Kafka is a riot

The bad news is I'm guilty of blog neglect.  The good news is I've been neglectful because there's so much incredible fun livin' going on around here.

exhibit a

For example, the kids and I have recently taken up geocaching.  Geocaching, to most participants, is an exciting worldwide treasure hunt using GPS coordinates to find random hidden stuff stashed all over the place.  For me and my two kids and my finicky inaccurate GPS, however, geocaching is being lost in the woods for two hours, walking in circles, and never finding what you're looking for.

We knew, thanks to a clue on the geocache website, that the thing was hidden in a fake rock at the base of a tree.  We eventually began kicking rocks under every tree we passed in a desperate attempt to find the thing and feel successful.  Trust me, you do not realize how many rocks are under trees until you start looking for a specific one under a specific one.

In other fun news we lost the Super Bowl.  We threw a Super Bowl party that was really exciting and energy-filled right up until the end of the stupid game.  Our guests were so upset, so desperate to flee and nurse their wounds in private, they left within thirty seconds of the last play. They left in such a rush and in such emotional states, two people left without their shoes.  Sad barefoot football fans roaming the streets, that's what that day did to us.

We're mostly over the loss but it's hard because our house continues to mock our pain.  Every morning we come downstairs to this festive bunch of Seahawks balloons which, for some upsetting reason, refuse to die.  I could pop them but I paid a lot of money for them so can't bring myself to do that. Perhaps I'll let Coco play nearby with a ladder and a sharp knife.

perky as ever

Alex and I went to see a band Thursday night.  Sonny and the Sunsets are a fun band but their opening act was a real stinker.  It was a solo lady with a guitar who apparently kissed her boyfriend a bunch of times.  I am assuming this because she sang a song in which the sole lyrics were "I kissed my boyfriend I kissed my boyfriend I kissed my boyfriend."

Things took a turn for the worse after that.  I think her boyfriend dumped her and got a new girlfriend because the next song's lyrics were "Jessie's got a new girl Jessie's got a new girl Jessie's got a new girl" sung over melancholy chords while wearing a dark pair of sunglasses. Jessie was probably not into being kissed 24 hours a day and needed some space.

Alex and I felt awesome being out late with the band-listening crowd.  Band-listening people wear perfectly worn-in jeans and vintage corduroy jackets with ironic patches on the back like "Pete Peterson's Family Friendly Gun Shop!" Indeed, it was fun to feel part of the scene again but then we made the mistake of leaning against the back wall.  We immediately began dozing off from the overwhelming fatigue our aged bodies were experiencing.

We went home halfway through the set, leaving all the hipsters wearing overalls and women with ombre shaded violet hair behind.  It's OK to try to be young again but it's also OK to be true to your damn selves and get out when your feet start to ache from all the standing.

we came.  we saw.  we left early.

I'm still learning how to throw pottery on a wheel.  I'll let you know when I make something that doesn't make people laugh out loud upon seeing it.

I'm also in a writing class.  I needed a boost for my Paris book writing, needed to shake off the stagnant place in which I found myself and mix it up a little.  I enrolled in a humor writing class, first class was last week.

Right off the bat, immediately after roundtable introductions, our teacher told us to re-write the first paragraph of The Metamorphosis by Kafka but make it HILARIOUS.  We would then read our paragraphs out loud.  It was strongly insinuated if we didn't make our teacher laugh, we were failures. He gave us ten minutes for this exercise which, when re-writing Kafka as uproarious comedy, doesn't seem like enough.

That was quite a bonding experience.  We scribbled furiously, occasionally stopping to glance at one another and silently mouth swear words in wide-eyed panic.  I re-wrote The Metamorphosis in first person and turned myself into an ant, awakening in my room to the sudden overwhelming desire to lift a Buick.  The teacher laughed so I didn't fail.  Not yet anyway.

Work continues on Banister Abbey.  Supermodel Neighbor is here again. He now carries enough authority in the house to give my children stern talking-tos when necessary and has his own shelf in the refrigerator. He's family.

S.N. is currently building stair railings for our two flights of stairs.  It's a momentous time -- Banister Abbey is finally going to have banisters.


