taco bell beach

have you been to taco bell beach? we load up bags with cheese, apples, little metal canteens (now i'm hearing they may be as bad as all the poison sippy cups we threw away), extra clothes, buckets, football, diaper, suntan lotion, beach blankets, towel, little people maya likes to play with, peanut butter sandwiches, plums, and we are ready for our 2 hour trip to taco bell beach. it is a quick drive down 280 to 1, on a moderately cool day with a sun and a moon in the blue sky. we drive past the fog festival and consider stopping (more than one lot says $6 parking all day plus drink tickets which is intriguing) but we go right for the sand and surf. we pull up into the parking lot by taco bell in pacifica and see all the surfers, boys and girls and grownups and of course all their cool dogs getting in and out of wetsuits. miles notes that the surfboards have shark fins. maya gets a good laugh out of a dog licking her hand each time she thrusts it in his face.

and then we are on the sand, the kids thrilled to be on the coast, and i guess i still am too. we get covered with black sand and maya ends up naked as she just can't keep out of the freezing water. we tease the waves and rich and miles throw a football and then we build a sand castle and wait for the tide to rise and fill up the moat. which it does, and somehow for a while doesn't destroy the castle. surfers and dog people all smile at my kids. there is a kids' surfing competition going on with judges and telescopes and an announcer and all and we watch kids standing on boards whizzing down waves, feet firmly planted somehow. i can't imagine being able to let my son go out in those waves without some water wings or a life jacket or a personal trainer or something but supposedly this will happen in the future.

we used to come here years ago. it is hard to believe i would squeeze into a wetsuit and ride a boogie board but i did and it was awesome dude! there is a trail leading up a rocky bluff that overlooks everything. we used to bring hungover band friends here when they stayed at our house while touring. it was fun to show off our new home and its natural wonders. we used to eat big seven-layer burritos but have learned lessons about that. chicken would run around being goofy and then lie down next to us and be embarrassingly macho and territorial to everyone who walked by.

i like that we can get to the beach anytime. it is beautiful and feels freeing to sit at the edge of everything. i have never minded a little sand on my picnic lunch or stuck between my toes.

on the way back miles is generous enough to give maya his preferred toy just so she will be happy. and that is beautiful too.

the dishes piled all over the kitchen don't look so nice though. must go attend to them.

night night mommy. you're the best. hey mommy, if a cheetah and other meat-eating animals were in a race but not the falcon the cheetah would be the fastest, right? the falcon wouldn't win that race because he bees in the air. (pennying quote for today)

more goofy pictures

we went to the st phillips yearly fair in noe valley today. lots of nice catholic and irish people running bake sales, jumpy castles, face painting, a book nook, and a stage where there are some cute performances such as 5 year olds playing piano and ten-year-old girls performing a completely indecipherable (but to them hilarious) play, and the roulette wheel win-a-plant booth at which i won a cool plant for the second year in a row. there is marie, the owner of miles' preschool,ladling out pasta at the pasta and salad booth. her older son goes to this parochial school. as does the son of one of my old students' moms, who is selling tickets at the ticket booth. i ask a lady at the bake sale, who kind of sticks out visually in this crowd as she is african-american, with big long dreadlocks and lots of crazy jewelry, if her kids go to st phillips. her son does and he likes it. this is the usual consensus, as i compulsively ask people about their kids and schools. miles spots a little girl from my gym. i know her big brother goes to public school. hurray for him.

this pathetic part of me feels a little sad each time i meet a private school kid, and a little buoyed up when i meet a public school one. maybe half-jealous and half-sad. it is hard for me to feel excluded from a group, from options. i have never cared about this in terms of wanting a bigger house, nicer clothes or car, because of money. when it is about the kids, though, and education, i do want the best for them. and i don't know what that is. and if i did know what it was i don't think we could afford it. and if we could afford it i would feel pretty conflicted about jumping out of the public school system.

noe valley is just up 24th street from us but feels quite different. not many piles of dog poop, shattered 40 ouncers, or beautiful crazy old ladies in purple pants sauntering down the middle of the street calmly stopping traffic. not too many ambulances and trucks and fire engines and booming pounding listen to me stereos passing by. it is quiet and sunny. some tweens are playing football in the closed off street. the crowd at this fair is not really a white bubble, it is not exactly representative of the city but a nice mix of people and lots of comfortable kids of all ages. maybe we should move to noe valley and send miles to catholic school.

