not a cat whisperer

The other day I was standing on the sidewalk and crankily shouting at the children as we arrived home after school (why won't they get out of the car when we come home, without being told one million times to get out of the friggin' car, and why won't they pick up their thousands of tiny possessions? Mysteries of life, mysteries of life). As the children in their snail-like way slowly, slowly, slowly opened their car doors and slowly, slowly, slowly unbuckled their seatbelts and slowly, slowly, slowly picked up their school things, I wandered over to chat to my neighbor, B., who had the air of one who wanted a word with me.

"Are you missing a cat?" he asked.

"No, I saw all three today."

An incredulous pause followed. It is difficult for my neighbor, B., to believe that I have only three cats. True, I have had as many as five permanent cats, and with foster cats, the number has sometimes slipped up into double digits. But these days there are only three cats who live here.

B. gathered his thoughts and took a deep breath. "I think there's a cat breaking into my house again. I sense there's a cat in the attic."

"Well, if it were one of mine, he'd come back out again."

"It won't let me look at it, but I sense it's up there."

A discussion ensued of all of the known neighborhood cats and which one might torment B. by going into his house (my own Henry has been known to spend quality time in B.'s garage). Finally the children were lurching up the steps to the house, squabbling amongst themselves as they went. I reassured B. "Let me know if you want me to come over and look up there for you. If there is a cat there, Iris and I can catch it."

B. shook his head sadly. The children and I went into our own house, where our cats frolicked about our feet.

wait, wait, wait

Tonight one of my favorite dads from Lola's school said to me, nervously, "If you don't mind, Carole, I'm going to wait to call you until Burning Man wears off. You're kind of scaring me right now."

laughter is not so medicinal around here

After the children finally went to bed, I was sipping a glass of red wine in bed and talking to the Sober Husband. He made an ill-timed witticism which made me guffaw exactly as I was swallowing a big mouthful of wine. A large amount of very tannic red wine went down the wrong way (why couldn't this have happened while I was having an innocuous glass of water?? Or even my usual friggin' sparkling wine?)

I spent the next forty-five minutes hacking, retching, and gasping for air while the Sober Husband reassured the disturbed children. Hours later my throat still burns. It was a really full-bodied red, alas (and funnily enough the label touts this particular wine as "a ballbuster").

After I was able to breathe somewhat normally again, I remembered how Iris uber Alles once read in one of those weird fact compendiums children love so much about how many people die laughing. "I want to die laughing! How do people die laughing?" she'd say, over and over again. The next time she brings that up, I'm going to say, with new insight, "Oh no, you do not. Drowning is so much nicer."

Burning Man

It. Was. Frigging. Amazing.


More later, my dears.

did you ever want to do an interactive art piece at Burning Man without having to go there?

Once again I'm heading out to Burning Man, to pad around barefoot in the dust and marvel at world-class works of art, to make champagne cocktails for my campmates, and hopefully to keep my tent and shade structure erect no matter what storms come. (Meanwhile the Sober Husband, who will be holding down the fort at home, vows that he will turn the house into a model of cleanliness and order. Poor Pigwidgeon the dimwitted parrot will be restricted to her cage, and the children will be performing much more housework than normal. The children quailed at this pronouncement).

I have an offer to make the readers: send me interesting mail at Burning Man, and I will do something artistic with it and document it here, giving you due credit. It's your chance to join the premier interactive performance art festival without having to drive all the way out to the middle of the Nevada Desert, get dirt on your clothes, or risk seeing hippies in person (incidentally despite what "South Park" says, Burning Man isn't a hippie event. It's no Grateful Dead concert; it draws more of a Wired magazine type. It's not surprising to me that Jeff Bezos held a staff retreat there).

Many of you are devoted readers indeed, and how do I reward you? Aside from the occasional "Comment of the Week", I don't. Here's yer chance!

How to play: mail your thing to

Hass (Carole)
c/o BRCPO 2.0 in the 9:00 Plaza
Undercity
5:30 & D
Black Rock City, NV 89412

The sooner, the better, as Burning Man ends on Labor Day.

love, the DH

p.s. Do not send me anything which would get me arrested. That is all I ask.

the Apocalypse is here, plus quotes from Iris and Lola

Yesterday the Sober Husband came to me with a grave, drawn expression. "Steve Jobs just resigned," he said in tragic tones.

