Priorities

So Paul McCartney is boycotting the Beijing Olympics because of China's ill treatment of cats and dogs? Funny, I don't recall hearing him complain about their ill treatment of people.

I'm not saying the ethical treatment of animals isn't an important cause. I just wish we could all fight a little harder for the ethical treatment of humans. Of course, if we were to do that, we might see a lot of boycotts of the U.S.

The volcano in our backyard

OK, maybe not just in our backyard. More like three-and-a-half hours away. Anywho, the Times notes today -- or tomorrow, depending on how much geeky time you spend on the 'net -- what those of us with occasional views of Mount St. Helens have known for a while -- she ain't quite quiet.

Being the weather geek that I am (I don't have the names of those nine hurricanes I covered tattooed anywhere, but that's mostly because I'm needles make me queasy), I get a little thrill everytime the clouds part long enough to catch a glimpse of the volcano here in lovely PDX. One of the best parks in town, Mount Tabor, is actually the remains of a long-dead volcano. And Mount Hood, to which I promise to take any and all out-of-town visitors who are up for a day trip, has the potential to blow. You know, someday. Decades and decades from now. Not that I'm hoping it happens anytime soon. We don't have a tarp for the car, after all.

kicking myself over kicking back

When I was in school, I dreamed of the day when I'd have a job I could leave behind at the end of the work day. I always hated the feeling of papers and tests looming on the horizon. There was always some form of studying I could (should) be doing, and I never felt like my free time was my own.

Then I had a job, but as a journalist, I never felt I could leave the work behind when I left the office. The only way to get ahead was to put in extra time off the clock, researching story ideas or working on some special project that would get some notice. Again, my free time was not my own.

Now I don't have a job, and even though I still have dreams that I have to take a test for which I've had an entire semester to study and yet have not cracked a book, I do not have homework. Unfortunately, I don't have a whole lot of free time either. I thought I would, what with the little man in school three mornings a week, but those hours have been eaten up by errands and house projects, (shopping for groceries, trips to the pharmacy, tiling the bathroom, etc.)

The other day, I was waiting for the paint to dry on the molding in the new bathroom before I could put on a second coat. The groceries were put away; the laundry was in the dryer; dinner was ready to be popped into the oven when AR got home, and I had finished the fall pruning in the garden. The Boy was napping, and I had at least an hour, if not two, of free time all my own.

I freaked.

I did not know what to do with myself, so in a neurotic fit I reorganized the bathroom drawers and rearranged the medicine cabinet. Alphabetically. That night I chided myself for being such a spaz and wasting my precious leisure time, which will be nothing but a dream once I start working again.

On Friday, I had another couple hours to myself, but this time I was prepared. I had a plan. Once The Boy was down for his nap, I curled up on the couch with my new library book, read two and a half pages and fell asleep. That night I chided myself for wasting the day. I was uncomfortable with my lack of productivity. I could have caught up on emails or put old photos in albums or started learning Chinese!

Am I constitutionally unable to relax, or have I just forgotten how?

Random thoughts, pre-turkey

I'm feeling incoherent. But I have some things to share:

- From the "only in Portland" file: Riding to work this morning, I passed a man peeing on the sidewalk downtown. The man was wearing a skirt.

- From the "shameless plug" file: This summer, our friends Little Becky Sunshine and Mr. Brilliant Computer Guy Jon moved from Seattle, a very reasonable place to live, to Toronto. (Toronto, CANADA. I believe Jon was elected prime minister or something, which is the only reason to justify leaving our land of apple pie, purple mountains majesty and Coors Light. OK, maybe not the ONLY reason.) LBS is writing about the experience -- and the culture shock -- at her blog. It's a lot funnier and wiser than ours, and you should check it out.

- From the "I'm not being political, just stating the obvious" file: Our president can't even pardon a turkey without Dick Cheney holding his hand.

On third thought, perhaps LBS and Jon have the right idea.

We are here

In our ongoing attempt to make the most of our time here in Portland, we made a pilgrimage to Mt. Hood this weekend. About an hour and a half in the car and there you are.

We had been talking the trip up to the kid for couple weeks, and he was looking forward to going to the mountain so he could "throw snow balls at Ima." On the way there, he looked out the car window toward a stunning view of Mt. St. Helen's and declared, "My mountain." Then asked where Mommy's mountain was.

When we got to Mt. Hood, The Boy announced that he was going to climb it, and he did try, but halfway up a steep, snowy embankment that separated the parking lot from the lodge, he demanded to be carried.

I guess next time we'll bring a yak.

