Riding With Sally

What's to love about skiing and snowboarding? The majesty of the mountains, the thrill of whipping downhill, that pristine, bracing air.

Me wearing the Mountain: Collage by Harley

Yes, but there's so many other things to enjoy too.

Friday night: I drove the three hours to Tahoe in the dark. (Kevin had to stay behind one night as Cy had try-outs again - soccer this time). In the car: kids, the fridge leftovers and a pineapple... which rode back on the return journey Sunday night, uneaten. 10pm, arrived at our rental house to find the heating broken. Again. I half fixed it and we crawled into bed wearing our ski jackets, didn't get to sleep until 2am.

Sat morning: Woke up feeling as fresh as the day after I had my first baby... following 24 hours labour. Packed up Kevin's and Cy's gear as they were meeting us at the mountain. Couldn't find Tallulah's season pass. Drive the half hour to Alpine Meadows. Arrive at Alpine to a thin layer of snow and icy patches. Line up to get Tallulah a new pass. Her gloves are missing. Find her gloves outside. Line up to go to the bathroom. Leave my gloves in bathroom stall. Haunt bathroom for a half hour as can't remember which stall I left them in.

Sat lunch: Normally we pack our lunch. Somehow in the three hours preparing that morning we hadn't managed to do this, so I purchased a $10 floppy burger and a dry apple.

Sat afternoon: Back on the ski lift. After ten years of snowboarding, realised I couldn't make a turn anymore. Wipe out three times, scraped my knee, twisted my arm and find myself in another strange position midway on Roundhouse run. ..

Help me...

Was just about to weep when my friend Sally skimmed up beside me. Within minutes I was cackling at my inglorious splatter. Do you want to go down this run or this one, Sally asked. Normally I would go down neither. You lead the way I called and we tore off, giggling and gormless like we were 13 again.

Sally and me

And that's what I love about being up in the snow.

No Snow Day

This weekend we headed up to Tahoe, a three-hour drive from Oakland. There was no snow so we spent the whole time organising the ski house we're renting for this season, grocery shopping and trying on all the ski gear. Instead of skiing, we ate and ate and ate; ice-cream cones at Auburn, ikura at Drunken Money, chicken burgers at Bootleggers' the works at KFC and banana splits at Jax's.

Tallulah and me unloading in the no snow.

Just as we did for the last two years we'll be driving up to Tahoe most weekends. I think of those winter journeys back and forth as sacred time to really get to know my kids, to delve deep into our inner thoughts and really talk about our lives. And after five mins of that, the kids put on their earphones to watch psych, leaving Kevin and me in the front happily singing along to dorky Nineties radio stations.

I did grab the chance to tackle Harley, 14, about not being involved at his new High School. Now football is over, his new sport is coming home and winding us all up.

Harley: "You're wrong, I'm in the French Club."
Me: "Kidding me! But you've never studied French, what on earth do you do there?"
Harley: "Everyone brings in French food, it's always a banquet. They give us France books."
Me: "But I've never seen you take in any food."
Harley: "I bought in a couple of croissants the other day. Got them while I was waiting for the bus."

Bingo! Or rather Bingeaux! I spent the rest of the weekend torturing Harley with my Franglais. You simply cannot pass up that kind of opportunity with your children. Enchante!

I've also had a lot of fun helping my dress designer friend Lesley look for props and locations for her fashion shoot on Wednesday.  She'll be shooting at our house for two days, but needed other backdrops. Walking around the neighbourhood we found two vintage cars... 

One of our neighbour's cars...

...and a Southern-esque home on the corner filled with dusky pinks and chinoiserie, a complete contrast to our house. I'll post about the shoot on Friday. One thing I couldn't help her with though: one of her models shaved her head. Take a look.

Nu Zild: Staying "Sweet As"

A Kiwi reader mentioned the other night I never warn you I'm heading off...I'm simply suddenly there. Bloodyhellsorry, done it again. We're in New Zealand for two weeks, guys. First in Auckland staying with my friend Sue for two nights, then tramping (hiking) in the Coromandel Peninsula for four nights and then home to Ohope Beach in the Bay Of Plenty.

