August 2004 Archives

I never quite did come right out and say it, though Josh did: yes, I'm pregnant. Due next March. So there. Secret out. Lump, begone. (That is to say, the lump o' secret I was carrying around, not the lump currently pushing out the waistband of my pants. That one I sincerely hope will stay this time.)

But speaking of kids...I had the most heart-satisfying snuggly time with Eli this morning, before we got into the swing of getting-ready-for-the-day. He just wanted to curl up on my lap (which he'd better enjoy while I still have one) and have me hug him and sit quietly together for awhile. He told me he loved me and wanted to snuggle with me forever. It was literally one of those moments where I could have dropped dead from happiness right on the spot (but I'm glad I didn't). I am so poignantly aware of how brief and precious this snuggle-time with my son is, in the grand scheme of things. I know that it will be a mere finger-snap of time before he rejects all but the most perfunctory of one-armed hugs around the shoulders. I am steeling myself against the future with its admittedly necessary and appropriate building of independent self by pushing away the familiar support.

But I will hold tightly to the memory of these times, where love was easily expressed and relatively uncomplicated, when we were both happily ensconced at dead center of each others' emotional universes, and it was good. At some point, there will be other, more complex and complicated emotions (where the love mixes with pride, amazement, appreciation, a fuller understanding of particular personhood) to experience together, which I'm sure will bring their own particular joys. But for now, I'm pretty sure this is the best part of being a parent.

Just a small realization tonight (as always pounded out right before bed and so therefore probably not as clear or literarily smooth as it could be) about being a good guy, or in other words, being nice, being a decent human being, being a civilized member of society--a mensch, if you will.

I tried (and mostly succeeded, I think) to be a mensch today. I thanked people for things; I was pleasant and considerate to my boss and coworker; I acquiesed right of way and let people in front of me as I was driving; I waited my turn; I chatted personably with grocery clerks and other patrons; I even returned my shopping cart to its designated place. I played with my kid, I interacted amiably with my husband, I kept a good attitude all night long, despite an encroaching headache.

And you know what? It felt good to be good, to follow the rules, to interact positively and empathetically with other people. I must be some sort of bizarre philosophical love child of Anne Frank and Rodney King--I really do believe that people are good at heart, and that we can all get along. I just want everyone to agree to play nicely together in the sandbox of life. Is that so wrong? I get a good feeling from being nice to others. It's not hard to do, I don't do it grudgingly or with a sense of obligation, or worry that I'll be punished in some way if I'm not nice. It just feels good.

Maybe I'm already beginning that yearly mediatation on forgiveness and re-turning (turning back) that always accompanies Yom Kippur. But really, I do believe in the golden rule. Treat others as you would want them to treat you. Or to create another Reese's peanut butter cup (two great tastes that taste great together) by combining Aretha Franklin and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: Respect and be excellent to each other. You'll feel better if you do. End of story.

Went camping at Sugarloaf Ridge State Park in Kenwood this weekend with my friend Daphne, just overnight from Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon. Great campground, I'd definitely go back. But oh my, how wonderful to have 24 hours of easy, relaxing downtime. We drove, we chose a campsite, we threw up the tent, and then we pretty much sat on our asses and read for the rest of the day and into the night, with breaks for snacks and dinner. Woke up to a cacophanous riot of bird calls at dawn, then fell back asleep for another hour or two. Had tea and sat around and read for a couple more hours (and I even managed a wee bit of writing). Then pulled down the tent and packed up and drove home through Petaluma, where we stopped off at the Applebox to have lunch and meet up with the gals in my writers group for some more reading/writing time.

I got home today around 3ish, to an overwhelmed and unhappy Josh and a wound up, zingy Eli. I showered off the dirt, and then turned around and took Eli (Josh went out to his own writers group and Artist's Way class) up to Jen and Jason's (yes, right back to Petaluma) for a mellow bbq get together. Ian and Lisa and Jenna were there too. The kids played together, the grownups sat around and talked, everyone ate yummy grillables and far too much junk food. We stayed until bedtime and then came home. Eli had fallen asleep in the car and thus was a snap to put right to bed.

All in all this has been one of the easiest, mellowest, most relaxing weekends I've had in a long time. I feel drugged out on downtime, I'm satiated with slacking. No errands, no house chores, no logistics, no push to get personal projects done. Just keeping it low-energy, doing what I wanted to do at any given moment, with everything flowing easily and no hassles. And you know what? I'm done writing this blog. I'm going to go take my comic book and go to bed early. So there.

Went to see Jack Johnson at the Greek Theater tonight, just like real grownups on a date. Great live music on a lovely warm night with a full moon, under the stars. It was great. I'd describe more but it's after midnight and definitely time for sleep.

Some of my favorite Jack Johnson lines from tonight:

"If Hell is what we want, then Hell is what we'll have"

"There were so many fewer questions
when stars were just the holes to heaven."

