Read this

Read THIS if you are struggling as a parent, or if you are having a hard day, or if you are in any way a human being. It's beautiful. Thanks, Laura.

On the dole

I have a very fuzzy memory of standing in line at the Welfare office with my mother as a young child. I remember playing with those movie-theater ropes that swung like hammocks as we slowly made our way toward the impassive face behind the glass-fronted window. My mother had a stack of papers in her hand. Most likely she was wearing her burgundy-colored Levi's Bend-Over slacks (when read as a command that sounds awfully dirty). I was probably in my bright yellow Big Bird overalls, the very first piece of clothing I remember caring about.

My mom was not on Welfare for long. Just in those first bleak years of single motherhood in the early '70s. Soon she would be donning her polyester dickie and her lab coat and heading off to clean people's teeth while I went to the house of that scary babysitter who washed kids' mouths out with soap (child abuse! my mother claimed), and tried to feed me egg salad with sweet relish.

She's still at it! But with better clothes

Then today, I was back. Ok, not Welfare exactly, but the Unemployment office. More specifically, the buzzing, fluorescent-lit Employment Development Department, where I had to take a class this morning to satisfy the requirements of my $440-a-week checks from the government.

Sitting there in that windowless room, listening to Jack walk us through how to fill in boxes (no check marks! God, please, no check marks!) I couldn't help but think of The Full Monty. Since watching that movie is the closest I've come to this type of place since the Big Bird overalls days, it sort of made sense. And besides, my entertainment choices were pretty much whittled down to daydreaming about British working class male strippers, listening to Jack make stale jokes about the Govenator, or gnawing off my own hand.

Please watch this extreme charmingness in action:

And I have to say, aside from the fact that today's visit was seriously lacking in good disco music and pelvic thrusts (would a little Donna Summer kill them?), it wasn't really so bad. In fact, I'm actually quite grateful for my government handouts. And believe me, I've done way worse things for $440 a week.

Why I don't wear thongs

One time, back in those halcyon days of flying alone on planes, I was seated in a middle seat next to a woman with a screaming baby. She was alone, sitting in the aisle seat and struggling to calm her baby. As he wailed miserably, people all around were emitting audible puffs of disappointment and impatience. There was much eye rolling and why-me sighing. Our fellow back-of-the-planers were ringing their little flight attendant buttons and pleading to change seats, all right in front of this poor woman with the howling infant.

I was doing my usual thing, which is to say I was reading a book and pretending not to be there. I don't normally speak to people on planes. I'm not good with strangers and I generally don't like to get involved. So, although I wasn't requesting a seat change or rolling my eyes like some entitled jerk, neither was I offering much in the way of a sympathetic ear.

Once we all got settled and buckled in, the dreaded delay announcement came from the pilot, and on top of the infant howling and the adult moaning, there was a collective why-does-this-always-happen-to-me exhale. The baby took it up a notch, as if the plane delay were just what he needed on top of the day he was having. It was all quite highly agitated in our little aluminum tube.

This was when the guy sitting in front of me with all the hair gel turned around, removed an earbud, and asked the mom if there was anything she could do to quiet the baby, as if maybe she were napping and enjoying an in-flight movie while her child screamed away in a concerted effort to interfere with his Green Day album.

The whole thing was just too depressing for words and I plummeted into one of those the-world-is-such-a-shitty-cruel-place kind of funks at which I excel. I didn't like the sound of the baby crying any more than anyone else, but, hey, there are babies in the world. That's why there are also earplugs in the world.

At the height of all the depressing social shunning of the mother and her baby, a woman approached from a few seats back, leaned over and wordlessly took the screaming baby in her arms, held him over her shoulder, and walked him up and down the aisle until he stopped screaming. The mother watched in awe. It was if harps started playing and fairy dust rained down upon us all.

from here

At the risk of sounding a little like one of those mysterious Foundation for a Better Life ads, I am convinced this angel in a tight perm and elastic waist jeans descended to Earth to show us all how easy it is to make things better. All you have to do is help out a little.

Which is more than I can say for the old lady who descended during one of my more stressful parenting moments.

It was pouring outside and in an effort to allow my kids to blow off a little steam, I took them to the mall, where everyone in San Francisco had had the exact same idea. The place was thronged with people in dripping boots and damp jackets. And, lucky for me, my kids had recently decided it was positively hilarious to run away from me in two different directions.

I was at the very end of my already frayed rope, physically holding down Oliver as I strapped him into the stroller (aka child containment device) while I begged Maggie to stop and watched while she disappeared into a forest of legs. I was sweating so hard I could feel droplets running down my sides and into the waist of my jeans. The only reason I was not crying was fear of public shaming.

It was at this moment that a smiling old woman in bright pink lipstick touched my shoulder to get my attention. I looked into her face, expecting a word of encouragement or an empathetic story about surviving motherhood. Instead she pursed her lips and said, "Dear, everyone can see your butt crack when you bend over like that."

