State of Grace

I can do this blogging thing. I really can.

Molly Graduates!

I know how I can go forward on this blog. I can write about...

LOVE.

As in, "All you need is..."

And, "Crazy little thing called..."

Also, "Let's do it, let's fall in..."

This start-again-with-the-blog post is not about Beatles, Freddy Mercury or Cole Porter LOVE.  I want to tell you about the love that's plastered all over the Internet.  I'm talking the love that dares, big time, to call its name.  We're talking -

MOMMY BLOGGER LOVE.

And, that Mommy Blogger Love? Is aimed smack dab at that cap and gowned kiddo you see here, my Molly, who just graduated from high school, turned 18 four days later then took off to backpack in Peru - all in the course of a month. Just like that, one month and the 215 months before that, and now it's all over: her childhood. Finished, checked off, done, finito.

Yeah, yeah, I know. We parent our kids until, well, we're dead. And beyond the grave in the more neurotic parent-child dyads. But, for all intent and purposes, Molly is a Young Adult, moving on to college (at our excellent community college - bless you, our dear child, for that wise move) (and I need to tell you immediately, Internet, that the kid was accepted to a four year college, but she doesn't know what she wants to do, so she's going to SAVE HER PARENTS MONEY by living at home and getting her general ed requirements completed locally) and, sometime in the next two weeks, Machu Pichu, for crying out loud, where she will undoubtedly be chewing coca leaves as I know you and I would do, given the legal access as they have in the higher elevations of Peru.

Back to the love, the big mushy love we profess on our mommy blogs. Screw that nonsense that all we talk about is poop and pre-school. Sure, we do that and more (hell, I blogged about the time Molly threw a party at the house without my permission and part of her punishment was that I got to blog about it), but we're really talking about loving our children so much we have to write about it, much to the chagrin of many, especially those who get pissy that while we're waxing lovingly about our kids and their excrement (and the forbidden parties) we make money and get free appliances and trips to big companies who ply us with handsome swag.

For the record, that level of swag does not come my way.

Better than swag, this came my way:  An opportunity given to me - and Molly's Bio-Dad and my Hubs/her Step-Dad - to surprise the kid with a letter from each of us, tucked into a folder of her best work in AP English. This brilliant plan was put together by Molly's brilliant teacher, Ms. Miranda, who secretly e-mailed all of us and asked that we write to our children of the pride, wishes and hopes we have for them. The fabulous Ms. Miranda then printed our letters out and stashed them in each student's portfolio. Shout out to great teachers like Ms. Miranda!

Here is my letter, and here, unabashed and unashamed, in front of the entire Internet and God and everyone else, is the love I have for my kid:

June, 2009

Dear Molly,

I'm sending this to you via your wonderful AP English teacher Ms. Miranda's email because when you read this again sometime in the 2060's you'll wax nostalgically about the good old Internet days, before everyone started communicating telepathically through "neural-mailing". After talking about Twitter and texting, your grand-kids will roll their eyes and go back to their "neural-Game Boy" in which they direct the action on their monitors with their eyeballs.

I'm not going to waste our time by quoting John Donne or Yogi Berra. It's just as well, in your next four years in college, you'll get a goodly dose of Donne and maybe, if you're really unlucky, the Confessions of St. Augustine, if that's still taught in Western Civ. And, certainly between your Dad and your Uncle Mark, you have access to a vast reservoir of baseball trivia which no doubt includes the many quotations of the great Yogi.

Rather, what I will say to you here is based not on scholarship or Major League Baseball, but on pop culture. Don't be fooled by your professors and those show-off intellectuals you'll meet at cocktail parties - pop culture provides the masses with a never ending source of wisdom and deep thought. Season Four of Project Runway immediately comes to mind.

Thus, I want to share with you something that made your old Mommy cry while watching ER in the Spring of 2002. You were not one for what you called "the doctor shows" because they made you "sad". So, I watched this by myself, the episode where the geeky but good and kind doctor Mark Greene dies of a brain tumor in Hawaii. Suffering from his disease symptoms, but at peace in his Hawaiian vacation rental, Mark was laying down resting and hanging out with his 15 year old daughter Rachel. They both knew it was close to the end, so Mark took the opportunity to tell her what he wanted her to be after he's gone. He told her in a weak but firm voice:

"Be generous."

Indeed, good advice, for you and anyone, really. Give back, Moll'. Give without needing to be acknowledged. Give because it feels good. Give what you have learned. Give love. Give, be generous.