At Ohope, our kids sold (bit runty) Christmas trees on the side of the road for $10.  Initially they weren't having much luck. Cy, seven, having watched of lifetime of Disney TV, knew all about incentives and salesmanship, "Let's give cookies too" he said and when they went door to door: "Take me, I'm the cute one!"

Harley, Jackson and cousin Finn selling Christmas trees at Ohope Beach

Cy and cousin Leah

It's been a funny old trip. Loads of things about New Zealand (sometimes pronounced Nu Zild) have changed...

I Scream: There's even more ways to scream your way through the day, as Tallulah and I found when -  straight off the plane - we jumped 750 ft off the Sky Tower in Auckland. Have I ever mentioned I am terrified of heights? I've done sky diving (with a hangover, natch) and bungy jumping. But this is scarier  -  you're jumping into tall buildings and concrete streets. Shamefully I pushed in front of Tallulah, 10. I knew if I waited any longer I would pike (pull out).  "The guys here will look after you" I told Tallulah as I headed out to the gangplank. Yes, there have been prouder moments for me as a mother...

Happy now I'm near the road

Tallulah about to jump 750 ft in Auckland

Corrugated ironic: Once a noisy, cheap, hotter-than-hell roofing for bushwacker's huts, now corrugated iron cool. The orange and purple and denim-blue curvy stuff is fabulously everywhere.

The Auckland Wharf, Tallulah, Pietra, cousin Leah, Cy, Jackson, Harley, Kevin and cousin Finn.

Me and Mum at her corrugated kitchen island, Ohope Beach

Dog Day Afternoons: The security dogs at Auckland Airport can sniff out anything. Including Cy's three-day old spaghetti bolognese school lunch which had just a touch of green fuzz on it. Poor Cy, seven, bawled when the dog barked at him and a whole building-full of travelers turned to glare.  We rounded out that sterling first impression when Kevin declared his American health bars to customs officials, joking: "Just a little something to bribe you with."
"Sir, there's no bribing here!" the customs guy told him sternly.  I moved away from Kevin, fully prepared to disown him. There have been prouder moments for me as a wife...

Kiwi "chucks" (chicks) no longer keep their good clothes for best. Pietra's friend, Joanna cooked a chicken lunch for 14 in this gorgeous silk gown and stacked sandals. Staunch. When she lived on Waiheke Island she sipped one reviving glass of champers (just the one, mind) at breakfast a la Coco.

Pietra and Joanna

And some things never change...

Retro domestic moments:
I never iron at home, so why am I ironing tonight?

Me and friend Sue before her barbie

Kiwis trust you: Kevin walked into tiny old gold-mining Coromandel Town and told the bank teller: "I have an account here but I don't have the card...or the account number...and I don't really know what the account is."
"Oh no worries at all" the teller said "Just sign this form and I'll do the rest. How much would you like?"
$600? ventured Kevin.
She'd already pushed the cash over to him before he had the chance to hand over his ID.

Good old Kiwi ingenuity. 22-year-old Roxy noticed a small alleyway next to her parent's fish and chip shop in the surfing mecca of Whangamata. She then found a shipping container in the back of her parent's shop. She moved the container into the alleyway space and Roxy's coffee house Barside was born, the "best coffee in Nu Zild" according to everyone we asked.

Roxy's shipping container coffee shop

Roxy

Sweet As. "As" means "Very".  As what? my kids asked their Kiwi cousin Finn, 12.  And what words can you can tack "As" onto? Everything, Finn said, it just has to be good...as. You can also say "Awesome As" which Cy was keen to throw about willy nilly, thinking it was "ArseAs."

The best Kiwi parties always end up in the garage. Here's a classic at my cousin Barry'n'Sue's in the spud (potato) growing town of Pukekohe.

Barry, Dad, John, Freddy, me and Mum. What are we laughing at?

And everyone stays the night...

