Side of Honeydew

Disgrace Under Fire

2025-11-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

The stegosaurus is known for its small brain,
the size of a walnut. We have a lot in common sometimes.

I wish I could say confidently that I am a boss, but I really am such a child in many of the stressful moments of our moving military family lives.

However I will say it would break some others. Like a really nervous pet?

I have learned that getting my nails done and buying things like a $20 pink Himalayan salt lamp — which the kids and their friends would later dare each other to lick during sleepovers — helps me be less of a wreck. Something about some new, mood-adjusting piece of cheap decor or little tech gadget, or a refreshing health shot in a glass bottle, or the best nail art example I could find on the internet, makes renting furniture or eating off a paper towel standing up just fine.

If I'm being honest, often it's a glass of wine too. Or two. Maybe an IPA.

Other times it's a movie seemingly made just for me. Or the silliest show for the youth of today, but they can't watch it because they have homework. An indulgent book. A bunch of charcuterie items with no one to share them. Or a new alpha generation slang term I get to use around the kids to see what they do. Perhaps including a new accent I'm trying out.

It's saying no to things that make me miserable, while saying yes to things like olive oil lattes and yes, I'll plan the date night so I get to have it.

It also helps to write down the stressful things, see the humor, try to make someone else feel better.

It's been seven moves in 15 years. Sometimes every two years. Same goes for jobs, and at times more often because lay-offs, pregnancies and a pandemic can happen. Same goes for homes, schools, doctors, haircuts and haunts.

Same goes for commutes where I'm flying down a highway I don't know how to keep up with, hitting pot holes I didn't know were there, and wondering if I should carpool with these confident speedsters to get myself to work quicker in the heart of the city.

Same goes for threats of a snap deployment that leaves me single again. (The Navy uses other phrasing, but that takes more words to explain and nobody cares.)

At one point it hit me. Being a military spouse and parent really has become my identity. Oof. Why do I feel this way? Everyone has an identity and it's not always what they intended. No person has only one layer, yet there's an outer one we maybe can't help but fight as it takes over. Like that weird "cover the Earth" Sherwin Williams paint ad. I crave in equal parts adventure and normalcy and achievement. Often a tough three-legged stool to build. I teeter quite a bit.

But we're also explorers and Gumbies.

We've lived longer elsewhere and on-the-go than in our hometowns.

What else would we really be doing?

Ha! Sometimes I'm so mad I scream into the void. Then it's one breath, one task, one joy, one challenge charged through clumsily, one unexpected win. And I see him out of context. Passing each other on the drive home with a wave I actually see, or reuniting after splitting up the kids for different things at another foreign-to-us local event. And I know it's because I'm happy. The kids we take care of together are happy, running towards me from somewhere else.

The grass is a little yellow everywhere.

Bamahenge

Swamp Thang

2024-08-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

If at middle age I catch myself walking around work with toilet paper trailing from my waistband, I can't imagine what I'll be like at 80.

My hearing started going in high school my friends will tell you laughing.

Cary will probably have to hide my car keys sooner than I think.

In the last several years any time I eat something spicy or tart, like lemon candy or cherry tomatoes or grapefruit juice – curry or salsa – my tongue's taste buds will start shifting into a pretend map of the world. Stress or being sick too. I know what it is, relatively harmless but weird; I come from a family of oral healthcare practitioners. But in my mind, it's my body's way of telling me it's the beginning of the end.

Or I need a break. Yeah let's go with that. A chance to pay more attention and take better care. (Which we all know is good for everyone involved.)

I remember my tender tongue began after Cole was born.

When Jules was a newborn, I started having tender feet right when I got out of bed.

I became emotionally tender-headed.

We push through it. These things are almost-always-most-likely nothing or normal.

My right hip now has good days and bad.

My timed mile I won't share.

I saw somewhere if you don't take a break, at some point your body will take a break for you.

It's felt that way as we've settled into our new home that constantly shifts. A repair. Fixing up an old boat. The threat of a change in life plans. A kid getting sicker. My husband getting busier than I've ever seen him, somehow still managing to do early morning dishes and late night laundry. Somehow quietly. Setting us up for work trips with pre-built meals.

While I'm just happy to be here if I'm employed and the kids aren't ill or in trouble. Delighted when the house isn't a wreck, and I'm there at the peaceful office or bustling event with our smart, kind, funny team. They make me feel like a marketing champ. Like a liberal arts degree is as powerful as numbers. Of course then I'll make a gaff and curse my name. Miss an opportunity due to family obligations and scorch my own earth.

I heard somewhere to give yourself a thousand breaks. Then give yourself a thousand more.

Between podcasts and forcing extra sleep, early mornings on the porch creasing a borrowed book and worrying about it, and runs turned to jogs, things are better. Over a long period of time. There's no rushing it. If there was I'd be 80 sooner and worse off.

We hit the water when we can, with snacks he packs – due to a father who makes time he doesn't have. The sun, sky, fresh air and cooling off is rallying for the weeks.

Jules made a new best friend when she moved here simply because a mini bell pepper in her lunch started a conversation. Now all of us like being friends with Kitty.

Cole's friends help him not leave anything behind when we pick him up.

Not every day is easy for any of us. Anywhere.

Jules likes to hear my embarrassing stories growing up and now. There are many. She has her own. She makes me retell mine when something happens to her. Takes everything in and I see her confidence rebounding on her face. It's starting to work on Cole.

Meanwhile we all can't help but gawk at and tease Cary when he gets a horrible reaction to poison sumac, trying to save us some money by working on a hard area of the yard. We all then watch YouTube videos about sumac, poison oak and poison ivy. Cole makes Lego versions that are uncanny and giggles while rubbing them on Cary.

Even though everyone feels like a swamp thing sometimes, Swamp Thing was a DC Comics hero. And "we're all made of the same stuff."

Florida Boy

2023-12-28T17:07:00.000-08:00

Sticking with my new theme of one blog post per calendar year, I'll resume where I left off in the nick of time.

When Cary got back from deployment we proceeded to live in harmony for 90 days, followed by 90 days of stress as we navigated the squadron closing. We assessed another move that hopefully this, this, THIS time would ring true. So we scrambled once again to continue giving our jobs our all and our kids ridiculous opportunities.

We went life-hunting, seeing who would take us and returning to Pensacola plus a fixer-upper. I moved to another wonderful workplace, while Cary is thrilled to teach flight. We were lucky enough to get another sunny, beach-riddled setting; this one cheaper yet richer in wildlife and natural disasters which can destroy you. Plus renovation. Which can and will also destroy you.

When Cary got off the plane after six months away in Asia, I had pretended to be falling apart with a guacamole face mask, sweats, the kids haphazard with giant snacks in tow, my rolling suitcase apparently packed.

"What happened to you?" he said with a laugh as the three of us rushed him.

The square complete, as my friend would say.

We all got a feather in our hats which no one can take away.

Not long after, I had to miss a great work event because Cary was doing something called ground turns. On the ground. An aircraft just driving around. The moral of the story is you can't do this life without a wicked sense of humor. Laughing out loud at yourself. Music played louder. Dancing or singing in front of the kids. Forcing self care. These things are like shots of water in a stretch of Sahara like a deployment or a move. Plus the little moments written down for me to absorb months later are like more shots. *whispers: shots, shots, shots*

Jules thinks glimmering pale mint toothpaste is the most beautiful color in the world.

Cole could win an Oscar for how he method-acts animals.

I learned the word bailiwick in my 40th year.

Hearing Cary talk about teaching aviation students. (Also asking ourselves, were we ever that fresh-faced?)

Meeting a military spouse in my shoes years ago and seeing her killing it at her career planning.

Finding stickers on my hair dryer and Kindle.

Not removing them.

The stranger kindnesses.

The inside jokes.

Missing people. Then talking to them on the phone and feeling like it's still the same.

Cracking up with siblings.

When your parents make you feel important.

Text messages and emails from previous colleagues with compliments and GIFs.

GIFs.

More and more of Jules' baby teeth are getting pushed out, her softness continuing to turn sharp while Cole still feels rounded at every edge; though his hair is now cropped short and I don't even know who he is anymore. *wink*

We show the kids, while chuckling, how to run in a zig-zag if an alligator comes at them. How to avoid snakes. How to deal with bad insect bites. (Our Google history must've been extra-funny after we arrived.) They grow tougher as they go through it. As Jules struggles to catch her breath with newfound asthma and hives, and Cole struggles to behave how people want. We argue about hurricane preparedness and the expense of everything.

I recall Jules being achingly bad at ballet and blissfully unaware, now determined and excelling at karate.

Cary and I talk about Cole seeming like either a Navy SEAL, a PETA warrior, or a beach bum who pontificates about dinosaurs.

We get forgotten and make new impressions, which takes more effort than we think. I try to take up less space then more, then less. Talk more. Talk less. The right name doesn't matter, if it's Amy or Alt. What Cary flies doesn't matter. The world doesn't revolve around us nor do we it.

Right is a small box invented by people who are afraid. I barely understood Everything Everywhere All at Once but I loved that.

And when you reach a point in life where your stomach lurches at the sound of children's voices in the night, but then realize it was just your stomach – you've arrived. At older age. Not always wiser but something. Achier? More seasoned? Less able to handle seasoning?

I lay in bed – now wide awake – and think about the leftover fish I ate.

We've all technically become Florida people but especially Cole, who sticks his belly on an ant hill on a dare, has learned air quotes, and fights back against anything that bites him.

He talks confidently to strangers at church.

While I was nervous about a presentation at work a while back, it still seemed to go OK. But the best part was when I sat down and things ended, the woman in front of me turned around and said, "Your hair is amazing." I guess I'll take it.

The kids are alright and so are we.

Everyday We're Shuffling

2022-02-20T18:50:00.038-08:00

I only lost it once over the holidays so I consider it a win of a deployment season.

Staying with family feels like coming home. But you can't go home again, "they" say, and I think I see why. You've changed. They've changed. Everything else has changed. That's normal, and I seriously was reminded of that quote while watching The O.C. for the third time and it's funny because the dumbest character says it.

You grow up. That doesn't mean you handle everything with logic and grace. When I open the gates even a little, often the flood comes out.

I was telling Jules again the other day how it's OK to cry. She says, I know but I don't like to cry. Hm. Yeah. Good point. It does suck. I pretty much never feel better. Maybe mentally but not physically and that kind of ruins it.

I miss my co-parent the most. Because we can still talk, text or email, I get my best friend back now and then. But because he's not here to parent, I don't always get his dose of a second opinion when I need it. (Though I did make him put them to bed the other night, listening to his stern voice through the phone while I cleaned up.)

I was coaxing Cole out of my parents' house to go to my siblings' over Thanksgiving break, and it just built and built and I had told my parents to wait in the car, and Jules the peacemaker had stayed over with cousins, and he was fighting me so hard. I wanted him to see he was hurting me, making it hard. So I let myself tear up. His face softened but he didn't budge much. We sat staring at each other and breathing heavily. Me with tears streaming, wishing my husband and his dad was there with us right then and now instead of serving everyone else.

It seemed like everyone always loves hanging out with Jules but not Cole.

Cary would've said, it's just because he's only three. He's not old enough to do full-on sleepovers and be more manageable yet. Remember it's us against the world.

However I couldn't think of that in the moment, on my own.

I couldn't remember how much I love that sweet, wild child exactly as he is at every stage unconditionally always and forever. Couldn't vent. Couldn't download. Couldn't be embraced and supported the way only his father knows how to do best. Not perfect but best.

Yet I'm tired. So when we returned to sunny California from my homey northwest, my angel of a mom-in-law and Grammie-in-law watched the kids while I went to the spa, sitting in the foggy steam room till my eyes felt better finally and where I couldn't even see the sporadic other person in the tiled space.

Then I lay on a pool chair while reading as I watched people ice skating at The Del in bikinis.

Everything isn't so bad.

We all got back in our beloved routine filled with tiny San Diego excursions which breathe life into all of us. Things then continued to get jacked up by random COVID scares. Which always give my heart palpitations and stress despite my best efforts but also moments with my children I wouldn't have had otherwise – which I know one day I'll wish to live twice. I want off this ride but it's life so I guess I don't.

We saw family again another weekend in my husband's hometown. I ran into old college friends while wearing Grammie's coat since she was worried I wouldn't be warm enough at the park (she was right), which was adorable but probably not the coolest item.

Donkeys were everywhere from the Loma Linda hills so Grammie and I dodged their poop with the kids.

I drove out of the way with the kiddos to hit up and stock up at my fave Mexican spot in grad school and realized I feared for our lives. The kids had a blast though taking quarters from a determined homeless man to work the games and vending machines.

Cary's mom came down so I could go to my work holiday party for free but traffic was murder and I still had to leave early to get them from school and daycare. However for that one hour it was so nice to talk shop and not deployment or kids too much. Though when I did with Liz we commiserated over our tough boys, and my heart swelled and kept healing with mutual understanding.

