Bicycle
Only 31 percent of children who live less than one mile from school walk there.  Half of all students go to school by car.  If just 6 percent of those students who go by car walked, it would save 1.5 million dropoffs and pickups - and sixty thousand gallons of gasoline - a day!

From those nice folks at the green book.

As you already know, Little Boy and Sister Bear do walk to/from school, a fact that we are very proud of.  They may be the only kids in their school that are walkers and we are proud of that.  

Little's MRI came back normal. I can start on that D&D diary now.

(See "recent diaries.")

Anyway, mom's leaving for Germany tomorrow.  I'm feeling tense with lack of dissertation progress.  I was supposed to have another chapter under my belt by now, and there's just not a whole lot there yet.

Mom's cat cracked me up last night.   It took him about 24 hours to realize there was another cat in the house.  He was laying around, then started sniffing, then followed the scent up the stairs.  When he got to the room where my cat's hanging out, he saw the food and lost interest in the other cat.

Anyway, was planning on going to the library to get away from the upheaval, but ended up writing a diary instead.

tomorrow.  My mood has definitely improved, but I still mutter to myself when I'm thinking about some things.

My eating plan continues to go relatively smoothly.  I have a lot of stuff in the refrigerator that I need to chop and portion out and freeze, though.  This week is dealing with snacking.

I walked to school in 4th grade, and my junior and senior years in high school.  We lived too far away when I was in 1st-3rd, and junior high through sophomore year, and we only did it on the rare occasions when we missed the bus when I was in 5th & 6th grades.  The bus stop for junior high and high school students was at the bottom of the hill that the grade school was on top of, so the distance wasn't impossible, but the hill at the end was kind of steep.

until I got my first car at seventeen.

My grade school was five miles away, the middle and high school even further. So no walking to anything for me, or even biking as a kid.

Now, of course, I live in town, so I can walk places. And I don't walk to the library because most of the time if I want to research non-fiction, hello, intarwebz! and I want to be driven if I go to read fiction, because otherwise I stumble out at closing, drunk on prose, and that's not safe.

Lunch today was fried fish and french fries. It would have been baked potatoes, but I didn't store them properly and they sprouted. Ooops.

My brother is hoping to hear back from his friend, who is bidding to replace a Spanish tile roof. He is eagerly waiting to help pay for things.

Soon to be ex-weeds, we hope. They got blasted with RoundUp on Saturday. We are the least proficient gardeners you've ever met, and our neighbors' vicious, snarling dogs are bad enough when they snarl at us while we're in our kitchen, let alone when we go out in the backyard. Poor Scout, we bought this house specifically because we wanted a nice, big yard for a dog, and we can't even let her out in it.

My school district's policy was that elementary school kids could walk half a mile, middle school one mile, high school two miles. As the crow flies. Period. You lived within that distance, you walked: no bus, and if you were 17, you still weren't allowed to park on-campus like most 17-year-olds could. In high school, I had a friend who lived exactly two miles away as the crow flies ... on a loopy road that made her morning walk more like 3½ miles. To be at school by 7:45 am, she had to leave the house well before 7:00. Carrying the 20lbs or so of books that good students needed for all their Advanced Placement classes.

On the other hand, I lived 2 miles from my elementary school and nearly 10 from my middle and high schools, so I took the bus every day, except when my mother (a substitute, and then permanent, teacher) could drop me off.

nothing new about that, unfortunately. I'm tired of gray skies; I'd love to see the sun.

I'm supposed to be working on a powerpoint for a class I'm giving on the trinity tomorrow and Wednesday, but instead I cleaned the kitchen--which desperately needed it, but the powerpoint needs to get done too. And I made cookies. And shopped for books. Avoidance, anyone?

Ugh.

I'm on the couch, huddled under a blanket.  No heat; that was turned off a couple of weeks ago.  I dragged out my electric heater and have a chicken breast in the oven.  And then I may make some muffins.  I just did the dishes, mainly so I could put my hands in some hot water.  

Rainy and windy all night; there are branches down all over the place.  I've heard reports of flooding but nothing around here.  Mom called to say the stream is up but otherwise they are fine.  I will be glad to see some warmth again.

A friend emailed me; he'd been unemployed the last time I talked to him, but he's working again!  Woo hoo!

OK, back to huddling under the blanket.  I think I'll start learning to knit and make myself a bunch of thick wool socks for days like this...

everyday, until the latter years of high school when The Boyfriend (later DH) and I were in the dual enrollment program.  We hiked to the bus, to the subway, and rode downtown to college twice or three times a week.  Later on he got a car and we drove.

I am growing mold and cockroaches.  And a toddler.

I am preheating the oven now for a meatloaf, and I have chicken poaching on top of the stove for a chicken pie for tomorrow's lunch.

like you, we have frost until May 31 here and I need to finish the semester before anything else gets tackled--the deck needs to be stained before I start on the garden too.

I walked to elementary school in Nebraska and New Jersey.  Middle School and High School were much farther away--took the bus or forced Mom to take me if I was running late.  I HATED the bus--ick poohy--mean ugly boys on it.  

I have done it all.

• walk to school
• ride bike to school, (trusty old stingray!)
• ride bus to school, (I did live out in the country you know!)
• drove one of these:

• then ... drove one of these:

• My older brother wrapped the El Camino around a telephone pole; so I went back to bicycle in college.

... plus, I was too poor in college to afford much else other than a bicycle!

Thank goodness the weekend is over. Today was a much better day.

I mailed the letter to my church this morning; let's pray for a good outcome there.

This afternoon I figured out something at work that I've been thrashing on for weeks, so that was a Good Thing. (Of course, I just looked it over again and now I'm a bit confused again; but at least I've made fundamental progress compared to where I was on friday.) Got a few other good things accomplished at work, too.

I was even motivated to have a salad for dinner tonight, and pick up some cucumber, apple, and anise to make a little salad with to take to work tomorrow for supper. We'll see how that works out. I nibbled a bit as I went too.

School: I walked to school most of my life:

K-2: Public school was about 3 blocks away, and I walked.

3-4: Catholic school was 10 blocks away, and I walked. (Home for lunch, too, except after my brother got there & they decided he was too little to do all that.)

We moved the summer after 4th grade:

5-6: Catholic school was something over a mile away; rode the bus.

7. Catholic school was 3 miles away; rode the bus.

The school moved to a different building that summer.

8-9: Catholic school was 2.5 miles away. Rode the bus sometimes, walked sometimes. (I have vivid memories of walking in beautiful spring weather in 8th grade.)

10-12: High school was just under 2 miles away & I was not eligible for the bus. Walked.

And then in college I lived on campus all 4 years and walked everywhere, except to voice lessons which were downtown. I loved walking to church. I wish I could still do that. :sigh: