Lady Food

In a stunning example of the predictability of human nature, I scanned the early reports of the unusually virulent outbreak of E. coli in Germany to find out what type of person was most frequently afflicted. It’s the “can’t happen to me or my family, right?” thinking that characterizes my immediate reaction to almost any bad news  - crotch photos, tropical diseases, cruise ship strandings. 

In this case, however, the group of people with the highest incidence of illness were women around my age, and I swear to you, my first reaction was “it’s from salad.” Is there a food more beloved to women to over 30 than salad, for its magical health properties which offset a myriad of other dietary evils like second helpings and Take 5 candy bars? Sure enough, it turned out to be bean sprouts, grown at an organic farm in Northern Germany. 

My thoughts go out to the people who died, to the sick, and to their families. I hope the incident can help prod governments into making basic food safety a higher priority to prevent it from happening again. Nicholas Kristof had a terrific column in Sunday's NYT about food safety and the overuse of antibiotics by Big Ag in healthy animals to make them grow faster, creating conditions under which increasingly severe strains of E. coli can thrive - well worth the read and the indignation that should follow.

More selfishly speaking, it got me thinking about other hotspots for E. coli that would target women in my demographic. If another outbreak occurs, here's a punch list for the Food and Drug Administration to work down, stat:

1. Any processed food with “bran” in the title. Women in midlife are always looking for that magic bar, cereal, or topping that will, within an hour of being consumed, cause such a commotion that we will emerge from the bathroom, our hair combed, our lipstick freshened, and our figures restored to that of our twenty year old selves. “Colon Blow” may have been a joke on Saturday Night Live, but for generations of women it’s the pantry staple of our dreams.
2. Teas that promise to de-stress or ease tension. We drink it by the gallon in an attempt to decompress lives that are packed with work, family, volunteering, maintaining some semblance of romantic relationships with our partners, and trying to carve out time for ourselves and with our friends. The teas rarely work, but if you hold your face over a steaming cup while it steeps, you can get a smidgen of that pore-opening aromatherapy facial that you don't have time to schedule.
3. The veins of caramel, chocolate, or peanut butter in a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. My idea of a perfect night is when my husband and I settle on the couch to watch "Game of Thrones" and "Treme" with a pint of Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch and two spoons. He usually lets me have the first go at the ice cream, nice fellow that he is. A few minutes later, I hand him back a pint of plain vanilla ice cream, completely denuded of Heath Bars. To his repeated consternation, I say “If you gave me a bowl of rocks with a big fat diamond in the center, would I pick through the rocks first before grabbing the diamond?” Women who’ve made it out of their twenties know a thing or two about missed opportunities.
4. The leftovers off the children’s plates after a family dinner. Who needs to scrape plates into the compost bin when there’s a mother in the kitchen who will eat them? We hate to see food go to waste and more than that, know exactly how much work went into preparing it. No way that pork loin with the homemade peach sauce is going to be unceremoniously thrown away. I'm not sure how the bacteria could replicate in so many separate children's meals in so many separate kitchens, but advise the FDA that it's probably linked to an iCarly broadcast.

Five Telltale Signs It's the End of the School Year

Who needs the calendar or steady barrage of Father's Day shopping circulars to tell you that it's June? These five phenomenon occur like clockwork when the waning days of the academic year are upon us.

1.) You're Broke. Between the gift for the classroom teacher, the teacher's aides, the piano teacher, the math tutor, the babysitter graduating high school who wasn't much for cleanup but at least she could walk home, and the niece graduating college after the five year plan, you are clean out of $20 dollar bills. (Apologies if you are more of $100 dollar bill gifter, I didn't mean to insult you. Can I please be your babysitter?) It gets so bad that you could almost use a second job. But you can't do that, because…

2.) Your Productive Workday Has Been Shot to Hell. You have to be up at school to see the end-of-year talent show, of course, and your child would never forgive you for missing out on the end-of-year class picnic. Then the school districts get in on the act, fulfilling some budgetary or union contract obligation by cutting a bunch of June school days in half. Your to-do list becomes an archive, saved in its non-checked-off state for future generations to admire. It's enough to make you run for comfort to the cookie jar which is full because…

3.) You Have Baker's Elbow. Brownies for the ballet recital, pound cake for the Little League team party, chocolate chip cookies for the celebration of a completed Social Studies group project; you're churning them out like your middle name is Poppin' Fresh. You would like to buy stock in King Arthur Flour and Betty Crocker, but can't get out of the kitchen long enough to log onto E*trade. And if you're going anywhere past the stove it's going to be to the laundry room because….

4.) The Lunch Bags Look Like They've Been Beaten. Bruised, torn, bearing tiny flecks of unidentifiable foreign substances that may or may not be mold, the insulated lunchboxes that started off the year in bright primary colors have been reduced, through constant improvised use as seats, soccer balls, and weapons, to an indistinguishable grayish brown.  You weigh running them through the washer one last time. But would it be the cycle that finally separates the strap from the rest of the bag? That would probably make you cry, because…

5.) You Burst Out Crying At Inopportune Times. It's the inevitable result of being handed concrete evidence, in the form of a graduation certificate or a class council election, that Your Children Are Growing Up. The ultimate example was when the Kindergarten teacher rewrote Eric Carle's "A Very Hungry Caterpillar" to describe all the knowledge that our children had hungrily gobbled up throughout the year. Then she had them hold up wobbly, colorful pictures they'd drawn of butterflies and said, "And now you are beautiful butterflies who will fly off to First Grade!" Twenty-three moms, 15 dads, and one kindergarten teacher hit the deck sobbing, delaying the children's American Sign Language performance of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" until we'd (temporarily) recovered our composure.

But it happens every year. This time it was at the end of the year school choir concert, when I realized that my baby is going to be a 5th Grader which is really not babyish at all, and that she and her classmates are now eye-to-eye with the choir director (who, it must be said, is not tall.) Yes, that was me sniffling loudly all the way through their three-part-harmony rendition of  "Lean on Me."

As the Rapture Approaches: No Regrets

I don't know if it's just in the Bay Area or nationwide that garish yellow and black billboards are telling us the Rapture is upon us: specifically, sometime Saturday, all the good folks are going to be sucked up out of their shoes to ascend to heaven in a burst of radiant glory, and the rest of us flawed sinners are going to be stuck down here wondering why it just got so easy to park.

Can't say as I'm too worried; the atheist billboards assure me it's not going to happen. Anyway I certainly would not be one of those transported to the heavenly beyond. I'd rather take my chances down here with the losers who will be in no position to judge one another. Wouldn't it be awkward if you were the only person in your circle who turned up missing on the day of the Rapture? "Oh, that Mary Louise, she always thought she was better than us. Now we'll never hear the end of it."

All the Rapture talk does, however, make me think about regrets. If it really all goes to Hell in a handbasket in a few days, what unfinished business would I wish I'd wrapped up first? Herewith, a partial list.

