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Skating Portland Parkways, June 2009

I’ve always wanted to use that word.  Now what exactly does it mean?

Did you know that skating is how I landed my prize of a husband?  It is true.  I had always been vaguely in touch with Brad.  Through college, I would shoot him a postcard every now and then.  My sisters and I had him to a couple parties here and there during breaks, enough so that I met, (and was not impressed by) several of his college girlfriends.  When I returned from volunteer service in Canada, there was this crazy thing called the INTERNETS.  I think Gore invented it or something.  Anyway, after seeing Brad for a few hours while he was home for a funeral, we started e-mailing in earnest.  He was dating someone, but that didn’t deter me.  Oh no!  I started making plans to go see him and wow him with my skating abilities.

Okay, so that is kind of a joke, but not really.  I knew that he skated regularly.  He even skated to work, miles across Los Angeles!  He got in trouble once for skating on the freeway!  (His reasoning was that his car broke down, his skates were in the back, it made as much sense to skate for help as to walk….etc.  I think we all know that he wanted to skate the freeway.)  Anyway, I had only been up on rollerblades a couple times.  Back in those mid 90s, there were skate rental places.  Imagine that!  We would rent rollerblades by the day.  I have a picture of my dear friend Devra in rollerblades, with blood coursing down her knee.  Those were the days!

Anyway, my dad was speaking at an architectural conference in Eugene and I accompanied him there to visit my alma mater.  With plans to go visit Brad in LA, I lingered long in front of the skate shop.  They not only rented rollerblades, they sold them, and I was quickly cooking up a plan to make a pair mine for real.  Back then I didn’t have much money, or rather, I had just started my first real job at Juvenile Detention in McMinnville, so I had money for the first time that I didn’t know how to spend.  Buying rollerblades was outrageously expensive.  Skates are actually cheaper now than they were then.  I remember telling my dad that I was thinking of buying skates.  ”Oh you should!  I would do it!” he said.  He had so much enthusiasm.  I was sure that it was good advice.

Now that I am older I realize that my dad must have liked skating too.  I don’t remember ever seeing my dad on roller skates, but once when I was about 10 or so, there was a deep and hard freeze out in Sheridan.  We went up to visit some family friends who had smallish ponds tucked into the woods.  Dad pulled out his ice skates and took some turns on the ice.  He could do all sorts of crazy shit!  He could turn, he could put his leg out!  It was beautiful and I was astounded at his hidden skill!  Later he told stories about how in high school, he would skate the lake near his house to get to town, and he told one story about traveling on the lake at night, skating for a mile or so underneath the stars.  I didn’t experience it, but it was a beautiful image, and so vivid to me that I felt like I did.

Long story short is that I bought the rollerblades, went to LA, and skated with Brad up and down the beach and into his heart.  This is a terrible sentence but it reminds me of a poorly written greeting card and makes me laugh, so I will keep it.  (In college my friend Sean Guard and I engaged in a contest to find the worst greeting cards, which we bought and sent to each other.  A company with particularly horrible messages was called “Airbrush Sensations”.  We liked that and worked to recreated “airbrush sensations” in our homemade cards too.  This is what English majors do for fun!  We’re so zany!)

Skating East Esplanade while Anne is visiting from Japan. We now have two kids in strollers! I later trip over an extension cord on a bridge crossing and get the worst skinned knee. It's the only wreck I've had recently, and remains slightly discolored to this day. August 2010

Now here we are with three kids and introducing the world of skating to them.  We took the older two kids to Oaks Park a few weeks ago to teach them to skate, and I tell you, it’s hard.  I don’t remember learning, so I am a rotten teacher.  Even BEING a teacher, I am not a good teacher.  Francis is getting a decent start on it, but she only pushes off with one leg, and is a huge baby when she falls down.  Zephyr is a noodle.  A floppier kid could not be found anywhere.  If you skate near him, it is like his bones melt and he clings to your leg or any available appendage like a spineless koala bear.  I tell him to put his butt out, but when he does that, his knees collapse.  I tell him to bend his knees and he leans back in a deadman fall with his skates shooting out in front of him.  Then he cries and begs to rest as though we are torturing him.  This is fun, right?!

Last week I told the kids that we might go skating again.  ”No!  No!” said Zephyr.  ”Yeah!” said Francis.  Sigh.  Maybe it is wiser to just let them pick up the skates and shoot down the sidewalk when they are good and ready.  The problem is that I love skating.  So goes the work of torturing your children hoping that they will love what you love.

