Lola is a native San Franciscan

Every week Lola brings home a sampling of her work in the first grade, usually a set of worksheets she filled out in the classroom. This can be a monotonous thing to review, pages of 2 + 2 = 4 and "underline the long vowel sound", etc.., etc.., but it is well worth a careful examination, given that the unique genius of Lola somehow leaks through at times, even on the most boring of worksheets.

Today I found a sheet where Lola was instructed to "Make a picture of four squares. Put a squirrel to the left of the first square. Put a squirrel to the right of the second square. Put a squirrel over the third square. Put a squirrel under the fourth square." Lola obeyed these commands, and then went on to squeeze into the margin a picture of a fruit tree, a peace sign, two cats beaming at each other, and three stick figures hugging each other and smiling. Where Lola was supposed to practice writing the word "square," she wrote (continuing this onto the back of the page) the following ode to the square:

A square, each of its sides with equal rights, loving nature. building a tree. The square is a Happy Hippie like me. Be nice to Squares. Raise them in your mind. When 18, let them free.

RIP Ray Charles

My little cat, Ray Charles, who was less than two years old, died today due to feline infectious peritonitis. Poor Ray had a really rough life: found feral in a junkyard, blinded in one eye due to a feline herpetic infection (this was cured with intensive treatment from a feline opthalmologist), and not adopted after spending two months at the city shelter (please, people; consider the BLACK kittens and BLACK cats. Don't pat yourself on the back for your originality in seeking out an orange cat or another exotic color. It's the black cats who need you). Ray went up for adoption with his silver tabby sister, who was snapped up within two days despite the fact that her vision was severely limited in both eyes, but the people who adopted her weren't interested in taking Ray as her companion. The Sober Husband kindly gave me Ray for my birthday, as I felt horrible that no one had adopted him, and Ray turned out, for the short time we had him, to be everyone's favorite cat. Always snuggling with us and seeking human contact, he was nicknamed "Baby" and beloved by all.

Ray especially loved kittens and interacted nonstop with all the litters we fostered last year. He groomed them, slept with them, and roughhoused with them, making up for their own too early separations from their own mothers. It won't be the same fostering without him.

Lola's best friend from kindergarten was hugely attached to Ray Charles and told everyone, "When Ray Charles dies, I will die!" At the time, I assured her Ray would live a long, long time. Hopefully the untimely deaths will stop with this one. RIP Ray. You were really ripped off in life in so many ways, and I will miss you always.

a seemingly innocent thing

Today I got a message that Iris had injured her head at school and that I needed to pick her up. I was worried as I drove over, thinking it must be a concussion or something needing stitches. I'd barely parked when our unflappable office manager led a softly crying Iris out to my car, with an icepack on her head.

"What happened, Iris?" Between sobs, Iris said she'd been struck in the head with a recorder by accident. I asked who hit her, and it was a friend, a very warmhearted girl I knew would never physically attack Iris. "It must have been an accident," I said. "But. I just can't visualize it." I couldn't imagine a recorder doing that much damage unless it had been forcibly whipped onto Iris's head with both hands, and I knew the girl in question wouldn't do that. Iris couldn't understand it fully, either. I went ahead and claimed little sister Lola early and took them home, where I gave Iris ibuprofen, put her to bed, and later fed her comfort foods: soup, edamame, and ice cream.

The music teacher called to check on Iris and explained. She hadn't seen the incident but had reconstructed it after the fact. Iris's friend was walking across the classroom on her way to sit next to Iris. As she swung her recorder in the air as she walked, the bottom piece of her recorder flew off, and the rough, somewhat jagged metal inside piece, exposed only when the instrument was taken apart, struck Iris's scalp. "There was a lot of blood," said the teacher sadly.

It made a little more sense when it was explained. The music teacher started to explain how terrible Iris's friend felt, but I cut her off. "We know it was an accident. I knew as soon as I heard who it was that it was an accident."

Having been afflicted by a loathsome clarinet for many years of my childhood (I got stuck having to take the clarinet because my parents had bought one for my older sister, who quickly gave up on it, and already having one musical instrument, they had no interest in buying another), I always instinctively mistrusted the recorder, the clarinet's cousin. "It's the devil's own instrument," I said to Iris, who sobbingly agreed.

the attention of the media

Over the life of this blog, I've been interviewed by the "Wall St. Journal" and by "Time." However, the real incisive questions came from the iInterview blog. Enjoy!

everyone can draw -- and glue things on paper

I've been busy lately on an Art Spree: I'm taking two art classes (a mixed media class and "Everyone Can Draw") and sitting in on a third (a life drawing class, with live nude models). This has been taking up most of my time and energy, aside from the children, and it's been fabulous.

