Sidewalk Parking: A crusade

Today I saw this on the way to church:



I KNOW.

I have a tendency towards obsession, so I have to be careful that I don't turn into a single-minded anti-sidewalk-parking vigilante. Instead, I have a plan. First, I will call back the Captain Richardson at the police department and ask him if he passed my message along to the officer who does work in the north part of the city. Second, I will continue to photograph the offending cars and file the photos away as though documenting a science experiment, the better to present to the police department or mayor's office, depending on how things go. Third, I will continue to ask people not to park on the sidewalk if I see them near their cars. This can, as it turns out, have an effect. Because today, there were a few people on the porch of a house in front of which a car consistently parks with two wheels on the curb. Now I realize that it is not actually legal to park with any wheels on the curb, but if all of the problem cars parked like this, I would not be on a crusade. There is still room to get by on the sidewalk, so I wouldn't be forced into the street, and I wouldn't care that much. But cars like the Cadillac and Ford above have ruined it for everyone, and I can't start making exceptions.

So I asked the people on the porch if they owned the car, and then asked them not to park on the sidewalk. "But I have to park on the sidewalk," the owner told me.

Let me interrupt myself here to say that the most perplexing part of this entire thing has been the responses of people when I ask them not to park on the sidewalk. You see, I recognize that not a lot of people walk places anymore, and I assumed that the people parking on the sidewalk are just worried about their cars being sideswiped and want to give the moving traffic as much room as possible. But I thought that if I pointed out to them that they were forcing me and my children into the street that the people would apologize! "Oh, my goodness!" I thought they'd say. "Sorry! I didn't realize!" and then they would stop parking on the sidewalk. What I did not expect was a litany of rationalizations about why it's OK for them to park on the sidewalk. Before today, I had asked five people to stop parking on the sidewalk. Let me paraphrase their responses:

1. OK. (Then she got into the car and drove away.)
2. But I don't want my car to be hit. (This is the woman who promised not to park so far onto the sidewalk and also not next to the tree. Not doing a great job:)


3. But I'm only going to be here for five minutes.
4. I wanted to park my car in the shade. (This was from a postal worker in an official vehicle. This is how he parked it:)


5. Oh! Sorry!

So one apology out of five. Not a great percentage.

But let's return to today's encounter, in which the car's owner tried to explain to me that she needed to park on the sidewalk because the street was so dangerous. "Do you know how many cars have been totaled here?" she said. "But, you see, that is why I do not want to have to walk in the street with my children!" I said. "But everyone does it," she said. "That doesn't make it OK," I said. "You're not supposed to park on the sidewalk! Please don't park on the sidewalk!" and then I had to keep walking, because I am terrible at confrontation and was starting to cry, but I could hear her saying, "OK. OK," as I walked away.

And then! When we drove by later, I saw that she had moved her car! She moved it! Onto the street! I had to go out again later, and made a point to drive by her house to thank her for moving it, because she totally made my day.

But for those of you who have also become invested in this, know that I am not going to give up. Last Friday I was forced with my stroller into the middle of a very busy major street because of a long line of sidewalk parkers, and this cannot stand. It is going to take a while, I think, because it is obvious that the culture needs to change, but I shall persevere. But without becoming unhealthily obsessed.

Sidewalk parking

I live in a city, but in a suburban-looking neighborhood. There is a lot of off-street parking but also a smattering of multi-family houses without enough, so lots of people park on the street. Well, I wish they parked on the street. Actually, they park on the sidewalk. And I’m not talking about parking with two wheels up on the curb a little bit to make the street wider. I’m talking about parking so far up on the sidewalk that it can be challenging to walk by single file, nevermind squeezing through with a double stroller or a wheelchair. Consider these fairly typical examples:





The first photo is on the main street I use when walking to and from school with my three small children. It is a wide street with plenty of room for parking along both sides. The second photo is a side street off of the main street which is a bit narrower, but also less busy, and so cars aren’t usually parked along both sides. And even if they were, YOU CAN’T PARK YOUR CAR ON THE SIDEWALK. I have been brewing angry resentment at these cars for about four years now, getting angrier and angrier every time I have to walk in the street with my baby in a stroller and tell my three-year-old I will “meet her around” as she squeezes by the cars on the eight inches of sidewalk remaining next to the car. I kept wondering if I should leave notes on the cars asking the people to stop parking on the sidewalk, because I am pretty sure no one is thinking about the people who actually use the sidewalk for walking, but I’d have to leave at least fifteen notes, and it became ridiculous. I was also boiling with resentment about having to ask people not to park on the sidewalk. I shouldn’t have to ask them not to park on the sidewalk. “No cars on the sidewalk” is a fairly elementary rule of driving. So I finally started calling the police, but I didn’t see any tickets and by the second call, there was a definite “Oh, THIS lady again,” tone in the voice of the officer who answered the phone.

