Miscellaneous updates

 It is not snowing. Just rain, and more rain, and we've all reached the end-of-Portland-winter moment when we just want to see some goddamn sun. 

Everything else continues as normal. Both kids started track, which means a lot of running and burpees and squat jumps and whatnot in the rain for now, but presumably will get slightly less tortury over time. I remain puzzled over the fact that both my children have signed up - voluntarily, multiple times - for running sports, something I never would have done and never will do because running sucks and what even is the point of doing a team sport that isn't collaborative? However, I recognize that they are not me, and also I am looking forward to seeing what events they end up doing. I hope Skipper chooses long jump for one of hers.

Duchess experienced her first-ever not-a-drill full school lockdown this week. It turned out to be a false alarm (shots fired a block away from the school during a period when students were going in and out of the school led to a lockdown until police arrived and got a handle on things), but it was pretty harrowing for the kids and staff, all of whom had to consider, while huddling in their darkened, locked classrooms for an hour, the possibility that they might be about to die. And since they were all holding their phones, all their loved ones got to spend an hour considering that possibility, too. It wasn't great. School was actually cancelled the following day, which feels both like an over-reaction and also totally appropriate. 

Duchess also has now been admitted to four colleges. She'll have all the offers/rejections by April 1, and then she'll have a month to decide, but I think she's comfortable that she'll end up in a good place even if all she gets from now on is rejections. 

So the spring is shaping up to include a lot of track meets and difficult decisions for Duchess, and please no more lockdowns. 

The days are not long enough...

So we had a wonderful trip - four days in Iceland, three days in London, and eight days in Scotland. Nothing terrible happened (in spite of my fears, some of which were very lurid - I am very good at fears), and everything went very smoothly. We saw SO MANY beautiful places and things; I felt like the vision part of my brain started exploding when we got off the plane in Iceland and never really stopped lighting up with fireworks at any point.  We ate new things, learned new words, and learned a bunch of history. The two things I ended up really taking away from it, though, were surprising to me.

First, I enjoyed spending time with my family. We were pretty much together continually for the whole trip, which is not a normal situation for us, but it worked. The kids are old enough to carry a lot of their own logistical and emotional weight, and even though they whined a lot and were super-annoying a lot, they were also good travel companions. They were curious and excited and had things to say, and when we had to slog, they slogged. We all mostly enjoyed each other's company. (Duchess said "Mom, I forgot that you and Daddy can be fun!" which was broadly insulting but I took it as a compliment. Duchess also, much to our amusement, wrote about London in a postcard to a friend: "I have to sleep on a pull-out couch, and there's no wi-fi, but it's worth it.") I was afraid that we'd come home utterly sick of each other, but we didn't. Well, at least I didn't. I feel grateful for all three of them.

Second, I thought a LOT on this trip about mortality. Apparently, the combination of spectacular grand-scale scenery, visits to historical sites focused on the lives of people who lived their little lives hundreds or thousands of years ago, and doing things that I'm sure in the moment will kill me (like flying on a plane, or driving in rural Scotland) makes me think about death. Not sad thoughts, mostly, but I just ended up thinking a lot about how brief life is, and how our lives are both really poignant and totally meaningless. I felt very small. I also wanted to hold onto EVERY SECOND.

People who will no longer write books for me to read.

I'm not sure why the death of Oliver Sacks made me think of the death of Terry Pratchett, but it did.

Dirt vs Snow

Today was my last day of work, and I shuttled the kids to their various jury-rigged childcare setups. Skipper went to the home of her preschool teacher, who was holding a "camp" for a few kids from the class, and we dropped Duchess off at the home of a friend with whom she was attending Zoo Camp* on our way. It was raining when we left the house, and was snowing pretty hard by the time we got to the friend's house. While we were waiting for the bus, Skipper watched the snow with interest.

Skipper: Is the snow falling everywhere?
Me: Around here, yup.
Skipper: Is it falling on dead people?
Me: No. Dead people are underground, or have already fallen apart and turned into dirt.
Skipper: Can they feel the snow?
Me: Dead people don't feel anything.
Skipper: Will I turn into dirt?
Me (possibly more emphatically than necessary): Yes. But not for a really long time.

