It is what it is

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be assholes

As a general rule, I try to avoid judging other people's parenting choices, as I'm sure my own style is open to much judgment.  But one issue I've been increasingly taking note of, and most definitely judging, is what I view as a failure to teach children basic manners or social niceties.  While there is some truth to the "kids will be kids" mantra, I see too many parents taking this motto to justify their children's Lord of the Flies behavior while they sit on the sidelines drinking a latte. 

This was highlighted for me recently when I was at the park with Q (age 5) and a friend and her two children. There was a particularly ill-behaved child at the park that day.   He was consistently throwing snowballs at kids' faces and the kids were all quite clear in telling him that it wasn't okay and they didn't want him doing that.  From a bench nearby his parents (or I assumed them to be) half-heartedly yelled that it wasn't okay to throw snowballs.  Needless to say their pronouncements yielded no change in behavior.  But they continued to sit and chat amongst themselves and do nothing. Were their pronouncements mere suggestions?  Guidelines perhaps that they then allowed the child to choose to follow or not?  Why bother at all with these lame efforts?  Essentially you're telling him that what he's doing is wrong, but there is no consequence to his ill behavior, so go crazy and do just what you want.  Not exactly a philosophy that's going to help him go far in this world or one that's going to make the world a better place.

Ultimately I felt compelled to intervene and try to mediate a conflict that developed between this child and Q.  While I don't have any desire to parent other people's children (my hands are quite full with my own), I also think there are limits to what any adult should witness under the "let them sort it out for themselves" theory, and I do subscribe to the notion that it takes a village.  As much as I was troubled by this kid's behavior, just as troubling to me was having the parents just sitting back and chatting together and not laying some claim of responsibility for correcting their child's behavior.  Particularly jarring to me was when one of them complimented me on how well I mediated the situation between their child and mine.  It would have been nice to have them at least step forward to be engaged in the situation, rather than sitting back and letting someone else (me) handle the situation.  At that moment, the village wasn't really what was needed, just their own active parenting. 

So much media attention is focused on the pressure kids are under to succeed - helicopter parents managing their kids' lives, charting out their schools, their friends, their activities.  But one thing I don't see enough of is people truly trying to guide their kids' behavior.  Call me a Pollyanna if you will, but I wish as much parental energy went into helping kids become good people as went into helping them become masters of the universe.  My parenting abilities and my son's behavior are far from perfect, but I will take credit for at least making an effort to correct what is fundamentally socially unacceptable behavior and enforcing consequences.    So, to borrow from Willie Nelson, I'd just like to suggest a new parenting philosophy - Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be assholes.

Oprah and me

There are many things I'd like to have in common with Oprah - her capacity to connect with just about anyone, her ability to inspire and influence millions of people, her media empire, her wardrobe, her beautiful home in Santa Barbara.  Unfortunately, what I recently learned that I actually have in common with her is a thyroid problem, which I would happily take a pass on.  Alas, not an option. 

In a fine example of the expressions "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans"  or "The best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry",  within about a week of making a series of New Year's resolutions (including the resolution of making weekly posts to this blog), I found out the reason I had been feeling a variety of incarnations of terrible was because I have hyperthyroidism.  Follow up tests pinpointed it as Graves disease (not really a name you want to hear for any condition you are diagnosed with even if it's just named after the guy who discovered it).  As it turns out, the thyroid is actually pretty key for determining how you feel, as it basically regulates your metabolism.  After reading over the list of symptoms associated with Graves disease, a number of which are emotional/mental, I asked Ryan if that gave me a free pass for all past craziness. Alas, he said I could only give partial credit to the illness. 

While I've certainly never been on speed, I feel like I'm getting a bit of a taste of it, as the best way I can describe my physical state is to say that it feels like my body is vibrating, while at the same time I feel generally exhausted (I get out of breath walking up the stairs in our house or reading a book to Quinn) and have trouble really staying focused.   So, while I can't attribute all past bad behavior to this condition, and it's really impossible to pinpoint when it started, I am giving myself a bit of a pass on failing to stick with the blog post resolution (though I plan to get back on track).

As much as anything, the diagnosis just made me feel old. I've dealt with a variety of physical issues in the past - back, knees, wrist, etc - but somehow getting a diagnosis of something that you will most likely need to deal with on a daily basis for the rest of your life is different.   I've spent many hours at this point reading everything I can find on the web, and I have to say, I don't really like the options. I'm 37 years old and the idea of killing a pretty key part of my body (taking radioactive iodine to basically kill most/all of your thyroid is the most common treatment in the U.S.) and then being dependent on drugs for the rest of my life to kick start my metabolism seems pretty crazy.   I'm no scientist, but I have a lot of faith in them and it's hard for me to believe that in the next 30+ years there won't be a better option than this.  Anti-thyroid drugs are another option, but after use for 1-2 years, the disease goes into remission for only a relatively small percentage of patients. So, I haven't found either of these alternatives to be particularly compelling.

I've been trying to find alternative options. Perhaps I've read too much Dr Weil, but when you're dealing with an auto-immune disease it seems weird to be focused on addressing the symptoms (hyperthyroidism in this case) rather than dealing with fixing the immune system.   While clearly this falls into the "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on the web" category or maybe just plain denial,  I can't help but believe that there is some alternative treatment, diet, supplements, etc. that can help get my system back into alignment. 

I have seen one naturopathic doctor so far and one of the most useful pieces of advice she gave me was insisting that I really listen to my body and respect what my body needs.  What's amazing in this advice was that it forced me to realize how often I do just the opposite.   Like many people, I too often use caffeine or sugar to prepare myself to do something physically when what my body really needs is a nap. Shocking, but the doctor didn't think it was such a good idea for me to be frequently having a double shot of espresso to get myself to yoga class.  Staying up late to read just one more chapter was similarly frowned upon.

She prescribed a diet void of pretty much all of the quick fixes I rely on - no caffeine, chocolate, sugar or alcohol.  While my first reaction to this prescription was that perhaps nuking my thyroid wasn't such a bad idea after all, I was resolved that I should give these things a fair shake.  While I've had a few lapses (glass of wine after very rough plane flight, crackers after stomach flu, and chocolate after tough day with the five year old) I have mostly stuck with the program and I do feel that it's helped make my energy more consistent and even and slightly reined in the feeling of being on speed.

I met with an endocrinologist this week and he said I could take six months to try whatever alternative approach I wanted as long as my symptoms don't get significantly worse.   I was really happy that he wasn't completely dismissive of what I want to try (while noting that the patients he'd had in the past who've had similar ideas pretty much always end up back at his office.)  So, I've got six months to try to fix the problem and I'm actually excited about embarking on this project.  While I accept that my efforts  may not fix the Graves disease/hyperthyroidism, I am convinced that tuning in to my body and taking better care of myself is a worthy effort that is probably long overdue.  Sometimes it takes a push from something you can't control to highlight what you should have been doing all along. 

Why bother?

At the risk of sounding like a cynic, if you've made a New Year's resolution in the past, you're likely familiar with the unlikelihood that you'll keep your resolution.  I certainly am.  As this NYT article clarifies, you certainly have plenty of company if you abandon your commitment.

I've made the stereotypical resolutions to get in better shape, lose weight or not read People magazine at the gym. I've tried more thematic approaches like "Let go of things that don't serve me",  "Be more present," "Embrace new experiences," or "Focus on the things I can control."    And, while I actually do think that the intent of these goals has some benefit, even if in the specific instance it fails (perhaps subscribing to the two steps forward, one step back approach to personal improvement?), I've always felt a bit disappointed in myself for a failure to fully live up these expectations or resolutions.

This year I've decided to take a slightly different approach.  I considered abandoning resolutions altogether or cynically adopting the altogether achievable goal of "eat more, drink more, exercise less." But, in the end, I guess I'm just a sucker for the arguably artificial sentiment that the new year is a time for new beginnings.   So, rather than focusing on the outcomes I'm looking for (fitter, smarter, better person, etc), I'm setting up a structure of activities, which I'm thinking of as my own count-down clocks to my goals. 

Rather than focusing on the outcomes of these objectives (though obviously I've considered them), I'm trying to view these as the put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach to running a marathon.  If I do these things, I have faith that I will be significantly closer to whatever finish line they correspond to.

So, without further ado....

I will do 200 yoga classes by 11/22/09 (I started this goal on 11/22/08 as this goal occurred to me as I allowed my mind to wander very non-yogically as I lay in savasana in yoga class that day.)

I will read 50 books this year.  I'm trying to think of a good way to structure this as I want a balance of topics/types of books. (If anyone has must-read/life-changing book suggestions, please send them my way!)

I will write (and post!) one blog entry a week. 

Obviously the second and third count-down here run the risk of pushing me towards less than impressive books/posts in the pursuit of the goal (e.g. it would be kind of hard to read books like Infinite Jest each week.) But I'm going to have faith that while crap will occasionally end up in the mix, I will generally hold myself to a higher standard.

Short sighted

A few months ago, I read the book There are no children here.  It broke my heart and scared the crap out of me.  The book was written 15 years ago, and what's scary is that so many of the issues the book highlights -including the poverty and violence the children are living in alongside a failing education system -  haven't improved, and yet these issues aren't on the front page of every newspaper.  That any child should have to live in the conditions the book describes or have the education experiences the book highlights is just unacceptable.   (I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in issues relating to children and education.)

This being an election year, it's an obvious time for politicians to put forth a real agenda of change, a Manhattan Project-type ambition, and it troubles me that education isn't jockeying for a top spot on someone's policy agenda.  Obviously the situation in Iraq, health care and global warming are critical, but how are we going to pay for any of this in the future when we have a crumbling education infrastructure that is churning out uneducated, unskilled people that ultimately will create more financial drains on our economy rather than contributing to it?  From the economic perspective, if not from a moral one, these children can either be turned into assets that contribute to our bottom line or become liabilities that detract from it.  Unfortunately, it seems that we are increasingly building a system that is doing the latter.

It's rather discouraging when two billionaires pool $60 million dollars in an effort to make education a top policy issue in the presidential campaign, and even that just doesn't seem to have significantly moved the needle.  I realize it's one of the most complex policy issues to resolve, and that much of education policy decision making resides at the state level. I realize it isn't an issue that exists in a void and is inter-connected with so many other policy and social issues.  And at the same time, we need to do more.  It's not just the morally right thing to do to ensure a safe and quality education for every child, it is so obviously the self-interested thing to do.  What is going to happen to our country when we continue to fail to educate our children?

I recently read two articles which highlight for me the divide that seems to be growing in the US, where access to a quality education seems to increasingly separate the haves from the have-nots.

The first article was from the LA Times and goes into detail about parents paying admissions consultants $350 an hour to advise them as to how to get their children into $20,000 a year kindergartens. Yes, kindergartens.

The second article was from the SF Chronicle about a seven year old who got a fractured skull after being beat up at school by a 5th grader.  This after an attack the previous year led to four lost teeth.

We live in the United States of America. This should simply be unacceptable. Blame can be placed in many different places, but it seems like a basic right for a seven-year-old child to go to school and not be put in that kind of danger. Oh, yes, and also maybe to have the opportunity to actually learn something.

When education is reported on in the media, it seems very clear that there are two very distinct realities  - on one side are the tales of the privileged - like the LA kindergarteners or teenagers who take every AP exam, get perfect grades and spend summers volunteering in third world countries so they can apply to every Ivy league school and pray to get in; on the other side are the growing number of children who are getting an inferior education as demonstrated in myriad ways, including the low rankings of US 15 year olds on an internationally administered exam.

I would never deny that every parent has the right (and frankly the obligation) to pursue the best educational opportunity they can for their child. But, at the same time, I think we all need to keep holding and pursuing the goal that all children deserve a quality education.  I'm sure the children at the fancy LA kindergartens will receive a fine education, and that's a wonderful thing. But the reality is that the little bubbles that their parents are trying to create for them are finite. The kindergarten they go to may make the world seem like it's just peaches and sunshine as far as the eye can see, but at some point, the real world will encroach, and all of these children are going to be confronted with the harsh reality that we are living in a country with a seriously crumbling infrastructure. 

Now seems like a critical time to do something about it.

What do you care what other people think?

Before having Q, I recall occasionally seeing a child walking down the street in some odd or seemingly inappropriate get-up - perhaps wearing a pirate costume (nowhere close to Halloween) or a bathing suit with rain boots on a nice spring day, and I would wonder what was going on.

Since having Q, I no longer wonder. The answer has become clear, and for me it lies somewhere between "pick your battles" and "does it really hurt anyone"?

I had a good example of this today. Q has for some reason got it into his head that Easter is the greatest holiday ever and has spent the past few days talking about how the Easter Bunny will visit us next month.  Today he scored the mother lode at the art store when he asked me to buy him a pair of bunny ears (think hair band with bunny ears attached).  He then proceeded to wear said bunny ears for the rest of the day -  including while we played tennis for an hour, and for our walk through downtown Boulder.

