Last night as I drove home from work, police lights came on behind me. We were mired in backed up stop-sign traffic near Olive and Fowler, so I knew the lights were for me.

Saying I drive fairly cautiously would be an understatement, so this was the first time I've been pulled over since, I think, 1991. Wasn't nervous though, since I knew I hadn't broken any laws. I just pulled over and reached for my proof of registration and insurance papers. Turns out, I wouldn't need them.

The deputy said he pulled me over because my tail lights were out, both of them, and he was concerned that someone might not see me and come up too fast behind me on the dark country roads. He asked how much farther I still had to drive. He ended up following me the rest of the way home, to make sure I got there safely. No ticket. Never even asked me for any ID. He suggested that since both lights were out, it might be a fuse, not the bulbs.

I got home, and called my brother. But, while I'm not afraid to ask for help, I have an innate drive to try to solve things myself, especially this year, as I've gone from married to single mom. Since it was going to be a while before Mark, would arrive, I decided to check things out myself.

Found the map to the fuses in my owner's manual, found the fuse box in the actual car, and began cursing the design of my car, which made it near impossible to reach said fuse box without lying on my back and trying to maneuver into the small space under my steering wheel, behind the dash. As it turns out, the position was so awkward that I couldn't get the fuse out anyway, neither with the little plastic fuse tool nor with tweezers.

Anyway, I wasn't even confident that the fuse was the problem, since the fuse in question operates two sets of lights, only one of which weren't working. Frustrated, I still waited for Mark, and I was chatting with a friend on Facebook. "Might be the bulbs," he suggested. "Both at the same time?" I asked. "Could be," he said.

I went back out to try to figure out how to access where the bulbs were. That turned out to be easier than I might have expected. Pulled out the bulbs that I thought might be the tail light bulbs and Voila - even to my untrained eye, the filaments on both appear burnt out. Back into the house, doublechecked the owners manuel again, and SUCCESS - I had guessed the right bulbs.

Quick trip back to Kragen, with minutes to spare before closing time, and picked up a packet with two new bulbs (for less than $5!). And the clerk confirmed that yes, it looked like both of the old bulbs were bad.

Got back to the house just as my brother was checking out the fuse box. But I told him the progress I'd made, we popped in the new tail lights and basked in the warm red glow. "What'd you need me for?" he asked teasingly. Turns out I hadn't.

It wasn't a hard thing. It wasn't monumental. Doesn't make me any kind of mechanical whiz because I solved the problem on my own. But a feeling of success can come from big accomplishments, like climbing mountains and running marathons, or it can come from a series of little accomplishments, like mowing a lawn for the first time in your life, putting up Christmas decorations on the house (which I'll be tackling next week) -- and fixing broken tail lights so I don't get pulled over again or worse, crashed into. By little and big steps, I'm regaining confidence in myself. 

(Originally posted on The Moms' House, my blog about my blended family as we explore a nontraditional family arrangement )

I made it.

Last week, I hiked the Mount Whitney Trail, made it to the summit and back down again. (I wrote a week before the trip about some apprehensions I was having.)

(Originally posted as a Facebook note on Sept. 1, 2009)

A week from right now, I will be in the middle of the most strenuous physical challenge I've ever undertaken. In fact, based on how next Tuesday goes, I should have a pretty good idea of whether or not I will succeed in my overall goal -- hiking to the summit of Mount Whitney on Wednesday.

I got a phone call today from someone who lives near Bullard High School, in Northwest Fresno. He was upset because school officials decided to paint over a mural that students had created a few years ago. He felt that school leaders should have sought community input before destroying students' artwork.

What was the mural? (The caller thought it was something representing F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby.") Was it offensive? Where on campus was it located?

My attention to the news over the weekend was overshadowed by my own personal experience with crime. Saturday morning, my car was broken into while parked along the Eaton Trail, north of Woodward Park. My purse was taken. In my 42 years, I've never lost a purse or wallet.

A few years ago, our van was broken into while it was parked in our driveway. But in that instance, they didn't damage the vehicle and the only thing they took was my cell phone.

Some people have comfort foods, that they turn to in times of stress or crisis. I find myself turning to music that takes me back to a less complicated time in my life, and not just in tough times, but anytime I want to feel that embrace of a simpler time.

