Bicycling Rites of Passage, Spokane Style

Inspired by Bicycling Magazine

Cyclists who reading Bicycling know that its content aims primarily at racing cyclists and people who like to think they might be someday. Ads for Hammer and GU gel, car ads that compare the feeling of driving to the feeling of cycling at high speed, training tips for people who plan their lives around “base/build/peak”—this isn’t for a 12mph rider on an old Schwinn, or someone who adds an electric motor to his/her bicycle to make it possible to get up hills without working.

Their Rites of Passage piece has a lot of high notes for their typical reader, and a few for the rest of us. I thought I’d add a few of my own.

First, you might go read their list and the comments. I particularly like the one who said “Realizing that you want to ride so bad that the trailer and kid on the back that add 60lbs to the already 7% climb is a small price to pay.” This person is hard-core, but a parent who's ready for Spokane's hills. (And don’t assume this is necessarily a DAD, either!)

In no particular order, here are some of my own rites of passage—some specific to Spokane, some not. Why not start riding and rack up a few of your own?

• Catching and passing a guy (after he first passed you) on a steep hill on the Old Palouse Highway coming back from coffee at On Sacred Grounds in Valleyford with your husband who cheers you on, after which he explains the meaning of the phrase "to get chicked," as in, "You just chicked that guy!".
• Leaving for your morning commute in the rain, knowing that you'll be riding home in either rain or snow.
• Riding down Stevens at 30-35+ mph when all the lights are turning green for you and realizing it would be so much easier to shoot the lights if the cars didn’t get in the way. (Drivers who aren’t hypermilers do a lot of jack-rabbit starts, then have to slow for the next red light just before it turns green, instead of going at a nice steady pace that would let them keep rolling. They could learn something from the cyclists.)
• Recognizing that downtown Spokane has a slight rise heading west to east—something you never really noticed when you drove through.
• Avoiding the Centennial Trail as a commute route because it slows you down. (Did you know there’s a speed limit? 15 mph)
• Choosing the Centennial Trail as a route because it lets you ride by the Spokane River, and that’s worth slowing down for.
• Discovering there are some great biking bloggers in Spokane.
• Creating a log-in at a cycling site with your main email address, not the one you use for warranties and junk email, because you actually want to read the newsletter they'll send you.
• Volunteering to do something in your community to make it better for cyclists, whether it's working on bike infrastructure, helping put on a family ride, or showing up to testify at City Council in support of a master bike plan.
• Asking candidates for public office where they stand on using transportation dollars to pay for bike infrastructure—and voting accordingly, since bikes are transportation.
• Joining cycling organizations and clubs that advocate politically and publicly on behalf of cyclists, not just ones that put on club rides.
• Realizing you don’t know the price of gas—and you don’t have to, any more than you have to carry change for parking meters.
• Learning that within downtown Spokane, it’s usually faster to bike to a meeting than it is to find your car in the parking lot, drive, find another parking spot, realize you don’t have change for the parking meter, run to the meeting to borrow some, run back, plug the meter, and scurry back to your meeting in high heels. That could just be me J but for most trips under two miles--and most trips ARE under two miles--the bike is frequently faster than the car.
• Drawing the circle within which you’re going to house hunt based on three factors: high school zone for your kids, legislative district for your politics, and bike distance to work (and associated hills) for your legs and butt.
• Walking into a Chamber of Commerce event taking off your helmet and carrying your panniers like they're your briefcase.
• Saying jokingly to a Chamber staffer, “You put in that new bike rack outside the building because of me, right?” and having that person answer in all seriousness, “Yes.”
• Having people look twice when you show up at a meeting without your reflective lime green/yellow jacket.
• Realizing that a building or establishment that doesn’t have a bike rack or other secure bike parking facility isn’t your problem—it’s their problem—and asking them where you can put your bike so they have to solve that problem, the way they solved it for their car-driving customers. (Just last week at the Davenport Hotel they checked my bike like a suitcase—awesome service, delivered without batting an eyelash. If enough of us ask, building owners will catch on and put in parking. They do it for cars.)
• Falling for the first time as an adult—getting up bleeding—and finishing the ride instead of calling for help with your cell phone. (This one is for Betsy J, founder of Belles and Baskets.)
• Smiling at a motorist who yells, “Get on the sidewalk where you belong!” because you know the law, and he clearly doesn’t. (Bikes on sidewalks are illegal in downtown Spokane, by the way.)
• Particularly for women: Realizing that you now evaluate potential clothing purchases based on whether you can bike comfortably in them, in addition to how they look on you and whether they’re on sale.
• Having bikes in your living room because—well—your house is where you live, and bikes are how you live.

I’m sure there are many more. Add yours in the comments!

