Visuals projected onto a cardboard wall at the Roger Waters The Wall concert.

I survived Mother’s Day, a holiday I sort of dread…for reasons I can’t fully explain.  Roo and I went away for the night to a local hotel.  To escape, though there wasn’t really anything to escape from.  Sometimes a change feels like a rest and so it felt quite restful.  We stayed where we have stayed before, a hotel once owned by Doris Day.  Half the hotel is very modern, the other half is modern on the inside but feels a bit motel-ish on the outside.  In one of the rooms, The Beatles stayed during their last US concert.  It’s confusing why they stayed there, it’s a haul from where they were playing in San Francisco – but apparently at one time they were trying to make Palo Alto into the Las Vegas of California.  It was ill-fated of course.  Anyway, celebrities stayed there, Sinatra, The Beatles, maybe others too.  Now it’s where Zuckerberg kicks off his Facebook IPO tour.

Friday night, we went to see the Roger Waters The Wall show at AT&T park in San Francisco, where the Giants play.  It was sort of a last minute thing – some good friends had extra tickets.  I grew up listening to a lot of Pink Floyd, not because I was a big fan but because my dad was and he just adored them.  It seemed to be on all the time.  It drove my mother insane.  I called him on Friday afternoon to see if he wanted to go as well. “What are you doing tonight?” I asked him. “Watching Jeopardy,” he replied.  I laughed. “Want to do something else?” I asked.  I told him where I was going.  ”Oh. My. God. Yes.” he said.  So I got him a ticket too, along with one for my cousin who is visiting from Manchester.  It was an amazing show.  From my seats, I could see my dad, a mop of grey-white hair, about 20 rows ahead of me, bobbing his head, holding up his camera occasionally.  He said later it was the greatest show he had ever seen.  He couldn’t stop smiling.  My mom said that when he got home he made her watch all the videos he took at the concert.  She said she heard him singing Another Brick in the Wall as he brushed his teeth that night.

For Mother’s Day Roo and I went out for breakfast and after, I had to stop at Wallgreens.  As we passed the card aisle, filled with hapless men pouring over Hallmark cards, Roo said “At least I’m not that bad.  I didn’t wait until noon on Mother’s Day to get a Mother’s Day card.” I knew what he meant, that we had already sent flowers to his mother.  But I was feeling snarky I guess. “Oh, did you get me a card already?” I asked.  And the color drained from his face.  Because, I guess, he forgot I was a mother.  Because I am not the mother of his children, I think these things don’t occur to him.  Or he’s just a jerk.  I think it’s the former though.  It’s hard to navigate those weird feelings about whose kids they are – mine, his, ours, this other guy living in a nearby town. Obviously I feel very much like a mother.  Most of the time.  Though those feelings are a little off at times when I’m not with my kids.  But I don’t know how much he feels like a father.  I hope though, that some afternoon in the distant future, one of my children will call him up and say “Hey what are you doing tonight?” And if he says, “Watching Jeopardy,” they’ll reply: “Want to do something else?”

I’ve been trying very hard to get back to writing.  It has been only moderately successful.  I have not revisted my novel, which is still trapped in my computer, done-ish but mostly in bits.  I did write a short story that I’m fond of but again, I haven’t revised it.  But I was thinking maybe if I wrote little pieces of things on my blog, that might help.  Not blog posts, but more like historical blog posts.  Like mini memoirs, because that takes a little more crafting in a way, than a blog post does.  So from time to time I’m going to try that.

And so:

A painting from the 1400s depicting a beauty contest between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite. The winner, judged by Paris, would be given the golden apple.

In 6th grade I was friends with a girl I’ll call Claire.  We spent a lot of weekends together, a lot of afternoons after school too.  She was rich and lived in a very affluent town that is something like the second most wealthy place in the country.  They had a huge ranch style house with long, wide hallways banked by tall glass windows.  She had her own room with an attached bathroom.  There was a pool in the back and a guest house.  Her father was a surgeon.  Her mother was beautiful.  There was, in the living room, a big oil painting of her mother above the mantle. In it, she sat demurely, smiling out from the frame like Mona Lisa.

On weekends I’d go over there and Claire and I would pack up drinks and Oreos.  She was allowed food I was not and Oreos were, to my carob-pushing mother, about the same as crack cocaine.  So of course I loved them. In 6th grade we were studying the Greek myths and I suppose we were at the age (or maybe just at that maturity level) that she and I still indulged in make believe.  We would get on our bikes and ride to this vacant lot full of oak trees, near her house.  And there, after or before a meal of Oreos, we would reenact Greek myths.  I don’t remember much about this, except that even then it seemed kind of ridiculous – pretending to be Hera or Pandora or Athena or Medusa.  For some reason part of this included one of us clambering up a tree and waiting for the other to shout Shakesperian-like dialogue to the other.  The one in the tree was the God on Mt. Olympus and the one below needed something – to be freed from a lifetime of rolling stones up a hill or from wandering hades for eternity.  One of us did the imploring in this very stilted language, while the other considered things carefully, then boomed down a response.  It was all incredibly odd.

