Feels like Day 39

I 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

My old car would never ask me such a stupid question. She knows breaks are for wimps and road trips are for driving.

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!

Giant Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox

Babe was anatomically correct.

Lucien jumped out of the car and yelled, "Mom, look at the balls on that bull!"

For the tour-thru tree, my rental car's dashboard

flashed the message,

"Get me out of here I am claustrophobic"

We're really getting to know each other now.

A house carved out of a giant Redwood tree

The Gravity House at Confusion Hill

The Grandfather Tree

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

The Winchester House was as beautiful and creepy as I'd hoped.

staircases leading straight up into the ceiling

The door in Sarah's seance room.

It opens onto nothing

but is a handy shortcut

if you'd suddenly like to be down in the servants' kitchen sink.

Another "door to nowhere" up on the second floor.

If you open that one and aren't paying attention,

you're face first in the garden now.

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!"

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."

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.

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.

Onward!
MJ

The search is over

Stella the parakeet is an excellent mimic and her vocabulary is growing rapidly.  Her favorite phrase to repeat is "pretty birdy!" followed by a low wolf whistle.  It was amusing and pleasant to hear her repeat our words until the day she began repeating them while vigorously humping her favorite mirror.  Then it turned a little weird.

Stella's "Pretty birdy pretty birdy you're such a pretty birdy" is now accompanied by vicious cage shaking as the mirror gets what's coming to it.  If we have visitors over, I try to distract her by waving towels at her cage, "Stella, stop it, my God, you're in the middle of the kitchen and I'm serving appetizers!" but she will not be swayed from her mission of making love to that pretty, pretty birdy.

Lucien has asked lots of questions and I've answered them honestly.  I think it's great for him to have a front row seat to the birds and the bees -- the bird part anyway -- over his cereal bowl in the morning.  The teacher has already called to report Lucien told her, "my bird wants to have sex with herself all the time" but after my explanation we had a good laugh. 

Stella is a true Narcissus. It also appears she's reaching sexual maturity.  It also seems fairly obvious Stella is a male.  We're not changing her name, though.  I don't think she'll care, doubt she'll even notice because she's so busy -- *bang bang bang bang* -- over there. 

Alex and I took part in a scavenger hunt over the weekend.  We were teamed up with dear old friends who live in Tacoma.  Our team name was Panda Lovegods.  We dressed in black and white, chewed on bamboo, dragged a few stuffed pandas around on leashes.  Nobody on the streets gave us a second glance because such antics are par for the course in Seattle.

The scavenger hunt brought out the seething competitive side that exists in all four of us.  We're pretty laid back people in daily living but something happened as soon as the competition began.  Alex was our driver and was so amped up he didn't break just some of the driving rules, he broke ALL the rules as we careened around the city screaming. 

Our friend and teammate, Tacoma Dad, said last year they were paired with a much less competitive couple who, instead of rushing from clue to clue, insisted on moseying.  He said by the end of the evening the woman was crying and begging him to slow down, then telling him he had ruined the entire evening for her and it wasn't fun anymore.  He tried to tell her, "There's no crying in scavenger hunts, hippie!" but it didn't get her to move any faster.

This year's hunt led us to parks, laundromats, a mambo dance lesson, and a karaoke bar where we were forced to perform Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer."  It's tough to get the crowd on your side when you're singing "The Boxer." They all stood there, bored, arms crossed like "Who are these clowns with pandas on leashes singing a snoozefest song in the middle of our party?" 

And why is the one guy dressed like the Hamburglar?

One stop had us throwing darts at balloons in a park.  There may have been one errant dart accidentally thrown at a dude on a bike but thankfully he didn't get hurt.  As an aside, is it legal to throw darts in public parks?  Because it shouldn't be.

My favorite task was reproducing the Miro painting currently hanging outside the Seattle Art Museum --

The art museum is where we pulled ahead of the other teams thanks to exquisite teamwork.  Tacoma Mom drew the shapes, the rest of us intertwined our arms at odd angles and climbed over each others backs to get them colored in. We were like a writhing ball of pythons clutching markers.  A group of tourists took pictures of us.  "It's true, Seattle people are so odd!" they may be telling friends back in Saint Louis right now.

