When you’re a parent of a small child, every free day is a gigantic looming blank slate that you’ve gotta fill. Wake up, drink coffee, have some cereal, dress the kid . . . then what? You’ve got this little human being that needs to be entertained, but you need not be bored out of your skull.

I can’t claim to be an expert at this, but I do hate sitting around the house, and in the last four years I’ve managed to escape the lure of Hulu or Nickelodeon or whatever to discover plenty of things out in the real world to do with my child that don’t make me want to kill myself. Hence, based on my own experience and geography (I live in downtown Santa Rosa), here’s a rambling run-on list, that’s by no means complete, of how I have managed to fill the long, empty days with a small daughter.

First rule: get around other people. The quickest way is a park. You don’t even have to talk to other parents, just exchange knowing glances and shrugs while the kiddos run around. Once you get to know the area parks, you can target them by mood. If I’m feeling up for activities and socializing, I go to Howarth Park, where there’s a train, a carousel and pony rides. (Don’t forget the boats—small children are allowed, and it’s only $8 an hour for a rowboat.) Often it makes more sense to go to a small area park—mine is MLK Park, near the horse track—which is a good way to meet your neighbors, anyway. Peri Park in Fairfax is dangerously close to Three Twins Ice Cream, and the Superpark in Sebastopol has been a destination on more than a few bike rides.

Bike rides? Yep, a child’s seat is around $130. Do it. I’m amazed at how docile and quiet my daughter is on a bike ride, and the Santa Rosa Creek Trail is nice and flat. (Take it from me: do not try riding up Gold Ridge Road with the extra weight!) Kids, like dogs, love the whirring wind and open scenery as you pedal the day away.

Hiking with a kid can be arduous, but not impossible. I’ve scaled the just-opened Taylor Mountain with my daughter, which was not a great idea; the trail gets steep and is mostly in the open sun. Annadel is a better bet, and I don’t know if it’s legal to swim in Lake Ilsanjo or not so, uh, I didn’t tell you to, OK? In Marin, the Tennessee Valley Trail is the best for kids, because it’s short and wide.

Nightlife? Why not? I’ve brought my daughter to more than a few all-ages shows on special “stay up past your bedtime” nights, where she’s seen everyone from Stevie Wonder to Ceremony to Skrillex. (Those ubiquitous kiddie headphones are cheap.) Outdoor concerts are especially great for kids, and I go to the ones in Juilliard Park and the Cloverdale Plaza, though they happen everywhere. Movies in the Park are a fine bet, in Windsor, San Anselmo or elsewhere, and movie theaters, of course, have a good deal on matinees. I also love buying VHS tapes for a dollar at thrift stores, like Fatty’s Threads, and renting movies from my local video rental spot Video Droid.

Libraries have an incredible selection of DVDs, of course, along with CDs and books, and they’re free to rent—hurrah! Childrens’ reading programs abound at just about any branch—my local branch has been doing ‘Read to a Dog‘ days, weirdly.

Not to instill early-onset consumerism in your child, but window shopping can be a hell of a good time with your kid. I once spent over an hour putting ill-fitting clothes on my daughter in the dressing rooms at Macy’s and taking funny photos. She loved it. Of course, when you have a kid, you will get garbage bags full of hand-me-downs, but if you must buy clothes, Goodwill and other thrift stores have an inventory that’s way more entertaining to kids than a department store in the mall.

Getting familiar with your local independent boutique is key, too—mine are Wee Three and Cupcake—because they’ll have much more personality than the big-box behemoth with the red circle logo. Likewise, hit up your locally owned toy store—mine is the terrific Toy Works—where staff can field your questions and find the right gift.

I made an annual tradition of going to whichever Mexican Circus came to town, though none seems to be coming this year. But the Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa is an excellent day trip, and totally interesting for adults as well. (Time your trip right and across the street at the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, kids can learn to skate with chairs on Sunday and Wednesday mornings.) The Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito offers educational and fun activities for all ages, and Scientopia in Napa also sparks the imagination.

