Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 55

Announcing My New eBook: The Family Mix

Just because I ran out of things to graduate from in the mid-nineties doesn’t mean that I don’t still like a good old fashioned learning curve. I got one, and how, when I decided in July to compile an eBook of my favorite essays on the topic of “Family” from the blog, by the end of August.

It meant extracting, organizing, editing, polishing, proofreading, uploading photos, and proofreading again. (Thanks @msbarstool for your copyediting, I owe you a cocktail!) It meant hiring a book cover designer, and someone else to do the layout and conversion, and figuring out how to upload the files in various forms for various readers. It meant spending WAAAAAAY too much time on the special bonus video playlist embedded at the end of the book, inspired by the chapter headings.  It meant extending my “end of August” goal to “well, maybe by mid-September.”

So while the image of the cover of my new eBook, above, may not look like a diploma to you, it sure feels like one to me.

I present: The Family Mix: Essays on Family Life from MidlifeMixtape.com, now available on Amazon, as well as Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Scribd, and Sony. It’s a collection of forty or so of my favorite posts on school, home life, parenting, pet ownership, and more, stretching back to the Normalarkey era (in the dark ages of 2009) and including a few essays that never appeared on the blog but rather were published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

I would be thrilled and grateful if you’d consider buying a copy of The Family Mix. I’d be extra thrilled and grateful if you could help me spread the word by telling your friends, sharing it on Facebook, Tweeting about it, Snapchatting about it, Instagramming about it, Kik-ing about it, Mergatroiding about it (I made that last one up, as far as I know Mergatroiding is not a thing.) Maybe you’d even consider leaving a positive review on whatever platform you bought it, if you think the book deserves it? Having a bunch of positive reviews will really help bring other potential readers off the bench.

As an indie author, I’m mindful of the role that community plays in helping spread the word about worthwhile reads, and I want to express my thanks to my family, friends, and the whole passel of Midlife Mixtape readers for being a community that amplifies my work.

Did I mention there is a video playlist at the end of the book? I used EveryonesMixtape.com to create it.

But wait, there’s more! As an added incentive, anyone who buys The Family Mix: Essays on Family Life from MidlifeMixtape.com gets a URL (tucked into the title page) where they can download the first chapter of my memoir in progress, SHE GOES ON: How a Gen X’er Learned to Rock Midlife, One Live Show at a Time. I’d really love to get some feedback from you guys on the book thus far, which is why I’m swallowing hard, fighting my panic, and showing a chapter of an unfinished book to the world….

Don’t have an eReader? Hey, that makes two of us! High five for paper. Luckily for us there’s an easy workaround: download a Kindle reading app to your iPhone/Blackberry/Android or PC and voila, your iPhone/Blackberry/Android or PC is now an eReader.

If this goes well and enough people like the concept of the Midlife Mixtape eBook, I already have my next mini-degrees mapped out for later this fall: The Modern Mix and The Music Mix. So let me know what you think and I’d appreciate your help in spreading the word!

Here’s a song off the Family Mix Playlist…about what makes a house grand (hint: it’s not the roof or the doors) by the great Tom Waits. His stream of consciousness about the Swear Jar ends about 1:35 if you want to skip past that and get to the growling….

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I Need to (Pretend) Move

When I first started paying for my own housing after college, I moved every two to five years. Apartment traded for bigger apartment, traded for row house, traded for free standing house, traded for free standing house with fewer incidents of people doing doughnuts at the nearest intersection in the middle of the night.

And with each of those moves, I was faced with a critical decision regarding every single object in my possession: is this thing worth moving to the new place? Every book, every shred of paper, every pair of worn out running shoes was run through that algorithm of “keep” vs. “toss.” It was Object Darwinism, a cathartic process of reaffirming that only the most important items got to stick around.

Especially once we got to California, where Staged House Mania was invented, the benefit of showing a home stripped of nearly all personal possessions was concrete. Conventional wisdom said that if you presented a blank canvas onto which the potential buyers could project aspirational dreams of full length mirrors, or a cluster of lithographs, or artfully stacked coffee table books, your sales price would climb.

