Am I the @ssh*le?

Chad, Brad, Thad, Hamilton, & Banks Ripping Up the Suburban Pavement

Welcome to my rant.

This is the story of how, on 9:30pm on a Wednesday, I was flashing the bright lights of my SUV into a car full of teenagers. 

F*cking entitled teenagers driving one of their parents f*cking Teslas. 

It’s Wednesday. Halfway through the week. This particular Wednesday is K-Pants’ 17th birthday. Can you even believe it? He’s a freakin fabulous human. Last weekend he and his friends came with me to volunteer with a local organization we love. He plays baseball. He’s a great teammate. He cooks his own meals. He does his own laundry. I love him very, very much.

I am an exhausted, multi-tasking mother who runs her own business. The teenagers in my household (there are two) recently agreed that I’m 50% of the issue with the clutter and general dishevelment of our house. (The Fairy Pig being the other 50%.) My theme song is “Anti-Hero.” Hi. It’s me. I’m the problem. It’s me.

I accept this, because I am the mother of teenagers.

For his birthday breakfast, K-Pants politely requested bacon and breakfast potatoes (“If you have time, Mom.). For dinner, he asked for ratatouille and French fries, two homemade specialties of mine. I was happy to oblige for his special day. I love that he loves my cooking. This same day, I was doing the following general mom thingies, in chronological order:

** I write this list for my own sanity, to remember, 15 years from now, what a special day looked like with 3 kids at home **

• Making the Fairy Pig a fresh smoothie before school;
• Feeding the dog and letting her out;
• Unloading the dishwasher so K-Pants didn’t have to on his bday;
• Driving the Fairy Pig to school with the dog in the back, the dog’s flooftastic head out the window;
• Making bacon & breakfast potatoes;
• Prepping ratatouille (today I went overboard and sauteed Italian sausage, roasting the tomato paste in the drippings to create the base for the sauce, then I oven-roasted the potato and eggplant slices in the oven to add depth of flavor) so it was ready for my hubs to put in the oven at night while I was at baseball;
• Running a client meeting and handling the follow-ups;
• Checking off as much as possible from my business to-do list, including creating a social media toolkit for an urgent CA state budget ask that could protect almost a million people from losing health care;
• Stealing a cat nap (yesssss!! – did not sleep well last night);
• Following up with my 93-year-old grandma’s doctor to make sure they put in the referral to the spine specialist;
• Calling the spine specialist and begging them to please not take “a few days” to look at my grandma’s x-rays which is their “standard procedure,” because she is in excruciating pain from the compression fracture in her vertebra and is not able to eat or move properly;
• Picking up Kid Woww and his friend from middle school, then dropping them off at high school football practice;
• Rushing straight to K-Pants’ baseball game, an hour drive in traffic, to cheer on his team and score the game live on GameChanger;
• Coming home to pull the ratatouille out of the oven, adding mozzarella and fresh-grated parmesan to broil for a nice crispy top;
• Cutting and making homemade French fries; grabbing rosemary from the garden to mince and add to the fries;
• Finding the next audiobook in the series the Fairy Pig is listening to on Libby, and setting her up with wireless headphones so she doesn’t have access to my full phone while going to bed;
• Learning that Kid Woww’s ride from football fell through, so there goes my chill time on the couch; instead, hopping in the car to pick up Kid Woww, who has mysteriously been able to crash the high school track team banquet and has eaten delicious catered Hawaiian food;
• Fielding a call from the Fairy Pig about how devastated she was that I ripped away the audio book from her when I had to go pick up Kid Woww.

All this on the heels of Tuesday. 

Tuesday was insurance phone calls day: two hours in the morning before work on the phone with Providence health insurance. I was working on a bill that I had been charged $2,666 for – not just imaginary money, but money that has already been taken out of my account, where money does not actually grow on trees. I’ve been gathering the 10,000 pages of paperwork to submit to hopefully get some reimbursement. The next step is to go to the bank to get them to print out records. I can’t wait! 

Also on Tuesday, I took my little grandma to the doctor to figure out why she is in debilitating pain. We were referred straight to imaging across town to get an x-ray of her spine. First, I signed for an oxycodone pill from her assisted care, in case we took long enough that we needed her next dose; grabbing a loaner wheel chair that folded into my car. Off we went! Within an hour, we got the news she has a compression fracture in her T9 vertebra. 

