Do They Have Wi-Fi in Prison?

Because it seems that might be where I'm heading, thanks to the great state of California, and I'd hate to have to leave the blog behind while I'm doing 10 to 20 in Folsom state prison.

Why the hyperbole, Sarah? Why the absolute breach with reality? Because. They are driving me to it (no pun intended...really).

A little background. During the first week of September, I was stopped by a cop, for the first time ever, for failing to come to a complete stop on a right hand turn on red. I was coming off of the Interstate, the light was yellow, I slowed way down very close to a stop, checked to see that the line of traffic waiting for the green had not started moving, and when I saw that it hadn't, I made the turn. By the time I got through with the turn, my light was red. I suppose you could argue that I turned on yellow, but whatever.

So I got a ticket. Fine. It sucks, but that's life because let's face it, I (and you) have probably crawled through more than our fair share of right hand turns on red without coming to a complete, count-to-five, wait-to-feel-the-tires-roll-back, stop. I know this because since getting the ticket, I have keenly observed the driving habits of others and almost no one stops completely at a right hand turn on red unless there is oncoming traffic. And in my research (google, you bitch), you'd have to make something like 1 million rolling-stop right hand turns on red before being the catalyst for a life-threatening accident. So in the name of all things law-abiding, this is not the hugest crime that police are facing today. But still. Whatever, I got a ticket. And I'm not really all that interested in fighting it.

But what I would like? Is to know how much I owe. So I can pay it. Before there are late fees. And drivers licenses revoked. And bench warrants out for my arrest. Because that's what Google says will happen.

But Sarah, why are you relying on Google for all of your information regarding your traffic violation??!! Surely that information is somewhere on the citation you were issued at the time you were pulled over? Right? Because that would make sense. That would be...what's the word? LOGICAL.

Alas, reader, you are correct. That would be logical et al, but that's not how it works, apparently. I was told I would receive a more thorough ticket in the mail, with fine amount, a court date should I choose to fight it, information for traffic school options, etc. All really helpful information when trying to be a good citizen and pay off your debt to society for, well, not doing anything all that terrible or egregiously hurtful to anyone. I was told I would receive this information. But I have not.

There was one thing on my ticket and that was a "tentative court date," which said I was to appear in court "on or before 10/20/10 @ 1:30pm." Go ahead and try to plan your month around that. Can I show up at 1:30pm on 10/20 and get this taken care of? Can I show up at 10am on 10/4 and pay my fine? What exactly does "on or before" mean in Superior Court-ese?! Because I can't imagine they have some shlump hanging around the Superior Court to deal w/ people just wandering in on their own time to try to fight or pay a traffic ticket. That would seem like a waste of resources and we all know that states don't ever waste resources....right?

The other thing I found on the "this is test, this is only a test, if this had been a real traffic ticket you would have received valuable information regarding fine and traffic school" ticket was a phone number for the Superior Court and the words "if you do not receive notification by mail, it is your responsibility to contact the court for further instruction."

If you know me, you know I do like further instruction. And so after a month went by and the mail had brought with it no sign of a traffic ticket, I started "contacting" the court. I put the word contacting in quotations, because my attempts to "contact" them all kind of ended up like Jodi Foster's attempt to "contact" the aliens in the movie, well, Contact. I dialed the number and then my entire being was sucked up into a vortex of pre-recorded voice messages, muzak and redirections from not-attached-to-any-living-thing voices until I was spit back out of the black hole by a busy signal that meant I'd been hung up on by a machine. Again. I did this for days. I may have punched a wall. or two.

Then I decided to call the police station in the town I was driving through when I received the ticket. Random-person-who-answered-the-phone lady told me that no, I should NOT show up to court on the day specified on the quasi-ticket I was issued because that's just a date the officer puts down and he does not make the court schedule. It's not the "real" date of my court appearance. So...that's helpful.