Her father the surgeon, was in the paper one year, because he had operated on a very famous boy who had survived five days in the snow after a plane crash with his parents in the Sierras.  He was the only survivor.  It was a miraculous story full of the things Hollywood and the media love.  I remember the teacher reading the newspaper clipping to the class. The boy had survived by sucking on snow and for five long days he was trapped, with his dead parents in the snow buried plane.  It was such a story of bravery and survival and sadness and miracles, that in the hospital he was visited by all kinds of local stars and celebrities.  But the surgeon had not been able to save his legs and I believe both had to be at least partially amputated. We were all amazed by the story.  Both that he had survived this Herculean feat and that Claire’s father had been a part of such an incredible event.

Years later the boy and I ended up at the same high school together. By then Claire and I weren’t friends.  Middle school has a way of fracturing friendships irretrievably and as she became more popular, I became less so.  She ended up at a different high school.  But the boy, the boy from the plane crash, was at my school. He was a few years older than me.  He had prosthetic limbs and though he walked a little unsteadily he was never in a wheelchair.  We sat next to each other in French or Spanish.  I don’t remember now.  Both languages were taught by the same teacher, a woman with a southern drawl who didn’t even attempt a plausible accent.  In front of him sat one of the most beautiful, popular girls in the school.  She’d walk in and all the air would leave the room.  She was so pretty she had a college boyfriend.  Almost every day in class he would try and ask her out.  He was pushy about it, borderline rude.  He wrote these insistent notes to her and because I was sitting so close it was hard not to notice her responses.  I have a boyfriend! she’d write back, with the word boyfriend underlined.  This went on for months.  He just kept trying.  One day after one of these rejections, he turned to me, casually appraised me and sneered, “You know, you’re really homely.” I don’t know what I said.  Maybe nothing.  I think I just turned my face away.  I remember trying to think what homely meant and for a few moments I had it confused with comely.  One letter that made all the difference.  But I could tell by the way he said it, that he did not mean comely.  He meant what he said: I was plain, unattractive, especially juxtaposed to the beauty in the seat next to me.  The thing was, I had always sort of suspected he was a jerk.  There were other things too, I’d seen him say nasty things to other people.  But his near death in the snow, his prosthetic limbs, had me confused.  How could this miracle child, this kid who was a hero all those years ago, that suffered so mightily and lived to tell…be such…well, an ass?  Maybe he’s a great guy now.  Maybe it was an offhand comment made because he was frustrated she had rejected him yet again and his comment to me was a kind of verbal kicking of the dog.  But that didn’t make it sting any less at the time.  It’s funny how we see what we want or hope to see in a person.  Based on their lives, their past, their appearance, we want to decide what they will be like.  We give people leeway or make allowances we wouldn’t otherwise, because we have in our heads the way we think they should be.  But they’re not always that way, are they?

The San Francisquito Creek, near the house where I grew up. I don't know who the girl is. (photo from Stanford University Archives)

I grew up near a creek.  It was a fairly large creek – not terribly wide, but very deep, though rarely filled with very much water.  Some winters it did fill, once so much that it threatened to overflow.  The prospect was very exciting – that it might overflow, stream down the streets and flood the neighborhood.  I remember going to the bridge near my house and looking over the ledge at the water, rushing by just a few feet from my face.  For most of the time though, the creek was empty or close to empty, enough for a few frogs.  We didn’t go there much and I’m not really sure why.  I can recall going there to catch minnows, and once, to dig up a trunk full of treasure as part of a Hobbit-themed birthday party of a friend.  Other than that we mostly stayed away.  There was some trash in the creek – shopping carts, random shoes.  And there were homeless people who lived there, though honestly we never really saw them. It was never expressed, but there was this general feeling of not exactly danger, but unease around the creek.  You couldn’t see it from the road, it was heavily wooded, deep and dark in some places.

Once when I was child, a man knocked on our front door.  He was disheveled and exhausted looking.  I’m not sure he even said anything, but he started to cry, almost as soon as I opened the door.  It was startling, because I had never seen a man cry. “What’s wrong?” I asked him. And he said, “I’m just so tired of sleeping in the creek.”  My mom came to the door and invited him in and she defrosted some soup.  She always had soup in the freezer.  She fed him and he talked for a while.  He had pictures of his children in his wallet.  I remember that really well, looking at his children, the photos protected in a plastic sleeve.  My dad used to go to all these conferences and they were always giving away messenger bags or backpacks and she got one of these and filled it with things.  I don’t remember all the things.  Maybe there was a jacket and some food.  She put some money in a zippered pocket in the front of the backpack, which is what she did for me when I needed to get something at school.  Then he left.  With a backpack embroidered with something like “Particle Physics Symposium, New Orleans, 1984.”  He came back a few more times, and we repeated this process – the soup, the backpack filling, the money.  And then he just stopped coming and we never saw him again.

