Last night we returned from a lovely short trip to South Lake Tahoe with Frostee and her handsome beau, Master Tate. It snowed quite a lot on Saturday and then sometime in the night, the temperature warmed up enough to change the snow to rain. When we arrived, there were lots of big bare patches of ground sporting pretty beige autumn leaves. When we left, six to eight inches of slushy wet snow covered everything.

The 30-hour weekend was just about perfect. We played in the snow, beaned each other with sloppy snowballs, made Splenda cookies, played Apples to Apples and Life, and ate yummy carbs. We chatted late into the wee hours of Sunday morning. I slept in while my lovely man got up with my early rising son. We spent time together: something we haven’t done with these good friends in a long, long, too-long time.

Even the slow drive home over the summit and down the mountain wasn’t a disappointment. Lucas slept, thankfully, ’til we reached Placerville. A stop for pizza there rounded out the trip. Thanks for dinner, darlings!

On Friday evening and Saturday morning, before we embarked, I was feeling a little frazzled and doubting the wisdom of using the last precious weekend before Christmas to go out of town. There’s so much still to do to get ready for the holiday! But you know? It reminded me that the holiday isn’t about getting everything done. It’s about enjoying time with people you love.

So, Frostee and Master Tate, dearest husband, and Lucas: Thank you. And Merry Christmas.

Is it the eleventh? I don’t know; I’ve lost track. Anyway, please feel free to join us here at Chez Wilson on the evening of December 25, anytime after 7 pm.

Good friends + good family = The Good Life

That’s exactly what we have and this is our chance to get you all together. So please come visit, detox, and let your hair down. Escape from the holiday insanity and stress. Kick off your shoes, hug your neighbor, and toast to the happy and hard times of 2005. Know someone cool with no place to go? Bring him or her along.

Much love and light,
Sara, Ian, and Lucas

Groove is in the heart

Inside-my-head stuff follows.
Sometimes my kid makes me nuts. Have I mentioned this before? Have I also admitted already that sometimes I don’t like him? I mean–I love him; he is the most spectacularly spectacular person ever to arrive on this good green earth, IMHO of course. But man! Lately we butt heads all the fucking time

Other people’s kids have taught my son lots of annoying new tricks, words, turns of phrase. I’ll mention just a couple here:

“Guess what? Chicken butt!”
“Guess why? Chicken eye!”

This type of thing, I can handle. And it doesn’t surprise me because he’s always thought weird words and rhymes were hilarious. The following statements, however, are harder to handle:

“I hate my dad.”
“Shooting is good; it’s fun.”
“I can push you down, mom. I can! I can hurt you.”
“I’m going to stab you in the eye until you bleed and then you’ll be deaded.”

Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me.

Except they can and they do. And lately, they hurt me all the time. The behaviorists say put this on “extinction.” Ignore the behavior and it will go away. I have successfully made this work on Lucas. He gets really loud for a while and it’s impossibly awful, but then he stops.

I feel obligated to teach him that such words are hurtful, and yet, I don’t want to infuse too much power into them by making a big deal about it. We are currently having a lot of discussions about using only gentle hands and gentle words with our friends, and that we must must always be respectful of others; using ugly words is disrespectful.

My fuse is really short these days. I’m very quick to get angry with him. I don’t like it. I feel like a crappy mom because of it. Where did my sweet baby go?

Busy day today. Lucas has dance class and the Advent Spiral celebration to go to today. After that, we’re taking him to Kimberlee’s house where he’ll stay with her and Gordon while we go to TAC’s Christmas party downtown.

What follows is rather mundane.

So, I sent Lucas off with Dad to go to dance class a couple of hours ago. He seems to enjoy himself more at dance when I’m not there. I think it’s some kind of performance anxiety or something. Last week I sat and proofed while he and the girls danced with Miss Bethany. He was suddenly super clingy and stopped participating about half-way through the class. Something about doing the caterpillar-to-butterfly dance freaks him right out.

I kind of expected the boys to be home by now. I have busied myself while they’ve been gone by doing a bunch of stuff that is just plain easier to do when no one else is around: I showered and shaved my legs (for tonight’s little black dress), I swept the floors, I picked up toys and reorganized Lucas’s room a little (in anticipation of the Great Christmas Tsunami of More Toys), I wrapped some Christmas presents (scissors, tape, and sharpie pens laying around on the floor while I wrap are just too good for a 3-year-old to ignore!), and posted in my livejournal. Now it’s 1:15 and I’m hoping that they’re bringing me back some lunch, or else that they’re out buying me cool presents for Xmas.

A couple of days ago, I culled Lucas’s bookshelf of “baby books”—board books, simplistic things-that-are-in-baby’s-world books, chewable cloth books, etc. I had no idea how many books that might be, but then look who his parents are. There’s now an entire, rather large gift bag full of books that will be placed out in the garage on the mountain of baby stuff that’s already threatening to evict everything else. Since I’m pretty sure we’re going to have another baby someday, we’re keeping loads of this crap: clothes, carriers, high chairs, bouncy seats, toys, blankies, mobiles, and assorted baby equipment.

