Learning curves

At Coco's most recent HELLRAISER BALLET class, the teacher noticed she tends to lead with her left foot and is therefore, possibly, a leftie.  We nodded our heads together in mutual lukewarm enthusiasm for Coco's hypothetical oddity.

Then the teacher mentioned "a little test" her family doctor mentioned to her years ago.  If you want to know if your child is right-handed or left-handed, stand behind them and, without warning, give them a little push.  Whichever leg they step forward with to avoid faceplant is likely the side they favor.

The following scene may or may not have played out five minutes later in front of the community center:

Me: *shove*
Coco:  AAAAAHHH......
Horrified Onlookers:  You are a terrible woman.
Me:  Confirmed!  A southpaw!

Alex's co-worker from Beijing, who was in Seattle for a business meeting, came over for dinner last week.  He was born and raised in Singapore but has lived in China for many years.  In discussing plans for dinner, he mentioned he'd never been in an American house before and also had never eaten Mexican food before.  Alex decided to take care of both at once -- dinner would be takeout from our favorite fancy Mexican restaurant, Cactus, served in the dusty old American grandeur of Banister Abbey.

I ordered butternut squash enchiladas.  I always order butternut squash enchiladas from Cactus.  They are my favorite and I don't mess with a good thing.  We ordered Singapore/China Dad a Mexican basic -- carne asada tacos.  When the tacos came out of the box and were set before him, he looked at them with question mark eyes.  To him, the almighy taco was a truly foreign object.

Singapore/China Dad is a fascinating guy with a fascinating life.  We had a lively fun conversation but through it all, he remained lost with his taco.  He poked at it for awhile, then scooped the insides out into a pile in the middle of the plate.  He seemed happy with the deconstructed taco pile but after many sidelong glances towards me, Alex couldn't take it anymore and interrupted the conversation for a taco lesson.

When Al said he was supposed to pick up the whole thing and eat it with his hands, Singapore/China Dad looked at Al like he was playing a joke on him.  He then looked at me for confirmation and I said, "Yes, it's true!  Mexican food can be really messy!"  He believed me, likely because I had butternut squash enchiladas smeared all over my face.  They're not messy or hard to eat, I just get a little overexcited sometimes.

When we asked S/C Dad what he thought about Mexican food, he proclaimed it, "exotic!"  That's about the last thing Mexican food is to me -- it's more like a necessary staple, like bread and butter, really -- but I'm happy to give him such a scintillating cultural experience.

 Sibling teamwork.  Lucien on gas pedal, Coco on steering wheel.

I've experienced some dental hell lately.  The dentist tells me I need about five thousand crowns, which is odd given my number of teeth.  I went in recently for the preparation/temporary crown step and the dentist wanted to put a wedge thing in my mouth to keep my mouth open.  Wedging my mouth open with something like a tiny rubber horseshoe?  Dentists, go home, you're drunk!

I take my bodily autonomy very seriously.  I went for a facial chemical peel once and the lady wanted to put these little sticky things on my eyes to keep them closed.  I freaked out.  There was absolutely no need for me to have my eyes open but the fact she was taking away any possibility of me opening them made my fight-or-flight kick in and I punched her in the face.  I kid!  I kid!  I didn't punch, just threatened her firstborn.

Even hugs.  I enjoy being hugged by Al if the hug is a normal one.  But sometimes Alex thinks he's a bear.  When Al thinks he's a bear, he squeezes so hard I can't move.  Then our laughing happy "hee hee we're hugging" turns into me screaming and clawing his face off and him looking at me asking, "My God, what happened to you as a child?"

Claustrophobia ain't just about elevators, people.  And for some reason, for me, it's only kicked in the past couple years.  What is it about getting older and fearing movement restrictions?  My theory is it's a growing fear of the coffin.

I refused the wedge thing.  The dentist said "please?" and I said "no."  She said "you won't be able to keep your mouth open that long" and I said "watch me."  She said "you're absolutely not allowed to move for a very long time" and said "if it will help me avoid the tiny rubber horseshoe of death, I won't."

And I didn't.  Two hours of near constant open mouth.  I didn't move a muscle.  The dentist was impressed.  My will can be cast iron as long as I know I have options.

Al and I have been trolling architectural salvage yards recently.  They are some of our happiest places.  There's nothing like walking into a place full of rusted old house parts and seeing all the possibilities --

 

 

      

 

   

"We disagree, we are bored."

My book about Paris has been on the back burner for a long time.  There's always something happening that takes my attention from book writing and focuses it on a house falling apart or a child vomiting in my lap.

