a little vent about work

i know i am lucky to have a job. and extra lucky to have work which i actually care about and sometimes enjoy. but lately i am not feeling that positivity. i am feeling pulled in a million directions and stretched out so thin that i don't feel like i am doing much good at all. a torrent of needy children coming my way, with needy teachers and parents lined up behind them. help.

i did get away for thanksgiving. we had a delicious dinner at grandma's in sonoma, and the kids were very good and quiet thanks to satellite tv. miles did manage to be obnoxious in the few minutes he was not staring at a screen and when it was his turn to say what he was thankful for stated "i am thankful there are toilets in this house because i really have to go!" ha ha, thanks little boy.

we played in crunchy leaves at the square and we visited a mossy old cemetery on the hill above sonoma on a wet saturday morning. then julia and her two boys picked us up and we went to the calistoga village inn. there we alternated between being furious with our spoiled and bratty children and feeling heavenly as our little sweethearts frolicked in the sunny warm pools for hours. on the way home we hit the calistoga petrified forest, and saw 3 million year old trees that had been knocked down by volcanic blasts and replaced cell by cell with silica, turned into stone. they looked exactly like redwoods, even the bark was intact. kitchy wooden statues stood along the path through the petrified forest, and we were all wary of the rattlesnakes and mountain lions which never seem to appear.

terrible housekeeping--or ultra cool indoor gardening?

i was feeling very back to the land as i gathered some arugula seed pods and let the seeds dry in a little cup on the windowsill by the sink. then i characteristically lost track of my seed project. a few weeks later i found this little arugula sprout growing in the grout by the faucet.

not again

not again. i went through this agony of indecision a few years ago trying to figure out what school was right for miles. he ended up in mandarin immersion at starr king, a school visible from my window. and now that is his school, for better or worse, and he will "NEVER" go to another school and leave his friends. the school is working out pretty well for my rule-following, sporty boy with such a great memory and eye/hand for drawing and characters.

my maya is now coming up on birthday number 5, and another kindergarten application is due. if miles was not at starr king it is not the school i would choose for maya. i picture her somewhere artsy, creative, full of easels and child-led discussions. ok, i think i can picture her at creative arts charter school. i have a much harder time visualizing her in the starr king uniform, eagerly practicing characters using the correct stroke order, entering the sporty, competitive fray of the playground. maya has some mild delays in balance, fine motor, and proprioception. this throws her a little off. it is part of the wonderful person that she is. i am scared that her tendency to knock things over, to fall down, to be a silly puppy crawling on hands and knees will not be embraced at her brother's school. i am scared that the characters will be too hard for her to write and imagine her hurling her homework across the room in frustration.

i am scared of too many things, i know, and it will probably work out fine for maya at starr king. it is difficult to trust my judgment on this one, as it is on most things involving possible pain for my kiddos. do i just do as i did for miles--sign her up and see what happens? it would be strange to have kids at two different schools, one learning chinese and one not. and maya's beloved cousin is at starr king now too.

i went through this process of figuring things out with miles and came to one conclusion--that i most easily envisioned him in a place that was more like our home and his preschool, but that a place very different from our home was not necessarily the wrong place for him. and in the case of his school this has pretty much held true. but i am still not convinced this is not just rationalization of the decision to throw him into a situation where most of what he learns is in mandarin.

preschool is so safe and nurturing and full of freedom, the demands are all ones that maya handles with ease. her voice there is heard and respected. i want her to thrive and her unique little spirit to remain intact. what would you do?

a few things we saw on the way to jed's house this morning

wind turbine on the roof of the sunset magazine house near garfield parkpainting on someone's garage
new mural with rocks with eyes (hard to see). miles and maya are sitting on the rocks, get it?

i was talking to my friend about how it is hard to write blogs that are about your daily existence without worrying about boring readers. i am taking a little break from journaling my oh so profound thoughts and am instead sharing some sensory details from our lives. yes, taking a break from thinking.

this walk today from our house down 24th st, and up the north side of bernal hill. in perfect sunny weather with a little wind. the smell of pot smoke here and there, donuts cooking, roasting chicken. we heard some kids yelling at each other and screaming with laughter as they chased each other around a block. the blimp overhead, a family of three children coming around the corner in their pajamas, preceded by a remote control race car. many dogs to pet. in the water park on the way home we saw a bird of prey with pale wings, very high, bigger than a hawk. a little boy named rueben who spoke mostly spanish played a long long game of hide and seek with maya. after a while there were about 10 kids playing, miles and his buddy and maya running fast and shirtless and yelling under the blue sky.

the feast for the senses around here, even if it is on top of noisy cars and garbage, is most definitely part of what keeps us from leaving. maybe it would be as full in the middle of nature some where, but i would not trade all this for the regularity of suburbia in which i spent much of my childhood. all this stuff to see and hear and smell, it makes me feel more joyful, in the moment, alive.

