Alaska or bust. I hope we don't bust.

I took Lucien to see Les Miserables his first week of summer vacation. It was my 10th time seeing the show. I'd see it again tomorrow if I could. I will never stop.

I remember my parents returning home after they first saw it in the 1980s. They raved about it, and brought home a souvenir, a Les Miz documentary called "Stage by Stage." I didn't go with them that first time but I watched the first few moments of that video and I was hooked. I was obsessed. I remember a warm feeling coursing through my body and a sense of "I now know what love feels like." Don't you dare tell me a musical can't love me back because I know it does.

I was very happy to share my favorite story with my son date.

The Loosh asked about twenty minutes before we left for the theatre, "Mom, what's the story about?" and I said, "Oh! It's a super short story written by Victor Hugo about love, redemption, compassion, rebellion, you can read it quickly before we leave!" He nodded enthusiastically and I threw my dogeared copy of the nearly 1,500-page novel at him. He looked so shocked.

READ, LUCIEN, READ LIKE YOU'VE NEVER READ BEFORE.

This was my least favorite production I've seen of Les Miz. It's become something of a soap opera up there, with most actors throwing themselves all over the place in melodramatic fashion. They were being VERY SERIOUS actors but honestly, the story speaks for itself, you don't gotta sell it so hard.

The staging has changed, too. The sets used to be minimal and understated, which added to the charm of the thing. There was a revolving stage, so when people walked somewhere "far," they really walked in the same place as the stage rotated and props passed them by. Now there is no more rotation. When Jean Valjean gets Cosette at the well and takes her off for a better life, they just kind of wander all over the stage in lazy S shapes. What the hell are you guys doing up there?

One of the most effective scenes in the musical used to utilize the rotating stage to perfection. When Enjolras is killed at the barricade and falls off the front, the barricade later turns to show him laying upside down on top of the giant red rebel flag as music swells. That scene is gone without the revolving part; now they just kind of wheel a dead Enjolras across the stage in a cart. He's still with his big red flag but... what? Where's my big crying moment? It's gone, as gone as Enjolras.

I'm not done complaining yet! Another point of contention: Marius sings "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" while limping around in the darkness instead of sitting at the bar with all the chairs and tables he's singing about. How can you sing about empty chairs at empty tables when there are zero dang chairs and zero dang tables? Sit down in the damn bar and mourn your dead friends properly, Marius.

Don't even get me started on how audiences have changed. I swear half the audience was late so had to be seated at the first scene break, about fifteen minutes after the show began. Then there were just streams of people walking in carrying wine cups, and chatting, and blocking our view entirely for the next ten minutes of the show. Lucien didn't even get to see Fantine become a prostitute properly.

I'll distract myself from my crabby old lady Les Miz mutterings by showing before and nearly-after pictures of our master bathroom project. It's still not 100% finished but I sure like looking at it. It brings a little circa-1900 character to the space at last, and is even better than I'd envisioned.

Before:

we had no bathroom.

Almost After:

we very nearly have a gorgeous bathroom.

So gorgeous, we have decided to do all our entertaining from now on

in our bathroom. 

With the bathroom project nearly finished, our six years of Banister Abbey renovations are almost kinda complete. There is still a long list of small things to do but this, aside from the landscaping, which we hope to get to someday, is our last major undertaking in bringing this pretty old dame of a house back to life. Banister Abbey has been a labor of love. There is so much love. But as is involved in most labors, there has also been a shit ton of pain.

Summer is going well. There have been many water gun fights and buckets of water dumped on each other on the hot days --

And lemonade stands --

brilliant idea to offer the lemonade for free

but "except" donations.

They made a killing.

And kids running wild in the streets of Seattle --

And my beautiful sister, who is showcasing her art in her very first solo show in West Seattle. Her talent is astounding and I'm so happy she's getting the recognition she deserves.

That's Coco in front of "her" painting with Cecil the lion.

And finally, a fun event at the grocery store. Coco came with me to load up on the essentials for our big road trip. In the checkout lane, Coco loudly announced to the checker, "My mom and dad have a drinking problem." And I froze, and the checker froze, and we looked at each other, then both looked down at the items I was buying. There wasn't even any alcohol. So.... what's happening right now.

