This and that

--Dave sees so much of himself in Annie, and I see so much of myself in Eric.  He watches her struggle to handle surges of bitterness or anxiety at the tiniest little things, like tonight, we were discussing our schedule for the East Coast trip, and I was actually trying to work in a trip for the kids to see their friends in our former hometown, and Annie wasn't even a part of the converstion, but she started flipping out about something really minor.  And it is very, very tough to take her attitude when I expend so much energy to make my kids happy and get them to the places they need to go. 

--Eric is like me:  he is full of observations, theories, and laughter.  The other day, I cleaned his ears after a shower, and he said, "Dirty?" and I said, "not very, and isn't that good?" and he said, "Yes, but it's kind of more interesting when they're dirty, isn't it?"  (Yes.  Yes it is.)  And then another day, he said to me thoughtfully, "I feel like you only wear ponytails to work on certain days, like when you've got a lot going on."  (Perceptive.)

--I had a meeting today where I had to update everyone on Big Plans, and everyone at that meeting had had the chance to review those Big Plans, many times, so this was an update, but I was dreading it, because I knew everyone would kibbitz, and ask a lot of pointless questions, and try to add last-minute details to the Big Plans, even though we've known about these plans for months and months.  And that is exactly what happened.  I tried very hard to be pleasant and patient about it, but, you know, we're in countdown mode for those Big Plans, so inside, I was screaming.  And I was also doing a sarcastic monologue, which went something like, "Really?  Did you really, truly have to ask that question?  Because we kind of went over that already.  And really?  Did you really mean to add that suggestion, knowing that we have an insane deadline bearing down on us?  Really?"

Listen.  I come from a family, on my mother's side, that loves to let fly with comments that other people would interpret as cutting and blistering, even though from my family members' perspectives, it's just being honest.  So I have to work very, very hard to appear as patient and reasonable as I did in today's meeting.  Perhaps I didn't succeed fully--perhaps I had an edge on my voice after a while.  But I worked at it.

--There's been social awkwardness and passive-aggressiveness and just plain crazy behavior in all of the organizations where I've worked, including this one, and people tell me that's just a part of life.  Given that the people of the world are not all smart, well-dressed, funny, and kind, well, you're going to have to run across a wide range of people in work settings.  (I don't think I've met anyone who's truly evil, yet.)  But I am so, so grateful that I find every single person on my own team to be smart, funny, highly creative, highly productive, and yes, well-dressed (I'm really not sure I could bring myself to hand-pick an employee who is badly dressed).  We laugh a ton together, and we talk through serious things, and it's just a great f'in team.  It makes all the difference in the world. 

--I was thinking that we might go down to Carmel for the weekend, since it's apparently one of the most dog-friendly places in the world, with lots of dog-friendly hotels and inns and a gorgeous dog-friendly beach, but I left it too late and I was unable to find a room.  So we're kind of stuck here for the long weekend, only, I totally don't mind.  I just want to rest, and maybe read a few books.  I have an odd list of things to buy or do slowly taking shape, like, "Buy pet food," and "Buy more chew toys that look like animals and make noise," or, "look for Toms on sale."

--The urge to stress-eat is so powerful for me at times, even though I really, really struggle to not give into it.  No matter how healthy my diet, or how fit I am in general, I am never going to lose the craving for bad foods when I'm feeling bad.  I was feeling so pissy and tired after the Big Plans meeting, I was driving home, and all I could think of, in terms of dinner, was pizza, burger, fries.  Literally, i had a refrain going through my head, that went pizzaburgerfriesmmmpizzaburgerfries.  I got home, and we ate leftovers, and I had pork and braised cabbage and steamed colored broccoli. 

It's especially terrible when I pass restaurants that are NOT the ones featuring fresh local ingredients, like the Burger Hut, and the Original Pancake House.

--I don't think people, in general, have perfect bodies, and it comforts me to know that people, especially women, come in all shapes and sizes, and that some of us have big butts, or big stomachs, or big thighs.  Even celebrities, I notice, have weirdly shaped bodies--Olivia Wilde, for instance, has very short legs and wide hips, which is something that J. Lo struggles with, too.  But I gotta say, I think one of the top reasons I remain enamored of the Vampire Diaries is that the boys on that show are pretty much perfect.  So pretty, and so lean and fit.  Not bulky in the slightest; and they just wear the hell out of henley shirts and jeans and motorcycle jackets.  Really, it's just eye candy. 

