El Segundo Bike to Work Week Events

Media coverage of Bike-To-Work Week events in the South Bay has been sketchy again. Last year, I posted a schedule of Bike-To-Work Week events for 2007. Here's some info for Bike-To-Work Week 2008 in the El Segundo Employment Center area.

The 8th Annual El Segundo Bike-To-Work Challenge will be held from 6 to 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 13, in The Aerospace Corporation's Visitor Lot/Gate C located on Douglas Street, just south of El Segundo Boulevard. Many of El Segundo's employers will be competing for bragging rights (and a trophy) to see who can bring in the most bicycle commuters. Free continental breakfast, t-shirts and goodie bags^* will be provided.

There will be a bicycle and commuting expo outside the cafeteria at The Aerospace Corporation at lunchtime on Wednesday, May 14. MTA, AAA, commuter services and bike club members will be on hand to help you find a commute route using public transit, carpool/vanpool or bicycle. Several area bicycle shops will also be present with special deals for Bike to Work Week.

MTA is sponsoring a Bike to Work Day on Thursday, May 15, 2008. Check their website for more details. South Bay Pit Stops at:

1. Aviation Station Metro Green Line
2. El Segundo Station Metro Green Line
3. Torrance City Hall 3031 Torrance Bl, Torrance

* I have written before about how much I hate goodie bags, but this one actually contains good stuff. Last year, they gave out LED lights for commuting after dark!

Bicycle commuting in the news links:

• Riding a bike to work is more than a healthy commute: It's a sign of adulthood via the LA Times
• Bike to work next week and win a folding bike via Emerald City Blog
• Catching Up results from the 2007 El Segundo Bike-To-Work Challenge

Maybe you are looking for a good used bike to use for bicycle commuting? You are in luck. As part of my stuff diet, I am selling two (out of 3.5) of my bicycles. Email me through my profile page for more info.

Halloween Time Crunch

Sandy Banks wants to know if there is an equivalent "bah, humbug" expression for Halloween. So would I. I hate sugar holidays, especially ones that fall a mere days before Iris' birthday.

Try preparing to throw a kid's birthday party in the week leading up to Halloween. Line up with the crowds of people, trying to enter the party supply stores. Don't say that we should have prepared in advance. You try bugging people to get their the RSVPs in by an early deadline.

Iris pestered me about decorating for Halloween. I told her that maybe we can arrange for her to be adopted by our next door neighbors who decorate for all the holidays. She didn't find it funny.

Store bought costumes are so cheaply made and tacky, despite their inflated prices. Plus, I worry about exploitation. (This is no idle worry as the recent Gap fiasco proved.) This year, I dispensed with all guilt. I bought Iris a flimsy witch costume from a dance supply store in Westwood. I also bought her a long-sleeved black t-shirt to wear underneath it for warmth.

This year, I will live vicariously by reading the blog of a woman who is sewing a fairy costume inspired by Madeleine Vionnet and the book, “In the Realm of the Never Fairies, The Secret World of Pixie Hollow”. She does breathtakingly lovely work. She is hand painting silk petals for the dress! Click next at the bottom of each post. So far, she has written 4 posts in the thread.

Instead of throwing a big party, Iris will go to Disneyland with 3 of her best friends on Sunday. Iris will bring cupcakes to her soccer game on Saturday, her birthday; it was our turn to bring snacks anyway. There will be no goodie bags!

Instead of cupcakes in her classroom, I asked her teacher if she would prefer a visit from Kathy's Critters (aka the Bug Lady). Kathy will bring her insect and reptile zoo to her classroom, point out which ones are native and which are exotic, and discuss characteristics that make natives particularly well-adapted for our locale. There will be no sugar in the classroom and Kathy will wrap up just in time for lunch. I need only write a check for the tax-deductible cost.

(The district has no money for this kind of enrichment activity. In fact, they have no time for science because they spend 3 hours each day drilling for the reading and writing tests and 45 minutes for math. That leaves little time (30-45 minutes per day) and no money for art, music, history, geography, social science, or plain old science. One short weekly music lesson was saved because of the correlation between music and higher math test scores. Art is now a once a month and rushed activity, led by a volunteer docent mom.)

