Best of Intentions

A close member of our extended family is in the midst of a scary health issue which, at their request, we have been keeping hush-hush. All of us adults have been taking turns going to the doctor with this person, as this person is now in week five of treatment. Sweet Dub, since he has the most flexible schedule, has been taking up a lot of these duties -- which means I am single parenting it more than usual, which means I have even less time to do my fun things I like, i.e. blogging and such like.

Best of intentions, terrible implementation.

Hopeful that things will smooth out soon.

On Not Being Able to Take It On

What a week. How to sum up?

Well:  let’s go back to 2^nd grade, when Viva first started at the school she currently attends. Pretty much since then we have been hearing about two trips that fifth graders can go on each year:  a week of Science Camp in March, and a week on an historic trip to Washington, DC and colonial Williamsburg during spring break in April.

Considering we have been hearing about both trips since 2^nd grade, and rather intensely since 4^th grade, and super intensely since the start of 5^th grade, it was a no-brainer that we were going somehow to get Viva to attend. The DC trip is super expensive and is actually coordinated by another local school. They invite our students as a courtesy. As we started talking about this in the fall, we held out hope that a miracle would happen and our ship (full of money) would come in and one of us would be able to accompany Viva on this trip. Unfortunately this did not happen. We put down a deposit and began making payments on a ticket just for her. And then in January we discovered that only one other kid from her class was going (due to the huge expense) and that none of the teachers from her school were going, and that they were having trouble booking enough chaperones. We did not feel comfortable sending her 2,600 miles away with complete strangers. So we made the decision to pull out of the trip, losing a $400 deposit, but with the wonderful prospect of Science Camp still in the offing.

Science Camp! A week in the wilderness! No technology! Hiking! Archery! Canoeing! Bunking in a cabin with nine of your girlfriends! Smores! Campfires! Being away from your boring parents and annoying siblings for five whole days! What could be better?!

The weekend before the trip, we were running about getting last minute items – a small flashlight, a disposable camera, extra socks. It was very exciting. On Sunday, we reviewed the packing list and taught Viva how to roll her clothes to pack for camping. On Sunday evening, after we came back from the playground and had dinner, Viva said she didn’t feel well. I touched her head. It was burning. I put her in the shower, from which she had to exit promptly to throw up.

OH WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY….

I gave her some ibuprofen and put her to bed. Sweet Dub came home from his Sunday gig and we conferred. We were both heartsick. In the morning, despite our reservations, we decided she should try to go to camp. She said she felt fine. She felt slightly warm to the touch and her energy seemed good. We agreed to let her go.

Which is how I ended up on Interstate 10 at 8 PM on St. Patrick’s Day, with one kid in her pajamas sleeping in her car seat, driving out to pick up the other kid 90-some miles away, all the hell the way out in a cabin in the woods in Riverside County, because she had a fever of 103.5. We didn’t get back home until nearly 11:30 PM, at which point I realized we didn’t have any ibuprofen, since we sent it with her and the camp staff confiscated it.  Sweet Dub had to venture out to find a 24-hour pharmacy and nobody got to bed before midnight (except Ceeya, who slept through it all and was Full Of Beans at 6 AM.)

The next day, when we took her to see the pediatrician, her doctor asked me, “Do you think it’s a virus?” at which point I wanted to punch her in the face, because guess what, I haven’t been to medical school – maybe YOU could tell ME what YOU think it is?

But I didn’t punch her in the face, and for the next couple of days we treated it as the flu until we concluded that it just wasn’t getting better, and due to Sweet Dub’s crazy schedule this week, on Thursday I ended up having to take both kids to Urgent Care after I got home from work and we stayed there for the better part of three hours. And we got a chest X-ray, and my kid had a fever of 100.8, and then they told me they thought she must have walking pneumonia, which doesn’t even make sense since usually with walking pneumonia you barely know you’re sick, and Viva at this point had had a fever since Sunday and had stopped eating and was barely moving. I have never seen her so sick and so depressed.

Over the weekend, after a couple days of antibiotics, she perked up. We are tentatively looking forward to her birthday weekend this coming weekend, during which we are having her best friend over to go to the movies, to Dave & Buster’s and to stay for a sleepover.