aaahh. did i mention i have a problem with obsessive thinking????? someone help me here!!!! i will be mighty happy when the kids graduate college.

my friend gradiva told me today that they started composting because of me writing about it here, and thank you so much gradiva for telling me! that will make me feel better about writing one more slightly annoying thing about trying to be greener...

for the first time in my life i have pretty much stopped eating meat (except seafood) and it has not been hard at all. i've been lenient with myself, and will eat sausage in lentil soup, a piece of turkey that maya has thrown on the floor, etc. try it for a little while. it is much easier than i had imagined, and it feels good to say, (as i did recently when miles' teacher showed me a scary hard unidentifiable hot-dog looking thing a little girl found in a corner) "i don't eat meat." of course i am not trying to convert anyone. miles almost cried the first time i wouldn't eat bacon with him, he wanted me to share the crispy salty joy, but i wouldn't. he's ok with it now and seems to enjoy saying i LOVE to eat pigs.

one more thing i have been thinking about is that a generation or two or three ago kids spent MOST of their time with their extended families. especially farm families. for most of history, really. so kids weren't just around their peers all the time. seems like mixed age groups in general are good. this makes me feel a little better about raising a city kid. i know everyone talks about how it is so sad that the kids can't run wild and play out in the woods and ride bikes all day, but what i see as the kids get bigger is that we are going to keep doing fun things, that they want to do, but with them, and often with our friends with kids. i'm sure sooner or later they will get sick of us but maybe, like city dogs who are actually supposed to be happier as they can spend more time with their beloved owners than backyard country and suburb dogs, these kids who are stuck with their parents more will be closer to us.

who knows?

so, it is 8:30 and everyone is sleeping here including my husband. what shall i do now?

i will say goodnight.
love
jamie

a lot of maya's lexicon

mommy daddy brother
baby sleep drink bath bubble water agua shoe pink
willow nina kika steffy teacher
diego arturo mommom poppop lily marta zehara
suling mike natalie cassie
elmo

truck
bus
car airplane bike
helicopter
motorcycle
boat

my

bird eagle otter giraffe zebra
spider shark tiger lion doggie kitty cat
trot joe
fish
cow

nurse
booby
star

milk juice cheese cracker pasta broccoli
ice
in there
cereal
that kind
this kind
my turn
mess
chair
highchair seat bowl cup

slide
swing
no
go run hug kiss

brown bear lizard snake
out
off
yes
shirt dress belt button

open
window pillow night night
in
big
hot cold more
eyes nose ear hair knee bellybutton toes arm
teeth toothpaste wet
uh oh
towel

garbage

book read mouse bunny puppy ball people hello
ice cream
animals
man
lady
adios gracias zapatos

class
stroller
tools bead flower tree walk down puzzle
guitar
tv
too

where?
wah wah shh shh swish swish beep beep
scared
duck
dirty
read
love you
up
bye bye
home

guest blogger!!!!!!!!!!!

i am so pleased to introduce the first guest blogger on should we flee the city...elizabeth sullivan! we first met when she lived around the corner. i noticed that the cool little house with the bright red steps, window boxes full of bright red geraniums and a big flag of planet earth housed an adorable blonde guy about miles' size. miles and jonah quickly found a lot in common (so much in common they were sometimes grabbing it out of each other's hands). elizabeth and her husband gabe are SO COOL AND SMART i can't believe they are our friends. we don't see them much thought because of the lack of cohesive community problem. i sent her these interview questions because i wanted to hear her answers, because she is a friend who both validates me by thinking along the same lines much of the time but seems quite different from me temperamentally (not as crazy, really). maybe we can all live in the urban co-op someday and party late on the roof. i'm ready now!

i think the idea of more parties is important because we need them to get close to people in groups, and bring folks we love from all the little sectors together. i think we used to do this more when we saw favorite bands. so i promise we will have a good party soon, bedtime be damned. and maybe we can all go see rich's band together some night.

thanks elizabeth. other guest bloggers will be helping me out soon.

Questions from Jamie and Answers from Elizabeth

Please describe yourself and your living situation...

Touchy, lazy, Amazon, artsy-fartsy, feminist, mother of boys, in love, in school, in pajamas. I have red hair and red glasses.

I live in the Mission with my babydaddy, Gabriel, my big boy Jonah (who is four) and Rye, the baby. We try not to go out to eat for every meal but it is hard.

