Dylan's Candy Bar, The Rockettes and The Statue of Liberty

As I mentioned while blogging about my trip to London and Paris with Eldest Daughter this spring, it's special traveling with only one other person. You get to focus on their needs, have in-depth conversations with them, just go where the road takes the two of you. During this trip to New York I got a refresher on how witty Thing 1 is and how fiercely independent she is, too.

It was important to me that she ride the subway and so, on the way back from the Statue of Liberty, we caught it. I paused in front of the ticket machine, reading the instructions. She became impatient and pushed me aside saying, "Really mother, this is not that difficult." She pressed a few buttons and then said to me, "Insert three dollars and we're done." And that was that. She also navigated the subway map and signs to get us on the right uptown train. I loved every minute.

Several people had recommended Max Brenner's chocolate-themed restaurant near Union Square. Both the food and the chocolate desserts were excellent. We are now fans!

Perhaps the best part of our trip, other than the one on one time, was seeing the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular featuring The Rockettes. The red and gold Art Deco auditorium, a masterpiece built in 1932, seats 5,900 people. Yes, almost 6,000 people can see The Rockettes at a time. The Wooden Soldiers number is a synchronized perfection in precision. Thing 1 and I liked that best although the Raggedy Ann dance in Santa's Workshop in the North Pole is magical, too. There are live camels in one of the dances! Around the corner from Radio City is a second location of the Magnolia Bakery. We got cupcakes there although neither of us really liked them; we both prefer them less sweet.

A trip to New York would not be complete without a visit to Dylan's Candy Bar. We made some good contributions to the local economy there and even returned for a mediocre lunch after learning that the wait for nearby Serendipity 3 was more than two hours. Of our meal Thing 1 said, "They should stick to sweets."

It is impossible to even scratch the surface of the city in a long weekend. In fact, I counted that this was my 14th time to New York and still, I did two new things! I dragged Thing 1 to Times Square and fed her a bagel. She would not eat pizza.

We gave the Christmas windows along Fifth Avenue a good long look and actually spent the most time dissecting the ones at Bergdorf's, across the street from The Plaza. We went into Tiffany and looked at the really big stones. And we were sad to come home Monday afternoon.

Breakfast in the Palm Court

Breakfast was included with our room at The Plaza and so every morning we dolled up and took the elevator down to the Palm Court. It's similar to the Sheraton Palace's Garden Court. They both have light furniture and stained glass ceilings. The Palm Court was mostly filled with multi-generational families, all well-dressed and well-coiffed, even the teeny tiny children whose plastic covered strollers awaited them post oatmeal. When the hotel is sold out, as it was during our stay, breakfast is limited to hotel guests only. These picture-perfect people seemed to be enjoying a Christmas time tradition of visiting the city. A few tables had work-related meetings going on. At the table next to us was clearly a job interview. I eavesdropped. Just in case you're wondering, the best part of breakfast was the fresh squeezed orange juice. Thing 1 had Eloise Pancakes and I had Eggs Benedict. And the New York Times.

Welcome to New York, Darling Daughter.

With big eyes and a death grip on my arm, Thing 1 was uncharacteristically quiet. After all, we were in her first New York taxi, in rush hour traffic no less, en route from the airport into the city. Why it is called rush hour will continue to remain a mystery since there is a lot less movement in bumper-to-bumper traffic occasionally punctuated by an expletive and accompanied by a slamming on of the brakes.

Welcome to New York City, my darling daughter.

Ninety minutes later we were deposited at The Plaza hotel on Central Park South. It was lovely, just lovely. Old world elegance at its best. The bellman took our bags and we located our antique-filled room with its own balcony and lounge chairs. Mosaic tiles in shades of gold and white greeted us in the bathroom, which had a separate shower (with gold rainfall fixture plus a handheld) and deep tub. The toiletries were Caudalie, which David Lebovitz just blogged about, and the vanity was solid white marble.

The bathroom reminded me of the Fairy Tale Suite at the Disneyland Hotel. All it was missing was the  cloyingly sweet voice coming out of the mirror-disguised entertainment system.

