The Whole Story

OK, so last week my friend is in town with her kids. Even though her kids are small, and ours are small, we decide to do the duck boat tour. For the uninitiated, this is a giant open amphibious vehicle that is driven around town, and then into water, just because it can. So we ride through Seattle with the predictably brisk air in our faces, listening to our actually quite hilarious captain/driver crack jokes and play song clips. At the end, she throws us one last quip, holding up a pair of staggeringly large tighty whities, and claiming that some passenger on the last tour left them behind.

This moment, perhaps not surprisingly, stays with Naomi. She has forgotten nearly the entire tour, so focused is she on the giant underpants. She asks me, whose underpants are they? Why did they leave them on the duck boat? So, in the first of many foolish decisions, I explain that they are novelty underpants, and that they come from a joke store. She asks what other kinds of things you can buy at a joke store, and all I can come up with (foolish decision the second) to tell her about are whoopie cushions and fake dog poop. Oh, and squirting flowers.

Somehow we get around to making plans to actually GO to the joke store, Saturday after nap. So the whole morning, they are scheming about what they are going to buy. Naomi chuckles to herself all day at the prospect of tricking someone into sitting on the whoopie cushion. Muriel walks around the house chanting "FAKE DOG POOP. FAKE DOG POOP." They both take a surprisingly good nap.

We head to the joke store, which is of course far, far away in Seattle. We peruse. We shop around. We see a lot of wares. But we have a very difficult time finding the specific things we are looking for. So Jim, all forbearance, asks the store employees for help. This store, by the way, is something of a Seattle institution. So the employees, not surprisingly, are of the painfully hip hipster variety. One of them points out the selection of tricks offering ($10.99!!!) that includes a fake ice cube with a bug in it, and super hot cinnamon gum (?), as well as the coveted whoopie cushion. He informs us that they do not carry fake dog poop. Similarly, they do not sell squirting flowers.

Naomi finds a squirting camera, and for Muriel, it's a magic wand not quite dissimilar enough from one we have at home. Whatever. We go to the counter. I give it one last try with the clerk, explaining that my three-year-old has been chanting "fake dog poop" all day, and she says, are you ready for this? "I have never even heard of fake dog poop."

To which I say, venerated Seattle hipster joke shop, that if your shop is so clogged up with bacon band-aids and "terrified pickle catapults" and "emergency yodel buttons" that you can't stock a squirting flower, and if your brand of jokey irony is so far evolved that you cannot appreciate such classics as fake dog poop and whoopie cushions, well then, shame on you. Shame!

On the plus side, the shop is right up the street from the most famous hipster ice cream joint in Seattle, which we hadn't yet tried. And in between was a really cute, tiny, extremely delicious sushi place. All's well that ends well.


Before.
After. Squirty camera and wand in possession.
And earlier, the whole gang. Love having visitors!

Slacker

OK, it's not that nothing has been happening. Well, OK, nothing has been happening. It's been vaguely summery, we've had some regular times. School has been attended. Work has been attended to. Maybe that's it- I've been working a lot, it seems like. So there, that's my excuse, no posting because of all the darn work!

Jim, on quite the other hand, has been enjoying his free time in a way that is of course enviable, but also, pretty nice for the rest of us. By this I mean that he hunts around for a recipe in the afternoon, buys the appropriate groceries, and when I get home (late), there is a fabulous dinner waiting. Seriously, this guy. What a cook! He is also getting better and better at "Starcraft," or whatever that game is called. Woot!

Muriel is going through a period of bed invasion. This happens occasionally, and it doesn't last forever, and a few gentle kicks to the back of the head is a small price to pay for a happy child, right? Last Saturday morning, all of us were crammed in together, and Muriel was expressing her discomfort thusly: "I'm all bunched up with people!" Yep, that is what happens!

Naomi is newly entranced with the idea of summer camp, thanks to a visit to Camp Kookooskoos in The Trumpet of the Swan. She has set up their "cabin" in the living room, and has shifted her pretend play to include summer camp tableaux. The pretending part hasn't changed- she still says, Mommy, pretend I was at summer camp, and you were the director of the summer camp and I was a camper, and Muriel was my kitty who came along with me (Muriel: mew!), and it was time for bed, and you said, all campers, time for bed, and I took my kitty (Muriel: mew mew!) and we got into the bunk.... and so on.

Next week I am taking OFF from work and I am so HAPPY that I am capslocking it up in here. My friend is coming from Boise with her two sons, and there will be much cavorting and sunscreen and water play and so forth. Pictures from that, to be sure. In the meantime, this is all I've got- the kids out with Dad on a stay-home-from-school-just-for-fun day. Looks like it worked!