One playlist that I turn to often on my iPod is a collection of songs I call "Best of the '80s." It's probably not even the best of the music that came out of that decade, just songs that I liked especially well.

An article in today's Fresno Bee reminds us that it's never too early to start thinking about how to keep our children well-nourished during the school day.

School food experts are constantly tweaking cafeteria menus to tempt the finicky palates of the more than 30 million children who eat at school each day. It's all part of a broader effort to keep students healthy and well-fed, which studies show helps academic performance. Jose Alvarado, food services director with Fresno Unified School District, said students are more sophisticated about their food choices today, so district officials need to figure out what they like.

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I've stayed largely silent on the entire issue since Michael Jackson's unexpected death last week. But this latest news just makes me angry. According to CNN, Michael Jackson's body will return to his Neverland Ranch on Thursday morning for a public viewing Friday.

People have a wide range of emotions about Jackson. Some consider his contributions to American pop music comparable to Elvis, the Beatles. There are those who never stopped loving and admiring him. Then there are those who liked him for a time, maybe even years, but had to turn away when it all got a little too creepy.

Today's my first day back to work after a week with my youngest daughter visiting Ohio. So as soon as I get caught back up, I'll have lots to write about that trip.

But today, I wanted to put a question out to other moms. It's a topic we just covered a couple of weeks ago in a Monday Moms poll: How old is old enough for your kids to attend a show without an adult present?

On my way in to work this morning, I was listening to a segment on National Public Radio about "Sex Without Intimacy: No Dating, No Relationships." It's about "hooking up," the trend where young adults who are delaying marriage longer instead turn to sexual encounters with no strings attached.

Young people from high school on are so preoccupied with friends, getting an education and establishing themselves, they don't make time for relationships.
"Going out on a date is a sort of ironic, obsolete type of thing," says 25-year-old Elizabeth Welsh, who graduated from college in 2005 and now lives in Boston. She says that among her friends, dating is a joke. "Going out on a date to dinner and a movie? It's so cliche -- isn't that funny?"

Last night, Katie and I were at a blues concert at a local farmers market. Just as the evening's performance was wrapping up, I noticed an awesome lightning display beginning to light up the sky to the east.

It had been a hot day, reaching 102. Rain isn't that common between May and September in the Central Valley, so I hadn't even paid attention to the forecast for the evening. Usually one word -- hot -- covers it. But this was something special.

As we drove toward home, Katie talked to me from her car seat in the back, telling me how lightning scares her. "Oh, this won't do," I thought. "No child of mine should be scared of lightning."

I love weather, the wilder, the better. I just happen to live in a place that doesn't get that much of it. To paraphrase White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, I couldn't let a perfectly good lightning storm go to waste.

To read more, click here.

I have been running on empty. I've been having trouble sleeping for weeks. Not getting to sleep, or getting back to sleep after waking. Just staying asleep long enough for my body -- and mind -- to take advantage of the restorative powers that accompany a good night's sleep.

The National Sleep Foundation in the United States maintains that seven to nine hours of sleep for adult humans is optimal and that sufficient sleep benefits alertness, memory, problem solving, and overall health, as well as reducing the risk of accidents.

My uncle from Ohio had been visiting for a couple of weeks, so I've done some touristy Fresno things lately -- we did a tour of the Meux Home and went to the Japanese Garden in Woodward Park.

But one thing I mentioned on my Facebook page that drew a lot of interest from others was something that I had never done before, even though I've lived here for 31 years -- the Forestiere Underground Garden near Shaw Avenue and Freeway 99. And many of the people who commented were curious because they'd never been there either.

How do you acknowledge an anniversary for a marriage that is breaking apart? The divorce isn't final yet, but the marriage is definitely over. I've felt a melancholy mood brewing for days as this date has grown nearer.

Today would have been our seventh anniversary since our marriage in 2002. Perhaps adding to the weight of this for me is that this is the longest any of my marriages have lasted. But it didn't.

To read more, go to "The Moms' House blog."

If you aren't excited about our current giveaway, you should be. I've seen Stomp perform on its previous two visits to Fresno (late 1990s and 2004 or 2005), and it's great family fun.

Last time I took my entire family, including my baby, and this time I'm going with my three daughters.

