Day 3

Mile 675. Abortion rights upheld 5-3!  Finally some sense.  Hyper aware of what's at stake in November.

Mile 679. "How many miles have we gone so far?"

Mile 691. Coffee stop at Nellie's Lemonade and Espresso because Daddy is sure he would be better with coffee.  Attendant: "Normally I'd put 3 shots in an Americano that size."  Daddy: "Two is probably fine."  Attendant: "Oh.  I already put 3 in, I was going to offer you a 4th!"  She was super nice, wished us lots of luck on our trip (I don't think she'd even seen the 2yo in the car).

Mile 770.  We finally stop by the side of the road for a desperate pee break for Shmoogie.

Mile 771.  The town of Adin has a cute general store.  With a bathroom.

Mile 806.  Back in cell service!

Mile 840.  Bayboh is falling asleep 5 miles short of lunch.  We frantically chat at him to keep him awake and it works.  The sun ship only takes cash, so we cross the street to an ATM with three California Fire officers.

Mile 844. Swarm of grasshoppers hits the windshield for a mile!!! No other signs of the apocalypse.

Mile 894. Lone large tree on the side of US 395 is hung with hundreds of pairs of shoes.

Mile 960.  Bathroom stop at a playground with facilities outside of Carson City.  We park in the shade of a cottonwood but the hot wind blasts the sunglasses off my face as soon as I open the door.  Mr. P declares it too hot to play at the playground.  They haven't been in temps over 95 in a long time.

Mile 969.  Spooner Summit, 7,140 ft.  Ten degrees cooler.

Mile 971.  Sight of Lake Tahoe.  After all that hot dry terrain...  Wow!

Mile 1000. Lighted highway sign: "SEVERE DROUGHT. LIMIT OUTDOOR WATER USE."

Mile 1019.  "Ebbett's Pass ahead.  Very steep, narrow, winding road.  Vehicles over 25' not advisable."  Hmm.

Mile 1023.  Wondering if we've already been through the narrow windy steep part?  It wasn't that bad.

Mile 1025.  Oh.

Mile 1026.  Eep!

Mile 1027.  Whew.  Over the crest now.

Mile 1029. A little lake!

Mile 1030.  Ebbett's Pass. 8,730 ft

Mile 1038.  Eep!  And then another beautiful tiny lake.  Lake Mosquito.

Mile 1055.  False alarm poopy diaper change at a peaceful picnic area.  Toilets not so great, but the flies seem really happy with them.

Mile 1061. Wonder when we'll have cell service again.

Mile 1063.  Bayboh wants a "cookie".  No, not that cookie. That cookie is "done."  That cookie is "trash".  Actually, he wants a "cracker".  No, not that cracker!  This cracker?  Maybe.  This cracker might be acceptable.

Mile 1084.  Mr. P is upset because his ears have been pressurized ever since the pass.  He's also sick of being in the car.  Half an hour left, we tell him, and we're thinking of having pizza for dinner.  Bayboh knows his favorite food when he hears it.  "Peetie!  Peetie.  Peetie."

Pizza is a hit, so is the canopy bed at the historic hotel.  Playground pretty nice as the evening cools off, but we leave when the guy who'd been lying sick on a park bench stands up and starts to wobble in our direction.

Day 2

Mr. P: "This is the best hotel ever, dad. You did a great job."

Bayboh: "Molk? Molk?"

Shmoogie is huddled in a ball on the chair under her beloved froggie blanket.

At breakfast the waiter asks us, "Would you be better with coffee?"

Mile 362 Shmoogie writes "We had ice cream at a cheese factory," in her journal for yesterday and starts to think about what she should write for today. She refuses suggestion of "Mommy cried and I was cold," although that is a reasonably accurate description of our brief walk on the beach before leaving (it was also beautiful). Bayboh is also accurate: "Beach!" "Win(d)!" "Co(ld)!"

Mile 415 Shmoogie says, "I thought moving wouldn't be fun at all, but it's interesting!" The Oregon coast is gorgeous.

Mile 429 Crossing the Umpqua River. Bayboh has been asleep since shortly after breakfast. 

Mile 434 Elk viewing area. No elk.

Mile 442 Bayboh waking up, probably because I asked Shmoogie to pass grapes back to Mr. P, who utterly refused to acknowledge anything was happening, despite my increasingly loud whispers.

Mile 466 This.

​Also this.

There was water, too, but these little feet wanted nothing to do with that. 

​Mile 506. Crossing NE Rifle Range St

Mile 656 A huge tube, made of wood, held together by steel bands, and supported on concrete posts, is covered in moss and spurting water out of thousands of leaks. Built in 1949, it carries water from a dam 1500 ft to a hydro electric turbine.

