I love my house, I really do. (I also love my town. I want to do a photo walk of its main drag one day, because it’s such an interesting street. Bums! Hippies! Surfers! And I would NOT have it any other way.)
 
But my main point for now: my house is great. It’s light, it’s [...]

Disillusionment Of Ten O’Clock
 
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches Tigers
In red weather.
–Wallace Stevens
 
Oh [...]

 
For Toot’s recent birthday, I gave out mix CDs of some of her favorite songs. They’re her favorites because I told her they were, but she does seem to like them on her own, too. Which is a plus.
 
I’m not crafty. I’ve said it before, but need to say it again, because it’s my label [...]

 
A few weeks ago, we celebrated Toots’ birthday party at our local JW Tumbles (Pt. Loma).
 
It made me wonder why I ever do stuff for birthday parties. Things like planning and preparing and cooking and assembling and shopping. I just didn’t need to with JW Tumbles and let me say, the opportunity to do nothing [...]

 
Today did not go down easy.
 
My exposed nerves pulsated and twitched and despite all, someone kept scraping them with a callous remover.
Those are the someones above.
 
Today was the opposite of a sensory deprivation tank. Rather, it was an IMAX theater of scrambling kids falling off beds, crawling onto my lap, jumping on tables, [...]

Toots: What’s for lunch?
 
Me: (thinking fast on my feet) Uh, something good.
 
Toots: And healthy?
 
(Oh, my sweet little pupil!)
 
Me: Yes. Good AND healthy.
 
Toots: How about pepperoni salad?
 

 
My haiku won in the humor category over at My Mommys Place. It’s a great site. Their haiku contest is fun. Maybe they’ll have another one someday.
But better you don’t enter.
I’ll just win again and then you’ll feel real bad.
Don’t do that to yourself. You’ve got enough to worry about.
 
Here’s the winning humor haiku:
 
Online [...]

…than to open the e-mail titled “With Tremendous Force and Volume.”

I’m sorry. I’m using this photo again. It’s from about 4 years ago, so maybe you will mistake my youthful radiance for health.
 
In July of last year, I decided to eat better. And because I can’t do anything in moderation, my eating better looked like this: no white sugar, no white flour, no processed food, [...]

There’s a new Momma Love “review” up.
 
Cuz I know you (friend in Tulsa) were waiting.
 

So in college, my friends and I said “flocking,” instead of the other word.
 
Everything became, “she’s so flocking annoying,” and “what the flock?!?,” and “flock you!”
 
Then Halloween came and we (there were at least 7 of us) dressed up as a flock of cows. We wore black garbage bags and taped white spots to them [...]

 
I am bonkers for this stuff. I believe that I associate the smell of it with childhood, which brings good tidings. It’s got a beautiful eucalyptus smell that reminds me of the Vick’s VapoRub my dad used to use on us kids. For everything. Seriously. Loose tooth? Vicks. First period? Vicks. Herpes Simplex A? You [...]

 
Did you see this on SNL Saturday night?
 
Please note that the video has adult content! And as such is very adulty in nature. No dirty stuff, just grown-up, possibly offensive, but hilarious, humor. Again! You may be offended by this! But only if you’ve never had a period.
 
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m must go [...]

This one is completely dominated by the artist we heard play last night.
 
And how about this? Please list in an e-mail or in comments or in your blog (just leave me the link) three songs you can’t live without (for now). It can be songs you’ve just discovered, or songs you’ve loved long time.
 
I [...]

Is there a software or technology out there which allows people in your general vicinity to see what you are doing/writing on your computer? Like a Google Earth but with computers? Where people can zone in on you and see your computer screen on theirs?
 
I hope not.
 

I have this annoying habit, one I didn’t know what to call before, although I knew it needed a name, a slogan, a tagline. Something catchy and inspiring.
 
Finally, a few months ago a friend called it “Going Geico™,” and nothing could more perfectly sum it up.
 
So what I do is I “dub” over what someone [...]

Today we’re off to a Peter Pan-themed birthday party, where Toots and Booger will wear Sleeping Beauty costumes.
Those Disney characters, they’re all friends, right?
 
After that, it’s a quick ride home, a nap send-off and a quick getaway to a house concert our friends are hosting. Chris Trapper will be there, playing the Baby Grand. I’m [...]

Thanks to my brother for this link.
It’s a poem from the New Yorker.
Here’s a poem my brother wrote.
I like it too.
 
p.s. To see my bro’s poem, go to this link, click on Scribble, then on the photo with the red-shaded lamp. You’ll be glad you did.

My husband’s yelling woke me up.
Then I heard the home security alarm.
 
