Feliz Navidad, Again!

Christmas is here at last- hope you all have a wonderful day. Yesterday, on Christmas Eve, we had our third delightful visit to the golf club pool, followed by a pretty extravagant and wonderful sushi dinner courtesy of Jim's dad. We also concocted a Santa tradition for these parts where instead of stockings (which people don't really wear here) hung by the chimney (which we don't have at this house), we left wicker baskets out on the patio. Naomi wanted to make sure they were outside of the locked part, but Jim convinced her that if Santa can get down chimneys, he can fit fit toys through an iron gate.

The girls woke up, opened gifts, and were generally quite pleased. It turns out I didn't need to panic and buy one more toy for each like I thought I did- all the little minor toys I got as stocking presents seemed to be more than enough for them. Later in the morning we went to church, which I especially liked because I cannot get enough singing of Christmas carols. Also, hilariously, in this Methodist church nearly entirely made up of Chinese people in Malaysia, we ended the services with "Feliz Navidad." Hee.

After church we went to an open house for an old school friend of Jim's. It was great for Jim and him to catch up, for me to meet his lovely wife and get an Indian buffet lunch, and for Muriel to have the run of the place and eat a big plate of unbelievable Indian mango. For Naomi, it was not so great. She kept complaining that he stomach was hurting, and because she had eaten some cake before any other food, I thought she might just be tired and over sweetied. So she lolled about, with her mother meanly nagging her to please try and sit up a little, until she finally remembered our new holiday tradition for 2009, which is that on every major holiday, you must throw up on your mother.

Thanksgiving, you may recall, ended with Muriel vomiting on my head on my parent's sunny back porch. For Christmas, Naomi did her part by puking all over my lap. I had a dress on, and we were sitting on a chair over a beautiful Persian rug, so I (heroically, if I may say so) did whatever I could to make sure the spit up stayed in my lap. Fun! Credit to Jim, too, who grabbed a couple of plates when it all went down. What a mess. Naomi and I spent twenty minutes in the bathroom with a box of tissues (because paper towels are not widely used here), and then made a long awkward exit waiting for Jim's parents to come get us.

We came home and showered off- sure enough, Naomi has hives all over. She is allergic to some tree nuts, and must have had one in the piece of fruitcake she tried. I gave her a Benadryl and put her to bed. Poor baby. She seems to be feeling a lot better, I am happy to report, though I will also admit that I am checking on her a bit obsessively.

So, Naomi is sleeping, Jim and Muriel are out meeting up with a bunch of his old school chums, and I am eating some of the (insanely huge bag of) chocolate the kids scored at the open house. Tomorrow we had back to Singapore...leaving behind my new favorite place, the pool at the golf club. But the girls will be happy to be back with their cousin, and we with their parents.

Peace on Earth, good will to all!

What Day Is It?

When I was sixteen, I went to Germany for a month, along with one student from every other state. It was a fantastic trip, but I will never forget hearing from two of my friends when I got back that I was different, not as much fun, something like that. This came to mind when I was thinking about what to post, because on a trip like this, out of my routine and away from home, my everyday self feels far away and quiet. No chattering inner monologue to tap. Lucky you guys. It means I should focus on the photos more, but I left the camera in the room with a napping tot, and I will not wake her for anything.

So, for the roundup- Sunday morning was the wedding of Jim's cousin. We had to be there at 8:30...early, right? It was a bit of a dash. The girls wore beautiful dresses Jim's mom had bought for them, along with some wreaths of baby's breath on their heads. Attaching those wreaths was no easy feat, I'm just saying. The flower girl part went reasonably well, if you don't mind your flower girls looking spacy or sullen or fraught with concentration. There was a little jam up in the middle, but they got moving again and everyone made it to the front. The bride was beautiful and kind, the groom was handsome and magnanimous. It didn't rain on the outdoor event. There was a little buffet after that included some tasty tuna salad croissants. All in all, a lovely morning.

The girls got quite sweaty and undone, of course- it's hot here, if I haven't mentioned it. We went home to change before the tea ceremony for the groom's side. When we came here for our wedding celebration, we had a tea ceremony too. The tradition is that the bride and groom serve tea to all their older relatives, starting with the parents and then the oldest on down to whoever is just above them. The groom serves, the bride serves, and then the relatives hand over a gift. When we had ours, it seemed like everyone was giving us (me!) jewelry. So we thought we had it all figured out, and went out the day before to buy a gold bracelet for the bride. At the ceremony for his cousin, though, everyone just kept handing over the red packets (Hong Bao), and we started to feel like we had really missed the boat. Jim's mom explained later that since gold prices were so high, most people were just opting for cash. Oops.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention at this time that Muriel has fallen in love for the first time, madly, deeply, with the brother of the groom. She referred to him as "the Big Guy" the whole time, and waved and flirted and was just generally obsessed with him the entire day and evening. When I get my act together with the pictures, I will post the evidence.

The best news of the day was that the girls took about a five hour nap. They got up in time to get dressed for the reception, which began at what is normally their bed time. Fortified by the nap, however, they were ready to party. The reception was quite grand and enormous, with a seven (roughly?) course meal, a giant curtain with the names of the bride and groom in sparkly gold letters, a slide show of photos of them looking like Hong Kong movie stars, and a visiting corporate logo bear who handed out stuffed toys and candy to the kids. That last part kind of put it over the top, but really, it was a good party. The kids went to sleep near midnight- a clear record.

Yesterday we visited Jim's grandfather at his house. The cool, clean terrazzo floors and relative lack of impediments in his house were irresistible to the girls and their cousin; there was a surplus of dashing around and chasing and screaming. And ineffectual shushing and scolding.

This morning we went for a swim at the golf club Jim's parents belong to. It's really a lovely place, and they had a kiddie pool, which meant I got to just wade around a bit and not really commit (I enjoy a swim but I sort of have to be in the right mood). Jim ran into a high school friend and her husband and children, visiting from Sydney. It was fun to chat with them by the pool. Afterward, we had lunch on the veranda of the golf club- alfredo noodles for the kids and curry laksa for the parents. I think this brings us entirely up to date.

