I Love L.A.
Mood:  happy
There are a lot of things I don't love about L.A. I'm an Orange County girl through and through, and if you broach the subject of our larger, smellier neighbor to the north, I'm inclined to sniff, "I don't do L.A. County." There are reasons I live in this Republican hotbed I call home. Better services, cleaner air, less traffic, and a distinct lack of slum housing being among them.

But on Saturday last, I spent the entire day in L.A. -- and liked it. Because we explored two, in my opinion, of the coolest things L.A. has to offer.

Our first stop was the La Brea Tar Pits. There's something mystical about the place that you just have to see. For one thing, it's embedded in a busy stretch of Wilshire Boulevard, and just the uncanny placement makes it cool by definition. If you're not familiar with the Tar Pits, a little background can be found here.

Anyway, I adore the Tar Pits. I like the little museum, but mostly I love Hancock Park, with the lake where you can see tar bubbling up from deep below, and the sculptures of mammoths and sabre-toothed cats. So cool. It's one of those places that just its very existence is like a valentine for the soul. And Sam was very pleased and impressed, and I enjoy pleasing and impressing him.

After that, we headed through L.A. and up to Hollywood. I have an unreasonably intense, touristy love of the Hollywood sign. However, since I don't do L.A. County, I seldom get to see it. My patient husband, who doesn't question my more insane tastes, drove around so I got to see the Hollywood sign at several choice angles, then he drove up through the hills to where I could look at it from directly underneath it. We looked like a pack of fool tourists for sure, parked in a cul-de-sac gawping up at the Hollywood sign while some locals, standing in their front yard, squinted at our license plates and wondered why they didn't say Nebraska or something.

So, those cool things: the La Brea Tar Pits and the Hollywood sign. And palm trees. I still love palm trees. I've lived in Southern California for almost 20 years now, but in my heart of hearts I am still a tourist fool.

Stride-Rite: Bite Me.
Mood:  happy
This weekend we had Shoe Shopping Time, and my butt is still hurting, figuratively speaking. Stride-Rite? Can bite me. We are talking about two tiny boys here. Matt is not even fifteen months old, and his shoes in particular are the size of molecules. So how come they cost forty bucks, people? That's about ten bucks per inch. People pay less than that for hashish. (Or at least they used to do. But that's another entry. And best left unsaid, lest I run for office someday and have to claim I didn't inhale. Editor's knote: For hubris, Bill Clinton is my favorite guy on earth.)

My wisdom, when we started this enterprise, was that everything Sam grew out of, Matt could later wear. They have been thwarting me pretty roundly on that. Sam is a really big guy, Matt more average sized, so the simple truth is that Sam never even had shoes in the size Matt is wearing now, because he was a tiny baby and did not walk. So Matt is enjoying brand-new forty-dollar shoes, and I'm half tempted to spawn another sibling just to make it seem worthwhile. And how crazy is that? Having additional babies just so the expensive shoes will have someone to grow into them?

Meanwhile, last night we got our first solid indication that we have, in producing two boys 18 months apart, made a terrible mistake. The two of them were up on the hearth by the fireplace, pulling the chain that makes the little screen go across. Ben and I told them to stop, and the two of them, not budging and still pulling, commenced to cackle at us. Simultaneously, in stereo, looking very much alike. Now there is a scene I expect to see a lot of in the next eighteen years.

So I'm a blogger now.
Mood:  happy
Over the past few months, I've slipped into a pattern of following various blogs. This is a pastime unknown to most of my Internet friends, most of whom are mommies. But lately I have discovered several mommy blogs, Dooce chief among them. So mommies are writing blogs. Who knew?

I actually don't find my own life all that interesting. It wasn't always this way. In my teens and twenties I thought my life was the most interesting thing alive, people! I wrote and wrote and wrote. In those pre-computer days, this meant a manual typewriter and reams and reams of paper. I found my own journal so interesting, I once packed it up and submitted it as literature to my creative writing class. The professor was, understandably, bewildered.

These days, though, I'm bored by myself. But the tiniest thing my toddlers do is of overwhelming interest to me. So, I'll write about them. They rock my world.

I'll leave you with a glimpse into Sam's psyche. Sam is 33 months old. A couple of Saturdays ago he spoke up and said "I was thinking . . . " This was new. He had never told me what he was thinking before. "What were you thinking?" I asked him, eager to learn what went on in my son's mind. And he said "I was thinking . . . hmm hmmm, hmm hmmm." The "hmm hmms" were accompanied by a happy bobbing of his head from side to side.

So, this is what my son thinks. Here are people worrying and obsessing and fretting and fussing over a world of grownup concerns. But my sunny son? He is thinking "hmm hmmm, hmm hmmm." If more people were thinking that, the world couldn't help but be a better place.