ingrid

I don’t know what it is about me and death hikes.  I keep finding them.  I forget that many places that are beautiful to go are

• wet
• high up in the air
• made by scrabbling a barely flat surface into a cliff wall

I was pondering why we always end up like this, a white-knuckle death grip on each kid as we inch along a rock face, hissing at our dear children with each clumsy step.  (I swear that Zephyr starts tripping every third or fourth step when we are up 100 feet in the air clinging to a metal cable.  Swear.)  Why does this always happen to us?  Then it occurred to me… it is the terrain dummy.  We keep hiking to these waterfalls in the gorge.  Gorge + waterfalls = rock walls with just a cable to cling to.  If I were in Death Valley say, this wouldn’t be happening to me.

Anyway, we had a break in the rain this last weekend and we raced for the outdoors.  I feel like such a caged animal these days, eager to get out be RUN around.  I am coming to terms with my true nature.  The truth is that I like exercise.

So why not get it here?

This was Eagle Creek Trail.  William Sullivan, Northwest hike guru has this to say about this particular trail:

The Eagle Creek Trail is one of Oregon’s most spectacular paths, passing half a dozen major waterfalls. The trail is also an engineering marvel. To maintain an easy grade through this rugged canyon, the builders blasted ledges out of sheer cliffs, bridged a colossal gorge and even chipped a tunnel through solid rock behind 120-foot Tunnel Falls.

Yes siree.  It was high up there.

We did this particular hike with our friends Jason and Angela and their two boys Soren and Anders.  It is fun to have a whole family of friends.  Everyone has someone to love!  That is definitely how we feel about these guys, so we were certainly open to risking our lives with them.

Brad is such a good sport.  I have yet to decide if he really likes hiking but pretends not to or if he really does not like hiking but thinks he should or if he just doesn’t like it and… you get the picture.  For him, the best thing about hiking in the gorge is that Edgefield is between us and Portland when we are done.  The kids, (all five of them), were so exhausted that they were really pretty mellow at dinner.  Who can resist?

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I am trying to play more.  I am trying to relax and just be more fun.  My TSPC requirement classes made me sadly realize that I sometimes look at my kids as one great big bother, a source of stress and distraction that I must struggle to escape.  And that’s too bad, because it seems to me that I CHOSE to have these kids, right?  Why the crappy attitude?

I am such a do-er in my daily life.  I feel massive satisfaction from what I accomplish in any given day.  When Brad asks how my day went, I immediately catalogue what I achieved that day as though that justifies my whole existence, as though I am not worthwhile at all if I didn’t complete the siding on the chicken shed, plant lily starts, hang art, finish laundry and clean the kitchen.  I’ve got to fix this I know, because obviously the simple, quiet things are important too— maybe more important.  So I am going to play more and maybe do a bit less.

I’m not going to change too much– I will always love working, achieving, feeling the accomplishment that comes with being physically exhausted because you just mopped the floor on your hands and knees– but I am trying to find a little balance.  The work of mothering is a wide skill set, and the things that kids note at the end of the day are not the same things that I might catalogue to Brad as “accomplishments”.  So these are the things I am trying to do more of:

• Snuggling up with Zephyr at nap time (I would curl up with Inez if she would quit tweaking my nose)
• Reading books with kids (no, my books do not count, although once I had Francis fooled when I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan out loud to her a few days in a row)
• Art projects (like kid ones, not the ones where I tell them to go away and let mom work)
• Dancing around
• Playing instruments and singing
• Cooking projects where they get to make a mess and maybe even lick stuff
• Baths midday (with bubbles!)
• Setting up train tracks

Part of my goal with this year is just to calm down and not achieve anything, because you know, I think I am a good enough person just sort of sitting on my ass… and playing with trains.

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Francis came up with something hilarious… she is monkey-ing people.  I could tell you what this is, but wouldn’t a photo demonstration be so much better?

First, take one monkey with magnet hands and feet (thanks Devra and Gavin!).

Quietly attach it to someone’s seat belt when exiting the car.  This works best in the dark:

Wait patiently until the target gets in the car and reaches for his or her seatbelt:

Squeal with glee when target FREAKS OUT upon touching a furry, rat-sized monkey!
YOU’VE BEEN MONKEYED!  (This was me on the way to the grocery store this morning.  May I point out that I have already been monkeyed three times?  Good job Francis!)

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I have had a bunch of people comment on how I am not writing.  Well, yes, remember how I said that I would not be writing?  All my creative powers (and non-existent time) is being poured into one effort— to finish classes for my continuing license renewal in order to stay employable.  And yet, I have still heard, “Wow.  I remember that you said you would not be writing, but you are really not writing… like at all!”.  It is true.  But now I am pleased to tell you that I am almost there.