As we walked through town, we got many amused looks from people on the street, and Q took any opportunity that presented itself to explain to passersby the glories of the Easter Bunny (as well as EB's friend Bugs Bunny - all bunnies are apparently friends).  Experiences like this make me very aware just how much we often conform to what's "normal." I'm not saying that I have a deep longing to roam around town in bunny ears, but I guess it would be kind of nice if some of the same eccentricities we allow for children were more acceptable in adults.  Maybe that's one of the perks of having a kid - you get to experience a lot more freedom of expression, get over the uptight concern of "what will people think?" and generally let your freak flag fly.  If I walk down the street with Q singing "The Yellow Submarine," people smile.  If I walk down the street singing it by myself, people cross the street or try not to make eye contact. (okay, I'm projecting here, I've never actually walked down the street singing anything.)

It made me think of the Richard Feynman book, "What do you care what other people think?". Feynman fared well for himself pursuing a less orthodox approach to things, as he chronicled in his various books.   For me, this book's title is a good question to reflect upon occasionally. 

The Democratic Party owes me two hours

A (delayed) assessment of the caucus process....

I consider the Democratic caucus that I attended on February 5 to be one of the stupidest uses of 2+ hours of my time in recent memory.  It is simply incomprehensible that in the United States in 2008 there is still anyone who considers this the best way to run a primary.

This was the first caucus I've ever attended, so I'm going to describe the experience for those who remain blissfully ignorant of how a caucus is managed.  At the primary site I was assigned to, I would guess there were approximately 450 people.  Registration began at 6:15, so I think people were checking in until 6:45 or 7. Then we got to all cram into an elementary school gymnasium and listen to a quick introductions, followed by two minute speeches on behalf of the candidates (presidential as well as lower offices).  To be kind, not all of these speakers were exactly the best representatives the candidates could have offered.  But even considering the better ones, it felt entirely appropriate that we were in an elementary school, because that was the level it felt like the speeches would have been more appropriate for.

After the speeches were done, we broke into precinct groups, and then the real idiocy began.  There were about 150 people at this point, now packed into the school's library.  The organizer asked for a show of hands of who was for Clinton - A SHOW OF HANDS?!?! - and then began going around the room trying to count hands.  A suggestion from the crowd led to each person counting off a number as they put their hand down.  The same counting process happened for Obama.  At this point the groups were separated and the numbers needed to be re-counted to make sure they were accurate - again, several suggestions from the crowd on how to ensure accuracy, and then finally it was decided to hand in the voter cards we had been given at registration to the leader of each sub-group. 

Hmmm. What would be a good way to accurately count the votes? It turns out that a lot of states have actually figured out a remarkably efficient and accurate way to count votes.   It's called a ballot box.  Sitting around an elementary school library raising my hand to have my vote counted, and having spent an hour and a half to get to that point, was utterly ridiculous.  The process then proceeded to elect delegates to represent our groups vote, and then I'm guessing it moved on to the voting for lower offices.  I say "guessing" because at 8:15, two hours after I arrived at the caucus site, I called it a night and headed home (as had a large number of the people who had been there for the presidential vote.)

All in all, I consider this to be  the most inefficient, disenfranchising, ridiculous process for engaging the populace in the election process.  The notion that this encouraged some sort of meaningful discussion of candidates didn't prove true for me, and the biggest topic of discussion I noted was a discussion of the stupidity of the caucus process.  I suspect many people simply didn't feel like spending an entire evening in order to cast their vote and decided to stay home.   There were a lot of people whose spouse was home with the kids because they didn't have a sitter to take care of the kids while they spent 2+ hours in order to vote.  I also resented having to publicly state who they're chosen candidate will be - I think I should be allowed to have my voting preferences remain private if I should so choose.

If it were a simple polling process, I can't help but think there would be higher levels of attendance generally and higher engagement in all of the lower-level races.  I just read a George Will article in which he argues the value of caucuses in part because their annoying and time-consuming nature weeds out the people with only slight or moderate preferences and taps into the more rabid supporters.  While allocating concert tickets based on who's willing to camp out for them the night before may be reasonable, I don't think that's a sensible way to elect a president.  Frankly, I've driven by some of those lines, and most of those people aren't the type I'd task with electing our next president.

Tough Choice

I'm planning to vote at the Democratic caucus in Boulder on Tuesday night, because I think it's generally important to vote, because there are so many critical issues the next president needs to address, and because I'm quite curious about how the caucus process works. My general thought on the caucus itself is that it seems somewhat non-inclusive that the only votes that count are from people who can be available from 6:15-8:45pm this Tuesday.  Regardless, my fascination with organizational behavior forces me to attend.

The trouble I'm having is that I'm just not sure who should get my vote.  There are some specific differences between the candidates that are notable but generally not given too much note -  e.g specifics in health care plans, clarity of the timing regarding withdraw from Iraq - but in the end, more than any election I've been of voting age for, it really does seem like it comes down to a gut feel, a sense of who you think is the right person for the job - largely because of personal qualities, a sense of what attributes are most important in a president, and a sense of who is best matched to the unique challenges we are presently facing.  Somehow this analysis is so much harder than evaluating health plans, views on education, etc. 

In some ways, the fact that I don't find the choice totally clear cut bothers me - I envy the people who seem to be connected to one of the candidates with an almost religious fervor.  It isn't that I don't like both of the candidates - I actually like them both quite a bit. It's just that neither one completely checks all of the boxes of what I'd like to see in a president.   Of course, Ryan reasonably pointed out that it's not as if there is anything that could fully qualify someone for the job of president, but still I'd like to feel a more complete devotion to one of the candidates, more certainty that they were unequivocally the best person for the job.

In most elections in the past, I've found myself annoyed with the "Get out the vote" campaigns, because I've always felt so strongly that the first mission needed to be "Inform the vote", followed by getting out the informed vote.  In some ways, this election is different because although I've been making a reasonable effort to inform my own vote,  it hasn't gotten me any closer to clarity on who I'm going to raise my hand for (or however this caucus thing works.)  I can read debate transcripts and find pros and cons for each of the candidates, I can read position papers and largely agree with both of them. 

I find the second-guessing of who is more equipped to compete in the general election simply presumptuous (I don't really think that many people are qualified as political crystal ball readers). And frankly, I want to vote for who I actually want to win, not play a part in some grand game of political chess. My problem is, I'm just not sure who that person is.

I've got a little less than 48 hours to figure it out, and I really have no idea what I'm going to decide.

Richardson for President

Watching the Democrat debates on Sunday night was actually more interesting that I expected.

I came away with quite a positive impression of Richardson, generally positive sentiments towards both Clinton and Obama (basically unchanged from what I thought going in) and I was quite unimpressed with Edwards (I think the only reason I wasn't less impressed with him earlier in the campaign is that I honestly haven't spent enough time reading about each of the candidates). For better or worse, I kind of went along with the general assessment that's been offered for months that the race is really between Obama and Clinton and figured there was no point in looking deeply at the other candidates.

Watching Edwards in the debate, I seriously could not believe that he's doing as well as he is.  Beginning with his response to how he would handle a nuclear attack on a US city (go after them and remain calm) I didn't find significantly more depth in his other responses.  I found him to be the clearest example on the panel of the "if you've got a hammer, the world is a nail" approach to answering questions with his frequent re-directing of all questions to the theme of the need to stand up for the middle class and be tough with the forces of the status quo.  What was lauded in some of the prese as his upbraiding of Hillary as a member of the status quo attacking the voices of change just came across to me as a sad bid for the VP slot on an Obama ticket.

In sharp contrast to my negative take on Edwards was my impression of Bill Richardson.  What I've read about him had given me a generally positive impression, but truthfully I just haven't seen that much written about him.

And that is what is annoyed me most as I watched the debates.  The fact that it seems (at least on the Democratic side) that there are some seriously experienced and capable people that just haven't risen above the noise at all - It's incredibly disappointing that the field seems to have been narrowed with a greater weight placed on some sort of cult of personality/celebrity than pure qualifications.  This isn't to take anything away from Clinton or Obama who both have compelling credentials, but it annoys me that Richardson is essentially written off as a non-viable candidate given that his credentials would seem to make him at least as capable as some of the leading candidates.  Watching the debates I could just imagine the thought bubbles over the other candidates heads as he says "If I were elected president."

Of all of the people on the stage, I found Richardson to hit the right note for me of both straight-talking, compelling visions (hello 50 MPG fuel efficiency requirement) and deep, relevant experience.  Maybe because of their leading candidate status it makes it harder for Obama and Clinton to veer off polished, difficult-to-assail talking points, but if I had to pick someone on the stage who represented both of the ever-present themes being shoved down my throat, Richardson seemed to represent both experience as well as change (when I'm looking for change, I'm looking for a smart, competent president that could have located Pakistan on a map without assistance when they began their run for the Oval Office).

So while my title for this blog post is perhaps a bit mis-leading, as I'm not truly certain that I'd vote for Richardson (I clearly need to do a lot more research on all of the candidates), I have absolutely no idea how anyone could walk away from listening to that debate and choose Edwards over Richardson (or either of the other two candidates for that matter). And frankly, I'm still left looking at the options in both parties and generally disappointed that there's not more depth on the ballot that's been assembled at a point in history that clearly demands greatness (which would certainly qualify as change).

Quote of the day... Making Changes

I've been pondering making some changes in my life and this particular quote from James Baldwin is resonating for me.  I read it in a book during college and somehow it always comes to mind for me when I find myself at a point of big choices/transitions/changes.  Thought some other people might appreciate it as well.

“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges”

--James Baldwin,  Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son

The Lorax will thank you

With the holiday season approaching, I've begun to dread opening my mailbox as I've come to expect a stack of unwanted catalogs each day.  A few weeks ago, I started keeping the back pages of the catalogs, planning to contact these companies and request that I be removed from their mailing lists.

I figured and hoped there would be a simple online one-stop solution where I could  relatively quickly remove myself from all of these lists.  A quick Google search turned up Catalog Choice - a sponsored project of the Ecology Center.  It's a free service that provides a directory of catalogs for you to search or browse and quickly unsubscribe yourself from each company's list.

In less than 15 minutes I removed myself from over 40 catalog lists and figure that after doing this a few more times in the coming months, I'll be removed from almost all of these lists.  In the process of doing this, and in the spirit of simplifying and scaling down a bit, I ended up deciding to remove my name from all of the catalogs that I get (not just the ones I so obviously don't want like The Great American Hanger Company or Allen Brothers Steaks).  Basically, I have no shortage of buying opportunities as it is - if there's something I need or want, I can go online or shop locally.  At the least it will mean less paper in our house, at best it might mean a bit less crap generally as I avoid a bit of impulse shopping.

Between using Catalog Choice and registering with the DMA to have my name removed from mailing lists that are sold to marketers, I'm hoping that my  mailbox will soon be emptied of the unwanted content.

Check it out - seems like fairly low-hanging fruit to help the environment.

What to make of a diminished thing?

Lately, I've been giving some thought to a quote I remember from Robert Frost's poem "The Oven Bird": "What to make of a diminished thing?"   

Until this past year, I had been practicing yoga regularly (about 4-6 times a week) for about seven years.  Four or five years ago my wrist started hurting me quite a bit.  As someone who spent a lot of years in competitive sports drinking the kool-aid of mantras like "pain is weakness leaving the body", I basically ignored the pain, listened to every yoga teacher offer a different theory as to how to diminish the pain, and pressed on, convinced that grinning and bearing it was the right strategy.

Turns out, it probably wasn't.  My wrist started hurting enough about a year ago that I stopped doing yoga and started seeing some doctors.  After seeing several doctors, doing some physical therapy and having an MRI done, I found out that I have torn cartilage in my wrist (TFCC) and need to have surgery to fix it.  I'm not a huge fan of surgery - I believe in western medicine, but general anesthesia kind of freaks me out - so I haven't scheduled the surgery yet. 

After essentially doing no yoga for about six months, I've started exploring a path back into my yoga practice.  While I did a fair bit of Bikram yoga when I first started going to yoga classes, it was when I started practicing Ashtanga yoga that I really connected and started getting the more mental benefits of yoga - more peaceful, more centered, etc.  I definitely think different styles are right for different people, Ashtanga was what resonated with me.  Unfortunately, it's probably the practice that's most stressful for the wrists.

A few months ago, I tried going back to some Bikram classes (less stressful on the wrist), but, for me, I might as well just go to the gym or go for a run. I just don't get unique benefits from a Bikram class.  So, I've started going back to ashtanga and power yoga classes.  And my ego is taking a beating.  I never thought I'd gotten to such an evolved place that I didn't value how my skill had developed over the years;  I knew I was a little too attached to whether or not I could do a hand stand in the middle of the room or various other arm balancing poses. I didn't know just how attached I was until going back to the practice with the recognition that at least until I do the surgery, and perhaps not even then, it's just not responsible for me to do these poses.

It is an incredibly hard realization. It also makes me realize that I need to find a new way to approach yoga and acknowledge that it will be somewhat different and require a different mentality.  Whereas before I  would always push myself as hard as possible, now I need to find a more honest and deeper awareness of what is appropriate for my body. To honor my limitations and find a new relationship with the practice.  To deal with the fact that it is really hard for me to watch other people do poses that I simply can't let myself do anymore.