Moving from discipline to discipline at the arts studio, I've been surprised to see how different the people are who gravitate to different kinds of art. Last year I devoted myself to sculpting in clay, and my ceramics classes were a mixed bag. Before I even started my first class, the instructor called me to try to talk me out of my spot in the class, as I'd accidentally taken a slot that she'd rather give to one of her long-term students. I declined to give up my class slot, and it shouldn't have been a surprise to me that I was, as I put it, the red-headed stepchild of that class, since I was clearly a brash interloper who seized someone else's rightful place.

The instructor wasn't particularly interested in instructing me; she spent considerable time each class bragging about developments in her own career. She was interested in functional art, while I was drawn to making little statues of animals. It's clear (if I immodestly say so myself) I have a certain gift for making charming little clay figures which have personality, but I didn't learn a damn thing about how to glaze them. Even my classmates were moved to compliment some of my pieces a lot. "You nailed that, you really nailed it," they said about a little rabbit. "Look at how his neck turns!" Sadly my best sculpture, a little wildcat, was shattered by a heavy crystal frame falling on it.

The typical person in my ceramics class was a wealthy, retiree from Marin. They had a clique which had strengthened over the years spent making pots together, and many of them weren't eager to welcome anyone in. When I was working with porcelain clay on the work surface reserved for white clay only, several classmates came up to mistakenly scold me that I shouldn't be there.... all of them having witlessly failed to notice that I was working with pure, white porcelain just like I was supposed to. I snapped and said to one of them, "I've been doing this for nine months; when are you going to stop treating me like a newcomer?" This prompted another senior citizen ceramicist to apologize to me, in private, for the rudeness of the rest of the class.

The ceramicists' rudeness wasn't limited to newcomers. One of the core members of the class regularly committed one of etiquette's greatest faux pases: discussing a social event in front of others who are not invited. She held an annual Oscar party, to which only one of the classmates was invited, but she spent months discussing her menu in front of the rest of us. (This woman also nearly ran me over with her minivan, which she illegally drove through Golden Gate Park at a high speed when she was dropping off alcoholic drinks at our last class. She was also fond of discussing in class how she maintained a legal residence in Texas so she could avoid the California income tax).

While the aging ceramicists can be a rough group to breach, collage enthusiasts tend to be warm, friendly, and admiring of each other's work. My current collage class is composed entirely of women, who are all lookers, of various ages. (I would strongly recommend any single heterosexual man or lesbian woman who likes artsy women to take a mixed media class. The pickings are excellent, my friends). Two are French women, who are as thin and chic and emotionally complicated looking as all the cliches we hold of Frenchwomen. Their accents are as sexy as their intricate, form-fitting clothes. The Americans are beautiful and sweet and earnest, and everyone has the loveliest manners you could wish for, all finding something to admire in everyone's work. And my God, these women do good work. When we were assigned the homework of making an autobiographical collage, I thought the pieces a couple of my classmates brought in were worthy of hanging in a gallery. We passed our pieces around and discussed each one, and pretty much everyone was glowing with a love of art and each other's work.

I've taken several classes with my collage teacher, whom I like very much, and it's paying off. I am a slow learner at collage, and the techniques she taught me last year are now (at least some of them) something I can deploy on my own. My classmates often admire my work, but I tell them it's only because this is my third class. "But you have an eye for this," one kindly persisted.

And then there's the introductory drawing class. This class brought out a big split in generations, with a sizable number of retirees but also quite a few twenty-somethings, with your redoubtable correspondent representing the middle-aged. As predicted by our instructor, quite a few students dropped out, but those who remain are delightfully humorous and charming, as well as hard-working. By this point in the class, there's a feeling of industry -- industry which pays off. Each week our drawings are better, clearly better. And four of us have been sitting in on the life drawing class, and together we have developed the ability to calmly watch a naked lady contort herself and get a reasonably accurate rendition of her down on paper. Sitting together in a group on one side of the class, we don't really stand out too much from the highly accomplished artists we are joining. One of those artists made friendly conversation with me one day, inquiring, "What medium are you working in today?"

"Oh, I thought just pencil," I said breezily. At least I had an artists' pencils package, twelve pencils sorted by hardness, all sans eraser, rather than a regular old yellow #2 pencil, but I didn't feel much more sophisticated than a child.