I understood his angst. The man is a diehard Apple enthusiast, an early adapter to each new fabulous iProduct to come along. "Who will make our next thing?" I said sadly to him. "We had iPod, iPad, and iPhone, but will we ever get a new iThing to love?" We took a moment to honor Steve Jobs's contributions to the world.

At roughly the same time the Sober Husband came in with his somber news, a number of friends of mine had turned to Facebook to express their feelings about Steve Jobs. But that was nothing compared to the newspaper this morning. The Chronicle treated Jobs's retirement as though it were Armageddon. Virtually the entire front page was given over to it, with huge headlines and giant fonts that reminded me a lot of the Pearl Harbor Chronicle front page which hangs on the wall down at my favorite bar. "Look," I said to the Sober Husband. "It's World War III! It's the apocalypse! It's a zombie war! Steve Jobs is stepping down!"

People, how will we survive??

Iris and Lola's bright spirits remain undaunted (although they are so devoted to their iPad, which is known in the household as "Mr. Pad", that they should be mourning). Yesterday we went to the Santa Cruz boardwalk in honor of Iris's birthday, and they rode together in harmony on a variety of nausea-inducing rides. Only the Ferris wheel broke up what was, until then, a day of unprecedented sibling harmony. Iris was upset that Lola had rocked their car. "I didn't mind being stuck up high," she said, "Until Lola was rocking it! She kept rocking it, which is forbidden, and she said, 'I am a bachelor and this is my pad!'"

She got little parental support. "Iris," I said, "What part of, 'Lola is a bachelor, and that is her pad' do you not understand?"

Iris took the point well. She did see the humor in Lola's phrasing. Or maybe she was just in a good mood from getting presents and being taken to Santa Cruz. The day before she'd been quite impatient with little Lola. I give you, without comment, a verbatim partial transcript of a conversation that went on for what felt like to me, the only grownup in the house at the time, many long hours:

Eight year-old Lola: "That is so demented!"

Iris: "Stop using the word 'demented'! You keep saying everything is demented! It gets old!"

'That is a perfectly good word! The government uses it all the time!"

"The government does not call things demented!"

"Yes, it does! All the time!" Lola then listed a variety of things which allegedly the U.S. government has denounced as "demented."

A short silence followed, broken by Lola saying to herself, "No way! No fucking way!"

Iris: "Stop saying that! You're not supposed to say that! Momdude, did you hear what Lola said?"

Lola (with especial relish): "No fucking way! No fucking way!"

decisions, decisions

As lifetime members of Burning Man, the Sober Husband and I get two tickets every year. This year I'm giving his ticket to our friend N., who was on the fence about going to Burning Man until the event sold out. Then she realized she did want to run away from her responsibilities to pad around in the dust but she thought it was too late, and I was happy to be able to inform her that I still had the extra ticket.

However, people are getting more and more creative in their attempts to wheedle tickets out of those of us who have them. A very special offer has been passed along to me, for my consideration:

In exchange for your Burning Man ticket, I offer you the extraordinary experience of having your DNA activated to its full energetic potential, up to 24 strands, your youth and vitality chromosomes activated, your abundance gene activated, your death gene de-activated and reimprinted with the pattern of immortality, your enchantment gene activated (creates harmonious relationships with anyone and everyone you wish), and your manifestation gene activated (enhances ability to create instantaneously by the power of intention). I can also deactivate and repattern any limiting belief system that is keeping you from experiencing all of the love, joy, success, and goodness you desire. This will take 2 to 3 hours, and will be permanent.

I am not fooling around. Since I've learned to do these things and practiced them on myself, my life has accelerated like a rocketship. My perception of reality has deepened, broadened, and intensified for the better, and I have more energy and stamina than I ever imagined. The activation of our DNA is a scientifically proven thing, and is happening gradually planetwide, but with the consciously focused techniques that I practice, you can put yourself on the leading edge of human evolution.

I am happy to share my gifts with you in exchange for the extraordinary opportunity to experience the magical mystical field of manifestation on the playa. I think that's a pretty good trade, don't you?

