Happy birthday, little daughter. You are the joy of the world in toddler form. I love you so much I don’t even mind when you wipe your snotty nose on my favourite shirts. You’re the reason I get up in the morning. I mean that literally: with you standing there yelling “I WANT LECHE. I WANT DORA,” who can possibly sleep in? It’s like living with a bouncy little white dwarf star on legs.

I thought that lightning could never strike the same place twice. I was wrong. I can’t imagine my life without you. Thanks for everything, Miss Jules.

Gorged on genre in the wake of the workshops. I loved the coincidence engineers and the ranids in Bear’s Undertow. Scalzi’s Old Man’s War scratched that old I-read-Heinlein’s-juveniles-when-I-was-a-juvenile itch. Steve Gould’s Jumper is a kickass boy coming-of-age story, and there’s a World Trade Center scene that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, because it was published in 1992.

I liked The Hallowed Hunt even better than some of the Miles Vorkosigan stories, but it’s getting harder for me to ignore the messed-up sex politics in Bujold’s work. Connie Willis’s The Doomsday Book, on the other hand, has five or six brilliantly drawn female characters who get to do just as much as the men, even when they’re stuck in the fourteenth century. This was my favourite of this clot of reading. It’s a bit impenetrable at first in its attention to detail and insistence on the present tense, but the work pays off in spades in the last third. The fates of various characters hurt me a lot. I can already tell it’s going to be a reread.

Now I am reading Clea Koff’s The Bone Woman, which has given me an idea for a new short story called “Externalities.” The main disadvantage of this book is that it’s difficult to read over a lunch of Wolfgang Puck roast chicken, because the clinical descriptions of saponification and the white fatty liquid that pours out of corpses in a particular state of decomposition take a lot of the savour out of the meat.

Next up: King Leopold’s Ghost and The World Without Us. Because apparently I am hell bent on feeling bad.

…about dinosaurs.”

“Okay. Once there were some dinosaurs. On the moon! And then they pooped. There was dinosaur poop on the moon!”

“You said poop!”

“Poop on the moon!”

“Pee on the stars! Poop on the moon!”

A woman I vaguely know has been teaching at the Community Music Center, so tonight I dragged Claire along to a recital by her students. The first thing that happened was catastrophic status anxiety, mine. Claire and I had turned up in our customary jeans and scuffed boots, ironic tees and hoodies. The other kids were all in velvet dresses, white tights and patent leather mary janes.

I kinda wished I had brought Quinn along, just so I could watch her turn into the Hulk at the sight of all that naked privilege on display.

I also felt very small and shabby and besmirched with soy sauce from our sushi dinner. And then I looked at Claire and saw that she was totally punk rock, which made me feel much better.

We tried to sit quietly with the other grownups, but Claire saw that there were kids watching from a balcony up the back, so eventually we snuck up there. The view was way better. And unlike the parents, who had been looking askance at us, the other kids gave us huge welcoming grins.

I have discovered the mark of a great composer. Even when they’re being murdered by affluent ten-year-olds in uncomfortable clothes, Mozart and Beethoven sound really good.

A third of a bottle of a nice red from Corbieres. We dragged Ian out to La Provence. I had the nicoise salad and the duck, of course. Afterwards we walked to Dog Eared, where I bought King Leopold’s Ghost, The Bone Woman, a Disraeli biography, a dinosaur encyclopaedia for Claire and a Metropolitan Museum of Art ABC for Julia. The whole time, the boys talked about their Wiis. What are you gonna do.

Tomorrow: bloggity goodness! This time for sure.

…cheating on Nablopomo is trivially easy. Ethically problematic though.

Bloggity goodness to come!

My Advance Parole arrived, so I am no longer trapped in this sinking luxury liner of a nation. Yay?

Well, Internets, I’m glad you asked.

I’ve been touring San Francisco public schools for Claire’s kindergarten enrollment next year. And it’s making me crazy.

I swore I wouldn’t be that mom. I have researched the matter up the wazoo. I am a paid-up member of Parents for Public Schools. I am informed and empowered! You would be impressed by my diligent legwork! And I am going crazy.