I asked her a hundred times if she was sure, because really truly I just wanted to pay the fine and find out about traffic school and I don't want to end up with bench warrants and police coming to my home to arrest me for not showing up in court and I *may* have gotten a little weepy in my frustration and my sincere desire to be a good citizen (who really didn't do anything horribly wrong, anyway. Did I mention that?). She laughed and assured me that I would not go to jail for not paying a traffic fine. Well, okay, but that's NOT what google said. She told me that traffic violations are super back-logged and the ticket was probably not even filed yet, sitting on someone's desk. I shouldn't worry about it until I get something in the mail.

"But, the initial ticket says I might not get anything in the mail & that it's my responsibility to contact the court or I might incur late fines and suspended license and bench warrants," I said to her.

"Yes, that is possible; we don't guarantee you'll get anything in the mail."

"But, you just said I shouldn't worry about it at all until I get something in the mail..."

"Well, you might get something in the mail. Don't worry about it."

"Oh. Okay."

*click*

So it was a really helpful conversation. Don't go to court, and don't worry about the ticket until you get the ticket. But you might not get the ticket. So then you won't know when to even worry about the ticket. But don't worry about it right now on my phone line because I've got other things to do now, mkay, honey?

This led me to the panic attack I had on Tuesday morning at 2am, the day before my not-really-my-court-date court date. I woke Husband up at 2am, in full-on teary hyperventilation mode rambling about how I didn't know what to do? Go to court? Not go to court? If I didn't go to court and never got a ticket, what would become of me? The court is 1.5 hours away and when am I supposed to be there? Can I take Ethan to court with me? Do I want him to see me standing in front of a judge??!!! Am I even going to stand in front of a judge?!

I think my biggest problem is that I had no idea what to expect. Aside from an address an hour and a half away from home, I had absolutely no concept of what I'd be facing. Yes, there are bigger things to worry about in the world and life. But like I said, first traffic ticket in 20 years. Miss Never Gets in Trouble tends to get her feathers ruffled when she's in trouble and doesn't know how to make it right.

So the next day, after assuring me that I would not be arrested and sent away for rolling through a right turn on red, Husband also tried to contact the court for some answers. He experienced the same vortex of unhelpful recordings and hang-uppy busy signals. So he called the same police station to double check on the "don't go to court on your not a real court date court date" advice I was given by random-person-who-answered-the-phone lady. Funnily enough, he was told by random-person-who-answered man that I SHOULD go to court on my not a real court date court date, even though it wasn't a real court date.

OH MY GOD!!!!

That if I didn't go to court on 10/20, it might look bad and that at least by showing up I was showing good faith and could maybe get an answer from someone there about what to do next. Maybe I'd be seen that day, but he doubted it.

So fine. FINE!!! Go to court I did. Which I realize should have been the anxiety-free plan all along, but without any idea of what would happen there or even how much my fine was, it was all just daunting. And no one wants to drive 1.5 hours to court if they don't have to, am I right?! With my little carbon copy quasi-ticket in hand, I drove in morning rush hour traffic (because Husband was told by RPWATP-man that it was possible I *might* be seen earlier than 1:30pm since the wording is "on or before 1:30pm.") and arrived at Superior Court in downtown Place I've Never Been, CA around 10am.

The first thing I saw when I got through security (which I bumbled through like a nervous chihuahua--I might have an underlying fear of courts that I don't know about because I was a trembly wreck. I don't know how criminals do it, really.), was the "traffic court" schedule, printed out in impressive dot-matrix style and thumb-tacked up to the wall.

Would you like to guess?

My name was not on the list. It was not my court date.

Sooooo, I found the first real person I could (and was mightily surprised to see so many of them behind the partitions--real people!!! drinking coffee!! and chatting!!! Not a voice recording in sight!) and asked her "What. Am. I. Supposed. To. Do.????" to which she directed me to follow a red line on the floor, showing the way to the "You're a Crap Driver" division of the court. I thanked her far more profusely than was necessary for the help she gave and followed the red tape road to join the rest of my fellow traffic losers awaiting their fate.

