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.