Who sat down beside you

"You may not know it," my six-year-old told me, "but there's always a spider within at least three feet of you."

Protected

If I want to see my grandchildren, I'll have to retire in Mongolia

Scientists today announced the discovery of a new species of parrot-sized dinosaur in Mongolia. (I'm serious! Scientists really did discover a new parrot-sized dinosaur in Mongolia. Here's a picture of it.) A lot of the new dinosaur discoveries come from Mongolia, where there's a formation from the Late Cretaceous. It "dates to 84-75 million years ago and has yielded a rich trove of vertebrate fossils including the recently discovered theropod Linheraptor exquisitus."

One learns these things when one's daughter is dinosaur-obsessed.

In other news, Houghton Mifflin recently (2009) published Saving the Ghost of the Mountain: An Expedition Among Snow Leopards in Mongolia. My son received this book for Christmas. It tells the story of a man from Seattle, Tom McCarthy, who has spent his life tracking, reporting on, and attempting to save snow leopards. Blake thinks that if only Tom had a helicopter and/or airplane and/or skis, he'd be livin' the dream.

So. There's a good chance I'll be retiring to Mongolia.

The book has maps showing where snow leopards lived, but I can't find out exactly where in Mongolia one would find that Late Cretaceous formation. That's lazy reporting, don't you think? I do imagine we'll be driving back-and-forth, between the children, quite a lot.

*

Of course, paleontologists are also excavating dinosaur fossils in Montana, and plenty of cougars live in Montana, and Montana has helicopters planes and skis (oh my), so maybe we'll be retiring nearer by!

Gates

I stashed my snowboard in a tree well and hiked down to the race start – a lip of snow between the trunks of two tall hemlocks – where several kids stood in line waiting for their turn. They looked like little warriors. In those helmets and goggles I couldn't recognize any faces. Luckily I knew my son's bib number.

"Hey, Number Seventy-seven!" I said.

Two boys looked over at me but my boy didn't. I chucked him on the shoulder. "Hi, B!" He saw me then and smiled and hugged me.

"I have a treat for you," I said, and he cried joyfully, "Gummy bears!" Then he looked with consternation at his hands, be-mittened, with the straps of his poles wrapped round them. "Here, open up," I said, and fed him like a baby bird.

A parent volunteer walked by, reading off the boys' bib numbers and then going back to the start and reading them off again. "Seventy, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75 – Where's number 76?" He looked at me, but I shrugged. We glanced uphill, where a few kids were scrambling up an outcropping to leap off in a heap, and some kids threw snowballs at each other, shouting, and some dug in the snow – building a cave, I suppose, or a castle. The parent volunteer shrugged, too. He looked back at the start. "OK. Seventy-one's up, there's 72, 73, 74, 75, no 76, 77. Oh, there you are, 76. Back up, boys, make room." Pause. "Seventy-two is up. Seventy-three, 74..."

I stayed beside my son but I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to make him nervous. (He didn't look nervous. He looked like he was waiting his turn to ride a chairlift.) I gave him another gummy bear. His coach came by and put his hand on my son's shoulder, giving him a quick pep talk, and then suddenly it was my son's turn. He took his place between the trunks of the two hemlocks, poles in front skis in back, and the starter began the countdown and whoop! Go! Go!

He is, of course, just nine years old. When I watch him ski around gates, I remember watching nine-year-old gymnasts (and being one myself): able to do an aerial and a layout backflip but forgetting to point her toes. His skiing is like that. Ski racing, however, is completely different from gymnastics competitions. Gymnastics competitions can be so boring while you're waiting your turn; and then when it is your turn, you know everyone is staring at you. In ski racing the kids build snow forts while they're waiting, and when it's their turn, only the starter notices. They don't watch each other because there's nothing to see; the course curves; it's hidden by trees. Also, in gymnastics the equipment is what it is. I mean, another team's spring floor might feel different, but a beam is a beam. In ski racing the conditions are always different. This weekend the course was crazy icy – I was spooked by it myself, and though it was sunny and warm, there was absolutely no way I could have brought Sasha along. Nearly half the kids failed to finish. At his last race, on the other hand, it was snowing.

So keeping in mind he's just nine: Whoot! He did totally awesome on a course of super death ice. That's my kid!

"Yeah," he said afterward, "it was fun." Proud and nonchalant, just like a guy.

