Archive for the ‘Lifestyle’ Category
I drove through the Mission today on a quickie errand. With all my life centered in the East Bay, and aside from making the occasional run for Peruvian food or ice cream or Quesadillas Suizas (you can see what my priorities in life are), I am rarely anywhere near Valencia Street anymore. But the Mission and I go back and we go deep. I had nearly forgotten that until today.
It has changed so much the last 10 years, from mid 90’s bike messenger gritty to swanky sushi bars (during the dot-com boom), then back to gritty again and now to this weird vacant Carroll Gardens-like hipster good restaurant enclave.
It’s always been a love-hate thing. I have been rolling my eyes at the Mission for YEARS, mostly due to its Trustfundian population.. you know.. the MFA students with their penchant for space rock, weed, rent control and really expensive shoes. I always looked down on the Mission from my other, more ironic ‘hoods that were, in truth, just more affordable (in retrospect, we weren’t all that punk rock). But we spent endless afternoons reading and sunning in Dolores Park, and nights in the Mission’s countless coffeeshops that didn’t mind our puffs of cigarette smoke, rants about consumerism and things like lack of adequate research on women’s health issues. We wanted passionate lives but didn’t know how to create them yet, and were contented to rely on passages from Howard Zinn books and Ani Difranco lyrics to inspire us.
When I moved to the city at the ripe age of 22, I was damaged and heartbroken. I had come to reinvent myself, but not from a place of reason and confidence; more for a lack of any other viable option. I recently had left Santa Cruz penniless and much more wise about recognizing the signs of heroin addiction when choosing a potential soulmate (long story, clearly). I had also been gathering momentum to put out my first album, and it seemed that San Francisco was a swell place for such a DIY project. Nothing made sense at that time but determination, and the Mission was a perfect landing place for me with its chaos, clubs, thrifty art stores, dirt, and renegade nonprofits.
At that age, we sought to fill the holes in our lives with experiences, so life emanated from the weeklies. We would scan the SFBayGuardian for show and club listings every Wednesday evening over a pot of coffee, and I felt an intimate connection with most local bands. We showed up for every operating all-girl dance party in our tank tops, overalls and purple lipstick, ready to dance all night*, even the ones in biker bars or office parks. I worked long hours as a nanny on the Peninsula and wrote lyrics on the train ride home and music in every spare moment. I reserved any actual personality for nights and weekends- work was a necessary function to fill. Like toothbrushing or tax filing. I went against traffic each morning, literally- standing at the train platform with my spiky bright red hair and camouflage pants, eyeing the “suits” on the other side on their way into the Financial District for a meeting as I headed south. I scowled at them. We laughed at them in the evenings over cheap bottles of red wine on our building rooftop and talked about how we’d never get suckered into that life. We wouldn’t take any pre-prescribed circuit. Screw ‘em. We would subvert the patriarchy… somehow.
I can still feel that energy on Valencia, even if it isn’t coming from the community so much (there seems to be much more passion about Bi-Rite than politics, and the pirate radio has long been shut down). On those wide, dirty streets, I am still in my twenties, fighting a serious battle against the man, and trying desperately to hold on to what I believe in. I can still feel the flutter of working up the nerves to walk into Aquarius Records and ask if they want to carry my label’s releases, or promote my show. The store is still there, thank goodness. As I drove past, I thought about dropping in for music and saw a girl who looked a lot like me, posting her co-op flyer and having a quick smoke outside.
*A side note. It is difficult to dance in platform military boots. I know grunge is having its resurgence so I’m just warning those of you who didn’t rock it the first time around. Source alternative footwear for clubbing.
press photo from '98. cool schmool.
Because I had a particularly hard week that ended with an aching back and a few more grey hairs, my wife let me sleep in until 10am today.
Then she took the five year old and left to spend the day in the city, leaving me to do WHATEVER I PLEASE with my morning. Isn’t she nice? No, you cannot have her.
Cue the Roku stream of Rachel Maddow’s Friday show about our withdrawal from Iraq, couch, and a big awesome bowl full of coffee.
That’s pretty dorky, I guess.
But I don’t care. It was bliss. Even Cherry the Terrible Dog enjoyed it. And she never enjoys anything unless it comes out of the garbage can.
One summer, I nannied for a wacky little girl named Leila who loved to watch the Wizard of Oz. Rather than swooning over Glinda’s sparkling gown and tiara, however, she would fist pump and scream “DIE, DOROTHY!!” in support of the Wicked Witch of the West during peak moments. For real. And with a voice that sounded as though she’d been drinking whisky and smoking Carltons for five years.
Leila-isms are oft-repeated in our home. We quote her more than any kid I nannied, taught or cared for in a ten year span (which at last count, including the girls who attended my South Central Los Angeles, pro-bono dance classes, totaled over 100). And no quote more often than this (said in a whiny, insistent, depressive tone): I Want To Watch Tee-Wee.
Leila was allotted only a few short hours of Dorothy or Wallace and Grommit reruns weekly and consistently tried to manipulate me into giving in and throwing a video on to keep the complaints to a minimum (which I did not do, of course. In case you’re reading this, mom of Leila. We made whole grain granola and read Proust instead).
My daughter has shortened this phrase to simply “I want to watch”. Which is probably because she’s a Taurus and doesn’t have time to pansy around with long complicated five-word sentences. She’s also amazingly confident navigating the remote and often masters new search functions before we even know about them, prompting quick grab-and-recoveries like “yes that was cartoon but, honey, it’s the grown up kind” (Yikes).