So I embraced the expulsion, rejoiced in the rejects. Every two to five years saw this ritualistic unburdening practiced anew. Watching bag after bag of god knows what get carted to the curb resulted in a newfound feeling of lightness, relief that came from knowing that every bag tossed = one less box to unpack at the new house.

The new house. The one we’ve now lived in for ELEVEN YEARS. The one that has accumulated stuff like a cross-sectional view of sediment as shown in the sixth grade history textbook unit about epochs.

Things are put away in this house; they’re just never thrown away. We don’t plan on moving anytime soon, so there is no pressure to make Sophie’s Choice about things like books we’re not going to read again and Christmas ornaments that aren’t quite pretty enough to hang. Except the pressure of our belongings squeezing the air out of us.

Plus, in those eleven years I’ve become much more conscientious about not putting anything in the landfill that doesn’t belong there. Carting garbage bags to the curb just doesn’t cut it anymore. I’d have to sort into my belongings into separate piles for East Bay Home Depot, Goodwill, recycling, the consignment store…it stops me in my tracks before I can even get started.

But the other day I tried to a stack of the girls’ letters from camp into the drawer for my bedside table where I keep such things – see picture at the top of this post – and no matter how hard I pressed on the corpus of correspondence that was already in there, I couldn’t fit the 2013 camp  mail. Tipping Point Officially Reached.

So it’s time for me to (pretend) move. I am voluntarily and artificially putting myself into that desperate, panicked state of mind that comes (for free! at zero interest!) with moving house.

Each week, for as long as it takes, I’m going to tackle one room of the house, not with a general goal of clearing up clutter, but rather with the eye of a person who is thiiiiis close to panic because she has to fill out change of address forms, register the kids at the new school, fill out the mortgage application and, oh right, find a new house in a market where bidding wars are the norm. Only with that level of frantic stress will I be able to achieve the mercenary mindset necessary to substantially clear these drawers and closets and shelves.

Would I pay a moving company to move the game Dog-Opoly to my theoretical new home? I would not. Do I need a pottery mug that so old that is is no longer circular but oval, and causes me to dribble on myself?  Would I pay someone to move the small packet of pictures taken for my passport issued in 2002, since expired? Well, I was a lot less wrinkled. And that blue shirt really made my eyes pop. What? No, no, NO! Throw them out!

I did a test run with the bedside table drawer last week – see AFTER picture, below.

Everything in its place

The good news was that I made a big stack of things to donate, and took a small pile of things to the garbage. The bad news is that at least sixty percent of what was in that drawer is now simply “re-homed” in the black hole of storage in the basement.

I’m scheduled to tackle that room sometime in late November. Wish me luck.

And with regard to the (pretend) move: please, for the love of all that is holy, do not send a housewarming gift.

The lyrics of this song always make me laugh. Dude. Yes, yes it does.

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Mark Your Calendars: Lit Crawl 2013

Each October during San Francisco’s epic weeklong literary festival, Litquake, we Bay Area word lovers suffer from an embarrassment of riches. There are readings all over the Bay Area, by authors of every stripe, and the biggest challenge is trying to figure out whether if it’s somehow possible to get to readings seven nights in a row (and throw in a few daytime events too.)

But no matter what, I always keep my calendar clear for the climactic Saturday night event, which will be held this year on Saturday, October 19: Lit Crawl. It’s like a literary death march, with cocktails, in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco. The idea is that from 6-9:30 pm, authors read in venues all over the Mission, in one hour phases. So from 6-7, for instance, you can choose from The Science Writers Handook event called “Eat, Drink, Geek, Write” or Write On Mamas with “Let Go or Be Dragged” or an open mic event in Clarion Alley, or one of 26 other readings. At 7:15, everyone grabs their stuff and runs to a Phase 2 reading, and the same happens at 8:30. All readings are free, and open to the public. So many great readings, so much choice, so much fun.