I have a few things to figure out and accomplish before Christmas...which is in a few days. There will be more visiting, more eating out (always more eating out!), more shopping, and if I get my act together, some photos posted in the near future. Ho Ho Ho!

Malaysia Day Two

Today: Wedding rehearsal at a lovely resort, dim sum, shopping mall, big giant rehearsal dinner type thing at the groom's parents home. The kids stayed up hours past their bedtimes and basically had candy for dinner, so wish us luck tomorrow as they participate (and play minor supporting characters) in an 8:45 a.m. wedding. Yee-ikes.

Who says a family of four can't fit in the back seat?


Sweaty children at a wedding rehearsal.


Sweet nourishing bao!

One delight of foreign lands is the sometimes wacky signage and marketing concepts. At the mall by Jim's parents' house, against the backdrop of "Sparkling Christmas," one sees the "Call of Duty" tournament. Merry Christmas- get ready to shoot!

(Full disclosure: actually posted on Malaysia day three...more on that day soon, I hope!)

Singapore!

So much for my post-a-day ambitions. It's day two of our trip, and I'm writing this from the 24th floor of an apartment building in Singapore. There's a view of downtown from the living room window (when it's not too rainy to see that far), and an even better view inside, of two little girls playing with their super cute three-year-old cousin whom they met for the first time yesterday. It has been so good to stay with Jim's sister and brother-in-law (and their daughter), though I am afraid we are kind of awful guests, voracious and noisy and sleeping at all the wrong times.

The flights were...OK. I will summarize with bullet points:
- The international terminal at Vancouver, oh all ye Olympics-bound travelers, is pretty swank. Enjoy.
- Japan Airlines, please, please give your passengers on ten hour flights more food. We waited so long for that second meal to arrive, and when it became clear that all you were giving us was a half sandwich and two teensy cornichons, well, let me just say that it was a bit of a disappointment.
- All Nippon Airlines, while I am at it, if you are going to try to fix a seating issue, only to divide up a family with tiny children into one pair of seats and two singles (?), please, when you finally get the situation sort of resolved, be judicious about asking the tired, worried family to hurry into their seats. Good food, though.
- General advice for long trips with small children: you need WAY more snack food than you think. Go overboard packing snacks. At the Tokyo airport, in a sleepless haze, I ended up buying a can of Pringles to avoid that panicky feeling I was getting near the end of the last leg. They were the only food I could recognize that wasn't a cookie, or a distressingly named mystery food (like "Corn Chocolate").
- Obvious advice for international trips: you are supposed to know the address of the place you are staying. You can save yourself (and the poor relative who is picking you up in the middle of the night) a good twenty to thirty minutes of customs line time.

One more short flight this afternoon- to Kuala Lumpur. We are sad to leave our hosts behind, but happy to see Jim's parents and other relatives, and get ready for his cousin's wedding on Sunday. Plus, his sister and brother-in-law are coming for the wedding, so we will see them again tomorrow.

Hopefully the next post will include some pictures. Keep on keeping on!

Watch This Space

In a couple of days we will climb on board what I truly hope is a luxurious jet plane and wing our way to the East. Except that of course we will be flying westward to get there... whatever. The point is, we're spending Christmas in Singapore and Malaysia. This is very exciting because we get to spend time with Jim's family, in particular his sister, brother-in-law, and niece (who is three and whom we have never met), and of course his lovely parents, who hopefully have forgiven me for being such a grump near the end of their last visit here. We will also get to see his extended family, because his cousin is getting married. Which reminds me that we are supposed to have bought some presents for some of the little relatives, and I don't know if we have yet... yikes.

The part I am not looking forward to of course is the plane ride. We keep pitching it to the kids as a super fun adventure, but I am not quite in that frame of mind yet. Better start working on that frame of mind... we have drawing pads and sticker books and unusual snack food and a new little computer that will play movies (and a headphone splitter for the girls). It's really only a ten hour flight followed by a seven hour flight- I can't really count the hour long flight to Vancouver.

We are going to have a computer along, though, so I am going to make an effort to post often. In the meantime- Happy Holidays, you guys!

Tonsillitis!

As gleeful as it makes me to get a real diagnosis from a doctor, you would think I would choose to actually go to one more often. Today's appraisal of my wretched horror movie throat has me dancing to the pharmacy counter, because the charming Aussie-accented doctor I saw assured me that tonsillitis (what I got) is not only treatable with the awe-inspiring Z-Pack (or in my case, its generic cousin), but is also NOT THAT CONTAGIOUS! As he said, it's between me and the bacteria. All weekend I have been agonizing over giving this illness (that I thought was maybe strep throat) to my kids right before we start our 23 hour plane journey to the other side of the world. It has been yucky- I feel sick in all the traditional ways, but my throat hurts so badly that every time I swallow there is pathetic whimpering. I picture that times two on a full day plane ride, and it quite literally gives me heart palpitations.

But no longer! I have started my generic pack, and feel the full confidence of the pharmaceutical industry coursing through my veins. Both girls have finished off their own virus-induced maladies, enough said about that. We will be healthy and happy and bursting with love or whatever when the plane takes off. Whew!

Which leaves me plenty of time to brag about the kind of spectacular Holiday Open House. What a turnout! Dearest oldest friends, check. Neighbors, check. Friends acquired through kids' school, check. Church friends, check. Coworkers, Jim's and mine! Check! All total we had thirteen kids, and they ran around and begged for cookies and played with each other and made foam sticker ornaments and begged for punch and ate cheese and cucumbers and chocolate. Mostly it was my kids begging for treats and punch, actually. Two of the kids (7 and 5?) from across the street came, and stayed when their mom left, and at one point they announced to me that Muriel was their particular friend. Lest anyone think I am exaggerating her party girl affect.

And now, in the week remaining of home for the holidays, I have a fairly clean house full of flowers and pointsettias and snack food. Hooray! The only down side of the party is that I also now have FOUR half-finished bottles of wine in my fridge, and in my tonsillitised state, I am completely unable to do anything about them. I am working my way through the cookies and cake leftovers, thank you very much.

Sophie's Choice

Naomi is home from school with the stomach virus thing. I will keep my feelings on the stomach virus to myself... She has kept herself mostly busy watching "Super Why" and drinking soup from a straw and dozing. Our extra time together has afforded her extra time to pursue her new hobby- giving me completely random choices.

The choices do NOT go together. It is frequently difficult to make any kind of connection between them. They are presented at unpredictable intervals throughout the day.

Real examples:

Do you like ice cream or cats?

Do you like oranges or stars?

Do you like number one or number 4?

Do you like water or broccoli?

Do you like chairs or markers?

The reassuring upshot is that I have figured out there isn't a penalty for liking one thing over another. But can't I like both water and broccoli?

Thankful Itinerants

You know who has really spectacular weather of a Thanksgiving week? The Arizonans, those lucky lucksters. I enjoyed seeing everyone bundled up in sweaters and fleeces during the shivery 70 degree days. Brr!

I'm lazily relying on pictures, as is my habit of late. There are a few bits I don't have any good pictures of, though, like the night my parents and I drove the girls out of town in an attempt to get a better look at the stars. It was moderately successful- we saw Mars and Saturn in addition to the Pleiades, though neither my parents nor I could pin down the Big Dipper. During the singalong on the way back, my dad indulged in one of his endless novelty songs, "Found a Peanut." About six verses in, Naomi whispered to me, "Mommy, is he just making this up?" Hee.

In addition, I had a fun night with some high school chums at a local sports bar, dinner out with my sisters, and a trip to the zoo with my brother's family and my parents. Thanksgiving dinner was remarkably early, it seemed to me (12:01 p.m., approximately), but the turkey was delicious and we had a good time. I was toying with making the weird cranberry relish they are forever flogging on NPR, but I didn't. Anyone ever made that?

And now, the pictures...

I have already mentioned that my mom buys the best toys. Good job, Gramma!








On Tuesday morning, I took the girls to Hole in the Rock at Papago Park. They loved climbing around on the rocks, especially Naomi, who pretended to be a bear the entire time.




The Zoo! Remember when Muriel was all terrified of the livestock? No longer! She loved this goat with her whole heart.


I made up a name for the goat, Buttercup, before I realized that the nice Zoo people had put the name of each goat on their collar. (Its real name was CJ.) Muriel really believed Buttercup was hers, and kept objecting if any other child attempted to make contact with the creature.


Meanwhile, I was mildly obsessed with this giant bird, the Kori Bustard, an animal I had never heard of before. 42 pounds! Heaviest flight-capable bird!

Thanksgiving!


I got this idea from my friend, A.- the kids had a good time assembling assemblies from mini-marshmallows and uncooked spaghetti. Muriel just ate a couple of marshmallows.

Beautiful Thanksgiving afternoon- sunny, warm, and so delightful. Except that about ten minutes after this photo was taken, as I was sitting on the floor of the porch playing with the kids, Muriel decided to throw up down my back. Whee!

Muriel had been a sick little insomniac for the first three nights, had about two decent nights' sleep, and then in honor of Thanksgiving, picked up a nice stomach virus, probably from Buttercup. She was already in a lightweight phase, but three days of being sick and not eating followed by two days of throwing up and not eating has resulted in our little skinny thing being an even littler, skinnier thing. I'm trying not to worry. More vitamins and jello for her, maybe.

Here are the pictures I didn't post, because I can't get Lightroom to work in a recognizable way right now- one of Jim and Naomi in the plane on the way home- hooray for having another parent along! And one of our friends' new baby, D., who joined us (along with her parents! yea!) for a terrific former band nerd brunch the day after Thanksgiving. So wonderful to see old friends, and new little ones.

That's the trip roundup. The holiday open house is this weekend- Will I distribute the invitations to the neighbors on time? Will the power go out? Will anyone show up? Stay tuned...

Thankful

Yesterday Muriel and her classmates made big paper turkeys, decorating the big fan feathers in the back, which their teachers then assembled. On the right-most feather, the teacher wrote the child's name and what they are thankful for, as dictated by the child. Charlie is thankful for strawberries. Ella is thankful for her Mommy. Muriel is thankful for... Vitamins and Jello.

Aren't we all? Tomorrow morning is the kickoff of a crazy travel season- we're off to Arizona to blink in the sunshine for a week, and try to remember how to play outdoors. And then of course there is the thankful feasting. Have I told you lately, friends, how thankful I am for you? You and vitamins and Jello.

Girls' Weekend Mashup. Or Sample.

Imagine if you will that your girlfriend won a weekend stay at a geodesic dome on Washington's Pacific shore, and that she was kind enough to invite you along, buy you some cocktail makings, snack box, red-velvet petit fours, and for heaven's sake, a camel colored Snuggie to wear while you kick off the holiday season a little early by watching White Christmas on DVD and listening to the November beach wind howling outside.


Of course, I don't have to imagine it, only acknowledge my good fortune at hitting the weekend jackpot yet again. After the snack, cocktail, and Bing Crosby combo and a luxurious night's sleep in the geodesic loft, I had a long walk on the windy gray beach and time to catch up on back issues of the New Yorker. Liver, down, erudition, up slightly. In the afternoon we explored the nearest tourist/beach town, a place almost entirely devoid of village-type charm, with weird little strip malls bunched up along a rigorously divided highway-type road. We hit a souvenir shop enticingly named "Eye Candy," which was positively chockablock with seashell-themed merchandise. The homemade ice cream and fudge shop next door was also kind enough to stay open in the off season, and while we enjoyed a cone apiece, Ice Cream Shop Radio played a current song that uses the refrain from a vintage Hall and Oates hit. You know the one. Thus began the debate on what constitutes a mashup vs. a sample. I read (OK, skimmed) the Wikipedia articles on both mashups and sampling, and I still don't think I can answer the question with any authority.

Anyway, back to the dome for more snacking and magazines, and in the evening, back to the town to visit the Irish pub, which had advertised live music and implied fish and chips.


