When I grow up, I want to be like her ...

On Tuesday, I was sitting in the newsroom when my attention was grabbed by one of the many t.v.'s we have tuned to all-news channels. This happens a lot, because I am easily distracted and televisions are pretty and shiny. But what I saw this time was deeply disturbing - not in the usual, Britney's-latest-escapade way - this was more personal. It was coverage of the wildfires burning in Southern California, and I saw that they were evacuating people from the town where my Grandma lives.

As soon as I could, I called the senior living retirement/assisted living center where my very independent, 90-something grandmother has a one-bedroom apartment. I was surprised, and somewhat relieved, when someone answered, then horrified when, after telling the woman on the phone I was trying to reach my grandmother, she told me my grandmother had been evacuated to Qualcom Stadium.

The woman quickly assured me in a matter-of-fact manner that my grandmother was fine, and the center's staff were with her, but that didn't stop me from getting choked up at the thought of my in-great-shape-for-someone-in-her-mid-nineties-but-still-frail grandma bivouacking on a football field full of evacuees. I was greatly relieved to learn from my mother later that night that my grandmother's son had picked her up from the stadium and brought her to her sister's house at the beach, far from danger.

She returned to her apartment yesterday, and after a little phone-tag, I finally got to talk to her this evening. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, Grandma," I told her, and she said to me: "You know what? It was an experience, and I'm glad I had it."

My grandma rocks!

Bring on winter

The World Series starts tonight, and I'm stuck in a very difficult position. The Rockies are a bunch of Jesus freaks who probably think we're all bound for hell here in the little green house. The Red Sox are ... the Red Sox.

Blech. How many days until pitchers and catchers report?

The beach

Judybat said I'd tell you about the beach, and I do what the nice lady says because I know what's good for me. Or rather, I'll tell you about the coast. That's what we call it here. The Coast. Because even in summer, it's really not the sand that's the attraction. Too cold, friends.

We went to lovely Newport, which is on the central Oregon coast, about two-and-a-half hours from home. That's our longest car trip with the kids, and we managed to make it down there with only a few minutes of screaming from TheGirl, who decided right at the end that the car is no longer the automatic sleeping pill it has been, and a new developmental milestone for TheBoy: Asking "Are we there yet?" every 10 miles or so.

Yes, I screwed up and got us a room rather than a suite. No, we did not get the sleep we needed. That is, however, becoming par for the course as TheGirl has decided to get all of her teeth at once. Last week, she was working on the top row. Now she's got a couple coming in on the bottom. How do we know? She started vomiting again as soon as the new ones began cutting through. It's going to be a loooong few months, I fear.

Except for the exhaustion, the trip was great. The weather forecast was supposed to be rain, wind and cold. Instead, it was perfect fall weather here in Oregon: Rain off and on, temps in the 50s, the occasional glimpse of Mr. Sun.

Our favorite parts of the trip boiled down like this:

AnnaRay and Judybat: Walking among the fishing boats in Yaquina Bay, watching the seals lounge around barking at each other, climbing the state's tallest lighthouse.
TheGirl: Being held constantly. Observing this strange, loud, big room that seems to have a lot of water and sand. (That's Judybat and TheBoy off in the distance.)
TheBoy: Going through the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum. Twice. "Playing" video games at the arcade. "Mommy! Mommy! I played two games that didn't need any cash."


Please note that our budding genius man-child is in fact playing the high score screen. Happily. We will miss these days when they're gone.

Corny, but true

We just got back from a fun-filled family weekend on the Oregon Coast. It was a great trip - a much-needed getaway that I'm sure AR will blog about. We came home exhausted, (note to self: next time spend a little extra money on a suite that has a separate bedroom for the kids,) to find that the dog - not the one that we nearly put down because of his history of fear biting, but the "good" dog - had bitten a jogger. Then, on the way to the pet store to buy a Gentle Leader dog collar, The Girl puked on me, and though it was getting late after a trip to the grocery store, I figured I'd run through the car wash to clean the ocean grime off the Subaru, but had to run through the thing twice after sheepishly admitting to the attendant that I had pulled up too far and had to watch in the rear-view mirror as the foam squirted and the rubber brushes swirled around nothing but the butt-end of my car.

I returned home feeling rather dejected and wondering how I would make it through an evening of cranky kids and crankier adults, but when I walked in the door, a long-since-heard but familiar and soothing sound greeted my ears. Anna had popped Swamp Ophelia into the CD player.

It's been a while since that player has spun anything other than tunes for The Boy, since we usually play our music off of AR's ipod, on which we have yet to load much of our pre-itunes music collection. So this music came to me as if from an earlier, less complicated time in our relationship, and my mood lifted as we danced around the kitchen, preparing dinner to "The Power of Two", (which our friend Austin Willacy sang at our wedding.)

Ah the healing powers of The Indigo Girls. Could I be any more gay?

You all look alike to me

For anyone who thinks I exaggerate about just how hippy-dippy Portland is, I offer this story ...

This morning on my way to work, I dropped the entire happy family off at their respective destinations. Last on my list was TheGirl. I pulled our happy blue Subaru into the day care parking lot, got her out of the car seat without bumping her head on the ceiling -- a rarity -- and didn't even bother to lock the door because I knew it would only take a few minutes.

Sure enough, five minutes later I was back in the parking lot. I opened the car door and was sliding into the front seat, when -- WAWAWAWAWAWA -- the car alarm nearly busted the eardrums of anyone within a half-mile radius, including the three Kinko's employees standing across the lot on their cigarette break and the day care workers watching over the older kids on the playground.

It took me longer than it's probably taken you to figure out the deal: This was a blue Subaru, yes, same year, same model, right down to the coffee cup in the front floorboard and the two car seats in the back. But it wasn't my Subaru. (I didn't stop to see if they had the same Dar Williams CD in the player, but I have my suspicions.)

Our car was parked two spaces over, a walk that felt a lot longer than usual given the many, many people who were watching, and laughing. Because I am a moron of the highest order.

performance art

I was driving through the rain to pick up The Boy at school today, (sadly, I've been driving a lot, because my teaching/working/childcare schedule is not - at the moment - bike friendly,) and while stopped at a light I saw a man on the corner holding a sign. This is not unusual. Many of the corners on this particular road have their regulars; there's the "VIETNAM VET/PLEASE HELP/GOD BLESS" guy, the "HOMELESS, HUNGRY, (something illegible)" fella, and - my favorite - the "WILL TAKE VERBAL ABUSE FOR A QUARTER" dude. But this man I saw today was new, and so was his sign. It read: "JESUS DIED FOR YOU."

The message irked me, as it always does, but maybe the apparent selflessness of the act (he was, after all, braving a downpour to deliver this message in - I'm guessing - the hopes of saving a soul or two, while his mendicant brethren across the street were busy looking out for their own damn selves,) sent my internal rant flowing in a different direction from my usual response. Instead of thinking about what combination of ignorance and arrogance it would take someone to make such a declaration, I began to think perhaps it's true, but if Jesus did die for me, he was only the first misguided soul to do such a thing. What about all the soldiers who've gone off to war to protect my country and my freedom?

And then I had a glorious vision. I saw George W. Bush waking up one morning with Laura sleeping on one side and his trusty Bible resting on the nightstand on the other, when through the mail slot (because in my vision, the president's mail is delivered directly to him through a slot in the door) comes a postcard. And then another. And then two more, followed by another and another until a torrent of postcards addressed to George W. Bush flood the room, and on each one is a picture of an American soldier who died in Iraq during the past four years, and underneath each picture is the message: HE (or SHE) DIED FOR YOUR SIN.

I think it would make a nice piece of performance art. Any artists out there want to run with this idea?

Our daughter, the overachiever

I knew TheGirl was destined for big things. She's ambitious, Type A, determined to bite off more than she can chew.

How do I know? The little twerp is getting five teeth at one time. And she has a stomach virus. And a double ear infection.

And life is very unpleasant in the little green house these days.

Why I haven't posted in eight million years, Part II

Ok, you say, that accounts for September, but we're already halfway through October! what's the deal?

Good question. I don't really have an answer really, except to say that it seems to have something to do with the fact that I've lost all interest in reading books. I'm not sure I can articulate the connection, but I think it comes down to follow-through, which I've been lacking of late.

I have a stack of books by my bed that keeps growing. Normally, I'd be excited about the prospects that lay before me, but these days, I can't bear the thought of starting a new book, because I know it will take me about 6 months to finish it, given that my ability to stay awake and focused while reading is only good for about 500 words.

