Author Archives: Pamela

School Bus Days
It snowed at little last night, depending on where you live. I turned on the TV to try to get an idea of what the commute would be like and should I drive or take the bus and which bus should I take. Bob didn’t have to go to school until 10am.

The TV is almost completely worthless because they find the 3 iciest intersections in a 60 mile radius and set up cameras and tell you over and over how awful it is out there.

The things I look for are whether the newspaper arrived on time, whether the driveway is icy and whether traffic is moving on the cross street I can see from my front yard. This morning: Yes, No, Yes.

I hopped in the car, left extra early and found a few snowy patches before I hit the main street which was completely fine. Except there was a freaking bridge lift and it took 25 minutes to get on the freeway. Also note: once I left my neighborhood I did not seen another flake of snow on the ground.

Lorelei wrote something about the school bus last week which made me remember riding the bus in 7-8 grades. My Mom was the librarian at my school and I’m pretty sure I rode to school with her when I was in 6th grade. Once I turned into a pain-in-the-ass 13 year old with equally pain-in-the-ass girlfriends, I was too cool to go to school with my Mom.

Our bus was over-crowded and we were miserable brats. We went through a series of bus drivers before it stuck with a guy who looked like he’d just gotten out of prison, smudgy tattoos and all. His name was Terrence and he also had an earring which was not a common look for men in the 70’s. There were two places for pickup in the morning, one was 5 houses down from mine at the Foster’s and one was at the front of the housing development. Picture tract homes in southern California.

You saved your place in line at the bus stop by putting your books down starting at the curb and leading back into the Foster’s driveway. You could run down early and put your book there to save your place and then go home and get ready. It’s hard to believe middle schoolers honored this system. As soon as my alarm went off I ran down with my book. But no matter how early I got there, this girl named Jeanette’s book was already there first. Always. She must have put her book there before she went to bed.

The absurd thing is that the bus picked up our stop first. There was no reason to be all worked up about getting on first. The bummer was for the second stop because by then all the seats were full and you had to go to 3 in a seat and no one wanted to sit 3 in a seat so there was all this awkwardness, especially for the kids nobody liked because they had to sit down. It’s just like on public transportation where people put their coat and pack next to them so no one can sit next to them. You’d have to ask them to move over and on the school bus they’d look the other way and ignore you.

Then Terrence would get involved and yell at the kid to sit down and yell at the kids who wouldn’t move over. Once the bus got rolling there was lots of yelling and carrying on. One time we were so bratty that Terrence drove us all the way back to school and had the principal come out and yell at us.

When I got to high school there was no bus and I went to school with the Tudman’s until I was old enough to drive myself.

I still don’t completely get the customs and ways for the bus.

I take a commuter bus so we all get on at the same stop. There are about 6 stops through downtown Portland for deboarding and/or boarding and then the bus goes back to Vancouver and we all exit at the same place where we started. (You know, after we work all day.)

The bus is rarely crowded. Yesterday was the first time I’ve ever seen someone stand and I think he wanted to because there were a few open seats.

I used to take a different express bus that left from the old downtown transit center. There was this lady who always went to the front of the line when we started boarding. I saw someone drop her off and she walked straight to the front of the line to board. Even though there were tons of places to sit, this irritated me and I gave her the stink eye.

What I think is funny is sometimes I’ll arrive at the stop and a few other people will already be waiting. Sometimes when the bus arrives, they wait until I board. Or one or two will stand back and a couple will go ahead and board. Or someone else who came after me will go ahead and board first. It’s like there’s a weird hierarchy of boarding that everyone knows about but me.

For the trip home I wait at the corner which is a stop for at least a half dozen different buslines. When I see my bus pulling up, usually no one is stepping forward. So then I step forward and I’ll notice a whole bunch of people who have been waiting longer than I have, lining up behind me.

Maybe I’m the pushy one. Maybe they’re all standing behind me, nudging each other and rolling their eyes and whispering, “There’s the ‘me first’ lady shoving to the front with her giant neon-green bag and paperback with a knight and unicorn on the cover.”

Two Things I Don’t Like About Winter:

1. Darkness. When I leave the house, it’s dark. When I drive home, it’s dark. On Friday the fuel guy came to make a delivery and I went out front to talk to him and it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I stood in front of my house in the daylight. I made a point to walk around the whole thing and saw where some bulbs had sent a few sprouts to peek out of the mud.

