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!

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.

Acclimated

Every region has their own approach to weather. In Minnesota, as I recall, the weather is something you always talk about in polite conversation, however, no one makes a big deal about it. Weather nonchalance in the face of pretty regular weather extremes. Same with Arizona. It is hot as the face of the sun there, but people pretty much go about their business. Here in the Pacific Northwest, there are two weather-related social patterns. One is that you must affect that you prefer those cloudy days of endless drizzle (OK, maybe some of them do, how do I know?) to any other kind of weather. Two, whenever the weather goes to any extreme whatsoever, it must TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE COMPLETELY.

I think I can say with relative certainty that we finally really fit in here- in the weather spirit of the Northwest, this absolutely insane heatwave has ruled our lives for the entire week. The girls have embraced the new policy of brushing their teeth during a cool-down shower. Tonight when I told Muriel it was tooth brushing time, she said, "I want to spit on the floor!" The floor of the bathtub, but you can see why the born rebel appreciates this approach. We have been camping out in the basement for three nights- it started out about fifteen degrees cooler than the main floor, but now it's probably only about an eight degree spread. We have been trying to avoid cooking, moving the dog downstairs during the day, wearing only a diaper to bed (ok, that's Muriel too). Every little bit helps.

Tonight we went for dinner to the local crazy mall food court that we frequent, because we are all class all the time. Turns out it was not such an original idea. Everyone on the Eastside was trying to stay cool at the mall. Under normal circumstances, this mall is already like the Mos Eisley Cantina. Every species, humanoid and otherwise, hangs out at this mall and throws down some mah jong and gives crochet lessons and plays Magic: The Gathering. But throw a 102 degree evening into the mix, and the joint really jumps.

Also: because the weather here only gets really interesting in one direction or the other for about two weeks out of the year, we are ill equipped. So not only is the mall mobbed with people, it is mobbed with people attempting to dress for the searing heat of a border town when for most of the year they wear their fleece vest or the long sleeve polo shirt they got when their software release finally wrapped up. A sight to behold, is all I'm saying. The girls had penne pomodoro, Jim had the halibut bento box, I had the Italian chop chop. We sat and watched the refugees drifting past, peering at everyone's table as is the custom at this establishment, to see what they might want to order next time.

You know in the movies when there is a burst of ominous music or chase music or comic music, and the camera pans and there is an actual group of musicians there? Ha! We had the perfect soundtrack for the whimsically surreal, because of course the performer at the stage was an accordian player. We got Girl from Ipanema and this one tango we like, and other than that, a lot of songs that made you feel like any minute a troupe of mimes was going to come down from the ceiling on trapezes and infiltrate the crowd. We took the girls and two quarters to the carousel, but even that was mobbed, and I could see from the look on the faces of parents that had gotten there after us that they were prepared to pretend they had gotten there first.

We changed course to the ice cream place, a chain where ice cream is not good enough and must be enhanced with other sorts of dessert items. (Shout out to my MN homies- I miss the St. Paul Creamery like mad. Can't imagine the line you would have if you had the weather we have.) The stress of their deployment was beginning to tell on the ladies behind the counter, who were trying to direct the traffic through gritted teeth. Naomi stuck to her pattern of ordering based on color (watermelon sorbet, anyone?), and I was intimidated by the pissed off ice cream scooper into ordering a medium (which was gigantic!) mint chocolate something. Mmmm minty.

Home, toothbrushing in the shower, bed in the basement, and as the grownups sat out on the patio, listening to that guy a few houses down who shouts for HOURS on end (what is he shouting about?)... a sensation of coolness in the air! Awesome. Tomorrow it is supposed to only get to around 86, which is cooler than the inside of our house has been this week. We can go back to daydreaming about drizzle, waiting for the next big weather emergency to rock our world.

J. Bungler

Lately at work I have been disastrously effective at making mistakes. I make a mistake every day, it feels like, and two or three big ones per week. I know why it is happening- I am at a crossroads of many different projects, have only a minimal amount of ownership of most of them, and still have to keep track of them so I don't miss an important deadline like sending files off to be included in the manufacturing stream in advance of a product release. I have been a giant lucky duck in that none of my mistakes have had the impact they could have (whew!), but still, yuck.

This week, however, I am absolutely certain that I will make no major mistakes. Why? Because I completely exhausted any reasonable allotment for mistakes big and small for one human over the weekend. A narrative of this would be too long, so here's the list:

• Forgot to put the salt in the banana muffins. (It's only a small amount, but it matters.)
  