I need inspiration, and accountability.  I've signed up for a memoir writing class in the hopes of adding structure to my writing life.  My first class is this evening.  I'm nervous, primarily because it's a class full of "real writers" and I am but a lowly blogger.  I'm sure I'll look stupid.  Thankfully, this is not a deterrent.

 Grand finale -- Al in a bib.

A southpaw!
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

Gimme Chicken

Thanks for all your well wishes on The Prodigal Schnauzer's return.  He fit back into the family without much trouble at all.  The only problem is he has pancreas issues so eating human food is akin to eating poison.  Oscar doesn't care about that, though, so spends his days relentlessly foraging for things that can kill him. 

There are workmen all over my house.  Some days there are only two or three, some days upwards of ten.  I have no idea what most of them are doing but I like having them around because they're real characters.  I especially like coming home to find them gathered around the dining room table eating a bucket of fried chicken for lunch.  They yell, "Hey, MJ!" and I yell back, "SHH, JUST GIMME CHICKEN."

The first time Alex and I did a "fixer" house, we did it ourselves with the help of several loyal but masochistic friends.  It became our lives, took every spare second we had and every single weekend.  Oh, the caffeine consumed!  The NPR listened to! 

But this time around we've discovered something called "general contractors."  These magical beasts come into your home, do all your work, and in return just take all your money.  It's easy!

Our contractor, Contractor God, is the best.  He's also a good friend of Seattle Mom and Dad and lives on the Street of Dreams right near The Goddamn House next to Supermodel Neighbor.  Check out all those blog monikers in one sentence, truly boggles the mind.

The first day here, Contractor God found a light fixture Mr. Cool left behind still in the box.  Contractor God though I'd purchased it so took it out and installed it in the stairwell.  When I saw it, I said, "Umm... Contractor God, what the hell is that?" and Contractor God said, "It's the lighted dildo Easter egg thing you bought."

I told him I hated it and it had to go.  It was the end of the day so Contractor God said he'd get rid of it first thing in the morning.  He found me on the landing the next day swinging at the beehive dildo egg with a baseball bat and gritting my teeth.

I didn't think it was possible, but it got even worse at night

Lucien spent his first week of summer break at a sports day camp.  A father of a fellow camper was inexplicably always barefoot -- and when I say always, I mean always.  He was barefoot when he stepped out of his car, barefoot walking across the parking lot and up the hill, barefoot in the bleachers, barefoot in the john, barefoot all the time.

 see if you can spot him

At first I thought Barefoot Dad was just a sensitive hippie guy in touch with the earth and his fellow man until I overheard him ask someone, "Was the guy super fat?  Because you said he was Samoan and Samoans are always super fat."  Then I thought wow, that sensitive hippie guy is really insensitive.  Maybe he's just a jerk who hates shoes.

I spent Sunday at our old house on Beacon Hill.  Our renters moved out so I have to get the house ready for new renters.  I also had to do a ton of laundry, which I lugged to the rental house in many suitcases, because we're still awaiting our washer and dryer at Banister Abbey.  We hear they're somewhere between Seattle and Brooklyn.

I stopped at our old neighbors' house for a visit.  They're fantastic -- so fantastic, they gave me a cocktail at noon.  At first it helped with my laborious tasks at the house but then it made me sleepy.  

My feelings are still very hard to manage at the old house.  It's a house full of memories, a house we worked hard to fix, a house we always imagined living in after our years in France.  We changed the plan without ever returning, so there's still unfinished emotional business on Beacon Hill.

When I'm there, I see baby Lucien crawling across the floor and learning to walk in the kitchen.  I hear the sounds of our old parties, full of great friends, some of whom we've completely lost touch with.

 I see the countless number of times we were gravely injured on the spiral staircase

I also remember Lucien's first birthday party when Alex got so sick, he became dehydrated and collapsed.  I called 911 right as the first guests walked in carrying balloons and presents.

First birthday drama right there on that floor we laboriously refinished ourselves

I also remember the false alarm thanks to a faulty ADT smoke detector that brought the fire department to our door, charging up our steep front hill fully clothed in their gear and carrying axes.  Lucien ran around our deck in just a diaper and squealed at the sight of them, in the full throes of little boy firemen heaven. 

The firemen were not so rapturous when we shrugged and told them nothing was wrong.  They looked pretty pissed, in fact.

I painted an apple tree in Lucien's room when he was a baby.  It stood over his crib, wooden letters spelled out his name in the apples.  I ran out of time to paint over it before we left for France so left the paint for the renters.  They never painted over it, either, claiming they "just got used to the thing."

