Random Observations on DC

I promised a little more about DC, so here it goes, random observations.

1. The Newseum makes most other museums feel pretty Podunk. It's pretty much six floors of awesomeness, especially if you are sort of a First Amendment junkie, uber-nerd (my favorite kind of people). The Pulitzer Prize photography room alone is worth the pricey admission. But bring your hankie because no one wins a Pulitzer for taking pictures of healthy, well-adjusted children feeling joyful.

Photo from here.

2. DC is a very black city (54.4%). San Francisco is not (6.5%). In DC, white people and black people are together a lot, doing business, hanging out, going to school, conversing. In San Francisco, they are not. In DC there are black people across the socioeconomic spectrum (hello, Mr. President). In San Francisco there are also middle class African Americans, but the majority of black San Franciscans live in poorer, marginalized neighborhoods. I guess what I am trying to say is that race relations felt much more relaxed in DC than in supposedly super-liberal, groovy SF. Here, it feels like a bunch of stiff white people trying to be PC about the black people they don't actually know. There, it just felt like a completely natural mix of people doing their thing. Which is what my dad always said about Southern cities: that despite a reputation for and history of racism, there was actually a lot more regular, day-to-day interaction between races. And that completes my portion of the national conversation on race. Now watch this mazing video.

3. In DC it seemed as if there was a larger percentage of young women who dressed as if they were on Gossip Girls. They were all so blond and shiny and barely clad and slutty looking. We saw lots of Daisy Dukes and stilettos. Where, I ask you, were the dowdy policy wonks in sweater sets? I know, I'm so totally old and prudish now.

I go where Obama goes: a weekend away

If you've missed me, I'm sorry. We went to DC. Washington DC. Cross number 31 off this list. and let me just say, this is one great city. I sort of expected a lot of suited up blowhards, but it turns out that's only inside the Capitol Building. Otherwise, nice place.

It's Sunday. We're still recovering from last night—the Mister's 20th High School reunion. And a word of advice on that (you can thank me later): let him go to his all-boys Catholic school reunion by himself. You can watch a movie and drink vodka sodas by yourself for one night. He can drink beer in the cafeteria and talk to guys named Stevie. You will both be happier for it.

This is the man I married

More later on such topics as drink 40-year-olds at weddings, the FDR Memorial, the Newseum, Georgetown's cuteness, Obama obsession, race relations, and 20-somethings dressed like hoochie mamas. In the meantime, love from Obamaland (sigh).

What if I start wearing mom jeans?

Since I am no longer the home editor at Sunset and my mind has turned temporarily to travel, I've sort of fallen off my manic home makeover bandwagon. This also has to do with my newly refreshed urge to move out of our boxy, tiny house and into something a little more open, with a little better weather, and maybe some decent public schools nearby.

Yes, I am contemplating suburbia. Marin County, to be exact. Or sort of. I waffle. Part of me wants to raise cool city kids able to converse in Mandarin and navigate MUNI and enjoy a film in translation. And part of me remembers the childhood pleasures of hot summers, school yards with grass, and the feeling of having free reign over our little town.

A lot of my friends are crossing the Bay and settling into the land of parking lots and ice cream trucks. But I don't know. What if it makes us soft? What if my kids grow up thinking everyone is white? What if I start taking Pilates and walking around in my workout clothes with a giant nonfat iced latte in my hand at all times? It could happen.

A thing I like

I know he hasn't exactly fixed the economy (yet) and, well, the troops are still in Iraq. Healthcare looks like it's probably not going to get the radical full-body makeover it so desperately needs. But, I can't help it, I still love Obama with a purple passion. Which is why I like to waste my time scrolling through the White House Flickr page. My current favorite? This one of Michelle cradling a woman's face on Fourth of July. It's just so full of heart.

Just a little more about Yelapa, Mexico

I was a fourth grade pie lady

Exactly a year ago I published a story in Sunset about Yelapa, the Mexican village where I went to fourth grade and which I have visited nearly every year for 30 years. In it I waxed extremely nostalgic, basing much of my argument that it is one of the best places in the West on my thesis that it had barely changed at all in three decades.  

The Mister and Ollie on the panga to Yelapa

A lot of people traveled to Yelapa because of that story (I saw some of them holding the article in a plastic sleeve and consulting my restaurant recommendations!) and I sometimes feel a little squeamish about that.  Yelapa is a beautiful place, maybe even magical in its way, but I feel the need to set the record straight. So here it is, my revision:  

Yelapa has changed A LOT since I was a kid and there was no electricity and my friend Fermina had never seen a pizza and no one, not one resident, had a TV.  Yelapan teenagers dress like Kanye West now.  They have cell phones and designer jeans.  Gone are the pigs rooting around in the mud on the trail, in large part because the trails are are now PAVED with cobblestones, allowing ATVs to zip up and down. There are drug dealers and yoga instructors and a full-time doctor in Yelapa.  You can buy Diet Coke at the grocery store and hear Norah Jones at the taco stand.  If you go you will most likely see more gringos than Mexicans.  But the biggest change, the thing that made me sad and wistful like nothing else this year, was the total lack of pie ladies.

Yelapa has been known for its pie ladies, they of the sturdy calves and impeccable balance, who trudge up and down the beach selling fresh, homemade pie out of Tupperware balanced on their heads.  And now they are gone. It's the end of something good, truly.  I haven't had enough time to properly grieve and process this loss, but I know for sure that life will never be the same.

