An article in the Wall Street Journal with the headline “Why not wear pajamas all day?” got my attention. After years of dropping my daughters off at the high school and watching kids shuffle into school in slippers, the trend of wearing sleepwear to school was something that that really didn’t make sense to me.

According to the article, many teenagers like looking like they just rolled out of bed in their flannel pants, camis, and t-shirts because it’s both comfortable and hip. And besides, they’ve been seeing the same group of kids for years, so who do they need to impress with their appearance?

I did a little research with my own teenager and from her perspective, dressing down – which for her means yoga pants, not pajamas – is ok during finals week. It’s sort of a signal that “I’ve been studying so hard (whether she has been or not) and my mind is so totally consumed with finals (ya, sure) that I just can’t be bothered with putting on real clothes.

Of course, putting together an outfit with yoga pants takes every bit as much time as putting on the usual jeans and top – in fact it probably takes even more time because it’s hard to get that perfect balance between “I’ve worked hard to look cute” and “I’m too distracted with studying to care what I look like.”

At the risk of sounding like the tightly-wrapped mom that I am, I don’t think anybody does their best work when wearing something that is really only appropriate for eating Cheetos and watching reruns of “Friends” in the privacy of your family room. I think when you look sloppy you more inclined to do sloppy work.

I have found that to be true. When I used to work entirely from home, if I came home from the gym and immediately got into the day’s work, my attitude was different. My interactions had an edge to them, like I just wasn’t ready to face the day.

I don’t long for returning to the days of girdles and nylons but as my teenage daughter said, there’s something about clothes being just a little constricting that makes a person feel like they are ready to work. And the best part is coming home from work or school is peeling off the skinny jeans (in her case) or the wool slacks with the slightly tight waistband (in my case); it feels so good just to let it hang out. I love knowing I’ve earned the right to look like a slob because I’ve worked hard.

Schools are probably very happy that about this trend. Compared to the super-short shorts, extra-low rise jeans, and tube tops that I’ve seen on many a high school girl, the sweat pants and floppy shirts of the pajama look must make it easier for everyone – teachers included – to focus on their schoolwork.

A few months back, our longtime friend and business associate, Pam Davis, called Steve and asked if he would be willing to design the poster for her 50^th birthday party bash called “The Heart of Winter.”

A birthday party requires a poster? In Pam’s case, the answer is yes. It was important to publicize her birthday because turning 50 gave Pam the ideal opportunity to bring the community together to raise money for two of her favorite non-profits: the Sebastopol Community Centerand the Ceres Community Project.

Pam probably knows more about recycling than anyone else in Sonoma County– she previously worked in government relations for the County’s garbage company and is now general manager of Sonoma Compost – and she is all about making the world around her a better place.

So, in addition eating to some really, really good artisan cheese from local creameries (I’m still dreaming about the Roasted Chili Redwood Hill Farm Chevre) and wishing Pam a happy birthday, another great aspect of the event was learning about an organization that meets a need that I had never thought about before.

The Ceres Community Project provides nutritious meals to people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. The program makes complete sense: someone going through chemotherapy certainly isn’t going to have energy to shop and cook yet consuming high-quality, whole foods is essential to helping them regain their health.

And the Ceres Project (named after the Roman goddess of agriculture) goes far beyond just delivering food. The healthy meals are prepared by teen chefs working under professional chef mentors. Not only are teens serving people in need, they are also learning culinary and life skills and spreading the word about the connection between food and health. The whole program works beautifully on so many levels.

At the event, we got to enjoy the type of meal that the teen chefs prepare for the Ceres Project clients. And it was fabulous: pork with red cabbage, roasted sweet potatoes and sautéed kale. Organic, delicious and nutritious.

Their goal in 2012 is to provide 45,000 free and nourishing meals – a 50% increase over 2011.

So thank you Pam for turning 50 and introducing me to yet another way that people in Sonoma County come together to support and serve one another.