This all came back to me the other night.  I took the kids to dinner, something I seem to be doing all the time – now that I’m working I don’t seem to have the energy to get dinner on the table very often.  I pulled into the parking spot of the restaurant and saw someone’s sleeve peeking out from behind a pillar.  They had black pants on and a white shirt and I thought it was a waiter maybe having a smoke.  I got the kids out of the car and the person, who turned out to be a woman, came out from behind the pillar.  She had a big tote bag with her.  As I got the kids out of the car I could see her reflection in the windows and I sort of assessed her like you do sometimes, when you are slightly wary.  I was trying to figure out why she’d been standing there.  I think one of the kids said something to her, like hello.  And she said hello back and then I turned and said hello too.  By then all the kids were out of the car.  She asked how we were doing.  She was still kind of walking away from us.  One of us replied and asked her the same thing.  And she paused and slumped a little bit. “I’m a little frustrated,” she said. “I haven’t been able to find anywhere to be tonight.  I’ve tried the shelters and even the churches.” She had that look of someone that might be homeless, but it’s hard to tell.  Her hair was clean, pulled back in a neat pony tail.  Her clothes were pretty clean.  She was obviously sober. She was obviously sad. I would have liked to give her a little money.  If she had nowhere to go at least she could go and get a meal, I reasoned. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’m afraid I have no cash.”  I had just got out $300 to pay the babysitter and the limit at the ATM was $300.  I knew it wouldn’t let me have any more.  Clyde and Ivy weren’t really grasping what was going on.  Hazel on the other hand had gone into the car and found a dollar in the console. “Oh it’s alright,” the lady said.  There was a motel nearby, I remembered.  I had stayed there once myself when I was trying to work on my novel.  It was kind of a lonely place but it was clean and relatively quiet. “Why don’t I put you up at the Mermaid Inn,” I said. “It’s right around the corner.”  But she shook her head no. “They want $70 for a night.  I couldn’t let you do that.”  By now all the kids seemed to get what was going on.  Especially Hazel who started to try and plead with her. “Come on,” she said, “Let us. Let us.”  The woman kept shaking her head.  “Is there somewhere else then,” I said. “Somewhere you would let me pay for.”  She told me there was a Motel 6 in Belmont.  Somewhere she had stayed before that was cheap – $50 a night, she said.  Belmont was not walkable by any means. “We’ll take you,” I said.  I expected at least one of the kids to object.  To say they were hungry, that they didn’t want to get back in the car again.  But everyone seemed on board.  She got in the car and we started on our way to Belmont, about 15 minutes away.  Of course when you do things like this, things that you are conditioned to think you must never never do – pick up random strangers for example, you have a moment of regret.  I had my kids in the car too.  What if she was in fact crazy?  But there was nothing crazy about her.  She was just tired.  And kind of sad.  She was from Coloma, where Hazel had just gone on a 4th grade gold panning trip and the two of them chatted about what it was like there, the different landmarks.  She had worked for Job Corps and at some point they lost a government contract and she was let go.  The duplex she was either in the process of buying or bought, was foreclosed upon when market fell apart.  Her husband died.  She had no children. It wasn’t one disaster, it was just a series of shitty events that piled up.  She had the same name as my aunt, an aunt I had just been talking about the day before.  Not a common name, by any means. I asked where the rest of her things were – all she had with her was this large tote.  She said she had two large duffel bags that she was careful to hide.  She said she was always very careful when she went to get things from them in case anybody saw her.

We got to the Motel 6.  And I told the manager what was going on -that I wanted to pay for her to stay there.  I somehow didn’t expect him to agree to let her stay.  I don’t know why I though this.   He seemed to either recognize her or recognize her situation.  He was unbelievably friendly to us.  He didn’t even ask for my ID or hers for that matter.  I paid for two nights.  She wanted to walk us out.  She was kind of tearful.  She asked if I would mind if she said a quick prayer for us.  I am not even vaguely religious but we all bowed our heads. And in the doorway of the Motel 6, with the freeway traffic roaring by, we gathered around her and closed our eyes as she said we were a blessing to her and that she hoped God would keep us safe.   I gave her my phone number on the back of an old business card.  I gave her a hug.  And we left.  I am worried about her.  It’s not even that I’m worried she has no place to go.  I am of course, worried about that.  I’m more worried that she will live this kind of solitary existence forever.  What must that be like, to be alone in that way…all the time? I’ve since called the manager and added another night, because last night it was pouring.  But I don’t know really what else to do.  She checks out today.  This morning it was drizzling, but it’s mostly clear now.  I hope it stays like that.

