The Devil's Fortune Cookies

My latest foster dog, a six-year-old German Shepherd mix, was adopted last weekend by the sweetest couple. It was sad because I loved him with the strength of many suns but even worse, within two hours of being with his new family, he bolted and was hit by a car. He's injured but will be OK. The poor boy must be so confused and scared, surrounded by people he doesn't know in a place he doesn't know.

I wish he could recover here with me and the kids instead.... sooo hey, does anybody have any surefire dognapping tips? Asking for a friend. We did not have this conversation.

I miss you, good boy. 

Get better soon.

I'm getting back to the California road trip now to get my mind off poor Rocky and his collapsed lung.

Last time I checked in, which admittedly was a long time ago once again, the kids and I were headed to Big Sur on Highway 1 in beautiful California. It was a fast swervy ride, as it should be. The kids had vomit bags at the ready but more importantly they had Dramamine, which made them so drowsy they were kinda like "whooooo" all quiet-like with eyes half closed. The vomit bags thankfully went unused and quickly returned to their previous status as garbage bags.

Lucien has an interest in photography. Here he is trying to get a picture of a possible sea lion in the water but Coco and I kept bugging him. Hang in there, Lulu, we are indeed annoying --

Hearst Castle in San Simeon sits just off Highway 1. The Hearst Castle tour is boring compared to the Winchester House Tour because there are no ghosts. Hearst built a big impressive house, sure, but you barely see any of it because you spend too much time in each of the rooms. We could have seen many more rooms if we didn't have to stand around hearing for the 100th time that Charlie Chaplin played poker with Walt Disney in that very room or whatever. Stop with the name dropping and show me more house.

I am totally pretending I live here. I've just joined this tour to mingle with the commoners

 and keep myself down to earth.

We stayed that evening in the infamously quirky Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, California. I can't recommend it enough, especially if you are a fan of sensory overload --

This is just the dining room

The rooms at the Madonna Inn are themed. Our room had an "1850s San Francisco" theme which, from what I could tell, pretty much meant "brothel." Think black lampshades, gold mirrors, red shaggy carpet and red walls with a gold lace overlay. I was pretty jealous of the pioneer themed room next door because it had half of a real covered wagon in there. The wagon added something special, added authenticity to the theme. I am very relieved we did not have half a prostitute to add authenticity to ours.

The Madonna Inn is the place local couples come to dance like nobody's watching, often in matching outfits, to live bands. I took Coco for a few twirls on the dance floor after dinner but Lucien chose to stay at the table and cover his face with a napkin in horrified embarrassment.

That boy has become less fun since turning 13. I went to pick him up early from school last week in one of my favorite outfits -- a pair of super high-waisted wide-legged jeans and a cropped top with a wide belt. My style game was on point and I was feeling sooo fine but when Lucien saw me in the office, he was mortified. He actually pulled on my arm to get me out of the school as quickly as possible. I was like, "Dude, what is your issue? I'm amazing!" and he said "God, Mom, you look like one of those hippies from the 80s." He then informed me that bell bottoms are hopelessly out of style (false) but I didn't really hear that because I was stuck on the horrifying "hippies from the 80s" part.

(... Lucien thinks the hippies were in the 80s... I guess because the 80s seem so impossibly long ago to him... so now I have a choice to make. Either I wear the exact same hippie outfit to school every time I pick him up OR I can pull out the true 80s gear -- maybe a Wham t-shirt worn off one shoulder, pegged jeans, jelly shoes -- and jazzercise into the building.)

Our brothel themed room at The Madonna Inn neighbored a group of people from L.A. celebrating their friend's 30th birthday. I know all this because we could easily hear them next door through the thin wall, calling each other by their insufferable names like Magnolia and Blaine and Thaddeus -- and forgive me but sweet baby Jesus, I hated them.

One male (I think it was Rolston but my voice identification is not 100%) said at one point, "My actor's diction coach got injured pretty badly at the tennis club but he wanted to take his SUV to the emergency room instead of my convertible because he doesn't like what my convertible does to his hair" and I sat straight up in my bed and said aloud, "I HATE YOU PEOPLE" and then immediately heard Lucien laugh from over in his bed. I did not model mature parental behavior there but at least The Loosh concurred.