--Lainey is writing about her latest crush, Tom Hardy, and number one:  I completely identify with her sudden crushes that come out of nowhere and provide her with much fodder for silly daydreaming, I get those all the time, and then I wake up one day and wonder:  what did I see in him way back when?  (Christian Bale, I'm looking at you.)   But what I don't understand is that she actually gets to MEET these celebrities.  And smell them.  And shake their hands.  And if this happened to me, and any one of my celebrity crushes lived up to the fantasy version that was starring in my daydreams, I don't know what I'd do. 

--We were talking about crushes today at work, and we were talking about the difference between a spiritual crush--like, there's a cute old man who's a grandfather, and we all just love him for being so smart, funny, and wise--and real crushes, when we actually find someone to be cute and well-dressed on top of being smart and engaging.  I don't really have any crushes going of either kind right now, which is a bit of a bummer.  Because crushes can make the world just a teeny bit brighter.

Dogs on the brain

Yes, so.  It's been a busy week.  Dave is gone--coming back tonight--and work was busy, and the teenage girls we hired had unexpected things to do with graduation, and etcetera, etcetera.  To a certain extent, I feel guilty for even mentioning how busy and stressful things can feel, because I feel like these are First-World problems, Woody Allen-esque problems, and it's not like I have to walk thirty miles for water, you know?

But, busy.  Everything just goes slightly awry when Dave is gone.  My belief is that I do about 75% of the work around the house and with respect to the kids, but his 25% is rather critical, and hugely missed when he's gone.

Our neighbors left us a key to go and see their sweet dog Zoe and check if she wanted to play with Jack occasionally.  She did come out the first time I did this, and played halfheartedly with Jack, and peed on command, and went home on command, but then the second and third time I went over there, she was lying in the exact same spot, looking depressed.  One of the neighborhood children is walking her twice a day, and then she's been getting my visits, but she didn't even want to come outside after the first visit, because she looked so sad and depressed.  One of these times, I asked Eric to take Jack home, and I went inside and cuddled with Zoe, and she put her head on my lap, and I scratched her head, chest, and stomach.  Rather heartbreaking.  The other time, I managed to coax her outside, and while she wouldn't play with Jack, she did take a quiet walk with Jack and me around the block. (Jack was on leash, tugging and pulling like a madman, and Zoe walked sedately off-leash.  That dog, man.)

It was all sort of making me sad.  As I said, these neighbors are strident in their opinions, and officious, and quite bossy, but they are also good, kindhearted people.  In the neighborhood, we admit quietly offline to each other that we find them to be somewhat hard to take at times, but that we all recognize their good intentions.  And I do love that dog.  Not as much as if she were my own, but I love her.  She is half border collie, half golden, and the golden really shines through in her.  She is getting quite massive, lately, because she hasn't been getting enough exercise, which is why I think they suggested we take a key for spontaneous play dates.

So, yesterday when I came home, Jack had a couple of violent sneezing fits, and they continued through the afternoon, and into the early evening, and I was like, oh shit.  Because I had read about the danger of foxtails to dogs out here, and I've been seeing them everywhere, and Jack loves snapping and chewing at grasses by the side of the road, I don't know why.  So I called the vet hospital, and they said, yeah, bring him in, and I went in around 7:15 and I didn't get home until 10:45.  Five hundred dollars poorer, I might add, although my dog was healed, and I guess--I guess--that's all that matters.

It's a very, very nice animal hospital, this place, a new gorgeous building with a huge friendly waiting area, soothing colors, an on-site pharmacy, and lots of exam rooms.  But I was there forever, because there were a number of dogs waiting for foxtail extractions ahead of us, apparently it's been one of the worst early seasons for them.  So we were in an exam waiting room for almost an hour, even though the initial exam only took about 10 minutes; then we were taken back to the outpatient operating area, where they drew Jack's blood and after many more minutes, finally, finally sedated him and extracted the foxtail.  Which was bloody, and about two inches long.  Wow.

