wellthoughtoutspot

Pet-sitting Trauma

2010-04-25T07:11:00.000-07:00

It all begins so innocently. I like pets but don't have any of my own. So I say "Sure!" when friends ask me to pet-sit for them. Last week was Spring Break for Red and Rainman, so we offered to take care of the preschool guinea pig for a week. Some of you know that we have a nice history with guinea pigs (Rest in Peace, Ferdinand and Isabella).

Squeaker came to live with us and everyone was loving her furry sweetness, until she began bleeding all over the pee pad towel we used to hold her. Uh-oh. A few frantic phone calls and google searches later, and I learn that no, in fact, it is not normal for female guinea pigs to bleed. Rats.

Waiting at the vet, I feel like a nervous Mom with a sick, furry child. A young woman in scrubs comes out and calls "Squeaker Cosgrove?" In we go. They check her vitals and give her I.V. fluids. It turns out that Squeaks has a possible urinary tract infection (does she not know about wiping front to back after the goes to the bathroom?).

So we spend the week nursing her back to health with antibiotics, fresh veggies and lots of love. As my brother, the doctor, puts it, "That pretty much sums up 90% of modern medicine". Hooray! Squeaker is cured and we return her to nursery school in better shape than she came to us.

We are no strangers to the world of pet-sitting sick, dying, or totally-faking-it pets. In fact, my best advice to those of you who live near me is FIND ANOTHER PET SITTER. We have a knack for bad luck with all creatures, great and small. For more on our spotty record with other people's animals, read my post on svmoms.

Obese Kid Nation: the School Lunch Connection?

2010-02-21T08:05:00.000-08:00

Do you know what your kids are eating for lunch at school? I do, but only because they are still young enough that I pack their lunches. But in a few more months, my eldest will be able to eat in the school cafeteria. And what's on offer there is a troubling mishmash of highly processed food and sometimes, a few healthy options.

Since learning that at least 1/4 of our local kids are obese, I've gotten involved in a group that advocates for healthier food in our schools. Partly, I'm doing this for my own kids. I'm also doing it because of all the kids who consider themselves lucky to get a subsidized school lunch and count that free or reduced-price meal as the best one they get all day. And trust me, as a community and as a country, we can and should do better by our kids.

At our local school, concerned parents started a Wellness Committee to work with district officials to get better food at our schools. It has been an uphill battle, despite the fact that district officials seem to agree that our food could be healthier. A combination of tight budgets, bureaucratic inertia, and free food courtesy of the federal government ("commodity food") seems to conspire against serving truly nutritious food. And highly processed food like Hot Pockets and Pizza Sticks (which contain imitation mozzarella, sodium nitrites, preservatives, artificial colors, and partially hydrogenated oils) keep turning up on our lunch menus, despite multiple requests by our group to replace them with healthy options.

Two weeks ago, I participated in a conference call with the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Thomas Vilsack about nutrition in the schools and the Obama administration's policies for a healthier America. A fellow blogger from SVMoms (and Mednauseum) arranged the call. It was eye-opening. Schools in the U.S. provide lunches to 30 million children and breakfast for more than 10 million. Secretary Vilsack pointed out that the federal Childhood Nutrition Act is up for reauthorization this year and that Members of Congress face some tough choices: to increase funds for healthier schools and make cuts elsewhere in the budget, or not.

The Obama administration knows it needs to do better. The Department of Agriculture hired the Institute of Medicine to analyze our school's food. In their report, they noted that the USDA needs to work on:

Increasing the amount and variety of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains
Setting a minimum and maximum level of calories
Focusing more on reducing saturated fat and sodium

All of the above definitely holds true in our little school district. And a few of us at our school have even (gasp!) asked why the schools need to serve chocolate milk. Would it be the worst thing for kids to have plain milk or water with lunch instead of a sugar or corn syrup-laden drink? The grim truth is that even in healthy Santa Clara County, one in four of our kids are obese or overweight. And for adults? Half. For adult males of color? 70%.

When we were talking to Secretary Vilsack, some of the bloggers on the call pushed him about getting healthier commodity (free) food from the USDA. He basically told us that school districts have to push for it and the government will be responsive. So if we want to tackle obesity among our kids, we have our work cut out for us. We have to ask Congress to reauthorize the Childhood Nutrition Act and increase funding and attention to programs that get more fresh fruits and veggies into school lunches. We have to support the First Lady's new initiative "Let's Move" to get kids moving. And at the local level, we have to meet with and work with our school boards and food service providers to push for healthier food at schools.

So just as our kids need to do, we adults need to embrace "Let's Move". Maybe it will also inspire us to "get moving" on improving what we feed our kids and how we help them be healthy.

Roller Disco Night: Go While You Still Can

2010-02-06T12:17:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, we rolled back in time to a decade that was much more colorful than the current one. We went to the '70's to be precise. How did we get to that magical decade, you ask? By going with a group of friends to Roller Disco Night at a local skating rink.

Here in Silicon Valley, we have three roller rink options: San Jose Skate, Cal-Skate in Milpitas and Redwood Roller Rink in Redwood City. I had only ever been to San Jose Skate (a.k.a. Aloha Skate). My 3rd-grade birthday party was held there and someone -- you know who you are -- threw up in the car.

Last weekend, we ventured up the peninsula to Redwood Rink, which is truly a time capsule of another era. It has a wooden floor, bumpy in places. The DJ spins classic 70s songs like "Ladies Night". They have a divey snack bar. I laughed more watching my husband and friends roller skate in various disco costumes than I have in a long time. Ever so slowly, at very low speed, I shot the duck.

So if the photo of me in my Farrah Fawcett wig and pink satin jacket aren't inspiration enough to prompt you to go, read my full post about it here:

http://www.svmoms.com/2010/02/your-local-disco-skate-check-it-out.html

My unfashionable side: What would Coco say?

2010-01-27T20:02:00.000-08:00

Like most Moms who aren't working in a glamorous industry (part-time academia anyone?), attention to fashion is a long-lost memory. But I just finished reading a novel for the svmoms online book club about Coco Chanel called Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky that called to mind why I sometimes love beautiful clothes. And when I say "sometimes," I mean "once in a blue moon". (As I type this, I am wearing hot pink flannel pajama pants with sheep on them and a cotton turtleneck sweater with a mystery stain on the front). But every now and then, I decide I need to look good. I want to look good. So I delve deep into the bowels of my closet and find... something or other.

Reading descriptions of Coco's simple yet elegant style in this novel: her pairing of crisp whites with timeless blacks, recalling her use of beautiful fabric and attention to detail makes me want to own one or two timeless pieces of clothing myself. So maybe for next year's big birthday, I will treat myself to a classy, classic piece of clothing. (And I promise, I won't wear either of them with my pink pajama pants.)

The occasional need for beautiful clothes hit home on my recent birthday. A few weeks ago, my sainted hubby told me he was surprising me for my 39th. He's not a surprise kind of guy, so I was excited. He arranged the sitter (my Mom) and made the reservations. All I had to do was be ready to go around 7 PM on Friday night.

I couldn't remember the last time I had made a major effort with my appearance so I ditched my usual going-out-in-winter look (flouncy silver and black wool skirt, black cardigan and black boots) for my cranberry colored sleeveless dress. When I first brought it home, my hubby dubbed it my Michelle Obama dress because I bought it in Chicago. Plus it's classy and tailored and sleeveless -- a style our First Lady often wears. I put it on for our night out and felt great. And it was a good thing too. Because the surprise was that we went to Manresa for dinner. A place I have longed to go since I first read about it in Switzerland more than five years ago. And Manresa did not disappoint. Oh my. Did it ever not disappoint. We both loved our first amuse bouche (a soft-cooked egg with cream, sherry vinegar and maple syrup) so much that we threatened to order a dozen more and eat them as our first, second and third courses.

Part of what we both loved about Manresa was the casual-elegant yet warm and refined atmosphere. Some of the art on the walls in the restroom consisted of real menus from restaurants in France (presumably where Chef David Kinch used to work?). Looking at them, I was reminded of some of the things I loved about living in France. The wonderful food. The beautiful clothes and sense of style of the residents, the beauty of the vineyards, cycling with friends in the Loire Valley, a lazy trip with my husband and dear friends across Champagne...

It seems that this January, between the novel about Chanel and a transporting evening of eating at Manresa, I've remembered a few things: that I used to live in Europe and even managed to blend in. That I occasionally love to wear beautiful clothes. That I always love a nice glass of champagne. And that taking time with my appearance can elevate my mood and lead to an unforgettable night out.

Note: I received a free copy of the novel Coco Chanel & Ivor Stravinsky as part of the Silicon Valley Moms Group Book Club. This post was inspired by thoughts I had reading the novel, while noting my decidedly unfashionable attire.

Pearl Up Ladies! (It's for your health)

2010-01-06T21:50:00.000-08:00

Sometimes really horrible things happen to good people. Like Michelle Whitlock, a remarkable woman who is working on a global campaign called “Pearl of Wisdom” to educate and spread the word about cervical cancer. Michelle’s story is shocking. She was abandoned by her mother at age three and helped to raise her siblings while her father struggled with drug and alcohol dependence. She went on to college and a career. But when she was 26 years old, she was diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer that led to extremely invasive treatments, surgeries, pain and anguish. Years later, she is a survivor, an advocate and very recently, a mother.

But horrible things don’t necessarily have to happen if we are well informed and vigilant. The Pearl of Wisdom campaign aims to prevent more people from getting this disease by informing women – and especially mothers – about the options for avoiding this heartbreaking disease. I participated in a conference call a few weeks ago with Michelle Whitlock and Dr. Marie Savard, a doctor, author and medical contributor to ABC News, in which we learned about cervical cancer, the vaccine that prevents it and the tests we may need to ask for at our OB’s offices.

Cervical Cancer

Cervical cancer is caused by "high-risk" types of the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is a very common sexually transmitted infection. In fact, about 3 of every 4 adults will have had HPV at some time in their lives. Most HPV infections go away without treatment. Infections that do not go away can cause cells on the cervix to change and become abnormal. Over time, abnormal cells can slowly develop into cervical cancer.

The good news is with proper screening and vaccination, almost every case of cervical cancer can be prevented.

