loose in the caboose

After a fiasco with our diaper service, involving diapers and contents left on our steps, we decided that maybe the time was right to potty train. So we cancelled our diaper service in mid-August and I stocked up on some cloth diapers for sleeping and training pants. Training, for the most part, turned out to be no big deal. Axel ran around the house nekkid for a couple weeks and then, one day, we bit the bullet: we took the train to Sacramento.

Axel's love affair with trains has been on-going for a while now, so when I heard about the Sacramento train museum a few days before he turned two, I decided we could squeeze a train trip in before he graduated to paying a fare.

Everything was a fabulous success: from the bike trip to the train station, to using the bathrooms on the train, to the huge engines, refrigerator, sleeping and dining cars, model trains, and toy trains in the train museum. Axel walked around, gripping my hand tightly, huge eyes.

That Perfect Day is how we ended up with two (2!) three-packs of Thomas the Tank Engine underpants. At least, that's how I'm trying to put the story together. Because, otherwise, I cannot explain how I, the most anti-consumer person in the brick house, became responsible for buying Axel underpants with pictures of Thomas and friends (I know, it's trademarked) stamped on the booty. Which prompted Mychal, when he saw them, to comment: gettin' loose in the caboose. Yikes! What have I wrought?

Axel held the package of train pants through the entire store (I had to wrest them from him to pay) and all the way home. And when we opened the package at home, he was beside himself: trying each pair on multiple times, trying each pair on Monster multiple times, before, in a complete dither, electing to go naked so that he could arrange all pairs on the coffee table to better see them.

souvenir from Canada

Since we were so over-burdened with luggage during our extended trip, we tried to keep our souvenirs on the tiny side. I wanted to bring home tatoos for everyone, but we couldn't decide between a moose or a salmon. Instead, and inspired by my sister-in-law's clothesline, I brought home a one-item to-do list from Canada, which Mychal handily accomplished in five minutes for less than ten bucks. My very first clothesline.

Which also doubles as my new office view. And since I'm still lamenting, it merits a comparison to the old view:


I mean, who wouldn't exchange a Mediterranean-style fortress purported to be the dowry of a Borax daughter (but we haven't taken the historical walk yet, so can't say for sure), complete with lemon and olive trees, a burbling fountain and Moroccan tiles for laundry swaying in the lee of the high school shed?

Not quite the boats that someone else gets to watch all day...

before, during and after

While Mychal's cooking dinner, I'll share pictures from the first leg of our trip: Vancouver, B.C. to Astoria, OR, biking by day, camping by night.




Day One: Axel fixing the bikes at our motel; his attire not too different from what the johns wore as they escorted their, ahem, lady-friends to the door.





Day in the middle: Here we are on one of the five ferry crossings.






Helping me set up the tents one evening...




our tent city with bikes


We caravaned over the Astoria bridge... four miles long and blanketed in fog. Luckily Axel and I caught up with another family, so we had moral support.








And celebrating our last day with huckleberry ice cream.

office envy

It's been nearly three months since my last post. Given the much-lamented absence of both my short- and long-term memories, I'm not going to attempt an update, chronological or otherwise. Suffice to say that trips and photos were taken, involving various combinations of bicycles, tents, pop-up campers, airplanes, cars, trains, international borders, coastlines, islands, great lakes, and a variety of beds, bunks and sofas. With any luck, photo evidence will make its way here or to Axel's blog.

In the meantime, I'm going to dwell on my missing office and offer that as the most compelling reason for not having written anything in the last ninety days.

Since Axel's birth, my office has migrated three times. It's been difficult for me to adjust, especially since the punk now has what used to be my office.

And he's semi-inhabiting Mychal's former office as well.


It wasn't supposed to be this way. We'd survived five years sharing a studio apartment which doubled as both of our home offices (mine was a board laid atop two filing cabinets in a closet, Mychal's was a door balanced on two sawhorses). We had put in the time, chosen the paint, examined the natural lighting and windows, considered the lay-out of the house. These rooms were the culmination of years of waiting and a week of cursing (who really likes to paint anyway?). And, for the single year that they functioned as offices, they were perfect.

My office now is in the eaves upstairs. My desk is still balanced on the filing cabinets, but because the space is so narrow, the drawers face inwards. Four overloaded bookshelves tower over the desk; it feels like a cave, not a good thing for someone who lives for sunlight.

Obviously, the solution is to get rid of the books.