Mom Camp

“Which camp will your daughter go to this summer?” my friend asked me about a week ago. “In this economy?” I replied.

“We’re doing Mom Camp this summer!”

In defiance of strict San Francisco parent law my family eschewed children’s day camps this summer season in favor of something radical and exhausting. Entertaining the kids my own damn self.

I’m fortunate enough to not need the camps for childcare. I work from home, half-time. I set my own schedule and bill the hours when I’m done. I’m lucky in that, in these tight fiscal times, I can make the choice to take care of my kids during the day and hit the grindstone during naptime, TV time, and after bedtime. This frees up my money to pay for things like food and electricity instead of one of the many excellent Bay Area specialty camps, such as (and I’m not kidding here) Shark Fishing Camp.

So far we’re having a fabulous time. Such a good time, in fact, that I’d love to spread the word on my Mom Camp highlights.  If you live in the Bay Area feel free to copy these ideas directly. And if you live far away, I am sure you are sharp and clever enough to modify this stuff to create your very own Mom or Dad Camp that works with your city or town.

I’ve found it best to have themes. Starting with some San Francisco basics.

Tourist for a Day. Register ahead of time with the Pier 39 local special to get stuff like free parking or food for kids. Arrive early to hook up with the crowds on east coast time and check out the sea lions, the carousel, and (for toddlers who are still not too jaded to freak out over all things transport-related) the many varieties of boat going bye-bye. Trek over to Musee Mechanique and entertain the kids (while creeping out adults) with the likes of Laughing Sal and other Victorian-era nickelodeon machines. Be sure to avoid the Opium Den puppet show or you’ll have some serious explaining to do.

Scavenger Hunt Day. Make a list and check it twice. Then head out to a unique neighborhood like Chinatown or Japantown to forage for items of interest (waving kitty, fortune cookie factory, etc.). Pop some  pics of the stuff with your phone, making sure to have a kid pose in front of each one for proof of scavenger hunt success.

Explore A New  Neighborhood Day. We applied this one to West Portal but it works anywhere as long as you plunge yourself into a certain part of town with total commitment. We started our neighborhood quest at the playground above the awesome tunnel where MUNI trains exit the subway to go above ground (see above note about toddlers and things that go bye-bye). Then we hit the library for your typical screeching and ripping things off of the shelves. After a lovely stroll down the sunny main street we took a break for gelato at a hip new shop that mainly sells the trendy sour yogurt everyone’s getting all tarted up about. A great Mom Camp day except for the fact that the yogurt/gelato shop’s sullen teenage employees played eff-word laden gangsta rap the whole time (who’s got two thumbs and is gettin’ old? This gal!) And they didn’t have recycling. Seriously? No recycling bins in a restaurant in San Francisco. Please! They practically come into your kitchen and rinse the damn cans for you.

Field trip day. Last week we trekked across the Bay Bridge to Children’s Fairyland in Oakland. Next up is a voyage down the coast to a goat farm in Half Moon Bay. I don’t need to tell you experienced moms and dads out there to plan well for rain contingencies, bring loads of snacks, and offer plenty of time for rest and unstructured play breaks on such outings.

But I will let you in on the best Mom Camp secret I have yet to discover.

Taco Tuesdays at Park Chalet. Shhh! This is between us, but the best way to end a day of Mom Camp is to find a kid-friendly happy hour. I’ve found that the outdoor Taco Tuesdays at this charming little beachside restaurant offer the kids a final chance to run off some steam while the parents get to mingle over a cold one with our fellow camp counselors.

If you don’t live near such a miraculous venue, I advise you to invite your friends over around 4:30pm, bust out some cheap, kid-friendly hors d’oeuvres and grow your own Taco Tuesday. It makes being Mom Camp Director worth it.

I also realized it was quite worth it when my six-year-old daughter blurted out in the car last night, “Aren’t we having the best summer ever, Mom?”

We sure are, Little Camper, we sure are.

Book Review: The Urban Homestead by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen

I got my husband The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City for his birthday.  We recently bought our first house and I thought the book looked like an excellent resource in assisting our family in realizing the organic-yuppie dream of creating our own garden. Based on my cursory skim of the jacket blurb I thought the book would be about planting tomatoes in my backyard and harvesting homegrown lemons off the patio. Typical grow-your-own advice for the intrepid new homeowner.

