I'm back. I'm fat. Get used to it.

So, I haven't done this in a while. Like, you know, not for a big company. And so much has changed since we last spoke. So much.

But I'd rather not go into it all right at this moment on a Tuesday night when I really should be in bed. And I've had a port or two.

But we'll talk, we will. And the first order of business will be that I can not find a photo of myself taken in the last 2 years that I am willing to post (which is sad in all the feminist, I-love-myself, sort of ways). In fact, I can't think of a way in which it is happy.

And that's what prompted me to write after ALL this time: sucky body image, or perhaps, just sucky body. Jury is still out. But the truth is, I got fat. And I hate it. And I am in an awful pendulum swing between "I-love-myself-the-way-I-am" and "I-am-fat-and-I-hate-it-no-matter-what-the-lesbians-say."

But tell me, when was the last time you looked in the mirror and thought, "Awesome." Because I'd like to know your trick. Unless, of course, your trick is being naturally skinny. In which case, let's just talk about something else--like maybe how much we hate Rand Paul--because weight is not going to be our common ground. Which is ok. I still like you.

And I leave you with this, in case you think I am just belly-aching.

That's me at 16 and then me more recently. I mean, right?

Why can't I be more like Angelina Jolie?

My kids are never sick (knock on wood, throw salt and turn around three times). Except for now. Maggie has been home with a fever all week, poor thing.

What this means, in addition to way too much screen time, multiple readings of Rainbow Fish, and yogurt for breakfast, lunch and dinner, is that I have been home all week with a sick child. Seriously, I didn't leave the house for two days. Not once. No fresh air. No clean underwear.*

Then, on the third day, I got to go to the corner grocer for some supplies and witness the astounding miracle of real adult humans moving about in public. The next day, still high on my recent exposure to the outside world, I also got a haircut and took my kids to see Toy Story 3. I paid dearly for it with much feverish whining and a serious case of popcorn bloat (me, not them).

All this is not so bad.

What's bad is when, on the fourth day, your completely delightful old friend from college comes to visit for the first time since the kids were born and you suddenly see your life in stark contrast to what could have been.

1991.

That's her on the far left. That's me, wearing pajama bottoms and pearls.

Her: Saving the world by doing important global peace-building projects with the U.N and other impressive NGOs.

Me: Trying to remember when I last administered the Children's Tylenol.

Her: Cocoa-colored linen suit with adorable flats.

Me: Ripped jeans, dirty underwear, clogs.

Her: Teaching at Columbia's graduate program in International Studies.

Me: Trying to teach my children to wipe their own butts.

Her: Hobnobbing with the rich, influential and powerful.

Me: Hobnobbing with two four-year-olds and the occasional corner grocer.

Her: Mother of one super-genius, chess-playing 7-year-old.

Me: Mother of four-year-old twins who try to impress guests by toppling the coffee table and throwing pirate hooks in the air.

I think you get the idea.

And I know that here I am supposed to write something about how worthwhile it all is and how I wouldn't trade anything for anything. But that's not true. I would trade being an unemployed stay-at-home mom (not the kids themselves, mind you; them, I like) for a career that required me to travel all over the world doing good work in a second. At this point I think I would trade it for a career that required me to get dressed in the morning and travel to downtown San Francisco.

All of which is to say that, when the time comes, I'm going to strongly suggest that my children don't major in English. Cause it's too late for me.

* having a sick kid does not preclude changing ones underwear, but really, why bother?

I'm back (and not in a Shining way)

OK, my dahlinks, I know I've been remiss. But, if it's any consolation, I have learned an important lesson about blogging: when you blog often you feel OK about writing a few cute lines of dialogue or describing your love affair with your new pink tights. But when you tell all nine of your readers that you will only be blogging once a week, well, all of a sudden you feel as if you have to have something BIG and IMPORTANT to say. And then you get all squirmy and self-critical and you're all, "No one wants to hear about my trip to the wildlife preserve in Pt. Arena," or "Maybe my children aren't quite as clever to everyone else as they are to me." Then you get sick. Then you get super into writing your novel and feel as if you are close to finishing a first draft.