Well, they are smiling. Maybe it wasn't so bad. Oaks Park, March 2011

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Heading out to skate with friends Juan and Kristi (and little Francis and Josep). Eugene, OR,2004

I lOVES THE SKATIN’!

You know at a certain point in your life when you identify the very significant place a certain activity has in your life?  (And then you laugh your ass off because it is sort of a ridiculous thing—-I’m thinking of square dancing or garage sale-ing or kung fu movies, for all of those who might need an example.)  Skating has been “my thing”.

I don’t remember learning to skate; I just remember always being sort of good at it.  My dad’s shop was a perfect place to skate, smooth concrete, a “path” of sorts, (if you took the time to sweep up the sawdust and move piles of wood out of the way).  I remember that my parents always had skates around….and lots of them.  There were skates to fit every kid in our house, plus some for visitors.  I think they picked them up at garage sales, (and now that I think about how we had to sweep the floor before skating—how clever were my parents?!)

When I was in elementary school, I was rotten at just about every sport.  Everyone who knows me from way back then would remember that I had very thick glasses by first grade.  Even though I was pretty coordinated at things like climbing trees and running up hills, I lacked pretty much every skill necessary for ball sports, and ball sports dominate the PE curriculum.  (And as I write this I think, “that sucks!” because all sorts of kids, especially country kids, were certainly just like me—good at scrambling through the underbrush and jumping over mud puddles and hiking for miles.)  But, I digress.

My schools had rotten PE teachers.  My daughter has an awesome PE teacher right now.  I missed out somehow.  We had the type of teacher who loved the “pick teams” thing.  He seemed to think that maybe public winnowing could serve as an instructive force—like those of us chosen last would try harder because of fear of social repudiation.  I will tell you now–it doesn’t make you try harder.  I was usually picked nearly last—not totally last.  Sadly, I recognize now that when “picking teams”, at the end, it would often be me, a couple of my similarly physically challenged friends (sorry dear friends, but you were always MORE AWESOME than those coordinated kids anyway!), and then the children that were truly disabled.  It’s shameful to think of this as an adult.  Why the hell were teachers allowing kids who were mentally and physically disabled to suffer through this?  (Wait! Maybe because our teacher was mentally disabled!)

Anyway, I LOVED the yearly reward parties where we got to go to Skate World.  LOVED THEM.  Why did I love them?  Because I DOMINATED. I was faster, more coordinated on skates than any kid in my class, male or female.  I won almost all the speed contests.  Pairing with a very cool girl (who was good at all sports and probably picked nearly first for all aforementioned sports games), the two of us would also win the sitting duck contest and the wheelbarrow thing where one person pushes the other person crouched down on their skates and you try not to careen out of control.  Skating allowed me to feel like a winner in something athletic.

As I tell this story, it occurs to me that all sorts of kids never felt like a winner in anything, so perhaps my “poor-me-I-was-so-bad-at-sports-but-had-this-moment-of-deserved-glory” tale is sort of tiresome.  After all, though bad at sports, I was very good at music, and certainly many of my peers must have hated how I got so many solos at school concerts.  My peers probably have all sorts of tales to tell about how all they ever wanted was to be good at singing and that goddamn Ingrid Parmeter took all the solos.  How is it that we care so much about what we lack and inflate the importance of it in our memories?  Well, that’s someone else’s tale.

Okay, this is getting too long.  Wow, will I need to do “Skating, pt 2″ for my loyal readers?  It is an IMPORTANT topic, right?

You can't tell we are skating, but we were! With Juan and Kristi, Josep, Julia & Francis, New Mexico, 2005

Skating in Portland along the waterfront, Francis in the big purple stroller, 2006

Skating along Marine Drive with Anne, Zephyr in the stroller and Francis graduating to a bike!, Portland, 2007

Next Up:  Skating Part 2!

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Zephyr got a fascinating piece of homework this last week.  It is a series of two pictures where you have to draw what you think will happen next.

He drew the dog putting the bone in the hole and the bird adding the stick to the nest.

On the next page, he extemporized a bit.

The squirrel does not hide those nuts.  Oh no.  He eats one and “is about to eat” the other one.  And that bird is not about to fly.  ”She’s too young.  She falls,” Zephyr said quite seriously.

