Guessing Game

I'm back at the Paris book.  I have a developmental editor working with me now and she's been huge. We're dismantling all my ideas from back in November and developing new ideas.  Who knew there were so many ideas?  It's exciting but my head's swimming.  

While my head is in the bookwriting clouds, here's a fun game.  Guess which of these French quotes hanging on our kitchen wall Natani can reach?

yep....that one

That was too easy.  How about this:  Guess what terrifying object Natani is growling at and fiercely protecting us from?

That's right!  It's her own toy!  She forgot it on the back porch and it then blew into a strange, unrecognizable and frightening shape.  I like to believe she felt foolish when I let her outside and she circled growling at it until she worked up the courage to approach and sniff, but I'm not sure dogs are that self aware.

Here's another fun guessing question:  What's wrong with the schnauzer?  Did the schnauzer die?

Nope, no worries, he's alive.  We just took him on a hike. He was happy for half of it and then he was most decidedly not happy at all.  He just kind of flopped on the ground and said, "no."  So we carried him back.

I'm too old for this sh*t

Seattle is a boomtown. Our population is exploding, our home prices increasing to ludicrous new highs. It will soon become common to hear "I bought this ramshackle 1957 bungalow for 7.5 kajillion dollars."

Our neighborhood is changing rapidly; old homes are being torn down on every block and clusters of skinny townhomes soon built in their places.  I hate these new ugly buildings and my kids know it. When we drive past yet another old home being tickled to death by a bulldozer, Lucien or Coco will mutter,"Dammit.  There goes another Victorian with turn-of-the-century charm -- the architectural details along the roofline were to die for -- being torn down to make room for an ugly modern box lacking in character and quality."

Hearing your words coming out of someone else's tiny little mouth is both eerie and heart-swelling.

Thanks to all this urban progress, streets are regularly closed in our neighborhood for big construction machines and utility crews.  Driving the kids to school has become a frustrating task because there are always new and unexpected "ROAD CLOSED" signs popping up in front of the car.  I then must improvise, zig zag around, find a new unimpeded path.  Then the next week there are more signs -- the new route's closed now, too.

I'm convinced someday there will be no possible route to school so we'll go back home and watch movies and eat Nacho Cheese Doritos.  The excuse I will call into the school will be "there are no more streets left."  I guarantee the office staff will understand.  They will probably be taking the call from their own living rooms, having found no viable route to school themselves.

oh god.  no.  just stop it.

Alex and I attended the elementary school fundraising auction over the weekend.  Alex bid on a restaurant gift certificate because he's been wanting to treat his hardworking team at work to a nice dinner.  He missed a few crucial details before he bid and won, though -- namely that the certificate was for $200 worth of bagels. That's going to be one weird team dinner.

I took Coco and Lucien to the Seattle Bouldering Project while Alex was in Mexico for work last week.  I love bouldering, especially at this point in time.  When I'm hanging high on a wall by only my fingernails, all I can think about is how to keep hanging on.  I can't think about the words I'm using for the Paris book, and how most of the words I'm using are stupid words and I need to find good words. Bouldering is a reprieve from crippling self-doubt.

I may love the singular focus that comes with bouldering but my kids were less enthused. Within an hour they could not feel their arms nor legs so laid in whimpering little kid puddles on the mats and begged to go home.  Seattle climbers are a very supportive lot; they high-fived me and said, "Nicely done, Mom, you got 'em!"

We're going back whenever the kids get uppity.  You giving me lip?  GET ON THE WALL.

We took another trip in the RV before Al left for Mexico.  Taking off in an RV is more work than it sounds because you have to empty the RV when you're not using it and refill it when you're ready to take off again. You can't leave food in there to rot, can't leave linens in there to get damp in our wet Seattle winter weather.  It's like packing a tiny home each and every time so something is always inevitably forgotten. Last time it was ketchup and eggs.  This time it was butter and a pillow.

We also forgot to buy firewood.  Other campers' fires dotted the campground as we attempted to make our fire with a roll of toilet paper, small sticks and some damp leaves.  It was brief, brilliant, and smoky.

There are three types of RVers we've encountered so far.  The most common type is the retired couple.  Then there are young families like ours.  The third is more difficult to categorize in a definitive way -- they're the kind that shuffle around the campsite in dirty bathrobes and slippers and don't make eye contact. I'm not sure of their age or family situation.  It's anyone's guess what they're all about yet they are definitely my favorite.

and old man schnauzer went on a hike

Lucien recently told me about a girl he has a crush on at school.  He was invited to go to a movie with her family and while we waited for her dad to come pick him up, Lucien said, "I really hope I impress her."  I worried about what "impressing her" might entail (probably farting on cue) so I asked cautiously, "Hey Loosh....how do you think you should communicate with a girl in order to "impress" her?"  He thought a minute, pointed at me, winked and said, "I'm gonna speak to her in German."

It's worth a shot, I guess.  Better than farting.  If it doesn't impress her it will at least befuddle her and that's worth some laughs.  So go on, baby, sprechen sie deutsch.  And good luck.

Coco just ran into the kitchen and announced, "Donald Trump just bit me."  Frankly, I wouldn't put it past him.

Anyone want a bagel?
MJ

a lemon or merely lemon scented?

Lucien loves Star Wars.  He recently began coloring a picture of R2D2 but left the room briefly to discuss important matters with his mother. He returned to find his sister had turned R2D2 into a pretty princess at a tea party thanks to her pink marker and bottomless princess sticker collection.

