Rules for Irate Drivers

Okay, this is a bit of a rant. Forgive me.

All motorists should be required to commute to their places of work at least once on a bicycle. All motorists should be required to commute to their places of work at least once on a motorcycle. All bicyclists should be required to commute to their places of work at least once on a motorized vehicle. Do you get what I'm saying?

A couple of weeks ago, a bicyclist was hit and killed near Lake Calhoun. I've both driven my monstrous truck and ridden my bicycle near this location. The fury that was sparked by this incident on either side of the car/bike debate was immense. Cyclists claiming that cars just ram through intersections, drivers never looking, and motorists claiming cyclists break all kinds of laws and deserve what they get for pretending to be cars and taking up space on their precious roads.

And...both sides have valid points. As someone who rides my bike once in a while and drives once in a while, I've done dumb things on both modes of transportation (and for the assholes who say bikes aren't transportation, I'd like to punch you). I do dumb things, not because I wanted to almost hit the pedestrian who was cross 6th Street and Cedar Avenue legally the other day (oh, geez, dude, if it was you, I'm sooooo sorry, I didn't stop shaking for hours and I imagine you are still having nightmares), or because I wanted the truck to hit me when I illegally blew through the stop sign on the corner of Bryant and 32nd last week on my bike, but because sometimes we all do stupid things. I'm the first to admit that I'm a distracted driver. Billboards get me. The bad music on the radio gets me. Thoughts of what went wrong in my class get me. Oh, my god, this week I've been thinking about fucking ribbon* for our wedding invitations to the almost exclusion of everything else.

So, everyone needs to take their share of the responsibility. I don't know if it was the cyclist's "fault" that he got killed. Possibly he was doing something illegal. But if you're in a car, you have a responsibility to watch for dumb ass cyclists and pedestrians. Just like you immediately slam on your brakes when you see a ball fly into the street (seriously, when I grew up, I thought that was the dumbest driver's ed video in the world - now, since it's happened to me three times in the last two weeks because of the kids playing in the park across the street, I have a deeper respect for all I didn't learn in driver's ed), you take into account that cyclists do dumb things. Possibly the driver was not giving the cyclist right of way. I don't know. Frankly, I don't care. A person died. Everyone is responsible. So, some rules.

1) Don't scream at cyclists to get out of the way on the road. They are doing the best they can. They do have every right to be on the road.
2) Cyclists, don't purposefully do dumb ass things. Get yourself a headlight and a flashing light for the rear of your vehicle. Don't bike ahead of eight cars at a stop light so that you can go through the light before they do and then end up slowing them down in the end. Don't swerve in and out of the traffic lane. If you've got to be in a traffic lane, then stay in it. Don't make motorists anticipate what weird move you're going to make next. Don't wear headphones while cycling.
3) Make it clear what you're going to do. If you're going to turn left, signal. Warn people what you're going to do.
4) Respect others on the road. We're all just trying to get there safely. Don't let others die because you're a jerk who can't control his or her own road rage.
5) Try to keep your mind on the task. It's so easy to get distracted. Trust me. I don't think Biker Boy will ever get in the car with me after nearly killing that pedestrian. Cut the distractions. Does it matter that you've never seen that billboard for the Mall of America (stupid, NGS - look at it next time you go by on the bus)? Does it matter that your best friend is calling (don't answer the phone - chances are she'll answer it when you get to your destination in five minutes)?

Look, it is an important issue. There are so many cyclists in this city, I feel bad whenever I get in my car to go somewhere. But let's not realize that we all have the same goal - to get where we are going without dying or killing someone. Sure, if you're in a car or riding a bike, you should still enjoy the experience, but part of that is releasing your anger about things that are beyond your control. Stop being a butt-head.

*The ribbon is a source of consternation. We found the color we want. But it's grosgrain and I want satin ribbon. Yeah. That's right. I've become Bridezilla. Over fucking ribbon. Notice I said, "I want." Yeah. Biker Boy could care less. Yet he has patiently looked at ribbon with me in craft store after craft store and even made some half-hearted attempts to look it up online. I love that man.

Laughter as the best medicine?

So there's nothing really funny going on unless you consider having eight hundred things to do funny. Including prep classes (not funny and did you know that in a class of 70 undergrads NOT ONE knew that the 19th amendment gave women the right to vote?), figure out some boring wedding details (not funny when your father emails you that he "feels left out" of the planning), and having downstairs neighbors knock on your door at 9:55 pm and say, "do you work at night because you're really loud between 10 and midnight?" because, folks, are you 112 years old? Get over it. We had just gotten home at 9:30. Bite it.

Okay, but I digress. The stress is getting to me. So here's an email that I wrote that makes me laugh. As I reread it, it's not really funny...but maybe it could be funny if you were stoned...or if you enjoy pithy comments about people that aren't meant to be mean, but could potentially be interpreted to be mean...

Hi Other Teacher,
I subbed for your orientation lectures this week. Here's a rundown on the classes.