This whole assignment had me giggling a bit.  Here is what it would look like if I did it:

We have this squirrel who sits on our fence and displays his huge, furry, well testicles.  It’s true.  Me and him—we don’t get along.  He tries to run up my window screens and jump on my bird feeder, and he even knocked it down once.  So I hit the window when I see him and laugh as he shoots like a firework off the sill because I’ve surprised him.  Then he comes back and hunches over to display his goods.  I’m not intimidated, but I know what would come next in the story.  And if I had two nuts (ha!) I know exactly where I would aim them.

Here is my other one:

Okay!  Now people are wishing that I wasn’t blogging again.  But aren’t the possibilities endless?  What would you put for picture number three?

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There is no such thing as Krugly Dolls, but in the interest of not receiving a cease and desist notice tomorrow, I am renaming them.

It all started when my kids picked up a toy catalogue and identified the items in question.  ”Oh, we love them!  Can you get them for us?”.  What?  Buy them?  No way.  I can totally make those suckers.

A quick trip to Joann’s Fabrics and several yards of fleece later, we were ready to embark on the project.  First step was to draw the dolls and make a pattern.

Here is what I did:

Here is what Zephyr did:  (Prepare yourself for preciousness)

I wish I could sew that.

Next we cut out this guy and I attempted to sew without swearing.  I did not accomplish that.

My sewing machine is really, really old, and beset with problems that people with newer models might not have, hence there is more profanity necessary to keep the thing in line.  It jumps up and down if I don’t yell at it a bit.  Despite breaking a needle, tangling a bobbin impossibly, needing to cut a chunk out of this doll’s eye as I somehow wound the thread from the bobbin around part of the foot and the edge of the eyeball (huh?), and taking the Lord’s name in vain, we finally got to the good part.

And the other good part:

We didn't make this green guy. He is a "for real" that we borrowed from a neighbor.

And still more good parts:

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Sometimes Brad and I are awesome parents.  Brad would say that he is always awesome.  Here is his criteria:  1)  Am I still here?  I am awesome.

In particular, we have achieved a (hopefully) habit-forming awesomeness in the form of Family Art Night.  Back in August Brad and I lamented that neither of us had time to work on our personal art in any meaningful way.  I worried that Zephyr’s drawing skills were somewhat lacking.  Both us noted that Francis was DESPERATELY needy regarding art time.  She wanted MORE.  MORE.  MORE.  “Can you help me make a quilt?  Can you help me create a paper tower that is strong enough to let chickens play on it?  Can you help me make a felt sleeping bag for Nutty the Squirrel?  Can you help me make a hat out of clay?  Can you help me make a robot that actually moves out of plastic milk jugs?  Can you help me weld a STEEL PLAYGROUND FOR MY NEWT?”

What we couldn’t figure out was how to guide the kids without Family Art Night becoming completely subsumed by their wishes, because although we love our kids, part of the goal was that we might also pursue our own interests—-but together.  And I am not one of those people who wants to sacrifice my interests on the alter of my children.  I proposed taking turns guiding their projects.  Brad had some idea about making them leave us alone that wouldn’t work.  We argued and gave up.

But then we tried again with more reasonable expectations.  Yes, the kids need our time, but if our over-arching message is “I will get you going and then you need to do it yourself”, everyone can be happy.  They CAN do it themselves.  They love to make me their art servant, but they can be taught to be self-sufficient.  Hence, Family Art Night sits on Monday evenings.  We have dinner early and then rush down to the basement where we get going on our own projects.  It requires that I plan ahead a bit and have standby ideas and supplies to get them going, but that isn’t an unpleasant task.

Last week Francis felted a mini Totoro, and Zephyr made a beaded necklace.  When they finished those projects, both kids painted with water colors.

I planned a sewing project and knitted on a hat for a friend.  Brad worked on stained glass designs with us and then retired to the computer for more design time.

Inez is the only one who misses out on Family Art Night.  She goes to bed early.

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Meet De Waltina.

I love her.  I finally got the driver of my dreams back in August, and I find I use her just about every week.  She figures prominently in this story.

Remember how I complained at length about my inability to finish projects because I overstate my skills?  Well, I finally finished something (mostly, sort of).