Negotiations are frequent in our household between the parental units and the 12- and 15-year-olds about (more) piercings and tattoos. My answer, as far as the remaining years they live at home, is that less (or none, in the case of tattoos) is more.

So it boggles my mind that a father would HOLD DOWN his 7-year-old son so that another gang member could allegedly tattoo a gang insignia -- a dog paw -- on the boy's stomach.

A couple of weeks ago, before I went on vacation, I quietly slipped a big piece of personal news into my last blog entry. My husband of almost seven years and I are divorcing.

I've been down this road before, but a big difference is that we had a child together while we were married. I've also been a part of his older children's lives for the past 10 years. As soon as we started talking in January about splitting, I knew that I didn't want my association with the older children -- a sophomore in college, a sophomore in high school and a seventh-grader -- to end.

It happens. Time marches on. One minute you're holding a tiny little bundle in your arms and a year later, that little bundle is crawling, cruising or taking his or her first steps away from you. And nothing else stops along the way either. Life keeps happening, whether we want it to or not.

One year ago, on April 1, 2008, Central Valley Moms was born. We went from a handful of registered users to several hundred within just days of our launch. We now number more than 1,600. Some faces have come and gone, some babies have been born, kids have been registered for kindergarten, teens have started driving.

Yesterday I posted an entry on the Opinion Talk blog about the White House vegetable garden, and how with the economy, more people are trying to plant their own little corner of earth and grow some produce.

Some of the comments on that blog reminded me of a story I heard my youngest brother telling someone recently, about a lesson our dad taught him in the garden when we were growing up.

This editorial in today's Fresno Bee discusses how last month's alleged altercation between music stars Rihanna and Chris Brown provides an opening for discussing domestic violence.

Sadly, the news keeps changing. Are they back together or not? Did they record a duet together, and if so, did it occur before or after the incident that landed Brown, 19, in jail and Rihanna, 21, in the hospital? In perhaps his smartest move since the incident, Brown last week removed his name from the ballot of the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards.

Two things I've read lately have had me saying "Hear, hear!"

The first was a column last week by columnist Ruben Navarrette Jr. I choose the columns and design the pages for The Fresno Bee's Opinion pages, which means I wrote the headline that accompanied his op-ed: "Our young people need to get over themselves."

Last night my daughter, who is obsessed with the DS handheld game system she wants for her birthday, was asking if I had a DS when I was a little girl.

"We didn't have video games when I was little," I told her (I was a pre-teen before we even had Pong). "People didn't have [personal] computers in their homes either."

Fireflies.

There are few real-world creatures that so easily evoke the whimsical fairy world as the bugs that light up the post-dusk skies.

Perhaps the biggest story of the night on Sunday wasn't who won which Grammy awards, but rather which performers cancelled at the last minute -- and why. Celebrity couple Chris Brown, nominated for two awards, and Rihanna, with three nominations, both pulled out of their planned performances after an altercation earlier that day allegedly turned physical, landing her in the hospital and him in jail.

According to an article in the San Francisco Examiner, the fight "may have been part of a cycle of violence in Chris' life. In an interview published two years ago, the heartthrob revealed to Giant magazine that his stepfather was abusive to his mother."

Mamma Mia! My breasts hurt just thinking about it.

Yesterday a mother in Southern California gave birth to octuplets, six boys and two girls. What's funny is that's one more baby than she expected was sharing space in her womb.

When was the last time the White House was home to children as young (or younger) than the Obama girls, who are 7 and 10? You have to go back to Amy Carter, who was 9 when her father, Jimmy Carter, took office in 1977. To find younger first children, you have to look at the Kennedy administration. John Jr. was an infant and Caroline was 4 when they moved into the White House in 1961.

I just have one word of advice to Michelle or the White House staff: I swear by Mr. Clean Magic Erasers.

Last night, me and some girl friends went to see "Marley and Me," starring Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson, as Jennifer and John Grogan.

While most people are aware that this is a story about a family's relationship with their dog, there was a scene in the middle that really rang true to me.

Anyone who social networks on Facebook has discovered that what you think is a minor update to your profile can result in a flood of feedback. Go from nothing to single, and every former high school classmate or coworker will offer their condolences.

So did my eldest daughter, 15, honestly think that when she changed hers to "in a relationship," that it would go unnoticed? Ha!

