something like this

I just turned 40.

Somebody give my mother a stiff drink. It’s surprising enough to me, so I can only imagine what she’s going through. It’s been an awesome birthday though.

I’ve been showered with drawings and ridiculously cool presents and wonderful shared meals and drinks with friends – it’s been nothing short of spectacular.

Last night, Tom took me to the theater here in town to see and Impro Theatre production called Jane Austen Unscripted. Just as it sounds, the whole evening is an improvised play in the style of Jane Austen. I had to check that out. We laughed through the whole thing and were amazed at how difficult improv must be, although some of our favorite lines actually came at the expense of slip-ups the actors made. It was a great evening.

So far this is looking like it might be my favorite decade!

I’m going to fess up front here – this one’s about clothes. You’ve been warned.

Around this time every year I tend to look in the old closet and cringe a bit. Shopping is not on my top ten list of favorite activities – at least not for myself. I get itchy and self conscious and flustered and desperate to be outside. But sometimes I have to face facts and realize that when the sweaters have vents in the elbows and the shirts are faded and the dresses are drooping, it’s time to grow up already and get myself out and buy a few new things.

This is the moment when my natural disinclination for shopping runs headlong into my miserable memory and creates a disaster because when will I ever learn that shopping is a team sport? I grumble my way around the mall all by myself, tsking like an old lady at the prices and recoiling at my reflection under the fluorescent dressing room lighting. The last time I tried it, I confirmed that all dressing rooms should come equipped with business card dispensers for local therapists. On-call.

Last week, I was feeling both brave and desperate, so I headed up to the shops with one major plan – Anthropologie. I might still groan about the prices, but at least I’d get to revel in the store design, and the fabrics, and the way their dressing room lighting actually murmurs soft compliments the whole time you’re in there. (Which can be a bit misleading, but I’ll take it.) I really did try that day, but I walked out with just one black turtleneck top that was on sale and somewhat predictable. It’s actually quite nice. I have it on right now.

Right after that, though, I had the unbelievable good fortune to bump into my friends Nuran and Jill, and everything changed. They wanted to see what I bought. I showed them. “It’s black!” Nuran said.

“Well…”

“Come with me.”

And with that, Nuran grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back into the store. She started throwing clothes at me. “You’re going to try this on, and we have to see that. THIS is a great color for you.”

“Really?!”

“Don’t argue with me. Just try it on.”

Talk about pushy. But Nuran is always right. Jill was also giving me ideas and trying to protect me a bit. They grabbed clothes that I’d just walked by and never even considered. I thought they were a bit crazy but it seemed safer to just ride the current and see what happened. Can I also say they still only took things from the sale racks? That’s important.

They hauled me into the dressing room, checked everything out and told me what they thought. They said charming things like, “I hate you – look at those legs.” God love them.

In the end, I had too many choices. I couldn’t decide, so they suggested that I put it all on hold and stroll around to mull it over, which I did. We said good bye and I thanked them for the rescue. Shortly afterwards, I got a text from Nuran – ‘Where are u? I have somthng to show u.’ They turned up a few minutes later with a box – they’d bought me one of the skirts I was looking at, for my birthday. I am not making this up. Like a total attitude overhaul wasn’t enough.

The next day, I wore one of my new outfits around town. It has a great 50s feeling to it – one of the other mums at school said I was “channeling my inner Betty Draper.”

You don’t have to tell me – I know the bike helmet really completes the look. Mmm.

(I had a great string of vintage beads from my friend Lori that had the exact same green as the skirt. Sweet!)

Ok listen up, fellow shopping detesters – I’ve seen the light. You need teammates. The kind who will, through gentle guidance or outright bullying, get you to expand your image of yourself. They’ll tell you what looks good and give confidence to wear what you truly like. Yes, it is frivolous. Yes, your confidence should come from within and your clothes shouldn’t make a difference, except for the fact that they do because we make visual decisions and judgements incessantly, subconsciously, and we can’t stop it.

On Friday, I rode my bike around town with a grin on my face because I felt terrific, and it wasn’t just the cut of my new skirt, or the lovely compliments I received that gave me such a boost. It was camaraderie.

Honey had an excellent intuition yesterday to swing into a consignment shop where our friend Ruth used to volunteer. We strolled in, and in the first 30 seconds we made two important discoveries: our neighbor Barbara, who was working there that day, and a set of sterling silver animal birthday candle holders. Shall I break that down? Birthday candle holders. Shaped like animals.

They were so lovely we bought them up, just like that. And then when our friends came over for dinner, we knew what we had to do.

Our friend Sean said it was a little like choosing your monopoly piece – it was fun seeing which animal each person wanted most.

We’ll all have extra birthdays this year!

in which we went from this -

to this.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, but honestly, Vegemite isn’t that bad. No, it was something far more unsavory, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the good stuff. Tom turned 40 at the end of last week, and we decided to take a quick trip down to Santa Cruz for some fun on the boardwalk with Gini and Craig. It was a perfect day.

It started with a steam train – really the best start to any day for Tom. We weren’t on board, but we got to see it head out for a tour through the Santa Cruz mountains, and it was beautiful.

