The Color of Four

It is hard to have profound original thoughts about children doing what they are biological programmed to do: get older every day.  It is definitely a profound and bewildering process, but original it is not. However, it FEELS original when you are witnessing it first hand in your own house by your own flesh and blood. It's a front row seat to the evolution and biology show and its amazing.  It is this feeling that is behind the 4 zillion mommy blogs and billions upon billions of baby firsts/birthday/how-is-my-baby-in-kindergarten Facebook posts. You out there without kids may never choose or not choose to experience this feeling in regards to children, but you did experience the same sense of profound awe at something that in the larger sense of things is normal, routine, and experienced by everyone that time you visited a new-to-you continent and Instagramed the same bridge that billions instagramed before you. So, don't gripe about baby posts if you've ever posted a vacation pic, concert pic, fourteen pictures of the deck you built by hand.  Besides, isn't finding what you think is amazing about our very normal existence pretty much the point of life?

Anyway, Alma is four and every single day of watching her grow has nearly made my mind explode from wonder.

We threw Alma a birthday party in the park at the top of our hill (everyone has an "our hill" in SF). It started out simply but then got a bit more involved, as things tend to do. We were all about color.  Here's a snapshot:

 The four was backward most of the time and usually looked more like a sword than a number, but Alma thought it was the best thing ever. Helium filled balloons always let me down so I tied bunches of regular balloons together and they worked splendidly without the disappointing deflation or fly away. I love bunting and garland, you should know this about me by now. I made a ton. I used some I had made in the past. It was every where. 

Although we had a contained space above a playground, I wanted to have some activities set up to keep the kids around before they dispersed in the playground. I dyed noodles with rubbing alcohol and food dye and had a necklace making station and set up a space for kids to make their own crowns. 

Alma asked for a chocolate, vanilla, strawberry cake and so, much hacking and butter later, the above giant cake was born. I used a devils food cake for the 2 chocolate layers and a vanilla cake with a touch of almond for the vanilla cake layers. For the filling, I puréed strawberries and added them to a cream cheese frosting in which I had drastically decreased the butter and sugar. This made for a delicious filling, but as the last picture shows, not the most stabilizing. I frosted the whole thing with the best cream cheese frosting I have ever made. I made colored letters by melting white chocolate, adding color, and pouring into a silicon mold. There was lots of other food, but no pictorial evidence. I made giant platters of fruits and veggies arranged by color from green to yellow to orange to red. There was sticky sweet colored caramelized popcorn. Adam smoked chicken for a sandwich bar. I made way too much but it was probably the easiest and most effective and delightful food plan yet.



For favors, I made little pouches filled with a homemade notebook, crayons, pencils, and an eraser. Alma threw in a few Lightning McQueen tattoos for good measure. I made the notebooks by sewing printer paper into blank notecards. Alma and I made the crayons but cutting up her old ones and melting them on low heat in a silicon ice cube tray. I walked into a Home Depot in Sacremento a few weeks ago at 7 in the morning and walked right back out with a hundred paint samples. I sewed them together to hold the favors and sewed more to hold napkins and utensils. This was quite the use what I had/could make/could borrow kind of shindig.

 After filling them with sugar, the kids played on the hill above and the playground below. The party's existence was comforting. We knew no one who attended the party for longer than 5 months and yet there were people there, really very great people at that. Our lives in SF are getting fuller. 

 

 

Reasons for occasional bad behavior

54 individually written and edited cover letters explaining why my experience would make me a good fit for each specific job. 20 plus online applications which did not require a cover letter or re-used a previously submitted one. Three month time period. Zero jobs. 

Shameless Product Placement

Alma wanted a Seesaw t-shirt too.  I took my Seesaw t-shirt plus two tired out t-shirts, used a dress that fits her well as a pattern, and made us our own little walking billboard. A dusk photo shoot on our very very mini back porch ensued. 

The Tasks of Superheroes

Thanks to iphone apps and the convenience of Hawaii being three hours behind and Philadelphia three hours ahead, there is only a brief period of time in which NPR is not playing in my house. It is my primary source of news and information but I also just like the calm monotone voice sounds and Ratatat interludes.

However, it has gotten a bit more complicated now that Alma's ears are more preceptive and her brain more understanding. I do censor what she hears to some extent. For example, I didn't listen to NPR at all around her immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting or the Boston Marathon Bombing. But, the news is full of all kinds of things both big and small in their terribleness and it is not always clear what is appropriate for her to hear and what is not. She does this thing where she will pick up on one word that is said and say it back in a loud and disbelieving voice, as though the word were the funniest thing she has ever heard. Tonight I was listening to Marketplace and she said, "Mom! Money Laundry!!!! That's silly!"

