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Tom and I have this horrible habit of mirroring the speech of whatever characters are featured in our current book and/or iTunes TV obsession.

When we were reading the series of maritime novels by Patrick O’Brian that take place during the Napoleanic Wars, we ran around the house speaking a wretched approximation of the Queen’s English, utilizing more formal than necessary sentence structures.

During our watching of The Wire, we would attempt to work the theme of an episode into our everyday lives, such as “You come at the king, you best not miss.” (By the way, can you believe that this amazing show never won an Emmy or Golden Globe? My personal opinion: best TV series, ever.)

We have Deadwood to thank for introducing the word “cocksucker” into our everyday lexicon, which, as foulmouthed as I can be, had never been a word I used, either as a noun or an adjective. A few episodes in, and alas, I could no longer make that claim. Sadly, it was in heavy rotation for both of us for a few weeks (only with the older set, of course).

Our vulgar period has passed now that we’ve moved on to our current TV addiction — Mad Men, the series about 1960s Madison Avenue. One of our favorite characters is Roger Sterling, a partner in the advertising firm featured in the series. He has some gems, such as:

“You don’t know how to drink. Your whole generation…you drink for the wrong reasons. My generation, we drink because it’s good, because it feels better than unbuttoning your collar, because we deserve it. We drink because it’s what men do.”

“You know what my father used to say? Being with a client is like being in a marriage. Sometimes you get into it for the wrong reasons, and eventually, they hit you in the face.”

“I bet there were people walking around in the Bible complaining about kids today.”

Unfortunately, Tom and I have nothing to say that would be as cool as the writing on Mad Men, so Tom has suggested that we start drinking and smoking in the same copious amounts as the characters, really taking our emulation to a whole new level! (He’s willing to go the extra mile, my husband…)

One of the fun aspects of having wee copies of yourself running around the house is that you get to reread your favorite examples of children’s literature.

Lately, I have been performing Anne of Green Gables for the girls before bed, which has helped me crystallize my thoughts on another popular series for kids, Harry Potter.

The entire time that we read the magical tomes to the girls, I couldn’t escape the thought that while her world building and story arc were admirable, Ms. Rowling’s writing skills simply didn’t measure up to the classics that I enjoyed in younger days.

Of course, it was impossible not to wonder if I wasn’t biased, making the mistake of looking back with rose-colored glasses. But something has really struck me as we make progress with Ms. Montgomery’s story; I never change a word while I am reciting it to the Zs. With Harry Potter, I was constantly editing as I read out loud, such as rewriting the ridiculous boy-girl flirting dialog that peppered the later books. (And frankly, reading plucky Anne Shirley’s tale has made me mourn Hermione turning into a hormone-challenged, lovesick twit.)

LM Montgomery transforms Anne’s everyday life into an adventure that has the girls on the edge of their seat…well bed, and she does it with a flowing and poetic voice that is mesmerizing. It makes me admire her all the more that a book published in 1908 (it was her first novel) can capture my daughters’ imagination so completely, with nary an exploding wand to move the action along!

Bravo.

Below is an example of boy-girl interaction that I feel is suitable for the Zs. (I’m a bit bloodthirsty, I suppose!)

Mr. Phillips was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to Prissy Andrews and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as they pleased, eating green apples, whispering, drawing pictures on their slates, and driving crickets, harnessed to strings, up and down the aisle. Gilbert Blythe was trying to make Anne Shirley look at him and failing utterly, because Anne was at that moment totally oblivious, not only of the very existence of Gilbert Blythe, but of every other scholar in Avonlea school and of Avonlea school itself. With her chin propped on her hands and her eyes fixed on the blue glimpse of the Lake of Shining Waters that the west window afforded, she was far away in a gorgeous dreamland, hearing and seeing nothing save her own wonderful visions.