The other pop culture item is from the main chorus of a song you adored when you were in elementary school. We heard it again on that road trip to Tahoe we took with Noah and he yelled out from the back seat, "OH! I LOOOOVE THIS SONG!" The lyrics are romantic in theme, but the essential message is one that I embrace in my full heart when I think of you, my girl, my child, my Molly Rose:

"I love you, always forever
Near and far, closer together"

And, I do love you, my beautiful daughter. Go forth into the world knowing that you have this never ending love from me.

Congratulations, Molly. I am so proud of you.

I love you,
Mom

Blog Backfire

It's been a long time since I've posted on the blog, that's clear.  It's not that I have nothing to say; those of us who are trapped in a writers' ego always have something to say.  Rather, I've been self-conscious about blogging and that goes against the whole purpose of this genre, particularly for folks like me -  bloggers who write from a deeply personal perspective.  In order to pull that off, you have to be brave and not care what others think or say.  Unfortunately, these days I've been scared of what people think or say and that has silenced me. (Ironic, this state of affairs, as it's "my talking year" and all.)

Why so scared?

It's not just one thing, it is, as always, a bunch of things.  Primary of those things is getting backfire for publishing posts about surviving child abuse. When someone in my extended family does discover these posts, how they will respond to this knowledge?  I have some experience with that - when a family member divorced two years ago, they asked if could I refrain from discussing the history of abuse on my blog, lest my disclosures provide the ex with ammunition in their divorce war.  I have another family member who is dating someone new - what if that new beau finds out about this blog? Will that family member believe that new beau will end the relationship? (If so, then just as well for my family member.)

And, then there are nieces and nephews - kids who have come of age and have, much to my delight,  friended me on Facebook. If they stumble upon the truth about their grandfather, will the fact that he was my abuser devastate them?  And, will they hate me for telling the Internet my story?

I thought I had this all figured out and concluded that I was fine with everyone and anyone knowing about my life.  What did I have to hide?  I did nothing wrong.  In writing about abuse, I help others, right? In writing about my life, I honor my struggle, yes?

Or, is all of this self-disclosure a big ego trip at the expense of other people?

I don't know.  I don't know what to do.

What I did do is follow an instinct and deleted a selection of posts.  I may regret this act, but so be it.  

What I have to do next is figure out how to go forward on this blog. 

Pretty Little Missile Silo

Behold our propane house, made of recycled gates and fences. Last October I planted delphiniums, coral bells and catmint in the little patches of dirt I piled up with compost on either side of the gate. The patches were reinforced with  borders of large and small river rock I picked up around our property. I took pieces of Arizona flagstone remnants from our patio for the entrance. This little project turned out charmingly well, if I can say so myself. It also looks inviting - come on in! But, I've not done anything inside the propane house because there's a big-ass tank in there that's shaped like a military missile, and anything that looks like that, I will not touch.

But, I will adorn our little missile silo with flowers, sort of like what the hippies did at protests, popping daisies into the mouths of the National Guardsmen guns. Much to my disappointment at the time, I was too young to be a fully credentialed hippie. Instead, we were wannabe flower children in the early 70s, with beads draped around our necks and flowing hippie skirts not in the Haight Ashbury, but in a tract home development in the suburbs.

In other news, and this is very important news, one of the dearest people I know is in a tough spot. It's a spot I have been in when I was that little hippie chick in the suburbs, a stark contrast to that sweet peace and love of my youth. It's the body, heart and soul killing experience of domestic violence. I can't write about it completely on my blog as today I'm feeling overwhelmed. The subject turns me into a fire-breathing monster, angrier than Jesse Ventura on the subject of Dick Cheney (and that's pretty angry). It also triggers very difficult memories of this childhood trauma, and though I'm much better at managing the anxiety and panic that shakes me when facing those memories head-on, it still knocks me out for a day. Today was that day.

Instead, I will let my wonderful fierce mama friend Squid explain it all to you. Please follow the link below to our fundraising campaign in support of Gwendomama, who recently survived an assault by her ex-partner and was re-victimized yesterday in the court.  It's a nightmare and we should try to help her.

Gwendomama Fund:  Make a Real Difference to a Real Person

Thank you so much.

Your Testosterone Moment for Tuesday

Enough with all this talk about balance, yin/yang and aging! Pah! Let's have some Major Dude Action from Barats and Bereta, the very funny dudes who brought you the Mother's Day video I published two posts back.  Have some MAN-TAGE people!

You're welcome!