Back to work 2

Before I went out of town a couple weeks ago, I was feeling pretty good about the whole staying-home-with-the-kid thing. I had come to a certain peace about not working for the time being, and as The Boy grows more communicative and capable each day, spending time with him becomes more and more enjoyable. Also, he's in school three morning a week, which means I can go grocery shopping unencumbered, catch up on technical advances in my field for when I do get a job and make the occasional desperate run to The Gap.

Then I spent five days in Columbia, MO, talking photojournalism with other adults, going out to nice restaurants for leisurely dinners - and two glasses of wine - and generally not worrying about anyone other than myself. It was nice. Sure I missed The Wife and Boy with a visceral longing any time there was a lull in the conversation, but on the whole I had a darn good time.

When I got home, The Boy was taller and more talkative, causing my heart to crumble into tiny pieces - but in a good way. I couldn't get enough of feeling his little arms squeeze back when I hugged him. I was content to sit and stare him as he told me a story about something that happened five minutes ago, or read with his mommy, or played with his toys.

Then The Boy came down with the croup and had to stay home from school on Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday and Thursday. Actually, he doesn't go to school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but he couldn't go out and play with his little buddies, which meant I didn't get to hang out with their moms. He had no one to turn to but me for distraction, and I had no one to turn to. AnnaRay worked late most of this week, and as I was trying very hard not to feel resentful, I kept thinking to myself, "I've got to get a job. I've got to get a job. I've got to get a job."

Unfortunately, it's not all up to me. First there has to be a job out there for which I am qualified, then there have to be people who want to hire me. I've made some inroads with the latter, which is interesting considering the lack of the former. Still, that puts me in a better position than if the situation were reversed. In fact, I will be teaching a photography class one day a week at a local community college starting in January. I don't really know what I'm doing, but that's never stopped me before. I'll still be spending most of my time in Boyland, but for a few hours every week I'll get to be an adult.

I'm torn

The whole intelligent design debate has me confused, and torn.

On the one hand, I think the people who are pushing this are Jesus freaks with too much time and certainly too much special interest money on their hands.

On the other hand, I think most of us who believe in some kind of higher power -- even those of us who's belief hinges on something so amorphous and disconnected with day-to-day life that we're loath to talk about it -- can agree that there's a method behind the madness of creation. I mean, we're all just so freakin' well designed. (Except for the belly button. I don't get the point.)

The problem, of course, is that our friends on the right wing refuse to acknowledge any of Darwin's findings. Which is what I don't get: Why can't you say, 'OK, God drew up the blueprints, and then got out of the way.' Or even more directly, 'Who do you think created the genes of life that allowed Darwin's ancestors to evolve from monkeys so he could one day explain evolution? God!"

I know, I know. It all boils down to the Bible, right? And the fact that a certain segment of our population (I'd say the inbred segment, but I have some loved ones who sit on the right side of the political spectrum, so . . . ) thinks that the Bible has to be the absolute, literal truth just as Antonin Scalia says it's a legal sin to consider the Constitution the framework for an evolving set of laws and principles. (In other words: The Bible can't just be stories with an overarching message! That tree burned!)

But can't we all just get along? Isn't there a healthy in-between that we can agree to occupy, if only to ensure that the rest of the world doesn't look at us and think, "What a bunch of idiots?"

The Gap makes Judybat's head hurt. I'll talk pants any day over this.

A few random moments in the life of a judybat

Or what it's like to be me:

1. Last week I went to The Gap in a desperate attempt to find a pair of pants that fit. I used to go there all the time for work clothes, until about six years ago when I started my own personal boycott after trying on a shirt that was clearly cut for an 11-year-old boy and yet was in the women's section labelled XL. Unfortunately L.L. Bean, Land's End and Eddie Bauer all seem to make pants for people whose proportions resemble my own about as much as a greyhound resembles a bull dog, and I lack imagination when it comes to clothes shopping, so I was out of choices. And I was out of pants, having worn a hole in the left leg of every pair I own, because apparently that's the knee I bend down on whenever I have to help The Boy with anything. So there I am at The Gap with barely an hour before I have to pick the kid up at school, and I tried on every pair of pants they have in my size, including a few in the men's section which could have been my size if I were a completely different person. I am not exaggerating. I tried on every single size 10 in the store. And guess how many I found that fit. ONE! You can check them out the next time you see me, because I'm never taking them off.

2. The other day, The Boy was looking over my shoulder as I was going through some video on the computer we had shot when he was about a year old. I explained to him that the baby on the computer was he when he was small. The Boy looking over my shoulder kept showing The Boy on the computer the Lego towers he was building and wanted to know if he, his earlier self, could come out and play. The Boy seemed o.k. with this post-modern, looking-glass mind game, but I had to sit in a dark quiet room for a while.