At the second to last stop, things got rough.  The clue handed to us at the pitstop was a bag of fortune cookies.  As we ran to our car, which was parked in front of a fire hydrant obviously because anything to win, I opened my fortune cookie, pulled out the fortune and popped the cookie into my mouth.  I couldn't help it; fortune cookies are delicious.

Suddenly Tacoma Dad said, "Guys, there are two pieces of paper in the cookies! Find both of them!" and my heart sank.  "Uh-oh," I thought looking down at the solo piece of paper in my lap, "I'm pretty sure I'm eating a clue."

Indeed I was.  I fished the second piece of paper out of my mouth but it was no longer legible.  We hoped to figure out the clue using just the other three but those clues put together read, "GO....TO....PIER..."  and Tacoma Dad yelled, "Dammit, MJ, you ate the pier number!" We all agreed it was the most important piece to the puzzle and a most unfortunate circumstance.

We got back on track but then things got worse. We really botched it at our last stop after having been in first place for a long, long time.  In a catastrophic misinterpretation (with just a touch of laziness), we gave the tickets we were supposed to use for ourselves on Seattle's Great Wheel to a passing couple.  They were crabby people and in retrospect probably did not deserve our gift --

It's a long story.
We were wrong.

Immediately after it happened we received a phone call from the organizers telling us even though we were in first place and technically were finished, we were going to finish as "incomplete" because we hadn't completed our final task.  Our dream of victory was dashed, it was over. 

We walked back to the car (parked in a "police vehicle only" spot obviously) with heads hung low.  We are all buoyant by nature, however, so soon decided we won in our hearts and were the best scavenger hunt team ever.  Then we went to a bar to kill time while waiting for the other loser teams to finish.  We took pictures of the animal puppets we obtained earlier in the evening drinking beer because what else are you going to do with them?

We're going to do the hunt again next year, only this time I'm not going to eat any clues and we're going to make sure we don't do any wrong things.

Alex dozed off to sleep next to me later that night -- but suddenly he sat bolt upright in bed and said with a hint of panic to his voice, "Are you sure it's OK to leave the car here???!!!"  I smoothed his hair and spoke soothingly, "It's OK, baby, it's over...it's over....go back to sleep....hush....hush....."


Competitive scavenger hunting does things to people,
MJ

Pack of Wolves

I took a break from blogging last week to deal with an emergency situation; Coco's preschool made the out-of-the-blue decision to shutter its doors next year.  This may not seem like an "emergency" in your typical "someone's bleeding over here" sense but when you consider next year is her CRUCIAL PRE-K YEAR and most Pre-K programs are already full for Fall, we were Code Red.

The late decision left our preschool's families scrambling to find a spot for their kid's CRUCIAL PRE-K YEAR.  If parents don't handle the CRUCIAL PRE-K YEAR properly, it can be disastrous to their child's future.  There is an adult on a therapist's couch right now processing an overwhelming list of troubles.  The therapist is going to ask any minute, "Where did you go for Pre-K?" and if the patient responds, "I didn't really do a Pre-K program, just a play-based preschool for a couple years," the therapist will throw down his/her pen and say, "Well then there's not much I can do for you."

Crucial stuff, these schooling decisions made for four-year-olds.  I'm pretty sure at the age of four I was eating paste on my parents' asbestos-laden linoleum floor but no matter, times have changed, Pre-K now determines everything. 

We all got on phones immediately to beg for spaces in programs across the city.  Most schools no longer had spots but those that did were quite specific as to what they were looking for because the gender/age ratio in a Pre-K classroom is apparently of utmost importance.  "We're looking for an older girl," or "we have a spot for a younger boy" or "we're looking for a hermaphrodite, with a summer birthday, about three feet tall, who can yodel."

All our preschool's parents descended upon the same schools for visits and suddenly friends were rivals jockeying for position, eyeing each other suspiciously, and overhearing other parents brag to admissions their child was born in Paris (I admit nothing).

Even if you don't buy into the idea our kids' lives are made or broken at the age of four, it's difficult not to get swept up in the mania of emergency Pre-K admissions.  It feels like running with a pack of wolves.  It's pressure-filled and exciting and kind of scary and you're looking over your shoulder thinking, "Oh my gosh, look at me, I'm in the middle of this pack of wolves!"