I'm going to try posting more often over my break, since waiting a long time between posts doesn't actually seem to yield any interesting content. So you can look forward to many more transcriptions!

*They saw the controversial new baby elephant. There was uncontroversial delight.

The time to talk about it.

After the shootings in Connecticut yesterday, I went to Duchess's school today to shelve books. (The part-time library assistant cannot keep up with the shelving on her own, and it's a very satisfying volunteer task.) The doors, which are usually unlocked between 8:30 and 6, were locked today, and the principal was working in the lobby, guarding the doors. The parents and staff with whom I spoke while I was there were very subdued and some were really upset.

Thursday night was the holiday singalong at the school, a much - beloved annual tradition. It was pretty great, without being unusual in any way, just a typical school event,  probably replicated more or less in schools across the country. The kids were grouped by age, and the tiny kindergarteners sang with enormous enthusiasm. All the kids, even the ones I don't like, were all lovely, full of life and joy.

I think everybody who ever reads this blog knows and shares most of my politics, and you all know how I feel about this. But all of my opinions about the urgent need for gun control and mental health supports are sharpened by my personal experience of my community school. Even a mediocre public school, with all its small humiliations, cruelties, and disappointments, is a place that is brimming with energy and hope and the relentless force of life in an absolutely non-ironic way. (Especially on the last day before the winter break.) Every time I visit the school I feel a little heartbroken by the ways life is going to crush some of these sparky, radiant kids, but today was the first time I felt heartbroken by the idea that somebody would take that life away entirely. So I'm feeling pretty angry about that, and flailing around a little bit to figure out what I can do. But mostly I'm feeling heartbroken.

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.

Anxious

A few months ago, I went to the doctor because I'd been having chest pains and shortness of breath. I was pretty sure it was anxiety, because I am an anxious person, and I have some legitimate things to be anxious about, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't terribly ill. The doctor said, after verifying that I am, in fact, quite healthy for a fat lazy person, "Is there a chance it could be anxiety?" and I said "Yes, there's a good chance," and she said "What are you feeling anxious about?" and I burst into tears. This was surprising to both of us.

I AM feeling pretty damn anxious these days. Not depressed, just afraid - I think the lack of sadness made me underestimate how much of a toll the fear was taking on me. I'm afraid that Cook will lose his job. I'm afraid I will never get another job (this is the big one, really). I'm afraid my family members or I will get sick or badly injured. I'm afraid of natural disasters. I'm afraid of people being mean to me.

If you're not naturally an anxious person, it's probably hard for you to understand how afraid it's possible to be. For me, life is a series of Almost/If-Only Moments. You know how when something bad happens, you often think about how if you had just chosen to do or not do something, the bad thing wouldn't have happened? Like "If I had just been paying attention when I stepped down that last stair!" or "If I had just chosen not to say that one thing!" or "If I had just gone to check on the baby one more time!" You hear stories all the time about people who missed a plane that then crashed, or who walked out the door a minute before the building collapsed or whatever. Those are Almost/If-Only Moments.

I think about Almost/If-Only Moments all the time. For me, life is a series of escapes from disaster. I did not say the incredibly stupid thing that would somehow have gotten me fired. Skipper did not fall down the concrete steps. Dutch did not hit her head jumping into the pool. I did not drop the pot of boiling pasta water on my feet. Cook did not get hit by a car on his way home from work. This way of seeing the world might sound awful to some of you, and it certainly makes me more conservative in my life choices, but in a way it's also an opportunity to celebrate. Every day, I am grateful that we are whole and healthy (for NOW).

So - anxiety sucks. But I can see as how it serves an important purpose when it doesn't run totally out of control. It's certainly worse when I'm feeling anxious about something I can't really do anything to fix.* Don't worry about me, though - I'm trying to take better care of myself and practice normal-people breathing,** and I feel better!