My Reasons to Vote NO on Spokane’s Prop 4: A Really Long Political Discourse, Possibly Verging on a Diatribe, Running into a Rant

Let me be clear: I believe city government has an essential role in making our city livable and workable for everyone. I believe taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized society. I vote and speak out for the passage of measures to make Spokane a better place to live, such as Citizens for Spokane Schools and our “Yes for Kids” campaign every three years, the street bond that is improving the streets on which I commute via bike every day, and the sales tax that supports mental health services and law enforcement, among other things.

I’m not an anti-government, anti-tax conservative. I’m not opposed to the creation of government programs that address market failures—in fact, I believe that’s why we have governments, because markets so often fail to protect the environment or provide services for people who don’t have fat wallets or a working vehicle.

To make it even harder, I like and respect many of the people who are working with great passion for passage of Prop 4. I think the City Council's addition of advisory votes on funding if Prop 4 passes was an inappropriate effort to condition voter response to the measure, even though I agree with them that it creates unmanageable burdens on the City's budget. I am completely at odds with some of the people I find blogging against Prop 4, in disagreement with reasons they state against it, and in some cases downright alarmed by their overall political philosophies (I won't even link to the example I'm thinking of--he's seeing Communists behind every bush and doesn't deserve the traffic.)

But I oppose Spokane’s Prop 4. Not only do I oppose it, I’m allowing my name, face and words to be used in ads against it.

It would be easy not to—just to oppose it silently and vote no. Maybe tell a few friends who ask, but keep my head down so I don’t alienate anyone who might support me politically at some point if I ever run for office again (or lose a few friends on Facebook).

But I believe it’s important for people who share progressive values, and who have legitimate concerns about a specific proposal from “our own side,” to be willing to speak up. The left is not a monolith, nor is it a bunch of mindless sheep lined up and waiting to support the latest new government program. I think the criticisms of current national health care reforms prove that point nicely.

We have minds and we need to use them to analyze critically the proposals from our own—not just from the other side. Since the full text of the measure will not even appear on the ballot, it's particularly important for people to share their thoughts so voters might be encouraged to go read it for themselves before voting.

I’m not opposing Prop 4 because I think it’s great to let developers violate the comprehensive plan or because I think everything’s fine and needs no improvement—far from it. I think we need an impact fee ordinance that really encourages density and true transportation choice, for example. Hey, maybe the City Council could get on this—if we had the right people there.

I’m not opposing it because I disagree with every item on the list—there are some I support, had they been presented as separate items for individual votes in accordance with the state's requirement for single-subject measures to be presented to the voters.

I’m not opposing it just because I think specifying fee-for-service as the mechanism for preventive healthcare is the wrong way to go about getting that for every resident who needs it—although I do, and I really wonder at the choice of this particular mechanism.

I also wonder about declaring a right to healthcare services; only part of our health status is actually determined by access to healthcare services, preventive or not. They might have called on the city to do more to create an environment in which individuals can attain a better health status—something that’s actually doable within the core services a city delivers. A healthier city would expand its infrastructure, education and encouragement aimed at making it easier for more people to choose active transportation, for example, with related decreases in chronic preventable diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

I’m opposing it because, as written:

It’s unenforceable. Some measures have specific mechanisms, others don’t, and some of the elements are simply illegal for a city government to undertake.

It’s a big fat target for lawyers who sue and then get paid (by us, the taxpayers) no matter what the ruling in the end. Insert loud cha-CHING sound here. If the city wins its side of the suit, though, we don’t get our attorney fees covered, so it’s written to encourage anyone, from anywhere, to file suit against the city. That’s us. (At least, that’s how I read their language, since it refers to the prevailing plaintiff getting attorney fees reimbursed, but not prevailing defendant.)

Oh, but it gets better: Those suits can be brought against any person for violating the terms of these amendments. Your potential liability isn’t just indirect, as a city taxpayer—it’s direct.

It seeks to regulate sectors such as lending institutions and health care that are regulated at the federal level and which city government can’t touch.

Let’s think about the lending provisions just a little more, shall we? Anyone recall a certain financial meltdown in oh, say, the last 18 months or so? Anyone think that lending institutions should have pretty high standards for the financial wherewithal of their borrowers to repay loans? Maybe this has something to do with our overall stability as an economy, which isn’t really in A+ shape right now?

Maybe we should ask lending institutions to be fair-but-tough on everyone they lend to, rather than seeking to extend extra consideration to a borrower based solely on ZIP code rather than on ability to repay. People and businesses in Spokane already have “equal access to capital” as called for in this: They have to prove they’re worth lending to. If that bank or credit union is the place where I’m keeping my money, given that I want it back, I probably support this standard. Some great micro-lending programs are out there that could be developed and applied here. Oh, and there’s the Community Reinvestment Act, too.

