shadow in my peripheral vision. One would think that perhaps having one child, and then another, would cure a person of this sort of hair-trigger jumpiness. And yet.

On days like today, when it seems like the children have decided to pitch a tent and camp out on my Big Red Button of a psyche, I really start to wonder if maybe I shouldn't go running for the shelter of a mother's little helper and start poppin' those Valiums and seeking out my happy place. Then I decide instead that it's a perfectly natural response for any adult, especially any sensitive, intuitive, in-tune-with-the-emotional-barometer-of-the-room adult to get a little tense, and a teeny bit brittle in the face of a 22-month old screaming in displeasure and rage that no, he cannot have juice! juice! juice! or truck! truck! truck! right this very instant, at an average of eight times an hour. Never mind the four-year-old, matching her brother blow-by-blow in the Demand and Complain Loudly department.

The problem with writing about those moments is that they're so bloodless on the page, rather than bloodcurdling, as they are in real life. Which leaves me, whining and complaining much in the fashion of the younger citizens of the house. I don't want to be the kind of mother who frightens her children by hiding in the furthest corner of the deepest closet, but I so wanted to go there today. It would have been dark, and cool, and quiet, and maybe I could've taken a deep breath without hearing the terrible screams and shrieks that, any evening now, are going to make the neighbors call Animal Control on us. Is your house this loud at 6:30 every evening? Because from my perspective, I of the big red button sensitivity, it sounds like an insane asylum, like the one in The Snake Pit with Olivia de Haviland. Like there should be arms reaching desperately out the barred windows, and grim-faced men hurrying down the corridors with straight-jackets at the ready. And a humorless nurse, like at the end of Streetcar, who will examine my fingernails and declare, "these will have to be trimmed."
Accuse me of exaggeration, but I swear, that's exactly what our house sounds and feels like most nights after dinner.

Not every night, thank goodness. Some nights, Lily will go up to her room and play or read, and Tucker will happily work on making those grooves in my coffee table ever deeper, as he pushes his beloved trucks around and around, muttering away to himself. But we're not talking about those nights, those nights that make me feel so smug and blessed and blah blah blah. We're talking about tonight, and how mommy was standing at the open front door letting all the mosquitoes into the house while she anxiously looked up the street, waiting for those men in the white coats to come and take her away, because at this point, she could really use the change of scenery.

Sing Us a Song, You're the Piano Pan...

2006-10-19T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well we're all in the mood for a melody, and you've got us feelin' alright....

Okay, sorry. Yes, I'm a dork, but listen people, what you need to remember here is that I survived with my sense of humor (such as it is) intact after Wednesday's Halloween parade at the senior center. If it had actually been, in fact, a "parade," maybe I wouldn't have needed that infusion of alcohol or sedatives so badly, but it was so NOT a parade, but rather a....swarm. A mass. A miasma of preschoolers and toddlers sweating in their chicken suits and lion costumes, or, like Lily, bumping into doorways with her pixie wings, and all moving en masse toward the hapless old folks with their arthiritic hands curled around the Tootsie Rolls they would then very slowly, very purposefully, very carefully place into each child's bucket. And then there was a craft! And melting ice cream cones! And marching across the hot parking lot from the freewheelin' independent-livin' retiree section with their sweating pitcher of margaritas sitting on the sideboard that I eyed longingly (as did Edna and Marge, no doubt) to the locked-down Alzheimer's wing!

So here for your viewing pleasure is my piano-playin' Peter Pan. He rocked the crowd with his inspired noodling of the ivories, only just slightly less than he jarred 'em earlier with his eardrum-piercing chimp shrieks when he saw me deliver our donated bag of candy to an aid and then had the nerve not to immediately give him some, per his request. (Yes, this is all our fault, because we thought it was so, so cute to teach him to sing "I Want Candy," and bop his curly little head to the tune.)

