Everything but the kitchen sink

This is a kitchen sink post and a long one at that. I'm throwing everything in this one, none of it connected and none of it relevant to the news of the day.  Thank God for that; nobody wants to further discuss the news of the day because wow, what a shitshow.  

So school's back in session. My kids are older and wiser, their fresh little smiley faces heading out the door for a great new school year.  A friend on Facebook circulated the following article to help us "prepare healthy lunches!" for the new school year.  Brimming with back-to-school energy and enthusiasm, I clicked on the link.  I found the article immensely helpful.  (It's hard to tell in writing but that last sentence was sarcasm at its most exaggerated.)

http://goop.com/kids-lunch-recipes-from-chef-moms

As I stand late at night in the kitchen packing the following day's lunches, I conjure the following phrases: "Hudson has always loved Asian flavors" and "Maca is a Peruvian superfood; look for it in powdered form at health food stores" and my personal favorite, "The slightly sweet addition of mirin, a small amount of sugar, and (optional) dashi broth, transforms eggs in the most comforting of ways."

I then send a couple quick faux apologies up to my kids asleep in their beds and toss a couple stale bagels, devoid of cream cheese because we're out again, into their lunchboxes.

Maybe I should try packing lunches like Goop suggests just one time. It wouldn't be for health reasons; it would be more for entertainment. I like to picture Lucien's face should he crack open his lunch to find a Japanese sweet omelet and some lemon tamari dipping sauce for his pickled vegetables.  I can hear the incredulous "WHAT THE HELL, MOM......what is this pretentious crap......well, at least the eggs are comforting with that sweet addition of mirin."

I'm not entirely immune. I will admit to getting sucked into a tiny bit of parental overkill.  Coco recently had a birthday and requested a circus party.  I booked a party at SANCA, our local School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (we got it all in Seattle, trust it) and vowed to "keep it simple."  I was not going to bake anything, cook anything.  I was going to buy a tray of cupcakes, a few bags of pretzels, maybe some juice boxes if I was feeling generous.  Have some fun, throw a few bags of popcorn at them, get it done, that was the plan.

Then Coco said quietly, "Oh. I was hoping for a real birthday cake" and something immediately switched inside me.  Of course she needed a real birthday cake!  Yes!  Baking and lots of it!  Now!

I'm weird like that, can be very all-or-nothing.  I'm either in front leading the parade or I'm hiding in the corner hissing at people.  Hanging out in the middle doesn't last long for me so I went from "I'm not baking a damn thing and they can deal with it" to "I'm gonna bake the best birthday cake that girl has ever seen, it's gonna blow her dang mind" in a matter of seconds.

The next events were as follows, in chronological order --

*Log on to Pinterest*
*Search for a circus cake*
*Regret logging on to Pinterest*
*Feel bad about myself*

Well way to go, Lucas, lucky you.

PS. The number on top tells me Lucas is turning 1.
He is never going to remember this cake
which tells me you are not baking this cake for Lucas at all.

What is a Hezry?
Do you think they just mis-spelled Henry, accidentally flipped the "N" on its side?

 I like to think they did -- less perfect.
(Hez(n)ry, by the way, is also turning 1, though this cake seems more reasonable)

what fresh hell is this.

Pinterest is full of overachievers. I quickly abandoned Pinterest and instead Googled "easy birthday cake recipes" where I stumbled across the rainbow cake idea.  Perfect.  I threw myself into its creation.  A rainbow cake is a six layer cake, each layer a different color of the rainbow.  It took a long time. There was fondant and sprinkles involved. I was sweating profusely by the end.

It ended up being the tallest cake in existence because I didn't shave down my layers sufficiently.  It tipped over halfway through the cutting and serving, no longer able to stand on its own.  It was a top heavy rainbow sonofabitch.

But Coco was happy.  And I do love to see my Coco girl happy.

Speaking of Coco, we're a little concerned.  Alex took Coco to a video arcade recently that had one of those claw machines -- the machines that are rigged to rarely, if ever, let you win anything.  Still, she tried.  And tried.

Coco had been given a set amount of money to use at the arcade and it was dwindling quickly.  Alex tried to reason with her, explained the claws are intentionally weak-springed so they don't hold onto toys very well and suggested maybe it was time to try another game. She stopped speaking to Alex after that, stopped making eye contact, just kept pumping quarters into the claw game.  I soon thereafter received a text that said, "Help. Coco is like a degenerate gambler."

She came home with a stuffed animal she won from the claw game and a smug smile on her face. Coco has an iron will -- which should bode well for her, except that sometimes she can also be unreasonable.    

