Girl.

I Blame Facebook.

When you've started blogging purely to keep up with bloggity-blah and distant friends, and then all of those up-keepers end up on Facebook, chatting and photo-sharing and thumbs-upping away, why would you bother to continue with the keep-ups-ing in the blogosphere?

That's right. You wouldn't.

Unless you had a kid or two, and lots of non-MyFace addicted or non-tech savvy family and friends needing to be kept informed of the goings on in the non-electronical areas of your life.

Unless you maintain a semi-anonymous persblogonality while in the throes of law school, as a place to comment on culture and happenings and random thoughts and all the unspeakable gossips of the intense campus/community/field into which you have begun to dip first your toes and then all the various appendages into, and about which you would not dare risk snarkifying in the SpaceBook realm due to the long, long, loooong memory of the oh-so-mature folks and future colleagues therein (but which really must be shared with friends, family, and the world at large because OH COME ON, PEOPLE, SERIOUSLY?!!).

Unless you simply want to write it all down and remember because your brain, well, your poor rusty brain is beginning to forget the day-to-dayness of it all and it would be nice to have a record of just what the eff all the time has been spent upon...

But if you started tap tap tapping away in a blogger window not just as a connection to the far-scattered friends and loved ones, but as a connection to the words that tended to escape, to the page and to the pages, and to the Giant Bubble Machine of a world out there, with so much going on every minute - spit out at you via RSS feed or Headline News or Alerts in the inbox - well, Facebook doesn't do a very swell job with all of that, I'm afraid. In fact, I'd say it manages to almost instantly (within a few replies, anyway) trivialise or diminish most everything posted or discussed within its pages (and I say that despite the experience of having the very choicest news of MJ's death being broken to me via Twitter/FB feed from a cousin in Italy, a full 30 minutes before CNN changed their headline from "grave condition" to "DEAD" - - - of course that's a moral of the story for another time). You may disagree. That's fine, I'll allow it. Let's chat about it over on my wall, shall we?

But really, I should never have stepped away, because Facebook (though I do love you, you sweet, innocently addictive crackpipe you) is no place for the in-depth, for the thoughtful, for the lengthy.* It is a place for photos, photo-essays even, edged with storytelling captions, but lacking any graciousness for the story itself. It is the land of the virtual connection, the shorthand, the easy way to reach out and click "Like!" and let someone know you are thinking of them, that you know they are out there, that you give a shit about what they are doing and saying and snapping and sharing. And for this I maintain many, daily, truly heartfelt appreciations and admirations. However, it is hardly the venue for the longer, harder, dare I say fancier braindumps and certainly not for the writings and the by-products of the (now rare) ass-in-chair, brain-to-hand scribblings, tappety-tappings or snip-snap cut-n-pastes. It's no place for the actual, I fear.

So I blame Facebook. And the sweet flood of relief of post-inauguration America-the-Beautiful that made it okay not to think but. at. all. for a few months in the blissful thereafter. And I blame therapy, of which I've certainly had too much by now.** And laziness. And indecision. And travel to California. And not getting into graduate school, AGAIN. And ambivalence. And efforts elsewhere, in strange small piles of intention and (in)action. And oh oh, gardening, the garden! I totally, lovingly, longingly blame the garden! And about a million fluid ounces of love and contentment from the constant stream of houseguests that fluttered through our giant drafty house from May to October (love love love).

But now there is no excuse. And barring babies and grad school or any tangible plans at taking over the world with my verve, vim and vigor, I'll just have to stick with what pours out of the pockets between the cranium and the sacrum and see what takes shape back here in this blackness.

So - Hi. How've you been keeping yourself these days, months and years?



*I claim none of those but the third. Ahem.

**Though I can justify the time in years (if not the money in dollars) by the simple math of twice-a-month = double the length of the process versus the standard once-a-week analysis. Right? Right.

Hi, I love you.

Okay, hi. Hi there. How're ya? Ya good?

See, I know it's been a very long time. And I actually have a lot to say to you, my sweet Interwebs, but things have been so so so so so busy lately, that I haven't been able to sit and organize any thoughts (let alone the photos, oy the photos!) to send your direction. I will try, I will. Very soon.

When? After I'm done packing for our move to the giant house this weekend, and have finished the 2500 word article I have to write for one class, and written and practiced the 10 minute story I will be presenting orally (snicker) for another class, and have trained the new girl at the Wellness center, and read three loooooong books for school, and workshopped 7 articles for the first class and read some Flannery O'Connor for the second, and previewed tons of good/bad/heinous submissions for the Portland literary magazine I've committed my eyeballs and exceptional discernment (ha) services to each week, and organized the next meeting for my writing group (that I've COMPLETELY dropped the ball on, you guys, I'm sorry - I'll make it up to you with fancy drinks and an extra large deck on which to smoke your wicked writerly cigarettes), and cleaned my old small pretty apartment, and cleaned my new giant weird house, and phone banked at least once more and hosted my awesome Obamania brother for a post-election decompression, and hopefully having thrown the celebration of the century after the Election in a few weeks. THEN I will sit and put it all down here for posterity. For myself. Because I'm old and I have started to forget things. And for the five of you who might be curious as to what's been happening all up in these here Northwest parts.

So I will tell you about the new house, and my Facebook addiction, and Josh's birthday, and the weird coincidences that have been happening lately, and the dream I had about Jojo giving birth to twins (actually a very fun dream, all things and strange subject matter considered), and perhaps I will have more interesting stories to tell you. For the moment, all my words have been reserved for the classes I impetuously signed up for a few weeks ago.

In the meantime, lacking anything of substance, please watch the following, compliments of Z The Wonder Volunteer, who keeps me well liquored in the lubricating grease of campaign and peripheral greatness:



I know you won't judge me when I confess to thinking these two too skinny Ruskies are hot. Especially not after you hear the "I love you" at the end. I love Al Gore, or whoever invented the internet. I don't know how I lived a life before it came to be.

Best Of Intentions.

I had every intention of posting a photo of a mid-summer Farmers Market haul, a sort of "this is what $20 bux'll get ya in Stumptown" sort of thing, prompted by a convo I had with KDog last week in Ventura... But alas, in spite of the blogg-o-guilting, I just can't find the photos.

I know they are around here somewhere, but as I'm drowning in technology and everything looks and sounds the same to me half the time ("Oh this is the 1Gig micro sd card in an adapter, huh, have you seen the 80meg sd card anywhere, cause it's got my summer photos on it") and Joosh has no discernable system of organizing all the little bits, I'm totally lost. I'm nearly certain I backed up all the photos before he left on his roadtrip (dispatches from which I am clearly extremely late in updating, heavysighwhatever). However, I can't find the USB stick onto which I think they were copied, nor can I remember on which of the three laptops (in various states of disrepair, lest you get the wrong idea) we have floating around right now did I make extra-super-duper-secure-thirdly-backed-up back ups? So. Um. Moving on until tomorrow when I can bug my tech guy to please please pretty please find my photos please and thanks!

