The Long and the Short of It

I saw Julie & Julia three weeks ago now, back when it was still August. I had a strong reaction to the movie and started mentally composing a blog post about it almost immediately, but then...well...pfffftttt, went the brain. Or the momentum. 

So.  The short version of it is that I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the movie, as I didn't have much hope for it at all.  I'd read Julie &  Julia last year after reading a lot of very enthusiastic reviews. I believe most of my problem with the book is that my expectations were way, way off.  I expected it to inspire me to start cooking,  to want to purchase my own copy of Julia Child's seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and get right down to chopping and sauteeing.  Instead, the book mostly inspired me to want to clean my house, specifically my kitchen, as every other page seemed to have a lot of vivid descriptions about how awful and small and dirty the narrator's  apartment was, with lots of cat hair and dirty martini glasses cluttering the counters and coffee table.  I also seem to remember a scene with maggots lurking under the dish drainer.

And while I truly loved and was inspired by Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France, I still didn't really want to see the movie, assuming that Hollywood would make it all too cutesy and cloying to bother with.  The book is always better anyway, correct?  But then I read a number of good reviews, when I'd expected it to be overwhelmingly panned, and changed my mind about wanting to pay money for it. So....in short: pleasantly surprised. Smart, funny, clever, inspiring. A chick-flick, sorta, but one that I have a hunch my husband would enjoy too, as central to both halves of the movie (both the Julia Child and Julie Powell halves) is each woman's happy and nurturing relationships with her respective husband.  That's my review...THE END. 


Now, for the long of it: The truth behind my "pleasantly surprised" is that I thought the movie was actually quite fabulous, and I loved nearly every moment of it.  There was a real undercurrent of joy in "Julie & Julia,"as each woman initially floundered about in her unhappiness and yet found real purpose and zest for something she was passionate about, whether cooking, writing, or both.  


This isn't a spoiler here, as both halves of the movie are based on actual books, but the movie concludes with both women being recognized as writers.  Julia waves aloft her copy of the long-awaited publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julie Powell realizes that her blog-noodling was "real" writing after all -- she comes home to an answering machine filled with agents and editors inquiring "would you like to turn this into a book?" and "could you please call me?"  What kind of writer's wet dream fantasy is that, huh? 


When the movie ended and the credits rolled, I was a bit overcome, "verklempt" as Mike Myers' Jewish TV hostess used to declare on Saturday Night Live.  Not only did I get a bit misty, but I had to chew hard on the inside of my cheek to stop from bursting out into very real sobs. "Julie Powell is a writer," said the short sentence, in black and white up on the screen.  My chest heaved.  


Watching Julie & Julia coincided with my own re-dedication to the idea of myself as a writer, as a wife and woman who has been feeling more than a bit stuck and blocked and crammed into her (self-created) version of life.  I've been doing a good bit of personal writing lately, not on the blog (obviously, which has gathered nearly a month of dust yet again), but in the exercises mandated by the book The Artists Way.  "It will change your life," I've heard and read more than once.  I feel a little heeby-jeeby talking about it, as for one, thing, I'm not into "New Age" and "self-help" solutions in the least. Or, as Carolyn See put it in her wonderful memoir Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America,  when discussing the Laurel Canyon-Esalen-tinged, 1970s consciousness-raising she participated in, "oh, the embarrasing California-ness of it all." Yeah, so there's that. 


I don't want to discuss it much, except to say, oh, I'm trying.  I'm putting in my good faith, writing my morning pages, and yes, things are changing, slowly, slowly. Which is damn sight better than no change at all. Foremost, and most obviously for the moment, the biggest change is that I'm setting my alarm clock a half hour early to do the pages.  If you know me at all, this alone is pretty huge.  I mean, I felt that I should've truly typed that in ALL CAPS  and bold, just so you get it.  Setting my alarm early?  Two years ago when I first purchased TAW (and then let it collect dust on my book shelf)  that dictate alone, to get up early to complete these pages, was more structure and more bossiness and more work than I believed I could bear.   