So, Happy Halloween to you. I can say it now, rather than waiting for the end of the month, because I was in the Macy's shoe department two weeks ago, and they'd already busted out with their huge, twinkling Christmas wreaths. Oh, and tomorrow? Tomorrow we're doing Disneyland. And no, we are not going in costume, and if there are any parades, we'll just be watching, not participating, if I have any say in the matter at all.

Setting Myself Up

2006-10-17T21:25:00.000-07:00

Since I'm officially part of the blogging community now (and also, since I didn't end up participating in World Bread Day), at the very last minute I submitted a picture of our living room to Apartment Therapy's Fall Color Contest. I have absolutely no hope of winning, but it seemed like an interesting thing to do, even as I feel I'm just totally setting myself up to be crushed by all the hip, snarky comments from all those lily-livered loft livers with their apple green walls. Go over there and click randomly at the entries and you'll see what I'm talking about. (I actually have big plans to use that apple green myself when I re-imagine the guest bedroom into a kid's playroom.) It seems clear that apple green, orange and turquoise are big, big colors of the moment. It's too bad I didn't enter our family room with it's marigold wall and red rug, but it was a mess and I was in a hurry to just get something in to them. (Ah, fond memories of submitting short stories on the postmark deadline to lit journal contests....)

Anyway, like I said -- don't expect to win, but I'm looking forward to the comments whenever my entry gets posted. I'm not too terribly worried though, because while my house is certainly not going to be photographed for a magazine anytime soon (like some of the best entrants), I'm sure as heck not as downright awful a designer as some of the others. (That Bloody Mary bathroom, for one....Lord.)

Oh, and did you see...I got my first ever comment? Whoo-hoo! I'm in the game now, baby.

Cream Puffs and Inspiration

2006-10-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while I get lonely for some of my favorite books from childhood, and I stop by the children's section in the library and look them up and pay one or two a visit. I don't usually check them out, as I'm already too ambitious as it is, checking out three of four novels when it's clear I can usually only finish two in the two weeks our library allows. But a couple weeks ago, I checked out Ginnie and the Cooking Contest, by Catherine Wooley. My favorite book featuring Ginnie is Ginnie and the New Friend, which I could have sworn was titled "Ginnie and Geneva," but my memory was wrong. How I loved that book, and how I wanted to be friends with both Ginnie and Geneva! (This one wasn't at the library, though.) It made me happy to revisit the book for the first time in over twenty years, and Lily was quite intrigued by it too, and kept picking it up and leafing through for the illustrations. I think she was a little puzzled by her mom reading a book about a little eleven-year-old girl, a book that's written for eleven-year-old girls, and was therefore obviously a wrong choice for either one of us.

Ginnie and the Cooking Contest has a pretty basic plot, in which our heroine is bored with the winter weather, plops down on the couch with the evening paper, and discovers a cooking contest for local girls, with the grand-prize being a trip to Washington D.C. Just to make things interesting, there's also a subplot about Ginnie and her friends trying to raise money so that the community center can build an indoor pool.

There must have been other factors that brought me to it, but I credit this book with a lot of my early inspiration for going into the kitchen and trying to learn how to bake. Throughout a good half of the book, Ginnie is fairly obsessive about thumbing through recipe cards and cookbooks trying to find the recipe that'll win her the grand prize. I can't help but figure that my eight or nine-year-old eyes must have glazed over a bit at all the talk of cheese souffles and almond pastes, because I know I wouldn't have had the slightest idea of how those things tasted, and probably no interest in finding out. Early on, Ginnie is convinced she can win the prize with her recipe for cream puffs, which are a big hit with the neighbor boy. I don't know just what it was about those cream puffs that caught my fancy, but I have a very vivid memory of sitting on my grandmother's couch and thumbing through one of her cookbooks and finding the recipe for cream puffs and thinking they sounded pretty easy to make. (Evidently they are pretty easy, which is why Ginnie doesn't choose them for the contest.) What I also remember pretty vividly, is that for a while after reading the book, I became fairly obsessed myself with the notion of learning how to bake. I remember asking permission to make those cream puffs, yet I never did (and haven't still to this day). I also remember going into the B. Dalton bookstore at the Stonewood Mall in Downey and heading toward the back, because that's where the kids section was, and finding a couple of children's cookbooks. I remember that they were on a bottom shelf, and I had to crouch down to get to reach them. I remember asking for one, and then asking for one again at Christmas, and not receving it after all. I don't remember what happened to that early interest in baking. I think I must have forgotten about it for awhile, and then in high school, I did start to bake a little here and there, until somewhere along on the line, I got good enough to tell people that I love to bake, which I do, but not that well, still, and not very often. (Though I'm working on changing this, recently.)

