mamacita is nothing if not practical.

brother bear and i are hanging out with mamacita when brother bear makes reference to this image:

me: "oh, mamacita, there's all these anti-piracy ads that say things like, 'you wouldn't download a car. why would you download a movie?'"

mamacita: "actually, i would download a car if i could."

happy mother's day!

i hope you get to hug your mom, and the other important women in your life too. (i love you, mamacita!)

and don't forget, mother's day was not invented by hallmark, but instead created by julia ward howe, an abolitionist, as an anti-war observance inspired by the horrors of the civil war.

the milagro beanfield war is an excellent book.

i remember mamacita and the dad reading it and enjoying it back in the 80's, and i found it at the best bookstore ever awhile ago. it kind of reminds me of edward abbey; the profound injustices of land and resource allocation in the american west are a centerpiece of the book, but there's a magical realism flavor to the whole operation that is reminiscent of isabel allende.

this description makes me think of a good friend:

The sheriff would have liked a mind that could deal with abstract thoughts and ideas. Instead, he possessed a mind capable of tinkering with things just enough to make them impossibly confusing and himself so dissatisfied with his own intellectual inadequacies that he would never be happy.

-from john nichols' the milagro beanfield war, p. 234

seriously, no on 8.

today i got a yes on 8 mailer. and i'm still pissed about it. i can't really write logically about it right now because i'm too damn angry. but:

for anyone interested in helping stop prop 8:

1. donate: your money puts ads on the air. the mormon church has pumped millions of dollars into the yes campaign, and turned public opinion from 38% in favor/55% opposed in mid-september to a majority in favor today. donations are being matched dollar for dollar until midnight tonight (10/31.)

2. call voters: the yes on 8 campaign mobilized thousands of people (many from out of state) to call and knock on doors, spreading lies about prop 8. you can sign up online to call people, either at a phone bank or from your own home. for calling from home, they use a fancy calling system that means that your number doesn't show up on people's caller id, and you pay no long distance fees. i've been doing it, and although it makes me nervous, i am proud to be a part of this effort.

3. talk to your friends and family about prop 8: i've definitely got friends who support/considered supporting/used to support prop 8. there are still people who haven't really heard about prop 8, since there's so much noise about this election. others have only heard from the yes on prop 8 people, and may be convinced that without prop 8, all elementary school classes will be replaced with mandatory, non-age appropriate sex ed. (for the record, parents have always, and will always have opt-out rights in the state of california...remember those permission slips you had to return before awkward sixth grade sex ed time? still the law.)

i talked to both of my parents about it. my mom donated, and my dad's thinking about it.

for more information: http://www.noonprop8.com

drivers and cyclists, please be careful.

last weekend mamacita called me when i was getting ready to go to the farmers' market. i had overslept, so i was in a hurry, but when she told me she was calling from the emergency room, i had all the time in the world to find out what had happened. mamacita and her partner had been riding bicycles when a car overtook them and turned right, directly in front of her partner (who had absolutely no time to react, and who slammed into the car, flipped in the air, and landed flat on his back in the road.) he's going to be okay, but he spent the entire day in the emergency room, busted his helmet, and is taking serious pain killers right now.

a couple of weeks ago a dear friend was hit by a police officer. his bike was totaled, but he's going to be okay.

today a bicycle messenger in san francisco was hit by a truck. he was pronounced dead at the scene.

if you ever ride or drive, please be careful.

drivers, look for cyclists. you won't see what you aren't looking for. cyclists belong on the road too. use your turn signals. make eye contact. give cyclists some space. don't honk. it's really startling (cyclists don't have windshields to absorb the noise.) above all, remember that every cyclist is someone's baby. imagine that the cyclists you see are your kids. do you always need to pass them, or could you relax and give them some more room?

cyclists, wear your helmets. every single time. they don't always save your life every single time, but neither do seatbelts or airbags, and they're still worth using, every single time. look for drivers. run a brake on your fixed gear. you don't have to use it (i rarely use mine), but you should have it. ride predictably. use lights when you ride at night, a red blinking one on the back, and a white one on the front (blinking or not.)

if you usually drive, ride a bike once and awhile. pay attention to how the cars make you feel and how drivers interact with you. remember these feelings when you return to your car. should you be doing something different?

if you usually bike, pay attention to cyclists when you're in a car or on a bus. are they being safe? considerate? do you ride like they do? should you?

i want to stop writing about bike accidents. like other kinds of accidents, they'll keep happening sometimes, but especially as we continue running out of oil and baking our planet, we all need to work to make cycling as safe as possible. cycling is an environmentally and economically sound mode of transportation, great exercise, and in the top five most enjoyable physical activities on earth. but it needs to be safe.

we're all just fragile bodies. the strongest bones and tendons and muscles in the world are no match for bumpers and asphalt and curbs. please, be careful. please.