I said, "Umm, what?" and Coco said, throwing her arms into the air in exasperation, "You guys drink, like, twelve bubbly waters A DAY." True enough, I had five cases of La Croix on the belt and they're not likely to last a week. I've never loved a beverage so much in my life. It has actually replaced coffee as my morning drink of choice, it's that serious of a relationship.

Then the checker laughed and I laughed and the checker said, "Oooh boy, it got real awkward there for a second." Yes, yes it did. Coco can't come to the grocery store with me anymore.

I gotta go, it's crunch time, we're leaving for Alaska in t-minus not many hours. We'll be gone a long time, just shy of a month. Imagine the insanely long posts I'm going to write when I return! I'm really gonna write this trip into the ground, I can feel it.

Our journey to the Great North involves a stop in Watson Lake, in the Yukon. Watson Lake is known for its "Sign Post Forest," a labyrinth of almost 80,000 signs brought from the hometowns of people making the trek up the Alaska Highway. We have our sign ready. We will leave our mark at Watson Lake, as nearly 80,000 people have apparently done before us.

I hope it's the best road trip of our lives,
and I hope they put Les Miz back the way it used to be.
MJ

A thin layer of drywall dust

There is a thin layer of drywall dust in this house. There is a thin layer of drywall dust on the kitchen counters even though the kitchen is a full floor away from where the drywall is happening. There is a thin layer of drywall dust in our linen closet even with a tightly closed door. There is probably a thin layer of drywall dust up on the roof of the house. There is a thin layer of drywall dust on my soul.

Most impossibly, there is a thin layer of drywall dust in the TV room even though Natani, the crazy desert dog, is always running around in there like a goddamn maniac so makes the settling of dust very difficult. She excels at constant breeze-making.

I think my dog broke.

She sleeps like this sometimes.
She is one crazy goddamn dog.

If it sounds like I'm complaining about the drywall dust, rest assured it is the opposite. This is my happiest of places, fixing up spaces very much in need of fixing up. If I had all the money in the world, I would buy all the houses and fix up all the rooms. I would live with a perpetual thin layer of drywall dust on my clothing and in between my teeth but I would happily show it off by twirling in circles to watch it fly and smiling with a wide open mouth.

Banister Abbey is a labor of love and six years in, we are still laboring. Most of the big decisions have been made for the master bath project and it's going to be a beauty. I am happy with the direction it is taking -- even happier I found a general contractor who doesn't mind I'm sitting on a stool next to him munching popcorn in anticipation while watching the spreading of mortar and the installation of waterproof membranes. It's a vision coming to life before my eyes, with perhaps a few unplanned popcorn kernels embedded in the grout.

I'm going to call my contractor "Peter Gabriel" because I'm listening to one of my favorite Peter Gabriel songs on KEXP right now. He's a keeper, that Peter Gabriel contractor. I've worked with many and he's the only one I would invite to Christmas dinner with my family -- and he would probably get most of the presents under the tree. He is a gentle soul with a keen eye for detail and an impeccable ability to keep it all moving along cheerfully no matter how complicated the project.

The only issue I have with Peter Gabriel is he smiles all the time. He may be delivering bad news but he's smiling and cheerful so at first I'm not sure what's going on. Wait... the electrical inspector won't approve the light fixture I love so much, the one I based the entire bathroom design around, because it's not 500 miles away from the nearest water source? That's bad news, right? But you're smiling so widely, is that actually happy news? I never know when he approaches me smiling if he's about to make my day, break my heart, or just ask me the time.

I am now fixating on the third floor bathroom. We're adding one for guests who stay up there so they don't have to walk through the kids' rooms to access a toilet in the middle of the night. It used to be that, at whatever time, guests had to walk down these steep stairs where my favorite print hangs, the dapper dudes dueling with Nintendo guns --

-- and choose which kid to wake up to use the jack-n-jill bathroom between their rooms --

Choose your door wisely.

Choosing the door means means choosing the kid

who scowls at you the next morning over breakfast

and loves you slightly less.

