Ride the bus.

If the bus were cool, more people would ride it.
If the bus were cool, car drivers wouldn’t be frightened
of the “dangers” of sharing their motorized transit
with folks they don’t know – delinquents and vandals.

If the bus were cool, less gas would be wasted
If the bus were cool, admit it, YOU’d take it
You could take it to work or take it to practice
You might even like it, if you tried it.

Sadly, too many see the bus as a joke
Say these serious people and snobberly folk:
“The bus is for others, they’re not for my kind!”
“I am too busy, I am far too refined!”

But the bus, you see, is actually awesome
When people move together, the city soon blossoms
with texture and energy of those with whom you share
your ride as you ride the bus from here to there

Sharing your seat is not always grand
and sometimes, it is true, you may have to stand
Sometimes, though, you can offer a hand
And help someone in need, a mother or elderly man,

And there are times when your ride on the bus has a moment of fright:
someone clipping his nails, or a theft or a fight
and the bus – damned bus!  – doesn’t  always show up on time.
But give yourself cushion, and all will be fine

The bus saves gas, it saves you from searching for parking
It gives you a reason to do a little more walking
You can read a book, or the paper, or look at the sights
Buses are safe, economical, they run day and night

So the bus, you see, is not for the poor and “those fools”
The bus – like the train or the subway – is a wonderful tool
To take you shopping, sightseeing, to work or to school

The bus, it is true, is truly quite cool.

——-

This poem was inspired by Amanda’s post lamenting the total lack of public discourse on the many benefits of public transportation, in particular as  great means to get around when you are out drinking.

[...] buses aren’t being used as much as they should be, but a large part of the reason why is the mental block of growing up in a car culture.  Making it easy on people is only half the battle.  The other half if getting people to realize how easy it is, which sometimes feels like an insurmountable problem.

She posits that part of the problem is our cultural taboo on discussing potential good decision that can be made while engaging in ‘bad’ behavior. All of our drinking and driving discourse simply discourages drinking. But, why not have a parallel campaign that promotes public transportation as a viable alternative? After all, the bus is cool.

spinners

I spent a lot of time in the gym in 2008. I’d really begun my gym routine back in May 2007, but fell off pretty hard in the 07-08 winter. I think it was March last year before I got my groove back, and lo and behold, I actually stuck to my guns! I was seriously committed, and really saw huge, positive changes in my life: my physique, energy levels, and emotional well being all took a turn for the better.

The holidays, of course, are a tough time to keep gym habits up. A bit of travel and a couple of minor colds, conspired to sabotage most of December. But fret not, fans! I’m already back on the wagon, as focused and determined as ever.

One thing on the agenda this year is to keep some variety in my gym mix. Not that I’ve been in a rut or anything, but I do sometimes feel bored, and if and when I do, those sessions tend to be lackluster. I don’t want any lackluster sessions!

Today, by mere chance, I got curious and poked my head into the spin room at my gym. Turns out, a spin class was about to start, and there were two open bikes left (according to the sign up sheet). So I said “what the heck!” and gave it a shot. Now, mind you, I haven’t even tried a spin class for probably over three years. But there I went.

It was fun. It was a good cardio and leg workout, and it was not too hard. I highly recommend trying a spin class if you haven’t done so lately. Good stuff.

For months years I have encouraged my mother to work out. In the last few years we’ve watched her mother gradually lose some of her mobility and seeing G-ma become more and more aged, I’ve begun to worry about my own mother’s health fading as she enters “seniority”. So I would nag her, “Ya know, Mom, you really should join a gym, go work out, lift weights…”. Twas totally effective. Nawt!

In August, my mom’s work situation changed and I told her “Hey, let’s start working out.” The bulk of the kudos goes to her cos when the ball was in her court, she totally charged ahead. We made plans and <gulp> actually headed to the gym.

