I Am a Dog Owner, and I Vote!

This was the bumper sticker I saw today. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. And it wasn't a sticker, it was one of those magnet stickers, high up on the back of the car, in the shape of a bone with stars and stripes on it.

I don't have enough battery power on the laptop to post the post-Christmas post, but there is one story I know I am going to forget, so I'm skipping straight there. On the way back from our Arizona trip, in the Phoenix airport, an officious TSA fellow who I imagine was trying to be charming told Naomi she was going to have to put her new build-a-bear Hello Kitty through the X-ray machine. She was more than happy to comply, but he had to up the ante and explain to her, a bit patronizingly, that they had to check and make sure Hello Kitty had no broken bones. She gave a little "Ha!" and then said, "She's not like me, she's a soft toy!"

I am an orthopedic surgeon for stuffed toys, and I vote!

In Which Capitalization is Overused For No Good Reason

I come to you from the brink of the eighteenth century, by which I mean I am going to try to get this blog post written and posted before the storm of the century hits and we are without power and modern conveniences and the interwebs for the duration of our stay in the Pacific Northwest, which luckily is only another 36 hours or so. The media are throwing around words like "apocalypse" and "end times." OK, not really, but the storm that is supposedly roaring toward us is "historic." Not that I want them to be right, but earlier this same week they warned me that we would be getting inches and inches of snow, and we did. But not until about 36 hours after the 99% chance of snow they promised us. And tonight, as I sit in front of the computer next to our lovely, LED-lit Christmas tree and hear some channel surfing over my shoulder, I should be at A FANCY PARTY IN SEATTLE WITH GROWN-UPS ONLY WITH DINNER AND AN OPEN BAR FOR WHICH I BOUGHT A NEW DRESS AND A STRAPLESS BRA AND WENT TO THE EXPENSIVE BROW-WAX LADY, which we decided not to attend because we were worried that the storm of the century would hit while we were there, and our kids would be freezing through a power outage while I attempted to hike across Lake Washington in my open toed heels. Which by the way would not have flown anyway because I couldn't get my toes to a pedicure place because the entire town (minus the expensive brow waxer), including the schools, preschools, and daycares, has been shut down for three days because of the snow, or in the case of Wednesday, the pathological fear of snow. So no, I don't want the storm of the century to swoop in and knock us back a hundred years, but if I don't see some tree branches on the road tomorrow morning, I know a certain National Weather Service who owes me two or three glasses of wine, some passed hors doerve, and a salmon dinner that involves no cutting up of my food into tiny bites to pass on to a toddler. I'm just saying.

It has been a while since I posted, and as we are off to AZ on Monday, and I am unlikely to post while there, allow me to messily pour out the contents of my head. Figuratively. Ew. Anyway:

• Open house! We had our annual Christmas open house, a tradition which I started when we moved here in an attempt to get to know our neighbors. This year was the most successful yet, though we had only one neighbor house in attendance. It was a good turnout, a diverse group, I got everything done far enough in advance that I wasn't stressed out at all (which is a Christmas miracle, in a nice small local sense), and it was actually really fun. Now that I am all grown up it never ceases to amaze me how much better a hostess I am when I'm not, shall we say, in my cups. Live a little, learn a little. Oh, and still no one from my job. Next year, if I have to invite the whole place, I will have a coworker at my shindig!
• Sick kids! Mostly it was Muriel, and she was pretty sick. I have this issue with waiting too long to take my kids to the doctor, and by the time we get there I often hear words like pnemonia, and what to look for right before I drive the kid straight to Children's Hospital. Which does not make me feel like a good mother. She was not herself for a full week, and even after that, very sleepy. She stayed home for a week, and when we finally brought her back to school, her new post-illness persona convinced them that she was not well enough to be at school, so she stayed home on Tuesday. And on to...
• Snow! Wednesday was the day in which a phantom snowfall that never came shut down the school district, meaning I got to work from home while attempting daycare. Thursday, real snow, ditto working from home. Friday, same snow, cold weather, ditto working from home. Summary: Cabin. Fever. I was trying to figure out today why I was so punchy (I will not embarrass myself with any examples), and I realized I have not really been out of the house for days and days. But soon I will leave my house to go to...
• Arizona! We'll be there for a week, and if it is snowing there, so help me... Just kidding. I hope to have another open house, to get together with some people I don't see often, and I am so excited. Not to mention seeing family, which will be a lot of fun. But mostly, getting out of my house... aaaaahhhh.
• Holiday Excess! There is a lot of talk of simplifying Christmas, which I understand in the context of people who buy ridiculous amounts of unneccessary stuff, or get completely stressed out about calendars and events and decorating and affording things. But a friend and I were talking about how the point of Christmas (aka, the big winter feast day) is to live it up a little, and however you define that, it's worth it to go to a little trouble to make it happen. That is the point. Back in the day it meant you saved up your lard and your sugar for special corn cakes or whatever. Now it means you strain yourself a bit to get everything together, to get your cards out on time (or not, in my case), to make cookies with your kid, to buy presents, if that's your thing. I don't know where I'm going with this- I don't think people should feel guilty as if they are not trying hard enough at Christmas, especially with the economy, I get it, etc., but I also don't think people should feel guilty for extending themselves. That's just this year, though, I could swing back in the direction of Grinchy next time, who knows.
• Mystical Exercise! I had a weird but good experience at yoga last time, doing the something or other second triangle pose- it was hard work, so maybe that was it, but on the last go I had this burst of heat, like I was catching on fire, but you know, in a good way. I guess you had to be there.
  
• Favorite Things! This is a Christmas song for some reason, and I sometimes think of favorite things more relevant to me when I hear it all the more often this time of year. So, some of my favorite things are: When I am looking at a sign or a license plate holder and read a word and hear it right then spoken by the person on the car radio (yeah, it's dumb, but these are MY favorite things, and we have no bright copper kettles); When I hear Naomi calling Muriel, "Honey," when she doesn't know anyone is listening; Crunchy toast; Pea tips (a vegetable you can get at Chinese restaurants); Eating chips and cheese dip with a margarita at least bi-weekly with my homie; Hearing from old friends; Hearing from any friends, really; Taking a hot shower; Going to bed in clean sheets just after said shower; Getting a lot of work done; Whiskey with ginger ale; Sleeping through the night; Hearing Muriel say any of her endless supply of new words. These aren't in any order, and of course there are others. But yeah, my life is full of raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

And now, the wind is picking up, so I had better post a couple of photos before it's too late. Merry Christmas, Dear Readers.