Third floor needed at least a toilet and a sink. The only option was the long skinny closet that houses the furnace. We can't move the furnace and can't block or cover it for air circulation purposes. We're putting a toilet in there anyway.

That's the furnace lurking

inside the bathroom/closet.

I'm considering embracing the industrial aspect of the space and making it a furnace themed bathroom. Everything gray and white, toilet made out of pipes, super hot at all times. Peter Gabriel Contractor joked he'll bring old sections of pipe and we can suspend them from the ceiling with fishing wire. Anything goes in a furnace bathroom.

I'll finish this post with some Bobo. Bobo the bearded dragon is slowing down. He's lived a happy 12 years, 4 of them with us (still Lucien's favorite birthday present ever and a happy memory, especially the escaped crickets) and that's getting close to all you can expect from a pet beardie. He doesn't move very fast anymore, and sometimes misses the dinner crickets hopping around his tank. He can't climb all the way up his log anymore either, instead sleeps like this, with his little dangly arms down at his sides --

We often assume he's died during the night when we wake up and he looks like this. We approach his tank reverently, holding hands and speaking in hushed voices. As we all cluster around, staring down at him with affection and beginning our eulogies, he wakes with a start and his eyes get super wide and he's like, "GAH!"

And then we're like, "GAH!"
And he's like "OMG!"

And we're like, "YOU'RE ALIVE!"
And he's like, "OF COURSE I AM."

Then we feel happy and walk away as Bobo's eyes go back to normal size and his body relaxes a bit. You can tell he's thinking, "Jesus, there's something wrong with these people."

Sorry, dude. Live on, majestic lizard. 

Insult to injury,
there is also a thin layer of drywall dust on Bobo.
MJ

NPR and ABBA

I have never heard the words, "I heard about it on NPR" as often as I have in the past few weeks. The all-knowing NPR is everywhere these days. Whether someone mentions Al-Shabaab or a new kind of designer cheese made from socks and quinoa, there's an NPR segment for that.

Besides contemplating the fact NPR could be God, we're ripping Banister Abbey apart again. It's fun to peel away the layers of an old house -- counting the layers of renovation in a house old as Banister Abbey is like counting the rings of a tree to determine how old it is. Judging from what we've seen recently, this house is two layers of plaster and three layers of flooring old.

This old house has come a long way since we moved in almost six years ago. I remember the first day we moved into the crumbly thing, how tiny our kids were and how big our plans were. I remember the way it used to smell -- musty and dampy woody with a touch of fried chicken. I remember the playlists I used to listen to as I scraped paint or stained hardwood. I remember living in holey jeans and sweatshirts for weeks on end and meeting the cast of characters of the neighborhood as I sanded numerous things in the front yard.

(And now I'm reminded of Angel and Dorita and my giant chip-n-dip. I haven't seen Angel and Dorita in years. I hope they're doing just fine and still cracking each other up somewhere.)

Life is once again loud and full of contractors. I've missed the mess. I've missed the design process, and the planning, and the running around town ordering of things. I've missed slightly less the contractors at the door early in the AM before I've tamed my bedhead, and the flat tires that happen when contractors drop nails in the driveway but we've gotta take the bad with the good.

The project this time is the master bathroom. Alex and I have never had a master bathroom. It's been six years of a roughed-in plywood shell. It's looked like this since the day we moved in --

And now, after a few weeks of progress, it looks like this! --

House progress is sometimes so slow it appears to be moving backwards.

Hey, did you know it's possible to spend an entire day looking at sconces? It starts innocently enough with a split second, "I have a minute now to look at some sconces" and then BAM, it's seven hours later, you have 243 tabs open on your laptop, your eyes are crossed, and yet somehow you still don't have any sconces.

While we're tearing things apart, we're also adding a tiny half bath to the third floor (no claustrophes shall pee in there, trust it) and laying some flooring in an unfinished attic space to make room for storage. There will eventually be an access point to the storage from the third floor but for now it's all up and down a ladder.

