The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Doris Lessing: best response ever

Is that not exactly the perfect response to discovering one has won the Nobel Prize for Literature?

This was a bookatarian weekend, since we had houseguests who love and appreciate the Powell's phenomenon. We went to the Burnside store on Saturday and--wonder of wonders!--I didn't buy anything. But I made up for that yesterday when we went to the Hawthorne store and I bought

• The Best Science and Nature Writing 2007 (because I'm going to be a science writer when I grow up. Look for writeups on some of these articles soon, maybe. Also, this is the only one I bought that wasn't either used or on sale. Such virtue! Buy that girl another book.)
• Walter Wangerin Jr.'s The Book of the Dun Cow (because I've been hearing for some time that I should read it; it's 25 years old and won the National Book Award when it was published... who knew?)
• Elaine Pagels' The Origin of Satan (Jac bought it too! We'll have to compare notes, once she chews through the roughly 37 other books she bought this weekend, ha ha ha. Pagels is one of my favorite authors on religious history.)
• Donald Antrim's Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World (picked up because I liked the cover and then purchased because it had both laudatory blurbs from the SF Chron, the NYT and the New Yorker and a passionately-written shelf tag, and plus I just dig funny books)

Thereby bringing my unread-books total to, erm, roughly 370 or so. But we're getting rid of satellite TV so I'll be able to get more reading done at night. (The evil glow-box! It sucks me in! Must... watch... "We Are The '80s!" Must... watch... every single freakin' midnight-or-later showing of "Ferris Bueller!")

Also, I joined a book group--"Women Reading Women." We're alternating between full-length novels and short stories, all by--natch--women. First novel: Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. Starting off nice and light and accessible, don't you think?

T-t-t-t-Tuesday Ten

Lori did it, and I've been feeling blogatorially challenged, so now I'm doing it too. With pictures. (As ever: all photos by James Newman. Thanks, sweetie!)

1. The garden is in! The garden is in! Well, most of it, anyway. I'm going to map out what I've planted where, take some pictures, and maybe even post them here. Yeah, we'll see. I did get about 80 bulbs in the ground yesterday, plus creeping thyme, sage and coreopsis... and a bunch of transplants from the unlovely next-to-the-house beds to the slightly less unlovely middle of the mulch-covered yard.
2. Solitude. I had a big ol' chunk of it last week; the boys (Jim, Fisher & Rhys) flew out to Colorado on Tuesday, and Jim returned home with the $&@#@$!! as-yet-unsold Land Rover late on Friday night. (Anybody want to buy a $&@#@$!! Land Rover?) All alone for four days/three nights; I don't know if I've ever been by myself in the house all night before, at least not since we had kids. I was going to blog about it in hopes of getting a little reassurance from my Beloved Commenters, but then I thought "y'know, I really have no idea who is reading this blog" and so I kept it to myself. And then I realized that the Home Depot clerk from whom I'd bought a dishwasher on Tuesday knew that I was home alone and also had my delivery address conveniently written down right in front of him, and I scared myself dreadfully for a couple of hours until I convinced the cats to sleep with me. Because they would totally be a big help in a fight for my life with an armed intruder.
3. A musical weekend! We went to the Doug Fir on Saturday and saw Dat'r (our favoritest local band), Foreign Born (they were just OK, but their guitarist was pretty cute) and Datarock (Norwegian guys in crazy red tracksuits! Woo-hoo!). This is Dat'r:
   
   And this is Datarock:
   
   
4. Then we went to the Crystal Ballroom on Sunday and saw a fun psychedelicore Sabbath-stoney Seattle band called Whalebones opening up for Jason Lytle (formerly of Grandaddy) and M. Ward. Jason Lytle had kind of a sort of a breakdown on stage. It was dreadful; he said "I'm really getting tired of this acoustic shit" and was loudly taunted by the crowd. Grandaddy was an amazing band, and their songs as performed by a dispirited former lead singer were just heartbreakingly crappy. I kind of wanted to give him a hug and whisper "Get the band back together" in his ear. But M. Ward was awesome enough to almost make up for Jason's sub-lackluster performance. Here's Jason Lytle in all his non-glory:
   
5. I wrapped the BLT's bumper around a pole because I was looking for bicyclists when I was backing up. Yay me! I am a safe, wise and cautious driver.
   