Given the choice, my child would have elected to hole up in our room all weekend, it was that beautiful. However, we were in New York, not Bakersfield, and so we freshened up and walked out through the revolving door in the hotel lobby, the lobby with no less than four mile-high Christmas trees sparking enough to give Tiffany, just down the street, some serious competition.

How did Thing 1 and I end up at The Plaza a few weeks before Christmas? Here's the truth: there is nothing like having two people you are close to newly diagnosed with cancer to prompt you to go big at the Cancer Support Community annual gala. And so Thing 1 and I did a long weekend in the city of all cities during the Christmas season, her choice and a very good one.

The first thing you see when exiting The Plaza is the Apple Computer logo. It is seemingly suspended in the air in a 32 foot tall glass cube. The store proper is subterranean. It's also open 7x24 in case you're having a technology crisis. The individual iPads that operate the temperature and lights in the hotel's guest rooms are fairly finicky so maybe the store's location is strategic?

Just to the right of that was our first stop: FAO Schwartz. It's organized like a high-end department store, by brand or category: The Jungle, Life Sized Stuffed Animals, Natural History, FAO Schweetz, Muppets. Knowing it was barely a block from our new home, we only spent an hour there and I promised we'd come back. We spent the rest of the evening window shopping and returned to the hotel in time to have a late dinner in the Todd English food hall. 

Assisted by the night-time cold medicine she needed as she was fighting a miserable head cold, Thing 1 fell into a deep sleep in the fluffy white bed.

She is twelve.

And when you are 12 to 16 you seek out places that have appeared in your favorite TV shows. Do you recognize this location? Clue: It's in New York City on West 63th Street by the Lincoln Center. I did not. And I have not seen the TV show that this facade is in. It's Gossip Girl. The Empire Hotel was Chuck's first purchase as a baby mogul. What that means I have no idea. But it was on Thing 1's list to do in New York and so we went. Fortunately it was across the street from The Smith, an American brasserie that Matt and Kim took us to, and so we had a good lunch there.

The scenic route

Over the summer I drove to Tahoe via the Eastern Sierras. I hadn't planned to drive this route but having children means you sometimes take a detour. I spent the first part of the drive, the ugly freeway part, on a conference call. And then it was four lane roads narrowing to two lane roads into the mountains. As the trees got bigger I started to relax. I rolled down my windows and took deep breaths of the pine and earth smell.

After an hour-long stop at a lake where I spent part of my childhood and where I retrieved a child who was in the midst of hers, the two of us continued the adventure. There were no gas stations for the next 100 miles. She was chatty. We drove up and up and up until we hit the pass, and then drove down and down and down into the increasingly arid Nevada desert and where the landscape looks like paintings. We stopped for a late lunch at a dive pancake house. Finally we made a sharp left and after ten more miles of narrow, windy roads, saw Lake Tahoe. It was a relief to see water after so many landlocked miles.

It's not often I travel off the -- off my -- beaten path. This single-day journey was fun because it was unanticipated and because I got to experience it with one of my children. It made me want to take a road trip.

The Safeway in King's Beach had parking spots but inside there was barely any room to maneuver. This was expected at 6pm the night before a holiday. My daughter spotted a classmate's father, one who lives less than a mile from us in our suburb, We shopped and then drove on to Squaw Valley, where I stopped trying to keep my eyes open at 10pm and awoke 11 hours later.

Bittersweet

Another year of National Charity League is behind us. NCL is a mother-daughter social service organization that the Three Pinks and I belong to. Here's a picture taken of the four of us  prior to last night's Awards Ceremony.

Eldest Daughter and I were fortunate enough to assist with many causes this year including Special Olympics, Diablo Theater Company and Hospice of the East Bay. I had hoped that she would earn the award for the daughter who logged the most volunteer hours during the year. Although she did a whopping 232 hours of philanthropy in our community, this wasn't enough. I, however, was surprised to earn the award for the mother who spent the most time working with our philanthropies.