I hurled myself out of bed and looked at our alarm system flashing red, and wanted to cover my ears to shield against the piercing beep.
 
But there was the yelling. And the scrambling. And oh my God, is someone in the house? The kids! [...]

As you can tell from my recent posts, I’m currently in PMS Week #3.
 
Also, in Week #1.
 
Don’t ask for clarification. I’ll get all Week #2 on your ass.
 

As I fastened my daughter in her car seat this morning, I glimpsed a woman in the car next to mine, hunched over the steering wheel, sobbing.
 
My heart connected with hers in that moment and I so wanted to knock on the window and ask if she was all right.
 
But I didn’t.
 
I felt foolish. Also, [...]

I took her Cadillac the day we spread her ashes.
It was a long drive from San Diego to Bodega Bay, but it gave me time to think, which I did, sometimes reluctantly.
And as freeways gave way to greened two-lane roads, I lulled myself into thinking everything would be OK.
Of course, it never could be, not [...]

My pancake this morning. I know it’s blurry and amorphous. Why don’t you just shut up?
 
This morning I made my oat pancake with 75% expired ingredients.
This can only mean one thing: I’m PMSing.
 
Since I suffer from anxiety, it makes sense that I also get PMS. I believe they’re branches of the same tree. And I’m [...]

My daughter turned four this weekend and for kicks, I looked back at my other blog, the one I shall not name, for posts I wrote while I was pregnant with her.
 
And I found one. But instead of being about her, it was about me — sick and in the throes of early pregnancy.
 
So [...]

Yes, indeed.

Have you read the Memory of Running?
You should.
Then, please tell me who the author played in Sex and the City. It wasn’t the senator, right?

This is part 3 from my Road to Oprah series. (I was inspired by my dream last night).
 
This is part 1. And part 2.
 
I’ve been avoiding this.
 
There’s way more to work through than I originally thought. Because I started with my mom. And that’s the hardest person to forgive. Why couldn’t I have gone [...]

Straight from my dream brain to you.
 
I really wanted to blog last night. But I drew a blank, so I began to talk about mucous again, which happens when I’m nervous.
 
I fortunately threw that post to the curb and took to a fitful sleep.
 
The Universe must have taken pity on me, because I had the [...]

 
Despite the above, I don’t think you should vote for me.
 
Vote for the haikus you like best.
 
Because I’m OK with not being the best.
 
Although it’s a lot of fun when I am.
 
You know, I had a rough childhood. Always feeling like second best. Never really being accepted for me.
 
What? Yeah, it hurt. But, [...]

Oh, I talk a good game. In conversations with friends, teachers, and family, I focus on the wholesome, positive things I do as a mom, but the truth is, I can do better.
 
This isn’t a putdown. It’s the truth.
 
I know I’m not doing my best. As my daughter told me the other day, “Whenever [...]

 
I don’t know, I kind of have a licensed character aversion. My brother has it, too, and refuses to dress his son in clothes with any trace of Bob the Builder or Thomas, preferring instead those drab, uniformy-looking kid’s clothes you get when you shop in Asia.
 
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
 
So: Dora. [...]

Love Love Love/Tristan Prettyman
Spanish Stroll/Mink De Ville
Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)/MIKA
Oh! (What a Glorious Thing)/Akira the Don
When I Write the Book/Rockpile
I Believe In Love/Indigo Girls
Run/Indigo Girls
Last Request/Paolo Nutini
California Grace/Long Beach Shortbus
I Saw/Matt Nathanson
 
And that’s the way I like it.
 

My daughter turned 4 today and overnight things changed.
 
It’s funny how you say something to your kid, something unthinking, something you don’t even remember saying, and they take it and run with it, refer to it often and make it their mantra.
 
As a passing comment yesterday, I said, “Now that you’re 4, you can get [...]

Part 1 of my gripping “I Suffer From Anxiety” series.
And Part II.
 
So in my endeavor to better understand my anxiety and hopefully find ways to cope with it, I recently visited a kinesthesiologist. I’d heard great things about this guy from a vegan/Zen/meditative/very non-anxious friend of The Rocks’ who’d been going to this particular doctor [...]

Not really, but that wouldn’t that be cool: every Friday designated “Haiku Day?”
And the banks would be closed and the post office and schools and daycare and what am I, crazy?
 
In related news, I’m entering a haiku contest held over at My Mommy’s Place and am posting my submissions here. There’s all kinds of cool [...]

I hate being a pussy mom.
 
I want to be the rocker mom who grooves to the beat of her own drum, not caring what people think, no, just experiencing that joie de vivre and living, man, just living! You know?
 
