39 things to do before my next birthday

It's my birthday. Thirty-nine.  Doesn't that sound old?  It does, doesn't it?  But it doesn't feel old.  It feels just fine, in fact.  When I stop to think about how we all seem to be so terrified of getting older, it seems rather silly.  I suppose it's the sense of shrinking possibility that does it.  Less time to do the stuff that feels worthwhile.   And the looks thing, of course.  But what are you gonna do?  I had my chance to be 23.  And I can say with certainty that it was no better than being 38.  In fact, it sort of sucked.

Here are 39 things I like to do in the final year of my 30s:

1. start some meaningful and ongoing volunteer work

2. re-read some Shakespeare plays

3. learn to sew, even a little

4. make a headboard for our bed

5. throw a party

6. visit a state I've never been to

7. reunite with some friends I don't see very often: Tara, Vida, Kate, Hilary

8. publish at least one piece in a national publication

9. go sailing

10. take my kids to the circus

11. eat hot dogs on the pier at Chrissy Field with my family

12. swim in the Yuba River

13. take my kids to play in the snow

14. take my kids to see a dance performance

15. go to Vermont

16. host a brunch/clothing swap at my house

17. follow the sun more when it gets foggy

18. eat oysters at Tomales Bay Oyster Company

19. spend a weekend by myself

20. make ice cream and then sundaes with Magnolia and Oliver

21. finish landscaping my front yard

22. find some more good, cheap restaurants to love in San Francisco

23. go the Alameda flea market

24. take a dance class

25. do some more encaustic painting

26. go hiking with the kids in backpacks before they really get too heavy

27. take the kids on a ferry ride to Angel Island

28. clean out the garage

29. eat pupusas

30. plant a few veggies (pickling cucumbers!)

31. spend a weekend away with The Mister

32. write a letter to my representative

33. have a movie marathon day at a multiplex

34. write a rough draft of the novel I'm working on

35. bake bread

36. get a massage

37. organize the closets

38. make a new friend

39. have a San Francisco day with my family: cable car, Swensen's, chowder in a sourdough bowl, Fisherman's Wharf

P.S.  If you want to give me a b-day gift, go over there to the right and become one of my followers.

What I found in my closet: history, Hungary, and Dave Eggers

Not my real closet

I'm true to my word and last night I began the odious number 37 on my 39 Things to do Before My Next Birthday list. I started with the closet in the guestroom/TV room/office/library.  It's also known as the Mister's closet. The Mister, being the exact opposite of  a clothes horse (what it takes to get that guy to buy a new pair of pants, I swear!) only needs half a closet.  The other half is relegated to, well all that stuff we think we need, but don't really want out and about: Framed art we no longer hang on our walls, a sewing kit, many old photo albums in various states of yellowing, all my beading paraphernalia left over from the '90s, a gazillion instruction books for obsolete electronic devices.  You get the picture.   

But here are some things I found that were kind of cool:

1. A list in my grandmother's handwriting titled "50 best paying markets for writers."  It's dated 1948 and includes a section called "Markets buying humorous greetings."  This reminds me so much of my own yearnings, ambitions and bouts of industrious list-making I almost can't stand it. 

2. Three crumbling copies of the Golden Gate Park News with advertisements for Dr. C. Bouvier's Buchu Gin health tonic, "fine lots" in Larkspur for $200 ($1 down, call Bush 541), and "knit to fit" underwear on Post St.  I can't for the life of me find a date on the thing, but it advertises the new Japanese Tea Gardens so I'm figuring they're from around 1894.  

3. This polaroid of Dave Eggers and some girl I've never seen before. By the way, check out his lovely if nervous acceptance speech for the 2008 TED award.  "The primacy of the written word in terms of nurturing democracy, nurturing an enlightened life."  Oh, Dave.  Sigh. 

4. My student ID from when I studied in Hungary in 1989.  Obviously it was before the whole eyebrow shaping phenomena.  Man, did we eat a lot of sausage back then. 

 

A thing I like

Getting rid of stuff.

chicken pozole and huge egg giveaways

That's a decoy egg so they know what they are supposed to do in that box

This is the one year anniversary of this blog. My second entry, back when I was still a blogging newbie, was about the Sonoma Co. Fair and we are headed back this afternoon to ride more ponies and eat fried things off of sticks. The circle of life and all that.

