Kids say the darndest shit

While lunching at our favorite sushi joint today, Magnus looked at me thoughtfully and said, "Mommy, I love sushi. But I don't like avalanches."

Giving up my Kosher dreams

Until very recently, I harbored a fantasy of belonging to an insulated, tight-knit community like the Amish or the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. They seemed to really safeguard one another and their way of life. I wasn't digging the outfits so much but I thought I could swing the modest female dress code if it meant I lived somewhere that I felt 100% safe and protected every moment of the day.

Well, it turns out that my fantasy was blown up like an old Las Vegas hotel. Bad apples lurk among even the most pure communities. One bad Orthodox apple in New York slaughtered a young Jewish boy who was lost walking home from day camp. Then, once the community banded together to start looking for the missing boy, he cut up the body and tried to dispose of it in garbage cans. Gruesome stuff. How does an Orthodox man, presumably devout and isolated from the violence of TV, films and modern society, murder a 10-year-old and dismember the body?

Then the Amish. A dissident member was recently convicted of cutting off the beards of some men he felt wronged him. Obviously he made a better decision than Mr. Orthodox, but anger clearly runs deep and exacting revenge (presumably outside the code of Amish morals and life) didn't seem too far fetched to this gentleman.

So I have given up my fantasy of living on the fringes of Western society, cloaked in bad clothes but at ease with the knowledge that my neighbors had my back. Upon reflection, I think this strange wish began when Magnus was diagnosed with a peanut allergy and I was convinced he would be put in harms way by thoughtless teachers, school administrators, restaurant chefs and indifferent, uncaring parents. Obviously he still could be, but he could also be kidnapped, tortured or have his hair lopped off by people living among us who hide beneath a veneer of piety and devotion.

And truthfully, we all know I would last a day without a dishwasher and wine.

Things I could get used to

1.  Eating lunch (or any meal really) sitting down. It happened today and I seriously blissed out.
2.  Massage. This is obvious.
3.  Cupping. An acupuncture technique I recently tried to fall asleep easier. Who knew you could be an at-home parent and be stressed out with mental to-do lists?
4.   Sleeping in. Until 7 am. I would like to see this stretched out, however.
5.  Writing letters. OMG! I am making time to do this instead of just emailing.
6.  Did I mention massage? Had one last week, sorely needed, and I am in danger of becoming an addict.

Best inventions of all time

The car. The camera. The Internet. Pasteurization.

And Mucinex. Right now my personal savior.

Magnusism #4

Me: "Magnus! Do not lie on the baby!"
Magnus: "But Mommy, I am massaging him!"

I need to win the lottery NOW

I do. You know why? I need to adopt all the beaten and starving animals whose pictures keep getting posted on Facebook, along with appeals for someone, anyone, to take them in. I want to buy a massive farm property and hire five of the nicest, most compassionate animal experts on the planet who will nurse each and every helpless, starving creature I hand them back to life. I want to write a big-ass check to the ASPCA, even if it just pays for their commercials, so these poor dogs, kittens, chickens, gerbils, pot-bellied pigs, bats, whatever, get the hell out of their present situation and into a new and loving home with rolling hills and a view.

I think I may take a FB hiatus. As Black Dynamite said in the film Black Dynamite, "I can't look at this no more!"

It's official

So we have been living in Camarillo (the sticks) for seven months. I promised when we moved to withhold all judgements, misgivings, stereotyping and general snarkiness and try to see the city objectively. Give it a fair shake. Make peace with the chain restaurants and enjoy life with a minivan and shit.

I pretty much loathed the city the first week but I didn't tell anyone. Didn't want to violate my pledge and all. I was at my local Von's hunting for Katsu, a delish Japanese barbecue sauce, and the employee who was helping me scout the various Asian sauce bottles looked at me like I had second, protruding head. "I don't believe we carry that," he said. And then felt the need to add, "We don't have a lot of Koreans living here."

I chalked the incident up to sheer comedy and kept going. I started frequenting parks with the kiddies and striking up conversations with the other moms. They were stay-at-home, like me, but they really loved TV competition shows like The Voice and another show that Simon Cowell was on. I didn't watch those so I had nothing to contribute. Pretty quickly we started limiting our park excursions in favor of the library.

I hated, after a month, that there were so few trees in our neighborhood. If you live in Thousand Oaks or Newbury Park, you are dwarfed by beautiful trees of various colors. We have a pretty nice backyard, and I contemplated digging some of the bushes and trees up and relocating them to the sidewalk.

Then election season arrived and the rednecks came out swinging. Even our neighbors, who I suspected were conspiracy theorists or survivalists, but nice people to talk to, put up the nastiest anti-
Obama signs you have ever seen. (They also had stickers on their trucks that said NOTW, which I
think stands for Not of This World. Space aliens? Marines? What?)

I let six months go by without complaining to the mister, who was facing a demanding job as
president of his company, which is why we moved here in the first place.  He would come home looking almost beat up so I felt bad complaining about the lack of trees, culture and Asian sauces tormenting me.

But now it has been more than six months. I have found silver linings when I can and appreciated things that I could not do in Los Angeles, like pull off the road and buy fruit straight from a farm. I found a friend across the street who comes over on Fridays and we drink super-cheap red wine from
Target, because we are both non-working and have to make do on one income now. These are the bright points that fill the days and make my brain do that happy little ho-hum dance.

Because, faithful readers, I don't like living here, I will never get used to living here, and if Magnus gets accepted to the super-duper magnet school that is nestled among farm properties in nearby Santa Rosa, a very, very good, school, we will be stuck living here even longer. I shit you not when I say
that spooks the ever loving hell out of me. This town is too divided among the elite, who have mansions in the hills, and the workers who toil and pick their food. There is a middle class but there is something very hollow about it, like they are watching a tennis match between the richies and the workers, volleying back and forth. 

But I gave it six months, I did. I told the mister last night I hated living here, I missed LA way more than I anticipated, and what the hell, how will I adjust?

He just patted my hand, in that soothing style of his, and said it will be okay. You know why?
Because we have each other.

Damn him straight to heck.