Language Immersion

¡Lo hicimos! Hooray! We finally did it. I signed my daughter up for Spanish immersion classes. I can't believe it's taken me this long. But now that she's three and a half I think that adding a third language to her repertoire will really be a boon for her college applications. And the amazing part is that it's ONLINE. I only pay $9.95 per month and we have 24 hour access to our incredible profesora. So we don't even have to leave the house. Or even get dressed in the morning!

The instructor's name is Dora and she is super energetic and really connects with the kids.  I can already see a vast improvement in my daughter's Spanish language skills. They use a lot of repetition exercises in class and Dora is always engaging them in fun interactive adventures. The assistant teacher isn't always on task and is sometimes even a little distracting, probably because he's a purple monkey, but otherwise I couldn't be happier.

We're thinking of contacting Dora to hire her as our online Au Pair. As long as the kids stay in front of the computer we feel like they'll be in really capable manos.

Dear Gwyneth

My daughter modeling "Apple". Other designs available here.

Dear Gwyneth,

I was recently in line at the check out at Safeway when I saw you on the cover of Vogue so I skimmed the article. It wasn't a long line. But I was happy to see we have so much in common girl!  Besides being smokin' hot in our mid-thirties and Jewish, we're both from southern California. We both write blogs. We both have two kids who are basically the same ages. Except my oldest is a boy and the little one is a girl. Your daughter is named Apple and one of my most popular card/iron-transfer designs is called Apple! We both married foreigners. Your husband probably never watched Cheers or Family Ties either. So weird, I know. Both of our dads are from New York and went to Tulane. My dad became a doctor and your dad produced a show about a hospital! Uncanny! And unfortunately they both died of cancer before they knew their grand kids. I think about that one a lot. I'm guessing you do too.

And then there's the fact that we're both world renowned, award-winning artists. I mean, you won that Oscar. Remember? You cried like a crazy person in a poofy pink dress? And I recently won Best Jewish Artisan in the East Bay (of California) for the J Weekly Reader's Choice issue. So we both know how hard it is to deal with the pressure to always be awesome. Just the other day I had a big order but I forgot to save something on my computer and I closed the file by mistake and then I ran out of photo magenta ink and the neighbor's washing machine flooded and leaked into our garage, since it's attached to theirs, and got my museum etching paper wet, and I thought I can't let down my fans! All 288 of them on Facebook. 

Not to mention the paparazzi. It's no wonder you moved to London honey. I mean the constant phone calls, the random strangers who come to my door (selling vacuum cleaners). Can't a famous artist get some privacy?

Anyway, we are obviously kindred spirits Gwyn. In fact, when they make a movie of my life it only makes sense that you should play me. And vice versa. (here's where we do a pinky swear). Even though Winona Ryder would probably be a better choice since we have that brown pixie hair thing in common. You can just wear a wig.

In sisterhood,
Susie

Special Offer

Dear Jim,
Thanks for your call this morning about having a special on carpet cleaning in my area. Here's the thing. FUCK OFF Jim. Stop calling me. You and your friendly person voice letting me know that people in "my area", whatever the hell that means, qualify for an exceptionally awesome opportunity to get:

Three rooms for the price of two.
A free hallway.
Four rooms for $69.
Free couch cleaning.
Free enema.

I'm on to you Jim. I know you're not a person. I know you're a recorded guy. Because no one who makes phone calls for a living is that happy. So why don't you just stop pretending to be on a MISSION FROM GOD to clean all of the damn carpets in "my area" and be yourself for the love of ginger. Talk in your regular Domo Origato Mr. Robato voice. I'm not fooled. Yes, sometimes I do need my carpet cleaned. Like ONCE a year. So I suppose that if you call me every effing day you will likely land on a day when I would be happy to hold for one of your operators standing by. But the last time we did this, you and me, I ended up paying three times the quoted price with a couple of hooligans who made me feel like an ass for hanging my mezuzah on the wrong side of the door for the last five years.

And the same goes for you too, Frank. And Christine. And Scott. For the record:
I don't want the San Jose Mercury News.
I don't need new rain gutters.
I do not want to donate to the Police Officers Fund.
I do not need a house alarm.
I already refinanced my home.

