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

We're here.  So far, so good.  Activities to date include:

-Happy hour margaritas down at the beach.

-Swimming in the pool.

-Much quesadilla eating.

-The kids trying to figure out the concept of Mexico.  Is that store Mexico?  Is that tree Mexico? It's all Mexico, we say.  Mexico is all around us.  They look at us like were crazy and then take off running down the beach like they've been here all their lives.

-One big fight with mom followed by a trip to the fabric store.

-Twelve hours of sleep (for us and the kids).

Tomorrow we leave civilization for Yelapa.  I'll report back in a week.  I certainly hope our trip is better than Mighty Girl's. Yikes!

Have a good one.  And drink some tap water in our name.

A thing I like

Twelve hours of sleep. 

Kids, surfing and why eco-paint is so great

True and real conversation overheard in front of the surf shop by my house:

GUY WITH SURFBOARD BALANCED ON HIS HEAD "Dude, the thing about kids it they totally cut into your surfing, big time."

GUY IN SURF HOODIE: "Dude."

ME: [to myself] "Duuude. You have no idea."

I mean, look at me.  Two kids and I NEVER surf!

A thing I like

I've edited stories and written about low and no-VOC paint for Sunset a couple of times without thinking too much of it.  That all changed last week when I decided to paint the kids' room a lovely mandarin orange (see it up there?  isn't it nice?).  I went with no-VOC paint because my overbearing conscious was going to accuse me of endangering my spawn if I didn't.  And let me tell you, it was a revelation.  Painting without those heady toxic fumes really does make a huge difference.  I could have painted forever.  I LOVE painting.  I'm going to paint everything I own and then I'm going to go to your house and paint everything you own just so you too can experience the joyful revolution that is no-VOC paint.  

How to win a fight with a toddler, I wish I knew

Picture if you will: 

ME: yelling and finger wagging, my face in its meanest mommy grimace. "Do NOT kick me!"

MAGGIE: laughing and kicking and refusing to put on her pants, "Mommy, you're fighting with me, ha ha ha."

ME: gritting my teeth and looking murderous, "If you do not cooperate right now, you are getting a time out."

MAGGIE: her face amused and placid, "I want a time out."

ME: to myself, "holy shit, what do I do now?"

Seriously, we just had our biggest fight to date and I was utterly defeated.  I mean, yes, I finally got the pants on her (after some abuse-bordering manhandling that made her laugh even harder), and yes, she finally took a nap.  But man, I really lost my cool and she, well, she just held her ground, cool as a cucumber.  I looked like such a blustering hothead compared to her. 

Not only does this not bode well for the future teenage years, but it just really bugs me to feel as if I am in opposition to my kids all the time. It's not at all what I had in mind.

My friend Vida, who has two of the most awesome kids you'll ever meet, once said her approach to discipline was to raise kids who wanted to do right by her, a we're-all-in-this-together approach. Right on, I thought at the time, back in those idealistic, pre-kid days.  And I still like it in theory. Only what do you do if you've accidentally raised kids who determinedly want to do WRONG by you, who stare down your requests and commands and laugh?  So far, the answer in this house is to become a yelling, angry, frustrated dork, someone so ineffectual and cloddy that two-year-olds look at you and laugh. I'm at a loss, really.

On a happier note, I've been super good about my resolutions, especially 3, 4, and 5.  I even brought the Mister a cupcake one day. The BUY NOTHING policy does not extend to food. Nice, huh?

A thing I like

Parenting help from the ladies at Symbio in San Francisco.  Noelle Cochran (above), infant sleep specialist extraordinaire, and Lele Diamond (below), marriage and family therapist extraordinaire, have come together to form Symbio, the biggest boon for frustrated parents since the invention of the cocktail hour.  They will help you with figuring out how to get your kids to sleep, bolstering your kid-ravaged marriage, disciplining your toddlers, finding the right preschool for your child, and just talking you down from the ledge when it feels like you are doing all the wrong stuff.  Really, they rock.  And their fees are reasonable.  

Love!

This is the most recent letter from my friend h., who lives in another country and has been quite sad and lonely lately.  She just—like a month ago—fell in love and the crazy, unabashed joy in this letter makes me smile every time I read it.  I mean, damn!  Falling in love is such fun.  All us old married folk should just take a minute to remember that feeling.  You will grin.  I promise.

samantha, 

i just want you to know that things are so, so good.

t. is great. great, as in kind, smart, interesting, caring, tender, funny, honest, original and talented. and he is TOTALLY completely NUTS about me. and he shows it all the time, and i love it and i am super kitty-meow-meow girl and just kiss him constantly and purr with delight. the other night, after dinner, we met my friend e. for a drink before she goes off to india for a month. then we caught a taxi back home and when it stopped we got in and we were talking about going to rajistan together the next time he has to go for work (he goes maybe twice a year) and we just kept talking and at some point the taxi driver said, "India sounds great, you two, but where are you going NOW?" we had completely forgotten to tell the driver where to take us, so absorbed in our little smoochy love bubble world. we are utterly SICKENING in public. 