We sent The Loosh up that ladder into the attic and told him it was going to be his new bedroom. He legit looked nervous until our contractor couldn't keep his poker face anymore and started to laugh. Our softie contractor ruined our fun.

Coco and I took an entire Sunday for a mama/daughter day. Sometimes you just need some one-on-one with the Coco girl. Because she used to be this high and now she's this high.

Our mom/daughter date involved Mamma Mia at the 5th Avenue Theatre. Coco and I have seen the movie together dozens of times, it's one of our favorites, so don't worry, she was not even remotely bothered by the fact Sophie's dad could be any one of three delightful men. Coco is learning at an early age that a woman's sexuality is her own to do with as she pleases -- and that ABBA wrote tunes that infect your brain like a parasite.

At the end of the show, Donna and her friends come out for one final performance of ABBA's greatest hits. This is the time when the entire audience is supposed to jump up and start dancing. We were in the lame balcony and no one stood up so Coco and I took it upon ourselves to get the dancing started. I jumped up and Coco jumped up and we danced and motioned to everyone else to get up and dance and then everyone stood up and danced, hopefully because we were so inspiring but more likely because they couldn't see around us anymore.

The elderly couple sitting next to us, whom I thought were kind of annoyed by us, turned to me at the end of the show. The man touched my arm, motioned at Coco and said, "Your daughter is always going to remember you got up and danced with her like that." He was a little teary-eyed as he said he missed his daughter now she's all grown up with a family of her own in California. And that's how I ended up crying at Mamma Mia and hugging a stranger even while still humming "Waterloo."

(I just turned to Coco and said, "Hey, remember when we got up and danced at Mamma Mia?" and she looked confused and said, "Huh?" Oh well, so much for that.)

We joined some friends for skiing up at Sun Peaks, British Columbia for mid-winter break. We took the Winnie B, which was a big mistake. Sometimes we don't think quite right. If we had taken even five measly minutes to think it over -- SHOULD we take the RV across snowy mountain passes in sub zero weather and camp in a parking lot? -- I think we might have reached a different conclusion. Sometimes we just plow ahead, kind of blindly optimistic, and it's just so dumb.

Winnie B's windshield got a couple dings when semis flew past us and kicked up the gravel on the roads, and her water line froze, which is going to be a costly repair, and it was so cold up in Canada the propane couldn't kick on properly. We woke up at 4:00 a.m. that first night with outside temps approaching -20 degrees Fahrenheit and no heat source.

And yes, it's happened before, the too-cold-for-propane-to-work thing, but we apparently don't like to learn lessons. Alex and I stumbled over each other that night with no heat, looked at each other with wide eyes and just kept repeating, "This is so bad, this is so bad, this is SO BAD."

In moments like those, even though I am a middle aged woman, I feel like a child again. I'm like, "Why did anyone think it was a good idea to put me in charge of ANYTHING? Why am I responsible for LIVES of CHILDREN? This is just a bad idea, people."

We ended up ditching the Winnie B in a remote parking lot and getting a hotel room.

This is where we left her.

It was such a bad idea.

The good news is that even though temps never got higher than 0 degrees Fahrenheit, so stupid cold as to be laughable, the skiing was gorgeous. We took lots of breaks inside and drank lots of coffee and hot chocolate and even though we sometimes couldn't feel our fingers, we loved the place. We're going back someday when it's warmer. Like, a lot warmer.

So cold. So. Cold.

But look at how pretty it is. You are forgiven, Sun Peaks, a million times, you are forgiven --

And to the blog commenter who recently told me to get on with it already, take this here blog off life support by posting shorter posts more frequently, THANK YOU. You hit the nail on the head with needing to take the pressure off myself. I go so long between blog posts now, I get overwhelmed when I think about writing one. There's just too much ground to cover so the result is inaction, then feeling guilty, then rolling up into a ball and grieving my sweet little blog. I don't want my blog to die. We've been through so much together.

I'm going to resurrect this sucker. Writing more frequently but shorter, that's the way back to blog mojo. I heard about it on NPR a couple weeks ago so it must be true.