More context than you care about: San Francisco kids are entitled to attend any school in the Unified School District, no matter where they live. What happens if too many parents request a particular school? Since 2002, the district has placed students according to a Diversity Index, aiming to mix things up as much as they can.

To grossly oversimplify, the district places all the kids who have to be in a particular class in a school – siblings who are entitled to attend the same school as their older sibling, for example. That class gets a base profile, calculated on things like race, socioeconomic background, blah. Applicants are also given a profile.

The Educational Placement Center then places the kid *most different* from the base profile in that class. Recalculate base profile, rinse and repeat. The desired upshot: classes nicely balanced out by student background.

The practical upshot: you as a parent get seven choices. You tour as many schools as you can (link to blog of another mom doing the rounds), and then you pick your seven favourites. The Educational Placement Center tries to place your kid at one of those choices. And if you’re requesting a popular school, it’s anyone’s guess whether or not you’ll get it. Crapshoot. Russian roulette. Schroedinger’s cat.

That’s the first painful thing. You tour a school like you tour a house you are hoping to buy. You imagine your future there, your kids growing up there. And then, just like when you’re buying a house, you have to accept that it’s entirely out of your hands, and you can want as hard as you like, but it isn’t going to affect the outcome.

But there’s worse! I’ve toured four schools so far, and they’re all great in different ways, and I could live with any one of them. But the school district is strapped for cash, so ALL the extras are paid for by the PTA. And that includes things you don’t think of as extras. Like the LIBRARY.

The PTAs at the mostly-Hispanic schools are raising about $40K annually. One excellent PTA raised $77K, mostly from grants.

The PTA at the white school I toured this morning raised $200K.

Like most people who earn decent money I am massively in denial about what money is and what it means. I tend to treat it as if it were just a way of keeping score in some immense and arcane game of chess or Go. People who don’t earn decent money don’t have that luxury. Especially not here in the USA, where health insurance is broken and one good illness spells bankruptcy.

When lack of money becomes a constraint on how people can express the value they place in their children – when it is a constraint on what their childrens’ futures might be – well, that’s when you realize society is hopelessly fucked up.

Let’s not even talk about what’s being spent on the Iraq war.

My kids will be alright. They have me and Jeremy going into bat for them, and they’re privileged and loved and blah blah blah. But what about everyone else’s kids? Why don’t they all get the same deal? Why doesn’t the PTA at rich school share its treasure chest with the PTA at the school down the hill? How can a kid arrive in Salome’s class in high school, functionally illiterate? Why the fuck are the socio-economic scores of the parents in some arcane game, visited upon our children?

Your net worth is not your worth. YOUR NET WORTH IS NOT YOUR WORTH.

What is the matter with us?

Oh, so my epiphany this morning. I hate the Diversity Index, right, because it makes me feel like I have no control over where Claire goes to school. (I have lots, actually, but that’s how it makes me feel.)

And I hate, hate, hate, what I will call the PTA disparity, because it’s just unfair and inefficient and wasteful of human potential and stupid and broken.

And without the Diversity Index? The PTA disparity would be much, much worse.

And that, dear Internets, is why I have been in such a vile mood lately.

…are just not worth getting out of bed for.

Trinity

Originally uploaded by mr lynch

A well-timed Flickr upload from prawnwarp reminds me why.

Well, that was intemperate. I am sorry.

[I have edited out some chunks here to avoid hurting peoples’ feelings pointlessly.]

A great deal of my anger is survivor guilt. I got away by the skin of my teeth. I came within a hairsbreadth of jumping under a train (a horrible, unkind way to kill youself. Think of the driver. Don’t do it.) But when I left I left behind a lot of people I cared about, to fates I can’t imagine.

I tell myself I was only a teenage girl, but that’s cold comfort. I knew right from wrong. I could have done more. I should have done more.

The rest of my anger is raw grief. Patriarchies eat their sons as well as their daughters. When the strong prey on the weak, the weak prey on the weaker. A mother shakes her baby son to death. That little body in the tartan suitcase, that heartbreakingly beautiful face; that child was our future. We should have died rather than let anything happen to him.