But I am still so sad for her. She went back to school today, and all the kids were talking about Science Camp. I had paid for a Science Camp T-shirt, which I forgot about (!) and which she received today. When I called to talk to her after school, she told me it makes her sad to look at it and she wants me to take it away.

There is nothing I can do to make this better. This is one of the worst parts of being a parent, watching your kid have to suffer disappointment – particularly over something that they have been looking forward to for such a long time. Viva was literally X-ing out the days until Science Camp on her calendar all month.

This is just a big sucky thing. My heart hurts for her. I can’t carry this for her, much as I want to. I can only watch, and sit with her, and tell her I’m so sorry for how much it sucks.

And P.S. that is why I didn’t blog last week. Tune in next time, hopefully for something more uplifting…

When Things Are Complicated

The job that I currently have, and which I have had for two years now (!!), has been challenging in a number of ways I could not have anticipated. Middle management, for one thing, is just as bad as it has traditionally sounded to me. I avoided managing people for years for this reason. As a middle manager, you are sandwiched between your boss and your employee(s), and must run interference when there is a problem on either end. Managing people takes an insane amount of time and energy, and quite frankly, I already have children so I don't find managing adults all that fulfilling.

I work with someone who has naturally-occurring high levels of stress, to the extent that every speed bump is a ten on a scale of one to ten. She takes work-related things personally. If someone doesn't respond to an email in a timely fashion, for example, she tells me she hates that person, and from then on, that person has a terrible track record in her eyes. She also then gives attitude to that person, who understandably does not enjoy receiving attitude and thusly, tries to avoid working with her. 

I explain to her how she can't respond to people from a place of hostility, how it will work better if she recognizes everyone has multiple demands on their time and her request is just one of multiple requests that each person has to manage for themselves. I urge her to approach co-workers in a spirit of collegiality rather than as adversaries who have perversely decided to ruin her workflow and her life.

I am turning the tables on myself and for my own sanity, not taking things my boss does personally. I do pretty well with everyone else, but my boss can come across as rather judgmental (she is a bit of a perfectionist). You can see how this might make me a bit nuts between the two.

So today, I give you this:

 

In case you can't read it, it says: 

The sun is up

The sky is blue

It's beautiful

And so are you

It's a postcard for a business called Lyrical Kids, which offers "music classes for babies, kids, and their grown-ups."

It is a simple message. I keep it by my desk to remind myself when things get complicated. They don't always have to be.

Beyond Caffeine

Sweet Dub has been away from home two nights, dealing with some family issues. I do not sleep well when he is gone. I jolt awake sporadically and hear every little noise and creak around me. Needless to say, that doesn't work well once the sun rises.

Aside from massive doses of caffeine, any tips for staying awake?


- Posted using BlogPress

Scattershot

So many things to say, so many things I can't share.

It's a dilemma. So here are some random things.

Can I be boring and tell you how in love I am with Lupita Nyong'o? It just feels like I am jumping on an already over-populated bandwagon. But, oh, hell -- here I am, plopped right in here, trundling along with the mainstream media. I predict a huge uptick in the popularity of the name "Lupita"among babies in the years to come. Yeah? 

Today is National Day of Unplugging! ....Oops. Oh, I guess you are supposed to be unplugged from electronics from sundown tonight until sundown tomorrow. Unfortunately that is not going to work as we have some serious family medical shit going down right now (see above re: can't share). Blah Blah Fail.

In related news, we have undertaken the task of getting Viva a cell phone for her eleventh birthday, which fast approacheth.  She will be graduating from elementary school in May and moving on to middle school in August. I want her to have a way to keep in touch with her old friends since she will be switching school districts and it is highly unlikely any of her friends will be at her new school. I also want to have a way to contact her because I anticipate a variety of after-school activities and needing to pick her up hither and yon. We plan to have a talk with her about our expectations for her usage and care of the phone and to provide her with something along these lines as reinforcement. 