* Like the economy. I seem unable to do anything about it.

**Apparently I'd been doing a lot of the Oh-shit-I'm-about-to-be-eaten-by-a-tiger-so-my-body-needs-to-get-ready-to-run kind of breathing, which makes me feel even worse. A quick survey of the internet indicates that I'm the only person on the planet who didn't know the difference.

I had kind of a bummer of a day yesterday. Not awful, or anything. Just kind of a bummer. My voice is still only partly recovered. I found out that my new job, which was supposed to start today, is at best delayed three weeks, at worst cancelled for good (budget cuts). I had to tell the babysitter I just hired that I can't hire her. A coworker told me about some hard, sad  things going on in her life. On my way home on the bus, I started reading a new library book and discovered it was a sad book, and had to put it away, so I was staring out the window when a sort of spray of something sprinkled over me. It turned out to be coffee grounds, sprayed off the used garbage bag a homeless guy behind me was vigorously shaking out.  My first response (after suggesting firmly that he stop doing that RIGHT NOW) was to teeter toward the verge of tears,* but then I thought about the way I was going to tell the story to Dutch when I picked her up, and I realized how ridiculous it was, and my perspective was miraculously restored. (Then I realized the coffee-ground coverage wasn't very extensive, and they at least seemed to be reasonably fresh, and not mixed with anything nastier. And given that I've ridden public transit  at least two times a week for over a decade, I should probably just be grateful that my grossest experience involved only coffee.)

And then after Halloween (which was NOT a bummer in the least, and cheered me up immensely), I downloaded the photos off the camera, including these, which erased the last vestiges of emotional grime from the day.

* Because Oh My GOD! My life is SO HARD! And NOW, COFFEE GROUNDS!!! O the HORROR! I am so SO sad! Why does EVERYTHING bad happen to ME?!

Exactly as it should be

I am now 35 years old.* This is the age I have always felt myself to be, and now I am at exactly the right age. This is it! This is my year. I think I'm just going to stay 35 forever.

Last night, I sat in the dining room in the dark while Cook and Skipper and Dutch lit the candles on my cake. Cook said "Skipper, don't blow the candle out," and then he lit a candle and she immediately blew it out. They finally got the candles lit, and they came out singing. Dutch may be totally tone deaf, and Skipper doesn't actually know how to sing  the Happy Birthday song, so it was a little hard to tell what they were singing, but it was beautiful. My family, in the dark, with candles, singing.** I got a little weepy.

Which is not to say that the whining and tantrums are in any way diminished, but they feel okay today. Tomorrow... we'll see.


* I thought twice about writing this, in case you suddenly feel that you need to send me presents or apologies for forgetting my birthday. If you're feeling that way, you should stop, because I neither need presents nor ever remember other people's birthdays. I'm sure I'll forget yours, and have forgotten it repeatedly in the past. So do NOT feel guilty, because then I'll have to feel guilty, and that's a terrible thing to do to somebody on their birthday.


** "Singing"

Making space, staying safe, and talking about death.

This is Skipper, building a "house" this afternoon.

Unexpectedly, the conversation veered toward the morbid. Listen to me attempting to be honest yet comforting about death, and ending up just being confusing.

The years are just flying by

Last week I had lunch with a high-school classmate I hadn't seen in many, many, many years. Before I left my preceding engagement, I glimpsed myself in the bathroom mirror and thought "Wow, I look really old and tired." On my way to meet her, I briefly walked behind a cute family, and the dad was holding the maybe-3-year-old kid so he was looking back at me over his dad's shoulder. I smiled at him, because he was crazy cute, and he smiled back at me and then he said (and no, I'm NOT making this up) "Grandma, is that you?"

Six

I think I should probably be reflecting on time, and aging, and mortality. My baby girl (six!) is going to be grown and gone off to live her magical grownup life in about thirty seconds, I think. Or maybe on joy, because turning six is apparently pretty awesome.*

But instead I'm going to ask you to watch this clip. I know you're sick of hearing about how much I hate cars, and how nobody should call or text while you're driving. But if you take a second whenever you're about to make or take a call in the car, and think about a 13-year-old girl (who no doubt kicked off her sixth birthday with a face as purely delighted as my own girl's today) burning to death in a crumpled schoolbus, we'll all be better off.



