The Constant Chaperone

I don't chaperone every school field trip but when I do, you better believe I'm on high alert like a meerkat keeping watch over his hole in the ground.  I am reared up on my hind legs looking around anxiously with wide, dark, impossibly cute eyes.

this was me on a recent field trip to the Asian Art Museum

There are parents out there who have never chaperoned a school field trip.  They are the lucky ones, as they can continue to live in safe cheerful bubbles.  For those of us who've chaperoned even one time, we feel compelled to chaperone forevermore from that point on because we now know the truth; the whole thing is a chaotic near disaster every single time and it's a miracle anyone returns to school in one piece.

After knowing what chaperones know,  it's hard to go about your normal routine on a Field Trip Day with the knowledge your kid is on a school bus hurtling towards a very uncertain future.

I've chaperoned field trips to the zoo, to museums, to farms, to theatres, to goddamn corn mazes in the middle of the state, to puppet shows and beyond.  I have written some chaperone tales before, here and here and here and here and here and here.....

(...Lord... so I just now realized it may be a bit old to hear me talking about this topic. I didn't even link to all of my previous chaperoning mentions.  There were too many.  I apologize, I hadn't realized how redundant I'd gotten and how being a chaperone is now apparently closely linked to my identity as a person.)

me at the Gold Rush National Historical Park

My favorite part of any field trip comes when the teacher says, "Make sure you keep your group with you at all times," then hands you half a dozen six-year-olds who immediately take off in different directions.  Yippee-ki-yay, let the games begin -- and by "games" I mean a lot of rushing around yelling for kids to come back to you until your voice is hoarse.

I am proud to say I have always returned with all of my charges. I've never had a vomit (others have not been so lucky) and I've only had one peeing-of-the-pants.  When I show up at the end of the school day on a field trip day, it's common for a small child to point at me and tell his mother, "That's Coco's mom, I runned away from her!" and I have to smile at the mother like, "Isn't your child just delightful" but what I'm really thinking is, "You  have no idea how big you owe me, that kid nearly wound up in Idaho."

I volunteered Alex to chaperone the biggest field trip of all -- the Mount Saint Helens (it's a volcano!) trip with the 4th Grade -- because he's got a can-do attitude. They left at 7:00 a.m. and returned at 9:00 p.m.  We non-chaperone spouses awaited their return on our back porch with bottles of scotch at the ready. The brave souls were glassy-eyed and numb when they finally stumbled into the house.  Alex rocked a bit as he continually counted to five, over and over, occasionally jumping out of his seat to yell, "Holy shit, I can't find Henry, has he fallen into the caldera?"  Sshhhh, I know baby, it's ok, it's over now...

My most recent chaperone excursion was to the recycling plant.  It went pretty smoothly all in all.  The place was very educational and we learned a lot about recycling, reusing, composting.  The kids were quizzed about what items go in which bin and I felt very good about the whole thing indeed. We're raising good little environmentally aware citizens.

But I'll be damned if, after lunch, Coco didn't try to walk over and put her banana peel in the garbage can instead of the compost bin.  I saw her hand hovering over the garbage, her fingers beginning to relax their hold, and could not believe what I was seeing.  Had she learned nothing just moments before? Was it all in vain? Well, not on this chaperone's watch. I sprang through the air like a cat and batted the banana peel out her hand just in time while yelling, "Do not bring shame upon this family!"
 
All that to say I actually kind of like chaperoning.  It's a crapshoot but it's nice to spend time with all these kids while they're still young enough to look up at you with innocent faces and prattle on and on nonsensically about their pet turtle, Drip.

Until next time, all.  We remain your constant, serious chaperones on high alert.

(except for Merle there in the middle, he's always f*cking around.)

I am sorry for beating a topic to death.

But chaperoning is serious business.

MJ

I'm just too young

She's Back

I don't have much time to chat; I'm knee deep in Halloween party preparations.  That's a literal statement because I currently have my stockpile of Halloween decorations stacked in the entryway.

Our house is usually thoroughly decorated by the 1st of October but it's taking me longer to organize this year because of life and its numerous commitments and stresses. We therefore shuffle through scattered severed fingers and fake spider webs in the hall the way one would shuffle through crisp brightly-colored Autumn leaves on a park trail.

I've realized I can no longer decorate the outside of my house for Halloween, which has deflated my enthusiasm somewhat.  Last week I placed fake tombstones in their usual location in the yard but returned thirty seconds later to find my gleeful desert mutt Natani chewing through them with rapturous joy. It was a welcome present from the mommy to her dog child and she thanked me for it with many styrofoam-laden kisses.

My dog trainer comes frequently so, believe it or not, things are calming slightly on the dog front. My dog trainer is so intimidating that when she tells Natani to "sit" our whole family sits.  I've never seen her smile.  She told me once I'm being "a pushover, a total pansy" when it comes to the dog.  It's true but it hurt my feelings all the same.

There has not been a dull moment with this dog since the kids and I grabbed her out of the desert. For instance, she likes to chase bees but the recent day she finally caught one was the day we realized she has a serious bee allergy.  Her face puffed, her skin turned red, her eyes swelled, she gave up on life  --

her face is not supposed to look like that

but congrats, dog, you finally caught one of the little f*ckers

A dose of vet-directed Benadryl knocked her out cold but she still scratched at her face constantly in her sleep --

She recovered and has gone back to chasing bees.  Dogs can be stupid.