The live music was a guy at once loathesome and lovable, playing a truly random assortment of songs (Danny Boy? Yes. Take the Skinheads Bowling? Yes.) on the guitar and sometimes the piano. At one point he started "Blister in the Sun," and somehow the lyrics to "Might Like You Better if We Slept Together" crept in. OK, so, mashup? Sampling? At the last minute it switched to "The End of the World as We Know It," so ultimately we had to conclude it was...a medley? The highlight for me was a singalong to the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York," the lowlights I will refrain from cataloguing.

So, already a Saturday night to remember, right? But while the music played, two couples came in, pointedly dressed in their pajamas. My friend gave them a friendly interrogation on the way back from the Ladies', and that is how we ended up leaving "Galway Bay" and heading to the IGA (the town's grocery store) for Moonlight Madness. The IGA was hopping, the place to be in your pajamas and bathrobes, buying three pounds of Cornish game hen for $4.99, or, like the elderly man we bumped into on the way in the door, a half-priced case of Monster energy drink.


We spun the wheel of cheese (though we did not win the Emmenthaler), we bowled with a frozen turkey and eight two-liters of 7-Up (though I didn't even make contact with the soda, weakling that I am), and we jumped onto orange numbers taped to the floor whenever the lucky number announcement came across the PA.

Thus did I resurrect my streak, winning a ten dollar gift card on lucky number 9. What a weekend!

Back on the Eastside, every weekend is a Girls' Weekend. Muriel got her witch on, and Naomi, who already has considerable practice, was her cat.


Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Jim also got to take the girls to a princess party for one of Naomi's school friends. Apparently Snow White, the REAL Snow White, according to Naomi, was there, inexplicably doing magic tricks and painting kids' forearms instead of their cheeks.


Times are hard, even for the princesses.

Continuing Education

This past Saturday was the second and final installment of a brief but interesting continuing education class I enrolled in through the local college. (It's not a community college anymore, yo- they've got bachelor's degrees now!) The class was about online writing, specifically blogging. I know what you are thinking- what more could the creator of this entrancing, engrossing web log possibly need to learn about blogging? Yeah, yeah, very funny.

The class was geared toward people who have a business or some other interest for which social networking (via blogging, tweeting, Facebook and the like) is an as-yet untapped opportunity. The instructor provided lots of ideas for how to make your blog more engaging, including such obvious yet oft-ignored advice as "update often." Apparently I should also be reviewing products, or books, or movies, staging contests with prizes, and conducting polls. (For the first contest, I am thinking about a wagering pool on how long we let our jack-o-lanterns moulder before we transfer their squishy persons into the yardwaste bin...)

The real reason I signed up for the class is that I have been fomenting an online writing project on a topic that interests me. I thought getting a little formal blog training (such as it is) would give me a confidence boost to get going already, since like many projects in my brain, this one has taken out a mortgage and moved into a solid little house in the idea phase. But what I learned, of course, made me not more confident, but markedly less so. Because social networking on the web, and knowledge networking, I guess, provides a staggering array of tools and sites and doodads you can use to make sure that your thoughts or your message or brand or whatever get OUT THERE! in a hundred different places and ways. So you can set up and write your blog, but no one is going to find it if you don't give it the right "Google juice," and get it stumbled upon or dugg or kirtsied or whatever.

OK, maybe these are just ways to encourage visits, not determine the life or death of your ideas. But still, there is a gravitas implied in the level of effort and technology to promote an idea (which ironically I would be perfectly willing to exert if I were helping my classmate get his building supply company's blog off the ground) that feels misplaced on some fun writing project I'm idly mulling over. Crap. Now I have to go back and read the Artist's Way all over again.

Speaking of education, we let the television educate our children a bit over the weekend, and we were all treated to an episode of "Dinosaur Train" that featured great green boulders of Brachiosaurus dung, feces, poop, and one other poop-phemism that escapes me. We were expecting more of a (snickering) reaction from Naomi, who is not immune to the refined toilet humor of the preschool set, but because she is a TV hothouse flower, I am never sure what she is even understanding when the shows are on.

Speaking of jokes, the knock-knock jokes are attempting to gain traction. The joke is a fascinating little neuroscience mini-project- little kids love to laugh, they love jokes, but they don't understand them, and they really don't understand how to tell them. (Of course, neither do I, I am terrible at joke telling.) It's amazing what mental abilities go into this genre of socializing. So Naomi can repeat jokes, but the ones she invents are more Dada than Catskills.

And speaking of more laughs to come, I am happy to discover lately that Muriel possesses the personality trait (which she didn't get from me) of being able to laugh heartily at herself. At dinner the other night she was holding her fork weirdly, upright by the tines on one hand, while doing some other engrossing thing with her other hand. She looked at her food, then said, hey, where's my fork?! When I told her it was in her hand, she looked at it, and back at me, and laughed and laughed.

Above Average Wednesday Evening

Tonight Muriel saw on the foyer table a little box of restaurant crayons I found in the pocket of a coat I haven't worn since last winter, and decided she wanted to color. I found her some paper in the art drawer, and she drew a little shape she referred to as a love, by which she meant a heart, and in fact it was pretty close. Then Naomi got in on the act, and helped Muriel trace her hands. Naomi traced her own hands on a different piece of paper, and decorated them elaborately, as she does. She made two circles which she said were cheeks, and she decorated those too. Then she taped the paper up on the wall over the cardboard box they have been living in, got some chopsticks and the rice server paddle thing, and set up her henna and face painting shop. The chopsticks were the henna, the rice paddle was the hand mirror so you could see your painted face.

They also were playing with this flashlight/radio we have, that you can wind up to charge the battery. Jim did his usual science explanation of how a dynamo works. Do they listen to this stuff? Hard to say. He had to coach Naomi a bit on how to turn the knob just a tiny bit to tune in a station. She wound it and wound it, and found one of those song that starts slow and melodic, but that you know is going to pick up. When the beat started, she stood there holding this flashlight radio, bouncing to the rhythm, with this serious, un-self-conscious look on her face that was indescribably awesome.

Naomi climbed into the chair behind Muriel and played that her arms were Muriel's. Then Muriel decided that meant she was Naomi, so she climbed onto Naomi's chair and ate up her leftover salad. There was some play yoga (Muriel's idea), and a pileup on Jim (in which I took no part), and then off to the bunk bed.

