Year One

Approximately one year ago (give or take 3 weeks) I began this blog. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, I just knew that my friend Stefanie Wilder-Taylor said I should. We had just met, I thought 'she's funny as hell and seems to have it together as a mom, I'll do whatever she says'. I know, that's ridiculous. In my defense I was sleep deprived, and she's pretty.

You: Dude, you are such a name dropper.
Me: I know. Sorry.

But I'm glad I did. And so I've been up here more or less consistently typing into the void of the interweb sharing my panic about this parenting thing, and my love of the tiny boy with the big head, the endless nights of sleepwalking, our shortfilm fundraising efforts which succeeded (woot!), a possible huge move out of the state (which isn't happening by the way), and the continual unfolding of realization that this choice we made to be parents just changes the whole playing field in ways I still don't fully understand.

The shockwaves run the gamut: finances, career, friendships, marriage, personal identity. For me it's been a bit extreme in such groundshaking, earthquaking ways that it looks like a crack the size of South Dakota and feels like the crushing loneliness I felt driving through that state when I was 20. I feel a little ridiculous by how thrown I am by this new life, and while it's definitely getting easier, glimmers of the existential angst remains.

But I'm here, and you know what?  It's getting better and better. It's actually turning out to be an incredibly sweet life, and the likelihood is that the darkness I've seen this year is what brought me into this light. Sure the PPD fairy left her mark, but her fairydust doesn't choke me anymore, thankfully that little beyatch is flitting about more on the periphery.

So now that I've linked my way through some highlights of the year, I'll also share some faves that are unrelated. If you've got a minute or 14, wade on through...

* Cute hubs on our anniversary
*A big creepy fight outside our house
* A lovely moment of happiness during the holidays
* Sad (long) story of my brother's journey with schizophrenia
* During the movie review phase - Away We Go
* The birth story that I wrote in SWT's class. This was Take 2.

I'll leave you with this. One of the only ways cute hubs and I made it through the year is through knowing Larry and Linda - The Untroubled Couple. They are amazing and have a beautiful way navigating the stormy waters of love. Please watch the trailer for their webseries and become a follower. You won't regret it.




Untroubled and pretty happy about it,


PS - Link count: -  14 of my past posts and 2 other sites. That's a lotta linky!

PPS - Can't leave you without one pic of the BHB. This is his sign for Light.

sweet dreams

I want to be good. I want to be layered with subtext and make tiny choices with big consequences. I want to be inspirational to smaller girls and lucid old people with twinkling eyes. I want to do something extraordinary - really extreme. Like those crazy Olympians. Yet I want to do it in a small ordinary way.

I think of the filmmakers who made Once. Have you seen that movie? It was a small undertaking that turned into an extraordinary thing. It's magical, and the title track to the soundtrack makes me sob without fail.

Like a David Whyte poem. Like this poem.
I pasted it below too....

I don't need need fancy dresses, I dress like a teenage boy in real life, why pretend and wear other people's dresses? (I'm thinking of the Oscar's of course). I just want to be grace and love and magic personified. I want to drop all of my bad habits, negative thinking and random bullshit that y'all have surely noticed over the last 3/4 year but have granted me pardon because I'm funny at times or my kid is too cute to pass up. I'm guessing anyway. Is that it?

Can you tell I'm working in a 'dream board' this week? I'll have to scan it and share it like a big old geeky crafty scrapbooker when I'm done.

I've got to get some vision back into this picture as it's gotten a dangerously dark and gloomy around the edges. As it is, that big ol' life change I've been threatening to dish about has finally come to pass in an official way. Our tenure in Los Angeles is coming to a close, this little family is moving east to be near cute hubs family. So the thing in the box over there to the left? About leaving LA for free babysitters? It's happening.

We're moving to Utah. I hope the saints are nicer to outsider's in 2010 than they were in the 1840's.  Hub's family is delightful and not a part of that scene (for the most part), but that part of the equation is an x factor that makes me uncomfortable. I'm reading Under the Banner of Heaven, which it turns out, isn't a great idea. But it is a great book.

I love LA in an unreasonable way, mostly because of the people who I love here. And the sun I love here. And the way people dream big here.

