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!

Seriously

The other day I was in downtown Seattle, following a night of high jinks that included a Depeche Mode concert- Awesome!- a late night happy hour at my very favorite Seattle restaurant/bar, and a truly delightful hotel sleep where, when I woke up at the usual 5:40 a.m. expecting to hear a little voice saying Mommy! Where are you, Honey? instead I heard nothing and went back to sleep for another three hours...ahhh. After finally waking up and hitting the hipster workout room in our hipster hotel, my girlfriend and I stopped at Starbucks on the way to get something to eat, not because we are such local loyalists but because after sleeping in and exercising and showering and the whole bit, it was late and I really needed some caffeine.

In front of us in line was a man, an older man, portly, in an expensive-looking but kind of unkempt shirt and pants, walking with a cane. He ordered a venti drip. There was something about this man that suggested that he understood the seriousness of the world, that he had experienced things that were impossible to forget, that he was in touch with what mattered, and that he would never waste his time with things that didn't. I had a sense, in that moment, of the frivolity of much of my life, the time wasted on petty musings and fleeting contacts, the content mindlessly consumed, the depths unplumbed. When would I come around? When would I know this weightiness, this solidity, this seriousness?

Well, not tonight, in any case. Tonight is the hodge podge roundup before Jim gets home from the gym and we watch some old Peter Sellers movie on Netflix Watch Instantly that his boss inexplicably recommended to him. Suck up. Anyway...

On the way home from school Wednesday, Muriel casually informed me that she had changed the diaper of one of her classmates. Ha! She also likes to say, Mommy, I want some love. Which means she wants me to reach my arm around backwards and pat her knee. This works in the "Audi Car" as she calls it, but not in the "Mazda Car," where the love hand is busy shifting the manual transmission.

Yesterday I had what can only be described as an all encompassing bad hair day. First, I really did have a bad hair day. Second, my office mate (Other Jenny) gave me a coupon for a free smoothie at Starbucks (which is the real star of this post) at around 1:30, and I had forgotten to eat lunch, and even though I could have easily just walked the two and a half minutes to Starbucks and bought myself a smoothie, it would never have occurred to me. Somehow the coupon was like a ray of hope on my empty stomach (and a completely random gesture of kindness from OJ, since she and I literally say two things to each other every day- "Good Morning!" and "Have a good night!"), and I hustled over to Starbucks with my coupon. The counter lady frowned and frowned and asked where I had gotten the coupon. Like an idiot, I told her. My office mate! She said they were only honoring hard copies. ? But she said if I wanted to try the smoothie she would give it to me. Yes, I wanted to try the smoothie! I got the chocolate banana. It was tasty. When I got back OJ said they hadn't questioned her at all- she must have trimmed her coupon better than I did. The icing on yesterday's cake was when I was sitting on the couch in the evening and noticed a weird tag coming out of the side of my shirt...because... I had been wearing the damn thing inside out all day. Sweet.

Today I asked Naomi what she brought for Show and Tell, and she said she just drew a picture, a prototype for something called an Aester Egg. It's like an Easter egg, she said, but it has spikes on the outside. So you take the spikes off, and then you can eat the shell, which tastes like chocolate. Then, inside the shell is a chick, which you can then keep for your pet. Right? If I ever get my act together and download the pictures, I will post some of her recent "taxi number 9" paintings and drawings, which comprise a pretty exciting series of taxi cabs, all number 9. I don't know how she knows what a taxi cab is, or why they are all number 9, but it's good to at least have a definite period for the art appraisers to point to when assigning dollar values to your pencil and acrylic mixed medias.

Wow, we all got a mention but the mister, so for his part, Jim heads out in the early morning for the second annual Man Hike. Fingers crossed he gets to see another marmot. Also, that the relentless downpours let up for him and his crew up on Mt. Ranier.

That's it for this non-serious Friday night. One week till Orcas Island, you guys!

Good Times

I am starting to think the stepped-up posting schedule I'm on might be a mechanism for avoiding the huge amount of work I have to do in my real life job, that I should be working on right now, at 10:30 on a Saturday night. Oh well. As a backlash to the boring blah blah wordy posts of late, I give you a zillion photos of our fantastic Saturday.

It was company picnic day, at a place called Remlinger Farms, which is like a mini proto-Disneyland from another era. Except for the amazingly bizarre and anachronistic Native American...display? (two mannequins in a canoe, one inside a teepee, lots of fakey artifacts?), the place was a slightly surreal kind of delightful.


Mmm, animal food vending machine pellets...Naomi asked me if, when Luna got too old, we could trade her in for a goat pet instead. Which like many things she says, made me laugh out loud and broke my heart. Muriel was terrified of all the animals.

