Well, that was nice

I had previously asked that a staffer throw us a bone and hint at the magic number (ideology, cod piece, what have you) that would make the Sacto machine come to life again.  And we kind of got one.  Not a leak, exactly.  Well, not even a little bit of a leak; I was asking for a drip, if you may.  No, not that, and I'm not sure where I'm going metaphorically, but have recently read an email dropped by Perata saying hey, forget about taxes.  Let's just make a deal.

Because borrowing is so much better, don'tcha know.

Starving the beast.  Which would be so much more effective if local dollars were protected from the state general fund.  Which they are not, at least not in California (full disclosure: I have no idea if they are protected elsewhere).  But if they were, then local property tax increases and sales tax quarter-cents and so on and so forth might actually feed the beasts that spawn them.  Which they will not.  Not now.  Apparently, I might add.

Leaving Karen Bass alone on the mount waiving the flag and looking behind her -- perplexed if we are generous -- at what she could have sworn just yesterday was more than her shadow.

From the 1855 preface to Leaves of Grass

"Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men.  Go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families.  Re-examine all that you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body."  Walt Whitman

Backtracking

The wills and trusts lawyer wanted to know: what's up with the budget.  Why can't they just pass one already?  And here I was, the ex-government worker, trying to explain.

"It's just stupid," I said.

But of course that wasn't enough.  But why?  

It's hard to describe, I said.  But I gave it the old college try.  Okay.  So when I worked for legislators, around this time I was going to the bank every Friday to get my payday loan.  But how come I had to get loans and the legislators were still getting paid?  They weren't, I said.  Because they didn't.  They don't.  We were all relying on the Banks of Americas and Wells Fargos to advance our no-interest loans in through faith and loyalty and... well, knowing this happens every year, and whatever, that we would eventually get paid and all would be well.

So why don't they just pass the budget already?

Well... because they need a 2/3 majority to do it.  Which means they need, what, 4?  6?  8? republicans to do it.  And the only republicans willing to do it are the ones who have nothing to lose, like the ones who are terming out or the ones who have had it and want to move on with their lives, because if they vote with the democratic majority, you can bet that the republican leaders will turn their evil eye on their districts and get their butts voted out so fast they won't even have time for a rope burn on their butts.  Spoiler power.

And what bothers me about this year is I don't see the secret 2 or 3 things that the republicans need to cry uncle.  Like the boat tax, for example.  Was it 1994?  Let that stay at the low level it was at and throw in a couple of bon-bons, and you've got yourself a budget.  No, this one's ugly.  No-budget-through-Christmas ugly.  If it's not ugly, I'd appreciate it if some less-hard-hearted staffer would let that leak so the rest of us can just wait for the magic number.  Because I don't see any boat tax or happy medium coming our way, just a lot of day care centers out of business and support services biting the dust.  And I'm the idealist who heard some republican softening the no-uh-uh-no-way-no-how no taxes not this year language and thought I heard a clock ticking, but for all I know they were leaning toward a tipping point and the guv'nor pissed someone off by ashing his cigar upwind.  I'm that out of touch on state winds, what the hell do I know?  I just don't like it, that's all.

And so, like everyone else, I wait...

Newest Adventures

Sophia is now almost a year and a half old. So much happens in the first year and a half. Not that we have much to compare it to, but still... from a little blob of a thing to a person with thoughts and feelings and Very Definite Opinions.

She had her first public meltdown this afternoon. We bought her a "popper" thing -- one of those things where you push it and the little balls pop and pop and pop in their sphere. She has one at daycare, and loves it. She loved this one as well. So much so that when I tucked it in my purse (Babies R Us doesn't make bags that big except at Christmas-time), she howled and cried and whined because she couldn't Have It. It's an indoor toy, so she wasn't allowed to play with it outdoors. Hence the drama.

At home, she was all smiles. She dragged it hither and thon and up and around and back and forth and so on and so forth. Such a wondrous toy. We're thinking maybe we'll get a copy to leave at her grandparents' house, along with one of those booster chairs that you can adapt to a regular chair, a $20 addition to their home rather than the $100-plus that a real high chair would cost. Not that they'd never need another one, not soon, but just sayin', not trying to leave any hints or anything, maybe in another year or so...

A child of passion. She loves her toys, loves them with a love that is deep and true and quite long-lasting and quite vocal, if I do say so myself...

