Ode to Al

I recently found several boxes of old photos under our bed.  The photos held events and people spanning from my childhood up to the year I bought a digital camera, at which point all photos disappear.  I should really print those damn things because it looks like my life ended in '03.

Do you remember the days when you used to take a picture and you wouldn't know how it turned out until weeks or months later when you finally had the film developed and realized it was out of focus, your eyes were closed, or your idiot brother couldn't center a photo to save his life?

Boxes of old photos tell many stories. In my case, the photos told stories of love - love between family members and neighbors and true friends, not to mention love of the romantic variety.

Man, I miss some of those guys.

I digress.  Most importantly, my box of photos told the epic tale of Alex and MJ, a love that happened between two stupid little people from different countries, different languages, different pretty much everything.

Al and I had lives before we met, of course.  For instance, before we met, I had my First Communion --

...and Alex was a good Canadian boy --

A little later, I was busy being hilarious with my family in Antelope Canyon --

...while Alex was busy wearing shorts like these on top of a mountain --

 

Alex volunteered at a place called L'Arche, a worldwide network of communities that care for adults with developmental disabilities.  It turns out Alex was really, really good at it --

 

And he wore awesome "What's up Doc?" shirts

Around the same time, Alex met a man with muscular dystrophy who needed an assistant.  He needed help getting around, especially traveling, which he loved.  Alex became his assistant and near-constant companion.  The man's name was Mario --

Mario was smart and successful and funny and charming.  He had lots of girlfriends.  He and Alex were kindred spirits.  Each considered the other his best friend in the world.

Mario told Alex he had to learn English to be successful in the world.  He told Alex to leave Quebec, to go learn English and learn it well. 

So Alex did.  He moved to British Columbia where he learned English and continued his work with  L'Arche in the Victoria community --

More bumper cars

Alex's English-learning flubs are legendary in the Victoria community.  For instance, many people still tell the tale of Alex, who stood up in the middle of the room while leading a Christmas party for people with disabilities and their parents and announced, "OK, everybody, time to rape your presents!"

Meanwhile, someone else was just a few hours south of Victoria in Seattle, also working at L'Arche, also loving where life had taken her --

It was me!!

 

Pat's eyes were closed.  We didn't know that until much later because of film.

Moving to Seattle and working at L'Arche were my finest decisions.  No one can understand if they haven't lived it, but L'Arche -- houses where people with and without disabilities live together -- was family.

 

A dysfunctional family full of utopia-visioned social-justice-seeking hippies

 and the people with Down Syndrome who put up with them

Carol was pissed off when we took this one at the Sears photo studio.  She didn't want to be there and kept trying to leave.  My bear-like friend Dirk there in the middle clamped his arm around her and they hissed at each other out of the corners of their mouths the entire time.  But don't we look happy?

Aah yes, this one.  Marjie was pissed off this time because we couldn't get her out of the car.  Stephanie's leg was pinned under Marjie and I couldn't get a good enough angle to lift her.  All we could do was laugh while Marjie muttered something about 

"being surrounded by idiots."

Neighboring L'Ache communities often have retreats together off in the woods.  That's where I met Alex.  To say our eyes met across a crowded retreat center and lingered is no lie.  The attraction was short-lived on my end, though, because soon thereafter Alex led the "icebreaker" portion of the retreat and it was totally obnoxious and inappropriate.

Alex's ideas for good icebreakers were things like hopping around with carrots between our knees then passing the carrots between our co-workers knees.  We also played Musical Chairs but if you had nowhere to sit when the music stopped, you weren't out of the game -- you just had to go sit on someone's lap who still had a chair.

This would all be fun except L'Arche tends to attract a lot of intensely introverted and shy people.  Their embarrassment was palpable.  My director, for instance, was purple-faced and couldn't look at anyone for days.  Either Alex hadn't considered his audience, or he'd considered them very seriously and decided to embarrass them all anyway. (Now that I know him well...the answer is most definitely the latter.)

Either way, if you'd told me at that point I was going to marry that loud obnoxious guy, it's likely I would have punched you in the face.

It could have ended there.  But on the last morning of the retreat, a couple hours before we left for home, I watched Alex's director run to him, put her arms around him, and say something.  And then Alex collapsed.