The drawing instructor can find something praiseworthy in every one's drawings, and she takes such happiness in seeing us progress. She remarked to me after a life drawing class, when we were aahing over a fellow beginner's beautifully proportioned nude, that at this point in her career, she's never going to make a giant leap of progress, and it's such a joy to see it in us, the beginning students. If you were to look at the pictures some of us drew at the first class and what we are drawing now, you would never think it was the same person's work, done only a few weeks apart.

It's been fun, fun, fun, people, and my art has been improving steadily. On the other hand, there's plenty of work to do. Lola continually gawks, saying, "Why would you take a CLASS with HOMEWORK?" Both children can be sucked into my homework at times. They made lovely color wheels when I was doing a lesson on color theory. Lola even wrote on a class assignment that she loved her Mommy because her mommy is "loving and spoiling" and that her favorite things to do with Mommy were "foster kittens, play with cats, and make collages."

Happy Mother's day

me and lucy wish you a happy mothers day with these photos of us.

a cutting remark

First grader Lola was pretending to tell someone off. Putting her hands on her little hips, she sneered, "You wanna organize a sock drawer, SUCKAH?"

how did these two crazy kids end up married to each other?

For a week I didn't have a single alcoholic drink, as I had a sore throat, which led to a head cold, which in its turn segued smoothly into a sinus infection. I never drink when I'm ill; my body craves fresh vegetables and ginger ale at those times (I did feel better enough to enjoy a fine margarita on Cinco de Mayo, made with tequila infused with strawberries. I infused the tequila aeons ago and hadn't gotten around to trying it, and it's magic, folks, magic. An amazing, amazing flavor. I strongly recommend to all of you who drink that you pick up a pint of strawberries, rinse them and trim them and chop them up a bit, put them into a Mason jar, and then fill it with a decent tequila. Let it stand for several days).

Meanwhile the Sober Husband has been busy with a lot of pseudo-work, pseudo-social engagements involving drinking: I've been sober, and he's been imbibing. Last night he complained bitterly. "I had to drink beer three days this week. I don't want to drink beer three days a week!"

the rationale

At our house we have rules about food, rules which were forged in days of conflict and negotiation after a final, fateful tantrum thrown by the Drunken Housewife over ungrateful children whining over their nice meals. In the years since the Food Rules were created -- in a convocation practically rivaling that of the Original Founders --, peace has largely reigned, and everyone lives by the system.

That doesn't mean that there isn't scope for the lively young mind of seven year-old Lola, though. Tonight the children were eager to be deemed "dessert qualified", as, wonder of wonders, for once we had an actual dessert on hand, a lemon cake. To be "dessert qualified", a child must have eaten a reasonable portion of dinner (and there are all sorts of rules about how a child cannot be required to eat something she genuinely dislikes, but she must try a new food in good faith, assuming Mommy has left out all ingredients acknowledged by all as loathed by the child in question, etc.., etc...).

Iris was clearly dessert qualified, having mowed through a large amount of roasted asparagus, but Lola was not. I suggested that if she finished the piece of asparagus she had in her hand, we'd call it a day and let the cake be served. Lola moved her eyebrows up and down quizzically, and then explained, "Since we are vegetarians... and since we eat so many vegetables.... we are pretty much made out of vegetables! So this is like meat! It's like me eating meat!"

She looked at me to gauge the effect this had had, and then carried on, slightly adjusting her tack. "And since we're pretty much made out of vegetables, what's the point? Why should I have to eat this? I mean, come on? I'm made out of vegetables!" She brandished the piece of asparagus with disgust. "Now, what should I do with this?"

is it the Christians or is it "The Man Show" to blame?

As a feminist who is raising two girls in a screwed-up culture (albeit one I'd pick quickly over any country which forbids women to drive, vote, or go about unveiled), I am a sucker for a good feminist screed. This week I read two attempts to pin down What Is Wrong With How The U.S. Treats Women to a single, predominant cause: "Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done" by Susan J. Douglas (Henry Holt 2010) and "The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity Is Harming Young Women" by Jessica Valenti (Seal Press 2009).

Ms. Douglas says what is wrong with our culture is a snarky, backlashy attitude that feminism is no longer needed. Pop culture tells us that women have already won the war and now it's time for them to relish their own special power, the power of their sexuality. A way for a powerful woman to assert herself is for her to wear skanky clothes and revel in how men are reduced to mush in her presence. "Lad mags" like Maxim and shows, like "The Man Show", all present beautiful young women in as little clothing as possible as holding the ultimate in power, and they do it all tongue-in-cheek. If a layer of irony, a little knowing nudge-to-the-ribs that we all know something is playing with sexual stereotypes, is pastiched over some ridiculously sexist looking display, then it's okay by modern standards and only a ridiculous, hairy-legged, humorless old feminist would object. A modern woman knows she should exploit her special powers and rejoice that she is sexy as well as smart.