If you fall behind, you'll get trampled but even worse, your child will end up doing their CRUCIAL PRE-K YEAR at a now-defunct gas station led by a suspected felon named Bruise. 

I had my sights set on one school in particular for Coco.  On the day of our visit, the kids were busy painting scenery for the annual play to be performed later that evening. One tiny girl came up to me and told me she was a cat in the play and would I like to hear her lines?  I said "yes" and was utterly delighted when she followed me around meowing for the next five minutes.

Coco went for a trial run the next day to determine if she was a good fit for the school.  It was the audition of her four-year-old life.  As I sent her into the classroom, I smoothed her hair.  What?  Since when was Coco's hair ever smoothed and, if it wasn't, when have I ever cared?  Running with the wolves did funny things to me. I gently shoved her into the room and sent up a silent prayer she didn't choose that day to start smearing feces on walls. 

She didn't.  She was cheerful easygoing Coco and was offered the "older girl" spot the next day.  We're now secure in our knowledge we've made her life awesome forever, and our work here is done.

Coco is firmly in a horse phase so Alex took her to see Cavalia, the fancy Cirque du Soleil-meets-horse mashup of a show, over the weekend.  I helped him by writing turn-by-turn directions to the Cavalia tent in Redmond and attaching them to the dashboard of the car.  He proved himself Alex by ignoring those directions completely and getting lost somewhere in Bellevue. 

This is not your typical guy-won't-ask-for-directions tale.  It's more serious than that.  Alex doesn't consider directions because he firmly believes if he just gets into the car, the car will take him where he wants to go.  Directions are not a sign of weakness to him, they just don't matter.

Things tend to work out for Al and his aimless meandering "following his gut" driving because he has a detail-loving directions person (me) at home to talk him through.  If he didn't have me, I'm not sure what would become of Alex every time he got into the car.  He'd end up in Idaho when he was aiming for Costco, whistling and unconcerned it was taking longer than expected.

The Loosh recently told me he doesn't think he's good at singing but he's REALLY good at humming, so maybe I could find a humming competition in which to register him?  He's serious about it, lays in his bed at night and practices the same bars over and over again to get the hum pitch just right.  That kid is coming dangerously close to pulverizing my heart.

Meow meow meow meow,
MJ

Chicken Relay

Alex took the kids to his co-worker's pretty house on the lake for dinner not long ago.  I didn't go with them because I had plans for dinner with my old friend, Cavanaugh.  My best meals tend to happen with Cavanaugh because he's a "foodie" and insists on the finest cuisine in existence.  I'm more of a "whateverie" and would happily eat cereal for dinner for the rest of my life.

I returned home from dinner at 11:00 p.m. to find my family wasn't home yet.  They finally straggled in, both kids wired with hair pointing in every which direction, at 11:30.

Coco's eyes were wild.  She grabbed my face and pushed my cheeks into fishy-face formation, put her face a millimeter from mine and yelled, "I ATE CANDY MOMMY."

To top it all off, Lucien was barefoot.  Alex had somehow lost Lucien's brand new shoes at a dinner with only five people present  We never saw those shoes again.  Alex suspects they were thrown in the lake but he doesn't really know.

This is why Alex is rarely in charge around here.

If you guys were worried my life would become boring once I returned home after a three-year stint in Paris, DON'T WORRY.  My life is heart-palpitatingly exciting here in Seattle.

Exhibit A:  Lucien may or may not have lost his shoes in a lake. (!!)

and

Exhibit B:  We recently took part in a Guinness World Record attempt for largest number of people playing hopscotch simultaneously. Dreams are coming true in the Central District, yo.

Organizers of "Hopscotch CD" painted a giant hopscotch game from one end of the Central District to another.  It wound through many streets and attracted a large chunk of the community to its ridiculousness.  There were attractions along the way such as lemonade stands and massage chairs and goofy stuff like buckets overturned into "drum sets" you had to play before crossing the street.

It's almost impossible to walk down a sidewalk with a hopscotch game imprinted upon it and not jump.  Young and old alike succumbed to the magic of those squares.  Teens walking with their friends jumped. Big burly men walking their dogs jumped.  Old ladies carrying grocery bags jumped, which they probably should not have done.