So Tuesday builds to Wednesday (bullets above). And then, there I am. Driving roughly 35 mph in a 35 mph zone, with Hawaiian-food sated Kid Woww in tow, as a Tesla full of teenagers pulls up behind me and starts flashing its bright lights over and over. There’s a car next to me in the right-hand lane, so the Tesla can’t get by. And this Teen Tesla needs to go 45 or 50 mph. 

This is a suburban road. We’re passing a middle school, a church, and a rec center. But it is essential for Teen Tesla to go 10 – 20 miles over the speed limit so that Chad, Brad, Thad, Hamilton, and Banks can get… where? To Dairy Queen before it closes? Dropped off at home? Who knows.

And in their incessant flashing of the bright lights in the dark night, my little brain breaks. 

Stop it. 

Right now. 

Make it stop. 

The strobe lights are clicking on my stress response.

The Tesla is able to get around. I am now behind them. I, too, have bright lights. And I have been making calls to spinal specialists and checking off an endless list of to-dos and actually paying for the car I’m driving. And I am not here for the entitled bullsh*t of Chad, Brad, Thad, Hamilton, and Banks. Even if they do have a “This Tesla does not support Elon” sticker. I feel like the sticker is negated if you fill the car full of toxic bro energy and turn it into a disco strobe light.

Now let’s say that Chad, Brad, Thad, Hamilton, and Banks are heading to visit their friend’s mom in the cancer ward. Or maybe one of them has been diagnosed with lupus. Or maybe they’re just living their best lives, avoiding the teen mental health crisis plaguing our nation. 

But I need them to stop being Wednesday’s @ssh0les. So I take Jesus’ advice and do the eye-for-an-eye thing. Did I get that right? 

My bright lights go into their car incessantly. And they are of course delighted by this turn of events. As evidenced by their middle fingers and their phone lights coming on, which is fun, because then it looks like they’re at a tiny concert having a real Indigo Girls moment. 

The whole thing was not great. If it weren’t for Tuesday and then Wednesday’s list, I would have pulled over and let them go by and continued with my breath-in, breath-out routine of life. That’s my modus operandi these days. 

I leave you with the question (which should really be going into the Reddit thread) “Am I the @ssh0le?”

I don’t really want to know the answer. But I do love you, and I am grateful for your grace and lovingkindness.

---

A special thank you goes out to my friend C., who answered the phone when I called from my grandma’s doctor, and said YES really before she even knew what favor I was asking her for. Then *poof* she was taking a car full of middle school football players (none of which were her own children) over to the high school. And she had her elementary-schooler with her. C., I love you.

Vote for These Washington County Candidates

TL/DR: If you trust my judgement, vote for these candidates. I know them personally through community organizing, and I vouch for their tenacity, boldness, and courage: 

• Blayne Soleymani-Pearson for Washington County Commission, District 2
• David Kearns for Beaverton City Council
• Dr. Tammy Carpenter for Oregon House District 27
• Evelyn Kocher for Beaverton City Council 
• Kipperlyn Sinclair for Washington County Commission, District 4
• Nafisa Fai for Washington County Chair

BALLOTS DUE MAY 19, 2026

---

Dearest Readers, 

How have your last two years been? This is my horse buddy Rio. He died suddenly of colic (a twisting or obstruction of the intestines common in horses) in the afternoon of Election Day 2024. I didn’t stay up to watch the presidential election results. I knew how that was gonna go. Sometimes the universe sends you a sign that is deafening. 

Photo credit: Chloë

Since then, it’s been a whirlwind of chaos around here. My husband is changing careers. My wonderful business is weathering the total insanity of this second Trump presidency. We work with nonprofits and small businesses doing visual design and digital community building with a human rights and social justice lens. During Trump 1.0, there was plenty of funding for progressive work. In Trump 2.0, government grants are being pulled left and right, philanthropy is skittish, tensions are high, and while the drive is there, the instability and petulance are impacting almost everything. 

In Portland, Oregon, especially here in Washington County, we’re still taking some deep breaths after the terror of the end of 2025. Starting in about September, ICE agents and contracted bounty hunters started kidnapping people off the streets. They would start at about 6:30am and end around 3:30pm, because Portland doesn’t have an overnight ICE facility. So victims would be put on buses in the afternoon and sent to Tacoma, Washington. 

