Category Archives: Lifestyle

Parenting Uncategorized

Fire fire

October 26, 2007 – 6:11 PM

So if any of you are wondering, “Why the hiatus from the useless information?” I’ll tell you: I was evacuated early Monday morning because of the San Diego wildfires. It was my first evacuation, though my college roommate and I used to play hypothetical games all the time, like, “If you were in a fire, what would you take with you?” so I did have some preparation. So what did I end up taking? My kids’ toys (especially the key stuffed animals), pillows, blankets and dry food in case we ended up at a shelter eventually, two changes of clothes for everyone, our important documents like passports, house stuff and birth certificates, cell phones / chargers and my camera (I really like my camera. My husband took his bass.). I also packed cotton balls and some water.
Later on, after we left, I saw a list on TV of all the things you’re supposed to pack. They said, “Don’t forget your medication!” which of course was thing #1 that I forgot (for my daughter — I’m not vying for any mother of the year awards). They also said that you should take photos of everything in your house for insurance purposes, which I also didn’t do — though I had my camera so I could take pictures of dogs on the street in case they would help my insurance claim! I’m very lucky my house didn’t burn down (for many reasons). It came as close as six miles away.
The really cool thing was how San Diego really pulled together. Qualcomm Stadium, one of the evacuation sites, had to issue a press release saying that they could take no more donations at their site — there was apparently entertainment for the kids and bands for the adults there. Other shelters who posted for help were similarly bombarded. My husband went to Target and then to Qualcomm to drop off some air mattresses and pillows, and for the most part people were really grateful (except the teenager who hovered around and said, “So are you giving away that computer?”). Friends called friends offering refuge.
The best story I heard was about a guy who was walking on the street with a gas mask (the really major WWII type), a wet suit…and a surf board. That’s San Diego for you!

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Parenting

Photo session

October 18, 2007 – 5:34 PM

So I decided that while my kids are still cute and before I’m too ugly, we should get some family photos taken — professionally. There is also the added benefit of being able to Photoshop me out if necessary.

Ok, faithful readers (um…all four of you?), let me know what you think we should use as a backdrop. We live near the ocean, so part of me thinks that we should do ocean pics while we’re here. Here is a link to what that might look like (see “Melissa and Casey”) — pretend that there isn’t a couple making out on the beach and imagine instead a suburban family of four, including two kids who hate the ocean. And rest assured that I will not be posing for any swimsuit shots, unlike Melissa and Casey who evidently have gym memberships. I’m worried about the wind at the beach — wind in my hair looks less “California girl” and a lot more “hurricane survivor”. Click here to see what it might look like in a park setting. I love all the park colors, but parks are a dime a dozen.

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Parenting Travel

The beach

October 17, 2007 – 11:48 PM

This is a photo I took of my daughter while we were at the beach this week. In preparation for the upcoming photo shoot I’ve been gauging the kids’ behavior in each environment. The ocean — beautiful, vast, humbling, soothing…yeah, the kids still hate it. The only way I was able to bribe them to sit on the beach with me was to bring boxes of salty snacks and juice boxes that a good mom wouldn’t buy. So I’m leaning toward park pictures now — I’d prefer not to end up with a photo essay entitled “The day we spent a ton of money hiring a professional photographer so we could have pictures of crying and whining and look more dysfunctional than usual”. I keep telling the kids that they’re going to be ostracized in California for not liking the beach.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine, who apparently spends quite a bit of time hanging out at a publishing company, recruited my kids to be photographed for a children’s book. My 4-year-old liked it. A lot. I’m worried she could easily be led down the Britney Spears path. My 2-year-old, on the other hand, frowned harder whenever they told her to smile. She is tending toward the opposite path. She has a real talent for chugging milk, so it’d be a serious loss to the college fraternity party scene if she ends up becoming a recluse.Posted by Picasa

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Parenting Uncategorized

Good cheap fun

October 16, 2007 – 5:22 PM

I have a headache. I have hip hop dance class tonight, so I’ll be even worse than usual (that’s sort of like saying “greater than infinity”). Instead of spending quality time with my kids like I’m supposed to after work, I’m letting them engage in some good cheap fun: playing with ice cubes! Yeah, it’s really fun at my house.
I think I got the headache from work. I don’t understand why we can’t have windows that open in office buildings. It’s like they’re trying to make it a germ incubator. I’m tempted to walk around the office with a mask and gloves now that flu season is starting — it couldn’t make me any more of a pariah than my recent spanking and biting incident (by the way, I have been avoiding walking by the IT department at all costs.

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Faux pas Uncategorized

X me

October 12, 2007 – 3:54 PM

So I finally started to play around with Facebook and installed this application called X Me. With this application you can do whatever to your Facebook friends — you can hug them, bite them, spank them, give them beer, etc. Let me start by saying that some of my Facebook friends are people who I haven’t even ever spoken to (like that guy Dan in IT). So I installed X Me, and decided as a joke to spank my husband. I also decide to wave to my brother-in-law’s girlfriend, and to give a hug to my friend Libby in China.