This is actually not my belly

Then, I don't know, you obsess over your stomach for a while and toy with the idea of throwing in the towel and never dieting again. Then you see that Crystal Light is on sale and you buy some despite your objection to processed food and then it turns out that lemonade Crystal Light is really delicious and, God, you just go along, drinking your powdered drink mixes and examining your naked body in the full-length mirror (it's fine, right? I mean, its not perfect, but it's fine). And also, it's summer, and you feel as if you should be taking advantage of the daylight. And you bought that bench at that garage sale that you should finally just paint already so your backyard can be super cute, especially once you get a fire pit thingy.

Anyhow, before you know it, its been a month (well, 25 days, really) and you have not written anything and you assume that all nine of your readers have moved on (people are busy, after all) and you start to think about Decorno and how she just signed off one day, but you don't want to give up your blog, you don't. You just can't think of anything BIG and IMPORTANT to write. But then, two people write you in one day to say why aren't you blogging and it turns out that's all you needed. Just a little shout out from the anonymous buzzing molecules of data that are the Internet. And you're off again, happy as can be. Not in an every day kind of way, but more often. Often enough so that if it comes up, you feel pretty OK about blogging about socks. I mean, if they are especially cute.

Special bonus video starring moi about a novel that I LOVE and that I totally think you should read this summer:

12 good things that have happened in the last 17 days

photo from here

1. The birds found the bird feeder. Finally.

2. We took the kids to their first Giant's game.

3. The Mister caught a foul ball.

4. I discovered (and devoured) Breaking Bad

5. I had this conversation about marriage and child rearing with Oliver:

Me: Do you want to get married?

Oliver: Oh, yeah.

Me: And what do you think marriage is?

Oliver; It's just like you get to be with your friend forever.

Me: And do you think you want to have kids?

Oliver: Yeah.

Me: Why?

Oliver: I think I will be a really good dad. My dad is the best dad.

Pause

Oliver: Actually, maybe I won't have kids.

Me: Why not?

Oliver: Well, taking care of kids is really hard work.

6. Maggie proposed to me (three times). I said yes. Then she reminded me that I'm already married.

7. My kids discovered photography.

8. My dad and I found two perfectly good nandinas on the street, took them home and planted them in my garden.

9. The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer finally came out. I read it in galley months ago and I've been waiting to gush and now I can. It's tremendous. It's important. It's amazing. Read it. You won't be sorry.

10. We went out for pie. In the middle of the day. For no reason.

11. I signed up for a recording and interviewing workshop with these amazing ladies.

12. I bought tickets for this.

Martha Stewart is the devil on my shoulder

A few days ago, as I was artfully sticking my homemade "Please take me home" stickers on the gift bags I put together for my children's fourth birthday party, I had a familiar feeling. I was sort of enjoying myself, getting a certain satisfaction from the Martha-like perfection of the goodie bags, but underneath lurked a simmering resentment and impatience, a little throb telling me that my cutsie-pootsie project might not be the best use of my time.

As I stuck the stickers I started to suspect that such things, these bourgeois arts so trumpeted by women's magazines and Martha Stewart and a thousand design blogs, were just a giant diversion of creative energy. I imagine that no great artist, and certainly no one who has ever really changed the course of the world for the better, has expended much time or effort into making perfect goodie bags, or butterfly cakes, or wallpaper-covered file folders.

I'm all for an uplifted environment, by which I mean that I appreciate design and believe aesthetics make a difference (you should see my new faux bois rug--OMG). I get as much pleasure from a piece of beautiful Indian craft paper as the next girl. I adore a nice leisurely stroll through Design Within Reach or Etsy or Ikea. I even sort of like Real Simple.

I must admit, I'm sort of proud of my butterfly cake

But I also notice that men make and get credit for most of the "great art" of the world. Ditto on great scientific discoveries, adventures, environmental milestones, and feats of engineering. Meanwhile, women are encouraged to make the world a little cuter one scrapbook at a time. (Again, I appreciate a good scrapbook, but they are not the building blocks of a greater civilization, as least not as we currently view it.)

And the spaceship cake.

Of course not all of us were meant to design bridges or write the Great American Novel or become the next Beethoven. Most of us were meant to live decidedly less dramatic marks. And there is something to be said for doing something out of love, without regard for the praise or attention it might garner. All this magazine-style cuteness—wrapping forty presents, or making a spaceship cake, or laboriously calligraphing the place cards—might all be seen as acts of love. There is nothing wrong in wanting to delight someone else with a small effort toward beauty.