Sometimes it seems like we should move to the suburbs so the boys can run feral but then, as I will paraphrase Calvin Trillin "then they would have the disadvantage of having parents who are miserable."

where are you from?

I was born and raised in the suburbs outside of Boston. I grew up in the same house my father grew up in. I was surrounded by a pretty huge Irish Catholic family; cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents...the whole mafia. My Dad taught English at my high school. I went to church every Sunday to hear about how sinful I was until my first week away from home at college.

what do you do for a living?

Right now I am in school. I am training to be a therapist at the California Institute for Integral Studies. I am in love with my school, learning so much. Right now I'm taking Human Development, Psychodynamics, and Therapeutic Communication. I even have a blog about it! (Jamie, can I promote myself here? http://theladderherald.typepad.com/the_ladder_herald/ ) What I am working towards is having a private practice and writing books, like Kim Chernin or Amy Bloom.

Before that I started a couple of projects: Streetline Networks, www.streetlinenetworks.com, most recently, with my excellent friend Tod Dykstra. And City CarShare, with Gabriel and Kate White. www.citycarshare.org

why did you move to san francisco?

After college, Gabriel and I wanted to live in a "family community," as our zine "Neuter Baby: People Could Learn to Love It" spelled out. We had two close friends who wanted to do this with us, one was in Chicago and the other was in Seattle. So, we visited several cities together and made this big matrix to decide where was objectively the best place. It was literally a spreadsheet of cities we could all imagine living in: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Boston, and a few others. And then we created categories of things we all wanted in a home, for instance, one of the categories that was dear to me was, "a poetry scene," for my friend Kate it was, "possibility of being in a band." There were about 30 or 40 categories. Ok, and then we weighted them, using points to express how important each category was to us individually.

And San Francisco won. That's why I'm here.

I was heartbroken, actually. I really wanted to live in New York, and I still do (as you will see below).

do you plan to stay in san francisco?

Yes. Why, when I kind of hate it here?

a. I think I will carry my restless dissatisfaction with me wherever we go.
b. I have the world's greatest shrink here.
c. After I graduate from CIIS, I think I will need help starting a practice from colleagues and professors who are here.
d. I have been depressed for about two years every time I move to a new city.
e. We know so many good people here (I should have listed this first).
f. We are lucky enough to live on the best street in the city, I think.
g. It would be very hard to leave El Toro, the burrito store (as Jonah calls it). They know his order and correct me when I ask for black beans instead of refried.

I plan to stay here and continue to be broke, unable to buy a house, pissed off at local politics, and in love with Buen Dia Family School.

if you think about moving away, why, when, where...

I've always wanted to live in New York, and still do, though I am slightly less romantic about it now. It's real city—it's not trying to pretend it's a suburb, like San Francisco can be. I went there for a few months just before we moved here back in 1995 and lived in Park Slope, in Brooklyn. The summertime seems disgusting, but otherwise I like almost everything about it. Now my baby sister lives there with her wife, as well as another close friend, and lots of acquaintances. So.

Then there's Boulder, Colorado, where Gabe is from. The fantasy is to live in this beautiful, spiritual place, go to his family's cabin in the aspen trees every weekend, and raise our kids to be left-wing survivalists. I could be a freaky shrink there, and ride my bike all over town like Gabe's grandma. Of course, our children would never be friends with a person of color or have real ethnic food, or be effortlessly exposed to culture...

And then there's Amsterdam. We could bike our kids around in modern design carts, live on a canal, take weekend trips to Paris. A better city than new York, even. So rational and livable. No homeless people because they have housed them all, for free, using taxes!

And then there's Mexico. We could all learn to speak Spanish (except Gabe, who knows), we could be ex-patriots and write and sketch and swim in the warm ocean. We could paint our house like Frida Kahlo's house. American friends would come visit us and be inspired to take photographs and make paintings.

what would be your ideal living situation (Utopian intentional communities,
fantasies about being a billionaire, living with your parents again,
whatever)?

I think I'd like to live in an urban co-housing community. For me to last, it would have to be beautifully-designed, cosmopolitan, and in a dense part of town, not a hippie commune. I'd like to have my own pretty space with my little nuclear family, but to live right next door to my friends and some select family. I'd love to share resources like babysitting, laundry, big appliances, cooking etc. And I would love to have extra space for guests to come for extended stays, and for big outdoor parties—maybe up on the roof?

how important to you is being part of a community?