But, here it is, ten years since I entered my MFA program, with all the ambition and hope and work that went into earning that degree.  Ten years, and maybe now, just maybe, after a thesis of short stories and a couple of publications, after rejection letters and contest dealines and the Squaw Valley Writer's Conference and yes, even the blog, maybe it's time I think of myself as a writer.  Even here, surrounded by women who mostly view "art" as something done by toddlers with washable paints, I want to dig in.


Here is some Julia for you, from her memoir, My Life in France, after struggling long and hard to perfect a recipe for mayonaisse: 

"I proudly typed it up and sent it off to friends and family in the States, and asked them to test it and send me their comments.  All I recieved in response was a yawning silence. Hm! I had a great many things to say abou sauces as well, but if no one cared to hear my insights, then what was the use? I was miffed but not deterred. Onward I plunged." 

Onward I'll plunge.  I feel it's reached a point where I don't even have a choice in the matter. And thank goodness.  

And So It Was...

It seems to just now be heating up in earnest in my part of California...99 degrees today, probably a few degrees hotter by the weekend. Ah, but it's a dry heat. And yet, here is my farewell to summer.

I have a lot to say. SO MUCH to say about what's been going on in my head the last couple of weeks or so. Tectonic shifts are in store, synchronicity and it's markers are popping up like crabgrass all around me. It feels exciting, and scary, but at least it feels like something, and that's a lot.

But I would feel amiss if I didn't first say an official good-bye to the summer of '09. Yes, summer still has about a month of livin' to do, but with school back in session and Oriental Trading sending me Halloween party catalogs in the mail, it's hard not to feel like true summer is over. It was an okay summer -- camping and our wonderful trip to Big Sur, water parks and pool play and lots of lazy mornings, lounging in our pj's until noon.

Still. Still, I wanted more from this summer, not the least of which was a trip to one of our Southern California beaches. The beaches of north San Diego county are only about an hour away, and yet we never once made it to the beach. I feel horrible about this, and I know it's not too late to remedy it, but aaargh. We all have our ambitions, our mental images of what something should be, and summer doesn't feel complete yet, for me. I had also hoped for more board games, more impromptu trips for cheap ice cream cones from the Rite Aid counter. It was hard for me to be spontaneous, this summer.

The picture above was taken at Pfieffer Beach in Big Sur (just like my sandy toes post). Those two screamed at the water and the waves as though they were landlocked Midwestern children who had never seen the ocean. Nor-Cal beaches are not "true" Beach Boys/surfin'/Coppertone kinds of beaches, though. The coast is rocky, the water is colder, the waves choppier. We need a trip to the shore, before this summer is truly through.

Summertime Toes

So! I thought I was remiss in only having a post or two in July -- and come to find that I didn't write a single post for the past month. Oops.

Back when I last posted, I said the weather was still a bit unseasonable and cool -- not at all the case now, in the first week of August. We definitely have our chlorine and pool-scented skin days upon us now.

So here was a bit of July..
On the 11th, you would've found me here:
Sitting poolside with my sister at our home association's public pool. We've gone to the pool more this summer than in previous years -- and that said, we've still gone less than a dozen times, so far. Lily has learned to swim pretty well though, and that has been a very life-changing thing, in terms of the hassle and stress of making sure that my two children won't drown on my watch. Now I just have to get Tucker to the same level (next year?), and I'll be one of those enviable women I've often gazed upon, sitting alone with a magazine or book in the shade while the kids frolic in the deep end.

So that was July 11th, and then just a few days later, on July 13, I was here:
at Pfieffer Beach in Big Sur. Wow, that was a great trip. So great, I guess, that I haven't much felt like recounting it here. Suffice to say that it was good, and much needed, to train my eyes out into the great expanse of the sea and sky and landscape of the big and gorgeous world. Now I'm back home, and my eyes have been re-focused once again onto the small scale: the minutia of packed snacks and scraped knees, of saying farewell to Lily's first pet, a betta fish named Alexa who was well-loved (if frail from the get-go), of trading babysitting dates with friends and cooking meals for another friend with a newborn. Good things, important things in my life and neighborhood, but....AH.

Those things are not this, either, are they?