There was a bit of yelling but then, thank God, my son realized the exquisite humor in the situation and laughed until he cried.  As did I.

R2D2 has never been so fancy.
The tiara. It kills me.

In other news, we briefly regretted our Winnebago purchase over the long weekend when a panel blew off the side while flying down the highway.  Sometimes one experiences buyer's remorse when one's vehicle starts blowing to bits at 70 mph.

It's possible this is going to become an RV blog.  Or an RV blog with a touch of  "our desert dog, seven months later, continues to destroy all of our stuff" blog.*  When we first moved into Banister Abbey, I thought this would be a home renovation blog.  And it was, briefly, but I have since gotten away from posting pictures of our home improvement.  My point is, I'm no longer sure what my point is.

(*Speaking of Natani, she knocked Coco's favorite game off the counter this week and started chewing it up.  I hate this game.  Alex hates this game.  My mother hates this game and my mother hates nothing in this world except stupid, stupid Mermaid Island.

I debated whether or not to let Mermaid Island die "a natural death" at the jaws of our destroyer, Natani the Navajo dog.  But in the end, I couldn't do it and rescued the ridiculous thing.  My mother can't forgive me.)

nom nom nom i love you nom nom

So the directionless blog wanderings continue this week with more tales of skiing (could be a skiing blog now) and RVs and bestiality.

I might as well take care of that last item now since it's all anyone will think about until I address it. We went out for Seattle Mom's birthday Saturday night and her husband, Seattle Dad, told us the story of the infamous "Enumclaw horse sex case" which happened in 2005 outside Seattle.  Some guy died from internal injuries (perforated colon, I believe) after being on the receiving end of sex with a stallion.  By "stallion" I mean a real stallion, not a euphemism for a virile male.  Truly, a horse.

Our beautiful friends out with us in Ballard.

Right after he told us the terrible horse story.
Why did he do that to me.

I haven't been able to shake that horse story since I heard it.  In addition to being repulsed by some sections of humanity, I just have so many questions about how it happened.  I mean what......how....

anyway, the takeaway from that is the human race is doomed.

We may all be headed for hot livin' in hell but in the meantime, the family and I continue to enjoy the Winnie B and more time on the slopes during mid-winter school break.

I look happy. The Loosh does not look happy.  

HE IS HAPPY

(Nope, he really wasn't, so mad at me right here)

The family headed for Hoodoo, a ski resort in Central Oregon, over the long Presidents Day weekend.  Hoodoo allows RV camping in the parking lot, provides an electrical hookup but nothing else.  It was our first attempt at rationing water, which we did incorrectly so ran out of fresh water from our tank on the second day.  We're learning, we're learning.

I remain the sole driver of the RV.  Alex prefers to put his feet up and avoid driving something big and scary and I have fairly debilitating control issues, particularly when it comes to my family's locomotion.  In that sense, Alex and I are perfectly paired.

I cannot overstate how excited Alex and I were at the prospect of camping at the base of a chairlift. We were near giddy on the drive to Hoodoo, imagining the extreme convenience of being able to wake up, eat a bowl of cereal, throw on our gear and walk twenty feet to the lift.  We were like kids being told they were camping at the base of a candy mountain, and when they awoke in the morning they could shovel mouthfuls of the sweet stuff into their gaping jaws immediately.

Excitement aside, the challenges began immediately upon arriving at Hoodoo and pulling into our reserved space in the resort parking lot.  An RV has to be level in order to avoid damage to both the refrigeration and slide-out wall mechanisms.  If you're parked in a non-level spot, you must put levelers under the lower wheels to even things out.  We've leveled Winnie before with our cheery bright yellow plastic levelers with zero trouble.  But that was then.

When you place RV levelers on top of wet pavement, slush, and a thin layer of ice at a ski resort, then try to drive your RV on top of them, those goddamn cheery yellow levelers shoot away from your vehicle with impressive agility.  You're not getting on top of those things; they're spooked gazelles sprinting into the forest.

When something isn't working, Alex pulls inward, goes silent with a steely and impressive determination.  When he goes quiet like that, I back off, disappear, don't bother him.  Trust it, he wants to be alone with his thoughts.  I instead watched and prayed silently from the inside as he tried shovels, ice scrapers, portable heaters, even put the levelers on top of our anti-slip table placemats.  The placemats were quickly shredded by the tires.  Now I need new placemats but that's neither here nor there.

It took Alex so long to get the RV up on those levelers, I had begun making dinner in the back by the time it happened.  The kids and I grew accustomed to grabbing onto whatever piece of furniture was nearby when Alex revved the engine and lurched Winnie forward to give it another go.  When he finally succeeded, our RV neighbors next door pounded on their windows and cheered.

Alex had been so immersed in getting the deed done, he hadn't realized he'd drawn an audience of fellow RVers and people waiting in nearby passenger cars.  He was like, "People were watching me?  Should I be embarrassed?" but I said, "Nah, hold your head high, man, you are the new face of determination in Central Oregon."

Alex has got serious grit.