Remember when I won, through a foolish bet, (made by my husband)…a 50s housewife?

It is not panning out.

Though there was some laundry folding and putting away today, what I believe I have is closer to a 70s housewife, who is diligently following the feminist dogma.  Instead of cleaning the kitchen, she’s still in her housecoat, cigarette dangling from her lips, a tumbler of vodka and Tang in her hand.  The kids are locked outside in the snow and she’s got the soaps on.  And when I complain she cuts her eyes at me, like, don’t push me…or I’ll burn my bra too. I casually mentioned this analogy to Roo and he said, “Well you know how strongly I feel about women’s rights.”  F word.

Last week I tried a juice cleanse.  It’s basically drinking juice for three days.  A few years back I went over the handlebars of my bicycle and broke my jaw which necessitated it being wired shut (after two different surgeries), for roughly 6 weeks.  I sipped a lot of Ensure, a chalky protein shake favored by the elderly.  I drank so much of it that Target, who evidently watches these things extremely carefully, started spitting out Depends underwear coupons at the register when I’d check out.  Oh!  She’s not who we thought she was at all.  She’s 90. It irritated me so intensely that I would occasionally purchase things I had no need for, just to fuck with their system.  That’s right Target, I’m buying parrot food now.  And while I’m at it, I’ll take a box of Dark and Lovely chemical free relaxer.  You thought I was white and owned a guinea pig?  Guess again.

That's right Target. I'm Dark and Lovely. And old. With a parrot.

Anyway, I survived with no crying.  Which is more than I can say for when I was wired shut and stood staring into the refrigerator sobbing, which is difficult to do with your jaw wired shut.  No really, try crying with your teeth together.

The kids are back! They had a good time in Italy, though most of what they reported had to do with the airplane rides and their stop in London.  The stop in London meant they could buy Quavers, a criminally addictive brand of potato chips favored by their mother who has no problem paying $45 to have them sent by the case from the UK.  My older daughter clung to my like a barnacle when she returned. “I can’t believe I am seeing your face,” she kept saying. It was heartbreakingly sweet.

The contract job I have at the moment is sadly coming to an end in two weeks, which I am bummed about.  I really like it there.  I like the people.  I like that they have frozen yogurt in the cafeteria and a full length mirror in the bathroom and a Dolly that works in HR.

I wrote a new short story which I like quite a lot and which is being critiqued right now by the author Michelle Richmond. A year or so ago, there was a fundraiser for a fellow writer who needed medical treatment.  I bid to have Michelle read and critique a story of mine and I won.  I should get it back next week or the week after.  I also sent it to a friend of mine who is a great reader and she suggested I change the ending, which I think I will do.  Or perhaps I will write two endings and have it be a choose-your-own-ending-story.  Because really, in all things…who doesn’t want to choose their own ending?

My children are in Italy.  In Umbria.  Somewhere around the orangy-brown part:

They are with their dad and stepmother for spring break.  For 10 days.  Usually I go about 3 days without seeing the kids, because I can go and see them at school even on the weeks they are with dad.  Today is Wednesday, the day I normally start wringing my hands and feeling generally horrid about everything in the world out of my control.  I’m okay today.  Though on Saturday I had a big boo hoo about it and because that wasn’t enough I had a cry for every other parent on the planet who couldn’t be with their children.  Then I cried for things I’d read in the news, and capped it off with a little sob about a cat I once had who dissappeared never to be seen again despite my hiring of Sherlock Bones, pet detective.  Eventually, sick of myself, I pulled it together.  That said I keep having bad dreams.  Mostly about trying to find a lost bottle of Ativan that only contains one pill.  Sometimes I find it and happily shake it to hear the rattle of the last pill.  Sometimes I don’t.  It’s anxiety, plain and simple.  My kids are not with me.  They are in another land.  If I didn’t have to get to work right now, I can promise you I would be on the couch eating Cadbury’s creme eggs and crying over Storage Wars (it’s not a sad show).

The goodbye on Friday was hard because they were sad too and Ivy was doing her usual prophesying of doom which she loves to do before trips. “If our plane falls out of the sky, will we have to swim? Will the boats help us?  Will I be very cold.  If I can’t swim and I fall to the bottom of the ocean, will you cry for a long time or just one day?”  In these instances, instead of clamping my hand over her mouth and saying, for the love of God child, stop! I chirp encouragement: “You’re a great swimmer! Planes never crash!” and what she really wants to hear (and what eventually calmed her on Friday)… “If you fell to the bottom of the ocean, I would cry for the rest of my life.  Every day, over and over.” And she smiles.

