All My Children

precocious six
freshman jock or senior stud
i love them all. yep.

Robert gave his Tuesday Talk at school today. Wow, am I proud.  Even though I don't really have a right to be.  People keep congratulating me, and all I can think to do is shrug modestly and say, "Thanks, I made him myself."

But I didn't, really.  No one did.  All three of my children are fascinating products of genes and environments and their very own marvelous spirits.  And I love them all.

Barre None

O, prissy barre class
I scoffed at you; to my shame
Now I cannot walk.

"Seriously?" I said to myself, when my friend  Chanda suggested I try the latest trend in personal fitness at her studio, IM=X Pilates. I mean, I'm not one to brag, but I've got some good workout game, and the notion of standing in place and fluttering my arms and legs around didn't strike me as particularly worthwhile. I am a busy working mom, for heaven's sake. No time for tutus.

But I went anyway, because I actually love Pilates, and figured if Chanda suggested it, a barre workout had to have something going for it, if only the opportunity to feel like a pretty ballet dancer for a while.  (My last attempt at this, when I was about six, ended in ignominy and an irritated Frenchwoman suggesting I might be better suited to field hockey.)

Chanda led me and a group of about seven other woman - many of them impressively taut - through a series of leg bends and arm lifts that felt incredibly easy ... until they didn't.  About halfway through my IM=X barre class, my shoulders began to burn and my thighs started protesting in stereo. By the time we were done, I was drenched in sweat and whimpering for mercy. Two days later, my butt still barks every time I approach a set of stairs.  And this is good, because after eating more than my share of nummy Chocolat du Cali Bressan eggs over the recent holiday, I need my butt to do something other than strain the seams of my yoga pants.

So here's to another lesson learned over here at MamaKu's place: don't knock it 'til you've tried it.  Or it just might knock you back!

what's in a name

may i recommend?
a post by alice bradley;
she's braver than I.

http://www.finslippy.com/

I wish we could give the biochemical imbalance currently called "depression" a new name. Because it's not, as someone once nervously told me when I felt I had to confide, "feeling a little blue." It's not a self-indulgence, a "pity party." It's certainly not an option. You can't "snap out of it" "pull yourself up by your bootstraps," or take any of the other well-meaning but ultimately painful advice offered by those who have no experience with it. Depression is an illness, with a physical cause, just like arthritis or eczema. Only society at large doesn't treat people with this particular disease with the same sympathy and support it offers sufferers with more physical symptoms.

If an Olympic athlete suddenly fell victim to an attack of lupus, for example, most people would feel pity and offer good wishes and hopes for a cure.  If that same athlete woke up one morning devoid of hope and literally unable to summon the will to walk to the starting line, the press would probably call him a spoiled brat, and he'd most likely lose his corporate sponsorship.

No Vons checker has ever asked me if I want to round up my grocery tab to support medical research to seek the cause and ultimately a cure for depression, the way they always want me to ante up for prostate cancer and muscular dystrophy. For myriad reasons, the very word "depression" makes people uncomfortable, so those who suffer from it tend to be stuck with some pretty negative labels.  ("Unstable," was my personal favorite, but I've heard quite a few.) So naturally those who suffer from it are reluctant to 'fess up ... which is really too bad on a number of levels, because we're not unstable or unreliable or any of those things; in fact, we depressives as a lot tend to be pretty smart and competent, kind of like whatever gene makes us occasionally feel unworthy of existence is karmically linked to some really good DNA that also makes us unusually bright and capable of great things. A disproportionate number of authors have suffered from depression; before their tragic self-inflicted ends people like Hemmingway and Plath created works that will live forever.

People like Alice Bradley (and J.K. Rowling, and other writers who have come clean to their public about having depression) offer hope, though.  By giving their disease a different name (Alice's might be offensive to some, but she pretty much sums it up) and framing it in metaphor, these  authors help others look past the stigma of depression and understand its very real physical effects. Anyone who shuddered when they first read about the faceless dementors of the "Harry Potter" series, hooded horrors with the power to suck a soul through a lipless kiss, has gotten a glimpse of what happens when depression strikes.

If greater understanding is possible, then acceptance should be, too. I just read Alice's latest post at http://www.finslippy.com/, and I feel compelled to share, and to applaud her. She's a smart, multi-talented woman - and not afraid to name her Demon and face it, head on.  I'm nowhere near so brave.  I've kept my own depression on the down-low, partially because of the stigma and partially because I'm just as prejudiced as most people ... I've been ashamed.

But Alice has made me feel braver. And inspired me to be more openly honest about the genetic legacy that causes my brain to occasionally misfire. I have depression. I also manage it, I think, with admirable strength, and a lot of love and support from my family and a few close friends. There are times when this physical ailment prevents me from functioning at top capacity, but on the whole I am in pretty great shape. So there you have it. I have depression. I might wish it had a more impressive, multi-syllabic Latin medical name that didn't carry quite so many 19-th century "hysterical" connotations, but I guess I'm stuck with the name, just like I'm stuck with the disease.

And now you know.

Thanks, Alice.

fear but not loathing

the snake was there first
i had no right to freak out
but did anyway


Ok, first of all, a confession:  I am afraid of snakes.  Irationally so. I can't even look at a serpent wriggling across my TV screen without shuddering; on the rare occasion I encounter one in real life I morph into a whimpering lump of panic. The only other thing that sends the metallic taste of adrenalized terror into my mouth faster than coming face-to-face with a snake is the prospect of a world without Planned Parenthood ...  but since snakes are an integral and important part of the natural world and politicized misogynists are not, I have been gamely trying to overcome my horror of the former.

Today that fear came to a head ... literally. Because but for the iron nerves and quick thinking of my friend Leslie, this morning I would have stepped right smack into a rattlesnake's fangs, an act of stupidity that could have spelled the end of my days as MamaKu.  Heck, it could have meant the ends of my days, period.