My point isn't to sound pathetic because my mean old parents didn't take me seriously and indulge my early Betty Crocker tendencies. My point is that it's another piece in the puzzle that is parenting, and how I can't help but compare my childhood with Lily's. Because I know that if either Lily or Tucker, at eight or nine years old, or even a little earlier, were to have a sudden, overwhelming interest in baking, I'd hop us both into the car and down to the bookstore and we'd pick out a kid's cookbook together and come home and bake us some cookies, dammit. I'm just that kind of parent, all too eager and trigger happy to find out what my children's interests will be and encourage them with so much rah-rah enthusiasm that they'll probably lose their initial interest altogether. Damn, it's so hard to ride that fine line of encouragement vs. forcing-the-issue. With Tucker, it's still a little too early to tell, but one thing I am proud of learning about Lily's temperment so far is that I need to back off -- way, way off, all the way down there to the end zone, and just let her do things her way, in her own time. And for me, that's the hard part.

Anyway. In the end, Ginnie doesn't win the grand prize (sorry for the spoiler), but she does win a special prize created just for her, to honor the patience, care and effort it took to create the "down home goodness" of her homemade bread. Funny how twenty-plus years later, I'm still inspired my Ginnie, because while I don't have plans to make cream puffs anytime soon, I suddenly have a very, very strong urge to try and bake up some homemade bread -- like Ginnie's, it'll be the real kind, with yeast and everything. Maybe Monday will be the day? It's World Bread Day, I hear, and wouldn't I feel like such the blogger, taking part in this event.

Creepy Shoe

2006-10-09T22:56:00.000-07:00

I did end up at least taking the Halloween stuff out of the garage yesterday. I just didn't really put it up or decorate like I'd hoped. It was all I could manage to unwrap a few things from the box and put them on a shelf until more time and inspiration were available. (It's always so jarring to me to take out the holiday decor and get that feeling of, "didn't I just see you, like, 2 months ago?" Amazing how fast the time flies.) Anyway. I unwrapped this faux-vintage red glitter devil head and his buddy, the orange glitter pumpkin head, and stuck 'em on the living room bookshelf. Later that night, Lily spied the devil head, and in a burst of her own interior design creativity, ran and got her red-glitter shoe, from last year's Dorothy costume. She put it right there next to the Mr. Devil, and asked, "is that a creepy shoe, mommy?" She was quite pleased with herself. Today I was able to get a little bit of decorating accomplished. I'm pretty happy with the way the entryway table turned out.

But back to those red glitter shoes: every time I trip over one of the damn things around the house, or see them in the aisles at Target, I think to myself that it's just not fair, and remember how for every birthday until I was oh, about 29, I'd blow out my candles and wish so hard for a pair of ruby slippers just like Dorothy's in the Wizard of Oz. Even now, my heart sort of stops and flutters when I see those sequined shoes in all their Technicolor glory during one of my umpteenth viewings . Like the shark in Jaws, they're actually a pretty rare sight throughout the movie. You have to wait for those shoes. And it's not like I don't know that these mary-janes with their cheap, glued-on red glitter are a far cry from the stunning originals. Still. I'd have been happy, nay ecstatic, at four years old, if I would have had my very own pair of sparkly red Dorothy shoes to sport around the house and even decorate the bookshelf with, any damn time I pleased. Kids these days! They got it too easy.