Turns out this book is more than your standard Better Homes and Gardens resource. More like a DIY (that’s Do-It-Yourself to the non-do-it-yourselfer) guide taken to a hardcore level. It’s written by folks who seem to be prepared to withstand any major calamity of human or natural origins while they ride out the storm in their off-the-grid Los Angeles bungalow.

As I perused the advice on guerrilla gardening in public spaces and keeping wild quail for eggs, I got the feeling that the book almost amps up the reader for some sort of progressive response to the apocalypse, without coming right out and saying so.  It’s a sort of leftist manifesto to sustainability, eco-friendly living, and urban community for those who have long-since mastered growing a lemon tree on the patio. A sort of hipster thinking-person’s alternative to the back-to-nature hippie advice of our parents’ generation.

My first clue was the guide to urban foraging. Things like grinding flour from recovered acorns, the legal wiggle room allowed when plucking fruit from your neighbors’ overhanging trees, and how to safely dumpster dive.  Seriously cool advice, if not somewhat surprising.

Diving deeper than the dumpsters, I learned about peeing in your own compost, building a wormery, and raising hens in the yard. I was all for it and ready to take the kids out to buy some chicks until I got to the part about cleaning their nasty poultry bottoms. I do enough of that with the small human members of our household. And then I turned to the page on building your own luggable loo/self-composting toilet. It’s basically a bucket in the bedroom. Wow.

Along the way are all sorts of handy projects that take DIY to the extreme. The authors eschew buying expensive compost kits and chicken coops in favor of metal trashcans and busted old vans. They advocate growing your own living curtains out of climbing vines and ripping up the lawn to let wild edible weeds take over. Folks who have apartments are advised to plant secret gardens along highway medians and grassy parking lot green patches. Reduce, reuse, recycle and save money and stick it to the man while you’re at it!

The authors strike me as the sort of educated Ready-Made readers who live in Berkeley or Brooklyn and fetishize mid-century furniture. The extremist, back-to-land living that The Urban Homestead makes the case for is not for militant black-helicopter types. More like citified, yet eco-minded, farmers market shoppers who want to take it to the next level without giving up the creature comforts of urban living or really cool design.

Extremism aside, this is an excellent book for those who are ready to dip their toes into gardening and farming, or taking sustainable living to the next level.  The Urban Homestead’s main weakness lies in its breadth not depth. It almost covers too much ground with its detailed instructions on making your own sourdough starter before moving on to harvesting water off the roof.

As an added bonus, this book is quite a handy guide for folks living in San Francisco earthquake country, or any other city that is at high risk for potentially losing services in the face of disaster (i.e. any city). We were reminded after the Katrina nightmare that we are totally on our own in the event of calamity—that local, state, and national government will pretty much be useless. I’m keeping many of the self-providing lessons of The Urban Homestead in the back of my mind in case of such an event. And I think I’ll throw a copy into the earthquake kit for reference in case the shit goes down and we have to ground flour from foraged acorns or recycle our graywater. Or even just grow our own tomatoes.

Getting Ready for Summer in San Francisco (And, yes, we all know that Mark Twain quote)

I recently read a blog with a hilarious (and true) list of 5 signs it’s spring in San Francisco:

I read this particular article (and I’m writing my own blog entry) while sitting in my iceberg-ish office, wrapped in a cardigan and scarf on a San Francisco Memorial Day weekend. The temp hovers in the mid-50s, the skies are gray, and the wind is tearing off the Pacific Ocean like an arctic fart.

Yes, indeed, it must be springtime in San Francisco!

The funny blog list led me to come up with a few more signs we know it’s spring in the City by the Bay, and I can’t help it if my list offers a parent’s perspective. Here are a few ways we know that San Francisco families are gearing up for summer:

1. A rush on off-season fleece sales. San Francisco parents have been known to swarm the sale racks at Old Navy and Nordstrom in a shark-like frenzy each spring as they search for the perfect bargain on winter clothes. Since San Francisco summers usually top off at an average temperature that is ten degrees less than January in Arizona (see #4) moms and dads of quick-growing kids like to load up on cheapie NorCal “summer” wear.  I have yet to witness a savvy retailer catch on to this phenomenon.  They still mostly stock tank tops and sundresses. I assume this is for the shopping tourist or the SF folks who need to buy true summer wear to take with them on their vacation to somewhere warm.