6. We went to a parallel universe! Actually, it was just the parking garage at 15th and Burnside. We parked there Saturday night before the M. Ward show and spent the next ten minutes wandering up and down hallways that led to nowhere, trying frantically to find a way out of the building. There was one door hanging a few inches open, and we could hear a radio playing beyond it... but when we tried to push it open, we discovered there was a concrete curb four or five inches on the other side of the doorway. Ultimately, we had to go through a series of Emergency Exits ("Alarm Will Sound") to emerge, blinking, out on the refreshingly uncomplicated street.
7. Apparently, someone else got so lost in this parking garage some time ago that s/he just gave up and went away sans car. And I guess the garage was too much of a maze for the attendants to point a tow truck in the abandoned vehicle's direction.
   
8. I got a new haircut this morning. Well, actually, it was just a trim updating this haircut, which I got a few weeks ago. Just had to share this picture because Jim took it at Lupa, which has the best portrait lighting of any place in Portland. Or at least of any wine bar. Look at that smooth, flawless skin which is so very neither smooth nor flawless in real life!
9. Joe and Karan are coming to see us tomorrow! Plus a very special guest visit by the Jac & Mike Show! The safe-n-sane hedonism is just palpable. Yay friends!
10. And last, but not least: we discovered the world's only known 100%-effective form of birth control at Fred Mayer this weekend. After the jump...

Is it so much to ask?

It rains quite a bit here, which fact I think we were well warned of in advance. This is a rainy city, and the rain does love to fall.

My recently planted garden (that's a whole 'nother blog post, someday, maybe) certainly is enjoying the rain. My hostas are reaching for the sky with a big green "aaahhh!"; the black mondo grass fairly shudders with excitement as it's pelted by fat juicy drops dripping steadily from the tangle of tree branches above.

And I kind of like the rain, too. In fact, I like it so much that I decided I wanted to go take a walk in it. Or even a proper hike, perhaps; I would imagine that the trails near the Audobon Center in Forest Park might be even lovelier and mistier and redolent of faerieland than they would be on a sunny day.

But to embark on this adventure, I needed one thing: a rain jacket.

I have a tough-ass black leather biker jacket (thanks, sweetie!). I have a gorgeous long far-too-sophisticated-for-the-likes-of-me coat (thanks, Mom!). I even have a cunning little brown tweed zip-up jacket (thanks, Herm, I think!). But do I have anything properly rainproof, ready for wet outdoor adventures, with a hood attached? I do not.

So I headed to REI, where I promptly had a heart attack at the prices of the rain jackets. Two hundred and fifty dollars? Are you shitting me? For a freakin' chunk of nylon with a designer label on it? The cheapest thing I could find on the clearance rack was still $70, which was (a) roughly twice what I wanted to spend, and (b) only available in an XL. I tried it on anyway. It looked just about as stunningly ridiculous as you might expect.

I could feel my mood heading rapidly downhill. "Never mind," I counseled myself, "I'll just go to the Lloyd Center mall and poke around there. They must have some sort of Mervyns-y type place that would be the ideal place to find a nice reasonably priced jacket in any color except blue."

You'd think they'd have such a thing, wouldn't you? Not a chance. I went through Macy*s. I trolled through Nordstrom. I even ventured into both Marshall's and Ross before being completely overwhelmed by the sheer grotty sadness of it all--plus, they didn't have rain jackets either. They had ridiculous puffy brown things with hot-pink stripes across the back and hot-pink faux-fur collars. They had things that looked like they might have been perfectly nice rain jackets if they hadn't been useless bloody vests instead. They had long fancy non-waterproof wool coats, short depressingly tacky jackets with unaccountable bling sprinkled over them, jackets that might well have been waterproof but were in the men's department and made of a dreadful forest camo fabric that made me want to cry just looking at it.