What is the matter with us?

Remember all my stories about Victor Roland Cole, former minister of St Davids Anglican Church in Forestville? Well, now his son is in the news as well.

A MINISTER rejected plans by Dean Shillingworth’s family to hold a traditional Aboriginal smoking ceremony at tonight’s memorial service because it clashed with the Anglican ceremony.

Plans on the form of the memorial service would take were thrown into doubt when some members of the Shillingsworth family requested a traditional Aboriginal smoking ceremony to release Dean’s spirit to the land.

Local Anglican Reverend David Cole said he planned to say three prayers at the ceremony – one for Dean, one for the community, and one for his family.

However, he said the spiritual smoking ceremony was incompatible with a Christian service…

[Edited because I was being a sanctimonious ass.]

You know, I really disagree with David’s position here.

If there were a God do you seriously think he’d give a damn how you grieved for the boy? You think Jesus would be sniffy because the Aboriginal family wanted Dean to go to the Dreamtime? Or do you think, just maybe, Jesus might be crying over the dead baby?

[Aaand edited again.]

“I couldn’t believe those people talking two rows behind us.”

“I know! I hate it when people come to a concert and then they’re all ‘Pss pss pss…'”

“I really wanted to throw my program at them.”

“Me too!”

“So did I!”

“But I thought you’d think I was overreacting!”

“Heck no. Next time you’ll know. We’re the types to join in.”

Dia de los muertos. Gathered up Jamey, Salome, Jack, Ian, Danny and the kids and went to Garfield Park to see the altars. I love the drums and burning sage and feathers and skeletons. I lit candles for Aunty Ruth and Uncle Arthur and my grandma, for Wendy and for Shannon’s lost babies.

Lots of people were covered in shaving cream, which seemed odd. I realized later that they must have come from the pie fight.

The great thing about winter veggies like cauliflower and cabbage is that they last forever in the fridge, so when you haven’t been shopping for three weeks, as we have not, you can make a meal of ’em.

I panfried the cabbage with apples. I roasted the cauliflower with garlic to make soup. There was half a country loaf in the freezer, so I stuck that in the oven with the roasting cauliflower. The girls love soup with bread. They dip the bread and don’t even know they’re eating veggies.

Now there’s a small bread pudding in the oven. I even prevailed on Claire to eat a tangerine for dessert.

Pirate and ninja

Originally uploaded by yatima

Our conclusive findings should put this Internet meme to rest at last.

• Ninjas grab more candy with their stealthy power moves
  
• but more people go gaga over pirates.

“That’s WOWSOME.”

May I gush? Deadwood is amazing. I’m bereaved every time the credits roll. I’m hopelessly crushed on Seth Bullock and scared to death of Al Swearengen. I don’t know where Trixie gets the inner steel to defy that devil of a man. Don’t think I could do it. I’d be like Calamity Jane, falling apart and sobbing snot. Unless, of course, the kid he was after was one of mine, in which case he’d have to kill me first, but that’s not real courage, just the lesser of two evils from my point of view.

It occurred to me as I was running this morning, taking a much-needed break from endless diplomatic crises with Claire, that attachment parenting works both ways. Cuddling and playing with your newborn gives him or her the opportunity to display the full range of attachment-seeking behaviours. Letting yourself fall for the little brute helps get you through the years of noncompliance and flat-out contradiction that follow. Claire has become necessary to my happiness. That’s lucky, because you’re not allowed to sell five-year-olds on eBay.

America and I have gone through the same arc. I came here as all economic migrants do, for a deposit on a house and maybe some retirement savings. I planned to stay a couple of years. It’ll be ten in April. San Francisco sent out its tendrils of charm, its urban coyotes and soapbox derbies, its open studios and improving coffee and nasturtiums growing like weeds. For an overeducated, bookish, nerdly woman, it’s Renaissance Florence. Which is lucky, because you’re not allowed to sell dysfunctional oligarcho-plutocratic superpowers on eBay either.

