tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34803834185563686482024-03-14T16:50:11.582-07:00Seattle Moxie*...she really knows her fruit*MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.comBlogger198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-78943333234224457542020-01-15T12:51:00.000-08:002020-01-15T12:51:08.744-08:00Don't call it a comebackI live! Suffice it to say this has been one of the strangest years of my life and I took the time to hunker down. It's been my hunker year. There were sweatpants and cozy blankets and endless movies involved, as should be customary when a marriage breaks up. I'm thinking I should start a separation care package business. Everyone would receive a pair of flannel pajamas, a weighted blanket, a Netflix subscription, a few bags of Nacho Cheese Doritos, an online dating profile, and a hot new pair of shoes. You may be separated but you ain't dead.<br />
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Some pretty exciting stuff has happened to me in my sweatpants. First, I hurt my back when I sneezed. Come to me, middle age.<br />
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It was the coffee's fault. I had just poured a very full cup of piping hot coffee and was walking through the house when I felt the sneeze coming. I seized up, thinking "oh no, oh no, don't spill the coffee!" so when I sneezed all tensed up, bad things happened. I immediately laid down on the floor moaning. Lucien came downstairs -- "Oh my God, Mom, what happened???" and when I responded "I sneezed, baby" he was just like, "wow...." and stepped over me shaking his head. He's a good boy, though, so went and got me the heating pad.<br />
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I also got a new car. I will miss <a href="https://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-happiest-time-of-year-now-with-duct.html" target="_blank">my duct-taped beauty</a> but thankfully it didn't go too far because Alex has it now. I got a shiny new bright blue zippity zoomer. Alex drove me to pick up the car, with plans to go out to dinner afterward to celebrate us finally being a two car family. Alex and I wanted a fancier dinner, like the nearby steakhouse place, but we ended up at IHOP. The kids won that one. We ate celebratory pancakes.<br />
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I took the kids on another road trip over the summer. No one is surprised. Strap in for a bunch of photos again.<br />
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<i>Coco on the road between here and there </i></div>
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This trip will be known as "the one with the masks" because Lucien and Coco wore sloth and pigeon masks at every stop.<br />
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<i>Arches National Park, an old favorite</i></div>
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Coco wanted to do an escape room while staying in Moab outside Arches. She remembers fondly our <a href="https://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2018/04/whistler-and-magic-meatball.html" target="_blank">escape room experience in Whistler, BC</a> where Alex and I very nearly pried boards off the walls thinking we were on the right track. But we were not.<br />
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The kids and I escaped the escape room but only because the staff took pity on us. They liked us when we named our team "We Are Definitely Not Going to Escape Ha Ha." I think they wanted to give the kids a sense of accomplishment so let us ask way more questions than allowed over the walkie talkie -- and at the very end a staff member just walked into the room laughing and said "do this, do this, do this" so BAM! We escaped. Kind of.<br />
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We also visited the Grand Canyon. Coco wanted a Junior Ranger badge from the Grand Canyon so we stopped in the visitor center for her Junior Ranger booklet. Our troubled relationship with a park ranger began when we dropped the completed booklet off for her to receive her badge. As she raised her hand to recite the Junior Ranger oath, Lucien pointed at the badge on the ranger's chest and said, "Oh, you're a Junior Ranger, too, good for you!"<br />
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(Lucien was mortified after. He truly thought the guy was sporting a Junior Ranger badge to support all the park's Junior Rangers and he was making a funny joke. Oops.)<br />
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I wish the ranger had a better sense of humor but he seemed quite miffed and said, "I'm a real ranger and this is a real badge" and launched into his lengthy education in the forestry sciences that had gotten him to where he was sitting. It didn't help when Coco didn't quite keep up with the conversation and said, "But you're old, did you have to fill out all twelve pages of the Junior Ranger book instead of just five like me?"I fear he was offended both on account of her calling him "old" and the lack of respect for his forestry science smarts.<br />
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To change the subject, I quickly asked him about the evening ranger program. He said he was leading a program that evening called "Mistakes and Missteps and Mishaps in Grand Canyon" and I said, "You mean like literal missteps? Like people backing up and falling into the canyon?" And he said "Uhhhh...no. No death stories" to which Coco immediately said, "Well where's the fun in that?"<br />
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There were a few beats of silence then as he likely considered ripping Coco's Junior Ranger badge off her t-shirt so I ushered the kids out of the visitor center quickly. Lots for that ranger to unpack in those few minutes of interaction so I'll leave him to it.<br />
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<i>Love you anyway, you offensive sloth</i></div>
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Our cabin was close to the visitors center so we had to pass it several times a day. We were embarrassed by some of the things that had come out of our mouths to that ranger so wished to avoid him for the rest of our stay. We would approach the entrance slowly and peer in to see if he was there. If he was sitting at the desk, we would run quickly past the front door. He saw us a couple times.<br />
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Whatever, so one ranger in the world thinks we're a terribly odd little family. I'm frankly surprised it's only one.<br />
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We relaxed for a few days at Glenwood Hot Springs in Colorado. It's giant and wonderful. We became unrecognizable little shriveled prunes floating around in that thing all day and all night.<br />
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Then during our stay with Grandma and Grandpa, we visited a lovely art installation made of sticks and Grandma tried to teach a sloth how to play hammered dulcimer --<br />
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Then Mesa Verde National Park. I made new friends at this park when people wanted to airdrop me videos they'd taken of the kids with funny commentary like, "And in the distance, we see the elusive sloth and pigeon of Mesa Verde" as we hiked up a path towards them. The kids couldn't see very well in those masks so I had to hold onto their arms often to avoid them plunging off the side of a trail.<br />
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Last, our favorite park of all time -- back to Capitol Reef and back to staying in a covered wagon. This park is worth it every time. We had to branch out to see new stuff since we've been there so many times. The best way to do that was a Jeep tour of the back country. Our guide was delightful, even gave Lucien his own flip-flop when Lucien's broke in the middle of nowhere.<br />
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<i>Then our guide just went nuts and started driving down the river</i></div>
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In non-road trip related matters, Coco was a crying baby for Halloween. Terrifying stuff --<br />
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<i>Look how concerned Natani was</i></div>
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I hosted a big crew on Thanksgiving, including my parents and brother visiting from Colorado --<br />
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Christmas was bittersweet. Alex was with us for dinner at Seattle Mom's on Christmas Eve and came over Christmas Day for presents. It felt pretty normal, which for some reason makes the whole thing even more sad. I'm glad we get along, though. This would have been a much harder year for all of us if we didn't.<br />
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I had a dream recently. The four of us were at the elementary school where Lucien once attended and Coco still does. Coco went up to her classroom as Alex and I sat there with Lucien having a chat. I looked out the window and saw a tidal wave, three times the size of the school, coming towards us rapidly. Alex and I grabbed Lucien's hands and ran as everyone yelled, "get to the back of the school." We ran and ran and then the wave hit and rocked the school. The floors flooded heavily but we were still there, holding onto each other.<br />
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I told Alex to stay with Lucien, that I had to find Coco, and waded through waist-deep water. As I made my way up the stairs, other parents told me that the teachers were gone, had been called to a school that had been hit even harder, and that the kids were alone upstairs.<br />
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I found her classroom, found Coco sopping wet and huddled in a corner crying, and grabbed her up. I looked out the window and another tidal wave was coming, much bigger than the first. I sat on the floor with her in my arms, telling her everything was going to be OK and praying Lucien was safe with Alex downstairs, as it hit. And then I woke up drenched in sweat and crying. I didn't go back to sleep that night.<br />
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If there's anything to represent my heartache and anxiety and fear of divorce, that dream is it. It was a real asshole dream and maybe, if I can make a critique, dream, a bit too on the nose.<br />
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But we're all here. And we're all OK. Life goes on.<br />
Don't call this a comeback.<br />
But I'll be around when my hunkering schedule allows,<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-44313489822638397042019-07-02T16:06:00.000-07:002019-07-02T16:06:13.561-07:00The orange kidsSchool's out for summer, finally. By the end of the school year, I cannot wait for summer break. And by the end of summer break, I will be staring at the calendar all day every day desperately counting seconds until school starts again, which it will do just in the nick of time. These things are perfectly timed for my mental and emotional limits on either end.<br />
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Lucien has completed 7th Grade. It wasn't his easiest year but I don't think 7th Grade is ever the easiest year. It actually may be the year that sucks the most so taking that into consideration, he rocked it.<br />
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The Loosh was enrolled in a phys ed class this year called "Urban Hiking" led by an intense teacher who is big, intimidating and, as Lucien said, "somehow has a nose in the shape of an 's.'" The teacher declared they were going to try a heart rate experiment and gave the kids heart rate monitors and iPads for their urban hike that day. Everyone's heart rates were there on the iPads in a list for everyone else to see. A box next to their names turned green, orange, or red depending on how hard their heart was working. The kids were instructed to keep their heart rates in the green range, the acceptable range for the activity at hand, at all times.<br />
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It was a pressured situation. And Lucien is not the most physically active person in the world, ahem. His primary passions are video games and ants, both of which involve focus and intense staring, occasionally with a magnifying glass, but neither involves much movement.<br />
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<i>He caught this queen ant during her nuptial flight last month.</i></div>
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<i>It's a long story.</i></div>
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<i>He is now growing his second colony.</i></div>
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<i>He is so happy with the ant situation.</i></div>
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So... nearly immediately upon beginning the urban hike, Lucien's heart rate spiked into the orange range and his classmates yelled, "Oh no, Lucien's dying already!" (He told me later, "Mom, I swear, it only took like five steps for my heart to be like 'nope.'") By the time they got up to the park, Lucien and a handful of other kids were in the high orange range and their teacher was hopping around in front of them demanding they get back into the green, which only pushed their heart rates closer to the red. It is apparently difficult to lower your heart rate when someone is in your face insisting you do so immediately.<br />
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The teacher told the red-orange kids to stop walking and get on the ground but to keep moving in some way until their heart rates were green. The orange kids dropped into the grass and began squirming on their bellies like army cadets at basic training. This did nothing to lower their heart rates, in fact increased them by quite a bit because now passersby were staring. The orange kids then laid in the grass and attempted movement with even less movement. Lucien said he laid on his stomach, reached his arms out to the sides and wiggled his fingers. One boy gave up and laid in the grass whistling and staring at clouds with his legs crossed. One girl log rolled side to side halfheartedly.<br />
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As their classmates walked green-zoned circles around them, the orange kids bonded in the grass over their mutual agreement that 7th Grade is pretty much the worst.<br />
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(My takeway: Lucien needs to jog around the block more often.)<br />
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I have two new foster dogs. Rasta is an 8-year-old poodle mix rescued from the streets of Mexico and Ralf is a 6-month-old Formosan rescued from a mountain in Taiwan where he'd been abandoned with his littermates.</div>
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Rasta the mini poodle is a small feisty dog who thinks he's a big scary dog. He regularly attempts to attack Natani even though we tell him it's a bad decision every time. She could kill him, of course, but thankfully Natani doesn't have murder in her heart. She just kinda looks down at the little growling thing hopping around spoiling for a fight then looks back up at me with question marks in her eyes.<br />
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<i>Can I kill the big doggie, foster mom?</i></div>
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Most of my day is about trying to keep Rasta quiet. He is a vocal one. My neighbor walked past the house the other day while I was out in the yard and asked how my foster dog, Bob, was doing. I responded a bit confused, "Huh? Bob?" and the neighbor laughed and said, "Yeah, we call him Bob Barker." Yikes. (My takeaway: I should send all my neighbors fruit baskets.)<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6v612mIfdo8" width="560"></iframe>
<i>Exhibit A</i>
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Alex usually comes for dinner once a week. The day he was scheduled to come here was also the evening Ralf the Formosan puppy was due to arrive at the airport from Taiwan. We decided to go to the airport for dinner and pick up Ralf together as a fun family activity.<br />
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<i>Ralf</i></div>
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Ralf and his littermates were wheeled out from the oversized baggage area in big crates on carts. There were six of them in total, all of them shaking, exhausted, confused from their long journey. The director of the dog rescue organization warned they would be distressed when we wheeled them away in opposite directions since it would be the first time they'd ever been separated. And sure enough, as soon as the first dog began rolling, the high pitched, frantic dog shriek screaming began. It was ear splitting, heartbreaking, and awful.<br />
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We fosters just looked stunned at each other and said, "Uh-oh, this is gonna be ugly. Like a band-aid, people, GO GO GO." and took off jogging with our dog carts. The noise got louder then, so shrill and frantic as we all bounded away trying to get them into cars as soon as possible. People waiting for their luggage at the carousels stared incredulously as the gang of us sprinted past. Many plugged their ears.<br />
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I wonder what those people saw, what it looked like from their perspective. I imagine it looked something like a little dog crate race, with all of us pushing our carts and taking corners too hard at high speed as we slid sideways.<br />
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We dove into an open elevator only to realize there was already another shrieking Formosan inside of it. The dogs, sensing proximity to a sibling, went absolutely insane. It was a sound I'm not sure I can accurately describe but I will try -- "hellish cacophony exploding shriekbomb." I exchanged desperate looks with the other foster mom, whose bangs had fallen into her eyes from her dog running efforts so she was trying to blow them out of her face, and immediately yelled at my family to "reverse! reverse! reverse!" I'm fairly certain we all would have suffered permanent hearing loss on that elevator ride.<br />
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Ralf gave up after that but the other dogs shrieked all the way to cars. We could hear them from different corners of the parking lot. By the time we got to the car, we were sweaty and tired and pretty damn stressed out. Alex said, as we climbed into the car, "This was fun, Min, I'm so glad you're fostering dogs now." I sense he was being sarcastic but let's believe he was serious for a minute and truly appreciates my dog-saving efforts.<br />
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Happy news, Ralf was reunited with his siblings at an adoption event a week later and they all piled together in a sweet little Formosan heap.<br />
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<i>Beautiful brothers staring at a bag of treats</i><br />
<i>and wanting the treats very much.</i></div>
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Ralf goes on trial adoption later this week. I'll miss the shy guy. Rasta may never go on trial adoption because he is a very loud little dog. Rasta is also a passive aggressive poodle. He does not like sharing my attention with Ralf, and lets his displeasure be known by peeing on Ralf whenever Ralf is sleeping.<br />
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<i>I require assistance from the kids when walking three dogs.</i><br />
<i>Especially these three.</i></div>
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Here's to the orange kids and foster dogs.<br />
Struggle brings strength, y'all,<br />
MJ<br />
<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-40278118653079085262019-06-07T11:25:00.000-07:002019-06-07T11:25:53.592-07:00The Devil's Fortune CookiesMy latest foster dog, a six-year-old German Shepherd mix, was adopted last weekend by the sweetest couple. It was sad because I loved him with the strength of many suns but even worse, within two hours of being with his new family, he bolted and was hit by a car. He's injured but will be OK. The poor boy must be so confused and scared, surrounded by people he doesn't know in a place he doesn't know.<br />
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I wish he could recover here with me and the kids instead.... sooo hey, does anybody have any surefire dognapping tips? Asking for a friend. We did not have this conversation.<br />
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<i>I miss you, good boy. </i></div>
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<i>Get better soon.</i><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
I'm getting back to the California road trip now to get my mind off poor Rocky and his collapsed lung.<br />
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<u><span style="color: #000120;"><a href="https://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2019/05/feels-like-day-39.html" target="_blank">Last time</a></span></u> I checked in, which admittedly was a long time ago once again, the kids and I were headed to Big Sur on Highway 1 in beautiful California. It was a fast swervy ride, as it should be. The kids had vomit bags at the ready but more importantly they had Dramamine, which made them so drowsy they were kinda like "whooooo" all quiet-like with eyes half closed. The vomit bags thankfully went unused and quickly returned to their previous status as garbage bags.<br />
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Lucien has an interest in photography. Here he is trying to get a picture of a possible sea lion in the water but Coco and I kept bugging him. Hang in there, Lulu, we are indeed annoying --<br />
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Hearst Castle in San Simeon sits just off Highway 1. The Hearst Castle tour is boring compared to the <a href="https://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2019/05/feels-like-day-39.html" target="_blank">Winchester House Tour</a> because there are no ghosts. <span style="color: black; display: inline; float: none; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">Hearst built a </span>big impressive house, sure, but you barely see any of it because you spend too much time in each of the rooms. We could have seen many more rooms if we didn't have to stand around hearing for the 100th time that Charlie Chaplin played poker with Walt Disney in that very room or whatever. Stop with the name dropping and show me more house.<br />
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<i>I am totally pretending I live here. I've just joined this tour to mingle with the commoners</i></div>
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<i> and keep myself down to earth.</i></div>
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We stayed that evening in the infamously quirky Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, California. I can't recommend it enough, especially if you are a fan of sensory overload --<br />
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<i>This is just the dining room</i></div>
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The rooms at the Madonna Inn are themed. Our room had an "1850s San Francisco" theme which, from what I could tell, pretty much meant "brothel." Think black lampshades, gold mirrors, red shaggy carpet and red walls with a gold lace overlay. I was pretty jealous of the pioneer themed room next door because it had half of a real covered wagon in there. The wagon added something special, added authenticity to the theme. I am very relieved we did not have half a prostitute to add authenticity to ours.<br />
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The Madonna Inn is the place local couples come to dance like nobody's watching, often in matching outfits, to live bands. I took Coco for a few twirls on the dance floor after dinner but Lucien chose to stay at the table and cover his face with a napkin in horrified embarrassment.<br />
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That boy has become less fun since turning 13. I went to pick him up early from school last week in one of my favorite outfits -- a pair of super high-waisted wide-legged jeans and a cropped top with a wide belt. My style game was on point and I was feeling sooo fine but when Lucien saw me in the office, he was mortified. He actually pulled on my arm to get me out of the school as quickly as possible. I was like, "Dude, what is your issue? I'm amazing!" and he said "God, Mom, you look like one of those hippies from the 80s." He then informed me that bell bottoms are hopelessly out of style (false) but I didn't really hear that because I was stuck on the horrifying "hippies from the 80s" part.<br />
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(... Lucien thinks the hippies were in the 80s... I guess because the 80s seem so impossibly long ago to him... so now I have a choice to make. Either I wear the exact same hippie outfit to school every time I pick him up OR I can pull out the true 80s gear -- maybe a Wham t-shirt worn off one shoulder, pegged jeans, jelly shoes -- and jazzercise into the building.)<br />
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Our brothel themed room at The Madonna Inn neighbored a group of people from L.A. celebrating their friend's 30th birthday. I know all this because we could easily hear them next door through the thin wall, calling each other by their insufferable names like Magnolia and Blaine and Thaddeus -- and forgive me but sweet baby Jesus, I hated them.<br />
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One male (I think it was Rolston but my voice identification is not 100%) said at one point, "My actor's diction coach got injured pretty badly at the tennis club but he wanted to take his SUV to the emergency room instead of my convertible because he doesn't like what my convertible does to his hair" and I sat straight up in my bed and said aloud, "I HATE YOU PEOPLE" and then immediately heard Lucien laugh from over in his bed. I did not model mature parental behavior there but at least The Loosh concurred.<br />
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We didn't sleep well that night because as cool as The Madonna Inn is, its walls are apparently made of paper. I hated our room's walls more than I hated Rolston and that's saying a lot.<br />
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The next morning, bleary-eyed, I bought a cup of coffee at the bar and the woman working there said, "the condiments are over there" and pointed at a table across the room. I immediately blurted out, "Oh! Do you have mustard?"<br />
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My mind had jumped to a thought I'd had from the previous day, you see, when the kids and I were eating lunch at a rest area. I was eating cheese and salami on crackers and thought, "It's a little dry. Mustard would be great with this. I need to find little packets of mustard for next time."<br />
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Upon hearing the word "condiment" my mind had not gone towards cream and sugar. It had gone straight back to mustard. Maybe it wasn't a totally unreasonable connection for me but I think it struck the woman behind the bar as completely baffling. She stared at me slightly wide-eyed, slightly open-mouthed, until I mumbled "never mind" and shuffled off. I'm sure she watched me go and said aloud to no one in particular, "My god, that woman puts mustard in her coffee."<br />
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Our next stop on the itinerary was the reason for the whole road trip, the ultimate goal -- Death Valley National Park in the Mohave Desert. I'd never been to Death Valley before but knew enough to avoid it during the summer because we would probably DIE.<br />
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Even in Spring, it's toasty in Death Valley with temps in the mid-90s. It is also a humongous park. I asked a ranger about one hike in particular and was told it was a four-and-a-half hour drive to the trailhead, which unfortunately meant a four-and-a-half hour drive back, too. I laughed out loud -- what a silly ranger telling me jokes! -- but she was serious. We skipped that hike.<br />
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<i>My two dot kids</i></div>
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Death Valley immediately became not just one of our favorite national parks, but one of our favorite places ever. You have to marvel at the remoteness and the wildness of it all, the extremes it embraces with snow capped peaks above and one of the hottest places in the world below in the salt flats, 282 feet below sea level.<br />
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<i>The kids shopped for my birthday gifts in San Luis Obispo.</i></div>
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<i>I became the proud owner of a shark hand puppet,</i></div>
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<i>and a lucky road trip car charm,</i></div>
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<i>and a bunch of fake mustaches at the the age of 44.</i></div>
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<i>It's gonna be a good year.</i></div>
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<i>Coco two miles out into the salt flats,</i></div>
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<i>wishing the car was parked closer.</i></div>
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I almost lost the kids to an overheated crabby revolt in the sand dunes. The handheld misting fans got us through --<br />
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<i>For the Star Wars fans, Death Valley was Tatooine</i><br />
<i>and these sand dunes are where C3PO and R2D2 got lost.</i></div>
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<i>The kids got sick of me scouting all filming locations</i></div>
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<i>and tried to leave me</i></div>
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<i>as I ran after them yelling, "You guys! It's a classic!"</i></div>
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Death Valley is full of natural features with ominous names like "Dante's View" and "Devil's Golf Course" and "Devil's Haystack." Lucien said at one point, while reading from a book we had purchased at the gift shop, that there was a super cool feature we had to see called "Devil's Fortune Cookies." I scoured my park map but couldn't find anything labeled Devil's Fortune Cookies so walked into the visitor center to ask a ranger their whereabouts. The ranger laughed out loud, said there was no such thing in Death Valley, and that someone must be mistaken or was playing a joke on me.<br />
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I turned to see Lucien doubled over with laughter. He could barely choke out the words, "I can't believe you believed me and I can't believe you asked!" as I marched him back to the car. He was so very pleased with himself.<br />
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<i>Devil's Golf Course.</i></div>
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<i>A real place.</i></div>
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I get frustrated sometimes on these road trips because even if I'm pointing out something amazing outside the car, the kids rarely look out the window. I pulled over in the middle of a gigantic wind farm (amazing!) to give them a talkin' to. I said they were missing some of the best parts, the journey parts, and that I wanted them to notice when I pointed out something interesting along the road. If they didn't get it together and enjoy absolutely everything I told them to enjoy at all times, I was going to take away their screens.<br />
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We soon happened upon a gorgeous old bridge above a deep valley. I said, "You guys better look out the window and appreciate this old bridge." and Lucien yelled from the backseat, "OH WOW, thanks for pointing that out, Mom, this bridge really butters my biscuit!"<br />
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Punk.<br />
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We're not done with this trip yet, sorry. I pointed the car north and aimed for a different type of valley, Yosemite National Park. Yosemite is classic beauty in your face, some of nature's finest offerings.<br />
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I splurged on the accommodations in Yosemite. We stayed at the fancy pants Majestic Yosemite Lodge. It wasn't cheap but it was worth it because it reminded Lucien of <i>The Shining </i>and I really love creeping out the kids.<br />
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<i>waiting for blood to pour out of this elevator...</i></div>
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I'm not sure if we enjoyed driving around the park more or sitting in the lodge's sun room more. The Majestic Yosemite has board games to lend its guests and we borrowed them ALL. It's good to have the quality downtime in between insisting the kids enjoy things they very much do not enjoy.<br />
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I've got to wind this road trip down but there's still one more stop! Plus... a special guest!<br />
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The last stop was San Francisco and the special guest was Alex, who flew in just for the weekend to join us in one of our favorite cities. Alex and I are no longer together as a couple but we still like each other as people and are doing well keeping our separation friendly and peaceful. High five, Al, we make breaking up after 20 years look like easy fun. (It's not)<br />
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The kids said it was "kind of weird" we were all together again on a trip but also "kind of nice." I think that sums up how we all felt about it.<br />
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<i>Coco being sent to solitary confinement on Alcatraz</i></div>
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<i>This is where the real hippies were from, </i></div>
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<i>not those 80s ones.</i></div>
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<i>Coco got very tired after about 500 blocks of uphill San Francisco walking</i></div>
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<i>so she said "eff it" and started crawling.</i></div>
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<i>Same sculpture eleven years later. </i></div>
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<i>The kid looks different, though.</i></div>
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I'm plotting my next road trip already. So I guess that means I'm plotting two things now -- another road trip and (allegedly) stealing my foster dog back from his new family. I could incorporate the two, maybe, because once I've stolen the dog I should probably skip town for a little bit.<br />
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<i>I'm going to do these trips with them until they are 100 years old</i>.</div>
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In the meantime, back in Seattle,<br />
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<i>She's a sloth now.</i></div>
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Life goes on. And everyone is OK.<br />
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Those Devil's Fortune Cookies really butter my biscuit,<br />
MJ<br />
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MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-81065341370786748292019-05-02T12:45:00.000-07:002019-06-06T08:44:54.382-07:00Feels like Day 39I turned older recently. It tends to happen once a year. This year I celebrated in one of my happiest of places because I was on the ROAD.<br />
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You know it's been a tough year for all of us, posse, so you know how badly I needed to be out there with my kids again, driving through a whole lot of wide open expanses with a whole lot of nothing stretched before me on long, long roads.<br />
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I rented a car for this trip. Alex helped since he has a membership for rental cars given all his travels. We picked the car up together and as soon as we hopped in, we were like, "Is this what cars are like now?" and then proceeded to push every button like kids with a new toy. I'm surprised we didn't break anything.<br />
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It's been a long time since I've had a new car. My 2006 model is still kicking it but has most definitely seen better days. I love my car and don't want to part with it yet but I'll admit -- pretty thrilling to have an affair with a hotter younger model for a couple weeks.<br />
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My road trips are ambitious. It's the norm for us to pull 14-hour days in the car as we get to where we're going. The kids and I have a system that has been refined over many years of doing these trips -- an intricate schedule of bathroom breaks and snack bags and surprise bags and road trip games and countdowns and music playlists to fit each landscape. We know what to expect in a car and it doesn't take long to get back into the road trip frame of mind.<br />
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Climbing into a car together at dawn to begin another adventure is like climbing into an old friend. That sounded creepy but I meant it to feel cozy.<br />