Leslie is my hiking buddy.  Although she only moved to Santa Barbara from the East Coast a couple of years ago, she has taken to our backcountry like a bobcat, and knows more about our local trails than I do. (Which is saying something, because I love to hike and have been getting myself lost in the Santa Ynez Mountains since I was ten.) Leslie and I have kids the same age, and lots of  similar interests, and it's fun to share notes while we ramble around the foothills.  She, I will note, is not afraid of anything, at least not that I know of.

However, since I am a great big baby when it comes to things that slither, I am usually the one with the more paranoid eye on the trail when we go hiking. Leslie has two handsome and well trained Labs she watches while we hike and, frankly, I think we both figure the dogs make enough of a ruckus running ahead of us to scare off any reptiles that might be sunning themselves on the path. Certainly I wasn't thinking about snakes this morning, which was a particularly glorious one, cool and clear.  The recent and unusally heavy El Nino rains have rutted the familiar trails behind Montecito into strange, convoluted channels, and wild weeds and grasses have taken over many places where foot traffic usually keeps the trail barren.

I am used to looking for snakes in open spaces, on rocks, seeking the sun. I haven't really considered the provenance of the phrase "snake in the grass" because we really don't have that much grass in our chapparal-covered mountains. That's why I was so stunned when one minute I was walking along the newly-greened trail, chatting away, only to find myself  suddenly being shoved sideways so hard I almost fell over.

Imagine that - walking along, talking to a dear friend about something pleasant and personal when *WHAM* that same friend shoulder-checks you into the dirt.  I was about to protest - loudly -when Leslie hissed, with steely calm, "snake." She had an iron grip on my forearm and was looking at me with the kind of intensity one usually sees on reality shows when one of the lamer participants is about to do something really stupid and the experienced eventual winner needs to reign her in lest everyone on their team end up dead.

And that was when I saw it.  Extending across the path, semi-hidden in the six-inch grass.  The part I could see - which included the pointed head I had been about to step on - was about five feet long, dark brown, and faintly marked with the interlocking diamond pattern frighteningly familiar to anyone who has grown up in the environs of the Crotalus oreganus ... the Pacific rattlesnake.

I am embarrassed to admit that, at that point, I shrieked.  Loudly.  Piercingly.  Which was a stupid thing to do, because Leslie and I were still only about eighteen inches away from the animal, and as anybody who watches "Animal Planet" knows, an adult rattlesnake can cover that distance in a lightning second ... especially if you've made it mad.

Both Leslie and I jumped back, instinctively, and fortunately for us, the snake has not yet warmed up enough to take any agressive action.  It just stayed there, lying across the path, thick as my forearm, sluggish but potentially fatal for all that. Leslie shot me an irritated glance and ordered her curious dogs to back away. Skirting the snake, she walked a ways up the path and looked at it from a safe distance.

"Big," she commented.  "Can't even see the tail." We both knew if we could, the rattle would be disturbingly large.  Leslie, bless her, just shrugged and gave me one of the knowing little smiles she uses to such effect.  "Are you coming?" We still had another half a mile or so uphill to go, and Leslie started walking.  With my heart still pounding so wildly I couldn't catch my breath, I followed my friend's lead and, giving the rattler a wide berth, continued up the trail.

Leslie pretended not to notice when I leaned over and picked up one large rock ... and then another.  Not that I really believed the snake was going to follow us - I didn't - but still.  For the rest of the hike, I acted like a nervous herbivore, eyes darting everywhere and jumping everytime I saw a downed oak branch that might have possibly resembled a snake. I told Leslie about my irrational childhood fear.  She laughed and called me a chickensh-t, which was exactly what I needed to hear. She had carefully noted the spot on the trail where we had encountered the snake on the way up, and on the way down (as I cowered behind her) she reassured me it had moved on.

I put the rocks down before we got to the end of the trail. I know that any real nature lover who had seen me clutching sandstone weapons would have pegged me for a tourist ... worse, an idiot, because we hikers really have no right to pelt snakes with rocks or really, hurt them in any way. The backcountry is their home, and we are just vistors. It's up to us to look out for them when we're on their turf.

I can't say that my herpetic encounter this morning has cured me of my fear of snakes.  Heck, my heartrate is increasing even as I sit at my keyboard, recounting the story.  But I can say I'm grateful to one snake in particular for not biting me this morning, particularly as it would have been my fault if he or she had. I also owe Leslie a great deal of thanks, both for saving me from doing something dumb and reminding me that snakes deserve our respect and appreciation. 

One thing's for sure:  I won't tread so carelessly in the future.

TARP-ku

you got my money.
now you pay me back with less.
how is this ok?

Dear Fed,

Let me see if I've got this right: You used my money (well, mine and some other people's, too) to bail out several financial institutions. As collateral, they offered up shares which at the time were equivalent to the dollar value of the money (mine and other people's) received. And now these institutions are paying me (and the other people) back with devalued shares ... not enough shares to equal the dollar value of the original bailout money but in the actual number of shares that were worth more at the time of the bailout. So by paying their debts back now, before their shares go back up, these institutions (which are loudly and proudly trumpeting how responsible they are by paying me-and-other-people) are getting free money. Mine and other people's money.

Am I right?

I know I'm supposed to be better with words than with numbers, but, really ... even a six-year-old can figure out this isn't fair. In fact, mine just did. And she's not to happy with you right now, Fed.

Sincerely yours, MamaKu

On the Road Again

on the road again
dont know if im north or south
until i hear "eh."

It has been a whirlwind tour of the Pacific Northwest, meeting people all across Oregon, Washington, and now, Canada.  I have forgotten how much I LOVE this part of the world. It looks green; it smells green; it IS green.  And everybody is so nice.  Not SoCal I'll-Kiss-You-On-The-Cheek-In-Public-Because-My-Highlights-Look-Really-Good-Compared-To-Yours pseudo-nice but honestly and truly kind and interested in each other.  It's hard to say who I love more, the sophisticated Portland Foodies, the Seattle-ites who really might just be saving the world, or the Canadians (bless their hearts) who take hospitality to levels I've never experienced anywhere else on this continent. I am sorta tired and really homesick for my family, but wrapping up the trip on an evening boat ride out of Granville Island with a couple who speak in that lovely, lilting Canadian way is a wonderful way to wrap things up ... eh?

