Becoming One with Erma

Every once in a while a friend will introduce me saying, “This is Kristen—the funny one I was telling you about.” The new person then turns to me wide-eyed, as if they’re expecting a monkey to jump on my shoulder playing maracas, and for me to launch into celebrity imitations and a slew of hilarious one-liners.

Oh, there’s always a two-drink minimum when I’m around!

I’m rarely at a loss for words, but that introduction—which I realize is meant to be a compliment—tends to leave me dumb and drooling.

I wish I could hear the conversations those people have as they walk away from me. “Is she feeling alight?” “So, wait, THAT was the Kristen you were telling me about?” “Do you think she’s maybe having a petit mal?”

Speaking of mal, I’m awake at a blisteringly painful hour, awaiting lift-off for a flight that will take me to the bright lights and glamor of Ohio. Yes, I’m goin’ “back to Ohio,” land of my alma mater, for a weekend writing workshop. It’s as if all those times I drunkenly sang that Pretenders song at Kenyon frat parties were somehow truly prophetic.

I wonder if that means there’s a Funky Cold Medina in my future too.

Anyway, I managed to get off the waiting list for this humor writing workshop that happens every other year, and sells out nearly instantly. A friend—the sassy and hi-larious Nancy of Midlife Mixtape (read her blog IMMEDIATELY if you never have) told me about it. When I asked to be put on the waiting list months after registration closed, the conference coordinator sent me the kindliest Midwestern email, essentially saying I had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in, but he’d be happy to add me to the list.

But then a couple weeks ago a woman emails me outta the blue and says she can’t make it and would I like to take her spot. And thanks to The Husband’s preponderance of frequent flyer miles, here I sit watching the worst-ever American Airlines safety video. It is truly truly atrocious and I’m not sure why it’s pissing me off as much as it is.

At any rate, the conference is called The Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop. Yeah, yeah, she’s the bowl full of cherries greener over the septic tank writer your mother loved so much. Several people have asked me if she’s still alive, and sadly she’s not, but I’m nearly certain we’ll have a seance to make contact with her at some point in the weekend. I mean, what else would you expect of a Marriott full of 350 kidless-for-the-weekend women? Think of it as an immense slumber party of hundreds of thirty- and forty-something women. We’ll all be globbing on eye cream and padding around in our slippers in the hallways raiding each others’ mini bars.

I know, I know. You want to come now too, don’t you?

Of course, when I first got the email about getting in I ran through my Mental Check List of Unworthiness. Aside from it being last-minute and utterly unplanned for, I wondered whether I really belonged in the company of those funny, successful women writers.

I also wondered:

Will the other kids like me?

Will I make any friends?

Should I spend the money to do this so soon after sending that large monetary gift to Uncle Sam?

Will I suffer some of the same dorkish alone-in-a-crowd feeling I sometimes had in the swarming throng at BlogHer?

What does one WEAR in Dayton in the springtime?

Not to mention all the practical issues, like childcare while I’m gone and the fact that the hotel hosting the event was sold out. Staying a mile down the road was sure to solidify my deeply internalized outsider status.

But then the woman whose spot I took said she knew of someone who didn’t need their hotel room. A pants-pissingly funny blogger who I heard read once, and had the entire room in eye-wiping hysterics. I sheepishly emailed her and within minutes she very graciously (and helpfully) outlined what I should do to transfer her room to my name, insisting I wasn’t at all the “stranger” I’d labeled myself as when I contacted her.

Awww…

Call me a late bloomer, but I’m getting a hit of that down-homey comfort of an online community.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for me in this group of gals yet.

So then, here I am. Horrifically early. (Did it mention that?) Ohio-bound. Awash in first-day jitters—though that may just be my body’s reaction to the 3:45 wake-up call.

If this workshop were a yoga class I’d have to set an intention for, it would be to try to learn as much as I can. And to put myself out there and meet lotsa people. And to not worry about being funny, because I’m clearly so very out-ranked there that I’m just thrilled to tag along. (When I make my Oscar speech some day I’ll really mean it when I say I’m honored to be in the company of the other candidates. I won’t mean it when I thank my agent. And I will mean it when I say that Mr. Harris was my favorite teacher in high school. Okay so he was really from Lower School, but do people ever thank elementary school teachers? Is that even done? I think that the high school white lie is the way to go.)

So wish me luck! And send some good vibes to The Husband who is gallantly wrangling the kids solo all weekend to make this happen. I told him that the kitchen is the room with the refrigerator in it, so he should be fine.

Actually, the man hardly needs domestic guidance (thank GOD), but that line just felt so Erma.

I’m already letting the channeling begin.

Light as a feather… Stiff as a board…

Get It in Writing

You really should do something divine for me so I’ll send you a thank you note. Not because I need a favor or anything—though I’m not actively discouraging them—just because I got new stationery and it’s so damn fab-u-luss. My note card alone, without a word on it, should be all the thanks you’ll need.

I’ve been wanting to get my own stationery for about ever. And I don’t think of myself as indecisive. But every time I looked at all the options for fonts, colors, or even the damn paper liner for the envelopes, I’d get light-headed and woozy. I’d have to sit down and pour myself a bourbon to steady my nerves.

Add to that the size and shape of the card. Flat or folded? And the paper stock. I was flummoxed.

At one point I even enlisted my uber-stylish gay friend Larry to help me. No doubt he’d have strong opinions and excellent taste. We met at Gumps, a high-end department store that’s a San Francisco institution. But our field trip was fruitless. He flipped through the books and mocked half the designs. “Too Holly Hobbie.” “Too country club.” “I used something like that for my sweet sixteen party.”

And when the snooty saleswoman stepped away for a moment he whispered, “You can get this MUCH cheaper online.” So we left and went to lunch.

And I was sent back to square one. Stymied now by which website offered the best price, and left to fend for myself with my own inadequate straight-girl taste.

The thing is I’ve spent so many years working with companies on their branding that this kind of design decision is out-of-whack important to me. As if the recipients of my correspondence were some sort of customers with whom I was delivering an emotional experience that I wanted them to associate with me.

Absurd, yes. But I still couldn’t shake the thought that these cards would be a representation of me, albeit a small one. And I was gripped with the dismal realization that I had no idea who that ‘me’ was.

Perhaps other people don’t suffer identity crises when they buy note cards. At least, I hope not.

Or maybe Cranes is somehow in cahoots with the American Psychiatric Association. I mean, I don’t want to start some conspiracy theory or anything. I’m just saying it’s possible.

I watched one of those horrible fashion reality shows once where the husband of some poor sweat-pants-clad woman who’s altogether given up on herself sticks a team of fashionistas and a crew of hidden cameras on his wife for a week. And by the end of the montage of her myriad fashion faux-pas you find yourself screaming at the TV, “Could she at least COMB HER HAIR before picking up the kids from school?”

And then at a commercial you run into the bathroom and comb your own hair really quickly.

Anyway, one of the sniveling show hostesses said something about how people’s clothing choices tend to get stuck in the happiest periods of their lives. So, like, if your glory days were in the 80s, you still gravitate towards neon lime green FRANKIE SAY RELAX t-shirts when you’re out shopping.

I found this theory interesting. I do sometimes find myself reverting to a preppie fashion comfort zone. Sometimes I’ll look at a pair of Pepto-Bismal pink capri pants with royal blue clams embroidered on them and actually take them off the rack to the dressing room.

What’s scarier is half the time I go on to buy them.

And it doesn’t take years of therapy to know that this harkens back to my teen years. I don’t have any tattoos, but if I’d gotten one back then it would’ve probably been an alligator on my left breast or a ribbon belt of nautical flags around my waist. Thank God for my fear of needles.

So was high school the happiest time in my life? I had fun but, God, I hope not. I’ve been lucky to be blessed with lots of happiness. Hell, I was happy during both my pregnancies but have never considered buying elastic-waistband jeans while out shopping for a cute new outfit.

Anyway, when I’ve tried to come up with personalized note cards I kept finding myself reverting to that bad preppie juju. Yet I knew that a conservative navy blue monogram wasn’t what I was really looking for.

So thank God for Mark (once again), who deftly put an end to this whole quandary at Christmas. He researched old-world printers and found an exceptional authentic engraver in New York City. He even got the process started by working with an art director there to develop some initial designs. My gift allowed me to see the process through—coming up with whatever I liked.

