Dane's 6th Birthday
Belvedere Park, Tiburon





About the party:
Classmates and siblings and family friends (about 20 kids and lots of parents) showed up for pizza and cupcakes on Saturday the 21st. The main activities were remote control car racing, Trac-Ball, stomp rockets, the playground (with rope climbing, sand pit, huge playhouse), and cupcake decorating.






Pictured:

(1) Vincent

(2)Little Sam Javadi

(3) Andrew (from Kindergarten)

(4) two of the Javadi girls, Carolyn and Hannah

(5) Amelie with frosting

(6)Abby (Kindergarten friend Joshua's little sister)

(7) Makayla (from Kindergarten; her dad's a Sausalito dentist)

(8) Dane and pals, Mia, Joshua, and Amelie

(9) Aubrey

Vibrato

Aubrey has started singing with vibrato. She’s four. So, it’s not quick and snappy “Mary had a little lamb,” it’s slow and pensive: “Ma-a-ary ha-a-a-ad uh-uh-uh li-i-i-it-uh-uh-uhl la-a-a-amb”

It’s pre-schooler sings the blues.

I’m not sure where she picked this up, but I will say it seemed to start after a 2-week visit from her Grammy, who, if I may be so bold, utilizes a wee bit of the vibrato herself.

But, then again, maybe she picked it up from me. While I try to stay away from excesses of vocal warble, perhaps my voice occasionally makes those dips and dives too.

I’ll admit that sometimes in the dark when I sit on the floor of my kids’ bedroom and sing up to them in their lofts, I let my voice take off. I belt out the lyrics to their (my) favorite song, Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue.”

In some parts, I sing fast and raspy, going somewhere edgy and rebellious. In other parts, I let my voice go slow and bluesy, somewhere unchecked and from the heart. And, so far, since they don’t ask what it means to work in a “topless bar” or why you’d light “a burner on the stove to offer me a pipe,” sometimes I let myself feel the poetry and music so deeply I could cry.

So when I hear “You are my sunshine” coming from Aubrey’s mouth like she’s channeling Ethel Merman, I admire the risks she’s taking with her sounds—and maybe even her feelings. I try to catch her eye with a nod and a smile as if to say to my girl, "That’s right--sing it, sister.”

Mike's Latest Project

Not only has Mick's Dad, Mike (a.k.a. "Grandad"), designed and executed the remodel for my beloved alma mater of adolescent glee, Ballou Junior High, but he's currently the architect working on Garfield High in Seattle.

Here's an interesting link showing the process of the project: Garfield High. BLRB is his architectural firm; the contractor posted the website.







And this is a picture of Grandad on Valentine's Day 2005.

HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY, ROCCO!

The before-school party

The Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

Miss Lisa (teacher's assistant) w/Charles & Geornae


Camille (Joshua's mom) w/Geornae


Maxwell


Aubrey & Mia (1 of 4 girls in Dane's class of 18)


Dane w/(L to R) Michael, Terrance & Jaylen

The Class Party


Mia, Michael, Jacob, Nick (Mia's twin) & Dane


Dane w/Nick

The After-School Party at Home & Pomodoro

Wore new jammies to pizza across the street,
played new board game w/Mom & Dad while waiting there.

A fun park morning party is also planned for Saturday.
(Lucky kid!)

Espanol-o-rama

Dane's been telling me for a year that he wants to learn Spanish. I think it really started when we met the neighbors who used to live below us, and Oscar, our favorite grounds-crewman. After every meeting on the stairway or in the parking lot, we'd always get back to our apartment and say we wish we could say more than just hello or have a nice day.

Lucky for us, Dane's school offers a Berlitz Spanish class on Tuesday's from 3-4pm throughout the school year. With the help of a school grant, students pay a mere $20!

On our way home yesterday Dane told me the class is hard, so I hugged him and told him that was great. At dinner, he told Mick that they learned to name face parts that day.

So it looks like my little bambino will be getting some quality escuela.

(Really) Great America

We happily wore ourselves out yesterday at Paramount's Great America, which is about an hour south of here. It was the annual UoP picnic. (Last year's was held at the SFZoo--see blog archives for October '05.)

