Reading Nest

It's Friday...

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 17:26:00 +0000

No L.A. Music Friday post today, since writing yesterday's William Morris project post took forever to create, and I really need to get out into the world today. (Although when I typed "it's Friday," I got that annoying teenage-girl Youtube song in my head. ~~And I think she's from the Valley~~, so...hey!) *Actually looked it up, and she's from Anaheim Hills, so...hey!

But here's an update: I've got a new way to make coffee, now that inventory has dried up for buying new pods for my Senseo machine. The above is a little Bodum French press. It seems to do the trick for making my one-off daily cup. After reading the directions, I feared I'd have to return it, because the directions specifically state to "use COARSE ground coffee only." Well, I'm not about to also go out & buy a grinder...that's all just way too ritualistic and time-consuming for me.

So far the store-bought grounds seem to work fine. Whew! Another first-world suburban mom problem solved.

Also, look out world, because the Tek Nynja, also known as my husband, has a new blog post out, after almost a year. Click over here to see the kind of things he does for fun and relaxation. I can barely understand it, but love how his enthusiasm shows through in sentences like "I love the challenge of hand-tuning code to make it as small and fast as possible, and that's not so easy with the PIC18F's!"

Right! So now you know what we'll be up to this weekend: drinking coffee, ripping apart and hacking small gadgets, and hopefully getting out as a family to enjoy our glorious hot sunshine.

Happy Friday!

The Books. The Rug. The Drapes.

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 31 May 2012 20:56:00 +0000

We live in a newer tract home, where the front room is meant to be split into a living area/dining room. Except that a formal dining area is the last thing our family would use, and I have a real pet peeve for opening the front door and immediately seeing the typical dining table/china hutch combo. I've always decorated this room as one big space. The living room acts as my library and sitting room, and it's a little more formal than the family room. This is where we retreat to read, nap or get some quiet, away from the TV/stereo/kitchen chaos in the family room.

But I'm getting way ahead of myself. Let's back up and, as Maria Von Trapp would say, start at the very beginning (a very good place to start).

So, it was high time to finally clean out my books and the closed cabinets on our bookshelf unit. (Ikea, natch, purchased eight years ago.) Like a lot of people who read design blogs and magazines, I decided at one point to get all cutesy and arrange my books by color. (Even if, deep in my English-major soul, I knew it was so, so wrong. For me, anyway.)

Witness:

Spoiler alert: Post-purge, not all of the books seen here made it back into my collection. The jumbled, cluttered insides behind just one set of doors:

Books, ceramics, and so many candles, for someone who rarely burns them.

Well, it ALL came out, onto my living room floor.

It was a lot of books. It took a lot of time to sort through them (and read them, and greet some long lost friends, and scold myself for the ones purchased and still unread.) Plus, I sorted through picture frames, candles, candle holders, vases, etc. etc.

Finally, days and days and four boxes of donated books later, I put it all back together.

Cleaner, organized shelves. Now one space hold candles and candle holders only, not a mad jumble of crap. One door holds all Christmas: books, candles, frames. All in one place.

After the Purge: Books are sorted by theme or subject, not colors. Whew. The suitcase on the left column is a Crosby record player, and on the shelf above are a few albums from our large collection.

So this is where things stood, post-purge. Everything in the room was cleaned up, dusted, and returned to normal.

Except that I couldn't stand it. All of the elements that bother me about the room felt overwhelming and embarrassing. The big expanse of wall-to-wall carpet, the blue, high-water drapes, the very specific pattern on our furniture set (a set! Ugh!), the kitschy, retro silver legs on the chair & sofa...I was over it, all of it. DONE. Somebody call in a bulldozer, or the Salvation Army, and let's move on and go shopping for some new furniture. And put in new hardwood flooring, while we're at it.

HA. HA. HA. Aren't I funny? Nothing, and nobody, was going anywhere. Time to re-arrange.

I moved the couch back over to the window wall (it's spent time there before), and brought the chairs in closer, for a more intimate seating area. Then I took the 5x8 brown rug out of our family room, and used it here to further define the space, and break up all that beige carpet. (Bonus: this will also force the issue of needing a bigger, 8x10 rug in the family room.)

It was an improvement, but it could be better. I stared at the blue drapes. There are white sheers behind them. How very JC Penney's of me! My future plans for this room include deep blue paint on the white wall, and textured, white linen curtains against that, with bamboo shades to block the intense sunlight. But until that happens, I assumed the drapes had to stay, like permanent fixtures. Or not. What if I took them down now?

Hmmm. Not bad, not bad at all. In fact, I was pretty excited by all the light, and how open and younger the room suddenly felt. And just like that, those drapes that have been there since we moved in and I first decorated this room, came down. Along with lots of dust, spiders and cobwebs.

Let there be light! What a relief to be rid of those drapes. Now the sheers can flutter and waft when our late-afternoon breezes kick up:

(Look in that back corner by the narrow window, and you'll spy the latest update in the lampshade dance.)

So the moral of this episode is: sometimes (most times) you have to live and work with what you've got, and sometimes, you've gotta work hard to wrestle a space that you love out of pieces you've evolved away from.

The other side of the room:

Summer is bearing down, and I'll have to buy those bamboo/matchstick shades soon, to keep the room and my family from roasting. (Those windows face south/southwest.) But I'm so relieved the room is done (for now) and I can rest, read, and chat in a space that once, again, I love (again, for now).

Thanks for coming along.

I'm linking up with Jules at Pancakes and French Fries every Thursday as part of her 2012 William Morris Project.

Foam/Home

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 30 May 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Scenes from the long Memorial Day weekend. On Saturday, Lily participated in a mud run/Foam Fest with members of her Girl Scout troop. (The girls did the "Rugrat" race, for kids 12 and under.) The actual race for adults looked arduous, as folks ran over hill and dale, through obstacles in mud, foam, and cold lake water. I don't know that the lake water was cold, but I had to wear my hoodie just standing there, arduously watching them in the breezy morning air. These people (most looked under thirty) paid good money to do all this. Go figure!

The girls were unanimous in their opinion that the most fun part of the race was getting all muddy and dirty and foamy without being scolded or told "Stop that!" by their moms.

On Sunday, my sister and nephew were set to come out and spend a couple of nights with us. While at Target, I texted back & forth with her over what type of beer and snacks she wanted (for the record: Tecate and Spicy Jalapeno Cheetos) and all was fine, until she texted me while I shopped for my own snacks at the gourmet grocery (cheese-stuffed green olives and salami) that her car was packed, she was ready to go, but her car wouldn't start.

SRSLY? OMG, WTF?!

Long story short, I made a quick tour of Southern California -- picking her & my nephew up from my aunt's in Huntington Beach, bringing them back here for a fun 24 hours of snacks, beer, cousin rough-housing, and a viewing of Jaws. Then, late Monday, the whole lot of us packed into our car and took them back to Whittier, my hometown. So maybe it was a lot of bother (and gasoline) just to sit around and stuff our faces and gab and gossip. But I missed my sister. I miss having family around. I grew up seeing my grandparents and aunts just about every single weekend, and that routine lasted for years and years. Everybody lived less than 10 miles from each other, except for my aunt, who moved all the way down the 605 freeway to Huntington Beach when she got married. The nerve!

The home exit

And now there's me, who moved nearly 100 miles away. Even though it's less than 90 minutes from my front door to my mom's, she pretty much acts like I've moved to Arizona. "How's the weather there?" she inquires each time on the phone. (A little colder in the winter, a little hotter in the summer.) Then she'll tell me what the local L.A. weathermen are predicting -- the same L.A. weathermen that I watch on the very same stations, way out here in Riverside county.


That big brown pole is an air-raid siren

Old trees and overhead power lines: two things I miss.

Sometimes I miss my old town: the history, the pretty college, the cute Craftsmen cottages, the great walking up into the steep, hilly neighborhoods. My kids love to visit their grandma and aunt, and don't ever want to leave. Sometimes I feel a little traitorous, living so far from roots and family and our history. But it isn't all that far, really. And sometimes, it feels good to drive away, and put a little distance between me and all that history. Sometimes.

*All photos are from my camera phone, and the last are through my dirty car window.

L.A. Music: Skrillex, and That Song

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 25 May 2012 20:54:00 +0000

I don't even know what I'm doing writing this. Clearly, my expertise in L.A. music lies in decades past. So far, my most "current" artist has been Beck, and that post featured a song that came out five years ago.