We've done quite a bit of hiking this fall.  We went to Mount Rainier with some friends and rented a cozy cabin with a fireplace, a dart board, and a hot tub.  Add a few bottles of wine, as we most assuredly did, and you have a recipe for either fun or tragedy.  Ours went the "fun" route but that was pure luck.

Mount Rainier is one of my favorite places to hike because I dislike "tree hiking." After five minutes of walking through trees, trees, more trees, I'm bored out of my mind.  I would rather hike through a parking lot because at least you won't get your boots muddy AND you can play the license plate game.

But Mount Rainier offers wide-open trails and subsequent wide-open views of the volcano towering above.  I will never tire of hiking there because it often looks like this --

However, when it's socked in by clouds, you get something more like this --

We did the fireman carry with Lucien when he got grumpy

which was often

because he did not believe we were on a volcano

Smile, son, I swear it's right behind us

We are lucky Mount Rainier is only a couple hours away.  We will return when weather conditions are more favorable and less likely to tick off the children.

Coco turned 6 and chose to have her birthday party at the gymnastics academy.  She paired her favorite sparkly blue gymnastics leotard with pink fringed Minnetonka boots.  I have always thought gymnastics paired well with cultural appropriation and am thrilled to discover she feels the same.

that's my girl

I can get mushy here and discuss the rapid growth of my children and how it both delights and depresses me.  Coco's age is mystifying; her current argumentative attitude suggests a much older person yet her huggable adorable self reminds me of the baby she once was.  I want to both reprimand her for sassing me and squeeze her face while babbling baby talk.  Sometimes I vacillate rapidly between the two;  it's a confusing time for both of us.

My feelings for Lucien are no different.  He holds my hand less frequently now and has begun rolling his damn eyes at his parents, how dare he!  He also now wears the same size shoe as me.  I don't want him to grow up, don't want him to stop cuddling with me on the couch, don't want him to leave me, ever, yet I can't wait for him to grow out of his current rain boots because they're cool and mine have recently sprung a leak.

Children aside, I also recently had dinner with President Barack Obama.

I attended a fundraiser for Senator Patty Murray and President Obama was the "special guest."  We have supported Patty Murray for years with our votes but we attended her fundraiser to see and hear the President.  She probably understood he was the bigger draw and didn't take offense.

If your politics differ, I hope you can still feel happy for me -- I'm a diehard liberal and a fangirl when it comes to Obama.  My besties feel much the same. We texted each other pictures of our possible wardrobe selections for the event beforehand and voted on each others options.  We've never done that before.

I ended up at the nurse's union table because my friends are affiliated.  I am not a nurse.  It's a long story how I wound up in that chair but they welcomed me with open arms and I'm filled with gratitude for the opportunity to join them for the event.

One of the women at the table was introduced as "the bookeeper" but I heard "the goalkeeper" and then imagined people in the nurse's union fighting each other in grueling sports matches during their lunch breaks.  I bet I'm not wrong!

Obama was great, though for me it's unlikely he'd be anything else.  We all know he's an incredible orator.  He was inspiring.  He was funny.  He also looks tired.  I do not envy him his job, what a thankless tedious thing it is.

We rushed forward and tried to shake his hand as he left the room.  "The goalkeeper" at our table scored a handshake but we all missed.  That's OK, I'm not sure I wanted the Secret Service guys looking at me like that.  Their jobs are also tough.

Alex and I are still shopping for an RV.  We can't decide on the model.  We want something small, super compact, yet able to sleep four people.  It's harder than we imagined.  There is nothing that's perfect, nothing that checks all the boxes, and as of now we can't agree on which boxes can remain unchecked.

In the meantime we will continue to attend RV shows and shrug at each other.  The kids will continue to get bored and say things like, "Oh my God, another RV show?"  It's a huge purchase and we will not commit until we are sure so just relax, kids.

This one's amazing but it's four feet longer than I'm willing to go 

since I'll be maneuvering it by myself much of the time around the Western U.S. 

Help me.  

I volunteered for a 4th Grade field trip yesterday.  It was an all-day field trip to a corn maze an hour outside of Seattle grown in the shape of Washington State.  The paths through it are the highways of Washington, marked with street signs and all, and there are landmarks built within with placards detailing the stories of Washington's towns, tribes, and significant events.  In theory, it's cool.

But when you're in charge of a group of 4th graders whose job it is to navigate the Washington State map you're given and told to find six towns/landmarks and answer questions about those very things before you can leave the maze, it becomes torturous.  The worst part was chaperones were not allowed to intervene.  If the kids made a wrong decision in their navigation, we had to let them make it.

That worked fine for the first couple sights because it was in the name of education and autonomy and skill-building.  I was able to hold my tongue.  But an hour in with four sights left to find, shit got real.  I'm only slightly ashamed to say I yelled, "WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU GO NORTH ON I-5 WHEN WE'RE TRYING TO GET TO OLYMPIA?"  because we'd been in there a long time and I was getting hungry.

