My first video blog-yay!

Um, here I am showing off my kids and my video making abilities.  The backstory of the complicated narrative is that the kids' great grandmother (Pete's grandma) gave them a weird and creepliy life-like plaster kitty. Ollie has been cat-crazy since way before he could talk.

Look here.

Travel through time—make Polaroids

Everything looks better with the greenish tinge of yesteryear.  I may be a little late to the Carter-era nostalgia party, but I'm loving polaroiding my photos. I learned about it here (can Swiss designers ever be wrong?).

Go here and download this little program.  Then begin reliving your youth.

But be careful.  It's addictive. . .

Oliver travels back to the '70s to pick out a pumpkin

Maggie and Oliver travel back to the '70s in their cool hats

I travel back to the '70s to get loaded at Mark and Chelsea's wedding

Literary failure, square dancing, and Stinson Beach

Well, there is good news and there's bad news.  And there is some medium news. First the bad.  Apparently my spit shining skills aren't up to snuff because the new agent on second thought just sort of dumped me and my little book proposal, leaving me stranded once again in the literary wasteland. 

The medium news is that because I am now so mature and well-seasoned I can see this with a modicum of perspective and attempt to take a few lessons. 

Here's the first, an oldie but goodie: don't write with "the marketplace" in mind.  Just write what you want to write and try not to think about how anthologies are dead and memoirs are in.  Kay Ryan, our new Poet Laureate wrote a terrifically funny essay that is in part about all the extraneous chattering that writers do in an attempt to connect, when really, just maybe, what they should be doing is writing. Read it here. Really, it's so good.

The second lesson I am gleaning from my most recent literary failure is that one should never send an agent a poorly formed, undone half-book hoping that said agent will recognize in said mess of pages a true spark of genius.  It's not how it works.  Duh.

So, as Howard Junker says, Onward!  To what, I don't know.  I'm thinking of becoming a nurse or maybe a nursery school teacher.  

Ok, now the good news: Mark & Chelsea's wedding was super fun in a million ways.  

The mister and me at the wedding

A few highlights:

Stinson Beach's most perfect weather of the year.

Wedding vows exchanged against the backdrop of kids and dogs frolicking on the beach.

Eating leg of lamb around a campfire and then getting to go back to our nice beach rental and sleep in a bed.

Mark's sister's family band consisting of her seven children, two of whom were wearing kilts.

Following mother-daughter fiddlers through town to the reception.

Two clogging nieces.

Late-night chicken wings (an true moment of wedding inspiration).

Learning a wedding reel dance that included do-si-doing and swinging our partners.

Square dancing

Dancing for non-squares

Hip hip hooray for love and marriage and all that fun stuff!

20x200--Art for Everyone

It's some-little-thing-I-love Wednesday

Jen Bekman's wonderfully addictive and highly democratic 20x200, is an online gallery featuring great, limited edition (there are only 200 of them) prints for 20 bucks.  Lots of photography (my personal favorite) but also paintings, prints, and collage.

If you really love a piece, you can always spring for the even more limited and much larger $200 and $2,000 sizes.  Sign up for her twice weekly email announcements and make some wall space available.

I bought this one and the one above (I guess I was in a bird kind of mood):

How it started

MY MORNING

My newspaper

My dishes from last night

My sleepy son

My funny daughter

My oatmeal

My politics with fruit

My foggy street

My commute

And then I had back-to-back meetings followed by leftover meatloaf.

These times

Ay yi yi!  I apologize a thousand times over to all of my 3 adoring fans.  I have been so busy. 

Here's a list of things that have been keeping me from my blogging duties:

1.) Looks like I have a new agent for my current book project.  Getting a new agent involves much spit shining of my book proposal and general gussying up of my writing, personality, potential and general bankability.  We'll see how it goes, but keep your fingers crossed.  

2.) Looking for a daycare situation for the twins.  I won't bore you with the woes, but suffice to say that it's painful to send your squishy little tots out into the world of people who are not their parents, family or very close friends. There might be TV out there!  Or Gogurts!

3.) I got sick.  Lame excuse, I know.  But really, the snuffling, the sneezing, the  moaning.  Nothing is worse than facing down 2 two-year-olds when you feel like crap. Quick knock on wood here for general good health.

4.) In case you haven't noticed, there's an election going on, people.  This means I have to spend much of my time with the liberal media reading the NYT and watching The Daily Show online every night.  Plus there are the debates.  Plus the recovery time when my blood pressure finally  returns to normal.

5.)  I got tipsy last Wednesday and it took me two days to feel myself again.  Note to self: quit it with the white wine!  Especially at dinner parties thrown by co-workers.

6.)  I'm keeping bees.  Sort of.  Sunset is keeping bees.  I just like to put on the suit.

That's me with the bees.  Underneath that suit I'm all business casual.

7.) I am finally reading Beth Lisick's newest book Helping Me Help Myself and aside from the fact that she is hilarious and just crazily likable, the book is having the strange side-effect of making me all self-helpy.  It's this smart and funny exploration of the self-help world and while I'm laughing right along with it, I'm also making this on-going mental list of all the ways in which I am going to improve myself.  Here's a good one: character over personality.  In other words, out with the arch and slightly mean gossiping and in with the timely response to emails.  And blogging.  You can count on me again.  Really.  

The good life

This is getting embarrassing and I'm sure my pinko grandparents would not approve, but my little  family is sure getting used to the good life (probably good to get while the gettin' is still good).  

This past weekend we spent a lovely 24 hours up at the lovely Stinson Beach with our lovely friends from England and their lovely son, born on the same day as the twins.  

For like the fourth time in as many weeks we partied like members of the chattering class in good standing—with wine and cheese and these outrageously tasty little Gorgonzola crackers from Trader Joe's. The weather was, as my friend Hilary likes to say, "absurdo" and the view was beautiful.  All of it was just too, too pleasant. Pleasant enough for me to feel the fuzzy outline of guilt (again, with the Commie grandparents whispering "softie" into my ear).  

So what if the economy is crumbling around us?  So what if we are at war?  Nothing beats an afternoon of crab fishing with your two-year-olds off the edge of your private dock, glass of wine by your side.  

So what if I'm toast when the revolution comes?

Oliver checks out a crab we caught with my ingenious

plastic-citrus-bag-and-raw-hamburger invention

This picture is all the husband's fault, but those are the $100 jeans