Doesn't seem fixed to me.

There are a few different kinds of bikes and I don’t know all of them but I do know two kinds - single speed and fixed gear.

Single speed is the type I’m borrowing from Krissy and you can spot someone with a single speed because they are either real slow going up hills or their bike is red and has a wooden basket and they’re riding it on the beach in short denim shorts. 

Fixed gear sounds similar but it’s not. You can spot someone with a fixed gear bike because they keep moving their feet constantly, even when they’re going down hills. If they stop moving their feet the bike stops moving. I should warn l you I have done no research to back this up, I haven't even read the Wikipedia page. I know nothing about how fixed gear bikes work.

I think a lot of people might say I don’t look like someone who owns a fixed gear bike and normally I would agree with them but what they don’t know is that my dad owns a fixed gear bike and I look almost exactly like him. I could probably stand in for him at a business meeting or family reunion, if people weren’t paying too much attention.

So actually I do look like someone who owns a fixed gear bike, just one specific someone.

I hope you didn’t hope to learn anything about bikes from this.

I will never make a cross-stitch.

For most of my life if I had guessed which was more likely: talking to a rabbit or talking to a rabbi, I probably would have guessed rabbit. 

Rabbits can’t even talk, I know this because in first grade we did a craft project where we made a puppet of our favorite animal and a sign with the sound they made, and my teacher said I couldn’t make a rabbit because they don’t make sound. 

“Rabbits don’t talk.” she said. 

“But they can scream.” I said. They can, they scream when threatened with death.

Hana Akiyama made this

First grade was a while ago and I’ve still never talked to a rabbit but a few weeks ago I was talking to a rabbi.

Rabbis love talking about life. The rabbi said life, is like a cross-stitch. On our side it may look messy, and we may not understand why things are the way they are. But the reason is that there is another side of the cross-stitch we can’t see, and on that side everything has a purpose and creates a beautiful picture.

I wasn’t that interested in the metaphor. Mostly because, to be honest, crafting metaphors have never done much for me. I appreciate a good hill metaphor any day, and I’m even pretty into laundry metaphors and airport security metaphors, but anything that compares my life to hot glue, sequins, beading, or needlework, just doesn’t really resonate. So I forgot about it completely until last week, when I was at the police department.

Chloe Giordano crafted this

At the beginning of summer I dropped my wallet somewhere in the forest, and considered it more gone than anything else I have ever lost. I lose socks and notebooks just like everyone else but this wallet was gone forever. To put it in crafting terms it was like… a very small piece of felt dropped in a shag rug? I really don’t love crafting metaphors. The wallet was gone. That’s the best way I can explain it.

So I replaced all of it and none of it was even that annoying. I got to learn more about how my bank works and got to visit the DMV, and got to talk with the woman who works at the DMV who told me that someone had broken in that morning and turned the thermostat to 85 degrees and turned all the faucets on. She wasn’t sure who did it. I had a few theories but she didn't think any of them were likely.

I told people that story for weeks, and if I hadn’t lost my wallet I never would have heard it. 

Then, months later, after I’d forgotten about the lost wallet and the new license and the DMV and the DMV sauna, I got a letter that the Portland Police Department had my wallet and I could come to a creepy warehouse and get it.

I didn’t think I would care too much about having my wallet back, since I’d essentially cloned it. But reaching through a weird metal security drawer and holding my wallet again changed everything. 

And suddenly I was incredibly into crafting metaphors, that cross-stitch one especially. Because this wallet had disappeared into thin air, and then months later, popped up in a different place good as new - there was even a $5 bill, a free drink coupon, and two forever stamps still in it. And there was only one explanation for it all:

I am living on the right side of the cross-stitch.

And now I can’t wait to talk to that rabbi because I know we will talk about life again, and cross-stitching will come up, and I can say I know exactly what you mean. I have tasted the other side of the cross-stitch and it tastes like a free drink from Sisters Coffee Shop, that the manager gave me because I was polite to other patrons, and I put that card in my wallet, which I dropped in the forest, and picked up in an evidence holding facility two months later. 

Life is one of my favorite things in the world and if life is what rabbis like talking about than I am into it. 

I would talk with a rabbit about it too if the opportunity presented itself.

Welcome to California

I thought I lived in California for a year but I was wrong.

California is actually located in Temecula, California; a place so California it's measured in dog years. Live there three weeks and that counts as almost five months spent in California.

Temecula is an hour from Los Angeles, an hour from San Diego, and an hour from the beach. That can either sound like the best thing or the worst, depending on what inflection you use. It really depends on how you pronounce the word "hour." Is that a fast hour, a quick fifty-five-minutes-and-you're-in-the-ocean trip? Or is that an hour of desolate unbearable wasteland separating you from anything fun? I can't tell you. You'll have to find out for yourself.

What I will tell you is that Temecula, California has streets so wide there are sometimes three left turn lanes. Three left turn lanes!

To me, all undeveloped nature looks straight out of either Jurassic Park or Land Before Time, and Temecula is the Land Before Time sort of nature, which is cool because most of Portland is the Jurassic Park sort.

It's the desolate unbearable wasteland kind.

My sister Bryn made me this mug to commemorate our weekend in Temecula so now everything I drink tastes like California. If you live near me you're welcome to try it. I live in Jurassic Park.

I'm partially ears

Last week I got my ears pierced - here's a picture.

One thing about having ten pounds of hair is that ear piercings for me are like stomach piercings or inside-of-the-spleen piercings for other people - they're nobody's business because no one can see them but me. 

It's hard for things to stay nobody's business when you write about them on the internet but something very important happened that I need to tell you about.

You can save $15 if you get a hoop earring instead of a little post earring.

I'm all about saving $15 and I figured I could spend a few weeks secretly looking like a gypsy and then switch it out for a post when my ear healed from having a hole punched through it. Right? 

WRONG. Putting a metal hoop in a piece of skin as fragile and rip-able as wet tissue paper is the worst idea I have ever had. The hoop earring catches on everything. It somehow gets caught on light breezes, and on music and smells. It keeps me awake at night wondering my ear's intact or if my pillow's ripped it to pieces, and when I finally fall asleep I wake up from nightmares about combing my hair.

Here is a useful chart of things I'm worried about my ear catching on.

I have more to say but my ear is making me too tired to write.

Write me a rap song

I run almost every day, but never in shorts.

I always wear running tights. I like running tights because they look like what a superhero would wear but mostly I wear them because I'm a girl and it's 2014 and so, I hate my legs. That's what girls do in 2014.

Boooo, legs, right? Hate 'em. I have the worst legs.

But then a few weeks ago all my running tights were all in the wash and so instead I put on shorts and, you guys. I was completely wrong. It turns out I actually have amazing legs.

There are some things words can't describe but there are other things that inspire millions of words, that deserve thousands of volumes of literature describing them and my legs are that second type of thing.

If I were a poet I would write poems about these legs. I'm not great at poetry but you know what I am great at? Legs. I have the best legs.

So now it's weeks later and I wear shorts every day and sometimes when I run past a bus stop or restaurant or dog-walker someone will yell "I love your legs!" and I keep running even though I want so badly to stop and talk to them because we have so many similar interests: I also love my legs.