Since I got back from Massachusetts I have been trying to write fiction for half an hour, every day. I have been running three times a week. I have been spending time with the kids, both of whom obviously need to see more of me. The high-pitched shrieking is a dead giveaway. I’m intuitive like that. Everything but the daily writing is pretty well-established habit. It’s always surprising, though, how the addition of just one more thing throws everything else out of rhythm.

I remember this vividly from the last round of serious riding. David, my instructor, would change the angle of my wrist or the set of my shoulder, and suddenly I wouldn’t be able to sit Noah’s trot any more. Every incremental improvement throws you off the plateau of mere competence and into disorder, before you reach a new and higher plateau.

Not to complain. I greatly enjoyed Emma Bull’s new novel Territory, set in Tombstone, Arizona just before the gunfight at the OK Corral. It had the disadvantage, for a non-American reader, of assuming familiarity with the source material; but this actually worked in my favour, for the same reason I usually enjoy mainstream movies more if I can contrive to miss the first act. It amuses me to fill in the gaps of the exposition, and I get restless if there are no gaps.

Genre writers are much better at this than a lot of the self-regarding hacks over there in lit fic. The best genre writers, like Bull, assume a sky-high level of sophistication among their readers, and by God it moves the plot along. I love having to pay attention. It is the opposite of being pandered to. And when I do find the way into the characters and plot, this is the kind of writing that disappears into itself, so that I’m not reading any more but floating over the character’s right shoulders, seeing what they see. Man, I could take that to the bank. There should be more of it.

J has succumbed to local values to the point of buying a flat-screen TV. My condition for this was the first season of Deadwood, which dovetails beautifully with Bull’s book. I’m always surprised at how late the Wild West was; both Deadwood and Territory are set in the 1870s. I sort of think of it in conjunction with the First Fleet or at least the early Colonials, when I should be thinking of Ned Kelly and the Ashes. Like everyone else I am findng Al Swearengen a spellbinding character, but problematic in terms of my own work. How sheltered am I, that I tend to leave people like that out?

Anyway, back to Territory: it handles magic in a fairly low-key way, but it still wasn’t low-key enough for me. Everyone who critiqued me at Viable Paradise wanted, understandably enough, to draw out the fantastic (fantasy-ish? fantastical. You know what I mean) elements of my story; they were also very good at pointing out all the fantastical stuff that was already there. I do want to keep my comet and my fever-dreams, not for their own sake but because they are so good at illustrating characters.

There’s a good bit in Cory’s review of God’s Mechanics:

I think that our experience of the numinous is both undeniable and entirely biological: the state of spiritual peace is the result of tickling some evolved center of our brain, a bit of neurology that conferred a survival advantage on our ancestors whose numinous hallucinations of a higher order in the universe drove them to catch more antelopes, eat better, and have more babies.

I had lunch with Seth today, and we talked about this in terms of people who are hypersensitive to non-verbal clues being exceptionally good at cold reading, to the point where if they don’t realize what they are doing, they might very easily persuade themselves that they are psychic. This ties into the idea of confabulation as the frontal lobes’ post-facto rationalization of decisions already made by the mammalian or reptilian brains.

I think ideaspace, intuition, magic and our experience of the numinous all live in the pre-verbal parts of our brains. I think it’s what Natalie Goldberg means when she talks about Wild Mind, and what Laura Mixon means when she talks about the beast. I think it’s where muscle memory goes when you’ve re-acquired your balance after your sadistic riding instructor is all done messing you up. I’m looking forward to re-acquiring my balance. Come on, monkey-brain. Talky is in trouble and needs your help!

Punkinhead Claire

Originally uploaded by yatima

The evenings are drawing in, so a bunch of us went to Half Moon Bay for pumpkins. The L on one of the Lemos Farm signs had fallen off, to our delight.

“No one understands my pumpkin pleasure.”

“No one understands my pumpkin pain.”

Bouncy pumpkin castle, ghost train, pony rides, adorable sex-crazed goats. So best: the haunted house. Ghost room, skeleton room, zombie room, clown room, room with E=mc^2 painted on the wall.

“OH NO! SCARY SCIENCE!”