What the heck?

So where did I go? I start blogging, y'all start to get a little interested and then...just like that, I disappear. It's not that I don't want to blog. I frigging love blogging. I'll blog all day long. I'll blog till the cows come home. It's just that here are the things I'm working on that require my writing time and attention:

1. A tv spec with my tv-writing husband

2. A pitch with said husband

3. Revisions of a novel I wrote in 2003-2004 then put in a drawer in order to focus on having a baby, raising a baby, going back to grad school, working as a therapist, stuff like that.

4. A screenplay. I know, I know, who in L.A. isn't? I don't care. I'm writing one. It may suck, it may rock. I don't care.

5. Several grants for our charter school, including one for an intergenerational e-penpal project that we are launching.

6. Other assorted first chapters of novels or outlines for scripts that I jot down as they come into my brain so I don't forget them.

And of course I'm still full-time momming. Oh, and I'm beyond obsessed with the word game apps on my IPhone. It's messed up how ofte I gaze longingly at my new IPhone, picturing the infinite bank of NY Times crosswords or the Tetris-like game with letters instead of shapes that requires quick spelling - oh how I love quick spelling. I justify my obsession by citing all the studies that show that as people age word games and crosswords prevent memory decline. And I'm about to 40, people, in case I haven't driven that home!

I realize as I glance over the list above, it reads as if I'm somehow blaming you - the fabulous reader, without whom I'm just shouting into the void - for how busy I am. I am not. I am actually thanking you. It has been the act of blogging, coupled with the responses I get from you all - sharing your stories, commenting on mine, giving me feedback - that has catapulted me back into the world of writing. I've never not written, but for years it was grad school papers followed by mental health assessments, therapy notes, grants for non-profits and schools, and long, late-night emails to far-flung friends. It was still writing and, like all acts of writing, filled a part of me that aches to be filled. Not kidding. Not being dramatic. Writing is my meds. If I don't get some sort of writing in during the day, I'm much crankier, insecure, and even borderline depressed.

It was that John Tesh-inspired late-night Maryland hotel room blogging tear that brought writing back to the center of my life (along with my family. Always have to make that clear out of concern that you'll visualize me as some Sylvia Plath / Virginia Woolf mash-up who can't focus on anything but the page. When I'm in it I'm in it. When I close it, I'm full-on mom.)

Since Mid-December, I have re-committed to writing with such gusto - partnering with my husband on these T.V. projects, working up the courage to open that rusty old desk drawer and pull out that rusty old novel, basically throwing my hat back into the proverbial ring. I don't blog much, but only because the 3-4 hours a day I have for writing gets eaten up so quickly by baby steps on all these other projects. Like right now, I have to dive back into the intergenerational grant thingy which is due at the end of the week. Ack. But I just wanted to write a quick post of gratitude. It is this blog, you readers, and my incredible writing group that meets in an incredible wine bar (causing our husbands to call it a drinking group at which we sometimes write) that got my chops going again. So, thank you.

Banana Duck

My daughter's toy camera has this feature when you can put silly graphics on photos. So she took a picture of some bananas on our counter, affixed a duck beak, then tweaked the coloring in IPhoto and came up with Pop Art - she made it all by herself. She's six years old! It's stuff like that that makes me smile big as a banana duck. I can't get over how awesome this is. I know I'm her mom, so I'm probably overzealous, but look at the composition! The humor! The artistry! Okay, moving on from Banana Duck.

One of my first posts, and the one that I've heard the most feedback about, dealt with our family's attempt to get pregnant... the difficulty we had and the struggle we went through to come to acceptance about what our family looks like. Since I wrote that post, I have heard amazing stories. Moms and dads at school give me hugs and tell me their stories. One of Sadie's best friend's dads shared with me the other day that it took 15 years for them to get pregnant. Fifteen years! Now they have two little girls. It took my grandparents nine years to get pregnant with my dad, back in the 1920s-30s, before there were fertility options, before rampant adoption from China. When I told that to my ob/gyn, the first time we were trying, she said, "Nine years and they were still having sex?" To which I replied, "Well, they didn't have kids."