Ah, decisions, decisions. Burning Man or DNA activated to its full energetic potential and death gene de-activated?

it is a poor workman who blames her tools

On Saturday the Sober Husband decided to take my knives to be sharpened. It had been a very long time since I'd had them professionally sharpened, and they needed it. The complication was that I was cooking for a dinner party that night, but for whatever reasons of his own, the Sober Husband was hellbound on sharpening the knives that very day.

I put off making the dishes that required chopping and instead made the cake while he and the knives were gone. After he came back, I moved on to the chopping. Right away I got little cuts on three fingertips. I had never touched a knife so sharp before. The professional sharpening service I'd used before didn't do anything like this. I moved on to mincing an onion. It's my habit when chopping up something fine to rest my left hand along the top of my big chef's knife, to work as a counterbalance to the heavy handle. I've never before, in decades of cooking and mincing a variety of things, hurt my left hand chopping, but then again I'd never worked with a knife fresh from Saucy Joe's mobile knifesharpening service. As I minced, the tip of the knife, sharp as a barb, went straight into my left hand, very deep into the palm. I shouted in pain. I pulled the knife out, and I shouted again.

I ran over to the sink. It hurt like hell washing my hand, the soap and water going into the inside of my hand where nothing should ever enter. I shouted, this time out of drama-queenness, until my husband finally got tired of listening to the hellish racket and came down. "I stabbed myself!" I said. "Knives should never be this sharp." I showed him my wound. It was not very long, but it was very deep. It was bleeding very heavily.

After wrapping the poor hand in a clean dishcloth, I sat on the couch and rested at the Sober Husband's insistence. "But I have to keep cooking," I said plaintively. "The guests will understand," he said firmly. "We can call for takeout or something." I took an ibuprofen. It took a very long time for the bleeding to stop. Lola ostentatiously brought me a glass of ice water, and after the bleeding finally stopped, I used the glass of ice water to ice my hand.

At this point, I looked at my hand somewhat objectively. The wound wasn't long enough for more than one or two stitches, really. There wasn't much point in going to have it sewn up. The question was more about what had happened inside the hand. I didn't think the flesh inside the hand was supposed to have knives slipping into it, and the flesh of my palm was swelling up. But what would any doctor do I could see on a Sunday afternoon do? Probably nothing, after I'd sat around waiting for hours. And I knew from reading chefs' memoirs that real, true cooks mutilate themselves all the time and don't even step out of the kitchen. I went back to work and finished all the food for the dinner party.

different perspectives

The leader from my Warcraft raid wrote a description of the members of our team. I was surprised to see myself described as "the maternal figure of the team. She is quiet, for the most part, good natured, willing to help and encourage people, and someone you can go to with issues and will offer a listening ear." I'm much more accustomed to hearing myself described as "bitchy" than "quiet and good-natured." In my litigator days, I was often called "a pitbull."

Later I asked eleven year-old Iris uber Alles, "How would you describe me?"

She thought. "I'd say, 'Interested in cats, cooks a lot, plays a lot of Warcraft, good at sewing...'"

I cut her off. "That describes my interests, but not me! My personality. Like, you could say 'bitchy' or 'sweet.' It's okay to say something that's not too nice; I'm asking for it! Or something nice, like 'caring and shy.'" We took a moment to laugh about the time her little sister described the two of them as "caring and shy" and I, their hellbound mother, laughed so hard I nearly choked.

Iris thought again. "I'd say, 'Weird but surprisingly awesome.'"

"Well, the leader of my raid group described me as 'the maternal figure of the group.'"

Iris laughed uproariously. "You're the mother of the group?" Laughing harder and harder, she choked out, "YOU'RE the mother of the group? You? You? You're the MOTHER?"

My own child does not view me as a maternal figure.

sleeping with the fishes

On Saturday we did something I've been wanting to do for years: we slept with the fishes as part of the Aquarium of the Bay's Shark Week. Iris and Lola and I love the Aquarium of the Bay very, very much. When Lola was a little toddler, she became besotted with the leopard sharks and sevengill sharks there, which she called respectively "Giraffey" and "Biggy." Over and over again she'd beg me to take her and on each visit, she'd cry ecstatically "Biggy! Giraffey!" at each and every sevengill and leopard shark which passed by.

