what not to wear

at the beginning of this year, my schedule at work changed. instead of my hours being 10a-3p, they were switched to 9a-3p, m-f. i am grateful every day to a) love my job and b) still have a job, so i didn't mind the change. but f? she is rebelling against our now more-chaotic mornings in a way that makes sense to me but still totally sucks: by making getting dressed an all-out freakout, pretty much every morning. wheeee!

before my shift changed, we'd wake up & i'd throw on gym clothes + stuff some work clothes into my gym bag, and that'd be about the extent of my morning routine. i'd drop f off at school, go to the gym & workout, then shower & get ready there & be at work by 10am. now that i don't have time to go to the gym in the morning, i go as soon as i get off the air, so i have to be dressed for work every morning before we leave the house together. and while i am not one to primp too terribly much, i still want to feel good about my appearance, so i wash my face, put on a little makeup, do my hair, etc. getting dressed is taking me longer than it did when i just had to grab clothes to throw into my gym bag. maybe because i have more time to actually look in the mirror and not just wing it? i don't know, but i've been fretting about what to wear a little bit more (which takes up more time, dangit) now that i have to be ready for work before we leave the house.

and there the problem begins. taking a little more time in the morning in our room to get ready (and stressing out a little more, i will totally admit it) i think has f reacting in a way that makes our mornings these little recurring nightmares. all of the sudden, she is changing her outfit 5 times each morning, and/or wanting to wear a tank top when it's 45 degrees outside (no joke! san diego! WTF?) and/or refusing to get dressed AT ALL as she's telling me over and over that SHE HATES ALL HER CLOTHES. combined with her waking up around 6:45am (super late for her) for the first few mornings of the year AND having a raging ear infection for about a week, and mornings in our house have been making us both want to cry. sometimes we do.

sometimes things have to get bad before i wake up and realize i can make changes, so i have: i'm figuring out my work outfits the night before (even if only in my head), packing my gym bag and as much lunch stuff as i can the night before, and making a concerted effort to spend more calm time with her in the morning doing whatever she wants, even if it's only 5 more minutes.

on her end, her ear infection is cleared up and she's waking up earlier again. she now has to choose her outfit the night before and we stick with it the next morning, no matter how much she tries to get us to let her change her mind. last weekend we went through her clothes and made a big pile of stuff she just wasn't wearing, so we're going to hand that down to her pal m. finally, her birthday is soon so instead of toys or books or whatever, her gift from us will be a trip to old navy to pick out some new clothes (she has already eagerly agreed to this). the last two dresses i picked out for her she wore once each and refused to touch them again (i was pretty frustrated - do we look like we're made of money? on a related note, do we sound exactly like our parents did? we totally do). i know she is a girl of strong opinions. and she now wants to choose her own clothes from the store, so we're going to let her, within our guidelines. no hoochie wear! but my hope is that if she picks out her clothes, she'll be more inclined to actually wear them. so far, the few things she's chosen at target or wherever, she has actually worn more than once. funny how that works.

today it all started to come together. i still had to lay down the law about her not getting to change outfits this morning from the one she chose last night and that wasn't pretty for a few minutes, but once we got past that, it was a much more calm morning. far more peaceful than the past few. and really, it's one day at a time, right? or, one outfit that consists of a black and white striped dress with a hot pink belt, purple flowered leggings, and silver shoes at a time, are you with me?

fotos

i'll put it right out there: i'm a late adopter when it comes to technology. always have been. i carried an ancient cell phone for so long that one day my friend asked me if it was my cordless; it was that huge. and i held out on the iPhone when it seemed like everyone else had one, but last april i finally went there, and of course now i'm totally in love with it. i almost immediately put it to good use at last year's coachella, taking pictures and tweeting and facebooking like crazy. it was awesome to be able to tweet from the radio station's account and give our listeners a look at what was happening when the mics were off and i felt like kicking myself for not having gotten one sooner.

lately, though, there is a new reason why i dig my friend the iPhone so much: f has taught herself how to take pictures with it, and it's her new favorite hobby. she even figured out the hipstamatic app, lil' hipster. i love looking at the pictures with her after the fact, and her taking pictures is more awesome for both of us than 99% of the kiddie apps i've downloaded, i'm telling you. if i have to hear the tinny, casio-powered music loop that goes with that one spelling game one more time, i might punch a panda in the nards.

