A thin layer of drywall dust

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.

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.

I think my dog broke.

She sleeps like this sometimes.
She is one crazy goddamn dog.

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.

Banister Abbey is a labor of love and six years in, we are still laboring. Most of the big decisions have been made for the master bath project 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.

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.

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.

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 --

-- and choose which kid to wake up to use the jack-n-jill bathroom between their rooms --

Choose your door wisely.

Choosing the door means means choosing the kid

who scowls at you the next morning over breakfast

and loves you slightly less.

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.

That's the furnace lurking

inside the bathroom/closet.

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.

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 (still Lucien's favorite birthday present ever and a happy memory, especially the escaped crickets) 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 --

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!"

And then we're like, "GAH!"
And he's like "OMG!"

And we're like, "YOU'RE ALIVE!"
And he's like, "OF COURSE I AM."

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."

Sorry, dude. Live on, majestic lizard. 

Insult to injury,
there is also a thin layer of drywall dust on Bobo.
MJ

NPR and ABBA

I 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.

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.

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.

(And now I'm reminded of Angel and Dorita and my giant chip-n-dip. I haven't seen Angel and Dorita in years. I hope they're doing just fine and still cracking each other up somewhere.)

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.

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 --

And now, after a few weeks of progress, it looks like this! --

House progress is sometimes so slow it appears to be moving backwards.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our mom/daughter date involved Mamma Mia 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.

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.

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 Mamma Mia and hugging a stranger even while still humming "Waterloo."

(I just turned to Coco and said, "Hey, remember when we got up and danced at Mamma Mia?" and she looked confused and said, "Huh?" Oh well, so much for that.)

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.

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.

And yes, it's happened before, the too-cold-for-propane-to-work thing, 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."

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."

We ended up ditching the Winnie B in a remote parking lot and getting a hotel room.

This is where we left her.

It was such a bad idea.

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.

So cold. So. Cold.

But look at how pretty it is. You are forgiven, Sun Peaks, a million times, you are forgiven --

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.

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.

Seattle Moxie Forever!
MJ

Kafka is a riot

The bad news is I'm guilty of blog neglect.  The good news is I've been neglectful because there's so much incredible fun livin' going on around here.

exhibit a

For example, the kids and I have recently taken up geocaching.  Geocaching, to most participants, is an exciting worldwide treasure hunt using GPS coordinates to find random hidden stuff stashed all over the place.  For me and my two kids and my finicky inaccurate GPS, however, geocaching is being lost in the woods for two hours, walking in circles, and never finding what you're looking for.

We knew, thanks to a clue on the geocache website, that the thing was hidden in a fake rock at the base of a tree.  We eventually began kicking rocks under every tree we passed in a desperate attempt to find the thing and feel successful.  Trust me, you do not realize how many rocks are under trees until you start looking for a specific one under a specific one.

In other fun news we lost the Super Bowl.  We threw a Super Bowl party that was really exciting and energy-filled right up until the end of the stupid game.  Our guests were so upset, so desperate to flee and nurse their wounds in private, they left within thirty seconds of the last play. They left in such a rush and in such emotional states, two people left without their shoes.  Sad barefoot football fans roaming the streets, that's what that day did to us.

We're mostly over the loss but it's hard because our house continues to mock our pain.  Every morning we come downstairs to this festive bunch of Seahawks balloons which, for some upsetting reason, refuse to die.  I could pop them but I paid a lot of money for them so can't bring myself to do that. Perhaps I'll let Coco play nearby with a ladder and a sharp knife.

perky as ever

Alex and I went to see a band Thursday night.  Sonny and the Sunsets are a fun band but their opening act was a real stinker.  It was a solo lady with a guitar who apparently kissed her boyfriend a bunch of times.  I am assuming this because she sang a song in which the sole lyrics were "I kissed my boyfriend I kissed my boyfriend I kissed my boyfriend."

Things took a turn for the worse after that.  I think her boyfriend dumped her and got a new girlfriend because the next song's lyrics were "Jessie's got a new girl Jessie's got a new girl Jessie's got a new girl" sung over melancholy chords while wearing a dark pair of sunglasses. Jessie was probably not into being kissed 24 hours a day and needed some space.

Alex and I felt awesome being out late with the band-listening crowd.  Band-listening people wear perfectly worn-in jeans and vintage corduroy jackets with ironic patches on the back like "Pete Peterson's Family Friendly Gun Shop!" Indeed, it was fun to feel part of the scene again but then we made the mistake of leaning against the back wall.  We immediately began dozing off from the overwhelming fatigue our aged bodies were experiencing.

