freedom from training wheels

man i love this stuff. ever since i was a child, going to newark community days and checking out all the arts and crafts booths and live music and hula hoops in the grass and even having a picture hung on a tree in the kids art show. i loved sunday streets in the mission today, with bicyclists blasting michael jackson off their bikes on the closed off streets, my kids walking and biking down what is usually a traffic-filled danger zone, so many happy people, bumping into friends, the freedom from training wheels workshop (miles is training wheel free now!). merchants outside their stores, jumpy castles governed by teenagers from the bernal dwellings, a duo playing songs about coffee and cigarettes, a man offering free massage in spanish and english on a massage table outside his house, and yes hula hoops on the grass.

only once every few weeks, but maybe these sunday streets events really will get some things rolling, maybe someday we will close off the streets once a week, or even more! more and more people will want bikes and want to spend time walking and talking on the wide neighborhood streets. who thought to make this happen? i want to thank them.

we had friends over later and ate burnt grilled chicken and drank just enough beer and the kids played star wars and went to bed happy and quickly.

the wind is blowing hard now, over and out, goodnight.

movie night

well, we survived the giant's county fair today with david and emily. the 48 bus and the fancy new t line took us to borders, we ate burgers and then went to a sleazy kind of carnival by the ballpark, full of vendors desperate for us to throw balls and rings at bottles and squirt water for prizes. miles and emily teamed up for the rides up to 48" and maya and i spent some peaceful moments on the baby rides together. no baby animals or giant vegetables around. afterwards we went to chill out in the grass by the waterfront. a dude was down there having a great time playing electric guitar all by himself and miles and emily and maya played along on their inflatable guitars won at the fair (maya actually played a giant inflatable hammer with pretty pink pirate skulls). we made the journey back up and over potrero hill and met up with a little girl from miles' school.

now it is movie night and the kids and rich are watching star wars for fifth consecutive friday.

i guess it is okay to say this--i have been very anxious lately. i am finally starting to do something about it. everyone tells me it is normal to be worried about things, but all this worry is really getting to be too much, and my world is shrinking. i won't go into the details. but, for those who know me, it does help to share.

does living in the city contribute to the anxiety? if there was no scary traffic outside would i worry about people breaking into the house and kidnapping the kids in a sleepy suburb instead? or about mountain lions carrying them away in the countryside?

this weekend is chock full of things to do. mandarin classes, friends' bbqs, visits with new friends. flipper playing, sunday streets in the mission with all kinds of cool stuff, freedom from training wheels workshop for miles. it's not boring to be here. maybe all this activity keeps some of the worry at bay. maybe it is all a wash. who knows.

maya wants me to watch star wars with her because she is worried about luke. so there you go. i'm going to go and hold her on my lap and watch the good guys prevail.

4th of july

here is the gang that stayed in sonoma for fourth of july, and the two cinder blocks miles and i found and tucked some mexican feather grass into to beautify (?) our sidewalk.

sonoma was all about warm weather and cannonballs in the condo pool, fireworks and the big parade, walks to the square, ducks and ducklings, wine, pizza, and kids getting to wander in and out of front doors without me having a panic attack. miles made a buddy at the pool through an elaborate squirt gun war that ended up with the little boys holding hands while jumping in the pool. maya discovered the joy of floating with water wings and channeled her inner mermaid for a long long time. this was the first time i left sonoma thinking "maybe we could live there, someday, maybe..."

there was one sexy odd float in the parade that got everyone excited, a huge step van with pole dancers on the outside, something butthole surferish playing, a man with a microphone intoning wierd prose about liberty and an amazing vibe that brought me back to me experimental youth--past burning man and parties in philly to the distant past of newark and DAMON KHAN. something about the sight and music of this float actually got me teary eyed, i miss this feeling so much, i want to be on a float like this that gets the sonomans laughing and a little confused, i need my creative partners to be with me and my kids as i slip into my 40s.

rich suggested our own float for next year, "relatives of josy". anyone want to join?

and let's keep fighting for freedom--why do we have less freedom on an institutional level than much of the "first world"???

july 1

maya loving herself some pinata and miles in an abandoned fort on epic angel island, on our hike to quarry beach.

the apartment below us is empty. i had some hopes for a friendly family to move in, maybe even friends, but it will be taken by four women, strangers, though as i keep telling maya, not all strangers are bad.

an acquaintance at a birthday party on beautiful sunday in a lovely potrero home told me she had left sf and moved across the street from her best friend in albany and how she was loving it, and i felt a hard pang of jealousy. the kids ended up buck naked, we drank margaritas and chatted, they climbed in boxes and maya sang about butt cheeks and miles watched entranced as his little naked girl buddy did an interpretive dance standing on a cardboard box, about a flower growing up, on a stormy night.

today we went to the samurai exhibit at the asian art museum and it was all very amazing and old but i did not feel connected to the art or the artists. on the way home miles and i found a new seafood store on 24th street, with live crabs and lobsters, eel, huge shrimp. he said to the owner in mandarin "i like to eat fish."

birds are going crazy outside. we made a plum pie with plums from the yard yesterday and it was delicious.

love you, miss you

sidewalk again

category: sidewalk/kid quote/city living/where should we live/tiny ambitions

if you read this blog regularly (and the two of you know who i mean) you will notice that there are a lot of sidewalk and park posts. i think this reflects the urban nature of what i am pathetically trying to write about here, how we intersect and live in the public spaces of the
city.

i wish there were more positive sidewalk posts.


this morning walking past some stinky fluid on the sidewalk miles said "i wish we lived on garbage block (the other side of our block, which has some kind of wind tunnel of paper litter but is much much less travelled than potrero ave) so there would only be regular garbage and not so much poo and pee."

sigh

there are a lot of sick and homeless folks around lately. faces are becoming so familiar. the drunks at the walgreen's bus stop have moved somewhere else. sometimes the down and out people around here remind me of friends from my past in newark and philly. i had two different friends camping on my couch for a combined period of over two years way back when. rich just saw our homeless friend with the shopping cart downtown looking not so great. i know we are lucky. i try hard not to use the poor around here as lecture subjects for the kids "if you smoke cigarettes too much you can get too sick to have a job and end up not being able to pay for a place to live" but every now and then this kind of bs comes out of my mouth.

i guess the upside of all the nastiness on the sidewalk and crazy looking folks pushing shopping carts in traffic and tiny elderly chinese ladies carrying huge bags of scavenged recycling on a stick across her shoulders is that right outside our door the kids are learning about how varied everyone's living situations are. i guess it is my job to make that part of their education positive somehow. i will try my best...

mission pie, mission apple tree, mission plums

hi little journal

evan forced me to go to mission pie
with him yesterday. strawberry rhubarb and peach, with a big blob of thick whipped cream, i reminisced about the 1996 fruit pie and iced coffee national tour i went on. cassie you need to go there next visit.

last night miles and i went out at bedtime, walked down 24th st, through about eight doors into the inner sanctum of precita eyes mural gallery and painted 4 ceramic leaves on the branch of a gigantic apple tree for a big tile mural/mosaic going up at the 24th st snake water park over the next few weeks. i was supposed to go see shellac but passed out at 9 pm instead, with allergies and parent fatigue.

today i picked three ripe plums from the backyard plum tree. firm and sweet. and ate the first big red backyard radish and radish greens. the wind chimes are going crazy right now , louder than the ambulance siren and motorcyle engines gunning. our old windows are rattling in the wind. the kids so cute and so asleep and daddy rich is out with the band.

summer is here

since i am overwhelmed lately by the numerous subjects to write about i will kickstart my writing by analyzing miles' flag he made for the bear flag festival up in sonoma this weekend.

first, the obvious. this is a variation on the california state flag. the pictured variations are fireworks, which usually represent celebration and excitement. they can also be seen in this image as representing massive problems in the california state economy and government. boom, bam, krash.

we can also analyze my son's kindergarten education, which was in mandarin for 90% of his day all year. he learned what the state flag looks like, from the red stripe and star to the bear which happens on this flag to look like a prehistoric sloth. he learned to use pictures and words to represent ideas, and how to tape a piece of paper on a long stick and make his little sister envious of his flag. he learned how to write simple words like boom, bam, and krash, but has not picked up many sight words, which makes this overly worried mama nervous. he learned how to make thought bubbles and fancy exclamation points. note the absence of chinese characters. i would guess that this means miles has not yet learned the characters for boom, bam, or krash. i'm pretty sure he hasn't. this brings up a whole host of concerns about mandarin immersion and what it entails as far as comprehension and expression of content. i am going to give it another year, and see how it goes.

summer is here and i had my first partially kid-free day in a long time. i went to dmv and waited in several lines, shopped at rainbow grocery, indulged myself at a bookstore, cleaned the guinea pig cage, did laundry, emptied and filled the dishwasher.

oops, i did not have time to do exercises, call phobia therapists, or start making my massive to do list. i also seem to have run out of time to call several of my loved ones who i am procrastinating calling until i have some good news, like i have found several million dollars and will be buying houses and plane tickets so my loved ones can come visit or live here and we can spend some quality time bbqing and gardening and drinking and listening to music and digging in the sand with our toes and watching kids swim in blue pools and all that summer stuff.

face painting at home

weekend notes

friday night review scribbled on parking ticket envelope:

king of coffee
for years this was a scary meat market, and then for the last 2 it was a plant shop full of homeless plants leftover from hotels and closed down companies staffed by a friendly older man who sat on a plastic chair on the sidewalk surrounded by his potted trees and plants, smiling. orchids, palm trees, japanese maples, cacti, tiny fruit trees, spider plants. walking by tonight out by myself before the mandarin immersion mom's night out i notice some new art in the window, a dragon, an abstract metal sculpture. the plant shop is now king of coffee, with the plant guy's friendly son josue serving coffee and telling me about the incredible paint job--you just have to see it. bush and bob marley and james brown singing out from behind a mass of plants. it is a one cup at a time place, like philz, and i get the magic joe, which is quite special. a young punk looking bruce springsteen is making silver rings for chain mail, his mellow pit bull at his feet and his hip friend discussing her fashion show for the maker faire. then a guy pulls up in an electric golf cart with a kid in the front in a car seat, the kid wearing a mexican wrestling mask. he checks to see if the tiny cupcakes he makes have been selling. through the window where i sit i see pink and white and purple petunias dancing around in the wind, growing in a big homeade planter on wheels. a vaguely familiar guy with his daughter walks in and the guy smiles at me and asks where my little ones are. i don't know exactly why but i am feeling good about my neighborhood. if all my loved ones are far away i'll just have to love these strangers around here.

circus review:
miles got tickets from school to see the maker faire (incredible, we went last year) and the circus (i went last year but had forgotten it somehow). turns out the maker faire tickets were gone so saturday we checked out carson and barnes circus at cow palace.

now this is one seedy circus. miles ate a scary hotdog served by a man with major fingernail fungus. inflatable spongebobs and doras, cotton candy and snow cones came by us every 2-3 minutes held in boxes by desperate looking men. a lot of the performers had a lot of ace bandages on various joints. there was a six year old performing. the ponies were biting at themselves obsessively. the animal guy didn't look very nice.

of course maya was in heaven, literally screaming with delight each time a teenage girl dressed in a sparkly bathing suit with feathers on her head hauled herself up a rope or ladder, swung from something or clung to an animal's back. "mommy look at the LAYYYYYDEEEEES!!!!!!!" the clowns appealed to miles, and i was laughing pretty hard myself at ajax's physical comedy. but there was an edge there, the kids getting a little frantic for a toy, a light up sword, more sugar. we had snow cones but they were not satisfying.

on the way out were about 15 very serious looking men and women holding signs, video screens, handing out flyers with photos of elephants being poked and hurt and an elephant foot in chains looking infected as well as some quotes right out of a horror film. "these poor animals" they were muttering, shaking their head sadly, and "carson barnes tortures animals", etc etc. maya started crying about how the people didn't like the elephants and miles wanted to know what the hell was going on. we got into a little discussion and then the whole thing felt awful and i never want to go to a circus with animals again.

sunday notes:
sunday morning we went to the skate park and there was a starr king family. and a family from maya's day care. and it was fun and nice. then miles and i cut out for his bud's bday in beautiful koret playground in gg park and we spent more time with starr king families and it was fun and nice. then since we were right there and i felt so free and light with only one child miles and i walked over to the academy of science joined by two little girl friends from his class and their accompanying parents and it was fun and nice and actually an adorable time with the three kids running around so excited about the rainforest and the fish and the alligator and the cool rocking bench and holding hands etc.
it was not QUITE so nice walking back to the cars when miles and his little friend got a little too happy and started stripping and running into the trees and wouldn't listen but what can you do. to top off this day miles and i went to a vietnamese restaurant to eat and he actually chewed and swallowed an egg roll with all kinds of unidentified things inside, a baby bok choy, a gnomish looking mushroom and some bean sprouts. incredible.


this was my weekend. i'm sure you are all fascinated. how to take all these bits and pieces and write them into something whole is beyond me. school will be out in a week and i will have a little time to...myself. whatever will i do? suggestions are welcomed.

memorial day

carnaval! it was a cloudy grey day, good for the performers. we headed down to our usual watching point, outside of boa on 24th. maya wore her faux fur cape and glass slipper flats for the occasion. miles was on the prowl for candy.

i walked the unicef parade as a preschooler, then was a band geek for years. in college i organized the first and last pagan ritual. a somewhat tamed and child-friendly version of mardi gras, carnaval makes me feel good. brazilian drumming, sexy dancers, little kids dancing with their schools, more sexy dancers, a scary african procession with skulls and machetes and crazy long-haired costumes, more drums. salsa bands on floats, followed by tiny bolivian women dancers with flutes and surprisingly loud voices. goofy middle school kids dancing to tonto jump on it. you gotta love this stuff.

later miles and rich went to play basketball and came upon a man lying in the street with a bloody mouth. rich said he couldn't talk and looked scared--maybe a seizure. he made a big impression on miles, who asked many questions about him at his favorite discussion time, after he was supposed to be going to sleep.

it is memorial day and i am thinking about my poppop. he was a combat photographer who in his grandpa days became a combat photographer for peace, veteran for peace, fought against landmines and helped protect voters in elections in central america. he grew up in a city like my kids are doing, in a poor neighborhood with a garden out back. he told some good stories about pea shooters and horse poo pranks. he built houses, made tiles, was a studio photographer. he made delicious oatmeal, built a house for my grandmother and himself next to a gorgeous green river in massachusetts, raised goats for a while, then ended up living his last years with a wonderful retired schoolteacher in staten island, ny. he led a full long life and was very much against war.

xo

ilhan first told me about this place

last night we bickered with each other about various issues (mostly miles and rich--miles has been pretty grouchy lately) and almost didn't go, but finally packed our stuff in the car and drove down to the dreamy butano state park campground. the ground was moist, the redwoods tall, huge logs everywhere for kids and banana slugs to climb on. the smell of fire and evergreen leaves. dogs barked and kids yelled, an occasional clank of pan or loud crack of fire, and our breath made clouds. the kids went bezerk for marshmallows, but it seems like lately the kids just ARE bezerk. how did we end up with these crazy little folks? hmmm...

we survived a night of heavy snoring and awoke to the sound of stellar jays and little waking noises. after breakfast we hiked down the trail where ten years ago cassie and i trailed kaveh to his friend's wedding and drank some danish liquer (that word must be spelled wrong) while elf like wedding guests cavorted around. today we were highly entertained by a park ranger named mountain who led a junior park ranger presentation about birds. we sang a song about quail, miles got to wear a sign around his neck that said BEAK: you got a beak, you got a eat, and finally there was an insane game with camoflauged nests full of checkers and 30 kids running around flapping their wings and trying to protect their checkers from the predatory adults. as we drove out we saw bunnies and quail and talked about native americans and how modern society was quickly changing the entire planet.

we balanced out all this nature nicely with a stop at burger king and a "name that cartoon theme song" game in the car. upon arriving home rich and i collapsed and miles and maya watched 2 hours of rocky and bullwinkle.

carnaval tomorrow. i'm in a i miss my friends mode. i miss you, friends.

i want to go back to bed and daydream

procrastinating before work

summer is almost here

stopped to get money from the little liquor/party store on 24th street. they have made an effort to reach new customers and now have "organic food". i expected some healthy cereal, soymilk and annie's mac and cheese. instead two cute stoner/skateboard dudes sit behind a deli counter with sandwiches and salads they have made themselves. they have home jarred fruit and vegetables in big mason jars. the salads are 2 bucks and things like corn, mint and baby bok choy. acme bread in huge bags. rasta music playing. good for them.

across the street i see a man peeing sneakily in someone's doorway.

our little garden out back is growing but slowly--the morning sun takes a little while to hit the ground. i just want to go lie in bed and daydream.


kids are waiting at school, better go.

"let us cultivate our garden"

just returned from seeing:
my friend sheila starring as candide in the theatre of yugen's version of candide, or optimism.
in case you didn't noh, which i didn't, this is a highly stylized form of theater from japan. after getting over my astonishment at seeing sheila on stage as a man in crazy japanese costume courting a baroness in west failure i settled in and enjoyed it thoroughly for 2 hours.

and on the optimism tip, we took the kids this weekend to the life is good festival
in gg park where for almost six hours a bunch of people played music, did some top-notch juggling and ventriloquism, kids cavorted on parachutes and threw balls through openings, the face painting and ice tea were free, bubbles were blown, and all donations went to charities. as we sat and made arts and crafts out of old clothing catalogs i got the story that life is good is a clothing company that decided to give back after 9/11.

ahh, what a nice place our earth is, the best of all possible worlds.

and maya's quote, unrelated:
"here are some books i got for you. i got them all in china."

me: "okay, can you read me one?"

"no, they are all in spanish."

nighty night

bee babysitter

we went to point arena last weekend. i was singing the hazy hit where should we live so much that maya started crying "stop it, stop it." so beautiful up there i just want to stare around me for hours but the kids made certain i didn't do that. every rock and plant and tree and cloud seems perfectly formed and positioned. i ended up staying up until almost 3 with brian and his friend listening to recordings he has made in the dome. it's amazing the creative projects our (mostly childless) friends have produced!!

back in sf things are way too busy. i was kind of half-hearted about the starr king open space board and didn't invite anyone to vote for me. so, phew, i am not on the new board of directors, but feel my slight involvement and vote helped create the new school friendly board. soon there will be kids out there with clipboards sketching bugs and writing in their journals. if there is still any money left for schools to function...

maya and i sat on the path in that open space today for a while. she came up with a game about us being birds that were babysat by bees. it was nice to not be a mean stepsister for once. some nice folks with dogs wandered by. we picked some teeny flowers. after coming back down the hill i was cornered by our star trek loving cross-dressing older neighbor walking his inherited dog peanut. i heard him rant about how he couldn't stand the city much longer and how when his wife retires in 18 months they are moving to a country house 20 miles from any town up in northern california. he is very pissed off because more parking will be removed for bike lanes. he also informed me that peanut has diarrhea.

maya started to pick someone's geranium's but before i could stop her the man stepped off his front stairs and said she was welcome to pick a big one. she said that was nice of you to let me pick this wery big flower.

and rich and miles are at a giant's game, tickets purchased through a fundraiser for miles' school. a weekend ahead of kid events, cleaning the bathroom, maybe a little cousin time.

life is whooshing by lately. i have been up a lot at night, thinking about present and future.

love you

me a board member?

not so long ago i was making jokes about bored members. haha. thought of that just now, actually. anyway, i was asked to submit my candidacy for the board of directors of starr king open space and i did! there is debate about how democratic the current board is, and there are plans for new blood to come in and make things more inclusive, democratic, etc. i have said yes because it might lead to kids at miles' school having access to this great natural space, but i am no politico. when i think of a board meeting i just feel bad about going out in the evening after work when i should be home squabbling with my family.

after almost a year my son is finally loving his lord of the flies type after school program, and now it is in danger of being shut down by parks and rec budget cuts. today i got there to see a the kindergarten tennis gang arriving at the court at the same time as a dad and his two sons with their racquets. at any other program the adults would have stepped in and told the kids to wait their turn, etc etc. the staff here is, um, very loose, and barely registered the possible conflict ("oh, are there kids around here somewhere doing something?"). then miles and his little buddies suggested to this very large stranger and his big boys that they share the court, and they did, for about an hour, while maya and i played bluto and olive oyl (feminist olive oyl) and squashed some unripe passionfruit.

maya is finally ready for bed, so night night to ya'

quick while the kiddos are working on a secret project

well, in a nutshell i am worried about swine flu. call me paranoid and a media believing loser but we are lying low this weekend. i think we will skip the my gym birthday party with 30 kids sneezing and coughing into plastic balls, and also the pump it up party with 30 kids wiping germs all over inflatable fun.

oh no, conflict already. i like this little dude a lot--cute and evil with swords on his forehead.

gotta go

at the car wash

this morning i hid in the garden so i could talk on the phone with my dad and not be interrupted by little crazy people. he had just put his boat in the water for the first time, in lewes thousands of miles away. my sister is living at home now with her toddler who is getting lots of grandparent time. i miss my dad more than i can write here. miles found me and talked to his poppop a little about fishing.

sometimes it seems very wrong that i am so far from my father.

around 11 we hiked the hill with some brownies for the starr king carwash and bake sale. woo hoo. the kids ended up washing and detailing, rich vacuumed many many cars and i hung out and fed kids and tried to help make sure no one got run over. it was a sunny perfect day. sf recycling donated a huge grill and two griller guys, and double rainbow donated a big ice cream truck with cups of ice cream for all. kids playing in the streams of dr bronner smelling soapy water, shooting hoops, chasing each other, actually staying still and lounging in the sun. an excellent dj, watermelon, scooters, meeting new neighborhood folks. it was nice. the starr king friends were there but what made things seem a little more whole in this disjointed people all over the place life of ours was that a bunch of our rock and roll friends came. baby suzette and john and danielle, and eric and his girlfriend from the warehouse, shannon from philly and her buddy. they were psyched to come to this school event near their houses. then they got to go and drink mimosas and we got to take the kids down the hill.

