6% moisture content

Last night my father-in-law called us to get the number for Mt. Bachelor's weather report. It was just an excuse. I mean, he did want to know that phone number but of course he could have looked it up himself; his call was an excuse to talk with his son about the storm.

I never knew any family so aware of the weather. During last month's dismayingly dry, warm spell my husband, his sister and his brother all explained to me – independently – that winter was being kept at bay by a high-pressure front off the Pacific coast. (I think it was a high-pressure zone. Maybe it was a low-pressure zone. I never listen to their words; I listen to the tone in their voices.) At any given moment my sister-in-law can tell me where the clouds are on a weather map and what it means for us; and any of them can discuss the current situation on the mountain passes.

It matters, they tell me. Here in Oregon the weather is changeable, and it matters.

Oh, I know. I check Mt. Bachelor's report on weekends, too. But still. This hyper-awareness of the weather is a continual reminder to me that Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

My husband was not able to take a call from his father last night because on Wednesdays he goes out with the boys. They skin up the Cinder Cone after work. Last month Wednesdays were miserable for them because the weather remained so warm and dry, but last week! and last night! Last night they skied in a storm, windy and very cold with poor visibility, relying on headlamps rather than the moon – but the snow, my husband told me, was so incredibly beautifully light: six percent moisture content, he said.

So I talked with my father-in-law instead. He told me about the situation on the Santiam Pass and I told him it was snowing lightly at our house, which is at a higher elevation than his house, and he said he'd call his son in the morning to hear a report on Mt. Bachelor's conditions.

Then I hung up and stood at the window awhile watching the snow fall.

Penny for your thoughts

We brainstormed different projects she could do for her 100 Days¹ celebration. She could draw a picture of 10 dragons and photocopy it 10 times. She could draw a picture of five dragons and photocopy it 20 times. She could draw five mamas and five babies and photocopy that 10 times... She could count out 100 beads, grouping them by color or shape, and string a necklace. She could make a pattern of 100 perler beads which I could iron into one object.

"I want to count 100 pennies," she said. "I want to tape them to posterboard."

One hundred pennies on posterboard will be really heavy, I told her.

"I can carry it," she said.

We don't have enough tape, I told her.

"We can use glue," she said.

Finally I blurted: Pennies are boring!

That gave her pause; but then she insisted, "Pennies aren't boring."

So my daughter spent an hour attaching 100 pennies to posterboard with 100 pieces of tape, proudly labeling it, "100 pennys on poster bord." She also wrote three questions about her project across the back, quizzing my husband and my son and myself repeatedly.

It's actually not that heavy. She folded it in half and carried it to class herself.

***

When you're six, posterboard is not boring. Pennies are not boring. In fact both pennies and posterboard are rare objects when you're six; it's only in high school, I think, that a person learns to groan over such stock in trade.

***

Over dinner we talked about how 100 pennies equals a dollar, my husband and I joking about what they might say at the grocery store if handed 100 pieces of posterboard with 100 pennies taped to each. (This idea astonished the children, who hadn't really understood that a dollar bill and a hundred pennies are equal.) I should take a picture of that posterboard, I said, and email it to Planet Money².

¹ 100th day of school. Apparently people celebrate this day across the U.S. I'd never heard of it before.

² I am totally in love with Planet Money. If you aren't listening, GO LISTEN.

Snnnnnnnnnnowwwwwwwwww!

That's better.

Ski report today:
18" in 12 hours | 20" in 24 hours | 23" in 72 hours: "Holy Cow - we got dumped on overnight! Today's going to be a good one, start coming up with a good idea to get out of work and come play in the Powder at Mt. Bachelor!"

School report today:
Two hour delay.

Um.

Can we?

Anticipation

Y'all have been drowning in snow but we haven't. Snow hasn't fallen here for weeks and weeks. It's been relentlessly dry and warm. On Mt. Bachelor the slopes have been icy, and the snowpack is so reduced that lava rock juts out of the ridges.

That's about to change.

Saturday night some friends hosted their fourth annual Ullr Pray for Snow party, in which everyone dressed like the Norse God/dess of Snow (or an 80s ski bum) and sacrificed items on a bonfire. No snow fell that night and it was still warm — but the wind picked up. The wind howled. Sparks from the fire flew up into the darkness, up toward the stars. After every excessive gust people cheered and our hosts cried, "Ullr is breathing!"

