On the side of the highway, baby/Our road is long

Blurry San Francisco, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Beautiful things:
Bumper stickers I've noticed lately, which have made me laugh -

OUTTA MY WAY. I GOTTA PEE.

EAT BEEF. The West wasn't won on salad.

I LOVE AIRPLANE NOISE.

And my personal favorite - NIRWANA - which reminded me of when my favorite crackhead, Somayya, first moved from Pakistan to the U.S. as a five year old. As a fobby little kindergartener, she became famous for uttering lines such as, "I am vearing a west today and I live in Vest Sacramento." Also, the very first English word she spoke was "cupcake." See, this is why we're friends, even though we're related by default.

Three beautiful things: The transportation edition

Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

[From October 11, 2006]

- It takes me two hours to get to work in the morning, because two big rigs collided on the Sunol Grade on Interstate 880 and spilled oil across the freeway. Impatiently listening to the AM radio to pick up on any traffic updates, I hear the newscasters discussing their colleague's fascination with my favorite cookies: "Every week, he bursts into a new realm of snickerdoodledom."

- In the afternoon, I stop by Macy's for a quick errand, opt for street parking rather than the garage, and discover, to my delight, that there are still 42 minutes left on my parking meter. (This, of course, means I spend way too much time doing extra girly things like checking out earrings, spritzing on perfume, and buying my favorite lipgloss.)

- GMail IM from Z: "Yesterday on BART, a little 4 year old girl said, 'I have pigtails and you don't!'"

880 South toward San Jose

In light of my recent post on personalized license plates, these plates, which I saw on my way to work this morning, are the best ones ever:

RAADHEY.

Raa dhey.
Get it?
For those who don't, raa dhey, in various South Asian languages, translates to something like, Make way. And the driver - Desi, of course - was speeding along and switching lanes in such a haphazard, helter-skelter manner that one would think he was back in the motherland.

Every state line, there's a new set of laws

Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

License plates I've recently seen and enjoyed while commuting:

- YWEH8N
- I[HEART]GHEE
- OH B 1
- SOMONEY [on quite a dilapidated-looking Honda Civic]
- WISEHAG
- HARD2BHV

Also, I saw a freeway exit sign for a street called "Pasatiempo" on the way back from Santa Cruz a couple of weekends ago. Such a light, airy word. It's stuck in my head, and I find myself mentally repeating it over and over at inopportune moments: Pasatiempo

I just roll through town and my window's got a view

Driving home, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Generally, I will be the first to admit I'm a horrible friend. I rarely manage to pick up my phone when it's ringing, and then it takes me a week (or two?) to return calls. I don't respond to emails in a timely manner. I'm always right, and you're always wrong. Those are just a few examples.

I think I have a few redeeming qualities, though. First and foremost, I can be counted on to do or say stupid things, so that you remember it - and remind me as well as the rest of the world of it - for years. Like the time I retorted, "I wake up looking cute!" Or the time, during freshman year of college, I loudly (and quite justifiably, I believe) cussed Somayya out in the middle of general chemistry, in a lecture hall filled with hundreds of students. Or the time that - check this, this is a crazy story - driving to school one morning, I stopped for gas halfway, only to realize I had literally no money on me. And neither enough gas to get to school (thirty miles to the east) nor enough to get back home (thirty miles to the west). So, basically, I was stranded. After a few minutes of "Oh, shit!", I frantically called Somayya to brainstorm what I should so. Thankfully, brainstorming was not required; she drove thirty miles to come rescue my sorry ass, and enough gas was pumped into my car to not only get me to school, but also back home that evening.

Basically, if nothing else, you should keep me around for amusement purposes. I'll have lots of stupid stories to tell my grandchildren someday.

I got so sidetracked on my stupidity, I almost forgot to mention that my second redeeming quality in terms of friendship is that I will drive to the end of the earth, to have lunch with you. As long as I have gas money, of course. Lunch money, I'm not so concerned about; that part always has a way of working out.

Last Wednesday, I drove sixty miles to have lunch with some friends. Oh, I also had to return books to both the Women's Resources & Research Center and the University library, but we'll ignore that part. After all, I'd kept those books seven months past their due date. Returning books is just a convenient excuse to have lunch, as far as I'm concerned.

[For the bookworms amongst you, who are curious about such things, here are the two books I loved enough to have kept more than half a year past their due date, plus the third book that I had simply forgotten was still in my possession:

1 - A Life Removed: Hunting for Refuge in the Modern World (Rose George)
2 - Peace Begins Here: Palestinians & Israelis Listening to Each Other (Thich Nhat Hanh)
3 - Her Mother's Ashes 2: More Stories by South Asian Women in Canada & the United States (edited by Nurjehan Aziz)

You should definitely read the first two.]

When I returned the last book and apologized profusely to B at the WRRC for keeping it so long, she blinked and said, "Don't tell me you drove all the way up from the Bay Area just to bring this back!"

"Well, kind of," I grinned.

She looked horrified.

"Don't worry!" I laughed. "I'm sure I'll find a few other things to occupy myself with while I'm here!"

And I did, indeed. A few minutes later, I found the Lovely L Lady, and in no time I was lunching it up with L and surprise guests H#2 and Somayya. After that, a free hour, wherein L and I headed over to Borders. You know you've got a good friend, when her idea of hanging out includes bookstore trips. While L found a chair, I wandered aimlessly around the store and then settled down on the floor in a pool of sunshine by the front windows, with a copy of East West Woman magazine [Sheetal Sheth's on the cover! And there's an interview with VH1's Aamer Haleem, whom L - who is Sudanese - instantly recognized while this Desi girl didn't] and Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man? in hand.

Then I was off to Sacramento to stop by and stalk some old co-workers. I managed to find a parking spot on Q St., and had a quick moment of nostalgia for all the times my co-workers and I used to fight over the 2-hour zones along that specific block. The ecstatic greetings I got from everyone were both beautiful and mind-boggling. (They: Where have you BEEN?!, I: They really LIKE me?!). I was there long enough to gush over Z's stylin' hair, tease K about how tall he had grown in my absence, make fun of H#3's hair, laugh at A's bluntness ("I called you?"), and coordinate future plans to hang out with my girls (first week of March!). Perfect.

Half an hour later, I rushed to meet up with my buddy S at Cosi in downtown Sacramento, its only California location. I nearly walked right by him without recognizing him, because he had just gotten off work and was still dressed in his button-down shirt, dress slacks, and a tie. A TIE! "Lookit you lookin' all spiffy!" I crowed.

I love hanging out with S, simply because he is, to put it mildly, on crack. Anjum will back me up here. I was supposed to do a second lunch with him, but I wasn't really hungry by that point, so we stopped by Cosi to get some light food and sit around. I ordered a mint-flavored arctic latte, and then nearly picked a fight with S at the register because he busted out with his card and insisted on paying for both of us. Now, to be honest, I have absolutely no shame about letting friends cover my meals when I'm feeling broke. But when I do have money, I'm highly stubborn about paying my own way.

"Aww, let him pay!" said the girl at the register, who thought he was a sweet kid.

"No!" I said. "Take the damn five dollars, S."

"Happy Valentine's Day!" he said to me, handing his credit card to the girl.

I rolled my eyes. "You're a day late and, also, I don't care about Valentine's Day. Here's your five dollars, buddy." I practically had to throw the bill at him, and then escaped to the huge red armchairs in the corner.

I tried to convince S to come visit the Bay next week. I even picked a day for him, a day he's off from work.

"Oh, wait, I can't come; I have work the next day!" he whined.

"So?"

"So I can't come to the Bay, then. I'm working the next day."

"Child, that's why I'm asking you to come on the day that you're off from work!"

"But I'm working the next day!"

At this point, I figured out he was just trying to give me a hard time. I felt like throwing something at him, but I pointed out reasonably, "It's not like you're going to be doing anything important on your day off, anyway. What're you gonna do, sit around and watch movies on your laptop?"

"Basically," he laughed. "I do that at work all the time."

"What, watch movies on the computer?"

"Yeah."

"And no one notices?!"

"No, I just minimize the movie screen when someone walks by."

"Dude, you need to calm down with that, seriously."

He gave me a scornful look, and uttered the best lines of the entire day: "What are they gonna do? Fire me?! You can't fire me. I'm Employee of the Month, b*tches!"

I collapsed in laughter. While he continued muttering about his "Employee of the Month, b*tches!" status, I promised I'd photoshop him something about that convincing argument of his. [Check it, here!] I also added, "You'd better calm down, buddy, the month's almost over."

"What're they gonna do? Fire me?"

"Yeah, 'cause you're Employee of the Month, b*tches!"

Ahhh, it was a good day.

After gathering my laughing self up out of the huge red armchair, I bid goodbye to S and hightailed it back to the Lovely L Lady's place, where I modeled for and played with her shiny, new digital camera. And, then, time to head home! And, man, you can be sure all those miles (that's nothing!) were damn well worth it.

So... Anyone wanna do lunch?

Change views, not channels

When they said 'palm trees,' they really weren't kidding, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

[The "Change views, not channels" post title is inspired by those smug little San Diego-advertising billboards that I used to pass on my way to Sacramento everyday.]

Like everything else I've ever written, this is long overdue, so I figured I might as well get this Thanksgiving-roadtrip-to-San-Diego update out of the way so I can write about other things. However, I can't conceive of this being really interesting to anyone, so if you get bored you might as well skip the words and jump right to the whole entire set of pictures. And that was only some of them. Yeah, I know.

Alright, here goes my (probably unsuccessful, I can tell you that already) attempt at conciseness...

First of all, why San Diego?

I talk about my father a lot on this weblog - mainly about his obsessions with gardening, shopping at Costco, and trying to convince me to go to law suckool so we can finally have a lawyer in the family. I believe I may have neglected to mention the fact that my father is also an avid cook, "avid" being keyword for "experimental." His favorite phrase to use while cooking is, "Special recipe." His style of cooking can best be described as "everything but the kitchen sink." He's lucky that everything he cooks tastes wonderful.

One of my father's other obsessions revolves around someday owning and running a restaurant. In this fantasy, he will be the main gourmet chef, and I have a feeling the rest of us will be relegated to lowly kitchen help, like chopping the vegetables. Much like what happens when he decides to take over the kitchen on some weekends.

My father scrutinizes food daily at the table, whether it's breakfast, lunch, or dinner: "This," he'll pronounce, "will be a great addition to our restaurant, don't you think so?" As if there is no doubt that there will indeed be a restaurant. "When we open our restaurant, we'll call this...aloo omelette...and people will line up at the door to get a taste of our food."

In typical Yasminay-style, I'm making a short story too long. Let's wrap this up:

So, one evening about a month ago, the daddy-o was cooking dinner and raving about the latest edible masterpiece he had whipped up. "We need to move to a college town," he decided. "The college students will never be able to get enough of this kind of food! That way, we can make sure we always stay in business."

"Mm-hmm," I said noncommittally. I decided not to point out the fact that there was no way in hell any of us were moving anywhere again for a while. Whenever the daddy-o is feeling high-spirited and exuberant, he is just as easily brought down by comments he finds deliberately antagonizing from those who refuse to share his enthusiasm. This usually, all too easily, escalates into bad temper at both ends. It is best to be silent sometimes, even at the risk of being labeled indifferent.

"Houston," continued my father. "I think we should move to Houston. There's a good college town!"

I decided silence was not an option any longer, even though I knew this was a theoretical conversation. "Houston?!" I said. "Who wants to move to Houston? Dude, if you're looking for college towns, we might as well move to San Diego. They have a bajillion colleges there. Plus, they have nice weather, too."

"San Diego! That's an idea! And," he added mockingly, "they have plenty of warm weather and you won't have to wear your sweaters all the time." The daddy-o finds my obsession with sweaters slightly amusing and mostly mentally unstable. Much like everyone else I know. Shut up.

The conversation petered out eventually, but later when we were throwing around ideas of what sort of roadtrip to take for this year's Thanksgiving break (roadtrips are becoming tradition now), the daddy-o brought up San Diego, and that was that.

Alright, so here's how it went:

Day 1: Thursday, 24 November 2005

Driving down to Los Angeles, where we would spend the first night. All I really remember is, lots of stops for gas. Also, being shocked at gas prices near Bakersfield: $2.85/gallon? Good Lord. The sister and I were slightly annoyed because the Daddy-o thought it was a terrible idea for us to even consider buying an ice cream bar at one of the gas station convenience stores. FINE! we fumed in true little-kids fashion, and decided to gorge ourselves on all the leftover Halloween candy that my sister had wisely brought along. Good lookin' out, buddy. This is my favorite photo from that gas station.

