Oh the wonderful things we'll make you do

Lucien flipped someone the bird in math class last week.  He pried his middle finger up out of his clenched fist and said, "I'm going to show you my middle finger now."

He got in trouble and I got a call from the teacher.  She said he didn't seem to know exactly what it meant to flip the bird but he knew it wasn't nice.  I explained the subtle yet loaded sociological meaning of the middle finger to him later that evening and he said, "OK, I'll only use it when I get real mad."

I went out with a friend, Seattle Twin Mom, Saturday night and mentioned the middle finger story.  She told me when she was about Lucien's age, her brother (who is six years older) told her showing your middle finger meant "Have a nice day."  So there sweet little Seattle Twin Mom went, flipping the bird all over her small hometown.  Her mom got a few phone calls from concerned citizens wondering why that cute little girl down the street suddenly turned into a real a**hole.

Alex and I try hard to do fun things with the kids on the weekends.  The kids don't always enjoy our "fun" ideas but they are still dependent and small and semi-portable so don't have much choice in the matter. 

Alex took the kids to a Japanese restaurant for lunch recently, one of those places where food circles the room on a conveyor belt and you have to grab your lunch as it passes by your table.  Lucien and Coco initially thought food whizzing by on a conveyor belt was awesome.  Their enthusiasm fizzled when they realized those containers of mackerel bits and octopus were lunch.

At first she was merely suspicious

 But then the sushi made her sad

So much for Japanese.  Let's try Vietnamese.  We've got a great Vietnamese place down the street from our house so we attempted more food horizon broadening.

We knew it was a failed experiment when Coco started eating plain lettuce

There's one food the kids will never turn down -- crappy U.S. macarons.

I'm not a food snob in general (raised on wiener bean casserole, after all) but there's something about the French macaron that's sacred and holds a very special place in my heart.  I have yet to find a macaron in the U.S. that truly captures what's happening over there in Paris.  Whenever a new French bakery-type place is recommended to me -- seriously, their macarons are the real deal! -- I take a bite and realize it is merely another pale ghostly imitation of the real deal. 

 exactly

The highlight of our most recent macaron attempt was when Lucien pointed to the counter and said, "Look, they have Macklemores!"  It couldn't have been a better fusion of our son's Paris and Seattle lives.

(For those wondering what the hell that meant, Macklemore is a rapper from Seattle)

There's just something off with the texture

There was a Life Sciences exposition at the Pacific Science Center over the weekend.  Lucien is a science-loving kid so we knew he would love it.

Except he didn't.  The brain table, which had real human brains cut in half and reeking of formaldehyde, made him knead his hands nervously and ask to go home. Guess we should stick to bugs and leave people out of it.

The kids are going to start refusing to leave the house with us

It was the most glorious Fall day on Sunday so we pulled out the scooters and went on a nice long walk through our fine city.   We didn't fully take into account Seattle's topography when planning our route.  There are lots of hills up in here.

We realized we weren't going to make it home easily when we saw Lucien, two blocks behind us and trying to scoot up a large San Francisco-style hill, yelling around about hating his scooter a whole, whole lot.  We eventually grabbed both of them by their jackets and began pushing/pulling them home. This would have been manageable except I wore slippery-soled boots.  I would slip while pulling on a kid, lose my grip on the kid, and the kid would start rolling backwards screaming before leaping off his scooter into some bushes.

It's family fun, kids.

Al and I left the kids with a sitter later that afternoon to go watch the Seahawks game at a rowdy Capitol Hill bar.  It was nice to get out together.  The kids were also thrilled because we were far away and no longer inflicting our ideas upon them.

I was reading a local news blog lately.  There was a story about some recent robberies in the C.D., one in particular in which a police helicopter located the burglary suspect hiding on someone's roof.   The following was written in the comments.

"...If it was a random 9pm burglary – then that is a freaky deal. We should all be up in arms and patroling the streets with pick handles.  We really need more detail on this kind of stuff. It makes a huge difference in the perception of risk. If it’s just thug on thug crime – I’m going to be leary of thugs. But if they be bustin into just anybody's house I’m gonna be all hillbilly."

What does it mean to get all hillbilly?  I'm picturing a lot of straw chewing and wearing of tank tops.  Is the idea to confuse burglars until they forget where they are, become disoriented and wander out of the C.D.?  I guess it's worth a try -- yee-haw, y'all.

Hillbilly is a decent idea but an even better way to fight crime is karate.  Lucien's pretty good at karate but Coco has a ferocity about her never before seen in a four-year-old karate novice.  Sure, sometimes she turns a somersault for no dang reason in the middle of the mat but other than that, she gets mean out there.

Hang in there, kids,

MJ

Crime, Auctions and Fish Parties

Ain't no party like a pumpkin party

If you're a parent of a school-aged child, you know the joys of curriculum night.  Curriculum night is when you go to your kid's school in the evening and squeeze into tiny chairs underneath trapezoids and parallelograms dangling from the ceiling by strings.  Then the teachers tell you all the ways they're going to force learning into your kid's brain.