Human beings have five senses. As far as memories go, the sense of smell is reported to be one of the strongest at evoking vivid memories from our distant past. There's even a name for it: "Proustian Memory."

But I think taste -- the only other sense based on chemicals -- can also evoke some pretty specific memories.

There's a saying: "If mama ain't happy, then nobody's happy." It seems the social networking sites Facebook and Myspace have managed to piss off a whole bunch of mamas. This Yahoo! article explains the uproar:

Web-savvy moms who breast-feed are irate that social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace restrict photos of nursing babies. The disputes reveal how the sites' community policing techniques sometimes struggle to keep up with the booming number and diversity of their members. Facebook bars people from uploading anything "obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit" -- a policy that translates into a ban on pictures depicting certain amounts of exposed flesh.

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I guess 5 is the age when kids stop being totally enamored with what they get for Christmas and join the "But everyone else has one" club.

Seems like EVERYONE except us got a Wii for Christmas. Never mind the fact that Katie never expressed an interest in the high-priced gaming system until about two days before Christmas, long after I was done shopping for her expressed desires.

An article: Orlando authorities say DNA tests confirm the skeletal remains recently found in the woods belong to missing toddler Caylee Anthony.

This story has been fishy all along. Caylee's mother, 22-year-old Casey Anthony, insisted that she left the girl with a baby sitter in June, but she didn't report her missing until July. Then the mother was indicted in October on first-degree murder and other charges, even without a body.

This is the kind of story everyone likes to read. Two children in Florida are doing something simple to make life more bearable for some people who are less fortunate than them.

Charlie and Sammie Zipperer, 12 and 10 years old, are giving blankets to homeless people. And the girls are not just giving money or blankets to some go-between -- they are out there, putting them directly into the hands of those who need them, looking them in the eye.

Katie has her first loose tooth, so we'll soon have visits from the Tooth Fairy at our house again. It's been a while since the older kids were losing teeth -- how much are they going for these days? And do you splurge a little on the first tooth lost?

We're going to talk about it when we do our Momcast later today, but I wanted to get some input from all of you. And do any of you have any horror stories about getting caught in the act trying to exchange the money for the tooth? I've always been afraid of that.

Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne

If you've never seen the monarchs, it's pretty amazing. I had heard of the butterflies that winter every year in Pacific Grove, but before three years ago (when we camped there Thanksgiving week), I hadn't known about the grove in Pismo, which annually hosts up to 100,000 migrating Monarchs.

Katie loves to play games. Here's one we played the other night.

"Mama, guess how old I am."

As they've done the past two years, The Fresno Bee editorial board (of which I'm a member) is planning a special page of readers' Thanksgiving memories to run on the holiday next week.

If you have a favorite Thanksgiving anecdote, a turkey-disaster story or if you just want to share what you are thankful for, we invite you to send it to us at letters@fresnobee.com before Nov. 24. Include your name, address and phone number. Limit letters to 200 words in length. All submissions may be edited.

I'm still not done ranting about Nebraska and the state's safe haven law. Last time, I was critical of the parents who abused the law. This time, I'm calling out the lawmakers who failed to do their jobs when they wrote the law in the first place.

Here's a link to an article in the Lincoln Journal Star:

Hope. Change. Surprise. Relief. Inspiration.

All day long, I've been tied up in knots, worried that the polls would be wrong again, as they have been other times this year. Even as the results began coming in, I hesitated to become too optimistic. They were just projections, after all. Isn't that what happened eight years ago? We thought we knew the outcome, only to have the battle drag out for weeks.

Who knew that, when given the opportunity, so many parents would jump at the opportunity to dump their children, even after putting up with them until they become teenagers? This article describes the situation in Nebraska:

    Deciding he could wait no longer to address what has become a state embarrassment, Gov. Dave Heineman said Wednesday he will call a special legislative session to amend Nebraska's loosely worded safe-haven law, which in just a few months has allowed parents to abandon nearly two dozen children as old as 17.

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... we'd have our first black president.

According to the Nick Jr. website, Sen. Barack Obama has been declared the winner of Nickelodeon’s 2008 Kids Pick the President “Kids’ Vote”:

Ingredients:

2 or 3 lbs. of beef or pork that you can roast, then shred

Darling daughters of mine,

Yesterday, after dropping you both off at school, so your little feet wouldn't get too tired before your exhausting day of educational and extracurricular endeavors, I made a quick pitstop in the hall bathroom of our home, the one you both frequent.