As of yesterday at 5 o'clock I am officially unemployed. Although I am not all broken up about it, I do feel at loose ends. As I've said, I'm not exactly sure what's next for me. I'll be doing a lot of work shifts at my kids' co-op nursery school. I plan to get totally ripped. I'm going to write a draft of the novel I've been working on. I might chip away at my 39 Things list by building that headboard, and I'll definitely clean out the garage. But I'm sure I'll also spend way too much time shuffling around the house, organizing the junk drawer, getting sidetracked by old photo albums and picking at otherwise invisible facial blemishes until they turn into scabs. It should be pretty fun.

I will also be minding my remaining chickens, biding my time until they finally start laying eggs. Which brings me to our next topic: The Guess the Date of the First Egg Contest. Today they are 17 weeks old. According to most experts chicken begin to lay around 20 weeks. But it could be earlier. Pick the correct date and I will hand-deliver a dozen fresh eggs to you. If you don't live in San Francisco, I will send you an Eggling planter so you can grow fresh thyme. It's a score either way, so start your guessing. The comments are open.

Finally, Tilly was delicious. First I made him into broth then I made him into pozole. He fed 8 people and we still have some soup left over. Thanks, Tilly.

Tilly all naked and ready to go

Tilly all picked and ready to be soup

Tilly pozole

Lee Anne happily sniffing Tilly pozole. Yum.

I am 48.7% successful

Way back when I was only 39, I made a list of things to do before I turned 40. Some of them were simple (eating hot dogs) and some of them were not so simple (writing a novel). Some of them I accomplished, some of them I didn't. Some of them I really wish I had tried harder to accomplish, some I let go without a second thought. The Yuba River, after all, will be there for a long time. So will Shakespeare plays. The gig is up, however, on getting the kids into backpacks (the good news is that they have hiked two miles on their own two legs!). In all, I managed to do 19 out of 39. Plus a few almosts that I didn't let myself count.

So here we are. A review:

1. start some meaningful and ongoing volunteer work

2. re-read some Shakespeare plays

3. learn to sew, even a little

4. make a headboard for our bed (not yet, but I bought all the stuff and put it in the garage!)

5. throw a party

6. visit a state I've never been to

7. reunite with some friends I don't see very often: Tara, Vida, Kate, Hilary

8. publish at least one piece in a national publication (I'm not counting my freelance magazine work. I'm only counting fiction and essays. So, no. Not this year)

9. go sailing

10. take my kids to the circus

11. eat hot dogs on the pier at Chrissy Field with my family

12. swim in the Yuba River

13. take my kids to play in the snow

14. take my kids to see a dance performance

15. go to Vermont

16. host a brunch/clothing swap at my house

17. follow the sun more when it gets foggy

18. eat oysters at Tomales Bay Oyster Company

19. spend a weekend by myself

20. make ice cream and then sundaes with Magnolia and Oliver

21. finish landscaping my front yard

22. find some more good, cheap restaurants to love in San Francisco

23. go the Alameda Flea Market

24. take a dance class

25. do some more encaustic painting

26. go hiking with the kids in backpacks before they really get too heavy

27. take the kids on a ferry ride to Angel Island

28. clean out the garage

29. eat pupusas

30. plant a few veggies (pickling cucumbers!)

31. spend a weekend away with The Mister

32. write a letter to my representative

33. have a movie marathon day at a multiplex

34. write a rough draft of the novel I'm working on (*please see NOTE below)

35. bake bread

36. get a massage

37. organize the closets

38. make a new friend (Hi, Miranda)

39. have a San Francisco day with my family: cable car, Swensen's, chowder in a sourdough bowl, Fisherman's Wharf

All of the things leftover are on my rollover list. I still want to paint more encaustic. I still want to make it to the Alameda Flea Market. I am still planning on writing my representative (I mean a real letter, not a click-here-to-sign), and I still have a gift certificate for a massage that I haven't used. It's looking pretty good for 41, I must say.

* NOTE: Although I am still a long ways from completing the novel I have been working on, I am 120 pages into it. Which is enough to know that I want to finish it.

There are many reasons why I am a slow writer. Motherhood is one of them. So are The Sopranos on DVD (yes, I started over), general fatigue, and maybe a smidge of self-defeatism. But what really slows me down is worrying about keeping up this blog. I love this, but I am starting to believe there is no greater impediment to writing a longer work than blogging (well, maybe Tweeting). There are only so many hours, as they say, but more than that, there are only some many creative impulses, only so many times you can hurry-scurry from one thing to another and retain any sort of depth or focus.