Wild One(s)

2006-10-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

It's Sunday night, and another weekend is in the can. What a weekend; what a week. I feel lately like I'm biting off much more than I'm capable of chewing, but I'm not at all sure how to, er, spit it back out, once I've committed to the bite. Instead of scaling back and leading that more simple life that everyone seems to be talking about these days, I seem to keep raising the bar higher and higher in my expectations of what I should be able to acheive on any given day. Any stranger who walked into my house off the street and spent about, oh, fifteen minutes in the presence of my wild, feral children would likely just slap me and tell me to snap out of it, a la Cher in Moonstruck. (I watched it again this week -- I never mention it on my favorites lists, but it should be on there.)

Because no matter how I may try to nag, scold, threaten or otherwise take them in hand to civilize them, the kids really seem to be reverting more and more to their natural state of wild beasts these days. (Reverting, ha. That would imply that they had at some point progressed beyond that stage.) You may have gotten the impression from the previous post that Lily is some sort of ethereal fairy-child, when in fact, the above picture is really a much more typical state for her -- wildy jumping around, bounce house or no. She just flat-out refuses to listen to 98% of what we tell her lately, which is usually just 2 phrases, anyway: "calm down" and "stop running." Tucker, as he approaches his second birthday, is really feeling his oats with that willful-adorable-tyrant stage. I sort of cringe when I enter the kitchen to make a meal these days, as usually he'll take that as a sign that mommy has already worked her food-magic-mojo, and he comes running in, yelling "ready? is ready? ready ready ready? Milk! Want milk? I want juice! No milk! Juice! Ready ready ready?" This, before I've managed to re-heat, chop or otherwise come halfway close to producing anything edible.

So, yeah. The weekend is over, and I didn't accomplish anything I'd planned. Which was to decorate the house for Halloween, and do some laundry, and clean, and work on the Halloween craft stuff that arrived this week from Mailorder #4. I don't even want to tackle the subject of me and this crafty business right now -- I have a whole other post I plan to devote entirely to that new weird obsession that's bit me. Suffice it to say that those crafty-blogging women out there are probably half the cause of my feelings of inadequecy these days.

However, I did get to go to Bunco on Friday night -- didn't win any cash, but I looked damn cute in my new Steve Madden red peep-toe flats, and I also found out that if you put salted peanuts and candy corn in your mouth at the same time, it tastes exactly like a Baby Ruth candybar. So I guess the weekend wasn't a total wash after all.

Girls In White Dresses

2006-10-04T16:14:00.000-07:00

"....with blue satin sashes..." That's the song that kept playing in my head on Saturday, each time I looked at Lily in her flower girl dress, along with her partner, Megan. How beautiful they were! Lily's blonde curls were amazing to behold, after being professionally tamed and perfected by the bridal hairdresser. Since she's only 4 (four and a half, mom), I wonder if she'll remember much of this day, when she was one of two flower girls at my cousin Michael's wedding? Perhaps it will come back to her as a series of moments, twirling around and around as she did all day in that cloud of white tulle.

My favorite moment was at the reception, right after the bride and groom sat down to eat at their head table, and the DJ put on "A Whole New World," from Disney's Aladdin. Lily jumped up, raced out to the dance floor in her bare feet, and twirled and danced, lost in her own world, blissfully unaware of all the eyes upon her, admiring this child alone under the soft lights. My girl! May she always be so eager to dance barefoot out in the center of the dance floor, partner or not.

Deliver The Money in Large, Unmarked Bills and Place in Nearest Dark Alley

2006-10-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

Turns out that Tucker's fever was just a fever, or as his dr. called it, a "nonspecific virus." He did get a light, non-bumpy rash on his face and torso for a couple of days after the fever stopped -- and this too was deemed normal by the doc. All of this is very good news, as I'm quite fond of both my firstborn child and my right arm, either of which I may be required to fork over should Tucker need another hospital say.