This is bittersweet. I wish that she had won instead of me. This is what it means to be a mother. 

My family has a long history in serving our community. I know that they are proud of us.

In search of the perfect macaron.

Eldest Daughter loves these meringue layered cookies, often seen in pastel colors.

They are becoming so mainstream that there is a spread on them in the current issue of Food Magazine. If these are not the national cookie of France, please tell me what is.

Laduree, founded in 1871, has long been considered the best maker of macarons. However, David Lebovitz, our favorite food blogger, thinks that Pierre Herme gives Laduree a run for its money. Pierre Herme was founded in 1998, the same year Eldest Daughter was born.

Eldest Daughter was up for a comparison.

As it turns out, both Laduree and Pierre Herme have London outposts. We visited both shops there and Eldest Daughter liked Pierre Herme much more. It was the same in Paris although we did bring back macarons from both plus another patisserie.

Her favorite flavors were rose and salted caramel from Pierre Herme and rose from Laduree. In Paris I dragged her into Fauchon, the luxury foods store that's been around since 1886 and that Dave and I like best, and forced her to try the macarons there. There she liked one that was mostly vanilla except for a tiny chocolate bar tucked into the filling. To be fair, she also sampled lemon, vanilla and several kinds of chocolate.

Although you can buy macarons individually, she mostly bought them in boxes of seven as the boxes are works of art in and of themselves. I love how she shot pictures of them all.

We had a blast exploring pastry shops in Paris as it was also the week prior to Easter and beautiful sculpted chocolates were in every window and display case.

In the Beginning

Eldest Daughter and I headed to London and Paris for Spring Break this year. My close friend and her family moved to London and I both missed her terribly and had also not been to London in 19 years.

In all seriousness, the best parts of this trip were the little moments: the observations Eldest Daughter and I had while seeing the cities through a different viewfinder, really catching up with my friend and her husband while walking their dog, seeing how happy their son is at university, the tulips in bloom. Their home is in Kensington, and while in the middle of it all, was far enough off of Tourist Central to recover from the frenzy of seeing Westminster Abby, the Tower of London, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace and the London Eye.

While Eldest Daughter slept in the first day, my friend and I took a tour of the five West London Sunday markets. Ruth, our Context Travel docent (I swear by Context Travel!), told us how the city grew and changed in this area, first with the arrival of the Hugonots then the Jews, thus explaining the proliferation of markets on Sundays. I wish we'd had more time at Spidalfield's Market and at the Columbia Road Flower Market. Her son, Eldest Daughter and the husband (who is also my friend) met us for lunch at the Sunday Up Market off of Brick Lane where I ate the best fish and chips ever made and they ate Ethiopian and Venezualan food. The son gave us a tour of his school.

Not far from there is Shoreditch and Boxpark, a funky area with live music and stores in shipping containers. That was fun, visually interesting. Eldest Daughter bought a gorgeous sundress. We then went to the flagship Top Shop store on Oxford Circus. Top Shop = Nordstrom Brass Plum. After helping the economy there we did the same at Miss Selfridge's. Bonus points to the husband for shopping with us. And for finding Pierre Herme, which I'll cover in another post.

Eldest Daughter and I explored Knightsbridge and Chelsea, went to the theatre (she chose Mamma Mia, which was well done except for the woman who played Donna singing off key half of the time), ate lunch in restaurants every day, and took in the sights at a leisurely pace. We found the house where The Parent Trap was filmed. We had tea at The Orangerie at Kensington Palace, the same palace where Kate, George and Will make their home.

We climbed the London Bridge and saw the exhibits there then walked along the Thames past Shakespeare's Globe Theatre and crossed back on the Millenium footbridge at the Tate Modern. We toured Westminster Abbey, built in 1245 and seemingly not given a thorough cleaning since, filled with so much history that we stayed far longer than we had planned. We saw the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. 

