Alaska or bust. I hope we don't bust.

I took Lucien to see Les Miserables his first week of summer vacation. It was my 10th time seeing the show. I'd see it again tomorrow if I could. I will never stop.

I remember my parents returning home after they first saw it in the 1980s. They raved about it, and brought home a souvenir, a Les Miz documentary called "Stage by Stage." I didn't go with them that first time but I watched the first few moments of that video and I was hooked. I was obsessed. I remember a warm feeling coursing through my body and a sense of "I now know what love feels like." Don't you dare tell me a musical can't love me back because I know it does.

I was very happy to share my favorite story with my son date.

The Loosh asked about twenty minutes before we left for the theatre, "Mom, what's the story about?" and I said, "Oh! It's a super short story written by Victor Hugo about love, redemption, compassion, rebellion, you can read it quickly before we leave!" He nodded enthusiastically and I threw my dogeared copy of the nearly 1,500-page novel at him. He looked so shocked.

READ, LUCIEN, READ LIKE YOU'VE NEVER READ BEFORE.

This was my least favorite production I've seen of Les Miz. It's become something of a soap opera up there, with most actors throwing themselves all over the place in melodramatic fashion. They were being VERY SERIOUS actors but honestly, the story speaks for itself, you don't gotta sell it so hard.

The staging has changed, too. The sets used to be minimal and understated, which added to the charm of the thing. There was a revolving stage, so when people walked somewhere "far," they really walked in the same place as the stage rotated and props passed them by. Now there is no more rotation. When Jean Valjean gets Cosette at the well and takes her off for a better life, they just kind of wander all over the stage in lazy S shapes. What the hell are you guys doing up there?

One of the most effective scenes in the musical used to utilize the rotating stage to perfection. When Enjolras is killed at the barricade and falls off the front, the barricade later turns to show him laying upside down on top of the giant red rebel flag as music swells. That scene is gone without the revolving part; now they just kind of wheel a dead Enjolras across the stage in a cart. He's still with his big red flag but... what? Where's my big crying moment? It's gone, as gone as Enjolras.

I'm not done complaining yet! Another point of contention: Marius sings "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" while limping around in the darkness instead of sitting at the bar with all the chairs and tables he's singing about. How can you sing about empty chairs at empty tables when there are zero dang chairs and zero dang tables? Sit down in the damn bar and mourn your dead friends properly, Marius.

Don't even get me started on how audiences have changed. I swear half the audience was late so had to be seated at the first scene break, about fifteen minutes after the show began. Then there were just streams of people walking in carrying wine cups, and chatting, and blocking our view entirely for the next ten minutes of the show. Lucien didn't even get to see Fantine become a prostitute properly.

I'll distract myself from my crabby old lady Les Miz mutterings by showing before and nearly-after pictures of our master bathroom project. It's still not 100% finished but I sure like looking at it. It brings a little circa-1900 character to the space at last, and is even better than I'd envisioned.

Before:

we had no bathroom.

Almost After:

we very nearly have a gorgeous bathroom.

So gorgeous, we have decided to do all our entertaining from now on

in our bathroom. 

With the bathroom project nearly finished, our six years of Banister Abbey renovations are almost kinda complete. There is still a long list of small things to do but this, aside from the landscaping, which we hope to get to someday, is our last major undertaking in bringing this pretty old dame of a house back to life. Banister Abbey has been a labor of love. There is so much love. But as is involved in most labors, there has also been a shit ton of pain.

Summer is going well. There have been many water gun fights and buckets of water dumped on each other on the hot days --

And lemonade stands --

brilliant idea to offer the lemonade for free

but "except" donations.

They made a killing.

And kids running wild in the streets of Seattle --

And my beautiful sister, who is showcasing her art in her very first solo show in West Seattle. Her talent is astounding and I'm so happy she's getting the recognition she deserves.

That's Coco in front of "her" painting with Cecil the lion.

And finally, a fun event at the grocery store. Coco came with me to load up on the essentials for our big road trip. In the checkout lane, Coco loudly announced to the checker, "My mom and dad have a drinking problem." And I froze, and the checker froze, and we looked at each other, then both looked down at the items I was buying. There wasn't even any alcohol. So.... what's happening right now.

I said, "Umm, what?" and Coco said, throwing her arms into the air in exasperation, "You guys drink, like, twelve bubbly waters A DAY." True enough, I had five cases of La Croix on the belt and they're not likely to last a week. I've never loved a beverage so much in my life. It has actually replaced coffee as my morning drink of choice, it's that serious of a relationship.

Then the checker laughed and I laughed and the checker said, "Oooh boy, it got real awkward there for a second." Yes, yes it did. Coco can't come to the grocery store with me anymore.

I gotta go, it's crunch time, we're leaving for Alaska in t-minus not many hours. We'll be gone a long time, just shy of a month. Imagine the insanely long posts I'm going to write when I return! I'm really gonna write this trip into the ground, I can feel it.