We didn't sleep well that night because as cool as The Madonna Inn is, its walls are apparently made of paper. I hated our room's walls more than I hated Rolston and that's saying a lot.

The next morning, bleary-eyed, I bought a cup of coffee at the bar and the woman working there said, "the condiments are over there" and pointed at a table across the room. I immediately blurted out, "Oh! Do you have mustard?"

My mind had jumped to a thought I'd had from the previous day, you see, when the kids and I were eating lunch at a rest area. I was eating cheese and salami on crackers and thought, "It's a little dry. Mustard would be great with this. I need to find little packets of mustard for next time."

Upon hearing the word "condiment" my mind had not gone towards cream and sugar. It had gone straight back to mustard. Maybe it wasn't a totally unreasonable connection for me but I think it struck the woman behind the bar as completely baffling. She stared at me slightly wide-eyed, slightly open-mouthed, until I mumbled "never mind" and shuffled off. I'm sure she watched me go and said aloud to no one in particular, "My god, that woman puts mustard in her coffee."

Our next stop on the itinerary was the reason for the whole road trip, the ultimate goal -- Death Valley National Park in the Mohave Desert. I'd never been to Death Valley before but knew enough to avoid it during the summer because we would probably DIE.

Even in Spring, it's toasty in Death Valley with temps in the mid-90s. It is also a humongous park. I asked a ranger about one hike in particular and was told it was a four-and-a-half hour drive to the trailhead, which unfortunately meant a four-and-a-half hour drive back, too. I laughed out loud -- what a silly ranger telling me jokes! -- but she was serious. We skipped that hike.

My two dot kids

Death Valley immediately became not just one of our favorite national parks, but one of our favorite places ever. You have to marvel at the remoteness and the wildness of it all, the extremes it embraces with snow capped peaks above and one of the hottest places in the world below in the salt flats, 282 feet below sea level.

The kids shopped for my birthday gifts in San Luis Obispo.

I became the proud owner of a shark hand puppet,

and a lucky road trip car charm,

and a bunch of fake mustaches at the the age of 44.

It's gonna be a good year.

Coco two miles out into the salt flats,

wishing the car was parked closer.

I almost lost the kids to an overheated crabby revolt in the sand dunes.  The handheld misting fans got us through --

For the Star Wars fans, Death Valley was Tatooine
and these sand dunes are where C3PO and R2D2 got lost.

The kids got sick of me scouting all filming locations

and tried to leave me

as I ran after them yelling, "You guys! It's a classic!"

Death Valley is full of natural features with ominous names like "Dante's View" and "Devil's Golf Course" and "Devil's Haystack." Lucien said at one point, while reading from a book we had purchased at the gift shop, that there was a super cool feature we had to see called "Devil's Fortune Cookies." I scoured my park map but couldn't find anything labeled Devil's Fortune Cookies so walked into the visitor center to ask a ranger their whereabouts. The ranger laughed out loud, said there was no such thing in Death Valley, and that someone must be mistaken or was playing a joke on me.

I turned to see Lucien doubled over with laughter. He could barely choke out the words, "I can't believe you believed me and I can't believe you asked!" as I marched him back to the car. He was so very pleased with himself.

Devil's Golf Course.

A real place.

I get frustrated sometimes on these road trips because even if I'm pointing out something amazing outside the car, the kids rarely look out the window. I pulled over in the middle of a gigantic wind farm (amazing!) to give them a talkin' to. I said they were missing some of the best parts, the journey parts, and that I wanted them to notice when I pointed out something interesting along the road. If they didn't get it together and enjoy absolutely everything I told them to enjoy at all times, I was going to take away their screens.

We soon happened upon a gorgeous old bridge above a deep valley. I said, "You guys better look out the window and appreciate this old bridge." and Lucien yelled from the backseat, "OH WOW, thanks for pointing that out, Mom, this bridge really butters my biscuit!"

