Greenpiece

My son is a greedy fucker

2012-01-29T21:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, it's true: Zev Raphael Wasserman is greed personified. Avarice. Untrammeled consumer lust. Acquisitive madness. (Mad acquisitiveness?)

Brazen covetousness wrapped up in one reasonably cute, skidmarked 5-year-old package.

I know we're not supposed to call our kids "fucker," but if there is another word for those possessed by the psychopathic compulsion to annex every plastic doohicky west of Toys R Us, I don't know it. Sometimes it seems as if we can't go 90 seconds without a growly entreaty for yet another wall-eyed stuffie, automatic weapon or remote-controlled car.

I'll see you a Wii and raise you a jet, bitch

As his fifth birthday approaches, the demands have increased in frequency and scope, such that his most recent petition -- delivered at bedtime in a flurry of screams and flailing limbs -- called for delivery of a live snake. A snake! Motherfucker, I thought, visualizing the urn of wine I was going to drink as soon as the drugs took effect and his eyeballs rolled back, and I thought you had balls to ask for a vintage VW Bug last week.

Here's the weird part: We never say yes. Never. We aren't the kind of weak-willed parent-mats whose resolve crumbles like a Turkish rotunda in the face of a few (hundred) tears. No. We're strong. Consistent. And cheap. Did I say cheap? At times, watching his small face redden with a cocktail of rage and perceived deprivation, I am reminded of the shrill admonition delivered by the Take-Back-the-Night people in the 1980s: What part of "no" don't you understand?

Yet, somehow, we carry on. We enjoyed a moment of comic relief (AKA, revenge) tonight at Zev's expense when, impatient with our ineptitude at inserting the ball gag, our daughter called down from the upper bunk with great cheer, "Zev, you're just like Dudley!", inciting another round of wailing.

Yeah, reading Harry Potter has its bennies.

Rationally, I know he will outgrow this unsavory behavior. That we will socialize him toward a more holistic view of, um, material wealth and, you know, world domination.

But right now, he is Gordon Gekko in pull-ups.

Stop Crying in Your Philz, San Francisco

2012-01-24T13:27:00.000-08:00

Junior Niners fans eat honors students for merienda

I can't remember the last time I saw San Franciscans this disconsolate. Must have been when that cokehead guy realized he was too old to go to frat parties. Or maybe when we found out we were all going to die crazy.

It was a season to be proud of, for sure. But apparently some weren't ready to let the dreams of glory die a natural death. Some San Franciscans are rightly wondering, what now?

I'll tell you.

Everyone knows idle hands are the devil's tools. So get up off your sad-ass, you know, ass, and find a constructive way to channel your angst. Stay active. Think positive. Here are some ideas:

1. Pray for Kyle Williams. Dude could use a pep talk. Or maybe a security detail.

2. Be glad you aren't a Carolina Panthers fan. (What the fuck is Carolina, anyway? Do they suck so bad they have to share?)

3. Think about baseball. With global warming and all, it feels like it's just around the corner.

4. Go skiing. So what if a weekend in Tahoe will set you back $2000, require 16 hours of driving and net you three runs before you retire to the lodge with a $12 toddy and a strained groin? Afterwards, you can brag to all your East Coast friends that you could go surfing and skiing in the same day, you simply choose not to.

Hi. I'm an investment banker.

5. Get an emo haircut. Seriously. Where else can grown-ups get away with this shit?

6. Have another baby. Yep. Just pop that Clomid and break out the turkey baster. Think of it as your contribution to the next generation of Niners fans.

7. Join AA. Close your eyes when they start with the sobriety stuff and substitute "Niners fandom" for drinking. You doubt? Take this test and see how sick you really are.

8. Blog about knitting. Or hating knitting.

9. Open a restaurant. (Hell, it's easier than being a Carolina Panthers fan.)

10. Pass out plastic bags to dog owners (my version of community service).

Hopefully, these suggestions will help you during this dark time. Also, there is Bar Agricole.

Zumba made my calves explode

2012-01-09T21:26:00.000-08:00

Calf muscle explode? No problem: Put it in your bra!

There's really not much more to say about it. One minute I was innocently samba-ing my way to BMI goodness; the next I was trying not to puke as a knot of anguish writhed under my flesh like a rat in a tube sock.

Yes, my calf muscle exploded. Blew out. Snapped like a rubberband. Flipped me the ligamental bird, as it were.

Is there a Mr. Zumba lying on a chaise somewhere ordering $18 mai tais that I can sue?

But first, some background. There's this whole culture around gym classes. There are rules, unspoken rites, codes of honor.

Well...was.

Like the Freemasons and Scientologists before them, the Church of Gym Rats is going down - I'm busting it open right here, people, to tell you what's what. Here you go:

Even if you can't reserve a spot, certain people think they have reserved your spot.
The aforementioned people are likely to have on one of the following: fake bake, g-string, unitard.
The front row is ruled by jobless yoginis, anas and old Chinese ladies.
People with flat stomachs never wear shirts. If they wear a shirt, we all die.
Moms are stronger than childfree people. Some moms -- I call them Hans 'n Moms -- treat every gym class like childbirth, pushing out another plank or deadlift until someone has to gently but forcibly take them to OB triage.
Men with skinny calves cannot stop looking at their skinny calves.

Anyway, there are other rules, but that's a start.

Why, you ask, is this germane to the excruciating agony I suffered at the hand of a perky young instructor and a Colombian ball of queso named Beto?

It's about dignity, man. Dignity. It's also about the evil that lurks among us, disguised as a dance class.

Yeah, you dated me in high school, bitches.

I don't Zumba very often. I mean, I used to, but like free time and waistlines, it sort of disappeared from the landscape in my early 40s. Which isn't to say I sit on my ass. I'm fighting the good fight, man. I run. I lift. I chase my kids around like all the supermodels say they do. Sometimes I just like to mix it up a little. Get crazy. Shake my booty. Kick someone in a unitard. Or I did today.

Bad portents were everyfuckinwhere. Should have heeded them.

First, there was the crowd. Might have been tween girls waiting for Bieber or soccer moms hoping for a glimpse of Robert Pattinson, so hormonal-nutty-crazy was the energy outside the door. By the time I jostled my way to the front line -- yes, my balls are that big -- I had sustained three abrasions, a broken tooth and a subdural hematoma. Ferrealz.

I was just about to begin the expansive deep breathing required to enlarge oneself enough to deflect interlopers from one's workout space when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

Uh, oh -- ancient Chinese lady at 2 o'clock.

"You can be here. This her spot!" Old Chinese Lady pointed at Old Chinese Lady #2, whose yoga mat was apparently standing in for her as understudy in Double Happy Best Spot.

"It's a free country," Impertinent 43YO JAP Trained by Pushy Old Jewish Grandma said. "It's not like there's anywhere else to stand!" I tried to hide my flush of guilt at fighting with old ladies by doing a quick, rude crotch stretch in her face. "You don't own it!" I blustered, hoping they wouldn't smell my weakness and fall on me like sharks on chum.

Thankfully, Half Naked Incredibly Hot Blissfully Fatfree Instructor Person turned the music on, and my demise was averted by an onslaught of Bhangra music. Gratitude pulsed through my logy veins, inspiring me to execute an odd, Hindi-ish pirouette, complete with air and fluttering hand gestures.

Dude, you may be 43 and size 10 -- I mean 8, EIGHT -- on a good day, but you fuckin' OWN THIS PLACE.

(Yeah, I actually thought that.)

One wild spurt of overconfidence led to another, and before I knew it I was leaping around to someone called Nayer feat Pitbull, Mueva-ing La Booty and acting like I was auditioning for So You Think You Can Adzohu, White Girl.

Bad portent indeed.

And then it happened.

I swear, I heard it before I felt it. Like jetplanes breaking the sound barrier, the sound of my poor, overtaxed calf muscle snapping left pain behind for a second. Flying above the music, it alerted me to the menace a second too late for succor. I froze, mid-gancho, fell to earth with fallen-angel grace and curled into a ball to await death.

Old Chinese Lady #1 stepped on me.

Grimacing, I thought, DIGNITY. Summoning every ounce of willpower from the only part of my body that didn't hurt -- my pancreas -- I hopped gamely from the room, pausing to check my phone for messages. (Nice detail. I find that pretending one is a doctor on call works well in these situations.)

Somehow, I managed to get to my car and drive home before I surveyed the damage. A bloody-looking hematoma from within marred my left calf. Propping myself on a bed of ice, I proceeded to pound ibuprofin and surf the Web, trying to find class-action lawsuits against evil Zumba practitioners.

Alas, the world is still in denial. Still, I hope. Like smoking and jeggings, Zumba will surely soon be discredited. Surely, surely, the world will see the Z for what it is: a way for people with awesome abs to show off.

Bite me, SFUSD

2011-12-24T10:01:00.000-08:00

Being an educated, middle-class, white, English-speaking public school parent in San Francisco is like being rolfed daily by a really smug Guatemalan evangelical preacher with iffy breath who secretly drives a BMW.

Recently, after years of "research" and "parent input," SFUSD introduced a middle school feeder plan whereby elementary schools automatically feed into a designated MS. As with all plans introduced in this town, an uproar ensued, falling out largely upon ethnic and geographic lines. Hair was pulled, accusations leveled, parochial options threatened...(whoever thinks SF's ethnically diverse culinary excellence comes without a price has their head in a bowl of pho). I took a wait-and-see approach with regard to that plan. Then, this week, someone told me that the district's response to parent anger over the gross inequity in MS program offerings -- some schools offer honors classes and advanced "tracks" for qualified students while some categorically reject "tracking" as a racisttoolofsocialinjustice -- was a proposal to eliminate ALL honors classes from ALL middle schools. You know, even things up a bit. Stop the whining. Create equity. Sure, it's a lower equity, but it's equity, dammit -- and you know how we over at 555 Franklin love us some EQUITY.

Gee, SFUSD, and you wonder why some parents spit in the road when your acronym is invoked?

But before I begin my rant at the asstarts whose aim is to dumb down the curriculum and offerings to make everyone look better, can I just say where in Christ's stick have you been while the conversation about America's descent into ignorance has been going on?

So...my experience as an SFUSD parent has taught me several things. Here are some of them:

There are lots of great teachers in SFUSD. There are even some brilliant ones. Certainly many hardworking ones. There are also a few lazy martyrs with poorly developed senses of humor. In other words, it's like every other bloated bureaucracy.
Principals, administrators and superintendents are sometimes sucky because they have been promoted away from contact with actual human beings, often deliberately.
Most kids with normative behavior, intelligence and socialization will thrive in most SFUSD elementary settings.
All SFUSD cares about is closing the achievement gap. Repeat: The only thing SFUSD cares about is closing the achievement gap. If a giant tsunami engulfed SF tomorrow, the district heads would be riding the whitecaps in a panic, blathering about the achievement gap while saltwater filled the lungs of millions.
SFUSD views caring about the achievement gap as a zero-sum occupation (i.e., if you care about the achievement gap, you can't care about anything else; it's mutually exclusive). SFUSD also believes the reverse is true: if you care about anything else, you can't possibly care about the achievement gap. Ergo, you are a rich racist pig.
Wanting art, music and physical movement to be part of kids' days is a WPP*. In fact, anything that concerns anything other than closing the achievement gap is a WPP.
If you desire academic rigor as an option for your child or any child, you are an elitist. If you are an elitist, you don't care about the achievement gap. Therefore you are a rich racist pig.
If you are white, English-speaking, educated, middle-class or employed, you are a rich racist pig who only cares about your own precious snowflake. Also, the fact that you live in a shitty rental apartment, work at a public-interest nonprofit and drive a 14-year-old dented Corolla is irrelevant; you are still a rich racist pig.
If your kid is white, English-speaking, or parented by educated, middle-class or employed people, she will be "just fine." She will be "just fine" even if she, say, gets her limbs torn off by pit bulls or scorches her retinas during an eclipse, forcing her to consume her educational opportunities blind and writhing in agony.
A while ago, Chinese people sued SFUSD for essentially putting quotas on their kids (vis-a-vis the top schools and being locked out of various schools) and won. So now race isn't used as an enrollment factor, but it remains an obsession at SFUSD, where policy makers seem to believe that some magical demographic "diversity" balance will make illiterate, impoverished, unstable people give two shits about their offspring's education.

*White People's Problem

The elimination of honors proposal should be assessed in this context. The context is that nothing our well-intentioned but grossly underfunded district has tried has closed the achievement gap between AA/L students and A/W students. So why not try something new? Why not try getting rid of that nasty honors stuff -- it makes some kids feel bad about themselves, you know? Kids who already have so many problems. Plus, it's racist. And a violation of social justice. And inequitable. Did we mention equity? And racism? Besides, everyone knows GATE-identified and honors-capable kids will be just fine.

This makes me really mad. Categorically lowering the bar across the board makes me really mad. Calling smart kids and parents elitists because they are smart and work hard makes me madder. Also: Acting like every student accomplishment can be attributed to socioeconomic entitlement and every lack of accomplishment to socioeconomic disadvantage makes me really fucking torqued. Pretending teachers can effectively differentiate instruction in classrooms where some seventh graders can't even read makes me really fucking mad. My Grandma Syl would roll over in her grave, yell meshugenah! and kick somebody's ass if she heard this nonsense (even with a fifth-grade education she knew a cop-out when she saw it).

I'm not saying the problems my immigrant forebears faced were the same as the ones facing disenfranchised kids now. Surely some of them were. Others? Maybe not. But comparing them is a silly game with no winner (plus, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool SF lefty, and according to the San Francisco Values Bylaws, we're not allowed to play that game anyway). No. I'm saying it is disingenuous as shit to pretend that culture, habits, behavior, individual agency and parental accountability have no place in this discussion. Because here's the thing: Regardless of the evil forces at work in kids' worlds today, without a belief in individual agency, kids will not be able to summon the will to succeed--or even try to succeed.

And we will never, and I mean NEVER, gnaw away at the achievement gap without acknowledging the roles these forces play in student performance.

Instead, we will tread water, spouting off identity politics drivel while generations of students fail to learn enough to be fully functional beings in democratic society. And so I say, carry on, social justice zealot morons, carry on! Go ahead, lower the bar...and wait for me. Because I am coming down to 555 to bury myself like a tick in your haunches (along with about 10,000 Chinese mamas and papas). Just in case it grants me more credibility vis-a-vis the wholesomeness and universality of my intentions, know that my third-grader hasn't even been GATE-identified yet. Although she is smart as can be, she may never be. In fact, she did not even score "advanced" on the language arts portion of the STAR test last year. So fuck you and your hidden BMW, SFUSD!