We got matching really cute Christmas pajamas for once this year but mine looked funny on me, Jules' ended up being too tight she admitted though she powered through for 24 hours, and Cole's were adorable but he didn't have the patience for the buttons or the heat. We got some of my favorite, horrible pics though. #worthit

Then Jules got a light-bright type art thing for Christmas and it looks cool in the dark, so while I'm cooking Christmas morning breakfast she calls me and Cole in to check it out. It's dark and needs to be darker; Cole closes the door. We all admire the lit-up drawing. I turn around with spatula in hand to find the door locked from the outside. Shit. I panic for 15 seconds. Jules says it's OK, I can go out the (high, tiny) window. My friends are out of town. One neighbor I know too. I picture us all burning to death from our breakfast or at the very least the fire department showing up or CPS again. LUCKILY, I had my phone on me. So I called my other, closest neighbor (the couple who takes my barrels out and in every Wednesday and it breaks my heart with glee), and she follows my instructions to get in the still-locked-from-the-night house and save us all. Not even making me feel bad. Then brings over goodies they had gotten the kids and I.

God bless them.

I fix the doorknob, figuring out how to turn the knob around the right way with a Phillips and some jimmying. *pat on back*

I fall into bed every night.

Though I hate going to sleep because when I wake up, Cary won't be awake till later afternoon. It's sad and lonely when the person who cares most about us isn’t conscious enough to care.

And what is it about being a parent maybe that makes me cry in every damn movie?

Cary must miss the kids so much.

And we keep losing people in real life. Which breaks my heart for everyone involved.

My heart feels like it can't take much more. Then it can. Like the Grinch's.

I can't go home because I'm this different person who cries in movies and has heart palpitations and stress without being an essential worker or working on Wall Street, but also shuffles through the day rock star style. I think of my Grams sometimes, who would come help these days if we could live and feel good forever, and if anything she would tell me she's proud of my own bravery.

Even though bravery can be selfish, giving can be self-serving, and serving can be a sacrifice that's too much, I still think, Fly Navy. We're almost home.

In Omnia Paratus: Not So Much

2021-11-13T09:59:00.000-08:00

Cary screenshotted us from Okinawa.

A newsletter I get through work has great quotes. They usually make me laugh, or feel happy or encouraged. But this one edition brought up a Latin quote from Gilmore Girls – "in omnia paratus." Or "ready for all things" essentially. I liked it. And then I didn't.

We felt ready for deployment. We were. Prepped to the point of creating ease and paving the way for help and peace of mind. You can't be ready for all things. No one is always coming. Yet we're putting pavement beneath and behind us every moment.

The snails there are huge.

I watched a movie about bears with the kids, and aside from the amazing things mama bears do – like mamas in real life – I mainly resonated with their hibernation, which works for a lot of necessary recharging especially at the beginning of deployment. Then there are the days I commit to two birthday parties for different reasons and stumble into bed feeling tired in my bone marrow.

Jules: Are you gonna be back for my birthday?

Cary: No I'll miss your birthday. And Cole's birthday... And mama's birthday. But I'll be back for mine.

Jules laughs.

For the first few weeks when I'd hear the neighbor's gate or ours when something's delivered, I couldn't help but jump inside thinking it was him.

Cole got potty-trained in the nick of time. Not before pooping at the same friend's house a second time and wondering if pink eye was coming for us this time.

I also don't love when we get home and they didn't eat enough hosted dinner, so now I have to give them second dinner before bed. I don't do it the next time.

With this friend – who dealt with the threat of poop again and kids complaining the sausage is too spicy while falling out of their chairs and screaming – I discuss signing up for things. Swim this time since she's been jumping through hoops like I had several months before. Why is signing kids up for stuff so complicated sometimes? We ponder.

I now drive a minivan. It's my favorite minivan and green and ours with an affordable Nevada plate and doors we don't have to interact with nor seats we have to squish into with guests, but it still killed a little of my soul and chipped away a little of my identity. I wanted to rage against the minivan. But it's a vehicle. And I'm practical. So it's me and can handle the mountains we visit. I buy knock-off expensive sneakers six months later and feel a little bit better too.

We're in the van, just Jules and I heading from after-school care to get Cole from daycare.

Jules: I'm so glad I was born.

The best weekends with this sassy angel and my sour patch kid are spent on the couch with two breakfasts in a row plus an outing where we breathe life into the truck that sits lonely all week. In the evenings or in bed I decompress, sitting in the quiet for a moment and listening to my breath or heart that I think beats too fast these days, feeling solely responsible for them and feeling every pulled muscle from the day. Exhausted but wanting to look at pictures and videos of them on my phone like most parents. Needing alone time but feeling lonely.

Sometimes when I share a schedule idea with the kids... "How about we eat and get ready then go to the library then the park."

Cole says: I like your plan, Mom!

I learn only military spouses understand.

At work the single parents and parents and married couples and former service members or spouses relate. At work, without operating on anyone or operating an aircraft, it's a break and a lovely workout for my brain. It's something that's mine alone, that I can care about with both a selfish and selfless, passionate level of service and skill.

At opposite points in the day, besides the weekend vegetation or sense of adventure, the kids are there and then not there. I can't soak up every detail enough during the day. I want to drink them up and feel them inside me again, keep them safe. However I don't want to be wiggled and kicked against or jumped on, spilled on, sneezed on.

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know. Albert Einstein.

We all miss Butters.

I want to prove them right. That we can do it.

We're running out of gas and I'm getting used to the van fuel gauge. It's dangerously low suddenly on my way home from work, and I'm not sure exactly how many miles to the base gas station though it's near. After grabbing Jules and then pulling away from Cole's daycare I say I hope we make it.

Cole: "I believe in you, Mom!

Me too.

Old Town has been the best excursion yet.

Don't Die, Don't Die, Don't Die, Don't Die*

2021-06-03T20:43:00.001-07:00

On my morning jogs, an older woman keeps randomly wandering out from her house the same time I'm near, shouting: "ALY! ALY!"

ALY!!!

It's some animal named Aly. (Probably not spelled the same.) Scared the bejesus out of me the first few times. Especially that first time. Then I started putting it together. Seems like it's the highlight of her day. So I'm gonna keep on pretending it's me she's desperate to see instead of a sly, silky black cat or aging golden retriever.

I read this book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. Let's just say of course it's harder to pick up than the latest mystery sitting on my Kindle. This is maybe the third or second kid help book I've read. I remember some things; I try them out. Nothing really works that great. But one day I'm driving Cole to daycare and he's freaking out because he dropped his dinosaur in our humongous ginormous new used minivan and there's no way I can reach it.

Anyone else pulled muscles reaching for things in the car, risking everyone on the road's life because you can't take the tortuous sound? Definitely #notworthit.

So the book tells you to get imaginative, wish with them and get creative about how you wish too – how you wish you could give them what they want with your magical wizard parent powers. I'm so dunzo with these meltdowns where they can't see logic so I commit with a passionate, drama-drunk gusto.

"Cole! I want to get it for you too!! I wish I had Elastigirl's arms and could reach back and grab it with one long loopy noodle wrist. Or I wish I was a fancy white-haired wizard with a beard who could just POOF! – wave my powerful wand and say my powerful spell and make the dinosaur appear out of thin air, lifted up from the floor or zapped into your haaaand!!!!!!!!!!

I've tried this before. But not with as much Oscar-worthy endeavor. It worked like a charm.

And the 1,000 pages of kid help books were worth it. For that one time when I didn't have to listen to him scream.

His response? A quick pause. "And then there was snow?" he asks quietly.

"Sure, Coley. Lots and lots of snow." He continues talking about magical things, narrating a whole story about God knows what.

Looking back on these last several weeks, he's come out of a tough phase. For now. Maybe the books are worth it. Or maybe it's just him. Or maybe it's just me or us. Or maybe I should go back to reading Harry Potter or watching more Incredibles with them. Nah, it's probably the experts. Probably.

Our neighbor asked us the other day if the kids were doing any sports. Nope. Well, I guess swimming. That's a sport, they say. I mean, is it? I'm trying to make it so they don't die in water, not that they become the Elastigirl that is Michael Phelps' butterfly crawl.

I finally navigate the maze that is signing up for swim lessons post-move and in the age of COVID. Cary can't make it the first day but I've got the procedures down. I pack up everything the evening before.

"They say to put non-potty-trained kids in two swim diapers but I mean, they're kinda expensive right and I have to take him to the bathroom right before anyway, and they're hard to get off. Should I just do one?"

Jules stares at me for a moment while I stare at the swim bag, then: "I think you should probably just do two."

Aw good kid.

I pick them up from care after work and we make our way through the rigmarole of remembering the street and parking and finding the exact school pool location and access point in this urban suburban island life of yet another new location to our family.

Meander through the path, eyeballing signs. Tell Cole to hurry up. Tell Jules she dropped her goggles. Wait for someone at the desk to take our temperatures. Pray they don't care I don't have masks for the swimmers. (Oops, but I don't remember reading that part!) Hm, where to change, where to change ... I see a single bathroom door I think on the swim deck across the way. But the arrows on the ground don't point us that direction around the pool so here goes, gonna break the painted rule! Walking in front of everyone (seriously no one is looking or cares but it never feels like that)...yell at the kids some more so they don't fall into the pool while looking around. A sign on the bathroom door says no more than one person inside due to COVID. And the door is locked. Be cool, Aly. Continue around the pool. Find a quiet corner. Get them changed.

In the middle of sweating and wondering where I'm gonna take Cole for a potty-break, a (very kind but doesn't seem like it in the heat of the moment) woman with a baby in a stroller comes over and says:

Hiiiii. Just to let you know there's no changing on the swim deck. We just don't want little penises out you know. (barely nervous giggle; in fact kind of a confident giggle)

At this point I want to shove my son's penis in her face.

Jules: "My mom is Aly. What's your name? What's your baby's name?" God fucking bless her but I want to say, Stop! Jules, she's the enemy; we don't like her!

I explain we're new and the bathroom was locked and I came from work and where are we supposed to change? By the end of this inaugural swim lesson, this woman has kindly researched and found out the answers to all my questions, baby in tow, her filling in since someone was out.

But in the heat of the moment it's one more thing.

The kids are blissfully courageous and fun as the lesson kicks off. Ahhh, it's all worth it.

Then mid-lesson Cole screams:

I GOTTA GO POTTY!!!!

I run over, almost slip WHICH IS WHY WE DON'T RUN, grab him from the teenager and try to hit the bathroom again. Woot, unlocked!

Yep, pulling down two swim dipes is great. Scared the kid to pieces. Expected poop but he probably peed in the three minutes it took me to get his diapers and trunks down. I sing him a song while he perches on the toilet seat, miraculously balancing and pushing his penis toward the bowl as we stare at each other in the echo-y bathroom with water on the ground that always feels like urine even though it's pool, shower or ocean water most likely in these places.

I contemplate buying myself Golden Goose sneakers for this. I just made $60 on a freelance news story so I'm 12% there. I really think those sneaks are the best place for my side hustle money. A mom at the lesson has GG sneakers on. Gotta do it. Then my dad can say, you bought sneakers that come dirty? It's like MTV and ripped, distressed jeans all over again.

A post-lesson dip in our weird tiny house indoor/outdoor jacuzzi where you simply sit with your legs straight out on our back patio is just the ticket after these lessons. For them. For us it's after they go to bed sometimes. The kids never balk at being cold getting in the pool for their lessons on a beach evening but the hot tub idea always crops up for them on the way home.

It's a grand time. Until we all get folliculitis. Turns out it takes a bit to get chlorination figured out.

We also change in the van now before swim lessons. Penises and vaginas tucked safely away. Though I did accidentally park in front of a lacrosse practice wrap-up and Jules kept doing an oblivious naked jig. She also heard a boy making fun of his mom and Jules was like, hm, did you hear that? We can do that?

Kid, we can do whatever we want. Go against the arrows to go to the bathroom. Hit a nudist beach. Drive a minivan. Make fun of our parents. Take pride this month and always.

*Post title isn't mine; it's Jerry Seinfeld's scuba diving joke. It's what it's like watching Cole learn how to swim.

Your Name Here.

2021-02-15T09:23:00.008-08:00

Jules writes her name with a big, solid period at the end. So sure of herself it seems. I've noticed other kids do this sometimes as they learn to write and learn punctuation. I like the idea of thinking of ourselves with a firm, confident period at the end of who we are.

Potty training a boy, at least my boy, makes me doubt putting a period at the end of my name.

Anyone else experience that rush of adrenaline, ripping your kid out of a swing or off the couch, or out of the bath, at the hint they're pooping while attempting to potty-train? Then trip getting to the portable potty you brought to the park? Then find you're too late and now that you've pulled their pants down, it's worse than you ever imagined?