No. So, here we are, here I am, it's the first week of August, less than 2 weeks to go before summer break is over, and as Perry once sang, the summertime rolls. But truly, I am more in the same mood of the great Keith, circa Exile on Main Street:The sunshine bores the daylights outta me...

I Vant to Be Alone

Oof, I'm in a grouchy mood today. Well, not outwardly grouchy with anyone -- more just inwardly grouchy with my own grouchy, cranky self. Grouchy at how, forty years into it here, my personality can still fill like a horsehair shirt, ill-fitting and irritating and not at all what I would have chosen, personally, out of the Great Outfitting Closet in the sky.

Always, it's such a back and forth drama: the need for friends, the desire for close friends, warring with my very deep-seated mistrust of people, of the prickly, snarky game that is the world of women's friendships. Also, let's face it -- I'm just not a people person by far. I'm an introvert, a writer and muser by nature, shy and yet deeply sarcastic and therefore an ace at leading people to conclude that I'm a stuck-up bitch. Perhaps I am.

Over the weekend, the neighbors directly behind us had a hell-raiser of a party. They have a pool, and a firepit, and these are mighty small lots in our housing tract, so we were privy to just about every noise and conversation out there. "Conversation" being a high-falutin' description for the shrieks, cussin' and roarin' we heard, during their drinking games and other Saturday night hijinks. Except for the fact that this noise went on well past midnight, I don't begrudge my neighbors their fun. In fact, I felt a bit jealous at their ability to cut loose and have such an uncomplicated good time.

I hold my drinks pretty well, so very rarely get truly "drunk." (Then again, I'm not often caught doing jello shots, which would help out.) When I do get a bit tipsy, I become either maudlin and nostalgic, or a bit er, amorous. Neither of these states really play well in a crowd.

Well, I'm a loner, baby, to paraphrase Beck. I just have a hard time embracing it, some days. I am not at all like my husband, who very cheerfully admits that he hates most people, and the whole concept of the human race, as a whole. No interior agonizing with that one.

In keeping with my loner state, I'm sharing some pictures taken out at the very lonely and desolate Salton Sea last July. We were out in Palm Springs celebrating our anniversary, and I suggested a long drive out to visit this huge, man-made body of water sitting out in the middle of an extremely arid, scorching landscape. I had been here years earlier, but forgot how truly barren and windswept this place can be. And yet beautiful, in its starkness and silence.
A couple of weeks ago, I read in one day Marisa Silver's acclaimed novel, The God of War, about a boy and his family living in a trailer community near the Salton Sea. A good book, and very evocative of its setting, especially the desert as it was in the mid-1970s, when it was even easier to fall through society's cracks. Here is the book's first paragraph:

Where I grew up, people kept their business to themselves. I lived in the desert, far enough east of the big cities of Southern California to render them meaningless to my daily life, closer to the border of Mexico than most people would have liked to admit. People did not so much choose to live in that parched frontier as they ended up there. It was a place generally ignored because it did not have much to offer, and so it was a place where you could be left alone. The desert's plants and animals thrived in seemingly impossible circumstances, against heat and drought and other odds. The same could have been said of its people, too.

If you are not from Southern California and have not visited its deserts, this place can feel and look very exotic and foreign indeed. Even for me, who is quite familiar with the desert communities around Palm Springs, driving through the small agricultural outpost towns such as Thermal felt very strange, as though I were in another country altogether. It's quite a place out there, 118 feet below sea level, and baking under the desert heat of frequent days over 110-degrees, and it doesn't get much cooler after the sun goes down.

No one else was there.

We walked along the shore for a good while before realizing the "sand" is in fact comprised of the crunched and tiny sun-bleached bones of millions of tilapia fish.

The Visitor's Center was open; we were the only guests.

Back in civilization, wind-tilted telephone poles alongside the train tracks.

We stopped at the Oasis Date Garden in Thermal, a date-packing plant and shop. The pen I bought in their gift shop is right here next to my keyboard.