"We used to laugh a lot
But only because we thought
That everything good always would remain."

Night night.

So I have this secret I've been keeping for weeks and weeks now. (It's a positive one, not an incriminating or icky one.) But it's been killing me, this self-imposed silence. I think there's a fine line between keeping secrets and out-and-out lying, and I'm not fond of lying (though I do it pretty well if I feel justified). I can see how those people who live with lying or having to keep major secrets about their lives, background or identities wind up with ulcers or jumping off buildings. Of course, there's no real danger that's making me keep my secret--like I said, it's a self-imposed silence, not an issue of personal survival or even appropriate professional conduct. Those kinds of secrets are whole other balls o' wax.

I can certainly keep secrets (my own and others') pretty well, when necessary (and I feel I do understand the admittedly somewhat fuzzy line between necessary and optional secret-keeping). But I am also quite fond of the bonding moment of intimate revelation, the thrill of "don't tell her/him I told you this, but...", or the smug satisfaction of breaking news with "you didn't hear this from me, but..."

Yes, spilling secrets can be fun. And with this one, it helped that I spilled it to a few strategic people right away--sort of like a venting system to keep me from letting it explode outward at random tempting moments. I think it'd be much harder to keep a secret entirely to myself, with absolutely no venting. I'm not sure I have many of those kind of secrets (and if I do, they're probably the kind I can barely admit to myself, except in brief lightning flashes).

But all that being said, here's what I'm finding: after you successfully keep a secret for awhile, it gets harder and harder to share. Even when the restrictions have been officially removed, and you know it's okay to share it, and even when you know that sharing it will generally bring positive results, a secret can kind of embed itself into your psyche, weave its way into your everyday mental operation, so that it becomes hard to break the habit of silence. You kind of forget it's even there, and when it finally is time to break the silence, you sort of...don't want to. You've grown comfortable with the lump, used to the protective scar tissue that surrounds the secret. It's like you've always been this way, and you're kind of proud of it. It's weird. I know I'm probably not being clear.

Well hell, I know that this entry is far too cryptic without using the specific example to anchor it. That will come. I just wanted to get some of these thoughts down before I forgot about them, before the lump gets lanced (or absorbed back into the system).

Today was one of those relatively unremarkable, low-energy days. Where nothing really particularly annoying happened (and thank god for that) and nothing particularly noteworthy happened. I got up, I got me and the kid ready for work and school, I dropped the kid off without hassle, and then went to work (which was boring but since I was low-energy today, I didn't try to create any interesting work for myself, I just coasted--so I have only myself to blame). After work I ran a few boring errands on the way home, then headed home for heated up leftovers for dinner, kid bath/bed routine, and a quiet night home doing laundry, poking around on the web and doing a bit of picture editing. About the most exciting thing that happened today was getting a phone call from a friend I hadn't talked to in awhile. Not such a bad way to spend a day, but not one for the history books. I guess this is how normal people spend their days and nights, but I'm just not used to it.

And yet this low-energy feeling is still with me, and I'm just not feeling creative or compelled to do anything ambitious with this blog entry. I am pretty sure the message I'm trying to send myself here is "quit screwing around on the computer and GO TO SLEEP". Okay, okay. Just this once.

(Yes, this should have been written last night, when I got home, but I was just soooooooooooo tired. Bite me. I could have just post-dated this entry, but I'm being honest here. Honest!)

So one of the gals in my writer's group is named Suzanne. Let me tell you about Suzanne from my perspective. (I fully admit ahead of time to taking certain potentially fictional liberties with this wee character sketch, but isn't everything we ever write bent and warped just a bit as it's filtered through our own experience and biases? Why, yes.) Suzanne is tall and has gorgeous long straight red hair--she looks a lot like Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas only without the stitches, the tiny feet or the patchwork dress. She works in PR for a cool local publishing company, has done years of volunteer work with animal shelters, and actually knows how to (and wants to) shampoo and clean her own carpets. (Clearly I find this latter ability amazing.) She writes fabulous personal essays (and she's recently started a YA novel loosely based on her own teenage experiences). She's got a true knack for observing and writing about things in her own life, and then expanding on them in such a way that they become universally identifiable with. She once wrote an essay about a performance review she'd had at work in which she was rated "average" in certain areas by a hard-assed boss (the kind who takes the category names far too literally and not as a scale on which most people should be at the top, not the middle), and turned it into a thoughtful piece on how outside opinions affect interior views of self.

Well, I'm here to shout out that Suzanne is not average. In fact, really, none of us are. Scratch beneath the surface and anyone you meet, anyone, has a fascinating set of life experiences and a riot of colorful opinions just waiting to be tapped (and as a writer, I constantly and shamelessly do tap into this great source material whenever I can). To steal and bastardize a line from Sesame Street, all of these things are not like the others--and that's what makes life so interesting.

Ack! I skipped a day. I feel so...wrong. So off my game. So lacking in discipline.