Punk.

We're not done with this trip yet, sorry. I pointed the car north and aimed for a different type of valley, Yosemite National Park. Yosemite is classic beauty in your face, some of nature's finest offerings.

I splurged on the accommodations in Yosemite. We stayed at the fancy pants Majestic Yosemite Lodge. It wasn't cheap but it was worth it because it reminded Lucien of The Shining and I really love creeping out the kids.

waiting for blood to pour out of this elevator...

I'm not sure if we enjoyed driving around the park more or sitting in the lodge's sun room more. The Majestic Yosemite has board games to lend its guests and we borrowed them ALL. It's good to have the quality downtime in between insisting the kids enjoy things they very much do not enjoy.

I've got to wind this road trip down but there's still one more stop! Plus... a special guest!

The last stop was San Francisco and the special guest was Alex, who flew in just for the weekend to join us in one of our favorite cities. Alex and I are no longer together as a couple but we still like each other as people and are doing well keeping our separation friendly and peaceful. High five, Al, we make breaking up after 20 years look like easy fun. (It's not)

The kids said it was "kind of weird" we were all together again on a trip but also "kind of nice." I think that sums up how we all felt about it.

Coco being sent to solitary confinement on Alcatraz

This is where the real hippies were from, 

not those 80s ones.

Coco got very tired after about 500 blocks of uphill San Francisco walking

so she said "eff it" and started crawling.

Same sculpture eleven years later. 

The kid looks different, though.

I'm plotting my next road trip already. So I guess that means I'm plotting two things now -- another road trip and (allegedly) stealing my foster dog back from his new family. I could incorporate the two, maybe, because once I've stolen the dog I should probably skip town for a little bit.

I'm  going to do these trips with them until they are 100 years old.

In the meantime, back in Seattle,

She's a sloth now.

Life goes on. And everyone is OK.

Those Devil's Fortune Cookies really butter my biscuit,
MJ

Feels like Day 39

I turned older recently. It tends to happen once a year. This year I celebrated in one of my happiest of places because I was on the ROAD.

You know it's been a tough year for all of us, posse, so you know how badly I needed to be out there with my kids again, driving through a whole lot of wide open expanses with a whole lot of nothing stretched before me on long, long roads.

I rented a car for this trip. Alex helped since he has a membership for rental cars given all his travels. We picked the car up together and as soon as we hopped in, we were like, "Is this what cars are like now?" and then proceeded to push every button like kids with a new toy. I'm surprised we didn't break anything.

It's been a long time since I've had a new car. My 2006 model is still kicking it but has most definitely seen better days. I love my car and don't want to part with it yet but I'll admit -- pretty thrilling to have an affair with a hotter younger model for a couple weeks.

My road trips are ambitious. It's the norm for us to pull 14-hour days in the car as we get to where we're going. The kids and I have a system that has been refined over many years of doing these trips -- an intricate schedule of bathroom breaks and snack bags and surprise bags and road trip games and countdowns and music playlists to fit each landscape. We know what to expect in a car and it doesn't take long to get back into the road trip frame of mind.

Climbing into a car together at dawn to begin another adventure is like climbing into an old friend. That sounded creepy but I meant it to feel cozy.

There was one feature I found jarring on my hot young rental car as I cruised along. Every few hours or so, the dashboard would light up and a message would flash in an annoying way: "Would you like to take a break?" And I would get kind of offended and say aloud, "Take a break? Take a break? Have you ever met me, car? God you don't know me at all."

My old car would never ask me such a stupid question. She knows breaks are for wimps and road trips are for driving.

This trip was all about California. Our first day ended in Eureka. I love Northern California and all the many, many quirky roadside attractions you can search out until your kids start getting crabby and telling you they're sick of them and wish we could just go to the hotel. Lame!

Giant Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox

Babe was anatomically correct.

Lucien jumped out of the car and yelled, "Mom, look at the balls on that bull!"