Naomi loved the snow. LOVED IT!



Muriel was flummoxed by it.



I just included this one because it's super cute. SUPER CUTE! OK, that's all. BYE!

Citizen Khooler

Some of you are already familiar with this piece of news, but for the rest of you, the once green-card carrying co-head of the Khooler household is no longer a citizen of far-off Malaysia, and is instead now a regular old passport-carrying citizen of the USA. It didn't happen in time for the last election, unfortunately, but I have helped him find solace in the fact that there is always some loopy home-brewed initiative on the ballot each November (democracy runs rather amok in these parts) to practice on. Hooray!

The ceremony was last Wednesday. The girls sported festive, matching red jumpers (more another time on the sudden and inexplicable onset of a desire to dress my girls in matching outfits), an effort to mark this as a special occasion, to get good behavior out of them, and to make them extra cute so as to garner indulgence from strangers in the event that part two of my plan didn't work out. We planned to get there early in case we had to wait in a long line for the security screening, as sometimes happens according to my insider sources. The event was scheduled to begin at 2. We arrived at about 1:30, breezed through the security screening, though Muriel's baby doll had to ride through the x-ray machine, and were promptly separated.

The girls and I went into the auditorium, while Jim went off to be processed. The room filled up slowly, and as it did, got warmer and warmer and hotter and hotter. More would-be citizens came in, more congratulatory watchers came in, more time passed. The kids were pretty good, then less good, more tired, hungrier, hotter, grouchier. The event refused to start.

I claim full responsibility for the terrible deterioration of our experience. I should have had treats and drinks and stickers and extra toys stuffed in the diaper bag. But I had been in a training all morning, that I just jumped out early of at the last possible moment to get in the car and go. I hadn't eaten lunch, myself, so I was a bit at the end of my rope as well. Even after the ceremony FINALLY started, almost an hour after it was supposed to, the situation was pretty wretched. And by wretched, I mean a three year old writhing on the ground wailing and begging can she please take off these tights they are so hot?! Wretched.

But then it wasn't. It was great. There were 114 people there to take the oath of citizenship, from 44 countries. Ancient elders, who needed help walking up to get their certificate, mothers with children sitting behind us in the gallery. The husband of the woman next to us, an Australian who waited ten years after his mother died to do something he knew would have broken her heart. During the part where everyone raised their hand for the oath, Muriel put hers up too. And when they called our Mr. Khooler up to the stage, Naomi shouted, "It's Daddy! Hi Daddy! Hi Daddy!" and everyone laughed, even the director.

There was a message from the President, some pledging of allegiance. And then, like a bad joke, the music video started. Oh yes they did. Proud to Be an American. gggggg. Rather than proud, I felt annoyed at myself that I have to have the eye-rolling reaction to this song in such a meaningful moment. But hey, they are doing it to me, playing this song! Why?!

Then I realized something- the thing that aggravates me so much about that song, and all the other artifacts that espouse a similar message of "pride" in nationality (read: bumper stickers) is that feeling proud of something implies to me some agency, some effort. In other words, it seems OK to me to say, I'm proud of this A+ in Physics (not me, you know, but someone), or I'm proud of this garden I planted, or this code I wrote, and so forth. But really, despite the seemingly enormous crowd of people becoming citizens in our city, in our corner of the country on a given Wednesday afternoon, the way most people become Americans, after a period of reflection and paperwork and tests known as GESTATION, is by coming out of their moms. Yes, even Barack Obama, crackpot lawsuit filers, became a citizen this way. Natural born!

So the idea that being born, not that it's not traumatic or whatever, constitutes an accomplishment of sorts that one might then sing ballads about or stick bumper stickers in honor of, that is what gets my goat a little when someone sings that particular song (though I know, that is not exactly what people mean when they hear it and love it and perform it on American Idol). You didn't do anything! Lucky to be an American, that should be the name of the song. But then- you have a room full of people, 114 people from 44 countries, for whom being an American actually is an accomplishment. It's decision, maybe a hard one, a journey, a process, a scrutiny, a measuring up. They are giving something up, leaving something behind. But the important part is that they are choosing.

In this context, the song was less goat-getting for me. All the more so when I noticed Muriel, about ten yards away from me, doing her distinctively awesome zombie penguin dance to the music while another ceremony witness videotaped her with his cell phone. We finally reunited with our new citizen, and the girls fell asleep in their car seats en route to the cheesy 50s diner where we all ate celebratory American food (and slurped an American milkshake, which made me even prouder to be an American). By the time we got home and put the girls to bed at the ridiculous hour of 6 pm, Jim was feeling well and truly citizen-ish. I'm proud of him, and really truly proud of our country for welcoming him. Thanks, USA!

Probably Not Going to Happen

I worry periodically (every day) that my habit of agreeing to do something with Naomi- but just not right this minute- is going to get me into trouble. She reminds me constantly of things I just agreed to. "You didn't get me a napkin!" "You forgot to get my milk!" These are the before 7:30 a.m. examples...the setup for tonight's anecdote is tortuous- feel free not to bear with me. But anyway...

Last night I took Naomi to to the store for our usual bread-bananas-eggs run. In the self-checkout line we encountered a kid (a thirteen or fourteen year old boy) with a chihuahua in his hoodie (peeking out over the top of the zipper). Naomi was delighted by this, and immediately asked me if she could have a pet that she could put into her coat. She did her usual elaboration, a dog, a puppy, maybe a cat? I tried to explain to her (ridiculously- why do I always think it's best to have a real conversation about everything?) that she is so little that there does not exist in the world a dog or cat small enough (puppies and kittens exempted) to snuggle in the front of her jacket. As I am typing this I cannot believe that I have these conversations, and that I am now sharing them, but you know, this is the setup for the real anecdote. Where we left it was, she would have to get a little bigger before we could make this dream a reality.

