Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 28

Vanity Bites

When I was a kid, I had a rogue tooth. It was determined to hide behind the tooth next to it, and throughout the ‘70s I underwent a series of orthodontic procedures that came straight from the Medieval Procedures R’ Us catalog. At one point I swear I had a tiny pulley system installed on that one tooth, operated by a tiny medieval torturer who cranked it once a day, then drank mead and read jousting literature. There was enough going on in my mouth during the preteen years that when the whole tooth grill phenomenon caught on three decades later, I could at least call myself a trendsetter.

via GIPHY

Eventually the tooth was tamed, but for a little bit of an angle that only I ever saw. In early adulthood, having thrown out the retainer that would have frozen it in the right place for the rest of my life, I’d joke, “It’ll make it easier to identify my corpse from dental records!”

Here’s something fun I’ve learned about aging! Your jaw gets smaller! And your wonky tooth gets wonkier! So in the past five years, that tooth has turned shy again and is trying to hide behind its neighbor tooth. My “dental records” joke got less and less funny, at least to me. And my kids finished up their own BraceFace journeys with the local orthodontic practice that is the single most pleasant, efficient, and friendly place I have ever spent time. I was starting to miss Dr. R and his waiting room of well-stocked magazines and on-time dentistry.

But mostly, I am vain. The wonky tooth was starting to be the only thing I ever noticed when I looked at pictures of myself. So this week, I got Invisalign.

This is not a sponsored post, though I wish it were to help me offset some of the cost of what I just committed myself to. This is just me telling you that my teeth are now wearing tiny plastic straitjackets and I’m about to starve to death, 22 hours at a time.

I am the first to admit that I didn’t do much – really, any – research about what Invisalign would involve before signing up. I had a vague sense that it was a series of invisible magic trays that you slipped over your teeth, barely perceptible to anyone but the wearer, and that at the end of some to-be-determined-but-surely-not-too-long time period, your grown-up teeth would look perfect again. I could simply take them off to eat, drink, and be merry when having them in was inconvenient– isn’t that what Adult Braces should be?

The first clue I had maybe underestimated my commitment was when lovely Deb at my lovely ortho practice said, “Ok, I’m going to be applying anchors to your teeth” and then came at me with some high tech purple adhesive and plastic. Ten minutes later I had knobs attached everywhere in my mouth, small and tooth-colored. I imagine the tiny torturer of my youth could have used them for recreational rock climbing.  Deb explained that the invisible trays attach to the knobs, so while the trays are in fact invisible, it looks like there are baby corn kernels clinging for safety to the surface of my teeth.

Then Deb slipped the first week’s trays on. Have you ever shopped at a discount store and grabbed something from the rack displaying your size, only to pull the garment on in the dressing room and realize it was a Petite XS that someone had filed wrong? Only now it’s stuck over your head and you might never get out of it? That’s my teeth in these trays. Deb made me pull the trays on and off my teeth a few times to be sure I could do it. I’ve never wished for a third hand so fervently in my life. And every week, when they start to fit a little more loosely, there’s a new size Petite XS to force over them.

Which is where starvation enters the picture. I’m supposed to keep these in 22 hours a day, and I can’t eat when the trays are in, unless you count “drink only cool water” as eating, and if you do, let’s not be friends. It’s only this week that I realized I’m putting food and beverage down my piehole at least eight hours a day. Popping the trays on and off insouciantly for my mid-morning dark chocolate snack or late afternoon whatever’s-in-the-pantry snack won’t happen without that third hand. So I have to figure out how to concentrate my nutrition intake time down by 75%, and work over the rumblings of my hangry stomach.

This morning, I shotgunned the amount of coffee I normally space out over the whole morning plus slammed down a breakfast sandwich as fast as I could, half awake. It left me jittery, but with enough time for a 15-minute lunch and 20-minute dinner. You’d like to think this whole thing would be a good diet aid – no snacking! – but I can already see traces of what my friend Jenny, an Invisalign graduate, warned would happen. “You think you’ll lose weight, but what happens is that you are so hungry by the time you take them off that you’ll eat 6,000 calorie meals.” Burp.

When the girls first got their braces I would say to them, “It’s just going to take some adjustment. It will all be worth it.” Now that they have perfect teeth, and I’m the one in braces, I have a new admonishment:

NEVER THROW OUT YOUR RETAINERS.