another lovely friday almost gone. we visited a friend in his ceramics studio (don't. touch. anything. maya.), played in delores park with kids from maya's school, watched the hawks and gophers while miles played soccer on top of potrero hill.

thinking today about how much closer i am with my kids than my parents were with me. as in actual proximity. by miles' age i was walking to school in a pack of kids, and after school was about running around in the woods, or being in the backyard or in my room with a friend. when my kids visit with friends i am right there with them, being friends with their parents, all of us within the confines of small to medium living spaces. we are seeing the same

more to look at than read

maya and natalie spying on miles and hayden wrestling on the front lawn of the palace of the legion of honor on veteran's day, 2010.broccoli, chard, kale and a tiny artichoke from the garden. ants like to crawl into the artichokes, so you have to submerge them in water if you want to get the ants out. they come out fast and swim furiously for the sides of the bowl. somehow i feel softhearted about these ants. i put a stick in the bowl and some of them find it and climb out. today outside the palace of the legion of honor maya was letting ants climb all over her arm and calling them cute.

borage, arugula, and a pepino from the garden.

floating and sinking

after a few years of hemming and hawing i signed the papers today at luminalt, two blocks away on potrero avenue, across from the skate park. we are getting a tiny array of solar panels , and more than 80% of it will be paid for through credits and incentives. our little array will reduce carbon emissions, will pay for itself within four years, and hopefully in a year or two we will be able to get thermal to heat our hot water. we use a lot of hot water here, with dirty kids, dirty dishes, and dirty clothes. our electric bill is tiny, as we don't use a heater or air conditioning. oh, i feel so good and green. the elections were disheartening on several fronts but california still came through and made it clear we care about our environment. i was pretty amazed to find that renewable energy incentives and credits still exist in these times of economic apocalypse.

now we just have to make sure our kids learn about it in school. miles told me he had science today. when i asked him what he learned he said that they combined water and sand, and the water turned yellow. i asked him what this meant and he was not sure. he also said they noticed the sand sunk to the bottom, because it is heavier. i think he noticed this when he was about 30 months old. but not in mandarin, of course.

anyhow, i will keep you posted on the state of our solar-powered lives.

beautiful day in the neighborhood

i love days like these, all in the neighborhood. a fuss-less walk up potrero hill, through the newly green open space. miles said goodbye with a hug and barely a backwards glance. a slow walk down with lots of dogs to pet. we sang michael jackson as we walked over the highway and didn't care who listened. at home maya and i got very domestic for a few hours. we picked flowers and vegetables, and then made sun prints. for lunch, pasta with the garden veggies (arugula, tomatoes, parsley). we drew some trees and made collages. then a stroll down 24th to get a coconut donut from the friendly donut shop, where spaceman 3 was blasting. we met a nice mom and three year old rock and roll boy and hung out with them. then back up the hill. soccer, all kinds of crazy kids running in the grass, balls flying, miles in his element. the red-tailed hawk sat in his tree above us gossiping parents while maya and some big girls made mud soup in the ground. the kids and i walked down through the open space singing a song i wrote about not swallowing your gum and a woman getting out of her car told us "the family that sings together stays together."

sometimes i feel like i am a wierdo, that all this mundane stuff can make me feel such ineffable happiness. and little flashes of sadness thinking about the kids growing up and this all going away. i try and try to live in the moment, because when i do it can be so good.
stuff we made
book miles started writing before anyone woke up today. terrible spelling, heavy captain underpants influence.
leftover from someone's alice in wonderland costume, i think

sigh, sorry

i should be feeling good but am not. in the last few days i went to a fun grown-up halloween party (with grown-ups that don't have kids), a kid birthday party where many of the separate parts of my city life collided (among the guests were my brother and family, families from miles' school, families from miles and maya's preschool, the couple that runs the video store on 24th street, and some of our neighbors i have known since the kids were born) and where i painted many people's faces including the birthday boy's 80 year old haitian grandma. last night i trick-or-treated with a pack of joyful kids and no tantrums or major injuries. today i took the kids to the academy of sciences with rebecca, and we met up with more of miles' school buddies. it was a beautiful sunny day and my kids were good.

yet it has been a huge effort to keep calm and help my anxious son and needy daughter feel that all is okay in the world when i am so unsettled.

outside there are doppler shifts of car horns honking, fireworks whistling and banging, shouting. i think i just heard a trumpet the giants have just won the world series and i feel alone on my little planet here. i don't care a bit about the giants. now i hear a helicopter overhead. it is my mom's birthday and she is driving south on highway 101 right now. i just received an email from my best friend far far far away. i am hoping for some sweet dreams tonight and a cease in the noise of ecstatic drunken giants fanatics.