Frith O’Steen

Yeah, ok so the title of this post is from a very silly SNL sketch from like 3 years ago, but it’s stuck in my head so there you go!

Yup, I had a birthday this weekend and now I’m 32! I’ve been driving for 16 years, I’m now truly a “thirtysomething”, and I’m divisible by 8 and 4. It was a fun weekend - my parents were thoughtful enough to have me on a day that typically winds up somewhere during Memorial Day festivities, which meant I often got the day off of school or work (well, except when I worked at CalSO for 3 years) and more importantly so did my family and friends. (It’s not as much fun to just celebrate by yourself, although it does generally guarantee a larger portion of cake just for you).

Saw lots of folks over the three days, and then on the actual day itself (May 30, for those keeping track of such things) I went with Sean, Decker, my dad and sisters to Golden Gate Park for a picnic and then rowing around Stow Lake. So fun! Although, I will say that Decker didn’t seem to think so, at least for the first part of the boat ride. But once we distracted him with pretzels and put in the front of the boat with his daddy (thanks for rowing, Tully!) then he was good to go. The weather in SF was gorgeous - man, what a beautiful city.

Ended the day with yummy dinnner and presents at my folks’ place - birthdays are so great! You get to set desserts on fire, rip boxes open, and just be really silly. Case in point: the marshmallow gun I received from Sean. I believe there are still soft little bits of sweet white shrapnel all over my parents’ living room!

There are lots of things you don’t know about parenthood until you become a parent yourself. Your own kid’s bodily fluids don’t gross you out (but others’ do). You can get by on little to no sleep. You can lift enormous weights as needed. And the dating scene starts all over again once you go out in public with your child.

For me to keep my sanity, and give Decker a chance to run off some energy, I try to take him out somewhere once a day - usually a walk through Walnut Creek and a trip to the playground at Civic Park, or going to his weekly playgroup at the community center, or hanging out in front of our house where he can play with his toys in the driveway. And without fail, I have discovered that we mommies (particularly the SAHM variety) are a chatty lot, who seem to always be on the prowl for a (play)date! It’s really funny! Typical scenario: Decker and I are once again at the choo choo train in Civic Park. He’s hanging out, doing his thing (which usually means perching on the little bench inside the engine, balancing his truck on the front of the train, and peering out at other kids and smiling). A little boy (it’s almost always moms of boys!) about Decker’s age (give or take 2-3 months either way) will come wandering over and climb on board as well. The dialogue goes like this:

Me: Look, Decker, here’s another big kid! (They’re all still babies, but I think they like to think they’re big kids! Might as well stroke the ego a bit!). Can you say hi?

Decker:

Me: Hey, looks like they’re gonna drive the train for us! Where do you think we’ll go?

Decker:

Other kid: Babble babble Mommy something or other

Other kid’s Mom: Hey, (fill in the blank, usually something like Colton, Parker, Taylor, etc), look at you drive the train! Where we will we go? Will we go visit (fill in the blank, usually Daddy, Grandma, etc). Can you say hi to the little boy?

Other kid:

Decker:

Other kid’s Mom: So, how old is your little boy?

And so it begins. It’s the ultimate pick-up line! Once you’ve established ages, you can then begin chatting about your kids’ commonalities, complimenting their names and outfits, and so forth. Usually in the playground, it’s like having a brief conversation to help break up the day, and then one of the kids wanders off (usually the other kid, Decker seems to like to stay put) and the mom leaves with them. The caveat to this is if you have a chance to see this mom again (ie: a regular at playgroup or a neighbor from across the way). Then, the conversations move from initial flirting to the potential of an actual date. Dialogue may go something like this:

Me: Hi, (fill in the blank of the kid’s name, which you always remember better than the actual mom’s name)! How are you today?

Other kid: Mommy, (fill in the blank for name of toy)!

Other kid’s mom: That’s right, duck! (or train, etc; fill in name of toy). Can you say hi to Decker?

Other kid:

Me: Decker, can you say hi?

Decker:

The kids proceed to play, while the moms chat in between chasing their kids around the room/driveway, exhorting them to play nice and share (when in reality they’re parallel playing anyway).

Other kid’s mom: So, how’s he doing?

Me: Oh, we’re doing great. He’s getting closer to really talking/keeping us on our toes/teething (pick one).

Other kid’s mom: Oh, I know (empathizes over whatever I offered up conversationally about Decker).

Other kid’s mom: Chit chat

Me: Chit Chat

Other kid’s mom: You know, we should get together sometime! We’re always free if Decker wants to play!

Me: Yeah, that sounds neat!