Which isn't to say that I don't like or listen to current music. Granted, not a lot floats my musical boat these days. I don't like all the overwrought pop crap that's so popular: all the American Idol and spin-off talent shows, the Glee thing, etc. etc. I don't care. I think "Moves Like Jagger" is a catchy little song that my grade-schooler loves, and granted it gets stuck in my head pretty quick, but that doesn't mean I "like" it, either.

So just because I'm writing about Skrillex doesn't mean I "like" him that much, either. Except that in my house lately, it's like that old beef slogan. "Dub-Step: It's What's For Dinner." And breakfast and lunch and in-between snacks, too.

Maybe it's a boy thing, because the biggest fans in our house are my husband, followed closely behind by Tucker. Trailing way back there in the outer reaches of tolerance is me.

I don't get it. And it's not even because I'm not young enough in the young way.

I get that my husband loves electronica and computer-generated music. Being the hard-core computer geek that he is, the hardware love carries over to the audio world. It goes way back, to the Moog-generated classical music of William/Wendy Carlos to the "Popcorn" song from the '70s, on to Kraftwerk and Devo and '80s alternative and etc.. You get the idea. The boy likes his synthesizers.

But this! O, this.

I think I've mentioned before the my husband works from home (which is great) and most days, he has a pretty consistent soundtrack going, to keep him company and provide some background noise besides the click-clacking of his keyboard. And on lots and lots of days lately (roughly the last three months), he keeps playing THAT SONG over & over.

Propping myself in his office doorframe, I'll harass him and inquire, "don't you get tired of listening to that song all day?" And this is a joke, of course, because it's not just one Skrillex or dub-step song that's he's got turned up, but many, many different songs.

Many, many different songs, and they all sound about the same to me.

He tells me that the similar sound or effect that runs through all this ~~noise~~ music is The Drop. It's all about The Drop.

Photo from here.

In the current Rolling Stone, there's a small article about The Drop, and it features a quote from Skrillex: "It's like you're revving your engines and the fucking motorcycle just wants to take off, and as soon as you fucking throw it into gear, it just starts to go." Um, okay. I can see, or hear that.

Still, this sound doesn't move me. It might make the art on our walls shake and vibrate with the bass, but it doesn't move me. I don't even think you can dance to it. Which isn't the point, I get that too. You don't dance to Motorhead, either.

And as for Mr. Skrillex's L.A. music creds: born in east L.A., moved up north to somewhere cold & rainy for a while, but came back to the eastside as a teenager. So there you go.

And here you go. THAT SONG. (Or one of them, anyway.)

Enjoy! Have yourself a good long, dub-steppin,' bass-shakin' Memorial Day weekend.

Twelve Days to Summer

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Tue, 22 May 2012 18:52:00 +0000

Eclipse shadows

Tuesday, and twelve more days of school left before our summer break. What? I better make good use of my last dozen days of freedom. (Blogging: good use?)

What I'm looking forward to: days without structure. Not sitting down at 4:30 each afternoon to oversee homework. (We've been blessed with minimal homework this year, which is not to say there hasn't been occasional tears and drama over 4th grade math.) Days at the park. Days at the pool. Our big summer vacation: we're going on a cruise! Lazy mornings and library afternoons.

What I'm sort of dreading: days without structure. No breaks from the kids until bedtime, which gets pushed back later & later each year. 16 hours + 2 kids = 1 tense mama. Sibling squabbles that erupt after too togetherness. Whining for soda, cookies, and the near-constant snack grazing of Tucker. And also, and maybe most of all, the neighborhood kid thing.

Some background. The women in my family don't do kids all that well. I'm talking about both of my grandmother's, who were as different as two women can be, but alike in their distaste for small people. I'm talking about my mom.

My maternal grandmother was famous for her vehemence in not wanting to entertain or even allow other children into her home. My mother tells stories about her mom yelling at other kids, not allowing them to cross her threshold and basically having a reputation as an impatient, angry woman who had no qualms about screaming out the back door at somebody else's kids. Of course, this was back in the late '40s and '50s, when parents could get away with that sort of thing. Ah, the good old days.

My mom, who grew up feeling embarrassed at her own mother's total lack of hospitality or even tolerance toward her friends, tried to be different, but without any positive role model, she wasn't all that much better. She tried to be warm toward my friends, and granted, never disallowed me from having friends in and out of the house, especially when I was in fourth grade and lived on a street packed with sisters. She was a willing, encouraging audience to our near-constant performances from the Grease soundtrack. Still, it didn't come easily, and I always sensed her feeling of strain, which got worse as I got older, and my friends and I just wanted to talk and be alone. (She always seemed to be right outside the door, hovering, listening.) Also, she flat-out refused to drive us anywhere, which was embarrassing and hard to explain. "Can your mom take us to the mall?" Me: "Um, no." "Why?" Me: ???

So now it's my turn. I live in a town that's famous for being family-friendly. There are kids everywhere. In the last six months, Tucker has become good friends with a pair of young brothers on our street, and is also pals with many other little boys who live near us and play at the park next to our house. Lily has a friend on the next block, hosts play dates and runs into school friends at the park. Inevitably, all these children seem to end up at our front door. And I'm okay with that. Or rather, like my mother before me: I try to be okay with that. Is it DNA, or deeply ingrained family behaviors that make me tense up and want to boot those young, smiling faces from my front porch?

This Sunday afternoon was intensely kid-centric. Including Lily, there were five girls in the house for half the day. Tucker was back and forth on his bike and scooter. Snacks were ~~demanded~~ required by all. I was in a good mood. I wasn't tense or angry. Still. Doors were slammed. Doors were left wide open! Juice was spilled. Popsicles stained the driveway. It was a preview of many, many similar days to come this summer.

I'm never going to be the neighborhood "cool mom," who orders the pizzas that appear just before the kids realize they're hungry, who gives out the easy, laid-back invitations for sleepovers on the fly. We won't be those parents who mysteriously seem to vanish and give the kids run of the house. But: I have pretzels, and half a bowl of grapes! I have a fridge out in the garage stocked with juice boxes and waters and sodas and I'll share my last box of Thin Mints with giggling girls without getting too cranky about it.

My maternal grandmother is still alive, but this weekend I felt watched by her, intensely aware of her presence. For a difficult period in junior high, we lived with my grandparents, and I have a vivid memory of my grandma yelling at and frightening me and a friend, when I made the mistake of bringing the girl into her kitchen through the back door, for a glass of water. Check me out, I said to myself, and to her. Check me out, Grandma. And maybe this is simply the way the past gets healed: one juice box, one smile at a time.

L.A. Music: Donna Summer & 1979

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Keeping it short today. No need for a bio, or the facts. Except we've lost too many artists this year, and this one came as a bit of a shock.

As for Donna Summer's music coming from L.A., or being especially connected here, let's point to the huge, huge Bad Girls album. Recorded in L.A., produced by Giorgio Moroder, a man with mad engineering skills and an epic 'stache, who lived in L.A. by way of Italy. New York disco had Studio 54 and the West coast had Giorgio Moroder, and Casablanca records.

I received the Bad Girls album for Christmas in '79, the year it was released. Music, by way of albums and their cover art, was so much more tactile back then. I held that album cover, stared at it for so long. I was 11 years old. It was a long time ago. It was a double album, and not all the songs were "hits," but what else did I have to do, during those long, endless hours of early adolescence, but listen to the whole thing?

Summer, and Donna Summer:

Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, the big fat ones.

Love's Baby Soft, which always smelled like baby powder and onions to me, or maybe it was just the heavy corduroy jacket I wore a lot that year.

Roller skates, and short shorts

Satin! Satin shorts, satin jackets. I don't think I owned anything satin, but it seemed to be everywhere, in magazines and on T.V.

Reading and puzzling out Judy Blume's Forever, and singing aloud to the lyrics, "Dim all the lights, sweet darlin', 'cause tonight it's all the way." Puzzling over all the photos of "bad girls" and cops in the inner sleeve of the album. What was going on here? I think I knew. I can't remember not knowing. Isn't there some space in every girls brain that intuits the whole gig, that it's all about the exchange? Money, fluids, Ralph, kisses, winks. Yeah, I understood.

Hey mister! Have you got a dime? Hey mister! Do you wanna spend some time? I got what you want, you got what I need. I'll be your baby, come and spend it on me."

Sunset People: L.A. and Sunset Blvd., circa 1979. There are roller skaters in shorts. There are satin jackets. There are roller skaters in satin shorts! Doin' it right, night after night:

Enjoy your Friday And...toot toot, EHHH, beep beep!

My New Old Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 17 May 2012 18:10:00 +0000

If last week's William Morris post was my most boring yet, than this week's is definitely my easiest. All I had to do was open a Mother's Day gift and snap some photos.