The Princess Sleeps

9 a.m. Saturday morning, and the Sophia is down for her first nap of the day. It used to be we were barely waking up at 9 a.m., but those days are over. Avelino took Sasha out for her much-loved weekend morning walk, and I clean the kitchen and start a jalapeno-egg bake, all of which Sophia watches from her playpen.

She's walking now. Not well, and not for long, but she'd much rather be upright most of the time than crawling around. At Target yesterday, she decided she'd had enough of her cart seat when I was in the books section. This happened last time we were at Target, which is how I broke down and bought the newest Sue Miller hardcover (doesn't fit in a purse) because it was there and I knew I'd like it and it didn't look like we were going to be there much longer. This time, no book; the three books I could grab the quickest were unappealing because (a) it seemed depressing, (b) I didn't like the prose I turned to at random, or (c) it seemed like too much of a "chick" book.

So she grabbed my finger and we walked slowly through the aisles. She peered solemnly up into people's eyes as we passed, then would look back down, focused as she was on this new walking situation. She looked over to her right and tentatively pulled open a shiny blue book at baby-level, but she's a good girl; I said no, and thanked her when she closed it. Then - Papa! She squealed in delight and pulled away from me, holding her hands up and close to her chest and burbling to herself as she toddled quickly up the CD aisle toward her father.

Avelino and Sasha come home. Sasha bursts in and heads straight for her water dish, and then partrols the kitchen for any crumbs that might have escaped her last night. This is our chance to finish up what morning rituals we can with Sophia quietly sleeping on a blanket the living room floor. Sasha tiptoes gingerly to the edge of the blanket -- she is so careful about everything related to Sophia -- and sniffs in her direction. No, better to go back to the kitchen for any possible treats. And Sophia sleeps.

Eating, Sophia Style

Sophia has definite opinions about what she wants to eat: it has to be tasty, it has to be different from last time, and it has to be what you're eating.

All the baby books are full of advice and good intentions. Introduce foods one at a time. Mix everything with breast milk or formula. Feed your baby separately from your mealtimes. Etc.

About the only thing that has worked "normally" for us has been the schedule of introducing new foods that our doctor gave us at one of her well-baby check-ups, and mainly because that's not really up to her. If the doctor says no egg whites before one year old, guess who's not getting egg whites?

An egg yolk, on the other hand, is something our baby happily and delicately nibbled from her spoon this morning, along with half of a slice of toast that she pinched carefully between thumb and forefinger before definitely -- but sometimes awkwardly -- placing into her mouth. Of course, Mom was having buttery garlic bread and generously seasoned eggs, but it looked close enough to what Mom was eating, which was good enough for her. And she didn't know that the liquid in Mom's mug is coffee, so she was fine with her water, although she still prefers a regular cup to her sippy cup.

Several of the babies in the day care are approximately the same age, and we compare notes like we're gossiping about women's shoes at the mall. Yours flings spaghetti and spits out macaroni but loves bow tie pasta? Mine refuses dark meat but will eat strips of white meat as a finger food. Have you tried using a Magic Bullet instead of a food mill for a chunkier texture? Does yours like basil?

Although her meal is much smaller, it takes her longer to eat it. But eventually, she was sagging in her harness, and while she was still pounding on the table to ask for more food, her poundings were half-hearted and her cries were closer to whimpers. She stared out the window at the finches that come by to steal dog hair to insulate their nest, and she wiped sleep from her eyes and smiled at me.

I went online today...

...and as requested, here are some baby photos.

Brain Fuzz

Being sick is boring. But sick I was last Friday, channel-surfing through the several hundred cable channels we now have because I asked my husband to find a cable package with Turner Classic Movies. That's all I wanted. And he wanted National Geographic so he could watch The Dog Whisperer. So I came home one day to find a strange new silver box under my TV and instructions and three different remotes spread out over the coffee table. Turns out that, for an additional $10 a month, we get much more than we bargained for and the ability to essentially Tivo 100 hours of programming, 10 or so of which are now taken up by The Dog Whisperer, 2 for Audrey Hepburn's "Sabrina," and another 3 for whatever that Bowl was that SJSU won.

None of which was on while I was sick. Daytime TV is a slow death no matter how many channels you have. I even gave in to my wonk/hack/whatever side and surfed C-SPAN and the California Channel, where even I couldn't get all that excited about slow formaldahyde gas emissions from hardwood floors or the internationalization of the California Lottery. Where's Senator Kuehl scolding the writer of the new worker's comp laws when you need her?

