Camp at your own risk

When the kids were not quite one-and-a-half we went on a family camping trip to Mt. Lassen with my dad and brother. I also happened to be writing about it for Sunset. The trip was an unmitigated disaster from the filth-encrusted toddlers smearing their own excrement around the tent, to my normally low-key dad telling my brother to go "f**k himself." I cried all the way down from the summit, but not half as loudly as the kid I was carrying on my back.

Nine months later, the story came out, pretty and slick as can be.

Mt. Lassen, 2007 (total b.s.)

We haven't spent a night in a tent since. But on Thursday, we decided to give it another go. One night. Close to home. We were scarred, but ready to heal.

I'm not sure why it is so important to us that we camp with the kids. I don't even like it that much. I like the idea of it. I wish I liked it. But really it seems like a whole lot of work topped off with a terrible night's sleep. I prefer a nice day hike followed by a good meal, a warm bath, and a soft bed. My step-dad calls me "Mrs. Davey Crockett." It's ironic, in case you didn't get that part.

But I do like the outdoors and who am I to instill in my offspring my prissy dislike of dirt? So off we went, to China Camp State Park. Camping.

A word of advice: unless you have the types of three-year-olds who will run off to poke things with sticks and explore creek beds without you, don't take them camping for a while. You will be busy setting up the tent-Mahal you borrowed from your friend, and trying to start a fire, and dropping your pillow in the dirt, and blowing up the effing inflatable mattress. All the while your demanding preschoolers will be whining for food you did not bring along, peeing in their pants, tracking dust into the tent, absconding with the pocket knife, and asking if it is time to go home. You will fight with your spouse and yell at your kids and your feet will be cold once the sun goes down. You will deeply regret not bringing alcohol.

Sure, the campground is lovely, set as it is among the Bay Laurels on a bluff overlooking the Bay. And, yes, there were those pleasant 10 minutes when you got to point out the raccoon tracks and the flattened grass where the deer sleep.

But I recommend you think hard and you think long about whether all the work, the resulting loads of laundry, and the massive and unprecedented post-trip meltdowns were worth it. Because I suspect they are not.

Then again, maybe you don't have twins.

I think I may even prefer the "C Word"

I should have written today but I am too upset. I just learned that some parents call their daughter's vaginas "front butts." Is that not the grossest, prissiest, weirdest, yuckiest, most unappealing thing you've ever heard? I know, me too. I'm gonna need some time. Maybe by tomorrow I will be whole again.

Photo from here.

In my next life I will be a music teacher

Again, I'm late to the party here (8 million You Tube view, Tori Amos), but I just can't resist these kids. First, they are totally singing music of my generation, secondly they are just so unbelievably awesome (check out those heartfelt hand motions). I weep over and over again when I watch them. Here's the skinny on them and their cool teacher.

Read Olive Kitteridge, please

Looking for a book to read this weekend? May I suggest Olive Kitteridge, the novel in stories that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction? I just finished it an hour ago and it is the most deeply human, empathetic, smart novel I've read in a while. I'm sort of speechless in its wake, actually.

You should try it. You won't be sorry. Thank me later; we'll have a good cry and a cup of General Foods International Coffee.

Dude!

May you stick all your landings this weekend!

xoxo Samantha

What I learned in school today

This is what I learned at my kids' first day of nursery school today:

1.) I have a distinct tendency towards nervousness. Okay, to be fair, I totally knew this. But this experience really sealed it. It was crazy. Butterflies galore. Heart palpitations. Nervous what-ifs driving the Mister mad (what if the blueberry bars are considered junk food? What if kids are mean to them? What if they are the weird kids? What if we don't like it there? What if no one will wipe their butts after they poop?). You'd think the twins and I had been asked to address the U.N. Naked. In one of those dream-states in which you can't stand up.

2.) In San Francisco non-Japanese parents pack nori in their kid's lunches. And the kids eat it.

3.) I really like name tags. And if they are supplied and then some people are too cool to wear them, I feel slightly peeved all day and it is hard for me to like the non-adherents.

4.) Three-year-olds are wonderful. I knew this too, especially as it pertains to my own kids. But hanging out this morning with 20 other three-years-olds was pretty awesome. First of all, they are really funny but also, they have not yet learned to express disdain. There is no "duh" in their vocabulary. No eye rolling. They are just funny and eager and bright. And, baggies of seaweed aside, they have good snacks and are easily distracted.

Unemployment: A Love Poem

How was my writing week, you ask? Well, in a word, it was fan-freaking-tastic.

A partial list of what I got done in my five free days:

- I cleaned out the bathroom cabinet and finally threw away those humiliating Slim Shots I bought during one especially low and vulnerable trip to Wallgreens.

-I made lentil stew so that I would not waste the bone from the pork shoulder I bought to make "shot-and-a-beer" pork. Very thrifty.

-I wrote about 30 pages of fiction, which is more than I've written in the last six months.

-I threw a potluck brunch for the neighborhood collective.

-I went running (everyday).

-I submitted two short essays to Babble.

-I gracefully received two rejections from Babble.

-I accepted a freelance gig.

-I submitted a short essay to the New York Times.

-I, together with the Mister, cleaned out the garage. Trips to the dump were made. It was awesome.

-I translated some immigration paperwork for my kids' wonderful daycare teacher.

-I played with my kids

-I hung out with the Mister.

Three times this week I have paused—I'm in bed or at breakfast, maybe I'm alone in the car—and had the surprising and utterly distinct feeling of contentment. Not the absence of complaint (which, for me, would be surprising enough) but the presence of contentment. A bodily feeling of contentment.

It's weird I tell you. So weird that I do this mental scan, looking for things that might be wrong. And, nope, nothing bugs me. I'm like the Dali Lama over here. Frankly, it gives me the jitters.

I am reading the amazing and wonderful novel Olive Kitteridge right now and there is a line in which one of the characters says, "I wonder what it was that made her so distrust happiness?" and it sticks in my memory because it is the only line thus far that has rung absolutely false.

Doesn't everybody distrust happiness? Isn't that what happens when you live into adulthood? It's absolutely just a fact that happiness, like the common cold, is fleeting and reoccurring. You're up. You're down. It's just the way of the world. And I'm ok with that.

From here

What gives me the willies are the days upon days of total contentment. Nothing is wrong. I love everyone (well, except the Republican members of congress and Sarah Palin). And really, it can only be one thing: unemployment. And let me tell you, if I had had even the least inkling of how great it would be to lose my job, I would have done it a long time ago. Like this guy. He might be on to something.

On a completely different note: There is still time to enter the "guess the date of the first egg" contest (I really should have come up with a snappier name). So far, we've got nothing, so you could still get lucky.