A big part of the whole William Morris project is living with intention: buying and displaying and living with only those items that you deem beautiful or necessary. So along with that intention, I knew that my husband had been looking around for a vintage rotary phone to use in our home. I've wanted one too, but of course wasn't about to settle for just any old boring black or beige thing.

Mother's Day morning brought flowers and waffles and sweet hand-painted art, two new books, and some Charming Charlies' bling. And then, there was this:

Ohmygoodness. My new vintage aqua rotary phone. It is so cool. It is so loud. It is so heavy. I forgot how heavy old rotary phones were. And yes, it works. Perfectly. (It was purchased on Ebay, and all I know is that my husband had to bide his time for months to find a phone that looked good, worked and wasn't too expensive.)

It was amusing to teach the kids how to dial, to insert their fingers into the holes and tug: "you mean, I have to go all the way around?" (And yes, when you dial each number, you hear that...rotary sound.) It was like showing them how to wind up a Victrola.

Our phone doesn't ring all that often, and it'll probably give us all heart attacks if it ever rings after midnight, but hearing this thing ring...LOUDLY, and answering it, and placing the handset back into the cradle, puts a stupid, happy smile on my face. Every time.

Ring-A-Ling...It's for youuuu.

Also: don't think I haven't been putting in my sweat this week. Because my bookshelves got the flu, and threw up their entire contents onto my living room floor. It was helpful to type out the point of the WM project again at the start of this post, as it helps me remember not to keep something out of guilt, just because it was a wedding gift from nearly fifteen years ago.

So out go the dusty crystal vases and candle holders that never get used. In comes something old and funky and fun that'll be used every day, and will become part of the memories my children take when they leave our home. Maybe someday, they'll instruct their own kids on how to use an "antique" phone like this. And they'll look like old pros.

Each Thursday I'm linking up with Jules at Pancakes and French Fries as part of her 2012 William Morris Project.

Mother's Day: Irvine Regional Park

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:51:00 +0000

I love Mother's Day as a mom, because in my house, my little family pampers and spoils me -- this year, it was breakfast at home with fresh waffles and bacon and flowers and a big balloon. And sweet homemade cards and art and carefully chosen costume jewelry and a really awesome Ebay score from my husband that deserves its own post.

On the other hand, I dread Mother's Day as a daughter. It's never easy to figure out what to do with my mother, where to take her, what to buy her. She has no hobbies and no overriding interests, beyond watching the Lakers, drinking wine, and reading paperback mysteries. She doesn't like chocolate, even. One year, I convinced her to come down to my house and we treated her (and me) to a big expensive buffet with free-flowing champagne and piles of shrimp and pastries. Last year, I didn't even spend the day with her, but invited her to join us at Disneyland, which she declined. She would've had to drive, park and meet up with us by herself -- and my mom is not good at jumping through those types of hoops on her own. (Note that she lives by herself, and continues to work full time, past retirement age -- but she just won't attempt that kind of solo feat.)

This year, my sister (a hard-working single mom who's most deserving of pampering) and I decided that we'd all spend the day together at Irvine Regional Park -- a wonderful park with over 800 acres of old oaks and trails and horses and a lake. My sister and I were excited to spend the day together, excited to get our kids together for a picnic (Tucker and my nephew are only five months apart), to eat and soak up the sunshine. My mother was....okay with this plan. I don't think the words "park" and "picnic" quite meshed with whatever vague ideal she had in mind. But as I assured my sister last week: "She'll have a good time. She just doesn't know it yet." And she did.

On the other hand, everyone else in Orange County had the same idea, to picnic at a great park on a beautiful day. Go figure. What is normally about an hour drive for us took nearly twice that, counting the time spent in line to enter the park. This is the photo I took of the long, long, line to get up to the toll booth and inside the gates. The photo doesn't do justice to the crazy line; even the park ranger was standing out there snapping pics on his camera.

Self-portrait of me appearing calm enough, but inside I was stressing hard, convinced they'd close the park to more cars & we wouldn't be able to meet up with my mom & sister:

But eventually we made it in, parked, lugged our coolers/chairs/gifts down the path to where my sister had already set up, and finally started enjoying ourselves. You know it's a good day when you get watermelon, cupcakes, AND orange Fanta.

And you get to take a ride on a slow train:

And three generations get to walk under hundred-year-old oak trees, on a Sunday in the park:


My mom with Lily; sister and the two boys up ahead.

L.A. Music: Jackson Browne & The Moody Dudes

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:29:00 +0000

This is a post about Jackson Browne, but first, a word about James Taylor. JT won't ever be featured here on my Friday series, because a) although I like a few songs, his music doesn't move me enough to dwell on it and b) he's an East Coast guy all the way. When I got to meet the lovely Jenn a couple years ago, she started explaining where she lived, and I said, "oh...the Berkshires...like James Taylor territory?" because that's the sum of my experience with the Berkshires.

Anyway. James Taylor is a famously mellow mellow sensitive dude, and from all his appearances on the early days of Saturday Night Live, it seems he's also got a good sense of humor. But my husband and I have this running joke that JT is a total asshole. I think it started when I was idly watching some PBS concert, and my husband said, "I don't know... he just looks really uptight and angry. I bet he's a real asshole." And I protested, because, you know...JT! All of the above stuff, mellow mellow, "You've Got a Friend," "Sweet Baby James," etc. etc. Nope, he insisted....total asshole. So now whenever we see James Taylor on TV, it's all "there's that ASSHOLE!!" And we giggle madly. (Such is the stuff that keeps an almost 18 year relationship going.)

In the same way, I have a feeling that Jackson Browne might be an asshole, too. For a guy who sings some mellow mellow songs and is all sensitive and liberal, it seems like maybe there's some underlying tension there. I like a verbal, sensitive man, but there can only be one moody, touchy person in any relationship, and I call dibs.

But I don't have to live with him, I just get to enjoy the creative effects of all his moody, tortuous relationships.

Image from here.

Here's my Two Degrees of Separation from Jackson Browne story: He grew up in a neighborhood called Sunny Hills, which is a tree-lined, rural-feeling area in the hills of Fullerton, in north Orange County. (My husband has worked for a company in Fullerton for nearly his entire working life, and I got my B.A. from Cal State Fullerton.) I have a friend here in town whose mom attended Sunny Hills High along with Jackson Browne, and briefly dated him. In fact, one of his early songs is supposedly named after her, but I'm not going to name it here and open that can of worms. My friend remembers Jackson calling her house and her mom laughing and reminiscing with him. How cool is that?

Okay. So I'm sounding pretty jaunty here, but the reason I'm writing about Jackson Browne this week is that I'm feeling quite moody and touchy myself. There's nothing at all for me to be sad/mad/upset about, but tell that to my chemical imbalance. I've been suffering bouts of anxiety lately, the racing heart, short of breath, hand wringing sort. Yesterday, doing some Mother's Day shopping in the aisles of Sephora, I felt like I might pass out. Clearly I need a change of scenery, a shake-up in my routine. Yoga? 'Ludes?

But it's Friday, and here I am. The following is the last song off of Browne's third album, Late for the Sky. Twenty years ago, I listened to this album a lot and the feelings it evoked back then, I still feel today. This is dismaying, as supposedly we change and evolve, but some things, like my tendency toward ennui and sadness, remain just the same. On an optimistic note, I can now relate to the line about how having a real friend makes all the others so much easier to bear.

And I like to think that if my husband, he of the geeky/gadgets/binary code ilk, was actually of the sensitive songwriter/poet/guitar strumming ilk (he wouldn't be my husband), he might be able to quote the last lines of this song to me, and remind me that I can just, you know, stop.

"Look: it's like you're standing in the window
of a house nobody lives in,
And I'm sitting in a car across the way.
Let's just say, it's an early model Chevrolet
Let's just say, it's a warm and windy day.
You go and pack your sorrow,
The trash man comes tomorrow,
Leave it at the curb, and
We'll just roll away."

As it is, he can make me giggle madly. And breathe. And that's not something small. So I say to him:

"...While they scuffled through your weary smiles
I thought of all the empty miles
And the years that I'd spent
Looking for your eyes."

Enjoy! And here's to taking some deep breaths this Friday.

Closet Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:53:00 +0000

This is possibly my most boring post ever: I cleaned out the closets. Well, at least mine and the kids. I didn't touch the husband's side of our walk-in, but his stuff would have easily produced another bag for the donation pile.

