Get your plums off my windowsill

Surprise, everyone, we're still renovating our house.  It was recently my job to carefully chisel off the century-plus buildup of dirt, caulk, paint, glue, whatever (I called it "lead-laden potpourri") that was caked on the frieze so it can be repainted (the frieze is the sculptural element that fits into the middle of the triangular pediment over the balcony over the front door.  I know you are fascinated.)

First I used a small chisel to chip-chip-chip at the frieze then I used a dremel tool to vroom-vroom-vroom.  It took forever but I love work like that -- the kind of work where you can get lost in your thoughts for hours.  After about thirty minutes I realized how weird my thoughts are and spent the rest of the time compiling mental lists of people I had to tell about them.

 

 Before -- an unacceptably gunky frieze  

After -- hot damn, girl, nice frieze!

 

a frieze-cleaning station

I worked alongside our normal team of guys for a couple days as I cleaned the frieze.  I kept wondering when we were going to start scratching our balls and talking about chicks.  It never happened, likely because I didn't know the secret pre-ball scratching password.

Which reminds me -- Contractor God has plums.  Really great plums.  Many friends have spoken fondly of Contractor God's plums; some have even boiled and crushed them into a fine jam.  I winced when I heard that, too.

Contractor God asks me all the time if I want to sample his plums.  He says he can "put them in a bag and bring them over tomorrow."  I can't tell if it's a sexy joke or not, so today I yelled, "Keep yer damn plums away from me!"  He seemed confused so I explained I just really didn't know what to do with his plums.  When Contractor God then said, "you just put them on your windowsill until they're nice and ripe,"  I said, "Don't put your plums on my windowsill, you sick freak, what the hell is wrong with you?"

He walked away.  I may have missed out on some great plums but that's the price you pay for being hysterical and confused.

For those of you still around from ye ole Paris blog, we had a visit from one of the featured players of that blog over the weekend.  Remember our English friend, Newcastle Guy?  Newcastle Guy was in Tacoma on business last week and came up to see us over the weekend.  I found him wandering around outside the front of our house trying to figure out how to get in.  Thanks to the construction covering the entire front, we really don't make it easy.

I welcomed Newcastle Guy back into our lives with great emotion and great joy.  It was strange to see such a Paris-themed friend sitting at our dining table in Seattle, but there he was anyway.  He still looks like Jake Gyllenhaal.

I departed from our previous fancypants Paris ways and handed him a PBR (and in a can to boot!)  He looked at it suspiciously, sipped it, then made many horrible sour faces.  I told him it was a hipster beer -- because it's ironically awful! -- and therefore acceptable to drink in Seattle.  He then asked me repeatedly to define "hipster" but I really couldn't.  I know irony is key.  I think I may have gotten frustrated and sputtered, "Hipster is a state of mind" a few times, which didn't help Newcastle Guy's understanding of these complex beings.

Newcastle Guy choked down a couple PBRs then asked if we could order a nice wine at dinner.  I think he was worried hipster wines existed, too.  (They probably do -- anyone know of any?  I'd like to serve them in a glass full of delicious irony.)

We went to Poppy on Capitol Hill.  I recommend it highly.

eggplant fries coming at your face

a delicious cocktail with some delicious fried ball things.  Not plums.

The food was incredible but the company so-so.  Newcastle Guy and Alex can be quite crusty and curmudgeonly individually and the problem gets exponentially worse when they're together.  I suggested they chat with a crack whore up on Aurora Ave. to put the relative awesomeness of their lives in perspective but I realized the point was lost when Newcastle Guy said, "She gets to make her own hours!"

We put Newcastle Guy in a taxi back to Tacoma.  He wasn't interested in trains and none of us were in any shape to drive, so into a yellow cab he went.  Tacoma is about 45 minutes away so the trip wasn't cheap.  Between the PBR in a can and the hundreds of dollars spent in a handful of hours, Newcastle Guy may be happy he's not in our lives very often anymore.

My in-laws arrive this weekend.  Soon thereafter, Al and I are going to Hawaii.  The two of us.  No kids.  We are looking forward to it the way a hipster looks forward to a concert by that band you've never heard of.

As always, I am eternally grateful to my in-laws for taking care of our children so we can get away.  I'm also hopeful they're not offended we yell "SEE YA!" and run out the door pretty much every time they arrive for a visit.