2. Public school fundraisers. I work for a non-profit website (Plug! Plug!) with a mission to serve as a resource guide for SF families, and every year around this time we get bombarded with requests to help publicize Spring Flings, Kiddie Carnivals, Big Bashes, Movie Nights, and of course my personal favorite, DogFest. My colleagues and I are more than happy to post tons of info on these ubiquitous school events, but along with spring fever comes a bit of a spring bummer that the District provides so little funding that parents have to hold a friggin’ dog show to pay for things like art.

3. Summer camp fisticuffs. And I’m just talking about the parents trying to get their kids in. If you have kids in SF, you may have heard the buzz in the school yard, on the playground, or at Acrosports lessons. Perhaps the messages are flying back and forth on the neighborhood list serve. Second only to preschool panic and public school application mayhem is the summer camp melee. San Francisco parents who work both inside and outside the home tend to bum rush the (thankfully many) summer camps starting early spring, hoping to land a coveted spot at one of the Rec and Parks programs. Some of them are incidentally harder to get into than Harvard University or Rooftop Elementary.

4. Transplants going home. In anticipation of a summer full of cold and fog, many parents who are non-natives of San Francisco (especially those who couldn’t land a decent day camp) pack the hell up and hightail it out to Delaware or Texas or London or Arizona to have a “real” summer with swimming pools and popsicles and sunburns. A real summer does not involve wearing fleece. Even in London, I’m told.

5. Festivals, fairs and parades. For those who choose to stick around and brave the cold, there is no shortage of free or cheap family entertainment. San Francisco families have the good fortune to take part in everything from county fairs to the Stern Grove Music Festival to San Francisco’s crowning glory, (second only to Halloween) the Pride Parade.

6. An odd burst of summer. For an occasional 48 hours parents get to rejoice in 90 degree temperatures. Everyone hurls their kids in the car or onto the N-Judah line to rush to the beach, the white mommies blinding each other with radioactively luminescent legs. The farmers markets overflow with mommies and daddies stocking up on fresh blueberries in their shorts and flipflops. Windows are cast open (as no one has AC here) and all manner of odd bugs make new homes in children’s beds and fruit bowls across the City. Parents scramble to find the window screens that were hidden away in the garage or attic or back closet after last heat wave in February. And then, as quickly as it arrives, the warm weather beats a hasty retreat, smothered by a white pillow of fog.  And out come the fleece jackets again. Purchased on sale at Old Navy.

Why My Mom is Mom-tacular!

I love my mom because:

She teaches her dog to sit, Texas-style, with two syllables: “Seee-it!”

We still bond over classic lady-dates: lunch, shopping, manicures.

She taught me how to dress in a manner that is most flattering for a short woman.

On a related note, she totally understands why I think being called “cute” is a lame compliment.

She taught me to be well groomed and have pride in my appearance. Mom never looks like a slob, even if she is just running out to the grocery store.

Manners, manners, manners. I whined about it as a kid, but I have thanked God for her etiquette lessons every time I’ve ever been on a job interview or at a decent restaurant.

I heard the following mantra a million times growing up: “You can do anything you set your mind to. Don’t ever settle.”

Certain conversations of an intimate nature with her young daughters made her a wee bit uncomfortable, but she sucked it up and had them anyway.

She won’t admit it, but she’s a closet feminist.

I’ve learned how to be a loyal, long-term friend by watching her sustain relationships with an amazing circle of women for the past thirty years.

She embraced my husband from day one, welcoming him into the family like he was one of her own.

She spoils my kids rotten.

She spoils me rotten too.

Good Bye Noe Valley!

Our family had to leave the old house. Our landlords intended to sell the place and we had a couple of choices: take advantage of San Francisco tenant law and dig in our heels to endure a tedious eviction process under the new owner; or cut a deal with the current slumlords (oops I mean landlords).

Rather than force our family to endure any more negative vibes from the hostile property owners, we finally opted to take the money and run.

It all worked out for the best: a beautiful house backing up to Stern Grove, more room to grow and play, and best of all, home ownership! Only one glaring exception: we had to leave beautiful Noe Valley, a lovely, convenient, charming neighborhood that was our home for the past six years.

Many other families love Noe Valley just as much as we do. Its growing popularity drove prices up so high that our family could no longer afford even to rent anything of decent quality that we could turn around in. Much less buy.

But I will miss so much about our sweet little village in the middle of San Francisco:

The Saturday morning farmers market with blue grass music and honey sticks for the kids.