Our neighborhood was hopping.

In the most exciting part, a large group of us congregated in a parking lot for the official world record attempt.  The air was abuzz with excitement -- we were about to try a completely random and insignificant thing!  When the whistle blew, we hopped at our designated court while a man with a bullhorn urged us to KEEP HOPPING.  Hop hop hop hippity hop hop hop.

When it wasn't my turn to hop, I looked around and soaked in the absurdity.  What was it about the event that attracted so many people (over 400!)?  Are we, as grown adults, that starved for whimsy?  Are we desperate to be part of a world record, make our mark upon the world, no matter how dumb?  Are we just all incredibly bored and looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon?  If so, we should consider cycling.

And why were the vast majority of hopping people caucasian when the Central District is the most racially diverse neighborhood in Seattle?  We've got all kinds of colors of people up in here!  My working theory is white people are the most ridiculous of the races.  I'm not sure.

After all the excitement! jumping! bullhorns! whistles! -- well, we didn't make the world record.  We were 50 people short.  Oh well.  In Lucien's words, "Second place is still pretty good."

Let's hop on home, son

If all that wasn't crazy exciting enough (!!), I recently chaperoned a field trip to the Lincoln Park tidepools.  We scoured the beaches and found lots of crabs and starfish plus a bunch of other animals whose names I'm never going to remember.  Some looked like gelatinous goo.  They were very loose interpretations of the word "animal."

There are about 50 "animals" down there

Maybe you don't think the field trip sounds very exciting so far.
Maybe this will change your mind...

BAM!  Butt plug in your face

One little girl leaned in to touch the butt plug sunning itself on the beach -- "What is it?" she asked all childlike. I karate chopped her hands and pushed her forcefully away while yelling, "NOOOOOOOO."  Those are the kinds of reflexes that develop only with extensive chaperoning experience.

If that wasn't enough shredded mayhem and bone-crushing carnage in Seattle for you,  I also helped at Lucien's school for Field Day.  Lucien wasn't present; he was sitting in the principal's office.  But that's neither here nor there.

Actually, I was here and he was there

Another similarly masochistically-inclined mom and I worked the Chicken Relay.  For over an hour, I demonstrated hopping (or waddling, depending on my mood) with a tennis ball between my knees five yards to a box, where I then "laid" the egg by dropping it in.

I don't know why I bothered.  Those kids didn't listen.  You would not believe how many Kindergarteners USED THEIR GODDAMN HANDS when I specifically told them not to.

It was a long hour of chasing errant tennis balls and picking children up off the ground.  It's mind-boggling how many feelings were hurt and how many tears were shed.  I mean come on kids, it's not like this is an event to be taken seriously.  It's not like this is a Guinness World Record attempt for hopscotching.

By the end of my shift, I was hoarse, exhausted, and dammit, I missed my son.  I waved in the general direction of the Principal's office, blew my boy a kiss, and waddled/hopped to my car.  Old habits die hard at the Chicken Relay.

We had some friends over for dinner Saturday night.  We roasted some motherf*cking marshmallows over a firepit.  IN YOUR FACE HELLRAISING that's what that is.

I'll take the Fruit Loops tartare,
MJ

Perfect Love and Monkeys

I saw the sign at left at Lucien's most recent track practice.

Is the City of Seattle being funny or are pot bellied pigs now a common animal to see about town?

If we're going to start banning odd pets from tracks, there are others I would consider before pigs. For example, it would upset me much more to see a pet boa constrictor at the track than a pig.  Also distressing would be tarantulas and/or tigers.

Inversely, there are pets I would like to encourage to come to the track.  For instance -- monkeys.  I would love to see a pet monkey at the track, preferably a Capuchin but I would also welcome a Pygmy Marmoset. 

Seattle Mom invited me to her co-worker's wedding last week.  It was the first gay wedding I've attended since our state legalized gay marriage.  Washington, you make me proud to live in you.

Now that gay marriage is legal, conservative talking heads fret it's a slippery slope -- next it's going to be OK to marry animals!  Alex will be in trouble if that's true because I really like those Capuchin monkeys.

