Flarp was a flop

My memoir writing class is almost over, just one week left.  It's been a very positive experience if you don't count my assignments being returned with critiques such as "MJ, YOU TOTALLY BLEW THE FIRST AND LAST LINES AND THOSE ARE MOST IMPORTANT GIVE UP AND GET A JOB HIPPIE."

To some of our more sensitive classmates, our teacher's harsh (and mostly spot-on) critiques have proven too much and they have dropped out. I relish the criticism, though, because it's the only way I'm going to learn to stop using so many goddamn opening clauses. 

"SO MANY GODDAMN OPENING CLAUSES, ARE YOU BORING YOUR READER TO DEATH ON PURPOSE OR IS IT JUST CRAPPY WRITING NOW GO CRY IN A CORNER, LOSER."

A fellow classmate and I attended the "Cheap Beer and Poetry" event downstairs at the literary mecca where I take my class.  It's a regular event and a popular one.  Rainier beers were $2 and deliciously watery as usual.

One poet recited a poem about a saggy old barn.  It had a terrific opening line --"Barn got its lean on" and got better from there.  The poem introduced me to a new feeling -- desperate and profound sadness for a barn.

Another poet broke the ice first by telling a joke --

"A young man walks up to his grandmother and says, 'Grandma, have you seen my bottle of pills?  They're labeled 'LSD.'"  And his grandma says, 'FORGET YOUR MOTHERF*CKING PILLS THERE'S A DRAGON IN THE KITCHEN.'"

My parents came for a visit last week.  I am grateful --  Alex has been traveling for work for the past two weeks and I'm losing my mind caring for our hooligan children alone.

Alex's travel took him to China, Japan, England, France, Germany, and Luxembourg this time.  He went all the way around the globe and will therefore be near-comatose upon return.  In good news, he spent a few nights in Paris and saw these people --

The Return of Virginia Mom.  She lives on, SHE LIVES ON!

Look at these jerks rubbing Montparnasse in my face

I miss you, Virginia Family.  A lot. My fragile constitution can barely handle the photographs of all you together again, sans moi.  Someday, ma biche, someday...

But anyway, back to my parents.  They are still as good as parents get.  We laugh a lot and talk over each other and never really hear what anyone else is saying.  Mom, as we yammered on as usual, said "Well, once again we've launched into indecipherable conversation." And that sums up most of the visit.

Mom and Dad brought the kids some gifts.  One was called "Flarp!" and it was a "noise putty," which we assumed meant it would make fart-like sounds when we squished it between our hands.  Imagine our surprise when, instead of making funny noises, Flarp glued our hands together with a cold obscenely sticky goo. 

As we pried our hands slowly apart, Flarp dripped (Flarp had inexplicably turned into a liquid) onto carpet, clothing, and furniture.  The more we tried to clean it off, the messier it got, the more it stuck, the bleaker the future seemed.  It was a real battle and one that was never truly won -- even after a few washes, Flarp still dots our jeans with fluorescent yellow stringy gobs.

I think the "noise" they refer to is people yelling obscenities when they realize the mess they've gotten themselves into

We scared the children when we took them up on Seattle's Great Wheel --

Frankly, I wasn't at my most comfortable, either.  It seems gratuitous to dangle patrons over the water the way they do.  It's like they're taunting us with all the ways we're gonna die if someone screwed up the assembly of the thing.  If the fall doesn't get ya, the drowning will, enjoy your ride!

Each cab on the Great Wheel is equipped with a "panic" button you can press if you want off early.  The button idea is better than what you had to do if you panicked on a Ferris Wheel in the good old days -- you just yelled "I'm panicking, I'm panicking!" into the air with nobody around to hear or care.

We also spent some time on Alki Beach.  Lucien did not understand why we were laughing so hard when we took this photo.  He will someday.

While on Alki, the weather turned.  In one direction, it looked like this --

But in the other direction, it looked like this --

So we got the hell out of there.

I'm the weather and I'm going to get you

Thanks for coming to save my sanity and give me some much-needed backup, Mom and Dad.  

Even if you did bring Flarp.

When I first started this blog, I added an email link to my sidebar so people could email me all their wishes and dreams.  After a few months of not receiving any email (save one from Bill), and after trying it myself and it not working, I removed it from the sidebar.  And promptly forgot it had ever been there.