It makes me understand why I stayed away from yoga classes for so long. It is so much harder for me to go to a class and not be able to do everything than it was to sit on my couch eating bonbons, lamenting my lost yoga practice.

All of this got me thinking of how I think we too often walk away from something when it's no longer exactly the same thing we knew and loved - whether it's an activity or a relationship.  The former college sport star becoming a couch potato because they can no longer perform at the same level is a cliche, as is the "let's be friends" talk that rarely pans out after the end of a romantic relationship. It's so much easier to walk away from these things rather than re-negotiate them and find a different, but still valuable, relationship.  It just seems like too often we have such a binary idea of things - we have a fairly narrow idea of an experience and if we can't have it like that, then we decide want it at all and simply walk away.   As I'm starting to realize as I develop a new relationship with yoga, I think this all-or-nothing mentality is an unfortunate approach and that a lot is lost when this choice is made. I do think it's the easier approach, I just don't think it's the most rewarding.

Keeping your mouth shut

Almost every time I see a "man on the street" type interview, I cringe.  Whether it's asking people to offer their views on a political candidate or name the members of the UN Security Council, or even just their favorite TV show, the reality is that most people don't sound all that intelligent when put on the spot by a media crew. It seems that even if they did actually say something vaguely intelligent or amusing, it apparently is usually spliced and diced to sound considerably less so by the time it's aired.  I am always left wondering "WHY???"  I consider it a hard and fast rule that you should run, not walk, if ever approached by these people.  Unless you're hawking a product and you can see some clear financial gain, or you're truly an expert on a topic that the public really needs to be educated about, keep your mouth shut. Or, at least speak off the record, or ask that names be changed.

Obviously I'm out of step with much of America on the issue of personal publicity, as I am totally lost as to why anyone would want to appear on a reality TV show, and the notion of seeking "fame" as an end unto itself is totally insane to me, but at least in these contexts I suppose the people can articulate some explanation for why they're on the show (e.g. get exposure to further their acting career, work for Donald Trump, win a million dollars.)

In most other cases, the motivation for offering up personal details for public consumption is considerably less clear.  A few weeks ago, there was an article in the New York Times about the "poor millionaires" in Silicon Valley.  My first response was - why, oh why did these people agree to be interviewed for this article?  I'm not going to get into the question of whether their comments are good or bad, right or wrong. My question was simply - did these people really not think about how they were going to come across in this article?  Is there really any chance to generate sympathy among the general public for these folks who "only" have X million dollars?  Based on several people who I spoke with about this article, I was not alone in generally thinking that it was far from a positive impression that they made. 

I'm always confused when I see these type of articles. It's sort of like the horror movie when you see someone about to do the obviously stupid thing (go outside alone, answer the phone, whatever) and you think - "never go outside alone. don't answer the phone.  IDIOT!"   Haven't these people seen a man on the street type interview before, or just read these types of articles themselves and noticed how incredibly stupid these people typically sound? 

I don't understand what these people ever think could be gained from agreeing to these interviews, or why they want to subject their lives to public scrutiny.  Unless there's a clear professional or financial benefit, I'm at a loss as to the motivation.  If there's some desire to enlighten or share some private information about an issue, I don't understand why people wouldn't just do it anonymously.  On this front, I recently read an article in the Times Style magazine about women who spend what most people (myself very much included) would consider an absurd amount of money on purses, and then proceed to spend what I (and I assume many others as well) would consider an absurd amount of time talking about them.  But at least these people had the sense to only go on record if their screen names were used.

I realize that there is something ironic about me writing in a public blog that I don't understand the willingness and desire to put yourself fully out there for public notice. But at least with the blog I control the content - it isn't going to end up cut and pasted to fit into a reporter's agenda.  I read an article recently about Vladimir Nabokov and how the only way he would answer questions for an interview was if they were submitted in writing in advance and would be returned with written answers that would need to be published verbatim, in entirety.  Smart man.

Life list

This past Sunday I read an article in the New York Times about the growing number of people making life lists - a sort of "things to do before you die" list - and it got me motivated to start my own list.  It seemed like it could be a good way to provide a dose of motivation and accountability - both things I feel the need for right now.

I used to be someone with a fairly clear plan and many concrete goals.  I liked the sense of certainty (even if somewhat misguided and false) of feeling like I knew where the road was taking me (my post on how I read books further elaborates on these tendencies). Since having Q, I've kind of fallen off the wagon of goal setting, so I thought that sitting down to write a life list would be an interesting exercise.  I don't think this is a panacea for my desire to find a bigger role in the world, but I do think it might be an interesting way to keep me moving forward towards some goals, and hopefully that can be part of the process of solving the bigger puzzle.

Some of my goals are admittedly rather shallow, hopefully most are not. Some goals are considerably more achievable than others. They are in no particular order as yet.  I've tried to be specific where possible (and being quote girl, sometimes I had a bonus quote to tag on as well).  For some things I still only have a general idea without specifics, but I included these goals even if still in the formative stage and trust that I'll be able to refine it; I'm figuring that by putting it out there it's like clay that I can work with and shape. I think I'm going to keep this as a running list on my blog in an effort to feel some public accountability. 

Life List

Be present.

Focus on the things I can control.  (I'm not religious, but the quote that always comes up for me on this one is "Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference").

Run a sub-3:45 marathon.

Compete in a mountain bike race

Go to cooking school in France or Italy.

Live in France, Australia, Italy, UK for at least a month each.

Learn to speak a foreign language fluently.

Do a volunteer vacation.

Get involved in a political campaign

Get deeply involved (with time and money) in a cause or issue to make the world a better place. ("Be the change you want to see in the world.")

Volunteer in a homeless shelter (or similar venue) for a Thanksgiving dinner

Learn to sing (somewhat) in tune.

Learn to play a musical instrument

Wear a bikini at the beach again (look very hot in it)

Participate in a long-distance team running relay (perhaps this one)

Follow the Tour de France on an organized bike trip

Bike across the US

Raise a happy, well-adjusted, compassionate child

Write a book. 

Publish a book.

Write a letter to the editor of the NYT (that gets published)

Learn to ski well enough to get down any run safely (and happily)

Do another Ironman race

Learn a martial art

Create art (paint/photograph/etc) good enough that I want to hang it in my home

Build/design a house from the ground up

Live in San Francisco again

Start a business or organization.

Create a retreat/commune/gathering venue for friends and family

Go on a silent meditation retreat.

Visit Galapagos islands

Study yoga in India

What now?

"Making choices is easy, it's living with them that's hard."  I'm not sure where I first heard that, but I think it's often quite accurate. While making choices isn't always exactly easy for me, of late I have been feeling some of the burden of choices made or, if not explicitly made, made nonetheless.  The specific issue I've been giving a lot of thought to is what I want to do next - from a professional/impact the world beyond my home sort of way - and my general place in the universe - what and who I want to have an impact on.

I've been told by one of my dear friends that this is an inevitable passage you go through right around when your kids turn three if you're a stay-at-home mom. Lots of people end up having more kids right about this time so perhaps that forestalls some of the questioning by doubling down on the first set of choices, but that's not the path for me.  So I know one choice that isn't right for me, but I'm not sure what the right choice is.  I've loved spending most of my time the past few years focused on my family and I know it was the right thing for us, but I've started to feel a bit unbalanced and feel a strong desire to expand my universe.

I think somehow with turning 36, my last official year as a mid-30, I've had this sense of feeling mired in my choices - that some of the choices I've made have closed other doors, that there are lives I may never live or experiences I won't have because of choices I've made.  I agree with the Katherine Mansfield quote that "Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only for wallowing in," so I hate to admit that I've probably been indulging in more than my fair share of regret and wallowing of late (though I'm thankful to some of my favorite friends in the world who listened to me as I broke down in tears over more than one cup of tea or glass of wine on my last SF visit as we discussed this very topic).  Now I'm trying to refocus my energy towards what I am going to do instead of what I have (or haven't) done.

What's been particularly challenging for me is that for the most part, I think that most of the things I've done in terms of professional/public roles - product management for Internet company, magazine editor, board member for non-profits - don't feel like quite the right answer to fill the void I'm feeling now.  So I guess what I'm feeling is the need to re-invent myself, and, at the same time feeling the burden of my own expectations - that ever looming question of "Is this what you got an MBA and all that education for?".   I've always loved stories of people who re-invented themselves - either rising from the ashes of failure to climb to great heights or simply having another success in a new realm - so I'm trying to view this more as an opportunity than a burden (haven't quite gotten there yet.)

After not having a formal forum for engaging with the world for so long, I know I miss it - I miss the intellectual experience, I miss the challenges, I miss the intensity, I miss working towards specific and achievable goals, I miss building and creating.  There are myriad ways people fulfill these needs. I'm just trying to figure out the path that's right for me.

Must-eats in SF

Other than running the marathon, my recent visit to San Francisco was filled up as these visits usually are - catching up with as many of my favorite people as possible, walking all over the city, and eating as many of my favorite foods as possible.  Eating is usually a big and important part of my travels and on San Francisco visits I'm always trying to find a balance of enjoying some of my old favorites while also being open to new discoveries. 

I love food and I like to optimize my experiences.  While I enjoy the occasional over-the-top meal (a la French Laundry), in general, I'm a bit more basic in my food preferences and tend to appreciate perfect executions of somewhat common/straight-forward, unfussy foods.  I'm blessed with a husband and friends who are willing to tag along for the ride as I seek out the perfect meal, even if that occasionally means having each course at a different venue. I'm definitely a believer in the "life's too short to eat bad food" approach to things - and I've certainly been known to leave a bad meal in search of a better restaurant rather than waste a meal with bad food.  While Boulder has some good food options, there is really no comparison with San Francisco and so I've usually got a long list of food I want to eat on each visit to the Bay Area.

So, while I wasn't able to eat all of my favorite foods on my recent SF trip (I'm back again in a week though so will have another bite at the apple, so to speak), and I had a few horrible food moments (desperation raisinettes and a wonder-bread like soft pretzel at the double-feature movie we saw), I did get a chance to re-visit some of my favorites as well as experience a few new good options.

Old Favorites:

• Chocolate sable cookies (from Miette) and Billecart-Salmon rose at Ferry Building Wine Merchant
• Almond croissant and raisin walnut roll from Boulangerie (Bay Bread)
• Ham and warm sheep's milk Cheese terrine (with champs) at Piperade
• Yank Sing for dim sum
• Chocolate chip cookies at the Grove
• Valdeon toasts and Billecart-Salmon rose (notice a theme?) at Terzo
• Margherita pizza and chocolate budino tart at A16
• Green Papaya salad at Slanted Door
• Cinnamon hot chocolate cake at Bittersweet Cafe
• Peaches from Frog Hollow Farm

New (for me) and worth repeating

• Christopher Elbow chocolate bars from CocoaBella
• Bombolone (Raspberry and Chocolate) at I Preferiti di Boriana at the Ferry Building
• Dinner at Plumpjack (Fabulous app of pain perdue with burrata and amazing black forest cake with chocolate pudding and cherry soup for dessert)
• Pasta-load dinner at Bacco - solid Italian restaurant in Noe Valley

On the list for upcoming San Francisco visit (again trying for the blend of the old favorites (OF) and new discoveries..)

• Tacubaya (OF - love their pork tacos)
• Sketch (OF)
• ici (have been wanting to try this relatively new Berkeley ice cream spot for quite some time)
• Picco (OF - love their pizza and soft-serve ice cream)
• Tartine (OF)
• Bong Su (OF- Actually have preferred this place over Slanted Door for Vietnamese food of late -- still holding out for their Boulder location....)
• Charles Chocolates factory tour and retail store
• Hamburgers at the Village Pub and Peninsula Creamery (OF)
• Dinner at Scott Howard and Nopa

If anyone has any suggestions for must-eat foods in San Francisco (particularly the new and fabulous), please send me an email or leave a comment!

Slow day at the races

It's not a good thing that I knew what the title of this blog post would be at mile three in Sunday's SF Marathon.  I tried to be optimistic, turn that frown upside down and tell myself that it could still turn around and be a fast day at the races. But, the truth was, I just knew.  I've run enough that usually from the very beginning of a run (and definitely by mile three) I know how things are going to go.

For some reason, from the starting line of this run, my legs just had nothing to give me - they just felt heavy and slow.  The first seven miles were particularly uncomfortable as I had added a second insole into my shoes the morning of the race because I'd been feeling like my shoes were a bit big.  Conventional wisdom on marathons tells you not to do anything new on race day - same food, same clothes, etc.  So, new insoles definitely defied conventional wisdom and my toes paid the price (I currently have two fewer toenails than I did when I started the race).  I sat on the curb at mile seven and pulled out and trashed the extra insoles. My toes thanked me, but it did nothing for my thighs which were quite clearly going to be the limiting factor on this run.