My goal was to empty out my closet of old clothes, and then do a thorough cleaning: vacuum, dust, and rearrange my little vanity area on top of the long dresser. Then I could play with all my pretty perfume bottles and vintage head-vases and show them off to you. But no, the pile of cast-offs kept growing, and even though it's only been a couple of years since my last closet clean-out, there was a lot of stuff to go through.

My take-away at the end of this week: Tucker still has a pretty consistent, if slow, growth rate, Lily has exploded in the last year into a great big, tall girl (at 10, she's pushing the size limits of many kids stores/departments) and when it comes to myself, investing in "quality" pieces really does pay off in the long run. I had a big pile of fun, "Saturday night" shirts, most costing under $20. Time for them to go.

Here they are, set out this morning for the veteran's donation truck. (There are two black garbage bags hiding beneath & beside the white table.)

Next week: tackling all the stuff that I pulled out of our old, big media center that was sold on Craiglist, and that we replaced with the vintage credenza. I was glad to see it go, but it was great for storage. Now I'm going to have to find new homes for all this, which has been stashed behind the living room couch for the last few weeks:

Needless to say, this pile doesn't excite or inspire me, but it has to get dealt with. I've been dragging my feet, because I know the wood shelving unit that you glimpse here, full of open and closed shelf storage and packed with books and papers and a boutique's worth of random candles, is fairly screaming for attention.

But that can wait until next week. It's only Thursday, but I say Mother's Day should be an entire weekend, and it starts.....Now.

On Thursdays, I'm linking up with Jules at Pancakes and French Fries for her 2012 William Morris Project.

Rip Roarin' & Snortin' Good Reads

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:35:00 +0000

It seems every woman around me is in the throes of the x-rated 50 Shades of Grey (I've read a few Facebook comments that made me cringe and think TMI, girlfriend. T. M. freaking. I), It's like the suburbs' new Wifey, for the 21st century. Do you remember being a kid and seeing your mom and aunts exchanging "that smirk" over Wifey? Meanwhile, over here I've been all chaste and keeping my hands above the covers, tearing through a couple of excellent reads. (I sound like such a prude: I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine.)

First was Ann Patchett's State Of Wonder. I have to hand it to Patchett, she really is such a solid, reliable writer of great lit-fiction novels. State of Wonder was a page turner; from the first paragraph onward I was sucked into the world of research scientists, pharmaceutical intrigue, and a remote tribal village in the Amazon. I loved the protagonist, Marina Singh, and found her such an interesting, strong character. I suppose it's a sort of device to set up her as "conflicted," being a dark-skinned woman of Indian descent, who loves the chilly climate of her native Minnesota, but she was a great, complicated character. This was a book with lots of interesting, strong women: Marina, her old mentor the mysterious Dr. Swenson, and even Karen, the wife of Marina's research partner, Anders, who has died on a fact-finding mission deep in the Brazilian Amazon.

The plot centers around Marina's journey, sent by her boss at the pharmaceutical company, to dig up the truth about what exactly happened to Anders in the Amazon. Anders himself was originally sent to a remote village in the Amazon to check on the progress of the brilliant and difficult Dr. Annick Swenson, who is being funded by the drug company to develop a top-secret new drug. So there's travel to an exotic locale, and intrigue as the reader learns only through Marina's eyes of the true nature of Dr. Swenson's long-term drug research. It's all very vivid: the terrible heat, the insects, the total pitch-blackness of the jungle at night. The last few chapters had me totally in thrall, and I slammed the book shut with satisfaction: that was rip-roaring! I said out loud. I can't remember the last time I was so overall pleased by a book.

Next was the debut publication from blogger Kyran Pittman. As I said before when I bought the book, I've been reading Kyran for several years now, and was thrilled when she ~~won~~ earned a book contract. Let me say up front, I loved her memoir Planting Dandelions: Field Notes from a Semi-Domesticated Life but it took me a few chapters to get into the swing of things. From reading Pittman's blog, I know she's a talented writer who thinks deep, and can go deep and illuminating in her writing. So that's what I was expecting of the book: an involving, linear memoir of her life, from being the child of free-thinking, artistic Canadian parents, to a bit of wild party girl, to becoming a suburban mother of three boys in the American South. But Planting Dandelions isn't a memoir in the standard narrative form, but a series of linked essays, that could easily stand alone as articles, rather than chapters building upon the previous events.

And that's fine -- it just took me a few chapters, or essays, for that to dawn on me, and to adjust my expectations. The structure of the book may be women's magazine-article essays , but these essays are also damn funny and insightful. I mean, really funny. I may be a little odd in that I don't adore David Sedaris -- his books are amusing, but I rarely laugh out loud, and he's supposed to be "hysterical." But I found myself snorting, chuckling, and laughing out loud numerous times reading Planting Dandelions. Maybe it's a mom thing.

There's a whole lot I can relate to in this book -- as a child of a non-traditional household, I also view the white-picket fence as exotic territory, and not necessarily the place I expected to land. Like Kyran, I spent time in my 20s hanging out in seedy bars, wearing short-shorts, smoking cigarettes and playing a part -- and like her, I mourn and struggle with coming to terms that nobody wants to see an over-40 mom in Daisy Dukes. (Even if they still fit.)

But even if you were raised in a "normal" household, even if you fit just fine into your adult role, whatever that may be, there's insight and illumination -- and depth, too -- in this witty, thoughtful book about marriage, motherhood, and overgrown lawns.

No Joe

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:51:00 +0000

No "L.A. Music Friday" post today. I need to step away from my desk and focus on life beyond the blog. In addition to posting, this week I've spent a lot of behind-the-scenes hours, changing up my header, tweaking the colors, just doing this and that. A little spring tidying up for the Nest. I'm not sophisticated at graphic design, don't know HTML, and so ended up banging my head against some of the weird things that Blogger does and doesn't allow you to change. Maybe someday, I'll pay a real designer to make this space look as sleek & pretty as I'd like.

Also...for the past week, I've been without my cup of coffee. I'm not a coffee addict, but I do enjoy my one cup each morning. I've had a Senseo machine for the last several years. First I had a dark red one, and when it died, I got the black one in the above photo. And all has been just fine, until....

a few months back, when the Senseo coffee pods up and disappeared from the shelves at Target. They weren't at the grocery store, either. I ended up buying a multi-pack of four flavors at Amazon, and when that was gone, created a "subscription" to save money and have the coffee automatically delivered each month.

Last weekend, I used up my two last coffee pods. And no "subscription" had yet arrived at my door. So long story short, Amazon cancelled my order, because evidently there ARE no coffee pods to ship out. Damn. Senseo claims they'll have more inventory available by July, but I ain't buying it. Or, as The Husband says..."death throes." Farewell, dear Senseo. Sorry it ended so...abruptly. I would've savored our last cup a little longer.

Big Wood Reveal

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:42:00 +0000

I'm happy to announce that wood is in the house. (It had been living out in the garage, after our madcap rush to acquire this piece.) A couple of weekends back, my husband worked hard and got the family room ready for our wood credenza. And a few weeks before that, he spent the day out in the garage, using his manly tools to do all the custom modifications to the piece. This post should really be written by him, as he did all the work and had the ideas on how a 50 year old credenza would work as a very modern entertainment center, wireless and all. As usual, my contribution was having the vision of how it all should look, then telling him, "make it happen!"

Before our new vintage credenza could go in, he took off the old baseboards and ran speaker cable up against the floorboards, so that we could put the big subwoofer speaker back behind the sectional. Like certain guys of a certain era, he's an audiophile and spent a whole other day finessing the stereo sound quality. (There will be no photos of that excitement.) Then he had to size, trim, paint, and install the new baseboards. He also painted the inside of the nook, where our previous big media center had gone. (Like the rest of the wall, it's Benjamin Moore's "Hibiscus.")

Here's a before shot, with the old media center pushed out from the wall. You can see a better, older "before" shot over here.

And here's how it looks now:

Previously, there were 9 drawers. Now there are 6 drawers and one cabinet, as my husband converted the far right set of drawers into a door, and placed shelving inside to hold the computer and stereo receiver:

Proof that they were all drawers...

...but now this side is a door.

Note the big square of plywood where the drawer fronts are all attached.

I think this picture is remarkable for what you do not see:

No visible cables, cords, or wires No speakers, either.

The two small speakers and numerous cords are all sitting on this plywood "shelf" that was added to hold it all.

The computer router, power strips, and various magical parts are in the top middle drawer. "Magical" being the wireless, infrared thingy that senses the remote through the wood.