You really learn what good friends are when your kid poops their pants at your friends' house and you came unprepared.

Cole taught us over the last year he cannot be trusted to stop having fun to hit the bathroom.

We taught Jules about crying wolf. Spoiler alert: A wolf will petrify any kid into avoiding that. We may have forgotten briefly it eats the sheep and had it eat the boy, our voices slowing down to a quiet trail as we realized what we were doing, her eyes wide in the dark before bedtime, us curled around her on top of the covers. Oops.

There are many immature ways I still feel young but I'm nonetheless getting older (and wiser at an eighth of the rate). Old move: I got a pap smear for my birthday last fall. Immature move: I think I might start doing that yearly because I got a few extra "happy birthday's," giving my birth date to check in and so on.

Let's see, I watched Enola and The Queen's Gambit and fell in love with women all over again.

Oh – I got a new, full-time job! It's been great. Rewarding. Uses my skillset. Makes me feel like a grown-up. It also takes about 30 minutes to explain so I'll spare you.

In other literal news, I got the cover of Crown City Magazine again. In honesty, the key is the photo someone more professional took. Also got a Coronavirus at Christmastime feature for the Coronado Times. You can read more about my island Times life here if you're really, really bored – so these are basically some of my favorite people ever and I wish we could have writer get-togethers which they did before COVID and I arrived.

The writing and income life is good for once. If only I could make time to finish that pesky 30-something coming-of-age novel instead of blogging therapeutically.

I still like how I saw this on Twitter and thought, yep.

Anyone else have an Apple Watch and not know what to do with it? If you have one and do know what to do with it, please tell me. I'm tempted to donate it to someone who needs it. I still love you for getting it for my birthday, Cary, don't get me wrong.

Yet it feels like the giant blue pleather planner I bought when I was 12 and pretty much just enjoyed rewriting my homework assignments in my best (still really bad) handwriting and seeing a five dollar bill in the clear plastic pouch inside.

I proceeded to leave it in every store – racing back in a panic – when I put it down to check out an item.

Cary was gone for some training for a couple weeks recently. The C.B. Strike series on HBO MAX and frozen burritos got me though. Also my amazing mom-in-law. Grandparents may not replace your spouse. They may spoil your kids or not know where everything goes, or not know how to communicate every drop-off, pick-up and chore or errand like your more intuitive spouse after nearly 15 years of marriage. But they sure damn do make it easier when you have to change one less diaper, discipline one less time, deal with one less load of dishes or laundry, make one less even simple meal; and they provide that much more love.

Plus I didn't have to clean the microwave that was laughing at and taunting me. I wanted to shed a tear.

Because when your kids are getting in their car seats, talking incessantly or fighting, and you close the car door on their high, penetrating voices. And you pause. Walk as slowly as possible around to your own car door. It's one break. Adding a grandparent is a whole other one.

Then we drive home, Jules asking me about our our poor dead dog, girls marrying girls, me dying, God, heaven, giving birth (seriously all one in day)... And I’m like, I want them to ask and learn and find their way but also I’m just so tired and can’t even explain these things when tip-top. I mess up these conversations so much. Like I don’t have the answers, kid. Just be a nice person. But like tough when you have to be. Ugghh, good luck.

For some wins – what I live for – we watched Earwig and the Witch (also on HBO), the whole weird thing in peace, both kids rapt, me with coffee I made it all the way through without heating up. And we watched Frozen 2 for the millionth time (still so good) one night while they licked clean bowls of popcorn, also peaceful and laughing together in the near darkness because Jules makes it that way for a "special night" and we were close to her birthday – and I realized how much Cole is absorbing these days, talking about the "ice boat" and the "dark sea." And it's all worth it all over again and again.

Us toward the beginning of the pandemic,
getting ice cream and eating it in the traffic median. 😳

These Days Have Teeth

2020-09-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

Cole escaped the gate outside our front door. I forgot to latch it in some hubbub, swore he was in our fenced yard, could hear him babbling and banging around. Nope. He had gone 200 feet to the nearest street corner, obsessed with all things vehicular. Oh my good Lord. My heart took the elevator shaft down when I couldn't find him. Springing down the sidewalk, Jules at my heels.

Strangers saved us yet again – but me feeling their hearts and minds, through their eyes, chewing on my soul with sharp, judgmental canines. I thanked profusely, dodged quickly, tried to show I cared the most and shuffled the kids back to the house – embarrassed – wracking my head for the error. Jules? Nope. Me.

The police stopped by (how long had Cole been chilling with these passersby?!). The officers kindly tried to make me feel a little better.

Why did I avoid apologizing to anyone?, I wondered later. Because it's my kid and I'm a good mom? Because I was stretched thin for the longest I've ever been? Because I felt enraged for all the wrongly judged parents, especially moms (let's be honest), especially military spouses or the like, especially these days?

Child Protective Services showed up a few days later, announcing themselves in startling clarity right when I had almost recovered from the lost child incident. My spirit plummeted all over again. My confidence was sapped all over again, trying to find it was probably like getting juice from a prune.

Work hit a distracted standstill, my appetite filled with nerves. Time was lost and a bunch of ache gained. I felt alone alone and like a failure in the HGTV Disneyland that was supposed to be my new home, the village that would help me with my kids and life when Cary isn't able to because he's out helping or preparing to help others.

I felt like the worst parent ever. When I know I'm not. It's a weird dichotomy. These days.

While I waited for a letter that would say the claim was unfounded, I went back near the corner to exchange numbers with a neighbor just in case it helped me feel better, the kids in tow. Jules was eating an apple she wanted to bring and Cole was wearing a fitting Mr. Mischief T-shirt. Make it better for yourself, I thought. And can and did. Notwithstanding a racing heart and worry about cowering to conflict.

In Fallon Jules didn't come inside right away when Cary got home from work one evening. People driving by called the police since apparently the light-glowing house with the front door half open wasn't a clue.

Wulp, I thought that Friday CPS announced themselves at our gate that boasted added security, we officially belong in a garbage can.

Hope no parents have an untidy house, drink alcohol, spank or have junk food around. Because you will feel less than enough even if none of that exists. And your kid will be woken from their nap. And your other kid will all of a sudden clam up. And you better pray it makes for a good wedding toast one day if your rascal survives that long.

I should've taken it more in stride. I should've shook it off sooner.

Jules actually ran away from us in a Target once, thinking it would be a game while I had visions of someone snatching that tiny little person with the fuzzy hair and running out the front door.

Cole walked straight into the San Diego Bay the other day without his mini lifejacket on, thinking it would be a game too.

I treasure my kids. I'm also surviving them. That's OK.

Loved ones ease my mind. My friends accept me even when I text in weird teen shorthand. Like literally only five years ago my entire message trails were 14-year-old code since I apparently didn't have enough time to write out a complete word (shuttering I think, as a writer). So of course they understand a CPS visit.

One friend listened to me ball into the phone like we were kids again, as the straw had stacked up on top of me. Another said dads get a free pass on mistakes, moms get the authorities. One suggested this will totally be part of a speech at Carroll the Fifth's wedding. This childhood tribe is legit.

Though my buddies are all very different, they seem like they know exactly when to check in on me and how. My military squad can do that too, friends I'm lucky enough to live by again or new ones nearby who don't skip a beat. My heart rippled like a balloon starting to reinflate, slowly healing from all the teeth marks this year is leaving on my soul, many marks much shallower than other people's.

Sometimes I worry I'll have a heart attack or stroke while alone with the kids and they'll find me and panic and not know what to do. Or Cary will be gone and hopefully Jules will know what to do. A heart attack isn't out of realm as the last meal I ordered from Uber Eats left an oiled wood grease stain on a side table (and a chunk out of my wallet).

A bright spot in these months was a job offer. But I turned it down. In our situation, I don't think you could pay me enough these days to do technical writing with still little take-home after the needed nanny or tutor. The second income childcare wash is real precarious these days.

Another bright note: I ordered some scrunchies (so comfy) and a NYC T-shirt (gotta at least wear the dream) to save on shipping when I got sparklers for Jules – after I learned too late Cali doesn't sell fireworks. Thirty dollars later I had saved $10 in shipping. My mind is starting to go.

Cole also burnt his little hand on a sparkler even after a long lecture and with careful eyes. Not careful enough, the voices say. F^@$ off!

Digging through my drawers for other comfortable things to wear every day, I discovered I have several sets of basically yoga pants. Some with pockets! Cell phone-specific pockets! These pants have definitely proven themselves to me and I regret every bad thing I ever thought about them and hope they didn't hear.

I also started the curly girl method toward the beginning of the pandemic. Have you heard of this? Whenever I get low on something in the bathroom or closet, I resort to Instagram to see what items I've saved and might want to try – that aren't one million dollars. Through this I found there's a thing to treat your hair naturally and let its natural wave shine. It's nice but I'm never sure if I should leave the house looking like that.

Good thing because I was all ready to start remote kindergarten, mainly to write about it. Then some go-getter families I'll forever be in debt to started a pod and needed a fifth kid via Facebook. Yet prior to the pod life raft, Jules and I (and Cole) attended a school district parent night via Zoom.

Jules' little head popped over the kitchen bar with me, to meet the amazing teacher and other families whose thought bubbles I would've paid to see. It was so heartfelt but so hilarious. Jules waved, talked, realized no one was responding. She grabbed a toy to show, a banana to eat. Still got bored. Cole pulled me away. Jules and I came back to the screen. We discussed this crazy thing called a mouse.

Their computer experience is going to be so much different than mine was. As well as their nature one.

At the Point Loma Tide Pools Cole said, "Look, Mom!" He had stacked a rectangular rock on top of a larger rectangular rock. "Ah cool!" A few minutes later... "And who's your mother?" Oh crap. A nice older woman (alongside her older man counterpart), who are likely state park volunteers, said they can't have unnatural formations in the park.

"See those rock towers over there?" she said, pointing to the two carefully balanced, small towers of stones perched in holes of the beach cliff wall. "People build them out in nature but they're not natural." She then bent over with her walking stick sprawled to the side and used a hand to awkwardly knock over Cole's very flat tower.

My friend and I proceeded to weirdly tell our adventurous kiddos not to stack rocks.

You never forgive yourself for the real mistakes you make with your kids. But you can move on.

(Plus I love telling that rock story.)

Now I'm going to post this to social media and hopefully make someone else's teeth marks a little less deep.

Butters Made Everything Better

2020-07-25T15:18:00.000-07:00

Butters and Jules when we were in Fallon, Nevada.

We laid our pup of 12 years, age 14, to rest last month.

A night or two later I'm hearing this panting. No other way to describe it. The second night we're laying there in bed and Cary says, You hear that? Me: Yes! Cary: She's haunting us. Me: Yes!

After the third night, turns out the other way to describe it is the house across the street doing a sanding project after-hours.

I miss Butters. Of course. Everyone misses a beloved pet who passes. She was always around for me when no one else could be, grumbling quietly as I warmed my feet on her belly. Her only flaws were she could clear a room and she shed – but when you lower your bar for cleanliness, wear a weirdly repellant flight suit or pajamas to work from home, it doesn't matter much and is worth the trade-off.

Cary liked to show me the vacuum cleaner canister, pointing out all his girls' hair filling it up twice in one cleaning. We three were more than worth it we all agreed.

Loved ones kindly took care of our dog when we needed.

We'll probably never own another dog until maybe our kids are out of the house and we need a ridiculous distraction to fawn over.

We killed our first plant – a cactus – but somehow thought we could manage a dog. She did lose a leg. But we gave kids a shot and it's gone OK so far. Cole has almost died multiple times now though. We profusely thank the stranger, acquaintance or friend who reaches out. Sometimes it's Jules who saves the day, my heart and limbs skittering as if I'm living the chapter Gage gets mowed down in Pet Sematary.

The thing about missing something or someone for me is its nostalgia, wanting what's gone. Even if you have Christmas every year or some vacation to look forward to on the regular, no tradition, period of time or new adventure will ever be the same as it was – as it is, as it's happening right now.

When Kobe Bryant died, I thought of a game I went to with Cary and his friends. The two of us stood for a photo in front of where we exited the Staples Center after a ridiculously fun night. Cary was wearing a hideous mustard yellow shirt with Kobe's face screen-printed on it in purple.

I was hugging Cary sideways for the photo. He pushed my arm away so I wouldn't block his precious player's picture. His friend Larry, who was watching as another friend took the photo, said something like, wow, and smiled and laughed contagiously; he made me crack up too.

I remember this every now and then. That night and funny moment that struck me. All of us young, in school to some extent, some in relationships, just going to a game to watch people who are really good at something. Rooting for something. Laughter and excitement. Now it'll always be a little different watching basketball.

We lost people we actually know and love this year too, and I feel old and sad, realizing life does indeed change in a slow, painful blink. As they say, having kids make the days long and the years short. It's nostalgia with a whole new layer or two, laced with tragedy and crisis. Life comes at us hard and fast and we never know absolutely at all what to expect, more of the same or more change, but both equally hard and necessary.