Other kid and Decker:

Ok, now it’s awkward b/c if you don’t make plans right then, it’s like someone asked you on a date and showed they liked you, and now evertime after that, there’s that weirdness. You didn’t accept right away, which doesn’t mean you won’t ever, it just means you didn’t make plans right then. But you worry that they feel rejected, and you hope they ask you again but you also hope they don’t because that would involve extra effort of picking a day, planning something, figuring out what to wear (for the kid and yourself)…oy. You wonder if you should make the next move, or if you should wait and see if they call you….

Poor Decker - he was born to a mom who was never very good at the dating scene!

Yay! I know that summer technically doesn’t start for another month or so, but it really feels like it’s arrived full force this week. And the heat’s been here a short enough while to still feel welcome and novel, rather than exhausting and overwhelming. Decker and I have changed our routine accordingly (I can’t exactly take him out to the playground in 90 degree weather!), and have been doing our morning walk/visit to the park in the mornings, and switching his naptimes to afternoons. It’s been fun to walk through Walnut Creek in the morning, because it’s quieter and a nice temperature and you can smell all the restaurants starting up their kitchens to get ready for the lunchtime crowds and all the moms and kids out at that time are Decker’s age, so they tend to be gentler and less pushy on the play equipment. (If I hear one more kid say “You can’t play here - this is OUR (fill in the blank, ie: spaceship, train, etc)…I will lose it! Do they say it because their moms aren’t right there? Or do they do that in front of their parents as well? I get spoiled at Hippity Hoppers - all the moms there bend over backwards to make sure their kid isn’t the rude one - as a result we have a roomful of toddlers who are probably very confused that all the moms are encouraging them to share, even if the other kid only glanced at the toy in question! Heh).

It’s nice to go on these walks, because they also remind me of walking around Corvallis when I was a student up at Oregon State. I really enjoyed going out and walking around the downtown on weekends and in the summer, especially because it was kind of quiet and it was a pleasant set of streets to meander down while I got some exercise to boot. I liked doing the same thing in Arcata, too. I dunno, there’s something very comforting and familiar about the smells and sounds and sights…I really like going on walks. They’re nice in the late summer evening as well, after a hot day and now the temperature is just right and the shadows are long and everything just feels very relaxed. Even when I was working CalSO, I really enjoyed when I needed to walk across campus for something or other in the evening…sort of a magic twilight hour where it was nice to just relax and breathe deep and not really think about anything. It’s one of your cheesier songs I grant you, but “Summer Breeze“ always pops into my head during evenings like that.

Best part of all about a summer day at home with Decker? When Sean comes home early and surprises me with a nice cold slurpy drink! Yesh!

So last weekend when Sean and Decker headed up to Loomis for a visit with Sean’s mom Trudi, I stayed behind and had a grand ol’ time being solo. (See previous entry for just HOW grand a time I had!). Part of that grandness included a yummy and entertaining dinner at a new restaurant in Lafayette called “Lily’s”, which specializes in Beijing cuisine. When my folks had eaten there a couple of weeks before, they had seen on the menu that you can order a item called “Clay Chicken”, which takes 8 hours(!) to prepare, so you have to call in your order the night before. Dad thought this sounded fascinating, so we made a date for me, my folks and my sisters to meet there for dinner on Friday night.

The food there was sooooo good. Not too heavy, and according to Katil and Tully (who have traveled there a few times themselves) pretty authentic to what they are used to seeing in restaurants in Hong Kong, Beijing, etc. But not only was the food really good, the waiter was really cool. He served up all our plates to us, including the appetizers, and did it quite artfully using 3 spoons each time! He also had a good sense of humor. Everything was delicious, but the Clay Chicken was outstanding. They brought out what looked like an enormous round loaf of bread, which they then broke apart (and threw away, much to my dad’s chagrin - he kept saying, “they could have left it with me! all i need is a little butter!” - heh), and revealed a round foil covered mound underneath. After carefully unwrapping the foil (this was a 2 man project at one point, especially b/c it was so hot), you see there was a whole chicken wrapped in lotus leaves (which smelled DIVINE). After taking off the lotus leaves, you saw a stuffed chicken (including the head and legs still attached - yes, “Christmas Story” comments were made at the table), which the waiter then proceeded to carve up and serve to us. I have never had such tender meat in my life. And the flavoring of the lotus leaves added a new element - almost like anise - very tasty!

Follow up that amazing supper with a yummy dessert of sugared fried banana slices (so warm and gooey on the inside!) that Tully assured us she had seen several times over in China, and we were full and happy campers! I never get to do stuff like that, and it was great! Good food, and no worries about having to keep an eye on anyone dropping food or making a mess! (Well, there WAS Dad, as Katil pointed out…)

Ah, the flashbacks….mmmmm…food coma….