As a reference, this was the 3rd floor stairway when we first viewed the house nearly three years ago --

 Welcome to your new home
we strongly suggest never going upstairs

Before we moved in, we had a temporary railing made of splintery 2x2s installed so nobody would fall off the stairs and die on their way up to the office --

But now, after just a few weeks of Supermodel Neighbor cursing repeatedly, here's where we are --

Never mind the blue painters tape.  I'm in the process of priming and painting the unfinished newel posts and skirts.  It's still a work in progress but trust it, it's going to have pizazz.

The balusters and hand rail used above are originally from the main staircase. They are original to the home, circa 1904, and were located here when we first saw the house --

they don't make them that awesome anymore

Now regarding the picture at the beginning of this post --

Despite being the only person in the room -- in fact the only person on the first floor -- when the lamp was snapped in two, Coco still claims absolutely no knowledge of events.

Punk

My apologies for neglecting the blog.
In my defense, it's very difficult to blog when I'm lost in the woods.
MJ

baaaaad business

Our annual adults-only Banister Abbey Halloween party is happening in a week and a half.  The weeks leading up to this event are tense ones in our house, especially for the children.  Lucien and Coco come home from long days at school only to be confronted by objects like these:

The kids are also fed things like this for dinner while I stand over them and ask, "Do these look like bloody severed fingers to you?"

Why aren't you guys eating?

The kids have been awfully jumpy lately.

I hired a tarot card reader for this year's party.  It was the first time I'd interviewed a tarot card reader and I had no idea what to ask.  I figured my opening question should be, "Are you full of sh*t?" hoping the fakes and crackpots would then hang their heads in shame, shuffle their feet and mumble, "Dang, you got me."  It seemed as good a place to start as any.

I didn't end up asking that.  Instead, as I sipped my grande americano at my favorite Starbucks, I was treated to a fascinating history of the tarot and how it works for this gentleman in particular.  He seemed completely sane and passionate about his tarot work.  And bonus -- he can talk to trees!  That was welcome news; I've got an Alder out back that's been reclusive lately and I'd like to know what's bugging it.

In my search for Halloween party entertainment, I also talked to a numerologist who gave me a reading over the phone.  He pegged me, was right on the nose in his assessment of who I am as a person, yet I still don't believe in numerology.  It shouldn't have surprised him when I didn't hire him -- he had just told me five minutes earlier I was a born cynic and very difficult to sway.

In other news, this is what Lucien chose to wear for his school picture day --

the bowtie really takes it over the top

And I made a bowl-like object in my pottery class --

And Supermodel Neighbor has saved the day regarding the continuing work on Banister Abbey.  He may live in Portland now but he has heeded my long distance plea for help several times and remains my most loyal and unbroken contractor.  (I've broken several other contractors, you see, and have no idea where they've scampered off to because they're very good hiders.)

For weeks now my house has smelled like wood stain and bacon -- wood stain because Supermodel Neighbor and I have conditioned/dyed/stained/sealed several new doors and miles of new wood trim, and bacon because it's delicious.

Here's a couple before and afters to celebrate this fumey period in our lives.  The kitchen has always bothered me because everything is new.  The previous owner left no hint of the original character of the kitchen when he remodeled it.  So we decided to fake the character.  Thanks to Supermodel Neighbor's knowledge and his continued gentle redirection of MJ when she bought the wrong product (often), I learned brand new wood can instill old character when finished properly.

Before

After

The previous owner also installed cheap hollow-core doors all over the place.  We are one-by-one taking those down and replacing them with five-panel fir doors, as the gods intended it to be in houses as old as Banister Abbey.

Before

After

It's good to have loyal unbreakable friends in the carpentry business.

The Seahawks played last weekend.  It didn't end well.

Alex and I, for reasons we don't understand other than we're pretty random, ended up at an Ethiopian sports bar for the game.  We were the only non-Ethiopians in the place.  The air was thick with accents and the smell of Ethiopian food.  Al and I have never been the only white people in a bar before.  Nobody seemed to give much of a rip about the whiteness in their midst so we happily settled in for the long haul and ordered some of that Ethiopian spongy bread smothered in lamb and onions.

It's not what I would consider "bar food" but I'm not Ethiopian so what the hell do I know.