Thirty minutes later I found myself face to face with another human being who confirmed that I was indeed "not supposed to be here today", but that she'd fill out some form for me to let the court know what a good do-bee I was for showing up anyway. She told me, as a matter of fact that my ticket was not yet even in the system. It has yet to be filed by the officer who wrote it.

Apparently, the officer has A YEAR to file the ticket. A year. I know I'm melodramatic, but seriously?!!! Mama's got a bit of anxiety here. It would seem to me that drawing out this process for a YEAR is cruel and unusual punishment for making a rolling stop right hand turn on freaking red.

She told me that I *should* receive a ticket in the mail after the officer files it, but they don't guarantee that, so I should check back with the court, every 2-3 weeks until the ticket is filed so that I don't incur late fees and "other penalties" (read: hard time and solitary confinement and the fashion disaster that is the orange jumpsuit) for failing to show up to court and pay the fine.

Check back with the court?!!! The way I'd been "checking with the court" for over a month, with the recorded messages and the transfers that lead to busy signals and the hanging up?!!

I asked her why no one ever answered the phones here--that I'd been calling for a month, sometimes multiple times a day, to try to get an answer and had driven 50 miles to stand in this line just to be sent home, that I was trying to do the right thing here, and she laughed at me. Or perhaps she'd say "with me," but I assure you I wasn't laughing. Her response was, "honey, we answer the phones all day long. If no one's answering your call it's because they're answering someone else's. You just have to keep trying."

She sent me home with my carbon copy quasi-ticket that has my not really my court date court date on it, and a piece of paper that proves I showed up at court for my not real court date. And now I go back to waiting for the ticket in the mail....for the next year. And "contacting" the court every 2-3 weeks...for the next year.

So even if I don't go to prison for failing to pay a traffic ticket, I suppose it's possible that sometime in the next year, after eleventy billion unanswered phone calls to the Superior Court and countless 3-hour round trip drives up to the court to stand in line just to be sent home, I might find myself in cuffs for losing my ever-loving mind and streaking naked through the court with my hair on fire, screaming obscenities....

Adventures in Ethanland...

It's been a busy week here. Field trips, out of town visitors, touristy trips to the city--it's all good (except for my experience dealing with the superior court of California trying to settle a traffic ticket, but let's keep it shiny and happy here for today, shall we???!!!)

If there's one thing I love more than an apple orchard at 'pick your own' time (you might remember a September littered with posts about apple picking), it's a pumpkin patch. I totally get Linus, people. The great pumpkin IS coming. We found ourselves at the first one a few weeks back, but on Monday I chaperoned a field trip with Ethan's preschool to local pumpkin patch. There was much autumn-y rejoicing and hay ride happiness. I can only show you bits of it because our school, aside from forcing the kids to dress in shirts of the LEAST naturally-occuring-in-nature color for all field trips, has also splashed the name of the school across the front of the school. Totally harshing my picture-taking-blog-posting mellow, but whatever. Fortunately it got cool enough midway through the field trip that I could throw a sweatshirt over Ethan's green-screen hued shirt and get some post-able shots.

Later that day, we drove up to the airport to pick up some wonderful friends of ours from back home in DC, as they made their way through a whirl-wind tour of CA. We got to spend a little under 48 hours with Erin and Izzy and though it wasn't nearly enough time, it was so much fun. There is nothing quite like watching Ethan reconnect with an "old" friend. What he remembers and how he emotionally responds to people from his so very limited past is one of the unanticipated benefits of all of our moves--he is 4 years old and he has friends all over the country; it's pretty amazing. I think I was 12 when I got my first pen pal and that was the first friend I ever had who wasn't sitting in the same class room as me, Monday through Friday.

One of the best things about having out-of-town guests? Aside from the catching up and the feeling like you're home in a totally different way than you normally do while sitting in your living room, it's getting to be a tourist again. Yesterday Erin and I packed up the kids and headed to the tourist trap center of San Fran--Fisherman's Wharf.

they're so urban hip it's killing me.

slowly but surely the sea lions are coming back and they're as ornery and slothful as ever.

mesmerized, naturally

the kids were pleased that these particular sea lions didn't stink quite as badly as the real ones.

