Our Days of Spelling Behind Her Back Are Numbered

It's official: the kid can read! I bought her the "Bob" beginning reader series and she read the first five on our car trip to El Paso. I was amazed not only by her reading, but also by the fascinating lives of Mat, Sam and Dot. Those kids sure do a lot of interesting stuff considering they only have short vowels to work with.

P.S. Jason is greatly relieved. He has been worried that she might not learn to read before kindergarten. I have advised him that he should be more worried that she might not stop peeing her pants before kindergarten.

I Heart New York

We just spent a long, perfect weekend in NYC. We ate, drank and did too much to detail here (and more than anyone wants to read about), but here are the highlights:

The Restaurant Royal Treatment. Megan and Andy made friends with restaurant royalty when they lived in New York, and we were lucky enough to ride their coattails through extra special tasting menus at both Spice Market and Esca. Good. Lord. Better food than we deserved. I had always considered myself, you know, a foodie, a wannabe cook, a gourmand, even. Andy clarified it for me the way it was once clarified for him, "You're an eater." And eat we did, not to mention the great swath of cocktails we cut throughout Manhattan.

Remixing the Ordinary.This exhibit at the new Museum of Arts and Design was among the most accessible and intriguiguing shows I've seen, though my art muscle is admittedly feeble. A chandelier of eyeglasses? A wedding dress of rubber gloves? A tsunami of melted vinyl records? Tribal art carved from phonebooks? Strange and lovely.

An Evening with Ernest. I've known him since we were 11 — he was my friend, brother and frequent accomplice. This evening was markedly more tame than others we've had, but did not end any earlier. It's great to know that 20 years later, we can still have just as much fun.

Upper East Side Families vs. West Village Families. In the course of a day we saw (uptown) daddy-mommy-and-me matching argyles, polos and twinsets pulling up to fancy awnings in town cars and pedi-cabs and (downtown) converse-wearing, hipster pre-schoolers on the shoulders of rocker dads carrying high-end pizza home.

Jeremy Piven Knows My Name. We saw the revival of David Mamet's Speed the Plow and I was in the same (big) room with Jeremy Piven. His costar Raul Esparza stole the show. As Raul was collecting money for a good cause after the show, we had a meaningful exchange about our hangovers. I touched his bicep. I wasn't all, "Look, Raul, I'm married," but I know we had a moment. For real.

The Inside Track. Sudhir has been in NYC less than a year and, true to form, he's infiltrated the food mafia. We actually went to a bar we had to enter through a phone both (absinthe, anyone?) and got a choice lunch table at the NYTimes food critic's new darling, Market Table.

To say it was a good time is an understatement. New York never stops impressing me.

She Loves Me

This morning, I left without giving Lucy a satisfactory goodbye, and she and Jason called me on their way to school so she could say, "MOM, you didn't say goodbye to me! So I am calling you to say 'goodbye, I love you.'"

Me: "Thanks, babe, that's so sweet of you."

Lu: "Goodbye, I love you!"

Me:"Goodbye, I love you!"

Lu: "Goodbye, I love you!"

Me: "Goodbye, I love you!"

Lu: "NO, MOM, SAY goodbye, I love you, TOO!"

Me: "Okay, goodbye, I love you, too. I am hanging up the phone now, okay?"

Lu: "Okay, goodbye, I love you!"

Me: "OKay, goodbye, I love you, too!"

[Click.]

R.I.F.

I have been a reader my whole life. What is better than climbing into the secret world that a good book holds?! Right now I am reading The Brief and Wondrous Like of Oscar Wao (thanks, Meg) and I can hardly stand to be away from it.

I think Lucy might have the same love of reading: we have started reading her Ramona the Pest, one of my childhood favorites, and she loves it. She is so rapt as we read I can almost hear the movie projector clicking in her mind. I hope this is the start of a lifelong love.