We checked out the boardwalk…

and had our lunch at the best taco bar. We’d stumbled upon this place the last time we were in Santa Cruz a few years back, and boy were we happy to find it again! $1.50 taco? Yes thanks.

Santa Cruz has a cool style going on – check out this mural:

How about a close-up of that awesome retro mod car? You got it.

Seriously, now – who doesn’t want one of those?

And just before we left town, we caught some surfing action along the coast. Gorgeous weather, awesome time.

Now for the opposite end of the scale. Are you sitting down? Both of our kids have whooping cough. That’s right – check your calendar, but it’s still going to say 2010, and our kids are still going to have this crazy thing I thought belonged to the history books. Here’s the story. Hot Wheels got a cough at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, and we’d just been reading in the local paper that our county is currently inundated with Whooping Cough cases. Feeling a little alarmist, we brought him to the doctor and asked if he could have pertussis. No way, the doctor said. His booster was only a year old, he didn’t have any of the right symptoms, and the cough sounded like an allergic cough. It was Memorial Day weekend, so we pressed the issue – was he safe to be around people? Absolutely.

Let’s go forward a week. He was still coughing, but no real change in symptoms. Then we heard that some friends’ kids had been quarantined with Whooping Cough. “We’ve got to bring him up again,” I said to Tom. So off he went for another check – and more assurances that he was fine, but we said we really wanted him to be tested. Two days later, Honey was coughing and I brought them both into the pediatrician’s office. She swabbed Honey and said she’d bet they both had it.

HOW? I wanted to know. How do two healthy kids with all their immunizations get Whooping Cough? You might be more up to date than me on this one but I learned for the first time that no vaccine is 100% effective, and if we have enough exposure to a disease, we can contract it even if we’ve been vaccinated. When enough people in a community are vaccinated, you develop a ‘herd immunity’ so you don’t have enough exposures to risk sickness.

I just read this morning that our county has the highest rate of families choosing personal belief exemptions for vaccinations. Ten years ago, less than 2% of kindergarteners in our county entered school without their vaccinations – in 2009 it was 7.1%. Clusters of exemptions like that in a community increases risk for all of us. I respect that lots of people were scared by the autism fear, but the science just wasn’t there to support the scare – and I didn’t fully realize until this week the danger those exemptions pose not just to the kids who aren’t immunized, but to all our kids.

Personally, I feel horrible. I know we were acting on doctor’s advice, and I know it’s all around us, but of course I get hives at the thought that we were walking around with this unknowingly. I’m also pretty angry. Our kids have been miserable and we’ve lost a week of school and work and a good chunk of change dealing with this.

Here are our takeaways. Ready?

1. Don’t assume that your kids are protected by their immunizations.

2. Even if your kids aren’t presenting the traditional whooping cough symptoms – runny nose, slight fever, cough that ‘whoops’ – they might still have it. One friend of ours tested positive with no cough at all.

3. Tom figured the last one out – if your child develops a cough, call Wildcare. Tell them you found a baby bird and it’s coughing. They’ll have you tested and treated by mid morning.

As it turns out, things are looking up for me, too! Months ago, I was invited to join a group of friends (all fellow mothers from our elementary school) for a Tahoe overnight. One of my friends has a house up near Donner Lake, and I was lucky enough to go up this past weekend for a visit. We got up there Friday afternoon, and here’s what we found:

Yee haw! What an awesome house. It was beautiful, laid back and cozy all at the same time. Here’s something else we found:

Snow! I guess nobody told the Sierras that Memorial Day is only a weekend away. It sure was beautiful though.

We took some nice long walks and appreciated the landscape around us.

It kept alternating between grey skies with snow blowing horizontally by, and bright spots with long views.

Here are the friends contemplating Donner Lake. They’re probably also contemplating their numb toes, but it still felt wonderful to be hiking around. It was simply amazing  - no agenda, no worries. We did some of this:

And some of this:

(That’s homemade tortillas – yum.) And some of this:

And, frankly, some of this:

Although not all at the same time, mind you. We were simply well prepared.

When I got home Honey asked me, “So what did you do? Did you go anywhere?”

I replied, “Well, ahh, let’s see – we went hiking, and we cooked, and we worked on a puzzle, and we talked…” She gave me a concerned look and said, “I’m sorry. It sounds like you didn’t have very much fun.”

Little does she realize. I keep replaying moments in my mind – doubling over with laughter, fresh cold air, delicious flavors, DJing for each other from our iPhones, swapping ideas and stories. It was rejuvenating. We stretched time together and still got home in time to enjoy Sunday with our families. What a gift.

Honey was talking with her best friend in the back seat of our car the other day when an event of such uncommon rarity occurred that Honey is now confirmed as one of the most fortunate people in the world. Are you ready for it? Brace yourselves.

I can’t even remember what they were talking about back there – all I remember is Honey’s friend asking her a question, and Honey saying, “Ok. Here’s what happened. Wait – do you want the long version or the short version?”

And her best friend replied, without a millisecond’s hesitation – “The long version.”

Like astronomers catching the Fab Five, or ornithologists sighting a white robin, or A’s fans watching Braden pitch a perfect game on Mother’s Day, Tom and I were completely amazed that we were there to observe the event. Incredible.

We canceled our annual egg and beer hunt this Easter, due to rain and Tom’s impending 40th birthday party in a couple of months. (There are going to be two bouncy castles, people – we need to stay focused.) It ended up being a lovely, quiet, rainy day and we had a lovely brunch with our neighbors. We actually hit the jackpot there, because Joan and Hank had us over at the beginning of the week to celebrate their Passover Seder with them, and then at the end of the week to celebrate Easter. Perfect bookend events.

I’ve never shown you this unbelievable bowl that Joan gave me (ok, us) for Christmas. It’s simple and delicate and perfect. Filled with Cadbury eggs, this one goes to eleven.

This photo actually cracks me up, because the eggs are these gorgeous pale blue eggs from Finn and Susie’s chickens, and the nest was abandoned in our back yard – I like them together, even though the nest is woefully small for the eggs. What would happen if they were real? It would be like swaddling a baby in a washcloth. I still love looking at them together though.

Last Sunday, Honey and one of our friends from across the street took their cooking interest up a notch. They took it to a… whole… ‘notha… level and made dinner for our families All By Themselves. We have discovered a new land out here, and it is good.

Tom was hanging out in the kitchen with them in case they needed help, but he had very little to do. Joan and I were in the art room catching up and being neighborly – Joan hand stitched dress cuffs for me while I put together an apron for the Sutter’s Fort adventure. That’s old-school neighborly, for sure. Too bad we don’t share a fence.

The girls cooked up pasta

and an incredible salad, while Hot Wheels dashed back and forth taking orders for his ’special drink’ – a lemon-lime concoction with so much sugar it’d make your teeth curl. (Suggesting that he rethink the sugar levels, though, brings you the same arch look I imagine you’d receive from the sommelier were you to suggest an ice cube in your wine.)

All the while, our other younger neighbor friend was working across the street with her father to make a lemon meringue pie. Now that’s ambitious. As Joan was walking out the door to come over to our house, she heard the following exchange between her husband and her daughter:

Husband: Now what does it say?

Daughter: Stir over low heat until translucent.

H: Ok – it’s translucent. What’s next?

D: Add the egg yolks.

H: What egg yolks??

Joan: [closes the door quietly behind her]

What a cliffhanger! Don’t worry, the green archer doesn’t actually get crushed by the… oh wait, wrong cliffhanger. The pie was delicious. As was the dinner itself – bruschetta, mixed green salad and pesto pasta. Now we’re getting somewhere.

As predicted, our friend Russell didn’t end up making an acceptance speech at the Oscars last night, but we are all still psyched for him. Our friends Susie and Finn came over with their gorgeous baby girl, winner for best performance in a leading role for her work in “Birth – The Next Generation.” Our friend Mark joined us as well – he brought a container of cookies he called “Starship Gingerprises” that were unbelievably tasty. Honey made Russell-inspired sandwiches with roasted turkey, gruyere and cranberry sauce that were fantastic, and we tried a new Cooking Light recipe for apple/raisin compote on toasts with brie. It was delicious, but we bought light brie accidentally (heavens!) and it just doesn’t melt properly. It was still tasty and easy to make, so a win in my book.

It was a great night, although we only got one quick glimpse of our friends during the broadcast. If you go to the Oscars website, you can see them at the very beginning of the Visual Effects acceptance speech clip.

The place to go, though is to the Access Hollywood site, and check out the clip of Sandra Bullock talking about how much she loves Gabourey Sidibe. Keep watching, because as the interview goes on there are some awesome moments of Courtney and Russell in the background. I’m sorry Sandra, you were gorgeous and funny too, but there’s this moment when Courtney turns around and you see the cool layered detail of her dress in the back… it’s fabulous. And what a beautiful woman!! It’s not every couple who can just step into a situation like the Oscars red carpet and look so thoroughly at home.

There’s another photo of them on the Huffington Post site, which I love because they’re smiling at each other. That prankster Sandra hopped into the photo in front of them again in this one – she’s such a card.

Well done guys!! We’re all so happy for you.

Love is

Valentines on the fridge, and talking to Nana in the driveway

Tulips from friends

Treats from neighbors

New lavendar

A sunny day bike ride to the beach with best friends.

Honey’s best friend gave her a valentine poem yesterday afternoon. The last line of the poem is:

“We have power, that power is love.”

What a score in the best friend department. We all rode together to Sausalito to the best little cafe you can imagine. We bought root beers and sat outside for a bit. As we crossed the street to the cafe, our friend Amy asked Hot Wheels if he’d be her valentine. He paused and answered, “Wellll, I’m not sure if I can live with you…” She had to explain that living together wasn’t necessarily in the valentine contract.

Then we hit this tiny scrap of beach where the kayakers go out into the bay. There was a sea lion lolling around in the shallow water checking out all the boats and even one crazy swimmer. What a day.