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Sometimes I forget how long we’ve lived in Temecula. Then I find myself sitting in the elementary school talent show, wondering, “Who IS that kid?” and realizing it’s so-and-so’s daughter. The funny this is, I remember this child as a teeny little baby sleeping in a Snugli and now she’s stealing the show with her backbends and elaborate eye makeup.

The flip side is the same thing happens with US to other people. More than a few people stopped me during this week of talent show rehearsals and performances to say, “THAT’S Jane?!” (She is very in-your-face when she performs on stage.)

I’m sure they’re remembering the little lump who slept with her face smushed against the edge of the Baby Bjorn while Eva ran around on the grass after kindergarten. And now here’s Jane, almost done with kindergarten herself, and Eva heading off to middle school.

Oh. My. God.

I just made these brussels sprouts.

I happen to like brussels sprouts, but still, they are incredibly hard to make into a crowd-pleaser.

But this dish, my friends, is exactly that.

The flavor, the texture, the lightness of the seasoning….this dish hits all the right notes.

I can’t wait to try a preparation like this for spinach. (Another vegetable that people often don’t like but, when done really well, can be amazing.)

Tonight I made chilis rellenos for dinner. But then I remembered I’d bought the brussels sprouts a couple of days before, planning to test out the Better Homes & Gardens recipe. I figured I might as well give it a try while the chilis rellenos baked.

Jane and I stood in the kitchen marveling at these. It was actually hard for us to not burn our mouths because we wanted to eat them faster. Eva looked skeptical but said (I kid you not! Brussels sprouts, and she said this), “They smell good.” She sampled them, then went back for more.

Scott came home from work as I was spooning the few leftovers into a dish to save for the next day. He hates brussels sprouts. Sure enough:

“Want to try one?”

“No thanks. I don’t care for brussels sprouts.”

But then he ambled over and tried one. “Whatever you put on these, it works.”

And he had more too!

So anyway….try them. TRY THEM!

I occasionally have a stress/anxiety dream in which I am sitting at a desk, in an office, just pushing papers around and minding my own business, when a call comes in. It’s court! You are IN TRIAL! Where are you? You’re very late!

And I rack my brain, thinking, “Court? Trial? Did I even work up this case?”

I rifle around the desk and find a few neglected looking (definitely NOT worked up) files and run over to court.

Mercifully, the dream ends just as I leave my office. I am guessing if the plotline continued, it would be like something out of My Cousin Vinny.

It’s the ex-public defender version of showing up for the final never having attended any classes or opening the book. For YEARS after graduating from UCLA I had a recurring dream where I thought I dropped a class (always a math class!) but really the paperwork didn’t go through so on the eve of the final I learned (again through an ominous phone call) that I was actually still enrolled and expected to sit the final the next morning. I’d grab my books (often still wrapped in cellophane) and try to teach myself a little calculus.

I had the “not ready for trial” dream a couple of nights ago. I was tempted to go downstairs and watch TV with the dog, but then I remembered he was at overnight boarding.

Instead, I lay in bed playing a mental game where I tried to mentally review every grade in school starting with kindergarten. Who was my teacher? What did she look like? What was the classroom like?

This is such an interesting game for me because Jane is in kindergarten. I like to guess what things she is going to remember when she’s older. If my memory is any guide, it’ll just be a few fleeting images from random days.

I don’t remember the name of my kindergarten teacher but I do know it was Turtle Rock Elementary, and the teacher one room over was named Mrs Brady. She called her kids “The Brady Bunch.” I gave my teacher an African violet as a gift once. I remember cutting Valentines out of pink construction paper and tasting pumpkin soup for Thanksgiving.

A boy in our class died. I didn’t know him well but I do remember his name was Michael. He choked on a fishbone and his mom came in to talk to our entire class. Then after she left the teacher put on The Electric Company and we all watched while the teacher left and Mrs Brady got to watch us for the rest of the day. (As an adult, I wonder if maybe she went to his funeral.)

I remember running across grass to a huge red, white and blue hot air balloon that landed at a park to celebrate the Bicentennial in 1976.

At some point in my mental movie, I fell asleep. When I woke up, I thought about how to make life memorable for the kids. Probably taking lots of pictures is as good idea. As they look at them and we tell them about the things they did, they’ll conflate hearing about it with actually having done it. Hell, I could even Photoshop them into Machu Picchu or at the top of the Eiffel Tower; they’d never know the difference! Instant privileged and well-traveled childhood, with none of the whining.

I recently read this Mother Jones article about online shopping warehouses and now I have something else to feel guilty about in addition to shopping at Walmart (which I still do, all the time.)

I tried to buy something at Target the other day: the latest Just Dance Wii game for Eva’s birthday party.

The shelf tag said it was $39.99 but I’d get a $10 Target gift card back. So I tried to grab it but everything was locked, but in an odd, confusing way, so it actually took us awhile to figure out that it was, in fact, locked. Found an employee, but he didn’t have the right key. He tried to find an employee but the only person with the key was SELLING AN IPAD! It is an IPAD !!!!! and he cannot be disturbed.

