doom and gloom cycles and wanting it all

these things come in cycles, right? we have pretty much accepted that maya will follow in her brother's footsteps and attend the starr king mandarin immersion program. we will support her as much as we can and see how it goes. maybe it will be hunky dory. if not, a learning experience.

but now middle school changes are now on the horizon again. never a dull moment around here! in a draft proposal of changes we read about in the fall miles' entire school was slated to feed into a mission middle school but there was a lot of mandarin immersion parent uproar. many vocal people did not like the low test scores and spooky scary crowd of mission kids. i was not thrilled at first but the more i looked into and thought about it this school grew on me. the kids miles is getting to know, slowly but surely, would be together for another few years. it was a nice sized school, not a gargantuan one with 1500+ kids. small class sizes. and walkable, walkable, walkable. but then a few weeks ago another district plan emerged, a plan in which the mandarin immersion program was to be placed at a higher scoring school, but a huge one, with bigger class sizes, and across town.

maybe i am nuts to lean toward my kid attending a low-scoring school in a part of town with more violence and less open green space, but to me community is huge. i can clearly recall that horrible self-conscious feeling of being in a new school, surrounded by strangers. it took a long time to be myself when i switched schools in 6th grade. and then another long time when i switched in tenth. i never got to know kids outside of my classes and everyone was in a little group alienated from everyone else. i also remember that long long bus ride i took for years, and how my parents never set foot in my schools. and i don't think a tiny school is the best but yes, size matters. i know i am projecting onto my kid but i really believe that it makes more sense to not have to make all new friends every few years in a huge sea of people just because, well, because we live in a big city. i am hanging on to my commitment of having a stable community for my kids despite the erratic urban planning around here. i like walking my kids to school and being green and all of us getting to know the people and places on the way. our city here is the mission, bernal, and potrero hill.

so maybe it will be a waste of time, but i guess i am going to jump into this middle school assignment redesign process by attending the meetings and thinking and talking. who knows what the district will come up with? i would love to see starr king stay together. or at least have my kids attend middle school in our neighborhood. learning new languages is supposed to bridge cultures, not separate people, right? after posting this i will organize the soccer registration forms i have been trying to collect from miles' second grade team, kids in ALL the classes who our tireless coach has been working hard to recruit and register.

anyway, it will all work out somehow, but i do think this school district, like a lot of government, is good at coming up with plans and goals, but not so successful at implementation. suppose the implementation would be easier if there were not so many voices clamoring for what they want and think is right. it would be nice if we could all just be good citizens and not be so entitled and think about the bigger picture in a thoughtful way. the good, the bad, and the ugly are all out in the open when you talk about educating everyone's kids. and of course we are all in for another shock when the new state budget is revealed.

get yourself an egg and beat it

walking down 24th st this morning to buy some garlic and eggs i was suddenly aware of the very gentrified crowd flowing up and down the street. sure there were two men having a loud drunk conversation sprawled out on the ground next to a shopping cart full of wet blankets. and the dressed up sunday latino families going into church. well, actually, there are all kinds of people, and garbage, on 24th street but today it seemed like the majority were semi-scruffy 20-30 year old hipsters, coffee cups in hand, dark framed glasses, cool bikes. many of them smiled at me as if they knew me. one man was wearing birkenstocks and a tie dye t-shirt, my lord!! and papa potrero's, that crime magnet eyesore we have lived with for 13 years, has been painted a golden kind of yellow and there is a piece of paper tacked on the door saying "coming soon, wok and go". a terrible name for a chinese restaurant, i guess.

i am free associating back to a middle school teacher who had a crazy handlebar mustache and would yell "heads will roll" when we were acting up. throughout 7th grade he had us draw map after map of africa, europe, and asia over the centuries, as different empires came and went.

little city things

i keep writing serious posts and deleting them. all my worries and interests are being written about so well by many others. i will just keep documenting the little details of our lives in order to try and better understand why we stay here in this expensive earthquake land.

i grew my first batch of sprouts, broccoli sprouts. pretty tasty. just soak, drain, rinse and drain for a few days and here they are, a bowlful of hippie food.

this is a view of the hamilton rec center from the south side of geary. it's a huge sparkling rec center in the western addition, with a playground, soccer fields, batting cage, tennis and basketball courts aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnd.................

