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

Crime, Auctions and Fish Parties

Ain't no party like a pumpkin party

If you're a parent of a school-aged child, you know the joys of curriculum night.  Curriculum night is when you go to your kid's school in the evening and squeeze into tiny chairs underneath trapezoids and parallelograms dangling from the ceiling by strings.  Then the teachers tell you all the ways they're going to force learning into your kid's brain.

I appreciate the teachers at our school but sometimes they offer unsolicited advice.  At curriculum night they told us, "9:00 p.m. is too late a bedtime for a second grader."  My impulse was to raise my hand and ask,  "What if I put my second grader to bed at the respectable hour of 8:00 but he's still awake in his bed at 9:00?  Should I then club him over the head like a baby seal to get him his much needed rest?" 

In a newsletter sent home last month the teachers asked parents to make sure girls wear tights or shorts underneath their skirts because glimpses of underwear were distracting the boys and "it's never too early to teach our girls a little modesty."  Finally, an answer to the nagging question "at what age do we start teaching girls they're responsible for boys' behavior?"  The answer is seven-ish!

Ugh ugh ugggghhhhh.  Hey Lucien, if you catch a glimpse of a girl's underwear, it's probably embarrassing for her so don't make a big deal about it and get your eyes back on your work where they belong.  Personal responsibility and being respectful of others -- internalize it.

So how many 911 calls have you made in the past 18 months?  I've made four.  One was the suspected bomb around the 4th of July last year.  One was the angry guy walking down the middle of our street yelling and throwing rocks.  One was the person who plowed over our traffic island in the middle of the night and knocked down the tree which had been lovingly planted there by our green thumb neighbor.

The fire department came and chopped down the tree because it was bent over and lying in the middle of the road.  They chucked it onto the front lawn of Banister Abbey where I found my sad neighbor standing over it the next morning.  He asked if I cut it down and I was slightly offended.  I admit it didn't look good, tree being in my yard and all, but why would I cut down a tree in the middle of the night?  I'm a very important room mother with numerous mysterious responsibilities.  I must get my rest.

(This just in -- as room mother I was recently asked to purchase several pumpkins with which to decorate the preschool classroom.  I accomplished my mission and stand at the ready awaiting further instructions.)  

My fourth 911 call was this past weekend.  I looked out my window around midnight while brushing my teeth and saw three young men trying to take down our street sign.  They threw rocks at it and climbed on each others backs trying to get at it.  When they began taking blocks from our retaining wall and stacking them at the base of the pole,  I said "OK THAT'S QUITE ENOUGH, A**HOLES."  I called my friends at 911, "Yo, it's MJ again."

Our city neighborhood is a hotbed of strange activity at all times.  We've had friends who live in more suburban neighborhoods ask, "Do you feel SAFE in this neighborhood?"  I would be sleeping with one eye open tonight if I was a street sign but other than that, yeah, I feel OK.

Maybe their question is as surprising to us as ours is to them when we go visit their neighborhood -- "What the hell do you guys DO out here?"  Here in the C.D. we watch dozens of people walk past daily and say "hi."  We walk a handful of minutes to restaurants, bars, theaters, and live music venues.  We stare at a city skyline from up close.  And yes, we call 911 when someone's acting the fool. 

Speaking of criminals, this is me getting fingerprinted --

I wish I could just leave it there, leave you wondering and guessing why this is happening.  

Hey wait, I can!  It's so fun to have a blog.

Al and I attended another charity auction over the weekend.  This is the 1,276,588nd auction we've attended since returning from France.

Our table at the auction was a rowdy one.  We badgered each other into buying things none of us wanted or needed.  They pressured Al and I into bidding on 12 pounds of fresh seafood ("just think of the party you can have!").  Yes, that's true!  So we kept bidding until we won it.  Yee-haw, fish party!

Now that sounds like a really terrible party.  I hate auctions.

The auction was held to benefit L'Arche, an organization I've mentioned before.  It was the place where Alex and I met, the very place where we banded together to fight street crime side-by-side for the next 15 years.

I won a painting in the silent auction. It was painted by Carol, a woman I used to live with in the Seattle L'Arche community.  She was 52 years old with Down Syndrome and barely verbal.  We were friends and loved each other very much.  I shared more belly laughs with her than I've shared with just about anyone.  We also got mad at each other sometimes.  She hit me hard in the arm once while visiting the zoo.  Carol, you were so stubborn.

My grandma died while I was living in L'Arche.  After I heard the news from my parents over the phone and came downstairs, Carol saw the look on my face before I said a word to anyone.  She squinted at me for a second, then rushed to me and wrapped me in a bear hug.  I cried into her shirt as she stroked my hair and said, "Oh Bustabee.....Bustabee...."  (Carol called everyone she loved "Bustabee")  She saw me through that grief unlike anyone else could.

Carol passed away while we were living in Paris.  I tried to write something for her memorial service but couldn't adequately articulate the importance of her well enough to send anything good.  I deeply regret it.

I'm so happy to have a piece of her -- her fun-loving self, her contagious laugh, her enthusiasm for life, her sweet soul -- now hanging in the Abbey.

 You were awesome, Bustabee.

So maybe I don't hate auctions.

We're busily preparing for our 2nd annual Halloween party.  This year I've added a giant glow-in-the-dark spiderweb and a blacklight to the decorations.  Should be fun when people get drunk, become hopelessly entangled, and fall down.

I hope our guests really like fish.
MJ