Sometimes the perfect song comes at the perfect time – like when I heard “Miracle Aligner” for the first time on the way home from the ortho. If you think The Last Shadow Puppets sound like the Arctic Monkeys it’s only because they share the same lead singer, Alex Turner.

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A Lot of A Lot

Raise your hand if you feel the same way.

Here’s the worst part of the annus horribilis that is 2016: what’s happening in the wider world is the least of my worries right now. My parents are facing some challenging medical issues that require an all-hands-on-deck approach from my siblings and me, which necessitated a ten-day trip back east to help get care and support organized. I am lucky because my brother and sister and I work well as a team, and my parents have a big network of friends who want to support them. But it’s a lot, and doesn’t leave room to worry about #CheetoJesus or #Brexit or even Orlando, much as I am holding space somewhere down the line to feel worry and pain about all those things.

For now, my Concern Capacity is at Level 5 Red and it’s all focused on Mom and Dad.

Even so, there were two magical things that happened during my trip home to Upstate New York. (Besides Wegmans.) One is that all my nieces and nephews came in to celebrate Father’s Day, and I got to sit around in my parents’ living room that weekend with six of my favorite twenty- and thirty-somethings in the world. Just listening to the way they banter with and look out for each other reassures me that when their parents and I need the kind of help that Grandma and Grandpa need right now, we’ll get it.

The other was last Tuesday when my sister and I took my parents up to camp for the day, because we could. Our eldest daughter is there as a counselor this summer, just like I was in the summer of ’83, and my dad gives the staff an annual lecture on the history of the camp. So to be able to bring Dad and Mom there on a beautiful day, see my soon-to-be-in-college kid training for the same job that I still consider the best one I ever had, and listen to my dad’s talk that ended with what a special place this camp is for his family…well, it was also a lot. A lot of gratitude, but also a feeling that defies a name, something about generations and legacies and the helplessness that comes with deep and abiding love. It was a feeling that made my throat hurt.

After Dad’s talk was over, we sat on the front porch of the cabin my family has stayed in every August since 1968 (minus that one year we moved next door while they cleared an impressive tonnage of bat guano from our cabin’s eaves,) and walked down to try out the camp’s latest boat. The sun was out and the blackflies were not. Adirondack Life magazine wishes every day were like that.

The first inkling I had that something was up with my dad was when I wrote a post about old school country music last month and my dad didn’t call me to comment. He loves reading the blog and if he’s mentioned in it, he never fails to call and give me his opinion – or his side of the story. In retrospect, his silence touched off the quiet alarm that became a clanging bell a couple of weeks ago.

True to form, he and Mom wanted to listen to Willie’s Roadhouse in the car as we drove the four hours up to camp, and my sister and I sang along with Patsy and Emmy Lou and Marty and Johnny as we went. Then this song came on, which none of us knew. And a couple of verses in, I said, “Excuse me, is he singing ‘Big Balls in Cowtown’? What the hell?” and my mom and dad laughed, and my sister laughed, and I laughed.

That is also a lot, right now.

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“There Was a Fire Here” Mixtape

Risa Nye and I met on the anthology reading circuit almost a decade ago, when I had an essay in “Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex, and Work in our 40s” and she was promoting “Writin’ on Empty: Parents Reveal the Upside, Downside, and Everything in Between When Children Leave the Nest” (which it occurs to me I need to go order immediately.) So pleased to see this talented writer publish her memoir about an event that looms large here in Oakland in so many ways – the ’91 Oakland Hills firestorm.

“There Was a Fire Here” Mixtape

By Risa Nye

My memoir chronicles the events surrounding the Oakland Hills firestorm that destroyed my home and my neighborhood in 1991. Given the subject matter, it is not a light-hearted romp—although I am optimistic that the reader will appreciate the small patches of humor and the underlying message of hope throughout. As I wrote the book, I had to dig deep in my memory to create a context for what life was like before the fire—enough of a context so that readers would get to know me and my family and would be able to cross the divide from “before” to “after” along with us.

Some of the songs I’ve chosen may, frankly, make you recoil in horror. You may ask yourself, why—oh why!—must she subject us to this old school stuff? But at the outset, I must remind you that this story really starts in 1969, even though the main event occurs in 1991. I beg for your tolerance as I invite you to return with me to yesteryear and introduce you to the main characters in my book.