I've never given so much genuine consideration to how much I wanted to just bail on a race, but after a little heart to heart with myself, reminding myself that my friend Brad was slugging it out behind me, I decided that it would be better to be DFL than DNF.  There are valid reasons to drop out of a race, but because it's not my day and the running just feels crappy just isn't a good enough reason.  I tried to figure out why my legs felt so crappy - could it have been the cookie and raisinette diet regimen I followed during the movie marathon (Harry Potter and Die Hard) the day before the race?  The fact that I completely discounted the terrain of the race and did all of my training on flat surfaces? The fact that even though I'd done many long runs in training, I'd never really felt like I got into a good groove (I had thought this had a lot to do with the 90-degree temperatures in Boulder)?  Nothing I could come up with could really explain why I just felt crappy from the very first step. I just had to chalk it up to the fact that some days you have bad runs, and it's just a serious bummer if that happens on race day. But, as the title of my blog points out, it is what it is.

So, I decided to think of the run more as a character building experience than an opportunity for a PR (in the end, I was about 35 minutes off my PR). I just had to accept that sometimes a race wasn't going to be about how fast I could get from A to B, but rather that I simply continued to put one foot in front of the other and got from A to B.  I tried to enjoy the fact that I was running in SF along some of my favorite running routes (across the bridge, down by Baker beach, Chrissy Field, through Golden Gate Park.) 

There were a couple of good moments during the run - like when I missed the 23 mile marker and was so hopeful that the next sign I saw coming would say "mile 24" (it did) that I promised I would consider the possibility that there is a god (I'm pretty much an atheist, but as my friend Amy noted to me afterwards "There are no atheists in foxholes". Perhaps the same is true of distance runners.

In the end, I spent most of my time just focusing on ticking off the miles and thinking about how I was going to train differently for next year's SF Marathon. While I have been working on staying more in the moment, I felt that this occasion warranted an exception as it seemed that there was little I could do to improve my lot in the current race, and focusing on the next race distracted me a bit from the present situation which just wasn't that pleasant.

I've always found running to be a good way to clear my head, make some goals and formulate a plan, so, in the end, that's what I came out of Sunday's marathon with - a training plan for the year until next years marathon.   A few key take-aways:

*Lose the 10+ pounds I've known I need to lose (according to a recent Runner's World article, this should shave almost 20 minutes off my marathon time)

*Train on hills

*Get out to the track (I've always avoided track work, but, usually the thing we avoid is the thing we most need to do in these kinds of situations. I avoid it because I'm bad at it, but until I practice going fast, I'm not going to race fast).

*Measure and analyze.  I didn't time myself on any of my training runs this time around, just saying that I didn't want the pressure of time, just wanted to get back into a groove, blah, blah, blah. In the end, what this meant was that my training was more random than it should have been, I wasn't really adjusting training to make improvements and come race day I really had no idea what to expect in terms of pace or overall time.  As the title of a book I saw but never read proclaims: Hope is not a strategy.   Next time around I want a strategy based on hard numbers and real planning.

*Get on the bike. My best running has happened when I've been doing a lot of cycling for cross training.  Time to dust my bike off, get it tuned up and start exploring the hills of Boulder.

I've got a bit over a year (next year's race is August 3) and I'm very fired up.  I had been looking for a serious fitness goal and I've found two - first, to qualify for Boston marathon at SF marathon next year (this will be a pretty ambitious goal, but, I'm kind of in the mood/needing a really ambitious goal) and second, to do the SF marathon every year until I turn 50 (that will give me 15 consecutive SF marathons, 16 overall).

So, in spite of this race not going as I had hoped, I'm glad I did it. I finished with no real injuries, I know that marathons are still something I can and want to do (this was my fourth one, but my first since having Q), I got to spend time in my favorite city catching up with many dear friends and eating (too much?) amazing food, and I'm fired up with some new goals.

Older and (hopefully) wiser

Happy birthday to me!  I turn 36 today right around high noon Cambridge time (that's where I was born).  So that makes me a cusp child, between Cancer and Leo. The cusp of oscillation to be specific.  For people who know me personally, perhaps this additional factoid explains some things about me a bit better.

Increasingly over the years I have come to value the gifts of an experience shared with people I care about more than physical  gifts. (This is compared to when I was a child and my parents needed to implement the one-month birthday rule so I wouldn't start talking about what I wanted more than one month in advance. That being said, a perfect present is still a wonderful thing to behold, and while I've scaled it down considerably, I have no illusions of being so zen that I've completely transcended materialism :))

In keeping with this shift, I have increasingly come to think about my goals or resolutions in terms of less tangible things.  I'm usually a bit more focused on making resolutions or goals around my birthday than I am at New Years simply because of my  general distaste towards feeling so common and  sheep-like to be doing something at the exact same time as so many other people.

While there are some smaller goals or milestones that I'm thinking about, there are two over-arching themes I'm thinking about today - quotes that have been resonating with me for the past few months. I think they're great quotes so I figure I should share them:

From Chasing Daylight:  "The only decision to focus on is the one you can still make."
Most people I know are much better at this than I am - one friend even had a perfect comment on this when he said something to the effect of "I live like I don't have a rear view mirror."

While I think there are clearly things to be learned from experience, for me, I know that I spend too much time looking in that rear-view mirror, trying to adjust the view by mentally re-playing the scene, trying to figure out how to fix things, letting myself wallow in regret about things I should have done differently, wandering off into fantasy-land about how great some road untaken might have turned out.  Instead, my goal for the year ahead is to focus on what's in front of me - what I want to be doing, what impact I want my time to be having, who I want to be and who I want to be spending time with; essentially making the life ahead of me the one I want, rather than worrying so much about the one that's behind me.

And, the final quote for my birthday post, and my other birthday mantra for myself:

From Jonathan Swift (also quoted in Chasing Daylight, I believe):  "May you live every day of your life."

Funding a presidential campaign

I've heard a lot lately on the news about how much money is being raised - and spent - by the presidential candidates. The sheer numbers have blown me away, but I hadn't really looked much beyond the top level numbers I was hearing about. One thing I hadn't heard too much about is the comparative distribution of donor bases. (These are the things that I ponder at times like this when I've got a bout of insomnia at 4 a.m.).

So, I found it interesting to look through this NY Times resource and what struck me in particular was the distribution of Barrack Obama's donor base versus the other major candidates, specifically what a high percentage of Obama's funding has been generated from contributions of less than $200.  I knew that there was a big grassroots effort from the Obama campaign, but I was still struck by the magnitude of the disparity of funding sources.

Sources of Obama's $58,494,900 in individual contributions  (of $58,912,500 total raised)
under $200 - $16,545,600 (28%)
200-2299 - $18,376,190 (31%)
2300 - $23,684,000 (40%)

This versus Clinton's $51,999,800 in individual contributions  (of $63,075,900 total raised)
Under $200 - $4,633,860 (9%)
200-2299 - $13,946,810 (27%)
2300 - $33,958,100 (65%)

John Edwards had a fairly similar ratio to Obama's in terms of distribution of funding sources (albeit at a considerably lesser scale than Obama's):
Under $200 - $5,438,940
200-2299 - $9,511,048
2300 - $8,109,200

The rest of the high-profile candidates fall more in line with the Clinton distribution of funding sources.

It's interesting to me that while the totals are fairly comparable between Clinton and Obama, the funding base is clearly so different.  After a bit of web searching, I came across the approximate number of Obama donors as 258,000.  I couldn't find a recent number for Clinton, but it clearly can't be even as much as half that number.

I'm curious how the distribution of a funding base impacts elections and further funding - I wonder if large or small donors are more loyal to the party or the individual. Instinctively I guess I assume that if Obama won the primary, many of Clinton's large donors (those who have resources for more donating anyway) would flock to support Obama, but I wonder if the smaller donors that Obama has drawn in would necessarily be as eager to support a different candidate (not based on any research, but I think of these donors as more tied to the individual candidate than the larger scale donors).

The tyranny of socks and the burden of choice

I recall a scene in the movie Moscow on the Hudson where the main character has recently defected to America from Russia and is overwhelmed by the choices available in an American supermarket. In some aspects of my life, I'm starting to understand that feeling of being overwhelmed by choice.  While in general I support and embrace choice - think it leads to the best choices, products, etc,  I'm starting to consider the question: when is choice a blessing, when is it an unnecessary burden best shed when possible?

I'm starting to think that in some areas of my life, less choice would be better - simplification in lieu of constant optimization.  I've read of this strategy being recommended as a tool for losing weight (pick a reasonably healthy breakfast, eat it every day, don't give yourself any choices).  For me, my current target for simplification is socks.

I am surrounded by socks. Piles of socks. Literally hundreds of socks (see picture above). My socks, Ryan's socks, Quinn's socks, socks of unknown origin.  I don't want to spend the time sorting them, so the pile remains, with us digging into the pile each time socks are needed, trying to find something that resembles a pair.  We've collected these socks over a lot of years - there was a bag of unmatched socks that we brought here from California a year ago that have remained unmatched; I still have socks that I received when I was an editor at Triathlete magazine over ten years ago and received all sorts of gear from sporting goods companies. 

I don't like to throw things away so there's very little exodus of socks except by complete deterioration.  At the same time, any time I see new socks that claim to be better for running for x or y reason, I've given them a try. Or I like the design. Or I forgot to bring socks to the gym and I don't have time to run home but there's a sports store nearby.

I've caught myself on more than one occasion unable to find matching socks for Quinn and telling him that it's cool to occassionally wear mis-matched socks.  I realize I may be encouraging some rather odd fashion choices, but, sometimes, it just seems easier than diving into the pile to try to find a matching pair. 

But I've been embarking on a new effort of late to simplify our lives and eliminate any unnecessary sources of stress or things that are taking up more time than they warrant. So, today, I've decided to follow Ryan's lead of simplifying this tiny little aspect of my life. 

Ryan had long been a fan of socks as a vehicle for creative expression and had a vast collection of funky socks - Jhane Barnes and Ted Baker were particular favorites.  After ten years together and me being the one who does our laundry, Ryan seemed to finally come to the realization that he hadn't married June Cleaver. Considering himself lucky if I managed to get clean underwear in his drawer each week, it has proved beyond my ability to ensure that he had matching socks on any given day from his vast collection of creative but distinct socks. So, Ryan's solution was a trip to Nordstrom's from which he returned with one bag of black socks and one bag of sports socks.  He told me that he didn't want any of the other ones in his drawer any more - it was to be black socks with gold toes or nothing at all - he told me I could throw away any others.

Of course, I couldn't do that. It just felt so incredibly wasteful. There's nothing objectively wrong with the socks.  At the same time, I realize that the pile hasn't been doing anyone any good, and every time I head out for a run I have to dig into the pile and find two suitable running socks.   For the past month or so, I've started opting to just wearing mis-matched socks and not spend any extra time on the process.

But, today is the day for me.  Earlier this week I bought Quinn 15 pairs of white socks.  And today I'm going to head to the running store and do the same for myself.  Tuesday is trash day and I think I will just pack the whole pile of socks into a bag and dump it. I might have to ask Ryan to do it as I know if I start picking up the pile, I'll see one perfectly good sock and then another and another, and pretty soon I will have the whole pile back on my floor and I will again be forced to spend that time each morning picking out socks for my run.

So, while eliminating the choice of socks is rather low-hanging fruit in the stresses-of-life department, that's my charge for today.  I'm looking forward to getting up for my run tomorrow morning and grabbing two socks - any socks - and having a match.

Response Time

I guess it was when I was working at Excite about ten years ago that I really started hearing people talk a lot about response time - how quickly you get the information you request on websites, how this can be optimized, why it's slow.

For my own part, I've been giving more thought to the question of personal response time.  I actively hate talking on the phone (which is somewhat problematic in that I no longer live near the majority of my friends) so email is my main vehicle for communication.  Sometimes I end up with a technology preference mismatch - I email, some of my friends are much more reachable by phone or text message - this can sometimes lead to big lags in correspondence (eg I don't really check my voicemail that often, other people don't check their email that often)  Setting aside this medium mismatch, and while I realize that email is not IM, I'm amazed at the response lag time that some people seem to think is acceptable. 

I've been trying to monitor my own behavior so as not to be one of those slow responders.  Slow response is particularly annoying when trying to make plans - eg how long are you supposed to keep times available after you offer them up?  If you continue to follow up it can feel somewhere between harassment and chastisement for poor email etiquette. If you don't follow up you can be left to wonder whether the original email was received or if it ended up in a spam filter (only for those poor souls using a non-Postini spam solution).  But exactly when did it become socially acceptable not to reply to invitations?

Personally, I think my worst response time comes with the most personal sort of emails - as the type of exchanges that for many friends are hour long phone conversations, for me often end up in my email queue (per my distaste for the phone). Sometimes I just don't have the emotional wherewithal to have the kind of reply that the email warrants even when I have the best of intentions and the highest esteem for the sender.

I read a book several years ago called Memos from the Chairman, written by Ace Greenberg, then CEO of Bear Stearns.  I remember generally enjoying the book, but the item that most stuck with me was that he made it his goal to always respond to inbound correspondence within 24 hours (or at least that's how I recall that part of the book.)  Sometimes the response was simply that he had gotten the message, didn't have time at the moment to address it but would get a full reply as soon as he had time.  Still, that counts at least as an acknowledgment.  The book was written before the ubiquitous nature of today's email, so I'd guess  he had fewer inbound requests than his successor does today, but he was the CEO of Bear Stearns. If he could get back to people within 24 hours, it's hard to think of many people who can't. I know lots of people who think that they're too important or busy for fast response times, but my own observation is that some of the busiest people I know are the fastest to respond. Sometimes these responses are even incredibly long and thoughtful replies.