Being in the animal hospital for that long, it was like watching a slow, quiet movie composed of little vignettes.  Like:

--The number of people who were gently judging me for Jack's people-fear, and warning me that he could turn into a fear-biter (which seems highly unlikely, but I guess they know better?), and suggested that I take him to a behavioral therapist, or to more training classes until he managed to shake it.  One tech suggested that I sign up for a sheep-herding class down in Pescadero.  For both of us.  Don't misunderstand me:  the vet and the technicians were all lovely and warm and clearly very caring people.  But they were all concerned that I was letting Jack go on with his craziness because he hadn't gotten over his people shyness, and I was sitting there feeling overwhelmed by how much I love this dog and how much he's costing us and how many hazards I have to watch out for, in relation to him, and they're suggesting....SHEEP-HERDING classes?  I had a moment of giggling,  picturing adding that to my resume.  "I'm certified in sheep-herding with my border collie mix, Jack!"  Ye gods.

--Watching a guy with a Scottie have an agonizing end-of-life discussion with the vet, because the Scottie had stopped eating several days ago, and they were discussing options for letting the dog slowly starve to death or euthanasia.

--Hearing the vets and techs talk about this nasty guy who brought in his 20-year-old cat and requested euthanasia, to get rid of him, they agreed to do it, but when they brought her back, they were all torn about the request, because she purred the second people started touching her, she emptied her food bowls, and her fur was matted and full of fleas.  She was quite cute--except for the mats and the fleas--marble colored, with a white stripe on her nose and her chin, and I think they were actually going to try and find someone to adopt her.  They just couldn't kill her.  She was too alive, and too not sick.

--Sitting next to a guy with an elderly golden lab who had just been diagnosed with cancer, having him be all brave about it, even though he was clearly sad, and him giving me tips for how to keep Jack's nose out of the foxtails and his head up from now on, although he told me that his dog had at least seven foxtails extracted during her lifetime.

Jack, meanwhile, was bug-eyed with fear, and as is his wont in these situations, he glued himself to my shins and was very, very hard to scrape off.  The tech had to take him and hold him for blood draw and IV stick and sedation, and he was shivering and looking at me piteously.  And then they knocked him out, and shoved probes up his nose, and pulled the foxtail out, and unlike the snoring dogs who had gone on before and were still recovering from the anesthesia, Jack popped up like a, well, a Jack-in-the-box after they stopped administering the drugs and he was DYING to leave with me and after I paid the enormous bill, we got out of there, him weaving crazily like a drunk person.  When we got home, close to 11 o'clock last night, he practically begged me to let him in his crate, and this morning, when I woke up, he came out of his crate for a second, but then turned around and went right back in.

Now, however, he is back to his crazy, ornery, lovable self.  But I did take him running this morning and I was hyper-vigilant for fox tails, and we encountered about five or six patches along the way, and he seemed to want to steer clear of them, for once.  Perhaps he did put two and two together and came up with owwwwwww, that really sucked.

Vignettes

--Taking Jack for our long Saturday morning run together, having him obey the command "leave it" for three disgusting things we encountered along the way.

--Experiencing moments of narcolepsy anytime a certain patch of sun hit our old sofa.

--Dave blinking in and out, leaving from Friday to Saturday evening, departing again on Sunday afternoon, gone until Wednesday.

--Going for pho and then to a neighborhood sweet shop on Saturday, thinking how lovely routine activities are in brilliant sunshine.

--Watching a little tufted dog try to hump every big dog in sight in the dog park.  The big dogs didn't even really notice him doing that.

--Trying to offer our condolences to our strident obnoxious but well-meaning and kindhearted next-door neighbors, the ones with the sweet dog, about the guy's mother dying, he seemed conflicted about it.  They gave me a key and I took their dog for a walk with Jack at lunchtime today and she is so well-behaved, she walked off-leash, and peed when I asked her if she wanted to, and turned around for home when I told her it was time to go back.  She made Jack look like a hyperactive crazy teenager by contrast.

--Congregating in our cul-de-sac yesterday for an impromptu eclipse viewing party, all the neighbors brought pinhole papers and telescopes and cameras and X-Ray films and we all looked at the sun get increasingly skinny and the coolest thing was the sickle-moon-shaped shadows everywhere.

--Afterwards, gathering with the neighbors in a backyard to eat weekend leftovers and chat, with glasses of chilled white wine.