I appreciate the teachers at our school but sometimes they offer unsolicited advice.  At curriculum night they told us, "9:00 p.m. is too late a bedtime for a second grader."  My impulse was to raise my hand and ask,  "What if I put my second grader to bed at the respectable hour of 8:00 but he's still awake in his bed at 9:00?  Should I then club him over the head like a baby seal to get him his much needed rest?" 

In a newsletter sent home last month the teachers asked parents to make sure girls wear tights or shorts underneath their skirts because glimpses of underwear were distracting the boys and "it's never too early to teach our girls a little modesty."  Finally, an answer to the nagging question "at what age do we start teaching girls they're responsible for boys' behavior?"  The answer is seven-ish!

Ugh ugh ugggghhhhh.  Hey Lucien, if you catch a glimpse of a girl's underwear, it's probably embarrassing for her so don't make a big deal about it and get your eyes back on your work where they belong.  Personal responsibility and being respectful of others -- internalize it.

So how many 911 calls have you made in the past 18 months?  I've made four.  One was the suspected bomb around the 4th of July last year.  One was the angry guy walking down the middle of our street yelling and throwing rocks.  One was the person who plowed over our traffic island in the middle of the night and knocked down the tree which had been lovingly planted there by our green thumb neighbor.

The fire department came and chopped down the tree because it was bent over and lying in the middle of the road.  They chucked it onto the front lawn of Banister Abbey where I found my sad neighbor standing over it the next morning.  He asked if I cut it down and I was slightly offended.  I admit it didn't look good, tree being in my yard and all, but why would I cut down a tree in the middle of the night?  I'm a very important room mother with numerous mysterious responsibilities.  I must get my rest.

(This just in -- as room mother I was recently asked to purchase several pumpkins with which to decorate the preschool classroom.  I accomplished my mission and stand at the ready awaiting further instructions.)  

My fourth 911 call was this past weekend.  I looked out my window around midnight while brushing my teeth and saw three young men trying to take down our street sign.  They threw rocks at it and climbed on each others backs trying to get at it.  When they began taking blocks from our retaining wall and stacking them at the base of the pole,  I said "OK THAT'S QUITE ENOUGH, A**HOLES."  I called my friends at 911, "Yo, it's MJ again."

Our city neighborhood is a hotbed of strange activity at all times.  We've had friends who live in more suburban neighborhoods ask, "Do you feel SAFE in this neighborhood?"  I would be sleeping with one eye open tonight if I was a street sign but other than that, yeah, I feel OK.

Maybe their question is as surprising to us as ours is to them when we go visit their neighborhood -- "What the hell do you guys DO out here?"  Here in the C.D. we watch dozens of people walk past daily and say "hi."  We walk a handful of minutes to restaurants, bars, theaters, and live music venues.  We stare at a city skyline from up close.  And yes, we call 911 when someone's acting the fool. 

Speaking of criminals, this is me getting fingerprinted --

I wish I could just leave it there, leave you wondering and guessing why this is happening.  

Hey wait, I can!  It's so fun to have a blog.

Al and I attended another charity auction over the weekend.  This is the 1,276,588nd auction we've attended since returning from France.

Our table at the auction was a rowdy one.  We badgered each other into buying things none of us wanted or needed.  They pressured Al and I into bidding on 12 pounds of fresh seafood ("just think of the party you can have!").  Yes, that's true!  So we kept bidding until we won it.  Yee-haw, fish party!

Now that sounds like a really terrible party.  I hate auctions.

The auction was held to benefit L'Arche, an organization I've mentioned before.  It was the place where Alex and I met, the very place where we banded together to fight street crime side-by-side for the next 15 years.

I won a painting in the silent auction. It was painted by Carol, a woman I used to live with in the Seattle L'Arche community.  She was 52 years old with Down Syndrome and barely verbal.  We were friends and loved each other very much.  I shared more belly laughs with her than I've shared with just about anyone.  We also got mad at each other sometimes.  She hit me hard in the arm once while visiting the zoo.  Carol, you were so stubborn.

My grandma died while I was living in L'Arche.  After I heard the news from my parents over the phone and came downstairs, Carol saw the look on my face before I said a word to anyone.  She squinted at me for a second, then rushed to me and wrapped me in a bear hug.  I cried into her shirt as she stroked my hair and said, "Oh Bustabee.....Bustabee...."  (Carol called everyone she loved "Bustabee")  She saw me through that grief unlike anyone else could.

Carol passed away while we were living in Paris.  I tried to write something for her memorial service but couldn't adequately articulate the importance of her well enough to send anything good.  I deeply regret it.

I'm so happy to have a piece of her -- her fun-loving self, her contagious laugh, her enthusiasm for life, her sweet soul -- now hanging in the Abbey.

 You were awesome, Bustabee.

So maybe I don't hate auctions.

We're busily preparing for our 2nd annual Halloween party.  This year I've added a giant glow-in-the-dark spiderweb and a blacklight to the decorations.  Should be fun when people get drunk, become hopelessly entangled, and fall down.

I hope our guests really like fish.
MJ