And I hope that when the clock strikes 8:30 you’ll consider coming to hear me and my fellow Lit Camp alumni read at Laszlo’s Bar! Our topic: The First Time. We’ve been advised that by Phase 3, the audience is going to be a little sloppy, so we should go for violent, sexy, or funny with our readings. I’m trying to hit all three, and throw in a foreign language portion for good measure. My fellow LitCamp readers are fabulous, so I feel really lucky to be part of this event.

Would love to see you there and even if you can’t come, do check out Litquake that entire week. If you’re not in SF, the good news is that Lit Crawl is expanding to other cities – check and see if there’s one near you!

Tom keeps crawling back to you…

                   
CommentsI'm hoping someone will record it so I can post a video…have ... by Nancy Davis KhoYay! Would be so happy to see you in the audience…it's been ... by Nancy Davis KhoLooking forward to hearing you at Litquake. by KristinIt sounds like a blast. I did a search for conferences in San ... by EllenRelated StoriesHear, Hear for Listen To Your MotherListen To Your Mother!Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: Grouplove and The Rubens 

Midlife Mixtape Concert Review: Grouplove and The Rubens

The Band: Grouplove, September 15 2013. This is the LA based five-person alternative rock band that you know from hearing “Tongue Tied” on the radio all the time last year. Their current tour, in support of their upcoming release Spreading Rumors, sees them alternating acoustic shows at small funky venues with regular amplified shows at bigger halls. So the night after they played a sold out traditional show at the Independent, they took to a stage that is smaller than most elementary school auditoriums.

The Venue: The Chapel, San Francisco. Sorry, Fox Theater in Oakland, but you have competition for my favorite venue now. The Chapel opened last fall and is exactly what it sounds like – a converted chapel in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco with a soaring arched ceiling, warm red walls, and amazing acoustics. There’s a mezzanine up top, folding chairs on the floor, and a standing room section in back near the bar. It’s TINY – everything I’ve read says it holds 500 people, but it felt much smaller than that. If a band is coming there that you halfway like: Go.

The Company: The Chapel, on a Sunday? Of course I took my church friend Diana, the one who brings a commuter mug of coffee into the pew with her most Sundays. There was some confusion when we set off about where we were going to the show, because Diana thought I was talking about an Oakland venue called The New Parish. If there was a club called The Narthex, we’d be done for. (It’s church lady humor for a new age, yo.)

The Crowd: Young, white, and on their phones.

I try not to judge, I swear. You can see from this post that I snapped a few quick pictures with the iPhone. But there you are, single and twenty-something, in a perfect mixing bowl of other young single people who are probably all game to get tongue-tied with another human being and already have a shared admiration for Grouplove and/or the Rubens in common. So why spend most of your evening staring down at your text messages or staring through the phone’s camera screen at the band, instead of connecting with each other?

Oh, the humanity.

The Opening Band: The Rubens. An alt rock band from New South Wales, the Rubens also played unplugged. They were solid. They’ve got the good rock star hair, the Aussie accents, and both Diana and I remarked that their denim cuff to boot ratio was perfect. They just seemed a little unseasoned, like a farm team that needs another year or two to finish them off. When they wrapped up their set with “My Gun,” that’s when we got a glimpse of why it’ll be worth sticking with them.

 

Age Humiliation Factor: Pretty high.


I have a seventh grader doing advanced math this year and she is perpetually disappointed at my inability to explain her homework, what with it being impossible. The age humiliation factor of the Rubens/Grouplove show, however, is an equation that is easy to compute.

Average Age = (My Age÷2) + 1 Year.

Not that I felt out of place; I’m over that. It was watching the Frat Party Pileup that formed at the front of the stage (including a guy in a 49’ers jersey and a “Perot for President” trucker hat doing bro-hugs with his friends) when Grouplove busted out “Itchin’ On A Photograph” when I thought, Good Lord of the Music Chapel, I’m glad those days are behind me.

Cool Factor: High

Grouplove is consistently among the top ranked alternative bands on the US charts, and the Rubens are garnering a similarly strong following Down Under. It’s always great to watch a band on the upward march to fame.

Worth Hiring the Sitter? That’s the rumor that’s spreading.