Yes, it’s 1969 and my high school boyfriend and I went to see Joni Mitchell perform in Berkeley. I was in love with her songs, but I’m terrible at remembering lyrics, so I asked the boyfriend if he’d write down the words. It’s the first thing he ever wrote for me, scratched out on a long roll of stuck-together Zig-Zag papers. I kept the little yellow scroll, along with other letters he wrote me during summers and semesters apart. The letters are gone now, of course. But this may mark the place where it all started.

“Both Sides Now” Joni Mitchell

A few years went by, and then . . . Reader, I married him. (Couldn’t resist.)

We lived in a little apartment in Albany (near Berkeley), went to school, went to work, threw parties. In the spring of 1977 I finally graduated from college and collected my diploma, marching across the stage in a maternity dress. The baby was due in December.

Late in my pregnancy, we moved to San Jose. My doctor was in San Francisco, about an hour away. On the midnight drive up Highway 101 I sang along with James Taylor between contractions, trying to remain cheerful—although I was terrified. I think we both were. But how can you not smile when you listen to this song?

“Your Smiling Face” James Taylor

So: in labor, long drive, walking the hospital halls, waiting. Hours later, my daughter was born at last. We discovered early on that she had some serious problems. I’ll not go into details here, but this song defined the way we felt about her at the time. It played on the radio constantly during the time Caitlin, my daughter, spent months in the intensive care nursery with tubes, wires, and monitors all over her tiny body, her hair shaved into a Mohawk to accommodate IVs—and I cannot hear it without getting tears in my eyes. Even today. Like right now.

“Just the Way You Are” Billy Joel

Caitlin healed, got healthy, came home, and we started over as a family. When she was a year and a half old, we moved to Oakland.  We moved to a different house when she was almost three. For the second time, we moved during my eighth month of pregnancy. Good planning on my part. Our son Myles was born in December 1980.

In 1984, we bought our first home, barely half a mile from the rental we’d been in for four years. We were petrified first-time buyers. The house desperately needed some triage: plumbing, paint, disastrous wallpaper, etc. But we settled in contentedly:  family of four, with two cats. Life was good at our house.

“Our House” Crosby Stills & Nash

Two years later, we welcomed a new baby into the family. This would be sweet baby James. I’ve already gone to the James Taylor well, so perhaps you can hum this one to yourself. I do love it, though. And we really did sing “We Built This Baby on Rock and Roll,” during the pregnancy. I know some people hate that song, but it’s better with Muppets.

“We Built This City (on Rock and Roll)” Starship

The daily life of a family of five: school, rehearsals, basketball games, birthday parties, tap lessons, family vacations—the kind of routines we took for granted. We added and remodeled until we got the house just the way we wanted. And then . . .the fire.

A hot and windy Sunday in October. My daughter swears she heard this on the radio that morning.

“Burning Down the House” The Talking Heads

I don’t remember hearing it, but I may have been walking up the street trying to assess how close the raging fire was, and whether it made sense to evacuate or stick around and see what happened next. We decided to throw a few items into our cars (photo albums, a binder full of recipes, tap shoes, my little one’s favorite toy and blanket, not much else), and leave before the police came around telling us to go.

While there are no songs about the Oakland Hills fire that I know of, there is this one about another terrible fire.  I had a conversation a year or so ago with a retired Oakland Fire Department battalion chief. He was near tears as he told me, “Fire fighters don’t like getting their asses kicked by a fire.” The firestorm of 1991, “kicked our ass.” In memorium.

“Cold Missouri Waters” Black Irish Band

We decided to rebuild on our lot and were the first on our block to get started. I kept a journal, hoping to keep track of each step: the design meetings, the architect meetings, and all the decisions I had to make as we saw the house taking shape. Along with these details, I also noted a few current events. One entry reads: Election Day. Bill and Al win.  Hard to forget their theme song.

“Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” Fleetwood Mac

There are always lessons to be learned from experiences like ours; sometimes you just have to look hard. I wrote about my inability to make decisions, either under pressure, or because it’s Tuesday, or for no reason I can put my finger on. Some days are just like that for me. But after the fire, when I took on the role of project manager during the rebuilding of our home, somehow I rose to the occasion. No one was more surprised than I was.

Maybe I was only waiting for that moment to arise.

