In the News

I'm having a bit of writer's block. We've mostly been spending our time swimming. Emma's school ended on Friday, so she and Abby have been having turf wars all day. Which is not to say that we've been bored, per se....

Saturday I took the kids down to Santa Cruz to go to the Boardwalk and watch fireworks. They didn't start until 9:30 (two whole hours after the kids' regularly scheduled bedtime), so the kids were tired enough to lay quietly on the beach while the fireworks boomed overhead. We had spent the previous hours riding the rides - Abby went on the kiddie roller coaster for the first time, and I forced them to go on my favorite ride, the Cave Train, which is indescribable.

Parenting is largely frustrating and messy, but there are times with your kids that are just sublime, and this was one of them - our feet in the sand, fleece blanket covering us, their sticky faces sleepily watching the sky.

Monday afternoon, we went over to San Francisco City Hall to watch people get married. Sure, there were protesters, idiots claiming that they knew what God thought about love, and that they had the right to ruin someone else's day (I imagine that these are the type of people that go to dinner parties and completely dominate conversations with their right wing crazy). But mostly? It was beautiful. The band played "Going to the Chapel", and the City Hall is just this gorgeous building. I cried like a baby, and Emma handed these guys (is there nothing you can't find on Youtube?) a note that said "congratulations! love, Emma" with hearts and a smiley face.



Yesterday and today, the university started to remove the tree people's platforms and supply lines. One of the protesters, Millipede, bit an arborist, and is now in custody. As I write this, helicopters are circling over our apartment, and the ruling just came down that the trees won't be cut down. I have such mixed feelings about the protest - I admire the commitment, and the idealogy behind the decision to live in a tree for a year and a half. I even agree that the trees shouldn't be cut. I just wish they picked a cause that would truly change the world for the better - why didn't they take to the trees to protest the war? Genocide, child abuse, slash and burn foresting? Just do a quick Google search for "Chevron South America" to get a good reason to sit in trees. And Chevron is local - why these trees, that were planted as shrubbery when the university was founded? The kids, however, fully support the tree people - Emma was horrified to know that one of the police officers that she really likes is working against the tree people.



Yesterday, I had an ovarian cyst burst. Major suckage, and my first sick day here. Still, we had dinner at our friends' house. They're originally from Germany, and have only been in the States for six months. Somehow, we got on the subject of movies. I told them about how Lloyd Dobler set my romantic aspirations pretty high. They'd never seen Say Anything, which was called Teen Lover in Germany. How can you explain how the sentence "I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen" meant so much?



If you think they didn't get the reference because they're so much classier than us, listening to Bach and eating stollen in a little sidewalk cafe in Berlin, rest assured, they are not - they introduced us to this German artist - the lyrics to this song are simply, "Kitty litter, kitty litter, makes a kitty happy."



I spent the rest of the night begging their third grader to let me play his Wii, while Abby destroyed almost all of their daughter's Barbie accessories. We are excellent dinner guests, I tell you.

Finally, we got a washer and dryer! We were told we'd have one by the end of last February, so we've been living week-to-week, only doing absolutely necessary laundry. I've been washing clothes that I had forgotten we had - it's like I've been on a shopping spree!

xo