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There was one feature I found jarring on my hot young rental car as I cruised along. Every few hours or so, the dashboard would light up and a message would flash in an annoying way: "Would you like to take a break?" And I would get kind of offended and say aloud, "Take a break? Take a break? Have you ever met me, car? God you don't know me at all."<br />
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My old car would never ask me such a stupid question. She knows breaks are for wimps and road trips are for driving.<br />
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This trip was all about California. Our first day ended in Eureka. I love Northern California and all the many, many quirky roadside attractions you can search out until your kids start getting crabby and telling you they're sick of them and wish we could just go to the hotel. Lame!<br />
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<i>Giant Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox</i></div>
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<i>Babe was anatomically correct.</i></div>
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<i>Lucien jumped out of the car and yelled, "Mom, look at the balls on that bull!"</i></div>
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<i>For the tour-thru tree, my rental car's dashboard</i></div>
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<i>flashed the message,</i></div>
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<i>"Get me out of here I am claustrophobic"</i></div>
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<i>We're really getting to know each other now.</i></div>
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<i>A house carved out of a giant Redwood tree</i></div>
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<i>The Gravity House at Confusion Hill</i></div>
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<i>The Grandfather Tree</i></div>
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We ate dinner our second night at a Cheesecake Factory in San Jose. It is not an experience I would recommend. My first question, which has been on my mind for a long time: why is The Cheesecake Factory decorated in a faux Egyptian theme? Shouldn't it be more of an industrial factory-type thing? What is it about the words "cheesecake" and/or "factory" that made someone snap their fingers and say "Cleopatra!" This is just one of many things that bother me about that restaurant.<br />
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Our table was wedged between two tables of men at The Cheesecake Factory. The men on my left were complaining about the women in Silicon Valley. One said, "If you're not payin' 'em, ignore 'em, because at least the ones you're paying will do what you say." I had to resist throwing my bowl of overpriced pasta primavera at his head because it is my firm belief it is better for a misogynist to wear a bowl of pasta than not wear a bowl of pasta.<br />
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I was hoping the kids had not overheard but Lucien looked up from his book and said, "Mom, I think that guy's single for a reason."<br />
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The conversation of the men to my right was slightly less offensive. They were discussing how one of them had drunkenly killed a chipmunk one time. I don't think I want to be friends with either table but at least those to my right seemed sad about what they were saying.<br />
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The kids and I were in San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House. It's been said the Winchester Mystery House is the most haunted house in the country, inhabited by the vengeful spirits of those killed by the Winchester Rifle.<br />
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Sarah Winchester, an eccentric lady, understatement, was told by her medium the only way to keep the ghosts at bay was to build on the house continually, 24-hrs a day, which she did for over 30 years. There were no blueprints, no plans, she would just tell the workers to tack on this room or that room as it went along. It is an immense labyrinth of 170 rooms with no rhyme nor reason as to its layout. We were warned by our guide not to leave the group, that if we wandered off it would be very difficult for us to find our way out. I bet half the ghosts in that house are just former tour participants trying to find the bathroom.<br />
<br />
The Winchester House was as beautiful and creepy as I'd hoped.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>staircases leading straight up into the ceiling</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif-EzWAb6ZR8ftnyuzGe_19bbVAi-G762-9Jt_9khZCq_SnfE8Zoj3Gi_XLnASCV52L_8pEXva1mPjdqTGyR2KKjNT3RbYVXBqHP1CapbJWBOncRHm6QjySQXGNRmwE7Nvkm3m2j-AWimF/s1600/IMG_E1246+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif-EzWAb6ZR8ftnyuzGe_19bbVAi-G762-9Jt_9khZCq_SnfE8Zoj3Gi_XLnASCV52L_8pEXva1mPjdqTGyR2KKjNT3RbYVXBqHP1CapbJWBOncRHm6QjySQXGNRmwE7Nvkm3m2j-AWimF/s320/IMG_E1246+%25282%2529.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The door in Sarah's seance room.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>It opens onto nothing</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>but is a handy shortcut</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>if you'd suddenly like to be down in the servants' kitchen sink.</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Another "door to nowhere" up on the second floor.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>If you open that one and aren't paying attention,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>you're face first in the garden now.</i></div>
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I must add the tour doesn't begin in the best way. The guide says "We're about to climb a staircase with seven switchbacks and a hundred low-rise stairs, all just to take us nine feet above to the second floor." So you're crisscrossing back and forth across the narrow low-rise stair switchbacks, giggling with your fellow tourmates like, "Oh gosh, Sarah, you were so weird!"<br />
<br />
But then you get to the top of the stairs and the guide says, "Those are not the original stairs. Sarah had the normal stairs ripped out and those low-rise stairs installed towards the end of her life because she could barely move due to her arthritis."<br />
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And then you feel terribly guilty, like a total jerk, for giggling and calling an old lady weird who sufferred crippling arthritis and was just trying to get into her big dang weird house. Hang your head in shame, tour participant, in shame.<br />
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After San Jose we headed over to Highway 1 to experience the winding and wild beauty of Big Sur. This is the morning I jumped on the kids to wake them up and said, "Guys, time for Day Three!" and Lucien groaned and said, "Jesus, Mom, it feels like Day 39." Maybe that's how it feels to read about it, too.<br />
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Onward!<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-42116429900506884622019-04-22T11:07:00.000-07:002019-04-22T11:07:17.839-07:00Bunnies gone badPosse, thanks for the love after my last post. Phew. It was not an easy one to write (obviously, it took me months) but now that it's on the screen, I feel freed up in an incredible way. I dreaded sharing the news with all of you, even though I've never met most of you. I felt I was going to disappoint you in some way, that despite all our adventures in Paris and beyond, which hopefully you enjoyed once upon a time and cheered for our little family, Al and I couldn't hold it together in the end.<br />
<br />
It is what it is and I hope you will still hang around. Alex will still likely be a guest star here on the regular, such as in the Spring Break post I'm about to write. We also spent Easter together yesterday with our crew of best friends. Always a lot of laughs. It's a big crew and our kids have grown up together. They all fight like siblings. Chosen family can be as awesome/tricky as real family.<br />
<br />
I'm sure it's confusing for the friends that Alex and I can still hang out together and have a good time yet don't want to be together as a couple anymore. I think they're happy they get to keep us both, though, so they're not making too big of a fuss about it.<br />
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<i>Most of the parents had gone with our collective children to the egg hunt nearby.</i></div>
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<i>We didn't. We are old parents tired of egg hunts.</i></div>
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<i>Instead, Alex held some sort of dildo-looking baseball training thing</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>and I swung at it with a bat.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>Lucien and his bestie.</i></div>
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<i>Seattle Mom sent this to me with the caption</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>"Bunnies gone bad"</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>Alex loves the Loosh.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Everyone loves the Loosh.</i></div>
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<i>When asked how he's going to afford his new gaming computer monitor,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>which he wants very much,</i></div>
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<i>he said "Mexico will pay for my monitor."</i></div>
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<br />
Spring Break was a beauty. An ambitious beauty. I may have packed more into this road trip than most road trips. I roused the kids from their sleepy beds a few days in and said, "Guys, time for Day Three!" and Lucien groaned and said, "Jesus, Mom, it feels like Day 39."<br />
<br />
There's just so much to see in California. Good thing for the kids I cut out half of the itinerary right before we left because I finally figured out we are not superhuman.<br />
<br />
That's it for now. I'm tired. Easter was exhausting with the bat swinging and the bunny fighting. I've got plenty to share about California but for now, even I am overwhelmed by my own trip and can't get there yet.<br />
<br />
Before I go, I will address my love for Notre Dame. The <i>pompiers </i>of Paris are heroes. They are also unfairly hot looking people but that is not related to their hero/heroine statuses. Virginia Mom used to trail the <i>pompiers</i> on their training runs through Luxembourg Gardens in the early mornings. If I had been a runner, I would have done the same. What a fantastic motivation to run, both to chase the hot people and to hope that the running will make you exactly as hot as them someday.<br />
<br />
I am reminded of the time the <i>pompiers</i> came to our apartment door selling their annual <i>pompier</i> pretty people calendar and Lucien told them at length about the bag of Coco's poop-filled diapers sitting next to our front door on its way to the garbage. He just kept saying "<i>caca</i>" and pretending to poop. It was awkward. I should have bought more calendars.<br />
<br />
I'm grateful I saw Notre Dame on the regular back then, walked in front of it a couple times a week since it was a 10 minute walk from where we lived in Saint Germain. Towards the end of our years in Paris, I sometimes didn't even glance up at the towers when I walked nearby. It had become everyday and old news.<br />
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I should have looked up every single time. The extraordinary should never become the ordinary.<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Following a three-year-old Lucien to Notre Dame.</i></div>
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<i>He loved it.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>But was suspicious</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>after I told him about Quasimodo living up in the towers.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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It's a whole new world here.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
But life goes on, <i>mes choux</i>.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
MJ</div>
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<br /></div>
MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-3270236515541146372019-03-31T10:25:00.000-07:002019-03-31T10:25:13.322-07:00Ode to a marriage and to the pits in our stomachs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: left;">
I've started this post, then deleted, then re-started, then paced a lot, then deleted and re-started this post a million times. I can't decide if it should be a post of epic length or if I should keep it short then run away fast.</div>
</div>
<br />
I disappeared for a long bit, yes, and in a blogger that is usually the sign of something sad -- or of just being over the blog.<br />
<br />
I'm of the sad sort. I could never quit you happily, blog. It just felt disingenuous to continue writing about Alaska, or about the regular ridiculousness of life, without addressing the biggest thing. Yet I wasn't quite ready to address the biggest thing until right now, wasn't sure I would do it justice with words, and wanted to make sure I could honor everyone involved before I sat down to write it.<br />
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But boom, here it is. Alex and I separated after the Alaska trip. Boooooom.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXLMHPgxL2CR5a9CJoTG4UU5oalUMzJEemQw3K80gBziJ43BWljrRG1KWOngaC4VVrqPivUS5B33s3kquX12aO34dB3mW3fY9OgbMoRldcDQB9omQsQGz2cvhZ83fyuKW0w7daKe7eMhcV/s1600/1timMvW4SvmxkeF9QpSD3w2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="769" data-original-width="576" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXLMHPgxL2CR5a9CJoTG4UU5oalUMzJEemQw3K80gBziJ43BWljrRG1KWOngaC4VVrqPivUS5B33s3kquX12aO34dB3mW3fY9OgbMoRldcDQB9omQsQGz2cvhZ83fyuKW0w7daKe7eMhcV/s320/1timMvW4SvmxkeF9QpSD3w2.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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It's been nearly six months since Alex moved out. I'm not going to get into how hard our past year has been, how hard, honestly, it's been since we returned from Mexico. There was a pit in my stomach every day since then, with many reasons why. But I knew something had gone way bad, something had changed, and that my ability to live with Al, my partner of over 20 years, had been taxed to the point of no return. I won't go into details here out of respect for all of us. The details are between me and Al and shall remain that way.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijqph_Quogte6R82_aAs02aXuZk3EpdHgXpEVhh3FP23ba2sDeXFGHDcVDBndae09d3MZpZ4Zsz1sstPL-4acI_nvxfvonSG7kmWS1AYPvfB3CzgA95_w0SJQx_AKFZoy7O6sNklNBIHvJ/s1600/2019-03-14_17-25-03_383.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijqph_Quogte6R82_aAs02aXuZk3EpdHgXpEVhh3FP23ba2sDeXFGHDcVDBndae09d3MZpZ4Zsz1sstPL-4acI_nvxfvonSG7kmWS1AYPvfB3CzgA95_w0SJQx_AKFZoy7O6sNklNBIHvJ/s320/2019-03-14_17-25-03_383.heic" width="240" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Alex is my friend. I hope he always remains my friend. He moved into a loft apartment nearby, within walking distance, and he and I are sharing time with the kids, sharing life in a different way than before, yet still sharing it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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He comes over once a week for family dinner and has the kids every other weekend. We've taken trips together since our separation. Here is a very awkward family photo we took in Vancouver, BC at Christmas --<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWjUCVmhWmMGcjivamuTyRb4pe7OJ8fz4tW1kcuBA4NJCRB-vzFVlmKT1QZ177UmeccTo94Fd0Uc9KKuM6GgZtWnBkCoVqIQR-tS91m9GZI4nd48SuFBDvxKAEV8Ryaz0tMInyaEYmvRtb/s1600/2018-12-31_17-56-32_367.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1440" data-original-width="1600" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWjUCVmhWmMGcjivamuTyRb4pe7OJ8fz4tW1kcuBA4NJCRB-vzFVlmKT1QZ177UmeccTo94Fd0Uc9KKuM6GgZtWnBkCoVqIQR-tS91m9GZI4nd48SuFBDvxKAEV8Ryaz0tMInyaEYmvRtb/s320/2018-12-31_17-56-32_367.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We just wanted to help Coco become King of the World</i><br />
<i>at the Titanic exhibit</i><br />
<i>but it turned out weird. </i></div>
<br />
I'm not sure if it's the right thing, seeing each other as often as we do. Maybe we're too afraid to sever our daily ties for real. It feels scary sometimes out there without our backup of 20+ years. We are meeting up again for a part of Spring Break at the tail end of another of my ambitious road trips with the kids. I cannot wait to hit the road because hot damn I need some long stretches of road right now.<br />
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<br />
I think it's OK. And I think it will change. Al and I won't always need each other this way. With time, our relationship will naturally grow more distant. Mindy and Alex have been a thing since 1998. It's hard and devastatingly sad to move on but it has to happen. Someday I will have no idea what he does with his days. And he will have no idea what I do with mine.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin_l7Zb-VVCfxutsKeh64zhXgByrNzAaE55nT2J2j8hiIRQk175-Bsg9-LdkZq2lYWKrNPfw3Wn1ONDBl26fe6JaLn2MVwzjP1ixo-UG8uephBiuoQuDbv9WSPbEZZmSG-5VnKgmSuvhHu/s1600/JqedXd6bT1yvvkYiJjIYrQ2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="567" data-original-width="708" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin_l7Zb-VVCfxutsKeh64zhXgByrNzAaE55nT2J2j8hiIRQk175-Bsg9-LdkZq2lYWKrNPfw3Wn1ONDBl26fe6JaLn2MVwzjP1ixo-UG8uephBiuoQuDbv9WSPbEZZmSG-5VnKgmSuvhHu/s320/JqedXd6bT1yvvkYiJjIYrQ2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>2002</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We were trying to look badass</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>but I'm not much good at that.</i></div>
<br />
Alex and I knew we would separate soon during the Alaska adventure. I am so grateful we still took the trip. Al and I had some great laughs throughout. One long drive on the Kenai Peninsula stands out in particular. when we laughed so hard we had to get out of the Winnie B and run up and down alongside the road taking videos of each other being assholes. What a drive. Sometimes we would just look at each other in the middle of a beautiful place, and feel the tragedy of it, and hug for a good long time. The kids took this as regular everyday affection between parents and rolled their eyes but they had no idea it was one in a long series of goodbyes.<br />
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<br />
Al and I had a good cry together the Saturday morning we told the kids. The kids were off watching TV as we sat at the kitchen counter, grasped each others forearms and wept silently, bracing ourselves for the conversation to come. We were about to change everything for them. That was as hard a day for us as a family as we've ever had. When we finally stood up and called them to the family table, the kids were surprisingly not surprised. Lucien said later he was a little relieved to know what was going on, that he "knew it." Sometimes kids feel pits in their stomachs, too, but don't have words for it.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Our baby Coco girl in France.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Our semi-disastrous summer trip to Picardie in 2010.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Because Lucien was bleeding profusely ten minutes after arrival</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>and required stitches.</i></div>
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The kids are good. It has been many months of processing and talking, often late into the night, fielding their sad or angry feelings and hugging and saying "I'm so sorry" a lot. Lucien has a therapist now, per his request, because he was having a hard time. He's doing better now and is his usual optimistic funny self most days. He still sees the therapist. He's also still obsessed with ants, is growing his own colony with a long-saved-for queen ant and her handful of workers. Bobo is still alive though moving very, very slowly. Lucien is 13 and in seventh grade and dealing with all such issues contained therein. He is still quirky and funny and smart and awesome. Not a day goes by I don't admire and adore that warm-souled child.<br />
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<i>The Loosh with Daddy at Versailles so, so long ago.</i></div>
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Coco is good, too. She's younger, and may not fully get the bigger picture of what all this means. She says "Daddy traveled and worked all the time anyway so it isn't much different he's always somewhere else." I've told her it's OK if someday if feels more sad, more different, than just the usual work travel schedule.<br />
<br />
I've often told her the best part of my day is the very early morning when I wake her up. She's a reluctant waker, my Coco girl, and I get to kiss her soft sweet face a million times before she starts batting me off with, "Mom, STOP IT!" Coco is not a morning person, you see.<br />
<br />
She is in the drama club now, and is passionate about the environment. She's traveling with her environment club to Olympia to give testimony before the Washington State Senate about climate change and saving our local endangered Orca pod, and raise some hell about how they'd like an Earth hospitable to their growth and well being well into the future. I am so proud of that pistol.<br />
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I am often in my kitchen. The above picture is the wall in my kitchen. I stare at it every day while doing dishes or making dinner and depending on the day I am full of sadness and/or full of joy. All of the pictures on this wall happened because Alex and I met long ago and got married and took each other on in all of our imperfect glory. It wasn't for nothing, our marriage. It was for everything.<br />
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I am relieved to have reached a friendly plateau months after the initial upheaval. Alex and I get along better now with space between us, and the kids have settled back into the rhythms of their lives and seem cheerful as usual. They tell me they're OK when I ask how they're doing, that they've gotten used to our new schedule and are happy we can still all spend time together as a family. I hope that's true. Al and I are absolutely committed to doing the best we can by them.<br />
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Sometimes there is crazy love. And then sometimes. far off in the future. for whatever reasons, that love fades and it's just over. I never thought it would happen to us and didn't want to acknowledge its presence for a long time but sometimes the pit in your stomach starts getting fidgety, trying to break out of you so it can jump up and down in front of your face and shout, "Helllooooooo? What are you even DOING?"<br />
<br />
The pit is gone now, the one I lived with for a long time, desperate to make everything OK and keep it together and make things work. Sadness is in its place, and fear sometimes. But the pit is worse than all that, a nagging thing that constantly reminds you you're stuck in limbo and something isn't right. The body sometimes steps in and says, "Woman, this isn't working, you gotta change this shit up" until it eases and says, "Woman, it's hard as hell but you are on the right path."<br />
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The body knows even when the mind is in denial.<br />
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<i>Alex and the baby Coco girl in Switzerland</i></div>
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<span id="goog_1296821997"></span><span id="goog_1296821998"></span></div>
Even knowing what I know today, I would still marry Al way back when, with full knowledge of how it all ended up. It has been such an incredible journey with this man. The best adventures, the most stepping outside of myself, the having of the most amazing of children. Even absorbing how sad I am now, I would do it again. He was my companion on the journey for a good long time even if he wasn't my companion until the very end.<br />
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<br />
<br />
I love you, Al. I'm so sad for where we ended up but thanks for it all.<br />
Now let's raise these kids up right good<br />
<br />
Marriage may not be forever, mes choux, but love is.<br />
MJ<br />
<br />
<br />
PS. Now that it's out in the open and I'm breathing regularly again, I just may be back here soon writing the rest of Alaska. And writing about my foster puppies (I'm on number four now and she's a doozy). And the beauty that continues on the regular in the raising of kids and living amongst the best community of friends a woman could hope for. It feels like the 40s have not been kind to any of us lately but we're getting by with a little help from our friends.<br />
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Plus... I'm about to hit the road again in a few days. Who loves a road trip tale on top of a road trip tale? Hopefully everybody!<br />
<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-44712416754962850142018-11-09T12:38:00.000-08:002018-11-11T07:56:50.399-08:00Fairbanks: Sled Pups and Sibling SmackdownI'll talk more about Alaska now but likely will not have much time to do so -- the foster puppies are fixin' to do something awful soon, I'm sure of it, and I'm going to have to stop them. They've so far today peed on my pile of papers destined for the filing cabinet, chewed up a flip-flop, and ripped a hole in Lucien's jeans with their shark-like puppy teeth.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Atticus is off to live his new life</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>but I've got a newbie, Pickles the black lab, now</i><br />
<i>and still have Waffles the foxhound mix. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Pickles and Waffles.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Who the hell is naming these dogs.</i></div>
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When I was last here talking about the road to Alaska (Chapter One <a href="https://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2018/08/you-too-can-drive-to-alaska.html">here</a>, Chapter Two <a href="https://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2018/09/you-too-can-drive-to-alaska-part-two.html">here</a>), we had crossed into Alaska "for real" and were heading towards Fairbanks. Driving through central Alaska is a strange thing. The isolation of the place is so palpable, you feel the most chilling sense of being all alone immediately after crossing the border at Port Alcan.<br />
<br />
Port Alcan is not like our usual border crossing between Washington State and British Columbia where you can expect to sit in line anywhere between 10-1000 hours. There's nobody around at Port Alcan. You go through with no fuss after a nice chat with the border agent, who honestly seems a little desperate for company. Then the road stretches ahead of you into nothing, the surroundings so wild and expansive and still, it sometimes feels like nobody has ever been there, you are the first, you are a pioneer!<br />
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The rusted cars sitting alongside the road will eventually tell you otherwise. Sometimes those old abandoned cars are down in ditches or wedged between trees. Try hard not to think about how they got there. Just maybe slow down a bit.<br />
<br />
One of the reasons those cars may have ended up there was ominously insinuated by the numerous "HIGH ELK COLLISION AREA" signs showing elk being gratuitously smacked down by vehicles. Those signs are unnerving. I pictured unassuming kindly elk coming at me from all sides, maybe not realizing what a car is since there are so few around, or maybe not paying attention to their surroundings due to a riveting elk conversation with a friend, when suddenly whammo. I did indeed slow down a bit. Or maybe a lot. At one point Coco asked, "Are we even still moving?" to which I replied, "Coco, the elk need you to be patient right now."<br />
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Our first day in Fairbanks was a catch-up day. Alex and I don't like catch-up days because we're itchers. We're fidgety and antsy to get out there and see all of the stuff that needs to be seen but sometimes laundry must be done and storage containers/label makers must be purchased to make more organized use of the space inside the Winnie. Even though living space is minimal inside the RV, maybe the size of your average walk-in closet, none of us can ever find anything. Sometimes even toothbrushes get lost in a bathroom that is the exact size of your body. Lucien lost a shoe in there somewhere and it still hasn't been found which makes no sense at all.<br />
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The Fairbanks Fred Meyer store is pretty nice, FYI, though they have way too many storage container options. We spent an obscene amount of hours in the aisles thinking hard and staring at storage containers and measuring them with our hands in a haze of indecision.<br />
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We watched a movie that first night in Fairbanks, cozy in the Winnie with fresh laundry hung outside for a final dry. During the movie, an overwhelming stench of sewer wafted into our space. It burned our eyes, it was so, so bad. Al and I opened the door and tumbled outside frantically, hoping and praying we didn't have a big problem on our hands. Thank the RV gods, it wasn't us. But somewhere in the campground, a row or two over, we heard angry shouting. Lots of swear words. Then people were running back and forth with buckets of water.<br />
<br />
Somebody, somewhere in the campground pulled the wrong lever under their rig and paid for it dearly. It's a real downside to traveling with a container of poo strapped to your house. We watched the rest of the movie with scarves pulled up over our faces. A canister of Febreze was generously deployed yet we wished we had another.<br />
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The sun never goes down in parts of Alaska during the summer months. The further north you go, the more hours of sun you've got. It would set to a twilight-y level in Fairbanks and stay that way all night. We have blackout shades in the Winnie B so weren't much bothered by it sleepwise. In fact, I was bummed we weren't more bothered. I <i>wanted</i> to be bothered, to see it, to suffer it, wanted to experience what it's like to be in the middle of permanent day.<br />
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I set my phone alarm for 3:00 a.m. that first night but I didn't need it. My body was so excited to see light all the time I awoke every hour to peek out the window and giggle.<br />
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<i>I took this picture out the window at 2:30 a.m. </i></div>
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<i>Delightful giddy stuff.</i><br />
<i>I'll see you in another hour, permanent day.</i></div>
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As for Fairbanks, I loved it. It's a sleepy city in the summer, not much going on, not many people walking around. We hear it comes alive during the winter when residents are out and about playing winter sports on the frozen Chena River in giant snowsuits, revving up their snow machines (that's what they call snowmobiles up there), plugging their car's engine block heaters into outlets posted in all the parking lots so car engines don't freeze and can start again after grocery runs, getting their sled dog teams in order, and generally trying to stay alive.<br />
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Unfortunately, unique of a place as it is, Fairbanks is where all hell broke loose sibling-wise. It was an outright sibling fight in downtown Fairbanks. It may have been too much constant togetherness in a confined space yet we weren't even half finished with our trip so....ohhh shit --<br />
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<i>"Fight! Fight! Fight!"</i></div>
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<i>(Alex and I were not yelling this,</i></div>
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<i>though we may have been speaking it softly to each other</i></div>
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<i>behind cupped hands.)</i></div>
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<i>Get it all out, kids, we've got a couple weeks left to go.</i></div>
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Regarding this next part, I'm not going to debate the merits/cruelty of sled dog teams. I know I felt one way when I went to Alaska but felt another way when I came back. I suggest only that, if you've got an opinion on an issue that doesn't really effect your life, go talk to someone whose life it actually does. (Related... don't tell an Alaskan to give up their guns nor be a vegetarian. They will roll their eyes hard then stroll away to shoot animals to smoke and store for their long ass winters.) </div>
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Sled dogs are breeds born to work, born to run, born to pull. These are working dogs, not pampered pets like my spoiled Natani and two foster puppies who are currently sleeping on top of the heater vent because they felt a slight breeze. Sled dog breeds are instinctively more ready to work hard than my posh doggies who are like, "Huh? Work? Does that mean I have to eat my own poop today because... -- okey dokey, actually I'll just do that, you don't gotta ask twice."<br />
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The above pups playing in the water are descendants of Susan Butcher's dogs at her home in Fairbanks, viewed from aboard the terribly touristy but ultimately awesome Riverboat Discovery tour. Susan Butcher is a famous victor of the Iditarod with a handful of wins and another handful of impressive records to her name. Besides her many Iditarod wins, she was also the first person to take a sled dog team to the summit of Mount Denali, the highest peak in North America. I have no idea how she and her dogs did that. How did ya'll climb a mountain in a sled? I just.... I don't.... so much stuff I don't understand in this world.<br />
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Susan Butcher died of leukemia in 2006 but her husband and children carry on with raising and racing the descendants of her beloved team at their family home.<br />
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Below is a video of the sled dog running demonstration. Susan's widower, David, is doing the presentation via microphone on the ground and riding the four-wheeler behind the team. The dogs were ready to roll -- those who had not been chosen for the demo were circling in fits about being left out and those attached to the "sled" were anxious to get moving. </div>
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(The tiny little dots back to the left behind that fence are puppies. I did not take one home. It was hard.) </div>
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The dogs were happy and healthy and so breathtakingly strong, and I say this as an absolute dog lover, I was in awe of their drive and power and loved every single minute with them. </div>
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<i>It's a shaky dog video indeed</i></div>
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If you are still not a fan of sled dog teams, here's a picture for you depicting your feelings. It's a sled dog taking a poop in the middle of the demonstration --<br />
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We saw a handful of other demos from the Riverboat, too, one of them being a bush plane take-off and landing by a gray-bearded man who's been doing it his whole life, since he was a teenager. People in the more remote areas of Alaska depend on him to bring them supplies at any time of the year because as I mentioned, there are no dang roads out there. He can take off or land on whatever surface the season requires anywhere in the state -- land, water, snow -- he just changes the "feet" on his plane from wheels to floats to skis and lands soft as silk with one leg lightly skimming the surface first, then bringing the other one down gentle as a sigh to meet it.<br />
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I was like, "Man, I should stop complaining when there's a slight chill in the air and I can't get the first several spots next to the Safeway entrance." At least some dude doesn't have to bring me my groceries in a plane in subzero temperatures once a month.<br />
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<i>But The Dude does have serious pilot skills</i></div>
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The best part of the Riverboat Discovery tour was listening to the tour guide describe what winter is like in Fairbanks. I hear it's harsh as hell with almost 24 hours of darkness and temps down to -40 degrees Fahrenheit yet also a rosy hunky dory example of the best of humanity coming together for a common goal (survival). He spoke at length about how everyone helps each other, stops for every stranded motorist with a broken down car no matter what because it's a life or death situation, shares their moose with their neighbor if their neighbor didn't bag a moose that year, and most importantly of all, "likes" all of their neighbors' Instagram photos.<br />