“Blackbird” The Beatles

Finally, looking back on the fire, what we lost, what we saved, who we are now—I treasure the memories that live on in my mind and in my heart—and now, in my book. Bottom line: things don’t matter. Family is what matters.

“This is Us” Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler

***

Want to read more? Risa is giving away a copy of There Was A Fire Here to a lucky Midlife Mixtape reader! To enter for your chance to win, leave a comment below…we’ll use Random.org to select a winner on Monday, June 20 at 5 pm PST!

If you’re in the Bay Area, come out and hear Risa in conversation with Midlife Mixtape pal and poet Alex Green on Thursday, June 16 at 7 pm at Great Good Place for Books in Montclair. More details here!

Risa Nye is a lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. Her articles and essays have appeared in a number of local and national publications, as well as in several anthologies. A co-editor of Writin’ on Empty: Parents Reveal the Upside, Downside, and Everything in Between When Children Leave the Nest, she also published an e-book based on her blog, Zero to Sixty in One Year: An Easy Month-by-Month Guide to Writing Your Life Story. Her alter ego, Ms. Barstool, writes about cocktails at www.berkeleyside.com. Follow her on Twitter: @MsBarstool. She lives in Oakland, CA with her husband. See what else she’s up to at www.risanye.com.

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Commencing the Next Phase

At my eldest daughter’s high school graduation on Tuesday night, a friend who reads the blog said, “Every day I think ‘today’s the day she’ll blog about graduation’ but you haven’t yet.”

I haven’t because I’m not sure I have anything to add, not after reading this from my friend Julie Gardner, or this inspiring letter to a college-bound son that appeared on Grown and Flown. So much beautiful writing on what it feels like to approach the end of an eighteen year project that required your entire heart to finish, and yet somehow feels like it rushed by. (I wrote a little thing myself a couple of years ago that focuses on the more pragmatic side of things.)

But mostly it’s because the sheer scope of what transpired between this picture on the first day of kindergarten:

And this picture thirteen years later on her graduation night:

Defies all words for this writer.

All I have is feelings: wonder, gratitude, and hope for her future.

And, of course, a song. This one’s for you, @KhoKhoPuff. May you only ever have love to share.

(And in all your travels back and forth to the East Coast for the next four years, may you get to sit next to Scott Avett at least once.)

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Ace Driver’s Ed with Aceable

This post is sponsored by Aceable.

Maybe it’s because I’m the passenger and not the driving student now, but it seems to me that almost everything about learning to drive in 2016 is less convenient and safe than it was back in 1986.

Back in the proverbial day, learning to drive meant taking Driver’s Ed. In school. For credit. From a gym teacher who probably wore polyester coach’s shorts and had an unflattering nickname that he/she was aware of but pretended not to know, because why should those damn kids get the satisfaction.

Anyway, as soon as you were old enough to have your Learner’s Permit, that coveted slip of paper tucked in the glovebox that said you had the right to veer all over the road while you figured out what “Yield” really means, you signed up for Driver’s Ed. For a whole semester in high school, you spent part of your day in a dim classroom driving “simulators” which were fake half-cars that gave you a chance to practice steering and using the brake and gas pedals before you ever hit the open road.

Later in the semester, once the gym teacher felt you were no longer a menace, you got to pile into a car with a few fellow students and careen around town. I don’t know about you but I spent much of that time in prayer, whenever the girl with frighteningly slow reflexes who never checked her blindspot was behind the wheel.

At my school, the training ended with the infamous “no brakes” maneuver down Cobb’s Hill, when the gym teacher yelled “No brakes!” at some point in the steep drive downhill, and you had to pull the car to a complete stop using the emergency brake and your own flop sweat before the car could careen onto Highland Avenue. The day Slow Reflex Girl drove us down the hill took ten years off my life.

The point is, you got a lot of driving time in before your parents ever had to sit in a passenger seat sucking air in through their teeth while you practiced your skills.

How times have changed.

In California at least, in school Driver’s Ed has gone the way of in-school Art and Music, i.e. offered sporadically if at all. Here, once the kid gets the learning permit, you hire a private driving instructor for six hours of instruction. Then, far too early in the process if you ask me, the parent climbs into the passenger seat for the requisite 50 hours of practice driving, gripping the dashboard, praying that the time your kid spent behind the wheel with Safest Driving School or Miss Anita’s Driving School was sufficient training to let him/her merge onto Highway 880 along with every long-range trucker in America.