I have also happened to catch two drivers as they were getting into their cars on the sidewalk and said, “Excuse me, but if you park like that, I can’t get by.” The first woman just said, “OK,” and got in and drove away; I haven’t seen her car again. This is the second woman’s car:



When I pointed out to her that I can’t get by when she parks like that, she looked at me and my stroller and my preschooler and was clearly embarrassed, but still explained that the cars on the street “drive so fast” and she “doesn’t want her car to be hit” but that she will “try not to park so close.” I said, “I understand that, but I don’t want to walk in the street.” I also pointed out that she is parked next to an enormous tree which encroaches on the sidewalk, thus making it even more difficult to get by, so she said she’d try not to park as close to the tree. Got that? She’s going to keep parking on the sidewalk, just not quite as far onto the sidewalk, and not quite as close to the tree. She’s not doing a good job with it, though. The other day, she was still there, just maybe three feet further back from the tree. I still can’t fit the stroller between her car and the tree. Also, she is, as always, parked facing the wrong way. I can certainly understand how she doesn’t want her car to get hit by the speedy traffic in the street, though. I feel similarly about myself and my children.

This has become a pet project of mine. I met a city councilor last night at the senate primary (MA special election to replace John Kerry), and he gave me the name of a captain in the police, and I just left him a voicemail. So we’ll see.

A post that should probably have been three separate posts

1. Last Friday I had to take the kids to buy shoes. I also had some things to bring back to the Gap, so I decided to take them to the Stride Rite Mall B instead of in Mall A, my default mall, because the last time I went to Mall A and tried to return something to the Gap I discovered that Mall A no longer has a Gap. I know! I mean, if the Gap isn’t at the mall, where is it? (Incidentally, you know what Mall A now has that it didn’t used to have? Yogurt shop.)
   
   So anyway, I had to go buy three pairs of very expensive full-priced shoes, because I had managed to put off the shoe-buying until the last minute which unfortunately landed me between sales at Stride Rite. I would have taken them to Marshall’s, but I was buying Ann Marie’s very first pair of real walking shoes, so I needed an actual trained person to measure her feet. I also would have taken them to the shoe store near my mom, but I had to return that stuff to the Gap, so Stride Rite it was.
   
   I loaded them all into the van, and halfway to the mall Nora needed to use the bathroom. Twenty-minutes-in-a-Dunkin-Donuts-bathroom later, I loaded them all into the van again. We got to the mall and I went straight to the Gap. Halfway through my returns transaction which was complicated because one of the things had been a gift, which included a gift receipt, but they would nevertheless only give me the value towards a purchase right then or else mail me a gift card. Why on earth they couldn’t just hand me a gift card then, I will never know, but there you are. And everything in the store was 30% off, so I wanted to maybe buy something right then. But before I could look, JACK had to use the bathroom. So I took my gift back and off we all schlepped. While Nora, the baby, and I waited outside the men’s room for Jack, I scanned the directory for a Stride Rite. Which, as it turns out, Mall B doesn’t have.
   
   I wailed and moaned and gnashed my teeth, Jack emerged, and we all schlepped BACK to the Gap where I was going to BUY something for 30% off SO HELP ME. I chose a pair of pants and exchanged my gift for them while noting to the cashier that they were definitely not going to fit, so I was going to have to come back anyway. “Oh, we have a dressing room that the stroller will fit in,” he said. Meanwhile, it was 4:45 pm and my children were race walking (no running allowed!) around the store. “Not worth it,” I told him.
   