Turns out I loved one of the typefaces she originally comped, and from there picking a color (orange) was easy. She matched the envelope papers to the font ink exactly, and in the matter of a few email exchanges and some samples sent via mail, I finally hammered out my personal stationery. In the end it seemed weirdly easy.

And it rocks.

Best of all, there isn’t a single whale, anchor, or martini glass on it anywhere.

A couple weeks ago I called my dad as if I was announcing I’d had a baby. “Guess what?” I gushed. “I got my new note cards today and I feel like the Duchess of Glam.”

“Ho ho ho!” he responded, the enthusiastic reaction reserved only for him and Santa. “Tell me!”

Dad, it turns out, takes his stationery VERY seriously. Since as far back as I can remember he was childishly excited about selecting letterhead for his law firm. He’d get the boxes from the printer and lift off the lids like a pirate opening a trunk of gold. He’d run his fingers over the raised engraving, remark on the heft of the paper, point out the watermark, then turn to five-year-old me asking, “So ho ho! Whaddaya think?”

To which I’d reply, “Can I get some graham crackers?”

I was perhaps the only eight-year-old to have her own letterhead as well. I had reams of the stuff in two colors—a pastel pink and a kinda minty green. The lettering was a darker shade of each color. My name and address was along the top of the paper, and on the envelopes too. I think I wrote a total of eight—maybe 12—letters (from the 200+ sheets I had), but Dad got a thrill out of the stuff.

I remember the year he ordered European-sized business cards. They were slimmer than standard ones, and extra long. “They don’t even fit in American wallets!” he declared triumphantly. Sorta like, fuck my clients of they can’t handle high style. If they wanted his cards on hand they could damn well buy European wallets.

So then, Dad was riveted by the news of this gift from Mark. (As if he needed more reason to adore his youngest son-in-law.)

“Send me a caaahd!” he urged in his Kennedyesque New England accent.

Dad is also a fountain pen collector. He has a crazy vast collection, and if you’re ever suffering from insomnia he can lecture you on the historical background and artistic merits of each one. (I’m sure he’d be happy to do this via phone.) He aims to “keep the aht of lettah writing alive.”

“And what kind of pen are you using with this new stationery?” he asked with reverence.

“Uh, Bic? Or… felt tip?” I stammered lamely.

“Now then,” he said in his we’ll-sort-this-out lawyerly fashion. “You send a me note cahd and I’ll find some pens—and I’ve got some wonderful inks—a brown Italian one that’s really first-rate. A real first-class ink. The cahds are orange? The brown could look quite smaht with them. Trust me.”

Within days four pens arrived in the mail. And once he got a copy of the card and was able to creative-direct an ink choice, a package with inks arrived too.

So then, here I am, exceptionally well-poised to send out a note. I’ve got the stationery, I’ve got the pen. I’ve even got some designer brown ink that’s apparently worthy of kings.

And I’ve got two great men in my life to thank for making me look so good. I really should send them both notes.

My Peter Pan Complex

I used to spend Christmases at home. And by “home” I mean at the house I grew up in—my mom’s—in Rhode Island.

Then a number of things happened to change that, not the least of which was that she died. But aside from that even, I got married and became a mother myself. And a few years ago, despite my inclination to still do my winter migration to Little Rhody (now to Dad’s), Mark started lobbying for us to stay at our own house for Christmas.

Imagine!

“The girls should wake up in their own beds on Christmas morning,” he opined, ever the rational one. He also likely tossed in something about holiday travel being a hassle, expensive, and particularly taxing with young children and cross-country flights.

WHATever.

Sure, I saw his point. But what about me? What about me waking up in my own bed? What about Santa delivering presents to my house, not that place where we live in California?

And the thing is, Mark’s right. Well, I’m not actually sure I’m ready to embrace his stance entirely. Let me downgrade that to, “I can see his point.” It IS kinda expensive and it IS kinda a hassle to get there.

Sometimes I let him make the decisions, you know, to empower him. So for the past five years I’ve done some supremely selfless parenting and allowed my kids to be the kids—not me—at Christmastime. I must be up for some kind of mothering award.

A couple weeks ago Mark helped me with some blog stuff. He is both husband and IT consultant. (In this economy you’ve gotta be able to wear several hats.) If it’s not glaringly apparent, I’m embracing a fairly scaled-back user experience here. But I sometimes fall prey to blog peer pressure (self-imposed, mind you). I’m the world’s biggest luddite, but every now and again even I realize I should implement some sorta new feature to keep up with the other kids.

So Mark helped me add a Facebook “like” button to the bottom of each post. So now you can not only “like” motherload on the whole, you can “like” any individual posts that rock your world.

It’s a regular like fest.

Amazingly I have not obsessed over this. I have not checked every four minutes to see if I have more likes. (Good thing too, since they’re not exactly pouring in.) I will cop to having had a small obsession several years ago when we sent out an Evite for a party. I spent the better part of a day compulsively hitting “refresh” to see who’d RSVPed. It was not healthy.

Anyway, the new, more mature me will manage this “like” button much more rationally. (Though I’ll still be your best friend if you use it every once and a while. In fact, I double-dog dare you to do it right now.)

Speaking of Le Face Livre, in the new year I’m reversing an ill-formed personal policy that I’ve been foolishly adhering to. What is that you may ask? 2012 is the year that I will finally friend my mother-in-law.

Now I’m curious to hear how you all manage this yourselves. Initially my take on the parental-level Facebook friend was this: Who knows what they might see. Who knows what they might read. And moreover, who knows what I would have to edit, avoid, or otherwise regret.

But now, a few years in to seeing her friendly face crop up in my “People You May Know” list, I’m wondering what the hell I’d been thinking.

It’s not like I’m selling crack on Facebook. (I do that on my other website.) It’s not like I’m publishing skanky pictures of myself. It’s not like I’m really doing anything much other than making snarky comments on the often dizzying state of motherhood, a topic that, of all people, my mother-in-law is very much in touch with.

Keeping her at social-media arms length was apparently my way of maintaining a foothold in the world where I’m the kid and the grown-ups are the grown-ups. It may have taken me 44 years, but I’m finally willing to throw in the towel and admit that I’m an adult.

Of course, I have no intention of ever acting my age. And Facebook is the perfect outlet for my raging immaturity. The way I see it now, my mother-in-law and I can act immature there together.

I’m a Loser

On Mark and my first wedding anniversary we’d recently moved into our house, and I was pregnant. Extremely pregnant.

Before heading out to a celebratory dinner (where Mark would drink expensive wine and I’d sip water), he gave me a present. We were in what would be the baby’s room, sitting on the floor. And Mark handed me a little turquoise box from a brilliantly-branded jewelry store. I think you know the place.

Inside it was a beautiful necklace—a platinum chain and a diamond solitaire pendant. I absolutely LOVED it.

Mark put it on me, and we sat there on the floor for a while, looking at the new crib and rocking chair and the pile of laundered, twice-rinsed baby clothes, marveling over how much our lives had changed in one year’s time.

Then Mark had to stand up and grab both my hands in order to pry me up off the floor.

Ah, good times.

A few weeks ago we went to Seattle. We had an amazing weekend with wonderful friends. We ate at great restaurants, got a private tour of Chihuly‘s studio, went for walks on the beach, and even saw two bald eagles up close and personal.

But somehow in the course of all that fun I lost my diamond necklace. And I’m just sick about it.

The thing is, I was insanely organized that weekend. Like even more so than usual. Our hosts don’t have children, so I tried my utmost to keep the sprawl of our stuff controlled. I folded clothes and placed them neatly back in our luggage. I paired shoes closely together and set them at the edge of our beds. I gathered wayward toothbrushes, detangling spray, and princess panties that had been flung around the bathroom and tucked everything away in its place.

So I’m not sure how that necklace got away.

Damn my recent growth spurt around accessorizing. A couple years ago I wouldn’t even HAVE another necklace to change into. But recently I’ve made an effort to mix things up a bit. I’ve bought some bold, statement-ish jewelry hoping to up my maternal style quotient.

All I know is that beloved diamond necklace went to Seattle and never came back.