For the tour-thru tree, my rental car's dashboard

flashed the message,

"Get me out of here I am claustrophobic"

We're really getting to know each other now.

A house carved out of a giant Redwood tree

The Gravity House at Confusion Hill

The Grandfather Tree

We ate dinner our second night at a Cheesecake Factory in San Jose. It is not an experience I would recommend. My first question, which has been on my mind for a long time: why is The Cheesecake Factory decorated in a faux Egyptian theme? Shouldn't it be more of an industrial factory-type thing? What is it about the words "cheesecake" and/or "factory" that made someone snap their fingers and say "Cleopatra!" This is just one of many things that bother me about that restaurant.

Our table was wedged between two tables of men at The Cheesecake Factory.  The men on my left were complaining about the women in Silicon Valley. One said, "If you're not payin' 'em, ignore 'em, because at least the ones you're paying will do what you say." I had to resist throwing my bowl of overpriced pasta primavera at his head because it is my firm belief it is better for a misogynist to wear a bowl of pasta than not wear a bowl of pasta.

I was hoping the kids had not overheard but Lucien looked up from his book and said, "Mom, I think that guy's single for a reason."

The conversation of the men to my right was slightly less offensive. They were discussing how one of them had drunkenly killed a chipmunk one time. I don't think I want to be friends with either table but at least those to my right seemed sad about what they were saying.

The kids and I were in San Jose to visit the Winchester Mystery House. It's been said the Winchester Mystery House is the most haunted house in the country, inhabited by the vengeful spirits of those killed by the Winchester Rifle.

Sarah Winchester, an eccentric lady, understatement, was told by her medium the only way to keep the ghosts at bay was to build on the house continually, 24-hrs a day, which she did for over 30 years. There were no blueprints, no plans, she would just tell the workers to tack on this room or that room as it went along. It is an immense labyrinth of 170 rooms with no rhyme nor reason as to its layout. We were warned by our guide not to leave the group, that if we wandered off it would be very difficult for us to find our way out. I bet half the ghosts in that house are just former tour participants trying to find the bathroom.

The Winchester House was as beautiful and creepy as I'd hoped.

staircases leading straight up into the ceiling

The door in Sarah's seance room.

It opens onto nothing

but is a handy shortcut

if you'd suddenly like to be down in the servants' kitchen sink.

Another "door to nowhere" up on the second floor.

If you open that one and aren't paying attention,

you're face first in the garden now.

I must add the tour doesn't begin in the best way. The guide says "We're about to climb a staircase with seven switchbacks and a hundred low-rise stairs, all just to take us nine feet above to the second floor." So you're crisscrossing back and forth across the narrow low-rise stair switchbacks, giggling with your fellow tourmates like, "Oh gosh, Sarah, you were so weird!"

But then you get to the top of the stairs and the guide says, "Those are not the original stairs. Sarah had the normal stairs ripped out and those low-rise stairs installed towards the end of her life because she could barely move due to her arthritis."

And then you feel terribly guilty, like a total jerk, for giggling and calling an old lady weird who sufferred crippling arthritis and was just trying to get into her big dang weird house. Hang your head in shame, tour participant, in shame.

After San Jose we headed over to Highway 1 to experience the winding and wild beauty of Big Sur.  This is the morning I jumped on the kids to wake them up and said, "Guys, time for Day Three!" and Lucien groaned and said, "Jesus, Mom, it feels like Day 39." Maybe that's how it feels to read about it, too.

Onward!
MJ

Northern Exposure

We spent a long weekend at Suncadia with friends at the tail end of Spring Break. One of those friends put the wrong kind of soap in the dishwasher, squirted liquid dish soap into it instead of the stuff made for machines. Our friends are a smart and savvy group of people but when we all get together, it gets kind of chaotic and we're often just trying to get through the day without somebody ending up in the ER. "Details" often become "details schmetails."

Here come the happy little bubbles

escaping out the bottom
while we all stand around staring at it.

The adults said "shit" but the kids said "cool."

My search history for our time in Suncadia reads as follows on my iPhone: "wrong soap in dishwasher" followed by "squawking sound coming from refrigerator" followed by "what is Supertramp's greatest hit" and that is a surprisingly good summary of the weekend.

Suncadia is a resort community outside Roslyn, Washington. Roslyn is a textbook "sleepy town" whose claim to fame is being the filming location for the '90s TV show Northern Exposure. The show is supposed to take place in Alaska but that was a TV falsehood, it is downright Washington around here.

There are no moose in Roslyn. The famous shot of the moose in the Northern Exposure opening credits was created, so we're told, by "borrowing" a moose, building a fence around the entire town, and letting the moose wander around. And wander he did, straight past The Roslyn Cafe at one point, a business that still exists, which straight up told the audience they weren't looking at Alaska.

Our group took a few hikes together during our days in Suncadia/Roslyn, including this one where we went offroad and walked 'round and 'round in the forest somewhat disoriented, joking nervously about how no one had come prepared with backpacks, bottles of water, food, that kind of basic hiking survival stuff --

What are we even doing? 

Buncha city people

 wandering around with no trail and no water.

Again, details schmetails. We had been grateful just to get everyone out the door and into cars and accounted for at the trailhead.

It's no joking matter with these people, really, we should have been better prepared. These are the same people with whom we have weathered intense windstorms, terrible injuries and disgusting hot tub rashes. We should be careful when we're together. There is something about the energy we put out into the universe that makes the universe want to do things to us.

Looking at this pic, who can blame it?

We're just begging to be taken down a peg.

It's like The Beatles crossing Abbey Road but more Twilight-y.

Since our older kids are capable babysitters now, we left the mess of kids (or is it a tangle of kids?) at the house with some mac-n-cheese and went out for grown-up dinner in Roslyn.

We went to the town tavern, The Brick, after dinner to play some shuffleboard. The Brick is rumored to be the oldest operating tavern in our state, established in 1889, but we were more impressed with the unabashedly phallic sign out front.

well hello there, fella.

The Brick has a "running water spittoon" still operating in front of the bar stools --

These water-filled floor troughs were originally installed for tobacco spit but soon enough men began using them to relieve themselves pee-wise so they didn't have to get up from their stools. I think it was a wise decision the TV people focused on the moose and left out the piss trough for the Northern Exposure opening credits.

I wonder what gross secondary use they devised for the shuffleboard.

Likely butt exfoliation.

Alex went back to Mexico City for work soon after our Suncadia trip. I took the kids to another area of Washington while he was away, the northern part, where tulip fields bloom like Holland in the Spring. It's quite a draw for the people of our state -- such a draw, in fact, the kids and I had to wait in a car line for over an hour just to pull into the parking lot from the main road We all agreed it was good Alex wasn't with us at that point; he would have lost his damn mind because the man has no patience for sitting still.

The tulip fields are gorgeous, like paintings come to life plus hundreds of tourists. I tried to take nice pictures of my children but they soon made it clear I'm never going to have a normal picture of them ever again.

...for the love of god, children.

Sometimes I would think I had a good one of both of them smiling at the camera only to zoom in and realize Lucien was giving me the middle finger. I am really enjoying the age of 12.

whoomp, there it is.

Unabashedly Phallic would be a good name for a band.
Seems fitting for heavy metal,
but would be funnier for a classical string quartet.
MJ

Whistler and the magic meatball

Lucien and I bought the game Monopoly while out running errands not long ago. It was an impulse buy -- a fit of nostalgia for me and a desire for world economic domination for him. We have since played it several times, none of the games ever ending and all of them becoming increasingly more frustrating as time plods on. The threats get ugly as we get worn down and crabby after hours of play, threats like, "If you put one more house on that property, I swear to God I'm going to eat a pickle then breathe in your face." (That one was from me. My kids hate pickles.)

I had Coco backed into a corner during one game. I owned 75% of the properties and she was running low on cash but she just kept squeaking by with a determined look on her face for approximately seven more hours until I was so sick of Monopoly, I told her she won on account of her grit and stamina. Now she thinks she's some kind of Monopoly whiz kid. I'd take her down a peg by demanding a rematch but I don't have thirteen more hours to spend playing that stupid game.