Today when we were walking Luna, I was pretending to be a giant, for whatever reason, maybe because after this morning's princess party for Naomi's school chum, she pretended to be Cinderella the whole day. When I am pretending to be someone other than Mom, Naomi loves to talk to me. She will sometimes say, talk like the wicked gnome! (Don't ask...) So she really enjoyed talking to her mom talking in a slightly slower, deeper voice (really, I don't try that hard). Tonight, on the way home from a super fun dinner outing involving pizza and spumoni (mmmmm), she wanted me to be the giant again. As chianti was part of my dinner, I was game for some more giant impersonation. So, as usual, she got going, telling the giant anecdotes from her life, inviting the giant to admire the Hello Kitty painted on her cheek (by Cinderella, no less). Then she told the giant about the kid she had seen at the grocery store, with the dog in his jacket.

"I asked my mom if I could get a pet like that," she said. I asked her what her mom said.

"She said I could when I get bigger," she said. "But it's probably not going to happen."

It was so funny at the time. The "daddy giant" and I laughed out loud in the car, crossing the bridge back to our city. But now I'm not laughing.

The Out of Towners

Stand back, people, lest ye be seared by my white hot streak of good luck. At the company zoo day, which we attended in the pouring rain a number of weeks back, we arrived at the dripping lunch tent just in time for the door prize drawing, and just as they were calling my name. Really? I won a backpack with the company logo. Sweet. Or whatever. Then, two weeks ago? I filled out my charitable pledge thing at work, clicked the button to be entered into the raffle, and was promptly awarded a $15 itunes gift card. Last Wednesday, after using my Pacific Science Center membership card to get in free to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (aw yeah!), scoring a really nice free lunch from my Portland friends, and driving two three hour stretches with two tiny kids in the back seat with very little screaming or complaining, I arrived at our hotel, only to be greeted by this:



Right? The result was an Oregon-themed gift basket, including pickled asparagus, pickled, um, pickles, chocolate with hazelnuts, huckleberry jam, berry candy, and a delightfully retro rolodex card with the hotel's information on it. The hotel was in Pendleton, Oregon, a town which claims some Old West or cattle drive heritage, and has intriguing place names like Emigrant Trail and Poverty Flats (which is actually out of town a ways...). It is two thirds of the way to Boise, most relevantly, so we stopped there to avoid another long three and a half hours.

I admit to being easily swayed when someone gives me free food, but the hotel was super. The girls loved it too- we had a suite, which meant there was much running from room to room. They had a free cocktail hour, which I declined (not without some struggle- especially after another grouchy, highway-worn mom made a clearly audible remark about how no children were allowed in the bar part of the "lounge"...). They had an awesome luggage cart, which the girls rode on together in an effort to make our all girls' road trip look even more like a pilot for a family-friendly Friday evening sitcom.


They had a pool, which we swam in the next morning, before enjoying our tasty free breakfast in the same lounge. OK, Pendleton chamber of commerce, I will be checking my account for your deposit, thank you very much.

The real point of this journey, of course, was not to stay in a hotel in cattle drive country, but to visit our friends (including a new friend, 2 month old H.) in Boise. We had a really nice visit. My friend, besides being a new mom, is a wonderful cook and a great hostess. It was even better than the hotel (except for the luggage carts...).

On Friday morning we went to this big indoor play place, normally a peaceful experience (said my friend), involving sipping a latte on a couch while your tots play with whatever's nearby. This Friday, though, was a no-school day, and all the local elementarians had swarmed the place. When I took Naomi to the bathroom, Muriel skillfully eluded my friend's watch, and found her way inside and to the top of the play structure (for 5 and ups), which was crowded with eight year olds. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and I got to have a nice little adrenaline dump. Then she found her awesome beatnik niche:


Friday night Jim flew into Boise to join the fun, and on Saturday we ate pumpkin pancakes (autumnul and syrupy!) and had a walk by the river. Still a little fall left in Boise!


I will spare you the part where I say, as I always do, that of course the real delight in this trip was spending time with our friends. And to be honest, getting back home to a full night's sleep where Muriel wasn't waking up squawking because she's not in her cushy crib was one of the highlights of the trip as well. But yeah, seeing friends is good, good stuff. Do you think these guys will be taking road trips to get together when they're our age?

Election Eve

It's a spooky night. Not really- it's a wet and average night. I have watched some Frontline, gotten the manager at Barnes and Noble to subvert her no returns without a receipt rule for me, wandered hopelessly lost around the remodeling in progress QFC (grocery store), and returned home in time to upload some Halloween pics, if the internet gods will smile upon me. So far, only frowning.

There is so much to write about. I have fifty little posts in my head. About my crazy week at work, and my zen breakthrough on what a gift genuine feedback is, even when it stings. About a family of suckers who showed up to an empty church parking lot and still didn't remember it was daylight savings day. About my love hate relationship with campaign coverage. About my plans for an old school girls' road trip (this week!). About my kid getting moved up to the Orca class, and how stoked she is that she got to use GLUE! About my newly formed fond wish that people would be more evangelical about the things they love that are not religion or politics related.

But it is late, and although I would like to say that I will be up early, driving elderly Democrats to the polls, really I will be furiously working away, hoping to make a lot of progress to make up for the three days I will be taking off. I will say this, though- tonight at yoga, when we did the thing we do at the beginning, where we quiet our thoughts, and get ready for our practice (or whatever, I don't know), I quieted my thoughts, but I swear in my quiet head I could hear the thoughts of people all around, all over the country. I could hear the excitement and the optimism and the thrill. Maybe these are all the voices in my head? You only get one vote, guys.

I don't have to tell the four people who read this blog to vote. I trust you. But I can't wait, I cannot wait for tomorrow.

Ah, now the upload thing is finally working again, so, pictures:

How's this for a cute witch? The not-too-menacing cat was her idea. I thought since she was a witch, I didn't need to bother with the detangler and comb wrestling match. So yeah, that's some witchy hair. 
This was at the Halloween party we went to last Saturday. If Muriel could talk, and swear, she would say, "Are you effing kidding me with this, Mom?!"

Even Naomi the witch recognizes costume folly when she sees it.

This is the actual night of Halloween. Naomi was asked by her photographer to make a good witch face. Yeah! In the background, Muriel settles once and for all how she feels about her penguin getup. She did wear her Dieter from Sprockets black turtleneck and leggings, with her penguin hat, for the door to door.