Also: Stopping for lunch and prayer at Fort Tejon State Historic Park. A nice young man apologetically approached us in the middle of our lunch to say that their Pathfinder had a flat tire but the tow truck guy was unable to unlock the tire. He noticed we were driving a QX4; perhaps our tire-lock rod would work, and could they please borrow it for a few minutes? "Sure," said the Daddy-o, adding in amusement, "As long as you know where it would be, because I don't know." Apparently we have all these tools and things attached to the bottom of the passenger seat. Amazing.

The tire-lock worked, the flat was replaced with a spare tire, and not only did the guy and his family thank us about ten thousand times, they also gifted us with tin of cookies and waved a lot as they were driving away. Rocking!

What else... Made it to our hotel in Los Angeles, and I was in pain because my ears were popping from driving through the mountains, so I took a nap on the couch after unsuccessful, frustrating attempts to hook my dad's laptop up to the hotel's wireless network. I woke up to find him playing Solitaire/FreeCell on his laptop, an addiction I thought he had kicked, years back when he used to stay up 'til late, late at night, engrossed in the game on his computer.

Later in the evening, we had dinner at a desi [South Asian] restaurant called Bismillah in Buena Park. Eating out with the parents is always tricky, because my father doesn't believe in ordering whatever one can cook at home (he once refused to let me order spaghetti at an Italian restaurant), which also does away with the desi food option most of the time, whereas my mother is wary of eating anything other than what we eat at home. What a process.

Day 2: Friday, 25 November 2005

Woke up to this in LA. Yes, I was hella annoyed. But the fog (and some of the smog) started to clear away as we hit the road and the day got warmer, which cheered me up.

We were aiming to make it to Jummah [Friday congregational prayers] at the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD), and stressing it a bit because we thought we were running a bit late. But we turned out to be early. The ICSD is absolutely gorgeous. I wandered around stealthily taking pictures for a few minutes while waiting for the prayer to begin; this was my favorite, because it made me smile: warm fuzzy feelings!

We settled down for prayer, and I got sidetracked making funny faces at the little boy next to me, who couldn't have been more than two years old. He reminded me of Matteo, the toddler I used to work with as part of my Human Development lab practicum back at university. If my weekly Jummahs in Oakland have taught me anything, it's that I'm all too easily distracted by adorable little babies at the masjid. But I managed to drag my attention away from the Matteo-lookalike to listen carefully for once, and I'm glad I did, because the imam gave a beautiful khutbah [sermon] on gratitude. I sat there remembering my friend S's Thanksgiving voicemessage from the day before: "I don't know if you celebrate Thanksgiving but, hey, we have things to be thankful for: We're alive and kicking!" It was a lovely reminder, and I'm blessed to have the friends that I do.

Here was the funniest and most random (as far as I'm concerned) part of my Jummah:

Walking out of the masjid, dawdling a bit behind my mother and sister, squinting at the sun in my eyes, and hearing someone call out from my right: "Can't say salaam?"

The world always comes full-circle, doesn't it? It's extremely fitting that after almost exactly a year to the day that we missed meeting up with 2Scoops while he was at Jummah in the East Bay and we were Thanksgiving-roadtripping it to Santa Barbara, we instead run into him at Jummah prayers in San Diego. Very slick indeed. I always had a suspicion my life goes around in circles, but this just confirmed it.

Apparently the way to make my father's eyes light up and to get him to like you enough to give you his business card is to mention two words: BUSINESS and LAW. Preferably in the same sentence. Way to go, buddy.

Next up: Trying to figure out what to eat, and where to eat, for lunch. [My dad still laughs, remembering the words of one of the San Diego guys: "If you're looking for good Afghan food, you'll have to eat it at someone's house."] Finally, we gave up and settled on french fries. Yay! Then we hit up Balboa Park. Those San Diego people are so smart: they put all their tourist attractions in one single location, so confused people like us don't have to waste time wondering what the hell to do with ourselves. We checked out pretty buildings, the Japanese Friendship Garden [did you seriously think we could go anywhere without my parents checking out the gardens somewhere?], various other places, and, finally, the San Diego Museum of Art, which was totally drool-worthy.

Too bad I couldn't take photos inside the museum, because the galleries and exhibitions were gorgeous. We spent almost two hours in there, finally dragging ourselves away past sunset, and still only managed to get through Galleries #1-5. Out of twenty. Yeah, you read that right. The "Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting" was enough to keep the parents occupied, while I was mesmerized by the "Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self" exhibit. Right up my alley.

We spent the night in San Diego, and not only did the manager lady, Annie, 1) have a rocking Scottish accent [I especially loved the way she pronounced "laptop," and couldn't stop mentally repeating it to myself for days afterward], and 2) advise us to eat dinner at an awesome Italian place down the road, but she also 3) helped us connect the daddy-o's laptop to the wireless network, thereby earning our never-ending gratitude forever and ever, amen. It was to be the only internet connection we'd have for the three days we were on the road, and we were all twitching to fulfill our various online addictions: weblogs (me), Facebook (the sister), email (everyone).

Day 3: Saturday, 26 November 2005

We checked out of our hotel, stalked the ICSD for some more pictures, picked up lunch from Jamillah Garden, and hit the road back north.

The daddy-o, regarding San Diego's maze of well-connected freeways: "These people just won't let you get lost. It's terrible!" He broke it down easily for me, the navigational amateur-rapidly-turning-pro: "They call all their big roads freeways," citing Balboa Avenue - which is apparently also called 274 - as an example.

He didn't like Interstate-8 though. Somewhere around there, he started singing, to the tune of "'Tis the Season to be Jolly": "8 is a screwed-up freeway, la la la la la la la..." Good times.

Leaving San Diego:

Sister: "Daddy, are you going eighty?!"
Dad, unrepentantly: "Yes, is that a problem?"
Sister: "Yeah."
Dad: Why does that bother you? You're the one who said you wanted to get home in at least an hour." [Laughter at the exaggeration.]

Driving north, I decided Southern Californians put a lot of creativity into their street names. Some of them are really beautiful. Check:

Via de la Valle
Street of Copper Lanterns
Ava Magdalena
Bluebird Canyon
Boat Canyon Drive
Morning Canyon

And there was a town with the lovely name of Lemon Grove. Oh, and there's bougainvillaea everywhere! Absolutely gorgeous. The daddy-o and his inner gardener couldn't stop marveling at it.

The parents especially liked the Cardiff and Solana Beach areas of San Diego. "Let's retire and move somewhere around here," suggested my father.

"Yes," said my mother, "but maybe closer to where that masjid was." My ummy was really liking the masjid.

Around Carlsbad, my father started getting antsy: "Southern California is so boring. All you see is palm trees and U-Haul trucks."

