Where to Be Rich in LA

House hunting brings out the demographer/sociologist in me. I haven't lived here long enough to have a total handle on what are the "good" and "bad" areas, but I'm starting to get some ideas.

(I apologize in advance for all the feathers I'm about to ruffle.)

Areas that are good tend to have:

• Rich people
• White people
• Maybe Asian people
• "Good" schools as defined by a score of 8+ on Great Schools
• Well-funded public services
• Crime that is not overt

Areas that are bad tend to have:

• Poor people
• Brown people
• Black people
• Asian people who aren't integrated into mainstream American culture
• "Bad" schools (scores 1-3)
• Poorly funded public services
• Visible crime, graffiti, gangs
• Noise and/or pollution

You know what I see as the main differences on these lists? Socioeconomic status and race. So if I ask myself, "Where should we live?" what I'm really wondering is, what kind of white people are we? Statistically speaking, our income puts us in the third quartile for Pasadena (between 50-75% of median). I feel awkward calling myself rich, but I think it might be true.

Then I see these lists like "Best Places to Raise a Family Around LA" which should be titled "Where Rich People Live." I mean seriously, #1 on the list is Manhattan Beach, where the average sales price of a three bedroom home is $1.8 million. So I guess my family is richer than we are poor, but we're not rich rich.

The point I'm trying to make here is that one can't just choose to be rich. In many cases, the deck is stacked against you from the start. And we can't keep using socioeconomic status as a proxy variable for everything in life. Which leads me to the following scatter plot:



(If that's not displaying properly on your device, or you'd like to see the supporting data, click here.)

What are we seeing in this chart? 
A correlation between a school's rating on Great Schools and the percentage of its student body that is low income, which means qualifying for free or reduced-price lunch. (As an aside, that is really poor around here because there's no adjustment made to the calculations to factor in cost of living in your particular area within the lower 48 states.)

What are we not seeing?
A large portion of the not-low-income families in Pasadena that are not represented on this chart, because their children aren't enrolled in these schools.

Pasadena Unified School District has kind of a mixed reputation around here. In the 1970s, the district was ordered to bus students to end de-facto segregation, a bit of history I haven't found anyone too eager to talk about. As of 2016, only 55% of students living in PUSD boundaries attended public schools. The rest are in charter, private, home school, or transfer out of the district. At the same time, there are several schools with new magnet programs focused on STEM, Arts, and IB, and they also offer dual language options. I'm familiar with a group called Pasadena Education Network that seems to be doing good work towards promoting integrated schools. So overall, I'm observing some positive trajectory.

Where should I try to buy a house, then? (I mean, assuming we stay in Pasadena. We also have been looking around Glendale and Eagle Rock, which is a whole other ball of wax.) To complicate matters, PUSD offers open enrollment, meaning that if you don't want your student to attend your neighborhood school, you can go through a lottery system to obtain a seat for your child at a different school. So it doesn't even really matter, school-wise, where we buy because we can put the kids in a different school. We just have to give them a ride.

But you see that? How privileged am I that the need to provide transportation daily to/from a school a few miles away wouldn't even give me pause? We are a two parent family with only one of us working outside the home right now. We have the resources to pay for a vehicle, gas, and insurance. I'm not trying to work two minimum wage jobs just to keep food on the table here. And I have the mental bandwidth to think about all these things two years before my kids will even start kindergarten.

What a world we live in.

If you want to learn more about these topics, here are some resources I recommend:

• How America's Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty (TED talk by Kandice Sumner)
• Follow Integrated Schools on Facebook
• "The Problem with Great Schools" inspired me to write this post

A Day in the Life, Year 3

It's time for my annual post, "What I did all day." I started this tradition when the boys were first born and I'll keep going as long as I remember :)  On the first Friday of January (that is not January 1st), I record everything I do over the course of the day. Since my kids are generally with me, it's also a log of their activities.

The rule I have for myself is that I should try to have a normal day - not doing special things just because I want everyone on the internet to know how cool I am. And I don't have to publish every single happening, especially if it involves something like bodily functions that may embarrass the children in the future.

I can tell I have more time on my hands these days and/or more functional brain cells b/c my notes from today are rather long!

January 5, 2018
Location: Pasadena, CA

12:00a All quiet on the sleeping front

6:48a I wake up, just 2  minutes before DF's alarm. This is progress! I had been waking up at 6 but just hiding under my pillow to read Facebook on my phone. Sleeping is a better use of time. Today I read a couple parenting articles while DF takes a shower, even though I've told myself I need to stop reading so much and just be a parent...