The best part of the A. of the B. is the tunnel: you are surrounded by fish-filled water on three sides, as you glide through on a moving walkway. The fish have so much room to move around, and there are so many of them in this huge tank designed to replicate the San Francisco Bay. I knew that you could rent out the aquarium for the night for a largeish sum, and I had toyed with the idea of trying to organize parents to do it with me, but I'd never made a stab at gathering the funds. Then this year I was lucky enough to score us spots at the Aquarium's Shark Week sleepover.

As usual, the Sober Husband was game but reserved and not particularly enthusiastic. We started the evening with him slightly pissed off at me, as I was busy playing the World of Warcraft when he wanted me to help sort out the bedding. I defended myself. "It's a big moment in my guild, give me a minute! People have been working on this for months!" Two of the players from my guild got married in Stormwind Cathedral, which was pretty tricky given that we are Horde and Stormwind is the human capital. Hundreds of players worked together to secure the cathedral and to hold it, while others in tuxedos and party dresses listened to the solemn vows at the altar. As I tried to listen to the ceremony and the warnings over our live chat that the alliance players were getting closer to breaking through, the Sober Husband got sarcastic over my lack of caring about our shortage of sleeping bags. "Just two minutes!" I hissed.

I closed up my computer as soon as the bridal party started to file out of the cathedral, and I volunteered to go without a sleeping bag myself. "I'll wear my cat," I said, referring to my thick, heavy cat costume pajamas complete with long tail and hood with ears. "I won't need a sleeping bag." We gathered up some blankets, the two air mattresses (dating from that pre-child era where the Sober Husband and I used to go camping together), and pillows.

My one concern had been that the event might be overcrowded and noisy. I was really happy to see that there was a small, reasonable number of families. Evidently the A. of the B. knows what it is doing with these events. Even more happily, all of the children were charming and well-behaved.

Down at the A. of the B., things got off to a slowish start. We spent much of the evening in a conference room, being educated about sharks by a pair of lively naturalists and eating cheese pizza. While I was examining a display of shark teeth, a small child confided in me that he had once discovered a piece of poop in a swimming pool. Things picked up around 9:00, and we spent two hours going around the aquarium when it was virtually empty and so quiet. This was amazing for us. I love that place so much, and normally the crowds get you rushing along. With no pressure, you could really stand and gaze at the moon jellies (I'd never noticed before that there are a few mutant moon jellies, with six stomaches instead of the regulation four). Iris uber Alles most enjoyed a lot of time with the chinchillas, who were highly lively at night, as opposed to during the day, when they generally just gaze out blearily at the visitors.

Around eleven we changed into our pajamas. A sweet little girl was taken with awe and amazement by my cat outfit, and I waved my tail at her. One of the other adults was less charmed and ostentatiously whispered about me. Then we went down to the tunnel, carrying only our bedding, and settled in for the night. Virtually everyone wanted to sleep in the part where the sharks live, which was literally packed solid with no room to spare. Meanwhile we had the entire first half of the fish tunnel to ourselves entirely. The Sober Husband was particularly taken by the huge deep sea bass, while Iris and I loved the schools of anchovies (so perfect, so beautiful. It was seeing these lovely fish at the A. of the B. years ago which got me to swear off eating seafood once again).

Self-sacrificing parents as always, we gave the children the inflatable camping mattresses, and the Sober Husband and I bunked down on the hard ground. Needless to say sleep was scanty. However, lying awake in the night, gazing up at the shadows of passing fish is really charming. I felt like I was in a nature documentary.

The next morning as we went up to get dressed and have breakfast, a naturalist asked little Lola what she had learned, no doubt expecting some nugget about sharks. Instead Lola said, "I learned to always carry the pillows." She demonstrated how she was able to loll her head onto the pile of pillows in her arms.

Upstairs I skipped the bagels and muffins and gathered up my clothes. Somehow while walking from the conference room through the gift shop to the bathroom, I dropped my clean underpants. I immediately retraced my steps, but the underwear was gone. I asked a janitor if he'd found any clothes, but no. "Someone picked them up!" I said to the Sober Husband. "I retraced my steps within two minutes!"

He looked at me like I were crazy. "Of course they would throw them away, like any normal person would."

"I think any normal person, knowing people were spending the night here, would pick up a piece of clean clothing and ask if anyone dropped it!" I hissed.

I asked him to see if they'd been turned in while I retraced my steps again. He didn't, but he did check around our luggage and confirmed that I had indeed lost my underwear, which I already knew. I asked a naturalist if anyone had turned in any clothing. "What kind of clothing?" Swallowing my embarrassment, I said, "A pair of black underpants with skulls all over them." Diplomatically she visibly choked back her laughter. Later she reported that none of the staff had had anything turned in.

A friendly fellow could see I'd lost something and asked. I explained what had happened, and he said sympathetically, "Someone must have picked them up and kept them. That's sick." He shook his head sadly. Meanwhile my own husband had no sympathy. "I don't see why you're reacting this way."

"I think any normal person who dropped something and immediately retraced their steps would be annoyed," I said. "Plus, they're my favorites."

I gave up and went along to the morning's activity, feeding the animals in the touch pool. The bat rays were so charismatic, raising their heads high out of the water to peer at us. We oohed and ahhed. One looked like it was going to jump out at me, and my friendly acquaintance said, "He's going to kiss you!" The naturalist in charge of feeding that room of animals distributed an assortment of weird thawed things for us to feed the skates and rays. I got a little squid to drop in; the children got bits of frozen fish. I forgot my missing underpants in the happiness of the moment.

Later we waited until everyone else took their luggage, in case those panties (which the Sober Husband was sick and tired of hearing about) and Lola's little flashlight, which had also gone missing, turned up. Another mother said to me, slightly condescendingly, "I'll bet someone just thought they were theirs." She looked me up and down. "After all, a lot of people have black cotton underwear. I have a lot myself." I could see where her guess came from, as I was wearing a black cotton dress over black cotton leggings with a black cotton hoodie, but she was wrong, and I pointed it out. "Actually, they weren't just black. They had Day of the Dead skulls all over them." She was visibly deflated. "Yeah, I guess that is different."

Afterwards we dragged our things over to the end of Pier 39 to watch the sea lions before going home. It was cold and foggy, the best weather for massive sea lions, and they were cavorting and snapping at each other and diving around. It was enchanting... until a very large sea lion, poised right at the closed dock to Pier 39, enjoyed a voluminous flow of liquid excrement. All the tourists recoiled and fled. Iris in particular was disgusted and disturbed. "I really wish I hadn't seen that," she said, shuddering. "And it smelled so bad. Why couldn't he do that underwater?"

Final judgment by all: if you ever have the chance to spend the night at the Aquarium of the Bay take it. But don't bring your favorite underpants.

what they talk about when I'm not there

The other day the children and I were at a cafe, and eleven year-old Iris left the table for a while. When she returned, she asked her little sister and I what we talked about while she was gone. The truth was that we hadn't said anything of any substance, but Iris wasn't sure she was was getting the full truth. "I want to know what you people said when I'm not there," she said crankily. "I always want to know what people talk about when I'm not around."

"Usually we talk about Lola," said Lola modestly. I agreed.

Turning the tables, I asked the children, "You two talk a lot, and then you get real quiet when I come around. What do you guys talk about when I'm not there?"

Lola was happy to answer that. "Usually we talk about doughnuts and pizza and how they are basically the same thing." Nonplussed I looked at Iris. "It's true, we really do talk a lot about that," she confirmed.

Lola merrily continued. "They really are the same thing, but sometimes people confuse it. Like when someone who usually gets pizza goes to Dunkin Donuts. That confuses the issue of pizza and doughnuts being the same in ways that words can't explain, that you would need a graph to show."

breaking parrot news

Pigwidgeon, our irritatingly stupid and slow-to-talk African grey parrot, has learned to make the sound the microwave uses to tell you that your food is done. So now I can have the experience of having a little microwave on my shoulder, next to my ear.

Miley Cyrus's new tattoo

Miley Cyrus had an equals sign tattooed on her ring finger, as a sign of support for the gay marriage movement.