Gilbert Blythe wasn’t used to putting himself out to make a girl look at him and meeting with failure. She should look at him, that redhaired Shirley girl with the little pointed chin and the big eyes that weren’t like the eyes of any other girl in Avonlea school.

Gilbert reached across the aisle, picked up the end of Anne’s long red braid, held it out at arm’s length and said in a piercing whisper, “Carrots! Carrots!”

Then Anne looked at him with a vengeance!

She did more than look. She sprang to her feet, her bright fancies fallen into cureless ruin. She flashed one indignant glance at Gilbert from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry tears.

“You mean hateful boy!” she exclaimed passionately. “How dare you!”

And then — Thwack! Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert’s head and cracked it — slate, not head — clear across.

As we continue our idyllic visit to the Oregon Coast, which has included more marshmallow roasting and the erection of a large tent in the backyard for gaggles of kids to stay in all night not sleeping, I realized that I had forgotten to share a singular triumph from our trip to Las Vegas — my two way parlay on the hard six that came in…twice!

For those of you not versed in craps terminology, let me illuminate you! On the craps table, the box in the middle is called the “proposition box,” which is filled with horrible bets that have a huge house edge.

Regardless of the fact that I know this, I still made a bet with two $1 chips called a two way (a bet for me and the dealers) parlay (we are both going to stack the winnings and let it ride if it hits) on the hard six (the dice will come as two 3s before a seven hits, or before a six comes the easy way, which would be 4-2 or 5-1).

Now, I made this fancy, completely long-shot wager while I was rolling the bones. And, when the two 3s hit the first time, my $1 bets became a $10 bet for me and a $10 bet for the dealers. Then, miracle of miracles, I hit the hard six two more times, which made me $180 richer. Pretty nice!

For some reason, my brother decided to let the girls work on his hair and buzz his beard with electric trimmers.

(Yes, more summer hijinks on the Oregon coast.)

Aside from Zelda accidentally removing too much of one of Ian’s sideburns, he came out of the experiment remarkably unscathed.

The girls, of course, had a delightful time.

In fact, Zelda was having so much fun, she didn’t want to relinquish the electric buzz cutters and got into a minor skirmish with Ian over who had a right to their possession. I’m happy to report that Ian came out on top and Zelda was not allowed to create any additional hair havoc.

I just fell back in love with the United States of America, and not for the reasons you might think. It was thanks to some amazing, hard-working, and dedicated city Mayors that I had the pleasure of getting to know this last week.

You see, my jetlagged, broken-backed, congested self just wrapped up an amazing and affirming professional experience as a part of the The Mayor’s Institute on City Design. For three days, we (a panel of architects, designers, planners, and real estate professionals) were locked in a room together with 8 mayors to discuss their cities and address their issues and concerns about their home towns.

I was energized by these leaders — they are willing to act as lightning rods on tough land-use issues that might be unpopular in the short term, but could improve their communities for decades to come.

This country was built on the backs of public service such as theirs — they generally make little money while often serving “part-time,” when in reality, they work full-time for their constituents. My interactions with these mayors showed me, in a tangible way, that livable places are the result of good governance, which is the result of ordinary people working hard and caring for their neighbors and families.

Kudos!

We just joined the group of people at Infinite Summer, devoting ourselves to reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest over the summer — about 75 pages a week. That meant a purchase at the Amazon store, downloads to the Kindles, and we were ready.

This book is giving us the opportunity to run the Kindle through its paces. The first thing I have LOVED is the built-in dictionary. DFW likes to use a lot of archaic and unusual words (concupiscence, festschrift, and deliquesce, to name three), so the Kindle dictionary has been a boon. Although, there have been a few words that we’ve had to look up online:

Kekulean Knot: which is how he described a tie, and is a reference to the scientist who discovered the structure of benzene and how he came upon his inspiration.

Incunabular: which means “extant copies of books produced in the earliest stages (before 1501) of printing from movable type.”

