If You Book It, We Will Come

Attention, anyone who wants to head to the west coast expressly to spend some time at Cannon Beach, and is looking for a mildly boisterous family to go in on the rental with: we are in.


Naomi enjoys the sea breeze.


Muriel enjoys a goober grape sandwich and the very bad emergency bang trim I gave her right before the trip.

Jim had one decent morning to try to get some shots. The weather wasn't too cooperative. But my goodness, is this place ever stunning.


Hello Kitty, Representing.


Some nice lady let Jim be in one of our vacation photos. Also pictured, a friendly child we met on the beach. He is actually my friend's adorable almost three year old.


Fortunately, none of the kids really knew that digging in beach sand was supposed to involve bathing suits and sunscreen.


Really, really a beautiful place, and a wonderful time.

Springtime

How can these weekends go by so quickly? Ridiculous! Today Naomi and I headed to a birthday party for her classmate. It was at... Chuck E. Cheese. This was Naomi's first visit to the venerable Mr. Cheese's. She was a little overwhelmed at first, but had recovered enough after an hour and a half to declare that Chuck E. Cheese was super duper fun. Whee. I was comparing notes with another mom, and we agreed that our childhood version of this was Showbiz, and that Showbiz had been much bigger, darker, and deafeningly louder. So Chuck's was brighter and quieter (somehow) than I thought it was going to be. Still an insane mob scene. We tried to find some games to use our free tokens on. I found one that looked cute, with penguins, and after it started I realized that the point of the game was to hit the penguins (and occasionally walruses) over the head with a big wooden mallet. Nice.

We had a little sun in the afternoon, though the sprinkles have returned. This area is known for non-stop rain, I get it, but we go through periods here where it just gets ridiculous. It has warmed up, too, which is nice. Hopefully March's in-like-a-lion phase is over, and the lamb part is here to stay.

Jim convinced Naomi to try to pick every dandelion in the backyard, so both girls ended up with a lot of flowers.

It's All Relative

Naomi has been fascinated with germs lately (for two months, lately), not in a phobic way, just in an amazed that there are things that are too small to see way. The result is that everything we talk about is appraised for its size, and not surprisingly, is then described as "but, it's bigger than a germ, though, right?" Right!

Today we got the other benchmark for size. At dinner, Naomi described something as bigger than a germ, but smaller than a giant. So there you are.

Confessions of a Freeloader

There has always been an espresso machine at my office. I never used it, because we had free coffee, and really, coffee is just fine with me. When we moved to the new office, the free coffee went away, and the espresso machine became the center of an espresso collective. You give money, and our overly obliging Gal Friday buys the beans and the milk. This led of course to stupid signs on the fridge. "Milk is for espresso users only." Says the original. "Also for calves." Says the hand-written addendum. "And to bind us to our mammalian ancestry." Says the second addendum. Here we go. I did not join the collective, thinking I could just bring my own coffee, or buy the $.50 coffee from the wacky new machine, in a pinch.

I have not gotten my act together on the bringing coffee from home thing, leaving me to spend my hard-earned money at the Starbucks that is strategically located between the parking ramp and my office building. My boring drink at Starbucks, if you were wondering, is the grande nonfat latte, extra hot. Or again, buying the $.50 coffee from the machine (I can't remember what this thing is called), into which you insert your quarters (exact change only) and a weird little packet of something (coffee concentrate?), before you get the coffee out. I was doing that a few weeks ago, when one of my super friendly coworkers that of course I don't know said, "I wondered who would actually use that machine!" Nice.

So I approached the office assistant lady about getting in on the espresso collective. She said that she had recently been told that her arrangement violated the super strict policies of our company regarding soliciting money. They don't mess around. You are not allowed to hang up your kid's Girl Scout Cookie sign up sheet, that kind of thing. She said she was going to figure out some other thing, where we all sign up to bring beans and milk on some particular week or whatever. I said, OK, count me in.