Lazy Halloween Photos-Only Post

Be-Flued

OK, well, the flu seems to have made it to the Khooler house. I have no way to say for sure whether we have regular old flu or the far more interesting and newsworthy H1N1, but Jim was very sick all last week, and now Muriel has had a fever for three days and is generally miserable (though both girls are enjoying a marked increase in TV time). The timing could not have been worse- we missed not one but TWO Halloween parties on Saturday. Blah.

I have been a bit sick, but not terribly so, and hoping this is as bad as it gets for my iron-clad immune system (ha). This flu seems to have divided our family down a line- Jim and Muriel on one side, with yucky long-term fevers and more severe symptoms, and Naomi and I on the other, with flu-ishness and respiratory symptoms, but no fever. Naomi has more stalwart German/Swedish genes, maybe? We noticed not long ago that Muriel looks a lot like Jim's mom, which makes her a lucky girl, since Jim's mom is beautiful. But it doesn't protect her from flu fever!

I have to admit that the coverage and emphasis on this epidemic have given me pause. I wanted to get the vaccine for the kids, but I couldn't- it still isn't available at our pediatrician's office. One unwelcome gift of becoming a parent is the macabre ability for my mind to head straight to the absolute worst case scenario, and thanks to the media's various offerings related to the flu, I am well-equipped with scenarios. At the same time, of course, I am certain we will all be fine, and that's highly likely the real scenario. Our health-care professional friend says that although he can't say for sure, it's seems likely that we do have H1N1, since the seasonal flu doesn't generally make the rounds this early in the season. I hope he's right- it will be good to get these fears all put away.

So, today is another in a string of girls' days in, days that have included the afore-mentioned TV time, some butterfly wing painting (though again, we already missed two costume shindigs), sponge cake making, junk food eating, soup, more soup, the reading of seven hundred books, and a long and fruitless search for Naomi's magic wand. Where is that thing?!

Weekend Update

I forgot to mention in the bunk bed dispatch that poor Dad Khooler has been having nightmares (three or four) about things falling. The other day he lunged to catch the lamp on his bedside table, knocking it right over. And the other night, during one of his patented couch naps, he jumped forward with his arms out, to catch some other falling object. So although the girls are doing great in the bunk bed, clearly someone in our family has a little anxiety about it.

On the plus side, I have been getting quite a lot more sleep. Because our little roommate used to wake us up any time between 4:30 and 6:30, I haven't relied on my alarm in quite a while. But either she's sleeping longer in her giant twin bed, or we just can't hear her waking up and demanding things of us. Works for me. Though I have to start setting that alarm now, I guess.

We had a very nearly uneventful weekend (ahhh), but we wrapped it up with a visit to... Turkfest!



Lest you think I am making this up. The Seattle Center hosts a festival for just about everyone at some point during the year, and this can only mean fantastically dressed dancers who will captivate my children. This Fest had an added insider bonus- one of the dancers was the father of Naomi's classmate.



On Friday we had a conference with Naomi's preschool teacher. She had a two or three page report, with lots of Ms (mastered), a few Us (usually), and a couple of Ss (sometimes). We asked the teacher if Naomi's seeming anti-joinerism is an issue at school, but she didn't know what we were even talking about, so that's good, I guess. I never know how Naomi is going to respond when I ask her if she wants to do something. But at Turkfest, when we came across the henna artist, there was no hesitation. She sat right down, and held perfectly still. With favorable results.



Muriel is still too little for henna, so we compensated with a super fly Turkish cap (which also happened to be super cheap). This girl rocks a hat, I'm just saying.

Roommates

Although there is still some actual decorating to do, I am pleased to report that Naomi and Muriel are now officially roommates. They are, as I type, snoozing away their third night in the same room.

We don't have a great "before" picture, because Jim only thought of it "after" we had cleared out the room. So the best I can do is the color and unfinished wood before, featuring the giant rented floor finisher and some moral supporters:


And now, the results- a new color, new trim, and the floor newly refinished. OK, so it doesn't have any furniture or decorations or plug plates. Sheesh. At least the girls like it.




And Muriel LOVES her new bed:


Just kidding. Jim put up the new bunk bed, and they love it. I hope the thrill of bunking together cements the bond they seem to be working on every day. Muriel looks so tiny in her big twin bed. But there's room for everyone during story time, so, yeah, it's all good.

On Eating

On work and eating

So, the short one is that someone STOLE MY APPLE out of the work kitchen. Not out of the fridge, not off the table, where I left it in a pile of fruit sitting on a paper scrawled with the words "free- eat me" or any such thing. No! I left it on my plate, next to the toaster, where my toast was busily toasting, and while I was out of the kitchen for a (ahem) short personal errand, someone took my apple. Brigand! Of course, because I am a pragmatic nerd, I had three more apples back in my office. In your face, apple thief.

The next one is longer, yet even more inconsequential. Every year my gigantic company holds a charity roundup kind of thing, where they politely lean on you to consider donating money to a huge list of causes. And each year when it's charity campaign time, they provide a meal (free food!) and various local charities come in to present information about who they serve and how. Last year there was a pancake breakfast, which was not half bad. The posters are up for this year, though, and here's what we're getting: a "chili feed." Something about this choice of names is making me feel very ambivalent about participating in the lunch. I see from the poster that the Olympia site is getting a "pizza luncheon"- that's appealingly innocuous. But "chili feed?" I know we will not all be huddled around a trough eating chili with our hands, but this is the image "chili feed" leaves me with. Maybe I will bring some baby wipes.

On home life and less eating

Jim has been out of town all week and is coming back today. I was musing last evening that I felt like I had only just (the night before his return) actually achieved "flow" in the single mom thing. We had a whole night of loving calmness and stories and good listening and very well-eaten dinners. I felt like I was finally on top of my game! Then I remembered that it was the morning of the same day that Muriel cried for fifteen minutes (seemed like that long) because I wouldn't heat up her soy milk. This was one of those ridiculous instances where when it's all over, I think, really, that's what I took a stand on? Not heating up soy milk? But then, once you have made a choice, you feel locked in, like if you give in to the crying, everybody loses, or whatever. She got over it eventually and drank the cold soy milk (in the way that she had been doing for weeks).