The game was abysmal and depressing but the company was good.  One man sitting next to us was such a fanatical Seahawks fan he could not sit still.  Whenever the Hawks eff'd up (often) he began pacing back and forth next to our table, wringing his hands and shouting, "That's just baaaad business!  That's just baaaaad business!"

Also, when the Seahawks challenged a catch made by the Cowboys -- it was obviously a legitimate catch and was a dumb thing to challenge -- the guy paced around waving his arms and  yelling, "Awwww no! That was a love-ly catch, a love-ly catch."

I now use both these phrases, much to Alex's delight, often and repetitively and loudly.


Al:   "MJ, I can't find my wallet."
MJ:  "That's just baaad business!  That's just baaad business!"

Al:   "MJ, can you help me lift this heavy cabinet that has fallen on me and crushed my spleen?"
MJ:   "That was a love-ly catch... a love-ly catch!"

Al:  "MJ, should we diversify our stock portfolio?"
MJ:  "That's just baaad business!  That's just baaad business!"
Al:  "Really?  Perhaps you're right.  Let's just keep all our money in that one stock."
MJ:  "Uh-oh."


I'm very busy, have to get back to curating my Halloween party playlist and perfecting bloody fingers and entrails and various other disgusting things nobody's going to eat because I am truly that good.
MJ

Spaghetti Tail

Super Bowl Sunday began with a morning visit to the grocery store.  I needed to buy a bag of Doritos because I'd already eaten the bag of Doritos I'd purchased two days earlier to avoid a day-of-game trip to the grocery store.  I'm pretty good at planning ahead but also pretty good at sabotaging my own planning.

It was a good idea to try to avoid the grocery store on Super Bowl Sunday.  It was crowded with people jostling to buy ingredients for guacamole and spicy chicken wings.  The fun part was seeing everyone decked out in the unofficial Seattle uniform for the day.  I've never seen the grocery store so color-coordinated.

Our friends came over and we did a little shadow boxing, some stretches, got pumped.  And then, in what has since been called "the most boring Super Bowl ever," the Seahawks pummeled the Broncos 43-8.  Our ragtag band of fifth-round draft picks, a yoga-loving coach who'd been fired by another NFL team and a "tiny" quarterback proved all the doubters wrong.

We're the Bad News Bears of football

The city held a Seahawks victory parade yesterday to celebrate our very first Super Bowl win.  Over 700,000 people showed up which, when you consider only 600,000 people live within the city limits of Seattle, is a very impressive number.

People skipped out on all other commitments to be there and many parents, including me, called schools to report their kids were sick -- let's call it "Seahawk Fever" -- and wouldn't make it to school that day.  Lucien's school later decided all absences due to Seahawk Fever would be excused because it was evident by the number of absences this was a very important event for the community.  Some moments in a city's history are so epic and unifying, it feels necessary to put other things on hold for a minute to be a part of them.

It was a sub-freezing day so Lucien and I put on all the clothes we own and waddled downtown with some friends.  Our group wasn't alone; streams of people walked alongside us and once they got downtown stood 50-60 people deep at every intersection, cheering, stomping, laughing.  The steep hills of downtown came in handy and acted as bleachers, giving the people in the 60th row a birds-eye view of the action below.

It was a loud and proud giant frigid football party

There was a palpable sense of joy radiating from 699,999 spectators.  The one person not feeling the love was Lucien because after an hour and a half of waiting, he could no longer feel his fingers.  I took my miserable and tear-stained son into the library to warm up.  As I pulled him through the crowd to the library doors, he yelled, "Why are you torturing me like this?  I don't want to be here, I WISH I WAS IN SCHOOL!" to which all other kids within earshot gasped audibly.

 The Loosh is not convinced this is a good time 

Lucien and I lucked out; while waiting in the library, we scored prime space at the front window, a head above everybody outside yet toasty warm inside. We even stood next to a couple of women who volunteered to help me lift The Loosh up so he could see even better.  The only downside was none of the spectators crowded inside the library were allowed to cheer because it's a library.  We instead cheered softly into our cupped hands and silently high-fived each other as players rolled by outside in amphibious vehicles and military pick-up trucks.

