The mystery of the egg thief

My daughter has a new book about baby dinosaurs in which nearly every dinosaur has feathers. It includes a surprising fact about oviraptors.

"In 1923," writes author Lita Judge, "a new species of dinosaur was found lying on top of a nest. At first scientists thought the dinosaur had died while raiding the nest — it had a huge, toothless beak that looked perfect for eating eggs. They named it Oviraptor, which means 'Egg Thief.'"

Sasha knows about Oviraptors. Any book that goes beyond the Triceratops/T-rex/Brachiosaurus triumvirate will include information about the Oviraptor, since it was discovered so long ago, paleontologically speaking. They're one of the more frightening dinosaurs for a girl who so dearly loves babies. They stand in stark contrast to the Maiasaura, whose name means "Good Mother Lizard" and who is noted for actually looking after her babies. (Most dinosaurs, they say, were like turtles: they laid their eggs and then left.)

But lo. When paleontologists studied the embryos inside the eggs beside Oviraptor's fossilized remains, they realized that Oviraptors were not thieves. They were sitting on their own nests.

Says Lita Judge, "Though he couldn't fly, a father Oviraptor might have spread his feathers over his fragile babies to keep them cool in the searing desert sun while mother brought meat for their next meal. He may also have used his feathers to keep his babies warm at night."

I don't particularly like dinosaurs, but I do enjoy the history of dinosaur discoveries. I find it so interesting that dinosaur books for children include caveats, phrases like "scientists used to believe" or "scientists now think..." They are sprinkled with words like "maybe" and "perhaps."

When a child grows up with books like these, how do they affect her worldview? Will she come to believe that knowledge is provisional, that truths are only temporary, that it's her choice to either "believe" or "not believe" what a scientist tells her?

*************

Ursula Le Guin has said, "History is one way of telling stories, just like myth, fiction, or oral storytelling. But over the last hundred years, history has pre-emptied the other forms of storytelling because of its claim to absolute, objective truth. Trying to be scientists, historians stood outside of history and told the story of how it was. All that has changed radically over the last twenty years. Historians now laugh at the pretence of objective truth. They agree that every age has its own history, and if there is any objective truth, we can't reach it with words. History is not a science, it's an art."**

My daughter's dinosaur books make me think that science is not a science, but an art.

*"Born To Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew To Rule the World." Copyright 2010 by Lita Judge. The illustrations in this book are gorgeous.

**I found this quote here, where it was excepted from "Talking on the Water; Conversations About Nature and Creativity", copyright 1994 by Jonathan White.

Secret spaces

The first house I remember had a fort in its backyard. The fort was a giant barrel on stilts. To get in, we climbed a ladder and opened a door; to get out, we jumped through a hole in the floor, landing in the sandbox below. My sister and I used to wish we could spin that barrel like hamsters, but it was firmly nailed. (Oddly enough, when we moved from that house to another, the new house stood near a park which had a big barrel that did spin.)

The fort stood in the far corner of the yard. A wooden fence to the left of the fort separated our yard from our neighbors'; a wire fence behind the fort separated our yard from a weedy wilderness. It was a vacant lot, I suppose; although my mother hacked a vegetable garden out of some of that weediness, so maybe it was just unused, not vacant. Milkweed grew back there, and sassafras. One of my parents — my mom most likley — taught us to chew on sassafras stems, which taste lemony. We loved the milkweed best, though. My sister and I used to reach through the wire fence to gather it. In late summer the pods get crunchy; when you break them open, silk bursts out. Seeds attach to the ends of the silk. My sister and I buried them in the sandbox, hoping they'd grow. The "milk" in the plant's stem made our fingers stick together; it is, according to this naturalist, as strong as rubber cement. He also says that milkweed's spring shoots can be eaten like asparagus, which is kind of funny because I remember my mom's excitement when she got asparagus to grow in her garden. Adjacent to the milkweed.

Our barrel fort had a small window which overlooked that wild space — the weeds, the beehives beyond the weeds, the stand of trees beyond that. My elementary school stood beyond the trees; in second grade my mother let me walk there alone. I loved to traipse through that wilderness (even after I got stung); passing out of view of the house was scary, but it made me stand taller.

I love the house I own now ... but it's missing a fort. I'm thinking we need to build an addition onto our garden shed! It would overlook our neighbors' chicken coop.

This post is part of Backyard Mama’s children & nature carnival.

Just another day at the beach

Saturday the power went out across the mountain. Every chairlift stopped. My son and husband and I stood third in line for the Northwest Express chair when it stopped; we stood there, fidgeting, as more and more and more people joined us in line. It was lovely at the base of that chair: sunny, warm, calm. Mt. Bachelor had constructed a little beer garden down there, where people sprawled on chairs and ate hamburgers. Mmm, hamburgers. Time passed. A couple people complained, and a couple people sighed classic Mt. Bachelor!, and a couple people went to buy beers. Everyone struck up conversations. The guy in line behind us said that he's always wanted to be evacuated from a chairlift; he said he deliberately skis down to the chairlifts with a reputation for getting stuck. (I couldn't tell if he was serious.) After awhile we detached ourselves from our respective planks and walked around. Ho hum. Some Mt. Bachelor employees gave us updates, but no good news. Suddenly a good-natured snowball fight broke out, everyone laughing and hucking snow into the crowd and then ducking. Blake, inspired, pelted me and his dad. And then they told us: this lift's not going to run again today.

NW Express is the lowest chair on the back side of the mountain. Once you've skied down to it, there's nowhere else to go. Either you take a chairlift back up or you hike back up.

So, so. Me and over a hundred other people, we took off our coats and rolled up our sleeves — it was warm, I tell you — and we hiked to Outback, the nearest chair that had power. A couple people complained. Other people seemed to consider it an adventure, or part of the deal, or something, and stopped strangers to say, "Take my picture!" The hike took 20 minutes or so. Upon arrival at Outback Mt. Bachelor employees gave me a free day pass, saying, "Thanks for your patience!" I stood there squinting in the sun, sweating, proud that I'd barely lost my breath. After a few minutes I found my husband and son, who had gotten a ride on a snowmobile.*

— —

On the ride up Outback our seatmate commented, "That was still better than my best day in the Army!" People often say things like that. When it's extremely cold or stormy or raining or too warm, so that the snow grabs your board as you fling on ahead, people always say something like, "At least I'm not at work!" or "At least I'm not stuck in traffic!" I'd rather be here than anywhere else, even on the worst days... People used to freely criticize the mountain's operations, though — to rant about it, even. In my totally unscientific analysis, that seems to be changing.

* Before you get indignant over my husband's getting a ride: the snowmobile has a tow rope, and I didn't think that I could successfully manage that on a snowboard, which has a sideways stance. It was easier for me to hike & stick him with the kid.

Sproink

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7," — that was Sasha counting out in the front yard; I was out there, too, looking for buds on the lilac — "7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. Fourteen, Mom!"

"Fourteen what, Sasha?"

"Crocuses!"

One of 14 purple crocuses + one wee girlie.

Saturdays the boys ski, which gives Sasha and me a whole day together. This Saturday being spectacularly lovely, we spent all our time outdoors: counting crocuses, as you just heard, and quail (2), honey bees (1), bumblebees (1), ladybugs (1), dandelions (2 -- both picked for the guinea pigs), sprouting irises (1) and june bugs (18).

Spring spring spring spring spring!

Sasha found the bumblebee flailing upside down in a crocus. It was so cold, or so new, or so heavy with pollen that it couldn't maneuver very well. It entertained us for a long time; after it flew away, Sasha kept saying, "I miss that bumblebee." To console herself she caught the (1) ladybug and put it in a jar with some store-bought cabbage and lettuce leaves, where it is likely quite a bit happier, or at least less hungry, than it would be outside.

Watch our "bee" movie on YouTube.

Spring!

Hard core

Mt. Bachelor's Conditions Report from today at 11:30:

"Summit's open 360, 6 inches fresh last night, 16 in two days and it's BLUBIRD! Pinch me are these conditions real! I just got back from a couple laps on the backside...amazing! See you on the slopes!"

I love Mt. Bachelor's conditions report. I check it all the time, even on days like today, when I know I can't make it up to the mountain. I don't know who writes it. Whoever he is, his excitement is contagious. After reading it I have almost skipped work a dozen times. Reading the report makes me feel part of a community of powder hounds; I can sense all the other people reading the report and wishing they could be riding, rather than working. Or child-caring. Or whatever.