Then they practiced being airplanes.

Being an airplane really took it out of Izzy and she needed a speedy power nap. She's lucky no one stole her princess camera while she napped--and by "no one," I mean Ethan.

Then we headed to Boudin's sourdough shop and purchased a mini-turtle sourdough bread. Which I totally performed a serious vivisection on later on in an attempt to give each kiddo exactly half of the turtle, right down the middle. Just call me King Solomon.

one seagull per car, people. Please, just one seagull per car. Alternate caption, "this car is mine, mine, mine, mine." Ah, Finding Nemo, with the seagull jokes that just keep being funny.

Probably only to me.

Ethan and the quasi-dreamy street car ticket seller dude who is ALWAYS there; I think he is solely responsible for selling every ticket to every person who ever gets on a SF street car. And he's always got his guitar. And he always lets Ethan play it. I heart him for being such a good sport. And a little bit hot.

It really doesn't get much cuter than this folks.

After adequate time for posing, we got on the street car, during which Ethan's tongue apparently came to life and declared war on the inside of his cheek. And Erin modeled our communal bottle of water. Who wants germs?! Germs!! We got 'em!

We got off the street car in China Town. Where we had a quick lunch, took a picture of this guy:

and then I was yelled at by a shop owner because I had a camera around my neck in his shop, and apparently he had state secrets scattered throughout his stash of Hello Kitty crap and paper lanterns. So, clearly I have no pictures of his stuff, damn it.

Wise advice. Thank you, folding street chair. Thank you.

Just a head's up.

After being chased out of China town by angry spy shop owners, we hopped back on the street car and headed to our last stop:

where, people, they have a pumpkin spice chocolate squares. Pumpkin. Spice. Chocolate.

I'll give you a minute...

Aaaand we're back. We got the kiddos some ice cream (um, yeah, and ourselves. whatever, it was vacation! someone else's vacation, but vacation nonetheless) and they made their best attempt at falling into the chocolate making magic machine and actually becoming part of the magic themselves:

I wish I could post a picture of both kids passed out cold in their car seats on the way home. But alas, they spent most of the 1+ hour drive home in rush hour traffic doing things like licking the bottoms of their naked feet and laughing like hyenas, then arguing over who got to sing the next line of each song they picked out--incessantly asking for adult intervention on their own behalf when the other sang the line "incorrectly" or "out of turn." It was a super fun ride. Note to self: invest in a sensory deprivation tank for preschooler-overload emergencies.

We bid our friends adieu this morning and I embarked on a journey called Operation Just Let Me Pay the Damn Ticket, which I will share in probably mind-crushing detail in another post at some point. But for now, let's keep the post in our happy place, shall we?

NaNoWriMo--Who's With Me?

So next month I might not be here at the blog so much. I'm going to be devoting most of my writing time to writing a novel. In a month. With 100,000+ other people, who do the same thing each November, all over the world. Last year my friends Kita and Karen did it; perhaps more people I know did as well?

Last week I had the opportunity to see the founder of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, speak at Facebook. And let me tell you, I pulled out all the dork stops for it. Brought my laptop and took notes while he talked, laughed too loud at all his jokes (in my defense, he really was funny), and just basically got my school-girl-crush-of-college-professor adoration on (even though the guy has to be 10 years younger than me, which was never a problem when I actually was in college). At first I thought everyone was dorking out like me and taking notes, but then I realized that a lot of the people were Facebook employees actually keeping an eye on their work while they listened to him speaking. Soooo, I might have been the only one actually taking notes. Super.