Hot Like Him

If you think he's hot
Chances are others do, too.
Roll with it, Girlfriend!

I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The first time I clapped eyes on the man who would eventually become my husband, I (swear to God) literally couldn't breathe for about thirty seconds. Then I automatically assumed he must be married and/or gay and/or incredibly arrogant, because anyone that good-looking couldn't be just a nice, single straight guy hoping to settle down and raise a couple of kids.


Fortunately for me, I was wrong, and here I am, married to Mr. Breathtaking … who is, I must say, aging nicely. (The same gray hair and crinkly eyes that are making me look like my grandmother Harriet only add to his masculine appeal; go figure.)


Anyway, the Big Kahuna is a babe. I knew it then and I know it now, so it shouldn't come as a shocker when other women say as much … but it kind of does. I remember the first time it happened, shortly after we began dating. We were both teachers then, and BK was also coaching basketball. Besotted as I was (and even though I've never been a particular fan of the game) I loyally parked myself in the bleachers and cheered my heart out. ("Go, Panthers!") One night, seated amongst the other fans, I was watching my beloved in the process of getting booted off the court for arguing with a referee when the woman next to me sighed.


"He is so hot."


Puzzled, I looked over at Panther mom, whom I knew slightly. Was she talking about the ref? (The guy in black and white stripes was paunchy and bald, but hey, lots of people think that's cute.) She must have seen the question in my face, because she gestured toward the court and smiled … a little lasciviously, it seemed to me. "Mr. K." Then she scooted over and gave me a little poke in the ribs with her elbow. "You're a lucky woman, you know?"


Well, yes, I thought to myself … I certainly am. But it felt kind of awkward admitting as much to a near-stranger, as if she somehow had an inside track on my relationship and knew way more than she should, like just how much I lusted after this man and wanted to marry him and have his babies and spend the rest of my life basking in his presence …


Of course the Panther Mom sitting next to me knew nothing of the sort. She was just stating the obvious: the guy who was at that point striding back to the bench was a remarkable specimen of male pulchritude, put together in all the ways that define aesthetically pleasing, worthy of admiration and comment …


In short … hot.


It was a throwaway remark – a compliment, really – and I'm sure Mrs. Panther (who was starting to look more like a cougar to me) never gave a second thought to the interchange, but over the years I've had reason to recall that brief interaction more than a few times, because it happens … not all the time, to be sure … but people respond positively to the Big Kahuna's fine appearance. Sometimes it's just eyes following him appreciatively as he crosses a room. Less often someone will actually say something to me about him: Wow, your husband's a good-looking guy.


More often than not, I'm kind of flattered when a friend or acquaintance expresses a healthy appreciation of my man. It makes me feel validated, as if someone is admiring my taste in males much in the same way she might compliment my shoes. But sometimes – and it's hard to say exactly at what point–another woman's admiration for what's mine crosses the line from flattering to flustering.


I'm not talking about flirting with someone else's spouse here. That is another can of worms entirely, and rarely (if ever) acceptable, in my humble opinion. Noting the attractiveness of another person’s significant other is a far more subtle practice that can be perfectly acceptable … until it's not.

My friend Starshine, who writes a wonderful syndicated column about things like life and relationships in the modern world, puts it this way: "After years of marriage, it's healthy to glimpse your spouse through the fresh eyes of someone who doesn't, you know, rinse out his coffee cup four times a day. Like, 'Oh, yeah! He IS kind of studilicious. I forgot!' But when a gal pal presses the issue, I get suspicious and begin swatting words like 'swinger' and 'homewrecker' out of my head until I can change the subject."


So: while it's OK to give a girlfriend a compliment and fresh perspective on her life partner, it's not OK to belabor the point. Context is also important. My sister can make fun of my marriage all she wants (“What does he see in you, horseface???”) but she’s my sister, for heaven’s sake, and it’s her duty to taunt me. Plus, she’s got a perfectly decent spouse of her own, so I’m not threatened.


But family and friends are one thing. Leering at a coworker's guy when he comes by the office to drop off lunch, or insinuating attraction for a mere acquaintance? Not so much.


My colleague Barbie (who is herself a hottie of the highest order) is very comfortable with the fact that her husband, Ken, leaves a wake of swooning women pretty much everywhere he goes. She's used to it, and they are charmingly, goopily, in love, so it's no big deal. Until one of Ken's random admirers starts trying to get a little too close … to her.


“We were at a professional function one evening, and this woman looked right at me and said my husband was ‘just her type.’ That was weird. I could feel myself turning red.” On cue, Barbie starts to flush whenever she relates this story. “It still bugs me,” she admits.


So in the end … as with so much in life … navigating the waters around someone else’s marital good fortune comes down to my mother’s favorite dictum: appropriateness. Giving a girlfriend a verbal high-five for having landed a babe? Appropriate. As long as you say it, and then drop it. Complimenting a co-worker or acquaintance with a few thoughtful, well chosen words (“You two look terrific this evening; you’re such a striking couple!”) is also perfectly acceptable. Sidling up to a matched pair and implying you’d like to join in on the fun is most decidedly inappropriate …


… and so on. We’re all grownups, so it should be pretty easy to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and weigh the impacts of our actions. It’s nice to make other people feel good about themselves.


