My Day as Irate Berkeley Resident

Leverage = making it more of a hassle to ignore you than to deal with you.

That's my recollection of a quote my old boss had on his wall at one of my SEIU jobs. Meaning: if you are able to disrupt business as usual, you win.

Right now UC students are trying to disrupt business as usual in protest of huge fee hikes. News helicopters flew over our house all day Friday and for a couple hours today -- filming the demonstrators, who are about a mile away. So I decided to play irate citizen and call around to show how these helicopters were disrupting my business as usual.

1st stop: the police nonemergency number. "Ma'am, the police dept has no helicopters." "Ma'am, we don't control the airways." Finally: "you'll have to call the FAA."

2nd stop: FAA. Appears (from recording) that they don't deal with noise issues that aren't safety issues. Could go down that rabbit hole and find another number to call, but moved on.

3rd stop: UC Chancellor's office. "But they're news helicopters." "Well, I want the Chancellor to negotiate with the students so that the news helicopters will go away." "Okay, thanks." Click.

4th stop: Mayor's office. After a bit of confusion, told him outright that my goal is to tell the Mayor to tell the Chancellor that he has to deal with the students because Berkeley residents are getting pissed off at the helicopters. Will the message get passed on? We'll see.

Thinking of forming a group. POAH. Pissed Off at Helicopters. Or Negotiate with Students so Helicopters Will Stop. NSHWS.

Other ideas?

Stuff I said in kindergarten today

"Boys can be pretty too, if they want to be."
"What's most important is what makes you feel pretty."

Though one girl giggled, others seemed to listen. Just one small attempt to broaden these kids' perceptions of gender, in the hopes that some time in the future, Transgender Remembrance Day will be just that -- remembrance, not reality.

Yes, they do grow up so fast!

A FB friend (and kid I knew growing up) posted that his 6 month old daughter has started trying to say words. That prompted me to try to remember when Norrie started talking, and that prompted me to find this post from Angela on our lesbian moms yahoo group, from when Norrie was just shy of 10 months old:

Norrie said her first real word this very morning! She has been practicing "cat" for days now. Yesterday we heard her whispering in her stroller "ga" "ga" after we had seen a cat. As you may know, Pretty is the most exciting thing in the world to her. I was thinking cat would be her first word because she tries to talk to her all of the time. A while ago we started referring to the "Pretty kitty" as "cat" to make the whole thing easier. This morning when we were all together in bed we said hi to the cat and Norrie said "cat" twice as clear as can be - hard "c" and hard "t". It was SO exciting! Two more teeth came in this weekend (for a total of 6) so I think that had something to do with being able to do the "t" sound for the first time. Norrie has been saying "mama" and "baba" and "yum" but this was definitely her first serious word. I'm beside myself with joy today.

Sweeeeeet!

Is this what McCarthyism felt like at the beginning?

Every great activist I know and love is probably one degree of separation from Van Jones or ACORN. And how odd it feels that these groups I've known for years are finally becoming a household word not for their good works, but in the name of propping up the right wing. It's like finding out your cousin and your high school buddy are being wrongfully accused of murder. Who will be next?

Overcoming pack-rat-itis

The time has come to admit it: I'm a pack rat. My mother is a pack rat, my father is a pack rat; my sister may have escaped but that's only through sustained effort. My partner is a neat freak, but she also likes to stash things in "special places" that she can never remember subsequently. Even my daughter appears to be a pack rat. She loves saving little pieces of paper and scraps of fabric.

What's a pack rat to do? For now, I have set myself the task of spending 1/2 hour going through stacks of papers, 3 times a week. Not much, but about all I can tolerate.

Today I recycled 3 or 4 inches worth of papers. Some fun themes emerged:

• Paid Family Leave background material, from when the law was implemented and I helped write a brochure. What I had saved did not include the brochure I actually wrote, and everything can be found online anyway. Toss.
• MY Paid Family Leave material from before Norrie was born. It was fun to reminisce about what I was doing 5 years ago today (preparing to stop work for maternity leave), but I don't need to save copies of the actual forms I gave to EDD. Toss.
• Pages ripped out of a guidebook on the Philippines, from when I traveled there in 2003 for work. Okay, so that doesn't really fit into the theme, but it reminded me of what I did pre-kid. Can all be found on the internet now. Toss.

Tomorrow: file the stuff I should keep, but don't need to have easy access to (like taxes from 2005). We have file cabinets in our basement and that stuff will do just fine down there. Make room for files that are actually relevant to my life today!

Baby Kindergartner

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Originally uploaded by Mama Isobel.

Good friends of ours are about to adopt a baby -- quick quick. They had nothing and we had saved *everything.* So we gave them bags and bags of baby clothes this weekend. We're hoping we'll need it all back in 9 months or so ourselves!

Norrie had a blast discovering her old baby clothes -- and got a big smile on her face when I showed her this photo of her in one of the outfits we decided to keep, one of those full-body gowns to keep newborns snuggly and warm. Such a big smile that she needed to try on the gown herself.

The results speak for themselves. And she's wearing this gown/tight shirt thingy to bed tonight.

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Originally uploaded by Mama Isobel.