My superstitious personality says that if I keep all this boy stuff, I’m sure to have a girl next time (you know, when I actually get up my courage to do all this again). I wonder if there’s also some kind of birth-control magic at work too. If I have all the baby stuff I might need, maybe I won’t ever get pregnant. Hmmm.

And no, I’m not.

December 10, 2005
This isn’t new news, but I don’t think I’ve written about it here before. My chiropractor, Dr. O’Brian has told me my back is all f—ed up because I carry Lucas. He’s a whopping 36 pounds now. So, since I injured myself carrying him in July, I’ve had to make him walk a lot more and climb up into his car seat himself. This is a good thing, but he resents it bitterly and we consistently run 15–20 minutes late wherever we go because he is a master at dawdling.

Yesterday Lucas had a checkup with Dr. Kuhn. Although we always had great care with Dr. Vigran at Kaiser, I’m happy to be back at UCD with John W. Kuhn, M.D. He’s a friendly, down-home kind of guy and he was our first pediatrician. We took Lucas to see him when Lucas was only one day old.
Anyway, the kid is very healthy (except for the occasional cold). He’s growing. His spine is straight. He’s 38.5 inches tall and about 36 pounds as I mentioned above. That’s the 35% in height and the 50% in weight. I was told that if he doesn’t want to eat, I shouldn’t make him, but that his weight is fine. Lucas was poked and prodded in a friendly and fun way. Dr. Kuhn checked his ears for bunnies. I was asked whether he separates OK at school (yes), how high can he count (29), and does he know his colors (since 20 months). I was also asked if Lucas has any language issues: “Is his language clear?” (Abundantly, yes.)

Warning: This is a silly thing to write about.

OK, today I bit the bullet and went to Macy’s to find the perfect cheap holiday dress for tomorrow night’s company Christmas party. I was reminded how stupid it is to go shopping alone for something as important (ha!) as a holiday party dress. I sorely missed the company of Fosseelovechild and Kimkimkaree–the kind souls whom I’ve dragged along to the mall with me in past years.

I happened to know of a big sale and had an extra 10% coupon with me. I went first to the juniors section ’cause sometimes when I cruise by on my way elsewhere, the dresses catch my eye. I can tell you, everything seems to have extra flash this year: sequins, hulking rhinestones, and ruffles that really belong on a male flamenco dancer’s sleeves. I thought, well, maybe I can do flash. Who knows? The first six dresses I chose to try on were stupid, ludicrous, too young, too flouncy, too roomy in the chest, etc.

I gave up and went upstairs to the women’s department. There, everything is old! Billions of beads on every garment, and anything with beads on it is in the hundreds of dollars. This is, of course, entirely out of the question. What’s more, I can’t shake the feeling that some poor old woman in Taiwan or Indonesia went blind sewing these beads on. Even the “little black dresses” with little ornamentation were like $150! And really, I think I only saw a couple of racks from which to choose.

I dejectedly rode the escalator back down to juniors. I decided I’d wander through the racks again looking for the simplest of frocks. I found a couple. I guess they were so simple they didn’t catch my eye when I went through the first time. Tried them on. They fit. I couldn’t decided between the black one or the gold one.

My practical mental advisor said, “You already have a black dress. Why waste money on getting another one? Choose the gold.”

My frivolous mental advisor said, “If you buy the gold dress, you will have to buy new shoes too. Yay!”

Practical said, “That’s stupid. You have black shoes already.” Madame Practical seemed to be contradicting herself.

Stymied, I opened the door and asked the opinions of a group of four women who were also in the dressing room. They made me try on both dresses for them. I told them that I’m 33 years old and they shouldn’t let me pick something too young-looking. When I put on the black one, they all said “Aaah.”

I came home with another little black dress.

I’ve been quiet lately. It’s not that stuff doesn’t happen to me. It’s just that when I work super-late every night, I don’t have the energy to write.

Hopefully I’ve seen the back side of the current project. Hopefully they won’t come back and say change the A-to-Z order to a Z-to-A order, or something equally random and maddening.

I’ve been visiting my old cube lately. It still has a nice Roseville office-park view featuring some grass and some baby trees. From it I can see the smokers on the patio connected to the other building. It’s a strange feeling to be staring out the same window I used to stare out every day back when I had a “real” job. This week I was wishing the same old things: That I could be at home with my man instead.

Anyway, the whole thing is just way too familiar. Some of the faces are new. That’s cool. But the bologne is still the same old bologne.

A few nights ago, we had a little get-together here for a friend’s birthday. I hope he had fun. I know I certainly did. It was wonderful to see my friends in person and in a relaxed and easy kind of atmosphere. I really like being with my peeps.