1.) I should have come out and told my neighbor, nicknamed "The Troll," that when I give her a friendly wave and a greeting, the proper response is not to grunt and turn away. Pull your lips back and grimace, lady, it's close enough to a smile and it's the civil thing for you to do.

2.) I should have donated that bag of dried beans in my pantry to a food bank two years ago, before they expired. As if a food bank recipient will have any more interest than I do in soaking beans in water overnight. What am I, a professional chef?

3.) I should have learned to play bass guitar with my band, the Moist Deluxe, instead of just thinking about what our concert t-shirts would look like.

4.) I should have worn large, line-of-sight-obscuring hats more often. The Royal Wedding really drove this regret home.

5.) I should have pulled out the artichoke from my garden and just bought some at the grocery store. At the rate I've nurtured that thing with fertilizer, insect spray, and backrubs, each of the 5 chokes it produced cost me $27.53 each.

6.) I should not have stopped dancing at Rachel's bat mitzvah party last weekend, just because the 7th grade girls were beginning to point at my friend Andrea and I dancing to "Shawty Got Low" by Flo Rida. Everyone has to die of something; it may as well be embarrassment.

So - Rapture. What song does it conjure up? This one. Enjoy your early Music Moment, I'm bumping it up for those readers who don't read Normalarkey until the weekend, which may not arrive.

Shoot - I regret never wearing a tube top and shorts while dancing with a man in a white top hat, add that one to the list.

Season of the Swan

Our refrigerator is covered in invitations right now, their brightly-colored edges and fancy fonts like a dusting of leaves from a Disney-fied forest. Each one, held up by its own homemade bottle-top magnet, heralds another junior high school student about to make a major transition in the life of their faith: bat mitzvahs, bar mitzvahs, confirmations. These fluttering cards just rub in the visual evidence that I am fastidiously working to ignore:  my 13 year old daughter, and all her friends, are hurtling towards adulthood.

My daughter goes to an all-girls junior high which my husband and I selected because of its academic excellence, not at all because of the reassuring lack of absence of male distraction in the place, no sirree, not us, never crossed our minds. Throughout 6th grade, she rolled out of bed and into whatever clothes happened to be on the floor under the giant stacks of books she loves to read, plopped her glasses on the bridge of her nose, and pronounced herself ready for school. I congratulated myself for keeping the "child " in "childhood" for her.

But the hairline cracks in my plan to keep my daughter forever young appeared at the start of 7th grade, and have been widening ever since. A co-ed dance here, a co-ed birthday party there, the realization that months of ballet study have given our daughter the long, strong figure of a dancer and the graceful carriage to boot. Who could have seen that coming?

This spring it's just picked up momentum. We sent out our own invitation a few weeks ago, inviting a small circle of friends to witness the culmination of our daughter's confirmation process. Then began a series of changes that could broadly categorized as "Getting Ready for Confirmation," and subtitled "Freaking Out Mom and Dad."

First, there was a haircut that took my daughter's long, straight locks from simple to sophisticated. Then we shopped for confirmation dresses (all her dresses had inexplicably shrunk) and the ones that fit her were in the women's, not children's, department. We found two that were sufficiently cute for her, and sufficiently modest for me, at least if I threw a sweater on her and buttoned it from neck to hip. Months of her surreptitious study of fashion magazines, which I have long pretended were just a kicky way to find collage materials for craft projects, meant that my daughter knew exactly what jewelry and hairstyles would complement each dress to best effect.

We'd agreed that she could wear her first pair of heels, but I insisted on buying the lowest ones available in the department store. Who would have guessed they'd also be the most flattering, nude patent leather slingbacks with little flowers on each toe? They managed to make her long legs look even longer. Backfire.

Then came the contact lenses, something that she convinced me she needed for ballet more than anything else. Until she took them off, I didn't realize how much I'd relied on her old tortoiseshell frames to fix her in my mind as the fourth grader she was when she got them. Without them, her blue eyes pop.

Only one thing to be done: buy more glasses. "The contacts will be uncomfortable when you're reading," I said, scrambling. "Better to have some glasses you like." At the opticians I encouraged her to buy the biggest, most Buddy Holly looking glasses they stocked, almost exact duplicates of David Byrne in the "Once in a Lifetime" video. Did they tamp down her looks? No, they did not. She now looks like a smart girl who has the added sassiness to pull off Geek Chic glasses. 

After her confirmation service last week the older church ladies surrounded me. "She's so grown up!" they said, marveling. "She doesn't even walk; she just glides when she moves!"

I only have one tool left in my arsenal: braces. When I mentioned to her that maybe we should call the orthodontist to see if she needs them, she nodded vigorously. "Because if I get them right now, I'll be done with them before high school," she reasoned. High school. As in the co-ed high school she'll be attending, or gliding through, with actual boys.

Am I crazy for thinking we should bring caftans and poke bonnets back into vogue before next year?

In honor of my daughter and all the girls in her posse who we are about to unleash upon the world (thank or blame us later,) here's the Airborne Toxic Event singing "Changing" from their latest album "All At Once," which I heartily recommend.

Looks like Oakland on a perfect Saturday night.

I thought it said "Annoying Know It Alls"

Today I've got a guest post on SMARTS Magazine, an online magazine for "Aspiring Know It Alls" who share  nuggets of wisdom about their particular arena of expertise, be it fashion and beauty or cooking or health matters. So what's my particular piece of the pie?

Failure. How proud my parents must be.

Specifically, it's about how being a failure at a big project was actually a good lesson for my kids, in disguise. I hope you'll click through to Failing By Example and leave a comment there if you liked it.

As for the Aspiring part of the tagline, you can just ask my siblings and husband...I achieved "Know It All" status YEARS ago.

All About Her

You know those people who hate when anyone makes a fuss over their birthday? They try to let it pass unnoticed, reject any suggestion that something should be done to commemorate their special day, act sheepish if they're found out.

I do not understand those people at all. I believe in the Birthday Month approach, wherein anything you do in the thirty days bracketing the anniversary of your birth can and should be rationalized as a celebration. So you won't be surprised when I publicly declare that tomorrow is my birthday.

You may be surprised when I say that I'm voluntarily not celebrating it. 

My oldest daughter, along with 17 other kids from our church, is being confirmed tomorrow. The program that our church pioneered for confirmation, the sacrament by which a child becomes an adult in the eyes of the church, is called Confirm Not Conform (CnC) and is now nationally syndicated. Starting last September, the kids began meeting 2-3 times/month to talk with clergy and lay leaders about various aspects of Christianity, their own spirituality, and their personal values. Field trips to various area houses of worship were mandatory, as were stints at a soup kitchen and food bank.

Each child was assigned a mentor who took a special interest in their progress, encouraging them and helping them along with what was a significant time commitment. Throughout the experience, the kids are supported in the journey and reminded that it is 100% their choice whether or not they actually choose to get confirmed at the end of it. It is designed to leave them with a lifelong framework for evaluating spiritual and moral choices.

