the only rock video you will ever see posted on this blog

rich posted the first rock and roll video i ever made on youtube. the internet is amateur heaven! anyway, here it is, made on my ever so wonderful iphone.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnaklvuCX0U

that's rich's band carlton melton with music legend j mascis sitting in for a song at cafe du nord.

the usual

maya's quote for the day, looking at another brown item on the sidewalk as we walked down utah street to a friend's house under a beautiful blue sky.

"you know, mommy, most every day we see a poop."

so true, so true.

pathetic parenting moment

last night i trailed behind a fast-moving and funny dragon composed of a bunch of fast-moving and funny 2nd-4th graders in the chinese new year parade. in front of the dragon were the bunny dancers and fan dancers. it was a cold and drizzly night and i felt very alive in the bright lights and music, sipping a delicious manhattan a fellow parent handed me mid-parade as we wound our way through the downtown streets.

maybe this is wierd narcissism, immaturity, obsessive thinking, getting older, who knows, but lately more and more when i am feeling the most alive, joyful, amazed, or loved i also think about dying. it happens more and more. i felt it last night as part of a spectacle, this fierce love of being alive and the thought of being dead. i know this is a subject i need to come to grips with a little better. maybe it is time to get some religion unless anyone has a better suggestion.

tonight, my seven-year-old dragon dancer surprised me by echoing my thoughts. in a happy family moment, drawing together at the table he looked right at me and said "i hate thinking that i'm going to die." my pathetically inadequate response was to hug him and say "then don't think about that."

it's an art, not a science

i work in a preschool special education classroom, and dealing with undesirable behaviors is pretty constant. kids not following directions, not staying with the group, not being safe, difficulty sharing, yelling, grabbing, knocking over towers, and some hitting--all in a day's work. of course most of the time our students are just wonderful and adorable. during the past two months, however, one of our students developed some pretty severe aggression toward the other kids. hitting, throwing hard and heavy objects, poking, kicking, pinching, making scary faces and sounds--up to 30 times an hour. his primary teachers and i came together as a team and devised a plan for what we decided were attention seeking behaviors: completely ignore all the negative behaviors, heavily praise the good ones. this did not fly with some of the assistant teachers, who thought it would be impossible to ignore the bad behaviors,and did not feel comfortable refraining from saying no and telling our student he was doing things wrong. but the plan was if he hit someone we would attend to the hittee. if he was about to hurl a block at someone we would just take the block from his hand with a neutral expression and move right on. this involved a lot of creative defense and comforting of the students while simultaneously trying to create lots of opportunities for our little aggressor to get positive attention. we had tried giving him positive attention before but not ignoring the negative stuff.

as these things go, the bad behaviors escalated for a while as our little guy tried more and more desperately to get attention. for the past two weeks there were a lot of crying kids, ice paks, and some serious skeptics on staff saying that this would not work, things were getting worse, we should not keep ignoring bad behaviors, this was bad teaching. it is hard to work with people who don't have patience. it is also hard to hear these doubting voices when you are trying hard to implement a plan that may or may not work.

however, the past two weeks things have been much better. some of the kids that our aggressive little guy was targeting the most have, as he probably wanted them to be all along, become his friends. instead of screaming and crying in fear a few of our more passive and scared kids have become noticeably more confident and assertive as they have had so much practice defending themselves. it is kind of amazing and heartwarming to see ( as i did today) a tiny four-year-old who would burst into tears at the mention of the aggressive kid's name actively seek him out on the playground, and take his hand, and lead him away saying firmly "you are my friend."

gustav klimt's rocker sister

there has been a lot of outside time lately. the garden is growing in the backyard, lots of little seeds sprouting up, pink and white blossoms on the fruit trees, and crazy tall greens that just keep going and going.

work has been rough lately, feeling overextended, but i am trying my best. i find myself involved in miles' school through meetings and email conversations. the teasing and bullying task force. the middle school committee. the garden coordinator political fiasco. miles is doing fine, but there is so much pressure to get test scores up that there doesn't seem to be much time to look at how to engage the kids. they keep assessing the kids to find out what skills they don't have yet that they should. i know this is important but assessment should look at not just what they know and don't know, but how they learn best.

