Fab Xmas

Lachlan, Jake and Carina, Christmas Cousins
(pic at right)

Even though I feel like I could sleep for a million years, Christmas turned out fabulous. The kids had a great time and that's what counts. Speaking of counting, if I could count the number of times my son jumped up and down, dropped his jaw, drew in his breath, laughed, smiled, said thank you, ran up to me saying Mommy, Mommy! I'd be a rich woman and that means Christmas was a success. He was even shaking on Christmas morning he was so excited. In my half awake state, as he opened his stocking, I noticed he was shaking. At first I thought he was cold. Then I thought he'd contracted a nervous disease (don't us mothers always jump to the worst conclusion?) After careful checking I came to the conclusion he had ECE, Excessive Christmas Excitment. Which is not far from OCD, Obsessive Christmas Decorating, which my husband suffers from. Just drive past my house after dark.
At our old house, we lived at the end of a cul de sac where if a car drove down the street, we all noticed and looked out the window to see who it bloody was. Now, we live on a busy street, and literally thousands of people see the lights. Imagine the look on my husband's face when the light bulb went off over his head after realizing that fact. In fact, I think he bought this house because of it. We really need to go solar next year.
We had 18 people here for Christmas: my wonderful Aussie cousin Carolyn and her family fresh from New South Wales, my brother and his family (my favoritis family of all), my cousin Andrea, her partner Cathy, my aunt and uncle from Oregon and the five of us. What a clan! I even managed to seat everyone, together and not use paper. Except for the napkins. Gimme a break.
The menu consisted of roast and fried turkey, ham, Cathy's homemade tamales, roast potatoes, sauteed broc and beans, stuffing, gravy, beets, cran sauce, bread, high end appetizers, thanks to Aunty Jeane who rocks the appetizer table, ollalaberry pie, Aunty Jan's homemade pie, butter cookies I made for Santa, etc., etc. Everyone pitched in and it came out great.
Before dinner, everyone left me alone (wheeshew) and ran off to play ball at Walden Park. I listened to Harry Connick Jr., the Elf soundtrack and my perennial favorite, a Charlie Brown Christmas while I chopped, peeled, washed, opened the oven door, searched for the right tray, platter, counted silverware, freaked about table space and cooked. I didn't do my usual spaz out, I just relaxed. I think the food tastes better when the cook is relaxed.
After dinner, more present opening and the grown up gift exchange with lots of stealing. The big hit was the rolling cooler Jeane brought. I ended up with a beautiful signed silver trivet. You may not think a trivet is a score but the funny thing is before dinner I noticed my trivets for the first time in years. I was looking at them in disgust: they're 99 cent costplus straw trivets circa 1985 that looked like the cat tried to kill them and then smoke them. I thought, "I need new trivets!" Ask and ye shall receive?
Well, I got what I asked for this year. A big, fun, cozy, happy, family Christmas.
God bless us, everyone one of us!
P.S. My favorite gifts: my beach purse from Jake, my boots from my husband, the Snugglepot and Cuddlepie book from Carolyn, my teacher book from my daughter Monica, marbles from my sister in law Jeane (why do I love marbles?) and the Big Apple from the neighbors.

It's Scary How Much I Love Halloween

Ron's annual awesome pumpkin, 2007
(picture at right)