It's the most important thing I do not have. We know lots of wonderful people here, but there is no gel between them. The connections are individual, and mostly loose. There are neighborhood friends, parenting friends, school friends, bike activist friends, City CarShare friends, SPUR people, Burning Man people (Gabe's friends), and so on...Lucky us! to have such problems. But, I do feel like I am floating, a bit. Not held in community.

how do you feel people's relationships are being affected by communication
technology (email, long distance, etc) and globalization, the movement of
goods and ideas all over the u.s. an world?

I know we're sort of supposed to say it's bad, but I think it's made my long distance relationships a lot better. Email is so simultaneously intimate and protected. You can edit yourself, go back and strike something out, and at the same time, you can get a reply that same hour and feel so in-touch!

I've just started texting a bit in the last year and I love that too--it's like speeded up no vowels email!

what do you think the bay area will be like in the future (you pick a time
frame)

I am afraid to write about this. All I can think about is Global Warming and most of the coastal cities I love being under water. I hope it is not coming like they say it is. And I hope it will be slow, not fast. I hope there will be time to get out. And I hope my boys don't have to be soldiers.

what could you change about your life to make it more satisfying?

More Osento, drinks, and dancing. More free time to stare into space. More time alone with my man in a hotel room. Some gardening, some space in my house to have a party.

anything else??

I love Should We Flee The City? because it is what I am thinking about all the time. And I love your dreamy portraits , and Maya's devilish grin.

mmm

ok, i give credit to david cronan for introducing these to me at a speech and language therapist inservice. they sell them in bulk at the fabulous rainbow grocery store where my helper miles (i helped you get healthy food AND sugary food!) and i bought 3 full bags of groceries for 100 bucks, thanks to the bins and bins of bulk.

they are castelvetrano olives and they are my whenever i shop at rainbow treat. they are really yummy. try them soon.

i think i need one more. bye.

middle hell

each week now i spend a little time at a middle school. it is a sprawling concrete campus at the top of mclaren park. a huge huge black crow stands guard on a telephone wire and caws at me when i get out of my car. a school cop hangs out in his car out front. there is a nice view and trees all around. i only have one student there, and i don't even work directly with her. i'm just there to provide consultation about working with her and using her fm system. she is a sweet 6th grader with a hearing impairment and a nice class and 2 good teachers. her resource teacher is great, he grew up a block from where i live and is very intuitive and knowledgeable. this place is still super depressing. there is an atmosphere of tension and chaos and a lot of frustration in the 7th and 8th grades. they have actually isolated the 6th graders so the big kids' problems don't rub off. a lethargic security guard ambles around the hall. some teachers seem to have lost control and kids just leave their rooms, not turning around when told to get back here, yelling or muttering angrily. stupid bitch, etc etc. other teachers are loud and big and critical and seem to be all about intimidating the kids. i'm just trying to describe. i'm sure it is hard to have a bunch of hormone driven boys and girls. i know i was in seventh grade i slapped a girl across the face, egged on by cute boys eager for a fight and surrounded by excited kids, no teacher in sight. today within 10 minutes of my arrival a girl was rushed into the resource room to get her away from another girl, she'd been punched in the face. i stayed with her while the resource teacher went to get ice and chase down the responsible kids and teachers. turns out i knew this student when she was a kindergartener at another school where i worked, not far from here. she had six siblings and no mom. at the elementary she came from there are all kinds of play therapists and behavior specialists and behavior plans and student study teams. here a police officer showed up to deal with the other girl who was not listening to anyone. these middle schoolers are just a few years later on their road. but at this school, at least, they seem pretty lost. kids are shouting at their teachers and walking out of rooms and yelling back at the principal. i'm NOT going home yells one over and over as a counselor calls her mom. they aren't cute, they are a little scary, but i really do feel for these kids. they need some more support then they are getting. and it can't just be the family, or economics, or school policy, it has to be all of those things, and how that is going to happen i don't know. we will see as the year unrolls--last year they had a 74% suspension rate...

the farm we get our produce box from is in trouble. someone near them brought mangos back from hawaii and a little med fly hitchhiked, so now there is a quarantine in the area. the box is quite light and half empty. in the half empty (half full?) box was a letter explaining what had happened as well as a plea to keep subscribing and
"there are many families that depend on this farm for their livelihoods. Please stick with us and we will all get through this together. Times of crisis can be just as rewarding a time to belong to a CSA as times of bounty, as they give you a chane to better understand the obstacles farmers face. Being a member of a farm like ours shows you care and take responsibility for where your food comes from."
so, they are obviously in dire straits and we do now have a relationship with them through email, registration, reading the recipes and seeing pictures of the farmers and workers on the eatwell farms blog. so we will stick with them for now. it is something to think about.