Well hello there, handsome

The wedding was more frustrating and befuddling than most I've attended but it had nothing to do with the fact there were two brides and no grooms.  It had more to do with Car2Go, my heretofore beloved and flawless spontaneous transportation companion.

Seattle Mom and I drove a Car2Go to the wedding.  When we tried to end our trip outside the hall,  the car told us we couldn't end our trip because we were outside acceptable Car2Go boundaries.  That message was especially confusing because we were parked directly behind another Car2Go whose driver had apparently ended his/her trip quite successfully and walked away.

After some parking here and there with no success, I kicked Seattle Mom out of the car -- go see your friend get married, for Pete's sake! -- and continued to drive around and around searching for the elusive acceptable boundary.  I finally found it thanks to a squeaky-voiced Car2Go helpline representative who may or may not have been in the middle of a panic attack.

I ran many blocks in my high heels ("Wear the really high heels!" said Seattle Mom, "There won't be much walking!") but missed the ceremony anyway.  I hear it was beautiful and everybody cried.

At least I made the reception --

As I watched the brides smooth each others gowns and discuss how they shopped for them together, I felt a stab of envy.  How awesome it would have been to plan a wedding with someone who was as excited about "girl" things as I was.  Alex's eyes used to get glassy and a thin line of drool would escape his mouth whenever I talked wedding.  I would say things like, "I don't know whether to go sweetheart, square or strapless" and he would stare at me blankly and say "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Forget the monkey, I want to marry a woman now.  (those talking heads were right....this is how the gay people seduce us into joining their "lifestyle"...)

These brides have been together twenty years.  Even though I don't know them, it was a joy to see them make their commitment as legally binding and inescapable as me and Al's --

Best toast of the evening -- 

"You two are perfect love and I'm sorry it took the world so long to figure it out."  

I chaperoned a first-grade field trip again because I'm a chaperoning fool.  Being the constant chaperone is my contribution at Lucien's school and honestly, I enjoy my time with those kids.

Except for this last time.  I was the only parent who volunteered between two classrooms so there were two teachers, me, and forty-two First-Graders.  I also had Coco.  It was an uncomfortable ratio of adults to troublemakers. 

The idea was to take a nature walk at a nearby park.  The kids carried magnifying glasses and notepads and were tasked with observing and sketching the various trees, animal life and other naturelike things we came across.  It sounded great in theory but once you took into consideration the ledges-and-ravines topography of the park, the steep slopes on either side of the path at times, the lack of adults and the inexplicably stupid choice for my footwear (high wedge sandals, what?), it was a tense outing.

Our initial strict policing of the kids soon gave way to doing the bare minimum required for survival.  We settled for grabbing kids' hands last second to keep them from slipping into ravines and pulling them down from logs and out of shrubbery by their ankles instead of enforcing the unattainable "maintain a single file line at all times" ideal.

Similarly, the strict "use your half-voice" rule soon morphed into three frazzled adults yelling "I SAID USE YOUR HALF-VOICES YOU'RE GOING TO SCARE ALL THE NATURE" while the kids pulled each others hair and accused each other in their "screaming" voices of squashing the caterpillar (nobody squashed the caterpillar, the caterpillar was perfectly fine, I don't know why I was the only one who could see that.)

On our way back to school, I was posted at the end of the line to collect stragglers.  Half the students fell into this category so I was very busy.  I'm happy to report Lucien stuck cheerfully next to his teacher the entire time but I was kind of bummed about it -- he's the one I wanted to spend time with, not the permanently distracted girl whose collar I had to hold onto because she's always looking straight up at the sky.

I'm pretty sure I rounded them all up and got them back to school but it's entirely possible I left one stuck in a tree trunk somewhere.

I had a weird dream last night.  In it, I said to a group of friends, "Oh, so I have sex with one person dressed like a bunny rabbit and now you're calling me a Plushie?"  just as Alex's boss walked into the room.  I've never met Alex's boss, he's a real head honcho, but the "meeting" idea has recently been floated.

Is the meaning of the dream obvious, as in I'm worried about humiliating myself in front of a big kahuna (understandable, I can be an idiot) or is there something else happening in my strange subliminal mind?

(For the record, I'm not a Plushie)

(Unless there's a Capuchin costume?)