   After a stop at Kids Foot Locker for (full-priced) shoes for the older two, I found myself once again loading three kids into the van for a drive down to the strip mall that is about halfway between my house and Mall B because there is a Stride Rite there. We pulled into the parking lot, and you will never guess what is next door to Stride Rite. Literally next door. Not even at the other end of the strip; it is the storefront immediately to the left of Stride Rite. Yep. The Gap.
2. Kelly tweeted some time ago about noticing an under-mounted sink on a television show rather than noticing the attractive actor. I can relate to this, because I keep zeroing in on window treatments. My house has a lot of windows, and I lost momentum four rooms in. The problem lies mostly in that window treatments cost a bajillion dollars. You know what television show has some gorgeous window treatments? Parenthood. The oldest brother’s house has, at a conservative estimate, $5,000 worth of window treatments. Valances! Curtains! Tie backs! Fancy hardware! Custom Roman shades! Do you have any idea how much a custom Roman shade costs? ONE BAJILLION DOLLARS.
   
   But even though I lost momentum, window treatments became an issue when we took over the downstairs apartment. The sheets and towels clamped to the window frame weren’t really working for me. Because we had so many windows to cover, we decided to just buy inexpensive vinyl shades, which don’t feel that inexpensive when you buy them in bulk. Then there were a series of ridiculous problems which resulted in no less than five trips to three different hardware stores, an extra set of useless shades that we can’t return and don’t fit anywhere, and the kids’ room having shades just slightly too narrow. And there are still five windows without shades in the dining room and kitchen!
   
   I gave up and decided to rehang the blinds that we bought for the windows before we rented the place, but none of them fit. This seems impossible, but it’s because I threw out the blinds that were in the kitchen because they were gross, and the kitchen windows are apparently a quarter inch wider than any other windows in that apartment. Meanwhile, we had the woodwork around the dining room windows replaced, and the new trim is about a quarter inch narrower than the old trim. But that, at least, I thought we could solve by just asking Home Depot to recut them. I figured it would be easy; we had bought them at Home Depot originally. The label even says “Home Depot” right on it.
   
   Yeah, they wouldn’t cut them. And it’s not because they were just being jerks, it’s because their machines do not cut the plastic blinds, “But, you cut them when I bought them,” I said. “No, we can’t cut those,” he said. “But… they DID,” I insisted. “If they did that,” he said, “they weren’t supposed to. It’s against store policy, and they ruined the blade and destroyed the machine. We can’t cut those.”
   
   It was the “If” that rankled. “If” they cut them? They cut them. Believe me, 22 7/8 inches is not a standard width for plastic blinds. And that “if” really made me want to get him to admit that they at least USED to cut them, so I asked him how long he’d been working there. “Two years.” So OK, fine. I bought these seven years ago, when they apparently had different machines, because THEY CUT THEM. Which he never admitted. But he did give me some replacement mounting brackets for free, so I forgive him.
3. This has nothing to do with shopping or home improvement, but here is what I would like to happen on Sunday mornings: First, I want to sleep late. Second, I want to have a leisurely breakfast. Third, I want to go to the early mass so that the rest of the day is free.
   
   Somehow, I do not think I’m ever going to have all three of those things happen together.

Overly ambitious

This past Tuesday I had a work obligation that kept me out of the house from 7am till 9pm, so when we were planning the week's meals, I told Andrew he could make anything he wanted that day, but maybe he'd like something simple. "Eggs? Cereal? Pasta?" I suggested.

"You're going to be gone, right?" he said. "You don't like lobster. Maybe I'll make lobster thermidore!"

I swear, that is what he suggested. He was going to have all three kids all day long, from breakfast through bedtime, and he wanted to make lobster thermidore. For himself and the children. It's not that I doubted his ability to cook it, it's just... lobster thermidore? Really?

So we looked it up in Julia Child, and she says right up front that lobster thermidore is not difficult, per se, but that there are a lot of steps. "A lot of steps!" I said. "Maybe it's not such a great idea." Happily, Andrew came to his senses and instead of making lobster thermidore, he heated up some Boca burgers. For which he made fresh buns, though. He is quite capable. Just delusional sometimes, I guess.

Frankenbaby

I love it when babies are first starting to walk.

MVI 0323 from Maureen on Vimeo.

MVI 0347 from Maureen on Vimeo.

