if i knew i was going to live this long...

i wouldn't do a damn thing differently. let's just get that out of the way. rather, i am thankful for so many things. the first thing i can think of is how lucky to grow up with the Beastie Boys (Paul Revere from Licensed to Ill is blasting right now), Run-DMC (you’re a 5 cent boy and I’m a million dollar man), LL Cool J (ROCK THE BELLS), Public Enemy (make the miracle, pump the lyrical...BRING THE NOISE) and so many other FANTABULOUS funky beat masters to make up the soundtrack of my youth- thank you Def Jam! but I digress...

Again I cannot deny the pressure and blessing of staring down the barrel of 40 years old. Oh hell yes I said it out loud, and proud with a big beat my friends- every rockin' luscious minute of it! This is the sweet spot kids- you're not afflicted with the bad attitude of your teens or the not-really-bullet-proof-am-i-but-i'm-gonna-act-like-it approach of your twenties, or I shouldn't-i-know-by-now learning curve of the thirties. It's here that I'm so not old yet, but i have infinite wisdom from all those mistakes i made- lots of them- few repeats- rather I went for the variety pack and made all different kinds! I don't think I have experienced a conventional day in my life. Nope, no white wedding, the only picket fence I've know was the one that was swung at me on the way home from school in 4th grade. True love, maybe? Love that was true in the moment, sure, a whole bunch of times! and happy to say i still love them all with perhaps two exceptions and even they keep a soft spot. i know how to forgive, maybe next lifetime i'll learn how to forget...

this time in my life is all about running the last lap of my youth and not missing a milestone- treating my body like a temple instead of a ride to the next adventure. i have been doing yoga off and on since i was 17, now i am training myself to do the slackline in Yosemite and the trapeze. just today after an inexcusable fitness hiatus i was able to do crow pose (balancing on the backs of my arms) and i walked half way across the slackline. even earned a little scrape on my ankle- that's the progress i love. to top it off i am working as a writer. my daughter is healthy and my family- though it's a sort of Partridge Family for the millenium- 3 single moms each with a daughter and a full fabulous life- we are here for each other in ways that i think only true and dreamy family can be.

my way is likely not the way for very many, if any. but tell me nay-sayers, you who might judge me (get in line! on the dark days nobody could judge and begrudge me more than me!) for raising a girl without a dad, for not settling for some mediocre idea of what long term grown up love should be, or anybody who subscribes to the teensy tiny life of shoulds and should nots- how could i do this better? I am teaching my daughter and the world around me by being and doing.

Wild and imperfect, with no shame about living an enormous and effervescent life. And I fully intend to keep doing so, every single day I am able.

bounce into balance

slacklining today. total body workout engaging everything i can think of, from the deepest cerebral crevices inside my head down to my in dire need of a pedicure rough and tumble toes. seems like you're jumping up and falling down on a rope. it's more. breaking a sweat- i don't sweat for the record, before an half hour was closed. wrapped up the super fun simple informative class with an inspirational DVD introducing Libby Saulter the first woman to cross a Yosemite slack line almost 3K' above the valley. I so want to do that before I turn 40. Slackline and trapeze- that's how i need to be. i loved it when i first did it in my ratty little Rheem backyard- now i get it. haha.

tonight though i just need to go to sleep. so much to do in a week. excited to be able to get better and better so closet to home- it's such a great way to work out and have some crazy Peter Pan fun balancing on a rope. it's all about muscle memory- i love the idea of developing new and powerful memories with my muscles at this age. Bridges Rock Climbing gym in E Cerrito- a sauna, slacklines, bouldering and rock climbing plus cardio and gym equipment.

The missing piece was pumping up the volume with my Private Coach software- I can't trust the Wii to set up my workout and nutrition program- finally i can keep track of what i'm doing inside and out. yay.

Gratitude, Bee Gees Radio and the Return of the Tornado

Not like the hippie self-love-your-universe cult restaurant intends it, to be sure. What i'm all about today is not digging down to figure out what I want or need in order to assuage my heart and be able to move through the downtown of my soul with a smile oozing out from my face-- more like using my whole arm to scrape off the surface of a chaotic and crowded with work shit desk, like I would imagine Lou Grant did back in the day.

Today I was absolutely wrecked tired from too few hours of sleep, my body happy sore from hours of dancing my fool ass off with The Uptones and The English Beat (you'll read all about my Friday night in Skid Rosa later) but managed to tumble in to acupuncture and start the day healing myself.