My friend Kay (who in addition to being the stereotypical Hot Librarian is also godmother to one of my children and one of my favorite people in the world) happens to be married to a Brit who makes Hugh Grant look like sloppy seconds. This is duly noted by a lot of people, especially as their two sons appear to be turning out just like dear old dad – gorgeous. No harm, no foul as far as Kay is concerned. She sent me the following from her iPhone in between intercepting tweenie text messages and putting the kibosh on dating until high school:


“Maybe it feels like a reflection on my excellent taste, or maybe it makes me feel like people are wondering if I have some well-hidden sexy side myself.

“That,” she wrote with an arch-smiley emoticon. “Doesn’t bother me at all.”

Twins

Two new lives, compact
Have changed the world already.
Happy Birthday, boys!

There is nothing-but-nothing like the birth of an eagerly awaited child to make this world feel like a better, more hopeful place. It's twice as good when there are two! I know my friends K. and S. are over the moon now that their two healthy, beautiful little boys have been born. The rest of us are pretty darned happy, too. 

Facebook Friend Finder

Facebook Friend Finder
you insist on showing me
my less-than-best self.

Newsflash: I'm not a very nice person, sometimes. Longtime readers may have noticed I have a certain ... shall we say, caustic ... outlook on life that, while occasionally humorous, also carries a certain sting. I'm not proud of this, but I have to be honest and at least acknowledge my inner bitch if I'm going to do anything to lessen her impact on my better self and become the more loving, lovable human being my priest, my yoga instructor, and my therapist all insist I can be.

The reason I bring this up is beacuse of a strange thing that happened to me while I was wasting a few minutes on Facebook this morning. You know that "Friend Finder" banner they have? It pops up on the right of your homescreen and scrolls the faces of "People You May Know!" along with their names and the fact that you have a gazillion mutual friends. You are encouraged to add these people as friends, so you can happily share all future posts, pictures, and birthday wall-scribbles (Happy 29th!!!XOXOXOXO.) I usually ignore this aspect of FB, because 1) I really don't know most of these people, even though we apparently have acquaintances in common and 2) I realize that this is only one more way Facebook is trying to take over and control my online life. (I'm not really ready to be taken over or controlled by Mark Zuckerberg and his ilk, not just yet, anyway.)

Only today, my screen popped up a couple of faces - one from the past and one from the present - I really can't stand. Does that sound extreme? I thought so, too ... but one glance at those pictures and I felt that most revolting of emotions: hatred. My mental gears switched right from "mellow" to "mean." The girl from high school who made my teenage existence miserable? I decided the posed glamour shot she was using as her profile pic made all the bad cosmetic work she's had done in the thirty years since I've seen her far too obvious. The business acquaintance I've caught undermining his colleagues time and again? I was momentarily tempted to grab a Sharpie and scribble an ugly mustache on his smiling, smarmy face ... only then I remembered that that face was on my computer, and while Mr. Smarmy would never know I defiled his image, my husband would be sure to question the marker all over the screen.

That was when I realized that this is my lesson for the day. Like most people, I suppose, I spend way more time engaging in ill-feeling about people over whom I have no control and who most likely don't give a rats-ass about me or my opinion. The only person hurt by my negative reaction to them is - d*oh! -me.

I don't have to "friend" these folks, certainly. I don't have to go out of my way to spend time with people who don't make me feel good in real life, either. But I do have to let go of my reactions to them, justified or not ... because, really, aren't most petty resentments just that ... petty? They're as easy to release as dandelion fluff, if you just decide to do it. Hang on to them, though, and they'll irritate your insides to no end. So thanks, FB. That brief exposure to my lesser self wasn't very comfortable, but I'm heading off into today with a higher purpose, and that's good. Just ask my priest, my therapist, and my yoga instructor.

Man Versus Gopher

Man versus Gopher

Herbivore eating our plants

Eternal Struggle

grumpy 6 year old

grumpy 6 year old!
there can be just one diva
in our little house.

... and it ain't you, honey.

The Luckiest Woman in the Universe

anniversary
so, so much more than a date
a time to reflect.

It's been a long week. A big conference on Monday and bad news from the state regarding the budget for schools on Tuesday and a big paper that had to be done by Friday 9:00 am and the usual hate-speak from the crazies out there and crashing antiquated servers and ... did I mention half the family (including me) is sick? Nonetheless, the man I love more than anyone else on the planet made reservations at the restaurant where we had our first date and spent an hour telling me why he loves me, our family, and our life.

We were going to to take maximum advantage of the fact that our oldest (17 years) was on hand to babysit our youngest (6) and spend the night on the town, browsing bookstores and maybe even hitting some good local music. Instead, we drove up to the Riviera to look at the full moon and the city we love, and decided to come home early and hang with the kids. Right now the Big Kahuna is asleep in the twin bed where he fell asleep reading "Dragonslayer Academy 8," and I'm more in love than ever.

PS - to my PIL ... I never forget the package deal I got when you two entered my life as well. I love you. XO L

Gardenista

Keep your clothes and shoes;
My passion is not fashion -
I'm much more "grounded."

Other women may get all excited when the spring couture collections come out; not me. What gets my goosebumps going are the garden supply catalogs that start hitting the mailbox right about this time of year. With their promises of fecundity and ease ("Grow great TOWERING tomatoes!" "Precision Planting with No waste, No thinning!") gardening catalogs make me feel like an Earth Goddess just waiting to happen - Demeter ready to throw the welcome-home garden party of the century for her long-awaited offspring.

Will this be the year I finally coax a peony out of the dusty ground with a can't fail SoCal hybrid? Can my strawberries REALLY be sweet and AND big? Maybe what I've really been waiting for all my life is the right pair of Nitrile gloves - "Fit like a second skin and wear like iron!"

Sigh ... there is so much promise in a garden supply catalog. Fashion catalogs, with their in-one-year-out-the-next peasant blouses and wedge sandals just can't hold a candle. I'll leave it to my more elegant sisters to sport the latest in oversized handbags. What I'm really lusting after is a new compost crock. (Gardener's Supply Company Item #37-985, in case you're interested.)