I rocked a colicky Lucien under that apple tree for months.  That kid cried/screamed/acted possessed by a demon all the time.  At one point Alex looked at me with bleary eyes and said, "What if it isn't colic?  What if he's just telling us who he is?"  I think we all know how that turned out.

It still hurt to paint over that tree. 

Bye bye, baby

I was tired when I left the Beacon Hill house.  Alex then told me we had reservations, just the two of us, for a belated anniversary dinner.  He said I had to be ready in five minutes because the babysitter was on her way.  And that's how I came to be at La Spiga, unshowered, my hair back in an old headband, with green paint up my arm. 

Nobody cared.  Now gimme chicken,
MJ

Turkey Bacon

I survived Spring Break 2012 by going to the YMCA a lot.  There's childcare there, plus a sturdy elliptical machine upon which to vent my parental frustrations.

I love the YMCA.  The YMCA is different from other gyms I've belonged to because fifty percent of its members are senior citizens.  I enjoy working out alongside senior citizens for a couple reasons: one, they make me feel as agile as a jackrabbit, and two, senior citizens are doing some really strange, entertaining stuff at the gym.

The most bizarre sightings are usually in the free weight area.  As I worked my biceps the other day, I observed a senior citizen on the ground in front of me doing what can only be described as "aggressive mat humping."  Then I looked to my left and saw an elderly woman engaged in "dangling from that bar" coupled with "slight swinging." 

Another woman was holding a weight like a baby and turning in circles.  Behind her was an elderly man who believed lying prone on a mat staring at the ceiling was exercise enough for him.  I probably should have checked the pulse on that guy.

(Please don't misunderstand -- I am not making fun of senior citizens.  I have great affection for my fellow gym members, and big respect for anyone at any age who's committed to staying active, no matter how strangely they do it.  Will I be a senior citizen humping a mat at the gym someday?  God I hope so.)

Friday morning I was on the elliptical machine when an elderly woman with a huge smile, very loud voice, and thick unidentifiable accent climbed onto the machine next to me and went gangbusters.  Her legs were flying all over the place.  She turned to me with a big open-mouthed smile and yelled, "LOOK AT ME!  I'M FASTER THAN YOU!" 

I'm not the competitive type, but I didn't like everyone in the room thinking a tiny grandmother wearing street clothes and a large straw hat could outpace me on an elliptical.  So I yelled back, "I'M ON MY COOL-DOWN AFTER 45 MINUTES OF INTERVALS SO BACK OFF, WOMAN."  

I'm thinking about trying the "Silver Sneakers Cardio" class next week.  I will be legend.


In other news,  Coco is diapering dinosaurs --

 The brachiosaurus has been a real b*tch to potty train

I'm writing this on Sunday.  My Friday and Saturday were really something to talk about, but that's for another time.

I want to talk about today because it was a perfect one, both in terms of weather and low level of annoyance with my family members.  They were downright fun -- all of them! -- all day. 

We went east towards the mountains, stopping along the way for breakfast at IHOP.  IHOP is considerably less fun since they started listing the calorie count of all their menu items right on the menu.  It made us rethink our choices then make different, less fun choices.  In related news, I hate turkey bacon. 

After breakfast we drove to Snoqualmie Falls.  We drove with all the windows down and the sunroof open, not just because Coco got carsick and threw up all over the place again, but because the day was too perfect to keep out.

I love where I live

   

proof I still exist

Our friend's brewery is right next to the falls so we stopped to grab a couple growlers.  Aren't they beautiful?

like bottled sunshine 

 

The rest of the day was spent in our backyard with the growlers, a couple wiffle balls and bats, an anthill, some light screaming, an aggressive game of tag, and many band-aids.  

 

It would have been flawless if it weren't for that damn turkey bacon.

 

Go gangbusters, little lady,

MJ

This post is sexy if you think ants are sexy

Thanks for your support of The Loosh and our family, posse.  It sure was a rough week, but we're moving past "the incident" nicely.

The other night Lucien fell asleep on our bed on a pile of newspaper.  When we moved him to his own bed, we saw he had newspaper ads printed all over the side of his face, so we did what any proper parent would do -- we pointed and laughed until he woke up and looked at us with wide, confused eyes.

So yep, it's safe to say the kid gloves are off again, and it's back to business and mockery of the children as usual.  But again, thank you for supporting us when we felt fragile.  We're lucky to have you all.

In much-needed fantastic news, the tacos are back!!!  The taco truck has moved into a corner store in the neighborhood.  It's now serving its delicious tacos across a real counter inside a real store so can never drive away again.  We celebrated by having Seattle Family over and eating hundreds of tacos.  Seattle Family also brought a birthday cake for me because I successfully grew a year older last week.