Grouplove is a perfect name for a band that creates a sound so joyful and irrepressible. They had a wonderful, loose energy and seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as if not more than the audience – some of whom were related to singer and San Francisco native Hannah Hooper. It was a very sweet moment when Hannah brought her sister onstage and got the crowd to sing Happy Birthday while the sister blew out candles on a tray of cupcakes and the Grouplove band members clamored to give her a hug.

Even unplugged, the band’s harmonies are rich and strong; I feel like they could go completely a capella without losing a shred of their appeal, and everyone in the audience was amplifying that energy. In fact, Grouplove managed only one song before everyone jumped up out of their seats to start shaking it, a moment that singer Christian Zucconi pronounced “Epic!” (Although I don’t know what was up with the mezzanine; those people never left their seats. Get thee to the floor if you want to dance.) The tunes they performed off the upcoming album, including “Ways to Go” that’s getting airplay now, were rocking.

Their first album was called Never Trust a Happy Song, but take it from someone who managed to stay out way past her bedtime on a school night: you can trust that Grouplove is a happy, talented band worth catching live in concert.

Grouplove and the Rubens are on tour for the next little while so check out tour dates and see if you can score a seat. Have you been to the Chapel yet – how were those French fries that I kept seeing come out of the restaurant next door? How important is the cuff/boot ratio to a musician’s success? Let me know your thoughts in the comments field – I could talk music with you all day long.

                   
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Still in Rotation: Pretzel Logic (Steely Dan)

Still in Rotation is a feature that lets talented writers tell Midlife Mixtape readers about an album they discovered years ago that’s still in heavy rotation, and why it has such staying power.

I know Jen Kehl through her “Twisted Tuesday Mixtape” meme – a weekly linkup invitation to the musically minded to create a playlist and liner notes on their own blog, on a subject of her choosing. It’s great fun to see the variety of viewpoints on themes like “stalker song” or “best cover songs,” so check it out and throw your own hat into the ring! For S.I.R., she’s gone way WAY back into the archives.

Still in Rotation: Pretzel Logic (1974)

I was four years old, an impressionable introvert who spent most of her time hidden under her father’s gigantic stereo headphones, when Pretzel Logic by Steely Dan was released.

I identified easily with this “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” about a little girl who couldn’t, shouldn’t lose a number. The song ran like a movie in my head. Rikki had to keep that number, she clutched it tightly in her hand as she sat in the back seat of a car. And she didn’t want to call anyone else. It was the only one she owned. Even now, when I hear that song, I see Rikki sitting at a glass desk writing a letter to herself.

Lyrics were never what they appeared to be. But to a four year old lost in the lilting harmonies of the cascading jazz ninth chords, “We can stay inside and play games, I don’t know” was an irresistible invitation to sit on a white shag carpet and play Candyland, while the rain fell outside.

Pretzel Logic became my soundtrack. My father pushed my little desk up to the record player, and I would sit with my headphones on, listening to that album over and over. No crayons, no books, just me and the music.

photo credit: Myles Schneider

As the Icons of Irony, Steely Dan was the Alternative Band of the 70′s. While everyone was playing rock ‘n roll or disco, these guys were playing their own blend of jazz and rock. This was music unlike anything that had been played. I also enjoyed their confounding lyrics. It’s like reading and re-reading your favorite novel. Each time you get a little more out of it, but the movie you play in your head is your very own.

Beyond “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” I gravitated to “Any Major Dude Will Tell You.” When I hear the opening guitar of Any Major Dude, I feel the strumming in my heart. It’s the kind of music that forces me to tilt my head in order to process the whole song completely. And at four, I thought that song was about a Major in the army. But it didn’t matter because it was about the music, and the music never ever let go.

As I got older, one of my requirements for a mate was a love of Steely Dan. Not always the best way to rule out the loony tunes. But without a predisposition to Steely Dan, there was not even the possibility of finding my soul mate. It was a question always subtly slipped in on that first casual meeting, or that first blind date. It was a deal-breaker. It broke many a deal. However, it also spawned many heated conversations lasting well into the night. I was going to share Steely Dan with my children someday, and how could I do that without the compliance of my spouse? Someday my first favorite song was going to be my child’s first favorite song.

