This blog is going to be restructured a bit and everyone knows that it’s easier to remodel a house when you’re not actually in the house.  So I’m pasting up a note, Gone to the seaside. Please don’t rob me while I’m gone.  But feel free to pick the roses.  The roses should be shared. 

Anyone who has been around for the past month or so knows about my cable service woes. It works, it doesn’t work, it works, the wind blows, it doesn’t work, etc.

Today they’re bringing out the big guns.  Four trucks carrying four guys who stand in a circle and mutter to each other.

It reminds me of that SpongeBob episode when SpongeBob and Patrick don’t know what to do with their day.

Spongebob: I don’t know, what do you want to do?

Patrick: I don’t know, what do you want to do?

Spongebob: I don’t know, what do you want to do?

And then Patrick sees a guy selling balloons, his eyes light up and he announces, I know what I want to do today!

The four cable guys just walked away.  I hope they don’t return with balloons.

That’s me right now.  Don’t expect poetry.

Anyway.

Last week I took my daughter to dance class.  My son was with us and they were both hungry.  Not actually hungry, but snacky hungry, and they had their minds on the Corn Nuts for sale in the lobby of the dance studio.

They sell things besides Corn Nuts, but my kids are fixated on the Corn Nuts.  So weird.

I usually don’t buy the snacks, but that day I was feeling generous.  I told them maybe.

Then they did the noisy things that kids do in cars.  They were happy, but really, really noisy and they were driving me kind of nuts.  With every shhhh they got even noisier.  Finally I said, Not another word until we get inside the dance studio or no one is getting any Corn Nuts!

The kids sealed their lips in an exaggerated way to show that they were sealing their lips.  They then showed each other their sealed lips.  They were good.  The lips were tight.  And the laughter was coming out their eyeballs.

It was them against me.  Anything could have happened.

I pulled into a parking spot, turned around and looked at my kids. My son, my angel child, looked me in the eye and said, Beep.

Are you kidding me?

Me: No Corn Nuts for you!

The kids laughed and laughed. Ha, ha, ha.  Hilarious.

After we delivered my daughter to her class, the Kid looked at me and said, Are you really not going to get me Corn Nuts?

Me: Not getting you Corn Nuts.

The Kid looked sad.

Me: Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not mad.  But if I buy you Corn Nuts now then, when you’re a teenager and you do whatever awful thing that teenagers do, you’ll be like, ‘It doesn’t matter. Mom will still buy me a car because she bought me Corn Nuts when I was 10.‘

The Kid looked at me like I was insane.  And then he laughed his little heart out.

You know what I love about the Kid?  He can laugh even when he isn’t getting his way.

Kid: I’m not going to remember this when I’m a teenager.  I’m probably not even going to remember it tomorrow.

Kid, Kid, Kid.  How I love the Kid.

Then he went to the desk and, with permission, bought himself a pack of Corn Nuts.

But this influence… It’s fleeting.

Six hours later I locked myself out of my house.

You know how it goes.  You grab your big ball of keys, lock the door from the inside and slam it shut.  Then you realize that the big ball of keys is just a fraction smaller than it usually is and in less than a second you realize that you are screwed.

I stand by this: from slam to revelation is less than one second.  I don’t know what happens in the brain during that split second, some sort of self-preservation or survival instinct or something, except that it’s a stupid survival instinct because suddenly you don’t have shelter.

I was on my way to judge student artwork and writing for a contest and I was running late, so I headed over to the school, ate a burrito, and judged children.  Then I came home and attempted to break into my house.

No luck, which I suppose is gratifying in the big picture.

What followed was a series of lounging about, licorice eating, hanging out on other people’s couches and margarita drinking.  It was a young kind of batting about.  A city-dwelling kind.

And it wasn’t bad at all.

It’s been a week and a day and, as predicted, I miss the first cup of the day the most.  The stumble out of bed and fill up the cup is hard to replicate with tea.  We always made coffee the night before, so by the time I showed up in the morning, it was fresh and hot.

Tea is more of a process.  Fill the teapot.  Boil water.  Pour water over teabag.  Wait.  Wait.  Wait.  Take teabag out of the tea.  Wait for tea to cool.  Take a sip.  Wait.

