Category Archives: Regional

H-H-House

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Today we signed 30 years of our lives away and parted with our money! Yeehaa! Let’s hope we’re not fools. We certainly weren’t quickly or easily parted from it.

In California, you sign all the legal and mortgage paperwork and then they give you the keys later. We’ll legally have our house on May 4, and then the fun begins. Tenting for pests, small repairs, installing things, packing, packing, and more packing, sorting and donating, packing, and then moving. May will be a busy month.

And then we’ll nest. Bean already loves the back yard. I’ve got ideas for planting… and I must remind myself we have many years in which to do all these things.

A Dream Achieved

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At long last, after a search of 13+ months, we found a home to buy! We close a couple of days into May and will move in by June 1. Woohoo!!

If you live in Silicon Valley and need a realtor, contact ours: CJ Brasiel. She also has a blog. CJ makes it happen. We hired her on January 1, and we had a house by Easter.

I stand here nipping a bit of lunch while Bean eats, so this post will be brief as usual.

A Poll

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I want to know:

  1. how much do you spend on groceries per month (including household cleaners, personal items, etc. but NOT dining out);
  2. what part of the country do you live in; AND
  3. what is your family size?

I’m looking to see what other families of 3-4 in the Bay Area spend but am generally curious. Trying to see if we spend more than usual and if we should cut back somehow. Please email me privately if you don’t want to comment, kathryn at pobox dot com.

Women Hold Up Half the Sky

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Last night I saw a movie based on a book called Half the Sky, written by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Their work through this book and Nicholas’s New York Times column is an effort to galvanize the world to pay attention to women’s rights all over the world. I could get on my soapbox and provide statistics about poverty, sexual abuse, maternal death, but I think sharing my reflections about one story might be more compelling. Before I do, though, I will share one statistic with you: globally, at least one in three women are beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. Since I myself am among the group of “one in three” (although I don’t discuss it often here), I want to focus on how one woman has catalyzed major change in her culture.

I want to talk about Woineshet, a young woman who was featured in short film directed by Marisa Tomei. She transformed her experience of being brutally raped into a forum for changing her culture for the betterment of women and therefore, also of men. In Ethiopian villages a common practice — which has been upheld by the law — is that of men raping women and girls, who are then usually forced into marriage with their attackers. As a result of making the offer of marriage later, men cannot be prosecuted for their attacks. In one village, about 70 percent of the marriages found their genesis in this practice.

Woineshet was 13 when she was raped. She journeyed two days for a physical exam in order to provide proof for authorities, only to be told that her virginity was in doubt because the wound looked old. Her attacker was arrested and released on bail; then he abducted Woineshet again and held her for a month, forcing her to sign a marriage certificate before she escaped. Before a judge — who suggested that she was fortunate that her attacker wanted to marry her even though she was no longer a “fresh virgin” — she replied to the question of whether she would marry her rapist with the simple answer: “I refuse.”

She has since, with the steadfast help of her father, gone on to complete her basic education and is pursuing a law degree. She has pursued her case through the legal system in order to win the right for women to prosecute their attackers. What is more heartening, however, is her work to educate people to effect change in the culture which supports this practice.

There is a scene in the film where Woineshet has visited a village, and the men and women gathered to hear her story. A young woman who was forced into marriage after her rape spoke about how she felt. She was unhappy; she wanted to have an education; she wanted to be someone; she was angry. Then the man who attacked her — her husband — spoke from his perspective, of how his actions made him feel like a successful man. It is tempting to feel outrage toward him, but instead I felt something else: hope. I listened to this man talk about how he felt at the time, and how he has come to understand how devastating his actions have been. And he offered to apologize to the woman he’d hurt, and kissed her feet. I realize those actions don’t “make it all better,” but that’s not the point. This enlightenment must occur for change and healing to occur. He cannot undo his actions, but he can atone. Person by person, culture changes. Woineshet is an example of resilience and perseverance at the young age of 21; imagine how she might improve the world throughout her lifetime.

Join the movement: Half the Sky. Women aren’t the problem; they’re the solution, along with men.

Getting Away From It All Some Of It

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We want Bean to enjoy nature, and it can be a challenge to find unsullied open spaces close to home. Last weekend we went to Los Gatos Creek Trail to walk. We decided to try the trail head in Los Gatos proper. Well, first parking was a challenge. And then the many people biking and running made it difficult for Bean to pursue her own meandering path. But what was most intrusive was the traffic. This part of the creek trail runs alongside Highway 17, which at this location is a six lane highway.

So, Bean did get to see trees, smell flowers, and — thrill of thrills — stand at the creek side and throw stones into the water. She loved the ker-plunk sound and the splash. But it certainly wasn’t a pastoral experience. I believe I’ve hiked another part of the trail that was quieter; I need to find out where that entry point is.