In 1993, Steely Dan had decided to “get the band back together” and go on the road. I was there. While “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” has not been on a set list since 1974, other songs off of that amazing album still are. And really, Pretzel Logic was only the beginning of my love for Steely Dan. I absorbed each new album as it was released. Each new song, each new sound, becoming part of how I would see music for the rest of my life.

I  have Donald Fagan and Walter Becker to thank for my love of jazz. Even more than that, I have Donald and Walter to thank for my love of music in the purest sense. For my love of musicality. For the need I have for music to be beautiful, to be complex, to be artistic.

I know every note of every song on Pretzel Logic. When I hear the opening notes played on the mysterious marimba type instrument that signify the beginning of “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number,” I am always transported to somewhere good. No matter what is happening in that moment, everything is good and right and true.

That song is now a part of my son too. From the day he was born, he has heard Steely Dan. I made a special mix, just for him, of only their most beautiful songs. One of my greatest joys is when “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” comes on the radio and he tells everyone to shush, because “our favorite song is on.” Thanks to that magical duo, my son will also have an appreciation of music spawned by two guys from New York,  naturally shy and infinitely gifted.

 ♪♪♪

Jen Kehl is a mom, writer, homeschooler, maven of music, self-proclaimed sensory processing disorder expert, food allergy pro, photographer, controller of chaos, John Cusack aficionado and all around interesting person who refuses to put herself into any one category (because that’s boring). Jen shares what is important to her in the blog My Skewed View at www.jenkehl.com, Tweets about pyromania and other antics @jenkehl and facebooks about antics that are more than 140 characters at www.facebook.com/myskewedviewbyjenkehl

 

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Top Nine Top 9 Lists

A few months ago I started working as a contributor to NickMom.com, a great site updated daily with all sorts of tomfoolery designed to induce a midday laugh, and not just for moms either. My emergent specialty seems to be the Top 9 list, and I now carry a notebook around with me everywhere I go, into which I scribble things like “Top 9 Fruits That Make Me Nervous” and “Top 9 Halloween Costumes Made Using Only Coat Hangers and Wallpaper Paste.”

(My kids and I have a standing business arrangement: if they come up with a list title that sells, they get 10% of my paycheck. Sheesh. Agents. Can’t live with ‘em, can’t live without ‘em.)

Luckily for readers, many of the lists that I start with great gusto peter out by the second entry. But a few pieces have made it through inspection and landed on the NickMom site, and now that I’ve reached nine published posts, I thought you might be interested in seeing them.

Top 9 Signs It’s Time to Find a New Doctor
Top 9 Leftover Dinners That Aren’t Fooling Anyone
Top 9 Creative Swimsuit Cover-Ups That Will Hide Your Obvious Lack Of Gym Time
Moms Can’t Go on a Work Trip Without Doing These Five Things
The Disappointing Reality Of What’s In My Purse
Top 9 Nail Polish Colors That Sound Unintentionally Dirty

Top 9 Things I’ve Said To Both My Son And My Dog
Top 9 Teenage Laments That Sound Like Country Song Titles

Lest anyone get too giggly over the NickMom content, here’s the haunting “Nine” by Patti Smith to sober you up.

***

I also wanted to give a belated but heartfelt THANK YOU to any and all of you who voted for me in Circle of Mom’s Top 25 NorCal Mom blogger contest – I made it onto the list! I’m really grateful for your support – thank you so much.

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Turn Down the Music and Read: Turn Around Bright Eyes

Around these book-loving, music-loving parts, a new book by Rob Sheffield is always cause for celebration. There are so few writers who mesh their deeply ingrained love of music with humor and poignancy quite the way Sheffield does. If you read either of his earlier memoirs, Love is a Mix Tape or Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, you know exactly what I’m talking about. (If you didn’t: what the heck? You read Midlife Mixtape so I promise you, you’ll relate. Go do that, then come back here.)

