Banjo night

This is Banjo Night at the Elks' Club in Pittsburgh.

I was there. I took this picture:

What you can see in the picture:

• Lots of white people
• It was an uncommon mix of older folk, iron city hipsters and people who love banjos.
• A large American flag.
• This picture was taken in the Allegheny Room. 

What you can't see in the picture:

• "DJ Divine," an octogenarian with a fabulous gravelly voice who sings with the banjo crew, apparently quite regularly. She sang two songs the night I was there, one of which was "All of Me" alternately known, she said, as "the fat girl's song."
• My brother and his girlfriend Brin knocking back a pitcher of Yuengling like someone is going to steal it.
• An old guy wearing a dark red silk bathrobe over his pajamas standing in the doorway. Is there housing at the Elks' club? I didn't think so but this makes me want to know for sure.

Kindness of strangers

Every time I travel by myself with two children I am trusting that there will be a helping hand when I really need it. And so far, it always has been, even if sometimes it is the pilot himself helping me carry Emerson's carseat to our seats. (That was on Southwest. I didn't realize he was the pilot until after I had asked him for help. He was very nice about it.)

Of course, I do try to minimize the amount of help that I need, which is why when I arrived at the Pittsburgh airport for our flight home and discovered that the Ergo baby carrier, a central part of what makes flying alone with two children possible, was not in the car, I felt dismayed (read = total freak out curbside).

It turns out that the more help you need, the more help those kind strangers will provide. And a little luck doesn't hurt, too. The plane had open seats and the guy checking us in at the curb not only let us take Ethan's carseat on the plane (without paying for an additional seat) but he personally carried Ethan from the baggage check desk onto the plane and into a seat. He was my total hero for the day until he mentioned how much he loved Rick Santorum but I choose to forget that part and just remember how nice he was. You will not be surprised to hear that he has five children of his own, with a sixth on the way.*

So there I was, settled into a middle seat with a child strapped into a car seat on either side of me. Not bad, really. Until a flight attendant came up and informed me that car seats are not allowed in the row behind the exit row.

We needed to move. 

This is the part of the story where all the kind strangers are off getting a coffee. 

This being Southwest, hundreds of people have boarded since I sat down and the only way to get three seats together is to go the the very back of the plane. I can't carry two car seats and my bags all by myself so I ask the flight attendant for help or to at least block the boarding traffic for a moment so I can get the three of us moved. That doesn't really happen and I am frantically trying not to leave any child alone for too long while running back and forth down the aisle carrying heavy, awkward carseats. By the time I go back to get my bags there are already people sitting in the seats shoving my stuff to the side with their feet like trash.

I may have lost it again, just for a moment.

And then it was all fine once we got settled back in. About halfway through the flight a different flight attendant from the one I yelled at came to check on me and offered me wine.

Faith in humanity: restored. 


*He actually announced the latest pregnancy to the gate agents as we arrived at the gate and they congratulated him, then one of them turned to me and said in a hushed conspiratorial whisper "His wife's not counting right!"

Some updates

It has been longer than I like since I wrote words here so I am going to further postpone finalizing our taxes (that's what extensions are for, right?) and see if I can remember what interesting things have happened over that last month.

This past week Eric called me from work to tell me that he had made a student throw up. Not from the quality of his teaching, I was glad to hear, but on a field trip to a local wastewater treatment facility with his mircobiology lab class. Apparently the intense sewage smell was too much for this delicate flower and she tossed her cookies. Another prissy girl loudly declared their tour the "worst field trip ever" but those who breathed through their mouths and paid attention learned a lot and Eric was pleased with the applied microbiology lessons to be learned from turning sewage into potable water, with a few useful byproducts like nitrogen fertilizer.

Somehow I still have not seen the Hunger Games movie though I really really want to see it even though I already know I will be disappointed because the version in my head from reading the books is so much better.  But I must go see it soon.

With help from Emerson, I started a bunch of plants indoors from seed. While the seed collection I brought with us from SF was a little heavy on cool weather crops like spinach, chard and lettuces we picked out some of the warm weather crops like tomatoes and peppers that grew poorly in SF and should do well here. We've been ambitious and started five different heirloom tomato plants, a container variety jalapeno, two plants of basil, one mint, one serrano chile and just for fun one zucchini plant. The seedlings are all doing well and now I need to figure out where outside we will put them. As summer gets hot I may need to arrange a shade canopy to keep them from burning. This is all just a big experiment to get us started on gardening in Florida.

I have been reading the news from a new perspective recently. I had what I am referring to as my "mushroom-induced revelation" a few weeks ago after eating a lot of mushrooms one day and then sleeping poorly that night and doing some deep thinking while lying awake. The short version of the revelation is that I don't have a responsibility to reside in my anger about all of the despicable, unconscionable, horrible things going on in the world. I can read the news and be horrified and then I can let it go, rather than carrying all that anger about how wrong everything is around with me all the time. For the particularly terrible stuff, I will choose to do something about it. But the rest of it doesn't get any better just because I am pissed off about it. In fact, it probably makes it worse because what this world certainly does not need is another really pissed off person. This revelation has freed me up to read the news and be interested in what is going on without the oppressive emotional experience. I have thoughts on whether the Supreme Court is playing the right role with regards to Obamacare (no), whether student loans should be forgiven (no), whether it is OK for Secret Service to bring prostitutes back to their rooms (no), whether "stand your ground" is a helpful law (no), and whether Ann Romney works (this one is complicated), but you won't see me shaking with fury once we're done discussing it.

In related news, I am back to doing some yoga when I can squeeze it into my current life. I don't know how I survived so long without it. It definitely contributes to me being a better, happier person. It does, however, compete with blogging in those few minutes every day when I can do something that isn't taking care of children.