I think it comes down to the kind of style that people have chosen to adopt.  It seems that the fast responders basically have a FIFO approach to email management - they read an email, they deal with it, it's done.  I am aspiring to be one of these people.  The approach I have followed too often is the one I see too many other people following as well - essentially random - read an email, sometimes respond instantly, sometimes plan to respond to it at a later point (maybe more information needs to be gathered, a schedule consulted or more time needs to be allotted for the reply than is currently available). Maybe I get back to it or maybe it gets lost in the queue of forgotten emails. Since I've switched to Gmail, even more emails fall off my radar as only 25 emails are in view on my front page.

I'm really trying to reform, and hope others will as well, as I think Ace had it right.  So anyone who hasn't replied to my emails lately, get on it :)

Let's be friends

I'm not making a run for William Safire's job. And I'm not as anal as my pickiness about language might make me seem. But, it should by now be clear that imprecise language bothers me, and hyperbolic relationship descriptions are a particular pet peeve. 

Today I was struck by the ubiquitousness of the overly-friendly issue again when I received a message from Facebook.  I just signed up for Facebook recently (to get some background on a potential nanny candidate) so this was the first 'Friend request' I had received.  I was amused by the language of the email:

"Laurie added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need you to confirm that you are, in fact, friends with Laurie."

That doesn't seem quite accurate. What they "need" to do (I would suggest that this is what they "want" to do, but that's not my main linguistic beef here) is to confirm that I want Laurie on my Facebook Friends list.

I spent a bit of time cruising around the Facebook website, and it's quite clear that many people's "Friends" lists are populated with people who aren't exactly friends.  Perhaps associates. Colleagues. Acquaintances. People you may want to have as a friend, be employed by, sleep with. All legitimate relationship types, but none I would categorize as 'friends'. Many of these clarifications are available on the follow-on page where you can detail the relationship further - after you accept the general premise that "you are, in fact, friends."   

While I'm not thrilled with the imprecision of the "Friends" list, I understand the constraints of presentation on a website and that simplicity often trumps accuracy.  But I can't help but think that the umbrella of friendship in Facebook's universe hearkens back to the overused "BFF" (best friends forever) in a high school yearbook.

(side note... after reading this post, Ryan pointed me to a WSJ article that is more expansive in its discussion of this issue...)

Peace and quiet

Ryan and I just got back from a few days in Aspen. We've been there before and I was again struck by what a fabulous place it is. To me it's pretty close to perfect - breathtaking natural beauty, focus on active outdoor lifestyle, nice downtown area, great culinary, cultural and intellectual offerings; perhaps a bit too moneyed-feeling for my taste, but you certainly understand why people with the money would choose to live there.

It was nice to have time to ourselves, eat amazing meals (D19 and Matsuhisa were particularly good), do some great hiking (great for the first hour anyway, until we both ran out of water), good yoga, and just generally be spontaneous with no particular agenda for the day. We had a requisite celebrity sighting (Michael Eisner at the next table over at lunch) and even ran into a friend from business school who we ended up having lunch with, which was a nice surprise.

But perhaps more than anything else on this vacation, I just enjoyed being able to sit or hike or read in absolute silence.  Much as I adore Quinn, hanging out with a three year old all day can sometimes feel like a cross between a filibuster and the inquisition. His insatiable curiosity and intensely verbal nature are qualities I absolutely love (and I can certainly tend towards being a big talker myself) but I also sometimes really love and need (and am often sorely missing) silence. 

Our first day back in town I had a bit of whiplash with all of the talking and questions, but I feel back in the groove on day two.  This trip did confirm what I've felt on some other trips I've taken over the past year which is that my nature really just needs quiet time to fully recharge and re-center myself.

That's a great question

Today I was listening to an interview with an interesting, educated entrepreneur, and throughout the interview, I heard many of her answers prefaced with "That's a great question" or "That's a really good question."

These are phrases that often annoy me because I think they're overused, and more so because they're typically not a genuine appraisal of the quality of the question. In the case of the interview I heard, the questions were certainly reasonable, many rather obvious, but basically appropriate for the interview subject; nothing I would categorize as a "great" or "really good" question.

I certainly think that there are in fact many great questions to be asked. The historical record is full of them. To provide a few well known examples, from a range of contexts:

John Kerry: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

The Clash: "Should I stay of should I go?"

Rodney King: "Why can't we all just get along?"

Arnold Jackson: "Whatchoo talkin' bout, Willis?"

William Shakespeare: "To be or not to be"?

I wish that there were in fact as many really good questions being asked as people are saying there are, and more clarity and additional information was the result.

In reality, it seems that the phrase is typically used (consciously or unconsciously) to co-opt a sometimes hostile audience or to create more of a connection, a "we're-all-in-this-together spirit" with the questioner. To me, it often comes off sounding either like sycophantic pandering or thinly-veiled condescension.

When I was working in professional settings, I sat through a lot of meetings where people were pitching a product or business and looking to win support from their audience.  Frequently they would be faced with a skeptical or hostile audience posing questions, trying to pick holes in the presentation.  Often the presenter would preface the response to the hostile question with "That's a great question." I was amazed to see that this actually seemed to work with some people to mollify their objections and make them more partial to the presenter.

So as much as I wonder about why people use this often disingenuous phrase, I am also left wondering why even educated, successful people are so susceptible to this not-so-subtle ass-kissing.  It's a really good question.

Can I be frank?

I hate the phrase "Can I be frank?"  As if there's some other way you should be.  What possible answer is there to this other than "Yes"?  Who's going to say "No, lie to me"?  How much more real, interesting, better it would be if we didn't ask the question, but rather went about our interactions just being frank, saying it like it is, laying it out on the table and letting the chips fall where they may.

I have always had an appreciation for people who are willing to put their opinions out there - not just for the sake of attention, ideology or being confrontational (a la Ann Coulter) or trying to offend (a la Howard Stern), but rather for the sake of honesty, for clarity, and, ideally to offer some value to the people receiving these opinions.  Too often I find that people don't offer the truth because they are worried that they won't be liked or because they are focused on some larger agenda that won't be served by being more forthright.  Yes, I realize I'd never last a day in politics (or many more traditional and corporate settings) with my distaste for the overly tactful and cover-your-ass approach to communication. That said, I still think there are many venues and many people who would be better served with a more straight-forward and forthright communication style.

I was recently struck by this issue when I talked to a Jungian astrologist I've spoken with on occasion (hopefully this doesn't render everything else I say invalid in people's minds).  While Ryan and I are fairly certain we don't want any more children, this woman had offered some interesting insights when we decided to have our son, so I thought it was worth hearing what she had to say on the subject. Without having any insight into my leanings or thoughts on the topic, she came right out and said (with regard to our son), that having another child would be something "he would never get over in this lifetime" and would be "the worst thing we could possibly do for him."  Wow. That's getting to the point. No fence sitting here.  I thought it was fabulous. It completely resonated with me, and I totally appreciated her just putting her opinion out there - no caveats, no moderating.

When to share an opinion, when to keep your mouth shut? It's not an easy balance, and most people probably have a general style that tends more towards one option or the other.  I definitely lean more towards the former approach, perhaps sometimes overly valuing honesty over tact.  I'm not one to hold back my opinion, or as Ryan says jokingly after I've reacted strongly to something "Ah, my honey of the moderate opinions." 

I know there have been (many) times where I've probably said too much, offended some people that I would rather not have.  Even so, too often lately I find myself offering caveats when I'm worried that my opinion may offend someone, and in the process, whatever value my message might offer is diluted and loses its impact.  The lessons here for myself:  To make sure my opinion is considered and not reactive;  not necessarily offering opinions on everything when it isn't particularly important;  but when there is an opinion I want to offer, to be certain I'm expressing it fully and really properly conveying my meaning and intent undiluted by the safe harbors of caveats and hedging.

While I'm not advocating for rampant rudeness or insulting behavior, I think there are many occasions where people would serve their relationships and themselves better (and more honestly) to say it like it is.   My conclusion ultimately is that if the opinions or advice being offered are accurate, they will resonate with the person (assuming they are reasonably self aware), and if the opinions are off base, a reasonable person should be able to process the information, take anything useful from it, and let go of that which doesn't resonate. 

Finally, as most topics make me think of quotes that speak to the topic at hand more eloquently than I can, writing this made me think of a poem I remember reading in a college literature class, the sentiment of which I very much appreciated, and believe to be apropos of this topic:

Elemental

Why don't people leave off being lovable
Or thinking they are lovable, or wanting to be lovable,
And be a bit elemental instead?

Since man is made up of the elements
Fire, and rain, and air, and live loam
And none of these is lovable
But elemental,
Man is lop-sided on the side of the angels.

I wish men would get back their balance among the elements
And be a bit more fiery, as incapable of telling lies
As fire is.
I wish they'd be true to their own variation, as water is,
Which goes through all the stages of steam and stream and ice
Without losing its head.

I am sick of lovable people,
Somehow they are a lie.

--D.H. Lawrence

Gratitude

A lot of people wear clothing that indicates something about them - college or professional affiliation, political ideology, sense of humor, or similar things.  For the most part, I take note of these things, but rarely does it have a big impact. Maybe something makes me smile, a stereotype is confirmed or challenged, but by the time I've passed the person, the impact is forgotten. 

Seeing people in military uniform usually has a bigger impact on me. Like most people, I feel gratitude that these people are serving their country and putting their lives in danger to do so. Regardless of my feelings on much of our government's military strategy, my feelings towards the institutions and the people committed to them are generally very positive.

But the gratitude I usually feel when I see people in uniform went to a whole new level today.  When I was hanging out downtown, I saw a 97-year-old man wearing a Marines jacket and sporting a Navajo Code Talker hat.  This man was one of approximately 400 Navajos who served as code talkers during WW2, transmitting a code that the Japanese were never able to crack, and about whom many  military officials stated that "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima."  It literally gave me chills to realize what an impact this man and those he worked with had at such a critical point in American, and world history.   

It was obvious that I wasn't the only person who took note of the man and were in awe to see and meet someone who had such a critical role in our history.  The man who was making a balloon figure for my son commented "If it weren't for him, we'd all be speaking German." [Perhaps more likely Japanese given that the Navajos work was primarily in the Pacific, but I am certainly no WW2 expert.] Many people stopped to speak with this former code talker, and I for one was thinking about him and his impact for quite a while after seeing him. We all like to think that our contributions to the world are having a positive impact, but it's not often you encounter people who played an integral part in something that had such a large impact on the course of history.

How We Connect, or, the Genius of Crocs

It's not a big insight to say that many people walk through life fairly disconnected from the people (strangers) around them (see Bowling Alone for a very long discussion on the topic). We're all pretty caught up in our own lives - whether it's busyness, laziness, fear, increased focus on the individual or something else that keeps each of us isolated in our own small universe. So, it's always interesting to note what makes people reach out and connect, even if it's just a friendly hello, a wave or some other small acknowledgment that we're all walking this planet together.

In my day-to-day life, I find this connection most often when I'm out on a run or playing at the park with our dog or our son.  Out running on the trails, it seems natural and commonplace to connect with people with a friendly wave. Even the speedy Boulder professional runners and triathletes that blaze by me often  hold up their hand in greeting, though we're clearly in very different leagues fitness-wise. From my own standpoint, when I'm at mile 12 into an 18 mile run, there's a combination of "misery loves company" and taking comfort in thinking that with enough people on the trail, the mountain lions/bears/snakes will stay at bay.  With kids or dogs, there's just the obvious focus point for conversation (kids/dogs), though it's interesting that more often than not you just exchange dog/kid names and details but not your own.

Another connection point that I've been noticing increasingly of late is the connection around commerce, around the things that we buy.  I first really tuned into this idea in an explicit way about 8 years ago when Ryan drove a Porsche (yes, the cliché Internet bubble purchase). I have always found it hard to justify spending so much on a car, and particularly one so flashy (even when I'm willing to spend money on something, I prefer things that are more stealthily high-brow - ie they may cost a lot, but the value that you're paying for isn't really visible or obvious to most people.)  What most amazed me when driving around in the Porsche was that quite often, when we passed another Porsche, Ryan and the other driver would wave at one another.  I found this completely ridiculous.  I'd always roll my eyes and wonder aloud what it was all about - were they connecting with each other because they're both fortunate enough to have the discretionary income to drive a Porsche or because they're both stupid enough to have purchased this overpriced car?  Whatever the reason, I found it fairly ridiculous that purchasing the same item would create a point of connection.

More recently, I've been seeing how pervasive this connection around commerce is among the preschool set.  I'm amazed at how fluent some 3/4/5 year olds are in the language of Power Rangers or Transformers.  Preferring to hold the commercialism at bay as long as possible, our son doesn't have most of these toys.  We're not totally immune to the influence (Q is well versed in the Cars movie propaganda), but I've decided to hold off on most of the character-driven commercial dynasties as long as possible. Q doesn't seem to mind and is happy with his more generic toys (tinker toys, legos, cars, etc).