So instead, I want to tell you about two exciting things.

1) My brother Z is in day one of a five-week stint as a sort of local organizingCaptain for the Obama campaign, organizing throngs of out-of-state and local volunteers in Nevada. He's staying in some lady's Vegas house, along with his old roommate and basically working 7 days a week supporting teams of canvassers, phone bank callers, etc. He's staying in said lady's guest house, actually, with a pool, jacuzzi, tennis courts, the whole shebang... but likely he'll not have time to enjoy these much, it would seem from his schedule so far. It sounds like they have a shit-ton of work to do, all day, every day. I saw him online at midnight, and he was still at the headquarters after a long day. Mmmm, Politics. It's going to be intense. But all this work is so important, and really seems like it stands to make a difference. As he put it on the MyFace: Gonna turn it blue for Obama! This is so exciting.

2) Which brings me to: Opportunities to make a difference without giving up 5 weeks of your life...

I'm really impressed with the Obama campaign for all of its innovative strategies toward volunteers, outreach, connecting with the masses of voters who are out there, who may not be engaged, who may not have access to accurate representations of the campaigns, folks who may get all of their information from the absurd sound bites into which much of the issues and policy nuances have been reduced. The simple act of phone banking, including the request to bring your own cell phone (free weekend minutes!), and the fact that you can sign up to make calls from home in your own time (whaaaa?) is amazing.

Check the website: there is probably a phone banking timeslot open in your area this weekend.

Another goodie that I just found out about is detailed here: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/organizing/gpl9km

It's essentially filling out postcards with a few words about why you support Obama, putting .27 cent stamps on them, and mailing them en masse (bulk envelope) to campaign headquarters in swing states, where volunteers will address and mail them locally to undecided voters (I think). Maybe this is totally simple, but I think it's totally brilliant. The fact that we can all spend 15 minutes and $5 bux, in our own time and do something positive for the campaign is terrific.

Here in Portland there is a gal organizing a group Postcard-ing event at a local coffee shop. As the cards should be state or locally focused (the personal touch?), she is going to have some sort of handmade card printing situation - Gocco? - plus some cards already dry and ready to be filled out in case you're short on time. Rad. I am truly impressed.

I hope you might have a few minutes to purchase and fill out a few postcards, in this case prior to September 30, but also keep checking the MyBarackObama site for updates.

Here's why:

If you care to know about some of the crap going on behind the scenes, or just in case you are at work or school or the kids are napping and you're reading this with some time on your hands, I will leave you with two articles that totally made my blood run cold. One of which I am especially trying to take with appropriate grains of salt, but both of which leave me terrified all the same. There is a significant internal battle being waged in me this minute and pretty much all the time, between the forces of good hopeful optimism (all my Peace Studies/all you need is love/namaste understanding of the universe) and the rotten fungal spores of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) that multiply like infectious bacteria in my heart.

As with so many things that have happened in the last 8 years, I keep thinking: this can't possibly be. How is it that we find ourselves here? On every level - civil rights, privacy, torture (TORTURE!!!), environment (acceptable amounts of toxics in our food and in our bodies and melting icecaps, rising waters, shifting weather, dead oceans, lone-star-state sized plastic-filled gyres in the Pacific... the tips of the icebergs), healthcare, economy, energy, integrity of the election system, foreign policy, the war, veteran treatment, infrastructure, secrecy, blatant horrible croneyism, disaster capitalism, the bankrupting of the future... This. Cannot. Be.

So let's try to make sure that it will no longer be... that would be great. And I hope it's not too late. Because according to these two, we're in even bigger trouble than you might think:

Per RFK, Jr. ("Is your vote safe?") we are sliding down the slope here, Sisyphuses, all of us. And we all responsible for making sure our fundamental system of demanding change - the act of voting - is intact. We've already been sold electronic voting machines, which are a total effing unverifiable crock bought sold and managed by Republican interests, and now hundreds of thousands of mostly democratic voters are being scrubbed from the registration rolls. WTF, America?

Per Naomi Wolf (my grain of salt taker-with-er), Sarah Palin (don't EVEN get me started on this lady, jesus christ) is the Trojan Horse of the Police State Apocolypse. It's a tad bit conspiracy theoryish, but on the other hand, so many things that I would have chalked up to tin-foil hat-wearing kooks have turned out to be horrifyingly true so maybe she's a Cassandra and not a harpy.

Oh, and also (this is totally why I shouldn't blog late at night - I cannot be trusted to maintain coherence or frame of reference or keep it under a million words of rambledom), I suggest listening to some Naomi Klein interviews about all of the Wall Street bail out shenanigans going on right now.

So I had the best of intentions for a nice easy short and sweet entry of fruit and veg from our kick ass local market, and instead you get this half-hopeful & yay-we-can-do-it/half-dismal we're-in-for-more-puke-worthy-rides-on-the-shit-coaster post and all I can say is something about the road to hell being paved with all my bests and leave you to go about your business.

Happy Friday (?).

Double check your registration status. Then go buy some postcards, write a few nice things on 'em and mail them to Ohio. Do it for the children.

Dear Small World of Mine - A Treat for You.

Hurry up and go to this website and watch this video before the woman responsible for it yanks it and puts up something else.

Bite My Cookie.
http://bite-my-cookie.blogspot.com/

BMC, whose web site you'll visit by clicking above, is one of my favorite ladies in Portland. She is fierce, a firecracker, a connector, a scrape-the-lining-of-her-insides-out-for-you-if-you-need-it, a ball of energy and chaos and giant-hearted snark. She's funnier than sin. She has the most adorable family (this is heresay, or blogsay, I guess, as I've not actually met them yet) and a neverendingstory of stories to tell that will make you cry with hysteria. Also, she makes the best cookies in all the land. Hopefully she's going to have a rad website selling these cookies in the next week or two (if someone you know and love can get her ess-aytch-eye-tea together ay-ess- ay-pee).

In the meantime, she's just had the ultimate crapperfull of a hellish experience in business wherein all of her talent and energy and huge vats of effort got swallowed up by The Man (in the collective patriarchal sense, as well as in the penis-bearing-personage pissing absurdities on a years worth of bloodsweatmoneytears sort of way). I think she's trying to sit still for a moment, water the roots at the base of the pruned bush, so to speak, gather her strength for the next thing. But in the meantime, she offers periodic treats on her site, but just like the incredible cookies she bakes, you've gotta run and get em while they're hot. I can't guarantee that what you'll see when you click above will be the video to which I am directing you, but hey, don't shoot the messenger.