Speaking of gambling, Alex and I went to Snoqualmie Casino awhile ago with a couple friends.  We are not casino people but thought it would be fun to try something different. Even better, we decided to take the casino bus from Seattle instead of driving.  We pictured the casino bus as being a fun time -- champagne flowing and upbeat music playing for festive bus riders and whatnot. The casino bus was a total party in our minds.

The casino bus is not a total party.  It is the opposite.  The casino bus is a silent, kind of depressing thing full of mostly elderly people, half of whom are asleep.

The casino itself was also not fun.  After our initial shocked gasps at all the smoking happening inside the casino (it's on a Native American reservation so they make their own smoking rules) we promptly bought a pack of cigarettes, giggling like teenagers giddy with rule breaking.  None of us have smoked a cigarette in years so we all immediately coughed up a lung and took turns saying, "Oh my god, this is so gross."  We tossed the pack but still -- rebels!

Alex very quickly lost a lot of money at the blackjack table so he retreated to the corner with us where we played nickle slots and drank alcohol until it was time to grab the bus back to Seattle.  If you think the casino bus is depressing on the way to the casino, just wait until the trip back home. That is one silent bummer of a loser bus.

Here are more happenings in the past few months I never wrote about.  It's a lengthy list, forgive me, but I feel compelled to document these things, even if just in a crappy iPhone photo way.

The kids and I met this guy walking his pet lizard on a leash in South Lake Union --

it was not a fast walk for man and lizard, more an aimless mosey

We went on our annual camping trip with our friends, no wind storm this time --

Then we went camping with our friends again --

North Cascades National Park, by the way, is stunning

We played euchre at night by a lantern covered in a beanie hat --

One evening, Bobo fell asleep like this as I was putting Lucien to bed. We laughed at him pretty hard; he was barely hanging onto that log, just look at his little legs --

By morning, he had fallen off but was still asleep.

Bearded dragons are the chillest of animals

I learned how to play mahjong with the ladies--

and now I am hooked

We still have a sweet and funny though frustrating dog --

Natani the Navajo dog is not allowed on the couch

but she likes being on the couch very much

and sneaks up onto it at every opportunity.

We had a back-to-school party at our house involving a ukulele band --

We ate tacos, sang along, later had a water balloon fight in the yard  

We called it the back to school taco-lele party

and it was glorious.

Our friend Seattle Dad wore this amazing hat that one time --

Yep, I'm still going.  I still have more.

I went up to the top of Smith Tower for the third time, for the last Tower Sessions concert. The Tower Sessions are private concerts, held once a month in the apartment at the top of historical Smith Tower --

I will miss this concert series.  

I will miss the music but will miss most of all climbing all those ladders
and spiral staircases and catwalks 

to get to the very top.  

Below is a picture of the gorgeous Smith Tower, completed in 1914.  It was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River until the 1930's when something taller was built in Kansas, I think  --

The stunning private "lighthouse"apartment at Smith Tower is the pyramid shape at the top.  It's owned by a tiny dynamo of a woman named Petra and her children, and is where the concert series was held.  The glowing glass ball at the very very tippy top is where we were for these next couple pictures. It's a long way to climb and a small hole to squeeze through to get up into the glass globe but if you can make it, it's worth the effort --

My inlaws were recently here for a visit.  My mother-in-law had a birthday during their stay and we celebrated by inviting some friends for dinner, including a messy though delicious guest named Dungeness Crab, which we ripped apart like the disgusting animals we are.  I love the taste of crab but the process of eating it can be unsettling.

Alex and I took off for a few days while my in-laws took care of the kid wrangling.  We took the RV over to Port Townsend, a picturesque Victorian town on the Olympic Peninsula.

We stayed in a mini castle at nearby Fort Worden.  The "castle" was an odd place.  It was once a single family home with a single bedroom so we were the only ones in it for the night.  As soon as we entered, I said, "This place feels weird." Later, as we walked around the grounds outside the castle, I said, "It feels like someone's watching us, do you see anybody?"  Alex concurred, said he felt a little twitchy and tense himself.

On a whim, I looked up the castle on my phone --

You betcha it's haunted!  

Or so say some people. 

It was not a great night of sleep.

We spent one night in the castle then switched to the nearby Fort Worden campground on the beach where we promptly locked our keys inside the RV.  The tow truck driver our insurance company sent as part of our roadside assistance package couldn't jimmy the window enough to get the wedge thing and the metal thing in to pop the lock.