I may not be the most mature chaperone but they have to love me anyway because I volunteer to go on all these damn things.

I blew off some steam that evening after the field trip by attending a concert by one of my favorite bands, Beirut.  I was tired, though, so didn't fight my way to the front.  Instead Al and I chose a wall we could sit against until the band took the stage, and when they appeared we could stand up but lean heavily against it when necessary to keep us upright.

Anyone surprised I love this band?  They're from Santa Fe with a heavy mariachi influence.



Sign me up, Santa Fe.  Indeed.

I'm off to finally Halloween the crap out of my house,
MJ

Mary in a bell

This is a preschool field trip I recently chaperoned.  We used the city bus to get there and back because we love the environment at fancy preschool.  Yee-haw.  

We may love the environment but we chaperones don't love the anxiety and logistics involved in putting 20 kids on a city bus already full of people and getting all 20 back off again.  I had a nightmare the evening before the field trip and you guessed it, I left my entire group up in there somewhere.  As of my waking, they hadn't been heard from since.

Yes, we preschoolers may love the environment but I'm not sure our fellow riders loved us an equal amount.  That was evidenced by the face of the one guy who got pinned in the back corner.  His expression turned from genuine friendly smile into frozen mask of terror as tiny kids piled all around him and asked his name repeatedly.

It's Lucien and a gigantic snake.  Just be cool. 

Let's talk holiday.  Christmas is my favorite holiday but it's gotten harder.  Christmas as a kid was about twirling in circles in new holiday dresses and sucking on candy canes. Now it's about sitting bolt upright in bed in the middle of the night nursing the panicked thought, "I forgot to put the speech therapist on the thank-you holiday gift list!"

(I then go downstairs and write her name on the list immediately, lest I forget to purchase an Amazon gift card for the woman who made my unintelligible daughter somewhat intelligible.)

I miss being young at Christmas.  Gone are the days of lying under the Christmas tree with my brother, staring up into the branches at the lights and giggling. We had large-bulbed brightly colored lights on our tree back in the early 80s, not the chic tiny white lights of today.  Those giant hot lights could burn your nose off if your face got too close so lying under the tree was flirting with danger.  In addition to the potential injury, the lights blinked maniacally giving our living room the constant feel of a disco.  It was a 1980s Christmas and it was glorious.

My mom was often baking things.  She probably felt the same way I feel now when I'm trapped in the kitchen baking things.  Had I understood back then that Christmas could be stressful, that it was often an agonizing month-long preparation purgatory, my six-year-old self surely would have helped Mom or at least patted her on the back reassuringly.

Or maybe not, because I was busy.  I was busy grabbing Mary, the blessed mother of the baby Jesus, from our nativity set, sticking her head inside a bell-shaped Christmas tree ornament and declaring her "under the hair dryer at the beauty salon."  Mary was more often dangling from that "dryer" than resting in the manger with her newborn son.  My mom suspected this activity was sacrilegious but Mary's head fit so perfectly inside that bell there's no way it was wrong.

In other holiday news, Thanksgiving happened.  My parents flew in to join my sister Raba and sister-in-law Zee at our table. It was a warm and happy time but we missed my sweet brother who couldn't get the time off work to make the trip. He probably misses simpler holiday times, too.

We added a stray to our family Thanksgiving, a French man from Alex's work who had never experienced Thanksgiving before.  French Man is outgoing, warm, excited to sample everything Seattle has to offer.  He smiles all the time.  He bounces up and down a little when he talks.   His hugs are like being enveloped by a psychotically happy octopus (How can he have so many arms?). He's such an enthusiastically positive force for good, Alex once said, "It's like he's not French at all!"

(our stereotypes are expressed with the greatest affection and we miss you, French people...)

French Man's presence at Thanksgiving upped the ante.  I would normally have foregone many traditional staples for more contemporary options but instead felt the need to stick with the oldies, most of which sound unpalatable to foreigners.  Pumpkin pie?  Cranberry sauce?  Potatoes covered in so much brown sugar and butter they should be classified as dessert?   Crunchy curly things on the green beans, what?

I expected at the very least some hesitation but French Man dove into everything and pronounced it "amazing!" and "incredible!"  I wonder if there's anything I could have thrown his way that would have broken his can-do spirit.  Maybe Jello with suspended sliced bananas?  Easy Cheese on Ritz crackers?  Marshmallow Fluff eaten out of the jar with a spoon?  I'll have to invite him again to try these things and will report back.

I forgot to take pictures at Thanksgiving but here are a couple of Mom tickling Coco's feet --

Speaking of French people, Alex and I attended the Beaujolais Nouveau event, sponsored by the French-American Chamber of Commerce, a couple weeks ago.  It was a fancy event held on the top floor of our tallest building downtown.  It was an impressive location for a wine that's widely agreed to be awful.

Thankfully there were other things to drink besides the B.N.   I accepted a glass of rosé from the roving servers when we arrived and immediately said, "Alex, we've got to ask the bartender for the name of this wine, it's incredible."  Alex walked away to do just that and returned a few minutes later with a kindly Frenchman who kissed my hand and said, "I hear you like my wine, Madame."  I asked Alex to get the name of the wine and he returned with the winemaker.  It was well played, Al.  