So I left, my search fruitless. And as I was driving home in the rain (which had continued apace), I started getting really mad.

This is Portland! It freakin' rains here... kind of a lot! Why the hell don't any of these stores sell clothes that would be practical and useful and worthwhile? Why does every single rack in every single store have to be packed with wildly inappropriate clothes in varying degrees of heartrending ugliness? Why can't I just buy a damn rain jacket so I can go out in the damn rain?

And then that kind of got me on a whole long train of thought about the general uselessness and slavelike followerness (is that even a word?) of fashion in general, and that started getting me even more cranky, and I'll spare you the rest 'cause ugh. But I will tell you this: as I drove home, still jacket-less, I looked out the window at a crowd of people at a bus stop, all getting rained on... and there were two of them who had proper rain jackets, and they were standing there unfazed with their hoods up and their heads held high, while the rest huddled and cowered and held newspapers and textbooks over their heads and looked as wet and miserable as everyone accuses Portland's weather of being.

Parent as Boeing Chinook

It's Monday evening on the patio at Hot Lips Pizza. The vegetarian pizza of the night is a scrumptious concoction of summer squash, feta and pesto. The wine is flowing (O Hot Lips! How we love the fact that you charge us just $1 more for a bottle of wine than you would for two glasses!), the sun is setting and the children are scampering.

Hot Lips' patio is raised just above a tempting tangle of shrubs and trees and suchlike. It's a well-groomed jungle that on any given night typically has three to ten children frolicking about in it. And yesterday, after they'd devoured their slices and their house-made blackberry soda (O Hot Lips!, etc.), we let them descend into the brush to goof off with the other younglings already there.

Next to our table was a tableful of miscellaneous parents and children. There were two, or maybe three or maybe four mamas, two (I think) papas and one lady who was either a patient nanny or a patient spinster auntie in town for a crazy kid-soaked long weekend. And there were about thirty-seven little blonde kids, the oldest of whom was probably Rhys' age. They'd "eaten" their pizza (well, nibbled it), sipped their drinks (I'm sure their parents were far too virtuous to permit them any soda) and begun begging to be allowed to go play. And, with some reluctance, their mamas let the older ones do so.

They hadn't been off the patio for thirty seconds when one of the mamas started shrieking "Oh my God! Look at them!" She jumped up from her table, ran over to the verge of the patio and gestured in distress at two of the children... who were doing nothing more than hoisting themselves up by their arms over the forty-inch concrete barrier between jungle and pavement. You know the move: the one involving putting your palms down flat on top of the wall and pushing until you can swing your legs up. A perfectly normal kid thing, right?

Not for this mom. She was convinced her children were going to dash their brains out against the wall, or fall backwards and dash their brains out against the ground, or somehow meet some similarly Isaiah-esque fate. So, after rescuing her children from the perils of the Climbable Wall, she sat perched on her seat with both eyes peeled for trouble. Over the next fifteen minutes or so, she saved them from the Horror of Not Being Completely Visible, the Unspeakable Terror of Being Boosted Onto the Wall By One's Sister and the Deadly Fate of Going Beyond the Wooded Area Onto the Concrete Beyond. Then, in some exasperation at her children's apparently uncontrollable suicidal impulses, she turned to the nanny/auntie figure and said "Julia, will you go down and keep an eye on them, please?"

Jim and I made eye contact, and we drank deeply of our wine. Our savage and uncontrolled children rustled in the bushes.

We've noticed this phenomenon a lot in other parents, especially since moving to Portland. Hordes of mommies and daddies hover at the bottom of the playground slide, waiting for little Madisons and Jacobs to emerge so they can cushion their offspring's landings. Parents grip their seven-year-olds' hands tightly as they walk, and not just as they cross the street. Childless-seeming persons standing in the vicinity of playgrounds are given the evil eye (as I was a time or two yesterday while waiting at Jamison Square for my crew to show up). Mamas at Crafty Wonderland shepherd their children relentlessly through the DIY button-making station, leaning over them till it looks like Junior's wearing mom's boobs for a hat.