May 11, 2009

Cute Lil' Teacup Lights
Originally uploaded by GraceD

Life is at a precarious balance these days, dollins.  Consider my last post, which went yin and yang all over the place - Hey! Look at these funny guys in the video! And, hey! My kid and her boyfriend who went to the ER and passed a kidney stone under heavy drugs took me to lunch! Then, wow, I have a sibling who's an asshole and my mom is not doing so great in the memory department. And, does anyone know how to get your fuzzy minded mom to the doctor's for some Aricept?

I really do need help in approaching my mother with this tough information. She doesn't believe she may be in trouble and it insults her when we hint at it. Perhaps it's just another little tempest in a teapot and maybe not.

In the meantime, here's a little gift for you dollins - teacup lights I found in a hipster store in downtown Santa Cruz. They were $35 each and I'm sure one can make them in an hour. But, for the purposes of this post, they're meant to sweeten and maybe balance things out around here.

Namaste, good people.

If I had sons, they'd totally be like these guys.

Happy Mother's Day, ya muddas! As I write this, I hope you're enjoying your Mickey Mouse pancake breakfast or dining out at Denny's, a Grand Slam brunch from the kids who saved their allowance for two months. Or, if your kids are older, and they have a job like my Molly's, they damn well be taking you out to the nearest themed seafood restaurant, as my daughter and her boyfriend Jordy did on Friday afternoon.

Here's a picture of Jordy and Molly being mauled by a giant sea otter on Cannery Row, Monterey.  We had just finished consuming shrimp entrees at Bubba Gump's down the street. Molly and I have a long history of dining at Bubba Gumps, and it was therefore a sweet, comfortable and familiar setting for her to celebrate, well, me.  Jordy was kind enough to want to celebrate me, too.  This was truly a heroic gesture as he had just passed a kidney stone 6 hours earlier.  Our poor Jordy woke up with massive, massive back pain, alleviated with massive, massive doses of narcotics administered in the ER at 5am. The ER docs introduced the different narcotics with a preface that revealed how well they knew their Santa Cruz young dude population  - "Whoa, you thought the last drug was gnarly? Well, you're gonna love this next one!".  Another doc showed up, took up Jordy's hand and reassured him, "Brother, I know what you're going through. I passed a kidney stone, too." 

Molly is not with me this morning.  She was doing some underage drinking at her stepsister Jenn's bachelorette party in Southern California.  I dropped Molly off at the airport for the short hop down to Burbank yesterday, then drove up to my Mom's house in the northern far reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area.  My Mom, despite some short term memory loss and still grieving my father's death, is doing pretty well, looks a great deal younger than her 76 years and was snappily dressed in a cute tie dye top that coordinated with her turquoise slacks and matching sandals. Her well being was in sharp contrast to the doomsday portrait one of our siblings painted of our Mom, and the art references are intentional, the sibling being an artist and a temperamental one, at that.  Arty sibling and my Mother have been at war since my Dad died.  I know that this sort of business can be part of the fallout of a family death, but things are going a bit too far, with arty sibling sending group emails to the rest of us, claiming that Mom needs to be institutionalized and we should do something about it.  This is hardly the case, and if anyone's crazy, the fingers point back to arty sibling. Life's too short for this.

(Ha! Blogged the family drama! But, really, what are these damn mommyblogs for, anyway? I'm just doing my part.)

Otherwise, I carry on with my blissfully boring life.  I enjoy the boredom tremendously, my simple life of tomato gardening, resting my hip (doing a lot better, people!), waiting for my Hubs to come home from business trips, the Cialis moments thereafter, shopping at Ikea for my new office/craft-sewing room/War Room, and the usual Jack Russell Terrier wrangling.  Our extended family of six beautiful kids, the next generation of four even-more-beautiful grandkids, thrive like the big showy delphiniums blooming in our yard.  And, our beloved home of Santa Cruz, California has never been more glorious and peaceful. 

(The only thing I can ask for is that my Mom gets evaluated for her short term memory loss and if any one of you dollins has convinced their aging parent to go to the doctor for their fading memories, please, please, please, tell me how you did that.)

As to the title of this post, I present to you this Mother's Day the answer to a question I ask myself now and again, "What if I had a boy? What would that have been like?"  I know that there are two guys are involved in this brilliant YouTube video, but I'm damn certain my male offspring would be a composite of both of these endearing dorks:

Best Picture from the First 100 Days!

P020109PS-0339
Originally uploaded by The Official White House Photostream

Interrupting my bout of "Swine Cold" to present this gem from the Official White House Flickr Photostream. I don't see Sasha or Malia anywhere and that means only one thing - the adults in the White House have fun with or without the kids around. And, that's a healthy thing.