I say this because of The Bill we got last week from the hospital. In the hospital's defense, it is really the fault of the bastards at the insurance company, who decided that, in their opinion, Tucker didn't really need to be in the hospital for the last 6 days that he was there back in June, and so, hey! Guess what?! We ain't gonna pay for it! And since every decision or payment from the insurance company seems to provoke a flurry of paperwork, the gears of bureaucracy really started grinding away, which resulted in us receiving The Bill amongst the junk mail and Pottery Barn catalogs.

I suppose unless your child has been kidnapped and you're anxiously awaiting the delivery of the ransom note, nothing can quite prepare you for the sight of a piece of paper with the words "Patient Responsibilty" and "Payable Upon Receipt" typed next to an amount that is just slightly less than $47,000. $47,000. Huh. And just as if it really was a ransom note, I burst into tears and panicked and then calmed down and thought, "we'll have to call a lawyer." (Why do the parents of kidnapped kids on TV always have a lawyer on retainer?)

Turns out we likely won't need to get a lawyer. Myk called the hospital, and they apologized and said we never should have gotten that bill, and they're still in negotiations with the insurance company. Meanwhile, we get to keep our healthy, happy, and precious little boy, and for that, I'll happily deliver all the ransom money I can scrape together, and I promise I won't even get the cops involved.

Fevers, And a Manifesto, Of Sorts

2006-09-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

So today is Tucker's third day of having a low-grade fever. Myk & I are going about our daily routines, and yesterday he even drove Lily out to a family birthday party in Long Beach, but we're worried over him and watching closely for any other symptoms. There aren't really any others, besides a sluggish, sketchy appetite and the need to cling and whine a little more than usual. Of course, as small children always seem to do, he came down with the fever on a Friday, right at the start of the weekend, when I can't easily call the doctor.

Four months ago, we probably would've just gotten him dressed, despite the fever, and we'd all have gone to that birthday party, and we'd all likely would've had a good time and that would have been that. But now, we're a little more cautious, a little more prone to worry, and so Tucker and I hung out here and puttered and played in the backyard after his nap. And he was fine -- fine as far as being whiny with a fever of 99.5 goes, at least.

Tuesday, the 26th, will mark 3 months since Tucker came home from the hospital. This is his first fever since then, although he's had a couple of colds, and really we've been pretty lucky, as it's damn rare for either of the kids to go for three months without a fever. They're not sickly kids by a long shot, just little kids who tend to get all the sniffles and colds and weird 24-hour bugs that children are prone to, especially since Lily goes to preschool and brings all of that crap right back into the house. And I admit to being one of those parents on the pretty laid-back end of the worry spectrum, who only tends to call the doctor when a fever hovers above 103 for a couple days, or if puking persists for more than a day and turns the kids into little pale, zombie-like versions of themselves. Usually, I just hang back, watch, and wait, and eventually, they get better without a call or visit to the doctor's.

But back in June, Tucker again had a low-grade fever, was a little peevish and off, and also had a cough that only seemed to bother him in his crib at night. It wasn't a scary, chest-rattling, tuberculor sort of cough -- just a little cough. Again, it seemed to hit over the weekend, but I have pictures of him from that weekend, looking healthy and laughing and being his usual monkey-self. (See Above.) But by late Monday morning, he'd thrown up and was inconsolable, and by that afternoon he was ordered to get a chest x-ray because his breathing was labored and by the next afternoon, a Tuesday, he was being admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit at Children's Hospital of Orange County. After numerous chest xrays and 2 CAT scans, and a few hours when the the doctors thought maybe it was his appendix, we were told that he had a pleural effusion -- fluid gathered in his chest cavity, next to his right lung. This automatically also meant a diagnosis of pneumonia. And then a big, blond, handsome doctor who looked more like a linebacker came in and did an in-room procedure that inserted a tube into Tucker's chest to drain out that fluid. And then, eventually, results from the cultures of those fluids came in, and we learned that Tucker had not just the typical, viral kind of pneumonia, but the bacterial kind -- staph pneumonia. Then they put him in isolation, until they could grow out the cultures a little bit more, to make sure he didn't have the resistant form of staph. (Resistant to antibiotics, that is.) Thankfully, he "only" had the regular kind of staph. Even so, bacterial staph pneumonia is rare, and potentially deadly, as it often was to young children before the right drugs were found.