on the way back down i heard my name called and it was a content specialist from work sitting in a camp chair outside sf general, on a vigil with a good friend whose good friend was very sick inside. i finally get to see your real life! cried this co-worker with some real pleasure in her irish accent, a goofy basball cap shading her eyes. for some reason miles laid down on the sidewalk and then maya laid down with her head on his tummy and said he was her pillow. it made everyone laugh for a minute.

i'm tired now and rich is down the hall in music land again.

love you

mummy shots

sunday night i took off at 4:30, hopped a quick 48 bus to valencia street and walked through the dazing yet soft heat to amnesia to hear the mummy shots. four of my lovely lady friends were all in ghostly white with red eyeliner. they are the back up singers, xylophone and tambourine players. the band played a show with a deathly theme, with a little funny sex stuff thrown in. accordion, guitar, a wierd stylus instrument david bowie used in the 80s, piano, drums, sounding almost a little like daniel johnston at times. i had a few pint glasses of sangria on ice under the shimmering pink fabric hanging from the ceiling. my band played here a few times in a different lifetime when the bar was the chameleon. the basement thren was full of kind of dirty looking happy punk rockers and cigarette smoke and furry dogs. that was almost a decade ago. afterwards there was more drinking and talking and a little cool breeze coming in a window off the street.

looking at all the death-referenced song titles on the free cd yet feeling so light and happy i remembered out loud that most people who think a lot about death are very in love with life. then i had one last slurp of my vodka and grapefruit juice.

not a profound thought but it pleased me at the time. it is still very very hot here. time for a wet washcloth and some short stories in front of the fan to wind down. i should be doing work, oops.

so, my husband went out and played with his rock band last night, and will do so again tomorrow, yet i can't go because we don't have a babysitter. no babysitter. is this a function of living in a city, or of the somewhat unusual situation of having a 41 year old husband who still plays shows until 2 in the morning? i would like to go out, but will have to be content with going to bed at 10 instead.

today was beautiful, right now the sky is light pink and purple, and thank god the kids conked out early. maya and i hung out in the starr king open space after dropping miles off at school. sitting up high looking at the hills and valleys covered with lines of buildings, different colors and rooftops, wisps of fog around the sutro tower, green peaks around us. right where we sat we found pineapple weed, a wierd sticky velcro plant, california poppies, tiny pink fairy flowers, purple thumbelina flowers, rocks that maya stuffed in a small hole, a pale spider, lots of wavy hay-like grass, shiny black obsidian, and a rectangular piece of glass. somehow the places where buildings, roads, and nature converge make me feel slightly hopeful about the future.

a blog telegram

cassie came and went, in a 3 day blur of being sick, laughing really hard like i do with no one else, getting teary about old friends, and finding myself toughened up a little and not bawling when we took her back to the airport. cassie, wish you were still here. we could go see browntown west at the eagle together thursday and think about tedd and laugh hysterically at my husband's band.

ajax the guinea pig was very ill, almost dying from seizures on easter sunday but the vet saved him. he is nibbling on a carrot right now. maybe it took a near death to make me love the little guy.

now the blog telegram, or maybe a bad poem...

big wheel race down vermont st last night, streams of 2o somethings racing down the hill on plastic tricycles, barbie cars outfitted with cheetah print pillows, the same small asian lady ninja turtle we saw last year, they reach the final stretch and jump up and out of the way so the big wheels following don't hit them. miles on my lap, checking out the outfits, the helmets, the sexy easter bunnies, the man slurping vodka from one of those hikers water tubes, the bikes. these riders are whooping with exhilaration, the ride down is so good. my sciatica hurts just from walking up the hill.

in sonoma my mom drove us around, bought us expensive pre-cooked food, played pick-up sticks with miles. we went to a trout farm and i threaded hooks through fat squirming worms and pulled in 2 10 inch and 1 11 inch trout. miles cried and yelled in the car going back to the city when he realized we left his fish skeleton in the refrigerator. he wanted it for science.

easter sunday ajax is in the animal hospital with rich and i am in gg park with my kids and brother and friends and miles is so hyped up about the upcoming sugar that he gets wacky and just smacks a big open bag of bagels right out of his uncle's hand onto the ground and barely notices. i am becoming a bad mother at times, and yank him up by his arm and tell him to go sit across the field for a minute and calm down. he does. i need to be aware that i am big and strong and i shouldn't yank anyone no matter how annoying they are being.

maya is being a baby, again and again. me want up she says. she falls apart crying, down on hands and knees in angst, several times a day. she screams and folds her arms in fury. she is going through a phase. she wants to be little again. littler. even when having an angst-filled tantrum she is adorable. miles says "i like the age i am, i don't want to get any older." miles asks "after i die will it still be monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday saturday sunday?" miles says "love isn't always a good thing because if you love someone and they have an accident or something then you can't love them anymore and that's when love is bad." a friend emails after his 40th bday and says he is getting old. we all want time to stop. i remember crying about growing up, around age 15.

i have a moment of pure pleasure holding my friend's tiny wide-eyed smiling baby boy.

and after school today i took the kids to check out warm water cove. people trying hard to make natural a place devastated by people. a patch of wildness with cement paths through it and lots of broken glass. butterflies and birds singing sweet songs on that scary curly sharp barbed wire. we eat bananas and tortilla chips on a table looking out over the bay. two large cement stones turn out to be parts of baby head statues our artist friend dave from the warehouse on third discarded years and years ago. they are still here. miles and maya stop to sketch on a bench and when i look down they are sitting on top of some graphic cartoon porn someone has sharpied on there. a beautiful young man and woman walk by and it turns out they are going to be trying to build a beach here. as an art project for california college or arts. they get my email and we talk about community building. there is glass everywhere and maya has another tantrum when her brother draws ariel's hair scribbly black.

i tied together some cool hard dried seaweed in a circle and hung more curvy pieces on it. black and white, odd shapes, this wierd mobile is hanging from our beautiful old light fixture. i like it.

maya told me this was a bee-YOU-tiful day.

this is not a telegram at all. i don't know what it is. we flee the city and return and do it again. i'll be more organized next time. how many times have i said that in my life?
love you, jamie

long weekend

rich away this weekend making music in mendocino county, and i've got one borderline sick kid and one quite sick coughing mucous-filled kid but we worked it out. saturday we met our good friends at the library downtown, where we checked out no books but played sorry and the strawberry shortcake game, then ran around at the park in front of city hall, walking past the most joyful loud laughing totally crazy person ever on the way. her head thrown back and huge huge laughing mouth with shining white teeth in the sun. said friends came over afterwards and the kids puttered around together so well, miles and jonah drawing skeletons and monsters, z and maya dressed like tinkerbells and parallel playing in parallel small worlds. these friends are moving to the east bay, but i won't get too sad about it because, well, i guess i am becoming hardened and tough about losing friends to distance.

yesterday evan came over and we took the kids to hipster st francis for a fabulous brunch and returned to find i had locked us and evan's bag with his keys out of my house. upstairs neighbor in sacramento, rich 4 hours away. evan kept cool and we walked to my neighbor's bday party one block away. i left the kids there and cabbed it to my brother's, got his spare key from the hiding spot, found the set of keys to our house in his basket of mail, bought a bottle of bushmills whiskey and some ice at the corner store, and went back to the party. soon the kids were watching pokemon, evan was facilitating shots for all, there were ribs and chicken and cookies and the day flew by until bedtime.

and today our backyard became part of a decentralized urban farm, myfarm. we hired a bunch of young eco-warriors to crush all our grass, haul in tons of dirt, build beds with drip irrigation, put up a huge trellis and a potato tower. for the next nine months our farmer will come each week to weed and harvest and leave us a box of veggies, taking another box to a member of myfarm not as lucky as us with our sunny mission yard. yes, i wish i could do all this gardening myself, but times are wierdly busy, my back and leg have been killing me, and this is all good, right? allll gooood. the farmers ride their bikes around the city and the food is only transported from yard to kitchen. it is supposed to taste better too. we will see!!!

miles asked tonight if i was going to die first since i am a grownup. i said i didn't really want to talk about it (bad answer), and that we should enjoy our time together. he replied that we spent a lot of time not together, and that made him sad because i am his best friend. lord, he is a pain in the you know what, but i love that crazy little dude SO MUCH. maya then spent an hour driving me nuts not going to sleep and then threw up from coughing ten minutes after she passed out. i washed her gross milky vomit hair in the sink and she smiled up at me with her red cheeks and exhausted eyes.

i know i am lucky right now, even if i often forget. my life has terrible and wonderful parts. the terrible are not on this blog. it is possible to turn towards the wonderful, and writing, growing things, kids and friends help.

you know what i mean, right?
love, j

more themeless details, this is headed somewhere, right?

thursday morning i discovered that when rich test drove our car the night before to check out the sticky clutch it had become completely stuck and was squatting at our mechanic's across the street. aaaahh. i had to get miles to school up the hill, maya to bernal heights daycare, me to work in the western addition in an hour. a seemingly impossible feat, but it was done. after some phone calls ana from ana's daycare came racing over in her humongous suv and took maya and her car seat away to ana land in bernal. miles and i ran up the hill and two classmates stopped to offer us rides. after drop-off i hitched a ride down the hill. grabbed my bags from the house. ran down the steps. snuck in a tasty two-shot rocket coffee from 24th street for moral support. the 33 miraculously appeared. a cute baby stuffed in some kind of snow suit on a 70 degree day made googly eyes at me. i got off at 16th and mission. wham! the 22 appeared. i got off in the heart of the fillmore, walked two blocks and made it to work on time to see my first little friend. after work i got the 22 to jackson park, enjoying my seat as the man next to me snoozed and then dropped a huge plastic to go box of chow mein noodles of the floor. scooped up miles just in time to hitch another ride to our house with a departing schoolmate. he was in heaven (silent, shy heaven) but heaven anyway to be in the backseat with a second grader he idolizes. we were dropped off at home just in time for maya's little daycare mate's mom to drop her off with her carseat. adventures of carless urban mom. i don't know how people do it. i depended on a lot of kindness and favors. and a freakishly good day on muni.

this morning, walking to school, maya was jumping over pieces of glass, cigarettes, pigeon doo and other lovely stuff. she said she was garbage girl and made a superhero pose. yikes!! she is into the tiny titans. and being strong, fast, and powerful.

rich is down the hall making crazy guitar sounds. kids in dreamland. school event tomorrow night, cousin dinner the next, friday is walk to school day, this weekend a new friend's bday party i can stumble home from with my kids, monday is our farm installation, soon my best friend will be here.

is anyone reading this? and why, may i ask?

i promise something interesting soon. there are a lot of interesting things going on, but i'm not ready to share them here yet. don't get too excited, but that will bring you back again, eh?

wierd fun

there are many things i could be doing. instead i am spending my tuesday night alone time...
watching american idol and obsessively checking the sfkfiles blog (about school admissions in san francisco) EVEN THOUGH MY KID IS ALREADY IN KINDERGARTEN!

any analysis of what is wrong with me is appreciated. well, you know, almost any analysis.

i guess both obsessions are loosely connected to justice and fate. those are interesting, right?

maya's quote: there was a plate of noodles on the floor near her at miles' party. i asked her who dropped the noodles. "my butt!" peals of hysterical laughter. ai yi yi.

xo

joint birthday party

well, we made it through another birthday party. my baby boy is six. years. old.

we planned this one with another family from miles' school. we don't know them that well but the kids had birthdays in the same 2 weeks, it would be greener to have one whole class party for both, and less parties for parents to bring their kids to.

this morning was rainy, gray skies and maya up at 5:18 whispering in my ear about "remember when the hawk picked up tinkerbell?". a blurry few hours of princess music and some punk rock dancing and nerf basketball. i took miles up 24th street to return 2 videos, him riding fast and smooth on his new scooter, me limping along in the drizzle. we stopped at st francis and shared a sausage patty and a hot chocolate under the awning, surrounded by hipsters discussing their friends, watching dogs and drunks and families go by.

at glen park there was a glimpse of sun but then rain fell. the kids came in, many, many kids, the whole kindergarten class plus edison, calvin, emily, natalie, and more i don't know. they hummed and buzzed around in the big rec center room we had rented, making goofy faces, creating paper masks, eating potato chips, playing floor hockey, running spastically making animal noises, pulling each other in a wagon. maya was in heaven with her big friend lucy to follow around. my mom, my cousin, my niece, julia, todd, rebecca, suling. miles not yet overwhelmed with this marking of the passage of time, sugary food or bags of gifts (the angst hit later, around bedtime. he is definitely my son). the other birthday parents had hired a magician and our kids grouped up and watched him smack himself in the head with flying objects, make booger jokes, and at one point balance my son on his shoulders while standing on a board which rolled on a barrel. maya's laugh hit the ceiling every dumb joke he made.

i moved around the room checking in on my kids, my family, all the moms and dads talking about their kids, school politics, and started to feel a wierd feeling. kind of a feeling of joy. was this relief, having pulled off another party in the midst of work chaos? hormones? hmm. as the kids gathered around the birthday cakes (grandma-bought flourescent green ninja turtle for miles, homeade with a top hot on white icing for the birthday girl),and then sang twice, first in english and then chinese, and as many little fingers darted impulsively towards the cake i was trying to cut fast with a sharp knife i felt oddly calm and good.

i still lament the breakup of my urban tribe, my wonderful time and friends who played music together and camped together and had kids together and went to burning man and on and on. we had HISTORY, and intimacy that comes with it, and love. and that goes a long way and always will. but tonight after the party, lying in bed with maya waiting for the kids to drift off it hit me that, random as it is, my son's school is a new tribe we have joined. no history yet, but a wierd intimacy because those funny little people we are all more than intimate with, and so in love with, will be together for years. this tribe has a future, and i am happy to create it with them.

it's time to dive in. splash.

happy birthday miles love you SO MUCH.

xo
xo
xo

power nap

sleep struggles. maya has been waking us all up at night, and then getting up for the day between 4 and 5. in the morning. this morning rich was so annoyed and talking about her slamming doors and not sleeping enough that she started bawling listening to him, "you said i wasn't a good girl." and nap time was ugly. i tried to lay down peacefully with my yawning earlybird, eager to close my eyes and drift for a bit but her legs kept kicking around, she kept talking, joking to herself, playfully patting my head, inching away as i lay there becoming so so so grumpy wanting a break, wanting a little nap myself. i started threats, made her take off her princess dress because princesses go right to sleep at nap time, even helped her stay still by holding her tight next to me on the bed. i will go to sleep, i am, i am she would protest, and then after a few minutes of clenched eyes the twitching and whispering and squirming resumed. this repeated for an hour.

i am embarrassed to say at one point i cried and let her know how miserable she was making me by keeping me up. she cried too, after staring into my eyes hard for a minute, and we bawled together exhausted. pathetic tired guilt-tripping mother.

this is bad power stuff. i know better. i don't like threats and guilt tactics and using my power over people. i only do this stuff when i am very very tired.

just thinking about positions of power and how we act in them. the benevolence and caring and patience can go away so quickly. this is part of what is wrong with humans, even the kindest of us. it has become better among some people, some groups, but how will it ever go away when we teach it to our kids in so many ways? however you look at parenting there is no doubt that parents use their power in ways that are not just for the child's good. or our own, really. and so it goes.

maya woke up and smiled at me with red cheeks and crazy hair and said "remember when you were mean to me?"

i did.

i'm sorry.

xo

little things

hmm. the last weeks have been a busy rainy blur. i'm sure i have had some profound and interesting thoughts but they seem to have fled my head. discovery museums, tapas birthday brunches, very sick students, party playhouses, rich's music projects, preschool interviews, rediscovering The Cars with my children, a trip to round table pizza, the culture and excitement just don't stop around here.

the rain has made everything brilliant green. there are pink blossoms on our peach tree and white on the plum. maya is sleeping with a smile on her face under my blue and white quilt in a room filled with the scent of lemon geraniums. i had the day off to take it slow. stop and chat with my owner friend of the 23rd st cafe and her girls after dropping off miles. stop to pick many small flowers on the way home. stop to investigate streams of water in the gutter and painters on scaffolds and say hi to lily the dry cleaner and our neighbor dog little chicken. play cinderella on the back deck in the sun. lie down with my baby girl and listen to the traffic and the fan. ginger flowers in a vase on the table, left over from valentine's day. a tiny plastic bag of dark chocolate chips for lunch.

there is a lot going on that is heavy and complicated, but these little sweet things are what i am concentrating on today.

soon i will wake maya and we will hike up that hill again. i promised miles we would walk the circle maze up on the green top of potrero hill open space. there are wild flowers blooming everywhere there, and little rocks to be pocketed.

xo

year of the ox

lately i have been unable to keep in touch with people. there are a lot of important folks on my to call list. i haven't spoken with my sister in months. and you all know i love to talk.

i love to listen too. but the way things are, communication with far away loved ones becomes very one-sided. blog posts. a little facebook here and there. emails with photos of the kids. it seems like there is so much communication going on, but, and this is painfully obvious i know, reading and writing are not talking. not close. i know email and blogs and facebook are creative modern ways to communicate in our brave new world but sometimes i wonder what these developments are replacing, and how, and why. and if it's okay with me.

here is a photo of miles preparing to march in the chinese new year parade. he did it, he made it, he is a trooper. he had a breakdown before they left the school, and pretty much wouldn't take his eyes off me during the 2-mile march, but he made it!! i was quite proud.

and now miles' teacher is leaving to have her baby. he is sad. and i don't know if it is coincidence, but all the death questions are resurfacing. questions about who will die first in our family. if my grandmother is dead. if his great great grandfather is dead. what it is like to be dead. i'm so bad with this. i'm 40 and haven't figured out much about death yet except i'm painfully afraid of it. i can't lie anymore, like when this topic was approached last year, and say that we just aren't going to die. so my kid is feeling a great loss already, that the teacher he loves is going away, and i guess to him it is something like death. loss is loss, right? we can try to picture her happy with her baby, and know she will visit, but loss is loss.

i have been shedding some tears with him.

but we all know it will all work out all right.

hey people, if you are out there, say hello. let me know how you are. miss you.

xoxoxo

blog from the past

my former bandmate, accordion and guitar player extraordinaire,tall handsome tatar maker of elvis heart pillows and owner of many a cake pan mold created a blog of our old band.

i love the past, and love to revisit it. you are welcome to stop by too.

yusakuta.blogspot.com

more sunny weather

this is maya being cinderella.

went to our friends tiny bungalow yesterday to eat pancakes and bacon and meet their 11/11 newborn. i got to hold her the whole time, her big big eyes staring at me from under her hat. her dad took a tiny space, about as big as our bathroom, and customized it into the sweetest little bedroom, with a window looking out into a bamboo and stone backyard. we look forward to her growing up in our neighborhood.

sunny sunny sunny, wierdly hot and sunny really. the kids collected flowers and sticks in mckinley park and then miles and i made a weapon out of sticks and silver duct tape to match the one donatello has (is that the right ninja turtle?) maya and i made a six-inch sword for her made with sticks and pink duct tape, it's definitely cute. we saw the sun set yesterday at taco bell beach. today we played at the skate park and then went to the bottom of the hill bar for a nordic heavy metal themed chili cook-off/super bowl party. i don't even know who won. there were a lot of old friends and the kids hung in there, eating meatballs, jello and red velvet cake, and running around on the stage behind the huge tv screen, the stage where their daddy has played his guitar.

my mom and dad are both out of the country, and i am feeling it. the unknowns seem piled high right now--miles' new teacher starting tomorrow as his fabulous one is going on maternity leave, my credential and maybe my job in danger as the legislature considers a cheaper "language credential". sick students in the hospital, crazy headlines about droughts and recessions and the next big earthquake and california budgets blaring at me from newspaper dispensers even when i try not to look. other friends waiting for adoptee babies to arrive. my dad down some tiny dirt roads and across bridges i have never heard of in costa rica. i'm feeling the need to hunker down with some people i love and feel grounded.

i guess i can try and do that with my little family here. sometimes a lot of people i love seem so spread out and far away. if you were all closer i think i would enjoy this endless sun and heat more instead of wondering if it is a sign of unknown things to come. we could have a picnic at the beach and watch the ocean slowly slowly rise. things feel peaceful at the ocean's edge.

hope for rain soon.

posted at 4:00 am. xoxo

boom

well, it is the eve of the due date for miles' paperwork to participate in the san francisco chinese new year's parade. yikes. he's been attending the weekly practices, where they march around the schoolyard for an hour holding hands, and after these practices miles is (extra) teary/sensitive/angry/tired, but insists he likes it. insists he wants to be in the parade next weekend. i don't think he has any clue what he is getting into. here is the scoop: drop your five-year-old off at the school at 2 in the afternoon, where they get to dress up in cool little costumes. then they ride on a bus to chinatown and get ready for the 2 mile parade in front of thousands and thousands and thousands of people. fireworks, dragons, stops and starts. rain? then they get back on a bus and we pick them up at 9 at the school. two hours past bedtime.

i've been in a lot of parades. dressed as a orange paper painted pumpkin skipping down main st newark on a sunny halloween weekend, scooping candy off the street. marching in lines down a slippery boardwalk playing flute badly on a slippery boardwalk in atlantic city for the miss america parade. overheating playing trumpet badly in disneyworld. so, will it be fun?? i am feeling like such a mama. if i could march too and check in with my little dude, to see if he is overwhelmed by it all, and ready to blow up, his little face screwing up. because he really is still a little guy. but i can't march, and there will be huge crowds so i won't be able to keep up with his group. and his beloved teacher won't be there because 2 miles is too long for a nine-month preggers lady. there will be other nice moms and teachers and kids. it will be intense and beautiful and loud.

should i sign the forms? or should i play loser mommy who forgot to turn them in, sorry, my fault, you can't be in the parade...

i wish it was a tiny main street parade, a soft, gentle little parade with good access to my baby, but that's not what we've got going on here, is it?

sigh.

hot tub!

this photo was taken moments before i left my children and, poor pitiful me, had to go to an, ahem, conference for the weekend.

so the kids got to get spoiled by daddy and i spent my weekend in calistoga, under a perfect blue sky with a few clouds and breeze...(in chronological order)

going to two fantastic wineries where my girlfriends and i sipped lots of expensive varietals from big glasses in front of statues and fireplaces. eating raw oysters and drinking irish coffee at the main street bar. soaking in the hot spring pools for three hours, floating on my back and looking at palm trees and clouds. fancy farm to table dinner with more wine.
more hot springs and very buzzed talk. sleep. eggs benedict with crispy little potatoes. lots of good coffee. slow drive home past vineyards, hawks, bitterns, hills, the bay. survived trip over bridge with no earthquake. kids overjoyed to see me and everyone is fine.

why did i wait almost 6 years to take 30 hours for myself?