and i no longer think he's kind of ugly. i think he's the SEXIEST most SENSUAL man in the whole world. isn't that amazing?

yesterday i also met his daughters, a. and o. we went to the marionette theater for cindarella and then took byron out to the park. i think they were more thrilled with byron than they were with the marionettes. during the intermission, o, the 5 year-old, climbed up on my lap and stayed there for the rest of the show. then when we went to go get byron they saw my fuschia kitchen and all of them approved. even a. the 10 year-old, who is much more introverted and serious than o. was really eager to tell me all about the philip pullman series, the Golden Compass. we also had a long, serious discussion about which cookies are the best for breakfast. 

t. and i were careful not even to hold hands in front of them, but later, when his daughters were walking ahead of us with byron in the middle of them he took my hand and kissed it and told me he felt like the luckiest man in the world. i feel so different samantha. it's so odd. it's like my neighborhood feels like the most magical place and i feel like i just got awarded some crazy life-long sweepstakes award prize jackpot thingy. 

just wanted to update you. because you said not to be remiss in the correspondence department and so here i am corresponding. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! 

ha ha HA! AND the best part, is that because bryon was so fundamental in getting us together (as the dog was the focus of our first conversation) t. wants to do something nice for him. i really think that byron would love a kitten as a friend. so when t's house is finished (he hopes march, i think it'll be may) he says he'll get a kitten for byron. and i can choose the name of the kitten. i think colette sounds good, don't you?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

LOVE!

remember when i thought i would literally DIE from lonliness? i won't.

h

Disneyland sounds pretty good right about now, or How motherhood has turned me into a total wimp

This is a picture of the place that I'm so scared of

It's 5:31 am.  I've been up since about 3:40, when Oliver woke me by falling out of the new big kid bed and clunking his noggin on the floor. He was fine, a little hugging and a re-tuck-ining and he was back to sleep.  I, on the other hand, do not go quite so easily into the good night.  I like to lie in bed stressing out about our upcoming trip to Mexico, the one I do not want to go on.  Woven into my exhausted visions of tragedy and discomfort (how am I supposed to bathe them? Where will they nap?)  are weird calculations about how much fabric it will take to make closet curtains, and what a text block of 40 words looks like.  It's like one of those horrible Scrabble dreams or crossword nightmares where all night long you dream fitfully of letters and tiles and points.  Ugh. 

Motherhood, it seems, has turned me into a total wuss.  I have traveled all over Mexico by junked out bus, slept in trucker motels, eaten Guinea pig in Ecuador, slept on ant-infested dirt in Panama.  But that was when it was just me.  And that was back when I could sleep in if the ants kept me up.  

Now I have two kids to think about and I have the havoc those two kids can wreak on my life when we lack sleep or comfort or diversion.  Suddenly Mexico seems like way more trouble than it's worth and I totally get places like Disneyland and Club Med (songs for the kiddies and drinks in exchange for beads).  I don't like that I've turned out this way.  Honestly I thought there would be way more of the loosey-goosey mellow-yellow about me as a parent.  Alas, here I am.  Next stop: drip dry, elastic waist pants and a money belt.

What keeps you up at night? Tell me.  I need company.

A thing I like

Art by Mary Emma Hawthorne, who I discovered through Big Happy Orange.  Lovely and way out of my price range.  But wouldn't it be nice to have big white walls and honey-colored floors and these paintings on the wall?

Just make the bed: simpler New Years resolutions

I think I messed up.  I have no gift for resolutions.  I mean, how am I supposed to measure whether or not I'm being nicer than the situation calls for?  It's certainly something to keep in mind, but as a resolution it's sort of dumb.

And number 4?  The one about my career?  That's just a cop out. 

So here it goes, my revised 2009 resolutions inspired by other, more gifted resolution makers like the folks at Apartment Therapy and Andrea of Hula Seventy.  Those people know how to make lists!

1. Lose fifteen pounds (I'm nothing if not consistent).

2. Replace my closet doors with long curtains made of beautiful fabric. 

3. Make the bed everyday.

The new and improved number 4. Write five pages of fiction every week

5. Say or do one nice thing for The Mister each day.  This can be as simple as pouring the morning coffee.

This is so much better, don't you think?  I'm going to print it out an post it above my desk. And that right there is resolution number 6.

Please write and tell me your resolutions.  I just adore self-improvement.

A thing I like

Okay, now that I am BUYING NOTHING until April, I keep coming up with a million things I just love and have to have.  In some weird way, though, it's sort of fun not to get them.  It's the same feeling I got registering for wedding gifts—like a virtual shopping spree.  All of the retail high, none of the money.  Still, I'm keeping a list.  Which in and of itself takes a lot of the pressure off buying.  Here's the first thing: a gold pouf from Tazi Designs.  Beautiful, no?