For more information on the Ceres Community Project go to www.ceresproject.org

The other night the conversation shifted to Mitt Romney.

If that sentence doesn’t send chills up your spine, then you’ve either just landed from another planet, or you know who you’re voting for come November. If it does, then you’re in good company, because the subject of Mitt causes a strong visceral reaction in me.

I’m not talking about Governor Mitt, or Mitt the last, best, hope of the Republican party to dethrone the sitting President.

I’m talking about Mitt, the typical starched, upright and smug Mormon. Before I proceed, let me mention that I was raised Mormon, from birth until I was 18 in Salt Lake City,  the seat of the Mormon church and crucible of this particular self-righteous stereotype.

Whether Mormonism is a true Christian faith or a cult is a subject for another time. My beef is with the entire concept that for one to be acceptable among the Latter Day Saints, one must be … well … perfect. Or, at least, be able to give a pretty good impression of Mormon-style perfection.

To begin with, you should be wealthy. Because, as good Mormons know, wealth is sign that you’re right with God. If you’re not well-to-do, then you belong in the back of the church, or perhaps it would be better if you worshipped at some store front.

Let’s not forget physical perfection. Good Mormons are good looking. And speaking of good-looking, one’s children should qualify as models for Crest commercials.

Are there Mormons who love God, and seek to do go in the world. Absolutely. I believe my father was one.

But those who espouse the Gospel of Prosperity, Propriety, Popularity and Perfect cause my stomach to knot up.

Maybe Mitt is not like this at all. If that is the case, then his campaign team had better get to work, because that’s how he comes across to me and, I’ll bet, a whole bunch of other folks.

New Year’s day is such a strange day. It’s a combination of relief that the holidays are over. Everything that needed to get done, got done. It’s such a pleasure to go to Target and the grocery store and be able to find a parking place. The stores are quiet and easy to get around in. No more overly stressed shoppers trying to cross one more gift off their list.

But I also have some post holiday letdown. I can no longer use the busyness of the season as a distraction from the pile of bank statements and bills on my desk. It makes me realize that even though there was a lot of work involved in preparing for the holidays, I really enjoyed it. I might just have to bake some more biscotti and savor the experience once again.

However, the bittersweet nature of the day also gives me an opportunity as I look ahead to the new year. I’m the type of person who more easily focuses on the bitter…or at least the less-than-perfect aspects of life. Something improves but I immediately find a way to negate it. We don’t have to pay property tax but the car needs new tires and major service; we reduced our phone bill but we need to start making payments on our Parent Plus loan. Oh, woe is me…we’ll never get ahead.

I can get myself into a total funk where the only thing I have to look forward to is getting through tax day on April 15^th. Isn’t that a cheery thought.

Rather than going down that depressing path, I’m going to take a few minutes to reflect on the sweet things in our life. The fact that we got through the sale of our house. It was stressful but we survived with all our limbs intact. A little painful, yes, but it certainly didn’t destroy us. We found a safe and very nice place to live. Is it ideal? No, but neither was our old house.

Everyone in our family is healthy. There is no amount of money in the bank that could take away the deep pit in my stomach if one of my kids were ever to be really, really sick. And how about a husband who looks at least 10 years younger than his age, is always reinventing himself in business, and has an abundance of talents and skills?

I have a job waiting for me to return to on January 3 working with a wonderful group of people. That is a blessing because going into the holidays a year ago, I didn’t have a job. Being in that situation has given me a lot of compassion for all the people looking for work.

So there is good reason for me to be optimistic about 2012. As I see it, the choice is either hope or despair. I’m going with hope. Amen.

Merry Christmas,

As you saw on the postcard, we did a lot of downsizing in 2011 – even our Christmas greetings downsized to a postcard – so I appreciate you taking the time to find the website to read our annual family recap.

