This is my idea of paradise. This little beauty will go up for auction at this year's Barrett Jackson car auction in Scottsdale in January. For those of you who thought they only sold hot rods, think again. Imagine where you could go with this. If Slow Food is all the rage, Slow Driving shouldn't be far behind. I heart VW buses.

People should have the right to marry and be happy. Period. End of subject. Vote on Tuesday.

Thought I'd share a little article I wrote for our PTA newsletter this month. Reprinted with permission from the author.....me!

Does the following scenario sound familiar in your household?

Your son forgot his homework…he did it – but he forgot to put it in his backpack. After he leaves, you see it and run it down to the school to make sure he has it.

What’s wrong with this scenario? What are the outcomes? What are the alternatives?

Letting our children manage their own lives has got to be one of the most difficult parenting challenges. We just want to do what’s best for our children – love them, support them, step in when they need help. Our challenge is being able to actually use stepping back as a strategy towards moving forward.

When we step in to “save” our children, we actually reinforce behaviors that we really don’t want to reinforce. This happened in my home just this morning. I left the house before anyone else…..but I knew there was a piece of errant homework sitting on the coffee table that my daughter needed to bring in. I could have so easily called home and asked my husband to tell my daughter to put it in her backpack. However, I needed to determine how I could support my daughter, without stepping in and taking over.

I decided to call my husband to get him on board with my strategy…..I asked him to simply check with the children before they left by saying “is there any homework, anything due, or anything else that needs to go in your backpack before you leave?” If my daughter takes that cue, and looks around, she should find it. If she doesn’t, then she will go to school without it.

What happens if she doesn’t have her homework? Well, homework will be called for, and she won’t have it. Ouch. Her teacher may ask her about it and she’ll have to make the choice of how to respond. She’ll most likely be marked “0” on that homework for the day. Ouch again. Or what if it was her lunch that she forgot to bring? Lunchtime comes….and yikes, she’s hungry. Not fun. Not life-or-death either.

These are the natural consequences and reinforcers for shaping a different behavior – in this case, the “forgetting” behavior. And frankly, it may need to happen a few times in order for it to truly reshape her behavior. Unfortunately, if we make the choice to step in and bring the homework, or the project, or the lunch to school, we continue to reinforce that it’s okay to forget because someone will step in to save you. This doesn’t fare well for successful life strategies. Someone will not step in to save you in college and in your career.

What would be more helpful is to help structure the strategy for not forgetting in the first place. Take a look with your child at their processes. If they are consistently forgetting things, then their systems aren’t working – and you can help them by working out some new systems with them that they can implement. What is happening to get organized for the school day? Is their backpack packed up before they go to bed? Do they use a checklist of items to check on before they leave for school? Do they look around the house just before leaving as a backup? Do they need a designated homework spot so that they always know where to look? Do they need to wake up 10-15 minutes earlier to give themselves time to do these things?

And what’s the academic implication of that homework that doesn’t get turned in? Well, that depends. In many cases, homework reinforces, enhances or delves a little more deeply into a subject taught during the week. Because she actually did the homework, then she hopefully captured that deeper understanding. She should easily be able to participate in further discussion of the subject. If she is tested on it, she should be fine. She simply has to deal with a score of “0” on her homework (possibly more than once). It is not the end of the world.

We all do our best to be great, supportive parents. We feel like we’ve failed if we don’t support them in the every possible way. Sometimes, we just need to take a fresh look at their needs and decide what is truly most helpful – saving them for now, or teaching them for now and forever.

Next month: The Importance of Family Dinners.

"The large volume of emails I receive on a daily basis necessitates brevity in my replies." I absolutely love this tag that comes at the end of our school psychologist's e-mails. I need to amend it for my life, however. Mine shall read: "The large quantity of my children's activities on a daily basis necessitates brevity and long lapses of time in my replies, or in fact, any interaction you may hope to have with me." While the calendar below is a bit challenging to read, you probably get the picture that the big grey sections are chunks of committed time in the next week. The areas that aren't dark grey happen to be when Ry and Si are in school. A couple of months ago I called a friend to get a restaurant recommendation in her area....she gave me a few great ones, then followed up to see how we liked the one we chose. And then she followed up again. Oh yeah - and guess what? I still haven't actually given her the info. And Ry and Si hadn't even started Queenie Pie rehearsals yet. So I'm giving you fair warning. If you don't hear from me, or I don't return your phone call/letter/e-mail/carrier pigeon, don't take it personally. The few moments I am able to get fingers on keys, I need some kind of release in the form of the blog....so that may be where I put my 2 ounces of leftover energy. Unless, of course, I'm running around trying to find the stone for my front patio and crying over the fact that they want to charge me $8 per stone for hand selecting my pieces. But that's a whole other story of a renegade homeowner-landscaper that must be told some other time.