To my horror, I logged in the next day and saw that I apparently spanked Dan, the guy in IT who I don’t even know, I bit Gabriela, my brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s brother’s girlfriend (who accidentally invited me to be a friend on Facebook — we’ve never met), and as a dressing decided also to hug Gabriela, who again, I don’t know, but who will surely run away from me should the occasion ever arrive to meet in person.

I was so careful to select the appropriate people (I actually triple-checked) so there is something wrong with this application! I’m sure of it! This is not for my generation.

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Parenting Travel

Hip Hop + Disneyland = Bad Idea

October 11, 2007 – 9:58 PM

So I did end up taking a day off from blogging after my first hip hop class, because literally every part of my body hurt. It wasn’t the normal kind of exercise soreness — it was the type of soreness caused by extreme stress on muscles that have never before ever been used. I am not genetically predisposed to do hip hop. I probably don’t even have the muscles that are required to do it successfully. But my neck — after an hour of trying to alternate between snake-like and robot-like moves — was killing me the next day. Only, not right away.

You see, long ago, in a galaxy far away, before I had even made hip hop plans, I decided that the best time to take the kids to Disneyland would be 1) off-season, and 2) in the middle of the week. I mean, who can take their kids to Disneyland on a Wednesday in October? Apparently, millions of people. By the time I got there the lot was packed. And here is important Disney tip #1: do not bring a large double- jog stroller that does not fold up. Contrary to my assumption that a place like Disney would have wild accommodations for handicapped people and people with children (people handicapped by children?), the trams that take you from the parking lot to the theme park only have two rows that accommodate said passengers. So on the way in, I waited til 6 trams passed before I could get onto one that had space for me. On the way back, it was worse — it took me an hour to get on a tram because handicapped people had first priority — so every time I was at the front of the line, a handicapped person would appear and get ushered on. The “handicapped by children” people are screwed.

So I finally got to the theme park, at which point important Disney tip #2 kicks in: do not go to Disneyland after your first hip hop class because the stiffness will kick in at exactly 10 AM when Disneyland opens and you realize you have 12 hours ahead of you pushing 60 pounds of people around a giant theme park. I was feeling totally fine until 10 AM, when I suddenly became an octagenarian and groaned my way around the park.

As luck would have it, I then stumbled upon important Disney tip #3: check that there isn’t anything wrong with your stroller before leaving the parking lot. Yup, my stroller broke. I was 5 minutes into Fantasyland and I groaned my way down to the ground to assess the damage. Should I abandon the stroller and attempt to walk the kids around? Should I scream for help? After about 15 minutes of sheer determination I was miraculously able, with my hands as my only tools, repair the stroller. I will now fast-forward past all the whining, crying and saying that they have to pee after finally getting to the front of a long line, to the part where my girls met Ariel the Little Mermaid. My 2-year-old rightfully asked, “Why do you still have fins?” (She’s right — Ariel’s supposed to be a human now.) We also stood in line for over an hour to meet some other princesses, and they turned out to be the B-list (Belle, Pocahontas and Jasmine). Bummed out by this, my 2-year-old asked Jasmine where Cinderella was. I’m sure Jasmine was annoyed. I bet she hates those A-list princesses.

Anyway, add to that the traffic on the way back (add an extra hour on for that, actually) and I will summarize that I never want to do that again anytime soon.

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Health

How not to get really, really sick

October 7, 2007 – 9:07 AM

I’m not a doctor. I don’t even play one on TV. But I can’t afford to get really, really sick, because there are people to feed and drive around and jobs to do. In fact, somewhere along the way to parenthood it became illegal to be sick — if my husband is sick, rather than feeling sorry for him, I’m usually annoyed. So here’s my strategy for not getting really sick. It’s ok to be a little sick — that is, you’re still functional but have a slight cough or congestion — but the type that gets you laid up in bed hiding under the covers is pretty much unacceptable once you have kids.

  • As soon as you feel the tiniest inkling of getting sick, like an itchy throat or general malaise, or if you’ve been near sick people, take some Cold-Eeze. I’ve tried both Airborne and Cold-Eeze (I’m sure the generic zinc lozenges work just as well) and have had better success with the latter.
  • Keep taking it every 4-6 hours til the feeling subsides.
  • Sleep a lot. If I feel something coming on, I try to go to bed shortly after the kids do. When I used to travel a lot for a demanding job, I found that sleeping was the best way to prevent illness (as well as recover from it). I’m willing to bet this is actually the silver bullet when it comes to mitigating a cold.

I also pop multi-vitamins regularly if I feel like I’m fighting something. It’s been years since I’ve been so sick that I can’t do anything, so I think I’m on to something here. Give it a try — your family will thank you (or at the very least, they won’t resent you).