Last night at dinner with some friends, a woman mentioned Penitencia Creek Park. I’d driven by it on my way to Alum Rock Park but not stopped. This morning on a whim I took Bean. This park, too, resides in the midst of urban life, but what a difference location can make! While we still heard traffic, sirens, and airplanes, it was all in the distance. The weather was gently warm and sunny. The creek burbled cheerfully as we walked by. Bean got to throw stones into it and to test what happens when you throw leaves into the water. (They rapidly float away!)

There is a pond in this large, green open space as well, and it is populated by Canadian and white geese, American Coots, and white as well as Mallard ducks. The pond is fringed with thick cattail plants which make a great landing spot for red-winged blackbirds to sit and sing. We saw a robin red-breast hunting for worms, and many fat squirrels chasing each other. And, while the trail was well-populated by people, it didn’t feel crowded. Bean found a large white duck feather which she used “to tickle the water” of the creek. And the best experience of all for her was an encounter with a small black caterpillar on the paved path. She enjoyed the feeling of it crawling over her fingers and declared, “Her name is Sam.” She put the caterpillar in the grass so it wouldn’t get squished.

As for me? For a change I felt my body relax with the release from all agendas; I was content to meander and look with Bean at whatever caught our eye. We spent a lovely hour there and came home content.

A Future We Can Change

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Life is competitive around here. It is everywhere, but I feel it especially here — in the play group, among other parents in general, especially when the topic of education comes up. Last year, four Gunn High School students in Palo Alto committed suicide by stepping in front of trains; already one child committed suicide the same way this year. Granted, Palo Alto manifests “the best of the best” — affluent, highly educated, highly successful Silicon Valley players who want their children to succeed and exceed the norm. Not all school districts are as packed with scrambling over-achievers.

We want a good school for Bean, but more than that, we want a good learning experience for her, and a good life. I want to see this movie when it comes out. And I want to be part of the solution.

If you can’t see the movie trailer, click this link.

Last Day To Bid

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Today is the last day for the To Haiti With Love auction. While I’m pleased that my items have had some bids, I’d like to point out some other products for auction in case hand-knits aren’t your wish.

There is a wide array of books — inspirational books, children’s books, poetry — offered.

Are you looking for a grown-up indulgence, such as a ski weekend in Telluride, handcrafted soaps, a creativity coaching session? Look here.

How about some artwork to hang on the wall in a beloved toddler or baby’s room, or a handmade wood toy, or lovingly crafted clothing? You can find some here.

There is a wide selection of gorgeous fine art photography to bid on.

Perhaps you’re looking for a new journal to write in.

These are just a few items available. Check out the site! All proceeds go to assist St. Joseph’s Family of Homes.

Bidding is easy! Just leave a bid in the comment section for the item you want. More details are here.

To Haiti With Love

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To Haiti with Love is an online auction of art, photography, papercrafts, clothing, and creative goods. All proceeds will go direct to the St. Joseph’s Family of homes for children in Haiti. There are some gorgeous works and delectable items offered.

The auction opens at 8 AM EST on Monday, February 1, 2010.

The auction closes at midnight EST on Monday, February 8, 2010. There is still time!

Instructions on how to bid are here.

I’ve offered three items for bidding — a felted bowl with chocolates, a cashmere/wool scarflet called a Fidget, and fingerless gloves made of wool and silk.

Make a bid, change lives!

(And I’d love to see someone enjoy my creations!)

Day 1

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We spent the day doing a marathon tour of houses with our new realtor. She now has a sense of what each of us really looks for in a home. We’ll probably go on another tour soon. We feel optimistic. Bean got to spend many hours with a friend whose parents graciously offered to have her over for a play date.

The really good news is that our landlord, who typically only works with 12-month leases, agreed to let us go month-to-month as tenants! That gives us much more flexibility with our search and timeline.

Tomorrow we need to go to Bean’s nursery school and help clean it. It’s a parent cooperative, so all the parents take a turn doing projects to maintain the building and grounds.

New Year, New Hopes

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I feel jazzed at the moment. Out of the blue, yesterday I received a lovely, gracious email from a blog reader — someone who has lurked around here for three years — and it made my day. I haven’t been feeling inspired much to write lately. Hearing from someone that she has appreciated this little world I’ve created nudges me to make an effort. So here is a post.

I recently cleared out the office, which has been the art room and the overflow room. It was cluttered and hardly usable. I’ve now reorganized all the art and craft supplies and labeled the drawers. I know where stuff is and can get to it. The vacuum cleaner fits in the closet. Now it’s ready for me to mess it up again!!

For Christmas I was given a gift card to a sewing store to sign up for lessons. I was given a sewing machine last June for my birthday, but it hasn’t been used yet! Now that the desk is clear, there is room to set it up and try a project. Soon.

