San Francisco: A Weird Place.

I revisited the city of my youth recently, and it is as weird as ever. I say that with all the love in my heart. I ADORE San Francisco. The hills, the fog, the ocean, that pointy tower, the shows, the restaurants, the ethnic neighborhoods, the fortune cookies, the street artists, the trolleys, the shopping, the bridge, the museums, the redwoods... I won't keep you all day. I see ghosts there everywhere I go. The good kind of ghosts--the kind that look a lot like different ages of me and people I love.

I just spilled a huge jug of nostalgia all over the computer. Whoops. Cleaning that up.

ANYWAY. You should go there. But I feel that before you do, it's my duty to warn you about some weird things you might see:

-You might see some asian ladies pushing huge strollers packed with four to eight children through the park. Don't worry about it. They'll seem like they really know what they're doing.

-You might see a two-story-tall safety pin balancing on its head. Act like you're impressed. This is what we call "art." Show similar respect for any other giant objects you might come across. If you must take pictures that make it look like you're being attacked or whatever, do it with dignity.

-You might see two motionless guys in black facing each other from 50 feet apart on a pier. Whatever you do, don't disrupt the energy field connecting them. The future of life, the universe, and everything depends on it. Possibly.

-You might be walking through a BART station next to a person who might be related to you and she might look down to see something edging out of her pant leg and onto her shoe. She might swoop down to retrieve it and come back up with something leopard-printy in her hand. She might say, "Oh, my underwear" and shove it in her pocket. She might not think it's a big deal. Realize: IT IS A BIG DEAL. Emphasize this to her repeatedly. Don't let her forget about it. If several weeks later you remove your toddler's pants to change his diaper and you are stunned to find the diaper missing, but then you shake the pants and the diaper falls out one of the legs, make sure you text her immediately. She might have some insight on the situation.

-You might see a guy standing on a bench facing the ocean with his hands spread out in front of him. He might be audibly declaring to himself, "This is what I have!" Reject any notion that he is crazy or on drugs. He is right. This is what we have, and it is quite a lot.

www.jadianesphoto.com

Things I said to my husband in one recent 24-hour period:

-"I'm combining the boys' sock drawers so we have an extra drawer when Andy needs more room for his clothes."

-"I'm wearing pearls with my moccasins. That's okay, right?"

-"+Jonah looks good in grey, doesn't he?"

-"I left a dirty diaper in the back of the car. Remind me to get it."

-"I'm so tired."

This is our life together. I mean, I'm sure that day I said things more interesting than those, too-- like commentary about current events or thoughts on a book I'm reading or reports of funny stories I heard from friends--but really, a lot of what I say is very, very boring. And you know what's nice? +Seth loves me enough to look somewhat interested in all those uninteresting things. I'm not trying to brag. I just want to note that that's part of what love is. It's building a regular old life together. And it's nice.

Here's Seth, doing an impersonation of me doing "special commentary" on the news:

[in a stupid-person voice]:

"Stupid political stupid idiots stupid dumb stupid-ness stupid."

[lifts up his leg and blows a raspberry.]

Sounds about right.

Just when you think your two-year-old isn’t listening when you sing him church songs

You hear him say something about an “earthly home” while belly-flying on his backyard swing, scraping a screwdriver through the grass.

Singing in the car

When I sing Just Give Me a Reason I sound so good. SOOOOO GOOOOD. I mean, Pink and the guy from Fun(.) are amazing at it, but I feel like if they were to hear me sing it their hearts would sink because they would realize they will never be able to sing with all the depth I do. I sing the song with hurting passion. With the last drop of my hope. With a bent soul. With 90 percent of the notes in the right key. All while driving my 2001 Honda Accord. 

I know this is hard to believe--I can hardly believe it myself--but not one single person who rides in my car has ever commented on how well I sing that song. 

I've got your back, Google.

I just noticed that my last three posts all say something about making sure people get results when they google certain phrases.

No one can say my life lacks direction.

The Hippopotamus

by Steve "Pappo" Joplin
(my grandpa)
(who wrote this in high school)
(and got an F because the teacher was sure he plagiarized it)
(but I'm pretty sure he didn't because I googled a line from it and got nothing)
(but now if you google a line from it you'll get something.)


THE HIPPOPOTAMUS

Lumbering Hippo to the mud
Sixteen toes in the narrow deep sink.
O fat barrell on love's brown tub
How terrible the hug...
                            like a warship's wound.

Tonsilled, black yawning for tremulous roar
Nostrilled steamings to help near shore.
Two black fires and mud-blubbered lips
Beckon helps dawning to whore's death pit.


Like great tonned logs
In bottomless bogs...


Lumbering Hippos to the mud.

Things my kids say

Jonah:

"I have a question for ya!... COOKIES!"
"Dinosaurs are coming in my room. Better shut the door!"
"Remember I cried at the bowling station?"