If you’ve heard of the vaccine for cervical cancer (Gardasil) but don’t know much about it, it’s time to get informed -- especially if you have a daughter. Because who wouldn’t want to get their child vaccinated against a deadly cancer? The vaccine is both safe and very effective and has been given to 40 million people already. It is recommended to give it to girls before they become sexually active (ages 11-12) and up to age 26. This is a vaccine that prevents the virus that later causes up to 70% of all cervical cancers.

There are steps all women can take to reduce their risk of this disease too. If you are over 30, the next time you go for your annual check-up with your OB, ask whether you have had a test for HPV in addition to your Pap. In some cases, the Pap test misses cervical cancer, but a simple HPV test can detect it.

Lastly, take the pledge to protect yourself against cervical cancer and spread the word to the ladies you love.

Just in time for the holidays! Tech is making me stupid!

2009-12-23T09:21:00.001-08:00

My latest post over at Silicon Valley Moms blog seems to have touched a nerve with a lot of people. It's called "Technology is Making Me Stupid" and it's about losing my car -- a friend's car actually -- at the mall and having to call my family to come rescue me.

The craziest thing about this post is that I vowed two weeks ago to stop parking and simultaneously erase from all memory where I put the car. Except that I did it again yesterday. Yesterday! How quickly we forget. So I'm crafting my New Year's resolution early. This year I resolve not to be an idiot about parking my car.

Reflections of a public school newbie

2009-12-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

My kindergartner has been in public school for fewer than 200 days, and I've already been thoroughly "schooled" in how little I know about elementary education. Having taught at a university for the better part of a decade, I think of myself as an educator. But this fall has taught me that the differences between teaching highly motivated adults at graduate school and teaching 4, 5 and 6 year olds (all in the same class!) are enormous. If adult students are from Mars, kindergartners are from a galaxy far, far away.

I volunteer in my son's class 5-6 times a month. Every time I leave the classroom, I'm in stimulus overdrive. Five cleansing breaths and a brisk walk later, my nerves are only slightly less frayed. The reserves of patience I try to tap into when I work with a challenging kindergartner never seem quite deep enough. The teacher often asks me to work with a boy in class who truly can not sit still, who runs away from the classroom, who won't make eye contact, and who generally says "I can't do it" about every task he faces. I try to teach him to count to five, but it's as if he doesn't know what numbers are. We work on writing his name, but he rarely makes it past the first two letters. After 15 minutes or so, the teacher usually takes over. I go find another table of smiling, wiggly, eager kids to work with. I breathe easier. I smile and help them. I feel useful.

As I leave the classroom, I often wish I had been more creative with the challenging boy. Could I have worked with him longer, if only to give the teacher a longer respite so she could focus on the other kids?

The teachers in my son's classroom are wonderful. Kind, patient, creative -- and they are both female. So are most of the parent volunteers. Sometimes I wonder if the boy I work with would react differently to a man? Would he try harder? Make more of an effort? Perhaps not, but it's interesting to note how few male teachers there are at our school. From my own experiences co-teaching courses with women and men, I know that adult students often respond very differently to male professors than female ones.

Phillip Done is a third-grade teacher at a local Silicon Valley public school. He's one of those beloved teachers who has been teaching for twenty-plus years and has received several national teaching awards. Mr. Done recently published a book of his thoughts about teacherhood called Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind. I just finished reading it for the SVMoms Book Club, and as I read it, I often wished I could be in Mr. Done's classroom. Many of the chapters are light and funny, like the one about gifts in which he talks about "Mug Week" (right before Christmas) when all teachers receive their "#1 Teacher" mugs from their students. Or for the male teachers, their novelty ties that play Christmas carols. (Note to self: perhaps we should just give gift cards to the teachers this year!)

The book's serious chapters shed light on the humanity of a caring, loving teacher. There are tear stains on at least three pages in my copy of the book. Reading about a girl named Rebecca, I was reminded of the boy I try to help in kindergarten.

Rebecca had trouble reading and lacked confidence to read aloud in class. Her mom was in jail and she was being raised by her grandparents. She fought at school and cried because she missed her mom. Worrying about her one night, Mr. Done hit upon the idea of having her read to the dog that comes to school a few times a week with the school secretary. He pitched it to the girl as a way she could help out the secretary, who was too busy to read the Max, the school's beloved golden Lab. After a few weeks of reading with Max, Rebecca's reading and confidence had improved. She chose books that she thought Max would love and got excited to read to him. Wiping away my tears, I kept wondering if there is a similar way that I could help the boy in my son's class. I haven't thought of any yet, but I have resolved to keep trying.

Even though I'm a newbie parent at my son's school, I know how vital it is to have caring, creative, kind teachers for all children. I'm grateful that my son has such a teacher and that great teachers like Mr. Done are sharing their stories so the rest of us can learn a thing or two about how it's done.

Erica also blogs for SVMoms. She received a copy of the book Close Encounters of the Third-Grade Kind for free as part of the SVMoms Group Book Club. She had hoped to give it to a friend as a Christmas gift but had an incident with some hummus while reading it.

Kids Say the Darndest Things!

2009-12-06T07:35:00.000-08:00

Art Linkletter used to host a show called "Kids Say the Darndest Things". I don't think I realized how right he was until I had two kids of my own. I once read a blog by a Mom who was lamenting that now that her kids were older, they either didn't say so many unintentionally funny things, or if they did, they were too embarrassed to let her share the stories with friends and family. Apparently the window for maximum verbal cuteness is from about 2 to about 6.

Since my two don't care (and Rainman likes it when I tell funny stories about what he's said), I'm going to make this an annual end-of-year recap of the funnier moments we've shared.

1. "Dat beazer was SOOOO dead!" -- Red's take-away from seeing a dead beaver on a hike with her preschool and learning that when animals die, they don't ever wake up.

2. "Mama, does Hanukkah or Kwanzaa come first?" -- Not so inherently funny, except that Rainman woke us up at 6:30 this morning NEEDING TO KNOW THE ANSWER to this burning question. We celebrate neither of these holidays, mind you.

3. Rainman dipping his toast into his egg yolk, eating a fried egg: "I'm getting my toast and my egg together for a playdate in their swimming pool".

4. Red noticing the cat's rear-end, "I don't like she's belly button!"

5. Rainman after weeks of rain keeping us indoors in February: "It's no fair that the plants get to play outside in the rain. I wish I could bring everything inside -- all the plants, houses, cars, sky, planets, universe, Milky Way galaxy, and even the rain. Then I could go play outside."

4. Red, after getting buckled into Grandmommy's car announced: "OK, babycakes, let's go!"

3. When asked what he was thankful for last Thanksgiving, Rainman answered "You, hearts, myself, water, milk, juice and stuff like that. Oh and car smoke!" ( I'm pretty sure we had the only four year old who was thankful for tailpipe emissions. )

2. Red, getting ready to sing for us: "Everybody make some noise!" (She saw a cartoon version of a Kiss concert and has learned a few choice heavy metal-isms.)

1. "Mom, I've always wanted Christmas to be every day".

Rep. Joe Wilson's Angry Outburst

2009-09-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

Inspired by my own visceral reaction to the Congressman who screamed at the President last night during his address to a Joint Session of Congress and a post on Chicago Mom's blog, I wrote a letter to Rep. Joe Wilson.

I worked on Capitol Hill in the 1990s. There were some very polarizing figures there at the time: President Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Jesse Helms. Yet I never recall an incident -- particularly at the Capitol -- where anyone heckled or screamed "YOU LIE!" in a snarling rage at these men while they made a speech. How times have changed. Civil discourse, anyone?

Here is my letter:

Dear Representative Wilson, Your angry outburst at last night's Joint Session of Congress was unwarranted and disrespectful. I used to work for a United States Senator -- a mere 15 years ago -- and back then, no one behaved that way in Congress. Now that I have young children and am teaching them to be respectful, to not interrupt and to not practice name-calling, I would hope that our elected leaders might set a good example for school kids. Some do. I think President Obama's thoughtful remarks to school children the other day, in which he urged them to work hard and stay in school was a good example. Your behavior last night was the opposite. I understand that you have apologized. That is a good first step. However, you really need to reconsider your core values, your ethics and how to behave in public. You did a disservice to all Americans by screaming "YOU LIE!" at our President in the middle of a speech. Shame on you. Sincerely, Erica Cosgrove

My Pain is Not Your Pain

2009-08-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

My Pain is Not Your Pain

Reading the new book Birth Day by the ironically-named Dr. Mark Sloan (“Paging Dr. McSteamy from Gray’s Anatomy”), I was fascinated by the chapter on the history of the epidural and pain relief in child birth. The descriptions of old-timey remedies for labor pain were shocking. I can just picture one of my beleaguered ancestors screaming at her midwife 200 hundred years ago, “Where’s the damn viper fat!!!? I can’t take it anymore!”

We just finished reading the book for Silicon Valley Moms Book Club. Birth Day brought back my own vivid memories of childbirth and the judgment made by a complete stranger about my choices. As I learned, the last 400 years or so are full of episodes where men decided whether or not women should experience the full pain of childbirth or be knocked unconscious for it.

When I was pregnant with Rainman and living in New York, I experienced my first taste of Pregnancy Rage. The husband of a woman in my birthing class raised his hand to speak during our group discussion. “I don’t understand why any woman would not want drugs during labor”, he said belligerently. Why was he voicing an opinion on what other women (besides his heavily face-lifted second wife) chose to do about pain management? I had just told the group that I was doing Hypno-Birthing and hoped for a calm and drug-free delivery (I know, I know. Famous last words). Another woman had just admitted that she did not want drugs during labor because she had experienced some bad reactions to prescriptions painkillers. And that’s when Mr. Buttinsky decided to add his two cents.

Our nurse handled it beautifully, saying she thought that women who delivered without drugs were courageous, and that some women preferred avoiding the side effects for them and their babies. She made it clear that this was a big decision and described some of the pros and cons.

New research shows that redheads feel pain more strongly than others and require on average 20% more anesthetic than other-heads to block pain in dental procedures. My daughter, Red, may have to deal with this throughout her life. Mercifully, she will have choices when it comes to her own pain management if she has children, and I assume viper fat will not be one of them. I will do my best to prepare her for the waves of agonizing pain I experienced when my Pitocin-induced contractions began. I’ll also tell her what a blessing the epidural was for me and what a relief it was when the doctors told me we had to stop laboring and have a C-Section to get my giant 10-lb baby out.

