6AM..Monday, April 29th

It is a gorgeous morning, clear blue skies in every direction. I can watch the sun come up through the reflection off the houses across from us in the hills. It is bright and inspiring. On Sunday late afternoon, G and I went down to the LA River just below Elysian Park. Elysian Valley is the name of a neighborhood I have just discovered through my pottery class. The middle of the river is overgrown with vegetation and serves as a mid-city bird sanctuary.

There were a ton of people biking or walking along the river, as well as an overcrowded reception at the art studio adjacent to the Eads Street entrance.

The 5th Grader art, a collection I like to call "Impresssions of the LA River", was fantastic.

We barely had time to eat dinner before we were due at Spaceland for a benefit concert to support the Silver Lake school. Mike Randle performed first. He did a short acoustic set. His songs are beautiful and funny, a perfect combination. He played some music off his solo albums and a couple Baby Lemonade songs. Seems to me that they were mostly about different places to eat in Hollywood. I wonder how the baby would react to Pink's? I'll have to give it a whirl sometime soon, but there is always such a terrible line. Anytime of day or night there is a line ten people deep at that little hot dog stand. I have a secret dream of opening a Pink's on our side of town.

Oh how the mind wanders.

We stayed for Trinket, but my sober endurance could not last for Jon Brion or The Sugarplastics. It had been a long weekend. But Trinket, Trinket was fabulous. A mostly girl band with Kurt representing the men on drums. Their songs are intelligent, witty and catchy. Heather smelled like booze after the set, but maybe I'm just jealous. I totally want to be her when I grow up. She plays a mean bass, she can sing and she is a mom, too!

I think they are the only rock band with a song about breastfeeding! Not sure what it was called. Let's just call it "Feed Me Mommy!" The guitars were great, like a screeching baby.

Saturday night after a nice long dinner with family and friends I saw these dogs going for a joy ride...

Nothing in this town ever surprises me, but some things make me laugh out loud.

I'm starting to realize that I am just a vessel. I'm just an incubator for this amazing little human that we all get to meet in the Fall. From the moment I was impregnated by the notorious GJV, I simply became the vehicle in which the tiny saint is riding. After s/he is born I will continue to be a mode of transport as well as a meal ticket. This is just the beginning, the free ride starts here and now and possibly never ends. Today I'm feeling more like a brokedown bus than a fancy limo, but that's just today.

It was a very strange day... I woke up from a dream in which I was flying all over the SF Bay Area. For some reason I had to use a magic towel to fly. I could only fly by stretching it over my head and catching the wind just so. My flight patterns followed the major NorCal freeways and bridges that span the Bay itself. I flew above the Bay Bridge, the San Mateo and then back across the smelly old Dumbarton Bridge that we used to take to get to our family dentist in Fremont. I kept wanting to go farther wondering if my magic towel would take me to LA. But I woke up before I could.

My sister was always along for the ride in the station wagon. She hated that dentist because he messed up her teeth. I hated him for the cherry flavored rinse that has given me a permanent dislike of any cherry flavored candy. She woke me up from my crazy dreams, first thing this morning with her daily call...

she suggested that we go for a hike. It started pouring rain as I waited for her to get across town. By the time we left the sun was coming out as if it never happened. We explored Bronson Canyon for a while.

We stood above this exact spot and debated if it would be a good place to skate.

It looks like I was right and it appears to be especially inviting at sunset. We never found the Bat Cave, but that just leaves us something for next time. It's the perfect place to bring your dog, only I would not know what to do with one the rest of the time...

We were actually heading for Runyon Canyon. Perhaps we turned too soon, we get to talking and often forget to pay attention. We sat in the parking lot for a while and discussed the terrible voices of the KPFK "Hosts". Especially Lisa Garr from The Aware Show. Her voice is like nails on a chalkboard and her silly show is something straight out of a SNL sketch, only not as funny.