Now back to my hacking, coughing, sneezing and very loud nose blowing. (Ask anyone in my family, my nose blowing could also serve as a civil defense siren. "Was that a tsunami warning?" "No, Grace is just blowing her shnozz.")

Hubs Likes the Future Son-in-Law's New CD

Silversun Pickups, our family band aside from stepkiddo Tracy's band Twilight Sleep, just released their new CD, 'Swoon'. Silversun took a major step-up with this CD, adding orchestral movements, more enhanced vocals (with a lot more Nicki the bass player in the harmonies) and an overall bigger sound.

Here's lead guitar/singer Brian (aforementioned future SIL) and his band performing "Panic Switch", the first video from this impressive endeavor.  You will watch it, because these are our kids and we are pushy stage parents in the worst possible way:

Jack vs Kid

When Malcolm Babysits
Originally uploaded by GraceD

This is the sort of stuff I live for: Today, Malcolm, our Jack Russell Terrier, dragged our three year old friend Bubbles  across our bedroom floor.

Bubbles' mom was downstairs on the phone while this mighty tug-of-war action was happening. Thank God for that, because I was laughing like a madwoman at this spectacle of raw strength and silliness and took pictures with the wholly evil intent of posting scenes from this battle royale on the Internet.

What's that you say? You'll never come over with your kids again? Oh, you are so boring.

A Big Softy at Sixty

Hubs and his Kids
Originally uploaded by GraceD

My husband turns 60 later on this month but we gathered this past weekend to celebrate his birthday. Our experience with the Hubs is that he's almost always on a business trip on his big day, so we closed in on him early before he could get away to Mexico, Singapore, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota or wherever else he's doing business when he really should scarfing down some major birthday cake action with us.

Hubs' five kids converged from near and far - flying in from Brooklyn and Los Angeles, driving up the coast from Santa Barbara, making the quick trip over the hill from Silicon Valley. We cooked a big Italian dinner, drank wine and toasted the Hubs/the Dad. The sweetest part was that instead of giving our good man gifts, the kids wrote him letters, a few of which were read aloud. One of these was the following list, put together by Hubs' beautiful and brilliant daughters:

60 Things we Know About Dad at 60

1. He wears a leather watch vest around the house
2. He lifts grocery bags so as not to miss any opportunity for exercise
3. He eats late night snacks like ice cream and cereal standing up in the kitchen
4. When he’s frustrated, he says, ”Dammit!”
5. He likes to take things apart and look at them under microscopes
6. He reads Watch Magazine
7. He loves the History Channel
8. He loves that Malcolm is aerodynamic
9. He pines for vintage pocket watches
10. He gets mad at flashy watches with diamonds all over them
11. He uses a snorkel and mask for ease of breathing in hotel pools
12. Wine gives him headaches sometimes
13. He likes to wear his red bow tie at the office for an idiosyncratic look
14. He also likes his red glasses for the above reason
15. Despite over 50 years of phenomenal guitar playing, he won’t play in public
16. He’s a smarty pants with patents and such and he doesn’t brag about it
17. He and Grace talk to Malcolm in strange voices
18. He’s turning into a big softy
19. He always says he doesn’t really like people but we suspect he does
20. He does his exercise at the nearby resort hotel gym
21. He always seems to be watering the yard
22. If not, he’s probably reading a science publication on the deck
23. He’s one of the few people whose slide shows you actually enjoy
24. He enjoys smoking his pipe
25. He loves Beyonce
26. He imparts wisdom, for example telling  (our friend) Jordan, “When you feel like you don’t want to edit yourself, that’s probably when you should.”
27. There is no where he’d rather be than at the house with his family
28. He thinks Bush should be publicly executed for crimes against humanity
29. He doesn’t take any b.s. from airline ticket agents
30. His secret wish is to retire and take science courses at UCSC
31. He likes to sail
32. He is one of the worlds few men who can pull off a Hawaii-5-0 mustache
33. Perfume gives him a headache
34. He hates New Yorkers
35. He still has a little New York in him after all these years in California
36. For example, telling a taxi driver to just “let him out” for not knowing how to get to the hospital
37. He loves the Sopranos
38. He misses Lola Falana's long elegant fingers                                                                                     
39. He yells, “I know these women!” when he watches 'Sex and the City'
40. He always answers the phone, “(ahhhhh) George Marcellino”
41. He responds to the following names: Popsy, Monkey, and Badoo
42. He’s the only person we know who got his dog laser eye surgery
43. He and Grace like to wear sporty gear for potential spontaneous activity
44. He eats pizza with a fork and knife
45. In recent years, he’s been taking on a Sean Connery essence
46. He also eats quesadillas with a fork and knife
47. He always says, “what the hell is this?”
48. He likes to call things by their proper names including:  CoCAH-CoLAH or DOHs OHsos
49. He once grew marijuana under the house and asked Jenn to water it
50. When drunk Irishmen look at his daughter on the tube, he turns into Tony Soprano                                         
51. He likes to talk about YOUR feelings
52. He calls us all “baby” because it’s easier than mixing up all of our names
53. As an adult, he played on a softball team called,”The Inner Kids”
54. His favorite snack is a block of cheese with cashews
55. He’s extremely punctual but he’s trying to be relaxed
56. He always has his suitcase packed a week before he leaves for a trip
57. He hates matching his socks ("they all look the same!")
58. He’s a late developer in the dog lover community
59. Yesterday, he couldn’t find his cookie and realized it had been flattened (against his wallet) for 4 hours in his pants pocket
60. His daughters adore him