Lucky for us, the new dean was looking to make a good impression, scoring us tix for $5 each (with a value of $45+ each, including meal and parking).

We all had a blast on the rides--a great balance of kid stuff in Kidzville and adult stuff like "Top Gun," "Invertigo," "Drop Zone," and "Vortex," thanks to the tag-teaming we did with our friends the Javadis.

The biggest family fun, though, was probably the "Rip Roaring Rapids," a 6-person water ride with plenty of dipping splash. Not only did the little river soak us, but sadistic voyeurs could shoot water from dry land at our rafts for a quarter. Needless to say, we were drenched (hair, pants, shirts, shoes, socks) at the end of the ride, but it was such an adrenaline rush we went back twice.

(Click on it twice for best resolution.)

Netty's Brag Page
Second Edition

Look out, Texas!
My cousin Karen's son, Connor, pitched
his very first game last weekend.
Three up, three down, baby.
Way to go, Connor, you little Amarillo stud, you!



Barritt is SEVEN.
Boo-hoo, we missed her fairy tea party
in Seattle last Saturday.
Happy Birthday, Little B.
xoxoxoxo


Big Share and Donny Daring
celebrated anniversary #23 (if I've done my math correctly),
proving that there is life after marrying someone with a teenager.
Congratulations!
(Obviously, I need a photo update.)


Andrew Schneidler passed the Washington State Bar exam!
His dad woke up at 6am just to get online and find the results,
and called Andrew right after to tell him the good news.
Perfect, since Andrew's dad is also his law partner and boss.


Mick and Anjie Reynolds kicked some serious booty
on Saturday for the Rose Petals,
their team in the UoP Softball Tournament.
Let's just say one of them stroked one out of the park
and the other had a perfect batting average.

Happy 9th Anniversary, Mick

So much good comes from giving my heart to you.

Mick started quarter #6 today. Break's over. That's a good thing. I'm ready for the kids to start emulating dental-student-dad again, rather than home-every-day-dad. When they pulled off their shirts and pants last Friday to run around the house in their underwear yelling "I'm daddy! I'm daddy!" I was definitely looking foward to Monday's shirt and tie.

GROOMING

“That one’s that skinny, and that one’s that skinny,” Aubrey says, pulling my face close and grabbing my eyebrows into an uneven pinch in each hand.

My right brow looks like it always looks after I wax. Subtle. Full. A clean crescent. My left brow I must now lovingly refer to as “the skinny brow.” Not so subtle, not so full.

Yes, Aubrey sat in the bathroom and watched me accidentally remove the lower half of my left eyebrow this morning. Much of it. Oh, and she listened to some expletives.

Somehow, when I gave the wax strip that glorious, edifying pull from the outside of my eyebrow inward, I had a line of eyebrow hairs the equivalent of a pigeon feather stuck in the strip.

Oh, vanity.

And since the wax strip hadn’t gone all the way to the inner tip of my eyebrow, I had about a half-inch square of brow bulk next to the sleek little line I’d just made.

Given my competence level at this point, the thought of re-waxing it brought visions of no brow at all to mind. However, that inner bulk was so ghastly next to said skinny brow, I knew something needed to be done.

With the help of our hair-cutting scissors, I went to work. It improved, but let’s just say I eventually ended up with a nick of skin visible in the thick of the brow (bringing to mind the lines the boys at my high school etched onto their scalps in the late 80s) and a look of perpetual perplexity.

Oh, vanity.

Eventually, I patched up the nick with some brown eyeshadow.

Then I changed my hair part.

And, no, I will not be cutting myself some bangs anytime soon.

And, I’m going to guess Aubrey’s not going to ask me to do hers either.