It includes a “right” to affordable and renewable energy, which is a service not even delivered by the city. No mechanism proposed so I don’t what you’d sue to have the city do here, but I’m sure there’s something.

It grants rights to ecosystems. Since the river can’t come into court and sue on its own behalf, someone will have to do that. Setting that aside, just look at the right it grants the ecosystem: The right to exist and flourish. How on earth—how on EARTH—does the city accomplish this? I feel pretty good about my credentials as an environmentalist, but I honestly don’t get this.

Despite the wording emphasis on our incredibly important and irreplaceable river and aquifer systems (a topic on which I’ve commented here and on the late lamented MetroSpokane blog), this describes not just the Spokane River Gorge, our sole-source aquifer, or a wetland that provides essential habitat—this includes every element of incredibly complex systems.

This goes so far beyond existing environmental protections at the local, state and national level that I can’t begin to imagine the range, complexity, and pettiness, let alone the expense, of the suits that will be brought. And since Nature really is “red in tooth and claw,” things are living and dying every day, in every ecosystem. Human action didn’t bring an end to the dinosaurs. “Right to exist and flourish” isn’t one of Nature’s principles—it’s a human idea.

Sarcasm alert: Why, only the other day I tore out some crappy little shrubs in my backyard because I want to plant raspberries so I can increase my food sustainability just a bit. Goodbye to a little bit of insect habitat in my backyard ecosystem (I don’t think the squirrels were getting any food off these particular bushes) and its right to exist and flourish.

I absolutely want access to undamaged ecosystems. I just don't think we get them by bogging down the court system.

It gives power to neighborhood councils that I can’t elect or un-elect. Not just the power to enforce the comp plan, as I’ve heard supporters say (and we do need better enforcement and real teeth for the comp plan). It gives them the power to veto anything that doesn’t square with the provisions of these charter amendments themselves. All of them.

More on this because I think this is the heart of the matter, thanks to the bad City Council decision for the Southgate Neighborhood and the expansion of unnecessary big-box development that just encourages the American addiction to unsustainable overconsumption. If we really want to protect ecosystems around us, one way we can help achieve that in this area is by increasing density and containing sprawl. Spokane covers more square miles with far less density than cities like Seattle, San Francisco or Paris, France.

If you increase density within the urban growth area, you’re going to have to—wait for it—build taller buildings, closer together. In someone’s neighborhood. Where they may like things just the way they are. So they’ll carry petitions, get signatures (not that many needed), and take it to the neighborhood council.

If Prop 4 passes, instead of increasing urban density you’ll encourage people to build outside the city of Spokane, where they’re free to destroy a little eco-space and won’t have to wait for a neighborhood council veto, and you’ll encourage sprawl. I’m 100+% certain this is not the goal of Prop 4 supporters. Unintended consequences, folks, unintended consequences—the problem with every well-intentioned law or regulation.

I served four years in the Idaho legislature and I’m pretty good at reading statutory language. One of my colleagues across the aisle, in fact, told me after I lost my reelection bid in 1994, “We’ll miss you. You used to read the bills.” (Not sure what that indicates about the other legislators—kinda scary.)

I’m not trained as an attorney, but writing legislation gives you some practice in paying attention to details and language. So I see the holes, I see the inconsistencies, and in particular I see the difference between what the charter actually says and what its supporters tell you it says.

I’ll take just one example—and a darned expensive one it is. In the Sunday Oct. 11 Spokesman-Review pro/con roundtable articles, Prop 4 backer Brad Read writes:

“(The opposition is)… working hard to convince voters that the proposition would require the city to buy health care for all residents, which couldn’t be further from the truth. By intentionally misrepresenting it, they’re avoiding the measure’s clear language, which merely requires the city to convene a meeting of health care providers to determine how their existing fee-for-service preventive programs can accommodate all Spokane residents who need such care.”

The proposition’s “clear language” does not “merely require the city to convene a meeting” no matter what someone asserts. The proposed charter amendment says this:

“Residents have the right to affordable preventive health care. For residents otherwise unable to access such care, the City shall guarantee such access by coordinating with area healthcare providers to create affordable fee-for-service programs within eighteen (18) months following adoption of this Charter provision.”

“The City shall guarantee such access.” Guarantee.

The language laid out in the clause that starts “by coordinating….” provides for a specific mechanism. But if that mechanism doesn’t work, the guarantee is still sitting there, and I doubt the city leaders would be allowed to shrug their shoulders sadly if a meeting didn’t lead to the intended outcome and just walk away.

This guaranteed access is the primary subject and object of that sentence. (I majored in English and Linguistics, which comes in handy when you’re parsing statute.) It’s the goal of Prop 4 supporters for people to get this access, not for the City to convene a meeting. It must be—otherwise why bother?

