I gotta have more Winnebago

I live! Truly, I live. There are no excuses for me being away from the blog except for ALL of the excuses. Things are off the rails here, or at least more so than usual, which is saying a lot because we are not known for calm and measured living.

It is impossible to catch up on all the events of the past few months. There were many happenings -- some very good and some very, very bad -- but after all those things we are still here, still well, still living our best-ish lives as we stagger and stumble into 2018 hoping for good things.

When it comes to blog catch ups, they are usually impossibly long, fairly boring, and involve many pictures but not much insight. This time shall be no different, and will play out like a "recent holiday greatest hits" kind of compilation. Sorry for being unoriginal, let's just do this.

It's probably best to start with Christmas, as it is freshest in my memory so I won't have to make up as many fanciful details. Seattle had a white Christmas this year. Snow on the ground, especially at Christmas, is rare in these parts; we woke up and ran in circles outside, laughing like giddy school children (two of us are actual school children but I hope the simile is not weaker for that fact).

Natani, the dog born in a desert, is a snow fanatic and ran through the yard like a snowplow, mouth open and skimming the ground in parallel lines back and forth to put ALL of the snow into her mouth. Her lawn mowing-type precision surprised me because she is a hot mess when it comes to most other things. She accidentally overturns her food bowl then stares at it confused and whimpering, she tries to jump off the couch and lands on her face, she whines while trying to find her ball under the couch, not realizing the ball is sitting several feet behind her. When it comes to snow, however, attention to detail is important to her.

She also likes to chill in the front window with her paw up on the sill and her ball resting nearby for emotional comfort --

Before Christmas, we took the Winnebago up to Vancouver, B.C. for a couple days. We made the kids try virtual reality games and they both got terribly motion sick. The googly eyes applied to the VR masks made it worth it. For Alex and me, anyway --

We then plopped down at a nearby brewery and told the kids we were going to be there for hours to watch the Seahawks game. Oh, the utter betrayal on their faces when they learned they'd been taken football prisoners. Coco immediately asked to play games on my phone, and not in a nice way --

This is the choosing of our Christmas tree. Alex said, as the tree began to slowly slip from Coco's grip, "Lucien, help her, quick, extend your arm!" and Lucien, because he is The Loosh, extended his arm in the exact perpendicular direction from where it needed to be to catch the tree.

I caught the moment on camera, 

as Lucien cracked himself up with his non-helpfulness 

and the tree fell to the ground.

Our Christmas tree this year was anchored to the wall with a bungee cord because we couldn't get it to stand directly upright in the tree stand.

As Alex hooked the bungee cord to the trunk of our tree in the living room and secured it to the window sill, I said, "Alex, I appreciate your efforts in trying to keep our tree upright but... it's a bungee cord, man." Alex agreed it wasn't the best option but said it was the only thing he could find; we are apparently fresh out of rope and string and other taughter, less stretchy things. I sat in that room with many cups of coffee in the following days and pictured the tree falling over then bouncing up and down at the length of the bungee while squealing, "Whee, I feel so alive!"

Christmas Eve was celebrated at our friends' house with delicious things like ham with cherry sauce and smoked sea bass. The kids played in the snow across the street in an empty parking lot. When you live in the middle of the city, empty parking lots are the substitute for large yards. This particular lot is gated after hours so cars are not a hazard. It's where most of the kids learned to ride bikes, and where scooter races have been known to occur fairly regularly.

We brought a nice bottle of Calvados to share on Christmas Eve (I miss you, France) so suffice it to say, terrible Calvados-inspired dancing to '90s hip-hop happened --

We went to the Nutcracker, where Coco did some impressive dabbing during intermission --

After Christmas Day present opening mania, we climbed into the Winnie B again and ferried to a nearby island, where my sister and sister-in-law live on 12 acres complete with a stable full of horses and an A-frame ski lodge-type house. It's bucolic stuff. We parked the Winnebago on their property and in an attempt to find a level spot, did irreparable damage to a large section of their grass.