Upper Noe Playground and Noe Courts, even before the makeovers.

Holy Bagel, which gives out free bagels for babies.

The kind (and cute) firefighters at Station 11 on 26th street who always entertained my brood.

The fascinating dynamics of the tight nanny cabal that rules the above-mentioned playgrounds.

Carolyn the children’s librarian at the Noe Valley Branch Library.

Saturday morning stroller rush hour on 24th Street when everyone comes out for shopping and coffee.

Catching the J-Church train in front of Lovejoys Tea Room.

I’ll even miss getting riled up by the bizarre love-hate thing with kids in Noe Valley. Noe is teeming with offspring, so obviously many people in the hood like kids. But there is a small, vocal group of haters who seem to think that diversity in all its forms is great as long as that diversity only includes childless hipsters.

I’ll miss the $1,000 stroller gridlock whined about by above-mentioned haters.

I’ll miss the cheese store, the hardware store, the chocolate store, the funky pajama store, and all the other unique local businesses that have hung on for years. Thank you for six great years, Noe Valley! I’ll visit often but it won’t be the same.

Coming Home

Our family finally realized the dream of owning our own house! We moved in one week ago, and I have subsequently had little time to touch the keyboard. In honor of the new place, I’m posting a recycled essay about the sweet little rental we just left:

I cried in the car on the way home from the hospital with our new baby. From what I’ve heard, many mommies do this. I cried because the pediatric nurse and lactation consultant acted like the baby was going to starve since my milk had yet to come in and the baby had lost ten percent of her birth weight. (This is totally normal by the way.)

I cried because I was angry at the doctor who botched my stitches after the birth, causing a horrific delay in finishing up the whole thing. I cried because I was sore and tired. I cried because I was still reliving the birth, bracing against each phantom contraction and rubbing my empty belly like an amputee scratches a lost limb.

I cried because my older daughter was a confused mess and I hurt for her. I cried because my mama-hormones made me love my children so much that I ached like I had the flu.

But then I came home to our old house with its cozy little rooms and the walls that we painted ourselves and the shady backyard and the view of Bernal Heights from the front porch. And, although instant peace didn’t completely overtake me, the intensity of my emotions slowed down and I was able to take some yoga breaths and unclench my jaw just a little bit.

Our front door greeted me by ejecting the inside doorknob onto the floor as I stepped over several pairs of sparkly children’s shoes. I put the infant carseat down on two plastic tubs filled with essential survival gear for the event of an earthquake and I immediately remembered that I now needed to add diapers. The cat tried to sneak past me and weasel his way out the front door. Everything was normal. As normal as it could be after giving birth three days ago. I was home.

The notion of home has become somewhat fluid in recent years. Most middle-class, professional people I know have mortgages by now, unless they live in San Francisco. In which case “home” is often a dusty old house or apartment, full of character and charm, and actually owned by a nice couple who hit it big during the dot-com boom and now live down the peninsula in a neo-classical, ranch-style, pre-colonial, Spanish-influenced, gothic-revival, mid-century-modern subdivision.

Renting sometimes makes it hard to devote myself to my home. The house is full of crappy repair jobs, thrown together by my slumlords—oops I mean landlords—who ensure that the shareholders of Ikea and the company that makes duct tape stay in the black. For example, our back stairs had no rails along the sides until my then-two-year-old daughter plunged off and onto the concrete below, prompting a quickie lawsuit-preventive repair job. Such infuriating incidents always keep me up at night wishing we could win the lottery and buy a zillion dollar house, all the while thinking, “This is supposed to be my home?”

Sometimes I feel guilty for questioning this idea of home, because I know it’s a lot more than what many people have. Every time I see a homeless woman in Golden Gate Park or catch some of the endless heart-shattering footage of New Orleans, I cross my fingers and thank my lucky stars that I am blessed with a roof over my head.

And on the day that I cried my way home from the hospital, introducing my three-day-old baby to a place she had yet to experience outside the womb, I remembered all that I love about my oft-derided home.

I love the shrieking wooden floors that must have been used for sound effects in a Hitchcock film. I love these ancient boards that caught my eldest when she learned to crawl and walk. And I look forward to seeing a duplicate performance from sweet baby sister.

I love the cardboard walls, which conduct noise better than NASA equipment and have the same thickness as a well-doused, grocery store-brand disposable diaper. We have no need for a baby monitor, and should we still live here with teenagers, no sneaky shenanigans will get past our privacy-deflecting walls.