3. A while back, I was looking through The Boy's little pack when he came home from school and found a pink triangle made out of popsicle sticks with his name on it. I experienced a split-second moment of panic as I tried to make sense of it - do they talk about gay pride at preschool? Have they singled out The Boy as the son of lesbian parents? Are his teachers trying to tell me something? - then I realized this must have been an art project designed to teach the kids about shapes. The Boy chose his favorite color - pink! - to paint his popsicle sticks, and his teacher wrote his name on it so it would go home with the right kid. This masterpiece now hangs with pride in our dining room window.

Back to work

I spent last week in Columbia, Missouri judging a photography contest. I got home from my trip late Thursday night, hung out with the inlaws on Friday, then spent the better part of Saturday unconscious. Even with a good day's rest behind me, I still needed a two-hour nap to get me through Sunday. I'd forgotten how tiring it can be to use your adult brain all day long.

But this morning I woke up early, rarin' to go. I did a little pre-dawn yoga and felt good about my prospects for Getting Things Done. Then The Boy woke up with the croup and we spent the better part of the day visiting the doctor and the pharmacist. I'd like to say I'd forgotten how tiring it can be to deal with a small child all day long, but I think it takes more than five days for that sort of amnesia to kick in.

Now I'm feeling a little tickle at the back of my throat. Can grown-ups get the croup?

The new me

A quick post, because Judybat is still gone, and I've been dealing with TheBoy for the past 14 hours, and all I really want to do in the 90 more minutes I'll be awake is play "The Sims" and eat leftover Halloween candy . . .

I cut off my hair. Or rather, a nice lady named Jessica cut it off. Not quite all of it, but certainly enough to qualify as a radical transformation. I was going for something fairly hip and sophisticated that would make all the baby lesbians at our local independent coffee shop swoon. Which means I wasn't pleased when a friend greeted me with, "You got a mommy haircut!" It's the thought that counts, though.

I realized, after the fact, that cutting my hair short was a sign that I'm feeling pretty self-confident these days. Long hair hides me. But we all have our own individual hair things: I was talking with lissajeen about the whole hair issue, and she explained that she grows her hair long when she's feeling confident. It's kind of reassuring to know that we're all insane in our own unique ways. Celebrate diversity, etc.

And now to my Sims.

Life with child, part 45

The other night, before Judybat left town for a brief vacation in the land of adults, TheBoy offered us yet another interesting "Weird Parenting Moment, Especially for Two Lesbian Mommies."

It was just after bedtime. He was whining and hollering and generally carrying on and calling for his Mommy and his Ima. When I went in to investigate, I found him sitting up in bed, with his hand on his crotch.

Me: "What's wrong, TheBoy?"
TheBoy: "My penis not working."
Me: "Huh?"
TB: "My penis not working."
Me: "Um, what do you mean by, 'not working?'"
TB: "Not getting bigger!"

This is, unfortunately, exactly what you might think it is. TheBoy has recently discovered that if you yank on your johnson, it, um, grows. He thinks this is great fun, just sitting around watching it get big and then shrink again. We're trying to convince him that such behavior is probably best done in private, certainly away from two Mommies who aren't sure whether to shriek in horror or giggle uncontrollably. Because, you know, he's TWO. Isn't this a little young for the beginning of his lifelong obsession with the thing down below?

I'm hoping nothing similar happens while the boss lady is away. I might freak out.

Life with child, pt. 2

It took The Boy exactly 27 minutes to reach the outer limits of my patience this morning. It's bad when you're at your wit's end before 9 a.m.

I don't know when it began, this new phase of limits testing. Sleep deprivation has fogged my memory, but I'm pretty sure he was delightful as recently as last week. Then he must have realized we were getting too complacent, and now everything we say must be challenged. You tell him to do something, like pick up the Play-Doh he has crumbled up and sprinkled all over the kitchen floor, and he shrieks "NO!" and runs away. You tell him not to do something, like stop hitting the dog with that wooden spoon, and he looks at you, smiles, and hits the dog with the wooden spoon.

I'm going out of town first thing Saturday morning. Alone. AnnaRay is taking a week off from work to take care of The Boy. I'm sure she'll have this behavior problem all worked out by the time I get back Thursday night.

See ya!

Life with child

This past weekend, I spent a good chunk of time hanging out at the local urgent care center with TheBoy, waiting for a doctor to confirm that he indeed had something suspiciously like strep throat.

After two days of heavy drugs -- Tylenol, baby ibuprofen and regular doses of antibiotics -- he's fine. Judybat, however, is sneezing constantly. (With my bionic ears in, it sounds like Mount Hood is erupting each time she goes off.) My throat is a lovely shade of maroon, and feels it.

None of that mattered to TheBoy when he pounded into our room at 6, ready to begin the day.

Sigh.