I strongly believe that gay people should have all the same rights and obligations that hets do, including marriage, and I'm fairly heavily tattooed, but this leaves me nonplussed. It's not the tattoo itself; it's the quality and the fact that she already has another crappy little black tattoo on the same hand. The girl's not even legal drinking age yet, and she's already covering herself in poorly done little tattoos. With all the money and fame she enjoys, can't she get a decent tattoo? She should be able to have Ed Hardy himself (and no matter what you think of his clothing line, the man was rightfully worshipped as a tattoo artist back in the Modern Primitives day) fly out to her home to make her a really nice piece of art, instead of this jailhouse-looking thing. Do Miley and Tish sit around giving each other tattoos in the evenings, like a pair of cellmates?

win a trip to Burning Man

My theme camp is raffling off a ticket to Burning Man. Ten dollars enters you into this raffle... which is a pretty damn good deal as the tickets are sold out and are currently selling at well over a thousand dollars a piece. This online raffle will shut down in one week, and there are other fabulous prizes as well.

Help the poor old Drunken Housewife's cohorts. We're trying to raise money to add on to our bar, transport our camp to the desert, and improve what was already last year a lovely oasis. Our camp is based in part on the World of Warcraft, and we'll be giving out quests again this year. Earn fabulous rewards, drink intoxicating cocktails... it's all so damn magical and gives yer Drunken Housewife a rare opportunity to abandon her children, husband, parrots, and cats for a moment of irresponsibility and joy.

yet another parroting fail

I read recently that a good way of disciplining a parrot is to flick the parrot on the beak with a finger. The rationale is that in the wild, the alpha parrots bite the other parrots on the beak to express disapproval of their behavior. I was happy to read this tip, as disciplining parrots is very difficult. The sorts of disapproval so potent to the children (particularly forceful stares, pointed remarks, threatening the withdrawal of video privileges) are meaningless to a parrot. Shouting at a parrot is stupid, as parrots love nothing more than noise. Swearing at a parrot is a terrible idea, as parrots who learn to swear are unpopular and often cannot find new homes if need be.

The only real parrot-discipline tactic we have is time-outs in the cage, and that only works if you and the parrot are both near the cage at the moment of parrot naughtiness. If you're upstairs when the parrot misbehaves, plenty of time elapses before you get the poorly behaved bird downstairs and into the time-out, and with a less-intelligent parrot like Piggle, it's dubious she understood what caused the confinement.

Another technique for getting parrots to submit to a person's authority is to physically tower over the bird. Like flicking the beak, this is also based upon the psychology of the species, as parrots perch according to pecking order, with the alpha bird always up top. But again success is dependent upon where the parrot misbehaved. While I have been known to climb on top of a chair or even a table to make a point to our green parrot, there isn't always a suitable piece of furniture nearby.

So while I would never strike a pet (and I've never spanked either Iris or Lola), a flick on the hard shell of the beak struck me as potentially a good idea, and I resolved to try it. This morning Piggle flew from her tree over onto the bed before I'd gotten up. She was rowdy and unpleasant, being a bit rough, and I flicked her on the beak with my finger. She immediately pecked me on my nose. I flicked her on the beak again. She pecked me harder on my nose. There was then an unpleasant standoff, both of us glaring at each other.

Evidently parrots do indeed naturally bite each other on the beak to express disapproval, and evidently Piggle thinks I'm in need of some beak-biting discipline. This all reminded me of a bad parenting cliche, spanking a child to punish them for having hit another child, all the while shouting, "I don't know where you picked up that behavior!"

a conversation with Lola is like being on drugs

"My breath smells like Izze," said little Lola pensively as she finished her Izze mandarin soda. She blew out her breath in a gust. Her thoughts continuing on this track, Lola babbled happily: "You know what? Izze smells like Izze!"

Lola's older sister and mother were happy to humiliate poor little Lola for this rather obvious remark, and Lola defended herself. "It's the perkiness! I'm suffering from perkiness! It's making me say things like that!"

a day of British culture

Here in San Francisco, everyone but us regularly flocks to Stern Grove for free entertainment on summer Sundays: concerts or dance performances. In particular the annual ballet and symphony performances are insanely popular. In the past I'd brought up going to Stern Grove shows, and the Sober Husband was always dismissive. "Save those seats for people who can't pay to go," he said. But on Sunday it was one of my favorite bands from the eighties, the English Beat.