The tow truck driver scratched his head and mentioned he knew a guy who was "good with locks" in town.  It's not as shady as it sounded at first -- the lock guy is a retired police detective who now works part time as a locksmith.  He was also one of the most cheerful guys I've ever had the pleasure of coming across; he looked a bit like John Denver with that round shiny face and big smile.

Smiley John Denver Lock Guy got into our RV in less than ten seconds using a pair of tweezers and a tiny pick.  We did not give him our home address.  He seemed very nice but still, not taking any chances there.

Fort Worden as a whole is kind of an eerie place.  It's an old fort abandoned after WWII and turned into a state park, and is mostly empty now that we're headed into the off season. Although eerie, it's a cool place. You can stay in the old barracks and officers' homes at Fort Worden, and have a nice meal and a drink in the old jail.

If it looks vaguely familiar, Fort Worden is also where An Officer and a Gentleman was filmed -- and now we're all thinking about a beautiful shirtless young Richard Gere.  At least I know I am.

OK, I think I'm done now.  That was a lot of catching up.  As for our Mexico City news, it's more complicated than not complicated.  As of right now, there are no openings in the international schools but there "may" be openings in the near future.  This makes it very difficult to plan.

Applications are filed with a handful of schools and now we wait.  If the schools come through, we're gone in the new year, perhaps with very little advance notice.  If they don't come through, sorry, Seattle suckers, you're stuck with us.  Or at least you're stuck with me and the kids and you'll see Alex every other weekend.  Ouch.


All righty, off to tackle those homemade sushi roll lunches,
HA HA HA HA HA
MJ

Stop, drop, and roll

If you ever forget where you live around here, your memory will be jogged when you notice the WiFi password posted on the wall at the local organic smoothie bar --

definitely still in Seattle

So I'm turning 40 in a couple weeks.  Whee!

I think I'm becoming more eccentric in my middle age.  For one thing, I'm less tolerant of unexpected visitors at my front door.  At the top of my "go away" list are the religious people. A Jehovah's Witness recently stopped by as I stood quite visibly in the middle of the kitchen. When he knocked and peered through the glass of the front door, I did my usual; I stopped, dropped, and rolled out of sight.

Supermodel Neighbor was unfortunately sitting at my kitchen counter eating lunch at the time, frozen with a fork halfway to his mouth.  I whispered loudly from the floor, "Is he gone yet?" to which S.N. asked in disbelief.  "Are you seriously doing this?  How old are you?"

The answer is almost 40 and I'll do what I please.

The stair railing is coming along very nicely

 so I will allow Supermodel Neighbor to stay 

and continue to judge me

My current humor writing class is uninspiring.  I enjoyed the first class when we rewrote The Metamorphosis as comedy but my interest has waned since then.  The main problem is my teacher's sense of humor is not aligned with my own sense of humor.  In fact, I believe his sense of humor is more aligned with those of psychopaths.

Think that's an exaggeration? Last class he handed us Edgar Allen Poe's The Telltale Heart and asked us to analyze the "humor" within.  The guy in The Telltale Heart kills a man who has a gross, weird, pale blue watery eye and then buries him underneath the floorboards.  Ha ha ha ha ha!  Poe, you clown.

I read through that story a dozen times but was unable to find a single shred of funny probably because, as everyone knows except my teacher, Poe is a master of writing horror. He's really good, too, I'm not going to be able to sleep for weeks.

I'm considering alerting the police about my teacher.  I'll tell them he thinks Edgar Allen Poe is a laugh riot.  Maybe it will raise a red flag,  make them understand he's worth arresting preemptively before he goes apeshit.

My recent pottery class was a bust, too.  My current teacher proves that sometimes artists, as talented as they may be, should not teach.  Example:  I asked her, as I sat at the wheel with the clay caving in on itself yet again, for some helpful tips and she told me, "you've got to just feel the clay."

But I was feeling the clay.  I was feeling the clay being a goddamn mess all over the place.  I wanted to know how to "feel" that mess into a discernible shape but my teacher just skipped away humming and staring dreamily into space.

My old teacher was a talented potter but also had words to share in a teaching manner.  She could spin things magically from her hands but when it came time for teaching she could bark, "No! Put your left hand here and your right hand here and press here and make the damn bowl, hippie!"

I miss her.

Other than my current crappy class juju, life just kind of keeps plugging along.