​Mile 601. Crater Lake. Astounding. I sincerely doubt the deepest blue will come through in photos. Kids petulant about us trying to get them in photos, happy to play with snow (except when they get hit themselves), Bayboh in tears when I won't let him take the two pumice rocks he picked up, but at least the older two are a little wowed when I show them the rock and then put it in their hands. So light!

​Mile 606. Writing "If found please return! THANK YOU!" plus address in all the kids' National Park passports, having jogged back to retrieve one of them from the cancellation station.

Mile 615. Bayboh is playing with his socks, his toes, and a Duplo pig. Gleefully.

Mile 619. "How many minutes until we get to the hotel?" Shmoogie wants to know. We tell her we don't know yet, because there's no cell service here.

Mile 620 But, "See that number on the dashboard, where it says 620? We have to go 57 miles, so when it says 677, that's when we'll be there."

​Mile 620.9 "It still says 620." Yep.

Mile 621. "Now it says 621." Yep. "So that means it's been a mile?" Yep.

Mile 622. "Now it says 622." Yep. "This is gonna take FOREVER!"

Mile 626. Shmoogie is asleep.

Mile 640. We finally get cell service back, search for our destination, and find we are 107 miles away and it will take us two hours. Tearing of hair, gnashing of teeth.

Mile 642. Realize the map search was an error. We're headed where we thought we were all along. 35 more miles, about as many minutes. Shmoogie still blissfully asleep.

Mile 657. "Mmm. I was just taking a little nap. I think I fell asleep."

Mile 668. First anti-abortion billboard if the trip.  Was already feeling plenty of anticipatory stress about the SCOTUS decision coming on Monday.

Mile 671. Waffles. WAFFLES. For dinner.

Another successful day, also gone awry at the very end, this time with a frightening moment at the hotel pool, but everyone is fine and that's that.

Day 1

My phone ate my day 1 post.  Waaaah!!!!

Here's what I remember...

Mr. P asked 3 blocks in, "How long is this going to take?" Turns out he meant "until we get to breakfast," but still funny.

Bayboh learned to say "Watch!" to ask for a video.

Preparing the kids to break out of the electronic daze in a few minutes, I cheerfully chirped, "We're about to stop at Cape Disappointment!  We'll learn about Louis and Clark and find the snacks, ok?"  Silence from the kids.  We pass a field and I shout, "Look cows!" hoping to garner some interest.  Still silence.  Daddy says, "What did Mommy just say, guys?"  Shmoogie knows, "Cows."  Mr. P heard, "We're going to learn about Louis and Clark and find the Oreos."

Cape Disappointment is pretty cool.  The only disappointment is our failure to fund parks.  This place, the place from which Louis and Clark's expedition first sighted the Pacific Ocean, is a state park inside of a national park.  Meaning that we had to pay a $10 entrance fee to even get there, despite already having bought an annual National Parks pass.  And if we'd wanted to go in the little museum, which we rather did but didn't have much time to spend, it would have cost our family another $17.50.  When you consider the expense of even getting to one of these places, which are rarely public-transit accessible...  I want our parks to be easier for anyone to enjoy.

Ten miles from the hotel, Shmoogie announced, "One day successful!"

The Fates heard that, because we then spent an hour waiting for food at a restaurant that lost our order, so we missed the sunset over the Pacific wrangling tired hungry kids up way past their bedtime.

I took a walk with Bayboh, though, and he was asleep in moments.  Day 1!  Done!

Two

Having only recently developed any sense of birthdays (Bayboh did sing "happy happy to" when I uncharacteristically lit a candle for the dinner table shortly after the spate of spring birthdays at our house), turning two is always a happy if slightly bewildering surprise that really doesn't suffer at all from living out of a hotel preparing to move across the country.  A special "hat", a single string of flags, a new teether toy, and a cupcake.  What more does a birthday need?

A mighty struggle as Mommy tries to keep control of the plate until we can get through "Happy Birthday!" 

Mother's Day

The kitchen door is shut and there's an index card taped to it, hinged-like on one side, that says "KiDs not waiting yet GO Back to Bed Mom love you".  Signed by Mr. P, who demonstrated it for me last night when he had to go retrieve the grocery list since I wasn't allowed in the kitchen. 

The other side says, "Come in mom Happy mothers Day," also signed by Mr. P, although I know Shmoogie is in on whatever this scheme is, too, since they both wanted their alarms set for early "before you wake up".  (I talked them out of that and promised to call them when I woke up, except that I'm going to wait a little and enjoy the quiet.)

