Oh my!

Could it really be over a week since my last blogpost???
Get it together girl!
And no decorations on the blog either, no pictures.
Maybe I should take up tweeting instead?
I'll be back - I promise!!

Clever insight

We overslept this morning. Running very late actually. Holly was a little worried in the car going to school, she doesn't like being late.
- Don't worry about it, says Richard. It's not your fault that you're late, it's mine and mummy's, it's our responsibility to make sure you get to school.
- Yeah, OK, she says. If it was my responsibility, I probably wouldn't go to school at all.

Home sick

Turkey week.
For us more like a chicken week.
That's the story if you have no extended family around during Thanks Giving. Chicken roast English style and a brisk long walk on Ocean Beach. I do get very home sick this time of year.

It's raining in SF

Friday night and I braved the rain to go to Magnolias on Haight and Masonic for Belgian beer and sausages with friends I haven't seen since September.
The perfect recipe for a cold, dark night.
We all wished you were there, Nats.

10 points for honesty, the rest we should work on...

Am talking to Finn about his preschool and asking him who was there.
- Mason.
- Is Mason your friend?
- Yes.
- So what did you and Mason play?
- I don't play with Mason. I just push him.

This is the life

Life insurance at this stage of my life:
Worth half of Richard.
It's a fact.
Ironic - but a fact.

The city was beautiful from from the hill top this morning

An sweet old man lives on the block. He has an equally sweet, very old, and very slow Lab which the man takes out for a walk, dressed only in his worn out brown, terry cloth robe, some well-used slippers. and a straw hat. He is friendly, always smiling as they conquer the hill.
During the day he sits outside his garage, still dressed in his robe, petting the Lab and watching the world go by.

One minor problem: the dog has chosen the pavement next to the only piece of community green as his toilet and the results remains there afterwards, like composting but on concrete, where is festers, attracts flies, dries up and eventually disintegrates in to peoples shoes as the frequency of the product makes it almost unavoidable to not step on some of it at some point.

It has become a familiar part of my everyday. As often as I say good morning to the man, I also skilfully dodge dog poo on my way up the hill.
Part of living in this neighborhood.

There is a bake-sale outside Starbucks. Their goods look tastier.
And it is for charity.
They picked a good spot.

Starbucks at West Portal or Why did I never think of that before?

If you're not happy with where your table happens to be, then you can just move it - even if your new spots happens to be in the middle of the queue to the counter....

Afternoon in Cole Valley

A transient is outside the caffee on Cole and Waller shaking the life out of the metal newpaper boxes for change.
I had no idea so many people bought the Chronicle from those boxes. He's making a ton.

Dog-lemma

We have dogs in three of the five houses surrounding ours. They bark different times of the day.
What they have in common is that their owners don't seem to mind that they do.

Learning to be a better mother

I have learnt to hate this day. The sun is shining, the temperature is in an unusually high low 70's and San Franciscans are leaving their houses to vote and celebrate the Giants victory from last night. Nothing seemingly bad about this day. But it is Finn's yearly heart ultra sound and I can never seem to sleep or relax until it is over. It doesn't matter that on a rational level I know that everything will be fine. It's not a complicated or unusal defect. Nothing will have changed for the worse, of course.

But there is always the "What if?".

And I hate the "What if?".

With high risk of sounding sentimental, all parents know how incredibly vulnerable our children are to us. During pregnancy we develop a protective instinct that, to the child on an average day, can be annoying at best, all-consuming at its worse. But it is there, and it makes us parents invincible. There is nothing you wouldn't do - literally nothing you wouldn't do - to protect your child.

And so, building up to this appointment, I notice myself go a little softer on my son during his testing moments. I give him a little more leeway, have a little more patience than on an average day. I give him more hugs, and tell him that I love him more often than i usually do. Just in case. Just in case today is different from other days.

I do what I should do every day, regardless of the "What if?".

Oh, the drama, the drama

Note to self:
take down the Halloween decorations and throw the pumpkins in the green composte-can after the three year old is in bed.
Less whining will occur.

Otherwise, you will listen to this for most of the afternoon:

- Oh no, mummy - please don't touch my ghosts and my skeletons. I will be very, very nice and look after them very, very well, I promise!

- No, not my pumpkins, mummy, pleeeeaaaaase. I will take care of them! All the time!

Happy Halloween

We went trick or treating on Belvedere yesterday and as we were standing on Carl Street waiting for the rest of the gang we acknowledged the other groups of inventive trick or treaters as they passed us. It went something like: Happy Halloween, ghost! Trick or treat, witch!
And so on.
- Happy Halloween, Britney Spears, says one of the other mothers. Then she turns to me:
- Or, maybe that wasn't supposed to be Britney? What do you think?

- I think that's just a 20'something dressed in her normal clothes, I say and start heading up the hill to Belvedere Road.