Wow, do people have a lot of opinions on whether YOUR kid should have a phone. Sweet Dub and I are both rather sensible most of the time. I said, most of the time. And Viva is fairly mature and responsible most of the time. I said, most of the time. I am aware that she may abuse her privilege of having a phone. And she will be aware that she will be in Huge Unspeakable Trouble should she abuse the privilege. There will be consequences, and then we will move on. 

Have I mentioned how much I adore Viva? Perhaps not lately. (I mean perhaps I haven't mentioned it lately, not that I don't adore her lately.) I love this age. She is fun to be around, and we have long talks and just enjoy hanging out with each other. I will always love her, but I also really *like* her as a person because she is so thoughtful and funny and insightful. 

Oh, and to head off any friction in the event her sister reads this someday: yes, I also love Ceeya. How can there be any doubt?? 

And finally: I think the laundry hampers in our apartment are being filled by fiendish elves while we are out. Why is there so much laundry, always? What is to be gained?

Happy weekend. Peace out.

Happily Ever After

At the beginning of the year, I decided that for 2014 I was going to plan a little monthly LA adventure for the Blah Blah Family. We would go somewhere we'd never been, do something we'd never done, you get the idea. Well, as I have mentioned, one of our close friends got married in February, and it was such a HUUUUGE wedding that everything else took a back seat. First in early February there was the bridal shower, which had a Victorian theme, and which was held at a Victorian tea room, and for which we were told to wear period attire:

The hat isn't mine, but it's pretty great.

I am looking quite the demure and fancy lady here.

Sweet Dub was at the bridal shower because he was the photographer, but the kids did not attend, so we can't count that toward our monthly adventure. As I may have mentioned, the wedding itself had a Roaring 20s/Gatsby theme. Guests were asked to wear attire appropriate to the era. In the two weeks between the shower and the wedding I spent much of my spare time hunting down shoes for all three of us Blah Blah ladies, not to mention dresses, headpieces and jewelry, not to mention all the usual things like cleaning the house, braiding hair, doing laundry and oh, going to my job. So not a lot of time there for an adventure either. 

However: the wedding itself was the first time either of my kids had been to a wedding (okay, Viva did go to a justice of the peace ceremony at a courthouse for her cousin, but that was an on the fly wedding, not a huge event like this). The venue was magnificent, and none of us had ever been there:  the Park Plaza Hotel.  

The Park Plaza Hotel is one of those places from back in the heyday of old Los Angeles, and you can just imagine how incredible it was at the height of its glory. Today, it sits in the midst of a congested, run-down and crime-ridden area. It's an historic landmark and doesn't operate as a hotel any longer, but can be rented out for events like weddings or for TV/film production. Inside, you forget about the funky neighborhood it's in and kind of lose yourself in the glamour. 

Image credit:  http://parkplazala.com.

I took a lot of pics at the beginning and then my phone died right after the ceremony. Awesome. But I can't include a lot of the pics here because I don't have permission to publish from the people who are in them. However, here is my lovely fam:

And here is a pic of me hanging out with Ceeya, Best Flower Girl in the Land, before she went down the aisle:

Sorry, no full-length shot of me. Waiting for Sweet Dub to finish editing all 900 million photos in order to send me at least one. The wedding got underway 45 minutes late, at 3:15 in the afternoon. GAH.  The wedding event, by the way, was segmented into:

(1) the ceremony and
(2) the post-ceremony cocktail hour, both for 100 people;
(3) the reception, which seated 300;
(4) a Cotton Club-themed "after party" (I know. What?), which was to have a capacity of 500 people. (I think you already know that I didn't stay for that part, since for one thing, it was a Sunday night and we had work and school in the morning; and for another, I had children with me.)

If you are wondering whether I actually got up and danced on stage at this event, as I mentioned here:  NO. No, I did not. That portion of the event did not take place until nearly 10:00 PM, and I was long gone by that point. My kids and I were in our jammies and watching How to Train Your Dragon by 7:57 PM.

But the important thing is: it was beautiful, and the newlyweds looked enormously, gorgeously happy. And it was sort of an adventure, and certainly only one that could happen in L.A. The End.

Window Shopping

(Putting on my Andy Rooney voice for a moment:)  Have you ever noticed that when you are running low on funds, the universe bombards you with all kinds of beautiful things that you lurrrve but can't afford to buy? Have you also noticed the converse, in which when you happen to have some play money and want to treat yourself, you can't find anything you like?