Then, with a little encouragement from a regular user, I figured out how to get a cup of coffee out of the machine, and have been using it ever since. Sorry, this post is so long and boring. Have a cup of coffee! So I see our trusty assistant in the kitchen the other day, and I ask her if she has gotten the coffee thing figured out. She says no. The machine is leaking, and the company has taken back the new one we had that was to be the replacement. Once the beans run out, that's it. The collective is over.

Which means- I have been a coffee drinking member of the espresso collective without ever paying in. It's only been a couple of weeks, and I still occasionally stop at Starbucks, so it's eight or ten cups of coffee. But still! How do I come clean? Put a bowl of nickels on the machine with a note to have each member take one? The real solution is just to stop drinking the coffee right now. Sigh.

Speaking of machines in the work kitchen, the toaster in the new kitchen is SO MUCH BETTER than the one at the old building. Trusting your slices to the old toaster was like holding the bread in front of your mouth and breathing warm air on it. It took two full rounds of toasting at full power to get even marginally crunchy. The new toaster goes to eleven. Crunchy toast is back, baby. I must point out, though, that the toaster is so high tech that it has to beep before the toast is released. Wha? Normally, the sound that alerts me that my toast is done is... the sproing of my toast sproinging out of the toaster. So now I hear Beeeeeeeeeeeeep. pause. Sproing. Can anyone think of a reason I would need the beep to pre-alarm the sproing? Also, quit trying to make toasters all high tech. If you peek into a toaster, you will see the same weird 19th century early electrical technology that toasted my great grandmother's toast (theoretically). Now I am channeling Andy Rooney.

Speaking of machines in the new building, I believe the bathroom at work might be haunted because of the way the paper towel dispensers are constantly issuing forth their product when I am locked in a stall. Those motion sensitive bathroom appliances always make me feel like I'm in a hidden camera show anyway, but the towel dispensers are all about going off when no one is out there making motion. Don't worry, I'm not going to hold a seance in the bathroom. What I need is a motion sensitive coffee maker, small enough to fit on my tiny desk. Beep!

And Finally, Party Pictures

Aww, look at that face. And Naomi is pretty cute, too. yuk yuk. We had Naomi's party in the afternoon, with the fairy tale (kind of) theme as planned. There aren't many photos, actually, for two reasons. Jim, the staff photographer, spent some time filming with the video camera, and some time entertaining the other dads. There was not much time left after that.

The good part of that is that we have some fun video of the treasure hunt. I was banking on our friends from church coming, because their daughter is in the second grade and can read. The girls found the clues, and she read each one to the little gaggle. They needed some prompting, but they found them all. The last clue directed them to the basement, where we had some bins set up with a lot of rice and some very faux gems hidden in it. This is an idea borrowed from my grad school friend, so thanks a lot, A! The girls had a good time digging out the gems, and then we went back upstairs and decorated little wooden boxes with them and with some fancy glitter foam stickers.

Then, there was cake. It was lopsided and overly sweet. In fact, Naomi told me she didn't like the frosting, which sounded a little like opposite day to me. Oh well. By the time we got to the cake, she was already feeling a little overwhelmed by the party, which you can kind of see in her face here:


And you can see her finished box there too. Treasure-y! There were eight girls total; Muriel was the youngest. Four sets of two sisters! Do we know how to pick friends or what?

In the background of this fun shot is Muriel doing some kind of America's Next Top Model hair flip move. But also, the now famous beanstalk, which was both decoration and one of the treasure hunt clue stops. I had asked Jim to draw a little Jack we could tape up, to complete the scene, and here's what he came up with instead:

Is this not so David Lynch? When Naomi came out, on the morning of her birthday, and saw the beanstalk, her reaction was so funny. She was almost angry. She said, "That is not a real beanstalk. That is not Jack. That is Muriel's Sock Baby, with a sock on her head!" Like we were going to mess with her and try to get her to think we had planted some magic beans there in the wood floor. Hee! She's growing up alright.