I'm very happy with how this vintage piece was converted into use for the 21st century, and also very happy with how it looks in the room. Now though, I need to inject some color onto the wall. I'm planning on replacing the starburst mirrow with a large piece of bright, colorful art. I don't know what that will be yet. Maybe when I have the piece, I'll also finally get around to using some black spray-paint on that brass trim on the fireplace. That ugly thing, and the surrounding peachy tiles, is still my biggest pet peeve in the room, and maybe the whole house.

Oh, and as a sidenote: I put our old, massive entertainment center up for sale on Craigslist, and it sold within a couple of hours. Score!

I'm linking up with Jules every Thursday as part of her 2012 William Morris Project.

Spring Break Pt.2: Sacramento with Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:21:00 +0000

After we left San Francisco, the second stop on our whirlwind Spring Break trip was Sacramento. We made this visit partly to make up for deciding to skip Lily's fourth-grade school trip to the state capitol. Each year, the fourth graders in her school are given the opportunity to travel with their classmates and a few teachers up to Sacramento for the day. It's a true whirlwind of a trip: they catch a plane in the early morning hours, spend a day touring all the major sites around the capitol, and then arrive back home around midnight. All this for the low, low price of about $500 per child. I decided to pass on this: we're seasoned road-trippers here, and I knew we could travel as a family for a whole lot less per day. (I get that traveling with your family is not nearly as awesome as taking a plane trip with your friends. But she's 10, and has years of expensive school field trip options ahead of her.) (Besides, not that many kids even went.)

Anyway. It was funny to drive into downtown Sacramento after 8pm. Compared to the city hustle of San Francisco, the capital felt like a ghost town. I mean it was empty. We checked into our hotel, the Best Western Plus Sutter House, and called it a night. I have no strong impressions of the hotel: we arrived after dark and checked out before 10 the next day.

Our destination was the state capitol building. We parked in a downtown parking garage and strolled over. It was a cool, sunny morning. We didn't take an official tour, but wandered around the halls, checking out the portraits of govenor's past, and sitting briefly in both the senate and congressional chambers. And looking up:

In the Senate Chamber

In the basement hallways are dioramas representing each of our state's counties. (The smaller, quirkier northern counties were the most creative. All the larger counties were pretty eh.)

Represent!

And just like at Disneyland, I like to appreciate the lighting:

Deputy and "Mike the Bear" guarding the Governor's Chamber:

Touring the capitol took longer than we anticipated, and with just a few hours left of our trip, we drove over to the nearby Old Town section. I somewhat regret this, as it would've been more in keeping with the fourth-grade field trip itinerary to have headed over to Sutter's Fort, a nearby state park chock-full of history. But I also knew that Sutter's Fort would also be a big investment in time, we were in need of lunch, and that we still had an eight-hour drive ahead of us. So Old Town it was.


Big muddy American River

Me as "disapproving school marm" outside the old school house. This is probably my expression most mornings as I'm hustling the kids out the door.

We strolled the faux-historical boardwalks, stopped in a few touristy shops, and had lunch in a little corner cafe. Down the tracks, we saw several trains belonging to the California State Railroad Museum, which looks like an excellent place to visit. But alas, the meter was running down on our streetside parking, and also on our road trip. Time to traverse the flat, green Central Valley again, and make our way down south to home. Farewell, NorCal! Hope to see you again, for a much longer, leisurely stay...next time around.

L.A. Music: Little Feat, and Juanita, What are You Up?

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:38:00 +0000

This is another installment of my Friday series on L.A. Music, featuring artists and bands that originated in Southern California or are closely linked to Los Angeles.

Yesterday at Starbucks, I made an impulse buy and bought one of their featured CDs in front of the register: Back in New Orleans. As you might remember, I'm a big fan of the South, and I love me some NOLA music. A long time ago, I had a really cool compilation cassette of New Orleans music, put out by Rhino Records. But that's long-gone. Anyway, I tore open the package, and drove around while the music started. The first song is by The Meters, and their song "Hey, Pocky A-Way" immediately reminded me Little Feat.

Oh buddy. I do love me some Little Feat.

Like Creedence Clearwater Revival, Little Feat is a band from California that confuses people into thinking they're from the Deep South, because of their sound and subject (see CCR's "Born on the Bayou," Little Feat's "Dixie Chicken.")

But front man and founder Lowell George was from Southern California, and that's where the band was formed, after George had a brief stint in Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. (If there's one musician/band that I've never understood the appeal of, it would be Zappa. It's like highbrow Dr. Demento stuff to me.)

Lowell George was just packed full of talent, as a musician but especially as a songwriter. Out of the literally hundreds of songs that I love to death, "Dixie Chicken" is right up there in my top 10: it puts a smile on my face, makes me want to dance, and tells a helluva good story. (And it takes place in the South.)

Photo from here.

Tragically, George died of a heart attack at the impossibly young age of 34. The band was disbanding into more of funk/jam outfit, and George's weight and drug issues escalated at the same time. The members of Little Feat got back together in the early 90s with a new lead singer, and had a couple of hits with "Let it Roll Tonight" and "Hate to Lose Your Lovin'." I liked both of those songs, and even got to see them in concert, as an opening act for...? But that re-vamped version was not at all the same, without the creative spark of Lowell George.

With all the other artists that I've profiled in my L.A. Music series, I've had a clear idea of what song I wanted to feature here. I had a heck of a time picking this week. There's just so many Little Feat songs that I love: "Willin'," "Feats Don't Fail Me Now," "Tripe Face Boogie," "Oh, Atlanta," etc. etc.

Album image from here.

In the end, I chose "Fat Man in the Bathtub," in a live performance from 1976. Watching this, I think Jack Black could grow a beard and someday play Lowell George in a bio-pic. (But Jack Black isn't nearly as sexy as I find George in his cowboy hat, rockin' that cowbell.) The opening percussion beats reminds me of "Iko Iko," another New Orleans classic song. This is good stuff, people.

"Put my money in your meter, babe
So it won't run down,
Cause you caught me in a squeeze play
On the cheesy side of town
Throw me a dime, throw me a line,
Cause there's a fat man in the bathtub
With the blues."

Well, like the song says: All I want in this life of mine is some good clean fun. But now I also want a muffaletta. And a beer. And to be right there down in the French Quarter, on a hot spring day. Ah, well. At least it's Friday.

Enjoy! And have yourself a funky-good weekend.

Dance of the Lampshades

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:04:00 +0000

I'm linking up with Jules at Pancakes and French Fries every Thursday as part of her 2012 William Morris Project.

I called this post "Dance of the Lampshades" because it sounds a little classy -- like maybe it's some forgotten sequence from The Nutcracker. Really, though, it should be called "Musical Lampshades," as in the game of musical chairs. Or maybe "the Lampshade Reel," like the Virginia Reel dance in Gone With the Wind...bow and switch partners, doe-si-doe.

And here we go. See if you can keep track, because it's confusing enough to me.

It all started with this lampshade:

I bought it on Ebay many moons ago, at the height of my mid-century phase. I still like mid-century design, but a few years ago I was going more for the hard-core retro look. I won the shade, and it's little brother (the same shade, only shorter and smaller) in an auction. And then I went back on Ebay to find a lamp to go with my retro-licious tiered shade.

I bought this teak and ceramic lamp, and like the shade, it came with a sibling, this time a twin brother. I didn't need 2 of the exact lamp, so one went into the closet. And then I had this. Voila!

Back when I had pumpkin paint in the family room.

Then last year, we painted and re-did our master bedroom. I went to Home Goods and bought a pair of lucite lamps for our new bedside tables. I liked them, except that they came with bright lime-green shades, and the colors in our master are grey and yellow. So I searched around for some rectangular white shades (a shape that's harder to find than you'd think). Surprisingly, I found something close to what I wanted at Wal-Mart. These shades were $8 each.

These shades are a bit too small; the lamps came with harps and a nice lucite ball finial, which I can't use with these. It's on my Master List of 2012 to buy some proper-sized shades.

So then I had 2 big lime-green lampshades sitting around my house. What to do, what to do? Then I remembered that my teak & ceramic lamp has a twin brother, waiting patiently for something like four or five years to again see the light of day. And then I had this:

But wait: What was to become of my tiered retro shade? Well. I had a floor lamp with clean lines, that moved from the family room, into the living room. I removed the plain white cylinder shade that came with that lamp, and then I had this:

Like it was always meant to be. Ah...but then: what to do with the big white cylinder shade that came with the floor lamp? It went into the closet for a few weeks, until I had a moment of inspiration when staring at another floor lamp. One of those cheap touch lamps with the upward sconce...probably bought at Target. I put it into the family room....