Here comes the Legion of Boom 

(ridiculous yet truthful nickname for the Seahawks defense)

including my personal favorite, 

the mouthy and brilliant Richard Sherman.

It's not a super important thing, winning the Super Bowl.  It's insignificant in the grand scheme of living.  It's not going to make the world a better place and it's not going to save lives.  But damn, it sure was fun. 

Coco has become very attached to one of her preschool teachers.  If you ask Coco who her favorite person in the world is, she won't name me.  It's that damn Teacher Heather.

Coco wanted to buy a Valentine's Day card for Teacher Heather so we went looking for one at the store.  She immediately picked out a pretty card with a bright red glittery heart on the front.  I agreed it was beautiful and opened it to read the inscription, which unfortunately said, "Oh my darling, the time the two of us spend together, just the two of us, away from the rest of the world, are the most cherished moments of my life."

I then attempted to explain to my excited, shiny-faced daughter clutching her "pretty card" that perhaps it wasn't the most... platonic... card to give a preschool teacher.  Coco stuck her lip out and clutched the card harder, resulting in a tense tug-a-war between me, Coco, and a glittery card in the middle of a grocery store aisle.  I finally relented, threw the card in the shopping basket and made a mental note to include a mixtape of Barry White slow jams for Teacher Heather.  If we're going in, we're going all in. 

Teacher Heather opened the card at school today.  Coco beamed as Teacher Heather laughed in a whole-bellied kind of way.  Then she grabbed Coco and hugged her so hard, laughter tears still running down her face, and winked at me over Coco's exuberantly happy shoulder.  I'm glad Teacher Heather is in on the joke and doesn't think my daughter is trying to muscle in on her marriage.

As for our pets, Stella's tail feathers are now dyed orange because she dive-bombed the sink when I was doing dishes and landed in a bowl of spaghetti sauce.  I tried to grab her and wash it off but she squawked and gnawed on my hand.  Fine, Stella, go ahead and look ridiculous.

Don't you touch my spaghetti tail

Bobo the bearded dragon got all stressed out recently because I removed the paper covering on one side of his tank.  It was torn and I didn't think it was important so I ripped it off.  What I didn't know at the time is bearded dragons DO NOT LIKE CHANGE -- and they like seeing their own reflections in the glass even less.  In response to my careless action, Bobo's beard turned black and he began "glass surfing," which means he frantically tried to crawl up the sides of his tank but of course failed because glass is too slippery for his little reptile feet.

A few frantic Google searches later -- "My bearded dragon seems upset" did the trick -- I now know "glass surfing" and turning their beards black are common behaviors amongst "beardies" and are signs of stress.

To summarize, my bearded dragon is stressed out and my bird is orange.  At least the dog seems OK, although he seems to be losing his hearing and wears a diaper at night because he's reached the age where he can no longer hold it all night and our floors are paying the price. Other than that, he's fine.

And we won the Super Bowl.
Seattle out,
MJ

Little John he always tells the truth

Our family went for a hike together last weekend.  Here's an example of what it's like to be an anxious person out for a hike on a beautiful day; Alex and the kids hiked merrily on after we noticed this sign but I stopped in my tracks, heart racing --

QUICK, HOW MUCH DO THE FOUR OF US WEIGH ALL TOGETHER?

After doing math and realizing we had over 4500 lbs. leeway, I continued to worry about imminent trail collapse for no reason.  You should have seen my wild eyes when a group of people riding horses passed us. I grabbed my babies around their waists and took off into the forest.

How can you enjoy that beautiful waterfall
when you're about to plunge into the abandoned mines below?

Alex works for a BIG COMPANY.  There are several biggies here in Seattle so take your pick and go with it.  I've promised him I'll never discuss his work on the blog so don't ask, I will neither confirm nor deny.

BIG COMPANY holds their annual party every winter.  It's generally something we skip but this year there was a band playing the event with whom I have a long history -- one very delicious Vampire Weekend.

I've been with Vampire Weekend since their first release many years ago.  We broke up for a little while because I reached saturation -- their jaunty syncopated rhythms suddenly made me want to punch myself in the face.  But I'm happy to report, with their newest release that is pretty much the best thing ever, we're back together and it's looking permanent.



