live from sublurbia

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And I know I drive the hub nuts when I hit sport-option and click click click six jillion incrementally differing pictures of the kids. But it’s just pixels! And hard drive space. And sometimes you can make a cute animated gif!

Be that as it may, we don’t have plastered formal looks in our photos from the days of wet-plate photography, and usually a lot of blurry kids moving to and fro. But if you take enough pictures, eventually everyone is smiling and you can fix it in post-production (digitally melding all the smiling faces into one shot).

The trick is getting enough pictures. I do it with the handwashing song, converted into the cheesey song. Continue Reading »

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Works for me Wednesday, from wearethatfamily.com.

I’ve had to make too many calls lately for the various buggy germs and more flying around our insides and outsides. More than not, I’ve phoned up for a non-emergency appointment and been told by the specialist’s office staff that the nearest opening for a new patient is between three and six weeks away.

Yeek.

Then something happened – I called up and asked for an after school appointment, as soon as possible for a particular doctor. Those are the most coveted, of course – no one misses school and you miss as little work as possible. He didn’t have anything, but as he shuffled his calendar, he noticed a cancellation for the next day. And if I took it, not only would I get the appointment over with, he’d knock a third off of the cash part of his usual fee. I took it. Continue Reading »

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Too quiet.

I cleaned out my dresser drawer the other day. Need room for socks; I’ve been wearing loafers but am now back into tennies.

I found a couple pairs of reflective snap-on bracelets and left them out, intending to wear them walking this morning. I got out later than I expected, and was about a mile from the house when I remembered how naked I was without reflectors. But it was sunny, I reasoned. I’d be fine.

I completed my walk, came home to several morning-routine mini-disasters, and hopped in the car to right everyone’s day and enjoy a light lunch with a colleague.

Once I had every lunch, tool, and computer put in the hands of the right forgetful person, I headed back north along Military Trail to my lunch date. As I approached the Glades road overpass, I saw an ambulance and fire truck pulling into the right-hand lane. Three police cars were already blocking two lanes, and a fourth one was pulling up behind.

I slowed down and moved left, and saw a car off to the side and a jogger curled up on the sidewalk, in obvious pain. I haven’t found the report online yet, but I imagine she was struck by a car. There’s no place or reason to cross six lanes of traffic there, so I assume someone just hit her by jumping the curb.

When my lunch companion passed the same spot about fifteen minutes later, two cars and some police vehicles were all that remained.

Broad frikkin daylight. On a curve that I know people take too damn fast.

Go run, but be careful out there.

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Lots of graffiti, according to a phone call I finally got. “I walked the neighborhood and just can’t find the graffiti!” Maybe because I painted it over …

The Master Ass. finally called back and we had a quick conversation about graffiti. She walked the neighborhood and didn’t find what I was talking about – just more on and near the school (I don’t walk that route) so I’ll report them shortly. City probably won’t do anything about the graffiti on the traffic control signs, but I know the electric company will on the rest of it.

But if and when I meet with the Master Ass. rep, I’ll try and hammer out a graffiti plan to take to what remains of our board (I don’t think we’ve had a meeting in over a year). Good on them for getting on the job, even if it is only eventually. I don’t pay my monthly dues for mere lawnmowing. Now if only she’d call … on the day we agreed to meet, I got one “unknown” caller on the phone but they were gone when I picked up. :(

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So the good thing about all this (yes, really) is that our bigoted graffiti scrawlers are also stupid. “Smart” enough to put their hatred readable where the kids are, “smart” enough to put it on property that it seems as if no one cares about, “smart” enough to go back and do it in the same area again …

But dumb enough to put it on my washable paint. I knew they were idiots, but that is fantastically stupid. I only wish my house overlooked where the hate scrawlers are scrawling so I could put up a camera … or flood light. :P

There’s another good thing come from this. After the original paint job was hit again, the crossing guard made sure to call me over to report it to me (he either saw me painting it over the first time or spoke to the community patrol officer who took the initial reports and directs our traffic am/pm around the school). This is progress. I HATE GRAFFITI. And not because of what it does to my precious property values – what it does to our souls. Not quite the broken window theory, but I do believe that not deleting the message and reinforcing its wrongness quickly is really really bad, especially for kids who already may soak up enough damage from a hateful world.

Gang scrawls are bad, too, don’t get me wrong, but I hope most kids wouldn’t take it to heart. This crap – directed at them or their class mates. Not acceptable. And a big ye gods to ALL of the tacit approvers of this crap, who ignored it, who didn’t report it, and who just let it stay there because it was “someone else’s” problem.

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So I followed through on my “threat” on Take Your Children To Work Day – I painted over the graffiti. I have a kit now (haven’t seen or owned one of those in … fifteen years?) in an old peanut butter jar. Hand-mixed grey washable paint, foam brush rubber banded to the side.