But then we stopped for coffee, milkshakes, and smoothies at Orange Inn in Laguna Beach, which made for some cool pictures and refreshed tummies, and all was well.

We made it home late Saturday night. I fumbled my way out of the backseat blankets and the daddy-o's sports coat and tumbled out of the car onto the driveway, where it was so cold that my ears almost froze and fell off my head and I decided this was unacceptable and I'd have to move to sunny Southern California after all.

The end.
>continue reading

The ties that bind

The week before last, my mother and I spent two separate days visiting various relatives and family friends, which is a lot of time considering the fact that, since we kids have grown up, we've fallen out of our weekly visiting-the-relatives habit. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do start missing all those crazy people after a while.

While driving up to see the relatives, my mother and I listened to the "Rough Guide to the Music of Pakistan" mix CD that my brother had compiled for our father a while back. At one track, my mother started at the singer's distinctively deep voice and exclaimed, "That's Amitabh Bachchan!"

I glanced at her in amusement. "He sings, too?"
"Yes! Don't you remember how he sang all those songs in the movie we saw?"
She and I had just watched an Amitabh Bachchan movie the day before, and she still had it on her mind: "Yaadiya, us na putthar jeh moyiay, thi ke kuch karneya? [Remember, when his son died, all that he did?]"
"That was in the movie, Ummy. I don't think he really sang all those songs. Or this one either."
"Well, it sounds just like him."

Visiting the relatives is all about the food. Well, sometimes. There are very few people whose food I enjoy eating; that would be my parents', my own and my sister's, and Somayya and her mother's. Well fortified with kabob, halwa, samosas, and a parathha or two at the behest of Somayya's ummy, we continued on our way to visit other family members.

[Speaking of Somayya's ummy, I spent the majority of one of those days hanging out with her, and all I gotta say is, If you were ever wondering where Somayya gets her crazy crackheadedness from, look no further than her mother.]

I love 'em all, but they drive me crazy. As always, conversations invariably centered around my education, the way I dress, my career aspirations ("Umm, no, I'm not going to medical school; why did you think so?"), my car, and, uh, the way I dress. Basically, the usual. Not that they could say anything bad about my car though, because I've had it for a month now and it still has the new car smell. Take that! My mother laughed, relaying to my uncle the story of how Somayya's mother, upon hearing about my new car purchase, had remarked in amusement, "Oh, so it's black just like that one sweater Yasmine always wears?" Actually, that sweater I always wear is dark gray, thankyouverymuch, but vatever. I am obsessed with sweaters, seriously.

My uncle chuckled at this story and said dismissively, "We are old-fashioned. Our kids, they know what they're doing when it comes to car colors and clothes and things. We should just leave these decisions to them." My uncle is a rockstar. The end.

Reminder to myself: Ramadan is coming up, and I need to focus on thinking before I speak. After all, targeting the relatives with sentences like "I don't even answer my own phone; why should I answer yours?" and "Why are you giving us food to take home with us? Don't. No one will eat it" sound about forty-seven times more rude and obnoxious in Hindku.

[I hung out a lot with my nieces and nephews - both the really and the fake-ly related ones - during those visits. You can see some cute little kids here.]

Na lara gham

Driving back to my corner of the Bay Area this afternoon after dropping HijabMan off at the Oakland Airport, I merged onto the familiar Hwy-24 from 880, and, as the road curved down and then up again, the fog and gloom suddenly gave way to sunshine, and I couldn't help but laugh out loud in my car. I turned up the volume on my Red Hot Chili Peppers CD, pushed the button to slide open the sunroof, and held my right hand out through the sunroof for the next two miles. I hadn't done that for a while. It was the kind of perfect moment that you may not necessarily remember later, but you realize how beautifully, simply perfect it is at the time.

I remembered a moment like this from last winter - a different CD and a different car (my father's SUV), but the sunroof had been open then, too, the stereo had been turned high and I had smiled widely at the unexpected sunshine and fellow drivers stuck in afternoon traffic beside me, and the thought that had come unbidden to mind then, as now, was in Pukhtu: Na lara gham. I have no worries. Because the things I really need in order to be happy are simple, I suppose, as they were today: sunshine and warmth, loud music, the taste of mid-morning ice cream still fresh on my tongue, an encompassing view of the mountains I love, and laughter echoing in my ears from a few hours spent in Berkeley with friends, in this case, Somayya and HijabMan.

Last November, I had been driving home after dropping my father off at the Oakland Airport, and, while I'm usually his chauffeur of choice when he leaves on/returns from business trips through Oakland, that had been no business trip. That time, he had been flying down to Southern California for his former colleague and longtime friend Mr. R's wedding in Long Beach.

My father had driven to the airport while I lounged in the passenger seat and kept a watchful eye on the speedometer. "Daddy, you're going ninety miles per hour!" I exclaimed at one point, whereupon he slowed down and joking replied, "Now, wouldn't that be some way for me to go and die? Ninety miles per hour in a freeway smash-up!"

"That's not funny," I had snapped. "Bean and I spend just as much time on the road as you do, and we probably have the same chance of getting into a car accident. I don't think that's amusing; do you?" He was suitably chastened, and I felt bad for my snappishness, so I changed the subject and we spent the rest of the drive reminiscing about my father's friendship with Mr. R.

Mr. R is Hungarian-American, and we all loved him as children, even though he had a tendency to mistake my voice for my brother's whenever I answered his phone calls. He had an old, wise, and complacent cat named Heidi, and a dog named Lampoush. When my family moved back to the Bay Area several years ago and we children reunited with Mr. R, we were heartbroken to learn that Lampoush was gone, replaced by another, albeit just as friendly, dog named Bundi. But we recovered soon enough, after Bundi came to dinner with Mr. R one evening. The dog's high spirits had us in gales of laughter as he ran in lively circles throughout our dining room and courtyard, his tail wagging incessantly behind him.

My childhood memories, which revolve mainly around frisbee and table soccer, are filled with images of Mr. R hunched over the foosball table, trying to maneuver the ball without spinning the handles, even though spinning was shamelessly allowed in my family. He would follow a particularly intent shot with an "aieee!"-sounding grunt, and we kids would giggle and chorus, "'Aieee!' means 'ouch!' in our language!" In the summer, he would invite friends to his home in Belmont and we would tag along with our father. While the men played softball, we three would munch on pizza and occupy ourselves with the exuberant Lampoush and unruffled Heidi.