But I have a great excuse: the typical type-J super busy social weekend. We spent all day yesterday getting ready for and then hosting a variety of friends over at our house in honor of Josh's birthday. During the day we had the friends-with-kids over, and hung out and bbqed and watched the kids drag out every toy in the house and scatter them over the carpet. Then I brought Eli over to Grammy and Grampy's for the evening and we had a bunch more people over for the traditional dionysian revels (which actually were somewhat more low key than usual this year). I stayed up way too late, but had a good time hanging out with friends, so I can't really complain. Pictures will be posted at some point.

I got to sleep in this morning (which was a lovely thing but dammit, I couldn't even stay asleep as long as I should've to make up for staying up way too late), but then I got up and made like a wee party fairy and cleaned up from the night before while everyone else slept (we'd had several drunken/overtired friends crash on the floor and the couches for the night). I even went so far as to run out to the bagel cafe and bring back fresh bagels and cream cheese for everyone for breakfast (yes, I do rock. Thanks for noticing). After making coffee and setting out food, I woke up the groggy, hungover birthday boy and commanded him to 1) revive himself with the magic bean and 2) head out to retrieve our son, while I went out the opposite direction to a baby shower in Petaluma (which I wound up being half an hour late for, d'oh). After the baby shower I met Suzanne at the 'Box for a brief writing session (wish I'd had another hour), then headed back over to my parents' house (where Eli still happily resided, although Josh had already come and gone), stopping at Target on the way. I got to their house by around dinner time, so we ordered out Chinese food and hung out there until way past Eli's bedtime, then finally came home and put the boy to bed.

But that wasn't enough socializing, apparently, because as soon as the boy was in bed I talked to my buddy Chris on the phone long-distance in Hawaii for an hour or so. And now suddenly here it is way too late and I only intended to do a quick bloggy check in but somehow I find myself babbling about my entire weekend. Yeesh. I'm not even making grammatical sense anymore. I'd better go to bed if I want to be even halfway effective at work tomorrow.

Time certainly DOES fly when you're having fun.

Here and here are 2 fascinating links from 2Blowhards on the general topics of women and food. These, combined with a conversation Josh and I had last night about addictive foods (you know, the kind of food you love the taste of so much you keep eating and eating, long past the point of satiety), got me thinking about food today.

Josh and I each had really different things that floated our respective boats, foodwise. His first choices were all meat-oriented (bbq pork ribs, a big ol steak, etc)...mine were all starch+fat oriented (macaroni and cheese, "Julie tabouleh" cous-cous salad, pesto risotto, sourdough with avocado, and most recently, sesame/peanut sauce noodles. Course I never say no to a perfect peach, an artisan cheese, fresh hamachi nigiri, Bert's mashed potatoes or a cup of deep chocolate gelato....mmm). Male/female thing? Bloodtype O/A thing? Different ethnic backgrounds? Random personal preference? Who knows. I tell you though, I would last for about 2 weeks on the Atkin's diet (once I got over the thrill of eating all that cheese without consequence, I'd be miserable). Josh could probably do it forever.

Tell me about one thing that you could eat by the bucketload, until you were bursting, but still you reached for one...more...bite.

Me, I pick the aforementioned sourdough with avocado--a truly Northern Californian snack. It has to be really fresh, really sour San Francisco-type sourdough (Bordenave's is the classic but any of the good artisan sourdoughs will work too), sliced into thick slices and lightly toasted to bring out just a little bit of bread sugar (and crunch). Then I slather it with Best Foods mayo (an addiction from my childhood...I keep trying to wean myself to organic mayos, low-fat mayos, etc, but none of them works for me like Best Foods--"Known As Hellman's East of the Rockies"). On top of that goes thick slices of perfectly ripe (firm, buttery, not mushy or watery) Haas avocado, lightly mashed. Then for the coup de grace, a slight sprinkling of garlic salt. Oooo baby. If it wasn't so damn fattening, I could eat a whole loaf of bread with like 6 avocados this way. Sigh...I'll never leave California.

Tonight there was a book group meeting at my house, where we had delicious Greek dinner (shish kabobs grilled by Josh and tabouleh made by me, along with other potluck yummies) and a great discussion of Middlesex. I've been in this same book group for approximately 8 years now (almost as long as I've lived back up here in the Bay Area, post-college and grad school), and have rarely missed a monthly session. Members have come and gone (though all have been great in one way or another). Some of the books have been life-changingly great, some disappointing, others merely "ehhh". But always the discussions are fun, whether they're deep or merely gossipy. It's a definite pleasure to extend the solitary pleasure of reading into talking with others about what I just read. (Reading AND talking, with great women friends? That's just extra sprinkles on the frosting of the choco cupcake, as far as I'm concerned.)

My love affair with reading and with books goes back literally as far as I can remember. Here's a little smidge of a memoir I started that deals with this subject. Someday I'll finish the whole dang thing, but for now, this is the germane piece, I think. (Please forgive the horribly kitschy and hard to view mid-90's background art--I plan on redoing all of that stuff too some day. It's on the project list. Really. Bite me.)

