Suburbs

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More Stupid Things I’m Thinking

Yes, unfortunately, there are more.  It’s how I roll.  Stupid thoughts running in and out all the time.  For instance, tonight the local bankruptcy bar in which I practice held a CLE, a thing to go to and learn legal things, continuing legal things.  Hence the C in the CLE. A judge, a court rep, and a couple of trustees instructed us on the ins and outs of the new bankruptcy rules.  Good times.  After they invited us for snacks and drinks.  I thought, free snacks?  Sure.  Social hour with adults. Why not?

Well.  I never feel more a fish out of water than when I attend lawyer functions.  I am terrible at small talk and stand around feeling self-conscious.  Stick me in a room full of lawyers and judges and theoretical “peers” and I simply feel, well, peerless.  I’m terrible at it.  If there are issues to discuss, cases to analyze, things to talk about with a question to argue, basically communicating with the same people in my job, then I’m fine.  But take any of that away and I’m just pathetic.  I stand there holding a drink and feeling foolish.  I think things like, “I’m standing here thinking this,” and “My pantyhose are too tight,” and “I can feel my ears,” and also sometimes things like thinking another lawyer is hot, although tonight that didn’t happen.  I was too sidetracked by the tight panty hose.

Today while I was getting dressed, I posted a status update on facebook that said, I go for lawyer, I end up librarian. This about sums up how I am as a lawyer overall.  I’m not suave; I’m frumpy.  I actually asked a judge tonight whether he would kick back a brief because of bad grammar because I have gotten some really awful briefs from lawyers with terrible grammar and thought to  myself that if I were a judge I would send back a brief for bad grammar.  He kind of paused as he answered, “Well, um…” And I knew the answer was no. He probably realized in that moment that perhaps I wasn’t a normal person, but he did seem a bit tipsy, so that might have helped my case a bit.  I like it when most of the people at such a function start to take on a bit more alcohol then they probably should. Then I figure they aren’t going to remember my standing there like an idiot holding some glass and repeatedly crossing and uncrossing my legs because my feet hurt, and not because I have to go to the bathroom.

I’m not sure why this is.  When I was first a lawyer, it was lack of confidence. I had no experience and felt like everyone around me had tons.  Now I don’t feel inexperienced. In fact I feel quite confident about my practice skills for the most part, and I don’t care when I don’t know.  I just call someone up and ask.  No big deal.  It isn’t that I don’t have anything in common with anyone either. There are people in this group with whom I have enough in common to manage a conversation, and some of them interest me quite a bit.  I really want to know about what they do.  I just don’t schmooze well, and a lot of legal activities seem to be all about just that.  Ah, such is life.

Tonight Isabel pooped on her bed.  I have been letting her run around with a diaper because she has never pee-peed or poo-pooed anywhere except in her diaper or her potty.  Tonight I think the poop surprised her.  I heard her holler from her room, POOP!  I went in there and low and behold, that is exactly what had taken place.  She looked surprised and kind of scared, sitting there with a little turd on the bed and stuck to her bottom.  Okay, honey, I said, I’ll clean it up.  I was laughing so hard, I could hardly breathe, especially because I was trying to do it without her knowing I was doing it and it was strangling me.  Poor little pooper!  I got her all cleaned up and she helped me put on a new diaper and then take her bedspread to the washing machine.

On New Year’s Eve, I had the opportunity to venture outside my comfortable inner NE Portland bubble and visit the suburbs.  My friend Rita invited me to a party at her friend’s house.  Why not?  I could bring the baby. We could hang out, bring a small hostess gift, and then head home after.  My other option was movies at home on the computer after Isabel went to sleep. Not so fun.  Life is kind of boring around here when Milla is gone.  No one is around for me to boss around.