I went up into the storm on Tuesday. I love storms; I love the energy and I love how the conditions change from run to run. I rode for 2 1/2 hours, giddy as could be. One of the lifites called me "hard core." (Flatterer!)

I hope y'all have had a chance to do something that makes you happy.

10 things which do not make me cranky

1. The sun is shining!
2. It will still be shining when the kids get off the bus!
3. Doves and robins are feeding in my backyard. Right now. I can see them.
4. The clover is greening up, which means (I think) that the quail will be back soon.
5. It's Friday! Happy happy Friday!
6. My sister and her husband and my super super super cute nephew are going to be in Central Oregon next week.
7. That means I'll get to hear him saying "aminals" live and in person!
8. Sasha and I are going to see "Walking with Dinosaurs" in Portland next weekend. Oh, the joy!
9. This spring the robot dinosaurs are returning to the Portland zoo. OH, THE JOY!
10. My son is building a rocket out of a cardboard box. He and his leopards plan a journey to the moon. Since cardboard burns, he's covered the box in duct tape. Rocket fuel? Vinegar and baking soda. Next week I'll be able to tell you why the environmental movement hasn't embraced vinegar & baking soda as an alternative fuel.

Daffodils? Bah.

The Oregon native plant listserv has been flinging out emails these last two weeks as people in the Willamette Valley excitedly announce the first sighting of certain native flowers.

Bah, humbug.

In the Willamette Valley — the wet side of the Cascades — native flowers never really stop blooming; they just take turns showing off. Look at me! I'm a native azalea! Oh, hush, says the rhodie, and the azalea lies quiet while the rhododendron blooms. Then the rhodies settle down so the dogwoods can flower. So it goes.

Here on the dry, sunny side of the mountains, native flowers pretty much all bloom at the same time, demurely, and then duck-and-cover. However you can brag to the listserv about how late you see them blooming, if you're willing to hike up. For two weeks at 3000 feet in June you'll see lupine. Then head up to 4000 feet: the lupine is blooming! Two weeks later, head up to 5000 feet: lupine again!



***



I haven't been writing this week because I've been excessively I R R I T A T E D.

Grr. I feel like everyone's in my way. I don't know why. No one actually is in my way; nothing in my life has changed. This irritation feels like PMS but I'm mid-cycle, so it can't be. --- Wait. I have been getting cramps mid-cycle for the last few months; could it be that I'll get PMS too? Shit.

Whiteout

Either my doctor refilled my prescription incorrectly or my eyes have changed radically in the last few days: with contacts I can barely see out my right eye. However I only wear contacts for snowboarding, and lately each time I've been free to ride the weather has been poor. Yesterday afternoon the top of the chairlift was in a cloud so dense that snow and sky were indistinguishable. The trees appeared as a blot of dark green-brown below, color without form, exactly as they'd appear if I had forgotten my contacts entirely.

Screenshot from the Mt. Bachelor web site: West Village skycam, seven minutes ago. The weather today appears to be exactly the same as yesterday.

According to current research

One of my daughter's library books, Does a Triceratops Have Polka Dots?, includes this line: "Dinosaurs were the ancestors of today's birds, but they didn't have feathers and they couldn't fly."

That's not true. Some dinosaurs did have feathers. In Sasha's other books we learned that Archaeopertyx had feathers, and Velociraptor had feathers, and baby T. Rexes had feathers. (These weren't flight feathers but instead kept the dinos warm.)

Those other books, of course, are more recent.

*

Fifteen years ago Time Life published a book which stated that dinosaurs did not have feathers. Now all the illustrations in children's books about dinosaurs show theropods with feathers. However, the books explain, we can't know what color those feathers were. Fifteen years from now we'll exclaim over that, because "scientists have decoded the full-body color patterns of a dinosaur."

Click that link. It's really cool. It shows a 3D rendering of an Anchiornis huxleyi, a dinosaur new to science (as they say). It doesn't look at all like our mental images of a dinosaur. It looks like a bird. It looks just exactly like a bird. National Geographic also has a pretty accurate picture of Sinosauropteryx, which was brown-and-white, apparently, and less distinctly birdish.

*

My dino-loving daughter has a couple of books which trace the history of our understanding of dinosaurs. That is, the books describe how with each fossil discovery paleontologists revised their mental image of dinosaurs.

At first they thought T. Rex looked like Godzilla, stomping around on two legs with his stumpy hands waving in the air. Now they say he looked like a colossal roadrunner, with his long neck and tail perfectly horizontal. He had such huge jaws they figured he was a terrifying creature, as in Jurassic Park; but now they say that given his tiny arms, he must have been a scavenger — more like a vulture than a crocodile.

*

One day 65 million years ago a meteor smashed into the earth, wreaking such havoc that all the big sauropods died, and all the big theropods and ornithiscians died, too. All those freaky, frightening, glorious giants died — but not all the dinosaurs died. Some lived. They lived, their feathers evolved, they learned to fly. All the 9,900 species of birds alive today are the descendants of dinosaurs.

It's a lovely, comforting theory. I wonder if it's true.

Ba dum bump

OPB has been re-broadcasting the latest movie versions of Jane Austen's work (Sundays at 9pm). I've seen all the Austen movies on YouTube, as I mentioned, but I recorded Emma anyway. I wanted to see it on the big screen, without interruption.

So one night last week I curled on the couch with a cup of tea and my husband, and my insomniac son curled on the little futon, and I giggled in pleased anticipation as I clicked "play."

And my husband fell asleep. My son fell asleep, too. They were both asleep within ten minutes.

Later I asked them about this. HOW could you FALL ASLEEP during the FIRST TEN MINUTES of EMMA? For goodness sake!

"All they do is talk, talk, talk," replied my son, "and have picnics."

Hrm. Actually that's a pretty good summary of Emma.

Colder and drier, with cats

Sasha's cough being infinitely better, I have allowed the house to return to its usual cold, dry state. And now (or "Therefore, now" – ?) she's playing with modern-day mammals.

For Christmas my mother found her an American Girl cat, which is little and furry and very cute, and which arrived with a Pet Journal. Sasha completed the Pet Journal earlier this morning, sounding out the words to write all by herself.

Journal: My favorite memory with my pet is

Sasha: Going on a wok

Journal: Write a story ... of an imaginary journey the two of you went on together

Sasha: Going to the sentr uv the erth

She also wrote that her pet's favorite game is pretend fishing. To play this game, the cat uses a fishing pole with a magnet on its end to "catch" paper fish with paperclips or staples on them. She's building this toy now, all on her own, because it's Friday and I need to work.

Oh, right! Work!

Goodness gracious, we're back in the Cretaceous!

My daughter brought a virus back from the Cretaceous. (Well, maybe she got it at school.) She's coughing in this hoarse, painful way and sounds asthmatic. I can ease this cough by, apparently, simulating the Cretaceous period in my house: hot, humid, oxygenated. Last night we ran the shower until steam dripped down the kids' bathroom mirror and Sasha slept in there, on the floor. This morning we're watching TV by the fire and the humidifer, with wet clothes drying all around the room.

She's watching Mythbusters. My five-year-old loves Mythbusters. Yet another mystery!

Leisurely (II)

Actually, I do know what I think of Brigid Schulte's Washington Post article. I just didn't want to say it outright because I don't like to disagree with people.

The man who said that working mothers have 30 hours of leisure time each week is incorrect. No working parent has 30 hours of leisure time a week. He could only find 30 hours in Schulte's life by counting "waiting for a tow truck" as leisure; and while one may make the most of waiting for a tow truck by doing yoga by the side of the road or telling stories to one's child, there's just no way it can be considered leisure.

That said: What parent expects 30 hours of leisure each week? Most parents I know would find five hours of true leisure perfectly acceptable.

Lastly I quote Penelope Trunk (who I just discovered & find to be a kindred spirit; I must have Asperger's as well; it would explain a lot) in her piece My financial history, and stop whining about your job: "I'm saying you need to be an adult, and realize that adults make big decisions. Things don't just happen to you. You have power to decide what your life will be like."

Don't be a stranger

I changed this blog's commenting options – I didn't realize I'd made it so restrictive – but please, if you avail yourself of the new "anonymous" option, would you sign your comment? You may sign pseudonymously. An unsigned anonymous comment is less like a love-letter-left-in-a-locker and more like heavy breathing over the phone!

Apparently today is Delurking Day, so, you know, say hi.

*

New snow on the mountain and Summit is open: my husband has commanded me to go snowboarding. Right after my 11am meeting. I think I can make it back to the bus stop by 4:15.

Best,
Jennifer (ponderosa)

Relenting

I wrote this back in November. I don't know why I never published it.