On our last night there we went for a drink at Oblix, on the 33rd floor of The Shard, a Renzo Piano-designed building in the London Bridge District and which has views city-wide. And then I cried myself to sleep knowing I wouldn't see our friends again until summer, when they visit the US.

Great visit. Too short.

The smile says it all.

I'm not supposed to blog about Paris. She tells me that it violates her privacy and makes her uncomfortable, too. However, today's milestone is too good to keep to myself.

Here's your hint. My friend Sharon Cohen posted this to my Facebook Page: Welcome to the New Driver's Parent Club. Valium is to the left. Martinis are to the right. The sound booth for screaming at insurance costs is straight ahead.

Yes, that day is here. She got her driver's license. I knew she would pass on the first try, just like I knew I wouldn't. She is a good driver. (For the record, my 16th birthday was the day we moved into our Anchorage house. My father and I pulled the five-speed out of the shipping container and I took the test in that, a car I had not driven in three months, on the ice covered roads of an Anchorage winter day.)

The proud mother in me is jumping up and down in happiness for her, and for our new freedom. The scared mother in me knows what's to come: worrying about her driving in the rain, worrying about her navigating the turkeys that linger on the roadside every fall or the bikers that speed out of Diablo, through the stop sign.

Dave deserves all the credit for helping her reaching this milestone. He spent hundreds of hours with her behind the wheel of the car.

Be safe, sweetheart. Be safe.

My firstborn is 16 today.

Random Thoughts:

• How could this be? Wasn't she just born like yesterday?!
• Can we take back teaching her to drive?
• I hope her feet grow one more half size so we can share shoes.
• Can we turn back the clock?
• Will we ever be able to see the floor of her room again? Or the bathroom counter? I picked out that carpet and tile, you know?
• I want to wear her Free People clothes. Will I ever fit in them?
• Is Dave as freaked out about this 16 thing as I am?
• This makes me feel old. Does it make my parents feel really old?
• How did my sister-in-law deal with this when her daughters turned 16?
• Seriously, how do we turn back the clock?
• Alternatively, can I lock her up in her room and throw away the key until she's 18? Or 21?
• Why does she need so many clothes?
• How much of my hair has turned gray in the last 16 years?
• Will we kill each other on the trip we're taking together Spring Break?
• I must research arranged marriages.
• Should I bring her a Tuxedo Hot Chocolate or a Vanilla Bean Frappuccino between classes?
• Thank g/d she is not into the same things I was at her age.
• This is a big day, a big deal. I'm so proud of her and happy she's my daughter.

Happy birthday sweet girl.

The University of Washington

Often I look at Eldest Daughter and am shocked at what I see. She is so together, so ambitious and focused at this age. Add to that long brown hair, long legs and ridiculously long eyelashes that she lengthens with mascara. Is this child even mine?!

We experienced our first college tour together Monday at the University of Washington. It was cold and foggy, unlike the perfect, sunny day prior when we played tourist.

I didn’t take any college tours before I went off into the Wild, Wild (mid) West. Did they even do official college tours back then?! I remember visiting a friend at UCLA and another at Cal. And that was it. This child will visit many schools on her journey to pick one.

Our Beyonce-look-alike tour guide could simultaneously speak, smile with all of her face and gesticulate broadly with her hands. She was a perfect promotional vehicle for the school – all sweetness and light. We walked through the quad, the library, the computer science building, the union. We learned about the 800 student run organizations (aka clubs) and that California provides the second highest number of students to UW after the state of Washington. We learned that the average undergrad receives their degree in 4.1 years (what does that .1 mean anyway?!) and that 70% of freshman live on campus.

It was surprising to me how much the tour was a sales job. But then again I had nothing to compare it with. I worked very hard to keep my mouth shut during the tour so as not to influence Eldest Daughter's observations. Eldest Daughter and I both loved how the UW is a community within the large Seattle community. She mentioned it first. Remember, my mouth was clamped tightly shut. The setting is spectacular – on the lake with views of the ocean and Mt. Rainier and the Olympic Range. Although the school is large, 28,000 undergrads, the campus is fairly compact and the buildings were visually interesting. It’s a pretty campus. Eldest Daughter kept commenting on that.