2. Cold Water. The original footprint of our house is pretty small and we have a kickass oil furnace that blasts cozy hot air out of three major vents in the front half of the house. My office room is the small bedroom and if I have the door closed it actually can get too hot in there. In the 50s the house was remodeled and expanded to the back, creating the large kitchen and laundry room that were among the major selling points for us. (The other being the giant finished basement with bathroom which is Bob’s room, or as Kim calls it, “Bob’s apartment.”) The back part of the house has two lonely little heating vents so the kitchen and laundry room are the coolest parts of the house.

This morning I was getting my lunch ready, and I turned on the sink to wash my hands and it was like dipping them in glacier water. I hate wasting a gallon of water waiting for tepid just to wash my hands, but sheesh, that stuff is cold.

One Thing I Like About Winter:

1. Chilled Foods. We have a room attached to the garage that we call “the shop” but nothing remotely shoplike occurs out there. That’s where most of my gardening stuff is, two bikes, tons of empty boxes, quite a few full boxes, camp gear, a chest freezer, and so forth.

Over the weekend I made a big pot of soup and after dinner it was way too hot to stick in the refrigerator. I put it out in the shop and an hour later, perfectly chilled. I probably could have left it out there all night but since there was room in the fridge brought it inside. One Thanksgiving we let the turkey brine out there. The flip side of this is that I have no idea what’s in the chest freezer right now because every time I walk out there, I’m so cold I just grab the first thing that looks good and run back in. Not like I’m going to put on a coat (or sometimes even shoes) just to paw through all the frozen pizza flavors.

I also like that you can buy groceries and do 12 other errands and all the food is just fine in the trunk.

Check out this cool bookmark I found in an old book.

This morning I took Priscilla and the prints up to Debby’s for matting and framing. Bob and Priscilla are putting together a show of my late father-in-law’s photos in a local gallery and combining it with a celebration of Priscilla’s [redacted, but ends in an “0”] birthday next month.

Bob was going to do this but since he still needs to take a nap after he wakes up and scratches himself, I decided to go instead. I’ve never been to Debby’s. She lives about a half hour drive north of us in a gorgeous house in the mountains with a fabulous view. She shows her work in all kinds of art shows and trades goodies with other artists so every corner had some sort of beautiful treat to look at. It was fun to see her place and ask her questions about her art.

When I got home it was the usual “getting organized.” I finally cleaned off my desk and compiled all my various lists onto one page. I have some sort of forgotten object/activity anxiety and when I worry I’ll forget something, I write it down. I might write the same thing down 3 times. Then I have a pile of stickies and old envelopes and scrap paper and index cards all with anxious scrawls and exclamations points or highlighter on them. I also compiled my Target list and plan a major expedition for this week.

I’m working tomorrow. Our firm is practically the only business in the building that’s open. No lines for lunch! Traffic is light. Good side to everything.

I was scanning some more old photos this morning and chose this gem to continue the theme of bitchin old cars. I think it’s France around 1978 and I can’t tell you any more without doing some homework and not in the mood right now.

I turned my books 08 page into a blog so that my three loyal readers could subscribe as a feed. If I’ve managed to do anything right, you can also still view the page by clicking this link.

I’m still only at the 3rd grade level when it comes to the feed thing so if you need help, you’d be better off asking someone else. I use Google Reader.

I also hate the template and my attempts to customize made me want to brain myself with the keyboard. I have no idea how I set up my original page. I’m sure a large quantity of red wine was involved. Will fix template some other day, probably in the far, far future.

Cold and drippy out. We’re off to take my dear husband to the doctor. He’s still down with the crud and this is too long.

I added a few more tornado damage photos. This should fulfill all your damaged tree photo needs for the time being.

The guy across the street had this cool old truck so I had to visit with him and take a few photos. He’s a treesmith and does hazardous tree removal. I’m sure this will be a good month for him.

Today’s a lazy day here. My spouse came home with the crud on Wednesday night. He was standing the kitchen when I got home and started whining before I even put my purse down. I wasn’t too sympathetic until I felt his burning forehead. For the record: when I’m really sick I get whiny, too. He also skipped dinner. He’s had a couple achy, fevery days but today he’s perked up a bit. Still, we’re going to lay low and stay close to home this weekend.

I was planning to go to yoga tonight so I drove this morning.

There was an accident on the bridge and the backup to get on the freeway was bad enough that I considered taking a day off from work. I just didn’t have the stomach to sit in my car and roll forward in painful six-inch increments while cars coming in from all angles want to merge and then when finally arriving within sight of the freeway, fending off all the Lexus (plural: Lexi?) who bypass the line and drive to the front and turn on their turn signal, like they had no idea there was a line and can’t they just sneak in right there because they drive a Lexus and don’t care that you’ve been trying to get on the freeway for the past 45 minutes.