Here it town, two days later, it's still warm and still dry but the wind, I tell you, the wind has not ceased. It's blown shingles off my house. It's blown pine tree debris everywhere. For awhile I thought a tree or at least a large limb might fall onto the house and crush me.

Ullr is breathing.

In a ski town like this, a strong winter wind stirs the populace. We're eager for the storm. We're all anticipation: skis waxed and sharpened, gear pre-loaded, car full of gas: all ready for the winds to slacken just enough that we can ride.

Workspaces

When I visited Portland this week, my co-workers asked about my home office. Here it is. You can see the remains of my lunch today: previously frozen chicken nuggets, plus almonds, water and coffee. Also, printed reading material: 1 brochure (work-related), 1 local newspaper (peripherally work-related) and 1 70-year-old edition of Wuthering Heights (for perspective on work).

Every evening I put it all away, because this is my bedroom.

Well, that was embarrassing

When the doorbell rang, I was placing halibut on the counter to thaw – some of the wild halibut my parents caught in Alaska last year – in anticipation of tonight's stir-fry.

"Oh!" I said. "Heidi!" I'd forgotten I'd placed an order with her, but I was pleased to see her; she's an interesting woman, German I think; she's running a farm out in Tumalo. She'd brought me two dozen eggs & a bunch of fresh-cut thyme,* and we chatted a bit. I gave her the empty egg cartons and two clamshells I'd saved for her. (Deschutes County doesn't recycle clamshell plastic.)

Just as she was leaving, the Schwan's delivery man appeared. With four boxes of frozen food.

Oop.

Well! But! They were small boxes! and I'll be out of town next week, and my husband is too out-of-practice to work a full day, supervise the kids' homework, do the bedtime routine and cook a Michael Pollan-approved meal...

Yes. It was embarrassing.

_

What about you? Do you sometimes rely on instant meals?

*It's 55 degrees here. Her greenhouse is thriving. Go figure.

"His name was Colin"

In case you were wondering, the new IFC series Portlandia is spot on. Some of the clips I've seen online are so accurate they play like documentaries.

My favorite clip shows the Adult Hide and Seek League, which is such a cool idea I bet someone will now initiate one; but I found this guy eerily familiar. (He has a Bend counterpart who rides an expensive road bike, wears expensive racing gear and rides three-abreast up Skyliner. "CARS! WHY??")

It's been like this

Once there was an owl. (It wasn't a guardian of Ga'Hoole. We've been reading a lot about those owls lately – but this is not one of them. This owl is not a warrior. He drinks tea.) Our tea-drinking owl lived in a hollow with an upstairs and a downstairs, both of which he liked equally.

"There must be a way," said Owl, "to be upstairs and to be downstairs at the same time."

"Perhaps if I run very very fast, I can be in both places at once." Owl ran up the stairs. "I am up," he said. Owl ran down the stairs. "I am down," he said.

Owl ran up and down the stairs faster and faster. ... "Faster, faster, faster!" cried Owl. Owl ran upstairs and downstairs all evening. But he could not be in both places at once.

"When I am up," said Owl, "I am not down. When I am down I am not up. All I am is very tired!" Owl sat down to rest. He sat on the tenth step because it was a place that was right in the middle.

Lobel, Arnold. Owl at Home. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1974, pp. 42-49.

I love this book. Owl is foolish but the stories are wise. Mine is a library copy; I think I need to own it!

Who sat down beside you

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

Protected

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

Gates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-1-

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

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

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

-2-

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

-3-

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

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

-4-

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

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

-5-

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

I just need to find people to go with me.

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

44° 16'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dust and spiderwebs.

***

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

Whether

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

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

From another angle

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

Random thought of the day

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

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

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

I think that's interesting.

*

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

I think that's interesting, too.

*

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

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

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

Angles

Stairs with drying rack.

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

sick, well

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

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

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

Naught

(see update below)

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

and Sasha woke with a terrible cough and a fever.

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

I guess I'll write a blog post.

*

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

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

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

Whee!