I am currently in the former camp, and it is not my favorite place to be. There is a sort of workaround, which is the spectacular online pinboard, Pinterest. Oooh, I love love love Pinterest. The cool thing about Pinterest is you can pin something and then a few days/weeks/months later as you are adding to that particular board, you might realize you don't lurrrve something as much as you once thought, and you can delete it. It's almost like buying the actual thing and then having buyer's remorse, except that no cash has changed hands, and that is infinitely better for one's wallet. 

I originally got onto Pinterest to find ideas for kids' birthday parties, and then I got sucked into creating boards for home decor and recipes and outfits and hairstyles and such. It is kind of addictive, so I try only to use it from my phone. If I have a full-size screen to scroll through, I am a goner. Gah, so embarrassing. But having said that, I realize that my creative outlets at this point in time are: decorating my apartment; combining things in my closet in various ways to create new outfits out of what I already have; doing hair; and cooking. And as I realize that, I feel a little relief, because so often I mourn my lack of creative expression and feel depressed about it. I am just using different mediums at this moment, and that is okay. 

"As long as we're creating, we're cultivating meaning."

 - Brene Brown

 

Gettin' Gatsbyfied

“I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

 

So I am going to this wedding in a couple of weeks, and the bride is a very dear friend of the family. She is loud, and foul-mouthed, and complicates things endlessly. She is also generous to a fault, loyal, hilariously funny and loving to the point where she would without question take a bullet for anyone in our family. You take the good, you take the bad, and we love her, so here we are. 

 

Our friend likes to live large. She is an event planner, so naturally, her wedding has become a huge event. It is a 1920s themed wedding, being held at an art deco landmark LA hotel, and she has asked that all her guests dress in 1920s themed attire. I have been looking online at 1920s beaded dresses and found one I LOVE (a reproduction) for $400. Well, that is not going to happen in this current scenario. So I have decided to do a modern interpretation of the theme, and today I bought this:

 

Image courtesy of Bloomingdales

 

In the 1920s, dresses had little to no definition at the waist:

Image from Vintage Dancers - go check out the site, it's cool.





I bought a kind of art deco looking belt to slap around that bad boy and we'll see how that looks. I am going to wear long strings of pearls or perhaps a tassel necklace, depending on what I can find, and probably some 1920s shoes from Modcloth. I may try to set my hair in finger curls - will let you know how that turns out (I've been watching tutorials on YouTube).

 

So okay, I am getting all that together, feeling pretty good. And then today I received an email from the friend, saying that she is putting together a performance AT the wedding, and she is asking selected couples who have what she describes as successful marriages to participate. She wants me, as one-half of one of those couples, to lip-sync a song to Sweet Dub in the middle of the reception at this HUUUUUGE wedding. Holy Jesus!

 

You know what? My first reaction was to say no...so I said yes. Totally outside of my comfort zone, and I might embarrass the hell out of myself, but I'm going to do it. It will be a complete surprise to Sweet Dub and he will love that.

 

I get to pick the song. I am thinking I might do a Josephine Baker or Edith Piaf song. Or, in keeping with the theme, there's always Fergie:

 

I kid, I kid. But I do like her manicure here. And by the way:  song suggestions welcome!

 

One Moment in Time

Have you ever used a day book? Or read one? Day books are simple journals that are used to record daily events as they occur -- back in the day, one would write about little happenings such as "first snow," or "finished Little Women today," or "zombie apocalypse, ugh."

 

Apparently, people still keep them online, formats vary widely and sometimes, sometimes you might see them in the form of a blog post. (You see, I actually did have a point there.) Here is my daybook entry for today - Monday, February 10, 2014.

 

------------------

 

I am thankful...that I was able to reconnect with friends this weekend at a bridal shower.

I am wearing...a gray and silver polka-dotted sweater with an aqua scarf, cropped dark gray pants, knee-high black high-heeled boots, and silver circle earrings.

