we-love-it-here-thank-you
a time bomb is about to go off, so i have to hurry. we just had the best weekend ever. anne took friday off, and we were so happy she could come adventure with us for the weekend. because since she's not a gym or woodshop teacher, it makes summer planning kind of difficult. first we went to tacoma, where auntie liz and uncle seamus live. adah loves them, and when we're at a portland pool and she is on a raft, she
will randomly say something like, "float me over to tacoma so i can be with seamus and liz!"
oh the camaraderie. here are some snippets:
oh the camaraderie. here are some snippets:
the morning after we arrived, there was some nail painting, adah running around with the cats' nylon toy on her head, a visit to the zoo where there are puffins AND seahorses and camels to ride. don't tell PETA.
after THAT, we ate the best cupcakes in the entire world, and while adah slept, anne and i drove to seattle to stalk molly wizenberg of orangette fame, and to eat at her new restaurant delancey, which knocked our socks off. there is no other pizza after delancey. next morning: bainbridge island, home of seamus' parents and lots of beauty. i have 30 pictures to post right here, because the aesthetics of the entire experience made every moment a delightful one. forgive the overwriting, but it's true. so many beautiful things. like my wife and kid:
and tree swings, and herbs growing in olive oil cans, and little pieces of art everywhere, and food growing, and fresh ice cream, and our rainbow dinner:
adah was strikingly comfortable there, which can be attributed to the gentleness and kindness of sue and thomas, our incredibly welcoming hosts, and their beautiful stretch of land she got to romp on. 
here she is making everyone some carrot and lettuce soup after our walk to the beach for some impromptu tidepooling:
the fun continued, with homemade popsicles and a funny seamus accent:
and it didn't cease to continue because we then went to a wood-fired pizza party in the backyard of some seriously nice people, and this gave liz and adah some time to run and roll down hills:
the fun continued, with homemade popsicles and a funny seamus accent: and it didn't cease to continue because we then went to a wood-fired pizza party in the backyard of some seriously nice people, and this gave liz and adah some time to run and roll down hills: 
uncaptured: seamus pretending to be a rhinoceros with adah on his back, and the ferry back-up and our arrival at home about 4 hours before anne had to leave for work the next morning.
the end. time bomb.
living it up
i have to go back to work (outside-the-home work) in five days. thoughts of lesson plan ideas are started to infiltrate my brain and are keeping me up a little at night, so already my mind is back at work. i won't complain about this too much-- i really do consider it an utter privilege to be able to have 2 full months off with my kid and still receive a paycheck in the mail. it should be this way for everyone if that's their fancy. i feel very fortunate for our long and exuberant days.some of them have been grief-filled, because we are sincerely feeling the loss of a grandma, but i have also felt a strong and genuine excitement about waking up with the little one and seeing where the wind takes us. it's been a summer full of fruit picking and preserving-- strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, marionberries, blackberries, corn, plums, pears-- the order in which they arrived. we have lots of jam for sweet breakfasts in winter, lots o' berries for smoothies and pies, and enough corn to help us remember how delicious summer tastes for a couple hundred days when it's cold.
we've also spent lots of time at parks, the pool, in sprinklers, and in puddles. if it doesn't rain, we make them. we've been riding our bikes to the library to fill baskets up with books, baking up a storm, visiting the amusement park, the zoo, and the science museum. we've also been having some lazy days of doodling, cuddling, and watching some charlie and lola with a big bowl of popcorn. luscious i tell you.
adah accomplished her goals of learning to climb trees, and everywhere we go she's on the lookout for one that's her size. she can also ride her tricycle all...by...herself... all the way to prescott and back. she has also been busy playing out her anxieties and anticipations about school, which she starts a week after i go back to work. she plays school constantly, wants to know exactly how many friends she's going to make, and what we're going to pack in her lunch. she still likes to eat. like a lot. mothers' daughter, i guess.
Rest In Rage by Matt Davis
Portland is a city (and the Mercury a paper) that occasionally erupts in bursts of vitriolic civic engagement over issues that could not be less important. See: The Cesar Chavez Boulevard rename. Also: Sidewalk tape arguments at the Rose Festival. And of course: Major League Soccer. There are very few Portlanders, I think, who are able to rise above the Rose City noise and focus on issues of genuine life-and-death importance. Sadly, there is now one fewer.
If there's a heaven, Bonnie Tinker is probably already bored up there. Unless there's some raging injustice over the distribution of harps and angelic foot rubs—in which case I guarantee Tinker will be causing trouble in paradise. Still, "resting" in "peace" seems inappropriate for Tinker, whose 61-year life was ended prematurely last Thursday, July 2, when a Mack truck ran her over at a Quaker conference in Virginia.