Now I don’t know about you, but I was actually nervous about going to the gym (even though I’d been paying my membership fees for well over a year, all I’d ever done was go to pre-natal yoga). It has been many years since I’ve been in a gym working out and I felt intimidated by the machines and defeated by the “What will I do?”edness. Enter my awesome bro and my determined mother. Rick gave us a workout plan and Mom became the motivator. Since August we’ve worked out 2-3 times per week and progressed from the “Express” circuit workout to the Hammer machines and free weights. W00t!

The gym is a weird place. Our gym in particular is very family oriented and the people seem very suburban. Wade stands out (o yes, did I mention he goes to the gym too?) because he is one of the few men with a  beard. We’d both independently noticed this aspect of the gym-people tribe. It’s funny because there seems to be a strict aesthetic at this particular gym. While there, I listen to my wee ipod, which is filled with slamming underground hip-hop and energetic house music and the contrast between the visual (bland middle class peops) and aural (Immortal Technique, Invincible, The Presets) is often hilarious. I didn’t really appreciate my music player before, but now, WOW! There are some songs that get me so motivated and energized. It is so fun! I didn’t know before.

Another aspect of this experience is that we are trying to embrace it as something we’ll do for the rest of our lives rather than the “I’m gonna lose 20 pounds then everything will be perfect”-mentality. Toward that end I’m not really thinking about weight loss, but more of a pursuit of strength, developing musculature and ability. Tis paying off. My goal is that I’ll still be working out in a year – I may lose some weight – but mostly I want to be stronger, more fit and committed to developing my body for the rest of my life.

This past week we went hiking in the desert and I scrambled up some dry falls (& with a 18# baby strapped to my back!) that I would not have been able to do without help before. They were challenging but I made it up. Twas exhilirating to know that our work is paying off in concrete results that allow us more ability and strength. I definitely feel more balance and strength and resilience and that motivates me. Overall, I am so very glad that I took the leap and that I have the good fortune to have all the resources I need to make it a go. Yay!

Whum, straight into the 8th day frizzle-frazzle. Ima tired. So durn tired, but I will write. What should I write about? Wade sez I should write about the ‘rhythm of the universe’. Herm. Instead I think I will write about why we spend so much time and effort to ensure that we eat an organic diet and why we try and support fair trade whenever available.

Our grocery bills are large. We spend a significant portion of our income to ensure that we eat organically.  We feel better and enjoy our food more when the food in our pantry and refrigerator (our building blocks) is organic. Yes, we pay a premium, but we also strive to eat in season and locally as a way of keeping costs reasonable. We also try to avoid processed food to keep our costs down. Making granola has almost completely eliminated our “need” for cereals. Making bread has become joy and our lovely assortment of soups keeps us going.

Over the years we have moved towards a more organic diet. In the last ten years we have switched from an almost completely conventional diet to a mostly organic diet. The changes were small. First it was fruit then vegetables then meats. At first we shopped at the Henry’s and Trader Joe’s around the corner from our duplex in PB. When we could, we’d buy the organic version. Then Whole Foods opened up and we moved into the area. One of us would stop by on way home from work to grab the necessities and we’d always choose organic. Over the course of years we noticed that ‘ordinary’ food, which once tasted good, no longer had the same oomph. In addition, we’d started feeling better. When someone had bad news for us, we felt elastic like ‘well, that’s not too good, but I’m sure I’ll figure my way outta this’.  Of course, some of this could be attributed to maturity, but our intuition was also telling us that since we were eating higher quality food, the fundamentals of our life were more wholesome and healthy and less saturated with poisons like pesticides.

Since then we’ve become more and more aware about the need to eat locally and sustainably as well as organically.  There is always more to know. We’ve become suporters of our local farmer’s market and have come to appreciate the remarkable flavor of a locally grown, in-season peach. O. M. G! Never again will I be able to eat an out-of-season peach. Tis like comparing the sun and the moon! For us, we have found that the effort and money to ensure the ellimination of chemicals from our food stream has had a benefit beyond dollars and cents and that reason we are committed to keeping it so.