I feel somewhat awkward and worthless scrounging up freelance work as the papers tighten and marketers raise their bars real high at the influx of candidates. I wonder if I'll be attending a virtual kindergarten alongside Jules next year, juggling Cole between stories about the island or a Carson City press release or my next chapter (*questioning eyebrow raise at myself*). But the bouts of confidence, paychecks and random peaceful hour makes keeping on writing in some form worth every penny and bead of sweat.

I went to help a local author with her website and social media. She lives on a boat and it was cozy but not too cozy and smells like the still sea. I felt we spent the time correcting a Squarespace accounting error but looking back, it was nice to just chat about her life. There's more to existing for me I think than a salary or glittering career, perfect home or people in it. It's a chance to giggle and learn lessons that stick.

Yet don't tell me that when Cary's schedule changes and I have to cut work or play short and watch the kids, or go without a food run or tackled project.

We have plants here the previous tenants made great, and now a goal these days is just to keep them alive. OK, I failed on a couple already but Jules helped me replace them. Like actually helped. She doesn't suck at things so much anymore. And we talked about Butters, which felt good. Jules inserts our pup into her stories and memories. She still sleeps with her stuffed version whose name is also Butters. (We once weighed trimming off the front right leg and sewing it up so it would be a true clone.)

We all talk about those who've passed often; it feels right and keeps them alive to us. It's usually a lesson they taught us or a hilarious story. Which makes me think that's what matters. This year and next is going to have some pretty big learning curves and funny stories to look back on.

I still remember babysitting a friend's little guy when Cary was in flight school. Butters stared at me from the couch: You have no idea what you're doing, do you? I still don't and so I miss her watching over us and always will.

She was there cleaning up the food that dropped (and sometimes didn't), or teaching us how to deal with poop and pee and post-beach dog. She was there having Cary and I talk about our days on humid night walks in Florida. She was there walking Jules to sleep with me along the neighborhood river in Japan. She was there as I cried myself to sleep as Jules was crying herself to sleep. She was there cuddled up close while I pumped milk for Cole. She was there when the daylight in our houses turned dark from a tropical storm or typhoon, both of us listening to the rain and the wind, looking outside as the eyes passed over.

She was there when no one else could be and she didn't lift a paw or say a thing.

Watching All The Way Down

2020-04-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

Cary actually noticed its greatness first.

See it all from their perspective.
They were there every hilarious step of the way.

The Lion King 1 1/2 is actually really clever. Disney sequels aren't usually up to adult snuff. Jules and I (and Cole) watch endless movies and shows together (including all four of The Descendants*, which I can barely keep up with since I have to jump up constantly apparently for juice, milk, crackers, diaper changes, assistance fluffing pillows, you know).

And I keep observing of some productions: Wow, that was really creative. Now Jules has started saying that too.

"I just want to watch *insert something*. It's really creative. We can cuddle (liltingly)."

She knows me too well now.

I've entered an alternate reality that's beyond binge-watching. We're binge-living.

I love belting out 'Into the Unknown' from Frozen 2. Both my kids hate it when I do it. Which makes me love it more. You know when Tom Hanks shouts "I have made fire!" in Castaway? Well that's how I feel. "I am a parent!"

These are my weeks, probably like other people's weeks:

This is hard.

This is easy.

This is hard.

This is easy.

A year ago I was weighing how we could afford a co-op** in Brooklyn if we went to NYC next – if I somehow got a job there and Cary started flying commercially. Last time I almost sunk into my idea of the East Coast publishing high life, 9/11 hit right after my summer in D.C. I never know whether to feel lucky I missed catastrophe or whether I missed out on some life-altering experience for the better.

One day New York City or Paris or Seattle will get me, starring in my own romcom minus the rom and plus some years to my appearance. For now I'm content (cough cough) and trying to be tough living the comedy of errors that is Jules and Cole.

Turtles All the Way Down art print by Dianne Gage

Jules has taken to snails. Hunting them down and holding them captive, er, taking them as pets. Cole found one that had escaped – much to Jules' glee – then 20 minutes later he accidentally stepped on it and cracked its shell – much to her despair. She found an empty snail shell in our yard (read: a long-dead snail's shell) and somehow got the new, yet traumatized, snail inside it. Needless to say it didn't make it.

Jules often says when she grows up she wants to live in Fallon, Banana (she means Nevada). It has proven more successful than Coronado to her. Touché. She doesn't fully understand yet the beaches and endless sidewalks, as well as only remembers the going-places, the reservoir and pre-school friends and teachers. We used to go to this great Reno zoo and this supposedly breathtaking San Diego zoo has proven a letdown. Jules' first world problems are real AF.

When I get tired of watching with them, I've taken to reading alongside them – immersive mysteries and YA novels and a negotiating book or any other books my dad sends me.

I take endless pictures of the kids when we're not endlessly watching, which makes me look like a better mom than I am.

I have more time to blog now.

Work hours are dwindling as I was between jobs yet again since I decided to take a news desk job on the brink of a pandemic. I also bought a home in 2006. I make such good choices sometimes.

But slowing down to almost a standstill – when not getting up and down off the friggin' couch or scrambling to write a press release during naptime or movietime – hasn't been all bad.

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough. No record of it needs to be kept and you don't need someone to share it with or tell it to. When that happens – that letting go – you let go because you can."

—Toni Morrison, Tar Baby, 1981 (or since I'm bearing all, I really read this in John Green's Turtles All the Way Down – recommended)

*On Netflix and 'Under the Sea' is a Descendants short story. Woot woot.
**The HOA will getcha.

The Bath That Made Us All Dirtier

2020-03-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

A lot has changed since I had two kids we somehow named after minerals but spelled differently.

As Jules would say adoringly, in that "tiny town" I had many jobs – more jobs than usual for a military spouse.

I was a reporter before leaving that beloved paper (which taught me a lot) to take advantage of paid maternity leave and a marketing environment. I was laid off because that's how start-ups can go at first. So then I got a new gig out of Carson City that allowed me to work remotely mostly – and kindly continued to do so when our family was being stationed indefinitely in San Diego.

It's nice when the 9-5 is a grind – or when a kid gets sick or Cary has to go be a hero.

Yet then I see people in the flesh, and I throw myself into a rabid conversation of relatable laughing points and stories, AP style discussions or plans for lunch. I also start rambling about all the shows and movies I've watched or stuff read when work is slow or Cary is gone. Sometimes I feel bad for the listener.

I'm sad to change hometowns again. Wherever you learn a lot it feels like home.

I learned I'm bad at being a ballet mom. I would show up in not enough time to get her hair up tight, sweating and having forgotten again to glue her decorative laces so they wouldn't come undone three times during class. She would get kicked out anyway for doing things like playing with the giant stuffed animals they were supposed to be leaping over gracefully.

I learned, in living color, your second child is different from the first. Cole falls asleep on the ground, demands to be read to, leaps off stairs and furniture with his sister, became surprisingly coordinated at a riding scooter early on – and he will sit in Jules' battery-powered truck inside the closed garage, long after the battery dies. He'll study wheels for minutes on end.

I learned I'm still struggling with writing for enjoyment versus writing for pay, or working with a family to take care of when the other caregiver can't be there. More money for my family or that rewarding feeling that oftentimes comes without much compensation or with more snuggles, laughs and memories. Sometimes you do get a bit of everything. But not all at once usually. It may be a never-ending tightrope walk, carefully weighing the stage of life and adjusting your quality of life.

I learned home is where my family is. This one I chose, the one I share a roof with – whether a hotel room, a camper or a home we rent, own or live in on a military base.

I learned when one kid poops in the bath and you have another, both get a lot dirtier. We all do.

I learned being happy is to be grateful. And that I have no good reason not to be.* (Thank you, Downton Abbey.) I've also learned that me letting Cary accept his new position makes me essentially the biggest badass I know. Or the biggest dumbass.

And San Diego? It's like the book Hatchet, only instead of returning to grocery stores I'm faced with an abundance of Targets, ramen shops and dry bars.

*Most of the time.

Battleborn

2016-08-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

via

When you're on the road for six months practically, it feels like every thing becomes a bad penny.

Your suitcase handles. Your task list and wifi. Your womb.

Jules took three years to make. This one three months without trying. Then it went away. How are so many parents out there going through that? Blech.

When Roger Federer won a Wimbledon, his 2004 finals opponent Andy Roddick was being interviewed and said:

"I threw the kitchen sink at him, but he went to the bathroom and got his tub."

That's how this year has felt, like Zeus went and got his clawfoot bathtub to throw at us. Yet driving into Fallon and onto Hawk Drive, with our house keys actually in hand, felt like everything was falling into place. We have another property investment and an insatiable desire to explore anything, like the Italian-Mexican restaurant and backroads on a wish list dune buggy with any loved ones daring to visit. We like our jobs if not love them. We have each other and at least one sweet, spunky, squishy, little family member.

Why is it so hard to keep perspective?

Every now and then I think, at least we don't have brain cancer. At least I have all my limbs. Five seconds later, I'm banging on my sticking keyboard, then later clamoring around in the bathroom as I refill the toilet paper roll, then later driving down the road worrying about my identity being hacked and someone stealing our tiny-ass nest egg.

Nevada's official slogan and The Killers' latest album via

After loudly switching out the toilet paper last time, I made yet another call about scheduling paint and carpet for the new place. I was really excited to pick out this foundational stuff since we usually just shrug and sign a rental agreement in whatever city or country we land in. But when your husband tells you the house you're considering just needs paint, carpet and some zero-scaping, don't listen to him.

These three, seemingly straightforward things take a lot longer and more money than you'd think. You are not an HGTV show host. Unless you've got a slice of their talent-and-budget pie – which pairs well with sides of cooking* and gardening – buy a turnkey house.

I'm only talking to myself here, aren't I? All my friends and family seem to be remarkably motivated and trendy.

The silver lining on our Silver State home is the end is in sight. That's what Cary keeps telling me to keep me from clawing his and my eyes out when escrow lasts another month...when we have five more hours to drive...when the weeds have grown so high you need a special mower and 10 men to make your yard resemble a nice field...when we have to make extra trips to base and medical and daycare and Walmart and Safeway...when there's only fast food to eat...when there's no internet or toolboxes...when we put Julesies to sleep in the hotel bathroom again, in the travel crib I can't help but think is giving her scoliosis after being in it since birth...when the baby is removed after a trimester of nausea and other unpleasantness...when I eat tomato soup in bed and spill it all over myself, the computer and the white comforter. #burnshurt #poormaids

But then there's the hotel pool within baby monitor distance, with its Crayola desert sunsets visible over the highway signs and blackening treetops – where we could sip drinks in the new quiet and laugh more loudly.

Just that made the last hotel stretch worth it.

As I laid awake our first night in the house, on crinkly gym mats pushed together, I should've been thanking God I have my thumbs still. Instead, I couldn't help but think about moving again. I'm so deeply looking forward to having my own lair back. Laying on a normal couch with plenty of pillows and blankets. Creating our ideal cups of coffee in our souvenir mugs. Gaining back our routine of bigger weekend breakfasts and maybe kiddie pool time. Walking Butters, talking and admiring homes that have better curb appeal. Good job on those lighting features! Watching the train with the round cars slowly roll by just beyond our back fence.

However we're going to drive away again in nearly four years.

You're killing me, Smalls (she said to herself).

That's a long ways off, and for now, I'm home. It's time to heal and hit the beat and make our place like John Stone's on The Night Of.

John Turturro from HBO's The Night Of via

*I found out why I hate cooking! It's boring. (Especially without a drink in my Japan friends' kitchens, while watching them cook and them making me laugh and feel better about everything including the sinks and tubs.) Julia Louis-Dryfus agrees.

To Right Now

2016-05-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

'Up in the Air' says a lot best. (via)

Shailene Woodley is known for living out of a suitcase. I loved this idea once. Carefree and limitless, more in the moment than blinded by the constant search for belongings to store in a huge space that meant hours of cleaning and unused food. The goal was to have next to nothing as we traveled the globe flying and writing.

Sometimes that makes me gag.

Maybe we'll get antsy again but right now, all I want is to have a bunch of room and stuff so I have everything I could possibly need to keep my kid happy and house cozy, give my dog the ability to stretch out. I want a big fat driveway and big fat food. Central air and people who look like me so I don't stick out.

I missed you, American comfort food. (via)

Paraphrasing, Woodley told Ellen and InStyle magazine that not having a house, a closet full of clothes, an apocalyptic stash of toiletries, means she feels more free to experience life to its fullest. She got caught in a downpour in London and asked to use someone's clothes dryer to dry her one shirt – an experience she wouldn't have had otherwise. I get the point, but really?