Infinite Jest also features a really long set of endnotes that you must read along with the book. Happily, the Kindle makes this easy; we can bip back and forth between the two seamlessly. It is pretty cool how it takes you exactly to the endnote specified and exactly back to where you were in the text. There is one problem though — last night, I wanted to go to bed, but was stuck in a 14-page endnote, and the Kindle wouldn’t let me go back to my spot in the book until I came to the termination point of the endnote. I grudgingly finished it so I could bookmark my page in the main book and get some rest!

And lastly, since we are doing this with each other, and as a part of the larger community, we have been taking notes on the Kindle as we’re reading so we can discuss items of interest together at a later date. After you are through gagging, you will be happy to know the thumb typing on the Qwerty keyboard is fine as long as you don’t want to write a thesis.

What do we think of the book so far? It’s complicated and intriguing…but we’ve only just begun. It is fair to say that we are enjoying it so far.

We’re going to be heading back to the US during what is winter vacation south of the equator. We’ll be leaving in a little over a month, which has gotten us all thinking about a few of our favorite things back in the US:

1. Tillamook County Fair and the Pig and Ford races. (Each of the contestants has to complete three laps around a horse racetrack in an old Ford Model T, which they have to start with a hand crank, all while holding one of three different pigs. They have to stop and start the car each lap to get a new pig.)
2. Not ironing freaking uniform skirts and shirts every day (that one was mine).
3. Portland Farmers Markets at the height of the growing season, super yummilicious.
4. Berry picking on Sauvie Island
5. Mooching off, I mean visiting, family and friends.
6. Trip to Vegas, sans kids, in a luxury suite (we may not even leave the room to play poker…yah, right).
7. Using a dishwasher!!
8. Blissful quiet on the Oregon Coast. (You can see the stars and fall asleep to the sound of the ocean at night.)
9. Being able to eat at a formal restaurant before 8:30 pm.
10. Making Rice Krispies Treats (courtesy of the Zs).

The American Dream seems to have escalated into a race to amass as much square footage of housing as possible. It has been interesting for us to reverse that trend lately in the years when our peers are typically moving to larger homes as their families grow.

Our house in Portland was not spectacularly large. It was built in 1929 and was about 1,600 SF above grade with a 700 SF basement that we turned into an industrial-looking art/TV/office space. We also had a small one-car garage that was filled with gardening crap. When we sold the house in the summer of 2007, we had a humongous moving sale.

The rule: if it couldn’t be stored in our 1,800 SF rental condo then we couldn’t keep it. We did a lot of paring down.

When we moved out of the 1,800 SF unit in Portland, prior to our departure for Argentina, we secured a storage space in the US and tried to keep only those things that we couldn’t live without. (It shall be interesting to see how we feel about said stuff upon our return.)

In Argentina, we moved through several larger living spaces until we finally downsized to a 1,000 SF apartment, where we are living now, in a location we love. Observations:

• In general, since we have less space, we can’t accumulate and store as many things. On a positive note, we’ve learned to make due with fewer possessions — minimal kitchen implements, a lot fewer clothes, not as many shoes, a paltry assortment of toys and games…
• As a family, we can clean this apartment (I don’t mean straighten, I’m talking mopping, bathtub scrubbing, sheet changing, etc.) in about two hours. Couldn’t say that about the house.
• No yard work, which is both a blessing and a curse.
• Noise can be a bit of an issue. The kids have really had to work on acknowledging that they need to be quiet and respectful if someone is napping or on the telephone.
• There aren’t a lot of places to escape if people (as in other family members) are driving you crazy.
• The girls share a room and get along most of the time. Zoe still lobbies to have her own space when we get back to the States though. In general, I think the older child wants autonomy, but the younger sibling is happy to share.
• I would rather have space taken from bedrooms and bathrooms and put into the living/dining/kitchen. A well designed bathroom layout, even if small, beats an empty cavernous bathroom that seems the norm in the US now. Truly, it has been enormously pleasing to spend time in spaces that are thoughtfully laid out to function, even in very tight confines. A huge contrast to a lot of condos I’ve seen in the US.