We're in the middle of the kids' Spring Breaks and just returned from a week up at Whistler outside Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia. We fell in love with Whistler and briefly dreamed of owning a slopeside condo there until we did a real estate search and discovered even the most basic of slopeside condos run about 1.7 million dollars. A short lived dream indeed, but lovely while it lasted.

Dang, Whistler. 

Well done on the view situation.

Skiing is the weirdest thing. You spend more time sitting on a chairlift than actually skiing, and the equipment is annoyingly cumbersome and unwieldy. Walking in ski boots is one of the least graceful things a person can do. It's a clomp clomp clomp robot walk. Clomp clomp clomp fills the air at a ski resort, people clomp clomp clomping all over the place as if it was a normal thing to do. God forbid you need to go down any stairs -- then you're suddenly sidestepping with a jerky heel/toe like the least graceful dancer descending the grand staircase in the Ziegfeld Follies.

When the awkward walking and the clomp clomp is over, though, a transformation! As soon as you strap on skis, you become the lightest thing on the planet, gliding across the snow and swooping down the slope like a bird. Unless you're like me, then you're swooping around more like a cow. I don't mean I'm big like a cow, more that I'm a bit derpy and people like to push me over when I'm sleeping. 

What? I just wanted to say I can ski but I'm not super graceful on skis. The metaphor went rogue up there. 

There is a gondola at Whistler called the Peak 2 Peak, which joins the two neighbor mountains of Whistler and Blackcomb. The Peak 2 Peak is a Guinness World Record holder for both "highest gondola" and "gondola with the longest span between support poles." I don't think there should be an award for a gondola having fewer support poles. I also think the Peak 2 Peak should be renamed the Shit 2 Pants.

I distracted myself from my fear by taking pictures of my family members, who were also feeling slightly uneasy. Anyone who isn't feeling uneasy dangling from a cable way up there with no support poles is a prime candidate for a Darwin award.

Coco took this picture of us at lunch at an Irish pub.

We agree it's one of the stranger pictures we've taken.

We embarrassed Lucien our final afternoon in Whistler as we sat in the Crystal Hut at the top of the mountain eating waffles. "Don't Stop Believing" came on the sound system and that's me and Al's jam. We busted our best moves - we sang into air microphones, we played air guitar, we danced the best we could in a crowded cabin surrounded by people eating waffles. In his younger years he would have joined us but Lucien is now at the age where he embarrasses easily. He turned red, slunk down in his chair and said through clenched teeth, "You guys.... everybody..... is...... watching." I feel it's payback for all the times in Paris Lucien made me the center of attention when I most definitely did not want to be. That kid was crazy!

The kids running towards dinner in the village.

Our slopeside condo is there to the left. 

It was a brief, intoxicating, 

very expensive dream.

On our final run down the mountain, the finale of our glorious 2017-2018 ski season, we made a wrong turn and ended up on a run with moguls, a.k.a bumpy enemies. Moguls are like small snow mountains on all sides of you, some so tall you can just barely make out the top of Coco's blond head a few bumps over. They take a certain style of skiing to navigate, a style I've never gotten the hang of, one that requires very bouncy knees and very sharp turns to ski between the bumps. We decided we were going to take the moguls one by one, one turn at a time, slowly, and would get down the hill cautiously and together. 

Coco didn't quite get that memo and just took off straight down, bouncing up and down over the moguls with a dududududud. Her tiny person bounced over the tops of those things with a rattly bounce similar to that of a car driving over many speed bumps in a row at full speed. We were briefly concerned for her safety until the hilarity hit us, she looked so funny, and then we were laughing too hard to see her anymore. Coco bouncing over those things like an out of control rag doll was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. Lucien laughed so hard he fell over, which is a totally normal thing to do in moguls so he didn't stand out too much. We, the parents, pointing and laughing at our child hurtling towards possible grievous bodily injury may have stood out a little more.