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He said, "In Fairbanks, we don't care who you're holding hands with, or what color your skin is, because all bodies freeze at the same temperature and we all need each other to get through the winter."<br />
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It kinda sounded like a place I wanted to be. I am a real sucker for humans being human to each other. I immediately set about dreaming of being there for a full winter some year. I can't wait to be one of those helpful people saving the lives of my neighbors on a regular basis, even if I scream in agony every time I step outside and see their confused expressions when, after I save their lives, I ask them where to find the tastiest quinoa bowl in town.<br />
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I may not be able to share my moose, though, because I don't even know how to go about getting one of those giant suckers home with me. At least I'll have the Northern Lights to keep me company on my fool's journey -- an earthly phenomenon that, alas, you cannot see in summer in Alaska because THE SUN NEVER F*CKING SETS.<br />
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We also panned for gold at an old gold dredge outside Fairbanks. We compiled the tiny gold flecks found in all of our pans and made them into a necklace for Coco instead of cashing them in to retire for maybe about thirty seconds --<br />
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And we visited the Ice Museum. Not much to look at from the outside but very cold fun inside. I was so cold, I often had to retreat through the insulated doors to the warmer heated part of the museum. This does not bode well for my future winter in Fairbanks.<br />
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<i>Ice slide</i></div>
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We saw other sights in Fairbanks but that's enough, I think. My eyes are crossing from trying to locate all these pictures in my massive photo library. I may take too many pictures. </div>
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Next Alaska chapter -- where Lucien's childhood went to die! (or so he says...)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnur18Mha3fVMmgwU53Z9KxtgXvkiBvhJXEDHkIKA5RPAj3RDzdoJ8CmenCID2qdrAv8M98cDqtZPwMDgF1mY1ZtRXQa2IuTgGVaX7MFnORnJaj14GOKTrdS0ZWNQvudd5uPmEzaN47wQh/s1600/IMG-9985.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnur18Mha3fVMmgwU53Z9KxtgXvkiBvhJXEDHkIKA5RPAj3RDzdoJ8CmenCID2qdrAv8M98cDqtZPwMDgF1mY1ZtRXQa2IuTgGVaX7MFnORnJaj14GOKTrdS0ZWNQvudd5uPmEzaN47wQh/s320/IMG-9985.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>I call them my "not-quite-ready-for-the-sled" dogs</i></div>
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Mush on, little doggies,</div>
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MJ</div>
MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-86297265255188787692018-10-25T09:56:00.001-07:002018-10-25T09:56:59.343-07:00Alaska is on hold because Waffles doesn't give a damn.I'd like to get in here and talk more about Alaska -- I've had a post in the works for weeks now -- but I've gone and done something that has made doing so much more difficult than it already was. My thought process on this one was enthusiastic and brief, perhaps too brief. It was a spontaneous "Imma do that!" without much thinking about what came after. I'm an Aries, which, from what I understand of astrology, means I am easily filled with childlike enthusiasm for stupid things.<br />
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I must have been longing for more chaos and less sleep. Maybe I wanted to buy a lot more paper towels. Maybe I just wasn't happy with the level of poop on the floors of my house because my recent foray certainly fixed that last one --<br />
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<i>Waffles and Atticus</i></div>
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They're not mine forever, I swear! I've volunteered to be a foster dog mom for an organization that rescues pups from high kill shelters in the South. These are my first two charges, a brother/sister duo, hyper little foxhound mixes from sweet peachy Georgia.<br />
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It's tough to keep up with two puppies, even with both of them barricaded in the kitchen most of the day and watched with exhaustingly constant vigilance. If I see Atticus sniffing suspiciously and run forward to grab and run him outside, Waffles will definitely take advantage of those two seconds of inattention to pee and poo in all corners of the kitchen and chew through Lucien's headphone cord. When she's done destroying the place, she pounces on my ankles with a jubilantly wagging tail. She's always so dang pleased with herself.<br />
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I'm so tired. It's kind of like having an infant again minus the "they sleep in a cage and I can put them in that cage when I go to the grocery store, too" parts. I hear you definitely can't do that stuff with human babies.<br />
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Natani loves the puppies. I think she sometimes yearns for her lonely days, stares into the distance and pines for solitude as puppies crawl all over her and chew on her ears, but overall she is the best foster dog mom I could have hoped for.<br />
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<i>Sigh.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>This is my life now.</i></div>
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I mentioned in my previous post we'd lost a pet. It obviously isn't Natani, thankfully, because I need her right now. We thought Bobo would be the next pet to go -- he is one old, old lizard -- but no, Stella the parakeet went first.<br />
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Stella made us crazy all the time. The chirps were redundant, constant, loud, shrill, and made us all mental. "STELLA, STOPPPPP!" was a regular refrain from dawn to dusk. Yet the day they disappeared, those constant chirps and learned phrases ("You're a pretty birdie!" was a regular one and unfortunately, thanks to the siblings, "Shut up" was another), the vastness of the silence that descended upon this house hurt our ears more than her constant noise ever did.<br />
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I emptied out a box of checks and lined it with cotton balls. I placed Stella's body on top. I wanted the kids to see her comfortable when they came home from camp. I didn't have time to bury her after our tearful goodbyes were said so I chucked that box of checks into the freezer, where it remains to this day. I feel intense guilt whenever I open the freezer to grab some frozen peas for dinner and see her check box coffin lying there. One of these days we're gonna bury that pretty, pretty birdie.<br />
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I am now assisting Bobo in daily exercise routines and feeding him a high protein/low carb diet. We can't lose another pet so soon, dragon! Keep moving those little lizard legs!<br />
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I'm throwing my big Halloween party this weekend. And after the weekend, I'm taking on yet another foster puppy. Somebody stop me, what the hell am I doing?<br />
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<i>they're just so damn cute</i></div>
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Waffles doesn't give a damn,<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-19771643019391862192018-09-10T15:35:00.000-07:002018-09-17T12:17:41.596-07:00You, too, can drive to Alaska. Part Two: Alan is an animal<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2018/08/you-too-can-drive-to-alaska.html">When I left off last time</a>, I was nearly breaking my neck in Watson Lake, Yukon.<br />
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Watson Lake is where we hit the official Alaskan Highway, a.k.a. the Alcan, the road that runs to Alaska through Canada. The Alcan used to be a messy dirt thing with very few services and lots of trouble. Now it's paved(ish) but there are still miles-long stretches of dirt road when there's road maintenance, which is constant. I'm thinking harsh winter weather is not kind to pavement.<br />
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There are more services along the Alaskan Highway now than in decades past, too, so you're much less likely to run out of gas and die of starvation with nobody around, which is pretty cool.<br />
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Even with such improvements, The Alcan is still not the friendliest of roads. It is rutted and wavy with frost heaves, which are speed bump-like ripples left in the pavement thanks to the extreme freeze/thaw cycle. The potholes are another obstacle; they are big, frequent, and tend to come in groups as if they enjoy ganging up on you. If you don't slow down in some of the more extreme patches of frost heaves, you'll go airborne and bust an axle. If you hit a group of asshole potholes, bye bye tires. It's a wild ride in some places, a wilder ride in others.<br />
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<i>a common sight along the Alcan:</i></div>
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<i>bumps, patches, potholes, isolation</i></div>
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Often the frost heaves would be marked with tiny bright orange flags on either side of the road --<br />
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<i>teeny tiny helpful orange flags</i></div>
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<i>Do you see them?</i></div>
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<i>You better hope you do.</i></div>
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-- but just as often, they would be marked only with air, silence, and secrecy. I would hit one unexpectedly and scream, "You BASTARD!"<br />
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<i>secret bumpies</i></div>
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There were long stretches of the Alaskan Highway I poked along at 10 mph for fear of injuring the Winnie B beyond repair. I was in the oncoming lane as often as I was in my lane to avoid obstacles. Thankfully, nobody's around up there so you can pretty much do whatever you need to do to avoid catastophe. You can just zig-zag and weave and tiptoe and drive like a general drunken menace, it's all good.<br />
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The geography of Alaska is unexpected to those who haven't pored over maps of the place. There's a little sliver of Alaska that runs down the side of Canada, much further south than you would expect Alaska to encroach upon our northern neighbor. Enjoy this colorful map for a second --<br />
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All of that scraggly skinny yellow stuff trying to claw its way out of mainland Alaska is still Alaska. Hyder is at the southern tip of that scraggly yellow arm. We've gone much further north since we visited Hyder but we're still hanging around the yellow arm, and are about to drop across that green/yellow border again to visit Skagway.<br />
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Alex, Lucien and I have been to Skagway before while on an Alaskan cruise through the Inside Passage. Lucien was 18 months old. He was a very hyper kid with poor impulse control. He enjoyed running into streets and directly into large crowds at airports and was therefore often on a leash.<br />
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<i>Me strolling with my leashed son in Juneau, July 2007</i></div>
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In planning the road trip, I said to Alex I knew we'd been to Skagway before but didn't remember much about it. Neither did he. We both vaguely remembered the train trip along the Yukon route, a ride we took for over six hours, where we were trapped in a small train car with not much to entertain our toddler. It was light years before technology made such events more bearable with screens and iPhones and whatnot. I remember asking fellow passengers if Lucien could hold their water bottles for fun. That would work for a second or two before he returned to his escape plans with renewed vigor.</div>
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It wasn't our happiest time, nor the happiest time for anyone else on board. Though honestly, six hours on a train to nowhere is not the most entertaining thing even for the most mature and developmentally developed of people. There was lots of yawning from everybody, not at all related to our son attempting to destroy the train car from the inside out and continually attempting to take off his pants. It's not a surprise we'd blocked Skagway from our memories.<br />
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I planned for us to be in Skagway for the 4th of July because I suspected a small touristy town would do the holiday right. Maybe it would please us to be Americans again in this most desperate and odd of American times. At the very least, we could enjoy the holiday atmosphere of a small town and probably see a few fireworks to which we could say "ooooh."</div>
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The drive to Skagway from the Yukon was one of the prettiest legs of our trip. Craggy mountains, raspberry-colored roadside flowers against kelly green and yellow grasses, and the most gorgeous blue-green lake, fittingly named Emerald Lake, that stretched alongside the road for miles as we approached the town. The beauty is so beautiful it hurts. You have to remind yourself to just live in the moment, resist stopping the car every five minutes to take another picture because let's be honest, you're never going to look at those pictures again, they are going to live in your cell phone forever.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>unless you have a blog</i></div>
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Skagway did not disappoint with its 4th of July festivities. There was a parade, of course, where the paraders threw water balloons and candy at the onlookers. I was soaking wet and shoveling mini Milky Ways into my mouth, grinning with chocolate-covered teeth.<br />
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There were also streetside arm wrestling matches, and egg tosses, and a rubber duck derby in the river through town.<br />
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My personal favorite was the slow bike race. The last person to cross the finish line won. From witnessing this event, I'm going to overgeneralize and say people in Skagway have really good balance --<br />
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<i>it lasted forever</i></div>
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<i>We had four rubber duckies entered in this race down the river.</i></div>
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<i>None of our ducks won, </i></div>
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<i>a fact we still can't wrap our minds around,</i></div>
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<i>as we had all felt so certain.</i></div>
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I had reserved tickets weeks in advance for the often sold out "The Days of '98" show at the historic Eagles Hall. The show told the captive audience the tale of Soapie Smith, one of Skagway's most notorious outlaws during the Klondike Gold Rush days.<br />
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The story of Soapie was interesting but most interesting to Lucien were the prostitutes (Soapie ran a brothel, of course he did). The "prostitutes," who in my opinion looked way too damn cheery to be prostitutes, dragged a poor audience member up on stage, a man named Alan who looked to be in his mid-80s. Alan most desperately did not want to be involved in the production judging by his bright red face.<br />
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After flirting with Alan and wrapping their feather boas seductively around his neck, the ladies then dragged Alan offstage for a period of time and we heard them squeal, "Ooooh, Alan, how did you learn to do that, Alan?" and "Oh, Alan, you're an ANIMAL." Alan returned to the stage a short time later wearing a bathrobe.<br />
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Lucien looked at me then and said, "Wow, Mom, thanks for the growing up lesson."<br />
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I had bought tickets to the family friendly version of "The Days of '98." There is an "After Hours" version of the show that was billed as "strictly adults only." The business with Alan made me wonder what happens in that other adult version? Do they have sex with Alan for real as his poor wife watches from the audience? It didn't look like Alan could have lived through that; he needed three actors just to help him up onto the stage and back down again when his part was (blessedly, according to his now ashen face) over.<br />
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<i>dang, I ate some good crab legs that day</i></div>
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I am surprisingly not done talking about prostitution. One of the most popular tourist attractions in Skagway is the Red Onion Saloon, a former Gold Rush era brothel, where women dressed as REALLY SUPER HAPPY prostitutes serve you drinks and maybe some potato skins if you're feeling peckish. You can also take a dirty little tour of the upstairs rooms for ten bucks.<br />
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This is when Coco got weird. She balked at the front door of the Red Onion, pulled back on my arm hard as she planted her feet on the sidewalk and said, "I don't want to go in there." She looked serious as hell.<br />
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We eventually got her in the door by promising her a usually forbidden Coca-Cola, thinking she was just tired and could use a hearty caffeine-n-sugar jolt. But no, Coco truly hated the place. She went quiet as she slowly looked around the walls at the old black and white photos, her mouth set in a grim line. She whispered to me, "I don't like this place" and "This is a sad place" until we agreed to cut our visit short and leave without ordering our potato skins.<br />
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We had not mentioned to the kids what kind of establishment the Red Onion had been long, long before it was crammed full of cruise ship passengers so it seems pretty obvious Coco is some sort of empath psychic who was channeling hard stuff from a century ago. Then I felt guilty for making her sit there absorbing all the hardships of the world while drinking a sugar bomb and watching the tour participants come back downstairs, grinning and cracking jokes with cameras slung around their necks. We must have all looked like depraved soulless heathens to her all-seeing eyes.<br />
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Man, I love it when she gets spooky like that.<br />
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"Ooooohhhh"</div>
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After our two days in Skagway, it was back through Canadian customs and on the road again through the Yukon. It was another long day, roughly 14 hours. After six days of constant togetherness, we were all fit to strangle each other. What started as "We love the Winnie B!" turned into "This f*cking thing is too small."<br />
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Alex and I began yelling "BEAR!" whenever the kids started bickering, which was often. It distracted them enough to stop arguing and then we'd say, "Oh darn, guess you guys missed that one." They would eventually start arguing again so we would again yell, "BEAR!" The kids now believe Alex and I saw thousands of roadside bears during our Alaska trip but in reality we only saw a handful.<br />
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<i>BEAR!</i></div>
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<i>This was a real one. Our first Grizzly.</i></div>
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RV owners wave at each other on the roads with a level of enthusiasm directly proportional to how similar their rigs are. Passing another Winnebago of any type was always nice, and we'd give them a little salute. But if we passed the same make and model as ours, our arms were fit to fall off with the waving and the honking. If we both even had the same exterior paint color scheme (!), you bet we were stopping in the middle of the road to hug and have a conversation about it.<br />
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You only wave at RVs completely unrelated to yours if you're bored.<br />
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Towards the end of that long day, we were in Alaska again, It was a bit anti-climactic since we'd already been there twice but this time was for REAL. No more yellow claw, we were fully embedded in the middle of that giant yellow blob.<br />
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We drove on until Tok, Alaska, which is not a very interesting place to stop. Tok is basically just a bunch of Alcan travelers happy for electrical hookups and a real shower. The only things of note in Tok are a very nice log Visitor's Center and a much-needed RV wash station. We'd killed so many bugs with the Winnie B: big, winged, foreign-looking things that would freak me the hell out if they ever landed on my body.<br />
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The next morning, on our way to Fairbanks, we stopped at North Pole, Alaska. It is as awful as you are thinking it would be. They really beat the hell out of Christmas there, complete with sad looking reindeer stuck in a pen you can pet if you're willing to pay. That part made us all sad, and Christmas is supposed to be happy.<br />
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<i>Alaska is kind of weird</i></div>
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<i>I haven't sat on Santa's lap in a long time</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>and I'm thinking I don't need to do it ever again.</i></div>
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<br />
And then we were in Fairbanks.<br />
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It's fun to note that at this point in the trip, Lucien was still squealing, "Ooooohhh, Alan!" every handful of minutes or so then laughing hysterically for another handful. Great. Can't wait to hear about that one on his first semester report card back at school.<br />
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Here's another map to show how far we made it this time --<br />
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<i>The red circle in the bottom right is still Seattle.</i></div>
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<i>First red arrow north is Watson Lake. Red arrow to the west of it is Skagway.</i></div>
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<i>Red arrow above that red arrow is Tok. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Final red arrow way up north in central Alaska is Fairbanks.</i></div>
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<i>I added exclamation points for pizazz.</i></div>
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I'm still not even a third of the way through our trip. Yikes. I best pick up the pace for fear of droning on and on about Alaska forever. Though I would honestly be pretty happy doing just that.<br />
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In the meantime, life continues at a rocket fired pace. I took the kids camping in southern Utah the week before school started, which was awesome. Also, we sadly lost one of our pets. And my parents are pretty much the best. And the master bathroom renovation is all done. And yes, the Paris book still LIVES. I have a writing coach now, whose job it is to point and laugh at me and kick my butt when I don't do what I'm supposed to do. I'm finding there is too much to write about and too few writing hours in a day before I have to stop writing and go do something responsible.<br />
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I'll get there. I'll get to all of it someday. Or not.<br />
OOOH, ALAN,<br />
MJ</div>
MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-41990680548875404442018-08-14T14:36:00.000-07:002018-08-16T12:58:17.465-07:00You, too, can drive to Alaska <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We've been back from Alaska for a mere few weeks and I'm already plotting how to return to Alaska. My head is full of bizarre ideas, such as leading annual caravans up the Alaskan Highway for my friends, or sneaking into suitcases of unsuspecting cruise ship passengers, or maybe just heading off into Denali with a backpack and a dream to test my survival skills.<br />
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That last one would probably land me on a bush plane back to civilization within the hour. But the vastness of Alaska makes you dream big impossible dreams that are nowhere near your actual skills or abilities.<br />
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Our nearly month-long trip is almost too big to write about but I'll give it a shot for the sake of posterity, and in an attempt to maintain some sort of presence here on the blog. If I inspire anyone else to jump in a car and drive all the way to that gargantuan beauty of a place, I'll consider my work here successful. Contact me, I'll help you plan, and then I'll go with you.<br />
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The most important thing to know about driving to Alaska is you have to really, really, really love to drive. If you don't love to drive, this trip will be your personal hell. It's a lot of driving. A lot a lot. You should also probably appreciate trees.<br />
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I'm a long-ass road trip enthusiast, a well-established fact which has led Alex to often comment I should have been a long haul truck driver. There are fewer happier places for me than being behind the wheel of a vehicle, loved ones in tow, a jumbo sized can of Pringles in my lap, driving down a seldom-traveled road through incredible things. The Alaska road trip was made for me because you get a lot of that.<br />
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<i>This is what the kids look like most of the time inside the Winnie B. </i></div>
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<i>There is a lot of sleeping.</i></div>
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<i>Alex didn't drive for even one minute of this trip</i></div>
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<i>because I am a road trip driving hog.</i></div>
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The legs are long. Our first day was 14 hours and we barely got to central-ish British Columbia, Prince George to be exact. Our second day we drove another 11 hours to a town called Hyder, which is technically in Alaska but is not accessible from anywhere else in the state; you must enter it through British Columbia and go back through the cutest, tiniest little customs stop when you re-enter Canada.<br />
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We spotted four black bears on that drive to Hyder at various spots along the road. It's an exciting drive when every once in awhile you or one of your family members screams, "BEAR, BEAR, BEAR!" and you have to slam on the brakes real fast. I got a little jittery trying not to hurt bears nor us, but nothing a little coffee didn't make worse.<br />
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Hyder is charming in its friendly ghost towny kind of way. Maybe the best part of Hyder is the drive there, especially the 45 minutes spent cruising the Glacier Highway. You turn a corner and bam, Bear Glacier.<br />
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<i>Bam</i></div>
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We got out of the Winnie B and flew kites for a bit along the Glacier Highway because the winds were favorable --<br />
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Entrance to tiny Hyder from Canada --<br />
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There are lots of abandoned structures in Hyder, remnants of the town's heyday as a mining hub --<br />
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We had a nice snack at the only open establishment in town, a bar/restaurant called The Glacier Inn. The server asked Alex and me if we wanted to get "hyderized" and we said, "Yes, of course!" before we knew what the hell she was talking about. It turns out getting hyderized involves doing a shot of Everclear up at the bar in front of all the locals. The instructions were serious -- we were not allowed to sniff it nor sip it and had to shoot it all in one shot without a chaser. If it came back up, we owed everyone in the bar a drink.<br />
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I hate Everclear, which is a hardcore grain alcohol between 150 and 190 proof depending on the bottle. It's like gasoline in an even less drinkable form. It's way too strong for my beer-loving body. My palms were sweaty as the shot was poured and the locals stared at me intensely, some smirking, all pegging me for the one that was gonna owe them drinks. I knew they were probably right, which didn't make the experience any more comfortable. Getting hyderized is proof peer pressure exists for adults, too.<br />
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Alex had no trouble but I did that shot and my entire body rebelled. I was on fire in my face area. It was a close one, a very, very close one, and it took several minutes to ensure I'd truly been successful as I rested my head on the bar and mentally invented lots of new swear combinations like "mothershit fucker fuck" while everyone watched and waited. That Everclear wanted badly to come back up but I held it down, didn't vomit all over the place, so my pride remains intact in Hyder. The locals looked a little disappointed but gave me high fives anyway. Then we got these little certificates --<br />
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<i>(mine should say "just barely.")</i></div>
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We tried to teach the kids how to play pool at The Glacier Inn for awhile, the only problem being Alex and I both suck at it --<br />
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The locals then advised us to head to the food truck at the end of the road for "the best fish tacos in Alaska." That sounded like something we very much wanted to try so we walked through Hyder, appreciating its odd little self, feeling enthusiastic for fish tacos.<br />
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We walked up to the fish taco truck but the woman working there stretched her arms out towards us as we approached and said, "I'm sorry, we're all out, Ed ate them all." This struck us as funny and we threw up our arms and yelled stuff like, "It's always goddamn Ed! Dammit, Ed, you stop eating my tacos, Ed!" It may have been the Everclear talking.<br />
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<i>No tacos for you, Coco.</i></div>
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After a night spent near Hyder in Stewart, B.C., the third leg of our trip was a very exciting one indeed. We took the Cassiar Highway, which at many points dissolved into a gravel road with no shoulder and little warning, and we saw lots of bears.<br />
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It's important to note here that no drive to Alaska should be attempted without the Bible of Alaskan travel, the Milepost. The Milepost is the most amazing thing you've ever seen, giving mile-by-mile information on all the most popular and most remote roads to Alaska and throughout Alaska. It's a traveler's best friend when you're in the middle of godforsaken nowhere. At the very least it's comforting to know somebody has been through there before you.<br />
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The Milepost is most crucial when it comes to finding gasoline. I mapped out our gas stops as fastidiously as I mapped out the rest of the trip. Calculate the miles, know your tank's limits, and for the love of God, stop for gas if the Milepost tells you to, even if you have half a tank and it's a middle-of-nowhere nobody-around gas station that seems likely to be operated by grizzly bears.<br />
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The drive up the Cassiar Highway took us past a few glacier-fed lakes. Glacial runoff water is damn freezing cold but that didn't stop Alex from stripping down and jumping in. He just kept yelling, "I'm from Quebec, bitches!" as he floated around out there. I then turned to the children and said, "So we need to be prepared for when hypothermia sets in, which should be any second now, and we're gonna have to jump in there and drag him out before he dies."<br />
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<i>Coco is saddened by the thought of losing her father</i></div>
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<i>as he floats around behind her yelling,</i></div>
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<i>"Is this all you got? This is nuthin'!"</i></div>
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By the end of the day, maybe 10 hours later, we had arrived in the Yukon. It was a triumphant moment when we crossed that border. It was also the moment mosquitoes the size of Volkswagens began attempting to devour us whole. Lucien grabbed our insect zapper racket thing and was very attached to it for the remainder of our trip. We should start him in tennis; the kid now has a vicious swing.<br />
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We stayed in Watson Lake, Yukon that evening, finally joining up with the mecca of Alaskan road trip travel, the Alcan Highway. Our campsite that night was a gravel parking lot with little going for it, yet was the most expensive of our trip at 50 bucks. They can really gouge you along the Alcan when pickin's are slim and you're desperate for a real shower.<br />
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There is only one thing to do in Watson Lake, Yukon, and that is to visit the enormous sign post forest. The sign post forest is a landmark along the Alaska-Canada Highway. Travelers from all over the world making the trek up the Alcan bring a sign from their home town to hang on any one of the hundreds of wooden posts to mark their crossing.<br />
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I had read about the sign post forest while researching the trip so came prepared with our Seattle sign. The four of us signed it, dated it, drew smiley faces on it, and prepared to leave our mark in the immense "forest" composed of over 90,000 other signs.<br />
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<i>pleased to see my original hometown of Toledo, Ohio representin'</i></div>
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All the posts were full. The town cannot keep pace with the number of people who want to hammer the name of their hometown into a piece of wood and have fallen behind in their new post installation. The only place we could find to hang our sign was up very, very high and the only way to get any of us up that high to swing the hammer was to stand on Alex's shoulders. I was the only viable candidate, as Lucien and Coco were too short plus lacking in hammer skills plus it is our job to "protect them" or whatever.<br />
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This was a tense moment in our relationship. As you can maybe tell by my face below, I was getting serious with Alex and saying, "I swear to God, if you drop me, you won't live to see morning." He swore it would be OK, that he could do it with little trouble because he works out a lot. I've never appreciated his hours in the gym more --<br />
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Those were some stressful moments balancing on Alex's shoulders like an unskilled circus performer while hammering our sign into the post. The kids held their collective breath below, as did several other visitors. As I held that first nail in place with one hand and swung the hammer with the other, unable to hold onto anything else for stability, I seriously wondered if this damn sign had been worth the grievous bodily injury I was about to inflict upon myself.<br />
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<i>It was. We did it. We left our mark as Alaskan travelers in the Yukon. </i></div>
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<i>The kids applauded enthusiastically. </i></div>
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<i>And Alex lived to see morning.</i></div>
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Trip thus far, for orientation's sake -- the arrow down in the lower right is Seattle. First leg was to the second arrow above it at Prince George. B.C. Next leg was driving west to the arrow at Hyder, AK. The third leg was driving north to Watson Lake, Yukon --<br />
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<i>I really love to drive.</i></div>
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It's a looong trip and we're only three days in. These blog posts shall stretch out as large as the state of Alaska itself.<br />
