Amazing Finds At Our Scary Local Grocery

In a pinch we go to a scary little ethnic grocery down the hill in a mall that seems like a magnet for the destitute and sad of Los Angeles. We call it the Asparagus market, because next to it is the Asparagus Pizza joint, which sounds so stomach-turningly awful we figured it has to be money laundering operation.

We stand in line with the homeless, and watch desperate people try to steal really bad liquor. I have been there on two occasions when there were either arrests going on inside the store, or someone collapsed right outside and there were ambulances. It is too dangerous to leave the boys outside, so I always take them in.

But despite the veneer of desperation it is a sweet little store. And over time we fell in love first with the convenience, then the low prices, and now the treasures that hide in their short aisles. First Jonathan found the perfect meat to make Milanesa, just like he had it in Argentina. Divine. I have never seen that pounded beef anywhere else. Then Jonathan found a fajita mix he liked at the butcher.

Last week he came home with the oddest purchase yet: a jar of Cornelian Cherry jam. The ingredients were simple, as if from another place (Armenia perhaps??????) and it turned out the strangely shaped cherries still had pits in them. After I recovered from nearly breaking my tooth I smiled. It was the most delicious jam I have ever had. Soon I was eating it by the spoonful, ignoring bread and butter altogether. I love it. And I find that already, I crave it. (We are leaving for a few days of vacation tomorrow. Will I bring my Cornelian Cherry jam with me? Can I live without it?)

Last time we went Jonathan showed me the secret cache of Armenian jams and I looked through the odd flavors. This time I picked a jar of white mulberry jam. Again, a picture of a fruit I have never seen appeared on the lid. We went home and opened it right away. (No pits!) Oh my sweet God in Heaven! It is like honey and fruit, nectar and ambrosia, all mixed into one.

Now both come out before anything else on our breakfast table.

I find myself eating a lot more toast.

My Car Detective

Last year, on the way back from UCSD, I pulled off the freeway near Trestles and got some cheap gas at a Thrifty. I am a Scot, I reasoned. I am thrifty. A few miles later a scary light went on in my car: "Coolant low," it said. "Slow to a stop, now."

I ignored it for 20 miles, as it flashed on and off. Then I called Jonathan. Was my car going to blow up? I wanted to know.

He said it was probably the bad gas. Drive on. It was a little scary, but I did. And the next time I got gas at my regular gas station everything went back to normal.

Flash forward to 2010. I was driving back from the Santa Ynez Valley after a weekend of camping, my boys snoozing in the back, the car coasting on fumes. I pulled over to the first gas station I could find and filled her up with Thrifty gas. By the time I got through the traffic in Santa Barbara my coolant light was on, telling me to pull over, NOW!

As is my wont, I ignored it. But it made me nervous. More and more nervous as the days went by. Yesterday Jonathan took it in to get the coolant checked. (We now get excellent service at our favorite garage thanks to a funny/irritating/unbelievable incident I will explain in another post.)

Today, riding on fumes again, I went to fill 'er up at our local gas station. We had no sooner pulled out of the gas station when Benji remarked: "The car feels smoother now, Mommy."

I thought about it. He was right. The car did feel smoother--and it was not because of the road. Hollywood roads are a nightmare of bumps and cracks. And then I got it: The Thrifty Gas!!!!

The Thrifty Gas messes up the Volvo. The finely tuned Swedish baby is tough in an accident, but delicate when it comes to nutrition. Bad gas makes it sick.

And Benji is the one who felt it.

Wow.

My kids amaze me sometimes.

A Tale of Good Samaritans

Every once in awhile you have a day that reminds you how wonderful strangers can be.

I had that day last Friday.

I was taking Benji on his long-awaited pre-school graduation trip to Soak City, a water park down in Orange County. He had managed to convince his entire pre-K class that this was where they wanted to go. So we set off, he and I, with a bag of bathing suits, water, sunblock and beach shoes.

I was sitting in traffic near Silverlake when a dude in a pick-up pulled up next to me, really nice, and said, "Hey, your left front tire is flat." I said thanks, and wondered if I could make it to Soak City.

A minute later a guy on the other side gestured to me to roll down my window. He gestured to my left front tire. "It's flat!" he said.

I tuned in to my car, and even on the worn out, pot-hole pocked L.A. freeway I could feel something was wrong. I got off at Alvarado and pulled into a gas station to take a look.

My tire was not just flat, I was riding on the rim. And I was in the middle of a neighborhood I do not know that well, not close to any of the garages I am familiar with. I went into the convenience store and a Filipina woman and her daughter told me there was a tire store right down the block.

I went outside and a sweet Latino dude in a little run-down Honda pulled up and offered to help me put air in my tire. He wouldn't let me leave without doing it.

My tire was so flat, and blown out, it wouldn't hold any air. He reached in and felt the inside of the tire and nodded his head knowingly. "It won't hold the air," he said.

Then another guy came and told me where the tire store was. The first Latino guy said he would make sure I got there. So he jumped in his car and rode behind me to make sure no one rear-ended me. Then he made sure I was in good hands, and drove away. He said he hoped that if his daughter was ever in distress, someone would help her. I said I thought someone would.