Who was I kidding... A year after being stationed overseas, our rental's cupboards were stuffed to the gills. Add another human being and gone were the days of meeting my husband at a port with just a light duffle.

Returning to the States, I was of course greeted by a corner of the world that didn't hit pause just because I left. A loved one lost, couplings broken. Family and friends had moved away or moved in. Construction shifted things. Issues had surfaced. People were making more money, had more kids, less pets, big yards. Was my hometown still my hometown? Was I already missing the people who knew what it was like to be all alone in another corner?

But the warmth of those ones who immediately love your kid – because they love you in that way time and effort lends – spread through my veins like the cure for cancer.

After a week in Washington we set out for a week in northern Nevada, to check in with our jobs and find a place to live. We rolled into Fallon during an early, gusty hour of the morning, after a night of driving in snow and me realizing that vertigo really does exist. Getting used to the dryness, I kept feeling a sore throat. And Cary pointed out how the water is so soft, showers feel slimy.

via

"Well how can we go about make it harder?"

He laughs.

"No but really."

We decided to go into Reno. We needed to figure out our cell phone situation and wanted to explore our nearby big little city surrounded by SURPRISE, I FORGOT! snowy mountains. That 60-mile jaunt resulted in seven hours in an Apple Store. At one point, Jules was face down on the Apple Watch display.

We flew to Florida for a month-long course Cary was taking. Well we tried. We got snowed in heading out. Bright side: a night at the Peppermill with a flash deal that got us a weirdly luxurious suite with columns and a jacuzzi, and access to a pool with a four-story waterfall we didn't frolic in since we all just wanted to lie down.

And of course Florida was all warm air, white beach, bayou bars and friendly faces once we got there. Coming back, there were significant delays due to storms again. At least Jules got to play on a giant plastic structure playground for an extra four hours. Just to make sure we all got sick.

There are no homes for rent in Fallon. Don't ask me why. So military families are being forced to either live in small base housing or buy. So we invested [insert petrified emoji] again in a place off "the loneliest road in America." The acre is ours so that's nice. But the house is mint green.

No second car yet. We don't have any energy left after voting and packing and unpacking and packing and unpacking and updating our giant password document. Plus, I'd rather spend that time catching up on AMC's The Night Manager and HBO NOW. Plus-plus, the rental car we have (thanks, Navy) in addition to our truck we drove south is really showing me I've been highly underestimating full-size sedans and need to reevaluate.

At least San Diego has happened. For nearly three months. Another beachfront base hotel and breakfast every day. A weird, tall water fountain toy for kids. A playground. Burritos every night. It's just a matter of time till I start feeling guilty or the family suite feels small.

We're here 'cause Cary's learning the MH-60 S(ierra). He was on the MH-60 R(omeo) before. All this means is there are less gadgets and computers, more room for riders and supplies. His humane work schedule will hopefully continue once he returns to his search-and-rescue team in Fallon, where he'll be the Longhorns' safety officer (thanks, Florida) and fly around mountainsides, rescuing hikers and ejected jet pilots.

I feel windblown and drained after that sea tour. I can't imagine how Cary feels. Where did this hard worker come from? In college, I could barely get him to do his part of our sociology project on time. Now all I want to do is somehow get the job designing Google's word art of the day. In my mind, that person is basically owner of the most impression-making art in the world and gets to doodle on random days throughout the year.

via

On the brink of this shore tour, I already miss Japan's clean, safe, tidy, techy, small life. I miss my old job, the guy that dyed my hair weird colors, our house, our tall teeny-weeny minivan. Sushi will never be the same. I have no deployment trump card anymore. Relationships back home are more complicated in a way different from overseas wives clubs and the solitary, mundane days of just Jules, Butters and I. But there's no geographical solution to your problems, said Tony Soprano.

I can feel my neck getting sunburnt again as I sit in my office, the Fashion Valley food court that isn't far from Jules' daycare, working remotely to barely pay that bill. None of the stores are open but Starbucks and Apple. Soon there will be shallow conversations and crying babies, outfits to admire when I look up. I will struggle to eat my bag of trail mix instead of buying a meal, to stay phone-interviewing and typing instead of seeing a movie or roaming Forever 21. I pull my hood up. It's too chilly in the shade.

Cary says I need routine more than Jules. Maybe that's because I can't count on anything in this life we created for ourselves. I'll take control where I can get it. But I was always like this, as well as lazy and apt to write things down.

This is a life, I have to keep pinching myself, that's a dream come true – even if it's not anyone else's. I checked some big typical boxes getting married young, taking in a yellow lab, having a kid and engaging in social media. But ta da, now we get to shake things up again as helicopter pilot and newspaper reporter – one whose on staff with a real desk and real live coworkers, as well as a self-proclaimed writer-in-residence in my own house that looks like a stick of spearmint gum lying lonely in a field. Such a strange American dream.

"To right now," he toasts on our first night in Fallon, in the basement of a nice Mexican restaurant on the refurbished downtown's Main Street. Jules munches on her chip and watches us. Feet pass by the windows overhead, and the sun is dipping, turning the warm desert day into its cold night. He's right. So aggravating.

Why I chose Twitter et al over Facebook

2016-02-28T17:00:00.000-08:00

Black Friday 2015 was one of the best days of my life. It involved daycare, a Japanese movie theater and deleting my Facebook app. Cary was gone but Jules was here, and I needed a break – even though she's perfect in every way.

via GIPHY

Our office on base was open, but I took the day off (thanks, co-worker) and still dropped Jules at daycare (hehe). Then I made a beeline to the rambling, terraced ViNAWALK. I had a plan thanks to the Toho Cinemas at this outdoor mall having a 10 a.m. showing of the latest James Bond, Spectre. I've been a fan since we bought my dad all the old VHS copies for Christmas one year and it turned out I loved the stuff; they're also a good entertainer for visiting uncles and cousins and bored guy friends.

Then bro Ty and I went to the first Daniel Craig installment Casino Royal and it changed our lives all over again, as well as made us want to visit Montenegro one day and drink Vespers. What I'm trying to say is, I was excited. Not to mention the anticipation of sitting in a large, dark, peaceful room interaction-free for a couple hours. Going to movies alone also means I don't have to constantly resist the urge to share what else I've seen the actors in.

Wikia

Not many people go to morning movies or on weekdays. And in Japan, when it wasn't a holiday, there wasn't anyone under five feet tall, maybe. The parking lot was quiet but for my mini-mini-van's wheels, the mall abandoned as I walked with my coat pulled tight. The warm lobby with its smells of popcorn and coffee welcomed me with open arms.

The ticket kiosk was a breeze. With my tray of perfectly popped and buttered corn and tiny, foamy latte – don't get me wrong; I seriously contemplated the gourmet hot dogs, pizza and beer – I passed the built-in, wannabe Sweet Factory (contemplated this too) and the nicest, most well-groomed ticket-taker ever, on to the most impeccable and colorful restroom ever. I swear to God it looked like the inside of a Toontown building. Every Japanese movie theater is like the few American theaters that are luxurious, clean and focused on service and taste. Yet in Japan, they just seem to take it a step further like with everything else, from Disney to konbinis.

The movie was great.

I watched the credits scroll prettily and enjoyed the aligned baby name ideas as usual, with their sometimes-interesting job descriptions. Then I left those characters behind, doubly sad as I remembered I was almost done with my Frasier Netflix marathon. How have I watched almost all of Frasier while Cary's been deployed? Actually, as Cary pointed out, how did I watch all 10 years of Friends episodes during the time it took to get the hang of breastfeeding in the middle of the night?

Each time I finish a show, it's like leaving family behind. (Samesies for books.) Every friendship no longer viewed leaves me missing them like my real friends. Every love story leaves me wanting more. Every homey house in Parenthood makes me miss living with them throughout the season, as if I'd sat on their plush couches with them and leaked tears too, rubbed their backs and whispered their nicknames. I get coffee with my Hallmark and Lifetime movie heroins. Caroline's desk was my desk. I wanted to work alongside Archer and staff at the good Isis.

I know this deep love of entertainment can be ridiculous. I write it off as arty. Just like I pretend I watch the Oscars to see who'll win best original screenplay and best cinematography. Really, Hollywood, publishing and living as romantic a life as I can handle are all part of a quite superficial dream to feel comely, clever and free.

I sighed – the loudest noise anyone had made in two-and-a-half hours (god I love it, not to mention the zero kicking, random shooshing and potential fist fights) – and proceeded back to reality. But I had the rest of the day really. What was I going to do, I thought. I used the Thanksgiving Day on my own to clean our rock-star-hotel-room-destroyed house... Gosh, I was freezing. So I bought a new jacket. I spotted the decent burger place and hunkered down, warm and happy eating again, American to boot. I pulled out my phone. I swiped to Facebook. I paused before opening it. Here I was about to possibly ruin my good time with myself [wink].

Here's the thing about Facebook. It's pretty much constant comparison despite your level of confidence. Sure there's the excuse it's easier to stay in touch with friends, reconnect, keep our parents apprised of their grandchildren...That we need our account active for Messenger to work, or for work, or to know what's happening in the communities we're part of, or with the brands we love, or when our favorite blog has a new post. ;-) But are these false truths? I thought maybe the app was at the heart of the matter, the content another matter. I'll explain.

I deleted the app and enjoyed my second lunch with a feed of illustrated comedian comic tweets. (In the back of my mind, I fondly remembered my oracle of a friend who mentioned app deletion years ago.)

Facebook is like my new US Weekly, my new McDonald's. I love it, but I'm not really proud of it. Like when I pass up NatGeo for Entertainment Tonight on a gym cardio machine TV console, then wonder if my neighbor also thinks my incline level is pathetic. Apparently I want people to think I prefer the news, the latest local ski report and maybe even an ESPN app over good ol' FB. I definitely don't need it. Sparingly might be key. I'm really looking for viral videos and images that either make me 'lol' or want to write to the moon and back. Enter my YouTube and Tumblr apps, duh me. Insta and Pin are a bit too much of the same, but sometimes I take a pic of Jules I just have to filter the shit out of.

There's just a je ne sais quoi about Facebook. An ease. A one-stop shop. An entertaining, escapist, cathartic liking machine. You tap; you wait for the gray blocks to turn clear and vibrant; and then you get an immediate flood of social information. Which has everything to do with who you're not and what you're not doing, should be doing or wish you were doing. Thumbs down. Plus, many times there's a quirky pic or sarcastic comment, there's some dip who misinterprets it. I'm realizing privacy goes a long way toward my sanity. And I love not much more these days than sending Jules' Papa, Nana and Mimi her cutest pics via text, trolling Twitter anonymously and opening the Blogger app to edit my latest, probably dumbest opinion.

Sometimes it's OK to just enjoy the view over second lunch.

Simotron

****** SOME TIME LATER ******

Cary: Have you seen this hilarious dog video Brad shared?

[Aly shakes her head quizzically.]

Cary: Oh yeah, you don't have Facebook...

Aly:

The future is fe/male

2016-01-16T19:34:00.000-08:00

Emma Watson and her HeForShe campaign
are raising feminism awareness.

The Different Blog

I'm slightly concerned the Super Bowl is going to fall on or near Jules' birthday every year. And it's followed by Valentine's Day. If the people in her life who like her think they can get away with Super Bowl parties and Valentine-themed birthday gifts, they better think again... But she'll likely become a better person than her mom and not only love football when the games aren't tight but easily forgo the birthday-relationship worship I apparently not-so-secretly relish. Maybe it'll make her tougher. Like the boy named Sue.

It's hard not to be extra gentle with a baby girl. Why? They all have the same makeup despite the normal variances. Long babies and babies with slightly smaller earlobes or something. They're squishy, don't have kneecaps, are guileless. I did double-takes at first but now I like how with dad home, he wipes her face free of food with more force; he isn't as ginger when putting on her shoes; he tosses her higher and makes her laugh for longer.

Last year I sat around a table of really educated women and found myself describing what a feminist is. I was being stupidly redundant for everyone probably. But it reminded me of when my brother and I were in high school and we were talking about guys and girls and dating ... and we sifted out how a feminist isn't an obnoxiously opinionated woman who doesn't care about men; a feminist is any person who believes in equal rights for all the little boys and girls. If that person also happens to be loud or shy or obnoxious or Emma Watson, it doesn't diminish or elevate the principle beyond what it just plainly is. It's not a personality trait but a belief.

And it has nothing to do with changing the rules so my T-Rex arms are in charge of restraining prisoners or missed career opportunities because I chose to have a kid.

Bro and I thought it interesting how it can be souring when women give their opinions, sometimes loudly, or are anything other than accommodating. Why can a clear voice make us inappropriate, or being submissive make us more attractive? Further, why does a man have to be extra tough or love sports? And why does the choice not to be the breadwinner tend to imply that person's mind, needs and wants are second-rate?