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Everclear is the worst but Ed is a close second,<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-79889416532808722932018-06-28T11:47:00.000-07:002018-08-16T13:27:45.196-07:00Alaska or bust. I hope we don't bust.I took Lucien to see <i>Les Miserables</i> his first week of summer vacation. It was my 10th time seeing the show. I'd see it again tomorrow if I could. I will never stop.<br />
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I remember my parents returning home after they first saw it in the 1980s. They raved about it, and brought home a souvenir, a Les Miz documentary called "Stage by Stage." I didn't go with them that first time but I watched the first few moments of that video and I was hooked. I was obsessed. I remember a warm feeling coursing through my body and a sense of "I now know what love feels like." Don't you dare tell me a musical can't love me back because I know it does.<br />
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I was very happy to share my favorite story with my son date.<br />
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The Loosh asked about twenty minutes before we left for the theatre, "Mom, what's the story about?" and I said, "Oh! It's a super short story written by Victor Hugo about love, redemption, compassion, rebellion, you can read it quickly before we leave!" He nodded enthusiastically and I threw my dogeared copy of the nearly 1,500-page novel at him. He looked so shocked.<br />
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READ, LUCIEN, READ LIKE YOU'VE NEVER READ BEFORE.</div>
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This was my least favorite production I've seen of Les Miz. It's become something of a soap opera up there, with most actors throwing themselves all over the place in melodramatic fashion. They were being VERY SERIOUS actors but honestly, the story speaks for itself, you don't gotta sell it so hard.<br />
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The staging has changed, too. The sets used to be minimal and understated, which added to the charm of the thing. There was a revolving stage, so when people walked somewhere "far," they really walked in the same place as the stage rotated and props passed them by. Now there is no more rotation. When Jean Valjean gets Cosette at the well and takes her off for a better life, they just kind of wander all over the stage in lazy S shapes. What the hell are you guys doing up there?<br />
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One of the most effective scenes in the musical used to utilize the rotating stage to perfection. When Enjolras is killed at the barricade and falls off the front, the barricade later turns to show him laying upside down on top of the giant red rebel flag as music swells. That scene is gone without the revolving part; now they just kind of wheel a dead Enjolras across the stage in a cart. He's still with his big red flag but... what? Where's my big crying moment? It's gone, as gone as Enjolras.<br />
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I'm not done complaining yet! Another point of contention: Marius sings "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" while limping around in the darkness instead of sitting at the bar with all the chairs and tables he's singing about. How can you sing about empty chairs at empty tables when there are zero dang chairs and zero dang tables? Sit down in the damn bar and mourn your dead friends properly, Marius.<br />
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Don't even get me started on how audiences have changed. I swear half the audience was late so had to be seated at the first scene break, about fifteen minutes after the show began. Then there were just streams of people walking in carrying wine cups, and chatting, and blocking our view entirely for the next ten minutes of the show. Lucien didn't even get to see Fantine become a prostitute properly.<br />
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I'll distract myself from my crabby old lady Les Miz mutterings by showing before and nearly-after pictures of our master bathroom project. It's still not 100% finished but I sure like looking at it. It brings a little circa-1900 character to the space at last, and is even better than I'd envisioned.<br />
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Before:</div>
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we had no bathroom.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7SlCkiC_f9VD-gqF9vS6kpLmlxq5h3PafUotoesB-SgGWsXq1fIu32rVYmQ83fJFcp1hiBWIw4tofcUZ09Fa70D0dXT8ggWk8zEuaUJfPDtoqpNo7sxZ-i40JUln62pG1klMyxFrmt4rm/s1600/2018-02-17_12-14-35_614.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7SlCkiC_f9VD-gqF9vS6kpLmlxq5h3PafUotoesB-SgGWsXq1fIu32rVYmQ83fJFcp1hiBWIw4tofcUZ09Fa70D0dXT8ggWk8zEuaUJfPDtoqpNo7sxZ-i40JUln62pG1klMyxFrmt4rm/s320/2018-02-17_12-14-35_614.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Almost After:</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
we very nearly have a gorgeous bathroom.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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So gorgeous, we have decided to do all our entertaining from now on</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
in our bathroom. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyej3Ma1Eohjbgz2fS8I5MU2S8oo-TLkZM9njb3oFY1Z-1UAaElZ8B4zfcsVHMxEbiBb_r7F366t4mklbB7o7IIG_3EmPijZ4Lnp-H_wY4EzErXNDbGGbDjYvljunSUjMdugfMOyhGE6Na/s1600/2018-06-27_15-24-15_582.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyej3Ma1Eohjbgz2fS8I5MU2S8oo-TLkZM9njb3oFY1Z-1UAaElZ8B4zfcsVHMxEbiBb_r7F366t4mklbB7o7IIG_3EmPijZ4Lnp-H_wY4EzErXNDbGGbDjYvljunSUjMdugfMOyhGE6Na/s320/2018-06-27_15-24-15_582.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpuFPHO79nTbxahJjQRh_mGjU4jTeLMO5jqNPtYxz792iO6peRcSIJZS7Wtl_J_Rjart29Lkxst5mos_BcUKYa44IuI_rtGGH_mFVp4dEYd4kNxSYgu64stEW5C4DzqS6A1S90dd0zjhas/s1600/2018-06-27_15-24-41_250.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpuFPHO79nTbxahJjQRh_mGjU4jTeLMO5jqNPtYxz792iO6peRcSIJZS7Wtl_J_Rjart29Lkxst5mos_BcUKYa44IuI_rtGGH_mFVp4dEYd4kNxSYgu64stEW5C4DzqS6A1S90dd0zjhas/s320/2018-06-27_15-24-41_250.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
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With the bathroom project nearly finished, our six years of Banister Abbey renovations are almost kinda complete. There is still a long list of small things to do but this, aside from the landscaping, which we hope to get to someday, is our last major undertaking in bringing this pretty old dame of a house back to life. Banister Abbey has been a labor of love. There is so much love. But as is involved in most labors, there has also been a shit ton of pain.<br />
<br />
Summer is going well. There have been many water gun fights and buckets of water dumped on each other on the hot days --<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjft83I4ATapSA2ta2cgrsJuufXAeYLNgCgdHbVD_sbdPjmjfZt8uOp8JTDH2BWB8E-yDfLgV_J4mOYh-r_w-tfFWS_G9P8nRtE3lQolyIwoeYajxLNxhlZ2y9k7SCJdyieNPaUvrSGz04E/s1600/2018-06-21_19-55-33_140.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjft83I4ATapSA2ta2cgrsJuufXAeYLNgCgdHbVD_sbdPjmjfZt8uOp8JTDH2BWB8E-yDfLgV_J4mOYh-r_w-tfFWS_G9P8nRtE3lQolyIwoeYajxLNxhlZ2y9k7SCJdyieNPaUvrSGz04E/s320/2018-06-21_19-55-33_140.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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And lemonade stands --<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG9w6eMgtjv_EZ3bO-GJTZ-G3icBrSF1CRoUQYhUN1ytBEMCIxVcln6_g314AcfP8iw599AMTINuByHMR_Uw-B04M47c1eW5vK8adOFiJNVZCGrtbq9f1EdesXqGNLzcrF2zVCsILdAs_v/s1600/2018-06-20_14-35-11_000.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG9w6eMgtjv_EZ3bO-GJTZ-G3icBrSF1CRoUQYhUN1ytBEMCIxVcln6_g314AcfP8iw599AMTINuByHMR_Uw-B04M47c1eW5vK8adOFiJNVZCGrtbq9f1EdesXqGNLzcrF2zVCsILdAs_v/s320/2018-06-20_14-35-11_000.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>brilliant idea to offer the lemonade for free</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>but "except" donations.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They made a killing.</i></div>
<br />
And kids running wild in the streets of Seattle --<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiib3d6SnLq9a-7wHl8VGqyLk8L1LtoEUDPFtP5p0Os4yrlB1BLxadVrowEsHjwPn33-InTX_24GxuAkoUER6pUDObAdRsaEbrn7SYUYaG5jY3omsnkbeM6GX7ia2RLMPEnuZvJqWk4bbAa/s1600/2018-06-24_19-35-09_839.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiib3d6SnLq9a-7wHl8VGqyLk8L1LtoEUDPFtP5p0Os4yrlB1BLxadVrowEsHjwPn33-InTX_24GxuAkoUER6pUDObAdRsaEbrn7SYUYaG5jY3omsnkbeM6GX7ia2RLMPEnuZvJqWk4bbAa/s320/2018-06-24_19-35-09_839.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58eiesqEPPrWMF123sXzI6Imb5Pglp3HxYZ3q54hOcnEm-7Zf1DGXBv-gbbK1P2B4qerkAgfVO7kU_9vfPUatVt0TSK7sMW6b9hmpD-7SdK3nehLKWkLjEYNyu9QItD91DNsmHH-kAoiM/s1600/2018-06-16_13-20-45_533.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg58eiesqEPPrWMF123sXzI6Imb5Pglp3HxYZ3q54hOcnEm-7Zf1DGXBv-gbbK1P2B4qerkAgfVO7kU_9vfPUatVt0TSK7sMW6b9hmpD-7SdK3nehLKWkLjEYNyu9QItD91DNsmHH-kAoiM/s320/2018-06-16_13-20-45_533.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
And my beautiful sister, who is showcasing her art in her very first solo show in West Seattle. Her talent is astounding and I'm so happy she's getting the recognition she deserves.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK7N2uvWQMZ6HG_i-ZA3ee9k3eRgN2JUFtzuPfnrdt8hSp9L4SMUYrJA5eRSeYkLu9VWSORcvuQlwh41gxnW6RiiDwbw-KvkSC0IwtPlMwaL54Y0Y3YBI7PheQjQguR40wVZkthzDmz3j_/s1600/2018-06-14_18-23-47_867.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK7N2uvWQMZ6HG_i-ZA3ee9k3eRgN2JUFtzuPfnrdt8hSp9L4SMUYrJA5eRSeYkLu9VWSORcvuQlwh41gxnW6RiiDwbw-KvkSC0IwtPlMwaL54Y0Y3YBI7PheQjQguR40wVZkthzDmz3j_/s320/2018-06-14_18-23-47_867.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>That's Coco in front of "her" painting with Cecil the lion.</i></div>
<br />
And finally, a fun event at the grocery store. Coco came with me to load up on the essentials for our big road trip. In the checkout lane, Coco loudly announced to the checker, "My mom and dad have a drinking problem." And I froze, and the checker froze, and we looked at each other, then both looked down at the items I was buying. There wasn't even any alcohol. So.... what's happening right now.<br />
<br />
I said, "Umm, what?" and Coco said, throwing her arms into the air in exasperation, "You guys drink, like, twelve bubbly waters A DAY." True enough, I had five cases of La Croix on the belt and they're not likely to last a week. I've never loved a beverage so much in my life. It has actually replaced coffee as my morning drink of choice, it's that serious of a relationship.<br />
<br />
Then the checker laughed and I laughed and the checker said, "Oooh boy, it got real awkward there for a second." Yes, yes it did. Coco can't come to the grocery store with me anymore.<br />
<br />
I gotta go, it's crunch time, we're leaving for Alaska in t-minus not many hours. We'll be gone a long time, just shy of a month. Imagine the insanely long posts I'm going to write when I return! I'm really gonna write this trip into the ground, I can feel it.<br />
<br />
Our journey to the Great North involves a stop in Watson Lake, in the Yukon. Watson Lake is known for its "Sign Post Forest," a labyrinth of almost 80,000 signs brought from the hometowns of people making the trek up the Alaska Highway. We have our sign ready. We will leave our mark at Watson Lake, as nearly 80,000 people have apparently done before us.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1sjWs0tXVVVZXNBpwdIx0iZdOAiDylCQa0QDRFra5gMaXl7uBYFA3q7Ig4TDE01kUnYzIj2Jr-x-sQLvkp0RgdiRqywQ4pgaeLX5HpkQuZqxT4_G1_MLSWEyTskwMN4lIx1QKtSbelNKS/s1600/2018-06-18_17-38-59_380.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1sjWs0tXVVVZXNBpwdIx0iZdOAiDylCQa0QDRFra5gMaXl7uBYFA3q7Ig4TDE01kUnYzIj2Jr-x-sQLvkp0RgdiRqywQ4pgaeLX5HpkQuZqxT4_G1_MLSWEyTskwMN4lIx1QKtSbelNKS/s320/2018-06-18_17-38-59_380.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
I hope it's the best road trip of our lives,<br />
and I hope they put Les Miz back the way it used to be.<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-54580711178163411252018-06-12T13:25:00.001-07:002018-06-12T14:10:35.444-07:00Storing fat for Alaska<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq7BL5cqKNPokXuKHIuoTkDpc5RhstB-QexrU3lZstNhe3gQRKZ7a2lj3VQQmtZ2vrAIFRAbL69BwV3dGSDXbdcm5vYqyzcYyrUtgEZ2ZBaPGOEO3Nz8obbux5n8M0UKqgPhnpKkVN6Zh6/s1600/2018-06-09_12-43-23_390.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1237" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq7BL5cqKNPokXuKHIuoTkDpc5RhstB-QexrU3lZstNhe3gQRKZ7a2lj3VQQmtZ2vrAIFRAbL69BwV3dGSDXbdcm5vYqyzcYyrUtgEZ2ZBaPGOEO3Nz8obbux5n8M0UKqgPhnpKkVN6Zh6/s320/2018-06-09_12-43-23_390.jpeg" width="309" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>This good girl doesn't know</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>we're fixin' to leave her for three-and-a-half weeks.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I'm eating, sleeping and breathing Alaska to plan our upcoming road trip. So much to know to plot the route and plan the itinerary, so many internet searches like, "Is such-and-such a road safe to drive in an RV or is it another <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2016/04/danger-vacation-and-peppernuts.html">Tiller Trail</a>?" There are also novels to read to get into the spirit of the place, tour companies to contact, and purchases to make such as bear spray and warm lined rain boots and mosquito nets that cover your whole head. Do you know how many ways there are to die up there?? Hundreds!<br />
<br />
The kids are using my intense road trip focus against me. I found Lucien eating a secret bag of potato chips in the TV room this past week. He looked guilty for a second but thought fast and said, "I'm storing fat for Alaska." I took the chips away and said, "You know there is plenty of food in Alaska..." but he followed me out of the room saying, "No! We're gonna have to craft our own bows and arrows to shoot deer, and do you know how to cut down a tree yet? We're also gonna have to fish, lay traps, and forage for berries!"<br />
<br />
He was on a roll then. He entertains himself thoroughly when he thinks he's onto a juicy joke. (apple, meet tree...)<br />
<br />
".... but we'll have Coco taste the berries first, obviously, to make sure they're not poisonous!" I gave him a severe "Mom look" after that comment and he said, "She's the youngest, Mom, if anyone's gotta die out there in the nothingness of our summer vacation, it's gotta be her. And if anyone's gonna live, it's going to be me, because of the chips!"<br />
<br />
Lucien is now, at this very moment, musing aloud we may have to resort to cannibalism. I guess anything less than that will be considered a smashing success of a trip.<br />
<br />
I took the Winnie B into the RV shop to fix everything that needs fixing. There's always a lot on such a complicated vehicle but as of now, all seems to be in good working order. I pretty much told the guy, "We're driving to Alaska, just replace everything with new things." I'm being extra cautious because I can't imagine much worse of a disappointment than suffering RV failure in the middle of the Yukon.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbrOvHBA3haz9lxYlMoJ4zKXAVNaTxAO6TqQt_XW7QkQM1PPlUwBO4HLdqzu6dm4hWk6qkRvyDAiSrRHjFlQicGZg2qxUxg3UlT7Op9aKMbzIlsDYRJnO28redpYuFtvokFF2dolt7dana/s1600/2018-05-06_19-14-28_956.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbrOvHBA3haz9lxYlMoJ4zKXAVNaTxAO6TqQt_XW7QkQM1PPlUwBO4HLdqzu6dm4hWk6qkRvyDAiSrRHjFlQicGZg2qxUxg3UlT7Op9aKMbzIlsDYRJnO28redpYuFtvokFF2dolt7dana/s320/2018-05-06_19-14-28_956.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Good luck, us.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(Good girl still doesn't know...)</i></div>
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In these few weeks remaining before we drive off towards the Arctic Circle, we are caught up in the whirlwind of end-of-school-year chaos. The performances, presentation nights, carnivals, etc. are really stacking up but we're knocking them down one by one with rapidly fatiguing fists.<br />
<br />
Lucien's big end-of-year Humanities project involved an in-depth report on biodiversity's role in healthy ecosystems, a subject for which he organically feels much passion so it was a natural choice. As part of his project, he had to take an "action step." For his action step, he decided to print up flyers and educate the public by handing them out and starting conversations one-on-one and in small groups. His original plan was to do that at the beach on a sunny day but we're a little tired here at the end of the school year so instead it took place at a friend's party the day before the project was due. Our closest friends were all there, and had been drinking beer and eating tacos for hours.<br />
<br />
I had to document the action step to include in his PowerPoint presentation. I told this group of friends to look natural, as if Lucien was educating them about the alarming rate of loss of species at that very second and it was the first they'd heard of it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy72LJN-yEjgTDsQwx2k6DADy6kDApL8UHEaj4m13je3jIUct1zEPmgljgie10bjBq7lFbvt_kdEox9Dz-tZdbzwbiiQ010P-QvBEqnfhzSxAr27G9chB7KbsT36keCVh1afFVVObcLuaa/s1600/2018-06-02_21-26-11_157.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy72LJN-yEjgTDsQwx2k6DADy6kDApL8UHEaj4m13je3jIUct1zEPmgljgie10bjBq7lFbvt_kdEox9Dz-tZdbzwbiiQ010P-QvBEqnfhzSxAr27G9chB7KbsT36keCVh1afFVVObcLuaa/s320/2018-06-02_21-26-11_157.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Nailed it. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Totally natural.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(I love this photo, and you bet we used it.)</i></div>
<br />
I volunteered to work a couple booths at Coco's school carnival this past weekend. First shift was at the Fish Pond game, where Coco acted as assistant by sitting hidden behind the screen and attaching toys to the end of the fishing pole whenever some little tyke tossed his line over the side. The prizes were mostly very small so came grouped together in Ziploc grab bags. Coco didn't understand the entire bag was the prize and instead opened all the bags and began attaching teeny tiny toys one at a time.<br />
<br />
You should have seen that four-year-old carnival enthusiast's face when he handed me his ticket, threw his line over the booth, and received a mini doll shoe the size of his pinkie nail. His eyes were big sad adorable question marks when he looked up at me and I said, "Oh hell no, not on my watch," threw his line back over the side and whispered around the corner to Coco, "Give him the whole bag, give him the whole bag, for the love of God!!" The volunteer working next door at the "Dig in the Hay" game had a good laugh about that one.<br />
<br />
Not sure what she's laughing at, that volunteer had her own questionable game going on. The "Dig in the Hay" game is usually a big pile of hay kids dig through until they find a prize. But this year, to the confusion of many, there was no hay, only a small inflatable pool filled with plastic balls. The "Dig in the Hay" sign still stood boldly behind the pool, which left many scratching their heads. I guess carnival organizers didn't feel compelled to rename "Dig in the Hay" to "Dig in the Balls" and who can blame them for that.<br />
<br />
I worked the ticket booth second shift with two of my favorite friends. We thought it would be fun to do it together because we could chat and catch up during lulls. That's a laugh of an idea; there are no lulls at school carnival ticket booths. The ticket booth is mayhem with people swarming you constantly waving fistfuls of money and asking questions like, "why can't I use this food ticket to play games?" As you tried to explain the intricacy of the school's ticketing system, some errant wanderer would inevitably walk up and order a cotton candy. I'd be like, "Does it look like I got cotton candy back here, buddy?" while punching furiously at iPad buttons because I was three reported ticket sales behind.<br />
<br />
I'm still around for a bit but for the record, I'm hoping to post some short blog updates during our weeks of driving through the mountainous abyss of the great North. Not surprisingly, I hear there's not a whole lot of WiFi nor cell phone service in Northern British Columbia and the Yukon. We may have better luck once in Alaska, but by then we may have eaten each other so there may not be much to post about.<br />
<br />
If the grizzlies don't get ya, the other grizzlies will.<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-67602232568068147112018-05-17T10:44:00.000-07:002018-05-17T14:27:45.056-07:00Awesome or scaryLucien just walked up to me and said, "Hey Mom, I think "Ukraine" sounds like a do-it-yourself crane company, kind of like U-Haul, only no hauling and with cranes....." and then he walked off to continue thinking deep thoughts. I'll be damned if he isn't right. Why did I never think of that before.<br />
<br />
The Loosh has also become interested in horror movies recently, a development that could possibly be genetic. I grew up on horror movies. It wasn't exactly my choice, my family just likes them, my brother especially. It may not be normal to grow up with <i>The Shining</i> and <i>The Amityville Horror</i> playing on the regular in your TV room but I must say, it's raised me to anticipate many of life's terrifying calamities, like serial killers and vengeful demons and zombies and killer clowns.<br />
<br />
I am just now considering that watching many horror movies as a young person may be a root cause of my terrible adult anxiety. Sorry in advance, son.<br />
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I started Lucien on the classics, primarily Hitchcock films. Our first foray into mother-son horror movie nights (while Alex dangled shiny objects in front of Coco in another room because she was pissed off not to be invited to scary movie night) began with <i>The Birds</i>. An hour into the film, Lucien turned to me and yelled, "Mom, WHERE ARE THE GODDAMN BIRDS?" He's got a real potty mouth these days, that one, but I have to agree classic horror movies move agonizingly slow by today's jump scare standards. There were no birds for a long, long time. Then there were lots of birds. Then it was over.<br />
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I also took The Loosh to see <i>A Quiet Place</i> in the theater that weekend (as Alex grew increasingly frazzled trying to entertain an increasingly pissed off younger sibling who doesn't like to be left out of anything, ever) and we both agreed that movie is pretty perfect. We've also watched <i>Get Out. </i>Lucien quickly picked up on the racial themes of that movie but I wasn't surprised. He's pretty socially aware, is the kid who said about his sister's <i>Barbie</i> TV show, "You shouldn't be watching this, it's pretty much the complete dismantling of feminism" and Coco responded, "It's not up to boys to decide what is and isn't OK for girls to watch" and I like them both so, so much.<br />
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The Fremont troll clutches a VW Bug in one hand and a child in the other.</div>
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In keeping with our current family horror theme, we did a "murder mystery dinner" at a friend's house recently. We were all assigned characters beforehand and had to come dressed as our character. My character was a jazz singer/contract killer in 1930s Chicago. Alex was a golfer who wore argyle socks pulled up to his knees. We arrived to many other festively dressed friends and immediately got down to business determining which of us was a cold blooded killer.<br />
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I am not an auditory learner so all the information sprung on us in the beginning of the evening did not seep into my consciousness even a little bit. It just went in one ear and out the other, no way I'm keeping all those dates and train schedules and relationship triangles straight. I spent most of the evening whispering to "Silky," the mysterious brothel owner and bootlegger to my right, "What the hell is going on?"<br />
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During the course of murder mystery evenings, you have to ask many questions of other players to uncover the killer. You also must ad-lib when people ask you information about yourself you do not want to reveal. I am not great at thinking on the fly, which is why, when asked where I went all those nights I left my jazz singing job early (I was out killing people with my Tommy Gun) I replied, "My mom has been very sick. With leprosy. She has only two toes left" and when asked how I made all my extra money to afford my extravagant evening gowns, I said I sang at birthday parties and bar mitzvahs, picked up the odd babysitting job, and mowed lawns.<br />
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As the night went on and I lost the plot more and more, I would usually answer, "I dunno" and occupy myself with errant threads on my dress. I now know I am not good at these kinds of games and bow in respect to friends who were able to weave believable responses on the fly. Though I now suspect they are always lying to me in our daily lives.<br />
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In big summer news, this year I will cross an item off my bucket list. To anyone who's met me or read much of this blog, they know I'm a roadtrip enthusiast. I love crafting roadtrip itineraries, the bigger the better. We've done many through the Western United States, one through Costa Rica, and our most recent was through Mexico.<br />
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Those were easy trips compared to the most recent endeavor. This year we're doing the granddaddy of them all, the Holy Grail roadtrip for RV owners, the one that makes people hesitate slightly before responding "I don't know if that's awesome or scary" upon hearing our plans. (The answer is "both.")<br />
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We are driving to ALASKA.</div>
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(the real Alaska, <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2018/05/northern-exposure.html">not Roslyn, WA</a>)</div>
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This will be my finest success if everything goes well, and my worst failure if we get a flat tire in the middle of the Yukon with nobody around for a hundred miles.<br />
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Alex and I have been busy prepping the Winnie B for the trip and unfortunately discovered we have a water leak behind one of the walls. It's likely a cracked pipe, a vexing result of our <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2018/03/npr-and-abba.html">disastrous frozen winter camping attempt</a> at Sun Peaks back in February. We're scrambling to get it fixed before our planned departure date at the end of June but RV service places are jam packed with people itching to ready their rigs for summer trips. If we can't get it fixed in time... well I'm going to need to process it at length if this trip has to be cancelled.<br />
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We are crossing our fingers and moving ahead with plans. I've prepped the children for the Alaskan wilderness adventure by showing them <i>Into The Wild</i> and <i>Grizzly Man</i>. They are now very scared to get anywhere near a car with me at the steering wheel.<br />
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And Coco has been dressed as a hot dog for two days.</div>
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Yukon. U-kon.<br />
U-con.<br />
It's a do-it-yourself company for murder mystery dinner parties.<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-57752490854606702822018-05-04T11:59:00.001-07:002018-05-04T11:59:41.010-07:00Northern ExposureWe spent a long weekend at Suncadia with friends at the tail end of Spring Break. One of those friends put the wrong kind of soap in the dishwasher, squirted liquid dish soap into it instead of the stuff made for machines. Our friends are a smart and savvy group of people but when we all get together, it gets kind of chaotic and we're often just trying to get through the day without somebody ending up in the ER. "Details" often become "details schmetails."<br />
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<i>Here come the happy little bubbles</i></div>
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<i>escaping out the bottom</i><br />
<i>while we all stand around staring at it.</i></div>
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<i>The adults said "shit" but the kids said "cool."</i></div>
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My search history for our time in Suncadia reads as follows on my iPhone: "wrong soap in dishwasher" followed by "squawking sound coming from refrigerator" followed by "what is Supertramp's greatest hit" and that is a surprisingly good summary of the weekend.<br />
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Suncadia is a resort community outside Roslyn, Washington. Roslyn is a textbook "sleepy town" whose claim to fame is being the filming location for the '90s TV show <i>Northern Exposure</i>. The show is supposed to take place in Alaska but that was a TV falsehood, it is downright Washington around here.<br />
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There are no moose in Roslyn. The famous shot of the moose in the <i>Northern Exposure</i> opening credits was created, so we're told, by "borrowing" a moose, building a fence around the entire town, and letting the moose wander around. And wander he did, straight past The Roslyn Cafe at one point, a business that still exists, which straight up told the audience they weren't looking at Alaska.<br />
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Our group took a few hikes together during our days in Suncadia/Roslyn, including this one where we went offroad and walked 'round and 'round in the forest somewhat disoriented, joking nervously about how no one had come prepared with backpacks, bottles of water, food, that kind of basic hiking survival stuff --<br />
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<i>What are we even doing? </i></div>
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<i>Buncha city people</i></div>
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<i> wandering around with no trail and no water.</i></div>
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Again, details schmetails. We had been grateful just to get everyone out the door and into cars and accounted for at the trailhead.<br />
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It's no joking matter with these people, really, we should have been better prepared. These are the same people with whom we have weathered <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2015/09/renounce-your-foreign-princes.html">intense windstorms</a>, <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/09/recycling-laundry.html">terrible injuries and disgusting hot tub rashes</a>. We should be careful when we're together. There is something about the energy we put out into the universe that makes the universe want to do things to us.<br />
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<i>Looking at this pic, who can blame it?</i></div>
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<i>We're just begging to be taken down a peg.</i></div>
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<i>It's like The Beatles crossing Abbey Road but more Twilight-y.</i></div>
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Since our older kids are capable babysitters now, we left the mess of kids (or is it a tangle of kids?) at the house with some mac-n-cheese and went out for grown-up dinner in Roslyn.<br />
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We went to the town tavern, The Brick, after dinner to play some shuffleboard. The Brick is rumored to be the oldest operating tavern in our state, established in 1889, but we were more impressed with the unabashedly phallic sign out front.<br />
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<i>well hello there, fella.</i></div>
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The Brick has a "running water spittoon" still operating in front of the bar stools --<br />
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These water-filled floor troughs were originally installed for tobacco spit but soon enough men began using them to relieve themselves pee-wise so they didn't have to get up from their stools. I think it was a wise decision the TV people focused on the moose and left out the piss trough for the <i>Northern Exposure</i> opening credits.<br />
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<i>I wonder what gross secondary use they devised for the shuffleboard.</i></div>
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<i>Likely butt exfoliation.</i></div>
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Alex went back to Mexico City for work soon after our Suncadia trip. I took the kids to another area of Washington while he was away, the northern part, where tulip fields bloom like Holland in the Spring. It's quite a draw for the people of our state -- such a draw, in fact, the kids and I had to wait in a car line for over an hour just to pull into the parking lot from the main road We all agreed it was good Alex wasn't with us at that point; he would have lost his damn mind because the man has no patience for sitting still.<br />
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The tulip fields are gorgeous, like paintings come to life plus hundreds of tourists. I tried to take nice pictures of my children but they soon made it clear I'm never going to have a normal picture of them ever again.<br />
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<i>...for the love of god, children.</i></div>
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Sometimes I would think I had a good one of both of them smiling at the camera only to zoom in and realize Lucien was giving me the middle finger. I am really enjoying the age of 12.<br />
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<i>whoomp, there it is.</i></div>
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<br />
Unabashedly Phallic would be a good name for a band.<br />
Seems fitting for heavy metal,<br />
but would be funnier for a classical string quartet.<br />
MJ<br />
<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-61011323985184194342018-04-26T10:55:00.000-07:002018-04-26T10:55:39.632-07:00A thin layer of drywall dust<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There is a thin layer of drywall dust in this house. There is a thin layer of drywall dust on the kitchen counters even though the kitchen is a full floor away from where the drywall is happening. There is a thin layer of drywall dust in our linen closet even with a tightly closed door. There is probably a thin layer of drywall dust up on the roof of the house. There is a thin layer of drywall dust on my soul.<br />
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Most impossibly, there is a thin layer of drywall dust in the TV room even though Natani, the crazy desert dog, is always running around in there like a goddamn maniac so makes the settling of dust very difficult. She excels at constant breeze-making.<br />
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<i>I think my dog broke.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>She sleeps like this sometimes.</i><br />
<i>She is one crazy goddamn dog.</i></div>
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If it sounds like I'm complaining about the drywall dust, rest assured it is the opposite. This is my happiest of places, fixing up spaces very much in need of fixing up. If I had all the money in the world, I would buy all the houses and fix up all the rooms. I would live with a perpetual thin layer of drywall dust on my clothing and in between my teeth but I would happily show it off by twirling in circles to watch it fly and smiling with a wide open mouth.<br />
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<a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2013/05/ode-to-banister-abbey.html">Banister Abbey</a> is a labor of love and six years in, we are still laboring. Most of the big decisions have been made for the <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2018/03/npr-and-abba.html">master bath project</a> and it's going to be a beauty. I am happy with the direction it is taking -- even happier I found a general contractor who doesn't mind I'm sitting on a stool next to him munching popcorn in anticipation while watching the spreading of mortar and the installation of waterproof membranes. It's a vision coming to life before my eyes, with perhaps a few unplanned popcorn kernels embedded in the grout.<br />
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I'm going to call my contractor "Peter Gabriel" because I'm listening to one of my favorite Peter Gabriel songs on KEXP right now. He's a keeper, that Peter Gabriel contractor. I've worked with many and he's the only one I would invite to Christmas dinner with my family -- and he would probably get most of the presents under the tree. He is a gentle soul with a keen eye for detail and an impeccable ability to keep it all moving along cheerfully no matter how complicated the project.<br />
