Have you ever found yourself standing in a basement room at 5am, gearing up for two loads of laundry and a two-mile run before breakfast, wondering when, exactly, you started sprinting through life? 5am is not really a reasonable time to do anything besides sleep or drink coffee, and yet here I am using it, milking it, this precious hour before people wake up and start needing things. When did the rest of my life get so squeezed? What (misguided) choices am I making that drives me to this point? I like to think I am a good multi-tasker but lately I wonder if I'm actually really ... [READ MORE]
A Chance Encounter with a Dragon
March 5, 2014 by Leave a Comment
We wear red for the Lunar New Year. LittleMan's class stages a parade in the school gymnasium. It is a wise system: the littlest children wear the dragon, so it cannot frighten them. (LittleMan is too tall, so he follows and bangs a tambourine.) All weekend long the firecrackers snap and pop on the streets near our apartment, Grant Avenue being just a few blocks up the hill. There are random outbreaks of live music. We do not go to the parade itself (Mommy is slightly agoraphobic like that), but the city is alive with it, this midwinter celebration of beginnings and endings and good ... [READ MORE]
Funk
January 30, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Occasionally, in those sleepy, random-thought moments , I have stared at my feet and pondered the usefulness of toes. Like baby teeth (they hurt, then they fall out) or the appendix or tonsils (why?), toes seem purposed for little in the human body (besides the big toe, which is good for balance I suppose). But the rest of them? My little toe, in particular, is so tiny that it seems destined to vanish as evolution progresses. And besides, they get in the way of fabulous shoes. There you have it, folks: Jaime's Theory of Evolution -- The End of Toes. Unfortunately, as fate would have ... [READ MORE]
An Object in Motion, Stopped
January 7, 2014 by Leave a Comment
We never did give LittleMan that haircut. He started the 2014 semester with his usual sticking-out 'do, despite our best intentions. We never got to those last few loads of laundry, either; or the thank you notes (deeply grateful though we are...we're working on it, I promise); or The Pile on the kitchen counter that desperately needs to be sorted through and filed. We did not research the bunk-bed purchase, and I did not update my blog (although I will say with some satisfaction that 2013 was my most prolific year yet, nearly meeting my goal of a post a week). We are still figuring out ... [READ MORE]
A Planet With Two Suns
November 19, 2013 by 1 Comment
Tatooine is a planet with two suns. It's always hot there. And dry. - LittleMan, on Indian Summer Our apartment gets freakishly hot this time of year. It's a long space, with south-facing windows along one side (no cross-current), and when the sun hangs low in the autumn sky it feels like it's sitting right on our deck, beaming straight into the livingroom. I love the light -- LOVE it -- but with so many outward signs of the changing seasons (longer shadows, shorter days) the warmth feels...stubborn, somehow, like Nature dragging her feet, and it can make me impatient: I'm ready to ... [READ MORE]
Only Human
October 2, 2013 by Leave a Comment
This morning finds me pondering the million-and-one tiny injuries we inflict on one another along this journey. The child, testing the power of words, hurls an "I hate you!" across the room. The parent picks the wrong battle -- say, the brushing of the toddler's teeth after a long and challenging day -- and after fighting through clenched jaws and enduring wall-shuddering screams, gives up and puts the child to bed, crying. The child kicks the mother in the shins. The baby bites her shoulder. The mother yells, and startles the toddler. The child yells, throws a toy, nicks the paint on ... [READ MORE]
Birthday
August 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Though the Rim fire burns hundreds of miles away, a thick, purple cloud of smoke lay like a blanket over Lake Tahoe as we drove over Donner Pass on Friday evening, the final weekend adventure before back-to-school. On Saturday morning, we woke at dawn to air thick with the soot and the smell of it, the lake barely visible, the sun bleeding red in the sky. Eventually, as the sun rose and the winds began to move things around, it was clear enough for a walk, and my sister and I ventured out with the girls in their various transports: Babygirl in her jogging stroller and my niece snuggled in ... [READ MORE]