This is the WORST feeling. That pit-in-your-stomach, beating yourself up, woulda coulda shoulda feeling.

The thing is I also know what it’s like to feel this way then to suddenly find the lost item and to snap out of it. To feel awash with sudden relief and renewed love for that once-lost thing. I keep hoping I’m at the brink of finding the necklace on the bottom of my toiletry kit (even though I’ve emptied it out and shook it upside down eight times now).

But as the weeks march on and it doesn’t turn up, I’m losing hope.

All this would be bad enough on its own, but a couple weeks before Seattle I pulled another regret-laden move. It was a rainy, stormy, low-visibility morning. I was driving to work in a crazy slew of traffic. My 20-minute drive took nearly an hour.

I finally arrived at the parking garage in downtown San Fran. Hurray! I made it in one piece.

But when I pulled into the garage and took a sharp right to get into the row of to-be-parked cars I heard a loud scraping sound. No, it was more like a crunching. I looked up to see that I’d hit the edge of the doorway—a wall covered with a black rubber bumper and bright yellow reflective tape.

I’m such an optimist that I hopped out of the car, hopeful that—despite the horrific crunch of metal—the damage wasn’t too bad. [Let me throw my head back here for some hearty rueful laughter.]  Yeah, well, no luck there. I pretty much took out the front passenger-side door AND the rear passenger-side door. Oh, and I scraped up the edge of the bumper too, just for good measure.

I’m not sure why I’m in this self-destructive mode. Maybe my moons are in retrograde? Or my insurance company is controlling my actions like a marionette? Maybe—despite my age, my marital and maternal status, and my professional standing—I’m still that irresponsible, reckless teen who crashed her car into a snow bank, lost her mother’s pearls, and had her Kelly green rugby shirt stolen because she didn’t lock her locker.

I don’t feel like that girl any more, but try as I will, maybe I just can’t shake her.

The other night at dinner Paige asked me to tell her a story about when I was “a little girl.” I find these requests both sweet and annoying. The egomaniac in me loves the invitation to hold court on my favorite topic: myself. But the tired old mom in me just wants to clear the dishes off the table and start running the bath water. Haggard Mom thinks summoning up some story to tell takes more energy than she has.

But egomania won out.

Me: “Okay, so when I was a little girl my mother used to save all the old stale cereal and crackers and bread that we didn’t eat. She’d put it in the trunk of her car. And whenever she drove past the golf course or the pond on Poppasquash Road she’d pull over and feed the old crackers and stuff to the ducks.”

Kate: [wild-eyed] “You’re not supposed to do that!”

Me: “What?”

Kate: “Feed bread to ducks! We just learned this on our field trip. If ducks eat bread they get this disease where their wings get stuck like this [holds her arms straight out behind her]. Then they can’t fly!”

For some reason in my wrung out, end of the day, slaphappy mode, I found this utterly hilarious. And I started to laugh.

Kate: “No, Mom, it’s true! Their wings get like this [holds her arms out stiffly again]. It’s NOT FUNNY.”

And really, it’s not funny. But something about my daughter’s sweet earnestness, and something about how all those years my mother was trying to do something good but was essentially crippling the object of her affection—gave me a taste of how powerless we can be as we make our ways through the world. Try as we may to do the right thing, sometimes the universe conspires against us.

Opposites Attract

We recently survived a terror-filled evening at Casa McClusky. It was bedtime and we couldn’t find Baba, Paige’s beloved stuffed animal lamb. The one thing that’s essential for getting Paige the f**k to sleep.

Other breeders can no doubt appreciate the world-rocking misery of losing a sleep-critical item like this. The fact is, Baba is irreplaceable. He’s very much like that Busy Bee dog toy in Best in Show. Even if we were to ever find the same stuffed lamby in a store somewhere, it just wouldn’t be Baba.

So that night, what started as Mark casually asking if I’d seen Baba anywhere quickly turned into into a full-bore all-family search. We tore through the house like looters, up-ending tables, dumping out toy boxes, and running our arms through the contents of cupboards, searching every frickin’ inch of the house desperately, frantically. We were like FBI agents on the prowl for a tiny digital chip. Like Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity.

You get the point.

Okay, so we really didn’t swing our arms through all the cupboards (though I would like to do that sometime). But man, we did look everywhere. Mark even went outside and dug through the garbage cans—what a saint! In a less messy but equally-desperate move, Kate and I looked in the fridge.

All this to no avail.

The cleaners had been at the house that day, and I conjured terrifying images of three women making their way across the border with Baba. I pictured them mistakenly grabbing Baba with a rag and using him to scrub the mildew off our shower tiles. The thoughts running through my mind were delirious and frightening. I was one step away from pledging myself to a nunnery if Baba was just returned to us safely.

A shaken, tear-drenched Paige went to bed with some random stuffed sheep I dug out of a toy box. A pathetic, inept imposter. It felt like our three-year-old was having an affair with some other stuffed animal. It was just wrong.

And after getting Paige to sleep—which I have to admit wasn’t all that bad—we continued to toss the house, with no luck. We felt so sad for little Wigs. And at 3AM, when she woke up and called out, “Mama, Dada, did you find Baba?” my heart ached when I bellowed back to her, “No, honey. No yet.”

So the next morning, with renewed fervor, Mark pulled apart everything in Paige’s room. And suddenly, from the depths of the closet he leaned out, holding Baba with an outstretched arm. He said to the girls who were lounging on Paige’s bed with some books, “Look who I have…”

They looked up and both casually said something like “Ah!”

When I high-fived Mark later in the kitchen—our long national tragedy drawn to a close—he reported, “I’ve got to tell you, I was really hoping for a bigger reaction.”

To which I said, “Oh, sure. Story of my life.”

I mean, what turbo people-lovin’ extorvert can’t relate to that sentiment? Especially on the heels of Halloween, the ultimate attention-seeker’s holiday. I’m renowned for obsessively assembling elaborate reaction-gettin’ costumes. Me? I’m all about the big reaction.

But not Mark. Mark is low-key. Mark is mild-mannered. Mark is… Midwestern.

We recently spent a weekend with friends of mine who’d only met Mark once. After knowing me, I think his low-impact, mellow ways surprised them. But, as one of my super-extroverted friends says about her shy husband, “Thank God he’s so quiet. Can you imagine TWO of me in a relationship?”

Word to that, sister.

Yes, Mark does not wrap up his self worth in how many people stop him to admire his costume on Halloween. In fact, he rarely even bothers with a costume. Though this year he did. Well, kinda.

We bumped into some friends at a neighborhood Halloween parade last weekend. They took this picture of us. It does an excellent job of conveying our individual approaches to Halloween.

It says so much about us, really.

I know (and adore) my husband. And does he ever know me. It’s one of the things that blew me away about him when we first met—how after being together for such a short time he knew me better than anyone.

And so we’ve come to laugh at the fact that I go for big drama, and he rolls on the down-low. He’s a little bit country, I’m a little bit rock and roll. And I couldn’t imagine it any other way. (Though some day when I set a homemade lasagna on the table in front of him I wouldn’t mind him setting off a fireworks display to convey his appreciation. Just once.)

Anyway, standing there in the kitchen The Morning Baba Was Found, we had a good laugh and decided I should write a memoir entitled I Was Really Hoping for a Bigger Reaction. That is, unless Joan Rivers gets to it first.

20 Things I Learned after 20 Years in California

It’s been a big week for milestones ’round here.

Monday was Mark and my seven year wedding anniversary. Say what you will about this marital mile-marker, but we have thus far experienced no itchiness. Phew.

Yesterday was Kate’s first day of first grade. It was like some meta first-ness. Like first to the first power. But things like this don’t phase my unflappable girl. Within the first minute of being on the playground she was acting like the First Lady of Elementary School. By tomorrow she’ll have the kindergarteners handing over the cookies from their lunch boxes. Bless her heart.

And today is another biggie. Today marks 20 years to the day since I moved to California.

20 years!!! It’s totally unbelievable.

I’ve lived here longer than I lived in Lil’ Rhody. Which must mean that in another bat of an eyelash I’ll be wielding a walker with tennis ball wheels. I plan to have lots of flair on my walker by the way. In-n-Out Burger stickers, fuzzy clamp-on koala bears, and magenta bike handle streamers.