As Douglas points out, one of the problems with this is that it only works for young, white women who are a size two or smaller. I would go even further and say that it doesn't even work as it is posited to work. I experimented in my early twenties (as a dear old friend reminisced once, "I remember when you were a sexbomb") with running around in rather extreme clothes, bustiers and miniskirts and latex, and it didn't, as Maxim claims, reduce everyone around me to my drooling slave. It didn't empower me at all. It empowered the louts around me to leer, make disgusting remarks, and try to reach up my skirt (although perhaps I should note that there was a fellow of my acquaintance who made the serious offer to be my house slave and to live as the unpaid servant of my first husband and me. I rejected this instantly without thought, although my ex would have relished the set-up). Similarly the drunken college girls who climb aboard the Bang Bus don't seem to be given any power in that situation by their youthful good looks or sexuality.

Meanwhile Ms. Valenti also whipped up a brew of pissed-off erudite feminism over the same state of affairs, but she's blaming it all on the charismatic Christian virginity movement. As someone who feels forever scarred by her extreme born-again Christian adolescence, I like to keep an eye on what the Pentecostals are up to, and I found it odd that Ms. Valenti missed a lot of it. Like her, I'm pretty disturbed by the purity balls, where born again Christian girls go to oddly sexualized formal dances with their fathers, where they pledge their virginity as their father's personal property. The girls are often given necklaces with little locks on them, and the father keeps the key, which is intended for him to give the girl's husband eventually. I think this bothers me even more than it does Ms. Valenti; by making a girl's purity a physical possession of her father, which gives him pride and esteem, I feel like this branch of Christianity is teetering dangerously towards the honor killings of Muslim societies. Also, Ms. Valenti somehow missed the whole "I gave up dating for Jesus" movement, where teens and singles are pressured into giving up dating entirely and a kiss, a simple kiss, mind you, is viewed as something which must be saved for marriage. I fear for the poor girls in a subculture where just a kiss is viewed as a permanent cause of impurity.

Ms. Valenti discusses the ugliest side of lad culture, "The Bang Bus", but somehow she doesn't see or ignores the message sent by lad culture which is the entire subject of Ms. Douglas's book: the pretense that glorifying women's sexuality and beauty gives them power and that if we are ironic in our use of sexist cliches, it's only the humorless who are upset at them. Instead Ms. Valenti thinks it's all down to the glorification of virgins and that once a woman is no longer a virginal child, all this sexual slamming comes out. If we didn't honor and obsess about virgins, perhaps we wouldn't obsess about women's sexuality.

Both Valenti and Douglas note that the idealized woman in our American pop culture is physically a child. Models are starved into a childish form (indeed they often lose their periods, making them seem literally like prepubescent children). Valenti thinks this is linked to our obsession with virginity, while Douglas seems to think it's the logical result of glorifying youthful good looks.

While I'm just as disturbed as Ms. Valenti by the purity balls and abstinence teaching, I think it's a reach on her part to try to make the religious right's obsession with girls' virginity the cause of so many woes, such as a pregnant woman attempting a vaginal birth at home being arrested and taken to the hospital in shackles for a c-section. Out of these two books, I'm more inclined to believe that "enlightened sexism", as Ms. Douglas dubs the ironic use of sexual stereotypes, is a bigger and more pervasive problem than an obsession with virginity.

I wish both writers were less narrow in their scope. Both books treat the U.S. as though it were in a vacuum. I also wish Ms. Douglas watched a little less television and looked at other areas of life for inspiration. Although these books made for depressing, albeit thought-provoking and edifying, reading, I did find some room for hope. Ms. Douglas longs for the nineties, when American women made huge gains. Fueled by our rage over the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, stoked up by reading Susan Faludi's "Backlash", and encouraged by the Riot Grrls, women went into politics and mass media in huge ways. What seemed so obvious to me, but unspoken by Ms. Douglas, was that perhaps it is a natural cycle: the 70s saw huge feminist progress, followed by the 80s backlash, which itself was followed by the radical 90s, to get slapped down by the enlightened sexism Ms. Douglas so pervasively documented in the 00s. Maybe the 2010s are going to bring us great things again.

the homecoming

The fourth grade went up to the Gold Country for three days, culminating their study of the Gold Rush. Here at home Lola celebrated "National No Iris Day" each day, but eventually the time came to go meet Iris.