Ever drag your kid to a baseball game? The Giants have the more kid-friendly stadium, with a kids’ baseball diamond, slides and a model cable car, but the A’s have a play area and batting cages, too—plus tickets get as low as $12. We always take BART there.

While it’s still sunny, familiarize yourself with your local community pool. I like Ridgeway in Santa Rosa, but Finley, Mill Valley and Terra Linda are fine options, and they’re inexpensive. That can eat up a few hours right there, as can going to a childrens play at the likes of the Wells Fargo Center, the Marin Theater Co., the Marin Center or at community centers.

Train Town and Safari West are standbys for a reason—they’re excellent places to while away the hours. And if you want to do adult things in Napa while bringing the kids, Sterling Vineyards has a tram ride and juice boxes at the tasting room. If you’re feeling fancy, the Napa Valley Wine Train offers a Family Date Night where kids are free (one per adult), and they’ll watch your kids in a separate car while you dine.

Finally, show me a kid who doesn’t like a jumpy house and I’ll eat my hat. Pay-one-price jumpy house places include PlayLand in Sausalito and Pump It Up in Santa Rosa. Bring a book and relax for an hour or two . . . until it’s cocktail time.

As a new, young mother in the mid ’90s, I was shocked by how my “open-minded” North Bay community treated me. Strangers, mostly women, repeatedly pulled me aside at Santa Rosa Community Market, the Salvation Army thrift store and even the Health & Harmony Festival. “Oh, my,” they’d begin, “you’re so young! Were you able to finish high school?” And, my personal favorite, “Is the father involved?”

As my daughter finished preschool, I was pregnant again. I also had more tattoos, crazier-colored hair and a different partner. My idea of quality family time included weekend protests at Headwaters Forest, Saturday afternoon prison-reform marches in San Francisco and Sunday mornings cooking with Food Not Bombs. Sure, I used cloth diapers, made almond milk and sent my oldest to a Waldorf school like other linen-clad granola moms in the area, but I was also a young pseudo-anarchist feminist with radical political views, and very few fellow parents that fit into the same misshapen box as me. I felt completely alienated from my supposedly forward-thinking community.

Luckily for myself—and my kids—I found Hip Mama magazine.

“Back in the day, you had your baby, you had your cigarette, you had your little umbrella stroller and you did the best you could,” laughs Hip Mama founder Ariel Gore. “Class diversity or family-structure diversity was just barely visible then. That was one of the key reasons I started the zine.”

Gore first launched Hip Mama as a senior project at Mills College in 1993. A young single mom, Gore became the poster girl and champion of the “alternative” parenting scene through her unapologetic writing about the realities of raising kids outside of the norm. The articles in Hip Mama included personal essays on raising children as an LGBT parent, about parenting children with special needs, about sexuality after parenthood and even tips on how to breastfeed with nipple piercings.

“When I started Hip Mama,” says Gore, “there was Anne Lamott’s book [Operating Instructions], there were feminists’ books, a couple of kind of punky underground zines, like China Martens’ Future Generation. But in terms of an easy forum for single moms or younger moms or urban moms or anybody who didn’t fit in, there were literally three or four places you could access images of nontraditional families, including Roseanne, which was kind of a traditional family but they were working-class, which was a big deal then.”

Twenty years later, Gore is relaunching the print magazine this winter after a brief hiatus and temporary move to Santa Fe, where she cared for her dying mother while raising her second child, Maxito. The magazine, she says, will feature regular columns from Teen Mom NYC blogger Gloria Malone, Rad Dad zine founder Tomas Moniz and the magazine’s new political editor Victoria Law. Gore’s daughter Maia, who’s just weeks away from graduating college, is working on a new logo and other graphics. The new format will also include more food writing, more art, and, as always, it’s sure to contain sharp wit and insight.

Along with Hip Mama, Tomas Moniz of Rad Dad zine is relaunching his seven-year-old publication with a redesign as well.