The retreat center had received a call from Alex's family.  Mario had died in Quebec.

Everyone was hushed as we packed our things, milled around Alex and his intense grief, and tried to say the right things.  I hugged him, told him I was sorry, and we went home to our respective cities.  

The loud guy with the touching friendship with the older guy in a wheelchair stuck in my mind.  I wrote Alex a couple weeks later to see how he was doing.  He wrote back.  Then we called each other.  Then he came to visit.  And then he was my boyfriend.

 I was thrilled

Part Two coming up. This sh*t's just starting to get good.

Happy Anniversary Al.  12 years and counting.
MJ

And P.S.  -- Listen up, everybody, Google Reader is going bye-bye July 1st.  To continue following Seattle Moxie via a blog reader, try bloglovin or feedly.  Feedly is especially great with its fancy one-button migration tool.

I'm going to miss you, Google Reader.  We really had something special.

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

Goonies

I'm not sure why we keep thinking it's a good idea to go away for long weekends.  It seems like a good idea beforehand but usually ends up a mess of screwed up schedules, screwed up sleep, cranky hungry kids and bumper-to-bumper traffic.

I guess we keep doing it because when we return home (often more tired than when we left) and start looking through the pictures, we usually say things like, "Gosh, that was fun!"

Vacation amnesia sets in quickly and thankfully (usually) leaves the good parts. 

We went back to one of our favorite spots for the long Memorial Day weekend -- the Oregon Coast.   Alex and I have visited the Oregon Coast many times throughout the course of our relationship.  In fact, here's a photo of Alex on the Oregon Coast, on the very beach where we stayed this time, fifteen years ago -- 

Our relationship was in its infancy at that time but I knew he was special, the zany French Canadian with the thick accent who said ridiculous things.

And now, here's a recent picture of Alex on the Oregon Coast --

Not much has changed except Alex looks more batshit crazy now, possibly due to the hoodie/fedora combination.  Plus there's a strange Alex-like kid addition running around screaming behind him.

We rented a first-floor condo right on the beach in Seaside so we could shove the children out the door easily and regularly.  It would have worked well but the weather was not our friend.  While we did have some periods of incredibleness, we also had some rain and some cold and some wind.

As we sat indoors staring outside, Coco tried out her knock-knock jokes.  She's pretty into knock-knock jokes.  They all go like this:

Coco:  KNOCK-KNOCK
Me:  Who's there?
Coco:  poo poo
Me:  poo poo who?
Coco:  poo poo pee pee

Sometimes she'd mix it up a little --

Coco:  KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Me:  Who's there?
Coco:  pee pee
Me:  pee pee who?
Coco:  pee pee and poo poo on your head

I told her the jokes were the worst jokes I'd ever heard but it didn't seem to faze her.  After the hundredth time being told a joke involving some combination of poo poo and pee pee, most of it ending up on someone's head or (god forbid) in their mouth,  I told Alex we had to get out of there, that I couldn't take any more.

Thankfully, we stayed in Seaside, an old beach resort town fully equipped with things like covered tilt-o-whirls and bumper cars.  We made Lucien ride the tilt-o-whirl by himself.  He did not look healthy by the end of it.

Seaside is most famous for being the end of the Lewis and Clark trail.  Seaside is where those two badass explorers (plus badass Sacajawea) finally emerged from the wilderness and dipped their toes into the Pacific Ocean.

They paved the way for many, many timeshare condos

We went to an arcade where, upon her first pull of the wheel at the first game she played, Coco won 1000 tickets.  It took ten minutes for our tickets to fully dispense from the machine, during which time we drew envious gazes and knuckle cracks from all other vacationers.

We decided to get a voucher for our tickets and come back to redeem them the next day.  As we walked back to the condo, I cleaned out my jacket pockets, absentmindedly throwing fistfuls of wrappers and receipts into a boardwalk trash can while looking out over the water.  I realized a millisecond later I'd just tossed the voucher for our tickets, procured not even one minute earlier by a pimply-faced employee who told me to guard it with my life, into a large cement trash can with a bolted-on lid.

I dove into the boardwalk trash can headfirst, trying to wriggle my way under the nasty bolted lid ("I'm small, I can do this!") while Alex lounged on a bench a short distance away, pointed at me and yelled, "homeless, uh-oh!"