To leave you on a more positive note, Ms. K and I checked out Y Tu Mama Tambien at the LF3. Wow! On the surface, a simple movie with lots of sex with two young, hot Mexican boys... yummm... however, it truly succeeds where most Hollywood teen movies fails. The innocence of the young boys is never lost, instead it is constantly reinforced by their bravado and desperate machisimo. The characters remain real and beautiful in their awkwardness and palpable vulnerability. It was a simple movie, easy to follow and lovely to watch. The scenes in the small towns will bring smiles to anyone who has ever wandered down a dirt road in Mexico. I give it a very warm recommendation. And with that... hasta manana!

Ms. K and I spent Saturday in Santa Barbara. We left early and rambled around Red Rock. It was a perfectly clear, warm day. We picknicked by the water's edge and almost made it to the SB Reservoir, only we had a date with a winery.

It took us about thirty minutes, in Ms. K's amazing jalopy, to get to the Santa Ynez Valley. My Aussie friend Martin Brown has recently opened a winery with his brother Michael. I met Martin through one of my oldest and dearest friends, Kristina. She came down from the Bay Area to work at the winery for the weekend.

I know what you might be thinking. Pregnant woman? Wine tasting? I actually tried most of their wines and simply spit it out after each sample. Apparently this is the appropriate way to taste. (Although I have not found any hard evidence to support it.) It seemed to help me critique the wine, as I could concentrate on the flavor and my palette remained sharp.

The M. Brown label Shiraz (1998) was one of the best, we all agreed. I cannot wait to serve it to friends. Martin has offered to provide wine for G's art opening!

On our way back into SB we swung through Cold Springs Tavern. Cold Springs is an old stone shack on the edge of the Los Padres Forest. It is a favorite of both bikers and college kids. An acoustic set was going and we felt right at home.

We finished the night with dinner at Roy. I highly recommend Roy, in my opinion it is one of the best restaurants in SB. All entrees come with soup, salad, vegetables and potato latkes. Ms. K is one of those excellent travel comrades. She is game for anything and you never have to worry if she is having a good time. Over dinner she got into an intense discussion with a Professor of Plant Biology.

My fearless Attorney and part-time Girl Scout Guide!

I've been meaning to get to this. What better time than just after a Dodger game when we beat the Padres 5-2. It was a good one. I digress as I attempt to digest the mix of Dodger dog and nachos through my convoluted, and confused system...

Wanda Coleman, one of my favorite tres L.A. writers, pans Maya Angelou's latest (and perhaps last?) installment of her semi-autobiographical series. The new book is titled A Song Flung up to Heaven and in the book review section of the LAT, the article is titled "Coulda Shoulda Woulda". Coleman, who is a fantastic writer, slings some mud on Angelou and criticizes her for getting names and dates confused. Just for the record, Maya Angelou is seventy four years old! I've read the whole series, minus the most recent installment and for some reason Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas stands out for me because of the excellent title. They are all tremendous. It's been quite a while since I read the books, but I do recall in All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes Angelou claims to have a jacked up Billie Holiday show up at her apartment.

Coleman's review simply made me want to read the damn book for myself. It seemed to me that Coleman did not want to like this book, does not like autobiographies or simply wants Angelou to step down as the reigning queen of African-american women writers. I am very doubtful she wrote the book out of greed as Coleman insinuates, "It might be assumed that Angelou would take her honorary doctoral degrees, make a graceful bow and retire from the literary round table with celebrated reputation intact. Alas, a dignified departure is not the trait of the greedy when one more traipse to the trough is offered."

Smack!

I love autobiographies and biographies in general. Authorized or unauthorized, I go crazy for them like bad t.v. or any other sickly indulgence. Now, I don't make them the staple of my diet or anything. Neither do I confuse them with primary documents nor trust one scrumptious and often ludicrous word.

The most ridiculous and memorable autobio that I love to recommend is Cookie Mueller's Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black. Mueller, among a million other things, worked with John Waters and also wrote a column for the East Village Eye.