So there’s that to look forward to.

Anyway, in light of my 20 years as a Californian, I thought I’d share the top 20 things I’ve learned since living here.

1. To some people local artisan cheese is Kraft Singles. This is a good thing to think of when you are paying your astronomical rent or mortgage bill and feeling jealous of your friend’s McMansion in Sioux City. Compared to much of the rest of the country, the Bay Area offers many pains, but also many pleasures.

2. Redwood Trees are really tall.

3. Parallel parking is a Darwinian skill that one develops while living in SF. After driving around your neighborhood for 45 minutes on a parking spot quest, you can bet your pins-and-needles ass you’ll wedge your chippy-paint-bumpered Jetta into a space better suited to a Mini Cooper. On a 30% grade hill no less. After living in San Fran, going anywhere that has an actual parking lot makes you feel spoiled rotten.

3 1/2. (Turns out I had more than 20 things to say, so I’m trying to slip this one in here unnoticed.) You know how you go into an ice cream store and you ask the people who work there, “Wow, do you just eat ice cream all day?” and they just squirm and look uncomfortably annoyed because you’re the seventh person who’s asked them that in the past half-hour? You know that? Then they say, “Actually, no. When you work here eventually you get over it.” Well, I never REALLY believed them. Come ON. They’ve gotta be running in the back room stuffing themselves silly with Pralines and Cream, right? Well now that I live so close to Napa Valley I know exactly what those ice cream scoopers are talking about. Napa is stunning,  close by, and a world-renowned destination—oh, and it’s overflowing with wine, of course. Yet we don’t go there every weekend. We somehow also manage to not to always bring visitors there. It’s so close! It’s so fabulous! But I’m ashamed to say that we’ve grown to take it for granted. (Wait, you all don’t have hundreds of world-class wineries an hour’s drive from YOUR house?!)

4. Divorce West Coast style means that your father and his wife (who is younger than you) comes to your house for Thanksgiving with your mother and her girlfriend. And not only do they all talk to each other, they’re all best friends.

5. My scariest California rookie experience was ordering a burrito at a Mission taqueria. There’s a huge long counter behind which 15 or so women take orders from a constant stream of patrons. They sputter out questions like, “Black, pinto, or re-fried?” and you must use all your energy to ante up an answer—any answer—so as to keep pace with the next question they’re going to hurl your way. They move down the line two steps to the chicken and meat section where more un-decipherable questions are asked, and you whimper lightly and point. By then, sweating and disoriented you lose track of your burrito-maker, who is down by the salsas bellowing out “Hot or mild?” while a dozen other people are calling back to their nice burrito-making ladies a cacophony of “Pinto! No lettuce! Carnitas!” Then what happens is you start talking to The Wrong Woman. You lose your Burrito Maker and then suffer a sudden crushing white-girl shame because all the long-black-haired Mexican women look the same to you but you don’t want to accept that you really think that because that would be BAD and WRONG. Yet, uh, was that her? In the gray t-shirt? Or the one with the braids? And then suddenly she is back and in your face and yelling something and beckoning you down the long counter because you are creating a hungry human traffic jam so you wave an affirming that’s-great-thanks gesture her way so she’ll just stop asking you questions then you’re shunted to the cash register having no idea what it is that you ordered. And you have also not been handed your burrito. It’s been tossed in a pile with 8 other tin foil tubes that all have different letters scrawled on them. At the register they say things to you in questioning tones like “Super Veggie Burrito?,” or other phrases that include words like “Deluxe” which appear to be names for the kindsa burritos they make, but you have NO IDEA what it is that you got. Someone could offer to pay you $10,000 to tell them what is in your burrito and you’d just sit down and cry and say, “I don’t know! It all happened so fast! And she had an accent that I’m ashamed to say I really couldn’t understand!” But you manage to somehow buy something (that may or may not be yours) and don’t cry from the trauma of it all. And whatever the hell it is you eat it and decide that the holy terror you endured was SO worth it. Then eventually, 8 years or so later, after coming back about once a week, ordering a burrito becomes easier.

6. I sometimes feel un-cool for not being gay.

7. I’m more afraid that one of those Looney Toons anvils might somehow fall on my head than I am about earthquakes. When you live here, you don’t hang pictures framed with glass over your bed, and you don’t think much about earthquakes. Because really, not wanting one won’t prevent one from happening. Besides, we’re all too stoned out of our minds every day to worry about anything other than when the pizza is going to arrive. (See #12.)

8. You have not really gone out dancing until you’re the only woman in a gay club and by the end of the night you find yourself dancing in a black lace bra. (Just kidding, Dad! Well, as far as you know…)

9. It turns out Spanish would’ve been a more useful language to take than my 12 years of French. Who knew?

10. San Francisco Victorians are painfully cold in the winter and summer. They sure may look purdy, but most Turkish prison cells are more comfortable.

11. Everything Mark Twain ever said about San Francisco summers and witch’s tits is totally true.

12. Of my native-Calif friends, some scored pot from their parents with the same regularity and lack of big-dealness that I had hitting my parents for an allowance.

13. Whenever I was home sick from work in New York, I felt like I was the only one in my apartment building aside from the crazy old ladies who never threw out newspapers and bred cockroaches. EVERYONE else was at work. But in the Bay Area I think that people in offices feel like the outsiders. Cafes and coffee shops are thrumming with people hanging out (working? checking Match.com? betting on the ponies?) all day long. And a good drinking game, if you ever need one during the day, is doing a shot every time a man with a baby strapped to his chest walks down the sidewalk past your house. THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

14. When it rains here it rains and when it doesn’t rain it doesn’t rain. These weather patterns are strictly relegated to seasons and they nearly always play by the rules. This seems odd to you at first, but later when you go on vacations outside of Northern California and after a sunny morning there’s a rain storm in the afternoon it freaks your shit right out.

15. There’s something warm and romantic—but also prone to knocking over your porch plants—called the Santa Anna winds that pass through the Bay Area every once and a while. It’s fun to say Santa Ana winds, and even funner to have an unusual weather pattern crop up that you’ve lived here long enough to recognize. “Oh yeah, those Santa Ana’s are blowin’!” you call out to your neighbor over the bluster while getting into your car some mornings. And you think you’re really cool.

16. Don’t be surprised if you are waiting at a stop light and a man wearing black leather pants, a black leather captain’s hat, and a “shirt” comprised of crisscrossing leather straps, is walking another man across the street who is on all fours, and on a leash. I don’t know what those wacky gay boys are up to, but it seems like good clean fun!

17. Speaking of leather pants, don’t wear those to the Rainbow Grocery cooperative. Really. Take my word on that.

18. And speaking of crossing the street, people in California actually stop for pedestrians in crosswalks! All that time on the East Coast I never knew what those lines on the street were for.

19. The Berkeley Public Library’s library cards look like they’re tie-dyed. Somebody had a great sense of branding (and humor).

20. There is a field of bison in Golden Gate Park and the first time you see them you will feel certain someone slipped you a hallucenogen.

Thank you, thank you, Mark, for a dazzling seven years of marriage, and for being the funniest, smartest, cutest, best-cookin’ husband a gal could ever have. I adore the ground you walk on, and could you pick Kate up from school today? Listen, I’ll just call you about that later.

And thanks to you California, for the wild, wonderful ride these past twenty years. I must have been having a good time, because man, that time FLEW. Here’s to the next twenty.

My Hubby the Hobbyist

Years ago my New Year’s resolution was to eat more sushi.

This might not seem like your typical self-improvement-type resolution. But after being with Mark—a die-hard disliker of seafood—for a while at that point, I’d come to realize just how seldom I was eating the stuff. Something that I happen to love.

And I’m not one to deny myself.

I sent an all points bulletin out to my friends. “Available for any and all outings for sushi. I’ve deprived myself needlessly for too long! Seeking seafood redemption, and a good wasabi-induced nasal passage clearing.”

Okay, so I didn’t send out that exact email. But I did tell my possee I wanted to get my unagi on more often.

And I posed it to Mark this way: If I went on like this indefinitely—putting my own desires aside for the greater good of the couple—well, who knows? I might suddenly implode one day. I may do something irrational and regrettable, like, well… like smother him with a pillow in his sleep.