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The only issue I have with Peter Gabriel is he smiles all the time. He may be delivering bad news but he's smiling and cheerful so at first I'm not sure what's going on. Wait... the electrical inspector won't approve the light fixture I love so much, the one I based the entire bathroom design around, because it's not 500 miles away from the nearest water source? That's bad news, right? But you're smiling so widely, is that actually happy news? I never know when he approaches me smiling if he's about to make my day, break my heart, or just ask me the time.<br />
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I am now fixating on the third floor bathroom. We're adding one for guests who stay up there so they don't have to walk through the kids' rooms to access a toilet in the middle of the night. It used to be that, at whatever time, guests had to walk down these steep stairs where my favorite print hangs, the dapper dudes dueling with Nintendo guns --<br />
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-- and choose which kid to wake up to use the jack-n-jill bathroom between their rooms --<br />
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<i>Choose your door wisely.</i></div>
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<i>Choosing the door means means choosing the kid</i></div>
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<i>who scowls at you the next morning over breakfast</i></div>
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<i>and loves you slightly less.</i></div>
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Third floor needed at least a toilet and a sink. The only option was the long skinny closet that houses the furnace. We can't move the furnace and can't block or cover it for air circulation purposes. We're putting a toilet in there anyway.<br />
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<i>That's the furnace lurking</i></div>
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<i>inside the bathroom/closet.</i></div>
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I'm considering embracing the industrial aspect of the space and making it a furnace themed bathroom. Everything gray and white, toilet made out of pipes, super hot at all times. Peter Gabriel Contractor joked he'll bring old sections of pipe and we can suspend them from the ceiling with fishing wire. Anything goes in a furnace bathroom.<br />
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I'll finish this post with some Bobo. Bobo the bearded dragon is slowing down. He's lived a happy 12 years, 4 of them with us (<a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2014/01/lizard-disco.html">still Lucien's favorite birthday present ever and a happy memory, especially the escaped crickets</a>) and that's getting close to all you can expect from a pet beardie. He doesn't move very fast anymore, and sometimes misses the dinner crickets hopping around his tank. He can't climb all the way up his log anymore either, instead sleeps like this, with his little dangly arms down at his sides --<br />
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We often assume he's died during the night when we wake up and he looks like this. We approach his tank reverently, holding hands and speaking in hushed voices. As we all cluster around, staring down at him with affection and beginning our eulogies, he wakes with a start and his eyes get super wide and he's like, "GAH!"<br />
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And then we're like, "GAH!"<br />
And he's like "OMG!"<br />
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And we're like, "YOU'RE ALIVE!"<br />
And he's like, "OF COURSE I AM."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeV1J3PkrRiynzaxRV0Lehay8cEGToqSOQ656Oi2fTRnroaSiNMGdt5JhUaE_KQROCOQVjLjvWgctgt-xy0mQRrDW5Z3aRNmF6X1sBcTFBQ1lCY9eX9CXEV_Joj6Wb7vHZOn4r-gtf63lr/s1600/IMG-6270.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1334" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeV1J3PkrRiynzaxRV0Lehay8cEGToqSOQ656Oi2fTRnroaSiNMGdt5JhUaE_KQROCOQVjLjvWgctgt-xy0mQRrDW5Z3aRNmF6X1sBcTFBQ1lCY9eX9CXEV_Joj6Wb7vHZOn4r-gtf63lr/s320/IMG-6270.JPG" width="179" /></a></div>
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Then we feel happy and walk away as Bobo's eyes go back to normal size and his body relaxes a bit. You can tell he's thinking, "Jesus, there's something wrong with these people."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQT1QlGLSh6WffvgCC_sjDnxuyCkHV9sd_JPlNdKP5pAxWeFKBujchyphenhyphensRkjsYumDYLSPjuA_VI2Lg-BrKAtsuqUgJIh_dlecETGESPNPZlf8_ahl1qQ1zyBIyYvez0S6zhZhNJcqjEXOkr/s1600/IMG-6248.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQT1QlGLSh6WffvgCC_sjDnxuyCkHV9sd_JPlNdKP5pAxWeFKBujchyphenhyphensRkjsYumDYLSPjuA_VI2Lg-BrKAtsuqUgJIh_dlecETGESPNPZlf8_ahl1qQ1zyBIyYvez0S6zhZhNJcqjEXOkr/s320/IMG-6248.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Sorry, dude. Live on, majestic lizard. </div>
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<br />
Insult to injury,<br />
there is also a thin layer of drywall dust on Bobo.<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-66610042959580019302018-04-11T18:09:00.002-07:002018-04-11T18:09:55.867-07:00Whistler and the magic meatball<div>
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Lucien and I bought the game Monopoly while out running errands not long ago. It was an impulse buy -- a fit of nostalgia for me and a desire for world economic domination for him. We have since played it several times, none of the games ever ending and all of them becoming increasingly more frustrating as time plods on. The threats get ugly as we get worn down and crabby after hours of play, threats like, "If you put one more house on that property, I swear to God I'm going to eat a pickle then breathe in your face." (That one was from me. My kids hate pickles.)</div>
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I had Coco backed into a corner during one game. I owned 75% of the properties and she was running low on cash but she just kept squeaking by with a determined look on her face for approximately seven more hours until I was so sick of Monopoly, I told her she won on account of her grit and stamina. Now she thinks she's some kind of Monopoly whiz kid. I'd take her down a peg by demanding a rematch but I don't have thirteen more hours to spend playing that stupid game.</div>
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We're in the middle of the kids' Spring Breaks and just returned from a week up at Whistler outside Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia. We fell in love with Whistler and briefly dreamed of owning a slopeside condo there until we did a real estate search and discovered even the most basic of slopeside condos run about 1.7 million dollars. A short lived dream indeed, but lovely while it lasted.</div>
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<i>Dang, Whistler. </i></div>
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<i>Well done on the view situation.</i></div>
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Skiing is the weirdest thing. You spend more time sitting on a chairlift than actually skiing, and the equipment is annoyingly cumbersome and unwieldy. Walking in ski boots is one of the least graceful things a person can do. It's a clomp clomp clomp robot walk. Clomp clomp clomp fills the air at a ski resort, people clomp clomp clomping all over the place as if it was a normal thing to do. God forbid you need to go down any stairs -- then you're suddenly sidestepping with a jerky heel/toe like the least graceful dancer descending the grand staircase in the Ziegfeld Follies.</div>
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When the awkward walking and the clomp clomp is over, though, a transformation! As soon as you strap on skis, you become the lightest thing on the planet, gliding across the snow and swooping down the slope like a bird. Unless you're like me, then you're swooping around more like a cow. I don't mean I'm big like a cow, more that I'm a bit derpy and people like to push me over when I'm sleeping. </div>
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What? I just wanted to say I can ski but I'm not super graceful on skis. The metaphor went rogue up there. </div>
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There is a gondola at Whistler called the Peak 2 Peak, which joins the two neighbor mountains of Whistler and Blackcomb. The Peak 2 Peak is a Guinness World Record holder for both "highest gondola" and "gondola with the longest span between support poles." I don't think there should be an award for a gondola having fewer support poles. I also think the Peak 2 Peak should be renamed the Shit 2 Pants.</div>
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I distracted myself from my fear by taking pictures of my family members, who were also feeling slightly uneasy. Anyone who isn't feeling uneasy dangling from a cable way up there with no support poles is a prime candidate for a Darwin award.<br />
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<i>Coco took this picture of us at lunch at an Irish pub.</i></div>
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<i>We agree it's one of the stranger pictures we've taken.</i></div>
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We embarrassed Lucien our final afternoon in Whistler as we sat in the Crystal Hut at the top of the mountain eating waffles. "Don't Stop Believing" came on the sound system and that's me and Al's jam. We busted our best moves - we sang into air microphones, we played air guitar, we danced the best we could in a crowded cabin surrounded by people eating waffles. In his younger years he would have joined us but Lucien is now at the age where he embarrasses easily. He turned red, slunk down in his chair and said through clenched teeth, "You guys.... everybody..... is...... watching." I feel it's payback for all the times in Paris Lucien made me the center of attention when I most definitely did not want to be. That kid was crazy!<br />
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<i>The kids running towards dinner in the village.</i></div>
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<i>Our slopeside condo is there to the left. </i></div>
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<i>It was a brief, intoxicating, </i></div>
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<i>very expensive dream.</i></div>
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On our final run down the mountain, the finale of our glorious 2017-2018 ski season, we made a wrong turn and ended up on a run with moguls, <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2018/01/bumpy-enemies.html">a.k.a bumpy enemies</a>. Moguls are like small snow mountains on all sides of you, some so tall you can just barely make out the top of Coco's blond head a few bumps over. They take a certain style of skiing to navigate, a style I've never gotten the hang of, one that requires very bouncy knees and very sharp turns to ski between the bumps. We decided we were going to take the moguls one by one, one turn at a time, slowly, and would get down the hill cautiously and together. </div>
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Coco didn't quite get that memo and just took off straight down, bouncing up and down over the moguls with a dududududud. Her tiny person bounced over the tops of those things with a rattly bounce similar to that of a car driving over many speed bumps in a row at full speed. We were briefly concerned for her safety until the hilarity hit us, she looked so funny, and then we were laughing too hard to see her anymore. Coco bouncing over those things like an out of control rag doll was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Lucien laughed so hard he fell over, which is a totally normal thing to do in moguls so he didn't stand out too much. We, the parents, pointing and laughing at our child hurtling towards possible grievous bodily injury may have stood out a little more.</div>
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But nobody knows Coco like we know Coco. Coco's strong as hell and Coco's a beast. She made it through the mogul minefield upright, finally falling towards the bottom in a soft non-catastophic fall where she sat and laughed at herself until we'd caught up to her, all of us incredulous she had made it down the run in the most unconventional of mogul skiing ways.<br />
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<i>She will shock the hell out of future Olympics</i></div>
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<i>with her trademark mogul style</i></div>
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It was raining hard our final day in Whistler (Spring skiing = weather crapshoot) so we skipped the skiing and looked for indoor fun. The best option was determined to be Escape Whistler, an escape room experience. An escape room is where you get locked in a small room for an hour and the whole room is a giant puzzle. You follow clues and solve riddles and break codes until you either free yourself from the room or fail miserably and must live forever in great shame. </div>
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Given I'm a moderate claustrophobe, it might seem a strange thing for me to agree to do. My family thought so. Lucien joked on the way there that I was going to last five seconds inside the room before I freaked out, crashed through the door leaving a Mom-shaped hole as I yelled "See ya later, suckas!" and disappeared towards the horizon. I must admit I also thought that was the way it was gonna go down.</div>
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Our escape room scenario was a ski cabin buried by an avalanche. The production value was high in our tiny room with authentic log cabin walls, rumbling snow sound effects and a crackly fake fire in a potbelly stove. I did not freak out inside the room; it was actually kind of cozy to be in a little cabin full of ski equipment, of which I am very fond despite their cumbersome nature. It was like being surrounded by little old clomp clomp friends.</div>
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Coziness aside, that escape room was the hardest damn thing. Alex and I are not really puzzle people. I do not enjoy code breaking and have absolutely no patience for riddles. If someone presents me with a riddle, I am likely to say immediately, "I don't know, just tell me the answer, I'm not getting any younger here." </div>
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We were so confused in that room, we kind of just wandered around and bumped into each other. We had to ask for many clues via walkie-talkie to the staff outside. At one point, we veered so solidly off reality's course, we decided we were supposed to pry off a couple of those authentic log cabin wall pieces using a wrench we'd found in a suitcase. To our credit, we checked with the walkie-talkie people before we began destroying the room. "Are we supposed to pry the boards off the wall?" The reply came quickly and a little panicked, "No, no, please don't do that." </div>
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Keeping everyone on their toes, that's just what we do.</div>
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We didn't even come close to "escaping." If the escape room had been a marathon, we maybe made it to mile 7. And that's being generous. The staff reassured our bummed out family that we were not stupid, that in fact the "Buried Cabin" was one of the two hardest rooms they had, with only a 20% success rate. I wish we would have known that earlier. We might have chosen the "abducted by pirates" scenario instead, the beginner level room with a 90% success rate. We probably still would have considered ripping the walls apart, though. </div>
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Bye, Whistler. We loved everything about you except for the Shit 2 Pants gondola. That thing is insane.<br />
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In closing, a technology story. Alex is a big fan of the Amazon Echo device, nicknamed "Alexa." We have several Echos around the house. We have one in the kitchen, one in the TV room, and one in the master bedroom. This is too many Alexas, in my opinion.</div>
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I hate Alexa. I do not find Alexa helpful. Every time I try to ask her something, she usually tells me she doesn't understand me or she can't help me with that information. I mean come on, Alexa, how hard is it to tell me how many nickles it would take to fill a human stomach? (Lucien had a unit on measurement for homework and we got weird with it.)</div>
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Alex sometimes uses his Echo device to search for movies for us to watch at night. He asked Alexa for information on <i>I, Tonya</i> and instead of giving us info about the movie, Alexa said, "OK. Here is your short bedtime story about the magic meatball" and began reading to us from some whacked out kids book. I laughed and laughed but Alex just looked annoyed. He always takes it personally when Alexa lets him down.</div>
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Ever since that night, as Alex talks to Alexa in our bedroom about setting his alarm for the A.M., I yell behind him, "Hey Alexa, tell me more about that magic meatball" and I'll be damned if Alex still doesn't look annoyed. Come to my side, man, it's so fun to hate that thing.</div>
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See ya later, suckas.<br />
*Mom-shaped hole in the door*</div>
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MJ</div>
MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-19960474009354455122018-03-30T14:51:00.000-07:002018-03-30T14:51:13.170-07:00Small Shiny WitchI'm here giving the "short-n-sweet" blog post a try. This likely means I'll still be working on it two weeks from now and it will be the size of the Encyclopedia Britannica A-Z upon completion. I am what I am.<br />
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Lucien is nearing the end of an intense two week tiny home building seminar at school. The kids are building a tiny home and examining whether or not tiny homes are an effective part of the solution for homelessness. When they're not actively working on the tiny home, they're meeting with homeless shelter directors and handing out warm socks to the homeless on downtown streets. I love that he's engaged, interested, and thinking about big complex issues for which there are no easy answers. That's daily life as an adult, kid, might as well practice now.<br />
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What I haven't loved about these tiny home building weeks is Lucien's refusal to wear a jacket. Even on the coldest, rainiest days, The Loosh slips into his Converse sneakers, pulls on a thin-ish hoodie over his favorite jeans with giant holes in the knees and calls it good. It offends every shred of maternal instinct I possess. When I attempt to tackle him in the front hallway with a jacket -- "at least wear this, it's raining and you're building a tiny home outside, you fool!" -- he ducks and weaves away from that jacket as if it was made of vegetables.<br />
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It seemed a losing battle. Then I received an emailed picture of the tiny home building team from Lucien's teacher. I couldn't find Lucien at first but soon enough deduced he was the one wearing a garbage bag. His teacher, fed up with a cold and sopping wet Lucien day after day, cut arm holes in a garbage bag, made another hole for his head to poke through, and cut a second garbage bag into the shape of a pointy hat. The Loosh looked like a small shiny witch, or perhaps a glossy black Crayola crayon. All I could see of his person were his little eyes peeking out between the layers of garbage bag. His eyes did not appear to be smiling.<br />
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The very next morning, Lucien put on a jacket without being asked. And that's why we pay the big bucks for private school.<br />
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Moving on from kids to rats. We've got a rat problem in the basement. It's starting to feel like we will always have a rat problem in the basement because it's an issue that has followed us from house to house for years. Those rats can't get enough of us.<br />
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I've worked with a few teams of rodent specialists over the years and they all seem to share a few things in common. They sometimes trail off mid sentence to suddenly dive under your house. They often enthusiastically show you their old raccoon bites. And they get really excited about things not usually considered exciting, like rat poop.<br />
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The man I had here last week jumped around and clapped his hands and said, "I'm so excited, I found a bunch of poop!" I think he meant it in the context that he may have discovered a potential entry point into our basement but I don't know.... he seemed awfully happy about just the poop itself.<br />
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While I'm talking about being a little different... there's another collective group of folks that are also a little different: the audience at a George Clinton concert. A group of us went to see G.C. perform Saturday night because when presented with the opportunity, one should always go see George Clinton. He's a living legend, innovator of funk music with the P-Funk, always decked out in outlandish outfits and technicolor dreadlocks. He is so much cooler than I will ever be.<br />
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I see a lot of live music. It is one of my favorite things to do. I've seen all kinds of shows with all kinds of artists, so trust me as a source when I say no audience compares to the variety found in a George Clinton audience. The people are black and white and the entire rainbow of colors; they are very old and very young and every age in between. Some are drag queens, some are not. Some are dressed like Janis Joplin and some look more like Animal from the Muppets. Many seem lucid but many, many others are possibly still enjoying the hallucinogenics from the early 1970s P-Funk heyday.<br />
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The few common denominators between attendees resulted in a fascinating yet distracting experience. I think I spent more time looking around at all the different kinds of people standing around me than I did looking at George Clinton -- and he came out wearing some type of rams head headdress so was quite eye-catching. I didn't see George emerge onto the stage because I was too busy looking at the guy next to me thinking, "Damn, that dude is really rocking the Black Panther meets Willy Wonka look."<br />
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There is, however, one commonality between a George Clinton audience and any other audience -- and that is the large number of people being dicks and shoving past you to get closer to the stage. It's the similarity that unifies us all -- losing a touch of our humanity for a chance to get marginally closer to a famous person.<br />
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We're off for Spring Break next week. Spring Break isn't as crazy as adults as it was back when we were in college, but it is still highly likely Alex will do a keg stand and enter a wet t-shirt contest. The fact that we are skiing and not on a beach will not deter him in the slightest. Go, Al, go.<br />
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May we all get as excited about something this week,<br />
as excited as that guy was about finding rat poop,<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-48172664953399691342018-03-21T11:37:00.000-07:002018-03-21T11:37:10.210-07:00NPR and ABBAI have never heard the words, "I heard about it on NPR" as often as I have in the past few weeks. The all-knowing NPR is everywhere these days. Whether someone mentions Al-Shabaab or a new kind of designer cheese made from socks and quinoa, there's an NPR segment for that.<br />
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Besides contemplating the fact NPR could be God, we're ripping Banister Abbey apart again. It's fun to peel away the layers of an old house -- counting the layers of renovation in a house old as Banister Abbey is like counting the rings of a tree to determine how old it is. Judging from what we've seen recently, this house is two layers of plaster and three layers of flooring old.<br />
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This old house has come a long way since we moved in almost six years ago. I remember the first day we moved into the crumbly thing, how tiny our kids were and how big our plans were. I remember the way it used to smell -- musty and dampy woody with a touch of fried chicken. I remember the playlists I used to listen to as I scraped paint or stained hardwood. I remember living in holey jeans and sweatshirts for weeks on end and meeting the cast of characters of the neighborhood as I sanded numerous things in the front yard.<br />
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(And now I'm reminded of <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2012/07/chip-n-dip.html">Angel and Dorita and my giant chip-n-dip</a>. I haven't seen Angel and Dorita in years. I hope they're doing just fine and still cracking each other up somewhere.)<br />
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Life is once again loud and full of contractors. I've missed the mess. I've missed the design process, and the planning, and the running around town ordering of things. I've missed slightly less the contractors at the door early in the AM before I've tamed my bedhead, and the flat tires that happen when contractors drop nails in the driveway but we've gotta take the bad with the good.<br />
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The project this time is the master bathroom. Alex and I have never had a master bathroom. It's been six years of a roughed-in plywood shell. It's looked like this since the day we moved in --<br />
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And now, after a few weeks of progress, it looks like this! --<br />
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House progress is sometimes so slow it appears to be moving backwards.</div>
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Hey, did you know it's possible to spend an entire day looking at sconces? It starts innocently enough with a split second, "I have a minute now to look at some sconces" and then BAM, it's seven hours later, you have 243 tabs open on your laptop, your eyes are crossed, and yet somehow you still don't have any sconces.<br />
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While we're tearing things apart, we're also adding a tiny half bath to the third floor (no claustrophes shall pee in there, trust it) and laying some flooring in an unfinished attic space to make room for storage. There will eventually be an access point to the storage from the third floor but for now it's all up and down a ladder.<br />
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We sent The Loosh up that ladder into the attic and told him it was going to be his new bedroom. He legit looked nervous until our contractor couldn't keep his poker face anymore and started to laugh. Our softie contractor ruined our fun.<br />
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Coco and I took an entire Sunday for a mama/daughter day. Sometimes you just need some one-on-one with the Coco girl. Because she used to be this high and now she's this high.<br />
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Our mom/daughter date involved <i>Mamma Mia</i> at the 5th Avenue Theatre. Coco and I have seen the movie together dozens of times, it's one of our favorites, so don't worry, she was not even remotely bothered by the fact Sophie's dad could be any one of three delightful men. Coco is learning at an early age that a woman's sexuality is her own to do with as she pleases -- and that ABBA wrote tunes that infect your brain like a parasite.<br />
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At the end of the show, Donna and her friends come out for one final performance of ABBA's greatest hits. This is the time when the entire audience is supposed to jump up and start dancing. We were in the lame balcony and no one stood up so Coco and I took it upon ourselves to get the dancing started. I jumped up and Coco jumped up and we danced and motioned to everyone else to get up and dance and then everyone stood up and danced, hopefully because we were so inspiring but more likely because they couldn't see around us anymore.<br />
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The elderly couple sitting next to us, whom I thought were kind of annoyed by us, turned to me at the end of the show. The man touched my arm, motioned at Coco and said, "Your daughter is always going to remember you got up and danced with her like that." He was a little teary-eyed as he said he missed his daughter now she's all grown up with a family of her own in California. And that's how I ended up crying at <i>Mamma Mia </i>and hugging a stranger even while still humming "Waterloo."<br />
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(I just turned to Coco and said, "Hey, remember when we got up and danced at <i>Mamma Mia</i>?" and she looked confused and said, "Huh?" Oh well, so much for that.)<br />
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We joined some friends for skiing up at Sun Peaks, British Columbia for mid-winter break. We took the Winnie B, which was a big mistake. Sometimes we don't think quite right. If we had taken even five measly minutes to think it over -- SHOULD we take the RV across snowy mountain passes in sub zero weather and camp in a parking lot? -- I think we might have reached a different conclusion. Sometimes we just plow ahead, kind of blindly optimistic, and it's just so dumb.<br />
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Winnie B's windshield got a couple dings when semis flew past us and kicked up the gravel on the roads, and her water line froze, which is going to be a costly repair, and it was so cold up in Canada the propane couldn't kick on properly. We woke up at 4:00 a.m. that first night with outside temps approaching -20 degrees Fahrenheit and no heat source.<br />
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And yes, <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2016/04/capable-associates.html">it's happened before, the too-cold-for-propane-to-work thing</a>, but we apparently don't like to learn lessons. Alex and I stumbled over each other that night with no heat, looked at each other with wide eyes and just kept repeating, "This is so bad, this is so bad, this is SO BAD."<br />
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In moments like those, even though I am a middle aged woman, I feel like a child again. I'm like, "Why did anyone think it was a good idea to put me in charge of ANYTHING? Why am I responsible for LIVES of CHILDREN? This is just a bad idea, people."<br />
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We ended up ditching the Winnie B in a remote parking lot and getting a hotel room.<br />
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<i>This is where we left her.</i></div>
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<i>It was such a bad idea.</i></div>
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The good news is that even though temps never got higher than 0 degrees Fahrenheit, so stupid cold as to be laughable, the skiing was gorgeous. We took lots of breaks inside and drank lots of coffee and hot chocolate and even though we sometimes couldn't feel our fingers, we loved the place. We're going back someday when it's warmer. Like, a lot warmer.<br />
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<i>So cold. So. Cold.</i></div>
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But look at how pretty it is. You are forgiven, Sun Peaks, a million times, you are forgiven --<br />
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And to the blog commenter who recently told me to get on with it already, take this here blog off life support by posting shorter posts more frequently, THANK YOU. You hit the nail on the head with needing to take the pressure off myself. I go so long between blog posts now, I get overwhelmed when I think about writing one. There's just too much ground to cover so the result is inaction, then feeling guilty, then rolling up into a ball and grieving my sweet little blog. I don't want my blog to die. We've been through so much together.</div>
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I'm going to resurrect this sucker. Writing more frequently but shorter, that's the way back to blog mojo. I heard about it on NPR a couple weeks ago so it must be true.<br />
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Seattle Moxie Forever!<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-669382991228698342018-01-31T08:59:00.000-08:002018-01-31T09:09:23.727-08:00Bumpy Enemies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Have you ever had a day of skiing so bad, you cut the day short after two shockingly miserable runs, then just sat in the lodge with a beer and a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos in your hands, put your head down on the table and laughed incredulously into the void? If not, I will share a bit about how that might go.<br />
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The roads were slick up into the mountains on our recent ski day; a big dumping of snow had many people frantic to hit the slopes but in their haste, they instead spun out on Snoqualmie Pass. We, thankfully, did not spin, but that was the last thing to go right.<br />
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There were ominous whispers in the wind as Coco tried to put her ski boot on at the car but lost her balance and planted her socked foot directly in a foot of snow. It got worse when we boarded the chairlift and it stopped for a lengthy amount of time while we dangled fifty feet in the air. I fought rising panic when the chair just.... well, it just didn't move, dammit. And then it didn't move some more. And then some more.<br />
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I silently and desperately ran through rescue scenarios. How were they going to get us down from all the way up here? Do they have cherry pickers mounted on snow cats at the ready? Were we going to have to bungee? Would we have to jump down onto inflatable bouncy things and if so, how long would it take to inflate those things and wouldn't they just slide down the mountain anyway? Alex cheerfully chatted with the kids to distract them from the fact Mom had suddenly gone silent, wide-eyed and white knuckled. Mom had gone to her unhappy place.<br />
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The chair began blessed movement again after nine agonizing minutes of non movement. I began to breathe again, though my relief was short lived. After we dismounted from the chair and started getting PUMPED for skiing, we realized there was no easy way down. We had unknowingly jumped onto a chair that serviced only black runs, which are for experts, and one blue run (intermediate) that was so steep, it is my opinion it should be labeled blackish-blue, kind of like the color of a really bad and violently inflicted bruise.<br />
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My kids have the skills for the easiest green runs only. They are very much beginners, still skiing without poles and using wide snowplow stances to master their balance. They do not remotely have the skill sets nor confidence to tackle a blackish-blue, especially one with a fresh dumping of snow that was thick, deep, and quickly being shaped into moguls -- a.k.a. bumpy enemies.<br />
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Coco said flatly, "No, I am not doing this" as we stared down the steep slope from the top and I said without any confidence in my heart, "You can do it, we'll do it together, one turn at a time, nice and slow." I took one very slow, wide, careful turn in front of her to demonstrate how we were going to get down. She attempted the same, panicked in the middle, picked up speed, and face planted in the snow. And then she was crying and refusing to move any more.<br />
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I got a little crabby with her after many minutes of her sitting, crying, and pounding the snow. She was not reacting to my rational, "Coco, you've got to move, we have to get down somehow, we have no choice" and instead just shook her head "no" with her mouth set in a grim line.<br />
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I tried teaching her how to sidestep down the slope but the moguls (bumpy enemies) prevented it. I eventually convinced her to stand up and give it another go -- pretty much by threatening to maim all her stuffed animals at home if she didn't move -- but after a couple more turn attempts and a couple more hard falls, Coco was done. She took off her skis in the deep snow and left them in a pile as she stomped down the mountain -- though with the steep pitch she occasionally fell forward onto her chest and slid a few feet. I skied awkwardly behind her, holding her skis in one hand and my poles in the other and staying as close to her as possible to protect her from skiers and snowboarders rocketing down the slope from above. They could anticipate avoiding me, but no one would expect a small angry girl on foot.<br />