I was given a heart, cut out of the middle of the index card on the kitchen door, which I'm to think of as a key that only works when the card is flipped to the "Come in" side.  This is all pretty cool.  :)

Easter

WHAT WE HAD: 

 - some hopeful sprigs of mint

- a healthy batch of parsley

- 18 boiled eggs  

- 12 raw eggs

- 2 sweet potatoes

- paprika

- sourdough pasta bought on a whim yesterday

 - a bit of cream cheese in the bottom of the container

- boullion

- a cold downpour

WHAT WE DID: 

- ate candy

- moped and whined

- pushed an update to the App Store

- delivered stuffed plastic eggs to a neighbor

- put Bayboh down for a nap

- rushed out the door, late, with the older two for the neighborhood egg hunt

- ate more candy

- bundled Bayboh and Mommy for a jog to the grocery store

- laundry

WHAT WE BOUGHT: 

- fresh peas in shells

- sliced mushrooms

- shredded mozzarella

- a bottle of Pinot Gris

WHAT WE WERE GIVEN: 

- warm sunshine with misty rain sparkling in the air

- a screaming fit from one over-sugared and under-fed Screamy McScreamypants (the older one)

WHAT WE ATE: 

- pasta with fresh peas, sautéed mushrooms, green onions, mint, parsley, and a dash of cream cheese and boullion, topped with chopped hard boiled eggs, and, well, a splash of Pinot Gris

 - sweet potato skillet (but I forgot the initial microwave step; don't forget that; it's important)

- deviled egg boats, which our children may now forever know as "Boaty McBoatface" eggs because of the

- bottle of Pinot Gris

And now these moments pass into memory.   The season turns again and life goes on. 

But I want it remembered that, although we had no plan until after noon and the Pinot Gris played a major role, "I crushed it!" as far as Easter dinner goes, as long as the guidelines are "something fresh" and "use up some boiled eggs, for heck's sake".   Which are totally the guidelines, right?

Jiminy Cricket

Mr. P is his normal challenging self, as ever, but something new is happening lately.  Inconvenient feelings of remorse, guilt, and concern for other people's happiness keep cropping up and he's clearly finding it uncomfortable.

He'll be going on and on about wanting to buy a remote controlled helicopter, say, when suddenly a look of anguish comes over him as he grips his hair and exclaims, "Sorry!  I'm being so greedy!"  It's ok, we say, you're excited about your birthday, but he moans, "I just feel so BAD!"

​ Or he'll come find me, wanting me to unlock the iPad for him, except that I don't even realize that at first because he starts off asking me about what I'm doing and having a (short but) very pleasant conversation.  And then he apologizes for wanting to have the iPad, "I just feel so BAD!"

But this is wonderful! we beam at him.  You're developing a conscience!  This is a very important part of growing up!

He is skeptical, but seems to be working this idea into his sense of the world.  It's "weird," he says, "I'm sorry, Mom, it's just that now that I have this moral sense.... It's good in a way, but bad in a way."

This is not a milestone I knew to expect, but it is so cool!​

***​

We have survived our first sleepover birthday party.  There was cake and pizza and a movie (two movies) and a tent in the living room.   They were quiet by 1 am, after Mr. Right decided to sleep on the couch next to them. 

 ***

On a rare outing just Mr. P and me, he's in a philosophical birthday mood.  "Mom, I just wish I could make a potion so that I could stay a boy forever and you could stay my nice mommy forever."  Heart melting, I tell him, That's so sweet!  You know, I will always be your mommy and, as much as I love having you be my little boy, I am so excited to be finding out who you're growing up to be.

Silence

There’s been so much happening in the world.  A few years ago, when this blog was new and the only outlet for my mental energy besides everything I was doing at home, you would have heard from me about it regularly.  Indeed, a lot of posts have winked into potential existence in my mind, responding to this that or the other thing, but deprived of mental sunshine and nutrients (because those are going other places), they never even sprouted a first set of leaves.

One thought has been growing, though.  How quick we are to throw people away.  How much we focus on punishment instead of help or understanding.  How afraid we are.

Some related things, since I'm out of time:

Ta Nahesi Coates, interviewed by Diane Rehm, with (among other things) a poetic understanding of the fear that underlies toughness and which drives violence against others, which can even channel love into violence.

A clarifying political science look at why xenophobic racist politicians seem to take off with terrifying ferocity at certain points in time.  The question they don't answer is how to put out the fire, which is where I hope a discussion can continue.