No? Oh man, why you gotta be like that?
 
Yesterday, my daughter and I made valentines for [...]

These days, I make exactly three things for dinner:
pasta, salad, nothing.
 
There’ll be weeks where I motivate to try something new, but about a month ago, my mind suddenly sprang a dinner recipe leak.
 
It’s as if I never knew how to make anything. Kind of like Freaky Friday where I changed bodies with my husband. Except [...]

Steady hands, honest gazer
I crave to etch words in your marble
 
Love to make my mark
where it shall remain
and if it
peaks
dips
circles
 
You’ll touch the infinite cast edges
 
And when I turn away
And when I shut it out
And when I wretch –
to what?
 
I don’t know
 
The conviction
despite feeble veneer
is carved nonetheless
 
And when what I say is love
crazily makes [...]

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I recently looked back through all the correspondence I’d sent my husband over the past 10 years. And instead of feeling inspired, or invigorated, I took a horrifying walk down memory lane, where I realized that my husband is one lucky brave man.
 
I offer for evidence one particular letter, written [...]

 
I disappoint myself when these types of videos get to me.
I know the message is worthwhile, I do. But it’s that they orchestrate the music, the photos, the words, to intentionally make you cry.
And then it becomes about the making-you-cry, and not about the making-you-think. (The fact that I’m bothered by that just highlights my [...]

This seemed manageable.
 

Then, I walked into this.
 

This.
 

And finally, this.
 
I’m trying to take this all in stride. Usually, I spot clean throughout the day, then dive into emergency surgery cleaning late in the afternoon. I’ve been trying to pace myself, because it feels like all I do is clean. But messes make me anxious. Really, really, [...]

Well, now that the writer’s strike is pretty much over, I find this hilarious video.
Maybe not as relevant, still as funny.

 
Can you see this OK? I simply must take fashion photography to better capture the kick assedness of my thrift store finds. But meanwhile, let me break it down for you: we’ve got one 100% silk, Banana Republic, peacock green, visually arresting top, paired with dress khakis sporting cream, black and tan pinstripes, topped off [...]

 
Can I just tell you how many kick ass things I’ve found here? A brand new Lilly Pulitzer jacket for my one-year-old ($2), Gymboree dresses ($3.99), Banana Republic totally awesome jacket ($8.99), the best purse in the universe ($9.99). And more!
 
Usually, I don’t buy unless the item is new or drycleaned (and you can tell). [...]

 
1) Popularity isn’t worth it.
If I have any regret in my life, it’s that I spent so much time and worked so hard to be popular. It consumed me. In fact, I have a whole section in my adolescent diary devoted to “How to Be Popular.” (An especially lame, but earnest tip was “Take Shower [...]

Creativity is a value in my home. I foster, nurture, and develop the creative urge in my children every day (quite possibly to ward off any chance that they will languish uncreatively in soulless jobs as I many people I know have done.)
 
I firmly believe that we are all creative. I also believe that if [...]

If my emotions were mapped today, this would be the topography.
 
Darlin’ Do Not Fear/Brett Dennen
Circle/Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians
Kindly Unspoken/Kate Voegele
In My Own Mind/Lyle Lovett
Myriad Harbour/The New Pornographers
Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games/Of Montreal
Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes/Paul Simon
Silver Lining/Rilo Kiley
Step On My Old Size Nines/Stereophonics
Landing In London/3 Doors Down [...]

electric fingers, worn by silver
move me forward, will I hear a whisper
 
spent as light in near dawn, spirals
she limps, then settles
 
sits in blonde wood acclimated to cold
peeks through the porthole, spider glass
 
pipes of light I would collect and -
forget, unbidden in deep pockets
 
padded, stuffed with dolls, grass, a look
from the hall, red paint that gleams
 
and [...]

This is “Angel.” He’s 55 years old. Or, 85. He wanted me to guess.
 
Throughout his adult life, which either measured about 30 years, or 60, (I’m still deciding), Angel was an insulation contractor, a cleaning business owner. a Hollywood actor, songwriter, entertainment agency CEO. and…whew! isn’t that enough?
 
Now, Angel works for God.
 
And I believe him.
 
For [...]

I love the affection on Ray’s face here.
 
This is Ray (left) and Bill. I’ve seen them at my local coffee house going on two years now. Usually, they’re holding court at a table filled with other intelligent-looking, newspaper-reading, energetically-discussing locals. In my mind, I imagined Ray, Bill and their friends to be local activists, perhaps [...]