And neither of us wanted that to happen.

I recently got breakfast with a mom from Paigey’s school. We don’t know each other very well, and in the course of conversation she mentioned that she coaches her son’s little league team. And here I’d been thinking that, along with taking the trash out, that was men’s work.

It was the last thing I expected her—she of the fabulous over-sized designer purse—to say. And I love that she does it.

I told her how Mark worked for Sports Illustrated for years covering baseball. How he’s been to every spring training venue, took a road trip after college with his BFF to tour ballparks, and he used to write a popular blog about the Oakland A’s.

Oh, and sometimes? Sometimes he does that sports-nerd thing where he tracks the scores at games on those little cards.

None of this makes a whit of sense to me. But I gather it’s what baseball fans do.

And Mark is definitely a fan. Or, at least, he used to be.

Because, sadly, after years of me whining whenever a game was on TV and I wanted to watch something estrogeny like Friends, and after producing two time-sucking kids, and after getting older and lazier about actually making it out to ball games, the truth is, Mark indulges his baseball fandom about as often as I eat sushi. Which is, sadly, not so much.

I told Little League Coach Mom that Mark also used to be in a band. (She did too!) But now, heck, he rarely even picks up his guitar.

I walked home from our breakfast wondering, “Has parenthood—or marriage—beaten our old interests out of Mark and me?” Over time have we morphed into a common entity, unwittingly abandoning our personal passions in deference to those we share? And have even some of those been swallowed up by our children?

One block further in my promenade I came to the realization that the answer was—thrillingly—no. Blessedly, all that is unique and interesting about us has not been lost.

Mark and I still appear to be different people. Sure, folks say we look alike, but we steadfastly remain one introvert, one extrovert. One cooker of savory foods, one dessert-maker. One Midwesterner, one New Englander. One techno-file, one luddite. And, despite a brief period of confusion (when we both had blue ones), we still even use separate toothbrushes. (I have a friend who shares a toothbrush with her spouse, claiming the result’s no different than what happens when you make out. But still.)

So back to my contemplative walk… What was a bit distressing, was the realization that Mark’s done a far better job that I have of pursuing non-kid-related interests.

But honestly? Nearly anyone would be challenged to keep pace with the man. Not to be overly fawning, but the guy‘s a kinda Renaissance Man. Or at least, one in training. It’s like he’s being guided by some unspoken imperative to educate himself on a super vast array of stuff. Or maybe he’s just training for some reality show I’m unaware of.

And when he gets engrossed in some new thing, it’s not like he takes a cursory dip. When Mark’s interest is piqued, he goes deep.

When we were dating he got into cooking. Lots of folks like to cook, right? Mark began amassing cookbooks (and knives and pots and mandolines) on a grand scale, took a week-long class at the Culinary Institute of America, and became obsessed with obtaining a perfectly cubical dice on his mirepoix. And when I say perfect, it was as if Thomas Keller were going to bust through our kitchen wall like the Kool-Aid guy to inspect Mark’s knife skills.

Generalized cooking over-achieving eventually gave way to Mark’s interest in molecular gastronomy. More gear and high-tech equipment was gathered (taking up even more storage space), and strange chemical agents made their way into our cupboards alongside old-school standards like cinnamon and garlic powder.

Mark practically began making the girls’ morning oatmeal sous-vide. He placed plates of pink dust before me at dinner. “It’s salmon, but I altered it using bio-sodium-carbonate-hydroxy-something-or-other. It’ll just melt in your mouth. It’s the true essence of salmon!”

Cyclocross came onto Mark’s radar at some point before or after techy geek cooking. (It’s hard to keep track.) It turns out his  love of road biking was just the gateway drug to cyclocross—a seems-miserable-to-me sort of obstacle-course laden bike race. Mark woke early on weekends to meet up with other mad men who took pleasure in repeatedly grinding their way through hilly punishing courses that forced them to intermittently run carrying their bikes over their shoulders to get over stairs or streams or tree stumps.

Race mornings that were especially drizzly or muddy had him giggling with glee. In his free time (sometimes in our living room) he’d practice jumping on and off his bike. Or throwing it over his shoulder and sprinting.

He returned from races splattered in mud and nursing minor injuries, happy as a clam. If I didn’t know him better I’d have guessed he was having an affair with some raucous barnyard animal.

The first ‘cross race the kids and I went to was weirdly family-friendly. Most of the 30-something guys were former road or mountain bikers who, after fatherhood, became cyclocross weekend warriors. (The sport serves up a large dose of action to the time-constrained maniac.) Cheering sections formed in small mud pits alongside the race course, made up of hipster mamas and kids clanging cow bells howling, “Goooo Daddy!” After the race grilled sausages and beer were de rigeur (in the Belgian tradition), despite the fact that it was 10:30AM. It wasn’t uncommon to see a mom pushing a stroller with a kid balanced on a case of Trappist ale.

Mud and pain aside, attending that race helped me see the allure of it. But one morning, scaling some slippery hillside with his bike slung on his shoulder like a backpack, Mark wrenched his knee. And faster’n you can clang a cowbell, his obsession with cyclocross was replaced with sessions with a physical therapist. (He still fervently watches races on YouTube. Very weird to suddenly hear a crowd cheering in Flemish from the other room.)

I set one of Mark’s obsessive hobbies into motion when I gave him a food smoker a couple Christmases back. He’s spent hours pouring over food-geek websites, sussing out subtle differences between brisket recipes, contemplating cuts of meat, and photographing (and Tweeting about) every step of the smoking process. He’s woken up in the middle of stormy nights, and gone outside in his boxers and raincoat to check on the progress of his pork butts with a flashlight.

I’d call it excessive, unhealthy behavior if it weren’t for the fact that his pulled pork is so damn good. (His ribs don’t suck either.)

We’re at least three months into Mark baking bread every weekend, never quite content with the rise in his proof or the airiness of his crumb. He’s also been golfing a damn lot. And like his bread loaves, no golf outing ever seems totally satisfying. At some holes he birdies, but bogies at others. The first 17 holes rock, then he falls apart on the 18th.  There’s always the hope that next weekend his sourdough will be surreal in its perfection and he’ll get 18 holes in one.

And while my ass grows rotund from succulent smoked meats and home-baked bread, Mark’s decided to also come down on my liver. Which is to say the man has become Mr. Cocktail. He’s a high-ranking amateur mixmaster, who blessedly has not incorporated flair into his bartending prowess. That’d just be tacky.

I’m currently living in a world where a pre-dinner drink could include something as obscure and colorful as Creme de Violette or as oddly-named as John D. Taylor’s Velvet Falernum. A cocktail cookbook I bought him for his birthday has become his new Bible, and man, we are sipping some lovely fizzy ginny deliciousness ’round here.

What’s great is these drinks are such time-honored classics. Like, I’m a huge fan of the Tom Collins now. So preppy-sounding and old school! And recently at a friend’s house Mark took a mobile tote-bag bar and busted out some lemony minty bev called a—I love this—Southside. How smooth-sounding is that? “Yes, I’ll have a Southside, please.”

And all this is coming from the woman whose first act as President was going to be a law that states coconut-flavored rum is bad-ass. Up ’til now I’ve had the booze palette of a 12-year-old. It’s up just a notch from those who have an affinity for wild strawberry wine coolers. (I prefer peach—much more refined.)

Anyway, to discover that there are some excellent classic cocktails out there that I like? That I wouldn’t be ashamed to order in public? It’s immensely liberating. Plus it frees up my first Presidential mandates to focus on outlawing the use of mushrooms in restaurants, and requiring all children to stay in bed until 9AM.

Speaking of kids, Kate has recently abated her two-week compulsive balloon animal making binge (going everywhere clutching a balloon pump to her chest like it’s her pacemaker). These days she is fervently focused on crafting friendship bracelets.

God help those who deign to darken our doorstep for even a moment. She’ll accost you with a demand for your favorite two—no, three!—colors, then start furiously knotting. Two Jehovah’s Witnesses pushing pamphlets left our porch after a five-second “no thanks” from me, and I could swear each of them was sporting fashionable new thread bracelets from Kate. “When it pops off some day, make a wish!” is her cheery manufacturer’s tip.