The Beaujolais Nouveau fête was full of "somebodies," a few of whom I didn't like.  Once they've reached "somebody" status, some people stop being authentic and start being schmoozy to an uncomfortable degree.  They should also lay off the tanning beds because it's Seattle in winter and they're orange.

Orange folks aside, the view of my city was awesome

Most of the people I met were great.  I made a new friend at our table when he leaned over and asked, "Why are you sitting there laughing all by yourself?"  I was indeed laughing all by myself because two elderly people had begun dancing right next to my chair.  It would have been a sweet moment but for the nature of the Serge Gainsbourg song to which they were dancing.  Alex is a fan of Serge so I know most of his songs, including the English translation of his oft-salacious lyrics.

I'm pretty sure those sweet silver-haired people aren't as familiar with Serge as I am.  I leaned over to my new friend and said, "Do you think they know they're dancing to a song about doing it in the butt?"


I'll be under the tree if anyone asks.
MJ

Stories, most involving screaming

The end of the school year is chaos.  There's a ceremony or event every day at one of the kids' schools. None of them are very fun and they all seem designed to make parents insane by being either emotionally manipulative (Her "graduation"? What? She's four years old!) or too overwhelming ("Come to the school carnival where a constant stream of screaming kids are going to step on your toes as they run past you. And you have to work at a booth. And it's going to be hell.")

School stuff aside, our general contractor showed up on our driveway recently and started to cry.  His wife of 30 years just left him and now he can barely get out of bed.  It's hard to pressure a guy in a situation like that so our exterior project may never be finished.  We may have to be OK with a half painted house.

(We're giving him some time to regroup and then will gently suggest he focus on his work, that his work will give him strength and pull him through...)

I chaperoned Coco's preschool field trip to a nearby farm a couple weeks ago.  I spent most of the farm visit shielding a little girl from view of the pigs, of which she was inexplicably terrified.  If she happened to look up when my body wasn't blocking her view of said demon pigs, she would start screaming.

 this is how far we had to stand from the pigs

At one point we had to walk past the pig pen and that was a tense moment indeed.  I picked up the little girl, her screams in my ears and her kicky legs landing directly on my kneecaps, and ran past the pigs.  I deposited her safely on the other side of the pig pen in front of a cow who had her nose stuck through the slats of her fence.  The little girl didn't like that cow either so I had to pick her up again and run past the cows.  Rinse and repeat at the goats.

That was exhausting but the worst part of the field trip was the constant singing of "Frozen" songs from the four little girls packed into my car there and back.  It seems I wasn't the only one suffering; when we got back to school, a fellow chaperone threw open his car door and fell helplessly to the pavement pleading, "If I hear one more "Frozen" song I'm going to lose my mind, please make them stop, please, please."  But they didn't stop, they'll never stop.

Coco had another sleepover with her aunts recently.  She did their nails because Coco is convinced she's good at giving manicures. (She isn't.)  The worst part is when she blots your still-wet nails with a napkin and tells you "It helps them dry faster" when you protest.  Then you have to spend the next week walking around with pieces of napkin stuck to your nails because if you remove her manicure, so help you God, she will glare you to death.


I volunteered to work the Prize Booth at the elementary school carnival last night.   That's a brutal job, especially at the end of the evening when all the kids swarm the prize booth to redeem their tickets for prizes.  I'm well suited to that kind of chaos for some reason (it's because I'm raising Lucien).  I can usually roll with yelling and jostling kids but this event stretched even my limitations.  I lost my voice halfway through and needed water so badly I began grabbing the wrists of friends as they passed and croaking, "water....please..." in a hoarse voice that frightened them.

Alex eventually joined me at the Prize Booth.  If I'm well suited for that kind of work, Alex is born for it.  He immediately morphed into a carnival barker.  He held up crappy toys, declared them the "must-have toy of the carnival" and then held an auction for the hot ticket item when the kids started fighting over a toy they weren't interested in five seconds prior.  Alex cleared the prize table of a lot of crap with his wheeling dealing methods.

Some big news around here is Lucien finally learned how to ride a bike.  He's resisted learning to ride a bike for years, always told me he was happy with his scooter and didn't care about bikes.  I would tell him bikes are faster than scooters but he never believed me.  He would then challenge me to a bike/scooter race down the sidewalk and would always win because he has less concern for smacking into the many pedestrians on that sidewalk than I do.

The turning point was a sleepover at a friend's house.  His friends wanted to ride bikes but Lucien told them he didn't know how.  So his friends -- two on either side of the bike and one standing in front yelling directions and encouragement -- taught him how to ride in about five minutes.  He took off around the block and hasn't gotten off the bike since.

Maybe I can convince his friends to teach Lucien how to tie his shoes, too.  All I get on that is, "Meh, just keep buying me these kinds of shoes" as he points down to his slip-on Vans.

I played a game of chess with Lucien this evening.  I had him cornered and said, "checkmate."  Lucien then grabbed his king and, arm stiff like a windshield wiper, wiped all the remaining pieces off the board while yelling, "Oh my God, my king's gone crazy, what is he doing, I don't know what's going on!"  He then ran out of the room and up the stairs into his bedroom where he locked the king inside a storage bin.  He still claims I haven't won the game.