Which was why I felt relieved when, days after our younger daughter told us she had already circled the date for late June 2016 that she can get her Driver’s Permit, I learned about Aceable Driver’s Ed.

Aceable is fully accredited by the state of California (they tailor the programs to the Drivers’ Ed requirements of each state in which they offer the app) and offers an online learning course that can be accessed on iOS, Android, and the web.

My daughter downloaded it and has been steadily working through the program on her phone, using it after she’s done with homework, or the kids she’s babysitting have been tucked in. She says the interactive nature of the course keeps it interesting, and she really likes that there are unlimited free practice tests. I like that it’s comprehensive and thorough, and that she can pick up where she left off on whatever device she’s using. Now when I am driving her somewhere, she knows enough to ask a LOT of questions and make unsolicited observations about my driving, which is a Hole Nuther Topic (HNT) that we don’t need to cover here.

Aceable has graciously offered a discount to Midlife Mixtape readers who may have young drivers in the family – click here for California, here for Texas, and here for Ohio to get your discounts.

And if you see me tooling around this summer in the passenger seat with my youngest daughter at the wheel, know that it is only my confidence in Aceable that keeps me sitting there so serenely.

Well, that and not wanting anyone to see me in my polyester coach’s shorts.

One of my all time favorite roadtrip soundtracks: Tied to the Tracks by Treat Her Right. What’s yours?

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Things My Neighbor Has Given Away on Nextdoor

Two Sad Orchids

Yay for the digital age and how easy it is to connect with our neighbors without ever leaving our homes and putting a face and name together! I speak, of course, of Nextdoor, the hyperlocal social network designed to connect everyone in a geographic designation through emails that may make you believe everyone around you is a racial-profiling hoarder.

I’ve written about it before, but lately our Nextdoor Listserv has reached a new level of absurdity.

I speak, of course, of the neighbor who appears to be de-cluttering her house halfheartedly, one drawer at a time, and even then not all at once. I think she is Marie Kondo-ing her life, but she only got to page 16 of the book before she thought, “I’ve got the basics, let’s get started.” Not for her the comprehensive clean out where you thoroughly organize room by room, culminating in a garage sale or a satisfying trip to Goodwill, and then bask in the home’s sparseness for the four weeks it takes to make it a mess again. No, she likes to do things slowly. Sporadically. Eclectically.

Three or four times a day I get the email describing what this woman has for the taking, if someone is savvy enough and quick enough to come by and grab it. I present, unedited, a sample compilation of what she has for the taking from just the past week (and it has taken the full week to offer all of this up.)

Two sad orchids
Used pallets
Hanging toiletry bag
Doggie tennis ball “Well loved but not too much. Got lots of life left.”
Box of bicycle cleaning stuff. “All quite a few years old.”
Several baskets
Cork board
Hot chocolate powder
Poster mailing tube. “18″-24″ long. Don’t have a way to measure.”
Used shower curtains
Dish towels

I don’t fault her for giving stuff away; it’s better than sending it to the landfill. I just wonder if she couldn’t take a whole Saturday and one of her several baskets, pile in all the stuff, set it on the curb with a big “FREE” sign and have a dented car with a dragging muffler pull up and take it within 26 seconds, like the rest of us do here in Oakland.

My fellow work-from-home-in-the-hood friend Neil and I like to forward these notices on to one another with commentary, like, “Get cracking or someone will beat you to the hot chocolate powder!” and “Run!! Grab that old bike stuff for your husband.” Yesterday Neil emailed me something he’s thinking of putting on Nextdoor:

Rusty old crappy propane bbq needs some tender loving care.  Come pick it up so you can cook yourself some rusty hamburgers.

I’d dare him to do it, but I think we know who would come get it. And would give it away again, one rusty burger at a time.

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Concert Review: The Cure

The Band: The Cure, May 26 2016. Everyone’s favorite happy Goth band from the ‘80s, or at least mine: they looked so stygian yet made such peppy, danceable music. Fronted by the distinctive sounding and even more distinctive looking Robert Smith, The Cure is on their first major North American tour since 2008. From everything I’d heard about earlier dates, the shows are just getting better and longer. Of course, when you’ve put out 13 studio albums, 5 live albums, and 10 compilation albums, there’s a lot of material to sift through.