The Rebirth Brass Band straight out of New Orleans for a friend's birthday

an urgent care visit with a miserably sick little girl

and a very bored big brother

(Alex was out of town, he had no choice)

Seattle Mom's daughter getting beyond festive for Saint Patrick's Day

Cute friends, a blanket and a growler of beer

a highly disturbing game of Cards Against Humanity 

after we lured our kids away from the area with a movie

The kids are doing well.  Lucien continues to be a mischievously grinning class clown.  His giggle, when he cracks himself up, which is often and usually due to a fart joke, is the best sound I know.  He's got a quick wit and a loud voice.  When one friend recently told him, "Lucien, you're a comedian."  He immediately responded "I'm not a comedian, I'm a Canadian!"

His favorite catchphrase, which gets placed at the end of everything he says, is a growly, '''cuz I'm Batman" followed by a swoosh out of the room.

"Mom, cool news, I don't have homework tonight....... 'cuz I'm Batman."
*swoosh he's gone*

Batman is about to eat a ton of pancakes and feel sick the rest of the day

Coco has a squeaky little voice that's gaining in volume because she wants to be heard over her loud older brother.  She charms most everyone she meets unless she's in a punky mood, in which case a silent glare is all you'll get from her.

Coco loves all things art.  The kids recently recreated famous works of art at her preschool.  I appreciate how she plays with scale --

there it is! down there

I was in charge of the preschool Spring Party last night.  I purchased appropriate tablecloths and paper plates and begged parents to sign up to bring kid-friendly food.  Bring on the mini pizza extravaganza and hummus, oh so much hummus.

My favorite part of the party was when I failed to realize the olive container lid wasn't closed.  I therefore picked it up more sloppily and with more force than I should have.  The result -- festive olive explosion!  The amount of olives in the container appeared to double as they flew up in the air and then crashed and rolled around all over the floor.

The olive oil smeared on the floor proved troublesome when little Johnny tore through the room and fell on his back.  I'm a party planner who's full of surprises.

Being the Spring Party planner also came with cleaning responsibilities afterwards.  I was pretty tired and traumatized by the olives by that time so I chucked a bunch of recyclable and compostable materials in the garbage to make it go faster.  Forgive me, Seattle.


Kale chips forever,
MJ

No dice, pumpkin spice

Halloween is over so I can have a life again until next week when I start prepping for Thanksgiving. I will then have a brief life again until Christmas preparations begin, which will be alarmingly soon after the Thanksgiving meal has been consumed.

My grocery shopping for our annual Halloween party revealed America's perplexing obsession with all things pumpkin flavored and pumpkin scented.  There were pumpkin waffles, pumpkin lip balm, pumpkin coffee, pumpkin marshmallows.  I didn't investigate too thoroughly but I wonder how far it goes. I wonder if there are pumpkin flavored hot dogs.  I wonder if there are pumpkin scented suppositories, to remind you of Grandma's pumpkin pie when you take your butt medicine.

We need to get a hold of ourselves because if you truly cut open a pumpkin and take a sniff of the insides, or god forbid taste them, the experience will be more akin to day-old cat vomit than the deliciously warm and comfy scent those marketing geniuses have concocted.

Banister Abbey Parents Gone Wild Halloween 2014 was the best one yet.  It was the year I finally bought my own beer tap.  It was also the year I made sure to set our fire extinguisher on the counter before the party began.  I love my friends but they are definitely capable of burning down my house so it's best to have that thing handy.

I made the worms again

We had over 50 people this year, more than we've ever had before, and they were all enthusiastic, fully costumed, fully on board.  I dressed as Elvis Costello and didn't set my guitar down all night.  I couldn't.  My costume became nebulous without the guitar, something between a Blues Brother and a 1940s era hit man.  I smacked a lot of friends in their chests and shoulders with my guitar as I walked through the party but I think it was worth it to uphold my vision.

It's two Elvises and two White Stripes

Alex was a giraffe --

Animal costumes were popular this year

but what is up with that eagle cow?

A tarot card reader sat in the TV room and gave readings all night, some of which were life changing and had people crying on their way out of the room.  (That could have been the booze, though; too much of the hard stuff seems to have the same effect.) Our friends reported the tarot reader was amazing and right on point, minus the one lackluster review from a wife whose husband had just been told to come out of the closet.

Whoops.  I hope they don't come to the party next year costumed as a divorced couple.

has your life changed yet, Seattle Mom?

The final revelers left near 2:00 a.m. after one guest yelled, "You guys, seriously, MJ calls 911 all the time.  Believe me, she will call 911 on her own party if we don't leave."  I then placed the phone back down gently, grateful someone knew me so well, and understood who I am, at my core.