We're barely on 'em, but we're on 'em.

we love skiing blah blah blah

Hoodoo is closed Tuesdays.  We camped Monday night and awoke Tuesday morning to find we were absolutely alone in this world --

Winnebago feels lonely and insignificant

I loved the solitude, loved having the entire place to ourselves like a giant snowy playground.  But me being me, I looked over my shoulder every five minutes and thought, "Gosh, we're really alone up here, a murderer could drive into this parking lot and kill us at any time and no one would ever know."  My thoughts are pretty dark but I take comfort in the fact Enumclaw guy's "I should have sex with that horse" is still way way worse.  

Coco and I climbed the beginner slope and went sledding.  While up there, a truck pulled into the parking lot and several men jumped out.  My heart stopped.  It was my nightmare coming true, I was sure of it.  I knew what I had to do;  I had to rush them, confront them, let them know I wasn't going to go quietly.  I was in such a hurry to confront those men about their murderous intent, Coco fell out of the sled in my hustle down the embankment back to the parking lot.

Sorry, baby

but Mama's protecting you

It became apparent, after I ran at their faces, the men in the truck were a father and his three teenage sons who didn't realize Hoodoo was closed Tuesdays.  They were dejected to say the least; the dad had taken off work for the day and the three sons had taken a day off from school.  They only had one snowboard and one pair of boots between them; the rest had planned to rent from the very closed rental shop.

Super nice non-murderous guys. We watched them and yelled our enthusiastic support as father and sons climbed the steepest runs.  They took turns using the one pair of boots and one snowboard.  They cheered for whomever's turn it was then yelled encouragement at the poor sucker as he climbed the equipment back up to them.  They made the best of a disappointing situation.

Sorry I thought you were criminals, guys.  You're inspiring in your can-do attitudes and it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance.

and it was fun to camp in a parking lot

Now back to beginning -- the Winnie B shedding her parts on the drive home to Seattle.  I looked in the sideview mirror after we'd cleared Portland to see what appeared to be a large piece of metal flying alongside our vehicle.  I yelled back to Alex, who was locked in the bathroom at the time with his computer in an attempt to combat motion sickness while answering emails (that was a mouthful and a confusing one at that, long story) I yelled something along the lines of, "WE GOT A PROBLEM, MAN."

Alex came rushing back to the cockpit and confirmed something had gone awry with his panicked, "Pull over!  Now!  The side of the car's about to blow off!" but I was surrounded by people on a major freeway with a shoulder not wide enough to accommodate the Winnie B.

I slowed down, put on my emergency flasher lights, prayed for an exit ramp, told Alex he was going to have to run into the highway to grab the piece if we lost it before I could stop.  (Alex has grit, remember.  I don't.  He was the obvious best candidate for the job.)

It was then I realized what people had been trying to tell me.  Not two minutes earlier, a couple had pulled up alongside me and honked their horn.  Then the man made some emphatic gestures.  He pointed at his own eyeballs with two fingers then pointed at the Winnie B.  It was the ole "I'm lookin' at you" gesture and it struck me as very rude.  I wasn't doing anything wrong, wasn't speeding, was well between the lines, hadn't cut anyone off.  How dare he.

I began making the same gesture back at him.  Two fingers pointed at my eyeballs then pointed at his eyeballs. "Oh yeah?  You're lookin' at me, buddy?  Well I'M LOOKIN' AT YOU, TOO.  I can look at things, too, and I'm lookin' at YOU.  What you gonna say about it?"  He eventually floored it and took off in front of me with a shake of his head.  What a jerk.

Except as I pulled off to the side of the road with part of my RV detached, of course, it became evident he wasn't a jerk at all and was instead trying to give me an important message, that it was time to take a good hard look at my vehicle.

I should perhaps evaluate my suspicions regarding the motives of strangers.  I am an island!

I finally eased to the side of the road on a desolate off-ramp.  Alex jumped out the side door -- straight into a pile of dog poop.  What are the chances?  What are the chances of pulling onto a rural exit ramp and jumping into a pile of dog poop?  That's just how life happens for us.  We embrace the unpredictability but not the mess.

Alex hopped around a bit, some expletives, decided he never wanted to see that pair of shoes again and took them off  right there on the side of the road.  He wrapped them in a plastic bag for later disposal and asked the children to retrieve his slippers.

It didn't take much effort to pull the panel off; it had been dangling by a mere thread.

there used to be a piece there...

...but it is now in here

Al hopped back in and we pulled back onto the highway, slightly rattled but relieved.  Not five seconds later, the battery warning light illuminated before me, a glaring red light that seemed sent from the devil himself.  I hesitated before delivering the bad news to Alex, who was happily wearing his slippers and chatting about our near disaster on the highway.  "Err...Al....?"

One exit later, we were back on a rural off-ramp reading our owners manual.  The manual said if the battery warning light came on, we needed to stop the RV immediately, pop the hood, and inspect the somethin'-somethin' belt for a tear.  Okee dokee.

We didn't know what a somethin' somethin' belt was.  A few Google searches later, we popped the hood and stuck our heads way down inside the bowels of the mechanics of the Winnie B.  The somethin' somethin' belt looked awesome, in fact looked brand new, because it is.

When we took off again from our second emergency stop of the hour, the battery warning light turned off and stayed off.  But still, we were jittery and spent the rest of the uneventful ride home Googling things such as "Is my new RV a lemon or merely lemon-scented?"

We've since learned it's fairly common for everything to go wrong in the first six-ish months of RV ownership.  The thing's never been used before and there are a zillion things that can go wrong with such a complex piece of machinery -- so a lot of them do, brace yourself.  So far, in our four initial trips, we've had a broken slideout wall (now fixed) a dead house battery (fixed) a dead GFCI outlet (fixed --user error, oops), a panel blown off the side (not fixed) and a battery warning light (what the hell was that about).