The first two days were brutal.  It was a blood pouring out your ears kind of headache, which happened to coincide with the day I was teaching my son’s 5th grade class about Matisse.  For an hour.  On a Friday afternoon.

It’s that kind of poor planning that turned me into a caffeinated mess in the first place.

I’d be hard put to claim that it’s changed my life.  If there has been a difference, it’s a subtle one.  I think I’m less tired during the day and I’m definitely better off without all the sugar and half & half, so all in all it’s worth the anguish.

Anyway.

Do you  know how when you do one decent thing for your body you suddenly want to change your entire life and bring your family down with you?

That’s where I am right now.  Researching heirloom seeds, making yogurt and hiding flax in everything.

It’s quite a ride, my friends.

Then, yesterday at the grocery store, I walked past the coffee.  I didn’t buy any.  I was already one day down, so it seemed as good a time as any to quit.

And now, this morning, there is none, which for some reason hurts more than yesterday morning.

Up until two days ago, this was my routine:

• Alarm goes off at 6:00.  Stumble downstairs.  Fill coffee cup.  Start day.
• Return from dropping kids off.  Fill coffee cup.
• 1:00 Diet Coke.

Sometimes, particularly when I’m being social, there are more cups of caffeine wedged in there, but those three are a constant.

I tell my kids that soda is pure crap, but it’s a tough sell with an empty Diet Coke can in my cup holder.

Sometimes two empty cans.

I’d been thinking about quitting for a while.  It makes the day too inconsistent.  Sleepy, lively, sleepy, lively, and so on.

The first sip of coffee in the morning is one of my favorite things on earth.

It’s important not to have too many sweatpants days in a row because they’re soul crushing.  I once had a yoga teacher who told me that if a man carried his wallet in the same pocket every day, it would affect his posture.  Sweatpants days are the same thing.  Too much fleece will erode your character and next thing you know, you’re watching the entire fourth season of Nurse Jackie at 11 in the morning.

Anyway.

The workday ended, the parenting day started, and I was still in sweatpants, helping with homework and cooking dinner.  After dinner I traded sweatpants for jeans and headed out for a PTA meeting.

The difference between sweatpants and jeans is slight, but significant.  It took exactly four seconds to change, which I vowed to remember the next time I was veering near a sweatpants day.  Teeth brushed, I headed out the door.

The street was dark and the house quiet.  I rung the doorbell and was greeted by the host of the PTA meeting, who graciously wondered why the hell I was standing on her porch, one night prior to the PTA meeting.

I muttered something about the calendar and headed home.

Here’s something I do know: A properly kept calendar has everything to do with being properly attired.

I headed home, confessed my mistake, and got a good laugh out of everyone.  Then the Kid looked at me.  His mother,  misplaced and confused, but finally dressed for the day.

Kid: Well, you look nice anyway.

My boss’ job wasn’t one that really needed a full time assistant so whenever there was something that needed to be distributed, I’d jump at the opportunity to leave my desk.  Then I’d walk around all the buildings, even closer to the real writers, shoulder brushing distance, and return to my desk to scheme.  From my desk to those desks across the street was a million miles away and I was getting discouraged.

One night, while flipping through a catalog for the Learning Annex, I found a course that promised to change all of that.

How many times has that phrase been uttered?  Honey, I think this class from the Learning Annex is the change I need in my life!

How to Break into Porn, taught by porn actress Nina Hartley.

And, to tell you the truth, I don’t remember if the class was about how to break into porn or how to write porn, but my focus was entirely on the writing.  My plan was to knock out some porn, quit my day job, and focus on more artistic pursuits.  I assumed, incorrectly, that the line to write porn was a short one.  I also assumed, incorrectly, that porn has a script.

But the cold, hard reality of the industry struck later.  I signed up for Learning Annex porn class with a song in my heart.

My husband, then boyfriend, joined me because who sends their starry-eyed girlfriend alone to a porn workshop?

There were about 200 people in the room: 196 men, 4 women.  One of the women was Nina.  Two of the women worked with Nina.  They were older, grand dames of porn.  And then there was me.  Twenty-five.  A research assistant dressed in Gap.  I scooched my chair closer to my husband, then boyfriend, and pulled out a notebook, ready to learn.

