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