I remembered my failed email experiment last week and, on a whim, decided to log into that email account to see what was there.  And there before me.... emails.  Dozens.  So many wishes and dreams sitting dusty in an email inbox for over a year.  I have no idea where they were the first time around but they've finally shown up to the party.

I don't know if any of you people are still reading, but know if you emailed me in the past 16 months, I didn't get it until last week because I'm a loser.  (WHO USES TOO MANY DEPENDENT CLAUSES, IDIOT.)  I hope to make my way through those emails and answer them.

I've re-added the email link.  If you use it and don't hear from me for over a year, rest assured I've somehow screwed it all up again.

Hug your barns, people, you have no idea what they've been through,
MJ

Everyone make it through that one?

Our holiday season was happy but a lot of stuff got away from me this year.  I didn't send Christmas cards like I usually do, and the present I bought two months ago for my brother is still sitting here on the floor.  It's wrapped and ready to go, has been for weeks, but getting to the post office is hard.

While I'm in confession mode, might as well alert my sister and my mother, one of whose birthdays was almost a month ago, that their birthday cards are still on my desk.  It doesn't seem to be my year for handling mailing details.

Our holiday was full of good family times.  Al and I took the kids to the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma for the model train fair.

Tacoma, we are in you

Our kids love tiny trains so came armed with millions of questions about how they were made.  They didn't get many answers, though, because model train enthusiasts tend to be rather introverted people who can't speak or answer questions in any coherent fashion. From my observations, they appear to avoid eye contact and interaction because it frightens them.

Alex, with his customary loud voice and larger-than-life bravado, was frustrated in his attempts to communicate with the choo-choo artisans.  He couldn't understand why they skittered away from him and hid under tables.

Fortunately, I speak Introverted Model Train Nerd and was able to coax them out by speaking softly with a singsong tone to my voice.  They liked me so much I was granted backstage access through a swinging door that said KEEP OUT so I could look at the model buildings along the back wall.  One was a candy factory; the people inside were making tiny almond roca, delightful!

This is the kind of incredible picture a choo-choo VIP can take

My kids looked pretty disappointed on the other side of the plexiglass but I just pumped my fist in the air and yelled, "Kids, look, mama's finally a SOMEBODY."

Even as I celebrated my VIP status, I was preoccupied.  My beloved Parisian houndstooth coat was in the unattended coat check downstairs and I was convinced someone was going to steal it.  Halfway through our visit, even as Alex yelled after me I was being paranoid,  I ran downstairs to retrieve it and held it close to my body from then on.

I see you, sneaky model train enthusiast coat thieves

Santa came to visit the kids at the museum.  We'll get the official photo in a couple weeks but until then, this blurry one will have to suffice to preserve the memories.

My mom warned me about taking the kids to see Santa Claus too late.  She said kids will always ask Santa for something at the last minute, something you didn't see coming, and you'll be unprepared.

Boy was my Mama right.  Lucien has talked about nothing but "Beyblades! Beyblades! Beyblades!" for months but when he sat on Santa's lap, the only thing he asked for was a goddamn remote control helicopter.

The model train geeks startled and dove back under tables when they heard me yell, "What the F*CK???" from Santa's Jolly Christmas Corner.

We left the model train exhibit and drove directly to Toys-R-Us where I told Alex to keep the kids distracted in the parking lot (he attempted cartwheels, it was terrifying) while I went inside to fight a giant toy store three days before Christmas.  In a related thought, people are goddamn insane and I don't know what's wrong with any of us.

It was bumper carts in the store and everybody was grumpy/scary.  I'm from Ohio, though, so automatically smiled and chirped out some cornfed "Thank You"s when somebody decided NOT to decapitate me for taking the last Etch-a-Sketch. (Because Coco apparently suddenly loves Etch-a-Sketch, what the HELL happened with Santa?)

There was time spent in downtown Seattle before Christmas.  It reminded me of our Christmas last year when we lived in Belltown, right after we moved back from France.  That was a bittersweet memory.  A year ago already?  It feels like just minutes ago we were celebrating Christmas in light-strung Saint Germain and being firmly reprimanded by the Parisians (as per my usual).

We went to Seattle Mom and German Seattle Dad's house Christmas Eve for dinner with friends.  Quite a few of us decided not to travel this year so the crowd was a sizeable, stress-free one.  The food was delicious and the company pretty drunk.  Thank God for the drinks, though, because the kids put on a "play" that was directionless and seemed to go on forever.  Only one kid cried, though, so that was good.