After watching the kids at school or on the playground, or listening to a speech from my son's 4- year-old playmate about the glories of Optimus Prime, I have had moments where I've felt somewhat guilty, that I'm denying him this point of connection with some of the other kids.  While Q doesn't seem to have a real sense that he's missing anything, it's obvious that these toys do serve as a bridge between kids, providing a platform where they all speak the same language and know the rules of play.  I'm left with the dilemma of balancing my personal preferences and values while not denying my son a point of connection (even if he's not aware of what he's missing).

I was recently pleased to find a commerce-connector product that didn't create such a moral dilemma for me. Yesterday, we were introduced to the glories of Crocs (a Boulder-based company). Of course I've seen them around for years, noted their pervasiveness, but basically thought they were pretty ugly.  Ugly or not, the people behind these shoes are absolute geniuses, and have created a ubiquitous commercial connector.

A few weeks ago, Q noticed the Crocs in the cubbies at his gymnastics class and asked what they were.  Then we saw them when we were checking out at the local Wild Oats. This time he said he wanted a pair.  Other than an interest in shirts with guitar pictures, this was the first time Q had ever expressed an interest in any particular clothing item, so I figured it was reasonable to indulge the request.  Happy does not begin to describe how pleased he was to have his shoes. Once we added the Jibbitz (most brilliant product add-on ever?) he was beside himself with excitement.  But what blew me away was how quickly the shoes proved to be not just something to cover his feet, but a social lubricant.

We left the shoe store and headed out to the play area on Pearl St.  Immediately, Quinn got engaged in a conversation about Crocs/Jibbitz with a little girl who was playing on the climbing equipment (I'm fairly certain Q had Jibbitz envy as the girls shoes were completely covered in them).  He had a conversation with an older girl by the fountains about why she wanted to take her Crocs off before going in the water, but he wanted to keep his on.  An hour later, he and I sat at the bar at The Kitchen for dinner and Q turned to the woman sitting next to him and asked if she had Crocs too.

The Crocs provide the point of common connection/experience, while the Jibbitz offer the potential for individuality and personal expression, and provide further topics for conversation.   While in general I'm not a huge fan of these commerce connections, I find the Crocs/Jibbitz  connection basically innocuous and just have to sit back and admire the pure genius of the inventors.

 

Make it stop

I opened my Yahoo front page today to find these as the top 3 stories from Reuters:

• Iraq forces Gates to pick new top officer

• Weeping Paris Hilton ordered back to jail

• G8 trumpets Africa aid deal as summit ends

I seriously can not believe that headline number 2 is sitting alongside these others as if of equal import.  I thought, perhaps there is an algorithm that rotates through a huge pool of stories and maybe there are some similarly un-newsworthy stories in the top stories list. So I clicked through to see the whole section. In full, it just made the inclusion of the Paris Hilton story all the more absurd:   

Iraq war forces Gates to pick new top officer, Weeping Paris Hilton ordered back to jail, G8 trumpets Africa Aid deal as summit ends, Immigration Reform advocates vow comeback,  Bush signals missile shield to go ahead, Secret CIA jail hosted by Poland, Romania, Fierce Fighting rocks Palestinian camp in Lebanon, Legal scholars urge "Scooter" stay free on appeal, Vitamin D cuts cancer risk, Israel offering Golan, awaits Syria proposals, CIA Agents go on trial, Spain arrests Syrian man for selling arms to FARC.  Hmm, which of these is not like the others?

I have been increasingly annoyed lately by the fact that it is simply impossible NOT to know what is happening with Paris Hilton and her cohort, even when reading fairly credible news sources.  In the same way that I'd like to go through the checkout stand at the supermarket without seeing candy, I'd like to be able to access my news free of updates about the latest celeb rehab/outfit/romantic interest/etc. 

Normally I'm somewhat safe if I only read the New York Times. But, I just checked their web site, and there is Paris Hilton crying, front and center.  On the Washington Post website, it's the most read story (while only the 15th most emailed story - not sure if this means that everyone wants to know what's happening with Paris, but doesn't quite want everyone else to know how lame their interests are).  The only current story about Paris that I liked at all was the Salon story  We'll always hate Paris, but even here I have to think that the level of vitriol assigned to Paris is really out of proportion to anything she's ever done, to her actual importance in the universe - it's just crazy that she should bring up such strong emotions/opinions in people. 

While I admit that I used to enjoy flipping through People magazine and similar fare when I was waiting to have my teeth cleaned or wasting away an hour getting my hair colored, I am now officially, completely done with those magazines and am just overwhelmingly sick of their content.  I know it makes me sound old to say that things are worse than they used to be, but I really think the pervasiveness of the attention to celebrities is just out of control.  Of course it can be mindless fun once in a while to check out dresses at the Academy Awards or similar things, but who really cares or needs to know on a daily basis what people are wearing/driving when they go to the grocery store/gym/walk down the street, where they spent their summer vacation (rehab), who got paid 200K to show up at a party, who forgot their underwear and who is sleeping together this week?  It is so high school it's absurd.

I am amazed that many people seem to be able to offer a more considered opinion as to whether Jessica Simpson is right for John Mayer than what the hell we should be doing in Iraq or health care or global warming or any other major issue facing the country.  I realize the latter issues require a harder analysis than the former, but if people spent the time that's wasted on each inane celebrity story taking on the responsibility of educating themselves about something (anything) of substance, I'm sure we'd all be better off. 

Angelina Jolie is photographed in a dress and it sells out, but how much money do people donate to the various causes for which she evangelizes?  I realize it's a lot easier/sexier/lighter to contemplate celebrity glamour and relationships than the state of our REAL world, but most people have a more realistic chance of matching Angelina Jolie's philanthropic efforts (at least in intent) than they ever do of looking like her, regardless of what dress they're wearing.

Obviously, the media-celebrity parasitic-symbiotic relationship has been booming and growing for quite some time. But to see real media sources cover these stories as well - and so prominently - makes it considerably worse.  I think I might rather live in a world without the New York Times than live with a New York Times that puts a crying Paris Hilton on its front page.

The road of excess

I'm a big collector of quotes, and I'm by nature a big fan of extremes, so these lines from William Blake's poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell have always resonated with me:  "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" and "You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough."  Increasingly, I'm finding that my affection for the extremes may not be serving me very well and I'm pondering the idea of seeking a middle path in some areas of my life. 

Last week, the road of excess led me to the We Care spa in Palm Springs. I decided to go the extreme of the juice cleanse approach after hibernating during our first Colorado winter and putting on the associated layer of insulation. I think Ryan and I are the only people to move to Boulder and gain weight (pulling down the heralded fitness levels of this town), but that was the shape I found myself in and I finally decided to do something about it.  I've typically found it easier to get out of a rut and into a good groove by first going to the other end of the pendulum, and in this case that meant finding the opposite of the chocolate/wine/bread/cheese diet.  The We Care Spa fit that bill.

I do think "spa" is used fairly generously here as my idea of a spa includes lazing around a  big lap pool, taking long hikes, playing tennis and marveling at how they can cook such fabulous tasting food that is still healthy. We Care had many things to recommend it, but this was much more a place for inner reflection and inner cleansing than any outward-directed activities. While my room was actually quite nice, and I loved doing the mellow yoga and sitting in different spots on the grounds catching up on my reading, the main activity of the day consisted of figuring out how to sequence the myriad different drinks and pills that needed to be consumed during the day. 

While I actually felt really great doing the cleanse, and didn't think it was too hard to do in an environment where I had nothing to do except plan my next drink, it still left me somewhat perplexed as to how to preserve these benefits and create change in the real world of my day-to-day life.  I like drinking wine, I make and eat a lot of chocolate, I enjoy entertaining and socializing over big drawn-out meals, and I'm not interested in giving up these things. At the same time, I can't deny the fact that I felt fabulous after a week of cleansing.

I spent a lot of years of my life being super extreme and obsessing about what I ate and how much I exercised, and I just have no interest or tolerance for being that person again.  That said, I'd still like to fit into my skinny jeans and have more energy, so it seems the full-on laissez-faire eating plan isn't the answer either.  Instead, I'm trying to explore the idea of the middle path.

My friend Amy and I are both working on making real substantive lifestyle changes, and she has more then once noted that it really just comes down to moderation.  Of course she's right, though my general response is "I don't like moderation" or "Where's the fun in that?"  That said, I think it might hold the answer. "Moderation" doesn't have quite the marketing caché I look for though, so I've come to refer to this as the "Don't eat so fucking much" diet.

Free Love

Where does "like" end and "love" begin?

I'm often troubled by what I think of as the cheapening of the word "love" through misuse and overuse.  I frequently hear people using the word "love" for things I struggle to see how they could really "love."  I accept that there is a range of feeling that can be captured by the word, and a range of relationships, objects or experiences that could come under the mantle of "love". Even as I look at a formal definition of the word which allows for some pretty broad applications of the word (with synonyms ranging from fondness to passion to adoration, you've got a lot of ground covered),  I still think "love" has lost some of the gravity I think the word should carry. 

Recently driving home my discomfort with this has been our son's propensity to tell us all day long how he really loves "X" - it might be his Tinker Toy airplane, his Hummer that is missing three wheels, a flower he has picked in a friend's garden or the smoothie he is drinking. I always try to respond with some version of "I'm so glad you really like x, y or z." My one attempt to try to explain "love" versus "like" was met with a blank stare from Quinn and with Ryan rolling his eyes.  Maybe kids are such zen beings, so in the moment, that they lack the context by which to weigh one thing against others and create the mental map to really assign the proper weighting to the things they "love" versus the ones they merely "like."

I also struggle with this issue in some email exchanges, even with people that I actually do love.  If they sign off an email to me with "Love" am I a jerk not to reply in kind?  Somehow signing off from a discussion of what kind of pizza people want for dinner (particularly after its gone back and forth several times) with "Love" seems excessively sentimental to me and somewhat out of place.  Along with the "love" email sign-off is the equally or more common "xoxo" sign-off.  Again, from the closest friends or family, I'm mostly okay with this (although I could never really bring myself to write this sign-off to anyone but Ryan), but I've gotten emails signed that way from people I barely know or have just met.  Here I find it somewhat odd, have a moment where I wonder why I'm such a cold fish and then reply with a friendly, yet not emotionally presumptuous smiley-face sign-off.

I was recently writing a gift card and I went through the same challenge I have at Christmas time when I'm signing a big stack of holiday cards. Outside of our innermost circle of friends and family, I just feel uncomfortable using "love" as a sign-off. The dilemma of course becomes, what to use instead.  "Fondly" seems uptight, "Cheers" seems more appropriate for an English Pub, "Regards" seems too formal. Each holiday season (and in sending cards generally) I go through this angst, and I have yet to come up with a satisfying answer.  Some years Ryan just implores me to get over myself and write "love." Other years I have simply signed our names or closed the note with "Best."   But as someone who values accuracy in language, my inability to come up with a satisfying sign-off continues to trouble me.

Ryan of course thinks my distress at all of these things is just one more sign that I was dropped on my head as a child.

Dog speak

Anyone who has spent any amount of time with our dog Bear will know that he's incredibly sweet, but they'll also note that we're probably not the people you should turn to for dog training advice. That said, I still feel comfortable commenting on what I consider a particularly poor dog communication strategy that I often witness.

This morning I was out running by the reservoir where there are some large patches of open space where dogs run around off leash.  At one spot, I saw a dog run off the trail into an area of open space, playfully exploring.  Just as soon as he ran off, his owner dropped the gear he was carrying and started screaming at the dog. No transition of sweet talking the dog to lure him back, picking up a tempting stick, nothing. Just right in to screaming "Get over here right now" rather angrily, followed by more ranting of "Stop that, get out of there; you get back here right now" and so on. 

He sounded rather menacing and threatening to me - sort of that "come over here so I can kick your ass" tone of voice.  Dogs might not be rocket scientists, but I really can't think of many beings who would rush at the opportunity to come over to someone talking like that.  While the man didn't show a lot of kindness towards his dog in this exchange, he seemed to think that his dog had a capacity to understand some rather complex sentences.  We didn't learn much from the dog trainers we've used, but I definitely learned that too many dog owners speak to their dogs as if they understand English, rather than dog English (one to two word phrases).  Listening to this man made me picture a somewhat menacing version of the teacher in the Snoopy cartoons ("mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa, mwa")

I didn't stick around to see how the exchange was resolved, but as the man continued his ranting, all I could think was "Now's your chance - make a run for it."

The 24 Effect

I'm always impressed when I realize that a fictional story or character is impacting my thinking even after I turn off the tube or close the book.  So, while I thought this season of 24 was rather boring, I still consider myself an avid fan, and I suppose it should have come as no surprise to me when Jack and Chloe's way of seeing the world recently took over my thinking.

As I was sitting on the plane last week waiting to go to Palm Springs via LAX, the pilot announced that the flight would not be able to take off as scheduled as the radar was down at LAX and no planes could take off or land until that was fixed.  It's never particularly fun sitting on a plane waiting for it to take off,  but this was a reason I hadn't heard before.