Wink’s hardware is truly the most awesome problem-solving place in all of Portland.  When I first checked it out, I didn’t really understand how they did things—or why, but a few short moments later, I was completely set up with EXACTLY the hardware I needed to complete this weirdo job— and I UNDERSTOOD the glory of Wink’s.  First of all, they have you take a number and wait in line until an actual human can help you.  There are plenty of people behind the counter, so the wait isn’t too long.  The actual human looks at your project, listens to your needs and suggests what might help you complete the project.  The actual human leads you back into the stacks and finds the screws, plates, grommets, etc, and then deposits them IN YOUR HAND.  Isn’t that novel?  Usually I am there at the hardware store holding screws up against samples trying to tell if I have a metric or standard in my hand and then I tear open little drawers with abandon trying to match by sight.  Then because I don’t trust myself, I buy other screws that COULD be the right ones, just in case.  As you can imagine, my way doesn’t always work well.  My way involves chaos.  My way involves too many drill bits (just in case!) and too many not-quite-right tools for the job.

If you remember, this mounting ceramic head project was sort of a pain in the ass.  First of all, when making these heads out of clay, I hadn’t really conceived of how they might go on the wall.  Because I didn’t understand that I would need to attach the heads two ways, I didn’t make standard sized center holes (which meant that I spent a good deal of time today carefully drilling out holes in these finished ceramic pieces, creating dust and mess).  When I created them, I made screw holes, but I somehow thought that screws would be enough.  I hadn’t yet discovered the wonder of two part epoxy—(ahh wonder!), and I hadn’t considered how tightening a screw to hold a HEAVY ceramic head to a wall might make the ceramic part just bust into pieces.  Hmmmm.

At Wink’s they gave me these groovy little plates with center spindles sticking out that I was to screw to the wall, and they pointed me towards Great Goop, two part epoxy.  In the last post about this project, I made it as far as screwing the plates to the wall.

Today, I marked where the screw holes needed to go and drilled guide holes, then I mixed up the epoxy and stirred it for the requisite two minutes.  Then I smeared it on the plate spindle and put it in the center hole on the backside of the head.

Mounting it was tricky.  I could sort of put some screws in to hold the piece to the wall, but because of the roundness of the heads (the HEADS, not the screw heads), I had to put in some screws at an angle.  And because I needed to not overtighten, this wasn’t such a great job for my De Walt driver.  I ended up putting screws in loosely and using duct tape until the epoxy dried, at which point I would tighten the screws by hand.

Decorative screws are funny.  Sometimes they look great but don’t bite worth crap.  I bent some.  Is it me or my screws?

Now I need to wait for the epoxy to dry, get some new (and shorter) screws to fill in the awkward places, and our towel holders are ready to go!

I feel so capable today!  Thanks, De Waltina!

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Most of you know that Brad and I have only one car— a trusty 1998 Nissan Sentra.  We bought it in 2003 for something around $4000 and it seemed amazingly new and expensive.  Now it is getting old and ratty, but still drives well.  The kids’ three car seats fit across the back just fine, (only if you tip one armrest into the upright position and wedge it under the sides of Inez’s seat).  It is amazing that we can fit five people in this little compact car (but none of the kids can buckle their own car seats because there isn’t room for them to reach between the seats and down to where the buckle is).  Who knew a compact car could do the work of a mini van?!  (Just make sure that the kids lift their fingers when you shut the doors because all the car seats shove together.  And don’t think you can do anything when they start screaming, “Inez is pulling my hair!” because believe me, there is nowhere to go.  And if at Christmas time, we don’t give you a present, it isn’t because we forgot or because we are cheap, it is that it didn’t fit in our car.)

Most of the time, the one car thing is no problem.  Brad commutes to work by train every day.  I get around largely by walking and sometimes riding my bike.  With a little planning and communication, there are few conflicts.  Every now and then we run in to trouble though.  Early September for example.  Brad wanted to get out to his parents’ place and work from there; Francis had another couple days of school.  What did we do?  Sent the car with Brad (and two younger kids) and Francis and I stayed to catch the Yamhill County Transit Area bus.

Yeah, bus!  There is a bus that connects Hillsboro and McMinnville.  Then there is another bus that goes from McMinnville to Grand Ronde, stopping in between in Sheridan and Willamina.  Who knew?

