• In Case You’re Wondering…

    Maya came home safe, sound, and happy from her overnight trip to Hidden Villa, in Los Altos Hills…(See, I didn’t say WHERE she was going before, in case some mad fucker was reading my blog and decided to go get her! But she’s home safe now, so I can say it.) She had a wonderful time: saw TONS of stars, took long hikes, made friends with a 3-week-old baby goat (kid) named Rosemary, had Frosted Flakes for breakfast, gave herself a sponge bath because she wanted to be clean but they weren’t taking showers, made a camp fire, learned a new camp-fire song about baby sharks and decomposing bodies and…

  • Car Shopping & Left Bank

    Last night, since Maya was out of town on business, Ted and I decided to go crazy and do those things we can’t do when she’s around…that’s right, we went car shopping and then to dinner. 🙂 We are a two car family, one of which is a 2005 Camry, complete with car payments, while the other is a 1986 Volvo (It’s a classic, right? At 20 years, it’s a classic? Why would anyone call a Volvo a classic? It’s a box!) Anyway, we went looking at cars to perhaps replace the Volvo. Sigh. It’s probably a good idea, because the car is wearing out. But we went from no…

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  • Car Shopping & Left Bank

    Last night, since Maya was out of town on business, Ted and I decided to go crazy and do those things we can’t do when she’s around…that’s right, we went car shopping and then to dinner. 🙂 We are a two car family, one of which is a 2005 Camry, complete with car payments, while the other is a 1986 Volvo (It’s a classic, right? At 20 years, it’s a classic? Why would anyone call a Volvo a classic? It’s a box!) Anyway, we went looking at cars to perhaps replace the Volvo. Sigh. It’s probably a good idea, because the car is wearing out. But we went from no…

  • Pining….

    Maya left this morning for an overnight ‘camping’ field trip with her class. I say ‘camping’ in quotes, because they get to sleep in heated cabins. That’s MY kind of ‘camping’ too, by the way. I remember going to science camp when I was in 6th grade, which was a 1 week camp that all of the school kids went to. It was SO FUN, perhaps the most fun legally allowed for kids who haven’t gone through puberty yet. So I’m sure she is going to have a GREAT time, hiking and singing around the camp fire (if they don’t get rained on…storm scheduled for tonight or tomorrow early), giggling…

  • I noticed on my blogger dashboard that yesterday’s post was post #99, which would make this one post #100! Wow, who knew. I didn’t really know how much I would enjoy blogging, how freeing it would feel to just write whatever I feel like writing, whenever I feel like writing it, and to not really worry much about whether it’s good or not. Amazing what a difference that makes, that worry about whether someone will like it or not. But hey, I’m not getting graded, I’m not getting paid, it’s just something that I do for me, so I can write whatever I want. I like that. So I’m thinking…

  • 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…

  • Yoga thoughts…

    A few months ago, during my yoga class, my teacher talked about a philosophy that kind of threw me for a loop. This was before I started my blog, so I didn’t write about it then…you all know I can’t have a thought without writing these days…and since I have no new thoughts today (outside of sorting girl scout cookies and what’s for dinner), I thought I would try to bring some of those lost yogi thoughts back to my conscious mind. Now, I don’t know what any of these philosophies were CALLED, because I was doing yoga, not taking notes. So don’t ask me. But…here it is…a lot of…

  • Where’s Tonya Harding when we NEED her?

    And no, I’m not actually talking about the olympics. I’m talking about the evil-one-who-must-not-be-named-but-surely-stays-sickeningly-thin-by-injecting-herself-with-her-own-urine. Read on for choice quotes like these: “I think we should have saved the ushers some time and just removed all the ugly people” and “”You don’t want the Republicans in power, does that mean you want a dictatorship, gay boy?” Very nice. I try not to let her get to me, because she’s just stupid and not worth it, but it would be easier if she would STOP OPENING HER STUPID MOUTH. I SO want Tonya to take out the evil-one’s knee cap.

  • My Cousin…

    I have a cousin, Tony, who I only knew as a small child. He was about 10 or 12 years older than me, and I worshiped him. When I was about 4, we moved to a homestead outside of Fairbanks, Alaska, and we really didn’t know anything at all about living in that kind of environment. He was raised there, so he came out to stay with us and show us how to do all of the things we had to do…(when I say ‘we’, I mean my mom…I was, after all, 4). We had no phone, no running water, a coal burning pot bellied stove for heat, a broken…

  • Thoughts on Reading…

    I’ve seen this posted a few places, most notably here and here. You fill in the blank, either on your blog or in the comments section. Everybody should read _____________________. So, here’s my list of things everybody should read: 1. This Post, from Angry Black Bitch 2. Chrysanthemum 3. The Lorax 4. The 100 Dresses 5. The Red Tent 6. The Unbearable Lightness of Being 7. Bel Canto 8. A Wrinkle in Time 9. The Handmaids Tale 10. The Mists of Avalon 11. The Forgotten Door 12. The Grapes of Wrath 13. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter 14. Invisible Man

  • Does this Bother You?

    It bothers me. There’s a story on Yahoo today about a computer system you can use to check what your kids are eating at school. And you can limit what they can or cannot eat, how often, etc. I have a couple of thoughts on this. If we don’t want our kids eating crap at school, STOP SELLING CRAP AT SCHOOL. If you don’t want your kids eating crap at school, and the school sells crap, pack them a lunch. Better yet, do it with them, so they can see what healthy choices are. Tell them, it’s good to have some protein, some carbs, some calcium, some fruit, veggies, etc.…

  • Dream symbolism?

    Has anyone seen “The Straight Story“, about a guy who drives his lawnmower a couple of states over to visit his estranged brother? Well, I kind of had that dream last night, except my lawnmower thing was smaller than this one, with no trailer, and I wasn’t going to visit my estranged brother (I have a brother, but we’re not estranged, even in weird David Lynch type dreams). I was driving across the country, which I have done a few times, but usually in a normal car. With stopping for food and sleep, the drive from SF to Philly takes about 4 days. Well, in my dream it was already…

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  • Weekend Wrap Up

    This weekend was jam packed with fun. Got to leave work early on Friday, in celebration of the long weekend. 🙂 I went home and started dinner, which was fancy tuna sandwiches. We went to Ted’s brother’s house to eat dinner and watch Battlestar Galactica, which we do every Friday now. We don’t get Sci-Fi channel on our cable, but his brother has satellite or something. We can’t get it, because of the trees near our house, and we’re too cheap to pay for the expensive cable that would come with the channel. But it’s fun anyway. Saturday was cleaning day. Ugh. My kitchen was so disgusting, it was embarrasing.…

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  • A Letter to the Dinosaurs

    When Maya was 4 years old, she was REALLY into Dinosaurs. My brother bought her a DVD called “Walking with Dinosaurs” that she had seen on the Discovery Channel, and she LOVED it. Except the end, where the asteroid comes and wipes out 90% of life on Earth, including the Dinosaurs. So she wrote them this letter (dictated, obviously, but the picture she drew…her favorite dinosaur was the diplodocous…she was 4 1/2). This was written in November of 2000, when she was getting ready to go to Autumn’s birthday party. Click on the image to make it bigger and easier to read.