I’m referring to the end of the madness… my classes are almost done.  I fully intend to send the last project off tomorrow, and then I can be a somewhat free woman again—look onward to a brighter tomorrow and all that.

Meanwhile, things still need to happen around here whether or not classes are finished.  Laundry still needs to be done.  That damn dishwasher still does not load nor unload itself once or twice a day.  I hate that thing.  Our refrigerator “fill yourself” option seems to be broken.  No matter how many times I check, it is still lacking the basic ingredients that every household needs.  And the kids.  They need all sorts of help doing things— (So helpless!  So needy!  I tell you, don’t have kids.  They can’t do anything for themselves these days.  Even the baby is useless, useless, useless!).  And get this— the worse thing is that we seem to be invaded by mice.  Just because I can’t get the food off the floor (those kids again!), they think it was left out for them.  Au Contraire raton!  That is for the shark to clean up, which I plug in faithfully each night, but he still seems to be in the same spot each morning as though he went nowhere.

Sigh.  A brighter tomorrow.  And better appliances, please.

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I felt accomplished this year that I had such a successful summer garden.  It is still sort of successful, if those 13 tomato plants ever decide to ripen.  They are ripening, just not all at once like I imagined.  It is somewhat inconvenient as I intended to can those tomatoes.  I’m not going to be able to can one at a time though.  Ripen, ripen, ripen!

The weather is weird around here.  The season is changing.  The mornings are cold, but then midway through the day, you are sweating in your wool socks.  I put on a sweater, take off the sweater, contemplate turning the furnace on but then see that it is still 67 degrees.  Fall is here, but it is sauntering in.  We’re having showers in the morning, heavy clouds and then bursts of sun.

In the garden, the snow peas and beets gave way to lettuce, chard, and cauliflower.  We’ll see what makes it.  The napa cabbage is looking troubled.  I see that maybe I do have slugs after all.  If you can believe it, I have seen very few slugs on our property here in Portland.  I don’t actually think that is a good thing.  I think the soil is just so dry and poor that it doesn’t support egg growth.  So even though I don’t miss the suckers, I do sort of mourn their absence.  I think our soil sucks so much that even the slugs don’t like it, but anywhere I put down chicken manure, straw, leaves and mulch there are now signs of tiny little slugs.  That’s okay.  There is enough to share for now.

And what is this?  Peeking around the side of a tomato plant, these buggers looked me in the eye.  Begone deadly nightshade!  I love that it has “deadly” in its name.  Makes you think, “Now wait, should I eat this?”.  I think I should have deadly in my name.

I had an ill-fated couple weeks for all things coffee and tea.  Just when the weather changed and I wanted more of both, I broke my coffee pot (knocked it on the sink), broke the spout of my teapot (dropped it while washing it), and suffered the loss of my milk frother (Zephyr swept it off the counter and then imbedded a piece in his foot for good measure).  Sigh.  Ill-fated.  This tea pot was so cute and useful.  Brad’s aunt gave it to me along with this excellent little tea cozy.  I couldn’t part with it,even though the spout is broken down the back in a quite irreparable way.  You can’t see the break from the front, especially with the plant in it.  I’m going to keep it on the front porch to announce my priorities to the world.  I planted a corsican mint in it.

Yes, at the big purple house, things are indeed growing well.

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Francis started school last week.  Not a moment too soon is what I say.  I love my daughter dearly.  She is super smart and fun and creative.  Unfortunately, she drives me like a mule.  She can think up a million projects and games a minute and for some reason, most of them involve me.  She would also make an excellent lawyer.  She wants a 2 page document with high lighted reasons for every decision, as well as cross-referenced accounts of relevant past cases.  (“Why can’t I bring a toy to school?  You let Zephyr bring Dog to school, why can’t I bring something?  Gracie brought a toy just last week!  Why would her mom let her do that if she knows the rules?  Are you sure that the rules are the same this year?  Can you show me the place where they put the new rules?  Maybe they changed……).  Off you go!

Zephyr started preschool today.  He was thrilled.  Absolutely.  That kid has absolutely no issues with heading off into the world alone.

I think preschool will be good for him.  Like many self-involved toddlers, he thinks “But I love to” is a good enough reason to do whatever he wants.  He has truly used that response after doing all sorts of naughty things.  ”But I love to kick the chickens!”.

And, here is the classic third child left behind.  It won’t be long Inez and you can be shuffled out into the world just for a bit each day, little steps at a time, testing that fleeting, giddy, joyful independence.