The stories are wonderful, heartbreaking, inspiring. And now, I sit here distracted from the "comedy pass" I have to do on a kids' show my husband and I are writing, from editing the novel I put in a drawer for seven years and have finally pulled out, from applying for grants so our sweet little charter school doesn't go under... I'm distracted because one of my best friends finally had a baby and he's in intensive care after being born with severe lung issues. I'm now gathering stories about survival. A mutual friend - total strong mountain man - told me he was born premature, in NIC-U for two months while his lungs developed. Another friend tells me that her daughter was born with the cord around her neck and wasn't breathing for her first moments. Now she's a healthy, bright first grader. These are the stories I'm collecting today. When you put together the fertility struggles and the pregnancy complications and the crazy birth stories...it feels like a miracle that any of us are even here.

Positivity, dammit dammit dammit. Who dat?

When a military psychologist went on a shooting spree in Fort Hood last year, the principal at my daughter's last school had a moment of silence at the assembly, after explaining that it was for the "men and women who were fighting for our country who were killed by gunshot wounds..." I wanted to punch him in the nose. Sadie was in kindergarten and she looked over at me - thankfully I was there for some award presentation or fundraising something before I headed downtown to work - and I threw her the most comforting, loving look I could. I waited for her to ask about it later but didn't bring it up when she didn't. I did speak to the principal, reminded him that not all parents choose to leave television news spewing around the house or talk about developmentally inappropriate subjects in front of their children. I threw out my Marriage and Family Therapist credential, my master's in psychology, to impress upon him that five year olds don't need to be hearing about massive shooting sprees. They can't process that kind of rage and violence. I can't process that kind of rage and violence. And I'm about to be 40. That may have been the day I decided to search for a new school. A school where the people in charge really take care of our children, consider them their children, consider them precious. I believe we have found those people and that school.

When I was teaching first grade in South Central in 2001 - yep, that's right, I done a lot of things - I woke up, as did the nation, to the 9/11 news. I didn't have a child yet, and if I had I suppose I would've had to figure out a very simple, clear way to explain the mass mourning, the national fear, my own tears. I wonder how I would've done it. What I would not have done - and what many of the parents of the children in my class had done - was leave the television on, burning those terrifying images into the brains of six year olds. How do they process that? How do any of us?

Yesterday as we watched the football play-offs at a new friend's house and Sadie took photos of their cool 5-year-old boy shoot baskets in his toy hoop, and we ate Po'boys and cole slaw and tried to comfort the pregnant, hardcore New Orleans fan mom with soothing words and a thimble of wine, I kept feeling like something was terribly wrong. Some lunatic shot 12 people in Arizona and we were watching football. Practically speaking, there was nothing we could be doing from L.A. to help the congresswoman fight for her life. I prayed or sent good energy or whatever version of that I do. We comforted each other at halftime in veiled words so our precocious children wouldn't tune in. But what could we do?

What I struggled with yesterday, and this morning when I lay in bed, my heart pounding, my body aching, and my brain saying - Get out of bed! - to no avail (though obviously it eventually worked - I've made it as far as my living room) is how to do this. How do you watch a football game with friends and laugh at the commercial for an upcoming Owen Wilson movie when a congresswoman is in surgery because she was shot in the head with a semi-automatic weapon? A congresswoman whose nutball teaparty challenger urged supporters to bring M-16s to his campaign rallies and who Sarah Palin depicted with a target over her and encouraged people to "target"? Seriously, that is what s going on. People are being directed to destroy people who don't agree with them. And we're still fighting two wars that no one talks about and people are losing jobs and the ozone layer is disintegrating (is that the right word? Not sure) while congress passes legislation banning science... And now, this blog has officially become Bummer, Dammit.

Okay, enough of that. Here's my point. I can't do the "positivity" thing with blinders on. I will never be one of those women with the creepy frozen smiles insisting that "everything is great, for goodness sakes! Chin up! Turn that frown upside down!" Oh, I'll turn that frown... I will never be one of those parents who watches her daughter fall down and scrape her knee on the playground and tries to plug the crying by saying, "You're okay." I want to turn to those parents and say, "Um, clearly she's not okay, what with the tears and all." I understand the desire to decrease the panic, but come on, people, we can admit that falling down hurts. We can admit that things aren't looking so hot, environmentally speaking, that scientists aren't just being negative nellies when they point out that frogs are showing up all around the world with seriously weird genital structures. We can acknowledge that hermaphrodite frogs aren't a good sign.