And my Twitter feed full of brave people standing up for the right to bodily autonomy and stepping away from shame in front of the Supreme Court this morning.  Having experienced pregnancy, childbirth, and raising several children, I am quite convinced that in a moral world, each person must have control over what happens to their uterus.  And cannot be allowed to control anyone else's.  That does mean that people without a uterus won't get to decide anything about any uteruses, but that will be ok.  Really.  (This one is harder to provide a link to, so I'll just put the Twitter hashtag #StopTheSham, which of course means the full mess of humanity on all sides of the issue, fair warning.)

It was the best of vacations, it was the worst of vacations.

The best because we saw almost everyone we most wanted to, despite snow and illness and bothersome things like jobs.  The best because the snow was beautiful and the kids gleefully threw handfuls of it at anyone and no one, had shovelfuls of it mischievously thrown at them by their DiDi, and enjoyed wild sled runs steered expertly by their cousins (Shmoogie hesitated, but got on board in the end; Bayboh would gladly have gone, but we restricted him to butt-sliding, which he got pretty good at, considering his restrictively small snow suit).  The best because we were there.

The worst because eight days isn't long enough to see everyone.  The worst because two hours in a restaurant (children or no) isn't long enough to make up for years of not seeing your best friends.  The worst because we thought we'd left a mild stomach bug at home but actually brought a vicious one with us (so very sorry if we gave it to you!)  The worst because we had to leave again.

Noncooperation

He sees the toothbrush coming and is instantly flat on his face to avoid it.  

When I don't fight him right away, he's curious why not and discovers I have the camera out.  

I haven't gotten the shot yet, though, so I hold up the toothbrush again and he whips back into position.  Over and over again.  Camera, curious.  Toothbrush, face down.

I get the shot in the end, and I get his teeth brushed, too.

Twenty-Three

The walk to school yesterday was warm and drizzly and very exciting.  "Mommy, be careful!  There are worms ALL OVER!" 

 "There are, like, a hundred worms!"

"Let's count them!" cries Shmoogie, who loves to count things.  She is at 15 before I even get the stroller moving out of the carport.

Together, she and Mr. P count as we walk and he bikes carefully up the sidewalk "16...17...18!..."  But Shmoogie decides she must enforce some standards, "No, that one's dead.  You can't count dead ones.  You can only count live ones."

There's a near tragedy when Mr. P's tire catches the tip of one worm, leaving it slightly bloody and writhing on the pavement.  It takes several tries before we successfully airlift it to the grass and Shmoogie deems it alive and countable. 

We arrive at school with a count of 23 (including one extremely impressive foot long specimen), certified by Shmoogie herself.  The ten minute wait for best friends to arrive only heightens the excitement.  "You can tell R," offers Shmoogie, "but I get to tell L."

Soon, R is spotted heading our way across the field.  Mr. P shouts out, "R!!  WE SAW TWENTY THREE WORMS THIS MORNING!!!!"

I watch, wondering a little anxiously how this is going to go, relaxing as soon as R smiles back and shouts, "COOL!" 

Cherry Pie Day

Shmoogie never met my dad, but she knows cherry pie means it's his birthday! 

The oldest relative I remember had a portrait of a several generations ago ancestor on her wall her whole life.  And the one thing I know about him is that he loved oysters and, I think, pears.  I wonder how many of us live longest in memories of our favorite foods?

New Thing

Bayboh can climb up onto the kitchen nook benches all by himself. 

This makes him very happy.

He can see out the window, "Birdie!"   He can grab things off the shelves that have hitherto been unreachable!  He can climb onto the pedestal table that barely stays upright with his weight on the edge! 

He can be repeatedly snatched off said table by a safety-conscious but unfeeling adult, and deposited, wailing, back on the boring old floor.

January 19

Time-poor as I am lately, I don't have a lot of words today.  I do have, though, a small interesting thing I learned, which I would have shared with my father, were he still here.   At first, I was thinking I would have shared it with him because it was exactly the kind of thing he would have loved.

And then I thought, that's ridiculous.  He used to circle back on his route home so as to have to do the biggest hills more than once.

But now I'm thinking again and although he was a dedicated cyclist himself, he was also an environmentalist. And a person fascinated by human ingenuity.  So I think maybe he would have loved it, afterall.  

Realistically, were he still alive, I probably would have emailed him the link. Well, realistically, I probably would have SMSed it, but since he died before any of us got iPhones, SMSing wasn't really a thing we did then, certainly not for sharing links. 

And, realistically, my comment with the link wouldn't have been "I thought this was cool and I thought you would think it was cool, too, so I'm sharing it because I love you."  It probably would have been something more snarky, something more like, "I might actually use my bike to get around if they'd install these on the big hills between me and everything I want to get to."