Tallulah and her cousin Leah

(Big news here today. My sister Pietra just found out her latest documentary, Maori Boy Genius has been selected for competition at the Berlin Film Festival in February. "It's been a long, hard struggle and it's cost me everything, so it's great to find it all worth it" she says. )

Happy Holidays everyone!

Lana'i: Price of Paradise

While we were in Lana'i, a tiny island off Maui, Hawai'i, the most profound thing we experienced - besides the waves which hushed the whining and scrapping for the time it took to bowl over four children - was the deep-seated peace of the Islanders.

Harley, Jackson and Cy

Many of them had lived there all their lives, on a comma-shaped island 18 miles-wide with no traffic lights, an outside jail and a population of 3,102.

The only two hotels on the island have golf courses and tennis courts and staff whose sole job it is to put towels on the chaises, clean sunglasses and spray Evian on sunbathers, who pay $15 for a fruit plate and $6.50 for a latte.

Meanwhile the front page of the Maui News showed Lana'i locals lining up for 1,000 gift bags containing turkeys and rice, which everyone agreed were much needed. Paid work is limited to tourism which is hurting like everything else.

Even if you have a job, or hopefully two, to pay the bills, the three small stores on the island stock few fruit and veg. The 40min ferry ride to Cosco in Maui is $30 each way for an adult, $20 for a child and most families need to stock up at least every six weeks.

All the locals we met agreed that everyone knows your business here, you have to grow your own food and fish if you want to eat well ....and they would never, ever, leave.

First there was Martin who took us out to see the dolphins. This is something he does everyday but when we caught sight of a horizon-full of dolphins leaping - they travel in pods of 60 - his joy was as new, wide and glorious as the grins on the faces of Cy, seven and Tallulah, 10. How do you live here, we asked, the island is so expensive. Yes, he agreed, a gallon of milk is $8 and he has three children who love milk. "That's the price you pay to live in paradise."

Martin and Tallulah

Jared, our shuttle driver to the "City" of Lana'i agreed. He was born here but rebelled in High School. After having a daughter at age 17 he signed up to work on Naval aircraft carriers and travelled the world for six years.  Jaded by city-life he returned to marry his girlfriend and now has three children and two foster children. He also mentioned the price of milk but said: "That's the price you pay to live in paradise"

Manele Beach at 6pm

One of the women busing breakfast tables was from Milwaukee. At age 18 she moved here with her mother and hated it, there was nothing to do. Ten years later, she loves it and intends to live here for the rest of her life. She has three children and she and her fiance, a bartender at the same hotel, are saving to be married in the hotel gardens. She says life here allows their children to roam freely with everyone keeping an eye on them.

We arrived home and the boys flew outside to play football in the backyard and Tallulah spent a happy day with her 12 soft toys making a movie about circus-life. (She even negotiated terms with the actors who will receive 1% of 100%. Someone wrote "great" on the deal but I don't think it was the actors).

The lesson is -  and I guess I'm hammering this moral home as clunkily as Alexander Payne's latest movie, The Descendants, which has the most annoying, preachy voice-over for the first half hour  - that kids don't need posh hotels, swimming pools and room service to be happy and we don't either.  What fools we've been!

I walked down to the deli at the end of our road to buy a gallon of milk - $6.99 before taxes... the price you pay to live in Oakland? No, that doesn't have the same ring somehow.

Anyway in the midst of my "money can't buy you happiness" euphoria, I may have sssslipped off to the sssales and bought this Yarnz ssscarf. I'm obviously too in touch with my new non-material self to feel completed by a mere piece of material. But my brown winter clothes are just ecstatic.

Scarf in our living room knotty-style 

Scarf in our kitchen droopy-style

Any moments of truth for you over the weekend?

Too Late

There are many moral dilemmas in our lives. The lesser of them being: you're late to a yoga class, it's really crowded and there are no more mats left. The women stationed near the door make it very clear they are not moving. Human decency would dictate that you close the door and head home.

Sorry, this photo has nothing to do with what you are reading...