I texted the chess story to Alex, out for drinks at the time with his old European posse who are in town for a work meeting.  Alex relayed the story to his friends and the German guy responded, "I think that's how the French won all their wars."

Please, Coco, please no more manicures,
MJ

Chicken Relay

Alex took the kids to his co-worker's pretty house on the lake for dinner not long ago.  I didn't go with them because I had plans for dinner with my old friend, Cavanaugh.  My best meals tend to happen with Cavanaugh because he's a "foodie" and insists on the finest cuisine in existence.  I'm more of a "whateverie" and would happily eat cereal for dinner for the rest of my life.

I returned home from dinner at 11:00 p.m. to find my family wasn't home yet.  They finally straggled in, both kids wired with hair pointing in every which direction, at 11:30.

Coco's eyes were wild.  She grabbed my face and pushed my cheeks into fishy-face formation, put her face a millimeter from mine and yelled, "I ATE CANDY MOMMY."

To top it all off, Lucien was barefoot.  Alex had somehow lost Lucien's brand new shoes at a dinner with only five people present  We never saw those shoes again.  Alex suspects they were thrown in the lake but he doesn't really know.

This is why Alex is rarely in charge around here.

If you guys were worried my life would become boring once I returned home after a three-year stint in Paris, DON'T WORRY.  My life is heart-palpitatingly exciting here in Seattle.

Exhibit A:  Lucien may or may not have lost his shoes in a lake. (!!)

and

Exhibit B:  We recently took part in a Guinness World Record attempt for largest number of people playing hopscotch simultaneously. Dreams are coming true in the Central District, yo.

Organizers of "Hopscotch CD" painted a giant hopscotch game from one end of the Central District to another.  It wound through many streets and attracted a large chunk of the community to its ridiculousness.  There were attractions along the way such as lemonade stands and massage chairs and goofy stuff like buckets overturned into "drum sets" you had to play before crossing the street.

It's almost impossible to walk down a sidewalk with a hopscotch game imprinted upon it and not jump.  Young and old alike succumbed to the magic of those squares.  Teens walking with their friends jumped. Big burly men walking their dogs jumped.  Old ladies carrying grocery bags jumped, which they probably should not have done.

Our neighborhood was hopping.

In the most exciting part, a large group of us congregated in a parking lot for the official world record attempt.  The air was abuzz with excitement -- we were about to try a completely random and insignificant thing!  When the whistle blew, we hopped at our designated court while a man with a bullhorn urged us to KEEP HOPPING.  Hop hop hop hippity hop hop hop.

When it wasn't my turn to hop, I looked around and soaked in the absurdity.  What was it about the event that attracted so many people (over 400!)?  Are we, as grown adults, that starved for whimsy?  Are we desperate to be part of a world record, make our mark upon the world, no matter how dumb?  Are we just all incredibly bored and looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon?  If so, we should consider cycling.

And why were the vast majority of hopping people caucasian when the Central District is the most racially diverse neighborhood in Seattle?  We've got all kinds of colors of people up in here!  My working theory is white people are the most ridiculous of the races.  I'm not sure.

After all the excitement! jumping! bullhorns! whistles! -- well, we didn't make the world record.  We were 50 people short.  Oh well.  In Lucien's words, "Second place is still pretty good."

Let's hop on home, son

If all that wasn't crazy exciting enough (!!), I recently chaperoned a field trip to the Lincoln Park tidepools.  We scoured the beaches and found lots of crabs and starfish plus a bunch of other animals whose names I'm never going to remember.  Some looked like gelatinous goo.  They were very loose interpretations of the word "animal."

There are about 50 "animals" down there

Maybe you don't think the field trip sounds very exciting so far.
Maybe this will change your mind...

BAM!  Butt plug in your face

One little girl leaned in to touch the butt plug sunning itself on the beach -- "What is it?" she asked all childlike. I karate chopped her hands and pushed her forcefully away while yelling, "NOOOOOOOO."  Those are the kinds of reflexes that develop only with extensive chaperoning experience.

If that wasn't enough shredded mayhem and bone-crushing carnage in Seattle for you,  I also helped at Lucien's school for Field Day.  Lucien wasn't present; he was sitting in the principal's office.  But that's neither here nor there.

Actually, I was here and he was there

Another similarly masochistically-inclined mom and I worked the Chicken Relay.  For over an hour, I demonstrated hopping (or waddling, depending on my mood) with a tennis ball between my knees five yards to a box, where I then "laid" the egg by dropping it in.

I don't know why I bothered.  Those kids didn't listen.  You would not believe how many Kindergarteners USED THEIR GODDAMN HANDS when I specifically told them not to.

It was a long hour of chasing errant tennis balls and picking children up off the ground.  It's mind-boggling how many feelings were hurt and how many tears were shed.  I mean come on kids, it's not like this is an event to be taken seriously.  It's not like this is a Guinness World Record attempt for hopscotching.

By the end of my shift, I was hoarse, exhausted, and dammit, I missed my son.  I waved in the general direction of the Principal's office, blew my boy a kiss, and waddled/hopped to my car.  Old habits die hard at the Chicken Relay.

We had some friends over for dinner Saturday night.  We roasted some motherf*cking marshmallows over a firepit.  IN YOUR FACE HELLRAISING that's what that is.

I'll take the Fruit Loops tartare,
MJ

Perfect Love and Monkeys

I saw the sign at left at Lucien's most recent track practice.

Is the City of Seattle being funny or are pot bellied pigs now a common animal to see about town?

If we're going to start banning odd pets from tracks, there are others I would consider before pigs. For example, it would upset me much more to see a pet boa constrictor at the track than a pig.  Also distressing would be tarantulas and/or tigers.

Inversely, there are pets I would like to encourage to come to the track.  For instance -- monkeys.  I would love to see a pet monkey at the track, preferably a Capuchin but I would also welcome a Pygmy Marmoset. 

Seattle Mom invited me to her co-worker's wedding last week.  It was the first gay wedding I've attended since our state legalized gay marriage.  Washington, you make me proud to live in you.

Now that gay marriage is legal, conservative talking heads fret it's a slippery slope -- next it's going to be OK to marry animals!  Alex will be in trouble if that's true because I really like those Capuchin monkeys.

Well hello there, handsome

The wedding was more frustrating and befuddling than most I've attended but it had nothing to do with the fact there were two brides and no grooms.  It had more to do with Car2Go, my heretofore beloved and flawless spontaneous transportation companion.

Seattle Mom and I drove a Car2Go to the wedding.  When we tried to end our trip outside the hall,  the car told us we couldn't end our trip because we were outside acceptable Car2Go boundaries.  That message was especially confusing because we were parked directly behind another Car2Go whose driver had apparently ended his/her trip quite successfully and walked away.

After some parking here and there with no success, I kicked Seattle Mom out of the car -- go see your friend get married, for Pete's sake! -- and continued to drive around and around searching for the elusive acceptable boundary.  I finally found it thanks to a squeaky-voiced Car2Go helpline representative who may or may not have been in the middle of a panic attack.

I ran many blocks in my high heels ("Wear the really high heels!" said Seattle Mom, "There won't be much walking!") but missed the ceremony anyway.  I hear it was beautiful and everybody cried.

At least I made the reception --

As I watched the brides smooth each others gowns and discuss how they shopped for them together, I felt a stab of envy.  How awesome it would have been to plan a wedding with someone who was as excited about "girl" things as I was.  Alex's eyes used to get glassy and a thin line of drool would escape his mouth whenever I talked wedding.  I would say things like, "I don't know whether to go sweetheart, square or strapless" and he would stare at me blankly and say "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Forget the monkey, I want to marry a woman now.  (those talking heads were right....this is how the gay people seduce us into joining their "lifestyle"...)

These brides have been together twenty years.  Even though I don't know them, it was a joy to see them make their commitment as legally binding and inescapable as me and Al's --

Best toast of the evening -- 

"You two are perfect love and I'm sorry it took the world so long to figure it out."  

I chaperoned a first-grade field trip again because I'm a chaperoning fool.  Being the constant chaperone is my contribution at Lucien's school and honestly, I enjoy my time with those kids.

Except for this last time.  I was the only parent who volunteered between two classrooms so there were two teachers, me, and forty-two First-Graders.  I also had Coco.  It was an uncomfortable ratio of adults to troublemakers. 

The idea was to take a nature walk at a nearby park.  The kids carried magnifying glasses and notepads and were tasked with observing and sketching the various trees, animal life and other naturelike things we came across.  It sounded great in theory but once you took into consideration the ledges-and-ravines topography of the park, the steep slopes on either side of the path at times, the lack of adults and the inexplicably stupid choice for my footwear (high wedge sandals, what?), it was a tense outing.

Our initial strict policing of the kids soon gave way to doing the bare minimum required for survival.  We settled for grabbing kids' hands last second to keep them from slipping into ravines and pulling them down from logs and out of shrubbery by their ankles instead of enforcing the unattainable "maintain a single file line at all times" ideal.

Similarly, the strict "use your half-voice" rule soon morphed into three frazzled adults yelling "I SAID USE YOUR HALF-VOICES YOU'RE GOING TO SCARE ALL THE NATURE" while the kids pulled each others hair and accused each other in their "screaming" voices of squashing the caterpillar (nobody squashed the caterpillar, the caterpillar was perfectly fine, I don't know why I was the only one who could see that.)

On our way back to school, I was posted at the end of the line to collect stragglers.  Half the students fell into this category so I was very busy.  I'm happy to report Lucien stuck cheerfully next to his teacher the entire time but I was kind of bummed about it -- he's the one I wanted to spend time with, not the permanently distracted girl whose collar I had to hold onto because she's always looking straight up at the sky.

I'm pretty sure I rounded them all up and got them back to school but it's entirely possible I left one stuck in a tree trunk somewhere.

I had a weird dream last night.  In it, I said to a group of friends, "Oh, so I have sex with one person dressed like a bunny rabbit and now you're calling me a Plushie?"  just as Alex's boss walked into the room.  I've never met Alex's boss, he's a real head honcho, but the "meeting" idea has recently been floated.

Is the meaning of the dream obvious, as in I'm worried about humiliating myself in front of a big kahuna (understandable, I can be an idiot) or is there something else happening in my strange subliminal mind?

(For the record, I'm not a Plushie)

(Unless there's a Capuchin costume?)

(If you want to share your strange dreams now, I wouldn't feel so vulnerable and strange)

I just spent hours putting together some before-and-afters of Banister Abbey and adding them to this post.  It made this post last for millions of years so I decided it was too much.  I'm going to put them up Thursday instead.  A reason to live!

Cheers to perfect love,
MJ

Blah blah blah then BAM, everybody leaves

I hate that Sprint commercial, the one with the girl whose parents have taken video of her every day against a white wall.  The sweet song in the background bolsters the sense I'm a crap parent who doesn't truly love my children.  If I loved them properly, I wouldn't have neglected the memory-making.

Kids, don't watch that commercial someday and think I failed you because we don't know exactly what you were thinking on the first day of third grade.

I also hate the commercial for Ready for Love, that new dating show.  One of the contestant guys says, "I'm not the stereotypical rock star; I can count the women I've been with on my fingers."  We can all count the people we've been with on our fingers, genius, some of us will just have to use each finger a few times.

I was recently a field trip chaperone again. We went to the zoo.  A peacock caused a ruckus when the kids realized it was perched on the rooftop over our heads during lunch. 

But that peacock really blew their minds when it jumped off the roof and did this --

Feathers in your face, motherf*ckers!

One of our classroom girls ran up and grabbed the peacock's feathers.  She was immediately threatened with a lifetime ban from the zoo by people in tan shirts holding walkie talkies.  We chaperones felt the shame; we had failed in our duty to keep the more unruly children away from the wildlife. 

After the assault, the peacock stood absolutely still, save an occasional ripple of feathers, and glared at our group.  He reminded me of a cobra about to strike.  It was obvious he was formulating a plan.

We chaperones began to murmur and pull the kids to a safe distance.  This begat many questions: What's a safe distance from a peacock?  How fast do those things move?  Can we outrun them?  Are they surprisingly fast on foot like a hippo or as awkward as you'd expect, like an alligator? 

To make things worse, Lucien kept calling the peacock "turkey."  Insult to injury.

The peacock followed us slowly as we walked away.  The incident ushered in a new chapter of my life -- peacock nightmares.

When you least expect it, chaperone...

Our occasional handyman recently installed our kitchen cabinet pulls.  They would have been lovely except he installed them all off-center and crooked --

I could use Contractor God's help fixing them.  But the truth is, Banister Abbey broke Contractor God.  He has walked away from it and us, not planning to return.  The loss is painful, both the loss of his knowledge and the loss of his curmudgeonly friendship.

I would love to process Contractor God's departure with my other beloved contractors, Dan the Man and Supermodel Neighbor, but they're both gone, too.

Dan the Man had a falling out with Contractor God and stopped working with him in the middle of the Goddamn House project.  He occasionally texts me, usually when he's drunk, to ask if I'm mad at him. He was at our house for Thanksgiving a handful of months ago and now we don't even talk.  Human relationships are complicated and sad.

Supermodel Neighbor is moving to Portland this week.  Supermodel Neighbor and I are kindred spirits; he understands the necessity of indie music, strange humor and a properly used color wheel.  We went out for beers once and he jumped into a grove of bamboo on the walk home for no reason.  He stood inside for awhile, then called out, "Hey MJ, look how tall these are."

Once I was sitting at his kitchen table drinking coffee and he silently slid a picture of an alpaca in front of me and walked away.  When I asked, "What's this all about?"  he said, "I just thought you might like to look at that."  He was right; I did.

He's beautiful and weird and I'm going to miss him.  And that's all I'm going to say about that.

I wish I would have known the time with my three contractor friends was fleeting, that the shared jokes and beers and pissing matches were not going to last.  I would have hugged them more.  I also would have stood them against a white wall every day and videotaped their thoughts, then put them together in a timelapse montage with a bittersweet song in the background for proper mood.

Mama always told me I was a sentimental fool.  I don't think so -- I just really hate the end of a good chapter.

This is the song I'd choose.  Thanks for this, JP, and good luck.

Hug your contractors tight, people,
MJ

Cabin fever

I chaperoned the Valentines Day party that involved all three classes of the First Grade.  Call it insanity, but I truly enjoy my time with those kids.  I think it's their blinky eyes blinking up at me, and the way they all want to hold my hand, and the awkward toothy first-grader grins.

The party ran long.  There was no time for kids to sift through the pile of coats dumped outside the party because the buses were about to leave back at school. We had to run the three blocks from the party location to the school, without coats, GO! GO! GO! to catch those buses. I imagined the horrified expressions of parents at bus stops when Little Johnny disembarked in February without his coat, teeth chattering.

Loyal chaperone I am, I filled a box with all the coats and followed behind the sprinting masses, dragging it along the sidewalk until I couldn't feel my arms very well.  I dumped the coats onto the sidewalk in front of the buses and helped kids throw them on as they boarded.  Every kid left with a coat.

There will someday be a folk song written about me, the trusty chaperone who wouldn't let the kids go home cold, entitled, "Cold Kid, Warm Heart."