This time, the grownups noticed and commented. One had a conversation with her daughter about “bad words” on the sidewalk, another asked about the HOA. And thanked me. That was awfully nice, not something I was expecting (though it’s logical). I had my youngest with me and she wanted to paint, too – I told her she could paint it another time.

Hopefully there won’t be another time …

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Odd coming from someone who has doodled in the past. Or graffitied if you want to look at it that way. Compared to what I grew up with, though, I’d call it doodling. So if you ever come across an Algebra 1 text book from the state of Texas with “This Space For Rent” doodled in pencil, well, that was me.

I’m still pissed about the whole neighborhood graffiti situation. I get it, we don’t have a graffiti “task force” and our community hasn’t really needed one. But no one called the cops? Seriously? Or the HOA, seriously? Until it was on the community center and someone bothered?

That’s what upsets me as much as the graffiti. If it were gang markers, I’d be aware of it but not as insistent on getting it covered asap. That can be waved away with “oh, its stupid disrespectful people whose small minds think that’s okay”. But this was a series of hateful scrawls, targeted at the people in our neighborhood, and the next neighborhood over, who walk to our school. The next neighborhood over, who someone of my acquaintance had voiced to me had turned into a “ghetto”.

Earth to sublurbia: cars older than three years old and extended families living together are not GHETTO. A neighborhood with more people of color than white people is not GHETTO. People who take the bus are not GHETTO. People speaking languages other than English are not GHETTO.

Condoms and discarded drug vials in the gutter? Graffiti that takes up more wall space than the original paint job on the building? Put there with “permission” from the owner of the building? Drug deals in the back alley? Discarded stolen goods dumped in your back yard? Don’t talk to me about an affordable neighborhood filled with people you never grew up seeing and living with and watching on TV being GHETTO.

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Scenes from my pre-married life

“Where’d you get a name like that?”

“Oh, so you married into the name, where’s your husband from?”

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The broad anti-immigrant bill passed by the Legislature this week makes it a crime to be in the country illegally and gives local cops the job of demanding documentation if they have reasonable suspicion someone lacks it.

The need to carry proper ‘papers’ falls squarely on Arizona’s Latino population — including those born and raised in the Grand Canyon State. The bill invites racial profiling and ignores the fact that Latinos are an intrinsic part of Arizona’s history and its future. Arizona’s senators should know that.

The bill . . . is bringing thundering bad publicity that will echo for years to come. It will lead to lost economic-development opportunities, lost tourism and lost opportunities to expand our trade and commercial ties with Mexico.

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I guess I’m “lucky” because I “pass”. You won’t know I’m actually Hispanic and Indian to look at me. There’s some German and Irish in me, too – that’s the “pass” part. Because it’s not as if there ever were any white people coming over here a few hundred years ago.

Maybe I should say “usually pass” – I’ve been pulled over driving a vehicle that dared to be 10+ years old in Beemer/Lexus land. Vehicle was borrowed, plates out of date, so the pull over wasn’t specious by any means. But it was kind of weird to pass a cop car going south while I was going north, and have it change lanes, pull a u-turn and follow me until a reason to pull me over was found. And of course he had to know where I was going, why I was there, and who I was going to see. I didn’t know any better and just answered his questions. Weird to be experiencing things my parents and grandparents experienced a lot first hand that I’d only heard stories about.

Aaarrrrrgh. Maybe this will fare better than Hilibel and ruled unconstitutional.

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Some days I really am annoyed by the existence of the Home Owner’s Association. I had to go over hill and over dale trying to get my roof tiles approved (an infinitesimal shade of difference from the originals, no longer available), and even then it took fourty forevers.

But there has to be some kind of benefit, right? They got a few roofs fixed (finally) but not much else. And some of my fellow owners are, frankly, weird. We had hot rods screeching through the neighborhood one night, leaving rubber tire marks on the road. Someone wanted to sue … someone … and make that someone pay to clean it up. Never mind that it wears off eventually, it was harshing their property values (granted, this was at the height of the insane property bubble).

My management company was pretty useful when our electrical box and light poles were hit with gang-like graffiti. Neighbor called, reported it to the cops, reported it to the HOA, reported it to the electric company. Eventually the electric company totally cleaned and repainted the box, even removing the ugly old pile of cement the builder had left on there (that I’d jokingly threatened to paint green to match the box). if I’d known they’d do that much I would have graffitied and reported it myself (kidding). Continue Reading »

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So we’re done with school shopping; probably need some paper or notebooks, but we’ll find out more the day before school (though I’ll stop by the office tomorrow to see if there are any basic lists out). One thing I finally figured out! Use the shopping cart to boost the kids up for a drink at the water fountain instead of trying to hold them, a purse, the fountain trigger, and stay dry.

Dear Target,

Oh, Target, Target, Target, you make me laugh. Buying more underwear means less laundry? Noooooo. Maybe a less frequent need to launder for fear of running short of running shorts, but really? You’ll have to do more once you get there. I don’t call it our Laundry Pile of Doom for nothing. Continue Reading »

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