We were recently referred to a new realtor by a friend. If you’ve read this blog awhile, you know we’ve been searching for a decent, affordable house to buy in the Bay Area since last January. Husband has been researching online for much longer. We were using a do-it-yourself discount realtor company, and we saw dozens and dozens of houses. We nearly made offers on three. But they didn’t work out, and I was discouraged. I’d lost hope and interest by mid-year.

So we met with this new realtor, and we like her. She has knowledge and expertise and connections with other realtors. Once she is certain about what we’re looking for, she’ll preview properties for us. She’s sending us listings we would not have considered before, because her sense of how soft prices might be means we might be able to buy a house that’s priced higher and negotiate down to our comfort level. She has even made a video of one house she viewed as a way of trying new technology this year. I’m enthused again.

Last year was a year of learning about friendship — how fluid they are. One close friendship from 2008, with a mom I saw almost daily and spoke with on the phone at least as often, ended. There was a misunderstanding, then repair, then a transition on her part to another friend. I felt abandoned and replaced, and it hurt me deeply. It left me reeling, actually, for several months. I realized during this process that I had concentrated my well-being in one relationship to the exclusion of other mother friendships. Since then, I’ve made more effort and thus more friends for me and Bean. I feel connected to a wider community. When I see this person at play group events and parties, we always chat and I enjoy it; but the part of me that broke and let go has changed. Paths diverge. It’s all right.

In November, I had hoped a long-time friend from Austin would arrange to visit with me so I could introduce her to Bean during our visit. (We’d met in 1999.) I’d been close to her when her son was born; I was designated an “auntie.” After I moved, we drifted some and had less contact. She got more passionately involved in other pursuits in 2007 and stopped following through on the small gestures and actions that nurture a friendship. I was a little hurt by this, especially because there was no response to my baby shower or Bean’s birth — and months after her birth, the friend sent a small package of hand-me-down stuff.

Well, the visit didn’t work out, and she was very blasé about it, and I wrote her about how I felt. She conceded she’d dropped the ball and mentioned wanting to connect again, and she pointed out that I had seemed distant as well. I was encouraged and looked forward to responding and trying to reconcile. However, I didn’t reply to her email quickly enough. It gave her time to reassess that she really didn’t feel it was worth it. She decided to “un-friend” me officially from her life: off of Facebook and Flickr, off my blog, everything. She removed my blog link from her blog. I imagine she has purged my contact information. I hate to think what she might have done to the artwork I’ve made and given to her in the past. It was thorough and unilateral, and it first it stunned me. But then, I decided to let it go. If that’s what she needed to do, it’s her loss. Considering the way things were, it isn’t much of one.

Lastly, someone who found my blog a couple years ago became a reader and felt inspired to start his own blog. He is a wonderful photographer and has interesting insights on the politics of our day. As my offline life got busier, I have stopped commenting on most blogs that I read. For some reason, this person felt it important to send me an email with a subject line of “Farewell” and to inform me that he was removing me from his list of blogs on his blog, because I don’t comment enough for it to feel like an exchange. He wasn’t going to read my blog anymore. He assured me that he knows I’m busy with a wonderful child, and this wasn’t meant as a slap to me. Yet somehow, it did feel like a slap. I didn’t dwell on it long, but I was reminded how tenuous our online connections can be.

So my hope for this year is that I manage to nurture the community I have offline, maintain connections with far-flung friends, and revive my online presence a bit. Somewhere in there I want to read books, make art, knit, learn to sew, buy a house, and do fun things with my family. Well, sleep is overrated, anyway.

Happy new year everyone!

Doing Good

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Bean has a little bank — a squirrel — that we put coins into. Any time we find a coin on the sidewalk, or whenever a relative sends a dollar bill in a card, the money goes into the bank. The other day, I told her there are people who don’t have any food to eat, and asked her if she would like to help them. She said yes. I told her to choose a number between 1 and 5, and she chose 4. So we took $4 in quarters out of the bank.

Then at the grocery store, I took her to the aisle that had beans and rice. She chose two cans of beans and one bag of rice. We paid for it at the register. It came to $3.99, and she handed the quarters to the cashier. Then she carried the bag (actually, dragged it across the floor) to the food collection barrel installed by Second Harvest Food Bank. Bean shops often with me and understands you have to give money to take the food or other items home. I’m not sure she entirely understood why we left food in a barrel, because the concept of helping out faceless people is really abstract. But it’s the action that matters. It is the practice of acting with compassion that will, over many repetitions, become part of her world view.

Last night I volunteered wrapping presents at The Family Giving Tree, an organization that undertakes a massive annual effort to collect toys and clothing for people in need. When I saw the items, I just about cried. They are wonderful and brand new. Each child listed a first and second gift wish, and some of these were so small: a bottle of perfume, some colored pencils, a basketball. Others of them were a bit more elaborate: a boombox, MP3 player, or Fisher Price Little People toy. But each child was getting one gift, a toothbrush, and if the toy required it, batteries. I almost cried because my daughter, the only child, only grandchild, only niece in both sides of the family, is going to receive so much for the holiday. We are very fortunate.

