shiso mama

And now, just a little break from all this serious talk about birthin’ babies.

Our friends and back door neighbors are sadly moving away and putting their house up for sale.  We live in the Elmwood neighborhood of Berkeley, which is pretty desirable - not many houses go up for sale around here.  We know most of our neighbors, have good friends on the street, and there are multiple block parties each year.  They will be talking to a broker very soon (later this week) so if you or anyone you know are in the market, you’ll save some money if you get to them before the brokers do.

They have a 3-bedroom, 2 bathroom, one-story house with shingles.  There is a spacious master bedroom in the back, with a sitting room outside of it which has french doors leading to their cozy backyard.  Two smaller bedrooms run along one side of the house.  We have spent many happy afternoons hanging out in their comfy home and backyard.  I’m not sure of its square footage, but it’s a good size for a young family (they have two young children who are friends of Otis’s).  Their house is on Bateman Street, between Woolsey and Prince Streets, and it is a very quiet street with little traffic, and there are two parks within a block and a half.

Feel free to email me if you have questions or you can email Meg directly at megjayATgmailDOTcom.  You’ll at least have fantastic back door neighbors, and I promise not to walk around naked.

me: “gwong pi gu” (going bare bottomed)
Otis: “grrrrumpy!”

Get it?  It’s a bilingual joke!

Speaking of bilingualism, our friends at Z Recs are doing a special series on foreign language educational materials, and yours truly has done a guest post reviewing a Mandarin learning DVD here.  So if you’re in the market, or thinking about introducing a new language into your household,  check it out.  They’ve covered a lot of different materials.

The other day, we were all at my grandmother’s house, gathered around their large, circular dining table, ravenously eating our lunches. My grandmother, who often becomes very busy during mealtime, monitoring everyone’s intake to make sure that you eat just one more piece, or remembering yet another thing that we need at the table, suddenly got up and made for the kitchen.

Lots of under breath speculation swirled around the table. What is she doing? What could she possible need now? Why is she so busy? Oh, she must be getting a soda!   We’re a nosy family, you see, and would not rest until we had an answer. With the mystery solved, we returned to the business of finishing our lunches and discussing Otis’s every move and utterance (not my hobby, of course)

We all nearly jumped out of our seats when, minutes later, my grandmother yelped and sputtered, “PahhhhhhhhhhhHHHHH!”

My grandmother had gone to the refrigerator seeking a bottle of cold, refreshing water and had sat down, twisted off the cap, and had taken an enormous swig of … cooking wine! Which, strangely enough, was in a small, plastic bottle with a paper label, just like a bottle of water.

Consternation erupted from everyone at the table. Ma, if you want something to drink, tell us and we’ll get it for you! You don’t have to get it yourself! And WHO put that cooking wine in the fridge?? Frowns and stern looks everywhere, but soon, everyone started staring intently at our food, trying our best not to laugh out loud, for fear of incurring the wrath of the boss of the Chinese mafia.

I feel very sorry for my poor grandmother, who will soon be going in for cataract surgery. But I saw a bottle of alcohol in my mother’s cabinet this morning, and I promptly fell to the ground, laughing. Then I said “cooking wine” to my mom, and she promptly fell on the ground, laughing. And still, no one in my family can figure out how that bottle of cooking wine ended up in the fridge.

And last but not least, for you Otis whores out there (really, just F):

I’ll see you soon!

Nicole! (uh, you have read her blog, right?)

Thank you for your comments. It makes me so happy to see emails from friends, new and old. I gobble them up and am greedy for more. It’s like kisses from babies - you can never get enough.

New York City report to come after I come home. xo.

five years ago, we were not yet married.
five years ago, we did not have a baby.
five years ago, we did not own this house.
five years ago, we were living in new york.
sometimes five years seems like a long time.

I just found this article in the NYTimes, about artists who make artworks every day (just like me, in theory!).  There’s even someone whose website is collageaday!

Oh man, this is genius.

I found it via Daddytypes. Read it?

