Break it up

On Wednesday the children and I – well, mostly the one child, my daughter – planted 64 daffodil bulbs. On Thursday the squirrel (who's been going berzerk for weeks now) dug them up.

"God damn squirrel!" said she.

In other news, this morning she broke up a fight between a Stellar's Jay and a Western Scrub-jay. They were apparently attempting to peck each other to death. I don't know why; it's the squirrel who's stealing all the ponderosa pine cones. A posse of jays squawked, squawked, squawked at the warriors from the fence.

"Arrp!" my daughter screeched at them. "Arrrrrrrp!"

They broke it up. Everyone always listens to Sasha.

*

Veronica Mitchell asked (via Twitter) how we make the narratives of motherhood interesting to non-parents. I don't have an answer; I just know that this? Isn't it!

What do you think?

Saving leopards, part 2

Updated final paragraphs for clarity.

Of course money can help save leopards. It was cynical of me to say that it doesn't. Just a little bit of money can help a lot, too. National Geographic's Big Cat Initiative, for example, funded a project to fence in the livestock of Masai herders. The Masai have moved into new lands, says National Geographic, where their animals are being killed by lions and leopards; the Masai kill those big cats in retaliation. A more substantial fence (and a lot of discussion, sounds like) dramatically reduces cat/human conflict.

Or there's ALTA, the Amur Leopard and Tiger Alliance, which compensates people for livestock killed by (one of the 30-odd remaining) Amur leopards; and the Snow Leopard Trust, which vaccinates livestock in remote Pakistani villages in exchange for an agreement to leave the leopards alone – under the theory that snow leopards don't kill livestock, common illnesses do.

Simple programs, right? And relatively inexpensive.

The question is, however: Where does an 8-year-old boy get even a little bit of money?

Well, we have an idea. Blake's going to make money from garbage.

**

Three weeks ago we watched the National Geographic show about sea birds who eat plastic. Have you seen that one? Albatross parents fly over the ocean, scanning for food to feed their babies, and they think they see something promising so they scoop it up, but it's not food. It's tiny bits of plastic. Albatross babies eat the plastic and then they die. (According to the linked article, mortality is 40%.)

The show distressed my kids, as you'd imagine. We had a long talk about it, and then we looked inside our own garbage can. Yikes. My daughter started pulling out all the plastics she found in there, saying, "We can't throw this away! We can't!"

So, so. I set our old glass fishbowl on the kitchen counter, and for the last three weeks, rather than trashing non-recyclable plastics, we've been putting them in the bowl.

It's shocking. Really. The city of Bend has a great recycling program, but they don't accept all plastics and let me tell you, there's a lot of plastic in this world. Almost every food comes wrapped in plastic – not just "junk food" but everything: grapes, blueberries, bread, cheese, tortillas, tortilla chips, granola bars... That glass bowl filled pretty quickly. We had plastics all over the counter.

At first I'd thought the kids could reuse most of it, and in fact Sasha took a lot of those flimsy clamshells; but what oh what could we do with the rest?

Well. The company Terracycle buys some plastic garbage: ziplock bags, candy wrappers, chip bags, things like that. They make products from it. They give you mailing labels; you fill an envelope with whichever type of garbage you've committed to providing, and then you mail it to them. For each piece of garbage, they donate (generally) $0.02 to the charity of your choice. Usually they work with large groups, like schools or boy scout troups, but individuals can join, too.

So. As a pilot program – to find out if this is an even remotely feasible way of dispensing with non-recyclables – we're collecting wine corks. Not all wine corks are plastic, of course, but they are garbage and they're easy to collect: our extended family drinks a lot of wine! So far Blake has collected 22 wine corks. At this rate I expect he'll collect 300 corks in a year, which will raise $6 for ALTA.

Yeah.

You can join our wine cork brigade, if you want. I can get you the mailing labels. You have to collect 25 before you can mail them in.

Hope

In some areas of the forest a few trees survived the fire, but in this place everything burned. It's unsettling — ghostly — and dizzying. The trail we followed runs high on a ridge; between the trees' black and white hulls we could see the other mountains as if through venetian blinds.

The sun was so bright that day I had to squint and my glasses got covered in trail dust and I was, after all, hiking with friends and many small children, so I didn't ever really look. That burned forest got into me, though. After an hour's hike I felt quiet and calm and hopeful.

At the trees' feet grew manzanita, brightbright green, the green of new growth.