I will say that sitting there in a lecture/discussion type setting reminded me how much I loved being a student and how much I have missed feeding my brain by listening to, and exchanging ideas with, other people in some sort of academic setting. Sigh. Didn't I just post about how wicked smart you have to be to be a stay at home mom? Well, I guess it takes a different kind of smart, and gives a different kind of satisfaction, from what I get listening to someone talk about their passion for writing and publishing. I havent' been able to stop thinking about how great it would be to go back to school for---something. But what?

At least for next month, while I sit on that question, I'm going to throw myself into one thing that has always been a great passion and dream of mine--writing a novel. It's about time. I started writing my first novel in high school (it was deliciously horrible, let me tell you). I've started about four since then, but never devoted the time or love needed to complete them. One of the perks of writing a whole novel in a month, according to Chris Baty, as that you're basically giving yourself permission to write horrendous drivel because you can't possibly craft the perfect novel in 30 days. And that takes a lot of the pressure off and makes it easier to shut up that voice of your inner critic.

The other thing he said that, hyper-emotional-overly-sensitive-internalizer-of-all-things that I am, made me a bit weepy when he said it and has resonated with me ever since, "the novel you write when you're 25 is different from the one you'll write at 40. And the novel you write at 65 is not the same as the novel you wrote at 40. Every year you don't write, another story you could have told is gone forever." At almost 40, I feel like I owe it to all the stories I've failed to tell to sit down and be true to this part of who I am, and finally tell a whole story.

I'll still post on Mama Sarahndipity a couple times a week and I am also promising myself to get back into the swing of things on my "365" Blog, which I really should rename my "whenever I damn well feel like it" blog, since the 365 is now looking more and more like a 415 blog or something like that. But for the most part I will be neglecting the blog--along with the housework and the grocery shopping--to write a novel.

Inquiring Minds Want to Know...

Well people, it has happened. We've transcended the "why?" phase. Just when I thought one more "why" question would set me over the edge and drive me to a life of shuffling down the street in my jammies, pushing a shopping cart, Ethan seems to have stopped, or at least tapered off, with the "why." This should be where I say something about the heavens opening up and rosy-cheeked cherubs with harps descending to serenade me as I bask in the peaceful glory of those five "why"-less minutes.

But.

"Why" has been replaced by "HOW." Now, I don't have to know why everything happens/ed. I need to know how it happens/ed.

On our less than 10 minute drive home from a play date on Wednesday, Ethan asked me how the Earth got here. And how the dinosaurs went extinct. And how cars got here. Because really to my 4 year old, those are the three biggest concerns in his life right now. Earth, dinosaurs and cars. I explained how the Earth got here and his reply was, "Mom, you just blew my mind!" No, really, that's what he said. I almost drove off the road, laughing. But instead, I just said, "I know!!! It's so cool, huh?!" We just got him an atlas of the universe and the idea that the universe is still expanding out there somewhere just completely silences Ethan with the awe. After I explained the advent of the automotive industry, he was keen to know if Henry Ford himself built our car. "That would be pretty tricky for him, honey," was my response and thankfully that seemed good enough for him.

I know a lot of people think that being a stay-at-home-mom saps one's brain function, and while I won't compare it to running a Fortune 500 company or curing cancer, I will say that the vast store of both basic and esoteric knowledge you have to have tucked away to answer the quick fire questions that come from the minds and mouths of little ones certainly requires a good amount of mental and intellectual agility and content. It's not a job for dummies.

In which I Lose My Mind Over Kindergarten

I'm not one of those parents who had her child on a waiting list for the best preschools in our neighborhood since he was a fetus. I'm not one of the parents who attended 15 preschool open houses and then sat at home whipping out spread sheets of pros & cons of each school (I was, however, the friend of a parent who did that & I totally sponged off of her research when starting to look for a preschool for Ethan in Los Angeles. Awesome). I'm not a parent whose, up to this point, put a super huge ton of thought into the "public" versus "private" debate about school. But now? I am kicking all that casual "whatever; it will all work out fiiiiiiine" attitude to the curb and fretting about kindergarten until it has me rocking back and forth in the corner, chewing on my own shoulder.