Some household tasks are mindless and unskilled, like the Dish Cycle or the Laundry Cycle, as I mentioned before. We generally consider these tasks to be drudgery; it's the work that Free to Be You and Me criticized in the song Housework.

Not all housework is like that, though. Some tasks require creativity, skill and attention — like cooking, for example. Sometimes I get tired of cooking cooking COOKING all the time but it's never boring. It's a chemistry experiment, for one thing. (Do not substitute hot sauce for dry mustard in your homemade mac n cheese. I'm just sayin'.) Flailing against the corporate grocery store interests me, too. I like researching local sources of healthy vegetables and eggs and meat; I enjoy the challenge of cooking in a such a way that one can taste the difference. And the dinner half-hour, the one time each day when the four of us sit together, is a great joy to me. Even with the wiggly, singing, sometimes-whining children.

You know, historically, when women didn't work "outside the home," they worked in it. They sewed or mended the family's clothes; they kept kitchen gardens; they fed the chickens; they cooked everything from scratch. Oh, and they also cared for the children. I think about that when I go about my daily household chores. I remember that what I do is just a remnant of that older, more demanding way of life. I'm glad household work is so much easier now — I've never once been inspired to wash clothes by hand! — but I do wonder sometimes if this remnant is like a pale hothouse tomato compared to one picked on a sunny August day in a garden.

Is that ridiculous? Am I romanticizing?

Something about managing a household makes me look backward, not forward.

I am such a poseur

Last week when the weather was so gloomy, I asked two of the other mothers at the bus stop if we were experiencing an inversion. Is the weather better on the mountain? I asked. Sure! they said, and we talked awhile about skiing/snowboarding.

"Have you been up much this year?" one of them asked. People always ask that. It's a little like asking what college a person's gone to or where they work: something you ask when conversation lags, but which is useful because it helps you know who you're dealing with.

"Not as much as I'd have liked, since we were sick over the holidays," I replied. "But I've managed to get up there three times so far."

And they confessed that they'd each skiied more than 30 days in the last six weeks.

*

Each of those women asked me to call them the next time I have a chance to snowboard, but I didn't. I am not quite ready to ride with women who ski 30 days in six weeks. I went up by myself instead, yesterday.

The weather was so strange. It was unusually warm. This rogue fog bank kept whispering around the base of the mountain, so that I began each run in the sun but on ice and ended it in a cloud but on slush. I had fun, though. Four times I took the same path down Northwest – in the sun then into a cloud, on the ice then onto good snow then onto slush – and by the fourth time I was so comfortable with that run, I felt like a superhero. I flew past the others feeling their way though fog. Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Then I thought I'd better go home. Cockiness leads to injury.

**

People of all types visit Mt. Bachelor, which makes riding the chairlift like riding a bus. People talk to one another on the chairlift, though. I find it interesting. I rode with two teenage boys talking smack; a woman from Ashland just learning to snowboard; and a man from Bend who planned to ride down Rainbow, where he figured it was entirely sunny.

Query: If two teenage boys riding the lift with you swore casually and kept burping, would you reprimand them? I couldn't decide.

**

My eight-year-old had ski school on Saturday. He always looks ten feet taller after a day of skiing: older, more competent, more confident. He is somehow unreachable, unknowable. He smiles to himself. He smells like the wind.

Bea commented, "When your Austen phase occurs during high school, the culture is alarmingly familiar. They talk differently and dress differently, but otherwise, it's just the same: the rigidly hierarchical and stiflingly unvaried society, the narrow focus on social opinion and heterosexual attractiveness."

I believe she's right but I can't say I know it to be true from my own high school career, which was a study in obtuseness. I never could figure out what was going on.

I love that in Austen's novels, (most of) the main characters do understand what's going on. They know what behavior – what dress, what manners – will send their neighbors into a tizzy of gossip. They know what is morally right and what's wrong. The rules of society are very clear to them. Her characters may choose to act against the rules, but they do so consciously, knowing full well what the consequences will be.

I never had that kind of clarity. I still don't.

My husband tells this little joke. Actually it's a test. All single men under age 30 fail this test. It goes like this: A man and his wife are driving down the street. Suddenly the woman claps her hands and says, "Oh, honey! A little coffee shop just opened! It looks so cute!" The man says, "Oh? Is that right?" and continues on. When they get home, the wife is angry with her husband. Why?

My husband gave his older brother this test about a decade ago. I still remember his brother's response. It was so funny and so telling. He got kind of wild-eyed and he stuttered, "I don't know! She's angry? Did we ... did we pass an old girlfriend or something?" I laughed but I sympathized. Oh, how I sympathized. She's angry! Is she angry? I don't know why! Is it my hair? Is my make-up a mess? Did I talk to a guy she likes?

I wandered through high school bewildered. I never could follow other people's relationships, and I certainly could not fathom the rules of behavior or dress. In fact it took me awhile to understand that there were rules.

For me, Austen's books are a relief.

Lizzy doesn't wonder why Lady Catherine De Bourgh would drive miles out of her way to reprimand her. She knows what De Bourgh is about, and she knows exactly how to respond, and she knows what her response will convey to Darcy. I so admire that!

I'd like to think that I'm as clever as Elizabeth Bennet, but you know which Austen character I most resemble, right? Catherine Morland!

Playlists for Elizabeth (and me)

Sense and Sensibility (1995) (Emma Thompson/Kate Winslet)

Sense and Sensibility (2008) (Hattie Morahan/Charity Wakefield)

Pride and Prejudice (1995) (Colin Firth)

Mansfield Park (1999) This one only slightly resembles the book.

Mansfield Park (2007)

Emma (1996) (Gwenyth Paltrow)

Emma (1996) (Kate Beckinsdale)

Emma (2009) (Romola Garai)

Northanger Abbey (1986)

Northanger Abbey (2007) (Felicity Jones)

Persuasion (1995) (Amanda Root)

Persuasion (2007) (Sally Hawkins)

And in case you're interested in Gaskell, too:

Wives & Daughters

North & South

• "Look back at me"

Cranford — free on the Masterpiece web site

As it turns out, you can watch nearly every Austen remake on YouTube. In 10-minute increments, of course. If you choose to do this, every 10 minutes YouTube will suggest other movies to you, which is kind of annoying and kind of amusing, because it will keep suggesting North & South.

Ha! thought I. Here are the limits of metatagging! No human would suggest that an Austen fan watch a mini-series about the American Civil War.

Then once I did, accidentally, click through to North & South.

Now you're laughing, right?

The movie is about the north and south of England. It's based on a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote in the mid-1800s. I totally loved it.

Watching all those remakes of Austen's work followed by North & South is so striking. North & South begins with a train. A train! There aren't any trains in Austen's work. There weren't any trains in Austen's time. In North & South there's a cotton factory; there aren't any factories in Austen's work, because there weren't any factories then. Isn't that striking? Jane Austen was 35 when Gaskell was born – not even old enough to be her grandmother. The transition from cars to rockets in the 20th century was nothing compared to the transition from horses to trains in the 19th, I'd say.

If I ever have the need to teach the history of the Industrial Revolution to teenage girls, that's how I'll do it: I'll have them watch Sense & Sensibility ("Girls, why does Marianne reject Willoughby's gift of a horse? How would it have changed the family's daily routine if she'd been able to accept it?") and then Persuasion (in which the men, at any rate, have sailed to the East Indies and made their fortune in Europe — so far away in a horse-drawn world) and then North & South, with its train and its factories.

So interesting!

(And John Thornton has rather fine eyes.)

Obsessive

The clouds are bumping along the ground today, dropping rain. It's gray, gray, gray.

Ho hum.

The weekend that I had swine flu (I think it was swine flu) my Grape-stomping Sister-in-law threw her third annual "Hallowgiving" party: Thanksgiving hosted on Halloween. My husband's entire family gathers to eat turkey and candy under the vacant eyes of ghosts and witches and skeletons. My kids were so excited for that party they could hardly stand it, so my husband drove them the three hours to McMinnville while I stayed home with just a fever for company – a fever, and Jane Austen.

This summer I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time. I mentioned on the blog how much I liked the book, even though I didn't like Mr. Darcy. Apparently most women swoon over him. It puzzled me. I mean, I get the romance of his pained declaration of love, but I find him (as Austen would say) insipid. Thinking more reading might clarify his appeal, I read Sense and Sensibility. I loved that novel, too, but I still didn't like Darcy. Or Edward, for that matter. Then, the weekend that I was ill and alone in the house, I watched Becoming Jane.