We like spending time in the Winnie B, especially in winter. There is something incomparably cozy about waking up in the Winnebago, preferably in a camping spot near the water or nestled amongst a ton of trees, and enjoying a cup of coffee while looking out the window. We dream of scrapping everything and heading off in the Winnie B for years, carrying along only bottled water, a ton of RV-friendly toilet paper, and a dream.

After Christmas we Winnebagoed over to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. It has likely become evident by now that the theme to our holiday break was "I gotta have more Winnebago."

This was our favorite trip in a long time. We camped both at old Fort Worden outside Port Townsend, and the following night in downtown Port Townsend next to the water. Fort Worden is where An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed. It is picturesque with its white barracks and stately old officers' homes surrounding rolling fields of green.

The abandoned, rusted, creaky bunkers at Fort Worden, however, are creepy as hell. I think I impressed my nervous children with my willingness to plunge into empty drippy spaces and straight down pitch dark stairways.

Creepy bunkers.

Coco said, "no."

machine gunnery something

Lucien's photobomb game is on point

(If it sounds familiar, Fort Worden is where Alex and I stayed in the haunted tiny castle and then locked our keys in the RV a couple years ago.)

After Port Townsend, we ferried to Victoria, B.C. Alex was living in Victoria when we met over 20 years ago, and a couple of his dear friends are still there. The female half of the couple made our wedding invitations by hand all those many years ago. The tiny daughter they brought to our wedding is now in college. What the hell is that all about.

Beautiful Victoria

High tea at The Butchart Gardens.

We may not be high tea people.

We were louder than most, and broke two glasses.

Family selfie in front of the 10 lords-a-leapin' from the 12 Days of Christmas display.

We are not sure why the lords were frogs.

old friends,
and a daughter doing something odd

Where to next? I can give Halloween a shout-out because I mentioned in my last post I would write about it and then promptly never did.

I don't really remember what happened there, partially due to the passage of time and partially due to the fact my "Vampire's Kiss" cocktail mix was a little stronger this year. I know we had a lot of fun. I know it was the largest turnout in the six years I've thrown the party and was full of very enthusiastic adults with reliable babysitters at home. The adults in our lives look forward to this event every year like kids do Christmas. Some refuse to leave at the end, clinging to the posts on our front stoop and wailing something about "no, please, the children are there...." It makes for a very late night.

I skipped the tarot card/crystal ball guy this year and instead hired a numerologist to do numerology readings in the TV room. He told me I don't suffer no fools, which I'd love to believe about myself but the truth is I suffer fools all the time.

My costume this year was Frida, of course --

Everyone told me it was a very good costume but I still lost to the guy who came dressed as Edward Scissorhands. He's a surgeon by trade so I felt his costume was a bit on the nose, but must admit (grumble grumble) he won by a longshot.

He may not be invited back next year.

What the hell, let's do more holiday. My mom and dad and brother were here for Thanksgiving. I do not dread spending holidays with my family; I look forward to it. They are a fun group of people and we are all on the same page politically speaking. When I hear of other's Thanksgivings, I realize I am very lucky. While my family was doing a jigsaw puzzle and watching Best in Show, one of my oldest friends was defending the #metoo movement to her Uncle Bert. I hope she had a nice bottle of wine at her fingertips. Or two. Or three.

My parents, brother and I rented a home on the island where Raba and Zee live for the long Thanksgiving weekend. We believe the house was haunted because Natani refused to walk down the back hallway. She would stop several feet away from it, hair raised on the back of her neck, and growl a very low growl as she backed away slowly. To our non-dog eyes, there was nothing there but an empty hallway. So that made for some restful nights.

Raba and Zee's A-frame ski lodge-type bucolic setting home.

They are doing living right.

One more holiday! Just one more! A friend organized a family soccer game New Years Day. It was adults versus kids and several soccer balls were used at the same time "to increase the chances of someone scoring." It was absolute mayhem. Then a football got busted out and tossed into the mix and I just don't even know what was happening out there.

Hot mess soccer

 Some kids didn't fare so well.