Yep, this could turn into an RV blog. Or skiing. Our dog is still crazy, too.
MJ

Ski hounds

I had a question about Sarah Palin recently so went to Google to get it answered.  I soon forgot my question because I got distracted by somebody else's --

Is she made of crab meat?  

And if she is, would that explain things
or provoke further questions?

I've got skiing on the brain thanks to a healthy snowfall up in the mountains. In my family, skiing was one of those things you couldn't avoid, much like mowing the lawn or picking up all the Legos stuck in the shag carpet.  It didn't matter if you wanted to do these things or not; it was something you did for the benefit of the family.

I grew up in Ohio, which is not a state known for mountainous terrain.  The best we could do in such a place was head to upstate Michigan where the hills afforded us a bit of height and a bit of pitch. As  I mentioned in this previous post, my first year on skis, at the age of 6, I hit a tree and broke my leg.  It was not a glorious beginning but Mom and Dad made me get back out there the following season anyway.

Once a year we went to Colorado for a bigger ski trip, almost always with family friends with whom we rented a slopeside condo.  Those are good memories, particularly the time our fireplace chimney clogged at Snowmass so the condo began filling with thick black smoke.  My dad's law partner, Mort, grabbed the burning logs with tongs and ran to the balcony where he threw them overboard into deep snowdrifts down below.  We always wondered what the downstairs neighbors thought as burning logs fell from the sky.

That was the same condo that had a line drawing of a butt hanging on the wall.  I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever seen because I was about 10 years old and, much like Lucien today, thought butts were hilarious.  I studied that drawing and practiced replicating it during our vacation.  By the time I returned to school, I was a butt drawing expert, which impressed my fellow fourth graders.

I didn't always enjoy those family ski vacations, in fact often found them unbearable as freezing rain pelted my face or subfreezing temperatures made my fingers and toes go numb.  I remember on more than one occasion begging my parents to stop so we could go inside as unhappy tears froze on my face.

Yet here I am, all grown up and inflicting the same cold torture upon my children that my parents inflicted upon me.  Tradition!

Our most recent ski outing began in an exciting way when our neighbor/dogsitter for the day texted to say, "Oh my god, there's stuff thrown all over your house, we think somebody broke in." My heart raced for a minute until I remembered the state in which we'd left earlier that morning.

I responded, "When we left, there were outgrown ski clothes tossed frantically all over the dining room, Coco has taken up three rooms with an art supply explosion because she apparently needs that much space for her most recent elaborate masterpiece which involves many wads of crumpled paper and Natani has shredded four of her toys in the past 24 hours so there is stuffing and ripped pieces of fabric littered throughout the kitchen and dining room and on up the stairs."

A few minutes later came a sheepish reply, "OH. I'm so sorry, never mind, it's just as you said." Well that was embarrassing.  Onward!

that's him being him

Alex and I were in the middle of a contentious argument that ski day about an important matter.  We decided that, in order to preserve the enjoyment we feel when skiing, we were only going to discuss said contentious matter if we were alone on a chairlift.  At all other times, we were going to have FUN.

The plan worked well.  Tense discussion ended when skis hit snow at the top of the lift.  We each enjoyed our runs, sometimes stopping to soak up the view and offer pointers on each others form as usual (Alex says I don't bend my knees enough and turn with my shoulders I KNOW I KNOW) After a particularly enjoyable run, there would be high fives at the bottom and enthusiastic, "Wow, that was amazing!"  Then as soon as skis lifted off the snow on our next ride up, we would turn towards each other and begin again with something like,  "I can't believe you said that, jerk!"

It helped diffuse the tension and made the fight manageable.  We worked it out better than we would have at home because it wasn't able to boil over thanks to the built-in fun breaks.  Next time a fight is brewing, we're headed for the slopes.  We'll just suddenly take off in the car, leaving the kids blinking and looking at each other in confusion in the kitchen.

she was crying in the morning 

but refusing to stop by the afternoon

skiing does that to you

We stopped at IHOP on our way home for a dinner of pancakes.  Our server was an odd bird.  We alerted her on her way through the aisle that she was pouring tea continuously from a kettle she was holding at a precarious angle.  She shrugged and said, "Well I'm always spilling something, aren't I," and just kept walking, a steaming tea trail following her all the way back to the kitchen.

This wasn't a great post about skiing.  I wrote a better one here.

Best I can do today!
MJ

The kid is all right

Lucien turned 10 last week.  Years are weird once kids turn up.  Sometimes they seem to drag on forever but then you look at him one day and he's huge. Then you find yourself wrapped around his growing body singing him the songs you sang him as a baby and begging him never to leave you.

Then he says something muffled like, "Mom, get off me, we're in a movie theater watching Star Wars."  Kid's a mood breaker, for sure.

Lucien was not the easiest baby.  He was not a happy cooing baby. He was a screaming baby.  If he wasn't nursing or sleeping (which he rarely did), he was crying.  It was constant baby crying for nearly six months, which does not do great things for a new mom's psyche.

The doctor couldn't figure out a reason for it; he seemed healthy and pink and strong in all ways.  I changed my diet, did all sorts of anti-gas baby dangling to make sure he wasn't just one huge gas bubble, supplemented with formula for awhile, read him long passages from Chaucer, sang him show tunes.