The fall that we returned from our eighteen months in Pakistan, we kids sat disconsolately on the sidewalk in front of our school one afternoon after our father had apparently forgotten to pick us up. Close to an hour after school had let out, an unfamiliar long, shiny black SUV pulled into the parking lot with Mr. R at the wheel and our father waving out the passenger-side window, and we jumped up in delight, all resentfulness abandoned. My father and Mr. R were laughing like gleeful kids themselves, and I remember envying their easy banter. They looked so physically different - my father with his slight stature and his dark hair and beard, and the ruddy-complexioned, reddishbrown-haired Mr. R who looks like he was probably a football jock in his younger days - but their ease and camaraderie with one another highlighted a deep, long-lasting friendship that has spanned decades.

When Mr. R called to invite my father to his wedding last winter, my father had been characteristically silent about his decision for a few days. And while I had been admittedly surprised that he would consider flying down solo to Southern California for a wedding that the rest of the family couldn't accompany him to, there had really been no question of his not going. It was obvious that he would go. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.

Driving home in last November's sunshine in my father's SUV after dropping him off at the airport, I realized that that's the kind of friends I want - the kind who, if they were to say, "Come visit, even though you're a bajillion miles away and I know you have a life and all," I'd think nothing of promptly saying, "Hell yeah!" and dropping everything and going.

Which, come to think of it, is exactly what HijabMan recently did for Somayya and me. Thanks, buddy. It was good times.

hamsafar.

After picking my mother up from our relatives' in Sacramento last week, she and I settled into my car for the hour-long drive home. After the usual impatient verbal tussles ("Why is the seatbelt always messed up in your passenger seat?" "It's because you always twist it the wrong way whenever you use it, Ummy." "I don't twist it. I just pull it in the direction I need to fasten it." "Ummy, you're pulling it too much."), I glanced out the window and noticed the moon, hanging unusually low in the sky like a large orange-red globe.

"Look at the moon, Ummy!" We both ducked our heads and peered at the moon through the side windows.

Long after I had pulled away from the curb in front of my relatives' house and we continued home along the freeways, I would periodically glance at the moon out of the corner of my eye and exclaim, "Look at the moon, Ummy!"

"Very pretty," she would agree with a smile. "It looks like it's traveling right along with us."

If my father were there, he would have predictably followed my mother's comment with a reference to "hamsafar," an Urdu word meaning "fellow traveler" or "traveling companion." I was reminded of the PIA (Pakistan Internation Airlines) inflight magazine entitled Humsafar, which I had first noticed on our trip to Pakistan when I was eight and which had resulted in my father's etymological explanations.

Appropriately enough, my mother and I spent the drive home listening to songs by a woman named Mahjabeen (literally: moon-face moon-forehead, beautiful forehead; basically: having a face as beautiful as the moon), a name that strikes a deeply personal, emotional chord with this family. The songs were performed in what seemed to be a mixture of both Pukhtu and Hindku, helpfully translated line-by-line by my mother, who would repeat each line after the singer, then turn to me and translate. My initial exasperation soon gave way to amusement at hearing my mother continually translate the Hindku lines into...Hindku, the dialect I speak fluently and use to communicate with her.

In a gorgeously fitting end to the day, I received, just a few minutes after arriving home, a text message from a friend exhorting me to "Look at da moon tonight it looks hella beautiful."

i got a fast car.

It's never a good idea to leave the house just a split second before your father does in the morning, because that means you're on the road together for the first fifteen minutes of your daily commute, and you can see the yellow fog lamps of his SUV shining disapprovingly behind you the entire way, even when you do your slick lane-switching maneuvers and he gets stuck behind some slow truck.

After you've both crossed the bridge and swished through the FasTrak toll lane, you split up, he taking 780 towards Napa and you continuing on 680 towards Sacramento. And because, as mentioned above, he was stuck behind some other car and so you didn't get to wave to each other at the junction, this is the point where your father calls to say goodbye and tell you to have a beautiful day. And because he is highly predictable, he also adds sternly at the end, "And drive slowly. You drive too fast, and you tailgate people."

You think of this weblog, and want to burst out laughing and point out, "But, Daddy, the whole entire world already knows that by now." But instead you reply meekly, "Alright, Daddy."

You don't sound very convincing though.

and who is he, mr. rand mcnally?

About a week after we returned from our Thanksgiving break roadtrip to Santa Barbara, my father remarked, "You know, I think we should go on a trip again soon."

"Oh?" I said. "Are the nomadic tendencies kicking in again?"

"Not really," he admitted sheepishly, "It's just that I kinda liked your guys' music." I let out a shout of laughter and yelled into our bedroom, "Bean, did you hear that?!"

On Christmas day, we packed the car again and headed back out to Highway 1 along the coast, but northward this time. We passed creeks and lakes and drove along the ocean itself, endless water that looked like sheets of glass tinted by a vast expanse of sky.

The daddy-o gave us the hysterical inside scoop on many of the small hill towns we passed by. Apparently, many of these are hippie towns that songwriters referenced in songs back in the day ("Hippie from Olema" – the tongue-in-cheek take on "Okie from Muskogee" – anyone?) where people supposedly used to grow marijuana. Passing by a horse ranch in the hills, the daddy-o said confidentially, "That's how he got rich, you know. Selling horses. It's all a front. His real business is drugs." Daddy translated Farsi songs for us, while we all made smartass comments about the towns we passed.

Re. "Olema – Population: 55":

Me: "Get ready, you guys. Population in the double digits!"
Daddy-o: "This is the one town where the elevation is higher than the population."

Re. the cow attempting to chew its way through a wire fence:

Daddy-o (suffering from caffeine withdrawals): "Well, he must have found some coffee on the other side of the fence."
Bean, jokingly: "Or marijuana!"

Later, my father looked down at the ocean to his left. "My bebe," he murmured, "used to say to me when I was little, 'At this time of evening, even the oceans come to a standstill, and yet you are still working.'"

I was reminded of a line from my Muir Woods post from last year: Miles out from the cliff, the clear bay met the unclouded sky, and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

The mountains and ocean stayed consistent, while the eucalyptus tress were eventually replaced by redwoods, majestic in their own right, but my childhood – and the lines of trees behind my house – taught me to love the eucalyptus ones above all.

We stopped in Gualala for the night (the daddy-o kept referring to it as Gul-i-Lala, with the Pukhtu accent on the very last syllable: Lala, we kept repeating in amusement. At the hotel that night, we turned on the wall heater (yes!) and settled down on the beds to channel surf, because this, of course, is apparently what children who were denied adequate access to television while growing up do when they go on roadtrips through the northern portion of the state. They watch cable TV to make up for all those empty, traumatic years. Right.

