Friday Favorites

So far, I've made three of the Halloween recipes posted by Sundry on Milk and Cookies and mm-mm, are they good (note: I did *not* make the hand), although I'll come right out and say that so far none of them quite delivered on my expectations. I.e., they didn't taste quite as good as they looked in the pictures. I wasn't organized enough to get a photo of my creations before I left the house, but I will try to post one later, because also? my creations don't look as good as they looked in the pictures on Milk and Cookies.

Anyhow, what I wanted to post today is my favorite things about cooking:

1. I can explore without leaving my kitchen.
2. It's crafty, yet doesn't lead to crap accumulation, unlike actual craftiness.
3. It offers immediate gratification (or, occasionally, immediate feedback on The Wrongitude).
4. It allows me to incorporate my love of lists and projects with my love of eating.
5. It involves FOOD. Mmmmm.

Better Late Than Never

A fairy and the hideous ghoul she loves. Not, perhaps, as cute as a bat and a ballerina would have been, but still cute. Also, easy.

You know what was cute, though? The kids we trick-or-treated with. Si's 3rd-grade friend from up the street went as a gangster, complete with machine gun and cigar, and his little sister was his little gangster moll (so cute you could DIE, with a little flapper hairpiece, shiny black shoes, and a pink feather boa as big as she was). The two of them were unbearably cute and the whole evening was enjoyable--if a leetle awkward. We went with Si's friend, as I mentioned, and his dad, who was nice enough but I'd only just met him, which made it that much more awkward when other parents assumed we were together and that the adorable gangster moll was mine.

Picture Yourself in a Mercury Now

I hate cars. HATE them. Hatey-hate-hate. I hate their smell, their look, their gas needs, their space needs, the way they dominate the whole world. I correspondingly hate roads, highways, parking lots, garages, car dealerships, "car toy" stores--if it was built for a car, I hate it (except bridges. I still have a toddler's love of things that go over water). I didn't get my driver's license until I turned 17, which in the town I grew up in was like saying I didn't learn how to drive until I was thirty. I didn't own a vehicle until I was 22, and then it was a gift for helping a graduate student watch sparrows (a surprisingly difficult job). I didn't BUY a vehicle until well after I was married (although I'm enhancing my carless status here by omitting the detail that I used Hubs's truck as a primary vehicle for several years). We didn't join the ranks of most American couples and buy a second car until Silas was three and Helen was well on her way--and even then we only bought it because the truck's extended cab could hold one car seat but not two.

So. That was then. Now our family has four people, two cars (a Toyota pickup and a Jetta), two jobs, two schools, and four sets of mutually incompatible activities. In other words, we drive. A lot. On a typical day I drive almost forty miles. ICK. Every so often I make a big flurried show of trying to get us to drive less, and whenever I can walk or bike to an activity, I do, and the weeping of the small ones be damned (my children regard being forced to use their legs as something akin to child abuse, and I only wish I were kidding). However, most of the time, not-driving is not an option, and in fact to even contemplate either biking or taking public transportation would be a huge indulgence on my part, one that would inconvenience pretty much everyone else in the family.

For example: I could bike to work. I figure it would take me about an hour and a half, so I'd have to leave the house six thirty in order to get to work by eight. This would mean that Hubs would have to do all of the kid prep, plus drive Helen to school. It would be, frankly, selfish of me to do this more than once or twice a month. Alternately, I could make EVERYONE get up at five thirty, and make my kids both ride their own bikes AND get dropped off at school an hour to an hour and a half early. And as much as I believe in this, as much as I believe in teaching my kids the importance of not relying solely on carbon-powered conveyances, the bike-centered lifestyle does start to sound a little like child abuse. Or at least like something Balloon Boy's dad might do. You know?

Yes, we could be the weird and slightly overauthoritarian family who makes the kids rise at five, eat a sugar-free breakfast and hop on their bikes, come rain, sleet, snow, or ice. And to tell you the truth, we HAVE been that family. Last year at this time I was still "encouraging" Hubs to bike Si to school on the way to the train station. Si was often the only one whose bike was parked in the school bike rack--a distinction he did not really appreciate. As recently as this summer (before I got the job) I was still biking Helen to school. But as they get older, and social pressures start to crystallize, I get hesitant about forcing them to be so obviously Different.