Mark and Kate’s hobbies have yet to intersect, but when they do—fly fishing? cartography? Beanie Baby collecting?—I can only imagine how the sparks will fly.

But thankfully, before Paige and I have reason to be fed up with the onslaught of new gear, or the dining table be overtaken, or them being absent for chunks of the weekend, they’ll be on to the next thing.

Campfire Classroom

You think you know everything there is to know about someone, then out of the blue they bust out something new.

Mark did this to me on Sunday. He told me that two of the best showers he’s ever taken took place since he’s known me.

Okay, I admit this is NOT the most scintillating tidbit. Not like finding out he’d been a prodigy on the tuba. Or that he had a tail surgically removed after birth. (Neither of those things, sadly, are true.) But, you know, when you’ve been married to someone for a while, any fresh little nugget is compelling.

So about these showers. The best of his life, he claimed. And before you envision some steamy Nine 1/2 Weeks acrobatic-sex scene, the showers he was referring to he actually took alone.

One of them was after a several-day backpacking trip we took through the Minnesota Boundary Waters. Back when we were dating. It was the kind of grueling balls-out adventure that had the potential to cement our relationship or squelch it. After several days we emerged from the woods exhausted, sucked-dry by mosquitoes, and with Mark missing a toenail. But strangely, still in love.

We were both chicken-fried in sedimentary layers of sunscreen, bug spray, and dirt. Oh, and sweat. Did I fail to mention we were comprehensively coated in deeply-funky homeless man strength sweat?

Well, yes sirree we were.

Mark remembers that first shower back in civilization quite fondly.

Then there was the bath Mark took in a fancy L.A. hotel room after completing the AIDS Ride. (Okay, so this wasn’t a shower per se, but his second best “bathing experience.”) Turns out that after a 580-mile bike ride, a soak in the tub does you justice. In the same way that doing anything other than pedaling your bike would probably be pleasant.

Since having had kids, neither Mark nor I have gotten much chance to do the kinda things that result in severe abstention from cleanliness. No long camping adventures. No immense feats of athletic endurance. And I don’t mean to show off here, but even when the kids were newborns we somehow managed to shower regularly.

So it wasn’t until a few weeks ago, when we went camping for a weekend with Kate’s school, that we returned to the Land of the Stinky.

Yes, we’re the people who put camping equipment on our wedding registry, got a bunch of great new gear, then I immediately got pregnant. And say what you will about the merits of a Thermarest, I had no intention of settling my preg-o whale-like carcass atop a thin air mattress and hoping for any semblance of a good night’s sleep. I mean, even a world-class optimist like me knew that was too much to hope for.

But now Paigey’s well over three years old. We no longer have a baby as an excuse. (Take my notions of poor sleep as a pregnant camper and magnify those to the tenth power at the thought of bunkin’ in a tent with a baby.) So when Kate’s kindergarten sent out an email about a school-wide weekend in the wilderness, how could we say no? It seemed like high time to dredge up and dust off our sleeping bags, Nalgene bottles, and moisture-wicking clothing. Oh and those great little super-absorbant towels.

Sure, we were staying in a cabin. With bathrooms just a path’s walk away. And—get this—there was even a dining hall where we were beckoned by bell for meals three times a day. So it was hardly roughin’ it. But it was a perfect re-introduction to the wonders of the wilderness. A great way for Mark and I to revisit the concept of camping, and to envision it as an activity for our party of four.

And beyond re-igniting our desire to starting camping again, our whole family learned a little something new that weekend. So much so, that I started noting our various discoveries.

Here’s that list:

Electric Kool-Aid Gummi Bear Test
For the first time, Kate and Paige drank Kool-Aid. Paige dubbed it “gummi bear juice” and became immediately, devastatingly addicted. After polishing off a large cup she’d plead, “More, more, MORE gummi bear juice, Mama!” I started wondering what we could use as a methadone to ease her off the stuff on the long drive home.

And to top it off she had a big, smile-shaped, red Kool-Aid stain on her face. Kinda like a milk moustache, but larger and more terrifying. By weekend’s end I feared it was essentially tattooed on. She looked like The Joker from Batman—and with her sugar high, was acting only slightly less demonic.

Boys Like Fire
At the bonfire our first night, I learned that boys—especially 4th and 5th grade boys—really REALLY like fire. Trust me on this. My eyeball was almost on the receiving end of a flaming marshmallow several times. Some boys were skipping the s’mores altogether to focus all their attention on setting branches and leaves on fire. The way things were going it was only a matter of time until bratty siblings and controlling parents were tossed into the flames. I bugged out before the real pyrotechnics kicked in.

Tricks for Keeping Warm
On our first morning in the cabin, Mark handed Kate and Paige their clothes for the day and suggested they put them in their sleeping bags to warm up. Mind you, it was May, but still chiiiiilly where we were. (Saturday night dropped down to 40-something.) Anyway, I thought this idea of thawing your clothes before getting dressed was sheer spousal brilliance.

It pays to marry an Eagle Scout, ladies.

And the other thing? On Sunday morning when I was nearly swan diving into a cup of rank camp coffee to warm up, I learned that I’d bungled my attempts to not freeze during the night. I’d layered on lots of clothes before climbing into my super-schmancy hi-tech sleeping bag. (I am, after all, The First Lady of Wired Magazine Gadgets.) Anyway, in a not altogether flirtatious fashion, one of the dads from the school informed me that “less clothing is more” in one’s sleeping bag. As in, your body generates warmth that bounces off the sleeping bag and gets trapped there—keepin’ ya toasty.

But me? I’d intercepted my 20-degree sleep sack’s ability to be warm and womb-like by foolishly layering on leggings, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.

This explains why mountain men like to sleep in the buff. (Someone said that who was listening to our conversation that day, so I thought I’d say it too. But I actually don’t know any mountain men, and certainly have no insights into their proclivities for night-time garb—or lack thereof.)

Moths to a Flame
The first morning at the dining hall many of Kate’s classmates were clamoring around the industrial cereal dispensers—those long clear-plastic tubes that’re filled with different cereals. You churn a knob at the bottom to dump some in your bowl.

And you know what was in one of them? FRUIT LOOPS.

This, like the Kool-Aid, was life-changing for many of those all-organic, low-sugar, earthy-groovy-healthy California kids. Suffice to to say they were like moths to a flame. Or rather, like little robots aimed at a target who kept blindly walking towards it, bumping into it, then charging it again.

All those lies us parents had been spewing all these years—that the flavorless cardboardy organic Cheerio-shaped cereal was the most delicious and indulgent of breakfast options—were brutally laid bare.

I actually had some Fruit Loops myself that weekend. What a taste flashback!

And you know, they ARE pretty damn good.

Four-Legged Stroller
I have long contended that I will be pushing my children to their proms in strollers. Because they are the world’s wimpiest walkers. I know I should really just dispose of our Rolls Royce-quality double stroller altogether. But now I don’t think I’ll have to. Now that Kate’s been on a horse I’m convinced she’ll be more game for a pony than a Porsche when she turns 16.

I too rode a horse for the first time! Took a glorious hour-long trail ride on an amazing gorgeous trail. Even saw a real-live beaver out swimming in the river.

Nature! Real living nature!

I’m currently considering an urban-girl-goes-country wardrobe overhaul. The next time you see me wearing turquoise jewelry, a silver belt buckle, jeans, and boots, please just play along with it. I’m sure, like all good phases, it will pass.

When in Rome, Speak Roman
On the second morning in our one-room cabin, Kate rolled over and started yammering on about something to Paige. This was a thrilling chance for Kate to start her 12-hour-long Daily Talk Marathon a few minutes earlier than at home, where she has to walk from her bedroom to her sister’s before lurching into uninterrupted streaming chat.

Paige was groggy. She was un-used to the late bedtimes brought about by night-time bonfires. She harumphed. She whined. She rolled over. She pulled her blankie over her head. And finally, fed up, I heard her clearly, unemotionally say, “Suck it, Kate.”

I was stunned. And I think Kate was too—even though I’m pretty sure neither of them knew what it meant.

Kate quieted down. Paige dozed back off, and I lay trembling and speechless in my sleeping bag, not believing what I’d just heard my baby say. (Mark, as it turns out, was in the bathroom during this.)