So for the first time since Decker was born, I have the house to myself this weekend. Sean and the little guy went up to Loomis yesterday for a couple of days at Trudi’s house (they walked in a 5K this morning, I believe it was a walk-a-thon benefitting community groups in the area) and I am a bachelorette until tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon. So how did I spend my free time? Well, first I cried for about 5 minutes when they left (it was actually hard to say goodbye! I then had to laugh b/c it was pretty funny!). Then I lay down for a quick snooze and woke up 2 hours later! Woo hoo! I proceeded to wander around my very quiet house, and even allowed myself a chance to read and be extremely lazy. It was awesome. Finished off the day with an AMAZING dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Lafayette with my folks (more on the meal in another entry - it deserves its own post), and then went over to my folks’ and watched the complete uncut version of Sound of Music, which is so much better in its full context (I saw a lot of stuff that must have been cut to fit the tv version), but is also about 12 hours long! (or felt like it). Anyway, I sang along with gusto, and then headed home around midnight.

Having satisfied my need to veg, I woke up at 8 am this morning (after a couple of false starts, where I woke up at Decker’s normal rise and shine hour, and then realized I didn’t have to get up!), and was a new woman! I read the paper, took a shower, and then realized it was 9 am and I was itching to do something - I had all this newly discovered energy! I put on some music, the soundtrack to “Mama Mia“, to be excact, and CRANKED it. So…the best visual I can give you: remember the “Family Ties” episode where Alex is taking Mallory’s friend’s diet pills so he can stay up and get more done? And he gets even more and more frenzied? (Don’t worry, you don’t need to call an intervention for me, the worst substance in my body this morning was caffeine). Ok, now combine that with the scene in Risky Business with Tom Cruise dancing around his house (only I wasn’t dancing in my tighty-whities, I was fully dressed thank you very much) and that was me! I dusted, vaccumed, scrubbed, cleansed, bleached, laundered, scoured…and took a break every so often to do my whirling dervish dance to a particularly great song. It was awesome. I haven’t had the drive/energy to do that in a long time. And I realized how out of shape I am! I’m pooped!

And I am looking forward to my guys coming home…crazycake hugs all around! But I am sure enjoying the solo time while it lasts! I’d kinda forgetten what it felt like!

Well, I’d like to say that nothing could rain on my parade this Mother’s Day, but the weather had other plans. It was still really fun though! I got to sleep in until 8 am, Decker took a nice long nap himself later that morning so I got to enjoy the Sunday paper and do the crossword at my leisure, and then that afternoon we thought we saw a possible break in the clouds, so we bundled up and headed over to Tilden for a walk in the hills. It was really wet by the time we got back in the car, but it was a good time all the same! Decker’s favorite part (and mine too) was when we stopped to change him and then let him run around in this grove of trees along the trail. He was oblivious to the elements, and having a great adventure feeling all the trees and looking around on the ground! Afterwards, we had dinner at my folks’ house so I could celebrate with my mom, and the traditional Mother’s Day meal of steak and strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert was sinfully good as always. Gotta love holiday meals!

I realized with not a little bit of shock and horror yesterday that it has been 10 years since I graduated from UCSD. 10 years, people! Rebecca, Kay, Janet - I’m looking at you, too!

And in all that time, I haven’t grown any taller. Damn.

I may not be able to code or speak in binary numbers like my husband, but I will fully admit to having a large proportion of geek blood in me all the same. I like shows like “Lost“. I read fan fiction on occasion. I refer to Harry Potter books/movies by their acronyms. I know all the words to They Might Be Giants “Flood“. And I am not embarrassed to admit that I (along with Sean) had been counting down the days till opening night for “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”.

Seriously - this was huge for me. When I was in about 4th grade, my uncle gave my dad some tapes of a radio show from BBC a few years back, which turned out to the original version of “H2G2”. We listened to them a LOT going back and forth from Utah, and I was hooked. Add to that my dad letting me stay up and watch the tv version (wonderfully low budget, also BBC) on PBS, and by 5th grade I was making mixed juices and putting masking tape on the glass labeled “pan galatic gargleblaster”, and using names from the series as the theme for my map project (”create your own island”) in Miss Martin’s class. I’m pretty sure she had no idea what the hell I was doing. Especially b/c my dad helped make my map look all hella cool and real, while the other girls were making things like “bunny rabbit island” and “musical note island”. Please - I had the Sea of Zaphod, Minsfrain Mountains (yes, I used secondary characters, not just key players!)…yo. I hung that thing up in my closet until I got married!