I don't even really feel like finishing this post, so in lieu of a snappy conclusion that ties all my disparate thoughts up in a neat little package that resembles something coherent, I present to you Shesaid's first video. It's a bit of old business I shot back in September with the best of intentions to share with you, our dear readers, a unique and intriguing bit of Portland, in which the fine folk gather for some family entertainment brought to you by Mother Nature. It's amateurish - definitely not my best work - but still kid of cool. Here's a little explainer from the Audubon Society of Portland:

Each September, thousands of migrating Vaux's Swifts use Chapman Elementary School's chimney as their nightly roost before continuing their journey to southern Central America and parts of Venezuela.

And on with the show ...

Why I haven't posted in eight million years, Part I

It all started back in early September, when a deadline that had once seemed so far off was fast approaching. Actually, it started before that, in the spring, when I agreed to teach a class in documentary photography at a nearby community college. I had written the syllabus when I proposed the class even before that, but it was just a sketch, really, and I still had to figure out readings, handouts, assignments and a whole lot of other details if I was actually going to teach it.

No worries, though; I had all summer long to prepare. So June and July came and went. Have I mentioned we have a new baby at home? Yeah, babies take up a lot of time. But that's ok; I still had August, except August was filled with family visits, so not much time to crack a book. Still, I had time; the class didn't start till the END of September. Phew. But then, everything seemed to happen all at once, with Griffin starting school again and the High Holidays, more visitors and a trip to New York to plan for ... all of a sudden I found myself in the middle of the same nightmare I've been having for the last 20 years - the one where I have a class the next day that I haven't prepared for, even though I had all semester long to study/read the material/write the term paper/do the homework - you know the drill. Except I didn't get to wake up to that sweet feeling of relief that replaces the panic when you realize it was just a dream, because I wasn't dreaming.

It's been more than a decade since I've been in school, but it seems I haven't lost my touch when it comes to procrastinating. Silly me for thinking it would be any different just because I'm the teacher now. Anyway, that's my excuse for not posting for the last month, and now that I'm a teacher, I see how it's every bit as lame as the ones my students give me on a regular basis.

If only

There are so many things I could tell you about, if only it weren't Judybat's turn to blog ...

I could tell you about the unfortunate incident earlier this week in which TheBoy, tired of my efforts to get him to give me a kiss before he got out of the car (I was the car troll, and he was my victim), took another approach. Instead of kissing me, he reared back and punched me in the face. And then, realizing what he had done, he immediately started crying.

I could tell you about the conversation I had the other night with one of TheBoy's good friends, who was over for dinner and a shared bath. As TheBoy got out, the friend looked at his penis and yelled, horrorstruck, "What in the world happened to him?!?" Thus began my explanation of circumcision.

I could tell you about TheGirl's new teeth, which she is already putting to good use on both parts of my body and solid foods, and the interesting response she's developed to the pain of teething: When it gets really bad, she pukes. Then she laughs and goes about her business.

I could complain about the Yankees. Oh, how I could complain!

But, alas, it's not my turn to blog. Judybat, where are you?

Did somebody order the locusts?

As a Yankee fan, I revel in rooting for the bad guys. I don't deny it. We're the Evil Empire of major league baseball. We spend more. We smirk more. We win more. (At least, um, we're supposed to win more.) Sometimes, however, the force seems to work in not-so mysterious ways. Like, say, last night.

I don't really believe in signs from the heavens, and yet ...

Given the way things are going, I sincerely hope Jeter isn't a first born son.

Back home

We headed east this past weekend to attend our friend CLo's wedding -- few people alive could have made the white dress/hiking boots ensemble look so good -- and see the in-laws. The trip triggered, yet again, another round of the eternal debate: Do we really want to spend the rest of our lives an entire country (and a veeeery long cross-country flight) away from all the people we love most in the world?

At some point, we have to decide. The pro/con list changes daily. Portland is beautiful and funky and accepting and, above all else, so danged easy. TheBoy has such good friends, we both like our jobs, we can actually afford to pay the mortgage.

Why would we ever think of leaving? When we landed at Newark Thursday night, the humidity was hovering around 80 percent. It was like being in an outer ring of hell. (Some might say Newark qualifiies.) On our way back to the airport, it took 20 minutes to go the four blocks from the West Side Highway to the Holland Tunnel -- and we considered ourselves kind of lucky. Plus, I like seeing my kids every night. I don't want to have to make the choice between tucking them in and living in 900 square feet.

And yet, how could we ever think of staying here long-term? The 'rents are only going to get older. The nieces and nephews, both surrogate and real, are going to grow up. How can we miss all that?

Sigh. I have no good answers, and probably won't even after TheGirl gets back on West Coast time.