Finally, I must relate that of the two groups of trick or treaters we got, one of them was our next door neighbor boy, wearing a John McCain mask and carrying a water rifle (?). Naomi must have really picked up on my amusement, because for two days she has been relating the funny anecdote of a kid coming to the door dressed like John McCain. I guess you have to hear her tell it- but really, it's funny.

Next entry: Back from Boise!

Again with the Pumpkin Patch...

Saturday we made our annual pumpkin patch pilgrimage. As promised (threatened?), here are the photos...

Forecast? Sunny!

My friend's kids were so adorably got up for the patch, and I overheard one admiring bypasser ask if they were twins. Hee! In every picture we got of them, C is looking dreamy and S is looking fierce. Seriously, don't let the ponies fool you. This girl is fierce! But yeah, also, adorable.

New this year at the patch: hay maze! For the taller set, it wasn't too tough to see where to go. But for the little people, the hay was high enough to actually be labrynthine. Plus, it was really cool to see the hay loft. I love the way my friend is all Roma Downey in the photo. I am an angel, sent by God. Haymazing!

This was the before picture, before Jim reminded me that I didn't need to shoot from so far away. But in all the after pictures, where I got closer and framed it better, the girls had gotten over the novelty of seeing me with the camera, so this is the shot that made it in.

I would like to pretend like my awesomely pegged jeans were all about my retro fashion sense, but actually they were about my stumpy legs and my being too lazy busy to get my new jeans altered to accommodate them. It was pretty muddy out there, I'm just saying.

There were so many good shots of Muriel. She is rocking her shag hairdo so effectively that we were thinking about scrapping the penguin costume and seeing if we could find her a teeny leisure suit. She also had a really cute word for pumpkin, something like "pupikaaaaannn."



Ah, these cuties. Are pumpkin patch trips really just photo ops? Hmmm. They are rife with photo ops, but we really enjoyed ourselves. And we got a really lovely pumpkin for our efforts.

In the spirit of pre-Halloween, I would like to also relate Naomi's weird new fascination, a conversation we call, "Tell me what has bited you before." Here's my list:
- ant
- flea
- spider
- tick
- bee (not technically a bite, but as you see we are liberal with our definition of that)
- mosquito
- cat
- dog
- hamster
- hermit crab (this was actually just a pinch, of course)
- jellyfish (again, not really a bite, but you know)
- Naomi

A little something in between

The end of year slate of blog posts stretches ahead...pumpkin patch, Halloween pictures, Thanksgiving, something in the beginning of December (please, not another wind storm/power outage combo!), then Christmas trip report and photos. This blog will be writing itself. So in the meantime, I will attempt to update the general status of things in our house. It is this. We are all sick and tired and overworked. Even Muriel is overworked. Ok, not really.

So, I don't know, bulleted list, maybe?

• Naomi and I have been going back and forth on Halloween costumes. I assumed, because she endlessly impersonates a cat, that she might want to be a cat for Halloween. Wrong! She wants to be something scary. I have been attacked by more than one cat, but why argue the point? She voted for ghost, witch, or monster. Witch it is. We made her a fancy skirt over the weekend, mail ordered a hat (ok, electronically mail ordered), and are scouring around for appropriately witchy striped tights.
  
• Related: We went out to dinner the other night with our friends, including Naomi's friend C. Naomi was quiet for a minute, then asked C., "What will you be for the Halloween?" This doesn't sound like a big deal, maybe, but it is. Because putting all these parts together, knowing Halloween is coming, we're all preparing for it, it's interesting what someone else will be, we make friendly chat at dinner, this is something that has not happened in such a neatly qualifiable way before. Synapses! Zap!
• Muriel had her fifteen month appointment, and is Still Not Heavy Enough to turn around in her carseat. Gaaaah. On the other hand, she did beat an ear infection all on her own when her hippie mother said no thanks to antibiotics. Small but mighty, baby.
  
• Oh, and Muriel is trying out new words. She has always had a little bit of parakeet in her, repeating sounds that sound like what you're saying, but really aren't. But lately she is making the connections between words and things, and can suddenly tell us what a range of animals say (specifically, cats, dogs, birds, cows, and elephants). She is also finally breaking out some Mamas, about damn time. Just kidding sweetie! Seriously, though, she's been Dada-ing it up for six months now.
• I am still taking a beating at work, but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Just before that light, though, is a trip to California (going back to Cali!), which results in me missing...Halloween. Are you kidding me, people? Oh well. I'll bring back some vitamin D.
  
• Jim is the sickest of all, as his lot seems to be, but is still working from home like a dog. Sick as a dog? Yes. Working like a dog? Yes. Though Luna is an actual dog, and she is neither sick nor working, unless stalking table scraps and licking the rug under the table count as work. Which I guess they might.
• Oh- one more Naomi one. We had our parent teacher conferences at her preschool, and she is doing just great. Of course she could improve on letter sound recognition and cutting with scissors and fifty other things, but you know, she is three. The best news of all is that she never pitches fits at school as she sometimes does at home. Whew! That was my hopeful takeaway, and I got what I wanted.

That's all the news that's fit to post on this sad, neglected blog. We miss you, friends.

Five Years Only

I told someone recently that my five-year anniversary was coming up, and he said something like, "Only forty-five to go!" I am not sure what that meant. We should be able to make it seventy-five years or more, right?

Last year I posted a wedding photo, so this year I thought it would be fun to relive the other wedding, the Malaysia wedding, even though that one was a few months later. Jim's parents put it on for us at a hotel in KL. The place has a menu of wedding packages, and his parents picked a winner. It came with fabulously cheesy decorations, including our names in glittery styrofoam letters on the wall, a colossal tiered artificial cake, styrofoam swans, and a champagne tower (which we totally flooded and spilled).


I was keen on getting a cheongsam, which kind of broke my MIL's heart a little- she had pictured me in a fantastic Western gown, and we shopped through the wedding district of KL before I found what I wanted at a department store. Of course I had to buy an extra large one, because I am a towering giantess over there. When I asked her if the shoes I brought were OK, she said yes, as long as I painted my toenails. Heh.