Furthermore, if by some twist of fate we ever run into each other, you better run before I punch you in "your area".

Sincerely,
Susie

ps. are you impressed with our collection of phones? press one for yes.

Tools of the Trade

I had every intention of writing about what a great weekend we had. First a trip to Angel Island with friends. Took the ferry over and then road bikes and flew kites on a perfect day in San Francisco. And on Sunday we strolled around at the Art fair on our main street and I bought fabulous earrings from my favorite jewelry guy and then we opened BBQ season at my brother's surf shack in Santa Cruz with some tasty brats (the hot dogs - not my kids) and played a ridiculous game called Munch the Box which may or may not have caused me to pull a muscle in my ass. A story for another time.

Instead I will bring you closer to my daily reality with a saucy tale of a little girl who put a hama bead in her nose (those beads that you puts on little peg boards and iron them and they become pretty multicolored plastic thingies). And then some time after she did this asked me to get it out.

Me: Get what out?
Her: The bead.
Me: The bee? You need to blow your nose? Bee in your nose?
Her: Yes.

She blows her nose and nothing comes out. Then I realize she's said BEAD. Like a piece of PLASTIC WITH A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE THAT AIR BLOWS RIGHT THROUGH.

Crap. If I have to take her to the ER because she's got a bead jammed up her nose I am not going to be happy...

Me: (with mildly panicked voice) YOU HAVE A BEAD UP YOUR NOSE?
Her: Yes.
Me: (panic growing) DID YOU REALLY STICK A BEAD UP YOUR NOSE?
HER: No.
Me: Tell me what you did?!!?!?
Her: NO!!!

She finally admits that she did in fact put the bead up her nose and now she's terrified because I'm coming at her with a tweezers and a flashlight but eventually we pin her down by sitting on her get her to lie down on the bed with her head tilted back and her nose pulled downward so I can shine a light in there and find, indeed, a black hama bead. My son held her hand and told her she was brave and I reached in there to do the extraction.

This was not in my job description.

More Monsters

Suburban Monster at Dawn

Robert was confident he could squeeze himself through the front door, but once he ate the child, getting out would be more difficult.

Happy Thursday. Mwah ha ha ha...

Quiche me, you fool

In 2001 when I started graduate school in North Carolina my fiance and I had $4 in the bank the day he was hired at the medical device firm where he worked for the two years I was in school. We had been in Chapel Hill about two months and student loan checks were delayed somewhere and we had just spent all of our savings (all of $5000 each) to travel around the world for nine months. The situation was kind of grim. In fact I told my husband to negotiate a $1000 starting bonus and take $1000 less in salary because I had just learned the time value of money in my Introduction to Finance class and understood well that money now was more valuable than money later. Indeed.

Not two weeks later I am at BJs (a wholesale store like Costco) with my newest grad school buddies and I can hardly believe all the fabulous stuff and how cheap it all is (per ounce) and I start filling my super-sized basket with what I am certain is deal after deal of the century. You see I just spent the last year living in a tent with my boyfriend and trekking through Nepal and India and for the four years before that I lived in the Middle East and bought most things at this market:




So BJs was the tiniest bit overwhelming. And exhilarating. And as I'm leaving with my piles of stuff and my $200 bill which at this point is about half of our total savings, the pit in my stomach starts to grow. And I get that heavy thing in my chest like good lord what have I done. But my friends, who are also poor and their husbands don't yet have jobs, are fine and dandy, it seems to me anyway. I am silent on the way home.

They drop me off and help me cart my stuff up to our apartment. I can't even remember all of it but here are some highlights:

A rattan hamper that has two smaller hampers inside it
Ten cans of corn
Ten cans of diced tomatoes
A jar of capers the size of a car battery

And then my fiance comes home and I just burst into tears. He assures me that it's fine and not to worry, until he sees all the corn. And the capers. And he gives me this look, like, well, if you think we need a ten gallon jug of capers than maybe we do. I guess. He's a gem. Ten minutes later I'm driving back to BJs with everything I bought and I return it all. Including my three hour old membership. I can't be trusted in this store.