Furthermore, it doesn’t say providers, and providers only, will extend existing programs. It says the City will coordinate with those providers to create programs. The City is the one charged with guaranteeing this access, so it holds the responsibility for seeing that the programs are created regardless of cost required to make them “affordable” to residents.

Since these same providers suffer from lower Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates than other parts of the country, and everyone involved would have to find the money to pay the providers of preventive healthcare somehow, you tell me how this is accomplished without the City writing some mighty big checks drawn on taxpayer-funded accounts. (And someone, somewhere, funding and running the system that does the screening to figure out exactly which residents are “otherwise unable to access such care” and which ones aren’t, so you know who’s eligible for the care. This is a new definition with respect to eligibility for care, so it means extending the current system or creating a new one.)

If you edit the charter sentence down by removing the dependent clauses (except the time frame just so you can ponder the cost and complexity), it looks like this:

“…. The City shall guarantee such access … within eighteen (18) months following adoption of this Charter provision.”

This one strikes close to home because when I served in the Idaho Senate, I sponsored legislation seeking to bring together a widely representative group of stakeholders—people with disabilities and mental health issues who aren’t well served under current systems, primary care providers, seniors, hospitals, insurers and others—to design a health care reform effort that would work for us in hopes of getting a Medicaid waiver and trying something new. Couldn’t get it out of committee, it being Idaho and all, and I took plenty of flack from lobbyists for even trying.

This isn’t just a requirement to convene a meeting. It really isn’t. I sit now on the board of a healthcare foundation (which is not in any way associated with my political views, so I won’t name it here.) I can assure you of my commitment to making affordable preventive healthcare available to everyone. Having the city convene a meeting is not going to accomplish this, and for a supporter to say the charter amendment “merely requires the city to convene a meeting” appears to be a misunderstanding of their own mandate for a right to be guaranteed by the City.

This piece has now officially crossed the line from discourse to diatribe to rant, which isn’t where I wanted to go.

One more thing before we break up this lovefest, just because I’m a big fan of representative democracy in all its messiness and incomplete realization of its highest goals--

Supporters make it sound as if these are the rights we need to protect us from business as usual, and that with their adoption things will finally start happening around here that will contribute to a more sustainable, more livable community. Since we’re still working on fully realizing the values of equality embodied in the U.S. Constitution more than 200 years after its adoption, I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.

Yet every week issues come before the City Council that affect our ability to live according to values found in Prop 4.

• How they will ever pay for street repair—that’s a biggie for me, since I’m (ahem) rather intimately acquainted with our rough streets as a bike commuter, and complete, well-maintained streets are essential for bike commuting and access to transit stops.
• How they’re going to balance the budget in the face of falling revenues and rising healthcare costs.
• How the City’s own practices as a purchaser of goods and services, a real estate/facilities manager, and employer could become more sustainable.
• How we might improve our courts and law enforcement practices so people with mental disabilities get appropriate responses and the treatment they need.
• Whether or not to vacate a particular street right-of-way, affecting future opportunities to add bike lanes or rapid transit and the texture of our urban fabric when smaller blocks are consolidated into larger ones.

The answers to these will not be provided by passage of Prop 4. The votes that will affect the outcomes of specific issues requiring specific budgets will be taken by members of the City Council. We will still have representative democracy and we will still need good City Council members.

Prop 4 has ended up being used as a deadweight wrapped around the necks of two good candidates despite their stated opposition to it. Specious analysis of campaign contributions is being used to imply hidden support, without regard for the ability of reasonable people to agree on some things and disagree on others. (For a nice discussion see Spokane Skeptic and DTE Spokane.)

If those candidates lose, Prop 4 supporters have something to answer for every week when the City Council votes.

3 Things My Mother Taught Me

My mother turns 88 today—September 13, 2009. Born in 1921, she grew up through the Depression, taught school, married a dashing World War II bomber pilot and hometown boy, raised six kids, had a brief stint as “Mother Trucker” working with my dad in a truck dispatching office after his retirement from a lifetime working for Potlatch, had some seasons as a snowbird heading to Death Valley with Dad and going on an Alaskan cruise—and got dementia.

Now everything from her long life is gone, except for her love for my father.

The number of her children and our names and faces: Gone. When I visit, my father does a good job of saying hello in a way that reintroduces who we are and how we fit into her life. She always smiles her best hostess-y smile when we arrive, but it’s clear that she doesn’t really recognize us.

Her actual age and what has and hasn’t happened already in her life: Gone. Sometimes she refers to her mother , dead in 1986, as still living. Sometimes she talks about whether or not she and Dad should have children since they haven’t had any yet. Sometimes she’s living in Spokane, although they’re in Lewiston. Sometimes she lives in the big house they used to own outside Lewiston, instead of in the dementia unit at Guardian Angels.