He's dancing again

Back at home, Alex and I attempted to play Santa through the haze of champagne cocktails and food coma.  I stared at the directions to Coco's princess castle and thought, "Man, I am not gonna make it through this."  Alex wrestled with the parts to an artist's easel next to me, hissing the "F" word periodically and saying things like "this damn easel has 47screws."  It's impressive what parents endure to keep the magic alive for their young kids at Christmas.

The next morning, the kids' eyes were big as moonpies (Coco's especially, Lucien has always been a bit of a skeptic) when they saw the loot under the tree.  Coco could barely speak, could only point and stammer "San..?  San..?  San....?" with a rapturous look on her face.  And that's why we do it.

Hope everyone had good holidays.  Or at least made it through with a sigh of relief.   

Finally a somebody!
MJ

Get your plums off my windowsill

Surprise, everyone, we're still renovating our house.  It was recently my job to carefully chisel off the century-plus buildup of dirt, caulk, paint, glue, whatever (I called it "lead-laden potpourri") that was caked on the frieze so it can be repainted (the frieze is the sculptural element that fits into the middle of the triangular pediment over the balcony over the front door.  I know you are fascinated.)

First I used a small chisel to chip-chip-chip at the frieze then I used a dremel tool to vroom-vroom-vroom.  It took forever but I love work like that -- the kind of work where you can get lost in your thoughts for hours.  After about thirty minutes I realized how weird my thoughts are and spent the rest of the time compiling mental lists of people I had to tell about them.

 

 Before -- an unacceptably gunky frieze  

After -- hot damn, girl, nice frieze!

 

a frieze-cleaning station

I worked alongside our normal team of guys for a couple days as I cleaned the frieze.  I kept wondering when we were going to start scratching our balls and talking about chicks.  It never happened, likely because I didn't know the secret pre-ball scratching password.

Which reminds me -- Contractor God has plums.  Really great plums.  Many friends have spoken fondly of Contractor God's plums; some have even boiled and crushed them into a fine jam.  I winced when I heard that, too.

Contractor God asks me all the time if I want to sample his plums.  He says he can "put them in a bag and bring them over tomorrow."  I can't tell if it's a sexy joke or not, so today I yelled, "Keep yer damn plums away from me!"  He seemed confused so I explained I just really didn't know what to do with his plums.  When Contractor God then said, "you just put them on your windowsill until they're nice and ripe,"  I said, "Don't put your plums on my windowsill, you sick freak, what the hell is wrong with you?"

He walked away.  I may have missed out on some great plums but that's the price you pay for being hysterical and confused.

For those of you still around from ye ole Paris blog, we had a visit from one of the featured players of that blog over the weekend.  Remember our English friend, Newcastle Guy?  Newcastle Guy was in Tacoma on business last week and came up to see us over the weekend.  I found him wandering around outside the front of our house trying to figure out how to get in.  Thanks to the construction covering the entire front, we really don't make it easy.

I welcomed Newcastle Guy back into our lives with great emotion and great joy.  It was strange to see such a Paris-themed friend sitting at our dining table in Seattle, but there he was anyway.  He still looks like Jake Gyllenhaal.

I departed from our previous fancypants Paris ways and handed him a PBR (and in a can to boot!)  He looked at it suspiciously, sipped it, then made many horrible sour faces.  I told him it was a hipster beer -- because it's ironically awful! -- and therefore acceptable to drink in Seattle.  He then asked me repeatedly to define "hipster" but I really couldn't.  I know irony is key.  I think I may have gotten frustrated and sputtered, "Hipster is a state of mind" a few times, which didn't help Newcastle Guy's understanding of these complex beings.

Newcastle Guy choked down a couple PBRs then asked if we could order a nice wine at dinner.  I think he was worried hipster wines existed, too.  (They probably do -- anyone know of any?  I'd like to serve them in a glass full of delicious irony.)

We went to Poppy on Capitol Hill.  I recommend it highly.

eggplant fries coming at your face

a delicious cocktail with some delicious fried ball things.  Not plums.

The food was incredible but the company so-so.  Newcastle Guy and Alex can be quite crusty and curmudgeonly individually and the problem gets exponentially worse when they're together.  I suggested they chat with a crack whore up on Aurora Ave. to put the relative awesomeness of their lives in perspective but I realized the point was lost when Newcastle Guy said, "She gets to make her own hours!"