During the coverage of the recent tornado, it became clear that she was not only repeating key words but understanding some of the context. Tornado is a terribly funny word to say over and over again. After she was done with that, she said, "The big tornado knocked down the whole city. Did people die?" I explained that the tornado was really big and people got hurt, some so badly that their bodies stopped working. Immediately, she responded, "When I am big, I'm gonna be Superman and then I'll fly really fast and push that tornado away and then no one will be hurt." She then ran out of the room and put on her cape and mask and flew around the house tackling imaginary tornadoes and cats.

I want to bottle that hope, that ingenuity. I want to capture the feeling that whatever is wrong is smaller than her, seal it in an age resistent container, and save it for her for that moment when life suddenly has a growth spurt and gnashes its terrible teeth. I want felt and craft glue and imagination to always save the day. I know that it can't, but I WANT it. I WANT it.

Day Trip of Beautiful

This town is a town made for day trips. Conveniently, my friend Kindra is a friend made for road trips.   Kindra, Alma, and I took a trip down route one to Big Sur a few weeks ago. Kindra was up for stopping and exploring everything and anything and that is exactly what we did.


The drive down route one is a thing of mystery and beauty filled with vistas and rocks and cliffs to explore. Also, apparently, dead trees for posing.

I found Swanton Berry Farm a few weeks previously and had been dreaming about the blackberry pie ever since. Its filled with kitch and all things delicious. It made the perfect lunch stop. Yes, pie is a perfectly respectable lunch.

    We found three amazing beaches. Each one was epic and would have made for a good day by themselves. All three made for something else all together. 

 

 So, when are you coming to visit?

The one that doesn't get a title (except this one)

I dropped my parents off at the airport about 25 minutes ago. It was the last goodbye of a month and a half of visitors and by far the hardest. Nothing feels like it is going right at this moment. For reasons that would take a long and frustrating explanation, I still have no job and no prospect of a job. I have no friends here. I have no family outside of Alma and Adam here. I feel like I have no ground under my feet.

This place is beautiful but it still feels like I am on vacation and I am desperate to go home. I will figure out how to move on from this feeling. I will.

How to lose one's self confidence in a matter of minutes.

Cover letters should be classified as a war crime. I have applied for 27 jobs in the last 8 days. At the present moment, I have received 3 calls, one interview, and am currently waiting for the phone to ring to complete a phone interview. I have received about 9 rejection emails, including one, which was sent to me 3 times, immediately following a very positive sounding phone interview where I was told by the interviewer that he was very impressed and would highly recommend that I be brought in for a face to face interview.  If this goes on much longer, I might lose my mind as well as my self confidence.

Birthday Wishes

Adam's parents are visiting this week, thus commencing a five week visitor season. In 37 days, there will be a total of 4 nights where we don't have visitors. Other people might consider this high level of traffic a little overwhelming. Those other people have likely had more than 4 in-person conversations with not-their-husband in the last 80 days.

I wonder what would happen if I ever decorated my house without a visitor/party/youareabouttohaveababy deadline. For the last 15 years, there has always been some event about a month or two after move in that has ended up dictating the decor of my house for the next 1-3 years. Or until the apartment catches on fire, whichever happens first. So, that has been what I have been up to lately.

In the meanwhile I had a birthday. We went to Yosemite for the weekend and it was perhaps the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me. I had a grand plan of coming up with 32 wishes for this year, but instead I came up with five:

1.  Get a job that is mostly enjoyable
2.  Go a whole week without crying
3.  Make a new friend
4.  Hug my old friends until they beg me to stop
5.  Buy a leather jacket

We will see how that all goes.

My Armpit is More Beautiful than Yours

Adam and Alma and I visited a few vineyards in Napa on a lazy beautiful Sunday a few weeks ago. Yes, it weirds me out that I can do such things. At one of the vineyards, we ended up at a standing table next to two absurdly talkative middle-aged brothers. At first they started talking to us about wine but when that didn't get much intelligent response from us, they moved on to telling us about their girlfriends and ex-wives and how the one was considering getting his 25 year old girlfriend pregnant. One brother downloaded a random dinosaur puzzle app on his phone and handed it to Alma. They asked for our contact information, offered to take us out on their boat, and eventually paid our tab. It was a little strange. 