And did this:

And that was pretty much the end of the story for a good while. Until a few weeks ago, when I did another swap. I'd bought a lampshade I loved, the Target one with gold chevron stripes. I didn't have a lamp for it, but you know how it goes at Target: when it's gone, it's gone, so gather your lampshades while ye may.

The lampshade sat on a shelf for a couple months...until I found a lamp. And proceeded to take off it's shade. This scene in my living room prompted this whole post:

The teak lamp had been moved temporarily from it's mate in the family room, to this brown table in the living room. One of those Christmas decorating switches. The white lamp came with that groovy big shade with the blue graphics, sitting on the chair. I like it a lot, but for now it's in the closet. After I paint my living room (another story), I have a feeling it may come out, and replace the tiered-retro shade on the floor lamp.

All of this doe-si-doe and drawn out story all just leads up to one simple ending:

I bought a new lamp. THE END! (Until the next switcheroo...)

Spring Break with Kids in San Francisco

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:11:00 +0000

I'd love to do a big, long, detailed show & tell of our trip to San Francisco/Sacramento at the beginning of this month, but eeeshhh...we accumulated over 300 pictures, in just 3 days. I stare at my huge file of photos and the thought of narrowing them all down for you, resizing them, and then giving a play by play is SUCKING my life force away. So let me break it down as quickly as I can. Y'all know I talk too much, so no worries that this will be TOO BRIEF.

Day 1: We arrived in S.F. around 4pm on a Sunday afternoon. I thought we made great time; we left home around 7:30 in the morning and made an hour stop for lunch outside of Coalinga. We checked into our room at the Mayflower Hotel. After trolling on TripAdvisor for hours, I picked the Mayflower for the price, the location, and it's historical charms.

The place is old, but clean (well, the rooms were clean. I thought the public areas could use a good dusting.) How many hotel rooms give you 2 walk in closets, with a pull-chain light-bulb? And the old-fashioned cage elevator was a hoot.

Old cage elevator

Only a little freaked out by the rattling between floors...

We walked down about 3 or 4 good blocks to Union Square, where we had dinner in a kitschy '50s diner. My suburban kids were totally charmed by the funky city vibe all around us.

Day 2: Awoke early, ate our bowls of cereal and continental breakfast fare from the hotel, then started our Day of Walking. We walked a LOT this day. From our hotel, we walked to Chinatown. I would've liked to have spent a little more time perusing the trinket stores, but we got there so early, some were just barely opening. We found the fortune cookie factory down an alley, and spent some time watching how fortune cookies get made. (Quickly, it turns out.)

From Chinatown, we walked to the (free) Cable Car Museum, which is worth a stop, because it's not just a museum, but a working garage where they repair the current cars, and you can see all the giant spools turning the cables that run under the streets, and have the mechanism of how they work explained. Very cool.

From there, we walked onward...up and down some of the town's very steep streets. While we stopped to catch our breath, we admired the great panoramic views:

Coit Tower, in the background

Onto Fisherman's Wharf, where we ate lunch at the Boudin bread cafe. Sourdough bowls of chowder for the adults, pizza on sourdough crust for the kids. Then we spent a few hours at Tourist Central, aka Pier 39. Of course, the kids had a good time in the candy store, staring and laughing at the sea lions, and doing the Mirror Maze over & over.

Not about to walk all the way back from Pier 39 to Union Square, we finally caught a cable car. At $6 per person, one-way, it's hardly the cheapest mode of transport, but how could we not take a ride?

Cable Car turnaround. The drivers get out and literally push the cars around.

After a brief rest in our room, we hit the streets again to go find some dinner, not the easiest thing to do around Union Square with kids in tow. We found a little Italian joint where the kids split a spaghetti plate and the mister and I had deli sandwiches. Again, the kids had fun taking in the sights of the city. Such as they were.

Day 2:
Checked out of the Mayflower, and headed toward Golden Gate park, where we spent most of the day at the California Academy of Science. I have a lot of photos of fish, sharks, butterflies, frogs, lizards, etc. in my files. I think you can get the gist of it.

It was a fun, interesting place, and I don't think I heard much whining at all from the kids during our hours there. We saw a cool film about the origins of life inside the planetarium, got all muggy in the "rainforest" section, and somehow totally missed the penguin exhibit. That said, if I had to do it over, this is the one part of our trip I'd change. In retrospect, I wish we'd just explored more of sprawling Golden Gate park and all of its sections (like the Japanese Tea Pavilion) rather than have spent the majority of our last day inside the Academy of Science. Oh well. We knew this was a quickie trip, and my husband and I already have a small list of things we'd like to see in the greater Bay Area on another, longer visit someday.

After we left the Academy, it was already getting on to late afternoon. We promised the kids we'd find the Children's Playground in the park, and I'm glad we did. Otherwise, they'd have missed the awesome concrete slide:

"Why don't we have anything like this where WE live?!" demanded Lily. (That's her in the pink sweater up there.) Because we don't live in a cool place like San Francisco, I explained. (Granted, we're only an hour away from lovely Balboa Park in San Diego, but they don't have anything like this there, either. )

After we dragged the kids from the playground, we consulted the GPS again, this time to get to Chrissy Field. I'd read that this was a great area for capturing some photos of the Golden Gate Bridge. And it would've been great...but the clouds were rolling in, making for a rather washed-out, low-contrast view. (See the very top photo, above.) Oh well. At least we got to see it. (On the list for next time: walk, even for just a bit, on the bridge itself.)

Kids with Alcatraz in the background. I originally thought we'd do an Alcatraz tour on this trip, but changed my mind. I think it'll be better to return when Tucker is just a little bit older...and maybe we can do the night time tour of the old prison, which sounds cool and spooky. For now, it was windy and chilly, so we got into our car and headed back to the Bay Bridge, bound for Sacramento. Of course, we left town right during rush hour, so we got to spend a good while sitting in traffic. Farewell, City by the Bay. Hopefully we'll return within the next couple of years for a longer visit.

Even though we weren't even there for a full 24 hours, I've decided to break up the Sacramento leg of our trip into another post entirely, so expect that next week..and thanks for coming along on our Spring Break trip up to the northern half of our state.

Love Where You Live: Weekend at Home

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:04:00 +0000

This is my second post in the Love Where You Live link up series, hosted by Design Mom. You can see my first post explaining where I live, here.

This was a wonderful weekend. My husband might not agree, as he was taken down by the same head cold that I had the previous weekend. It's a sneaky little germ...you never feel all that awful, but you sure don't feel very swell, either.

But sniffles and sore throat aside, I loved this weekend. We didn't do all that much, but what we did felt just right. Two soccer games on Saturday morning/afternoon, and both games were tied, which was just fine, too. No winners, no losers, just two hard fought games.

During Lily's soccer game, my cell rang: it was the mom of one of her two best friends, and they were trying to track Lily down to invite her to our neighborhood pool later in the day. It was a hot day, over 90 degrees, and despite some initial grumbling and crankiness on my part while I did a quick mental inventory of our pool/sun supplies and ramped up my brain to get organized, it was a great afternoon.

The pool is in walking distance of our house (it's one of the amenities of our monthly HOA fees), and it seemed like half of the kids from school were already there, screaming and splashing around. It felt like the unofficial Opening Day of Summer Fun. I'm glad we didn't miss it.

Confession: this photo is from a previous summer. I wasn't organized enough to bring my camera.

I know this all sounds terribly pedestrian and suburban and even a little boring. But the fact that I was happy to be home, not feeling restless and anxious to escape, sure feels notable to me. Watching my son's excitement to play with his new friend at our park, walking to check on him and seeing him riding his bike with a small posse of other seven-year-old boys, made me understand, in a deep and fundamental way, that this is where I'm supposed to be right now:

This tract house, that may need a fresh coat of paint and some serious landscape help, but is within easy walking distance of the pool, the school, and next to a park. This neighborhood, that can feel suffocatingly close and insular at times, but is full of other families who care about their kids, the school, and each other. And this town, Temecula, which may not be where I dreamed of landing, but on this weekend of Saturday heat and Sunday breezes, felt and looked awfully idyllic.

On this Sunday, at least, I was at peace with being home, and with my own small backyard. I was at peace with being here, this specific spot on the planet. I could say that I loved where I live.

~~Tomorrow~~, Wednesday I'll be back to my usual restless and roaming self, and will have a report on our quickie Spring Break escape up to San Francisco & Sacramento.

L.A. Music: Van Halen & My Time Machine

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:23:00 +0000

This is another installment of my Friday series on L.A. Music, featuring artists and bands that originated in Southern California or are closely linked to Los Angeles.