The whole point of me writing about positivity is that being positive and enthusiastic and optimistic is not my natural stance. I would even go so far as to say that in this day and age, it's not a natural stance for anyone. It's pretty easy to be pessimistic. One of my favorite cynic friends told me about a study that showed that in a survey of people who identified as optimists and pessimists, the pessimists' world views were actually much more realistic than the optimists'. If you see the world as it actually is right now, it quite naturally leads to pessimism. Ergo...and stick with me on this one...a positive stance becomes a radical choice; a constructive, conscious decision to push against the natural flow, since the only thing I feel clear about is that following that negative flow will drown us. Maybe we are ultimately meant to drown, but I'm not going without a fight.

By making a choice to paddle against the malaise I feel when I ponder the insane consumerism, the de-prioritization of public education, the increasing racism and xenophobia, the industrial military complex...(Oh, I could do this all day), I'm deciding to fight. And the only way I know how to fight at my age, in my life, with my family, is to do small, everyday good things. I'm not going to leave my husband and daughter to go camp outside of the White House, but I can help build a great public school. I'm not going to live in a village in Chiapas and make sure the Mexican army isn't intimidating villagers (like I did in the early 90s), but I can write about what I believe, help build up someone else who's having a crap day, hug my daughter so hard she says, "Mom, please." I can show up for people the best I can. And I can love. Nineteen-year-old me - living with radicals in Nicaragua, marching on Washington against the first Gulf War, wearing a "F#&$^@ The New World Order" bumper sticker on my leather motorcycle jacket - just threw up a little in her mouth. Oh well.

When the next Travis Bickle (Google it, under-40 and over-60 readers) nutball goes out there on a shooting spree, I can't stop him. But I can try to shove as much love and empathy into this world as he shoots hate and destruction. I don't have a semi-automatic love machine (that sounds dirty), but I'll do my best. Positivity Dammit, out.

Still here...

This image has nothing to do with this post, but I just felt a desire to uplaod this adorable picture of two of my oldest dearest friends in front of a Bruce Springsteen photography exhibit in New York. It makes me so happy, I want to share it with the world. Between the Jersey friends and the Jersey icon, it reminds me of why I'm proud to be from Jersey. That's right, I said it. Jersey girl. Proud.

I felt a need to spend ten minutes on this blog to say that I'm still here dammit! And becoming more positive every day. The holidays were wonderful. I literally vacationed from everything (except family and friends). I barely checked my email. I barely received any email. I certainly didn't write, though I read a ton, sat in hottubs, played in snow, slept in, saw friends, drank a little too much, watched movies and a sketch comedy show, took bike rides, hung out at a great new playground near our house (which is so crowded, it's as if an entire neighborhood of toddlers was standing poised and ready, flew through the gate the second it was unlocked).

Now Sadie's back to school and I'm in the weeds. Deadlines, grant applications, school stuff, work...it's nice to be working. In an hour I head over to Sadie's school to teach the 1st grade "breathing and stretching" class. I think we'll do a story with poses. "A little girl walked through the trees..." (they all jump into tree pose) "and came upon a giant dog" (down dog) "and a beautiful, strong warrior" (warrior 1, 2, 3). You get the gist. They always want to do "machines" too, which is an activity I remember from early acting and movement classes. Everything can be recycled, everything is new to someone.

And here it is:

Ha ha ha. Very funny. Though I tried to ply Sadie with visions of her in the cute red dress with fur that's "just like Santa Claus," she did not bite. Ergo, this is what I have to wear for Christmas Eve and Day, instead of the cute little black dress I just got at a clothes swap that is cutey cutey cutey. Jon says, on the plus side, he's in no danger of anyone else trying to pick me up. I'm all his, that's for sure. I feel like a Mennonite at the Bon-Ton (see earlier entry). A shout out here to my dearest friend, Laurie, who said she'd come over tonight dressed in the cheesiest outfit she can find and dress her baby to match best as she can manage. Ah, girl friends. Gotta love 'em.