As I stood in the parking lot by the side of the massive rented tour bus, Iris's favorite teacher popped off the bus first. He looked like he'd aged ten years. "You look so tired," I said, and he gave me a mournful look. "I have a graduate school presentation tonight, too," he said sadly.

Fourth graders streamed off the bus, all screaming, "Mom!" or "Daddy!" and rushing to their waiting parent, throwing their arms around them vigorously. It was all so touching. One girl's little sister pushed her way right up to the bus steps (Lola had chosen to sulk in the car), and her big sister folded her up in her arms and kissed her softly on the top of her head. They stood there, hugging tightly with their eyes closed, for a long time, while the other girls pushed and mobbed around them. It was like something from a story book.

Eventually Iris emerged, one of the last girls off the bus. She walked past me without acknowledging me in any way, swinging her hair about and shouting, "Bye, guys! Bye!" to her classmates. Turning back to me she said brusquely, "I need to get my stuff."

like a grownup

My drawing instructor urged us all at our last class to drop in to the life drawing class, where there are real, live, nude models posing. We had come to enough classes that she felt comfortable inviting us, as we should be able to comport ourselves with dignity as non-perverts who truly enjoy the art of sketching. I'd known for years about the life drawing classes; the hallway always displays pictures from the latest class. The girls and I normally take a moment to check that art out when we're at the art studio (Lola always enjoys a good butt picture in particular).

Yesterday I did drop in. I decided to slip in and perch at the far back for the end of the class, which overlapped with Lola's art class (which is devoted to drawing cute things, such as mermaids and kittens. Lola tends to work on the same idea each week, a princess riding a unicorn near a castle, a frustratingly difficult subject which drives her to tears but yet a compelling one which cannot be abandoned).

As I tried to settle myself quietly at the back, the instructor pointed out a bench closer by I could use. This bench had bags of every type around it, on either side, and it was difficult to settle myself in, but I did. I was directly behind the model, so I worked with the view I had. "Lola will be so pleased that I've drawn a naked stranger's butt," I reflected.

The model ended her pose and took a brief break. The owner of all the bags came back; she'd moved to get a more pleasing view. I took the spot she'd been squatting in, which turned out to be directly behind the model for the next pose, and then the class was over.

My two pictures were better than I had expected. I can't draw from my mind; I can't imagine something and draw it at all well, but if I can see something, I can put a recognizable (and often pleasing) rendition of it down on paper. The instructor was very encouraging and urged me to come back next week. She suggested that I could come by for an hour, leave my drawing things there, go pick up the children, and then return for the last two poses. A man from my class had also tried the life drawing course.

I felt oddly grown-up as I left. As a homeowner, parent, and former attorney, I should feel adult all the time, but it felt exceptionally grown-up to have moved into the realm of sketching a naked stranger without snickering. Maturity points should be deducted, however, for my getting a laugh out of Lola by informing her that while she made an orange kitten out of foam, I was drawing a stranger's naked old butt.

another unmarketable skill discovered

I'm taking a drawing class, and it's not easy. The catalogue makes the class sound simple: "Everyone can draw! Get in touch with your natural ability!", but at the first class, the instructor solemnly instructed us to look around, because a lot of us were going to drop out and few would struggle through the whole course. (I've heard that is often said to first year law students, but not at my alma mater. There was an epidemic of suicides during my time there, but no one just dropped out. If you didn't kill yourself, you graduated).

Last Friday at drawing class, first we had to draw a mangy old trumpet for an hour (I drew it twice, and then took out a New Yorker and silently read. The woman next to me gamely sketched that trumpet for a solid hour, and even then she wasn't done). Then we had a difficult exercise that we were told would drive us all crazy: we had to turn our bodies away from our paper, angling our arm behind us to touch the paper, and we had to stare at our left hands and draw it, with a Sharpie, without looking once at our paper. We were supposed to do this slowly, but most people ripped through it in a minute or less. I took a bit over two minutes. Then we looked at our pictures. Most were unrecognizable, a cacophony of lines which resembled nothing. Mine was a hand. A big, jerky hand, but a hand nevertheless, with fingernails, rings and scars.

We did something we often do: we had to display our drawing and walk around the room, looking at everyone's picture. Mine was freakishly better, hugely better, than all the rest. "Carole must have done this exercise before," our instructor said. "Many times before."

"She looked!" accused another student. "She was looking!"

"I did not, and I've never done this before," I said firmly.

We went back to our seats and did the exercise again. This time the instructor took up a new position, straight across the room from me, and I think she was trying to see if I were cheating. Once again my hand was a hand, with proportionate fingers and fingernails and thumb and knuckles, even better than the first hand, and once again everyone else's was jumbled and crazy.