Weekend recovery

This week was a juggling act.  It was so busy, we blew off the last week of Jack's obedience training class, and we missed getting his certificate of completion.  I have to say, this is the first time I've experience living and working in the same geographic region, even growing up, I had to drive 45 minutes to get to my high school, and so the whole idea of "community" has always been abstract to me.  But this past week, after blowing off Jack's last class, I encountered the ancient people from that dog training club several times in the town in which I work when I was out getting my salads or going to the post office during lunch.  Quite weird.  I also run into lots of people from the YMCA and we look at each other and sort of nod hello, because we hardly recognize each other out of workout clothes.

Work, in general, was not overly pressing, meeting-wise, but there was a lot going on, a lot of things to write and details to pin down and meetings I got invited to that I didn't need to be in and meetings I didn't get invited to that I probably should have been in. And then this past week especially, I was organizing the kids' camp schedules and pick-up schedules for the next few weeks and filling out their health history forms and all that shit, plus, dealing with the crazy dog who chews everything when we're gone.

With all this, by yesterday, I felt and looked like crap. Cheerful, overall, but tired and a little goofy and snappish.  I'm at the age where fatigue gets written in fine lines everywhere on my face and my skin.  (It's kind of interesting, seeing my face and neck collapse into soft lines and wrinkles when I relax, nowadays.  It's not something I can feel vain or frantic about, because aging is aging, what's the point of trying to look younger than you are?  Or wishing that you were younger than you are?) 

But yesterday, Friday, was not about me.  Yesterday was Eric's 10th birthday.  And it was a happy birthday for him, because Dave and I made it so.  It was not very hard to do, because happiness comes easily to Eric.  It's one of the most wonderful things about him. 

Even though Eric has this gift of being happy, and easy-going, there's still a part of him that misses our East Coast life more than the rest of us.  He hasn't made many friends out here, and he still thinks of his friend Ben back in Pa, the one he has known since they were in preschool together, as his best friend.  (Yesterday, a birthday card from Ben unexpectedly arrived in the mail, which was a lovely, affirming surprise for Eric, they haven't seen each other in over a year.)  His favorite friend out here is our neighbors' son, who is four years older than he is, and even though they share similar interests, like comics and Legos and Harry Potter and robots, I feel like there's a separation, a widening, always looming ahead.  Which is why I suggested various permutations of a birthday celebration involving Eric's school friends, but his limp response to all of these suggestions eventually led me to ask our neighbors if they would like to go out to dinner with us and see the Avengers afterwards.  They accepted the invite with alacrity, Eric was overjoyed, and we were set.

So, yesterday morning began with a pile of small toys and a card for Eric to find at breakfast.  Then Dave took him to school with a whole bunch of birthday cupcakes.  Then I left work early, and picked him up from school, and before six, I drove us and our neighbors, minus our husbands (Dave is on a business trip, so our neighbors decided to match their family structure to ours) to Eric's favorite restaurant, a take-out/barely-dine-in place that serves amazing French dip and barbecue sandwiches.  It's a tiny place--a glass hut in the middle of a parking lot, and Eric adores the chicken barbecue sandwiches there, while the rest of us love the French dip, prime rib sandwiches that come au jus on flat buttered rolls.  The owner greeted us like old friends when we came in (our neighbors, who had been there once before separately and loved it, were impressed), and when I told her it was Eric's birthday treat, she treated us all to free drinks and gave Eric and our neighbors' son root beer floats (Eric decided at the last minute that he didn't want the "float" part, because he is sort of a purist about his root beer).

We had great sandwiches and then we went, all of us, to see the Avengers.  For me, the second time, for the kids and the other mom, the first time.  Not only was it the first time for everyone else, but no one else had the backstories, like I do:  I was the only one who had seen all the Marvel movies leading up to this one (Iron Man I and II, Hulk(s), Thor, Captain America), and I was also the only Joss Whedon-ite, the others don't know who he is or understand that I am literate in all things Buffy, Angel, Dr. Horrible, Firefly, and Dollhouse. 

But boy, did everyone else enjoy the movie, especially the kids.  Even Annie, who normally disdains action/superhero movies, and is just too good already at playing the supercilious, above-it-all teenager, loved, loved, loved it, and at the end, when all of the Avengers were assembled, she said to me happily, "I think they're ALL good-looking and funny and cool!" which is kind of the point of superheroes, right?   There's nothing worse than thinking that a so-called superhero is precious and overly tortured or ridiculous (I'm looking at you, Eric Bana and Edward Norton, and at you, Ben Affleck, and at YOU, Ryan Reynolds).  The Avengers is just so much fun, but it also does its job of letting the superheroes be superheroes. 