Well, the weekend is a little more hectic than I let on. We are hosting 4 family members in town for Iris' birthday. We will hold some sort of family dinner on Saturday night. Iris has informed us what kind of cake she expects.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I caught the cold going around. That puts me off my drug regimen once again. In addition, I lost my voice. About twice a year, I catch an infection bad enough to set off a cascade of auto-immune symptoms in my throat. It would be laryngitis and a sore throat in a normal person, but I am not normal. It usually takes 3 weeks, 21 days (I keep track), before I can talk again. Once, my throat swelled up so badly that I had to go in for IV fluids, antibiotics and powerful painkillers. The doctor said I was this close from asphyxiation.

That time, they had been watching the situation for a week. They couldn't give me steroids to bring down the inflammation because that would have dragged out the infection. Yet, they couldn't keep me in the hospital because that is a dangerous place for people with compromised immune systems. Medicine is an art, not a science. It was horrible, but I am not sure anyone could have done anything different that would have been better. Well, maybe they could have given me the good painkillers earlier. ;-P

Of course I am on the schedule to speak at an upcoming satellite health meeting in 3 weeks. Gotta rest. On the bright side, silence actually makes me more productive at work.

Today, I kick back in bed with tea with honey and a good book.

Walking and Biking

Iris and I are reading Beverly Cleary's Ramona Quimby series in order. In Ramona the Pest (link to entire first chapter), 5-year old Ramona was left alone in the house one morning while her mother took her older sister to the doctor. Her mother instructed Ramona to walk to school at quarter past eight. Ramona knew exactly what time that was. A quarter is 25 cents so she left the house promptly at 8:25. Where were all the other children? The streets were eerily empty. She ran to school and found out that she was late.

Why can't we do that today? Nowadays, one could be prosecuted for child neglect for leaving a 5 year old alone in the house. Is it because our houses are more dangerous? I doubt it. The Quimby house likely contained lead paint and exposed wiring. Are there more child predators than 40 years ago? Again, not likely. Parents today are just more focused on the dangers.

In addition, our school district insists that children younger than 4th grade be accompanied to campus by an adult. Because Iris attends after school supervisory care, an adult also needs to sign her in each day. That means parents can't just pull up to the curb and push their kids out the car door. This has lead to a mad scene on the streets surrounding the school each morning as parents (in cars) double park, block driveways, dart across streets or even park across sidewalks in order to find someplace to park.

In our quest for safety, we have made the world a more dangerous place. We know the number one killer in this country is heart disease. We know that inactivity is the primary cause of heart disease. Yet, we insist on driving our kids everywhere instead of allowing them to walk or bike places.

Moreover, we are driving them around in ever more massive vehicles with higher centers of gravity and larger blind spots. The number of children being crushed under the wheels of the light trucks used to ferry them around in the name of safety is staggering.

Help end the madness. May 14-18, 2007 is Bike to Work Week. Consider walking or biking to school with your kids before continuing on to work. Join me at the El Segundo Bike to Work Day challenge on May 15 on Douglas street ~200 yards south of El Segundo Boulevard. Free breakfast and Goodie Bags (with useful stuff) for every pedestrian and bicycle commuter!

One year, I made elastic pant leg straps for everyone who rode in. This year, I will just post a pattern. Stay tuned.

Another Sugar Holiday

This is Iris' loot from first grade, after school daycare, and Brownies.

I made this paper-pieced pillow for Mark for another Valentine's day, perhaps a decade ago. I was so excited about finishing the project, that I sandwiched and quilted it before remembering that I forgot to remove the paper! You can hear it crinkle when you lean back on the pillow.

Addendum
It snowed 20" at Brighton after my last post. We went back to the aforementioned black diamond run (Aspen Glo) and skied it over and over until our legs turned to rubber. Skiing doesn't get any better than that.










That's all folks.

Thoughts on Hollywood SWAG

So the dorky secret date took us to the James Bond film festival at American Cinematheque's Aero Theater. Mark loves trivia. He took third place even though his brother has had his Sean Connery as 007 boxed set for the past year. Take a look at the Hollywood SWAG he won. The cologne was not in the picture because he gave it away as soon as he opened the bag. (I have asthma and we keep a scent-free home.)

When we looked at the loot, we both thought about the goodie bag at a toddler birthday party a few years back. Both of the little girl's parents work in Hollywood, but they also work hard to 'keep it real' for the sake of their daughter. Imagine my shock and horror when the mother handed me a huge shopping bag for a goodie bag. I peaked inside and saw several games, toys, two t-shirts, and two largish stuffed animals--all in the same cartoon character theme as the party.