I’ve decided to save my copy of Birth Day for Red because of its enlightening explanation of how difficult it is for our too-big human babies to pass through our too-small birth canals. I only wish I had read it before I had children. Reading the clinical description of a C-Section would have eased my fears about the surgery and put it all in context. Although there are many risks and a Cesarian is no walk in the park, the one thing I’m sure of is that it was right for me. After all, my pain is not your pain and my labor is not your labor.

The Nintendo Nanny?

2009-07-31T07:20:00.000-07:00

It's 11 AM on a Wednesday. Do you know where your children are? If you're the moms at my athletic club, you do. They're sitting in the cafe with their handheld Nintendo DS games, glued to their screens, while you do Zumba. Welcome to the new version of electronic babysitting.

I just wrote a post about my reaction to finding ourselves surrounded by 12 boys, each with his own DS that I am posting on svmoms later this week. I wasn't the only one to notice this new scene that had popped up at the gym. You can bet my five-year old was fascinated. He couldn't tear his eyes away from all the big boys with their cool video games. The teenager working at the gym cafe noticed too. She commented to another customer on "the new version of babysitting".

Given that I happily let 5-year old Rainman play with his Leapster in the gym's daycare center (it's educational! Really!) while I do Zumba, I can't blame the Nintendo moms. But I do wonder how it will be when my kids are in school if "everyone" has a DS and they want one too.

This may be a uniquely Silicon Valley concern. My friend visited her cousin in Colorado recently. Her cousin and her husband had never heard of a DS, even though she has a seven-year old boy too and they're both teachers.

How will we cross this next gaming bridge when we come to it? I assume that like everything else, we'll say our kids have to ask for it for Christmas or a birthday (or maybe do chores to earn money to buy it if they're old enough), and then we'll set limits on screen-time.

Will I let it become my virtual nanny though? I hope not, but having just seen how quiet a room with 12 young boys can be when they have their DS, I know it will be tempting.

A Parent's Identity: Segmentation or Fragmentation?

2009-07-15T21:19:00.000-07:00

Parenting 101: No one ever tells you before you have kids that one of the biggest challenges you may face as a parent is ensuring that you don't lose yourself along the way. I've struggled with this for five years. How can I fulfill the different -- and always multiplying -- roles I need to play as a parent and daughter without losing the core that makes me me? It has taken several years and a few mistakes, but I've found answers. I'm not cut out to be all one thing or another. My monthly routine has to include activities that anchor me solidly in the adult world, despite spending almost all day every day with my preschool-aged kids. That means my part-time consulting work and my volunteer work in city government.It also means managing the care of my ailing Dad as a part-time job. Setting new challenges to accomplish small goals (like running a 10K) is part of the mix. And I need time for bonding with other women (like my book club and nights out with my oldest college or high school friends).

Reading Michael Miller's memoir and self-help book What Happened to the Girl I Married? reminded me of the stark differences between a stay-at-home-parent and a full-time working parent. When Miller was working, his identity had three segments: Sales Executive, Dad and Husband. But that all changed when he decided to stay home for a year and try to do the job his wife had done for more than a decade. That's when he realized that while he was used to having three neat segments to his identity that rarely overlapped, the stay-at-home parent faces a more daunting situation. Her segments become fragmented between all the roles she has to play (e.g. Administrative Assistant, Taxi Driver, CEO of the House, Therapist, Social Planner, Chef, etc.) As a SAHD, Miller could plan his day and anticipate that he might need to play seven roles such as Butler, Cook, Tutor and Taxi Driver in the morning followed by Laundry Man, Housekeeper and Husband in the evening. But the unpredictability of life with kids forced him to abandon nearly every task before it was complete and add new ones such as Nurse (sick kid), Facilities Manager (leaking toilet), and Counselor (child is bullied at school) at the spur of the moment and in response to everyone else's needs. He quickly lost his sense of self and felt fragmented or torn apart rather than segmented into tidy slices.

Miller gained insight and empathy from walking a mile in his wife's shoes. That's something I try not to lose sight of in my own marriage. I've found the outlets that help me not to feel totally overwhelmed by my caregiving roles (most of the time). But my husband -- and all the full-time working parents I am close to -- has a different struggle. For the conscientious working parent like my hubby, the pattern in a typical day is work, then Dad (until bedtime), a little bit of husband-time and then more work at night. At times I worry that he will lose his sense of self since there's so little time in that busy schedule for a social life, sports, volunteer work or hobbies. He carves out some time for himself (a weekly tennis class, bike-riding , the occasional baseball or hockey game), but I try to check in with him to make sure he's not disappearing in some way. I know how easy that is to do and that it takes hard work, planning and commitment to avoid it. Fortunately, my part-time work has always been something of a lifeline that prevents me from drowning in the overwhelming flood of my children's all-consuming needs. A working friend with three young children told me that she thinks the first thing to go for working Moms is attention to self. They work. Then they parent. There's not much time for adult activities. That's a struggle that SAHMs and working Moms can all relate to. We may each tackle it differently but it's a problem we can't just ignore. If we do, we risk losing ourselves. And once that is lost, what do we have left?,

Saturday Morning Outing: Science and Tech with Toddlers?

2009-06-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

"Mama, I don't want to listen to any boring talks!" proclaimed my five-year old, Rainman. "Mama, where's da popcorn?" asked my two year old, Red. Welcome to Saturday morning and my kids getting antsy just before Bill Nye the Science Guy gave his presentation at San Jose's Tech Museum of Innovation.

Wrangling a two and five-year old by myself at a museum was not exactly what I had in mind for Saturday. This was supposed to be a family outing with Daddy solidly at the center of our group. Instead, he stayed home -- sidelined by the one-two punch of strep throat and pinkeye.

After a week of Daddy being ill while my mother-in-law visited us from Canada and my own Dad's chronic illness took a turn for the worse, I was desperate for an outing. So I packed up the kids, remembered to pack some Goldfish to quell any whining or hunger pangs, and off we went. Despite the rocky start ("No, there's no popcorn here. It's not a movie." and "Don't worry, it will be fun!"), the kids and I loved our day.

This was an event for SVMoms sponsored by a company that makes a green cleaning product called the ActiveIon Pro. The real lure for me was not the swag bag with science-y gifts for my kids and my own $300 water-based cleaning system (though that turned out to be an AMAZING perk), but the chance to see Bill Nye, the Science Guy. He was witty, smart and lively and managed to make all the science concepts he taught us about soap, fluid dynamics and how to make rings of air "poof" out of a modified garbage can fun. Rainman laughed at all of Nye's jokes and probably didn't get much of the science. Red sat on my lap and had a successful potty-training session at the museum (yay!).

An unexpected highlight of the day turned out to be exploring the Tech Museum. I had only been there to see IMAX films and didn't realize how many interesting interactive exhibits they have. I would never have thought to take my preschoolers there (alone! while pottytraining!) but they had a ball and would have stayed all day.

I walked away from the outing with three great takeaway lessons:

1. Taking the kids on excursions by myself on a Saturday is not nearly as lonely or difficult when you have all your blogging friends there to play with.

2. We should rent Bill Nye the Science Guy DVD's so my kids can continue learning and thinking science is fun.

3. Giving my five-year old our new ActiveIon Pro and turning him loose to spray and wipe all the hard surfaces in our house (with magically electrified water and no cleaning chemicals) is his idea of a rocking good time. And any free child labor I can get to clean my house is just the icing on the cake!

The Supreme Court: Gets Way Too Involved in a Discussion about Underwear

2009-04-22T15:42:00.000-07:00

My latest blog is titled "Hey Supreme Court: Keep Your Hands out of My Daughter's Underwear!". You can read it in full on www.svmoms.com

It's about the cases of Savana Redding, a then-13 year old girl who was strip-searched with very little cause by school administrators. She ended up suing the school for violating her Fourth Amendment rights (the right against unreasonable searches). A lower court found in favor of the middle school, but the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal found her constitutional rights had been violated. The Supreme Court heard the case yesterday. The almost-all male justices made arguments including one by Justice Breyer that basically claimed it was no big deal to be strip-searched at school since kids change clothes at school for gym class. He later said that in his experience in changing for gym, some kids put stuff in his underwear. He then backpedaled and said maybe it was him that put stuff in their underwear. Either way, the deliberations had a through-the-looking-glass feel with Supreme Court justices bandying about the words "panties," "underwear," "brassieres" and "body cavity search" with great relish. Thank God for Justice Ginsburg, the lone woman on the court. She actually "sputtered" in response to the nonsense that her male colleagues were spewing and reminded them that Redding wasn't just forced to strip but to shake out her bra and open up her panties to show the officials there were no drugs in her crotch.

Common sense in this case would point towards that search having been an unreasonable one, even though there might still be some set of extremely rare circumstances in which you could imagine school officials needing to strip-search a student. However, calling their parents or even the police first would also seem to be a common sense next step.

I first heard about the story on NPR yesterday but decided to look into it online and to see what more conservative media sources were saying. After all, protection against unreasonable searches would seem to also be an issue that would resonate with conservatives, and certainly with libertarians. Fox.com had some good coverage. Other outlets today, especially slate.com with its-always-entertaining Supreme Court dispatches by Dahlia Lithwick was excellent.

So far everyone I've mentioned the case to is aghast. Those of us who are parents can imagine the nightmare scenario where our own innocent, honors student daughter is subjected to a humiliating strip-search at school. It may be the best argument I've ever heard for home-schooling.

Is there a case against breastfeeding?

2009-03-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

My latest blog on this crazily contentious subject is up on www.svmoms.com. My post was inspired by reading an article in The Atlantic called "The Case Against Breastfeeding" by Hanna Rosin.

It was also inspired by the experiences of some women I love who have not been able to breastfeed and have suffered greatly from the guilt they felt over that. I've always wondered a bit about why there is such guilt associated with this issue. I now believe that in part, it is generated by the overstated claims about the benefits of BF in the popular literature. Rosin's article offers a well-researched review of many of the studies of BF. She doesn't argue that BF is not better than bottle-feeding (on some criteria), but that the degree to which it is better is often overstated.