Urban Seed & Flower
2856 Adams Avenue, San Diego, CA 92116
Phone:619-584-7768
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, noon to 5

Have you heard of it? If you haven’t, go ahead and take a look at it, I’ll be waiting right here for you. Did you look at it? Did you think ‘what the hell does this do?’ or ‘why would people waste their precious time on this?’. Welcome to the club. Actually, no, I’m not in that club. I’m in the club that has glommed onto the service like a barnacle on a whale. More than year ago I read about twitter on a microsite run by the venerable Andre Torrez. (I don’t know him, but I’ve found his site to be a nice source of dependable good links. So good that it lives on my bloglines reader.) I didn’t really get it, but I signed up for the service. Days or weeks later, I goaded my brother and fellow organic mutant into signing up and if you go back far enough in the timeline you’ll see we fooled around with it intermittently, but it didn’t really ‘stick’ at first.

Weeks or months later one or another of Rick’s compadres at the bank signed up and started tweeting (yup, that’s what we call it, but the official terminology is ‘twittering’. (I say Blech on that term)). Suddenly, there was more to read and more connection and more direct messaging and more friending and following…o, wait lost myself for a moment, I just remembered you might be wondering ‘what the heck?’. Suffice it to say that until you sign up for the service, there’s not a lot to get. To someone without an account the twitter homepage looks pretty stale. If you use the search bar and look up people you know or people whose blogs you read, you find individual feeds. This is one aspect of twitter. Right now I’ll encourage you to sign up for an account, add me as a friend, and start searching for people you know IRL or thru their words and/or pictures on the web. Just trust me on this, okay? It won’t take very much time and there’s no need to wait for an invite. Did you? Okay, now when you return to the twitter homepage, it looks different, right? Congratulations! You’ve entered the twitterverse!

The magic thing about twitter is the ability to check in with your tweeps on a daily (or more often) basis. There are a few people I’d recommend following if you have a certain sense of humor i.e. Merlin Mann, Joshua Green Allen, Jenny Holzer and there are more, but the great thing is that you can customize your feed to reflect your interests. The best way to do this is to use the utilities like Summize or Tweetscan to search for key words that reflect your interest or even your location. I follow a few fellow twitterers who have nothing more in common with me than they happen to live in the same region. Sometimes they recommend something local that plants a seed that doesn’t bear fruit until many moons later. Feel free to follow and unfollow as need be. Some people are very polite and forward about this. I am more stealthy as that is my style, so feel free to try whatever works for you.

There are more than a few utilities to round out the twitter experience. Try them out as you are wont. I am used to a pretty bare bones experience. Until a few weeks ago, I tweeted from either my browser (my twitter.com homepage) or occasionally from my phone. Now that I have added Twitterfox to my Firefox, twitter lives in my browser. My tweets have seen an uptick and my use of the site is far more enjoyable as I don’t have to be on twitter to read people’s tweets. Twitter has suffered some instability from its raging popularity so there are a few pages to deal with twitter outages. You also need to use twitter a fair amount to notice the problems. Fortunately, those outages have been fewer and farther between.

Once you’ve used twitter for a few months, you may want to read further. I think that twitter will be fun for those who often think in one liners or those who have blogged in the past, but found it too cumbersome. I myself enjoy the bits of humor and insight that flit past my sight on the hours that I might be logged into the matrix. At this point twitter doesn’t have an income stream, so there are no ads or stupid flash things jumping at you trying to get your attention. For being ‘web 2.0′ company, things are very basic.

Thanks to @claynewton and @nothatwasyou who definitely make twitter more fun with their stream of wit and links and observations. I hope that you’ve found this informative and that we’ll see your tweets real soon.