Still, I wonder. All this presentation is so fleeting and so fickle. Today's gorgeous cupcake tower will most likely be tomorrow's pineapple candle salad. Adorable goodie bags get torn open and disposed of with barely a glance. Spaceship cakes take 4 hours to make and ten minutes to eat.

I think of it this way: there are a million aspiring novelist in the country and I bet none of the male ones spend hours of their precious writing time making delightful goodie bags for four-year-olds.

Then again, I don't watch sports on TV, so maybe we come out equal.

P.S. The party was a complete success and much fun was had.

Mark Fiore is more inspirational than Oprah

Did you hear about my friend Mark Fiore (he's the one who got Dengue Fever at my birthday party)? He won the Pulitzer Prize last week. The Pulitzer Prize, people! That's, like, the most colossal and public pat on the back a journalist can get.

I did the voice for this one. It earned him death threats!

I have dealt with my pride and excitement by working the information into as many conversations as possible. I run into a parent preparing snacks in the preschool kitchen and say something like, "Man am I tired; it must be because my really good friend Mark Fiore just won the Pulitzer Prize." I'm out to dinner with some work friends talking about learning to make Chinese dumplings and I say, "That reminds me of my really good friend Mark Fiore, who just won the Pulitzer Prize." An acquaintance mentions she just got back from New York and I say, "Oh, my really good friend Mark Fiore will be going to New York to accept the Pulitzer Prize he just won."

Ahem, I did the voice for this one too

But seriously, I am really proud of him. I tried to make a toast at a party in his honor earlier this week but because of my weeping problem (it prohibits all public toast-making and reading of poetry), I couldn't do it. What I wanted to say was this: I am proud and happy for him not because the Pulitzer is a big deal, super-prestigious prize, but because he was justly rewarded for following his passions.

I got a book when I graduated from college called Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. This, of course, is the kind of soft-minded pap that makes me dislike Oprah (I jumped off her bandwagon around the time of The Secret). But the first part of the title, the part about doing what you love, has some merit. Mark Fiore has done what he loves, regardless of whether the money was following or taking a totally different route. He worked hard, super hard, at doing it well. He invented a form (the online political animation) and he found success. It's positively inspirational.

Mark helped us build our chicken coop. What a stand up guy.

I was waxing thusly to my dad the other day when he reminded me that talent plus hard work does not always result in success. Lots of people do what they love and find neither money nor notoriety. Lots of good, smart people toil away at what they love in anonymity. My dad, by the way, is perhaps the least sentimental person on the planet. He's also right.

But this doesn't mean I can't get a little lift from Mark's reward. Just because in the end very few of us will win venerated awards, doesn't mean we shouldn't try to remember to pay attention to what moves us, to work hard, to practice discipline, to ignore the bullshit, and to follow what we love. That could be pretty rewarding too.

Congratulations, Mark! Woot! Woot!

Why not just practice the rhythm method and see what happens?

from here

A lot of my friends are currently trying to decide whether or not to have a second baby. Actually, they are writhing in a sort of tortured late '30s angst trying to decide whether to have a second baby.

I get it. Here you are, you've got your mate and your career and your one completely, ridiculously doted upon offspring. You still get to go out with the girls every now and again. You're having sex once or twice a week. Your body is more or less back where it belongs. You've got it worked out. Why mess it up?

It's not a bad question to ask yourself. But I find that I have little patience for the dithering. Maybe because giving birth to twins knocked me off my axis so profoundly that I never really got to the part where I felt like I had it all worked out. Maybe because I'm jealous.

I imagine life with one baby as a kind of gauzy, pink-tinged Gerber commercial in which you have hours a day in which you are required to do nothing more than suck on perfect little infant toes. If I only had one baby, I tell myself, I would never lose my temper, or yell, or say things like, "when you learn to cook your own dinner, you can start complaining about the food" to three-year-old children.

I suppose what I am saying is, I am not the person to ask when you are considering having a second child. I always knew I wanted two children. I was wholeheartedly committed to the idea of two from the beginning. But that's not why I am not the person to ask.