Others have noticed it, too, and are calling it helicopter parenting. It's not a new term, but it's one I don't think I'd seen in quite such obvious action before moving here. Parents who oversee their children's every waking moment, stuffing their schedules with mind- and body-improving activities, pushing them to get into a top college, above all protecting them from anything that smacks the slightest bit of chaos or danger.

So what is my problem? Maybe I just don't hang out with sufficiently high-achieving types. Maybe I just don't have the essential mommy gene for pushing my children to succeed, micro-managing their lives, scripting and supervising every action they take. Maybe it's more important to me that my children discover for themselves what they want to do and how they want to do it than that they check off a bunch of boxes on a list leading somehow to "success" ...good grades, sports star, cool (but not outlandish) clothes, four-year degree (everyone knows Ph.D.s lead to nothing but debt and irrelevance), well-paid safe career, quality health insurance, attractive high-achieving spouse, attractive high-achieving children, international vacations (to safe approved destinations), tennis, golf, regular cancer screenings, well-managed retirement in a well-managed community, inevitable yet painless and adequately prepared-for death (followed by a tasteful memorial service).

In fact, I can go hours without being exactly sure where my kids are or what they're doing. I know if they're outside (a benefit of having replaced our front yard with mulch: the kids don't like to play on it much and hence are always in the backyard) and I often have a vague idea if they're in the basement (clue: if I can hear drumming and/or guitar shredding, that's where they are). But I don't hover, I don't pry and I only step in if it seems truly necessary.

So yesterday, while my unsupervised hellions were wandering around, here are some of the things they did:

• played with Play-Doh on the back deck for almost two hours
• assembled their Lego glow-in-the-dark anglerfish
• started working on a Lego model of our house
• watched "Meerkat Manor"
• read a few more chapters of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
• made a list of Harry Potter spells
• staged a Harry Potter battle in the backyard
• carried said Harry Potter battle into the basement
• drew comics
• worked on the Dungeons & Dragons monsters they're inventing (Fisher's is called a "two-fingered;" I'm not sure what Rhys' is called, but it has an impressive number of sharp pointy teeth)

And some of the things they did not do:

• complete any math worksheets
• get in a fight
• clean the cat box (we're having words about this one today)
• watch TV without asking, or for hours and hours
• set anything on fire
• damage or break anything, be it property or person

All that without my help. Golly! Imagine if I were standing over them breathing down their necks all day... they'd probably be translating Ovid and discovering cures for cancer by now. I'm such a rotten parent.

Bitter disappointment and the hope of recompense

It was a sickeningly sunny Saturday, and I wanted to go outside. Specifically, I wanted to go outside and read my book.

But duty called, and I could not succumb to the call of the (not very) wild.

"I will work and work," I said to myself, "and I will finish those things which must be done, and then I will reward myself by going outside and lounging in the cool green grass (well, I'd actually like to be insulated from the grass proper by a nice insect-proof blanket) and reading a book and perhaps even falling asleep."

(If you read the blog this weekend, you know this already.)

So: I cranked out my tasks accordingly, took a shower (for, Dear Reader, I was frightfully stinky), dried my hair, applied only the tiniest titch of makeup so as to make myself fit for public consumption, put on a cunning flared denim skirt that seemed to offer the perfect blend of unfettered lounging and necessary modesty, found my book, dusted off my book, rounded up the troops, discovered Jim didn't know where his keys were, offered to drive since I knew where my keys were, and headed out the door. We drove up to Washington Park and rounded the corner to the "Elephant Playground" (so called by my kids because it is directly next to the old Elephant House; in reality, I think it's called something like the Lions Club Playground; at any rate, it is a terrific playground).

And my heart sank. For the entire playground, being located in this famously lushly forested park*, was mired in deep deep shadow. There would be no lying in the sun for me here.

Jim suggested going somewhere else. I thought it would be (a) silly to drive around trying to find a sunny park, and (b) mean to not let the kids go to their favoritest park in all of Portland just because Mama wants to pretend she's lounging on the shore at Capri. So, spirit somewhat dimmed, I went to fetch my book from the back seat.