Inspired by the movie WAITRESS (one of my new top faves) and a fridge overflowing with organic and tasty beyond belief veggies and eggs nearly hand plucked from some unassuming hen's vent, long story shorter-- if i didn't roll up a little inspiration all this amazing food would go bad, wasting money, time and God's bounty. Not gonna happen if I can help it. It's Saturday- I most certainly can help it. So I push it all aside and mozy on over to Berkeley Bowl and gather up all the extra goodness required for homemade egg and spinach pasta, prosciutto, tomato and chevre quiche and coconut milk pumpkin pie. Yup, the bitch is back.

I've had this thing going on- my body was taken over by a not so mysterious situation and due to the insidious nature of such things it took me close to 6 months to determine that it just was not cool and was going to require drastic measures to come correct. And correct it I have- that thing that makes my smile and my thing mine, it was misplaced and distorted- and not it's not. this brings me to this magical time in the kitchen.

here i am in my kitchen=- sometimes the girls are here with me- at any moment that can mean one or two dogs, one or two English twins or a little girl ranging in age from 4 1/2 to 23 months. that's the hen house folks. this is the family i have created, not counting the exclusive membership made up of folks who know who they are and are sorely missed when they are not around- scour the globe- you'll find them. but I don't want to be like so many of these songs blasting and bemoaning what could have been - this 70's and 80's ballads and bumpable boogie riffs that trained and probably train wrecked me on how love goes down. it's not about that's all you got, but i want and need and deserve all of this and i if don't have it exactly as my wishing and weeping heart desires, then i must be settling so go away because i am saving that parking spot for Prince Charming and his Valiant steed. It's the same message I go at the Princesses on Ice the other night- well I say POO POO!

I say Poo Poo because right now I am so damned happy. I have sooo much- I am at the fabulous intersection of my life where I have a bounty of experience and skill and wisdom that i get to bring with me to a time in my chronology that is more than accommodating to me starting from scratch and moving into the next volume to do and be and make even more.
I mean after all- what is it I have to say to these kids who crave cookies and cartoons every moment, you can't have that now. So maybe I should turn it on myself- the romance and luxury and intimacy and comfort and cash- you can't have that right now. I have it, and sometimes it's better than I could dream of and sometimes it's a total surprise. I have the best friends- my family- anybody could ask for. I have the freedom and support to go out and let my hair down or pull it all up and work my tail off to make it happen. And just when I think I can't take it anymore, I get super goodies and can breathe a sigh of relief-- then I have to let it go until next time. I don't know anybody else (except one of my roommates) who really has it all like I do. So the moral of the story is to not be so convinced by the power of music and myth, move through your day knowing that you have it all- just not right now and not all at the same time.

throw back hero stuff

another inspiring movie. i was swaying with them skating in and out and around the track. i saw Drew Barrymore's Whip It tonight. i'm always a sucker for a movie i see by myself, especially at night in the city. the first time a movie left me with this distinct sensation and profound impression was Gus Van Zant's MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO at the Lumiere- in at the afternoon and out with a great crowd at Twilight. I still don't know if it was a great movie or it was just the moment i was saturated with. Doesn't matter. it's sometimes why (like the vowels- get it, sometimes y!>) I have to see a movie at the theatre twice, to know if i am impressed or impressionable. i think this is why movie theatres will always be around. but i thought that about the UC theatre too- these are my digressions.

how cool to see a movie about girls, women, whomever, that is honest and real and true and doesn't show them getting raped or treated like idiots or slaves or being otherwise disrespected by men or each other. it also wasn't so soft or girly that your teeth hurt and you felt like you were being manipulated. it was about how it's okay to be whatever kind of tough ass girl you want to sometimes. i guess you could say acceptance. i just know that i was only a couple of years older than Ellen Page's character when i shaved my head, donned Guatemalan military issue combat boots, fishnets and my grandmother's leather jacket to be a bad ass in SF doing performance art and producing an independent film- 16mm black and white before digital. making art. being smart. traveling. getting fitted for hipness that started where my graceful non-conformity as a Gaucho broke off. that place in your factory assembly where you have to sort out how much of your family of origin to scrape and shave off to be prepped for the new family of seeking adolescent vagabond bohemian artist types you adopt.

this is why i believe in reincarnation. i have had so many such lives- so many intersections of the soul. life configurations that shift and unfold like the beads refracted in a kaleidoscope- like cartwheeling through the ether seeming to touch the sidewalk and function along the path where i am more falling along, swimming among the others in an inspired wakeful sleep. you fight for that move on the board- such conviction and well there you go, there's another all configured, waiting for you to tumble on to it.

Absolution for Compulsion and Conscience Confessed

How come I think it's okay, that's right I do, I must. How long will it last is the question, no? Hank can fuck anybody, but as long as he goes back to wondering and 'hankering' if you will for Karen, well that kind of redeems him for me because he still has some real love there.

What a dick I am. am I really hating out of my own inability to be so detached? it seems like by design it's my job to get in there so what else is there besides some empty desire to be empty about it all sometimes. But maybe that's another niche is to write the show that exposes the fallout from King Californication.