Here’s the first song I ever heard from them, when I sat straight up in front of MTV and thought: who is this? Because I already love them.

Not the official video because that content is on some Prince-level copyright lockdown. Respect.

The Venue: Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View. I’ll start with the positives: it’s a beautiful amphitheater once you’re inside, with a circus-tent vibe, and the sound was terrific.

Everything else was ridiculous.

The traffic situation was so bad trying to get close to the venue – absolute gridlock, decorated with Google buses leaving the Google campus next door – that we ended up getting out of the car (we were lucky to have a ride there) and hoofing it for the last mile, going off-road over some hills and through a cluster of bushes where a forlorn Google bike lay on its side. We completely missed the opening band, The Twilight Sad, thanks to the unexpected hike. (According to their Instagram account The Twilight Sad is a “Scottish band who enjoy making miserable music & drinking.” If that’s not a perfect opening band for The Cure then no one is.)

Once you got into the Shoreline, the lines and crowds for everything were just as bad – beer, tshirts, churros, you name it. The size of the sea of humanity wasn’t the problem, it was the venue’s inability to funnel anyone efficiently. This letter to the editor of the SFChronicle the next day may explain why we had empty seats stretching out on both sides of us for the sold-out show.

The Company: The Gal who saw the Cure with me last, back in the 20th century, when we were both college juniors and a ginormous Boys Don’t Cry poster in apartment hallway was our primary decorating element: Kathie Gal. She still lives in Philly but the minute I got these tickets I texted her and said, “You’re flying out for this” and she replied with “Yes I am.” Kathie and I could never live closer to each other than we do, because we would only ever go to concerts together, and we would be broke and our families would hate us. As it is, this is a typical text exchange.

We were also Hashtag Blessed because our friends JT and Louisa had someone driving them to the show and dropping them off, and they offered to let us come along for the ride. Given the gridlock situation it’s the only reason we made it in time, but the payback was a bitch: I got a little turned around leaving the ladies room post-show, and it took me a bit to figure out where the ramp was where we’d all agreed to meet afterward (again, sea of humanity leaving the Shoreline in a human version of the traffic gridlock made the sightlines a little tough.) It is clear from the ribbing I got on the way home from JT that “She Couldn’t Find The Ramp” will be what defines me to him for the rest of my life.

The Crowd: So vaguely familiar. Middle aged rock fans in black who, if you squinted, looked exactly like those cute guys you played pool with after seeing the Cure in ’86, only now grey and with Dad bods. I’m sure they were looking at Kath and me thinking, “well, add wrinkles and sensible shoes and that could totally be those girls who used to dance near the DJ booth back in ’87.”

Also, Mozart. I don’t know either.

Cool Factor:

I don’t care who you are, everyone has a favorite Cure song. Mine is usually the one that happens to be playing at that time.

But when The Caterpillar appeared 32nd in the lineup, and I glanced over to see Kathie Gal dancing and smiling exactly like she used to, near the DJ booth in ’87 – that was pretty cool. Flicka flicka flicka flicka flicka flicka flicka flicka here you are.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? If she can get you parking at Google, yes.

First of all, Robert Smith sounds not even just as good as he did in the ‘80s, I honestly think he sounds better. And the length of the shows is the stuff of myth and lore – three hours long and multiple encores. Here’s what they played in just the third encore last Thursday:

source: setlist.fm

Sometimes when you see a band that’s been around since the Carter era, you know they’re phoning it in. But there’s no trace of that for Robert Smith – he is ripping up the stage, playing the B-sides, and generally just as joyous as the crowd there to relive their high school/college memories and make some new ones. And can we take a moment to appreciate that Robert Smith has been married to his wife for 30 some odd years? I imagine those three decades have been some odd, too.

photo cred: JT aka “He CAN Find The Ramp”

So the only drawback of this show was access to the venue. Here’s my pro tip: if you want to go to the Shoreline for upcoming shows, your best bet is to first get a job at Google in Mountain View.

Next show on the calendar: Bob Schneider at Slims

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6 Reasons You Can’t Be Mad I Got Sod

Not my lawn. But what my lawn aspires to be.