For the record I'm going to keep dreaming big up there in the valley near Park City, I just have to do it in the snow. (shudder)

So for now I'll leave you with this poem that a dear friend of mine sent me in an email six years ago. She didn't stick around the planet for long after she sent it to me, I think this kind of living is hard to do. But I love this poem and her memory in the same fierce way.

Heavy hearted-ly yours,




Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.

-- David Whyte
      from Fire in the Earth 
      ©1992 Many Rivers Press

Snow White

I type and I watch. I'm catching out of the corner of my eye these mad dudes with their flying, flashing ski's willingly flip, well - fling themselves miles into the air and flip flop fall and float (but mostly flip) into the relative safety of the snow that sometimes catches and sometimes kick back with a splash of white and whatev's. All I can say is WHOA dude. These guys are awesome.

What inspired that? Were they like six years old and racing a car around the Berber carpet in 1994 and  looked up at the flickering coverage of the Olympics coming to them from Norway and saw these nutty dudes flipping through the air and then turn to their mom's with big round eyes and matchbox car mid-track and point their little stubby fingers at the screen and say - "Yes, I will do that. It will be rad and I will wear shiny colorful spandex and I will win."

photo credit: Mike Groll AP/File

Don't you wonder? As I watched the other jumping event tonight - the ski jump - with the dudes that fly for like 30 gorgeous heartdropping seconds I got totally annoyed with my 10 month old son as I projected into the relative near future when lil BHB and I will likely have this conversation....

INT: OUR HOUSE - NIGHT

An adorable 4 year old BOY pushes a monster truck around the hardwood floors as his MOM and DAD watch slack-jawed as the Olympic aerialists flip fourteen times before landing on the fake snow.                        

His Mom is extremely hot and looks amazing in casual sweats. She is a very thin and young-looking 43 year old...(oh rats, sorry - went off into fantasy there) Ahem. The sweet boy looks up at the giant plasma TV that is uber fancy and wafer thin...

BHB 

Look Mom! I can do that!

ME

Nope. No way. Forget it.

BHB

But Mooommmmmm.

ME

Sorry.

BHB

(looking offscreen with intense resolve) 

I will wear flashy spandex, and I will win.

ME

Noo! I love your big head!

 I don't want you to break it on that mean snow.  

Curse you inspiring dudes who flip through the 

air with the greatest of ease!

Sigh. I guess we're not going to be watching the next Winter Olympics.

With love from the future,




PS - Ok, I realize that reading the above is like watching reality tv when a really great drama is on the other channel. It's on the silly, fluffy and pointless side but thanks for coming by...

Now if you want to read something really heartfelt and poetic and filled with awesomeness, you should go here. The writer is a dear friend, filmmaker, writer, and mom of an amaaaazing kid. I met her in line at Sundance a bunch of years ago. She's just fantastic! But I digress. But yes, you should definitely check this post out (whut up double link!) And be sure to play the music, it's a wonderful good time.

Falling Down

Today started out like any other day. Stayed up too late last night, slept in while the boy hung out with the cute hubs. This is an almost daily ritual, while I fade in and out of sleep, BHB sits in his bjorn bouncee chair doing his screaming banchee thang and kicking himself into a rockin’ rhthym while Hubs does the dishes. And if you’re wondering why I”m such a lucky Momma that gets to sleep in and did I say Dad does dishes? I did. I’d say I wonder too. But since I am the one on the hook to get up during the night, I think it might be semi-fair.

Went to the Feeding Little Foodies workshop and met some awesome other Momma’s and got some handy tips on how to make baby mush. It was great. I totally recommend it. I feel that much more capable and willing to make the food and freeze it and ya know, if I open a jar, I open a jar.

So in all the excitement about learning how to be feeding a little foodie I had not put any foodie in my body and since I’m still producing all the food for the little doody, I was famished.

To solve this problem I skipped loading the boy into the car and left him in the Ergo carrier and wandered down to the main street. Wilshire. I immediately found a cool little snackee place next to the El Rey theater that has found a hilarious line between Indian Food and Mexican. It’s called Cowboys and Turban’s and um hi, how fun is that? I ordered a chicken tandoori quesadilla (seriously).

I sat outside with my big-headed baby as we waited for this wacky concoction. In recent days I’ve realized he’s no longer the patient lap sitter he once was, he’s now a guy who needs entertainment. You know, like toys n’ shit. And in my haste to find nourishment, I dropped off the diaper bag that contained such things in the car and so I was caught basically empty handed. This is where my perfectly lovely day became other than.