***********

for those of you who want kid quotes miles said this morning:

"mommy, sometimes i like homeless people because they can't GET stuff so they MAKE stuff."
(makes pained smile i'm-trying-to-understand-how-things-work face) "I know it's not good for THEM."

i like that he feels admiration rather than pity.

my best friend is coming to visit soon! hurray! get ready.
xo

kids with runny noses and dragon

a post in the format of the classic children's book "fortunately"

fortunately we got out of the house on time this morning
unfortunately it started raining halfway up the hill
fortunately the 48 bus came promptly right along
unfortunately the beeatch driver did not honor my request to get on the bus and see if someone had change for a 10
fortunately a man in a tree care van pulled up and offered us a ride
unfortunately i used terrible judgment and hopped in with the kids
fortunately it turned out he was the husband/dad of the our nice neighbor mom and maya's little friend
unfortunately after a sweet hour back home making banana bread and playing princess and ninja turtles with maya we went outside to find someone had shattered the car window and ripped out the car stereo
fortunately my daughter is a champ who told her crying mother that it was okay, she would read me a story and that would make me feel better


this could go on and on. what is really bad right now is that one of the little students i know is very very sick, so send your positive wishes to him. makes you hug your own kids tighter, feel lucky, etc etc, but it is true. all these little ups and downs are just fine. i don't even have bad feelings toward the window smasher. i know nothing about him (but i guess it's a him).

last night i speed read the rest of last child in the woods by richard louv. not a work of hard science, and the ideas are mostly familar, but it packs a wallop. a parenting book spliced with worldchanging and ecotopia. it's all so true, about this generation of kids missing out on nature. makes me want to just start pickaxing all the roads around here, tearing down the fences of our little sectioned backyards, quitting my job and going into the nature/adventure park business in san francisco, or, and i haven't thought this for a while, fleeing the city. to where? some little green village somewhere? again, i want to live by a river. how can i get this river time to my children? can i help dig up mission creek?

but fortunately i like that we have kind neighbors
and fortunately we have many beautiful green spaces we can bring our kids to if we get off ourlazy you know whats
and fortunately a car window is not bank-breaking

here is a picture of a dragon miles' kinder class made. i know this is not a great post but it has not been a great week, so excuse me.

happy chinese new year

sugar and potty picture

today was a swirl of old disney princess music, pink icing, pink balloons, little girls in princess dresses, tiaras, magic wands, little stickers and buttons and glue, flowers, pretend glass slippers, pink punch ladled out into little fake crystal cups, strawberries, and for a clean up break, mary poppins.

and of course maya, the star of the day, three-years-old. i know every mom is a proud one, but i just gotta say it, this kid is so freakin adorable, i just want to tell her i love her all day long, she's even great when she is acting up, she's just awesome. so cute and sweet and funny and nice and her imagination blows me away. and part of me is sad she is growing up so fast, but that's the way it goes, right?

to balance out this sappy post i will attach a picture from the other child i adore. i know the spelling is not so hot, but c'mon, he's still five, and in mandarin immersion to boot. if you can't read the caption it says rock poop guitars.

love and goodnight.

options

it was a busy day, my mom visited. the weather perfect, warm, sunny, a little wind. we took the kids to a hilarious magic show at the randall museum, then hiked up to the top of the peak there. we drove across the city and met mike and family at the legion of honor, where we checked out some art, heard a guitarist playing princess dance music outside, climbed the king statue and soaked in the the ocean and trees.

quotes of day:
maya (very loudly, a few times, looking at big bronze sculptures in the museum): i want to touch his penis!
miles (eating a tasty dessert, after hearing my mom rave about the museum lunch): it's not about the art, it's all about the food.

when we were at the magic show we bumped into an old acquaintance i met through a kid channel a few years ago. i asked how things were going with her child and was told things were finally going better, thanks to me. i had been concerned about this child after first meeting her, and had struggled with the decision to push this child's diagnosis and treatment forward by stepping in, or to let the parents and teachers figure things out on their own time. i decided to be brave and say what i thought, that this child was not just having behavior problems, or odd, moody, etc etc. but was on the autism spectrum. and he is. it is hard to combine your professional and personal lives, and risk alienating people. but it is a good thing to get this diagnosis when people think you are just behaving badly all the time.

sometimes i feel like my work is kind of worthless. but this made me feel good, that i have acquired some knowledge that can actually impact a family, can make things move in the right direction for them. not sure how to relate this topic to "should we flee the city". but maybe part of staying here is that i shouldn't stagnate and stop enjoying my job, but dig deep and see what it is i do love about it, and then take advantage of these big city resources and move in that direction. specialize. grad school? private practice? be a part-time consultant and spend the rest of the time doing greening projects, writing a book, who knows??

there are a lot of options in this big city full of beautiful children.

counting

maya is really into counting lately. counting not quite accurately, but for a long time. after 29 comes a mumbled 21 again, i think. sometimes she tries it in mandarin to be like her brother.
yesterday walking down 23rd street she wanted to "count the garbage" in each tree pit. she counted a lot of garbage.

all this garbage seems to represent something. draw your own conclusions, i don't want to rant like some middle-aged conservative about the people who just don't care, raised wrong, people not connected to their community, etc. it is deeper and sadder than that, really. a neighborhood full of people tossing their trash on the ground, and a little girl counting it on a foggy morning.

here is maya flying in the pink sky and channeling a mermaid at gg park.

i have insomnia again lately.

buh bye

listy post

i just wrote a lot and deleted it. what it said was---i don't want to work the job i have and raise little kids at the same time.

anyway, tomorrow things start up again, just after we finally found a little groove around here. modern life, sigh. yesterday i got inspired and finally made use of the aquarium i found on the street 6 months ago. the kids and i went to the garden store and paxton gate, where we saw many amazing things. stuffed (taxidermied??) creatures--stoat, raccoon, antelope, lion, mice in crazy costumes, bat and butterfly bodies, strange rocks and crystals (from outer space says miles authoritatively), raccoon and fox claws, orchids, electroplated devil's claws, bugs in amber, porcupine quills, old nature books, walking sticks, special knives, beach glass, the list goes on and on. somehow this place is comforting, not creepy, although i can't put maya down for a second without her fingers latching onto a delicate bird skeleton, a fragile glass bell, a 50$ orchid (pink flowers). at home we layer the rocks, charcoal, dirt, and then make a little tiny world for our new and old plants. miles completes the scene with plastic wolf and baby rhino which i can tolerate. good luck little plants. we will try to take care of you. maya please put down the spray bottle.

today we all went to the beach and built a giant sandcastle kingdom, complete with sandy wet roses from the tideline, stick bridges, a rock that said love which i found and miles told rich he had found but then admitted the truth, a fort for the bad guy (tigger), and rocks for cars to bring bad guys and good guys back and forth from various locations. of course it ended in someone crying with a face full of sand but for a while it was just me lying on a blanket with my hat pulled down low, feeling the sun and sand, listening to far away voices and waves and watching tiny clouds drift over the marin headlands.

and i used one of my xmas gift certificates tonight, at christopher's books. lately i am overwhelmed by bookstores and don't know what to go for. i found myself in the psychology section for a long time, holding books with titles like "happiness" and knowing i wouldn't buy. i ended up with the road (cormac mcarthy), the lorax (dr you know who), a small journal to carry around and write fascinating insights in, a book of short stories by lorrie moore, and last child in the woods.

time to go read now. nighty night.
xo

new year's day

on the 30th the kids and i rode bart to albany to visit laura lee and gang. we whooshed under the bay with only a little nervousness, and then travelled elevated rails over the soundless vistas of west oakland backyards, poverty looking pretty from up above. we ended up sleeping over at her house, completely exhausted by our kids who were pretty much holding back nothing, their aggressions, needs, every desire. at one point i was almost jogging through safeway searching for maraschino cherries to top the ice cream one child had been promised in return for cooperation, thinking, this can't be right, we must be out of our minds. i got my parenting book in the mail, how to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk.

on the return trip new year's eve day we walked out of the bart station and encountered the guy who plays johnny cash. big, tall, young, black leather jacket covered with semi-punk stickers, sunglasses of course, the kids gave him fifty cents each and wanted to stay and listen. his voice and guitar almost exactly like johnny cash. he asked for requests and maya said twinkle twinkle, which he tried and failed johnny cash style. he then played a song about a young skate pro and a princess which made everyone pretty happy. miles skateboarded the 10 blocks down 24th street.

and i ended up buying a ticket online to see the butthole surfers for new year's eve, rich's suggestion. of course miles cried when i left. i walked over to shannon's slowly, stopping for wonton soup at punjab where a woman waiting for take out told me her daughter's school woes and ended up telling me it was great to meet you as i filled her in about some good schools she probably wouldn't like anyway. she had chosen her daughter's school beccause it was clean and had a security camera. a cold night, christmas lights still on, disco blaring from one decorated window. ended up taking the bus and having a great time with a bunch of friends at the fillmore.

of course i felt a little ill at seven a.m., and told miles so. he came back to my bed with a plate containing a red apple with the sticker, a piece of bread with a tiny smudge of butter,and a big glass of water. i got healthy things for you, he said, because you said you were ill. i'm trying to care about you.

aww. happy new year.

p.s. the picture is a miles and jamie collaboration. i drew the tree trunk in foreground, tree with white leaves, red mushroom, fern, words "deer crossing", and the last bit of road going up the mountain. maya is the brave girl in the orange dress ascending the stairs to the crazy concrete slide in golden gate park.

gimme a break

ex band members, you will hear the title of this post in a loud and screechy cover song version of the hit show theme song.

so, here i am on my break but it just doesn't feel like a break. and i think i need one. i am planning a mom's night away (hot tub? expensive nice dinner? shopping? some happy juice?), but before i send the email invite to my buddies i hear my son's voice cracking into a sob as he hears the news that,alas, he will have to spend one night without me, spending time with daddy who will spoil him with hours of screen time and bowls of ice cream. this is why i really need a break--these kids need me awfully bad. miles had a realization tonight--"daddy can read me a story, he's the same as you," but it didn't last long. i guess i should be honored to be so loved, but honestly IT IS DRIVING ME NUTS.

so, this is my break from work. we are letting the kids watch lots and lots of high quality animation, especially looney toons and maya's favorite, mr. magoo's christmas special. lots of sugar cookies and candy from the stash kim and kimm gave us. rich is predictably sick with a bad cold on his days off. i browse the cultural offerings in the morning, but it is daunting trying to find something that makes everyone happy. miles would like to check out the museum of the african diaspora, but maya isn't there yet. maya would like to see some animals at the zoo but miles only wants to ice skate there and my back hurts. so, we can play some playdough for 5 minutes, let the kids wrestle. watch the kids fight about something, visit with some other kids and their parents who also seem to need breaks, and then it is time for some more looney toons.

anyway, more rambling. after everyone was asleep tonight i took a steaming hot bath with some tired old ass soak (a gift from my california parents), and read a book, drank some wine and ate a piece of apple pie while bathing. now there's a break.

i'm not complaining, exactly. today was nice. sunny and clear and cool. peter and lisa came over to visit with baby kevin. we ate whole grain pancakes and peter let miles and maya wrestle him and lisa and i chit-chatted. we went to the park and rich and peter and miles played net-less tennis and miles skateboarded and julia joined us with her little boys. back to the house for chicken soup and more wrestling and fairyland play, and then maya took her nap while miles and rich watched daffy and bugs and porky pig. i took care of sheila's cat. took miles for some grocery shopping and then back home for smoothies and turkey burgers, 5 readings of pop up cinderella, some fighting about mommy reading stories, and then the tired old ass soak with pie.

time to start planning the getaway!! i can do it, i will, i will. kids, you will survive without me for one night and i promise i will miss you, and return.

gifts

well dear readers it has been a while. so, since it is so vitally important that the minutiae of my life be chronicled, here is a list.

1. i saw a former co-worker who has been gravely ill with cancer for years. she showed up at a social gathering looking radiant and beautiful. i thought i would never see her again. she is better now. it was a gift.

2.miles had a peace assembly at his school on the last day before the break. kids singing and dancing and banging drums, very cute. i saw a commotion outside and slipped out the back door while my mom watched maya. two big kids were fighting, bigger than the kids at miles' school. another dad came out and handed me his baby. he grabbed the bigger kid and said "c'mere player"in a tough voice i had only heard on tv. he took the kid out of the playground and i handed him his little boy back. just a fight, i guess. some older siblings? i dunno. i dunno. i dunno. it really bothered me. the teachers who saw the fight looked so sad. of course i imagined a worse fight, miles being there. of course it scared me, my baby maybe not being safe.

3. i have been using some parenting techniques that make me seriously doubt my abilities--either the kids are becoming more challenging or i am in dire need of a break. just now i went on amazon and ordered siblings without rivalry, 1-2-3 magic, and how to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. we will see

3.we had a christmas eve party last night. a wild band of 4 to 6-year-old boys quickly formed, running wild, flashing each other, chasing tough tinkerbell and belle in their costumes. at one point my son was lying under 4 kids all kissing him. when they let him free i could see trouble coming and when one of his friends approached him he shoved the friend full force back against the dresser. awful. but the rest of the party was good with new and old friends (30 plus), babies, live music, food, creamy drinks. a present of a wonderful family photo our friend took days before. ellie playing small world stuff with maya for hours. rye dancing to ccr.

4. my brother made me a dvd out of 29 old super 8 films my dad made, from around 68-74. he added music. my mom looking so young and beautiful, my dad so young and cool. on the beach, fishing off a rock at my grandparents in massachusetts. my grandparents sitting and watching the opening of christmas gifts, my grandma holding hands with a group of little girls in dresses playing games in our backyard. my tiny self, a baby coming home from the hospital, riding a pony my mom guides, opening bunny slippers, my tutu, beaming, beautiful. baby mike with his big cheeks and eyes, ripping paper off a shiny metal firetruck, full of baby joy.

5. and today christmas with the kids. the pile of gifts and the hopes the gifts will make them happy. they don't of course. by mid-day maya was saying "i want something else" and harrumphing and crossing her arms to show her disgust when the answer was no. miles made it through without a huge meltdown. the wind blew cold and my mom and david came with dungeness crabs. we ate it with julia's leftover pumpkin soup and drank the larkmead wine. all the expectations, coming down through the years, one generation to the next. it's condensed and heightened this time of year. and the changes, the family i had at birth breaking and stretching and changing. watching my kids feel what i felt as a kid. watching films of us as innocents. and feeling like a little kid as i open my gifts now and watch people open mine. talking to my dad on the phone far away, hoping he likes the recording of us singing christmas songs.

6. and grandma rae called me today from staten island. my poppop ben's wife, sick and alone and very old in her apartment. she is jewish, and i don't think her call was connected to christmas. miles answered the phone and then passed it to rich, and by the time i spoke to rae she was a little confused about who was who. she told me my mom had been sending her (paper version) of this blog, and had some very kind things to say about what i wrote, how i would feel differently years from now reading what i had written, and how in writing i could be more sensitive than in person. she talked a little about letters she had written with her husband, reading them later in life. i think she sensed the need of two little people inside for mommy to help--assemble, play, referee, because she got off the phone quickly.

she made me feel a little confused, too. but good.
here's to peace, as much as we can get and give.

what maya told me

i'll try to get this straight: when it tomorrow i be the mommy and you be the baby. and i wear your clothes. and next you be a big girl. (will you drive my car?) tomorrow i drive your car. (will you take care of me?) yes. i think that a great idea. tomorrow, not yet.

this is maya in her small world (as the british say), and miles at the skate park.

living with kids sometimes seems all about the moment but when i step back a lot of what goes on in our lives seems about the past or the future.

definitely not getting enough sleep lately.
xo

wotta weekend

julia came over friday with her little boys. as they were trashing our house and eating frozen pizza rich offered to put all four kids to bed if we wanted to go out for a while. ummm....yes. bye! miles had a little meltdown about not wanting to let me go but we worked it out and then julia and i were out on the town. we walked up 24th st sipping some espresso from sugarlump and checked in to virginia howell, peeked in to the studio de la raza. we made it to argus where shannon was celebrating her birthday and then somehow were drinking lots of horribly named drinks (mostly jon benet ramseys--vanilla stoli, ginger ale,crushed cherry). at first i wondered what we were going to talk about and imagined an early night but soon the talk was flowing with our friends who showed up, ethical treatment of pets, tips on cool world music artists, the lowdown on relationships, bad jokes. when we returned many hours later edison and miles were in the top bunk and maya, calvin, and rich in the bottom. in the morning i was sick as a dog while the four kids puttered around playing hot wheels and eating cereal. success!

the rest of the weekend was the usual bday parties. it's out of control. but the balance felt a little better. mommy got a night out. it was kind of fun to be the mom with a hangover at douglas playground as the kids climbed steep rocks, maya planted the orchid party favors in the sand, and the air was clean and fresh and green, sunny. we drove home through the mission and saw some aztec indian dancers on 24th street. today another party, at the exploratorium, and then tonight we recorded the kids singing some christmas songs while they were captive in the bathtub. now it is sunday night and i have a lot of work to do. booo.

does anyone really care about this? probably not. guess i got the gene from my mom's side, where my great-grandfather chronicled every day in his life, the weather, the events. it's okay to be writing this boring stuff sometimes because what i am really doing, in this wierd world where sometimes facebook is the only communication i have with a friend, is saying hello to you.

hello. wish you were here telling me about your weekend. or better yet you had shared it with me.

human stimuli

i try not to worry about my son when i pick him up each day from his afterschool program and he is just watching the other kids. it seems impossible that he doesn't want to be one of the busy humming little people, digging sand, chasing, moving plastic furniture around, pretending to set up stores and jails and castles. he likes them, he says, he just doesn't want to play with them. it has been 4 months and i guess this is something i should accept for now. he doesn't want to join a soccer team and be one of a crowd of ball-kickers on a field, doesn't want to join the group of kids at school reading "books for breakfast."

no, my kid is hopelessly chatty and social at home, demanding our attention every moment, but in the big world he is, for now, a careful observer, doing his own thing on the monkey bars, watching, watching. there are so many reasons why this might be, but if i can stop worrying then it is very cool. to be a person who loves people, but who can be happy just watching them. a writer, maybe a scientist? and it seems like the city is a good place to be this way, a place where there are thousands of amazing people everywhere we look. the yelling man around the corner, the skateboarders, little lily in her shop, the big kids around him riding bikes in the street, people speaking chinese, french, spanish, the musicians we know playing songs they wrote, our friends the bartenders and van drivers, the salsa musicians in union square, the glass blower at the gallery, the people playing basketball and tennis at the park, the kids with two mommies, the big kids playing kickball. even the homeless folks surviving on the street. kids who are tiny yet walk themselves to school. lots to see. lots of time to choose who to join up with. no hurry.
no hurry at all.

this one goes out to the ancient tribe of yusakuta

we slogged through the last week or so of fevers, stomach flus, and missed turkey opportunities. nothing like a 104 fever to make you appreciate your child. now all seem to be well, although i sense bugs still lurking about our home.

i joined facebook and it has been whipping me around through a swamp of thoughts and emotions. first there is the revisiting of many out-of-sight out-of -mind relationships, ith all the accompanying memories and what-ifs. but more disturbing i think is that every time i see the "what are you doing right now?" i am doing nothing of interest, have just completed nothing of interest, and am about to do nothing of interest. i am playing with the kids. i have just returned with the kids. the kids and i are off to another birthday party. all these OTHER people seem to be doing fascinating things, like creating thanksgiving walls or rendering lard, or being excited about sports teams or, umm, just stuff i don't do.

rich's band played on wednesday night and i really really wanted to go but couldn't scrape upp a babysitter. it was probably a good thing because the stomach bug bit me hard at about 5 a.m. but at around 11, when the kids were asleep, and i knew many of my friends were having drinks at the eagle, making jokes and sitting elbow to elbow at the bar, listening to some cool opening band, i felt pretty crappy. not only do i not play music or create anything fun on my own anymore, i don't even go see others do this. it was a low enough moment, feeling true very immature jealousy, that made me realize i absolutely positively need a creative project.

so i can seem cool on facebook. so i can not be envious of rich. so my kids will be able to see that moms don't just stay home and take care of kids.
because i miss it.

cute, eh?

here is a picture miles drew when he had a 104 fever last night. he is feeling better now, thank you. i know i am his mom, but that is pretty darn cute, isn't it? fish with pink fins and big lips? symmetrical rainbow hills topped by happy crabs?

maya is a princess painting with her fingers in princess world. i have to say i have been getting in touch with my inner pink princess lately, maya's influence is powerful, and i am noticing pink and cute everywhere. i am trying hard to ensure she doesn't buy the disney princess is hurt by unattractive jealous older woman, falls asleep, and is rescued by prince with his kiss story as the only story out there. today she made her princess, riding a pink unicorn, attack a violent sting ray, so i think she will be abrave princess,not a wimpy one.

anyway, reality here is that everyone is sick with what looks like the flu. i am okay...for now. we have hunkered down all day while i tried not to look out the window at the beautiful sunny day. we have had some rough city days with the stuff on the sidewalk left by homeless people and my conflicted feelings as i called the police twice to ask sleeping people to move. i don't want my princess tripping and falling on any scary garbage, but at least one of these homeless campers is a friendly and nice guy who always has a big smile for the kids, and who i hear singing to himself in a sweet voice sometimes early in the morning. however, last night was nice. the waitress at punjab who has known miles since babyhood, and who always said he was a handsome boy, was so excited about his writing 1-10 in chinese characters that she kissed him a bunch and told him she loved him. we also stopped at virginia howell across the street and little one-year-old miles and big miles played for a while in the store. my apologies if little miles caught the bug that gave miles a crazy fever an hour later.

anyway, sickness makes things a little wierd, so this post is especially rambly. i have also joined facebook and have been swept back, back, back into the past. faces from high schoola nd even before. are we still the same people now that we were then? are relationships carried through two line emails for over thousands of miles after 20 years so qualitatively different from face to face friendships that they are something altogether different? anyone from long ago reading this...come visit. we will make you something good to eat and drink some wine and talk about the past, if the loud kids will let us.