After living on Paula Lane for 17 years, it became apparent to us that the house had become too much for us. It had too many bedrooms now that Ethan and Valerie weren’t living at home, too much yard work and way too much mortgage. We are grateful that we didn’t have to give up our first born to Wells Fargo in order to get out from under it, so after about a six month process, we moved in early November to a cozy condominium in a quiet complex called The Cottages in Cotati.

It’s more of a drive to get Jennifer Lynn to her full-on schedule of high school activities but one of the best things that has come from moving up the road is that Steve has had the opportunity to share office space with a long-time business associate in a nearby community. After working alone in a home office for the past eight years, more contact with the outside world and a bigger separation between home and office feels really good to him.

On a beautiful day in May, it was a thrill for us to watch Ethan and 5,000 of his closest friends graduate from San Francisco State. It was definitely an opportunity for me to be in the moment and set aside my worries about the job market, his compounding student loans and the $56 in his checking account. However, I needn’t have stressed, because he did get a job at a small video production company located in the nice part of Oakland. He’s working the phones to bring in projects so he can build his film industry credentials on IMDB – that’s the internet encyclopedia of movie data. He really likes the sound of Ethan Rustad, Associate Producer.

Valerie’s second year at Chapman University in Orange, CA, has been a lot sunnier than her first. We know she’s doing fine because unlike the frequent teary phone calls during her freshman year, we never hear from her. She’s too busy perfecting her graphic design projects, working part-time at a law firm in Santa Ana, taking acrobatic classes and watching “Friends” reruns on Netflix with her roommate.

Jennifer Lynn was the only one of the three kids who actually had to experience the move with us…Ethan and Valerie just got a text message from us with our new address so they could find their way here for Thanksgiving. Jennifer’s only requirement for our new home was that she didn’t have to share a bathroom with mom and dad and since our new place has two-and-a-half baths, we exceeded her expectations.

As a sophomore this year, Jennifer Lynn is combining two activities that surprisingly have something in common: cheerleading and playing the tuba. That’s because that both require heavy lifting. Wow, that girl’s getting some shoulders on her.

I have been very fortunate to continue my position at the Petaluma Visitors Center and Downtown Association in spite of the dwindling reserves in the city’s coffers. And Steve’s versatility as a marketer, designer, consultant, cartoonist, filmmaker, and pretty much anything else anyone will pay him for, has seen us through the tough economy.

We are looking forward to hanging some pictures in our new place, letting out the collective breath we’ve been holding for the last year, and seeing what opportunities the New Year has in store.

We wish you peace, happiness and prosperity in the New Year!

The ghost of Gourmet Magazine past visits my kitchen every Christmas. That’s because for almost 20 years I’ve been making the Biscotti di Greve recipe from the December 1992 issue to give as Christmas gifts.

I always enjoy getting the magazine off the shelf and studying the fluffy intensely-pink dessert that is pictured on the  cover and flipping past the NordicTrack ad to get to page 164. By now though, I’ve used the recipe for so many years that the page is so crusty and spattered that the magazine practically opens by itself.

Because we moved a little more than a month ago and all our routines have been shaken loose, I wasn’t sure I would continue with the biscotti baking tradition. I love making them but baking 20 dozen biscotti is time consuming and our lives in 2011 have been all about downsizing.  So maybe giving homemade gifts was another aspect of my life that could be simplified. I could make one trip to our neighborhood Target and I could be done – no fuss no muss.

But after Steve and I talked about it, baking the biscotti again this year just felt right. I know at least some of the recipients truly look forward to getting them and would actually miss it if they didn’t get my “I hope you don’t have any loose fillings,” crunchy almond orange biscotti.

Besides, if you’re going to give a homemade treat as a gift, I think biscotti are the perfect choice; they are practically guilt free because they have so little fat and not all that much sugar in them. Plus, there’s no such thing as a stale biscotti so they will taste just as good in January when all the other holiday goodies are long gone.