So out into the land of McMansions I trekked.  Rita asked me to meet her over at her neighbor’s house because she was picking up her son.  I parked at Rita’s house and bundled Isabel in her coat before trundling to the neighbor’s white colonial.  Bundled and trundled. The door bore the words WE_COME.  The L was curled up so it looked like a little dash.  I knocked and waited.  From within the house I could hear the sounds of children running and hollering.  A moment later, Rita’s son answered the door, followed closely by Rita, carrying another son.  Immediately in front of me were stairs up to the second floor of the house.  Each stair displayed a word or an inspirational saying in different fonts and letter sizes.  LOVE.  KEEP Faith ALIVE.  HOPE. God ANSWERS those who ask.  Okay, I thought.  Not my decor choice, but whatever.

Rita introduced me to the neighbor and we headed back over to her house.  Inside, I noticed Rita had Faith, Hope, Love in stick-on letters on her dining room wall.  Hmmm.  I thought nothing more of it.  We changed diapers, gathered diaper bags, bundled up children further, and headed out to drive over to the friend’s for the party. It was nearing 10 and we needed to get going.

I followed Rita’s Highlander as we drove out of her neighborhood onto a main road.  A half mile up the main road, we turned and drove along a road with countryside on one side and houses on the other.  We turned and turned and turned again. Mostly the roads stayed partially housed and partially country.  Rita lives in Washington county.  It is my opinion of Washington county that its perspective is to cover every available green space with a building, so it was actually quite refreshing that this countryside had not been tainted.  The night was clear and the moon was bright, so I was able to see the grayed landscape.

Finally we drove into a neighborhood.  Neighborhoods like the one we were driving into are popular in Hillsboro.  I think it is Intel; its base is there.  These neighborhoods are filled with houses that nearly obliterate their lots.  They are mostly snout houses, meaning the primary feature one notices when looking at them is their rather large garages.  We passed several such houses with three garages.  Who needs three garages? I thought to myself as we twisted and turned, twisted and turned.  Every house looked the same to me.  I would never have been able to find my way there if I had been alone.  Rita used to live in a neighborhood like this one, back when she was married to a man who worked at Intel.  I kind of pride myself on my ability to find my way and that I rarely get lost, but every single time I visited Rita when she lived in that neighborhood, I made at least one wrong turn.  It was uncanny.

In any case, eventually we arrived at a whole lot of cars and I knew the party could not be far.  We parked and walked a block to a nondescript suburb house.  Very large. Very snouty.  The cars were parked outside, which I later learned was because the garage had been turned into a storage facility.  Maybe that’s the purpose of the many and large garages, storage!  Fill your garage with things you never use and won’t see just in case someday you might need them, but you won’t know you have them so you’ll buy more of the thing you can’t find, use it once, then lose it in the garage again.  I get it!

I digress.

The point of this little tale is that upon entering, the very first thing I noticed was that all over the walls, in between the photos and floral hangings, were more stick-on, inspirational sayings!  Lots of them.  A little lightbulb popped on above my head right in that moment and I realized that this must be the in suburb thing.  I’m really out of the loop about in things, and I’m especially out of the loop about in suburban things.  I wondered, standing there, whether my many suburban Vancouver and Washougal and Camus had special sayings on their walls.  Probably.  Wow, I’m not in.  But I knew that.  I think about my pantyhose at lawyer functions, what the hell would I know about inspirational writings on suburban walls?

Now it is time to go to bed.  Isabel has been very patient as I write this.  Milla has been hiding in her room.  She came down to sit on my bed and scold Isabel because Isabel wants to touch Milla’s homework and Milla doesn’t want her to, but rather than ask nicely or move to a place the baby can’t get to, Milla is acting all teenagery.  Get a grip, Milla. Now baby wants to be on my lap.  I have to brush my teeth.  The stupid thoughts will just have to hang out in my head for now.

 

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So Unbelievable

 

My daughter likes box elder bugs. They are these harmless beetle things that only live for about a week. They have red stripes on their back and they fly, their wings little red capes whirring behind them in flight, kind of like little insectian super heroes.  They enjoy warmth, so they hang out in windows and places with heat. They do not bite. They do not sting. The do not emit smelly odors. They do not eat houseplants. They do not do anything whatsoever that harms humans or their dwellings. The biggest complaint about box elder bugs is that they like to come in the house where it is warm, and who can blame them? box-elder.jpg

I did a google search on box elder bugs for my daughter. She loves the things. They are fairly prolific around here in the fall and spring while it’s still warm but not terribly hot. She fills her pockets with them. I told her I was writing about her and box elder bugs and she said, “Oh, I haven’t played with them in a while, cute little things.” That should give you some idea of Milla’s persuasion towards box elder bugs.