What she just said and where a normal conversation would go next: Gone. I like to describe it as running a lot of laps around a very short track. (I've written a bit before about what this is like. This means I'm repeating myself. This is of some concern.)

Her looping would be familiar to anyone who has spent some time with a dementia patient. As soon as she finishes a sentence—if she does, and if she uses English rather than throwing in a few Klingon words created by the strokes that cause her dementia—she might pick up that thread of thought and start all over again. And again. And again.

Fortunately, the thing she repeats more than anything is how much she loves my father and how well-suited they have been for each other through nearly 65 years of marriage. She repeats things about how they met or things they did together, and often gets those right: “He was always such a good dancer,” with an arch look and a smile.

If she has to forget everything else and repeat just one essential element of her life ad infinitum, at least it is love.

This essay is my birthday present to her, although I don’t know if she can still sustain enough cognitive continuity to read much.

How sad that makes me, when she turned me into an incredibly fast, retentive reader with her teaching skill. She posted names of things on flash cards all over our house so that I learned to see words as entire and intact units, rather than painful constructs of sounded-out syllables. This makes me a good proofreader because I know at some subconscious level that the shape of the word is wrong, even before I can tell you where the typo is.

The best gifts she gave me, though, were lessons in how to lead my life. Because of her, I have these qualities:

I’m a feminist. She told me stories about my grandmother—to be told here another day—to illustrate why I should be able to take care of myself as an independent woman before I married. Admittedly, she did assume I would marry and have children. Her wish for all her children was that we have a marriage as happy as hers (we all got there eventually).

I believe in service to my community. Long before I ever heard of the notion of privilege or paying it forward, my mom gave me both those concepts. She told me how lucky I was, to grow up in a home with two parents who loved each other, plenty to eat, never any fear of losing the roof over our heads, a college education.

More important, she told me there are lots of people who don’t have all those things and because of that, they may not be able to do and be everything they want in this world. So I need to use the gifts I’m given and whatever talent I have to contribute, because I can and because some doors will open for me that may not open for others.

I try to be kind, and I look for the good things that abound. Kindness is underrated in this world. My mother was kind and she taught me empathy.

If we saw someone who had any kind of problem that made life more difficult—say, someone with a disability, or someone who was morbidly obese—Mom said something like, “Oh, life must be so difficult for them. Think what it’s like just to try to go see a movie” (or whatever seemed relevant).

This wasn’t said in a patronizing way—it was said to help us put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.

My mother was almost always cheerful, too, and I have her sunny optimism most of the time. My dear and sometimes brooding husband knows I’m his Sally Sunshine. (Every marriage should have one.)

Thanks to Mom, for me the glass isn’t half-empty, it’s half-full, or maybe you need a glass that’s a different size, or we’ll get something to drink later instead of right now. The lines “We’ll just make the best of it” and “Things will turn out all right in the end” can carry you through many of the bumps in life’s road.

These were good lessons. Thank you, Mom.

Where have you BEEN, anyway? It’s been far too long.

It’s called Real Life. That thing we do with family, friends, projects and causes that matter to us. That thing that slows down the tweet stream, drops the rate of Facebook updates from multiple ones every day to once or twice a week—the thing that stopped my embryonic blog for five months.

I don’t have anything dramatic to report for my time spent in four-dimensional life. Bike to Work Week got pretty all-consuming about the time I last blogged in late March, so that was the first bump in the road. My work chairing that committee is on top of a full-time job, kids, sweetheart, all the rest, so it does command a lot of those late-night hours I might otherwise use for a creative outlet.

That’s not the only board or committee I’m on, and most of them cut a pretty wide swath in my in-box. If I’m lucky, they don’t all peak at once—Bike to Work Week fortunately doesn’t take place at the same time as the Spokane River Clean-up (coming up Sept. 26—have you registered yet?), or the executive search committee I was chairing for a foundation board I'm on. I run Twitter and Facebook accounts for volunteer efforts like Friends of the Falls and Bike to Work Spokane. My work as communications director for WSU Spokane also involves tons o’ email, Twitter & other electronica. Keyboard fatigue, pure & simple.

I got past Bike to Work Week, I did some other board work, then Eldest Daughter graduated from high school. This was huge. She naturally thought it was blogworthy. I agreed. But what would I write?

Something to sum up her evolution as a young woman and her life to date? Reminiscences about her life as a Legislative Baby, my little political parade companion wearing a sash that said “Future Governor” while waving to the crowd, and knock-‘em-dead songstress in every talent contest she ever entered? A look ahead to her college life and her plans to be a bilingual civics teacher? Reflections on my divorce from her father and how I could have done a better job as her mother but now it’s too late?