The Circle of Life (with pieces of ham)

When I was a kid my mother used to say "Children's waste goes to mother's waist" as she picked at my leftovers. I am embarrassed to admit that I did not understand this little play on words until adulthood. Probably post-college (I can be a little slow sometimes).

Having chickens has made me realize how much food our own kids waste. On the counter we have a bowl into which we scrape all scraps considered delectable by chickens (basically everything but garlic, onions, coffee grounds and egg shells). It's a lot of food.

Here's the breakfast and lunch contributions for today:

(poppy seed bread, pieces of ham, pita chips, radish tops, nibbled apple slices, cheese, milk)

But here's the good news: they turn all this into eggs. Everyday. Garbage into food!

(That egg on the left is the normal size for our chickens.

That egg on the right is some monster birthed after much loud squawking yesterday.

I'm betting it's a triple-yolker. Poor dear. )

Okay, so I'm leaving out the poop part. If I'm perfectly honest I have to admit that mostly, they turn our leftovers into poop. But does this bother me? Does it gross me out? It does not! Because we turn the poop into compost which we use to grow the vegetables that our kids won't eat. The vegetables that end up in the scrap bowl, and are fed to the chickens, who turn it into eggs...and poop. We're like our own little biosphere over here.

What I needs is a secretary

I am not the only one parked at Ocean Beach, sitting in my car and watching the wild Pacific through the windshield. The old Chinese man in the car to my right is napping, mouth wide open. The suburban-looking man two cars away in the silver highlander is smoking a cigarette, (I'm thinking his family still thinks he quit for good back in 2001). On my way in, I passed two old ladies sitting in a Civic, arguing.

Me? I’m blogging, catching the last 27 minutes before it’s time to pick up the kids from the hula-hooping babysitter and make dinner. And really, I can’t complain about the office space. I mean, I have a minivan, and as work carrels go, it’s pretty spacious.

This is what my time is like these days, little snatched moments that I try to stuff with something productive (I have a productivity disease and can only feel happy if I can list some worthwhile accomplishments for the day; this isn’t as hard as it sounds since I sometimes allow myself to count showering among my achievements.). Today my patchwork went like this: two hours on the couch while the kids were at school, then three more hours at Peet’s until I got kicked off the Wi-Fi. Now it’s Ocean Beach, with surfers tumbling in the white water right in front of me and the crazies sticking yet more old seagull feathers in their dreadlocks.

And in the killing-two-birds-with-one-stone category, I’m pretty sure the sun baking me through the windshield is good for my cold.

Playing Catch Up

As you may have noticed, I'm not exactly winning any Blogger of the Year awards for frequency lately. I apologize for my dereliction of duty. The good news is, my freelance life is booming. The bad news (for you, at least) is, with the exception of about 9 hours a week, I am taking care of my kids. Those precious free nine hours are spent writing about hotels or interviewing people who know stuff. Every once in a while they are spent watching You Tube videos forwarded by my mom.

But here are the four most exciting things that have happened to me and my family in the last week. Because, you know, I want you to feel up to speed.

1.) An MFA creative writing class at DePaul University in Chicago is using a short-short story of mine called "Why You Shouldn't Have Gone in the First Place," as an example of "time and place." I know this because one of the students wrote me an email to say he liked it. Isn't that nice? It's in this book, along with many, many good short stories. I wrote it a hundred years ago. Maybe a thousand.

2.) I had a minor but important parenting breakthrough after my total Sylvia Plath collapse last week. Here it is: I don't have to follow one parenting philosophy word-for-word. I can pick and chose and figure out what works for us. Like, I can give time-outs AND involve my children in decision making and conversation. I know, it sounds elementary, but for me, freedom from thinking I am a failure at being the perfect "positive discipline" groovy parent has been revolutionary. Peace reins in the household. Also, I think the fact that my children saw me just sob my eyes out has made them realize that I do have a breaking point and that they probably don't want to see it again. Proof once more that fear is as good a parenting tool as anything else.

3.) We went to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival where my kids sang along to "This Land is Your Land," got filthy dirty, and learned the phrase "jump the fuck up." Thank you, Steve Earle.

4.) Green Apple Books has a candy drawer in the office and, as the wife of one of the owners, I have access to it. I will now be working here every Monday morning.

Peace and chocolate, my people.

Why hand washing is important

Here's a conversation I just had with Maggie:

Maggie

sniffing her hand and wrinkling her nose

Smell my hand

Me

P.U. Stinky. What is that?

Maggie

Shrugs

Me

Well, let's go wash your hands.

Maggie

No, that's okay. It's just cream cheese that I got off my belly.

Me

What?

Maggie

It's just stinky cause it's old. I wiped it off my belly.

Me

What?

Maggie

shrugging like I'm out of my mind

It's just, you know, some old cream cheese.

I just want to add for the record that I have not given Maggie any cream cheese in days and that I know for a fact that her belly is cream cheese-free. The source of her stink-hand remains a mystery.