Alex took me to Restaurant Zoe for my birthday.  We ate seared foie gras.  I'm not sure how the French would feel about that.  The other part of my present was two tickets to Cats.  Cats was the first Broadway musical I saw as a kid, and kicked off my obsessive Broadway musical phase, which was nonstop fun for my whole family. 

I thanked Alex, agreed it would be nice to see Cats again after all these years.  But then Alex told me the second ticket wasn't for him, it was for Lucien.  The warm fuzzy feeling evaporated.  I said, "Wait....you want me to take Lucien to Cats and what's more, you consider it a present?  Are you insane, man?"

The show is in a couple weeks; I will spend the time between now and then begging Alex to go see Cats with me.

I also had a celebratory birthday night out with some of the neighborhood ladies.  We decided to start a book club.  We're not going to read any books, just go out to restaurants and drink wine.  Getting older isn't bad when you make grand plans like ours.

In not-so-great news, our Tiny Cottage is overrun with ants.  I returned from the grocery store one day to find a long line of ants winding across the dining room floor.  I armed myself with a spray bottle and a roll of paper towels and conducted an ant massacre of epic proportions.  I'm now worried their tiny ant ghosts are going to band together and seek revenge from the other side.  Whenever I hear a strange creak in the house, I yell, "Ant ghosts!" and crash through the screen door in my hurry to get the hell outta here.

The ants keep coming, I am powerless to stop them.  They appear to be pointing and laughing at my strategically-placed ant traps.  The only way I can keep them at bay is to regularly spray their entry point, which is directly under my writing desk, with a toxic spray cleaner.  It's possible I'm fuming myself to a dangerous degree, because as I write this, the chocolate Easter bunnies in the kids' baskets are talking to me.  (I should warn you all is not well in chocolate Easter bunny land -- they're planning something sinister according to the smiley one in the yellow bowtie known as "Mr. Pickles.")

We had a good Easter.  I had to return to the grocery store several times because the Cadbury Creme Eggs I bought for the kids' Easter baskets kept disappearing into my mouth.  I'd go back to the store, buy a few more, accidentally eat them again, go back to the store.  It was a vicious cycle, and now all my teeth are falling out.

The neighborhood Easter egg hunt was held in the backyard of The Goddamn House, which is kind of pathetic when you think about it.  We figured it was the best place to have it, on account of it being the biggest yard on the block.  It's also easy to hide eggs there -- it's so overgrown you just toss the eggs a couple inches in front of you and -- voila! -- hidden!

 the kids listening to Al's egg hunt instructions

Supermodel Neighbor uses the covered back porch of The Goddamn House as his carpentry workshop.  This offered more fantastic hiding opportunities -- our silly dumb kids didn't even consider looking in the jaws of the table saw.  It will probably surprise whoever owns the house someday to find our overlooked eggs hidden in piles of sawdust on the back porch.  They will know something happened back there.

We had Easter dinner with a handful of fellow neighbors who, like us, don't have family nearby.  With family far away, friends are family, maybe even slightly better because you get to choose them and don't have to buy them presents at Christmas. (Hugs, family!)

I was responsible for cooking half the Easter meal and it was not a disaster.  That's about as good as it gets when MJ's in charge of food.  I don't know if it's my midwestern upbringing or what, but I was shocked no one had heard of serving cherry sauce with the ham.  What the heck is the point of eating ham if it doesn't have cherries on top of it?  I just don't get people sometimes.

What was that noise?  Ant ghosts!
*runs*
MJ

The boy is mine

Chickens are a "thing" in Seattle now.  We came back from Paris to find chickens in most of our friends' backyards.  If you're cool, you have chickens.  If you're cool but extremely unlucky, one of your "chickens" turns out to be a rooster.  Those boys are loud. 

A classmate of Lucien's has chickens.  They recently invited us over to see their new baby chicks.  The family is a lesbian couple with two daughters, so I considered saying, "Wow, this house really is full of chicks" when I walked through the door, but didn't.  I'm going to save that comment for when I know them better, though, because I think it's pretty good.

You would think holding chicks would be a delightful experience, but instead it's nerve-wracking, bordering on heart attack-inducing.  Both Lucien and Coco were excited, squeezing the tiny fragile bodies in a terrifying way that made the chicks squeak.  I performed many chick interventions, and gave chick-holding demonstrations, all while being climbed upon by many baby chicks. We lost one for awhile under the couch, then another behind a pillow.  I spent the visit thinking "we're going to kill one, maybe two, so when it happens, Imma run." Remarkably, all chicks were unscathed when we left but they probably needed some stiff drinks.