March 17

i don't drink green beer
or believe in leprechauns
still ... erin go bragh!

Having spent four years in Boston evading the drunken advances of guys named "Sully" every time St. Patrick's Day rolled around, I've never really been a fan of the holiday as it's celebrated here in the U.S. (What's with the pinching, anyway??)

Nonetheless, Ireland has a fascinating history, and they continue to make some of the best music in the world, so I'll raise a pint of Guinness tonight in gratitude for all things Irish ... especially MaryPat O'Connor!

Flu Haiku

It's been so long since
I've been sick that I forgot
I'm not essential.

Woke up at 3 am with a raging sore throat and headache; had a fever and body chills by dawn. It still took me half a day to realize the world would function very well without me if I just put my sorry self back to bed, where I belong. I think this happens to moms, in particular ... we do a lot and get to thinking everything will fall apart without us.

Trust me.

It won't.

Heading for the Hills

there are times, I think
when it's best to turn your back
on the obvious.

rain

rain, rain go away
come again another day
...it's haiku? Who knew?

Sick Kid Poker

I'll see your meeting;
raise one overdue report.
It will work ... somehow.


The game always starts in the middle of the night, when our bed is invaded by someone who either has a fever or wants to barf. After taking the usual precautions - hugs, cool water, Tylenol and/or big bowl in case she suddenly starts vomiting all over the place - The Big Kahuna and I snuggle her back down and turn to one another ... it's time for Sick Kid Poker.


You working parents know exactly how the game is played. Your child is ill; you can't send her to school, but you also both have jobs that - peskily enough - require your presence and attention. Sometimes, if the child in question only has a mild case of the sniffles, you can bring her into the office and park her in the corner with some Kleenex, a box of colored markers, and the contents of your recycling bin. At the end of the day she'll have had an adventure and your entire office will be covered with cute kid art. When she's truly sick, however, she needs to stay home, in bed, and be treated with lots of parental TLC. Which means one of you has to stay home from work the next day.


The question is: which one of you can more easily afford a day away from the job? In this economy, with so many people laid off and those of us who are left standing struggling to fill their shoes as well as our own, that's never an easy call. That's where Sick Kid Poker comes in.


Kahuna has more letters after his name than I do, and much more public and prominent position, so he usually opens with something showy and superficially impressive, like:


"I've got a 10:30 with a newly elected member of the State Assembly;"


But I'm no slouch either. Narrowing my eyes, I counter with the information that I'm working on a major publication. Under deadline.


So he says: "Budget meeting this afternoon," reminding me that people's lives and livelihoods are in his hands.

However, I can play that game, too. "Grant proposal due Monday."


"IEP meeting."


"Conference call."


... and so on and on we go as the clock ticks steadily toward dawn, listing all of the things we both absolutely have to do the following day, until, finally, one of us concedes the other holds the upper hand. One of the many things I love about our marriage is that the winner is not always the one who makes the higher salary or holds the more "important" job. Both of us believe that being good parents is our most important obligation, followed closely by being responsible and effective employees. Playing Sick Kid Poker actually helps us decide, on any given day, the most reasonable and productive compromise. Sometimes (thank you, internet!) one of us can work from home. Other times, like today, we will literally tag-team parent, taking turns throughout the day being with our daughter and being in our places of work.

It's a tough game to play, and there are many times I wish our family could survive on one salary, just so we didn't have to spend so many nights this way. But, like I wrote, we are lucky to have jobs, to have each other ... and somehow we always make it work.

jalapeno hangover

jalapeno chips
spicy, kettle cooked, from the bag
i just can't quit you.

Oh, dear God, even though the "nutritional" information was staring me right in the face as I held that crackling Lay's bag in my greedy little hands and popped one fiery, salty chip after another into my mouth I ... just ... couldn't ... stop.

Do I have a problem?

Do I?

Do I?

I do.

Jury Duty

My fellow jurors:
Housewives and Bored Retirees-
Not "Twelve Angry Men."

I had kind of hoped my civic duty might involve some kind of meaningful responsibility - a chance to represent that most wonderful of documents, the US Constitution, and ensure liberty and justice for all. When I got that brown summons in the mail, I instantly formed a mental picture of myself wearing the flowing robes and blindfold of Lady Justice, and I must confess ... it wasn't a half-bad look for me.

Instead I found myself shivering in a large, cold, holding pen with an assortment of stoic businesspeople, harried-looking parents (the spit-up stains on their left shoulders a dead giveaway) and nice older folks who wanted to talk to everyone. It was kind of like being on an airplane, only there weren't any snacks.

Then, instead of getting some really cool case involving civil rights or freedom of speech or some other weighty issue, the other prospective jurors and I were asked to consider the case of an over-coiffed Beverly Hills matron whose slimy-looking attorney husband was attempting to sue the pants off some hapless surgeon who apparently botched her latest face lift. I'm pretty sure the fact that I snorted out loud when the judge stated one of the claims was "loss of marital consortium" had something to do with my quick dismissal.

Sigh. Maybe next time.

Live

all thumbs while texting
i missed the "o" and got "i"
now i live for love

truth in advertising

the smiling lady
on the box of "Two Week Cleanse"
is a crock of sh-t.

I know what you're thinking! MamaKu used a bad word?!? How crude! How awful! How ...

Accurate.

Call it whatever non-expletive you choose - "Number Two," "BM, or (my personal favorite) "The Poopies," - my life is all about it these days, and my friend Caro is to blame.

Caro, who is older than I am but looks about a decade younger, occasionally does this fourteen-day nutritonal "program" and swears it makes her more alert, energetic, and all-around better than she felt previously. Since Caro is the perkiest person I know, this is saying a lot.

Anyway, between lots going on at work and home, I've been eating poorly, not exercising much, and sleeping even less. (Night being the best time to worry about pointless things.) I've got bags under my eyes big enough to carry an iPad in ... if I had an iPad. (I don't. But I wish I did. I thought I might win one in this contest on Facebook, but that turned out to be a hoax. But see what I mean? My mind is all over the place these days. I can't stay focused AT ALL.)