However, we went on to draw kitchen utensils this way, and I lost my mojo altogether. My spatula was a mangled mess, unrecognizable. But for a shining five minutes there, I was an art prodigy, envied by some and attacked by others who could not imagine my gift was real. The hand drawings have gone into the recycling, and the glory has passed.

on Haight Street

Today I got the call to pick up Lola, who was complaining of a sore throat, early. I sped off to get her, and as she didn't look too bad, I asked if she'd be willing to run an errand on Haight Street on our way home. I needed to get a pad of drawing paper, and I wanted to browse the magazines at the bookstore for possible collage pictures (my homework for my art classes this week is to draw every day, which I cheated on by doing five drawings this morning rather than one a day for the past five days, and to make a collage about a current event).

When I got out of the car, a raspy-voiced, rough-haired guy sitting on the street called out to me. "Lady friend!" As I fed the meter and got little Lola out, he asked me if I live in San Francisco, no doubt pegging me for a tourist. "Yes, I do," I informed him. (I talk to any street people who are polite, although I'm not as friendly as my old landlord, who made it a point of pride to have warm conversations with anyone who ever asked him for change).

"Have you lived here long?" he rasped.

"Since the eighties. Is that long?"

For some reason, he loved that. "She asks if it's long since the eighties!" he said delightedly to his companions, all sprawling about. (I thought about Police Chief Gascon's Haight Street-inspired crusade to get sitting and lying on the sidewalks outlawed).

We exchanged a few more pleasantries about the city and my raising a child here as I led slow-moving Lola away. When we got back to the car, poor Lola dragging, I found that the little crowd of street people were gone. There were two pages on my windshield; nothing on any of the cars in front or behind ours. Under the driver's side wiper, there was a full page picture of a beautiful woman with a caption, "Divine Domesticity." Under the passenger side wiper, there was a full page shot of a beautiful baby wild cat, a jaguar or ocelot kitten, wearing a collar.

4/20

Today Lola had a drawing class in Golden Gate Park, and I could not find a parking spot. Driving around crankily, I eventually remembered that it is April 20th... i.e., 4/20. "Ah," I thought to myself. "It's the day all the potheads celebrate by taking up all the parking spaces in Golden Gate Park!" I eventually pulled up and instructed Iris to walk Lola to her art lesson and then wait for me in the kitchen, while I parked. After driving around and around, I got decisive and parked illegally, figuring that the many police on hand should be preoccupied with the potheads, rather than my car.

I met up with Iris and instructed her firmly: "Next year, do NOT let Mommy drive to Golden Gate Park on Four Twenty! I don't care what classes you guys have; we're skipping them." We left the citadel of the arts studio to take in the sights of that special day, which consisted of a very dense crowd of people under thirty and one reggae band which everyone was ignoring. "Iris, be careful!" I nagged. "Don't knock over anyone's glass pipe!" Indeed it appeared that everyone had brought their finest hookahs, bongs, and pipes for the occasion; there were a lot of showy art glass smoking apparatuses on display. "These people are breaking the law," marveled Iris as the fumes of marijuana filled the air.

"Did you learn anything, Iris?" I asked her as we walked back to the arts studio. "Not really," she said.

Back at the studio, Iris did her homework, and the sounds of the potsmokers could be heard within the walls. The art parents and instructors were slightly crabby. "All those people are driving high as a kite," one artist and instructor complained. "And the bongo playing, they're playing the bongos in the daylight." She gestured tiredly. "I just want to tell them to give it up, just stop."

failing as a fourth grade mother

I'm not doing so great in my role as mother of a fourth grader. At the girls' school, the fourth grade is considered an unusual grade, a special time in a child's life, as it's the last year in the lower school. The fourth graders are supposed to take a leadership role in the life of the lower school, before they transition (in a ceremony enigmatically called "Pansy Day") to the upper school.

The other mothers are all taking this very seriously. Meanwhile I've been lost in my own world all year. First I had meningitis in October, losing the whole month in a haze of headaches and Vicodin. November and December I spent freaking out about my next health crisis and doctor-shopping, trying to get a diagnosis and a surgeon. January was spent clearing the decks (a morbid person by nature, I was secretly convinced I wasn't coming home from surgery). February was all about my surgery and days in the hospital, and March was spent convalescing. Now it's April, and I'm fine (although sadly out of shape; six months of health crises have left me with the strength and aerobic capacity of a snail).