So yeah, I was very psyched about seeing this film. And I’m pretty impressed with how they adapted the book. Obviously the story is convoluted and rambling enough that a straight page to film interpretation wouldn’t have really worked. But things I especially liked:

1. Shout-outs to old school fans! They used the original theme music (cue the strains of plinky plunky banjos in the opening) for the credits and the original title artwork. They used the original Marvin the Paranoid Android, and just had him in various scenes during the part of the movie while everyone was lined up on Vogsphere. The original actor who played Arthur showed up as the ‘answering machine’ for Magrathea. They kept saying “Belgium” when they wanted to swear, but didn’t worry about explaining it - it was just there to be picked up on. I’m sure there’s tons of stuff I missed, too.

2. They didn’t dumb it down or go to too much effort to explain stuff. It may have made it much more confusing for the uninitiated who haven’t read the books or anything, but it made it feel much more respectful to those of us who knew the story and just wanted to see it up on the big screen.

3. They kept the awesome bits from the radio/tv series, like the part with the whale and the bowl of petunias. Would have been a sin to leave those out.

4. The factory floor in Magrathea was sooooo cool. It was exactly like I pictured it when I listened to the tapes.

Anyway…it was awesome.And yes, I did go online afterwards to find out what other people thought of it, and to read about the production of the movie, etc. Yes I did. And I’m damn proud!

Mother’s Day is rapidly approaching, so I will indulge myself once again and dedicate a portion of this post to my life as a mommy. I will then add some other non-parental related stuff, if for no other reason than to reassure myself that I do still have separate identity other than “eh!”.

“Eh!” is the closest I can phonetically come to spelling Decker’s name for me. It’s funny, b/c an outsider might not hear the differences in tone for what essentially tends to be the same word for him. (I imagine it’s sort of like how a non-Chinese speaker has a harder time hearing the subtle differences in pronunciation of similar words in Mandarin). Anyway, while “aaah?” means what’s that?, “eh!” is the word he uses when he calls for me. It works, I know who he wants. It will be nice eventually to hear “mama” (or any words at all for that matter), but for now we are certainly able to communicate all the same. The kid has gotten really good at pointing to things, and it’s actually pretty rare that we can’t figure out what he wants. I was reflecting this morning that Decker and I have become good buddies for each other. As he’s getting older and developing more and more personality and a sense of humor, I realize that we have a rather fun time together! He forces me to slow down and appreciate small stuff (seriously - like he brings me really tiny pieces of tanbark and wants me to hold them for him) and he also is the easiest audience in the world if you want to make him laugh (gratifying!).

It’s great to see him healthy again, too. I do NOT like to see my son get sick, and it sucks when I can’t do anything for him besides ride it out and help ease the discomfort as best I can. It’s amazing what is so NOT disgusting when it’s your own flesh and blood. He basically couldn’t keep anything down for approximately 7 days, and I had to laugh at how savvy we got at catching/deflecting as he did his thing:

“Decker, are you going …ack! Wait! Don’t throw up on the carpet/couch/bed - here - throw up on this blanket and on mommy’s shirt, ok? Good boy!”

I don’t want to get cocky, but our couch remained unscathed despite the biblical scenes of destruction his stomach flu left behind. Let’s hear it for covering your furniture in tarp cloths of washable baby blankets!

Anyway, like I said I had to laugh because here I was, elbow deep in stuff, doing 6 loads of laundry a day, getting up multiple times a night to rock him back to sleep, and getting very little sleep myself. Quite a far cry from the days of working at Berkeley (although Sean pointed out, not so different from being an RD on duty!). Doesn’t mean it didn’t take its toll though…last Wednesday night (week 2 of the plague), I told Sean at the end of the day that I had to get out NOW or I was most likely going to peel my face off of my skull right there to release some tension. (Did I mention that the whole time Decker was sick, the roofers were up above us and making an unholy racket? I didn’t? Well, that adds a bit to why I was so on edge - it wasn’t all Decker’s fault!). All of which is why I have to say I really appreciate the new study that came out today from a site called salary.com. They basically surveyed a ton of stay at home moms, tallied all the stuff they do every day, and then totaled what they should earn per year if they were paid. Drum roll, please………including overtime (THANK YOU!), we SAHMs should be pulling in $131,471 a year! It’s just very validating to hear someone put an actual number value on what we do. Don’t get me wrong, I know the value of it even without a salary, and I know that Sean values it too, which makes a huge difference. I feel very lucky and priveleged to get to do what I do for a job. It’s just nice to see it given some value for context with the rest of the world.

Hmmm…you know what? See the next post for my non-mom stuff - this is getting too long otherwise!