So go, run, click, do it. BMC recently took down her archives, which were time-suckingly entertaining (and which I used to read long before I met her at work by happenstance one day, long before I realized that she was BFFs with an LA blogger, Rebecca Wolf, long linked on this site that I'd been reading for months and months.) Anyway, you unfortunately will not have the honor of experiencing those BMC, days-gone-by, belly-laughing posts, but please, please please go watch her darling 4 year old give a life lesson about what it means to be four. It is beyond precious, absolutely sums up four years old - and the important bits of life in a nutshell, really - in under a minute and a half.

Ps - I got two hours of sleep last night, due to an early morning airport run for Le Mama and some damn inconvenient insomnia involving a terribly unnecessary late night fixation on h'ors d'oeuvres (because I am retarded) for this weekend's shower-to-end-all-showers for our darling Joj, so please forgive if this entire post makes no sense, which I suspect it may not, but am too wiggy to double check. Bottom line, go watch the vid - I can't imagine you'll be sorry.

So Pretty Much The Same Methods Apply For Governing As For Grooming...

Oliver William is Heading This Way!

Sorry, please to forgive the ridiculous pun. But my brother just recently turned me on to the absurd farewell that goes something like "Time to make like a fetus and head out" and it somehow seems appropriate to use in this crazy moment when I've been told that a certain mom-to-be is fully dilated and ready to birth her babe any minute! So very exciting.

Wishing you all the best in the universe, Doc and Mister Doc. We're all so excited to welcome Oliver.

Fun With Analytics.

Did I mention that I have been writing 1000 words a day for the last month or so? I have. With moderate success (if by moderate you understand that the middle ground between super great and unbelievably horrible is just that).

Actually, I have been tremendously successful at the actual writing of 1000 or more words every day. I've only missed one night since I committed to the daily activity. Ass in chair, blah blah blah. This does not mean that I have been writing 1000 GOOD words or strings of words each day. But whatever, it's a start.

The very first day of writing these grand or so words, I wrote something to read at my writing group, about the process of committing to the page and all the shit that floats up for writers sitting down to write. Well, all the stuff that floats up for ME sitting down to write, anyway. Not surprisingly (because apparently we writers are nothing if not unoriginal in all the shit that floats up around the process, the act, the desire, the actuating, the ass-sitting, etc etc), it was some pretty familiar stuff for my fellow wordsmitheons: I got plenty of positive feedback, and a lot of head-nodding and amens around the table.

Afterward, a gal that I particularly like (the instigator of the nerdy ladies board game fun) grabbed my paper and a red pen and bracketed six or seven sentences or segments that she felt particularly stood out. Right on. When I got home and did the casual math, I was running about 10% good, stand out stuff, to the remaining 90% comme ci comme ca stuff. Honestly, I'm fine with that. And if 10,000 monkeys pounding on 10,000 keyboards will come up with Hamlet in 10,000 years (um, isn't that how that goes?) then surely one girl, at one keyboard, in 10,000 nights can come up with something usable in 10% of all that scattertyped text, right?

So here's the problem: Procastination. It's insane to me how very much I resist the task at hand. I can sit in this fercockt (probably not the correct yiddish spelling of this, my favorite Grandpa word) chair all night long, and read all y'alls blogs like 18 times over, ignoring my real-life to-do-lists and the blank page in front of me, read read read and catch up on CNN and Buzzflash, and write a few words, and head over to Facebook for some Scramble and some spying on my friends and family, and then tap out a few more words, and then go scare the crap out of myself with stuff about the environment and warming and the war and the conspiracies (oy fucking vey, the conspiracies of those that are conspiring and not yet geting caught, holy hell) and the sea of plastic in the Pacific and the damage done and doing and gonna do, and then go write a few more bits (in a decidedly lower tone) and then back all y'alls blogs, and then internet-stalk people like Julia Kernochan from Junior High (she's a Yale-educated lawyer on Senator Schumer's team, if you must know) and back to Buzzflash and on and on and on. (I can imagine one or more of you sitting there with your wee one in your lap as you try to read my overly long post here, in the few spare moments you have to catchup on web bizness, thinking that clearly I need a child in order to stop having infinite time to not focus on the thing that I sat down to accomplish, right? Right. Sorry.)

My ultimate point here, however, is not about my fierce and ridiculous need and ability to procrastinate, but rather to talk about my latest good time in the avoidance realm. Bex treated me to a lovely procrasty show of her own (oh Veronica, oh Logan, how I miss you so) and then I thought about how much I feel that her blog is written just for me (by the way, writers are apparently giant narcissists, so look out) and then I started thinking about what others might think in stopping by her site and then I thought "hey I wish there was a way to find out who was visiting a site, that would be funny" and then I immediately recovered my brain and remembered the miracle thing known as Google Analytics.

I signed up with the old Analytics tool back when I created this little vanity project. And I couldn't figure out if I'd inserted the tracking code correctly (it did not seem as though I had), got super annoyed and then gave up on the effort (shocking, I know). I've not logged in since that day. But hey man, what a perfect procrastination tool!

And indeed it was a sweet little surprise treasure trove of goodness. So much information! More than you could ever need/want/take in/make use of in a million years. But lots of helpful bits and bytes and bites. Here, my friends, is the tastiest morsel:

The top ten (er, eleven) searched keywords/phrases that have led people to This (Amberican) Life this week-

11) anna beth chao.
10) Important stuff to know in life.
9) I'm going to ride my bicycles and roller skates.
8) 3 month old drool.
7) momby porn. (that is not a typo. momBy porn. someone should really spellcheck their blog, am I right?)
6) Sun chips flying pig. (nice)
5) scurvy more tests and diagnosis. (wow, sorry dude, that sucks)
4) Chastity-belt. (hahahahahahaha)
3) sucktastic. (um, ha).
2) 1950's aprons.
1) momboob. *

God I loves me some interwebs, I really do.

And guess what? 947 words, suckers, yeah!

But now I need to wrap it up and go watch last week's BSG cause apparently the 5th Cylon is revealed and it's bugging me that I've gone this long without seeing it but Josh grabbed a crap copy and then he grabbed a super nice, super huge copy that wouldn't play on the computer we've got hooked up to the projector (have you heard the expression "the cobbler's wife wears no shoes?") and then the final copy was just right, but Sunday I babysat* and Monday I procrastinated too long into the evening to allow for viewing and now tonight I'm coming dangerously close to same. So au revoir, mon amies. I hope you enjoyed this last segment of rambling smack wherein I tried to up my word count to make up for all the numericals above, which really shouldn't count toward the sum word total, don't you agree?