And maybe someday I'll do a blog entry on why I love talking as well. But maybe not. Right now it's way past bedtime.

Somewhat stupidly, given my bad night's sleep the night before, last night I stayed up late and finished reading Middlesex, our book group book for this month (the meeting's on Thursday...I usually finish faster than this but this month has held many distractions and not enough plane flights). What an amazingly great book (duh, it won a Pulitzer). The damn thing wouldn't let me go last night until I finished it.

And speaking of finishing, today I finally finished the novel critique that's been hanging over my head for far too long, and what a liberating feeling that was! I feel a sudden exhilarating sense of having free time. I'm sure I'll fill it immediately with all the other projects I've been putting off. Maybe I'll actually do some of my own writing...which has slowed down considerably since I stopped doing my daily morning BIC (Butt In Chair) time. In fact, I think I'll go to bed (since I'm still markedly sleep deprived from the last couple days) and hey, try to get up early tomorrow and do some writing! Good deal! Ok self, I dare you to start up that BIC time again! (Let's see if my dares work as well on me as they do on others...I kinda doubt it but you never know.)

Migraine pain, that is. You know the phrase, "debilitating head pain"? It's such a cliche. But whoo, guess what--for something that doesn't seem to have a clear external cause, goddamn it can really can throw a fuzzy, energy-sucking, red-hot-spike-through-the-eye kind of blanket over your day.

So yeah. Woke up this morning at approximately 2:30am when Josh came to bed (don't ask) and realized I had a whopper of a headache behind my right eyeball (the aforementioned red-hot-spike). Tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, which I sort of managed to do, but then woke up off and on for the next 5 hours, with the pain never getting better but always too tired and fuzzed out to actually get out of bed and get Tylenol. Finally dragged out of bed at the appointed hour (actually past the appointed hour by about 3 snooze bar whacks) and took the damn Tylenol, whereupon the "red-hot-spike-through-the-eye" downgraded to merely "squeezing-anaconda-wrapped-around-skull" and I managed to get all those morning things done. And then work things done. I was so wiped out and just generally, well, debilitated that by the time I got home I sort of thrust the kid at Josh and said "I need to go take a nap." And I did. And it helped, but now the latest batch of Tylenol is wearing off and dammit, it is just not right that I should STILL have this headache.

There are days where I can actually see the advantage to being a wired-up disembodied brain in a jar.

Iris and Eli having a great time together on the kiddie ferris wheel at the Sonoma County Fair a couple weekends ago.

Pissed off. Tired. Don't want to post. Hours worth of work on this novel critique I've been doing just went poof into thin air when Microsoft Word crashed.

I was literally like 5 sentences from the end of the whole thing. But I have to go back at least two chapters.

Goddammit.

(And I don't want to hear a thing about saving as you go or I might just explode.)

Yawn. I waited until it got entirely too late to post, and now I'm foggy and slow. (Dappled and drowsy and ready for sleep...)

I had a really great day today. Woke up with the kid, hung out with him, got a bunch of chores done, and then switched off with Josh (who slept in). I took the 11am ferry (the most romantic way to travel, with the best views of the City) into the City to meet my friend Daphne. I got to spend some quiet time beholden to no one, reading and looking out the window and indulging in my own thoughts for more than 10 minutes in a row. Precious. So precious.

Daphne was there to meet me when I got off the ferry (I love that feeling of having someone waiting for you when you come off a ferry or a train or a plane), and she and I wandered briefly around the ferry building (there's a Cowgirl Creamery outpost there! Cheeeeeeeeeeese I love cheese mmmmm) and then went off to Flax (an artist's Nirvana--I wanted to start a zillion projects but settled for merely consulting Daphne on hers). After artsy bliss it was time for lunch--we had dim sum at Yank Sing (mmmmmm tasty tiny morsels...I love dim sum mmmmm) and lots of fun girly chatty chat. Then Daphne drove me back to Marin. Josh and Eli were still out together getting Eli a haircut, so I had some quiet time to myself at home before they got home. Also quite precious.

And then when they did get home, Eli had fallen asleep in the car and proceeded to continue his nap on the couch for the next two hours (!). So I took advantage of the opportunity to finally catch up on some of the critiquing I'm waaaaayyyy overdue on, for a very kind fellow Critter who finished and sent his critique of my entire novel manuscript to date weeks and weeks ago, and has been patiently waiting for me to get my reciprocal critique finished. And now, after a brief break for dinner and putting the kid to bed, I'm almost done with that project! So I'm feeling very accomplished today, and refreshed and rejuvenated to boot. Hooray!

Ok it would be good if I continued my good day by getting a good night's sleep. So I'm outta here.