I can't resist posting about this, though I know my mom has read at least some of the entries because the other night at dinner she and my dad said, about the fertility/best laid plans entry: "This is the kind of thing you read on the last page of the New York Times Magazine," to which I replied, "That'd be great, if you can just let them know, it'd be much appreciated..." So if you're reading, Mom, I apologize for harping on the outfit, but knowing me and my short skirts, baby doll tees, and skinny jeans (which I can still rock at 39, goddammit, though the other day a third grader at Sadie's school asked, "Ms. Erika, are you wearing red skinny jeans?" "Yes I am, dear. Yes I Am.") can you see how a shapeless floor-length skirt and matching vest is a little bit of a bummer? Especially in L.A., where there's only a few opportunities a year to really sport the fancy dresses and even on holidays, most guests still show up in flip-flops...

Okay, done complaining. This is "Positivity Dammit," not "Bitch About Feeling like your Mom Dressed You On The Cusp of 40, Dammit." I'm making a playlist, wrapping the last of the presents, cleaning a bit, deciding that spotless is overrated, and listening to the Beastie Boys. Recipe for happiness.

Happy Holidays to everyone and their families!!! Enjoy wearing whatever outfit you desire tonight and if you start to feel insecure about how you look, just scroll up, take a glance at me (sung to the ABBA song), and feel a whole lot better about yourself. That, my dear friends and readers, is my Christmas gift to you. L'chaim and love.

Mommy-Daughter Matching Outfits

(Picture of my family circa 1978) Note the patterned shag rug in the foreground, and the fabulous tan 3-piece suit on dad)

When I was 6 or so, my mom made matching outfits for us to wear to my first opera. It may actually have been my second opera. I think we went to Hansel and Gretel when I was five and La Boheme when I was 6. La Boheme: A light-hearted romp about impoverished bohemians dying of consumption. (For those non-opera people in the house - and I count myself among you - it's what Rent was based on). In order to prepare us, my mom made paper dolls of all the characters and we "played" La Boheme at home while listening to recordings of the arias. I particularly enjoyed making paper Mimi cough up a lung as she died, tragically young. Just your average suburban family fun. My parents didn't like board games. The outfits my mom sewed are long, to-the-ground skirts with matching vests and little tissue purses (purses for tissues - remember, we were going to the Metropolitan Opera to watch a tragedy).

For this story to make sense, it's important to know that four years ago my parents moved across the country to be near us. Well, to be near our then 2-year-old daughter...and us. Along with my parents came entire Fisher-Price toy sets in pristine shape; all my Barbies with their unfortunate mullet haircuts that had seemed like good ideas at the time; buttons to match pretty much any shirt that has ever been worn by any member of our family; miles of embroidery floss, categorized by color and shade; and my brother's and my bronzed baby shoes and favorite stuffed animals. My husband, daughter, and I live in a house with a garage and plenty of closet space, an attic even, and yet when we need fabric for a craft project or specific size screws for a broken gadget, we call my mom before heading to Michael's or Home Depot. Usually, she's got it. It's kind of a miracle.

Of course, when you grow up with a mother who has cards for every occasion perfectly organized in an under-bed box, your office supply area tends to be a bunch of random boxes filled with envelopes that don't match; rubber bands twisted around bent paper clips; and papers, papers, papers, important papers in recycled folders that are labeled with what was in them three lifetimes ago. It's not that I don't appreciate organization: it's as if my DNA forces me to reject it. Teenage rebellion so imprinted in my bones it's almost physically impossible for me to successfully organize. I try. I really do. I put labels on plastic boxes for my daughter's art supplies: "stickers," "markers," "assorted found and recycled craft stuff," but I can't keep up with it. My desk has several upright cardboard boxes - given to me by my mother of course - and I periodically make decisions: this one's for stamps and envelopes - things that have to do with mail; this one's for all my pages of notes that might find their way into my novel or a script or something brilliant I'm just about to write; and this one is for all the stuff having to do with my daughter's school. Did I mention that I love the semi-colon? My husband and I were working on a script for Nickelodean recently and he kept taking my semi-colons out of the dialogue. When I finally confronted him: "Where are my f#$&%ing semi-colons?" He told me that he'd been taught not to use semi-colons in dialogue because actors don't know what to do with them. Silly actors; semi-colons are your friends. A pause, slightly longer than a comma. A way to really organize a list. Hey, look at that: I'm all about the organization in my writing. M dashes, colons, semi-colons, commas - they are all my friends. But within a week, those desk boxes have begun to infect each other - school papers in with stamps, bills and receipts - where do they go? - in with my jotted note things, checkbooks and notepads sticking out like they're trying to breathe...