Our lovingly rented home also shelters spiders and bugs. The dirt encrusting its hundred-year-old windowsills carbon dates back to an era when San Francisco was known as “The Barbary Coast.” But I love it anyway.

I love the view out the front window, where my eyeballs wore a groove while I nursed my first baby girl for hours and hours, and where I plan to repeat the act for my new baby.

I love the dining room table where we gather to eat, work, create art, play music, and make noise. It is where we do our version of a family prayer by playing the grateful game.

I love the small bed where I lie down each night and stroke my four-year-old daughter’s hair as she falls asleep, and where I ritualistically sniff her cheek before putting myself to bed.

I love the music that surrounds our house. Our neighbors to the left play jazz saxophone every evening to serenade our dinner. Our neighbors to the right have their bluegrass bandmates over to practice on Saturday afternoons. I crank open the windows to listen while I write this story. The whiz of the J-Church MUNI train at the end of our block puts me to sleep each night and greets me at dawn.

I remembered these reasons to love my home as I eased my way into our bedroom with my tiny baby girl. There was no fanfare, no ruckus, no party. But I didn’t care. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose, and settled in to nurse my newborn. A perfect welcome to her imperfect home.

How Do You Find a Table at the Anarchist Book Fair?

I didn’t fit in at the Anarchist Book Fair.

I stopped by on a whim. I was headed over to the de Young Museum. Baby was home asleep with Daddy and Big Girl had just been deposited at a birthday party on 8th Avenue. So I had a couple of blissful hours in the City, alone with my iPhone…walking in the light rain at the perimeter of Golden Gate Park, listening to Snow Patrol, you get the idea.

Then I saw the people camped out in front of the old school bus next to a sign that said “Free Tea.” Then I saw about 500 vintage 10-speed bicycles clobbered together outside the Botanical Garden. Then I saw the hardscrabble, handmade sign that read “Anarchist Book Fair.”

Holy crap! I remembered that a cool zine-ing dad friend (Rad Dad. Check it. I implore you.) would be there, hawking his wares. Even though I was certainly not dressed for the Anarchist Book Fair, I really wanted to meet this superstar in person, so I sucked it up and went in.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. Wet dog mixed with patchouli. Then I saw the uniform: black hoodie, facial piercing, and very tight skinny jeans bordered by the kind of muffin-top favored by 20-something Mission hipsters whose only exercise is amphetamines or teetering around Dolores Park on a rickety bicycle.

I immediately stuck my hand with the wedding ring into the pocket of my Burberry coat so as to not appear too bourgeoisie. Then I remembered I was wearing a Burberry coat.

Now let me make one thing clear here. I am not and never have been a label whore. This coat was a gift from my mom bought on extreme sale and intended to last me several decades. Even though I know this and you know this, the punk rock anarchists at the Anarchist Book Fair may not have known this. My only hope was that they were so far out of the mainstream that they did not recognize the telltale snooty Burberry plaid.

I also hid my other symbol of capitalist pig oppression, my iPhone.

It was a nerve-wracking experience to wind my way through the “Free Mumia” posters and “Smash the State” lithographs, looking for the cool dad I wanted to meet. It brought up all sorts of poseur feelings from junior high. Was I lefty enough to even be in the presence of these activists? Who was I to produce my puny little zine? I wondered if there was some sort of floor plan or guide or an information table. Then I remembered the definition of anarchy and I wondered if everyone just ran in and threw their books and zines on the first table they could grab.

Finally, I reached the Rad Dad table. And he was awesome. As expected. Just a real guy, doing his thing, putting his creative stuff out there to the universe. And I realized that the main difference between him and the black hoodie crew was age. Rad Dad was old enough to just hang out and share his work, without donning the uniform of the rebel. Rather than wear his radicalism on his jacket, he puts it into words and he lives it. I instantly relaxed, even in my capitalist coat.

Shout Out Alert

The Foggiest Idea got a nice little mention in an article on parent blogs by Laure Guyot on SFkids.org

See the whole thing HERE

Thanks, Laure!!!

Woofing It Up

There are several reasons why I would be a terrible dog owner right now.

There is something so demeaning about picking up their feces in public. I have seen enough gag-worthy smears on the sidewalks in our San Francisco neighborhood to live in mortal fear of ever having to inflict one of them myself. I have a hard enough time scooping the cat box.

