Sartorial rules are not so iportant, apparently.

What's Iportant to You?

So sad.

Wash was my favorite, and they killed him.

Transit fatigue?

I ride the bus about three days a week, and mostly on the same route, out to work and back again. I'm on one bus for about 40 minutes, usually, and it runs along a soul-killing major arterial lined with vast parking lots, cash&carry grocery stores, bars, pawnshops, fast food, car repair places, and so on. There's some residential development, all of the cheap, windowless variety that already looks dilapidated even though it's maybe 10 years old. The people who get on and off (darting through traffic trying to catch the bus because the safe pedestrian crossings are few and far between) are poor. I think that I'm usually the richest person on the bus. Some people smell bad. One guy has Tourette's, I'm pretty sure. There are plenty of people who are silent, like me, and some whose conversations are innocuous. However, I hear and see enough that I know a lot more about the general complications of being poor than any boring, law-abiding, over-educated middle-class person like me ought to.

Things I have seen or heard lately on that bus route:
1) A man and a woman, maybe in their 40s or 50s, yelling at a very fat toddler on a leash.
2) A woman saying loudly into her phone "But I want to make it LOOK like a ROBBERY!"
3) A kid, maybe four years old, wearing the blank, impassive stare common to those of who ride transit regularly (the look you never see on kids who get on in the wealthier neighborhoods, kids who think transit is an unusual and exciting way to get to the zoo a few times a year, and who are thrilled to get on the bus), numbly stuffing her face with something out of a bag. I figured it was chips or something, but then I realized it was pre-cut apple slices.
4) An obese man wearing a tight red t-shirt, sleeping, snoring, wearing headphones, and smelling really unwashed.
5) A short and cheerful teenager and a tall bike-commuter guy and I, strangers to each other, gossiping happily about the bus drivers on our regular line. We were all delighted to see that the driver who finally pulled up was the one that Bike Commuter Guy calls "The Rocket."

I started this post yesterday planning to write about how exhausting this transit ride is getting for me. I am a transit believer, but this ride is a heart-breaking, spirit-crushing one that pushes the limits of even my appreciation. But then #5 happened to me this evening, and now I'm back on board. That kid made me laugh so hard. I really hope life doesn't crush her too much.

I had no idea how well-aligned you all were with my particular brand of dorkiness.

Maybe it's just because I'm not on Facebook that I didn't know that. I loved Battlestar Galactica (though my passion dropped off precipitously after the first season), and have started watching it all over again.

I told the kids they could only watch a movie if I chose it, and I chose "The Red Balloon."

Dutch: This movie is really stupid. That kid climbed a pole to get the balloon and now he's just running around.
Skipper: He is so fast!
Dutch: Wait, is the balloon magic?
Dutch: He speaks French!
Dutch: Even the teacher wants the balloon!
Dutch: Who took it?
Dutch: What'd that man just do!
Dutch: She just locked the boy in the CLOSET!! Why'd she do it?
Dutch: The balloon is going to get the key in the end. I know this.
Dutch: Look mom!
Dutch: MOM! Watch the balloon! These are bad guys!
Skipper: This movie is stoopooh! It's so bad.
Dutch: Yeah, they don't even speak the right language, and I can't figure out what's going on.
Skipper: There's two balloons
Dutch: No there's just one.
Skipper: He caught it! Hey, another balloon!
Dutch: Look mom, it's saying hi to the blue balloon!
Skipper: They're both balloons!
Dutch: Oh my gosh mom, they both have magic balloons and they're trying to go the opposite way and the balloons want to be together!
Dutch: They're trying to get his balloon.
Dutch: Let go of it! Come on, let go of it, boy!
Skipper: I don't like this movie! Those kids tried to get his balloon! I'm sad about that!
Dutch: Skipper, look, there's the balloon! It's following him!
- Brief period when I wasn't paying attention - 
Skipper: Are those kids having trouble?
Dutch: Balloon. Come here, balloon!
Dutch: Mama, they're going to get his balloon again and I hate this!
Skipper: This movie's more scary! More scary!
Dutch: Skipper, it's going to be fine. It's a happy movie.
Dutch: Where'd the balloon go?
Dutch: Fly away, balloon!
Dutch: It's dying. The kid hit it with a rock.
Skipper: Balloon is dying.
Dutch: Twins with balloons
Dutch: Everybody's balloons are going away! What is this? I think they're trying to go help it!
Skipper: Why Dutch? Because it's broken? Because a kid stepped on it?
Dutch: Oh my gosh! Or maybe they're going to the boy!
Dutch: Wow!
Dutch: It would be really amazing to see this!
Skipper: He's standing with all those balloons!
Dutch: He's getting all of them. They're being nice to him. Why did all these balloons do it? Because they know he's nice? Oh my gosh. Mom, look! There he is at the end of the balloons! Wow, balloons really like him, don't they! Where's he going? I think he's going to Mars!

Let me clarify...

...ridiculous TV that I LOVE.

Also.

I have found a new ridiculous TV show to watch. This time, I'm aware that there aren't very many episodes, in contrast to my experience with Downton Abbey AND Sherlock, which somehow BOTH caught me by surprise when I finished an episode and found there was nothing left to watch, which was terrible. Now I know to treasure every ridiculous moment.

Because you really, really wanted to know how I feel about my footwear.

We've had some Weather here in Portland lately. There's been some snow, and then there was a LOT of rain. Seriously, a LOT of rain. We're used to rain, of course, but mostly of the intermittent variety, but this was a major downpour that just went on and on and on. (The rain is continuing today, and will go on for at least another day, but it's not pouring any more.) Not only did all of us get really, really wet during our morning commutes,* yesterday afternoon our basement started leaking in a determined way. Our basement has never leaked in our experience, including during some pretty rainy periods, but apparently things just got too wet this time, and I spent yesterday afternoon frantically moving things around and mopping up rivers of water while Skipper heckled me from her perch on the stairs. The basement is fairly dry now, but we'll see how we hold up over the next few days. The whole region is in a bit of a state of crisis, with a lot of flooding.

All that human misery, however, hasn't been on my venal little mind (we don't live in a floodplain, after all) so much as a feeling of deep, abiding love for my boots. Remember my boots (Keen Silverton, in case you're in the market)? I've come to think of them as my Carfree Boots because they are such a perfect fit for my life - they've kept my feet dry and warm this week even as I waded through a third-of-a-mile-long, ankle-deep lake of slush between the bus stop and my office,* and stood in a six-inch-deep puddle while buckling Skipper into the bike trailer. They're indispensable for biking in the rain, an experience that can drench your feet and legs even if you're wearing waterproof shoes with low tops. I don't have to bring shoes to change into, because they look nice enough for work, and they're comfortable enough to wear all day, for many miles. I can't remember how I lived without them; what was I thinking? I must have had very wet feet. I should have bought a pair of these the day I moved to Portland. When Dutch and Skipper reach the age when their feet stop growing, I will buy them each a pair of these boots as a rite of passage into car-free adulthood  - they're crazy expensive, yes, but way cheaper than a car.


*Cook is a very, very dedicated bike commuter - one of those people you see slogging along on a miserable day, and you think "Jesus, that guy is nuts," and appreciate your dry, warm bus or car seat that much more. It's probably a combination of his bone-deep stubbornness and his resistance to spending money unnecessarily - but whatever it is that gets him out the door at 5:30 AM to ride to work, when it's dark, pouring freezing rain, and there's an inch of slippery slush on the ground, it's pretty impressive.  Portland is home to a lot of bike commuters, and they're generally pretty indifferent to rain, but this week only the desperate or the hardcore types like Cook were out on the road.

Lately

Cook posing with a victim (the stump, not Skipper)of Phase One of the Back Yard Renovation Project, an experience that led him to declare that an ax is an essential gardening tool

Dutch at 7:30 this morning, frantically trying to make a snowman before all the snow washes away in the rain. Both her school and Skipper's preschool have a late start today, because, you know. Portland.

Today

Today it snowed. Nothing stuck, of course, but it was exciting nonetheless.

Also, we have a recent household acquisitions on which I haven't yet reported - we received a sewing machine for Christmas. Cook took a shine to it, and doggedly tackled the actually pretty daunting task of learning to use a sewing machine without first knowing anything about any kind of sewing at all. He made a skirt for Skipper (on the premise that it's best to start small), and finished it tonight. Here she is modeling it,* though she refused to remove any of the clothing she was already wearing, and insisted that she was going to show the camera her scissors instead.

*She's also modeling the new haircut Dutch gave her in the mudroom this morning. Oops.

Names of Kids at Today's Library Story Time

Girls:
Marlowe
Hadley
Dory
Mazzy
Elise
Sydney
Matilda
Juni
Lucy
Magnolia

Boys:
Hollis
Kai
Peter
Lukas
Max

So, yeah. Portland. It's a little embarrassing.

And in case you're wondering, Skipper adamantly insisted on going to the story time, and paid rapt attention the whole time, but refused to leave my lap (and when everybody else got up to do fun stuff like sing and dance, she buried her face in my neck so she wouldn't have to even make eye contact with the people having fun). Kid's a watcher. Don't you even THINK of trying to make her do the hokey pokey.

Dubious recommendations, y'all.

That Luther show is cah-RAZY, you guys. I can't decide if I think it's incredibly stupid or totally hilarious.

Milestone

"I need to exercise more!" said Dutch tonight, as she bounded around the house wearing just her tights.  Cook and I both looked at her speculatively, waiting for the other shoe to drop, and then it did. Dutch clutched her belly with two hands and said gleefully "I'm too FAT!"

I guess we should be glad that she made it all the way to age 7 before saying it. (The first part of her announcement was right, though.)

Apparently I need to move to England.

All I want to do is watch British television. (Dutch is sticking with PBS.)

I don't have the gumption for 2012

You guys, 2012 is kicking my ass. Nothing bad has happened, so I can't blame my limpness on that.* Even the weather has been unusually sunny this winter. I just can't seem to face this year. I drag myself through my days with this wincy, heavy feeling of foreboding...**

So this weekend, 2012 and I are going to sit down and have a Talk. We've got to work this thing out.

Also, Skipper is really mad at me right now because I haven't yet taught her to read. When I pointed out that the problem is probably related to her insistence that every single letter is an "H" she flipped out and threw a mighty tantrum. She and 2012 are a good match.


*Except the accursed itchies are back!!!! GRRRRRAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!
**However, my email inboxes are looking pretty good!