Clearly the girls picked up more than just how to wield hot marshmallow-tipped sticks from the older boys that weekend. They learned a new nearly-swear. But blessedly—maybe because I didn’t react to it—it was one lesson that they totally forgot.

Kate is doing an overnight camp-out with her most-excellent super-expensive summer camp tonight. They’re sleeping under the stars, having a bonfire, s’mores, and lots of other good clean fun. At nearly six years old, this will be a big dose of independence for her. She’s stayed away from us with her grandparents before, but an overnight camping trip is truly the Big Girl big league.

I’m in that weird maternal place of feeling half thrilled for her and half sad about how quickly my girl is growing up.

And I’m looking forward to getting out to camp more this summer with our whole family. No doubt Kate will have a thing or two to teach us then. Hopefully it won’t be about being naked in your sleeping bag.

Glory Days

The older I get, the younger I dress.

I came to this disturbing realization on Friday, while digging through my wardrobe. I unearthed tweed blazers, thin brown belts with gold-tone buckles, and high-necked woolen herringbone dresses.

This clothing phase was like some sedimentary layer of my life I’d dug down deep enough to hit. Geologists would likely call it The Neutral Tones All-Wool Un-Sexy Professional Era.

It’s no wonder I married so late in life, dressed as I was.

The thing is, there was a time in my younger days when I dressed even older. From age 9 to 14 or so I was painfully, excessively preppy. I worked damn hard at it too. I layered shirts will devout precision, sometimes wearing two turtlenecks (in the dead of summer) just to reveal the slim perimeter of an extra pastel color at my chin-line.

I wore Bermuda shorts with ribbon belts, Lilly Pulitzer golf skirts, or any bright seashell-patterned jack-ass pants I could convince my mother to buy. I draped fair isle sweaters over my shoulders with surgical precision, and accessorized with a nautical rope bracelet and a gold signet ring with the monogram KEB. (Like everything else I wore, the initial ‘E’ was just for show. I don’t have a middle name, but I couldn’t bear the shame of a two-letter monogram.)

Yes, in my early teens, tragically, Talbots was my punk rock. I looked like a 75-year-old woman who got lost en route to Garden Club and mistakenly wandered into a middle school.

And the sad truth is that the look I was going for was utterly un-ironic. I even embraced the short-lived nickname Kiki that was bestowed upon me after The Preppy Handbook came out.

Ah, youth.

Anyway, on Friday I was getting ready to go to a clothing swap. A fabulous friend I rarely see had invited me. And although I assumed I’d know only one or two gals aside from the hostess, I had a hunch it’d be an interesting crowd.

But I was un-prepared. That working-mother frantic “oh-shit-I’m-supposed-to-bring-something-to-this-thing-that-starts-in-20-minutes” kinda unprepared. And so I dove into an armoir in the basement to dredge up some clothing to contribute. I was hoping to find something chic that just didn’t fit any more.

Instead I came up with tweed.

If I had any hope of hitting it off with these San Fran sisters, I’d have to swiftly dump my Nancy Reagan-esque clothing cast-offs into the mass of “clean, gently-used garments,” and slip away before the dowdy duds were linked to me.

Turns out I’d been right about the evening being fun and fabulous. I had reason on many occasions to laugh wine out my nose. (And thankfully the good sense not to.) I ate a tremendously delicious slab of lasagna, met some hilarious gals, and made off with a stunning new skirt and a great little black dress.

I even broke my own No Used Shoes Rule thanks to some other Size 8 whose adorable, unstinky, next-to-new heels were too cute to resist—especially when surrounded by a sea of gals who were ooh-ing and intoning in serious voices, “Those look SO GOOD ON YOU.”

It was like being in a dressing room with 30 other girlfriends who you just met. Who were a little drunk.

But the other half of my fun didn’t even happen at the party. It was getting there. My exceptional spouse was tending to our small humans, allowing me the unbridled freedom of slipping out into the evening in our non-kid-transporting vehicle, cutely clad, radio blasting. I had a bottle of wine in my purse, and not a single wipe or diaper on me.

The hostess lives in a dazzling Victorian in my old San Francisco ‘hood. A jealous-making home they bought back when mere mortals could afford digs that grand.

Cruising down familiar streets lined with new unfamiliar shops and restaurants felt like connecting with a long lost friend. Ah, the ole coffee shop. Ah, that soap and shampoo shop. (How do they survive?) That dump of a grocery store, reborn as a Whole Foods.

I gazed out my car window at the inhabitants of my old stomping grounds walking around doing their Friday night things. Oh those cute child-free folks, I thought smiling and shaking my head. Spilling out of that Irish pub onto the sidewalk. Wandering through that used book store. Eating raw fish or spicy kid-unfriendly foods in white-tableclothed restaurants that don’t hand out crayons or booster seats.

It’s so cute that they know no other life!

And it was so thrilling to be amidst them. Even to just be driving down the street, looking at them like fish in an aquarium. Not so long ago I didn’t have this C-section scar! I ate off hangovers in that greasy spoon! And that the bar sign “Be quiet when you leave here, our neighbors are trying to fucking sleep”? That was aimed at me The Drinker, not me The Tired Old Neighbor.

I Pandoraed Bruce Springsteen the other night, and after Mark cleaned the kitchen from dinner he turned the volume way up and declared Family Dance Party. (This is something one can declare, like war. But it generally involves less casualties and more disco.)

Anyway, Mark grabbed Kate’s hand, stretched out her arm and frenetically strummed her stomach like a guitar. This is apparently the most hilarious, funny thing a father can  do. On the scale of Fun Paternal Activities, this makes making chocolate chip you-name-the-shape pancakes on a Sunday morning seem like as much fun as running an errand at the hardware store.

Put simply, the child-as-guitar game rocks.

The whole time Mark’s working Kate like some Fender Stratocaster he’s wowing an arena full of crazed fans with, she’s nearly barfing she’s laughing so hard. And Paige is almost hyperventilating wanting it to be her turn. “Play ME, Dada! Plaaaay meeeee!”

I posted something on Facebook about Mark playing the kids like guitars to The Boss, and people posted comments like “Just as long as he doesn’t have to prove it all night,” and “Glory days, they’ll pass you by.”

Ah, good times.

Anyway, after everyone put back on the clothes they’d come in and the clothing swap wound down, I skipped out through the rainy night to my car. I pulled my hood over my forehead with one hand and clutched a bag of fabulous new-to-me clothes in the other. And I felt smug knowing that various women managed to take home all the weirdly drab, woolen clothes I’d contributed to the evening. (Perhaps mixed up in the fray as they were, each item on its own seemed less, well… Amish.)

I was giddy even admiring my parking job—squeezed into a tight spot on a steep hill. You can take the girl out of the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl.

Life was good, right? I’d gone into a house knowing three people and came out with new friends and their old clothes.

And it was too early to know that my work husband would heckle my adopted long skirt when I wore it to work on Monday, asking, “Who was AT that swap? Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman?”

When I got back to my quiet, dark house, I dropped my sack of duds by the door, slipped off my boots, and tip-toed into Paigey’s room. She was snoozing in her usual sweaty, curly-haired way, head flopped to one side and cheeks flushed pink. In Kate’s room, my big girl was lodged between the edge of her mattress and her wall, blankets kicked off, and her stuffed dog Dottie draped across her neck like a string of pearls.

Before setting foot in either of their rooms, I could have described to you exactly how each of them were going to look.

Teeth brushed, email checked, dress yanked off and tossed into the dark of the room, I climbed into bed alongside Mark. He was snoring the very smallest little snore, deep asleep. I edged towards him to steal some warmth.

Say what you will about my single-gal city livin’. What I’ve got right here and now? Glory days for sure.

All Hail to Principal Kate

Mark and I are so going to rock the nursing home scene.

I know it may be a bit premature to get fired up about this now. But if our Bingo skillz are anywhere near as on-fire as our knack for winning raffles, we’re going to DOMINATE those oldsters.

Here’s the thing: Last year at Kate’s preschool auction we were ready to dart out the door early. The school was providing childcare and we had one hour of babysitting left. This compelled us (and some friends) to want to bee-line to a bar to guzzle as much booze as possible in that remaining window of freedom. (What is it about being a parent that makes you want to drink like a frat boy sometimes?)

