Dogs, Romaine, and "Get it? Get it?" -- A Blog Post in Three and a Half Parts

After I came home from work, I was thinking about yesterday's post with the robot dolls used with dementia patients. The robots cost about $18,000 each. Why can't these nursing homes get dogs instead of robots? Dogs are way cheaper and have a real heartbeat. Fox was $250 from the Humane Society and he costs about $35 a month to feed. Sure it would cost money to have a human take care of the dogs at night and whatnot, but someone could have a business where they train and provide supports dogs for nursing homes.

Jack and I went to dinner tonight while the Boy was at soccer practice. When I ordered a Buffalo chicken, avocado, bacon and blue cheese salad for dinner, the waitress told me they didn't have romaine lettuce. Instead, it would be served with a spring mix. I said that was fine.

"The lettuce is almost a side to the dish. We added just enough to call it a salad," she said.

True that.

I've turned into one of those people who takes pictures of my dinner at a restaurant so I can post it online. 

They didn't have romaine lettuce it because it has been pulled from everywhere in the United States because forty-three people became ill from E. coli. According to the CDC, E. coli causes intense stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea, fever and vomitting. No one has died from this round of E. coli, but one person has kidney failure.
(<--Picture of reaction from E. coli courtesy of the CDC.)

So bad lettuce is pulled from everywhere in the U.S. because of bloody diarrhea--which has got to be really gross and uncomfortable. But what about guns? Forty-nine people died and fifty-three people were wounded in Orlando when a shooter came into a night club and opened fire. How come the day the E. coli break out occurred, people didn't rush to the grocery store to buy more romaine and stock up on caesar dressing and croutons?

After dinner, Jack and I picked up the Boy from soccer. He and his posse of other fifteen year old boys were hanging out by the parking lot, all full of swagger after practice. While we were driving to get the Boy dinner, the Boy was cracking up looking at his phone and shared a meme. 

"You can tell the Apple 6 Plus was designed by men because is only five and a half inches," said the Boy while snorting.

I was trying to navigate a left turn into U Village. What is up with that dude in front of me? Can't he see the green arrow is on? Wait a second, I thought. Did my son just tell a dick joke while I'm driving? I think so, but really? Huh. Maybe I'm wrong... Why isn't this truck turning? What a jerk. He must be high. Stupid legal weed laws.

I sat quietly perplexed while simultaneously trying to make a left turn into U Village while Jack tried to change the conversation. He told us one of his esteemed colleagues, a world famous physician in his field, announced at a meeting that he didn't know what a meme was.

"Wait," the Boy said. "Didn't you get it? It was a dick joke."

"Yeah," said Jack. "We got it."

"But you didn't laugh," said the Boy.

"We weren't sure how to respond," said Jack.

"I'm glad you got it," said the Boy. "You are adults. I shouldn't have to explain it to you."

Oh. My. God. Can I fast forward twenty plus years to when the Boy has a five year old daughter? Thank you. Mental note: Make a point to hang out with some women friends this weekend. Perhaps I can compare notes with my friend who had sixteen year old twin boys. Oy. I wonder if her house and car are also locker rooms.

-- Side bar: Which reminds me... The Northwestern Wildcats are playing the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Big Ten Championship this weekend. They winner of this game will play the winner of the University of Washington v. Utah in the Rose Bowl which is kind of cool. I've lived in three of those cities, but of course I am most hoping for an NU v UW Rose Bowl with an NU win. Woohoo! Go Cats! If NU makes the Rose Bowl, I will have to go to Pasedena. I digress.

And finally, the Boy and I were waiting at Din Tai Fung to get his dinner. A television in the bar had a soccer game on Univision, the Spanish speaking American television station. A commericial came on in Spanish recruiting people to the U.S. Army. 

Seriously. 

What is up with our government? Let's separate immigrant kids from their families but hey, the rest of you immigrants--feel free to serve in our military! We'd love to have you!

In case you have been couting, this blog post has more then three and a half parts, which is like a woman joke because when we tell stories, we lowball our weight, age and how much we actually paid for those really awesome shoes.

Brave New World

This morning I opened the newspaper before I went to work, as I do four out of five days. The front page of the New York Times had four science articles on the front page, and each triggered an emotion.