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It took us 45 minutes to get down that slope, made longer than it needed to be because she stopped every few feet to turn around and yell, "I'M NEVER SKIING AGAIN." My patience stretched to the breaking point and my enjoyment of skiing at a complete standstill, I yelled back, "GREAT, NEITHER AM I!"<br />
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Ahhh, making family memories!<br />
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Lucien fared better, at least he kept his skis on, and Alex got him down the mountain fairly intact despite a handful of confidence rattling falls. We breathed heavily at the bottom, where we were met by our good friend German Dad and his son, one of Lucien's best friends. We had all eagerly anticipated a day of skiing together the day before but in the moment, we all just kind of looked at each other in horror and wished we'd taken up another winter hobby.<br />
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I had to get Coco over to another area of the mountain where we could access some green runs. Everyone else was winded by that first terrible run, too, so decided they would join for a breather and a regroup on easier terrain. Unfortunately, the only way to get to the other part of the mountain was to traverse straight across a couple runs then take off our skis and walk twenty feet uphill to a pass-through.<br />
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It was like a little game of Frogger as the six of us skittered straight across the slope between downhill skiers and snowboarders. Then Lucien lost his balance and fell into a deep snowbank where he could not free himself. What a shitshow.<br />
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The chairlift for the green runs did not improve our rapidly deteriorating spirits. It was crowded and full of beginners, which is never an efficient nor easy scenario. There were people slipping and sliding everywhere, challenged with keeping their skis under them even when standing still. The woman in front of me in line just suddenly fell over to the side. She was standing there one moment then, with no explanation or seeming disturbance, she was suddenly on the ground. Her three family members standing to her left just turned, looked down at her, and returned to facing forward. They didn't say a word to her.<br />
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The woman tried and tried to stand but her skis kept getting jumbled. I leaned forward and helped her get her skis parallel, then told her to plant her pole in the snow and push up from it, and she would pop right up. She didn't pop, instead she slid sideways into her teenage daughter who just looked ticked off and said, "JESUS, MOM!" with an angry face. That poor lady, on the ground, embarrassed, and with total dick kids to boot.<br />
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I tried to help her a few more times but finally suggested she just take off her skis, stand up, and put them back on again. And that's what she did. From her face, I could tell she was never going to ski again -- which now made three of us.<br />
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The beginner chairlift line was not well managed nor marked so quickly devolved into chaos. It was a two-person chair but often six people shuffled forward shoulder-to-shoulder then all just kind of fought it out at the actual boarding platform. Alex, German Dad, the kids and I ended up far from each other as the mishmash of the line continued to mishmash. Coco and I went up first. As we were whisked away on the chair, I saw Lucien and his friend were about six people behind us, and Alex and German Dad about ten people behind them.<br />
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Coco crash landed getting off the chair so I picked her up, brushed her off, and said, "OK, you ready to ski for real? This one will be fun!" I could tell she wasn't convinced because she was crying again.<br />
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Halfway down the slope, as I skied behind Coco, I heard a voice yelling my name from up on the chairlift. It was German Dad and he was alone. Why was he alone? He looked as confused as I did.<br />
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He yelled down something like, "Hey, MJ, wait for me, I think something went wrong." I yelled back, "Why are you alone? Where's Alex?" and he said, "I don't know." Then I said "Where's your son?"and he said, "I have no idea." Incredible how everyone had gotten lost and separated somewhere between the chairlift and the top of a short beginner hill. "So.....where's Lucien?" I yelled and he said, "I think he got kicked out of the chairlift line."<br />
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For fuck's sake, people, skiing is not this hard!!!<br />
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I skied down quickly to find Lucien alone and fuming at the bottom. The operator had told him his lift ticket was not valid (it was) so pulled him out of line. Alex was stomping around somewhere demanding to speak to a manager about the ticket situation. German Dad and German Dad's Kid eventually found each other on the green run and made their way down to us. Lucien was so embarrassed and so angry by then, he announced he was done and was going to the lodge to eat a hot dog. I had to admit it sounded pretty good.<br />
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The Dads and I literally dragged the kids to the lodge because it involved yet another uphill traverse. We each had a kid hold onto the ends of our poles as we pushed uphill on our skis, pulling kids behind us as if we were well trained sled dogs. We may not have done much skiing that day but we got a really good workout dragging kids all over the place and carrying their equipment down steep slopes and fishing them out of snowbanks.<br />
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German Dad was pulling Lucien up that hill when Lucien lost his grip on the ski poles. The Loosh began to slide backwards, to which he yelled with what was intended to be rage, "Oh! and now I'm going backwards! Exactly how I planned!" Then he fell over and while lying in the snow, stuck his fist straight up in the air and yelled, "AWESOME!"<br />
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Lucien said all these things in anger but frankly, that's when things started to get funny for us adults. We tucked our chins into our chests and started laughing, that kind of laugh you don't want anyone to see (your very mad kids) but can't keep inside any longer. Sometimes it reaches a point of absolute absurdity and that's when it gets fun again.<br />
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German Dad and Alex shuffled off to the chairlift to do a few runs together, trying hard to salvage something from our shitty day, while I secretly giggled my way to a table in the cafeteria. The kids' spirits rose as I promised them hot dogs but plummeted again when we learned there was a water line problem in the cafeteria so there was no food.<br />
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I bought 500 bags of junk food of all shapes and sizes and a round of beers for the adults, which were very much appreciated when German Dad and Alex staggered in soaking wet about fifteen minutes later. The snow had turned to heavy drippy snow-rain while they were on the chairlift and Alex's "waterproof" jacket had failed him. He was drenched and shivering and could no longer feel his body. So we sat him on a heater and I bought another round of beers.<br />
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<i>I call this one "dazed misery."</i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(photo courtesy of German Dad)</span></i></div>
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German Dad began giggling again as we sat across from our grumpy babies and said, "Gosh, this day was so great, I'm having a hard time choosing my favorite part!" The giggles soon overcame us adults, which was especially hard for Alex because his face was frozen. The kids got angry at our laughter, said, "I can't believe you guys are laughing at this right now, we hate you, you ruined our weekend!" We knew we should have kept the laughter on the downlow.<br />
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<i>Grumpy babies</i></div>
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<i>but the beer was friendly</i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(photo by German Dad)</span></i></div>
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Alex and I decided to turn our day passes into season passes that day. We stood in line at guest services and had our pictures taken on our way out, and we now all have laminated passes permanently affixed to our ski jackets. You may wonder why we did that after our worst day of skiing in recent memory and we certainly wondered why we were doing it in the moment, too.<br />
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The short answer is a greater force was compelling us. We are skiers at heart. Skiers strap slippery boards onto their feet and head straight down mountains; they are not a sane nor rational people. Terrible ski days will not keep true skiers away for long. Just don't tell the kids we're going back, and often.<br />
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Subject change. Did you know all Amazon boxes are labeled with numbers on the sides designating the size and shape of the box? I didn't know that until my parents picked up a new box number identifying hobby. They know them all and like to call out a box's number from a distance. Once when they were at my house, they said, "Wow, a 1AB, we've never seen that one before." It also tickled them immensely to say, "MJ, you got a 1B4 coming in the mail with Lucien's gift inside."<br />
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Lucien received a 1B4 from Colorado because he recently turned 12. Every day he looks more grown up and pushes away from us just a tiny bit more. He's still letting me squeeze him when we're on the couch watching a movie, though, and he still runs his ideas past me and asks my opinions. He's gonna have to find his way without me someday but I secretly wish I could hang onto his ankles and drag along behind him forever. He's always going to be my little dude.<br />
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The Loosh is funny, clever and quick-witted beyond his now-12 years. Some of his quips are approaching legendary status in our friend community and are repeated often. He added to his reputation recently when a friend said, "I prefer white rice to brown rice" and Lucien said, "That's rice-ist."<br />
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And you should have seen his face when he found out that annual ski pass was one of his presents!<br />
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Until next time,<br />
it is likely,<br />
I will continue to ruin my children's weekends.<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-67067039849996820322018-01-11T10:40:00.000-08:002018-01-22T10:43:49.340-08:00I gotta have more Winnebago<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I live! Truly, I live. There are no excuses for me being away from the blog except for ALL of the excuses. Things are off the rails here, or at least more so than usual, which is saying a lot because we are not known for calm and measured living.<br />
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It is impossible to catch up on all the events of the past few months. There were many happenings -- some very good and some very, very bad -- but after all those things we are still here, still well, still living our best-ish lives as we stagger and stumble into 2018 hoping for good things.<br />
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When it comes to blog catch ups, they are usually impossibly long, fairly boring, and involve many pictures but not much insight. This time shall be no different, and will play out like a "recent holiday greatest hits" kind of compilation. Sorry for being unoriginal, let's just do this.<br />
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It's probably best to start with Christmas, as it is freshest in my memory so I won't have to make up as many fanciful details. Seattle had a white Christmas this year. Snow on the ground, especially at Christmas, is rare in these parts; we woke up and ran in circles outside, laughing like giddy school children (two of us are actual school children but I hope the simile is not weaker for that fact).<br />
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Natani, <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2015/08/natani-navajo-dog.html">the dog born in a desert</a>, is a snow fanatic and ran through the yard like a snowplow, mouth open and skimming the ground in parallel lines back and forth to put ALL of the snow into her mouth. Her lawn mowing-type precision surprised me because she is a hot mess when it comes to most other things. She accidentally overturns her food bowl then stares at it confused and whimpering, she tries to jump off the couch and lands on her face, she whines while trying to find her ball under the couch, not realizing the ball is sitting several feet behind her. When it comes to snow, however, attention to detail is important to her.<br />
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She also likes to chill in the front window with her paw up on the sill and her ball resting nearby for emotional comfort --<br />
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Before Christmas, we took the Winnebago up to Vancouver, B.C. for a couple days. We made the kids try virtual reality games and they both got terribly motion sick. The googly eyes applied to the VR masks made it worth it. For Alex and me, anyway --<br />
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We then plopped down at a nearby brewery and told the kids we were going to be there for hours to watch the Seahawks game. Oh, the utter betrayal on their faces when they learned they'd been taken football prisoners. Coco immediately asked to play games on my phone, and not in a nice way --<br />
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This is the choosing of our Christmas tree. Alex said, as the tree began to slowly slip from Coco's grip, "Lucien, help her, quick, extend your arm!" and Lucien, because he is The Loosh, extended his arm in the exact perpendicular direction from where it needed to be to catch the tree.<br />
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<i>I caught the moment on camera, </i></div>
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<i>as Lucien cracked himself up with his non-helpfulness </i></div>
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<i>and the tree fell to the ground.</i></div>
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Our Christmas tree this year was anchored to the wall with a bungee cord because we couldn't get it to stand directly upright in the tree stand.<br />
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As Alex hooked the bungee cord to the trunk of our tree in the living room and secured it to the window sill, I said, "Alex, I appreciate your efforts in trying to keep our tree upright but... it's a bungee cord, man." Alex agreed it wasn't the best option but said it was the only thing he could find; we are apparently fresh out of rope and string and other taughter, less stretchy things. I sat in that room with many cups of coffee in the following days and pictured the tree falling over then bouncing up and down at the length of the bungee while squealing, "Whee, I feel so alive!"<br />
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Christmas Eve was celebrated at our friends' house with delicious things like ham with cherry sauce and smoked sea bass. The kids played in the snow across the street in an empty parking lot. When you live in the middle of the city, empty parking lots are the substitute for large yards. This particular lot is gated after hours so cars are not a hazard. It's where most of the kids learned to ride bikes, and where scooter races have been known to occur fairly regularly.<br />
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We brought a nice bottle of Calvados to share on Christmas Eve (I miss you, France) so suffice it to say, terrible Calvados-inspired dancing to '90s hip-hop happened --<br />
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We went to the Nutcracker, where Coco did some impressive dabbing during intermission --<br />
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After Christmas Day present opening mania, we climbed into the Winnie B again and ferried to a nearby island, where my sister and sister-in-law live on 12 acres complete with a stable full of horses and an A-frame ski lodge-type house. It's bucolic stuff. We parked the Winnebago on their property and in an attempt to find a level spot, did irreparable damage to a large section of their grass.<br />
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We like spending time in the Winnie B, especially in winter. There is something incomparably cozy about waking up in the Winnebago, preferably in a camping spot near the water or nestled amongst a ton of trees, and enjoying a cup of coffee while looking out the window. We dream of scrapping everything and heading off in the Winnie B for years, carrying along only bottled water, a ton of RV-friendly toilet paper, and a dream.<br />
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After Christmas we Winnebagoed over to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. It has likely become evident by now that the theme to our holiday break was "I gotta have more Winnebago."<br />
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This was our favorite trip in a long time. We camped both at old Fort Worden outside Port Townsend, and the following night in downtown Port Townsend next to the water. Fort Worden is where <i>An Officer and a Gentleman</i> was filmed. It is picturesque with its white barracks and stately old officers' homes surrounding rolling fields of green.<br />
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The abandoned, rusted, creaky bunkers at Fort Worden, however, are creepy as hell. I think I impressed my nervous children with my willingness to plunge into empty drippy spaces and straight down pitch dark stairways.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Creepy bunkers.</i></div>
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<i>Coco said, "no."</i></div>
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<i>machine gunnery something</i></div>
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<i>Lucien's photobomb game is on point</i></div>
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(If it sounds familiar, <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2016/10/everything-but-kitchen-sink.html">Fort Worden is where Alex and I stayed in the haunted tiny castle and then locked our keys in the RV a couple years ago.</a>)<br />
<br />
After Port Townsend, we ferried to Victoria, B.C. Alex was living in Victoria when we met over 20 years ago, and a couple of his dear friends are still there. The female half of the couple made our wedding invitations by hand all those many years ago. The tiny daughter they brought to our wedding is now in college. What the hell is that all about.<br />
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<i>Beautiful Victoria</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>High tea at The Butchart Gardens.</i></div>
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<i>We may not be high tea people.</i></div>
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<i>We were louder than most, and broke two glasses.</i></div>
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<i>Family selfie in front of the 10 lords-a-leapin' from the 12 Days of Christmas display.</i></div>
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<i>We are not sure why the lords were frogs.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>old friends,</i><br />
<i>and a daughter doing something odd</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
Where to next? I can give Halloween a shout-out because I mentioned in my last post I would write about it and then promptly never did.<br />
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I don't really remember what happened there, partially due to the passage of time and partially due to the fact my "Vampire's Kiss" cocktail mix was a little stronger this year. I know we had a lot of fun. I know it was the largest turnout in the six years I've thrown the party and was full of very enthusiastic adults with reliable babysitters at home. The adults in our lives look forward to this event every year like kids do Christmas. Some refuse to leave at the end, clinging to the posts on our front stoop and wailing something about "no, please, the children are there...." It makes for a very late night.<br />
<br />
I skipped the tarot card/crystal ball guy this year and instead hired a numerologist to do numerology readings in the TV room. He told me I don't suffer no fools, which I'd love to believe about myself but the truth is I suffer fools all the time.<br />
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My costume this year was Frida, of course --<br />
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Everyone told me it was a very good costume but I still lost to the guy who came dressed as Edward Scissorhands. He's a surgeon by trade so I felt his costume was a bit on the nose, but must admit (grumble grumble) he won by a longshot.<br />
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<i>He may not be invited back next year.</i></div>
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What the hell, let's do more holiday. My mom and dad and brother were here for Thanksgiving. I do not dread spending holidays with my family; I look forward to it. They are a fun group of people and we are all on the same page politically speaking. When I hear of other's Thanksgivings, I realize I am very lucky. While my family was doing a jigsaw puzzle and watching <i>Best in Show</i>, one of my oldest friends was defending the #metoo movement to her Uncle Bert. I hope she had a nice bottle of wine at her fingertips. Or two. Or three.<br />
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My parents, brother and I rented a home on the island where Raba and Zee live for the long Thanksgiving weekend. We believe the house was haunted because Natani refused to walk down the back hallway. She would stop several feet away from it, hair raised on the back of her neck, and growl a very low growl as she backed away slowly. To our non-dog eyes, there was nothing there but an empty hallway. So that made for some restful nights.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Raba and Zee's A-frame ski lodge-type bucolic setting home.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They are doing living right.</i></div>
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<br />
One more holiday! Just one more! A friend organized a family soccer game New Years Day. It was adults versus kids and several soccer balls were used at the same time "to increase the chances of someone scoring." It was absolute mayhem. Then a football got busted out and tossed into the mix and I just don't even know what was happening out there.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Hot mess soccer</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i> Some kids didn't fare so well.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The adults were competitive, and came to play.</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And nearly all the adults wore puffer jackets.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We are very Seattle in this picture.</i></div>
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It's been a good couple months, blog friends, but not all has been good. I am not yet ready to talk about the parts that aren't good but trust it, as fun as life has been in recent days, nobody escapes the grind without some pain, heartache, fear, and intense anxiety. Or maybe it's just me? I hope it's not just me. That would be lonely.<br />
<br />
I'm going to end this with a couple recent Lucien (and one Lucien friend) quotes because these pre-teen boys are always good for a laugh during hard, weird times.<br />
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<i>Me</i>: Lucien! I am so excited. I am taking you to my favorite musical this summer!<br />
<i>Him</i>: Which musical?<br />
<i>Me</i>: Les Miserables.<br />
<i>Him</i>: My name is Rob? That sounds like a terrible musical.<br />
<br />
<i>Lucien, eating a hot dog</i>: This tastes amazing.<br />
<i>Lucien's friend</i>: Mom, can I have a hot dog, too?<br />
<i>Friend's mom</i>: No<br />
<i>Lucien's friend</i>: OH come on, Mom!<br />
<i>Lucien</i>: Oh, I'm sorry. Did I wake your inner hot dog?<br />
<br />
<i>Teacher at school</i>: The human body is about 65% water.<br />
<i>Lucien's friend</i>: So we're basically cucumbers with anxiety?<br />
(We say this one around the house a lot now, bit of a family motto)<br />
<br />
<br />
Well that was a long and rambling and pretty damn terrible summary of recent holiday happenings. At least you know I'm still alive, and still in love with a Winnebago.<br />
<br />
Here's to 2018.<br />
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Your loyal though fairly absentee fellow cucumber with anxiety,<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-66114854163562077202017-11-01T13:02:00.000-07:002017-11-02T09:17:10.702-07:00The things that go wrongAn ode to a friend.<br />
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<br />
Mort was my dad's best friend at his law firm back when Dad was a working man in Toledo, Ohio. Morty was a loud man; his normal speaking voice could carry for miles without effort and bore a very strong Brooklyn accent. He was funny and boisterous and one of the kindest, most welcoming, most exuberant people you could ever hope to meet along the journey.<br />
<br />
Mort and his two daughters were our ski vacation buddies. We took annual ski trips to Colorado together throughout my childhood and adolescence, rented pretty slopeside condos together, ate my mom's famous and appropriately dubbed "ski trip chicken" recipe at least once during our weeks in those cozy condos, sometimes twice.<br />
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Something went wrong on nearly all of those trips. It wasn't always fun in the moment but we now know the stuff that goes wrong is often the good stuff, the stuff we relish remembering all these years later, the stuff that makes us laugh, the stuff that made our time together rich and memorable. There were always botched rental car reservations, lost luggage, chaotic meandering drives trying to find elusive ski condos, serious sun poisoning resulting in unrecognizable puffy faces, tense people speaking to each other through clenched teeth as they debated who'd locked the keys in the car again. It was a rare trip indeed it all went according to plan.<br />
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I was the baby of the group by a wide margin so haven't always remembered the details of those ski trips thanks to my youth and spongy young memory brain -- plus my parents always stuck me in ski school as the rest of them cavorted around on the slopes together so I wasn't even present for most things. I'm not jealous of that at all, yes I am, very much.<br />
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But I've heard the family folkloric stories so many times, I've internalized them clearly as if I was sharp as a tack and taking notes for each and every one. For one example, "the flaming logs at Snowmass" incident. Our first night in the Snowmass slopeside condo, Mort closed the flue on the chimney when he thought he was opening it, then built a roaring fire as Mom cooked ski trip chicken in the kitchen. Mort continually and enthusiastically refilled her wine glass, proclaiming loudly, "Wine for the cook! More wine for the cook!<br />
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It didn't take long for thick black smoke to pour into the room. As the rest of us hustled our butts out of that condo, Mort lunged for the fireplace tongs. He grabbed the flaming logs one by one and dropped them off our balcony into the deep snow three floors below. It was about this time his wife called from Ohio to see how things were going. He was honest with her, and she grew alarmed.<br />
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We like to imagine the faces of the cozy skiers living below us as they soothed their aching ski muscles at the end of a long day with a glass of hot cider or mulled wine. What did they think when flaming logs began falling from the sky? They knew we were in town, that's for sure.<br />
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<i>Sometimes our extended family joined our trips.</i></div>
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<i>This is my dad, my second cousin, Mort, my aunt, Mom, one of Mort's daughters.</i></div>
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<i>Where was I?</i></div>
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<i>Likely face-planting in ski school. </i></div>
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<i>Dammit.</i></div>
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Dad likes to recount the time Mort convinced him to do "one last run" before the chairlift closed for the day. They made it back in line just in time and were the last people allowed on the chair. They high-fived. We did it! One more run!<br />
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The motor broke on the chairlift on that last trip so Dad and Mort were stuck swinging thirty feet above the ground for hours. It got cold up there. Dad began to resent Mort in that moment, the man who made him take one more run when he should have been back with us at the condo holding a steaming glass of hot cider or mulled wine by then. Ski trip chicken is an elusive far away friend when you're stuck on a chairlift.<br />
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After a few dangly hours, they saw the ski patrol run a new motor up on a snowmobile. Not too long after that, the chair lurched to life again and began slowly moving up the mountain. Dad and Mort made their way down the slope carefully with no light aside from the ambient light of a full moon. Dad says it was the most beautiful ski run of his life. Further proof that sometimes the things that go wrong are the best parts.<br />
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<i>I'm not sure what this one was all about</i></div>
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<i>but that's yours truly on the right in my '80s acid washed pegged jeans</i></div>
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<i>and Mort is doing something to my head</i></div>
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<i>and Dad is holding a stuffed hippo. </i></div>
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<i>Plus, so many hats. </i></div>
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Mort, a Jewish man, was the biggest fan of Christmas carols you've ever met. My mom played the piano at every law firm Christmas party and Mort would stand directly over her, bellowing those tunes slightly off key with an unbridled joy never before seen at a law firm Christmas party, especially from a Jewish man. He was very hurt when a semi-professional singer joined the firm's staff and received the coveted "FIIIIVE GOLDEN RINGS" solo on "The Twelve Days of Christmas." That had always been Mort's verse, you see.<br />
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Mort passed away from cancer a few years ago. It was a huge loss for my parents, one they grieved to their cores. Someone like Mort can't leave the Earth and his absence not be felt profoundly. There was only one of him, and that is a gross understatement.<br />
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Mort requested his ashes be spread in three locations, three places that held great significance in his life and ultimately became three of his happiest chapters. The first was Coney Island, where he spent an idyllic free range childhood. The second was at the top of Half Dome in Yosemite, where Mort defeated a lifelong fear of heights when he climbed it with my dad and one of his daughters about fifteen years ago. The third was right here in my backyard, in Olympic National Park, where Mort spent a few weeks with the <a href="https://www.thesca.org/">Student Conservation Association</a> at the age of 16, clearing trails and rebuilding Humes Ranch, a historical cabin off the beaten path.<br />
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Mort's two daughters carried out his wishes at Coney Island and on top of Half Dome in the past couple years. For the third and final stop at Olympic National Park, Mort's family invited my parents to join for the five mile hike out to Humes Ranch. My parents accepted with gratitude and I immediately decided the kids and I would join, too. We were eager to reunite with our old family friends, recount stories of Mort, celebrate his big heart and the way he lived his life.<br />
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Our two families gathered in neighboring rental houses for a long weekend at Lake Sutherland, just outside Olympic National Park. It doesn't get much more Pacific Northwest picture perfect than Lake Sutherland in the fall. It was gorgeous and crisp and calm and kind of smug with its autumn charms.<br />
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<i>My parents brought Lucien a slingshot,</i></div>
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<i>which we now know</i></div>
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<i>is a perfect gift for an eleven-year-old boy.</i></div>
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Mom made ski trip chicken. We refilled her wine glass often, obviously, as Mort taught us to do --<br />
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The next day we hiked out to Humes Ranch. We stopped halfway through the hike to light a candle and remember Mort and tell stories of his larger than life personality.<br />
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Dad told a story I'd never heard before. On my dad's very first day at the law firm, there was a firm meeting in which most attendees, including my dad, showed up in polished dark suits. Soon after the meeting began, Mort walked in wearing jeans and a George McGovern t-shirt. George McGovern was a liberal 1972 Presidential candidate not at all embraced at the mostly-Republican law firm but Mort didn't much mind. Dad liked Mort immediately and then they were friends. History made!<br />
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<i>Humes Ranch --</i></div>
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<i>Mort's two daughters, a son-in-law, and two beloved grandkids.</i></div>
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<i>Us, minus The Loosh, who was off somewhere</i></div>
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<i>being moody and pre-pubescent.</i></div>
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<i>(Help me)</i></div>
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<i>My parents could not be any cuter.</i></div>
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Our long weekend celebrating my dad's best friend got me thinking about lives well lived. About how simple it is to do it right, or at least how simple it is in theory, how simple it <i>should</i> be. Mort lived life enthusiastically and warmly. I doubt Mort was perfect, none of us are, but he was a good man, a good father, husband and friend. I don't think anyone can aim much higher than to be those things, and to be remembered for such things when we're gone.<br />
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If Mort could see us from wherever he is now, I know he was giddy seeing his grandkids play with his dear friend's grandkids at Humes Ranch. The four kids ran through the fields, played hide-and-go-seek, laughed their bubbly little kid laughs. I could almost see Mort beaming and hear him bellowing with enthusiastic joy. He may have also been singing Christmas carols but that's cool, we'll give him a pass on the seasonal appropriateness.<br />
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(I'm also pretty sure I heard a faint, "LET'S DO TIN PANTS," an ode to times when we would be spread out along the chairlift but Mort would let his ski run wishes be known by yelling at all of us up and down the line...)<br />
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My dad wrote a long essay that was read at Mort's memorial service. I wish I could cut and paste the whole thing here because it is a beautiful homage to friendship and shared history but in lieu of the entire thing, this is the final paragraph. It made me verclempt as hell. I hope Dad is OK with me sharing it here, I didn't ask -- hi, Dad!<br />
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"A good day of skiing has three parts: early morning is the time of elation and anticipation of the coming adventure. The air is cool, the trails awash in morning light, the body eager. Mid-day is the time of accomplishment in the heat of the day, the time for fast skiing, maybe in moguls. Late afternoon is the time for relaxing and reflection, for slowing down and really seeing and feeling the beauty of the day and the warmth, golden light and long shadows of late afternoon in the mountains - skiing as a metaphor for life. Judy and I are in the late afternoon now. Mort has passed through it, but we still see him, content in the mountains, happy with friends and family who loved him."<br />