Clyde had a little cry at drop off, though was mostly fine.  Hazel forgot her backpack and not being able to stop myself and being late for work, I snapped at her.  She just turned and walked away.  My heart!  But I went back at lunch time and dropped it off and gave her a hug and said we would miss each other and maybe I’ll miss her most of all, because she’s always the brave one.

On Sunday, we went and saw a friend who is here for a conference in San Francisco.  I hadn’t seen him since 1995 or 1996 at (as he pointed out) an Applebee’s on Wetmore in Tucson.  He was just as I remembered him.  We worked in a restaurant together called Geronimoz, now long closed.  Then, he reminded me of Tigger, always on the verge of hopping or running.  He talked, and still talks like he’s trying to hold in laughter.  The visit was a tonic.

I am now fully in the swing of working.  I am hoping I can get something there after my contract is done, though the first week I managed to knock the gate barrier off its hinge while exiting, so that probably counts against me.

This past weekend we went skiing.  The Friday we left was my birthday and I was super cranky because Roo did not give me a birthday present and I’m not petty and materialistic except for holidays and birthdays and then I’m like what the eff, where’s my present? I know. It’s not an admirable quality.  I’ve always wanted to be one of those people who is too good for presents, “Oh I don’t need the mass commercialization of Valentine’s Day!  I’m better than that!” But I’m not. However he did give me a card.  With a bear on it or a dog.  Or a bear-dog.  It was in Spanish.  And while I don’t speak fluent Spanish, I’m fairly sure the translation was something like Hola!  I’ll try harder next year! Except with those upside down exclamation points that they love so much.  I did get some lovely gifts this evening in case he is reading this. Late is better than never. Except if you’re planning on being late for my Easter basket.  I want some of those Cadbury’s cream eggs.  They have them at Cost Plus.

Anyway.  Off we went to Tahoe.  We got there in good time and the next morning, everyone was up bright and early.  By everyone I mean the kids.  This is always the case with vacationing with children.  They crawl into bed at some ungodly hour and start yammering about something.  And you’re like please I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you go back to sleep.  For about three minutes they are quiet and you think oh thank you Jesus.  But then they say really loudly in your ear: “Can eagles can see mouses from really far away?”

Skiing however was mostly a success, though at some point in every ski trip, I have this fantasy that I travel back in time and take my rented Any Mountain ski pole and stab the inventor of skiing to death.  That moment came when I was behind Clyde on conveyer belt ski lifty thing on our way up a bunny slope.  All you have to do is stand there and lean forward. That’s it.  It’s even easier than going on a chair lift because on a chair lift there’s the whole anxiety leading up to getting on the lift, trying to get your kids on the lift, trying to make sure no one gets hit in the back of the head by the lift, trying to hold onto your poles while on the lift, trying to not tangle yourself up with the first time snowboarder as you are getting off the lift.  So I was on the conveyor belt, conveying up the hill, Clyde ahead of me, when I dropped a glove and like an idiot tried to and reach back and get it.  Well of course I fell backwards, twisted up, poles in the air, legs at unnatural angles and as I tried to and right myself, two snowboarders on the conveyor belt of death behind me, essentially snowboarded over me so that we were all tangled together as it was still conveying up the hill.  My left leg sort of twisted at the hip at which point I started shouting “TURN OFF THE CONVEYOR BELT THINGY!” to whoever would listen as the whole sorry tangled mess of us ka-thunked up the hill.  Somehow I managed to free myself from the other two snowboarders and when I got to the top and hobble-slid off the conveyor belt, I saw the problem. The ski lift dude was asleep.

Still.  Two out of three kids can now ski.  Hazel is now on intermediate runs.  Ivy (who has only skied once before) is close behind, mostly because she’s fearless. With skiing you have to dispense with self-preservation, which Ivy does pretty well. The other day Roo looked at Ivy as she swung wildly from a pull up bar in the kitchen doorway and said, “She’s like a B-52s song.”  And whatever that means, it seemed an apt description as she love shacked her way down the mountain.  By the second day she was off the bunny slopes and onto Sugar and Spice, the long beginner run.  She fell plenty, but was unfazed.  Case in point, when we got back to the cabin on the second day she came to me wearing her footed pajamas that she’d been wearing on the slopes all day (under her ski overalls) and said, “There’s something bothering me in my foot.” When I unzipped them and fished around the toe for what I assumed was maybe a bit of lint or a sticker or a tag…I found a marble.

Hi! I have a marble in my ski boot. It's fine.