She was not that happy about the crappy canoe ride either.

Naomi and I aboard the inscrutable flying pumpkins.

Hay maze!

Which led to the hay jump. This was actually pretty fun, though mildly emphysema-inspiring with the hay dust, so we didn't stay long.

Choo Choo! The picnic lunch was good, and yes, I did win a door prize. Sweet!

Home, nap...U-Pick! We went to the blueberry farm right by our house.

Naomi got the hang of it pretty well.

We harvested a grand total of 48 cents worth of blueberries. I calculate Muriel ate about 30 cents worth in advance of the scale and cash register part.

Naomi's friend Carmen was the champ, though.

The blueberry farm could not be more conveniently located, right next door to our favorite Chinese place. I hereby decree that all dishes must henceforth be served within a beautiful ring of bright green broccoli. Unless it's pancakes or dessert. Happy Saturday, ya'll.

One is Silver and the Other is Gold

This has been THE week for connecting with old friends. Last Friday, I had a tasty dim sum lunch with a friend of mine whom I met freshman year of high school on our church softball team. It has been at least twelve years since we saw each other last, and probably six or more since we even spoke on the phone. I also had the good fortune of meeting his wife of many years, and his friend who lives around here and is in the same field as I, which led to a few boring minutes for everyone else in the lunch party, as you may imagine. They were leaving the next day for their Alaskan cruise, so, yeah, lucky ducks.

After the lunch I had the pleasure of talking on the phone with someone I went to Catholic grade school with in Orlando, Florida, something like a hundred and fifty years ago. Ostensibly the conversation was a plea for mentorship, and I got some, so that was good. But the most fun was lining up estimations of the mean nuns vs. the nice nuns. I have little doubt that all of these nuns have shuffled off this mortal coil, so it's probably not cool to name names on the mean ones, but Sister Eugenia, if you can read this, you were the sweetest. Thanks for choosing me to be the mom in the mock baptism.

This week, in addition to having a pretty interesting phone chat with a high school chum I re-met at the reunion, a friend from graduate school contacted me to let me know she was going to be in our own little suburb. Amazing! Grad school represents kind of a lost year for me- I didn't excel in my classes, and I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to work the forty hours of crappy retail that enabled me to eat and pay my rent and still at least skim some of the forty hours of assigned reading for my classes every week. It's a bit of a blur. But I did get a couple of good friends out of it. Though this week's visitor had been out of my loop for a long time, she and her impressively cute 8-month-old daughter and their local host agreed to come over to our house for some dinner. She is just as I remember her, energizing and definite and beautiful, but now with the added bonus of a tot that is almost cute and sweet enough to make you consider having more of your own. Almost, I said.

Oh yeah. It's been a good week. Just to keep up my streak, on Monday my college BFF and I will be meeting up with some of my dearest companions from the 80s, the members of Depeche Mode. Cue the synthesizers.

Song of the Summer!

You know how every year some smarty pants on NPR (or, someone who actually knows something about popular music on NPR) picks the song of the summer? I remember a couple of years ago it was that Gnarls Barkley song, something like that? I don't know what song NPR canonized this summer, maybe because my prime NPR listening minutes have been focused on a new station. Muriel is my carpool buddy (Naomi rides with her dad), and lately we have been spending a lot of time listening to this station, because it plays cool music and NO COMMERCIALS.

Muriel is not a talk radio person- she gets annoyed when the announcer comes on between songs. "I don't like this song!" is her mantra, always when there's talking, sometimes also when there's music. Anyway, so that's the scene- Muriel and I rolling toward toddler camp, blasting the radio. And somehow in the span of a week, we heard this song three or four times. It is a little dorky, but also kind of mesmerizing, and it really grew on me. More importantly, though, it grew on Muriel. She was singing along on the first listen.

She went home and started singing it to Naomi, who jumped right in and started singing along too (having never heard the actual song). I say singing, but really, it's more like chanting. There is nothing that Naomi and Muriel won't chant for an entire day. It messes with your sanity. Seriously, these girls should go straight to the sports venue of an under-cheered sports team and start things up. (Naomi actually spends a fair amount of time chanting "Who likes Muriel? I do, I do. Who likes Mommy? I do, I do." So she's all set for a very civilized sporting event of some kind.)

Before you start looking around for a phone number for CPS, I promise that they do not sing the "Gonna get a vodka soda with a lime" part- only the chorus. You push, I'll go. You push, I'll go. Over and over. Ha! We got our song. Somebody call NPR.