**A reminder again to click on any of these pictures for larger views.

Slow Start

Sheesh, summer is starting off slooowly around these parts. I hear that the Midwest and South are experiencing some terrible broiling heat already -- but here in Southern California, we're going on our third week of below-normal temps, with most days starting out socked-in with the low, gray ocean-bourne cloud cover that we natives refer to as "June Gloom." Each year we go through this a bit, but this is a particularly bad year. I've also had a cold, which developed into a mild sinus infection, leaving me feeling tired and woozy and uninspired to do much with the kids beyond basic care and feeding. That summer vibe of "orange popsicles and lemonade" (like the B-52's sang about) and flip flops and chlorine-pool scented skin haven't quite made an appearance around here yet.

So far we've done some tent camping up in Lake Arrowhead, a mountain resort community less than two hours away. That was fun; I'll be posting about that soon. Meanwhile -- this is how our summer got kicked off two Fridays ago. We dropped the kids off with my mom and went to an outdoor concert to see my beloved Neko Case at the Greek Theatre in L.A., spent the night (in an unremarkable and noisy motel) and woke up and immediately drove over to the famous L.A. outdoor Farmer's Market.

It's very good for the soul to get out of our small 'burb and experience a more urban lifestyle, even if only for just shy of 24 hours. It was fun to people watch, and to see a more varied and diverse population than what we typically see around these parts.


It was a rather gray Saturday at the Farmer's Market, and these pics were taken with my husband's cellphone. Still, hopefully you can get a sense of the bustle and character of the Farmer's Market, and the adjoining (and much newer) outdoor mall, "The Grove."

The Grove --the red awning is the American Girl Cafe. (Of the popular American Girl doll francshise.)

Strollling, with the iconic Farmer's Market tower in the background.

Ah, Los Angeles, my home. Such a push-pull of where I belong. For now, it's here. More summer postings soon -- including a reading list, both for my seven year old, and myself. And also, the seasonal reading nook I recently created just for her, in our front hall closet.

Speaking of SAHM's

I've been a fan of Meg Wolitzer's for a very long time, beginning back in high school when I read her YA novel, Sleepwalking. It's one of those YA novels that's way more A(dult) than Y(oung). And her The Wife is a brilliant skewering of the male ego, professional writers and the Breadloaf Writer's Conference.

In the The Ten Year Nap, Wolitzer turns her attention to stay-at-home moms, specifically the type who have college degrees and thriving careers, and still choose to become full-time caregivers when their children are born. I wish I'd liked this book more, I'd been eagerly looking for it for awhile --- but frankly, I was a bit bored, and not because of the subject matter. (As a SAHM myself -- see previous post), I find others in my millieu a fairly fascinating subject. I think part of the problem is that the "mommy wars" and its debates between "opt-out" moms vs. working mothers has been mostly played out, at least in the media.

Even if this subject is somewhat played out, I do continue to wish for a literary novel (as opposed to Jennifer Weiner's sort of breezy chick-lit) that deals with moms of the true suburbs in an honest way. The women depicted here are all located in Manhattan, and the one mom from the group who has moved away to a nearby 'burb is portrayed as lonely and isolated, living in some sort of cultural wasteland, when she's a mere train ride from the city. (Please -- you want cultural wasteland -- try nearly 2 hours outside of L.A.)

I read it from beginning to end, and liked the women well enough, but in the end, felt that I was being mildly chastized for my choice of being a SAHM -- as the slight put-down of the title suggests, Wolitzer seems to feel that women at home are sleepwalking a bit through life and HEY, JUST BECAUSE THAT'S A LITTLE TRUE, I still wish that her fictional women in real NYC just felt a little more real, a little less like sociological examples of Wolitzer's thesis that real "work," and a passionate calling, are the true paths to female happiness.

And, truth be told, I do agree with her thesis -- and The Ten Year Nap has many insightful, witty and revealing moments -- but nobody like to be scolded, especially when isn't really that conflicted or regretful about the choices she's made.

Inspired Friday: MOMS Club

Not a great new blog discovery, not a beautiful art print for this (2nd) Inspired Friday. Instead, it's something that's such a mundane and everyday part of my life, I hardly think about it.
That something is the MOMS Club, or at least my neighborhood's chapter of this international organization.