I am wondering...what the hell I am going to wear to my friend’s wedding in two weeks. It’s a 1920s/Gatsby theme and we are asked to wear attire appropriate to the era. Note that Ceeya is the flower girl and Viva is a guest. I have dresses for them but no shoes yet. I am trying not to stress over this, as I know I will get it together, but I have not yet found anything for myself that I would LOVE to wear and that I might wear again.

I am pondering...why toilet seat covers have become such a big thing on public toilets. Is it really that hard to squat?

A favorite quote for today...

Photo of me (not from today, from this weekend's vintage Victorian bridal shower):

 

 

P.S. Do you not love the old lady hat? I die.

 

Working a Long-Range Plan

Image Credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Chapter Two
In which we discuss how to get there from here.

Yesterday, I had lunch with a dear friend who is also a former co-worker – in fact, my former office-mate. We talked about our future plans. I told her that I am feeling this pull to go back to school. “For what?” she asked.  

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Communications, maybe?”

She made a face and snorted. “Don’t waste your money with that, you’re already a great communicator,” she said.

“But I want to learn more of the tech side of things,” I said. “So I don’t need to go back to school full-time, just take a class here and there.”

“Yeah, try looking at some extension courses,” she said. “And I can connect you with a couple of writers who are freelancing and doing really well. One in particular, L – she is really easy to talk to, and she can tell you how she segued from freelancing part-time into a career as a full-time writer.”

It all sounds so simple, in a way. But I know I have to take one step at a time as part of a long-term plan to transform what my work life looks like now.

STRETCH.  

I am telling you this because I expect you to hold me to it, blogosphere. Don't let me shirk!

Lost in LA

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, Yo shi.

Today is Friday! I think I am supposed to be writing something about Los Angeles – my adopted hometown, the birthplace of my marriage and my babies, a pivotal place in the Lisa Journey – in honor of the upcoming 20th anniversary of my relocation here. 

When I first moved to Los Angeles in January of 1995, I was living with my then-boyfriend (now ex of many many years), in a half-way decent apartment on Hollywood Boulevard. If you are familiar with Los Angeles, you will be horrified to hear that I was actually living on Hollywood Boulevard, but if I tell you that it was the part west of La Brea, in fact almost as far west as Fairfax, you will realize that it was okay. Yes, even in those days before Hollywood was starting to reinvent itself a bit, that stretch of Hollywood Boulevard was fairly safe. Although I do believe that after I moved out and my ex was still living there, the apartment was burglarized one day while he was out. 

At any rate, it was a half-way decent apartment, and it was on a bus line, which was crucial, since I did not have a car. As a Bostonian, I was raised on transit lines, and I did not get a driver’s license until I was 20. I did not actually own a car and drive on the regular until I was 27. It is a vastly different lifestyle, being from a city where one walks, or rides the subway or the bus wherever one wants to go. I arrived in Los Angeles, one of the biggest cities in the world, and I expected to walk out of my apartment and that a bus would come by within five to ten minutes. A bus schedule? Who ever heard of something so ridiculous? 

Oh, silly, silly 26-year-old me. That was a pipe dream. 

But here is one thing I loved: the section of Hollywood Boulevard where I lived had sky-scraping palm trees lining the sides of the street, and you had to crane your neck way back to see the tops.

I loved that a few blocks down the street, when we would stroll along on one of the side streets between Hollywood and Sunset Blvds. (was it Curson? Was it Sierra Bonita? I can’t say), there were all these adorable bungalows, and that in the front yard of one of them, behind a four-foot high fence, there were two massive Great Danes – one black and white, one tan – and they would bark a couple of times as we came near and heave themselves up and lay their great paws and legs over the fence easily, still with their hind feet on the ground, and fawn all over us and let us rub their giant microwave-sized heads, and wag their tails with great dignity. 

I loved that I could walk to the Alpha Beta supermarket at the corner or Fairfax and Santa Monica (sadly, no more – it is a Whole Foods) and that I might run into Angelyne in the parking lot. 

I loved the unexpectedness of it all, the vastness of it, the random bits of delightful weirdness which seemed part and parcel of Hollywood life – all the more remarkable because I had resisted moving there in the first place. LA was such a sprawl, I thought. I feared it. I might be lost in it. And I was, lost in it. But not in a bad way.