But I always turn into a bit of an ugly tourist when I'm on vacation with the kids. Here on a tiny island off Maui in Hawai'i with only a short break from family-togetherness I know if I don't capture this slice of Namaste I'll become a whiny siren on the rocks of mean muthaness. I hang around at the door until the instructor motions me over and I make my way to the front stepping over a number of prostrate bodies in various states of repair and fitness.  The instructor insists on giving me his mat.

Was I imagining it...a few of our class seemed to be giving me filthy looks for taking the poor instructor's mat? The instructor is a very sweet, serene and kind of smokin' Yogi sporting a flavour-savour goatee and mini hibiscus behind his ear. Of course I feel terribly guilty. But Yogi has fresh young knees, which I'm sure can handle bobbling around on the hardwood floors.... maybe this sacrifice will propel him to an even higher state of being. See, I could be doing him a favour.

To my left side is a rather hirsute, rotund gentleman wearing a t-shirt and shorts, both of which are terribly short and very baggy. I know what this means. I am afraid, very afraid. Soon we were on our knees doing a twisting arm raise. And around! The Belly! Yes, the gentlemans' belly is exposed in quite some rawness, a picture of which is still vivid in my mind even now. Then for the leg raises. Oh no, no please! The Ba..s! Then the arm and leg raises together! Arrgh! The Belly!!! Arrgh!!! The Baaa....!!!

I left sweating and shaken and a few others smiled their yogic smile, justice had been done.

The next morning I got up extra early to make the spin class but got the time wrong. The class had started and there were no bikes left. The instructor insisted I take her bike. This meant she had to stand at the front of the class kind of pretend-cycling with her legs and making pretend gear-changing motions with her hands.

Carb-loading at the porridge stand before Spin

I'm sure noone was terribly happy with this. To show the rest of the spinners that I was not a complete a..hole I smiled at everyone as if to say: "Look I really need this, you didn't give up proper instruction in vain. I'm trying really hard."

Feverishly I was always the first to the "top of the mountain" constantly turning up resistance until I thought I would expire. My legs were spinning, his stomach was churning and so was my head and I felt kind of ill. Keep going, keep going I said to myself smiling to the rest of the class: See how hard I'm trying - it was all worth it.

Was I imagining it ...but did everyone avoid my gaze as I left the class?

Sitting down that night for dinner, we noticed an older couple heading for the table next to us, dressed in their bathrobes and slippers. It must have been an optical illusion but it seemed they were not wearing any clothes underneath.  Harley, 14 said: "Please don't let those robes fall open, I'm still so young, I've got my whole life ahead of me."

Ooops, too late.

WTF Fun In The Sun

At some point in every vacation with the kids I feel like yelling "What the fuck! What the fuck is the fucking point?!!" packing my bags and heading home.

Paradise Lost: the kids' room

I reached that point on Day Two here in Hawai'i. The kids were fighting incessantly and unceasingly. If the second word is a redundant synonym, I apologise, I just wanted to cover every minute of their waking hours. The two middle kids actually disagreed this morning about how much they fight.
Me: You two kids fight all the time, it's unbelievable!
Middle child one: You've got to be kidding me, we don't fight ALL the time.
Middle child two: Yes we do! You've got to be kidding me, we fight all the time!

And so on for an hour.  They nudge, push, pull and trip.  And when we plead with them to stop, they persist, but quietly, whispering and hissing. The other two stir the pot. This is nothing new but somehow I thought a brighter tropical sun might burn off the squabble haze enveloping the Bickerville Four. Silly old me.

And yes, maybe I thought staying in a nice hotel would provide a buffer. But in fact it doesn't matter what you pay and where you go: hotels are simply expensive camping. Would you close off the rest of your house and live in your bedroom for a week? Trudge around a triangle of 100 feet from bedroom to food to a pool where 150 kids have peed in the last 12 hours?  Hand wash your work-out gear every night and attend a yoga class in a room the size of a box? Watch Cy, seven, select his clothing from the dirty washing bag every day?

Would you go to restaurants where the lettuce is brown and wilty, the chicken over-salted and tired because you're on an island and almost everything on the menu is shipped (even some of the fish) from the US ....and even the smallest and simplest of meals costs $20 and upwards? At $15 a glass, drink wine you've never heard of, and not in a good way.