As I've moved farther away from my own BF days, I've also gained a little distance and insight and realized that everyone -- myself included -- made way too big a deal of this at the time. Either way, we end up with healthy, happy kids and that's really the goal right? There's another goal too, which often gets lost in the frenzy around newborns and how to feed them: Mom's sanity and the health of the whole family.

It is always best to look into these things a bit, especially when there's a bandwagon of people insisting that "breast is (always) best". I'm glad I read up on it, looked at the studies and noted their limitations. The upshot is, I'm for a moderate approach on this one. BF if you can and you want to and if it doesn't work out, don't beat yourself up about it.

What I'm Reading: It Started with Poptarts

2009-03-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

I have a neighbor who claims that she never looks at herself in the mirror if her daughters are around. Extreme? Maybe. But it does seem like a smart way to help instill what I think is a healthy “who cares” attitude about looks and body image in children.

As a busy Mom and a Northern California gal who just can’t be bothered with a lot of make-up and hassle about my appearance, I feel like I have a pretty sensible attitude about my looks. But then I remember the teenage years and my early twenties. That was a time of extreme insecurity about looks as well as an unhealthy focus on my weight and my appearance. I wonder if there is any way to help my own daughter (and even my son) avoid the pitfalls I fell into in those years? Or is this something all adolescents and young adults have to go through?

Reading the book “It Started with Poptarts” by Lori Hanson (for the SVMoms Book Club) was a dark detour into the mind of a bulemic, albeit a recovered one. Some of the passages where she wrote about bingeing on junk food and then falling into a cycle of regretting it and berating herself afterward brought back painful memories of my own struggles. If I close my eyes, I can remember exactly how it felt to notice my body changing as a teen. It seems as though it only took a few months to morph from a long skinny beanpole who could eat anything she wanted to an overly sensitive 16-year old who frantically dieted on baked potatoes and cottage cheese to fit into my Size 4 prom dress.

Lori Hanson’s solution to her bulimia and alcoholism lay in self-help books, tapes, exercise regimes and a full range of alternative medical programs, healing massage therapy, unusual diets, and the like. My own struggles with weight and body image somehow sorted themselves out over time without any major interventions. My problems were not extreme, and for that I am grateful.

But the Mom in me wonders if there’s a way to pass on healthy notions about fitness, physique and diet to my kids and spare them the agony of yo-yo dieting and mental recriminations for gaining a few pounds here and there? So far, the best I can come up with is to encourage my kids to be as active as possible and to take an interest in sports. And maybe one of these days, I’ll even stop glancing in the mirror before I leave the house.

Slowing Down with the Grandparents

2009-02-16T20:48:00.000-08:00

Do you ever have visitors from out of town who make you slow down and take life at a different pace? In our family, my kids are blessed with 6 grandparents and two great-grandparents. Their visits are glimpses into a different way of life -- and a different culture -- that I'm really learning to appreciate.

The 4 grandparents who live in Canada come to visit once or twice a year. When they're here, I downshift into low gear and live life at about half my usual speed. At first, it's a hard adjustment. I find myself flying through the house practically knocking them down in my rush to get somewhere. I have to stop myself from yelling, "Come on, we've got to go! My hair's on fire!" Once I get used to it though, we all coast along in the slow lane together and just relax.

Some days, we do a whole lot of nothing. Other days, we rouse them out of bed and make them go on long family excursions. But when we're on those excursions, we eat leisurely lunches, stop for coffee, take lots of pictures and never hurry. When we're at home, I'm amazed (and sometimes jealous) by their ability to sit still, read the paper, sip a glass of wine and shoot the breeze.

My frame of reference is all wrong at first too. When Grandpa says "I had my eyes done", I think: "Wow -- laser eye surgery!" Then I realize he means cataracts. When we decide to go for a walk before picking the kids up at school, I realize the GP's don't want to walk at my "Let's-burn-as-many-calories-as-we-can" pace and that I need to re-think how many things we can cram in before the next thing on our schedule.

All of the grandparents in our lives are GREAT with the kids, and I feel truly blessed when I see how much they love each other. They're also very patient with me and have learned to try to get out of my way when my hair is on fire. And I've learned to ratchet things down -- at least for a little while -- and just enjoy life in the slow lane.

The simple genius of micro-loans with Kiva

2009-02-01T10:09:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday morning and we're not going to make it to church today. But I've done my good deed and think the Big Man upstairs would not be too upset with me. With a few clicks of the computer, I Paypal'd $25.00 to kiva.org. They are in turn partnering with Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance Fund (SEM) who will loan my money to the Kadidiatou Ndiaye Group. These five entrepreneurial women work in the fish industry in Senegal. They buy fresh produce and process it themselves to sell at weekly markets in Casamance, Senegal.

So what will happen to my $25? We'll be getting email updates about the women we helped fund. Once they repay their loan (C'mon ladies! I'm pulling for you!), we can lend our money to another entrepreneur that we find on kiva's site.

I need to give a shout-out to my neighbor Paul Hoekstra, whose birthday we're celebrating today. It was his idea to make a micro-loan in lieu of a gift. Way to go Paul! This donation was in your honor and it is getting credited to "Team Europe" on kiva.

I can feel myself getting carried away with this one already. The kiva site is addictive -- reading about entrepreneurs all over the world who just need a little bit of money so they can grow their small businesses and prosper. If I do get dangerously hooked on Kiva, at least the only thing that will suffer is my bank account. There's an addiction we can probably live with.

What I'm Reading -- SV Moms Book Club: Who by Fire by Diana Spechler

2009-01-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

Like every parent in the world, I have thought about the horrible "what if" of losing a child. I lock my doors, fear strangers beyond a reasonable level, and tend to have a near cardiac arrest every time the PG&E man appears in my backyard on his way to read the gas meter. And like most parents I know, my internal pendulum swings wildly between my urge to "helicopter parent" and my strong dislike of overparenting. If it's morning, I'll decide to let the kids play in the backyard unsupervised. By afternoon, I'm kicking myself because my 2-year old ends up with a black eye.

I just finished reading the fictional novel "Who by Fire" for the my bloggers book club with SVMoms. I had a hard time putting it down and stayed up way past my bedtime for more nights than I should have. The book has complicated, sarcastic, funny-yet-empathetic characters and a brisk plot. It also touches on themes that strike a chord with me right now: religion, loss, parenting, sexuality, and growing up. It made me ask myself a lot of questions like how would we cope with the loss of a child? What if our little girl got into a stranger's car one day and we never saw her again? What is an appropriate role for religion in our lives? When does fervent religious belief cross the line and become a cult?

Interestingly, the story begins about fifteen years after the tragic kidnapping of the family's youngest daughter. So the horror of that day, and of the months and years that immediately followed are not seen by the reader but they are felt. They have scarred the family members in ways that surprised me. If I think about what would become of me if my own child was kidnapped, I draw a blank. I see a void. I can't begin to imagine how I would carry on or how it would scar, deform or ruin the lives of the rest of my family.

In the book, Ash, the older brother, ends up becoming a devout Jew and joining a Yeshiva in Israel. His sister, Bits, loses herself in risky sex with strangers. The parents divorce. The book moves back and forth between Israel and the United States as well as between the web of relations between the characters, who seem at first to have grown surprisingly distant from each other as they cope in their own unhealthy ways with their loss.

Reading this book reminded me of some important lessons that I seem to learn, and learn and then learn again in my own life. Not to judge. Not to be complacent or take relationships for granted. Get help when you need it. Find the balance between vigilance with your kids and letting them grow up and away from you. In the end, I got a lot more out of this book than mere bedtime reading.

My New (Invisible) Running Partner: Robert

2009-01-07T07:27:00.000-08:00

It's a new year and resolutions have been resolved (and even broken, sadly). Mine was to get back into running. After my peak of running the Santa Cruz Wharf to Wharf 10K last summer, my running fell off a cliff. I don't even really know why. Somehow I went from training for a 10K to not running at all, except for the occasional slow plod on the treadmill at the gym while watching the wacky women on The View.

A friend and her sister told me about their new plan to get in shape and lose the last blobs of baby weight. It's called "From Couch Potato to 5K". It's a beginner's training program that has you walk and jog in slow intervals and takes you from doing no exercise to being able to run 3 miles in about 2 months. You can find it on coolrunning.com, but even better, you can download a podcast of it on ITunes. I somehow got my better half to agree to try this with me. Luckily, he did the hard technical stuff, like unearthing our Ipod, charging it up again and downloading the Podcasts. A warning to those of you hitting the gym again after a long break: It turns out the Ipod Shuffle is not machine washable! Left mine clipped to my gym clothes and it came out of my washing machine looking shiny, new and totally broken.

The great thing about doing a training program with a podcast playing in your ears is how little you have to think or even wear a watch. Needing a watch to time my workout intervals is tricky since I can never find it. The digital running watch I've had for years recently became part of Boy Wonder's superhero costumes. Ever since he began strapping it onto his wrist to talk to Commission Gordon, I can't find it.

I turn on the Ipod and there's Robert, my mellow 43-year old friend who decided to take up running again on his birthday. Go Robert! He has selected all sorts of dubious techno music snippets that he plays for the right length of time while I run. He usually ends the running intervals with little encouraging words about how great I'm doing. Really? I am? All right then. This all may sound cheezy and simplistic, but you won't know until you try it. It's refreshingly mindless to have someone talking you through a workout, and it even saves me from my own bad workout music mixes. An example: I ended up running Wharf to Wharf alternating between Madonna and the 8 Mile soundtrack.

Time will tell if I can stick to this program. But for ease of use and the slow build-up from lazybones to running wonder, it's hard to beat the couch potato to 5K plan.

A Merry Christmas Thank you to the Troops

2008-12-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

I don't usually ask people to do things on my blog, but this one is simple and can send a much-needed message of thanks to our troops. Go to www.letssaythanks.com. On that site, you pick a card and a message and then the magical elves from Xerox corporation (plus several other nonprofits and private companies) will ensure that a real, printed postcard with your message will be delivered to the troops, along with care packages. It's a great project and to date, they have already delivered millions of thank you postcards to our servicemen and women. Take a minute and go do it! You'll feel good and some fellow American sitting in the sands of Iraq or Afghanistan without their families will probably have a brighter day because of it.