And when something works, why change it? Although the thought of going to Target and just picking something off the shelf instead of making the gift myself sounds appealing, the reality is much more that I would spend two hours wandering the store only to come home frustrated and empty-handed because I couldn’t find anything that would be appropriate and affordable to give clients, friends and family.

The smell of them baking would also help our new place feel more like home. I don’t need to just make biscotti, I need to make some happy memories here too.

And there’s one more reason why I should make them again this year. How could I pass up the opportunity to say we’re giving biscotti from Cotati…it has such a nice ring to it.

When we moved a little more than a month ago, we downsized our square footage. But sadly, we also downsized in the number of pets we have.

We don’t know if it was the move that was the tipping point for our old cat, named Charm, or just coincidence, but about two weeks after we moved, the kidney disease that we knew he had, got worse rapidly. He stopped eating and it was obvious that it was time to say goodbye to his fuzzy round face.

We never really knew how old Charm was because we adopted him from Forgotten Felines when he was an adult cat but we had him for 14 years. He was the first pet for our family and he opened the door for getting two more cats, a German Shepherd, a couple of rats, toad, and assorted fish that also joined our household in the subsequent years.

I really don’t remember how we happened to choose Charm that day at PetSmart. Perhaps all the cute little kittens had already been adopted. But our daughter, Valerie who was five at the time, had her heart set on getting a pet that day so the cat with the slightly crossed blue eyes and latte coloring came home with us.

The name on his cage at the adoption center was “Toro” which gives you a sense that he wasn’t a little fluff-ball but more of a plus-size cat. Valerie immediately renamed him Charm because of a Barbie computer game that she was obsessed with at the time.

Apparently Charm had led a tough life before coming into our house because when we got him, he was a very ratty looking cat. He had a big chunk of fur missing from his tail and feline acne on his chin – who knew cats could get zits?

But once Charm put his paw that was accustomed to prowling the tough streets of Sonoma County on our plush carpet, his little kitty brain was wiped of any desire to want to go outside. We could have left the door open for days and he never would have ventured outside. Although we’re not sure who was smarter…Charm or the toad…he had enough brain to know a good thing when he saw it.

Charm was a total lap cat. You only needed to be sitting for about a minute before this big ‘ol cat with four very small paws was upon you. I’ve never seen a creature that could get more relaxed. He would eventually end up sleeping on his back with his skinny cat arms raised over his head like he was doing the wave in his sleep.

But his favorite place was on Steve’s lap when Steve was at his computer. He loved soaking up the warmth that Steve’s massive tower put out. Every time Steve would touch the top of Charm’s back – which was every time he reached for the keyboard with his right hand – Charm would raise his butt so he was on his tippy-toes and then settle back down until Steve used his right arm again. Even though Steve had so much cat fur on his keyboard that the keys became felted, at least this constant up-and-down of his back end forced Charm to get some exercise.

As hard as it was to say goodbye to Charm, it would have been even harder to do it if we were still living in our old house because he was a presence in our lives 14 out of the 17 years that we lived there. He is one of the best memories I have of our old house.

Next week, we will celebrate our first month anniversary in our cozy condo in Cotati. And it’s almost starting to feel like home. I’m beginning to be able to identify electronic beeping sound goes with which appliance. Is it the dryer beeping, the microwave, the oven signaling that it has been preheated or the refrigerator telling me that the door has been open for too long?

Of course, celebrating holidays and creating memories definitely helps a house feel like a home. Hosting our family for Thanksgiving and having the aroma of a turkey in the oven fill the house – and thankfully not setting off our overly-sensitive smoke detector for the two hours that the turkey was in the oven – helped Steve and I get over the feeling that we weren’t staying in a nice hotel on an extended vacation.

And downstairs right now, our daughter is baking gingerbread cookies and it smells wonderful. Isn’t having the smell of freshly baked cookies that taken right from the real estate agent’s manual of “How to Make an Unfamiliar Place seem Homey?”