There was some kind of fundraiser going on at his parents' church, where the Ladies' guild was selling kits for this traditional Chinese New Year dish where everyone mixes all the stuff together in a dish in the middle of the table with their chopsticks, and tries to hold up as much of it as they can as high as they can, all together. For longetivy! All the New Year traditions are for longevity or prosperity. Sounds like the Vulcans a little bit. So they arranged with the hotel to substitute the first dish of the wedding banquet with this dish, thereby raising extra funds for this school that the church supports. I throw that in because it shows what good people my in-laws are, but also because it added a weird tenor to the evening, since it continued to be a fundraising event, in addition to a wedding party.

We had a receiving line coming in, and a receiving line going out, so we shook the hand of every single guest twice. We also went around and drank a toast with each of the THIRTY tables, at the end of which, we were all (but especially my 90 pound mother-in-law who doesn't drink) a bit in our cups.

Then, the karaoke started. There were the church friends, goading each other to sing... "Friends, I have it from the mouth of Peter S. that he will donate five thousand ringit to the school if Eleanor and Michael come up on stage to sing a duet." (gasping, clapping, shouting) Duet. Mostly, though, it was the old drunk guys. The list was pretty limited, in their defense, but you would think they might have not needed to sing "Please Release Me" and "Your Cheating Heart" more than twice.

Eventually, Jim was pressured into singing something- he chose "Love Me Tender." Aw, he has a really good singing voice, which made standing up on stage next to the styrofoam swans in my slightly uncomfortable dress and my booze flush a little more romantic, I guess.

Weddings in Malaysia work kind of like mafia weddings in the movies- people just hand over money. So at the end of the night, Jim's dad counted up the take, and after buying dinner and drinks for three hundred people (and the dubious karaoke service), they still came out something like two hundred dollars up. It was really something.

In the same folder on the photo drive are our the pictures of our side trip to Langkawi, a Malaysian island that is just below the Thai border. So I'm throwing a few of those on here as well. We stayed at a beautiful resort that catered, oddly, to Italian tourists, so all of the buffets had Italian food choices on them.
We found some other places to eat, though.


Mah Jong tournaments on the veranda got pretty cutthroat.


What can you say, besides "Laksa Power"...?

Coconuts! Where are the kids in all these pictures? Oh yeah...

Happy anniversary, Jim. We're not always having this kind of fun, but it's never far away.

Now, wait just a minute...

It is not that easy to come up with new and interesting lunches every day, for two little girls who may or may not even eat them. At Muriel's school, they throw away whatever she doesn't eat. So who knows what she's eating? In the case of Naomi, I know exactly what she is eating. Because they send whatever she hasn't eaten right back home in her lunch box. Often, pretty gross.

One of my less-inspired fall backs is whole wheat Ritz crackers, and the other day I sent some with Naomi's lunch that contained peanut butter and jelly. When she got home, we did the usual fruitless interrogation about her day (never successful), but when we go to the subject of lunch, she lit up a little bit.

"Miss E. put peanut butter and jelly on my round crackers, and I ate them all up!"

What now?

"You sent plain round crackers in my lunch, and Miss E. put peanut butter and jelly on them, and they were really good, and I ate them all!"

So what is the weird part of this story- that somehow Naomi got the idea that her teacher has been tampering with her lunch, as a favor to her? Or that I am so incensed that, having finally scored a hit in the lunch bag, I am not getting any credit for it?

Autumn Moon Festival

I seem to be moving in slow motion lately, which is why a post about what went down on Saturday (almost a week ago) still seems new on the following Thursday. Really, tonight's event, the preschool potluck, is worth a post, but if I went that route, I'd have to reveal the sad, bumbling couple of days I had endeavoring to bring a homemade treat for this thing, including such details as my inability to properly soften shortening, and the fact that our flour has BUGS in it. Ew. Anyway, the potluck was fun, albeit not so much nourishing. Naomi was a bit of a maniac, Muriel walked around waving at everyone, no one really ate enough food. It was alright.

But better than alright, if I may say, was this thing last Saturday. We had our dear friends over to celebrate the Autumn Moon Festival with us. Before they came, Naomi and I made some paper lanterns. They were nothing like the amazing chicken-shaped lanterns Jim got to tote around when he was a lad, but they were lantern-esque, and since there was no way any of the kids were getting anything with fire inside of it, they were, to quote a hilarious restaurant review that is rather un-self-consciously framed at my friend's neighborhood Mexican place, "delightfully adequate." In addition to the paper crafts, Jim and I put together a Chinese feast, which I only say because I succeeded in making, all on my own and for the very first time, sticky rice. I don't like to brag, but Damn! Sticky rice! We also had chicken wings a la Khooler, broccoli with Chinese sausage, and this kind of steamed eggplant that Jim's mom showed me how to make (it was not as good as hers, but it was still pretty good).

The moon festival has a couple of wacky legends associated with it. I chose one to tell the girls, about when all ten suns, normally taking their turn, suddenly showed up all at once, scorching the earth, and then were shot down (or, nine of them were) by this superhuman archer. I forget his name already. He found the elixir of life, but he was tyranical, and his beautiful wife drank it to spare the people of the world an eternity of rule by a tyranical archer. Then someone, the fates? made her go live in the moon. Her name I remember; it's Chang Er. And the lanterns are for her? I guess? Yeah, I am a poseur. Whiter than sticky rice. Oh well.

After the strange legend part, the girls did their lantern parade, and those of us with a sophisticated palate enjoyed some moon cakes, and those of us without (me!) enjoyed some pineapple. Then Chang Er's big round white estate made its appearance. Thanks, Chang Er!

And now, the photos:

The girls weren't sure at first what to do with their lanterns, but neither were we, really. Should we write a Moon Festival marching song? Lyric contest begins now.

Lanterns lanterns lanterns! And Muriel eating sidewalk chalk!

Our little friend, who is only a few months older than Muriel, showed up looking two and a half somehow. Must be the ponies.

Once she gets something, she gets it. And that is a big bite of mooncake in her mitt.

I've had a lot of requests from the ladies to include Jim in some pictures, so, here he is. Looking good!

Another gratuitous shot, this one of Luna looking gorgeous... must have been good light that evening.

I like this one, and especially because Muriel is still fixated on the moon over our house.

And because who knows when I will post again, let me take this chance to send a big shout-out to the newest member of the Daddytude clan. Welcome Baby David, and good job, Tudes!

