E is for Employed

I haven’t had a paycheck in over twenty years.  This was a choice, mostly.  I did a little freelance work when my first born was an infant but he was wildly unenthusiastic about napping on a schedule or taking a bottle so I settled in to the domestic engineer career ladder.  Stepstool. Milking stool.

I'd work for this guy

My youngest is starting high school in the fall and I am acutely aware of my lack of marketable skills. When I opted out of the workforce, the Internet wasn’t a thing yet.  I had a carphone that had to be installed, laptops hadn’t been invented, and to apply for a job you mailed out paper resumes and made phone calls. 

My last job official job was in an art gallery where among other things, I reviewed artist’s work by looking at sheets of slides that were mailed to the gallery.  I mailed press materials to newspaper and magazine editors.  I visited artists’ studios to select work or dropped off pieces at collector’s homes for consideration. People wrote checks and we had to wait 10 working days until they cleared.  Back then people smoked in galleries too, which seems bizarre now. 

In the twenty one years since I retired, the art gallery as a sales venue has been all but replaced with eBay and websites, but shows do still happen. I’ve been to a handful.  My money goes to other things, like graph paper, cleats, and iPads, so I’m not a patron of the arts and my gallery opening invitations dried up pretty quick. 

So how does one step back in?  A lot has been published about this lately, or maybe I’m just noticing it. I have zero marketable skills, at least compared to an unencumbered twentysomething with a relevant degree and practical experience.  How does navigating elementary school volunteer & carpool duties translate to a W-2? I am nowhere near hip enough to be a barista or bag groceries at Whole Foods.  I’m way too hormonal to be a crossing guard.  I might be too hormonal to be around other people, or their dogs. 

I’m open to suggestions.

Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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D is for Depot

'meet you at the depot'

This sentence has been said and texted a zillion times in our family.  

The depot is the social core of our Northern California town, a former train station and then greyhound bus station tucked at the base of Mount Tamalpais. Now it is a red brick plaza anchored by the Depot Cafe and Bookstore, edged with wooden benches, permanent chess tables and mature trees skirted with concrete benches that house musicians and parents and dog walkers on any typical day.  The bus stops across the street now. 

In the twenty years that I have lived here, I have sat on those benches with coffee while my baby slept in a stroller; I have watched my kids climb the trees, make chalk drawings, play hop scotch, ride scooters, skateboards and bicycles.  I have brought my kids coffee while they played guitars, banjos and mandolins, busking (very successfully)for money. Sometimes I'd see them there playing when I drove by. 

I meet up with my kids there now, in town from college or traveling; it's our central meeting place to hang out or go for a meal. Recently I ran into my son there unexpectedly, not even knowing he was in town; Little kids were climbing trees, riding scooters (with helmets now), the hacky-sack kids, moms in lulu lemons pushing sleeping babies in strollers, and an old guy playing a sitar under the tree. 

Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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Write On, Mamas! announce our newborn Anthology

Mamas Write, (Bittersweet Press)
29 essays by the Write On, Mamas! 

It's been a long and thoughtful gestation, and our due date is imminent.  Deep cleansing breath, and.......

Sunday, April 27 (3 PM) at Napa Bookmine

and

Sunday, May 4 (7 PM) at Book Passage Corte Madera

we get to follow Ayelet Waldman and Andrew Sean Greer!  OMG.

Join us!
Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

and stay tuned for the A to Z challenge......

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V is for Valor, or maybe Victory?

The Armchair Squid has has chosen to bestow upon me the Liebster award. Well, myself and ten others. I am now obligated to layout 11 fun facts about moi, answer the 11 questions the Squid posed (really good ones), award it to 11 other bloggers and ask them 11 new questions. They in turn can, if they wish, follow the same steps to keep the award going. Check out his link so you can get to know him a little better, too. I hope I'm doing this right (write?) 

Eleven Millvallison Factoids:

1.   I am a retired skier. Meaning I no longer feel compelled to ski, or shlep anything related to skiing. Ever.

2.   I buy pretty much all my edibles at our local Farmer’s Markets. 

3.   David Lee Roth > Sammy Hagar. Duh.

4.   My computer is seriously overdue for an upgrade. 

5.   My daugher uses a sonicscrewdriver tooth brush.  If you understand, we can be friends.

6.   She, my third child was not a ‘surprise’, but thanks for asking.

7.   I allowed my two sons to stop cutting their hair in middle school.  One hasn’t cut it since, and he starts college in the fall. Because Santa Cruz needs more dreadlocks.

8.    During our annual summer trip to Texas, one year I made a split second decision to detour north to Archer City to see the crumbling theater from Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show.  Everyone got Dairy Queen, so there were minimal complaints.

9.   I’ve been hugged by Eddie Vedder. 

10.    Coffee is my drug, my jesus, my love.

11.     #9 is better than you can imagine.

Eleven Squid questions:

1.   If you could live one year of your life again, which would you choose and why? 

I would say possibly one of my post college NYC years, I would go out and do and see more art & music.  So many of the artists and musicians who were active in the late 80’s are no longer with us.

2.   If you could be good or better at one thing without putting the time and work, what would it be? 

Blues singer or guitarist.

3.   You’ve been invited to join a bowling league and you may choose any five people to be on your team. There’s only one catch: you can only pick fictional characters.  Whom would you choose? 

Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes, Aunt Bea, Lucy Ricardo, Harry Callaghan and Jamie Summers.

4.   How do you feel about pears? 

Juicy and delicious if in season, but can easily turn mealy.