Nothing helped.  It was the dreaded mysterious colic and all we could do was wait it out.

so wait we did, while attempting to maintain our sanity

I wore him in the baby carrier all day because it was the only way he would sleep.  He demanded constant proximity, constant motion to be soothed.  I slept with him on the couch every night cradled in the crook of my left arm, trying to murmur him to sleep while he glared and waved his tiny fists in jagged jerky air shapes.  I was an "attachment parent" without ever wanting to be an attachment parent.

Below is a famous picture in our family because it illustrates in a small way the state of our minds at the time.  This is in the middle of the night and I'm wearing Lucien and bouncing because he once again woke up angry.  Lucien hated baby swings but he liked when Alex put him in his car seat and swung him back and forth as wide as Al's arm could reach.  Lucien was into BIG range of motion, not small paltry stupid range of motions.

To save Alex's arm, we attempted to replicate the sensation by tying his car seat to our ladder with a length of rope and swinging him back and forth to each other, bleary-eyed and silent. Sometimes Lucien decided that was satisfactory to him but other times he just yelled through the ladder swinging, too.

 Safety first.

Meh, f*ck it, let's strap the baby to the ladder.

I wish I could go back and talk to that me.  I wish I could tell her to stop crying her blubbery tears and get on with it already.  I would tell her he was going to grow up a happy kid, and he was going to love the crap out of her.  He was still, at the age of 10, not going to get embarrassed when she squeezed him in front of his friends.  He was going to say, "I love you Mom" all sleepy-like when she kissed him goodnight in his bed.

I'd tell her he's a great big brother to another opinionated being (a girl this time) who would show up unexpectedly a few years later.  (No way I'd tell her to avoid that bottle of wine that led to the Coco babymaking in Paris, though, because Coco must exist in this world.)

I'd tell her he was going to sleep so well one day, in his own bed in his own room, it would become difficult to get him out of bed in the mornings. Sometimes getting him out of bed would involve bracing her foot against his bedframe and pulling on his legs with all her might while saying things like, "Come ON, get UP."  Younger me wouldn't believe that one, it would feel like a far away unattainable dream.

the kid is all right

I would want younger me to know that 10 years in, he's an individual marching to his own beat for sure, kindhearted and funny and comfortable in his skin.  I would tell her to relax, that she wasn't doing anything wrong and her baby didn't hate her, it's just that some babies need time to accept the fact they're born.

Or maybe I wouldn't say anything at all, because it would alter the journey somehow and change how we all are 10 years later.  Maybe I'd simply say the years with him are going to be worth every sleepless frustrated tear-filled day and leave it at that.  Then I'd smooth her hair, give her a hug, make her a drink.

No hard feelings, little punk.

best thing I ever did
no matter what

10 years down. Keep on trucking, kid, we are big fans,
Mom

Spanish rice trees

My mom, dad and brother recently visited from Colorado. They couldn't come for real Christmas so instead came in January for fake Christmas. This meant our Christmas season lasted forever and by the time they arrived we were all quite sick of it.

Our Christmas tree was the most pathetic, dried up, shriveled thing you've ever seen by the time they walked in the door. It didn't even look good in the first place so you can imagine the state of it five weeks later.

My dad, a retired lawyer, has been having an ongoing dream for months about a product liability trial.  His dream is impressive in terms of detail and how it picks up where it left off from night to night. In the mornings we greet him with, "Morning, Dad, how's the trial going?"

Aside from Dad's impressive dream skills, the high point of my family's visit was a ride to the gas station in the Winnebago.  I may not be the most entertaining hostess but in my defense, they've been visiting Seattle for 18 years and have seen everything there is to see more than once.  But they've never seen a gas station from a Winnebago.

At the end of that day, Dad said, "Well... today we went to the gas station. That was a pretty exciting day, daughter."  It's likely that was sarcasm but I'll hold out hope I truly opened his world in magical new ways.

That night for dinner I attempted to make a pot roast.  Since we were busy all day (at the gas station), I decided to make it in the slow cooker.  I'd never done a pot roast in a slow cooker before but it seemed straightforward enough.  The only problem was instead of taking six hours as planned, the roast took 10-and-a-half hours to cook.  My pot roast was ready to eat at about 10:30 that night but we'd already eaten the salad and mashed potatoes for dinner, done the dishes, and my parents had gone to bed.

The next day I made them watch Natani at her doggy daycare via the daycare's webcam for a very long time. It is surprisingly riveting television to watch the social dynamics of a pack of dogs. Natani is apparently the town bicycle; she was repeatedly humped by many dogs, most notably a randy Irish Setter and most embarrassingly a tiny Jack Russell Terrier.  Those dogs would not leave her alone.  Mom said it's because Natani is young, cute and blonde.

I considered calling the manager of the doggy daycare to ask him to give Natani a break from the Humpy McHumpies but Mom said that would tell him too much about me -- namely I have no life and watch my dog on webcam all day.

My sister, Raba, and her wife, Zee, have moved out of Seattle proper and have bought 12 acres on a nearby island complete with a red barn they intend to one day fill with horses.

not too bad.  not too bad at all.