happy mothers' day!

to the mothers on the birth certificates (hi, mamacita and the nephews' mama!)
and the mothers who step in when somebody else's kid needs some mothering
and to all the folks, of any gender, at any time who love and nurture and cherish and challenge and encourage and appreciate and feed and hold and cuddle and play with and sing to and tuck in anyone's kids, anywhere:

thank you.

i hope you get a chance to say thank you to someone who has been like this for you today.

and also that you remember that science promises that one caring adult can make all the difference to a kid who's got all kinds of other tough stuff going on. you can be that person.

can we all just agree that time with brother bear is pretty much beyond compare?

last weekend it was brother bear, sarah, and mamacita time. this weekend it's brother bear, sarah, and the dad time. in between, however, was herman@ time. so wonderful. i love you, dude.

and this is what happens when you antagonize me too much.

to the left is my countdown calendar. i made it for the job that i hate. i made it over the weekend of january 25-27, which was kind of a bummer time in general. mamacita was visiting, which was great, but things with the heart weren't so good, and we had planned to go away for the weekend and that was a spectacular failure, and i was feeling pretty crummy in general, and one of the reasons for that was the job i hate. so i decided that, although i was afraid of being a quitter and afraid of admitting i didn't want to do something so much that i felt like i couldn't, i had to pick a concrete date to quit.

i thought about it carefully, and then decided that i would stay until the end of may. in my mind, my countdown calendar would fit on one 4x6 index card (i love index cards, by the way. love them.) so i got my favorite sharpie and started to write down dates. and then it took two index cards. and then i cried because the end of may seemed so far away and the prospect of staying that long seemed so terrible.

later on, i realized that i could not possibly stay until the end of may. so i decided on the end of april, got out the scissors, sliced off may, and started to feel better. but then things kept getting worse and worse at work, so i lost almost all of april. and then, in a meeting between me and all three of my bosses, where everyone was upset with me for things i could not possibly prevent or control, one of my bosses angrily demanded to know if i had a phone call "in writing." yes. a phone call. in writing. she wanted to know if i had a phone call in writing. it's funny now, but at the time i just felt so defeated. the next work day was way worse, and mamacita and i had a long conversation, and then i cut off all of april, circled march 3, and gave my two weeks' notice. march 14 is the day, after which i will be poorer and happier.

can we all just agree that doing taxes is the suck?

i've been trying for a couple hours now, and i have to have it done by monday. first i couldn't find a form that i needed, so i spent a lot of time trying to figure out some other way to get that information, then i found the form, but then i realized i couldn't use the 1040ez, so i printed the 1040a, and then as soon as that was done printing, i realized i couldn't use that either, so i printed the 1040, and at that point my printer ran out of ink. i have 25% of a 1040, but i don't think that will be enough. so then i decided that i should stop being such a grumpy retro tax-filer-on-paper and check out the free e-file option, but i can't find one that is actually secure (or at least one that doesn't have an unsettling red slash through the padlock icon.)

and i still don't have all my 1099s, and i just talked to someone who was saying that i might want to consider itemizing work-related deductions for my 1099s since that's cooler than paying 30%, which definitely sounds like something i should consider, but dang dude argh. i really understand why people pay tax preparers. also, thanks, the federal government, for making this so complicated.

update: still cranky! i found an online tax service that didn't sketch me out too much and that had a secure connection, and used that until...it turned out that i really do need those 1099s to be able to finish it.

so then i ended up going to radio shack where i had to fend off the most aggressive saleperson i've seen in person recently...seriously, i don't want to buy the color cartridge too. yes, i know which one it needs. no, i don't want it. no. really. i don't. yes, i am running out of color ink too. no, i'm not buying the color cartridge today. (or anything else from here, ever.)

i printed the 1040 and then spent a few hours trying to figure out how to fill it out. i think i did it wrong. i hope i did it wrong, because if i did it right, i paid a lot of money and still owe a lot more.

but the point of doing it now was so that i could submit my fafsa in time. and fafsas can be corrected, so i put in my estimate and found another reason to hope that i'd miscalculated my taxes when i learned that i'm not eligible for the pell grant, which i had been hoping for.

but now i'm done with that part of things, anyway, and i'll get to the re-done taxes soon. hopefully with mamacita on my side.

mamacita=hilarious.

she's been really into cycling lately, and the other day she told me, "thirty miles is a walk in the park! except i've decided i have a twenty-seven mile butt."

also, while i'm bossing you around on the internerd,

donkey punch. t4toby, who you might remember from such fine sites as sadly, no! and wherever else he likes to comment, writes this. you will like it, and he will also occasionally tell you good secrets like "go read exploding unicorn."

also, t4 brings you debra cagan. (WTF???)

now it is time to try to wake up mamacita and get crafty. enjoy your internets.

the material out of which many of my recent plans appear to be constructed? fail.

