And Again With the Getting Home

At several points in Sarcasm Girl's teenhood we had to have the "you need an exit strategy" discussion--which is to say, before she went somewhere she needed to let us know how she planned to get home, and if we, and the car, were involved. God knows there are acts of God for which one cannot plan (because God knows but doesn't share the info)--allergy attacks, toxic fights, Martian invasion. But it does help to be able to plan for when one can put on one's nightie or have a drink.

Yesterday there was a bonfire at the beach, organized by one of Avocado's classmates, running from 2-whenever-probably-nine.-Or-eleven.-I'll-let-you-know. When I asked how she planned to get home and if she needed a lift, the kid said airily, "Oh, I'll take the bus." Did she know the bus schedules? Did she know where to get a bus from Ocean Beach? Nah, none of that stuff. "Please let me know. I have the car. I can come get you." She nodded cheerfully and headed off to the beach with her buddy.

At 8:30 I called to ask what her plans are. "I think I'm having a sleepover." "Let me know what your plans are." Of course I forgot to give her a deadline, so at 9 I call again. "Um, still working on it." I think my hair stood directly up from my scalp in dismay at that moment. "You will let me know before 10pm." She, hearing grounding in my tone, salutes, telephonically, and says she will. And at 9:40, calls to say "Pick me up, please."

So I did. When I got there the air was dense with woodsmoke, and there were cop cars (which doesn't do a mother's heart any good), but apparently they were just there doing a routine "Okay, folks, the park is closing, off the beach now" sweep.

There is an "exit strategy" discussion in Avocado's future.

One Born Every Minute

or: Why I Love XCKD

Happy Birthday, Dad

My father was born in 1913. Before WWI, but after the Wright Brothers. He has been married three times; has two children, a long career as an artist, designer, inventor and raconteur, and turned a working barn into House Beautiful (seriously: from cowshit and holes in the floor to photo-ready gorgeousness in a mere twenty-five years, as a weekend project that we lived in). He designed, or helped design, the Princeton Perception Lab in the 50s; became an Emergency Medical Tech in his 60s (and worked on the local ambulance squad for 20 years), and told astonishing serialized stories to us on the long car-trips from New York to Massachusetts that we took every weekend when I was a kid (one was called "Breakfast in Space." Because it was a serial. Because it was--no, never mind). He used to have a sign over his desk that said "Don't bother me with your reason, logic, or common sense. I'm being creative." And he sure was. In his 80s they discovered that he had macular degeneration, too advanced to fix. Because of his experience studying perception (see Princeton, above) he had the vocabulary to be uniquely helpful to his opthalmolagists, with the result that he's written at least one paper with one of them on the experience of MD from the inside, as it were. When his eyesight got too bad for him to do art in any way that was meaningful to him, he started writing: first a book called Vision Junkie, about his experiences with MD, then vignettes about his life on the ambulance squad. Whatever his private grief at losing a huge part of his life with his eyesight, he has dealt with it by finding other occupations--and by becoming the onsite authority at his retirement community on all low-vision technology.

Today he turns 97. He's a hell of a thing to live up to, but my brother and I are doing our best. Happy birthday, Dad. I love you.