Well, El Nino came and went without nearly the dramatic drought-busting impact we were hoping for in dusty old California. But if you pass by my house you’re going to notice that there’s freshly laid sod in the front yard, the kind that needs lots of water to take root. I’m getting out in front of the issue because not only am I aware there are Water Waste Police lurking everywhere, I’m one myself. (I shamelessly narced on my absentee landlord neighbor who was watering the asphalt street twice a day last July.)

So before you turn me in to EBMUD, hear me out.

We’ve been staring at a dirt lawn for two summers. We’ve done our part to conserve water in the landscape, replanting thirsty beds with drought tolerant natives and giving up the water-guzzling vegetable garden in favor of a once-a-week CSA box. And the lawn? We just turned the sprinklers off completely in 2014 and let it die. It was de rigeur in our neighborhood for the past two years, when we only got 2/3 as much rain as usual and you weren’t even supposed to wash your car unless you did it with your own saliva. Patriotic, maybe, but sitting with a cold beer on a Friday evening and gazing out at topfill just isn’t that rewarding.
I did try to convince my husband that the crabgrass worked just as well as a landscape element. With this year’s (relatively) higher rainfall, there was one crop that came back with a vengeance: crabgrass. It’s ugly, it’s tough, it’s tenacious, but it’s also green. For a while there I was hopeful it would fill in the dirt patch and present as fescue but it’s an invader with absolutely no respect for aesthetics. It was as patchy as a 15 year old boy’s beard.
My husband has worked as a clean tech financier for two decades. If there’s a solar panel on your house, he probably financed the company that built it and he’s definitely visited the factory in China where it got made. Whenever we drive through the Altamont Pass he likes to quote detailed facts about the energy-generation capacity and height of the towering windmills that stud the hills like quills in a porcupine’s back. In fact he’s at a wind conference right now, forcing me to do all the ballet carpool driving. Doesn’t being the little woman to a titan of clean energy financing buy me some dispensation for watering my lawn?
I’m getting a fancy controller that senses moisture levels in the grass and cross-references satellite weather data. It’s going to get very Internet of Things up in this joint once that thing is installed, at least once I delete some music so I’ll have enough room on my phone to download the app that controls it. So it may actually take awhile.
The sod we rolled out isn’t just drought tolerant. It’s EXTREMELY drought tolerant. The landscaper assures us that after three weeks of a lot of water, we can scale way way back and it will still go gangbusters. Assuming that the raccoons stop rolling it backwards to look for grubs long enough that it can root.

But the main reason is this:

We didn’t realize the sprinklers were broken for the first three days, so it’s well on its way to dying anyway.

Baby, I’ll drown in California...but probably not, Grimes.

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Marin Music Scene

Some days it’s harder to be a writer than others. You apply to a writing conference and get rejected; a publication you’ve been honored to write for (and they pay) announces it will fold; you cannot for the life of you think of a synonym for “awesome” and, on a related note, you’re out of coffee.

And then there are days like I had at the end of April, when my wonderful SFChron editor sent me over to Marin to hang out with some musicians from a band called Firewheel, and uncover “a musician’s view of Marin County.” We started off in a coffee shop in San Rafael that sports a hallucinogenic fiberglass caterpillar leering over the ATM, passed through the store where every musician in the North Bay buys their guitar strings, hit a boutique where I ended up filling up a shopping bag with goodies between taking notes, and ended the day at the Presidio Yacht Club, drinking a beer and watching the Solar Impulse 2 soar over the Bay Bridge in pursuit of its goal to circumnavigate the globe using solar power only, and arguing with the bartender whether a black and tan truly qualifies as a mixed drink.

On days like that, I think to myself, being a writer is the best job in the world. How did I ever get so lucky?

The result of my Marin field trip was a longform story in the SFChron on Sunday that I thought you guys might be interested in – you can see it online here. It includes a very handy guide to some hidden treasure music venues in the North Bay, if I do say so myself. Print it out, hit ’em up, and if you get an opportunity, go see Firewheel, hit a show at the Elks Lodge, and/or have a sun downer at the Presidio Yacht Club.

Because when you the inevitable bad days strike, you need some good ones to balance them out.