Yesterday while I was running, I did some more woolgathering on these and other issues facing public education. If these thoughts appear less than substantive, keep in mind that it was a really short run.

On the role of social justice in education policy: So, let me get this straight. You're public schools in California, with no money because the regressive property tax structure enacted by greedy conservatives, corporate interests and their fearful retired cronies has bankrupted us, and you're trying to take on multigenerational poverty, immigration reform and institutionalized racism in addition to teaching the three Rs? Godspeed, bitches.

On homework: Uh...shut up and fuckin' do it?

On testing: Less would be good. More relevant would be good. More actionable would be good. None would be idiotic.

On the achievement gap: Lots of our Cantonese students are poor, yet they do great.** Whatever they're doing, do that.

**The suicide rate among kids raised by Tiger Moms is outside the scope of this rant.

On discipline: Love discipline. Discipline is the shit. What could we possibly get done without discipline? Realizing a calling without discipline? Pshaw! What? Discipline's a dirty word? We're not allowed to say "discipline"? Surely you...your play-based, attachment parenting-infused preschool didn't approve of teaching discipline? Oh, I see...but how do kids learn to finish anything...oh, you have to go nurse your eleven-year-old? Oh, okay...well, catch ya at the Waldorf parade.

On the elimination of honors: If your goal is to drive every smart kid in San Francisco into private schools by sixth grade, congrats, you have achieved your objective.

Rant done.

p.s. I realize this rant will be taken by some as a rationale for evading public education. In fact, the opposite is true; we-the-people have never needed your participation more. Like Warren Buffett, I continue to believe that public education is it--the one true path, the foundation of democratic society, our sole hope for a future, the place the money should flow. So call me what you will, but please send your kid to public school like a good little American. The end.

Feliz Retrograde Christmaka 2011: The Annual Wassergreen Family Holiday Newsletter

2011-12-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

Yes, Gabe and I had another baby. Isn't it amazing?! Feliz Retrograde Christmaka. That's what we named him. It's an expression of our passion for social justice and our Christ-centered Jewish-Latin-astrological heritage.

Psych! Gawd. Morons. How could we have a goddamn baby? Gabe had a vasectomy and I'm almost 43 and have only one fallopian tube left. And even if we did, everyone knows we would name him Jezebel Lionheart Kombucha Aquaverde. Obviously.

So...I'll just say it: Christ-worshippers, you win. I don't know who your marketing guy is, but he's fucking awesome. We Jews can argue the eight-nights thing till we're blue in the face -- blue and white, as the case may be -- and no kid with an average allotment of intelligence and avarice will buy it. Gutter swill, mine said as they ravaged all 31 days of their advent calendar in one chocolate-smeared afternoon, those churchy types have it goin' on. See how their shit is everywhere? Christmas gets a full 12 aisles at Target, for example, while Hanukkah is squeezed into a corner near the lawnmowers. Kwanzaa has apparently fucked off back to the remaining dashiki-diapered Black Panthers' bedpan-sides from whence it came. Ain't no Kwanzaa happening at Target anymore, folks. Nope.

Luckily, I'm one of those Chosen People who loves Christmas. Love. It. Love the fir trees, mulled wine, drunk Santas, lecherous Santas, pedophiliac Santas, glistening hams, in-your-fat-face sales, elves, aggressive craft-making, SPCA puppies, tree lightings, creepy German carols, creepy reindeer sweaters, creepy nativity lawn displays and KOIT's creepy 31-day Christmas songfest. I love it all. In fact, I love everything but Christ himself (who, in the velvet paintings, at least, resembles every nebbishy cross-dressing cinematic murderer ever to steal one's hide and turn it into a housedress).

It is that love that propels me through this year's Wassergreen Family Holiday Newsletter. Knowing that our kids are cuter, smarter, better behaved, better eaters and more mature illustrators than yours comes from a deeply loving Christianish place for me. Truly, it does. So it is in that (Christ-infused) spirit that I pen my yearly missive, wondering if your family has also spent more than those idiots at Visa say is allowed.

Got blood?

L. is eight. She still has to be surgically separated from her dirty underwear on occasion, but the Christ-dampened child psychologist-slash-wipe-whisperer we consult cites several studies that show poor personal hygiene is linked to genius. That genius is readily apparent in many facets of her self-expression. Her gardening, for instance, has really taken off, and if the 325 planter's pots littering our deck are any indication, she has a fine future as a marijuana grower ahead of her (should she ever stop messing around with profit buzzkills like rosemary and heirloom carrots). Best of all, she no longer scratches Kim's face when Kim suggests she utilize her fluent Spanish to commune with our brown-skinned brothers and sisters. If anyone out there has stock in the Inspector Gadget franchise, you are in luck: our offspring watched a combined 12,256 hours of it in 2011! Ever since that article came out validating links between IG viewing and reduced likelihood of developing tedious, restaurant unfriendly food intolerances, we have allowed them full rein. Finally, L's taiko practice has also deepened perceptibly, as she has finally topped the lid of the drum and no longer finds it necessary to beat the instructor's knees in frustration.

If you won't let me touch yours, I'll make my own, TYVM

Z-man is four and three-quarters as this hallowed season blankets us in tinselly goodness. He whetted his appetite for masculine self-expression this year by exploring BMX, skateboarding, karate, hitting his sister hard and often, and masturbation. We think he's adorbs! His teachers constantly tell us how amenable, smart, talented and well-behaved he is, which means he is either amenable, smart, talented and well-behaved or the kind of sociopath who can pretty much write his ticket. Although Z's reading attempts flatlined a bit -- we attribute that to his mastery of other developmental milestones, like stealing chocolate, injuring himself doing stupid shit and sobbing brokenly for two hours when certain privileges are taken away -- his quirky genius manifests in all sorts of ways (few of them Christ-distilled, but we're working on that). His detailed automobile drawings, for example, are notable, as is his commitment to wearing sweats at all times. In fact, his zealous pursuit of that elusive, seamless, skin-friendly life experience we Wassergreens call Soft Pants has led him on all sorts of adventures! Kim shook her head in awe when she found him hanging from the stacked clothes dryer door, and admired his pioneering spirit yet again when she found him cutting all his jeans in half with a butcher knife. What a man!

Gabe: skinny and lovin' it

Those of you who track such things will be relieved to know that Gabe has finally recovered from the vasectomy (and, more importantly, stopped whining about that whole latex-suture-allergy-elephantiasis-of-the-testicles thing). Sadly, the decampment of Gabe's circus partner for Texas -- who goes to massage school in Texas? I mean, really? -- has left him scouting for fresh circus ass. The deep wellspring of Christ-erific trust between them allows Kim to give her sperminator free rein as he trolls the ranks for acrobatically inclined people to grab, and to grab him in return. In the meantime, Gabe has successfully channeled his midlife angst into surfing, talking about surfing, bragging about surfing, buying surboard car racks, shopping for surfboards and making friends with other people who surf and talk about surfing, some of whom look almost as good as Gabe in their sinfully tight wetsuits. Gabe claims to really like his (newish) job, which Kim interprets as evidence that many of his female coworkers are hot. Kim is confident that Gabe is far too focused on surfing and talking about surfing to actually do anything about his extramarital fantasies, though his devotion to the Wednesday morning in-office yoga class does give her pause.

If you squint, doesn't Kim look like Claire Forlani?

Kim has managed to achieve the impossible: another year of toil without a book deal! Thankfully, her commitment to Christ, running, growing out her hair, poodling, trips to Scottsdale with her girlfriends, cheese and the 2011 Beaujolais have pulled her through these tough times. After a fifth round of revisions on her book--whose title and subject she is trying to recover with the help of a Christ-dipped repressed-memory syndrome specialist--Kim initiated a new project with the full support of her literary agent's lackey, who is surprisingly smart, nice and enthusiastic for someone who has earned no bank from Kim's efforts and is not Christ-centered. Hopefully, the stars will align and that new project will pay off big-time, so that Kim can pay for the intense pulsed light treatments she so desperately needs. Kim spent much of 2011 working on cussword reduction (with a thumbs up from -- you guessed it! -- HisLordJesusKeeRist). On at least two occasions, she successfully morphed the word "jackass" into "jackal," to the relief of Her Lord and Personal Slaver. (Fuck! Meant "Savior." Pls. excuse.)

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out

One piece of news not exactly sanctioned by Christ but clearly the work of somebody's God is the recent exodus of our cat Flower. Yes, our yearlong campaign to encourage Flower's relocation finally paid off. After locking the incorrigible pisher outside for the 235th day, he finally got the hint and found another family to torture. He returns for occasional visits, often with a collar, primed to urinate on anything important he can reach with his tiny penis. His brother Louis does not miss him, and the copious vomiting incited by Flower's abuse has all but disappeared.

Well. It really was a great year, wasn't it? I love Christmas. I love Hanukkah. I love cheese. And Christ...Christ, do I love cheese. Happy holidays,

Love,
The Wassergreens

An Open Letter to Gifters

2011-11-30T13:57:00.000-08:00

No, not grifters. You'll get your own letter, and you'll get it when I frickin' feel like it.

Now that the holiday season is upon us, it behooves me to clarify the Wassergreens' wishes and priorities vis-a-vis the gift-giving process. Crass, you say? Well, you've obviously never been the recipient of an electronic "learning" tool for children that attaches to their poor parents' refrigerator, an execrable device that delivers its wisdom in not one, but two singsongy languages, and whose batteries must be filled with jogging mice on treadmills, for they never, ever die. If you had been, you wouldn't be questioning this parent's desire to inject some authority over the experience otherwise known as Generous Yet Misguided People Including Doting Grandparents Who Give Your Offspring Shit You Hate With a Passion Rivaled Only by Your Feelings for Postal Clerks.

It's not that I don't appreciate what the gifts represent--the generosity, the bank, the forethought, the number of times they had to click that button on Amazon to make the magic happen. I do. But I've hit the wall. I've hit the wall on tschotchkes and electronics. On proselytistic picture books and weird, pain-inflicting doodads. On Waldorf-approved wooden cat-ass-rapers and miniature lead-soaked fur kittens from Chinatown whose heads fall off before you've digested your pork bun. To the genius who got my then 3-year-old son a 500-piece BPA-ridden warship complete with ant-sized machine guns: I don't care if you're a nice lady and you birthed me. Fuck off and read a best-toys list that isn't written by a toy manufacturer or retailer. Thank you.

In the interest of sparing both givers and takers needless anguish this holiday season, I've put together a list of gifting do's and don'ts that I believe will simplify the process enormously (as well as saving our cats another trip to the vet to get their assholes sewed up). As follows:

Don't get anything with batteries.
Don't get anything known to contain substances that give boys tits.
Be wary of toys described as "learning," "education" and "teaching" devices. They are often boring and expensive. Also, they are always discredited within three years of their release, at which point parents are informed that the very plaything that was supposed to make their kids smarter was actually slowly instilling in them an uncontrollable desire to set fire to squirrels.
Don't get anything with more than 3 pieces.
Don't get anything that can be wrapped in pieces of toilet paper, worshiped paganistically or hoarded in a child's bed.
Don't get food.
Don't get guns unless you also provide targets (then it's okay).
Get two of everything (unless you want Christmaka morning to include getting hair plugs for the kid who lost a chunk to the jealous party). Come to think of it, get a gift certificate for hair plugs.
Get gift certificates to places that sell things grown-ups like.
Don't get books that aim to teach kids things about high-falutin' ethical questions, religion, spirituality or politics. Unless those issues are somehow elucidated using guns, fairies, cars, jets or Inspector Gadget.
Don't get us European videos that require us to change our DVD computer zone. If you do, please provide a bag to gather Kim's brains, because her head's gonna explode.
Don't buy classes or experiences located in Bay Area suburbs that require Gabe to navigate track housing, strip malls or cloverleaf onramps. Our offspring's father may sound American, but he drives like he just stepped out of a Truffaut film.

So, what do you get for the middle-class kid who has almost everything? Easy. New parents.

Happy holidays.

Wassergreen Thanksgiving 2011: You're Invited

2011-11-20T21:05:00.000-08:00

Dearest family, friends, neighbors and hoarders (and you know who you are),

Welcome to Wassergreen Thanksgiving 2011. We're glad you're joining us at this hallowed event. Things are getting exciting over here at the WG homestead and preparations are well underway: turkeys are ordered, menus are planned, seating is procured and extra toilet paper is stocked. We are ready for anything!

I'd like to introduce you to your fellow guests in advance. I think you will be excited by the wealth of experience, knowledge, humor, gluttony and nudist tendencies represented at our modest table.

Kim and Gabe: Your host/ess. Gabe will fret over the bird. Kim will abandon ship early and sneak into the bathroom with a romance novel and a bottle of Baileys.
Shelley and Steve Green: Kim's folks. Shellbells will likely bring her dish in a large hand-carved pumpkin urn. Do not be afraid. The urn cannot hurt you. Repeat: no one has yet drowned in the urn. The presence of Steve-o (AKA, the Grampoline) is strongly correlated with childhood nosebleeds, but since we have two medical professionals among the guests, I'm not worried.
BJ Green and Jill Culbert: Kim's brother and the patient attorney (not to be confused with patent attorney) who puts up with his shit. BJ just had knee surgery for some sort of freakish injury that is supposed to afflict teenagers, so he is likely to be even more useless than usual. Jill makes amazing appetizers but you won't get any because the bitch is flying in on Thanksgiving Day.
Angie Gibrat: Gabe's mom. Angie is the most amazing person. Her claim to fame? Woman can eat her weight. Just watch. It's downright freakish. Also, she is rumored to shop for undergarments in the children's department, but--truth!--people like her anyway.
David and Lea Schermerhorn: Hippie friends of Gabe's folks from the 60s. Oh! Did I say that out loud?!? David and Lea bring many wonderful qualities to our Thinksgiving table, including the ability to make the best goddamn martinis ever, a network of top-secret A-list contacts all over town and the balls to come to our wedding on a Harley in leather chaps.
Richard Green, AKA Uncle Dick, AKA Daniel, AKA the CPA You Need if You Don't Like the US Govt Taking Your Money: Kim's uncle, just in from somewhere exotic down south and Cuba by way of the Yucatan (or was it Guatemala? Should be a good story.) Friendly word of warning about my unk: he is prone to returning to a room lacking clothing entirely. Could be a simple quirk, a cry for help or just an Ashkenazi genetic mutation. Science is mystified; those of us who knew my Grandma Syl aren't.
Ellen Opie and Nicole Lederman: These ladies, school parent-friends, are too smart for their own good. Thankfully, they also drink and eat a lot and talk out of school. If you stroke out during the meal, I'm pretty sure they can save you (Ellen can also diagnose venereal diseases with the best of 'em, but we'll wait till after dessert for that).
Lena and Bea Opie-Lederman: What to say about Lucca's identical twin besties? Goddamn prodigies, that's what. It's probably good that they were not born into a Texas cheerleading family or they would have incited violence.
Lucca and Zev Wasserman: If kids came with package warnings, theirs would read: (Lucca) In case of accidental chocolate overdose, do not give chocolate. (Zev) Withholding of soft pants may cause psychosis.