In his latest book, TURN AROUND BRIGHT EYES: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke (HarperCollins, 2013) the Rolling Stone writer trains his sites on the Japanese entertainment form that seems to transmogrify everyone it touches into Steve Perry (at least in their own minds.) Structured like a playlist from a long, long night at a karaoke parlor, Sheffield once again uses individual songs as the starting point for wide-ranging reveries about the journey he’s taken since Love is a Mix Tape ended (no spoilers here.)

My own familiarity with karaoke is rather limited, at least as compares with Sheffield. There was the business trip to Tokyo in ’97 where I spent the whole week terrified that my Japanese businessmen counterparts would force me to sing karaoke with them. Then on the Friday night, when they still hadn’t asked, I begged them to take me to a karaoke parlor and blew their minds with my mastery of some Young MC raps. At least I think that’s why they sat there, stunned. It may have been the sight of their American product manager beat boxing in a tweed business suit and L’eggs pantyhose.

Beyond that, there was only the annual karaoke fundraiser for our elementary school at which I was always brought in as the first singer in order to disabuse newcomers from the notion that any actual singing talent was required. There, at least, Sheffield and I seem to have something in common. He freely and proudly cops to having a horrific voice, but it appears that hasn’t stopped him or even slowed him down when it comes to enjoying a night of singing in his chosen NYC establishment (named, of course, Sing Sing.)

But Sheffield is an able guide to the mystical world of karaoke. His observations about what makes a good karaoke song, why it grew in popularity so quickly, how the Karaoke Scene elbowed out the Slow Clap scene in movies, what Rod Stewart must have been thinking when he moved into recording old standards pulled me in and made me feel knowledgeable. Not a better singer, certainly, but a more informed bad singer of karaoke.

As always, there are laughs and enough musical references to make you scramble for your Pandora/YouTube/ITunes to play whatever song it is he’s writing about. But where Sheffield’s books always come alive is when he writes about his family. This time he gives us glimpses of his quirky, supportive parents that make it entirely believable that this romantic guy whose heart was broken in the worst way and at a very young age will nonetheless keep moving forward, believing in second chances.

Honestly, you just want to take the whole Sheffield family, plus his wife Ally, into a bear hug at the end of the book.

But that would be weird. So instead, how about I give away a copy of the book, courtesy of Rob himself? If you’d like a chance to win, just answer the question that Rob always poses to rockers when interviewing them for Rolling Stone, thereby eliciting some of the most unguarded and enthusiastic responses: what’s your karaoke jam?

I’ll pick a winner (US entrants only please) using Random.org on Friday, Sep 7 at 5 pm PST.





As Morrissey says: Sing Your Life.

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Things I Said After My Husband Suggested We Take a Vacation to Italy

My darling husband is currently riding his bike in the Italian Alps, a belated milestone birthday trip with a crew of his cycling club friends. When he was getting ready to leave, we talked about the fact that we’ve each been to Italy twice, but never together. We should go there together sometime, I suggested.

The poor man responded with a well-intentioned but soon-to-be-regretted thought that once we got there, he could ride his bike, and I could attend a cooking school.

I had a few responses.

Why? Was Laundry School already full? How about Toilet Scrubbing School?
Hey, 1962 called. It wants its traditional gender roles back.
At any point in the past fifteen years of cooking family meals, have I ever said, “If only the meals I prepare, that no one appreciates or notices anyway, could taste just a little bit better!”
Good idea! There’s nothing else I could do in Italy while you ride, like visit museums or shop.
Hi, my name is Nancy, have we met?
Exactly where would you like me to shove a gnocchi?
Say, what’s for dinner tonight? Because I know I’m not cooking.
Here’s another alternative: I could go to Italy and you could just stay home and ride your stationary bicycle while you think of how you will dig yourself out of this hole.