It's a gorgeous Friday here in So Cal. Birds are chirping, there's a light breeze, and temps are expected to climb into the 90s. I've already busted out my flip-flops and started working on the tan line I get on the tops of my feet that won't fade until November.   The sunshine and heat put me in the mood for one of my favorite classic rock bands, Van Halen. Emphasis on Halen, not Hagar.

Sometimes I fantasize about going back in time and seeing some of my favorite bands back in their heyday. It's a a game: if I could choose one act, one trip back in time, who would I choose?   Not the Beatles or Stones. Too cliché. Maybe Springsteen in the mid-'70s, at one of his marathon 4-hour shows when he was testifying about the power of rock n' roll.    Maybe the Eagles, when they were still playing backup for Linda Ronstandt at the Troubador. (Except the Eagles aren't known for being a stellar live act.)   Blondie in 1979? The Band, backing up Dylan? (I wanted to talk about the passing of dear Levon Helms, but damn, there's just no L.A. connection at all.)

Near the top of my list is going back in time to see Van Halen when they were still playing backyard parties and small clubs in Pasadena, or maybe in their first year of touring in support of their first album. Young and younger:

Every once is while, I get the urge to buy tickets for their upcoming reunion show this summer. I've seen Van Hagar in concert, back in the early '90s, but I've never seen a show with David Lee Roth in his rightful place as lead singer. I think my husband has, though. He's a few years older than me, and I love his story about hearing Van Halen for the first time, coming through his static-y FM radio when he was in junior high and living out in the desert near Palm Springs, how he bought their CD ~~cassette~~ ~~album~~ 8-track and turned on his friends.

I was going to play you "Beautiful Girls," a song I don't hear very often these days, and that seems perfect for a hot spring day. "I've got a drink in my hand/got my toes in the sand/All I need/is a beautiful GIRRRL," crows DLR. (I once read an article describing David Lee Roth's personality as basically "Bugs Bunny with genitals," and I think that's dead-on perfect.)

But then I went to YouTube, and watched the band singing a live version of "Beautiful Girls," from earlier this year. And, watching the band, sans Michael Anthony, hearing Roth's voice a couple gruff octaves lower now, seeing his frontman stunts reduced to a snazzy little shuffle, I felt kind of depressed.

So, let's climb into my time machine and go back to 1981 and see Diamond Dave do his big air splits off the drum riser. Let's hear him hit those ear-splitting notes when he does his Dave-wail thing. This one's for my hubby: his fave Van Halen song. He's down & out with a head cold on this gorgeous Friday, and mostly listens to annoying dub step these days, but maybe hearing "Unchained" will cheer him a bit and put him in a weekend mood.

"Unchained, nothin' stays the same." Word.

Enjoy! And have a rockin' Friday.

Open Any Vein...

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Another book post. (I had one of my William Morris/Thursday posts lined up, but Jules isn't hosting her usual link-up this week.)

So instead, I'll tell you what I ordered on Amazon Prime last night. (Amazon Prime is an awfully cool and addictive thing, and as a result, we get deliveries nearly every day. 98% are for my husband, who always ~~wants~~ needs some small electronic component or geegaw, either for work or the house.) (And for sure, nobody paid me a dime to say that.)

I ordered Julia Cameron's Vein of Gold, another of her books on creative exercises and mind tricks to get yourself writing (or painting, or dancing, whatever your creative itch may be). I never buy diet books, or self-help books, or any of the sort of non-fiction, commercial "life changing" twaddle that's always stacked up in the front of my local Barnes & Noble. (Okay, so a long time ago, I bought a Depak Chopra book. For years afterward, my husband teased me about the status of my "vata.") But Julia Cameron has been very helpful to me in getting motivated and tackling my fears in the creative realm. I've about wrung all the inspiration I can get out of The Artist's Way, so it's time for a new infusion of butt-kicking. And the reviews I've read on Vein of Gold make it sound like it's very good for "taking it to the next level."

Since the beginning of the year, and my renewed dedication to the blog, I've been so immersed in the blog and the internet and trying to find my online groove that I've sorely ignored what I consider my true writing self. After I lost my handwritten essay back in September, something soured in me and I stopped writing. It's stupid. I wish I wasn't such a timid, twitchy little forest creature when it comes to writing, but I am: I come out into the sun-filled meadow of writing, and then some small event (or thought process) scares me, and back I dive into the underbrush.

So I ordered the Vein of Gold to whip me into shape, to force some self-discipline into my days. I'll post an update on my progress sometime & let you know how that goes.

Second, I ordered Planting Dandelions, by Kyran Pittman. Pittman's writing trajectory from poet, to mom, to blogger, to writing some articles for Good Housekeeping and then getting a book deal, is one that I can certainly relate to, and certainly admire. I'd been a fan of her old blog for a long time, and it was exciting to see it all unfolding in real time, the hard times, the doubts, and then the opportunities that have since come her way. It's time that I finally read her memoir, now that's it been out for over a year.

Image from kyranpittman.com

I'm still working through my library haul, so it'll be a couple of weeks before I get to Pittman's book. But I hope to crack open and start tackling Vein of Gold right away. Crap, you know what that means: morning pages, here I come.

Library Haul

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:18:00 +0000

I scored at the library last week with several books I've been wanting to read for awhile. From the bottom up:

1. I actually just recently learned that Kate Atkinson has a new book out. Started Early, Took My Dog is the fourth of her titles that features detective Jackson Brodie. If I'd just read that last sentence, and didn't know anything about Atkinson's work, I would've immediately dismissed it, because I don't read mysteries. And I especially don't read mysteries that are part of a series, or feature a recurring protagonist. (And yes, that means I've never read Agatha Christie. Shame on me.) But Atkinson's books are different than the usual mass-market mysteries...her work is literary, character-driven, and very erudite in that British sort of way. I loved Case Histories, the first book that started this, um, series, and always recommend it to anyone craving a juicy good page turner.

2. I've been a fan of Ann Patchett since her debut, The Patron Saint of Liars. She's a reliably solid writer, and her bestseller Bel Canto is just terrific...another book that I always recommend to serious readers. Like Bel Canto, State of Wonder is also set in South America, but it's a less civilized setting, as it takes place in the Amazon. A young researcher who works for a major drug company is sent to the jungle to gain facts about the sudden death of her colleague, who was himself on a fact-finding mission. I started this one first, and it's already off to a terrific, absorbing start, with its very likeable and complicated protagonist, Marina Singh.

3. Some people are really into reading Young Adult fiction these days (think, The Hunger Games and Twilight series, etc.) I haven't read any of those, but I do like to occasionally dip into some good Children's lit. It's not YA, because the books aren't really meant for readers over 14. I'm a huge fan of Patricia Birdsall's Penderwicks series. These are books to stash in your bike basket and read on a picnic, or any sunny day. The Penderwicks at Pointe Mouette is the third in this series about four very different, but very close sisters and their likable widowed dad. I'm hoping to introduce Lily to the first of the books this summer, but we'll see. She's still so geeked out on Harry Potter and the fantasy genre that she's a little resistant to plain old realism.

4. And finally, Dan Chaon's Stay Awake, a collection of short stories. Okay, I admit this one wasn't on my must-read list, but I've read and liked Chaon's previous work. He's a great short story writer, and part of me picked the book out of guilt: I used to be such a huge fan of the short story. It's nearly all I ever read. But in the last five years, something's changed, and I've become much more resistant to reading them. I sadly suspect it's the level of attention required to read a the dense, poetic prose that usually accompanies short works. But I'm giving this collection a shot, nevertheless.

Oh, and that photo up there? That's one of my first-ever attempts using Instagram. I downloaded Instagram onto my phone on the first day it became available for Droids a couple of weeks back. But I haven't been using it much, because I'm a little resistant to the fact that it's really all supposed to be shared. Hrrmmph.

And in another instance of feeling weird about social media and oversharing (but participating, anyway) I've created a Facebook page for Reading Nest. I don't even know what to think about that. I actually created a page a month ago and then deleted it, because it was linked to my personal/family account. I dunno. I have no idea what I'm doing, on that score. But anyway, if you enjoy my blog, show some love or comraderie and be the second or third person to "Like" me. The badge/link is over there on the right. Thanks!

L.A. Music: Hi, I'm Glen Campbell!

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 20:00:00 +0000

This is another installment of my Friday series on L.A. Music, featuring artists and bands that originated in Southern California or are closely linked to Los Angeles.