• FINALLY found the dog nail trimmer- cut the dog's poor toe. Blood!
• Took kids to beach on "hottest day of the summer"- clouds roll in, raindrops start falling.
• Put the half-n-half on to "heat but not boil" for homemade ice cream recipe, turned around, then back to stove minutes later to witness volcanic half-n-half eruption. It boiled alright.
• Thought I could use candy thermometer for hot water and yeast mixture (100 to 110 degrees) for first time ever homemade pizza dough. Realized that candy thermometer starts at 200 degrees.
• Couldn't remember what number cup of flour out of four I was on, for same pizza dough recipe, threw in one more, just in case.
• Next day, "punched down" dough, as instructed, waited for the second rise...er, no second rise.
• Tried to spread dough around on oiled parchment paper (also, thought kids would think this was super fun, but not so much) and transfer to grill - nowhere near round or flat.
• Set up ice cream maker (stand mixer attachment), churned, churned, churned, added strawberries...ice cream DID NOT FREEZE.
• Agreed to just pretend ice cream was milkshakes, tried to get attachment off stand mixer, spilled giant gloppy "milkshake" all over kitchen floor.
• (Great one to close with) Assumed dog's toe was done bleeding, after 24 hours, let her come downstairs with us to escape the blazing heat, found dog toe blood all over downstairs carpet.

I bandaged Luna's paw pretty thoroughly last night. It remains to be seen whether the bandage will persist through the day. The beach trip was really fun despite the raindrops. The pizza looked fairly grotesque but actually tasted good. The ice cream glop tasted great, and we'll eat some of the actual frozen variety tonight, assuming our actual freezer works better than our ice cream maker thingy.

Ah- and one item where I did not make a mistake- starting Naomi on the much-vaunted "chapter book" experience with The Boxcar Children, about a group of little go-getters who turn the specter of homelessness and orphandom into a delightful plucky adventure of resourcefulness, re-use, and cooperation. (Wonderfully, the author does not give the kids any chance whatsoever to cry, feel sad, or otherwise reflect on the fact that their parents are DEAD. Sheesh. But good for my purposes.) Naomi gets SO MAD when I won't read her more than one chapter before bed, and she spent the weekend constructing a faux boxcar in the corner of the living room and making Muriel be one of the brothers. Good stuff.

This week: Slumber party in the basement. It is hot as blazes in these parts, and the basement is, shall we say, khooler.

That's More Like It

Yeah, the professional photog is back on staff. When Jim got home on Sunday, we went out to a beach park our friends had told us about, and brought some sand diggy toys Muriel got for her birthday. It occurred to me that I had completely forgotten what it's like to be a kid, because of course these girls had to go in the water (even though the day was both gloomy and chilly), and got themselves extremely damp and sandy. It was a rousing success.

Oh, and on the way out, we passed a picnic, and two kids from the picnic group were maniacally chasing the ducks around. I suppressed an urge to scold. Then the bigger kid (seven, maybe?) picked up a handful of sand and gravel and hurled it at the duck, at close range. I can't remember what I said, something fairly innocuous like, "Hey, hey, hey- take it easy on our duck friends." We passed the picnic group, and that's when I noticed that they were eastern Europeans. duh duh dunnnnnnh! As we were leaving two of the guys started following us to the parking lot. Track suits, gold chains, shaved heads, grim expressions. Holy crap! I had picked the wrong duck-attacking kid to scold! But they were just getting something out of their car. Whew.

Today was a pretty great day. Work has been kind of brutal of late, and today things seemed a lot more under control for some reason. I left a teeny bit early, made some pasta in a hurry, and left it on the stove while we went up to the pool for a dip. Hopping around in two feet of water for forty minutes makes my kids hungry and sleepy, which meant a satisfyingly focused dinner at which Naomi had three servings of pasta and Muriel ate something like ten asparagus spears, and a lovely bedtime with no objections. After the dishes, I took Luna for a walk around the blueberry farm, where unscrupulous summer lovers were sneaking some berries in advance of the opening of U-Pick season. It was a fantastically beautiful evening.

I choose to dismiss the part where my employer mailed me a free "book," the title of which may as well have been "Get Your Family Skinnier." Thanks!

Girls' Weekend

Jim's Father's Day present, besides the disastrous garden stone, was a plane ticket to California. As delightful as family life is (and it is), I had to admit to myself that getting out of my deeply carved role for the few days I was out of town for my reunion weekend was more than a treat- it was (in a small but good way) life altering. So now it's Jim's turn, and this is the weekend- he's visiting our good friends who used to live in Minnesota, but have since moved to San Clemente, which from the sound of it is very nearly paradise. Who knows what he will get out of it, besides the dual treasures of seeing old friends and eating a lot of fresh seafood. What I am getting out of it is a weekend with the girls, in a more concentrated than usual sense.

This, too, has been good for me. I am having a lot of fun with them, of course. But it is also liberating to know that EVERYTHING is on me, and there's no grousing or resenting (my perception) that I have to do it all. I can't even resent Jim for being out of town- I sent him there. It feels good to just do what needs doing and not think anything of it. Can I carry this with me out of the weekend? I hope so.

So, what's been going on? Kid's choice dinner, Friday night = macaroni and cheese, shrimp gyoza, and corn. With chocolate milk. I ate a lot of gyoza. This morning we went to our favorite breakfast place, ate some eggs and pancakes, and rode the mini-carousel. Our friends came over to play after breakfast. We ran around, created a stressful and messy group painting project (not my best idea ever), and waved our ribbon sticks (more props to Gramma for the mad present buying skillz). We planted peas in our garden this year in an effort to just raise pea vines, our favorite veggie dish at the Chinese restaurant, but we don't really know how or when to harvest, and the result is that instead we just have a whole bunch of peas. Which little girls, it turns out, love to pick and eat. When I went out this evening to put away the wacky pop-up gazebo that I got as my latest free Employer Swag, the picnic blanket inside, strewn with eviscerated pea pods, looked like the set of a pea horror movie.

While Muriel napped, I tried to debut a new movie with Naomi- Babe. She was not having it. I am not sure what she didn't like about it, except maybe for the part where she had no idea what was going on. She convinced me to turn it off in favor of her favorite DVD- Here Come the ABCs by They Might Be Giants. So many of these wacky songs are firmly lodged in my mind's ear, and I know the same is true of my kids, because the other day when I was absentmindedly singing a refrain that is something like, "I C U, I C U, and U R OK..." Muriel said, no, I don't like that song, and agreed to hear "QU" instead (one of my favorite videos in the collection). Then at dinner, Naomi was singing "The Alphabet of Nations," which is extra fun to hear a kid sing, since they have no idea what the sometimes obscure country names actually are. Except for West Xylophone, of course.

After an extended laundry folding session in the basement (which is much cooler than the rest of our house), we decided to hit the pool. Last time we went Naomi had been been kind of rotten, outright ignoring my direct requests (for example, to get out of the pool and come to the locker room right. this. minute, that kind of thing). The consequence was to be not coming along next time we went swimming. But since today was the next time, and there is no option for leaving her behind- the only option was not going at all, and it was a HOT day! So we agreed she would wait ten minutes to get in the pool after Muriel and I went in. This worked out pretty well, though if Muriel could have at least tried to pretend she was having a good time without her sister, that might have made the consequences more consequential... Eventually, we all enjoyed the swim, if you can call scuttling around in a foot and a half of warm water swimming.

When I posted my temporary single mom status on FB today, someone made a crack about how now I'll have to take all the photos. I took this as a challenge. And since I am being all self sufficient and grrl power, I am downloading, exporting, and posting those photos, with no coaching. So there! They're not great, but they are pictures.

Getting ready for the trip to the pool. I wasn't able to actually get any photos at the pool, which is too bad, because the look of intense concentration on Muriel's face the whole time made it seem like she was not into it at all, when in fact the opposite was true.

After the swimming, we spent a few minutes on the playground at the club. Naomi figured out to get out on one of the bars to hang- it was pretty impressive. Muriel wanted a piece of that action.

OK, yes, I'm holding Muriel up. Was it convincing?

This girl just passed her 2 year old doctor check up with flying colors, and came out between 10th and 20th percentile for weight (I was thinking she was terribly skinny). Yea, Muriel!

So yeah, fun abounds on our girls' weekend. If I can just keep the yelling under control. Ha.

In Which Muriel Declares Independence from England and Being One

You guys, where to start? It has been one heck of a long weekend. I took Thursday off to get ready for a visit from my parents and my 12-year-old nephew. They got in that evening around the spaghetti and meatball hour. Naomi had been very excited for their visit- she's a devoted fan of Gramma, and Muriel is mildly obsessed with Grampa, but unfortunately for both elders, the girls' little hearts were swayed by the cousin. They followed that poor kid around, called out for him if he left the room, and glommed onto him in every way imaginable. And he was the best sport imaginable, really- what pre-teen boy would be as kind as that to two little maniacs? He deserves a medal.