Horror of horrors, we got caught up on the Lifetime channel and three movies that were each two hours long, and didn't go to sleep til 1 a.m. "Keep your eyes glued to the screen!" the daddy-o kept sarcastically instructing us. "Forget 'glued,' I'm keeping my eyes rolled," I said dryly the first time around, but by the time he repeated it for the tenth time, my response had upgraded to, "Oh, I am!" Oh, the depths to which I have sunk! Disgustingly fascinating, what can I say.

So what did the Lifetime channel teach me? Babies can get switched at birth in hospitals in a case of "Mistaken Identity." And being too nonchalant and trusting with your social security number and credit card information will likely lead to "Identity Theft." (I'm paranoid now, thankyouverymuch.) And not only that! But even poor, downtrodden, disadvantaged teenagers can go from "Homeless to Harvard"! The end.

The next morning, we stopped at Café LaLa for some quick breakfast munchies before we hit the road again. How could I not fall in love with a café that had comfortable armchairs and bookshelves with a sign instructing, "BRING US MORE BOOKS! TRADE OR BORROW"? And how could I not love the girl at the counter, Laurel, who asked me, "Would you like extra chocolate in your hot chocolate?"

She was so helpful and good-humored that when I introduced myself and she said in response to my name, "I'm sorry, say that again. Is it like 'Jasmin'?", I didn't roll my eyes or do my infamous "evil death glare" with one raised eyebrow like I normally do, but only laughed and replied, "Yes, but with the ethnic twist." She gave us coffee on the house – "It's on me," she winked, gesturing towards the coffeepot – and did an excited little dance around the counter as she told us about her sister who works at the Whale Watch Inn in Anchor Bay and will be expecting a baby in May.

The rest of the day was endless rain and curving roads. As official navigator once again, I snuggled on the passenger seat with the thick fuzzy blanket, ate apple pie with my fingers, congratulated myself on learning to read the highway maps, and watched the roads, slick with rain.

On the way home, I mispronounced all the French names of the wineries throughout the Napa Valley. Where's my lovely L lady when I need her? Pinot, pinwa, what?

the open road for the travelers’ souls

I fell asleep last Wednesday night to the sound of my father asking, "Who wants to go to Santa Barbara tomorrow?" When we woke up the next morning, it was Thanksgiving Day and Santa Barbara was almost four hundred miles to the south. We showered, dressed, and packed in record time, far more efficiently than we’ve ever prepared for any visit to the relatives’ in Sacramento, and that’s only an hour away.

I will be the first to admit that I have an obsession with mountains, but this time even I couldn’t help but keep my face practically glued to the car window mainly in the direction of the ocean instead. Following the twists and turns of Highway 1 as we made our way down the California coast, mountains to our left and vast expanse of water to our right, we took endless photos and filmed the sea and otherwise thoroughly behaved like giddy, overawed tourists. Something in the (salt)water, I guess.

I was somehow accorded the position of official navigator, which brought back some déjà vu feelings of the summer when I was nine and we drove from California to Toronto, Canada, me reading The Wizard of Oz while propped up on pillows on the backseat as we laughingly renamed obscure Midwestern towns after imaginary relatives of the infamous Oz. Then, as now, I stared in bewilderment at the map, tracing my finger along the red, yellow, and blue lines, trying to unravel the junctions and interchanges with the tip of my finger, squinting at highways and interstates and the point at which one would meet another. This time, at least, all we had to do was follow all the signs labeled "South" (and, on the way home, those labeled "North"), so thankfully I didn’t make any damaging navigational suggestions or decisions.

In the hotel room the first night, I made a predictable beeline straight for the wall heater, where I stood for several minutes gleefully warming up my hands, and was finally dragged away only to watch Spiderman on TV. Later, I lay on the couch, reading Ray Bradbury’s short stories, while Bean listened to Josh Kelly and studiously flipped through her two-feet-thick, bajillion-pound biology textbook.

In San Simeon, our father kept raising his eyebrows at the hordes of tourists there to check out Hearst Castle, muttering, "Foreigners!" under his breath with mock superiority and outrage, while we laughed and retorted, "Look who’s talking, Daddy!"

Roadside billboard advertisements that made me laugh:

(1) "Big Bubba’s Bad BBQ"
and
(2) "BUELLERTON: HOME OF SPLIT PEA SOUP – Everything For the Traveler"

I hope the humor in these is self-explanatory. Or maybe I’m just far too easily amused.

I had a cough and cold, so I spent much of the trip listening to my father say things like, "Yasminay, did you take your Vitamin C tablets? Take two right now. Right NOW. And this is YOUR water bottle, okay? The one with the blue label. I’m putting it in THIS cup-holder. Make sure you don’t drink from mine. Don’t make me sick. What about Sudafed? Have you been taking Sudafed? Take two right now. When’s the last time you took some Vitamin C? THIS one is YOUR water bottle, Yasminay, don’t forget now." I’m five years old, in case you ever doubted it, really.

Bean filmed me singing the chorus lines to various songs, including Jagjit and Chitra Singh’s Kaghaz Ki Kashti, Sardar Ali Takar’s La Kha Wakhte De, and random songs from the Beatles (like Hey, Jude). And, just to clarify, this portion of the family video is not available for public perusal, sorry. Actually, even I haven’t seen it yet either, come to think of it. Sadly, the Haroon Bacha tape is currently down, so we missed out on old family favorites such as O Zarojaanay and Bibi Shirinay. We all agreed that our father’s version of Yellow Submarine is better.

The best part, hands down, was praying on the beach, and later on one of the turnoffs for a narrow mountain road where you could look down over the side of the cliff and see the beach and the ocean below. Gorgeous.

Our father translated the Pukhtu lyrics for us while singing along to all the songs, and approvingly drummed his fingers against the steering wheel when Bean played her sitar fusion CD. He also became suitably enthusiastic at our suggestion of listening to the Beatles. In the late evening of the second day, highly bitter at the fact that he couldn’t find an NPR station signal along the coast, the Daddy-o finally resorted to singing along with the oldies station on the radio. "Don't you know who this is?" he bellowed towards the backseat where I was laughing at him. "This is Bob Dylan!" "Bean!" I hissed at my drowsy sister, as our father continued loudly accompanying other artists on the radio, "Is this normal?"