The MOMS Club has been much on my mind for the last week or so, though, because our neighborhood chapter has been very, very close to closing up shop and ceasing to exist. MOMS (moms offering moms support) has been a vital part of my adjusting to and feeling part of this community. When we moved here almost exactly five years ago, I knew no one, had a 2 year old daughter, and was expecting my 2nd child. Initially I was okay with things -- absorbed in outfitting and overhauling our new home, finding my way about town and preparing for the birth of my son.

Shortly after his birth though, I started to feel crazily isolated and miserable. I'd made no new friends, my neighbors were standoffish -- if they even acknoweledged us at all. (Five years in, the neighbors just to our right, across the greenbelt, have never spoken to me or my children.) The town, which still leans conservative, was even moreso back then -- Bush had just been re-elected to his 2nd term, I felt like we lived in Texas, for godsake, and I, who had initiated this "great idea" to relocate here, was full of regrets.

Now, I am not a joiner, and have never been too comfortable identifying myself with any particular group. But I was desperate for friends and a friendly face, friends whom I didn't need to load up and drive an hour back into Orange County to visit. Because I'm not a joiner and am basically an introvert, I had a tough time with the couple of informal, loosely organized play groups that I'd stumbled upon at local tot lots. The women were somewhat friendly, if a bit aloof, but still welcomed me to meet up with them at various parks around town. After two or three stabs at this, I gave up and let it go, sensing I was just not a good fit.

Enter the MOMS Club: an ad in a local paper announced that local chapters were having an "open house" at a park to attract new members. I figured that any club organized enough to hold an open house event must be pretty large and established, and so I went --- and joined up that very day. If nothing else, I figured that ponying up the $25 annual dues would force me to attend and try to participate. (Not that this idea works very well with my gym membship...).

I was immediately placed into a playgroup, joining 6 or 7 other moms who had children close to Lily's age. On a weekly basis, I was invited into the other women's homes, offered coffee and snacks and (initially) strained but adult conversation. My kids and I went to Halloween and Christmas parties, craft events and tours of pizza joints, grocery stores and the like -- along with the weekly playgroup.

Lily & Tucker at a MOMS Club tour of a local dairy farm, Fall 2007

My kids each made friends. Crazyily enough, even I made friends, and started to place a lot of names with a lot of faces in and around our neighborhood. A year into it, myself and another fairly new member were roped into serving as Co-Presidents of our chapter (each year there is an "executive board" of volunteers who keep the group on track).

Almost 4 years into my membership, the club is still a part of my daily life and routine. I'm currently the editor or our monthly newsletter, still in a playgroup with my son Tucker, and bump into women all over town who are friends, or at least passing acquaintences, because of our shared experiences in the club.

Earlier this month, I wrote a bit of a farewell/warning note to our members in the newsletter, stating that this was likely their last issue, ever. The term of the current board is ending, and nobody (besides me) had stepped up to be on the board for the 2009-2010 term. Getting volunteers to step up to what sounds like the scarily officious "executive board" is never easy in any given year. This year has been different, though -- the economy has forced a lot of stay-at-home moms back into the workplace, we enlisted NO new members, and a bit of taking-it-all-for granted apathy among our members have all contributed to the problem. Also, children get older and move on to play at the school yard, rather than in back yards, and this too has caused us to lose literally dozens of members of late.

But, as I learned today, there have been several eleventh-hour commitments garnered at the last minute, before the higher-ups in this huge organization had to take moves to officially disband our chapter. Even though part of me would be all too happy to give up the monthy chore of compiling the newsletter, and felt that the lazy laggarts in the club were getting what they deserved if the club shut it's doors.....

Still, I am happy by this news, and inspired by the women volunteers who have stepped up to help out again. Corny as it sounds, I'm touched that they, like me, value the club and the role it's played in our lives enough to keep this show running for at least another year. And I truly believe there are brand-new moms around here, moms whose families have scored great deals on some of these sad foreclosures around us, who are looking around in a bit of desperation for a friendly face and for just somewhere besides storytime at the library to take their kids to meet other children. Maybe even moms like me, who will look backward in a few years and marvel at how social and involved and busy they've become, all due to joining the MOMS Club.

Summer '08: 4 families, 8 kids, tent camping near Crestline. Good friends all, and all met through the club.