It wasn't there.

It wasn't in the front seat. It wasn't in the back of the car. It was, I realized with a sickening jolt, still sitting on the dining room table at our house where I had set it down to retrieve my keys from the pegboard where, being a conscientious person, I always always hang them.

Yes, it was petty; but yes, it was all I could do not to cry a little bit. I think a tear may have welled up despite my best efforts.

You would really have to know just how awful of a mood I'd been in for days, and how much I was looking forward to that hour of blissful reading, and how it had dangled jujube-like before me as I worked my little tailfeathers off, to understand why I would react so frankly childishly.

But there was nothing to be done, and so I attempted to make do with the iPod (for which the only "headphones" available were the six-inch-corded earbuds that came with Jim's phone). It was a poor, poor second place.

So today, while Jim goes and gets two new tires for the BLT (we had a spectacular blowout on the freeway yesterday... that's another story), I'm going to repair to Powell's all. by. my. lonesome. And sell some books, and have their value added to the card I've had since before we moved to Portland, and then buy some books to add to the ever-growing To Be Read pile. And then maybe I'll walk over to Jamison Square and read one of them in the remarkably persistent sunshine.

Today's 20-Word Review:
Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart
Vulgar, profane, hilarious. Confederacy of Dunces meets Still Life with Woodpecker in post-Soviet Russia. Plus: white men rap!

*but not Forest Park. That's a whole 'nother place, and a damned fine one.

The family that stands in front of a crazy mirror together...

...goes home and drinks beer together?
...acts rather queer together?
...is glad to be here together?

Anyway, here's a family self-portrait from the playground near the zoo (the kids call it Elephant Park), taken a few days ago. Love the head-squashing effect of that warped metal!

(There is no word for how much I'm loving Fisher's insane shagged-out feathery 'do.)

Gaffel och soptunna

Yes! We have succumbed to the siren song of the new Cascade Station IKEA. Went there this morning for a fine and tasty and unbelievably cheap cafe breakfast (eggs/bacon/potatoes 99 cents; beat THAT, Denny's! Or, better yet: meatballs, glorious meatballs. With lingonberries, mmmm.). Shopped for various household and Kampmobil necessities (the nouns in the title of this post among them).

And as a result, I've been spending all day speaking faux-Swedish ('scuse me, förfalska svenska). In all caps, like this: "Fisher, get off that MOHLENGRUNER. Give your brother back his ARDIPLÖ. My RÅGDMEL is full of SÄGSSANNER."

Jim did his best to dissuade me, but I still managed to leave with an absolutely adorable bottle opener, can opener and measuring cups in matching red/black plastic. For the Kampmobil, you know. Sadly, they were from the prosaically-named CHARM collection and not from anything fun like RIVEN OST or BESLUTSFATTARE (look 'em up).

Put me in the zoo

The boys were being magnificently well behaved yesterday, so we decided to reward them with a trip to the zoo.

Jim brought his new toy lust object valuable career-building tool--a Leica M8--along to capture the action.

The background may look like a diorama, but it was actually a replica African savanna habitat (well, as close to a replica as one can get in lushly wet Portland, anyway). And here Fisher and I are with a 100% non-replica MEERKAT! Yes! I got to be within popcorn-flinging distance of an actual "terrier-sized member of the mongoose family." Color me, as you can see from this photo, happy.

(Note: zoo meerkats are roughly 10,000 times better-fed looking and sleeker of fur than are their wild counterparts.)

The Oregon Zoo may not be the largest or fanciest zoo on the planet, but it was still a wonderful place to spend the day (and, we hope, many future days... we bought a family membership). The habitats seem very well-done (says she who knows so little of such things) and the zoo is laid out in an appealing way and beautifully landscaped throughout.

We started out with a visit to the "Steller Cove," which is not a misspelled astronomical hyperbolic comparison as you might think, but rather a reference to the area's largest denizens, the Steller sea lions. (Silly me, I thought they were Steller sea cows. Sea cows. Moo. "I'm a manatee!")