Tom Lefroy! Now there's an interesting man. Granted, I had a fever when I watched the movie, which (I can say now, several viewings later) isn't very good: but Tom Lefroy! Where Darcy is haughty, Lefroy is devilish. Lefroy is vibrant and daring and lithe. I did like him.

I don't care for tall, unathletic men, I guess.

That weekend I also watched the BBC versions of Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion and I read the novels Persuasion and Mansfield Park, and after my family returned but while I still needed recovery time, I watched Northanger Abbey. Then while dealing with all the instances of this Christmas' stomach flu I finally watched Emma (the charming 2009 version) and read the ending, which I knew must be different in the book. I'll read the whole novel as soon as I have a chance.

I am totally overdosing on Jane Austen.

The world she describes is so different from mine that it's hard work trying to understand it. I find myself admiring its coherence, as if it were one of LeGuin's imaginary worlds rather than 200-year-old realistic fiction. So many things matter deeply to her characters but don't matter at all to me, like the quality of the roads or the quality of their neighbors or what the servants – who live in their houses – might say about voices raised in the night. It's just so interesting to contemplate. They have a domestic servant, while I have a dishwasher and a washing machine. All day every day they see people they've known since birth, and very few of them, while I mostly see crowds of strangers. When it's dark they sleep because they haven't electricity; when they have a fever it's terrifying because ibuprofin hasn't been invented.

And marriage, of course, matters more than anything else, because marriage will alter a woman's life completely and permanently. I wish Jane Austen had written a few novels about being married.

What a rambling post.

How about you? Have you gone through an Austen phase?

Never get involved in a land war in Asia*

Rain. Rain, rain, rain. Gray sky. When I look out – out into our winter-denuded backyard – the deck and our neighbors' towering house and the sky all blend together. Gray, gray, gray.

In an hour I'll head to the bus stop. My husband thinks I should let the kids walk home alone, but these gray days are so much more interesting to walk through than to look at; I can't resist going up to meet them.

Now that passage there sounds as if I'm depressed, but here's what I'm really thinking:

This is peace.

This leisurely contemplation of the weather, a note on the color of the sky, thoughts on whether 'tis better to walk in the rain or look at the rain: this is peace.

*Quote from The Princess Bride, of course!

Checking in

I survive December with long, deep breaths. I'm an introvert; I need great quantities of time alone; but in December — December, with its birthday parties and holiday parties and school celebrations — I just can't find it. So I breathe deeply. I whisper to myself the way I whisper to my children when they're hurt or anxious: It's all right. Everything's going to be OK. Stay calm. Smile! Everything's all right.

*

On a completely unrelated note, have any of you seen this video? If I'd seen this video when I was 10, I would have quit gymnastics and bought a new bike. I find it totally inspiring. And I love how he just rides off, at the end, without commentary.

Interviewee

Rhea interviewed me. She asked thought-provoking questions that took me awhile to answer.

I noticed that you switched coasts so I was wondering what your thoughts are on the whole West Coast vs. East Coast phenomenon.

The beer out here is much better!

My Oregon-born niece is going to grad school in D.C. and she says no one there drinks beer. Here, I actually know a few people who brew their own.

What are your top 5 karaoke songs?

To be honest, the last time I saw a karaoke machine was in the mid-90s in a bar in Vilnius, Lithuania. I sing a lot, though, around the house. In the mornings I like to listen to booming orchestral music; it wakes me up. This is one of my favorites:

Do you believe in magic/miracles? Why or why not?

I believe that life itself is magic. I love to read (or watch or listen to) natural histories that describe the wonder of this world. Once my daughter captured a pregnant sagebrush lizard which laid eggs in a fishtank in our house. The eggs dried up and the lizard could barely move because she was so cold. Lizards need it hot. And I was all, How is it possible that lizards even exist? In Central Oregon it's below freezing eight months of the year, and even in summer the nights can be in the 40s. So how can a lizard live? How can it find food before the temps get so low it can no longer move? It is a Great Mystery.

What is your favourite food?

Once when I flew to Pennsylvania to see my parents, my mom picked me up from BWI and we stopped for dinner at one of those roadside places that serve only Maryland blue crab and bread. They sat us at a picnic table and dumped a load of crabs in front of us. HEAVEN!

Did you always know you wanted to have kids? And what do you enjoy most about being a parent?

I always kind of figured I'd marry and have kids but, like, really far in the future. Like, when I was thirty. And then all-of-a-sudden I was TWENTY EIGHT! Which is almost thirty! And I was married! So my husband and I decided to try for kids. I knew only one person with a child at that time, and I didn't know her well. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into.

Now that they're almost-8 and 5 and sleep through the night, I have to say that I just really enjoy my kids. They're so interesting and creative and they make me laugh.

What is your favourite season and why?

For my husband, who's a skiier, autumn is a season of anticipation; he greets every sign of the oncoming winter with this intense joy -- like a kid counting down the days to Christmas. It's contagious, that enthusiasm. So I like autumn for the best, too.

Great Interview Experiment

For the Great Interview Experiment I'm pleased to share my interview with Sremmus, a relatively new and very sweet blogger. She makes me want to wear pink. It was fun to wander through her archives.

You blog is fairly new. What made you want to start one up?

I needed a creative outlet for all of my rage. I know how that sounds, but in my real life I am such a push over and a people pleaser. Internalizing everything was not a healthy lifestyle for me anymore.

Is Sremmus (your blog name) purposely "summers" spelled backward? Hee hee, now I'm feeling really smart for noticing that. Or wait, maybe sremmus is a word. I need to check the dictionary. Or maybe it's Lithuanian. Is it Lithuanian? .... How did you choose that name?

Yep, it's summers spelled backwards! I tried so many names in the beginning, and they were all taken! So, I went with my maiden name backwards, it wasn't until about a week ago that the official Summers family web site is also sremmus. There goes thinking I'm brilliant.

Do any of your friends and family read your blog? Mine do. That definitely changes what I write! If your family did (or did not) read, do you think you'd write differently?

The whole point for me was to not have to hide anything anymore, so I only told my husband, and he already knows I am insane. It's great to have someone who truly knows you and still loves you. I did tell my sister about it, no one was reading my blog and I was pouting. She only read it once, with her being Christian and therefore from a totally different planet then me. Oh well!

I live in a town without a real mall, too, but I moved here from the city. Have you always lived in a small town? What do you like best about it?

I like to jump around, at least until I got married. I used to move every 3-6 months. You can do that if you are live in help to the rich and shameless and only take jobs that are temporary. I have lived in Minneapolis and San Fransisco, those are the biggest cities. Not to mention the countless tiny places!

If I only knew you from the blog, and came to visit you, what do you think would surprise me? I mean, do you think I'd say, "Oh! You're so tall!" or, I don't know, maybe "You have the MOST GORGEOUS dreadlocks! I'd never have guessed!"

Cool dreadlocks! I wish I was that awesome! Alas, I'm not. I am a chubby, white girl that you would probably not even look twice at. You would be very surprised with the 'real' me, because I am all smiles, giggles, and sweetness in person. I truly don't know how not to be. I feel so unimportant in real life and it is rather hard for me to let anyone see the me inside.

I stole this question from Alejna's interview (she's funnier than I): If you were a dessert topping, what sort of blog would you write? And wouldn’t you have trouble typing? ... How about this question instead: if you were a fairy godmother, what gift would you bestow on your godchild? (Or do you prefer the dessert topping question?)

Butterscotch, and hell ya it'd be difficult to type what with me gumming up my keys all the time!

I guess the gift of am open mind and strong sense of self would be my gift to a baby. Then they could experience the world without losing themselves.

Any excuse for a party

Mt. Bachelor hasn't enough snow yet to officially open. From a great distance — from Bend, for example — it looks as white as an ice cream cone but from a near distance you see the summit is pockmarked with black. Next weekend, they say. Snow is expected all this week; Mt. Bachelor should open next weekend.

The mountain's being technically closed keeps the tourists away but people still drive up from town. Snow-seekers. Hard-cores, some of them: the cinder cone already has interlocking snaking trails down every side. The Main Lodge parking lot this afternoon was like at a tailgate party — not that anyone stood around drinking (that happens later in the season), but there was the same atmosphere of excited anticipation. A few snowboarders had hiked up the Pine Marten run to fly down, skimming over jibs; others sat in the snow, watching, as snowboarders will do. Families were sledding, little kids shouting and laughing. In the parking lot one rig after another went wheee-heeee-hew! in glorious four-wheel power slides.