We put Newcastle Guy in a taxi back to Tacoma.  He wasn't interested in trains and none of us were in any shape to drive, so into a yellow cab he went.  Tacoma is about 45 minutes away so the trip wasn't cheap.  Between the PBR in a can and the hundreds of dollars spent in a handful of hours, Newcastle Guy may be happy he's not in our lives very often anymore.

My in-laws arrive this weekend.  Soon thereafter, Al and I are going to Hawaii.  The two of us.  No kids.  We are looking forward to it the way a hipster looks forward to a concert by that band you've never heard of.

As always, I am eternally grateful to my in-laws for taking care of our children so we can get away.  I'm also hopeful they're not offended we yell "SEE YA!" and run out the door pretty much every time they arrive for a visit.

Here are a few awkwardly placed and random photos to leave this post on a scattered note:

Coco got some red boots, never wants to take them off, has slept in them twice

we are about to pour concrete into these forms Contractor God built when he wasn't badgering people about his plums

here's Contractor God doing..... something

corbels and balusters

 Al telling Loosh how many hands he has to use to throw the ball back into play

we put our hands in cement at Banister Abbey.  One of the hands is Contractor God's which is appropriate since without him our house would have fallen down already

I went out with some people and saw this guy at the bar.  Attempted hipsterdom?  Drunk golfer?  Lost gendarme?

I'm now officially sick of writing about plums and hipsters.  Time to go to bed.
MJ

The Prodigal Schnauzer

Alex and I celebrated eleven years of wedded mostly-bliss over the weekend.  Alex had to board a plane to Europe for work the morning of our anniversary but that's OK; we've celebrated many together, and frankly neither one of us made any plans this year.  I felt the love in his text after I drove him to the airport that said, "Flight delayed.  F*ck everything."  It was enough.

Oscar the dog was our wedding present to each other eleven years ago.  He was a mini schnauzer, "our first baby" as they say, though once a real baby came along he felt less like a baby and more like a dog again.  Still, we loved the little guy.

We drove up to Marysville a few days after our wedding to "just take a look" at a litter of schnauzer puppies.  And of course, we left an hour later with Oscar.  We had absolutely no dog supplies at home so had to stop at Petco on the drive back.  Oscar's arrival was not the best planned in the world but we had a habit of doing things like that so nobody was too surprised.

A week after our wedding, we went to Quebec for a party with Alex's extended family to celebrate our marriage.  Because we had an unplanned puppy at home, we had to enlist a string of volunteers to stay with him while we were away.  A couple friends were refinishing their hardwoods so were happy to have a non-fumey place to stay.  Other friends were intense dog lovers and happy to spend time with a puppy.  One friend (Cavanaugh, in fact) still takes immense pride he's the one who taught Oscar to go up and down stairs.

Another friend was willing because he was a horny selfish bastard who was happy to use the puppy to meet chicks by walking him up and down the street outside our condo.  The pup was well exercised and slept for days when we returned.  Much to his chagrin, our friend was still single.

Our years with Oscar pre-Lucien were happy ones.  They were full of days at the dog park where Oscar insisted on making the most intense ear-piercing shriek whenever he caught sight of another dog.  Which was often.  Because it was a dog park.  We eventually stopped going to dog parks because the sound emitted from our dog was truly unbearable.

Oscar slept in our bed, often on our pillows with his butt in our faces.  He joined us on road trips to Colorado where he got carsick and threw up every hour on the hour.  He went on a Labor Day camping trip with a group of our friends and accidentally had his head rolled up in our friend's car window.  That was a terrible moment.  Oscar made strangled sounds, Alex tried to break the window, and the rest of us just screamed.  The driver was so flustered, it took him a minute to find the button to roll the window back down.  We just kept screaming behind him, which he claimed didn't help.

Oscar once ripped apart one of his toys and ate all the stuffing inside.  I didn't realize he'd done that until I took him for a walk and he squatted to poo.  But there was no poo coming out of Oscar -- it was just stuffing.  A woman walked past and screamed when she saw the steady stream of white stuffing coming out of my dog.  She said, "OH MY GOD, WHAT ARE YOU FEEDING THAT POOR THING?"

Oscar had surgery on his ear that necessitated him wearing a cone.  He couldn't figure out how wide that damn cone was so often ran into door frames with the edge of it.  If he was running, the force was strong enough to knock him backwards.  He was one dazed and confused little schnauzer.