Being a Parent, and a Daughter

2008-12-13T14:34:00.000-08:00

Do we ever really grow up? The last day or so really makes me wonder.

Even though I'm a mother myself and have been for nearly 5 years, as soon as I get back to my Mom's house, I seem to morph into an older version of the prickly, difficult teenager I used to be. Why is that? Is it because my Mom is ever-helpful so I let my hair down and fall into a sulk? Or is it circumstance? Maybe I was just feeling cranky because my own house is currently torn up with at least a dozen plumbers plumbing (and a partridge in a pear tree). Plus the fact that the plumbing plumbers damaged a hose in the garage which leaked all night and soaked some of our boxes of memorabilia. Suddenly, I saw a radical shift in my weekend plans. Emptying out mucky, wet boxes and confronting waaaaayyy too many photos of the teenage and college years was not on my calendar. And the photos -- the weight gain! The weight loss! The big hair! Bottles of beer as accessories that we waved around boldly in every photo! Did the bad photos from the dusty yearbooks take me right back to my teenage angst? Seeing my Freshman Fifteen on display in picture after picture definitely rattled me.

But really, there is no excuse for bad behavior. Clearly I need to change my ways. I have no desire to impersonate a moody teenager while mothering two preschoolers. And if I want to be cranky at her house, then I really can't expect to rely on my kindly Mom to help me in so many ways.

All I can say is that hubby was dang lucky to be out of town this weekend (on a "mancation" in Vegas with his college buddies). His timing was perfect. Not only did he miss the broken gas cap on the van, the invasion of the plumbers and the flood in the garage, he missed the worst development of all: my metamorphosis into an overgrown teenager. Apparently I still have some growing up to do.

Giving thanks for a true survivor

2008-11-25T06:59:00.000-08:00

First, I have to admit I borrowed this title from one of my fellow writers on Silicon Valley Moms blog. She wrote about her 75-year old Mom with emphysema, who's on oxygen but still feisty, loving and full of life. Oh yeah, and still smoking. Well, that gives you food for thought about addiction, doesn't it? One more little thing to be thankful for this holiday season: an addiction-free life.

(We recently heard Martin Sheen give a lecture about life, activism, family, addiction and about a million other topics. His painfully honest tales of his own struggles with alcoholism and his son Charlie Sheen's battle with drug addiction were stirring. I still think of how Charlie Sheen thanked him for saving his life after intervening and getting him into rehab. His Dad insisted that all he did was help him wake up and see how bad he had gotten. He didn't want his son putting the responsibility for saving his life onto anyone else because he knew that if he fell off the wagon, he could also blame other people and not take responsibility. Good lesson. File that away under "Scary things I hope not to have to think about when my kids are older".)

The true survivor I'm thankful for right now is my Dad. He's 65 years old and almost totally disabled from Parkinson's Disease, which he has had since he was 30. You don't see many people who have had P.D. for 35 years. It just doesn't happen very often. So at 65, my Dad is a wreck. The medication he takes works against some other meds he takes for psychiatric problems. He only gets very brief windows now of relief from the "frozen-ness" of Parkinson's as well as the severe tremors. His mind is a chaos of confusion and dementia, with a large dose of paranoia thrown in for good measure. And yet, he still makes cute little one-liner jokes whenever he can. He still loves chocolate shakes and pumpkin muffins. He appreciates going to his weekly exercise class. He loves it when I bring my preschoolers to visit him at his nursing home and always calls them, affectionately, the "small bugs". And he's still just grateful to be alive.

Every time he needs a new medical procedure, I get scared for him. Scared that in as bad a shape as he is in, he might not make it this time. Yesterday, he had to have 5 teeth extracted and even though I knew he would be o.k., I still got scared. He seems so frail and helpless locked in his dopamine-deprived body, unable to move so much of the time. But he came through it with flying colors. He even asked my Mom if he looked "pretty" afterward with his new teeth. And you know what, he did. He looked good. He's a survivor. So there's one more thing to be grateful for at Thanksgiving. The survivors in our lives who amaze us with their resilience and will to live.

48 Hours in Nevada Helping to Get Out the Vote on Election Day

2008-11-05T16:03:00.000-08:00

I just arrived home bleary-eyed and hoarse-voiced from two days in Sin City (Las Vegas), Nevada. Did I go to gamble, party, hit the Strip, drink, smoke or make merry? Nope. Instead I rallied two friends and a friend-of-a-friend to volunteer on Election Day for the Obama campaign and we flew to Vegas to pound the pavement. Kudos to Swanner, Bean and Susan from Santa Monica for rallying with me!

It's 6 AM on Election Day, and we're lost in Henderson, Nevada. We're looking for our staging location to pick up Election materials and maps of the precinct to walk. So we call our designated local campaign volunteer, who, it turns out, has food poisoning. He points us to a nearby volunteer's house and we get our assignment. Time to hit the subdivision perched on the bleak desert hills where we are supposed to hang door hangers reminding people to vote and telling them where their polling place is.

We pound the pavement all day, making 4 trips to the same precinct knocking on doors to be sure people were able to vote. No one is happy to see us. At best, they sullenly admit they voted before slamming their doors. In fact, I'm not sure anyone in Henderson, Nevada is happy, period. One house (with two registered Democrats listed as the residents) has two different signs on the windows with pictures of guns on them warning that if you steal from them, you will be shot. I make a note never to trick-or-treat here.

Mid-morning, we take a break from canvassing to go do "visibility". This means standing on a busy street corner waving our "Vote for Change" signs. We get many honks and waves and one middle finger. The woman who gives us the bird is first of all, a woman and second of all, driving a semi. We decide Henderson could be nominated for "least hospitable town in Nevada".

By 7 PM, the polls are closed. We hit the Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay for a well-earned meal and watch through tears as Barack Obama makes his historic speech. No one else at the Burger Bar seems happy. No one is celebrating. We know we should go to the Rio for the big Democratic victory party but we're too exhausted. Something about the desert wind, the long walks through the near-empty sub-division and the surliness of the residents has taken it right out of us. But we are, of course, elated. We feel great. We helped make history. Barack Obama will be our next president. And that's all that really matters.

When we board our flight home to San Francisco, we realize most of the plane is filled with fellow Obama volunteers. Cheers go up in the plane when CNN announces the big win in Nevada for Obama. It's good to be going home.

My two latest blogs are on www.svmoms.com

2008-10-31T15:36:00.000-07:00

To read my latest blogs on the battle over same-sex marriage in California (Proposition 8) and on why Halloween is our default setting, check out Silicon Valley Moms Blog (www.svmoms.com). The site has published my two latest efforts, and each time I publish with them, there is a chance my work will get picked up by a newspaper syndication group and published nationwide.

My two most recent blogs are "Halloween is our Default Setting" and "The Debate Over Gay Marriage Makes me Wonder: Do Bigots Live Here?" The controversial one on the "bigot" debate in my neighborhood generated 25+ comments from readers, many of whom agreed with me and many of whom clearly thought I was crazy. (They might be onto me there!)

I got so fired up and indignant about all the "Yes on 8" signs in our neighborhood (note to non-Californians -- Yes on 8 means you are voting to change our state constitution to take away the right of same-sex couples to marry) that I also called in to "Talk of the Nation" on NPR last week. And I got on! It was surreal to hear Neil Conan, the host, say "Erica, from San Jose, you're on the air" and realize that whatever came out of my mouth would be broadcast to several million people. I talked about how Proposition 8 has really divided our neighborhood and how many "Yes on 8" supporters there are, even in supposedly "liberal" Silicon Valley. I mentioned that my Mormon neighbors all have "Yes on 8" signs on their lawns, since their church passed them out one Sunday. I also said that there are other religious people in California, like me, who believe that God created all people equally and that we should all have equal rights.

I'll keep blogging on my own space here at wellthoughtoutspot.blogspot.com and occasionally writing unique content for Silicon Valley Moms Blog.

The Greatest Girl's Weekend Ever

2008-10-15T18:48:00.000-07:00

Since I told everyone I know (and some who I didn’t) that I was going to the Democratic Women’s Leadership conference in Chicago last weekend to see the Obamas, quite a few of you have asked me how it was. In a word, incredible. Inspirational. Possibly life-changing. (Ok, I know that’s more than one word). These are powerful emotions that are hard to capture.

There is a certain joy and power that a woman feels from being in a room – even if it is only a Sheraton Hotel ballroom – with 1500 women (and a few intrepid men). Add to that the fact that all the women there share one goal, which is to change our country for the better, and you get really, really excited. Once you’re in that ballroom, a series of remarkable people come out on stage and make inspirational speeches. They praise you for the money you have raised, the phone calls you have made, the neighbors you have talked to and for being part of a unique grassroots movement in our country. They tell you what inspires them about this candidate, and they share stories from the field that bring tears to your eyes thinking about how much kindness and goodness is still out there in ordinary Americans.

So what did we do at this conference anyway? We laughed, we cried, we listened, we learned, and we basked in the feelings of camaraderie and belonging that came from being part of a gathering of women from every corner of the country (even Utah!) who are working to elect Obama and change our future.

First, Oprah came and made a funny and heartfelt speech about what women can do when we put our minds to it. She ought to know. Just thinking about all of her accomplishments makes me feel like a slacker. She talked about the campaign as a marathon and likened it to the one she ran a few years back. She talked about how you hit mile 18 and you need every woman, every friend, every family member, even Jesus Christ himself to help you finish. And that’s where we are now in this campaign -- at that tough part where everyone feels a little bit tired and spent and we have to call on every angel we can think of to help get Obama across the finish line.

After Oprah, there were speeches and panels by Jill and Joe Biden, Howard Dean, Gayle King, David Plouffe (the Obama campaign strategist who sends some of us MANY emails), personal finance guru Suze Ormon, Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona, the hilarious and wickedly smart Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, Michelle Obama, former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, former Council of Economic Advisors Chair Laura D’Andrea Tyson, former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, David Axelrod of the Obama campaign, the woman who founded the group “Republicans for Obama”, and many others who are all a blur to me right now.

