For years my job was boring, which is how I liked it. My job was just what I did for money; since it was boring, I could give my real work — managing the children and the household — all my creativity and energy and attention.Last September, however, when my youngest started school, boringne

My son and I have a free morning today, so we looked for someone to float the river with us.* Every single person I called already had plans. My former neighbor is doing the Paulina Plunge with her 6-year-old; two friends are starting their vacations today, one to the Oregon Coast

who are you,little i(thirty-nine years old)biking up some highhill;on a warm& cloudless August day(and feeling:that if onehas to exercisethis is a beautiful way)

In New York we went to the Top of the Rock and the top of the Empire State Building and rode a ferry past the Statue of Liberty and under the Brooklyn Bridge and we looked at the fossils in the Natural History Museum. Those tourist traps were just a ruse, though.In travelling to Manhattan with my ki

Loud!Crowded!Humid!Tall!Daughter: Why do so many people smoke cigarettes?Husband: Lamborghini!Son: The Brooklyn Bridge is GIGANTIC!Me:

Just to reassure you in advance: No creatures die or get eaten in this blog post.*Yesterday while out on an itty bitty bike ride I thought about how, if all you knew about Bend, Oregon, came from reading my blog, you'd have a mistaken idea about this town. I'm not particular

A mouse got into our house. I'm not sure when. Earlier this week my husband found scat among the pots and pans, and then a day later Sasha and I spotted the mouse downstairs. It's really cute. It's little and gray. When I found scat on my kitchen counter, however, I bought a mouse trap. We had a mouse

The bluebelly lizard that my husband caught for Sasha is doing quite well. The lizard lives in the dining room (when it's not cupped in her hands!) in an old fish tank lined with dirt from my compost bin. Every few days Sasha refreshes the tank with another bug-filled scoop of compost. She also catches other bugs for the li

My sister has hens.My sister also has dogs. One of her dogs' mission in life is to eradicate all birds (and squirrels) from the planet.You see where this is going, right?

The Phil's Trail mountain biking complex begins where the Deschutes National Forest abuts Bend's west side – the far west side, where 20 years ago a fire turned second-growth forest into grassland, and where just two years ago, I believe, a developer tu

It's raining again and still less than 60 degrees and Sasha puked last night which means I will be, too, soon; so I'm building a fire. We will roast marshmallows.Might as well embrace it.

...or rather, the first full day of summer break without puking or fever: yesterday. We couldn't attend our planned playdates for fear of contagion, so the kids played around the house while I tried to keep my usual telecommuting hours.*During a call with a new vendor I

After nearly everyone had left the birthday party, we remaining few gathered in my sister's backyard, enveloped in greenery and beat upon by the sun. (The sun! Please come back, sun!) My sister's friend Johnny broke out his guitar. His wife placed their eight-month-old son in Johnny's lap; the baby patted the guitar as his

Since I last wrote, one of my children had lice and the other a mysterious, itchy red rash; work has been insane; school ended two days early due to budget cuts; Sasha got a cold and gave it to me; and last night? My son puked all last night.Also, it's 42 degrees and raining.

A little boy's gone missing in Portland. He's 7. His stepmother watched him walk toward his classroom Friday morning, but apparently he never arrived there because he was marked absent. No one knew he

Right now the time is 10:36pm.Right now, my daughter is asleep.Right now, my son is asleep.Right now, through the open window I hear a truck accelerating on the parkway. I hear aspen leaves quaking in the wind. A gust whistles through my blinds an

7700 years ago Mazama, one of the largest mountains in the Cascades, erupted violently. A mile-wide column of tephra shot into the sky at twice the speed of sound. "Flow after flow followed in rapid succession," as Wikipedia says, until finally the mountain began

The John Day Fossil Beds are a national monument, owned and operated by the United States government. It's protected land. It's off limits. The public can't look for fossils there or remove any rocks; in fact the public isn't supposed to stray off designated trails.

For Sasha's birthday we took her to the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center, a small museum in Eastern Oregon full of mammal fossils, and then to a place just past Dayville where the road cut into the hillside exposing rock full — full, I tell you — of fossils.

She showed me the ladybugs (which had just recently become ladybugs) clinging to the undersides of a cage in her classroom, and she showed me the unhatched earthworm eggs, too, and then she pulled me onto the playground. I want to show you the elephant bugs, she said.I know! I've never heard of elephant bugs, ei

One member of this family has a couple (minor) health issues which can be controlled by diet; so I, as the chief cook and bottle washer, have been preparing meals following two big restrictions: low salt and low acid. We've been low salt for awhile, three years at least. It was hard at first but now it

Last week my husband found a bluebelly lizard in his office, which he caught and brought home for Sasha. Sasha was enamored. She named the lizard Lulu. Lulu is just about 4 inches long; she fits perfectly in Sasha's hand. We set up the old fishtank for her, filled with twigs and compost and the bugs that live in compost, an

An evening with Terry Tempest Williams:Where Do You Find Beauty in a Broken World?The author, naturalist and environmental advocate explores the question with young writers from Central Oregon in a reading presented by the High Desert Journal.Thursday, June 10, 7p

Three days in Portland:rainrain rainPink is Portlanders' reward for all that rain!

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming."I skied in the pink," my husband told me. Wednesday evening he skinned up Mt. Bachelor and skied down at sunset, when alpenglow turned the whole world pink.

These are some thoughts about online reputations and branding spurred by Bon's recent post.A few months ago I attended a part

Whilst driving to the other side of town (and back) two days ago, I scanned the landscape for pink. I saw exactly seven instances of that color: the buds on three crabapple trees; the flowers of three rock-garden shrubs (candytuft); and the petals