Now that I've crawled out of my little personal health bubble, I'm not fitting in so well. First one of the fourth grade mothers got the idea, a perfectly fine idea, that the fourth grade should bid on an auction item, a slumber party at the school with the head of school. It would, she thought, be a perfect celebration to mark the end of fourth grade, the end of lower school. That's well and fine, but rather than just ask everyone to contribute as they saw fit, she figured out that we should bid $150 a family.

This made me feel like a jerk. There's no way I was going to pay $150 for a slumber party. It's true that the bills from all my medical expenses are still trickling in, and it's true that we have been over budget and trying to get things under control. It's also true, though, that I could pay $150 if I put my mind to it. I could find that money somewhere. I could have not taken the children to the Beach Chalet for a decadent lunch during their spring break. I could stop buying arborio rice and cave aged gruyere (I've just started cooking again). We could eat more peanut butter sandwiches, and I could stop taking Lola for hot chocolate and a rugelach sometimes while we wait for her sister (I myself sip a relatively abstemious low fat latte). We hired a babysitter for three and a half hours this month and went to a play, our only date night of the past three months, and we could have stayed home and put that money towards the sleepover. But the truth is I wasn't willing to pay $150 for a fourth grade party, and I had to write to the very nice mother organizing this and whine that I can't join in, and everyone knows now I'm a cheapskate because the fourth grade mothers sent around emails listing every family who paid.

The sleepover-organizing mother wasn't the only one combining commemorating the importance of the fourth grade with fundraising. Another mother spearheaded a project of interviewing all the fourth graders, putting it all on DVDs, and slipping the DVD's into custom totebags designed by local artist Thora Rose. These were $75 a piece, and she got upset that not everyone was buying them. She sent out email telling us that she'd put a lot of work into this and wouldn't have done it if she hadn't thought we were all going to buy this. At pickup time, she showed me the bag and told me there was a lot of footage of Iris, and I felt guilt-tripped, but again, I don't have $75 for a bag and a DVD right now. I actually like this particular mother a lot, and I even like Thora Rose; I bought the graphic novel Rose wrote about her divorce a few years ago. But on the other hand, there are a lot of bags lying around this house and not so many piles of seventy-five dollars.

Pickup time has become humiliating for me at school, as the DVD totebag mother uses that time to hand out the bags, while I shamefacedly avoid her gaze.

And then there's the mother who asked me a few weeks back, "Are you going to the event this weekend?" I looked blank, like an idiot, and she clarified. "The school auction." The auction itself cost, if I remember right, $75 a person to attend, on top of a $10 an hour babysitter, and needless to say I wasn't going. This mother was handing out the guilt freely, pointing out how important it was to support the school, and I felt pushed into playing the health card. Shamelessly I said, "I just had major surgery last month, and we're going to be paying bills from that all year. No, I'm not buying things at the auction." The auction itself sold out; it was a capacity house, so I think that the school did just fine without me.

What do the parents say who can't afford to drop hundreds of dollars at the end of the year on this stuff who don't have the surgery card to play? Thankfully Lola's grade isn't going insane like this. I have not been guilt tripped or emailed or accosted by a single first grade mother who has an idea requiring me to hand over $75 or $150, thankfully.

snippets

- The geek torch has been passed from one generation to the next. Young Iris uber Alles subjected her classmates to an extra credit report on "Dr. Who" and has managed to become the official expert in the household on the 22nd century doctors. She called her father urgently the other day to alert him that "today you can download the new "Dr. Who!"

- I've started some art classes after a long hiatus. I'm painting or drawing every day, and Lola is incredulous. "Why would you take a CLASS? A CLASS with HOMEWORK?" Even when Lola joins me in doing my art homework, she shakes her head in sorrowful pity from time to time at my idiocy.

- Speaking of my art homework, I need ten words which describe me. There will be prizes if someone leaves words in the comments which I use!

- Lola's been sidelined with a urinary tract infection this week, missing a few days of school. I was treating this with baths (no bubble paths or scented soaps, of course) and cranberry juice, but it got worse, and the Sober Husband was highly critical that I hadn't taken her to the pediatrician. Today we saw a pediatrician, who advised that we treat Lola with baths and cranberry juice.

- I haven't logged into the World of Warcraft for nearly a week. This is mostly due to the fact that I've been busy with my art classes, but also due to a mania for Clue. I picked up a "Vintage Clue" edition last week when the children were on spring break, and we all play Clue together for hours every night. Lola insists upon being "Rachel Francesca Scarlett", the name "Miss Scarlett" being insufficiently grand for her.