Sounds great, right? But it's been much harder than I anticipated, when I decreed last summer that my daughter would have to do CnC this year. Much as she likes the CnC program and adores her mentor, the schedule has required my daughter to miss her ballet class every other week, for 9 months. You and I, grownups that we are, understand that  in the grand scheme of things fifteen missed ballet classes are not earth-shattering. But you and I are not 13 year old girls who really love ballet. 

Every other Wednesday, same fight. "I'm going, because I HAVE to go. Because you are MAKING me do it." Dueling eye rolls.

"I am MAKING you do it so that you will have something priceless to carry with you, your whole life - an understanding of the values that are important to you." Teeth grinding glare, hands on hips.

"BALLET is what's important to me!" Slam, slam, stomp, stomp. 

Every Wednesday I almost give up. She's got justification; I'm pretty convinced her repeated absences cost her a role or two during  last December's production of The Nutcracker. But having a solid spiritual grounding has been an invaluable help during troubled times in my own life. So I stubbornly hold on to the threat of mothers everywhere: "You'll thank me for this one day!"

But what do I know? You really have to wait until they're 35 or so to see the results of your parenting experiment. Even then - how much of it is because of the way you parented? And how much is due to the self-determining child who pushed back when Mom and Dad went too far? I'm thinking of that eighth year of piano study over which I fought with my parents. They eventually agreed to let me quit, and I went on to other activities like student council and writing for the school paper that felt much more relevant.

At any rate, that's why I am gladly making tomorrow - and today's video -  be all about her.  The video shows the Kirov Ballet dancing the Mazurka from Coppelia, the dance that my daughter and her younger sister will be performing with the Oakland Ballet School in June (and for which she has had to miss three rehearsals this week while practicing for confirmation.)

Giving my birthday over to celebrate her seems like the least I can do in exchange for her perseverance in seeing this through.

SpongeBob's Teachings on Corporate Lies

I am a lousy church school teacher. Having regarded my formative years as an Episcopalian as more of a social event than anything else - some of my best school friends attended the same church, so most of the praying that went on in class was over tests and who would ask who out for Senior Ball. I never read the Bible or anything Jesus-y like that.

Still, it taught me the benefit of taking part of a faith community, and I definitely buy into the whole "love thy neighbor" message. So when the call went out for church school teachers for the 4th,5th, and 6th graders at church recently, I signed on, breathing a sigh of relief when an email told me that our entire curriculum would be based on SpongeBob Square Pants.

It's clever, really. Our church school leader selects a Sponge Bob episode for the kids to watch, and develops with questions that tie it back to key teachings - "How might SpongeBob have been a better neighbor to Squidward? What does Jesus say about the way we treat our neighbors?" type of thing. Lively discussions ensue, often with sidebars on farting and bodily fluids. It's all good - the kids want to come back.

Recently, though, I got to class and the DvD for the week was missing. Faced with a roomful of staring kids who were moments away from stampeding back to Coffee Hour,  I said "I know! We'll pop in a random episode and you'll tell me what the spiritual message is!" In the episode, SpongeBob drew a little squiggle with a magic pencil, which quickly became a Zombie  2-dimensional SpongeBob wreaking havoc all over Bikini Bottom. Horrified at what he's wrought, it become SpongeBob's job to capture and erase the squiggle before it does any permanent damage.

All of which is a very, very long way to say that even SpongeBob, and the kids in my class, know that a lie can careen out of the liar's control and do terrible collateral damage.  Which is why I'm so pissed off to read columnist Kathleen Pender's piece in the San Francisco Chronicle today about how, exactly, U.S. corporations like GE and Cisco avoid paying a penny of tax to the federal government, even when they're raking in billions of dollars in profits. It involves a shell game of hiding profits offshore, using techniques like "the double Irish" and "the Dutch sandwich" (mmm, lunch.)

 In 2004, the government gave major corporations a one-time tax holiday to repatriate their foreign profits at an effective tax rate of 5.25% (which ended up being closer to 3.7% after foreign tax credits.) The idea was that these cut-rate foreign profits would be used by the companies to boost investments in R&D and training in the US and create jobs. But a study from National Bureau of Economic Research found that not only did that NOT happen, but that "a $1 increase in repatriations was associated with an increase of almost $1 in payouts to shareholders." Furthermore, as Pender reports, "A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said that companies including Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer, Ford, Merck and Honeywell announced large layoffs shortly after repatriating funds."

In short, these corporations are lying about their obligations, and getting away with it. Love they neighbor (and pay your fair share) be damned.

Guess what? My biggest client is a UK-based publishing company that pays me in British pounds. As such, they are not required to file a W-9 for me; it's up to me alone to report that income to the US government and pay taxes on it. 

It would be easy for me to not do that, and personally lucrative. Instead I track every penny of those payments, report them to the government, and pay taxes on them. You know why? Because I find it exhausting to even contemplate the web of self-delusion it would take to convince myself that doing the wrong thing is right.* I know these corporations may seem faceless, but there are actual human beings running them. 

How they sleep at night is a Holy Mystery, perhaps even beyond SpongeBob's ken.

*Yes, I recently wrote about the white lies I tell my kids. And now they know it's not the cleaning man's fault their things are missing, and I'm paying big time.

Give Working Moms a Break

A few months ago I attended a conference for women in publishing and during one panel discussion, the audience - 90% female - sat rapt listening to Kara Swisher talk about how she gave birth while holding a BlackBerry in one hand. For those not  familiar with Kara, she used to write about the online technology business in the Wall Street Journal and now is a partner in AllThingsD.com, a go-to website for coverage and analysis of what's happening in the digital world. She is whip smart, funny, and no bullshit - if you've never seen her 2010 evisceration of interview with Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook's privacy issues, it's worth a look. 

So when Kara talked about how offended she was when, upon arriving back to the office after giving birth to her first child, her boss offered her extra time and flexibility to complete her assignments, I believed her. "What did I need extra time for?" she roared, clearly insulted at the insinuation that motherhood had changed her ability to do her job.

From across the conference room, a petite young woman stood up and made an observation, one that I would wager 75% of us in the room shared. "That's really great that you didn't need extra time. But me? I needed extra flexibility after I had my kids. And I think we need to talk more about the root cause of why there aren't more women in upper level management positions," the absence of public policy that would support the efforts of women to be good mothers and good workers at the same time.

The woman was Katrina Alcorn, who writes the terrific WorkingMomsBreak.com blog. It seeks to shine a light on all the ways that public policy is stacked against success for families with two working parents, and to open up conversations about how to improve the state of play. Having admired a woman who wasn't afraid to offer an opposing (and, given the room, somewhat un-PC)  counterpoint to Kara, I was thrilled when a mutual friend introduced us, and even more so when Katrina invited me to guest post on her blog.

Of course, I have unique qualifications: when it comes to being a working mother, I can say with confidence that I have tried every arrangement that exists. Full time, part time, work at home, work for myself, and of course, temporarily unemployed. That last state came thanks to what my old colleague Matt referred to as "The Ritualistic Shitcanning of 2000," when 300 of us were laid off by my Dot Bomb employer - though I was the only one who was nine months pregnant.

