Frenzied Daddy

Ms B ran over what she describes as an exhaust pipe along I-5 and cracked the transmission. State Farm has totaled the vehicle.

First, replacing the transmission is expensive! Luckily, since she hit the pipe, it’s covered under insurance. We took the car to Steve’s Imports to have the transmission repaired or replaced. They were awesome. We borrowed a loaner car which was not a beater; it was a nice 2006 Toyota. When we found out that State Farm was not going to repair the car, we borrowed their car for an extra two days. This was a big help, and I took them cookies because it was so awesome.

Second, I went back to First Tech credit union and asked for a new loan, and we went car shopping. We’re getting GAP insurance through First Tech this time. With the GAP insurance from Wentworth, I have to submit a big stack of paperwork; police report / insurance report / adjuster’s report / payment history / outstanding balance / copy of check from State Farm. It’s offensive. GAP insurance is for the “gap” between what we owe and what State Farm is giving us. None of the rest of that is actually germane to the discussion. At any rate, I have to submit all that paperwork. With the GAP insurance from First Tech, they’ll take care of that for us.

We found a couple of nice cars at Dick Hannah in Vancouver. One was sold before we got there, and we took a Honda for a test drive. It was spotless, and had a warranty. In fact, all of their cars had some kind of warranty; the newer used cars have a 3 month warranty. The salesman thought I was weird for making sure the Honda had windshield wiper fluid. And a jack, and a spare tire. You know why I checked that? Because the VW from Wentworth did not have those items. But Dick Hannah really stood by their cars. Part of that is the state-mandated testing, and part of that is because they want us to come back.

It’s been a real hassle replacing the VolksWagen. But I think we’re winding up with a better car, and there have been a lot of helps with the stress of the situation.

Miss K is delighted that it’s soccer time again! She says she prefers spring soccer because there’s less mud. I think she’ll be learning about spring mud On the plus side, there’s only games, no practices, and it’s a short season. So in a few months, we’ll have played about eight games, and we’ll be done. She really enjoys being out and active. Two twenty minute halves and a ten minute mid-game show, and I can go back inside where I feel safe again.

We took the dog to the last game and he wanted to know why all these kids were pelting around and he was stuck on the leash. And they got to play with a ball! I think he was slightly offended. But there were plenty of dogs who came by and visited for sniffing. So that wasn’t all bad.

She (Miss K, not the dog) is really getting great at riding her bike, too. I may have to do my running with her on her bike so she can go further than the two houses in front of us. We’ll have to see about that.

Today is Saturday of Spring Break, the last weekend. And today, we escaped to Newport for the day. We got into town about noon and had lunch at Mo’s in the historic waterfront. Then, off to the aquarium. Yeah, kind of expensive this time of year, with taxes right here right now. But listening to the ooh and the aahs of the girls over everything from the turkey vulture to the sea lions, it was worth it.

We also walked along Beverly Beach with the dog. He loved it and kept trying to run in the sand. He didn’t like the waves much, they were large. It was windy, cold and wet, just like we expected.

We broke with our usual food and tried dinner at the buffet at chinook winds in Lincoln city. Never again. The smoke was too thick and we couldn’t taste the food. It was awful. Food selections were sub par.

A great day. We should do it again sometime.

Miss B is enjoying the Pirates of Penzance. That is to say, with her foray into High School, she’s taken the stage with their production team and she’s playing in the theater.

I’m beside myself with glee, and pride. But mostly, happy she’s doing something she enjoys. I figure that the more extracurricular activities she gets, the more involved she gets, the more she’ll get out of High School. Also, the more she does stuff “outside her head,” maybe the more she’ll feel like doing that when she’s an adult too.

It’s hard though, not seeing so much of her. She’s gone in the mornings to go to school, and now that we’re in the final week before performances, she’s at school until 9pm. When she comes home and does her homework and goes to bed (because she’s just a little worn out.) So, happy and also sad.

Just like the theater masks!

So, I’m standing here, at Bipartisan Cafe at SE 79th and Stark. Miss B is reading from her comic book here; it’s an open mike with a program called “writers in the schools.” there are a lot of people to read here and a lot of supporters.

At Cleveland High, I was a writer, I ran the literary magazine my senior year (with Terri Hughes). I took an extra class after school across town at Benson. Both years, I went to the U of O for a writing symposium. I wrote lots, both prose and poetry. But I never got a chance to read my writings out loud like she is tonight.

I’ve been worried about how supportive this school will be, of her confidence in her art. We talked at the teacher conference about her talent and how the teacher is so impressed with her. But watching this and seeing this, I’m finding myself jealous of this experience and happy with our choices.

Well, you knew it was going to have to happen; we got a puppy. About three weeks ago, in fact. The Humane Society got several shipments at once of what they thought were Border Collie (mix) puppies, so we went over to take a look. We brought home “Thurston,” who they figured was a border collie mixed with some sort of hound. The vet says more “pointer” than hound, especially since he doesn’t bay like hounds do, and the way he stands. He’s smart like Perrin was, kind of sneaky like Honor was, and a ball of wild energy like a puppy is. He’s a lot of fun, and I’m sure I’ll post pictures. We’ve renamed him to “Akamaru” (Aka for short), who is some mangy manga dog.

