We wouldn’t normally post the contents of our kid’s nappy on the Internet but this has to be seen to be believed.

When we got home today from daycare, I checked his diaper by peering down the back of it, only to see a few small wood chips.

The two-year-old class playground at daycare has a fabulous pit filled with wood chips and diggers and dump trucks and such. Tau often comes home with chips in his hoodie or pockets.

So I thought to myself, “Hmn. That can’t be very comfy. Better change him, or at least remove the offending particles.” And opened the diaper to find …

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Halloween art from daycare

Sometimes life gets in the way and I don’t get to report back on a major event. Like Halloween.

Which for Dave and I is neither here nor there, not having grown up trick or treating and so feeling no real connection with the holiday. In our pre-Tau days, we were the people who turned off the lights and curled up in bed early with a movie. Or went out for dinner so that we could see everyone dressed up but not have to wrangle with the challenges that Halloween presents.

Like how many pieces of candy to give each trick or treater. And whether you hand the treats out or just hold out the bowl and let kids help themselves. And what kind of candy is deemed acceptable anyway? All that and gauging how much candy to buy upfront, so that you don’t have a mountain of Kit Kats and M&Ms left over. Not that that’s a tragedy in my opinion — I can always find a way to dispose of Kit Kat bars.

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Palm tree burning in our neighborhood, Oct. 22, 2007.
Credit: K.C. Alfred, San Diego Union-Tribune

Now that we are home and safe, I’ve been thinking about what I’d like to add on the wildfires that have so scarred our county. And my arms feel like lead. In part because we are mentally and emotionally wiped out. It’s been a long week and we’re so looking forward to turning the page on a fresh one come Sunday night.

But also in part because when you see how monstrous not one but five simultaneous fires in your region can be, you end up feeling a bit small and unavailing. You realize how little power you have to change the course of nature and how you really ought not to place much importance on building a home or a certain way of life because it can all be taken from you in a matter of hours.

So here I sit, feeling a bit silly again about the name of our blog. These past few days in San Diego were not good at all. In fact, for those who lost family members and homes and livelihoods, they were very, very bad. And when a natural disaster hits your community as badly as this one did, everyone feels it. (more…)

Tuesday 2 a.m., but it still feels like Monday night. Can’t sleep so thought I’d send an update. If all is safe to travel, and if we need to move, we’ll probably go to stay with friends not too far away tomorrow late a.m.

Will let you know when we are “settled.” Don’t worry if you don’t hear from us; there are sporadic power outages and so Internet access is spotty.

- S

This post is mostly for our families. We are still safe. They have evacuated an area a bit North of where we are staying because they expect one of the fires to burn along one of the canyons and through almost to the coast.

We are watching updates on the news and if it comes to us needing to leave again to go South, we will do so well in advance. We have offers to stay with two sets of friends that are well out of the way of the fire.

We have wireless access in our hotel room and brought a laptop with us, hence the update Again, please don’t call; we are fine. If you don’t hear from us, please assume we are OK. We will contact you if we need to move.

Access to the following two web sites is a bit slow, as many locals are checking them constantly, but they do provide up-to-date info. Please wait a while before trying to access them.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/
http://www.kpbs.org/news/fires

If you hear of homes having burned in Poway, please don’t assume ours is gone. We live in the very urban area of the city and only evacuated to avoid any possible traffic jams. Most of the houses that have burned in Poway are on the NE more rural outskirts, where there are a lot of smallholdings and fancy estates.

Love,

Sue, Dave and Tau

PS: We are grateful for Playdoh, the Dinosaur book and the Chili’s restaurant just next to our hotel

As you will see from the TV reports, our neighborhood was affected by the Witch Creek fire. We think our exact area is still OK so far but no news.

We are fine and got out just before our neighborhood was evacuated. We are at a Holiday Inn in Sorrento Valley near Dave’s work. There is a business center here in the hotel, so we will try to post daily updates on the blog.

Please DO NOT worry … we are fine with plenty of food, TV, a king bed and internet access.

At the door this morning. “Tau, wait! Mommy needs to put on her shoes … uh, boots …”

Turns around, staring at my boots for the first time because the new word (it’s only just cool enough to consider wearing boots) … the NEW WORD! … has alerted him to something that needs to be examined, explored, filed away in his little Rolodex of comprehension.

Tugging them on, showing him the zippers. “These are Mommy’s boots.”

“Boo-bz?”