So for some reason, the other day the little action figure of Darth Vader that Eli stole off Josh's desk months and months ago was recently rescued from the obscure depths of one of the "miscellaneous small toys" drawers in our living room. And Eli's been playing with it off and on. It's especially attractive right now, I think, because of all the little pieces (helmet, cloak, lightsaber) that come on and off it. So a couple days ago, Josh remembered that he had a whole box full of miscellaneous Star Wars toys, from his cube farm days at Excite (ah, those days are starting to become their own stereotype of the dot com boom, now aren't they...the wild and wacky acres of cubes all decked out with their own "geekier than thou" toy collections). So he dug through it and resuscitated a big 16" talking Darth Vader doll, fully poseable and complete with real cloth removable cloak and two different interlocking removable helmet pieces, and gave it to Eli. It's been a huge hit. Eli's been asking for new toys from the Star Wars box every day, and now he's also got a couple of starships, a Han Solo action figure, and a talking Darth Vader bust. All these toys have been incorporated into the bizarre pretend universe that Eli spends his playtime in (which now includes toys from Nightmare Before Christmas, Sesame Street, and Toy Story, farm animals, plastic kitchen utensils and food, pirate magnets, and miscellaneous balls and cars. It's a truly impressive pastiche).

The funny, and vaguely ironic, and weird thing is, that Eli has no idea who these Star Wars characters are. He's never seen the movies (and though we are sorely tempted, of course, I think we'll wait a few more years before we show them to him). It seems clear from the way he talks about and plays with Darth Vader that he thinks Vader is some sort of superhero (it's the cloak and mask). The big Darth Vader doll sometimes gets treated tenderly like a baby doll, and sometimes thrown across the room or flown around in the air to save other toys. It's just such a trip--funny, disturbing, delightful, thought-inspiring--to see the way Eli treats something that has such cultural/nostalgic significance to us, using it as a prop for his imagination just based on the way it looks to him, with his limited experience of the world. It's really true that being around children can help you look at the world differently. Their fresh perspective reminds us that we can look at what we take for granted again, in a different way, and re-make what we see into what we want or need it to be.

Re-vision. Something we all need to remind ourselves to do from time to time, just so we don't forget how. Change is good.

A quick blast of navel-gazing before moving on to the next tightly scheduled activity. ;)

I came across this entry on BoingBoing, and it got me thinking about my own dark and muzzy motives in doing this whole blog thing (let alone the Augured blog).

The guy writing the above blog entry (Danny O'Brien) points out that there is a sort of "microcelebrity", middle level of fame available to us now, between the near-total obscurity of "me and my buddies" and ultra-famous traditional media celebrity. You can be known by a slightly larger, select group of people in say, the hundreds instead of the thousands or millions. But are you happy at this level? Some would be, some wouldn't. I think I would. In fact I think that's all I ever really aspired to, to bump up to that next level, and have just a few more people than my handful of friends and family read and enjoy what I'm putting out there. (Not that I'm knocking uber-fame, mind you...it can feel free to find me if it likes. :)) But yes, I DO want people to read what I put out there in the world. Otherwise, why blog? I could just keep writing my personal journal, but I choose to put it online for the world to see. I admit it, I fantasize about having one of those blogs where cool people that I don't even know come and read and stick around and discuss, and even get into conversations with each other. I guess, like every other artist (let alone every other human being, I suspect), I just want to be heard, and acknowledged. I want my point of view, my existence (and worth) validated. Of course I can do this for myself (I feel like I've got a decently strong self-esteem, all things considered), but there's something that still nags at me to get it from other people too.

Enough rambling. Time to move on.

Here's how I know I've definitely acquired the daily blogging habit: every evening I go directly to my computer after the kid's in bed, with the thought "I'd better do my blogging and get that out of the way first." Tonight I'm not feeling particularly philosophical or long-winded though, so just a brief bloggy check in and then I'm off to a more pressing project (like critting or picture editing).

So the doctor visit went fine. Poke poke, prod prod, thump thump, everything looks good, see you in a year. The old anxieties swirled but did not attack; the worst effect was a switch to the sort of over-caffeinated, jumpy, ultra-friendly, joke-making mode that I get into when I'm nervous or on high alert. It subsided as soon as I left the building (no surprise). And yes, leaving the building and driving to work, the summer sunshine seemed shinier, my favorite view of beautiful Mt. Tamalpais seemed more inspirational, and the very air itself felt tinged with a sparkly joie de vivre. I had a good day today.

So tomorrow is my yearly check-up appointment with my oncologist. (For anyone coming late to the show, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease back in 1992, on the day of my 23rd birthday. Details are below for the morbidly curious.) Twelve years later, and now in a different office with a different doctor, these yearly doctor visits (with their accompanying zaps and pokes) have lost much of the emotional charge they once had. But they still do prompt a few moments of reflection and gratitude (as do my other cancer-related dates, like my birthday and Memorial Day, which is approximately the time of year it was when my treatments ended and I was pronounced officially "in remission").