All of these speakers shared their expertise and insights. We learned about the perils facing us in the international community and how best to tackle them from Madeleine Albright, and we learned about the inside story of the global financial crisis and the bailout from Bob Rubin and Laura Tyson. We learned about how the campaign plans to win 270 votes in the Electoral College (at least!) and elect Barack Obama to the presidency from a number of the campaign’s top dogs.

And then there was one more speaker. Barack Obama. Some of you have asked me what he’s like in person. He is charming, funny, and eloquent. He has that 1000-watt smile and an aura of calm that radiates dignity, grace and intelligence that a lot of us find so compelling on television. I will admit right now that I burst into tears when he walked out on stage. The combination of excitement, anxiety and hope – above all hope – just made me have to sob for a few minutes as I watched this man who is so different from any politician I have ever supported come out to speak to ME and 1499 of my new friends. I hope that everyone who reads this has the opportunity to see Senator Obama in person some day. Even if you disagree with his policy proposals, I think you will respect the man that he is and find that he offers many people in this country who have lost hope a chance to believe that our country can do well again.

Just one of many...

2008-10-08T15:14:00.000-07:00

If you've talked to me in the past two months, chances are I've told you that I'm going to a Democratic Women's Leadership Conference in Chicago this weekend. It's a chance to see the Obamas (both of 'em) as well as many of the bright lights of the policy world who I revere: Madeleine Albright, Robert Rubin and Laura D'Andrea Tyson. Since I'm a policy wonk, these are my stars. When I'm at the hairdresser and I try to read People or Us magazine, I only know who about half the celebrities are so I quickly get bored. (Don't even get me started on trying to watch "Dancing with the Stars". That show makes me feel like I've been on a deserted island for the last 20 years.) But give me the line-up for a policy conference that includes experts like Madeleine Albright and Susan Rice, and I'm all atwitter.

Apart from seeing Barack Obama speak in person, I plan to relax and enjoy being among the like-minded. Thousands of Democrats and others who support Obama all in one room, talking about what policies this country needs and what we can expect from an Obama administration.

Lately I feel like our country is so polarized that it's hard to believe we share any goals in common anymore. For the third time in recent weeks this morning, I listened to a random voter in a Red state on the radio saying that Obama "scares the bejeezus out of 'em" and "I just don't trust him." Those are tough interviews to listen to. I understand disagreeing with the policies he is promoting but I can't even imagine why anyone would be scared of Senator Obama. Is it his race? Do they not know any mixed race or black people? Are they believing the crazy talk radio and Internet rumors that the senator is secretly a Muslim who plans to somehow convert us all and give aid al Qaida?

What reasons are there for being scared of a politician? It is understandable to be scared of one who is threatening to take away cherished rights. One example: Governor Palin, who wants to take away a woman's right to choose, with no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. But which rights is Senator Obama threatening to take away exactly? He had to make a campaign appearance in rural Virginia recently where he reassured voters that he would not do anything to take away their guns.

All this makes me wonder what the fear-mongers are saying and doing to scare voters? Or what is it about an African-American man that so scares some people? I look at Senator Obama and all I hear is clear logic and common-sense proposals to solve our country's problems. At times it's such hard-core policy talk that I could see the average person being bored by it, but not scared. Other times, I watch him and see bright bursts of a huge, infectious grin accompanied by passionate speeches about how great this country is for giving him this opportunity.

Meanwhile, I've got to pack my bags and figure out what to wear. They've just added Oprah to the line-up at this conference. Now there's a star that even I've heard of.

Advice for our daughters

2008-09-30T13:57:00.001-07:00

Since my daughter is not yet 2, it's a little weird that I am thinking about what I want to teach her about men and relationships when she's older but that is where my wandering mind is right now. Perhaps it's escapism from the fact that the economy -- and perhaps our personal finances -- are swirling the drain right now.

I just finished reading "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. As I'm sure everyone knows, he was a well-known (in his field) computer science professor who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when his three children were all under the age of 6. With only months to live, he poured some of his remaining time and energy into a last lecture to give at Carnegie Mellon, where he had taught. The larger point of the lecture was to impart some wisdom and life lessons to his kids.

The part that really got my attention was something he wrote about for his one-year old daughter. Thinking of her and having her father die so young was especially hard. Of all his kids, she was the one who would have no memories of her father. His advice for her was something he learned from a woman friend, and it makes so much sense:

"When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do."

I found myself sharing this very simple advice with a heart-broken friend recently. I also wished for a time machine so I could go back to my roller-coaster dating days of long ago and take this good advice to heart. If there is any way to save my daughter all the wasted hours of analyzing the nonsense that a guy has said or not said to her and just cut to the chase, I'll take it.

There are a lot of little pearls of wisdom in Pausch's book. Most of them are not original. As he admits, he is a big fan of cliches. But finding that very clear bit of advice that might help my girl some day cut through all the b.s. of dating was worth the hour or two of my time that it took to read the book.

An Alternative to the $700,000,000 Bailout

2008-09-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

Everyone is worried about the economy, including me. What really worries me though is the speed with which things are happening and how quickly we seem to be on the verge of spending a staggering amount of money to prop up private companies.

Last week, while we were on our family vacation in Disneyland, it felt as if we’d dropped into an alternate universe, where up was down and down was up. We were, of course, having a ball and wandering around in “the happiest place on earth,” which was the perfect antidote to the news of the day. One morning that news was of plummeting stocks (meaning our 401Ks were rapidly halving in value); then it was huge companies filing for bankruptcy or being bought by other huge companies (did Bank of America really buy Merril Lynch?). Finally, it seemed that global credit markets had simply ground to a halt and were on the brink of collapse. Every day the news seemed more and more unbelievable.

And to cap it all off on the last day of our trip, the government rolled out the idea of the bailout. Seven hundred BILLION dollars. I’ve been trying to get my head around how much money that is. The Iraq War so far has cost $2 trillion so this bailout would cost roughly 1/3 as much. But the Iraq War has been going on for five and a half years! The government is now proposing to give the Treasury Secretary the authority to spend these hundreds of billions as fast as he can.

In all the questioning of the bailout that I’m hearing on the news and radio, what I haven’t been hearing is alternatives. Surely there is some alternative to spending an ungodly amount of taxpayer money to prop up the economy?

It turns out there is. Two of the countries leading economists, writing in an online economics journal I subscribe to called “The Economists Voice,” recommend a plan that sounds much more sensible. It’s called debt for equity swaps and it is what normally happens when big companies file for bankruptcy. The idea comes from an article written by Luigi Zingales, who is a professor of economics and entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago School of Business. He has won all kinds of awards for his work. Interestingly, he wrote a book called Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists. He is now proposing a way to do just that since his fear is that greedy capitalists (my words, not his) will destroy capitalism with this bailout. The heart of the matter is that people who work at the big banks and investment firms – and more importantly their shareholders -- have all profited over the years while this crisis was brewing. But the losses they would now suffer if the full meltdown occurs won’t be borne just by them. Under the bailout plan those losses will be suffered by all taxpayers since we’ll be paying for it. So they get the profits and we get the losses? Not only does that seem morally wrong, it is also wrong in terms of how capitalism is supposed to function. If you profit, you take risks in order to do so. But surely it should be those who profit who also stand to lose or else how will they ever adjust the risks they take?

Back to Zingales’ idea. He explains that normally, when companies have a huge liability to pay, they file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and they basically get debt forgiveness in exchange for equity. He explains how it works:

In Chapter 11, companies with a solid underlying
business generally swap debt for equity: the
old equity holders are wiped out and the old
debt claims are transformed into equity claims
in the new entity which continues operating
with a new capital structure. Alternatively, the
debtholders can agree to cut down the face
value of debt, in exchange for some warrants.
Even before Chapter 11, these procedures were
the solutions adopted to deal with the large
railroad bankruptcies at the turn of the twentieth
century.

Zingales goes on to explain that the reason this “normal” way of dealing with the current situation is not being talked about much is time. It takes time to negotiate Chapter 11 arrangements. And U.S. credit markets don’t have time anymore. But our existing bankruptcy system has a way of dealing with this already. Bankruptcy judges just cram a restructuring deal down the throats of shareholders when they’re out of time or when the proceedings are too large or contentious for a negotiated settlement.

He also gives an example of how a similar situation happened during the Great Depression – when the government and courts forced a debt forgiveness plan onto firms -- and how both stock and bond prices soared afterwards. In other words, markets ended up liking this solution because it had benefits for everyone and it restored confidence in our finance system. That sounds like exactly what we need right now. It is certainly an idea worth exploring before we give away $700,000,000 of taxpayer money.

It's not rocket science

2008-09-06T21:52:00.000-07:00

I couldn't have said it better myself! Look what appeared in Frank Rich's New York Times Op-Ed piece today. A journalist with The Washington Independent went and read old newspapers in Alaska and uncovered this revealing quote from Sara Palin:

As for her “executive experience” as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: “It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees.”

Governor, Shmovernor

2008-09-04T16:08:00.000-07:00

I’m already sick of the Palin nomination, and sicker still of John McCain and the pundits who scream at each other on T.V. Yet like someone in a crowd of gawkers unable to turn away from a train wreck, I can’t tear myself away. But I promise, this is my last post on this one.

We really need to put the experience issue to rest. Barack Obama is a United States Senator. John McCain is a United States Senator. They’ve both had fascinating and unique life stories prior to becoming senators, yet they are each running from the same position now. And McCain was never in an executive leadership position and never “ran” anything either.

But the nomination of Sarah Palin has raised the debate over “experience” to a fever pitch. Palin’s experience is having been governor of Alaska for less than two years. Being elected governor of any state is an accomplishment, I’ll give you that. But we need to keep it in context. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Alaska has a grand total of 670,000 people. The city of San Jose, where I live, has roughly a million people. So the mayor of San Jose (America’s 10th largest city) governs one-third more people than the governor Alaska. And, unlike Alaskans, we are a diverse bunch. Our last big political brouhaha was when two different factions of Vietnamese San Joseans took on City Hall and staged hunger strikes over the naming of a Vietnamese Business District. Three-quarters of Alaskans are white. Their political dust-ups seem generally to revolve around how corrupt their politicians are.