1097 give or take.

It counts.

*As it's related to the otherwise baffling search term "momboob" and the aforementioned babysitting, this might be a convenient time to tell you about a mortifying thing that happened while babysitting the wee Watsons on Sunday. Except I just wrote it and it's a million miles long, so I'll make it a separate post, backdated, and thus appearing below. Enjoy.

Are You Stronger Than A Three Year Old?

So about the asterisk, above. I was sitting for the wee Watsons, see. Having never been in charge of both of them at once (how do parents do it one at a time?) I was a little nervous. It worked out for the most part - My big secret to success is jelly belly's and reading stories in extra exciting and ridiculous voices. Both kids were enraptured. And apparently both slept pretty soundly through the night, so yay for Auntie Amby and her crazy Winnie the Pooh readings.

But first, first, in the early nervous moments, when Sarah was hungry and attention-requiring and Jakob was not hungry and attention-starved, I was snuggling Sarah and rocking her and making funny noises at her while Jakob was watching Sesame Street. Sarah was clearly getting hungry and started pawing at me and rooting around in the chestal region. At one point she snagged my top with her wee fingers and pulled with gusto. I laughed and dipped her again, trying to adjust my dress while tickling her tummy. She was positioned horizontally to me and I dipped her and blew a raspberry on her tum. When I came up from the dip, with the bundle of baby pressed in my arms, Jakob was looking at me, with wide horrified eyes. "Why are you doing that?" he asked. "What? Tickling her?" He shook his head and glared. "Why are you feeding her WITH YOUR BOOBS!?!" I looked down. It did indeed look as if I were feeding her, from where he stood especially. Hi. Never a redder shade of blush was I in all my life, I'm sure of it. I died. I stammered, as if caught doing something naughty, feeling horribly guilty, trying desperately to fix my dress and blubbered that I wasn't feeding her, that she was just laying sideways and we were playing, that I wouldn't breastfeed her, that's Mommy's job, etc etc etc. I was MORTIFIED. Jakob looked at me with narrow eyes, clearly not believing a word I was saying. Oh the horror, the shame. Called out by a three year old for something I was not actually guilty of doing. Changing the subject, I sing-songed that it was dinner time and how many Dino Nuggets did he want, tra la la? Later we walked to the store to look for Pez for his free-from-a-nice-but-unclear-on-the-concept-saleslady-in-an-antique-store Pez dispenser, but ended up with the Jellies, which did fit in the dispenser, but kept shooting out onto the sidewalk, and distressing the poor kid along the way. Luckily all that walking, talking, lamenting the lost Jellies (there were more, don't worry, I'm not that mean), and story reading eclipsed the earlier horror (for me, anyway).

Jess told me that the next morning she heard Jakob talking in his sleep: Something about "Amber, Amber" and Jelly Beans. I told her that I was relieved it was the jelly beans that crept into his tiny psyche, and not the misunderstanding about the inappropriate boob feeding. God, I would die.

Hey Buddy, Can You Help A Brother Out?

My (awesome smart talented funny quiet hard-working self-sufficient clean non-smoking and non-pet-owning) little brother is graduating from UCLA next month. This means that a) I'm really old and b) dude's gonna be looking for non-student housing come Summertime.

I thought I might post a little inquiry out to you LA-based folks to please keep your eyes and ears out for any sweet living situations you might come across in the hot and heavy areas of the former City of Angels. You know: a roommate situation, a soon-to-be-vacated apartment that he might obtain to share with someone, a guest house, a spare room, wild tiki-inspired living quarters and a cabana-boy position for your rich Hollywood step-grandma, whatever.

He's gainfully employed at a law firm (considering law school, smart cookie that he is) and tends to go snowboarding on weekends during the Winter, and sometimes home to visit the folks in Ventura. He can make full meals from un-preprocessed ingredients (that's more than I can say for some of my friend's husbands, by the way!), knows how to clean up after himself (again, rare in some populations of husbandry, I'm sorry to report) and I'm almost certain that he's grown out of the annoying stage of always coming into your bedroom and interrupting when you are on the phone with your best friend talking about who to ask to the Backwards Dance. Pretty sure he knocks on closed doors these days instead of whining outside of them to be let in, as well.

I jest. He's terrific. (He was terrific even when he stood outside the door whining, I was just too teenaged and retarded to know it). At this point, I can say without reservation that he falls solidly in the pre-Mensch area of the manspectrum and I have no doubt he would be a fabulous roommate/housemate/subletter/tenant.

So. Holler if come across anything of note. Thanks in advance for your housing and brother related attention. Much appreciations from me, your friendly (un)neighborhood domicile-y Yente.

How to Amuse a 3-Month-Old.

Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, I've been hanging out with the sweetest little gal you'll ever meet. You are probably familiar with her from the Watson family site linked at right. Her name is Sarah and she is a doll baby, utterly and completely. Already at 3.5 months, she's got a total personality and basically cracks me up all day long (except when she's tired/cranky/desperate for the Momboob I cannot provide and/or having pooplosions out the top and sides of her diapers... during such times she more threatens to crack me than to crack me up.).

We have good times, me and the babe. She generally sleeps at least three of the eight hours we spend together, sometimes even four (during which times I try to sleep also, with the help of a magic spit-up covered sweatshit that blocks out all light and allows me to stay slumbering and motionless on the couch so as to not wake the wee Sleeping Beauty with unnecessary activities like walking, talking, going to the bathroom, what have you). Our days start early (not as early as poor Mom and Pop, I know) and usually breaks down to an hour or hour and a half of fun and food in the morning, followed by two hours of nap, then about 2 hours of food/diaper changing/play time and another hour or two of naps, then more food, more diaper changing and intensive efforts on my part to amuse, bemuse and delight, finally falling into desperate attempts to distract and pacify in the final half hour until Mama and the Twins come home to make all Sarah's dreams come true with the afternoon nursing sesh.

We've developed several fun and amusing games to fill the non-food/non-diaper related hours between naps. One game involves a mild version of peek-a-boo with her swaddling blanket floating down through the air toward her while she's lying on her back. This usually gets me some smiles, a few excited leg kicks, and sometimes that adorably weird sucking-in-air thing that babies do when they feel wind on their face (which usually means I'm getting a little too zesty with my blankie-waving, actually - "Take it easy" as Bex would say).

Another game consists of my laying on the floor, knees bent toward the ceiling, with Sarah sitting on my tum, back against my legs, while I sing ridiculous songs about her smile, her fingernails, her drool, whatever. Last week I somehow got a Sunday School song in my head (at least I think it's a Sunday School song, having never been to Sunday School myself...), the one about Noah and it goes something like "Who built the Ark? Noah! Noah! Who built the Ark? Brother Noah built the Ark!" An absurdly folk-songy version can be viewed here*. It is to this tune (approximately) that I sing things like "Who's got the drool? Who's got the drool? Sarah! Sarah! Who's got the drool??!? Baby Sarah's got the drool!!!" while moving my legs to the left and my torso to the right, snuggling Sarah one way or the other and giving her a little tickle to emphasize "Baby Sarah's got the drool!" I am proud to say that this little shaker produces hilarious giggles, the sounds of which melts my frozen heart like sunshine and kittens and unicorns and rainbows all wrapped up in a box of World Peace. Gah. She kills me.

I won't bore you with the other so-called games as they mostly consist of my pointing out completely non-interesting things as if they were unequivocally fascinating, or making insane faces worthy of an asylum escapee, with appropriately deranged sound effects, etc. We also do a fair amount of "reading" books, which she's actually quite content with at this stage of the game, taking in each page with interest and curiosity... look out: beauty AND brains, double whammy, right Pops? (And Daddy just jingled the keys to the chastity belt he's planning to strap on her in a decade or so.)

The tough times do come, about 30 minutes before Mom comes home. We've had to get a little creative in that time as most distractions can be a little overstimulating, and there's nothing a working mom needs less than a screaming hot mess of a baby melting down under overzealous babysitter tricks. Periodically we end up pacing the house, or sitting on the porch, watching the electronic picture frame change images, or cars drive by, or the dog pee - simple things, watchful things, observational rather than participatory activities. I'm quite proud of one recent discovery, however, though I fear I may be creating a wee bit of a narcissist. My latest success, documented below, involves the use of my camera phone, with the shrunken image of herself shining back at her as she looks into the display of the phone console. Brilliant. Utterly captivating. It was a 25-minute staring contest. Check it:



In related news: How freaking cute is that face? J'adore.

But: you can tell that she's pushing the limits of happytime in this photo by the little swatches of pink above each eyebrow. When those start to turn scarlet, you better look the hell out, man, no joke. Also, the slash of pink on my chest? Angry baby nails, Yo, angry, angry baby nails. So yeah, look out, for serious. (Of course I'd let this one scratch my eyeballs from my head, she's just. that. perfect).


*Updated to say that it's not a Sunday School song after all... It's RAFFI!!! After half a dozen or more solid years of Raffi from '86 to probably '94, how could I forget? And now it begins anew. Already the strains rise in my head: "Bay-Bee, Buh-Loooooo-Guh". Oy. Luckily I've not yet been forced to consume The Wiggles or Dan Zanes yet, but I've heard rumor on the MommyBlogs that they are out there. Waiting. Watching. Biding their time. Ready to pounce. (More on all that - the explosion of motherhood, the insanity of mommby blogs, the ubiquity and the conversion of the interwebs - very soon).

Why The Thought Of Becoming A Parent Scares The Ess-Aytch-Eye-Tee Out Of Me.

A writer here in Portland received the following message on his answering machine from his goddaughter/niece:

"Uncle Marc, it's Amy. I'm calling to find out why do bad things happen. Why do people get sick or have accidents? Or why do they fall in love with you when you don't love them back? And why is the oil on the ground rainbow-colored even when the sun doesn't hit it?"

I forgot to mention: the neice is six.

I. am. terrified.

If/when I can stomach the full leap into parenthood, I suppose I'll have to find some good godparent-types out in the world upon whom, along with Uncles Z and J, I can foist all the hard existential, metaphysical and otherwise unanswerable questions upon, as they inevitably come spilling forth from my child's mouth.

Until then, I quake in fear.*


*I suppose quake is a tiny bit melodramatic. I quiver, how about that? Tremble? Shudder?

I Ride My Bike, I Roller Skate, Don't Drive No Car.

Please imagine a wee spotty Anthony Michael Hall singing to Molly Ringwald in the passenger seat of the front half of an old American car in a typical High School shop class garage as you read the following: "Duh nuh nuh nuh nuh, you say it's your birthday, duh nuh nuh nuh, it's my birthday too, yeah!"

It's my birthday! Or it was my birthday, several days ago now. (Thursday, according to the belated email I received from my Stepmother on Friday that said "Yesterday went by in a minute, and I'm only now sending you my birthday wishes" but truly, it was Wednesday). It was terrific, thank you.

The darling man who spoils me rotten at every gifty opportunity purchased a fantabulous bicycle for me. It's called "The Amsterdam" (from Electra), and yes I feel totally Euro riding it around. It has a sweet not-too-shrill bell and a light that generates power from the turning of the front wheel (which my grandfather says adds a twenty pound drag equivalent, but I am inclined not to believe him because this is the 21st Century and I am confident that the technology of such things has improved since the last time he had anything similar on his bicycle in the 1980s). The chain is enclosed, as are the gears, so no grease or catching of my skirts on moving parts (because when have you ever known me to wear pants, except overalls once or twice while fishing or carving pumpkins ten years ago?). All I need to complete the oh-so-EU package is some kind of saddle bag on the rear and maybe a wicker basket for the front.

The aforementioned darling, taking the shiny new toy down from the crusty old bike rack that lay neglected on the porch all winter and seems to have served as a nice shelter for several insect and arachnid families.

Wheeeee, biking! I am especially thrilled that my shoes match the bike. I totally planned that. And the fact that I look like I just woke up, put on a velour jogger over my nightgown and hopped carefree onto my stylin new ride? Completely intentional as well.

Earlier in the morning we went to breakfast, and I tried my hand at food porn photography:Not quite what I was hoping for. (It might have been helpful if I had remembered to take photos before digging in - smeared red pepper coulis is probably not attractive in any light, I would think).

Went for a swing around the hood. Nice day for it. Didn't fall off or kill myself: It's like riding a bike.

Napped. Chatted on the phone. Wrote in my journal. Read tarot cards. Chatted with Joosh. Hunted online for reviews of the city's best Carrot Cake - really just wanted the cream cheese frosting, and Portland's infinitely discriminating Foodies helped a sister out by continually reviewing different options based on their components, cake and frosting, instead of just whole enchilada. Awesome.

Headed out to "A Piece Of Cake" which was well-reviewed, conveniently close to the Watson's and claimed to be voted "Best Cake In Portland." Which is maybe not the whole truth, as it turns out. It was mighty fine, don't get me wrong, especially for the vegan and gluten-free options we sampled (yes, yes, I'm turning into THAT person, whatever) but I don't know that I would say best in the city. In fact, having satisfied the chocolate itch but not the Carrot Cake need, the next day I bought slices of Vegan Carrot Cake and Vegan Wheat Free Oatmeal Cake from New Seasons and both were amazing, much more satisfying than the carrot option from the night before. Maybe my error was in purchasing Cupcake cake, instead of Slices of Cake cake.

Anyway, went to Sushi at the old favorite. The kids did very well and the food was huge, fresh, delicious and cheap, as per usual (the best part though was the fact that Sarah and Jakob threw us into the parties-of-six-or-more category that can leave a cell number and wait somewhere warm to be called back to a ready table, instead of freezing our collective buns off outside with the rest of the shnooks - since the Watson's live so close, we kicked it at the house and then hightailed it over apres phone call).

Then back to the house for statements like "Ugh, I'm so full" and Jakob's cute attempts to stall bedtime, and a little bit of baby snuggle time for me.

The object(s) of my affection (the one in pink, with the round head, and the one in black, also with a round head, though the one in blue bearing a slight resemblance to Ben Affleck is no chopped liver and does tell a wicked story).

Can I just take a minute to say: Baby snuggles are the best best best. Followed by cupcakes. (Which were totally good, don't let my curmudgeonly withholding of the "Best In Portland" moniker deter you. The only thing that should deter you is the scary "Amby's-Kitty-Cat-Pee-Grandma" style decor of the interior of the shop... dusty old 1950's aprons, weird ceramic antique-ish tea sets, boxes and boxes and SHOEBOXES of random single cards for all occasions, including some in Spanish and Russian. I wish I'd taken photos. Oh wait, you can see a small one right here, but it really only scratches the quaint surface).

More bad food photos for you. Chocolate Cherry, Carrot, Lemon White Chocolate Chiffon, Chocolate Caramel and Chocolate with Vanilla Frosting. Three of these vegan & wheat free, if I'm not mistaken, but I can't remember which three.

We divided each in quarters and went to town, but were bested by 3 and 4 quarters each. I'm told that the next day Jakob said "I'm going to have one of Amber's cups!" which is especially cute since I didn't think he had even spotted them the night before. Smooth operator, and cute to boot.

The piece de resistance of my entire birthday, however, was this:

I keep opening that sucker up and giggling. Eventually it will probably stop making me laugh and start making me feel heinously old since that movie came out TWENTY-FOUR YEARS AGO. But for the moment I am still blissed out on birthday goodness, so who cares, years are just numbers and blah blah blah. And I loves me some Jake Ryan always and forever... even if I am now old enough to be a cougar to his high-school hotness (the only thing about this that doesn't send me screaming to the botox clinic is that the actor was at least 25 at the time of filming, and while maybe not totally kosher, that's still better matched with 32 than 18 will ever be - too bad I keep getting older while Jake is frozen in cinematic time). Sigh.

Scurvy fighting melons.

Accompanying Joosh to the market just now - beer run, Brah! - I was overwhelmed with the urge for citrus. Not just any citrus, but red grapefruit. Which is weird because the only time I ever eat grapefruit is in the winter when we eat at this sweet homey cafe at the Oregon College of Arts and Crafts that serves little slices of lemon, zucchini and carrot bread with 1/2 of a pink or red grapefruit sprinkled with chopped candied ginger. Outrageously delicious, but really not often on my radar. Rather than panic that I must surely have scurvy, I decided to treat the craving as related to a healthy sublimation of my former sweet tooth (er.... current sweet tooth, usually beaten into submission with a variety of strong arm tactics). So indulge the non-sweet sweet need, I would.

(Now that I think about it, I seem to recall that my sudden urge was inspired by staring at a bottle of Ocean Spray Ruby Red Grapefruit juice that looked AMAZING. In which case I was probably craving a Greyhound, but vodka is basically another form of sugar or at least on the not-so-healthful list, so too bad, Inner Lush, go twiddle your thumbs with Mr. Demonic Sweet Tooth over there in the corner or I'll be forced to pummel you).

I love to peruse the amazing produce section of my favorite spendy market, New Seasons. So much to see, smell, fondle inappropriately. In my quest for grapefruit, I happened upon several strange looking fruits that seemed to insinuate themselves as grapefruit-equivalent. One was extremely ugly. Indeed, it is called "Ugly Fruit" and with a name like that, how could I not take the large and unlovely fruit - the red-headed stepchild, if you will - home with me? But the Texas Red grapefruit called out to me as well. And I was scared that the unsightly citrus would taste of it's name, so as a precaution, I selected a star from the Lone State pile, too. It smelled fabulous. And of course, as I tried to walk away, my salivating palette made me pick up a gigantic sunshiney orb called a Melogold. It was too beautiful not to take home (I hoped it would play nicely with poor Ugly, and not increase its already sure-to-be intense inferiority complex). Excellent: A grapefruitish taste-off for one*, coming right up.

So I just ate the Ugly Fruit, and I am astounded at how delicious and sweet and weird it was. Like an orange, a non-sour grapefruit, and maybe some Naked Tangerine Juice flavored juiciness to it. Fantastic. I sliced it in half, and did the whole sectioning between the membranes thing (wow, that sounds gross, i never realized). And you know, it totally hit the craving. So much so that I can't really imagine cracking open the others. I suppose in a taste test one should really try all samples at once for comparison, but I just chowed down on that single luscious and unattractive globe. I am a happy, sated, non-borderline scurvy diagnosis girl.

Of course the best part of the citrus adventure was standing at the check out, with two large bottles of beer, and three SUPER large citrus fruits on the conveyor belt. We step up to the checker, who is cute as a button and maybe 23 or 24, fresh-faced as all get out, and he exclaims "WOW!! Look at the size of those melons!"

Which is not something a girl hears every day, right? Especially in reference to, essentially, three grapefruits, but nevermind.

I wish you could have seen the look on Joosh's face. It took a second for him to realize the kid was speaking about the actual fruit in front of us, rather than being inappropriately cheeky.

I looked at the checker and at Joosh (simmer down, honey!) and said "Well, that's not something a gal hears every day." Checker Dude looked confused - for a beat and a half. Then, with a large globe in his hand, he turned about as red as the inside of the grapefruit.

Ahhh, kids these days.

*Joosh doesn't go gaga for citrus things like I do. He's a little bit sensitive to the acidity, I think. Not as bad Teabagger and his super weird "Geographic Tongue" (vile!) but somewhere earlier on the road to such a thing from Joosh's description. Since I have to kiss that mouth, I don't force feed the acids, you know?

Whats I Beens Doin?

Since December, when last I typed a peep*, this is what I've been up to (in general order of life appearance):

1) Heard this on the radio and cried for an hour in my car.

2) As a form of recovery from the above song-listening and crying, spent WAY too much time on this site, laughing hardest over the following in particular: Bacon, Emo (because it reminds me of a certain singing friend from the nineties), Balloon, and Devil Cat. I must admit that I am not laughing nearly as hard now as I was in December when looking at these initially, but Bacon still gets me every time. Also, someone told me that the bible is being translated into this language, the LOLCATS speak, so to speak. I didn't believe them. I was wrong.

3) Missed family at the holidays, but enjoyed a nice quiet time here in Portland. Kicked it with the Watsons. It was cool. Literally:



4) Tried to keep Christmas shenanigans to a minimum, and almost managed to succeed, until Joosh went out and spoiled the bejesus out of me with this:

(It's a giant Timbuk2 bag, the size and beautiful colors of which you likely are not able to discern from this hideous photo. It is big enough for all my schoolbooks, a laptop and most of my torso and shoulders, should I ever need to haul those around in a satchel).

And this:

(A keen-eyed rememberer of clothing named Jojo might be able to place the fabric from the quilt patch on the sewing machine. The flowery stuff. It was a hippie skirt. There may have been two tinkly bells on the tie at the waist, which I am not willing to admit to just now. It was a senior year thrift store find. I loved it long time. The black stuff is from a silk robe purchased in Chinatown, in college. Good times.)

So, me, I was very much spoiled. And I, in turn, got him a box full of foreign beers and a hand-made Shop Class metal arts type project craftily using wedding favor candy tins and rolls of self-adhesive cut-out magnet material (please. don't. ask). And pajamas, whoopee. So someone needs to get a real job and give someone else a nice Christmas in July, or something redeeming like that. Yeah.

5) Received several lovely items from AC, to whom I have still not sent my thank you note. Three items were for Joosh, and I have taken over all but one.

6) Started seeing an Acupuncturist, to discover that I suffer from "Dampness." Ooookay, then. At least it's not called "Moistness" since, as some of you know, I despise that word (yes, even when describing cake). Actually, the treatments, herbs and diet adjustments have been pretty miracle-working. I'm okay with not eating sugar (most of the time) but the bread, booze and fried stuff was not so easy to give up. When I partake of the above, however, I am So. Pissed. afterward. My traitorous belly punishes me severely, and I re-learn the lesson anew every time. Goddammit.

***Updated to say that Chinese Medicine is good for people and puppies, too. (Warning to women of childbearing age: clicking this link may cause spontaneous ovulation and/or immaculate conception from the cuteness of the wee child leading the post. The cheeks, holy, god, the CHEEKS. And the eyes. And the faces. And and and... Obviously I am completely smitten). But back to the canine family member in the Lalaland household: Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Lulu the super dog.***

7) Spent lots of time with these folks:


8) Had some excellent times (chats, fun, laughs, near-peeing-self-on-couch-misses, meals and entire host of other things we miss by living far apart from each other) with this gal.

9) Enrolled in two writing classes at this school. Began writing A LOT.

10) Waited impatiently for this little lady to arrive:


11) Attempted to try out for this but was foiled at the pre-tryout clinic by my Britney Spears Sketcher Skates (Damn you, Britney! Why you gotta put a weenie back stopper on your stupid skates?) and when offered a pair of replacements from a Breakneck Bettie (which smelled really bad, but were otherwise awesome - the skates, not the Bettie), I totally bailed out waiting for the second run of a sprint thing that involved running five steps on the toestops (front ones, BritBrit, duh) then full tilt boogie skating supa fast, then spinning and stopping short, again on the toe stops. Notice my words here: I bailed WAITING for the second run. I kicked ass on the first run. Then, while waiting in line for the second run, I totally toppled over just standing there, not even moving. Bottom line, I totally f'ed up my ankle on the Saturday before try-outs and was hobbling around like a dweeb with an ace bandage for days.

12) Was delighted by aforementioned ankle troubles when forced to miss out on actual trials, as I watched from the stands and subsequently understood them to involve thirty laps of fast skating BEFORE any of the timed trials, relays, etc. Had I not been hobbled, I would have killed at this, and then died, and then returned home after 3 hours completely deadxhausted, only to shower and turn around to head to the Watsons for Sarah's birth march. Okay, not a march, but it was in no way a fast experience. And there was some slow walking, almost a march, maybe sorta kinda a little. I kid: It was amazing. And I would have been suffering terribly and in no way able to provide any kind of support to Mama and Papa had I just been beaten down by all the bashing babes on blades. Er, skates.

13) Experienced the miracle of all miracles with Ms. Watson's birth. I swear I am STILL high from the whole thing. Jess was amazing, Mark was terrific, the baby is perfect. The entire event was totally mind-blowingly insane and scary and miraculous and great.

14) Continued to write lots more. Including a "please excuse my absence from class" paper about the fact that I was away giving birth. I'm sure that sounds bizarre, but we have to write these one page make-up papers about why we missed class, and they can't be true. So I borrowed heavily from what I had been witnessing whilst having to miss said class. My classmates responded well to the piece, though one gal felt the need to tell us all about how one thing "they" never tell you is that there is lots of poop involved in birth. (There was not in this birth, let me just clear that up right now). I told her, and thus the class full of people, that I had a lovely book, The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy and Childbirth (from the 90's, written by music producer Jimmy Iovine's sarcastic and not entirely unmean wife) which did indeed warn us all about the poop possibilities. The men in the room, with the exception of the one who wrote a fantastic "Dear John" letter to his masculinity** (I love him), were not super excited about our side conversation.

15) Decided to apply to this program at the above mentioned school (in spite of the fecal related feedback of my potential peers).

16) Did so, with the procurement of some very lovely last minute letters of recommendation and the crazy scramble to write/edit 30+ pages of material for submission (and an unquantifiable amount of constant patient support from my man - he's a saint or a masochist, I haven't decided). I don't know what he's doing in this photo.

So, yeah. Turned in app on 2/1/08.

Started to wait.

Am still waiting.

Will continue to wait.

17) Due to above decision, chose to skip a lovely Bay Area visit with the Davis girls in order to make a dent in the 30 pages, but did get to see this gal again briefly, which is always good.

18) Took this harder than I would have expected.

19) Fell suddenly and pretty hard for this guy. And this only added fuel to the fire (of my political support AND my wretched crush on young ScarJo, because I am a dirty old lady).

20) Got excited that my kid brother got himself a job (and tried not to think about the fact that he's starting at $4 an hour MORE than I was making as an emotional toilet bowl at my last job - not including commissions and non-existant bonuses, of course, BUT STILL). Congrats, moneybags.

