quote of the day As I was boarding the wagon for a hay ride at Pioneer Farms, wearing my Mama Keeps It Crunk shirt, the driver asked me through his cookie-duster mustache, "So what's 'crunk' exactly?" I explained that it's sort of the combination of "crazy" and "drunk".

"Well, I might have figured that," he said, "since it's got something to do with 'mama.'"

Indeed, sir.

State of the union Could Bush be the worst president in history? Some historians say yes.

Marrit and the Post-Its All my writing is on Post-Its stuck to my kitchen cabinets. I have two essays on the backs of garage-sale flyers. This is all fine but tends not to result in publications of any sort--no payment or bylines. Occasionally one of my Post-It ideas will suddenly become topical and I go running in to grab the appropriate sticky note. I also find other interesting things written down and forgotten ("Moms have trouble holding on to their ideas," I tell Baldo), such as my son's first original joke:

"Why did the pizza get in the shoe?"

"I don't know. Why did the pizza get in the shoe?"

"Because it wanted to walk away!"

That's all for now.

happy Happy 4/20, everyone.

Fuck you, Fred Meyer And in Portland of all places.

When I went to Portland last fall to do book events and hang out with my friends D. and E., they were stoked as all hell to have a Fred Meyer in walking distance. I met mothers and fathers and kids and everyone wanted to know if I'd been to Freddies yet. Freddies was ostensibly some kind of shopping Elysium--everything under one roof for busy people. Like, geez, I dunno...mothers with a three-year-old and a three-month-old?

Anyone offended by a woman nursing in public enough to complain to a retail manager should attempt to eat his or her next meal under a blanket, out of view of others. Let me know how that goes. It sounds like a big pain in the ass to me. I'm offended, distracted, or otherwise bothered by things I see all the time, but I don't go running off to grab a store manager when somebody's picking their nose, dropping their trash, walking too slowly or too quickly, or doing something weird. Honestly, what did a nursing mother ever do to you? "Um, I saw a flash of a woman's breast, and now I'm scarred for life. I totally can't shop for patio sets and grills now."

Breastfeeding isn't harmful or unsanitary. It's not comparable to urinating on the floor. It's food going into somebody's mouth. If you have a problem with that, then you're going to be really busy policing for people eating in public. How many people are you going to see eating in public today? Are you going to be offended? Then don't look at them.

American people want their lives to be totally antiseptic. We want to float around all day long in our individual bubbles of privacy and personal comfort. The world is our living room, and we want everyone on their company manners. If you don't like mothers and babies, then by all means they should be expected to hide from you and not offend. It's their problem, not yours. What's a three-month-old doing in a store anyway? Aren't you supposed to be on house arrest? Don't you know that children annoy all the Real People who have a right to assembly? You might inconvenience someone.

These are strange times. Women are losing our reproductive rights, but we're expected to raise children entirely in private without burdening anyone.

GLOBAL. WARMING. Wow! We hit 100 degrees today. Sometimes I forget to flip my calendar, but isn't it April? Damn!

education nation Here's the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders.

I don't know how I feel about single-sex education, but I like that it's at least an option for parents if they can't afford private school. Please nobody Title IX it to death. I would personally break the ground for the Jim Hightower School for Young Men Leaders, where boys aspire to do more than play X-box and scratch themselves.

Anyhow, the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders does a lot of things I like. Enrollment is capped at 115 students per grade. "Students from economically disadvantaged families will be given priority," its mission statement says in bold. Each student has an IPG and learning styles differences are built into the instruction. They encourage internships. This is not a drill-and-kill public-school curriculum. It looks like it's going to kick ass.