I am not the person to ask because there are many times when I want to grab my friends by the shoulders and shout, "Don't do it." I want to tell them that it will indeed mess everything up in all the ways they suspect. I want to warn them about never really being able to enjoy a lazy Sunday, or eat an uninterrupted meal, or have twice weekly sex again. I want to tell them about that weird shrewish voice that will come out of their mouths when their children are bickering, and how the idea of going out to a restaurant with the whole family will seem like an impossible dream.

Half the time.

The other half of the time I want to tell them to quit their hand wringing and get knocked up already. Join me in my messy, wonderful suffering. Enlarge your heart. Join the human family. Get in here and root around a little.

Mostly I don't say any of it. Mostly I shrug and say I don't know. Because, of course, I don't. If you are waiting for the right answer, forget it. There is no right answer.

I am of the best-guess-and-no-guarantees school of decision making. Go with your gut and hope it works out. That's how I approached my marriage and my career and the decision to become a parent in the first place.

And really, the big decisions are just a mixed-bag of emotions anyway— moments of despairing defeat and moments of profound and blissful joy. And in between lots and lots of moments of folding the laundry or watching crap TV or running out to the all-night Safeway to buy milk. Sometimes you are the luckiest girl in the world, and sometimes you look over and think, "This? Really?" And there's probably nothing more we can ask for.

I sound AMAZING in my car

Last night I went to a rock and roll concert, stayed out too late, and witnessed my first doobie smoking in a long time. As souvenirs I have a fading "Over 21" stamp on my hand and an exhaustion headache that probably has a lot to do with drinking three glasses of the Fillmore's house white, served in plastic tumblers.

But it's all worth it because Patty Griffin was a revelation. I didn't just love her, I lerved her, which is like love, but with extra feeling and much welling up.

Here she is, singing Heavenly Day (which, by the way, should totally be your first dance song at your next wedding).

I spent most of the concert fantasizing about being able to sing. I sometimes think people who can really sing must never be sad. I've spent a lot of time thinking this about Aretha Franklin. I mean, why cry when you can belt? Of course, history does not bear out this philosophy. A lot of people who can sing are tortured and depressive and end up choking on their own vomit. So, there's that.

Still, I wish I could learn this song so I could sing it to the Mister on our upcoming 10th anniversary. Wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't you just get all choked up? Not on vomit. In a good way.

------------------------------------------

Next time on Up Mama's Wall : Should you have that second baby (or please join me in the exhausting chaos that is my life).

How we finally decided not to get cable

Last Friday night my BFF Sarah and her second-grader Georgia had a sleepover at our house with Maggie and Oliver. It was an all-out preschool rager complete with banned movies and copious amount of hitherto forbidden foods. Something called "fruit gushers" was smuggled in. Rice Crispy treats were introduced. There was—I can barely stand to say it—morning television. Needless to say, the kids were in the sort of Heaven where you float around on clouds of cotton candy and big girls give you their undivided attention. The kind of Heaven dreamed up by three-year-olds.

Fruit Gushers. Some consider them food.

But what this story is really about is the Mister's and my night away. We couldn't go far in our precious 17 hours, so we Pricelined a San Francisco hotel and hoofed it over to the financial district Hilton. I know, it doesn't sound that great.

Like me, you may be picturing balding businessmen overeating at the complimentary breakfast buffet, possibly an irritable family from Des Moine on some extended and unhappy vacation. You might, like me, be so worried about the business grimness of it that you might, like me, lie to the man at the check-in counter about it being your anniversary. You might shamelessly ask for and receive an upgrade and then you might get this view:

And when you got this view you might start to realize that this was going to be a good night, even if neither of you had bothered with dinner reservations or negligee of any kind (and how I love the Mister in his negligee). Because, really, it's hard to have a bad night when you're in North Beach playing "when we move here," and then you stumble upon the cutest bar in the world and have the adult version of a fruit gusher, only better. And then another.

Go here and order a Pim's Cup. You won't be sorry.

When the extremely friendly Syrian cab driver talks to you about how much money Jennifer Aniston makes you really know its a good night. And then, when you get into this surprisingly delish restaurant even though you have no reservation of any kind and you eat meatballs and cold cuts made from duck, well, this pretty much tops it off. It's one hell of a date night. It's perfect.

Until you get back to the room, where you are very much looking forward to indulging in a little cable TV and eating the dessert you ordered to go.

