I hate bike riding with my kid

There, I said it. I like doing almost everything else with her, as long as we don't have to be punctual, but bike riding sucks. Want to know why?

She prefers to ride on the sidewalk. But she is simply not capable of scooting over for pedestrians. And she can't go over curbs, so once per block, I have to get off my bike, walk to the curb, convince her to get about four feet closer to the curb so I can actually grab onto her bike, and walk both our bikes across the street and onto the other sidewalk. Did I mention that was once per block?

If I can get her to ride in the street, I cut a year off my life once per block. Why? Because no matter how many times or ways I say, "No, a little more to the right. RIGHTRIGHTRIGHT! Can you aim to be to the right of those letters? Follow the line of the gutter. We're going to be so far to the right that as we pass this parked car, we could reach out with our fingertips and touch it. Not that we're going to. RIGHT!" it doesn't matter. She drifts happily into the path of cars until I get off and drag her back towards the bike lane.

She doesn't appear to believe in momentum, either, so her pace is actually far, far slower than her walking pace. Sometimes she just gets right off and walks it, but not from the side, as you do sometimes. She straddles it and walks. But that means that with every step, the pedals run into her calves, which is awkward and slows her down more. She will not listen to reason about why this is not a good way to locomote.

Once in a while, she chooses to walk her bike across something like a driveway because it has like a 2% grade at either side. She'll walk it from the side, but she'll let her front wheel turn sideways so that instead of wheeling the damn thing, she has to drag it.

If she's on the sidewalk, there are no driveways, and she actually gets a little speed going, she's very likely to apply the brakes, put her feet on the ground, and speechify for a minute. "I was going really fast. I'm actually quite scared of going so fast. That's why I stopped. You remember that I want to go to the triangle park, not East Portal park? Why was East Portal park a quarry? Did a quarryosaurus come and eat all the rock?" Then I convince her to get going again, and she stops two houses down. "I can't believe that triangle park used to just be a patch of weeds, can you? I really like how it has the lion head fountain..."

We went 0.8 miles and it took 40 minutes. Bless her heart, but I wish I could hire a kid-rider the way you hire a dig walker. Just... take my kid out for a bike ride once in a while. It's probably good for her, but lord knows I don't want to do it.

Be amused by simple things

In high school and beyond, I had a friend who would chide us, "Don't be amused by simple things." If we rewound a funny scene, pressed a button on the new device too often, expressed too much fascination by a potato that looked like Roosevelt. Whatever. It was his way, I know now, of belittling us. To be amused by simple things, in his view, was to be simple.

This is my batter bowl. I just got it after having "won" it on eBay. It is Jadite, a type of kitchenware I've loved for many years, but I've never treated myself to a piece before. I'm thrilled with it. I couldn't wait to use it. As you can see, I'm actually making batter in it. We had waffles.

I think if you know me, if you hang out with me in real life or work with me, you'll see pretty quickly that I'm one of the happiest people you know. I am just generally satisfied, easygoing, and good-natured. Now, part of that is who I am by nature. I know people have a temperament, and I know there are neurotransmitters involved in this stuff. But part of it is a choice I make every day. I choose to be appreciative of what I have, and to not be too bothered by the other stuff. Obviously, I can rant with the best of them (ahem, see my last post), but even then I'm not usually unhappy, just venting.

I like my life. I like waffles. I like my stupid batter bowl. I'm 37 years old today, and I am appreciative of everything I have, particularly my family, my home, my friends, and my job. But I appreciate the way the ice had formed on a puddle outside, too. I appreciate way the clouds turned pink last night. I appreciate that my yogurt set overnight. I appreciate that I am healthy.

If you want to be happy, you could do worse than being amused by simple things.

Some brief notes I'd like to dash off.

Dear union meeting people,

 I'm sure there are some people who find you fucking charming, but we're 15 minutes over time already, my kid and husband are starving, and my Crock Pot is on hour eleven of the high setting. So could you save your goddamn witticisms and asides for the people who like you?