I really enjoyed seeing the movie, the second time around.  I don't think it's a perfect movie.  Perfection, for me, means that the movie has all the right elements--plot, writing, action, acting, and humor--and it holds up over time.  Surprisingly, the Lord of the Rings movies have not held up so well for me, mainly because Elijah Wood acting as Frodo really started to bug the hell out of me, and they really made Merry and Pippin into the Three Stooges, and way over-used Liv Tyler as Arwen.  I think Witness is a near-perfect movie.  I think Galaxy Quest is pretty much perfect.  I think Room with a View is pretty perfect, maybe Cinema Paradiso? and I think the Star Trek re-boot is perfect.  I can see how people can make a case that Raging Bull is a perfect movie, but since I didn't enjoy it all that much (I always seem to appreciate Martin Scorcese's movies without actually loving them), it's not on my list. 

I'm digressing, I know.

Avengers is not perfect.  It has these draggy moments.  But seeing it the second time around, I was able to catch lots of things I missed because Dave and I saw it the first time with a raucous, joyful, opening day crowd.  First and foremost, Robert Downey Jr. anchors the movie with his snarky performance, but he also has these moments when he quietly does meta-narration of the action, he reminds the audience of what's going on in the plot with just one or two words (like when Loki's army arrives, Iron Man says quietly, "Right.  Army.") and I missed a lot of that the first time around.  And then the shots of his face inside Iron Man's mask are really important, like when he thinks he might not make it back to Earth (even though we all know he will, because really, there's the franchise, right there), but even though WE know he will make it back to Earth, HE doesn't know, and he has this moment of closing his eyes in acceptance and resignation that is very well-done.

So that's what I felt:  that even though the Avengers is not perfect, it's a movie that is lifted into great entertainment by Joss Whedon and a very well-chosen, highly likable cast (excluding Samuel Jackson, who I used to love, and now I can only think that at least he didn't RUIN the movie with his phoned-in caricature of a performance).   And while I have crush-like feelings about each and every single Avenger, including what I would call a lurking girl-crush on Scarlett Johannsen, who I like a helluva lot better after this movie, because while she uses her sexiness, she doesn't over-use it, and I began to feel better about her after seeing We Bought a Zoo, I think I still have the biggest set of hots for Chris Hemsworth.  Because he has the deepest voice, the biggest guns, and he talks in kind of a hilariously campy but somehow convincingly authentic Shakespearean way.  I might feel about Chris Hemsworth-as-Thor the same way that many, many male geek-nerds felt about Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in slave-princess outfit.  Really, I know that's so base of me, but there it is.  And I don't think I would feel as strongly about Chris-Hemsworth-as-Thor if I hadn't also seen him in his brief but memorable role as James Kirk's father, just before he bites it, in the Star Trek movie.  When his baby is born, and he's just about to crash the starship, and he's weighing in on what to call his newborn baby son, with tears and love in his voice. 

After the movie, it was late, and we raced home, us especially to get back to our crazy dog before he chewed up our house completely.  I had great difficulty exiting the parking lot, which was both nerve-racking and hilarious for the kids and the other mom.  But the whole way home, I listened to the kids chattering non-stop, excitedly, about how much they loved the movie, how good the sandwiches were, what a fun night they had.  Especially Eric.  And I thought, well, my work for the week is done.  I pulled off a lot this week, but the only thing that really mattered, in terms of doing the thing well, was Eric's birthday.

Onwards.

On dogs.

We love Jack, but he is a bucket of crazy.  We walked into this bucket of crazy.  We adopted this bucket of crazy.  We knew that border collies are nutty, energy-wise, and are terribly bored without a herd of sheep to work; we knew that he's still a puppy, energy-wise, and that we have at least a year to go before he calms down.  We knew all this, and yet we fell for him, and now we're dealing with the consequences.  Oh, the consequences.