The breakfast conversations make it all worthwhile though. Did I ever tell you my kids don't talk much? The one exception being the three boys will have lengthy discussions about college basketball players. If they do mention non college basketball-playing people in their lives they have four categories: "nice" "okay" "kinda annoying" and "super-annoying." Sooo... I say brightly and hopefully -  in what way is that person "super-annoying"? Give me some examples.  At this point there is a glimmer of faint camaraderie amongst the kids when they all glance at each other wide-eyed, smile and chorus: "Dunno. They're just SUPER-ANNOYING!!! O. Kaaay???" and go back to eating their Fruit Loops.

To be fair, seven year old Cy does talk a wee bit. And for this vacation he's decided to speak all day in a cockney accent, the authenticity of which rivals Dick Van Dyke playing Ned the chimney sweep in Mary Poppin. "Hey ho me guvnors wha a' ya doin' in thar - eh, eh? Bit of a larf eh? eh???" he calls as he knocks on our door at 6.30am. (We just had two complaints about this.)

Cy has also somehow picked up a very sweet trait: during his sentences he'll introduce the word "Mother" while raising his middle finger (the wrong way, but I'm not going to tell him that).

And then of course there is Tallulah, 10, who talks a bit but only sometimes. Last night Tallulah appeared at our bathroom door. Kevin was brushing his teeth while I was in bed. Not knowing I could hear her through the air vents, she soliloquized richly about the ills of being the only girl amongst three brothers and the various injustices leveled against her during the day, including but not confined to: everyone else likes playing football on the beach but she wants to go horse-back riding; everyone else wants to swim in the sea, she likes the pool better; we always take other peoples' sides and don't realise she's always in the right; we don't tell off Cy because he's cute and the youngest.....

After a half hour of this, I heard her say to Kevin: "Do you think I'm like Mum?"

That was sort of sweet of her and I smiled as I adjusted my legs ... it was hard to feel comfortable because our bed was sloping to the left and I was lying on the thin edge of the wedge.

"Do you think I'm like Mum?" Tallulah asked again"Always complaining all the time?" 

It's the next morning and we're on the beach. It hasn't rained for a year in Maui and now it's pissing down. Mother finger.

Me and Jackson in the rain

Ukulele Baby!

Aloha from Lana'i in Hawai'i, the land of apostrophes, sun, sand and legitimately drinking fruit juice with booze at 10am ...as if I needed a hall pass on that one...

Me and Tallulah

We're here until Thanksgiving Day when we fly back - the cheapest way to travel, flying on holidays, as it turns out. A saving for the unsentimental. And yes, I know it seems like we're always swanning off somewhere, but there were a couple of days when I was home picking up Cy's socks (for my sins, as they say).


Getting to Manele Bay on Lana'i, off Maui, turned out to be a full-day adventure of planes, taxis and boats.

Harley, Kevin, Cy, Tallulah and Jackson

As with any travel we arrived grumpy and stanky and having experienced the requisite number of monumental meltdowns one would expect in a group of six -  four of whom, in a show of hands, unlikely to have chosen to co-habit for 18 years.  But nothing a few tootsies in the sand can't turn around. Everything here is perfect. The mangoes a rich yellow, the sand a squeaky white and.... ukulele music.


That ukulele music made me think of my brother, Tony, and I at ages 10 and 11. We enjoyed nothing more than grabbing ukuleles lying randomly around the house (as they do in most homes) singing tunelessly and strumming chordlessly "Ukulele baby! Ukulele baby!" until someone (often the neighbours) finally cracked and yelled: Stop! Bloodyhellyoukids - Stop!

A perfect soft breeze rustles the palm trees. Should be utter serenity...but I can't get that tuneless tune out of my head...

Manele Bay

Ukulele baby! Ukulele baby!...is there any tune going round in your head this afternoon?

Last LOUD Days of Summer

Labour Day here in the US draws a line in the sand. After today you simply cannot be seen in your whites and brights. Who knows why? Anyone...anyone? So before my time ran out, I broke out the loudest, boldest, dayglo-iest frock I could find.