Getting to work using current public transportation options is not much better. So I'm stuck: on the one hand, this is something I really, really think is important. On the other hand, I don't even know how to make it work in my own life--so I REALLY can't expect anyone else to make it work. And it's more than just an abstract problem--these sorts of dilemmas are at the HEART of why we don't have better public transportation and a more bike-accustomed world.

I mean, it sucks. And it's not all about improving public transportation options--although shuttles passing every major intersection north & south every ten minutes would be helpful (RTD take note). It's about changing our attitude. Dropping the kids off by bike would be a hella easier if OTHER KIDS were doing it, too. The inevitable delays and waits built into a day based in public transportation are also easier when everyone's feeling the wait. Starting the day at nine and leaving by four--a schedule that makes slow transportation options a lot more feasible--only works if it's part of the office culture (and OH BOY is it not).

Friday Favorites

A break from my transportation kick to bring you my five favorite things about snow days:

1. Sleeping in.
2. That awesome, "and now we take a break from our regularly scheduled programming" feeling. Regular life is having some technical difficulties...so let's all sit around in our PJs and play Memory.
3. I'm often inspired to take up outlandish and totally uncharacteristic house projects. Like: I made a sock doll yesterday. People! A sock doll!
4. Hot chocolate and cookies are obviously medical necessities.
5. The snow.

The Wheels on the Bus

I don't know anyone over the age of five who loves buses. If they do, they keep their passions to themselves, which is just as well, since buses are big, ugly, unglamorous, move in a cloud of diesel exhaust, and apparently are one of the top causes of death in the United States (as evidenced by the phrase, "I could get run over by a bus tomorrow and then where would you be" and variations thereof). They're also the public transportation option I've used most often in my life.

Every weekend during the winter of 1994-1995 I took an RTD bus from Boulder to Denver (free with my student ID), walked to the urine-y and exhaust-y Greyhound Bus Station on the ungentrified part of downtown, and then took a bus to Glenwood Springs. I made this trip in snow and ice and riotous game crowds and was delayed only a handful of times. I had my share of strange seat mates (the well-dressed giggling man in his forties who claimed to have a sports car and tried to leave me with his phone number; the earnest and lugubrious former truck driver who wanted to impress upon me the wisdom of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, which he claimed could have saved his marriage, if only he'd read it in time; the man who carried on an entire, merry, give-and-take conversation with himself during the course of the four-hour ride)--but mostly it wasn't too crowded, and I rode alone and worked on my physics homework. Once we were in an accident ("Bus driver! Somebody hit us!"); once we had to wait for an hour on a pass after a semi jackknifed and closed both lanes. Mostly, though, it was a sturdy, stodgy, reliable way to get to Glenwood, and most of my fellow passengers were regular folks who didn't want to risk driving the mountain passes in the winter.

So, when I took this job, one of the first things I did was look at possible bus schedules (especially, uh, for days like today. Holy TOLEDO is it snowing out there.) The Denver RTD site has a handy "route finder" function, where you can plug in your starting and destination intersections and get instructions on which buses to take and how long it should take to get from A to B. Being me, I wasn't satisfied to just plunk in my address and my work address, but had to try to game the system a bit and put in large, obvious intersections that I knew were serviced by bus. Even so, the route they suggested took ONE HOUR AND FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. I mean, WHAT? In what universe would a normal person opt to take an hour and forty-five minutes to go 13 miles? I could BIKE it in less time. I mean, not today, obviously. But STILL. That's RETARDED. No wonder ninety percent of the people who use the buses are clearly obligated to use them due to their unfitness to drive/ own cars (Note: that stereotype is based on my experience with buses in other midsize cities. Maybe here the buses are populated by young professionals. Who just happen to want to TRIPLE THEIR COMMUTE time by riding the bus.)

So. Buses don't work. Trains don't work. Bikes don't work. What's a girl to do? Drive, of course. And voila: global warming. Also Denver's brown cloud. Parking lots. Acidic runoff. A drive-thru culture. I want something DIFFERENT.

The F Line to Lincoln

We chose our neighborhood based in part on its proximity to Denver's light rail line. Specifically, we actually vetoed an entire region of the city, one which would have been in many other respects more congenial, because its light rail line is not due to be completed until 2012.