Miss B is surprising us all with trying out for her high school’s performance of Pirates of Penzance. Don’t know how she did, but the tryouts were this week. Also this week, she brought home the “Battle of the Books” team permission form. Sounds great! She’ll have to read some non-fantasy stuff too.

Miss K had a special reading at her school yesterday. She read a story she wrote about growing and harvesting tomatoes and how proud she was of herself for tending them. I didn’t make it- I was buried at work. Had a client whose website was going live and it needed too much TLC for me to go running off. But I’m going to try to make it to her Winter performance; the classes are all singing rather than doing a play. Once during the day and then again in the evening.

And we bought a new car. A used car. Ms B’s car died on Thanksgiving, on her way home from work. It just stopped working. We found out later that it was the timing belt, a normal maintenance item that when it breaks, it breaks the whole engine. We bought a 2003 VW Jetta Stationwagon from Wentworth Chevy. I’m pretty happy. I’m very happy with the loan from First Tech CU- it’s 3.74%! (with a 1% discount for paying via automatic withdrawal). I took extra joy from that with the advertisement today of car loans “at less than 13 percent interest). Well, that’s something else.

Anyway, hope all is well in your lives.

So, anything new this week?

I’m still running. About 3.5 miles three times a week. Right now, I’ve changed from doing one monolithic run for 36 minutes to four ten minute runs. That’s helping me stay mostly on track and keep my speed up. I think I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough for the leisurely pace of 3.5 miles in 36 minutes. (and when I did, I burned myself out too quickly). In fact, my most recent runs were 4 miles long. A little secret is that these 4 10s are the same as the first week of the “Bridge to 10K” — which I’m not super interested in (because it’s running for an hour) but if it gets my speed on the 5K down, that’s good. I’m going to do these 10s for at least this week and maybe next week do 3×15 minutes.

Miss K’s done with fall soccer. We’re talking about indoor soccer through the winter but we need to look at our schedule. It’s only one day a week, but the schedule we’ve been on has slowed us down on other fronts. But she really enjoys running around kicking the ball- and last game, she quite nearly ran the entire field and scored (but was blocked at the last moment).

Miss B’s grades continue to improve and her studies at the high school are interesting her; in particular German and Fine Arts. I’m hoping Biology and Geometry start engaging her soon. She’s not finding the English as challenging as she would like.

Ms B and I decided to skip the gym membership as we head into winter, and plan to get our Weight Watchers memberships back. The weight loss requires more focus and feedback than the continuing running (both are about equally as important overall).

We had a scare with my father in law, but he’s out of the cardiac-care unit and is recovering in a hospital room. He should be moving home this week.

I love going to my in-laws. I can almost understand why some people don’t like their mothers- or fathers-in-law, but that’s not the case in my home. So when we left for their house this weekend, I was in high spirits.

Traveling over Willamette Pass, however, took its toll. It was dark, and foggy, and raining. And I’ve slowly been getting worse at driving at night; I have a hard time distinguishing the lane lines in the wet darkness (specifically during a rainy night). The fog lines were all blurred out from the winter wear on the roads (cinder ash and gravel) and there were times I found myself in the chain-up area thinking I was in the lane. There were wisps and banks of fog as well as the rain. It was a terrifying hour or so as we wound up from Oakridge to the pass itself, then the roads dried out and I didn’t have nearly as much fear.

Coming back was better- we came home during the day and I could see what was happening. Basically, humidity was very high, and there was a fog rising from the snow (the cold snow was causing a fog to rise and become a lenticular cloud). On top of that, the clouds were full and raining on us. The drive was surreal; we had ‘steam’ rising on both sides and from the road and at the same time we had snow falling on us from these clouds. And we had cloud banks (fog banks) across the road at intervals. It was a much more entertaining drive home than it was up into the hills. We have some neat pictures that I’ll upload (sometime).

I had a great time (as always) in K Falls. The girls had a lot of fun with their Grandma and Grampa and their cousins. And they got to go swimming at the Running Y ranch, too. The weekend was a success, but I hope that the roads get better before we go back down.

It’s only been raining for three days, I said day before yesterday, and I’m already depressed. I can feel the long cold claws of that forty pound monkey* sinking into my back. What is it with the winter and me lately? I’m cold and wet almost all the time. I just want to huddle under a blanket with a book and a cat and wait for a sunny day. But I can’t do that — I have things to do, websites to finish, projects to wrap up, dinners to fix, dogs (well, a dog) to walk, kids to play with. All these things need to get done even if I’m cold and wet.

On the plus side, I finally bought new shoes. I’m pretty hard on them but my hiking shoes had a big hole, and in the rain, well let’s just say there’s a reason I was cold and wet. And even thought Ms B’s HR department fouled up some paperwork, I actually had enough cushion in the accounts that the automatic withdrawals went through just fine. This made me feel like a grown up.

Maybe I’ll bring my work computer out of the basement and put it in the living room next to the window. How do other people handle this without wellbutrin or Prozac ?

*I don’t even know if monkeys have claws.