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.

Literary Death Match Smackdown!

I could see that photographer shooting me

from below and I knew it was a bad idea.

Finally! The Literary Death Match (otherwise known as the best night of my recent life) recap.

Listen to KFOG's Peter Finch describe it here (including an interview with yours truly).

(link not working? try this: Download Kfog - Ldm)

For the truly committed, here's the longer, 29-minute radio show produced and aired on KFOG. It's very This American Life. You can hear entire readings by both me and Joshua Mohr as well as the judges in secret discussion to decide who wins. It's pretty fun stuff. If I may say so myself.

That's my friend Miranda holding Danielle Steele

Mexico redux: ailments, injuries, and issues

I believe I promised you gringos falling into holes:

In addition to all the fun and sun in Mexico, there seemed to be quite a few ailments, injuries, and issues in our group. Some of the usual stuff: upset stomachs, hangovers, bug bites. But also a few more dramatic problems like painful relationship woes, major road rash, and one nasty case of what is either Dengue or Typhoid Fever.

It all started when my sort-of sister, Jenny, fell into a giant hole in the cement while walking home in the dark. One minute she is striding confidently across a little pier/deck thingy over the lagoon, the next second, she is up to her hip in a hole booby trapped with rusty pieces of rebar, all of which miraculously missed tearing her open in any life-threatening way. Still, I've never seen such impressively multi-hued bruises or a rawer, oozier-looking wound.

If I had been the one to fall in the hole, you can bet your last peso that I would have been able to speak of nothing else for the entire week. I would have had people waiting on me hand and foot. I would have demanded gauze and pain pills and constant, fluttering attention from all parties. But after some initial crying, Jenny bounced back like nobody's business. Only to be felled the next evening by all-night vomiting. From which she also bounced back with gusto. They don't breed no sissies in rural Vermont, apparently.

Oh sure. I look tough.

In between Jenny's accident and Mark's case of tropical fever, Maggie was stung by her very first bee, I had stinging jellyfish larvae stuck in my bathing suit, the sun broiled the tops of my brother's feet, I barfed in the sink, Donna whacked the s-h-i-t out of her shin climbing out of a boat, and, as if that all wasn't bad enough, there was one day when the pie ladies ran out of pie before we could get to them. The horror.

And now, to Sayulita:

We arrived on Sayulita Day. There were 15 marching bands

playing simultaneously and dancing horses in the streets.

Sayulita is a dusty surfing town about an hour north of Puerto Vallarta. It is also, suddenly, like the hottest, most talked about place in Mexico. Daily Candy just wrote about it. I have a piece on it in this month's Travel & Leisure. Every young hipster with a henna tattoo and Frida Kahlo beach bag is suddenly smitten with the place.

I've been there only once before, six or seven years ago, but because it gets so much hype, I've wondered lately if maybe I've been missing something. Maybe, I thought, we should start spending our vacations there. Maybe we were fading away like last year's papel picado in Yelapa. Maybe Sayulita was the place to be.

from HERE

So we went. Just the Mister and me. For a little romantic getaway, sans twins. Mark and Chelsea were already there.

As I said, dancing horses in the streets

And this is what I say: "Eh," shrugging my shoulders in the universal Jewish gesture meaning I could take it or leave it. It has its charms: taco stands, palm trees, good coffee, nice boutiques, a very reliable surf break. But its beach is a sea of sizzling flesh and pushy vendors. The beach-front restaurants charge you $15 a day to sit in their beach chairs, even if you are eating there. The town is crawling with the aforementioned hipsters, swarms of young parents wrestling their Bob strollers over the cobblestones, and boomers in Guatemalan vests and baggy shorts. Plus, it has that I'm-more-local-than-you vibe that tourist towns get thrumming through it like a pulse.

Don't get me wrong. It's a perfectly fine town, and our hotel was charming, indeed. But the fuss? The cache? I don't get it. Which means we can stick with Yelapa. Whew.

Chelsea and I follow directions by lounging in

our hotel's rooftop lounge, my favorite place in Sayulita

This brings me very nicely to the problems with travel writing I wanted to discuss. But I think I'll save that for another day. Along with news of my spray-on tan. Please stay tuned. There is audio of my Literary Death Match appearance coming soon as well. It's going to be a big week. Promise.

Turning 40 in Yelapa. Ole!

Last time we met I was off to Mexico and promising in my haste to discuss a million important things (such as the success or failure of my spray-on tan) upon my return. Well, I'm returned. The larder has been restocked. The laundry is in various states of washing and drying and waiting to be folded. The junk mail has been tossed, the checks endorsed. The sunscreen and bug spray have been put away. Let me just pour myself a glass of wine, and we'll settle in for a nice long chat.

We have so much to go over, so many adventures and mis-, that we're going to need a real working week to get through it all. Plus, as regular readers of this blog will attest, I've been a bit slack of late. And what better way to get back into the frenzied American pace than to commit to five full days of writing? I will picture you all as cranky overworked editors in soup-stained ties impatiently slapping the backs of your hands against your palms, demanding I file my next missive.

It was the Mister and Mark taking the kids up dangerous rocks

Let's start with Yelapa, Mexico, where I went with 17 family members and friends to celebrate turning 40. How was the trip, you ask? Well, it was so many things.

It was watching the chubasco from our open-air apartment

It was sunshine and blue sky, and it was unseasonable pelting drops of rain. It was hanging out with my dear friends, and it was fighting with my mom. It was our kids eating only white food for ten days. It was a pod of eight whales putting on a show, and it was a kidney-damaging boat ride on the pounding waves. It was heaven-sent piña coladas and a little touch of the Mexican revenge. It was bug bites, bee stings, and tetanus shots.

It was the invention of beach cereal

It was eating pie on the beach everyday. (That's right, I wrote "pie on the beach." And then I wrote, "every day.") It was turning 40. It was a shower of birthday Haikus recited in an outdoor disco. It was me feeling slightly anxious about making sure 17 people, ranging in age from 3 to 67 were having a good time. It was 17 people having a pretty great time in one of my favorite places on Earth.

It was customized birthday match boxes

It was Maggie forsaking her dinner for a lollipop

It was Julie reciting her Haiku a little tipsy on mango margaritas

It was me looking ridiculously drunk while Jono and

my dad discussed grant writing (I was sober)

Tomorrow's missive: Sayulita, boutique hotels, and why I regret ever becoming a travel writer. Plus, gringoes falling in cement holes prickling with rusty rebar, and, finally, the verdict on my spray-on tan.

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.