And to those who have foolishly elected to spend Thanksgiving with other people...
Dana: I cc'd you just for fun since you had the balls to abandon us for that passel of teutonic midwesterners (whatever...I guess there will be lots of leftovers for the Bundesliga). Susan: As a Green holiday head-butt survivor, you have earned the right of first refusal on all Wassergreen holidays. Just say the word and I'll just uninvite one of the people above.

Very hungrily yours,
Kim

Baby names I have puked up

2011-08-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

I am on deadline for two different clients. Naturally, instead of working, I dug around in my old computer files and discovered a putrid treasure: my baby name list circa 2003-2007. Some of these names are so self-consciously pretentious, I can only wonder if I was suffering some sort of pregnancy-induced derangement that made me think I was half of Brangelina or Victoria Beckham (er, twice as much as Vicky).

When it comes time to christen the offspring, perhaps you would like to borrow one of these gems (annotated for your reading pleasure)?

adlai
alessandro (sandro)
alexei/alexie/alexy/alexi
Alyosha
Andre
Andreas
Apollo (WTF????)
ari
ariel
Asher (Ash)
Boaz
Caique (WTF????)
Costa (if you want a son who's an old greek man, yeah)
Cruz (fucking beckhams stole it)
Danté
Danya
Dax (romance novel hero?)
diego (carlos the jackal's friend?)
dominic (dom)
doran (doran doran?)
dov (good israeli name. your teutonic husband won't approve)
emil(e)
esai (fer reals, 'cause every good jewish boy should be named esai)
Ethan (every jewish boy in the 1970s who wasn't named seth or jared)
Finn (trendy)
Flynn (ditto)
Fox (sweeeeet...mulder)
gael (garcia bernal....ahhhhhh)
gilad/gilead (omfg)
Graeme (welsh spelling. of course)
Grisha (fake slavic wtf?)
jax (holy crap...daniels?)
jay
joaquin (joaquin wasserman? fuck.)
Josh (so old school it's cool again?)
jude
Kai ("we conceived in kaui'i, natch")
kees (dutch name -- proncounced "case"...as in "just in kees")
liat (hmm...thought this was israeli girls name)
liev (the bigger version of levi?)
lior (I have light...fucking great name)
Loic (old fashioned french name...sto-eek?)
Madoc/Maddoc (madeline l'engle series)
marcello (actually called fetus this jokingly until everyone thought was our name...then, er, put it on list)
Marco
Matteo (who isn't matteo. seen a preschool log lately?)
max (done and baked)
meade (very stone henge)
micah (solid. the bible says so)
milo (like, but kinda done)
Mischa (love, but americans will think poofter)
Mischka (er...)
niall (pronounced neal - gaelic sp...pretentious)
Nico (the godfather)
Nikita (la femme)
Nino (old italian man)
noah (old school...add to list of 70s jewboy names seth, jared, ethan)
noam (the new jew)
o'neill (holy crap...irish pride names for non-irish?)
Pablo (escobar!)
paolo
pascal
paz (did brangelina steal this too?)
quinn (exciting, yet trendy)
raphael (gabe wants rafe...very international arms dealer with giant chai)
Raul/Raoul (at least latin americans can pronounce it)
Remy (gabe insists nobody french is actually named this. mystified.)
Roan (neigh!)
Ronan (like. thought would be trendy but not yet)
Rory/ruari (cute)
sascha
Sebastian
Shea
Shiloh (brangelina - thieves)
simcha
Tai
Teo
Tova/Tovya
Vadim (roger?)
Val
Van (this boy WILL get laid)
Vaughn (yummy)
Wolf (blitz me)
yannick or yannic (because there's nothing like naming your kid after a dreadlocked 70s tennis icon)
Zac/Zak (???)
zang (???)
zev (we know who got this one)

Buy me some peanuts and crack, please

2011-08-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

Ah, the joys of hitting a ballgame to enjoy our hometown World Series champs.

At night.
On a weekday.
With kids.
Via Muni.
Accompanied by the original Steve-o.
And every sack of rotting fish in America.

Yes, an adventure it was. Memories piled up, as fast and furious as the stream of expletives from our bleacher-seat compadres, as we watched the Pirates pillage and plunder the Giants (no sign of Captain Jack Sparrow, though we did spot ten naked people, a grown man in a Mexican wrestler mask and a Silicon Valley CEO we used to know making out with a bimbo on the Kissy Cam).

First off, I should say I approached this game as an experiment in saying "yes" to the kids instead of my usual response to their pleas for consumer "experiences" (er, "no"). My pre-emptive capitulation must have shined off me like a beacon, because by the time we departed for downtown, my offspring had reached a fevered pitch of avarice that began with Nicholson-tinged demands for cotton candy and ended with Darth Vader-esque utterances on the pleasures of $100 jerseys, $20 panda hats and $8 hot chocolate. Fuck you and your 40K tax return, Mom -- we'll have this stadium and eat it, too!

I was briefly cheered to see our neighbor Marilyn Ferrucci on Muni. Marilyn is in her late 70s, has season tickets, gout, a walker and a collection of Swedish Giants fan trolls so powerful, they glare at you if you dare stroll between them and their view of left field. Marilyn is awesome.

The Trip Planner told me to take the J to the 30 Stockton line to spare us the endless wait for the T line to the ballpark. It all sounded so sensible at the time. What Mr. Google doesn't know is that every Chinese granny from here to Canton has just shopped for fish, lugged a 20-lb sack of gutted carp onto the bus and merrily decamped for the Avenues, leaving behind briny, viscous puddles that prompted the same immediate response from every poor wretch who had the misfortune to board: What the holy fuck is that smell?!?!

We managed to get to the ballpark without puking. Zev said he was hungry, oh, 543 times or so. Lulu dropped her bracelet in the fish pond. I stuffed my muffin top back in my mom jeans and fantasized about hot dads and Irish coffee.

Lo and behold, Gabe and my pop (the inimitable worker's comp attorney and youth soccer coach Steve-o) were waiting for us under the palms in Willie Mays Plaza. Somebody had finally taken hedge-clippers to Steve-o Wolverine-style, midlife-crisis pompadour, resulting in an unfortunate fade + mullet that only looks good on teen rappers with gold teeth or actors on "The Wire." Gabe looked handsome and rested, which made me think he was either on drugs or having an affair with a coworker. Hmm.

I immediately relinquished the children's sweaty hands and checked Facebook.

Steve-o brought his "special" seats. Why invest in new travel seat technology when you have vintage plastic foam seat pads advertising nefarious apartheid-era multinational banking giants? So what if they're full of moldy water, which has emerged from said pads like a nervous vole seeking freedom, bowing to the pressure of our fat asses and created a river running down all of row 21 of section 136, soaking (and freezing) the butts of all who dared rest their poor unsuspecting asses there? Are you a real fan or a wuss?

The cigarette-cured, sun-baked tribe from Antioch was a breath of fresh, gin-soaked air, swept in from the far reaches of the East Bay like a lost tribe who still remembered how to smoke, make racist, sexist remarks and sneak food into overpriced public spaces (I did notice they were City enough to sneak in sushi, though it was from Safeway). They hollered and grumbled. They scratched their asses and traded tips on not pissing off the ex to the point where stabbing-by-bottle-opener was imminent. They patiently explained to us citified dumbfucks why they hid their faces every time Aubrey Huff (Aww, Be In the Buff) was up to bat (because they were season ticket holders and clearly were under some sort of batting curse that had affected ABITB's swing). I gave them a pass when they screamed "cocksucker!" and "motherfucker!" in the kids' ears because they were recovering from a (failed) stab at Jenny Craig. I especially appreciated that they told me about the secret underground bunker women's bathroom, though I suspect they were more concerned about my beer intake and possible bladder failure that might result in me impeding their view.

Lulu was mad at me from the 7th inning stretch till the end of the game, because I had the gall to tease her during the Kissing Cam, suggesting she might stand a better chance of, as she had gushed, "getting on TV" if she kissed the little blond boy in front of us in advance of appearing on-screen. Observing the kidlets' twin moues of horror and disgust, tears, quivering lips, and mitts raised to shield tender gazes, I could almost forgive everyone around us, who glared at me as if I had suggested they fornicate with donkeys. Stupid fuckers -- I planned to save that gem for the bottom of the 9th as a last-ditch meltdown-averter.

Our Gigantes stunk up the place. I mean, Christ, Vogelsong, pitch much? Still, I was happy to be an American last night and proud to be a San Franciscan. I love baseball and its proximity to beer. My kids are junior Darth Vaders and my husband has not gone to fat. My dad's a hoot and thinks nothing of watching the game from a slide in a giant Coke bottle. It's all good. The end.

Reunited and it feels so...goodish.

2011-07-26T20:11:00.000-07:00

It is done. I have survived the 25th high school reunion.

Where to begin?

First, a learning: There is nothing 25 years can't fix, but there is also nothing it can't fuck up. From what I saw, things tended to fall out on the side of karma and balance, with a few oddities -- both man-made and natural -- thrown in for cosmic joke value. I found that, even accounting for various horrors, there is a certain humility to these things, as in ain't it great just to be alive?

There was a lot to soothe the soul, the eyes, the nostalgic voice inside me whispering he asked you to dance once, and you kept the Polo-soaked shirt in a Ziploc bag for a year, sniffing it occasionally. There was also a lot of poetic justice, reasons not to take up smoking and banality, but there you go.

Tactically, my instinct to preempt humiliation by non-recognition paid off: I introduced myself to everyone in sight, up to and including the 18-year-old busboy who was not yet born when I matriculated. I recommend doing this early and often. Why? For one, when dealing with a FPP (Formerly Popular Person), it could be interpreted as meaning I don't expect someone of your lofty stature to remember humble, Jewfro'd me. However, it could also mean I can't tell you from the butt end of a roast, but I'm too polite to say so, so remind me who the hell you are again. It's an awesome tool for displaying your newfound (read = a quarter century in the making) confidence. It worked great for me last weekend, along with false modesty about being a published novelist and undergarments tight enough to disembowel a cow. I recommend it highly.

Name tags were problematic. What if someone remembers you but you're forced to do the eye drop tango with their boobicles (or, all too frequently, moobs)? No cure for that one, though I would suggest affixing your own tag to whatever part of your person is least objectionable, because people will be staring at it. A lot. Bearers of fake racks, be warned: A careless stick-pin insertion could ruin your triumphant return to perkiness. Show caution.

Some other trends worth noting: High school reunions are indeed a hotbed of hook-ups. Several former classmates were clearly single (or not) and on the prowl for either a night of hometown mattress dancing or a replacement mate. For an FDP (Formerly Dateless Person) like myself, there is nothing quite like an FPP taking you seriously and accepting your tongue-in-cheek offer of dating advice and a beautifying chest wax. It just touches a girl somehow. Right here, near the heart...well, move over just a bit, there. Awesome. Thanks.

The hook-up highlight of the night was a toss-up between the jovial (and largely unchanged) gentleman who happily invited anyone with tits to join him for a night of Ecstasy-enhanced passion in his Datsun 280z (soundtrack by Foreigner, no doubt...a little "Hotblooded" goes a long way in Sacratomato), and the FPP whose damp-eyed "I'm recently separated" (from another classmate) speech was so fuckin' prime, more than a few straight husbands were ready to drop to their knees and give him a Lewinsky.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the amazing ability of a few souls to NEVER EVER CHANGE ONE FUCKING IOTA, EVEN IF THE WORLD AROUND THEM HAS EXPLODED IN A GIANT MUSHROOM CLOUD OF NUCLEAR OFFAL. I'm not sure if it's a personality thing, inborn confidence or the preservative qualities of 80s skunk bud, but a not-insignificant cross-section of Broncos remained so unchanged mentally and temperamentally by the passage of time, talking to them was like entering a freakin' time capsule, shooting straight back to Heidi Gruenburg's bathroom on Valonia St. and puking up purple Boone's Farm wine. It was truly awesome.

What I didn't anticipate was the great groundswell of affection I felt for each and every one of the courageous souls who showed up. Truly, seeing familiar faces from long ago made me both fonder of my own past self and theirs, past and present. It was a true and unexpected gift. No matter what anyone says, these people bore witness to your formation, and that is both humbling and amazing.

I was lucky to attend with a bevy of my high school besties, something not always possible but highly recommended. (Alert: You will want to visit the little girls' room in groups of ten or twelve, even if you're 43 years old and perimenopausal.) On the other hand, I would have found the whole exercise comfortably satisfying even without the razor-sharp brutality of my well-preserved sisters, who have never shied away from drugs, alcohol, unnecessary food, meanspiritedness or underhanded ways of getting hot men to take off their shirts in public, which, I suppose, explains our continued mutual affection.

At one point, having consumed my sixth or seventh cocktail -- I didn't know Sea Breezes came in 32-oz's, but here's to supersizing -- I staggered over to the dessert buffet for a moment of quiet self-reflection. The Scorpions were wailing in the background, and my commemorative Maybelline Great Lash mascara in Very Black automagically began dripping down my cheeks, a Pavlovian response to Klaus Meine's panty-dampening countertenor. Watching my former classmates test the limits of their Spanx -- and, in some cases, plastic surgeons -- on the dance floor, I could not help but realize that time's great gift isn't really its ability to equalize. No, what the passage of time offers is perspective. I saw that high school isn't really about who has gifts and who doesn't. Who's lucky and who's screwed (or not). Who goes to prom and who spends Saturday night watching Hervé Villechaize spot the plane for Mr. Roarke. No. Even between unequals, there is agency. There are choices. Some FPPs were still the best-looking humans in the room. Some FDP smart kids had the best careers. But there wasn't always direct linkage. Something had happened, then and now, that produced success, or contentedess, or what have you--something that occurred outside of the bounds of God-given gifts and in the unpredictable milieu of choice and human agency. Something that came from yearning and wanting and making it happen.