Andy:

"Dah!"
"Gah!"
"Bah!"

Other times

There are times when I realize that in that particular moment, being a mom is exactly what I pictured. Like today, when my baby (almost a toddler!) was sleeping in his room and my 2.5-year-old was entertaining himself quietly at my feet while I shelled peas in the kitchen. (Yup, I SHELLED PEAS. First time.) Or any time one of my sons gives me a hug. Or when they're splashing in the bath. And even sometimes when I'm changing a diaper--I knew that would be part of the equation.

BUT. Then there are other times.  Moments and minutes and hours that should NEVER BE A PART OF ANYONE'S EQUATION. Not even Hitler's.*

What follows is not for the faint of stomach. I told my friend Melissa that this was way too gross to be posted on the internet, but she felt my blog would be a misrepresentation of my life as a mom if this momming moment weren't included. So with fair warning, here it is. I'm going to try to put everything delicately.

On the fourth of July, we set up a tent in my in-laws' backyard so we could give camping with babies a low-risk trial. When our kids started to get sick of fireworks, we retreated to the tent to go to sleep. Sleep didn't happen for hours. Jonah was too excited from the best day ever (at least within the scope of his goldfish memory). Then Andy woke up a few hours after we'd fallen asleep and we couldn't get him to go back down. But that's not the bad part.

The bad part is that as we were trying to calm Andy, Jonah woke up and climbed in the big sleeping bag with Seth and then vomited all over himself and Seth and the sleeping bag. ("Vomited" is a delicate word, right?) The other bad part is that while Seth was bathing Jonah (in a house full of theretofore sleeping people) and I was holding Andy and trying to help and figure out what to do with the sleeping bag, we looked down into the bath water to find it had turned murky and brown. Jonah had made a large deposit from his other end, and now there was a bathtub to drain, scoop out and disinfect and a crying toddler who still needed to be cleaned. The other bad part is that after we had showered Jonah and grabbed what we needed and were ready to speed home to lick our wounds, Seth put Jonah down on the bath mat to change his diaper, and its disgusting contents spilled out all over Jonah and the bathroom. The OTHER bad part is that after Jonah's second shower, when we were in the car and almost home, we heard a gross noise from the backseat. When I opened the door to get Andy out at home, I found him sitting in a 4-inch deep pile of nastiness that his diaper could not handle. (I'm giving myself a pat on the back for "pile of nastiness." Way more delicate than the other options.)

So. Bang, bang, bang, bang. One bullet wasn't enough. My sons wanted to make sure the holiday was good and dead.

I'm sorry you read this, but honestly I'm more sorry for our family and the memories that can never be erased.**

---
*Just doing my part to make sure when someone googles "Hitler" and "diapers" something shows up.
**But still. LOOK AT THESE BOYS:

What Seth has been up to

It occurred to me recently that +Seth hasn't made an appearance on my blog in a while (though he showed up on my old blog all the time), and that is a TRAVESTY. In case you were thinking he must be up to nothing, let me disabuse you of that notion:

1. Not too long ago Seth and I went to Red Robin together, and as we waited for our food Seth spilled some water.



Just a little bit. Nothing embarrassing. He didn't want to wet his own napkin cleaning it up, so he leaned over to the recently vacated table next to us to help himself to one of THEIR napkins. (He swears he was going for an unused one, but he has no proof.) Right before he could make the grab, though, the waiter popped up from around a corner and laid his eyes on Seth Grigg, scavenging.



But DON'T YOU WORRY. Seth is smooth.

He pulled himself out of his giant lean and swerved back around to his own table. He picked up the first thing his eyes fell on, which happened to be my water bottle (it accompanies me everywhere), and casually took a sip.



SO casually.

Here's what the waiter said to him:

 "Can I get you anything, sir?"

Here's what Seth said to the waiter:



"Uh, yeah. Napkins."

I hope this story pops up when professional contacts google him. They will be impressed with his recovery. You want to have this guy on your team.

2. Seth just told me a story about Rusty the Red Panda who escaped from the National Zoo and then was saved by an explosive outpouring of concerned Twitterers.

3. I mentioned to Seth that I was going to write a blog post about him to give him the chance to say what he wants to say to the internet, and here's what he wants to say: "Absolutely not. I forbid it."

4. Seth has been analyzing policy. His title is Policy Analyst, which--if you asked someone what his job was and he said Policy Analyst, would that mean anything to you? NOPE! So we like to throw that title around as if it really does mean something.

Examples:

"Which one of us is the Policy Analyst in this family??"
"Did you tell her you are a Policy Analyst?"
"That guy only WISHES he could be a Policy Analyst."

You get the idea.

So you see, Seth has a rich, full life and he has been up to many things. Please consider yourself up to speed.