(If you want to share your strange dreams now, I wouldn't feel so vulnerable and strange)

I just spent hours putting together some before-and-afters of Banister Abbey and adding them to this post.  It made this post last for millions of years so I decided it was too much.  I'm going to put them up Thursday instead.  A reason to live!

Cheers to perfect love,
MJ

All I want for Christmas is a ban on assault weapons

Lucien came home Friday with another write-up from school, this time for bending over and smacking his butt in the middle of the lunchroom.  His behavior was called "completely inappropriate" by the lunch lady who reported him. 

I didn't care.  I saw the telltale envelope in his hand as he got off the bus, marked sternly, "To the Parents of Lucien," and knew what it meant.  But all that mattered to me in that moment was I was seeing my six-year old get off the bus on a day when 20 kids on the other side of the country didn't.

That day has changed some things in my mind, to the point where Christmas shopping has ceased and all leftover Christmas money has gone to The Brady Campaign.  Enough is enough, gun people.  Your right to bear arms does not trump my right not to bear arms and feel safe in a public place.  Your right to bear arms does not trump my son's right to receive an education without worry of being executed in his classroom with a legally purchased assault rifle.

I have to believe someday soon we, as a country, will have had enough.  I have to believe someday the gun lobby will lose, that there are only so many times we can bury our loved ones until we rethink our worship of the great American god, The Gun.

I have to believe things will change, that we're not going to ask a classroom of six-and-seven year olds to be martyrs for the Second Amendment.  Because if I don't believe it right now, I'm going to do ridiculous things such as bar my windows and homeschool my kids -- which, as we all know, would find me checked into a mental health institution within 48 hours.

Enough is enough is enough is enough is enough....
MJ

Don't stand so close to me, MJ

Lucien is trying to convince me today is a "special" day at Kindergarten so he gets to go to school naked.  He's pretty adamant about it.  I don't want to think too hard about what kind of person wants to show up in a public place naked because I have to raise that kind of person for a long time yet. 

I realized while riding in an elevator yesterday I've forgotten U.S. elevator standing distance protocol.  In Paris, you were lucky to have that tiny elevator at all, so everyone crammed on with joy, brushing up against each other's body parts and breathing coffee/cigarette breath down each other's necks.  It was a packed, sweaty, writhing mess; Parisian elevators were unfun clothed orgies.

Now when I get on an elevator in the U.S, I'm so used to getting uncomfortably close to my fellow riders, I automatically gravitate to the nearest person and start poking them with my elbows.  Yesterday I got on an elevator and, not realizing it, stood right next to a dude.  He was visibly uncomfortable.  I attempted to ease his elevator anxiety (must be claustrophobia, I thought) by looking up at him and saying "howdy!" That did nothing to alleviate his elevator agony, now completely focused on the small smiley woman standing next to him.  He really hustled off the elevator at his floor.

I realized I'd made an elevator gaff so studied the elevator dynamics closely as I rode the rest of the way to the 24th floor.  Here are the rules -- if you're the first one in the elevator, go stand in a corner.  If you're second, go stand in the other corner.  Third person, pick one of the remaining corners but don't block the buttons unless you're willing to be on button-pressing duty; otherwise someone will brush against you uncomfortably on the way to their button.  Fourth person, go to remaining corner.  Fifth person, stand in the middle as awkwardly as possible.  If any more people than that get on the elevator, the tension becomes palpable.

You should only look at the ceiling, the floor, or your smartphone when riding the elevator.  If there's a dog or small child on the elevator, you should look at them with a bemused expression on your face, even if it's forced.  For the love of God, don't look anyone in the eye.  If you don't obey all these elevator rules, you are a pervert.

OK, I think I got it.  Just give me some time to get used to it again.  I swear I'm not a pervert.  I just lived in Paris for a few years and their ways rubbed off on me, literally, in their elevators.

Other than that, let's see what else is going on... I almost got a parking ticket outside FedEx Kinkos, which was pretty exciting.  The guy only let me off because I came flying across the street with arms waving and put some money in the pay thing.   He shook a pointy finger at me and said, "No one parks for free!  No one parks for free!" and I replied, "Some of us try!  Some of us try!"