Our journey to the Great North involves a stop in Watson Lake, in the Yukon. Watson Lake is known for its "Sign Post Forest," a labyrinth of almost 80,000 signs brought from the hometowns of people making the trek up the Alaska Highway. We have our sign ready. We will leave our mark at Watson Lake, as nearly 80,000 people have apparently done before us.

I hope it's the best road trip of our lives,
and I hope they put Les Miz back the way it used to be.
MJ

Free the guinea pigs

The flu came to visit recently.  It floored me (and only me) for a handful of days.  It reminded me of the old adage, "When mama's sick ain't nobody gonna take care of mama and she still has to take care of some other people, too."  Catchy adage.

Those days were miserable.  I was pale and bleary-eyed and my hair stuck out at funnier angles than usual as I collected Coco from preschool and Lucien from the bus stop.  Everyone was too polite to scream in horror but they sure did keep their distance.

In a feat of impressively bad timing, my three really sick days were also the three days I'd agreed to watch Seattle Mom's son while their nanny's on vacation.  The only thing harder than the flu with one three-year-old on the loose is the flu with two three-year-olds on the loose.  They really don't give a damn you don't feel well.

Whenever I come out of an illness, on that first day of being functional again, I feel invincible.  I can do anything!  Cure some cancers! Scale that mountain over there!  Karate chop a stack of boxes at Costco!  Macrame!

Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to do any of those things this time around because as soon as I felt better, Coco got the flu.  I discovered she was sick when she said, "Mommy, my belly hurts me" and threw up all over both of us as I read her favorite bedtime book.

I moved Lucien into the guest room so I could sleep in his bed on wheels (yes, wheels, we're stupid) to be next to Coco if she got sick in the middle of the night.   Those "on call" nights are rough.  I woke up every time she stirred and rushed to her side armed with a pan, a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Febreze aimed at her face.

My overreaction startled her awake.  She looked up at me with wide "What the hell, Mom?" eyes so I hushed and cooed her back to sleep.  But as I tiptoed across the room and climbed back into Lucien's bed, it rolled across the floor.  My delighted surprise woke Coco up again so I had to start over with the hushing and the cooing.

Let's get back to what I wanted to write about before the flu.

I went out with Seattle Mom last week to see the movie version of Les Miserables.  I, like many others, was obsessed with the musical in my younger days.  In high school I was sure I was going to play Eponine on Broadway.  To prepare for this, I walked around my house wearing a trenchcoat and looking sad.

Sometimes I laid down on the floor in my trenchcoat and sang "A Little Fall of Rain" over and over again, never tiring of dying in the arms of my beloved in such dramatic fashion.  Mom would walk past and I'd overhear her say to my dad, "Well, MJ's dying in the living room again."

Years later, when I met Alex and discovered one of his middle names was Marius, my family agreed it was a sign.  Dad even asked the priest to say at our wedding, "Eponine finally got her Marius."  It was sweet.  I promplty donned a trenchcoat, laid down in front of the altar and sang my death song.  It was a really weird wedding.

The movie version was good.  It wasn't good enough to win me away from my first love, the stage production, but it was done well and made me cry a few times and isn't that what Les Mis is all about?  Eponine was pretty good but she's no me.

Seattle Mom and I met Contractor God and another neighbor, Funny Woman, for drinks after the movie.  Funny Woman just returned from a vacation in Mexico.  I can't see an ounce of fat on Funny Woman but she claimed her goal for Mexico was to erase the tan lines made by her "rolls" over the summer.

To accomplish this, she needed to tan in a certain position. She demonstrated for us there in the booth; it looked like she was lying backwards over a beach ball, rolling side to side and yelling, "COME ON! GET IT!"  It apparently worked so I wanted to pass the tidbit along in case anyone else had the same problem.

So Happy New Year to everybody!  Our New Years Eve was spent at a friend's house.  It's a long story, but the rallying cry of the evening was "FREE THE GUINEA PIGS!" and the party attendees ended up walking through the neighborhood carrying a bottle of champagne and a light-up disco ball.

One of our friends has been having a New Years Day Open House for over 20 years --

The Quartz Bay Buzz Bomb is always the drink of choice on New Years Day

The annual party ends with the burning of the hosts' Christmas tree.  This tradition started in 1989 when everyone in attendance sat around and talked about how horrible their year had been.  It spiraled quickly from "1989 sucked!" to "Let's burn the Christmas tree, RHAAA!"

That 1989 Christmas Tree didn't see it coming.  It was dragged into the yard by angry New Years day revelers and burned on the spot.

It's a little more planned now.  Everyone gathers around the fire pit where the tree is dismembered methodically before it's thrown in the fire pit and burned to ashes.  Writing that made me feel creepy.

Lucien came to me upset last week.  He said Coco kicked him hard in the shins.  I asked Coco if she kicked her brother and she said, "No, I pushed him with my feet."  At least when she's sick, she puts the evil genius bit on hold.

This was a long one.  Rough week.  Let's go burn a tree, RAHH!

MJ