The city of San Jose has had two women mayors in my lifetime. My Mom worked for the first one, Mayor Janet Gray Hayes. The second one, Susan Hammer, is a family friend. These women are smart, glass-ceiling busters who did great jobs governing a growing, redeveloping, diverse, economically thriving city. Yet no one would have ever thought to pluck them from their Executive Leadership positions in San Jose and put them on the ticket as Vice President. Why? Because running a city of between half a million and a million people is just not seen as VP-level experience. Yet that is essentially the path Palin took to the VP slot on McCain’s ticket. She ran a state that is much smaller (population-wise) than any major U.S. city. And now we have to hear ad nauseum about all her “executive experience”. In my book, governor or not, she definitely comes up short.

A Superwoman? I don't think so.

2008-09-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

There was a great post on Silicon Valley Moms Blog from one of the co-founders about how much Sarah Palin scares her. I totally agree, but we’re just a couple of Californians who would be unlikely to vote for McCain-Palin anyway. I’m a coastal Democrat who has lived in places like Silicon Valley, New York, Washington, D.C., etc. Clearly, I don’t have a lot of first-hand red state experience. So I decided to see what Fox News was saying about her. Apparently, First Lady Laura Bush “electrified” the crowd at the Republican Convention when she introduced Palin and said “Every woman in this room knows that she is truly a superwoman.”

OK, so the red-meat, red-state conservatives are excited about her. No surprise there. I’m not sure why anyone would call her a superwoman though. Is it because she has a lot of children and works? So do most American women. Is it because she is governor of Alaska -- a state with a tiny population where she did not have strong opponents in the race? Is it because she decided (or more likely accidentally decided) to have a fifth child at age 44? None of these are decisions or achievements that I find especially impressive.

Sarah Palin is totally unqualified to be Vice President and her political views are so extreme as to be frightening. In addition to being anti-choice, she wants to drill for more oil, denies that global warming is man-made and thinks we should teach Creationism in school. Her Dad was supposedly a science teacher. Where does a college-educated person get such insane ideas about education? Is this how we will ensure that our country continues to excel in science and technology?

She is also an insulting choice to women on so many levels. The idea that Hilary supporters will blindly flock to vote for McCain because he nominated a (totally unqualified and extreme right-wing) woman is despicable. Are all women candidates supposed to be the same to us female voters? By that standard, how would men ever choose between 2 men to vote for? (Obama, McCain? Who cares? They're both guys.)

And what to say about her total lack of foreign policy experience or even foreign experience? Barack Obama has had to take positions and vote on nearly every major foreign policy issue as a senator, plus he is a global citizen who has spent time in Africa with his father’s family and lived in Indonesia. He is also smarter than smart, having graduated from Harvard Law School where he was editor of the Law Review. He is almost certainly more qualified in the area of foreign policy than either President Clinton or Bush was when they took office. And on the important matter of judgement – he chose one of the country’s top foreign policy practitioners to be his runningmate: Joe Biden, the Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

I was a staffer on foreign policy issues for a United States Senator, and I clearly recall how much we respected Senator Biden’s work on that committee. He has only gained more foreign policy experience and influence in the fifteen years since. Choosing him as a runningmate was a great choice by Obama and reflects his sound judgement. McCain’s choice on the other hand reflects raw political calculation and a fundamental belief that we soft-headed women will vote for a woman regardless of her qualifications. Let’s prove him wrong.

Rock of Ages

2008-08-13T12:58:00.001-07:00

Listening to snippets of John McCain’s Top 10 favorite songs on the radio yesterday, I laughed out loud. The Beach Boys? (I am pretty sure my flesh actually crawls when I hear “Good Vibrations”) The Platters? How old are you?

Abba was seriously over-represented on his Top 10, with two songs making the cut. I like dancing to Abba at weddings as much as the next gal, but the image of John McCain sweating to these oldies makes me very uncomfortable. And since he doesn’t know how to use a computer, does he listen to these faves on a hand-crank gramophone? Paris Hilton’s recent spoof video came to mind several times as I listened to the Top 10, especially the part where she refers to McCain as “old white-haired dude” (www.funnyordie.com). Normally, I’m not a fan of dumb celebrities who are famous for being shameless, but her video is clever and even funny. I wonder how much she had to do with it though.

And Barack Obama’s favorite songs? Not surprisingly, I loved them. Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” is my all-time favorite song and gets more play on my ITunes than almost any other. It’s hard for me to believe that someone with such great taste might actually be our president. He also had a song by The Fugees that I love but didn’t know the name of or who sang it. He totally out-hipped me on musical taste (admittedly this is not hard to do since I have little kids and don’t get out much), but still. I pretty much loved all his Top 10 songs: Louis Armstrong, U2, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin.

I pick my presidential candidate based on their public policy positions, but I’ve never understood how most voters decide whom to support. Paper, rock, scissors perhaps? There’s no other explanation for George Bush’s second term. This year, they could do worse than to pick based on musical taste. Maybe if a lot of young people with good musical taste decide to get out and vote, we’ll end up with a president we can be proud of. One who won’t bring The Beach Boys to the White House.

Achieving a Goal

2008-08-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago, I achieved a goal. Let’s call it one small step for Cosmo, one giant leap on my life-list of things to do. More likely it was about 6,000 small steps because I ran my first-ever 10K race.

Last Spring, faced with not having a part-time paid job for the first time since having my two kids, I felt like a needed a goal. It had to be something to anchor me more firmly in the real world. Of course, there is the challenge of the meta-goal of keeping the 2 small humans alive and happy. But I wanted to do something that was just for me and something a little different than child-rearing. So I started running. Fortunately the running bug hit 3 of my friends at the same time. I now have “training partners” who live in New York, Marin and just down the road in Los Gatos. They each played a role in helping to keep me going, whether it was a quick phone call to see how we were all progressing or a much-needed 6 a.m. trail run to be sure we could do six miles.

When the race came, I had two of my running buddies with me. But since we got separated immediately in the mosh-pit of 15,000 runners, what really fueled me that day was probably the music. We ran the Wharf to Wharf race in Santa Cruz. The course included 52 bands along the way. They ranged from Insecto Man -- a guy in a green sparkly bodysuit playing a matching green-sparkly accordion -- to teenagers playing death metal, and everything in between. I never had time to think about being tired or how my nearly-40-something year old knees ached. As soon as I’d run by one group of Taiko Drummers, it was on to the aging hippies playing their recorders or to a lone Scot tooting his bagpipes. If the music didn’t do it for me, the people-watching did. A cute guy in a full-body banana costume ran next to me for a while. A woman with shockingly large breast implants bobbed near me for a while which led me to ponder why she did that and if a sport other than jogging might suit her better.

I doubt I’ll become a serial 10K racer, but I’m still working on my next goal: the half-marathon. After that, I’ll probably hang up my running shoes and take up something else. Maybe I’ll get a sparkly bodysuit and learn the accordion.

Odd English-isms

2008-07-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

The little girl at the swimming pool yesterday was very cute – maybe 3 years old with lots of baby chub and white-blonde hair. She had on the typical toddler uniform at our pool: reusable swim diaper and UV protective swimming shirt. I happened to glance up as she padded by me and read the word on her shirt. It said “Execute”. What the …?!?@!

Ever the politically-minded person, my first thought was that this was someone’s way of making a pro-death penalty statement that we should fire up the old electric chair and take care of that pesky waiting list on Death Row. Intrigued, I watched her to see what other interesting political swimwear the rest of the family might be sporting. Then I noticed her Mom speaking German to her, and a light bulb went off. They must have bought the shirt (cheap, I hope) in some non-English speaking country where they put odd English phrases on clothes.

I’ve always been drawn to nonsensical English on clothes or in marketing campaigns. Japan is the world master at this sport, but I used to see some good ones in my travels in Eastern Europe too. There are even websites (really funny if you have the time) dedicated to posting English manglings seen in Japan. Two of my favorites: “Poccari Sweat”, the name of a sports drink in Japan, and a phrase seen on a pencil case there, “Spanking! By thhe Sea!”

I wonder if whoever made the “Execute” swim shirt thought it would be clever to use a word that had “cute” in it on kids clothing. Maybe there’s a whole line of clothes like this that say things like “Electrocute” and "Accute”. If there isn’t, maybe I just got my first idea for my very own business.

On Becoming President Some Day

2008-07-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about paths not taken. I used to think I would be president. Seriously. When I worked in the Senate, it seemed like that path might still be open to me some day. When I decided to do a Ph.D., I kind of felt like that door was closing. Then I had two kids and I feel like the door slammed shut. Sure, there are some women who have raised their kids and gone on to have careers in politics. I like to cite Nancy Pelosi, who did just that and is now Speaker (Speaker! That’s amazing actually). But still. Reality intervenes.

Not that being president seems like such a great job anymore anyway. It feels like the apocalypse is upon us, especially here in smoky Northern California, where the sky looks pretty much like Beijing’s (from what I gather) and where the threat of global warming seems palpable by the black haze that hangs over us as the mercury climbs. The stock market is melting down, the polar ice caps are literally melting and glaciers the size of Rhode Island seem to be regularly splintering off and falling into the sea. Floods, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, famine, earthquakes…

As much as I love Barack Obama, I really wouldn’t want the job he’s fighting to get. Imagine your first day in office as you try to decide which horrendous policy disaster to attack first. Global warming? Ending the war in Iraq? Health care reform? Energy independence? The mortgage crisis? Reining in our out-of-control budget deficits? Trying to fix any of these would be really, really difficult. Trying to fix all of them while not significantly raising taxes will be impossible. There just aren’t a lot of good options, or maybe I’m just not seeing them. It’s hard to see anything from here, what with the smoke and all.

A cat and two rats, in their new running hats!

2008-07-15T21:14:00.001-07:00

Today I bought some new running hats ( just like the rats in the Sandra Boynton book although, sadly, neither of mine came with little wings on the side). After a quick trip to the bank with my 18-month old in tow, I boldly decided it was time to get a hat or two to wear in my upcoming races. I've been needing some kind of hat you can do sports in for a long time and today was the day. I was also secretly hoping that having a hat to run in would magically result in my stamina approximately doubling between now and my first-ever 10 K in two weeks.