And here is a bonus video of Ann Marie playing a game she invented, called "Where's the milk?" See, she likes to have a napkin so she can helpfully wipe up her tray, and one dinner she started YELLING YELLING YELLING to get my attention. She HAS to yell, because I tune out the yelling. It's a bit of a catch-22. When I finally realized she was trying to tell me something, I looked over and she had her napkin over her milk cup and was signing "milk" at me. And a game was born.

MVI 0348 from Maureen on Vimeo.

But before you leave me a comment telling me how that is the cutest thing you've ever seen, let me preempt you by telling you that it's only because you didn't see Ann Marie calling us all over to her high chair tonight so she could give us hugs.

When engineers get mad

Last night Andrew and I got into a fight about fluid dynamics. Yep. See, I had been trying to recreate this weather experiment on cyclones and anti-cyclones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzqvGIAWHOk, but I couldn’t get the dynamic profile to fully develop. If you don’t have time to click on the video, just know that the experimental set up is a can of ice set inside a pan of rheologic fluid which is in turn set inside a larger pan. The entire apparatus is spinning on a turntable, and at the start of the experiment, hot water is poured into the second, larger pan. The setup is a model of the earth: The can of ice models the cold “north pole”, and the hot water warms up the equator (the outside edge of the inner pan).

In the video, you can see three cyclones and three anti-cyclones form, and in between them is a continuous line which is a model for the jet stream. But when I tried to repeat the experiment, I never got steady cyclones or anti-cyclones; I just saw small transient cyclones form at the “north pole.” The video is only a demonstration and therefore doesn’t give a step-by-step methodology, so I wasn’t sure which critical thing I was missing. One of the differences between my set up and the one in the video, however, is that I have a Lazy Susan, and not an electric turntable, so I couldn’t start the rotation until after I had poured in the hot water, but I was pretty sure that wouldn’t matter. I thought I’d ask Andrew what he thought, though. You should note that I had shown Andrew the video the night before, so I thought he was familiar with the setup.

But Andrew said the lack of rotation would make a difference, because the hot water would make hot spots. I blinked. What? Hot spots? In the outer pan? I stared at him, confused. “No it wouldn’t,” I said, lamely.

“Of course it would!” he said. “The hot water would make one part hot before it could get everywhere!”

Again, I was at a loss. Did Andrew not understand that water… flows? “But the water doesn’t just stay in one place!” I said. “How could it make a hot spot?”

I won’t repeat the whole argument word for word, although, actually, I pretty much already did. We basically just kept repeating those two statements back and forth to each other, with growing frustration. “It HAS to create a hot spot!” “But the water doesn’t just stay still!”

Eventually, he said he couldn’t talk to me about it anymore, because he was just too aggravated. I, however, insisted that we continue. “I think you are not understanding something,” I said, “Because it cannot make a hot spot! The water is being poured into an empty pan. It goes all over the pan! It flows!”

“Wait… you’re not pouring the water into the fluid?” Andrew asked.

OH THANK GOODNESS. So here’s what was happening. Andrew thought I was pouring hot water into a cold fluid and failing to understand that this would create a hot spot before the mixture had time to come to thermal equilibrium, something that I should understand very well given my degree in chemical engineering which is basically the study of heat transfer and fluid flow. But to me, it seemed like Andrew was failing to understand that when you pour water into a dish it will not stack up on top of itself but will instead flow into the pan, something that Andrew should understand very well given that he has POURED WATER BEFORE.

I tell you, we argued about this for a good ten minutes. And I think we had such trouble finding different words to explain what we were talking about, because what each of us WANTED to say was, “WHY ARE YOU BEING AN IDIOT?”

Use what you have

Andrew was holding the naked baby, having just gotten her ready for a bath. While I drew the bath, I noticed that this time, Andrew neglected to put a prefold diaper between her and his arm, the way he usually does in this situation. I turned my attention back to the tub and then heard Andrew yelling from the bathroom doorway. “Get me a diaper! Get me a diaper!” he cried out. But it took me too long and Andrew, already streaked with wet down his leg, saw the puddle on the floor approaching the kitchen baseboard. Because our house is so slanty, the baseboard does not actually meet the floor in a few places; for example, the place towards which the puddle was heading. So Andrew mopped it up with the only thing he had. His sock. Which he was wearing.