Photo and partially related anecdote

Over Labor Day my husband and I hosted four families at my in-laws' house in Camp Sherman: three families we've gotten to know since moving to Bend eight years ago, and one family that my husband has known since childhood. (Well, he's known the man in the family since childhood.)

Sunday morning, while the adults sleepily drank coffee and the children rampaged, my husband and his friend told stories. They were really funny stories but also impressive, like the one about the time they waterskiied at dawn and then, around noon, climbed South Sister: foolhardy and brave and strong and young. My husband also talked about his older brother and his brother-in-law, who in their 20s climbed North Sister in Stan Smiths with crampons attached to them; at the summit they broke open a 6-pack of beer and sandwiches bought at a convenience store, startling the sober, helmet-clad climbers sitting around them with water and gorp.

One of our guests asked her husband, "Do you think our boys will do anything like that?" and he replied, "I hope so."

One of their sons and my daughter, Sunday afternoon, on the ridgeline above Jack Lake.

Two

1. It's snowing on Mt. Bachelor. In August. Twenty miles from my house.

2. I just watched POV's 3-minute animated short "Q&A," in which a 12-year-old boy with Asperger's Syndrome interviews his mother. I have two comments on this film:

2-1. Twelve year old boys are generally as tall as their mothers. The boy in this film is way too short.

2-2. I've had very similar conversations with my son (although he's rarely self-doubting). I'd say I have conversations like this with everyone. What is it, exactly, that tips off the "neurotypical" that the boy is Asperger's? Or does he seem completely normal to you, and you only know he's Asperger's because they tell you?

Scree

My parents took the children on a Fun and Amazingly Wonderful vacation this week. They did this so that I could work – but my husband and I just had to take a wee vacation ourselves. Yesterday we skipped work and instead climbed South Sister.

South Sister is the third-highest mountain in the state, but climbing it is relatively easy. This here is the hardest part: the scree field leading to the summit. The rocks roll under you feet like ball bearings. Also, all that red plays tricks on your eyes. When you look up – to see how far above your husband is, for example, or to let a downhill climber pass – everything that's not red takes on a blue-green hue. People's faces look ghostly.

Interior

If you water it, they will come

When I learned that a raccoon had dug a house for itself under our garden shed, I intended to buy a trap. The children talked excitedly about a live trap, but I've had encounters with those dexterous creatures; I doubt I could manage an angry, caged raccoon. I thought I'd better kill him.

Then Terry Tempest Williams spoke in Bend. Have you heard her speak? Oh, my. When you read her books, you can put them down for a moment to hug your children, or punch a wall, or whatever helps you diffuse the intensity of her sorrow; but when she speaks, you must listen. You must face what she's facing. It's difficult.

Anyway, when Ms. Williams came to Bend, amongst her larger tale she told a little story about prairie dogs. She said that the Army Corps. of Engineers decided (I can't remember why) to eliminate prairie dogs from a section of Utah. Being modern citizens they first talked it over with the Native Americans, who said, "But if you kill all the prairie dogs, who will cry for the rain?" And the Army Corps. of Engineers said, Ah. Huh. Then they killed the prairie dogs. And then: Without prairie dogs maintaining tunnels under the ground, turning over the dirt and aerating it, the soil turned to hardpan; when it rains, the water doesn't seep into the soil but instead runs right off. Without prairie dogs, what was desert is now wasteland.

Now, obviously I'm talking about killing one raccoon, not all the raccoons in the Bend metropolitan area; but after listening to Ms. Williams, I thought it behooved me to pause. To consider. To watch awhile.

*

He left. The raccoon left. We put one of my son's old toy trucks at the entrance to the house he built under our shed, and now he's gone.

That's anticlimactic.

*

Yesterday evening my husband and I watched a rock chuck (a yellowbellied marmot) eat the clover in our front yard. He gathered tall, dry grasses and carried them into his house under our big tabletop rock, where I believe he intends to hibernate. He's super cute and fun to watch. He has dexterous hands like the raccoon. Like me.

But they say rock chucks like lettuce and tomatoes and this one I know for a fact likes not-quite-ripe raspberries.

So I'm watching.

In the absence of viable solutions

"What would you do," my son asked, "if you found out your best friend was in danger? What would you do if people were trying to kill him?"

My son's best friend is a leopard (stuffed, but real to him). In school this year he learned that leopards are endangered. People are poaching them. People are destroying their habitat. One subspecies of leopard, the Amur leopard, is "critically endangered": in real danger of extinction. Only 40 remain in the wild. In this dinosaur-obsessed household, we know all about extinction.

"What can I do to save my friend?" he asked.

Son, I have no idea.

I did tell him about organizations that work to save leopard habitat; I told him he could send money. I told him about fair-trade businesses and said he could buy things from them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To an eight-year-old, these are not solutions. They hardly sound like solutions to me.

So we went to the library. Now, Leopard has been Blake's best friend for years; he's gone to show-and-tell at school, he's been to friends' houses; he even has five leopard cousins – gifts to Blake on birthdays and Christmases; yet somehow we have never read anything about leopards. We checked out every single big cat book.

As it turns out, Leopard doesn't have five leopard cousins. He has one leopard cousin. Blake's other stuffed animals are jaguars and cheetahs. (Only a few jaguars are black. Most look like this.) We are now able to identify all the big cats, and we know where they live. We know their characters and their eating habits. We also know that all the big leopard-like cats except cougars are endangered.

Did the books give my son guidance on how to save his friends? Not really. They suggest sending money. OK, OK, we'll send money. Here's some money.

Now what? The animals are still endangered.

I read more about cougars, the non-endangered cats. Their story is really interesting. I'd never heard it before. In the 1960s cougars were nearly extinct in Oregon, so the state changed their status from predator to game animal – meaning, the state cancelled the bounty on their heads and instead charged a fee for hunting them. Then in the '90s voters passed a ban on hunting cougars with dogs. Now, 50 years later, more than 5000 cougars live in Oregon.*

Actually so many cougars live here that it's becoming a problem. So many cougars live here that the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife has a standing arrangement with the Oregon Zoo to place captured animals. Six cougars were recently killed on a ranch in Linn County – not a ranch in remote eastern Oregon, but one in the populous Willamette Valley, one just 30 miles from the university.

I told my son this cougar story thinking he'd be thrilled, that he might see how politicking can save animals, but instead he only said, "Good. I'll have fewer animals to bring to Leopardland."

Yes. Leopardland. In the absence of useful adult solutions, my kid has come up with his own.

He's building a boat which he intends to sail to the South Pacific, where there are many unclaimed islands. When he finds one with appropriate habitat, he and his stuffed leopards (and jaguars and cheetahs) will then gather up all the remaining leopards, two by two, like Noah, and take them to Leopardland. Where they will be safe.

*This is all in Oregon's cougar management plan, which I highly recommend reading.

I went to the moon

aka Tam McArthur Rim. My dad took this picture.

I changed my mind

Thirty hours of work each week is so much more than 20. Last week I managed it pretty well but this week is Going. Very. Badly.

I had this idea that I shouldn't work when I'm the only parent in the house; my kids are 6 and 8 but still, when they need attention, they need it; so this weekend I drafted a schedule for myself that would get my work hours in while not detracting from my parenting.

Plan V. Actual, Monday

Plan: 6:30 - 7:30am - Work while kids are asleep
Actual: 6:30 - 7:30am - Asleep

Plan: 7:30 - 9:30am - Make lunches for kids and husband, make breakfast for kids and self, get kids ready for camp, drop off at camp (note they are not at the same camp this week)
Actual: 7:30 - 10:00am - As above, except after dropping the kids off, I had to go back home, get Blake's glasses & bring them back to him at camp

Plan: 9:30 - 12:45am - Work while both kids are at camp
Actual: 10:00 - 11:30 - Work, but accidentally retrieve Sasha 1 hour early. She is in Spanish camp and I don't speak Spanish and no one bothered to tell me IN ENGLISH that I was an hour early.

Plan: 1:30 - 3:00pm - Conference call, unavoidable, while Sasha draws (!)
Actual: 12:30 - 3:00pm - Work and then conference call while Sasha watches Zoboomafoo and makes lions and other creatures out of Bendaroos. (These were totally cool, by the way.)

Plan: 3:00 - 10:00pm - Play with Sasha, retrieve Blake from camp, play with both of them, cook dinner, eat dinner, clean up from dinner, put kids to bed, have conversation with husband, put self to bed

Actual: 3:00 - 10:00pm - As above, except that my husband invited his dad over for dinner, since his mom was out of town; and somewhere in there I wrote a blog post; and?

Actual: 10:00pm - midnight: Work.

Tuesday and Wednesday have gone WORSE, if you can believe it, since I forgot to budget for things like unavoidable errands and laundry. I have to make up 3 1/2 hours somewhere!