And we got our Christmas tree. Since our new place is full up with furniture, there wasn’t a wall or corner that made the perfect place for the tree so it’s sprouting right out of the middle of the room.  Actually, it’s quite nice having a 360 degree view of it.

In the long run, it’s probably the everyday activities even more than the special occasions that really add up to feeling like we are living here and aren’t just visiting. Now that I’m in the routine of cleaning the bathrooms and cleaning up cat barf, I’m darn sure that I’m not staying in a hotel. And you know what, it feels really good.

The good news: the buyers removed the contingencies on our house. We are rejoicing that even a previously  undiscovered water stain in the ceiling isn’t going to tank the deal and the house will be theirs as of November 15.

The bad news: we are scheduled to move in a week and we still don’t know where we’re moving to.

Am I feeling panicked? If the fact that I responded to a “too good to be true” rental listing on Craigslist that was actually a Nigerian internet scam is any indication of my desperation, the answer is definitely yes.

Although I had been looking at rentals on Craigslist for the last couple of months, the choices seemed to range from too much house for too much money, to too little apartment for too much money. I could practically recite the 17 listings that came up when I searched “Petalumawith cats.” ”Birch, wonderful, beautiful, never been lived in, eastside, downtown, townhome” and on and on. We had either looked at them all or ruled them out when the best feature of the house that they could put in the listing was “central heat.”

A ray of light broke though the clouds in my head when I decided to expand the search to Cotati/Rohnert Park. A listing for a townhouse in Cotati that is available immediately popped up. While 10 minutes further north from church, school and work, at least it wasn’t the east side of town, a.k.a. Gaucho Gulch where our Petaluma H.S. band member and cheerleader refuses to be relocated.

However, the more I thought about it the better it seemed. We would be back to paying what we could actually afford. Steve and I went to see it today and I have to admit that unless the photos in the posting were extensively Photoshopped, I was primed to like it and ready to write them a check for the deposit.

The place was just like the place that I had imagined us moving when we started down this road of selling our house more than year ago. It was charming, cozy and cheaper than anything else we had seen, with the exception of a self-storage locker.

After huddling with Steve and Jennifer in the garage, we agreed it was a good fit for us and filled out the application.

 Fingers crossed, we’re waiting for their approval.

We’re packing up and getting ready for our November 7 move date – although where we’re moving to is still TBD.

The timing of this whole process is a little tricky because we can’t commit to renting somewhere until the contingencies on our house are removed and we’re sure the sale is a done deal. At the same time, the rental market is getting more competitive as we get closer to the end of the month because property managers want to have their new tenants lined up by November 1.

Time to panic? Yes!! I mean not yet. We’re just trying to take it one step at a time.

And the first step, as I talked about last week, is packing up the books. When it comes to all the work involved in moving, packing books is definitely the low-hanging fruit. You don’t have to think about how you’re going to wrap them or what size box to use. Just fill up a book box to the tipping point of “if I put one more book in here, I’ll be permanently injured if I try to lift it.”

The downside of having books these days is that they have become less valuable than the paper they are printed on. Steve estimates he took almost 1,000 pounds of books to Copperfield’s to try and resell them. I thought the quality of the books he was taking was first rate…no rejects from Oprah’s Book Club but really nice art and history books. Copperfield’s bought 75 of them for about $2 each. I’m not dissing Copperfield’s – I’m grateful we got a few bucks for them – it’s just that in today’s market, a case of Staples Multi-Use paper has more value than a case of books.

Once the books are in boxes, we have no choice except to move onto packing the remaining 80% of our stuff that doesn’t fit quite as neatly into a rectangular box. This is a good time for me to work on not being too OC. If I try to pack the small kitchen appliances like I’m playing Tetris, I’ll still be working on emptying out the first cupboard when the new owners arrive ready to move in.

Ever since we moved into this house 17 years ago, I have lamented the skimpy amount of storage space in the kitchen. Now that I have to pack it up, it’s totally working to my advantage. Two cupboards down; three more to go. Then onto the closets.