We now feel that we could live quite happily with a lot less square footage when we return to the States. It will be interesting to look at housing through our downsized lens!

(Pictured above is the dining room from what now seems a behemoth of a house that we sold in 2007.)

If you follow my writing, you know that I’m a fan of weird analogies. Unfortunately, they require an explanation, so here we go…

January. Tom and I cannot wax poetic enough about our love of January. Before we had children, we thought it was a horrible month. Cold, wet, rainy, snowy, dark at 4:30 pm — positively depression-inducing. Once we had children though, we saw the primer month of the year through a whole new lens.

First, getting dark at 4:30 pm is a Godsend when you are trying to get your kids to bed. Since little ones have no concept of time, you can just shrug and say, “it’s time for bed” because it’s dark. Without a working knowledge of the clock, they just toddle off compliantly at 6:00 or 6:30 pm. Love that.

Second, January is like hitting the RESET button on a video game, only the game in question is our chaotic life. Usually by the end of the year we are a wreck due to Thanksgiving, parties, employees, Christmas, birthdays (there are a thousand in my family late in the year), anniversaries, etc. Then comes the respite of winter break, we get things under control, we rest and take time just for us. Then voila, everything is new again in January. A clean slate.

Mondays. Now, for you folks who don’t have kids, you may think this sounds anal, but your life as a parent completely revolves around The Schedule. If you get off The Schedule, then everyone is crabby, no one is well fed, everyone is tired…you get the picture.

Here in Argentina, our schedule is packed with homeschool, tennis lessons, regular school, horseback riding, birthday parties, sleepovers, socializing, sight seeing, exploring, blah blah blah. I think you can guess what is the only day that is relatively activity free? Monday!

Wonderful Monday, workout Monday, cook dinner Monday, write Monday, plan Monday, Quicken Monday, real homeschool (not some half-assed attempt) Monday, get the kids to bed on time Monday!!!

And that, my dear readers, is why Monday is the January of weekdays.

I have been bewitched by the Chicago World’s Fair ever since reading Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. (They painted nearly every building white, hence the name.)

Did you know that the Pledge of Allegiance (sans mention of God) was written to celebrate the dedication day of the fair because “Francis J. Bellamy thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all of the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation.”

I discovered that the first Ferris Wheel was constructed for the Chicago event as an answer to the Eiffel Tower, which was the hit and lasting legacy of the previous world exposition in Paris. A call was put out to American engineers to “out Eiffel Eiffel,” only nothing was forthcoming until George Ferris conceived of his ride. The first Ferris Wheel “was a complex assemblage of 100,000 parts that ranged in size from small bolts to the giant axle, which at the time was the largest one-piece casting of steel ever made.” The ride was completed after the fair started, but was a huge success. Each car could carry about 60 people and they rode to a height nearly as tall as the highest skyscraper in Chicago at the time.

Who knew that fair administrators turned down Buffalo Bill’s act because they thought it wasn’t a good fit? Mr. Bill (really Col. William Cody) thumbed his nose at them and bought his own parcel of land adjacent to the official fairgrounds and performed his Wild West show and became a very rich man in the process.

Political machinations led to delays, which meant that construction on the 600 acre site did not commence until just sixteen months prior to Dedication Day. How they managed to pull off essentially building an entire city from scratch in less than a year-and-a-half, I have no idea. Keep in mind, there were over 200 classically designed structures, many of them among the largest buildings in the world.

Below you will find photos of the following: 1) recreations of the Pinta, Santa Maria, and Nina that were sailed from Spain to be present at the fair, which was also called the World’s Columbian Exposition in honor of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the good old US of A. 2) One of the Westinghouse alternating current generators that powered the fair. 3) The first ever Ferris Wheel!