To make a long and depressing and scary story short(er), we were there at CHOC for just a day short of two weeks. Tucker ended up requiring a 2-hour surgical procedure to clear the infected gunk out of his chest cavity, and to insert a central IV line for his meds. Did you know that after about 48 hours, a regular IV line will deteriorate and fail, and they have to choose a new location and re-insert the IV? Do you know how hard it is to find a viable vein on a sick 18-month-old, whose veins are even harder to find because he's screaming at the sight of more nurses, with more needles? I certainly didn't know, or care to think about, any of those things, 4 months ago. Anyway. After a lot of strong antibiotics, and morphine for his post-surgery pain, and enough chest x-rays to make the child glow in the dark, Tucker came back home with us. A little paler, a little thinner, but a healthy little boy again, thanks to the wonderful doctors and nurses at CHOC. Watch him, they advised. Oh, we do.

All of which brings me to my manifesto, of sorts, of why I'm on the internet, with this blog, taking time away from my family and books and housecleaning to create this cozy little spot of unapologetic domesticity. (Okay, so maybe I wouldn't otherwise really be cleaning house.) Because, three months after the most terrifying stretch of days I've ever lived through, I find that I've have changed, and my interests and priorities have shifted, just ever so slightly. That sounds deadly dull and serious, but really, the truth is that all those things I loved and valued before -- my home, the look of its interiors, good novels, baking, nesting, curling up on the couch with an old movie -- well, now I value and hold even more dear. I feel that I'm not so much nesting these days, as burrowing.

Since I'm a writer, it would be easy to tidily wrap up this little essay with a metaphor about fevers: how Tucker's illness burned away some of the extraneous stuff in my head, and left me with a clear distillate of Important Things. Or even how I'm suddenly in a fever to create this space and explore some new territories and interests that beckon. But -- yuck. Not only is that too simple and pat, it's also pretty self-obsessed, don't you think? After all, though I lived through their effects, the fever and sickness didn't happen to me. I won't co-opt their language and imagery to dovetail with some half-baked thesis.

It's just this: for two weeks, my child was seriously ill. Now he is better, and I am thankful. So thankful, in fact, that I'd like to live my daily life paying some small tribute to that, by giving attention to the details and background roar and blur that comprise our blessed and happy and noisy home.

And tomorrow, if the fever persists, we're going to the doctor's.

Beautiful Monkeys

2006-09-23T08:51:00.000-07:00

Here they are, my beautiful monkeys. There are many reasons behind my creating this blog, but really, it just boils down to these two. My sweet, whip-smart, noisy, affectionate, demanding, precious children. Lily and Tucker, I love you so. (And they love each other, too, can you tell? That is, when Lily isn't grabbing her brother's toys away, shoving him, slamming her bedroom door in his face, or otherwise exploring her inner dictator.)

No, the nights aren't cool enough around here to don footie jammies yet -- this picture is from back in April. Now Tucker is five months older, and starting to give his sister a little what-for right back. I'm not supposed to take sides in this sort of epic blood struggle, but I can't help but root for the little guy.