Sometimes 30-40 people would be taken in a day. The conditions in Tacoma are awful. I’ve spoken to a couple people who were there. Desperation and suicide attempts were common. Everyone I know who was taken was a mother or father, raising a family with the hope of a better future. They’re all people who’ve lived and worked in our community for years. Almost all of them were or are small business owners. Some have grown children who are citizens. Some have young children who are part of school communities here. They’re all trying to get their U.S. paperwork, but the immigration system is so intentionally confusing and bottlenecked that it’s almost impossible. 

From September on, I’ve been a community volunteer helping with mutual aid efforts. The candidates I’m recommending are people who I have seen showing up and doing the work. They are at every board meeting or council meeting giving public comment or introducing meaningful community protections. 

I will decorate your yard for free! Just ask.

Public health expert Nafisa Fai is the reason Washington County declared a state of emergency when ICE raids were at their peak. Without her, it simply wouldn’t have happened. Anesthesiologist Dr. Tammy Carpenter is one of two Beaverton School Board members (the other being Syed Qasim) who pushed to get our district to have a stronger, more coordinated plan for how to help families, while other board members (ones that I’ve voted for in the past) thought we were fine. Lawyer Blayne Soleymani-Pearson shows up at every city council meeting and county commission meeting trying to get leaders to understand the rights local government has under the law to protect people and push back. I went to a Know Your Rights training he held with other local leaders. 

Right now, it’s simply not enough to value human rights and want to protect our immigrant neighbors and vulnerable groups who Trump hates. You need to show up and lead the fight. We need courage. We need action. It’s not important if I like you (but I do like all these candidates as people), it’s important if you are bold and brave. It’s important that you are leading the change, not just voting yes after someone else takes the first steps. 

In many Washington County races, the differences between candidates are tough to suss out. I have backed candidates with promise in the past. Some have exceeded my expectations, and others have been disappointing. Sometimes the underwhelm is heartbreaking. 

Passing out info for Blayne, Dr. Tammy, and Nafisa with Nilo, Blayne’s wife (she freakin’ rocks)

Let’s vote for who is going to be bold, and then if they’re not, we don’t have to stick with them. These are the candidates I have a lot of hope for. They’re serious about democracy and also know their sh*t. Their opponents are more establishment, less likely to be in the street with the people, and more likely to make an excuse for why they can’t do what they’d like to do.

Vote for these Washington County, Oregon, candidates (listed alphabetically):

• Blayne Soleymani-Pearson for Washington County Commission, District 2
• David Kearns for Beaverton City Council
• Dr. Tammy Carpenter for Oregon House District 27
• Evelyn Kocher for Beaverton City Council 
• Kipperlyn Sinclair for Washington County Commission, District 4
• Nafisa Fai for Washington County Chair

Don’t see a race listed above? Then I just don’t know enough about it to give my opinion.

A recent Blayne Soleymani-Pearson and Evelyn Kocher door-knocking event put on by Next Up

Sidenote: Have you noticed all those Pam Treece signs on open land? Guess who’s letting her put bigger and bigger signs there? Likely the Peterkorts who have owned giant tracts of land North of Highway 26 for generations. Former Commissioner Greg Malinowski told me a few years back that when the Peterkorts didn’t like the community input for the Peterkort Centre development off of Barnes and Cedar Hills in unincorporated Washington County, they went to the city of Beaverton and had the city annex the land so they could do whatever they wanted. What they wanted was a strip mall surrounded by an enormous parking lot desert. It *finally* got a more pedestrian-friendly makeover last year, but it still can’t fill all the storefronts. The Peterkorts don’t seem to care about what the community wants, and therefore neither will Pam Treece. This is my educated guess. If you want your voice heard, vote for Nafisa.

I feel the same about Felicita Monteblanco. If pickle ball is more important to you than standing up for human rights, by all means vote for her. (BTW, pickle-ball lovers, I’m not saying you don’t want human rights. It’s just that you’re more likely to email your county commissioner about pickle ball issues than illegal ICE detentions.) Mostly, Felicita will likely vote yes after someone bolder leads. Meanwhile, Blayne’s over here showing up at almost every Washington County Commission and Beaverton City Council meeting helping educate people about how to use state and federal law to protect us from authoritarianism.