He chews everything in the yard.  He wants to play with us and he still bites us.  He has this terrible thing where he wants desperately to play tug of war, and then he pretends to try and get a grip on the thing he's tugging, but instead he bites our hands.  And oh my god, it hurts.  My hand is still aching from when he did this, this morning.  And we do what the training books say to do; we say "OWWW!" and we stop playing, immediately.  And then the fucker does it, again.

Oh, he has his moments.  He lay down this afternoon and let me brush and brush him until I had basically removed a dog-sized pile of hair with the Furminator and scented him with delicious green apple spray.  He sometimes puts his head on my lap when I'm sitting on the floor next to him, and if I put my head down next to his, he loops his paw around my shoulder.  Today, when I was brushing him, he got so dreamy and affectionate, he took my hand and held it in his mouth, very gently, no pressure.  That killed me.  It was a vast improvement over the play-biting, let me tell you.
 
I don't know what to do about a dog I love who also drives us crazy.  I miss him when I don't see him and I want to cuddle him and take care of him, and at the same time, I think about how much easier our life was, before hundreds of dollars' worth of property damage and aching hands occurred.  I even have an aching hip, because of all the running I do now for Jack.

I think the only thing to do is:  keep calm, and carry on.  And maybe consider getting him a herd of sheep.

More blurbs

We now have two adorable high school senior girls, ferrying my kids around over the next few weeks in the afternoon.  We have two because they are both graduating (from different high schools) and they have lots of senior activities and fun to get through.  Then, when we get back from the East Coast trip, one is taking over in terms of summer camp pick-up for.  And then we lose them both in the fall, and I have to start over.

Speaking of camp schedules:  it's a smorgasbord this year.  Eric's doing cartoon art, regular day camp at the YMCA with lots of field trips, basketball, and one week of overnight camp where he gets to sleep in tipis and learn how to farm the land.  Annie's doing sleepaway at Catalina Island again, babysitting certification, baking/pastry, and a few weeks of regular camp.  I did the spreadsheet schedule last night, holy moley.

I am sorry to have learned this lesson about babysitters, which is:  two of the babysitters I found through a web site were these young girls, from military families, and they were from a different socioeconomic class, and they were both extremely flaky and unreliable and they also had extremely unreliable transportation.  Whereas these two new girls are from wealthy families, they have their own iPhones with their schedules already organized, they are off to good colleges in the fall, and they have their own cars or unlimited access to their families' cars.  And I think about that old playing field, the one that is not level to begin with?  Kids grow up in very different economic circumstances and I have discovered that the more advantaged circumstances yield better, more reliable babysitters for me, and that feels like the wrong choice and the right choice, at the same time.

I was thinking today that if I ate everything I wanted, I'd probably eat mostly healthy food, but I'd eat some bad stuff, too, and I'd eat about 30% more than I eat now, and I would eat a lot more bread and rice and cereal than I do now.  And I'd have dessert every single day.  If I kept exercising as much as I do now, I wouldn't get fat, exactly, but I'd weigh about ten, fifteen more pounds than I do now.  I'd be a stockier, size-8 version of myself.  

The only times I can recall following such a meal/exercise plan is when I was pregnant and then, breast-feeding.  I ate mostly healthy food, and I exercised a lot, but then there's this video of me when I'm ginormously pregnant and eating a slice of chocolate layer cake and drinking a huge glass of milk and I can also remember eating a lot of cheeseburgers and fries.  Yum, yum.  Oh wait, I think I also followed this meal plan while I was in college.  Which is why, throughout those four years, I was a stockier, size 8 version of myself.  (I was swimming.  A LOT.)

All that eating in college was so fun, though.  And so social.  Brown had this thing where you could use your extra meal credits in these snack bars scattered around the campus.  And so you could not only stuff yourself with cheesy chicken divan in the cafeteria, you could also go to the Ivy Room at 10 pm at night and order a pita stuffed with hummus, falafel, and here's the kicker--boursin cheese!  My goodness, I remember those sandwiches fondly.  So faux-healthy, they were.   We'd eat them with Granny Smith apples and feel like we were doing something more virtuous than going to the Gate for pizza or the EC-DECK for fried food.

Every day at lunchtime (in college) I was really into making pita sandwiches, and I would make the most precise sandwiches out of half-pitas, turkey, sliced cucumbers from the salad bar, a slice of provolone cheese, and sliced tomatoes.  With ranch dressing.  People kept on observing how precise I was about layering the fillings of these pita sandwiches, which was probably an early precursor to my love for folding dumplings, egg rolls, and grape leaves.  I like to stuff things into other things.