I take a shower and get dressed. The kids are still sleeping so I address our last Christmas card to send out (returned due to old address) and make some coffee.

7:43a Hear a cough from the boys' room. They've been a bit congested lately. I wonder if anyone is sick. Put away dishes and eat some breakfast. We don't have a dining room table, so I sit on the couch to eat my cereal and don't slosh milk anywhere. Yay!

8:10a Hear more coughing, so I go into the kids' room to find they are both awake. Gus immediately reports that Gibson has been coughing. Is he worried about his brother? I get them both out of their cribs.

8:20a OH MY WORD I have already heard the word "me" at least 40 times, including "me-self," "me do it," "me first," "me chair," etc.... I was thinking about recording how many times they say "me" in a day but realize I would drive myself insane so give up on that idea. They are eating frozen microwave mini pancakes for breakfast, which the boys insist on helping make (so I have to lift them up and down to reach the microwave buttons). The pancakes are driving wheels and castles today, I am told.

8:40a Start getting boys dressed and changing diapers

8:55a They are both finally clothed. Interlude there where Gus wants yells "ah! ah!" at the trains from the balcony. They start fighting over their toy cash register and want to take out the batteries. I try to explain the concept of batteries to them. They don't care.

9:00a I realize we need to go to the grocery store b/c we're almost out of bread. Then I look at the Vons ad and see all these deals I can't pass up. Vons is the only store where I'll take the boys by myself because they have 2-seater driving wheel carts.

9:20a depart for store. We get the fire truck cart today. They sing "wee-ooh! wee-ooh!" with gusto up and down the aisles and only yank one item off a shelf. Not a bad shopping trip! But I buy way too much stuff.

10:20a back home. They help me carry the groceries up from the parking garage, sort of. At least they both walk the whole way. They eat a yogurt snack while I put the food away. Gibson refuses to eat the blueberries in his yogurt, which is unfortunate as the brand I bought is advertising "now with more fruit."

10:40a I turn on the TV so I can cook in peace. I bought a bunch of ground turkey, so I'm cooking it now and will freeze it in 1 pound packs for future meals.

11:10a We go down to the leasing office to pick up an Amazon package that arrived yesterday. Along the way, we visit the pool, outside fountain, mailbox, and the dry cleaning drop off with beeping buttons on their lockers.

11:30a Home, and time for lunch. They mainly eat cantaloupe and smash up their peanut butter sandwiches. They add an extra "w" sound and pronounce it "swan-wich," which I find adorable.

11:50a Done with lunch, so now they are using the momentum of rocking their bodies back and forth to roll their high chairs across the kitchen floor, and cracking themselves up. After they get down, they want me to play with them in their closet where they close the door and turn on two singing toys, but not to the same song. This is not my favorite game! They pretend to fix things, ask me to read the same book 3 times, and start fighting over a bus toy.

12:35p I'm tired of listening to fights, so I turn the TV on and give them a snack while I eat some lunch, clean the kitchen.

1:05p In bed for nap time. I eat some more, start a load of laundry, and hide the fruit cups I just bought in the back of a cupboard.

1:15p Gus is squealing. I give him some books to look at. Gibson is already asleep.

During their nap, I cut up some chicken to go in the freezer, take out a precariously full sack of garbage, throw my other neighbors' trash down the chute that they leave in the trash room b/c apparently I'm the floor mom, and wash dishes. I have a weekly chore chart for myself, which I do allow myself to slack on but not this week b/c we're just back from 2 weeks of vacation and I was slacking before that :) So today is cleaning the countertops and dusting, plus laundry. Then I sweep the kitchen because of course when I wipe off the counters, I make a mess. I go down to the garage to retrieve the last load of groceries. It takes 4 minutes. I hope no one is going to judge me too harshly for leaving my sleeping children unattended... Then I eat a snack while checking FB/IG. Send some emails and make a phone call for general life stuff.

2:50p Everyone is still asleep, so I sit down to read chapter 1 of my new library book, The Cross & the Lynching Tree. It seems like a good complement to another book I read recently, Just Mercy.

3:20p Hear a creature stirring in the bedroom. Both of them are awake, but Gibson doesn't want to get out of bed for awhile. We all play trucks.

3:55p Applesauce snack, then off to the park. There's a park across the street from our apartment complex, which is one of my favorite things about our location! I pull the kids in their wagon. A drunk guy greets us at the crosswalk and tries to get high 5s from the boys. They eye him warily, as do I. At the park, they go on their favorite things - swing, rolling slide, bouncy bridge. I help them on the monkey bars, and their grip strength is improving.