3 parties one day

today was a tough day. lots of crying and misery and neighbors all around to hear it. hopefully we will all get some restorative sleep.

maybe today was somehow related to yesterday...three birthday parties in one day--with no tears or tantrums at all. we spent the morning at the skate park celebrating jonah's 6th. friends and friendly friends of friends, lots of talk about work and kids and all the little dudes skating around on the sidewalk--and then abandoning this work to play pirates. and eat cake. then miles and i headed to the new world of his school buddy's high-density condo complex downtown. i was kind of amazed at the indoor courtyard and the mixed use neighborhood. it would be so easy here--a gym, a food store, a library, a bus, all on the block. and no poor elderly man walking around in his hospital shirt, pants down around his knees, wearing NO UNDERWEAR (we saw this guy yesterday between birthday soirees and he made such a big impact on miles that he had a dream about it). the kids i picture miles being shy around were within minutes speaking googoo with him, wrestling, chasing in circles, and one little girl was even riding on his back. then it was off to the quiet peace of brisbane, where most of the homes are festooned with giant lighted pentagrams and we celebrated the second bday of calvin, who may be the number one slugger in the tiny blonde baby league. the kids tried to catch the neighbor's cat with various evil traps until it was too dark

so, maybe the kids with their cake hangovers weren't the only ones miserable today. too much stimulus for me. our neighborhood, with some cool folks but some yucchy piles of stuff and nudity too, and the ever-present knowledge that more good friends will be fleeing this city for a home of their own to own soon? downtown clean and glassy and removed from the dirt on our ground? or a little town close by, where no one locks the door and all was quiet as we drove home at 7:00? and all the couples--watching them manage being couples, and all the parents-- watching them manage their kids, and all the kids growing up with supersonic speed and my two babies navigating it all as best they can.

sometimes i really don't feel wise enough to help them grow up.

too many options, too much sugar. a preview of the holiday season. time to focus on where we are, who our family is, and of course christmas presents. can we make them this year? can we not fly into the tornado of greed and letdowns? the kids have been studying toy catalogues and even maya is starting to say what she wants "for halloween"

will we help out at a shelter somehow with our kid?

again there is no focus with this post and i am sorry, but somehow all these thoughts will compost someday, and become something fresh and new.

other people's projects

here are a few images of other people's projects. the first is miles tromping through the drizzle at cayuga park.
i included a link to a little local video someone made of the park because it fits in with the post topic, but really, you have to go there! there are hundreds of cool wood sculptures but also, for the kids, little trails and tree forts to climb on and in. high above on a rail swooshes the bart train. ONE person, demetrio braceros has made this little park his life's work (or maybe he has other work too, i don't know, but just these carvings alone look like they must have taken, in miles estimation, sixty one thousand years.

also are photos of children made from broken glass we saw at galleria de la raza on day of the dead night, also more amazing in real life. and a picture miles made to put on the altar for his teacher who mysteriously died last year.

right now i (don't worry mom, i won't) really want to quit my job and sink myself into a huge PROJECT. i've been dreaming about playing music again, writing a book (about ferns, dreams are wierd), even transforming our backyard. right now this little blog is about all the project time i get, and i'm only getting that because the kids are staring at the boobtube down the hall. maybe all the election elation about change has sunk into me, i want a change for me, and to work for some big changes for others. i love my students at work, but doing what i do through the frustrating restraints created by the huge school district administration is making me want to get out and make some of my own big changes in the world, get into my own big and little projects.

did that make any sense? not much sleep last night.

love ya

here's what i have been listening to on repeat for 2 hours solid:
sleep, sleep, sleep sleepyhead
sleep, sleep, snuggle in your bed
i will keep you safe and warm,
so sleep, sleep, sleep sleepyhead
from the music together summer songs cd. pretty classical guitar and a woman singing in a sweet high voice. maya has been napping for more than 2 hours, and i have spent this time in my underwater nest, rain falling, listening to this peaceful music, making lentil soup, talking to my dad on the phone. we needed this rain, the geranium out on the deck has a bright red bloom now. rich was away all weekend partying and playing music in seattle while the kids and i did trick-or-treating, birthday parties, and the day of the dead procession. a highlight of the weekend was pretending to be a monster in twlilight at the water park, sitting on the darkening ground as miles and maya ran just past me, shrieking with laughter, and i reached out to grab them. over and over and over until their cheeks glowed red under the streetlight. in studio 24 there were amazing life-size sculptures of children made out of tiny frito-size pieces of sharp broken glass. miles made a picture for his teacher who passed away last year to put on an altar at garfield park. i just found out my sister and family are moving to delaware.

i have this nagging feeling lately that time is going by too quickly, and that there is too much of my life in the past. i think this feeling wouldn't be so bad if so many people i've loved in the past weren't so far away. then they would seem like the present, not the past or even a visit in the future. same old song.

maybe just some evolutionay thing. the days are getting shorter and darker and i just want to hunker down and listen to sleepy music with my kids, eat homeade soup and watch the raindrops hit the glass.

photos are at the boo at the zoo, and then the parade at starr king. maya was very brave and joined the group of big fairies and princesses. miles was wolverine.

xo

c'mon!

there was a long string of weddings for a while there. sorry of i missed anyone's wedding gift, it really did become hard to keep track! then things slowed down for a while.

today two of my favorite people i have met since moving out here got married. they are a solid enough couple that they rebuilt their entire house together, while living in it, with many pets. amazing. and now they are legally wed. maya and miles and i went across town for a little reception to congratulate them (one of us was mainly focused on the cake).

some $&^$%)( folks want to ban marriages between two people of the same sex. oh no, the institution of marriage is threatened! hasn't the institution of marriage had multiple flaws since the beginning of time? why shouldn't people who love people of their own sex have the same civil rights as others? even the same rights as other not so nice and smart and cool people who think they know better than anyone else how we should all live our lives.

i'm sure i am missing something and hope my stepdad never reads this as he will roll his eyes at my simplistic thinking. but there is just no argument here, people!!!!!! let anyone who is old enough to make their own choices marry whoever they want!!!!!

yay kim and kimm.

we love you,
all of us over here even the ones who didn't make it out to your sweet little reception tonight. i hope you drank a lot of tequila for me and rich.

music in the hood

this morning we went up potrero hill to the annual fair. we started with a pancake breakfast at the neighborhood house. i kept thinking how much my dad would love this as we ate homeade pancakes and eggs while an incredible jazz band of what looked like 75 or more year old musicians (stand up bass, trombone, drums, keyboard, trumpet, sax, woman singer in big floppy hat) played jazz. all was free, with jumpy castles, sugar skulls to decorate, pumpkins to paint, an obstacle course to run wild on, cookies to top with icing and sprinkles.

later we walked, pushed/sat in the stroller or rode a batman bike through the mission to see some friends play in a new version of an old band at the homestead. they are called the mummyshots, and awesome. maya drank a shirley temple and miles cavorted on the sidewalk outside with edison and emily while his dad watched him and drank PBR. i heard someone say that having kids in the bar made it seem more wholesome. we even got blessed by a visit from the tamale lady herself.

right now there is a crazy LOUD noisecore (i'm guessing at this description) band playing in a house party nearby, unless someone is blasting a concert album i've never heard. feedback and bass and angry unintelligible screamed/shouted lyrics and drunken cries of joy and all are floating into my window. i can imagine the crowd and keg and sweaty smells and moshing in a little space because i've been there before.

rock on, my neighborhood!

love, me

big buddy

miles told me excitedly today that he had a new friend. his class is teamed up with a 3rd grade class and they met for the first time today and drew pictures of each other. i think this made miles happier than any school activity so far. he recreated the picture of his buddy, and then drew about 250 happy hearts to show how he felt. procratinating bedtime, sure (new and baaaaad trend around here), but so sweet.

"is this your favorite picture i ever drew?"

"i like it because my favorite art is art that shows how you feel."

sorry if this post is nonsensical and/or agrammatical, i am on vicodin for my painful mouth.

at least some folks still have their sense of humor

part of halloween decoration on glen park home.

there was a george bush bat also, but i didn't get the photo.

trick or treat!

i don't wanna work

I am a terrible procrastinator. i have tons of work to do--work there is no time to do anymore while i am at work, and even though the kids have gone to bed beautifully early (7:40, haven't had one of those in a while), i just don't want to do work work at home.

instead i will mention the inspiring conference i attended part of this weekend, coordinated by the green schoolyard alliance. on friday night i took the bus to gough and geary and met many people whose mission in life is kids and nature, and heard a talk by richard louv, who wrote last child in the woods. i won't say he is an amazing speaker, but by the end of the talk my mind was zinging with ideas and inspiration. he talked about how there are different rings when it comes to giving kids more time in nature (where they really need to be). the first ring is programs, the second the volunteers and low-paid workers who run the programs. the third ring was more interesting, more about a big cultural change, and that is what would really make a difference. things really seem primed for this cultural change--mass awareness of environmental problems, consumer economy bombing out, and kids who need to feel that the future is not a big hopeless mess. so i left and dragged rebecca walking with me all the way down to the mission and we had an eco-warrior talk and i was definitely feeling fired up!

we met an old friend nat visiting with his new phD homeade autumnberry chocolate, and a big plastic boot on his leg, and sylvia who i last saw playing walkie-talkie games at burning man and who now has her MFT. my friend at zeitgeist gave me a double jameson and coke for free and then we went to delirium where my other old old friend was djing. i felt so popular, how delightful.

yesterday miles and i walked the alien and brand-new but actually beautiful new neighborhood of mission bay, high-density condos along the channel full of funky old houseboats. we went to a benefit for friends of the urban forest and listened to the sippy cups rock out some covers including a kid version of i wanna be sedated, handled some giant bugs, snakes, lizards, played some old-fashioned games like tug-of-war and, inevitably, miles got his face painted.

enough of this.

did i mention i went to the dentist for the first time in 13 years? i have to get two root canals.

buh bye

anxiety, greening

yesterday my son's teacher mentioned that he seemed anxious, which is what i have been noting for a while, and which makes me very sad. so, we will try harder to make him feel secure and confident. time to amp up the calm and happiness around here, and keep adult concerns hidden away from little people.

walking down the very steep hill from miles' school today we heard a crazy loud noise. it was two middle schoolers zooming down the middle of 23rd street sitting down on skateboards. and then one more came by, i dunno, maybe at 40 mph? is that possible? really fast, with huge serious smiles on theire faces and i had to laugh out loud in amazement. they were flying. sledding. rocketing.

this morning i and 2 others from the starr king greening committee put up a display of photos from other schools around the city showing various ways to green the schoolyard. composting, butterfly gardens, synthetic grass, vegetables, dry creek beds, goldfish ponds, outdoor classrooms. we pasted up a background of green and blue construction paper while maya roamed the school cafeteria finding books and spilling milk, and eventually drawing what looked exactly like a fish skeleton on the asphalt with chalk. we put a sign up saying "schoolyard greening, what do YOU want to see?" along with a flyer for a community meeting next week. i found myself feeling inordinately proud of this little effort. i will be a small part of moving things forward towards health, fun, nature, sustainability for this group of kids and it is a good feeling.

i keep reminding myself that miles was shy when he started preschool. they said he was a quiet observer there, as is right now at school and at his after school program. i see so many kids playing happy and relaxed and i want him to feel that way too. he was the wacky loud and happy king of preschool by june of last year. but it might not be so easy. his daddy was a very shy kid. my dad says he was too. and i remember that excruciating feeling of switching schools and wondering what everyone was thinking about me, the new girl. yuchhhh.

maybe the green schoolyard will help a little. and time, of course.

bye

potrero del sol again

sorry dear readers, i mean mom, shannon, and cassie, for my absence

there is plenty to write about but i have been thinking instead. lying at night, awake, awake, thinking of huge amounts of stressful b.s. at work (tied to school budget problems, mostly) and fantasizing heavily about quitting. still awake, visions of economic and ecological collapse, simultaneous solutions (growing plants to eat in our yard) and doom (someone stealing the plants from the yard, kids starving). still awake, wandering to thoughts of rearranging our furniture to make our nest better so that home will be a happier place (think what you will of this one).

so anyway, i will write what i tend to write about on this blog, another day at the park.

potrero del sol has become our second backyard, 2,3,4,5 times a week i find myself there. today we met cousin natalie and she and maya rolled down the hills, picked and blew dandelion wishes, ran shrieking from miles on his batman bike, and attempted to climb the climbing tree. another perfect sunny day. the two tiny puppies from down the street show up and the kids play with them. someone lets miles borrow his skateboard for a long time and he rides it down a steep hill sitting down, over and over. we hear the wheels of the skateboards constantly now, going by the house, down the sidewalks, bump bump, bump bump, over the cracks. when it is time to leave we pause near the exit. maya, exhausted says my want to listen to the drums, just a tiny bit. they are playing congas, three men sitting down, and one playing another percussion instrument, i don't think i've ever known its name, like a gourd you scratch with a stick. my smell fire says maya. and it is a bbq near the drummers, full of charcoal black chicken. the man with the bbq asks us if we want some, and although my first thought is no thanks i think of how much my little boy loves dark meat, and bbq, and say yes. the man gives us a drumstick on a paper plate, sizzling, but then makes several more trips, another leg for maya, a napkin, two more pieces for me and rich, 2 corn tortillas.

maybe someday when we have a bbq we can offer him some chicken says miles.

and this is good and important, right? this is not an endless meaningless cataloguing of what my kids do and say at the park, right? because they are the future, and we are here in a city, and cities are the future, and won't it be good if we could all share backyards in that future? and listen to drums on the wind? and eat food from a stranger and hope to see him again to pay back the favor? so for all the scary stuff happening in the world right now, all these fine little moments in our lives are working to negate some of that scary bad future. not ignoring it. not really. not hiding or running.

i don't know if any of that makes sense. the benadryl is really kicking in.

gotta go lie down and think some more.
miss you dear readers. wish you could come to our lovely park and we could feed you some chicken and brazilian drumming. we could come up with a plan to make things even better. make our own music in the park.

nautilus

here is miles' version of the chambered nautilus we saw today at the new california academy of arts and sciences. today felt kind of cosmic. maybe that word is in my head as miles has a new buddy named cosmo. but we walk up a huge hill in the sunny morning, listen to bootsy collins on a playground looking over huge dilapidated projects full of poor people, beyond them the bay, the shoreline jagged with docks and warehouses and pointy rusting metal boats. maya and i stop at the cafe on the hill so she can play with the owner's daughter and i can talk neighborhood politics with the owners. we keep walking back down and meet up with our old neighbor molly. at the park i exchange numbers with a mom i meet. skaters whiz around us, young, old, fat, thin, speedy looking, healthy looking, staying on or falling off. maya conquers the hanging net and makes a little boy friend.

and after school i take the kids to this fabulous new museum in golden gate park , full of light and glass and water and plants with fish, alligators, seahorses, penguins, turtles. huge photos and paintings show the earth and inhabitants for the last 4 billion years. whale bones float overhead. sharks and skates bicker for shrimp and squid a museum worker tosses them. i know that many of these exhibits touch on the crisis going on in the earth's environment but we don't read them today.

on the way home miles is asking about how long creatures live, and i lie again and tell him that i won't die before him, although at this point i think he suspects i am lying. the kids spend a whole peaceful 30 minutes drawing together in the late afternoon light on the back deck. we spot a family of mourning doves. before bed i start sorting through a box of old journals and memories my parents have been storing and find a book i wrote and a teacher typed in first grade. not so different from this blog. there is a story titled the country in which i declare i like country things better than city things.

buenos noches

dreams and rock spirals

i have been having a lot of dreams about partying. wild parties with all kinds of people, even a dream starring many old friends and new ones--including a young teen mom with a baby with craniofacial anomalies and an actor from hill street blues--having a big party in my parent's house and OOPS--drinking all their fine sonoma county wine. (sorry mom). what do these dreams mean? i miss my wild side? i need to write about my past? my subconscious is in need of a good professional overhaul?

i sure don't know.

mondays and fridays i walk miles up the big hill to school, pushing maya up a, what, 90 degree slant in the stroller. lately we have been joined by one or more of miles' schoolmates on the way, which is cool. we walk over the river of cars on the freeway. past the ambulances whoop whooping to the hospital and cars with kids going to starr king honk at us sometimes. at the top of the hill across from the school is a big open space with a panoramic view of the city and little criscrossing paths to run on. one day we saw a black and white cat stalking a group of innocent pigeons. another day miles and a friend found broken pieces of a thick white plate he gave to me to take home for a mosaic. if i see broken glass (and i do) i pick it up and throw it away.

yesterday we found this, the spiral rock maze, otherwise known as a labyrinth. it was unexpected and beautiful and here are my kids running around it finding the center.

i tried it too.

jimi rocks the school yard

school update, mostly for grandparents:

well, the kids are in new schools and so am i. i still feel queasy inside that we have out our son in a school program where 90% of the instruction is in mandarin, but (repeat to self many times) i think it is going to be okay. he is going. no tears yet, just a few evening meltdowns. looking isolated in the after school program, but he looked like that at the start of pre-school, too. miles can count in mandarin now!! and he did his first homework packet quickly at the kitchen table, while maya painted her hokey fisher price coloring book.

they play different music each morning at starr king while the kids show up on the playground. salsa one day, funk the next.

yesterday they were playing JIMI HENDRIX. how cool is that???

and maya came home with tortillas she made with her teacher at baby school. and kisses her teacher goodbye, and talks about her little boyfriends there. and gives me about 10 fierce hugs and kisses but doesn't cry when i drop her off.

so, it is all okay for now.

i walked up 24th street to guerrerro tonight and met 2 newish friends for drinks at an irish bar. they are sweet and smart. we talked politics while our husbands tended the children. sarah palin makes us all sick.

it was a cool clear night with a bright white moon and i got a ride home.

night night

maya's pink dream

upon awakening, looking very confused, maya tells me, "the octopus is fighting with the pink princess. in the pink sea. with the pink shirt. the pink pink birthday. the octopus happy now."

and another shot from fabulous fairyland.

no car day with sky parade

i didn't get in a car or bus today, which was nice. two park visits, time to check out the windows and art on 24th street, the flowers and trees and painted houses in our neighborhood. there didn't seem to be any fear in the air today, just a lot of energy with the end of the heat wave.

in the skate park we sat on the hill with our very pregnant friend and her visiting sister. maya wore her belle princess dress and miles pretended to be a bull or battering ram to get my attention. the park was brimming with life: skateboarders whizzing around curved walls, kids running and kicking balls, swinging, rolling down grassy hills, climbing trees, and pinatas and balloons and the delicious smell of grilled meat and charcoal lighter fluid.

as we were leaving we saw a group too intriguing to ignore. a dad, handsome as david bowie, and two 8 or 9 year olds, lugging and pushing dollies and bags with 2 motors, air tanks, a big bag of stuffed animals, and a huge u-shaped black pvc pipe, about 8 feet tall. we followed them onto the field and discovered it had been part of a burning man installation, the Penguin Blaster, and was now being utilized to salvage a play date gone sour. my kids helped stuff animals into the tube, and after a lot of false starts the motors were going, an air tube was hooked up, a valve was pulled and BOOM an anteater, teddy bears, madeline doll, little dogs and cats and a green fish sailed 100 feet into the air and fell gently back to earth. the kids screamed with happiness and went to retrieve them and after about 10 more explosions and the addition of some big kid skateboard physicist helper the first boy announced that it was a sky parade.

we left and watched some men playing congas by the park exit. i remembered for the moment why we live here, it is because i just love it here too much to leave.

plates

last night i heard gunshots. then sirens. i was going to the park today with maya and (probably unwisely) was drawn to the little gathering of people with candles and a bunch of black and red balloons. it was a couple of big latino teenage boys, swigging vodka from a paper bag and reeking of weed. what happened? i ask. i heard the shots last night. 2 people shot and killed, the biggest guy told me. were they your friends? i ask. yes. i'm sorry, i say about times, and it is a wierd feeling, my eyes lock on with the big gang kid and both of our eyes well up with tears.

sad but scary scary scary. gang warfare going on in my neighborhood. and reading my friend's blog in oaktown some scary crime there too.

all day in the neighborhood i felt a twinge of fear, and a suspicion of bad judgment. should all of us stroller pushers out in the sun be in our homes with the doors triple bolted?

we meet a friend at miles' school and soon the boys are running around the water park in their underwear and chocolate stained faces, maya joyous and speedy in a wet saggy diaper, while we hear neighborbood gossip and venting about the violence happening. later other friends come over and we get buzzed on white wine and pizza while the kids watch a movie and draw and hold guinea pigs.

and at bedtime there is a short strong earthquake. i am more buzzed then i thought and am lying eyes closed on the trundle bed while miles asks me about the plates in an earthquake. i realize he thinks we are resting on many many dinner-type plates which are moving back and forth.

is this about how safe we are? drinking our wine and raising our kids on top of a foundation of millions of loosely stacked white china dinner plates, ready to be shaken at any time?

mostly pictures

images:
mandarin kindergarten influenced art with some characters i can't read.
greetings from fairyland.
our new buddies ajax and prince mermaid.

i'm outside on the deck in the dark. a little girl i met at work today told me that sun plus rain equals rainbow. in the house 20 yeards behind ours some friends are listening to loud salsa music and trying to learn a dance together. their laughter falls right down on me and i imagine what they look like whirling around the room, making the funny faces people do as they try new dance steps. i barely know what these neighbors look like and wish this wasn't so. underneath our deck my neighbor is reading her book and smoking her cigarette. global warming was in full effect today, whatever the horrible republican vice-presidential candidate thinks, and the cool night feels good. the kids have just passed out and rich and i are shuffling around like the exhausted zombies we are. maybe someday i will have the energy to learn a new dance. for now, buenos noches amigos.