Speaking of gratitude (which is a weird thing to associate with having cancer, but that's life for ya), last year I wrote a brief essay about my cancer experience, on the theme of "Blessings In Disguise", and submitted it to the "Readers Write" department of The Sun, a lovely literary mag I used to subscribe to. (It didn't make it to print, but that's okay.) I'm still fond of it as a piece of writing, and it's relatively short, so I'm re-posting it below. I know this is sorta cheating, but I'm tired tonight (is there ever a night where I'm not? Yeah, yeah, I know...but hey at least I'm alive to be kvetching about it).

Hmmm, maybe one of these anniversaries I'll actually go back and re-read (and possibly post any interesting bits, if there are any) my MA thesis, which was about Identity Work in Women With Cancer (you can tell what was on my mind in grad school). God, both the cancer AND grad school feel like a whole other lifetime ago now.

But I digress. What I really wanted to say when I started this entry off is, damn it's good to be alive. Really. Amidst all the hurly burly and rush, despite all the setbacks and frustrations, I am so glad to still be here. I had shit to do. Things to finish. People to love. And now I can.

The migraine eye wigglies started while I was giving the kid his bath...now that he's in bed, I feel like I'm staring at this screen through a narrow shimmery tube, clear in the middle but flashing around the edges.

I guess my eeeeeevil evening plans for world domination through laundry and toenail polish application are foiled. I could have done it too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

Sigh. I do know that the message my body is trying to send me is "lay down somewhere quiet and stop using your eyes", but I protest. This is *my* precious personal time, dammit. I want to choose what to do.

Can barely see the screen. Signing off now.

Grumble.

I spent the early part of today scrapbooking, lunching and of course talk talk talking with my two dear mama friends, Linda and Michelene. We met in a mom's group when our sons were all tiny babies, and we went through that most major of life changes (mamahood) in tandem. We used to get together fairly regularly for scrapbooking, but then Mich moved to Alameda and life got busy and we switched to just getting together every few months on a weekend for scrapping and shopping and catching up. And then life got even crazier and we hadn't all gotten together for something like 8 or 10 months, and our get-togethers kept getting postponed and postponed, but finally, today, the heavens aligned and the space shuttle finally launched and we all met up.

The great thing is, it was like no time at all had passed--within literally one second of seeing each other we were back in the groove like we'd seen each other only yesterday. Of course there was much catching up to do, but it was all really fun catching up (and supportive and complimentary and positive in that oh-so-satisfying girly way). I love girlfriends like that, who can (and want to) reconnect in an instant and never get tired of talking and are always interested in more details of each others' lives. They rock. I feel so lucky and privileged to have a bunch of them. And even though I don't see them anywhere near as often as I wish I could, I don't feel judged or faulted for the time that's passed. There is just the connection, and the appreciation of whatever time we do get together.

Viva las amigas! (Or should that be "viven"? Oy is my Spanish rusty...actually it's pretty much just powdered ferrous flakes dusted over the floor of an unused back room of my brain, these days.)

Whew, I was heading off to bed when I realized that it was nearly midnight and I hadn't posted anything in my blog yet (geek!). So just a quick thought here and then I'm snoozin'.

The quick thought, brought on by a visit from our friend Trey, who I've known since high school, is this: old friends are vital to self-definition. You need old friends, especially those who have known you since you were half-baked (or at least still in the process of baking), and who still like and appreciate you, to really understand how much you've changed--and how much you've stayed the same.

I'd muse more but the muse wants dreams, not incoherent blogging. So goodnight, Gracie.

Ok I'm feeling a little spooked here...this morning the kid woke up barfing and we had to keep him home from school.

I was just kidding, God, I don't really have a problem with any of this. You're the greatest. Really.

I guess another one of the things you have to learn to appreciate/deal with/work around when you're a grownup is what I like to call the "IAS" (It's Always Something) factor. This is that peculiar aspect of adulthood that occurs when you realize that as soon as you feel like you're doing ok precariously balancing the demands of work and family and friends and personal projects and life admin, Something Happens to make the whole house o' cards fall down. You know, the cat has to go to the vet, you get a phone call at work from your kid's school informing you that he's barfing and you have to come pick him up Right Now, you're late and trying to get out the door but your keys are nowhere to be found--or in my case today, what should have been a routine 60K service on the aging family station wagon (expensive enough on its own) turns you into a poster child for excessive credit card debt. Ouch. I've just spent a couple hundred dollars more than an entire paycheck on my car, and it's only the 4th of the month. This is not something I feel good about, to say the least. I mean, who knows what will happen next? Do these IAS moments get increasingly worse and worse? God I hope not.

I know that the best thing to do is just to roll with the punches that the IAS factor administers--it's the universe's way of keeping us awakened and on our toes, training us for the grace we grownups eventually hope to acquire.