have i mentioned these things before? i think so. project based learning. cooperative learning groups.

anway, we have been learning by getting out and about.

yesterday maya and i walked up and over potrero hill to an art class where she learned about gustav klimt and painted a huge gold background. on the way back we saw this amazing kidserve mural on daniel webster elementary. this is just a section, this thing is huge.

maya experimented with making shadows in the window of this closed down hair studio. she said she was gustav klimt's sister, who was in a rock band.
today we went with friends to the mission science workshop, a big room in mission high with a free for all of musical instruments, projectors, bones, woodworking tools, glue guns, rocks, slices of 540 year old redwood trees, live animals, dead animals, computer parts, you name it. i love this place.
maya made this cool magnet pendulum which showed how magnets can repel each other. the little hanging magnet dances around on its string.
layers of people i knew were at the workshop, and are everywhere we go, really, from the neighborhood, baby class, preschool, even pre-kid life. and outside there was an old friend, alec, looking like the cool sailor engineer that he is, with his dyke march t shirt on, headed to sunny delores park. the park was packed, a green sea of people and dogs, throwing footballs, grilling sausage, giving free capoeira lessons, playing accordion, walking on tightropes. blasting bad rock music from a fender amp, selling ice cream, drinking and smoking weed. i told the kids about how we used to go to this park a lot, and sit on blankets and sometimes play instruments, and how cassie lived nearby.

we watched as a group of people prepared to release a balloon creation into the sky, tethered by fishing line so as not to pollute. it was the size of a small room, red balloons attached to each other in the shape of a heart. the kids were patient as a very sf crowd of older women with some young tattooed women and some men, well, hey, all kinds of people talked about going around the circle and departed love ones and meditation. "the ice cream!!!!!!!!!" screamed maya and the kids ran off hand in hand to buy crappy mexican ice cream from a cart. they returned in time for the release of the heart, which floated higher and higher until it was just a small red shape above delores park, with no destination but, as miles said, "as high as the moon."

happy chinese new year

ok, i admit i was a proud bragging mama today. maya's pre-k teacher asked me a few days ago if alumnus miles would come and talk to the pre-k kids about chinese new year today. he agreed, but at 9 this morning, just after SPONGE BOB SQUARE PANTS, i looked at my very runny-nosed and goofy missing tooth child and wondered how it would go down. he packed up a lantern made in kindergarten with the fabulous ms. chang, a lion dancer costume we splurged for a few years back, a picture book about a girl in china and her pet dragon, two pop tarts for breakfast and a tennis racket for a park date later, and we were off.

at the preschool miles sat calmly on a little blue chair in front of the gang, and then proceeded to tell (in detail, for 20 minutes) about the origin of the red lanterns and lion dancers, and the story of the chinese zodiac. some of the things he said didn't really sound like him ("the elephant was approaching at a very tiny speed") and i realized he had learned this all in mandarin and this was how it translated to english. the 3-5 year olds were pretty rapt listening to these crazy stories of racing animals, crop destroying dragons, and evil spirits scared of their reflection in the lion's mirror.

maya was the lovely assistant who held the lion's tail. one of my favorite parts of the presentation was when little slade started playing some quiet harmonica to accompany miles' quite lengthy narratives.

awww. maybe miles will be a preschool teacher some day, if not a super spy, comic book artist, famous soccer player or singer as good as michael jackson. the fact that he learned this stuff in another language seemed pretty cool.