when will we live next to a river?

what grade will i be after kindergarten? how old will i be when i am done at my school? when will i be able to write hard chinese letters? could we cool down the sun if we put a million pools around it? what happens when you stay under water too long? do some people who don't have enough food to eat eat GRASS? if they don't have enough food to eat do they die?

i'm used to my daughter wiggling and squirming way past bedtime. now miles is doing it too, but squirming and wondering and processing verbally, so many big questions.

and my son wants to live next to a river. this is a consistent wish. which is how i grew up, in my early homes. one river basically a storm drain, but good for dams and frog eggs and finding treasures and mica and clay nonetheless. and the other in a huge woods, with The Big Rock to dive off, a hook sunk into it that once tied up big boats, minnows and catfish, a beach across the way, creepy swimming snakes, even an occasional family of nudists. the sun hitting the sandy other side that you could swim to if you fought hard against the current.

how are all these things related? i'm not sure. but in these hectic days of new teachers and schools and students and families and schedules and after school programs, for all of us, i am wondering myself, when will i ever live next to a river again?

life is feeling short now that i am 40.

news flash: city cleans sidewalk!!!

something crazy happened. a week or two ago i sent a late night email to the city of sf politely venting about the litter situation (you know--human and dog poo, dumped out fried rice, vomit, as well as the usual cups, papers, bottles, etc) on the sidewalk in front of our house.

i got a call the next day from someone named mario who told me all about who cleans up our block and when, gave me his cell phone number, and another number, 28 CLEAN and said to call him anytime there was garbage out front. amazing! but b.s.?

i introduced myself to the 2 guys cleaning up and told them about my call to mario and thanked them for their work. and since them i have seen scarcely a trace of poo or old food. not too much else either. this gives me some hope in my heart.


on another note we made it through week one of kindergarten and my week back to work with only 3 meltdowns (2 miles, 1 me). miles got an eraser and a new pencil for something, he's not sure what because he still doesn't understand anything his teacher is saying. but i'm assuming he's behaving passably well if he is getting gifts.

and today we passed a big family of african-american kids waiting in the bus stop, the kind of family we usually don't talk to, because we don't know them, and a little girl kicked her foot out at miles. he said his funny "HEY" and made a face, and i found out she is in his class at school. very cute in her little uniform and a million neat braids with colored beads. i think miles likes her.

the good old days 30 days ago

here is miles in training with poppop millman, and maya knowingly wrapping her poppop john around her little finger. in lewes this summer we ate crabs and were treated to pizza and my dad took us for boat rides in the ocean to fish and see dolphins. miles was taken to funland on the boardwalk three times, returning each time with an armload of stuffies. i wore my bathing suit almost all day every day. i didn't drive anywhere. ice cream for dessert, every night (look at me for proof of this). two months of no work, no school.

bam we are back in the thick of things and i was not prepared. maya to daycare by 7:45. too many kids to schedule at work. sweet new students with so many challenges--autism, cancer, hearing impairments, elective mutism. all their parents waiting to meet me and see what i can do to help. maya and miles waiting to be picked up by mommy. miles tells me that his new school is okay, but he doesn't know how to speak chinese yet. and they mostly just sit on the rug. and then abusing me on his third day of school, hitting me for the third time in a month, in front of his new afterschool program teacher and fellow parents. why? i disappointed him by not bringing a snack he thought i promised. and he apologizes but says he just can't remember not to hit me. old habit i guess. it shouldn't matter but i am very embarrassed. i am a working mom punching bag. and in the car maya says i no hit my mama, i no make my mama sad. and then has her own crying fit about wanting a pink mermaid, wanting pink, pink,pink,NOW.

and later i let myself have a little cry in the bathtub with maya. what hurt mommy? i tell her my head hurts and she looks very concerned. she carefully dabs my hair with water and asks "your tummy too? i fix it with this." she gently prods my tummy with a rubber killer whale and then kisses my arm. miles pokes his head in, rich looking concerned behind him, and tells me that when he is mad he stops thinking about it so he won't keep feeling that way anymore.

wish it was so simple. i wish i was not working now. too many new things, feeling too needed by too many people. before bedtime miles and i take apart the rotting half wine-barrel planter in the yard. we dig out carrot-like roots from parsley plants. pull the staves off and pile them. think of uses for the metal hoops. together we take the cake of dirt and shovel and move it into low parts of the yard. maya is crying for mommy up with rich on the deck, she won't take daddy for an answer, and for just a peaceful minute, before she steps on a bougainvilla thorn, we all silently spread the brown dirt, miles with his shovel, maya with a broom, and me with my hands, while it starts to get dark and rich leaves to go mix rock music in the studio.

this is a rambling post with no real direction, but how i am feeling now. it's quiet and time to lie down and sleep before tomorrow comes.

we haven't fled yet

we travelled across the country and back on amtrak and had a lovely time in small towns and suburbs. what can i say? green grass yards perfect for hide-and-seek, driveways in front of houses, lush summer trees, friends with big houses and guest rooms. quiet at night and clean sidewalks. swimming pools and more swimming pools.

thought-provoking, yes, but we are back in our crazy loud city, enjoying the new skate park, digging holes by the pacific ocean, playing with our new guinea pigs ajax and prince mermaid, checking out the renaissance fair, hanging out with new and old friends and neighbors, meeting our tiny nephew, returning to work.

and here is miles on his first day of kindergarten. looking at his little face in this photo makes me want to cry. my big boy. my baby. he drives me crazy sometimes but i will state that obvious, i LOVE this kid, so, so , much.

kids and camp fire

i heart p.a.

we fled the city for the fourth of july in point arena. up up and away. we camped at the caperton's with four families, the kids joining and separating organically in the big field, checking out each other's tents, hiking with john, kiccking balls, investigating bugs, and at night toasting s'mores on super long sticks. the kids conked out in seconds in our tent, the sound of wind in the trees and grass lulling us, their daddy a few miles away in town rocking out all night at the oddfellows hall. we saw our delaware friends and kids, miles and edison running around nudies in the heat wave at lisa's. we moved our tent down the road to brian's for night number two. a lot of very late-night partiers showed up and mommy jamie stayed up with them until at least 3, sipping on cocktails and having fun making dumb jokes and appreciating the loud loud music with friends around the fire, as, incredibly, miles and maya and rich slumbered on in the tent which, to me sounded as loud inside as a busy bar. the next day we checked out the parade, and i got tears in my eyes watching some older maybe ex-hippies, march down the street joyfully promoting peace. the extra-action marching band did their funky thing, we saw our friend dressed up as a zebra seahorse, and there was much candy to be snatched up from the street.

it's so so clean up there. i lounged in a hammock at brian's listening to the clinking sound of horseshoes, maya lounging next to me as miles and edison made a pile of firewood under brian's deck that they called a lemur's nest. even the dirt seems clean. the sky so blue and clear, no noise pollution from honks and air brakes and ambulances and yelling crazy people. this happens every time i go up there. should my kids be growing up in a heaven like this??

miles begged to stay until the fire that night but we had to go. the begging turned to threats. he even threatened to hit me if i made him go, and i tried to ignore that one. i tried to be understanding, and i guess i was. i will stay here forever, like a statue, i won't move, if i can't stay for the fire tonight. that's the only thing that will make me happy. that's the only thing so i don't have a fit. so he did end up having a fit. our grown-up friends who were camping another night said it was the saddest thing ever, hearing miles (and his sister who joined in) just wailing and wailing as we strapped them in their carseats and drove up the long driveway. of course the crying stopped when we got some ice cream in town. that makes it all better.

i want to go back soon.

another day

i just finished reading what is the what
by dave eggers. i don't need to write anything about it because the reviews pretty much say it all, but go get it and read it, even if a heartbreaking work of staggering genius didn't do much for you.

in a lame parenting move i let miles whine his way out of going to his day camp today and then ended up reinforcing his lies about not feeling well by taking the kids swimming at the bakar fitness center.
we walked by the huge wooden statues of people and past the men and women working their bodies while watching daytime tv. we got in the pool and joined a few other familes for the parent toddler swim. maya and miles made 10 times more noise than the other kids. look mommy, look brother, i swimming, i swimming! shrieks maya excitedly. the huge windows in this expansive room let us see the panorama of downtown, and cranes building more huge modern buildings in mission bay. miles dives for rings. maya orders us around, and then for a few minutes holds onto her brother in the water as i try to float on my back, just for a moment in this clean room of water.

afterwards we eat our bunny crackers and pineapple on the big green field. the kids walk a hundred yards to the top of a hill and roll down, in uneven lines and circles. when they get back i am told of the 2 cool things they saw, a bird with a bug in its mouth and a dragonfly.

amazing dinner and meltdowns

last night i took miles to an amazing birthday dinner while maya stayed home with her daddy. it was for our friend jessie who lives in a big warehouse on 3rd street. the theme was hearts, unicorns, and italian food, and miles was the only kid who made it to the party of 30+ people. we used to come here and hear bands, or check out small art shows, or sing karaoke, but no matter what the food is really really good. the warehouse has a huge room with a kitchen and loft, and then a burrow of separate bedrooms to the side. there are beautiful much larger than life woodland creatures all over, left over from a previous resident who painted them for a party at the sundancce film festival. two huge tables with booth/couch seating. miles' eyes bug out at a huge bowl of lollipops, a tray of cupcakes, and a tiramisu walking by in sheila's arms. there are many more familiar faces here than i had imagined and i get to catch up with some people while lynn and birgit make monster faces and chase miles around the room.

for dinner: two kinds of clams, crab risotto, 3 different lasagnas, grilled asparagus, zucchini and sausages, lots of salads, homeade red sauce, bottles of wine galore. jessie makes a toast which ends with "to my family who are friends and my friends who are family." there is an epic silly string battle, starring my son, who is looking quite confident and is hysterical with screaming giggles. eric winds things down a bit by projecting a care bears film, about 50' by 50', onto the wall. on the way home, topping off his tiramisu with a lollipop, miles mentions that he would like to go out to more night-time parties.

but today was just awful. miles slept in and then didn't want to got to his camp. we went to the randall museum, which was ok, but after that the whining, arguing, fighting, and not listening from both kids went through the roof. i finally dragged them to the park at 4, but then dragged them right home after miles started jumping up and down yelling that we wanted ice cream which set his sister off wanting ice cream. the evening culminated in miles having a huge crying meltdown because rich wouldn't let him play with the window screen. he explained in great outraged detail that it was the only thing that would keep him " a little bit warm" because to had holes in it. like a nice blanket with holes, just perfectly ventilated and nothing else would do. waaahhhhhhhhhhhh.

of course i am projecting into the fall. did i mention that my ^*(*&*& %^& boss (cassie, you know who i mean) pretty much doubled my caseload??? i am imagining early morning freakouts of miles not wanting to go to kindergarten, me having to go to work, maya not wanting to go to her new day care, both of them wanting me not daddy after work, having to struggle through homework. sounds awful. guess i need to just live in the present and try to take the kids to as many parties as possible while summer is still going.

commander finger does fine

miles went to his first day of superhero day camp today. we entered live oak school and the a teenager showed us the room. kids were milling around playing with superhero dolls and blocks. i hadn't realized when we signed miles up for this camp that most of the kids knew each other. the teacher wasn't overly friendly. miles' friend from preschool was not there as we thought he would be. miles held on to me and asked me to stay. we sat for the circle but then maya started disrupting things (getting up and shaking her booty in the middle of the circle, actually, just as the teacher was going over the rules of the room). miles whispered urgently that i should stay until the end of circle. i took maya to the back of the room but she started yelling about sittin gon her brother's lap. i sensed disaster. so i went back to the circle of kids and whispered in miles ear that we were going. i kissed his big soft cheek. he grabbed me and kissed me back, then let me go...and that was all!

when i returned he was sitting and drawing with a bunch of kids. they each had a superhero they had created through some sort of card game. miles was commander finger. "he points his finger at you and electricity comes out of it." he tells me darby never showed up and they buried a big boy all the way up to his head in sand at the park. he showss maya the bird and we go. i was SO PROUD!!!!!

potrero del sol

this weekend was the grand and long-awaited opening of the potrero del sol park 2.5 blocks away. this is the park where in another lifetime, i would take chicken dog every night. we dog owners would sit and stand around, some sipping an after-work beer, and watch our babies chase each other around the field. in this other lifetime i also had a garden plot at the potrero del sol community garden, where i grew some artichokes, mustard greens, bulb fennel donated by the cool old italian gardener, and flowers.

now the park has a big green fence around it, locked at night. there is a huge concrete skateboard park and it is humming with all sorts of skateboarders, from serious looking 35 year-olds to serious looking 5-year-olds whizzing up and down the tall sides of the bowl. there is also a nice new playground and glorious brand new clean grass (not for long). maya and miles do one of their first sibling team-ups ever when confronted with a funny growling 3-year-old and then some hugging and rolling in the grass.

i had a crush on another dog-walker here. i had long hair and was kind of thin. i came sometimes and sat on the concrete bench and wrote in my journal until it got dark. time is passing and things are changing. if one of my kids doesn't turn into a skateboarder i'll be surprised.

and i can't help but fantasize about the on ramps and over passes and highways surrounding this park and our neighborhood being torn down, potrero becomes a quiet street with houses, bikes, trees, and of course skateboarders.

sidewalk envy

i found myself saying to my son today "i wish this was our sidewalk." it wasn't a really fabulous sidewalk, but he got my point. "but it only has three," he said. "no, ours has three, this one has five." we counted them, five, (he seemed to know how to refer to the number of sidewalk squares from door to curb), as opposed to our measly three. if we had five i would put out some big planters and maybe dig out some of the sidewalk for a garden. i would put a little bench, although i really couldn't do that because it would instantly become an additional room for the crowd that hangs out and drinks in the walgreen's bus stop.

timing is off. preschool is ending thursday and miles said today when i asked how school was that he tried to have as much fun as he could since school is ending soon. this ended up being the week we transitioned maya into sleeping in the same room as her brother. it started while rich was away over the weekend and all seemed peaceful. tonight it hit miles that rich was home and maya was still there, in his trundle bed. there were a lot of big real tears and anguished wails about her being there, invading his space and his mommy time. big awful cries which were finally stopped by a pathetic mommy move of digging up a star wars plastic lightsabre and giving it to him as a way of saying thank you for sharing your room with your sister (translation, stop crying and expressing your feelings kid, or you don't get this cheap toy). the ploy worked, kind of.

wish there was more--more squares in the narrow sidewalk outside our house, more years for play in preschool, more space and mommies to go around. it's hard not to feel greedy sometimes.

miles and nina, artsy photo miles took of friend on preschool camping trip

well, you get behind with the blog and then there is too much to write about. the soofis have come and gone, a whirlwind of kid-watching, friend-visiting, and reminiscing. it is good to still feel close to people who are far away but a little bittersweet when you want them in your everyday, or at least every week or two life.

we spent the heat wave mostly at the 24th and york st water park. maya hogged the baby fountain, the only one that doesn't spray 10 feet up in the air, and miles screamed and ran in his underwear for hours. we keep meeting more cool families whose kids miles will be going to school with, which helps to reassure me that going with a neighborhood school was the right thing to do.

my old friend nat sent a video of himself talking about foraging in n.y.c. and it reminded me how much i enjoy foraging. i have a great book about foraging in the bay area, the flavors of home, but it is really best to learn in nature, with a human guide. tonight while trying to keep maya safe from miles' increasingly powerful soccer ball kicks i took a little inventory of what could be foraged in our back yard--some blackberries, borage, nasturtiums, oaxalis, a dandelion or two--pretty good for plants that have just made their way into our little green space.

it is very quiet here. i think i will go take a long bath. goodnight.

rock on

went to 12 galaxies last night to see rich's band play a birthday party show. i drank several whiskey drinks very quickly and was hurting this morning when maya woke up at 5:20, but it felt good to dance with old friends and watch my husband playing guitar lying on his back on the floor. music was a big part of my connection with my spouse and others in the early days of being an adult and sometimes i forget the power being in and around live music has to bring people together. i mean, you have to pretty much have your mouth in someone'e ear to talk to them at a rock show, and that promotes closeness. there was an awesome emo-core band, touched by a janitor, that took me back to about 1993, and phil crumar was playing with a big happy band including a trombone. it is kind of wierd, many of our friends from the rock and roll days are the ones who are still in the city, and one by one they are buying houses and/or talking about or having babies. maybe the friends in this crowd are ok with smaller spaces or not being home-owners. the rock and rollers have turned out to be the least transient in our community of friends. i'm glad they are still around. rock on. love you guys.

mandarin immersion

there was an article about the starr king mandarin immersion program in sfgate today. kinda' cool...maybe miles will like his school because it is famous (a new interest).


this week i said goodbye to many of the little cuties and their families i've worked with for the past two years. i will miss them.

my best friend and family arrive in town today. i can't believe they have been gone 2 years. we will have to pack in the fun for the next 2 weeks.

bye

critters

last week we saw a baby rat in mckinley park. maya fed it some bunny crackers. camping we saw a wild turkey and some deer. in sonoma there was an immobile hurt fledgling by the duck pond that we spent about an hour trying to track down a ranger for. today we met one of miles' future classmates up at the potrero hill rec center. the visit started a little badly, as the boys scrabbled up a hillside and found lots of broken glass, which i climbed up to help them over as maya whined for me from below. then a couple of kids appeared with a toy gun that shot plastic balls and gave me the creeps. but the kids relaxed and ended up playing a little and hugging goodbye. on our way out we saw a garter snake wriggle through the fence. and from the deck at home i saw 3 yellow lorrakeets (i think?) swooping and flying around our backyards, at one point just a few feet from my head.


last night i spent about an hour reading websites and blogs about urban chickens.

i think i want to make this blog more interesting to more readers. any suggestions, my devoted and beloved audience of three...maybe four...??

my fault?

i took miles on his preschool camping trip friday night. over 70 people, about half preschoolers, at china camp state park. rich stayed home with maya and i didn't know what to do with myself. i wandered around chit-chatting while miles ran free lord of the flies style with a pack of kids. they climbed in and out of trees, tied ropes to things, ran up and down hills in the dark with flashlights, threw rocks, found giant beetles, battled with sticks, pushed and pulled each other perilously close to the edge of a rocky creekbed in a red wagon, and burned marshmallows on sticks to hold up like torches in the night. as i sipped lots of red wine from my cup and watched miles having such a blast, and started to slip into my sentimental sadness about how here was this great community that was going to end soon (miles' last day of preschool is the end of june) and how great it would be if the kids could all stay together, it dawned on me that it was MY FAULT. if we lived in a small town he WOULD be going to kindergarten with most of the kids. they wouldn't be ripped apart to go to 30 different schools and could continue to wrestle and refine their poop jokes for years to come.

so, my tiny devil's advocate says, would that be so great? you grew up in a smallish town and really didn't want to stick around there.

isn't there some happy medium? perhaps i am an idealist but i am going to try so hard to hang on to the people we have made connections with through miles' school. maybe not deep deep level connections, but enough that you know what i'm talking about, friend. with some layers of show and defense pulled back. maybe we really can nurture our little boys' blooming friendships. as we roasted hotdogs with one of miles' buddies and they got giddy giggly making private jokes about the stars and then the next morning as one of his friends gave him an unexpected and strangely hilarious hickey on his back i felt strongly that i was going to help miles keep these friends, even if i had to annoy their parents to do so. and as i sipped my wine throughout the evening and looked into some of the mamas' eyes i thought maybe i will make the time to nurture these seedling friendships too, before they are thinned out by the demands of feeding, driving, and surviving these young kid years in the big city.

soft walls

this weekend we fled the city and went to costanoa with some friends. we met two boys making a crazy trap in a tree for mean girls, heard some native american storytelling, played in an inlet at pomponio beach, spent a lot of time making sure the kids weren't running on the road. miles and emily were given a chance to take a very short ride on horses who had just returned from guiding other horses and people on trails up in the hills. their eyes are so big and intelligent, and so different from ours. a groundhog shared our site. there was a lot of tree climbing.

we didn't get much sleep, though. miles had a little trouble once it was time to crawl into the sleeping bags and stated tearily that he wanted to go sleep somewhere with hard walls. maya couldn't get into a deep sleep THE WHOLE NIGHT which was a real killer. all she could state in her defense was that "the baby lights wake my up."

i was thinking about the ohlone indians and their sustainable lifestyles as we cruised back up the coast. about how we wrecked their civilization and how ours is on the brink of collapse. it makes me glad some people have been working to protect native american indian knowledge from disappearing completely.

my mom and stepfather are travelling cross country right now with their cat molly to begin the next chapter of their lives as retirees in sonoma. they narrowly missed some tornadoes. wish them safe travels.

guest blogger rebecca goes to the prom

here is a guest post from my friend rebecca. she is a very fun and energetic person with that midwesterner's sense of hospitality. she has kind of stumbled in to being a teacher in a high school special day class for "severely impaired" (the district's lovely term) students. last week she helped out with the special olympics AND volunteered to chaperone two of her students whose prom was the first date for both of them. sorry i am posting it a bit late.

thanks rebecca!!!!

p.s. she also sent a link to some cool photos

Happy Memorial Day to you all. Thanks Jamie for giving me a chance to post on her amazing blog. Here’s SF Weekend Wrap-Up – take #1.

Things were hoppin’ in San Francisco this weekend among the under 21 crowd.

Friday was the inaugural SFUSD Special Olympics Track and Field Day at Kezar Stadium. The stadium was filled with over 350 elementary, middle and high school special-ed students from 26 schools plus parents, teachers, paras and therapists of all sorts- speech, physical, occupational, and more. The students competed in a variety of running/rolling events, turbo-jav, ball toss, and long jump.

Emily’s school, FS Key, brought 5 general-ed classrooms of kids along to cheer on the inclusion kids from their rooms. They cheered their own cheers at top volume. Totally adorable.