"I have always relied on the kindness of strangers....." I believe this is the line uttered by Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Kindness. So maybe I'd don't rely on it, like Blanche, but the little kindnesses in the world can definitely perk up my day for hours. I was thinking about this the other day when I was looking for a parking spot at Berkeley Bowl and a woman pointed out a spot that was kind of hidden by crates and forklifts. If you're a BB shopper, you'll appreciate what a big deal this was. Or the 6th grade boy who reached the door to the office at school just behind me, so I opened it for him, just to have him say...no....go ahead and wait like a gentleman for me to pass through. But I hit the mecca of kindness last night....and it happened to be at the ball game. Ry sang the National Anthem at the Giants game last night. (To see it, and more photos, click on the Ry and Si Blog link at right). We bought the tickets offered, at $15 each, which were here:

No problem.....we can check out the bay, right? But of course, I wanted to get video of the boys on the field when they sang, so I talked my way down to getting close enough for a good shot. Fortunately, I made the mistake of putting my video camera on top of the visitor dugout in order to stabilize the camera, at which point the usher came to let me know that wasn't okay, which brought me to the attention of the gentleman in front of me, who graciously told the usher lady that the four seats I was galavanting around happened to be his, and they weren't being used, and we could in fact have them, and pow! here are the tickets....have fun! Huh? What just happened here? Are we really sitting HERE?:

Yeah, baby....that's right....3rd row, 1st base line, right next to the dugout. That is my actual photo....no zoom. And you know what these seats come with......Field Club level services: food brought right to your seat....or walk in through the tunnel to the nice food concessions....no mucking around with the unwashed masses up on the concourse. Of course, we had already partaken of Garlic Fries and Clam Chowder Bread Bowl prior to this....but we did our best to stuff as much food in our faces as was possible, and as is apropos to the full ballpark experience. Sadly, Ry is NOT a Giants fan (when they sang at the A's, they got to meet a player, so has switched allegiances.....we're working on it....) so I kind of had to keep his inappropriate cheering for the Rockies under wraps. To further my streak of random acts of kindness bestowed upon me.....I went up searching for a hot chocolate and Bailey's to the concourse (okay...so I didn't want to pay the exhorbitant price for it to be brought to me) and a guy says...."hey - you dropped something!" and proceeded to pick it up and rush it over to me - it being my wad of moola with a $10 bill wrapping the outside.

Who does that?

Giants fans apparently.

It's a good week.

What a strange weekend. Yesterday early a.m. I went for a hike up on Skyline, and here's what I found....an entire tree had been uprooted and fallen on one half of the road.

Then, after having an absolutely lovely time making sugar skulls for Dia de Los Muertos at Corazon del Pueblo on International Blvd., as I was getting into my car, an SUV-ish type vehicle could not wait for me to close my door and decided to squeeze by....which wasn't possible and so practically took my door off. The door got munched - thankfully none of us was hurt - and the driver proceeded to speed off. Dummy. Did he think I couldn't see far away enough to capture his license plate number? So I waited for an hour for the police to arrive, and when they didn't, I had to hightail it home anyway because Scott and I were due in Nicasio (West Marin) for a fundraiser for Gavin Newsom. The good news is that we got there just after he did (even though we were an hour and a half late!) so didn't miss a thing. We then decided to drive back through San Francisco (stopping to eat at PlumpJack just to make it a full-on Newsom-supported evening) and stay the night....(highly recommend the new Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero), and this early a.m., Scott and I went for a walk over to Pacific Heights, and saw this car. Upon further investigation we discovered that it was a matching planter to one that still remained in front of the doorway of the large apartment building right on the corner where this car was parked. I would have felt tremendously sorry for the owner of this vehicle, however, I had (have) it fresh in my mind that I, in fact, will probably see this person in the insurance office first thing Monday morning as well. Like I said, strange weekend.....and there's not even a full moon.

Separated at birth?

Got back from the hospital a couple of hours ago. Si was having her croupy cough again and was having trouble breathing....... turns out everything is fine, it's pretty much just a cold, but since we did have this experience three years ago, and it was more serious, I'm a little more apt to go in right away. Once we were there, she actually was a lot better - I think the peace of mind of just being in a safe place helped her to calm down and that helped her breathe. Once we had seen the doctors and she was calm, I did snap a quick phone photo - but I have not yet been given permission by the subject to post it. I'm going to work on her but in the meantime I'll just post a different one.