Miscellany

1) Yesterday Dutch called her dead great-grandfather. ("Farfar, hi! We love you! Bye!")

2) This is Dutch last week, filling in her Summer Reading chart.













3) This is Dutch last weekend, in the courtyard with the 8-year-old girl who lives downstairs, has very long sumptuous hair, and treats Dutch remarkably kindly. Dutch worships her. Cook and I are pretty grateful to her. We're considering paying the family to stick around instead of moving this fall.

Sumer is igoing out!

July is almost over. I feel a sudden frantic desire to do EVERYTHING summery - buy ten pounds of blueberries! have picnics! hang out at the pool! - but I'm also looking forward to fall.

Anyway, because I'm busy planning all the summery things I've got to do in the next month, here's some photodocumentation of our evening, for your viewing pleasure.













*


























































































* Food porn in honor of my virtual friend, aimeehj, whom I've never met, but who produces such great photos of such delicious-looking food that I can't imagine I wouldn't like her.

We got a free plane.

Transported

Last week we were contacted by a woman in town doing a PBS documentary on land use. Apparently the documentary team was looking for a family that takes transit, and we were recommended through a circuitous friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend route. (I suspect that it's hard for us white middle-class overeducated types to network their way to a transit-dependent family.) Which was cool - I was kind of excited to get a chance to talk about transit. But it turned out they wanted footage of a family who uses... light rail. Which we do not, because we don't have the option. Never mind that the light rail (much of which runs alongside the freeway) is primarily useful for commuters, and that many of the users drive in to park-and-ride. Never mind that the light rail doesn't even run in the whole southeast part of the city. It's the light rail, not the bus, that's sexy and visually interesting. This weekend, our transit-dependent life will include the following means of transportation for six different outings:

• Zipcar
• Bus (6 different routes)
• Feet
• Bike
• Jog stroller

But not the light rail. Nor the much-ballyhooed streetcar. And over the weekend, as a family, we will end up spending probably four or five hours on the bus or waiting for the bus. I would LOOOOOVE for PBS to do a documentary on how freaking hard it is to get around without a car, even in a pro-transit city like Portland. How the system is all laid out hub-and-spoke style, for commuters to move in and out of downtown, and the buses run at times and routes that are convenient for commuters. How we rarely go anywhere on weekends or evenings, because it entails so much waiting-time. How we can't go anywhere that isn't downtown or in our neighborhood unless we're prepared to travel at least 45 minutes and two buses each way.

I bet that would be a super-popular documentary, too.

Help.

I need book recommendations. A colleague suggested a year ago that I read the Donna Leon mystery series, and I started the first book, thought "eh..." and kept reading, and now I'm hooked! I'm going to read them ALL! And I want MORE! MORE BOOKS!!!! Besides, it's Summer Reading time again, and I've got to muster up a list of six not-embarrassing books to turn in as an entry for a lottery to win a weekend retreat. So please, recommend me something.... I'm expecting you all to do a better job with this than you did for me last summer when you recommended NOTHING!

The Dark Side.

I was talking to my mom recently about the joys of the courtyard, and she started reminiscing about the neighbor kids with whom she played when she was little (also about how she used to ride a steam train* to visit her grandmother and eat big bowls of blueberries...mmm...), and she mentioned the kid in number three who ate worms. Which reminded me to post this picture of Dutch, in the courtyard, learning about violence and Star Wars.



















*In spite of her memories of antique technology, my mom is not actually a hundred years old. Just Swedish.

Class warfare, coming soon.

Yesterday I got to tag along on a planning-related tour of Southwest Portland, during which representatives of neighborhood associations explained some of their major concerns. This was cool, since I haven't seen much of that part of town, and I was impressed by the commitment and knowledge demonstrated by the neighborhood association people. They have some concerns that are unique to this part of town (invasive species destroying the trees and causing landslides!), and many that are not (OMG! Too many new buildings! And they're so BIG!!). I am a big believer in listening to people's concerns, especially in the planning profession, even if you don't feel that they are well-founded or tenable.

However, after a few hours of the tour, I found myself getting bitter. Having been an urban apartment-dweller for my entire adult life, I scoff at the notion that people living in 5000-square-foot houses have any right to indignation that a condo is being built next door. Where exactly do they think the million people expected to be added to the Portland area's population in the next twenty years are going to live? I guess the answer is always "somewhere else." They're happy to have all that density located in the brownfields right next to the freeway. They're happy to have all that density in somebody else's neighborhood. Just not their own. I saw a sign somebody had posted that said something like "Increasing density decays livability." I guess that's true if by "livability" they mean "getting to live on this huge lot in this huge house with no sidewalks and nothing to walk to nearby anyway, and neighbors who look just like me." People, you live IN A CITY. If you don't do density, you're going to lose all the open space you love to hike in or play soccer in or pick-your-own-blueberries in. Things change, people! You cannot live in the 1950s anymore, unless you have some great population-growth-prevention plan in the hopper (actually, never mind, I don't want to hear about it).

The thing is... those people are missing out. Density rocks. I've been lucky to have had the opportunity to learn how great living in cities can be (visits to Scandinavia during my formative years did the trick, I think), and it makes me sad that so many people have a knee-jerk distaste for density and urbanity.

Particularly, this whole courtyard-apartment-building gig we've got going on is fantastic. I do wish we had some claim to the space (like in a cohousing space, or some kind of co-op), so we could plant a garden, and put in some furniture and I wouldn't feel so worried that Dutch is going to uproot some sort of precious plant, but otherwise it's kind of perfect. It really is. Nearly every day this summer, Dutch has spent at least an hour outside playing with one to five neighbor kids, all of whom live within 200 feet of her. Just in the last three days, they have built tiny little houses for elves, made puppets, performed a dance show, climbed trees, chased eachother around, played with toy cars, practiced somersaults, ridden bikes, tortured bugs, and so on. Cook and I look out the window pretty frequently, so we can keep pretty close tabs on what's going on, without having to hover. We get delicious kid-free time, and Dutch gets practice in getting along with other people and torturing bugs, plus a wonderful sense of independence. This would not be possible in many other living situations. If we lived in a single-family home with a yard, we'd be delighted to have the outdoor space, but much of the thrill goes out of a yard when you have nobody to share it with. For Dutch, the courtyard is a place of joy and exploration largely because it is peopled, or potentially about to be peopled. The courtyard set-up is ideal. The space is confined (and fenced in, even better), so the kids are relatively protected from the heavily-trafficked street outside, and there are always eyes on the yard. Neighbors come in and out this way, and it offers an opportunity to meet and talk in a shared, neutral place. I recommend it to everyone, including people who live in big single-family homes and get all grouchy about having (horrors!) too many neighbors too close by!

I don't mean to be all idealistic about high-density urban living. Living in eachother's laps is hard. But living in isolation is hard, too. Living in a place where your kids have nothing to do and nowhere s/he can go without being chauffeured is hard. Living in a place where you never have to think about other people is hard. It'd be great if we could find some better ways to meet everybody's needs.

Tomorrow I will storm the bastions of city planning and declare a coup. High-density courtyard housing for all!

Escalation

Tonight Dutch, in a bedtime freakout, wailed "I wish I could have a perfect day, with no crying! I wish I could have everything I want!!"

Sometimes I daydream about What I Want. I am not greedy, I tell myself. All I want is enough extra money (after budgeting for rent, childcare, health insurance, utilities, groceries, and used shoes) to buy a couch... and a vacation, just a little one... and maybe better health insurance that covers more than getting-hit-by-a-truck. And occasional babysitting so Cook and I can have a date. And more shoes! And my dream vacation - two weeks in the UK walking around and eating fish and chips in delightful pubs where witty locals play terrific live music.* Also, a kitchen timer. And an electric mixer. Oh oh oh! Also, new pants! And a comfortable easy chair! Storage things... An apartment in a cohousing development! A dishwasher!

Anyway, you get the point. I AM greedy. I can totally see why poor people go into serious credit card debt. When you're not making enough money to afford your basic needs, you kind of shrug your shoulders - oh well - and go ahead and buy stuff you don't even really need. Because you're already living beyond your means and have no hope of living within those mean means ... and everybody else seems to have all this great stuff. And you don't. And if you're downwardly mobile, like me, you have all these cool friends with some money and great taste. And once you start thinking about that one thing that would make your life way better, the list never stops.

Cook and I have a special combination of hangups that make us extra-ridiculous about consumption. We have expensive tastes (not diamonds or iphones, but a yuppie preference for well-designed, well-made things), but we also have a commitment to reducing (if ever so slightly) our monstrous American ecological footprint, so we try to buy things that are used and/or extremely durable. So when our old dish rack fell apart, we considered our options for MONTHS. We dried our dishes by piling them up on a towel on the counter. We pored over online reviews. We debated the environmental impact and aesthetic quality of various materials. We seriously considered spending $70 for a dish rack. In the end, I found a stainless steel rack for $30 at a local kitchen store. It works perfectly fine. That's still a lot of money to pay for a dish rack, but we tell ourselves it'll last forever. We really needed it, too, just like we really need all those other things. I'm sure tomorrow will be a perfect day.

*It's possible that I have read too much Nora Roberts lately.

Occupied

Yesterday one of the neighbor kids (the puckish one) interrogated Cook.

Puck: What do you DO?
Cook: Um...
Puck: Do you climb trees?
Cook: No.
Puck: Do you climb humongous trees?
Cook: No.
Puck: Do you help people?
Cook: Um... I try to help people.
Puck: But where do you work?
Cook: I work in an office.
Puck: Oh.
Cook: What are you going to do when you grow up?
Puck: I'm going to climb trees!

Then he ran off. I have no idea how Dutch would question somebody in search of the same information, but I am sure it would be informed by what Cook and I have told her we do (hmmm... work in an office?). Puck's mother works as a dental assistant (helping people) and his father works as an arborist (climbing truly humongous trees) . Ergo, all adults must do this.

It's all very nice.

Last week was pretty hectic, as I tried to wrap up everything at my old job while convincing everybody at my new internship that I am a Very Valuable Member of the Staff. Friday was my last day at my old job, and I also went to the dentist (wringing the value out of the dental benefits I just got at my old job). At the appointment, I was told by the dental assistant that I have "very nice energy," and then was told by the dentist that my teeth are "very nice" and my oral hygiene is excellent. I left in a rosy haze of optimism.

This weekend, Dutch was sick, but weirdly jaunty with it, in spite of feverish nights and snotty coughy days. The weather has been perfectly gorgeous, and we've spent lots of time walking and playing outside. We've also been diligently working our way through the library's Summer Reading requirements, in order to win Valuable Prizes. Cook has been checking out old-fashioned classic books like "One Morning in Maine" and "Madeline," which means that, what with the movies Dutch has been watching lately, she's pretty much living in a pre-1970s media world. That world seems so very very different from today that it's hard to imagine how different the world will be 50 years from now. Presumably somebody watching "Wall-E" in 2078 will be as weirded out as I am weirded out by watching Dumbo now.

What I love...

Blueberries. I want to have so many I can roll around in them and eat them until my eyeballs turn blue. I just bought two quarts (four pints, whatever) and it's not enough.

Also sparkly, but much faster

So sparkly and beautiful

How I miss you, Thrift Town.

This afternoon, Cook took Dutch to the pool, and I had Time Off. I went to Goodwill and spent FIFTY DOLLARS on work clothes. It has taken me decades, but I finally have a work wardrobe that is not composed entirely of corduroy jeans and solid-color t-shirts.* Maybe Dutch's fashion philosophy is rubbing off on me, though I chose not to buy anything sparkly.

Then I went to the grocery store. Then I decided to walk home the (very) long way, along the trail through the wildlife refuge. I was wearing flip-flops and carrying a heavy backpack full of salsa, avocados and all my spiffy new clothes, which cut into my walking pleasure a bit, and then I got a little lost and ended up walking quite a ways on the bike corridor, which is a fantastic urban amenity but completely lacking in shade and somewhat overfull of lycra-clad bikers moving at very high speed. So it was all a little more extreme than I had planned for my Time Off. However, once I got onto my peaceful, shady trail, I had a lovely walk, in spite of my sore feet. I saw and heard all sorts of birds, and I encountered a garter snake and a dead tiny rodent** of some kind.

Now Cook has gone off to play frisbee, and I am home in our reasonably clean and not-hideously-hot apartment, and Dutch is frolicking in the courtyard with those blessed downstairs kids, and things are looking pretty good... okay, a little boring, but that's good too.

*Which is not to say that I am hauling down my Frump Flag; far from it! I made sure to buy one horizontally-striped shirt to maintain my reputation.
** Oh you owners of outdoor-cats! Please please please bell your beloved beasties if you will not keep them indoors!

Sort of funny, sort of really not

Another milestone

We were all hot and cranky this morning. There was much whining on Dutch's part and much irritated threatening on the part of Cook and myself that we couldn't really follow through with because we were mad at Dutch just for being generally obnoxious, and it's hard to punish somebody for that. Not a good morning.

Then I took Dutch to a movie. In a movie theater. Her FIRST EVER movie in a movie theater. I did it mostly because I selfishly wanted to sit in blessedly cool peace (with NO WHINING) for two hours, but I also really enjoyed taking Dutch. She loved it. She soaked up every bit of the experience - the dark, the cool, the noise, the big screen. When the robots flew joyfully around in outer space, she cried "wheeeeee!!!!" and when we got up to leave, she waved goodbye to the screen. When we got out she said, astonished "It's still daytime!" and then she said "It's magic!!" She was totally adorable.

Thirty seconds later she started whining, and whined and cried all the way home, and then whined and cried at home until she passed out at 3:30. She's still asleep. We're hoping she sleeps for the next 14 hours and wakes up refreshed and happy...

Anyway, it was great. It's such a pleasure and honor to introduce a kid to a new experience, especially one you love yourself. Also, wow, the movie was terrific.

I am humbled.

Dutch has reached the point where she can easily outmaneuver me. Today I took her to the fancy shoe store where they were having a big sale. I intended to buy her high-quality, practical, comfortable shoes that looked more or less like this:



















But I ended up walking out 45 minutes later, exhausted and baffled, with much more expensive and much less practical shoes that look similar to this:



















I said "Why do you like these?" and she looked me over condescendingly, clearly understanding that I will never ever ever ever have ANY fashion sense, and said "because they're the prettiest."

One last thing...

... I LOVE my hula hoop. I moved all the furniture so I can use it inside, but I still have to be careful not to knock things over or clonk Dutch in the head. I'll take a picture of the sparkly hoopy glory when I get around to recharging the camera battery. You're going to be so jealous.

I live in Urban Yuppie Land

Names of kids at the playground last weekend:*

• Bodhi
• Haley
• Will
• Owen (3)
• Max (2)
• Conor
• Simon
• Ella
• Isabella
• Kai
• Walker

*I make fun, but I do like most of these names, and Dutch has a very popular Urban Yuppie name, too. After all, I AM an Urban Yuppie, except without the upwardly-mobile part. And wait - do I even qualify as young? Or professional? Never mind.

Don't be a dick.

A friend with a hula-hooping mom sent me this link:
http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-to-be-feminist-boyfriend-part-1.html

which would be good for you to read. Yes, you too.

Twins

So you know those moms and daughters who go out dressed in identical outfits? I always pitied those kids for their crazed manipulative moms. But now I know that those poor moms were dragged to the store by their demented identity-building preschoolers. Dutch freaked out this morning because I took off my sweatshirt and revealed that I was wearing a SHORT-sleeved shirt rather than a long-sleeved shirt, apparently breaking the unwritten covenant of Thou Shalt Not Wear Clothes That Are Too Different From My Clothes. She wailed "I wanted us to be TWIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNSSSS!!!!!"

This evening when she put on her pyjamas, she anxiously consulted with me on which pyjamas I was planning on wearing, so she could wear pyjamas as close in shape and style as possible. When I was actually getting ready for bed, I almost made the mistake of putting on different pyjamas. I caught myself in time to forestall the inevitable morning tantrum consequence.

Automotive mystique

Dutch has now watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang twice, and on the second viewing I realized that it isn't just a charmingly weird movie about a car. It's about how much we love cars. The jaunty, loveable English family has no car, and once they get one, they are delighted and immediately drive off (to California, I think) to a picnic on the beach, singing an ode to the vehicle. Here are some of the lyrics from the eerily catchy title song:

Near, far, in our motor car
Oh what a happy time we'll spend.
Bang Bang Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Our fine four fendered friend.
Bang Bang Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Our fine four fendered friend.
You're sleek as a thoroughbred.
Your seats are a feather bed.
You'll turn everybody's head today.
We'll glide on our motor trip
With pride in our ownership
The envy of all we survey.
Oh Chitty You Chitty
Pretty Chitty Bang Bang
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
We love you.
And Chitty, in Chitty
Pretty Chitty Bang Bang
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang what we'll do.
Near Chitty, far Chitty, in our motor car
Oh what a happy time we'll spend.

Presumably they would vote for a gas tax vacation, too. I wonder if anyone's made a movie about a magical city bus.

Acting like a kid is hard.

Hula hooping hurts, people. My waist and hips are all bruised.

My current projects include: walking-while-hooping, hooping clockwise instead of counter-clockwise, and moving the hoop up and down my body.

Soon I'm sure I will be able to do this:

Sleep

Those of you who have known us since Dutch was an infant may remember that she was a terrible sleeper. She's still not much for sleep, fighting it right up to the last moment, and waking in the wee hours nearly every night, and she hasn't napped at home since she turned 2. Given the summer light, I've had the opportunity to photograph her sleeping lately, and I'm sharing it with you. This is her just being adorably asleep.













And this is a picture I took after a particularly annoying going-to-bed-session in which I had left her alone in her room playing, and she fell asleep in this position, clutching a plastic penguin to her chest.

Decadent weekend

Cook is gone this weekend, and Dutch and I are on our own. We're having a movie extravaganza (so far limited to movies made before I was born), with a showing of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang yesterday and Dumbo today. Dutch loves both of them. We went to Goodwill and Dutch and I had our first-ever mother-daughter dressing-room session. (She's come into the dressing room with me before, but never to actually try on her own clothes. I tried on work clothes, and she tried on pajama pants with polar bears on them.) We made ginger tea and bagel faces.

















We also bought my new hula hoop, which is really cool. I decided on a whim the other day to buy a hula hoop, and bought a $5 one at the toystore near my office. Unfortunately, I couldn't make it hula at all, which was very deflating, and I gave it to an appreciative Dutch. Then I looked online and discovered that it is very difficult for grown-ups to use child-sized hoops. Physics, or something. However, it is quite easy to make your own hula hoop, though I quickly determined that the investment in equipment was not worth it for me, and posted a craigslist ad instead. And now I have a HUGE hula hoop which is not only the coolest thing ever (AND easily hula-able) but also made us lots of friends on the multi-bus journey home with it. Here, for your random enjoyment, is a picture of one of the downstairs kids, dressed as a lion and using Dutch's hoop in our courtyard a few weeks ago during a fit of surreality.













Also, we went to see some fireworks last night. Dutch expressed a strong desire to see them, and I was not up for going to the waterfront show, what with the late hour and the holiday bus schedule, but we did walk down the street at dusk to the bluff overlooking the river, hoping we could catch a glimpse of some fireworks. We joined a handful of other people, including a family with a kid about Dutch's age who had also never seen fireworks, and the two of them were delirious with excitement. We saw... the moon! The lit-up windows of the hospital on the hill! Stars! Blinking lights on a cell tower! Lights of passing cars and bikes! Bats! Ninety billion mosquitoes! And then, finally, we kind of saw three different shows going on around the horizon, none of them terribly well, but well enough to thrill the kids. It was a lovely night, too.

Explanation of my working situation

I was just looking back over some old entries (hey! I've been blogging for more than a year!) and felt that I should provide some kind of helpful explanation of what exactly is going on right now, in case any of you lovely people (hi Diane!) are attending to the overall narrative. I did get an internship, and it's pretty terrific. I have no idea why they hired so late,* but it worked out great for me, as most of my classmates had already landed internships by the time these guys got around to hiring, so the competition was much diminished. Ha! A blow struck for middling-type students everywhere!

Anyway, I've got a few weeks left of working part-time at my old job AND at my new internship, and it's very weird going between the two. In one place, I supervise two interns and a host of volunteers, and in the other place, I get supervised (kind of). In one place, I have an office to myself and can listen to music and check my email as I please. In the other place, I am a tiny cog in a mighty machine, and I share a cube with other intern drones and smile awkwardly at my 89 coworkers when I run into them in the aisles between our cubes.

The internship is interesting and challenging, but it's also daunting. Several of the other interns actually have already secured their degrees and are interning because they can't find a real job. Seriously. This is NOT a good sign. And I happened to start my internship before the end of June, and therefore got to meet the guy in the cube next-door, who was just finishing up his FIFTH temporary government position. Really not a good sign. So all those not-good signs point to the conclusion that I need to be not only a good intern, but a spectacular one, in order to have a hope of landing a decent government job. I'm working hard on this; I have showered before work every day so far.

So my leisurely summer plan has fallen by the wayside, and I'm a little sad about that, too. But there's plenty of leisure to be got, anyway. I took Dutch to the pool last weekend, and she was delirious with joy and made me laugh a lot, and then when we were walking home a nice lady in one of the awesome food carts near the library gave us free samples of the most delicious strawberry shortcake ever, and then we went to the library and sat around in the air conditioning reading trashy magazines.** Summer, I love you. Sorry it didn't work out the way we planned, but maybe we can enjoy some weekend flings.

*Something about budgets. Silly government.
** Or picture books. Whatever.

I'm a model, you know what I mean...

I couldn't help but feel that Dutch was posing for an imaginary fashion magazine shoot for these photos. (A very peculiar fashion magazine, though. Probably European. I hear polka-dot pants and multicolored fisherman's sandals NEVER go out of style over in the Old World.)

Do as I say

I give a lot of advice to Dutch that I should follow myself. The list is very long (Don't wear flipflop when taking long walks, treats are not for every day, don't say mean things about other people, etc) , but here's the big one, which I say to her at LEAST once every day, and yet somehow can't manage to apply in my own life consistently:
Stop talking (whining/screaming/crying) about the problem, and start working toward a solution.

I don't think very many adults are able to walk the walk all the time on this one. It's hard.