The webpage schedule is sort of vague on the Hillsboro end.  Unfortunately like smaller town people, they list the pick up as “Hillsboro MAX”, and anyone who has ever been out there knows that Hillsboro has something like 8 stops in town.  A quick call told me that the pick up place was the Hillsboro Transit Center.  ”Nope, no sign,” the guy on the phone said.  ”Just look for the people in line.  It’ll pull up where the buses are.”  That made me a little insecure, but he sounded confident, so I figured we would try it.  Francis and I took MAX out to Hillsboro transit center after school and cast about until we saw people waiting in line along the curb.  There were three of them, but that was enough for me.  Soon enough the cute little bus pulled up and we paid our $2 for a day pass.  Yes, that is right.  It was $2 to take the bus and hour and a half home to Grand Ronde.  Francis, being a child, was free.  The bus driver carefully made out a pass for me representing what I would have paid for a cup of coffee.  How can they pay the gas with such a low fare?  I worried for a minute that if I didn’t shove some more money at the man instantly, the bus line would be bankrupt in a month, but he seemed fine with my $2.  Filled with guilt at not doing my part to support public transportation, I boarded the bus.

The bus was small but comfortable.  The seats were clean and very large.  The windows were fantastically huge, affording an excellent view of the gorgeous farmland of the Yamhill/Carlton area.  I have to say, the dude drove like a bat out of hell.  It was a fast, fast trip.  Occasionally he would swerve to the side of the road and pick up some person (did they wave?  How did he know?) and most of the riders seemed familiar with our driver.  Because they seemed to know him, I figured they had survived the last bus ride and maybe I should relax.

In McMinnville we switched buses at 5th and Davis (where the jail is), and continued towards Grand Ronde.  The other riders were more grungy at this point—-mostly young men checking in with their probation officers I suspect—but they were pleasant enough.  ”How ’bout some tunes dude?” one slightly retarded passenger yelled, and the driver acquiesced with a 70s rock and roll radio station.

At exactly the time stated on the schedule, the bus pulled into the Casino mini mart.  Brad was there to meet us with the trusty Nissan.  We had left Hillsboro at 6:25pm and arrived at Grand Ronde at 8:15pm.  All in all, not bad for $2.  I dream of a day when there is a high speed train to dump me out in the country (after a 40 minute trip), but for now I’ll take the YCTA bus.  Here’s for public transport!

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On the Shin Kobe Ropeway

You know how sometimes you have to ditch the husband and kids and just take off for foreign countries?  Well, that is how awesome I am.

I’m in Kobe Japan with my sister Anne… I traveled all by myself and it is awesome.  Anne has been here for a year and a half and I knew I needed to get over to see her life while she was still living it in this locale.  This was the right time to go, while the kids didn’t have much going on and could safely be sequestered at their grandparents’ houses (Thanks Mom and Dad & Dennis and Sue!).  I have had some pangs of guilt, but not many when I think of them having the time of their lives being all spoiled and entertained in the country.  Inez is probably being licked by a dog right now.  Scratch that.  It’s 1 am Oregon time, so that baby had better be sleeping!

Anyway, I don’t intend to be updating this blog much while I am here, but I did want to let people know where I am.  Eating awesome food!  Chatting non-stop with my little sister!  Going running with Kobe Hash Hound Harriers!  In Freakin’ Japan!

In the herb gardens at the top of the rope way

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Okay, so this is Parmeter.net, so maybe it is a bit self-serving to devote a blog entry to this, but I do just need to tell you all about how talented my uncle is (and YOUR uncle is if I have an adequate grasp of the bulk of my readership).  Yes, Rick Parmeter is good at what he does, and as I live in a house that has millions of problems needing to be solved with finesse and cleverness, I am a big fan of a craftsman who can solve them.  He thinks through things in a very interesting way that manages to be thorough and yet fluid, practical and yet still creative.  He is picky with details and yet open to different ways to solve problems.  Here is the reading nook that he created under our stairs in the basement:

Where once there was chaos and cardboard boxes stacked in dusty piles, now there is something pretty…. with storage space!  Victory!  We spend a lot of time here now.

Another Uncle Rick creation is poised and ready to go.  The bathroom isn’t quite done yet, but the cabinets for it sit in the dining room, preparing themselves to launch into their new and long-lived service.  (They have sat in a corner of our dining room for over a year because we weren’t really ready to start the actual remodel.)  Will I miss them from that corner?  Not really.

Next up is the stairs to the basement.  Everything is so nice down there, but the entryway is not.  It hasn’t helped that we knew we would replace them and sort of purposely abused them.  (“Don’t bother putting down that paint drop cloth!”  ”Don’t worry about the stairs!  They can be ripped up!”).  They look really bad next to the daybed nook, but Rick is on it!  Here is a view I will not miss:

Can’t wait to show you what he’ll come up with!

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How about you?

Maybe it is the morbid in me, but I simply love these boney folks from Mexico.  They make me smile, and I guess it is as simple as that.

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