 

 

                   
CommentsVikki. Pouring one beer atop another beer does not constitute ... by Nancy Davis KhoWhich side of the Black and Tan issue did you come down on? I ... by VikkiRelated StoriesSpring 2016 Events and AppearancesBART to Bar Litcaravan: Litquake’s Journey of a Thousand StopsGo Fourth 

Bet You Didn’t Know

Gimme old school country, and maybe a fringe skirt, and definitely a horse

When you get to my age, it’s easy to believe you know all there is to know, about everyone you know. I’ve had some friends for almost five decades, a husband for a quarter of a century, and a hairdresser for one score years. What could I possibly not know about these people?

Then I remember: I bet most of my friends don’t know I love old school country music, the cornier the better.

If that seems at odds with my loud public embrace of alt-rock and rap and punk, be assured that I come by my affection for old school country honestly, if reluctantly at first.

During my seventies childhood, my mom developed a love of Burt Reynolds, and my dad a love of his brand new CB radio. When Smokey and the Bandit came out in 1977, those interests converged, wrapped up tight in the soundtrack of Jerry Reed singing, “East Bound and Down.” It was a short leap from Jerry Reed to Willie Nelson, Crystal Gale, and Marty Robbins, and where we heard that kind of music most was in the car on our epic family road trips.

I think even if air travel had been cheaper back then, my parents would still have insisted we drive on our annual family vacations. No point in spending money we didn’t have to and, more to the point, inside my mechanical-engineer dad lurks a frustrated long distance truck driver yearning for the open road, along a path he has meticulously plotted out using maps and AAA’s Trip Tiks.

So along the open road we sailed, driving from upstate New York to the grandparents in North Carolina, back and forth to the Adirondacks like they were just down the street instead of four hours away, once all the way to Florida (taking the Auto Train down and driving back through Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, etc., me wedged between my two older siblings in the back seat of the station wagon. Thus began my long negative association with the South.)

And when we drove, it was all country, all the time. Even if I resisted it with every fiber of my New-Wave-loving core, it didn’t mean I could prevent country music from seeping in at a cellular level.

I realized this when we first got Sirius radio in our car a few years back, and I stumbled across Willie’s Roadhouse, the channel dedicated to Willie Nelson’s music and that of his pals. I’d hear the opening twang of notes played on a slide guitar and realize with wonder that I knew all the words that were about to tumble out of the speakers. Patsy Cline with “I Fall to Pieces,” Conway Twitty with “Hello Darlin’,” Tammy Wynette with “D.I.V.O.R.C.E.” I knew every banjo strum, every drawn-out note, both parts of every Johnny and June Carter Cash duet. Eddie Rabbitt’s “I Love a Rainy Night” almost made me veer off the road in excitement.

With the benefit of objectivity that came from three decades of not listening to this music, I was struck at the songwriting craft involved, perfectly constructed three and half minute stories that could stay with you for days. What I’d once thought of as predictable could pack a hidden punch.

When Dolly Parton sings to Jolene and begs her not to steal her man, how can you not feel sorry for her (and wonder whether that man is blind, because we’ve all seen Dolly?) When Bobbie Gentry sings “Ode to Billie Joe,” you can practically feel the Tallahatchie Bridge under your feet and see the murky waters flow beneath it. And pretty much anything Red Sovine sang, rearranging the words “truck,” “teddy bear,” “mama,” “crash,” and “Giddy-up,” is guaranteed to bring a lump to your throat.

But it wasn’t all so solemn: it seemed to me that, as a group, classic country singers understood the risk of taking themselves too seriously better than the more modern artists to whom I’d been listening, of any genre. Whether it was Jerry Reed singing “She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft,” Loretta Lynn with “You’re the Reason Our Kids are Ugly,” or Roy Clark with “Thank God and Greyhound,” Willie and his peers didn’t seem to worry so much about thinking Deep Thoughts all the time. Sometimes they only wanted to make people laugh.

Stick with it until at least the halfway point.If my parents hadn’t liked this music when I was a teenager, I bet country would have been my favorite. As it is, I devote one ninth of my available music preset buttons to a station I can rely on for songs about beer, roadhouses, and a dirge-like list of Tom T. Hall’s favorite things. It’s all tied up nostalgia and missing my family in New York and thinking that George Jones has the most gorgeous voice.

So next time you’re in my car, and I put the key in the ignition, and “Delta Dawn” by Tanya Tucker happens to blast you into the back seat, just try to think of it as me keeping the mystery alive.

Your turn: What’s the thing you bet most people don’t know about you?

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