Alex tossed Oscar into Lake Crescent once because "all dogs love to swim!"  Turns out Oscar didn't love to swim so Alex had to go into Lake Crescent, too.

Those were some good days.  But when we had Lucien, things changed.  Oscar was not happy.  Lucien followed Oscar everywhere and freaked him out.  He snapped at Lucien many times, growled at him regularly.  I had to shut Oscar in the bathroom much of the time.  It was a tense, stressful existence for all of us.

So when we decided to go to Paris for a few years, the decision to give Oscar up was, frankly, an easy one.  We knew we would have less living space -- much less -- putting Oscar and Lucien in even closer constant proximity.  Oscar wouldn't have a yard in which to run, the thing that gave him his greatest daily joy.  Plus, we would be traveling more often so he would be boarded more often, which he hated. 

It was time to part ways with the schnauzer.  A couple months before we left for Paris, Oscar went to live with friends of friends in southern Washington.  Al and I cried when we said goodbye to him and promised we'd visit someday.  We didn't really think we'd ever see him again.

But life's funny.  Because here's Banister Abbey's newest resident --

 Return of the Schnauzer

Oscar's back with us, as it should be.  The family who took him could no longer keep him.  They traveled extensively, often for weeks at a time, leaving him alone.  Even though neighbors came by to feed him and play with him, our emotionally needy schnauzer grew depressed and started chewing the fur off his legs.  He was so despondent he eventually stopped eating.

When the family contacted me in Paris to ask if I knew of a better home for him, we tried to find one but nothing worked out.  I begged the family to hang onto him until we could get back to Seattle and into a home where we could have a dog.  A week after we moved into the Abbey, the adopted family drove Oscar back to Seattle. 

When they pulled up in front of Banister Abbey and Oscar jumped out of the car, I couldn't tell if he remembered me.  He seemed happy but confused.  When Alex came home later that day, however, Oscar was not at all confused.  Without question, he remembered Al.  Alex was always Oscar's soulmate, his number one, and apparently nothing's changed in Oscar's schnauzer heart.

When Alex came walking up onto the porch, Oscar nearly had a heart attack.  It's like he couldn't believe who he was seeing, couldn't move he was so overwhelmed.  At first he just collapsed to the ground like a preteen girl at a Justin Bieber concert.  Then his entire body started wagging and he frantically flopped all over the place. 

He couldn't get enough Alex, jumping all over him as if to demand, "WHERE THE HELL YOU BEEN, PUNK?"  He pretty much tried to crawl into Alex's mouth to be as close to him as possible.  A man and his dog reunited is a beautiful thing.

Oscar's an elderly dog now at eleven years old.  He sleeps a lot more.  He no longer makes the squealing sound when he sees another dog.  He no longer gets carsick.  He no longer poops stuffing, or at least not that I'm aware of at this time.  

He's mellowed in all ways, including with children.  We were prepared to keep them separate but it doesn't seem necessary.  The kids threw a tennis ball for him and he decided they were OK.  Sometimes they smother him too much but he doesn't growl, just sighs deeply and rolls his schnauzer eyes.  So far so good.

I didn't mean to write all that about Oscar but I guess the dog deserved an ode.  It feels so good to have him back.  We always felt guilty about giving him away, and wondered what it meant about our marriage that we were able to give away the symbol of our love and commitment so easily.  Symbol of our love?  Meh, screw it, take it to southern Washington.

Welcome home, doggie

In other news, Lucien is now a Kindergarten graduate.  On his last day of school, the parents assembled in the classroom for a performance.  The kids sang some songs they learned over the course of the year.  Lucien, as usual, was placed in the back row as if to hide him, where he half-heartedly sang until he got bored and started smacking his own butt and grinning widely. 

He's in a sports day camp now that school's out.  I heard from a friend Lucien suggested they name his team "The Underpants" but the coach vetoed it.  Lucien then begrudgingly agreed to "The Banana Peels" but remains vocally disgruntled to this day.

I had a lot to say today but Oscar took up all the room.  Kind of like what he's doing in our bed once again.  Dog butt has returned to our pillows, huzzah.

We promise to give you a good last few years, prodigal schnauzer,
MJ

Climbing walls

I was standing beside two elderly men at the grocery store yesterday when suddenly one turned to the other and said, "You know, the first time I put on my kilt, I thought 'damn, I've got some nice legs.'  The second time I put it on I thought, 'well, shoot, where did those nice legs go?'"