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.

barbie and her pets

here are barbie and her pets.

christmas has come and gone, leaving behind several bags of garbage and many new battery operated toys.

looking at the mound of wrapped gifts for the kids last night i had a minor panic attack. how can we raise a generation of responsible people when we keep buying them so. much. stuff. how can i teach my kids not to want so. much. stuff? waah, waah, the fate of the earth is in our hands. i actually felt nauseous looking at the piles.

this morning, however, the presents were ripped through by 6:56 and everyone seemed pretty happy. the unsustainable lifestyle panic over, we enjoyed a dungeness crab, fancy cheese from rainbow grocery, and endive salad feast with my mom and stepdad, topped off with a viewing of elf, many lifesavers, many beyblade battles, some sentimental emails and phone calls, and a little more of that endive salad.

a little sad feeling for loved ones far away but not too too bad.

there will be time to try and correct all our many many many many parenting mistakes (disasters might not be too far off, if you know us pretty well) , or at least try, right? there are worse things than getting too many presents from your mom and dad.

now i need to study my urban rebounder dvd- my christmas trampoline is waiting for me at the foot of the bed. good night.

peace and love

miles' idea

"in the future the world will have a mechanical heart."

i think he meant it literally, but yikes either way!

dickens fair, fog of ennui, babbling

i took natalie and maya to the dickens fair today at the cow palace. just a few years ago i would have been full of ridicule and unable to relate to the "actors"in their costumes and english accents. today i felt very little of this detachment because i was with a four and five year old. maya asked a lot of questions about "dickens world" and although the girls knew there was acting involved it seemed so easy for them to slip into being into a whole different reality, and i kind of slipped along with them. hard to explain, really, but i found myself having a long conversation about india with an indian lady from rudyard kipling's time about sacred cows and cobras and third eyes. ok, i am a super geek, but being there with my wide-eyed girl i really enjoyed the dickens fair.

later i went to the bottom of the hill to watch a film some friends had made called "fog of ennui", starring naughty ninja, jailface, and captain ennui, with other superheroes and villains including furry man, spanish icicle, and dr. exposition. i laughed quite a bit and enjoyed the soundtrack and effects and silliness, but did not relate to the theme, which, loosely, was about fighting captain ennui before he spread boredom to the entire country.

this is probably not making sense but i am feeling today that there is something about having kids later in life, as i did, that throws your mind into a wierd position. or at least my mind. when i should be thinking about getting older, and fighting boredom, and the usual midlife existential crisis stuff (i have the fear of dying pretty bad), i am simultaneously exposed, every day, to little people who are feeling the novelty, beauty, and wonder of life much of the time. maya often GASPS with excitement and does a whole body "ohhhhhhhhhh" in amazement. i feel it along with her. i am so lucky to have this time with her but it throws me off balance too. i feel like a little old kid who knows way too much sometimes. it is confusing.

does anyone out there have any idea what i am babbling on about?

this is ridiculous

this weekend:

saturday:

1.go to randall museum to complete ceramics project with maya

2.after finishing project get sucked into storytelling hour with city college storytellers

3.attend maya's ballet performance, clap

4.attend 4 hour birthday extravaganza at gilman playground

5.collapse

sunday:

1.attend amazing gay and lesbian dance along nutcracker with friends and family

2.travel across town for emily's willy wonka tenth birthday party

3.go out with starr king moms to listen to a fellow mom's choir, sacred and profane, perform at mark's lutheran church

4. following performance head to bar for a few hours. drink hot toddies to fight off new cold germs.

5. following bar time head to SPARKY'S diner and eat curly fries (have not done this in ten years)

6. get home at 2 a.m. and complete meeting agenda for meeting with miles' principal regarding the environmental ed program

i want to hibernate for a few weeks. and then come out of my cave and do some things differently.

on a sadder note, i had ridiculously high expectations for a meeting with my son's principal regarding proposed improvements to the present environmental education program. i got a little too excited, because after the meeting i learned that even though X would be fantastic, and is very possible, Y is business as usual, and that is what we are stuck with for now. big bummer.

i keep writing these serious critiques of education and human nature but they are all in the draft section of this blog. lucky you get to read this fluff instead.

