Archive for January, 2008

wicked smart

“We’re okay out here,” he said, as he pulled up alongside me on his scooter and saw me checking nervously to see if any cars were coming. “Dad lets Gabriel and me ride our bikes up and down this street by ourselves all the time. We always watch for cars.”

“He told me,” I said. “I’ve never been around to see you ride your bikes before, though, so I guess I’m nervous anyway.”

“But we ride our bikes all the time when you’re not here, and you don’t even know about it,” he said patiently. “You probably don’t worry about us when you don’t know we’re out here.”

“So why would I worry now?”

“Exactly.”

It’s wrong to want a ten-year-old to be your therapist, right? Right?

dear internet,

I think you are making me stupid.

Love,
Alison

my year in cities 2007

In any other year, this list would be boring as all hell. Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, it would say, and who cares about that? But this year I went all over everywhere on my roadtrip, so I’m going to make a list. It’d be impossible to list all the places I drove through, so I’m only going to count cities where I spent the night. Asterisks are for places I visited more than once.

Fort Stockton, TX
Las Cruces, NM
Phoenix, AZ
Los Angeles, CA
Santa Barbara, CA
San Francisco, CA
St. Helena, CA
Eureka, CA
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Missoula, MT
Cody, WY
Rapid City, SD
Alliance, NE
Omaha, NE
St. Louis, MO *
Decatur, IL
Chicago, IL
Columbus, OH
Detroit, MI
Toronto, ON
Syracuse, NY
Royalton Tunbridge, VT
Peaks Island, ME
Somerville, MA
New York, NY
Philadelphia, PA
Washington, D.C.
Atlanta, GA
Oxford, MS
New Orleans, LA
Houston, TX *
Dallas, TX *
Cleburne, TX