Even Jane Fairfax has friends and the desire to be among them

-1-

Introverts get their energy from being alone, those online personality tests say. Extroverts get their energy from other people. If that's true, it's an extrovert's view.

Introverts are more interested in their own thoughts than in the thoughts of other people. An introvert in a roomful of people sits staring out the window not because she's shy, or afraid of people's opinions of her, or unsure of what to say. An introvert stares out the window so she can think without the distraction of all those other voices and intentions and opinions.

You might find an introvert in deep conversation with one other person. This is not a contradiction. She's mining that person for new ideas. You will hear her say I never thought of it that way or I didn't know that, how interesting. And then she'll go stare out the window awhile, pondering what she has heard.

-2-

Maybe not all introverts are that way. This introvert is.

-3-

Cities are difficult. It's not the crowds. Cities emanate thoughts and intentions and opinions. Billboards, graffiti, shops, the signs on top of taxis – building facades, statues, fountains – Cities are always talking. In a city it is always 6pm and I'm trying to dream up dinner while my son and daughter and husband are holding three separate conversations with me. And the phone rings.

I like to be in a forest or desert or even just along the river: anywhere that the wind can get me. The wind knocks me out of my head and into my body, so that at last I look up, I look out, oh hello world, there you are.

-4-

I like to be outside with other people. My strongest, fondest memories from childhood all take place outdoors, with my family or with neighborhood kids. I love parties around a bonfire; I like to snowboard with friends or walk along the river with them. I like to go exploring with my children. I can't imagine hiking uphill alone, not even up Pilot Butte, but climbs with my husband or other family and friends up South Sister, Broken Top, Mt. Washington, Tam McArthur, Black Butte, Black Crater – these are some of the most fun, most memorable times I've had in my life.

That's interesting, is it not? Indoors I turn within, and think, and time passes invisibly. The outdoors make an impression.

-5-

I didn't make new year's resolutions so much as set new year's goals. This year I intend to snowshoe in the mountains during a full moon. I intend to camp at either Sparks Lake or along the road ("road") to Broken Top. I intend to visit the Steens in fall.

I just need to find people to go with me.

Then I'll sit inside again for a long while, thinking!

44° 16'

My sister gave us a disco ball a few years ago. We lived in our other house then and the children were still small. She intended the disco ball for the children's room, but that house had such high ceilings: we didn't own a ladder tall enough to hang it in the children's room, or anywhere else either – except the bathroom; but we already had a helicopter hanging in the bathroom. Eventually I hung the disco ball from an open shelf in the kitchen where the children could shine a flashlight on it. They played with it a lot at first but after a few weeks we all kind of forgot about it.

Then one day sunlight struck that disco ball. Sparkles appeared all over the kitchen ceiling and walls and floor. The children shrieked; they spun the disco ball so the sparkles danced and made me dizzy; little Sasha pounced on the bright spots like a kitty. Look, look, look! we shouted.

And then the sparks faded. After those few minutes of mayhem, they disappeared.

I phoned my dad. He's an engineer by training. Uh, Dad? Why? all of a sudden? Well, said my dad, let's think about that. So we talked for awhile about the movement of the earth around the sun.

I knew all that, of course. But also I didn't. I mean, I had never actually seen an example of the sun hitting a particular place on a particular day of the year. The sun moves across the sky every 24 hours; everyone can see that; but I'd never noticed it move over the course of a year.

That is exactly why I wanted to stop awhile, to stay awhile in one place: so that I, stationary, might sense the movement around me.

Anyway. In this house we don't need the brilliance of the disco ball to show us how the sun moves from winter to summer and back again; we need only eat our cereal. The kitchen in this house has one window facing southeast and one facing northeast. In winter sunlight shines through the southeast window, blinding us as we eat breakfast; in summer it shines through the northeast window, and we may breakfast in peace.

Also in this house there's a little window near the living room ceiling – little: maybe one foot high by four feet long – and in mid-January, on a clear day at 7:45 in the morning, the sun shines through that window to dash upon the stairs. We walk down into the light.

Dust and spiderwebs.

***

Bend, Oregon is at a higher latitude than Toronto. The sun's movement here is dramatic. This super-cool widget will show you quite clearly why December here is the darkest, hardest month. Set the time to 16:00, the latitude to 44°N and then drag that vertical bar across the months. Ack.