I'm willing to bet that high schoolers still spend inordinate amounts of time moping about what they want and don't have (who they want and don't have). What they are too inexperienced to see is that life (and hope) resides in that thin slice of wriggle room between who someone is and what they want. What you are, or appear to be, and what you can achieve are not the same thing. Sometimes--not often--the homely guy gets the girl. Sometimes the poor kid is valedictorian. Occasionally, the benchwarmer wins the game. The stoner has remarkable insight. The jock is kind. (Yes, sliding dangerously into Breakfast Club territory here. Doubters can fuck right off now. Or, better yet, help yourself to a 32-oz Sea Breeze and see if that changes your perspective.) It's not so much that living well later is the best revenge; believing that, though you may not have it all, you'll get what you need, is.

Oh, and one more thing: Go Big Red.

Do you let your kid read dirty books?

2011-07-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

very enticing show on KQED's forum at the moment. indignant YA author squaring off against well-spoken but misguided book reviewer. exciting! was prompted to think about whether or to what extent we should filter our kids' book choices (fair warning: i tend to be very permissive, which i attribute to habit, the way i was raised, laziness and the awareness that my reading child is quite emotionally intelligent, stubborn as shit and has a uniquely strong moral compass all her own.) i have discussed this very matter with some of you already. anyway, here's the email i wrote to forum's editors:

my name is kim green. i'm a published author (in commercial fiction) and also a parent of two school-age children.

as both a writer and parent, i'm amazed at one subtext to this discussion, and that is the idea that authors -- or any creators or purveyors of entertainment or cultural fare -- are responsible for society's moral compass. or even the moral framework in which this dialogue is taking place. it's not that cut and dried -- books influence the broader culture, shape it over time, but so do zillions of other things. and, more importantly, we shape it right back -- and writers and other artists comment on the forces and ideas they see in everyday life. the moral framework is a work in progress, shaped by its actors, cultural agents, parents, the children themselves...trying to enforce some sort of moral framework on all authors in a genre? even if we could agree on one...BAD IDEA JEANS, baby (see: 1980s SNL).

if we have seen a shift, even a disturbing one, in the level of violence, sex and ugliness that is portrayed in YA lit, maybe it's because the world our YA authors are writing about is, in actuality, more violent than it used to be. or we are more willing to talk (and write) about it.

personally, i do sometimes feel a certain antipathy for some of the tawdriness in YA (especially those weird vampire books written by evangelical christians with all the violent sex substitutes). but that's mainly because i disapprove of the way they demonize sexuality over all other base impulses. i mean, honestly, create a generation of repressed pervs much?

that said, it is parents' responsibility to provide their kids with a framework for contextualizing anything they read or see. it is their job to place the child in school, social and other settings that fuel a paradigm the parent thinks is optimal and healthy from a moral perspective. there are choices, most of them less draconian than censorship or top-down art programming. honestly? some kids respond to those teachings better than others and develop that individual moral compass earlier. such is life.

i tend to be very permissive about what my 7-year-old reads. sure, it gives one pause when your second grader asks what a D R U G D E A L E R is (when reading judy blume's tales of a fourth grade nothing). but i figure, maybe, living in san francisco, it's time girlfriend found out.

kim green
san francisco, ca

Fuck me, I forgot to post on Father's Day

2011-06-21T13:14:00.000-07:00

Oopsie. How did I allow this to happen? Another hallowed day gone, and me without an appropriately laudatory Facebook status, congratulating my parter-in-life-sperm-donor-better-(definitely skinnier)-half on his performance as Heavenly Father. Fuck. Luckily, late is better than never, but before I dive in, I have to say I am sorry font of marital wisdom and all-around clever bitch Sandra Tsing Loh is no longer hitched, because I'm sure she'd have some choice words on the self-congratulatory bulltripe that is the Facebook Father's Day Post.

Mind, all the posts I read today when I was supposed to be earning money were really quite sweet: "To my dad, the best dad in the whole effin' universe, who makes all the other dads look like Michael Lohan. Love ya, Pops!" "To my husband, Xavier, who has never hit our children, even when they stole our high-fiber pot brownies and had diarrhea all over the DWR sofa."

What movie are these people living in and how do I get a part?

Call me cynical, but I wonder if we aren't polishing the nubs of reality just a wee bit. Would it be so hard to say it like it is? Acknowledge the grim valleys and slippery cesspools of gainful co-parenting? Plus, there is something self-congratulatory about all this, like, I may have specialized in muu-muus and headgear in high school, but look how I nabbed myself an awesome husband/father unit. Suck on that, Barbie! Maybe, with these public accolades, we are really subconsciously advertising for our second spouses. Promoting ourselves as a great option, should the current flavor not ultimately satisfy. Who's reading these things, if not the husbands of your friends, your co-workers, your college buddies...let the fuckers see what they missed out on by choosing Barbie over you! Make them wonder if beneath that vanilla soccer mom exterior lies a deviant sexual helpmeet who will give them a fine blowjob and change their colostomy bag, should the need arise. (If anyone can do this simultaneously, I'll marry you myself. Sisterwife.)

I suggest taking it up a notch, ladies. Make the Father's Day post work for you! Think of it as a performance review, if you will. Or an online personals ad. A smartly wrapped summary (threat) of what you're seeking in a mate. Tapping into the true value proposition that is you, wife, mother, married-person-who-might-someday-be-trolling-for-a-new-used-model demands that you pull out all the stops. If you are clever, you can offer your current husband his strokes while simultaneously delivering a clear message to future potential life partners about your spousal TMV (true market value). Here are some examples:

Approach A: Sexual flattery, however vulgar, might get you a new handbag:

To my beautiful husband, Keanu. After all these years, I still get wet seeing you in Point Break. You're the best dad around, and if our kids weren't, you know, your kids, I'm sure they'd want to do you too. Happy Father's Day.

Darling husband: Your cock is huge. Here's to another 15 years of bliss!

Approach B: A subtle warning that you might soon be on the market if the next performance review isn't tops:

Dear Bob: Wow, 10 years together -- did you ever think we'd make it this far? (I know I didn't!) You're a great dad, and I'm pretty sure that that thing you do when you see a blonde with big knockers has nothing whatsoever to do with Griffy's learning difference. Nothing at all.

And for your own father...

Dear Dad: I appreciate all you've done for me and have mostly recovered from those times you wanted to discuss uncompleted chores while you were taking a crap or flinging urns of talcum powder on your genitals. Happy Father's Day!

In that vein, I suggest single gals write a self-congratulatory/promotional father's day post as well, thanking their current spouse for a job well done. Should your TMV-laden post produce a response, you can always kill him off with an aneurysm or speedy, non-contagious terminal illness.

In every other way, I'm a fan of the reality-based Father's Day post. For me, it's the little things that get me through the day, as opposed to the grand gesture*. So, here it is:

To Gabe: Today, I honor all that is you, father, husband and saintly individual my family prefers to, well, me. It is cool how weighing just 138 pounds has not negatively impacted your ability to parent our children. Your patience is a daily gift. It is great that the kids have you as a model of adult behavior, so that they know there are grown-ups who do not say "fuck" to half-blind old ladies, read soft-core porn during play time and throw kale at them when they make poor nutrition choices. You inspire me to be a better person, and a better parent, every damn day, which is not as tiring as I would have thought. Did I already thank you for staying skinny? Most of all, I thank you for getting a vasectomy. It was super brave, the way you held back tears even when your testicles began to resemble Pam Anderson's chest and the doc explained that whole allergic-to-the-latex-sutures thing. One neat side effect of the vazzy -- I love when Dr. WhateverhisJewishnamewas called it that! -- is that it made me feel fertile and sexy, as if my 42-year-old, one-tubed, hardworn self was so fertile and irresistible that you had to literally chop off your scrotum to keep from impregnating me. So cool. Thanks for keeping the dream alive, and for telling the kids a story instead of serving me with divorce papers when I sneak off with my Bailey's and cowboy romance at bedtime. I love ya. Babe. Oh, and by the way, you have a huge...you know what.

*Which is not to say I would reject, say, a new car or Hawaiian vacation. Or strategically placed Botox Cosmetic.

The Rise of the Smug Mother's Day Post

2011-05-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

If you don't report something on Facebook, did it really happen? Yeah, yeah...okay. But, lately, doesn't it seem like people's statements of gratitude are getting a bit over the top? Dare I say...smug? It's not that I want to piss on other moms' gratitude...I'm sure it is very sincere and, like, grateful. Probably, the public nature of the gratitude makes it even more, you know, gratitudinal. But I digress...I guess what I'm saying is that we (royal) are starting to sound like we're bragging, or (possibly even) competing. For, you know, Best Fuckin' Mother's Day In the History of The World.

The cure for this is, of course, to report on how Mother's Day disappointed you. Were you, like my dear friend Susan, bitten by your offspring on that hallowed day? Were you the recipient of a well-intentioned but ultimately rubbery meal like, well, me? (Slight malfunction with the barbecue and too many minutes giggling at Anthony Bourdain's cheek when you should just have just been buying a cheap cut of flabby flesh and slapping it on the barbie will a leathery steak make. Sorry, Gabe -- you know I think angels fly out of your ass most of the time.)

Mine was...decent. Sure, I got to lie in bed most of the day with a book and hot tub at my parents'. Yeah, the kids were cuter than usual due to a recent bath. True, I didn't do a single load of dishes and nobody crapped in my shoes. Does that mean I'm supposed to cue Another Fuckin' Day In Paradise?

Mind you, I'm very grateful. The kids are beautiful. We all have our health. And angels fly out of my husband's ass.

Florsheim sex

2011-03-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

At the mall. Being at the mall is bringing me back. Back to my Orange Julius days (proud member of the world's smallest union: Underage Orange Julius Slaves With Second-Degree Burns Local #561). It has me thinking about guys who work in shoe stores (AKA, "shoe store guys"). Not the kind of guy who gamely mans up and takes one for the family, to put food on the table. No. I'm talking about the sort of dude in his mid to late 20s who lives at home like a total mammoni, gets an allowance from his parents and steals his dad's vodka and replaces it with water. He will have a soul patch, work out at noon daily without visible results, be so 420 friendly it's more like 840 and tussle physically with his grandmother if she tries to remove her gas card from his wallet. (I am describing him circa 1985ish, but it doesn't matter; slap an iPhone in his hand and -- boom! -- you got a current version.) College money was on the table, but somehow seven years at Community College of the Erstwhile Bowl Smokers have flown by, with neither degree nor urge toward matriculation presenting itself. No problem -- there are high-school girls aplenty to admire him! They work at Hot Dog on a Stick, Orange Julius and Mickey Ds. They have tan, flat stomachs and he can get 'em drunk for $1.69 (which will buy an entire bottle of Boone's Farm Kountry Kwencher or a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler). The idea that sorta cute sorta older shoe store guy could be arrested for letting them suck his dick in the ice cooler never crossed their mind (oh, the innocence!). Anyway, I was wondering if any of you, former high-school girls, actually did the nasty with the shoe store guy? Or were you the shoe store guy? Time to confess, m'dear...

Oh, gotta go. The Hair Straightener Kiosk Guy has me in his sights...

Honestly...

2011-03-08T20:13:00.000-08:00

House 'o cat piss? Check.
Angry home exchangers? Check.
Car on last legs? Check.
Tantrum-infused piano recital? Check-a-rooni.
Writing Great Novel? Not a bit of it, Charles.

I can safely say this has been a hellish week. Nothing tragic, but there is still a little time.

Bedtime without alcohol

2011-02-15T20:29:00.000-08:00

Hahahahahahahaaha. Hear that? That is the delicious sound of our combined laughter at the preposterous idea of staggering through that fresh hell the attachment parenting fuck-holes call "bedtime" without a mommy's helper, cocktail or jetpack of hashish to soothe the raw edges of your pain. And by APF-Hs, I mean anyone who has ever done one of the following:

Transferred title to their breasts to a child. Or long-term lease (with water rights).
Whined about homework being forced on kids before they're old enough to drive.
Called CPS on me because they heard that I let my daughter watch Deliverance.*
Named their child "Dexter."

But I digress. I think the reason I'm breaking my sablogical is that I noticed tonight that, in my desperation to culminate The. Bed. Experience. I was nearly panting--yes, panting--for the sweet tang of my Corona. Am I an alcoholic? No. But, like my role models, the muumuu-wearing, highball-holding, never-met-a-pool-gate-they-liked parents of the 70s, I find solace in the blissful escape offered by my drug of choice. Escape from what? Well, bedtime itself. Where's the sweetness?** The love? The mutual respect?

And, so, a new definition:

2. the time at which a person with children coerces, bribes, begs and eventually physically forces her offspring to enter the airspace around a bed, while drinking alcohol, checking Facebook and reading deviant Craigslist sex postings in the hope that someone there has the dark power to save her.

That is all.

*Once, motherfuckers. Once. And in my defense, I was unconscious on the couch with stomach flu and didn't know until that twangy ditty came on and the squealing...well, you know.
**Okay, there was some sweetness. Like when I read the book about the mice on a seafaring adventure and asked the children how embarking on a journey in the open ocean on a rickety raft would make them feel, and my son replied, "If you weren't there, angry!"

Downsize me

2010-12-22T13:26:00.001-08:00

Just downsized Christmas - told kids will start clubhouse but not finish. Pacified with husband's bonus iPad. Scrooge.

The Wassergreen Family Holiday Newsletter (Or, Our Kids Are Geniuses, We're Super Good-Looking, Spiritually Fulfilled, Rich & Our Marriage is Fucking Awesome)

2010-12-09T09:22:00.000-08:00

No goats had to die for this photo

What haven’t we accomplished in 2010? When we weren’t wallowing in productivity, spiritual fulfillment, self-betterment and wellbeing, we were, well...eating and drinking. A lot. This year, our familial pride runeth over (much like the junior Wassergreens' underpants—when will those little darlings finally get to the bathroom in time?). We are delighted to share our love and goings-on with you, our friends, family, colleagues and, yes, people we don’t really like very much at all. (Some people call this bragging; we prefer talking.)