BQOTY (so far)

though it kinds looks like "BOOTY," it stands for "best quote of the year (so far)," a new featurette (by the way, can we have a moment with adding "ette" on to words to indicate a tinier version of that word? so cute! but i digress - can we call it a digressionette?) where i will write down, verbatim, some of f's best statements, questions, and declarations. this one, the first and so far best of 2012, made j and i both crack up when she said it in the car the other day:

"mom! dad! I LOVE EVERY SINGLE GERM IN MY PANTS!"

happy new year!

a lowlight, or how not to interview your favorite band

last saturday night was my radio station's annual holiday concert. one of my favorite bands was headlining, and something really embarrassing happened to me while i was interviewing them.

it feels weird to type this, but i've been on the air in one form or another for almost 20 years. yikes. i started at age 19, hosting a noise/punk/metal show on kuci, my college radio station, and it's all i've ever done since (aside from a couple college internships at record labels and a short stint teaching rock climbing) (really). over the years, i've interviewed some bands who i loved to bits and some bands that i could care less about, and i've experienced the full range of situations. interviews like with will from arcade fire, or wayne coyne, ben harper or beck or gwen stefani where, when it's over, i love and admire the musician even more; i've done interviews that i've had to cut off abruptly thanks to interviewees dropping f-bombs (i'm looking at you, lars from rancid) and interviews where the person in question is someone whose music i have LOVED but i left the interview deflated, if not disgusted (ahem, anthony kiedis. such a bummer. made out with his girlfriend-du-jour the whole time, was rude, let any attempt at banter fall totally flat, and was plain unfriendly). i've prepared for days for interviews with people who intimidate me (omar rodriguez-lopez) yet have pulled them off fairly well, and i've done some off the cuff ones when they were thrown in the mix at the last second (a.c. newman, interpol) and made it through. but i have never, ever, ever done what i did last saturday night: have my mind go completely blank in the middle of an interview, so blank that i felt like i'd forgotten how to speak, so blank that it physically felt like my brain had hit a wall, hard. so blank, my brain hurt for a minute and i started sweating. and it was right in the middle of an interview with one of my favorite bands ever, my morning jacket. sheesh.

i knew a few days in advance that i'd be interviewing jim james from the band, so i'd been brainstorming questions, visualizing how it would flow, listening to older my morning jacket records that maybe i hadn't heard in a while. i jotted down ideas and a rough outline of a potential interview. i made notes in the margins. i read other interviews he had done. i cranked their new album as i drove to the venue on the day of the show. i was nervous, because, dude! it's my morning jacket!! they are so rad! but i almost always get nervous when i have a ton of interviews to do, so i just tried to squash the nerves and get excited for the broadcast.

i started the afternoon by interviewing two door cinema club, and they were great - easy going, talkative, polite, interesting - about the best you could hope for. then matt and kim came by, and i loved them; they are funny, open, friendly, silly, you name it. i was easing into the broadcast and aside from it being about 50 degrees where we were set up, everything was a-ok. it was awesome watching the bands soundcheck, and when my morning jacket soundchecked with "victory dance," i stood there with my mouth hanging open, blown away by how great they sounded and thanking my lucky stars that i was able to witness them soundchecking to an almost empty arena. wow. and now that i think about it, maybe that's what i did wrong: watching their soundcheck reminded me of how flipping AMAZING they are live. it gave me goosebumps! i think i set myself up for trouble. because when jim and carl sat down for the interview, and jim had this open, friendly smile and looked me right in the eyes - i just kinda lost all my sense. i remember starting with a question about their live show, and i remember jim answering it, and then: it was like i fell into a black hole of blankness. i was just looking into jim's eyes thinking, "oh my god, YOU ARE SO AWESOME, like, you are a musical GENIUS and you have such a GIFT and thank you for sharing your radness with us peons!" but on the outside, i said, "uh... and, um... uhhh..." - just stammered uncomfortably for about 20 seconds. and then: nothing, for about another 10 incredibly uncomfortable seconds as everyone waited to see if my head would in fact explode or i would be able to save the interview with another question. but i wasn't, and it totally flipping sucked. i was paralyzed! i looked over desperately at my boss garett and halle-friggin-lujah, he saved the day with a question about their recent grammy nomination. YES, I DID THAT ALL RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY BOSS. right next to him, actually. GAH.