*Even when your weary, cold-infested parents manage to muster up only an english muffin (with six candles jammed into it) for a celebratory breakfast.

Holy shit, Harrison Ford is OLD!

Also strange and kind of mean.

But you know what made my day today? I went to the local branch of my awesome library system and I discovered that they have a new "Lucky Day" system in which you can check out NEW BOOKS!!!!! Only two at a time, and you can't renew them, but wow. What a wonderful day. I got The Poisoner's Handbook and At Home (note that the review reassures you that "it doesn't overtax our intellect"). Man, it's going to be a great weekend!

I really mean it.

You guys. Cars are so terrible. SO terrible.

Also

Daniel Schorr died! I cried!

Holy shit. I know I keep piling scary, depressing stuff on you,* but my buddy Ray dedicated his blog post today to the danger of kids being left in cars in the heat, and it linked to this article, which is rivetingly terrifying and sad. I couldn't read to the end of the article, because I started to feel like I was going to throw up (right at the note about the child who pulled all her hair out before she died), but it's probably a good article for everyone to read.

I think it seems timely to me because I've been thinking about being over-multi-tasked, and distracted by technology. I lost my wallet a month ago, the first time I've ever done that. Yesterday I forgot to go to an informational interview. I can see how it would be possible for me to forget Skipper in a car.** I think it's good for all of us to note that our distractions can have really terrible outcomes - running over a pedestrian when we're talking on the phone, leaving a kid in the car when we're rushing to the next task.

Also, in News of The Sad and Scary, there's a 7-year-old kid missing in Portland, triggering the usual sorts of discussions about stranger danger and how much supervision is appropriate for kids. Dutch is very interested in the story, so we've been talking a little about it, though I'm trying to delay the Big Discussion*** until after they find the kid, which I hope will be very soon.

Anyway, maybe this will cheer you up, as it did me.



*My worried, dedicated readers. I hope you're not all getting together to organize an intervention for me (I'm okay, really). But if you are, I want cake.
** Fortunately, I have no car. Also, Skipper doesn't sleep, and hates driving, so she's hard to forget in a car.
*** With Dutch, there's ALWAYS a Big Discussion.

Updates

1) I came home yesterday, late, after a very long day, to find the end of my street blocked off with police tape. Also, a lot of police at the other end, and concerned-looking people standing all around the block rubbernecking. There was nobody at my end of the street, so I ducked under the tape, feeling furtive and very apprehensive. I was pretty sure - 80%? - that nobody I care about was likely to have been hurt in any criminal violence, since they're not prone to criminal activity, but it was a little scary. The homeless guy who sleeps in his car down the block from our place told me that there was a body in the street. By then, I could see Cook, Emma, and Brendan on our front porch. It turns out that the dead person was brought (after being thoroughly stabbed) out of a nearby apartment complex and dumped on the sidewalk (because NO WAY the police are going to figure out where he came from! Good plan!), probably about 20 minutes after Cook, Skipper, and Dutch passed by that spot on their way home. Yeesh.

2) Skipper might be a bad person. Seriously. She hits! She bites! She screams! She's vengeful and ferocious and wild. I mean, just LOOK at her!





















































Don't tell me that isn't the face of a child plotting something evil.



















Anyway, we got our camera fixed. And the weather has been gorgeous.

The bus is a place where you can talk about death.

The scene: Dutch, Skipper, and I are riding home on the bus. Skipper is nursing and thus quiet.