Turns out neither can my husband. Now it's 2003 and we are living in a small apartment in Mountain View, where we live now, and my husband has found a job but I'm still looking for one. Yahoo and Sun have just laid off about 10,000 people. The economy is trash (or so we thought. until it got a whole lot trashier). This time we live about a stone's throw from Costco and we need some large items like a vacuum. So we join. And on my husband's first visit he comes home with a jar of three bean salad that could feed a company picnic. It doesn't even fit in our fridge. And he looks right at me with a straight face and says, I thought this looked tasty. And five seconds later we are laughing hysterically because we're having flashbacks of the caper jar and all those cans of corn and the matryoshka hampers. But he's already opened the jar and had a serving (so now there are only 754 servings left) and we can't return it. It gets thrown out several months later when the vinegar has turned to rubbing alcohol.

So when my husband takes the kids to Costco on Saturday evening and comes home with 60 mini quiches, I just roll my eyes. And then the next day when I notice that 30 of them are with bacon (he doesn't eat pork) and that he's apparently wrapped his chewing gum in the receipt, he winks and says maybe we can trade these in for a gallon of capers?

More than meets the eye

The other day my son got a package in the mail - a belated birthday gift from a buddy of his. I had forgotten that a week before the child's mom had asked me what my son wanted for his birthday and after I begged her to please not buy him anything because I had just bought him a bunch of new toys and still he prefers to play with my camera, cell phone and hairdryer, she insisted to know what he wanted. So against my better judgment I told her that he seemed interested in his cousin's Transformers. Those vehicular robotic toys that are supposedly saving the world from the Force of Evil. Well don't be fooled. It's the Transformers themselves that are the Force of Evil. Here's what went down.

My mom actually bought him a Transformer for his birthday. We had both seen him play with his cousin's and thought he'd like one of his own. I picked it up for her in hell at the toy store. I got him a car and it said on the package that it was level 2 (easy) for age 4+. And it's not that I underestimate his fine motor skills or his mechanical intelligence - he's the one that figured out I have speaker phone on my cell, after all. But I had a suspicion, after having watched him try to play games marked for his age, that he would fiddle with it for a few moments and then get annoyed that it's a piece of junk and doesn't snap nicely back together. And I would have to show him how to do it. And that would suck for me because I have no interest in vehicular robots even if they are trying to save the universe. Once again, I was right. After he ripped it apart and saw all of the robotic innards underneath, he wanted it to be a car again. Here mommy. So I put it back together and thank God I picked the level 2 because it was plenty challenging. I failed to mention this important distinction when suggesting a Transformer to this friend. So she sends him a Transformer that is level THREE, age 5+. Two of them actually. The horror. The horror.

The first one is a motorcycle. He hasn't been holding it for more than ten seconds before it is transformed into a sinewy many-tentacled thing with one wheel here and the other stuck onto some other limb and I am thinking, George Jesus, how am I ever going to get this monster back together again. After a few minutes of jangling it around he hands it over. Here mommy. Now it's my turn to "play" with it. Cleansing breath.

For the next HOUR I am sitting on the couch trying to snap this mother effing piece of Made in China injection molded garbage back into a motorcycle. I actually start to feel sweat collect around my brow. Meanwhile, my two kids have now taken to playing with the handful of packing peanuts that came with the package. In the middle of what feels to me like a nationally televised Rubik's cube-a-thon (I suffer from performance anxiety) I look up and my kids have turned the packing peanuts into a winter wonderland. I am not exaggerating. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of this event but rest assured the entire living room floor, spilling into the hallway, kitchen and dining room, was covered in Styrofoam bits. And my motorcycle is still undone. And there's a blizzard in my home.

I rise to the occasion. Of course! I say, children of your father, you go and have yourselves a snow ball circus for the next twenty minutes while I bash this robo-cycle thing into my head repeatedly and then we'll reconnoiter and clean up this giant mess.

And that's exactly what we did. I managed to turn the Transformer into something that resembles a motorcycle while my kids laughed hysterically pulling pieces of Styrofoam out of my daughter's hair and netherlands. It was a scene. And after, we swept like mad and my kids ran in every direction screaming "she's going to get us" while I vacuumed. My floor has never been this clean.