Our family is so oppressively busy that I can barely get my toddler out to the playground. Any poor pooch that lived in my urban household would have to possess the uncanny ability to get his own leash, hook it on his collar, open the door, trot down the stairs, and take his own damn self out to the dog park.

My older daughter has an irrational fear of dogs. It would be like my own mother getting me a pet shark. I just can’t do it to her.

And along those same lines, my younger daughter has an irrational love for and attraction to dogs that I am afraid will some day result in a poor pup getting strangled out of affection. Why introduce a potential victim into our home?

Alright, alright. Before you rabid Dog People start chasing me into the off-leash area, I will admit that I objectively love dogs. They’re adorable and loyal and the best pets ever. (For the record, I’m not so into my cat these days. But that’s another long, hairball-infused story.) I love dogs as long as they aren’t mine. And as long as I don’t have to pick up after them. Kind of the way some people feel about kids.

Yet I am still working my heinie off to promote DogFest 2009, a celebration of dogs and kids that will raise big bucks for my daughter’s happy little San Francisco public elementary school.

Why? Because, like all public schools in these times, ours needs the cash to fund our incredible enrichment programs. And because I am a dedicated public school mama.

And I’m not even one of the hardcore parents. There are volunteer moms and dads at our school whose cups runneth with school activism. I’m just doing my small part to sop up some of their spills. It’s the least I can do.

I’m sucking up my dog issues and becoming a Dog Person. At least until this event is over. That’s how much I love my school and my kids. If you live in the Bay Area and want some cheap-to-free entertainment, pack up the kids and/or pooches and join me at DogFest.

Leave the cat at home.

 

The Phantom Leg of San Francisco Kindergarten Application

It’s that time of year in San Francisco. And I’m not talking about the rainy season.

Now is the time of year when preschool parents are chewing their nails into bloody nubs as they wait for a skinny little envelope from the SF Unified School District to slink into their mailboxes with the results of Round I kindergarten lottery. These parents of incoming kindergartners hold their collective breaths as they wait to discover if they have been assigned to a public school of their choice or if they have to start all over with Round II of the insane application process.

I feel for these parents, having been there myself a year ago. I know how the red tape binds you like a straightjacket. How the rumors and swarm mentality make you want to plunge off a cliff like the other lemmings. I sometimes still wake in the night in a cold sweat, batting at my school-assignment fear like a phantom leg.

But rest assured, San Francisco parents, you will be okay.

You may be lucky and get a school from your list on Round I. Or you may not be so lucky.

You may freak out. Throw a temper tantrum. Cry. Frantically phone private schools on the off-chance that one of Napoleon’s great-great grandchildren is getting shipped to that lycée in Switzerland and has left a coveted spot open at one of the $20k-a-year “Day” Schools.

(By the way, what is a “Day” school? I’m sure I could google this one, but aren’t they all Day Schools? Who sends their kindergartner to Night School?)

I know how you feel as you sweat through your fleece vest at the newly re-modeled playground while waiting for that letter. I know the knotted gut, the twisted headache, and the bile that rises in your throat each time some well-meaning nitwit tells you to move to Marin with all the white people.

And I want you to stop. Stop right now and take a deep breath.

And know that everything will be just fine. Repeat after me. Everything. Will. Be. Fine.

If you don’t believe me, read the thread of blog entries (start at the bottom and go up) that chronicle what our family went through a year ago.

You may stress out. You may go through Round II and still get nothing. You may have to waitlist until the second week of school before you end up where you want to be. This is a pain in the ass and it is terribly stressful, but you will be fine.

Your. Child. Will. Be. Fine.

SFUSD is chock-full of cozy little schools and bustling larger schools. It is brimming with kind teachers and involved parents and stellar academics. And due to the bizarre shuffling that goes on at the start of the school year each year, everyone always ends up where they want to be in the end.

Don’t believe the playground hype when you hear people (who have never, ever set foot in a public school) go on about how awful the public schools are. Those people are idiots and they are wrong.

The first time I went to a K-1 performance at my daughter’s fantastic public elementary school, I very nearly exploded with pride at the amazing drum, dance, and choral performance. Another mother and I laughed all the way out the door at the fact that people pay out the yin-yang to get the private school academic enrichment programs that we get for free.

San Francisco preschool parents, keep me posted. I wish you the best and I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you.

And don’t forget to breathe.