I did go to their site later and sponsored two children. I think next year I will get more involved in The Family Giving Tree project somehow. I’m glad that many children will get a gift this holiday; what pains me is that the circumstances of their lives are likely difficult. It’s not just a holiday gift they need. They also need food, shelter, safety, stability, security, clothing, and learning opportunities.

Traveling

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So tomorrow begins an adventure! We are all getting on a plane to fly to Texas. Other than one overnight in Monterey, we’ve never gone anywhere with Bean. We’re all set!

I won’t have access very much to a computer until after December 1. I’ve created blog posts for the remaining days of Art Every Day Month, but those will automatically publish. I may log onto email a couple times if you want to contact me; just don’t anticipate a prompt reply.

Happy end of November, everyone!

Art Every Day Month – Day 9

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My sister-in-law and brother love Paris. Bean’s godparents (why isn’t there a better term for atheists? Our other phrase, Emergency Backup Parents, is kind of bulky) recently went and loved it. Another friend also visited Paris a couple years ago. And I? Well, I stayed in an unremarkable hotel on the outskirts of Paris overnight on my 15-countries-in-2-weeks tour back in 1999. I visited Marseilles; toured Fragonard parfumeur; waved at the Eiffel Tower; toured (by bus) the Boulevard de Clichy (past Le Moulin Rouge) and the Arc de Triomphe on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées; breezed past Le Jardin de Tuileries; toured (in person) the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur and Notre Dame; and ate an incredible meal at a forgotten restaurant before riding on through the countryside on the way to whatever country was next. Maybe someday I’ll go back there for a longer visit, with Bean when she is older. I need to update my passport, though.

always paris - art every day month 2009 - day 9

Always Paris / 2.5 x 3.5″ collage

Art Every Day Month – Day 8

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I started this ATC on a bright green background and used tissue paper to collage. I got stuck along the way, feeling uninspired. I was thinking of fall colors in New York state, and also of how incredibly green and rural it is, and how easily lost one can get in some of these places. Where I live now is dense, urban, and covers a valley floor mostly with concrete. So this ended up being a piece reflecting my own uncertainty in the creative process and my longing for sparsely populated places.

lost - art every day month 2009 - day 8

Lost / 2.5 x 3.5″ mixed media collage

Mmmmm, Meyer Lemons

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When we moved here five years ago, I bought a little Meyer lemon tree and put it in a container. Meyer lemons are thought to be a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange, and they are sweeter and lighter tasting than regular lemons. The tree yielded meagerly until this year. Yesterday I picked two dozen lemons off the tree, and more are coming. Mind you, this tree only stands four feed high!

What to do with all these luscious lemons? I zested and squeezed them, and put it in the freezer. I have a total of three cups of lemon juice, which I am freezing in ice cube trays. There’s a cup of zest. This is all great for baking and cooking. The next task (probably tomorrow), is to roast the little pie pumpkins we bought and puree them. Bean still loves to eat plain pureed pumpkin, and it will be great for pumpkin bread and pie. And again, I freeze it in ice cube trays to make just-right serving sizes for Bean.

meyer lemon harvest 2

Princess Bean

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We went out and covered a few blocks. Bean had fun and got lots of comments about how cute she is. She was a little shy about saying “trick-or-treat” at first but soon got the hang of it. People were very generous! She became obsessed with a giant spider decoration. We had to walk back two blocks to see it a second time; she named it Mike.

winkie wendy & princess Bean
princess Bean
a spider named mike

Oink

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Based on her symptoms, Bean’s doctor thinks she has H1N1 (swine) flu. Her temp at 12:30 p.m. was 103.6; an hour ago it was 102.5.

I’m doing my job, being the Mommy bed. I hope Husband and I don’t get sick (at least not at once).

We’d have gotten a flu shot if the damn thing was made available. It turns out that although Santa Clara county is the sixth largest county in California (1.85 million people), we’ve only gotten 14,100 doses. Other smaller counties have gotten twice and triple that much. There are no seasonal flu shots either.

There actually were 79 H1N1 swine flu cases for every lab-confirmed case and about three pandemic flu-related hospitalizations for every reported hospitalization through July 23, according to the new estimates from CDC epidemiologists Carrie Reed, PhD; Lyn Finelli, DrPH; and colleagues.

After July 23, the burgeoning number of flu cases made it necessary to stop counting lab-confirmed cases — which the CDC always warned was ” just the tip of the iceberg” — and to start using mathematical models to track the pandemic.

—140 Times More Early Swine Flu Than Reported