BHB has been enjoying practicing his standing skills on our laps and laughing into our eyes. Needless to say looking into his starry blue eyes is uber sweet and this is what he was up to in this moment.

My arms are looped around him (imagine like a basketball hoop) and he leans into the left arm. I laugh at his laughing while the hand at the end of the right arm digs through purse for something fun for him to hold onto and or stuff into his tiny mouth. Two thoughts, lightening fast. Give him the glasses case. Take the glasses out first. So I avert eyes to open hinged case only I realize now the boy is missing. He’s down, he’s fallen down, he leaned back too far over my arm and flipped onto the marble below. My six month old child is screaming bloody-murder, no wait that scream was me. Now it’s him.

Before the brain has time to think, don’t pick him up he could be seriously hurt his back could be broken he’s up in my arms and I’m moving on the tiny patio in circles my voice says My baby, My baby oh my god I dropped my Baby and the nice Indian Man is out of the door saying, he’s okay, he’s okay I dropped both my kids yesterday this is what happens this happens all of the time until they are five then a nice guy who I noticed a few moments before as a hipster lanky guy with kind eyes is next to me saying He’s okay, he’s startled he’s okay he’s startled and I’m thinking or speaking Startled? Are you fucking kidding me? he hit the marble, that floor is marble is that cement or marble oh my god I dropped my baby as tears stream down my face and I try unsuccessfully to contain hysteria.

And now I’m also trying to get him to eat. Doing anything to create a sense of normalcy, my usual very modest public breast-feeding has become completely national geographic tribal and I just don't care. And the nice Indian man is yelling, seems to me he's yelling You have to Calm Down, He’s not going to calm down unless You calm down. And they are both very close to me, everyone is too close to me and I’m finally sitting down and the crying baby is thinking about latching but is too busy being upset. Like me.

And then he eats and it grows quiet except for the buses thundering by.

And lanky guy says, okay did he hit his head? And I’m looking at his perfect little head and I don’t see anything, not a mark. Lanky notices the angel's kiss on his forehead and thinks that is a problem, no I say, it’s a birthmark - there is literally not a single bit of evidence. I’m circling his fuzzy little head with a frantic hand as he feeds. It feels perfect.

And I call the pediatrician, only a nurse practitioner on duty today, she is going to call back.  And I sit there, on the patio looking down at the place where he fell. And he eats and he falls asleep. And the Indian man eventually comes out and brings the quesadilla. And lanky comes by a few more times and shares more kindness...and concern, what if he has a concussion? He should not sleep. So I wake the poor guy up, even though I know in my gut he is okay. Somehow he managed to perform a triple Lutz onto cement or was it marble three feet below and leave his head out of it. I guess all of that belly time paid off because he kept his head up.

After about 40 minutes, after the nurse practitioner called and we rule out head injury due to the fact that his head is not scratched and the fact that he’s giggling and banchee screaming and focusing fine and just basically behaving perfectly normally. My breath is finally coming back. The tandoori and cheese is good comfort food but you know, too rich but I’m not ready to be separated from his sweet breath by a car seat so we continue to sit there. I steal glances at the spot on the marble or is it cement where he landed.

Split seconds change a life. These moments which were orchestrated by random facts. I  didn’t bring food for me. The weather was nice so I walked. I found a place where we laughed. I looked for something for him to do and he was gone.

How fleeting. How dangerous this place. How much do I want to lock my family into a padded house with single ethnic food (no need to mix) and just laugh into each others eyes and steer clear of all hard surfaces. Needless to say I’m so grateful he is okay. I’m so sorry that he potentially wasn’t. I don’t know how anyone would survive this same moment going differently, I just don’t.

The good news is that I know what happened. After he backflipped out of my arms, he was caught by angels who then carefully lowered him to the ground where they placed him on his belly. The reason he cried was because I screamed. And cried. See Lanky was right, he was just startled. It's the only explanation that makes sense.

Fight Club

Last night as we began the get-baby-to-sleep routine that sounds like Jewel's lullabies on the ipod and the sound of cascading water into bath, we heard another very strange sound coming from the street. Brown dog jumped up to contribute his own sounds of 'hey! wtf! what's going on!' and we all rushed to the front of the house to investigate.