Too much pressure. Couldn’t do it justice, so I didn’t do it. That took me from mid-June well into the really nice part of a Spokane summer—and we have beautiful summers here.

The fact of the matter is that I had let online time cut too big a chunk out of family time. Things that ranked higher on my priority list than blogging for the past few months:

• Being madly in love with my husband and spending every minute together that we can
• Celebrating our two-year wedding anniversary in early July with dinner at Mizuna, the most wonderful restaurant in downtown Spokane for vegetarians and the carnivores who love them
• Long bike rides with Sweetheart, usually with a nice little coffee stop at the halfway point like On Sacred Grounds in Valleyford or the Rocket Bakery on Argonne
• Walking in the evening holding hands with Sweetheart, heading to Press or Lindaman’s for coffee or just around the neighborhood
• Sleeping in on a few Fridays off just to start the weekends early, then lingering over the newspaper with hot French press coffee sprinkled with cinnamon and brown sugar
• Walking holding hands with Sweetheart on a Saturday morning to Rockwood Bakery for quiche & buttery-good pastries (oh, and coffee—is there a theme here?)
• Yoga classes at Twist, taught by my best friend Betz, and coffee with her once or twice a week (I hear that theme music again)
• Reading fiction in actual books picked out at the downtown Spokane Library, with its wonderful view of the Spokane River
• A week at the family lake cabin in August, where there is no Internet connection and only spotty cell phone service
• Having The Engineer (boy age 11) and Movie Sponge (girl age 9) with us for five weeks straight
• Fierce board game head-to-heads: Monopoly, Pente, Parcheesi. Eldest Daughter isn’t one for board games, but the rest of us are always game for a game
• Teaching #2 Daughter to play gin rummy, and losing to her badly more than once. My father would be so proud.
• Movie nights with fresh popcorn
• Hosting a fundraiser for a political candidate I believe in
• Walks to a neighborhood park (we have several—thank you Olmsted Brothers for Spokane’s park plan) with the little ones, where they climb trees and play on swings
• Cheering Eldest Daughter on through her job search, which resulted in several interviews and two part-time jobs in a tough economy (she has been offered almost every job she has ever applied for)
• Ditto for her preparations for college--she starts next week with a "preview" one-week intro-to-college class
• Cooking up the occasional storm trying out recipes from the wonderful World Vegetarian cookbook, my mother’s old recipe box, and other sources
• Finally finishing a sampler afghan I’ve knitted away at over the years, and starting on a sweater for fall (back & right front done, almost done with left front, sleeves & finishing after that)
• Seeing my daughters through a rough patch involving a breakdown in their father’s health
• As a consequence of said health issue, surviving the experience of my 18-year-old and 15-year-old daughters leaving on their first cross-state road trip
• Cheering at Sweetheart’s bike races--he placed second in his category for the series he raced, and moves up to race at a higher level next season
• Sitting out on our back patio on summer evenings listening to the frogs shrilling their little froggy hearts out, holding hands and sipping a glass of something with my Sweetheart
• An epic hike with the little ones in Liberty Lake County Park: 3 miles up a steep forest hillside to the waterfall and back down again
• Feeling the season start to turn as the temperatures drop, the air becomes more mild, and a few yellow leaves start drifting to the ground

This is real life. Pretty sure I made the right choice. But now I’ve broken the log jam and I’ll get back in the groove—without sacrificing any hand-holding walks with Sweetheart.

What IS It with the Body Spray Already? Smells Like a Lot More than Teen Spirit

Image via Wikipedia

My eyes are tearing up and I’m getting ready to sneeze, a good sign that one of my sweet-smelling daughters has readministered body spray. Again.

“Readminister again” is not a redundant statement; they will later re-readminister. Possibly just as they get into the car or some other enclosed space in which I will be trapped with the vaporous goodness.

Japanese Cherry Blossom? Cherry Almond Vanilla? Something involving cherries, at any rate. Or flowers. It’s hard to tell what specific scent it is when it’s bombarding you at Force 10.

Don’t get me wrong—I love my daughters. Really. I’m pleased that they prefer to be clean and sweet-smelling. They generally leave the house groomed, although we differ on the critical question of whether slippers with semi-hard surfaces on the bottom count as footwear for the big wide world out there.

On the slipper question they vote Yes, I vote No. My vote does not count. The only time they entertained the possibility of reconsidering this point, it was because four feet of snow fell on us in late December and early January and stayed for weeks. They didn’t wait for the spring thaws to go back to the slippers.

They’re not over the top on make-up, thank heavens. Admittedly Eldest Daughter went through a raccoon-eyes phase, applying black eyeliner and extra-black extra-clumping mascara with the enthusiasm of a small child newly introduced to scented markers.

She shared her hard-earned wisdom with Number Two Daughter, who uses a light hand. Both have beautiful eyes in any case.