This makes me wonder how much the physical appearance of a school influences its student appeal. I never gave it any thought. Madison, my UW, had a lot of beautiful old, historic buildings. In fact, I had classes in one that was built in 1851. Bascom Hall, the building most people associate with the school, was built in 1910. I never appreciated it although I did think the campus scenic with its location on the isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona.

One more down. TBD how many more to go.

Sleepy in Seattle

More like EXHAUSTED in Seattle as I write this.

Paris and I flew in this morning and made the most of a sunny winter day in the Pacific Northwest.

I have to say, an iPhone and map app make driving in an unfamiliar city so much easier than the good 'ole days of reading the map they hand you at the rental car counter. Add to it an eager co-pilot and it's about as unstressful as it gets.

It's been 15 years since I've been to Seattle. It's still beautiful. The water. The boats. The mountains. The skyline. We started off at Pike Place Market and satisfied someone's quest to find the original Starbucks. From there we went into the market proper and sat down to a late lunch with a view far and west. After lunch we explored more of the market and saw the fishmongers throwing purchased fish prior to packaging it.

Next on our list was the observation deck at the top of the Space Needle, built for in 1962 for the World's Fair. I'd forgotten that the Chihuly Garden is in Seattle and fortunately for me, it's adjacent to the Space Needle at Seattle Center. That's worth a post all by itself. I think this picture is my favorite from today. Paris and I are reflected in the glass along with the Space Needle.

Seattle seems to have a big commitment to art in public spaces. One of the most interesting things we saw were five solar powered flowers named Sonic Bloom at the Seattle Center. The 40' tall flowers absorb the sun's energy during the day then use it at night to light up and sing. 

The original Nordstrom was our final stop and now we're in our hotel room eating takeout from Maggiano's. I have meetings tomorrow morning and then we have a tour of UW. Crazy! And by crazy I mean both the pace of this quick trip following last night's dance competition and that Paris is interested in going to school here.

Bedtime.

The glamorous life.

I recently read an article in the New York Times which described Facebook as often providing its members with the sensation of feeling a little left out when their friends post from that party they weren't invited to or from someone's last trip to an exotic locale. In this same article Instagram was described as a vehicle for unadulterated voyeurism because it is almost entirely a photo site with a built-in ability, via the retro-style filters, to idealize every moment, thus encouraging users to create art-directed magazine layouts of their lives.

Just in case you were wondering, my life isn't like that.

Here's an example. One of the things I do for my current client is host and moderate webinars. Last week's webinar featured a speaker nine hours ahead of me. This presentation, which had more than 200 attendees, was scheduled to start at 7am Pacific Time. I decided to forgo the 4:30am wakeup call, get two additional hours of sleep, do my duties from the house in my snowman print pajamas, and then doll up and drive the 50 miles to work. The only problem was that the internet was down in our whole neighborhood at 6:30am, which I only learned by running around the neighborhood in those aforementioned PJs pounding on the doors of all neighbors with lights on begging for a live internet connection. Glamorous, huh?

Today was Liberty's Ballet Tea Demo. It's a short performance at the end of her ballet class. I popped this picture of the little ballerinas doing a frog stretch. Why do they do frog stretches in ballet, anyway? Liberty dislikes ballet but takes the class because it's required for dance team. After seeing the demo today I honestly believe that teaching ballet is the most boring job on the planet.

The last time I went to one of these demos was when Paris took ballet at this studio. We skipped this event during her last competitive season because she was upset that it was all Christmas music. I was good with that since it was only a performance for the families, not a competition. Oh no. I got a less-than-friendly call from the studio owner reminding me that we were not the only Jewish family who took ballet. Again, so glamorous.

Tori did something quite glamorous last weekend if you're the Sporty Spice type. She took a lacrosse clinic with the Cal Women's Lacrosse team at Memorial Stadium. Go Bears.

