some photos

reading on the way to soccer
maya asked to be photographed with some evidence--an empty box of candy. it belonged to miles and she ate it during his soccer game.
a new mural on a house nearby.
unicorn art
three-headed robot monster

loving this blog

i am just loving this blog lately.

i am out of books to read, yes, but this is fine place-based entertainment.

unexpected lovely

music. stopped at the corner of 9th and irving waiting in my car for the light to change. an asian teenager in a cool black suit, shoulder length hair blowing in his eyes, playing classical music on an electric guitar through an amp on the sidewalk. as i pulled away i saw a man put some money in the guitar case.

rock on.

steamroller prints at the center for the book festival on potrero hill

hi

i have been terrible about taking photos lately, but i found this image online of the steamroller at the roadworks steamroller prints street fair in potrero hill.

maya and i spent a good three hours there. i like this festival not only for the social factor of bumping into friendly faces (both familiar and new), and the unexpectedly great entertainment (salsa dancing! a funny soulful singer-songwriter! a cute indy-pop band maya danced like crazy to! maya's buddy hugo's sister's amazing kids taiko drumming group with a chance for maya and other kids to play the drums together at the end! a troupe of girls performing traditional chinese dance!) but there is also that great element of pre-apocalyptic creation. sure there are laptops and iphones all over this crowd, but there are also a bunch of artists making things--journals out of discarded library books, and prints, prints, prints, on paper, hats, shirts, calendars. they enjoy hand-making things and seem to be saying they will be around whether or not high tech and corporations continue to dominate much of the world.

i will come every year to see the steamroller pressing down that old carpet, and the subsequent excitement when the carpet is lifted and a beautiful print held high for all to see. the crowd goes wild!

kids getting bigger in the mission

another week has flown by. miles played his first soccer game of the season. maya had her first ballet class. she managed to stain her brand new little pink leotard black and red within 2 hours of the class by playing in the water on the asphalt playground at the starr king car wash.

today we all went to a friend's to watch the eagles game, which i did not really do. i spent my time there carefully examining the artifacts of our host and hostesses child-free life, their refrigerator photos and drink cabinet and books and cat and owl collections and deep fryer. after a while maya and i went to the parque unidos de ninos where the free farm stand was happening. rich and miles met us and on the way home we saw a group of folks painting a wall with a mural of two people with drums and a monster (it's at 23rd and florida). the kids were fascinated by the many empty cans of spray paint, and miles asked his ever-ready question as soon as we walked away ("can i get a ____?"(can of spray paint)

i conked out with the kids at bedtime and just woke up in a wierd mood. i am wearing a shirt a neighbor friend gave me about 5 years ago, and she, now far away in the east bay, was in my dream. it was a strange dream, with a cruise through a watery land with tree houses and people building structures in the water (disneyland, holland?) and some old old faces, high school, and, even farther back, middle school. a boy named SS who held my hand once at a dance, and who had a sweet smile. in the dream i knew we were going to live together, near my mother, in the country up north.

sorry to share these subconscious rumblings. even though we live in an almost season-less land time still passes. our eagles fans friends were shocked at how big the kids, especially miles, have grown, and i guess i am feeling shocked too.

big or little, i love these two people. and this life that seems like a fast ride lately.

time to try and sleep.

reader and music critic

maya on sonic youth's "dirty": "it's like beautiful and rock and roll together"

miles on picking out the calming "tiny titans" comic book to read in bed after some dark crystal (don't let your kids see this creepy film!) inspired scary thoughts: "it will be like having a friend for company in bed with me."

kind of nice quiet day

today we went to the skate park and met suling and the cousins, as well as my visiting mom. two families from miles school met us also. there were skateboarders, pot smokers, homeless sleepers and other families hanging out. miles and his buddies paced around the park seriously discussing pokemon for hours while the two girl cousins were in their usual glued at the hip state. they decorated three rocks. one with flowers (the beautiful rock), one with garbage (the funny rock), and one with dead leaves and grass (the angry rock), all under the watchful eye of their grandma. we then ate at tasty's cajun food which is a block away from here and maya and her cousin held hands, shared chicken, and played in the planter box together. they sat on the same chair and cuddled. they really are especially close and happy together. i didn't have a cousin near my age, but i am seeing that for these two, a cousin is almost like a sister you don't have to live with.

miles also spent about a good half hour reading his little lulu comic book to his rapt little sister, which was unusual and very peaceful. i got to sneak out to the garden and planted a chilean guava shrub, weeded a little, and harvested more lettuce, tomatoes and mint.

i am trying not to stress about the new middle school uncertainties and not panic because miles could not do his chinese homework and i could not help him at all. breathe in 5 seconds, out 5 seconds, in five seconds, out five seconds. visualize the garden, and the happy girl cousins and the little lulu reading. it was a beautiful fall day.

maya told me the other day that meditation was "not thinking about anything in the whole, wide, world." she seems to know how to do it, too.

night night

dirt pile

i took the kids to the randall museum while rich recovered from last night. we went to the family ceramics class but it was almost over. then we poked around and looked at a little bat in a sleeping bag, owls, honey bees, a squirrel, snakes, a huge model train set. we went on a little trail and the kids climbed a tree for a while as i looked out over the city vista.

then as we started to leave we passed a big pile of dirt left over from a project. the kids spent a good hour on this pile of dirt. climbing up and then running down to fall flat in the grass. maya made a rock city. miles found a bunch of roly polys, rocks that he could break apart with his hands, and a bunch of little rocks that maybe possibly could have been parts of spears or arrowheads. it was an excellent dirt pile.

right now i am feeling mighty annoyed because whatever healthy tasty food i cook these kids only seem to want pasta and bread and very basic chicken. and cheesy puffs, seaweed, and fruit. did i mention cheesy puffs? and cereal?

salad from garden tonight:

arugula, lettuce, cherry tomatoes, a little parsley, feta cheese, and the first harvested pepino (a perennial bush that grows fruit which looks like small pale watermelons and tastes like a cross between a cucumber and a cantalope).

it is 6 o'clock and i feel ready for bed. outside i just heard a hawk crying, a truck idling, and our artsy neighbors are hanging with their friends talking on their deck. rich's slippers are shuffling around on the wood floor, the wind is blowing and i hear the voices of people in my family trying to work out how to get along.

sythoth!!

and now for something completely different...sythoth!

i have spent the last few weeks really immersed in conversations about education--support, placement, district policies, and always, in the back of my head--are my students, and is my child getting what he needs at his school. at work, at home, email conversations. pretty much all about getting kids what they seem to need. i have to say, these questions don't come up at the private preschool.

friday was great because i went to work on a day i usually don't. only two of my students were in our pre-k class, with a few little visitors to be peer models. since it was not a chaotic zoo of trying to get 9 kids with very little comprehension or experience to follow a class routine for three hours, i actually felt like i got some good work done. there is nothing like making meaningful, joyful contact with a little three year old guy seemingly cut off in his own world.

and last night i went out to walzwerk and ate east german style food with some old friends to celebrate andy's bday. we headed over to a bar in the dogpatch to see carlton melton with sythoth. a few delawareans were there, and we reminisced about all the basement bands we were so lucky to get to be with during our college days. the bands played downstairs in a pretty grungy basement with airplane seats and part of an airplane on the wall. the first band was a very out there guy who looked a hecka' lot like darth sidious reading some ancient scroll in another language while his bandmates crouched on the floor playing eerie spooky creepy synthesizer and guitar. it would have been easy to just laugh at it, and i did laugh, but it actually sounded pretty good and was entertaining. i don't think it was a joke to them! sythoth!!

after sythoth everyone went upstairs to the bar and it was just me and evan while rich and andy set things up. i was feeling nostalgic enough about all the time spent listening to and playing music in basements that i sat down at the drum set and then rich and andy and i started a little jam--suddenly there was a room full of people and i played drums for about ten minutes and--it felt pretty awesome. i miss that a lot.

just returned from a mandarin immersion mom's night out at dirty thieves on 24th street. we went after back to school night. this is becoming my new community, no doubt about it. we don't know each other's pasts that well, but are revealing ourselves in bits and pieces through our opinions about what is going on at the school and buzzed 1:1 eye to eye conversations about spouses and work and kids. it's all good. we all need this. it is what it is, right?

an old friend/acquaintance from the university of delaware was at the bar tonight, looking radiant and about ten years younger than i. she has just adopted a 6-week-old and seemed astonished that she was out for a drink and away from home. her boy is 6 and at the waldorf school and she seemed intrigued by my son being in public school. we caught up and she said my friends were a "beautiful group of women."

well, i know i am not beautiful, but it was good to hear. i have always liked being part of a beautiful group.