We've been to a lot of restaurants lately.  They've all been great except for the last one, which was a disaster, but we'll get to that in a minute.

We met our friends, Beer Guy and Beer Gal (they brew beer at their place, thus a new blog moniker is born), for brunch at Skillet diner on Capitol Hill.  The thing that matters most at Skillet, and possibly in this world, is the cinnamon roll.  Skillet's cinnamon rolls are as big as your head, and arrive hot and drowned in icing.  I'd gained three pounds by the time I finished it, but it was well worth snug jeans.

The combination of Bloody Mary and cinnamon roll is a little rough, but who cares.

A few hours later, I had dinner at Marjorie with a childhood friend and his wife.  The childhood friend -- Video Game Guy -- and I haven't seen each other since high school graduation.  Our mutual friend, Facebook, put us back in contact and informed us we were both Seattleites.  Unlike the many times you reconnect with someone via Facebook and realize you now despise them with every fiber of your being, Video Game Guy and I are a Facebook success story.

The food was good, but perhaps not as noteworthy as the sign posted at the bar --

 You can just barely see the sign hanging underneath the guy in the fake Hofbräuhaus t-shirt (a Hofbräuhaus in Vegas?  Is nothing sacred?) It says "No minors. No firearms."  That was just for the bar, though, so the handguns we had at the table were OK.

Also noteworthy is the bathroom.  There's a record player in there, so you can choose the music to which you'd like to pee.  Miles Davis was playing when I walked in.  I could have spent the entire evening in the bathroom with the vinyl but went back to the table for fear Video Game Guy would unfriend me.

 sweet, sweet pee tunes

Now I'm going to change the mood significantly.  Fun and games are over because our third restaurant was a disaster, to put it mildly.  I'm sick, frankly, of talking about what happened so the blog's getting a much-abbreviated version.

We met friends at a nearby alehouse -- an alehouse infamous for its toy corner moshpit, kids underfoot, chaos, and general mayhem.  Perhaps it wasn't the original intent of the restaurant, but it's the environment that's grown there over the years, and it's the main reason we go there, to give Lucien a longer "leash" than we would in a more traditional restaurant.  We thought it was OK to do so.  We were wrong.

An elderly man, unbeknownst to us, grew irate at Lucien and his friend's constant back-and-forth in front of his table.  It's unclear how the altercation began, but according to the kids, it began with Lucien's friend being yelled at by the man.  The friend cried, prompting his father to get up from his table and come over.  Lucien then either said something mouthy or made a face at the man seated in the booth.  The man then grabbed Lucien -- by the neck -- and shook him. 

The dad of Lucien's friend, who was by then standing next to him, yelled loudly and pulled the man's hands off Lucien's neck.  The restaurant went silent, staff (eventually) came over, the man denied he touched Lucien, that "he would never hurt a child."  Right.

The aftermath has been lengthy and tiring.  I mailed letters to the management and posted an angry message on a popular parenting listserve, which got me a barrage of comments from opinionated people on all sides.  I spent a full day plodding through and answering all the direct emails in my inbox, either thanking them for their support or thanking them for their opinion we're crap parents.  That day was long.

But it did have the effect I hoped for -- someone forwarded it to the owner of the alehouse and he was in touch with me within twenty-four hours.  He's a good guy, father of three himself, and was suitably appalled by what happened.  He and his staff are pulling receipts from that evening in an attempt to both identify the man and contact more eyewitnesses. 

Lucien's OK, though still processing.  Sometimes he'll be sitting in silence and suddenly say something like, "You know, Mom, I bet that man just likes to squeeze kids' necks, so he goes to that restaurant because he knows there will be lots of necks to squeeze."  It hasn't slowed him down much, but it's evident he's still trying to figure out what went wrong, too.

We have no interest in suing the man or filing a police report, as many have suggested.  Whenever he's identified, I want only to write him a letter, tell him he can deny it all he wants but we know what he did, it was an assault, and it was wrong no matter what Lucien said or did to him.  I want to scare that asshole so he never, ever touches a kid again. 

It was so confusing in the restaurant,  Alex and I didn't get a chance to confront the man before he left.  Lucien didn't see us defend him, and that pains us greatly.  We just want the chance to do so now.

You have absolutely no right, ever, to touch a child in anger. 
(Everyone knows this except assholes.)

It's been a rough week, posse.  Sure could use a few cinnamon rolls over here,

MJ