“No … boo-ts. Boots.”

“Boo-bz.”

“Boots.”

With certainty: “Boobs.”

“OK dude …” Can’t beat ‘em join ‘em. “If you say so!”

Mommy’s boobs. On her feet.*

Nice!

* If I was Jessica at OTJs, I’d be breaking out my Photoshop skeelz right about now.

Dear Muffin Lady,

I should have warned you up front: I am not a morning person. People I work with know not to ask questions until I’ve had coffee, breakfast and cleared my email.

And while I understand you would like me to buy breakfast from you more often, making know-it-all small talk doesn’t help. And breaking down for me just how and why I speak as I do will not make your chocolate-chip muffins any dearer to me than they already are, thank you.

So, now that I can get a word in edgewise let me tell you how it is:

• No, I am not from England. Not from any part of it. Never have been. To you it may sound that way at first. But no, I am positively not. From Britain. At all.

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Leo di Caprio and Djimon Hounsou
in Blood Diamond

I don’t write enough here about movies. We watch a lot of them. For those of you who haven’t visited our home, Dave and I don’t have cable or any of the new-fangled on-demand stuff. In fact we run a very low-tech casa. An old TV/DVD combo in the livingroom and a 13-inch TV/VCR combo in the guest room. (No snickering Declan.) I know, inconceivable; I have no idea who ought to be kicked off American Idol this week but I imagine I’ll go to my grave at peace with that one.

Instead, we use Netflix to watch movies, HBO series and documentaries of our choice and, except for March Madness, Tour de France and the odd must-see (yeah, I did miss The Police at the Grammys), we’re quite happy in our oblivion.

But what I wanted to talk about was the baggage. Last week Blood Diamond arrived in the mail. Set mostly in Sierra Leone, about illegal diamond smuggling to fund a rebel movement, this film cracks open African civil warfare like no other I have seen. Unlike the NPR interview I heard a few weeks back with a child soldier from that country, Blood Diamond is very graphic about the way young children are stripped from their villages and turned into drugged-out zombies with machine guns. And just for this, I recommend this movie: the ability to bring into focus an issue most turn their heads from the second they see it. Hollywood done good.

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Seventy percent of Americans disagree with George Bush’s plan to send  21,500 more troops to Iraq. Troops the US Army doesn’t really have.

Utne Magazine recently ran an article called Where Will the Soldiers Come From? that discusses just a few of the ways Uncle Sam hopes to boost his forces:

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(Not too bad - I might have to rethink my position on this one.)

Driving home in the slow lane from Henry’s Marketplace yesterday, sun streaming in the window, when a big black SUV roars right up past me, screeches to a halt at the lights with a bright red rudolph nose smug on the tip of the hood, foam antlers wobbling on the windows.

Which got me thinking in a bah-humbuggy kinda way about the things I dislike about Christmas. Dislike, not hate. My mother always told me, “Hate’s a strong word!” So, OK, strongly dislike.

1. Red Nosed Reindeer kits for cars. Just for that, I’m gonna make it number one on the list. An indignity to fine autmobiles everywhere, not to mention Santa’s hardest working reindeer. It’s like seeing a German Shepherd wearing bunny ears at Easter. And you just know the very together soccer mom peering over the steering wheel is wearing her favorite Christmas sweater and that she only has one item left to buy off her holiday shopping list.
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From time to time I read the blog of a woman called Tertia Albertyn — a mom of two toddlers who works in marketing for IBM in Cape Town. Tertia began blogging at So Close to document her painful journey through infertility and loss to the birth of her beautiful twins and life beyond. Her story was featured recently on the South African current-events show, Carte Blanche (think Sixty Minutes but slicker and edgier).

Some time back, Tertia wrote about her sister Melanie Novitzkas, a doula-in-training who started a charity so worthwhile that I wanted to tell you all about it.

As part of her training, Melanie volunteers at one of the state hospitals that provide vital medical care to uninsured South Africans. Seeing women give birth — in many cases prematurely and with awful complications — only to be discharged almost immediately with no one to care for them post partum prompted Melanie to start Bosom Buddies. This group of volunteers visits patients in the maternity unit at Melanie’s hospital to distribute care packages containing basics for both mom and baby — hand-knitted blankets, diapers, onesies and hats for the babes; sanitary pads, toiletries and homemade cookies to treat the moms. Mothers recovering from still births receive care packages minus the baby items.

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