I was at a cheap garage full of Latin Americans who spoke a little English in a parking area full of junked cars. But J.R.--who looked like an Indian from the mountains of Peru, fit me right in and changed my tire. Basically I had had a blow-out.

He felt under the car to my right front tire. That one was bald and about to blow, too. He changed it. He said I should change my back left, too, but said I could drive out if I promised to change the tire by Monday (I was literally in the process of getting the tires changed. Jonathan had warned me it was time.)

I freaked that a tire could blow again on some wild L.A. freeway and said, "Change them all!"

He did. He entertained Benji and gave me four new tires in half an hour for $200. Jonathan almost fell over when he heard the price.

Each of these people treated me with so much respect and compassion. They all made me feel grateful for this city and its hidden humanity. Drop off the freeway in a strange part of the city and people will emerge and help you.

Just as I will help them, or whoever needs me, here in Hollywood. That is a vow I made myself.

We made it to Soak City by noon, and my boy had the time of his life.

On the way home, soggy and happy, stuck in a sig-alert in downtown, with the sun setting over the city, I thought about how much I love L.A.. I thought about how misunderstood, and how hard to penetrate it is. But that is the challenge of L.A..

And I love challenges.

Garden Update

This is it. My crazy garden. I know therapists always use gardens as metaphors for one's mental state, so how can I resist the temptation?

Here is what I will say about my garden. It is thriving. It is unruly. It is out of control. It is not well-behaved or orderly, but it is gorgeous, wild and full of very healthy and delicious vegetables. It reminds me of my children. Not enough discipline, but I love the end result.

And I can't help but think that the garden has set in motion a chain of events that has changed the whole back yard. Coincidence? Luck? Cause and effect? I cannot say, but since I put in the garden Jonathan trimmed our back yard tree to give the garden more light. Our neighbor came in and hacked back his jungle for the first time since we have lived here, giving my hidden terrace garden about two more hours of sunlight a day. It rained more this spring than it has in recent memory. All the other plants have gotten competitive, and they are all thriving, too. We spend more time in the backyard.

I am grateful for my garden. For my giant zucchini and baby kale and fresh lettuce, for my aggressive beans and my exuberant tomatoes, for my persistent wild arugula, and my cucumbers on the run, and for the riot of green that is flourishing back there on what was once a patch of forgotten, sandy soil.

I can't believe I did it. I feel empowered.

Irresistable Art

Two of my friends just started this company.

Both of them, Anna Bondoc (artist) and Vanessa Trice (businesswoman) are amazing women, and the art is even better.

I have pieces of Anna's handiwork hanging all over the house--from spontaneous purchases to lovely cards she has given us as gifts over the years.

These two mothers met and dropped everything to invest in their own company and build a business. I am inspired, motivated and awed.

That would be true no matter what. But the art is the best. If you love patterns, tactile art, art-deco, Japanese design, or just supporting two cool women who dared to have a vision and start a business, check them out!

Waiting for Superman

Two nights ago we went out with a bunch of friends from our Charter School (and our Executive Director, head of the Board of Larchmont Schools and her daughter, and our principal) to see the new documentary by Davis Guggenheim about the state of public schools in America.

The film had its L.A. premiere at the LA Film Festival and the screening was packed. This was a huge theater--as big as an opera house--and when the doors opened we sprinted up three flights of stairs and escalators to try to score seats in the balcony because every seat in the house was full.

For anyone who has been following education in the news and reads, not much of the information was surprising. You could have gotten all the facts and figures and depressing data from a year of reading the LA Times, New York Times, New Yorker and Newsweek. Not groundbreaking research.

But the emotional impact of watching four families fighting to get an education for their child, mothers willing to get up at 5 a.m. for the shot at great teachers, parents trying in phone call after phone call to reach a teacher who would not respond, of families who know that education is the way up and out of poverty in America, and are aware that their local public school is not only letting them down, but could fuck up their kids lives forever--that drama played out on screen breaks your heart.

I can testify that our whole row was just sobbing and shaking. You could feel the tears and shoulders trembling down the entire row of theater seats. You could feel people crying two seats away, and you could hear people snuffling behind you.

The daughter of the Larchmont Schools Board Member was so upset by the plight of Daisy, a little girl from Boyle Heights about to go into a Junior School that had a devastating drop out rate, and pinning all her hopes on a public lottery to a charter school (she didn't get in...) that she begged her mother to find Daisy and pull some strings to get her into Larchmont's new upper grades.

Guggenheim and his team hope that this film will function as a call to action for all Americans. That it will start the revolution. That it will motivate citizens to fight the Teachers Unions (who, in this film, are portrayed as the villain in our educational disaster drama).

Go see it. And text "possible" to 77177.

And then see what you can do for your local schools.

If you are wavering about whether you have the time, the passion,the energy to care, watch these kids and their families and you will. You will feel so guilty that you are letting them down that you will sit down and move mountains.

I promise.

View from Our Tent

When you wake up and see this in the morning, how can you not love California?