More on the Twins

Did I say the computer and I had resolved our differences? Did I toss out there that we were now mature and reasonable and TALKING TO EACH OTHER?? I lied. I didn't mean to, I didn't want to, but oh how I lied. Having snubbed the mouse, rejected the e-mail and database management software and turned up its nose at sundry other things, yesterday it decided to develop an allergy to Illustrator. Quoi?? Not Photoshop, no Photoshop is just fine, thanks. Dreamweaver? Get on like a house a'fire. But Illustrator makes it sick to its silicon stomach.

So lets talk about the twins instead shall we?

I've been thinking about getting a scooter for months and months and months. My work commute is just long enough to make me feel terribly guilty for driving alone and of course as gas prices started rising sharply last year that just added incentive. I gave mass-transit a shot but between the under-funded bus system and a few other factors it was simply not practical. Bicycling would be another thought, but while the commute to work would be lovely for at least the bits with a reasonably safe bike path (down hill all the way) the trip back was not quite as appealing. Which led, naturally, to scooters.

You have to say it right. Scooooootah! Not a shout, mind, but a sort of mysterious hiss - sssssscoootah!

Honestly I've wanted one since I was twelve and saw an ad in Seventeen Magazine for a contest with the grand prize of a trip somewhere, a suitcase full of supermarket cosmetics AND a scooter. There was nothing cooler, I thought, than that cherry red little piece of motor driven freedom. I could picture myself on it too, clear as day tooling around town and parking with casual elegance in the school parking lot. I would be Audrey Hepburn in Rome for heavens sake if only I had a scooter.

I mentioned it once to Kirk when we were going to university. Imagine! I said, a scooter! It would be so... erm, impractical? He replied, what with the three very small children and the complete lack of income and everything. Sigh. So for years I muffled that scooter-yearning firmly and accepted the boring, four-doors-and-a-roof vehicles that got us and the kids and our various accessories wherever we needed to go. But I didn't love them, and over the last few years as I have thought more and more about the politics and ethics of gas usage the little scooter-yearning yawned and stretched and decided it was time to wake up again.

Which is why when Child 1 gradumagated and needed a way to get itself around to things like university and jobs it seemed the most obvious thing in the world to start shopping for a scooter for it. Well, sort of.

The most obvious thing in the world was to start shopping for TWO.

Twin 2 is mine.