What we heard was awful, what we saw was worse. The sound was primal, grunting. An unidentifiable cacophony of dangerous sounds along with a high pitch of crying female voice. In the waning daylight but mostly streetlight we saw about five people in the middle of the street all grouped together. It was hard to discern what was happening at first, but then it became quite clear. Someone was getting the crap beaten out of them. There was a woman outside the circle wailing for it to stop, but also holding up her phone as if she was video taping it. To which I thought, seriously? Is that for the cops or because she had the foresight to get this for the rights to someone's story. Then there was another dude close by with his pit-bull between his legs, adding to the danger and despair.

Cute hubs had the boy in his arms, sporting the white-trash-diaper-only look. He thrust him into my arms and ran for the phone. We closed the giant door and I retreated to the couch to sob. BHB was oblivious to these events and kicked and cooed on my lap while I cried and cried as hubs talked to the 911 operator. Why was I crying you ask? It was this mental mix:

We can't stay here another day. But I can't take another move, or for that matter afford it. How can we raise a baby amongst this terrifying behavior? Is that poor guy okay? LA sucks. But I love the weather. I love this house. I'll miss my friends when we leave. My stomach hurts.

But I think it was really just the visceral reaction to violence that made me cry. It was truly terrible, and mostly the sound of it. It wasn't the Hollywood soundtrack of a punch landing and angry voices mixed in. It was, as above, such a weird mashing of grunts and the sounds of lost breath. I can't explain it, but as you can see I keep trying.

It was especially odd to close the door on that event and tune into Jewel's sweet voice singing 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' and the bright lights of our cute kitchen and the sound of a welcoming bath. We had to move back into normality to get the baby into bed and then try to process what happened. The police helicopter overhead didn't exactly help, and as the cruiser's arrived to quiz the neighbors (they didn't come to us) I retreated into the adorable nursery with the adorable child.

Once BHB had taken an enormous amount of milk out of me, I stumbled back out into the brightness and found that my body was suddenly weak and feverish. I went to bed without eating with hopes of kicking it, but awoke with what appears to be a flu. Well, not yet puking but all over body aches and sore throat and the rest. Officially not good times.

Sorry for the text heavy post. I've got nothing to show for the above, I don't think as fast as that girl with her camera phone. But hopefully something of a lighter nature coming soon.

Road Trip

Or a better name for this would be head trip. But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

As you likely know, LA is burning. Again. And if you don’t live in LA you’re probably thinking. 'Whatev’s'. And that’s fair. When you have floods that take out all of your cows and tract housing I think, 'Aww. That sucks'. And then proceed to order my venti decaf cappuccino and obsess over how they never get the foam right instead of doing the right thing and sending dollars over the internet to your flooded plains. So I get it.

But the burning hill-line (like skyline) was so unnerving to me this time around. And I attribute that to my new status as protector-provider-procreator-person. And as that person, I, along with my teammate (aka the dad, hubs, cute husband) decided that the proper thing to do when you can see flames from your house is run. Sure the flames were 10 miles away and really the likelihood of them getting to our particular place of residence was pretty darn low. Yet I still got a new sticky sensation of unease that sent us packing. Of course that sticky sensation might have come from how freakin’ hot it was. But I’m talking about something else.

Parenthood has me right out on the precarious edge of reason and normalcy. I’ve heard friends reference this in the past and of course I just couldn’t understand it. When I was pregnant at a Christmas party last year (you know, cute pregnant? Not cankles and giant-face pregnant. That came later) my step-brother said to me, ‘Get ready to be terrified all the time’. Huh, I thought. This big guy is afraid? How cute. But yep, now I get it. It’s like a combination of a constant low-level adrenaline buzz spiked with a splash of irrational fear the imminent, untimely exit for my immediate family unit as well as everyone else I hold dear. How many times a night do I check to see if the wee one is breathing? Shoot this week I woke up cute hubs worried that he wasn’t breathing. I don’t know if this gut-bomb of anxiety diminishes over time, but here at almost five months in I’m still on the razor’s edge.

Plus the smoke was really bad. Here is a picture I shot last Saturday as the fire really kicked into gear.