There's something to be said for simply growing up to be the best version of you, a sensitive leader or confident wallflower, maybe appreciating athletes instead of being one, unoffended by turns of phrase, being as little of a wuss as you can be, unabashedly wearing pink or a hoodie or clear high heels.

I was lucky to be with the women around that city patio table, women who've put their sometimes higher-earning jobs on hold indefinitely; women who're raising kids on their own; women who'd do anything for their husbands and vice versa. There are some who aren't fans of military spouses, tossing around the stereotype dependapotamus and taking all the fun out of it, because who doesn't enjoy a good Netflix marathon huh? But have they eaten the food they cook, attended the parties they plan, used the services they provide, enjoyed the free country they help protect on the homefront?

Got a lot of questions here. At least I think this much is true:

Skateboarder Chelsea Castro

Do I want to be the one to investigate things that go bump in the night? Not really. Do I want to be the one to coddle my baby child a little more? Sure! Do Cary and I both eep at cockroaches? Absolutely. Mainly, I want to live in a world, and raise my daughter in a world, where you can be exactly yourself, whoever that may be, and achieve whatever you work hard enough for, and be respected solely because you're a good person.

As returning home comes into view along with high desert life – dry heat, clear cool Lake Tahoe, Burning Man, Area 51, snow-covered sand, the real-life Simpsons house, the Vegas sign graveyard, this really cool thing – I wonder what new progress will flow after our post-holiday move back to 'Merica. Like with the first female Rangers, the new Star Wars star Rey, getting to know more female pilots I can admire as well as new friends and coworkers I can look up to and connect with as peers. The future should be limitless for us all.

"Girl or boy we fight our battles, but the gods let us choose our weapons." – Game of Thrones

Eff

2015-10-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

"How ya doin'?"

Tonight Show Host Jimmy Fallon

"Ohh just treading water to keep from the sharks underneath," David says in his New Zealander's voice.

We laugh in the hallway at work because it's dramatic but kind of true. Even when our lives seem small in comparison to CFOs and soldiers, the sense that there are sharp teeth ready to snatch off your toes, or at least nibble at them uncomfortably, is still real.

When Cary's gone, this is just how I feel. But now that Jules and I are over our second illness that deserves a hurricane name ('cause again I'm hyperbolic like that), I think I can handle anything.

Cynically, I give this feeling five minutes.

Before he left, he got off the phone with the skipper, who had the news. "Whidbey?" I ask eagerly from the couch with Jules attached to me and my eyes no longer glued to Mr. Robot, knowing we've been lucky this far - not blessed, lucky - it must/could continue right? We're charmed and good deep down and work so hard...yes, I would like some stinky fatty cheese with my whine.

Tesla Motors (soon-to-be) gigafactory

"Fallon."

#$@&%*!
It's fine.
It's fine.
Teardrop.
What's wrong with you, woman, snap out of it!

Whidbey Island. Pax River. Fallon, Nevada... There was a string of decent options come February 2016. We were on the fence anyway about this one this time around, pop 8,600, shifting its Post-It note on the kitchen wall between top spots. The flying is supposed to be great, search and rescue (SAR), mountain experience, blah, blah, blah, WINK. I love small towns, went to school in one, enjoy driving through them to wherever we're skiing – looking through the diner windows and at the movie theater marquees, romanticizing tumbleweeds and solitary houses set back from the roads, yadda, yadda, yadda.

But I couldn't shake the notion I was moving backward in life, in work-career-job-whatever you wanna call it. Or is it really that our furniture resembles Lisbeth Salander's before she buys grown-up stuff with her hacker money? That seems dumb. Yet everyone else appears to be moving onward and upward with job security and a nearby Pieology and the fruit in the bowl in the fridge with the stuff.

But he did well. And I did too. And we're bright-siders anyway. And hey, don't you want to be us? Have my husband, my kid, my dog, my car, my house. Look we traveled to Seoul. Look we bought a leather couch. Post it, filter it, tweet. Blog about it. We done good, lookit! She sleeps through the night. Butters protects us against cockroaches. Bull. Shit. The truth is nothing is ever perfect and even outside Uncle Sam's Godlike plan and the gloss of social media, no one has control over much. It takes faith in yourself and selflessness, and the great white hope or Hogwarts or whatever you believe in.

And don't let anyone Stepford wife your ass, a friend said, hitting the nail on the head for how I was feeling; it's not only about them, including little people and pets. You'll be running on fumes before you know it because you're human not a robot. Take an interest in yourself and brush off the guilt every time you do what they do: talk about your work, eat til you're full, sleep in, let chores wait.

I will lose it between jobs. I will take a gig reading between bowlers or handing back movie ticket stubs. I will stalk the editor of the local paper until Tesla offers me something I can't refuse or Breaking Bad is filming a second spin-off and needs someone to hold microphones which may dip into the shots. "Jimmy Fallon," I'm coming for you. But in the interim, I'm gonna squeeze the shit out of Japan – from the friends to the trains to the trip that is baby modeling to the ski season to the shortest commute I'll ever have between work, daycare, coffee and store.

There it is, that high again, this time but again from a cathartic (tsk, tsk) blog post I can't resist putting on Facebook because I have nothing else witty to say on there let alone in the flesh in a timely manner. But now I have a bloody nose. Figures. It'd been five minutes. Is it dry in Fallon? Well at least I won't need a blow dryer.

Cary has passed me overseas screening paperwork for the second time in our lives. A friend told me about this; we're moving to a place so remote, it requires a health screening.

None of us can have it all, be the tallest or the bestest, in the ideal place or phase always. Have splendid timing. Still we can at least have our bananas in a hammock if we want, and trust for the best with the rest.

The Proper Use of Hashtags

2015-08-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

You know those moments when you feel optimistic about everything (ahem, last post)? Why do they never last long? Oh yeah, here's why:

Full-blown baby acne by the time your kid is meeting her extended family.

Getting the flu with an infant and without dad.

Losing air conditioning in your car in August in Japan.

Playing the extreme sport of consuming milk past its expiration date. Wait, I kind of enjoy this.

Missing your deployed husband's FaceTime call by minutes. (At which point he dropped the phone and ran away apparently.)

Selling out and going to Hawaii instead of Singapore. #firstworldproblems

Singapore's Marina Bay Sands resort
with a famous infinity pool to die for (via MailOnline).

A two-hour plus expensive commute to the airport then a delayed flight, then one of those achingly stinky blow-outs and later a wet T-shirt contest no one wants to see.

Being lonely enough you wish you were on a big gray boat in the middle of the ocean because hey, at least you'd have a cook and laundry service and constant buddies.

Joyce Carol Oates via Incandescere along with a good quote.
And here's a good article.

Wearing a dress all day at work for an anticlimactic reunion - Jules in her third-cutest outfit because guess what happened to the others...

Running around town to the soundtrack of your baby crying.

Spidey-sense boobs.

Dog poop.

Baby poop.

Your poop.

Joyce Maynard before Looking Back:
A Chronicle of Growing Up Old in the Sixties.
She's also the author of book/movie Labor Day
and mom to Hart of Dixie's Wilson Bethel
not to mention the Salinger scandal?

Dog hair.

Your hair.

Being responsible for feeding three living things.

Feeling more vulnerable as a parent than a mail-order bride.

Your spouse coming home then saying he's leaving again until Jesus' birthday.

Well why don't I just plan on seeing you at Jules' sweet sixteen then! At which point I'll make you buy her a 2031 Fiat to make up for all the lost time! Okay, okay, I digress. No, you're right, it's a great opportunity. GRUMBLE GRUMBLE HAPPY FACE TO THE WORLD GRUMBLE GRUMBLE SHAMELESSLY TO ANYONE WHO'LL LISTEN

Cockroach-like belly-up cicadas on your stoop.

Breast milk storage requirements.

Car seat weight and narrow places.

99% humidity with a baby strapped to your chest.

#pityparty

So now that that's done, I'm back to the high of freebie calories, short hair and my recent discovery that maybe everyone named Joyce is a fantastic writer (see above if you're into books).

And I've got him and her - and a family no one can tear asunder. #knockonwood

#hashtaghashtaghashtag

Sans Dad

2015-06-20T04:37:00.001-07:00

Yep, having your own kid is different.

SCI-FI BLOGGERS
Clone Club, Assemble!

It really does get your cockles toasty when they smile, chuckle, lay their head against you. I could live on that smile - a smile so big she has to turn away from me, curve into herself and laugh silently. And no one has ever been more excited to see someone in the morning than a baby looking at a parent.

So I'm willing to give up being able to watch foreign movies with ease, pesky subtitles. Whether it's to change her, make dinner quick or stare at her face. 'Cause it's Cary's face and a some-better-version-of-me face.

Dad's gone. He sputtered away to sail around on a little boat, weaving the blanket of freedom that keeps us warm at night he quotes.

But it doesn't make it any easier. Just seeing the unwatched MLS app on our Apple TV is enough to make me sad all over again. Or seeing anyone in a flight suit, wondering maybe it's him like a delusional. Or reading greeting cards. Or seeing stories about dogs on Facebook.

Daycare has been a dream, a physical and mental break when you're on your own especially. Daycare-slash-working full-time, or even part-time or even just babysitters, seems a mom's best tool in her tool belt. That and letting them cry for chunks of time. And a beer while breastfeeding. And a keg when you cut their finger instead of their nail.

I have friends who don't want kids or aren't sure yet. I hear ya. I never thought babies were even a redeeming cute. They often look like obese bald people.

The thing was the daycare parade. I was there the whole time, away form work, taking a zillion pictures like Alison Hendrix, (Orphan Black's overzealous soccer mom, and a human clone). I was so proud of my kid, who was doing absolutely nothing. Not even looking with her eyeballs, just sleeping after five minutes in the decorated stroller while the kid next to her played with her ladybug antennae.

These things surprise-surprise soften the hard edges of a life not entirely your own anymore. And for me that seems a good thing. I spent too much time thinking about the unfolded laundry, a skipped jog and an unfinished novel. And he's gone but I get to help raise a little girl into a great woman? Or at least one who appreciates a good talk show interview.

Got someone to stream the Women's World Cup or Sense8 with, or of course GoT, thanks HBO NOW.

Got someone to pose questions to like "Hey why didn't Butters eat her breakfast? Crap."

Got someone to cuddle with and go on walks with and wonder about.

As one of my friends said to me right before Jules was born, you've got this.

So if you're lonely this deployment season or just experiencing the lonely pang of being a female, think of the buddies in it with you. I count. Dogs count. Even cats.

You've got this.

Day 86

2015-05-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

You want to show up like you have it all figured out.

Your baby is fed, changed and sleeping peacefully in your trendy carrier. You haven't got a care in the world besides trying to help populate the world with a good person who also hopefully happens to be cute and smart. You're going to talk and catch-up, enjoy eating and maybe drinking. And you're going to go home near the end of the party with time to fold the laundry and file your nails better, maybe even answer some emails.

Except you have nothing figured out. Because it changes every minute. And they're never full for very long, or clean or sleeping. They're never anything for long enough - unless you're ready for them to wake up or eat, then they sleep for four hours or play ice cream cone with your nipple.

Except they eventually remain perfect (duh) because they're your kid, and even if they're not a good person for some reason in the future, somehow I can't imagine ever not being on her side. Could I turn in my family unabomber?

On the lighter side, thing after thing pops up that you want to do. From dinner with the girls to concerts to doing dishes without an effing dishwasher in this land of modern technology and convenience.

But you can't always eat cake.

You have to stop, reevaluate, adjust or wait. You have to piece together eating, sleeping, shitting and babysitter schedules. You swell and leak and are constantly getting famished and thirsty. You have to pump and dump more precious-than-gold milk than you ever thought you would because, better be safe! You think about and take care of bacteria and germs a lot, even if you're levelheaded.

You can't help but cringe as you leave work yet again to pseudo-feed your kid via vacuum in a place that'll never be private enough. You have to trim the tiniest nails against the softest skin on the jerkiest of limbs.

You have to face things like how your baby's hands smell like the inside of a belly button (not sure how I know this) and contain a few days worth of compressed lint doobies, which she proceeds to suck out and enjoy as a snack between meals.

You have to make blog posts shorter - using Grey's Anatomy monologue voiceover-style repetition - and even more far between. You have to rely on coffee and toothless smiles to get you through each trying moment. You wait for her to laugh.

But this is what everyone tells you..."You have to..." When really, you can do whatever you want as you side-step and feint. You're mom and dad.

You can have meaningful conversations over screams if the other person doesn't mind too much. You can pick how to carry your baby and style his hair. You can have Chu-His or not and will always find a way to enjoy your food. You can shower and have a clean house, or leave those tasks for another day if ever. You can feed them however you choose, get them to sleep however you like. You can make decisions on your own. You can laugh about anything. You can retire your blog from its readership of 35.