Rock City

We live just off the road that leads into Mt. Diablo State Park. One of my parenting fails is spending time with The Pinks in the park. It's practically in our back yard and people come from all over the Bay Area to visit it. We mostly ignore it except when there's a bike race or fire.

A few weeks ago the youngest Pinks had minimum days and a friend and I piled the kids into the car and drove up the hill to Rock City. She, of course, had been several times and knew the drill.

We ate a picnic lunch then hit the rocks. The kids scrambled around like goats. My friend and I were a little slower. The next day I was very sore. Although I've been running, the contortions my body did to climb those rocks did a number on me.

I had hoped to see the burn area from the Morgan fire but we weren't close enough. I guess that's a good thing.

This expedition made me wish we'd been up there with the kids before.

I am not related to you.

We had the strangest conversation with Tori a while back. She thought she was only related to Dave, and not to me. Here's her reasoning:

1. I like to stay up late, like Daddy.
2. I am good at sports, like Daddy.
3. I am tenacious, like Daddy.
4. I am outgoing, like Daddy.
5. I am good at math, like Daddy.
6. I'm tall, like Daddy.
7. I snore, like Daddy.

I love the way this kid's mind works. I love having a mini-Dave daughter.

Ten Years

Our family has officially graduated from elementary school. We spent ten years there watching our children grow, learn and occasionally be beaten down. Our kids learned a lot. So did Dave and I.

I will miss

• The sounds of laughter on the playground
• Performances like Geology Rocks and Rumpus in the Rainforest
• Amazing teachers: Marc Trapani, Melanie Carbrey, Brenda Aepli, Lori Ransdell
• Gold Rush Day and The Old Schoolhouse field trip
• The Halloween Parade
• Breakfast Book Club
• Lunch on the Lawn
• The elaborate, over-the-top Teacher Appreciation celebrations we could do in the early years
• Volunteering

I will not miss

• The parents who disregard the carpool pickup line
• The revolving door on the principal's office (three in ten years)
• Recorders and recorder concerts
• Questionable cafeteria food
• The cold water in the bathrooms when the taps say there is both hot and cold

I'm not sure how our children can be so old. Probably my parents ask themselves the same thing.

There's a new sheriff in town.

And it's Paris.

The good thing is that she's completed Driver's Ed.The bad thing is that she knows the rules of the road and she can quote them every time I deviate from them. For example, your turn indicator has to be on for a full five seconds before you change lanes or turn. Heck, sometimes I don't decide to change lanes or turn that far in advance! I now know, during city driving, how many blocks ahead I should look for obstacles.

I have decided to make this into a game. Every time she catches me doing something wrong and can show me the place in the California Driver's Handbook that cites it, she earns a quarter. It's a win all around -- I get a refresher course in the rules of the road and she will have that book memorized by August, when she can test for her permit. She earned a whopping $.75 this weekend for the 3 hours we spent driving to Sonoma and back. At one point I drove over the speed limit on purpose. It was a two-lane road and eight cars were in line behind me. What would you have done?

File this one under adventures in parenting.

S'mores for Sale

The Pinks are not Girl Scouts so they don't sell Girl Scout Cookies. They don't sell magazine subscriptions. Nor wrapping paper or frozen cookie dough to benefit the school. They don't set up lemonade stands when I'm on duty.

I'm uncomfortable with them selling things. I'm happy to buy from your child when he or she asks but I don't want my kids selling things to people who may feel obligated to buy.

That all being said, I did let them sell s'mores at Tahoe. We figured out how much the supplies cost and then deducted them from the amount they took in. We discussed pricing options and how they would affect their profits. One for $3? Two for $5? One for $5 on Christmas Eve after the Squaw Valley Torchlight Parade? Into a red-ribbon-tied cellophane bag went two marshmallows, one square of Ghirardelli chocolate and one graham cracker. Once someone bought a package they used our marshmallow skewers to make the gooey treat. One thing we did not consider: marshmallows freeze and become hard to attach to a skewer when it's very cold outside.