(Note: Minors' names have been changed to protect the insolent.)


Found-object sculpture is neat with non-GMO kelp

In school news, 7-year-old "L" continues to excel in the academe, achieving conversational fluency in Spanish, though still refusing to order Kim her margarita or say hello to the crossing guard in any language. She has amassed an impressive collection of Yoohoos, through which she has learned the value of loyalty as she defends her empire against Kim’s attempts to clean, often resorting to an almost martial level of violence. "L"’s hip-hop class is paying off: We often catch her sneaking onto YouTube to play Michael Jackson classics, having no idea whatsoever that her artistic inspiration is a dead pedophile—so darn cute! On the piano front, her teacher tells us she has a good ear, which she is able to turn on and off at will. It remains firmly in “off” mode at home, where she is making some progress eating without a bib and getting dirty underwear in the hamper. Showing signs of true genius in the areas of Eating Chocolate Really Fucking Slowly and Collecting Random Shit, "L" has begun work on a clubhouse she plans to open in 2011.

Piracy: a legitimate career choice

"Z", our 3.5-year-old, set a record for self-inflicted nosebleeds in 2010, picking his way to an astounding 1,235. As well, he loves sticking pencils in the cats’ furry bottoms and yelling “bateau!” for no apparent reason. And nothing with four wheels is safe from his razor-sharp machinations! Soccer held mixed results, as he often took time off from organized play to run the field’s perimeter, screaming and urinating. Showing a precocious talent for language and fine arts, "Z" writes his name both upside down and backwards. In fact, he has created a whole new language we are considering sending to the CIA to be used as spy cipher. No mama’s boy, "Z" is enjoying the increasing heft of his growing cojones (gracias for the translation, "L"!) as he explores the dark arts of tactical maneuvers, frontal assaults and marksmanship, most often against his sister and small animals. An avowed car lover, "Z" is following in his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s footsteps in maintaining an extraordinary mental repository of car makes and models. He has announced his intention to become a mechanic and is already building relationships with the neighborhood’s leading vintage “collectors,” most of whom have not served time in federal prison and take their psychotropic medication regularly.

From snood to Snooki

Kim continues her downward spiral as a writer, taking a record second year to finish revisions on a book that’s probably not that great anyway. Kim is grateful for the whole-grain copywriting gig that provides a deep spiritual grounding in fibrous matters and a chunk ‘o change that keeps some of the creditors at bay. Too, she is collaborating with a dance company to write a dance theater script, a project that challenges her by requiring ongoing contact with really skinny people. As Kim and Gabe enter their fifteenth year of togetherness, she finds solace in novels about ripped yet teary Navy Seals and her budding relationship with the well-built garbage collector, whom she takes time to admire when she isn’t preparing organic lunches the children won’t have time to eat because NCLB has shrunk school lunch to 11 minutes. Kim volunteers regularly at "L"’s wonderful public school, whose unofficial school motto is No hay monedas para comprar lápíz! Kim is grateful for the wonderful friends and family whose support allows her to work out at noon and drink a lot of alcohol before 5 o’clock, while still calling herself “a writer.” She is amazed at the southward migration of her various body parts. Kim has not yet succumbed to the temptations of Botox or liposuction, but in no way judges those of you who have. Not really.

Nice...shirt

News from the pants-wearing front: Gabe continues to be a bit show-offy, what with all that circus stuff. Although he has little hair left, he can still bang out handstands like a small Mongolian girl and do backflips on skates. This year, Gabe focused on sounding really good on paper, regularly attending his rewarding-sounding job, not talking so much about his “friends” Björk and Laird, and performing his fatherhood duties valiantly. (The children gloried in his skillful melding of the Batman, Tarzan and Abominable Snowman myths, sometimes even forgetting to yell, “I hate you!” at us as we barricaded them inside their room at bedtime.) In 2010, Gabe explored the varied facets of modern manhood, donning red satin pants for a professional artistic engagement and combining pot and beer to positive effect on several family camping trips—we love his newfound confidence! Gabe stays fit by biking to work, doing yoga with the leotarded and clenching his buttcheeks whenever Kim yells about missing Tupperware or calls out the garbage collector’s name during sex.

Fear this

Much love and happy holidays from the Wasserman-Greens (or the Wassergreens, or, for all you anti-Semites, the Waterman-Greenes). Oh, one more thing: We hate our cats. If you want them, we’ll pay shipping.

Blog abandonment

2010-01-26T18:23:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the long hiatus. I've been working on a book. I'll be back soon.

August 22 reading at SOMArts

2009-08-16T21:04:00.000-07:00

Feeling out of control? In control? Controlling? Doesn't matter -- come an hear some writers read passages about that theme and see some great art at this unique exhibition in downtown SF (SOMA). I am going to read at 2:30 p.m.

Come to my workshop in Petaluma this Thursday, July 16

2009-07-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

Info here.

READING TONIGHT AT BOOKS INC. IN SF!!!!!!

2008-11-14T12:24:00.001-08:00

deets here.

Nice day

2008-10-21T11:09:00.001-07:00

here's my day so far:
-- bust hump to get ride to school for lulu so i can volunteer for some godforsaken public school thing.
-- bust hump to get to godforsaken public school thing.
-- with 20-month-old.
-- realize that woman in charge of event doesn't really want me there, as regards me as powder keg ready to explode with frustration at SFUSD.
-- get parking ticket at godforsaken public school thing.
-- come home to meet guilt-inducing mom who is watching baby today. mom informs me that since we "kicked them out" friday -- parents have been basically living with us for 5 months (see: factors contributing to disintegration of marriage) -- they are forced to live in fleabag motel in alameda.
-- house reeks of smoke -- pot? tobaccy? -- from french houseguest, who seems to be uninterested in donning pants. also: leaves roll-your-owns and anticoagulent medication all over place.

and it's only 11 a.m.!

This article is the shit. For real.

2008-10-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

My friend Katharine Mieszkowski wrote it. Go on, read it:

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2008/10/16/big_necessity/index.html

READING FRIDAY OCTOBER 10 AT THE BUBBLE LOUNGE!

2008-10-09T11:31:00.000-07:00

COME TO MY LITQUAKE READING AT THE BUBBLE LOUNGE FRIDAY!

Along with a posse of much-more-famous auteurs, I'll be reading from my latest book at SF's Bubble Lounge. Doors open at 5 p.m. and readings start at 5:30 p.m. I've heard it's going to be packed so get there early (I'll read on the early side, likely). Donations encouraged.

http://sanfrancisco.bubblelounge.com/

I'll give you unexpected

2008-10-02T12:31:00.000-07:00

I have a copywriting client -- who shall remain nameless -- for whom nothing I write is ever "unexpected" enough. Naturally, as we reach the milestone of one year of working together (apart), I am inclined to ponder the very concept of unexpectedness. As in:

Is there really anything left in this world that somebody, somewhere, did not expect?
Is unexpectedness overrated? Perhaps it is, you know, better to read that cereal tastes sweet and feels crunchy (rather than, say, pan-floral and affectionate).
Could being supremely predictable possibly be a form of extreme unexpectedness?
Would they like my copy better if I delivered it in an unexpected way, such as by carrier pigeon or in one of those horse-pucky bouquets?

Pondering...

Thanks, Boston Globe!

2008-09-24T14:00:00.001-07:00

Nice review of Live a Little from our friends in Boston (you may have to register; it's free):

"...readers who appreciate antic comedy will enjoy this irreverent novel..."

Two events confirmed!

2008-09-09T14:46:00.000-07:00

Reading and reception at Books, Inc, Opera Plaza in San Francisco at 6:30 p.m., Friday, November 14!

Reading and drinking at Bubble Lounge, Litquake Festival in SF, at 5 p.m. Friday, October 10!

More to come....

Life with Dad

2008-09-06T08:34:00.001-07:00

so, in recent news, my parents have been living with us. again. for a while now. here's a little update on what steve-o's up to while mom's up in montana torturing my sister (i mean, waiting for her to have a baby):

dad spends the first week leisurely migrating his stuff from the house next door, where he and mom had been doing a house sit during their migrant farm worker/berber nomad period. nine days and fifteen torn safeway shopping bags later, he is about halfway done. he deposits said bags in a neat row lining the stairwell, like soviet soldiers hoping for a meal. he leaves gigantic urn-size containers of his prescription blood pressure and cholesterol medication open throughout the house for zev to ingest, like christmas candy bowls from the 1970s. so while zev is constantly at risk of death by drug overdose, at least it will not be from high blood pressure.

remember the days when dad would beat us with a belt rather than turn off a light we'd mistakenly left on across the house? or make us get up in the middle of a crap to turn it off? those days are gone now. now, steve-o makes it a point to switch on every possible electricity source and wander the house shirtless, in a daze, three or four glasses into his wine-in-a-box (oh, we'll get to that. we'll get to that!). i follow behind, praying that we won't be forced to take out a loan from the bank of steve and grandma syl's ghost to pay the enormous PG&E bill, so that we are forever yoked to mom and dad in co-habitating misery.

dad is deaf. stone cold deaf. also blind, but i don't mind that so much. the TV is always on, at volume levels that could shatter stone, especially when he's asleep on the couch or floor with his hand in his tightie whities, which are stained, threadbare, saggy and lying around the house like white flags of surrender.

dad overeats. when i cook for him, which i always do because i cannot stand to see what he eats if i don't (three or four frozen dinners, "salad" he whips up in a gigantic mixing bowl and a stack of bread and butter), he wolfs down three or four gigantic portions, all the while mumbling things like, "this is delicious!" "can i have seconds?" and "what is this, pasta?" (it is chicken.) he comes home from "work" -- AKA, that place where he sits until they fire him for chronic tardiness -- and tries to sneak into the cabinet to mow through the snacks i buy for the children. i catch him and berate him for eating before dinner -- which is ready! -- and he hangs his head and heads for his wine in a box.

STOP! ALERT! LATE-BREAKING NEWS! lulu just asked steve-o why he uses a "horse comb to brush his hair." his response: "because my hair is thick and curly and a horse comb is the only one that can get through it." lulu is now using it to comb her stuffed horse, princess. (princess appears mildly repelled.)

let's talk about wine in a box. is there a single person in the US beside steve green who buys this product? a single one? between the old black man comb, the wine in a box, the ancient corroded flossing devices that look like they were used by jeremy irons in "dead ringers" and his blinding white male nurse shoes (STEVE, RN!), dad surely has cornered the market on products viewed by the rest of the world with amusement and contempt. in spite of my promise that i would keep him in cheap but drinkable trader joe's table wine, he proceeded to bring wine in a box into my home anyway, place it on top of the fridge and pour copious amounts into his (32-oz plastic fast food giveaway) cup. purple wine flows into the cracks on top of the fridge seal and drips in globules down the front of the fridge. steve-o claims to not notice this, even though it has hardened into a bloody trail right over the photo collection. (he also leaves wine rings on every table surface. why can't he get the fucking wine into the glass? is it the eyes? the ears? parkinson's? cussedness? we'll probably never know.)

dad talks. oh, does dad talk. he corners neighbors. dogs. friends. cats. he corners corners. he talks to gabe when he wakes up and me when i am in my underwear making tea. he talks when you're reading, working or crapping. he never stops talking. sometimes he is in his tightie whities, shirtless or naked. and he talks.

dad works out. in the yard. in his knee-highs. with his weird 1956 weights, which he has brought into our house for the duration. so far, he has stopped short of doing that dynaband thing with the door knob and his neck, but i'm sure it will appear forthwith. he does it at 7 am in front of our neighbors' bedroom window. sometimes he finds a dead mouse in the yard and twirls it around for the kids to see. he doesn't wash his hands.

dad plays. he comes home at 6:59 p.m., exactly 1 minute before zev's bedtime. he bursts in after we've spent 30 min calming the boy down and whispers in this falsely apologetic falsetto, "is it okay if i say goodnight?" then he spends another 30 min rough housing, yelling and causing injuries like bloody noses, bruised heads, twisted necks and strangulation.

dad shows his husbandly affection for mom, but only when she is not here. when even five hours of childcare are not enough, when i'm running around putting dad's massive piles of dirty dishes in the sink or gathering his extra-large size toiletries, which he leaves all over the house in pools of matted toothpaste, he'll say things like, "bet you wish mom was here. when mom gets back she'll watch the kids."

the bag. what is the bag? the bag is the gigantic torn paper bag of "food" that dad seems to cart everywhere. it is full of things like opened cans of kidney beans, fake crab, tuna cans, lettuce and frozen meals. he shoves it onto the top shelf of the fridge, spilling everything we have up there. sometimes he leaves it out all night, but steve-o isn't one to let a little rotten stinking fish ruin a meal (he'll throw it on anyway!). the bag is always there, watching. rotting. ripping. dripping.

drip.

My book, the movie!

2008-08-26T07:15:00.000-07:00

Live a Little The Movie has just been cast. Check it out! (This was fun.)

My kids are awesome

2008-08-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

Just thought y'all should know.

Live a Little lives

2008-08-17T20:31:00.000-07:00

My first 5 Spot book is out. I feel...the same. Okay, maybe a little thinner.

Here are some of the funniest reactions from people I know:

"Omigod, where can I get it?" (Whispered under breath, as if could only be pubbed by extremely marginal, nay, illicit self-publisher.)
"I bought it already! On Amazon! I pre-ordered it!" (Aiming for Best Fan. Is Best Fan.)
"Did you get any, like, reviews?" (Self-explanatory.)
"Is it pink?" (Fuuuuuuuck.)
"Is it better than your other ones?" (Much.)
"It's a comedy about cancer?" (Demoting me to C-list friend.)
"Will you just give me a copy?" (If I was Danielle Steele, I sure would.)

Stay home and be fat...or get eaten by cannibals

2008-08-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

I run. Am a runner. Running a-fi-ci-o-naaaahh-do. Fleet of foot.

All lies.

Actually, I jog. Reluctantly. Because I have to.

I have one of those slow metabolisms. It's so unfair: What IS IT about my body that won't stay, you know, thin after consuming a carne asade burrito, three beers, a wad of cheese bigger than a child's head and an ice cream sundae? WHAT?

So I run. I mean, jog.

But I am reconsidering my habit after this news item appeared in my local newsgroup. It happened on the EXACT route I run -- I mean, JOG -- several times each week.

What has the world come to?

NEWS ITEM:
A local resident was bitten on her lower back by a man as she jogged
on O'Shaughnessy Boulevard. She felt pain as she ran and saw that a
man she had just passed was restraining her. A witness saw the woman
run pass the suspect (described as a white male 18 to 24 years of age,
standing 5'8" tall, weighing 150 pounds, with brown hair, wearing a
blue and white checkered shirt, blue jeans and black and white
checkered shoes) and then saw the suspect run toward the victim,
crouch, and press his face to her back. The suspect fled south on
O'Shaughnessy Boulevard. Glen Park Canyon was searched to no avail.
Inspector Laws, Sex Crimes Detail, took over the case.

Small criminals

2008-08-14T06:25:00.000-07:00

My kids woke me up at 5:30 a.m.! Someone should be arrested for this, and it's not me! I'm too old for this...how do YOU deal with your 18-month-old who's suffering from separation anxiety at night? Advice?

School daze

2008-08-13T13:57:00.000-07:00

there are a lot of wonderful things about san francisco, my hometown. there are also a lot of annoying things. one of them is the public school application process, a bureaucratic stew consisting of equal parts social justice ideals, data entry errors, parent-on-parent mudslinging, paranoia, rage, paperwork, incompetence, linguistic quicksand, misguided diversity directives and corruption.

i'll summarize it here: the system is supposedly "choice-," as opposed to neighborhood-based. there is also a diversity index based on economic and language factors, but not race. this is because the district was sued to desegregate (all well and good, IMO).

what this means if you qualify for public assistance, didn't send your kid to preschool or speak a home language other than english (even if you're descended from the bahrainian royal family): you apply to the seven most popular schools in round I and get one, celebrate with your drink of choice (PBR, breast milk, veuve cliquot) and call it a day.

what this means if you're a middle-class, working, homegrown american family: you tour 100 schools in order to broaden your comfort zone to include glass-strewn "dream" schools near the projects with test scores so low they could be the calorie count for broccoli, apply to seven schools you can live with in round I, get into none of them and drown your sorrows with a drink of your choice (microbrew, riesling, nonfat soy chai latte). then you hunker down and lower the bar to do the same in round II. fail again? get ready for that sweet deal they call "open enrollment" (read = pick your shit school now). then waitlist and watch as everyone the district fucks over even more than you have been gets special status that bumps them ahead of you. (insert drink of choice whenever necessary from this point forward.)

ain't it grand?

if i sound a little bitter here, it's because i am. or, rather, because i was. we got lucky, you see. how, you ask? well, the district happened to fuck us over but good, so we had a few more chances to benefit from its incompetent, corrupt bureaucracy than some of its other victims.

i'll cut a long story short: by the time my daughter actually settles into kindergarten, we may well have been assigned to five schools. FIVE. like everyone remotely white, working and well-intentioned, we got buggered in round I (and we thought we were applying to some "hidden" gems -- NOT). but, hey -- a zillion bad school tours and one phone call to a district mucky-muck later in round II -- they will categorically deny this is possible, but what can i say? -- we got into a gritty yet desirable spanish immersion program nestled in a lovely spot between a park, a public housing unit and the 101 freeway.

home free! i thought (naively) as i sipped my sierra nevada when i got the good news. this diversity index stuff really works. i really AM for social justice!

and, yes, it really is possible to slap yourself on the back: you just set down your microbrew, reach around as far as your socially responsible, organic hemp-cotton blend shirt allows, and tap that little spot between your shoulder blades where one of those chakra thingies is supposed to be.

not so fast, bobo byatch.

before you could say "80s identity politics," we got a phone call and letter from SFUSD, telling us that our daughter was being forcibly disenrolled because the district had made a data entry error and mistakenly overenrolled english speakers in the spanish immersion program, thereby endangering the dual immersion model and denying the rights of spanish speakers to those spots. also: the white-tailed marmot was imperiled.

put down microbrew. change to hair shirt. excavate white guilt from hall closet. control bourgeois rage with acupuncture and prescription drugs. howl "fuuuuccck" at the moon under guise of rolfing session.

in its stead, we were offered a spot at a program that did not actually exist, at a school that was being threatened with closure or state takeover due to its general inability to, oh, keep a kid from setting fire to a feral cat.

er, no...gracias!

here's where things got interesting. and the meetings started. oh! the meetings. useless meetings at which we 23 disenrolled families were expected to listen respectfully to the tales of woe peddled by poor latino families denied immersion opportunities for 15 or 30 generations because we--middle-class, working white and asian people and our malevolent lackeys, SFUSD's mostly chinese and southeast asian and jewish and latino counselors--suck so bad. the fierce blatherings of educated la raza types who covertly park their BMWs in covered lots and believe there is no wall that is not improved by a rainbow-colored mural of a massive indigenous woman with a brown fetus curled up in her womb spouting sunshine out of its bottom. the sort of meetings designed to make any thought that is not steeped in pure, white-hot, self-loathing seem like the worst sort of racist drivel. the sort of meetings at which everyone is out to prove that they have suffered so much more than you--how can you not want to give up your kid's spot at the school you already joined the PTA of, bought uniforms for, signed up for aftercare at and familiarized your kid with? what are you, A BIG FAT RACIST?

there is nothing like SF in the 00s...except berkeley in the 80s...and the 60s. and i suppose santa cruz from the 70s onward...davis...woodstock...oberlin college...ann arbor....you know, nothing.

we did end up with a school (for now). here's the funny part: it's the most overenrolled school in town. it's got high test scores. it's in a nice part of town. the parents there seem to all have attended stanford or princeton or brown (and a mutant form of teretz that forces them to mention same every 15 seconds). and it's as white as my ass in december.

it wasn't even on our list.

Hit my first writer's conference ever

2008-08-13T06:11:00.000-07:00

RWA right here in my hometown: San Francisco.

Now, if you haven't discussed the ins and outs of werewolves making love whilst killing each other and shape-changing -- does or doesn't it equal bestiality if one is still human? -- then you haven't lived.

More to come.

Is it a better book...or a movie?

2008-07-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

So, in the absence of adequate childcare, I remain Netflixated. Last night was the sperm donor's weekly circus class, which, translated, is Kim's-Evening-To-Watch-Chick-Flicks-Uninterrupted-By-Male-Contempt
-Whilst-Eating-Rogue-Cheese-Nuggets.

The selection? P.S. I Love You, with Hilary Swank and various Irish or faux Irish hunks.

I will confess that I have not yet read the book. My understanding is that the book was written by the Irish Prime Minister's daughter (no, she's not connected or anything). That sort of makes me not want to read it, which I know is shallow, but there you are.

(Sort-of-spoiler alert.)

After the 36th flashback scene in which a tearful Hilary conjured remarkably real memories of her dead -- yet still hunky -- Irish husband in extreme close-up, I got to wondering if there has EVER been a case of a modern chick lit or women's commercial fiction that has been made into a film superior to the book. Anyone? Ever?

What makes a movie better than the book?

A few other (quite possibly shallow) observations:

Did Gina Gershon get plastic surgery? She does not look like the gal who romanced Jennifer Tilly in the white wife-beater. No. She does not look edgy and full-lipped. She looks like a refugee from The Real Housewives of New York.
Are ALL Irish guys hot, or do I just have a fatal weakness for them? (There's backstory here, perhaps better saved for another post. You know, the one called Irish Guys Who Lured You In With Their Charming Wordsmithery, Big Packages and Unblemished Complexions, Then Fucked You Over By Breaking Your Heart and Taking Up With a Slutty Continental European Much Thinner Than You.)
Lisa Kudrow is fantastic.
Harry Connick Jr. has jowls and from certain angles looks sort of mentally challenged, but he is still hotter than 9 out of 10 real actors. How to explain?
Jeffrey Dean Morgan (AKA, Denny from Grey's Anatomy) needs to work out a little more. I mean, come on. He didn't even bother to suck it in.
You could bounce a penny off Hilary's abs.

Ack.

Because it's all about, well, me

2008-07-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

Some news of a literary nature: My new book, Live a Little, is going to drop August 15. Publisher's Weekly delivered the consummate back-handed compliment, saying I displayed a "charming, acerbic wit." Unfortunately it was deployed in the service of an "unlikeable character."

Me thinks likability is overrated.

I'll take the charming acerbic wit, however. Oh, I'll take it.

I will also be at RWA from July 30 through the weekend. Yes, that's Romance Writers of America. Give me any lip about it and I'll take off my codpiece and give you three lashes.

Besides that? I have a reading scheduled at the indie bookstore Booksmart in Morgan Hill for August 23 along with the intrepid and very talented author Jody Gehrman, thanks to nonfiction author and literary event guru Jordan Rosenfeld (thanks, Jordan).

Looking into the future...I will be reading at SF's very own Litquake on October 10 from 5-7 p.m. at the Bubble Room (a women-only event). Can't wait for that one. Champagne, glamour (not mine) and a bunch of sassy wordsmiths -- sounds good.

I'm going to do a handful of other readings around San Francisco during the summer. Stay tuned.

Silver balls

2008-04-26T07:14:00.000-07:00

not sure quite how to approach without pictorial evidence...will attempt. bear with me -- i'll have a photo up next week.

so, i'm in nashville at the moment, visiting my in-laws (husband's dad and stepmom). as always, it's an adventure in, well, suppressing my yankee impatience.

but, first, silver balls. actually, more accurately, silver scrotums. scrota? to wit: cruising down suburban nashville thoroughfare. spot twinkling object swinging from rear bumper of oversize truck in front of us.

twinkly silver object is car jewelry in form of scrotum.

me: what's that?
gabe: um...
me: is that balls?
gabe: i don't...
father-in-law: and on your left, that used to be tammy wynette's house. (starts warbling "stand by your man")
me: that's a ball sac!
gabe: that's a ball sac!
me: hanging from a car!
gabe: do you think it's, uh, real?
me: like those bronze baby shoes--
gabe: (retching a little) oh, god, oh god...
father-in-law: and over there by the lawn jockeys you'll see one of our 173 baptist churches...
me: omigod, we saw a silver scrotum hanging from a car bumper.
gabe: i thought that bumper sticker was pretty funny.
me: the one that said "i'm part of the vast right-wing conspiracy"?
gabe: yeah.
me: silver balls!
gabe: can we drop it?

Don't mind me, I'm just the drudge

2008-04-21T10:47:00.000-07:00

Set the scene: Breakfast at our place (AKA, animal wilding replete with shrieking, sailing plates, two-fisted gorging and spilled milk). I've had five hours of sleep (this includes two interruptions: once to rescue Lulu from her peed-in pants -- an inevitability after she refused to hit the potty on the way to bed -- and another time to calm Zev after he was ripped out of sleep by Lulu's incessant allergen-induced sneezing).

Me: If you get dressed now, I'll do your hair in two pink, fluffy, princess pigtails.*

[No answer: Lulu opens her mouth and drops egg out of it. Zev screams with pleasure and does the same.]

Me: Two pink, fluffy, princess, diamond, magic, engorged pigtails! And I'm going to brush it out first, like mine, to be different. [Wave hand at mop, which resembles Michael Landon's singed crop during the Little House on the Prairie years.]

Lulu: [pause] Will it be straight?

Me: It will be...different.

Lulu: [gazing at my Landon fro with pleased expression] Good, then I'll look like a matted dog.

*Don't ask me why, but the more girly adjectives I stuff into a suggestion, the more likely Lulu is to take it.

Moment of horror #526: weirdly attracted to Tom Colicchio

2008-04-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

so, last night was top chef. i finally stayed awake till the end. i guess that's because i now get the grand total of 5-6 hours of sleep a night and the working girls have officially entered retirement (AKA, my son's weaned).

a recap: ADDandrew grew on me...it was weird. it's like, he's a superfreak, but he's MY superfreak. ryan made me embarrassed to be from california. dale grew on me too. they let him depart from being Uptight Asian Gastrophysicist for five minutes, and it was a breath of fresh air. nikki and marc were just sad. i noted that nikki wore her funeral makeup for the occasion, as if awaiting open-casked burial. she looked so small and broken. i think the producers might let her have a small triumph before they boot her bony ass. spike...where to begin? first...

wait. this is going to require its own paragraph.

okay, there. better. so, fedora spike. first off, can i just say it? is he really jewish? 'cause i'm not grokking it. mendelssohn? perhaps adopted...from a band of...hatmakers? oh, i'm actually seeing the long thread back to the shtetl now...okay, i get it. he's just so freakin' AGGRESSIVE. here in san francisco, when he came out with the "go, lesbians!" monstrosity, we almost had to resuscitate each other from excessive laughter. it was at that moment that i knew he had not just a garden-variety harsh female rejection in his past, but all the rage bottled up under those fedoras over the years had morphed into the idea that -- yes, you guessed it -- every woman who dares reject him is a Big 'Ole Dyke. (actually, it would have been infinitely less disgusting if he had just shouted, "go, dykes!" at least then he would have not been so transparently maxim-reader-ish.) he almost redeemed himself by hot tubbing unashamedly with marc the kiwi. almost. but then he wore his fedora in the tub. fuck him and his weird shit, is what i say.

anyhoo.

i was alarmed at the level of padma's excitement over the dismemberment of marc on sanitation charges. bitch is a sadist, fer sure. bet she always wanted to do that to salman, back in the day.

and judge tom...yummy. he was so frickin' ALPHA this time. no wonder most people wanted to -- what was that poll? -- frotterize him. i have to confess a weird attraction for him this time, even (especially?) when he wore a cravat and beret with his bears jersey. what a cheeky motherfucker!