We went home halfway through the set, leaving all the hipsters wearing overalls and women with ombre shaded violet hair behind.  It's OK to try to be young again but it's also OK to be true to your damn selves and get out when your feet start to ache from all the standing.

we came.  we saw.  we left early.

I'm still learning how to throw pottery on a wheel.  I'll let you know when I make something that doesn't make people laugh out loud upon seeing it.

I'm also in a writing class.  I needed a boost for my Paris book writing, needed to shake off the stagnant place in which I found myself and mix it up a little.  I enrolled in a humor writing class, first class was last week.

Right off the bat, immediately after roundtable introductions, our teacher told us to re-write the first paragraph of The Metamorphosis by Kafka but make it HILARIOUS.  We would then read our paragraphs out loud.  It was strongly insinuated if we didn't make our teacher laugh, we were failures. He gave us ten minutes for this exercise which, when re-writing Kafka as uproarious comedy, doesn't seem like enough.

That was quite a bonding experience.  We scribbled furiously, occasionally stopping to glance at one another and silently mouth swear words in wide-eyed panic.  I re-wrote The Metamorphosis in first person and turned myself into an ant, awakening in my room to the sudden overwhelming desire to lift a Buick.  The teacher laughed so I didn't fail.  Not yet anyway.

Work continues on Banister Abbey.  Supermodel Neighbor is here again. He now carries enough authority in the house to give my children stern talking-tos when necessary and has his own shelf in the refrigerator. He's family.

S.N. is currently building stair railings for our two flights of stairs.  It's a momentous time -- Banister Abbey is finally going to have banisters.


As a reference, this was the 3rd floor stairway when we first viewed the house nearly three years ago --

 Welcome to your new home
we strongly suggest never going upstairs

Before we moved in, we had a temporary railing made of splintery 2x2s installed so nobody would fall off the stairs and die on their way up to the office --

But now, after just a few weeks of Supermodel Neighbor cursing repeatedly, here's where we are --

Never mind the blue painters tape.  I'm in the process of priming and painting the unfinished newel posts and skirts.  It's still a work in progress but trust it, it's going to have pizazz.

The balusters and hand rail used above are originally from the main staircase. They are original to the home, circa 1904, and were located here when we first saw the house --

they don't make them that awesome anymore

Now regarding the picture at the beginning of this post --

Despite being the only person in the room -- in fact the only person on the first floor -- when the lamp was snapped in two, Coco still claims absolutely no knowledge of events.

Punk

My apologies for neglecting the blog.
In my defense, it's very difficult to blog when I'm lost in the woods.
MJ

No dice, pumpkin spice

Halloween is over so I can have a life again until next week when I start prepping for Thanksgiving. I will then have a brief life again until Christmas preparations begin, which will be alarmingly soon after the Thanksgiving meal has been consumed.

My grocery shopping for our annual Halloween party revealed America's perplexing obsession with all things pumpkin flavored and pumpkin scented.  There were pumpkin waffles, pumpkin lip balm, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin marshmallows.  I didn't investigate too thoroughly but I wonder how far it goes. I wonder if there are pumpkin flavored hot dogs.  I wonder if there are pumpkin scented suppositories, to remind you of Grandma's pumpkin pie when you take your butt medicine.

We need to get a hold of ourselves because if you truly cut open a pumpkin and take a sniff of the insides, or god forbid taste them, the experience will be more akin to day-old cat vomit than the deliciously warm and comfy scent those marketing geniuses have concocted.

Banister Abbey Parents Gone Wild Halloween 2014 was the best one yet.  It was the year I finally bought my own beer tap.  It was also the year I made sure to set our fire extinguisher on the counter before the party began.  I love my friends but they are definitely capable of burning down my house so it's best to have that thing handy.

I made the worms again

We had over 50 people this year, more than we've ever had before, and they were all enthusiastic, fully costumed, fully on board.  I dressed as Elvis Costello and didn't set my guitar down all night.  I couldn't.  My costume became nebulous without the guitar, something between a Blues Brother and a 1940s era hit man.  I smacked a lot of friends in their chests and shoulders with my guitar as I walked through the party but I think it was worth it to uphold my vision.

It's two Elvises and two White Stripes

Alex was a giraffe --

Animal costumes were popular this year

but what is up with that eagle cow?

A tarot card reader sat in the TV room and gave readings all night, some of which were life changing and had people crying on their way out of the room.  (That could have been the booze, though; too much of the hard stuff seems to have the same effect.) Our friends reported the tarot reader was amazing and right on point, minus the one lackluster review from a wife whose husband had just been told to come out of the closet.

Whoops.  I hope they don't come to the party next year costumed as a divorced couple.

has your life changed yet, Seattle Mom?