The adults were competitive, and came to play.

And nearly all the adults wore puffer jackets.

We are very Seattle in this picture.

It's been a good couple months, blog friends, but not all has been good. I am not yet ready to talk about the parts that aren't good but trust it, as fun as life has been in recent days, nobody escapes the grind without some pain, heartache, fear, and intense anxiety. Or maybe it's just me? I hope it's not just me. That would be lonely.

I'm going to end this with a couple recent Lucien (and one Lucien friend) quotes because these pre-teen boys are always good for a laugh during hard, weird times.

Me: Lucien! I am so excited. I am taking you to my favorite musical this summer!
Him: Which musical?
Me: Les Miserables.
Him: My name is Rob? That sounds like a terrible musical.

Lucien, eating a hot dog: This tastes amazing.
Lucien's friend: Mom, can I have a hot dog, too?
Friend's mom: No
Lucien's friend: OH come on, Mom!
Lucien: Oh, I'm sorry. Did I wake your inner hot dog?

Teacher at school: The human body is about 65% water.
Lucien's friend: So we're basically cucumbers with anxiety?
(We say this one around the house a lot now, bit of a family motto)


Well that was a long and rambling and pretty damn terrible summary of recent holiday happenings. At least you know I'm still alive, and still in love with a Winnebago.

Here's to 2018.

Your loyal though fairly absentee fellow cucumber with anxiety,
MJ

Everything but the kitchen sink

This is a kitchen sink post and a long one at that. I'm throwing everything in this one, none of it connected and none of it relevant to the news of the day.  Thank God for that; nobody wants to further discuss the news of the day because wow, what a shitshow.  

So school's back in session. My kids are older and wiser, their fresh little smiley faces heading out the door for a great new school year.  A friend on Facebook circulated the following article to help us "prepare healthy lunches!" for the new school year.  Brimming with back-to-school energy and enthusiasm, I clicked on the link.  I found the article immensely helpful.  (It's hard to tell in writing but that last sentence was sarcasm at its most exaggerated.)

http://goop.com/kids-lunch-recipes-from-chef-moms

As I stand late at night in the kitchen packing the following day's lunches, I conjure the following phrases: "Hudson has always loved Asian flavors" and "Maca is a Peruvian superfood; look for it in powdered form at health food stores" and my personal favorite, "The slightly sweet addition of mirin, a small amount of sugar, and (optional) dashi broth, transforms eggs in the most comforting of ways."

I then send a couple quick faux apologies up to my kids asleep in their beds and toss a couple stale bagels, devoid of cream cheese because we're out again, into their lunchboxes.

Maybe I should try packing lunches like Goop suggests just one time. It wouldn't be for health reasons; it would be more for entertainment. I like to picture Lucien's face should he crack open his lunch to find a Japanese sweet omelet and some lemon tamari dipping sauce for his pickled vegetables.  I can hear the incredulous "WHAT THE HELL, MOM......what is this pretentious crap......well, at least the eggs are comforting with that sweet addition of mirin."

I'm not entirely immune. I will admit to getting sucked into a tiny bit of parental overkill.  Coco recently had a birthday and requested a circus party.  I booked a party at SANCA, our local School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (we got it all in Seattle, trust it) and vowed to "keep it simple."  I was not going to bake anything, cook anything.  I was going to buy a tray of cupcakes, a few bags of pretzels, maybe some juice boxes if I was feeling generous.  Have some fun, throw a few bags of popcorn at them, get it done, that was the plan.

Then Coco said quietly, "Oh. I was hoping for a real birthday cake" and something immediately switched inside me.  Of course she needed a real birthday cake!  Yes!  Baking and lots of it!  Now!

I'm weird like that, can be very all-or-nothing.  I'm either in front leading the parade or I'm hiding in the corner hissing at people.  Hanging out in the middle doesn't last long for me so I went from "I'm not baking a damn thing and they can deal with it" to "I'm gonna bake the best birthday cake that girl has ever seen, it's gonna blow her dang mind" in a matter of seconds.