I first met Tinker in 2007 after she was arrested along with her partner, Sara Graham, for daubing the walls of a military recruitment center on NE Broadway with water-soluble fake blood, made from corn syrup and food coloring. Tinker and Graham led Portland's Surge Protection Brigade, a group of politically active senior citizens who became known as the "raging" or "pissed-off grannies."
The first thing that struck me was that Tinker and Graham had definitely done it. There was no denial. In addition they told me: "We're not sorry." And still they beat the District Attorney's criminal mischief case in court, arguing under the first amendment that the blood symbolized both Good Friday, and the blood of dying soldiers in Iraq. I admired their ability to turn the court case into a public discussion about the war.
Tinker and Graham were arrested again in June that year, after lying down in front of a World War II tank during the Rose Festival. "It's not right, at a time of war, to have a tank on the streets of this city," said Tinker, making no reference to any ongoing arguments over sidewalk tape that may have been also been "raging" at the time.
I hope young and creative Portlanders like us can take a lesson from Tinker's life, now that she's gone. It's a shame we can get mad over the noise regulations for food carts on Hawthorne or sucked into the minutia of the mayor's sex life while seldom directing our energy, our indignation—or better yet—our guts, toward the really dreadful shit.
On that note, the effort to recall Sam Adams begins in earnest this week [rolls hipster eyes].
Bonnie Tinker, you'll be missed.
If there's a heaven, Bonnie Tinker is probably already bored up there. Unless there's some raging injustice over the distribution of harps and angelic foot rubs—in which case I guarantee Tinker will be causing trouble in paradise. Still, "resting" in "peace" seems inappropriate for Tinker, whose 61-year life was ended prematurely last Thursday, July 2, when a Mack truck ran her over at a Quaker conference in Virginia.
I first met Tinker in 2007 after she was arrested along with her partner, Sara Graham, for daubing the walls of a military recruitment center on NE Broadway with water-soluble fake blood, made from corn syrup and food coloring. Tinker and Graham led Portland's Surge Protection Brigade, a group of politically active senior citizens who became known as the "raging" or "pissed-off grannies."
The first thing that struck me was that Tinker and Graham had definitely done it. There was no denial. In addition they told me: "We're not sorry." And still they beat the District Attorney's criminal mischief case in court, arguing under the first amendment that the blood symbolized both Good Friday, and the blood of dying soldiers in Iraq. I admired their ability to turn the court case into a public discussion about the war.
Tinker and Graham were arrested again in June that year, after lying down in front of a World War II tank during the Rose Festival. "It's not right, at a time of war, to have a tank on the streets of this city," said Tinker, making no reference to any ongoing arguments over sidewalk tape that may have been also been "raging" at the time.
I hope young and creative Portlanders like us can take a lesson from Tinker's life, now that she's gone. It's a shame we can get mad over the noise regulations for food carts on Hawthorne or sucked into the minutia of the mayor's sex life while seldom directing our energy, our indignation—or better yet—our guts, toward the really dreadful shit.
On that note, the effort to recall Sam Adams begins in earnest this week [rolls hipster eyes].
Bonnie Tinker, you'll be missed.
these feets were made for campin'
last weekend we packed up our gear and went camping along the clackamas river with about 17 other moms and their kids. one of the gals overheard this conversation between two guys as they were walking past our group site:"what's going on there?"
"oh, those are the lesbians with the children."
"how does that work?"
you know, because lesbians don't have reproductive organs.
despite the fact that anne got food poisoning, adah got stung by a bee (the second time this week), and i got my period, we had a great time. really-- i'm not being facetious. i love a good change of scenery, and it was really fun to connect with other parents and kids and watch them explore from dawn to dusk. we were only gone for a few days, but it felt substantial. here's a shot of anne doing what she does best while camping, which is swat at mosquitoes because they love her blood. and adah is doing what she loves best, which is throwing rocks into bodies of water:
in case you didn't know, lesbians in general (with the exception of us and the luria family) are not the type of rugged campers you might expect they'd be. with our tent, sleeping bags, propane stove and two big coolers it looked like we were in the camping ghetto compared to all the others. we were the first ones to arrive, but a few hours later people started to show up with camping condos that were equipped with kitchenettes, living room sets, covered porch areas, and lawn furniture, not to mention extensive cookware and high maintenence meal ingredients. we didn't even bring any chairs to sit on, so we had to walk down the hill to borrow theirs and see how the others lived. we had our propane stove resting on a half burnt 2x4 we found in the fire pit. we didn't run out of hot dogs or smores ingredients, however, and that's what matters. even with our minimalist gear, we got to wake up underneath swaying trees and sleep next to crickets. aaaaahhhhh. we also got to wake up to buddies. here's adah and mateo cooperating to make some kind of contact (none whatsoever) with the ball:
who wouldn't want to wake up in this world? and this isn't just my prozac talking.
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