Anyway, heed this important advice. Transformers are NOT for five-year-olds. My husband is a 37-year-old mechanical engineer and he can't even put one back together. Do yourself a favor and get your kids some packing peanuts. The environmental kind that turn into compost or whatever. This blog may self-destruct.

The Carpet Cleaners

Today I had the carpets cleaned. We have carpet in the two bedrooms and in the studio/office/garage/guest room. It needs to be done more often but I just never get around to it because it's a pain in the butt to schedule, get all the crap off the floor, keep everyone off of it til it dries and anyway I'm always a little nervous about letting strangers in the house. And for good reason. The first time I had the carpets cleaned, like an idiot I went to the corner store to buy some stuff while the men where doing their work and two days later I realized our camera and charger were missing (if it had just been the camera than it's possible I could have lost it, but also the charger?) Oops. And then there's my friend Dianna who the last time I was trying to schedule a clean happened to mention that she knew someone who knew someone who was assaulted (or worse, I don't remember) by a couple of carpet cleaners she let in her house. Great.

So instead of more often I do this once a year on average and by then the carpet is gnarly having just been through a recent potty training season and such. Then last week I get one of these robo-calls and it's a cleaning service and they're having a special in my area - four rooms for $99 etc. so I beep myself through to an operator and get set up to clean our three rooms for $69. A steal. Except I know well that after all is said and done this will be more like $200 because they come with their hoses and their steamers and their special fluids and they tell you that $69 only covers steaming and odor removal. But stains are more and deep cleaning is more and scotch guard is more and you can't really get anything clean unless you deep clean and is that a pet stain over there? No, a daughter stain. Hmmm....

But we set up a time and today at 10:30 I hear a knock at the door. It's the carpet cleaners. Two guys. A tall skinny white guy and tall skinny black guy. The black guy introduces himself and his partner. His name is Daniel and I detect a slight accent. Maybe Jamaican? Hard to say. The white guy doesn't say anything but his name is Joe and he shakes my hand. I'm already on my guard and let them enter the house while I stand behind them close to the door (for my speedy getaway). They ask where the rooms are and instead of leading them there I point around the corner. They go look and come back and then they go look at the garage room. And then Daniel asks if I want to have the deep clean which is an extra $1 per square foot blah blah blah. Exactly what I expected. So I ask him how much it will be and he starts measuring the rooms with his actual feet. 6x8 is....(long pause)...I chime in with 48. He does this a few times and more than once takes out his phone to do the calculation. Yikes. Finally I decide, you know what? Clean the whole place; it's a cesspool. Have at it.

So they go get their equipment and I stay in the office as long as I can before Joe comes in to clean it. I leave through the back door and come back in the house through the front door to make myself a cup of coffee. I'm feeling more relaxed around these young men now. They appear to be doing a nice job and they ask me for towels to wipe up where some water has spilled so I stop planning my getaway strategies and enjoy my coffee.

When all is done, Daniel and I figure out the the total is $278 and I'm feeling like that is actually FOUR TIMES the price I was quoted. So I say how about if I give you $250? Then Daniel says, well....OK. But first I have to tell you one thing and he motions me to come over to the front door.

Your mezuzah* is on the wrong side of the door.

This is what he tells me. The skinny black kid. Huh?

Your mezuzah should be on the right side of the door, the visitor's right, because your right hand is connected to your heart and God.

And I think, son of a bitch, he's right. We've lived here six years and hundreds of Israelis and Jews have walked in and out of our house, rabbis even, and the first I hear of this mezuzah misplacement is from the carpet cleaner? So of course, I ask him how he knows this. Turns out he's Israeli, of Ethiopian decent. And so is his buddy Joe whose real name is Yossie. Well Yossie's not of Ethiopian decent obviously - he's the white guy. Though that reminds me of a funny story when I was in college. I worked as a waitress at the Blue Nile Ethiopian restaurant in Berkeley and we had to wear these traditional dresses which would have been beautiful if they did not smell like turmeric. And one day as I was taking an order my customer asks me if I'm from Ethiopia. And thankfully I had on my polite waitress filter so I just said no and smiled. But I'm thinking, really? Because I am as pale as a ghost. And not albino African pale. I look Irish. With freckles and fine, wavy reddish hair. Just call me Shannon. And there were travel posters all over the walls with gorgeous Ethiopian men and women and I resemble none of them except maybe the dress. But I digress...