school talk

another fabulous starr king bday party with our warm and diverse school crowd. soccer? check. miles in sports and friends heaven? check. families speaking different languages? check. families of all income levels and backgrounds getting along just swell? check. delicious spread of food? check. warm fuzzy feeling watching the kids together and knowing so many friendly faces? check.

but a few times at this party i had to walk away from conversations regarding school. the conversation where people discuss how they are supporting their kid in chinese, with websites, tutors, trips. we are not really doing that. and the conversation with one parent in particular which is inevitable--she is so aware of the things i don't like about public schools and i fall into this groove with her, about the test prep aspect of learning, lack of choices for kids, shallowness of learning, lack of intrinsically rewarding work, etc etc. go read alfie kohn. it is like talking to him.

so, pros and cons. it is a done deal for miles but i am still debating things for maya, and considering, possibly, applying to a reggio emilio charter school which is opening.

this decision, like so many others, is based on a choice between what may be flawed, but what is a part of our lives, and our community, and that which seems better (at least more progressive, and less focused on producing good little workers of the future), but which is not familiar. i tend to want to keep people together, but maybe this is not always the right thing to do.

i want to find balance in this area. maya and i were at the academy of sciences at the climate change exhibit and the lonely dad of a not yet talking toddler approached us and spoke of how all the suggestions to make changes towards sustainability might be useless at this point. it certainly does not seem like making decisions based on what is best for everyone is our species' strong point. i guess the problem with changing things like our unsustainable lifestyles, or the school where we might send our younger kid, is that *most" human beings, even when they can see the negatives, choose to go with what gives them community. this means sticking with what you know.

principal's chat

at miles' school there are occasional scheduled principal's chats on monday mornings. these chats consist of the principal answering questions posed by parents who do not have to go to work, while younger siblings are silenced by a tray of mexican pastries or sticky buns and the eye candy of iphones.

so many involved parents at miles' school with questions about things like "how are teachers dealing with the subject of race via the caring schools curriculum?" and "how will low-income parents access the tutoring their child is entitled to?" and "can we get a working microphone for morning assembly?"

there are so many huge issues to deal with in this one public school. there are issues between parents with different sets of values and priorities. issues between teachers and students with different values and priorities. issues between parents and the school bureaucracy that forces teachers to teach so broadly, touching on a thousand standards rather than letting the kids get deep into a project, and do some critical thinking. issues between parents and our larger society which does not place much priority on providing a good education for our kids.

it can be overwhelming. i look at my kids and obsessively worry that they are not getting what they need in this stressed out system. that there is a scary vicious cycle going on in which people are not educated to think and do in a way that is fair, sustainable, creative, caring, peaceful. then they grow up and become the leaders in a society where good education is not a priority. and it gets worse and worse, and stupider and stupider.

i don't just worry about my kids, i worry about the generations to come. so corny, but to me educating kids should be the absolute top priority for our society if we think beyond the next year or two.

fantastic cookie party

i made the mistake of peeking at facebook again. aaaahhhhh. seems so easy for most folks, but for me it is a fascinating yet creepy excursion into what my life could be, or isn't, and how other people seem so good at condensing their wonderful lives into easy to digest and respond to sentences and phrases. i really don't know what the heck it is, but it makes me feel kind of agro, and a little depressed. like a nice whiskey might help.
anyway, the holidays are upon us. miles had a greedy tantrum today about how this xmas would be stupid, and all presents are boring except for the nintendo DS i don't want to get him. poor brainwashed little consumer victim. luckily, right after his tirade against my cruelty we went to rebecca's cookie party, and got a glimpse of some fun that does not come in the shape of a handheld electronic device or a ball. rebecca's 4 downstairs neighbor kids were there, and they all kind of congealed and made cookies and got very silly, and then we were down in the basement and these 4 cool kids (7, almost 9, almost 12, and 14) were playing ramones, sex pistols and rolling stones covers on their very own instruments in the most awesome way possible. maya fell in love with the almost 9 year old girl and invited her to her birthday party. later emily played crazy beats and samples on her yamaha keyboard and everyone was dancing around like a freak. i guess eating lots of cookies added to the hysteria. but who needs a DS to have fun?

i will try to hang on and make it through this season of giving--and wanting to get lots of stuff--and painful old memories, and comparisons with oh so rosy facebook existences. at the end of it all i think there will be a reward--new year's in a wood stove heated hot tub up in the damp green green woods of point arena. clear skies and cold air and stars above.

oh the possibilities.