Dutch: I told Teacher C and Teacher J that I'm going to get a short haircut.*
Me: Yeah? What'd they say?
D: They were excited.
M: Hm.
D: I don't think I look like a (Dutch) with long hair. I want to look more like a (Dutch.)
M: Oh.
D: I want to look more like I did when I was a tiny baby.
Me: You want to be bald? Or do you want a mullet?
D: No. I just... I'll never be a tiny baby again.
M: No.
D: And soon I'll be...
M: ...a grownup?
D: ... some dirt.
M: Um. Yes. After a long while. But you'll be very special dirt.
D: Mom! You only think I'll be special dirt because I'm YOURS.
M: Maybe.
D: Mom! Anna has beads that she says are magic! Tomorrow I will ask her if they can make you live forever, and if they do, I will give one to each of you!
M: Great, thanks!

*Dutch and I have back-to-back PROFESSIONAL haircut appointments scheduled for next weekend. I'm holding my breath that she'll actually go through with a short haircut...

Distracted

I've been reading the DOT Secretary's blog lately.* A while ago I read a post about a woman whose 5-year-old son was killed in a car crash.**

A few months ago, Cook was riding home at night on his bike, and he stopped at a light behind a bicyclist who was pulling a trailer with a kid in it. A truck came up next to them and the driver leaned out and yelled at the kid-puller that he was putting his child in danger. Neither Cook nor the kid-puller said anything, but Cook fumed all the way home.

I can't find the perfect statistics online, but it is true (transportation dorks tell me so) that driving a car is much more dangerous than riding a bike. Certainly car crashes are a lot more dangerous than bike crashes. Or pedestrian crashes.

I have been thinking about how dangerous driving is. As a non-driver for the last ten years, I've become increasingly afraid of cars. I never much liked driving, because I was always thinking about how FAST the car was moving, and how dire the consequences could be if something went wrong. I still think about that whenever I'm in a car. I think about it when I'm NOT in a car. One of Cook's coworkers learned recently that his 21-year-old daughter had just been killed in a car crash, and thinking of what it would feel like to receive that call just shatters me.

As an urban pedestrian, I've had my share of close calls and upsetting moments with cars. I am amazed by how blase people are about driving, how they do all sorts of stupid things. Not just talking on the phone, but putting on makeup, or fishing around in the backseat for a piece of gum or whatever. My buddy Ray LaHood has been talking a lot about distracted driving. The part that boggles my mind is that people assume that they're going to get away with the silly thing they're doing, and that they are lucky/amazingly-skilled enough to not suffer any consequences. My buddy linked to a series of ads about distracted driving that feature the texts that were sent or read by people the moment before they were killed or killed somebody in car crash. The texts say things like "Yeah" and the point of the campaign is to remind you to ask yourself if your text is worth your life or somebody else's. The 5-year-old I mentioned who was killed was hit by a truck driven by a man who was hunting for the unlit cigar he had dropped.

So this is my public service message, which will reach, I'm sure, almost as many people as Oprah's campaign. When you're driving, please just drive. If you've got to do something else, please think about whether, if something went wrong, it would be worth it.

(And please don't yell at bicyclists and pedestrians. I know they piss you off,*** and maybe they deserve to be yelled at for the terrible thing they surely just did, but you're all cocooned in tons of steel, and they're NOT.)


*Yes, I am aware that his staff probably write all of it. But it wasn't his staff standing on the table to talk to bike advocates.
** One of my favorite traffic safety things I've learned is that you're not supposed to call them accidents. An accident isn't preventable, but a crash is.
** They piss ME off, when I'm not being one of them. Today I nearly got run over, a situation that I didn't notice developing because I was reading a book as I crossed the street. Thank god I don't drive.

Snappy little messages to tweet.

It's human nature to focus on what's immediate to us. The world is small for all of us, and we use cellphones, facebook, and other filtering tools to keep it limited to what we want to experience. I stepped out of my bubble long enough to call my senator's office the other day (finally) to express my opinion about healthcare reform. Afterward, I felt pleased with myself, and somewhat surprised to find that my intervention didn't immediately fix the situation. It's the same way with big things that upset me, like... wars. I decide that I disapprove of them and they are terrible, and that's that. My disapproval somehow should mean they just stop.

Unfortunately, it turns out that they don't.