All I could think was, "She upped the ante! I can't believe she did that. There is no way I am going to be able to keep up with this." I must have looked really panicked. The mother quickly related how she had called the promotions department at Movie Studio X and asked if they had anything they wanted to get rid of. Before she was off the phone, some gofers had dumped six boxes of this movie promotional stuff in her office. Then she asked if Iris liked the cartoon character. There were still two more boxes of this stuff in her garage she needed to unload.

I need to stop obsessing about goodie bags. This is my sixth post on the subject.

Digression

Iris' nanny gave her a fantastic haircut. Look at the softly layered shoulder-length bob that beatifully show off her natural soft waves. Is it not adorable? Should I beg for a matching cut?

That's all folks.

The Stuff of Life

I read about a passionate imperfectionist who advocated living better with the things we already own and paused for thought. Dan Ho pared down his personal possessions further than I ever envisioned possible by someone in midlife. (55 personal possessions, 47 of them clothing!)

I have always revered people who choose to live with so few possessions. Who hasn’t admired the beauty of Shaker interiors? However, I know myself too well to ever believe that I would have the discipline for that. That only heightens my appreciation of others that can.

When I showed up for college, I filled up my mother’s subcompact car to the gills. The girl who showed up with just two suitcases and two boxes was legendary. My friend took me to her room to introduce us and the legend graciously allowed me to look inside her closet. Her shirts hung amid all this empty space. I vowed to be more like her.

Nevertheless, I continued to accumulate. When I showed up for grad school, I filled my own subcompact to the gills. I also shipped 6 boxes of fabric and sewing supplies with a friend heading for the same school with a trailer in tow. I also mailed my growing collection of books by USPS’s bargain book rate to my new department.

Then I got married and playing house was so much fun. We accumulated more stuff. There were the wedding presents, the dumpster diving triumphs, the estate sales, finds from our travels… It was a good thing that our employer paid for our next move.

When we bought our townhouse, it seemed so vast. I thought that it would take a lifetime for us to fill the place. We even took in a roommate for a while because we really didn’t need all the space.

Then we had a baby. How can such little people require so much stuff? Have you walked the aisles of Babies R Us, the baby superstore lately?

Our baby is a little girl now who has very definite ideas of what she needs. Her taste does not run to ascetic minimalism. It is a constant battle against those plastic tschochkes that seem to blow in the door with her. Goodie bags, happy meals, and carnivals—each activity seems to be an opportunity for adding more stuff that we don’t need to our house. How much of a child’s art and school work should a good mom save?

For the past few years, I have been preoccupied with my health problems and I fell behind in the battle against clutter. It is a disaster and a source of stress. My doctors say that my condition is worsened by stress so I must reduce my sources of stress. No wonder that a UCLA doctor who studies longevity says that clutter shortens lives.

So much stuff and it all requires attention. It just grows unless I constantly whittle down the mountain. (You betcha that I don’t get any decluttering help from the other inhabitants of this house.)

I should say that I am not blameless. I bring stuff home, too. Do fabric, yarn, and patterns and art supplies count as stuff? Well, yes and no. They are raw potential, just waiting for my hands and imagination to release them. What about those old sewing magazines and fabrics that someone left outside the guild meeting with a sign, “take me”. Those magazines are full of good ideas and useful information. I gave them a new home. Now the workspaces in my sewing room are so covered in ideas and potential that I no longer have space to work.

As an exercise, after a closet purge a year ago, I catalogued all the black bottoms that I still own. (Bottoms mean shorts, pants, skirts and overalls.) I stopped the exercise when I reached 50. How many do I need? I don’t work in a PIB (people in black) environment; I work in a PWB (people with badges) industry. Yet, I didn’t let any of the 50+ go.

Sure it sounds easy to get rid of any clothing items you haven’t worn in a year. But what if you made them with your own hands, blood, sweat, tears and ingenuity? How can you part with them? They are a part of your portfolio.

Yet there is a man who owns fewer personal possessions than my collection of black bottoms. Wow.

The new piggy bank

We took Iris to Girl Scout signups last weekend. Each potential recruit was given a gift. We all know what I think of goodie bags.

This gift was particularly annoying. The more I think of it, the scarier it becomes. Of course this new-style "piggy bank" is imported from China. That wasn't the major problem. The design of the bank indicated that it was intended to be opened frequently. That wasn't troubling to me.

Take a look at the four savings goals that one can switch between.