I love my mother. I love my mother more every day. Watching her volunteer her time to come to my daughter's school and read to the children, spend extra time running a center for second-language learners who need a little more attention, sew soft, squishy pillows for the school library and colorful aprons for the art hut...I just adore her. The things that drove me mad as a teenager I now find endearing and tender. They were tender then too, of course, but it's hard to take so much tender when your 13, 14, 15, when all you want to do is get out, separate, expand beyond! When I was six years old, I loved that matching skirt and vest. As a teenager and young adult, I considered that outfit proof that my mom wouldn't give me any breathing room at all, ever! "Look," I'd say to therapists and friends and in angry lyrics in my all-chick band, Big Panty (not kidding), "She even wanted us to dress alike - she couldn't stand for me to be different from her! I am different! I am!!!" (the lyrics held the sentiment, but were a little more...well...lyrical.) I've referenced that matching outfit so many times throughout my long, hard-fought differentiation that it's taken on a life of its own.

And today, for the first time in 33 years, I saw those matching outfits in the flesh. Or in the faux-velvet, I should say. From the miracle closet, my mother pulled out those matching outfits and I waited for the anger, the frustration, the feeling of not being able to breathe, of being shrink-wrapped or straight-jacketed, or otherwise...

What I felt was...tenderness. Love. All the love that my mom must have poured into those black faux-velvet matching skirts and vests over three decades ago were intact, in the material. For a moment I thought my mom and my daughter would wear them on Christmas eve. It took me a long, confused moment to realize that she had saved them with the hope that I would one day wear the grown-up one. My daughter was, of course, thrilled. "Let's wear them on Christmas Eve AND on Christmas Day!" she cried. "Sure, hon," I said, wondering if photos of us would be fodder for her therapy in twenty years. Something will, chances are, whether we put on these outfits or not.

Chet Baker and peace in stormy L.A.

A quick note about the last blog entry: Thanks for all the feedback I've been getting about the story I wrote of challenged fertility and coming to peace with the family you have vs the family you pictured. Thanks also for the amazing personal stories that readers/friends are sharing. Most of you are emailing or FB-ing them rather than posting them, due to wanting anonymity or not wanting to have to register. To that end, we are working on a website dedicated to the project. I'll keep this blog going here and let you know when the site is up and running. At that point, you can post your stories anonymously or signed, and without having to sign in. Stay tuned...

It's been raining in Los Angeles for days. It's not a Los Angeles rain; it's what I imagine a Seattle rain or London rain might feel like. Falling asleep to the gentle pounding, waking up to a glary gray sky and windows spattered with drops. My two best friends from childhood live in those cities and I picture them wet, mossy, moody, cozy, a little sad. I looked away from the keyboard as I tried to type "moody" and I accidentally typed "mossy." I left it in because I liked the way it sounded. Mossy. That's how I feel right now: a little mossy. My husband and 6-year-old daughter just headed out to see Tangled and do some Christmas shopping, generously giving me a couple hours to write. Now that I've come back to it, if I don't have some writing time every day, I feel out of sorts, off, irritable. I remember reading Rainer Maria Rilke "Letters to a Young Poet" in college and he wrote about how a writer has to write every day. Over the years I'd question myself - am I a "real" writer? I don't write every day. Now I realize that a day when I write is a better day.