Earlier this spring I designed a type of raised bed that would enable Lucas to help me in the garden. Wade pulled out his tools and crafted an exquisite interpretation of my plans. Then the worst part of my morning sickness hit and the project lay fallow for many weeks. Curious neighbors stopped by and inquired as to our plans for this big, giant redwood box resting on the flagstones. Once I started feeling better, I collected all the ingredients needed for the mix to build the soil for the planter. A few weekends ago, we put the ingredients in and dumped the contents of the composter into the mix. Months of kitchen scraps, ash from the fireplace, sawdust from various projects, grass clippings, paper towels, and haircuts had transformed into a nice, loamy dirt-like substance. There were a few clumps of brittle egg shells that hadn’t broken down all the way and a few paper mache-like rocks, but in the last few weeks most of these artifacts have disintegrated, becoming indistinguishable from the other dirt components. Now onto the seed planting and sprouting. (Note: I am sure we are planting late/early for a winter garden, but I am just trying to get something going here and will hopefully learn a lot from trial and error.)

For the last few weeks, I have been researching plants and planning the garden. This week I finalised the plan in selecting the plants we’ll (try to) grow and experienced an inexplicable joy at seeing all my months of plans get to this stage, but a few small things were needed before we started sowing seeds. The bottom of our 24 inch raised bed is covered with some landscaping fabric to keep unwanted growth from creeping into the vegetable garden. There is a store ’round these parts called ‘City Farmers‘ where you can obtain a dazzling array of necessities for all types of yardening. Dis ain’t your daddy’s Home Depot. Yesterday Mom and I took a field trip to afore mentioned City Farmers Nursery to obtain copper tape and red wiggler worms. The copper tape is for the outside of the raised bed. It is an effective means of keeping slugs and snails out of the vegetable patch. The worms are for the inside of the bed to keep the dirt alive and aerated. Since I didn’t want the one pound bag of worms, we had to go back to the vermiculture bed and dig for the worms ourselves. O, dewd! A year ago I had no idea about all this kind of stuff. I grabbed a little rake and got to it. In about 20 minutes or so we harvested about 75-90 worms, but we also found a bunch of big, fat, happy grubs, which a nursery employee had asked us to put aside if we liked to feed to the chickens later. Later, the owner of the nursery let us feed the grubs to chickens and turkeys and oh my dosh, now I know where the slang ‘grubbed‘ comes from cos those fowl grubbed hard on those grubs.

Well, the bed is ready and we are going to be sowing some seeds later this week in the hopes of growing some organic, local, seasonal veggies like collard greens, chard, amaranth, carrots, eggplant, and brussel sprouts. We’ll see where this fork of the path takes us.

Eventually we did buy a telly and used it to watch movies. When Netflix revolutionized the way one could rent movies, we set up a queue and our lives set into an easy pattern: watch two, maybe three movies week; read the local rag, which we loathe 5-7 days a week to keep up on local issues; plug into the hive on a daily basis and consume our media via teh intarweb. We noticed that without daily injections of the hysterical evening news and other serial media that the objects of our desires and wants shifted. Instead of being driven by outside forces, a new voice emerged from inside. Our urges to conspicuously consume waned, our desire for status objects decreased, a need to be like others dwindled. (Of course, we still shop, seek new objects, & find inspiration in others. It’s just more self-directed rather than driven by media.) On the edge is an awareness of how commercial media i.e. media generated by corporations, for corporations, shapes our appetite.

However, not all is peaches and cream. Although I rarely visit corporate websites as the main course of my internet meal, I still spend quite a bit of time plugged in. I have had to make a conscious choice to limit the amount of time I spend with my square-headed girlfriend. A screen is still a screen even if you are pushing different buttons. Although I gain immense amounts of inspiration from the websites I read, I am concerned by how often my intentional reading becomes mindless perusing. I find that I need to leave space in my day for creativity or else my weeks go by and I fell more and more drained until I have to take action to infuse my life with positive energy and reaffirm my goals and bring *my life* back into focus. There is a middle path where we can enjoy the works of others (plays, museums, television shows, movies, music, blogs, concerts, books, zines, &tc) and still be actively and creatively living our own personal lives. That balance is crucial.