Austin ISD is one of those places where the magnets and the special campuses--the IB schools, the hospitality program, Garza High School, which has an individualized curriculum plan and flexible scheduling and is a truly fantastic school for the students and the teachers--are just off-the-scale smart and cared-about schools. And the neighborhood schools go piff! Needless to say, I have some pretty mixed feelings about that. I also think there should be that much choice in primary schooling, give the neighborhood kids a better run at the brass ring. And give those teachers a little break from the TEKS. UT-Austin has always pumped some very smart young teachers into the AISD talent pool. When alternative campuses work, it's because of the teachers, who realize they can't do their job if they're distracted constantly by learning walks with the superintendent and months and months of benchmarking students. Or they have so many kids in the room, so many different styles and temperaments and in some cases wildly varying degrees of preparedness for the course, so many kids that one of J's students spent almost an entire semester in a bean bag we brought from home. I'm all about creating alternatives to that.

new column New column up today. That is all.

blogging the gathering My online moms' group is having an informal get-together in Austin, which makes me the Luckiest Person Ever. We had a cookout last night, and it was lovely--kids of all ages hanging together, parents chilling out, people using their words. It didn't go on and on til the break of dawn, but there was a point around 8:30 where all the kids and a couple of beery dads were rocking out with maracas, a recorder, and a triangle in the living room listening to the Beastie Boys.

And Baldo? You should have seen him. Party animal. I never knew.

I wish life was like this for everyone. I wish we all knew our neighbors the way I know people from all over the U.S., from South America, from the UK, from Finland. I wish work was over at 6:00 for us all; I wish we all trusted each other enough to be real, to not compete, to not feel guarded and defensive about the choices we've made in our lives. I wish we could all just fucking relax already and be together as people. All the time.

The party's at my house on Sunday morning, brunch time. If you know me and you know where I live, please come.

Complete and total honesty at 4:08 a.m. So I'm re-reading How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, and How to Listen So Kids Will Talk, and I really like the part about providing information instead of punishment. Can I run some stuff by y'all? Thanks.

"Kids who don't sleep at night have moms who run away to join the circus."

"When you come running in and jump on my back at midnight and stay up for three hours, I feel like punching a window and having an extramarital affair."

"Insomnia causes people to be neurotic and dysfunctional. It's made me everything I am today. Want some Lexapro?"

happy birthday, dear J. We're, like, still here.

pacify this! A delightful bulletin from the Daily News about the adult-sized pacifier Tom Cruise has helpfully provided for Katie so she won't scream during labor.

Next up: I'll be working with my veterinarian to create a custom-built human muzzle for Tom.

good night, mush So far I'm liking age four, like everybody says. I knew about the bossy thing, and that's not a giant deal. Bossy I can handle. I have bossy's number.

Not terribly fond of the bit where they think they're superheroic and no longer need sleep. I'm certain we can blame daylight savings time in part (you fuckers!) and inculpate oak pollen as well, for as soon as the first one of those little pollen thingies hits the ground, everybody in Austin, even the Phish-loving frisbee golf dudes, goes Instant Asshole. But part of it is just, "I'm not tired! But I'm not tired!" Meanwhile the kid is staggering around like Red Skelton. In his 4,582 trips out of bed he was burbling, "I love you, man!"

"It's time to go to sleep. We're all very tired."

"I love you!"

"That's very sweet. I love you, too. Back to bed."

"I also love Jake, who is our cat. I love his ears and his butt." [stumbles]

Put him in a bed--pick a bed, any bed--and he just won't stay there.

"I don't want to be in bed! I want to go sit on my stool." He'll go sit on his tooth-brushing stepstool in the bathroom and stare at the wall in a daze rather than accept the body's imperatives of exhaustion and replenishment. And he's not in good shape when it's happening--slurring yet manic, like a miniature crackhead.

This is the age of transition from toddlerhood to big kid-dom; when this is over he'll probably start playing rugby and shaving. He will no longer crash the bathroom door when I'm in there for more than ten seconds, trying to pick my nose and demanding to know what all the red stuff in the toilet is.

People who recall age four fondly are looking backward at it with noses unpicked by their children. We're not exactly there yet.

I'm here. I'm not particularly queer. I'm used to it. Periodically I'm assigned to the gay film beat. Maybe I'm not the ideal demographic--hell, I'm a married suburban breeder woman--but you know what? I like it, and not just because I was a spectacular hag back in the day. (Hags make great moms, by the way.) I like it because I get to see interesting movies that would otherwise be off my radar, which is always good, and because I get to see actresses over 50 working and having fun. I get to see Julie Hagerty in a spinal halo! Where else am I going to get that?