And they do smell nice. But this comes at a price: the constant reapplication of body sprays purchased approximately every other week at Smelly Body Sprays R Us or some such chain.

When one of them gets ready for school in the main bathroom, we brace ourselves for the moment when the door swings open and the cloud wafts out well in advance of the girl ostensibly wearing the perfume—or being worn by it.

I’m sure I did this at their age. I remember a certain fondness for Love’s Baby Soft that probably announced itself around corners. Today my tastes are a trifle more sophisticated (Coco Mademoiselle by Chanel, which they had better not stop making), and expressed in moderation.

So what do I do, say, “Don’t smell quite so nice”? There’s a reason the words “teen girls body spray” bring up 103,000 results in Google.

A closer look at these results reveals that apparently this isn’t exclusively a girl thing—in fact, it’s a huge problem with boys.

Who knew? Since we have one boy who is 11 and still smells like the outdoors and whatever project he’s been working on involving glue and solvents, if not soldering irons and melting rubber, this has not yet become apparent.

Boys ODing to prevent BOing is such a problem, in fact, that the manufacturers are actually starting to suggest boys should tone it down. This will never move product—I’m amazed at their public-spirited campaigns (which conveniently move the product name up in the Google results....).

For example, this YouTube spot aims at the boy side of the line, using a sex appeal pitch to suggest that subtlety is sexier than a level approaching anesthesia.

This piece talks about the Axe overdose effect similar to what I’m experiencing with Cherry Almond Vanilla Blossom Floral Flower Whatsis.

The Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (such dreamers they must be, the people who could found something with such an aspirational name and so little hope of realizing the goal expressed in the name….Oh wait, it’s a Christian organization; they may have back-up help) write about the problem here.

The Google results, as always, are an entertaining mix of sites telling you about the problem, and sites enabling you to make purchases that will add to the problem.

I won’t even get to the articles where they talk about using body spray as a flame thrower or inhalant. I already know this stuff is both deadly and a substance of abuse--I’m livin’ it. Here it comes now....

Raised by Wolves, or Free Range Kids? Either Way, They Learn and Live. At Least So Far.

Image via Wikipedia

For years now I’ve told people that my children are being raised by wolves. I’ve now learned a much healthier-sounding term for my parenting approach: I’m raising free-range kids.

I found this term through the Cult of the Bicycle blog, which picked up on a text reference on the Free Range Kids blog to letting kids go out and ride their bikes.

Following that link, I was THRILLED to find other moms like me who don’t make their kids live in an antiseptic, antibacterial, padded, no-sharp-corners, experience-free bubble.

I've never been a "smother" and I don't think that makes me either neglectful or crazy. My kids are learning lessons from real-life experiences that I could never convey through verbal instruction (the effectiveness of which, after all, assumes that they listen to you).

One example (and I’m sure my daughters will jump on here with comments to clarify, expand, correct, and shoot down my fuzzy memory and factual assertions)—

My daughters are now 18 and almost 15. They've been riding on transit in our city of about 200,000 for the last 4+ years.

When my 14-year-old started at age 10, it was because she was attending a citywide gifted program that didn't have school bus service, and I simply couldn't drive her to and from school every day. (My bike commuting habit was not the only factor.)

She had already ridden the bus downtown with her older sister a few times, and we had a bus stop at the end of our block. I rode the bus with her the first day. We got to the central plaza and I showed her where to catch the second bus she needed to transfer to in order to get to her school.

When we came to our stop, we picked out landmarks so she could recognize it again. I showed her how to get from the stop to the school (a 2-block walk), and told her how to get back. I instructed her to sit up front, close to the driver, and tell the driver if anyone bothered her.

Turns out I should have come down and ridden home with her that first time, because she thought it would be easier to just get on the bus on the same side of the street where she got off in the morning.

This, of course, meant that she was riding farther away from home instead of back. The bus driver recognized that she wasn't getting off as he passed stop after stop, heading farther and farther east until she was the only person on the bus.

He asked her where she was supposed to end up, explained that she needed to catch a bus going the other way, and helped her get off at the right stop and cross the street to catch a bus headed back downtown to the plaza, where she could then catch another bus to come home. She got home safe and sound with an adventure to talk about.

Sure, it gave me some heart palpitations to hear about it afterwards, and I kicked myself for not riding home with her that first time. But--SHE MADE IT JUST FINE (and geez, it WAS a gifted program she was heading to/from....).

My kids have had plenty of adventures. No broken bones or concussions, and only a couple of small scars, one set definitely caused by free-range behavior: a wild bike ride down a bluff at dusk when she went off a trail by accident (same Gifted Kid who got on the bus going the wrong way).