Another Marvelous Writer

2006-09-21T18:21:00.000-07:00

I've been re-reading some Laurie Colwin this week. First was Home Cooking, then A Big Storm Knocked It Over, and now I'm about half done with Family Happiness. She creates such specific, East Coast worlds, that for me, it's almost like reading a travelogue, since I'm just a native Southern California heathen who has never even been to New York, or anyplace more than 100 miles east of the Mississippi. (Unless you count the East, capital E.) I like the people in her books very much, yet I'm also a little intimidated by them, as they certainly don't talk or dress or live like anyone I've ever sat and shared a soda with. Her women wear knife-pleated grey skirts and tweeds and thick woolen stockings, or creamy silk blouses with peter-pan collars. If married, they sport thin gold bands, or tiny estate diamonds. Anyway, I'm quite sure they wouldn't be caught dead in my bright Target tshirts and denim capris.

But I love Laurie Colwin because of the descriptions of her character's domestic lives, and how the women heroines all seem to revel in the comforts of home. There are lots of details about clean sheets, warm quilts, and hearty veal stews on blustery winter nights. Or pancakes with fresh blueberries and rich coffee, made whilst looking out the window at one's Park Avenue neighbors of a Sunday morning. Or baskets of good wine and goat cheese brought up to one's cabin on the lake -- the cabin that's been in the family for a generation or two, of course. So I've turned to these books over the last couple of weeks, to not only revisit the happy (for they are always happy) love stories and tales of family politics, but also because I'm just in that nesting kind of mood that the end of summer always evokes for me.

I admit that I got a little resentful with Home Cooking this time out. I think it's because I was actually reading more for the recipes, not the anecdotes, and since she was such a good, natural cook herself, she tends to take some of the details for granted. For example, more than once she gives recipes for puddings that require baking in a "kettle." Now, I have made a bread pudding, so I know about a bain marie, or water bath, but a kettle? I'm not quite a novice in the kitchen, but close, so I require recipes to take me by the hand a little more firmly than hers tend to do. Still, I laughed aloud again at some examples in the chapter titled "Repulsive Dinners: A Memoir." I can't say for sure which of her novels or story collections is my favorite -- probably the linked stories in Happy All the Time, featuring that wife who spends her afternoons reading through the entire works of Proust and then removes herself to a convent when she becomes pregnant. Before that happens, though, she handily whips up a complicated croquembouche for her brother-in-law's wedding. And without Laurie Colwin and her tours of the interiors of these exotic (for me), well-heeled New York apartments, I'd probably never even know what the heck a croquembouche is.

One of THOSE Saturdays

2006-09-16T17:25:00.000-07:00

So, it's been one of those kind of Saturdays. One of those weekend days when all the routines go to hell, when the children watch way too much Noggin and don't get dressed until after noon. At least they're dressed. Me, I'm still in the white t-shirt I slept in, and the only reason I changed out of the pj bottoms was because it got too hot. God, I hate these kind of days. I feel grimy and grubby, distracted and dazed.

It's all the blogs fault. It's taking most of my attention today, as me and the hubby work on making it look somewhat unique and presentable. I picked my color scheme (I know that the aqua and red is trendy right now, but I'm a high-contrast kind of girl, and I rilly, rilly like it.) Picked out the font for the header -- spent over an hour combing the web for a free retro font. I already have Font Diner's Sparkly on my web site and wanted something more elegant, and less "pink-elephant-martini." Besides, I see that font everywhere now, so it's hardly as unique as it was four years ago. Anyway, in the end I surprised myself and chose a standard Word font. You'll see. Give the hubby a couple of days.

In the meantime...the poor ragamuffin children need to be fed and washed and paid some attention to. And me, well maybe I'll even brush my teeth before it's all over.

Good God, I Have a Blog

2006-09-15T15:25:00.000-07:00

After sitting on the fence about this for the last month or so, I've finally gone and got hitched here at Blogger, and good gosh a-mighty, I've got a blog. Yet another thing to feed and care for and tuck to bed at night. Why blog? Why me? Why now?

I'm not sure. All I know is that it was keeping me up at night, this sudden need for my little plot of the 'net. It's not like I didn't have a website, that poor, ignored, and no longer even aptly named thing. But a blog...a blog! Well I wanted one, and now I've got one. Heaven knows I'm miserable now.