And, of course, no discussion of my Thanksgiving weekend is complete without mentioning missed connections with 2Scoops, Audioblogger Extraordinaire [link is from the November 23, 2004 audiopost on Chai’s blog] from Southern California, who was in the SF Bay Area this weekend. On Friday, we were still driving down to Santa Barbara while he left me a voicemessage saying he was going to Jummah (congregational prayer) at SRVIC. Bean and I just stared at each other and moaned, "That’s our masjid!" Yeah, so the one day we’re not there. Geez louise. The next day, Bean and I were at a Unity Halaqa in San Jose while 2Scoops was also in the city, but we couldn’t coordinate a meeting because of our convoluted scheduling conflicts and stuff. So hey, next time you’re in the Bay, 2Scoops, we need to grab some ice cream and continue that list of all our mutual friends and acquaintances. Small world, man. It’s amazing.

Also, I ate a lot of french fries over break. And cranberry juice. And ice cream, too, of course (two scoops of double fudge chocolate in Santa Barabara, yeeeuhhh boyyeee). I knew you all would be proud.

something about the open road

While I was driving home on Thursday night, my rear passenger tire gave out. Thank God I was close to home and already in the far right lane in preparation for exiting. Twenty more feet, and I could have even been off the freeway, although, in hindsight, it would have been worse if it had happened on the crazy 360-degree exit curve, or on the semi-congested downtown streets, or mainly if the tire had decided to explode in the vicinity of my neighborhood, with its dark, winding, hella narrow streets.

So I hit the button for my emergency flashers, pulled over, and went out to look at the damage. I was expecting it to be just a flat tire, and so I was a bit shaken to find nothing but a bare metal rim and a few small shreds of rubber. Got back in the car, called home and AAA, and waited for the tow-truck dude to show up so he could do something useful with the spare tire. Refrained from telling the daddy-o that I had already been out there, because he kept repeating, "Are you inside your car? Make sure you stay inside. Lock the doors. Don't get out!" Meanwhile, I guess not all highway patrolmen are rude and obnoxious after all, because the one who randomly showed up offered to stay behind my car while the tow truck came, and then actually stayed until I pulled back on the freeway. "Thanks, I appreciate that," I said.

When the tow truck dude finally showed up and lifted the spare tire out of my trunk, I had to silently laugh at the fact that nestled among my running shoes and box of textbooks is H's soccer ball, the one he placed in my trunk almost two years ago and which I kept forgetting to give back to him, even though he graduated and returned to LA this summer.

As I stood out there on the freeway with six lanes of traffic whizzing by two feet away, my cell phone rang. I swear the boy is telepathic. When I called him back later to explain that I had been waiting for the tow truck dude to finish up, H tsk'ed and said incredulously, "You don't know how to change a tire? Yasminay!"

Okay, so I do know a few things about cars, but changing tires is not my forte. "Please," I snapped, "do you even know how dark and foggy it is out here? I wouldn't want to be sitting out here on the freeway changing tires right about now."

He laughed. "I don't know a thing about engines, but I'd have changed your tire for you if I were there."
"Yeah, well you're useless," I said, "since you're in LA anyway. And dude! Your soccer ball is still in my trunk!" I'm hoping that'll be enough incentive for him to come back up to Northern California so we can all go to Sam's restaurant and stuff our faces with chicken kabobs and shawarmas.

The next morning, I opened my trunk to take out a few books and wrinkled up my nose at the stench of burnt rubber inside. Also, I realized that the tire had ripped apart with such force that it also tore away the mud guard positioned behind the wheel. I mean, really, as if my car didn't look muddy enough as it is... Wait, so maybe that means the mudguard wasn't doing jack anyway.

In Somayya's immortal words (in reference to our lack of tire-changing skills): "We have to be boys about this, Yazzo."

So hey, who's up for: (1) Washing my exceedingly grimy car? (2) Teaching me how to change a tire? and (3) Playing a quick game of soccer?

cloudy days.

Last Saturday, while on the road early in the morning, I listened to the Burdah for the first time in almost a year. The recitation is beautiful, the solos are simply amazing, but I realized it’s always going to remind me of this day.

I either slept through or skipped most of the cognitive psychology class I took last spring, and so don’t remember much of whatever I did learn, but I still find it interesting – for lack of a better word – to note how, much later, our minds continue to make such heartbreaking associations.

what the dictionary doesn't tell you

SCARY: College students who pedal through town and campus on their bicycles while jabbering away on their cell phones.
See also: stupid, suicidal, oblivious, road hazard, hella annoying

Please supply further synonyms.

say good-bye to the commute extraordinaire -
- til we meet again, september 30th (or something)


winter hills


summer hills


hit the road, jack


the road less taken

time here all but means nothing/just shadows that move across the wall

I knew it was a red car.

Three boys and a girl were killed, and another girl critically injured, in that freeway accident last Monday. Local articles have referred to it as "grisly," "high-impact," "ugly," and "tragic."

It has been difficult to escape the aftermath of the accident over the course of the past week. You can see the red smudges and black skid marks all along the freeway wall, if you know where to look and what to look for. They're difficult to miss, especially for me, since I drove by just a couple hours after the accident, when the cars were still there, during the beginning of a week that turned out to be overwhelmingly stressful and disheartening anyway. Not to mention the fact that I now can't sleep at night without my overactive imagination conjuring up visions of me being involved in car accidents galore.

It has now become a habit for me to turn my head to look every time I drive by on my way home. The day after the crash, bouquets of flowers began appearing all along the chain-link fence and retaining wall that separate the city street from the freeway. Over the past several days, I've noticed dozens of people stopping by, huddling in groups, standing silently before the makeshift memorial. One evening there was a group of adults and small children. The next day, a crowd of teenagers. The day after, a blonde woman holding a toddler at her hip.

It wasn't until Friday morning that I checked online editions of local newspapers and read about the details of the crash. On an impulse, I grabbed a pair of scissors I found while rummaging through my backpack on my way out the door and quickly gathered together a rough bouquet of roses from the garden.

I called my brother while driving through town.
"Guess what, my hair's red now!" he crowed.
"Slick!" I answered absently. "Hey, is Main Street the one that turns into Contra Costa Boulevard?"

A minivan was pulling away from the sidewalk just as I parked my car right under the "No Parking At Any Time" sign, along the street running parallel to southbound Interstate-680, just on the other side of the retaining wall. (There was no other place to park.) I felt relieved to not have to deal with groups of people who had known the victims, to have to offer condolences to strangers when I couldn't even begin to fathom their grief. Freeway traffic whizzed by in front of me, on the other side of the fence, while four lanes of city traffic slowed down behind my back to catch a glimpse of the memorial. Standing on the sidewalk, I carefully threaded my roses into the chain-link fence, then stepped back to view the entire memorial. Amid all the posters, candles, balloons, endless flowers, signs, and photographs, two scrawled statements stood out to me:

Remember when we were little, you taught me how to throw a football.

and

I know you're break-dancing up there in the sky.