We engaged in some low-key tourism on Friday, nothing out of the ordinary. Also, it was extremely hot, and I found an inflatable squirty thing we got for Christmas (thanks, AP!) in the basement and made Naomi's day.

Saturday was Independence Day (if you missed that somehow), which meant another trip north for the Kirkland Fourth of July Parade.


Yes to the WWII POWs, yes to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, YES to the Veterans for Peace, the Unicycle Kids, the Blue Thunder drum line, and the beloved DeLorean Club. But Kirkland, PLEASE add some musical numbers to your parade! Besides the drum line, we had some kind of church youth group banging pails, a band of Indian youths who chose not to play as they went past us, and the Rainbow City band, playing, you guessed it, Thriller. Not that I didn't appreciate it. But that was it for the whole parade. It's like going to a party where there's not enough food. It's nice that there's a party, but before long, it's difficult to focus on anything else except how hungry you are. Kirkland, gimme a beat!

It is with some shame and resignation that I further admit that Naomi declared her favorite part of the parade this time to be the girls with the puff balls (a.k.a., the cheerleaders from a local high school). Sigh.

After some sternly enforced napping back at the house, we had some traditional Fourth of July fare (here's where I admit in a nod to my previous simile that I fear I underfed my guests- especially my nephew, who is used to eating what his family eats- because I am in the groove of feeding the four of us, and was constantly running out of everything) in the backyard. We had agreed to try to see some fireworks, the first time for Naomi, so she stayed up LATER THAN EVER in the interest of this outing. My mom, being the best toy buyer I know, had brought presents for the girls that included a set of beautiful silk pieces in rainbow colors. Naomi accessorized with them all weekend long, and that is the reason she looked like this at the fireworks.
Oh- my mom had also bought her a super cute wristwatch, and someone told her the fireworks would start when the little hand was on the ten. At some point I thought it would be a good idea to go to the bathroom before they started, so we hit the portable, which was unfortunately pitch dark inside. Yikes. When we were in there, she started to sound a little panicky, and I was all ready to calm her down, and she said "This was a terrible idea!" Ha! She explained that it was too dark to see her watch, and what if the little hand made it to the ten, and the fireworks started, while we were in there?! Fortunately we made it back to the blanket. We had a good spot, good luck with parking, overall the kind of fireworks experience that would make you consider going again. Naomi enjoyed them with her hands over her ears the whole time. Happy Birthday, America!
It was fun to have my folks in town. While out doing their own thing, my parents went to Fred Meyer, which is a store here that sells really just about everything with the exception of cars and houses. They loved it- my dad said it was like Walmart, but cleaner and nicer! Sweet. A woman helped them at the watch counter, and because my dad is that guy, he asked her where her accent was from. Tobago, she told him, and then she asked him if he knew who he looks like. Fidel Castro. Ha! She said it was OK, Uncle Fidel loves his people. When my parents told me this story later, I had a stomachache from laughing. My dad has gotten Burl Ives and the occasional Santa, but Fidel is a new (awesome) one.

The rest of the weekend was focused on Muriel and her big party. We decided to have a barbecue Sunday afternoon, which turned into a fried chicken-cue instead. Jim went and bought friend chicken at some place in Seattle that is ostensibly quite famous for it (it was good), and we threw down the usual accompaniments. The party was fun (I thought) and well-attended, and included our dear friends and a visitor they brought along, friends from Naomi's school, a friend from Muriel's school, and one of her teachers and his wife and beautiful baby girl (who is Muriel's darling- she loves that baby). Oh, and a coworker of Jim's. Having Muriel's teacher there was excellent, not only because he is so nice, but because he obligingly demonstrated his super niceness to my parents (who are not always so subtle in their opinions of my status as a working mother), and they really liked him.

Muriel clearly comprehended that the party was for her. She looked wicked awesome in her birthday dress, and even kept her hair clips in for a while.

What I should really do is devote a post or five to the girl of the week. Muriel is such a fantastic and complicated little person. She is clever and musical, sympathetic, quick to anger, quick to apologize. She likes to sing and dance. She likes to go along with her sister, and utterly thwart her sister. She puts everything in her mouth, but rarely actually eats anything (food included). She makes funny faces. She insists on having her "injury" kissed whenever the dog licks her (no thanks!). She shouts the lyrics to "Doe, a deer" as though they are a rallying cry for freedom. She is the life of the party. And now she has been around for two years- can you believe it? We're so glad to have her.