Raba and Zee are now living some sort of idyllic "nobody messes with us" kind of existence.  I don't understand.  You mean nobody rifles through their recycling bins at 1:00 a.m. looking for aluminum cans or steals their garden tools from the front porch when they're left unattended for five minutes?  That kind of life is foreign to the downtown-centric people we are in Banister Abbey.

Speaking of our neighborhood, the Central District currently has a serial bread dumper on the loose. The bread dumper is a 50-ish-year-old male who dumps large amounts of bread daily in a nearby empty lot.  This is upsetting to neighbors because it's attracting racoons and rats.  When approached and asked to stop, the man apparently yells, "FUCK YOU" before running away.  Bread dumping -- must admit that's a new one, even for the C.D.

I digress.  Back to the island my sister now inhabits.  Mom said the island reminded her of the Hoh Rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula because of the fuzzy trees but instead of saying "all the Spanish moss on the trees" Mom said, "all the Spanish rice on the trees."  The hysterics were unbearable as I pictured Spanish rice dripping off trees and plopping onto heads of visitors below.  For those in need of lunch, they could merely tilt their heads back and open their mouths, which would be quite handy.

Mom laughed along too but then looked at me with a frown and said, "you're going to put that in your blog, aren't you." and I said, "YES."  My family knows me better than anybody.

We posed for many photos on the island that, as of this time, has no chronic bread dumping issue --

Glorious siblings

This is Lucien staring down a cargo ship --

This is Coco throwing something into Puget Sound with impressive force --

This one looks like the band got back together --

Soon after it was taken, Lucien fell off the log into the water.  

When my family gets together, we laugh a lot.  One of our favorite things to do is reminisce about the fun we've had over the years, especially on our family vacations.  This time we revisited our summer vacation on Lake Powell, Arizona in the early 90s. We rented a boat on Lake Powell but none of us had driven a boat before and it turns out boats don't always stop when you want them to stop.

We came in too hot on one landing and took off a chunk of the end of the dock.  Later, when it came time to gas up at the boat gas station, we all bailed on my dad.  We jumped out of the boat to avoid the embarrassment we knew was coming.  The attendant called to my Dad, "Stop at pump three, sir" but when Dad couldn't make that happen, the guy yelled, "Stop at Pump Four!" and then "OK, stop at Pump Five!" But Dad just kept going.

If you want to know why I am the way I am, there's no need to look further than these people. They are both the wind beneath my wings and the birthplace of my neuroses.  In other words, they are family just like anyone else's family.  And I am so lucky to have been born into their midst.

You know who doesn't feel lucky to be in this family right now?  Oscar.  Now that he's almost 15 years old and crabby, old man schnauzer hates being groomed so I put it off and put it off until his coat is so matted the groomer has no choice but to shave it all off.  Now he's so cold and has to wear a thick fleece sweater all day long with his diaper.

Since his haircut, he's been following me around sighing deeply.  He really wants me to know he isn't happy about recent events.

The vet tells me he'll help me know when "it's time."

It's not "time" yet.  He's still with us.

So we're going to keep loving you... 

...and in this family, that means laughing at you, old guy.

I'm happy to report,
Dad finally got the hang of that boat.
MJ

There once was a pig in prosser

Its 2016 -- the year I finally do the things and meet the goals.

I'm writing this post in the Winnebego.  There are cleaning ladies inside my home, their monthly visit to deal with our collective grime, so I've moved out to the driveway.  It's a pretty sweet setup.  I can still connect to our wifi, make a cup of coffee, take a nap.  There's also a box of Rice Krispies in the pantry for when I feel like emptying a few fistfuls into my mouth, which will be often, and likely messy.

The Winnie B is my favorite thing even though I've never been afraid of driving a vehicle before and now I'm pretty much scared all the time.  Alex feels the same.  Whichever one of us is driving nervously asks, "Am I between the lines?  Am I between the lines?" repeatedly all the way down the highway. The other usually responds, "Well it looks good to me but that guy just honked at you so....anyone's guess, honey."  My jaw aches from the clenching but it's a terror-tinged euphoria. I am elated to be a member of this elusive subculture, even around the most harrowing of hairpin turns.

Driving something as big as the Winnie B makes you bolder. Before her, I would earnestly try to work it out with someone on our narrow old Seattle neighborhood streets, attempt to find a win-win situation for both of us, do my best to pull over or back up if necessary.  Now my mentality is more of a shrug and a "That person must move or else we sit here until we die."

People are pretty self-interested that way; they realize I can't back up, and also realize I'm going to win if it comes down to metal-on-metal so are usually pretty quick to back the hell up and get out of my way.  They sure don't look happy about it, though.

We took our maiden voyage to the Oregon coast after Christmas and broke the Winnie B our very first night.  We couldn't get the slideout wall to slide out, which meant Alex and I could not properly unfold our sofa bed.  We stood in the dark holding flashlights and staring at the slideout with rain dripping off our hoods.  Best we could manage were a few "Hmm"s because we know absolutely nothing about this vehicle yet.

The problems continued indoors where we continually popped the fuse on our electrical hookup. Being an RVer involves knowing the electrical draws of everything in your rig and doing math as you turn things on and off to make sure you're not exceeding the amps on your hookup.  We don't know the specific amps of our things yet but have learned a few basic equations.  Heater + several lights = good fun times.  Heater + a couple lights + microwave = lights out, sucker.

As for the water heater, it must use a lot of amps.  Water heater + 0 = only way to go.  That thing should be used on its own as you huddle in the dark and cold without delicious microwaved burritos.