Blurbs

I'm a little nutso right now, trying to find babysitter coverage, because our most recent babysitter just flaked out, and I'm also trying to get the kids' camp schedules straight, it's an impossible patchwork of here and there, and then Annie just joined a real swim team, which involves almost-daily practice, and....yeah.  And work is a blur of editing and writing and getting ready for some big meetings and events coming up.  But...

--I had a happy weekend.  I'm in that zone, you know, when the weather makes everything better and less stressful.  The only downside to this weekend is that Dave was suffering terrible, violent allergy attacks.  We all were feeling the pain, but he was going through nonstop sneezing attacks.  It was awful.

On Saturday, I took a long, wonderful breezy run with Jack and then we ran errands, and on Sunday, we went to a Mother's Day brunch where I ate carbs to my heart's content.  I was bummed that this buffet--where we went for Mother's Day last year--was missing their famed buttermilk biscuits, also the chocolate-covered strawberries were messy and melting this year, but everything else was very good.  And then we went home and I cooked for the rest of the afternoon--having made a Korean barbecue last weekend for guests, I made Middle Eastern barbecue for our neighbors, chicken and lamb kebabs, Syrian salad with lemon and mint, and grape leaves.  I rolled tons and tons of grape leaves.  It took me almost two hours, and whenever I begin rolling them, I think I will never get to the end, and then somehow I do, and my fingers are pickled and wrinkled from working with the brined leaves.

I don't mind cooking for long periods of time, though, if my kitchen is filled with sunlight and I can pick lemons off of our tree (I had to get about 10 or so for all of the Middle Eastern recipes I was using, and man, those Meyer lemons really contain a ton of juice, although they do have seeds, but complaining about the seeds is really a First-World problem, as they say).  And then the music gets me through the hard labor part.

We had a really lovely dinner outside with the neighbors.  First we sat in chairs and drank wine and ate the appetizers they had brought (I'm getting less hung up about the potluck/contribution element of California backyard living), and then we ate the meal, which turned out excellent, and then we had dessert outside.  I could have tried to show off even more than I did and made dessert, but it was Mother's Day, so we had cheesecake and cherry pie from Whole Foods which I must say, makes damn good desserts.  I bought a peach and blueberry galette from there for last week's bbq, and that also was excellent.  Someone knows how to make pastry crust in that bakery.

I love our neighborhood. I love how friendly everyone is, and how many great dogs there are.  We may lose the neighbors we are closest with, because the owner of the house they're renting wants to sell, and that will make me sorry, because they've been really good for us, and as a matter of fact, we are celebrating Eric's birthday with them this Friday by going to Eric's favorite French dip restaurant and then the Avengers, and Eric is thrilled, thrilled that they're going to help him celebrate his birthday while Dave's gone on a trip.  I can't believe what a shitty, ignorant neighborhood we had before.  Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and Alabama in between--James Carville.  (And Philadelphia ain't so great, either--MinnaRice.)

--All of my physical ailments seem to be caused by heading towards menstruation and all of them seem to be solved by heading away from it.  Which means, I think, that I'm premenopausal, all right.  I feel great this week, all because I got past it.  So much better than the weird aches and pains and soreness of last week.

--Doods debuted a new playlist today but she put in Jane Says for me and I had been pedaling away, idly wondering whether I could get away with going for a pee break without Doods sending someone in to check on me, and then the song came on, and I clicked into high gear and got into the spin zone and lost the urge to pee.  It's always a race, to see if I can get ahead of an urge to pee by sweating it all out instead.

--Oh, Annie!  Yes, we're better.  We're trying with each other, and that's better than not trying.  Eric, I think, is trying to upgrade himself.  I said to the kids that they needed to hit a new level--that while they are generally well-behaved, I needed them to think of doing more things on their own, like helping me bring in the groceries, or making lists for what they need to remember.  Eric has been most anxious to hit this new level, and has helped me carry things, and even helped me set up for the barbecue on Sunday afternoon by pulling out silverware and plates, etc.  I love how hard that boy tries to please.  It almost makes up for when he forgets where he is and what he's doing.  Almost.