I tried drinking more coffee to stay alert, but all that did was give me the jitters. So dear Caro took one look at my sorry-old, baggy-eyed, shaky-handed self last week and said "Why don't you try 'The Cleanse?'" and directed me to the nutritionist who sells this stuff to women like me. He was nice enough, and had lots of degrees on his wall, and the plants in his zen-like waiting room were real and looked well-cared-for, so I thought "Why not?" and went home with a Spartan diet and a box containing four different bottles of pills made from various herbs and spices and complex instructions to take a certain number of certain pills at certain times of the day with plenty of water and (best of all) one glass of red wine every night.

(It was the wine that sold me, I think.)

The box that "The Cleanse" comes in looks promising enough. There is a picture on it of a happy, smiling woman with lustrous hair and glowing skin. Ostensibly this hair, skin, and overall aura of joy and contentment are the result her following all the instructions to a "T," so I followed suit. For the past three days, I have been popping little herbal pills and drinking lots of water and following my diet and enjoying my glass of wine every night and, truth be told, I actually feel pretty good.

Except for one thing. And I'm sure you've guessed what it is.

That lovely woman on "The Cleanse" box is only pictured from the waist up, and I'm reasonably certain that that, my friends, is because her other half is permanently parked on the potty. "The Cleanse," it turns out, is basically a full-on flushing of the gastro-intenstinal system that leaves users themselves flushing all day long. I won't go into the gory details, but I will say that my commute to and from work has become literally a race against time. I have harkened back to the days when my children were transitioning out of diapers, when I knew the exact location of every (clean) toilet along the routes of our daily routine.

I am "cleansing," all right.

Going back and re-reading the euphemistic fine print on the box-with-the-smiling-lady, I guess I should have been prepared for this. They do warn you, in oblique terms, what is about to happen. I guess I just didn't expect it to happen quite so ... ah ... powerfully. Y'know? Who ever has such high expectations for their own colon? I sure didn't.

So there you have it. Truth in advertising. A smile on the face and your tush on the toilet. Yin and Yang. Balance? I'm not sure. I actually do feel much better these days, and my system seems to be adjusting to and appreciating all the TLC I am offering up. I slept (almost) all the way through the night last night. (The cat jumped on my head at 3 am, but I was able to go back to sleep, which would not have happened last week.)

I've been productive at work, and nicer to my family.

I'm going to stick with "The Cleanse," and see what happens. Wish me luck, though.

I might need it.

Korean Spa

without a stitch on
in a room full of strangers -
strangely comforting.

Normally being naked in public is the stuff of anxiety dreams, those awful ones wherein you're merrily strolling the aisles at Trader Joe's only to suddenly realize you don't have any clothes on and you're stuck at the far end of the frozen foods, begging a TJ's employee to sell you an ugly Hawaiian shirt. As a veteran of many of such nightmares, I should be a little hinky about public nudity. But I'm not. Not in the least. Especially when it comes to Korean Spas.

Don't know what a Korean Spa is? Not to worry. MamaKu knows, and she's about to tell you:

It's heaven.

No, seriously. A good Korean Spa is like God took a sharp knife and sliced off a little piece of Paradise, and populated it with kindly Korean angels in practical black underwear who want nothing more in life than to get you cleaner and softer and more relaxed than you have EVER been in your ENTIRE life. A good Korean Spa is hot herbal tea and iced cold cucumber water in rooms lined with exotic materials with magical sounding names and curative properties: The Jade Room, The Yellow Clay Room, The Amethyst Room, The Mugwort Room (ok, this last one actually smells a little funny, but supposedly it cleans out your internal organs and gives you nice dreams.)

It is Heaven.

When you go into a Korean Spa you are given a locker key, a towel, a robe, some sandals, and strict instructions to keep your hair up. (Hint for Newbies: the little wrist-twist that holds your locker key is perfect for this purpose.) That is the last time you will see your clothes for hours. You will wear your nice clean robe all the way through the lounge area, where you might pause to have some of the aforementioned tea or water. Thus refreshed, you will enter the main spa area, hang your robe on a hook, and become one of a sea of naked people practicing what is surely the world's best hygiene.

I should note here that Korean Spas are gender-differentiated (men get naked only with men, and women with other gals) but they are still not for the prude-of-heart. Once you drop your robe, male or female, you are going to find yourself strolling around with dozens of people who have the basic equipment you do but in every different size, shape, age, and color you can imagine. You are also likely to see a few scars and tattoos that normally don't enjoy the light of day. It's all out there.

But nobody cares, and that's the beauty of the Korean Spa experience. Everybody's naked, and no one cares ... so long as you keep your hair up, because if you don't, a couple of little old (naked) women will scold you and try to put it back up for you. I know. It happened to me my first time. Never again.

You will take the first of what will be many thorough showers at this point, making sure you are clean enough to take part in the communal cleanse-a-thon.

Then you go for it. In addition to all the nifty rooms, there are hot saunas and cold plunge pools; jacuzzis and pungently scented steams and open showers you visit again and again, to rinse off whatever toxins are leaking out of your pores as a result of all these wonderful places. At a Korean Spa, you can wash and scrub yourself stem to stern - rows of pristine little showers with stools to sit on make this easy - or, as a special treat, hire someone else to do it for you.

That's where the angels come in. Professional Korean bath attendants know their stuff. They wear a uniform of very un-sexy black underwear (think more "Lady Jockey" than "La Perla") because, basically, they work (and work hard) in a never ending stream of warm water. Under such conditions, less is definitely more.