So our family tee wee habits have waxed and waned. For the past year we’ve not had ANY cable, and instead have been streaming stuff from our awesome Roku box, which enables us to watch all the horrible movies that Netflix offers for free, but also a guaranteed nightly viewing of Rachel Maddow on the news channel, cheaply rented movies and TV shows from Amazon, and the occasional addition of a great movie to Netflix’s Starz queue. We have a cute little flatscreen Hanspree monitor connected to the Roku, the DVD player and the living room stereo, forming a poor girl’s version of a home entertainment system and it’s been just peachy.
But then we have this baby coming. In December our world will be rocked and we’ll be exhausted by a new tiny person (I’m still trying to catch up on sleep from the first one. Five years ago). And I recall VIVIDLY that there’s nothing more lovely than fondling the remote control while the baby drops back to sleep at the tail end of a 4am feeding, and finding a reminder of the wonderful outside world, still glamorous and with room in it for you, in the form of Bravo, HBO and A&E.
As part of preparation for said baby, I’ve been ogling U-verse ads that come, and finding sweet deals for wall mountable tee wee sets on chain store websites, but I just can’t commit. I suspect my wife, though she appears cool on the issue, would secretly would throw her Marc Jacobs bag into the bay for a night with bonafide cable and a bag of pretzels. Should we throw in the towel and embrace pop culture? Or save those hard earned cable payments for some post-partum massages?
yep. i am trying *that hard* to come up with visuals.
So my wife has declared that we are embarking on a new adventure entitled “The Master Happiness Project”. The outline of it is vague to me still, but it appears to involve not being the yuppie scum my sister declared we had turned into when we showed up for Thanksgiving in a Prius and I stopped wearing concert tees.
She cites a few examples of what changes we’ll make: not using plastic storage bags and walking more. I have reason to believe it ultimately involves not using paper towels, since this all began after she had watched “No Impact Man”, a documentary about a young family in NYC going carbon-zero for one year.
I adore paper towels. I spent my childhood as the obedient daughter of conservationist naturalists who baked their own bread and eschewed hotels for campsites. Part of the joy of turning thirty was the realization that regardless of my heritage, I was not required to stare at the ocean and contemplate eternity, and that fashion could be artful, brilliant and life-changing, rather than just vapid, soul-killing consumerism. I LOVE hotels. I can’t wait until my next bite of artisanal French chocolate. What can I say.
She ultimately wants to bump our life quality up a few notches in a permanent way, which is obviously awesome. And I’m down with walking to the library and riding a bike (assuming said bike is chic, weathered and light blue. A girl has a right to make her mark.) But it’s very hard to jump on board a train going into the fog, especially when your life is already crammed full of activity and you just want to make it stop and spend two days in bed watching Almost Famous. And clean up with an eco-friendly cleaner and the quick swipe of a paper towel.
I am down for this plan and I trust my brilliant wife who is, in the end, the one everyone feels cool just knowing. And I’ve been kicking her ass for YEARS, making her stay up late, drink coffee, go to acoustic shows while she was secretly gagging and plotting her escape. It’s time for her to kick my ass for awhile. But if you see me walking around in clogs and carrying a weathered copy of Walden, please come and hand me a glass of mind blowing Pinot Noir. ‘Cause I’ll need it.
I have an OLD friend in town.. and I mean that in both senses that we are
A) both feeling crotchety and stubborn and slightly grey, but that
B) we’ve been friends for long enough that we shared a bus ride home on the first day of high school, shared a limo for senior prom, planned camping trips in college, delivered a toast at both wedding receptions, planned the baby showers and continue to send gifts and well-wishes in celebration of various milestones in our young children’s lives.
I rushed home to meet her, having completely forgotten to leave a front door key in the place I promised it would be. In order to make it home to let her in, I had to bolt the five year-old through heavy shopping center doors on the wrong side of the Bay and back to the parking garage while balancing my lava-hot double americano between two fingers and then defensive drive all the way across the bridge. When we arrived home, my friend and her two tremendously sweet children were sitting on my doorstep. A lovely sight!
Tonight, after all the little monkeys have been fed and bathed and put to bed, we do as old friends do and try to distill six months of events, everyday moments of disappointment, joy and utter confusion into a synopsis. And pair that with a bottle or two of wine. As usual, there is far too much ground to cover so we bullet point. Job. House. Baby. Spouse. Future. Past. New Projects. Food (always room for conversation about food). Wine. There is nothing quite like this speed round of highs and lows, especially when you have a little person who will be waking you up at the crack of dawn the next morning and not giving you any sympathy if you stayed up late talking. Everything gets thrown into the mix, and fast.
The conversation circles around to my work, since she is on year four as stay-at-home mom, and I am pushing through year five as “I’ll do anything, just don’t make me stay home with the kid all day”. Since I have been working as a family and estate manager for the last five years (taking care of someone else’s family) she asks, “but don’t you want to be the one with the assistant someday? I mean, where you run the show and you need help doing whatever you’re doing?”
I try in vain to explain that my heart overflows when I can help someone accomplish their goals, and that I find insane amounts of joy in making sure things are comfortable, beautiful and peaceful in people’s homes. I say that I have an exceptional viewpoint into lives of absolutely fascinating people, by nature of having clients with great life stories and unique backgrounds. That the experience of being able to walk around inside the lives of dozens of different people over the years, learning their value systems and measures of life quality is unparalleled. And that in the end I am so totally blessed to be let in, to be trusted to help people deal with their aging parents, their hilarious kids, their new dreams, moments of devastation, and all of life’s big and small moments that everyone should be trying to be me. Not the other way around.
I’m going to watch an old favorite movie and go to bed, and not make this an everything-is-everything story. But I just wanted to get it out. I am so freaking lucky to be able to do what I do, it’s hard to explain and sometimes it’s hard to believe.