Whether

After skiing in the rain last weekend – torrential rain, drenching rain, which soaked our gloves all the way through; we used our ski-gees to wipe off our faces – finally we have snow again.

I'll write a real post any day now, I swear!

From another angle

The last photo was one of order, but when our ski stuff is drying the downstairs feels more like this. Crowded. From the garage I have to push my way through to the main part of the house!

Random thought of the day

Guinea pigs are native to Peru. Potatoes are native to Peru. Guinea pigs are herbivores that eat tubers – but they do not eat potatoes.

According to wikipedia, my guinea pig is the domesticated descendent of a closely-related but different species of cavy that lives wild in the Andes. All our cultivated species of potato originate from a single potato domesticated in the Andes.

My guinea pigs will eat almost any greens; tubers such as carrots, parsnips and dandelion roots; apple peels; and the green rind of a watermelon. They'll eat hay and cardboard and plastic bags. They won't eat the potato or its peelings.

I think that's interesting.

*

I've been reading about terra preta, the Amazonian "superdirt" made from charcoal and organic waste. Did you know that archaeologists now believe the Spanish explorers' reports of large, complex societies in the Amazon? For years scientists dismissed those reports as gold-fevered exaggerations.

I think that's interesting, too.

*

I have some new year's resolutions but also I have a new year's research project. (Some people knit; some people quilt. I research things.) I want to know who lived in Central Oregon in 1491 and what their lives were like, and I also want to know how we know that.

When I mentioned this to my family, I added, "It doesn't appear that anybody lived here. There wasn't anything to eat." My kids shouted, "That's not true!" There's serviceberries, they said, and huckleberries and currants and fish and deer and birds...

Apparently the children actually listen when I muse aloud. How about that.

Angles

Stairs with drying rack.

The shadows go both ways. No wonder I get disoriented down there.

sick, well

Yesterday neither Motrin nor honey could calm my daughter's cough, so we stayed at home by the fire and the steambath that is our humidifier while the males drove up to the mountain: up into the freezing fog.

For awhile I questioned my decision to stay home because up in the freezing fog my son had his very first ski race ever. I so wanted all of us to be there! I knew I'd made the right choice, though, when Sasha watched TV for over an hour without picking up a pen to draw something; she was listless, pale, with dark circles under her eyes. Oh, my girl. I laid down my regret and thought, This is what I am doing today. Today I am caring for my sick child.

She stayed home from school today but she's infinitely better. She velcro'ed her shoes together and hopped around the house, giggling.

Naught

(see update below)

Last night my husband gathered together all his ski gear and all Blake's ski gear and all Sasha's ski gear and all my ski gear and set it out so that this morning we could be dressed by 8am; and then he waxed everybody's skis but his own. Meanwhile I cooked a hearty dinner (hungarian stew) and baked apple turnovers for a quick-and-easy breakfast and then I packed four hearty lunches and then I cleaned the kitchen top to bottom; and we all got to bed on time –

and Sasha woke with a terrible cough and a fever.

So she's missing her first day of ski school and I am pacing the house at 8:20am on a Saturday, full of pent-up energy, wondering what the heck to do with this day.

I guess I'll write a blog post.

*

9:30pm update: New title: (Not) Naught

The wee girlie rallied after a dose of Motrin and some honey, so we drove up to the mountain to join her class at lunchtime; and I got a few runs in myself. I never met up with my husband but I did see my son twice and also a couple of friends – all of whom had seen my husband just moments before. Must! Remember! Cell phone!

Now I am again assembling four lunches so that we can do it all over tomorrow (without the cough/fever, please): because my son has his first ski race.

Whee!

Quiet

I wrote this back in November. It's a blast from the past, yo.

I've spent the last few months redesigning web pages. Ordinarily I update pages; I work within an existing framework. Now a group of us (all women, interestingly) have been charged with examining the framework.

It's fun and interesting and difficult and I love it.

Throughout this project we've talked a lot about purpose – the purpose of the project, of course, but also the purpose of the site as a whole and of each sub-section. We start with that objective, and then we investigate whether we're succeeding or failing at the objective, why, and how design changes might fix it.

These discussions at work got me wondering about the purpose of a personal blog. Musing. What is the purpose of a personal blog? What are we doing and why?

Here's my theory.

Now, I do think some personal bloggers primarily aim to make money; but let's set them aside. The bloggers I read – the bloggers in my community – aim for personal fulfillment or satisfaction by way of

• explaining/exploring their viewpoint and
• communicating with other bloggers who explore similar issues or ideas

Yes? No?

**

I always say I blog for writing practice but really, it's a poor way to practice. It's like composing emails & calling that writing practice. I'd be better off joining a writing group.

**

Bon has been writing about bloggers' brands. Her initial posts upset some of her readers, who were all I'm not a corporation and Who are you to define me and I'm bigger than a box! But branding as she meant it really just defines the viewpoint a blogger explains or explores – purpose #1 up there.

In her last post she asked her readers to state in one word "what we're doing out here" – out here on the internet, in blogland and on twitter. My word, I said, is Quiet.

Ha!

I think that's funny. True, but funny. What kind of blogger is quiet?

On 2010

Cribbed from Mayberry Mom --- a prompt to get me writing again.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?

Fell in love with snowboarding. (At the end of last season, I mean. Apparently snowboarding is something I need to fall in love with anew each year. Still waiting...) Visited New York with my family. Switched to 30-hour work weeks. Actually enjoyed most of those 30 hours. Learned to make pie crust – very good pie crust, thankyouverymuch. Hosted 20 people for Christmas Eve dinner. Ate pulled pork made from a pig my kid sister butchered on her dining room table.

2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Yes.

Last year I resolved to indulge myself more, or at least cut down on self-sacrifice. Do you know what I did – several times! – in 2010? I slept 11 consecutive hours.

This year I intend to be less daunted by logistics.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No, but one friend adopted a child and another is pregnant! Hooray!

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Thankfully, no.

5. What countries did you visit?

Manhattan. (Ha!)

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?

More time with my husband.

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Dudes, I'm nearly 40. Not much gets etched on my memory.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

I learned to make pie crust; and! I'm pretty sure I only had one big meltdown the whole year.

9. What was your biggest failure?

You know, in 2010 I often felt stymied. I could write a whole post on this.

Partly I got stumped by logistics, as I mentioned above (you find a babysitter for 4pm on a Wednesday: go ahead, I dare you: and no you can't call your mother-in-law again); but also, I felt like I was in a continual battle of wills with my children, like I couldn't get anything done because I couldn't summon the energy to fight them over it. I think that my failure to show these men of will what will really is caused me to miss a lot of good stuff.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Oh, sure, but nothing too terrible.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

My husband is exceedingly happy with the slippers I bought him for Christmas. In 11 years of marriage, they're the first gift I've ever given him that he really liked.

12. Where did most of your money go?

Feels like: Mt. Bachelor

Actually: mortgage, car payment, etc. etc.

13. What did you get really excited about?

I can't tell you.

14. What song will always remind you of 2010?

Bet Against the American Dream. This American Life, I -heart- you.

15. Compared to this time last year, are you:

– happier or sadder? The same

– thinner or fatter? The same

– richer or poorer? Richer. 2009 S U C K E D. That's all I have to say about that.

16. What do you wish you'd done more of?

I wish I'd snowboarded down the Cinder Cone pre-season with my sister-in-law, who is now moving to Portland. (Heaves big sigh.)

17. What do you wish you'd done less of?

Prevaricating.

18. How did you spend Christmas?

At my house (and then my mother-in-law's down the street) with both my sisters and their husbands and my exuberant nephew and my own children and my husband, and my parents, and my husband's parents, and his sisters and his brother and his brothers-in-law.

It was awesome.

19. What was your favorite TV program?

I don't watch TV. I did watch the 2009 miniseries Emma on YouTube about 800 gazillion times. (I finally bought it.)

20. What were your favorite books of the year?

Jane Eyre?

21. What was your favorite music from this year?

Band of Horses played at the Amphitheater here in town. They were awesome. There were fireworks. Literally.

22. What were your favorite films of the year?

Uh, Despicable Me?

23. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

39, and I don't remember. Not because I was drunk. I just don't remember. (I'm bracketing my 40th birthday with trips to B.C. and Hawaii. I hope that sticks.)

24. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

To be able to recall at least one accomplishment for the year that did not involve homemaking skills. (Pie crust, though!)

25. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?

Get dressed already.

26. What kept you sane?

My funny, smart, loving children; and my funny, smart, loving husband; and all my funny, um, extended family. (Ha! I know you're reading this!)

27. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.

The weather is finer when you're in it than when you're looking at it.