Parenting
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Black Diamond Mines
Maya’s class had a fieldtrip today to the Black Diamond Mines, in Antioch, CA. (That’s Maya’s BEST friend, Jackie, in the picture to your left.) I had never been there before, so I was happy to volunteer to drive some of the kids, and go check it out. The mines were for coal in the mid-1800s, and many men who came to California looking for gold ended up working in the coal mines instead. Actually, though we found out that CA coal is inferior to coal from Washington State or China, so when that coal started coming into CA, the mines closed down, and the cities disappeared. I kind of…
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Virginity
For some reason this story reminded me of a question I asked my mom when I was about 7 or 8. I had been arguing with my best friend, Amy Derocher (I just realized I have no idea how to spell her last name), whose parents were pretty religious by our heathen standards, and I came into the house to settle the matter. Went and found my mom, who was taking a bath. Me: “Mom, do you have to be a virgin to get married?” Mom: “No.” Me: “Are you sure?” Mom: “Yes, I’m sure.” Me: “How can you be sure?” Mom: “Well, I wasn’t a virgin when I got…
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The “F” Word….
Warning…this post contains SWEARING I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, from the age of 4 until I was 9. It was the early 70’s, and it was much more a frontier society than we have down in the lower 48. I haven’t been back since, so I can’t speak to the modern sensibilities, but I digress. In Fairbanks, at that time, everyone swore. I mean, EVERYONE. At one point, we lived next door to a church, and it wasn’t unusual to hear people come out and say, “Jesus Christ, it’s 45 Mother-Fucking Degrees Below Zero out here!” Needless to say, my brother and I grew up with what is politely known…
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What Kind of Mom Am I?
I read on Cape Buffalo about an idea for a Mother’s Day Collaboration, and I thought, I guess I could chip in on that. I don’t want to write about my mom, because I just did on her birthday, and I’ve got another post in mind for Mother’s Day itself, so for here and now, I’ll write about my goals as a mother…the kind of mom I would like to be. I want to be the kind of mom who supports her child no matter what. I want Maya to never doubt for a second that I believe in her, that I love her unconditionally, and that she will always…
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Commute Time
I had lunch last week with a friend who is looking for work. We were discussing two different jobs she is considering…one is close, the next town from where she lives, maybe 15 minutes by car. The other is in San Francisco, which with traffic, is not close. Can be as little as 45 minutes, but with traffic and rush hour and the tunnel and bridge, it’s usually MUCH longer. The problem is that the job in San Francisco is the job that she would LOVE. LOVE. It’s just exactly what she wants to do, and not a lot of companies are out there hiring for it. The closer job…
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Violence Begins at Home…
I was walking the dog yesterday, listening to my beloved iPod, and this week’s (last week’s, really) This American Life is about crime, and the allure of it. There are several segments in each episode of TAL. The first was Julia Sweeney (Pat, from Saturday Night Live), talking about how she fleeced an old employer for 10K – 15K way back in her youth. Interesting. Perhaps even cute, because, you know, she’s Pat. Maybe we should all write about the crimes WE’VE committed, and that might be pretty interesting…make sure the statute of limitations is past, however. Anyway, the second segment was about a bank robber, Joe Loya, who enjoyed…
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Anyone Read Echidne?
Do any of my loyal 8 readers ever pop over to read Echidne of the Snakes, one of the blogs on my blogroll? She’s a minor greek goddess, a feminist, and somewhat political (OK, very, but I like that about her). I really liked her post today. Check it out. Really good thinking, really good writing.
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Work/Life Balance
I was reading here about a discussion on the “Mommy Wars”, and newer “Daddy Wars” (It’s a good blog post, you truly should go check it out! Now! But come back, ok?) and it reminded me of an issue at an old job, which was who was going to put in the million hours of OT, and who wasn’t. The argument went that the parents of small children couldn’t be expected to work late, because they had to pick up their kids at daycare, they had to get to a soccer game or a ballet recital, they had to tuck their kids in at bedtime. These are very valid arguments,…
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Here’s the post where I climb up on my soapbox…
Family Dinner Table I’ve been hearing and reading about the “Family Dinner Table” lately, and I’m sure that I’m preaching to the choir here, but come on people what the hell is so hard about sitting down to a meal together? I keep reading reports that talk about how only 58% of families sit down to dinner together 5 or more nights a week, and then I hear that within this 58%, for a large number of these folks, that means they each heat up their own microwave meal and scarf it down, and then go their seperate ways. This is upsetting to me. Do you want to hear the…
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You want some Yogurt?!?!
One of the blogs I sometimes read is the ever-popular Dooce. Sometimes it’s interesting, sometimes boring, like all blogs. Well, this little post reminded me of when Maya was a baby, and would torture me by trying to get me to get her in and out of her crib over and over and over again. Don’t tell me that babies don’t have that kind of motivation. It was torture. So here’s the scene…she’s upstairs, and I’m downstairs. She’s in her crib, in a loft, so her voice carries VERY well to the downstairs. She replays the things that I say to her, to get me to come up there. “What’s…
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Wanted and Loved
We were watching “Six Feet Under” last night, and boy, that show has gotten pretty depressing. Wait, it has always been depressing. What am I saying? Anyway, David and Keith are looking into adopting or having a surrogate mother help them, so they can be dads. At one point, they go to the house of another gay acquaintance of theirs, who has some other friends over for drinks. They raise a toast to David and Keith’s endeavors. The toast? “May every child be wanted and loved just as they are, because otherwise, life is hell.” Wow. Now, I know this toast is coming from a gay man, and his personal…
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Old Enough?
One of the comments on my post about boredom was that the person was surprised that I didn’t feel Maya was old enough to be left alone…which got me thinking, “How old is old enough”? I’m not stupid like these people, who left their kids for the weekend while they go to Vegas. But I DO trust my daughter, and since there’s no younger sibling around for her to worry about, when would be old enough? I know when I was her age, I was home alone, sort of, because my mom worked and my brother was there. He was 12 to my 10, so I would think that’s a…
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Boredom….
Ted just finished reading A Sense of the Mysterious, by Alan Lightman. Here’s a description that I found online: Alan Lightman was horror-struck to realise that he has no spare time. He has become “a unit of efficiency”. He has to reach back to his childhood for the last time he meandered through a day, when time was not cut into efficient byte-sized pieces for instant use. As he writes, the reader thinks. A Sense of the Mysterious is a collection of essays by physicist-writer Lightman, a great introduction to his work and pure pleasure for fans. So Ted was telling me a bit about this book yesterday, which got…
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Testing…
Today is the day that the 4th graders in our district (maybe the whole state?) take their writing test, to make sure no child is being left behind or anything like that. While I was taking Maya to school this morning, I asked her what she thought about the test. She said, “I hope we get to do personal narrative”. I love that kid. Love that she doesn’t get stressed out, just goes with the flow. A BIG part of that is the school. She goes to a public Montessori school (you read that right…public = free), and they have to do all of the testing that everyone else has…
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Communication 101
I was sitting on our beautiful new sofa last night, having a glass of wine, and trying to get sucked into my book. It wasn’t working so much last night, and there was nothing on TV, and Ted and Maya were already snoozing, so I was a bit bored. I started going through a drawer, and I found a series of notes between Maya and myself from sometime last year, maybe the year before, I’m not sure. Here’s what I remember. I told her to go to bed, and she ignored me. I asked again, and she ignored me. We got in a big fight about it. I told (yelled…