“I just started a zine for fathers to talk about fathering in meaningful, feminist, anarchist ways. I started the zine I longed to read,” says Moniz. “It started as a place for fathers, but now anyone can write for the zine, and, in fact, in Rad Dad #20, my favorite essay was by a queer man in a relationship with a person who didn’t want kids, so they chose to live communally with a family who has kids. It is so amazing. Everyone needs to hear those stories.”

Moniz says that, like Hip Mama, the new Rad Dad will feature regular columns along with reader submissions, and will include stories on pop culture, race, queer parenting and more.

And between Hip Mama and Rad Dad, parents can rest assured that they are not alone with their weird-ass co-parenting, radical, farmsteading, anarchist, sex-positive, home-schooling (or, God forbid, public schooling), attachment-parenting, activist approaches to child-rearing.

“All of the things I was told would ruin her life, and that I was being selfish for not giving her up for adoption—they did not come to pass,” says Gore. “And kid number two, he’s 17 years younger than Maia, and I’m not that worried about him. I don’t care what y’all think of me. Part of it, I think, is getting older, I guess. But I could not care less.”

1. It’s a fact of nature: sweet cooing, smiling and cuddly babies eventually grow up into awkward, moody, hormonal, smelly, door-slamming, screaming teenagers. Don’t take it personally.

2. You will never have enough milk (cow, soy, goat, hemp, rice, whatever) or cereal in the house to satisfy the hunger of a growing teen. Buy a goat or cow and a grain mill.

3. Some teens never grow out of their obsessions with Harry Potter. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Every parent should educate herself and know the difference between Gryffindor and Slytherin.

4. If your teenager is female, you will spend a few hundred dollars a year on menstrual products, PMS tea, rom-com rentals, chocolate, gynecological visits and stain removers. You’ll also be able to prove the theory of women’s cycles syncing up. For roughly one week each month, your home will transform into a modern-day Red Tent situation, sans actual tent and bloody stacks of hay.

5. Thumbs really can be sprained by too much texting. You’ll learn this when you get your kid a new cell phone “for safety reasons” in eighth grade.

6. No matter how many unshaven radical feminist friends you have, and no matter how many annual goddessy ceremonies your daughters attend at the Women’s Herbal Symposium, at some point they will attempt to pluck their own eyebrows and shave their legs without your permission. It’s not pretty.

7. Morning carpool is a perfect time to interject your politics into conversations about celebrities. For example, when a Chris Brown song comes on the local radio station, this is an opportunity to discuss boycotting, sexism and violence against women—and to make sure the teen boys around know you mean business.

8. As teens get older, you don’t have to wait until they’re sound asleep to watch all the steamy R-rated movies you rented. R-Rated Movie Night can and should become a Friday-night family tradition. The only catch: sex scenes are often used as an opportunity for your teen to badger you with questions about your own sex life. (Also, watching Girls with your teen is a great opportunity to show them just exactly what bad sex looks like.)

9. If your child is psyched about driving and gets a driver’s license (unlike mine, who is afraid of being on the road while other teens are driving and takes the bus everywhere), you, my friend, have a personal designated driver for rides home from happy hour!

10. At some point in the mid–high school years, no matter how difficult or exhausting you become from driving back and forth across town, calling to make sure no creepers abducted your child on public transportation, helping with geometry homework and college job applications, buying cereal and milk, addressing health issues, counseling the kid after a blowup with a friend and all of the other various and unpredictable challenges that come with being a teenager, you will panic. You will sit alone at your kitchen table while your kids are out at parties or movies, and you’ll think, Oh mother of pearl, how did this happen so fast? These people are almost adults and will be leaving me soon. You’ll think of how desperately you want to shrink them, to encase them in cute little boxes in order to hold on to every precious, gut-aching, nostalgic memory forever. Then you realize putting your kids in boxes is creepy and illegal, so you let them go out into the world, you learn to trust that you are a great parent, that you did everything you could to love them and guide them into the people they are. And then you’ll pour yourself a glass of wine, sit back and learn to enjoy the last few years together while you still have them.