Life in the Slow Lane

In Los Angeles, you never can tell when you might run into traffic. Even on a five lane highway in the middle of a weekend, you should never be surprised when traffic slows dramatically. It merely provides you with an opportunity to conjecture. For who knows? It might be a three car (plus moving van trailer) caravan, driving in the middle lane, going 20 mph slower than the rest of traffic, with their hazard lights on. Who knows why they decided they needed to have their hazard lights on. But maybe they figured it was a good defensive move. Let all of Los Angeles drive like a mad man, these poor souls from Arkansas warned the world they weren't playing by the same rules, and let the world pile up behind and then rush on by.

Four year old: "Where did you get those mints?" Me: "At Costco. Have you been to Costco?" Four year old: "Yes, but I didn't see you there." I can understand why he thinks that. When you enter Costco, you can't help but wonder if everyone and their Great Aunt Wilma is there, too. Someone compliments the hostess on her wonderful brownies, or lasagna, or meatballs and the reply is "Oh thank you, doesn't it taste good? I got it from the red box at Costco." Last time I was in Costco I nearly bought a card organizer that came with 32 "handmade" cards. The price per card was pretty reasonable, but I had not taken two steps with the box when I suddenly envisioned bridal shower after baby shower after birthday party where three or four guests all gave the exact same "handmade" card. But the Costco culture that we live in is something I have been trying to figure out for years. Costco works, in a lot of ways, like the genera...

Today, to my slight horror, I realized that my two charges had no idea who Mother Goose is. They knew three or four of the rhymes I asked if they recognised, but they didn't know Georgie Porgie, Little Miss Muffet, the old woman who lived in a shoe, Little Mary Quite Contrary, and a host of others. The cultural literacy is changing folks. So of course, I had to remedy the situation. I ran out of Mother Goose rhymes that I could remember off of the top of my head and so I started in on fairy tales. "Who is Little Red Riding Hood?" So I had to tell them that one, too. I must admit I wondered if maybe there was a reason that their mother hadn't told them a story about a wolf eating a grandma and a little girl, but they liked it so much they wanted me to tell it again. And that led into the three little pigs. (Will their mother be okay that the wolf ended up in the fire place?) And that into the three billy goats gruff. (I decided being introduced to so much death might b...

The car dies just minutes after the tow truck that came to jump start it leaves. The door-to-door solicitors that come while you left the front door open are advertising house cleaning. You call someone three minutes after they have left for lunch. You are let off of work half an hour earlier than expected, but your car is sitting dead in the driveway at home. You fill the dishwasher and then go searching for the one plate that will mark it as full and realize that you hadn't yet cleared the table and there are another five plates that need to go in. It's been one of those days.

Sometimes I think the greatest argument against evolution is the fact that women still only have two arms. I thought of this while simultaneously trying to carry an infant in one of those heavy car-seat carriers, carry two purses, two large toys, a blanket, a walkie-talkie, all the while trying to take a picture of high-speed objects in low light. Or maybe what I thought was muscle strain from hauling the infant carrier is actually a new arm sprouting.

After five weeks of vacation Originally uploaded by biukalee . Anyone who can get on a bike after five weeks of travel and 18 hours of airplane time with the entire contents of their luggage strapped to their bike deserves a medal. But mostly I just wanted an excuse to get everyone who has not already seen this to go on over to serapio's blog and see the movie in which I am a star.

I eat good. Originally uploaded by biukalee . I was jealous that Caedmonstia gets to post cute pictures and stories of her godson, so I took these of mine.

What were you going to say? Originally uploaded by biukalee .

A good children's book is one that makes you wish the mechanic took a little bit longer looking at your car so that you could sit on the horribly uncomfortable chair in the waiting room with the abnoxious television blaring so that you could find out what happens to the duck running for president.

In all of the numerous options that people have when choosing their car, how come no one offers to change the blinker speed? There are some cars that would be quite nice, except that they have the insistance of a hyper chihuahua when it comes to changing lanes. Seriously, people need to think about this. With all of the road rage issues around us, hyper chihuahua cars on the freeway do not help. The rapid flashing of lights increase tension and convey urgency when safety would be better encouraged through calm and patience. Now, I'll admit, the Bugle's turn signal is so slow that I sometimes think it fell asleep between flashes, and since the untimely demise of the front left of the car, it sounds more and more like it could use a defibrillator, but that helps me to remember that if I happen to miss changing lanes because no one saw the blinks, the worst that can happen is that I will end up driving for fifteen minutes in the wrong direction until I find a traffic light that al...

Sometimes I am bothered when I consider the types of conversations I have in my current life. Observe the following telephone conversation which transpired while I was at home, preparing to take a short vacation. *Bring! Bring!* Me: "Hello?" Caller: "Hi. Did he have his morning poop yet?" Me: "No." Caller: "Okay. Thanks. I was just checking." Me: "Okay. Bye." Caller: "Bye." Admittedly, I chose this life for the time being, but as much as it may surprise you, I did not choose this job for the excitement of tracking p**p status.

When you find yourself part of a marching band that consists of a drum and a triangle, you find yourself contemplating the greater truths of life. Such as "No wonder I will be deaf by the time I am 34." So then you might try hitting the triangle so that it doesn't give off as much clang, but alas, that won't go unnoticed, and the drum major will turn around and strictly instruct you on how to hit it so that you get the most clang for your bang. And then perhaps you will be playing with lincoln logs, and in between knocking over towers and banging heads with the logs, the drum major will again strike up a strong beat on the overturned storage can (Whose bright idea was it to put lincoln logs in a metal can?) and will want you to stay close so that you can observe his perfect form. And then you will begin to wish longingly that you worked with lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, or leaf blowers, where it is perfectly acceptible to wear ear plugs.

Today, on my way home from a super-short trip to the LA area, I managed to get amazing gas mileage. It was raining so much that I just applied my brakes on the downhill side of the mountain and slid all the way home. I also managed to get a turbo-powered car wash without paying a dime. The water was coming down so hard that the dirt just picked itself up by the seat of its pants and took off for a vacation in Tahiti.

For a very long semester in eighth grade I had a computer class where the main assignment every day was to play SimCity. I would have preferred to do typing practice, but the only exercises were typing the same couple of sentences over and over and over again. So, in the war between two insanely boring activities, SimCity won out. Except there was that time when we were supposed to print out our city and then we all graded each other on the end result. I seem to recall that people didn't like how I colored the ground. Anyway, if you haven't gotten the main point of my story so far: SimCity bored me to near death. But this week I am really looking forward to building a city. One of the families I babysit for is leaving for a week and, this is the best part, they are leaving all of their building toys! Super delux Thomas Track; race car track with sand traps and burning hoops; Matchbox cars of nearly every make and model; Tinker Toys; Matchbox garage, fire station, car spinner; L...

Today I was told that there was fabric that kept stuff in the sky. The bean sized hail bouncing against the windows was quite a distraction , so it took me awhile to realize that there was a problem with that statement. With a few mental gymnastics and key questions, I figured out that he meant "static" rather than "fabric". I am inclined to think that his conclusion that the forces of static keep things from falling from the sky are a mix of knowing that static makes things stick and that there is static electricity in storms. But I can just imagine the truth behind Chicken Little's tale... one too many dryer sheets.