As I sadly remove the last of my black fingernail polish, I reflect on this year's Halloween. Since I first moved to the United States, Halloween symbolizes the deliciousness of all things dark and scary and the coming of fall. Australia doesn't really celebrate Halloween. I didn't celebrate Halloween until about the third grade. As many times as I have thought about moving back there (great standard of living, the beaches, family, the arts, the vacation comes first mentality) the thought of not having ghosties and goblins running around from jack-o-lantern lit house to house on October 31, really brings a cold shiver through my spine.
My seven year old son, dressed as an Army medic (the medic part was my influence, the M-16 joyfully his - I figure better he gets his army soldier phase out now, not at 18) ran around with his friends gathering hundreds of grams of sugar, even dollar bills and Hot Wheels. Some houses are so happy just to have trick or treaters, they really reward the kids. Seems Broadway Plaza is the place to be with it's safe, clean, well lit stores handing out treats. To me, that is NOT Halloween. Children must earn their treats by walking around their dark neighborhood, step up to the doorstep, ring the bell and hope that someone opens the door, preferably someone nice, with chocolate, not raisins.
Our house was decked in full Halloween regalia: orange icicle lights, pumpkins, candles, endless bats, spiders, skelteons and creeps. This year we started our graveyard. I have a feeling by time he hits junior high, the graveyard will rival anything from ILM.
This year my son demanded Daddy take him out so I got the job of candy dispenser. Every year the trick or treaters get more precious. Was it really that long ago that it was me, standing at the doors of stranger's houses, my pillow case held out anxiously awaiting the delicious reward for saying trick or treat, my costume either itching or half falling off or both? Yes, Jayne it was. A LONG time ago. But Halloween still stays timeless to me, like a favorite movie. So many things in life have lost their childhood magic, but for me, blessed Halloween comes every year and I never tire of it. Although Christmas still has magic too, it comes with so many more adult responsibilities and endless tasks. Halloween is simple: a costume, cool decorations and running around with your friends getting lotsa free candy. What could be better?
Halloween also speaks to the pagan part of me, it is one of the few historical rituals I participate in that celebrates life and nature. Since B.C., my ancestors celebrated Samhain or the like, to celebrate and acknowledge the coming of winter. Back then, when thirtysomething was not a time to reflect on your career and retirement account but a time to think about the end of your life, time was more precious than it is today. Life was more about survival and keeping your loved ones close, not accomplishments and accrual of posessions. Halloween was a time to stop and pay respect to the passing of time, the changing of the seasons, the marching on of time, the fact that we all too soon, pass on away from this earth.
I look out my window at the yellow and red falling leaves and chew on pomegranate seeds from my neighbors tree. This fall has been an endless shower of acorns and apples in my backyard. Is this a harbinger of a cold rainy winter? I hope so. All summer we have been outside and busy, playing and swimming, running and traveling, doing and going. I'm ready to go back inside, light more fires, read more books, play more board and card games, talk and listen to music, slow down a little.
Halloween is the day that always reminds me of all this, that time is my friend, not my enemy. That I am so blessed and lucky to be right where I am.

Happy Birthday Baby!

50 FUN Facts About Ron Lugo, Birthday Boy

1. On his honeymoon in Maui in 1997, Ron aced a HOLE IN ONE at the Kaanapali Golf Course. He’s on the boards, in brass for eternity.

2. Was a gymnast in school and can still do the splits.

3. Ron is the father of the 24^th and last grandchild of the Lugo family.

4. Ron is the 7^th child of eight.

5. Ron was born in Chicago, south side, baby.

6. Ron was a diver in school and can still do a back flip off the diving board.

7. His favorite bands are Led Zeppelin, James Brown, Jet, Oasis, etc., etc., etc.

8. His favorite movie is a tossup between The Terminator, Back to the Future and the Snapper.

9. His first job was putting together engines.

10. Played pickup hockey as a kid in Chicago and still plays a mean ice hockey.

11. Works on Carlos Santana’s Volvo.

12. Won the “Sexy Dance Contest” in Cabo San Lucas, July 2006.

13. Saved a man’s life with his hydraulic jack, who was pinned under a bobcat.

14. Shot a gopher with a pellet gun.

15. Studied ballet.

16. Dressed up as a woman on Halloween once and almost got a date. With a straight man.

17. Drank with a man in a kilt under the Harbor Bridge in Sydney, Australia.

18. Was the only guy on his bachelor party fishing trip that didn’t puke outside the Golden Gate.

19. One of his nicknames is McGyver. He can fix anything with almost nothing.

20. Makes the best BBQ chicken legs on the planet.

21. His fantasy job is a major league baseball player.

22. His favorite teams are the 49ers, Athletics, Warriors and any team Jake plays on.

23. Has been told he looks like Claude Van Dam, Troy Aikman (hates the Cowboys!) and Bill Clinton (they share the same birthday!)