Still, the kids liked it.  

Maggie discovers her inner Cousteau

Ollie discovers his inner Luke Skywalker

A thing I like

I'm finally reading Obama's Dreams from My Father (my last drop of the Koolaid) and man, it's really good.  He can write.  I would probably even read this book if it weren't written by the holy savior of America.  This guy, this smart, human, complicated, flawed, compassionate person is our president.  It hardly seems possible.  Pinch!  

Obama's inauguration in Mexico, lovely Mexico

Here's an image:  We are sitting in plastic chairs, huddled around a TV inside a cinder block house/restaurant at the edge of the jungle. Roosters interrupt us in their boorish and macho way.  It's hot.  The door to the bathroom is a moldy plastic shower curtain. Everyone is eating bacon and eggs and drinking the world's worst coffee.  Then Obama appears on screen and the room, filled with maybe 50 Americans—mostly middle aged, mostly Berkeley-esque—is silent and we watch the inauguration and some of us cry and everyone claps, especially for Aretha, giant hat and all.  

Everyone, that is, except for the Mister.  He's busy reading If You Take a Mouse to School out on the patio to our twins, who have chosen the exact moment of Obama's speech to get all squirmy and testy.  I try to relieve him, I do.  But he has martyr tendencies and maybe I don't try all that hard.  Anyway, I owe him one.

On our way upriver to watch the inauguration

And, Mexico.  Here's what I forgot when I was spazzing out and getting all worked up and worried about the trip: I love Mexico and I'm sorry I ever joked about cheating on it with Disneyland.  I would never do that.  Disneyland may have a better sewage system and a more reliable sense of time, but Mexico has soul.  And mariachi music, and margaritas (which, in combination, always make me weep).  They have boats painted orange and aqua. They have fishing poles made of bleach bottles, and way better Cokes, and lollipops covered in chili powder, and geckos that chatter in the night. They have kids everywhere and baby girls in frilly dresses. They have waiters who pick up your kids, and brown pelicans patrolling in formation. Parrots. Palm trees.  Bananas growing in bunches of 100.  Donkeys carrying sand.  And they have best avocados in the world.  Bar none.

Paintings on the street I did not buy

Hot dog-lime cups I also did not buy

Maggie and Ollie are so not into pants in Mexico

What didn't happen in 2008

The end of the year is coming and so my mind turns to lists and accomplishments and—alas, it is hard being me—failures.  

Ten things that didn't happen this year:

1. My anthology proposal failed to "inspire the proper enthusiasm" with my new agent.

2. I did not get a job blogging.

3. I did not win the Narrative Magazine First-Person contest.

4. I did not get tickets to Obama's inauguration.

5. The New York Times' Modern Love section did not publish my essay about hating my dog.

6. I did not plant a veggie garden.

7. I did not finish papering my hallway doors.

8. I did not discover my god-given talent for performance story telling.

9. I did not achieve the proper "body after baby" according to People Magazine

10. I did not always remember my pledge to reach out with kindness to everyone I know.

But stay tuned, because tomorrow's list is Ten Things That Did Happen This Year.  

Plus, there's still time: 22 days to be exact.  That's 31,680 minutes of potential.

I gotta get to the inauguration

I can't let this kid down

So there I sat on election night, eyes all brimming with joy, heart all aflutter with yes-we-can optimism, guts all knotted with regret.  I wanted to be in Grant Park in Chicago, crying and cheering at hope's ground zero.  

So, now I'm scheming to get to the inauguration.  Getting a ticket from a California rep. is out of the question.  I went to Jackie Speiers' website and it says she's gotten over 3,000 requests for her 198 tickets.  BUT, and here's where my hope lies, my in-laws live in Oklahoma, where they pump up Republicans from the ground with their oil.  I figure there can't be more than a few hundred folks from down that way who want to go to freezing DC on January 20 to celebrate with the liberal elite. So, my mother-in-law has put in a request to her rep.  It's a long shot, but I've got to at least try to be a part of history.

I can't let this happen.

MAGGIE (twenty years hence): Mom did you get to witness the inauguration of the first black president of the U.S.?

ME (all stressed-out, with a bad dye-job): No dear, I was taking advantage of Old Navy's post-holiday sales.

I think I'll make us go even if we don't have tickets.  We can just stand far away, chattering with cold and good old American pride.

Obama makes me feel like being a good person

Today I visited my friend Rachel and her tiny new baby, Hazel.  And of course we talked about breast feeding and sleep deprivation and the horror that is using a breast pump.  But we also talked about our dear Prez Elect (if you are a fetishist like me, look here for great photos of the MAN).  She watched the election returns from her lofty perch above the city with her hubby and her new babe.  And as she looked down upon San Francisco and Golden Gate Park (her view is incredible) after Obama won, she said she imagined troops of Americans, dressed in overalls and getting to work like something out of a Social Realism mural.  Maybe there would be oxen.

And the funny thing is, I have been having the same exact vision.  During Obama's acceptance speech I was so desperate to do my part I would have grabbed a shovel and started to dig if only someone would have given me a project.  Then, just today, I got an email from my aunt expressing her need to be of service.  "I feel like volunteering for something!  Teaching school in Appalachia?"  she wrote.  

The point is, this president has got us pumped!  Never in my lifetime has a public figure asked the citizens to be of service. Now, we just need to harness all this energy and goodwill and fix some shit.  Maybe we can start here.  Or here.  Or even here.  We can all be community organizers.