Cultural Reference

My earliest memories are from when I was three or four years old. I remember Uncle Bruce coming to visit. I remember playing in the snow with my friend Heidi. But most vividly, I remember one day in the dining room of our house on Plains Trail in North Austin. Mom was vacuuming and the radio was on. An announcer came on the air and said, "ELVIS PRESLEY DIED YESTERDAY..." He went on with the rest of the story, and I began to sing, over and over, Elvis-Presley-died-yesterday-Elvis-Presley-died-yesterday until my mom, still somewhat hysterical over the death of the King, shook me to make me stop. August 18, 1977.

We have been talking a lot about the election with Lucy. She knows who President-Elect (omg, did I just type that?) Obama is, his voice on the radio, and she is very interested in understanding what it means to be president.

Me: "The president is the boss of the country like Mrs. Robinson is the boss of the classroom, or Mom is the boss of the family."
Lu: "And Dad, he is also the boss." I want to explain that Dad is more like Mom's Chief of Staff, but this is too complicated, especially when I haven't explained the three branches of government and the federal system.

Regardless of how much she truly understands, I think she will talk someday about remembering November 4, 2008.

This Is Our Moment

[WARNING: this post contains political content]

I can't stop smiling. I am so proud. Proud that we elected our first African American president, when less than 50 years ago it was hard for black to people to vote in many parts of this country. Proud that a majority elected a minority, arguably a first in world history. Proud of the loser of this election, who gave such a gracious speech and peacefully stepped aside.

Proud that America chose a man who so clearly stated what I believe is the potential for our nation and our government:

"It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours -- ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work.

That's the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper."

We have an uphill battle right now, I know. But I believe we have a fresh start.

Good Morning

Sigh. I like my daughter. We had the sweetest, easiest morning, just the two of us. She chose her clothes (jeans! a shirt that was not pink!) and put them on herself. I made her a scrambled egg, then let her have a tiny sliver of cake. We watched the weather, then filled out the different forecasts on a map of the Western U.S. (it will be 60 degrees and rainy in Tacoma, by the way). She brushed her teeth and hair. We talked about the weather some more on the way to school. She said, "I like it when we cooperate." I said, "Me too."

The Animals That Live at My House

Clifford has been having some behavior problems lately. I have considered starting a new blog called WhatCliffordAteorDestroyed.com. His casualties include:
• A bar of soap
• The video cable for the Wii
• A Bible
• The lids of several very expensive shampoo and conditioner bottles
• The cardboard box of a set of poker chips
• His own feces (or maybe Ramona's)
• Various markers, crayons, stamps, stamp pads and pots of paint
• The legs of a toy high chair
• Bills, catalogs, that invitation we failed to respond to
• The bottom of the door to Jason's office
• Half a bottle of lemon furniture polish (the rest created an oil slick all over the hallway)
• The cushion on one recently (and expensively) reupholstered chair (note: for months the chair just seemed lumpy)

While this list is amusing, it is mostly...sad. Poor Clifford. He has never been bright (his mantra: "My head is too small for my body, my brain is too small for my head."), but he has taken a nervous decline that's worrisome, and the lengths that we go to protect him (and our stuff) from himself are getting extreme.

So today I took Clifford to the vet for some bloodwork (thyroid can make older dogs go nuts) and decided it would be beneficial for Lu to go. Educational and all that.

It was a complete comedy. The tech could not get our poor nervous dog to pee, so we ran around the yard at the vet's office being encouraging, but nonchalant. Lu used the distraction to create a grand bouquet of zinnias (despite my alternating cries of, "Clifford, go potty. Lucy, those aren't our flowers and if you pick them—Clifford, go potty." As I paid the bill, I watched Clifford huddled in Lu's carseat as she alternately berated him for sitting in it and yelled for me to hurry up.

The afternoon ended with me catching a specimen of Clifford's pee in our own yard, then trying to get Lu out of her carseat while holding said pee, to her wails of "EW, WHAT IS THAT? THAT'S CLIFFORD'S PEE. GROSS. DON'T TOUCH ME, YOU TOUCHED CLIFFORD'S PEE."

That pee is in my fridge now.