Campy

Even after a five day Labor Day weekend (ahhh), I still didn't find the time to clean my house, send off many baby gifts and cards and late birthday presents and photos of my kids, and update the blog. Now that another crazy (though short) week of work is behind me, I am starting to wonder if things are ever going to settle down. And it is this feeling of rushed, stressed, kid-nagging, husband-alienating, work-struggling excess that has me longing for a simpler time, when dishes were washed in a dishpan, when strong women cooked noodle hotdish in the open air, when small children were held on "vault toilets" so as not to be lost forever, when neighbors could attempt to fall asleep while listening to their other neighbors swap loud stories around the fire, just a few feet away, late, late into the night.

So, really, this simple time was last week, and it was pretty fun. The camping out part was really fantastic. The girls got muddy, our campsite was next to a little brook (which Naomi kept delightedly referring to as a waterfall), there was much stick and rock and leaf and mud imaginary play, we saw a little cute mouse scurrying around, and the meals I planned worked out just fine (though, if you know how to make toast whilst camping, please leave a comment...). The sleeping part was pretty disastrous. The campground was in the flight path of Seatac airport, and all the landing planes seemed to be about a hundred feet overhead, every ten minutes. The neighbors were a big group, a family reunion, maybe? who despite having claimed five or six of the campsites in the area had to make their fire twenty feet from our tent, sit around it and make chat late into the night (who can blame them, right?), and feed it with new logs which they insisted on chopping with an axe at 11 pm. After they had awakened Muriel (rats!), and she could absolutely not get back to sleep because of the chopping sounds and the light and shadows dancing on the tent wall, I was forced to morph into a person I swore I would never be, the person who totally kills someone else's fun by claiming their right to quiet hours with the excuse "We have little ones who are having trouble sleeping." Who says "we have little ones"...?! Not me! But, yeah, me now.

I tried to avoid saying anything about the noise, because I knew my kids would be up EARLY and there would be no shushing them. Sure enough! We didn't have a clock handy, but we got up when they did, made some leisurely breakfast, packed up our tent, chatted with the sweet apologetic campfire gang from next door, got everything into the car, and drove down the way to the beach park, where we discovered that it was all of 8:30. So, yeah, I told them to be quiet and then still woke them up way earlier than any camper should be required. Sorry! We gave them our firewood.

Anyway, camping pictures- let's see how many the internet lets me upload before I doze off...

Man Hike!

I had a post all cooked up about how hot it was over the weekend, and how it turned the girls into crabby little crabbersons, and I had some irritating titles on the table, like "Hot Cross Bun(nies)" or "Hottentots" or something similar, and some pictures of them all sweated up, and some of them in the wading pool, with their little teeth chattering. But now, of course, it is gray and cool and rainy, they put an extra onesie on Muriel today, under the tank top I sent her to daycare in, and I can't even remember what the heat was like. Also, it occurs to me that any readers in Arizona and even in the midwest would likely scoff at my claims of the magnitude of the heat, which really only got into the nineties.

So instead I will turn my attention to the oft-neglected (and completely outnumbered) man of the house, who on Sunday joined some of his coworkers for some wilderness male bonding. They went hiking near Mt. Ranier, and had a really good time. Why, yes, he did have to go out the day before to buy a lighter, more hikeable tripod for his big old camera. But it was worth it- look at this beauty...
And let us not overlook this beauty, for that matter!
Marmot!

Here's hoping we get a little more of the hot weather- we're planning a camping trip in the next week, and we would like it warm and dry, please....

The Crumber

Remember back in college when all of a sudden everyone was reading the Rabbit books, and you decided that Updike was a genius and you were going to read everything else he ever wrote, and you went to the used book store and found some little old early Updike paperbacks and you started in on them, and ...enh. The prose was still lovely, but they just didn't have the juice?

For me that paperback was The Poorhouse Fair, which I never finished. At the beginning, though, (and I hope I am remembering correctly), is the part where one of the women in the poorhouse reflects endlessly on her contribution to the running of their unconventional household, which is "crumbing" the table after meals. She scrapes and picks and gets all the little food bits off the tablecloth so that it is clean and ready for the next meal. Friends, Jim's mom was our crumber. For three months. And today, as I picked a galaxy of sticky jasmine rice off our tablecloth, well, I missed her a little more than I usually do.

Work is absolutely kicking my ass, if I may say so. As a rule, I am your aggravating coworker, who, when you complain about how much work you have and you can't even believe it, and how do they expect you to get anything done with all these meetings, and so forth, clucks sympathetically and strains all the muscles in her face to keep her eyes from rolling. But now, I am on your side. The work is piling up! It is insane how much we still have to accomplish! I am tripled booked, every other morning, between 9:00 and 12:00, with scrums (for all you Agile development fans), trainings, meetings, and more scrums.

And because everyone is feeling this way, whenever a new task comes up, which it does about fifteen times a day, somehow it's landing on my tablecloth. More things to track. More things to learn. More things to finish up. More things to be responsible for. And although it has me stressed out quite a bit, and feeling equal parts grouch and martyr, there is a part of me that feels a little more alive than usual. So I will continue to gather up these sticky, annoying bits of work, and feel secretly grateful for some external motivation. I knew I had it in me to be more productive!

School Daze

The girls have completed a month of school (Naomi is actually in pre-school, and for consistency we also refer to Muriel's baby holding pen as school), and I am pleased to say that the report is so far, so good. I usually time Muriel's drop off to coincide nicely with breakfast, so when I get there, there is a gaggle of toddlers sitting in teeny chairs, munching on incongruous pairings like pancakes and canned green beans. Mmmm. Muriel loves getting into one of these chairs and participating in the group snack. She is a sociable creature, noticeably more so than Naomi was at this age. She gets excited to see the teachers, she blows kissses when we leave, and does her random, non-directional hand waving. From the teachers' accounts, she enjoys music time, does a great job eating her lunch, and is especially fond of playing with dirt outside. Whee!

I would compare Naomi's initial reaction to school to a fervent crush. She LOVED school the first week or two, because at school there are teachers who are kind and friendly to three-year-olds. She is an adult-centric child, and this made it especially frustrating for her when her grandparents didn't know what to do with her for three months. She has settled down a bit, and more importantly, she has shifted her focus onto her peers. Hurray! We hear about her friends, we count them up (there are seven!), we talk about one in particular who seems a little bi-polar with her "play with me, no, don't play with me now" behavior every other day. Naomi seems unfazed by her flip-flopping, even though we are dying to rig her up with a hidden panda-cam to figure out just what the heck motivates three year olds in the "dolphin" class to accept and reject friendship overtures from minute to minute.