But I'm feeling stalked by the IAS factor right now....in fact we've had so many IAS moments in the last couple weeks that it's now evolved into a whole new category of crushing burden to deal with: NADM (Never A Dull Moment). I guess it takes about 3 IAS moments before you realize you're in a NADM phase. And being in a NADM phase puts you in the qualifying trials for the Suck-it-Up Olympics (which I must admit I am a gold-medalist in). But ok, ok, I get it. Can I go back to my sleepwalker's routine now? I just want to be able to focus on (and worry about) the little things like "strawberries or blueberries with my cottage cheese this morning?" or "jeans or skirt today?".

It's times like this that my usually well-hidden Job (as in the biblical guy, not what I do for money...at least I think it's Job, in my rush here I might be getting my bible stories confused, I'm not exactly a bible scholar) complex wants to come out and shake a fist at the sky, demanding "what do you want of me now, God? Haven't I already done everything you wanted me to? Why the new trials? Why? WHY?!"

So I found a new blog that I love to read (and feel compelled to check on every day or so): www.2blowhards.com. Some very thoughtful, interesting posts in there, about a huge variety of subjects loosely organized around "culture and arts". One I ran across recently that I just loved was this one, called "Adolescent Nation", about the creation of what we now think of as "the teenager" and, even yet more interesting to this ex-sociologist, the "teenification" (if you'll allow the slang) of American culture. The author (Michael Blowhard, one of the 2 Blowhards of the blog title) makes some fascinating points, among them these:

1) the teenager and teenagerhood (adolescence) as we know it today didn't exist prior to the mid 1900s
2) our American culture in general has taken on the core values of adolescence and prizes the activities and interests of adolescents as primary
3) adulthood, as a consequence, has become devalued
4) though this is somewhat cynical, there might be a connection between the shift towards a culture of perpetual adolescence (through marketing and culture-creation) and the ability to sell more stuff, not to mention the anesthetizing or prevention of political discourse

Wow! Some heady stuff, chock full o' chunky ideas to chew on. I highly suggest going to read the article (and it's accompanying discussion in the comments thread) yourself. (And stick around and poke through the archives, there's a lot of cool stuff there.)

Here are just a few quick thoughts I had after reading the article.

While of course I am struck by the excellent and seductive conspiracy theory-type argument that marketers have helped create and maintain this culture of perpetual adolescence in order to keep us uncertain and wanting to buy more products, I am more struck by the comment that adulthood--once valued as the positive goal towards which we all aspire--has become, well, unsexy at best, and undesirable at worst. Michael says:

Adulthood now looks sad. Having been crowded off the stage, adulthood mills about disconsolate and lost. Given that we now live in a country whose central values are adolescent, we've lost track of even the best adult values -- wit, grace, perspective, depth, suaveness, conviction, knowledge. In any sane civilization, these would all be regarded as virtues. In our country these days, such virtues often seem the marks of losers and failures. They seem kinda ... sad. Boring. Square. Adulthood? Get outta the way. Go sit quietly in the corner with your copy of Modern Maturity.

As someone who has really been struggling with being a "grownup" (my term) and all the responsibilities that the "grownup" status entails, I found myself going "yes! yes!" when I read this bit. I feel like I'm often surrounded (by culture, by media, even by friends) by heavy enticement towards the supposed pleasures of adolescent values (Michael names some of these as "bustin' out; pleasing yourself; excitement; grabbiness; gimme gimme gimme; self-expression; rebellion; sexy sulkiness; instant gratification; loudness; brightness; poppiness"), and I get very little support or understanding for my struggles towards/with the adult values of responsibility, dependability, loyalty, determination, steadiness, balance, and all the other ones Michael names above. I feel frustrated sometimes with my many friends who don't really "get" (let alone appreciate) this concept of adulthood, with all its joys and woes--hopefully this is just because I'm at an age/stage where I'm just beginning to really understand the transition that's happening to me, and they're not (yet).

But it's also good to remember that, in the grand tradition of C. Wright Mills' "sociological imagination" and feminism's great realization that "the personal is political", I'm not the only one who's struggling with this issue, and my experience is actually indicative of larger societal trends. (In my case I'm guessing that in addition to what Michael Blowhard is bringing up in his "Adolescent Nation" post, I'm also dealing with the societal pressures of being a working mom in a middle-class two-income family.) The question, now that my consciousness has been raised (so to speak) is what to do about this?

I'm fresh out of ideas. Anyone else know how to effectively change society so that being a grownup isn't such hard, unappreciated work? I don't need a soundbite; I'm happy to engage in a long, thoughtful conversation. Maybe the first thing to do is take a page from the women's movement of the '60s and '70s and just start talking and listening to each other, about what life is like for other grownups these days. A little mutual appreciation goes a long way towards empowering change, I think.

Dammit. I'm tired, I'm full of yummy dinner, I'm sitting on a half dozen unfinished half baked blog entry ideas and I just can't get it together to put even two coherent sentences next to each other. I wanted to do so many things tonight in my precious couple of post-kid hours, but got sideswiped by an unexpected visit from our friend Mark (fun and worth it but still...).

