Bread and Bread

Putting Dash to bed has been an ordeal lately, an up-to-two-hour affair involving multiple requests for milk (yes, after he's brushed his teeth; I judge me too!) and kisses from whichever mom isn't in the room. He wants "one more book." He wants to sleep on the floor. No, wait, he wants to sleep on the bed. No, the floor. He wants "that pillow." No " my pillow," which might look like that pillow, but is in fact inexplicably different. He wants "Dinosaur Boom Boom," a game I used to play when he was a baby, which has recently enjoyed a revival. He lays down and I hold his legs and chant "Boom boom, boom boom, dinosaur walking, dinosaur walking. Swish swish, swish swish, dinosaur dancing, dinosaur dancing." Etc. Recently he added a part where he kind of kicks me in the face. Good times. He has successfully sleep-trained me. He is, as you may have gleaned based on the behaviors described above, 2.75 years old. My emotions s...

1. turnips and sugar skulls The other day I caught a lighthearted BBC News Hour story on Halloween. Two reporters with crisp English accents discussed the fact that Halloween had been exported from Ireland and Scotland to North America, altered, then re-exported back to the British Isles. “Pumpkins are a new world vegetable,” one of the reporters said. “If we wanted to truly celebrate a local holiday, we’d be carving turnips.” “Turnips!” the other exclaimed. “Well, that sounds quite mushy.” Turnip spice latte, anyone? Around the same time, I read a Huffington Post piece titled “Dia de los Muertos is Not Halloween,” which included some good (and sadly not obvious?) points like: Dia de los Muertos is about “paying respects to late loved ones, honoring their lives, and acknowledging the fragility of life,” not just painting your face like a calavera and partying. Fair enough. But one (white) activist in my Facebook feed posted a long admonishment to her fellow non-...

When Kristi Nakamura Johnson and I were college roommates, we shared a love of gay men and musicals. Then she started dating straight guys, and I went on to see Rent fourteen more times. But no matter the different paths our lives take, I'll always adore Kristi, who now lives in Sacramento, because she's one of the sweetest, most open-minded people I know. She also knows how to make a back-up Halloween costume in a pinch. Kristi and her biker girl. 8am - Made C a grilled ham and cheese sandwich for breakfast. Nursed L while drinking coffee, eating a granola bar and checking email and Facebook. 9am - Transformed C and L into Peter Rabbit and Snow White for a Halloween party at the park. 10am - Changed a crying Peter Rabbit into a Train Engineer after his rabbit pants had a potty accident. Had my husband call the pediatrician after noticing Snow White's ear draining while she nursed. The original Peter avoided potty accidents by not wearing pants. 11am ...

I love our neighbor Jennifer . When I complained to her the other day that we never get any trick-or-treaters, she promised to come by with her daughter. I take all commitments very seriously, so I went into work early, left early and sat in traffic thinking, There are children who need me! I got home and threw our light-up Snoopy “Happy Halloween” thing in the window just in time to see Jennifer and Lucia coming up the sidewalk (or, more likely, they came over when they saw our light was on). Lucia was a baby carrot, although she’d gotten fussy when Jennifer tried to put her green frondy hat on, so basically she was wearing a big orange bib. “It’s okay,” I assured her. “Some carrots don’t have tops.” But I don’t think Lucia, who is two, was all that self-conscious about it. “Kitty,” she said. “Do you think we could see your cats?” Jennifer asked. I invited them in, the cats having been sequestered for the night to protect them from possible tricksters. Seriously, my aunt had this ador...

I had a dream that I was putting together an Amelia Earhart costume for Halloween, which would have been awesome, but last night was also PEN’s kickoff reading for Night in the City , a month-long celebration of L.A. literary and film noir. So instead, AK donned a fedora and I Googled pin curls. I think I looked more 1940s with the placeholder scarf than with the curls, but AK pointed out that the look I was going for was femme fatale, not war bride. Sort of Veronica Lake-ish ? Here’s Veronica Lake making a public service announcement to all the Rosie the Riveters out there, telling them not to wear their hair like hers. We hit the reading at the Last Bookstore and although the lit crawl that was to follow sort of disintegrated, we met up with Pedro, Stephen, Christine and Jody (below, as cheerleader) at Spring Street Bar. It turned out to be the perfect vantage point for watching costumed revelers. Some club nearby was having a big thing, and the stream of “sexy ...