I much prefer having my co-parent around, of course, and not just for the co-parenting. Mr. Khooler was sorely missed by all of us. But the interesting part from the eating point of view is how low-pressure dinner is when it is only the tots and I that are eating. The planning, the shopping, the cooking- all came down about eight notches. I haven't drawn any conclusions from this, or made any plans. But it was convenient to have that area lowered a bit to accommodate the slight increase in parenting responsibility (kidding, Honey!). Welcome home, dear itinerant trainee. And Happy Friday to you all!

6

The other day during "Candy Hour," which is apparently a real thing at Jim's work (though I hope for the sake of our retirement fund that the hour part is slightly exaggerated), he mentioned that his anniversary was this weekend. The other candy fanciers present at the time were an older set, with kids in college or beyond. They asked him which anniversary it was, and he told them- six years since we got married. "Oh," they said, "You don't even really know each other yet!"

It's kind of exciting to think about how there is ever more getting-to-know left to do. And of course there is, because we are not the same people even from day to day. What will happen in your own life and my own life, and in the intersections of our lives, and how will those things change you, and change me? It remains to be seen. Wonder whether those even older marrieds feel like they've made it, whether they think now that they really know their husbands or wives. Hmm. I like what I know so far, Baby.

Sunday was our anniversary, and it was the same kind of gorgeous, crisp, sunny October day here and now that we had for the actual wedding six years ago, back in St. Paul. On that original sunny October day, though, we did not have two little hitchhikers along, soaking up the sun and our love and mental energy and just generally changing everything for everyone. We hit the park and the dim sum place, two activities that for me boost the festiveness of any day. No pictures of dim sum, but here's the park pair:




And here are the now no longer even remotely newlyweds, on the way out the door to Cafe Campagne for some French cuisine and the Showbox Theater for some English Beat. Woo hoo!

Fixer Upper

So here is the deal. We are redoing Naomi's room, so that it may become Naomi and Muriel's room. It is about time Muriel wakes someone else up at 4:45, although actually she and Naomi are perfectly suited as roommates because Naomi sleeps like a rock. The point is, we are undergoing a minor renovation, with all that it entails. And it entails everyone sleeping in our bedroom (along with most of their furniture), and it entails the house smelling like super eco-friendly floor oil something or other (which still stinks, just saying), and pointedly NOT smelling like VOC-free paint from the same crunchy home improvement center as the floor oil.

Although I would say we get along quite well most of the time, when we undertake any kind of home improvement project, unfortunately Jim and I, hmmm, well, we clash. We both perceive ourselves to be the project manager, and we have a difficult time believing the other person could have any good ideas whatsoever. I have to admit this is mostly on me, since Jim is better about reading endless tutorials and doing practice runs on things like cutting granite tiles and installing appliances. Really, he's good at things. That does not stop me from trying to run the show.

But now there's a new wrinkle, and it is kids. Our kids are getting better every day at amusing themselves, playing endless games with each other, pretending to be cats (for whatever reason), and in poor literature-starved Muriel's case, looking at books all day long. But they can't really take care of themselves or feed themselves or put themselves to bed, so there is no way that the two of us (the grown up two) can actually put the kind of waking hours joint work time in on a project. What has emerged is an unfortunate but of course strangely natural-feeling gender dynamic, where Mommy cooks dinner and does dishes and reads stories and puts kids to bed, and Daddy saws and hammers and masks and rents big loud equipment. Feh. I will be glad when the room is put back together, and the bunk bed is assembled, and I have mustered the industry to bag and hide 50-75% of the stuffed toys that will not find a home in the new room. In the meantime, I think Jim is kind of enjoying the manly man shtick, deeply entwined as it is with a sensitive (by which I mean, chemically sensitive) love of the earth and the acquisition of new power equipment.

So yeah, before the little distractions joined our household, and in spite of our mutual smartypants handicap, we did manage to do quite a lot of work (together) on our house back in St. Paul. It was a hundred year old house, and lovely inside, but it needed some paint, and some attention to the extremely low-end Home Depot remodel job on the bathroom and the kitchen. We pulled together! We painted! We tiled! Oh, the pride of getting that insanely heavy kitchen sink set into the counter! Before we started that kitchen job, we sat at the dining room table, eating breakfast, arguing about how to do something or other. I took the dishes to the sink, and Jim followed me, and said, Before we start this big job, promise me one thing. And... there was the ring he had been holding on to, waiting for the right minute. Hee. This Sunday is the sixth anniversary of that thing that I promised him, post remodeling bicker, post breakfast.

So as not to end on a corny note, or so as to end on a cornier note, here's the sign Naomi made to remind everyone to keep out of the room where Daddy is working:



"No Coming In!" I love the exclamation point. Also pictured is Jim, brushing oil onto the newly refinished floor, and a bucket. So you don't feel you have missed out by not going in?

Super Mild-Mannered Rant

Today at Starbucks I got snaps from the cashier just for not being bitchy when someone cut in line to make some small demand or other of her. That seems like a pretty low standard to meet- she even said I was "awesome." Which of course I am (ha), but not because I'm too dull-witted in the morning to put someone in their place for bad queuing etiquette. It's easy to be easy on people when you're generally non-confrontational. And it's not awesome to have the confrontation internally, by which I mean, of course I can be plenty bitchy, just not always in the out loud sense.

Seems like, though, people all around are working on building their confrontation chops. Political engagement is a good thing, right? So why does it feel so bad? My friend from the Walla Walla outing lives squarely in the heart of "keep your kid home from school lest she hear the voice of the President" country, and has trained herself to express her opinions only in a very low voice. Which if you knew her, would mean even more. She's no shrinking violet. She stands up for people, and for herself. I guess it seems more normal now to feel like you have to be in a safe environment to state your views. I don't think the people next to us on the patio of the pizza joint were anything other than nosy, with their distinctly obvious eavesdropping (hope I'm not that obvious!), but still, she felt pressure to be discreet with her anecdotes about a particularly rare flavor of campaign sign that was repeatedly stolen in her neighborhood.