However by the second day, Clyde was mostly still lying on the snow weeping.  You’re doing great buddy! I kept saying. Good job!  You fell really well back there!  Nice one!  No no, don’t cry you’re getting it, I can tell you’re really getting it! When what I wanted to say was: Holy shit you are the worst skier I’ve ever seen. But you know, you can’t say that as a parent.  After his 89th fall, I sat down on the snow next to him and suggested we take a break in the lodge for a bucketful of Kit Kats and a double Chivas.  But he wanted none of it.  That was the maddeningly admirable part of it.  He was going to keep trying until he cried himself into complete dehydration. By Sunday afternoon I was so exhausted that when we came out of the cafe after lunch and put our skis on again, I evidently took someone else’s and then skied on them all day without noticing.  Until that is, Roo saw me carrying my skis to the car and said, “Those aren’t your skis.” Huh.  So…sorry, to whoever’s skis I stole.  I don’t doubt you called me a few names when you realized your skis were gone.  What can I say?  ¡Hola! I’ll try harder next year.

It has taken me some time (read: years) to adjust to my kids leaving every other friday to go to their dad’s house.  But lately I’m managing fine.  By fine, I mean that Roo and I spend the weekend they are gone living on beer and tortilla chips.  We sleep late, we go to bed late, we go out, we pierce juice boxes and squirt them into glasses of rum.  This past weekend we went out on Friday, shut the bar down and then slept until noon.  Well, I slept until noon.  Roo slept until about 3:30 pm, until I finally went upstairs, loomed over him and asked, “Feel like getting up for dinner?” And then we laughed and laughed.

Anyway.  This is a lot of throat clearing to get where I’m going.  On Saturday I spent part of the day running errands and, as I am prone to do, running the gas tank until it is empty.  This is a talent I have honed over many years.  Once I ran out of gas on 1-10 between Phoenix and Tucson where there is basically no gas to be had.  At least there wasn’t any to be had in the mid 90s.   Between Phoenix and Tucson on 1-10, there was a cigarette wholesaler and some truck weigh stations.  I had just picked my sister up from Phoenix airport and to kick of her visit, we ran out of gas and hitch hiked with a man who was out driving to “let off steam” because he’d had a fight with his sister.  It was only after we got in the car that I noticed the beer bottles on the floor of the car.  But we survived! Did not end up in the desert slashed to bits!  And for about a year after, I was really good at filling my tank.  Long after I’d graduated college and moved back to California though, I ran out of gas while exiting the freeway.  I had the car towed because as far as I was concerned it could not have been a gas problem, because by my expert analysis of the needle in the red zone, (but not quite on the last white line) I had at least 5 miles. “So what was wrong with the car?” I asked the repair shop when they called. “It was out of gas,” they said.  Oh. Right.  I tell you this to illustrate that I pay a good deal of attention to how much farther I can go before I have to hitch hike with possibly drunk men fresh off a dust up with their sibling.

Which brings me to this:  The car I have now, a 2005 Land Rover has a digital display telling me how many miles I have left.  It’s a guesstimate of course.  And I have flagrantly disregarded the 5 mile warning, the 2 mile warning and at times the 0 mile warning, thinking: Liar! If I had zero miles I would be hitch hiking right now! And I’m not.  I’m with my three kids on the highway, miles from home.  So there!

Roo, if you recall, is car obsessed.  And has to be right about most everything.  Who remembers the It’s Nougat! post? Anyway, he does not like to be wrong.  The only thing he hates more than being wrong, is being wrong about cars.  So on Sunday, we go out for dinner again, and the car is showing 0 miles on the dash, so of course we have to stop for gas.  I remark that the last time I paid attention to the display (earlier that afternoon) it had been somewhere around 8 miles, so I must have been driving on 0 for quite a while. “Impossible,” he says. “The car only shows increments of 5.  So you could NOT have seen 8.” I knew I’d seen 8. “I saw 8 today.  And I’ve seen 4 and 2 and 1 and 3 and all the super low, you’re-totally-out-of-gas numbers, so that can’t be right,” I said. “It is right.  You’re mistaken. I know my cars.” And by now he’s all excited and agitated because he thinks, that by filling the tank he’ll prove his point when the number shows some increment of 5.  I of course, being me and a genius at running out of gas, know he is wrong.  So we stop at the gas station and before he gets out, he says, “I’ll bet you!” and he’s grinning and all proud of himself. “You’re wrong,” I keep saying. “You’re wrong.”  Then, like the cocky jerk he is, he says, “Do you want to bet?” Which of course I do, BECAUSE I AM RIGHT.  I ask him what he wants. “A new car!” he says.  Which is basically what he wishes for every time he sees a shooting star, blows candles out on a cake, or makes stupid ass bets with his wife.  He just wants lots and lots of cars…everywhere, all the time, forever.  By now I’m laughing because he’s practically hysterical in his excitement over what kind of car he’s going to get. “What do you want?” he asks. “If you win.” He doesn’t even give me a chance to answer, he just blurts: “If you win…I’ll do ALL OF THE HOUSEWORK…

FOR

THE

REST

OF

OUR

LIVES.”