Seattle Moxie Forever!
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

Happy Birthday to me

Spring is arriving in Seattle and we're excited to spend some time on our new back deck. When we first moved into the house, the back deck was a rickety little thing made of plywood that moved back and forth and up and down when you walked on it. 

Exciting but not inviting

We tore down Danger Deck and started over.  Now we're looking more like this --

 it's not finished but at least we're not scared of it

Yesterday was a gorgeous day and an exciting one because our new outdoor dining set was to be delivered.  It arrived while I was running the kids to school.  I was less enthusiastic about the delivery when I returned home and found this mess on the front porch --

It was not a box. It was a very loose interpretation of a box.

The carnage was so bad, the furniture had begun unpacking itself in a desperate attempt to flee the structural collapse of its home.  I pulled the pieces out slowly, assuming damage.  And of course they were damaged.  I think it's fairly obvious this deliveryman hates his job.

So we still don't have an outdoor dining set, just an email sent to customer service filled with impotent rage and a ton of cardboard clogging the entryway.  The good news is the kids love playing on it and we've begun referring to it affectionately as "Mount Mangle."

So I turned 39 over the weekend.  It was one of my better birthdays because it began in total silence.  Alex woke up long before me and took the kids out all morning.  I slept in, drank coffee in my bathrobe and read my Facebook birthday greetings.  Sometimes Alex gets it just right.

Things got exciting later that day when we all clustered around Bobo the bearded dragon's tank and stared at him with concern.  Lucien was convinced Bobo was dying and it didn't seem an overreaction -- Bobo hadn't moved in four days, hadn't eaten in two, hadn't pooed in over six weeks.  It was an alarming combo and drove me to the internet where I deduced Bobo was suffering from "impaction."  In blunt terms, Bobo the bearded dragon was hella constipated.

Impaction can kill a bearded dragon.  Lucien was growing frantic, there wasn't a moment to lose. "Bobo, you ain't dying on my birthday," I said, and strapped on the latex gloves. 

The internet told me the best home remedy for bearded dragon impaction was a warm bath with accompanying abdominal massage. Bobo flattened his body in the bath and closed his eyes.  I wrapped my hands around his scaly little body and massaged what I assumed to be his abdomen. I guess I did something right because half an hour later BLAMMO, Bobo sh*t all over the place.

 Thanks, lady, and happy birthday

and you might want to bleach the bathtub

A group of friends met us later for my birthday dinner.  Look, I got a plant!

The strange thing about dinner was our server kept bringing us more bread even though we hadn't finished our other bread.  We finally had to shake him by his slight shoulders, smack him around a little -- "No more bread, man, you've gone mad!"

 it's too much bread

bread

bread

bread

must give more bread

After our dinner we walked to Neumos where Dum Dum Girls were playing.  As I've mentioned, I have an intense love for live music.  It feeds my soul.  My friends do not all share this fervent love but they still agreed (enthusiastically, even!) to stay up way past their bedtimes and go with me to see a band they'd never heard of.  I love them for that.

 

Dum Dum Girls played a good show.  The men enjoyed it, especially, because the lead singer wore a sheer shirt with nothing but pasties for coverage.  She can wear whatever she wants, she's a badass in a girl band, but it may have been too distracting.  Afterward Alex asked, "Wait...did they play music?"

Alex stepped outside for a cigar midway through the show.  He struck up a conversation with a guy in the band that played earlier.  The band guy told Alex his shoes were rad and asked where he got them.  Al is still glowing from that one and occasionally puffs out his chest, pounds it, and yells, "I STILL GOT IT I'M STILL COOL" at various times throughout the day.   

It was a late night but worth it

because we got to hang out with this Macklemore-ish guy wearing a white fur coat

 

Anne, Angelo, Anna, Kristin, Alex, Kate, Eden, Rhonda, Matt, Raba and Zee -- thanks to you, I turned 39 just right, and don't wish to be in any other place or at any other age.

MJ

Room Mother

 

It's tough restoring a grand old house like Banister Abbey because everyone is watching you and giving you lots of opinions.  Our neighbors peer at our every design decision and occasionally offer the very unhelpful, "ya know, what you should have done is..."  It's a real dick move, in my opinion.