Your Tuesday night class at a hotel downtown looks like a good mix of students. One guy is unemployed, one is in law school, and a few actually work for a living. Plus there are chocolates and water in the room. I don't know if you've taught at this hotel before, but the white board in there is pretty small, so you'll want to take that into account when you're thinking about your boardwork (as much as anyone thinks about boardwork outside of an actual class, I suppose). One woman has a pug named Petula.


Your Wednesday night class at a different location is the one I am not envious that you are teaching. There are three students. One is an international student from a country that is not the United States. I'm not sure about his grasp of the English language. He didn't laugh at my jokes, but it could be he either didn't find me funny or he didn't understand me (or both, I guess). One is a 2006 grad from a certain local university who wants to be a real estate agent and wore the highest heels I've ever seen in real life to class. The third is a guy who is married to a humorless woman I taught in a different class last year. He appears to have humor, but you can never tell. None of them have pets.

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions.

NGS

The World According to Food Labels

We had some friends over for a low-key dinner last night. When we planned the dinner, one of the women coming over volunteered to bring dessert. I said, okay, you don't have to, but if you do, make sure it's gluten-free. She said she had a lemon torte recipe and I thought it sounded suspicious, but I let it go. If she ended up bringing something suspect, Biker Boy wouldn't eat it and he'd eat ice cream when everyone left.

So, the night before the dinner, I get an email about how she's making apple crisp and she found a recipe that called for no wheat, just oats. And I had to send an email back about how most oats aren't gluten-free because of contamination from fields and machinery. And so apple crisp was off the list. At this point, I could tell our friend was getting frustrated. I told her that she should make the apple crisp and Biker Boy would happily eat ice cream. Seriously. Happily. The man loves his ice cream.

She shows up with lots of goodies from a local bakery and some homemade sauce for Biker Boy's ice cream. And deep frustration on her face. "How do you do it?" is written all over her face.

It's not so bad. Dessert is actually pretty easy. Most of the better quality ice creams have safe flavors. There are lots of pretty good boxed cookies and making chocolate chip cookies isn't too hard. Gluten-free brownies are pretty simple. And, to be honest, if all else fails, the Wedge has some eclairs the boy loves and some marjolaine cake he enjoys.

Dinner isn't bad, either. Meat, potatoes and rice, and vegetables. Unless you're part of a family where the bread bowl is passed at every meal, most of your dinners are probably gluten-free, too. Breakfast is fine. Eggs are fine. There are some okay gluten-free cereals out there. Fruit is safe. Yogurt is safe most of the time.

But lunch. Lunch is a killer. There is no good replacement for bread. There are replacements, of course. But no good ones. A good replacement would be one that I, a glutenvore, would eat. I would eat the brownies, the cereals, and the ice cream. But I will not eat Biker Boy's bread. It is disgusting. Even the bread he says "tastes just like real bread" bears a striking resemblance to cardboard. He eats it and doesn't complain, but it's so hard to vary our lunch routine of sandwiches and salads. He eats SoyGen or Kind bars, occasionally we have cheese and crackers, but what are our options? There are no soups out there that don't cost a ton. We do corn tortillas once in a while, but we really just end up replicating our sandwich crap.

And I didn't mean for this post to end up about eating. But it's so vital to our daily lives.

And it's the one area in our relationship where I feel like I am a huge failure. I have mentioned before that I am not much of a cook. I can cook, I guess. I mean, I can follow a recipe. I'm not incompetent and I can read. But I don't like to cook and I'm not creative in the kitchen and I only recently realized that poultry spice exists as a seasoning. Biker Boy has never said anything because he's an adult and he can feed himself, but I really wish I could take some of the pressure off of him by preparing something safe for him once in a while that is surprising and tasty. My solution to being hungry has always been to drink a big glass of water and convince my stomach that it's full. But Biker Boy has to eat. And it's frustrating. I can't just throw a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at him.

But, whatever. It's not a life-threatening problem.

Good luck LBI. You're doing great and we're thinking of you.

Madness, I Say

I have a print of a pig jumping off a pier into water. Because, for all of you out there who don't know, I am obsessed with pigs. In a somewhat unhealthy way.

Anyway, this print is 50 cm by 70 cm. And it seems as if Target and Kmart don't make frames in centimeter sizes. The closest I could get was a frame that was like 22 inches by 28 inches and that was just an inch or two too big. So I bought the big frame and then went to an unspecified craft store and searched for a mat to put in the too big frame. I thought I was being clever because the mat would cover up the fact that the frame was too big. The biggest frames the unspecified craft store had was 16 inches by 20 inches, which was too small. So, at this point, I ask the unhelpful lady at the unspecified craft store about what my options were in terms of obtaining a mat for my new frame.

"Well, you could make one."

"Okay, no. Have you ever seen my knife wielding skills?"

"You could custom order it."

"Oh, how much would that cost me?"

At this point, she names a price that cost approximately double the combined costs of both the print and the cheap frame I bought at Target.

"Okay, no."

Then, I looked at the IKEA catalog online. Wheeeee!!!!!!! European sizes all around. The next time I have a free day (looks like that should be sometime in November), I'm getting a Ribba frame!!! Wheeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!

P.S. Bestest friend is having a baby today!!!! To say I am excited is not doing justice to the giddiness that is NGS....