Alex and I went to see a play at Capitol Hill's Annex Theatre Friday night.  It was called "Undo" and took place in an alternate reality where, if you want a divorce, you must live your wedding in reverse.  All the same people must attend and wear the same clothes, the presents are given back, and in the case of the Jewish ceremony portrayed in this instance, the glass is glued back together.

The great thing about the Annex Theatre, and so many fringe theaters in Seattle, is there's a bar in the lobby and you can carry your drinks into the theater for the show.  The PBRs at the Annex Theatre bar are $2 and deliciously refreshing; the mixed drinks are crappy and expensive.  I think you know which way I'm leaning with this recommendation.

What transpired on the Annex Theatre stage was a beautiful piece of theatre.  Really, truly.  It had it all -- laughs, tears, and lesbians.  There was also some sad sex (you must do everything you did on your wedding day to make peace with God, even if it was f*cking on your dressing table).

The man sitting behind us said loudly at the intermission, "Watching things like this makes me realize how ridiculous human relationships are."  All of us within earshot murmured our agreement and bought another PBR.

Here's some advice if you see a play at the Annex -- at intermission, run for the bathroom.  Get there first no matter what.  Push those bitches to the ground and don't look back and here's the reason why: there are only two toilets, two single stalls.  And a fifteen minute intermission. And one hundred people in the theater all drinking beer.  Do the math then do what you must do *cracks knuckles*

Al and I and the kids went to a friend's cabin for the long weekend.  It was just us; the cabin is often empty and our friend has been telling us to use it for years.

We left for the cabin right after Lucien and Coco's swim lessons Saturday morning.  I love watching the group of boys in Lucien's class learn to swim.  They all have their own style: some wide-eyed and freaked out (Lucien), others goofy and trusting in the world (the one whose eyes are slightly glazed) and some who should never be allowed near a body of water (the one sinking like a stone).

Our friend's cabin is in the South Puget Sound area, on a peaceful little lake upon which no motors are allowed.  Paddle boats, kayaks and canoes are the vessels of choice.  The four of us climbed into a paddle boat and made it halfway around the lake before Coco started complaining her belly hurt. We figured out she was seasick when she turned light green.

In the middle of a lake on a space-challenged paddle boat, seasickness is serious business.  Alex and I pedaled as fast as we could back to the cabin but went nowhere thanks to the direction of the wind and Lucien's erratic handling of the rudder.  I imagined the other residents of the lake watching us with binoculars and laughing hard until they fell down.  Our predicament would have made me laugh, too, if I wasn't in such fear of a girl hurl.

We made it back to the dock without incident.  And now we know Coco prefers land.

Alex tried to teach Lucien how to canoe, which led to this, my current favorite photograph.  I call it "The Reluctant Canoe Lesson" --

Oscar the schnauzer came with us to the cabin.  It was immediately apparent our dog is not a majestic wild beast.  Our dog is a confused little old man who can't figure out where the hell he is so just curls up inside our suitcase full of towels and waits for it to be over.

 

I hate these people.  I want to go home.

The cabin's only source of heat was a wood stove.  It was a toasty warm, pleasantly wood-smokey scented existence until the middle of the night when the fire burned out and we awoke, so cold we didn't dare plan for the future.  I pushed Alex out of bed each morning with a frigid foot, yelling at the kids to stay snug in their bunk beds until Daddy built a fire.  Thankfully, Alex was once a successful boy scout and his fire-building skills are unmatched.

As cozy as they can be, what is is about cabins that makes them feel like they're constructed of cardboard and Saran Wrap?  And why all the wood paneling?  And why do they all smell the same, musty and woody with a hint of Grandma?

When a cabin is owned by a friend like ours, who offers it to friends and family on a regular basis, the bathroom is a mess of half-empty shampoo and conditioner bottles.  It's like a hundred hotels threw up on each other or, better yet, all the bottles are there competing for the right to wash your body.

  

 "Pick me, pick me"  

There was no internet or TV at the cabin so we were forced to unplug.  At first it was uncomfortable but then we started telling each other stories.  And cooking meals together.  And chopping wood together.  You should see Coco handle an ax, my God, a natural! 

  

We enjoyed "communicating" so much, we've added "buy a cabin" to our list of long-term goals.  We can't do it now, but maybe, hopefully, someday we will own our very own lake cottage with doilies for curtains and circa-1970s avocado green appliances.

Well isn't that just f*cking great news

Our return home was not glorious.  Lacking the desire to cook, I took Coco with me to the Taco Time drive-thru to grab dinner.  At the very moment I pulled up to order, Coco threw up in the back seat.  She was suddenly hot, miserable, and very, very ill.  

The Taco Time lady on the intercom asked for my order a couple times but apparently my words, "Hang on, baby, hang on" aimed over my shoulder into the back seat didn't make sense to her.  She said, "Excuse me?" a couple times until I said, "I'm not talking to you!"  

There was a long pause and then the Taco Time lady said, "ummm....you're not talking to me?"  And I yelled, "No, no not yet!" as I scrambled for paper towels in the backseat.  There was another pause and then she said, the way you would to someone who's obviously very dim, "Do you mean to be in the drive-thru, ma'am?"

Al and I hugged in the kitchen for awhile after I returned with my hard-fought Taco Time order.  Even though life never seems to slow down, at least that part was nice.

Your faithful chaperone forever,

MJ