As a product of private schools and a teacher in both the public and private systems, I have often found myself sharing my perspective with other parents. My perspective as someone who's not really been there yet as a parent, but as a teacher. Countless times I have said, "really, your child will get out of a public education what he/she puts into it and in the long run, so long as you're involved and enthusiastic about your child's education, chances are, public or private? It's going to be fine." And as a teacher, I have always believed that. I taught in exclusive snooty private schools as well as public schools fraught with all kinds of budgetary issues and at-risk kids.

Of course there was a shinier polish on the private school--new building, new computers, etc. But the kids still seemed to fail or succeed based on the involvement and support of their parents. Of course, "succeed" was sort of a relative term, given that *some* parent involvement involved bullying either myself or the dean of students to change a grade to demonstrate a greater level of success than had been actually achieved, so you know, sometimes parental involvement isn't such a super thing. Like the time the dean of students told me I had to "adjust" a student's grade up from a zero after he simply printed out a page from sparknotes.com, advertisements, banners and all, and handed it in as his assignment, because I hadn't explicitly stated in my written instructions of the home work assignment that the work handed in had to be original student work. Those students whose parents weren't barging into offices and demanding A's for their kids had other issues; I had students with such anxiety problems due to the rigor of the curriculum that they had ulcers, missed school, were hospitalized. I had students stressing out that we were required to grade their work so unforgivingly that they were working harder than kids at other schools, but getting lower grades for it, thereby seeing their lower achieving counterparts in other schools getting acceptance letters from the Ivy Leagues when they weren't. I always seriously questioned whether I wanted to put my child in a learning environment like that, regardless of the prestige or the relative *quality* of the education.

But.

I may or may not make friends with saying this, but the standardized testing that goes on in public schools now? Is bullshit. Not only does it speak to only one method of student assessment, it is the least authentic form of assessment available to educators and turns our students into robotic memorizers, not critical or creative thinkers. When I started teaching, I used rubrics, portfolios, project-based assessments that allowed each student to tap into their own strengths to demonstrate the knowledge they'd gleaned from a certain unit of study. By the time I left teaching, 11 years later, several years into NCLB, I was slapping last year's state assessment test up on an overhead projector and going over which answer was correct for each question. Because that's what I was told to do; that's what education in the school I taught for had become, district-wide, in one of the largest, most affluent districts in the country. There's not enough money in the state's education budget to compel me to go back to teaching kids to take a test. Watching them squirm uncomfortably in their seats, eye-lids drooping as they try to pick the right multiple choice letter to correspond with the question lit up on the overhead projector in front of the class, where once the room was full of kids working in groups, making posters, planning presentations, searching the room for examples of various literary devices, acting out Shakespeare? It's depressing beyond words. I no longer know if I believe my own shpiel about it all being good as long as you're an active and supportive parent.

I realize that my experiences as a teacher in the secondary level isn't really all that helpful when making decisions about where to send my child to kindergarten.

But as Ethan chugs along in his last year of preschool, Husband and I are beginning to discuss and consider our options. And by "discuss and consider" I mean Husband is listening patiently and nodding as his slightly insane wife rants and raves about how the street we live on is not in the same district with every other street in a 10 block radius and that means Ethan doesn't get to go to the super awesome elementary school, but the one that's considered somewhat less awesome by California standards (which I say because California is NOT exactly a shining star in terms of the national average) and that from what I've seen on their school web-page, our kid is going to kindergarten so he can copy over vocabulary words and bring worksheets home for homework and zOMG, is there going to be ANY art, music, physical education, recess?!!! Obviously I have to make a time to go in to the neighborhood public school and observe the sense of community and the academic style of some of the kindergarten teacher before I solidify an impression of the place, but the idea of my kid being turned into Rote-y McRote Memorizestein makes me want to immediately order a shit ton of homeschooling supplies and go live on a farm somewhere. Which? I know works beautifully for some people, and I admire them for it tremendously, and it might seem natural because I'm a teacher by profession.

But. For me?

