Let me get out my notes

While stopped at a red light yesterday, I whipped out a scrap of paper and a pen and furiously began taking notes of things to blog about. I had a feeling I wouldn't get around to doing much of a blog yesterday. When the light turned green, I proceeded to drive the remaining blocks home with an uncapped (and very inky) pen clutched against the steering wheel.

I went to the library yesterday, on one of my days off, to pick up a book I needed and I experienced one of the great joys of books. Remember when you were a kid, and your parents still drove you around, and you'd just been to the library to stock up, and you start peeking into all the books on your way home? Maybe you're in the middle of another book already, but you can't resist just reading a few pages on the way home? I love that. Now that I have to drive myself around, I have even less time to dip into them. Again, the red lights. Just enough time to get a feel for the book in your hands before the light turns and the cars behind you start honking and...well, it's almost better that way. Like the book is contraband. The world doesn't want you to have books. Not the car-driving, high-speed world at any rate. They don't understand your need to get a glimpse of that first sentence before you go any further. The world and I are at odds. I butter my bread to the edges.

One of my favorite things about fasting, and fasting being over, is that then you remember, sometimes gradually, all the good things you can eat. I tend to obsess over a few items each Lent - generally eggs, or ice cream, or what have you - but other delicacies slip my mind. Yesterday, again driving home, I was thinking about lunch options and suddenly remembered a little food item known as pepper turkey. At it's best on a sandwich with avocado, sprouts, cheese, and mustard. I'd forgotten that turkey sandwiches even exist! But oh, the joy of remembering!

On Sunday (Pascha) I had brunch with my family. No meal with my father is complete without a nutty story. This is especially true when there's company, as many of my friends can attest. No company being present, it was fairly tame, but I still enjoyed this story about bike riding. We were discussing bikers following pedestrian rules vs driving rules, the terror that would be biking across the Sellwood Bridge, and so forth, when my dad came out with this story about when I was a kid. He had a bike with a baby seat on the back, and would take me out for rides ("to give your mom a break before she went crazy") around downtown Indianapolis. One time, he lent the bike to a friend, who removed the child seat to use it, and then put it back on before giving it back. The friend, however, neglected to screw the seat on all the way, so it was just attached at the bottom and not secured at the top. So, my dad is taking me for a ride. We're in the alley behind our apartment building, and he swings his leg over the bike ("it was a girls' bike") and kicks off. Naturally, as soon as he started moving the seat tips back and out I spill.

My response? "I think this explains a few things."

Finally, I think, I am coming to terms with the (unknown) trauma of my childhood. I want to start riding a bike on occasion. I haven't since I was a kid - I never got a bigger one when I grew out of the 7-year-old-sized one. The whole thing about cars being on the road with me is a little scary. But doesn't it sound like a fun thing to do on a sunny Saturday?

Oh, and if you've had a chance to check out Tyka's photos of Easter, imagine the whole church processing across the church lawn at the end of the most rowdy service of the year (except maybe for the banging of the pots and pans on Holy Saturday), and me skipping along (literally), holding hands with a Sunday school student on one side and the four-year-old I've been babysitting on the other. Good times.