In the middle of all that, one of the brothers asked where we were from. When I explained that we had just moved from Philadelphia, they both loudly groaned. "PHILADELPHIA!!! What an armpit. Thank God you are here!" He then went on to explain that he was from San Antonio, TX, an even bigger armpit than Philadelphia, so he was allowed to say that. 

[Insert really long rant on how Philadelphia is overlooked and underrated and may be filled with more delicious food than San Francisco. Yes, I mean that.] Whatever dude, my armpit is pretty and I miss it.

Cascarones

I have a special attachment to Easter. As an end of March baby, my birthday always wound up being somewhere near the holiday. I have scores of egg themed birthday parties in my past. For instance, at my 7th birthday we had an easter egg hunt. It was all harmless fun until my brothers got involved. They hid several eggs that had not been hardboiled. And, because they were 9-13 year old boys, they preceded to throw those eggs at me. What girl doesn't want to be covered in egg yolk at her birthday party? I tell that story often, but it really is one of only a hand full of "it was SO hard growing up with 3 older brothers" stories. They really weren't that awful, but don't tell them that. 

My birthday last year was all about pretending I was a kid and wasn't in the middle of a very grownup BAD year. There was an old school sleep over and penny candy I got from the Amish store behind my grandparent's house in Lancaster.  And cascarones. Cascarones are hollowed out eggs which are filled with confetti and are meant to be broken over the heads of party-goers. It's the responsible version of the game my brothers played on my 7th birthday. We played the game in my all time favorite city park, Washington Square in Philadelphia. It was fantastic.

       

 

Sometimes I use the brillant blogs of others as inspiration and tweak ideas so much that they become my own. Sometimes, I take an idea just as it is. This was the latter.

Nothing says "Happy Birthday!!!" quite like owl puke

It is an obvious fact that I miss the people that are no longer within a two hour drive of me.  But this feeling is most poignant and novel when it relates to little people. There is now 3,000 miles between me and the best collection of imaginative, creative, brilliant, hysterical nieces and nephews a girl could ask for. There is even a little nephew whom I have not met yet (it hurts to write that sentence). It feels epically unfair to be so far away from them and miss their joys and feats. Enter the party in a box (I didn't send the cat but only because the last time I brought a cat into the same house as the recipient's  mom, the mom ended up in the hospital for a few days and I kind of like that girl and she has enough on her plate as it is). A simple party box for a five year old boy: Number Piñata, Slimy Experiment Kit, Candle, Hat, Poppers and Noise maker, and Owl Puke. My favorite part was the owl puke.

Pi Day

I don't have a strong attachment to Pi. But, I do have a strong attachment to pie and homophones. Swiss chard, pear, and sausage pie. My favorite absurdly buttery crust, this plus sausage and cheddar instead of gruyere, and presented like this.

I wish that I was good at change, but I (like a lot of humanity) am not even close to being good at it. I am decidedly bad at it. To say that I am in a rut is an understatement. Baking something new helps, for a minute.

A new day, a new beach

 

Beaches are a relatively new thing to me. I grew up in a Campsite Family, not a Beach Family. I can make my way around a Coleman Stove way better than I can around a boardwalk. But, that being said, I am familiar with what they look like. At least, I thought I was. What is pictured above should have its own separate dictionary entry. The "beaches" pictured above are as followed: Asilomar State Beach in Monterey, Seabright State Beach in Santa Cruz, Fort Funston, Somewhere between our house and Halfmoon Bay, and Ocean Beach. We didn't necessarily seek out all of these beaches, it just appears to be the kind of thing that happens around here. Kind of like getting flicked off at a four way stop for stopping is the kind of thing that happens in Philadelphia.

Sand is pretty novel for Alma. Sand is currently in the same excitement causing category as Twizzlers, Pteranodons, Anything that Flies, the MOON, her cousin Ian, and trapping our cat, Kiwi, in closets.  The second we step off the gravel onto a beach, she does a belly flop into the sand, even though this belly flop is usually onto a crowded rocky path. What typically follows is a 7-10 minute walk down to the actual beach, even if it is only 20 feet away, as every inch of sand must be smushed and dug and sand-angeled. Given all of this, sand is my new scourge. It is the pockets of my sweater, under my pillow, in my coffee cup, and caked into the corners of my phone case. It's the new marbles (damn you, marbles).