Here are a few awkwardly placed and random photos to leave this post on a scattered note:

Coco got some red boots, never wants to take them off, has slept in them twice

we are about to pour concrete into these forms Contractor God built when he wasn't badgering people about his plums

here's Contractor God doing..... something

corbels and balusters

 Al telling Loosh how many hands he has to use to throw the ball back into play

we put our hands in cement at Banister Abbey.  One of the hands is Contractor God's which is appropriate since without him our house would have fallen down already

I went out with some people and saw this guy at the bar.  Attempted hipsterdom?  Drunk golfer?  Lost gendarme?

I'm now officially sick of writing about plums and hipsters.  Time to go to bed.
MJ

Searching for Tyson

My children are back in school.  I did it, survived them, and am now going to hibernate until next summer.  If anybody clings to my leg and yells "Mommy" before then, I will be an MJ blur fading into the middle distance.

First grade never looked so good

Lucien is playing soccer this Fall.  I'm looking forward to burning some of the kid's energy.  It's likely a futile effort because he has the energy of a thousand heavily caffeinated men, but I've got to try.

The problem is Lucien's coach, whose name is Tyson, is as disorganized as Lucien is hyper.  I received an email from him last Monday afternoon stating our first practice would be Tuesday afternoon.  He also said Lucien needed something called "shinguards" within those next 24 hours.

I'm not an athletic person so I asked Dan the Man, who was here working on the house at the time, where I could buy these "shinguards."  His reply was "anywhere."  I first tried Anthropologie.  No shinguards there but I got a great dress.

Ten more stores and a fantastic new wardrobe later, I eventually stumbled into Target and bought shinguards.  I even threw in a new water bottle and a glow-in-the-dark soccer ball. We were ready for our first practice.

Any soccer person out there can tell you what's wrong with this next picture --

I'm a newbie.  Forgive me.  But it still makes more sense to me to have the padding of the sock UNDER the velcro of the shinguard.  Why are all you people doing it the harder, presumably less comfortable, way?  I say let those Stormtropper shinguards shine in the sun.

I realized my shinguard folly when we arrived for practice and found five thousand kids running around the fields searching for their new soccer teams.  I noted smugly that no other kids had shinguards.  I was better prepared!  I'm Mother of the Year!  But then I realized the other kids' socks were extremely bulky and angular.

I looked down at my son, realized my mistake and how ridiculous he looked, and ordered him to sit down in the middle of the soccer melee.  I began frantically pulling off his shoes, shinguards, and socks.  Lucien laid on the ground and stared up at me pathetically, "Why are you doing this to me, Mommy?"  he asked.  "Sshhh"  I hissed at him.  "Be subtle about it, boy!"

After Lucien was correctly re-assembled, we stood up.  We were alone.  All other kids had found their teams, were already voting on team names and donning their uniform t-shirts.

I walked up to a few groups and asked the men with the clipboards, "Are you Tyson?  I'm looking for Tyson."  Nobody was Tyson.  So then I did what any parent still flustered by shinguards would do -- cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled, "TYSON!"  Nobody was Tyson.  Or if they were, they didn't want to meet me.

Half an hour later, and with desperation setting in, we found Tyson, red-faced, trying to get out of his car with two kids and ten million soccer balls.  Tyson was breathless and flustered.  He kept calling Lucien "Lucent" and in the middle of the chaos, I chose not to correct him, just told Lucien that was his new special soccer name.

While Lucien warmed up with his team I took Coco to a nearby playground where she kicked off her shoes and ran far away from me.  I chased her, grabbed her by the leg as she tried to climb up the slide, and told her we had to return to see if Tyson needed any help.  I suspected he did.

We returned to where Coco kicked off her shoes only to discover they were gone, along with our brand new glow-in-the-dark soccer ball.  It was about that time I started thinking someone was f*cking with me.  It was also about that time I realized Tyson was yelling.  I ran to Tyson with a shoeless Coco under my arm and found him wrestling his own son to the ground, who apparently had pitched some kind of fit and was hitting everybody.

I love soccer!

Tyson's son, Matthew, then ran off, yelling over his shoulder he was going to the bathroom.  I asked Tyson if he wanted me to follow Matthew to the bathroom.   He said "sure."  I ran after Matthew into the community center, where I found Coco's shoes lying in the middle of the floor.  I don't know.

I poked my head into the men's bathroom and called for Matthew.  There was no response.  I walked in and looked in all the stalls.  No Matthew.  I didn't know how, but I'd managed to find Coco's shoes and lose the coach's son all in the span of thirty seconds.