and last
here are two shots from the vacation i was on the last 2 days. lying in bed (pretty much) while the kids were at school and the babysitter. no, i was not deathly ill, just a sinus infection and cold, but i just felt so so sooooooooooo tired. i read and ate canned salty yellow chicken noodle soup and enjoyed the view of twin peaks pointing breastlike into the blue blue sky. i took a short nap each day, head propped up high on pillows. took a shower without any little person in the tub with me trying to nurse nurse or asking me to pretend i am watching the killer whale show at the museum. it felt great to be sick. and i took this photo of me from above to remind myself of perspective, how it changes things so dramatically.

is anyone out there?? say hi.
xo
jamie

white bubbles and bad judgment

i broke down and signed the kids up for my gym once a week. they love it. the staff open up that little wooden gate and turn up the music and the children swarm like red ants across the carpet and up blue carpeted steps, jump into gigantic tubs of plastic balls (one teacher notes that most kids at my gym get little or no mcdonalds time), roll around inside giant soft rings, swing on hoops and climb all kinds of ladders. there is circle time where we all do an aerobic warm up and my kids are reaching and stretching and stomping feet like little stars and a dance and then free play with special activities such as walking on balance beams, learning new kinds of somersaults, etc. maya likes to make it dangerous by burrowing completely under the balls so that she will be invisible to the four-year-old boys jumping full strength on top of her. miles spices things up a bit by being a crocodile or lemur.
i like to see my kids in this healthy wonderland, learning new skills, smiling, clapping and, at the end, cheering for themselves. so safe and fun.

it is a very very white group of children.

here we are with the potrero hill projects just above us, near bayview, not far from the mission. but every kid here is quite pale. it's not the park. it's not the bus. it certainly isn't the public schools. like most of the classes we have taken, and miles' preschool, it feels a little strange. privileged i guess. like if some mother of color peeked in on us i would feel embarrassed.

still wondering if we should move away to some tranquil town. i would be lonely. it would be a little white bubble, with a nice school for miles and maya. it would be quieter. it would be closer to how i grew up.

maybe where i grew up will be the subject of a post in the near future.

when i was in high school and college i dated (on and off for 5 years) a jealous, angry person. he had his good points, but the jealousy and anger were pretty bad. here's an example--i stay out late at a party and he breaks into my house and rips up a bunch of artwork and finds a photo of us and stabs it into my wall with a big metal file. another--he follows me to oregon after cheating on me, convinces me to take him back and live together, and cheats on me again in our big co-op with a roomate, while i was in the building. umm, finds out i was in a big car wreck and comes to my house to push me around and yell at my wounds and throw a wine bottle at my head he's so mad i almost died. you get the picture. yet i kept getting back together with him. FOR FIVE YEARS. the last time i saw this guy, his literal last words before getting on a plane and disappearing, were "i wish you would come with me and marry me." this is not good closure, and to this day he sneaks into my dreams.

anyway, what i am trying to explain is that i had terrible terrible judgment for a long chunk of time. i thought we should just keep trying, that love would win out, that he would change. maybe this is somehow related to having two very nice but divorced parents and never really understanding why they were not together. there are many posts in here, i guess. but i think this part of my life made me really not trust myself to make good decisions. how could i have stayed in such a crummy situation for so long?? am i doing the same type of thing to the kids by staying in this dirty dangerous city ?

i love being part of this huge wierd community of san francisco, which is really a big mess--full of people from around the world with their languages, art, music, germs, races, different amounts of money, ideas, full of cars and trucks and parks and litter and pit bulls and homeless people and sushi and museums and buses and schools and burritos etc etc. it is a beautiful place, but not so safe and not so predictable. i drove home in the dark a few nights ago from mike and suling's and saw young party people walking to bars and hanging out on mission st and a big applauding crowd at galeria de la raza and the gang selling drugs next to casa sanchez and just wondered if i should take my kids away to a smaller quieter place.

a little island, perhaps. until they are about 25.

there must be a reason why diversity and urban energy are so attractive to me right now. attractive enough to want to raise kids in san francisco. i must trust my judgment or go crazy with questioning.

or just take it one day at a time. we are all doing ok, right? am i taking chances? will going to public school in sfusd really ruin my kids' future? are we really in danger of being hurt in this dense and traffic-filled neighborhood? is there really safety and security anywhere?

again, sorry to be heavy. blogs are supposed to be light and witty with fun descriptions. i'll do better next time i promise.