Without the slideout wall, Al and I had to scrap our sofa bed and sleep with the kids.  It was not restful for me because Coco is an aggressive spooner.  I awoke many times to find her leg thrown over my body or her arm wrapped around my neck like that possessed clown doll does to Robbie in Poltergeist.

Even given the winter weather and the tight slideout-less living quarters, we loved being out there in our new home away from home.  Unfortunately, our dog did not share the warm fuzzy feelings.  Natani hated the RV.  She shook the entire time she was inside of it.  When we took her for a walk at the campsite, she refused to get back in.  She planted her legs firmly in the mud outside the door and locked them at the knee, turning her head as far as she could to the side as if to say, "if I don't look at it, maybe it won't exist anymore."

She slipped out of her collar as we wrestled her and then bolted towards the trees.  Thankfully Natani is also a scaredy cat so she didn't get far in the dark Oregon woods.  How sad she must have felt when she realized we were truly the best option.

We took the RV in to the dealer to get the slideout fixed but, of course, the slideout worked fine for them.  It also worked fine for us back at home for awhile but now it isn't working again. I don't see a lot of fun times ahead in terms of dealing with the intermittently problematic slideout.  Please don't make me sleep with Coco again.

This next tale is not for the vegetarians amongst us.  This one goes out to the meat-eaters.  I'm not kidding, vegetarians, get out of here, this will not please you.

Alex and I recently joined with two other families to purchase a pig.  Not a pig like a pet, but a pig to grow on a farm and then eat.

The farm was recommended to us by Seattle Mom's chef cousin.  He said their organic pasture-raised pork was the best pork ever so we pooled money until we had enough to buy a bacon, I mean a pig.  Soon after we signed up for the pig, the farm began sending pictures of our pig -- the live pig, enjoying his life, walking around in the grass and breathing air with a pig smile playing just below his snout.

Why would they do that?  Why would they make us love our pig and look at pictures of him and say "awwww, cute" when they know our plan is to eat him?  We couldn't help but wonder if the farm was actually run by cunning vegetarians.  Did they really want us to eat the pig or was their ultimate goal to make us feel bad enough about wanting to eat the pig that we break down into guilt-ridden sobs and succumb to their vegetarian-bully agenda?

We decided to name our pig "Cuddles" because what the hell, let's make the thing even more tragic by giving it a cute name.  We spoke of Cuddles often as he grew.  They notified us on his butchering date.  They assured us he never felt a thing but still, Cuddles died that day and we all felt sad for that.

Don't underestimate our love of pork, though.  We were trading pork recipes with renewed excitement when another blow came from the butcher -- Cuddles wasn't anywhere near Seattle. Cuddles was waiting for us three-and-a-half hours away in the small town of Prosser, Washington, and the butcher didn't do delivery. It was a detail the chef cousin neglected to mention.  We all agreed it was a pretty big detail to omit.

Anyway, that's how our friend, whom I'll creatively call Seattle Dad, and I came to be crossing the snowy Snoqualmie Pass through the Cascade Mountains on Monday on our way to Prosser, WA.  The rest of our village stayed behind to collect all children from school and get them to music lessons and other assorted activities on time. But Seattle Dad and I were roadtripping all day long.  We're coming for you, Cuddles.

Prosser is a cute town with perhaps a handful of inhabitants.  We stopped in a tavern for lunch before heading to the butcher.  When we walked in the door, the guy standing behind the bar actually said, after scanning us up and down, "You ain't from around here, are you?"  I didn't know people said stuff like that in real life!

Good news was Small-Town-Stereotype Guy made the best burgers we've had in a long time.  Don't get me started on his onion rings.  It may be worth the drive just for lunch again sometime.

We wandered around the corner to the butcher (everything is close by in Prosser) and were confronted by a surreal scene involved animal carcasses hanging from hooks and friendly cleaver-wielding people.  We took some pictures in there but I'm not going to post them.  If any vegetarians have made it this far, I respect that and don't want to push them over the edge.

We drove the 3+ hours back to Seattle (it was a long day) and divvied up the meat on the floor of Seattle Mom and Dad's house --

It looked like a drug deal

It was then we realized they'd forgotten to give us the bacon.  All that trouble for zero bacon?  We decided it was Cuddles from beyond the grave, giving us a final "eff you" before sauntering off to pig heaven.

My family is here visiting.  They're with my sister and sister-in-law today at their new home on a nearby island.  I'm going to write about all of them next time because there is always something noteworthy to mention when they come around.  For example, yesterday we had a conversation contemplating why cows can't milk themselves.

Guess I'll go inside the house now.  I'm getting cold out here.  I'm afraid to turn on the RV heater because our exterior outlet shares a circuit with the outlet the cleaning ladies use for the vacuum cleaner indoors.  I'm not sure there is amp-le power.  Did you get that amp joke?  Pretty bad, I agree.

We'll leave this post with Alex and The Loosh in a go-kart.

Sure enough -- looks like a Rice Krispie explosion happened in here,
MJ

The Dog Ate the Spirograph

That's our wonky Christmas tree over there.  Our tree's trunk is so crooked it's tied to the wall in hopes it won't fall over.  I'll keep you posted.

Mama's back from her month of writing and not a moment too soon.  Alex was in charge of many things while I was hunkered down in the corner of my favorite coffee shop and some of those things didn't end well. For example, he selected the Christmas tree.