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One final thing about our long weekend, a tone change so I can, ahem, clear this dust out of my eyes. Lucien hurt his back over that weekend on the peninsula when he flipped around on his bed and landed on the back of his neck. His neck and back were still sore a few days later so I took him to a chiropractor. Lucien has never been to a chiropractor and doesn't quite understand their treatment methods as evidenced by his alarmed, "Why are you hugging me? WHY IS THE DOCTOR HUGGING ME?" as the chiro wrapped his arms around Lucien to adjust his spine. The chiropractor laughed so hard he had to stop and wipe his eyes with his shirt.<br />
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I love that kid.<br />
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The kids and I returned to Seattle from the Olympic Peninsula via the ferry. It was a beautiful day for a ferry ride. I have loved many places in the world but I am most absolutely content to be in this one. It's so fantastically pretty up in here.<br />
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I hosted my annual Halloween parents-gone-wild fest over the weekend. I'm going to post on that ASAP but after that, November will be all about the Paris book, a NaNoWriMo tweaked once again for my non-fiction needs. It's time to confront the reality of my editor's feedback, which hurt my feelings but is likely right on the money. I'll be around.<br />
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<i>Until we meet again, </i></div>
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<i>here's to all the great friends we meet along the journey.</i></div>
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More wine for the cook! *clink*<br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-51086608409675114572017-09-21T12:25:00.000-07:002017-09-21T12:38:25.409-07:00Recycling the laundry<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>I wrote this post the day before the earthquake hit Mexico City. I have debated whether or not to keep it, as it obviously does not address the gravity of the present situation. I'm going to keep it for now as a farewell to our time there and also our transition home to Seattle, but obviously my heart and thoughts are much heavier than at the time of its writing. The city and its people are never far from my mind.</i><br />
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<i>The photos and videos showing what happened in CDMX and its neighboring communities are heart wrenching. I'm of course grateful the kids and I were no longer there, and that Alex and all our friends still in the city are OK, but it is a sucker punch to the gut to know what has happened to so many others. The earthquake truly devastated one of the most vibrant cities on the planet, and took so much away from so many. </i><br />
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<i>The people of Mexico are strong and resilient -- my heart is with them.</i><br />
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I couldn't find anything my last night in Mexico City because it was all gone. All our stuff had been packed into boxes headed to Seattle by either the fast route (our air shipment) or the slow route (our truck shipment which, as of right now, I'm convinced we will never see again because it's stuck somewhere along the border.)<br />
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I couldn't find my slippers that night, nor my pajamas, nor the toothpaste. Alex went to bed before me and in my attempts not to wake him, I had only my iPhone flashlight by which to search. I ended up sleeping in the sweaty tank top I'd worn all day, foregoing my nightly face washing and using Coco's toothbrush for the tooth cleansing. Don't tell her that, she will freak.<br />
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I sat outside enjoying our view until a very late hour that last night, just taking it all in and saying my goodbyes to the big bold city for which I'd found much affection. I drew hearts on the dirty glass panels of our balcony. They won't last there long but it was comforting to leave even the smallest of marks on our Mexico home.<br />
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The four of us had eaten our last dinner out in Polanco earlier that night at a favorite neighborhood restaurant, Dulcinea. We gorged ourselves on the most tender short rib, and fried bananas with beans and cream, and buratta in a spicy tomato sauce. It rained on our walk home which was fine with us because why not splash in a few puddles when you're headed out of a place.<br />
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<i>This was a picture we left taped to the wall for our housekeeper upon leaving.</i></div>
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<i>Lucien is holding the photo we gave her of Seattle</i><i>.</i></div>
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<i>And you betcha Coco is scratching her armpit like a monkey in her goodbye photo.</i></div>
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<i>Paulina would have it no other way. </i></div>
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<i>She loves that girl just the way she is.</i></div>
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The next morning, the kids and I packed up our last things and climbed into Mario's car one final time for the drive to the airport. Alex is staying in Mexico City until the beginning of October to finish his job there so he held our hands often and gave us many hugs on the drive. The kids were not willing to wait until the end of September to return home, were definitely not willing to miss the first month of school. They were itching to get home and see their friends and play with their dog and get ready for new school years and quite frankly, so was I.<br />
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You can't fully enjoy the current city when you're prepping to move to a different city. Your focus and energy orients towards the place you're headed as you make summer camp arrangements there, book doctor appointments and babysitters there, find a rat specialist for the rat in your basement there, schedule reunion lunch and beer dates there. I tried to enjoy the last few days of Mexico but it was a distracted kind of enjoyment. My life had already left Mexico and was way up North.<br />
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Our driver, Mario's, family showed up at the airport to say goodbye to us. I was keeping it together pretty well until I turned around and there they were, his wife and two teenage sons with big hugs and shy goodbyes for the three of us. They didn't need to come see us off -- they live far from the airport and it's a lot of driving for them -- but they wanted to. Then it was hard to keep my shit together. I shed some tears as the kids and I waved one more time and sniffled around the corner towards the security line. Seriously, how lucky we were to meet the people we met.<br />
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The kids and I landed in Seattle again and -- oh my God -- there was English everywhere. It is a wondrous thing to understand everything all around you, be it written communication or spoken. I became the creepiest, most excited eavesdropper ever, sometimes just staring directly at the poor people with my mouth hanging open. I'm so sorry your aunt is suffering from a worrisome bout of diarrhea but isn't it cool I understand every word of your gruesome details??<br />
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The following are my immediate observations at the Seattle airport before we'd even collected our luggage --<br />
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1) There is a garbage can every thirty feet. I no longer have to collect my garbage in my purse for later disposal.<br />
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2) Mexicans are warm and polite friendly whereas Americans are more obnoxious and over-the-top friendly. In Mexico it was a "I hope you are having a nice day, <i>SeƱora</i>" but in the U.S. it's more of a "Well HELOOOooooOOO there, little nuggets!" The U.S. Immigration guy told the kids a couple terrible "dad jokes" as a welcome home, shook my hand so hard my shoulder nearly dislocated, then laughed so loudly he hurt my ears, which is crazy because I'm married to Alex so am used to volume.<br />
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3) There is fully stocked soap and toilet paper in all the restrooms. I may have no more need for the Ziploc bag of toilet paper nor the family-sized bottle of Purell I keep in my purse. And once finished in the bathroom stall in the U.S., you don't have to put your toilet paper in the garbage can, you can send it right down the magical pipes!<br />
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When we walked into our house late that night after a long day of emotional goodbyes and travel and terrible turbulence and a near breakdown by me because GODDAMN AIRPLANES, Natani looked surprised for a few shocked seconds, lost her mind for a few minutes, then immediately went to get her toy and dropped it at our feet with an expectant look on her face and a viciously wagging tail.<br />
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She is happy to have her kids back. It's like she can't believe they're real. She wakes them every morning for school upon my command, "Go get the kids!" by jumping on their bodies and licking their faces. She takes her job very seriously.<br />
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<i>good doggo</i></div>
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Our house/pet sitters taught Natani how to play fetch and swim in Lake Washington, two things she refused to do before we departed. You'd throw a ball and she'd just grab it and run away with it, looking back over her shoulder suspiciously like, "I know you're trying to steal my ball, b*tch." And God forbid she got near water. You could almost hear her thinking, "Aww hell no" as she ran the other direction as fast as her strong muscular body could carry her.<br />
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I'm glad she swims and plays fetch now but it's also a bit taxing when I'm stuck in the yard throwing her ball for two hours while dinner burns on the stove. I say, "OK girl, that's it, I gotta go inside!" and her ears droop and her body language sags and she sighs deeply, staring at her sad ball on the ground. "OK, just one more, girl," I say then, unable to break her heart again given we just abandoned her for eight months.<br />
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....and one hour later, dinner is toast and my hand is so cramped up, I have to ask Lucien to open my refreshing sparkling can of La Croix.<br />
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The first 72 hours home were strange. I'd forgotten my house. I couldn't find things, instead grabbed for drawers roughly where they were in Mexico City. Why is the silverware now to the right of the sink when it should be to the left? Our TV remotes were also befuddling. I'd forgotten how to make our various TV components work using our arsenal of complicated clickers. The housesitters had to come back the next week to give me a lesson. That was embarrassing.<br />
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We were all a little fuzzy and out of whack. You know how sometimes you're so distracted by other things, you can't process exactly what you're doing at the moment? I was sorting laundry a few days after our return and thinking, "Is tomorrow recycling day? I don't remember which day... I'm pretty sure it's tomorrow. Yes, yes, it's tomorrow, I must get the recycling to the curb right away." I then gathered up the load of laundry I was sorting, walked over to the recycling bin and tossed it all inside.<br />
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Lucien sat nearby enjoying a snack. He watched me recycle the laundry silently, a hand holding spoon frozen halfway to his mouth. He asked slowly, "Mom, what are you doing?" and I replied, "Well son, it should be obvious I'm recycling... umm... just the clothes and stuff." Damn, he caught me being weird again.<br />
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But as for Seattle, life here is good. My country is a hot mess and my city is getting super crowded with tech people but I love it here. I love the mountains and the ocean and Mt. Rainier, the volcano that looms hazily over the city. I love watching the Seahawks with a group of screaming friends again. I love seeing my kids happy back in their schools, and most of all I love grinning at the skyline from my back porch with a proper IPA brew in my hand.<br />
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We did our crew's annual getaway a week after our return. I handled the Winnebago all by myself for the first time because Alex is still in Mexico. It went perfectly well except for the time I came within inches of backing into my best friend's minivan. I stopped in the nick of time when I heard all the screaming and saw the waving arms of my frantic comrades.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Friends since babyhood</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>reunited in the Pacific Northwest.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>And you betcha that's a narwhal.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
This year's getaway was a little edgier -- <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2015/09/renounce-your-foreign-princes.html">though not as scary as the wind storm year</a> -- given all the injuries. Coco cut her foot wide open on an oyster shell on the beach plus received a goose egg on her head when she turned suddenly and ran smack into the kitchen counter. It's a good thing we have a nurse practitioner in our circle.<br />
<br />
Two other kids also succumbed to grievous oyster shell foot injuries and all children returned home with nasty "hot tub rashes" and ear infections. Hot tubs now give us all the skeevies. I'm not sure I can climb into one with a happy heart ever again.<br />
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I'll be around the blog as often as possible in coming months but my energies are on the Paris book edits and recycling my laundry. I am also trying to remember where I store the extra batteries and light bulbs. They should be in the kitchen closet, seems obvious that's where I'd keep them, yet they're not there.<br />
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<br />
I miss nearly everything about it.<br />
Thanks for the memories and the love, CDMX,<br />
and it's very nice to see you again, Seattle.<br />
MJ<br />
<br />
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PS. As you can see, Bobo was also beside himself with delight upon our return --<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>wake up and tell us you love us, lizard.</i></div>
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<br />MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-5809220123636567282017-08-10T12:02:00.000-07:002017-08-10T12:02:08.343-07:00Adios, Chicken Pizza<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ6ujjMkQmIIc2RTDXOFlT86sdQLsZrt_S1NUQ7qsaxZ2jxldlsA8FSQOl7ELaPh1U4mGeul_7nRQAETqbw_TTWeiPtbBCeZANh_Mgq1QXb2WLTG9Mm1B8mYV60JBOUfEabRTa5NLK3wxX/s1600/IMG_7425.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ6ujjMkQmIIc2RTDXOFlT86sdQLsZrt_S1NUQ7qsaxZ2jxldlsA8FSQOl7ELaPh1U4mGeul_7nRQAETqbw_TTWeiPtbBCeZANh_Mgq1QXb2WLTG9Mm1B8mYV60JBOUfEabRTa5NLK3wxX/s320/IMG_7425.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
This is it, the last post from Mexico City. Those eight months went way too damn fast.<br />
<br />
The next handful of days hold transition and chaos for all of us. As sad as I am to leave Mexico, I am looking forward to being back with the Seattle crew. I am also really looking forward to squeezing my crazy dog and poking Stella the bird in the belly with a pencil (the eraser end, I'm not a monster). I'll even be happy to see Bobo the bearded dragon; he may not emote much but I'm sure he will also feel reunion joy somewhere in his lizard heart.<br />
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>We're finally comin' home, girl!</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(Though I suspect she stopped looking for us out that window</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>a long time ago.)</i></div>
<br />
Let's finish this road trip. Let's do this finale. There's probably no better way to celebrate our time in Mexico than by continuing to wax nostalgic about vacation and posting a barrel full of photos of this magnificent country.<br />
<br />
(Part One <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-road-to-oaxaca.html">here</a>, Part Two <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/more-marimba.html">here</a>, Part Three <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/pyramids-pirates-and-parkour.html">here</a> ....)<br />
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After Merida we took a slight detour to another <i><a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/06/giant-memoir-and-magic-village.html">pueblo magico</a></i>, Izamal. Izamal is also known as The Golden City (or is it The Yellow City? I don't know, tick tock, no time to research, nothing about this thing is gonna be fact checked) because every building in town is painted a bright egg yolk yellow.<br />
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Izamal also has several pyramids in the middle of its town. We visited them via horse drawn carriage from the center square. I usually refuse to entertain the idea of horse drawn carriage tours because I don't think it's very nice to make horses drag people around cities all day. Horses aren't meant to work in big cities on hot pavement with cars whizzing past them all the time. The stories of horses collapsing in Central Park from exhaustion and stress were enough for me to swear off of them forever.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>But check me out, I'm Captain Hypocrite! </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(our horse driver and our car driver, Mario, chatting in the front)</i></div>
<br />
Alex knows my feelings on horse drawn carriage so first approached the man to discuss the care of his horse. Looking around Izamal, it's more of a quiet village than a city. There are very few cars whizzing around and at the time of our meeting him, our horse Picasso was munching on some grass and looking pretty chill indeed. I sure hope he likes the color yellow, though, because if he hates it he is living in his own personal hell.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I believe this is our final giant city sign of the trip. </i></div>
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<i>Behind us, a horsedrawn carriage, though that is not our Picasso.</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>If I look more closely, that horse appears to be wearing a humiliating pink hat.</i></div>
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<i>Well, shit.</i></div>
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<i>That is one wild pyramid.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Lucien was shat upon by a bird,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>likely one who did not believe</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>he is an authentic tech expert forever.</i></div>
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There is one Mayan ruin you must see, according to the world. If you're on the Yucatan Peninsula, you must visit ye olde Chichen Itza or, for the more refined, also known as Chicken Pizza.<br />
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I did not love Chicken Pizza. I have friends who have loved this place but for me, it felt like the Disneyland of Mayan ruins. The lines forming out the front may actually make Disneyland look tame and easily accessible by comparison. Vendors are everywhere, lines snaking all over the place, millions of people standing around fanning themselves with tour bus brochures, at least half of them bused in from Cancun resorts and wearing "Official Boobie Inspector" t-shirts.<br />
<br />
We arrived very early, aware we'd be far from alone at this most popular ruin, and were into the site within half an hour. The ruins are nice, it's true, but it's like visiting ruins as if strolling through an art museum. You can't climb anything, you can't touch anything, and your entire experience will be shared with many, many, many other people all craning their necks to look at the same thing.<br />
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Chichen Itza was one of the first Mayan ruins to be excavated and is listed as one of New 7 Wonders of the World, alongside the likes of the Great Wall of China and Macchu Picchu. I understand its significance in the history of history and that is nothing to be trifled with. Thank you for your service, Chicken Pizza, but my opinion still stands -- there are many ruins more worthy of visiting than this one. (See my best friends Palenque and Uxmal)<br />
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<div>
Chicken Pizza gets a sad rating of 2 out of 5 pyramids. </div>
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<i>I liked the columns, though.</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>They are all Official Boobie Inspectors. All of them.</i></div>
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I may have bitched mightily about the vendors clogging up the place but I did pick up my favorite souvenir of the entire trip at Chichen Itza from one of those very vendors. <i>Hola</i> again, Captain Hypocrite!<br />
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The kids saw it and said, "Mom, I'm scared" and I knew I was onto a winner --<br />
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<i>This is all I can show now because he's nestled nicely into his packaging. </i></div>
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<i>I'll take another picture when he's hanging in his glorious new Banister Abbey location.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
We weren't at Chichen Itza very long. We kind of ran through, bought my scary dude and escaped. The place was crazy by the time we left. The line for tickets was ten times longer and the parking lot was a hot mess of 50 tour buses. My advice, if you feel it's important to cross Chichen Itza off your list, is go early, run through, and run away. Buy something amazing from a vendor if you must.<br />
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We stopped at one last ruin, Ek' Balam, on our way to Cancun. It was a welcome change from Chichen Itza -- uncrowded, accessible, fun to explore, terrifying to climb. We were right back in it.<br />
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<i>It's a small site with not a ton to do but it's adorable</i></div>
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<i>The palace was impressive,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>thatched roofs there to protect carvings underneath.</i></div>
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<i>And we felt pretty badass at the top of a very steep</i></div>
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<i>and very hot climb.</i></div>
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<i>We nearly passed out, which would have been pretty bad.</i></div>
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<i>You get 3.5 out of 5, Ek' Balam.</i></div>
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Then straight to Cancun, the town where humidity reigns and everything, including the folded clothes in your closet and your bedsheets, is moist. We parked our butts on the beach at our resort in Playa Mujeres. I have never been an enthusiastic fan of all-inclusive resorts because the cheesiness can be off the charts. But this one in Cancun had been recently visited by Seattle Mom and Irish Mom with much raving upon their return. It sounded kinda heavenly.<br />
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By the time we reached Cancun, we were burnt out on ruins and driving and posing with giant city signs and were happy to have a breather. And by "breather," of course, I mean napping on lounge chairs, drooling a little, and waking up to find a well-dressed waiter has placed a drink in your hand.<br />
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All-inclusives are full of sloth. There are many people who float around in the pool for hours on pool floats near the swim-up bar; others would stake out beach lounge chairs early in the morning then stay in them all day. I was jealous of their contentment and ability to be completely still; I'm too antsy to be still for long. I was instead a hopper; I hopped from pool to pool (there were many pools) to the beach, to the restaurants, bam bam bam I'm a resort mover and shaker.<br />
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<i>The people in that pool haven't moved for hours. </i></div>
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<i>I hope they're OK.</i></div>
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The resort, <a href="http://www.finestresorts.com/">Finest at Playa Mujeres</a>, was a classy joint. Beautiful place, delicious food at its many restaurants, and no Official Boobie Inspectors to be seen. The service was great and the Kids Club so entertaining, we didn't see Coco for days.<br />
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Lucien was on the older side for Kids Club so chose to go swimming all day with me. Alex was usually napping or in the resort's gym. He likes working on his body but I don't care much about my body on vacation.<br />
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<i>Lucien and me, underwater selfie.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Nailed it.</i></div>
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The Loosh and I followed a baby stingray and a crab as they swam/scuttled along the sea floor. We warned two guys there was a crab directly at their feet but they just looked at us blankly and continued their conversation about the New York Giants lineup. Fine, assholes, get clamped, I tried.<br />
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One night Alex and I tried to take Lucien to the fancy formal French restaurant at the resort. We were not quite prepared for the dinner dress code requirements. Dinners at some of the restaurants are "elegant" affairs and we didn't have too much that could be considered "elegant." We were more rife with "dirty" and "sweaty" and "crunchy."<br />
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Alex kept shoving me ahead of him into restaurants because I like dresses and brought several, so I was by far the most formal of all of us even though my dresses hadn't been washed in weeks and all reeked of old sunscreen and bugspray. Alex was hoping they'd see me at a distance, register "acceptable" in their brains, then he and Lucien could slink past unnoticed.<br />
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We were worried about our outfits but we should have been worried about other things. As we walked into <i>Le Petit Plaisir</i>, we were stopped at the door and told the restaurant was for guests 18 and over only. We didn't know that beforehand but Alex didn't miss a beat. He immediately gestured at Lucien and said, "What, him? He is 18."<br />
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Lucien, on cue, stood on his tiptoes, dropped his voice as low as it can go for an eleven-year-old, and began discussing the U.S.'s crushing student debt problem. The lady at the door didn't budge, just shook her head at us. We dragged Lucien out as he continued moaning, "Oh no, how am I gonna pay for college, it's so expensive....."<br />
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Our last night we attended a pirate show on the beach where we learned pirates love juggling fire and resort audiences don't like to applaud. Those poor fire-juggling pirates entertained us in near silence for an hour. Awkward.<br />
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Then we came home. I love flying into Mexico City because it is a monster --<br />
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And now we're getting ready to go. The kids have been awesome in this hectic week of preparation. They've cleaned out all our rooms and filled six bags of garbage, then schlepped them down to the basement. I think they're ready to go home because I've never seen them so motivated.<br />
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Mario took Lucien to a movie two days ago to keep him entertained while I met with the movers. We are going to miss that sweet man. We will miss Paulina, too. She cried yesterday when she left. The kids gave her a gift -- a framed photograph of Seattle with a photo of them taped to the front. They wrote on it, "We're in Seattle now but we miss you and we love you." <br />
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Next time you hear from me I'll be back in Seattle, baby. I think there will be much processing of Mexico after I return to Seattle. I didn't blog here as much as I'd hoped, most likely because I was always writing about Paris. I may write more about Mexico in Seattle than I wrote about Mexico in Mexico. Then again, I get my Paris manuscript back from my editor on August 15th so I may write more about Paris in Seattle than Mexico, too. This is all very confusing.<br />
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Goodbye, beautiful CDMX. I'm going to miss you something awful.<br />
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<i>I'm going to miss all the sidewalk cafes and restaurants</i><br />
<i>full of beautiful chatting people</i><br />
<i>across the street from bustling artisan markets.</i></div>
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<i>I'm going to miss showing my kids things</i></div>
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<i>like this beautiful old fountain.</i></div>
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<i>I'm going to miss our fun friends.</i></div>
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<i>I'll definitely miss this view from our apartment.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKySRUdC7Ko7ql6we7uGVWYYDPR5VBtWN3gsQcXpI7wlRUvwIAZQ0cn383JTi9F81up6Xquw7sCBpcIXVcsQc1iIn4vCHPF-60qSq3V6L-c6v6dYRi0_daTDz9pbSibR7GN7OMau4i8Qv1/s1600/IMG_3658+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKySRUdC7Ko7ql6we7uGVWYYDPR5VBtWN3gsQcXpI7wlRUvwIAZQ0cn383JTi9F81up6Xquw7sCBpcIXVcsQc1iIn4vCHPF-60qSq3V6L-c6v6dYRi0_daTDz9pbSibR7GN7OMau4i8Qv1/s320/IMG_3658+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Coco took this one as we stood outside enjoying one of our last sunsets.</i></div>
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<i>She insists on taking pics with fisheye.</i></div>
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<i>She thinks it's hilarious.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4iOUGBxFRijH_sj3RjjNIDg7z6wc-EwvZOyaB0BzRgrQTg8SjqFZUc14dVf-CeO5eZc3AmTMLH6EXHDRYsDHcy_cWw8f7X26oJ-KN7XVjLzZK7QC169Z8lMvkFdrUsfuGH1n55wzM3-Gx/s1600/IMG_3614+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1199" data-original-width="1600" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4iOUGBxFRijH_sj3RjjNIDg7z6wc-EwvZOyaB0BzRgrQTg8SjqFZUc14dVf-CeO5eZc3AmTMLH6EXHDRYsDHcy_cWw8f7X26oJ-KN7XVjLzZK7QC169Z8lMvkFdrUsfuGH1n55wzM3-Gx/s320/IMG_3614+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>I'll even miss the times we didn't do anything at all,</i></div>
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<i>just sat around our mod apartment,</i></div>
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<i>watching TV and playing video games.</i></div>
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<i>Though I suspect we'll be doing some of that back in Seattle, too.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJqFgF54nfAZKafU3ESKQlftvClbhR3ajaBivo1946dSl6CB5QFTKO5yL6vcd7Ndv886ehO5O1DoIhXkcz6RmPZ1DZUeOulew92q6n-J4IEd3obw036qgfv1dAbZ9afO8irOsipUbQ_aDH/s1600/IMG_7026+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1153" data-original-width="1600" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJqFgF54nfAZKafU3ESKQlftvClbhR3ajaBivo1946dSl6CB5QFTKO5yL6vcd7Ndv886ehO5O1DoIhXkcz6RmPZ1DZUeOulew92q6n-J4IEd3obw036qgfv1dAbZ9afO8irOsipUbQ_aDH/s320/IMG_7026+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Bye bye, guys. It sure wasn't long but it sure was great.</i></div>
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Thanks for the memories, Mexico.<br />
<i>Adios, amigos.</i><br />
MJMJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-11234912878480333682017-08-09T07:50:00.000-07:002017-08-09T07:50:07.161-07:00Pyramids, pirates and parkour<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpZsXu-FucISTI9gLSr8K4QwbAS8awKSO7z0bb0cRy46n3q42OIl_FUUBtXyrDiCPhPZeCNsuyFXEds8AaWBz0uNSVdQDBDRDnwCmbuTExvbBt0en34S-4_mAad0ii4LDyL41z-1wPQe58/s1600/GEPD0753+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpZsXu-FucISTI9gLSr8K4QwbAS8awKSO7z0bb0cRy46n3q42OIl_FUUBtXyrDiCPhPZeCNsuyFXEds8AaWBz0uNSVdQDBDRDnwCmbuTExvbBt0en34S-4_mAad0ii4LDyL41z-1wPQe58/s320/GEPD0753+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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R-E-S-P-E-T-O, find out what it means to "<i>yo</i>."</div>
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(pretty weak joke, agreed, bad Spanish grammar to boot, but it rhymes.)</div>
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<a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-road-to-oaxaca.html">Part One</a> of our <i>hasta luego, Mexico</i> road trip is back <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-road-to-oaxaca.html">here</a> and it's glorious. <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/more-marimba.html">Part Two</a> is back <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/more-marimba.html">here </a>and is slightly less so. This is <i>Part Three</i> and will probably be the worst of the bunch because this thing is going to be a monster.<br />
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Then I'll write Part Four tomorrow and you're gonna be "enough already!" I'm processing a lot of emotions plus logistics right now. Dysfunction and short circuiting, that's what I'm doing.<br />
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The movers were just here to survey our stuff and left me a stack of forms to fill out before they can pack all our stuff on Friday so now I'm jittery and annoyed. I hate forms, especially ones with mysterious blank lines on them after words such as "attach copy of travel orders in invisible ink to Page Zero" and "apply corporate seal here -- and by "seal" we mean the animal, so go find one now, godspeed and good luck" and "we're killing you with all these forms right now, ha ha ha, don't care."<br />
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This hurried and frantic and annoyed <i>Part Three </i>picks up where I left off last time -- on a winding twisty nauseating road where <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/more-marimba.html">people with nail boards made us stop and give them money</a>. </div>
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That winding road eventually deposited us in Palenque, which is frankly not a very interesting town. I'm not going to mince words, Palenque, your town is ugly. Our hotel was nice on the outskirts, though. It had a pool roughly the size of several postage stamps into which many sweaty tourists deposited themselves at the end of blazingly hot days.<br />
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The kids had a blast in the pool, as kids always do, but I swam a couple laps and surfaced with a wad of dark hair woven in between my fingers so that was enough for me. Thankfully the pool also had bar service so I watched the kids swim in hair while I enjoyed a couple beers in the sun. That is a win-win.</div>
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But here's the thing. The town is not charming but you absolutely must go to Palenque, Chiapas if you ever find yourself anywhere near it. Reason being, the Mayan ruins of Palenque are spectacular, my favorite of any ruins encountered thus far in the journey.<br />
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I wish I had known how popular the Palenque ruins are because I would have been a ballbuster about getting my family out of the hotel room at an early hour. As it was, we moseyed into the site's parking lot around 11:00 and holy hell....just holy hell.<br />
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Tour buses were everywhere as we approached, never a welcome a sign when you like your ruins quiet and solo-ish, and a very long line of barely moving traffic snaked into the parking lot where, of course, all spots were taken. We got lucky, though; a man appeared to offer us a parking spot right near the entrance <i>and</i> a car wash, all for the small fee of 400 pesos, about 20 bucks. (400 pesos is not a "small fee" in Mexico, it's a big fee, but for us at the moment given the circumstances -- helluva bargain, my friend, and thank you for the shiny car.)<br />
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The line for tickets was longer than long so the kids and I left Alex and Mario in line and went to drink water bottles in the shade. For the record, entertaining kids for the wait is roughly equal in difficulty to standing in a long line. So, so many rounds of I Spy.<br />