Can we just vote for the folks who don’t wait around for someone else to stick their neck out first? 

Washington County, you’re probably going to break my heart again. We tend to skew toward the moderate, establishment Democrats. They’re likable. They’re “progressive.” Suzanne Bonamici endorses them. And they’ll break our little hearts over and over, but they’ll look great in photos doing it.

---

If you’re new here, I love this blog, but don’t write here nearly enough anymore. I’m a mom of three, a Christian who believes Jesus spends his time with the most marginalized, and I’m a registered Democrat because that lets me vote in the Democratic primaries. But I’ve voted for plenty of non-Dems. At this point, I try to vote for leaders who SHOW UP, and have a fire under them about it. I want people in my county to be able to afford their basic needs. I believe government is always imperfect and bureaucratic, but it’s an essential tool in making sure people can enjoy and afford their lives. I love horses. So so so much.

I Have No Idea What I’m Doing. But I’m Doing It.

Evelyn sits on a horse backwards

I have no idea what I’m doing. But I’m doing it. And that seems to be the essential matter.

I’m parenting. I started this blog when K-Pants was an infant. He’s 14-and-a-half. 

Let me tell you about horses.

I feel calm and happy even thinking about telling you about horses. My breathing flows. My brain slows its frenetic energy. 

Oliver and Melakush and Boy and Bella and Frodo and Scout and Skywalker. These are the horses I’ve loved. Only one was ours. Boy. He’s also the one I got a concussion on. Go figure. He was so so cute. A chestnut Briar Horse pony in real life. It doesn’t really matter if a horse is yours or not as long as you have a relationship and its owner is kind. (Thank you Tedi and Libby and Lisa and Henrietta for your incredible generosity.) 

Yesterday I was in my friend Henrietta’s barn. Friends’ barns are like little cocoons for me–little coconut and dark chocolate truffles and I get to be the caramel center. Gooey and sweet. That’s how I am at my friends’ barns. They protect me. 

I won’t have my own horse or my own barn yet. Two reasons. One, they are expensive. Two, I’m trying to raise three children and I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s too much weight to be fully responsible for another lung-having being. The lung-havers are a lot. When the lung-havers are yours, it feels like a kale salad with roasted squash and apples. I LOVE kale salad. But I already have a lot of servings, and I don’t need more. I need a coconut, dark chocolate, caramel truffle.

So I was in Henrietta’s barn. And I thought I would do something nice. I thought I would clean Skywalker’s bridle–the piece of horse-human communication that goes over the horse’s head and attaches to the reins. It’s leather. It gets dusty. Grit gets in the thick seams. 

I picked up a rag and the saddle soap, and I wiped the bridle up and down, inside and out. And hung it back on its hook. 

I texted Henrietta–I cleaned Skywalker’s bridle. I used that leather soap that was on the counter. 

Oh haha! She texted back. That’s dog shampoo. 

I have no idea what I’m doing. But I’m doing it. 

Henrietta is very kind: The gesture is much appreciated and it won’t do a bit of harm. 

I’m not sure the children agree about my parenting. I’m hoping they feel like the gesture is much appreciated. I think the children and I can all agree that sometimes it does do a bit of harm. But here we are. All of us lung-havers. We’re doing it. 

---

It’s been over a year-and-a-half since I’ve posted a blog. I miss it. I miss interacting with you all. Thank you for hanging with me. xoxo – E

Photo credit: Henrietta

Advice Boundaries & Birds

Image: The Fairy Pig looks at a great blue heron by popping out of the sunroof on the car. She’s borrowing K-Pants’ binoculars.

Let me tell you a story. I’m a birder. Until recently, I thought I was simply the daughter of a birder. Growing up, my mom would suddenly pull the car over, rattle off a list of very-specific characteristics of the bird she was looking at, then tell us to remember what she’d said so she could look up the bird in her Audubon guide when she got home. I knew a lot through osmosis.

Then a few weeks ago I headed to Sauvie Island with my friend Tony, his two boys, and the Fairy Pig. After a focused ten minutes spent discussing shorebirds with our binoculars pressed to our eyes, I realized a) I am a birder independent of my lineage, and b) I have my first birder friend. Tony and I were looking at a group of western sandpipers. 