I hope you'll click through and check out my post on WorkingMomsBreak today, about how some days working "part time" just makes me feel like I'm doing two jobs badly. But hey, at least it's by choice.

I'm a bona fide Scary Mommy

One of my most vivid childhood memories was being awoken in the early hours one morning by my dad, who was rummaging around under my pillow for the tooth I'd placed there the night before and leaving two shiny quarters in its place. When I arrived at the breakfast table, indignant, I said, "DAD! I know you are the Tooth Fairy! You woke me up!"

To which he answered, "Me? I was just making change."

Lies, lies, lies, yeah - it's not just a song by the Thompson Twins but a bona fide parenting technique (used judiciously, of course) for keeping a kid happy. So imagine how thrilled I was when Jill at ScaryMommy.com - motto: "An honest take on motherhood" -  invited me to guest post on her site today, about the four lies I tell my kids to keep the peace. 

Just to give you some context: ScaryMommy.com is the site where I go when I want to dream big about being a blogger with a capital B. She has serious cred, in part because she's a great writer, in part because she bends over backwards to build community with her readers, and in part because she may have the best blog name out there. It's an honor and thrill to be part of the ScaryMommySociety today so I hope you'll click through here and take a look! (Except for you, my two darling daughters. If you figure out what the four lies are, I'm sunk.)  

Finding Fearlessness

Every winter I interview high school seniors who are applying for acceptance to the Freshman class at my East Coast alma mater. The kids I meet are mature, accomplished (I have to tell you, if you haven’t built an orphanage in South America, you could probably qualify as a minority student,) and whip-smart. I genuinely enjoy getting to know what motivates these young people, and then doing my best to boil those discussions into four persuasive paragraphs for the Admissions Office. I try to find something about the kid that is noteworthy, that will make them rise above the sea of 4.1 GPAs and school newspaper editors and student body presidents.

This year I met a young man who was, by his own description, swimming in a somewhat murkier end of the pool. Without giving specifics, he faced some learning disabilities that make it difficult to thrive in a traditional academic environment and his grades have suffered as a result. Frustrated at the labels being applied to their son in elementary school, his parents suggested that computers might help him cope. Of course he turned out to be a whack-a-dooey computer genius.

At 17, his high school principal has given him budgetary and management oversight for a major school computer initiative, and he is also busy at the helm a high-tech startup. He recently went with his two co-founders – if you add up all their ages, they don’t quite equal 60 – to meet with VCs and ended up gaining an entire advisory board of interested graybeards.

None of that was what impressed me – I’m jaded after all these college interviews with superstars. You wrote a bestselling novel? WhatEVER. Is it in French?

What made him stand out was his utter fearlessness. “I told my co-founders that there is simply no way we can fail,” he said. “Everything we’ve done – figured out what the product is, wrote the business plan, got the meetings with the VC – even if we don’t get one step farther, we’ve still succeeded. Because we’ve learned something each step of the way. I told them that they should be so proud of what we’ve done just to get this far.” Here's a kid who is not discouraged by the fact that his school grades and SAT scores don't properly reflect his promise. He understands that lessons learned in the process are as important as the outcome, and embraces every moment of it. 

I have been thinking about his fearlessness – and why my own is so hard to coax out of hibernation.

Of course, once you get older and have a family depending on you, the notion of trying something risky without a net loses a great degree of appeal. I’d go live in a cave and eat beans from a can if it meant better writing, but I’ll be damned if my husband and kids have to suffer.

But even when the stakes are lower, I take the sure shot too easily. Apply to speak at a conference when I haven’t done public speaking for a few years? Not unless I’m forced to. Submit an essay to a magazine that draws household-name authors to its pages? Sorry, I’m not in that league yet (and at this rate never will be.) Respond to the "Room of Your Own" challenge and offer to organize a panel for the upcoming BlogHer conference? Maybe I should spend my first-ever trip to the conference by just observing. 


I spent a college semester in Vienna. When I returned for my senior year and people asked what I would do after graduation, I told everyone with complete sincerity, “I’m getting a job in Germany.” I hadn’t applied for any, and as my classmates got snapped up by the Manny Hannys and the Solly Bros (it was the '80s, it was business school, and we were all on a nickname basis with the big banks,) I just bided my time and entertained not a single shred of self doubt.

A month before graduation, a tiny German company came to campus, and three weeks after wearing my mortarboard I headed off to Munich to spend two years as an IT consultant. It never occurred to me that I wouldn't move to Germany.

So how, when, and why did I relinquish that faith in myself? And what would you do today, if you weren't afraid to fail?

WTF is the issue?

After skipping the television broadcast of the Academy Awards for years, on the grounds it was both a snooze- and narcissism- fest, I succumbed to my children's requests and watched last Sunday. They were excited because they'd actually seen one of the movies up for best picture. An R-rated one, no less.

We didn't take them to see "The King's Speech" without a little homework first. I skipped over to my Bible for parental movie decision making, Commonsensemedia.org. This site is a gift for parents trying to figure out what exactly their darlings will be exposed to in the course of a 90 minute film. (Full disclosure: I was a reviewer for CSM for awhile, specializing in straight-to-DvD sequels with the numbers VI, VII, and VIII in their titles. You ain't lived until you've sat all the way through Buddies 6: Buddies in Space.)

According to the review, The King dropped a number of F-bombs, but other than that nothing seemed beyond the ken of our 10 and 13 year old girls. In fact, in the UK it was approved for audiences 12 and up. Prior to the movie we gave our caveat: you are going to hear language that you should never repeat. Even if you hear your parents use it on a weekly (Mom) or daily (Dad) basis.

Sure enough, the girls loved the movie - LOVED it - and we all cracked up during the one swearing scene. Nobody's ears withered and the children are not referring to each other or us by four letter words. Instead we've had some interesting discussions about WWII, about stuttering, about the rules for royal succession. That scene made a point, but it didn't overshadow the whole movie.

Cuss words in music can be the same way. Though I download the clean version of explicit songs if I think the kids are going to be listening, I'm not particularly bothered by the swearing if it's there for good reason, and I trust that my kids are not idiots who are going to sing the actual words out loud in mixed company. I've told them my view - that people who swear constantly are missing out on a whole wide world of more precise adjectives, nouns, and verbs. And no word has as much impact as a curse uttered by someone who usually takes pains to avoid them.

Please, a simple f-bomb would be a nice problem to have. What bothers me much more is lyrics that are sexually explicit and /or misogynistic, or as Flight of the Conchords put it in their rap Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros, "Some people say our lyrics are sexist, but you lovely bitches and 'hos should know I'm trying to correct this."  I flip the radio channel to something else when the singer talks about Shorty on the pole, or backing it up so he can milk the cow, or boys trying to touch her junk (that she's probably doused with the same bottle of Jack she uses to brush her teeth.)