- I was determined to watch some grown-up movies for once, and I rather randomly picked "Donnie Darko" and "Secretary" to see. I didn't realize until over halfway through "Donnie Darko" that I had accidentally programmed us a Gyllenhaal Sibling Film Festival. The Sober Husband liked "Donnie Darko" so much that he yammered on for days about its theories of physics and time travel, but remarked of "Secretary," "I don't know what that movie was about. I watched it, but don't ask me what it was about."

ten is the new thirteen

As someone who dyed her hair nearly every color you can think of, shaved her head, and wore a latex miniskirt in public, I felt pretty confident about dealing with whatever extreme fashion statements the children might get up to in their teen years. After all, I was one of the earlier Modern Primitives back in the eighties, getting pierced covertly in the basement of a fetish store before piercing shops were invented and moving to California because tattoos were illegal where I lived. How could I be shocked?

I was stupidly wrong, of course. Iris uber Alles is only ten years old, and I'm already shocked and unsettled by what one of her friends wears.

Even being forewarned didn't help. The Sober Husband came home one night from a Girl Scouts meeting and told me how the mother of one of Iris's friends had complained bitterly to him that her daughter had gotten in trouble at school on a free dress day by wearing a skirt that was deemed inappropriate by the school. The mother was angry and defensive. "I didn't think the skirt was that bad." She didn't think it was too short and wanted support from the Sober Husband, support that wasn't coming. He just changed the subject, but brought it up with me later because we'd never heard of a fourth grader getting into trouble over something worn on a rare free dress day. We mused over it together. How on earth could an innocent ten year-old get into trouble over a skirt?

Then this ten year-old girl stopped by our house in a miniskirt which barely, barely skimmed her crotch, and I instantly shared the school's point of view. I brought up the skirt to Iris and was relieved to find that she didn't covet one like it.

This week I learned that there was more than one gynoskirt (a phrase invented by the "Project Rungay" wits to describe the alarmingly short, tight, and shiny skirts favored by Heidi Klum) in this girl's wardrobe. On a spring break outing, this young girl showed up in an excessively elaborate ruffled, pleated, and ornamented miniskirt barely covering her underwear.

I cannot exaggerate how short these skirts are. Back when I went to Burning Man, I had a lot of friends who favored "look at me! look at me!" clothes, but none of them ever left the house in something as extreme as these skirts unless they were at Burning Man itself (where it's perfectly accepted to walk around naked, which I never did, although one of my legal clients couldn't quite believe that. "I always wanted to go to Burning Man," he said, "but now I can't. It's just not appropriate for me to see my lawyer naked." I reassured him that he was quite safe on that count, but the risk still loomed large in his mind).

Iris is only ten years old, and I'm already freaked out by the clothes one of her friends wears. I'm also disturbed by the parents, who are presumably funding these extreme clothing buys. I don't want to ask them what they're thinking, because I don't want to discuss it. I just want to cover my eyes, make a wish, and reopen my eyes to find all the children dressed in adorable, modest Hanna Andersson clothes.

chinchillas

chinchillas are cool. does anybody out there own a chinchilla???

iris

our tin foil hat saga, continued

Fourth grader Iris uber Alles has been ranting continuously about the moon landing being faked ever since "I had an ephiphany, Momdude: the moon landing was faked!"

Iris idolizes those noted skeptics, the Mythbusters, two wisecracking San Franciso stuntmen who attempt to systematically disprove urban myths, and last night we all watched the episode where the Mythbusters take on conspiracy theorists who claim that the moon landing was a hoax. Iris watched very attentively, screaming at little sister Lola when Lola talked loudly, but in the end was unconvinced. "All they proved was that they can use film equipment to duplicate the effects of the moon landing! So all they proved was that the moon landing could have been faked on film equipment!"

And as for the kind offer of an Australian blog reader to send us a cup from the remote communications station which handled the signals sent from the moon, an ungrateful child snarked, "I want a cup that says, 'The Moon Landing Was Faked!'" (I, however, would enjoy a commemorative Australian moon landing cup).

I even raised a part of my own history rarely spoken of these days, my first marriage, and informed Iris that my first father-in-law spent his life working at NASA. His life's achievement was creating the lunar rover used on the moon missions. Iris shrugged this off easily. The lunar rover he made could have been used in the film studios used for the hoax, she seemed to feel.

"Why do you believe in the moon landing?" Iris asked me. I told her that I remembered it. I was only a very small child at the time, and I have no memory of seeing the actual moon landing, but I do remember everyone hovering by the television all day long and how somber and important that day was.

Iris jeered. "You believe it because you saw it on TV! You're always telling me to doubt what I see on TV! You think the TV is an authority figure!"