Just no. For a bajillion reasons.

But what to do? Not only have I spent years p'shawing the idea of private education for my child, but we live in an area where a private school is going to run you about the same as a year of college. So it's kind of like sending your kid to college (albeit not an Ivy league) for 12 years BEFORE college. And while it may be do-able, if we never get new cars, or go on a vacation for the next 12 years or stop eating any and all organic, grass-fed, free-range foods and subsist entirely on canned tuna and ramen, it's just not something we really truly want for our family at that kind of expense. Half the joy of childhood is the experience that comes from travel and experiences outside of school, and most of the education our child will get about his own well-being and a healthy lifestyle will come from seeing how we eat, what we eat, our participation in shopping at local farmer's markets or CSAs. Giving all of that up to pay for private education just really isn't a viable option as far as I'm concerned. (plus, mama needs new shoes).

But how to keep Ethan from ending up in a desk, in a row, a work sheet in front of his face and his love of learning floating up and away into the ether, never to be seen again after preschool?

If you have any thoughts on the subject, or any advice for how you've manage to keep your child's love of learning alive in an educational environment that seems determined to grind it into the ground, I'd love to hear it. I'll be over in the corner, chewing on my shoulder.

*I really want to clarify that I KNOW there are a ton of teachers out there in the public system who are heroes striving to provide an education that encourages a child love of learning; there are teachers out there busting their asses every day to make sure their students pass those inane tests while at the same time ensuring that they are always inquisitive, always curious and critical thinkers and not just #2 pencil-little-oval-filling API scores. And I KNOW there are teachers in college prep private schools who concern themselves with the well-being of the whole child, not just the grades and fierce competition; there are teachers who risk their jobs to give kids a bit of a break when they see that they are being held to unrealistic standards and see that one more 10 page paper is going to push that sophomore over the edge. My intention in this post isn't to disparage the profession of teaching at ALL (it is, after all, my former profession and one that I--at least for the most part--adored--I know there are amazing heroes out there who give of themselves without the expectation of thanks and who love the children that come through their rooms each year). My complaint isn't with teachers, but with the systems. My intention in this post is just to express my own frustration at being on the other side of this equation for the first time--losing that sense of control over who is caring for & teaching my child, and how, and wondering how big of a role I can play in this process is a making me a bit twitchy. A bit.

Virtual Coffee

Today I'm participating in Amy's Virtual Coffee, which is an imagined conversation that might take place between you and me if we were able to sit down and chat over a real cup of coffee today, instead of meeting each other through this series of tubes we call the internet.

If I were meeting you for coffee today, I would probably talk about this past week, about how we saw old friends and started new traditions, and how I've been sort of struggling to find my blogging voice lately, which is why the posts have been fewer and farther between. I'd try not to let too much of my insecurity as a writer show, but if you know me, you know I'm an over-sharer, so who are we kidding? I'd probably talk about myself too much (oversharer), but that wouldn't mean I wouldn't want to hear all about you--it just means I lose track of time and assume we have all day, forgetting that there are other things to accomplish besides this one connection between you and me.

Speaking of connection, this week we reconnected with friends from back home in DC. They live in Southern California now, but were up in San Francisco for the weekend, so we joined them for a bit on Saturday afternoon.

Our friend Jason augmented that PX90 workout he's always talking about by lifting 30lb weights, erm, Ethan, on the banks of the pond by the Palace of Fine Arts. Everyone was impressed.

Maybe not the birds.

Ethan questioned others' fashion choices...

And ran down some hills

It was Fleet Week in the city, which meant low-flying planes and screaming fighter jets and men and women in uniform. So it was a lot like Top Gun, but without bad karaoke or Goose being blown to smithereens at the end.

We hadn't intended on going to the air show--we aren't a big "rah-rah military!!!" type of family, but there's something about the sound of a jet engine peeling through the sky and breaking the sound barrier that is some sort of testosterone-y siren song to all men, so we found ourselves, after lunch, heading towards the marina....