5.   How do you feel about the metric system?  

It has let me down.

6.   The doctor knocks on your door. He’ll take you to visit any place on earth at any point in history (he always seems to make the choices with intersetellar travel). Where and when do you choose?

Creation of the earth, end of the dinosaur age, or a great lost weekend at mardi gras with well connected locals who know all the right places to go.

7.   If you could learn any new language, which would you choose? 

Spanish for practical travel, Elvish for Comicon

8.   You have one personal quality which eventually annoys everyone in you life including on occasion yourself. What is it an do you feel its within you power to change it? 

Negativity/pessimism.  Probably not.

9.   If you knew when you were younger what you’d be doing with your life now, how might you have planned things differently? Do you think your life would be truly better overall if you had? 

I would have worried significantly less about getting my kids into the right preschool and traveled more. Yes, possibly

10.  If all went south and you had to turn to a life of crime (assuming you haven’t already) what line of dirty work would you choose? 

I’m guessing there’s gonna be something shady happening with electric car chargers/solar panels that I’m not dialed in enough to know about – it’s going to be energy related. Or possibly like the fake tweet that was read by an investing algorithm and tanked the stock market for a few hours.  that was pretty surprising.  to me.

11.How do you get your geek on? 

Vicariously, through my kids mostly. Dr. Who, the new Star Trek movie next month. Discussing LOTR with my son. Hubble telescope photos of deep space.The usual.

It is my great honor to present the Liebster Award to:

1. Crystal 

2. Jennifer Van Santvoord

3. Julie Kemp Pick 

4. Crazy California Claire

5. A Daft Scots Lass (Jack White's girlfriend)

6. Sweet P

7. Steven Friedman

8. Annie Yearout

9. Cindy Ash

10. Leslie Lagerstrom

11. Write On, Mamas!

My eleven questions to pass on:

1. What's the first thing you ever wrote that you were proud of?

2. What kind of roller skates did you own/rent?

3. Did you name you bike as a kid? as an adult?

4. Has another person's dietary habits ever ended or threatened to end the relationship?

5. Is there a sport you could not live without following?

6. What is it about ketchup?

7. Have you ever shaved your head.  Have you ever wanted to? Why?

8. Is there a song you know the lyrics to that you will sing just to annoy people?

9. What is the first meal you learned to cook?  Do you still make it the same way?

10.  Have you ever turned down an invitation out of spite?

11.  Did you believe new sneakers made you run faster? What if they did? 

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O is for Options

I want him to look down and ask himself ‘What’s on my plate?’  How do I create a future? Lay the stepping stones to a goal?  So far its still Chutes and Ladders for him.  Every day a new adventure. He has walked his plate to the dog bowl, scraped it clean of opportunities and wondered off the trail. I’ve heard from some (men) that this is admirable, formative.  They’re envious of his freedom. 

Why must his lessons be hand forged artisanally crafted, locally sourced, micro brewed in bad behavior? So Portlandia! His parentally woven safety nets of financial planning and collegiate expectations have been shrugged off, while suspended above his head a sharp blade dangles, twisting in the breeze of his creation with his tsunami of questionable choices. Only visible to maternal eyes, apparently. He senses it but it doesn’t factor into his decision making. 

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N is for North Beach

Mario's Bohemian Cigar Store Cafe

I walked through North Beach this morning and it’s been a while. Predictably, as it happens, things have changed.  I moved to San Francisco’s North Beach in 1991. My first child was born a year later, and we spent the first year and a half of his life walking and strolling around our neighborhood before we moved to the burbs and his brother was born.

First off, Tower Records is now Walgreen’s.  This is partly just the way it goes, record stores are not profitable enough to occupy two corners of prime real estate in San Francisco.  But Walgreen’s? Bleh. Strike one for charm.

pagoda theater Go Giants!

What’s still thriving? The Chinese laundry and alterations shops, tourist bike rentals and Coit Liquor. The Pagoda Theater is gutted. Once an actual theater, then a blue movie house,  when we lived nearby it was a movie theater specializing in Kung Fu flicks. It's Deco façade is now stripped of neon and the front is boarded up and nicely graffitied. (Go Giants!) The theater was supposed to be renovated, then a parking garage was to be dug out of the basement and the building converted into condos.  Now the plan seems to be about the impending subway and the theater being an entry point. Strike two.

A few doors up Powell is an empty restaurant called Bottle Cap which used to be Ed Moose’s historic WASHBAG.  Erased with periwinkle blue paint. Same with Moose’s across the park. Just another restaurant. Out front Prius cabs and helmeted tourists in three wheeler go-carts, slow as neon slugs, manuver around as if in a San Francisco’s North Beach theme park.

Mario's on Columbus & Union

What’s still around, thank god, are Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store and Saints Peter & Paul church. On the east side of Columbus and the north side of Union Street, it is sunny and warm spring weather. On the opposite shady sides, it is down jacket weather with icy gusts of wind.  Inside Mario’s my ambitiously mustachioed barista whips up a double cappuccino and a roasted red pepper and eggplant panini. Unchanged since the first time I order it in high school. The bells of the church chime noon as kids screech and yell in Washington Square Park. This remains the same.

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J is for JAVA!

maddie's mud at marin farmer's market

Crazy California Claire is hosting my J Is For JAVA! piece today as part of the Write On Mamas! Blogging A to Z challenge.

Are we all familiar with cupping?  The fanatical java fans know what I'm talking about. My friend, Bill, sent me this article on brewing the perfect cup.

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