Mighty plans

As we discussed last week, today is my pretend birthday. Hooray! Pretend birthday hats for everyone.

Three and eleven are my favorite numbers, so age 33 is particularly auspicious. If you see me, you should probably rub my tummy for good luck.

Every year, I make birthday resolutions, because I find them weightier than the New Year’s variety. This year, I have three big ones:

1. Don’t drop-kick the puppy.

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes:

“Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don’t drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor’s yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.”

This year, I’d like to be a little gentler with myself. I need to focus on my health, my environment, and the present tense. I’m going to take all the time I waste replaying my various inadequacies, and spend it celebrating the things I should be grateful for instead.

2. Make my work the best it can be.

Here’s the part where I lay a little Oprah on you — she always comes up when I’m course plotting. She says the defining question in her life is:

“How do you use your life to best serve yourself and then extend that to the world?”

I spend a disproportionate amount of time working, and this is because I have an awesome job. I’m feeling inspired lately, especially by the design community, and I’d like to use that momentum to rethink the Mighty sites with Oprah’s question in mind.

3. Harness the good.

This is something I think about almost every day. There are so many of you. I’d like to know more about what you know, and find ways to make each others’ lives better. I’m still working through the details, but I want to do some sort of group project with the Mighty Life Lists many of you made with me. Perhaps we could start by crossing a few things off.

Anyway, that’s the overview. There are many detailed to-dos attached to each goal, and I’m excited to tackle them. It’s going to be a good year. You come too.

Not Even a Devo Hat

We have three costumes for Hank, none of which he will wear, because he does not like hats. Or tails. Or sleeves.

It’s perplexing, because he’s never resisted any of these things before. Clearly, he can sense how much Halloween means to me. How I will do anything, short of super-gluing ears to his head, to get him in a costume.

Every time I approach with some bedazzled, be-furred, or suspiciously stiff garment, he thrusts a tiny toddler hand in my face.

“No?” he says. “Bye, Mama! Bye-bye! No? NO? NOOOOOOOOoooooooo? “

And then he shakes his head vigorously and super-glue sprays everywhere. I will never get it out of the carpet.

As for that beguiling, “No?” Don’t let the question mark fool you, he will avenge himself on your offspring if you keep advancing with that cowboy hat. What kind of monster are you? The kind who’s comfortable with toddler vendettas, apparently.

“Kid! Don this elephant costume immediately. Do you hear me? Mommy wants to keep you up well past your bedtime and flood your system with high fructose corn syrup. Hold! Still!“

Eat your heart out, Dr. Spock.

The Mighties

Lots of guide action at the Mighties.

I’m keeping this guide on file for the day when I can offer guests more than a couch to crash on.

Mighty Haus: Prepare a Welcoming Guest Room

Turns out you can still get candy cigarettes and pipes. Stay away from the Pop Rocks though. They’ll kill you dead.

Mighty Junior: Nostalgic Candy

I would have dressed the whole family as Devo, but Hank wouldn’t wear the hat.

Mighty Goods: Halloween Costume Guide

Tiger, Tiger

Antique shopping, I round a corner and nearly trip over a boy in a paper tiger-mask. He starts, scrambles backward, then pauses in my path. His hands are on the floorboards, and he rocks forward and back, eyes fixed on mine. I smile for a moment, and then realize he is gangly, tall, perhaps too old to be crawling around.

We pause for a moment, at impasse. A giant warehouse fan whirs beside him. He turns his head, bares his teeth one at a time, and growls softly into the fan blades.

The Envelopes, Please

For those of you wondering who won the $5,000 Intel Tech Makeovers, we announced the winners over here. When we started out, three makeovers seemed like so much, but if you read any of the entries you know how many deserving folks threw their hats in the ring. Even if you didn’t win, I hope entering the contest gave you the oomph you needed to find another way to make your dreams go. I’m still rooting for you.

Me and Louis

A few months back, I was sitting in the coffee shop where I often work, and looked up to see one of my Morning News editors standing in line for the bathroom.

This wouldn’t have been odd, except Rosecrans was living in Paris at the time, and I hadn’t heard anything about him coming to town. My brain kept insisting that it couldn’t be him.

Turns out he was there for a whirlwind work trip, filming an ad campaign for Louis Vuitton. They were trying to capture Francis Ford Coppola’s San Francisco, and I ended up in the campaign.

Because of all the JavaScripty madness, there’s no way to direct link (boo!), but a full five percent of you should be able to reach it by following these painstaking instructions:

Go to Louis Vuitton Journeys
Click “USA”
Click “San Francisco with Francis F. Coppola”
Wait for the street video to stop playing and a mosaic of photos to appear
Mouse over the center photo in the center row until you see text
Click on the center photo that reads “The Mission Now, Bohemia”
Click on the photo of the blue sweater and coffee cup (that’s my sweater)
Mouse over the larger photo of the sweater and hit the play button

That’s all there is to it!

For those of you who aren’t related to me, and therefore won’t have to pretend to have seen this at the next family reunion, it’s enough for you to know that I am shockingly eloquent. I guess you’ll just have to trust me on that.

ILLINOIS

Bryan’s grandmother passed away unexpectedly, so we’re currently in Illinois for the funeral. We took a red-eye to get here in time, a flight I like to call the Happy-Birthday!-No-One-Sleep-for-48-Hours-Cross-Country Spectacular.

Yesterday, I turned 33. I consider this an auspicious number, and expect to have a very good year. However, for one week, all of us are going to pretend that never happened. Let’s meet back here at the same time next week and discuss birthday stuff in more celebratory detail.

For now, we’re enjoying time with Bryan’s family, acquainting Hank with extended family, and celebrating Grandma Mason — who was a very good grandma indeed.

FLEA MARKET FINDS

http://www.db798.com/pictobrowser.swf

I finally took photos of my finds from last month’s Alameda Flea Market:

-A signed, limited-edition print of a thistle, which I pretty much stole for $5
-Beer steins with slightly detached handles
-A blue Tonka truck from the ’70s for the little guy
-Georgie a rubber baby doll. I’ve been looking for a good one for Hank, and had to have Georgie when I noticed he had one blue eye and one brown, like Bryan.
-A very small jointed doll, which I’ve added to my small-impassive-doll collection. The big gash on his face is part of the charm. I was going to pop him in a terrarium, but Hank has adopted him. He calls him “Guy.”
-A few more cool little cars for Hank. The ones with the best moving parts aren’t pictured because Hank has hidden between couch cushions or somewhere similarly secret.

A pretty good haul for about forty bucks.