As for us, we hadn't brought sleds, so we drove to the far side of the parking lot, where other people had packed a trail. Not that my children actually stayed on a trail.

A thin crust on the snow held his weight ...

for a moment. The snow's chest-deep to a 7-year-old.



Hiking out at sunset. (That's, like, 4:30pm in mid-November.)

Technical writers say the darndest things

Or, how lessons-learned in parenting can be applied at work

While explaining why video tutorials should be user-led, technical writer Tom Johnson gave one of the best descriptions of child-led parenting that I've ever read.

"...Child-led parenting doesn’t mean you let your children do whatever they want without rules. Instead, her [his sister's] model of child-led parenting is to allow the children to make decisions and determine their course of action by themselves (to some extent).

"Some examples of non-child-led activities might be letting your children watch TV or parading them around rides at a theme park. In both cases, the child is floored by the external stimuli, not making decisions on his or her own but rather sitting back and letting someone else drive the input and thought.

"In contrast, on the beach, the activity is much more child-led. The child drives the activity all the way, deciding where to dig in the sand, how deep, whether to build a castle or not. The child decides whether to wade deep or shallow in the water, to run from waves or into waves, whether to dance around or stand still. The child decides what seashells to collect, how many to put in his or her bucket, how to arrange them, which ones to keep, and so on.

"In child-led activities, the child makes a ton of decisions about how he or she wants to do an activity. The activity doesn’t drive the child. The child’s choices drive the activity."

And that is how I try to parent — and live my life — forever and ever, amen.

Empty, con't.

Alejna said she didn't realize that any part of Oregon was desert. Before I met my husband and moved to Oregon in '96, I didn't know it contained desert, either. (As a teen I daydreamed about moving to either New Zealand or Oregon, thinking them equal, climatically speaking.)

But here, look at this precipitation map of Oregon from nationalatlas.gov. Bend straddles the Deschutes River (on the border between the green & the orange), roughly mid-way between Washington and California. Dry, dry, dry. You can see why we have just two local CSAs, and why I'm thrilled and kind of mystified that mine begins providing vegetables in mid-May.

Bend is the most heavily-populated town in all that orange bit. By a lot. We have 80,000 residents.

P.S. My friend and fellow Bendite SMJ did a great write-up of the Nature of Words event, the one I mentioned last week — an especially incredible event in context of that map below.

Setting (II)

First drafted August 5. I cleaned it up last night.

Central Oregon is desert. My kids call it "the cold desert" to distinguish it from the deserts one sees on TV and in books, with their cactuses and Gila monsters. Around here people call it the High Desert.

It's empty.

Well, of course it isn't empty. The drier, lower areas are pockmarked by junipers, sagebrush, bitterbrush, rabbitbrush. The ponderosas grow at higher elevations: ponderosas with bunchgrass at their feet or, in a very narrow zone, ponderosas with manzanita. Even higher the ponderosas cede to alpine firs.

At all elevations, however, there's a lot of space. Juniper trees don't form a forest; junipers are individuals. They stand one here, one over there, like ancient oaks in a savannah. Sagebrush and rabbitbrush stand alone, too. They don't form hedges. Between the junipers and the brushes you see dirt, you see rocks. Above you see the sky.

*

Photo taken near Silverlake on a very, very smoky day in August (hence the white sky). Fifty points if you recognize the place.

Relentless

In response to recent posts by Jody, Landismom and Chichimama, and an old one by Mimi.

This summer emptying the dishwasher was my son's job. He called it "the dish cycle": clean to dirty and back again, from the dishwasher to the cabinet to the table and back again, over and over, over and over, over and over. At first it amused him but by the end of the season he was almighty tired of the dish cycle.

*

When my kids were tiny everything was so hard; I didn't know how to be either a parent or a housewife and had to learn it all — how to care for a child with a fever, how to cook a hot breakfast for four, how to entertain guests over the holidays, how to choose a daycare — all that stuff was new to me, mysterious, and though exhausting, though often overwhelming, it was interesting.

Now I have become a wife and mother. I'm no longer in the process of becoming. It's done. I've transformed.

I no longer have to blaze the trail. I just have to walk it.

It ought to make me feel victorious, don't you think?

Explaining Portland

For everyone who dreams of someday moving to Portland, listen to the interview with John Raymond at OPB's Think Out Loud. The way he speaks, the cadence of it -- his gravelly voice, his droll, self-deprecating style of speaking -- and what he says is just so Portland.

[Update: OPB has this available as a podcast which you can download on iTunes. It's also on their web site, as I linked to above. You need to click on the teeny tiny "play" icon underneath the title.]

Distracting myself from H1N1

The Deschutes County health department just announced, "We are seeing a surge in the number of people presenting to the medical system with influenza like symptoms" — followed by, "we will only be getting a portion of our expected flu vaccine."

Children are scheduled to be vaccinated through the schools on October 30, but that's still 14 days away. I've been trying to determine whether I can (or ought to) avoid all stores and other public places during that timeframe.

Are you all freaking out about it? My daughter has viral-induced asthma, so I am. A bit. My son is freaking out, too — not because of me, but because of conversations at school. Before he eats ANYTHING, even breakfast, he washes his hands.

So, so. So. I've been distracting myself by thinking about nouns. Nouns have hampered my ability to understand electricity. — Wait! Come back! Hear me out.

"Electricity" is a noun but what we mean by electricity is not a solid, touchable thing, the way you think a noun ought to be. The word "electricity" really describes electric current: an-electric-charge-flowing. It describes an electric charge in motion, the way the nouns "waterfall" or "river" describe water in motion. Or you could say that an electric charge in motion is an event-in-progress, like a song or a lecture.

An electric charge: too many or too few electrons: a state of unbalance. We sometimes say that something "has" an electric charge, but that's a misnomer. Something is electrically charged. It's unbalanced — and it would rather not be; it seeks balance. Often explosively. Rub your feet on the carpet and then touch a doorknob, and you'll see what I mean.

Swishing your feet on the carpet gives you an electric charge. You pick up too many electrons. When you scuff your feet and quick! touch a doorknob! then ZAP. Your extra electrons leap across space to bond with the metal knob. What leaps is the current.

So the flow of that-which-is-charged is an electric current, or electricity. Science books for kids often use a water/river metaphor to explain this concept, but I rather like comparing electricity with life. (Me and Deepak Chopra, right?)

Electricity: that-which-is-charged flowing in search of balance.
Life: that-which-is-alive moving toward...

Oh, great. Now I'm thinking about H1N1 again.

La la la, la la la.

Somebody tell a joke!

Where

Once upon a time and long ago, this guy I know worked nights. He was going to school, too, at that time, so despite the job he hadn’t much money. He owned a truck but never seemed able to fill its tank completely. Sometimes on the way to work he’d run out of gas. He’d have to coast to the side of some silent thoroughfare. He’d swear, sigh, and then start walking, plastic gas can in hand – walking in the dark, in the rain, toward the bright lights of a gas station. Around him the city slept.

I always wondered what he encountered along the way. Surely each of these late-night hikes was a little adventure. What might he have encountered on a rainy night in Portland, back when Portland was a smaller, grubbier city?

*

I just finished reading Orson Scott Card’s book Shadow of the Giant, which was engaging but frustrating because I just couldn’t picture it. I couldn’t visualize the characters or their surroundings. Card didn’t provide enough detail. He’d write: The main characters went to Yerevan. Period. He never said if they’d gone to Yerevan during the day or at night, in winter or spring; he never said whether Yerevan was a tall modern noisy city or a short old musty village. Was it in the mountains or on a plain? Were there pine trees, or was it desert? They were in Yerevan; that’s all he said; so I couldn’t imagine the scene.

*

This past weekend my husband and I celebrated our anniversary in Portland, then drove home along a circuitous, scenic route – a driver’s route, really, following the kinds of unpopulated, narrow, serpentine roads that you see highlighted in Evo magazine. It was thrilling. I cinched my seatbelt.

When we got back on the highway (a one-lane state highway with no traffic; it was fun driving, too), my husband exclaimed at the gauges on his BMW. “We may run out of gas,” he commented. Oh, said I. Hm. We were just outside Dufur (population: 500), an outpost among rolling hills of wheat – hills rolling on and on, as far as one can see, covered in wheat and then patches of sagebrush and then wheat again. If we ran out of gas there, at dusk on a cold autumn day, what would we do? Try to hitch a ride to the next town, I guess. Maybe we could hoof it to a rancher’s house; surely ranchers have spare gas?