And I'm wasting valuable minutes blogging!

In whose house?

I was working from my dining room with the door to the backyard open when a commotion caught my attention. About 30 quail had flown over the fence. They pecked through the grass. What do they eat? Ants? A lot of ants live in that dirt. My sister says they're to blame for the aphids in the aspens. One of the quail sat on the roof of the garden shed, overlooking the others (and my neighbor's caged chickens, which strikes me as funny) and calling out warnings.

The quail weren't the commotion, though. They'd spooked the squirrel, who has been lately busy burying ponderosa seeds, and he chirp-chirp-chirped at them, very loud. I know this is a warning chirp because he yells at me that way, sometimes, when I burst into the backyard. The Stellar's jay yelled, too. Mine! Mine! Mine!

I spooked them all when I tried to make a movie for you — once the squirrel and jay stopped yelling, the quail made such a nice, soothing sound — but maybe eight quail are still out there, side-by-side with a young flicker, pecking at the dirt.

*

In Ursula LeGuin's Always Coming Home, which is a kind of science fiction/fantasy/anthropology hybrid, the creatures of the world live in different "houses." I think this is a Native American concept. Some animals live in the same house as humans – sheep and cows and dogs, for example – and some live nearby, which if I remember right is the second house: quail, deer and other hunted animals. Then the more elusive animals, like cougar or eagles, are considered to live separately from those in the first two houses.

When I walk out my door to startle quail, squirrels, jays, robins, deer or the marmot who's taken up residence under a rock in the front yard, I always think about that distinction; I think that I'd draw the line in a different place; because when I walk out my door, I imagine myself entering their house — or, at least, our house.

Pink (New York City version)

I passed this store in Manhattan & had to photograph it for Nora. Who is now in Manhattan herself.

The sign says "Pink"! But it's actually yellow! Which is so funny, because after Nora photographed pink in Western Oregon, I obsessed over finding pink in Central Oregon, but it was just yellow yellow yellow everywhere!

(I should have photographed yellow flowers spelling out "pink.")

Another

Here's the buck posing nicely for you. Cool markings on his face, eh?

Why no one in my neighborhood has flowers

While I was out photographing these marauders, a dog startled them. They ran straight at us.

Two bucks, a doe, a young buck and two fawns.

Ranty break

I know y'all are planning for Blogher (I wish I could go, too!) but thought I'd point you anyway to Charlotte Freeman's latest column, which is ranty and awesome. Here's the essence of it:

"Why should we try to buy local? Why does organic matter? Why should we care about the lives of farmers or ranchers or cows or genetically-modified wheat?

"Because feeding ourselves and our families (however we might construct them) is the most basic task we face and the entire force of corporate America is deeply invested in telling us we can’t do it. That it’s too hard. That it’s boring. That it’s a waste of time. Or conversely, that it’s elitist and only for rich people and annoying hipsters who live in cities and insist on being rude and photographing their food in restaurants and then blogging about it.

"Both messages are false. Cooking is creative. Cooking is individual. Cooking is one way we can thumb our noses at the forces . . . who try to control us by keeping us scared."

Interest

For years my job was boring, which is how I liked it. My job was just what I did for money; since it was boring, I could give my real work — managing the children and the household — all my creativity and energy and attention.

Last September, however, when my youngest started school, boringness at work stopped being a perk because last September, for the very first time, I thought: I know how to do this. I know how to be a parent and a wife and a cook and a bill-payer and I can even throw an impromptu party for eight, which is a real achievement for me, let me tell you. I know how to do this. And my job is boring.

So, I wondered, what's next?

*

Now you are expecting some grand announcement, like maybe I've gotten a book deal! A permanent writing gig! No, no book deal. No writing gig. I have, however, gotten a sort of promotion at work. My dept. got reorganized and rather than hiring new people, they increased my hours and gave me interesting work. It's something I don't really know how to do, at least not well, so I have to learn it; it's challenging and interesting. It involves systems analysis, which I totally love, as you can probably tell from the blog.

Interesting! work!

It'll leave less time for blogging, though. That's what I really wanted to tell you. If I'm posting less, don't worry. Nothing's happened. I'm just at work!

Summer at last

My son and I have a free morning today, so we looked for someone to float the river with us.* Every single person I called already had plans. My former neighbor is doing the Paulina Plunge with her 6-year-old; two friends are starting their vacations today, one to the Oregon Coast and one to Mt. Rainier; one woman is heading up to Sparks Lake early to try to get a good camp spot for the weekend; and one woman has to work.