 Thanks,
 CM


 Dear person who invited me to a poetry event via Facebook,

 Who the fuck do you think I am? You've sent me THIRTEEN messages regarding one single measly-ass poetry reading, including a notification every time you upload one of your shitty pixellated flyers, and several messages that, quite honestly, seem to be aimed more at the readers than at the audience. Like, why do I need to know that readers at this series won't be the kind who run to their car in the middle of the reading to get something? I don't EXPECT them to do that. That's like a special note on the restaurant menu saying, "This isn't the kind of place where waiters scratch their balls at your table." And why specifically point out the kind of erotic poetry that these readers won't do? I didn't need your creepy visual, and I'm still kind of mad at you for planting it in my head. And you know what? If this is a venue for people who love words, learn some goddamned grammar and don't spell stuff wrong to be cute. In closing, next time you do an event like this, I would suggest no more than three emails, going something like this: 1, Hey, there's an event! 2, Don't forget about the event in a week. 3, That event is tonight. Hope to see you there.

 Thanks,
 CM

Dear people of the internet,

For the love of god, onions aren't toxic. Planned Parenthood is not full of eugenicists. You can't cure cancer with pineapple. Just because you share a revolting picture of a mutilated dog doesn't mean any good will come of it. In fact, all that will happen is several more people will feel revolted, and several more dumb-asses will click "share." I feel like you've mostly gotten the hang of the Nigerian scam, now bookmark Snopes.com and take a deep breath and put on your critical thinking hat before you do anything else online. Do feel free to post pictures of Tartar Sauce the grumpy cat, though; he's hilarious.

Thanks,
CM

Growing up in Santa Cruz

Which I obviously didn't. But going back there, it sometimes feels like I did. The first time I visited I was only eighteen. My high school friend Greg had moved down there, and I stayed at the little house he was living in. He had moved there to be closer to a girl, and if I remember right, had quickly met another girl. She was just a friend, but he always meant that in the Biz Markie sense. In fact, by the time I got there (on the Greyhound -- my first long trip by myself), she was regularly sleeping in his room in the house she shared with another guy. Awkward!

Anyway, Catherine had a magnetic personality and knew lots of things I didn't, like about Lindt truffles and dessert wine, and I liked being there and learning those things, too. We went (all of us, including the left-out boyfriend, Brad) to comic shops and watched Japanese animation and ate sushi. I went to a retreat house with saunas, hot tubs, and massage rooms, and I went naked!

I actually was there for a week right around this time, New Year's, when I got a call from my employer at the time, calling me back early from my vacation for a mandatory meeting. Said meeting was to tell us that the business was going non-profit, and they were laying us all off. I was mad that I returned from vacation early for that, and I acted somewhat less than honorably the night before my last day. Let's leave it at this: hung over is not a good way to come to work.

I visited once or twice more before Catherine moved away -- Greg had already done so. But she moved back, lived in a big house which was on the outskirts of the town proper and was within walking distance of the beach. We only went to that beach a couple times together -- maybe even just once -- but I sort of fell in love with it. I'm not a leader, but I'm not a follower, exactly, either. I'm sort of independent. So the things that annoyed me about the people in the house on Grandview street, like that it took FOREVER to get ready to go anywhere, turned into opportunities for me to explore more on my own. I started walking down to the beach, Natural Bridges, on my own in the morning, as I knew that if I woke at seven, I'd have a good three hours to kill while others woke, showered, got ready, and decided on a breakfast place -- back then, usually Scotty's Cafe at the Sash Mill (afterwards, we'd get cookies on the honor system at the Pacific Cookie Company factory). I'd go down and kick the surf, sit on the sand or the rocks, and just be alone.

During all this, I went to college, got married, got divorced, my grandpa died. There was a lot going on in Sacramento. But there were things going on in Santa Cruz, too. I was deciding who I was. Catherine believed in everything -- past lives, karma, witches -- and Kevin, her new beau, believed in nothing that wasn't proven. He said he was a skeptic, and she said he was a cynic, and I decided I was a skeptic, too. We went to dinner and they were picky -- there could be no onions in the dish. She'd want a side of the spinach instead of the gratin. And could we just have the whole pitcher of water? I tried not to let it bother me, but I knew it was rude, and I decided to be agreeable, instead.

