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.