If you choose to receive a Korean Spa treatment after you spend as much time as you like in the main spa area, you are escorted by your own personal angel into a large open room lined with padded plastic tables. This is not your lavender-scented intensely private spa "space" with Enya and Kenny G. drifting through the air. There is no music (unless you think as I do that the Korean language is a inherently musical). The aesthetic can only be described as Early Hospital Morgue - everything lined with tile, and with drains spaced at intervals in the floor. Big industrial trash cans filled with warm water are refilled from plumbers' taps in the wall; wire racks hold gallon jugs with unknown contents and - wait for it - piles of raw cucumbers. (I will get to that part later.)

Bare as the day you were born, you will be prompted to hop up on a plastic table only about three or four feet away from other naked people on other plastic tables. But you will not care, because your eyes will close and, honest to God, you will immediately revert to infancy. Your new Mama in black bra and panties will take a bucket and slosh warm water all over you before donning a pair of loofah mitts (fresh out of the package) and getting to work making sure you are as clean and soft as the proverbial baby's bottom. All of you. Even that selfsame bottom. From your neck to your armpits to your back and breasts (boobies are apparently just another appendage to be scrubbed, in the world of the Korean Spa) all the way down through your nether regions to the space between each and every, believe me here, toe ... you will be scrubbed to within an inch of your life. But kindly. Your attendant will gently lift each limb and body part, work methodically through every crack and crevice, and tap you gently before rolling you, with all the strong assurance of a practiced parent, from front to back to side to side.

(If you manage to open your eyes through the sheer bliss of this experience, you will see literal sheets of your own skin rolling off your body like nasty gray cigarette papers. I recommend keeping your eyes shut. The bath attendants will deal with with your dermatological detritus without your needing to look at it, and that is best for everyone, I think.)

When she is done, your Korean angel-mama will stand you up and send you off - yet again - to shower off the scrub. Take note: When you get back, she will check to make sure you have not left a grain of exfoliant to interfere with the rest of the process. Your ears will be flapped up and down, your hairline inspected, and, depending on the spa and the authenticity of the treatment, you may or may not have a middle-aged woman run her finger up the cleft between your buttocks. If she finds so much as a speck of soap, grit, or exfoliated skin there, she will send you back to try again.

Try to get it right the first time.

Then comes the good part - the massage.

How can I describe this? Having lurked at the bottom of the spinal gene pool for almost all of my life (lordosis, stenosis, scoliosis, degenerative discs - I've seen it all) I have experienced just about every therapy, chiropractic, and medical treatment out there. Nothing, but nothing, equals the ability of an experienced 4-foot-nine-inch Asian woman who is literally straddling your prone body to figure out and cure what ails you. These ladies take muscular tension as a personal affront; during one Korean Spa visit in LA the 50-something woman taking care of me grabbed hold of one arm, lifted it above my head, and hissed right out loud. One of her colleagues came over to see what was the matter, and before I knew it, the two of them had, I am convinced, dislocated and reinserted my shoulder. Not that I was really aware. It didn't really hurt - there was just a flurry of limbs and some very loud pops, and then my lady was patting me with a sweet mixture of consolation and admonition.

"Too much stress," she chided me. "You cut it out."

Then she continued to massage my problematic left trapezoid with the same powerful, assured strokes that had basically jellified the rest of my body, and all I could do was mentally agree: "Yes, Angel-Mama, I will stop gripping the steering wheel so tight. I will chill on the keyboard. I will stop wagging my finger at drivers who cut me off on the 101. I will do anything you ask, just please ... don't ... stop."

And she didn't, until I was drooling all over the towel beneath my head and pretty sure that the numbness that had been plaguing my left pinkie was ... gone.

Then, with one of those deft taps, she flipped me over and disappeared. This is another thing American spa-goers need to understand. Korean bath attendants aren't like the white-t-shirted Karmas and Larses of the American spa experience. They don't feel obliged to have one hand comfortingly on you at all times. In fact, at some points during your hour-long treatment, they will disappear altogether, leaving you (warm enough and swaddled in towels) all alone on your plastic table in the middle of the big tile room. (Rest assured, Newbies. They are just off making things even better, if that is possible.)

Toward the latter half of your Korean Spa treatment, your attendant will leave you alone for a while, whisk a fresh cucumber out of the stash on the rack behind her, grate it (you will hear this) right in the vicinity of your head, and proceed to apply the resultant moist, fragrant slop to your cheeks, foreheads, chin, nose, and jawline. You will at this point think you have recached the apex of your Korean Spa experience, because shredded raw cucumber on your face feels - and smells - sooooooooooooooooooooo good.

But you have not. Ultimate bliss is reserved for the shampoo and scalp rub that follows and will, as one friend of mine once put it, leave you feeling as if your hair has never been so wet nor so richly full of mysteriously healthy, good-smelling unguents in its life.

Ah. This blog post has gone on too long, the way I wish all my visits to Korean Spas would. It's been a few years since an old friend treated me to my first Korean Spa experience, and only a few days since I did likewise to a more recent acquaintance, who left our joint appointment in San Francisco beaming like a religious convert. We're all hooked now - addicts of a sort. We know the sweet satisfaction of being THAT clean, of smelling THAT good, of having milk-rinsed skin so soft and muscles so relaxed that it takes days - literally - for the glow to wear off.

We don't have a Korean Spa in my hometown of Santa Barbara, but I wish like anything we did. If I had money to spend on setting up a business, it would be, hands-down, an authentic Korean Spa, with minimalist decor and wise, practiced ladies in black underwear to take care of us all and remind us that, in a world where - truly - we control so little, we can at least take care of each other. Naked and without judgement, just doing our best to be clean and happy.

Kind of like Heaven.

Disneyland Dirty

Disneyland dirty -
middle American muck
clings to us, like dreams.

Despite what you are probably thinking, this is not a rant about how tacky Disneyland is or the bizarre people you see there, wearing pirate mouse ears over their shaved mullets. Even though I am sometimes perplexed by the fashion choices and parenting methods of my fellow visitors, I go to The Magic Kingdom because Disneyland inevitably makes kids - even teenagers - happy. And really, how many places can lay claim to that kind of power? I don't like Disney bashers. They're mean, and there's enough of that in this world.