*

In the event we did not run out of gas. We made it 60 miles to the nearest (sizeable) town with plenty to spare. The whole way, though, I kept thinking about how the story “We ran out of gas, and then…” hinges on where one ran out of gas. The setting determines the action. Setting matters.

Stories that stick

All across Eastern Europe I bought books. Books in English, I mean. I'd been overseas for a year, stammering in incompetent Russian the whole time, only partially understanding what other people said to me: so I was desperate for stores. I couldn't find any English-language newspaper except The Financial Times (ack) nor any English-language magazine except The Economist (ack); I couldn't follow the local radio, and movies were all dubbed. I wasn't even able to eavesdrop on conversations. Lord, I was desperate for stories.

So as I traveled I stopped in bookstores and bought what they had in English. I was train-hopping around Eastern Europe in the early 1990's and my journals are laced with commentary on Annie Dillard, Joseph Conrad, John Barth. How odd.

These days I hardly ever read novels. They make me too distracted. If I'm in the midst of a novel I find myself staring into space, wondering about the characters, when I am supposed to be getting the children ready for school. Or listening in on staff meetings.

*

Thus ends my prelude to Sweet/Salty Kate's book meme, which I have via Magpie. I skipped the movie-related questions. I do not know anything about movies.


1) You are facing an epic journey. You may choose one companion, one tool and one vehicle from any book or film to accompany you. Or just one of the three. It's up to you. What do you choose?

I'd have Ged from Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books accompany me. He can bring his wizard's staff and his little boat, the Lookfar. Any epic journey can be improved by the presence of a wizard, I imagine.

2) You can escape to the insides of any book. Where do you go, and why?

To the Portuguese island which is the setting for Madeleine L'Engle's The Arm of the Starfish. It sounds absolutely lovely; also, I'd like to talk to Meg Murray as an adult.

3) You can bring one literary character into your current life. Who do you choose, and why?

At this particular point in my life, I'd welcome the friendship of Stone Telling from LeGuin's Always Coming Home. It would be like having my mom live with me. She's quiet and helpful and knowledgable about homemaking, and she tells great stories.

4) [x] is my go-to book. I could read that book fifty-seven times in a row without a break for food or a pee and not be remotely bored. In fact I’ve already done that but it wasn’t fifty-seven times. It was sixty-four.

I have several go-to books, depending on my mood. Half were written by Ursula LeGuin and the other half by Madeleine L'Engle.

5) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most enviable?

Oh, Vicky Austin. She and Adam Eddington are so much in love that they can communicate telepathically. And he teaches her to ride a dolphin, which becomes her friend in need. And everyone recognizes that she's going to grow up to be a great poet.

6) Of all the literary or film characters that made an impression on you as a kid, who was the most frightening?

Christine, the evil car! Omigod. When I was 12 my best friend loved horror movies. This one was her favorite. During sleep-overs she'd tell me a story in which Christine crashes through the window in her bedroom and kills us both. I NEVER SLEPT during her sleep-overs.

7) Every time I read The Dispossessed, I see something in it that I haven’t seen before.


11) After all these years, the closing scene in the book 2010: Odyssey II still manages to give me a thrill. ("ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE." Eeep!)

13) The coolest non-fiction book I’ve ever read is Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. Every time I flip through it, it makes me want to intone, out a window, "Hello, Horatio."

Parsely, sage, etc. etc.

Once a week I make my way to a gravel alley on the edge of downtown Bend. It's not as seedy as it sounds. Downtown Bend is a cute, touristy place; the alley I visit is in an area that's also cute (but not touristy): it's quiet, shady, filled with little millworker-built houses. Some of the houses have been converted to shops. This particular alley runs behind what is now a nonprofit and a women's clinic. Weedy flowers and shrubs grow in the dirt there — and underneath one of the currant bushes, during the growing season, sit a couple of coolers.

The coolers hold my eggs and vegetables. Well, not just mine. The eggs and veggies come from Gigi, who has a farm east of town. She stops by the alleyway once a week with overflowing canvas bags, and then throughout the day we CSA members open the coolers to exchange an empty bag for a full one.

*

So once a week I unload a bag of just-picked vegetables onto my kitchen counter, getting dirt everywhere and grinning, because just-picked vegetables make me happy. I give the guinea pigs carrot tops and radish tops and onion tops and whatever else I won't eat and then I refrigerate the rest — everything except the herbs. Gigi grows lots of herbs: parsely, sage, basil, thyme, tarragon, oregano, fennel, rosemary. I couldn't possibly use them all in a week, so I dry them. It's easy to do in this climate. The small-leafed herbs will dry in two days just sitting on the counter, believe it or not. Usually, though, I bunch them with a twist-tie and hang them from the cabinet handles. My husband doesn't like this method — he opens a cabinet to get a coffee cup or a glass and, damn!, knocks down a sprig of herbs — but it works well, and I feel so Little-House-on-the-Prairie-ish with these herbs hanging every-which-way!

*

Now I recommend you read Charlotte Freeman's post at Bookslut, which is about, I think, the art of homemaking. It's also about cooking deliciously despite being broke.

The library crowd

A crowd gathers outside the library at 9:50 in the morning. People of all ages: toddlers, teenagers, middle-aged women, an old man on a mountain bike. They stand apart from another, one here one there, shift their weight, squint in the sun. All are silent; even the toddlers are silent; except that a man in need of a shave, wearing jeans and a baseball cap, makes general comments to the air. No one engages him.

At 10am the librarian unlocks the door and, still silent, still separate, they flow inside.

Oh, you're a hedge

The 2 1/2 block walk from my kids' bus stop to our house passes through an overmanicured suburban neighborhood. It's neat. It's orderly. It's stultifying.

And that shows you what I know.

In the no-man's-land between two of those suburban houses stands an arctic willow hedge. Arctic willows are a fast-growing, cold-tolerant bush; around here people often plant them to conceal electrical boxes. The willow hedge that we pass every day stands taller than me and wider than my outstretched arms. Wispy, wavy limbs have begun to reach across the sidewalk. It needs a haircut.

As it turns out, inside the willow hedge is a space large enough for two children. Blake and Sasha can conceal themselves utterly; except for their whispers and laughter, you'd never know they were there. Every day they run ahead of me to slip inside the hedge and then, as I wonder aloud Where could my children be? BOO! They leap at me.

*

We have two willows beginning to hedge in our yard, too. The quail like that space. Some mornings we watch two dozen quail or more cluster under those willows and then, when they deem it safe, pass through to feast on the clover in the grass.

*

Gregory Smith in the magazine Clearing (Jan/Feb 1996), "The development of an ecologically literate citizenry ... may be linked to regular, unstructured experiences in wild places (both urban and rural), much as the development of reading skills depends upon contact with books and adults who read them." Urban, rural — and suburban, too.

Time

Last Friday my youngest child started all-day kindergarten. Do you know what that means?

FREE TIME.

For the last several years I've tried to work 20 hours/week with just 18 hours of daycare or less. Now I have 30 hours of daycare and (at the moment anyway) a 20 hr/week cap on work.

It's, like, totally weird.

I feel I need to fill those extra hours productively: earning money, preferably, or at the very least cleaning the house, winterizing, putting up jars of jam. I feel as though those hours will be revoked if I don't use them wisely. For the last several years I've had to snatch every moment alone, every moment in which I hoped to complete a task; if I wanted to get something done, I had to give up time with my children or my husband. Go watch TV, kids! Mom needs to make dinner!

And now I have free time. Not stolen time. Free!

It's very strange.

In a month I'm sure it will all be reallocated.

Stuff II

Labor Day weekend my husband and I hosted a sleepover for six families at my in-laws' Camp Sherman house. For toys I brought two board games (the forecast called for rain) and a bag full of recycling: egg cartons, empty bottles, stuff like that. We also had two large rolls of duct tape.

If you ever need to entertain 14 children, raid the recycle bin first. Those kids spent hours building boats, launching them in the creek, racing to catch them — and then destroying them and building again.

Listening comprehension

My son tried to fly out of a tree in his geocopter. He scraped himself up pretty badly. To keep him lying down until the biggest scrape stopped bleeding — lying quietly, without whining — I piped the latest RadioLab podcast through the stereo. Have you listened to that one? It's about parasites. It's fascinating. Some scientists claim severe allergies will disappear if one gets hookworm.

Anyway, my 7-year-old listened, entranced, to the whole RadioLab podcast. I quizzed him about it afterward. "The parasitic wasp stung the cockroach in the stomach and then it was able to control the cockroach," he said. "Just like the rat in Ratatouille! It laid its eggs inside the cockroach, and the eggs hatched and ate the cockroach from the inside. It was still alive! Then the babies burst out of its head and it died."