You had me back at A-Punk but you're keeping me with Hannah Hunt.

If you ever wondered what an annual party for a BIG COMPANY looks like, here's the answer --

Ice fairy women rollerskating in a boxing ring.   No party's complete without them.

So many people

Acrobats dangling from the ceiling

So many lights 

Motherf*cking igloos

Pictures taken in front of green screens.
We had no idea we were in a cozy lodge

In this one we were going for "bored."

We had fun walking around the gigantic party but then it was time to do what I had to do.  I had to be in front of that stage when Vampire Weekend took it.  Alex doesn't know Vampire Weekend but he was a good sport, tagging along behind me as I cashed in all our free drink tickets then cradled our drinks in my arms in front of the stage, double-fisting those suckers while waiting and waiting because I WILL NOT LOSE MY SPOT.

The anticipation was delicious.  And then Ezra Koenig came out onto the stage.  He was right there in front of me, slipping into his famous Epiphone Sheraton, as it always should be.

Some live shows I've seen recently were so good, they forever cemented my love for the band but others were so disappointing I haven't listened to the band since (I'm looking at you, Cave Singers, with your snooozefest set list and ten-minute long flute solo).

When a show is good, I enter a euphoric state.  Nothing exists but the music and the dancing and the singing loudly with the people next to you, people who used to be strangers but now are your very close fellow fan friends.  It's bliss when a band sounds the way they should sound and that's the kind of show Vampire Weekend gave -- the very best kind.  I banged my two beers together over my head in lieu of applause because I had no free hands.

Alex isn't as obsessive a music fan as I am but he hung in there, watching me with a bemused expression and saying things like, "Wow you're really in your element right now, aren't you."  I think he was happy I was finally happy with some aspect of his job.  His job is stressful and takes a lot of hours away from our family life.  But his job also just gave me Vampire Weekend so we're going to call a truce for a little while.

When the show was over, Ezra Koenig gave a grin and a nod to the audience then strolled off the stage with his hands in his pockets as if to say, "So I just rocked pretty hard, wonder what I should do to fill the rest of this lovely evening."

Thanks much, V.W.

Leaving the BIG COMPANY party, we stepped out into a Seattle pulsing with excitement. It was the night before the NFC championship game and this city loves its Seahawks.  Everywhere we looked, the 12th man was pumped up and ready --

We had some friends over for the game the next day and they all turned into rabid lunatics.  You could be having a perfectly normal conversation with a person and then all of a sudden they start yelling, "NO, NO, NO!!  WHAT ARE YOU DOING, NO, GODDAMMIT, NO!" and fall to the ground.  Perfectly normal, just watching football.

We collectively moaned and screamed and fist-pumped our Seattle Seahawks all the way to beautiful, exquisite victory.

We're going to the Super Bowl!

The best part is we're going to play the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl.  My parents, of course, live in Denver so the trash-talking has already begun.  I just wish I knew what some of it meant.

I hope we're all still family after the game

Lucien turned eight years old this week.  I'll write about that next time, some interesting tales to tell.

I love Lucien the most profoundly when I watch him take off from our car every morning and run into his school.  He grins, his hair flops, his feet, so comically large and paddle-like these days, slap the pavement.  Lucien never walks away from the car, he always runs with that unbridled enthusiasm for life only an eight-year-old boy can have.  It puts a lump in my throat every time and I have to resist calling him back to the car for just one more hug.

I felt that same feeling last weekend when Coco had her first sleepover with Auntie Raba and Auntie Z.  She didn't even look back at me, just went forward to have the greatest night of her life, a night that involved eating spaghetti in her underwear, many unicorn tattoos, and some godawful Barbie movie.

I'm glad my sister lives in Seattle now so my daughter can know her awesomeness up close and personal.  I'm glad Coco has come to love her aunts to the point of delirium.  I'm also glad I'll know where to find her when she runs away from home in ten years.

I give a f*ck about an Oxford comma, Vampire Weekend.
MJ

She moves things with her mind

Seattle is an excited city right now.  Once again our Seahawks seem likely contenders for the Super Bowl and the whole town's gone rabid.  I'll readily admit I'm not much of a football fan but it's impossible not to get caught up in the excitement.  When even the bagger at the grocery store packs my groceries with a fist pump and a GO HAWKS, I high-five him and leave the store thinking it's fun to have everyone in the city on the same page about something.