The next events were as follows, in chronological order --

*Log on to Pinterest*
*Search for a circus cake*
*Regret logging on to Pinterest*
*Feel bad about myself*

Well way to go, Lucas, lucky you.

PS. The number on top tells me Lucas is turning 1.
He is never going to remember this cake
which tells me you are not baking this cake for Lucas at all.

What is a Hezry?
Do you think they just mis-spelled Henry, accidentally flipped the "N" on its side?

 I like to think they did -- less perfect.
(Hez(n)ry, by the way, is also turning 1, though this cake seems more reasonable)

what fresh hell is this.

Pinterest is full of overachievers. I quickly abandoned Pinterest and instead Googled "easy birthday cake recipes" where I stumbled across the rainbow cake idea.  Perfect.  I threw myself into its creation.  A rainbow cake is a six layer cake, each layer a different color of the rainbow.  It took a long time. There was fondant and sprinkles involved. I was sweating profusely by the end.

It ended up being the tallest cake in existence because I didn't shave down my layers sufficiently.  It tipped over halfway through the cutting and serving, no longer able to stand on its own.  It was a top heavy rainbow sonofabitch.

But Coco was happy.  And I do love to see my Coco girl happy.

Speaking of Coco, we're a little concerned.  Alex took Coco to a video arcade recently that had one of those claw machines -- the machines that are rigged to rarely, if ever, let you win anything.  Still, she tried.  And tried.

Coco had been given a set amount of money to use at the arcade and it was dwindling quickly.  Alex tried to reason with her, explained the claws are intentionally weak-springed so they don't hold onto toys very well and suggested maybe it was time to try another game. She stopped speaking to Alex after that, stopped making eye contact, just kept pumping quarters into the claw game.  I soon thereafter received a text that said, "Help. Coco is like a degenerate gambler."

She came home with a stuffed animal she won from the claw game and a smug smile on her face. Coco has an iron will -- which should bode well for her, except that sometimes she can also be unreasonable.    

Speaking of gambling, Alex and I went to Snoqualmie Casino awhile ago with a couple friends.  We are not casino people but thought it would be fun to try something different. Even better, we decided to take the casino bus from Seattle instead of driving.  We pictured the casino bus as being a fun time -- champagne flowing and upbeat music playing for festive bus riders and whatnot. The casino bus was a total party in our minds.

The casino bus is not a total party.  It is the opposite.  The casino bus is a silent, kind of depressing thing full of mostly elderly people, half of whom are asleep.

The casino itself was also not fun.  After our initial shocked gasps at all the smoking happening inside the casino (it's on a Native American reservation so they make their own smoking rules) we promptly bought a pack of cigarettes, giggling like teenagers giddy with rule breaking.  None of us have smoked a cigarette in years so we all immediately coughed up a lung and took turns saying, "Oh my god, this is so gross."  We tossed the pack but still -- rebels!

Alex very quickly lost a lot of money at the blackjack table so he retreated to the corner with us where we played nickle slots and drank alcohol until it was time to grab the bus back to Seattle.  If you think the casino bus is depressing on the way to the casino, just wait until the trip back home. That is one silent bummer of a loser bus.

Here are more happenings in the past few months I never wrote about.  It's a lengthy list, forgive me, but I feel compelled to document these things, even if just in a crappy iPhone photo way.

The kids and I met this guy walking his pet lizard on a leash in South Lake Union --

it was not a fast walk for man and lizard, more an aimless mosey

We went on our annual camping trip with our friends, no wind storm this time --

Then we went camping with our friends again --

North Cascades National Park, by the way, is stunning

We played euchre at night by a lantern covered in a beanie hat --

One evening, Bobo fell asleep like this as I was putting Lucien to bed. We laughed at him pretty hard; he was barely hanging onto that log, just look at his little legs --

By morning, he had fallen off but was still asleep.