                   
CommentsI am dying laughing. Seriously. by Dusty Earth MotherI think you should take an, “Eat, Pray, Love” tour. Eat ... by Grandemochanow that they're reunited… by Nancy Davis KhoI know. And your wife would have had all the same responses. ... by Nancy Davis KhoPoor Andrew – sounds like something I would have said. by TedPlus 5 more...Related StoriesFive Things I Learned at Family CampLazy Days of SummerGifts From Ceil 

Book Review and Giveaway: MAXED OUT by Katrina Alcorn

A few years ago I was at an all-day conference for women in the publishing industry, and in the afternoon there was a panel of female publishing execs talking work/life balance. Predictably, and depressingly, most of the women talked about how, if you just worked hard at being organized and if you loved your job enough, you could be both a full-time professional and a devoted mom. I may have missed the nuances of their message because I was also sneaking looks at my wristwatch. My work/life balance that day meant gathering enough notes to write up the conference for an editorial client while still making it back across the Bay before the kids’ school day ended.

Then a petite brunette in the audience stood up to make an observation, which was (and I paraphrase): “I call bullshit.” She went on to say that as an ambitious working mom, she did not find that being organized and committed was enough to stave off the anxiety of how to do it all, and she challenged the panelists, all C-level execs at big publishing companies, to look for ways that they could help their employees from getting maxed out. It was a little awkward. It was awesome.

That woman was Katrina Alcorn. I chased her down to express my admiration that day, and that introduction developed into a deep friendship. Two years later I am beyond proud to have a copy of Katrina’s new book, “MAXED OUT: American Moms on the Brink” (Seal Press, 2013) in my hot little hand for a review and special Midlife Mixtape giveaway.

No, it’s not a music book, though I’ll hum a few bars of “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” if you insist. I am making the exception to my normal music-book-reviews-only policy because MAXED OUT resonated so strongly with me, and I’m guessing from my reader demographics, will strike a nerve with many of you.

When Facebook exec Sheryl Sandberg’s much-ballyhooed book on women taking ownership of their careers, LEAN IN, came out earlier this year, I avoided it like the plague. Given that I am already leaning in to work and family so hard that I am hovering an inch above the ground most days, the last thing I need to hear is that I should work a little harder, which I understood Sandberg’s message to be.

But after hearing Sandberg speak eloquently at BlogHer in Chicago, I decided to read LEAN IN after all. The book certainly had its merits and gave me food for thought. However, knowing that Sandberg has unlimited funds for household help and daycare coverage, and her seeming comfort with the idea that we are never allowed to be wholly unplugged from our jobs (hello, she works at Facebook) made the book ring more than a bit hollow to me.

Katrina’s book is for the rest of us. The format is memoir, the story of Katrina’s efforts to balance a career as a successful web designer with the demands of raising her young family that ultimately caused her to have a nervous breakdown, and her long climb back to health. But it’s memoir woven through with facts, citing studies and statistics that show beyond a doubt how unfriendly the American workplace has become to working families in the past few decades, and the detrimental effects those policies have on the very corporations that impose the rules.

Whether it’s the abysmal lack of paid maternity leave in the U.S., the epidemic of too little sleep, the difficulty parents have in finding meaningful, flexible work situations, MAXED OUT makes it clear that it’s not just about moms leaning in. It’s about companies and the US government doing a little leaning themselves, so that maybe we can meet in the middle.

The book ends with a list of ten Do-Now steps that empower readers to start making changes to achieve meaningful and real balance. The last one is, I think, the most important: Change the conversation.  That means when the subject of work/life balance comes up, and someone implies it’s an individual problem, or that women are simply better suited to doing child-rearing and housework, or that if you were just better organized and more committed, you’d have no reason to complain, I challenge you to take Katrina as an inspiration. Call bullshit on that thinking.  Talking about this in honest, realistic terms is the only way this is ever going to change.

Would you like to read your very own copy of MAXED OUT? Katrina’s offering a copy to a Midlife Mixtape reader – to enter, just leave a comment below about the topic of work/life balance, and I’ll choose a winner using random.org on Friday, August 30th at 5 pm PST.

Bay Area friends: Join me on Tuesday, September 3 at Books, Inc on 4th Street in Berkeley at 7 pm to hear Katrina read from MAXED OUT.

And if you can’t make that, check out Katrina’s cool book trailer so you can hear her talk about what it meant to be maxed out, in her own words…

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Five Things I Learned at Family Camp

Just back in town from the annual family sojourn I take in the Adirondacks with my family every August. You would think that after 45 years of staying in the same rustic cabin on the same cold blue lake with the same thirty families, there’d be nothing new to report. You’d be wrong.