"What excellent listening comprehension," I said. "You understand what you hear."

"Yes, I do." He looked thoughtful. "I don't understand when people are talking to me, though."

"You don't understand people when they talk directly to you?"

"Right. Like when I'm in trouble. I never understand what you're saying."

*

I'm thinking I ought to record some of my lectures so I can play them on the iPod when needed. Like the one about not jumping out of trees while harnessed to a cardboard-and-duct tape geocopter.



The propeller actually works quite well. We flew it off the balcony and it hovered for awhile before dropping. It doesn't hover while he's harnessed to it, though. Picture taken about 8pm — when all inspiration strikes.

Revenge

Earlier this summer, when I realized both my children could climb the silver maple in the backyard, I moved the lava rocks that were underneath it. The rocks didn't look very nice anyway. I think this house's previous owners intended for the rocks to look artfully placed, but to me they just looked like a couple lava rocks dropped at the base of a tree.

So I moved the rocks, and lo! the ants did scurry. Ants had nests beneath nearly every rock; when I moved the rocks I exposed the pupa. I felt badly about it. I did! I covered the pupa with an inch of dirt, hoping that would save them.

A week or so later we noticed that the ants had moved their colonies to the sandy spaces between the pavers of our back deck. My husband said we should kill them; he said that eventually they'd force us to re-lay the pavers. Ah, I thought. That's my fault. But we left them alone.

Two months later, as you know, those same ants have entered my house. Yesterday I found some on my kitchen counter.

And that is the limit to my ant empathy.

Yuck! It's disgusting! When I chop vegetables I'm just sure an ant will climb onto the cutting board and get mixed into the salad. What if I mistake an ant for a sliver of basil and EAT IT? Aack!

Clearly the ant traps I bought aren't working, so I researched alternatives. Borax, said the internet. Bleach, said the internet. Vinegar, said the internet. Baby powder, said the internet.

Baby powder being the least toxic and smelly of those choices, I dug out the bottle left from Sasha's infancy. I sprinkled a line of powder across the kitchen. I sprinkled some where I thought they were entering the living room.

That was three hours ago. I don't want to declare victory too soon; but?

THEY'RE GONE.


(Can I return to my lazy ways in the kitchen now?)

The first frost can't come fast enough

My kitchen is immaculate. That's not usually the case. I tend to leave dinner's pots and pans until morning; and because the kids and I forage all day – sitting down to breakfast or lunch is such a waste of time, don't you think? – there's almost always dirty cups or plates on the counter. I store fruit in a bowl on the counter. I keep the bletch bucket there.

No longer. I wash dishes immediately; I store all food in the refrigerator; the bletch bucket is emptied 10 times a day. My kitchen is immaculate, I tell you.

It's the bugs. I can't stand it anymore. Fruit flies! House flies! Earwigs! Spiders! Moths! The other day I found a gigantic, black beetle in my bowl of strawberries. I've never seen such a beetle. How did it get in the house, never mind in my bowl of strawberries? Eeee-uck.

Also, we have ants. Sugar ants, they call 'em. They're mostly in the living room. The kids and I followed them to try to find their nest; we didn't see evidence of one, but after awhile we realized the ants were entering and exiting from the floorboards near the front door. I bought little ant houses with poison inside. It was an interesting science lesson for the children – kill the queen, kill the colony; but how do you kill the queen if you can't see her? – although I must say it's a lesson I'd rather have taught them theoretically than experientially.

So, yeah. My kitchen is immaculate. At least until the first frost.

The good life

It's been so blasted hot that we spent all Sunday in Lake Creek, the mint-lined stream that runs through a meadow near my in-laws' place. Lake Creek isn't shocking meltwater anymore, and it's not overflowing anymore — when I floated it with Sasha, our float bumped the bottom. It was pleasant. It was calming. My husband and I lounged on aluminum lawn chairs we set in the creek, drinking PBRs while the kids splashed about.

Does that sound hopelessly white trash? Well. So be it. I shall teach my children noodling.

Off the off the beaten track

"Mom, I can't get over this barbed wire!" Blake called.

I gave my water bottle to Sasha, told her to stand still, and walked back through the cheatgrass to where Blake stood, stuck between bitterbrush, lava rock and, apparently, barbed wire. Sasha and I, following a deer trail through the brush, hadn't crossed any barbed wire; but Blake, he doesn't walk where others walk. I lifted him over the wire and sternly reminded him what it means to follow someone.

My husband had pulled some strings to get my car's oil changed today (don't ask), but we didn't know how long it would take the mechanics to get to it; we didn't know if we three would be sitting on their sidewalk for half an hour or four hours. "Walk to Sawyer Park," my husband suggested. "It's only a mile." I considered it.

The service garage is in a light industrial area of windowless buildings with lots full of RVs and boats and trucks. Security gates enclose everything. Parkway traffic roars by. No one walks around there. That's what I thought at first, anyway. Then I stood with one hand on my hip and another shading my eyes, and I squinted, and considered, and I saw there is, in fact, an interesting way to walk. We could take a jagged line through abandoned lands of hardy, prickly Central Oregon shrubs and invasive weeds. Lizards live in that liminal place. Grasshoppers, too. Grasshoppers clack-clacked, leaping, as we pushed by.

We had water and gorp but it was so hot and prickly that I knew after just 1/4 mile that the kids would never make it to the park. I thought we might find a closer path to the river, though. It was really hot. The kids kept collapsing in bits of shade. When we crossed from that industrial space to a residential street, I hoped for a sprinkler — vainly; even the temporary owners of foreclosed properties know not to run their sprinklers at 3pm.

"Look," I said, pointing to a lot that was once, I suspect, a working ranch. Mature ponderosas grew there. "The river's on the other side of that land. You can make it!" I urged them on.

But at that old ranch we found something better than the Deschutes, at least as far as young, drownable children are concerned: a busted irrigation pipe. Water just poured from that pipe. It made a creek along the side of the road. My kids shouted and leapt. Blake, he climbed a split-rail fence and jumped into the creek's deepest part. With knees bent he was in water up to his neck. Sasha found a snake skin, a drowned lizard and tadpoles. I kid you not: tadpoles. That pipe must've been broken a long time.

Thus refreshed, we walked back to the service garage.


This is the Central Oregon version of Sweet Juniper's experiences in Detroit. You could say I'm making a meme of his post about pathways of desire.

White Noise

Our first day on Orcas Island dawned cold and rainy — not fat, Central Oregon droplets with sunlight visible between them but fine, misty stuff, like the inside of a cloud. There was nothing to do in that rain but sleep.

Toward afternoon the sky raised and then the sun broke though. Which made a nap even nicer.

Artist Brother-in-law on the beach.

Na, na — I cannae, I cannae

Awhile back a book meme went around that asked something like, "Which literary character would you like to marry?" Most of the bloggers I read answered, "Mr. Darcy, of course!"

Really? Darcy? I hadn't read Pride and Prejudice but I'd seen two movie versions (the one with Colin Firth and the one with Keira Knightley) and I didn't particularly like Mr. Darcy in either. He's so arrogant! He's silent. He doesn't do anything. He just travels from party to party being arrogant and silent.

Recently I heard Mr. Darcy praised again, so I thought, well, I'd better read the book. If so many people like him, clearly I'm missing something. He must have more depth than what's shown in the movie. (I planned to read the book in the San Juans but OMG! I loved it! I stayed up late to read it. I finished it before we ever reached the ferry.) And lo, I did like Mr. Darcy. I see that while he's arrogant, he is also an honorable man. He does a lot more than go to parties, too, in the book; he's got an estate to run, he has tenants and vast acreage to care for. I respect that.

I don't want to marry him, though. Do you? He has no sense of humor! He's silent!

I'll tell you which literary character I like. I wouldn't marry him, but I have a wee bit of a crush on him.

Alan Breck.

From Kidnapped? The Robert Louis Stevenson novel?

Wait, wait, I'm completely serious here. I borrowed Kidnapped from the library thinking I'd read it to the kids in the San Juans; after skimming just the first chapter I knew they'd never understand it; but after skimming just the first chapter I was totally hooked. While on vacation I kept stealing away to read parts of it, and it fair haunted me, I tell ye.

Alan Breck! What a hero! He's a great swordsman and he's brash and he's a dandy and he always carries with him the buttons off his dead father's coat. He's generous and open-hearted and would travel to the ends of the earth (or across the heather, pursued by English soldiers) for a friend. He has an impeccable sense of honor. He's a little guy but he has great reserves of strength, sleeping on rocks, traversing mountains without a whimper. But he's emotional. He sings all the time. He cries. And that scene in the heather? When he and David Balfour have been travelling in such hardship for such a long time, and young David draws his sword on him? What a lovers' quarrel! That's when I most liked Alan Breck.