Doin' the New York thang

2008-03-29T15:41:00.001-07:00

just back from nyc with the fam. i mean, the CLAN (husband, 4-year-old daughter, 1-year-old son, my mom and dad, my pregnant sister). stayed at my brother's apartment in tribeca (where he lives like a king courtesy of his friend tony, who seems to have figured out both gainful employment and compensation, and floats my brother on the basis of his sunny personality, nose for great salsa and amenable mini schnauzer, jake the snake.)

which is not to say it's ideal cramming a family of four into a single room, even if you do set up the baby's crib in the closet. it was amusing to visit the lower east side tenement museum -- highly recommend -- and see how my people's circumstances have hardly changed in the 100 years since my ancestors stumbled out of the pale of settlement and onto delancey street. okay, so i don't wear a wig and my husband has no payess (admittedly, that would be weird, given he's half italian), but still...the similarities are striking.

since this is a blog by writers and people who love top chef, i will focus on writerly matters and food (not unrelated). i mean, do you really want to hear about how my dad -- who's from the bronx, for chrissake -- sort of got run over by a taxi (his umbrella definitely got run over) and wore a bulgarian babushka the whole time to stay warm? and carried a man-purse? no, you don't, not really.

so, writerly matters.

i will start out by saying that i have published two books, with another forthcoming, but i have not sold many. my byline is known to few. i am still dogged by the terror of officially being deemed a failure by the publishing gods and having to work for The Man again in some (lame) capacity. i am still struggling with finding a publisher to call home. it's all part of the game, you see. that said, the prospect of seeing my literary agent in person for the first time in six years, and meeting my editor for the first time, filled me with anticipation (and anxiety).

my agent is a great person. she is fierce and maternal and fiercely maternal. she is funny as hell and neurotic in that way only the smartest LA-NYC hybrids can be. i just wish i was one of her success stories instead of the person whose ARCs litter her shelves. anyway, she -- get this -- took my entire clan out to lunch at one of those little neighborhood italian places that are so deeply good in nyc. half of us were on jenny craig or weight watchers, but that didn't stop us from tearing into piles of calamari, bread, pasta, chicken thingies and a dessert tray to die for like we had just been defrosted from cryogenic chambers after 100 years of stasis. even the waiters were impressed. i managed to survive the family-on-agent contact for several hours before my dad starting punning. agent managed to impart to me that i needed to get moving on my new book, get a hardcover deal, get a movie deal and come up with bank to buy a private publicist. my mom tried to photograph all of us, but agent resisted, perhaps due to intimate quarters and annoyed stares of fellow diners. mom sulked.

so, food. weight watchers definitely an inhibiting factor, but did my best for the local economy: delicious fish and wine at pearl's oyster bar, an israeli hummus place in the village that was seriously all hummus all the time, vietnamese noodle bowls...the list goes on. oh, the pleasure of a street stand nyc hot dog (or two -- not many points left after that, i can tell you).

oh, the piece de resistance: meeting my second cousins for the first time in great neck, long island. can we talk about long island for a second? i guess as a native californian, i'd always thought the accent was, you know, an affectation. how wrong i was! and what a balls-out accent it is! we arrived by train just as all the observant jewish folk of great neck were walking to shul on saturday. feeling like the shabbes goy, i skulked behind the mighty tinted windows of my 1st cousin once removed's second husband's mercedes and watched parades of families go by. the women wore fur coats (!). the girls wore tights. the husbands didn't look like they wanted to rush home for the hockey match. it was a revelation. here's what was waiting for us on the buffet when we arrived: baked fried chicken (no skin), baked ziti, three salads, meatballs, brownies, cake, fruit plate, cheese, tiramisu...i'm forgetting about 12 platters. my cousins all have beautiful long dark shining hair, clear skin and eyes like does. their grandmother -- my grandma's sister -- had passed away unexpectedly a couple of months ago, so -- surprise -- they held an impromptu memorial during the reunion. it was actually very moving and quite interesting, hearing everyone compare notes on the stein sisters' -- three of them -- idiosyncracies. one of their surviving brothers was there, and when he wasn't sleeping he chimed in with charming stories from the tough days on orchard street. it was amusing to watch the young cousins' boyfriends -- one was british in the floppy-forelocked, good looking hugh grant vein, and the other was homegrown long island boy with serious accent, a great sense of humor and yen to watch that hockey game -- maintain expressions of Serious Respectful Interest in the proceedings for the better part of three hours. thankfully, i was able to get a few breaks by pleading diaper changes (not mine, kids, kids!).

anyway, new york always challenges me in some vital way, and not just, i think, because i'm a cali girl through and through.

Confessions of a mad mom

2008-03-27T06:15:00.000-07:00

For the past six months, I have been obsessed with getting my kid into a public kindergarten of my choice (it's a San Francisco thing -- don't ask). I have spent hours touring schools, burying myself in data, hosting meetings, negotiating a labyrinthine bureaucracy and maintaining a hopeful demeanor while I slouch toward madness.

That time is ending now.

On the eve of summer, in spite of all the effort, the pain, the hopes, the tears, the hell-no-we-won't-go-style attempts to convince other bourgeoisie that we can successfully take over/turn around a school whose uniform mandates that gang tattoos be inked on our children's tiny knuckles, we still find ourselves without an acceptable school.

Kim is done with Zenlike calm. Kim is a whirling ball of maternal rage, and Kim wants to talk about it.

(Third person fits nicely when you're talking about clinical mental disorder, doesn't it?)

Thought about doing anything nutty lately, mommies? Done anything nutty lately? C'mon, you can tell us. We promise not to call CPS. In fact, I'll buy you a beer.

There is no substitute for family time.

2008-02-28T08:28:00.000-08:00

It's so great when life slows down for a moment and you have time to gather your 4-year-old, 1-year-old and husband together to watch Jimmy Kimmel is Fucking Ben Affleck.

Safe haven. For me.

2008-02-27T21:25:00.001-08:00

So, I was wondering: Is four too old to leave a kid at one of those fire station safe havens?

Partying with women of a certain age

2008-02-25T14:53:00.000-08:00

It doesn't get any better than this: me, some of my oldest friends -- er, literally -- seventeen bottles of wine, vintage Scorpions, a wackamole septic system, an overworked breast pump, a hot tub straight out of an 80s porn flick and the 35 Weight Watchers points I'd scrupulously saved for the occasion (no, Zinfandel isn't on the Core Foods list).

My latest theory of revelry: Women over 40 know best how to relax, how to let loose, how to party like it's 19fucking99. Why? Because they spend their "real" lives working two jobs (either at work or at home or both), wiping asses, outperforming their male colleagues so they can get promoted, eating flakes of meatball of the floor in lieu of dinner, chaffeuring, dieting, exercising, and just generally sacrificing their baser urges to the gods of species survival and corporate mastery. When they finally get to chill, to put on the brakes, to act non-tactically, they go nuts. In a good way.

To wit:

The Great Shaved-ball Debate of 2008.

Scorpions as interpreted by Jack Black as interpreted by, well, us.

Boot camp with the Spooner.

Dinner table bush: Wild! Untamed! In your pasta!

See how great aging can be?

Rock me like a hurricane

2008-02-21T20:49:00.000-08:00

Went to Stinson for my friend Susan's 40th birthday bash. Scorpions air guitar, rampant nudity, excessive drink, codpieces, Weight Watchers...details to come.

My big fat Greek lunch

2008-02-20T14:59:00.000-08:00

...sadly, a thing of the past. Now, I'm on the Points system. Now, I'm no math whiz, but it's pretty clear to me that while my points allotment may be enough to technically keep my corporal self alive -- technically -- there will no longer be that thing sometimes associated with food consumption known as pleasure

You'll excuse me if I sound a little bit resentful right now. I always get a little grumpy when I'm in a state of ketosis.

Heaven can weight

2008-02-20T13:33:00.000-08:00

Joined Weight Watchers this week. Doesn't bear rumination. More later.

Of business trips and cougars

2008-02-14T20:01:00.000-08:00

Let me start by saying that I haven't gone on a business trip in, oh, eight years. Seriously. And I can count the ones I went on on one hand. So I tend to idealize them. To me, sliding between crisp white sheets in Akron while nibbling a $24 Caesar salad and watching TNT sounds fantastic. I even visit the gym -- even if all they have is a 1982 Stairmaster and a mat with weird stains on it. 'Cause it's the hotel gym. I roam the empty hallways in my waffle-weave bathrobe -- the cheap-ass one they threaten to charge you $125 for if you steal it -- keeping an eye peeled for interesting happenings, like cougars snapping up fresh meat. Or a naked guy locked out of his room. You know, hotel stuff.

Well, last weekend I went on a business trip.

I know what you're thinking: cougar city! Grrrrr! Well, nah. I've got a husband and a couple of kids and a rack that looks like a fucking bag of onions. And I haven't slept in a year.

But there were...moments.

The backstory: I stumbled into a copywriting gig for a big fancy creative agency with big fancy clients. The "team" was meeting with the client in San Diego. My learnings:

It is possible to use an iPhone, email, blog and other humans to converse simultaneously. (Caveat: You must be youngish, confidentish and have taken the ad world by storm when you were thirteenish.)
In an all-day meeting, no one looks at you funny if you go to the bathroom every 20 minutes. Just plunk down that liter of H2O and go nuts; everyone knows it's the only way to survive the boredom.
Expressing a healthy interest in others is lame. Latin gang-style tattooed forearms are cool. Being a mom of two is lame. Being a mom of a single newborn is cool, as long as you have 7am-7pm daycare and tattooed forearms.
Using the phrase "buried in snatch" with the right businesspeople will not automatically get you fired, and may even earn you some currency if you deliver the comment at the right moment through a mist of whiskey.

I did drink a lot of lovely beer though. And I didn't get fired (yet). Got to sleep six hours without being woken up by some asshole (read = family member). All in all, a nice entree into the world of fast-talking ad people.

Would love to hear your biz trip all-time highlights and lows.

A day with the parental units

2007-12-05T19:01:00.000-08:00

so, this has been my day, in sum:

take call from mom at 7:59 a.m. 1 minute before scheduled conference call with agent. mom is crying and yelling about dad being late to come to our place, her waiting in the car since 7 a.m. and dad having a "hidden dark side." i tell her i don't want to hear about it unless he actually beats her. response: "he's very threatening." threatening what? to be on time? "just, you know, threatening."

lovely. thanks, mom. that's how i like to start the day.

tell her i have to get off to take call.

agent cancels the call. am officially second-class author/human.

agent apologizes profusely. okay. whatevs.

mom and dad show up. mom in high dudgeon. dad looks like a werewolf who hasn't slept in a month. dad begins transport of DC (dad's crap) from car to house. an inventory:

5 torn shopping bags exploding with used kleenex, sudoku, newspapers and shoes.
5 pairs of shoes (2 dress, 2 tennie, 1 indeterminate)
3 suits
several suitcase-size briefcases
toiletries, including (i shit you not) backscrubber, large-size suave shampoo (clarifying) and traveling soap bar. because we don't have soap here right!?

dad dumps pile of loose change, sudoku, newspapers, wallet and 2 man-purses on dining table.

mom fumes.

kim fumes.

i take 2 conference calls whilst pretending mom and dad and zev aren't yelling in the background.

lulu refuses to wear pants. i threaten to give away all pants to a grateful 2-legged primate child.

lulu draws "tattoos" all over her entire body, a la edward norton in american history X.

dad proudly announces he has an "interview" for a "job" in walnut creek.

dad insults san francisco.

parents take zev for walk. stroller returns caked -- ankle deep caked -- in dog shit. almost physically impossible, as if went to zoo and buried it in gorilla cage.

kim storms around muttering and spraying stroller with toxic cleaner.

mom and dad deny dog shit blame. try to blame babysitter!

rush to diamond heights state farm insurance office to get new auto coverage before dad needs to take car to walnut creek for "job interview". am asked to provide proof of mileage in form of recent oil change receipt. tell fluttery old-country chinese woman don't have one. get berated for not getting enough oil changes! tell her to shut up and write me insurance or i'll run her over with dogshit stroller.

she shuts up.

return home. zev wailing. mom says he was awakened by sonic boom.

whafu?

dad claims san francisco has more dogshit than other places.

dad begins transport of DC back to car.

dad leaves.

kim finds pile of backscrubber and toiletries in bathroom amidst pond of excess water on floor.

kim finds extra suits piled on her bed.

kim finds empty jenny craig fake food cans stuck to kitchen island countertop.

kim contemplates dish pile and boxed latke mix as panic mounts. (goyische neighbors invited selves to experience REAL HANNUKAH with wassergreens and will arrive in 2 hours).

entryway caked with dogshit. ("oh, it's a jewish tradition to decorate entryway with the feces of the hound during the festival of lights.")

kim buys ticket to mexico and writes email instead of (1) working on three due ASAP assignments; (2) cleaning kitchen; (3) running or taking muni in absence of car to pick up lulu, which involves darting across freeway entrance - so fun!.

shabbat shalom motherfuckers!

Back fat on the French Riviera

2007-05-19T08:19:00.000-07:00

Going to visit in-laws in Antibes four months postpartum with dairy-sensitive infant.

Suggested headline: Fat Yankee Invades France, Declines Fromage.

Skinny mothers

2007-05-01T20:16:00.000-07:00

Today, I attended a museum exhibit with some friends. (Read = I darted through a clean building praying my son wouldn't erupt into screams.)

We saw some other moms with their offspring. They were skinny. One of my friends asked if they were "the nannies." After a brief confab, it was determined that we, uh, hated them. 'Cause they were skinny.

My friends went to Yale. And Smith. And other fancy places.

Just thought I'd mention.

Who's your Asperger?

2007-04-20T17:50:00.000-07:00

The in-laws are in town. I could end the post right here and some of you would be nodding your heads sympathetically, but brevity has never been my strong suit.

The sitch: There's an uncle who shall remain nameless who, well, might have Asperger's. Okay, he has Asperger's. He lives nearby, but we somehow manage to avoid prolonged contact except when the in-laws are in town. Long story short: Dinner at our place. The family assembled. Oh, the joy.

This is a man who, among other freakosities, once held court on the topic of a giant ball of string.

For two hours.

As well: When I presented at 28 weeks pregnant, he commented, "You're ripening nicely."

While staring at my tits.

Another time: Caught him in conversation with two recalcitrant family members, trying to make them understand, intellectually, the futility of their spat.

The cat and the dog.

Huzzah!

Last night, as the rest of us raced frantically around our tomato-sauce-spattered kitchen trying to achieve Full House-style normalcy before the preschooler or newborn yowled, Uncle Asp wandered around picking things up and putting them down. He stared at me with baleful eyes, trying to get me to spoonfeed him ice cream before the long drive back to his bachelor apartment, a grim affair with damp carpets, Pakistani singles dancing the night away and cabinets bulging with cans of dark meat tuna and Top Ramen. Finally, perhaps feelng my rage percolating through his fugue, he twitched up to me with his hand extended like a zombie (Night of the Living Aspergers). In it was a plastic spoon studded with food.

"What. Do. You. Do. With. This."