check it out! the pool (and indoor basketball courts and tot area) is in the building glowing in the distance in the previous photo. here is one of two water slides at the very large pool. tough love lifeguards all around, water which was warm enough for all but the smallest of our group (maya is supposed to look cold in this picture), sunny warm air, huge windows. i rode the pictured water slide about ten times, ahhh, eyes closed made it seem even faster. there is another water slide i rode once, which is super fast and high and dumps you out about eight feet above the water. fun but a little painful. afterwards we walked over to the japantown mall and splurged on sushi. miles even ate some avocado. we sat in the peace tower and thought a little about war and peace. miles mentioned that the atom bomb turned the beach to glass, and we bought a book called hello, maggie, about life in a japanese internment camp.

and at starr king last week there was a guest author, maya cristina gonzalez for the books for dinner event. our maya stayed home which was a shame because she would have loved the author's hair. she showed the kids all kinds of secrets she paints into her work--they were entranced.
that's all for now.

23rd street river, funny faces

maya and i found this awesome little river running fast and hard down 23rd street. very exciting. a pipe must have burst somewhere on the hill.

23rd street river

maya and i found this awesome little river running fast and hard down 23rd street. very exciting.

child home not sick

after a hectic fun (that's hectic, not hecka') weekend miles said his stomach hurt this morning so i let him stay home. it was another sunny perfect day. i gardened, cooked homegrown kale and green onions, made carrot muffins, and defeated the entire pile of bills. i even completed maya's kinder application with, gulp, starr king mandarin immersion in the top spot.

maybe i am just lazy, but i don't want to work these days. i am imagining my day tomorrow. 8:30, two little boys with very different issues, me trying to plan therapeutic activities. then 9:00 two brand-new three-year-old students, again me trying to hold a little clinician-directed session to engage them both. then the part i like best, three hours of co-teaching our little class. then meetings with parents about transitioning to kindergarten. thursday is little 30-minute pull-out sessions all day. i am feeling burnt-out. it has been eleven years, and that is quite a while.

i would love to be a gardening housewife. i could walk leisurely to and from school with my kids. get a bike and start doing all my errands on it. hem the pathetic bottoms of my son's pants which are all stepped on and torn to shreds. make healthy muffins and recipes with brown rice and many vegetables. write my novel, of course. tutor at my son's school. but i know i have a good gig with the school district, and i should hold on tight...unless i can find something else rewarding and part time and secure.

any speech and language pathologists out there have any ideas? anyone else?

love letter

i went and saw rich's band carlton melton play at cafe du nord last night. j mascis played a song with them and it was pretty exciting, especially for rich and andy. a loooonnngg jam.

afterwards i went out to a nice gay bar with a few friends for a quieter drink. we discovered everyone in our group was jewish, at least in theory, and i enjoyed a few hours of talk talk talk. i discovered a good number of jews don't believe in god, but are in it for the community. my brother gave me a ride home and we stopped at el farolito for an unnecessary taco. jam packed at 1:00 a.m. with drunken people scarily walking around ignoring traffic. i gave a skinny homeless woman a buck and felt bad about not giving her my warm plastic bag full of a grilled chicken super taco.

at home i read a little bit of the new yorker at 2 a.m. and skimmed an article about how social connections and interactions create the most happiness for people.

and this morning sipped coffee in a big sunny room with huge windows and watched maya smile her way through her creative movement class at dance mission theater. she "loved it", "it was SO FUN because three girls i know were there."

the mother beside me, hugely pregnant, noted that the girls looked like a lot of little pretty birds.

the thought comes and goes sporadically that this blog is just a long letter to those people i love who don't share much time with me. those folks i fantasized about having an intentional community with at one time. those who have slipped away to places that are hard to travel to.

and check out the carrots! i had been waiting for some spindly carrot tops to grow big and strong in the garden but pulled a few today and discovered these short, thick, very tasty little guys. the potatoes were a surprise, some growing in the dark below the compost. the green onions are amazing roasted with olive oil and salt.

night night

love,

a house or a place to live and food

the sun makes it all so much better. aahh. after a rainy stretch life is beautiful and full and warm again. in the starr king open space all is green and flowers are starting to bloom.

feeling spoiled rotten i bussed it to noe valley with maya where i got some fancy clothes with christmas gift certificates. for her birthday maya picked out "the most beautiful paper plates and napkins, ever" (i think they were left over from hanuhkah). we also cashed in a noe valley bakery gift certificate for a shi-shi cake. we lounged at home, had a picnic of bunny pasta in the sun on the deck, and then borrowed a huge pile of library books. i know it is a parenting no-no, but days like this i feel like my kids are my best friends. especially my little girl, lately.