So we chatted in Hebrew about how hard it is to find work in Israel now and how Joe just got here a week ago because a friend of his used to work for the company (which is owned and operated entirely by Israelis). Apparently carpet cleaning is a quick study...and Daniel has been doing this for eleven months and he's not sure if he'll stay longer or go traveling or take his money back to Israel to start his own business...and now I love these two boys. And I'm happy for the reminder that most people are good and are just trying to get by.

And tomorrow the mezuzah gets switched.

* A mezuzah fulfills the commandment in Judaism to put the words of the Shema (central prayer declaring there is only one God) on the doorposts of your house.

Au contraire au pair

I was standing in line at Starbucks today and there was a beautiful young woman behind me pushing a stroller in which sat the chunkiest, poutiest, blue-eyed baby. So, trying to be friendly, I asked, "how old is your baby?" In fact it wasn't her baby, she explained in her Scandinavian lilt. She was the au pair.

Now what woman in her right mind is going to hire a beautiful Scandinavian woman to live in her house, WITH HER HUSBAND, and watch after her baby?

Wait, maybe I'm being to quick to judge. It wouldn't be the first time. Let me reassess the situation for a second. I've just had a baby so I look four months pregnant, even though I'm not pregnant at all. I have milk stains on every blouse I own. My hair is falling out. I have post-partum acne. And my spouse is seriously sex-deprived. I know. I'll hire a beautiful woman with a sexy accent and a washboard stomach who wears those low-rise jeans that on normal women create that oddly popular "muffin top" effect but on her only provide better viewing of her hip bones and her thong. And she can sleep down the hall.

Nope. I just can't spin it. Bad choice any way you look at it. Bad bad choice.

Miss Communication

We went camping over the holiday weekend to Olema Ranch up in Point Reyes National Seashore. Usually we're too disorganized to reserve a spot six months in advance which is the earliest you can ever reserve and the only time anything's available six months from then. Especially for a three-day weekend. But friends of ours did the reserving and then asked us to join, then canceled when their baby girl came six weeks early.

It took us a good six hours to pack up the car and leave the house, at the tail end of which I looked at my husband and we just giggled. I mean, is it really worth it? Is camping with babies that much fun? I mean, not really. By the time we get everything in the car for the 48+ hours we'll be gone, we may as well go to Mexico for a week and stay in a resort. It's just so much stuff. And diapers. And toys. And enough Elmo underwear for three months. And a ton of food. And a hundred sleeping bags, two tents, two chairs, a stove, a folding table, 46 stuff sacks, and a flash light. It's dizzying.

But we do it because in the end it is enjoyable and the kids love it and it's fun for us to watch them roll around in dirt and not care. My daughter started walking on this trip which was an extra treat. But by walking I mean five consecutive steps - we still have to schlep her around in the backpack to cover any ground. Which we did, on Sunday.

Friends met us in Point Reyes Station which is about the coolest little town I've ever had coffee in. From there we drove to the trail head. The hike itself is fodder for another post. We ended up on a quiet beach in Tomales Bay and had a picnic. My son and his pal took off their pants (he had peed in his and she just wanted to be naked) and ran around and we ate and relaxed and fed the baby who continues to astound even the casual observer with her special aptitude for inhaling food.

We were getting ready to leave and the baby was holding two cheese sticks in her hand and whining. My husband said, "let's just put her in the pack and get going. She'll settle down." So we put her in the pack. She starts crying and waving the cheese sticks with greater gusto. "Maybe she wants an animal cracker." I give her an animal cracker. She throws it at me. Now she's hysterical and throws one of the cheese sticks at my head and gives me the hairy eyeball. It dawns on me that she might actually want the cheese stick. So I take off the wrapper and she gobbles the whole thing and smiles and sucks her thumb.

My husband and I were laughing so hard. She must think we are a pair of idiots. I mean she could not have been clearer in her communication. Here is a replay from her perspective.