Finally we got him to come over and unlock the case. Then he couldn’t get the $10 gift card to ring. Finally we went back to the shelf and got the $10 gift card sign, which said I had to buy a 6-pack of Propel Fitness Water (“fitness water”? Ridiculous) and the “fitness water” is kept in a totally different section of the store.

Finally found the “fitness water,” and realized it’s basically an uncarbonated diet grape soda in a fitness-y looking bottle and the six-pack is $4.89.

Pulled out my trusty phone, which I should have done FORTY FIVE MINUTES earlier, and found that Just Dance 3 is $16 less at Amazon plus they’ll just mail it to my house.

This story doesn’t have much of a point since Target employees are probably only marginally less “wage slaves” than the warehouse fulfillment ones. Maybe my point is that retail could be better. And that Eva is having a party, and we’re going to be dancing! And playing laser tag! And miniature golfing!

Okay so you know how we had an owl pellet on our front lawn?

I finally had a chance to show it to our neighbor Dave, who is a wildlife biologist.

“If this is an owl pellet, your owl is 30 feet long.”

Turns out what I found on our lawn is a nest. But not just any nest. It is the nest of

(wait for it)

the bushtit.

Yes, I am 42 years old, and yes, the word “bushtit” did sound hilarious coming from his mouth. I literally thought to myself, “Oh no, he did NOT just say ‘bushtit!’”

I would love to take the nest in to Eva’s class during science to show it to them, but c’mon. Bushtit. There is just no way.

So then I’m chatting with the neighbors about it and Dave brings over a book turned to the page on bushtits. And yup, “bushtit” looks even more hilarious in print.

You already know I have the humor of an eleven year old boy. And bushtit is just too much.

But in all seriousness, their nests are really cool.

They hang “pendant style” like so. Dave calls it “gym sock” style. The bird lays her eggs inside and actually crawls in through the small opening.

Dave believes our nest blew out of a tree before the mama had a chance to lay eggs, because there were no broken shells. (So the eggs didn’t break, and even if they’d “fledged,” there would be broken shells left behind.)

All of this explains why Scott thought our “owl pellet” looked like dryer lint; it probably DOES have dryer lint in it. Suburban birds love dryer lint as a nest ingredient.

Dave even whipped out another bushtit nest (he seriously just had it sitting in his house) and gave it to me to show the kids. (Which might not happen because I can’t say “bushtit” over and over again to a roomful of fifth graders.) This one came from northeastern LA County and had a lot of pine needles in it. And no dryer lint. He did say to “be careful because there might be dead babies inside.”

Bushtit bushtit bushtit!

Look what our neighborhood owl left on our front lawn:

Eva dissected an owl pellet a few years ago at the Wild Animal Park and it had interesting things in it. This one looks like it is mostly feathers. Scott said he thought it looked like a giant ball of dryer lint.

(In case you don’t know, owls eat entire little creatures whole, then regurgitate whatever they can’t digest in a pellet that can be examined to learn what the owls are eating.)

Up close, it’s not as gross as you’d think. The pellet looks kind of dry (like dryer lint!) and has absolutely no odor.

But to take away some of the horror, here’s a picture of Mo:

It’s here!

I wait with a ridiculous amount of anticipation for this moment every year:

2011/.

2010/

2009/

2008/

Doesn’t look like much, but in a few weeks our front yard will be a waving sea of these things.

Spring!

Yes, I do feel slightly guilty for writing this, but I have been relaxing so much during spring break that I am actually physically tired from all the relaxing.  I spa-d so much at Glen Ivy this week that I (literally!) need a nap.  (The late night at Pechanga might have something to do with it, too.)

Good times with good friends and family…ahhhh.

Week one of spring break is down; one more left.  Eva heads off to Astro Camp this week, I am on call for jury duty, and Passover starts. So basically week one was relaxation on steroids, and this week will be Getting Stuff Done.

But first I’m giving myself one more day.  A little napping in the sun with the dog, a little tennis with the neighbors, a quick visit to the Hidden Jungle butterfly exhibit at the Wild Animal Park…it’s all good as they say.

Hope you can put some break in your spring this month too:-)

Jane was doing some art while Eva was at school.  Later I found this casually placed in the garage near.

I was laughing too hard to even think discipline.  But can I seriously let this slide?  It’s so premeditated.

"Eva, look inside."

"Eva is stoopid."

"Eva is not osum (awesome)."
Define irony?

A MEDIUM TOLD ME I have protective angels all around me and my most influential one looks like a garden gnome.  He wants to inspire me to write more.

THE FIRST GUN I EVER FIRED was a Mossberg 590.  We went out to a very  secluded range and shot at rocks for awhile.  I was too busy just trying to hold the thing to aim.  That gun really packs a punch.  It was our anniversary and actually quite a fun day.  My biggest surprise firing a gun is the smell.  I like it; it’s magical.

DAD ALWAYS SAID, “Don’t ask for a tack when what you really want is a pushpin.”  Sometimes precision matters.   Our Destination Imagination team used these to hang cheap cotton bed sheets from a wall to paint as sets.

I TREASURE THE MEMORY  of my (adult) bat mitzvah in December, 2011.  Belinda Singer is a wonderful teacher and congregant at Temple Adat Shalom.  She created these beautiful shema sculptures cast from metal.  This religious art is incredibly inspiring to me.

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