We might have had a bit of a conversation, then.  He might have told me that if I'd just try, I'd eventually be able to do hills, even relish them.  He might have guilted me about climate change and how could I say I cared if I wasn't willing to go through a little inconvenience to cut down on my car use?   And I might have defended myself, held myself up as an example of a "normal" person who wants to bike more but has a fear of traffic (he was all for dedicated bike lanes and off-street paths, so that wouldn't have been controversial) and a fear of hills. 

Or I might have started with that, explained that I was thinking about what stopped me from biking for actual transportation and realized it was pretty much those things, fear of cars and fear of hills, and that I idly wondered whether a thing like a ski lift could work for bikes.  And that Google and Wikipedia had led me to this video and I'd been so pleased to have had the idea and within minutes found that such a thing exists!  

From there, we might have speculated on why there's only one of these bicycle lifts in the world. Or maybe we would have thought about how it worked and how it could be improved.  Or which would be the best locations for such a thing in my hometown. 

You can have a lot of conversations with someone after they've died, except they all turn out to be conversations with yourself. 

The Force Awakens

The first movie I ever saw in the theater was Annie and I was enchanted.  I have a dim memory of enormous shiny glass doors at the entrance and I know I sang Tomorrow at the top of my lungs and in very poor tune for a long time afterwards.  I named my teddy bear Molly, after my favorite orphan (she was cute and maybe my very young self recognized a kinship in brown pigtails that I would never have with red curls, no matter how much I idolized the main character).

That year, I picked out the box with the Annie mask and red vinyl smock for Halloween and wore it with joy for the next two years.

 (Those vinyl smock costumes have a story behind them!  I never knew!)

Then came Star Wars, which I watched obsessively on VHS, always demanding that mom fast forward through the scary part with the Sand People before she could leave me alone.  I wanted the Halloween box of Luke Skywalker that year, but they were sold out, so I took Darth Vader.  And spent the next several years perfecting a Vader-worthy breathing style by pressing my tongue against the sharp edge of the tiny mouth hole.  I felt it gave a very convincing slurpy rasping effect.

At some point, maybe when I decided I could handle the Sand People scene without fast forwarding or adult company, I got to watch the other two movies.  But they were way too scary and I did not love them.  I spent most of first grade terrified that the floor would open up below me and I'd come up a frozen block of carbonite.

I did love Ewoks, though, and the fake fur teddy bear costume my mother actually sewed for me (I think I helped fashion the head wrap, using a rag of a thin bathrobe in a surprisingly appropriate color) took me  happily through most of the rest of my costumed Halloweens.

So I found myself on the first Sunday morning of this year, when we finally had tickets and a babysitter, briefly contemplating an attempt at Leia buns in honor of the occasion.  Let's be honest, though.  We're lucky we both got showers before handing off two excited kids and a cranky snotty baby (discovered that evening to have a double ear infection) and making our escape.

Hmm.  That lead in was longer than I'd intended.  This was supposed to be a quick post where I tell you what I thought of the new movie.

It was fun!  I loved the casting.  I can totally imagine little-kid me being even more excited to be Rey for Halloween (especially with how cool and not-vinyl Halloween costumes are these days) than I was to be Luke or Vader.  (Except that little-kid me would have been way too terrified by this movie to even get past the third or fourth scene, much less fall in love with it.  Even adult me kept wishing they’d just cut half the action sequences and let us have a little rest.)  As an old fan of the original, the nods back to that one were fun (especially because the audience so obviously loved them; I slightly regret that we didn’t see it closer to the release, when I know the crowds were even more excited.)

Grown-up me loved even-more-grown-up Leia the best, though (and Carrie Fisher has definitely been the best thing in the little press I've read).  How often in the movies do you see a woman her age (and a mother, even! and with some grey hair!) portrayed as commanding, beautiful, complex, and warm, all at the same time?   I also totally want to be able to do my hair in that nice crown-braid thing she had going on.

---

For an interesting take on other aspects of the movie, both positive and negative, I’d definitely recommend the Feminist Frequency review.

You could be really good!

A good Lego build is a beautiful thing.  The cleverness and care of the design, the perfect clarity of the instructions, the satisfying smooth-but-secure connections...  Mr. P was very generous and let me "help" on a few parts of his Christmas present.

The Airjitsu Temple

That night he told me, "It was really fun watching you do Lego for the first time ever, Mom. With practice, you could be really good!"

This thing is amazing.  It even has a shadow puppet theater built into the basement that lights up and moves when you turn the crank!   I believe that's what Mr. P refers to as a "play feature".  (Thanks, YouTube.)

 I'm really curious to see how long this one stays in essentially its current condition.  It will be very tempting to cannibalize for parts!