Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Life Without Broadband

This past weekend I became an unwilling participant in a campaign to deprive technology-dependent people of their internet connections.

Ok, so it wasn’t really a campaign. And BT wasn’t really trying to deprive me of my internet connection, it was just a fault with the line. But I felt targeted. Deprived. Lost.

Saturday morning started out just fine. The kids got up early, and I followed them downstairs, bleary-eyed, to get the coffee on. In the mornings I feel like Wall-E in that scene where he’s groggy from sleep and keeps bumping into everything. “Hey, that’s like Mommy when she doesn’t have her coffee!” my kids love to point out each of the 17 times we have watched this film.

With the coffee machine reassuringly gurgling away, I fire up the computer. As a treat for the kids I download some episodes of Sesame Street that I’ve purchased from iTunes. Can I just say how excited I was to find that this was possible? Sesame Street is, I swear, among the top ten things I miss about living in the U.S. Since we moved I’ve felt as if I’ve been depriving my daughter of this staple of American childhood. My son still enjoys it too, mostly because these episodes are the ones that happened to air right before we moved and, at 8 he’s apparently a bit nostalgic.

Watching Someone's Dream Come True - Susan Boyle

I've just finished watching for the sixth time the video of Susan Boyle’s audition for Britain's Got Talent last Saturday. Now, I'm hardly a fan of the show; it's not something I would choose to spend my time watching. Nor is American Idol for that matter, much to the chagrin of my brother who was uncharacteristically addicted a few years back. But a short article on an American news website about a 47-year-old church volunteer "wowing the judges" on Britain's Got Talent got my attention and, intrigued, I immediately hunted down the video on YouTube.

Why am I drawn to this performance? Why does it bring a tear to my eye and a smile to my face every time I watch it? Because there, six minutes and eight seconds into the video, you can see it: the precise moment when someone's dream really does come true.

I hope none of us gets REALLY sick

I’ve posted previously on the state of healthcare here in the UK. Nearly 2.5 years after leaving Silicon Valley, my opinions haven’t changed.

In fact, can I just tell the entire world how much I am missing Welch Road Pediatrics and the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital right now? I know the U.S. healthcare system isn't perfect; indeed, it is spectacularly messed up, particularly for the uninsured or underinsured. But somehow compared to the National Health Service in the U.K. it seems to me the far better option. In the U.S., I always felt that my family and I would receive quality care, even if it bankrupted us. Here, I find myself crossing my fingers and hoping that none of us gets really sick.

A couple of weeks ago as my daughter was getting ready for bed, she stood in her usual place on the third step in the stairwell and lifted her arms for me to pick her up.  She's five now, so my picking her up usually involves her bending her knees and giving a little jump to help me out. As I lifted her, my left hand felt something strange. I set her back down and asked her to lift up her nightgown so I could look at her ribs.

Daddy School

You’ve probably heard in the news that England is getting a lot of snow right now. Yes, Gloucestershire, where I live, seems once again to be getting more than its fair share of water, this time in frozen form.

But we’re a pretty easygoing family so we are taking it all in stride. When school closed early one day last week due to the weather, my husband -- celebrating his first day of freedom after his company's liquidation -- took our 5-year-old daughter to the local sledding hill down the road. (I have to say that as a California girl, I am getting a huge kick out of the fact that we can go sledding right down the street from our house. That just doesn’t happen in Silicon Valley! And the best part is that when I get cold I can just come back in, put my slippers on and brew up some Peets…)

A Visible Shift

From where I sit – that is, in a small market town deep in the English countryside – most people really seem to “get” what it means to have Barack Obama as president. Indeed, having moved here at the height of the anti-Americanism spawned by George Bush and his you’re-either-with-us-or-you’re-against-us policies, I can hardly describe how good it feels to suddenly be given another chance.

Silicon Valley from a 'foreign' perspective

My family recently spent two weeks in California over Christmas, catching up with friends and family and just enjoying being in the Bay Area again. It had been 14 months since our last trip back as a family when we attended my little sister’s wedding up in Sonoma in 2007.

Since we’ve been living in the UK for nearly two and a half years, I was able to make some interesting observations from an "outsider's" point of view as we strolled together through our old neighborhood and revisited our old stomping grounds:

As I paid homage at Peet’s on University Avenue in downtown Pal Alto and waited for my – I kid you not – six  pounds of coffee beans that I was about to stash in my suitcase and haul back to the UK, the barrista called out an order for a “nonfat decaf skinny latte” with a bunch of other specifications I couldn’t even understand. First of all: nonfat/decaf. WHAT IS THE POINT? Second: I had to laugh because in the UK, if you order coffee anywhere outside a major city center, you usually have to specify “filter coffee” otherwise you’ll end up with instant. (Now you know why I bring back my own Peet’s).

Soul Food

My mom sent me an email with an essay she wrote some years ago about our family's Thanksgiving celebrations. I think it captures perfectly the essence of what Thanksgiving is really all about, so with her permission I am sharing it here:

It started with a turkey served on a Thursday in late November. A day off from school and work, a football game on TV and maybe even a parade. And we were thankful! Like my children the holiday grew. They came home from college and we added the card games; they married and brought spouses and Pictionary took hold. Grandchildren appeared at the table with the turkey and ever-multiplying side dishes of yams, cranberry salsa and bread pudding. Little heads began to pop up at game time and were dealt a hand or two. Those little heads grew and so did the turkey.

These boots were made for walkin'

I’m always astonished at the amount of energy my children have. From the moment they rolled over for the first time, it seems, each began a journey of perpetual motion which has, well, never stopped. My husband and I learned early on -- I think it was the day my son learned to pull himself up and unlock the front door -- that the only way to ensure peace in our household was to engage in a head-to-head game of “last man standing” and physically wear the children out.

Firing the Housekeeper

We all know that times are tough right now. No matter where you live, families everywhere are struggling to make ends meet.

But I’m feeling pretty lucky right now. I’m so relieved I’m not one of those moms who’s just had to let the housecleaner go, hands wringing at the prospect while she tries to get her head around the fact that she is going to have to clean her own toilets from now on. While my toilets may not always be as pristine as hers, there’s no big shock in store for me. I do it myself. Always have.

As for the rest of the house, I usually judge its day-to-day cleanliness on a scale of “How Mortified Would I Be if a Friend Dropped By For Coffee,” with Only Moderately being my most frequent answer. I know I’m having a good day when the answer isn’t Extremely or Do Not Let Them In Under Any Circumstances. The Not At All – Bring it On answer is usually reserved for those last five minutes prior the arrival of dinner party guests. So nothing's really changed there either.

The Lunch Box Police

Do educators have a right to dictate what can and cannot be put in a child’s school lunchbox? This is the issue I'm facing head-on at the moment and the only answer I keep coming up with is a resounding “NO!”

I realize that more and more schools now have “peanut-free zones” or ban nut products altogether to keep the school environment safe for the increasing number of children with allergies. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about is having school lunch supervisors and teachers regularly strolling around at lunchtime looking into kids’ lunchboxes. At our school they hand out raffle tickets to kids with healthy lunches, and the winner of the raffle gets a big basket of fruit as a prize at the end of the month. Now on its own this could be a good thing (aside from the gross invasion of privacy and the fact that giving more fruit to the kids with healthy lunches is a bit like preaching to the choir, no?), but when it’s accompanied by stern looks, wagging fingers, and repeated messages like “we should only have one treat at lunch” and “no chocolate at lunchtime” it is bordering on harassment.