1. Meals with boys are different. My clan now takes up two full round ten-person tables at meals in the big Mess Hall, and where and with whom you sit at those ten-tops is entirely up to chance. One day at lunch I noticed that despite the general din around us, my seat mates had been entirely silent for the whole meal. I looked around and realized I’d drawn a table full of all the young men in my family, my nephews, cousin’s kids, and other various male relatives aged 18-27.

“Why isn’t anyone talking?” I asked, genuinely mystified. The boys looked up, stunned. “We’re eating,” one of them said. “Why would you talk when there is food?” Then they all tucked back into their giant plates of grub.

I swiveled to see my daughters at the next table. One was telling my brother a story, so excited that she had risen up out of her seat to lean on her uncle’s shoulder for emphasis. The other was gesturing with both hands as she talked to my mom. No food on either of their plates looked disturbed.

So meals are for eating, not for nonstop talking. Duly noted.

2. It’s OK to be a follower sometimes. On Monday morning my brother, our friend Greg, and I set out for a two hour bushwhack hike around the lake. Both my brother and Greg are well over six feet tall, and sturdy as they come. By feigning an utter inability to find the bright pink plastic trail markers that ostensibly marked our path, I was relegated to the caboose of our hiking train. (It wasn’t entirely feigned. Here’s what a tree fungus did over the past twelve months to one of the markers – formed around it and began digesting it.)

This meant that wherever I walked, it was freshly trampled by two big guys who also cleared my way of spider webs. When I did take the lead, I managed to clear out the spider webs only to chest height for my companions, leaving the face wrapping webs perfectly intact for them to find.

3. There’s No R Rated Movie As Inappropriate as the One To Which You Take Other People’s Children. Family Camp’s nonstop activity schedule is facilitated by volunteers from among the campers, so everyone signs up to lead something. I drew Teen Night, during which four adults and I took the twenty-two kids aged 13-19 into town to see a movie, ride the Go-Karts, and get an ice cream. The theater was showing three movies: The Conjuring (too scary,) Planes (too baby,) and We’re the Millers (too inappropriate.) But at least I knew the Millers was funny, having seen it with my mom a week earlier. I wrote “R RATED” in big letters on the signup sheet, figuring that parents could make their own decisions about sending their 13 year old kids along.

Every one of them came with us. The three 13 year old boys who sat open mouthed in the front row during the Jennifer Aniston strip scene, the 13-year-plus-one-day old girl who got to see three flashes of full frontal male nudity, the twenty-two of them who got to hear words that would get them kicked out of camp if they ran around spouting them. Super.

On the other hand, all the parents of teens in camp got four hours off. No wonder they thanked me the next day.

4. I Still Got It, Even If “It” Looks Creakier Each Year. By now there are certain things I do at Family Camp just to prove I still can. Scale the rock climbing wall. Swim across the lake and back (sadly, New York state regulations now forbid it, so I just do a million laps in the designated swim area.) Get up on two waterskiis and circle the end of the lake twice. I managed them all this year, again, but the recovery takes longer and longer. Apologies to everyone at the base of the rock climbing wall who had to witness me hurling my carcass across the top, that’s not a sight you’ll recover from anytime soon.

5. Never group-text people who are in their twenties. Every year we get t-shirt made for the kids, for a big family picture. This year we decided to do a Wordle, and I texted all my nieces and nephews at once with a plea: send me five words you think of, when you think of Family Camp. I imagined getting back words like “family,” “campfire,” “loons,” “lake.”

But because they could all see each other’s responses, it quickly became a game of My Vocabulary Is Bigger Than My Cousin’s. So I instead got words like “mystifying,” “stupendous,” and “medicinal,” not to mention “soy milk,” “gas,” and “expensive.”

The shirt turned out fine, though. I’m not an editor for nothing.

I don’t want to scare you, but this Klezmer song, “Solomon Levy,” is my favorite dance tune at Family Camp. My family and I make it rain on the square dance floor when this comes on.

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