Summer in Bend is spectacularly glorious – and barely eight weeks long. We are frantically enjoying every second of it.




Red boy at Sparks Lake. Last weekend.



*People float down the river as it runs through the heart of Bend. You see canoes, kayaks, paddle boards, rafts, inner tubes or just life jackets. The 2 1/2 hr route requires a portage around the spillway, but if you start at McKay Park, it's smooth sailing.

It was one of those clear, sharp mustless days

who are you,little i

(thirty-nine years old)

biking up some high

hill;on a warm

& cloudless August day

(and feeling:that if one

has to exercise

this is a beautiful way)

With apologies to ee cummings. (The title is his, too. I wasn't actually biking on a mustless day, but it felt mustless while I was riding.)

No creatures die in this post

Just to reassure you in advance: No creatures die or get eaten in this blog post.

*

Alternate post title: The Camelback of Smugness

Yesterday while out on an itty bitty bike ride I thought about how, if all you knew about Bend, Oregon, came from reading my blog, you'd have a mistaken idea about this town. I'm not particularly representative of Bendites – too self-denying and quiet – and my blog observes too much and acts too little for a Bendite.

So whilst riding I devised a kind of One Word Meme like Alejna's, but Bend-style. It's probably not funny to anyone else, but I just cracked myself up.

Mountain, road or cruiser bike? Mountain.

Are you a two-hour rider or an all-day rider? Two-hour.

Favorite trail? Ben's.

Favorite month for biking? September.

Favorite race? None.

Favorite winter sport? Snowboarding.

Backcountry or Mt. Bachelor? Mt. Bachelor.

Type of pass? Season.

Are you a 20-day-a year rider or a 40+ day-a-year rider? 25.

After the mountain closes, you... BBQ in the parking lot.

And your children – ? Ski.

Lessons or self-taught? Yes.

Mt. Bachelor classes or MBSEF? Mt. Bachelor.

Favorite water sport? Floating the Deschutes!

Ha ha! Seriously. I want to canoe more this year, but I don't own a canoe.

[Questions temporarily derailed as questioner offers list of acquaintances who might sell theirs.]

5K, 10K or 100-miler? I don't run.

[Audible gasp.]

Pilates or Barré? Neither.

Favorite yoga instructor? No yoga.

Gym membership? None.

Well, how do you cross-train? I walk to the library with my kids?

[Exasperation. End of questions.]

One mouse, many mice. One house, many hice

A mouse got into our house. I'm not sure when. Earlier this week my husband found scat among the pots and pans, and then a day later Sasha and I spotted the mouse downstairs. It's really cute. It's little and gray. When I found scat on my kitchen counter, however, I bought a mouse trap.

We had a mouse in the house last year and found one particular kind of trap to be quite efficient. It's shaped like a large, plastic clothespin; you bait it with peanut butter, and when the mouse crouches to lick it, the clothespin snaps shut, crushing the mouse's skull. It sounds gruesome but if you must kill a mouse, this is a good way. The mouse dies instantly.

My soft-hearted son insisted that we buy a live trap,too, though. He thinks that if we catch the little guy, we can set him free where our street dead-ends. There are rocks to burrow beneath and grasses and bushes to eat and when people wash their cars, water flows down there. "It has everything a mouse needs," said he.

The first night we set out the traps we didn't have any peanut butter, so we used cheese instead. In the morning – as if it were Easter, or Christmas – Blake raced out of bed to see what could be seen. And? Nothing. The mouse took the cheese out of all four traps without being caught.

"Tonight," said I, "PEANUT BUTTER!"

Later I overheard my son talking to the guinea pigs. "Tell the mouse not to eat from the white traps," he said. "Tell him to eat from the live traps!"

And he told me, "Mice are smart. He'll figure out which trap to eat from." Then, after a pause: "But just in case, can we bait only the live traps?"

Edibles

The bluebelly lizard that my husband caught for Sasha is doing quite well. The lizard lives in the dining room (when it's not cupped in her hands!) in an old fish tank lined with dirt from my compost bin. Every few days Sasha refreshes the tank with another bug-filled scoop of compost. She also catches other bugs for the lizard; she wanted to give it some aphids but I nixed that, fearing for my house plants.

When I found a caterpillar in my bok choy, I gave it to Sasha to feed to the lizard. That'll feed it for a week, I thought. But: "No!" cried she, clutching the caterpillar to her chest. "It's too cute!"