This picture is not really of a stop sign. Well, it is, but what I was trying to capture is the little smudge of something silvery over on the left-hand side of the picture, almost smack-dab in the middle. That? Is a fighter jet. But my camera, without a sexy zoom lens, couldn't focus on it. And I didn't realize exactly how teeny tiny that jet would look in the picture because the noise it was making? Was shattering the fillings in the the teeth in the back of my mouth.

San Francisco has a ton of fire escapes; I kept waiting to see something interesting on one, but all I could find were some cool shadows.

When he wasn't blocking his ears and trying to decide between being terrified and mesmerized by the sound of the jets, Ethan was giggling a lot.

It was pretty cool...

I'd probably complain over coffee about how our GPS takes us on wild goose chases to get from point A to point B these days because we're too lazy, cheap busy to download the map updates. Last week, on my way out of the city with my friend and her daughter, Rhoda (get it, Road-a, that's what we call our GPS. Because we are dorks. Giant dorks) took us through the center of the city during rush hour when she could have just as easily taken us down one quick road to the highway. On Saturday, she took us from almost the exact same spot, through an entirely different, albeit equally and needlessly convoluted, part of town to get home. So while Husband grumbled under his breath at Rhoda and we sat in traffic, I stuck my head out the window and took some pictures.

"It's like a red light, on Green Street," (a missing line from Alannis Morisette's song about things that she *thinks* are ironic, but really aren't?)

Have you stayed at the Motel Capri? I hear it's very quiet...

I'd maybe talk to you a bit about this photography thing. I've had a lot of people say to me recently that they really like my pictures. That they see I've "taken up" photography. That they hope I do something with it. And it all makes me feel a little squeamish--in a good way? in a bad way? I don't know. I'm just another one of those people who got their hands on a DSLR and likes to hold the camera at a wonky angle when I take pictures. I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like when something comes out looking cool, it is totally 100% by accident. And my insecurities about it have led me to pretty much abandon my 365 blog because I at once hate not getting comments about my pictures when I think I've managed to take a cool one, and feel like a big giant poser when I do get comments or compliments. It's that way with pretty much any sort of creative endeavor I pursue, which is why I think I tend to drop them as soon as I start getting any sort of attention. Like the five different novels I've started in the past twenty years.

Then I'd realize it's probably time to stop with the gushing of the insecurities, and I'd make a joke about how I should be telling all of this to a therapist, not you, and I'd nervously chuckle and apologize for being a pathological over-sharer.

If we were chatting over coffee today, or in my case an tall soy, extra hot, no water chai tea latte, and I was just getting to know you (making that last conversation about my insecurities even that much more awwwkward) I'd ask you about your family traditions--not holidays or family gathering type traditions, just little everyday things, like bedtime routines or preschool drop off habits. Like how Ethan has to climb up the fence at his preschool gate and hang on for dear life as he punches in the access code to get inside the play yard. Every day. And how if some other parent is being kind and holding the gate open for us, I have to explain, "thanks, but he's going to want to punch that code in himself, so you can go ahead and close the gate!" Fortunately he's not the only kid in his class with this particular neurosis, so it's all good.

Last week we started a new tradition in our family. The evening walk. We've had a bit of a heat wave here in the past several days, but without fail, Northern California evenings are cool. If it's 95 in the afternoon, just hang on because it's going to be 65 by 7pm. So one night last week Husband, Ethan and I decided to go for a walk after dinner, before Ethan's bedtime. Just twice around our block--Ethan on his bike, his helmet cocked to one side of his head (I really hope if he falls it's on that side), Husband and I walking slowly behind, chatting about our days. It wasn't intended to become a fixture of our evening, but almost each evening since the first evening, one of us says, as 7pm approaches, "should we go for our walk?" And we do. And it's lovely.

There would be a ton more to talk about, I'm sure, and I hope I wouldn't dominate our conversation if it were real and not virtual, but you know, it is my blog, so I guess here, I'm going to be the chattier one.