we went to pick miles up from school and he was practicing for the chinese new year parade with his buddies. in between carrying the dragon they played a wicked game of handball while maya climbed around on the playground and me. my starr king girl gang and i hung out and talked about, well, school stuff, but also our upcoming party for a friend at a new mexican restaurant in the mission, gracias madre.

i am going out tonight to see rich's band play. supposedly j mascis will be jamming with them for a song. this brings me way back to that heady elation and angst of being 21 and blasting dinosaur jr. in my cheap little boom box. probably mishearing and mis-singing the lyrics, "don't let me fuck up will you, 'cause when i need a friend it's still you."

miles told me that he was the kid selected from his class to speak at the martin luther king peace celebration today. don't ask me how he was selected, i doubt it was for good behavior. we have been reading an amazing book, martin's big words, which makes me tear up every time i read it. miles said his dream in chinese first. then he said "i have a dream everyone will have a house or a place to live and food." which could be something he heard someone else say and didn't put much thought into, but i prefer to think he is learning something good from living in this crazy neighborhood in the big bad city.

24th street window shopping

i am lucky my brother lives in town. and that his daughter is my daughter's best friend. this morning we walked with the cousins from our house up 24th street to the dance mission theater family dance class open house. it turned into a good hour long walk, with the kids checking out all the sights, smells, and sounds. a new record store with crazy comic books for grown ups! a head shop called purple haze with some (according to miles) extremely ancient egyptian statues in the window. a storefront filled with grim reapers. many pastries with little colored balls on top. skull art. casa de canario with the african gray parrot who looks so wisely into your eyes. posters of creepy adult movies (inception), adorable owl movies (legends of the guardians). a crazy smashed in muni bus shelter. a dog with an army jacket on. smells of donuts and grilled chicken. cacti for sale. hipsters. people speaking spanish. hipsters and their dogs waiting for pop's to open.

we went to the dance studio and miles astounded me by joining in the demo creative movement class for 3-5 year-olds. i said he could be an assistant. skipping, twisting, jumping and shaking his booty he looked so happy and so...huge. especially in his size 10 puffy down jacket.

and a little escape to the backyard this afternoon. i pushed over the compost bin and was amazed to find black, rich, soil. a lot. and a bunch of sweet little potatoes growing at the bottom. i dug, scattered, weeded, pruned, and harvested mint, borage, potatoes, and some green onions while maya played evil gardener with her calico critters and the bright afternoon faded into dusk.

freaking earthquake

lying on the bottom bunk in the kids' room this sunny day, watching maya play dolls we felt the earthquake roll under us a little. maya said "i'm ok with little earthquakes but not with big ones." you said it sister.

i spent my vacation with mushrooms and weeds

ha ha, little joke there.

the winter break is over and we are back in the thick of it with work, school, pta meetings, worries about budget cuts to education, rich squeezing in his music career, doctor appointments, etc. etc. i even had the opportunity this week to write up and report a substitute teacher at work who showed up with no teaching skills and some incredibly racist comments.
over new year's we visited friends on their rural property in point arena. our little friend ella was really interested in picking mushrooms, specifically candy caps, which we picked off a trail near her house. they have a maple syrup flavor and we cooked them in buckwheat pancakes, yum. i had a strong memory of picking hedgehog mushrooms on our other friend's property down the road ten years ago and wanted to try again. i ventured into the wet woods, pushing under and climbing over wild rhododendron branches, and there, amidst the dark earth and dead leaves and branches, were hedgehogs, yellow tops poking up in random little clumps. i could hear my kids calling "mommy where are you?" but i was in a pretty dense area and had a little quality time with myself picking wild mushrooms with trees and ferns for company before they found me. we ate the hedgehogs in an omelet and funnel chanterelles in new year's eve risotto.

i also became addicted to watching weeds on netflix. so easy to push "watch next episode" on the laptop. i don't usually do this, but i fell right into a serious addiction, and am pretty sleep-deprived from watching 2-4 hours a night for the last two weeks.

weeds, weeds, weeds. i would love to sink into it right now, curled up in bed watching a dysfunctional family and their underground adventures. escape escape. but maya is here, and laundry, and dishes, and the rest of the real live world.

the caption for maya's picture is "this is a clown who has a broken leg and he has crutches. he is smiling because he can't wait to get back to the clown show."

i am assuming the clown got hurt on the job. he must really love his work.