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Religion

Day of rest, day of perspective

September 30, 2007 – 10:04 AM

It’s Sunday, and I’m taking a day of rest. My kids have colds and I want to be sure that they’re well enough to go to school tomorrow (thus the trials and tribulations of the working mother without backup daycare). I like to think of Sundays as a day of stepping back, a day to reflect. Sundays for me are typically a church-going day, but I think that religion has given itself a bad name. In fact, I’m generally hesitant to talk about religion much these days, as a pre-emptive strike against confrontational conversations for which I don’t have the energy nowadays.

When we lived in Chicago we went to Fourth Presbyterian Church, led by Rev. John Buchanan. I think what Buchanan does best is that, on the day of rest, he provides perspective. And I think one important thing he does is provide perspective on religion — and the fact that we can all get so caught up in the technicalities of our own religions that we miss the big picture. Too often, our viewpoints stir up animosity, hatred and violence — the very things that religion was brought in to mitigate. From Buchanan:

Jesus taught about and revealed a God who is big enough: a God bigger than human religions, bigger than religious laws and traditions, bigger even than the most sophisticated and sublime descriptions and theologies and creeds. Jesus revealed a God who is so passionately for all people, a God whose love simply knows no boundaries, certainly not the boundaries religion itself has created…

So you and I who claim his name are invited to the great adventure of living in that love and extending that love into all the world, to all people, near and far; people like us and people who are radically different; other Christians with whom we may disagree on many issues, maybe all issues; other Christians, Jews, Muslims; people of other faiths and no faith—all of them, each of them a precious child of God, each loved and treasured forever by their creator.

You can read the rest of Rev. Buchanan’s message here. But I like that perspective. Given that there are so many theologans (even within Christianity) that spend their lifetimes reading and interpreting Scripture who can’t seem to agree, I find no reason to claim that what I believe is the be-all, end-all — in fact, I think that the concept of God is bigger than all of us, and we certainly don’t have enough data to be making any exclusionary assertions — and certainly no basis to go around killing other people with different beliefs.

I like this way of thinking. I wish more people would adopt it, and that by the time my kids are adults people will really be able, spiritually, to focus on what’s important, rather than use religion as a tool to dominate or antagonize others.

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Economic development is the answer

September 28, 2007 – 9:56 PM

I recently read a book that spurred me into action. It’s called Enrique’s Journey, and I’ve pasted in a synopsis below:

From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Soon to be turned into an HBO dramatic series, Nazario’s account of a 17-year-old boy’s harrowing attempt to find his mother in America won two Pulitzer Prizes when it first came out in the Los Angeles Times. Greatly expanded with fresh research, the story also makes a gripping book, one that viscerally conveys the experience of illegal immigration from Central America. Enrique’s mother, Lourdes, left him in Honduras when he was five years old because she could barely afford to feed him and his sister, much less send them to school. Her plan was to sneak into the United States for a few years, work hard, send and save money, then move back to Honduras to be with her children. But 12 years later, she was still living in the U.S. and wiring money home. That’s when Enrique became one of the thousands of children and teens who try to enter the U.S. illegally each year. Riding on the tops of freight trains through Mexico, these young migrants are preyed upon by gangsters and corrupt government officials. Many of them are mutilated by the journey; some go crazy. The breadth and depth of Nazario’s research into this phenomenon is astounding, and she has crafted her findings into a story that is at once moving and polemical. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb. 28) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

I live in Southern California, where approximately 80% of nannies and housekeepers are single mothers who had to leave their children behind in their home countries in order to support them. It’s hard enough leaving your kids behind when you go to work — can you imagine having to do it for years, never knowing for sure if you’ll ever see them again? Worse yet, knowing that they might embark on dangerous journeys in order to try to find you?

That’s why I support economic development. Hand-outs are simply not sustainable. There are ways that individuals like us can easily get involved — organizations like Kiva make it simple for you to lend $25 to an entrepreneur in a developing region to help lift them out of poverty (and the default rate is miniscule — these people really want to get out of poverty), so they don’t have to illegally immigrate in the first place. It’s startling to me that for the price of a t-shirt, I can really help someone change their life for the better.

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Parenting

How to stop thumb-sucking / pacifier / binky use

September 28, 2007 – 11:55 AM

TIP
My older daughter sucked her thumb, while my younger one used a binky. I was able to wean each of them from their respective habits within a day. Yep, you heard it — cold turkey, all at once, in a single day. While I make no claims that I caused no psychological damage, but I will say that I used the most effective tool available: The Truth. The conversations went something like this:

Me: If you keep sucking your thumb, you’re going to need braces. [using a tone of voice usually reserved for ghost stories] Do you know what braces are?
Kid: No [but looking a little afraid].
Me: They put metal wires in your mouth and glue brackets on your teeth and then pull it really tight with a wire and it’s really owie. Do you want to see what braces look like?
Kid: Yes…? [looking very anxious now]

I took them downstairs to the computer and using the ever-omniscient Google, I found this website. Check out Case #4 — it’s the most graphic [insert maniacal laugh]. I showed my kids these photos and they were 1) scared, because growing up in Southern California, they’ve never seen teeth this screwed up, and 2) they shrieked, “I don’t want to be like that!” and immediately gave up their habits.

There you have it. Tried and true.

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