The usual reasons, often involving mechanical problems, certainly give me pause. Do I really want to be on a plane when its computers weren't working until a mechanic came along and jiggled some wires? Or the landing equipment was just fixed? Or they needed to re-start the plane to see if they could get both of the engines or some other equipment to start up?  At times like these, I get flashbacks to the Time/Life books I saw advertised on TV as a kid that talked about intuition or supernatural signs impacting people's life decisions and used the example of a man who decides at the last minute not to get on the plane that ended up crashing. The problem for me is that when I'm flying, I pretty much always get that feeling that tells me to get off the plane.  I hope that when I'm really supposed to listen to that intuition it will be glaringly obvious.

But the radar delay got me thinking in an entirely different direction. Rather than raising concerns about the safety of my specific plane, instead I started thinking of all of the reasons "the bad guys" might knock out the radar at LAX (coincidentally the location of 24's CTU and where all of the show's action goes down).  Obviously, post-9/11, safety related questions often lead the mind to thoughts of terrorism, but I think my specific line of thought could be traced more clearly to my loyal viewing of 24.  Clearly Chole O'Brien would know that the radar was down so that "the bad guys" could stealthily fly some other "bad guys" in without being seen on radar. Or to blanket LA with some airborne toxins and go undetected. 

After about an hour of my mind running through the different possible scenarios, we took off and landed uneventfully in LA.  I was happy that the Jack Bauer scenarios continued to remain fictional.

Where is home?

A few months back, I took a solo vacation back to San Francisco. When the plane landed at SFO, the man in the next seat turned to me and asked "So, is this home for you?"  A seemingly simple question, but for me it brought a real emotional pang. In that I don't live there, I suppose the simple answer would be "no, this isn't home for me."

In reality, it feels more like home than any other place on earth. After living in the Bay Area for 17 years and having virtually every meaningful life experience there, mostly with people who still live there, how could any other place possibly compete for the moniker of 'home.'

After moving to Boulder last summer, I quickly set about the task of turning our house into a home, busying myself with some small construction projects, decorating, landscaping. This kept me busy enough to distract me from the bigger challenge - moving physically and setting up shop was one thing, moving emotionally has proven a bigger task.  In many ways, I guess it's comparable to breaking up with someone, but trying to leave the door open for a future relationship.  How to continue to appreciate your ex, while looking for and being open to a new relationship. We don't know how long we'll end up staying in Boulder, and in my heart I know that at some point we'll end up back in San Francisco either full or part-time, but right now my challenge is figuring out how to move on and fully embrace our new home.

Where's the applause?

As a nervous flier, I have a series of rituals I follow as part of every flight.  While objectively I can acknowledge that it would appear that I have little control over the outcome of a flight, I continue to practice my rituals at every take off and landing, creating a small sense that I'm doing my part to ensure a safe flight.

After a perfectly manageable flight to SFO last week, and a nice smooth landing, I was again able to breathe easy on the tarmac, but was left wondering why collectively we no longer acknowledge the wonderful feat that has just occurred.

Maybe I'm imagining it or just becoming really old as I begin a sentence with "When I was a kid...", but I do recall people clapping when pilots had great smooth landings.  Personally, I feel like standing on my seat and cheering "Halleluyah!" every time the wheels touch down safely, but I've refrained from it thus far.

Elmo doesn't love the Jews

Ryan and I were planning to take Quinn to a friend's house in December for a party to celebrate the first night of Hannukah.  We haven't really talked much about Hannukah, so I thought it would be a good idea to pick up a fun book about Hannukah to read with him to get him excited about the party. He's loved the Elmo's Night Before Christmas book that we've been reading to him since before last Christmas, and books have always been a great way to introduce new concepts.

So, I stopped at Borders and figured I'd grab a few fun books. No luck. I'd categorize their offerings for children's books about Hannukah somewhere between just plain lame and incredibly boring.  I went to two more bookstores, and the best book I could come up with was a book about old ladies throwing a latke party. Not bad, but certainly nothing that hit the top ten list with Quinn. With all of the claims that the Jews run the media industry, all I can say is that they really need to work on the Hannukah marketing campaign.

The reality is that to a kid,  at least on the surface, Christmas just looks like more fun. As someone who was raised Jewish, I can tell you that the Christmas decorations, Santa and the reindeer, and the toy, cookie and candy orgy that Christmas brings is really pretty compelling.  In the race for kids attention and affection, Hannukah is starting ten yards behind with a foot tied behind its back and, rather than a bunch of lame offerings, there should be a serious marketing push to raise the fun profile of this holiday.   
A little more creative thinking and marketing could give Hannukah a fighting chance -- the Hannakuh bush and Hannukah Harry really don't cut it.  Better marketing of the draedel games and we've got poker with candy. wahoo!  Latkes? well, they're okay, but since it's really all about the oil, how about focusing on doughnuts, and really really milk the "it lasts seven days! how can it not be better?!?"   A quick search on Amazon for "Elmo and Christmas" versus "Elmo and Hannukah" is a good representation of why Hannukah just isn't getting its props - The first search brings 69 book results (a significant number, though some are probably a bit off the mark), including Elmo Saves Christmas, the latter search yields nothing. Apparently Elmo doesn't even know about Hannukah.

Everyone needs a Shtick

I'm always amazed at how generous and thoughtful our friends and relatives are as Quinn is so often the recipient of unexpected gifts.  Many of the gifts he's received also confirm my long held belief in the importance of having a shtick.

Since Quinn was about a year old, he has been very interested in guitars. When I say that to other parents, some parents note that their child likes guitar too. I usually just smile and nod. Because while I'm sure there are many other children who like guitars, it is quite hard to imagine that many like them quite as much as Quinn. While his interest has mellowed from the all out obsession it was, we went through a period where he would ask us to read to him from the Musician's Friend catalog that arrived in the mail. Or we would read the Encyclopedia of guitars so frequently that he could probably identify 50 different brands of guitars at age two.  He went through a phase where he refused to wear a shirt that didn't have a guitar on it, and had strong preferences on certain days for the double neck guitar, the flying V or the bass with no headstock. 

Quinn effectively branded himself as the kid who loves guitars. And as a benefit, he is the frequent recipient of out-of-the-blue guitar-related gifts. Over the holidays, our dear friend Patricia sent him a great t-shirt with the slogan "One Day I'll be a rock star" and a picture of a kid playing guitar. A friend and band-mate of Ryan's sent Quinn a sweet stuffed bear playing the guitar.  Our house is populated with other similarly thoughtful gifts. Basically, he's set things up so that when people who know him see something sweet involving guitars, they think of him.

Our friend Martin has a similar thing with turtles. Not exactly sure why or how it started, but he had a few turtle statues or figures, people noticed them and he started getting more.  Any time we see something involving turtles, we think of Martin. We bought his wedding present for him years before he got married because we saw an amazing serving piece that involved turtles.

Our less than positive experience with this came when Ryan and I had a few frog items around the house and, though the gift givers were quite thoughtful, we suddenly found ourselves receiving many more frog items than we ever wanted. Clearly, there are many benefits of having a shtick. The caveat to this is choosing your shtick wisely.

Chocolate of the Day

Some people view chocolate as a treat, an occasional pleasure to be indulged. I view chocolate as a necessity, a food group unto itself, if you will.  I am always on the lookout for new chocolate - from pure dark chocolate bars to new recipes using chocolate.  Unless I am subjecting myself to some extremely rigid dietary constraints (very, very rare), I have some sort of chocolate every day. Often more than once a day.

So, I thought it might be useful to record all of my chocolate experiences.

As Ryan was in London last week, he of course made a pilgrimage to the food halls at Harrod's. And, in his infinite wisdom he returned to Colorado with a bar of chocolate for me.  So, that was my chocolate of the day:  La Maison du Chocolat, Cuana, 74% cocoa (can't seem to find a link to the specific bar)

While I liked this bar, I think it suffered from overly high expectations. I think of La Maison as the pinnacle of the chocolate world, and while this was very good chocolate, it wasn't the best I've had. Not even the best I've had this month. (My current favorite is Michel Cluizel's ) 

I thought this was a fairly traditional decent-quality dark chocolate bar. But for such a high-end bar, I was surprised to find it somewhat harsh, rough, a bit chalky and overall lacking the depth I expect from great-quality high-end bars. Not as smooth or complex as some of the ones I prefer.

Rating: 5/10

How uptight is that

When I catch Quinn saying phrases that aren't typical toddler phrases, it makes me aware of the phrases I clearly use frequently.  Like the time I was changing his diaper at 4am one day while on vacation at a friends house and Q said to me "Mommy, they have square windows, how funny is that?"  Needless to say, at 4am very little is actually funny. But, if any part of the event was, it was hearing that phrase come out of his mouth.  "How X is that" is clearly a phrase I use often.

Which brings me to the question: how uptight is that?  Or, how uptight am I, to be more accurate.  In general, I like to think of myself as open minded, and definitely as someone who really believes that an important part of my role in raising a child is to be a facilitator, as in, facilitating him to really fully become who he is, to bring his truest and best self into the world.  So, I was a bit disappointed to note some weird societal hangup I've got rearing it's head when Quinn informed me that he wants a house for Christmas. (In truth, Q first informed  me that he wanted a house for his birthday, but this was after he had already opened his birthday gifts. Upon being informed that a house wasn't one of the presents that we had for him, he suggested that I go to the house store to get one.)

To some degree I was just surprised by the request as, while I've seen him occasionally play with toy houses when we're in stores or at someone's house, it's by no means been a particularly notable interest. But, more than surprise was some weird notion of what kind of toys boys should ask for. What the "right" toys for boys are. He has a wide range of toys right now - lots of trucks, blocks, puzzles, a toy kitchen and a veritable zoo worth of stuffed animals. But, somehow the idea of a 'house' (here, in the interest of full disclosure, I recognize that my inability to call it a 'doll house' is really stupid) initially made me really uncomfortable. Somehow I associate a house as a toy clearly in the girl realm, even though there are plenty of houses that are clearly designed to be gender-neutral (ie the ones that aren't pink and covered in flowers.)

Luckily, after relating this story to my dear friend Cristina, she pointed out that boys really need to have some gender-neutral toys, and have opportunities to 'play' versions of their real lives. (In retrospect, I view this as a very polite way to tell me that I was being an idiot.) While it was certainly disappointing to note how ridiculously caught up I was in some rigid notion of gender roles, it was nice to know I have friends who will tell me when I'm being stupid. 

The more I've thought about my initial reticence, the more I've thought how incredibly stupid it was and find it quite frankly a bit embarrassing to admit that I had any issue with this at all. I've now spent hours on the web scouring for just the right play house, and think I'm going to get this one or this one.

I guess it's one of those things where it's easy to think of yourself a certain way (ie I like to think of myself as a feminist) but then it just takes a little situation like this to force me to recognize that some of my self concepts might not inherently run as deep as I might like. At the same time, blogging about it has actually served the typical journaling purpose of making me question myself a bit, challenge my thinking and maybe find myself just a wee bit more enlightened at the conclusion. 

What's particularly hard for me as I think about many of my unconscious ideas of what's right for kids is that I really believe that there are more 'rules' in my mind for boys. I can't think of a toy that a girl could ask for that would give me pause, but somehow I realize that as open-minded as I think I am, I obviously have some pretty clear ideas about what boys do and don't do. Ultimately, I guess this probably relates to the broader societal discussion of the trap men fall into where we want them to be guys guys, but at the same time be kind and thoughtful, and just the rigid roles men are still often expected to play.  I guess it all starts with moms who hesitate to buy play houses for their sons :)

Obviously this is a much bigger topic to explore, but good food for thought.

 

Birthday Party

This past weekend, we hosted a few of Quinn's friends and their parents to celebrate three years of Quinn.  It's hard to figure out who to invite to a three-year-olds party in a neighborhood we just recently moved to, especially when said three year old is just as likely to tell you that his favorite friend is Curious George as he is to give you the name of an actual child.  We decided to keep it small and very low-key. That said, it's still hard to be completely removed from the idea that every landmark occasion in your child's life is an opportunity to dazzle and create a momentous experience.

A few searches of the web for activity ideas confirmed my general belief that I'm not as natural a parent as some (ie the thought of leading a rousing game of duck-duck-goose or musical chairs filled me with dread). So,  I was a bit concerned as to what exactly I would do with 6 or 7 three and four year olds.  Originally the plan was to just have one or two kids for pizza and cake, but after I invited a few additional folks, I was starting to feel the need for some activity.   

For anyone who finds themselves in the same position, I have two words for you - Bouncy House -  Best money I ever spent.  Kids bounced happily (with just a few teary eyes after the inevitable crashes) and parents were able to drink wine and beer. I couldn't ask for much more from a party.