So we’ve got one foot out the door. Quite literally. And we hear the auctioneer bellow, “Now wait a minute folks! We still have the raffle drawing for the instant wine cellar!”

With a dramatic flourish he sunk his hand into a glass bowl. He withdrew a stub, looked at it, and scrunching up his face he muttered into the mic, “I’m so bad at pronouncing these names.”

And Mark and I looked at each other. Because we knew.

Yes, thank all that is holy and bad for my liver—we won! (And the guy actually did a commendable job of pronouncing McClusky.) Yup, we took home more than four cases of vino that night. All different kinds, and all pretty good stuff—each family from the school having contributed a bottle.

I’ve found that many things labeled “instant” are not as good as their slower alternatives. Instant coffee, instant rice, instant mashed potatoes. But an instant wine cellar? Now that’s a good thing. Trust me.

Hic!

A couple months ago, I dragged Mark by his ear to Kate’s elementary school auction. He’s not a fan of those sorts of big, canned social events. Here we were on a Saturday night having spent $40 a ticket to come to the school’s auditorium—a place we schlep through every weekday in far less fancy attire. But we bought the tickets and gussied up because private school is kinda like going to a chiropractor. Your back is never totally better. And private schools never have enough of your money.

So anyway, they had a silent auction, a live auction, and, I noticed as I stumbled across the dimly lit prom-like room towards the bar, a raffle.

I diverted my wine mission, and sashayed over to the raffle table, heady with optimism and the cheap pinot I’d been drinking. I requested two $25 tickets, and proclaimed to the mom-volunteers workin’ the table, “I’m gonna win.”

Oh it’s so BORING being this lucky. Yes, yes, we won AGAIN. (Yawn.) I mean, it’s nearly at the point where it’s just unfair to the other naive, hopeful raffle ticket buyers who we go up against.

But get this: This time there was no physical prize. Mark wasn’t making several trips back and forth to the car heaving heavy boxes of wine into the trunk, or worse, cramming in some over-sized blindingly-colorful classroom art project. This time we won something intangible, something experiential, something that would make our daughter get a taste of power she may never cleanse from her mind’s palette.

We won that Kate, our little kindergartener, was going to be principal of the school for a day.

Brilliant! We were beaming. You would’ve thought they’d awarded us Neiman Marcus matching his and hers hot air balloons.

The real principal emailed me a couple weeks later to set it up. “Would April 28th work for Kate?” she asked. I wondered what she thought Kate might have planned for that day, other than circle time, chasing the boys around the playground, and singing rainforest-themed songs.

Let me see… No meetings with heads of state planned. No bereaved families to visit. No fundraiser luncheons.

April 28th? Why… yes! She’s available!

At  drop-off one morning I bumped into the principal. She suggested that Mark and I brainstorm with Kate about what she might like to do for her day at the helm. “Let me know what she comes up with,” she said. “Then I can pick out some of things that’re realistic for us to put in place.”

We hadn’t yet mentioned this whole thing to Kate. Why, her teacher suggested, get her all hopped up about it when it was still a ways off? (That poor woman is painfully aware of Kate’s relentless tenacity when she wants something to happen NOW.)

Our brainstorm with Kate at dinner that night was an off-the-cuff chance to bounce around ideas. But minutes after introducing the concept to Kate, it seemed like she’d been planning for it for a lifetime.

She started spewing out ideas at a staccato pace. And what was dazzling was how damned realistic and implementable all her plans were.

“I want ten extra minutes of recess. For both recesses.”

“Pajama Day for the whole school.”

“Extra long reading time.”

“I’d like for everyone to be able to make postcards. Oh! And to send them to people they love.” (No surprise, this coming from Ms. Hallmark herself.)

If she’d hooked a laptop up to a projector and started reading from a PowerPoint presentation I wouldn’t have been surprised. The gal was apparently made for this job.

She was ready.

And as she rambled on, and I started envisioning her in a smart, trim, gray flannel suit, I found myself getting annoyed with all her efficiency and pragmatism. She was getting a shot at doing whatever she wanted to for a day, yet everything she dreamed up was so drearily restrained. So maddeningly practical.

Like, get this. At one point she threw out: “I want the snack in the after-school program to be fruit salad.”

Fruit salad?

Have we really been withholding sugar from her so comprehensively that her idea of unbridled food glee is FRUIT SALAD? What about candy bars? Chocolate cake? What about a frickin’ make-your-own hot fudge sundae bar for God’s sake?

I emailed the erstwhile principal the list of Kate’s annoyingly-reasonable demands. Then, a few days before her rise to power, a school-wide email went out announcing Kate would be the temporary Head of School.

That’s when everything changed.

Yes, what came next was the adrenaline-amped dizzying swirl that comes with anyone’s sudden rise to fame. And as her mom—playing a minor role in Principal Kate’s posse—I was sucked right into it alongside her.

At the playground after school the next day swarms of children gathered ’round me, jumping up, waving their arms, and vying for my attention. “Kate’s gonna be principal tomorrow! We get extra long recess! Kate made it pajama daaaay!”

I pushed past the throng wishing I had a security detail, and entered the relative sanctuary of the building. A couple older kids were slumped against the hallway wall, backpacks slung over their shoulders. They looked up at me from their conversation and said casually, “Hi Principal’s mom.”

It was almost creepy.

In the arts and crafts room I finally spotted Madame Principal herself. She stood there like some hot molten core, the focus of all the energy in the room. She was surrounded by a pulsating ring of pumped up, over-tired, I’m-friends-with-the-boss kids. Some were Kate’s real homies. Others were clearly making a play to get on her good side.

And then one child called out in a scrawny voice, “All hail to Kate!” And I kid you not, they all joined in the chant. “All hail to Kate! All hail to Kate!”

Over the din the guy who runs the after-care program mouthed to me, “It’s like she’s a celebrity.”

Walking to the car later, my little principal reached to hold my hand and asked, “What does ‘all hail’ mean?”

I swear, this is the kinda stuff Michael Jackson must have gone through as a kid.

Anyway, in the same way that it’s cool for a bartender to know your drink order—how it’s nice when someone shows how they know you—it’s also validating and happy-making as a parent when other people show how they really know your kid. Which was how I felt when I told various friends that Kate was getting a crack at running her school for the day.

My dad let loose his famous, booming expression of affirmation: “Oh ho ho!” (No, my father’s not Santa. But he does talk like him.) Others imagined how perfectly poised Kate would be in the role. And more than one amiga said something like, “When she becomes president some day, she’ll say she got her first taste of power in kindergarten when she was principal for the day.”

I adored every implication that Kate has confidence, smarts, and leadership qualities. I mean, folks were probably just thinking about how she’s bossy as hell. But in a silly proud way I indulged in the jokes about Principal Kate being the gateway to President Kate. I imagined myself feeling how Kate Middleton’s mom must have on her daughter’s wedding day—watching in amazement at all that her little girl had grown up to be.

I can see it all now. She’ll no doubt appoint Paige to be her secretary.

I wish I could outline the activities of Kate’s actual day in power. I wish, like a fly on the wall, I saw exactly what went down that fateful day. But this is one of those stories that gets you to the part you’ve been waiting for and then it turns out there’s no there there. If you were at the movies you’d probably walk out feeling ripped off, left to form your own unsatisfying conclusions about what really happened.

Put it this way, if you’re able to get a reliable detailed account of your child’s days at kindergarten, you’re a better mother than me.

All I can say for sure is that I dropped her off at school that morning to more playground fanfare. She was clutching a clipboard with a sign on it saying ‘Principal Kate.’ And she and the rest of the kids pouring in for the day were in their PJs (which, I’ll note, dramatically reduced the professional effect we were going for with the clipboard).

I snapped a few pictures of her sitting at the principal’s desk, and left as she and the temporarily-overturned Head of School were discussing the merits of lunching in the staff room.

I can’t help but think that one day, the incoming White House staffers will be elated to have finally made it to the big league. After all their over-achieving, the glory and glamor will finally be theirs. But then, for President Kate’s inaugural dinner, she’ll insist that fruit salad is served for dessert.

[Insert that "waah waah" sound effect to indicate disappointment.]

Ah well, at least they’ll get to wear their PJs to work.