Back online! And, a little WoolfCamp drama.

Holy cow moly, our neck of the woods - Santa Cruz county, California - was plunged back into the late 1800s when some asshat cut through the fiberoptic cable lines that pours the internet into our computers. Cell phones and land lines were down as well. We were Amish for a day, and, truth be told, it wasn't bad at all. I got some extreme gardening accomplished and potted my tomato seedlings. I was just about to plow a field for a wheat crop, but then the internet flowed back into our monitors and we were back in the 21st century.

Speaking of drama, some of you have kindly inquired about a picture of our dog-man Malcolm that I posted on Flickr. Here it is and doesn't he look like a novitiate at a convent? Sorta in the Audrey Hepburn way in "A Nun's Story"? Anyway, every gathering has an incident and this is what happened:

Molly the Dog, a Bichon Frise/Poodle mix, was one of our WoolfCampers. A very cute and friendly little lady dog, but she had it in for Malcolm the Dog. She hated him on sight and Malcolm hated her back. They fought every time they were within 3 feet of one another. We would stop the fighting and pull them away to their corners, but I thought at one point they should just duke it out. So, I let them have at it, then separated them when I realize it was going nowhere.

I picked up Malcolm and saw on the floor - BLOOD. DROPS OF BLOOD. Both Molly's human Jane and I checked our respective dogs, both looked okay, maybe the blood was from a little cut, all's good. I proceeded to take Malcolm's mind off the smackdown by playing a little ball with him.

When Malcolm came running back with the ball after fetching the first throw, HE WAS SPATTERED IN BLOOD. I gathered him up, grabbed his leash and quietly and quickly left WoolfCamp for the vet's office.

I have never driven so fast in my life. I'm still shocked at how fast and, actually, how skillful I was at the wheel.

I pushed through the doors of the vet's clinic with my bloody pup. Our vet, a very nice no-nonsense sort, happened to be at the reception counter. She sized up the situation in an instant and took Malcolm from my arms and rushed him to the back.

I sat down on a padded bench and cried. A vet tech and the receptionist, cute young women with tats and piercings, rushed to my side and comforted me in the sweetest possible way. I let them pat my back and tell me stories of when their pets got into fights.

The doctor came out while her assistants were cleaning up Malcolm. She told me that the pointy tip of our little guy's right ear was bitten off. It looks okay from a distance, but up close, it's pretty gnarly.

When Malcolm emerged from the back of the vet's clinic, his little head was wrapped up in this hoodie bandage. He looks kinda sad-cute, don't you think?

Malcolm was given a hero's welcome upon his return to the house. Molly the Dog was still mad and Jane had to take her home.

I know. Crazy. Still, WoolfCamp was big fun, Malcolm got a lot of sympathy but I really didn't want Jane to go home (shout out to Jane - thanks for the Get Well card, dollin!)

The Talking Year

 

I have no idea whether the Google execs clicked to my kids' bands MySpace pages as per the previous post, but I can say that my time on their panel of moms who wander around the Information Super Highway marked my entry into my Talking Year.

Not that I "talked" on this panel; I more or less stood on my chair and hollered at a genteel audience comprised of Kelloggs-as-in-Corn-Flakes marketing gurus who were visiting Google. Kelloggs wanted to know how us wandering moms - aka "Digital Moms", a term that smells demographic to me and makes my friend Brian wonder who might be the "Analog Moms" - use the web as consumers. My beloved longtime "Digital Mom" friends Beth Blecherman, Jill Asher, Mindy Roberts and fabulous new friend Megan Calhoun were eloquently professional on the panel, dazzling all with descriptions of "reader engagement" and other very cool terms that both intimidated and fascinated me.