We got a sitter and spent Saturday at a local sports bar with some diehard football fan friends.  Fanatical fans are the best friends with whom to watch football because their enthusiasm and passion are both amusing and contagious.  A couple hours with them and I find myself yelling, "Suck it, ref, you #@&*% m*th#rf#@!" and feeling positively giddy about it.

The Seahawks won which is good because my friends are scary when we lose.  I would have balled up and rolled out the door to avoid interacting with them.

We went to a friend's house for dinner Friday night.  After dinner, our children invited us to what most parents dread at such neighborhood dinner events -- "a show."  

I have two rules about shows performed by my kids: 1) the show has to be well rehearsed beforehand and 2) it has to have a story with a beginning, middle and end.  It may seem harsh to impose these criteria upon our young children but life is too short to sit through yet another hour-long skit with kids pushing each other, saying "you go first" and giggling nervously. There's just no entertainment value there.

Our kids generally obey my skit rules and as a result we've seen some fairly decent productions at our get-togethers.  This time, however, things went off the rails. 

 What.  the hell.  is this.  hot.  mess.

Alex stepped in to save what was left of the skit portion of our evening.  He performed a piece he wrote himself entitled, "How To Write An Awesome Resume."  Our friend's daughter accompanied him on her synthesizer and the kids danced.  It wasn't just good exercise; they received valuable life advice that will hopefully land them their first jobs someday. 

The most recent project I'm tackling at home is the kids' room.  I wanted the kids involved in the creative process so I spread out a million paint chips on the dining table and told them each to choose a color to paint their side of the room.  They pounced on the pile, held up their chosen paint chips with big smiles and then I thought "Oh no, I've made a terrible mistake." 

Their chosen colors were electric blue and a pukey yellowish-green. Not only have my children proven to have zero knowledge of the color wheel, but also that they unable to work together to make something not hideous. 

I don't have a choice in the matter now, I have only one option  -- I'm going to buy completely different colors and tell the kids colors look way different on the walls than they do on paint chips.

I made another mistake in my design of the children's room in that I went to IKEA by myself to buy bookshelves.  Some of those IKEA furniture boxes weigh seven times my body weight but I forgot about that until I found myself face-to-face with the IKEA self-service warehouse.

The self-service warehouse is an area usually swarming with employees in blue shirts but this time I found myself alone in a sea of cardboard boxes that could crush me if I made any careless moves.  I was eventually able to slide all necessary boxes of the IKTHORP LANKAS BOMKE or whatever it's called bookshelf (only in IKEA does one dot one's "a"s) onto my flat cart.  Halfway through I had to partially undress in the aisle because sweat had seeped through my favorite Anthropologie cowlneck.

Getting the boxes into the car was another matter.  I called upon my catapult and lever knowledge and finally, after using pivot points and the weight of the box against itself like a ninja, I flipped it end over end until it miraculously landed in the back of my car. 

Alex helped me unload the boxes back at home.  As we wrestled the fiberboard beast into the house, Alex asked, "How the hell did you do this by yourself??" to which I replied, "my will is strong" and he said, "I swear you move things with your mind." 

Go, Seahawks, go!
MJ

The wide world of sports

Here are the kids playing a game called "Castle."  In this game, you face your opponent and throw rocks at them, inflicting as much bodily harm as possible.  The most successful "Castle" players have quick reflexes and can duck behind the concrete pillars (which we dug out of the ground during Banister Abbey's facade renovations) before taking a rock to the face.
 
Alex and I were in the yard fixing his bike.  We were so engrossed in covering ourselves with bike grease we didn't notice the violent game happening ten feet away.  By the time we looked up, both kids were injured and very mad at each other.  They each said things to the other that can never be unsaid.  I hope their youthful brains forget quickly; otherwise, all future family Christmases are doomed to be tense.

Speaking of games, I was a football fan for a few hours last week.  Our Seattle Seahawks were in the playoffs and looked to have a pretty good shot at the Super Bowl.  In retrospect, of course, we had no chance at all because the Seahawks will always break your heart.