The Mister won't pay $15.99 to watch The Blind Side on pay per view (and I can't blame him) so we decide to do a little channel surfing in the land of a thousand shows. And guess what? There is nothing on. We spend, nay, waste, and hour flipping between E! Twenty Top Celebrity Body Part, MTV's Spring Break and HBO, where they are showing the Best of YouTube. Not only is it bad entertainment, but what it says about our culture is so grim, I begin to regret bringing children into the world. People pay a lot of money to access the Twenty Top Celebrity Body Parts. This makes me want to eat fruit gushers until I explode.

The bright side is that we were just about to break down and finally get cable. And now we don't have to.

And now, for something completely different, a kid story that's not about one of my kids, but about one of the kids of one of my friends. It goes like this.

Three-year-old kid is in the bathroom with mom while she's changing a tampon.

Kid

Mom, when I get a vagina can I have tampons?

Mom

You already have a vagina, but when you get your period you can have tampons.

Kid

Do you think I can have Hello Kitty tampons?

And that's really it for the week. See you in approximately seven days.

Naughty dreams

I've been dreaming about men other than my husband. Last night, for example, Dave Eggers and I, each chastely in our own sleeping bags, laid face-to-face discussing trucker hats and real estate with a most delicious and thrilling intimacy. The night before that, I went to the Laundromat with Avi Avital, an Israeli mandolin player I met recently through a friend. We may have held hands, but mostly we were just in the laundromat, enjoying each others company.

As you can see, these are not hot and heavy sex dreams. They are hot and heavy getting-along dreams. Dreams in which mere conversation can be thrilling, a sexless buzz of electricity quite enough. They are dreams about being seen in a way that it is nearly impossible to be seen after nine years and seven months of marriage. They are, I think, a form of nostalgia.

I've been feeling nostalgic about a lot of things lately. I wept embarrassingly during a preschool slide show set to Prince's Purple Rain. It was as if I could see this marvelous and amazing moment in my sweet children's lives slipping away and I was missing it in advance. I find myself feeling intense pangs of college-withdrawal. I make lists in my head of all the things I am now too old to become: Olympic gymnast, ballerina, stripper, Jane Goodall's star pupil. It's all very un-Buddhist of me, this mourning for the past, this clinging to the present.

It stems in large part from being 40 and wondering what I am going to do with my life. I'm working on a novel, sure, but I've been down that road before. I'm raising kids, but if I am to believe what all the 50-something women are constantly telling me, that's going to be over in a flash. And then what?

Seriously, then what? All suggestions most welcome. Extra points if you can come up with something that saves the world and requires very little extra schooling and allows me to live in a place with indoor plumbing. And I don't want to be a teacher, so you can forget that one.

And then there is this, via Decorno. I had never heard of Neko Case (what?!) but if I could sing like her all my problems would be moot. Please listen to it. It's enough to make you weep.

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?

Please stand by

We are in the mountains, accomplishing (a little late) number 13 on the list of things to do before my 40th birthday. (Yes, we are still going to review the list together to see how I measure up to my ambitions). I've never quite seen anything so harmonious as Maggie + Ollie + snow. It's a match made in heaven. And the sledding! Oh, the sledding.

While the view is spellbinding, the Internet connection is patchy at best.

Tavis McNally, where for art thou?

While we are away, please amuse yourself with my 1988 prom picture. Be sure to appreciate the crimped hair; it took more than three hours to accomplish. This is part of an ongoing series I'm starting called "Cleaning out the Garage." I think you will enjoy it.

Happy Birthday to Me

It's a long story, but let me just start by saying that today is the last day of my thirties and tomorrow, I will turn 40 and fly with my family to Mexico. And by my family I mean my husband and our two kids, the same ones who have been vomiting uncontrollably all day. I also mean my mom, my dad, my brother, one ex-step-mother, a former half-sister (it's a long story), and 8 friends.

We will be converging on Yelapa like a huge pile of buoyant, white flesh. We will eat so much fish and drink so much beer. We will have so much fun.

But we will not be blogging.

Because we will be remote. And having said fun.

But I will come back in 10 days and then I will tell you all about how my spray-tan worked out. And together we will revisit this list to see how it went. We will discuss my appearance on Friday at Literary Death Match (preview: it was fun. KFOG liked me).

In the meantime, enjoy the Olympics. Wish us well. Be nice.