To my readers, I present...a letter (this is a real letter, BTW. Real estate is EXACTLY this crazy-cakes in San Francisco). __________________ To: The Owners of our Future Home From: Us, the Hapless Desirers of Said Home Date: October 12, 2017 RE: Purchase Offer To Whom it Concerns: For the past eight years, we have been raising our son (9) and daughter (6) on the 15th floor of a high-rise just blocks from your condominium. They have grown up looking down at the buses, watching the commuters and tourists (and parrots!), marking the time by the Ferry Building clock. They ... [READ MORE]
Jump
July 17, 2017 by 1 Comment
This morning, I woke up and I remembered I like to write. Maybe it was the journal my friend gave me yesterday. (Maybe, the journal was a hint.) Maybe it was reading a blog post my sister texted me in the night, that struck a chord. Whatever. This morning, I woke up and I remembered: Yeah. This is a thing I do. In June, I watched my daughter -- little Babygirl! almost six years old! -- slide off the side of a pontoon boat in the Pacific Ocean to swim with sea turtles. LittleMan screwed his courage to the sticking place and leapt from the deck. It never stops blowing my mind, that we ... [READ MORE]
The Ostrich
April 5, 2017 by Leave a Comment
Is it okay if I just hide in one of these for a while? One year ago this week, I sat next to my mother on a flight to London. We were both wearing Ostrich Pillows -- these lovely squishy turbans that double as eye-masks -- that she'd picked up at one of those hipster-y travel stores, along with wildly unstylish flat, stretchy slippers. Every time we made eye contact in we collapsed laughing at ourselves. Then the lights went down and she slept, which she can do -- seriously, anywhere -- and I watched about fifteen movies, paced the aisles, and cursed that the eye mask caused all my fake ... [READ MORE]
Recipe Roundup No. 12: Monday Musing
March 20, 2017 by 1 Comment
The clouds rolled back in with a vengeance yesterday afternoon. The kids and I were caught unawares, having been at a gymnastics birthday party that worked everyone into a sweat, but we emerged from the ritual pizza-and-cake to find that our spring temperatures had dropped and our t-shirts weren't going to cut it. I have a good spot here on my living room couch on Mondays. Through the sliding door next to me, the deck looks bright and pretty despite a gray sky (and windows that need a cleaning if this rain EVER STOPS), the bridge soars above the choppy Bay waters, and through the rails of ... [READ MORE]
Strange Places
January 23, 2017 by Leave a Comment
These are strange days. The rain has been endless, the news has been relentless, and the children have been so sick. Fevers and sniffles and that croaking cough that haunts our sleep. I spent all of last Wednesday night in the octopus-like grip of Babygirl as she hacked her way restlessly through the long, dark hours, the humidifier bubbling steam into the bottom bunk. I awoke after intermittent rest with a stiff neck and a child no closer to being healthy. We have been housebound, all of us together in this apartment high above the city, for what feels like weeks. I am grateful for our ... [READ MORE]
Hello, Again
January 6, 2017 by 1 Comment
Further evidence of my incredible photography skills. The sun was shining straight into the Tahoe house and the kids were watching Home Alone 2, and I was finally (finally) revisiting the blog. I was going to write about how being a parent of small children sometimes just doesn't offer many chances for reflection. And just when I was typing that, my children decided they were bored and wrestled one another off the couch, so I stopped reflecting in order to keep the peace and set up a craft station. If that's not life in a nutshell half the time, I don't know what is. Part of the problem ... [READ MORE]
Recipe Roundup No. 10: Nostalgia, with a Side of Salmon
October 24, 2016 by 1 Comment
My husband and I established our evening routine of cooking together very early on, when we first moved in together back in 2001. We were barely out of college and interestingly, though we had already been together a long time, outside of our relationship we had very separate lives -- career-wise and socially -- so our time together on weeknights had a kind of self-conscious "coupled up" vibe: there was a little thrill in the otherwise mundane. Planning meals together, and then preparing them for ourselves and for company, cemented the grown-up status our shared lease seemed to have earned ... [READ MORE]