But nobody knows Coco like we know Coco. Coco's strong as hell and Coco's a beast. She made it through the mogul minefield upright, finally falling towards the bottom in a soft non-catastophic fall where she sat and laughed at herself until we'd caught up to her, all of us incredulous she had made it down the run in the most unconventional of mogul skiing ways.

She will shock the hell out of future Olympics

with her trademark mogul style

It was raining hard our final day in Whistler (Spring skiing = weather crapshoot) so we skipped the skiing and looked for indoor fun. The best option was determined to be Escape Whistler, an escape room experience. An escape room is where you get locked in a small room for an hour and the whole room is a giant puzzle. You follow clues and solve riddles and break codes until you either free yourself from the room or fail miserably and must live forever in great shame. 

Given I'm a moderate claustrophobe, it might seem a strange thing for me to agree to do. My family thought so. Lucien joked on the way there that I was going to last five seconds inside the room before I freaked out, crashed through the door leaving a Mom-shaped hole as I yelled "See ya later, suckas!" and disappeared towards the horizon. I must admit I also thought that was the way it was gonna go down.

Our escape room scenario was a ski cabin buried by an avalanche. The production value was high in our tiny room with authentic log cabin walls, rumbling snow sound effects and a crackly fake fire in a potbelly stove. I did not freak out inside the room; it was actually kind of cozy to be in a little cabin full of ski equipment, of which I am very fond despite their cumbersome nature. It was like being surrounded by little old clomp clomp friends.

Coziness aside, that escape room was the hardest damn thing. Alex and I are not really puzzle people. I do not enjoy code breaking and have absolutely no patience for riddles. If someone presents me with a riddle, I am likely to say immediately, "I don't know, just tell me the answer, I'm not getting any younger here." 

We were so confused in that room, we kind of just wandered around and bumped into each other. We had to ask for many clues via walkie-talkie to the staff outside. At one point, we veered so solidly off reality's course, we decided we were supposed to pry off a couple of those authentic log cabin wall pieces using a wrench we'd found in a suitcase. To our credit, we checked with the walkie-talkie people before we began destroying the room. "Are we supposed to pry the boards off the wall?" The reply came quickly and a little panicked, "No, no, please don't do that." 

Keeping everyone on their toes, that's just what we do.

We didn't even come close to "escaping." If the escape room had been a marathon, we maybe made it to mile 7. And that's being generous. The staff reassured our bummed out family that we were not stupid, that in fact the "Buried Cabin" was one of the two hardest rooms they had, with only a 20% success rate. I wish we would have known that earlier. We might have chosen the "abducted by pirates" scenario instead, the beginner level room with a 90% success rate. We probably still would have considered ripping the walls apart, though. 

Bye, Whistler. We loved everything about you except for the Shit 2 Pants gondola. That thing is insane.

In closing, a technology story. Alex is a big fan of the Amazon Echo device, nicknamed "Alexa." We have several Echos around the house. We have one in the kitchen, one in the TV room, and one in the master bedroom. This is too many Alexas, in my opinion.

I hate Alexa. I do not find Alexa helpful. Every time I try to ask her something, she usually tells me she doesn't understand me or she can't help me with that information. I mean come on, Alexa, how hard is it to tell me how many nickles it would take to fill a human stomach? (Lucien had a unit on measurement for homework and we got weird with it.)

Alex sometimes uses his Echo device to search for movies for us to watch at night. He asked Alexa for information on I, Tonya and instead of giving us info about the movie, Alexa said, "OK. Here is your short bedtime story about the magic meatball" and began reading to us from some whacked out kids book. I laughed and laughed but Alex just looked annoyed. He always takes it personally when Alexa lets him down.

Ever since that night, as Alex talks to Alexa in our bedroom about setting his alarm for the A.M., I yell behind him, "Hey Alexa, tell me more about that magic meatball" and I'll be damned if Alex still doesn't look annoyed. Come to my side, man, it's so fun to hate that thing.

See ya later, suckas.
*Mom-shaped hole in the door*

MJ