Mueller is everywhere at the tipping point in counter-cultural history and on the cutting edge of every great movement. She is in SF during the Haight/Ashbury days where she almost becomes part of the Manson family while she sleeps with Jimi Hendrix on her way to see the Dead in Golden Gate Park. I think that is just the first chapter. A veritable Forrest Gump sitting beside the notorious Divine. Mueller manages to burn down a friend's house, save people from ODing and raise a child while her crazy life swirls around them. A fantastic ride, her writing is hilarious and engaging. You almost believe her.

So, I'll get back to you after I read Angelou's latest. I think something flew up Wanda Coleman's butt which is too bad because I was just getting to know her.

I just finished Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard. I hate finishing books, especially good books. This is a great one, hilarious and absurd like all crime fiction should be. I almost did not give Leonard a second chance. I chose Out of Sight (pre-J. Lo/ Clooney vehicle) to read first and was completely turned off. My love for him was redeemed by Get Shorty and Cuba Libre along with his attempts at short story Westerns. Mr. Layne and I spent a few emails joking about Leonard's Rules of Writing and the folly of following any such advice.

I recently saw him on a late night show and was inspired by the fact that he writes about one page a day. To all the aspiring novelists out there, this is the kind of information we need. One page a day is not too much to ask...unless of course you are an unemployed pregnant woman who's brain processes are as viscous as oatmeal mush.

Acid reflux syndrome! It has barely been a week since I stopped puking and feeling nauseous all the time... I was gardening this morning and whammo! Out comes the raisin bran I had so dutifully eaten for breakfast. I am really starting to wonder if I will ever feel “normal” again. Before that lousy bastard of a husband knocked me up, I had been to the doctor a total of three times in close to ten years. Now I’m setting a new record. The people at the (usually busy) clinic greet me by first name!

OK, so I'm not actually going in or even bothering my doctor about this latest nuisance... just thought I'd bitch about it. Thanks for your support...

Not everyone wants to have children. Not every woman wants to go through the ordeal of childbirth. In my weak moments thinking about it sets me into a little panic. Were the writers of these articles not so hell bent on scaring women into motherhood, I think they could find a large percentage of older women who had opted not to bear children or might even be content with adoption.

I'm only linking to this NY Times article because it forced me to read the Time article.

The question begging to be asked and answered is only addressed with these unspecific statistics: "Then she discovered, in interview after interview with college deans and opera divas, a cross section of successful women in various fields, that none of them had children-and few of them had chosen to be childless." Wow, not one of the ten(?) women she interviewed had children and 6(?) of them had at one time wanted children. I want more cold hard facts before I start shedding any tears.

For some reason I do not see this as a national tragedy or even headline news. Are we running out of children? Are we doing such a great job raising and educating the ones we already have? Is childbirth some political right that the Founding Fathers forgot to include? Perhaps it is covered in "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These "successful" women have pursued their dreams and now they want more. The highly expensive path of using fertility drugs, in-vitro fertilization, etcetera etcetera makes this a very class specific issue. In the greater scheme of world events and human rights, where does it say that is sucks to be rich and powerful if you can't go through labor?

The online Time article even has this terrible pop-up photo essay called "Moms Before 30" highlighting the amazing sacrifices these young mothers had to make. This is next to another link with graphics on "Infertility Treatments" as opposed to "Ferility Treatments." This article has one hell of an agenda, like maybe...hurry up and procreate or you'll die with regret!

I know one thing for sure, being pregnant is rough on your body and I'm pretty sure that raising children is no picnic. If your body cannot get pregnant after the age of fifty it just might be too late. Is this a national tragedy? I think not.

I just woke up and realized it might be too late for me to become a world champion figure-skater, is there anything the doctors can do about it?

I'm so goddamned tired. tired and blissed out. i started doing yoga again this morning. it was a very nice high after missing a month due to doc's orders. Then i chilled with one week old Sydney. New babies smell very delicious. man if you want to get off that crack cocaine just hold a nice, new baby for a couple hours (be sure to give her back or you might start up again once the hollering starts.)