That’s right. That’s how sure he is. That’s how sure mister Oh-don’t-fuck-with-me-about-cars-I-know-everything-about-cars-and-increments-of-five…is, about winning this bet.  He has just agreed to do ALL OF THE HOUSEWORK.  FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER (that’s an echo).

He gets out of the car, fills the tank, and in the reflection of the side mirror I can see him smiling away, mentally going through a catalogue of all the cars in the entire world he has to choose from.  He gets back in the car.  Puts the key in the ignition. And what does the display show for miles left?

246.

Good lord. When was the last time I posted. A long long time ago. So much has happened and nothing has happened.

I fell into a pool drain. Kind of. I fell into one of those filter things on pool decking, the circular things. The top was off because I was cleaning it. “Oh you should sue the person who left it off!” someone said upon hearing the story. So I’ll be suing myself. I don’t know how it happened, but it was similar to the accident I had a few months back when I fell into an open heating grate (also my fault). The pool thing lacerated my shin but was too wide for stitches. Because of my run in with that cat, I did not need tetanus shots. Because I already had those. Tra la! At some point the cut looked infected and I made the grave mistake of googling images of gangrene, which you should never ever do. And then I had a little cry in the shower because I was convinced I would have to have a peg leg. I still have both legs. So suck it, fate.

I got a job. It’s a contract job for a couple months. It’s basically putting up a new website for a corporation, which sounds fancy, but it amounts to data entry. I’m kind of Dolly Parton in 9-5 except I don’t take dictation or have that kind of rack and there is sadly no Mr. Hart to chase me around the desk which happens to be a fantasy of mine. I’m mostly kidding. So I guess I’m more like Lily Tomlin but I haven’t poisoned anyone with Skinny and Sweet. Yet.

The best movie of the 70s.

I got a letter from my past. It was returned to my parents house, where I was living when I sent it. It was written by me to a friend of mine from high school. It was written in 1995. And returned to me in 2012. I had trouble tracking him down to share the news about the letter – he is one of the last three people not on Facebook so it was hard to find him, which is probably how he likes it. Sometimes crazy ladies try and track you down over a 17 year old letter or a lunchbox they keep insisting THEY DON’T WANT BACK. He said he values his privacy which I’ve always taken to mean I have people under the floorboards, but in his case there’s no way that’s possible because in high school he drove a Camry and in the history of time there has never been a serial killer who drove a Camry. I did a lot of research on this. Just now. Mostly Fords for some reason. Anyway, for secret identity purposes, I’ll call him Dabney Coleman. There’s not much to say about the letter. In it I complain about a job I have at Costco, selling cell phones. I remember I hated it. I used to try and discourage people from buying one because the paperwork was like 85 pages long and I hated filling it out. Aside from the complaining about the job it’s mostly cheerful rambling. I haven’t seen him in years. Perhaps even our last correspondence was this letter, that didn’t even make it.   When I finally tracked him down and emailed him about the letter he said that his parents had sent all his old letters to him in a box and it had exploded or something and the post office, not knowing what to do, sent me back my letter.  Anyway, his response to my email was hilarious and I remembered why we’d been friends.  Dabney Coleman is the guy I should have been paying attention to when I was too busy having crushes on assholes. I don’t doubt we all have a Dabney Coleman.

It should get there in about 2-3 days. Or decades. Whichever.

Next weekend, we are taking the kids skiing, something that is required when you are middle class and living in northern california. So we are going to Tahoe. This is not our first trip. We went two years ago and it’s taken me two years of chanting “you can DO this Tara!” to get up the nerve to try it again.  I want to love skiing, but I spend a lot of time swearing and getting my fingers jammed in things and whispering silent prayers that I can get on the ski lift without them having to slow it down.  The last time we went, Ivy spent an entire afternoon leaning against a net fence, sobbing that she was cold.  I don’t know.  I’d like skiing if it was how it was in the Pink Panther, less skiing and more hot toddies and fondu, while trying to evade Sir Charles Lytton.  Which is a movie you should also see.

So the last post was a little heavy.  Here’s something less so.

Last night Roo and I went out for dinner and he let me know he’d been keeping a secret.  Some background – we recently got a 74 VW Superbeetle that has all the problems associated with a car over 30 years old.  Roo loves cars.  Vintage cars, new cars, whatever.  There are usually several car projects happening (or not happening) concurrently. Rarely are they ever completed. The first time he came over to my house when we started dating he asked if he could “check out my garage,” which to my dismay, turned out not to be a euphemism.