There was a considerable lack of enthusiasm in the air when I suggested a trip to Stern Grove. "Who is this again?" and "I wanted to go to Harry Potter today" were the main responses. Lola had a better offer, to spend the day with her best friend from preschool.

Rallying the troops, I bullied them into getting dressed and packing up a blanket, some books, drinks, fresh bread, and some nice Havarti. Poor Iris was discovered moping in front of a computer, sadly reading online reviews of the new Harry Potter film, and I energized her only by going on Fandango and buying some tickets for an evening show.

We got to Stern Grove long after much of it had been occupied by the more industrious. We climbed up the hill behind the performance lawn and scrabbled for a bit of dirt to call our own. Feeling optimistic, I called a steeply slanted spot with a nice view, but the more realistic Sober Husband refused. "It's too angled. We can't sit there." We found a surprisingly flat spot no one else had taken, right behind a huge tree. What no one else had realized is that if you just leaned a bit, you had a fabulous view of the stage. We were happy.

The hours went by, with more people streaming in. Iris was deeply envious of a man down the hill who'd brought a hammock and tied it to some trees. Soon we were packed in solid. Finally the English Beat took the stage. They had a set which refreshingly included each and every one of their hits, unlike other bands who refuse to play their most beloved songs on the grounds that they're sick of playing those same damn songs over and over again, year after year. But the man on my right, who'd been drinking wine all afternoon, was crazy-making. He sat, silent and perfectly behaved, between each and every song, but inevitably during each and every song, he'd start lifting a nearby toddler up repeatedly, shouting to the toddler every time he swung him up crazily overhead. So every time a song started, I would recognize it and be filled with joy, relax and smile and relish the music... until this annoying man started shouting to his toddler. Then I would grind my teeth together in silent rage.

"This is why we don't come to this," I hissed at the Sober Husband. "Here we are sitting in the dirt, with this drunken guy making a hellish racket during all the songs!"

"That doesn't happen at the ballet," he agreed.

"Yes, and there, you get a seat all to yourself, and a little piece of paper proving it's yours in case someone else tries to sit there. And a little zone of space."

"And you don't have to go hours early."

During my very favorite songs I hopped up to dance, and oddly enough my getting up caused my annoying neighbor to hop up to dance, along with a friend of his (while meanwhile their wives sat, talking, sometimes quite loudly, to each other and ignoring the show for the most part). Of course the Sober Husband and Iris stood up as well to humor me, so this meant every time I was moved to jump to my feet, a big clot of us in that section were dancing on the slanted hillside. "Look," I hissed at the Sober Husband. "I control them! They don't get up and dance unless I do."

He pointed out another phenomenon. "Look over there. It's other middle-aged mommies making their tweens enjoy the music!" He was right. There were a sizable number of women in their forties, who had obviously loved the Beat back in the day, and many of them were actually forcing their own reluctant daughters to dance. Somehow it was a female-only phenomenon: there weren't any middle-aged ska dads or male tweens partaking in this odd parent-child ritual. We watched one gray-haired mother, who was obviously extremely happy, forcibly waving her miserable tween's arms to the music. "I don't insist Iris like this," I said in my own defense. "As long as she's not actively complaining, that's all I ask."

"You bribed me with Harry Potter tickets! That's all I needed," said Iris smugly.

Later I mused, "It's our day of British culture. First the British music of the eighties, and now some current British cinema. Maybe we can watch some 'Dr. Who' later to top it all off."

"Yes! And we need some British candy!" agreed Iris, who is an aficionado of European sweets. "I've been very good, I need chocolate!"

Wow! what a great haiku man! (by Iris)

So I'm going to this really awesome art camp, which is two weeks long and on Friday we go on a field trip to some destination in Golden Gate Park, and this Friday my group went to the Japanese tea garden, and we sketched different stuff we saw. I wanted to sketch the koi pond (duh) and it doesn't have any benches around it so I went to the top of the moon bridge to get the best view. The moon bridge is one of the biggest tourist attractions in San Francisco, so there are always tourists climbing it. In case you have not heard of it; here is a picture.