We don't regret this decision (at least not any more than I regret every single decision I have ever made, which is obviously a personality flaw, not a reliable indicator of that decision's worth). My husband's office is a five-minute walk from a light-rail station; he spends less on his (heavily employer-subsidized) transit pass than I do on gas in a given month. We both love using the light rail to go into the city, mostly because it unshackles us from the harness of I-25, which is my least favorite interstate EVER. Also, even though I'm 37 I still get a kick out of the fact that it feels like a ride. I can see the mountains when I ride! And the bison bas-relief along the light rail corridor! And that funky yellow Stacking Tower Game sculpture near the Santa Fe exit! Also, when I get bored of that, I can read: last winter, when I took the train in every day to an internship, I barreled through about three books in one month just during the time I spent on the train. Sometimes it felt like the apex of civilization, to ride along in the elevated train as I read about Medieval Europe.

However. The train is not perfect. For those of us without employer-subsidized passes, it's pricey--for my two-month internship, for which I was not getting paid, I estimate I spent over three hundred dollars on train fares, including all the times I "forgot" to validate the free passes my husband had gotten for filling out a survey. It's seven dollars round trip per adult--that's a lot, especially considering that skillful vetting of parking lots can get you an all-day parking spot for about five dollars in downtown Denver. It's relatively useless if you want to go somewhere not in the middle of downtown--even though I live less than a mile from a light rail station, it doesn't make sense for me to take the train to go to the zoo (two and a half miles from a station), the writer's institute in northern downtown where I sometimes like to take classes, or to any of the other major submetropolises--Littleton, Boulder, Golden, Arvada. Even once the light rail extends to all of these places it won't make sense--it will take twice as long and will probably cost upwards of fifteen dollars round trip.

In other words, except for the relatively limited number of people who live in specific suburbs and work directly on the train line, Denver's light rail is less of a public transportation option and more of an overpriced lark. I LIKE the light rail. I WANT the light rail. But even I don't use it very often. So, Regional Transportation District: we need more! For less!

Why I Love My Bike

My favorite form of transportation is the bike. Yes, it has its limitations: it doesn't do snow, and rain is kind of unpleasant, too. Long distances are inconvenient. But overall, if I could ride my bike everywhere, I would.

I bought my current bike in 1993 for $500--a Specialized Rockhopper mountainbike. At the time that was a sizeable chunk of my savings, but I fell so instantly in love that I didn't regret a single one of those dollars. I rode it in snow, in ice, in rain, in the dark. I used it for actual mountain biking and also for commuting to various jobs, including one that was ten miles away from where I lived (by sheer coincidence, that job lasted only two weeks).

Sixteen years later, I've put more miles on my bike than on my first two cars combined. I've ridden well into my third trimester of pregnancy. I even rode during the months of my first pregnancy when I was both hugely pregnant and crippled and had to walk with a cane--it was the only form of locomotion that didn't hurt. I've hauled groceries, kids, biology-chemistry-physics textbooks, and small pets. I ride to school events, baseball games, and playgrounds. As late as last week I hauled Helen to her ballet class on the bike carrier she is much too big for, and even though work is thirteen miles from my house I'm still hoping to commute here by bike, at least occasionally.

I love starting the day by riding to work. I've had to defend this to my kids countless times over the past years, usually while hauling their complaining selves out the door to their own bikes. I like starting the day with taking deep breaths of the crisp clean morning air, with getting a feel for the weather and the temper of the day ahead, with seeing what's out there or catching a glimpse of a hawk or a fox. I like getting to work a little chilly or damp, pulling off all my gear, shaking out my hair, and settling in. Inclement weather is a challenge, one that I've overcome by the time I get to my desk. One of the hardest things about having kids has been that this pleasure is so often inconvenient, or involves massive struggle or argument (the kids do NOT feel like riding their bikes is a great way to start the day).

One of the challenges with my new job is that regular bike commuting really isn't an option. By the most direct yet still bike-friendly route, it's thirteen miles, which could take me as long as an hour and a half one way (I like biking, but I'm not a fast biker). Combine that with an eight-and-half-hour day, kids to pick up and feed, and a spouse with his own busy and stressful schedule, biking to work can only be a luxury that I indulge in a few times a year. I'm bound and determined to do it, though--I'll keep you posted.