24. Has a donor ACL in his right knee due to a basketball injury.

25. Swam with dolphins in Cancun.

26. Swam in the Phosphoresce Bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico. You must do this once in your life.

27. As a baby his nickname was Eisenhower.

28. Loves to dance.

29. Thinks fishing is God’s sport.

30. Knows the rules of the sport of cricket.

31. Can flip his eyelids inside out, guaranteed to make you sick.

32. Has no tattoos or piercings but lots of scars.

33. Was the only one of his “dogtown” friends in L.A. in the 70s that could do a skateboard hand stand.

34. Apprenticed as a carpenter with his Dad.

35. Was an altar boy at Ascension Episcopalian Church in Chicago.

36. Saved countless life and limb by convincing people to buy Volvos that previously drove little tin can imports.

37. Cried when his first son Jeff was born.

38. Cried when his twin girls were born. He held Monica first, then Amanda.

39. Cried when his second son was born and then said “NO MORE.”

40. Is an unbeatable Scrabble player.

41. Is a cat person.

42. Loves to play “Tin Man” on his guitar.

43. Is three-quarters Puerto Rican Spanish and one-quarter Irish.

44. Thinks in a previous life he was a WWII soldier.

45. Ron has played at the Olympic Club and if you have to ask….

46. Can do a “waterstart” on a windsurf board. His wife taught him.

47. Finally gave up snowboarding and is back on regular skis. He was almost a 50 year old snowboarder.

48. Loves camping of any kind: backpacking, car camping, pop-top camping, four wheel driving, tent camping, backyard camping.

49. His son Jake is a dual citizen between the U.S. and Austraila and if Ron lives there for more than a year, he will be, too.

50. Thanks for celebrating. Ron loves his family and friends more than anything else! Here's to five decades of Ron Lugo and five more!

I am an artist

I am an artist.

I always have been and I always will be. It's just taken me this bloody long to figure it out and actually do something about it.

When very little, when asked the omnipresent question, "what are you going to be when you grow up?" I gave anwers that raised many an adult eyebrow. My answers consisted of, what I thought at the time to be, very wise choices: mermaid (my very first choice) , treasure hunter, go-go dancer. With concern in their voice, the well-meaning adults (afterall, any adult who even wants to engage in conversation with a 7 year-old has got to have heart and soul) would reply, "hmm, I see, have you thought about a nurse or a teacher?" To me that sounded as ridiculous as my answers did to them. Life was about adventure, other worlds, music, games, and fun like any healthy kid should think. But, the question kept coming and the eyebrows kept raising and I kept on thinking I just might be a mermaid when I grew up.

Then, as a pre-adolescent, when the question was asked, I started to say, "I don't know." Because I didn't. I was old enough to know I couldn't be a mermaid anymore but not old enough to know who I was. Or frankly really care. All my options (which pretty much hadn't changed since I was seven) seemed surrealistic: a nurse? (no I couldn't even stand bloody dried band aids), a teacher? (no, what was I going to teach? honestly!). In the very early 70s, girls were just starting to realize that they could be some of the amazing grown ups that boys could be: astronauts, race car drivers, professional basketball players but just only.

The one thing I loved to do more than reading books or playing outside or watching tv or playing with my brothers and friends was drawing. I loved to draw. I wasn't particularly good, I didn't show any unnatural abilities, I just loved to draw. Then I branched out and learned macrame and candle making and I was hooked.

In the summer of 1972, while staying at our summer house in Shelter Island, in the back seat of our family station wagon, after a long day of collecting shells to adorn sand candles, I had the epiphany.
"I know what I want to be when I grow up! I'm going to live here year round and make macrame candle holders and sand candles and paintings of the beach and I'm going to sell them to the summer tourists and and be a beach comber the rest of the year." I really did say it in one sentence. My parents said, "that's nice love," not in a condescending way but in a reserved supportive way that a parent does when they have a rather over-imaginative child. I was off to the races.

