Work Today, Gone Tomorrow

Hmm, this was from last wednesday - haven't been keeping up with this yet...

I have a job today. Only today, and only for a few hours, but a job none-the-less.

I'm doing some computer training for a designer I used to work with - same one I did the illustrations for last month. She lives on a houseboat and we're working out there, so it'll be nice. And I get to use my expertise, which also feels nice. So much about unemployment is so demoralizing, so it's nice to feel needed and able to have something to contribute.

This morning, Dane left early, so I got the kids ready and we were able to ride the bike and trailer to school. As soon as I had been laid off, one of my first thoughts was that I would ride the kids to their daycare on the bike. Portland is such a wonderful bike town and there are tons of families at the daycare that take their kids to school on their bike. I planned to do just that.

Well, three months later I was ready. We had to clear room in garage to maneuver the bike with trailer in and out. We had to get the wheels pumped up. I had to get a helmet for Quinn so that Reed could wear Quinn's old helmet. And i needed to learn to hook up and de-hook the trailer and learn to ride with it. So, it took three months.

But it was worth it. On the route to Quinn's school (the boys are in different houses of the same organization - one's for the little guys, 0-3, called "the little house" and the other is more the pre-school for the older ones called "the big house"), I pass by more bikes than cars. And the bikes are in all forms - hardcore cyclists, casual commuters, bikes with trailers, bikes with the "little kid" attachment that piggy-backs onto the regular bike and front carriers and european style ones and the oh-so-portland low-rider, feet-forward ones. It's such a more fulfilling way to take the kids to school - I get to have a fun activity with them first thing in the day.

At first, Reed hated the bike - the helmet at least, and being confined in the trailer - he liked sitting on the bike itself and pretending to ride it. He screamed the first 2 rides, and then he would fuss by the last few blocks to school, now he loves it.

Quinn takes toys along for the ride - today it was a buffalo and triceritops. On the way, he wanted me to tell a story about them. Quinn dictates the terms of the story. I say "Once upon a time there was..." and then Quinn will say what the story will be about..."a buffalo and a triceratops" and then i will give the subject ..."who were great friends - but it wasn't always that way." And I told the story of how the buffalo and triceritops became freinds because they both loved to butt heads. If Quinn doesn't approve of the way the story is going he'll interrupt and say, "No! they got in a fight!" or whatnot, so I don't really have much creative freedom in the stories.

After dropping them off to school, I rode to my local Starbucks and redeemed my "free coffee" coupon. They had taste tests this past weekend for their instant coffee. If you did the test, you got a coupon for a free coffee. So Dane and I stopped in every Starbucks we could find and collected about 15 "free coffee" coupons (one of the times I was happy to see a Starbucks on every corner). Hey, I'm unemployed and need to cut corners. Though when we lost Quinn's freshly-purchased reward whale (a $5 finger puppet of a whale that was promised him if he used the toilet all day), and I needed to buy a new one, I figured it was karma punishing me for taking advantage of Starbucks and giving the money to a local-owned private bookstore (so very robin-hood-esque of karma).