Rihanna never swears, but she drives me INSANE. Here is an extremely talented singer who was herself a victim of domestic violence, and every song she has sung since that experience glorifies violence in the relationship - "Just gonna stand there and watch me burn, that's all right because I love the way it hurts." Each time that song comes on, I turn off the radio and give the kids yet another lecture on how violence has zero place in a romantic relationship.

The worst part is how some of those awful, demeaning lyrics are encased in songs that I am powerless to hate. We listen to a lot of hip hop and rap in this house, so pretty much everything by the Beastie Boys and Kanye falls into this category. "Carry Out" by Timbaland and Justin Timberlake - I cannot help but shrug my shoulders to the beat of those opening chimes. Yet when Justin asks "Is it full of myself to want you full of me?" I wince. Then I keep dancing.

Movies, song lyrics, books - is it rationalization to say that I treat the ones with questionable content as "teaching moments?" Maybe without the music of 50 Cent and Nelly I wouldn't constantly be telling my daughters that no one should ever get away with objectifying or talking down to them.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. In that spirit, I bring you Bruce Springsteen singing "Long Time Coming." When he gets to the line at 3:39 about his intentions to do a better job raising his unborn third child than he has with the first two, "I ain't gonna f* it up this time" is about the only phrase that can capture the power of his sentiment. It's also the parenting pledge I make, every morning.

Here's to a weekend of getting it right, friends -

When Winter Equals Summer

It’s winter in Northern California; though we don’t have the bitter cold and snow that seems to be attacking the rest of the country like an alien horde, we do have buckets of rain, intermittent hail, and the worst weather-related torture of all: meteorologists who summarize every Five Day Forecast by saying, “Of course, all that rain is probably still not enough to save the state from drought.” With all these signs of a prolonged winter around me, it’s obvious what’s on my mind:

Summer Camp. 

The bane of the working parent in the 21^st century, Summer Camp is where you send your kid when schools close their doors for two point five months. The brochures start arriving in the mail around the time that I’m taking the holiday wreath off the door. Sarah’s Science Camp! Roughing It Day Camp! Junior Center for Arts and Sciences Camp! Touch the Earth Day Camp (referred to by mothers of sons as Touch the Dirt)!

Each colorful handout offers compelling reasons to enroll your child, designed to make the youngsters in the house do the selling. “Pllleeeeeeease, Mom, please let me go to Ice Cream Camp in July! I get to make ice cream every day!” Well, that is something that has been sorely missing from your life. You’re right, you should go there.

But the truth is, they do have to go somewhere during the day so that you can continue to do your job, which stubbornly refuses to give you two point five months off, even when you’re self-employed. So it may as well be ice cream camp, and then a three week drama camp that starts the week after which the kid is actually not that excited about but it fills the schedule, plus you have a neighbor who will carpool with you.

Ah yes, the all important carpool. It's all well and good when your child has a friend attending the same camp, but as a wise parent you see the real benefit – the more friends who attend the same camp, the higher the likelihood that you can split the drop offs and pickups and even manage an occasional “is it okay if your daughter comes home with us after camp to hang out with Junior for awhile?” The emails start flying – which camps is your child attending, and when? Parents study complicated shared spreadsheets like runes. How can I minimize my driving and maximize the after-camp playdate potential?

Because the camps don’t believe in keeping your child one minute longer than they have to. It’s summer! They should be outside exploring and doing summery things! At least, I assume that’s the justification for having day camps that close at 11:30 a.m. That is not a day camp, by the way, that is a pre-brunch camp. I have barely scratched the surface of work email by 11:15, and now the kid needs to be picked up and fed lunch. What is this, 1956?

If you have more than one kid, good luck finding a camp that appeals to both children at the same time. You either force the issue and deal with the complaints of the kid who hates the water but has to attend swim camp with his older brother, or try to make everyone happy and go through more gas than a Hummer limo.  I have a friend whose family is taking a six week sabbatical in Europe this summer, and I think she's more excited about getting out of planning camp than she is about traveling abroad.

By March 1 the months of July and August on my family calendar look like a Mondrian painting: blue blocks for the oldest daughter’s camps, yellow for the youngest, and the rare and wonderful green blocks when they are in the same place at the same time. The checkbook coughs out its last deposit and collapses, empty. I enter Reese's Peanut Butter Egg season (some call it Easter) feeling like perhaps I have it all sorted out, and I relax for a few weeks.

Then in early June, someone mentions that ice cream camp only meets four days a week, plus since it's 4th of July that week they don't have camp on Tuesday, or that the ballet intensive camp that the kids must attend to progress to the next level has finally been announced, and conflicts with another camp you've already paid for. 

It's about that time when I start researching policy makers who are leading the charge for 12 months of school so I can contribute to their campaigns. Sure, it'll make Jack a dull boy. But isn't that preferable to sparing Jack the sight of his mother curled into the fetal position?

Nicknames and Mashups

Overheard at a Chinese New Year's party last weekend: "I feel sorry for her. She only has one culture: Malaysian. She's not even mixed." (4th grader to friend.)

Such is the ubiquity of mixed race kids around here that the poor single race kids are objects of pity - what could they possibly have to talk about on "My Heritage" day at school?

The children of the hosts were Japanese-Chinese-American. There were also two Whapa kids - Whapa is a term I learned from my older daughter, meaning kids with one white parent and one Asian parent (Hapa being the Hawaiian blanket term for part Asian.) My kids were the token Quapas, a word Andrew read somewhere meaning quarter Asian. Elsewhere, my friend's new baby nephew, Alejandro Sol, is Jexican - Jewish Mexican. My oldest daughter's best friends call themselves Blasian - African American mom, Whapa dad.

Even many of the same-race married couples I know have a mixed component, with Jewish-Christian unions outnumbering the more homogeneous pairing about 2:1 in my unscientific survey. (Is there a term for that besides Jew-ish?)

All these mashups raise up some interesting questions about racial identity. Last Saturday night the girls who call themselves Blasian were over for dinner and relayed tales of their Asian friends at school who call their parents FOBs (Fresh off the Boats.) I took offense, and so did their father who is half Japanese. "That is totally inappropriate," we told them. "What if someone of another race called their parents FOB - it would start a fight."

My husband, on the other hand, thought it was perfectly fine since the kids using the term are Asian. His own dad, who indeed sailed on a boat from Asia to America by way of Europe, often referred to people as FOBs. In our marriage, the appropriate deployment of terms like these tops the list of "Topics About Which We Agree to Disagree," followed closely by how to make perfect bacon.

Our youngest daughter, the blue-eyed Quapa, asked whether people would think she was Chinese if she ever went to visit China. "No," I told her, "and I better never hear you use the term FOB around anyone either." Later that night while our family played the word game "You've Been Sentenced" she used her randomly assigned cards to construct a sentence that went something along the lines of "Hand me some strawberries, whitey," which I didn't find offensive at all, merely hilarious.