So, in an effort to actually give this book a chance, I am committing to blogging only once a week. Maybe twice if I'm feeling chatty. I'll still be here, just less often. We'll call it quality over quantity. Kay?

Date night. And, he paid!

I think I’m going to blame my absence on the mountain of mini Snickers I’ve been buried under since Halloween. My goodness, but it’s easy to take candy from small children. You just put it on a high shelf and they forget about it within 12 hours. Meanwhile, you toss and turn in a frenzied lust for Kit-Kats for a full week. One of the many benefits of maturity.

There was also a visit from my dad (number 39? Check!), a massive fight about fighting with the Mister, and, um, I don’t know. One minute you’re folding five loads of laundry in front of So You Think You Can Dance and the next minute it’s Friday and you haven’t blogged in an age.

That's Oliver ringing the Hyde & Powell cable car bell. Ask him about it. He's happy to talk about it.

But I’m back.

And I want to tell you about our date night last night. We used to be really good at this. Once a month we’d schedule a day date, hire a babysitter for 8 hours, and try something fun. I read somewhere that the key to dating your spouse is not simply going out together, but trying new things, actually having interesting experiences. You know, so you can have something to talk about over the dinner table the other 29 days of the month.

We hiked a lot on our dates, once we biked around Angel Island. We went to museums, had martini-soaked lunches. It was fun. But somewhere along the way—right around the whole stop working/preschool shift—we stopped dating and started arguing and communicating via our shared Google calendar.

So last night we had our first date in a while and, because we needed some serious kindling, we decided to do something spontaneous. We went to a dance performance by a dance company we had never heard of. Just like that, we looked at the event listings and bought tickets.

I have So You Think You Can Dance to thank for the Mister’s newfound interest in performing arts. He actually says things like, “Technically it was good but there was no real feeling or connection between them.” Swear to God.

But he didn't say that about the Printz Dance Project because it turns out we really like the Printz Dance Project.

If you live around San Francisco, you should consider going to see them this weekend. Because, eh hem, something about watching all those lean bodies (and one fat one I couldn't take my eyes off) leaping and sweating, really puts you in a good mood. If you know what I mean. Wink. Wink.

Whatcha gonna do with all that junk?

Me, at 16, with Mark Darling and my smoking bod

So, I’ve gotten fat. Fat for me. I have cellulite on my upper arms and my gut is looking a little fanny-packish. It’s not the first time. It won’t be the last. But I am sort of pissed about it.

In 2008 I spent more than $1,000 to lose 11 pounds with Jenny Craig and gained it back in six months (I know. I know.).

So far in 2009, I’ve lost the ten again, and gained it back, again. Plus four.

I am not quite as fat as I was after giving birth to twins. I’m not even exactly what you’d call fat. I’m on the chubby side of normal. I can still squeeze into my size 10 jeans, but the resulting muffin top makes all but the most maternity of tops utterly useless. I weigh 164 pounds.

That’s one of the most humiliating sentence I’ve ever written. And I’ve written about my pubic hair. Twice. At the same time, to be perfectly honest, it's not that big a deal to me. So I'm a chubbers? Oh well. I have other things going for me.

Me, at 39, with Hilary and my much less smoking bod

My mom used to describe her particularly thin and self-denying friends as "having a horror of fat." I don't have that horror. In fact, I prefer some soft edges. But I would like to look a little hotter in my clothes. Just, like, 15 pounds hotter.

What makes me mad is that for all my rotundity, I’m not a glutton. As I’ve established, I love my chow, but I have never, not once, eaten an entire pint of ice cream, or polished off a whole frozen pizza. I am not secretly gobbling candy bars or sneaking Pop Tarts.

Yes, I went about six weeks without a drink-free day this summer (hello, last six pounds), but that was a highly unusual binge and doesn’t account for my overall waddliness.

I exercise. I love chard. I drink eight glasses of water a day. WTF?