They took me to Bonny Doon vineyards, just down the Coast Highway, and I did a wine tasting for the first time. I bought bay rum-scented soap, a smell I still love. Their weird roommate was a minimalist: he removed everything from his room but for an object d'art he made with Christmas ornaments. He moved his collection of Jem and the Holograms VHS tapes to the living room. I used to borrow books from their vast sci-fi/fantasy collection. I had saganaki, flaming cheese, at the Greek restaurant. We played games galore: The Great Dalmudi, mah jong, Curses, Fluxx, Cranium, Guillotine, Bohnanza.

I attended Catherine and Kevin's wedding. Actually, I officiated it. I stayed in a hostel there for the first time, down by the Boardwalk. The morning after the wedding, the maid of honor and I took the leftover apricots, nutella, and bread to Kiva and had a picnic in the sunshine.

It wasn't really much after that when Catherine moved to the Caribbean. Without Kevin. It's a long story, but as you might imagine, it was the beginning of the end for them. I never went back to Santa Cruz to visit them. But I did go back.

Sweetie and I took our first-ever road trip there. I think it was in September of the year we met. I had reservations about traveling with a boyfriend. Although I'd made the trip with other friends, including Monkeygirl, there always seems to be stress involved in going places with a lover. There certainly was with my first husband, anyway, and the history goes rather deeper than that. Vacations, as wonderful as they sounded, tended to be fraught with tension. But Sweetie and I travelled easily together. We stayed at the motel near the old house on Grandview, and we ate at the restaurants I loved -- namely Saturn Cafe. We walked Pacific Avenue, and we visited the beach. In one toy store, long ago replaced by an Urban Outfitters, we saw one lonely skinny plush cat, and I told him, "He's creepy! And I love him!" That was all we said on the matter, but the little cat was on the motel pillow that evening. The end of that trip was sad, because we'd had such a lovely time, but it brought a huge sense of relief, too: we could travel together! Without fighting!

And we've been going back ever since. When I was seven months pregnant and my sciatic nerve was crippling me, we parked way too far from the beach and walked there, stopping at every bench along the way to rest. But it was worth it, because on the walk back, we saw dolphins in the ocean. I felt almost like the child inside me had been blessed by their appearance. (I'm still a skeptic, but being a parent makes certain shit seem pretty magical.)

And when Zadie was barely six weeks old, Sweetie had a work conference there. I came along, the baby wrapped in her Moby, and our car full of new luggage, like the Pack and Play we couldn't get her to sleep in. We dipped her tiny toes in the pool, and we nursed absolutely everywhere.

And she got bigger, and we took her to the beach, to Saturn Cafe, to the bookstore... One toystore we loved was on an alley two years ago, on the main drag last year, and was having its final closeout sale this year. Some of the funky game stores and record stores and bookstores are still there. And some places have been replaced by the Gap and Forever 21 and Peet's and Starbucks. I'll miss Badass coffee. I probably won't miss the oxygen bar.

At risk of providing too much information, I went all those years ago with Catherine to a store called Camouflage, which sells lingerie. I couldn't afford much back in the college years, so I would sometimes get one small thing from the panty bin. I went in on this visit, and the young lady who greeted me asked whether I'd been there before. I said, "Oh, I've been coming here for..." and I hesitated, trying to remember just how long. Probably almost 18 years. She prompted, "We've been here for thirty," which made me think she thought I was making something up, trying to come up with a number that sounded plausible. But I was just trying to figure out how old I was!

In the time I've been visiting that little city, I got married twice (and divorced once), got three college degrees, owned three cars, held all the jobs of my adult life, owned two houses, and had a baby. A lot of the ideas I have about culture, relationships, and who I wanted to be were formed there. I've lost touch with almost everyone I ever knew there, sometimes intentionally, and the ones that I occasionally speak with have moved away from there.

Aside from Sacramento, there's no other city where I feel so at home. Eugene is comfortable, because it has family in it. I love San Francisco, but I never feel like I know it. Santa Cruz, in many ways, feels like my second home. Even when it sticks a Gap in the middle of Pacific Avenue.