Does appropriating racial nicknames for self-referential usage deflate the negativity associated with them, or does it perpetuate stereotypes? And what if the person using the term isn't easily identifiable as a member of the race to which they can claim heritage? I don't really know the answer to those questions.

All I know is that more and more people are going to have to wrestle with it over time. When I was searching online for a baby present for Alejandro Sol, I came across a onesie that said "Jew-Pino," the wearer of which is bound to grow up feeling conflicted about Pork Adobo. Just this week a far-flung relative of mine was featured on Good Morning America as a "real-life counterpart" to the TV comedy Modern Family, specifically to the May December reunion of Jay and Gloria. Her husband is 30 years older than her, but the fact that he is Asian and she is white barely rated a mention.

Another thing I know is that a mashup can be more powerful than the sum of its individual parts - like this genius bit combining the Glee version of "Teenage Dream" with Swedish singer Robyn's "Dancing on My Own" (thanks to Judith Powell for the find.) I know, Katy Perry two weeks in a row, annoying, but anytime I can share more Robyn, I will.

Here's to a weekend full of acceptance and mutual respect, friends -

Haste Makes Redfaced

The English language is rife with aphorisms that warn against the dangers of rushing. Slow and steady wins the race, look before you leap, measure twice and cut once. Hurrying is how you neglect to see that red t-shirt sneak into the laundry with the load of whites, or get two thirds of the way through a recipe before realizing you are missing four key ingredients needed to finish it, or speed to the school pickup before remembering that your kid is going home with a friend that day. Unfortunately, "rushing" is also the default speed at which I seem to live my life.

We had a busy fall. The girls moved up a level and are taking ballet twice a week, and the older daughter embarked on a nine-month long confirmation program at church. The husband is working long hours, and I bit the bullet and took a 12 week writing class that involved a bunch of homework, on top of my regular work. For about three months there I was living my life in 15 minute increments, happy if we were all where we needed to be at the appointed time and fighting off a little bit of panic every day. Reasoned consideration was in short supply.

In December I was in London and saw a poster that resonated with me. It was produced by the British government during the Blitz and hung all over the city of London during the war, an admonition and comfort to the British people. On a bright pinky-red background topped with a crown, white block letters spell out “Keep Calm and Carry On.”  

That’s it, I thought. I need that poster across from my desk so I can remember to slow down, not give in to the false allure of doing things faster. More important to do things well than to do them quickly. When I got home, I ordered it from the Imperial War Museum web site, paying three times as much for shipping as I did for the actual poster and resigning myself to wait for the month it would take to arrive. It’s worth it to have something so unique, I thought.

My new philosophy in mind, I felt smug when I decided to take all the VHS cassettes that hold our family movies and drop them off to the photo store, to be converted to DvD. Our VHS player died years ago and now exists only to hold up a sheen of dust, and I’ve been meaning to get these converted forever. I was finally going to do it right and cross it off my list.

I scooped up the whole pile of tapes from the cabinet where we’d always kept the family movies, back in the Pleistocene Era when the VHS player worked. At $25 per tape it wasn’t going to be cheap, but how else would we ever watch them? After I dropped them off I even had enough time to get a cup of coffee and do some writing. Carrying on!

Fast forward to me picking up a big bag of tapes, each one fastened with a rubber band to its new DvD twin, and the labels from the VHS tapes carefully reproduced on the covers of the DvDs. The girls and I laid them out on the table: 1999/Camp Gorham; Christmas 2000, San Diego.

But what’s this? Cool Runnings? Isn’t that the Disney movie about the Jamaican bobsled team? Holy Mother Mary, did I record that on a VHS tape and leave it with the family movies, and then pay $25 to have my non-HD, hoopty version of the movie, complete with commercials, converted to DVD? In case you’re interested, yes I did. Also, you can buy a Cool Runnings DVD new from Amazon for $11.49.

There was one other video that was mysterious, labeled “Dr. Video.” Hmmm. Did I maybe take the camera with me to one of the girls’ checkups? Maybe it’s a sonogram? The VHS cassette was no help, completely barren of labels. After we got through watching an excruciatingly plotless movie which consisted entirely of scenes of our older daughter opening every gift she was given that year, we slipped Dr. Video in the DvD player.

A grey circle appears on screen. Looks a little like an artery. A man’s voice starts narrating. “Ok, we are standing at the front curb filming towards the house,“ he says. "The line proceeds in a northerly direction."

That circular grey shape is no artery. It’s the sewer line at our old house, the time we hired someone to do a fiber optic inspection to determine if it needed work. Yes. Because I didn't take the time to actually figure out what was on all the videos I was dropping off, I paid another $25 to convert an inspection of the poop pipe of a house in which we no longer live to DvD. Would you like to borrow it? I’m charging $1 per day, until I earn $25 back.

Right after sent in my order for my Keep Calm poster, we got a sales circular from Cost Plus. On the cover it featured the exact poster, mounted on canvas and framed, for about half of what I paid. A day later I saw it again, different store, different frame, same low price. A friend of mine said, “Yeah, you were so excited about your poster I didn’t have the heart to tell you that you can pretty much find them anywhere if you take the time to look.”

Keeping Calm. Carrying On.

You Think You've Seen It All Before

Last weekend we hauled out old family movies for the first time in years, and spent a few hours revisiting the girls as they were at ages 2 and 3. In the unfair apportioning of screen time that accrues to birth order, there were seven tapes of the oldest child, and about seven minutes of the youngest. (Maybe that’s why she is pursuing a life on the stage, to try to make up for not being filmed as a baby…)

As I watched our now-teen daughter appear on screen, I was thunderstruck. Of course I remember her as the little girl with the Louise Brooks bob and the husky voice, tapping her way through Miss Marilyn’s dance class and reading board books to her collection of teddy bears. It’s just kind of incomprehensible that the same soul now resides in a tall, long-haired girl who comes up to my shoulder and buys all her own superfly clothes with babysitting money. 

One day slips into the next and even though you’re watching every moment of it you fail to notice the transitions. One of my favorite sayings about parenting when the girls were small was “The days crawl. But the years fly.” It made me feel better about those eternal daytime hours with toddlers, when the activity you thought would carry you until nap time is done in twenty minutes and you’re scrambling for the next distraction, nerves frazzled and raw. 

Now I wince when I hear it. The years are indeed flying. In another five, if we do our job right and the University of California system is still solvent, she’ll be off to college. I guess it takes that moment of standing back and seeing both the little girl on the screen and the big one sitting next to you on the couch to make you realize it.

Nothing in the room has changed but your own perspective.

For today’s music moment I picked a song that you have heard a million times (a million and one, if you watch Glee): Firework by Katy Perry. You will be tempted to not watch it, because as soon as you flip on your car radio it will be playing again. You will think you know everything about it there is to know – standard pop fare. I did.