I joined a handful of friends at our local sports bar where we commenced drinking beer at 10:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. is a strange time to drink beer but we don't get to choose the start time of the game.  We can only blindly obey and put beer to lips when that kicky guy kicks the ball down the field and people start running all over the place on the TV.

The Seahawks were down 0-20 at halftime.  My football fanatic friends didn't want to talk much at that point, just wanted to search their smart phones for a ray of hope.  They looked up stats for teams who came back to win after such a miserable score at the half.  The search results were not comforting so my friends then sat there looking grumpy.

Help me, phone

Then, in perhaps the greatest comeback in NFL history, Seahawks scored and scored and scored some more.  They scored like they'd known how to score all along but just wanted to mess with us.  The bar turned into a madhouse.  Every time the Seahawks did something worthy of applause, they got more than applause from our bar, and likely every other bar and living room across the entire city -- they got screaming and fist pumping and crying and people leaping through the air.

The man at the table next to me, a large man wearing a Seahawks jersey with the name "FAN" written across the back, was suddenly my very close friend.  As we stared intently at the screen together, we clenched hands.  He dug his fingers into my arm on several occasions and yelled the "F" word.  Sometimes he kicked my leg under the table and it really hurt but I didn't blame him -- it was apparently his "tension release" leg so regularly shot out with no warning and caught me about the shins. 

When the Seahawks scored, "FAN" and I jumped into each others arms and screamed into each others ears.  He nearly knocked me over a few times, running me into a few tables which resulted in some really ugly side thigh bruises.  I didn't notice the pain because I was too busy high-fiving every goddamn person in the bar. 

I may not watch a lot of football but I can absolutely get behind an event that puts every single person in a bar on the same page, every person bonding with every other person because they're all fervently hoping for the same outcome.  I get it -- it's really really great to be a home team fan.

Seahawks were winning 28-27 at the end of the game, only twelve seconds left to go!  Everyone in the bar was on their feet, pulling their hair and screaming!!  We were gonna do it!!!

Then the Falcons kicked a field goal and it was over.  We lost.  The crowd packed up almost immediately and left the bar, quiet, dejected, heads down.  "FAN" didn't even say goodbye to me but I have my ugly leg bruises as a reminder of the love we briefly shared. 

(When I changed into my pajamas that night, Alex looked at my legs in horror and said,  "Oh my God, did they take the Seahawks fans out back and beat them after the game??")

Next season better

Al and I take the kids to swim lessons Saturday mornings.  They have lessons at the same time so Alex gets in the water with Coco and I sit by the side of the pool to watch Lucien.  Lucien is still more interested in entertaining his fellow swimmers than actually learning to swim.  It's fun to watch the instructor's confused face as Lucien tells him fart jokes while clinging to his torso for dear life.

Al is also still an entertainer.  He waved at me sitting at the edge of the pool and yelled, "Hey, MJ, watch this!" He then sat Coco upon a floating mat and pulled her around the pool.  She was delighted. 

Alex, caught up in the joy of a moment shared with his precious baby girl, swung the mat in one direction then inexplicably whipped it in the other direction, causing Coco to lose her balance and fly off the mat into the deep end of the pool.  Alex yelled, " SHITSHITSHIT" in the echoey family-friendly pool establishment and paddled/lunged to where Coco was flailing around in the water. 

Another parent sitting at the side of the pool grabbed my arm in horror and said, "He did NOT just do that!"  I confirmed that yes, he had, in fact, just done that and she said, "Oooh, I bet he's in trouble when y'all get home!"  She was reading my mind.

Alex, comforting a sputtering Coco and perhaps hoping NOT to be in trouble when we got home, called out cheerfully, "MJ, I bet she's not afraid to go underwater anymore!"  My reply was, "She's likely more afraid, Al.  You've probably set her fear of underwater back four years, which is hard to do because she's only three." 

Turns out Al's right.  Coco now puts her face in the water no problem.  She smiles afterward.  She's not afraid of swim lessons with Daddy anymore.

But I am.

No.  really.  trust him.

 
Goodbye, "FAN."  I'll never forget the times we shared,
MJ