Of course summer ended and I went back to school and falling leaves and snow and an increasing interest in friends, clothes and boys. But I kept drawing.

My mother bought me a nice new lemon yellow (my favorite color at the time) sweatshirt to wear to school on cool days. I was a fussy dresser, I wanted nothing scratchy, tight or that rode up, which pretty much meant all nice looking clothes. My mother desperately looked for ways to combat my terrible habit of going to school looking like a hobo. My poor mother, my adolescence turned me away from matching dresses with my dolly to jeans and sweatshirts. So, she thought at least if I was going to wear sweats they could be new and pretty colored.

So, I took the aforementioned sweatshirt, took my beloved box of markers, took my two best friends and closed my bedroom door. Minutes later I came out of the room, proudly showing off my latest work of art. My mother was crestfallen, but God bless her not angry. I'd managed to take the one thing I would wear that wasn't horrible and turn it into little girls graffiti. We drew flowers, peace signs, hearts, and words and phrases such as "I love D.C.," (if you don't know who that was, in 1972, poor you but I'll give you a hint: I think I love you).

That was when I think my mother finally took my art seriously. But that, dear reader, is another story. But I will write later about my first art show and my sad and confused path away from art.

Now, I said I'm an artist but I didnt' say I'm a good one, so don't expect to see my art hanging on any walls in the city in the near future. In fact, my "portfolio" is spotty, erratic, unpracticed, unseen and immature. But being an artist doesn't necessarily mean having a professional portfolio or shows or commissions. In fact, art has so many different definitions..... well, let's just say I want to spread truth and beauty. Ack, I'm starting to sound like Superartist, "truth, beauty and the American way." haha.

So it's come down to, or I'd rather say, up to this: as they say in the real world, those that can't do, teach. So that's why I've decided to teach in addition to work on becoming a better artist. To immerse myself in art, show others the power of art and hopefully, catch a few young artists like I was myself so many decades ago and help them to the right path.

So I've come full circle, albeit a cubist circle, but I've come around. And it feels so deliciously liberating to say it.

I am an artist.

Gulity Pleasure Confessions

This is a great exercise.
Write down your list of guilty pleasures and/or things that you don't normally confess outloud.
Have fun and have no shame.

Today's list, in no particular order

1- I love Bon Jovi, the man. The band is just ok.
2- I'm addicted to "Classical Stretch" on PBS.
3-Modern Gothic romance novels.
4-Disneyland, I could just live there.
5-Hollyoaks, the 90210 of the BBC.
6-Blogging.
7-Googling ex-boyfriends.
8-Using the Gateway exit on 24 before the tunnel to get ahead by one minute.
9-Reading bad magazines at the pool.
10-Ned's Declassified on Nick

I Need A Gay Boyfriend

Normally grocery shopping doesn't inspire me to think much more than "what the f*** am I gonna make for dinner" and "do we need toilet paper?" Today was a different story.

At Safeway, buying supplies for our brand new kitty, Hershey, as I lifted up the 25 pound bag of kitty litter from the bottom of my cart and grunted it onto the conveyor, the Safeway checker said, and I quote, "Wow! Look at those big guns! You go girl!"

Two thoughts flooded into my mind. The first, coming from the front part of my brain called the lowselfesteemum thought, " he's just being nice to the chubby old lady." So I said to him, "yeah, there's a little life left in the old guns," and he immediately reproached me. "Oh my god, what are you like 40? You look great, and I don't get tips so I don't have to say that."

The second thought that rushed into my mind was "he's gay!" (Now, I'll put up the obligatory disclaimer and say if you don't like homosexual stereotypes, please click away.) My favorite person of the day had a perfectly pressed Safeway shirt, he was well coiffed, his manicured hands made me want to put my jagged-nailed hands in my pockets and here comes the worst stereotype of all, his voice was gay. He was gay, all the way.