Upon reflection, it’s possibly not the casual nature fan who can differentiate similar-sized birds in-flight. The bald eagle flaps its wings like it’s lifting weights at the gym; the turkey vulture soars like it’s the Platonic ideal of a glider plane; the great blue heron flies so slowly you think it might fall out of the sky.

This time of year on Sauvie Island (the country’s sixth largest river island, sitting near Portland in the Columbia River, attracting thousands of migratory birds), apart from the farms and locals, you’ll find a lot of birders and duck hunters. We occupy the same areas. But the birders keep outside the hunting borders because we like to stay alive and not bother the hunters. 

You can tell the birders because we’re usually not driving trucks, and we pull over at seemingly unexplained spots. 

On Sunday I took a crew to Sauvie: the Fairy Pig, Boy Woww, our new au pair, and me. We hopscotched viewing spots with a few other cars. At one point, a swoop of sandhill cranes took to the air right over our heads. I jumped out and started to video. It’s magic to watch anything take flight, but a group of sandhill cranes with their dinosaur-like rolling calls, their gangly spindle legs, and elegant opera-glove wing tips, well it makes me have a childlike sense of wonder and joy. And I’ve been video recording some of my favorite times in nature for mini-meditations on my Instagram page (@EvelynShoop). 2022 knocked me over with a coronavirus tidal wave and is demanding that I hold on and find moments of peace wherever and whenever possible. 

As I was walking back to my car, another birder car pulled up with an older man inside. He rolled down the window. “Can I give you some advice?” he said. 

Now if you’ve known me for a while, you’ll be sucking in your breath. I welcome advice if I ask for it. I welcome advice if you have walked a rough path of parenting or grief or self-discovery with me. If our lives are entwined and I reach out, I am all ears. But otherwise, no. N.O. I have to hold this boundary for self-protection as a human who parents. I have received so much unsolicited parenting judgment, errr… advice… that I am not interested in your advice even if it’s life-altering. Most often your advice comes from your own personal experience and it’s helpful and comforting to you for me to receive it. But not for me. And I already have a frickin’ awesome, all-star slate of advice-givers… some professional and some personal. 

So when my new friend The Anonymous Birder rolled up and asked if I wanted advice, it was very easy to just say, “No, thank you.” 

This was not what he was expecting. So he decided I should hear the advice anyway. It was something about not getting out of your car because you scare the wildlife. He didn’t get all the way through his monologue, though, because I repeated “NO, THANKS.” And I walked away. At which point he yelled “FUCK YOU,” and sped away. Which for birders in the wild is like 15 MPH. 

Advice is a lot about assumptions. He assumed I didn’t know what I was doing, that I hadn’t been to this exact spot five times since November, that I wanted to birdwatch like him. His advice was about his frustration that I wasn’t doing things like he does and that because of it I had altered the experience he wanted that day. 

So here’s the thing. On a normal day, I would be proud of myself for setting boundaries, but I would also be boring holes through Anonymous Birder Friend’s skull with my laser beam eyes. I would add the karmic insult he enacted upon me to EVELYN’S INVISIBLE VAULT OF GRIEVANCES. I always have it going. But this time I stopped and had a little chat with myself. 

I’m not taking this personally. It’s about him. I’m doing a great job raising little birders, and he can go shove it. 

Confetti and marshmallows and dark chocolate did not rain down from the sky, but maybe next time. Or the next. Maybe you need to fill your punch card with 10 zen moments before you get your reward. Or maybe somewhere down the line I’ll be a less angry person in general and that’s the reward. [scratches forehead and ponders]

In case you have a lingering wonder about me scaring the wildlife, well, getting out of your car definitely annoys the song birds: the sparrows, the chickadees, the finches. They are fickle and often prey. Generally being alive scares them. But my experience is that the sandhill cranes, the snow geese, the cackling geese, the Canada geese, the great blue herons, the American coots, the mallards, and the great egrets could really care less. I mean, like, don’t chase the birds. But at this same spot back in November, my husband and K-Pants played football, the Fairy Pig and I ran up and down the road, and Boy Woww chilled in the car reading a book. The only thing that bothered the birds were three bald eagles dive-bombing them, which frankly created the most beautiful soaring cacophony I’ve ever seen or heard.

(For a video of sandhill cranes in flight, check out my Instagram page, or request to follow me: @EvelynShoop.)