2 lame reviews, sorry no story

yesterday after all day trying to clean for rich's soon to visit parents while pulling dirty mops and sponges and dustpans out of maya's strong and helpful grip and negotiating with miles for him playing alone and us being lemurs with him around 4 rebecca and emily swept in. suddenly we were in the front room, rebecca telling us how great it looked, maya serving well handled little chunks of cheese right into our mouths,waiting for the curtains between the rooms to part so the show could begin. they open, and here are miles and emily, doing some kind of russian folk-dancing interpretation with miles in a spider man hood and emily with a wooden sword. they fight while dancing and we are laughing so hard and then they disappear. another show minutes later with a ring-tailed lemur and some sort of english accented girl character, doing gymnastics and monkey moves and more folk-dancing. it is time to slip out for 10 minutes with my friend and we leave rich lying on the floor with 100+ pounds of child jumping on him.

it is a beautiful sunny early evening. we step neatly around a man lying face down on the sidewalk in front of the hospital. "nigh nigh maeh" says maya matter-of-factly from her stroller. across potrero we bump into my friend jesse who tells us about the disastrous end to a party at their house last night--some acquaintance of a friend started a fight with our friend s and he ended up with a shattered ankle. they were on a mission to find him some porn to read while he was stuck in a hospital bed. they were having no luck.

aren't i glad i was home watching the movie i will review in a minute.

we go to el metate at 22nd and bryant. now when we first moved out here my whole household was all over el farolito. huge huge greasy tasty portions. perfect for those very non-discriminating times like 2 am after a drunken rock show. those big styrofoam containers full of super grilled chicken nachos covered with goopy sour cream and barely melted cheese prevented many a hangover. but now farolito seems a little, well, nasty. so we were so happy when el metate moved in. it is super fresh and a cute little place with a clean and slightly artsy vibe. fried fish tacos. shrimp burritos! quesadillas to feed several. grilled vegetables. bottled cokes. 5 kinds of agua frescas (sp?), and a big glass container of icy cold water. you can sit outside while your food is cooked by about 6 young guys at once, and mingle with (last night)doctors from sf general, a mexican mom and daughters, 2 older travelling french women, a hip 20 something woman who appreciates maya, and the owner, who looks like a love and rockets character whose name i can't recall and is doing quite well for himself with write-ups in lonely planet, zagat, etc etc.

i obviously am not a food writer but i do love el metate. there are cool people with dogs and kids running around nearby in the about to go down sun, and rebecca likes 23rd street, as do i.

i am so tired lately. we all are, with colds and their repercussions, and no rest for anyone. my sinuses are full of scary bright orange liquid and other stuff. but rich and i muster up our energy to watch the netflix movie that has been sitting around for a while now waiting to be opened. we watch God Grew Tired of Us and within about 10 minutes i am sobbing, my sinuses filling right up, as we watch these young men from sudan talking about what happened to them and their families and see the insane footage of them emerging from a march through the sahara with nothing to eat or drink for a long long time. 8 year olds carrying babies on their backs for miles and miles while their bodies just wasted away. these guys were together for over a decade, and without being sentimental about it you see the incredible human connections they have made with each other. when a few get picked to go to the u.s. there is a hard transition time as they feel the new to them american loneliness and alienation. waiting for buses alone to come home early in the a.m. to an apartment where your roomate has just left for work. no time to be with friends, work work work. cold and dark and crappy jobs and prejudiced neighbors. it does get better for them. they are amazing. but the transition has them lamenting the loss of the community they had in the refugee camp, lamenting hard being away from their loved ones.

so i knew i had to put the movie on the blog. cause part of me wishes i was in a village with all my friends and family. but the men that leave do so because they want to eat more, help others more, and be independent. it is a good movie that gives you lots to think about, check it out.

the lemurs are sleeping here, it is 7:30, what shall i do? i wish there was someone i knew at a neighborhood bar. sadie's flying elephant would be a nice walk for one jameson's and coke. or someone to meet me at a cafe for a writing date. or a band practice to drag my tired a*& to. or a hot tub to go soak in that was not a drive away.