Otis and I went to go pick up F, who had the goods with him (precious, life-saving cold medicine for O, who is sick again). We were driving home in pretty slow traffic, trying to get off the highway, and we signalled and changed lanes so we could get to the exit. As soon as the light blue Lexus SUV saw that we were coming into his lane, he zoomed up and leaned on his horn, clearly mad as all get-out. Then he sped into the next lane, charged up and swerved into my lane so that he could DRIVE ME OFF THE ROAD. I’ll admit I’m not always the best driver, but there was plenty of room and he was just pissed that I wanted to get into his lane. Then he continued to swerve all over all the lanes, without signalling, to end up in the fast lane, which ended up stopped anyways as we passed by him. By the way, this man was also WEARING A NECK BRACE. Hm, I can only imagine that he got that as the result of some other shithead maneuver. Although I wonder if he was also a little mad because when he was driving by, he might have noticed me doing my imitation of a man in a neck brace trying to turn his head.

Have you heard of Berkeley Bowl? It's a supermarket we have here, one of my favorite places to shop (besides Trader Joe's, of course), and it's excellent for produce. Their offerings are varied enough to be overwhelming. Why offer just green and purple grapes when you can offer 8 different kinds? Apples in different varieties AND sizes. Asparagus with the ends left on OR cut off. It's nuts. And the people who shop there are nuts too. They are aggressive and intent. They use their shopping carts as weapons, ramming them into you to make way in the crowded aisles while purposefully avoiding eye contant. Even when you have a baby whose tiny little hands are hanging off the sides. Yet I go back.

I stopped there on our way back from Napa, while Otis was still napping in the car with F. This woman rammed her cart into me because HELLO? She couldn't care less where she was going, she was too busy looking at the mushrooms. I must have looked a little shocked from the impact, and probably a little annoyed. She said, "Uh, sorry." But then, as she drove by me, she leaned in and said, "But not THAT sorry."

Then I kept seeing her REPEATEDLY during the rest of my visit. I hate that ugly orange sweater shrivelled up crazy lady. Before we officially moved into our house, an acquaintance told us that he believes Berkeley is a city of "repressed rage", and we agreed with his insight then. And sometimes, it's not even repressed.

There are two people out in the world that I believe deserve to win Lifetime Genius Awards, but probably never will. It's the sad truth of the matter. The first is Joe. As in TRADER Joe's? That man is brilliant. Just yesterday I was saying to F, "Damn that Joe and his tasty snacks! I love/hate him! He's a snack virtuoso!" The other under-recognized supergenius of the universe? Craig Newmark. Of craigslist.org of course! You do know about craigslist, don't you? It's super freaking magnificent.

I've looked through craigslist to look for jobs before. Apartments too. I've even cruised through the "Missed Connections" and "Casual Encounters" sections just for kicks. And then one day, I decided to explore the sale section and discovered a veritable treasure trove of exciting things. You want 19th century antique rosewood Chinese daybed? You want a custom built lobster boat? Want a jar of Folger's Crystals that someone's had in their cabinet since 1979? Got it and more.

Many of you know that I'm pretty indecisive. And snobby to boot. So these two factors made buying things for Otis rather excruciating. I couldn't decide on a crib. I bought a crib at Ikea. F assembled it. I loved it. Then I hated it. So F disassembled and returned it. But then I wondered if I should have kept it after all. All of which F indulged, most likely because I was sooo largely pregnant at that point, and had mostly lost my mind to the hormones. Craigslist has fixed all of these problems and more!

I've bought all sorts of hideously ugly and noisy toys in fantastic shape (that I would have otherwise refused to spend money on), let Otis play with them, and then sell them off again, usually at a price pretty close to what I paid for it in the first place. It's like paying a small rental fee for something that's an ugly and necessary evil that I want to keep around for as short a time as possible. It makes these purchasing decisions less painful when they seem less permanent or less expensive.

I've also acquired some fantastic finds on craigslist, and I'm determined to furnish as much of our new house via craigslist as possible. We just bought Otis a new crib on craigslist. It's an arts and crafts style crib made of sustainably harvested maple wood from the Pacific Northwest. The craftsmanship is gorgeous and it's finished only with beeswax and tung oil, so there are no toxic finishes on it. I love this crib more and more every day. Plus I paid something like 40% of retail for this crib and that makes me feel almost as smug as I do when driving our Prius.

See how happy he is? It's because he feels good gnawing on ecologically sound wood!