5:00p Finally back home. It takes us about 15 minutes from the entry door to our apartment b/c they have to admire everyone's decorations, run up and down the hallway, spin in circles by the elevator, try to reach out a window and grab a tree...

5:15p DF arrives home. Boys have been screaming a lot the last 15 minutes. He convinces them to eat some dinner. After they are done, they crawl and DF pretending he is a car while I eat dinner. Then we switch places, except I don't know how to be a car as well as Daddy does, according to the boys.

6:20p Gibson sounds a bit hoarse. I'm worried he's getting croup. His temperature is 99.0. WebMD says to keep him calm, but the boys are currently climbing on a cushion fort. He is coughing so I nix the cushion play and tell them they can pick a movie to watch instead.

6:30p They pick Caillou...siiiiiigh. Luckily it's a video with a bunch of short episodes and they agree to switch to Land Before Time after the first little show. I clean up dinner while they watch TV and eat snacks, then we all snuggle on the couch for awhile.

7:40p Bath time. Lots of roaring dinosaur splashing inspired by their recent viewing, I suspect.

8:10p Out of the bath, try to get them to play calmly with trucks and avoid cushion chaos. Gibson still sounds like his throat is scratchy.

8:30p Bedtime. The routine includes brush teeth, read a Bible story + 2 books, songs, prayer, hugs, goodnight. Gibson's temp is 99.3 but he's not coughing very much. While I'm finishing up with the boys, I send DF downstairs to our local tap house to fill up our growler because TGIF.

9:00p Boys in bed. This time schedule is pretty normal for us, lately. While we were traveling for the holidays they kept staying up late and sleeping in. It's working ok, I guess, but sometimes we do need to get moving earlier in the mornings. Hmm, we shall see how it goes.

DF returns with a beer called White Ghost. It's a Berliner Weisse, a sour. It's different than what I usually drink, but it's pretty good.

I move a second load of laundry to the dryer, start the dishwasher, and type of this novella of my day.

I hope I don't jinx myself by publishing tonight! If anything noteworthy happens in the next 90 minutes, I'll be sure to update the post. As it is, I'm about to head off to bed, after I fold the mountain of laundry currently covering my sleeping surface...

It's the Little Things

When the twins outgrew their infant carriers last year, I bought them a used "big kid" double stroller. It was a great deal - I think it only cost $30 or something! Since it was used, it has a couple quirks, like squeaky wheels. (I can hear my grandmother saying now, "Did you try WD-40?" No Grandma, not yet, but I should!) It was also missing 2 screws that held the front canopy cover on. So, whenever I'd open/close the stroller, the canopy bar would pop out of its holder. It wasn't really a big deal or injury risk because the canopy was still secured by a second bar, though it was certainly a minor annoyance. I kept meaning to take a look at it and try to fix it, but I would always forget once we were done strolling.

Well, this past weekend I got inspired to be productive. So, while the boys napped and DF was home to stay with them, I inspected the stroller canopies to find that the back seat used the same mechanism as the front. I removed one of the back screw to use as a template and took it to Home Depot with me. They didn't sell that small of screw and sent me to Ace Hardware. Ace, living up to its name as the helpful place, was definitely the right store for this quest. I had two different employees helping me, and in minutes they'd located just what I needed. For a whopping $0.20, including tax, I was the owner of two shiny new screws. Now the stroller canopy stays up nicely and I don't have to keep jabbing it back into its spot.

We got this stroller last fall. Wow! Why did it take me 6+ months for such a minor fix? Dealing with the broken canopy was definitely a hassle. It took maybe 45 minutes to fix it, and that includes going to two different stores plus having to dig the toolbox out of its hiding place in the boys' playroom so I could get the needed screwdriver. Once I was done I felt so accomplished. Like, wow, pat myself on the back, I just finished a DIY project!

It's the same feeling I get when I mend a 1" rip in a seam. I have an old college sweatshirt that has gotten me through many a winter. The wrist seam was starting to unravel, and it bugged me for probably a year before I finally sat down with a needle and thread to fix it. Now it's nice and solid and, well, ready for next winter ;)

So if you've been procrastinating on some project, let me encourage you today to just do it. It feels good to accomplish something, no matter how small. And it feels even better not to have to deal with whatever little thing was annoying you.

P.S. if I was a pastor, I would totally use these examples in a sermon. But I don't know what the sermon would be about, so that's probably why I'm not a pastor.