As we thought might be the case, The Pinks provided a valuable offering and were met with enthusiastic buyers. There are several fire pits at Squaw and we discussed why it would not be appropriate to sell s'mores near the ice cream shop, the crepe shop and the roasted corn truck. The Pinks seemed to understand that we want to support the local economy, not take from it.

I'm glad we did this. Tori is tenacious. And I'll never see those buyers again, anyway.

It's started.

Paris came home from middle school and handed me a school-generated form letter. It offered us the opportunity to allow her to read the required high school Health class text this fall then test out of the course, which she'd otherwise have to take a year from now, as a freshman.

This threw me.

Why is this an option? What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so? And where was the contact information on said form letter so I could ask these questions?

I tracked down the course syllabus and learned that the curriculum includes discussion of STDs, mental health, prescription and street drugs, eating disorders, alcohol's impact on the central nervous system and those movies that show how black your lungs become after using tobacco. Bring it on. I want her to sit through an extended explanation of this instead of glossing over it on her own.

It took me a while to track someone down at the school district to answer my other questions.

Apparently testing out of the course is an option because some parents don't want their teens exposed to all of the content. And by self-study, one can skip sections and still pass. Great. Freedom of choice and all that.

The very nice lady at the district office told me that there is no academic advantage to testing out of the class; the only other option a student has during that period is be a teaching assistant. The easy decision became that much easier.

The thing is, I didn't plan on thinking about high school course options until it was closer to high school. And to do this, one needs to know what it takes to get into college. My blood pressure started rising.

This brings me to the next task I didn't plan on doing so soon: going to some college web sites and seeing exactly what the requirements were. Ugh. I got through the UC System and NYU before I felt a panic attack coming on.

I went into my daughter's room late that night and watched her sleep. It's when she looks youngest, the most innocent. I'm hanging on to that.

Living the Dream

Goals are easier to achieve if are frequently reminded of them. I think I need to write down my goals, more concrete things than live happily ever after with Dave and The Pinks, leave the world a better place, and learn to make dinner so that everything is done at the same time.

I had lunch with a friend last week and in four years her husband will retire. In five years their youngest will be out of the house. She has a clear plan for the next phase of their life. I like that.

My brother's college buddy lives in Truckee. He worked hard to live his dream. He convinced his ultra-conservative San Francisco employer to let him work from Tahoe. He married a woman who supported his dream, perhaps even shared it. They have a child together (named Sierra, duh!) and ski a lot. And he often posts beautiful pictures on Facebook, ones that make me smile ear-to-ear on the most frenetic of work days.

One of our Tahoe neighbors has a son who wants to be on the US Ski Team. Although they have a house in the Bay, they live at Squaw and the 16-year-old trains and skis year-round. The son is living his dream.

I feel sorry for my children. They have no concept of how good they have it, how much they are living the dream. If not their dream, many people's dream. From the top of the Shirley Lake chair, on the most glorious of Spring days and overlooking the lake, I gave this considerable thought. Our children have coordinating, brand-name ski clothes. They ski on good equipment with sharp edges. When they forget their gators we pull out our credit cards and buy them new ones instead of letting them suffer for their oversight. For lunch at the mid mountain restaurant they eat overpriced, over-salted hot dogs and drink not-very-hot chocolate made from water and powdered mix.

If these kids are to continue to ski, I need to give them some tough love. They need to know that skiing is not always ski in, ski out. Here's my plan:

1. They will be woken at 4am on Saturday mornings and have their sleepy bodies thrown in the car for day trips to Sugar Bowl.

2. They will carry their own gear from the far reaches of the parking lot to the lifts!

3. They will know the fear of driving to the mountains in a rear-wheel drive station wagon.

4. They will do this drive without a DVD player, iPod or DS.

5. They will eat McDonald's pancakes for breakfast in Auburn.

6. They will put on their boots while sitting in the back of that station wagon.

7. They will take them off in that now-really-cold-station-wagon at the end of the day, without a warm, cushy sofa to kick back on and someone to hand them a bottle of water.

I predict this will aid their character development significantly.