Waiving in Beaverton

There’s an ad on Craigslist/Portland that keeps catching my eye:

Get Paid to Waive a Sign in Beaverton!!

Needed: Sign Waiver three to four days a week. 5 hour shifts. Minimum wage.

Must be willing to work in the rain.
Must pass a background check.

That just kills me.  “Waive” a sign?

I am also slayed by the admonition that all “sign waiver” applicants must be willing to work in the rain.  It rains every day here, and there are no indoor sign “waiving” opportunities that immediately come to mind.  So . . . duh.  And a background check?  For what possible job is a background check not required if one is required to stand at a traffic intersection holding a giant sign advertising a 2-for-1 pizza deal?

Speaking of waving, have you ever waved at someone you recognize across a crowded store, only to realize as you approach this person (still waving and smiling), that it is not who you thought it was at all?  And so then you are stuck, mid-wave and mid-smile, clearly an idiot, as this person who you do not know looks at you confusedly?  And so then you start smiling even more crazily and waving even more energetically to someone who you now indicate with a gesture of your hand is behind the person you originally thought was your friend?  How stupid is this complete stranger to have thought you were waving at him?  Clearly you were waving at that person over there.

That sucks when that happens.

I walked the girls to school this morning.  It’s not a long walk, and aside from the incessant whining about how Kallan’s backpack is too heavy for her to carry one step further, it is a pleasant walk.  I made the mistake the first time I walked them to school of carrying Kallan’s backpack for a short part of the trip, and so now I must pay.  Anyway, as we approached the school, their school bus came roaring up the hill behind us, and I turned to wave.  Which was apparently one of the most humiliating and embarrassing mother things I have ever ever done.

Just to be clear, I did not jump up and down with excitement or scream about how the bus was going to pass us.  I did not make weird faces at the bus riders, gesture rudely to the driver, or allow my tongue to loll out of my mouth like the drooling idiot the girls seem to think I am.  I simply turned, stopped, and raised a friendly hand in greeting.

Maj and Kallan both refused to acknowledge the bus in any way, and raced on ahead of me as though they did not know me.  I was confused for a moment – was I stupidly waving at the wrong bus?  No . . . I recognized the driver and could see all of the girls’ friends.  Friends who were, oddly, all looking at me as though I was some sort of freak whose tongue just might loll out of her mouth as she waved her goofy arm in the air.  Clearly, the girls were in for some shit at school about their loony waving mother.

So now waving at people is on the list of things mothers are not to do in the presence of their children?  What’s up with that?

The girls worry too much about being embarrassed.

Which they might get from their Daddy.

One of the first things Mark did after we got our house unpacked was to go get a keg of beer for his beer refrigerator.  Part of his explanation for this purchase?  The fact that the recyclable bottles go into a large open plastic blue bin that you drag out to the curb up here in Lake Oswego.  Mark was annoyed that the 6 or so beer bottles a week we empty would be on display for the neighbors.  He seemed to think that people in the neighborhood would be wandering around looking into everyone’s blue plastic recycling bins, checking out which neighbors were drinking how much of what.  It came down to privacy, he explained as he lugged the giant silver keg across our front lawn and into the basement.

What the neighbors thought of that spectacle, I would love to know.

Anyway, Mark is just paranoid, because the neighbors all have much better things to do than wander around making judgments about people’s garbage.

So I’m walking Jack home from the girls’ school this morning.  We walked at a much more leisurely pace without the girls, and Jack stopped to check out everything I would let him sniff.  Everybody put their garbage out last night, so there was a lot of good stuff to smell.

It’s not like I was going out of my way to see what was in the blue bins, but you can’t un-see and un-note what you have seen and noted.

Just between you and me?  There is some serious drinking going on here in our little Lake Oswego neighborhood.  Not that I saw or noticed.

Our garbage?  Coke cans and milk jugs and emptied fruit and vegetable cans.  All the signs of a wholesome happy un-dysfunctional family.  No sign whatsoever that in this house lives an occasionally slightly drunken mom who may or may not sometimes entertain herself by singing soddenly and emotionally along with her old Elton John and Janis Ian records.

The keg idea is looking like a very wise move.