My intelligent life sign must be really low, because I don't get advertising anymore...
I don't get backed aquatic life under beds. I tolerate talking geckos, snicker at cave men on shrink couches and even bought the talking chihuahua when he was working for a themed fast food company, but discarded food in a kid's room only makes me thinking of smell and rodent problem in the near future!
Over the last 2 days I witnessed a strange sign that things are getting harder. My neighbor is redoing her upstair bathroom and got a big dumpster for the drywall and other stuff. Yesterday I saw several people very carefully sifting through the container and removing everything of the slightest value: A little table, scrap metal, an old basket ball pole...
While I am a pretty avid dumpster diver myself, I have never seen people going even for the scrap metal!
This is the original recipe.
I cut it down to a small batch, since my rhubarb plant doesn't yield that much at a time.
Each morning I steal one hour to sloth in front of the TV with my cup of coffee... dropped the kid off at school, husband not yet awake...
I am kind of picky what I watch: It has to be engaging to hold my attention, yet mindless enough to let me plan the rest of the day... and so I rediscovered ER!
The reruns start at 7:00, so I have 2 episodes to watch (fast forwarding through credits and commercials) every morning. TNT just started it from the beginning again.
I forgot how good that show is, how innovative the camera work was in 1994, how dark George Clooney's hair was and all the characters that came and went during the years - 'Grey's Anatomy' seems oddly bland and silly against it!
Marion Rice, a super cool mom with an xtracycle wrote this cool article for bikeportland.org -- that's what our shop and I are all about!
In the last month a lot has happened in the realm of family biking for me: Marion started to work on a series of articles for Bikeportland, BTA is planning a family bike workshop(more info soon!) and I met a mom from urbanmamas, an activista mom blog that features a bike section!
Very good!
After my first attempts of planting lettuce were sabotaged by slime-covered, legless anarchists with huge appetites (yes, I do talk about slugs) I came up with a good snail guard... from earlier attempts I know slugs hate sharp stuff on their belly and my neighbor D.'s lettuce survived just fine being covered by simple wire contraptions which snails will not cross!
So I used old yoghurt container (Trader Joe's Greek Yoghurt to be exact) and cut the bottom off. Placed around the plant with no gaps at the bottoms those belly-crawling fiends will get the belly scratch of a life time when trying to get over the containers!
Hach!
We had our first game yesterday, I finally realized that we only have training once a week and the cuteness going on during the game was just too much!
There was wild dancing and hopping, chats during the pitching, general confusion, utter politeness when an adults caught the ball (Thank you!), limited sight due to slipping helmets and baseball hats, forgotten gloves when catching, pint-size Joe DiMaggios in the making!
Random things:
My mind is circling around the adoption again since I have to update the home study etc. (it's been a year!)... so I checked Rumor Queen, just because!
Not a good idea: There was a post asking what it would make the potential parents withdraw their adoption request and the desperation in some of the responses was...well, scary! Some of the people will be first time parents at over 50, know that they will have to work over retirement age to finance college for their kids and have to consider health issues... diapers instead of golden sunset!
A day or two later my very organized neighbors and proud parents of A. stopped by... they were way ahead of me in the game and expect to travel in November... which, yes, will be 27 month waiting time for them!
We speculated about if there would be more or less kids available after the Olympic games -- my gut tells that there might be some mixed race kids...
ok -'nough!
A woman came into my store and mentally my rollerdex started to whirl... where do I know her from? BTA? Glencoe? Tball?
We talked a little and suddenly a light went on - San Francisco, worst job of my life - she was an editor, I was a developer. Hach! We congratulated each other to having found our way out of the jobs we had and having made it to Portland (Yupp, she lives here, too!)
...and while I am some times jealous to hear about former colleagues who have now initials behind their names, it felt really good today to be a bike shop lady in Portland!
'One swallow doesn't make it Spring?!'
In Portland the arrival of spring is not measured by the swallows, blooming of the trees, but by SGOB sightings - at least according to my friend G. SGOB stands naturally for Skirted Girls on Bikes and while there a still some discussions about the "G", this bike shop lady embraces the rest of the abbreviation!
Martha Grimes: Belle Ruin
After a diet of slasher/pathology sleuthes, this is a much lighter meal. ...and also I didn't "get" the mystery, it was a fun book to read.
Alexander Mccall Smith: The Sunday Philosophy Club (Isabel Dalhousie Mysteries)
Ok, so I am in a philosophical state of mind... really nice read though
Joe Mackall: Plain Secrets: An outsider among the Amish
Pain stacking description life with the Swarzentruber Amish. Mackall only describes the daily life with his Amish friends... very quiet and peaceful... a little more anthropology would have been nice.