anyone out there want to make some plans soon?? i think i could stay out until 9 some night.

love,
me

in danger animals

don't bother trying to help a 4 year old distinguish between endangered and in danger. you will just become frustrated.

here is miles channeling the spirit of the predatory bird (hawk?eagle?) painted into the mural on our local laundromat on 23rd st, el arroyo.

so as the interest in animals grows and grows around here
(what does an eagle's egg look like?
does a raccoon climb as good as a monkey?
does a skunk eat animals?--these questions all within about 30 seconds of each other, kind of rapid fire, get the answer and move on to the next one--and this can go on for a LONG time)
we have moved into the research stage (i don't know the answer to many of these questions so we are cleaning out the bernal library's wildlife section). books about spiders, eagles, kangaroos, cheetahs, chameleons, wolves, snakes, poisonous animals, and skunks are all over miles' bedroom floor. there is no raccoon book! what really stinks is that near the end of all these cool books where we learn about earth's creatures and how they exist in a kind of harmony with each other there is a chapter that inevitably tells us that this creature is endangered or close, and that its biggest enemy is man. but I never would do those things says miles. and you wouldn't make a cheetah in danger mommy. right? right i say. hmm. it seems like everything i do puts a cheetah in danger.

i am starting to feel more and more that the annoying hippies in college were ahead of the game. save the whales! save the earth! if they would only have taken off the annoying tie-dyes and poured the patchouli down the sink (sorry CS) and turned off the endless grateful dead and bob marley i would have listened better. i have to admit i was a little on the hippie side for a while but then i heard a whole different kind of music and it took front seat. i got sucked into an exciting hedonistic existance by proximity to some super cool punk rockers and artists who were just a lot of fun to hang out with and didn't talk much about the plight of the planet. cassie and shannon if you are reading this you know what i mean! not that i would give up those friends and years and really the whole wild ride i was on there for a while for anything.

so i recently joined SPUR
which you should check out online, pretty cool and hopeful, but with enough glimpses of developing turmoil to keep me interested. there was a link to an article about coal
that i think was also an ad in the new yorker. i think the ad was titled "so you think you are making a difference?" or something like that. i have actually spent some recent nights crying after talking all day about in danger animals and then reading scary books like fred pearce's With Speed and Violence about tipping points in climate change. being a worn out old mommmy and having PMS adds to the tears i'm sure i don't want my kids to grow up in a world without polar bears and cheetahs and pandas and tiny kangaroos.

so what do i do? i'm writing in this blog. share the anxiety. get in touch with your
inner hippie. the little kid who wants to see wild creatures. if you have some money put solar panels on your roof. annoy a friend or a family member with some scary reading material about global warming and the very bad behavior of the most dangerous animal on earth.

sorry to be heavy.
alternating between poo and global catastrophe.
next time i will tell a story.
goodnight

sticker tush

maya was just insisting she had to go poopoo so i put her on her little potty. i didn't want to to sit there and i didn't want anything getting trailed down the hall so i got a sheet of stickers i knew would entertain her for a while. i told here to look at the stickers while she went poopoo, knowing as the oh so knowlegeable speech and language therapist that my baby probably doesn't quite get "while" yet. i heard her in there happily stickering away and saying poopoo poopoo.

she just walked out of the bathroom with a big smile saying poopoo. butt. with about 10 stickers on her behind. she thinks this is hilarious.

we have been in a difficult refinance and miles' new cold and back to work and general lonely feeling fall transition time slump over here but i think things will stabilize soon. hopefully then i will have some things to write about more interesting than what is stuck to my little girl's bottom.

now she is banging out a morse by slamming the childproofed cabinet. gotta go eat some panda puffs. save the wildlife with sugar cereal!
love

it's my first day home with just maya, as miles started his four day a week program. i am missing my little guy. he does drive me nuts, yes he does. between stage directing ("mommy, you be the baby owl who is waiting for his mommy to come home." "hoo, hoo, where's my mommy owl i'm hungry?" "no, no that's not it, the owl is worried, NOT HUNGRY, mommy.") , requests to play guitar, jealousy over baby sister attention, questions about when we will get/buy/go/eat things in the future, demands to make up stories and of course the general pretending to be a wild animal whom i need to squelch i don't get much done. maya is also often left to explore on her own, which leads to a lot of "open your mouth, spit it out in mommy's hand", "get down" "turn it off", and "give it back to brother". doesn't sound that fun. but i am missing having both of my babies. i will see miles in an hour so i guess i'll be ok. he can drive me nuts then.