Recent Reads
(Covers January through September, so read the term "recent" loosely)

Fiction:
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
The Attack, Yasmina Khadra
Book Doctor, Esther Cohen
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Ghostwritten, David Mitchell
July's People, Nadine Gordimer
Montana, 1948, Larry Watson
Nights in Rodanthe, Nicholas Sparks
The Other Boleyn Girl, Philippa Gregory
Peach Cobbler Murder, Joanne Fluke
The Sea, The Sea, Iris Murdoch

Poetry:
Axe Handles, Gary Snyder

Nonfiction:
-environmental memoirs:
Body Toxic, Susanne Antonette
My Story As Told By Water, David James Duncan
-creative nonfiction, essays:
The Boys of My Youth, JoAnn Beard
Distance and Direction, Judith Kitchen
In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction, ed. Judith Kitchen
Small Wonders, Barbara Kingsolver
-journal:
A Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton
-historical/journalism:
The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
-memoir/geographical journalism:
Walking the Bible, Bruce Feiler
-on writing:
Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury


Note: Email me if you want the low-down on any of the above, or if you want to tell me what you're reading.

Creature Comforts*

Dane, my five-year-old, is sitting on the couch watching Prehistoric Planet, his favorite DVD about dinosaurs. Leiopleurodon—an ancient whale-like sea creature whose jagged-tooth jaws have just been likened to a giant car-crusher—has eaten, well, a dolphin thing. (Dane, of course, could tell you its name).

Dane’s cozy under his afghan but his hands are cold. He woke up too early today so I sit out here watching the video with him. I hold a homemade hot latte in my hands. It feels so good I think Dane will like holding it too. He holds it and looks so comforted I tell him he can have a sip. He raises an eyebrow and cocks his head at me.

“Go ‘head,” I coax with a nod.

He brings the cup to his lips, tips his head back a little, drinks a sip in. He slowly brings it back down to his lap, looks over at me, and smiles the smile of a conspirator. I smile back a knowing smile.

“Good stuff, huh?”

I feel like a junkie who’s just scored a kid his first hit.

Since he’s able to recall every arcane detail about the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods, I’m tempted to tell him that these are Blue Bottle beans, voted by some to be the finest coffee beans roasted in San Francisco, home brewed on our Rancilio espresso machine.

Instead, I just let him hold my cup as Leiopleurodon makes his way further into the deep.

*I submitted this entry to the writingmamas.com blog. Hopefully it's in the queue for next week.

Angel Island Pix
(from earlier/July entry)

A short break along the Perimeter Trail.

Hydrating--it was HOT that day, pushing 100.
LOTS of water and Gatorade.

The Angel Island Immigration Station (known as the "Ellis Island of the West" and very important to Chinese American history) was further down the hill from our 5 mile perimeter loop, so we didn't attempt it--the perimeter loop was enough for the new cyclists. (Maybe next time.) So, no pix of that National Historic Landmark; however, the island also had old buildings where soldiers from WWI and WWII received support. We explored those for a while.

Above, inside one of the military support buildings.
Lots of cool old stuff like this to stick your fingers in.

I took a picture of Aubs on the ferry.

Aubs took one of me at the support station.

On the trail.

Trail-a-bike.

First Day of School Pix

Dane at his backpack/coat/helmet hook


Dane with our zippy little neighbor, Geornae.

Aubrey and Mom returning from first-day drop-off at school.

Writing, School, Camping

Dawn Yun, the leader of my Writing Mamas writer's group at Book Passage, has just launched a website: www.writingmamas.com. Check it out if you're curious to see what I/we've been up to. I've submitted one piece; I hope to submit more soon. (Yours truly is also in a photo.)

In other news, Dane's still enjoying kindergarten (will post pix as soon as I can download them) and Mick took his last final at 2pm today. Done with quarter #5. This one just sort of snuck up on us!

We're going camping this weekend at Mackerricher State Park, about three hours north of here; will pull Dane out at lunchtime tomorrow and start driving. Bringing bikes, kite, s'more fixins.

Ms Get Smashed By As

$2 ticket night at McAfee Coliseum earlier this summer. Picked Mick up after school and drove into Oakland to watch the Ms lose to the As something like 7-zip. No worries, though. The kids just had an experience similar to our Mariners experiences in the 80s--well, maybe even the 70s and the 90s too. Like all seasoned Ms fans, we knew to turn our attention to food, clapping to the organ music, picking candy up off the ground (oh, c'mon, everyone gets a one-time shot), and trying to ignore the boos of Oakland fans. Ichiro got an earful. (Youch. They're ruthless!)