Bearded dragons are the chillest of animals

I learned how to play mahjong with the ladies--

and now I am hooked

We still have a sweet and funny though frustrating dog --

Natani the Navajo dog is not allowed on the couch

but she likes being on the couch very much

and sneaks up onto it at every opportunity.

We had a back-to-school party at our house involving a ukulele band --

We ate tacos, sang along, later had a water balloon fight in the yard  

We called it the back to school taco-lele party

and it was glorious.

Our friend Seattle Dad wore this amazing hat that one time --

Yep, I'm still going.  I still have more.

I went up to the top of Smith Tower for the third time, for the last Tower Sessions concert. The Tower Sessions are private concerts, held once a month in the apartment at the top of historical Smith Tower --

I will miss this concert series.  

I will miss the music but will miss most of all climbing all those ladders
and spiral staircases and catwalks 

to get to the very top.  

Below is a picture of the gorgeous Smith Tower, completed in 1914.  It was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River until the 1930's when something taller was built in Kansas, I think  --

The stunning private "lighthouse"apartment at Smith Tower is the pyramid shape at the top.  It's owned by a tiny dynamo of a woman named Petra and her children, and is where the concert series was held.  The glowing glass ball at the very very tippy top is where we were for these next couple pictures. It's a long way to climb and a small hole to squeeze through to get up into the glass globe but if you can make it, it's worth the effort --

My inlaws were recently here for a visit.  My mother-in-law had a birthday during their stay and we celebrated by inviting some friends for dinner, including a messy though delicious guest named Dungeness Crab, which we ripped apart like the disgusting animals we are.  I love the taste of crab but the process of eating it can be unsettling.

Alex and I took off for a few days while my in-laws took care of the kid wrangling.  We took the RV over to Port Townsend, a picturesque Victorian town on the Olympic Peninsula.

We stayed in a mini castle at nearby Fort Worden.  The "castle" was an odd place.  It was once a single family home with a single bedroom so we were the only ones in it for the night.  As soon as we entered, I said, "This place feels weird." Later, as we walked around the grounds outside the castle, I said, "It feels like someone's watching us, do you see anybody?"  Alex concurred, said he felt a little twitchy and tense himself.

On a whim, I looked up the castle on my phone --

You betcha it's haunted!  

Or so say some people. 

It was not a great night of sleep.

We spent one night in the castle then switched to the nearby Fort Worden campground on the beach where we promptly locked our keys inside the RV.  The tow truck driver our insurance company sent as part of our roadside assistance package couldn't jimmy the window enough to get the wedge thing and the metal thing in to pop the lock.

The tow truck driver scratched his head and mentioned he knew a guy who was "good with locks" in town.  It's not as shady as it sounded at first -- the lock guy is a retired police detective who now works part time as a locksmith.  He was also one of the most cheerful guys I've ever had the pleasure of coming across; he looked a bit like John Denver with that round shiny face and big smile.

Smiley John Denver Lock Guy got into our RV in less than ten seconds using a pair of tweezers and a tiny pick.  We did not give him our home address.  He seemed very nice but still, not taking any chances there.

Fort Worden as a whole is kind of an eerie place.  It's an old fort abandoned after WWII and turned into a state park, and is mostly empty now that we're headed into the off season. Although eerie, it's a cool place. You can stay in the old barracks and officers' homes at Fort Worden, and have a nice meal and a drink in the old jail.

If it looks vaguely familiar, Fort Worden is also where An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed -- and now we're all thinking about a beautiful shirtless young Richard Gere.  At least I know I am.

OK, I think I'm done now.  That was a lot of catching up.  As for our Mexico City news, it's more complicated than not complicated.  As of right now, there are no openings in the international schools but there "may" be openings in the near future.  This makes it very difficult to plan.

Applications are filed with a handful of schools and now we wait.  If the schools come through, we're gone in the new year, perhaps with very little advance notice.  If they don't come through, sorry, Seattle suckers, you're stuck with us.  Or at least you're stuck with me and the kids and you'll see Alex every other weekend.  Ouch.


All righty, off to tackle those homemade sushi roll lunches,
HA HA HA HA HA
MJ