We visted a handful of preschools before settling on this one. I had thought a Montessori school might be good for Naomi, considering the glimpses of OCD I see in her, and my own anxieties about being able to model self-motivated learning (I am externally motivated in the worst way). We saw a few that were really fantastic. The one we chose, though, is close to our house, inexpensive, Montessori-inspired (close enough!), and has a shabby, comfortable feel to it, which I mean in the best possible way. It is the preschool that alleviates any concern you might have that you are in some way related to those people you hear about in New York City that call in all their favors to get the editor of the Times to write their two-year-old a letter of reference for admission to the preschool that will fast-track their kid to Yale or whatever.

Only time will tell whether this place sends Naomi to the Ivies, but in the meantime, here is a list of things she has learned at school in the past month:

"Ewwww!" All the cool kids at school must say Ewww! to just about anything that happens, because Naomi does it all the time now. Ewwww! Underpants! Ewwww, a baby wipe- I'm not a baby! Ewwww! Pee!

"Criss cross applesauce" = the new "Indian Style"... Everybody sit down, criss cross applesauce!

"Zip it, lock it, put it in your pocket." - Ha! If I were in just the right mood, I might be bothered by this, but most of the time I think it's really funny, and I have already tried using it on Jim, with undesirable results.

Songs, songs, songs. She can sing "America the Beautiful" all the way through ("above the fruit and planes!"), "I'm a Little Teapot," which I had purposefully never taught her because I have always found it a little too cutesy, a song for lining up to the tune of "The Farmer in the Dell"..."I'm ready for the hall, I'm standing nice and tall...", and my super fave rave, a days of the week song set to the tune of "The Addams Family":

There's Sunday and there's Monday. There's Tuesday and there's Wednesday. There's Thursday and there's Friday, and then there's Saturday.
Days of the week. (clap clap)
Days of the week. (clap clap)
Days of the week, days of the week, days of the week. (clap clap)

In case you were looking for a song to get stuck in your head for 72 hours.

Splash Park!

This Sunday afternoon we repeated last Sunday afternoon's high jinks, minus the chilliness, minus the adorable vegan kindergartner. We had some splashing, we followed up with some Chinese food. Ah, weekend, I miss you already.

Gigantic Blog Roundup

First, the picture of Muriel's cake that didn't make her birthday post:

Trip Report, Retroactive
So, way back a long time ago (at the end of June), we had our vacation. We went to Orcas island again, not because there are no other good vacation destinations around here, but because we really loved it last time, and we wanted to take Jim's parents on a sure thing. Our last Orcas trip, you may recall, was inspired by drunken bidding at a charity auction. This time we rented a house the way most people have to (find house, send in deposit, pay full price, bleah). Again, we were lucky enough to have our good friends join us on the trip as well, so along with three generations of Khooler, we had Naomi and Muriel's BFFs (and their parents) along.

Naomi with her best pal. The weather was chilly the first part of the week, but good and warm by the end.

The house was on the north side of the island, and looked out into the part of the Sound between the San Juans and the mainland. The view was really pretty spectacular, from the deck outside the main floor of the house, from our little deck upstairs, from my ridiculously comfy king-sized bed (from where, on the first morning, thanks to an early wakeup by our little closet-dweller, I got to lie back and actually watch the sun rise over the water), and from the rocky little private beach, accessible by a steep-sided trail that would not have seemed breathtakingly dangerous to my childless self of yore. 

The view from our private beach....

We didn't see any whales this time, but there were a few dolphin sightings, big ships, sailboats, and a puzzling set of dark, intriguing buildings on the far shore, which I doggedly attempted to identify with the marine map of the island that came with the house, only to discover a little typed square of paper that had been laminated onto the map, telling me exactly which islands I was seeing, and what those dark, forboding cities on the far shore were (uh, oil refineries). The only part of the house that didn't have a great view was the hot tub, which we tried out just on principle, but I think if it had been on the deck, there may have been considerably increased stewing. Also on the topic of stewing, my friend brought the pinot grigio wine cube from Target. And then her husband went to the liquor store for Jameson (because he has been reading my diary?), and a Khalua/vodka pre-mix thing that we renamed, in Jim's honor, "White Asian." Slurp.

This is the first season I have really watched "So You Think You Can Dance," and I am a little concerned that it is influencing my already slangariffic vocab. Because I was about to start writing about how good the food was in our vacation paradise, and the first adjective that came to mind was "sick." Thanks a lot, you weird dancing judges. Anyway, the food was not sick, but very very good, thanks to a friendly unspoken competition between Jim's mom and our friend J., the same vacation chef who kept us in bacon last trip. Yes, there were Mexican delicacies (homemade guacamole a la J. has converted me from a guac hater), yes there was sticky rice, on the Eastern side. We even had a birthday cake for C. Mmm.
I was concerned that Jim's parents would be bored on this vacation. Their sport of choice is shopping, preferably discount (or DVD) shopping, preferably at the same strip mall over and over and over. Occasionally, they like to vary from this routine with a trip to any establishment which provides them with all you can eat food. If the food includes seafood, specifically shellfish or sushi, all the better. Our vacation choice provides travelers with exactly zero opportunity to do any of this. But they settled right in, on the deck, reading a thriller, in the case of Jim's dad, and just taking in the view, in the case of Jim's mom. I confess, it was enormously gratifying. As for the rest of us, there was a lot of story reading and little-people playing. The bigger, though still quite little girls shared a room off of C. and J.'s room, which made for really terrible nights' sleep for those two. Shenanigans! We did a little hiking. We hit the beach (the lake beach, where again, the water was waaaaay too cold for any of us to go in further than knee level).

(Muriel auditions for some wacky Racquel Welch movie remake starring only babies...)

Jim, J., and I went sea kayaking, which was a terrific adventure, and also made me think it was possible that my arms might fall off. Ahh, vacation. This one really was over too soon.