Alan stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind.

"This is a pity" he said at last. "There are things said that cannot be passed over."

"I never asked you to," said I. "I am as ready as yourself."

"Ready?" said he.

"Ready," I repeated. "I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!" And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Alan himself had taught me.

"David!" he cried. "Are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, David. It's fair murder."

"That was your look-out when you insulted me," said I.

"It's the truth!" cried Alan, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. "It's the bare truth," he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. "Na, na," he kept saying, "na, na — I cannae, I cannae."

I wouldn't marry Alan Breck, though, like I said. It's only a matter of time before one government or another lops off his head.

*

David and Alan eat oatmeal. All through the book — when David first meets his uncle; as they beg a night's lodging from strangers; as they flee through the mountains — they eat oatmeal. Apparently Scottish oatmeal is stone-ground, not rolled. I thought that was interesting. I was trying to imagine eating oatmeal with water three meals a day every day for weeks on end.

When you're a mother concerned with running a household as inexpensively (but not cheaply) as possible, you notice different things in a book than you did at age 12.

Distractions

By the kitchen sink I keep what my husband calls a "bletch bucket." It's for compostable food scraps. In the winter our bletch bucket might sit by the sink for days, collecting only banana peels. Once the CSA starts up and the weather warms, however, it fills and smells and attracts fruit flies, so I empty it once a day.

The compost bins sit in the far corner of the backyard. To reach them I pass the raised bed and the flower bed. This can take half an hour. Cheat grass keeps growing amongst the flowers, you see, so I have to pull that, and then I have to check on the blueberries and why, pray tell, did the hundred flowers on that bush form only a dozen berries? I let Sasha plant the radishes too closely together; in case you're tempted to do this let me dissaude you; the radish greens will grow well but you won't get a single radish bulb. Which is fine for feeding guinea pigs but not people. So as I pass I pull radish greens for our dear Apocolypse Pets, and pick a pea or two for me, and then I fail to suppress my astonishment at the sunflowers. Did I tell you about the sunflowers? Last year two or three grew in dry dust back there, back where I put the compost bins, and lo, they have multiplied. It's a sunflower forest. They are just about to bloom. Wasps like them. I find wasps absolutely creepy but bees are interesting. Honeybees visit the flowerbed. On my way back to the house I squat to watch them.

Then one of the children calls me or I remember the pasta water is boiling or whatever, you know, I remember whatever task I had started before deciding to empty the bletch bucket, and I hurry back inside.

*

By the way: One of the three bins is completely filled with dirt. I made dirt in just six months. In the desert! That's what they call continuous learning.

Guinea Pigs: The Apocalypse Pet

Our two guinea pigs like to eat lettuces, all parts of a carrot, young radish leaves, apple peels, crabapples, watermelon peels (just the green part, not the rind), clover, all parts of a dandelion, the leaves of lamb's quarters and green grass.

In other words, my guinea pigs eat weeds.

*

We moved into this new house just as the economy of Bend (A.K.A. the Bend housing market) entered free-fall. I was afraid we'd made a horrible mistake. I was afraid the market would fall so far we'd be upside-down on our new mortgage.

I rationalized our purchase by insisting that this is an Apocalypse House. It has two fireplaces, so theoretically we don't need heat. It has room for a clothesline and room for a garden and we could, if push came to shove, bunk the kids in the master bedroom & rent out their rooms. And we have the guinea pigs, which subsist on weeds, and which are themselves edible.

Crazy, eh? It did feel, for awhile, like everything was crashing around us. It doesn't seem quite so desperate anymore. Even though I'm on furlough this week.

Adventure/Misadventure

I found myself with a bit of free time today, so I went for what my brother-in-law calls a "town ride" on my mountain bike. I took the Sawyer Uplands trail, which is just a mile and a half from my house; it's near my favorite park and I've been curious about it for awhile.

And?

Holy crap.

The Sawyer Uplands trail practically stopped my heart — steep, rock-strewn single-track with a cliff on the right, so that I instinctively hugged to the left, and then clipped my pedal against lava rock and dirt. It's the kind of single-track that has to be ridden because it's too narrow to walk one's bike. It's the kind of single-track I haven't ridden in seven years.

Of course I fell. I lost my balance on an uphill switchback and fell backward, unclipping just in time to avoid crashing on a rock, and twisted my ankle so bad I felt sick. I sat for awhile to calm myself. You're ok, for goodness sake, you're ok... Ground squirrels skittered between rocks and I saw butterflies and birds. A lawnmower purred. Ho hum. I got back up. I kept riding because, by God, I'm not 40 yet.

And lo: the Sawyer Uplands trail dead-ends in someone's driveway. The trail is, like, 3/4 mile long.

So I rode back down and hopped on the "Awbrey Reach" section of the Deschutes River Trail, which is basically a dirt road. It wasn't very exciting but the views were incredible and I saw a three-point buck resting under a juniper tree.

I love living here.

Wednesday Wondering

Alternate careers I think I would have liked, in no particular order.

Botanist. I am curious to know if a serviceberry could be crossed with a blueberry. Could you get a larger, sweeter berry that's drought- and frost-resistant?

Mediator. As a parent I resolve disputes all day long and I find it interesting. (Ask me again at bedtime, though. I might have a different answer.) In my last job I had a lot of responsibility but no authority, which means I had to make people want to do what I wanted them to do; that's a lot like parenting, actually, and I think like arbitrating professionally.

Technical writer or writer of science texts for children. I dislike dinosaurs, to speak honestly, but I do appreciate the art of creating dinosaur texts for small children. It's a puzzle. How do you explain extinction to a four-year-old? How do you explain the dinosaurs' extraordinary size?*

Arborist. Last fall an arborist trimmed our 120-foot-tall ponderosa and then lopped the top 20 feet off a trio of dead birches. He was like an acrobat, like a dancer, up in those trees. He sang the whole while. I think I'd enjoy that, too.

Bookstore owner. Doesn't everybody want to own a bookstore? I'd like to own one of those silent, dusty stores along Burnside in Portland, across from Powell's, the ones that sell old books about the Pacific Northwest and have so few customers that the place barely turns a profit, but the owner is happy anyway because she gets to spend the entire day reading.


Career choices which would be a colossal mistake:

Anything requiring decision-making; anything requiring attention to detail; and anything requiring the wearing of high heels.

What about you?



*Not all dinosaurs were gigantic. Some were the size of a chicken. (For the record.)

Open the doors and see all the ...

We spent the day raking and mowing and planting and all that springtime stuff, except it wasn't springtime: it was hothothot, August hot.

So we shut up the house, like they say to do on those "how to save energy in the summer" lists, then opened it up again in the evening. There was a breeze so I even opened the door to the back yard ... and now we have a mouse in the house. A little gray mouse.

Eeek!

Garden notes from all over

I built a raised garden bed. I did! This house's previous owners left some unfinished wood siding in the back yard, which I sawed into appropriate lengths and connected with nails and wood screws. It's 4' x 4' x 2'.



You aren't impressed. You should be. I haven't made anything from wood since 7th grade shop class. And I did this all by myself, with no help from anyone.

Ta da!

*

But. I killed the thyme. I'm not quite sure what happened. It was growing well on my windowsill; it had bright green new leaves; and then in the span of a day it wilted and died. Testy little thing.

But! Four tomato seeds have sprouted! We'll see if I can keep those suckers alive.

*

You heard that the Obamas have authorized a vegetable garden at the White House, right? It's not in sight of the White House, but it's big. They're planning to grow a lot of spinach.

The White House also now has a First Beekeeper.

It's a real sign of something or other, I tell you.

What he said

I am absolutely loving the Spring 2009 issue of Oregon Humanities. This is John Daniel describing Oregon's dry side:

"Spare were the junipers, homely and stalwart, in loose array on the slow rise ... each tree casting its own distinct shadow as the passing clouds cast theirs. There was something civilized and welcoming in the way trees and creatures and human beings as well apportioned themselves in the land. The country presented itself in particulars – this juniper, this lichened rock, this golden eagle riding the thermals, this series of ecstatic, wailing coyote cries in the deep of the night – and this way that solitary things and happenings invited my attention seemed to show me traces at least of my own singularity, a sense of what I was and could be or could at least hope to be."

Essay "In Favor of Rootedness."