I, on the other hand, more or less waved my crutch at these very nice Google/Kelloggs marketers and bellowed,

"You gotta get on Twitter!"
"You could do that on Twitter!"
"I can't believe you're not on Twitter!"
"Holy crap, would you get on Twitter!" 

Oh, I didn't cuss, really. Anyway,  I'm pretty sure the crazy crutch waving drove my point home.

This is how I began my Talking Year, 2009, shouting at the product teams of Google and Kelloggs.  I would not have done this, much less accept such an invitation to sit on a panel last year, my Silent Year. The Talking/Silent years alternate, odd years I blab, even years I shut the hell up and listen.

I was in my mid 30s when I started this practice. At the time, I was a regular at a local Zen Buddhist group in Silicon Valley where I sat in meditation, attended workshops and silent meditation retreats. I will always be grateful for whatever forces led me to these Zennies, as I fondly call these Buddhists. I learned what it meant to be truly present, right smack dab in the moment and that the present moment is all we have. Tough stuff, staying in the present moment. It was toughest during meditation when I battled monkey-mind who insisted on going through shopping and to-do lists as well as asking the person next to her if meditation is almost over.

"SHUT UP!" yelled the part of me who wanted quiet, no chatting and certainly no grocery lists.

"GO FUCK YOURSELF!" monkey-mind would shoot back, who really wanted to get up from the meditation pillow, add low-fat yogurt to the list in her purse and go over to talk with her friends.

"Everyone calm down and breathe." said my inner Zennie softly with compassion and non-judgment.

It was a solid year of brutal back and forth with Zennie calmly but firmly moderating the war between monkey-mind talker and the shut the fuck-up quiet one. Then, I had a revelation during meditation:

Clearly, monkey mind had a lot to say.

And, I had someone in me who needed silence.

Hey! I'll give them a year each!

Thus began my practice of having a Talking Year and a Silent Year.

Last year I was silent with intention and in how things worked out. I went into intense therapy which demanded deep introspection.  I was less interested in participating in conversation, both online and off. This blog was nearly dead. I would spend weeks without Twittering and why would I want to invade the youth turf of Facebook? I didn't see too many people and when I did, it would be sweet but awkward, like the time I had a picnic with wonderful Glennia. We ate baguette sandwiches on the Stanford Campus in the shadow of Rodin's Gates of Hell sculpture. Glennia was and is always articulate but I didn't say much and felt bashful while my eyes involuntarily wandered over to hell's gates with its scenarios of sinners getting chased down by devils while others were thrown into bonfires.  Clearly this was a signal to inform me I was toying with being social in my Silent Year, and I had hell to pay.  I was quiet in a somber, funereal way for days afterwards.

This year, an odd year, I have been babbling happily since the first of January.  I'm rearing to get the blog going, had a false start, but I now feel like I'm in the swing of things.  I accepted the invitation to talk to Google and I will be doing that again later this month with their guests from the Nestle Corporation (the nice Kelloggs folks provided Rice Krispies swag, so I'm hoping for Nestles chocolate swag).

I really upped the ante in talking by having another WoolfCamp gathering at the house this past weekend.  If you're going to host 30 people at your house, you're going to do some talking.  WoolfCamp, a happy gathering of bloggers and non-bloggers who want to be together in real life, is a talking bonaza.  We get up and talk as teachers, talk to learn, talk in sharing and talk with others in rich fellowship. 

It was a blast! I'd like to think others thought so, too.  Perhaps they did, because folks in these pics are looking pleased with things:

We talked and dined.

  

   

We talked and blogged and Twittered.

 
  
 
 
 





  

We talked in BarCamp style sessions.

 



 

 
 

  

We talked while the kids hung out.

   

    

  

Clearly there's much to talk about WoolfCamp, and I will leave that to the next post which will be way sooner than two weeks if not two months.

In the meantime, talk to me! Say hi and I'll say hi back! I thank you in advance for helping me out in this, My Talking Year.

Whereupon I Promote Our Kids' Bands Shamelessly at Teh Google

What I'm Wearing to Google
Originally uploaded by GraceD

Today I'm at the Google planetary headquarters in Mountain View, California to speak on a panel about 'Digital Moms'. I've been telling everyone I know including strangers at the grocery check-out - Hey! I'm going to Google tomorrow!

{{blank stare from family and strangers}}

But, I'm excited about this and am very grateful to my beautiful, longtime old (but young! she's very young!) blog girlfriend Mindy Roberts of The Mommy Blog who plugged me for this event. We'll be talking about our social media habits and I hope I can leave out the more unseemly bits because really, the mommybloggers are all a bunch of Sarah Silverman wannabes.