But yesterday I went on my bi-annual trek down to The Happiest Place on Earth with a whole Suburban full of students and experienced a revelation: Disneyland is DIRTY. No, not soiled and gum-on-your-shoe dirty - the place is actually obsessively neat in that regard. Cheerful Cast Members are all over the place, sweeping and emptying clever thematic trash bins and wishing you a "good day" while they do it. More than once I had to hustle to beat a lady with a cleaning cart into one of the pristine bathroom stalls there.

HOWEVER ... somewhere just outside of Tomorrowland it occurred to me that even the most obsessive cleaning crews couldn't do anything about my fellow guests. And - how shall I put this? - not all of them seemed particularly concerned with good hygiene. Disney forces you into proximity with others at every turn; from the moment you're herded onto the tram to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers from Topeka and Taiwan, you are, basically, at the mercy of the Gods of Contagion. Forget all the folks who blithely skip right out of the bathroom without washing their hands - and trust me; in the ladies room outside Cinderella's Castle, at least, there were a lot of them. Hour-long lines in which you are literally chained into tight herds of humanity provide ample opportunity to observe myriad gross habits:

• Little kid with the sickly green discharge coughing and sneezing all over without a single parental attempt to get him to use his elbow or even, God forbid, blow his nose? I did The Matterhorn with him.
• Woman with - I swear to God and the image nauseates me still - a large open sore on her tattooed arm resting said arm across the seat back of the boat in front of me in Pirates of the Caribbean. (Which happens to be my favorite ride and she RUINED it.)
• Not one but two open-air diaper changes with nary a sink in sight;
• Finally - wait for it - a completely oblivious "Ukrainian Hankie" right into the waters of the Jungle Cruise. Even the guy doing the lame safari-guide-schtick broke character for a second and looked appalled.

By the time the tepid, probably fetid, waters of Splash Mountain were washing all over me and everyone else in our shared petri dish, I knew it to be true. Disneyland is a pandemic waiting to happen. Toward the end of the day I was passed by a Japanese tour in which several members were wearing those medical face masks that I've come to equate with the Avian Flu, and I was actually a little jealous: Why hadn't I thought of that? The best I could do was make it through the two-hour drive home and have a long, hot shower once I got there.

After that, I had the most wondertful dreams. Maybe they'll all come true - that is, after all, the Disneyland promise. I'll be back. Maybe I'll just be wearing a face mask. And gloves.

revolution

cameras don't catch
the small acts of subversion
only their effects

My New Love

Absurdly in Love

With my New Water Bottle

I Just had to Share.

So I love Bikram yoga, right? Only it's really hard to stay hydrated when you're exercising for 90 minutes in a super-heated room. Even if you bring a bottle of iced water in with you, ten minutes into your practice the ice has completely melted and the water has gone tepid. Nasty when you're already a little queasy from standing on one leg with your head on the other knee for a minute and a half. Even worse, if your bottle is metal (which the best ones are) it gets hot and burns your lips. Very un-cool. Enter the G2V Zero Mass Vacuum Bottle: first of all, it's sustainably manufactured of fully recyclable, BPA-free materials. Ethical products are good. It's odor and stain resistant ( if you've ever spent time in a Bikram hot room, you know how important that is). Best of all ... the way this thing is constructed means it keeps whatever is inside freezing cold ... indefinitely ... no matter how high the ambient temperature. How do I know this? Because I just took my sexy new bottle to yoga, and, when class was over, the ice cubes inside hadn't melted AT ALL. Which meant that after camel pose, when I needed it bad, I had a fabulous drink of coldcoldcold water! I guess this might seem a little obsessive and weird if you don't do Bikram, but if you do, you are nodding along with me right now, aren't you?? AREN'T YOU??!!??? I love this new bottle. Oh - and the outside doesn't sweat, and the BPA-free plastic mouth stays cool, so you don't hurt your kisser. I am going to go and kiss my bottle now. You should try it, too.

Bartleby the Scrivener

the man at the desk
said "i would prefer not to."
and sat there, quite still.

Caffeinated

Th-th-th-th-that
secondcupofcoffeewas
NOT A GOOD IDEA!

Apparently my tolerance for extra caffeine, like so many other things, is decreasing with age.

The Downside to Multitasking

"Hello, Officer"
I mumble through the thick strips
Of tooth whitener.

OK, I know I am the first one to rail against distracted drivers, but Crest Whitestrips aren't distracting ... at least to me. And if not during the morning commute, when else is a working mother going to have thirty minutes free to spend with gluey pieces of plastic plastered to her teeth?

And no, I didn't get a ticket. I think he liked my smile.

Wherein MamaKu Takes a Stand

"Guns Don't Kill People;
People Do." Just easier
for people with guns.

I think since I lost two people I love to a gun, I get to have this opinion.

Why?

why do people wait
until january first
to fix what ails them?

Enough with the resolutions already. If you noticed your pants wouldn't button back in October, why did you wait three months to cut back on the calories and get some exercise? What stopped you from practicing more kindness last June? Maybe I have no appreciation for the symbolism of New Years - I just think we'd all be better off if we addressed our "issues" as they crop up.

On Applying Cosmetics Behind the Wheel

If undertakers
Exercise similar care
You will look good, dead.

Open memo to the woman who spent the entire commute this morning weaving around on the freeway in front of me because she was applying her makeup in the rearview mirror: I hope your survivors don't blame the poor schmuck who will inevitably rear-end you in the fast lane because you apparently need to take your foot off the gas pedal every time you dab at your lashes. I hope it doesn't hurt when the mascara wand impales your eyeball and plunges into your brain. I hope your apparent lack of a brain doesn't hurt anyone else. I hope ... oh, never mind.

2011

Peace, prosperity
Good health to you and your own.
These I wish for you!