I didn't care so much about the tickets, more about how my family was going to react.  They were never, ever going to let me live down the loss.  If I didn't find that voucher, I was going to have to hear about it every single day until the blessed moment I drew final breath.

I eventually fished the receipt out of the garbage using Lucien's new plastic clamming shovel.  Lucien was like, "Mom, why are you using my new shovel to dig through the garbage?" He looked to Alex for explanation but Alex just hugged him and said, "There's something not quite right about her, son, and the sooner you accept it the better."

Success, but I have less respect for myself now

One of my favorite beaches on the Oregon Coast is Cannon Beach.  We planned to spend a full day on Cannon Beach but when we arrived, the wind was so strong we were afraid it was going to blow Coco up into the trees.  We took refuge at a nearby coffee shop and debated what to do.

Alex, who tends to be a save-the-day type of guy, said, "Has Lucien ever flown a kite?" and I said "no" and he said "then that's what we're going to do."  We found a kite store and were advised on the proper kite to buy, one that wouldn't be shredded by the gale force winds currently out on the beach.  We chose a blue one that Lucien creatively named "Blue Kite."

When it's as windy as it was that day, it's easy to get your kite up in the air -- you just hold your arm up and the kite is immediately ripped away from your hands.  The force of the wind pulled Lucien across the sand as he held onto his kite string.  Impressively, he didn't lose the kite because he, like his mother, is freakishly strong.

 

Coco got one, too

As we walked up and down the boardwalk back in Seaside, we noticed this house.  And we immediately began wondering if it was for sale and if we could buy it and if we could fix it because THERE IS OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING WRONG WITH US.  The pull of an old pretty house in desperate need is like a siren's song and we, someday, are going to crash into the damn rocks.

An elderly woman resident heard us speculating and stopped to give us some history.  The house is owned by a very wealthy family in Portland who no longer cares about it.  There are six bedrooms on the top floor and six bedrooms in the basement.  It's hard to tell from the angle of this photo but the house is quite big with a sprawling front sun porch and great architectural details.

She told us from the turn of the century up through the 1920s, '30s and '40s, the family regularly vacationed in Seaside with an entourage of butlers, cooks and servants.  They threw lavish parties back in the day that spilled out into the front yard and down onto the beach.  For some reason the family stopped coming to their cottage decades ago and the house has been slowly dissolving into the ground ever since. 

I have absolutely no point to make about this house.  I just want it on the record this house existed, it was beautiful, and it LIVED, dammit, it LIVED.

It's a miracle this kid still has a scooter since he ditches it every few minutes and wanders off

He could dig in the sand for hours

We went back to the arcade on our last day to redeem our tickets.  After hearing the chorus of whiny voices clamoring for candy and only candy, I made an executive decision -- two gummy candy pizzas, five whoopie cushions and a monkey hat.  The kids protested but, in my defense, the monkey hat was awesome.

Our plan was to stop in Astoria, Oregon on our drive back to Seattle.  It's a great little town and famous for the many movies that have been filmed there -- the best, obviously, according to me, being The Goonies.  The entire movie was filmed on location.  Quite a bit of The Goonies was filmed up the road on Cannon Beach, too, though obviously on a much less windy day or else Corey Feldman would have ended up in the Pacific Ocean.

I wanted to find The Goonies house.  Badly.  The hard driving rain, however, had other plans.  After a quick lunch and a short drive through the town, we were tired and wet and miserable and decided, "Eff it, this isn't fun." We turned for home.

I'm bummed we missed it.  Really bummed.  That movie was one of my very favorites growing up and now that I've introduced it to Lucien, it's on heavy rotation in our family once again.

Wait for us, Goondocks.  Wait for us, Mikey's house.  We'll return to do the Truffle Shuffle outside the gate someday soon.

Andi!  You GOONIE!
MJ

Carpe Diem or else

Lucien has glasses now.  He began striking poses like this as soon as we picked them up.  He seemed to understand having glasses of this magnitude immediately turned him into an emo indie rocker.

(It was also "wear your pajamas to school" day.  The glasses/pajamas/rain boots combination seems to point in only one direction -- The Loosh has gone hipster.)