I asked everyone in the community center if they'd seen a little boy walking around by himself, possibly crying really hard.  Nobody had.  Then I was back yelling in the middle of the soccer fields, but I was yelling "MATTHEW!" this time.  I knew I was about to develop a reputation as the woman who yells random mens' names in the middle of soccer fields, but only if my reputation as the mom who puts shinguards on incorrectly wasn't already firmly established.

I don't know how everyone survived that soccer practice, but we did.  Matthew turned up later, completely unscathed and eating a candy bar.  Our glow-in-the-dark soccer ball also reappeared.  I don't know where it was because soccer balls can't talk, hard as I tried to shake the information out of it.  

We had our first game over the weekend.  In the chaos of our first practice, we never picked a team name.  Alex began cheering for "Les Bleus," and it's likely that will stick. 

"Allez, allez, Les Bleus!" 

Lucien is a natural born goalie.  He blocked a hard shot, everyone cheered for him, and the proud, almost embarrassed, grin on his face made the whole thing worth it.  We're in this for the long haul, Tyson, so God help us all.

We had a Labor Day party.  I forgot to take pictures.  The party involved water balloons, a lot of alcohol, some broken furniture and a friend passed out in the guest room.  It was a very good party.

An overturned chair in the middle of the lawn the next morning says, "Fun happened here."

I hope to blog more often now that the kids are in school.  Prepare yourselves for a ton of indecipherable pictures of construction. Please don't leave me.

I'm off to "find shinguards" at Nordstrom Rack,

MJ

 

Wild Kingdom

Welcome to this fantastic episode of Wild Banister Abbey Kingdom.  (It's an obscure show, don't worry if you've never heard of it.)

Banister Abbey has mice.  This fact first became evident a few weeks ago when Al and I were watching the Olympics in our TV room.  A mouse suddenly ran in front of us like the ballsy little jerk he is.  Al and I yelled in unison, "Oh great, we gotta deal with you now, too, asshole mouse?" and punched some walls in fury.  In our defense, it had been a long week of Banister Abbey renovations.

I purchased a humane mouse trap, the type that captures the mouse but doesn't kill it so you can re-release it into your enemy's backyard.  I have many enemies so this is a nice feature.

We've captured a few mice with the trap and re-released them into the same area so they can hopefully find each other again.  Picture the mouse family reunion!  The joy!  That is, if they weren't eaten by much larger animals within thirty seconds of freedom.  If that indeed happened, I hope it didn't happen as they were running towards each other -- "My beloved mouse brother, where you been??  GAH!  PUMA!"

After the mice, we ran into this bastard.  Also in our TV room --

I saw it on the carpet, backed out of the room slowly, and asked Alex if he'd by chance purchased a large scary spider toy for the kids recently.  He said no, so we crept back into the room armed with a plastic storage container and the birthday card my mother sent Al.  It was an effective spider-capturing duo.

We attempted to identify the spider to see if it was dangerous -- even though huge and scary, I didn't want to kill it if it wasn't necessary -- but in the middle of the identification process, Alex freaked the f*ck out and squashed it.  He felt better afterwards.

We found another one in the TV room later that week.  I captured it again and kept Alex and his itchy spider-killing fingers far away from it.  Our workmen came the next morning.  One of them, Dan the Man, sat down with a spider identification chart and gave us the verdict: it was a Hobo Spider, one of the few venomous spiders we have in the Pacific Northwest.

We will likely never go in the TV room again.  A shame, really.  Good light in there.

Lucien attended a sports day camp recently.  One day, he opened his lunch box and discovered a maggot inside.  Turns out the strawberries I threw into his lunch weren't so fresh.  He showed the strawberries and the maggot to every counselor at camp.  When I came to pick him up, they most definitely did NOT hoist me up onto their shoulders and chant, "Mother of the Year! Mother of the Year!" for many hours.  Thank God the day camp is over and I never have to see those people again.

The workmen have recently ripped apart the front of our house.  This has happened not a moment too soon because it's revealed our impressive front entry is built on a house of cards -- or, more accurately, loose piles of rotten wood.  It's a Labor Day miracle our entryway is still standing.

While tearing apart the front porch and balcony, the workmen discovered many wild things up in the ceiling, all of them dead, all of which they saved for Lucien to examine.  This is our best specimen so far --

I'm a dead bird.

In keeping with the Wild Kingdom theme, here's Lucien wearing a purple snakeskin jacket he found at Seattle Mom and Dad's house.  We all decided it was appropriate for Lucien to be wearing such a thing but I'm not sure what any of us meant by that --

Here's Coco, who has taken to standing on coffee can "stages" and singing into marker "microphones."  She's also got some signature moves, one of which, thanks to her big brother, is smacking her own butt and howling like a wolf.  Just really fantastic stuff happening there.

