My other day job (besides running around after the kiddles) will be heating up over the coming month or so, and as a result, posting here is likely to be lighter than I’d prefer. Truth is, until I rig things somehow so that this blog stuff pays me more than it costs me – that is, fiscally; it’s already priceless to me, emotionally and intellectually – from time to time, I have to pay more attention to my paying gigs.

Of course, the last time I went on a work-induced, month-long prose diet I had a very hard time keeping to it. I posted pictures daily, but some of the captions to the pictures kind of streeeeeeeetched the distinction between “caption” and “post.” Really, the whole exercise just proved to me yet again that loquaciousness is congenital: it can’t be cured; one can only just learn to live with it.

(It also proved to me that I can never Twitter. I did squat my name over there, and I do from time to time squander precious minutes pondering how I might be able to mend my ways, finally, and actually become brief. Okay, briefer. Ha! But I digress! Ha! See? I’m doomed! This right here? Nearly double the 140-character Tweet allotment!)

Continue reading ‘Eight weeks out’

Especially when it’s your second one ever, and the big sister is bobbing up and down on a neighboring ostrich.

Listening, Berkeley, CA.

Actually the beloved’s family, mostly all theater folk, deliver that old saw this way: 

“But I’ve been talking too much.  What do you think about my play?”

Robin Reagler, lesbian parent blogger extraordinnaire, interviewed me recently as part of an ongoing series, and has just posted the results.  

Continue reading ‘But I’ve been talking too much. What do YOU think about me?’

[Ed. note: Sadly, my usually pinched time is getting pinched-er with some upcoming work deadlines, and it will stay that way for a while.  I've had to punt to next week my reflective second part to the whole back-to-school transition dealie that I thought I'd post here today.  It deserves more massage time than I've been able to give it.  Instead, here: have some breezy fun and a buncha YouTube links.]

Now that Fiddler on the Roof is in rehearsals at the beloved’s youth theater co., the lil’ monkey is full-on in character, at least 50% of the day.  What character, you might ask?  Well!  Depending on the day, it’s either Tzeitel or Bielke, the eldest and youngest of Tevye’s daughters.  The lil’ peanut, in case anyone wants to know, is Mendel, the rabbi’s son.  The beloved is Golde.  And yes, I am proud to say, I am Tevye.  

For more hours of the day than the beloved can bear, our daughter implores me to speak in my fake-o Russian accent.   I accommodate the request to the best of my abilities, which are meager, since I don’t actually speak more than one sentence of Russian, nor do I know the proper inflections to indicate  Jewish milkman in the turn-of-the-century tsarist period, if he were trying to speak in English.  But, you know, one tries.

So far it’s been a big hit, my substituting “The Baba!” when everyone sings “The Papa!” in “Tradition.” And since that works so well, I substitute “The Baba!” for “The Mama!” when it rolls around in the next verse.  As a both/and type of gal, this sort of stuff comes naturally to me.  The kids eat it up, too.

Continue reading ‘It’s all Fiddler all the time around these parts’

Thanks to Pam, who says Jon Stewart nails it again - the bogus GOP gender card:

Steerike one.

Steerike two.

Steerike three.

Win goes to Stewart.  And hopefully, after exactly two more months of this stuff, Obama/Biden.

…I give you, lil’ monkey’s second first day of school. See the image at right, from yesterday’s post, for a glimpse of the stalwart toughie, her first first day.  

Note above, by stark contrast, the relaxed demeanor on this year’s model.  What a difference a year of loving community-building can do.  

Note the lack of out-thrust lower lip.  The placidity in the face, the furrow-free brow.  The apple in the hand, which Baba told her it was customary to bring to your teacher the first day of school.  In some fifteen years of active teaching and teaching-esque duty, I think I might have received enough apples to make one very feeble compote.  Or maybe enough to feed the lil’ monkey on a binge. Thus my staunch, pro-apple stance.

Of course as we were headed to school, she asks, “Why is it traditional to give an apple to your teacher?”  

As is my custom, I eagerly start to dig myself into a nice big hole.  ”Well, lambchop, it symbolizes knowledge.”

“But why does it symbolize knowledge?”

Continue reading ‘And by point of contrast’

Recently I had the great good fortune of being asked for advice by a dear friend of a dear friend of the beloved.  We bonded in a hot tub in Idaho, over a decade ago, both there for the wedding of a friend.  Under the stars, we caustically competed for who felt most likely to be shot at by locals (Jewish heterosexual?  or non-Jewish lesbian?  who gets it first?).  

She’s an elementary school teacher now, and she recently learned that one of her Kindergartners has two mommies. At different times, they each made an effort to clarify to her that their girl has two moms. She was very understanding about their concern, and is going to offer to meet with them (a capitol idea!).  But she wanted to know more: how did the beloved and I approach transitioning our girlie into school?  And what would we want her Kindergarten teacher to know?

Well!  So glad she asked!  And good timing, since today’s our girl’s second first day of school.  (The first first one, so, so long ago, is  pictured at right.  Brave little bugger.  God I love her.  I mean look what she’s holding.  The change of clothes, for when, you know.  Could preschoolers get any more dear?)

But back to the business at hand.  I wrote the dear school teacher friend a dreadfully long email, and have poached from it liberally below so as to ensure this is a dreadfully longer post.  

Continue reading ‘The annual LesFam Back-to-School primer, revisited*’