Gifted Kid, in fact, started riding her bike to school a couple of years ago, a distance of about 3 miles on some fairly busy streets. My husband and I rode with her the first day and explained the funny nature of the one-way streets she would have to deal with in order to come back along a different street than the one we were taking to get to school.

That afternoon I got a call from her cell phone. “Mom, I’m at some corner.”

Shades of the bus ride—she had gotten turned around or missed a key intersection or some such, and was heading south when she should have been heading west. The steepness of the hill she was facing stopped her, as she was pretty sure we hadn’t come down something quite that steep in the morning.

I’d commuted by bike that day too, so I hopped on my bike and rode to her after determining where she was (not a particularly high-rent district, in case you want to fill in some stereotypes and assumptions about the people who live around there).

When I got there, she was talking to a nice young woman who had gotten concerned when she saw a relatively young kid sitting on the curb with a bike and a cell phone, apparently lost.

The woman smiled at me and said she was just keeping GK company until I arrived. I thanked her profusely, and GK and I rode home.

No kidnapping or rape or assault, no drug addiction, no pregnancies. They have good grades, extracurricular activities, talent, manners—all the characteristics you hope your kids will demonstrate when they’re a few months old and screaming their heads off while they cut teeth.

They also have street smarts, they know how to handle an unwanted come-on much better than I did when I graduated from college, and they have great self-confidence. They've developed an internal moral compass and are quite clear about their values and priorities. They are far more comfortable being around people very different from themselves in age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and level of hygiene than I was at their age when I had had no such exposure to the wild, beautiful, and sometimes scary variety of the world.

I share the belief of the Free Range Kids author/blogger that most people are good, and nothing has happened to change this. Statistically speaking, my kids and yours are in more danger from people they know than from total strangers.

I could keep them safe from “everything” and send them out into the world completely unprepared to function as adults, but what would be the point? Better to learn, live, and pick up a scar or two along the way—as well as a better sense of navigation. Right, Gifted Kid?

Ways the World Wide Web Allows Me to Procrastinate. Food for Thought, but You Should Do Something Productive Instead of Reading This.

Image via CrunchBase

I could take this one step further and make it a Facebook meme, but I do have a life. Somewhere around here. Backed up on a flash drive. If I remembered to back it up. Dang, I really need to back up more often.

How many of these have you done within the last day? Subtract points if your living actually depends on any of these. Add points if you have no product or service you market online.

1. Logged onto Twitter and read random bits of noise from strangers.
2. Responded to these random bits with your own witty observation.
3. Checked and responded on a second (or third or fourth) Twitter account you also manage.
4. Followed a link someone tweeted.
5. Retweeted a link (extra points if you changed someone else’s short URL to your own system so you can track clickthroughs).
6. Searched on Twitter or any related utility to find interesting people to follow.
7. Updated your Facebook status. (bonus point for doing this several times a day)
8. Written on someone’s Facebook wall.
9. Commented on someone’s update.
10. Commented on someone’s comment on someone else’s update.
11. Did one of those ubiquitous Facebook lists.
12. Tagged friends with said ubiquitous list.
13. Responded to a tag from a friend with another ubiquitous list.
14. (awarded yourself points in your head for having an excuse to use ubiquitous everywhere.)
15. Browsed the Facebook “People You May Know” list and sent out friend requests.
16. Started a blog post.
17. Finished a blog post.
18. Actually posted a blog post.
19. Commented on someone else’s blog.
20. Tweeted a link to your blog.
21. Tweeted a link to someone else’s blog.
22. Clicked “Mark All As Read” in Google Reader because you have several hundred unread blog posts waiting for you.
23. Read something in Google Reader, then clicked on it to read it at the original site, then followed links to other posts, then forgotten where you were and closed the tab without remembering to back up to the post you really, really wanted to tweet about, so now you have to go back to Google Reader and find it again.
24. Favorited, shared, stumbled upon, or whatever-ed anything, anywhere.
25. Checked your work email junk folder.
26. Reviewed and deleted email messages because your IT system sent you one of those annoying messages about how much mail you have stored on the server.
27. Checked your personal email spam folder.
28. Spent time on Facebook or Twitter to avoid looking at your personal email account because of the backlog.
29. Responded to someone’s whitelisting email so your email account can get through to that email account. So you can get more email. Think about this.

Okay, now that you’ve spent time on this, admit it: You’re going to turn it into a blog post, post it on Facebook, tweet about it, or email a link to a friend.

What color are your kids’ eyes again?

And admit it—it’s bothering you that this list has an odd number of items, because you now think everything in a list should have 5, 7, 10, 20, 50, or 100 entries.

Admit a little bit more--you're waiting for some kind of rankings based on accumulated points, or instructions for what you're supposed to do with your point total. You might just reflect on it. And check your kids' eyes.