I have the IPod on shuffle in a docking station and some songs are just right - an Elvis Costello ballad, an old standard sung by Mel Torme, a silly Belle and Sebastian tune, but something just came on that is like that screech across the record album, "Ain't no cure for the summertime blues," sung by some bad country act. One of those - why do I have this on my IPod - moments? I'm getting up, excuse me...okay I'm back. Well, that was a big bummer. Turns out it was James Taylor (who anyone who knows me knows I love love love beyond reason and beyond criticism) on a recent Covers album he did. It was orchestrated like bad contemporary country and I am now working on flushing that sound from my memory lest it color my deep love of JT. Okay, got on Beck, singing Debra - "I wanna get with you...and your sister, I think her name's Debra..." That's so much better. Ahhhh.... Even though he's a scientologist. I probably shouldn't have typed "scientologist" into my blog. They're probably reading this as I type, internet spiders honing in on anyone who mentions the word.

Yesterday I was driving down to Playa Del Rey to swap some clothes at this awesome designer swap place - http://giveplustake.com/ - feeling aware of my privilege and of the fact that we are living slightly above our means right now and fighting the urge to go get a thai massage just to really drive that home - and I passed a long line of parents and children, huddled under umbrellas, outside the police station. It took me a second to put it together: Toy Drive. Every year the police station by our house collects new toys then has a toy drive at which parents can come get free toys for their children. The parents have to bring the children with them. I think the rule is that one child has to be there for each toy. I wonder if they're wrapped - the presents, not the children. If not, doesn't it ruin the surprise? I guess the surprise is pretty limited when you've stood for hours in the rain to earn your own present. Or does it give it that much more values? I've been struggling with how to help my daughter see the value of what she has, without stooping to the "There are children in Africa who would kill for that spaghetti you are poo-pooing! What's it like to be those children, standing in the rain with your parents, watching them accept your gifts from police officers? Normal, I imagine. Just like anything, it's just the way those families do Christmas. Is it any weirder than parents shopping without you, sneaking presents into stockings and claiming Santa Claus?

I waited to feel sad, guilty, even enraged at the social injustice. But this weird feeling came over me as I sat at the red light and watched the families huddled under big umbrellas, socializing, laughing, sharing free cups of hot chocolate. I felt a little jealous. It looked like such a community. It looked comfortable and friendly, if a little cold and wet. The kids were running around on the slippery patch of grass outside the station. The line was moving pretty fast. It was about half as long as the previous year when it was standard L.A. sunny outside. I wondered if the parents on line felt lucky that it rained, if they'd get a better pick or maybe even extra gifts this year. I am so glad we are building the public charter school that I'm sure I'll write more about in this blog over time, as it's the center of our family's social/educational/emotional/physical life right now. I finally feel like we have a community in L.A. It changes everything.

Chet Baker just came on my IPod - "Although I can't dismiss the memory of her kiss, I guess she's not for me..." oh God I love his voice. Crap, just got followed by Gloria Estefan, put on the IPod by my husband, I swear. Yep, my husband likes Gloria Estefan - should've put something in the wedding vows - "in bad musical taste and good..." I jump up, run over, turn it off, flip to "artists," select Chet Baker, ahhhh...now it'll be all Chet for the rest of the morning. Perfect for a rainy, chilly, L.A. day. Two sweet neighbor boys just brought me a bag of lemons from their lemon tree. Dominic was just a baby last time I looked, now he's got a mohawk. The gratitude is seeping back in as I write all this down. It doesn't take a masters in psychology and a license in marriage and family therapy - (Both of which I have by the way. Just saying) - to know that writing is therapeutic. That the act of slowing down and honing in, noticing the details of the day, recording them, brings a sense of purpose that's hard to achieve any other way. The wind is picking up outside and against the pale sky the undulating trees look unstable, overwhelmed by the sudden dramatic weather. Tonight we will take my dad out for a belated birthday dinner, then come home and start a fire in the fireplace. We will drag my daughter's futon in and cuddle up. Tonight's plan is a family camping trip in the living room. For now, Chet Baker's trumpet, stormy winds, a cup of mint tea, and gratitude. So much gratitude.