Rocking My 30s

Rantity-rantity-rant-rant-rant...

Not really. I don't have the energy for it. The baby croc's latest trick is to vacillate between getting the 5am shift person up before 5am (a.) and being totally dead asleep at 5am, thereby necessitating this whole song-and-dance to get her awake and eating (b.) Also, a few hours ago, she screamed at me like I was plotting her murder (not true!), then a minute later was openly baby-laughing with delight as I danced around the room with her going "doo-pa-doo-pa-doo!" (true!)

Anyway. I do have a few things I've been thinking about.

First, I realized that real estate developers are Satan incarnate. The reason California is broken, permanently, terribly broken, is that real estate speculation over the last twenty-something years pushed home prices completely beyond the level that anyone earning actual wages or a salary could afford them. Home prices rose so much faster than did wages that there is now an insuperable divide between means and ends in housing. That same pattern happened and continues to happen all over America, of course, but it's so bad here. The only people who benefited from this bullshit were the real estate developers themselves. IMHO, they should be hung on hooks like pigs in a slaughterhouse (feeling feisty today!)

Second, Santa Cruz, California. I'm always interested to hear from other people about their opinions and observations about this little dump. Two people I know (one a friend, one a neighbor) noted recently that they've watched things go to shit in this town. My homie H told us about her eight years here, watching the town getting dirtier and more dangerous and generally sketchier in every way, and neighbor A just said it's gotten so expensive she's thinking about moving up north just like we are. It's nice to know I'm not alone in noticing these things.

Money. Money money money. I just want an income, one that I can feel reasonably certain will keep our very, very modest standard of living going indefinitely. This summer is the perfect hodge-podge of random jobs bringing in scraps and I have no idea if/how things will change when we get to Portland.

Getting older...I really noticed that in pictures lately. Looking at pictures from years past is always shocking, that amazed "I look like a fucking KID in that picture!" reaction. Unfortunately, I'm now at the point of looking at recent pictures of myself thinking "I look like a SKINNY OLD GUY in that picture!" Part of that is probably the stress and sleep dep, but part of it is just that I am, in fact, older than I used to be.

Probably the Greatest Picture Ever Taken

Our homie C got us this Motorhead onesie when she was in England recently. B took this picture of Plan C in it a few days ago...I'm pretty certain this makes Ansel Adams look like a rank amateur.

P.S. I should add that the awesome blanket was created by our homie K.

Ride a Cock Horse

"Ride the Horse:

If you're like most parents, you'll soon become your baby's "horsie" and will be for quite a long time. These games help your baby bond with you and improve his ability to create and maintain social relationships. It also helps develop his muscle coordination and balance.

While singing the song "Ride a Cock Horse," cross one knee over the other and place baby on your free foot. Holding his hands firmly, gently swing your foot up and down, bouncing him while singing:

Ride a cock horse to Millbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon her white horse.
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall hear music wherever she goes.

When baby laughs, laugh back at him! He'll love the interaction."

-Glade B. Curtis, M.D., M.P.H. and Judith Schuler, M.S., Your Baby's First Year, Week by Week (Da Capo Lifelong, 2005), page 200.






I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Road Warriors

And, 1500 miles later, we are back in SC...


This is the view from the front porch of my brother in-law's new house in St. Johns. We're going to stay there for a while when we arrive in PDX next month. STOKED.

This is the friendly fellow who just got married!

And lo, the happy couple! They are brilliant and beautiful and fun.

Our baby is amazing. She put up with two 11 - 12 hour drives and bitched about it less than we did. She's also getting huge; she's over 25 inches long / tall and weighs about 12 1/2 pounds.

We've got a lot to do in the next month. SC friends: get in touch. We're almost out of here.

Apprehensive, Much?

I stole this shot off of B's flickr site. There are lots of other cute pics there, too.

In a few days, an old, dear friend is getting married in PDX. Tomorrow morning I'm getting the rental car, we pile in the junk, and then we're off.* We've got about 600 miles to do tomorrow, from here to Eugene, then we're on to Portland the next day.

Crap like this drives me into a fit of seething anxiety. I worry about all the little things that could go wrong, like me being too inept to figure out how to transfer our baby seat to the rental in a timely fashion. We're also, predictably, concerned with how Plan C takes the drive. She likes being in the car, but that's a lot of being in the car. Add in rest-stop breast-feedings and you've got yourself a DAY OF ADVENTURE.

That all said, I am very excited to see lots of my P-town friends in just a few days.

* We're doing the rental to avoid putting more miles on the trusty Geo (A.) and because we need reliable A/C for the drive (B.)

A Kid Who Tells On Another Kid's A Dead Kid...

I just ratted out a hobo trying to steal shopping carts at Trader Joe's. That was the most satisfying thing I've done in about a month.

Rubric

I finished teaching my first class of the summer this week. K was my "reader," which is the same thing as a TA who gets paid less (thanks to the Nazis who run the UC to the SC summer session). She and I went back and forth on grades over the last 48 hours and, afterward, I realized that I should write down how I generally do it:

A: I love you very much.
B: You did a pretty good job for a dumb college student!
C: You showed up to the party, but you didn't bring much anyone wanted.
D: You suck. But you wrote something down, anyway.
F: You are either a complete idiot or you didn't turn anything in.

That really sums it up. That's how I've rolled for six years now.

P.S. Please, oh please, someone give me a job in Portland...

Grow Up, Idiot

We have a new neighbor, who fits right in on the list.

We call him "Douchebag." He lives in the apartment right next to ours, the one vacated at the end of the school year by the relatively quiet lesbians. Douchebag is about 40 and, like every other male in SC who isn't part of the university, he is a mostly-unemployed contractor.* He is also the loudest talker I've heard in years, one of those guys who can only shout. He stands out on the porch and shouts on his cell phone while he smokes, he has friends over (remember, he's 40) to play Playstation and he shouts, he shouts while he tries to get people to hire him (they don't.)

The thing about Douchebag is that he's a perfect model of male arrested development, totally comparable to Hooker, the female version who lives across the hall. Douchebag never grew up. He still plays hip hop really loud, he punctuates every sentence with the word 'dude', he hocks up phlegm as loudly as he can during his morning smoke. He's what happens when the kind of people who set off fireworks at 2:30am get a little older: they stay the same. All the evidence indicates that it just never occurred to him to try to get his shit together.

Welcome to the neighborhood, Douchey McDouche! If we weren't already planning on moving out in a little over a month, we would be.

* This could be a whole separate blog topic: how every guy in California is a contractor. This is related to the whole "black hole economy, state breaking off into the ocean" phenomenon.