June 30, 2009

bike for your salad

I'm realizing it's kind of neat living in a place where you can just hop on your bike and run out to pick up some mozzarella and salad for dinner. And while you're out maybe some orange juice too. My adrenaline still gets going when I pull out on the road will all those cars, but riding my bike to the grocery store seemed a little more like adventuring and a little less like running errands. Pretty cool I'd say.

June 29, 2009

sort of but not really

Seeing so many people around me having their first (or fourth) babies has gotten me thinking about things. In these past few weeks I've finally started to feel like I'm regaining some of the strength I enjoyed during high school and most of college (before senior year and family stress sapped almost everything I ever had). It feels really good to ride my bike to the library or work out until my arms and legs are all worked out and pleasantly achy. I know that if we were to have a child sometime soon it would be that much harder just to do those simple activities -not to mention taking road trips or trying my hand at backpacking along the coast. I've always felt that my life was far too messy for me to suddenly be responsible for a completely helpless human being. Now that things seem to be turning around for me I find that part of me simply wants to enjoy the changes. The other part of me says that kids are awesome and that I really want to take my kids out into the wide world. I want them to scramble up mountains and learn Latin and take things apart and understand that failing is infinitely better than never having the guts to try. But do I want it now? I'm not sure. I feel like I want to enjoy the (hopeful) returning of my strength, but as that strength returns I can't help wondering what I'm going to do with it. It's a curious question. Fortunately (unfortunately?) there's not so much I can do about it. Que sera, sera.

June 27, 2009

In the "I bought series"...



Her name is Betsy, and eventually she will have a rack and light for hauling mystery novels around at night. First,though, I will get her a green chain because Betsy is just bad like that :D

June 17, 2009

I bought a blender!

And now I have bananas, strawberries, and blueberries in the freezer waiting for breakfast tomorrow. Yummy. Since coming to California I have come to love these things. I will confess to having had two today in the course of my out and abouting :D Getting a blender seemed the only way to save my budget from utter ruination.

June 16, 2009

How to Speak of Animals

As the unpacking continues (somehow I think movers make almost as much work as they save), I've been refreshing my sanity by reading essays out of Umberto Eco's collection How to travel with a Salmon and other essays. I just came across one essay which I must quote because I think it's so completely brilliant on the way teachers and environmentalists have skewed our view of nature.

In this essay Umberto talks about how children's conceptions of animals have changed in the schools efforts to teach that whales, wolves, and elephants should be protected. He says:

No one says [animals] are entitled to survive even if, as a rule, they are savage and carnivorous. No, they are made respectable by becoming cuddly, comic, good-natured, benevolent, wise, and prudent...We must save the whales, not because they are good, but because they are a part of nature's inventory and they contribute to the ecological equilibrium. Instead, our children our raised with whales that talk, wolves that join the Third Order of St, Francis, and, above all, an endless array of teddy bears...To make them forget how bad human beings are, they [are] taught too insistently that bears are good. Instead of being told honestly what humans are and what bears are.


I'd never thought of it that way before, but I really thing Eco is on to something. That last line in particular is a zinger. After reading this though I'm really curious as to what Eco would say about Grimm's Fairy Tales, Mother Goose, and Beatrix Potter. Something to think about while I'm trying to get my closets organized.

June 10, 2009

almost there

Spent about 8hrs yesterday unpacking boxes and woke up today with the work ethic of an unusually apathetic slug. We're almost home though.