I don't know if I'll be able to Tweet or live blog this meeting. We might be limited to the "pen and pad only" coverage that is reserved for Timothy Geithner's press conferences. I'm actually in the visitor's parking lot right now and the wifi is freakishly speedy.  I should sign off in case someone thinks I'm spying for Yahoo. 

I forgot to stuff my wallet with more business cards! So, if you are in the crowd, I would like to offer this blog post as my "Hello! My name is ________" sticker on my lapel. Also, kind Google executives,  I would like to draw your attention to my stepkiddo's band's MySpace page:

Twilight Sleep

And her fiance's, our future son-in-law's band's page:

Silversun Pickups

Because this? Is who you're dealing with here. A mother to rock stars. Watch out.

iPhone Camera Users - Has it ever gone cubist on you?

Strange Thing the iPhone Did
Originally uploaded by GraceD

Hello again. Another post so soon! But, this is not so much a post as it is what we call in the blogosphere a "bleg" - begging for something on your blog.

So, I beg-of-you-on-my-blog for any explanations to this phenomenon seen here on the right. Has your iPhone ever generated a similar image?

This was taken in Maui last year and Hubs was very content and relaxed in the Mai Tai way. I was too as I was taking this picture but sobered up immediately when I saw the resulting image of multiple panels that included bonus armpits and man cleavage action. The iPhone is broken! Either that or I've gone well beyond my Mai Tai limit! Or, both!

It turned out that everything was fine including my rum intake (given there was no puking later). Still, what could have caused this? Anyone know?

In other news, the weather's absolutely Spring time gorgeous here in Santa Cruz. We've been waking up to a cacophony of bird tweeting as well as the manic knocking from woodpeckers, bulbs dug into random spots around the property have begun to flower, the air is fragrant with fruit tree blossoms, puffy white clouds sail across blue skies and temps are in the mid 60s. If it wasn't for all the white kids in dreadlocks strolling around and the abundance of Burning Man art cars on the city streets, I'd swear I was in a Disney movie.

Two Months Later

Here I am! Hello! Good to see you again!

It's been too long. Holy crap, why has it been so long?

Well, I've been a little busy. The hip post-surgical rehab thing is top on the list of busy. But, I'm sick of the hip thing and providing just this one paragraph to the subject because presently I'm on Vicodan, an effective but freaky drug that makes me emo and anxious instead of considering the up-side of it all.  Which is....um....I could park in highly convenient handicapped parking spaces for the next 6 months. That is, if I got the prescription from my doctor. But, I can't just hop in the car and fetch the prescription from the doc then stand in line at the DMV for the little blue license plate sticker because my hip hurts.  Hurts! And hurts pretty much 80% of the time, especially after physical therapy, a brutal topic onto itself.  Ibuprofen doesn't get to the core of the pain, so I've had to deploy the big guns of Vicodan.  I wouldn't be able to drive anyway, there's a little label on the Vicodan bottle that provides what's probably very good advice - don't operate heavy machinery while on this medication, therefore ruling out driving and other heavy machinery operation like, perhaps, a combine harvester. 

Okay, that's it for the hip.  Gory but thrilling surgery details forthcoming. 

In the meantime, I'd like to share with you, Dollin Reader, how we have been happily stimulating the economy and doing so responsibly without cracking into Molly's college fund.  There is a crisis involved, but it has a happy ending.

For well over a decade, the Hubs and I have been stuck in a comfortable but boring home decor rut. We had to snap out of it for we may be geezers, but we strive to be exciting geezers. Thus, we launched our House Rehab project, executing the style transformation of our living room from Pottery Barn Grown-up Hippie Cozy to Mid Century Modern with Eclectic Touches Sleek.  

We considered adding more seating space than what our old Pottery Barn couch and its matching armchair had to offer. Like the wonks we are, Hubs and I researched the options.  A sectional with a chaise lounge side appealed to us, but the research also revealed that these could cost some big bucks.  Room and Board had some beautiful examples, but the pieces looked untouchable. An abundance of beige-y putty tones in the store didn't help.  We're all for subtle, but not sterile. 

Then, we looked on Craigslist and found this beaut':

Black leather sectional advertised by a house stager who has to rotate her furniture and home accessory inventory. I guess it was too 2008 for her? The sectional was previously displayed in swanky Marin County real estate offerings.  We followed up on the ad, met the stager in Mill Valley, took a seat on the sectional and bought the chrome and leather wonder on the spot.  It's in perfect shape, no scratches, no owies but because it spent time on display, the stager offered a considerable discount.  In other words, total score on the couch.