So now we have a caterpillar in a jar, too.

Random thought of the week

I used to think that genius loci referred to an actual ghostly being that wafted around a tree, say, or a set of rocks. Now I think —

Well, you know you can go a year or two years or five without speaking to a friend, and then you call her on the phone and along with her voice you hear her personality? The force of her personality, her own self, flows through the phone lines. After two minutes of conversation you know she is unchanged in essentials. It makes you laugh, it makes you happy, to find that she is still so very distinctly herself.

I think places can be like that. They can have a personality or an essence you can feel. That's the genius loci.

Photo credit to my sister-in-law.

Might as well roast marshmallows

It's raining again and still less than 60 degrees and Sasha puked last night which means I will be, too, soon; so I'm building a fire. We will roast marshmallows.

Might as well embrace it.

Scenes from the first full day of summer break

...or rather, the first full day of summer break without puking or fever: yesterday. We couldn't attend our planned playdates for fear of contagion, so the kids played around the house while I tried to keep my usual telecommuting hours.

*

During a call with a new vendor I had to ask my children to stop singing along with the movie "Snow Buddies." Or maybe it was "Space Buddies." The new vendor, luckily, also works from home and also had a school-aged child at home luxuriating in these halcyon schools-out-camp-hasn't-started days. The vendor lives in California, however, so his child was playing outside. (Here in Bend it was cold & raining.) We talked for awhile about what's apparently been a nation-wide decision to save money by closing schools early.

Working parents, unite!

*

Child: "I'm thirsty."

Me: "You know where the water is."

Child: "I'm hungry."

Me: "You know where the food is."

Child: "I'm bored."

Me: "You know where the toys are!"

*

Sasha built a fort. No boys allowed, she said. Boys destroy forts.

Oh Sasha! said I. Not all boys destroy forts. Let's see if Blake wants to play, too.

No!

Please?

So I invited Blake downstairs and he destroyed her fort.

"Way to fulfill stereotypes!" I shouted.

*

One hour and fifteen minutes into an hour-and-a-half conference call/Webex session, my daughter tossed her lizard onto my keyboard. Yes, I screeched. Much laughter on the other end of the phone.

*

My daughter draws. Have I mentioned that? She draws all the time. All. The. Time. The only items I send through the mail these days are Sasha's drawings: they go out to all the relatives. (She gets her feelings hurt if I recycle her drawings, but folks, we haven't enough storage space in this house for them all.)

When she realized I was communicating with my friends at work, some of whom she met on our recent trip to Portland, she drew a picture and asked me to send it to them. It's an archaeopteryx with very colorful feathers. In the upper right corner she drew the dinosaur beside a human, for scale. This archaeopteryx is so small that she drew just a human hand; it's the size of my thumb.

*

At the end of the workday I closed my computer to discover that the house was totally, irrevocably messy.

Or so I thought. For 75 cents the two children cleaned their rooms, made their beds, put away the fort components and for good measure put away the laundry I'd folded. And I only had to yell once.

*

First day of summer 2010: CHECK.

In perspective

7700 years ago Mazama, one of the largest mountains in the Cascades, erupted violently. A mile-wide column of tephra shot into the sky at twice the speed of sound. "Flow after flow followed in rapid succession," as Wikipedia says, until finally the mountain began to fracture; and then lava flowed from these fractures in all directions, spreading in some cases over 40 miles.

Mt. Mazama is now the spectacularly beautiful Crater Lake, photos of which you'll find all over the interwebs. You'd be hard put to find photos of the area around the lake, though. It's too eerie. Too barren. I imagine it's unrewarding to photograph.

Anyway: it was this map that got me thinking of Mt. Mazama: the oil spill superimposed over Oregon. I think it looks like an ash plume. On the map I made Prineville the epicenter because if Bend had been the epicenter, the spill would have run about 40 miles into the ocean.

In case you can't see it clearly, the spill starts at Yachats on the coast, travels up and over the Cascades, then oozes through the desert, up and over the Ochocos and back into the desert, finally stopping (for the moment) in John Day, where the fossil beds are.

Via ifitwasmyhome.com.

Lost: 1 sagebrush lizard

Last week my husband found a bluebelly lizard in his office, which he caught and brought home for Sasha. Sasha was enamored. She named the lizard Lulu. Lulu is just about 4 inches long; she fits perfectly in Sasha's hand. We set up the old fishtank for her, filled with twigs and compost and the bugs that live in compost, and set beside it a halogen light (for warmth), and Sasha's been putting her in the tank and taking her out and carrying her around and then putting her back so she can warm up and then taking her out again.