Track is over.  At our final meet, Lucien came in 7th place out of 8 kids in his first race.  I prepared myself to comfort him but he skipped up cheerfully, deposited his 7th place ribbon in my lap and said, "Well at least I beat that really slow kid!" I am thankful Lucien is buoyant and optimistic by nature.

We had to wait a long time for his second race, as is customary in track meet purgatory.  Lucien spent most of that time pawing through my bag (and his friend's mom's bag) for snacks.  We warned both boys that eating too much before a race was a bad idea.  They didn't believe us and continued to inhale Goldfish crackers as if they were the last Goldfish crackers on earth and people were coming to take them.

When the starter pistol fired, both our boys took off running but within a few seconds began clutching their sides with surprised looks on their faces.  They lurched down the track like tiny Quasimodos in sneakers.  I could hear Lucien muttering "Ow ow ow ow ow ow" as he passed at a slow gallop, arms wrapped around his stomach.

His coaches and I laughed so hard we cried.  It was delightful.  Lucien finished 8th out of 8; his similarly stuffed friend barely eked out victory over him in the "full stomach" division.

I tried not to say "I told you so" but failed.  Lucien said, "Mom, it had nothing to do with the eating, my sides just started hurting really bad and I think I need a doctor."  Then we all laughed at him again and he looked hurt and confused.  Character building!

We're currently taking bids for the exterior project we're hoping to complete this summer.   We've met with several contractors and their bids have started to come in.  It's difficult to compare the bids because each contractor has a different idea about what needs to be done and how best to do it. The issue is not just about the bottom line anymore but also who is most likely to know what the hell he's talking about.
 
First contractor:  "Hardi-plank siding is the only way to go."
Second contractor: "Blasphemy, nothing but the finest fir boards will suit such a house."
Third contractor:  "This house must be sided in unicorn teeth."
Fourth contractor: "We must bulldoze the whole thing to the ground and start over."

We're comparing apples to oranges over here.  How are we going to decide?  Are we going to rely on gut instinct?  Spin a wheel?  Throw a dart? (not at the contractors themselves -- though that would be another way to weed them out, by testing their reflexes.)

I have no idea.  I guess we'll just pick the guy in the middle -- not the guy who thinks he can mix the paint himself in his kitchen to save money nor the guy who thinks the paint must be made of quicksilver and diamond dust.  We'll choose the middle guy, the reasonable guy, then cross our fingers and march bravely forward.

I've been looking at catalogs again.   I think Restoration Hardware is becoming too pretentious for its own good.

For example, this clock.  I liked it quite a bit until I read it was non-functional. 
This giant clock doesn't work but still costs $1100.
That's dumb.
(Unless you're a big fan of 1:50)

A 1920s German Light Bulb Voltage Tester Bar?

What the hell does that mean?
Just relax, Restoration Hardware. 

I admit, this next item is useful if you really want to beat a message over your guests' heads --

When you're in my house, YOU WILL SEIZE THE MOTHERF*CKING DAY

Lucien had a really bad day at school recently.  The teacher wrote me a note and said it had been a hard one, that he'd been in trouble all day and seemed really out of sorts.  I sat him down for a heart-to-heart, asked him to put some words to his feelings to explain why it had gone off the rails.

He's quite articulate, my boy.  He started in on his list: he's frustrated because he's having a hard time with reading and feels stupid, one of his friends made fun of him and that made him angry, he's mad at me for being so hard on him lately,  it makes him feel sad and frustrated when I yell at him even though he's trying his best to be good, and he feels so frustrated with how wound up he feels he just wants to scream.

It was a lot of feelings for a little boy.  He let them all out while burying his face in my shoulder and crying.  He felt better afterwards, as do we all after a good vent session.

Then he said, "Mom, I just want to be a good man, like a man people study.  I want them to talk about me.  I want to be a man people only say good things about.  Like Obama*."

*Lucien doesn't realize people say bad things about Presidents because he doesn't have a Facebook account yet.

Anyway, hard times and easy times, good parenting days and bad parenting days, I really love this kid and hope I'm doing it right.

There's one thing I know for sure, my child:
Don't run on a full stomach,
MJ

I forgot to mention --

Hammacher Schlemmer thinks you need an ugly nap pod for $16,000.