Happy father's day. Found myself telling lots of stories today. Wondering if my son was old enough to whittle. What my dad used to call "parking lot pine" is good whittling wood and the name made my son say, "what the ( mouthed hell) is that?" He giggled hysterically over the silent swear word and my non-reaction to it. I'm hard to shock and part of that is thanks to my Dad and that makes me a good Mom and for that (and a million other reasons) I am grateful to my Pop. I miss him still.

My own husband, the father we celebrated today, is a good man in more than name. He deserves a day all to himself. All parents do. More than one.

Happy birthday, Dad.

I spent today doing mostly things I love.  I wrote some and walked in the bright spring sun.  I tickled the kids and made up silly songs.  My daughter and I had a sword fight with cooking tongs and socks and my son laughed the high cackly laugh that lights me up like a string of Christmas lights.

It was a great day. 

It's as easy as riding a bike.  But is it?  I've just spent forty minutes trying to remember how to inflate the tires on my bike.  Granted, I haven't ridden the darn thing in a year and it's got those tricky little Presta valves, but I'm still a little abashed by my need to watch a tutoring session on tire inflation on YouTube. (Thank you, cute bike guy, for all the info.)  Inflating the tires on my bicycle is not the only thing that I've forgotten.  I forget regularly how to pay my bills (some of them are paid online through the bank, others come out at intervals through auto withdraw and some I actually have to sit down and write a check.)  I've written a list of how and when all these things happen, but then I forget to look at it.  I forget the passwords to my various online accounts (why in the world do I need a security question to buy a top from J. Crew?)  I forget what book I'm reading and then when I remember the title, I forget where I am.  In all the catching up, think I probably read each paragraph five times.  And then, when the book ends, I promptly forget all about it.

Am I overloaded? Under brained?  Sometimes I worry about Alzheimer's.  But mostly I figure that there's a lot going on.  With over forty years of stuff crammed into my cranial file drawers, things are getting a little crowded, a little dusty.

Besides, I can remember how to make a souffle, how to saddle a horse, how to make paper dolls for my daughter.  For everything else, there's a recipe book or a cute guy on YouTube.

I'm up at The Next Family

Spring is here.  I can feel it.  The park is lush and green and filled with flowers.  The scent of orange blossom drifts in the air. The sun feels warm and the sky is still blue blue, not the smog tinged blue gray of summer heat.  I love Los Angeles in the spring when the stiff branches of trees fluff out into blossoms the color of prom corsages and the earth is plump and damp from rain.  Grass grows overnight, spreading a dense emerald carpet over hills that will, too soon, turn crackly and brown in the summer sun.  Too soon there will be fire danger and baked hard clay beneath my feet.  But for now, the moist air adds an ever so slight curl to my fine, straight hair and bright orange poppies spruce up even the most bedraggled median.  Spring in the air.  Spring in my step.

Fried rice for a new year

My daughter cooked dinner tonight.  Fried rice in celebration of the chinese New Year.  She and I were both born in Monkey years.  She tells me that means we are both "problem solvers" as in we know the answer to nine times one-hundred and five.  She doesn't, though, and I really have to think about that one.  The problems we are made to solve are not, perhaps mathmatical problemes.  Tonight (as I do most nights) she solved the problem of dinner.  She took the factors of left over rice, a bag of carrots, some purple cabbage and the chicken from two nights previous and she added them until they equaled dinner.  It was good.  What was better was watching her take charge of the big bowl of rice, seeing her happy smile as she dished out seconds (and thirds) to her brother.  My husband (because he was born in the the steady year of the Ox) took this on as a teaching moment.  He asked her to notice how happy she felt as the cook whose dinner was eaten with happiness and delight.  He asked her to put herself in her mother's shoes (her mother who is often the cook).  "Isn't it nice," he said, "to cook for happy eaters?"
"I know," she said.  "I know what you are trying to do."

We monkeys are problem solvers, but we are also problem makers.  We can't seem to help ourselves.

December already.

A hard rain last night almost convinced my kids that there would be snow. They drew faces with their fingers in the steamed windows and then asked for more cookies.

It was a big sugar day -- one more in the season of sugar. My boy arrived home from a two hour soccer/wrestling/football/basketball match with his pals, stuck his hand in his pocket and came up with a wad of gold foil, bouncy balls, tiny erasers and plastic farm animals all welded together with melted chocolate. Gelt should not be kept in the pocket of an eight-year old for any extended period of time.

The eight-year old is a furnace. He is a fiery pit of rage and tears and roiling, boiling emotions. I hesitate to put the butter dish near his place at the table lest it melt into a pool in the heat of his passion.

An evening that began with a Christmas tree and ended in tears and recriminations. So like so many of late.

Once we'd finally gotten the kids soothed and to bed, I read aloud to my husband. Not "A Christmas Carol," but "Your 8 Year Old." I read this bedtime story to soothe my beloved, to reassure him that our 8-year old was not different from any other boy of that age. That ours was to move through this fiery inferno -- keep calm and peaceful as that much awaited layer of winter snow.