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE …
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own
even if she never wants to or needs to…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ….
something perfect to wear
if the employer or date of her dreams
wants to see her in an hour…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE …
a youth she’s content to leave behind….

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ….
a past juicy enough
that she’s looking forward to retelling it in her old age….

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE …..
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill,
and a black lace bra…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ….
one friend who always makes her laugh…
and one who lets her cry…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ….
a good piece of furniture
not previously owned by anyone else in her family…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ….
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems,
and a recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored…

A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ….
a feeling of control over her destiny…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
how to fall in love without losing herself..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…

HOW TO QUIT A JOB,

BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,

AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
when to try harder…
and WHEN TO WALK AWAY…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
that she can’t change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips,
or the nature of her parents..

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
that her childhood may not have been perfect…
but it’s over…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
what she would and wouldn’t do for love or more…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
how to live alone…
even if she doesn’t like it…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
whom she can trust, whom she can’t,
and why she shouldn’t take it personally…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
where to go…
be it to her best friend’s kitchen table…
or a charming inn in the woods…
when her soul needs soothing…

EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW…
what she can and can’t accomplish in a day…
a month…
and a year…

I preached to my hairdresser the sermon of Curly Girl. She admitted that my hair looked great, but cautioned me to rethink my extreme stance. A few months later I gave in and added shampoo back into the regimen, but used far smaller quantities than in years passed (omiodosh – in high school I would use bottles per month…sorry, mom and dad). A bottle would last months instead of weeks and my hair looked great. La!

When Lucas was born I read with horror about Sodium Laurel Sulfate, a common ingredient in shampoo. It is basically is used in (animal?) research as an irritant. Of course, it is used in much greater quantities and concentrations as an irritant than as an ingredient in shampoo, but still, I would think, ‘isn’t there anything better?’ And once we saw the curls on that kids head, we opted to use all organic and gentle products on his little collection of hairs. Anyhoo, due to this I am always on the look out for alternatives to the shampoos.

During our bathroom upgrade, we would bathe at Mom’s and Dad’s house while our bathing facilities were not in working order. At CasaReY, Dad being the sensible resident that he is, they have my eternal enemy, the low-flow shower head. I have abundant hair. It is also very long and I would have to rinse my hair for tens of minutes in order for all the hair care residue to rinse out. Sometimes if I was in hurry or rushed or impatient, I would neglect to rinse for the necessary minutes and my hair took on the strange quality of being overly conditioned. My hair took hours, sometimes all day to dry out.

One day I stumbled over this and thought, ‘Yo, I should try this’. I, the intrepid blog sailor, ever the trusting soul, tried this strange recipe that day in the shower and wow! was my hair shiny and clean and manageable. Woot, sez me. The only thing is that the vinegar smell was, um, a little strong. The next morning I washed my face, inadvertently wetting the hair framing my face and a faint whiff of vinegar reminded me of my experiment. I used the recipe a few more times and each time my hair felt a little less clean and a little less manageable. Wade complained of the vinegar aroma that filled the house at every wash and surrounded me like a cloud until my hair dried. Vinegar is an acceptable scent when you are the salad bar at Souplantation (what a dumb name!), but not when you are trying to snuggle with your partner.

In short, I gave up. The vinegar was the white elephant gift that kept on giving. Today I went back and re-read the instructions after MaGreen over at Green Parenting posted a review of her experience with the recipe. I wondered how one could use ‘a citrus rinse’ in place of the vinegar rinse. Well, see here’s the problem, I mis-read the instructions. Instead of using 1 tablespoon of vinegar in 1 cup of water for the rinse, I was using 1 cup of vinegar as my rinse.

Today when I asked Wade about it after my shower. He said, ‘What vinegar?’

–
as far as the alterna- pre-fix, I’m not really alterna-anything. it just sounds good. nor should you take it as an endorsement of neal pollack, the original alternadad