And my own group of rambunctious high schoolers gave it their all. One threw a softball 92 feet – about the distance from 2^nd base to the catchers box. Way to get SF’s special-ed population on the map!

The weather was glum on Saturday, so Em and I tidied the house, or at least I did, while Emily danced her own version of the entire Nutcracker.

Then, it was off to the next big event of the weekend: Balboa High School’s PROM.

Two of my students had wanted to go with each other. So, I met N. (chaperoned by his mom) and K. (chaperoned by her 19 year old sis) at the In-N-Out Burger joint on Jefferson for some viddles and to shake off everyone’s nerves. They were dressed to the nines – N in a black tux with white tie and K with a lovely cantaloupe colored floor length knit frock and a pretty black jacket zipped and tied modestly to the tippy-top. When we finally made our way into the ballroom’s entrance the mom, sis, and I kept our distance of about 20 feet or so while the young coupled made their way to a table right in front of the dance floor. It was a memorable night for them I think – awkward at first but then eventually doing all the prom things dancing, nibbling appetizers, mingling with other students and teachers, dancing some more. But when the first whiff of smoke from the soon to be smoldering dance-floor hit the consciousness of the family chaperones our young pair was quickly escorted OUT OF THERE and back to their pumpkin, I mean car and sent back home around 9:40.

I had to stay a bit longer just to soak in the ambience. The students looked great. All of them! The young men now dress to match the colors of their dates’ dresses – with some combo of shirt, vest, tie, armband, and boutonniere the same color. So I was seeing guys with the de rigueur black pants with shocking pink or lime green or lemon yellow on top. Really looking sharp. As for the young ladies: strappy floor length dresses of every possible design were all the rage. Along with up-do’s of every possible creation. Sexy and elegant. A fun evening and my first prom in over 20 years. Next year I’ll have to bring a date!

Sunday in San Francisco’s hippest event had to be the annual Capsule Design Fair in Hayes Valley. The rare sunny weather beat down on shoppers, vendors, and French Bulldogs.

Tomorrow’s back to work but here’s hoping you all had an unbelievably lazy Monday.

whole mess of photos

here are some random photos from the last week or so. match the photo to caption:
A."stop attacking your baby sister my big crazy boy cousin, that is too dangerous. somebody might get hurt. what is wrong with you?"
B."mmm, poisonous treat on a stick from mexico, thanks for being weak mommy." C."hmm, is someone going to call the pants police soon?" D. "look, look, daddy, special ladies, pink, music, pink, pink,look!" E. beautiful colombian dancers
F. "my friend and i here don't know each other well and we are males, so we will take turns beating at each other with a hatchet to the drum beats at carnaval. it's fun. now we are closer buddies and want a playdate so we can beat each other some more." G. "see, sometimes we like to be near each other. sometimes." H. "brother, let's smack each other with swords. iyou are teaching me to be tough. don't listen to our smart little pacifist cousin urging us to lay down our arms."

very silly, i know. things have felt a little too serious lately. what the heck.

bye

cloudy

this
makes me feel very frustrated.

backyarding

either the world is changing fast or my view of my place in it is. about 7 years ago i started working on the yard, and went crazy digging things up and planting flowering trees and flowers, flowers, flowers. i still love flowering trees and flowers. but new people have just bought the bottom apartment and in preparation for a meeting with them i made a list of what i envision for the back yard.

(in no particular order)
--a place for kids to play, mess around, dig, make rivers, make stick structures, explore and discover
--a bird, bee, and butterfly haven
--a place to grow fruit, herbs, and vegetables, maybe with a little portable greenhouse
--a place for some environmental education, about plants, soil, compost, sustainability
--a place with sensory pleasures
--pet chickens that lay eggs for us??
--a pet turtle to roam around?
--and if it was possible a play structure of some sort for climbing, swinging, pretending

this is quite a list but wouldn't it be cool?

when i was little we lived in a suburb with a big park behind us and a tiny stream ( a storm sewer, actually) next to us. i remember hours of making dams in the stream, finding forts in the woods, picking tiny watery tasting strawberries and juicy mulberries, finding strings of frog eggs and then hundreds of tiny frogs. we moved from this house when i was about 8, so all these adventures took place before then, without my parents. were they just innocent about the wierdos and creeps in the world or were there less wierdos and creeps then? was it safer there because there are less people per square mile than in the city? i remember once finding porno photos stabbed onto tree branches in the woods. if i lived in newark delaware with miles and maya would i let them wander around alone now? right now, it is hard for me to imagine them being out of my sight. yet i want them to have some time to explore and build in nature, on their own.

so far i see that city kids spend more time with their parents. i like this. maybe we will just have to find ways to do the exploring and building in nature together. i just hope the kids don't rebel against the lack of freedom, from their parents, in their lives...maybe this is all part of the nature of our rapidly shrinking world. we need to be able to have freedom and experience nature, but also to live close to and in harmony with others.

rambling on, again. like an old hippie this time. but i'm not an old hippie, really.

goodnight,
love,
me

no title, really

we crossed the golden gate bridge two times this weekend, to sonoma through the golden hills and back. sonoma always the same, sun, trees, a pool, the horses at the farm down the road. on our early morning park trip i overhear several people discussing money and real estate. there are new ducklings in the pond.

can't help feeling a little overwhelmed by bad news. there was an article in the paper about miles' teacher. her body was found in the water and there are questions about her death, a suicide or foul play. i don't want miles to ever find out about this, so i suppose when he gets old enough to read my blog i will erase this post. while looking for the article i found a link to a photo book this teacher's friend posted. it was so surreal and awful to see pictures of her being a happy silly young person, and reading about the mystery of her death, when not long ago she had just been the friendly new teacher at miles' school making sure he and his friends were good to each other while they played basketball.

the news is just too much. the earthquake in china has me eyeing our own old walls. we drove by a house burning down. there was a six year old with a gun in his backpack in sf. oh yeah, and the world is running out of food.

driving home over the bridge i shut down a little, even after our nice weekend of swimming and playing in the sun. maya was whining and crying and the fog was all around and i gave up for a bit on cheering her up and stared out into the fog thinking about loneliness. feeling sorry for myself in a crossing the bridge mood, and it popped out, in a not good mom way, that i felt lonely. and miles said right away, "but we're here. you have us."

the people i have to keep me from being lonely are all sleeping now. it is too late to call my best friend whose call i missed again, whose son and daughter's little voices are on my answering machine. the heat wave is over. i am going to stop listening to the news for a while.

water park

it is freaking hot today. like, walk around the house in your underwear hot, compulsively buy bottles of gatorade hot, little old ladies carrying around umbrellas hot, let the kids have all the ice cream and popsicles they beg for hot. i picked the kids up and was driving home thinking i wished i lived in the suburbs right now, feeling desperate for a pool to jump in, or a river to wade into. we parked on hellish sunny potrero and went straight to the water park, where we ended up staying for over three hours. there were all kinds of folks there, naked little brown boys sticking their hands into the fountain, girls running and shrieking through the water in their bathing suits. the ice cream pusher sold out of spongebob squarepants ice cream. four preschool friends showed up and miles was in heaven making insane noises and moves in the fountains with them, pushing the giant swing, riding the giant swing, and staring at a boy with an awful plastic gun toy for a full 15 minutes. maya was a little less content,and tired from waking up at 5:30 and launching into 12 hours of whining for the last few days, but she finally relaxed and chilled out on my lap, feeding me bits of dry cereal and watching and listening as the spanish, english, and spray from the fountains washed over us. i pushed them back together almost naked in the stroller and was happy to hear a bling bling covered woman at the bus stop tell me that i had two beautiful babies.

it's so so so so hot.

just stuff

i'm writing this in the trundle bed while miles cuddles for "one more minute" by my side. he has been all over the map recently, cuddly, mature, polite, rude, aggressive, gentle. he has been asking so many questions about what happened to his teacher, and i feel so lost trying to answer them. trying to explain death and its possible causes to a young five-year-old can make an atheist wish she was a born-again christian. listening to him speak his thoughts aloud, rambling on "maybe she cut her finger and her blood all came out. maybe when you die it's like your body stops working and your bones stop working so you can't move and then you can't eat anything for a long time and then you are dead. maybe she ate a poisonous mushroom. let's stop talking about this." i feel helpless. if i say the right thing will i help my child live his life with a less crippling fear of death. what exactly is the right thing to say? we will never know what happened to his teacher, only that she died...so the questions will keep coming and i will have to try and answer them.

today a haze of travel and spending cash up and down the 24th street corridor.
first--miles and i walk to st francis where he eats an evil face pancake and we listen to sun ra and cat power
second--all of us drive up potrero hill to check out the new park at the potrero rec center. this used to be a scary sketchy place, rusty playground equipment and cat poo in the sand, overgrown trees and weeds everywhere. today we play on a beautiful new playground with views of potrero hill backyards with terraced gardens and the bay through eucalyptus trees. a little boy is holding his first birthday party there. the smell of smoky bbq. well-dressed families speaking spanish and english. we see a little friend from miles' school and he follows her around being obnoxious but she loves it.
third-the kids scream out to stop when he drive by miles' school-to-be on the way home. there is a health fair with booths promoting healthy things,a bookmobile, volunteer clown who painted a perfect ninja turtle on miles' face, a dj blasting kmel jams, boys riding bikes around an obstacle course, lots of people from the huge potrero hill projects. miles scores a man's xl t-shirt he is presently sleeping in.
fourth--we cruise up to noe valley to check out a garden on the garden tour that our friend john created. he and andy made the garden for a man they befriended who is blind. john called it a sensory garden. he is a rock sculptor and landscaper. our party crowd friends are there mixed in with the noe valley garden tour people. there is a groundcover that smells like mint when you walk on it. an amazing little stream with rocks in it to move and change currents falling onto a pond. a bridge that rocks slightly when you cross it. one of our rocker friends is due to have a baby in october...
fifth--we eat lunch at barney's and are disappointed with the hyped-up burgers and curly fries
sixth--this marathon goes on. we walk up the block to the little noe valley 24th street park. maya talks about the terrible easter bunny we saw there. miles climbs a tree and impresses a little german boy. maya shoves miles in the back and he shoves her back. time to go
seventh--rich is craving mitchell's ice cream. we get there and there are about 40 people waiting but the kids are ready to freak out so we wait. there are rainbow sprinkles all over the car.
eighth--we go home and watch our first mandarin video, with bao bei the panda. i feel like my ears are clogged. yikes.

and now the kids and rich are asleep. i'm writing all this down, why? i'm not sure. maybe this day to day minutiae will somehow counteract this heaviness that won't leave us alone lately--teachers being mysteriously dead, scary headlines about environment, politics, economics.

maybe if i write this down and someone reads it it will make me feel closer to them. knowing all these dumb little details. i don't know. too tired to make sense.

buenos noches

more experts

(read post while pinching nose shut to get true effect)

i have been dealing with over a month now of very bad sinus congestion. it's really hard to sleep, say my "m", "n" and "ng" sounds, and i am exhausted. it's hard not breathing through your nose. i've been taking claritin and sudafed which have worked in the past, but things are not getting better.

i finally went to the doctor today. she talked to me for about one minute and then said i needed to try a different allergy medicine, like zyrtec. i should stop taking sudafed, as i have been taking it for too long. then see if things improve in a few weeks. she starts to bolt out the door but i get teary eyed and say i don't think it is just allergies, and i really am having trouble functioning, so she quickly prescribes antibiotics and suggests claritin-d instead of the zyrtec. rich just went out and got the medicine--it's claritin and sudafed combined. so what the heck is this dr thinking????? help!!

on another note i am home with 2 sleeping kiddos and my stuffy sinuses. rich is at band practice and i am missing the meeting at miles' preschool with a child psychologist who is there to talk about the effects of the teacher's death. miles is asking about her a lot. as soon as we left school today he said "no one knows what happened to teacher b yet." i asked if he talked ot someone about it but he said no, no one did. he is back to wanting to fall asleep with me next to him, and i am saying sure and hoping it is okay.

the maker faire

well, we passed up a birthday party (gasp!) and went to the maker faire in san mateo. rich was wise and drove down 280 so we missed the traffic jam and breezed through the gates with our free tickets. wow! a huge giraffe robot, make your own marshmallow gun, isolate strawberry dna, see the tesla coils make lightning inside, make your own pet robot, watch battling big robots, see the devilettes and burst into tears thinking about tedd, ride a carousel or bus powered by bicyclists. listen to a musical saw. see a beautiful fountain display created by mentos and diet coke. get inspired by engineers without borders or grey water exhibits. watch your kids get confused by the steam punks. there was much to do, make, see, and hear. unfortunately we could only stay a few hours but we will be going next year. a little taste of burning man without the dust and the distance.

on another note, through park, word of mouth, and the sfkfiles blog, about 10 families of kindergarteners going to starr king mandarin have already connected and are starting to talk about playdates before schools starts and even pta meetings. i can see there is going to be some real community there if we want it. i'm also feeling intimidated by what i perceive as a group of very intelligent parents. i hope miles can keep up there and is not intimidated like his mama.

this photo of a dinosaur stomping on pretty flowers is for those of you who love cute and evil. you know who you are.

adios amigos

lady bugs and worms

it was a garden and party day. this am miles and i cruised down to flowercraft and deliberated for a while but came home with a lemon tree, a blueberry bush, some basil, strawberries, some alyssum miles picked out,a container of worms and a container of ladybugs. then off to cousin natalie's fabulous 3rd birthday, complete with a deluxe spread of food, a multi-colored ice cream cake, a real live princess who put on a show (believe it or not the boys couldn't take their eyes off her, yikes, it is starting), balloon animals and weapons, face painting with sparkles, a craft activity that engrossed the adults for hours, and a chaotic degeneration into mike hurling chocolate into the yard and kids growling and throwing balls and other objects at the adult males at the party. when we came home it was nearing dusk and time to do some planting, as well as release our critters. miles banged on our neighbor's back door and she finally came out to help us place the hundreds of ladybugs around the yard, one by one. i hope they like it here and stick around for a while

gone and gon

so sad and tragic. a young teacher at miles' school has died. how she died is a mystery, the kids were just told that she had died and that the teachers didn't know how yet, they would have to find out from the family. i don't want to speculate on what happened but miles certainly is. maybe octopus crime killed her. maybe she got burned in a fire. was she with her family when she died? where is her family? do you know how she died yet? and then, "let's stop talking about this, it's making ME feel dead."

when i talk to someone on the phone he is whispering in my ear to tell the person at the other end that his teacher died. this type of mystery is not good for anyone, especially my son. all day he just seemed wild, laughing too hard, running too fast.

we also discovered gon at the library. a wordless japanese graphic chapter book for kids. about a tiny dinosaur who lives in the present, in nature, and is in different chapters a member of an eagle family protecting the baby eagles from a bobcat, a member of a tundra wolf family happily nursing and playing with his fellow cubs until a terrible tiger comes along, at which time he must avenge the death of his mama wolf. then he is chomping down trees trying to build a mansion of wood in a stream next to an irritated beaver. amazing art, lots of biting and tail-swacking and anger and oh so therapeutic for a little boy overwhelmed by the world of humans.

what this all has to do with shall we flee the city i don't know.

goodbye

iron will

well, maya finally started walking today, about 10 minutes after she got to the babysitter's. we spent about 3 hours at the doctor's office yesterday as three doctors tried various strategies to get maya to walk or open/use her hands. she fell for NOTHING. it looked very behavioral to them, as to me, but they all said that this was level of persistence was highly unusual in a cchild her age. they thought it might be something medical since she absolutely wouldn't stand up or open her hands. after brainstorming at some type of secret pediatrician round table yesterday it was decided that she is stressed about something and that's why she is doing this type of regression. it was also decided she must be pretty smart, which makes me feel a little better. because overall, i'm pretty sad that maya is stressed/worried enough to act like this. when i got her this afternoon i felt like i was mommying on eggshells, trying to be kind but not baby her, love her and encourage he but not reinforce her whining. luckily, except for a moment when we got up the steps and she said "maya no walk at home" she has been walking, dancing, running, making a mess, and being her pretty much usual happy self. as the dr said, it's hard to tell what kind of spin their little brains put on the information they get at this age. i know maya may have heard us stressing about schools, day care, will she be potty trained in time for preschool, and god knows what else. things have been fast and hectic and stressful. so for now, even if we don't feel it, rich and i need to put on our calmest, happiest, most supportive faces for our little ones. maya told me today that she came from mommy's tummy, maya sleeping in there, it dark in mommy tummy, and it made me think maybe she shouldn't know these strange things yet, maybe it is too much, because she made it pretty clear she would like to be in there sleeping in the dark again, and had a strange little smile on her face when i told her she wouldn't fit anymore...

what's going on, maya papaya??

well, maya has not walked since friday. and she has not used her fingers since last night. if she has to get somewhere she crawls on her knees and elbows. she has a few little cuts and scratches that seem to have been catalysts in this thing. we are 99% certain in is psychological but she is going to the doctor at 3 to get checked out anyway. maya says she is various babies she knows. she wants to nurse a lot. she takes her pull-up apart so it is a diaper. when she crawls around on her elbows being a monster with miles she is a baby monster. so, seems like the reason she isn't walking is that she wants to be a baby again, but if you ask her she'll tell you "my legs hurt", and point to a week-old 1/2 inch long scratch on her knee.

what can we do? just find a balance between helping to satisfy her emotional needs and not reinforce this too much. we were at a bday party yesterday and i put her down about 20 feet from the pinata. when it broke and the kids swarmed she slowly scooched over on her bottom and arrived just in time to find the last goodie--an eraser which she sadly tasted and spit out. she is absolutely not breaking out of character on this one. she holds her cup between two clenched fists bc there is a little cut or scratch on each hand.

it's hard to grow up. i'm also seeing that our little one has quite the iron will.

i'll let you know when she takes her (second) first steps. i hope it is soon.

who woulda thunk it?

well, we finally got our round 2 letter from the school district and miles is going to...starr king mandarin immersion! you can check it out online if you are interested. he definitely wouldn't be going to mandarin immersion kindergarten anywhere else we've considered living. a nice friend of mine said to me "you are an amazing mother, talk about rolling with the punches", referring to this turn of events. i hope she is right, and my funny irish friend is not, who asked, when told where miles was going, "and what did he do wrong to deserve that?"

extinct wrestlers

miles was playing with his mammoth and stegasaurus. "they are doing a wrestling show," (i wince a little) "and using sign language." we met some cute preschoolers from the cesar chavez deaf and hard of hearing program at the park today. and miles and maya gazed longingly through the doorway of the mexican wrestling mask store on 24th street. the mix of cultures we flow through daily is being absorbed by his little brain.

been listening to npr more in the car and being reminded about the dismal state of the earth. we need to start growing more food in the backyard. collecting water. raising chickens. solar panels. preparing the kids for a quite different world. i really think things will change faster than most of us imagine.

too much to say on this topic. i try not to think too much about the future but i want to think about it.

nighty night

the city star

hey, miles' photo is in the paper! check out the online version of the san francisco city star
www.TheCityStarSF.com, page 8 or 9. how exciting (for miles, me, rich, and miles' grandparents at least!)

mclaren park nature in the city earth day festival

earth day in san francisco on 4/20, you know there was a certain kind of party going on in up on haight street somewhere. during maya's nap miles and i went out to check out the earth day festival at the jerry garcia ampitheater in mclaren park. i've heard enough stories to feel a tiny bit nervous in this park, but it was fine. up on a hill with trees all around and a clear view of mt diablo. highlights of this festival included:
---8 days a week and a CCR cover with words changed to make it an anti-war song performed by the very talented guitar band (only 8 here, but the teacher said they have over 5o guitarists in the music program) from visitacion valley middle school. the singer brought tears to my eyes and miles' too (he said loudly "what the heck are these tears doing in my eyes from eye wax!")
--the huge python, friendly turtle and iguana, little rockets to make out of vinegar, baking soda and fuji film canisters, and animal ones and pelts to explore provided by the very laid back but fun tree frog trek people. so laid back it seemed possible that julia the giant burmese python could just slither into the mclaren park woods...
--all the intellectual type alternative green people with their booths full of info about rooftop gardens, greenways, wildlife education for kids, tree planting and care in the city
--our friends who met us there and walked down to the little duckpond and playground with us, and who bought me a ice cream from the ice cream cart
--the views of hills of houses and the bay,between tall trees, twisted good for climbing trees, and waving fields of wild radish, wild mustard, tall golden grass

sometimes i feel hopeful that all these people with their earthday energy are becoming more acceptable to world at large. there wasn't a huge turnout for this festival, but stories about mclaren park might have scared some folks off. i love the idea of a city full of greenways and backyards full of vegetables and fruit trees and of course less air pollution floating right off the freeways through our windows. all i can manage for now is to sign my name to some mailing lists.

met ANOTHER family at the water park this morning while doing some oversized laundry whose kid got into their first choice, buena vista. i didn't feel kicked in the stomach when i heard this news. and met ANOTHER family whose kid got into creative arts charter and i didn't have the urge to scream at her to shut up it isn't fair. and discussed my friend's kid going to private school without feeling like every choice i have made in my life up to this point has obviously been wrong and my poor poor kids are doomed to suffer for life. so, i guess i have reached a slightly more zen-like state about where miles is going to school next year. we find out if he got into another school by the end of may.

time to go blow my nose and apply vicks and drink tea. feel sorry for me. i swear i haven't been able to breathe outof my nose for almost a month. poor poor me.

buh bye

farewell croakie

last night croakie jr was floating around in the water dish. when we fished him out he was alive but terribly bloated. think violet in charlie and the chocolate factory (we just finished reading this, charlie is miles' new hero). i had a bad feeling but miles was optimistic. when i looked online it appeared to most likely be kidney failure and we should rush croakie to a vet. this did not happen. this morning before miles woke up we found little croakie back to normal size, but not alive. it was sad. i left before miles woke up but when he did rich said he cried for a long time. how does a 5 year old understand death? there's a post way back about charlotte's web and how watching it created a lot of questions for miles about life and death. this time he just didn't want to talk about it. he told me after school that croakie had died but when i said i was sorry he just said "that makes me even sadder."