Bloomin' lovely or bloody awful?

I found this original Seventies dress while dropping Tallulah off at her doctors' on Friday. "Lounging Wear" it said on the label. I did its' bidding.

Lounging at home

But where to wear it? You may have heard me whining about the rubbish summer we've had here in the Bay Area. It was Mark Twain who said: "The coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco." Well, it was like that here in Oakland.  Every area here has its own microclimate. Oakland is just 12 mins across the bridge from San Francisco but is usually 15 degrees warmer. And it gets really, really hot if you drive just a few minutes inland to Lafayette.  So I invited my frock and family to Lafayette friends Peter and Lisa...and we sat outside all night.

Peter and Lisa's backyard in Lafayette

Me and Tallulah

Jake, 2 and Cy, 7

I must admit there was some angry loudness as we pulled out of our driveway earlier in the night. The kids had forgotten to put out the garbage the previous week and I made them pile it into the back of the car so we could drop it at a local store bins (pre-arranged, mind) Turns out some roaming creatures has feasted on our largesse which became obvious as the kids - and poor Kevin -  loaded in the bags. The wee holes leaked stinking, rotting whatever into the car and all over the kids. Making memories.

Despite garbage-gate, the long weekend was going rather well, a little too well, so we decided to spend a couple of hours in traffic driving to a freezing, fogged-over crowded Stinson Beach. During our 15 years living in England, we spent many brisk and bum-freezing hours on the beaches of Devon, Brighton and Studland Bay, near Bournemouth. Tropical compared to temps in Stinson.

On Sunday I was keeping it loud with my moving mermaid necklace , admittedly more Jersey Shore than the hippy succulents and Cowgirl Creamery vibe of Stinson. I arrived wearing my mermaid, ever hopeful, like so:

Watercolour by Tallulah

Arrived like this...

But soon was wearing the picnic blanket, Stinson-Beach style:

Couple of minutes later...Lesley and I 

What lovely loudness in your weekend?

(And don't forget to enter our Giveaway of the first three seasons of Damages, starring Glen Close and Rose Byrne.)

Sonoma Spa

This weekend was as close as I come to a spa. I just can't bring myself to pay for steamy stuff, bloopy facials and things with stones. The only times I've had massages, I spent most of the time trying to calculate the tip. Or wondering how long my face can hang through this hole before my eyeballs pop out.

But the last three days in Sonoma was better than a spa... with sweet reverie and relaxation by the pool at a small vineyard in Healdsburg. Fancy clothes were out: the kids had insisted on packing for me and I arrived with little more than a pair of Spanx, UGG boots and ski vest...so spent a lot of time with swimsuit and towel.

Jackson doing air guitar

We had "won" this weekend in the school fundraising auction: three nights in a old family home in wine country. The property was a paradise whatever your age, complete with a pool, a large pond squirming with fish and every kid toy you could think of including an electric buggy that Cy rode frontways sideways and backways around the pond for hours.

Cy rides the buggy

Friday night, Jesse, master pizza maker from Diavola fired up six pizzas for us while we ate roasted cauliflower and marinated eggplant by the pool. His triumph; the Rustica with house-smoked calabrese sausage, garlic, anchovies, ricotta and rapine. Not a first-date pizza for sure.

Even the coffee place at the corner, JimTown Store, was perfectly vintagely cream and Waltons green... without John-Boy's whiny voice.

In fact there was no whining all weekend. Okay, bit of an exaggeration but dang close - see you even start talking like John-Boy when you eat watermelon candy and play jumping beans near a hot tin roof.

I had another "spa" experience a couple of weekends ago when our bookclub met at Jean's house in Sonoma.  Her new home amongst the olive groves was a mix of soothing and stimulating with concrete floors and counter-tops, handmade wooden tables and bold oil paintings.

And it turns out that, yes, literary critical skills are absolutely sharpened with your toes in the pool and a chilled one in your hand.

What was your spa moment this weekend?