Katie is counting down the days.

"Today, it's four days till we leave on our trip," she said this morning, looking at the little airplane I've drawn on Sunday on the kitchen fridge calendar. "Tomorrow it will be three days, then two days, then one day!"

I've talked before on some of our Momcasts about how much I've grown to enjoy cooking in the years since I started watching the Food Network. It's not even so much following specific recipes, but learning techniques, what ingredients go together well and then following my own instincts.

It's funny because when I was married before, I wasn't the cook in our house. My ex-husband was. But the more you are willing to try and experiment, the more confident you become. 

Originally posted June 2, 2006, on Fresno Bee's Opinion Talk:

In the past few weeks, I have spent more hours than I care to think about at school awards ceremonies.

An article on the national politics wire reports that Michelle Obama filmed an episode of Paula Deen's cooking show "Paula's Party." The episode will air on Food Network next Saturday, Sept. 20:

    She was getting her hands dirty," Deen said in an interview Friday. "I think they are like us - they like real food, not a bunch of prissy food."

 

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Kids love mascots. Take them to a sporting event, and usually the thing they remember is Parker, the bear at the Grizzlies games, or TimeOut, the bulldog at the Fresno State games.

You can build up some of the excitement at your tailgate before this weekend's game (as if playing Wisconsin, the 10th ranked team in the U.S. in our home stadium isn't exciting enough!) by musing with the kids about which TimeOut will come out -- the old gray TimeOut or the new, cartoonish brown one that University officials tried to foist on fans last season.

"Go to sleep my baby, my baby, my baby.

Go to sleep, my Katie. I love you."

Once I thought Matthew McConaughey was merely a good actor and an amazingly easy to look at man. But the longer he shares space with us in this world, the more and more he surprises me. And not always in a good way.

This latest bit of news -- that he wants to plant the placenta of his newborn son Levi in his orchard -- startled me even more than when I realized that some mothers nurse babies other than their own offspring -- NOT that there's anything wrong with that.

Yesterday -- in our non-Mommy roles as members of The Bee's Editorial Board -- Gail Marshall and I got to chat with John P. Walters, the White House drug czar. One thing he talked about was misperceptions about marijuana.

People have a tendency to think of marijuana as a "soft" drug -- not that harmful, non-addictive, generally not as bad as other drugs. But Walters said that's not the case anymore, if it ever was. The pot being grown today is much stronger than the plants of 20 years ago, especially cultivated for the highest possible levels of THC, the main psychoactive substance in marijuana.

I have a problem with some of the song choices featured on the Disney Channel. When I'm watching Disney with my 5-year-old, I don't want to see Vanessa Hudgens shaking her short-shorts clad butt in the video for "Sneakernight." I'd rather see They Might be Giants, Ralph's World or Imagination Movers.

You know, McDonalds came up with an alternative to Happy Meals for older children -- the Mighty Kids Meals. There should be a more mature version of Radio Disney with music geared toward young teens.

This article in the parenting section of Yahoo news talks about how the numbers of teen pregnancies are going up, the first spike in the rate in more than 15 years.

Just look at all the media/pop culture influences that may have something to do with this: Jamie Lynn Spears, star of Nickelodeon's Zoey 101, announced her pregnancy in December, when she was 16. She gave birth last month and was featured on a recent cover of OK! magazine. In the article, Spears said being a mother was "so much fun."

What's the scariest movie you remember watching as a child?

I must have been 5 or 6 when my parents took the entire family to a drive-in to watch some movie about Bigfoot. I've tried to find out what movie it was on Internet Movie DataBase, and I think it may have been "The Legend of Boggy Creek" (1972).

An Associated Press article this week says that Americans last year halted a 16-year trend of declining redemptions by turning in 2.6 billion manufacturers' coupons, amid soaring fuel costs and a housing and credit crisis.

I should use coupons, but I usually don't. I do a pretty good job of going through the ones that come in the Sunday paper, clipping ones that I would use -- if I remembered to take them with me to the grocery. Kind of like those reuseable grocery bags that usually get left in my car.