Then someone clued me in to check out the video, and when I pulled it up on my laptop I realized it's meant as heartfelt encouragement to every teenager trying to negotiate the rocky shoals of growing up, to every closeted gay kid and self-conscious big girl and wallflower. My reaction watching it can best be described by what my daughter said when she entered the room – “oh my GOSH, Dad, Mom is crying AGAIN!” I blubbered something about “firework – you are so special – don't ever let someone make you feel worthless -  I love you so much- bwawahahwaawaawawa” before she rolled her eyes and walked out again.

It's the same old pop song. I just hear it differently now.

Here’s to all the kids trying to keep that spark alive inside them (though seriously, do not go swimming in your underwear at an overcrowded party. You do not want to be that headline.) Take a moment this weekend and try to see them for who they have become.

Teens in Transition

Our oldest daughter turns thirteen in a few days. But enough about her. I am turning into the MOTHER of a teenager in a few days. 

Of course, I may have some leeway before achieving official Mom of a Teen status, because turning into a teenager isn’t an overnight process. We’ve seen signs of encroachment since she turned ten, flashes of attitude and outgrown clothes and a sudden eagerness to take showers without anyone asking her too. But they’re right there inside the girl who is still willing to hold my hand sometimes when we’re out in public, who asks me to comb out her hair at night, and who is in the middle of a determined quest to read every single Trixie Belden book in the series in chronological order.

So I presume that for at least a little while I can continue my non-teen-mothering ways, sleeping secure at night knowing that my children are under the roof with me, confident that her parents or other trusted adults are the only people driving her in a car, and withdrawing television privileges in the case of rampant sassback.

But it’s a temporary comfort. I remember a call from my sister; she had been disciplining her middle son over something, and realized that she was tilting her head up to look into his eyes. “Now what do I do?” she lamented.  Since he’s passed safely out of the teenager years and into adulthood, whatever she came up with – I believe it involved threats of withholding automobile access, and keeping her sense of humor  -  must have worked. 

I suppose the timing of my official transition to Mother of a Teen depends mostly on our daughter; the first night she doesn’t come home at the appointed time, or the afternoon she says “Don’t worry, Rachel’s driving me home!” Maybe it'll be the strains of the Smiths' music from behind closed doors, the first notes of "How Soon Is Now" confirming that no one knows misery like Morrissey.

Or maybe there will be one pivotal moment that moves her - and me - across our respective thresholds.That's how it was for me.

I was fourteen in 1980, about to enter high school, and spending my last summer as a camper at Camp Gorham; the next year I'd be on staff. My parents were willing to send me for two weeks and I saved up my babysitting money so I could pay for another two. That year there was a counselor named Doug who was four years older than me and a certifiable Stone Cold Fox. For those readers not alive during the Johnson administration, Stone Cold Fox was a '70s phrase denoting a person of the opposite sex whose features are so arresting, I suppose, that they freeze the viewer like a statue.

I still spent about half my time in the horse barn, whispering my admiration into the ear of a horse named Bulldog and dreaming of becoming a cowgirl. But I spent the rest of it being pulled to Doug like metal shavings to a magnet. I took his sailing class six times, and elbowed other kids in the solar plexus when they tried to take the empty seat next to him at mealtimes. 

I wasn't even cowed when he said to me at lunch one day, in a speech full of awkward silences, that the Camp Director had suggested that Doug needed to sit with some other campers sometimes and that maybe I should go back and sit with my cabin mates at another table. I had the temerity to say, "I only came over to ask if I could get another apple for Bulldog."

One night there was a dance and like all the oldest girl campers, I primped and preened and prepped for hours beforehand. Walking to the dance by myself, past  a darkened staircase in the ranch bunkhouse, I was startled when Doug jumped down off a railing and landed beside me. In the purple twilight he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "Hey, fox," he said, before turning and running away.

My poor parents dropped off a horse-loving bookworm at the camp gates; the girl they picked up was an insufferable know-it-all, swimming laps in the pool of her own lovesick misery.  

In short: I was a stone cold teenager.

From Puppets to Mary Onettes

It happens in a flash. One day you're helping your best friend's son play with fire trucks and set up Lego castles on a braided rug in her family room, the next day he is a deep-voiced high school junior handing over a CD he's burned and saying "Nancy, I think you'd like this band. Check it out."

I spent half my earlier life reading music magazines, album reviews, and listening to the radio - back when it had some variety - hungry for insider tips on worthwhile new music and always, as the same young man once described me to his mom, "In the know. In the now." But times have changed; mostly there's less of it, and now I take my music tips wherever I can.

In 2008 I bought all the albums on the Time Magazine Album of the Year list, officially ceding my credibility as a hanger-on to the leading edge. Pandora's been a godsend, because I can play it in the background while I'm doing six other things and then prick up my ears like Achilles when something good pierces my nonstop internal monologue: "Ruh roh! Who's this band?"

Shazam's another great iPhone app - point it towards the source of a song you don't know, click the big "Shazam" button, and the technology spits out the name, rank, and serial number of the song in question. I could, but will not, reveal the names of friends who have a family game which involves taking the Shazam app into the closet, singing a song into it and seeing if they can pass as the original artist. (They can't.) Another friend almost got into a road rage incident when she Shazamed her iPhone at a van blasting some classic Def Leppard.

I just have to make peace with the fact that one of my prime sources for discovering new music these days is now someone who used to attend the Puppets and Pie summer camp with my daughter.

I bring you: the Mary Onettes, which was included on my Christmas mix CD from him. That's pronounced Marionettes, not Mary Won-ettes as I originally thought (and was frankly much more impressed by.) At any rate: every one of their songs sounds like they took one '80s band from Column A and another from Column B and wrote a little mashup thereof.

Here's a track, the formula for which is (the Cure)  +  (Joy Division) = Slow. So simple, a child could do it.

I Never Expected To Be This Broad

I  have a slight acquaintance with a man who is a knot expert, one of the leading thinkers about knots in the entire world. He teaches knot theory in the math department of a top university, and his office is hung with samples of sailor knots, artfully mounted and framed. Once I came across a knot at a flea market, attached to a wooden plaque, intricate and heavy and the size of a loaf of rosemary foccacia. At the last minute I decided not to buy it for him, worried it might seem a bit overfriendly. The next time I ran into him I mentioned having seen such a knot for sale. He sighed and said, "I already have that one."

There was a time that I too seemed slated for specialization. In high school I realized that my affinity for foreign languages, lust for travel, and fear of poverty made me a shoo-in for a career in international business. I earned both an undergraduate and graduate degree in the subject and spent about ten years in what my resume will tell you were "positions of increasing responsibility" in international marketing and product development, getting a more nuanced understanding of the challenges of cross-cultural business success.

Then I had kids. Then I realized that my favorite part of international business had become writing up long reports for my bosses, filled with superfluous anecdotes about the people and cultures I'd visited, and light on terms like EBITDA and IRR. Great if you aspire to be Mark Twain, not so much if you aspire to be George Soros. 