Two male (?) sea lions were wrestling (?) on the bottom of their tank, with Rhys (in do-rag) and Fisher observing.

Then they suddenly exploded upward toward the surface--an amazing sight, these two majestic and HUGE animals swooping at such a speed through the water. The twenty or so people gathered around the tank all went "WHOA!" in stereo.

This little kid (whom we don't know) got up close and personal with a beaver. (Shut up.) Isn't this a cute picture?

The Humboldt penguin habitat was possibly the stinkiest place I've ever been.

But it had this cool take-pictures-here area, which I think would be an insanely wonderful location for band photos. (Relatedly, somewhat: Jim's got his Web site up at last. Go check out his "People" (bands 'n' weddings) and "Places" (real estate 'n' his first love, street photography): James Newman Photo.

I made friends with this goat. Ba-a-a-a-a-a-d idea. (Not really. I just wanted to say that. Ba-a-a-a-a-a-d pun.)

Now, here's the thing about going to the zoo with Jim. Most people go to the zoo, they take photos of elephants or cranky tigers or whatever. My friend Brian takes photos of animals in captivity that come out so well he's selling prints of them (check it out). But, as I recently told Brian, we go to the zoo and we come home with pictures of large people eating ice cream.

Oh come on! Look at his shirt! You couldn't have passed up the opportunity either!

If you live in Portland, or have, or know someone who does...

...where should we go for our anniversary a week from tomorrow?

The boys will be in California with Grammy and Pa, so Jim and I will be going solo. We're looking for somewhere with absolutely delicious food, possibly "Northwest" (hey, in California we called it "California") style cuisine feat. fresh local seasonal ingredients, a good wine list, intimate but not squishy-romantic ambience. Mid- to upper-price range, prolly. Kid-unfriendly is definitely OK.

We're going to Portland City Grill for happy hour snackies & drinkies first, I think... but we're fine with driving to a completely different part of town for dinner proper.

Any suggestions? Thanxomuch!

On rain, and under it

So when we announced to people that we were moving here, we got one of two responses:

"Awesome! Portland is such a great city. There's so much going on there. I know you'll love it."

or

"Rains a lot there."

It didn't take long for us to figure out that the respondees in the latter group tended to be conservative, small-town, homebody, often deeply religious types--and it made perfect sense for them to say that, because they honestly couldn't think of anything else to say about Portland. But you know what? They were right. It does rain a lot. It was raining this morning, it rained like a crazy person a few days ago, and it'll probably rain again later this afternoon.

How one reacts to this depends on two things: one's own attitude about weather in general, and one's own attitude about weather that's anything less than default-nice. We've had the opportunity to discover, in the last week and a half, exactly how different two halves of the same couple's attitudes can be on this subject.

Jim's attitude about weather: likes the sunshine. A lot.
My attitude about weather: don't really care what it's doing, as long as it's not freakin' hot.

Jim's attitude about weather that's not default-nice: he's being quite good about it, but it  gives him this kind of tight-jawed expression of barely contained annoyance.
My attitude about weather that's not default-nice: awwwww! The rain makes the flowers and plantses grow!  I look out the window of my new attic workspace and all I see are the green, green treetops crowding bountifully against each other... oh yeah, and happy little squirrels running to and fro on the power cables. Rain is the weather that means teacups and good books and even, occasionally, lap-cats. And if it's raining and you want to go outside and you don't want to get wet... hey, we have Technology to help you deal with that. Like rain jackets.

Jim's really being very patient with my "tra la, we love the clouds and the rain" demeanor, though. As much as he may want to stomp out in a huff and drive to sunnier climes. What a great sweetie.

(Speaking of great sweeties: we have our first official Portland date tonight! Hooray! I haven't asked her mom if I can blog about her wonderful babysitting daughter, so I'll end it there for Reasons of Privacy... as soon as I mention how enthusiastic the boys are about getting to spend the evening with this fun-loving and sweet-hearted young woman.)