I never used to get tired like this, i can fall asleep almost anywhere, anytime...

and the dreams are outrageous. the other night I dreamt that G and I were on one of the top floors of the WTC. We were crazed protesters or environmentalists of some kind seeking demands from the goverment. They slipped a note under the door promising to meet all of our demands including the helicopter on the roof, but before we could start cheering a bomb suddenly went off and we fell crashing hundreds of floors down to the streets of NY. We just stood there with glass shards all around us and life in NY just went on normally. I saw an ice cream vendor across the street and begged G to go with me to get a scoop. We stood in line and when it was our turn the vendor could not see or hear us. It was then I realized we were dead. So we debated about stealing it from the drug store. We did, so i guess i really wanted it.

So that whole theory that if you die in your dream you die in real life ain't true so much...

Just called G and made fun of him for being an hour late to work. We completely missed the whole daylight savings thing due to a crazed, busy night.

First Ms. K had a christopher guest fest at her famous Hollywood Hills Mansion. which entailed three guest movies: "Waiting For Guffman", "Princess Bride" and "Spinal Tap" or "Best in Show". I'm not sure what they watched because we had to leave after "Guffman". A really nice group of people and lots of laughter made it hard to go.

We made a brief but thorough appearance at the Echo Park gallery openings, which include Fototek, Ojala, et al. It was a mob scene, especially at the middle gallery where a cop was having a show of his paintings. It was sponsored by Krispy Kreme.

The baby and I split a donut.

There were some nice photographs of NYC in the 40s and 50s. Nothing blew my mind but it was too crowded to relax and give anything a proper viewing.

We got home and I called my sister to let her know that I would meet her at the Evidence Room.

The place was packed. The show started right away. We crammed ourselves into the corner on a cushioned bench. the late night serial called "the comic strip" was being performed in the front room, not the main theater. the evidence room is my favorite theater space in l.a. it is fantastic. It is a simply huge, cement-floored warehouse but it feels so alive.

"The Comic Strip" did not disappoint. the actors were superb. There were a few scenes I could have lived without, but two characters in particular made up for everything. Zepharis with his blondish wig and beret talked in a perfectly stilted, Christopher Walken dialect making everything that came out of his mouth hilarious. in the final scene you finally get to meet hilda. who they had been alluding to all through the night. I have to bring a camera next time because i'm afraid she is just a figment of my imagination. Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed her up, she was just that perfect. With her face painted perfectly white and her hair in a dark bob, she pounced on the stage like a teenage Bettie Davis. Her eyes were perfectly round, outlined in black and bugged out convulsively when she delivered her low, gutteral lines. They really saved some of the best lines for her. Her lips were done in red, of course, and exaggerated dramatically, or ridiculously, so i could not stop watching them move. I'm going back next week just to make sure she is real.

It feels like I am coming out of a haze. not so much a purpley haze, like the kind i came out of post college, but a fuzzy gray fog that had turned my brain to mush. At least when you are partying the contrasting moments of sobriety are so crystal clear your mind can focus and in those moments you can prcatically conquer the world. My first three months of pregnancy have been murder to my psyche, my imagination, oh yes and my breasts.

The things i love about my new life: not working, paying attention to the garden, talking to and seeing good friends instead of evil co-workers, Tivo , reading anything i want, seeing matinees, wacko dreams, and rarely (if ever) sitting in traffic.

The things i miss about my old life: coffee, tako maki, paychecks, sleeping on my stomach, sleeping on my back, staying up past 11pm... well i think it is best not to focus on the negatives. I am indeed giving it all up by choice and on strict orders from the prego-nazis.

Of late, one of the most inspiring things to happen is the birth of Sydney Claire Norstad. Amy Jo actually had her on the predicted due date over at Cedars Sinai. G and i got to hang out with them the next day. She is a lanky but little, brown-haired newborn and the parents are all beaming smiles. i feel pretty far away from all that, but she sure smelled sweet. Jo even says she is starting to 'forget' the whole, apparently treacherous, sixteen hours of labor.

So my mind seems to be coming back to me, either I am adjusting to the overload of estrogen/progestoren or maybe it's finally easing up.