Archive | April, 2010

Mike Teavee

By on April 30, 2010 in Mostly a picture, Re: the lil' peanut

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Good news: boy likes to play with my meditation cushion. Bad news: here, he set it up as “a movie” to watch.

I will invoke the fifth amendment on the topic of whether or not I, ahem, from time to time, ahem, allow him to take in the animated/visual arts. While I cook dinner and his brain turns to pudding on the couch.  Will he meet the same sad fate as the Mike Teavee character in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Only time will tell.

At least I can say that I have the 25th anniversary edition of Marie Winn’s book The Plug-In Drug, read most of it, and believe nearly every word I read.  Soon as he can rip his attention away from the meditation cushion, I’ll read it to him, too.

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La caballista

By on April 28, 2010 in Re: the lil' monkey

We took a hike in the woods recently, the kids and I, while Mama was out of town for some hard-earned R&R. Yes, things started out a little bumpy (see Sunday’s post), but before long we, meaning Baba, had regained our composure and had a delightful time.

We’re nearing the end of our loop through the woods when we espy some rustic bathroom facilities, which, given the preponderance of poison oak (cf Sunday), are a welcome relief. (In the big bag of stories waiting to be told, if only I could fling discretion clean out the window, is a gem about the mother-out-law and some poison oak on her honeymoon, and all I can say is it is the cautionary tale to end all cautionary tales.)  We make use of the park outhouses and rejoin the fire trail, now dotted with Sunday afternoon strollers, joggers, and mountain bikers wending their various ways back home.

Right as we’re about to join them, what should round the bend but three caballeros on three gorgeous horses. They dismount and lead their steeds to drink from a nearby trough, and we can’t do a thing but stop and stare.

The man nearest to us notices the girlie’s rapt attention, leans over, and asks her if she wants to ride his horse.

Utter, shocked silence.

“It’s okay,” he says. “She’s really friendly.”

“Sweetie, that was a generous offer,” I say. “Would you like to sit up in the horse’s saddle? Just for a moment?”

Slow, barely perceptible nod.

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Weekend bonus shot, 04.25.10

By on April 25, 2010 in Mostly a picture, Weekend bonus shot

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Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, only with way more dirt than herbe, Berkeley, CA.

After a harrowing tour through a poison oak hedge — okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but only a little, and no, nobody got any, thanks to Baba’s code red terror alert vigilance (“Don’t even LOOK at the verdant splendor at the side of the trail, children!  Hands where I can see them! And no zig-zagging!”) — we spread out the picnic blanket in the middle of the first, wide fire trail we saw.  From this spot we were ideally positioned to greet the mountain biking, hiking, and horse-riding passers-by. (“Greetings! No poison oak here, no siree! Have a nice day!”)

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He’s a versatile guy

By on April 23, 2010 in Mostly a picture, Re: the lil' peanut

Like the post two weeks back, when it was all pictures even though I had so much of a story I wanted to tell in words.

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Just a little note from me to you

By on April 22, 2010 in Greenery, Mostly a picture

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Sweets for the sage

By on April 16, 2010 in Mostly a picture, Pops

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Out for brunch with DadDad at a local diner frequented by me mum, many years ago.  Therefore it’s a sentimental favorite.  Pops reaches for something to sweeten up his coffee, and contemplates the various colored packets containing faux sugar.

“Let’s see: blue, pink, or yellow?”  he asks no one in particular.  I see the sugar jar next to him and ask the obvious question.

“Why not go for the real thing, Pops? Heck, you’re 89.  I think you’re entitled to pull out all the stops now.”

He happily obliges, as the waitress approaches the table.  I repeat our exchange to her.

“Eighty-nine? What’s your secret?” she asks.

He considers the question for just a moment as he stirs.

“Get up in the morning.”

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Fun with gay taxes

By on April 15, 2010 in Mostly a picture, On marriage and commitment

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The funny little mixed mail bag that is the same-sex couple’s tax return today.

All the same-sex married folk in Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Conneticut, the District of Columbia are sending in one state form and two federal forms today.  Folks in New York and Maryland are also recognized at the state level, wherever they got hitched, so them, too.

Here in the Golden State, we got 18,000 in-state recognized same-sex married folk (those that rushed up the gang plank between June 16 and November 5, 2008, before it got yanked up), plus Registered Domestic Partners, who, as of 2007, were granted the right to file state taxes jointly.

Add to this anyone else same-sex coupled who got legally married anywhere else BEFORE NOVEMBER 5, 2008.  When the gang plank got yanked up, it left you on the dock, too. Sorry.  Pre-election day 2008 recognitions do include happy unions in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and South Africa (except I don’t know when each of those countries legally recognized our partnerships; some could well have been after November 5, 2008 in which case yer SOL).

Nepal and Portugal, thank you, but your recognitions will be too late for CA state residents. The rest of you-all’s, if you’re now in-state residents, you get to file one state form, too.  Yay!

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For the Apple Not Falling Far From the Tree file

By on April 14, 2010 in Baba familias, Re: the lil' peanut

One of the wonderful things about this two-kid thing is the opportunity to see how unique we all are, how very much we bring into the world to begin with.  A common roof and the same caregivers can confer many similarities, but only to a point.  We are who we are.  Or maybe were.  Or maybe, always have been.  If one’s own sibling relationships don’t clarify this, one’s kids will.  If one has a pair or more.

Our boychild is now over three years old, and with each passing month his personality shimmers forth with greater and greater brilliance. He adores his sister, plays into her humor, apes — for now — many of her tastes, eagerly looks to master/co-opt what she’s up to.  But I don’t think I am jumping the gun here when I say that he is following in his mother’s family’s grand tradition in one particular trait demonstrated  only modestly by his older sister.  By this I mean that he is, like his mother and her mother and father before him, an A#1, top-of-the-line, dyed-in-the-wool, unreconstructed drama queen.

When I say my in-laws are drama queens I mean that quite literally.  Regular readers of this blog will know that the mother of my children is a youth musical theater director (among many other things); she began her professional theater life right around the time she was getting her first permanent teeth.  Both her parents have spent their entire working lives in the theater: mother a grande dame playwright/director, father an actor/composer who came out as an even grander dame when the beloved was in about second grade.  I like to think of them as the Barrymores of the Great Upper Midwest. Only with a lot more pot, many more beaded curtains, and a Bertolt Brecht-meets-Valerie Solanas urge to épater le bourgeois.

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