From the town of Bedrock
I am not a homemaker. I have three or four recipes I can cook and proudly stake claim to (I’ll put my chicken pot-pie in a blindfolded taste test any day of the week), but in general, I’m a hurricane in the kitchen. Ditto in the laundry room. Yes, I manage to get things agitating without soap bubbles pouring from the closed lid, but inevitably there’s a tinted lip balm in a pocket or a new red shirt mingling with the whites. The same goes for sewing. The simple task of replacing a button brings out the OCD in me: There aren’t enough knots in the universe to hold that sucker in place and so I keep tying them, one after another after another, knots lining up like an endless string of ben wa balls, unable to stop myself until the button disappears beneath a big clump of thread.
I thank my mother for my domestic ineptitude. It is she—the Queen of Beige Food, the one who boasts of her culinary ability to prepare all things pasty and grey—who once forgot to add sugar to Baked Alaska.
In her defense, she was probably high when baking it, so despite the sour look on her guest’s faces that night, she’d had a good time in the kitchen and eventually, after the initial horror wore off, a good laugh. Still. Baking-while-stoned only further serves as a reminder of the old apple-and-tree cliché, a fact I’m intent on defying as I’ve made it my purpose in life to break the mold.
And so it goes that a couple weeks ago, while under the influence of Vicodin following a little abdominal surgery, I decided the time had come to hem the curtains on the French doors in my bedroom. I’d purchased them at Ikea and go figure, they were three feet too long. Damn those Swedes and their extra-tall doorways.
Not to fear. I asked a talented seamstress friend, who makes fabulously stylish Mad Men-era clothes for herself and her daughters, if she would hem them for me and then never got around to bringing the fabric to her house. Which is aaaaall the way across the street. Instead, my mother-in-law pinned the curtains during one of her visits and that is how they stayed, no one the wiser, for five years, six months, three weeks and four days. I am lazy. And pathetic.
To offer some perspective on my state of mind at the time of the “hemming,” I had been unable to pee without immense effort for two days. Were you to have peeked through the bathroom window during this time, you’d have seen a very disheveled me, sitting on the toilet with my laptop open to this:
I was drugged and delirious and fighting tooth and nail to avoid catheterization. I was dribbling urine after hours of concentrating on Niagra Falls and then lying sleepless in bed—bladder full—on top of Ruby’s special potty-training mattress pad just in case my urethra came to in the middle of the night. I actually hoped to wet the bed. Isn’t that sexy? This was new turf for my relationship. Suffice it to say, being bedridden did not suit my mental health. I had no business using scissors. But enough excuses.
I’d been staring at those curtains from my bed for three days and the more I stared, the more I began to resent them. Their imperfect existence was a reminder of my domestic shortcomings. They were unfinished and they needed to not be unfinished immediately.
How hard can it be? I thought. By following the hem line, I can cut them to the proper length with just enough fabric left over for a little break. Any caveman can do that!
I shuffled to the kitchen, grabbed the scissors and shuffled back to the bedroom where I knelt at the curtains, careful not to bust the stitches in my bellybutton. I lined the scissors up and I cut. Slowly, at first, but then I picked up speed as I cut and cut and cut. It was cathartic in a nobody-gets-hurt, NO! MORE! WIRE! HANGERS! kind of way. I may have grunted. I was a caveman. I was Wilma Flintstone.
And I have Flintstone curtains to prove it.
C is for ‘crazy making’: If you’re enduring school-choice season, you’re not alone
Feb. 15 marks the last day that parents of children going into or already enrolled in the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) can apply for “school choice.” If you’re not a parent, you probably think this column doesn’t apply to you. But please. Don’t skip over to the medicinal-marijuana ads just yet. There’s valuable information for you in the next nine paragraphs, namely: Don’t have kids. Not that kids aren’t great; they totally are—especially if you raise them right, with plenty of pleases and thank-yous, baths and broccoli and lots of Yo Gabba Gabba! (As an aside: Most people don’t raise their kids right and you will have to deal with these insufferable nincompoops on a daily basis. It’s painful.)
So where was I? Oh yeah. Getting your kid into school.
Navigating entry into the public-school system makes that first horrendous year of incessant crying, sleepless nights and crap-filled diapers seem as fun and carefree as the days when you were single and doing lines off a bathroom counter-top at the Manchester Hyatt during the staff Christmas party. Make the most of your childfree lives, people. It’s a tad different over here on this side.
Here’s how the school thing works: Parents can send their kid to their neighborhood school like they did back in the 20th century. Or, they can look at other schools in the city that have a particular focus—say, immersion in another language or an emphasis in boondoggle—and list up to five of these schools on the “choice” application. Then you cross your fingers and kiss your elbow that Little Jackson’s number gets picked out of the giant lottery ball at the school district’s main office. All of this doesn’t include applications to charter schools, each of which has a separate form. Admission to these schools is equally as random (or so they say).
Although I’m not a hover parent or even one who is particularly organized—I missed my father-in-law’s birthday last year—I managed to overachieve in the school-application department and beat the deadline by months. And thanks to a Total Freak Out at the ominous news of pending school budget cuts, I turned my back on my philosophical stance and waded into the private-school-application waters. More specifically, Sam and I dove head first into the financial-aid tide pool for a private school. It was a paralyzing experience that went something like this:
How many boats do you own? 0
How many vacation homes do you own? 0
How many of your membership dues exceed $250 each month? Uh… 0.
