takes a village

I’ve always wished I were a foodie, but I think it’s something else I’m after.

I love the cool, foggy Bay Area weather, but I lose track of the seasons. Rain means fall or winter, but chilly and overcast could be any day of the year. I wilt in real heat, but sometimes I miss signs of summer. So I was thrilled when my friend Mark insisted we get going…

A few weekends ago Jay gave me the wonderful gift of wrangling the kids while I did a daylong yoga retreat. It was unbelievably nice to have 8 hours at Green Gulch Zen Center in Marin, doing yoga and walking in nature. Besides being forced to exercise, which is awesome by itself, the yoga teachers I’m drawn…

The whole “micro” softball season was focused on the basics: which base to run to if you hit the ball (first), how to hit the ball (swing), how to work on a team (hint: not everybody should run for the ball at the same time). Nobody kept score, and at the end of the game each…

My dad and stepmom are in town to meet the kids. It’s been wonderful to connect them to my new family. So primal! It feels strange that they’re “only now” meeting the kids, which shows how huge the last three months have been in my life—years worth of changes in a blink. No wonder I…

I stole away to bookgroup this week, leaving Jay and a friend watching the kids. What a pleasure to be with grownups, following the customs and traditions that until a few months ago were my primary ways of communicating and being with others. So what if we mostly talked about our kids. The comfort of…

A full week of fulltime foster parenting. Survived! Enjoyed! Endured! I feel muddle-headed, daunted, overwhelmingly thankful. Jay says it sunk in when they asked him to sign the “parent” line for a school form, and he thought “What? Sign as what?” For me it was making my way up the uneven stone stairs with a…