1.  The InSight landing on Mars. Emotion: Super cool! Awesome. Look what a brilliant group of people can do with $800M. Still, awesome!
2. Nursing Homes in France use Robots to Befriend those with Dementia. Emotion: Hmmm. This in interesting. I think. Maybe. I guess there is a shortage of people to do this kind of work, but people befriending robots seems really sad. Yet, if the people can't tell the difference, I suppose a robot is better than nothing. Is it different than little kids playing with dolls or stuffed animals? (The photographs in this article are amazing.)
3. A Doctor in China Reports that He Created Genetically Edited Babies. Emotion: WTF? Do I want to live in a world like this? This is creepy and outlawed in the U.S. and everyone who knows this guy is distancing themselves from him.
4. Someone Wrote a Mathematical Analysis on Crumpling Paper. Emotion: Huh? I am smart enough to understand this? And what about people who didn't study math in college? But still, kind of cool. Maybe I'll understand it better if I read it again. 

Scientific change appears to be taking place at break-neck speed. Even for me-a liberal/progressive from Seattle with a STEM degree whose married to a doctor--the news today seemed overwhelming. What can this mean to people living in the Opioid Belt, where people are overdosing on synthetic painkillers or meth? How can they grok this pace of change?

I suppose someone could argue that meth-heads don't read newspapers, especially the science pages with articles about crumpling paper. But Mars? Genetically altered babies? Those stories should make it to the major news channels.

The Gospel According to Michelle and the Bullshit of “The Dream X____”

As I was surfing the internet last night, I came across an advertisement promising I could save for retirement AND send my children to their “dream” college.

This is was opposite of click-bait for me. I couldn't read further.

I'm all in favor of people having dreams, but we need to scrap this whole idea of the Dream House, the Dream Job, the Dream College, etc. and replace it with the Good Enough House, the Very Nice Job, or the Pretty Good College. The focus of "Dream" implies that there is only one home, job or college that is perfect and everything else is less than, which is a load of crap. There are plenty of nice places to live, nice places to work, and nice places to go to college. Sure, we only live in one place, work at one job (except for people who need to work two or more jobs) and go to one college, so picking the right one is important. But there can be many good options, and they all could be right.

Think of these things as if they were dessert. Let's assume you like chocolate. You can choose from tiramisu or chocolate cake. Both are good. Is one a "Dream Dessert?" and the other a loser dessert? No. If you like both and you pick one, will you be okay with either? Sure.

I was walking to work this morning from the bus and was talking to my new friend, Slats. He works in higher education, and we talked about how the status of colleges is so influential in terms of where kids want to go. But is status necessary? For him, the status of a school implies you are buying an education, not earning it through hard work. With the emphasis on status, kids look at a college in terms of what it can do for them, not what they bring to the school community to make it a better place.

Which brings me to Michelle Obama and her new book, Becoming, which is awesome so far. She went to law school and was working in a big firm when she met Barack, who challenged all of her assumptions about what it meant to be successful. Even though he was wicked smart, he focused more on what he could contribute to the world rather than what it would give to him. Michelle began to doubt if law firm life was right for her, and was looking for a new path (page 146):

"I was realizing that the next phase of my journey would not simple unfold on its own, that my fancy academic degres weren't going to automatically lead me to fulfilling work. Finding a career as opposed to a job wouldn't just come from perusing the contact pages of an alumni directory; it required deeper thought and effort. I would need to hustle and learn."

I won't deny that fancy academic degrees open doors for people, but more important than that is "hustle," as Michelle says. Everyone--fancy school or not--needs to figure out their own path, and that will be a greater source of happiness and success, as we each define happiness and success on our own terms.

Which brings me back to Dreams Homes, Colleges and Jobs, and my conversation with Slats this morning. More of life--house, colleges, and jobs--is what we bring to it, instead of what it brings to us. I can find a dream house and never paint it or take care of it. I can go to my dream school and party away four years. I can find my dream job and become a slacker. Suddenly, those things aren't so dreamy. They lose their shine and appeal. Or, we can take a good enough house and plant flowers and paint and bake cookies and have friends over. We can go to a really nice college and have lots of friends and take interesting classes and attend campus events. Much of life is what we chose it to be.

Fox & the City

Jack, the Boy and I spent the our first night in the condo last night. Yay! At first, the Boy didn't want to go because he is a teenager and has to crap on any idea that isn't his own. Whatever. He got over it and was fine after he ate and saw the Warren Miller movie.