My little one is sucking a lollipop that has recently become the obligatory candy-bowl treat she gets every time we go do my Dad's banking. For some reason I fail to notice that her hands are covered with congealing melted corn syrup and food coloring when we go into the sporting goods store. She decides it's hilarious to pick up as many hats as she can and reorganize them in the store. Finally, Sergio, the store owner, hands me two hats and says "Are these yours?". Confused, I am about to say that I was planning to buy a hat but not that super-un-cute light blue Nike one that he's holding. And then I see the sticky yellow fingerprints all over it. "Yes! That's just the one I wanted!" The chic black visor I am trying on also gets put back in the pile so I can buy a much less cute one that my girl has destroyed. I'm now the proud owner of 2 running hats, complete with 20 sticky little finger marks for added flair.

Shiny Happy Parents?

2008-07-09T07:03:00.000-07:00

Has anyone been reading about how unhappy we parents are lately? Newsweek just had a piece called “True or False: Having Kids Makes You Happy” and parenting.com had an article on “How to be a Happier Mom”. Taken together, the second article helps provide some answers to the first, which mainly points out that we parents are reportedly less happy than our childless counterparts.

Apparently there are two factors at work here. The first is that it’s easy to quantify your average daily unhappiness, which is one of the statistics they point to. As a social scientist, I can see it now. Harried mothers and fathers – especially of the under-3 year olds – volunteering to rank once an hour or several times a day how “happy” they are. Never mind that your 4 year old has just vomited all over their car seat when you remember that you have to write down how happy you are. Or that your formerly sweet 18-month old girl has just hit you in the face for no apparent reason. (All of this occurred yesterday). I’d rank my happiness that afternoon as about a 1, but I’m not sure that it captures my happiness level very well.

The second factor, which the parenting.com piece notes, is that our children bring us joy in surprising and often overwhelming bursts, which are hard to quantify. For me, and I suspect others, these little and big moments sustain us when we reflect on our lives. Even though I was sick yesterday with the stomach flu (definitely would give that day a “1”, Mr. Social Scientist!), I also had a moment of pure parenting joy. Lying in bed feeling ill, I heard the footsteps of my 18-month old girl approaching. She had found an envelope lying on the floor, picked it up and brought it to me in bed while saying (in her croaking frog little voice), “Happy, Mama”. It was so delightful and stood out as something unique to her and me that I still feel happy thinking about it. In a day that was definitely a "1", how do you add in those moments of "11", and make sense of it all?

One Mother, Rescued (or Nirvana)

2008-07-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

It sounds like the perfect ending to one of those espionage novels I read as one of my many guilty pleasures. A Colombian politician, held hostage in a jungle hideout by the FARC rebels for 6 long years is rescued, without a single shot being fired. The perfect operation. According to the Colombian military, it involved spies, deception, helicopters and Che Guevara T-shirts. The politician is Ingrid Betancourt, who was campaigning for President of Colombia in 2002 when she was nabbed by the FARC (Colombia’s main rebel group) and held hostage ever since. I’ve always been drawn to her story for its international dimensions and the fact that it involves a woman politician in a country that has long fascinated me.

Perhaps I think about this story more because I have friends who have been personally affected by the civil war in Colombia, including one whose husband was shot at point-blank range by someone he had angered with his political reporting. The shooter actually fired too close for the type of weapon he was using, and my friend’s husband survived. They fled Colombia with their young son and came to Princeton on an endangered scholars program.

It was only a few months ago when I heard an interview with Ingrid Betancourt’s husband that the story began to haunt me. At one point during her captivity, he dropped thousands of photos of her children from an airplane into the jungle where she was being held in the hopes that she would get one. After that, I found myself thinking about Ms. Betancourt, her captors and of course, her children a lot. I’m sure all parents experience this radical shifting of the lens through which you view and digest life’s events -- especially the news -- after having children. The same stories affect me very differently now than they did 5 years ago (B.C.). I tried to imagine my children being the ages of hers: 13 and 16, and having me disappear into the jungle, possibly to be killed by my captors. Unthinkable.

And how would a person mentally deal with the anguish of being held captive for six years? The rebels and other captives reported over the years that she was feisty and a fighter who tried to escape more than once. Of course she was. This is a woman whose first remarks after her rescue included the comment that she still wants to run for president! I like to think that her iron will also stems in part from the angry, desperate mother in her. The part of all of us that would claw, scratch and bite if we had to in order to get back to our kids. And I’m sure we can all identify with the other side of her, the side that describes her feelings at being reunited with her children after all these years: “Nirvana, paradise”.

L.A. Fabulous

2008-06-29T22:27:00.000-07:00

Friday morning, our taxi pulled up to the W hotel where we were staying in Westwood. I stepped out on to the curb and Adrian Grenier, the star of HBO’s hit series Entourage, walked by me. Welcome to Los Angeles! Before I could oh-so-subtly signal this star-spotting moment to my husband, we were inside the lobby and practically bumping into the whole cast of Entourage (Turtle, E and Drama). We were immediately whisked off to one side of the lobby by some young hipster working on the show. The director shouted “Cue models”, and several impossibly skinny, 6-plus foot tall creatures loped out from somewhere in very short dresses. They appeared to be from a different planet than the rest of us and definitely looked to be another species from the male stars of the show. You guessed it: the guys are predictably tiny.

Oddly, I’ve been to L.A. hundreds of times and never see anyone famous. This trip was the opposite extreme. We were there for the L.A. Film Festival, and it seemed we couldn’t turn around without seeing a recognizable actor. Sitting poolside at the W, we saw Philip Baker Hall, who starred in Magnolia and The Insider. Saturday night, while eating dinner at Craft (Tom Colicchio’s restaurant for all you Top Chef fans), we saw Patrick Fischler from Old School.

In between all our movie-star moments, we squeezed in a very fun and much-needed kidless weekend in L.A. We watched three movies, went to two parties, had many margaritas, worked out, ate out, swam in the pool and I got my toes and my hair done. It all added up to a great weekend of reconnecting with Reg, meeting a lot of his Netflix colleagues and occasionally bumping into extremely short actors.

The other Rush

2008-06-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

The Other “Rush”
As a former sorority girl, the only “rush” that ever came to mind when I heard the word was the hectic week or two before Fall semester when we had to wear flowered dresses, meet hundreds of new people, and pass judgement upon them while smiling and singing modified lyrics to Queen songs to entertain them. Wait? Did I make that up? No, we really did that. In college. When we were sort of supposed to be adults.

But I digress. The point of this posting is that I’ve recently had a profound realization. No matter how much you say you hate all heavy metal and hard rock and consider your musical taste far superior to your husband’s because you like “good” music (like the Grateful Dead) you just might eventually change your tune. I even used to do a pretty mean ironic imitation of Geddy Lee singing “Tom Sawyer” to drive the point home about how much I did NOT like Rush. And now, it seems I do. Apparently, if you listen to it enough, and you go see them live as a huge favor to your hubby, and your 4-year old son sings them ALL THE TIME and says he wants to grow up to be Geddy Lee, you ever- so-slowly warm to this phenomenon that is Rush. Tonight I drove Reg’s car and I realized later that I had taken out a CD and purposely replaced it with a Rush one. This may have merely been a lesser-of-two-evils situation though. The CD that I took out was Iron Maiden. And here’s something you can take to the bank. I can say without a doubt, unequivocally, I will never, ever become an Iron Maiden fan. Probably.

Green Acres is the Place for Me

2008-06-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

I am starting to feel a bit like Eva Gabor on that 1960’s TV show “Green Acres”. The show was about a former New York socialite who likes to drink martinis at cocktail parties but is whisked away to a farm where she stumbles around in high heels and sequined gowns while tripping over the pig, Wilbur.

On a small scale, I’m about to create my own little “green acre” by planting a vegetable garden in my yard. But I’m a little unsure of how this will go. I’ve lived in cities for the last 20 years and my gardening skills are nonexistent. Just ask the many plants I have killed – may they rest in peace. (Nickname from my husband: “The Orchid Killer”)

Since I insisted on laying out a garden in our backyard, doubts have started to creep in. Will I like growing food? Or will I feel like Eva Gabor, wishing I were back in my penthouse suite in New York and finding I’m not cut out for backyard farming?

Either way, I want to forge on with this project. For more inspiration, there was an article in today’s New York Times called “Banking on Gardening” that’s about the growing number of people like me who are planting vegetable gardens at home to support their organic dining habit and maybe even save the earth. A tall order for a 10 by 6 foot plot of land? Think again! By growing food organically, we can reduce greenhouse gases since our traditionally-grown crops are essentially “bathed in petroleum” (to quote Bill McKibben) and the fertilizer used on most crops is all nitrogen-based and carbon-intensive. Only organic fertilizer in my little patch, and I’m even threatening to do worm composting. (Reg seemed slightly horrified when he caught me watching a video online about backyard composting.)

Maybe there will be a new Green Acres sitcom some day: one that features a city girl like me attempting organic gardening and worm composting while sipping a cocktail in her Manolo Blahniks.

Old friends, amazing lives

2008-06-11T06:59:00.000-07:00

In the past few weeks, I've gotten in touch with around 50 of my old friends from Berkeley through an email chain that my sorority sisters started to get back in touch. Except for about a dozen of the women, I had lost touch with the majority of the group over the past 20 years. I was amazed and impressed with the depth, breadth and passion of their lives. Since we went to Cal, it should not have been a surprise how many of us went into what I think of as "do-gooder" professions (i.e. social work, education, non-profits, public policy, politics, medicine, law). One woman even became a Member of Congress (How did I miss that?)!

I love reading about what my old gal pals -- and we are getting old -- are up to, but it drives home this feeling that I'm sidelined right now while staying home with my baby and preschooler. On good days, I feel like I'm doing the best thing for me and my family right now, plus it's pretty fun. On bad days, I feel like the woman in those old Calgon commercials: "Calgon, take me away..." And I start imagining the career paths not chosen or the meaningful, exciting, well-paid jobs I think I could be doing. As my friend Shelley once pointed out to me though, "We have the rest of our lives to work." And I think she's right. After all, until I did this job (SAHM), I had been working since I was 15. A few years off to raise babies is a blip in the larger ocean of work, right?