Jiminy Cricket Hank Moody. Every time. Don't You?

Scary Movie Masochist

what's up with the scary movie thing with folks who live in the hood? It's scary here. It's aggressive. I am looking forward to when I don't live in the Bay Area, when we live in a place that isn't scary. From Richmond to Oakland to San Francisco, to Berkeley and New York to New Orleans, I have always lived somewhere rough.

It's fun seeing scary movies with me. I get SUPER scared and scream in a high pitched shriek - Phantasm really and truly scares me in my soul fibers. It's not just sheer volume but authentic fear in my voice. the ridiculousness of it or maybe discomfort of someone else so openly afraid, at a movie. Often everyone there laughs out loud, as loud as I screamed.

The story goes that I stay freaked out the evening stretch after the movie is long dark and done. To watch them at home can be an even stronger unsettling of the mood. Shaken by the high adrenaline pumping throughout the movie- this mind you compounded by the fact that I am watching it in the hood. duh. just doesn't seem like an awful lot of fun when I am defensive as a baseline, let alone to try and make it happen on purpose extra?

I remember this feeling the first time at Easter when I saw the man-bunny in a suit ala Harvey meets Hef on the cover of my dad's Playboy. White Bunny- freaked me out, the next thing you know it's the twins in The Shining and the head in Donnie Darko. Shake me to my core. I am such an adrenaline junkie that I do it sometimes maybe for variety, keep it an option.

Princesses on Ice

*Tonight I did something I never thought I would do. I attended the great big kiddie cult Princess on Ice thing at the Oakland arena- immediately ghetto and ridiculous when they charge a huge amount of cash only for parking and make us do a 7 point U turn in order to get out of the parking queue. I took the girls to Will Call and switched them into surprise with Princess dress up garb.
These are all things that I have no reference for, nothing remotely close to this kind of thing. My childhood is peppered with the Concord Pavilion (Kingston Trio), George Benson in Tahoe and the Original WWF wrestling- Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant on the bill. We weren't a Princess friendly house. Unicorns, Pegasus, Barbie and purple were allowable.

She turns the car around in less than 12 moves and lets the girls and I out near a security outpost where we enter the grounds, careful weaving in and out of the weaving in and out jubilant Raider Nation wagons and tailgaters ecstatic about their home field advantage over the Eagles. I recognized the folks in that crowd- matched the vivid memories I have of the now memorable Philadelphia v. SF at Candlestick Park- LT. But the blend with the Princess gangs was priceless.

But the blending doesn't stop there. Most of the kids are from some sort of brown family- maybe because it's Oakland? California? Bay Area? doesn't matter but then fast forward through a performance where the majority of the cast is blonde, brunette and swarthy. With a couple of Asian exceptions and many players in masks and wigs- there were as far as I could tell no Latino/a or African-American people in the cast despite the opposite being true of the audience. Unbelievable.

The folks who are Disney Princess lovers, the folks who pay top dollar and then spend again at the get more stuff with Princesses on it for a lot of money Made in China kiosks. The obese American consumer sheep who are gobbling this stuff up.

And then I wonder, where do I draw the line? How do I keep my daughter safe without sterilizing her against this cult of personality that may or may not have indoctrinated and contaminated and reinforced with a thick seal my Happily Ever After Seeker programming. argh. darling Rach and I tried to have a feminist counterintelligence training conversation after the event- questioning the arrangements and real desires of all those paired off Princes and Princesses. Make sure the girls knew to consider that despite it's all happy bunches of roses now, maybe they change their minds or they change themselves or they don't change at all.
All of it blew my mind. I'm so glad I don't ever have to do that again. Lucky mama, Xoxa won't mind either.


(*I am going to try to write this whole post without actually acknowledging or including the corporate identifiers- let's see how it goes!)

why do you care?

it's what i think about whenever i watch something and want to keep watching or want to watch more. it's even easier than putting a book down, for me words get more of a shot. it's infinitely easier to say no thanks to a snack or choose another food stuff for lunch than it is to avoid or walk away from a conversation- just me and i digress...

i wonder why people get involved with the people they do- is it about filling in the gaps? my gaps or their gaps or both? it's not always about chasing a moving object- sometimes it's about the wonder of what if. what if i could be brave and real enough to be a shit like Larry David or Hank Moody? I don't know about all you girls but damn if he doesn't tell it like it is- a morning of awkward is better than a night of lonely? though we don't really see him lonely and he does seem to genuinely appreciate something about each of the women he defiles. but knowing that the women don't get to have feelings and that his heart does belong to someone- does she get to know that? what difference does it make? why would you want to be a passenger on a train that careens off its track every so often every day? why is that irresistible?