The final revelers left near 2:00 a.m. after one guest yelled, "You guys, seriously, MJ calls 911 all the time.  Believe me, she will call 911 on her own party if we don't leave."  I then placed the phone back down gently, grateful someone knew me so well, and understood who I am, at my core.

Here are my kids on actual Halloween, with a Victorian ghost up top --

Halloween

the only holiday that doesn't take itself seriously

exhibit A: my boy is a piece of bacon

As for other recent events, Coco had a starring role in her preschool's class play.  The play was based on an ancient theme, one that has plagued mankind for ages -- Coco had grown a pumpkin that was too big and she couldn't figure out how to get it off the vine.

One by one the other kids came by with helpful suggestions. There was a lot of tugging on the pumpkin -- a little melodramatically overacted, if you ask me.  After the 15th round of tugging and pulling and shrugging of tiny shoulders, Alex leaned over to me and whispered, "Someone give these kids a decent hacksaw and we're done here."

At the end they decided if they all pulled together they could get the pumpkin off the vine.  I guess it's necessary to suspend one's disbelief when watching a preschool play because I don't think even 20 tiny kids pulling together could rip a pumpkin the size of a Volkswagen off a 12-inch diameter vine.

I hit a parked car a couple days ago.  That was the start of a bad day.  Drop-off in front of Lucien's school is always a mess.  Parents are supposed to drive north down the street in front of the school to drop off their kids but there's always some dumb parent trying to come south.  You have to move over as far as you can to let the stupid idiot through. I moved over as far as I could which, I now know, was too far.  I pushed the limits of what was possible according to the parked truck I broadsided.

Lucien, helpful little soul he is, started yelling from the backseat, "OH MY GOD MOM STOP! STOP!  YOU'RE HITTING THAT CAR, MOM, YOU'RE HITTING THAT CAR" to which I replied through clenched teeth yet at full volume (I'm amazing) "I'M AWARE I'M HITTING A CAR RIGHT NOW, LUCIEN, THANK YOU."  The crumply crunchy screechy sound was my first clue, how about you, son?  What was your first indication the morning had gone to hell?

I left a note on the truck, not only because it was the right thing to do but because I knew Lucien would be running his mouth about it all day at school.  If I hit-and-runned it, it would take mere seconds for the school to track down the culprit thanks to the wise guy in 3rd grade.  I have no morals, really.

The truck guy hasn't called yet so fingers crossed he likes the modifications I've made to his vehicle.  Mine looks much worse, by far.  The entire side is torn up.  I may not get it fixed because it makes me feel kind of badass, gives me a little street cred, makes people fear me.

I returned from the school drop-off debacle to find Supermodel Neighbor (he's here working on the house again, both kids now believe him to be an uncle) pacing the house.  He told me he couldn't find his jacket, which he wouldn't worry about too much except his wallet was in the front pocket.  We'd gone out the night before to a friend's stand-up comedy competition (so fun).  We both remember him wearing his jacket home; it had been raining and we'd run to the car with jackets over our heads.  It had to be in the house somewhere, there was no other option.

So we ransacked it.  We tore it apart room by room all the while muttering it didn't make any sense. Then we went outside to search the car, which is when Supermodel Neighbor saw the torn-up side of my vehicle.  "What the hell....?"  he said and I said,  "Oh yeah, I hit a truck earlier,"  Then he opened the passenger side door and recoiled in horror, "WHAT THE HELL...?"  "Oh yeah." I said, "I forgot, Oscar (my dog) also threw up in the car this morning.  I should probably clean that up."

Supermodel Neighbor looked at me funny then, like he wanted to get in his car and drive back to Portland at that point but couldn't.  Because I had his wallet somewhere.

On a whim I called Alex to ask him if he had, for some unimaginable reason, taken Supermodel Neighbor's jacket to work.  And of course he had.  He was trying to return it to a Halloween Party reveler at work who had forgotten his jacket at our house thanks to the too-strong but delicious "Rosemary's Baby" punch.  Alex saw a strange jacket thrown over the back of a chair that morning, grabbed it and and hopped on his bike, whistling, believing he was doing a very good thing indeed.

The wallet was still in the pocket even after its ride to Corporate America.  I breathed easily again until I went to pick up Coco at school and stepped in a giant pile of dog poop -- dog must have been the size of a rhino -- right outside the school's front door.  A friend, who had been in touch with me via text all morning and knew of my struggles, witnessed this.  She went back inside the building and gathered up Coco's things while whispering to her and smoothing her hair, "Now be a good girl for Mommy, she's a mess today."

In good news, my pottery wheel instructor told me I was "a natural born potter."  I'll hold onto that nugget of goodness as I jettison my favorite pair of shoes towards the curb because I am never getting the dog sh*t out of all those crevices on the bottom.