Admittedly, we were a little nervous that the sectional would be too intense and even intrusive in the room, like a big black steer had parked itself in the middle of the rug.  Remarkably, it blended in quite nicely, even with the late 19th century Morris Chair seen on the right.  And, that's one of the eclectic mash-ups - an Arts and Crafts design melded with modern contemporary lines.

The orientation of the room also changed for the better.  The sectional faces a wood burning stove. The TV behind the couch was moved to the right of the stove. The Morris Chair faces the couch, facilitating conversation.  In fact, the whole rearrangement of the living room is configured for great face-to face contact, vastly improving the social vibe of the room from what we had before, where the focus was not directly at each other but to the TV in the corner.

Clearly we had to have a coffee table.  Our old table is a fabulous piece, sort of a view/display box really, with a hinged glass top and curved cast iron legs.  But the wood table/view box is of a light pine.  Light pine = Pottery Barn Grown-Up Hippie.  No more of that!  The next step had to be a bold one, not unlike the purchase of the sectional. The room needed the magic of the Noguchi coffee table!

Behold:

Everyday art at its ultimate finest: The iconic Noguchi coffee table, structurally balanced and stable in its mesmerizing curves, simple wood and glass transformed into timeless sculpture. Functional and sexy!

I know about the work of Isamu Noguchi through the extraordinary museum in Queens, NYC.  But, even thinking about owning a reproduction of his furniture was beyond me.  I have to thank the current batch of 30 something hipsters who have embraced Noguchi's coffee table and mid 20th century design in general for creating a demand for the authorized reproductions and a world of cheaper knock-offs.

Again, I tapped Room and Board as well as the Design Within Reach showrooms.  Both stores sell the authorized reproductions, but there's a month and a half shipping/waiting time from their source, Herman Miller, the licensee and manufacturer of this and other mid-century classic furniture.  The Hubs is not patient, so to keep peace in our evolving household, I went directly to the Herman Miller website, located an obscure local office furniture design and product contractor from their list of dealers, called these local folks and they had two Noguchis in stock. No shipping, no waiting, happy Hubs.

Bonus - as this was a floor model (but flawless as this dealer does not get the typical retail traffic), we scored a 30% discount.  Hubs picked it up, we set it up, admired it from all angles and I got lucky that night.

Lighting was next.  The sweet but boring Pottery Barn floor lamp with a pleated ivory shade was retired and replaced with the ultimate, the big Kahuna, the floor lamp to end all floor lamps - an Arco Lamp designed by Pier Giacomo Castiglioni in 1962.

Enter the dragon:

I will have to admit that choosing this lamp was a lemming move on my part. Everyone knows this lamp, it's everywhere and it's probably a cliche' but so what, I wanted it like everyone else.  Hubs  loved it on sight (due to some Italian blood connection maybe?) and bought one at Design Within Reach, again an authorized dealer.  Poor Hubs had to suck it up on the waiting/shipping time but to make up for it, and maybe because he raised a fuss, DWR paid the shipping fees.

Ain't it grand? It does freak Malcolm out if I tap the globe and make it sway but that's how I amuse myself while lying on the chaise lounge part of the sectional, icing my hip and groovin on Vicodan.

As I'm self-conscious and insecure because that's what American culture generates in its females, I had a crisis. This new and improved sleek stylin' living room! What does it all mean?

I let it all out on my Flickr photostream:

I think we crossed some sort of line.

"Dwell" magazine atop new Noguchi Table atop Persian silk rug atop hardwood floors adjacent to Morris Chair and new contemporary leather sectional.

Have we turned into some weird morph of geezer-hipster-eclectic-mid century-Arts and Crafts Dwell Magazine Readers?

I think we've crossed some sort of class boundary. Perhaps we are now on periphery of The Creative Class.

Maybe I should put some Billy Joel on, just to flush the hipster out of me. A Billy Joel enema. Eeeeuw.

I'm fortunate to be a contact with a very beautiful and stylish woman who goes by a quirky-fun online name of Rooey (hi Roo!).  Rooey's own photostream is rich with images of her many endeavors -  from foodie-drooling vegetarian entrees to drop dead gorgeous ensembles she pulls together from a wardrobe of excellence.  Roo took charge of my crisis and responded to my existential angst by telling me, in the nicest possible way, to shut the fuck up and love it:

Rooey:  Quit thinking ... just live in that beautiful space you've created, and enjoy every bit of it. 

Good.  I needed that. Crisis averted. 

Dollin Readers, thanks for reading my blog. I'll try to show up more, okay? Okay.