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.

miles the werewolf at school halloween parade

isn't this a cute werewolf? don't you just want to take off that mask and hug him?

pre halloween

halloween is days away yet some things around here are taking on that element of..."what are we?"this is a house we walk by on the way to school. for a long time it has been the house that needs some love. suddenly it is the witch's house. look closely...creepy, eh?

and this, is it harmless entertainment for kids or an expensive subliminal message filled commercial for those too young to know better?
1974 looney tunes folder propped up on nasty garbage container by sf general. conceptual art? why does the tasmanian devil look so evil? i never before noticed what a carnivore he is. and what is bugs looking at?

wha,ah,ah

little spiral, beasts

well, things have been pretty exhausting lately. my son is experiencing separation anxiety, which i have recently learned can rear its ugly head between the ages of 6-8 and then again for the tweens, as the kids reach new stages of understanding how they are separate from their parents and also what the world may have in store for them. so life has been full of reassurance, logic, worry time, talking back to worry bullies, back up plan after back up plan,making things calm and good and happy, talking to the school counselor. yesterday was one of the worst mornings, and rich had to peel a wailing miles off me as i left for work. he then put scared and miserable miles in the car and just happened to turn on stairway to heaven on the radio which, he said, snapped miles out of his fear and into a normal state. who knew? soon he was playing handball on the schoolyard and things were all hunky dory today. led zeppelin therapy. we are trying our best.

some of this means i am spending quite a bit of extra time making sure i am there to pick up miles exactly right on time every day, which can be tricky with a job and a four year old. today maya and i arrived at starr king too early because she practically sprinted up potrero hill, being ozma of oz with a brown puppy. we had 30 minutes to kill in the starr king open space, and made a baby rock spiral and several maximum volume short movies, mostly about protecting puppies from: the tree monster!! the rock monster!! the earth monster!!! protect your puppies, hold onto them and don't let go!!!!!

shout it from the hilltop maya! protect your puppies from these beasts!! and end your crazy movie with a big long loud laugh.

same clouds

my friend and former bandmate who lives across the city posted a picture of these very same clouds from the same sunrise last week. amazing. the rain has come and everything is wet and gray. suddenly the city seems emptier.

rich is listening to some eery atmospheric guitar down the hall and i hear maya's cough from her bedroom. it won't be long before she gets up and gets into the bed with me to snuggle and go back to sleep. there is some persistently being mailed to us disney family magazine (did you, dear reader, send it to us?) in the bathroom, full of cheery ideas for thanksgiving activities and christmas gifts for kids to make themselves. winter has pretty much arrived. every year i forget about this season, and after only two days of gray i am missing the clarity of the blue sky and the sight of my kids playing outside.

pandora radio music and fancy plant store

i have music in the car now. i forgot how music affects your thoughts as you drive through the world. listening to palace brothers and bon iver as i drove up past glen park canyon in the fog felt very different than driving up with just my own worried little petty thoughts.

it's thursday, my friday. a big sigh of relief as i said goodbye to my last little language-delayed student (who told me a long story i understood pretty much none of, about egg-man, a big ship, and robots) and headed off to pick up my own kids. since i am not allowed to pick up miles before the predetermined pick up time maya and i stopped to browse around flora grubb nursery. i know it is shi shi, and some might hate this place but i love it. all the expensive little glass terrariums full of air plants, and rusty bikes hanging in the air serving as planters, and rocks with holes carved in them growing succulents. what could be more perfect than a plant? we got two pumpkins, one green and one orange. miles is going to make his into calvin's head (from calvin and hobbes that is).