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The ruins at Palenque are the best and most interesting ruins because they are half hidden in the jungle. Even cooler and more mysterious, there are apparently still a ton of ruins back in that thick jungle they haven't yet been able to get to and excavate.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7GFdmeTNpaa_saamO3grwF4_y7YCKj0n8Dfjvkjcw_x4HnhyOlEgo5ZH3DftdoKEBVsGag5uTsIn7SDADn1GwOA7geoAkUE-95L3CFuilH3gRLnFCRVI8q1eEZAsQnXc3R7njQbNYtysj/s1600/IMG_1934+%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7GFdmeTNpaa_saamO3grwF4_y7YCKj0n8Dfjvkjcw_x4HnhyOlEgo5ZH3DftdoKEBVsGag5uTsIn7SDADn1GwOA7geoAkUE-95L3CFuilH3gRLnFCRVI8q1eEZAsQnXc3R7njQbNYtysj/s320/IMG_1934+%25282%2529.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>It is so weird and whispery and perfect.</i></div>
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The earliest signs of inhabitants at Palenque date from 100 B.C. but the city reached its heyday around 700 A.D. That good old late classic period, those were raging good times.<br />
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The site is so big that even with the uncomfortable number of tour buses parked out front, you can still find yourself poking around on a ruin all alone, surrounded by thick jungle vines and reached only by a set of mossy green steps. Parts of the site are silent save the sounds of wind through trees and rustles of animals in brush. It's very Indiana Jones, only with fewer booby traps and more tchotchke vendors.<br />
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<i>Me and the Loosh enjoying ourselves in front of my favorite structure,</i><br />
<i>the one </i><i>with a jack-o-lantern face.</i></div>
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Some ruins are off limits as they are too fragile but those that are available to climb are not scary. The stairs are wide and the levels many, which always makes for a more relaxed climb and descent. If someone should happen to lose their balance and fall, they'll bruise extensively, sure, maybe break an arm or a leg or both, but multi-leveled wide ascents are preferable to the heartstopping death fear of <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/more-marimba.html">the steep narrow things at Tonina</a>.<br />
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Even Coco enjoyed Palenque, at one point said the actual words,"Mom, I like this place!" That is the highest possible praise because Coco is a very crabby ruins-visitor indeed. Because of all the above, Palenque earns my VERY RARE and VERY SOUGHT AFTER rating of 5 out of 5 pyramids! Wow!<br />
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<i>Our driver, sweet kind Mario, asked Coco to take a picture of him </i><br />
<i>in front of the ruins </i><i>to send to his wife.</i></div>
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<i>She is six inches from his face.</i><br />
<i>She is such a punk.</i></div>
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<i>(These two are peas and carrots. She makes him laugh a deep belly laugh.</i></div>
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<i>He has become a good friend, </i><br />
<i>and we are going to miss him very much.)</i></div>
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There's another kind of dumb thing you can do near Palenque, and that is the Misol-ha Falls. Alex liked it because he could jump in and swim right next to a pretty waterfall. I did not like it much but that is because I am a killjoy.<br />
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<i>That's Al swimming in the water hole.</i></div>
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<i>He had just been whistled at by many whistle-carrying employees</i></div>
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<i>because he swam too close to the falls.</i><br />
<i>Alex is a rule breaker.</i></div>
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The next day was a smooth ride to Campeche City in the state of Campeche. At home in Seattle, I am the driver. The kids once asked Alex if he knew how to drive and he was highly offended. But he knows that I love to drive, that I like little more than sitting behind the wheel cruising down the open road (or, as is more likely within Seattle city limits, sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, which is admittedly less enjoyable.)<br />
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What I realized driving to Campeche was sometimes it's nice to be driven, too. I sat in the second row of our sweet minivan and zoned out with my headphones listening to my tunes and looking at the gorgeous scenery. I would sometimes snap back to attention when I noticed one of my family members waving frantically at me. I would remove my headphones and they would say, "We can't talk to you like that!" and I would say, "Yep, that's the point."<br />
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If Palenque were my favorite ruins, Campeche was my favorite city. Campeche is a sleepy little town, likely because temps in the summer run hotter than hot so everyone hides indoors. The buildings of Campeche are painted pastel colors and the streets are narrow and seldom used by cars. It's a glorious mixture of pretty and uncrowded and full of good food. It's too hot, though.<br />
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Campeche used to have fairly serious and upsetting problems with invading pirates. They built a wall around the city for protection but those damn pirates just kept coming. Campeche has now embraced its pirate past; there is a pirate-heavy history museum and you can find a guy dressed as a pirate sweating profusely on nearly every corner.<br />
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<i>This is the nightly pirate show.</i></div>
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<i>The guy on the ground is drunk, of course.</i></div>
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<i>Perpetuating drunken pirate stereotypes.</i></div>
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When the sun goes down, Campeche comes alive. All the people who have been hiding from the sun come out for a nightly show in the main square. This one was traditional Mexican dance. The kids asked me what a traditional American dance was and I said, "I dunno, I guess a barn dance, or like a square dance?" and they seemed disappointed. They don't understand how heartstopping I can make the Virginia Reel.<br />
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There is also a nightly light show projected against the library on the main square. It celebrates the history of Campechans. The light show is so well done, we watched it two nights in a row, even hurriedly finished our <i>cochinita pibil</i> the second night to get there in time.<br />
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<i>Hell yeah,</i> <i>celebremos Campeche</i>.</div>
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Now a brief Campeche cell phone picture explosion --<br />
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<i>Coco running through the streets at night.</i></div>
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<i>Finally deliciously cooler.</i></div>
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<i>Coco and Alex have found a pirate.</i></div>
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<i>What a surprise.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>(It's not a surprise at all)</i></div>
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<i>The kids and I</i></div>
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<i>on my favorite giant sign.</i></div>
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<i>The C and A and M represent three of our first names.</i></div>
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<i>Lucien was offended so decided to add an L somewhere.</i></div>
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<i>We debated between "clam" and"calm" </i></div>
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<i>and decided "clam" fit us better.</i><br />
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<i>Coco up on the wall surrounding the city </i><br />
<i>ringing a warning bell.</i></div>
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<i>Pirate issues again.</i></div>
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Our next stop on the itinerary was Merida up in the Yucatan. I have heard many great things about Merida but we did not love it as much as we'd hoped. It's not Merida's fault it's 500 degrees during the day in July, and that we'd been on a long journey before reaching it, but by the time we drove into Merida and began strolling its beautiful streets, we were wilting like fragile flowers and very pissed off about hot charming Mexican cities.</div>
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There were some great parts. The mansions along the MalecĆ³n are without equal -- </div>
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<i>old mansion tour</i></div>
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As are the "conversation chairs" lining the city's main streets and squares --<br />
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<i>It's another giant sign.</i></div>
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<i>I'm very stressed out and sad right now.</i></div>
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<i>Just work with me, please.</i></div>
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We tried a bus tour in the hopes of air conditioning but were disappointed to find the bus didn't have such a thing. We sat on the top of the bus in hopes of a breeze but there wasn't much breeze to be had. We jumped off early because even our fancy fans purchased back in San Cristobal couldn't help us.<br />
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The best part of adding Merida to the road trip? MORE RUINS. I gotta have more ruins. Between Campeche and Merida we stopped at the nearly perfect Mayan ruins of Uxmal --<br />
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<i>We are out of control.</i></div>
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I have great news, guys. The Mayans have figured out rounded corners and modern construction techniques involving mortar --<br />
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<i>she's a beauty</i></div>
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We got to Uxmal early in the AM, having learned our lesson at Palenque, so were there nearly alone. Many others arrived later so while it's not without its crowds, you can avoid nearly all of those damn tourists if you arrive early. And no, of course, we're not included in the "tourists" category because we are TRAVELERS.<br />
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What did I love most about Uxmal? The rounded corners and mortar techniques, of course, wouldn't that be everybody's enthusiastic favorite? Second to that was the intricacy of the carvings still affixed to the buildings. I also loved the size of the site. We were poking around and exploring for hours, so much to see and all of it spread out and all of it interesting. We ran out of stuff to see at the exact moment we all thought, "yeah, we're kinda done now." Perfect size.<br />
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Fourth, I loved the bats. Lucien heard them first in the old palace, a faint squeaky chittery sound I never would have noticed without my animal-loving son in tow. He said, "Mom! There are bats nearby!" and I was like, "Yeah right, whatever" but then he poked around for thirty seconds and found them. The squeaky chittery sound stopped immediately as soon as he was directly under them. The bats had noticed the child in their midst. Lucien peered up into the crack above his head and there they were, a bunch of little bodies swinging upside down and staring right back down at him with their little shiny eyes.<br />
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We are looking at another 5 out of 5 pyramid rating here, people. If Palenque and Uxmal decided to duke it out for my affections, I would frankly be like, "Stop the childishness, you are both perfect to me and I will love you both forever." And then I'd just bail the town because who wants to stay in a weird town where pyramids fight.<br />
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Back to the bats. It's not easy to take a picture up into a dark crack full of dark animals but I did my best --<br />
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The outlines of their little bat heads are cute if you ask me. But Uxmal is where I learned Alex hates bats. We yelled to him we'd found bats and were confused when Al said, "nope nopeity nope nope, no way in hell" and hightailed it in the opposite direction.<br />
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We all have something we can't stomach and would prefer to avoid, of course, but I never pegged Alex as a "no bats" guy. In my mind he's more of a "no area rugs" or "no leg warmers" or "no toast" kind of guy because he's just a little different, a little out there, that one. Bats seem far too common a thing to dislike for my Al. Good to know he can still surprise me even after all these years.<br />
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Uxmal explosion --<br />
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The picture directly above is the Pelota field at Uxmal. Pelota was a popular game of the times so you can find a Pelota field at nearly every ruins site through Latin America. In Pelota, a ball was bounced off the hips and forearms to put it through the hoops at either side of the field. It also often involved human sacrifice at the end of the match. And get this -- it was often the winners who were sacrificed because they were the strongest and best offerings to the gods. It was an honor, you see. </div>
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Every tour guide through Mexico makes the same joke after they relay the above information: "This is why Mexico never wins their soccer matches."</div>
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Anyway, it's rare to see an intact Pelota hoop like the one above; almost all are crumbled away or removed to museums. It was the best I've seen. *calm down Palenque, I love you, too*<br />
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<i>La Casa de las Tortugas at Uxmal.</i></div>
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<i>It's the house of the turtles.</i></div>
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<i>That is adorable, Uxmal.</i></div>
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<i>I have neglected to mention thus far</i></div>
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<i>how many big lizards hang out at all of these ruins sites.</i></div>
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<i>We always think of our Bobo, of course.</i></div>
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<i>(Lucien saw this guy above and said, "Mom! Lizard parkour!")</i></div>
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<i>Nicely done, Uxmal, nicely done.</i></div>
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I'm not done writing about this trip, may never be done! But I also may take a break just for a second. Mario is taking me to the <i>ciudadela</i> today, which is the huge artisans market in the <i>centro historico</i>. I'm going to stock up on souvenirs in a major way.</div>
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Tomorrow, the adventure will continue. I am blogging so fast these days my fingers ache. It's nothing compared to what's coming with those damn forms, though.<br />
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Lizard parkour!<br />
MJ</div>
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MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3480383418556368648.post-15038407697054852292017-08-04T12:57:00.000-07:002017-08-04T12:57:24.842-07:00More Marimba<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I'm going to caffeinate myself and continue my slapdash speed blogging about our Mexican road trip. <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-road-to-oaxaca.html">Part One is back here</a>. I am supposed to be doing many, many other things instead of blogging to prepare for our looming departure but since I am overwhelmed by all of them -- meh, ignore.</div>
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Road trip! Road trip! The most important thing to know about our stay in San Cristobal de Las Casas is Coco bought this wolf hat as a souvenir and has slept in it every night since. There is nothing better than peeking into her room and seeing the top of her little wolf head poking out from underneath the sheets. Wolves have been Coco's spirit animal since she was a wee tiny thing. With the addition of the hat and her constant growling, I'd say her transformation is near complete.</div>
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<i>rawr</i></div>
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The state of Chiapas in southernmost Mexico borders Guatemala and as a result, the culture in Chiapas is a mix of many things. It's a mix of Mexico and Guatemala, ancient Mayan traditions mixed with Catholicism and a generous dose of voodoo. The feeling in the air is different from anywhere else we've been in Mexico. The locals are slightly more guarded, the Spanish accent a lot harder to understand. A visitor in Chiapas feels a profound sense of "I am most definitely a foreigner here."<br />
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San Cristobal is a charming city with its pedestrian-only cobblestone streets, many churches and brightly painted storefronts. Our favorite part was the night market, which sets up in front of the church in the main square every evening. Vendors are not allowed to sell in front of the church during the day but as soon as the sun goes down -- bam, it's business time.<br />
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<i>We bought many things including a wolf hat</i></div>
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We soon discovered Chiapas loves the marimba. There are marimbas everywhere. You can't get a coffee without a smiley marimba player welcoming you into the cafe. I soon began yelling at regular intervals, "I GOTTA HAVE MORE MARIMBA." At first amused, Alex soon became quite annoyed by this. But I gotta have more marimba.<br />
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We also learned when traveling to Chiapas, it is important to pack for all four seasons because you will experience them all in one day. That is how Lucien came to own the giant gray wool coat in the above photo with the she-wolf. We never thought we would need a giant gray wool coat in Mexico, but Mexico holds many surprises.<br />
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Chiapas is known for amber. The kids and I soon began an obsessive love affair with amber, diving in and out of amber shops with maniacal fervor as Alex yawned out on the sidewalk. I bought a gorgeous ring with a super old termite in it and Lucien is now the happy owner of a small piece of amber encasing his favorite insect in the world -- the mighty ant.<br />
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There was also an amber museum, which the kids and I enjoyed but Alex completed in about five minutes then went to sit on a bench.<br />
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<i>That dude is not seeing the world through amber-colored glasses.</i></div>
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<i>Old bugs stuck forever</i></div>
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<i>It's an amber marimba.</i></div>
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<i>I was not kidding about the marimba in San Cristobal.</i></div>
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<i>I gotta have more marimba.</i></div>
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There are two important things to see if you find yourself in the San Cristobal area. The first is San Juan Chamula church, which lies in the small town of Chamula about half an hour outside San Cristobal. We were told by friends, "San Juan is batshit and magical," which sounded like a winning combination to us. </div>
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The town of Chamula is odd. It feels... just .....weird. That's the best word I can come up with to suit the town. And I don't think I'm too off to call it "slightly, almost imperceptibly, hostile, but it's there, people." It's like the residents of Chamula know they need tourists to make a living but they don't really want you there.<br />
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The people of Chamula are their own tribe. Almost the entire population is indigenous, the Tzotzil Mayan people, and speak Tzotzil, an ancient Mayan language. They are entirely autonomous in Mexico and run things completely their own way. They are also intensely private and don't like you staring so you best blink your eyes and look away, son.<br />
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The Chamulans have strict traditional methods of dressing: women wear long black skirts made of shaggy wool with bright purple or pink blouses and men wear furry black vests.<br />
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<i>That's a group of young women in the bottom left</i></div>
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<i>in their long black hairy wool skirts</i></div>
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<i>in front of the very unique and bizarre San Juan Chamula church.</i></div>
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<i>I'll get to that in a second.</i></div>
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If a man has a position of great authority and responsibility within the community, he will instead wear a long white tunic --<br />
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<i>Like this guy in front of the church. </i></div>
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<i>I'm not sure what his official duties entail </i></div>
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<i>but one of them is telling tourists, over and over again, </i></div>
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<i>that no photos are allowed inside the church. </i></div>
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<i>And my God, he means it.</i></div>
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We've heard tales of tourists trying to take pictures inside San Juan Chamula who've had their cameras ripped out of their hands and smashed on the floor. We've also heard of tourists taking pictures of locals in the town without their permission and receiving pieces of produce thrown at them angrily in response. </div>
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I was nervous every time I took a picture in Chamula, worried I was going to offend and thus receive a cantaloupe to the skull. I tried to keep people out of my pictures as much as possible but sometimes they wandered in when I was taking pictures of other things.<br />
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<i>I was taking a picture of the blond German woman at the right,</i></div>
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<i>who had just purchased french fries and thus attracted the attention</i></div>
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<i>of a gang of hopeful stray dogs.</i></div>
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<i>Then the woman in her black hairy skirt walked in front of me</i></div>
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<i>carrying a thing of smoking incense and chanting.</i></div>
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<i>That's the kind of stuff that happens in Chamula.</i></div>
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<i>I was taking another picture of the many stray dogs</i></div>
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<i>and caught another local woman in her black skirt selling belts.</i></div>
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<i>It was an accident, and I'm glad nobody cantalouped me.</i></div>
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San Juan Chamula church is unlike any church I've ever seen -- understatement -- and we've lived in both Mexico and Europe so our church experience is staggering.<br />
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Giant pieces of fabric are draped from the ceiling almost like a circus tent. A thick smoky incense fills the air. There are no pews, no seats whatsoever. The floor is covered in a thick bed of pine needles. There are millions of candles stuck to the floor with melted wax. Statues of saints line the walls in glass cases and are decorated with pineapples and tiny bits of mirror.<br />
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Family members sit in groups on the floor, chanting and waving their hands over the candles. Shamans shriek and spit on the floor while performing cleansing rituals on people in the corners. Bottles of Coca-Cola are everywhere -- we learned later they are drunk quickly so the drinker burps, which is believed to expel bad spirits. Animal sacrifice is a regular part of church rituals so chickens, both alive and very recently dead, are held by families or laid beside candles.<br />
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So... yeah, they are doing things a little differently in Chamula.<br />
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Walking through San Juan Chamula was surreal and deeply moving. It was also a bit tense due to all the candles sitting on the floor. Coco nearly caught on fire when the back of her hair came within half an inch of a large candle that stood nearly tall as her. I yelled and lunged for her but with all the chanting and spitting and burping and shrieking around me, I just blended right in.<br />
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Back in San Cristobal, we happened upon a restaurant run by people from Chamula. There are pictures of the inside of San Juan church on the walls of the restaurant so I took pictures of the pictures. That must be OK, right? They were obviously professional photos so the people in them must have known they were being photographed and approved it, right? Please, no cantaloupe!<br />
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<i>The inside of San Juan Chamula,</i></div>
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<i>on a much less crowded day than the day we were there.</i></div>
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<i>We could barely get through the many groups seated on the floor,</i></div>
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<i>which is how Coco came to nearly catch on fire squeezing past a candle.</i></div>
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<i>Candles. Chickens. Coca-Cola.</i></div>
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<i>Candles and a large knife, don't want to know what that's for.</i></div>
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The second important thing to see near San Cristobal is Sumidero Canyon. We took a speedboat tour through the canyon and it was the coolest thing. Jaw-dropping, breathtaking, all those trite things, blah blah blah, sorry, I'm in a hurry.<br />
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The ride was gorgeous and enjoyable -- cliffs a kilometer high towering above you on either side! -- until we were reminded that people are polluting jerks. There is one area of Sumidero Canyon where the currents collide. All garbage that has found its way into the water, most of it from the capital city hours away upstream, converges at this spot and gets stuck. The boat driver suddenly cuts the engine as you round a corner and holy hell -- it's garbage island.<br />
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You must move very slowly through the fly-infested mess of garbage. On the other side, the boat operator must perform some maneuvers to dislodge the garbage from the propeller. It's pretty horrifying. He told us they have crews out there regularly to clean it up but it's too much for them to keep up with.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Garbage far as the eye can see.</i></div>
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<i>*shudder*</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Remember to dispose of your trash properly and recycle your plastics, everybody!</i></div>
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There's one more thing I need to tackle on this post before I bail and start packing up our millions of Legos. That is truly the one item on the to-do list today and trust it, it's one of the biggest. Can't wait to hear the shrieks of protest as I begin disassembling all the children's Lego creations to stuff the bricks back into boxes and bins.<br />
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The last thing to be discussed is our journey between San Cristobal and our next destination, Palenque in the north of Chiapas. We knew beforehand this was the toughest leg of the journey. The road is notoriously slow, winding and hilly. It is also known for people trying to stop you all along the way to sell you things. They will accomplish this by standing on either side of the road and pulling up a rope across the street as you approach.<br />
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We knew all this but were still not prepared. I have never seen Mario shaken while driving before (and he drives in the constant stressball of Mexico City) but he was sweating bullets on the road between San Cristobal and Palenque. People pass each other on blind curves, the winding path is torturous at times, and at one point the road was nearly completely washed down the hill thanks to a recent landslide. Drivers were queued up in either direction to take turns traversing the one slice of road still in place. I squeaked out, "I don't think we should be doing this!" just as Mario took his turn, floored it and got us to the other side in a burst of adrenaline.<br />
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We did encounter the children on either side of the road pulling up ropes and trying to stop us but Mario more or less blew through those tiny blockades. The kids would drop the rope if they saw you weren't going to stop, they have no interest in hurting themselves just to sell you tortillas.<br />
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Then we suddenly got stuck in a long snaky line of barely moving traffic. We could not figure out the reason for the delay. Construction? An accident? A great taco stand?<br />
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Upon rolling into the tiny town, I could see the reason way up ahead. I am freakishly far-sighted, Alex swears I can see for miles but that's likely an exaggeration. In any event, I can see way farther than him.<br />
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A large group of people, seemingly the entire community, were gathered along the sides of the road. Some of them had large boards with what looked to be giant nails sticking out of them. The boards were being placed on the street in front of every car. They were removed, I was assuming, only after each driver had given the people money. Some car occupants were evidently arguing with the town's residents, which is why we sat there barely moving for so long.<br />
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I told Mario and Alex what was happening ahead but Alex refused to believe it. He refused to believe people were taking advantage of travelers that way and shook his head, said, "No, you must be wrong. There's no way that's what they're doing. It must be construction or something."<br />
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But sure enough, we reached the nail board and were told we needed to pay a "toll" to drive through the town. I told Mario to pay whatever they wanted so we could get moving again, we'd already lost an hour. He paid them 100 pesos, about five bucks. They thanked us and removed the board.<br />
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Alex was so hurt when the truth was revealed. He sat near silent after that, occasionally whimpered like a wounded puppy, "I can't believe they would do that...I mean, they have you trapped...." Alex may not view the world through amber colored glasses but he sure does wear his rosy ones from time to time.<br />
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The nail board people made me angry at first but it didn't last long. You should have seen the faces of the people; these people have led hard, hard lives. The sad expressions and deep lines on their faces show it. The homes in the area were made of concrete blocks, just one room, corrugated metal roofs, lots of kids sitting outside. Some houses had windows with shutters but others had only holes where windows should be and clotheslines full of tattered clothing. That community is poorer than poor, and the only thing they can possibly capitalize on is the popularity of their road between two well-visited towns.<br />
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We'd lost an hour of our day and five bucks but life is harder than I will ever know for people in rural Mexico so you won't hear me complaining.<br />
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We detoured from the twisty road to visit the Mayan ruins of Tonina. The Tonina site has some of the best ruins around. The main structure is one of the biggest ruins in the world. It's not really considered a pyramid, it's a much wider structure with many more levels.<br />
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Unfortunately, Coco chose Tonina to declare she hated ruins and never wanted to visit any more ruins ever in her entire life.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>I call this one "Coco's misery." </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>She is very sick of the Mayans.</i></div>
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The rest of us loved Tonina. There are very few visitors, the ruins are expansive and you can climb and explore nearly everywhere, including several tunnels and maze-like buildings. For all that and more, Tonina gets the very impressive rating of 4.5 out of 5 pyramids. *applause*<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Nothing is off limits at Tonina so explore every corner,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>feel free to fall off every sheer ledge,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>while Coco glares at you from below,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>and tells you your vacation is "stupid."</i></div>
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<i>Alex at the tippy top</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Mayans had the best views</i></div>
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Coco sat with crossed arms at the bottom as Mario told her stories in an attempt to cheer her while Alex and I climbed all the way to the top with Lucien. It was a lot of work. The last stretch of climbing at the very top was nearly straight up, more like a ladder really, no handrail of course, and was a heart-stopping long stretch of climbing indeed.<br />
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I can't accurately describe my discomfort when I'm climbing tricky ruins with Lucien. He loves it, of course, and I want him to challenge himself and feel great about his efforts afterwards. I can't bog him down and squash his excitement and determination with my fear. But OMG, I'm totally freaking out, guys.<br />
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My heart stops. It just absolutely stops, feels hollow in my chest. I don't breathe, either. It's some sort of miracle I haven't passed out and fallen off the things myself given the lack of heartbeat and breathing. Sometimes I picture what would happen should Lucien lose his grip or balance and plan how I will react. I mostly stay below him the whole way up or down, stare at his feet and silently will them not to slip. I also brace myself for the inevitability that should they slip, I will fling myself to the bottom to break his fall with my body.<br />
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How is something so agonizing so fun at the same time?<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>These are the short sections with wider steps,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>where I can breathe well enough to pull out my camera,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>and capture The Loosh in all his giddy glory.</i></div>
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OK, this train don't stop, on to Palenque! The road was still twisty and turny as we pointed the car North again, but also prettier than just about any drive we've ever taken.<br />
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Oh Jesus, another <a href="http://seattlemoxie.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-road-to-oaxaca.html">Mexican in a truck making me nervous</a> --<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Hanging off the back, going at least 80 mph like it's no big deal. </i></div>
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I'll be back this weekend. The story isn't over yet but my time in Mexico very nearly is.<br />
MJ</div>
MJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00564714863783376506noreply@blogger.com2