As I was feeling a bit under the weather, I originally thought I would purchase cupcakes at the store, but when it finally came down to it (ie when I was staring at the cupcakes in the plastic containers at Whole Foods) I couldn't pull the trigger; my food-snob ways won out and I decided to try out two new recipes.  I'm still struggling a bit with adjusting for the altitude when I bake, but I think both of the recipes turned out fairly well. 
The recipes both came from the How to be a Domestic Goddess cookbook.  Sadly, I forgot to take photos, but the recipes are below.  These were both so incredibly easy, I'm glad I put in the effort.  Also learned a good cooking trick - I forgot to pick up confectioners' sugar at the market, but it turns out that you can put regular sugar in the blender and make your own confectioners' sugar.)

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes  (recipe says it makes 12, i ended up with about 15)

• 1/2c soft unsalted butter
• 4 oz bittersweet chocolate, in pieces (I used Dagoba dark chocolate chips)
• 1-1/3 c morello cherry jam
• 1/2 c sugar
• pinch of salt
• 2 lg eggs, beaten
• 1 c self rising cake flour (I had regular cake flour, so i added 1-1/2 t baking soda and 1/2 t salt)

melt butter in pan, when almost melted add chocolate. Take off pan after chocolate is softened.  Then stir until smooth and melted.  Add jam, sugar, salt, eggs. Stir til ingredients are well blended. Then add flour.   Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. cool in pan rack for 10 min.

Icing:  Heat 4oz bittersweet chocolate and 1/3 c + 1 T heavy cream in saucepan. Bring to boil, then remove from heat and whisk til smooth.  Recipe calls for topping with 12 natural-colored glace cherries which I didn't find at the market and didn't seem to critical to the 3 year old crowd that consumed these.

Night and Day Cupcakes

• 2 T cocoa powder
• 2 T boiling water
• 1/4 c sugar
• 1/4 c dark brown sugar
• 3/4 c self-rising cake flour
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 c very soft unsalted butter
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 T milk

Mix cocoa and water to a paste.  Mix sugars, flour, eggs, butter and vanilla in foot processer. Then pulse while you add milk and cocoa mix through funnel.  12 cupcakes at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.  leave in pan 5 minutes, then cool on rack.
Frosting:  1-1/3 c confectioner sugar, sifted, 4 oz cream cheese, 1 T lemon juice:
Beat sugar and cream cheese til soft, add lemon juice to taste.
(I added a splash of vanilla to the frosting.)

Why Not?

Having a child has made me really aware of how often we follow constraining rules of behavior and are quick to judge the behavior of others and ourselves even if there is really no reason for it.
Sometimes I'll catch myself telling Quinn not to do something and then realize it's really fine for him to do whatever it is - maybe it is a little less convenient for me (eg walking up the stairs in some manner that makes it take ten times as long as the conventional way might), or maybe it's a little embarrassing or just unconventional or silly and that makes me self-conscious.
I thought of this this morning at breakfast when Quinn decided that he and I should wear birthday hats (his birthday was last week) during our breakfast 'oatmeal party'.  Not what I would typically do, but hey, why the hell not?
A very very small example, but one of many ways that kids are the perfect example of the Zen concept of Beginner's Mind

The kind of openness and 'why not?' attitude that Quinn has is definitely a good inspiration and constant reminder for me of my desire to be more present, less judgmental and more of a beginner.

The Last Page

To use one of my least favorite phrases, 'there are two kinds of people' - those who read the end of the book first, and those who read straight through from front to back. (As evidence that there are in fact far more than two kinds of people are the frightening statistics about the declining number of people who read books at all.) But I digress... Back to the story.

I've finally started using Q's nap time for reading. Wanting to start off with a sure winner, I read The Da Vinci Code, which was recommend to me by too many people to mention.
It was a great, and compelling read. Though, for the first time ever (and I've been doing this for as far back as I can remember), I think that reading the end of the book after I was about 100 pages in actually took away some of my enjoyment of the book.
While Ryan has long tried to convince me that reading the end first actually does undermine the experience, I've always been someone who wants to know where I'm going to end up. I still (generally) want to stay on the ride, I just like to know what's waiting for me at the end. This was the first time I think that there might be something to just letting things unfold and seeing where the ride takes you. Unfortunately, I still think this is only the case some of the time. The challenge is figuring out when to sit back and enjoy the ride, and when to pull out the map to see the destination.

Yogic Wisdom

I've definitely become a believer that my experience in a yoga class is such a laboratory for me to gain insight into how I  experience and approach (or want to approach) life more generally. I wish I could say that I was so inwardly focused that these learnings were all gleaned from my own inner observations, but just as often as not, I find myself learning as I observe how other people approach a situation. A few specific things I've come face to face with in recent classes:

A few weeks back, I arrived early at class, and the woman on the mat next to me was trying to do a headstand without much success. I had learned an easy method a few years back in a workshop with Dena Kingsburg (sp?) so, after letting go of my usual hesitation to step into someone else's space in a class, I finally spoke up and offered my advice. On her next try, she was up in a headstand. She was very effusive in her thanks, and asked if I was a teacher.  As I aspire to teach, this of course made me feel great.  After the class began, I was aware that she was hugely experienced in regard to what she could do in certain poses, and yet, headstand (not what I think of as a hugely challenging pose) had not been available to her.  It really made me reflect on a few things: There are things that we all can offer up to the world, teach to others and we can too easily get hung up or intimidated by notions of hierarchy - this person is better than me, etc. In reality, the matrix is much more complex than a binary sense of better or worse.

At another class, I was practicing next to a fairly inexperienced woman (she announced this to me for some reason as she put her mat down next to mine before class began). Throughout the class, it was hard for me not to notice how hard she was trying to get into very advanced versions of the pose as the instructor offered a range of options.  It was hard to watch and made me sort of sad because she was just never going to get into the pose because like many destinations, you really do have to pass through a series of steps along the way. Also, because she was focusing so hard on wanting to get into a certain position that was beyond her present abilities, she was missing the beauty of the process, the joy of the journey. (being quote girl, this of course brought back a quote from my rowing days, "It is the process of becoming a winner that adds substance.")  It's definitely an interesting and challenging balance to find the right space between effort (lazily staying in an easily achievable pose is not the goal) and ease - the constant tension between pushing your limits, but knowing your boundaries.

This leads to my next learning, which is that while I believe my last point in general, sometimes it just needs to be thrown out the window. At another recent class, the instructor opened with some thoughts that I just really connected with. The general theme was, just forget about what you think you can't do, just experience this class, just forget what you've done in the past, what's been easy, what's been hard and just meet yourself where you are today. Somehow I just really connected with that message, and in spite of the fact that my wrist has been hurting me so much in arm balances for months, I managed to just forget that, and I found myself in a range of arm balancing poses that I had been avoiding or cautiously engaging in for ages.  It was sort of the "throw caution to the wind and run out over the cliff and you just might find that something or someone catches you" experience.

At my Sunday class last week, there was a substitute instructor, which often means a different type of series, and a different set of poses. While overall his style didn't engage me (just too slow, too much navel pondering), I did have a few good learning experiences. First, the obvious one was to not get so caught up in the fact that I didn't like his class. Clearly I wasn't going to walk out, so trying to find a place of non-judgment, and a way to appreciate the class for what it was offering and find a way to get the most out of it, rather than bemoaning it. Second, we did a pose I hadn't done in about a year, that had always been hard for me. Because it had been so long since I'd done the pose, I was no longer thinking about how hard it had been the last time I did it. This time I found myself easily going into the pose. This was definitely a case where sometimes walking away from a challenge, setting it aside for a while is the best thing to do.

I normally tend to be a "keep working at it til you get it right" person, whether in a relationship or a challenging situation, but this was such a reminder (not that life hasn't provided me with plenty of other examples!) that sometimes the harder, and better, thing to do is to let the situation go. When it's right, you can re-engage again, as a slightly different person, with different tools, and a slightly different approach.

This is my life

About two months before I had my son (who is now seven months old), I joined the Palo Alto Menlo Park Mother's Club. This is an incredible group of about 1000 members that has many programs, not least of which is a Yahoo Group where members pose questions on things ranging from parenting challenges to gardening advice, sell items, provide information, etc.  It is an incredibly active group and it would be an unusual day if at least 50 messages weren't posted.

The group has totally sold me on the value of Yahoo Groups, except for the incredible lameness of their search functionality that only searches the archives in batches, forcing you through many pages when you want to search an archive of over 20,000 messages. I've turned to this group for advice on a range of things and always gotten great information and been so touched that these people (many of whom are total strangers) took the time to write such thoughtful replies.

The group has also struck fear in my heart as I read some people's questions and see into the future of what parenting a two year old will entail. The group also provides me with my daily dose of humor, often with a posting that I have to read aloud to my husband so he can understand why I've suddenly started laughing at my computer. It's not that I don't feel for the challenges that the people are facing, but it's hard not to at least smile when reading the subject line to a post that reads: 'Seeking advice regarding nose picking.' 

There had been many posts that I found funny before that one, but for some reason, that marked the line where I just had to laugh and say, "wow, this is my life."  Before baby, the message board that I read most often was Chowhound - learning about the latest restaurants and keeping up with the foodies - and now I'm reading summaries about nose picking.  It helps to find the humor in these things. I will try to share the subject lines that amuse me just because I want a record of what's funny to me now. Subject line of the day: "Smelly rain boots?  Need advice."

Americana WAG '04

Shared an amazing picnic in San Francisco with ten friends to celebrate the fourth. The group is comprised of friends from my business school class who started getting together four years ago to share amazing food and wine. A potluck on steroids. The group is called WAG (wine and gourmet) and it's been a great way to spend time with close friends.
Yesterday's feast was impressive -
Perhaps most exciting for me was REALLY enjoying a white wine, which I so rarely appreciate. Easy to understand why this one would be enjoyable as it was an Araujo Sauvignon Blanc.
Along with incredible wine (also featured were a 1996 Viader and a Turley Dogtown Zin and a N. Feuillette rose champagne) were some remarkable and innovative picnic choices including Malaysian top hats (which were S's childhood snack - quite a bit more impressive than the pb&j's that most of us were offered), prisciutto, melon and fresh mozzarella and my personal favorite - a cheese and onion tart from Balthazar recipe, only with the improvement of substituting Cowgirl Creamery mascarpone and fresh ricotta for the recipe's cream cheese.
The peach and blueberry pies were inspired.

All in all, a glorious celebration of independence.
Including independence from the idiotic South Beach diet I've been slavishly following to minimal effect....

Clawing my way out of the abyss

It's hard for me to believe that 16 months ago I finished Ironman New Zealand, when two days ago I considered it an achievement that I was able to keep up with my two-year-old dog on a five mile run. It's been a bit depressing trying to achieve even a modicum of fitness in the post-baby world I've entered, but it's getting a bit old to continue chalking up my frightening physical condition to the new baby, when seven months old isn't really so very new... My pregnancy attitude of, "If the milkshake makes me happy, I'm going to have it, no guilt" is starting to haunt me. Did I really need to split a whole tray of brownies with my husband Ryan that night? And the following night as well? So, today when I got an email from my friend Dennise saying that she's going to be doing the Nike Women's Marathon in SF in October, I decided to sign up. I've done two marathons - SF in 1996 and Chicago in 2000 - so I thought that the only reason I would do another would be to achieve a particular time goal (for me, that goal is 3:45). Now, I think that just running the marathon faster than my slowest time to date (4:30) would be a big accomplishment.

Bumper Stickers

I've been noticing more bumper stickers lately. Election years seem to bring out a lot of creativity in the bumper sticker market. Stickers I've appreciated lately include: '2004 - the end of an error' and 'Jed Bartlett for President' (I guess you can figure out my politics from those two). A few nights ago while we drove to the city we passed a Honda Insight with a Kerry bumper sticker on it. That seemed fairly redundant. Is there really anyone out there driving a Honda Insight who is going to vote for Bush?

I've never been a bumper sticker person. I'm not really sure why. I think of myself as being as passionate as the next person about what I believe in, and not afraid to share my opinions (in fact, one of my brother's ex-girlfriends referred to me as a loose cannon for how freely I shared my opinion.) And yet, no bumper stickers. I guess I just don't know what the point is. I really doubt that anyone's opinion was ever changed by reading a bumper sticker. What is someone going to say - 'Hmm, i've never thought about it that way, but gee, that's a cool car so they must know what they're talking about?' And do I really need to either a) preach to the choir or b) point out to people driving multi-ton vehicles that I think their beliefs/values are full of shit? Then again, perhaps I'm just saddled with my father's view that they just lower the car's resale value.

Why blog?

My husband Ryan has finally convinced me to start a blog. I love writing and he claims I'm good at it (just one of the reasons I married him), but i have a huge Voice of Judgment (a topic discussed in Michael Ray's book)  that tends to stop me from committing my thoughts to paper and an even bigger Voice of Judgment that stops me from sharing those thoughts that do make it onto paper. He's convinced me that blogging will be a good jumpstart for me to start writing more regularly so that I'll stop just wanting to write and actually write.

I'm hoping that the free-form, seat-of-the-pants nature of blogging doesn't end up feeling like those emails you send in an emotional state but then regret after you've hit the send button. At least with blogging, I can edit, or delete. But right now, my goal is actually a little less editing, a little more free form sharing, less judging. Guess that's my way of saying that some of these early entries might really be crap.