I guess, though, pressure is one thing, and actual confrontation quite another. It's easier on the Internet to see people punching at each other in print, but does it happen in the actual world, outside of shouty town halls and those "rallies" that always seem to be held on the big intersection by Whole Foods (any conjecture on this location choice?)? Are there people who can talk about their political and policy differences in a meaningful way? Is it happening, anywhere? Does anyone out there believe that people on the other side have any good sense, any good intentions?

I think every time we get going on the decline of civility or morality or discourse, it takes just one quick review of life in other decades, even other centuries, to see that of course everyone always feels that way. I would be delighted to read some old headline on microfiche declaring an unprecedented rise in the rate of general kindness and open-mindedness, with outbreaks of spirited yet friendly debate. I'm not exactly a student of history, maybe that has happened, once, sometime, somewhere? Is it pathetic and weak to yearn for it now? Have I been hanging around my princess-pony-sparkle-rainbow-shooting star-heart delegation too much? Am I not grown up enough to have the hard discussions? Yeah, I know, I'm asking, but for the love of Pete, go easy on me.

Why Is the Trip Report Always Longer than the Actual Trip?

On a long-ago road trip through New Mexico, I conceded to the request of a road sign to tune into an AM radio station to hear tourism information, only to be rewarded with a series of staticky geographical and historical monologues wrapped in the seductive tongue of Ricardo Montalban. That memory, of sexily narrated anecdotes about local tribes dragging giant timbers from the mountains down to the high desert to raise elaborate mission churches, was the source of my optimism when I tuned in again, on Friday afternoon, heading over Snoqualmie Pass to the other side of the Cascades, to see what the tourism and weather channel on AM 1510 had to offer me. This time, though, I got what I expected the first time, a ghostly voice so deep under fathoms of static that it was impossible to make out its monotonous incantations. Oh well. Probably it just said I didn't need chains or snow tires.

After you get across those beautiful green mountains to the east of Seattle and head south (toward, say, Walla Walla), the landscape of this state heads in a particularly burnt ochre direction. There are orchards and farm fields here and there, of course, but where there are none, there are endless rolling hills of brown. Maybe it is just the time of year for this particular color to dominate? It's brown season.

Road trips always reawaken my pointless fascination with signage. Maybe that's why I was willing to try again with tourism AM radio. I had a few favorites on this trip. There were two or three instances where a vineyard or orchard was labeled, clearly for me, or for some 9-year-old passenger in some other car who at that moment was wondering to herself, what crop is that? Grapes. Apples. Peaches. There was also a spot on another pass, where you could see two glorious peaks in the distance, and suddenly, there was the sign, with two arrows, and it said, That one is Mt. Adams. That one is Mt. Rainier. Then there was the gigantic sign, atop an enormous white barn, inviting me to stop for FRUIT ANTIQUES.

Besides enjoying the scenery and the signage, I indulged in another of the great solo road trip delights- singing along at the top of my lungs to a bunch of my old CDs. Scenery, signage, singing! I know one reader who has already pledged to try to get me into the proper century, at least, with my musical tastes, and I'm willing to come along. But it was still really fun to belt out those old K.D. Lang songs, and some Tom Petty, and some Pixies, and some Beck (although you don't so much belt out the Beck). I also managed to get most of the people on the phone that I was hoping to catch up with. It is a rare and magical luxury to have hours to myself in which to phone someone...not working, not grocery shopping, not stopping the conversation every two minutes to address a question from the back seat. If I missed you, I'm sorry I did.

The drive (though great) was not the best part of the trip, of course. My friend and I stayed in downtown Walla Walla, in a suite that had been converted from old apartments- it was lovely! On Friday afternoon, we wandered the main drag in search of delicious treats that my friend, who is nursing, can't normally eat because of her baby's precocious collection of food allergies. Saturday morning we went for a run and ended up at a breakfast place with fantastic hash browns and very kind service (since we were foolishly short of cash- my fault). So, talking, jogging, eating, talking, eating, drinking, talking, eating, napping, drinking, eating, talking, sleeping. Also, a little shopping. We reflected. We set some goals. We worked it out. It was a good Saturday.

Besides being perfectly equidistant between Seattle and Boise, Walla Walla is a destination for wine tasting, what with all the vineyards dotting the gray-brown hills. Although I like wine fine, and although I am envious of people who are wine-knowledgeable, I think it might be time for me to admit that it is not a thing I'm truly considering, or something I'll get around to someday- I am not cut out to be a wine afficianado. We decided to just stay in town to do our wine thing, since there were tasting rooms all up and down the street. A mere two tastings, as it turned out, one cut short by the unbearably obnoxious pourer at the second place, and then we just drank up the bottle my friend had brought along with her- a local Idaho vintage- back in our hotel.

It always seems to me that the way back from somewhere is shorter than the way there. It was true on the return trip- I had a few more wonderful phone calls, a lot of enjoyable silence, and then suddenly I was back to my little cuties. They were on the fence about one of the presents I bought for them, but still agreed to model them for a picture.


They did like the chocolate dinosaurs and the geodes, which we smashed up out on the patio Sunday afternoon (the geodes, not the chocolates). I could lengthen the way back from this post by trying to distill that feeling of being a person out of my daily role, in a temporary place of freedom and luxury, and what it does for the me stepping back into that daily role, but whatever, we're already here. Best just unpack and get back to it.

Salad Spinner, Whiskers

OK, two more nights of working five hours at home after working eight hours at work, and then it will be too late to do any more, so, technically the project will be over. And then I will drive to Walla Walla, which really is a place, you guys, and lounge around with my girlfriend and read magazines and look inward and set goals and eat patisserie treats. And oh yeah, go wine "tasting." Heh.

In the meantime, here is a video, which will take all night to upload- what do I care? I am working! So if it works out, it's of two little chefkins who really enjoy the implements of the kitchen.