Nina’s message was loud and clear.  We would not break into porn.  Porn was an incredibly difficult industry and we did not stand a chance.  We were welcome to try, but good luck.  It wasn’t going to happen.  Then she proceeded to give us her biography.  The instruction had ended.  It was the Nina show.

By the break I had figured out that we weren’t going to get to the writing portion of this lesson because there was no writing portion of this lesson.  In fact, there was very little writing in porn, period. My dreams for quitting my day job were shattered and we never returned for the second half.

Though I did have a take-away that night, one that I reflect on during dark days in the freelance world when I wring my hands and wonder why I didn’t go to law school.

Of the 200 people in that room, 198 of them were porn people.  They loved porn.  Their greatest dream was to work in porn.  We were not.  We saw their industry as an easy in, a free buck.  But if you don’t respect the product, how can you compete with people who live and breathe the product?  You can’t.

No clever turn of phrase will ever give you an edge over a true blue porn guy.

I love leaving electronics behind and watching my kid run wild and free among the trees.  I hate sleeping in the dirt.  But that wild and free thing is pretty cool so for a few nights a year we clear out the pine needles and settled down into the earth.

It took two days to prepare for and recover from this trip.  We were away for two days.  The preparation/ recovery to camping time was exactly equal.  I’ve noticed this one to one, manic organization to relaxation ratio before on camping trips.  It’s completely insane, but we’ve learned to expect it and even embrace it.

Suburban parents are not a nomadic tribe.  Every facet of the decision making process that leads us to the suburbs relates back to a single common element: it is easier.

• Good public schools.
• Abundance of enriching activities.
• Caring parent-coaches who, if they are not informed about the rules of the game, make up for it by putting their hearts in the right place. (I, as a soccer coach, had my heart in the right place.)
• Plenty of large car parking.

We are not packing up our yurts and following our livestock to better grazing.  Following livestock is not easier.  Yurts are not easier.  But they are kitschy and fun and we will buy miniature yurts in which our children can play.

At which point the yurt loses all its significance for us.  The backyard yurt is not wild and free.

This particular campsite at Refugio National Park, outside of Santa Barbara, was sandwiched between the ocean and the freeway, with a topping of railroad tracks, just for fun.  The ocean: wild and free.  The freeway: a necessary evil.  And the railroad track: a bonus.  A dirty, dangerous, otherworldly, Stand By Me bonus.  Their existence, near a giant empty drainage pipe, made the entire campsite feel like a sequence from a 1970s episode of Sesame Street, where kids raced under bridges, jumped on old mattresses, and grabbed the neighbor kids to continue the mayhem.

Now it’s all puppets.  Clean puppets and shiny-faced kids able to articulate their feelings to dependable adults.  Which is a fine Sesame Street, a good Sesame Street.  A Sesame Street in which I feel safe and comfortable raising my babies.

But every now and then, it’s nice to visit the railroad tracks.

As so we sleep in the dirt.

Except for one thing that no one anticipated.  We should have anticipated it, but we didn’t.  You know how you and your sister and all your parent friends think things like, How wonderful!  A photographer will come to the school and show my child that all dreams are possible!  Let’s take advantage of this opportunity!

There’s also a group of parents who think this: How wonderful!  Six full days of free after school care!  Let’s take advantage of this opportunity!

Chances are, you don’t know those parents.  Or, if you do, it’s because they let their kids run wild on the street, scootering through petunia beds and whatnot.

Anyway.

This is what I learned yesterday.

1. Most kids do want to be there.  Most kids want to understand how to turn a clichéd topic into something that’s unique and all their own.
2. The ones who do not want to be there will take up 90% of your energy.
3. Most teachers are patient.  I am not.  Though, I thought I was until yesterday.
4. There are 10-year-old children on earth who will look you in the eye and say no.  They will say no repeatedly.  This will piss you off more than you like to admit.
5. Active defiance from a child makes you understand why their parents were so eager for free after school care.
6. But despite that, you will still blame the parents for their behavior.
7. Kids who earnestly show you their poems about their dog, carefully mapped out, really do make the whole thing worth it.

And while I hate to end on a sappy note, it is in fact true.  I wanted to take those earnest kids home with me and read them Whitman.

Which would have been fun.  If I ever teach this workshop again, we’re studying Whitman.