Imagine my surprise then to learn that most sites about box elder bugs deal with how to kill them. They are called pests for wanting to come inside. One site listed some nasty poisons a person can use for box elder elimination, including bifenthrin (possible human carcinogen), cyfluthrin (moderate acute toxicity and suspected endocrine disruptor), deltamethrin (a neurotoxin that attacks the nervous system), lambda cyhalothrin (moderate acute toxicity and suspected endocrine disruptor), permethrin (highly toxic to fish and cats), and tralomethrin (effects include headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, excessive salivation, fatigue, and in severe cases, seizures may develop).  All of these insecticides are toxic poisons and can harm humans, sometimes even in smaller quantities. Many of them are quite harmful to the animals we share our lives with, as well as those we would rather avoid. What I find so unbelievable is that people would bring toxic chemicals into their homes, spray them, spread them, breathe them, rather than share their space with a harmless insect that does nothing except try to get warm and dies in under a week anyway.  Where is the sense in that?

When I was in law school, Milla’s father and I were still together. We wanted to buy our own house.  We took the advice of a well-meaning, but misguided friend who assisted us in making this purchase. She owned a wealthy home-building company whose clients consisted mainly of older, usually conservative people with lots of money. We did not take our lifestyle into account whatsoever when we took her advice to build our own house as far as possible from the center of town in a suburb.

What a mistake.  We ended up in this country suburb.  As is often the case in these developments, it was named for what it had been:  Big Meadow. The meadow was gone and in its place were stepford houses in limited shapes and sizes, with perfectly manicured lawns and neutral paint, as required by the unrelenting neighborhood regulations. We did not last long there. I quickly realized I was not suited for this. I needed a house to fix up, and since ours was brand new, there wasn’t a lot to do to it. I needed plants to love. We gave the house our love, built a fence and a dog run, but we simply did not fit in. The neighbors brought us proselytizing literature on a weekly basis.  Every visit to the store provided an invitation to our auto windshield to attend a local church play. We were one of only a handful of families who recycled.  Basically, we were major sore thumbs.

Our immediate next door neighbors were especially different from us. The main thing about them that I remember is that on periodic afternoons the woman of the house had her teenage sons out in the yard and driveway with square-nosed shovels to search for garter snakes to kill. She did not want them anywhere near her home. Since her house backed up to the edge of what had been the big meadow the neighborhood obliterated, garter snakes were frequently in evidence. After her sons killed a sufficient number of garter snakes, she would spread poison all over her yard to kill insects. She would kill the harmless garter snakes that would have eaten the insects and chose instead to cover her yard in toxic chemicals.  Insane.

I am constantly amazed at the irrationality of human beings. I am certain that irrational behaviors are likely part of my makeup simply because I am human. I would like to think though, that most of my ridiculousness isn’t destroying the planet.  I hope not. I can hear it now how someone just doesn’t like the legs on bugs. Spiders give them the creeps. They don’t like the “idea” of something coming into their bed. So they’ll spread toxic chemicals all over their house and lawn to rid themselves of “pests.” At least the chemicals aren’t creepy and crawly.

I find it ironic that acts of compassion and kindness are considered humane, as if placing the name of homo sapiens on such behavior distinguishes us from other creatures on earth. Yet the only thing that really distinguishes humanity is our ability to systematically annihillate ourselves and our planet because of silly things like insect legs or the possibility that another creature might come into our beds. I just don’t get it. Perhaps a better definition for humane would be anything except compassion and kindness since our race seems hell bent on destroying this place we call home. At least we can say that while we were on our way out we didn’t have to share our lives with the box elder bugs.