This is what Contractor God found when he removed some stucco and wire mesh block things that were messing up the look of the front of my house --

The thing tethered to the house with an orange strap is an 18-foot high fiberglass column that weighs approximately 600 pounds.  It was perched upon some random pieces of wood under the mesh block thing, most of which were rotten, all of which moved when I pushed on them.

You're lucky we got you, Banister Abbey.  Without us, you would have fallen to the ground in the very near future.  All you passersby are lucky we got the house, too, because when the columns went down, they would have taken a few of you with them.

Have a good Labor Day weekend, friends.  We're having a party.  Here's hoping it's fun.  We will dare the children to play a game of "chicken" in which they will take turns running up to the dangling columns and pushing on them. 

May the fastest kid win!
MJ

Silhouette Warriors?

Here's an ode to summer crowds.  I've been involved in a few lately.  I like crowds because of all the rubbing up against people you don't know.

First there was the KEXP Concert at the Mural, which involved emo indie bands playing the Mural Stage under the Space Needle.  Also, hipsters wearing fedoras.

Then there were the Blue Angels at the beach.  Now that the weather's finally gotten blasted hot around here, our beaches are full of pale human beings blinking at the sun.  I love the smell of Coppertone on a hot day even though I don't apply it often enough and get sunburned.

Crowded beach, sand in our sandwiches, lost toy shovel.  Worth it to see aerial magicians.

An ode to the Artist Formerly Known as Prince? 

Lucien has logged onto the math program used by his school a few times this summer.  I noticed recently the icon he uses for his login.  While others in his class have chosen more "traditional" representations of themselves, Lucien has gone a different direction --

Lucien's the one in the middle

I'm not one to stress about traditional gender roles and whatnot -- hell, I act like a horny old man most of the time and a small baby of unspecified gender the rest of the time -- so it didn't bother me Lucien chose a girl icon.  It did interest me, however, that it didn't bother Lucien, and that apparently no one gave him any grief for it.

(Which made me wonder -- at what age do kids get all, "You throw like a girl!?"  Perhaps we're still too young for that nonsense.  If I hear Lucien or any other child say something along those lines, I'm going to say, "That's a dumb thing to say because I'm a girl and look what I can do," and then *whooooooooosh* I'm going to throw a ball around planet Earth.) 

Back to my point.  I asked Lucien, "Why did you choose this girl as your icon?"  I steeled myself for his response -- if the boy told me that he, in fact, identified as a girl, I was going to wrap him in a huge hug and yell, "I LOVE YOU, MY DAUGHTER!" because I'm supportive like that.  Instead, Lucien looked at me like I was one dim bulb and said, "Mom, she has PURPLE HAIR"  and walked away in slight disgust, totally bummed his mom couldn't recognize awesomeness when she saw it.

If you think this is a photo of Lucien pointing and yelling, "BUTT!" you are correct.

Another crowd-infused night involved the block party over on The Street of Dreams.  Even though we didn't get The Goddamn House and don't live there, The Street of Dreams still treats us as one of their own and invites us to all "family" functions.

The block party was a kid-friendly affair but I attended without my kids.  I was coming off ten days solo during Alex's most recent trip to Japan and China and I really, really, really, really, really, really needed a break.  I wanted to drink from the neighborhood keg without worrying how gravely injured my children were in the bouncy house.

I rode Lucien's scooter to the block party because I was running late.  I saw the scooter leaning against the wall and thought "Perfect!  Marginally faster than walking!"  The babysitter asked, "Are you really going to ride a scooter to your party?" and I said "Yes" and scooted off down the street.  I could hear her laughter all the way to the corner.

It was a treacherous journey because scootering on hills is hard.  I fell down a few times so walked the scooter for a bit.  The terrain flattened again at the Street of Dreams so I hopped back on, just in time for Contractor God to walk out of his house, see me and say, "My God, you're a delinquent."

Feel the love on The Street of Dreams!

The Block Party was an evening of debauchery, as family-oriented block parties tend to be.   It went very late, and while I myself did not get drunk, I saw many of my comrades fall to the drinking sickness worse than they've ever fallen before.