Last night, we were all ready to go to sleep around 11:00 or so. Except Fox. Once we were all tucked in, the dog started to fuss. He'd walk back and forth between the master bedroom and where the Boy was sleeping, his nails clicking along the floor. We put his dog bed upstairs, but that didn't help. He was lost like a toddler who needs to sleep in a new place but can't get settled. I don't even know where Fox ended up sleeping last night. I think he might have slept on the Boy's bed. Perhaps the Boy had empathy for Fox, thinking, "Yeah, they dragged me down here too against my will. You can sleep with me. We are a team." As if living in downtown Seattle is a prison.

The next morning, Fox came running to my side of the bed as soon as I stirred but wasn't awake. Fox wanted me to know he was there. Jack and I walked to the Biscuit Bitch for breakfast to get bacon and egg sandwiches, and we brought Fox along. I told Jack what I wanted to eat, and he went into order as I walked the dog around the block. As we walked, Fox pulled at the leash, in a big fat hurry to get I don't know where. He was skittish as he stopped, smelled, and peed on every lamppost, tree, garbage can, building corner, planter and patch of ivy. It was like Fox was Rube in from the country walking downtown, like he had never seen or smelled a garbage can before. For the first time in his life, he had to poop on concrete. Nor could he wait until no one was around because it is the city. Someone is always around, from the cute tourist couples getting breakfast to the crazy guy wondering if he is going to barf or not. Fox survived.

As I work in the same neighborhood as my condo, I have seen other dogs walking in the city before, who look and act like normal dogs, not like my hick dog. The other dogs act normal, blase to food scraps left on the street. Fox found something to eat this morning on the ground and he acted like he had never seen food before. You'd think he was some crazy mutt, not a Pomeranian-chihuahua for god's sake. If a lapdog can't be a city dog, what is wrong with the world?

And I was worried about the Boy being the blocker for the condo. Instead, it is the dog. Hopefully, one of these days Fox will turn into a civilized city dog.


Biscuit Bitch at Cafe Lieto, 1909 First Ave, Seattle WA

Le Pichet and My Dinner with Michelle

First news: We got a condo. We closed almost a month ago. Like when I ran for School Board, I stopped blogging a) because I was busy looking for a condo, b) I didn't want potential sellers to read my inner thoughts and c) once we got the condo, we needed find furniture and that was a huge endeavor. Now that the place is livable (minus kitchen supplies like pots, pans and food), I have a few moments to write.

The week before we found the apartment we bought, I thought we'd never find a place in a location we liked, in a building we liked, that fit our space needs and had a nice layout and was affordable. I thought our search would be like two circles in a Venn diagram that have no data points in common, never touching.

Just as I was beginning to despair, the Seattle Condo Gods smiled upon us and we found a really, really cool town home.

Tonight, Jack and the Boy went to see Warren Miller's latest pre-ski season, testosterone fueled epic.

"Do you want to go?" Jack asked.

"No," I said.

"I feel bad going out with Peter and leaving you alone," Jack said.

He should never feel bad about male bonding with his son. Ever.

I went down to the condo, dropped off the dog, and then headed out to find a place to eat. Should I have cassoulet at Cafe Campagne or go some place new? I walked around and remembered a place my friend Diane and I used to visit for lunch when I was a stay-at-home mom. So I went to Le Pichet for dinner, a posh French bistro around the corner from the condo. I sat at the bar and ate dinner with Michelle Obama. I got the last copy of her new book at Third Place Books today. The bookseller had read up to chapter five and was crying about how good it was. We joked about how Oprah was endorsing it, as if Michelle Obama needed promotion.

In the opening of her new book, she talked about a night after Obama was out of the White House and she had an evening alone without her family. Barack was out of town, and her daughters were out. This was the first time she was truly alone. She went to the kitchen to make toast, and there weren't any White House kitchen staff there helping her watch the bread turn brown. She loves her family and her old life, of course, but still she had a night alone. And it was awesome.

As I was eating my steak, I overheard a man tell his wife how he needed her to support him working more. She listened quietly, and drank more wine. I looked out the window, watching city life go by. I left the restaurant, walked down the block and around the corner, and I was home. Fox was waiting for me at the door. I don't think he left the door since I left for dinner. I took him for a walk along the waterfront.

It was awesome.

Le Pichet, 1933 First Avenue, Seattle WA