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When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to ride the Zoo Train at the Oregon Zoo.  It is expensive you see, and being from a family of modest means, we could never afford to do the train after getting into the zoo.  It is still expensive to this day.  Even if you are a little kid, they expect you to shell out $4.50 to ride the train for 20 minutes to the Rose Garden.

Last week I was contemplating how different things are for my kids.  It is tempting to romanticize your childhood, to make assumptions that the way you experienced things made you a better person, when in fact we don’t really understand the factors that form an individual’s character and values (nor do we know that you are much of a great person now!  Ha!).  We have a human tendency to try to reassure ourselves that hardships were formative, that they had purpose.  I think we want to be sure that we didn’t suffer for nothing.  I had this conversation with a young man struggling to put himself through college while his peers have scholarships and family support.  When I was in college, I remember being vaguely jealous that some kids had their school paid for, all while I presented as fiercely proud that I was putting myself through.  Now I look back and think, did that really make me better somehow?  More appreciative?  Not really.  Would I change places with someone with a full-ride in a heartbeat?  Hell yeah!  (At this point I would like to thank Brad for putting me through graduate school, and for issuing me a retro-active partial scholarship for undergrad.  Yes, I “did it myself” and exiting school, I had the loans to prove it.)

Anyway, back to the Zoo Train.  No, I didn’t suffer because I couldn’t ride the Zoo Train as a child, but I always longed to ride the Zoo Train.  Now I am an adult living an easy and luxurious life.  I am raising three very privileged children with college accounts and such.  When I say no to the Zoo Train, or anything really, I can’t honestly say that it is because we can’t afford it.  We can afford all sorts of crap that we don’t really need, so I have this new existential struggle that involves privilege, fear of creating nasty spoiled children, shame over conspicuous consumption, worry about what other children can have, worry about waste and the shit that people give their kids right and left just because, and other issues that probably come from my Catholic upbringing.  It isn’t just the Zoo Train; it’s a train wreck.

So, back to the Zoo Train. (Man, I have to move this post along.  I will try short sentences because the long ones are pulling me into some sort of philosophical whirlpool).  I was at the zoo last week.  I spent the first hour thinking about the zoo train.  Should we ride the zoo train?  Should we not ride the zoo train?  Man, I really want to ride the zoo train.  Why NOT ride the zoo train?  We could ride the zoo train!

Finally I decided that we were going to do it.  We were going to blow $13.50 on a stupid ride on a miniature train.  I walked up to the ticket booth, scanned the prices and saw:

RAIL TO RAIL: present your Tri-Met Max ticket for this day and ride free round-trip on the Zoo Train

Holy Crap!  The Zoo Train is free if you take MAX to the Zoo.  I ONLY take Max to the Zoo.  The Zoo Train is free for the rest of my freaking life!  I am so happy!  I am going to leave it all and go LIVE on the Zoo Train!  Who knew?  See you on the Zoo Train suckers!

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My family did another Sunday Parkways.  Holy Crap!  I love it so much.  I love living in freaking Portland Oregon!

Sunday Parkways is where the city shuts down a 7 or so mile loop of neighborhoods to cars so that bikes, walkers, skaters, and runners can take over the street.  It is like the street becomes one long stretch of park where you can ride and play without worrying about being run over.  Brilliant.

The first Sunday Parkways was last year in early summer and the route went right by our house.  We did that loop through North Portland with me fairly pregnant and Francis rattling along on her bike with training wheels.  15,000 people joined us.

This year the city of Portland planned three Sunday Parkways.  Brad and I skated the North/North East route and Francis rode her “two-wheeler” without training wheels.  It was her first major biking outing.  I can’t describe how proud I was of her biking, and I am so pleased to be able to share something I love with my daughter.  I am not a major biker in terms of doing miles and miles of riding, but I truly love the freedom of being on a bike.  Being on a bike feels pure and joyous.  It is like dancing.  It makes me feel like a kid.  In my mind, I am screaming, “Woooooo hoooooo!” the whole time I am riding somewhere.

After a few years of sharing our biking/skating pictures, I have come to see that they are mostly the same.  There is one of a kid sleeping in a baby jogger.  There is one of Zephyr sucking his thumb and looking tired.  This time we add this:

Our girl looks pretty confident on her "Jet".

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Did you know that you can break open these little whirligigs and stick them to your face?  Me neither.  The babysitter taught the kids their new favorite trick.

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Bouquets $1.

Cucumbers 2 for 25 cents.

So goes the world of commerce at the “stand” in front of our house.  The kid made $5 in about 1 hour.  Maybe she will quit asking for Playmobil now that she can buy it herself.

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