I get tempted to blame the Mister, who was born with genes so tall and sleek, that fat cells verily run off of him. I’m pretty sure we weigh the same. And he’s 6’ 1”. And he EATS. Like every hour. He has dessert after dinner, lunch and breakfast. He thinks roll-em-up pancakes stuffed with jam and sprinkled with powdered sugar are healthy because the batter has an egg in it. Sometimes, right after he eats, he has an actual snack-size anxiety attack about where his next meal is coming from, especially if we are going to the movies and he thinks it might be a couple of hours before his next caloric intake.

Imagine, if you will, the pleasures and pains of trying to keep up with him. I mean, it’s nice to share a hobby, but the results of our shared recreation are that I get cellulite on my upper arms and he weighs what he wrestled in high school.

The real reason for the fanny pack gut

All this is a long-winded way of telling you that today I joined Weight Watchers (which I could totally be CEO of by this time if I just had a little more willpower). My plan? To enter the normal range of normal. Stay tuned to watch as the only-slightly-overweight-me emerges like a 39-year-old butterfly from the really-quite-alarmingly-overweight-me. It’s gonna be a showstopper, folks.

New tricks

Maggie in a bucket on the first sunny day in weeks

Remember number 3?  This little jobby: "learn to sew, even a little?"  Well, check.  I spent the first sunny Saturday in six weeks in a strange industrial building learning how to wind a bobbin and sew a French hem.  It was just me and one 2o-something hipster boy in an ironic t-shirt who barely spoke except to say he wanted to learn to sew so he could alter his thrift store clothes.  Oh, 20-something hipster boys, how it warms my heart to learn that some things never change.  And here I thought all San Franciscans were now driving minivans and discussing pediatricians or how, on second thought, maybe Botox isn't so bad.  But, no, many are still buying clothes by the pound at Thrift Town and fashioning bedrooms out of hallways with nothing more than an Indian tapestry.

But back to sewing.  Here's the thing: it's fun and I made a nice little drawstring bag, but now I'm scared it requires a knack for spacial relations that I genetically lack. Also, there was some nerve racking adding of fractions.  Still I plan to persevere.  I'm even planning on making everyone I know beautiful cloth napkins.  Squares, I can handle.   I think.

My mother-in-law just made this outfit for Maggie.  Cute, right?

A thing I like

Craft Haven Collective, where I took my class in San Francisco. Not only do they teach sewing to hipsters and anxious 39-year-olds, they also teach sewing and entrepreneurial skills to at-risk girls through Turning Heads.  Pretty cool, huh?  If you want to learn to sew, you should take a class there. Really, they are very nice.

In with a whimper

Happy New Year! I hope the first three days of 2010 were awesome. I hope you were one of those deservedly smug people up before 6 on the first day of the year, doing your calisthenics and looking forward to that big, refreshing glass of beet juice you like to reward yourself with on special occasions.

Me? I wouldn't know much about those first three days. I did see 6 o'clock on the first day of the year. Just the pinkish hint of it before I dropped off to sleep, the glitter from my cheek making a smear like the milky way across my pillow.

That's right people, I, 39-year-old, type-A, mother-of-two-with-mini-van shook it all night long.

Seeing as I value sleep over almost all other things, it's been, um, maybe 20 years since I've stayed up all night. Maybe 22.

from here

I blame the karaoke machine, which functioned as a sort of vortex, spewing out tunes from the'80s and sucking us right into the void. I totally ruined my hairdo singing AC/DC with a butch lesbian named Five Star. It was that kind of night.

Anyhoo, I'm finally back to normal, after three days of catching up on sleep in fitful bouts between building block towers, reading The Day I Became a Pirate, and dressing and redressing Maggie's new doll, Gingerbread.

I was so tired I would have gladly slept here

I'm going to skip the resolutions this year because I've made enough lists lately and, as everyone knows, resolutions exist to make you feel bad about yourself (here are last year's. I succeeded with number 2). Resolutions are the pursed-lipped headmistress of your own little uptight English boarding school of the mind. They tsk and cluck and whap you on the back with a ruler for not sitting up straight. Who needs them?

I also have no real plans. I'm going to start blogging about fat people on TV here starting this week. I'm going to celebrate my 40th in Mexico with a lot of friends and family in February. I'm going to take my kids to the snow (see #13). I might attend a clothing swap at the end of the month. Maybe I'll finally paint the bathroom door that we scraped fours years ago.

This is certainly a worthy resolution

But, really 2010, I'm open. Bring it on. Keep it coming. Have at me. All I ask is that you play fair. And keep me away from karaoke machines.