What I wanted to say: "Well, Uncle Asp, since it's been in somebody's mouth, we fucking clean it."

What I said: "Put it in the dishwasher." Asshole.

Subtext: His mother thought he was a genius because he was good at math and Jewish. I guess that excused him from life's little chores like doing the dishes and wiping his own ass.

Oh, and did I mention he's a right-wing fanatic who was quoted supporting a Web site that blacklisted a friend of ours?

Why I deserve a Purple Heart

2007-04-11T21:14:00.000-07:00

So, I slept 41 minutes last night. I'm not joking. That would be forty. One. Minutes. This alone does not qualify me as a war hero. The other stuff might, however. To wit:

"Went to bed" around 11 p.m. Anyone with two children knows that the concept of going to bed, as you used to know it, is laughably naive. It implies somehow that your corporal presence, once prone, is permitted to lie there unmolested until it has cycled through whatever rejuvenation cycle nature allots the sane.

Nursed Zev at 1:30 a.m.

Awakened by Lulu at 2:30 a.m.: "I had a nightmare, Mommy." My daughter says this with just the right note of gravitas. She looks like she just scored tickets to Disneyland.

"Get in," I say. Parenting books be damned -- I'm not going to argue the finer points of nightmares with her when sleep is (potentially) at hand. She hops in bed with me. Gabe, the alleged sperm donor, is nowhere to be seen, presumably working in the living room on one of his 52 marginally profitable freelance or soul-killing corporate gigs.

3:00 a.m. Lulu: "My pants are wet." As if some golem snuck into our room and -- bastard! -- poured water on them. I realize at this moment that my pants are also wet, as is our Swedish memory foam mattress from Design (Sort of) Within Reach. Nooooooo! Not the Swedish memory foam. At this moment, with every particle of my being, I believe (sort of) that this mattress is the only good thing in my life (I use the word "life" loosely).

3:05 a.m. Change bedding. Tamp stinky wet spot with towel. Cry. Attempt sleep.

Skip ahead two hours.

5:00 a.m. Nurse Zev. Baby soaked. Place on changing table. Operate in complete darkness for fear of exciting young man with my (ravishing? leaking?) presence. Suddenly, without warning -- okay, I'll just say it -- shit flies out of his ass. It does! I'm not exaggerating! It flies out and it sprays on the wall, which we had professionally painted, by, you know, professionals, several months ago. It sprays there and drips rapidly down the wall, rivulets snaking toward the carpet, which I am unable to halt before they find the tiny crack between the wall and the carpet.

Somebody laughs. At first I think it might be Zev. Maybe me?

6:00 a.m. Stuff Zev in swing and do anti-SIDS ritual self-blessing.

7:00 a.m. Discover Lulu has "written" in her dream journal. Translation: Blue ink all over wall and carpet.

Thought: Perhaps children have inherited recessive carpet-hating gene?

Preschool Moment Thursday

2006-12-07T10:54:00.000-08:00

I have decided to start a new tradition. That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? New. Tradition. Oxymoronic, true, but, hey, what part of life isn't?

I will be documenting instances of the Preschool Moment. If not assiduously, at least incredulously. You know those moments when your preschooler says or does something so mind-blowing that you just have to mute Grey's Anatomy and stare at her with, well, incredulity? Those moments. (And I don't want to hear any klaptrap about why a kid is up during Grey's in the first place, because, well, you all know you've done it -- and worse -- just to get a few more seconds with McDreamy before bedtime. C'mon -- admit it, bitches!)

That said, like all three book clubs I've attempted, this Spanking New Tradition will probably not survive this season of Grey's. Still, I try.

Without furthur ado, the first Preschool Moment: My three-year-old daughter has a new mission. It is fighting the scourge of a hot lunch wherever it rears its flaming head.

Hot lunch -- the source of all eeeeeevil.

Why? Not because it's hot per se. No. Don't be childish. Rather, because it forces me to pack her meal thermos, which necessitates the use of the roomier Hello Kitty lunchbox instead of the whatever-it's-called lunchbox, which she got for her birthday from her friend Lilli and guards with the ferocity of a three-headed Cerberus. (An aside: As per the Vigilant Mums Listserv I don't remember actually subscribing to, both boxes are apparently lined with lead, or E coli, or arsenic -- can't remember -- and should be promptly burned and buried, but as I have not discovered suitable replacement -- hemp? free-range goatskin? -- have entered Denial on topic.)

Re: lunchbox rejection. Such are the challenges of being Hello Kitty, I suppose. One day your litter don't stink, and the next...well, you've got your 'lil pink bow all in a bunch.

A reenactment of this morning's festivities:

The scene: Forty minutes after school commenced. House interior being painted, thus everything instrinsic to functioning as normal human swathed and battened down in industrial plastic. Toilet lids in permanent upright position (all the better to enjoy rainbow of painter piss sprinkling rim). Cats yowling. Cause unknown. (Later discover is painter yowling like cat for no apparent reason.) Am braless in front of painters (one French-Canadian, one Latino, one Irish-American). Realize that said are privy to sight not enjoyed by own husband (Jewish-Italian-American raised in France) since entered nursing-bra territory at three months of pregnancy.

Kim (AKA Mom): "What do you want for lunch?" (Proferring organic, mindfuckingly expensive, Mothering-magazine-approved spaghettios and frozen Trader Joe's pasta.)

Lulu (AKA Kid): "Nooooo! I don't want the hot bowl!"

Kim: "So you want spaghettios?" (tone of hopeful idiot)

Lulu: (tears erupting) "I don't want the hot bowl! I want a sandwich! I don't want that lunch box!"

Kim: (mindful of parental performance in front of Irish, Latino and Quebecois painters and proximity of local Child Protective Services depot) "I hear your words, honey! And I'm sorry my choice upset you! How about I give you a time-in, and you pick which one you want?"

Lulu: "No hot bowl! No hot bowl! I don't want the hot bowl!"

Kim: "Great. The penne, then." (mumbling profanities, then, louder for painters, who have appeared to have stopped work entirely) "Mommy loves you, sweetheart, even when we disagree!"

Lulu: "AAAAAAAHHHHHH."

Kim: "There's the Tupperware! Pineapple? Do you want pineapple? Do you want cheese?" (thinking: perhaps arsenic level in lunchbox can be, you know, increased?)

Lulu: (hiccuping) "Don't. Want. Hot. Booooowwwwwl."

Kim: "Get in the car. Now."

What's really wrong with San Francisco

2006-12-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

This question seems to come up a lot.

I'm afraid I don't know the answer.

That said, I'm pretty sure it has something to do with Bugaboo strollers.

Fuck the BMI

2006-10-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

According to the BMI (Body Mass Index, for those of you living under a rock, or blithe skinnies), I am morbidly obese. Admittedly, I am nearly eight months pregnant, but since I only just slid in under the designation prior to getting knocked up, I'll run with it this time.

I think it's bullshit.

First of all, I wasn't visibly, like, fat, just muscular. Yeah, yeah, I know, the large-boned-and-muscular excuse. It's not like I play for the NFL (although I do sympathize with those linebackers who are also apparently screwed by the dastardly BMI). But I do a lot of strength training. My calves are too big to fit in knee-high boots, okay? No knee-high boots for Yours Truly. Ever. My shoulders are, well, manly. Manish. Maybe not shirt-splittingly so, but big enough to hang an overstuffed gym bag on so it never falls off. In sum: I can pummel the boney motherfucker who made up the BMI, okay? AND eat his burrito. Second, women lie about their weight. Not some women. ALL women. I don't care who you talk to, if you ask her how much she's hefting, she'll scrape off a pound or ten. This is the primary reason everyone -- BMI sadists included -- is still walking around with the notion that a full-grown woman can weigh 120 pounds and not look emaciated.

Ergo, BMI is based on a font of lies.

So, in the interest of injecting a dose of reality into the pregnancy process, I decided to put together my own weight-gain risk assessment. I believe it is more useful than the standard medical establishment dung heap.

You Are At Greater Risk for Irreversible Weight Gain Following Pregnancy If You:

1. Classify ranch dressing as a beverage.

2. Count the struggle to achieve upright stature when leaving the couch toward your daily 30-minute cardio session.

3. Did not start out pregnancy anorexic.

4. Have begun to find your local In 'n Out Burger cashier strangely attractive.

5. Choose raising your child yourself or working for a living over trust fund inheritance.

6. Are ethnic and live on the coasts, or, conversely, white and Midwestern. (Oh, quit your whining and move, Miss Lazypants.)

7. Gain more than, say, 142 pounds while pregnant.

8. Do not enlist in a branch of the armed forces.

9. Visit the Trader Joe's frozen foods aisle on a regular basis. (Go directly to jail if you even think of buying the gorgonzola gnocchi just because it's easy.)

10. Believe there is nothing a little extra lox shmear can't cure.

A year in the life of a breastfeeding mother

2006-10-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

Nearly six months pregnant. Am told am "blooming," "ripe," "glowing." (Clearly all euphemisms for fat. Good friends; bad liars.) To remind myself that none of these states, however true, will survive the birth of my son, I dug this up from the trough of bitter ramblings I saved after my daughter's birth:

Day 3: Awakened by horrifying realization that baby has leapt out of crib and landed on my chest. Then realize it is only my breasts. Hel-lo, milk.

Day 7: Nipples declare war on self in act of continual/ritual self-mutilation. Riffle madly through The Womanly Art of Tranforming Yourself into a Bovine Companion and other such for smug yet vaguely comforting platitudes on why this is right decision for baby, self, humankind. However, can only find information on something called Mastitis. Threaten to book flight to Zihautanejo. Alone. Mastitis! Sperm donor (AKA, cellmate) stops threatening to call in order for Prozac and/or involuntary institutionalization long enough to inform me that am wearing pajamas. Inside out. Backward. Mastitis!

Week 4: Out to dinner. Don’t know where. Time to nurse. Glance down and see crop-circle-like bullseye on shirt. Breast pad has gone way of George W. Bush during National Guard service. Is presumed guilty of dereliction of duty. Discover AWOL pad later hunkered down in band of control briefs.

Week 6: Starbucks. Am goddess-mother-of-angelic-child-who-understands-that-those-first-few-weeks-were-well-and-good-but-mama-has-to-fulfill-her-destiny-of-writing-great-American-novel-now. Smugly roll sleeping angel to table balancing iced soy chai latte in hand (small note of dismay: have forgotten to purchase after-market drink holder). Feel fleeting note of scorn for moms who cannot keep it together. Obviously not raising children with proper hand.

Week 6 + 8 minutes: Fires of hell burning out of control. Is Armagedden. Is hell. Did mention Armageddon? Baby screams in rage and famishment as if not fed continuously for entire period of existence. Apparently 15 seconds after awakening not soon enough to quell hunger; must get breast surgically attached to baby’s mouth and/or replace shirt with exposed breasts in sling a la patchouli-soaked, Mothering magazine-quoting, water-birthing hippie. Register baby’s qualities of impertinence and ingratitude before attempting to administer nourishment. Patrons cast glances as if at Dr. (Mrs.) Mengele. Fail to provide nourishment before infant synapses fire selves into frenzy of hysterical anguish resulting in mind-shattering shrieks a la African Genghis monkey. Starbucks employee politely offers private space to nurse. Am gratefully escorted to back room with porn queen-sized bare breast in hand, spurting arterially into poor wretch's venti latte. Discover private space is actually hallway to bathroom. Instantly acquire quality of depressing 16th-century still life or performance art piece (“Fat Woman With Recalcitrant Offspring”). Squirming patrons forget coffee-swollen bladders and avert eyes in horror as I ram breast into writhing baby’s wailing maw.

Month 3: Master cradle hold. Consider not setting fire to local LaLeche League offices after all.

Month 5: Successfully journey to Farmer’s Market. Nurse baby in splendor of sunny outdoors and organic produce. Achieve perfect draping of blankets for both discretion and sun protection. Experience 1.5 seconds of maternal pride. Feel shorts creep down as buttcrack makes way toward sunlight for air. B-feed baby as Fair Trade-promoting hillbilly band stares into asscrack.

Month 6: Out to dinner. Don’t know where. Have achieved b-feeding perfection. Am considering volunteering as LLL leader or becoming lactation doula. Am nursing baby whilst carrying on conversation with childless friend (smarter than I? barren? neat freak?) and balancing wine glass topped with Merlot. Realization that actual consumption of alcohol not critical to happiness; rather, is Pavlovian response to holding wine glass again.

Month 7: Bitten. Progeny is actually vampire with droplet of milk-blood quivering in corner of rosebud lip.

Month 7 + 2 days: Bitten.

Month 7 + 3 days: Bitten.

Month 7 + 4 days: Bitten.

Month 7 + 5 days: Bitten.

Month 10: Baby repeatedly tweaks paroled nipple while nursing, a la makeout style of horny high schooler. Am considering officially renaming Tweaker.

Month 11: Concerned relatives start asking when going to stop b-feeding. Smile complacently. Say waiting for breasts to succumb completely to gravity first. Ask for plastic surgeon referral.

Month 11: Theme of month is multitasking. Baby has decided is really pig at trough, prefers b-feeding while practicing crawling, standing and cruising. Does not really believe breast is attached to mother unit. Attempts to bring along, a la venti cappuccino on way to work. Am awed by my daughter’s professionalism. Am impressed.

Month 11 + 16 days: Wean. Wean. Wean? To wean or not to wean? Where does word “wean” come from, anyway?

Month 11 + 20 days: Attempted childcare at gym for 23rd time. Baby takes one look at anorectic stairmaster addicts and wails uncontrollably. Following paranoid workout in which mind focused exclusively on nightmares of older children running over/knocking down/otherwise injuring baby, burn only calories of day running toward kid’s club, to find tearful, accusatory, red-rimmed-eyed baby. Baby lunges at naked breasts in locker room. Bitten. Have to swat baby away as if pesky mosquito. Guilt. Make appointment to see shrink.

This is your brain. This is your brain on pregnancy...

2006-10-12T12:04:00.000-07:00

Would like to share a delightful concept with you all. This comes courtesy of Kortney, a fellow parent at my daughter's school: What do you call the state of a mind afflicted with pregnancy?

Pregnesia.

Now I've done it

2006-10-09T16:12:00.000-07:00

I have a blog. Blahg. Am blogorific. If I may say, Kim, you're looking blogolicious today.

Am a blogger. No, Ma, not logger.