so, we are down to one little frog and we will continue to take good care of him. i think the next pet if there is one, will be stronger and sturdier and maye furrier and friendlier.

also today at the playground there were 5 or 6 teenagers hanging around and talking teen stuff, and wrestling around, throwing sand on each other. only 2 little kids were interested in them, and one of them was my son. he slyly sat right next to them for a long time, pretending to play in the sand. when i asked him what they were talking about he said he couldn't understand what they were saying. good.

and miles said that when he got to be as big those kids he was just going to leave town and live in the country. just get a house in the country. maybe live near brian.

he sounded like he was about 32.

goodnight, goodnight, we miss you little croakie.

babbling on

i took miles to check out an informal soccer team organized by his classmate's mother. it was a very windy and cold day in holly park. we waited a while and thought they weren't showing up, but miles insisted on staying a little longer, even though he was shivering. finally he spotted his friend. and then about 8 more kids running up to the field on top of the hill. i could barely keep up with him as he charged through the trees and piles of mulch to meet them. when we got there the kids quickly organized themselves and began running around a baseball diamond kicking their soccer balls. the usual coach wasn't there, so the classmate's grandma was handing out balls. a toddler or two was chasing the pack. it seemed pretty casual. but the kids did all have matching shirts. and shin guards. and they had been there before. in about 30 seconds miles' body language told me this was not going to work. he pulled on my hand, turned away, got kind of stiff. he had tears in his eyes. he wanted to go home. so we did. and one side of me says it's ok, we'll try again some other time, but the other side of me is worried about him, that he will have to enter the real world of kindergarten soon. where it is not all free choice, where he will have to do lots of things, with strangers, and where (it is likely) his teacher will not speak to him in english. so this side of me is a little pushy, suggests we try next week, asks why not, says there is nothing to worry about, no one will care what he does. tells him there was a two year old there and that was fine. no, he says, it is better at school. and i like basketball. and, the heartbreaker, "i like playing with smaller kids better." my little guy. i really wish sometimes i could keep you with me forever.

i guess there is always the home school option....

tiny tiny pool

wish you could smell the jasmine in our yard. it was another hot day with a trip to the water park, a squirt gun fight in the house (aren't we the progressive parents), and even a tiny urban pool made from the top of the water table, legs removed and placed on the ground. miles and maya and our 3 year old neighbor willow had a blast jumping into our 2.5x2.5 foot pool with dirty feet, squirting each other with the muddy water, and maya even gave bert from sesame street a muddy water bath. he looks pretty funny with his hair hanging down.

days like today of course make me think about global warming again and i feel good to be a city dweller using less energy, in general, with our walks around the neighborhood , use of public spaces, and our tiny little backyard that we do love. i admit, though, we are hopelessly hooked on the car, at least until maya becomes a little more reasonable and the whole bus trip is not a wrestling match.

today

miles helped rich and his friend donnie do some work out back...really helped. i watched him through the window hauling shovel loads of weeds with his little work gloves on

it is a really hot day. we went to holly park for rishi's birthday. the kids climbed the hills, fought with sticks, used loud and obnoxious voices. there were picnic tables in an enclosed area in the park and little leon told me "there used to be a restaurant right here in these woods."
the car is in the shop. we dreamily walked to cortland st to catch the bus, about .1 miles per hour. i saw someone from my writing class and maya blew her a kiss and showed off her booboo and pieceacandy. when we got to cortland i asked a woman with her son if she knew where the bus stop was. and they offered us a ride home in their car! we got a ride home through the hot hot day which was nice as maya was overdue for nap.

their son goes to private school. as, i discovered way more than half of the white children in this city do.

while rich and maya napped miles and i snuck out to check out the youth arts festival at the brava theater. we saw two great plays put on by the SF Running Crew, some kind of theater work training group for kids (like 15-21 or something like that). the first one was set in a public high school and starred a bathroom goddess who advised the kids as they came in and shared their (funny) angst about grades, gangs, fitting in, being gay, being a nerd. the intercome would blast announcements every five minutes or so like "don't forget, students, next week is bring your own toilet paper week" and "due to the budget cuts, graduation will be postponed indefinitely". miles had no idea what was going on but loved it and was especially excited about a part with a bad guy pimp chasing two teenagers around the stage.

we cooled down at the water park. miles played soccer with an adorable tiny chinese boy. the park was full of people running through the fountains. we stopped at casa sanchez to get take out rice and beans to make maya papaya happy.

so. that was just our day. there is annoying dance music out back somewhere, kids playing, it is finally cooling down a bit. i am pennying my little guy. he wants me lying next to him but i want him to do it alone.

all these people and interactions and art, culture, stimulation. what will all this do to nurture my little ones? they are growing up in a very different place than i.

out of sight

this will be brief, as my sinus infection is taking over my brain and it is the end of a long long day. i didn't know where miles was for about 5 minues today. i would have to put a topographical map in this post to make it clear, but at glen park today miles took "the other way" and was completely out of sight for about 5 minutes. we were with another family and miles and the little girl were out of sight in some trees together for a few minutes. then the girl climbed up and said miles was going the other way. we thought this meant the other little path we could see 50 yards away. then when he didn't appear i called him a few times and he didn't answer. i stayed on the hill we were hiking with the kids and the other mom went down to see what miles was doing, but he wasn't there. in his green eagles clothes he had slipped away. she ran around the very large building back to the playground to find him. i waited with the kids trying not to panic. then the other mom returned through the trees and MILES WAS NOT WITH HER. i threw down the backpack and left maya with them and ran. the first person i saw i told my son was missing and she said she saw a little boy alone out on the sidewalk but thought he was with a different woman. the sidewalk by the street? hundreds of yards away? which way was he going? then she said "there he is" and i said where, where and then saw little miles running down the hill to us. he had made this huge crazy loop, like a quarter mile or so?? alone. he said he could hear us calling him. he didn't feel like he had done anything wrong. he wasn't being sneaky. he said he just took the other way. my heart was pounding so hard and we talked and maybe he will be more cautious for a while. but it really was his first time being conscious and independent. not a toddler wandering off without telling mommy. he just felt safe going on a path far from us, far from where i could see him and keep him safe. i still feel kind of shocked about it, kind of nauseous and amazed. we were lucky we found each other.
i guess as the kids get older these things will be happening more and more, but hopefully not anytime soon. would i have this kind of panic if miles disappeared for 5 minutes in the country or suburb? would i be worried about a mountain lion or getting lost in the woods or a creepy guy with a van like we heard about growing up? cause that's what i felt panic about--a stranger taking miles. i want him close to me. i told him again and again today, i have to see you to keep you safe but i know i can't keep him in sight forever.

nostalgia

an old roomate of mine from the wild days in newark and philly was in town for a conference and came over for brunch. we spent several hours reminiscing and he told me about all the people who had returned to the philly area to settle down after years travelling, exploring, grad, school. would we have been on this list if we hadn't chanced into buying our lovely flat in the mission, san francisco. the visit got me stirred up and so envious of being in a place where people are coming back , not just leaving. it made me call c in the midwest to reiterate my endless plea to "come back to san francisco!"

my parents are selling their PA home and moving to sonoma, so don't worry mom, i'm not moving to ardmore anytime soon, but i am feeling, more than ever, kind of isolated by the events and geography in my circle of loved ones' lives.

black lightning and local cultchuh

last night i was up obsessively researching mandarin immersion language programs which, as i suspected, have some definite challenges. are we up for them? we are waiting to find out if miles gets into our neighborhood school's mandarin immersion program, which has pros and cons, but is walkable and sounded like a safe bet in this hellish lottery process. if the program worries me too much, or if miles hates it, we could always transfer, (here is the biggest challenge i'm worried about:

"Some partial immersion teachers of the upper elementary grades report particular difficulties in teaching advanced-level subject matter because students’ cognitive development is at a higher level than their proficiency in the immersion language (Met & Lorenz, 1997). This challenge becomes more pronounced in programs where the immersion language is character-based since literacy development is more timeconsuming and demanding (Met, 2002). Promoting student understanding of more abstract and complex concepts in full immersion programs becomes increasingly difficult by the upper elementary grades resulting at times in teacher use of English to ensure concept mastery(Fortune, Tedick & Walker, forthcoming; Met & Lorenz, 1997). ")

or flee the city. also last night i was up wondering why we are still here. wouldn't it be simpler if we had moved to some nice suburb with nice predictable school systems and cheaper houses and less poo on the street, as most of my friends did? i wanted to stay here for the community, but that community has largely disappeared from our lives. but where would we go?

this morning miles was talking a lot about the mexican wrestling show he saw with maya's babysitter's 5 year old over spring break. he mentioned men without shirts, with masks, one jumping into glass. this isn't a show we would have let him see, but he'd loved it. we ended up making him a mask from some black and blue duct tape and a ski hat with eye, nose, and mouth holes. he said his wrestling name was black lightning and wrestled for quite a while with rich, which i'm sure our downstairs neighbors loved at 8 am.

later i took maya on a stroll around the mission. we went up 24th and got tasty coffee at sugarlump. galeria de la raza was working on an installation. a youth art festival is coming up at brava theater. maya liked a new mural of some wierd looking kids in masks, one of whom she decided was a lion. we walked over to the park and on the way saw some kids painting outside the red poppy.
these two cool young women (i'm feeling old) asked us if maya wanted to make some art. she put many smelly markers up to her nose and made some lines and dots with them. she painted some more lines on a big sheet hanging on the wall. a little 3 year old girl next to us perfectly painted her and her brother's names: xochitl and alejandro. i was amazed. other kids were painting suns, monsters, blobs. an acquaintance from miles' younger days walked by and his mom invited us to a group family camping trip she's planning. a drum circle was going on at caesar chavez elementary, pounding and banging ringing noises through the streets.

and later i took miles to a free introductory mommy and child yoga class up in bernal heights. it was fun, with miles learning to be a seed growing into a vegetable, a butterfly, a snake, a frog, a tree, and even helping me do some stretches. i don't think i liked it enough for $10 a person, but maybe.

and hey i forgot, also stopped at the very close by million fishes gallery to get a schedule for yoga classes they are offering. i went inside and chatted with the woman there. i told her i had been there years before, when our dog chicken's friend geo the dog lived there. i could tell she was from the east and was right, connecticut. we shook hands and she said she was glad to meet me. i liked her smile.

so, my stomach is still sick about the school thing. and i'm forever sad about all the leaving people. but the other people leaving is not my choice. it is out of my control. we have chosen to stay, at least for right now. so i know what i need to do is figure out how to really dig in and find who and what i need to be happy, right here and now. because i don't think there is a place we could go to find it and i don't expect anyone from my past in san francisco to return.

excuse me, it's late. bye bye

chapter books

school list has been handed in again. we will see in a month where the san francisco unified computer sends us...

today another friend told me she is moving. when is this gonna end? i want to catch all you loveable people in a big net and keep you here but it isn't happening. you know who you are, friend and you are one of the dearest i have met out here, not connected to the east coast life at all, just a cool lady neighbor i met 5 years ago, with an amazing family. hope we can keep in touch.

i just finished reading autumn in moominvalley
to miles. i'm sure much of it was over his head but he listened carefully anyway. i've had this paperback since i was about 8 or 9. this is an amazing and beautiful little children's book, about figuring out our own wants and needs and makes me appreciate all the great literature my parents found for me when i was a kid. i hope that miles and maya will love reading as much as i do. some of the books i want to find for him...

all the oz books
the moomintroll books
secret garden
roald dahl
no flying in the house
cricket in times square
beverly cleary
harriet the spy
phantom tollbooth
mouse and the motorcycle
ginger pye

these just popped in my head. any suggestions? i'm sure there are some good kid chapter books written after i turned 12.

wishing we knew more about the fall

wish that i wasn't once again awash in confusion and stress about schools. all that thinking we went through before choosing schools for the first lottery seems like it was an utter waste of time, and now we are trying to figure out what to aim for in the second lottery. immersion? creativity? proximity? i am so so so so tired of thinking about this stuff. the second form is due by friday, then we wait another month while a computer whirls things around and spits things out, then we can still get on a wait pool list and even check out the open enrollment options. goodie can't wait.

starting to feel like i am different from most people i know, who mostly moved away to buy houses or are staying here and sending their kids to private school. hoping i am not, as one friend said months ago and which keeps echoing in my head "sacrificing my children for my liberal ideals." feeling bad.

this weekend? another birthday party, we walked to precita park and bounced in a jumpy castle (with slide, miles has already requested this for next year), watched kids chaotically bat at a stubborn pinata, tried to avoid school talk. maya got in and bounced! finally! on easter the kids found jelly beans the easter bunny sprinkled around the living room and quickly ate them all. then we were invited to uncle mike's for another sugar hunt. i saw THE EASTER SKUNK in his yard, which was pretty exciting. we walked to their park and saw part of a baseball game with a crowd of 90% latino men, horns blowing, delicious smelling bbq, and some close calls and machismo with the umpire.

then last night miles and i hiked up over the highway to check out bring your own bigwheel.
this was a joyous event, me and my boy in the perfect weather amidst mobs of friendly hipsters, watching as big wheels, toddler trucks and tiny tricycles ridden by (mostly)smiling, helmeted grownups in costumes which included evil (evelyn) knieval, a gorilla, a shark, a bulldog, assorted monsters and (gasp) even a teenage mutant ninja turtle zoomed past. i was laughing out loud for much of the race which was a nice change from wondering if i am a terrible unlucky mom who is sending her kid to kindergarten hell in a few months. maybe next year i will take the pink big wheel from our closet, strap on a helmet and some knee pads, and ride that thing down vermont street with the other crazy happy urban goofballs.

better go. i am going to call amtrak to find out options for a cross country train trip this summer....

sunday

went to little nina's 3rd day party at the children's art studio in alameda today. maya did some out of the box and way off the paper hand painting (read:smearing glittery paint all over the paint room with her hands, but they didn't seem to mind) and miles and darby constructed a whip cream machine (it shot whip cream at adults) out of pvc pipes and joints. joy made a homeade cake, thank you.

the croakies weren't looking too good so we spent approximately another 50 bucks and now have a deluxe terrarium set up with heat lamp, air plants, lots of tasty crickets running around. yes, we now have to take care of crickets too, feed them veggies and cotton balls soaked with water and supposedly dust their food with calcium. i admit his is all quite educational, but for who? miles is busy playing teenage mutant engine turtles (don't argue about this one) while rich and i study the frog book and fret about the croakies' ambient temp and cricket diet.

yes, i am purposely holding back about schools because i am so obsessed with school thoughts at this point that if i start writing i may never stop.

today after the birthday party, back in the city i snuck out to try and track down a neighbor and our video store owners to ask them about their kids' schools. it was a perfect sunny afternoon. i chatted with a woman at the bus stop about her 2 year old's harness, as i am thinking of getting one for maya with her elbow issues. 24th st was humming: a mural tour group checking out the water park, people with cones leaving st francis, the old woman by the grocery store with her permanent garage sale laid out on the sidewalk. lots of happy drinking young and aging hipsters in and out of pop's. the bakery smells good, eur0-techno blasting. the neighbor and video store people are out. i stop at the little vintage clothing place to look for a pair of earrings to buy and make myself feel better. virginia is there behind the counter with her 4 month old baby miles. he coos and squawks and smiles and we chit chat but i can't find the right earrings. i remember when i used to go in there almost 5 years ago with my miles that small in his snugli, wandering around on maternity leave looking for some earrings to buy to make myself feel better. on the way home i notice a bunch of trucks on hampshire st and a little tent set up with a woman chopping up fruit. she tells me they are filming a movie set in the mission starring benjamin bratt and written by his brother. right here in my neighborhood. i head home and as i cross the street i look up the hill and see the school to which we were assigned. see, i can't control myself. where miles would probably be in a class of kids from the quite sketchy housing projects, but with a good teacher and principal and kids from all backgrounds in the other classrooms, spanish, mandarin, autism. the school is about 7 blocks up potrero hill, a white building against a blue sky...our neighborhood school...my brain hurts, feels like it is gently crumbling with so much going on inside it.

something else to worry about

well i guess we are not alone. i've been very obssessively reading the sfkfiles blog and so many people got none of their choices. go read the blog for a lively discussion. Among our friends and school buddies at least a third got none of their choices. so, a baby boom, people with more faith in SFUSD, maybe even an effect of so many people reading this blog and wanting the same schools, and what do you get? a whole lot more stress than i really feel equipped to deal with. i was actually just looking at brisbane rentals. but i love my city. i love it a lot.

at rtg today a dad was sitting by the door and 2 little girls were asking him to guess where they were going for kindergarten (so far i know 4 familes got their 1st choice and 4 of us got nothing. hmmm). miles was observing. the dad guessed wrongly may times and finally miles called out with a big crazed smile and a pointing finger "you're going to the school from NOWHERE!!" he thought this was very funny. it made me feel like, well, you can guess.

this photo is rich on his birthday wearing some special gifts.

on another note, we have something new to worry about. 2 little green things, actually. a well-meaning friend gave miles a "frog habitat" (plastic box with a little plastic marsh scene inside) for his birthday. i couldn't stand the begging anymore and we went to petco to get our 2 tiny green tree frogs. now, at least weekly we need to: clean the cage, buy or capture live bugs (but not beetles or ants, frogs don't like them), figure out a place miles can watch croakie and little croakie (i'm afraid these names hold some negative foreshadow) but maya can't open the cage, replenish frog moss and special eco-dirt (yes, that's what it says on the bag), monitor temperature (those of you who know us well know we haven't used our heater in 12 years, but if c. and little c need heat...), and of course talk to our little friends. i am already worried about these fragile little guys, huddled in little spaces with their pulses beating fast in that froggie way under their chins, wondering where the hell they are....

zilch

after all that agonizing we got none of the seven schools we put on our kindergarten application. i guess we are unlucky losers. seems like plenty of people got schools they were happy with but not us. i feel like bad news. like why bum our our friends who didn't have this crappy bad luck.

yes, we will do round 2, waitlist, etc but i have no faith.

this really really brings me down.

Experts

maya and her cast have been on my mind a lot today. i wasn't too pleased at the treatment we reeived at ucsf. things were disjointed--we were sent from one place and person to another and expected to retell the story of what happened. none of the experts really communicated with each other. everyone seemed slightly puzzled. and the final expert, the orthopedist was so busy and backed up she spent less than a minute explaining why she was putting a huge cast on maya. really. i've spent the last 2 days carrying my cell phone in my pocket waiting to hear back from my dr about what he thinks is happening, and hearing from two physical therapist friends that the orthopedist we saw has a wierd/not so good reputation. the more i thought about all this the more i saw that the doctors involved didn't really know exactly what was going on with maya, or what would happen. for an anxious mom like me this is hard to deal with.

as i waited with cell phone in pocket for a dr call that never came we held an iep meeting for a student in my therapy program. listen to this: this kid's family was concerned he might be on the autism spectrum. they mentioned this concern on their intake form with the district but for some reason he was tested only by a speech therapist. she told the parents, after a one-hour meeting with the child, that she thought his social and play issues were mostly due to poor language skills and lack of preschool exposure. he was sent to our program which is only two half-days a week.

my co-teacher and i took one look at this guy and thought he was on the spectrum. very bright. a little hyperlexic. no imaginative play. pouring sand on the same truck over and over by himself for most of outside time each day. echolalia. very distressed by changes in routine. atypical body movements. atypical vocalizations. so we had to go the parents and say what we suspected and ask if it was okay to refer him for more testing. what a rotton roller coaster for this family.

so a very nice very new psychologist came out and tested him and said she saw many autistic-like tendencies but she couldn't qualify him as eligible for services in the school district because she couldn't diagnose him but recommended the parents see a developmental pediatrician. HUH? and we had to make our recommendation that he leave our program for a more intensive five day a week program. this dad was all for getting his son what he needed but what a crummy journey to have to go on.

there is obviously a lot more to write on this subject. but it made me think about how people in my field often talk about the parent being in denial about their child's disability. there are many reasons proposed for this; the difficulty of saying goodbye to the concept of a child you held in your mind, the lack of knowledge about what is developmentally typical. and then there are the parents people complain about who want "too many services" for their kids who think they can cure the kid with the right program. i have a feeling if my child had a disability i'd be right there, trying to get along, trying to be reasonable, but fighting for everything i thought would help.

having trouble trusting the experts.

my little experience so far with maya and her nursemaid's elbow, trivial as it may be compared to a diagnosis of autism has given me a little more insight--it is hard to trust the teachers and speech-language therapists and psychologists when they don't admit it, but don't seem to know what is wrong with your child, or why, or exactly what to do about it.

i have so much respect and admiration for the parents of the kids i work with.

and little you know who, i will miss you so much and know you will do well in your new school.

this dad and i exchanged a teary look during the meeting, really this felt like our first eye contact. taking care of kids, our own and other people's, is deep. or at least it should be

the whole school

the other day everyone was so wiped out that long, long naps were taken and the kids stayed up late. it is hard to predict the mood around here lately, but as we puttered around the house until about 9:30 everyone was mellow and there was very little fighting. miles and maya collaborated on a family portrait of maya's obsession the caperton family. i started playing the same few songs on guitar that are all i have learned in 15 years, deb lenert's magnet moon, token white boy's dark, which was one of tedd's favorites, and the little man song. a lot of the time lately miles pushes my buttons, but look at this sensitive little rocker. he strummed along with a cute little self-conscious smile on his face and when i told him dark was one of my friend tedd's favorite songs miles said it was his favorite, too. and there is a picture of tedd, he pointed out, pointing the the mantle. maya tried fairly successfully to play guitar with one arm and tended to her babies. the darkness outside seemed to calm everyone down.

we are getting ready for the insanely huge crowd we invited to miles' birthday. are we really really crazy?? we invited the whole school. and almost all of them are coming. plus our remaining friends with kids. we will probably get a bounce house. please please rain, stay away, cause 60 people in our apartment will not be pretty...

poor baby/ies

well, to make a long long long story short, after 3 days in a row of doctor visits, including a 10-3 marathon today complete with intern, attending dr, another attending dr, x ray, a drive to another hospital, a long wait for the orthopedist, less than a minute of consultation with the orthopedist----- bam, maya has a little cast on her arm for a recurring case of "nursemaid's elbow."

i probably cried more than my amazing and brave angel baby maya grace millman. she was incredibly good and patient. it was hard to see her in so much pain. miles felt his own emotional pain, jealousy, which was much harder to be empathetic with ("maya--gets--everything" he said tearfully after i picked him up from the fabulous ilsa miller's house--a schoolfriend's mom who took him in for a day-long playdate), but i dug down deep into my mama pocket and tried. he is still so young after all, i am idealistic to imagine he wouldn't have some jealousy over all the attention maya was getting. then we get home and he has a little fever and a sore throat.

i am wiped out. my mind goes into a spin that there is some bigger badder problem with maya's joints, and there is that nagging guilt--i was holding her hand when this happened after all. oh, i know there are far far far worse things that happen to people and their kids than elbows popping out of joint or intense jealousy and anger. seeing maya's little face as the dr moved her elbow around, she stared into my eyes and tried to half smile through the pain, such a brave beautiful little person, and miles just feels it all so much he can't even pretend to be brave, we all handle pain differently, guess it is up to me to try and prepare us all for the inevitable more.

i promise to write more about life in the city soon. daily life, work and home, have suddenly escalated in demands and intensity and i am just trying to keep up as best as i can. i feel like so many people need me to take care of them lately. i want someone to come and take care of me...gaga googoo

love

rich is 40

well, my husband is 40 now. when i first saw him he was probably 21, a cute guy i didn't know in a history class. whoa. we had veggie lasagna and penne and meatballs and rolls from lucca on valencia street, a huge chocolate rum cake from dianda's, a half keg of rolling rock beer, 4 bottles of jameson's, only 7 little kids, one whoopee cushion, 2 rented videos to keep the little kids happy, one injury (cousin natalie got whacked in the head by a giant horseshoe magnet), and a whole lot of karaoke going on. by the end of the night chris and rich were playing guitar duets lying on their backs on the living floor and we even played the point arena song for brian. maya and miles partied until 11 or so, and we paid for it with some tears at dinner time tonight but hey, worth it, right? to sing karaoke and get loud and obnoxious with a lot of friendly and long-known faces? maya dancing honky-tonk and little marta inventing endless permutations of whoopee cushion play and miles and andy pretending to poop objects and cracking each other up. kim was there with rich on her t shirt. uncle evan riled up the little ones but didn't whip them into a full-on frenzy. shhh, someone confided to me they planned to have children. oh yeah, and mike d and sheila's incredible rendition of summer lovin'

of course there were some loved people missing from this gathering. we take what we can get.

we put on the twinkly outside white christmas lights and i bragged about my city view, of the yards and trees and some open sky. i think if we could only see the backs of people's houses, or the sky only if we looked straight up, i couldn't take it. our downstairs neighbors came up around 10, their 3 year old blonde beautiful girl willow wanted to "see the band at miles' house."