I love living in English again.  If you're within earshot of me, I'm listening to you.  And even if you don't make a whole lot of sense, I'm giddy about it.

Look at this crazy drama with the school bus. There was a truck parked too close to the roundabout so the bus couldn't make the turn and got stuck.  A fire truck happened by and the firemen jumped out to make sure everyone was OK.  Then the firemen turned on the engine lights to entertain all the kids stuck on the bus and we all said, "Ooooooh."  (Not much happens around here on a weekday afternoon... it was a really big deal, I swear.)

Bear with me, everybody.  Little light on blog material today.

When Lucien was four years old and living in the super-white 6th arrondissement of Paris, he saw an African American boy at the park and asked me if he was burned.  Jesus.  I told him sometimes people are just different colors and he looked at me like I was batshit crazy.

Now that we're home, he gets it, and doesn't care a whole lot.  None of the kids do.  We're happy Lucien now lives and schools with people of assorted colors.  His school is a beautiful rainbow of skin color, a cornucopia of language and ethnicity.  I'm pretty sure I even saw a purple boy in his class but maybe that kid just had measles.

Sometimes adults don't do as well with the concept of race.  I'm sorry to say there's some racial tension in my neighborhood, and it's getting stirred up by the contentious issue of dog poop --

(I'm not sure why "black" is in quotes.)

I hate to think someone is purposely letting their dogs poop in this specific yard because the family is black.  If so, this dog owner is way worse than your average poop-ignorer; this person is a whole new level of shitty (HA!)   If the dog owner is racist,  I hope that person visits Paris, and then I hope they trip and fall face first into a steaming pile of Parisian dog sidewalk offerings.

What?  You want to hear more about poop?  I must obey!

Now that I'm back in a land where picking up dog poop is an absolute duty that must never be shirked, I'm hearing about lots of people having dog poop problems.  L.A. Mom is borderline obsessed with identifying a dog owner that regularly leaves poop in her yard -- obsessed to the point of sitting up all night with a pair of binoculars, a stun gun, and a maniacal look in her eye.

A woman recently left a note in L.A. Mom's mailbox addressed to L.A. Mom's husband.  The note said, "Brian, I need to talk to you.  Call me, Katie."  There was a phone number.  L.A. Mom did not immediately think, as I would have, "Katie is my husband's mistress and I must now challenge her to a duel."  Instead she thought, "OMG, I bet this woman knows something about the dog poop."

L.A. Mom called Katie.  She excitedly dove into her questions -- had Katie seen something in their yard, and did she know who the mystery shitter/owner were?  There was a long silence, as any person not emotionally involved in the poop situation would expect.  Katie then explained the reason for the note in the mailbox.  It was not only NOT related to poop, it was not even related to L.A. Mom and her family.  The previous owner was named Brian, too; L.A. Mom's family has only recently bought their house.

Please, people, take a deep breath.  I implore you, let's not let dog poop cloud our reasoning and make us suspicious, angry people.  Let's not be racist.  And let's all just pick up our dog's crap, okay?


Lucien, my recently turned six-year old, after three years of Eurodisney, finally had a real birthday party.  Us being us, we made it a DANGEROUS birthday party --

Seattle Bouldering Project.  Best birthday party ever.

The birthday boy climbing through a hoop

Here are the rules for birthday parties at Seattle Bouldering Project --

Here's what happened at our party --

The women who led the climbing part of the party said Lucien has incredible energy.  One said he could be an award-winning climber with that kind of energy.  The other woman said he could probably be an award-winning anything (except quiet person) with that kind of energy.

This was Lucien's cake --

 Dinosaurs, volcano, edible "rocks"

A mother of one of Lucien's classmates asked me if I baked it myself.  She doesn't know me so didn't realize how funny the question was.  Alex however, who was standing nearby, nearly passed out from lack of oxygen due to maniacal laughter.

Today at the bus stop after school one of Lucien's classmate's moms said, "Hey, does Lucien want to come over for a playdate now?" and I said, "Yes, take him."  I love this neighborhood, even if there are some questionable dog owners with possibly racist evil intentions.  

Alex is in Europe right now for work.  Today he's in Munich; tomorrow it's Paris.  He's in Paris for less than 24 hours so I know he won't be having any fun but still, I wonder how tomorrow will feel for both of us.

He should probably go get liquored up and yell at cars on Boulevard Saint Germain so he can say goodbye to the city properly.  Always worked for me.

Where did MY nice legs go?
MJ