You can have caffeine to help with the tired eyes, and extra calories as you eeking-ly wait for teeth to come in. You can take them to daycare or not or change it up. You can enjoy wishing for the next monumental molehill milestone. You can just stare and stare and talk and giggle with your partner: "Butters, this is called 'doting.' We used to do it to you." You can refreshingly realize you were wrong about the following things:

Just have them get used to loud noises--When you spent a long time getting them to sleep, it's a big deal when the TV volume suddenly gets loud or the dog barks, or moves.

Just let them bear the shots; they won't remember a thing--Their pain is your pain now.

Just let them cry--It's an irritating sound.

Just drop them off--What if they get lonely or cold or annoy them? Am I doing the right thing?

Ultimately, you can do it. It's always NBD in hindsight.

Worth it.

A great new view my mom pointed out.

Glug glug.

Woot.

First day of school?

Find the breastfeeding baby...

Hakone's black ice cream. Not a very interesting picture
but it's about to explode so...

Look mom, no hands.

Grandparents Skype

Just kidding, we all know this is the new Princess Charlotte,
Jules' future sister-in-law.
via Mirror

asdfjkl;

2015-03-30T11:30:00.000-07:00

I have this favorite song by Dido, Look No Further, and I thought I would sing it to Jules after she was born, to soothe her - I could picture Cary overhearing and thinking it was sweet. (Yep, that's how my mind works.) But I actually couldn't remember the complete words and it wasn't even 3 a.m., and it didn't soothe her anyway; her crying interrupted me. Rude girl. Perfect girl. Like every other mom thinks. Even her warped ear is endearing ... But my friend was right, every blogger turned mom thinks her experiences are worth sharing. So here only expect the mediocre giggle and relatable event as the blog title implies.

A piece of plastic with a fake nipple did the trick, pacifying her. The best feeling since seeing her dark wet head and wriggly body handed to me by Cary. My dad is reminded of Maggie from the Simpsons when she sucks on the pacifier. The creators seriously must've watched a sucking-obsessed baby to get Maggie's trademark really right. And if you look away for a moment, magically the pacifier has moved to her feet.

Never in my life have I wanted to "accio" things so much. The Harry Potter spell would come in unbelievably handy while feeding or holding her, carrying all the things, or a spell to lift her from my arms undisturbed and into her own space. Water, phone, remote, keys. Accio, accio, accio, accio.

aswerjkmn,23=fklsd9kdsfuek

Also a typing spell would be useful. Oh just face it, everything would be easier if Hogwart's existed.

I took Jules to her first movie. Jupiter Ascending. Meh. And inside a bookstore. While I looked around and hoped she liked the smell and the quiet, she passed a loud one. I gave her her first cold and her first sunburn at barely over a month. We have a three-legged dog because of our mistake and I wonder how much we'll make our kids pay for our oversights, for our determination not to worry too much. I focus on that she has a cool birth certificate and goes on train rides and has a passport.

Here are some more trite things for moms in Japan and beyond:

I have more respect for moms everywhere, from birth to breastfeeding.
I have less respect for stay-at-home moms who complain (not vent) while in sweats and with Netflix on in the background. Bill Burr says it best.

Why does diarrhea of the mouth occur when it comes to parenting advice? Others and my own.
I wish the funniest-in-hindsight things that happen during newfound parenthood weren't rated R.
I wish I didn't talk about kids now as much as the guys talk about aviation.
Will we ever talk about anything else again?

Just kidding, this is the new Gerber baby.

Girls Rule, Boys Drool and Babies Will Never Be Cool

2014-11-29T19:00:00.000-08:00

I can't wait any longer. Mainly because I've got nothing else to write about. (More on that later.) Also note that much of what follows has zero salt if you believe deep down like me: to each his/her own. But that means I get mine too.

Twitch

So here goes. Below is a list of things I've compiled over the years that I think parents shouldn't do. Maybe you'll laugh a little and agree (the best responses), regret things (the worst) and/or thoughtfully change some of your ways (a response I could only dream about and don't really deserve as an obscure blogger and first-time pregnant chick.)

You never know how long people have been trying to have a kid, so if it took you a month, shut it.

Other medical things to keep to yourself unless asked specifically by a genuine, inquiring mind: whether you had an epidural, a C-section, breastfed or didn't, tore (you know what I mean) and just basically any kind of delivery (or pregnancy for that matter) horror. I got pregnant thinking everything bad told to me could very well happen to me. This is obviously not true. Only some of it will. And in varying degrees, from the chillax to the magical pregnancy unicorns to the drama queens.

You cannot plan everything. From your baby's conception to its gender to its birthday to its birth.

Old wives' tales are FAKE. You can't guess the gender people are having regardless of how they're carrying, what they're craving, what a ring on a string does or what direction the parakeets are facing.

You don't own baby names.

If you don't like people touching your belly, don't have the miracle of a tiny human life inside you.

Girls are just as good as boys. Guys, if you think you have some sort of legacy to pass down, think again. And the carrying on the name thing? Ever think a family all has one name for the sake of simplicity? So relax and get over yourself. Your kid and any grandkids are your blood (and sometimes not if you're one of those angels who adopt) and will carry on exactly how much you loved them.

*quick interruption*

Boys don't drool any more than girls do but this does make them look, well, you decide.

Okay, back to it.

Why do we memorize all the numbers of our delivery day for regurgitation at people who don't really care... At 6:42 a.m. I started feeling this thing I thought was pee, got in the car at 7:14, arrived at the hospital a half hour later, walked around for this many minutes ... And this all resulted in a X-pound X-ounce, X-inches long baby. Nobody cares except your mother.

Pregnant women aren't always having a craving; we just finally feel it's okay to say we're hungry and want a burger and doughnut.

Things to consider when considering maternity photos: What are you going to do with them? Facebook doesn't really need any more along with foot announcements, months old T-shirts and gender cake Instagrams. How much will it cost? Have you started that education fund yet? Will your husband look awkward? The answer is most likely yes.

If you can avoid having a baby shower, you'll be guaranteed guilt-free 'no' RSVPs to everyone else's for the rest of your life.

Nurseries are rarely used for nursing so ixnay the nursery label for femme-cave and equip it with whatever you want like Netflix and your sewing machine or a comfy reading chair by the window and room for your yoga mat. Rock a wine rack. The kiddo's book and movie shelf can easily be yours too.

Don't act like the first birthday, first Christmas, first Easter, first trip to Disney is for them. It's for you. Be honest about it. It's okay.

Keep something, anything, for yourself.

I knew it would be hard to write about something other than parenthood for a while... It's like writing poetry about coming of age when you're 13 and a short love story when you meet the one. Or tragedy when it strikes. My head is a jumble of how I'll ever be sane again. How I read The Fault in Our Stars and cried more for the mom than the girl. I feel like when I'm alone, I'm spending quality time with my belly. I think of all the cool things I'm going to say to her (at which she won't be that impressed I know). How I secretly hope she's born a little Raven from X-Men (pictured above).

I'm officially crossing over to the light side (albeit somewhat in the shade). So if you feel you're any different than you thought you'd be at parenting or life, know you're not alone.

In conclusion, babies will never be cool but they sure do make life interesting.

Space-A and the Holograms

2014-08-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Mail Online

I simply could not get to Guam. At least not without going another stretch of days without waves of nausea, a fiery sunburn and more disappointment as military 'space available' flight schedules were both announced and tweaked. But let me start at the beginning if you're interested.

Cary was tottering around the ocean over here, over to southwest Honshu, Japan, then south to poor man's Hawaii (read: Guam). We had decided before he left that I would try and meet him there since he would be shoreside for a week for some special exercises, in which they did things like test giant fog machines for a professional party on the Pacific.

Base flights to Guam are happening all the time. And Guam's not that far away. I was up for it like the great, free trip to Seoul and the random, surprise trip to Hawaii when I got to see my parents. Plus, these things break up deployments like nothing else.

By the time he was underway and I was about to join him, I really, really wanted to see him in person.

Most people are good people, wouldn't hurt a fly or litter without feeling guilty. But when you're shooting for a seat on a Space-A flight, you suddenly wish horrible things upon other would-be travelers. Anything to simultaneously increase your chances of seeing a loved one and sticking it to the man. But no matter how hard you wish, prepare or analyze, this is what can happen - and I'm sure others have stories to boot...

Flight attempt one: Show up. Flight's cancelled. (They forgot to update the Facebook page.)

Flight attempt two: Show up. Wait. Flight's cancelled. (But there's another one in two days. Hmm.)

Flight attempt three (decided not to wait and drove an hour to the Air Force base for a flight to nearby Okinawa, where there are a bunch of flights going to Guam): Arrive on base. Kill four hours with an inhuman amount of nachos and the purchase of some comfy clothes from their huge Exchange. Wait. Roll call. (There are 20 people waiting to get on and five seats.) But I get a seat! (Pays to be traveling by yourself, so you can squeeze into that last seat while others have whole families in tow, mwooooohahahahahaha.)

Flight attempt four (a few hours after arrival in Okinawa; the wee hours of the morning): Flight's cancelled. Scramble for a room. Take taxi to base hotel.

Flight attempt five: Wake up. Check Facebook. Intended flight's cancelled. I've got a day to kill in good ol' Oki.

At this point, I commit to enjoying this Blue Zone. I hop the free shuttle to the base beach - I soon get on a first-name basis with the driver. I intend to purchase sunscreen and a towel at the beach shop, but it doesn't open for another half hour, so I make myself as comfortable as I can lying on a picnic bench with my Kindle.

Pinterest user since mine sucked.

There's one kind of beach towel in stock. It's $50. And the tiniest bottles of thick sunscreen. I get both, soon covered in expensive towel nubbles and not enough sunscreen as the day progresses and I can't resist swimming my screen off to get to the mysterious little island just out from the beach. There are tiny, electric blue fish and sea cucumbers which I can't get to throw up their innards.

In the evening I watch 22 Jump Street in the base theater while itching my sore stomach and eating a greasy slice of weird movie theater pizza.

Flight attempt six: Flight looks to be on. Shuttled to terminal for the last time hopefully. Wait. Roll call (wish bodily harm on other travelers except maybe besides the one girl with a little one who I watch Sleeping Beauty with in the lounge). I GET A SEAT!!!!! Check bags, wait and watch more Sleeping Beauty with them. Announcement: The plane is broken but they're trying to fix it and before they run into crew time - when operators need sleep. Second announcement: Plane is too broken.

Flight attempt seven: A flight has popped up, back to the Air Force base in an hour, and there's room, so I forget about attempting flight eight the next morning - and trekking in the humidity with my backpacker's backpack to the hotel in town I'd have to switch to - and take off with my nausea, sunburn and other ailments in tow.

But I may have extended my life while somewhat blue zone-ing it, and I have this "great" souvenir beach towel. And for one reason or another, the mirage that is Space-A sometimes just wasn't getting me down. Because I just wanted to tell Cary that our kid was finally on its way.

* * * *

Note: Space-A isn't going to be the only hologram out there in society today. The hit 80s cartoon 'Jem and the Holograms' is going to be made into a...wait for it...live action movie!

Annie's Girl

2014-07-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

The very best articles I ever read are always sent from my dad.

* * * * * *

The Project of Literature: Susan Sontag on Writing, Routines, Education, and Elitism in a 1992 Recording from the 92Y Archives

by Maria Popova

“To make your life being a writer, it’s an auto-slavery … you are both the slave and the task-master.”

Susan Sontag remains one of the most interesting minds in modern history, with provocative and prescient beliefs and opinions on everything from visual culture to love and sex to stereotypes and polarities to why lists appeal to us. But arguably her most timeless insights touch on the heart of her own creative material — literature.

In the spring of 1992, exactly ten years after her magnificent meditation on books in Letter to Borges, Sontag visited the 92nd Street Y in New York to deliver a lecture on the project and purpose of literature. Now, thanks to a new partnership with the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92Y, who recorded the live event, I am proud and heartened to offer Sontag’s talk for our shared enrichment. Transcribed highlights below — please enjoy.

On becoming a writer, writing itself (a subject Sontag pondered frequently in her diaries), and its osmotic relationship with reading — a fine addition to the collected wisdom of great writers:

What made me be a writer was that I was a passionate reader. I began reading at a very, very early age, and I’ve been a reading junkie ever since — I read all the time. I probably spend more time reading than any other thing I’ve done in my life, including sleeping. I’ve spent many, many days of my life reading eight and ten hours a day, and there’s no day that I don’t read for hours, and don’t ask me how I can do all the other things — I don’t know. The day has pockets — you can always find time to read.

Reading set standards. Reading opened up to me all these norms, or — to put it in a more naive and probably truthful way — ideals. So that to be part of literature, to be even the humblest, lowest member of the great multitude of people who actually dare to put words on paper and publish them, seemed to me the most glorious thing one could do.