Lucien has been selected randomly by Seattle Public Schools to be a participant in a physical fitness survey.  He has to wear a pedometer to count his steps for the next week.  So I was wondering, can pedometers explode?  Because this kid moves in ways this pedometer has likely never seen before.  I don't know how, but The Loosh even manages to run while sitting down. 

He's going to skew the data.  SPS is going to be scratching their heads like, "How come kids are still fat when they're taking a gazillion steps before 9:00 a.m.?"

Good luck out there today everybody,
MJ

Hippies and chronic undressers

We watched the Golden Globes last night.  It was like watching a Golden Globes broadcast beamed down from an alien planet because we didn't know the films, TV shows, or actors mentioned.  After every close-up of a nominee's face, Al and I would say in unison, "Who the hell is that?"  Then we turned off the TV and went to bed because we realized we didn't care.

Speaking of returning ex-pats lost in the homeland,  I am thrilled to announce I've been re-united with my Paris friend, L.A. Mom.  She lives in Seattle now, moved here six months ago.  She's been waiting for me.  We went out for beers Friday night and my face hurt for a full day afterwards because of the laughing. 

L.A. Mom has a crazy job in Seattle.  She's a math teacher but works at a hippie school.   I like hippies, in fact consider myself a hippie enthusiast, but after talking to L.A. Mom I don't think I want them teaching my children.

When I asked about a typical day for her daughter, who attends kindergarten at the (crazy expensive, by the way) hippie school (for free, because she teaches there) she said "Well, they take a long walk." It's her understanding they walk to the park and play with sticks.  They've been building a fort thing for awhile, but have recently discovered homeless people sleeping in it.  (At least there's one beneficial, if completely unintentional, socially-conscious component to the crazy expensive walk to the park.)

L.A. Mom, along with all the other teachers at the school, has to attend regular meetings in which everyone sits in a circle, drinks tea and discusses their feelings.  Sometimes there are presentations.  After the presentations, the teachers are asked to journal and draw a picture expressing how they feel about what they heard.

After a recent talk on the three parts of reproduction (sperm has three parts, egg has three parts, apparently it's more complicated than any of us ever knew, and I have no idea why teachers are talking about this), L.A. Mom didn't know what to draw.  She ended up drawing some circles, hoping it would pass as some circle-of-life sh*t or whatever.  She glanced over at a co-worker's page.  He'd drawn a rainbow.

Rainbow Guy caught her looking at his page so L.A. Mom told him she liked his drawing.  He shrugged, lowered his voice and told her it's what he always draws.  Every time there's a presentation and he's asked to draw his feelings, he just draws a rainbow and everyone tells him it's beautiful.  L.A. Mom and Rainbow Guy are friends now.

I was reunited with another old friend over the weekend, too.  I worked with her back when Al and I were first married.  I was working as a stock trader back then.  I can't really believe it either.

The Loosh and my stock trader friend's son were similar boys energywise before we left for France.  We were happy to discover they still are.  You can barely tell the two boys apart as they smack Al's butt in unison.

My friend's dad used to be an actor and very involved in the local theater scene.  She tells me he's no longer an actor, though;  now he's an "elderly model" and is currently featured in an ad for a clothing line created for chronic undressers. (this is apparently a real affliction in which elderly people can't keep their clothes on.  Horrifying stuff.)  She became aware of his most recent modeling gig when she flipped through a catalog and saw a picture of her dad sitting in a wheelchair, dressed in a shirt that buttoned up the back with a bowl of Cheerios on his lap.

We had a pretty snowstorm in Seattle yesterday.  There's much, much more snow coming, which probably means school closure, which would be a lot of fun if I hadn't jam-packed this week with stuff I MUST DO WITHOUT THEM.  So OK, none of it will get done and life will go on.

I walked down to Rite-Aid yesterday and there, tucked next to the Snuggies and the Pajama Jeans and some product called "The Forever Lazy," I saw this --

Now I know how to answer when someone asks me how French people stay so thin.  I'm going to say "they're willing to bend over to wash their own feet."

You've got to help yourself, America.  Jesus.

Snowmageddon on the way.  I'm going to go draw a picture expressing how I feel about that.
(It's a rainbow)
MJ