Friday, August 29, 2008

Ahem.

I'd really like to lay down some mad lines here about perspective and parenting and first days of kindergarten and shit, but I'm sort of obsessed with Black Hockey Jesus right now and keep checking in on him to see if maybe today qualifies as a two-entry kind of a day and also there's a toddler screaming at my elbow (HELLO! HELLO ELBOW! CAN YOU HEAR ME ELBOW? ELBOW HELLO! ELBOW!) and, yesterday, every time I turned on the radio or opened my eyes I cried mad, mad tears of joy/frustration/hope/anguish that burned my cheeks and stung my eyes like little crazy bees of emotion, and as disappointed as I was last night with Obama's speech I still want to kiss him for making it and say thank you, thank you, thank you for fighting hard and being our Obi Wan Kenobi, my eight-year-old didn't understand much of what you said but she listened with an open heart more golden than sunshine, more full of promise than a full Netflix queue and today I understood that despair will only guarantee us 4 more of this bullshit and that the hippies were right! all we really need is love, true, open, sweaty, blissed out love and hope and if enough of us send out our happy blinking beacons of happy hopefulness we will get what we need because if enough of us get to the forest RIGHT NOW, we will be there. We will be witness to the tree falling and we will hear it fall and we will be able to say: Now. The time is Now.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Not setting the goal too high since 1997

During my senior year of high school I applied to only one college. Everyone else I knew was applying to many, many colleges and universities and staying up all night and working every weekend on essays that would set them apart from the pack of other high school seniors who were applying with 3.9's and several extracurricular activities to their name. I had no interest in spending my last year of high school actually working at anything, other than being a complete bad ass, and I'm pretty sure I met my goal. The year was 1997, and I was subsisting on little more than black coffee, cigarettes and modern rock. I was dating a guy in his early twenties and I drove an '83 Volvo DL. I was the master of my situation and I was completely uninterested in being disappointed by rejection. Plus, I knew exactly where I wanted to go.

I applied to San Francisco State University and was still actually nervous about not making it in. Seriously, I think they take people on a first come, first served basis and I let out an audible sigh of relief when my Letter Of Acceptance came. My parents and I decided on the dorm for the first year and we took out student loans and drop-kicked that last bit of senior year in the ass and I packed myself up in my little Volvo and headed forward to my future with love in my heart and practically nothing in my head.

I dropped out after the first semester.

It had nothing to do with the school. Or the city, I loved the city and I continue to love the city. What happened was, I met this guy the summer before I moved and we had the most amazing courtship that happened mostly in the city. It was awesome. So awesome, in fact, that I dropped out of school, he never returned to his school to finish up, we moved in together and had three babies by the time I was 26.

Yeah, I know. The downside...ok, one of the downsides is that he DOESN'T ACTUALLY LIKE SAN FRANCISCO. I know, I know. It was a horrible realization for me too, but what can I do?

It's been years since we've been to the city together, but last weekend I dragged his complaining ass all the way down there because my dad's family was having a reunion and I told him that he just had to kind of ENJOY IT DAMMIT I WANT TO GO AND YOU HAVE TO TOO. He went. He even helped us find this great dim sum joint in Chinatown:





(That's the Sprout in a hat (worn backwards, of course) we picked up in Chinatown. Bean got Pop-pop firecrackers and Peanut got little slippers that are off-gassing the most vile shit imaginable. They've been kicked outside until they learn to let it go.)

It was not this place, though:



Which was too bad, really, because, and I know you can't actually tell from the picture, but the front of the building was painted GOLD and it was AWESOME.

We had such a good time, and we did nothing but all the shit I've always refused to do, like Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf, but the kids loved it (also, Cable Cars+toddler="FUN! FUN! FUN! ALL DONE?") and at the end of the day, I think my husband did too. Oh, plus really good food and service at Beretta that, unfortunately, we had to duck out of early because of child related illness--ha, no, my kids didn't make anyone sick, one of my kids GOT sick. Just, you know, for fun.

Hopefully we'll do it again. Some day.


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