Here are my kids on actual Halloween, with a Victorian ghost up top --

Halloween

the only holiday that doesn't take itself seriously

exhibit A: my boy is a piece of bacon

As for other recent events, Coco had a starring role in her preschool's class play.  The play was based on an ancient theme, one that has plagued mankind for ages -- Coco had grown a pumpkin that was too big and she couldn't figure out how to get it off the vine.

One by one the other kids came by with helpful suggestions. There was a lot of tugging on the pumpkin -- a little melodramatically overacted, if you ask me.  After the 15th round of tugging and pulling and shrugging of tiny shoulders, Alex leaned over to me and whispered, "Someone give these kids a decent hacksaw and we're done here."

At the end they decided if they all pulled together they could get the pumpkin off the vine.  I guess it's necessary to suspend one's disbelief when watching a preschool play because I don't think even 20 tiny kids pulling together could rip a pumpkin the size of a Volkswagen off a 12-inch diameter vine.

I hit a parked car a couple days ago.  That was the start of a bad day.  Drop-off in front of Lucien's school is always a mess.  Parents are supposed to drive north down the street in front of the school to drop off their kids but there's always some dumb parent trying to come south.  You have to move over as far as you can to let the stupid idiot through. I moved over as far as I could which, I now know, was too far.  I pushed the limits of what was possible according to the parked truck I broadsided.

Lucien, helpful little soul he is, started yelling from the backseat, "OH MY GOD MOM STOP! STOP!  YOU'RE HITTING THAT CAR, MOM, YOU'RE HITTING THAT CAR" to which I replied through clenched teeth yet at full volume (I'm amazing) "I'M AWARE I'M HITTING A CAR RIGHT NOW, LUCIEN, THANK YOU."  The crumply crunchy screechy sound was my first clue, how about you, son?  What was your first indication the morning had gone to hell?

I left a note on the truck, not only because it was the right thing to do but because I knew Lucien would be running his mouth about it all day at school.  If I hit-and-runned it, it would take mere seconds for the school to track down the culprit thanks to the wise guy in 3rd grade.  I have no morals, really.

The truck guy hasn't called yet so fingers crossed he likes the modifications I've made to his vehicle.  Mine looks much worse, by far.  The entire side is torn up.  I may not get it fixed because it makes me feel kind of badass, gives me a little street cred, makes people fear me.

I returned from the school drop-off debacle to find Supermodel Neighbor (he's here working on the house again, both kids now believe him to be an uncle) pacing the house.  He told me he couldn't find his jacket, which he wouldn't worry about too much except his wallet was in the front pocket.  We'd gone out the night before to a friend's stand-up comedy competition (so fun).  We both remember him wearing his jacket home; it had been raining and we'd run to the car with jackets over our heads.  It had to be in the house somewhere, there was no other option.

So we ransacked it.  We tore it apart room by room all the while muttering it didn't make any sense. Then we went outside to search the car, which is when Supermodel Neighbor saw the torn-up side of my vehicle.  "What the hell....?"  he said and I said,  "Oh yeah, I hit a truck earlier,"  Then he opened the passenger side door and recoiled in horror, "WHAT THE HELL...?"  "Oh yeah." I said, "I forgot, Oscar (my dog) also threw up in the car this morning.  I should probably clean that up."

Supermodel Neighbor looked at me funny then, like he wanted to get in his car and drive back to Portland at that point but couldn't.  Because I had his wallet somewhere.

On a whim I called Alex to ask him if he had, for some unimaginable reason, taken Supermodel Neighbor's jacket to work.  And of course he had.  He was trying to return it to a Halloween Party reveler at work who had forgotten his jacket at our house thanks to the too-strong but delicious "Rosemary's Baby" punch.  Alex saw a strange jacket thrown over the back of a chair that morning, grabbed it and and hopped on his bike, whistling, believing he was doing a very good thing indeed.

The wallet was still in the pocket even after its ride to Corporate America.  I breathed easily again until I went to pick up Coco at school and stepped in a giant pile of dog poop -- dog must have been the size of a rhino -- right outside the school's front door.  A friend, who had been in touch with me via text all morning and knew of my struggles, witnessed this.  She went back inside the building and gathered up Coco's things while whispering to her and smoothing her hair, "Now be a good girl for Mommy, she's a mess today."

In good news, my pottery wheel instructor told me I was "a natural born potter."  I'll hold onto that nugget of goodness as I jettison my favorite pair of shoes towards the curb because I am never getting the dog sh*t out of all those crevices on the bottom.

That's mine in a nutshell.  How's yours?
MJ