And now, internets, I think we are relatively up to date. I have lots more to tell you about terribly unimportant things, but this will have to do for now.

Good luck to Grandma and her eye surgery tomorrow morning.

Happy Ash Wednesday to the rest of you. No sinning for 40 days (right? isn't that how it works?). Can you deal? No? Then come on over here and sit by me.

*The unforeseen stoppage in writage was due to the information that my mother has been alerted to this portal in the blogosphere by one or more of my careless brothers who left it in the browser of her computer "by mistake". Dork(s). It wasn't some big secret, just nothing I had planned to advertise until there was a delicious pile of baby or something equally splendid to advertise on these pages. Until then, I'd hoped not to think too much about the audience (future job offer prospects and the egos of people I still care about in life not withstanding). Oh well. Hi, Mom. Hope you got over that nasty flu by now.

**Oh my God, this guy is so funny. His piece was a total break up letter, to his masculinity, with the whole "it's not you, it's me" and "I hope we can still be friends" and it ended with "You know you're still my favorite to fart and shotgun beers with." So totally great. Unfortunately, as I was trying to give some feedback about the format, I said something to the effect of liking the whole "It's not me, it's you" bit, and how we could all relate to that and suddenly the class started laughing. It took me a minute to realize what I'd said. I started to correct myself, but then decided that, no, my slip was actually more apropos to any of my possible Dear Johns or many other interpersonal troubles: It's not me, it's you.

Cutest Boy I Know.

While trying to find a photo of a previous Hanukkah bush (the first that Josh and I had in Berkeley, that had a super funny Dr. Seuss-like crooked bend in the middle), I came across these sweet snaps from last summer's camping trip at Lost Lake with the Watsons:

How unbelievably adorable is this kiddo, I ask you? He's like the poster child for the tremendous fun and good times involved in camping. Look at this face:


Such a sweetheart, and so good during our adventure! This was during some of the worst of the family business drama that I was dealing with over the summer, and this little man never failed to put a smile on my face through it all. I think I might have written down some of the gems he came up with during this trip, if I can find them I'll post them (after all, why should such a dollface be limited to public embarrassment from just his parents, right? Honorary Aunties with blogs should be allowed to kvell, too).

Speaking of public embarrassment, I also found some photos from New Year's Eve Y2K (what Millennium Bug?). I am still deciding if I will post them, a la Bex's "Old School Photo of the Day."

I am leaning toward yes. We'll see.

Ketchup, part 2: Trip to California, subpart B.

And shortly the All Hallows Eve, full of sugar and expensively-suited small people running up your steps, was upon us.

Halloween-y at Joosh's mom's place. Nephew Liam, being the damn cutest giraffe you'll ever see. Except that his outfit was a tiny bit too tight and he kept trying to yank the crotch free. Technically he was a bit of a skeevy giraffe, I guess.



And still later in the week I drove through parts of LA previously unknown to me (Irvine, Santa Ana, godforsaken places one and all) to see El Jefe, with whom I'd been working on the aforementioned ridiculous project for the last few months. We were supposed to go the Oceanography center, but when I arrived at about 1, there was a police blockade, so we renegotiated our plan to involve mediocre pizza and a park for some fun times.

The kids were along for the ride, and if you know Jefferey and his lovely wife, you'll know at first glance that these two are literal chips off the old blocks. May I present Mini-JLG and Mini-CSH:


They are incredibly funny and absurdly smart. And it's probably a good thing they are home-schooled, because they are the kinds of adorable precocious who would get their hilarious butts kicked and their brains shrunk in public schools (yes, even the snotty la la schools in So. Cal!).

Here I asked them to make their kookiest craziest grossiest faces. This is what they came up with:

With a smidge more prompting (grosser! crazier! C'mon!):



Ash conquers the rings:



Autum(nal) conquers the rock wall:















El Jefe conquers Dana Point (while rocking the ever-sweet 'Refugee Facial Hair' look, apparently grown during the wildfire evacuation the previous week):




The entire family (sans CSH who did not join, but was surely wearing them within a hundred miles of us all the same) wore Crocs. I found this funny.



Hipster parents and their hipster spawn, taking over the world one dress-over-jeans or punked-out-hoodie outfit at a time:

(Please note the evidence of California's real estate market shining on the hilltop in the background, just above jeans/dress girls head).

I didn't get a good shot of the possibly older women dressed youngisher (so of indeterminable age) in tight leopardy-slash militantish yoga wear who Jefe insisted were a lesbian couple. I had hoped you might weigh in on the subject. They were wearing Neimen Marcus versions of ghetto caszh, basically. And I disagreed about the couple thing. But Jefe also thinks that JK Rowling outed Dumbledore (who is CLEARLY not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that) in order to make the actress who plays Hermione feel better about the fact that she is, in fact, a total lesbian. So take his assessments with a grain (or several) of salt.


Prior to the arrival of the other kids in the photo above, I had a total "That kid is STILL on the ESCALATOR" moment with this aging skater punk dad and the daredevil egg-onment of his progeny.

It might be too small to see without enlarging the photo to full size, but man, I could practically hear the bones breaking, precognitive echoes playing over the voice of Brodyman in Mallrats in my head. A few minutes later they busted out a skateboard and went to town. No, no helmut. (God help me, I'm an old old old lady).

So that's about it. There were many other activities on the California trip, of which I did not manage to photo document any further. Visits with grandparents, brothers, mom, dad, step-brother and fam (where I broke the news about the fact that one of their Halloween pumpkins was covered in the recalled "Aqua Dots" beads, you know, the ones that turn into the frickin date rape drug when ingested? Thank you, China, you piece of shit, and thanks all you nutjob USA consumers so desperate for cheaper and cheaper crap that you don't give a rat's ass about where it comes from, how it gets here, what the impact is, etc, until your own spawn are threatened with immediate comas or a case of lead poisoning. Grrrrrr. Though I should offer the caveat that the Aqua Dots were not at all cheap, they are absurdly expensive, actually - I guess you have to pay extra for a drug in your toys that some people actually want and pay good money to procure on or before date night).

Hmmm, I seem to be getting bitter and crankypants. Perhaps I should leave off about now. I meant to end with a tribute to my love and yours, Mr. Ben Harper, who graced us in Portland with his harmonious presence last week, but my account of the lovefest, it will have to wait.

Congrats to Bexy on her last day of classes for the first semester!!! Crazy fast, this semester flew by. I've yet to try the New Year's Drink contender recipe yet, but I will do so soon. There's always the sweet Saphire nectar to fall back on come 29 December, right? Congrats, honey. You are totally rocking the school of law.