4 things i heard that made me feel good: julia said i looked nice, even though i am feeling like an elephant these days. somebody i didn't see said this was a great place. brian said this party was just like the good old days with one of his good old brian smiles. and rich's big birthday toast was that we would all be toasting together at our 50th birthdays.

parks and people

we parked it up this weekend. cortland street park sat am, glen park canyon in the afternoon(where we climbed to the top of the rock, surrounded by wild mustard and radish, miner's lettuce, blue sky, and friendly dogs. miles and jonah were wild animals, people with stick crutches, and wanna-be baseball players.) today we hit the amazing golden gate park playground by the carousel. call me a freak, but i could live here. big trees all around, big swings and slides and sand and cool sculptures and a sky high climbing structure that inexplicably doesn't worry me. kids are laughing and calling for mommies and daddies and babies are toddling around gripping the play structure. miles finds a buddy from school to climb and kick a soccer ball with , and emily and rebecca are there to chase and play monster. maya goes to the top of the slide and there is a 10 year old boy goofing off and blocking the tunnel. i whisper to maya, "tell the big boy you are next" and she yells "maya next, boy!!" later she is terrified by a police horse and confides in me "maya scared horse big nose." good to know. soon she is bouncing and kicking with excitement about the carousel. "yay, yay maya ride carousel, yay!!!" she makes a lot of strangers smile and this makes me feel proud.

we see our neighbor at this park, and also our friend narasu. this people tally always makes me feel a little better.

in our neighborhood i carry maya past three bikers at an intersection who look vaguely familar and then we see each other--it is john kennedy and his new wife and james. friends from the distant san francisco past, who came on some of the road trips and crazy camping. my most vivid memory of john kennedy is being astonishingly naked in a sauna with him and cassie and nat and hugh maybe? other steaming drunk people being very loud and fast-talking and straight in a kind of calm and quiet gay resort on the russian river, the willows (i highly recommend it). i ended up doing a handstand on the edge of the dock, which blows me away since these days i can barely do a somersault.

anyway james is back in the city after being in europe and came and checked out our bottom flat for sale. i am telling everyone i know looking about it. i still have my fantasies about a little intentional community, still fantasize about how it could have been here with friends who moved away. i guess it would be smarter to focus on what it could be like with people who move in.

i talked to gradiva about this at the park--if she and the other jonah and little ernie had not moved we would have 4 cool little 4 and 5 year old boys with compatible families on one block. if i had convinced any of my friends planning to have families to buy the apt below we would have a rocking house with kids up and down the steps and pets and chickens in the backyard.

i still have my fantasies. pathetic as they are.

feeling some love

well, the last few days anxiety was high. i think it was set off by the brief visit from our homeless friend. he came to use our phone, as his camper van he is living in now had been towed. he looked terrible, skinny, very dirty, black circles under his eyes. he used rich's phone and made some feeble jokes about how he could do some nannying for us. his brother had been out to visit, recently but our friend was still living on the street. i sensed some deep confusion in him, felt sick looking at the dirt on his long thin nose.

yesterday i stopped by rainbow grocery and got teary talking to a very together seeming homeless woman selling the street sheet outside. i bought a copy. rainbow was buzzing with positivity. i bought some fair trade coffee, feeling good about not ripping someone off or chopping down too many trees in the wrong place. i filled up on bulk items feeling good about using less packaging. i bought some organic produce and cheese and felt good about not contributing pesticides to the world. i bought a bunch of green paper and cleaning products. this simple stuff made me feel a little better.

and when i dropped miles off at school today there was a big buzz for valentine's day. kids giving away and getting homeade heart necklaces, cards, trays of treats, a brand new baby to see and a dad of a one-day-old dropping his big guy off at school. miles brought his scranimals book to share and sounded so mature telling his teacher, "ther other kids might like it too, it's really funny." driving home past the valentine displays of huge balloons and flowers and plastic hearts i felt calm about materialism and waste. little by little we will all learn what we need to do to love and take care of each other in this world. i feel affection for the hipster lady running across the street in heels and black to catch the bus. the little ones walking to school holding hands with their parents. the jumble of houses huddled together in the mission, under a sunny blue sky. and the love is there even for the people who live around walgreen's with their shopping carts. there's lily in her dry-cleaning shop working away on the sewing machine. my house strewn with "maya baby stuff", miles' cape, the dust dancing in the window sun, the bluebirds flitting around on our deck. i put the tofurkey roast my meat-loving husband bought for us into the oven and hope for the best.

little mama

maya is missing again. she often disappears to do her own thing. this would be fine except that her own thing includes climbing up to get things from forbidden drawers, putting various non-foods in her mouth, destroying all things paper, etc. we have just returned from work and school, rich is getting dinner in the kitchen, miles is talking a lot and already negotiating for dessert. i find maya in the bedroom on the big rocking chair holding her baby. "shh, baby shershey*". she starts to sing rock a bye baby and allows me to sing the whole thing with her, quietly. she notices the baby's diaper is off and cries "oh no, baby diaper broken" and puts it back tenderly, then rocks and sings some more holding her baby doll. miles bounds in and finds a stretchy arm monkey with holes in his hands. soon they are both laughing as he stretches the monkey and it boings quasi-dangerously in all directions.

she is a good little mommy these days.

*shershey is nursing

does this link work?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5891776656090272134

juxtaposition

well, thanks you two. yesterday afternoon pushing maya home from the cold wet park i met two canvassers who were very passioinate and got me thinking about how business as usual isn't working too well around these here parts. so, i do like hillary, but i'm going to go with barack.

miles wants to build stuff lately. not legos, not a cardboard model, but the real thing. he was excited about building a home for a homeless person out of some cardboard and driftwood sticks he found on the the back deck in a rare moment of sun. and he had some cool plans to build houses on top of our house, as well as a tree taller than our house on top of our house.

living in the suburbs i guess he would be protected from the grim realities of homelessness and housing crunches and lack of enough trees. but living here he doesn't seem depressed. he seems full of ideas and solutions. i guess i need to be more like my boy and not dwell in the fact that almost all of the community i felt so close to less than a decade ago has drifted or purposefully travelled away from me.

these rainy days put me to bed early and make more time for dreams filled with faces from the past, many of whom i long for.

i also stumbled upon a cool article about my neighborhood on the spur website.
i will try the link, i haven't been so successful lately.

last, a beautiful sunny afternoon in the cortland street park. a sturdy smiling boy jumped into my arms and i knew he had autism. very cute and friendly and miles' size. his dad was a just a bit crazy but cool and friendly ex-rocker. maya and miles and this little guy walked the stone circle around the sand, taking turns jumping on me and knocking me down. aren't i a good mom? this guy and family had fled the city about 5 years ago but had returned and were happy in bernal. maya climbs so fast to the top of the structure now, and bounces wildly on the bridge. miles looks out for her safety. as we pass the library, we hear music. it is an accordion lady, a young beautiful (russian?) one playing moody accordion music on the stone steps. our new little friend goes up and presses some buttons. miles slides down the smooth wide marble flanking the steps and of course his little sister tries too.

it is juxtaposition, of almost everything, that keeps it interesting in our lives. as maya says of the musician "look mommy look, the sound, listen"

video by david cronan

the night before maya's bday an old old friend was in town to visit mike, matt harris, now doing his post doc in germany with his wife. they have a little one now, lily.

mike organized a jam session with matt, kim, and chris at lennon studios. i took the bus down and wandered around under the freeway a bit with my brother's bad directions. 2 men living in shopping cart cities asked me in a friendly way if i wanted to buy some speed. no thanks. i did get this feeling, though, that i needed a strong drink. i bought a big bottle of jaegermeister at trader ho's and found the studio. i just had that feeling, a slight disconnect between brain and body, that only a little heavy drinking would cure. it was SO GOOD to see my friends in this studio. i surprised myself by going straight to the drums and banging away. it felt SO GOOD to bang on drums for awhile with my old friends and bandmates. then i spent a long long time singing/yelling/howling into the mic. this is cheap therapy, for those of us with kids and jobs. thank you mike, matt, kim and chris for this fun night. i came home in a taxi and threw a 30 buck tip at the driver.

the next morning was not so pleasant as i prepared for a 2 year birthday with an early rising 2 year old, a jealous 4 year old, cupcakes rich forgot to add eggs to, a headache, and a roiling tummy.

which all brings me to the point of this post, to let you see and hear my old old band yusakuta, if you want. parents, skip this one. it actually sounds pretty bad, but thank you so much david cronan for capturing this part of history for me. it brings back emotions--this was such a fun time, but i just want to grab mr tedduh out of the video and keep him safe with me.

here's the link to david's video

vote?

so, who to vote for on tuesday?

i'm not a very political person. in college i remember going to a pro-choice rally in d.c. i had a bad cold and ended up guzzling a bottle of cough medicine with codeine that made me wacky. i yelled out the windows of the bus on the highway. i watched in a daze as people dressed as grim reapers with red-painted baby dolls glued onto scythes walked by. a girl i knew as my roomate's on and off bed buddy was so overcome with emotion that she flung a coat hanger into a crowd of reaper types chanting hey hey ho ho baby killing's got to go behind a police barrier.

so many different people and their different opinions. so many grim reapers and coat hanger flingers.

i think i was on student council a few years or so in middle school. this was definitely a ploy to get out of class.

now that i have a little more time to panic about the future for my children i am thinking more about politics. i actually liked john edwards quite a bit but he has gone bye-bye. farewell john edwards. listening to npr, reading the economist and the new yorker, these things are not helping me choose between barack and hillary. do you have an opinion? will you share?

what i want from the next administration:
1.stronger policies for the environment. love your mother!! how did things get so bad? what is wrong with human beings? this would include thought-out investment and support for good technologies (i know many people think technology is neutral, not me)
2. economic policies that help people who need help (including health, homes)
3. education reform that moves kids towards being future parts of numbers one and two
4. money away from the war

i wish i knew more about the global economy and trade, but i know almost nothing. fair trade sounds good to me though.

and while I'm at it, how about someone to babysit my kids once in a while? help me lose some weight? scrub my floors? turn potrero avenue into a pedestrian mall? bring my friends back to san francisco? cure me of my heights phobias? return my library books?

so, anyone out there have any ideas for me? maybe when i am older i will have time to be a better researcher.

i guess the bottom line is that i want the democratic candidate most likely to beat the republican candidate. hopefully that will be the best person for the presidency...

maya is 2 now

maya is 2 now. here she is during the cupcake-decorating portion of her party. she is not turning out to be a sugar freak like some other family members, and spent a long time decorating but only took a small lick.

i'm just not in writing mode these days. sorry, and i'm sure i will lose all 2 of my loyal readers if i keep this up. i'll do another lexicon list for maya since i'm a speech and language therapist and it is fun...

cake cereal orange milk juice water agua mas cup pink green blue tall big empty open up touch get it myself down cold in there brother chair seat hot cook playdough draw picture stamp wash hands shoulder chin cheek hair eye nose mouth leg arm tummy

hurt mad sad crying happy now

tv clifford baby einstein

now soon later

jump climb walk sit touch reach tickle hug kiss listen see look love

mommy daddy brother miles natalie suling mike josy david rebecca emily david zehara jonah deb marta ella rose john willow erin manu kika steffy diego arturo poppop penny poppop mommom paige sophie che che edison calvin julia phoebe cassie nina niko cassidy sheila

train car bus eagle hawk ferret cat dog bird fly run swim fish baby beluga sing guitar rock sharp hard salt bath
eat time dinner time bath time teeth-teeth time
go
park swing slide sand beach tree house moon star music light blanket sleep flower stuff chu-chu
brush rock rocking chair

wow, this is way too long and i've just started. guess she is ready for a language sample.
buh bye

going for the unknown world of spanish immersion

well, my friend deb and i went down and handed in our school applications together today. she had a little list scribbled on a piece of paper and i had one in my head i had discussed with rich this morning, as he prepared to go split some wood with his dad in delaware. we ended up sitting at a big coffee table in the lobby of the administration building with assorted friends and neighbors who were all still devising their lists or had just handed them in. lots of talk, talk, talk, and then impulsively i changed some things and filled it in and handed it in. afterwards i had a brief period with a nice empty space in my head, where all the "what should we do?" had been living. brief. soon this space was filled up with "i should have put...". there is a possibility i will call the office tomorrow and make a last-minute switch, but they probably wouldn't do it except in person and i would have to drag 2 kids down, so it is probably over. i feel a little sick thinking about this but it is also probably lack of sleep and eating too much unhealthy stuff. in the end we went largely with spanish immersion, which i feel will be very challenging to miles in the beginning. i kept hearing it was a gift to your child and i kept imagining miles being so overwhelmed and stressed, but at the last minute i guess i had some faith that he could just handle it. hope i was not wrong, hope he won't be the one kid in the class who hates it. and cries. oh lordy. there were so many cool good schools, all very popular of course, but finally i went with doing something different, the exotic and unknown world of spanish immersion...

our final list (if i don't freak out totally and go down there again tomorrow):
buena vista spanish(next door, friendly, cool, arts, i really really want this now--almost 400 people applied last year)
rooftop (not immersion, early, just very cool, over 800 people applied last year)
alvarado spanish (arts, science, money, about 350 people applied last year)
leonard flynn (not amazing but near, "up and coming", spanish, about 160 people last year, very likely more this year)
fairmount (also not amazing, near, nice ,spanish, about 160 people last year)
miraloma (not spanish, early, very cool, good, fun, about 350 applied last year)
sf community (the cool mixed grade hippie school i worried about last minute, about 100 people applied last year)

so i think i should have put fairmount and flynn lower, but i was a little bit insane at the moment, and just went for the spanish.
also, as you can see, almost all of these schools are quite popular so there is a good chance we will get nothing at all. then what??? we will be assigned to starr king, up by the potrero hill projects where oj grew up. or move to brisbane. or homeschool maybe.

readers, tell me this choice of mainly spanish immersion will work out for my little guy...i alternate between faith in him and my motherly instinct to protect my sensitive boy.

i love him so much. that is what this is all about.

goodnight.

this freakin list is due and rich is away and i'm not ready

"it's like a morning night, mommy."
this is how my son poetically describes last night in which there were many wakings. rich left for his trip and i got miles to sleep. i looked at the many permutations of school choices and, knowing our list is due, felt quite overwhelmed. i tried to remedy this by drinking some bailey's left over from christmas and watching wife swap. i looked at our schools and felt incredibly foggy. should we be putting more immersion? was there a chance in hell we would get buena vista, which i am getting set on? should i really put this progressive poorish school near the top of our list when everyone else is putting buzzy and affluent miralomas and alvarados and clarendons? and what about the 7:50 start? will it be ok? awful? aahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. i start crying and just then my friend elizabeth calls, in a similar boat. super nanny comes on tv. then maya wakes up. i get her back to sleep, obsess sadly some more, then go to bed with maya. at 2 the door opens and there is miles. he is very good and quiet and just climbs in the bed with us ut maya surprises me and ends up going on a 3 hour whining and crying spree, with a little nursing allowed her in desperation and i want to keep miles from losing it and he insists politely on staying with us, pulling the cover over his head. i alternate being kind hippie mama and annoyed and mean-voiced stress mama with maya. fianlly miles leaves and returns to his room at 5, where he is now sleeping. maya conked out for an hour or so and is now banging the salt shaker on the table and giggling, somehow wide awake and full of energy.

veggie reuben

oh, and my new favorite food which you have to try if in the neighborhood,is the veggie reuben at st francis fountain. mmmmmmmmmm

afterwards you can go to the serpent park across the street and play in the fountains and sit on the dizzy chair and check out the murals

sfusd again

so , dear readers, if you exist

had a leisurely morning with my children, doing an exercise routine with ridiculous songs (i managed to rhyme cheetah and libido), then getting miles into the car, into preschool and leaving without him getting too upset. then i dragged maya to two more school visits. the last, i'm pretty sure. there are a lot of good schools on our list of seven that we submit to the sfusd lottery, but it kind of comes down to what you put first. it's wierd, because i have been obsessively reading a blog that many bernal/noe parents comment on, and the two schools i am focusing on end up being pretty off the radar for the blog readers and commenters. are we leaning towards these schools because they seem more likely to have spots? are we different than most of the readers and commenters? part of it is where we live.

school number one on mommy and maya's mini tour. it is a sunny bright day, and things are shiny and clean from the storms. this school is out mission, near room to grow preschool, where maya may be going. on the highway it is about 10 minutes from our house. i was welcomed in but there was no one to really talk to, except the not so exuberant parent liason. maya and i just wandered around and looked through windows. this school is not brimming over with parent involvement and donations. this is a small school with a long-established program. they have project-based learning, which means they work on a challenge-driven science project (for example, in studying body mechanics, the 2nd-3rd grade classes designed and built chairs--they looked pretty comfy!), alternating every nine weeks with regular curriculum. the grades are all combos, k-1, 2-3, etc. up through 8th. it is a very small school (less than 300 total). the upper grade classes are smaller than at many schools. many of the teachers have been there a long time, although one thing i wasn't psyched about it that one of the k teachers is new and looked less experienced, especially with the projects. you can request a teacher but there is no guarantee. there is a nice outside space with a small garden, a water feature, nice play structure. there is a great p.e. teacher the kids love. the population is very racially and socioeconomically diverse. the kids seemed pretty happy and peaceful and focused, except for a little more silliness in the new teacher's room. there is some art but not a ton. a small library and garden class. some music in the upper grades. i could see miles here.

the other school is a 2 block walk away and also has a long-established program--for spanish immersion. at the office they didn't seem that excited to have a drop in prospective parent and baby, but when the secretary asked the principal if i could look around he offered to show me the school. he invited me to his office and i don't know if it was because i name-dropped a mutual friend, but he ended up talking to us and taking us in lots of classrooms for almost an hour. i got to really see the immersion program a little more. this school is more traditional than the first, but would like to move toward more project learning. they are not a star school, so have a little more flexibility with the curriculum. they have a full-time arts coordinator so in a way the arts are the projects. less science. the kids in kinder were buzzy and happy and working on various things. there were toys available for free time. music played in one room. we talked to a few spanish learners in k and 1 and they were able to reply in spanish but you could see it was a little hard. in the upper grades the kids looked pretty engaged. the principal said there are a lot of gifted and talented kids in the school, and said one way to look at immersion is as a gifted program, because of the extra challenge. i saw a little of acrosports, which looked fun. the kids get some organized activities outside at recess, partly because of the smallish yard. by next fall the park should be accessible again and the school will use it. they have a greening grant which hasn't been used yet. there is before and after care which looks pretty fun. they are trying to move toward class size reduction in the upper grades but don't have it yet. the principal said he would send his own kid here (and many teachers do), but that he knows the school has its challenges and limitations. he would like to see more people in the school--resources, as well as projects and technology and ecological education. i think i can see miles here though naturally it is a little harder to imagine him there when all the teaching is going on in spanish.

so, one more traditional, closer by, and with the gift (and stress for miles in the beginning) of spanish immersion. the other more progressive, maybe more diverse, a little less art, a little more focused on teaching kids to be good learners, and a short drive rather than a walk.

what do you think????? is anyone out there? what would you do with your little guy if you were us??

of course there is a good chance we won't get either...

if you are out there, let me know.

love,
j