Her: Can you open these cheese sticks?
Dad: She's tired.
Her: No, aba, I want the cheese. That's why I'm waving them at you. I can't open them.
Dad: I'll just put her in the backpack and she'll stop whining.
Her: Sure. AFTER you open my cheese stick pops. What is wrong with you?
Me: Maybe she wants an animal cracker.
Her: What in god's name would make you think that me waving my cheese sticks around means I want a friggin' animal cracker? Do you see the cheese sticks? Do you see me waving the cheese sticks? I'm pretty sure you see me throwing a cheese stick at your head ma! What is wrong with you people?!
Me: What is your deal freaky?!
Her: My deal? Maybe you should take a class in non-verbal communication and then it might occur to you that I WANT THIS CHEESE STICK AND IF I HAVE TO EAT THROUGH THE PLASTIC TO GET IT, I WILL!

Poor thing. Half the time I'm just projecting onto her what I want. Like a nap. And an animal cracker. But she clearly has a mind of her own.

Baby Couture

So my baby is nearly nine months which is ridiculous. I mean she was just born and now she's lurching around the house on her belly like a Gila monster and shoveling food in her mouth and chatting her head off (funny how you never get sick of ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, but why-why-why-why from my preschooler makes me want to put a pen in my eye). But I digress...

So she's going through sets of clothes super fast because she's having growth spurts quicker than i can rotate to the next size up. Some stuff she barely even wears once or twice before it's cutting off circulation in her ham hock legs. A few things she received as gifts and we basically missed the boat because I waited til she was the approximate age that the label suggested and by then it was too late! And I'm not talking about the carter's stuff that I get her from Costco. Those are cut generously for a rolly poly. And my daughter's not even that chub by some standards. She's just a regular Buddha - not like a giant jolly Buddha. It's, in fact, the baby couture.

I have a few cousins and a few friends of the family who bought my daughter adorable and overpriced fancy baby clothes - my favorite was a tiered dress in baby blue, pink, yellow and chocolate - yum. It was so cute. It said six months so I put her in there at four months and it was already skimpy! It's one thing for designer crap to be teeny tiny for adults. I'm over the humiliation. I'll buy the size up, what do I care? But sizing for babies should be standard! What kind of message are we sending our daughters when size 6-9 months is too tight by 4 months! Maybe they should diet! Maybe we should take them off the boob before they get to the fatty hind milk. Maybe replace one feeding with a slimfast so they can better shimmy into their onesies! Sure,organics are all the rage now but what about that unexplored "dietetic baby food" market! Diet Gerber. Baby Lean Cuisine. South Beach Baby Diet. When once they gloated about their kids being in the 85th percentile, now moms will brag about how baby Madison is, at 9 months, still slim enough for size 3-6 months.

wink wink

Trouble with S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G

Parents have been spelling in front of their toddlers since forever. It used to be you could speak your native language in front of your kids so they wouldn't understand (although they always did) but now we all want our kids to be polyglots so we try really hard to get them to learn Mandarin from mom, Danish from dad, Nepalese from the nanny and English at school. Or in our case it's just Hebrew and English. So my husband and I are spellers, or at least we try to be. The problem is we each stink at spelling in the other language.

Yesterday we were at the park across from our house with the kids and I said to my husband, "Do you mind if we just give him C-H-E-E-S-Y P-A-S-T-A tonight?" That's our word for Mac and Cheese. My sister-in-law started saying that for some reason and it stuck in our family too. Anyway, we usually try to make him real food but sometimes it's a cheesy pasta night because we can't be bothered cooking.

So he looked at me sort of weird and here I am thinking, spare me your moral opposition to feeding our son a frozen entree, and as I'm formulating my retort - all five legitimating points and my closing argument - I can sort of hear some squeaking and clanking coming from the direction of my Israeli husband. And then I realize it's his brain trying to put those letters together and coming up short.

So he cracks a smile and I have a giggle. And then I see him actually spelling out the letters in the sand at the playground. At this point we are both hysterical.

Me: Are you KIDDING me?
Him: Wait, what was it? T-H-E-E...
Me: No, C!
Him: T-H-E-C-Y? What the hell is that? A sauce?

We can't even finish our conversation because neither of us is breathing from all of the laughing and snorting. The truth is I can't even ridicule him too much (even though it's entertaining) because I'm even worse. When he spells in Hebrew I literally have to sound out each letter which of course totally defeats the purpose.