We like our neighbors very much.  I think the problem is they've been staring at our house for many years in its disrepaired state and have developed many ideas over those years they're itching to finally share.

One neighbor suggested we paint each of the newly-installed dentils a different color.

No.

The contractors and I regularly inspect old photos of the house procured from the city in our attempts to put her back the way she was in 1904.  We stand in a circle on the driveway, photos in hand, heads bowed, squinting, silent.  To passersby, it may look like we're praying and that's not too far from the truth -- if we don't get the soffit detail right, we're surely going to hell.

 I hope we did right by the corbels

As I put the kids to bed a few weeks back on a very rainy night, Lucien said, "You left the faucet running in the bathroom, Mom."  And indeed, that's what it sounded like.  But I was pretty sure we did not have a sink out on the stairwell landing.

I investigated the source of the sound and found a lovely cascading waterfall entering from the corner of a  piece of plywood (which is currently standing in for a transom window) and landing on a brand new piece of wood furniture directly below.

Lots of swear words later, the water is gone but that lovely new piece of furniture will never be the same.  Welcome to renovation hell,  furniture, where windows are luxuries and pieces of plywood are sometimes your only defense against a very wet climate.  Accept it, and try to enjoy your new warped and wavy texture.

Oscar has fleas.  Correction: Oscar has "really really bad" fleas, according to our vet.  The vet looked at me strangely when I replied, "Oh, good! Can I feed fleas to a praying mantis?"

The vet gave me a giant spray can with instructions to spray all fabric and carpet surfaces in our house then stay out of the house for a few hours while it dries.  Before I unleashed the toxic flea-killing fumes this past weekend,  I gave my family strict orders:  these are dangerous chemicals, go outside and wait for me in the car.

Those were the only instructions I gave and I honestly don't think they were too difficult to understand.

I sprayed upstairs. It was pretty intense. When I came downstairs I found my entire family in the entryway, just standing there staring up at me like a bunch of dummies.  "What are you doing in here?  Get out, get out, get out, you imbecilic idiots!"  I screamed, light-headed from the fumes, possibly flailing a bit in the arms area.

Maybe it was a harsh critique of my loved ones but come on, people.  There was only one instruction -- "Go" -- and you botched it.

I managed to get my instruction-averse family out the door, hopefully without any further brain damage, and we drove up north to a pumpkin patch.  Did you know pumpkins can talk?  They talk all wonky and slow out of their sideways mouths.  Never mind, possibly still the flea fumes.

We met up with some friends at the pumpkin patch.

This photo is more awesome if you zoom in on what Lucien is doing to Coco's face --

Why can't men just push a wheelbarrow normally, without getting all nuts about it?

There was a pumpkin cannon at the farm.  We stood in line at the cannon watching pumpkins soar off into the distance with very loud booms.  Alex looked down at the youngest and smallest of our posse members and said, "You ready to fly, little buddy?"  The boy's eyes widened and he whispered  "no" before hiding behind his dad's legs.  And a lifelong fear of hairy men with accents is born.

The pumpkin patch/farm was awesome until the point of absolute saturation, which is the very second you realize you can't be in a place for one more second and are ready to chew your arm off if that's what it takes to free you.  It's also the exact point in time all the children in your group will scatter in different directions, leaving parents glassy-eyed, desperate to herd yet unable to move and wondering aloud if they can go home without the kids because OH MY GOD WE'VE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE.

My friend, Seattle Mom, and I are room mothers for Coco's preschool class.  So far we have no idea what that means.  We've asked several times what we're supposed to do as room mothers but our questions have yet to be satisfactorily answered. 

Until we understand our responsibilities as room mothers, we will continue to abuse the imagined privilege that comes with such a lofty rank.  Cutting people off in the parking lot, stealing shoes from that little girl because they're cuter than Coco's, letting the door slam in that kid's face because my arm is tired and I don't want to hold it open -- B*tches, I'm room mother, I do what I please.  

(This just in -- we're responsible for sending emails and gathering money for a teacher appreciation week present.)

I'm finally a somebody!
MJ