That's mine in a nutshell.  How's yours?
MJ

baaaaad business

Our annual adults-only Banister Abbey Halloween party is happening in a week and a half.  The weeks leading up to this event are tense ones in our house, especially for the children.  Lucien and Coco come home from long days at school only to be confronted by objects like these:

The kids are also fed things like this for dinner while I stand over them and ask, "Do these look like bloody severed fingers to you?"

Why aren't you guys eating?

The kids have been awfully jumpy lately.

I hired a tarot card reader for this year's party.  It was the first time I'd interviewed a tarot card reader and I had no idea what to ask.  I figured my opening question should be, "Are you full of sh*t?" hoping the fakes and crackpots would then hang their heads in shame, shuffle their feet and mumble, "Dang, you got me."  It seemed as good a place to start as any.

I didn't end up asking that.  Instead, as I sipped my grande americano at my favorite Starbucks, I was treated to a fascinating history of the tarot and how it works for this gentleman in particular.  He seemed completely sane and passionate about his tarot work.  And bonus -- he can talk to trees!  That was welcome news; I've got an Alder out back that's been reclusive lately and I'd like to know what's bugging it.

In my search for Halloween party entertainment, I also talked to a numerologist who gave me a reading over the phone.  He pegged me, was right on the nose in his assessment of who I am as a person, yet I still don't believe in numerology.  It shouldn't have surprised him when I didn't hire him -- he had just told me five minutes earlier I was a born cynic and very difficult to sway.

In other news, this is what Lucien chose to wear for his school picture day --

the bowtie really takes it over the top

And I made a bowl-like object in my pottery class --

And Supermodel Neighbor has saved the day regarding the continuing work on Banister Abbey.  He may live in Portland now but he has heeded my long distance plea for help several times and remains my most loyal and unbroken contractor.  (I've broken several other contractors, you see, and have no idea where they've scampered off to because they're very good hiders.)

For weeks now my house has smelled like wood stain and bacon -- wood stain because Supermodel Neighbor and I have conditioned/dyed/stained/sealed several new doors and miles of new wood trim, and bacon because it's delicious.

Here's a couple before and afters to celebrate this fumey period in our lives.  The kitchen has always bothered me because everything is new.  The previous owner left no hint of the original character of the kitchen when he remodeled it.  So we decided to fake the character.  Thanks to Supermodel Neighbor's knowledge and his continued gentle redirection of MJ when she bought the wrong product (often), I learned brand new wood can instill old character when finished properly.

Before

After

The previous owner also installed cheap hollow-core doors all over the place.  We are one-by-one taking those down and replacing them with five-panel fir doors, as the gods intended it to be in houses as old as Banister Abbey.

Before

After

It's good to have loyal unbreakable friends in the carpentry business.

The Seahawks played last weekend.  It didn't end well.

Alex and I, for reasons we don't understand other than we're pretty random, ended up at an Ethiopian sports bar for the game.  We were the only non-Ethiopians in the place.  The air was thick with accents and the smell of Ethiopian food.  Al and I have never been the only white people in a bar before.  Nobody seemed to give much of a rip about the whiteness in their midst so we happily settled in for the long haul and ordered some of that Ethiopian spongy bread smothered in lamb and onions.

It's not what I would consider "bar food" but I'm not Ethiopian so what the hell do I know.

The game was abysmal and depressing but the company was good.  One man sitting next to us was such a fanatical Seahawks fan he could not sit still.  Whenever the Hawks eff'd up (often) he began pacing back and forth next to our table, wringing his hands and shouting, "That's just baaaad business!  That's just baaaaad business!"

Also, when the Seahawks challenged a catch made by the Cowboys -- it was obviously a legitimate catch and was a dumb thing to challenge -- the guy paced around waving his arms and  yelling, "Awwww no! That was a love-ly catch, a love-ly catch."

I now use both these phrases, much to Alex's delight, often and repetitively and loudly.


Al:   "MJ, I can't find my wallet."
MJ:  "That's just baaad business!  That's just baaad business!"

Al:   "MJ, can you help me lift this heavy cabinet that has fallen on me and crushed my spleen?"
MJ:   "That was a love-ly catch... a love-ly catch!"

Al:  "MJ, should we diversify our stock portfolio?"
MJ:  "That's just baaad business!  That's just baaad business!"
Al:  "Really?  Perhaps you're right.  Let's just keep all our money in that one stock."
MJ:  "Uh-oh."


I'm very busy, have to get back to curating my Halloween party playlist and perfecting bloody fingers and entrails and various other disgusting things nobody's going to eat because I am truly that good.
MJ