Every Friday, I join my Moms’ Meetup group at Point Loma’s Liberty Station park.
This is a new and well-kept park tucked behind a large grassy area, and south of the bay (although it could be north, east or west? I’m horrible at directions, I just like how it sounds when I pretend to know).
It’s the [...]

As I was finishing up the last post, Alexa came up to me.
“I’m stunked,” she said.
Thinking she meant “stumped,” I corrected her.
“No, stunked,” she insisted. “It’s a Spanish word I made up for tired.”
 
That kid’s perfect.
 

Sunlight makes it through the thickest of branches.
 
Thursday didn’t come easy. Alexa’s down with a sinus infection and the rest of us are battling runny noses and general crankiness.
And here I am: squirreled away in a dark corner of the kitchen to write a few lines.
I started a poem, but thought: I need to empty [...]

 
CORE
When I walk here I feel OK
Though ragged feet
and bruised arms walk with me
 
Yeah you know I feel OK
 
Because I’m you
without the evidence
 
No. Mosaic alley with its tattoos and
broken melodies
 
is siren song
 
If we met face to face
dungarees and eyes that glaze
 
Kindred will know its name
 

Me now. But also then. Except for the crow’s feet and the nasolabial folds. Also? My laser eye vision wasn’t fully developed.
 
I have another blog. I’ve had it since June, 2001. I will not name it, because San Diego Momma is my new leaf. And I want to leave old stones unturned. (I just love [...]

This could be what puts me over my allotted Internet time…

AGENDA ITEM #1: FINALLY FORGIVE OLD SLIGHTS
The set-up:
I think I’ve moved on. But when the person’s name comes up or I’m reminded of how I’ve been hurt by anyone, in any way, at anytime, my anger flashes.
What’s that Oprah says? Not forgiving someone is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die. I [...]

This is part 1.
 
AGENDA ITEM #1: FORGIVE (UPDATE)
 
Well, this first agenda item is going OK.
 
I spent a lot of my Road to Oprah time working primarily on forgiveness for my mom. I think that one’s the jim dandy and if I can forgive that, then the rest will come easy.
 
For years, I’ve reacted with anger [...]

This morning, my daughter tells me, “I really, really, really want to be a policeman.”
 
Thinking this sounds like something she’s really thought over, and not wanting to discourage her from the dream, I say, “Yeah?”
 
“Yes,” she answered resolutely. “Or a unicorn.”
 

In September of 2007, my sister underwent an emergency c-section and subsequently gave birth to her beautiful daughter, Katelyn. Katelyn was born at just over 23 weeks, far far away from her due date of January 14, 2008. At birth, Katelyn weighed a tiny 1 lb., 3 ozs. and was barely 11 inches long.
 
None of [...]

There’s no picture today because this post is about my neighbor, who is so close that if he had a telephoto lens, he could see what I was writing right now.
 
(In fact, he doesn’t even need a telephoto lens, he just needs eyes.)
 
In truth, I did try to snap a picture of his bathroom [...]

Answer by Sarah McLachlan is simply the most lovely song I’ve ever heard. Makes me cry every single time. I would play this at someone I love’s funeral.
(I just blew the vibe, didn’t I?)

TO ANGIE
And this is the way you tell me you’ve grown tired
and I say you’ve been tired all along
 
I tell you I won’t light your stone avenues,
point at landmarks unseen, or the map
still folded
 
I rise against your close-eyed sickness
not by closing,
but not stopping to look
 
Not anymore
 
This is how I yell when I pass
say [...]

SWEETIE PIE (written for my daughter, Alexa)
 
How do you make a sweetie pie
Is it something you can bake?
 
Are there special things that go in it
Do you frost it like a cake?
 
What are the ingredients
That make it taste so sweet?
 
I imagine there’s no dirt or bugs
Or socks from smelly feet
 
Maybe there’s my mama’s grin
And my daddy’s [...]

I am strong, like a Powerpuff Girl. Except I’m not a kindergartner. But that’s open for debate.
 
Read Part I first here.
 
The anxiety: it’s overwhelmed me, made me laugh, ruined relationships, made friendships, and inspired my writing. It’s funny, really, that this is one of the first times that I’ve called it out: I never refer [...]

I have a lot of kid’s books. This one is my favorite of all time. It’s silly (as the title so helpfully suggests) but not in that annoying way, maybe like, say, Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You? read 100 times at breakneck speed. I could read The Seven Silly Eaters again and again and [...]

These are the kinds of days I love. It’s the Chicagoan in me, I think. (Although I’m betting Chicagoan’s don’t like these kind of days.) I’ve always run melancholic, so these scenes give me the atmosphere to match my mood.
 

Super Pour, Part Deux
 

Super Pour, The Third Installment