maya is asleep. we went to our first city colleg child observation class today. this is an awesome free program in various spots around the city. ours is up in a church on portola, and the teacher goes all out with trampolines, slides, ladders, dress up, water play, songs, story, balls, cars, zebra heads on sticks. i'm validated in feeling exhausted because even in this group of about 30 kids the teacher quickly notes that (among other qualities) that maya is "very busy." zing, there she goes up the steps to "poo poo potty"( this is a big tease about 90 % of the time, and i really don't love squatting on public restroom floors), zip, down the hall to wash dishes and get very wet, now off to make a glue painting, back to the kitchen to put some aprons around her neck, then she is jumping down some concrete steps, climbing onto a rocking horse, rocking so hard she bangs her mouth, now trying to climb a big metal ladder....

uh oh, she is up from her not long enough for either of us nap. big dog in arms, red cheeks and those ringlets with dreadlocks. now we can go pick up budduh from preschool. and find a way to fill the hours until bedtime with something that keeps us all happy.

thanks for listening, if you are listening.

and please look at the paintings.

please look at the paintings

here's another photo miles shot. i have been too busy and tired to write much. sad but true. work has begun and it just adds that extra element of things to do and take care of. like right now, i should be uploading photos of my new students and some of the new toys in our classroom to ofoto so i can get prints and bring them in. i'm not. so i feel guilty. but, i've got to blog (first time i used that as a verb).

went to mendocino last weekend, miles says that where brian lives is like "a place that is floating in the sky" and this is pretty accurate, highway 1 seems to go up and up, cliffs above the pacific and our friends all live up on ridges covered with tall trees. rich's band played an almost all night show while the kids and i slept at lisa's. i was up at 4 am two days straight, woken by the dog-pack like vocal stylings of a huge gang of sea-lions. they were somewhere near lisa's house, but probably a half-mile or more, and just incredibly loud and energetic. rich described it sounding like a huge animal orgy, i guess that is pretty accurate too. we caught a beetle inside and put him on a tree leaf where he was so starved he ate a huge hole before getting away from us. we frolicked on the beach by the anchor bay campground, which is a little rv city kind of place that got organized and bought the land they had rented for years from some real-estate person. very cool, some of the rvs have woodstoves outside, all kinds of ccrazy hammocks and outside kitchens and their own little store and dogs running around, maybe 50 separate sites and everyone knows each other. at brian's the party people were looking pretty psychedelic and happy and just gaga over the kids. i started having the not so wonderful feeling that i was just there as the bringer and caretaker of miles and maya, but i guess that's ok sometimes. we saw a big bird gliding down in circles which miles assured us was a bald eagle because he saw some white on his head.

yesterday i took a 2-hour free class on urban composting at the garden for the environment. we learned about what, how, when, why to compost, felt some worms, sifted and turned compost. it was a mix of rainbow grocery kind of folks, some hip and handsome gay men, a teenager who had just moved to the city from her parents' organic farm, and a very cool uber chubby short uber gardener with a t shirt reading Compost Queen. it seems like it could get addictive, trying to get less and less into the garbage can each week. very green and inspiring. san francisco collects a 5 foot high football field of garbage daily, yikes.

here's the big news. my aunt has photographed and is finding museum homes for the incredible paintings of my late great-uncle phil weintraub.
if you want to see the paintings i can email you the link. it's really worth checking out, some crazy combination of innocence and childhood and war and biology and patterns and love and beauty and ugliness. well, maybe i am going off but when i looked at these this morning i felt chills and just couldn't believe that this man was in my family. i only met him once, he was a withdrawn and pretty reclusive person. if you see a painting titled josy, that's my mom.

so i will try and keep up this where should we live theme but really i think it's more about do i stick with what i have and make the best of it? focus on the positive and work for good change? or seek elsewhere for happiness and safety and contentment? ah ha, maybe this obsessive theme is about more than where to live. maybe it's about a lot of other things, including not really knowing much about making decisions, just kind of drifting in a fast-floating river, going along with the current, enjoying the ride but also full of questions--maybe i should swim to the shore here? those people in that blue canoe look interesting, should i paddle over? what's going on on that bank over there?
oh no, i'm getting pruny and there is so much else to do.

please check out the link.
excuse my pathetic river metaphor. i'm too broke to see a therapist, so my insights need some work.

bye