Wednesday Night

Yesterday I went to pick up my kid from daycare, and this is what they gave me instead:


Yikes! This is the same place that lets them play in flour and pours water on them when it's warmish out. It is like she is off taking care of herself, right? What is going on over there?! She seemed pretty happy about the whole thing, actually.

The other kid, whom I do not have such an interesting photo of, is wholly engaged in being alternatingly hugely bratty and ridiculously lovey and capable. She tells me all the time that she loves me to the moon and back, and lately, she is striking out to greater distances, recently, Mercury, and yesterday, all the way to the sun. If you love someone that much, it must be twice as horrible when they tell you in a mean voice to brush your teeth already, for the third time, before I start yelling. So that is when she makes the horrible face and a noise that is supposed to be an angry cheetah. Something like that? Oh, and this weekend, after I went for a run on the treadmill, she was kind enough to tell me that I smelled like the dog's breath. Things are a little weird around here lately, is all I'm saying.

I am on the home stretch of the most stressful project yet at work. When my manager proposed this project to me, I was nerdily excited- it was a tear-down- a manual that needed to be completely reworked, and converted, at the same time, into our gleaming new DITA format. What better test of a technical writer's skill? What could be more fun than this level of ownership? But instead I find myself a week away from my deadline, with four weeks of work left to do on it to make it really good, and one week of work to make it reasonably passable. Could it be (to paraphrase Elaine from Seinfeld) that I am not as awesome a technical writer as I think I am?

For the record I do not think I am an awesome technical writer. But I know I am capable of this kind of project, and it is bumming me out (read, turning me into a bit of a manic crazy) to have too much in the way to do a good job. Which in turn makes me feel like a big nerd, because isn't this the job I am all ho-hum whatever about? I guess not.

This is another one of those everyone gets a turn posts. So what do we get from Jim? He is doing what he does best- considering changing out his camera technology platform. Researching that spot on San Juan island we heard about that is supposed to be great for whale watching. What was that? Planning a date with me on Saturday night? That's what I'm talking about.

Hey, Every Guys!

Would you like to learn a new word? Probably some of you know this one, but I did not. The word of the week is tombolo, a bar of sand or gravel that connects an island to the mainland or (more relevant to us) another island. The house we rented (what a house!) on Orcas Island came with its very own tombolo, and by association, its very own teeny island, called Shell Island. When the tide went out, we had a nice big path (tombolo!) out to the island, and a shallow tidepool to poke around in. When the tide came in, we had a little island to admire. So neat.









The house itself was also quite something. It was built over who knows how many years by one Captain C, who, if one is to draw conclusions from the many yellowing old school DIY guides in his study, including our favorite, Moving Heavy Things, did a lot of the work himself.



It was a great mix of amazing funky late sixties touches (like the pebble floor mosaic entry way and the giant drift wood decor items), cruddy vacation home touches (like the wood paneling in the bathrooms), and gigantic windows to give you as much of the amazing view as you could stand. On such touches as the big weird metal pot of (deer?) bones in the yard and the clearly haunted basement, I will suspend judgement.

Since pictures are worth a thousand words, this is going to be the longest blog post ever. I thought I would divide the pictures into the categories that make for a great vacation, arbitrarily decided upon by me. I was too lazy to separate out blog photos from the FB pictures, so apologies to anyone vexed by the repeats.

Recreation!

If you are ever on the fence about badminton, get right off. Badminton is the bomb.


Also, beach balls!



We actually had one day warm enough to swim (in the lake). It was the first time in a long time I swam in a lake, and I loved it.





The dads took the bigger girls on a day trip to Friday Harbor. When I asked Naomi what the best part was, of course she said, "The ice cream." Check it out.


Turns out this is also what she says when I ask her what she likes best about the whole trip. Good one, Dad!


Do not agree to play "Littlest Pet Shop Go Fish" with Muriel.


There was also much beachcombing.


There was some drinking. I have no pictures of that, though.

Wildlife!

Our first year on Orcas was all about the deer (and slugs and hummingbirds). This year it was all bunnies all the time. Those fat little rabbits hopped around the house constantly, occasionally spooked by a local cat. But we did have deer.



On the marine side, we saw otters, seals, porpoises, *I think* a whale, and of course, big dead jellyfish, who decorated the beach and tidepool when true low tide showed its true colors.


Oh, and let us not forget crabs! Jim was mildly obsessed with catching some crabs- he bought a trap and found a good dock to lower it off of. Unfortunately, it is not the right time of year to catch space aliens, so he had to throw that other thing back (we think it's actually called a sea sunflower? Maybe?).


I had to scuttle down the closed off abandoned staircase to find the elusive purple starfish. Worth it!



The squirrels on Orcas are cuter than on the main land- smaller, orange-red tummies, super cute squeaky noises. We also saw lots of birds- gulls, of course, oyster catchers, kingfishers, Stellars jays, and a very handsome pileated woodpecker (Jim saw this, I was jealous).

Food!

Experience tells me that there will be a lot of eating on an Orcas Island vacation. The first night we vaguely recreated the "Hawaiian Luau" menu from the June Sunset magazine, (um, Walla Walla onion dip instead of Maui onion dip, though). The highlight for me was the char siu sandwiches with grilled pineapple and cilantro. The magazine gives the recipe for char siu- our recipe involved driving to Seattle's International District the night before our trip. Yum.


Two or three breakfasts a day, Hobbit style. My friend makes some bitchin' oatmeal- my kids couldn't eat enough of it.


OFJ (Our Friend Josh) made amazing food as always, and unfortunately there is no photo of the best creation of his, a green enchilada sauce made of tomatillos he grew in his back yard. So, so, so good.

On Thursday night we fed the kids some mac and cheese and sent them to bed, then reconvened for some hot pot. AND some fresh crab. Ahhh.



View!

I miss the view most of all. No kidding, it was breathtaking.







I could have another category of photos called Muriel being Muriel (this is from a photo of teenaged me I found in my grandmother's things; my mother had written that caption with my name on the back...hmmm), except that I can't really consider that a vacation generalization, since she is our exclusive category.


She was so fantastically kooky the whole time. Her cute new figure of speech was to refer to everyone as "Every Guys." Bye, Every Guys!