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

Moving Bodies

Alex and Lucien ran a 5K last weekend.  The forecast said it would be a beautiful crisp day but when we awoke at 5:45 a.m. to get the guys out of the house, it was just damn cold.

The plan was for Coco and I to meet Lucien and Alex at the finish line so I could share the glorious moment of my firstborn finishing his first race.  But someone (Alex) forgot the plan.  Instead of texting me as they neared the finish line so I could get into place, he chose to cross the finish line discreetly and take Lucien inside for hot chocolate, leaving me outside in the cold to wonder where the hell everybody was.

Here's a nice picture of people finishing the race but they are not related to me

I was outside for a long time, walking Coco up and down in the stroller to keep warm, glancing at the finish line from time to time, looking for my boys.  I became concerned when the race participants became decidedly more unhealthy.  There were several who sat down immediately upon completion and refused to move.  One had diabetes and was taken to the medical tent.  One rather out-of-shape woman cried and yelled for water.

Then there were tourists wearing fanny packs crossing the finish line.  They posed for jokey "crossing the finish line ha ha!" photos and yelled at their friends in a foreign language so they would notice how funny they were being.

When the 15K race participants began crossing the finish line,  I thought, "Oh holy hell what have we done to Lucien?"   If the out-of-shapers and the diabetics and the German tourists wearing sandals AND the 15K participants have lapped him, perhaps this was a bad idea. 

Then I got a text -- "We're in Bay Pavillion!  Lucien finished in half an hour!  He did great! He's had five hot chocolates now! Come pick us up!"

It was an epic communication breakdown, suckas.

I wasn't happy upon entering Bay Pavilion but I was still very proud of The Loosh.  He didn't slow down, didn't stop, just ran that entire 5K like a boss.  He wasn't even tired as evidenced by his jumping on the couch all afternoon.  We've now signed him up for track and field where he will likely receive the nickname, "That Hyperactive Fast Kid."

Have you guys heard of Car2Go?  I learned of it from Blonde Seattle Mom, who knows everything.  We went out for drinks last week but it started raining so we didn't want to walk home.  Blonde Seattle Mom said, "No problem, we'll just grab a Car2Go!"  She made some magic happen by waving a card around and suddenly the three of us were crammed into a Smart Car and she was driving us the ten blocks home.

What's happening?  Can someone tell me what's happening?

The best part of Car2Go is you don't have to make reservations and you don't have to return it where you got it.  You can just ditch it wherever you want: sidewalk, tree, wherever.  It's a Smart Car so you could probably put it in your pocket and carry it around for awhile if you wanted, too.

This isn't an endorsement, I'm just recounting another unexpected occurrence in my life (my favorite kind of occurrence).  I have now signed up for Car2Go and look forward to popping a wheelie in a Smart Car in the near future.

Our neighbors are exactly like us;  they are suckers who purchased a beautiful old "fixer" home (theirs was formerly full of artists who turned out to be squatters, remember them?)  and now spend all their time fixing it and looking stressed.  We share house fixing tips such as, "this sh*t's f*cking hard and takes forever" and wave at each other weakly across the driveway.  They are oftentimes wearing large gas masks -- which reminds me, I should really ask them about that.

As I put Lucien to bed the other night, I glanced out the window and realized people who fix old houses can sometimes look like serial killers --

Whatcha doin' in that plastic-covered room with that spotlight and giant garbage bag, neighbor?

Not that I'm one to talk.  Banister Abbey recently looked like this --

All of us fixers end up with Dexter rooms sooner or later

What the above photo doesn't capture is the dank smell of wet drywall plaster.  Also, the several huge fans set at high speed that sounded like airplane engines all night long and made the plastic billow, flap and ripple in creepy ways. Downstairs was terrifying for two solid weeks.

 

Our dining room was no longer inviting

 And the refrigerator no longer hospitable

Since the plastic has come down, my life has revolved around priming and painting all the new drywall.  I haven't made it to the gym in the past few weeks but like to think I'm getting some good "Karate Kid" workouts -- roll on, roll off, up ladder, down ladder, brush on, brush off, lean in, lean out too far from top of ladder, fall off ladder, get back on ladder, repeat. 

I can probably kick some arrogant blonde guy's butt right now and don't even know it.

In happy news, Coco is a Butterfly Princess and if you tell her otherwise, she will kick you in the shins --

Coco is also now taking a ballet class. There's a special place in heaven for people who teach ballet to small children.  It's the most accurate example of the phrase "it's like herding cats" I've ever witnessed.

Coco's not too bad, but overall the girls in our class are the most uncoordinated group of children you've ever seen.  If the teacher tells them to skip, they lumber across the room like mini-Frankensteins, often with one leg dragging behind them and seemingly no understanding of the mechanics of their own body.  Most of the girls stop mid-lumber to pick their noses or sit on the floor to scoot around on their butts.

One girl is so hyperactive she runs back and forth across the room the entire class.  I don't understand how she makes so much noise doing so; all I can figure is her tiny feet are made of lead.  For another girl, jumping straight up in the air has proven quite a challenge; she kind of lunges to the side as the teacher looks at her with stupefied concern.

There's one little boy in the class.  Apparently the teacher and the boy's father had a difference in opinion recently because I overheard him say, "He's a little boy! Just let him hold his penis for Pete's sake!"  I'm going to stay out of that one.

There goes Ole Leadfoot

As our children make a mess of ballet, we parents sit against the wall and laugh so hard we cry.  We bury our heads in our arms so the kids can't see.  So far no obvious prima ballerinas have emerged amongst the 2-3 year old set but I'll keep you posted.

Skipping is hard,
MJ