i remember feeling horrified and embarrassed. my ears were ringing, my heart was racing, and sweat literally popped out of my pores - i'm surprised i didn't rain sweat on poor jim and carl. i was frozen and had trouble following their conversation. and i remember simultaneously thinking "THANK GOD GARETT IS HERE" and "WTF? this has got to be either a stroke or a flashback. SERIOUSLY, WTF??"

a few deep breaths later, i was able to somewhat regain my composure, and i even had a chance to make fun of myself mid-interview - jim james even fist-bumped me, bless his big kentucky heart - and i ended up asking about 50% of the questions i had prepared. but i never fully recovered, and in fact, i could not stop thinking about it for the rest of the night. i was able to apologize to jim and carl afterward and they were sweet and acted like it was no big deal, but DUDE. imagine one of your favorite, extremely talented celebrities, someone you respect and admire, someone whose work you have pored over and enjoyed immensely and whose performances you have paid good money for good seats at, someone who all of your good friends love and admire too. and now imagine totally blowing it with a giant stuttering brain fart when given a chance to talk to them. now throw in the fact that a few tens of thousands of people were listening as you did that. holy crap, right?

i think one of the biggest gifts of parenting is you don't even have time to really worry about your own petty bullshit much at all once there is a kid in the picture. so i did get over it pretty quick, about the time i got home and kissed my girl while she sawed logs in her little twin bed. i hardly even have time to look in the mirror most mornings before we leave the house, let alone worry about making a big radio ass out of myself in front of a band i love and respect and all the listeners too. ahhh well, you know? i'll be alright.

i just may never be able to listen to a my morning jacket record in the same way again, dagnabbit.

my protch.

she'd been wearing a hand-me-down, sparsely-sequined, extremely garish "recital costume" for about three hours, dancing slow interpretive/ballet dances in the living room to a weird al yankovic song on repeat. she'd eaten dinner in it. watched half an "electric company" episode in it. plastered an 8x10 piece of paper in painters tape in it (arts and crafts, you know the drill). and when we came upstairs to get in the bath, she reluctantly peeled it off.

"mom, it hurts me, right here," she said, pointing to her nether regions.

"oh, your vagina?" i asked. "no, like, out here," she said, pointing to either side of her groin, where the too-tight leotard portion of the costume had been chafing.

"oh, honey, your crotch. it means it's too small for you, love." i said, hopeful we'd be retiring it soon.

"yes," she said. "my protch."

so good:

i've got a new favorite website, and the coolest thing is: my 4 year old and i love it equally. the kid should see this is "Off the grid-for-little-kids videos and other smart stuff collected by Rion Nakaya and her three year old co-curator..." and the videos are smart, interesting, sometimes funny, sometimes stunningly beautiful, and always awesome.

like this rad japanese beatboxer:



or these stop-motion images of landscapes:

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

next time you are online with your wee one, hit it up - hopefully you'll both dig it as much as we do.

conversations.

the one i overheard while in line at the grocery store: pointing to a magazine cover with a picture of an emaciated celebrity's chest bones protruding above her neckline, the woman behind me turned to her male companion and said (lightly, like it was funny and awesome) "ha! that's my six pack! right there! i have THAT six pack." it sounded to me like she was proud of it.

wow. so ribs showing through skin is the new six pack. it leaves me speechless.

happier thoughts:

f asked me how the earth was born the other day, then proceeded to tell me. "ANIMALS were ALREADY ON IT when the earth was born, there were animals shaped like ICE CREAM CONES and then there were BONUS ANIMALS TOO, with long tails."

i thought, really, that's just as out-there as most other explanations. so we went with it.

we also had an in-depth discussion about jedis, the force, and the dark side last night, thanks to a new hand-me-down yoda book she just got. i loved every second of it. it felt momentous, you know? our first star wars conversation! made me think of this: