No jetpacks.

Portland is getting a bike-sharing system, and while I have issues with it, I'm getting pretty excited about the potential short-term future of urban transportation systems. I imagine Dutch in 10 years,* preparing to go out with friends - she'll pick up her Mobile Device Of Some Kind** and tell it where she wants to go, and it will tell her the best way to get there. But it won't give her driving directions. It'll tell her where the nearest available bike or car can be found (maybe a commercial car or bike share vehicle, or maybe a peer-to-peer share vehicle, parked in somebody's driveway,  available for instant rental by MDSK), the location and arrival time of the next bus, the location of the nearest available cab or jitney or whatever.... Maybe she'll grab a bikeshare bike and ride it to the light rail station, where she'll dock it and hop on the train.

It's going to be great, you guys. Of course, there's going to be a lot of stuff about it that's going to piss me off, and I'll be sure to be grumbling about how much goddamn time Dutch and Skipper spend hunched over their MDSKs,*** but we're going to get so much closer to having really flexible transportation options. If the Republicans don't screw it all up.


* This scenario assumes that society doesn't collapse, and that Dutch has a safe home and a reasonably healthy social life...
**which will be able to do a billion things that I can't even imagine...
*** and of course if we've moved toward massive 20-lane highways filled with driverless cars, I'm going to be REALLY pissed.

Spinny thing

Memes IRL

Skipper's been riding her balance bike a lot lately. Today she rode it while I walked to pick up Dutch at school. She typically zooms ahead of me, then gets distracted or waits for me, and I keep a steady pace, so we sort of leapfrog our way along. She had some technical trouble at one point, and fell down with her bike as I passed her. She looked at me to verify that she was okay, and then got up and picked her bike up in a business-like way and got back on, while I kept walking ahead of her. We were heading up a long, uphill block that ends at a busy intersection with two crossing bus lines, and there was a small cluster of scruffy young homeless-looking people at the bus stop. I realized that they were watching Skipper,* and they were all smiling, and one of them said "That kid is biking like a boss!" I had not realized that this is something people outside the internets actually say, so I watched them warily as we approached, just in case they suddenly turned into LOLcats. They didn't. They were beaming and they greeted Skipper warmly as we passed. She beamed back.

Skipper looks younger than her almost-three years, because she's short and chubby,** so she looks extra-comical with her bike, and the pride emanates off of her in almost-visible waves. It makes me laugh every time I see her ride, so I understand why the total strangers were delighted to see her. She totally does bike like a boss.

*It's probably worth noting that Skipper was wearing one of her favorite outfits, fuchsia leggings with red patent leather ankle boots and a short furry coat (the hood has ears on it) with a satiny, quilted pink lining, which all adds up with her rashy dry face to make her look (to me) like a tiny, plump Hollywood starlet who has recently fired her stylist and gotten a chemical peel. All she's missing is a pair of enormous sunglasses.

** For the same reason, I also look younger than my age, except for the shocking wrinkling and tragic hollows around my eyes.

Money, consumption, tulips, etc.

Today Dutch's school had a 2-hour snow delay, throwing a wrench into my plans for the morning. I took her and Skipper along on a multi-modal errand adventure, using as incentive for good behavior the promise that I'd take them to the big grocery store so Dutch could buy a toy she'd been wanting. She wouldn't tell me what it was, but she said she knew exactly what she wanted and she was confident that the $2.87 in her coin purse would be sufficient to purchase it. When we got there, the two toys she wanted cost $8.99 and $9.99. She frantically cast around for a few minutes to find something she could afford and actually enjoy, and came up with nothing.

Then we talked about fads. The toys she wanted are both currently extremely popular with boys in her class, who trade them and play with them after school. She wants the toys only for the social engagement to which they are a ticket. We talked about how the Pokemon fad in which she had been so eager to participate had ebbed recently (just after she finally got her own pack of Pokemon cards). I told her about the tulip bubble.* We talked about how if she's going to spend ten bucks on something, it'd probably be a good idea to make sure it's something she will enjoy playing with even by herself. She agrees, in theory.


*I also thought about how much fun it is to get to tell somebody about the tulip bubble. Parenting sometimes makes me feel, in a thoroughly enjoyable way, like I know an ENORMOUS amount of stuff. Of course, the flip side is that the kids expect me to be able to answer all of their questions. Like this morning's question, which was "How do clouds make rain?"

I wish to issue a blanket apology for my behavior between the ages of 8 and 20. I'm sorry.

I spent some time last night digging through MORE boxes of my ancient journals, letters, and school paperwork. It was exhausting. This is what I learned:
1) Most of my teachers understood me much better than I realized.
2) My youthful self was mean, judgmental, and withholding.*
3) Many of my teachers were much more generous with me than I deserved.**
4) Naked mole rats are still interesting.
5) Dutch and I have quite a bit in common.***
6) I have had quite a few wonderful friends and family members, who have (apparently) forgiven me for being an asshole, and who write great letters. Thank you.

In conclusion: teachers should get paid a lot more, teenagers shouldn't keep journals, **** genes are tricksy, and I have had a pretty lucky life so far.

* I really hope I have improved. Please don't tell me otherwise.
** Though not the teacher who wrote of my class-teaching project in tenth grade, "Her presentation on the bombing of Hiroshima made it, frankly, the least interesting topic of the twentieth century." I'm kind of impressed she wrote such a snarky thing on a report card, and I'm sure it was accurate snark, but jeez.  
*** As indicated by a teacher of mine when I was seven, who wrote that I had trouble with "the ambiguity between introduction and mastery." This is still true, of me and of Dutch. 
**** And if I die unexpectedly before I get a chance to take care of my boxes of crap, please, for the love of whatever gods, do not read my journals. I will come back and haunt you.

The "Principal's Coffee" should be called "Your Monthly Reminder That Education Is Not A Priority in This Society, Now Go Home And Cry"

Dutch will enter 2nd grade with a school budget reduced* from the previous year by 3 FTE. She entered 1st grade with a school budget reduced from the previous year by 1.5 FTE. I'm guessing that Skipper's 2nd grade experience will entail a classroom of 50 kids, one teacher, and a school year that's 100 days long. Music? Art? Library? PE? Attractive inside and outside spaces? Recess? Individual attention?  That's for rich kids.


*Technically, it's only a cut of 2 FTE - the third FTE is the result of having to spread the school's resources across more kids without getting any money to pay for the extra teacher required to prevent the 4th grade from having classrooms of 40 kids. You know. Do More With Less.

MORE depressing news you kind of already knew.

Oh, Jeebus.

Dilated

Dutch had an eye doctor appointment today. She's doing fine, and her eyesight continues to improve, which Cook and I both find stunning, even though there's nothing surprising about it, given her diagnosis - it's just so foreign to our personal vision experiences that we can't quite wrap our brains around it.

However, she had to get dilating eye drops, which precipitated an enormous freak-out about how ridiculous she looked in those disposable sunglasses, and how people would laugh at her on the bus. Once she stopped wailing like a stepped-on cat, nobody even looked at her, of course. (The general tendency of people to pay attention only to themselves is intensified on transit, particularly downtown, where there are plenty of stranger-looking people than Dutch to ignore.) Anyway, I took her home instead of to school, because she couldn't see well enough to read, and she didn't want to have explain her doofy eyegear to all her classmates. So she's now sitting in her room, curtains drawn , playing with dolls.

Sunday Outing

We went to the zoo today. It rained. It snowed. However, it was not crowded, and we actually saw more animals out being active than we usually do. And we had astonishing transit luck, waiting for our two buses and two trains for maybe five minutes total, which meant that the kids had no chance to pick up any whining steam. It was a good trip.

There's a wolf in this picture, sitting on a log, hungrily watching Dutch.

This is a river otter. 

There's a mountain goat in this picture.

Dustin Finney's bike

I went to a traffic safety public meeting tonight, and Dustin Finney's bike was there. Dustin Finney' mom was also there, just a few blocks away from where Dustin was killed last year.

At the meeting, the transportation staff talked a little about Level of Service, which is the way that engineers measure how "well" a road is operating. It measures how long it takes a vehicle to travel a given distance. If there's congestion, the Level of Service deteriorates. The goal  is to get as many cars as possible along a road as fast as possible. Other stuff, like, you know, KILLING PEOPLE, or, say, making pedestrians walk a long way to get to an intersection that isn't terrifying to cross, is secondary. (Though, to be fair, Portland is trying to de-emphasize LoS as the prime measure of effectiveness. The staff who were there are really serious about traffic safety.)

Anyway, that's not exactly what happened to Dustin Finney. But what happened to him is an environment that allows cars to go fast. People are stupid, and if you let them go fast, they do. And sometimes they get drunk and go fast, and kill somebody. Or they look down to finish a text, and kill somebody. Make it easy and convenient and quick for people to drive, and that's what they do. So let's NOT make it easy. Let's make it a little bit harder, because I never want to see another bike that looks like that.

Two little monkeys playing Bobby Shaftoe

Dutch is struggling with the piano. She loves her lessons, but hates practicing (though she likes it AFTER she's mastered the relevant song, of course). I made a video of her the other night attempting to play "Bobby Shaftoe" and I captured an awful meltdown, which I am not going to embarrass her or horrify you by posting here. Instead, you can watch her playing it WITHOUT melting down, the following evening. (I warn you that it is a very boring video. I guarantee you have never heard "Bobby Shaftoe" played, with or without mistakes, so slowly.)

Also, here is Skipper accompanying herself on the piano. (That's Cook reflected in the background, attempting to remediate a paint crisis.)

Sunshine

I was so busy today that I didn't even get a chance to take pictures to show you that it was warm! And sunny! I was busy digging and transplanting and planting and digging and pruning and whatnot, and it was AWESOME.

Boring Plant Information: We planted another blueberry plant! And another huckleberry! And a currant! We still have some kinnikinnick, salal, and Oregon grape to plant in the parking strip, and one more tiny little blueberry.*  We have also dug up a hydrangea, a non-fruiting fruit tree of some kind, and four rosebushes so far (one hydrangea and at least two more rosebushes to go), horrifying the neighbors. But we've got to make room for blueberries and vegetables, you see, so they had to go. It was a very satisfying day.

Also, we had TWO separate houseguests at the SAME TIME. That was really exciting, and we ran out of pillows. We did kind of a crappy job of entertaining them,** but we really enjoyed their company.

*Bringing our total to five blueberry plants, though one of them may not make it. I really do love blueberries.
** For example, taking them to school to volunteer at Running Club. Or, say, taking them to the nursery to buy blueberry plants. And those were the MOST exciting things we did with our guests. 

She's run 16 miles so far.

Today I dragged Antarctic Uncle to Friday Running Club at Dutch's school. That's him on the left.