Do you summer in Madrid or Gstaad? …
Do you prefer Dom or Krug to be served on your private jet? …
Do you own a coat, scarf or purse made by Burberry? Oh, God no. Hell no.
Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin? …Do knock-offs count?
Sam and I had started to feel pretty low and uncomfortably exposed. After four hours of scouring old tax records and seeing exactly how worthless we are on paper, I sucked down three old-fashioneds, including authentic maraschino cherries made by D.A. Kolodenko himself (take that, you high-falutin’, private-school-attending Cristal drinkers!). It was clear how far I’d wandered off the beaten path. These are not our people, I thought. And we are not worthless, even if a line-by-line audit says otherwise. We are poor! We are pagans! We are public school! And with that, I shredded our application. I’d like those four hours back, please.
Every day, I am asked by various friends or family members, “Do you know where Ruby will be going to kindergarten?” And I offer an abridged spiel with lots of gesticulation. Our first choice for her is a school whose proximity to our home is sort of like that of Russia to Alaska, but even closer, if you can imagine. It’s not a metaphor: We can actually see it from our front porch. Unfortunately, because it’s a magnet school, we’re beholden to the lottery and there is no greasing the wheel with charm and / or insider connections. I’ve watched other parents do some foot stomping, but that only serves to remind me not to hang out with them. Ever.
My personal feeling is that if I have to listen to the school’s alarm going off all weekend long, my child should automatically be given admission, in the same way that she is automatically admitted to our neighborhood school. Because that would be an actual choice, as opposed to the semi-sorta-pseudo choice currently offered. I politely mentioned this to a district staffer on the phone one day, when I’d called to verify that they received my faxed application. Not surprisingly, I heard only crickets on the other end of the line.
And so, like parents all over the city, we wait on the School Gods to bestow upon us the answer to the pressing question. If you’re a parent and you haven’t already done so, you might want to get your hustle on. You have just a week to make your list and then sit on your hands. And if you’re not a parent, and you made it this far, then, well. I’m guessing you really need to hit up that pot dispensary now, though you’ll likely have to get in line behind a few parents. And after you get home, I would highly suggest you seek out DJ Lance Rock for a little entertainment.
(As published today in San Diego CityBeat.)
Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it
As I begin preparing to go on Euro Gallavant 2010—also known as Debt Fest 2.0.1.0, or Reinvent Yourself: The 21st Century Edition—I’ve been making contact with a few other writers with whom I’ll be sharing prosecco toasts and sunsets over the Amalfi Coast. I sure hope they’re not talkers, boy. I like my sunsets lonely and profound and weighted with deeper meaning. Sort of like J.D. Salinger. Ah, shoot. Who am I kidding? What’s a sunset without friends and a few tipsy oohs and ahhs and holy mother of Jesus can you believe we’re in fucking Positano?!?
One of the people I plan on spending some serious time with is this woman right over here. I spent several days perusing her blog and getting lost in her incredible interviews (especially this one), which are amazingly thoughtful, pitch-perfect-inquisitive and deserving of larger publication. All I can say is that the screenwriters for Jerry Maguire couldn’t write a line cheesy enough for the occasion of meeting Sariah in person.
Without a script, I’ve decided my best bet is to play it cool. Not like Danny Zuko impress-my-friends cool. But more like a don’t-fawn-or-try-to-touch-her-hair cool. The way I figure it, if I don’t knock her over and hump her leg on day one, that will be West Side Story cool.
But I’ve strayed now from my original intention, which was to borrow the questionnaire part of Sariah’s interview. Because it’s so damn cool. As in, The Birth of:
What are your necessities?…Love; kisses from my daughter, both landed and blown; sunglasses; CO Bigelow Mentha Tint lip gloss; heels of all kinds (stacked, stiletto, kitten, princess, wedge, what have you); booksbooksbooks; The New Yorker; On The Street with Bill Cunningham; the family bed on weekends; alone time; my Canon 40-D and 50mm lens; Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, any Thelonious, Jimmy Smith, Gene Harris, Chet Baker, Ella Fizgerald…oh hell, all kinds of jazz that I couldn’t possibly live without, especially Cannonball Adderly’s and Bobby Timmons’ swingin’ masterpiece “Dis Here” set on repeat, cruising up the coast as a passenger in my husband’s classic Mini, windows down, volume at 11. Picture it…
Nothing smells better than. . .my daughter’s skin after a bath and her scalp after oiling; the space between my husband’s nose and upper lip after he shaves; early mornings in a canyon.
Nothing tastes better than. . .Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups/Trees/Eggs/Hearts with an ice cold glass of water.
Nothing feels better than . . .Hey, now…
I’d rather be…laughing and toasting with friends on my back patio during a summer evening, my home filled with people I adore, than doing just about anything else, especially faxing.
If you could live in any other epoch, which would it be? As far as fashion goes, the 20s or the 60s (ala Mad Men). Otherwise, this one seems to be working out well for me.
If you could jump into any painting, à la Mary Poppins, which would you choose?
“The Tree of Life,” c. 1909 by Gustav Klimt
What about you? What are your answers to Sariah’s pressing questions?