Last night, after we'd told Sasha good-night, she retrieved Lulu from the fishtank. She fell asleep with Lulu in her grubby hands. This morning, Lulu was gone.

Now I have to search my daughter's room for a four-inch-long sagebrush lizard.

I hope I find her. Eeek.

Work vacation

Three days in Portland:

rain

rain

rain

Pink is Portlanders' reward for all that rain!

Pink!

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

"I skied in the pink," my husband told me. Wednesday evening he skinned up Mt. Bachelor and skied down at sunset, when alpenglow turned the whole world pink.

*

Last week I phoned my sister-in-law, who has been painting Central Oregon for decades. "Where and when might I find pink?" I asked.

Artists are used to questions like this. Manzanita is flowering pink right now, she said immediately, but of course you have to lean close to see them. Currant's tiny flowers are pink. Some rocks are pink. (See painting to the right: Hot Rocks.) In the fall, cheat grass is pink.

So there you have it.

*

Actually last week was a summer week ("spring" here being the rapid alternation of winter/summer, as I mentioned) and now all the crabapples and cherries are blooming violently pink. As you walk around you spy them between pine trees. They're absolutely lovely.

Meta blogging

These are some thoughts about online reputations and branding spurred by Bon's recent post.

A few months ago I attended a party, a fairly wild one, where I met some new people. Last week I ran into one of those people again, this time in a professional capacity. She was embarrassed. She was afraid I wouldn't take her seriously. In a small town like Bend, this kind of thing happens all the time, and she commented on how it still takes her (a big-city native) by surprise.

I think that anytime you leave a trail online – on Facebook or on your blog or in another blog's comments, on Twitter, or whatever – it's like attending a party in Bend. Sooner or later everyone's going to know what you said. That means you'd better take care what you say and do; but also, you should give other people a break.

*

Your brand is not your reputation. Your brand is your clothing: it's the image you (attempt to) project.

*

Blogging used to be primarily online journaling. When you're journaling, you're writing as if to a group of friends. It's confessional. It's intimate. It's vulnerable.

Now, it seems to me, blogging is more business-like. It has a purpose. It's not like a dinner party; it's like a cocktail party. And the cocktail party has a sponsor.

*

There's this scene in the movie Wives & Daughters, a recent adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell's 19th century novel of the same name, in which a woman who has been unjustly accused by gossip-mongers of philandering has her reputation restored. How does she achieve this magic? She goes for a walk through town with the highest-ranking woman in the vicinity (a countess, I think she is), during which the countess clings to her chummily and praises her every opinion.

This kind of thing can happen online, too, can't it? A woman gets flamed out on one person's blog, and then a blogger of high rank says cool it, and everyone does...

*

On Mt. Bachelor's web site there was (is? I can't find it now) a Facebook widget. It showed Mt. B's comment stream and the profile pictures of some of their fans. I found that really disturbing. If I fanned Mt. Bachelor on Facebook, I'd do so to view their conditions updates, not to endorse them. They'd be welcome to include me anonymously in their boast of "over 5000 fans!"; but promoting my profile picture, with my full name, as a fan of theirs crosses a line. When I saw that widget, I unliked all for-profit businesses on Facebook.

On the other hand, if I were a business hoping to catch the attention of certain other companies' customers, I'd fan them immediately.

How is the widget different from Facebook's standard practice of showing fans/friends in the lower left corner of every profile page? It's different because in the widget, fans' profile pictures are more prominent than the company's status updates. It's the fans, it seems to me, who are being advertised.

With that widget, Facebook (at least for me) has also become a sponsored cocktail party.

*

Penelope Trunk once said that email is dead. She must have meant only for businesses. Email blasts are as dead as telemarketing, I'll grant you that; but if Twitter and Facebook and blogs are all cocktail parties? then email is the last place to host a dinner party.

A pink kink in your think

Whilst driving to the other side of town (and back) two days ago, I scanned the landscape for pink. I saw exactly seven instances of that color: the buds on three crabapple trees; the flowers of three rock-garden shrubs (candytuft); and the petals of one lone desert wildflower.

It's interesting that pink elicits such a strong cultural response when in fact pink is so seldom seen in the landscape, is it not?

*

I asked the kids to help me find the color pink. Sasha laughed at me and pointed to the passenger seat, where I'd set the hot-pink canvas bag containing our first week's CSA veggies.