Here is our conversation last night at dinner.

Roo has a terrible no good car idea.
by: bitethebedbugs

And yet…

Huh.

P.S. Previous episodes of Terrible Awful No Good Ideas can be found here and here.

img: http://lifewithaccess.wordpress.com

If you have read this blog for a while, you know that I trained to be a CASA which is a court appointed special advocate for the county.  This means in essence that I am an advocate for a child who finds themselves in the court system, mostly due to neglect or abuse.  Sometimes they have been removed from the home and are now in foster care.  Sometimes they are with extended family members.  Sometimes they have been reunited with family but are still being tracked by the court system should there be another incident.  This week I attended court, my first court date for my child.  There’s a lot I can’t say for confidentiality reasons, but I think it’s important to educate people about the program.  For me, I hope it will bring more volunteers into the program.  At last count there were approximately 100 children in my county waiting for an advocate.

Family court is an unpleasant place.  I don’t know if it is the most stressful kind of court, but it has to be up there.  Usually the hallways (at least in my county’s court) are packed.  The narrow benches are full.  There are often babies in strollers and older children are shuffled through in groups to the child waiting room, where they are semi sequestered from the adults, some of whom they know, some of whom have abused them.  It’s a bit of a farce really.  The room where the children are taken, or at least one of them, is at the end of a very crowded hallway and the children must walk past their own parents (in some cases) to get to it.  Imagine that for a minute.  Though I’m sure the lawyers and social workers do their best to shield them from seeing the parent who they are now separated from, it doesn’t always work.  To be fair, sometimes they want to see the parent who has hit them – who has done awful things we might think unforgivable.  Sometimes they don’t.  This is the case with the child I am an advocate for.  The child was badly abused in one very violence filled afternoon.  There had been abuse before, but for whatever reason, this particular day was the worst.  It  happened in front of siblings.  It was shocking and left scars on all of them.  They are (and the reports bare this out) still reeling.  They children are now out of the home, placed elsewhere.

My child who I have been assigned to through the program, was singled out by the offending parent.  This is often the case.  Abuse is not spread out evenly amongst siblings.  Almost always, one child will get the worst of it.  I remember years ago reading a memoir by the brother of Gary Gilmore, the murderer who became notorious for being the last man to die by firing squad in Texas.  His brother, Mikal (who writes for Rolling Stone) wrote the memoir and in it he talks at great lenghts about how Gary was brutally abused as a child while the other brothers in the family were spared.  He theorizes about this, but in the end I’m not sure even he knows why.  That’s the case with my child.  The other children have been spared for the most part.  At least physically.  Obvoiusly emotionally they have not been.

As a CASA I have to go to court, generally twice a year though this month I’ll be going twice because there were a few last minutes issues that caused a delay.  My child was not going to be there.  I’d asked when I saw the child the other week.  I reminded my child and told them they were allowed to go if they’d like.  But my child didn’t want to go.  In the hallway as we waited for the case to be called, the social worker told me of a few things that had just transpired.  Because of what had transpired, my child wanted no contact with the parent.  Ever.  No reunification services. No visits.  Nothing.  That’s unusual.

It’s always chaotic right before you’re called in to court.  There are often social workers having hurried, whispered conversations with lawyers.  Sometimes you get papers at the last minute.  I briefly saw my child as they passed me in the hallway. The child had their sleeves pulled down over their hands, they were smiling a lot which for a second I thought was good, but I realized they were just terrified and it was a nervous reaction.  Someone pointed out the parent to me and when the parent realized who I was and that I was part of the child’s case, they gave me a good stare down.  Look at me all you want, I thought, I know what you did.

In court the lawyer for my child made a good case for severing ties.  There was some legal maneuvering I didn’t understand and for a while it all went of the record.  At some point my child’s lawyer who kept hammering to make it so my child would not have to attend even supervised visits, hissed to me:  ”I really don’t like ____” referring to the parent.  I nodded.  In the end nothing was decided.  There was a continuance until later in the month.  It’s hard though.  I have read all the reports, I have seen the documented abuse.  And yet the parent in me has a difficult time reconciling these things in my brain. We were trained a great deal in the program to want and move towards reunification, because believe it or not that is often best.  And not all the cases are as grim as my child’s is.  We also know that the foster care system can be an ugly place.  Again, not always, but it is not ideal.  The children often want to be with their parent, they want to be home.   My child is old enough to have a say.  As I have come to know my child, I have come to realize that the same qualities that served them well during and after the abuse – bravery, resilience, perhaps even hope, are the same qualities that have aided them in making this massive decision.  So I have to believe it’s the right one.