As you can see, it is "quite tall." (English accent deployed)

While I was sitting there, three English guys who must have been in their early 20's who must have been high on something were "inspired" by the beauty of the park. So inspired, in fact, that one decided to write a haiku--

Weird English guy #1: I am on a quite tall bridge. It is cold outside. The End.

Weird English guy #2: Whoa, dude, that's awesome. What a great haiku, man!

Weird English guy #3: Wow, you should be a poet, man, wow!

You'll notice it isn't even the right number of syllables. More proof they must have been high on something.

ON ANOTHER NOTE:

Passive agressive notes is arguably the funniest website of all time. The funniest thing on there must logically be the arguably funniest thing on the internet. So look at this!!!!!

Ted's Rice

Ted's goddamn fucking rice! Stay the fuck away from my goddamn fucking rice! HAHAHAHA

the more things change

I just finished reading "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" by Daniel Okrent, a meticulously researched and sprightly written history. I learned so much from this book (did you know the Founding Fathers were sots? Jefferson, Washington and the rest drank like fishes. Did you know the oh-so-Puritan Pilgrims drank heavily and brought more alcohol on the Mayflower than water?).

But what struck me the most was how, due to a lack of education, I have been misperceiving American politics. I went to school in a very rural school district, where our "social studies" education covered the same limited ground every single year. Every September we opened a new social studies text and started reading about the Pilgrims, and every June we stopped midway through the book at Reconstruction. Never, never, never did I hear a word about either World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, or even suffrage or Prohibition. None of those topics were ever raised. I often think of my own education when I hear other countries criticized for what they leave out of their education (I have repeatedly heard Japan harshly ripped for failing to teach its children about the wartime excesses committed in China, but meanwhile in my American school we never studied how we dropped not one but two atomic bombs on Japan).

Anyhow, beyond learning how closely suffrage and Prohibition were linked (I had no clue that the great suffragettes were Prohibitionists and indeed some of them turned to suffrage after being rejected, on the basis of their gender, from the Prohibition movement), I was most spellbound by how much the politics of that age reminded me of current times. I have for some time been deeply concerned that politics have become too religious and that the far right is moving into new territory, injecting religious doctrine into textbooks (and again I note about my own childhood: the word "evolution" was never spoken in my school. We never learned a thing about it), making "family values" a fetish. It turns out that there is no new thing under the sun. American politics were just like that back in the 1910s and 1920s. Schoolbooks contained horrible, morality-based, science-be-damned falsehoods about alcohol, such as the "fact" that a single sip of alcohol tears flesh off a drinker's throat and that all habitual beer drinkers die of "dropsy." Religion and arguments about the family, the poor, beleaguered, threatened American family monopolized public discourse. It was all so very, very familiar.

I feel considerably educated now about an era of time I knew so little about, and I feel reassured, in an odd way. Our current "culture wars" are nothing new. As a nation, we've bungled and bumbled through much the same thing already.

anonymous children, saying unattributable things

Today the children and I were hanging out on our deck, enjoying a rare warm San Francisco day. A child, who wishes to be anonymous for this, asked the other child in all seriousness, "What is the best way to sit in these chairs without hurting your butt and having your feet on the ground?"

I couldn't resist teasing her. "Seriously? You have to ask how to sit in a chair? Do you think, 'Hey, SHE looks like she's good at dealing with these flat surfaces on four legs; I better ask for advice!' It's that hard?" The child was offended by this and attempted to explain why these chairs, perfectly normal chairs, are so much harder to sit in than other chairs. The explanations seemed lamer than the original question, and soon I had laughed so much that I was in tears. This caused the affronted child to draw herself up. "Momdude! You are not very supportive!"

Later we were discussing the children's afternoon art class, wondering what the theme would be. Another child, similarly one who prefers a lack of attribution, said direly, "I bet it's medical-dental week. You know, drawing doctors, dentists, offices, medical things." This child put her head in her hands and sighed sadly. "I hate doctors and dentists."

"What?" I said. Usually the theme is something like "mermaids" or "fluffy animals."

"I read it in the brochure," the child said. "Medical-dental week!" Then, after a moment, the child relented. "Okay, I lied."