What I really NEED to do is go the hell to bed. The kid keeps having night fears and waking us up at really unreasonable hours, and I'm in danger of working my way rapidly down the slippery skimping-on-sleep slope to running on fumes.

See, I'm really not putting coherent sentences together. I give up. Here, gawk at a picture:

(Eli, about 8 months ago, being a Ninja in his costume that Auntie Serena and Uncle Eric gave him. Or is he doing yoga? Or perhaps just goth dancing? You make the call.)

We got our poor lil boo boo kitty back tonight, and she is currently curled up next to my leg, purring as I type. The side of her head is in full Franken-kitty mode (2 inch wound, on a face that is only probably 4 inches from ear to nose--you do the math). Luckily it has mostly stopped oozing, but it is by no means close to being healed up (apparently this will take another week or so). She was so happy to see me when I arrived at the vet to pick her up that in all the excitement and head butting she popped one of her stitches, necessitating an emergency staple (ewwww). But now she's home safe and I have to say, despite the pain in the butt this has all been (and will continue to be, with 2x daily meds and the near impossibility of trying to apply a hot compress to a squirmy cat face), I'm really glad she's home and that she's going to be okay. There has rarely been a cat so all around good natured and generally motivated by love as my wee Oreo cookie.

Here's a testimonial picture to the lovey kitty (not the greatest picture of her but I love the mood of this picture--she's so patient and sweet):

I had every intention of posting in here yesterday morning before we left to go camping, so as not to break the daily posting run, but I got too caught up in prep and grumpiness, and never even got to shower, let alone post. Ah well. I graciously concede defeat to the mighty Ms. Rebecca, winner of the blog chicken game, but I think I might have the daily posting habit ingrained now anyway.

So. We went camping. It worked out pretty well, overall. The kids certainly seemed to have a great time, and we got some spots of relaxing adult time too. (Most notably from around 10pm last night after the kids finally crashed til nearly midnight, when the grownups did.) The funny thing about camping is that once the basic life chores are taken care of (food and shelter), you normally spend a lot of time just sort of...sitting around. That's sort of supposed to be the point of it, anyway. But when you have kids, you really don't just sit around and soak up the "outdoorsy" ambience. So the "relax and get away from all the hustle and bustle of normal urban life" nature of camping wasn't quite working for me. Really what it came down to was chasing the kids around a place with dirt, tree sap, ticks, poison oak, dirt, sharp sticks, rocks, dirt, cliffs, and did i mention dirt? Oh yeah. Serious grubbiness. (But it was camping, so who cared. And tonight we all had lovely showers/baths and are all finally shiny and clean. I think that's one of the best parts of camping--the coming back to modern conveniences and hygiene after being without it for awhile. One better appreciates what one does without, however willingly.)

The place itself (Costanoa) was pretty easy--there was a general store/cafeteria with great food so we didn't have to cook, which made everything much easier. There was also a small play area (a slide, a couple swings, and bizarrely, some rings--I felt like maybe the kids should have been training for an Olympic event) right next to the store, so we spent a lot of time over there. The only downer was that the campsites themselves were not allowed to have open fires--so the only place we could gather 'round the flames and roast marshmellows and get that authentic camping smell was at an outdoor fireplace next to the bathrooms (euphemistically called the "comfort stations" here in this hoity toity campground). We did gamely bring our s'more ingredients and the kids over to the comfort station for just this purpose, however, and they had such a good time it turned out to be worth it. (Eli: "Dad, can you fire a moshmellow for me?"

So in addition to playing at the playground and making s'mores, we got to go feed/pet horses over at the stables. Maddie (the oldest kid present at 5 years old), actually did get a pony ride but Eli and Carson (Maddie's younger brother, 2 years old) were content to just watch and occasionally try to pet the horses. We also took a long walk along the meadows and cliffs next to the beach along Highway 1 and spent some quality time making sandcastles, looking for crabs and throwing rocks into the water at the beach. A pretty good time was had by all, though I admit to struggling with a fierce paranoia about poison oak (I am soooooo allergic) and Josh got sunburned on his back and shoulders (by the 10 minutes of sun we actually had all weekend--the weather was generally overcast and foggy otherwise).

And now that we've sort of gotten back into practice with the whole camping thing, I dare say we could do it again sometime soon. I hope we do. I have so many fond memories of camping from when I was a kid--it was my family's main vacation activity for most of my childhood. We always went with a couple other families (sometimes more), and we certainly didn't go the fancy campground route--as fancy as we got was occasionally getting to ride on our friends' catamaran when we went somewhere with a lake. (Not that we were hardcore backpackers or anything either--I'm talking basic family car camping.) But I remember just loving the smells, the simple cooking, the games, the swimming, the snug little tents, the animals and plants, the rhythms of the camping days. I hope to share these experiences at least a little with Eli. Just have to keep practicing.