And I couldn’t find a traffic report to save my life. Does AM radio still exist? At one point I had all the local news channels programmed in for just these types of mornings. “Traffic on the 9s” “Traffic on the 7s” you just kept hitting the buttons until you found the traffic report for the current minute. This morning all I could raise was static and churchy programs.

So I drove all the way back to the transit center thinking, at least I won’t be stressed and I can read my book (The Guns of Avalon Fabulous) while we crawl over the bridge. Of course I couldn’t find my book when I got on the bus. It didn’t take as long as I thought (including driving back and forth being a wuss about the gridlock: 1 hr 20 minutes.) I guess the accident cleared quickly but, whatever. I’m here.

Last night we saw Colson Whitehead at Arts & Lectures. I remember when The Intuitionist came out it sounded like a book I’d want to read and it was on the list for a long time before I picked it up at the library. As I recall, I didn’t try very hard, but I didn’t get into it. Bob read a different one of his books last weekend and hated it.

When we walked out of the lecture last night we laughed because of all the authors so far, this is the one whose books we liked the least but it was our favorite lecture. He was really funny and doesn’t take himself too seriously. How often do you ever hear of a writer who likes television and puts in his bio that as a kid he loved Stephen King and Stan Lee? I’m going to try another one of his books.

Temp
Shortly before I graduated from college I met a woman who worked as an office temp. I don’t remember her living situation but it was either with tolerant parents or in a series of rundown hovels. Actually, she may have been one of those scary people who asks if they can crash on your couch for a weekend and never leaves. She didn’t do that to me.

She would do temp jobs until she saved a pile of money, then she’d travel until it ran out. Then she’d return to the temping until she had enough for the next trip.

I thought this sounded fabulous except I did not have tolerant parents and was not the sort of person who would be happy moving from hovel to hovel. Also, when I graduated from college I had only very minor office skills, I could type, but not fast enough to impress anyone, and even with fast, my accuracy was doodoo. I never did any temp work.

Now that I work in an office that employs temp workers on a regular basis, I cannot help but think that it would be a horrible job.

Imagine: every new job would be like your first day at work. You don’t know anyone’s name or where anything is or how anything works or the weird obsessive quirks of the person you have to work for. At least if it’s your new job people might talk to you but no one pays attention to the temp, unless she’s screwing up. (I say “she” because I can’t remember ever seeing a male temp.) Plus either everyone would be foisting the worst busy work on you or else you’d only be called because there was some giant project and you’d be working a deadline under a learning curve. Or else you’d just be sitting there watching the clock and waiting for the day to end.

I always try to talk to the temps and at least find out their names. At the end of one day I asked a temp if it was the longest day of her life and she very cheerfully said, “Oh no, everyone is really nice at this office.” Geez, what would a bad office be like? I think you need to be of a certain personality, unflinching and confident, to succeed as a temp.

I never would have been good at it.

Foods You Don’t Eat
I forgot to mention that with my potato soup recipe, I threw a couple of parsnips in there. My husband came back from the market once, a bit confused and he had parsnips. I think he grabbed them thinking they were turnips. Which we do eat. Or maybe some other vegetable that we do not. They’ve been taking up room in the crisper ever since.

Since I’m trying to clear the fridge and cupboards of the odds and ends, and since I saw a recipe with mashed potatoes and parsnips, I figured I could add the parsnips to the potato soup. Some cooks call this creative. I usually think of it as lame.

My Mom hates parsnips. If you drove within 20 miles of the vegetable factory on the day they were dicing parsnips my Mom would gag if she was in the car. I once went to a family meal that my Mom wasn’t even attending and the cook informed me very carefully that there were parsnips in the roasted vegetables in case there was a problem.

As a result I’ve eaten very few parsnips in my life and although I am personally ambivalent, I don’t really eat them because she wouldn’t. I put them in this soup and I think they knocked it down from a solid A- to a B. They have a sharpness that’s just not necessary.

Another food I used to not eat because of my sister is mangos. She’s violently allergic. I hope she’s not reading this because her eyes are probably swelling up just by seeing the word. But then I learned that mangos are like the food of the gods. So I eat them at home where she can’t be harmed. Giant carbon footprint be damned.

My Dad hates tuna and I hate tuna, too. It’s nasty. My husband likes it and if he makes it, he has to eat it outside. Or in his car.

I can’t think of anything my husband hates. Most tomato heavy dishes disagree with him, as do melons which is a major bummer. He also isn’t fond of lentils or chard so whenever I know he’s going to be out of town, that’s the menu.

I hate swiss cheese. I think it smells like throw-up. I also don’t like most pork products because the fat disagrees with me.