Did you watch the Grammy Awards this year? Everyone considered the high emotional point of the show to be Jennifer Hudson's tribute to Whitney Huston, who'd died the previous day. I didn't even see that segment. For me, the most emotional moments were during the performances for Glen Campbell's Lifetime Achievement Award. Campbell, who announced last year that he's suffering from Alzheimer's, came out on stage accompanying The Band Perry, who covered his first hit, "Gentle on My Mind." I tried, I really tried, to suck it up and hold it back. Epic fail. Before the end of the segment, I was bawling, my face in my hands and my two children little anxious satellites, hovering around and offering me Kleenex.

Glen Campbell makes me cry. More on that in a minute.

Perhaps you don't associate country-pop singer with L.A., but I disagree. Campbell was born a poor share-cropper's kid in Arkansas in 1936, but he came out to L.A. in the late '50s with a wad of cash, a guitar, and some dreams. And yes, I'm being corny, but this is the man who's most famous for singing "Rhinestone Cowboy," after all.

Out in L.A., Glen Campbell was first a session musician for a string of big names, including the Beach Boys. He played on many tracks on their album Pet Sounds, and also played rhythm guitar on Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night."

After getting signed to a record label, he struggled to find his niche or produce a hit, until he recorded the song "Gentle On My Mind," which became a huge hit and won a Grammy, and Campbell's career was assured.

In the early '70s, Campbell had a TV show, a variety hour of music and corny skits, like so many popular singers did back then. (The Helen Reddy show, The Captain & Tennille show, etc.) I'll admit that in my very hazy memory, I can recall watching the show. What I recall even clearer is the way my dad would mimic the country-friendly howdy introduction at the opening of each show: "Hi, I'm Glen Campbell!" which sounded more like, "Ha, Ah'm Glen Campbell!" when my dad said it.

There are a handful of singers and songs that I associate closely with my daddy, and up near the top of the list is Glen Campbell. I'd have to write a very long-winded essay to explain all the nuances of the why's and wherefore's of this association. I can tell you that my dad didn't like to be tied down, that he never was very good husband material, even after a nearly forty-year marriage to my mother. I can say that their courtship and early days can in some ways be summed up in Campbell's hit song, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix."

I can say that hearing Glen Campbell's early songs, with their lush arrangements, remind me of my own early days in the long backseat of a big Ford sedan, listening to those songs turned up high on a scratchy AM station.

Today marks the five-year anniversary of my dad's death. It was also a Friday the 13th, that morning we gathered for the last time in the hospital. My dad hadn't been aware of much for the last week of his life, but he'd have appreciated the irony of dying on Friday the 13th. He of the "if it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all" variety.

After five years, I still can't listen to most Glen Campbell or John Denver or George Jones songs and make it through without crying. Today will be no different. Here's the Campbell song I love most, a song about highways and train yards and sleeping bags and a young man out on the road, recorded by a young, healthy man who didn't even know it was the beginning of his dream coming true, when he recorded it back in 1967.

Here's the song, performed in a duet with the songwriter, John Hartford, on the Smothers Brother's show.

Enjoy, and Happy Friday. Even on Friday, April 13th.

Monkeys on a Bench

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:51:00 +0000

My monkeys on a bench in San Francisco's Chinatown, last week. Just last week? It already feels longer. Our trip up north was great, much more on that soon. The last half of the kids' 2-week spring break flew by, and though they returned to school this Monday, it feels like the break just ended literally about an hour ago, when I said farewell to our house guest of the last several days (my mom).

It felt good to spend time away from the computer, but I did miss the blog. Nobody in my extended family knows I have a blog, so it feels a little dishonest when one of them asks what I do with myself while the kids are in school, and I respond with something vague like, "um...this and that." Although maybe that's not so dishonest, really.

This and that: it fills up the hours, more than you might think.

Spring Break Break

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Icart's "Spring" image from here.

I've had the Reading Nest for a few years now, but have only been posting more often since the start of this year. "More often," for me means about 3 times a week. But I'm still finding my way and working out routines. If I was a kick-ass blogger, I'd have a bunch of posts all set to go and scheduled to magically appear, while my kids are on their 2-week spring break as we speak.

But alas, I'm not so kick-ass when it comes to planning and creating posts ahead of time. So it's time to step away from my desk, make us all turn off our respective electronic devices, and have some fun with my kiddos during their last week of vacation. Oh, and plan my menu and find "something cute" to make for dessert, since I'm hosting Easter here for my extended family next Sunday.

The above image is by French illustrator and artist, Louis Icart. My design tastes have evolved through the years, but my love for Icart's pretty, feminine prints has stayed true, ever since I first saw and coveted a large, framed print in an antique store when I was a teenager.

Happy April! Enjoy the sunshine and fresh breezes of spring. I'll be back in a week.

L.A. Music: X and (Not) Being Punk

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:01:00 +0000

This won't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me, or has spent more than a few minutes reading the blog. So don't everyone all gasp at once when I say: I am not a punk rocker. I might be a rocker. But a punk rocker is a whole different game, and it's not one I ever wanted to play.

Anyone raised on the mellow, mellow grooves of El Lay music, like I was, cannot be a punk rocker. Or maybe if you were raised on those mellow, slickly-produced grooves, but then felt the need to totally rebel against the preceding generation, kick out the jams and shove safety pins in your cheek, you could be a punker. That wasn't me.

It's too fast, too angry, too physical. Too in your face. As somebody who has always, for whatever reasons, earned the automatic favor and sympathy of the Old Folks, I always felt the need to sort of apologize or at least explain the point of punk to the oldsters, to whisper in their collective ears, “look, I don't really like this any more than you, either.”

But then, there's X. I love X. X came out of the early, early days of the L.A. punk scene, and as some would argue, were at the forefront of the entire punk movement, New York and CBGB's be damned. X might have been pioneers on the Hollywood/L.A. front, but by the time I discovered them, they'd moved beyond fast, true “punk” music into something with deeper roots in American music. Their guitarist, Billy Zoom, has always looked & played rockabilly, and their music always had a deep vein of rockabilly/country at its core. With Ray Manzarek from The Doors producing and playing keyboard on their first album (and their cover of “Soul Kitchen”) it seems clear that X was always more about being part of an ongoing musical story, a new chapter in American music, rather than about burning up the existing books and smearing the ashes on their faces.

Image source from here

I love X's first album, Los Angeles and played it over and over in high school. The title track, “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline,” “The World's A Mess (It's in My Kiss)” – great stuff, great lyrics. But it was their fourth album, More Fun in the New World, that I loved most. As a teenager, I didn't have the sense or experience yet to be able to articulate: I love all things Americana, like country music and train tracks and thrift stores and truck stops. But when I first saw the video for “The New World,” it triggered something in me that affirmed: YES. These are my people, these images are all part of something big that I wanted to talk and write about. Plus, if you'd asked my parents, who told me repeatedly to TURN IT DOWN while I was blasting,

Bang Bang,
Make the music go bang!
Brilliant shining and nasty
Bang Bang, Make the Music go Bang!

they might have told you that it sure sounded like "punk rock" to them. On a gut level, I knew that John Doe and Exene were smart. They were writers, they were poets, and they'd even met at a writing class, at a place called Beyond Baroque. At the time, I dreamed of someday going to Beyond Baroque and hobnobbing with cool, punker-poet types. I've never made it there, yet.

While I was doing some 'net research to write this post, I stumbled upon a couple of exciting facts. Number ONE, is that Exene has moved back to Southern California after living in the midwest for a number of years. And, she's settled down in my old hometown of Orange. (Reason #148 to beat myself up for moving away from there.) And TWO: Just for shits and giggles, she's been playing some music sets, along with a few other members of X and folks like Phil Alvin, in a new & vintage clothing store in Old Town Orange, called Moonlight Graham. And, they're playing an anniversary show THIS SATURDAY (like, tomorrow).

When I found out about this show, I immediately clicked the link to buy tickets. But then I checked the calendar and realized it just couldn't happen, as we have other plans for this weekend. DAMN. But I was also sort of relieved, as I'm not sure I'm worthy to be in such a small venue, breathing the same air as Exene. I'm totally not worthy. Also, I was a bit embarrassed that one of my other immediate thoughts was: What will I wear?? See. I'm so not punk.

Here's the video for "The New World." It's grainy, and the lip-synch is off, but it's still worth watching. John Doe has never looked cuter, Exene has never looked hotter than in her cowboy hat and midriff-tied shirt. And the song, released in 1983, is just as timely today: "Honest to goodness, the tears have been falling all over this country's face."

Enjoy! And have a rockin' Friday.