1. Beauty Emergency
2. Fashion Fund
3. Jewelry Fund
4. For Fast Food

All the reasons to save are for short-term instant gratification. There are no long-term goals like saving for college, retirement or buying a home. Those are the things that would really contribute to the girls' and our nation's well-being. My husband says the bank was clearly intended to be tongue-in-cheek. But I don't think the little girls got the joke.

In fact, I think that many grown women don't get the joke. Think about how many women spend their paychecks chasing the latest fashions before they even pay themselves first by saving for their future. This fantasy of living only for today is going to crash hard.

A savings goal rarely mentioned
On a related matter, I believe that women should save for an additional long-term goal, motherhood. Whether you aspire to be a stay-at-home mom (SAHM) or a career woman, motherhood is expensive. Don't hold your breathe waiting for the nation to tax itself to provide mothers with childcare subsidies. Start taxing yourself right now (this minute!) by saving up for the horrendously high cost of high quality daycare. Put it in a Roth IRA so that you gain the advantage of tax-free compounding and can tap the principal without penalty.

If you think that you even might want to remain a SAHM, you can use those savings if needed, to help pay the mortgage while your family lives on one income. This money will be expecially important because of the retirement money that you lose by not being in the paid labor force.

In California, the money you save before marriage is yours. It's an extra insurance policy. I hope you don't have to use it for that. I hope you use your savings to make your dream a reality. But saving for a rainy day (even in a place that never rains) will never go out of style.

Shipping Containers

In my little bubble world, I thought that shipping containers were something that merely clogged up the highways at inopportune times. I had never given any thought to what happens to all those shipping containers. I had assumed, that they were reused for shipping goods back and forth.

What happens, when the goods are shipped only one way? The shipping containers would be sent back empty for reuse. Surely they were too valuable to let pile up?

I was wrong. Read this article in the LATimes. The shipping containers are piled up in poor neighborhoods-sometimes stacked 7 high. The print version of the article has an accompanying graphic showing the number of incoming and outgoing shipping containers in Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors by year. (The graph is missing in from LATimes.com which is another good reason to subscribe to the hardcopy.) In essence, the graph shows the outgoing shipping containers remaining relatively constant, 2.4 million in 2005, while the incoming climbs relentlessly from 2.6 million in 1995 to 7.2 million in 2005.

earlier post: Goodie Bags and the Wealth of Nations

Goodie Bags and the Wealth of Nations

I stood in the party favor aisle at Party City and realized that the wealth of our nation is leaking away, one goodie bag at a time. All that useless stuff. All made in China. Our balance of trade, tipping ever further into the red. What are we doing?

Before that moment, I had resented goody bags only in a personal sort of way. What busy mother doesn’t resent having to assemble the goodie bags on top of everything else she has to do to ensure that her child has the perfect birthday party? (Let’s not even get started on why mothers instead of fathers are stuck with this task.)

Last weekend, Iris and I watched a 20 year old VHS tape of The Bernstein Bears Forget Their Manners. At the end of the party, each bear was expected to take exactly one favor from the single goodie bag as they left the party. So it is not my imagination. They have upped the ante. The individual goodie bag full of multiple useless trinkets is a recent phenomenon.

When Iris and I returned from a recent birthday party, I was upset to discover that she had already broken one of her goodie bag toys on the way home. When I asked her how she could be so careless, she replied, “It’s only a goodie bag toy. They break.”

If the toys are cheap and break easily, and the kids don’t care about them, then why are we still handing them out?

I spend the bulk of my time between LA airport and LA Harbor. I had another epiphany while driving on that stretch of the I-405 freeway. All those trucks laden with shipping containers coming from the harbor freeway are full of goody bag toys. While that may be an exaggeration, one has to ask if Americans really need as many things as we have. Why else would closet organization be such a growth industry? Why are low prices so important if we already have too much stuff?

Let’s start small. It’s time for détente between mothers. Just say no to goodie bags! Our nation’s balance of trade will thank us.

Google Saves the Day

Iris' birthday party came and went with only minor dramas. We ordered trays of food from The Loft in Torrance. Somehow, the dressing for the ramen noodle salad went AWOL. I googled ramen salad dressing and came up with several recipes. After reading three, I picked one, but used slightly less sugar. It took only a few minutes to find the recipe and make the dressing. When the AWOL dressing resurfaced, we decided that we liked the homemade better.

The Hawaiian fried chicken at The Loft is the best.

We painted t-shirts instead. One kid asked where their goodie bag was. The mom quickly hushed the child up and answered, "Your shirt was your goodie." I am so glad that someone else understood.

keywords: modern motherhood, goodie bags