last night the mamacita and i left for a weekend retreat that was going to be awesome. good place, good food, fantastic friends, etc. we were going to make the (very familiar, pretty, fairly pleasant) 72.4 mile, 1 hour and 35 minute drive together, and it was going to be excellent.

but it was apparently BIBLICALLY-PROPORTIONED RAINING TIME. after four hours, when yet another road was flooded out (we had been forced off the freeway long before that, because of flooding), we realized we needed to call it a night. so we went back into a town to find a motel. the first one was full. the second one was...inaccessible, because a creek had overflowed. i was on the phone with a guy at the motel, trying to make a reservation so that we could get one of the two remaining rooms, and i told him, "oh, [name of street] is flooded. is there another way we can get there?" he immediately replied, "i don't know."

just when we were scoping the best place in the best parking lot to sleep (funny how quickly our "civilized" lives break down in the face of nature, yes?), we spotted an expensive fancy chain hotel. mamacita, who has more money than me (not a particularly difficult attribute to attain) decided we were going to go for it.

so we had pretty good nights' sleep there. i had two dreams: one funny and food-related, and one crummy and make-me-sad-ful. the beds were really comfortable, though. and the soap smelled excellent.

can we all just agree that being sick sucks?

i have that weird kind of sore throat where it kind of feels like i'm drowning most of the time. i guess it's postnasal drip? but i don't have any sort of prenasal drip. is that even possible? (paging dr. beat! i mean, dr. joe!) also i kind of feel like i'm going to barf, but not because of a sad tummy situation; it's because i feel like my throat is gagging me.

and i think i'm a little feverish. so now i'm conflicted: do i go to work tomorrow? i have so much to do that being gone will be kind of awful, but i feel gross, but maybe i'll feel better tomorrow, but maybe i really do need to take it easy.

i also feel ambivalent about most forms of food. microwaveable bean and cheese burritos are still making the cut, but not much else. bleh.

i talked to the mamacita today and she said i should stay home tomorrow.

can we all just agree that cornbread stuffing is totally delicious?

i have learned its secret. its secret is sage.

i think there will be a lot more cornbread stuffing in my life from now on.

(thanks for the recipe, mamacita!)

can we all just agree that it is important to have a good bookstore?

there is one very close to my house. i went there shortly after they opened, because i was very happy about the prospect of an independent used book store a block away from my house. and it is awesome. i love going there, and i rarely leave empty-handed. and even when i was super underemployed, that wasn't a problem, because the books are really cheap (like usually less than $3 cheap).

i got a prayer for owen meany there, and i'm rereading it (one of my favorite high school teachers assigned it to me when i was a junior, and i didn't think that i would like it, but he knew me pretty well and it turned out that i loved it. a prayer for owen meany is absolutely one of my favorite books, and now i've got my very own copy. hooray!

today mamacita and i picked up a funny pie cookbook from 1965 (sample sentence: "most women are fascinated by pies."), a novel about the french resistance, the poisonwood bible, and even cowgirls get the blues. for $4. total.

and the weather was beautiful. and i got new tire levers. and i made a pear crisp and split pea soup. and life is good.

can we all just agree that flat tires are no fun?

this morning, mamacita and i were all set to ride bicycles to church...but then it turned out that i had a flat tire. and i mean a totally and completely flat tire. like no air whatsoever. and i don't understand, because i filled my tires on thursday night, and because they're really tough tires (that i put on myself.)

and we didn't have time to fix it (and it was the back tire, which always seems more complicated anyway) and we had to drive and that was lame.

can we all just agree that going to the state fair will be awesome?

but that going to the state fair with b.f.h. and audra will be even awesomer?

oh man, i can hardly wait! there will be sheep and various assorted highlights (or lowlights, as the case may be) of sheep anatomy, and lambs, and cows, and we get to have dinner with mamacita...yes!

(i hope that there are no sheep/cassette tape disasters.)

can we all just agree that family kayaking time is pretty excellent?

i'm kind of sore today and i was really tired last night, but it was fun! and the chips...so delicious.

can we all just agree that i should really try to make sure i bring my camera with me places?

tonight mamacita and i went for a walk along the river, and the moon was HUGE. HUGE! and then later on, the sunset was incredible (i know this is because of air pollution.) there was a complete rainbow effect—i haven't seen green in a sunset in maybe ever. and i wished that i had my camera. but i didn't, so she and i will just have to remember it, and you'll have to use your imagination.

can we all just agree that new shoes are fun?

so i'm in a wedding, and i had to buy fancy black dressup shoes with heels for the occasion. mamacita and i shopped and shopped today, and we found some totally fantastic ones. they're black with tiny silver accents and wee little pinholes, and i am really looking forward to wearing them. (i rarely feel this way about fancy shoes that were not selected for comfort.) maybe if you're lucky there will be pictures later.