After I thanked him for his compliment and he smiled a pie at me, I immediately felt blue. I was reminded that in the past, I always had a gay boyfriend. Yes, I'll admit it, I was a fag hag and proud of it. I'm here, I like queers, get used to it. Having this lovely young man, in his high pitched, fab voice declare that I was fab made me want to adopt him. Or at least look up my old friends who were always fun, warm, open, gushing with their compliments, into adventure and always sincere.

I miss my gay boyfriends. They've either moved away or moved on as friends do, especially when the straight ones get married and have kids and move to the suburbs like yours truly. One even passed away from the dreaded A. But that's another blog.

Not long ago, at a dinner party with one of my lesbian friends I mentioned the same thing, that I missed my gay boyfriends. I said that somehow most of my lesbian friendships were somewhat intact and that I was no longer a fag hag, I was the opposite. I asked her, "what do you call straight women who have lesbians for pals?" and she shot back, "wannabes." I almost fell off my seat laughing. While your gay boyfriends make you feel fabulous, your gay girlfriends make you laugh with their bayonet humor.

Either way, friends are friends no matter what they do in bed and as Mr. Lennon said, in my life I've loved you all. Here's to my gay boyfriends from the past. Thanks for making me feel like a million bucks. I hoped I returned the compliments. May you have a cocktail in your hand and a....well let's leave it at that.

Summer Swimmingly

Ahhh, Summer.

The word alone whisks me back to the endless hours of time on the beach as a child. I can smell Coppertone (they should make a perfume of that stuff) and feel the crackling layer of salt on my skin. I see the buckets of shells I collected to display on my shelves. I hear my brother playing splash bomb in the waves. I taste the crunchy corn on the cob and crisp, cold watermelon. I feel the drool on my cheek as I wake up from a nap on my towel in the hot sand, ending a dream about catching fireflies.

I remember being allowed to watch tv during the late afternoon after a long day at the beach, a supreme treat in our household. Now that I am a mother I realize a) why my mother didn't want us watching too much tv, especially when the sun was up and b) why after a particularly trying day of constantly feeding us, slathering us in thick white sunscreen and keeping us from drowning, the tv was her savior. It's amazing how, even with those active days and my two brothers, I still managed to get bored to tears. And that is why, the rare late afternoon of watching "Bowling for Dollars" or "Dark Shadows" was pure bliss.

Childhood summers are like no other time in your life. Summer memories are endless and endlessly immortalized in songs, books, movies and art. I hesitate to write too much about them, as if I take these memories out of my mind, they will fly away. I want to keep those fireflies flying in my mind forever.

I hope I am creating those memories for my son as I hoped I did for my step-kids. I hope that he too, when he is grown up, gets the same happy longing for the dog days of summer. That he'll taste Daddy's barbecued chicken legs (the best in the world and this has been confirmed by many of my food snob friends), he'll smell the chlorine and salt water (alas we mainly swim in the pool at this point but we did manage a trip to San Diego and luckily Alameda beach is salty),
he'll feel his crunchy bathing suit from hours of swimming with his friends and feel the Northern California camping dirt from Burney Falls, Big Sur and the Russian River to name a few. He'll hear the crickets on a hot night with a distant owl hoot, hoot. But again, I hesitate to write too many of the memories down because they should be his memories, to keep in the back of his mind until it's time to bring them up.

That's when you know you've grown up. When summers turn into memories. When you're truly young it is impossible to think of things like this. Children are almost always in the present, god bless 'em.

And this thought is a reminder. To let summer happen for him and myself. Forget the overplanning and the need to "create memories" for him. Just let it happen. Let summer swim around us like warm salt water.

As I write this he is creating his world of the morning. Today it consists of hot wheels, a garbage truck and Spongebob's car. He is having fun and happy. His only plan today is to pick up his friend as we head to the pool. And to eat the local cherries from the farmer's market for snack at the pool. And have a seed spitting contest. And to work on his cannon ball dive. And to beg me for nickelodeon and popcorn when we get back.

Ahhh...summer, it's going swimmingly.