Other things weren't Alex's fault at all; they were the fault of our terrible/wonderful dog, Natani.

Natani destroyed Lucien's glasses when he sat them on the counter and turned his back.  I pulled out his back-up pair of glasses with a firm, "DO NOT set these down on the counter!" He didn't listen, sat them on the counter, so Natani cheerfully destroyed them, too.  Lucien was without glasses for nearly a week and kept running into doorways.

We're not used to big dogs.  We're used to small dogs who can't even dream of getting their paws up on the counter to sniff around for dog contraband.  Our dog trainer recommended spraying her in the face with water whenever we caught her with her paws up on the counter.  That worked for awhile, until the day she found the water sprayer on the counter and ate it.

Natani also demolished a Spirograph set bound for a little girl's birthday party one hour before the party was to begin.  I was writing at the coffee shop so it was up to Alex.  He gathered his wits after a moment of panic and tried the Amazon one-hour delivery service.  It worked.  Less than an hour later a Paris coloring book was delivered to our door. They wrapped it up and were out the door just in time.

A Paris coloring book sounded like a great idea so I bought Coco the same book for Christmas.  I thumbed through it when it arrived and felt instant panicked mortification.  There were several pages of lingerie in the very adult Paris coloring book. One page bras, one page panties, one page bra-and-panty sets, topped with a couple pages of the Red Light District.

We'd wrapped a bra-and-panty spectacular and given it to a six-year-old child -- even worse, a child whose parents I'd never met.

I sent an apologetic email to them, explained the situation -- "our dog ate the Spirograph"-- and assured them we really weren't that weird,  At this time, I still have not heard back from them.

It used to be a mattress

But wait!  There's more!  Natani also recently jumped into our large outdoor planters after a rainstorm and got stuck chest-deep in the mud therein.  I had to pull her out and carry her mud-covered self into the house, straight into the bathroom for a bath.  But Natani is terrified of baths, you see.

She splayed all four of her legs and braced against the sides of the shower door.  I tried dozens of times but she fought hard. I eventually got her into the shower but only after the bathroom and everything in it -- the walls, the mirror, the floor, the sink, me -- was covered in mud.

When I finally emerged from the bathroom an hour later, Coco was standing ashen-faced on the other side of the door.  She said quietly, "Wow, Mommy, you said a lot of bad words." Hey, in my defense, the dog is a maniac!

As for our other dog, Oscar the old guy is still hanging in there.  He has to wear a diaper all day now because his bladder is not even remotely trustworthy.  It's gotten to the point he won't even stop to pee, just keeps walking as it happens, resulting in long pee rivers all over the house. He could not give two f*cks.

I recently bought him some more dog diapers on Amazon and noticed in the "Frequently Bought Together" section of the order page a can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli.  Can someone explain the connection between dog diapers and Chef Boyardee ravioli?  I'll admit I'm intrigued.

She's nuts but we love her so. 

Dogs do that to you.

My writing month went very well.  It felt luxurious to say "no" to everything but writing for a full month.  I was productive, got more done in that month than in the previous four years.  The terrorist attacks in Paris rocked me hard and led me to shelve the project for awhile, at the time I thought possibly forever.  I eventually picked it up again with an even greater desire to share stories about the city and its lovable/quirky inhabitants.  I haven't felt that clear and focused in ages.

Recently I've been referred to a good developmental editor who will hopefully help me shape the thing into something interesting. I hope there's a story to tell in there.  Still thinking of you, Paris.

My laptop was put aside long enough to celebrate Thanksgiving with our friends.  I made the cheesy potatoes and the appetizer plate.  I sliced the hell out of my finger trying to peel jicama.  Don't try to peel jicama; it's a fool's task.  The skin is so thick, so unwieldy, it seemed the jicama was mocking me and my peeler. I got frustrated, reacted hastily. And then I was bleeding.

Thanksgiving began festively with a street brawl outside our friend's house just as we pulled up out front.  Their neighbors have a tricky situation going on.  A woman used to date one of the brothers but now she's dating the other brother so when the family gets together -- say, for Thanksgiving -- things don't go so well.  I called 911, of course, because that's what I do, then stepped gingerly through the angry family dropping f-bombs liberally with my cheesy potatoes and a tentative "Uhh, excuse me? And sorry! And Happy Thanksgiving?"

We love our community.  We always have a good time together but truly outdid ourselves this year. The high point was blaring New Edition's "Cool it Now" during dinner.  We sang the lyrics we all still remember from our youth in between mouthfuls of foodstuffs. The low point was when Coco took an elbow to the face on the trampoline and came indoors bleeding profusely from her gums.

And a final celebratory November event -- we finally bought an RV.  We are now the proud owners of a Winnebago ("The Winnie B" as we're calling her) though we still haven't taken possession of it thanks to a recalled propane line.  Bummer.  We're anxious to begin living "the lifestyle."

Alex and I went to the RV dealer last weekend to do our walk-through of the coach.  It took three hours.  The technician pointed out every switch, every button, every gauge, every sewer pipe thingy and gave ominous warnings like, "never ever do that, you could blow up your propane tank."  Alex and I tried to take notes but the amount of information was so voluminous, so overwhelming, by the end we were just staring blankly at the dude and whimpering.  We will therefore, upon taking possession, immediately blow up the propane tank.

she's a beauty

November was so good,
December is bound to be a disappointment.
MJ