different track here- why do so many people like Sex and the City? who has any sense of familiarity or compassion or can relate to that? to any of them? i confess up front that i have not only seen most episodes broadcast, on DVD or in syndication with the expletives bleeped out- more than once! and the movie on a date! his choice! i think i even cut school. but there is something about the depiction of human relationships regardless of your footwear, financial station, career or sexual prowess that grips an audience when it is concocted correct.

this has always fascinated me. the WHAT. the making sense out of what people do and why the hell they do it despite how terminally moronic it might be, the if-loving-you-is-wrong-i-don't-want-to-be-right thing that i think defines humanity in a huge sense. if it weren't for this truth being told then a whole heaping hunk of my emotional reality wouldn't exist. i've been a musical masochist for every since I can remember- FEELINGS was an early one that my mom took away from me because i cried too much listening to it- now don't even get me started- perhaps i am addicted to heart ache or maybe i'm just like all of the other fools out there who just want those sensations hiding deep down inside to come out and play. is that why we like the dickheads and derelicts? do they rub us the wrong way and well who cares, maybe it's a case of i don't care how you rub me just rub me! and after all it's friction that gets teh job done isn't it?

the Waitress was not all warm and mooshy- she wasn't even really sweet and you could only feel so bad for her considering she didn't really seem to be trying so hard to get out of what made her so miserable. i don't know any movie that i like or any character that i respect that's so damn nice- freaks, fuckers and failures, i've got some for you. don't worry, no spoiler alert, this one coming right up is, well I ain't telling for once.

words. word.

today is brought to you by be careful what you ask for. way too much to write. about that. not sure where to start or what to stick to, or am I? there is the should list. obvious to the most casual observer that any revenue generating assignments (not this to be sure) are at the top of the list. these are the pieces that will help lower the blood pressure and contribute to the sustainability of daily life for my daughter and I as well as the writing career itself. but wait- there's more! let's talk about the distinctions that qualify immediately revenue generating vs. shorter term vs. long term vs. aspirational. of course i just want to write this right now. anything to help me clear some of the what, huhn'?

the good news is that there are immediately revenue generating items on the list! that is as soon as i create and submit a proposal to the wonderful folks at Digital Environment (www.private-coach.com) I will be hard at work. in fact if you could see the other windows open on my happy apple computer right now you would see that i am not just futzing around playing remote cafe worker but i am diligently stringing together words for submission to existing and potential clients alike. all the while sucking down as much caffeinated goodness as my system will allow.

anybody reading this need any writing work done? certainly my busy busy busy update here should not be taken as a wow she doesn't have time to be creative or innovative for me and my fabulous idea- rather know that there is enough of my fabulous brain to go around.

Holla!

see what i'm sayin'?

Check this out...
I am looking for work. Yes, as a writer- a versatile, talented, creative, strategic, intelligent, clever, resourceful WRITER. I want to be paid. I want to work with words, people and projects. Doesn't seem too far fetched until you discover what the economy has done to deteriorate my value in the market...

We are an engineering society; non-profit under the IRS code 501 (c)(3). We work with science and engineer members from about 50 countries. We organize and hold very successful large annual international conference and several biennial symposia alternating in North America, Europe and Asia, and publish conference/symposium proceedings of peer-reviewed papers. We also publish a quarterly scholarly journal of peer-reviewed papers.

We are looking for a mature, self-motivated, highly-organized, detail-oriented individual with fluent English (both writing and speaking) to work in a small, professional office environment.

Some of the duties for the society operation and conference include:

• Support Executive Director and editor-in-chief with various tasks
• Work independently as well as with other staff
• Copyediting and some Web/Editing
• Help prepare conference/symposium programs and put together conference/symposium proceedings, updating the existing templates.
• Logging in abstracts, papers, reviews and related files
• Communicating with authors, peer reviewers, editors, printing company staff and Society members
• Interfacing with printers and vendors
• Processing of publications orders received by email, phone, fax or postal mail
• Travel to conference site once or twice a year to oversee onsite management (about one week at a time)
• Data entry and maintenance of database files

Some of the requirements are:
• 4-year college degree from a U.S. university or college.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, Access), Acrobat, and working knowledge of HTML and Web/Editing tools etc.
• Good working knowledge of Web/internet
• Professional copy writing and editing experience
• Typing speed of 60 WPM or better

International, cultural understanding is helpful, library experience and a little bit of understanding Japanese or Korean can be a plus, though not required.

The position is part-time to begin with (about 6 hours per day with flexible hours) and can lead to a full time position.

• Compensation depending on qualification
• Location: Mountain View office
• Principals only
• No phone calls



* Compensation: depending on qualification
* This is at a non-profit organization.
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.



PostingID: 1401812586