Thus followed a major mid-life career change which has broadened and flattened my skill set like a pancake. Here is a partial list of things at which I've become merely proficient in the past five years:

1. Technical Support: I am the go-to gal for my own home office tech setup as well as everyone else's iPod, iPad, and laptop. I have a success rate of about 53% at fixing computer glitches. The rest of the time I just say, "Try to reboot it. I'm going to read in bed for awhile."
2. Hairstyling: Trimming bangs and split ends over the sink is what I'm known for, which is good because it is the only cut I can do. If I had a son, he'd probably have a bowl cut.
3. Stage Mothering: On Saturday I learned for the first time that ballet dancers on pointe are not standing on the pads of their toes inside those shiny shoes as I had always assumed, but actually on the tips of their toes. After 1.5 years of trying, the ballet teacher last week told my youngest daughter that Mommy almost had the hair bun right. (See No. 2 above.)
4. Veterinary Services: I can remove ticks with only a little bit of gagging.
5. Plumbing: I can sometimes get the long hair gunge left by three females in our family off of the bathroom drain, using a white plastic hooky thing my husband bought me. Mostly I just wait for him to get frustrated.
6. Urban Farming: Every spring I plant the garden with seedlings and high hopes, and reliably harvest a dozen tomatoes and one artichoke. 
7. Team Cow Penning: With my sister, I can separate three cattle from a herd and get them into a pen at the center of the corral while riding horseback. Cowgirl Camp ruled.

Of the skills above, Team Cow Penning is the only one I'd really care to get better at. But there's a limited market for it.

I supposed it would be nice to be recognized as an expert in something rather than as a Jill of Some Trades. But the benefit of this broad worldview is that by now I've learned that is nothing I can't do, in at least a half-assed fashion.

I may not know knots. But I can bake you a pretzel and tie your shoe, and sometimes that's plenty.

An Open Letter to the Lady on My Street With The Doberman

Hi! I’m your neighbor from a few blocks down the street, but I don’t think you know me by name. I’m the one who flees into my house whenever you and your large black Doberman Pinscher with the improbably feminine name of Clarice are trotting by on your thrice daily walk, accompanied by your Segway-riding husband. Of course, the fleeing routine is standard procedure for most of the neighborhood residents you must see, so let me be a bit more specific: I’m about 5’8”, have shoulder-length hair, and am usually pushing two children and a dog into the house ahead of me while screaming, “run, for the love of god RUN, Clarice is coming!” as you pass by.

Look, it was really noble of you to bring Clarice home when you found her roaming free on the ridge trail in the Oakland hills a few years ago, I totally get it. And I know you've worked hard to socialize her, because every time I see you in the grocery store you start a conversation with "I'm so sorry about Clarice, I've hired another trainer…" You, in fact, may be personally responsible for the buoyant employment statistics for the dog training industry in our neck of the woods. And like you, I am hopeful that one of these days, one of these trainers will know what he or she is doing.

But at some point, perhaps when Clarice tried to break the safety glass in the back of your car to pounce at my dog and I as you drove past us, or when she lunged two city blocks towards us with you dangling from the end of the leash with about as much utility as a cell phone charm, has it not occurred to you that perhaps she would be happier in another environment? Say, protecting a Russian oligarch’s property, where she could really let loose with the homicidal tendencies? Everyone deserves a chance to reach her true potential.

At any rate, I noticed that Christmas must have come early to your house this year, since Clarice has been sporting a trim new coat since November. Its black stripes match the muscular black of her haunches, and the orange complements the yellow undertones of her bared teeth.

But you know what? Like a streetwalker wearing stilettos AND a miniskirt AND a tube top on a winter's day, the tiger print on Clarice is overkill. Lose the coat. We'll still be scared of your dog.

Respectfully,
Nancy Kho

Holiday Drama

I'm so looking forward to Christmas this year. It will be the only day in December not entirely consumed by children's theater performances.

Let me back up. Because we apparently have a family tradition of gettin' it on in March, the month of December is already full of birthday celebrations in my family: my mother, my late father in law, my sister. The creme de la creme birthday, of course, is the December 25 birthday I mentioned in last week's Swedish music moment. We celebrate the child's saint's day, her school birthday party, her regular birthday party, and of course the whole of Christmas day we veer from candy canes to birthday cupcakes and back. One of my favorite family pictures is of her at age two, sleeping face down and diapered butt up on the carpet at about 4 pm on Christmas afternoon, felled in her tracks by a sugar low.

But all that was manageable, until the children discovered The-a-tuh. Now they sing in choirs and take ballet twice a week. The youngest has the drama bug and an enviable comic delivery to back it up. As the terrible anti-stage parents we are, my husband and I frequently beg them to drop one of the activities, to which they say "FAME! I wanna live foreh-ehver!" and then pirouette on top of a cafeteria table with a multi-culti cast bobbing and weaving in the background.

Come December, every one of those performance programs wants to do a special show. There's the church choir show, which has many titles but always one theme: stop spending so much money on Christmas. There's the school play in which, this year, the youngest daughter plays Mowgli in the Jungle Book, a role she began rehearsing since before they even cast the show. And there's the Nutcracker, of course, four performances over two days at a real theater with ticket prices to match. Each separate activity has mandatory dress rehearsals, almost all of which conflict with another mandatory rehearsal for another performance discipline. 

Back before I had kids I loved to sample the many wonderful live performances in the Bay Area that mark the holiday season: the Smuin Ballet's Christmas show, the singalong Handel's Messiah at Davies Symphony Hall, or the Oakland Interfaith Choir gospel performance. Then a few years back I realized the biggest herald of the holiday season's arrival was not Santa at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but the sustained appearance of my own bitchy short-temper. That's when I had to accept that there simply weren't enough hours in the month, and something had to give. I didn't want that thing to be me, set out on the curb like a discarded Christmas tree by my own family.

So now the only holiday shows I see include my children in the cast list. 

I'm not complaining, really. I tear up predictably and repeatedly during every single performance, something that never happened at the professional shows, and I can waltz backstage with insouciance (ditto.) But I do miss the days when all the actors on the stage didn't silently mouth the lines along with the one person who is supposed to be speaking them (but usually isn't.) I'd give my eyeteeth to see a show where no one is waving at intervals to a grownup seated in the audience. Or turning to look at the back of the stage just when it's time to deliver their one line.

On December 25th it all comes to a screeching halt - the theater gods just can't schedule a show for that day. I plan to sit back and let my sore, reddened palms rest for a full 24 hour period. 

Of course, that was also my plan on Thanksgiving 2003, and we all know how that turned out. Our kids and their friends wrote, rehearsed, designed programs and costumes, and staged the famous "Thivifest 2003" ("Thanksgivingfest" being a bit of a challenge for a second grader to spell, and also less catchy.) I won't say it would have benefited from editing, but it made the Oberammergau Passionspiele seem like a one-act play.

On second thought, better lay in the fixings for a couple extra pitchers of my go-to holiday cocktail, the Poinsettia. If my hunch is right, Leroy Johnson and Coco Hernandez will be stopping by to sing backup, and I'll need to be prepared.