Ominous, right? The real trouble came when our AC units were not doing their job of closing the vent and our place was filling with smoke. With watering eyes and hurting lungs I turned to our DEAR dear friends who had just came down from SF on Saturday to stay with us and meet the BHB and said. “We gotta go”. My lungs are big and they hurt, this is clearly not okay for the tiny-lunged dude. Thank god they not only understood, but they also gave us the key to their place is SF. So we home swapped. Not as interesting as wife swapping but just as weird.
Or it sure felt weird when we were driving out of town…did we just leave some of our BF’s ever in our smoky house? Did we just dump our sweet still-cone-headed dog on them to care for? Are we really passing up a flight to Seattle in favor of driving all the way there with a five month old? I ask you. Now that is nuts.

Unfortunately the ominous feeling of those towers of smoke and the smell of national forest burning didn’t fade when the image left our rear view mirror.

That dark feeling of doom trailed us north on 1-5 and didn’t actually shake off until we arrived in Seattle four days later. The trip was long and strange, we took it really slow and only did about 5 hours worth of driving per day – not that we only drove five hours mind you. More like eight - which is a heck of a lot of time to think.

The good news is that the big-headed-baby has been an unbelievable pleasure of a road-trip buddy. On the way up he was just a sweet, cooing, drooling, smiling, foot-waving rockstar. We rotated sitting in the back having face time with him with his adorable grin and then tried to have a little grown-up time in the front when he napped. The miles rolled by and the trees got bigger, our car dirtier and the baby farts funnier.


But we finally made it. Today we’re in Seattle which is our previous home. It’s beautiful here. There is nothing like early September in Seattle, it’s pretty much ideal.

I’m feeling better being around many dear friends but I am told by the same dear friends that the new fear-factor running my show doesn’t go away. Sure the first year is precarious and there’s lots to worry about, but it’s only just begun.

Anyone have any advice for coping mechanisms for this new cocktail of feelings? I think the recipe is part fear, part anxiety, largely overwhelming, heartbreaking love that is shaken And stirred. Do tell if you’ve found any chasers. Oh and despite my fun with the martini analogy here since I don’t drink booze anymore please don’t tease me with how you get it done that way. Please tell the other ways, if they exist…

Courage! Courage!

Gonna go a little Disney on you here, ready?
Why do we have the dreams we do?

Why do I dream of directing feature films that make people laugh and cry in a dark theater? (It makes me heart drop to even type that) Why should I be inflicted with this practically impossible dream that countless other saps have? Why, damn you, why~!

Medium shot: Jane crying in the rain, crane shot as we lift up and away from her as she shakes her fists at the sky.

I've often wished for a more 'normal' or realistic dream. How about becoming a Dentist? Or a Contract Lawyer? Sure these are tough professions but not freakin' insurmountable. In fact, so sweetly simple. You go to school, you get mounds of debt, you buy a shiny car with seat warmers, you buy a big-ass house, you pay off debt, you raise a couple of kids and freak out when they want to become musicians or filmmakers and do you know why? Because it's a painful, shrapnel filled road filled with disappointment, phonies and existential crisis rendering, gut-wrenching doubt.

So I'm sitting here in my rented house with the sweet, sleeping baby in the next room and the handsome husband typing in the other room (he's pounding out his novel) and my throat closes as I listen to "Title and Registration" on my itunes because this song just about sums it up for me. Dreaming, wishing - reaching and wondering. Will it happen? Or will I die with the disappointment and regret of not doing the thing that I feel somehow destined to do and simultaneously scares the shit out of me?

Ugh. I hate this post. Can you feel my angst? I can't type hard enough into this keyboard to give these words the urgent bold, italic juice that this topic requires. It all sounds so pat and obvious. But. How will I achieve this impossible dream? Cue all of those damn quotable magnets that say shit like 'whatever you dream you can do, do it, get off your ass loser' Oh wait, that's the way it rolls through my addled brain.

Or any of these others that lift my spirits and inspire me in that sparkly, otherworldly way and simultaneously piss me off to no end...



So let's summarize. I need courage, and fast. This fall my mom is going to roll into town to help us out and take care of the ankle-biter so we can shoot our short film...which is a fundraiser for our feature film. Today the husband and I met about it during nap #2 and ohmygawd even talking about it riled up my nerves. Ridiculous? Totally. I can shoot anything for anyone else any day of the week and feel no concern, but when it's the script that hubby wrote that I love, love? I'm shaking in my flip-flops.