You're Doing It Wrong

Last week we were sitting at dinner one night when Bob says: “Guess what I bought on the Internet?”

After you’ve lived with someone for 10 years, you can tell how badly you don’t want to know the answer to a question like this just by the expression on his face.

“I can’t guess.”

“A Jam Band Salute to the Talking Heads.”

You can’t even make this stuff up. But that’s not all. He also bought the 2004 High Sierra Music Festival DVD.

After he got it, he told me how great it was and how it really set the scene. I said, I was there and I still remembered the scene. I didn’t need to see a DVD.

On a different note: we taped the season finale of CSI because Quentin Tarantino directed it. It was worth watching but a word those like us, who aren’t regular CSI watchers: Don’t Watch While You’re Eating.

All my old jeans are disintigrating at the same time. Do Levi’s have an expiration date?

I had 3 or 4 pairs that I used for gardening. Knees ripped open, crotch frayed. I put on one pair a few weekends ago and did some work and then ran some errands and noticed a nice breeze on my bottom. Turns out the place where the back pocket meets the pants had sprung loose and my butt was flapping in the wind.

Put that pair in the trash and the following weekend put on another old pair. Falling apart in the same place. That’s two pairs of garden pants to go into the bin.

What if they’re all bad? What will I wear for gardening? I should buy some more Levi’s now so I have something for gardening a few years from now.

I didn’t get home until 7:35pm tonight. Theoretically, work is done at 6:00pm.

Traffic was hideous. I kinda expected it, being that a 3 day weekend is coming up and probably lots of people take Friday to make it a 4.

I left the office at 6:15pm, thinking that this would allow time for the worst of the traffic to pass through. I waited at the train stop for almost 10 minutes before I had a vague sense that I didn’t have my keys. I checked my bags and sure enough, no keys.

At the office, the cleaning guy locks all the doors when he comes in. I used the restroom while he was there, so I carried my keys with me so I could get back in. As I walked into my office I realized that I never watered the plants so I put my keys down and took care of that, then waltzed out without them.

By the time I caught the next train and made to the park-n-ride it was 7:15pm but I-5 was still backed up.

I got turned for the on-ramp and immediately stopped in the backup just to get on the freeway. During metered time this on-ramp takes 2 lines of cars, but the meter was off and we very politely made a single file line to get on the freeway.

At the top of the ramp we have to merge with the people coming off Interstate. I was behind an aged Buick with an emblem on the back that said: Whiptastic Handling.

I wonder if that means, stalls every three minutes. Two girls were in the car. I kept a respectful distance, edging toward the shoulder because I figured if they stalled for long, and I was stuck too close behind, the other cars would smell the blood on the water and swoop around us, thus completely eff-ing me.

For some reason, the folks coming off Interstate seemed to think that us folks coming from Delta Park were cheating or something but several cars spontaneously decided to break from their single file line and block us from merging, thus forcing them to re-merge with themselves.

A gold colored Navigator cut me off and got behind the gasping Buick and I ungenerously hoped that it died in front of her.

It ended up taking me 20 minutes just to get on the freeway and I didn’t get home until 7:35 pm. I told Bob that if that was going to be my commute all summer, I was going to kill myself. Historically, the evening commute on I-5 during summer is consistently hideous.

He made an encouraging argument for the three day weekend and whisked me off to Trader Joes for shopping.

I thought I’d start sharing our usage numbers on our cell bill since it’s so pathetic. Our plan gives us 300 minutes to share. I don’t think we’ve ever broken 100.

This month we used 58 plan minutes. All together we used 99 minutes.

This is a story about a friend who we will call KB. KB is married with 2 children and the family is what most would characterize as normal every day good people. (I say “most” because they had this crazy lady tenant at one point and her characterization might be less generous.) KB’s children watch cartoons and eat Fruit Loops and play games that involved knocking each other over the head with plastic toys. They speak only one language.

KB’s family is friends with another couple and their two small children. These children have attended a Spanish immersion school since they were toddlers. They eat only organic foods: plenty of fresh squeezed juices. They don’t watch TV but instead play with toys carved from wood harvested from sustainable forests or games that involve math and spelling skills.

KB’s family was recently invited to a birthday party with this family. Due to circumstances, the family split up. KB took the kids and did one set of errands while Dad was in charge of securing a gift and meeting at the house for the party.

KB arrived to find an eclectic group. The kind of people who listen to public radio and recycle and love the taste of whole-wheat anything. Their small children ran around speaking Spanish and playing games that emphasize cooperation. They feasted on a gluten-free cake made with organic figs and ground almonds and other foods harvested under fair trade standards.

When gift opening time came, the birthday boy got Spanish computer games and toys that embraced foreign cultures. When it came time to open KB’s family gift, it was a plastic Darth Vader sippy cup that sounded like Darth Vader breath when you drank from the straw.

The kids went apeshit.

Something I forgot to mention earlier this week.

On Tuesday I parked in the lower park-n-ride lot and as I got out of my car, an Osprey flew directly over me holding wriggling prey in its claws.

As I was getting in the car to go home, an Osprey flew directly over me holding wriggling prey in its claws.

What do you think that means?

Just so you know, I saw it this morning at the 9:30 show and it was AWESOME.

FOODday is the food section of the Oregonian and comes out on Tuesday. It used to be my favorite part of the paper but a couple of months ago they hired a new editor who comes from Connecticut.

I’m not sure why they felt the need to hire someone from back east. Don’t we have lots of talented and interesting locals with a unique regional insight?

Instead we get a lady from Connecticut who can’t stop telling us how she just moved here and is just figuring it all out: “I’ve been in Portland for only six weeks and haven’t yet traveled around the state, but it’s quite apparent that there’s something different about this region … .” Your journey of discovery is more interesting to you than it is to us, Martha.

This week she tells us that when her friends call they all want to know: Is she happy? Does it really rain all the time? How’s the shopping. Turns out: Martha says our food shopping is “as good or better than anywhere I’ve ever lived.” I hope she tells her friends we have paved roads and ATM machines, too!

Or maybe not. If people from back east realize there’s civilization out here they might all want to come.

The cover of this Sunday’s New York Times magazine talks about modernism — more specifically about preserving modernist architecture. I have no idea what any of this means, I’m just mentioning it because I was relieved that I wasn’t interested in reading most of the magazine: more found time!

My favorite part of the magazine is the Domains column which only runs once a month and features various people in their homes and asks them questions about their stuff. This month the person was Terence Riley, the chief architecture and design curator at MOMA. He talks about living space: “I like having a small apartment … I like really simple spaces you can inhabit.”

I’m not sure there’s a clear connecting line here but this inspired me to think what my ideal living space would be and I decided I would like one big rectangle with walls lined with shelves, cupboards and cabinets and everything put away. I would get a big zamboni ride-on vacuum cleaner and there wouldn’t be a bunch of crap piled around.

I read something recently that said that a slim man was more likely to cheat than an overweight man.

Isn’t that like saying a tall man is more likely to bump his head?

There’s another one going around that good looking kids are favored by their parents. Is it a major newsflash that good looking people are favored by the planet?

Or attractive anything. I picked up a dented carton of milk at Trader Joes earlier in the week (because I feel sorry for the broken stuff) instead of a more attractive non-dented carton and I got leaky milk all over everything as thanks for my open mind and compassion.