But there was one bright spot in the dark, slow morass of televisionia. While far from a Scalia fan, turns out the ACLU had a pretty good annual leadership dinner where the President of the ACLU went one-on-one with Justice Scalia about a long list of Supreme Court Cases and whether the Constitution was a living document a-la some kind of natural law or original intent. It was a nice break from the short attention spans and gotcha headlines of the newspapers (as the press person, I get to scan a dozen or so every morning at work) or the black and white natterings of the current events blogs ("You're evil." "No, you're evil." "I'm better than you because I'm decent and can get along with people, and you can't." "I'm better than you because you're uneducated and naive, and I'm not." "You're stupid." "No, you're stupid." Etc.).

Not that I could evoke it again for you all in this blog. ConLaw was something like four years ago for me, and the depth they were going to was beyond what I was able to glean during catch-as-catch-can studying. It was nice, though, to revisit the foundations of a lot of the issues I deal with on a mundane, day-to-day basis, in an exchange between two people that was competitive and combative, yet still respectful and engaging. Equality. Due process. Basic fairness and intent. Goals and limitations.

And then it was over, and I was stuck trying to find something else to hold my attention. At which point I gave up trying to watch TV and put on a music channel, and took a nap.

Ode to the Ice Cream Maker

I did consider dashing off a haiku or limerick or something in honor of my new ice cream maker, but the thrill didn't last much longer than trying to figure out if "Cuisinart" was three or four syllables and exploring a few quick rhymes (Heart? Start? Um... fart?)

Anyway, yeah, definitely liking the new ice cream maker. Especially since I ended up with all the leftover pears from my coworker's tree, and we have a few too many mangos after a recent trip to Costco. Until yesterday, we were mixing chocolate chips in with the pear sorbet, and today we swirled it with blueberry sorbet. In a few days -- in go the mangos.

In other earth-shattering news, that "Chavez Calls Bush 'The Devil'" headline was pretty exciting for a moment there. At least, until I figured out it was Hugo Chavez during a speech at the UN.

My Life In Development

And now back to my thesis. Er, I mean blog.

I think it's been something like three weeks since I started at the new job. So far, so good. Great co-workers, especially my supervisor -- it's a real pleasure to be able to work with and learn from someone who is so knowledgable in her field. Unfortunately, I'm not much help with the big grants right now because I'm so unfamiliar with the details of development in the nonprofit health field, but she's okay with that, and is fully willing to feed my inner nerd with as much background reading and I can take, along with trainings, meetings, and even a few baby grants to practice on. With events or PR, she's hands-off; I've thrown together enough of those that she's happy to think about other things.

Our CEO is a mix of go-go-go enthusiasm and down-to-earth charm; very straightforward, apparently impossible to rattle, and very focused on her work. Also a pleasure to work with. And I'm starting to get to work with some of the other people who will be really helpful with the grants -- our CFO, Program Director, Nurse Health Educator, etc. And IT, of course -- without them, we're all on typewriters. And they know the ins and outs of the reporting system.

My parents came to take me out to lunch a week or so ago, and they like the area. It's a lot like East San Jose, except there's a real lack of food diversity in the immediate vicinity. It's basically either Mexican or McDonalds. They ended up taking me over the freeway to eat at the Four Seasons. And, like in certain parts of the East Side, I wouldn't go walking around by myself at night.

Fortunately, foodwise, we have a very large refrigerator and a good microwave, so it's easy to bring lunch (and breakfast, and snacks, and... hey, a food drawer is important!) And we're close to the freeway, so when, say, I just HAVE to have Vietnamese food (and not the chi-chi/ritzy fusion food you find on University -- $12 for lemon grass chicken?), I can run down to Mt. View. It's not super-convenient since with side streets and parking it's about a 30-40 minute round trip to get take-out, but it's nice to get out rather than eat at my desk.

Overall, it's been a good move. I actually almost went into development a couple of years ago around when my first Legislator was terming out, but had some issues with the nonprofit after doing a little more reading up on it. Plus, for something like this you have to really be into the subject, and I was just kind of so-so on that one. And then I ended up staying with the Legislature, which in the end was a valuable experience (although I could use a lot of other words to describe it), and when you can at least say that, it's all still good.