The four people who died last week ranged in age from 15 to 20. I thought of their short lives, and of my three speeding tickets and the over one-hundred-thousand miles I've put on two cars.

Sometime life is so ironic, you don't even know whether to laugh or cry.

still the cold is closing in on us

After four years, the sixty-mile drive to school has become second-nature. I scoff at people who complain about supposedly long drives, dismissively citing my own daily commute to school as "nothing." It has come to the point where I don't even have to concentrate on driving; I get from Point A to Point B – and back again – in a perfectly safe fashion, but without having to actively think about it.

Lately, though, the drive, along with everything else school-related, has been getting to me. Much of it has to do with the fact that the first summer session is coming to an end soon, finals are any day now, and second session starts next week. I admit there have been many good things about this session: sleeping in, eating real meals, hanging out with beautiful friends (and family) who inspire me. But, ultimately, it comes back to academics: I'm tired of not pushing myself as hard as I should have, of trying to prove myself – to myself – and not meeting the goals and standards I set for myself, of being at that academic "eff it all" stage that Somayya and I have joked about since freshman year, but which isn't really funny if you think about it. My GPA, for example, doesn't find it amusing at all. I feel like I'm wasting my time and my parents' money, and if there were ever a good enough reason for me to take a break, that's it right there.

I'm registered for second summer session classes, but just thinking of that makes me feel suffocated, as if it's difficult to breathe. I don't want to have to deal with another six weeks of feeling overwhelmed and burdened. Even with four years of year-round school, I've never before had such an adverse reaction to taking a class. I'm too young to be feeling burned-out, dammit.

Driving home tonight, lost in my own thoughts, I decided to join the real world long enough to realize that I wasn't even as close to home as I thought I was. You've still got forty miles to go, buddy boy! jeered the little voice in my head.

And I thought: Dammit, I don't want to do this anymore. Not for a while, at least. God, get me home already. Ten miles later, my exit at the interchange was closed due to construction, and I had to go through the drama of taking detours. I don't like drama, in case you didn't know. Finally, just a few miles from home, slowing down due to flashing signs and lights that warned of an accident, I glanced to my right and gasped in horror. In the far right lane, right up against the freeway divider wall, were the remnants of two cars that had collided. And I mean remnants in the most devastating way possible. All I could make out were crumpled bits of red metal, chunks of steel that I could have picked up with my hands and dropped in a trashcan. I have never before seen cars reduced to such minute rubble. If anyone in those cars survived that crash, it's a miracle of God. I drove the rest of the way home in tears, muttering incoherent prayers under my breath.

It was not a good drive.

I'm getting tired of driving, and I never thought I'd say that.

I want a full tank of gas to last longer than two-and-a-half days. I want to go running early in the mornings and take naps on the sofa during the day and perform my prayers punctually and spend quality time with my mother. I want to remember why I used to consider myself just as much an artist as I do a writer. I want to browse through Main Street and reply to people's emails and learn slick tricks in Photoshop and feel cool Bay Area breezes instead of waves of blazing Sacramento Valley heat. I want to do all the things I mentioned in that one list, without remembering that there actually is a list.

When my friends come to me with their problems (which seems to happen often, Lord only knows why), I generally listen patiently and give careful advice. But sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly intolerant, I snap, "If you refuse to do anything about it, you have no right to whine about it."

Looks like it's about time I took my own advice.

the sun was just yellow energy

Some people like taking a break and "getting away" when the stress hits and life feels like too much to handle. I, on the other hand, can't really complain about my life, so I randomly decide to "get away" whenever I want to, without regard for whether the days are good or bad. It's fun, spontaneous, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Yesterday, for example, I decided I needed a slight change from my regular commute. I exited the freeway soon after the Benicia Bridge, stopped at the overlook to take a photograph of the "Mothball Fleet" out in the harbor, and then continued on my favorite winding road alongside the freeway. I rolled down the windows, pushed the button to slide open the sunroof, and turned up the volume on my Switchfoot CD, easily matching the speed of the cars on the freeway to my right.

It's a beautiful drive, that one. I stopped a couple more times to take photos. Our father taught us well, raising us to love cameras and photography. My sister and I rarely go anywhere without a camera, while our brother is a drama student/film major who knows everything there is to know about movies and art.

I had to smile involuntarily at one juxtaposition: bicyclists furiously peddling down a rise, followed rather too closely by motorcyclists hunched over their handlebars. There were mountains directly to my left, and marshland across the freeway to my right

A quick stop for gas, and I was on the road again.

Forty-five minutes later, I stopped by at the public park. Discman and Gavin DeGraw CD in hand, I walked over to the playground and clambered onto a swing. The little girl on the swing next to me looked about five years old, and smiled freely when I grinned over at her. Awesome, I thought, There's one less person I need to teach the cheesy grin to.

I had been planning on swinging as high as I could go, and then amusing myself by kicking off my shoes and seeing how far away they would land. But I forgot that part, unfortunately. I was so busy concentrating on my CD and how much I was enjoying myself, that it took a couple of minutes for me to realize that the little girl next to me had initiated a subtle swing war. As I glanced over, she grinned mischievously and began pumping her legs to swing even higher. I couldn't help but laugh.

I stayed at the swings for an hour, watching elementary school students playing soccer, a young mother doing yoga, scores of children running through the playground, a toddler rolling down a hill, adults rollerblading along the concrete walkways, and teenagers perfecting their moves at the skate park.

As she gathered together her children, the young mother turned back momentarily to wave at me and called out something. I didn't hear what she said, since my headphones covered my ears, but I saw her mouth distinctly formulate the words, "Have fun!" I waved back, watching her walk away, and wondered how old she thought I was, with my headwrap and flares, dangly earrings and flip-flops, swinging away as if I were eight.

My friend, D, today referred the swing sessions as her "therapy time." I'd like to think I'm a lot more well-adjusted than D is, but I need what I call my "quiet time," too. So here's to random scenic drives and swing contests with little kids. Try them sometime.

just say no to déjà vu

So guess what. They changed the curve again. AGAIN! Cal-Trans, you're killing me here. Holy freakin' smoley, have pity on this Commuter Child Extraordinaire.