Next Generation Artsy

Recently, the Blah Blah family undertook a little creative adventure. I am looking for new things for us to do these days--things to give my kids a different perspective, to broaden their horizons, Lord, maybe enrich them a little bit.

So with all the resources at my disposal, with minimal research I came across the Arts for NexGen program at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Well, what?! This is a free (FREE!) program for kids under 18. They have activities for kids every Sunday. Free! Metered parking around the museum is free (FREE!) on Sundays. Each kid who is a NexGen member can bring one adult guest with them every visit--free! Are you seeing a trend here?

Well, I signed the kids up online and received their membership cards in less than a week. And we went to LACMA, and I am embarrassed to say it's the first time my kids had been there. They loved it!

Tickets and maps and things, oh my!

We were helped along in the beginning by some nice folks who were helping direct people for Andell Family Sundays, a free (FREE! But I would imagine, underwritten by the Andells, so free thanks to them) day of kid-friendly activities on (coincidentally) Sundays at LACMA. They helped us map out our agenda and gave us some tips on what to see and where to go.

We stopped by Metropolis II, a cool miniature cityscape with tiny cars and trains that whiz about. We participated in a Photography and Light activity in which a NexGen docent talked to the kids about light and shadow and gave us all paper and pencils and encouraged us to find art that we liked and draw it. I chose this photograph:




Viva chose to draw me drawing the photograph, while Sweet Dub photographed us both:




And later on we ran around and under the Levitated Mass:

That's Ceeya, looking especially tiny.

And we tried creating little vignettes with shadow boxes and photographing them:







And then we had lunch from one of the skazillion food trucks parked across the street:

(That's Belly Bombz, by the way.)

And then it took me like three weeks to blog about it. But it was still fun. The End.


P.S. Totally recommend!

Patience, My Precious

All indications from the universe lean toward telling me that I must be patient. I have had two weeks of servers crashing, appointments going wonky, and heavy traffic. Just now, I composed an email to someone about a job posting and my gmail will NOT SEND IT.

Something else must be in store. I remain hopeful.

 

P.S. I wrote this and stupidly tried to post it, not making the connection that Blogger is also a Google platform. Thus, if gmail is not working, neither is Blogger. I is smart some timez.

Permission to Fail

It is still early in the year yet, and folks are still kind of riled up about resolutions, and achieving things, and highfalutin’ aspirations about making themselves better people and whatnot. In that spirit (and I by no means seek to denigrate such folk, as I can sort of count myself among them), I present to you “Fail Fast, Fail Often,” a recent article on the Daily Beast. (Well, actually, not so much an article as it is an excerpt of the book by the same name.)

The premise of this piece is that we too often get bogged down in details instead of taking action. The authors exhort us to do things badly, as fast as we can, because if we increase the quantity of our output we will stop worrying about the quality of the output – and yet, and YET! Somehow mysteriously letting go of worrying about the little details often results in higher quality output. At least that’s how I’m interpreting it.

There is something to be said for this, at least for me, because I am one of those “getting bogged down” people, with the result that I can too easily talk myself out of doing something because it will require Too. Much. I convince myself that I don’t know Enough to do said thing, so I get bogged down in learning more about it, and putting off doing something while I try to backfill what I think I need to know. And then after I have made two or three steps and realize the great enormity of all there is yet to learn, it becomes a monumental task and I get caught up in something else and never get back to it.

What? What? Is that really the best way to go about things? Clearly not.

Where I get bogged down is in expending time and energy on an idea that isn’t going to work. They key is to determine if the idea is workable. It is not always clear or obvious. But I like the idea of kind of throwing myself into it quickly, and seeing if it’s all that and a bag of chips, as I imagined it to be, or whether it’s simply a no go. And then moving on to the next new shiny thing.

So again, for 2014 it’s all about that one little word for me:  STRETCH. Get out of the comfort zone. Do things a little differently. Or maybe a lot differently. As the authors say,

You can’t know what something is like, how you will feel about it, or what will result from it until you actually are doing it.

It’s pretty simple actually. Let’s get stretchin’!