Bridge Topic: Vacation Homes

One thing I didn't mention in the vacation post is that the house we rented, in addition to being large and wonderfully sited, ridiculously well-equipped (kid plates? high chair? pack and play? blender? beach towels? checks and more checks on the list), and a tiny bit eerie in its ability to make you think someone was right there, when they were upstairs, or long gone, when they were around the corner in the kitchen, also had a distinct decorative theme: pine cones. You may think this is the sort of theme that would be a kind of suggestion, just a little something to tie rooms together. But no, this house was obsessed, in so far as a house does that king of thing, with pine cones. The things I mentioned in the "well equipped" list, above, are about the only thing in this house that didn't conform to the decorative theme. So there were pine cone wall paper borders, towels, sheets, dishes, glasses, silverware, placemats, switch plates on all the light switches, lamps, bed headboards, nightstands, wall hangings, throw rugs, candles, picture frames, mirrors, drawer pulls, curtains, and various bric a brac. To name a few. There was a set of framed stamps FROM OTHER COUNTRIES that had pine cones on them. There was a cute folk-art thrift store tin frame with a pine cone theme. There was a figurine that was clearly resin-cast, but was intended to look like a folk art miniature of an evergreen tree constructed out of pine cone parts (what are those parts called? You know, the petals of the pine cone?).

I was tempted, dear readers, to treat you to a peek at this excess, but there was no way to capture just a few photos that would realistically convey the scope of this theme. It was mighty, overpowering, all-encompassing. Pine Cone Cabin! You know who you are. It was in bookclubbing this wacky aspect of our vacation, during our vacation, that my friend and I formulated an important theory. Because it is too mind-blowing to imagine that there exists someone who has the time and the patience and the resources to scour retail and resale establishments to furnish a vacation home this completely and this thoroughly thematically, there simply has got to be a service out there in the world that exists to furnish vacation homes according to themes. In my two minutes of googling, I have turned up a couple of cabin-decor type places that have all the furniture and bedding and switch plate covers and coasters and salt and pepper shakers. So I guess I can imagine that those crazy, over the top touches could be accomplished by actual owners (the seven framed antique postcards of little resorts across the country that have "pine cone" in the name?), with the muscle work handled by a tireless online shopper. I remember that whenever we stayed at the North shore in Minnesota, the themes always centered around black bears or moose. I have to imagine there are many beach cottages that have fish or seashells or both.

But who could forget the hall of taxidermy, where I stayed with my girlfriend during a girls' weekend of terror, outside of Vegas, a year and a half ago? We were apalled by that place, so incredibly well-stocked with dead, menacing animals as it was, and wondered how anyone had the time to hunt as many deer as they would have had to to create that many antler chandeliers and, embarrassingly, magazine racks for the bathroom stalls. So, naive J. Khooler of one and one half years ago, I announce to you this: they just picked a theme and someone ordered one hundred and fifty dead animals off the internet. Duh.

But that brings me to a quick anecdote, which is almost in the present day (finally), and that is this: I had another girls' weekend, with the same girl, only this time it was in her new home, fabulous Boise, Idaho. Not that you care, but people from there say "Boy-see," not "Boy-zee," which is kind of my preferred pronunciation. Oh well. There was no taxidermy whatsoever involved in this weekend. Last time, I was the pregnant friend, but this time, it was my friend bearing that burden, if you will. She is due at the end of August, and is postively radiant (though she is normally, too). There was a baby shower for her that involved sick (read, fantastic) coconut cupcakes, a fun little farmer's market in Eagle, and a night on the town in Boise. Here's what our night on the town looked like: 1. Check into hotel. 2. Get suits on for trip to pool. 3. Discover pool is the greenish, three-lane lap pool at the Gold's Gym in the hotel. Eee. Return to room, still dry, for nap. 4. Get dressed up, including cute (uncomfortable) shoes. Hey, it happens once in a while. 5. Sit at sidewalk table of very nice restaurant/bar, drinking, eating tiny appetizer, watching people. 6. Report to real dinner spot, the fondue restaurant. Sit at a crazily romantic little table. 7. Eat way, way too much food that has been dipped into something or cooked in something right at our table. 8. Stagger and/or hobble back to hotel. 9. The end.

So, yeah, girls' weekends were a little different when we were closer to being actual girls. This is the friend who used to take me to the makeup counter, then dinner at a casino restaurant, off to a club, and then dancing at the after-club. Not that I expected much dancing out of this trip. It was just fine with me, how relaxing and devoid of binge drinking our evening was. The great part is that just being with my friend, which was ostensibly the appeal of a girls' weekend all along, is now genuinely the primary, wonderful treat of the experience. It is so great to get together and have nothing but time to talk and plan and dissect. Thanks, girlfriend! Spending time with someone who has known me since I was 13 (and still likes me!) is a remarkable gift. Though I will admit that going through security at the airport and eating out at three different restaurants without any small children along was weirdly delightful as well.

Awesome

When I got back from my girls' weekend on Sunday afternoon, my husband performed his usual ritual for the day we are reunited after a long absence, which is to go and see a matinee. Whatever. I took the girls out to the backyard post-nap, and it was so warm and sunny and lovely that I decided we should head over to the new splash park not far from our house. We hustled through the sunscreen/swimsuit/towel/dress/shoes procedure (involving a spectacular fall down the stairs by Muriel, which did not result in any injury to Muriel, but gave me the most amazing adrenaline dump), drove to the splash park, and jumped into the spray. At which time the dark gray clouds completely took over the sky and the warm 71 degree weather turned into cold 71 degree weather. The sun makes a big difference, is all I'm saying. Muriel kept putting her face directly in the spray, so she got pretty wet. I started to feel like a bad parent, since they were in their wet little bathing suits and I was not inclined to take off my SWEATER, so I dried them off and changed their clothes and set them loose on the dry playground portion of the park.

Naomi remembered some random imaginary play we had enacted the last time we had been at this park, which had to have been four months ago or more, that involved being trapped in the high tower, and having the other person come for rescue purposes, bearing nutritious, tasty (pretend) muffins. I don't know how muffins got involved. But we picked the game back up, and Naomi came to rescue her sister and me, up in the tall tower, and brought the pretend muffins. There was another little girl on the play structure (or whatever they're called) with us, watching our weird game, so I said, "Do you want some of our tasty muffins?" And she blinked her wide eyes for a few seconds, and then said, "But, we don't know if they are vegan!"