OK, OK, but do you see pink outside?

Sasha pointed to the coat of a little girl walking by.

Well, but I mean in the natural world — among the things God made, not the things people have made. I never see pink there!

And then Blake laughed, and exclaimed, "Haven't you ever seen a sunset?"

*

Do you see pink where you are?

Enduring May

I'm in the mountains all the time partly because dudes, it is totally depressing down here. It's supposed to be spring, but very few trees or bushes have leaves and it's below freezing at night and storms keep moving through.

In May I'd rather snowboard on Mt. Bachelor, appreciating a sun higher in the sky than usual, than allow a stray warm day in Bend to tease me!

*

Last month Nonlinear Girl, who lives in Portland, photographed pink. Pink! I barely remember what pink looks like.

We do have some yellow, however. A blackberry and two roses, leafless, in the foreground; forsythia in the background.

Endlessly new

Quote from Ursula LeGuin's story "Solitude," published in the collection "The Birthday of the World."

"Life in the [village] ... is repetitive, as I said; and so it can be dull. Nothing new happens. The mind always wants new happenings. So for the young soul there is wandering and scouting, travel, danger, change. But of course travel and danger and change have their own dullness. It is finally always the same otherness over again; another hill, another river, another man, another day. The feet begin to turn in a long, long circle. The body begins to think of what it learned back home, when it learned to be still. To be aware. To be aware of the grain of dust beneath the sole of the foot, and the skin of the sole of the foot, and the touch and scent of the air on the cheek, and the fall and motion of the light across the air, and the color of the grass on the high hill across the river, and the thoughts of the body, of the soul, the shimmer and ripple of colors and sounds in the clear darkness of the depths, endlessly moving, endlessly changing, endlessly new.

"And so I came back home."

**

Reading this, I thought of the years I spent travelling around Eastern Europe and how I knew when they were over: when I met the man who is now my husband, I knew that I had had enough of movement. I wanted to live in one place awhile. I wanted to understand how that one place could be "endlessly changing, endlessly new."

And here I am.

Happy 39th birthday to me.

!=spring

Central Oregon spring is not the spring of popular imagination, in which March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb and April showers bring May flowers and the world slowly turns green. In Central Oregon, spring is a clear struggle for dominance between winter and summer.

Last week summer won out. My kids and I wore shorts to Sawyer Park, where Blake found a garter snake that Sasha caught, and we marveled over caddis flies in their houses. We played outside after school. The peas sprouted and I planted some lettuce.

This week? Winter's back. A storm's blowing in right now; I can hear the wind flinging tree limbs about; and they say that tomorrow night we'll have snow.

***

The sun, however, will tell you what's what. It's in the sky 20 minutes longer this week than last.

***

Whilst googling "battle between winter and summer," which I hoped would give me a good title for this post, I found this. How interesting. Would you say pond skimming is the modern version of that event?

Why

My sister has a burst appendix. She's been in the hospital since Friday. She hasn't slept since Thursday. Her pain medication makes her hallucinate. My poor, poor sister! I am so tempted to jump on a plane and fly to Pennsylvania. I wonder if my kids' company would make her feel better or worse. (Probably both.)

Here's a joke for her, told to me by my 8-year-old.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to the other side.

Why did the turkey cross the road?

It was the chicken's day off.

Why did the elephant cross the road?

To avoid answering all these questions!

Nature v. nuturing

I learned to ride a bike the summer that I was six. My daughter is strong and sturdily built with good balance and physical self-confidence; there is absolutely no reason why she can't learn to ride this summer – the summer that she'll be six — just like I did. So last week, on our one day of glorious, warm-and-sunny weather, I arranged a biking playdate. We met a neighbor in the (level, large, untrafficked) cul de sac behind our house. I thought seeing the other children ride might inspire her.

My dastardly plans were foiled, however, when the kindergartener we met wouldn't ride, either!

So, you know. The kids abandoned their bikes in the cul de sac and instead climbed trees, climbed rocks, picked itty bitty flowers and made nests in the birdbath.

Why ride a bike in circles on the road when there's so much to explore right here? For goodness sake, Mom.

*

I am such a horrible photographer. I just can't see. I was trying to get a shot of the weird way new growth appears on this tree, which looks like an aspen but I think mustn't be; it was only after I'd transferred the pic to the computer that I noticed: child in tree in foreground, abandoned playstructure in background.

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

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!