Now, in this sort of book-drunken life … in this relation to reading, which is where the writing comes — I didn’t discover I had a talent; I discovered I wanted … to emulate, to honor, by trying to do it myself, as well as continuing to read it and love it and be inspired by it.

And I mean this most passionately. That’s where the standards came from, that’s where the ideas came from of what was good, what was right, what was better, that there was always something better and whatever you could do was by definition not good enough. The only thing that was good was what was hard to do, what you had to work very hard to do, or what was better than anything you could do.

Sontag goes on to explore the still-debated issue of gender in literature and the notion of how stereotypes imprison us:

That all came from books, and it came from the usual books that are now called “the cannon” — used to be called “classics,” which is not a bad term either — and most of those writers are men. It’s not my choice that they be men, but as far as we know, Homer and Shakespeare and Dante and Rabelais and so on, those writers, they’re mostly men. Of course… George Eliot and Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson and so on [are] absolutely first-class writers, but most great writers have been men — this is not to justify it, this is not to be happy about it, it’s just the way it is. For all the obvious reasons, we know why the majority of distinguished practitioners of most arts have been, up to this time, men — there’s nothing about the future, nothing about what ought to be, just what is.

Therefore, it was so natural to me to take the attitude that these were writers — in other words, Emily Dickinson isn’t a “woman poet” any more than Walt Whitman is a “male poet” — they’re just both poets. George Eliot isn’t a “woman writer,” whereas, let’s say, Dickens is just a “writer” — they were just writers. . . .

I also live in a time in which it’s very important to me — and natural to me — to support and want to align myself with most aspects of the feminist agenda. I’ve always been a feminist — it’s not something I became. At a certain time, I had the honor of being called by Elizabeth Hardwick “somebody who is born a feminist.”

[But] there can be a contradiction, if you will. It is important to women coming to consciousness of the cultural disabilities under which women labor, in which their consciousness is formed, to make those distinctions — the distinctions that I want to, as a writer, not think about. They can be very important for women in general to think about. So there’s the contradiction — let’s say I do one thing as a citizen, as a civic person, and I do something else as a writer.

[…]

But… if I truly considered people and their lives over a long span of time — people with marriages and love affairs and careers, living in a conventional society — it could not be the case … that I would not be struck by the ways in which women think of themselves in subservient roles and in which they become dependent, or even crippled, by gender stereotypes. … Everybody knows it. What we say is what we have permission to say — we always know much more than we say, and we see much more than we acknowledge that we see, but at any given time there are conventions about what we say we can say and what we think we can think. And one of the interesting things about being a writer is to try to open that out a little bit.

Adding to Italo Calvino’s timeless definitions of what makes a classic, Sontag considers what a writer is and what literature means:

A writer is someone who pays attention to the world — a writer is a professional observer.

To be a writer, also — and this is the contradiction — demands a going inward and reclusiveness, just plain reclusiveness — not going out — staying home all the time — not going out with everybody else going to play. . . .

In all of this, I am assuming a certain idea of literature, of a very exalted kind. I’m using the word “writer” to mean someone who creates, or tries to create, literature. And by “literature” I mean — again, very crude definition — books that will really last, books that will be read a hundred years from now.

Now, most people are not “writers” in that sense… 40,000 books a year are published in this country, and many of them are useful and are entertaining to some people. They have some constituency — they’re not part of literature. Literature is actually just this little tiny percentage of what is produced in book form. But, of course, that’s what I’m talking about — I would go as far as to say that no book is worth reading if it isn’t worth reading five times, or more. . . . That’s what I mean by “literature” — a book that you would want, repeatedly, to read, to be inside you, to be part of your bloodstream.

In answering an audience question, Sontag adds her contribution to famous writers’ daily routines, fusing with characteristic elegance the practical and the philosophical:
Writers’ lives are really very boring. I get up in the morning, I make coffee, and I go to work. And I work until I drop. . . . A day in the life of a writer — this writer — is getting up and doing it all day long, and all evening long, and sometimes till 3 or 4 in the morning.

On the psychological value of writing by hand amidst a digital culture, a point that has amplified resonance two decades later:

I write by hand and then I type it. But I have to write the first draft by hand. Now, don’t tell me about the computer — I know the computer is wonderful. I remember one writer friend of mine … said, “I don’t want to use a computer because it’s too entertaining.” It’s not writers’ masochism that makes some few of us continue to hold out against this — it’s that it is better if it goes slower, at least I think so. It’s good to feel it in your hand and it’s good to be able to just think. . . . .

Maybe a writer who grows up with computers would not feel this way, but then, I think, the writing will be different. Let’s put it this way: Writing, like painting, is artisanal. It’s one of the few artistic activities which does require solitude. Most other art activities do involve people and are collaborative. . . . To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing — a hand worker in an era of mass production.

In answering another audience question, Sontag considers what it takes to be — rather than become — a writer:

You have to be obsessed. . . . [Being a writer] is not like something you want to be — it’s rather something you couldn’t help but be. But you have to be obsessed.

Otherwise, of course, it’s perfectly okay to write, in the way that it’s perfectly okay to paint or play a musical instrument — and why shouldn’t people do that? I deplore the fact that only writers can write, as it were? Why can’t people have that as an art activity? … But to actually want to make your life being a writer, it’s an auto-slavery … you are both the slave and the task-master. It’s a very driven thing.

Sontag, who considers herself unproductive despite her books by that point and her ample diaries, returns to the question of daily routines and writerly rituals:

The most productive writers I know have been the most rigidly scheduled, and I’m incapable of having a schedule. . . . Alberto Moravia, the Italian writer who was enormously productive … told me that he started work every morning at a quarter to 8 and he quit at a quarter to 1, and that was it — that’s when he had lunch. . . . And I said, “Well, what happens if you’re called to lunch at a quarter to 1 and you’re in the middle of a sentence?” And he said, “Well, I just stop. I just go and have lunch and go back the next day.” And I thought, I couldn’t do that to save my life. I have a feeling … it’s started! How could? … I can’t leave it! It’s not even that I can’t leave it because I’m afraid that it would go away… I simply can’t.

It’s as hard as stopping peeing in the middle of peeing — excuse the simple-minded example, but just in the same way that it’s very hard to stop peeing once you’ve started, it seems to me, once you’ve started writing, that day, if there’s anything there, how could you stop?

(There’s a reason, indeed, why the creative process at its most immersive is called “flow,” and it’s perhaps this that Henry Miller touched into in his meditation on the joy of urination.)

On the absurdity of using “elitism” as a divisive and derogatory term, something that we still grapple with today:

I think most of what is called “elitist” is a mask for anti-intellectualism — I mean, there is such a thing as excellence.

Sontag ends on a remarkably prescient note about education, the broken system for which she had proposed a revolutionary intervention some two decades prior, and a system that remains just as broken two decades later:

The worst thing about [the system we live in], I suppose, is our educational system. And that is, perhaps, also the most hopeless thing in the system — it’s the most important thing that we should be changing, and it’s the thing we’re least likely to change. And if we don’t change that, basically we won’t change anything else.

Stay tuned for more excellent recordings from the 92Y archives, and explore more of Sontag enduring genius here.

Illustrated portrait of Sontag by Wendy MacNaughton for a previous collaboration

The Awkward Savior

2014-06-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm married to the Kindle now but it wasn't love at first sight. I thought ereaders were the end of the smell of a good book, used bookstores and libraries. Maybe even publishers and journalists.

But a rolling stone...

My first was a 2nd generation given to me jointly by Cary and my parents. A little while ago, I turned it on to find the paperwhite screen resembling a broken Etch-a-Sketch. My heart sank. Panic set in.

What would I do while waiting for Cary in the car outside his work?

How would I enjoy meals out and alone when I didn't feel like cooking? (Read: heating up soup and toasting toast.)

What would I do right now?

I raced to chat online with the-most-amazing-customer-service-company-since-Nordstrom-would-take-back-tires (Amazon). And soon realized in almost no time at all, I would have a better, smaller, cooler, more efficient replacement for a steal. I promptly ordered a new case too, one that would make the electronic device I used to nervously despise look like a real book.

I made special trips to the post office to check if the new Kindle had arrived, while my old one was tucked away for safekeeping next to Cary's first iPod. When it arrived, it was Christmas morning. Really. Not like when someone uses that analogy for 'fresh powder' or a Lululemon jacket and I agree heartily but also somewhat half-so. It was my Christmas Day. One that's all about what I enjoy regardless of anyone else.

One day I'll find a bookcase I actually like that I'll fill with all my favorite reads. But until then, as we pack and haul and move and unpack and organize and clean and organize again, I'll whip out my 170 grams of reading power that connects me to any book in the world wherever I am in the world and feel content. No matter how long I have to sit in a car or how many awkward meals I do by myself or nights in a bed with only one human in it (and one canine), I don't notice as much that I'm alone.

When I carefully but in a slight rush opened the new Kindle box, I pulled out the more petite, darker electronic, that's gratifyingly not quite a Mac, and moved my hand over its surface. When I turned it on, I squealed at the perfect shine of the latest paperwhite booklight. I tested it out at the base McDonald's, waiting for Cary to get off work and save me a trip. Side note: It's strange but nifty how our NAF Atsugi McDonald's plays classical music, like, most of the time. Anyway, the hour flew by...

When I get a text from Cary that he's ready, I pocket my inanimate best friend, enjoying how this one isn't scratched and dinged yet. Over dinner, I slide the power button on again because Cary is so stressed we can't think of anything to say. The screen illuminates magically to an ideal brightness and I 'one-click purchase' another Jonathan Tropper novel, sucked into a more eloquent and interesting world.

As my friend once said at the end of the movie Gravity: The future is now.

Allyson Wonderland

2014-05-04T02:30:00.000-07:00

J.D. Salinger's infamous story of Holden Caulfield, among others, went through rejection...so...
(Analog Yalanlar; also deviantart)

My parents visited this wonderland recently. The cherry blossoms finally popped, and the 'hurry up and happen' everyone feels turned into 'wait! don't go!!' I imagine it's something like fame or having a kid.

A third of our way through this tour, there are times I want to fast forward. Get back to English bookstores and the people who knew me when I was little. But there are times I want the days to stretch...and having family visit does that.

It's like taking your toddler to Disney for the first time. The Japanese vending machines are like the snack carts; it's as if heavenly light shines down on them, illuminating their shiny facades while sparkly music urges you to go ahead, enjoy some sugar, caffeine or vitamin C. The bullet train is like Space Mountain, thrilling yet soothing. The sakura (cherry blossom) trees are the stuff of storybook pictures.

River in Kyoto
via Goodfon.su

Further, on ambiance: their hair was blown back by how spotless every car was - even the garbage trucks - every sidewalk, every train, as well as how wonderful the people are and the cheerful music that permeates both indoor establishments and neighborhoods.

We frolicked around Kyoto's blue-green Kamo river, and Iwakuni's Kintai Bridge at night - the trees were still in bloom and highlighted by paper lanterns, and the giant cobblestones leading into the dark water begged Cary and I to run across them. We strolled beneath bamboo forests and explored the world of Hakone, where we snacked on magical black eggs and rode a gondola across a fantastically windy, gaping canyon, then a pirate ship across a Loch Ness Monster-esque mountain lake.

Kintai Bridge
via krstarica FORUM

It really is as if Underland, Star Wars planets and Instagram were all whipped into one when God created Japan. (No joke. Dead serious. Come visit, statesiders.)

We made our way to Hiroshima. I can't put my finger on why I like this city more than Kyoto. It rained while we were there, turning the river that dissects downtown an appealing, mottled gray. It's not about Scarlet Johansson wandering lost across koi ponds; it's about this suddenly somber appreciation and a respect for the rebuilding that took place on both grand and small scales.

On the lighter said, it's home to my new favorite Japanese food: okonomiyaki. And it's the birthplace of Koyudo makeup brushes, which look like hearts and daisies more than a utensil to paint the barn.

Okonomiyaki is a real tasty mashup.
(Kaelazors's blog)

* * * *

After they left, I returned to a mound of work. I should've been thrilled to have the pile-up, because freelancing usually means having too much time to eat Fritos at 10 a.m. and watch miniseries. Yet after this recent marathon of trying to harness my best column journalism, I got rejection, and then rejection. Nothing truly final, I told myself, just revisions and new leads. But I wasn't getting the scored-goal gratification of publishing that I've been needing over here. Copyediting just doesn't cut it. A byline buried in the credits and in eight point font only goes so far... Just like a personal blog's a dime a dozen if that.

I call myself a writer because that's what I do all day. But journalistically, I haven't gotten past local newspapers, travel guides and magazines the physical equivalent of TV Guide. Each time we move, I stand at the doors to the publications I admire like a Mervyn's customer. Open, open, open. Publish, publish, publish. While I wait, indefinitely, in whatever land the Navy transports us to, I guess I'll have to rely on proofreading tweets and entering speed typing contests.

Add this to your queue.
(via the review by Christopher Fowler)