It seemed a great idea to invite the Seattle Police Department to come meet the kids and hand out SPD stickers, but less so when our friend's inebriated wife put the stickers on her boobies and proceeded to talk to the officers three inches from their faces.  There was much hissing back and forth between the rest of us, "Oh my God, somebody make her stop."

As I took this picture of SPD Boobs, Seattle Mom yelled "It's OK, she cuts off faces!" and pointed at me.  Seattle Mom had only wanted to let SPD Boobs know she would be anonymous on my blog but SPD Boobs knew nothing of my blog so the comment confused and frightened her.  Without context, that quote is quite jarring.  SPD Boobs didn't spend much time with me after that.

Seattle Mom and I went to another Concert at the Mural last night.  The bands playing were old Seattle grunge bands so the crowd was decidedly older and grungier than last time we went.  In fact, Seattle Mom and I, in our sundresses and semi-made-up faces, were the only ones who seemed to put any effort into appearances whatsoever.  We stood out so much, I told her, "My God, we look like prostitutes."  Many prostitution jokes followed because everyone knows prostitution is hilarious.

This is the tent at the beer garden.  It says, "The tint is pitched and yes, we're happy to see you."  They must have been talking to us because we're the only women who looked like women there.

This was a guy changing his shirt in front of us.  I never saw him from the front.  Can someone tell me what that strap is?  I got nothing --

We stopped by German Seattle Mom and Dad's place on The Street of Dreams after the concert because the party never stops at their house.  We had a contest while sitting on their front steps; it was called "what would you name your band?"  Supermodel Neighbor had a contender with "Silhouette Panties" but German Seattle Dad brought home the win with "Buttermilk Warriors."

My mom and dad came to visit last week.  They didn't stay long, just a quick trip "to see the grandkids and the house."  Umm... hello?  I expected to be replaced in their hearts by my kids, but not my house.  It stings a little.

my people

My Dad and I went to get some barbecue at a C.D. barbecue joint where a man named Pookie makes the best pulled pork and brisket.  Pookie chatted with us a little bit then said to me, "I don't always tell people they're blessed because it's not always true, but YOU.... you are truly blessed."

He said this because he couldn't think of anyone in his life who could say they still had both parents, both in good health, both pretty damn great and still married coming up on 50 years.

Aside from their good health and good marriage, it's true, I'm blessed to have my parents.  I hit the parent jackpot even though they sometimes do questionable things such as fight with my son over a ridiculous monkey game that involves something called "a banana pile" (My Dad insists he won his banana pile fair and square but others aren't so sure).

So tell me, posse, what's YOUR band name?
MJ

The best stripper in the world

With a house under renovation, another house needing to be shown and rented, two kids on summer vacation and a husband once again off in -- hey, where the hell is Al again? (Japan and China this time) -- the blog is getting neglected.

It may leave me.  I'm convinced one day I'll log on and it will be gone, leaving only a sad "Dear MJ" letter behind.  It will tell me it needs to find a writer who isn't so caught up in their "life" and I'll understand.  But if it tells me we'll always have Paris, I'm going to roll my eyes because hello, cliché. 

The renovation work continues on Banister Abbey.  Much of the impressive front facade has, until recently, been covered in disgusting aluminum.  Contractor God got up on a very high, very wobbly ladder with a couple broken rungs (Contractor God lives dangerously) and started pulling the stuff off.  We couldn't believe what was underneath: dentils and corbels and a whole bunch of other words I only just recently learned.

It's like the house comes up with a new way every day to tell us it loves us.

Contractor "Danger" God did a lead paint test on all that peeling paint up there and, of course, it's full of the good stuff.  By "good stuff" I mean "the stuff that can kill my kids if they ingest it," so I guess it's really not good at all.  I excel at misnomers.

The front of the house now has to be tented and the lead paint removed in a specific way, likely with a monocle and a pair of tweezers, before we can continue with the restoration.  I will take pictures of the house burka once it has been donned.

In the meantime, I've moved indoors and have started making rooms look like this --

It's not finished but I think you can see the direction...

...I'm taking this sh*t straight to Crazytown.

Supermodel Neighbor is a carpenter (another misnomer thanks to me -- he's more carpenter than model these days) and came over to remove all the original woodwork from the windows.  The woodwork is now being stripped of its decades of darkened shellac by another man we call "the best stripper in the world." I'm talking the "wood" kind of stripper, not the "sexy sad" kind, although I wouldn't mind seeing him in a g-string.

Stripped wood by the talented but not sexy stripper.  

This is some of our woodwork with sample stains.  Can you understand now why I don't have time to blog?  I have to stare at the stripper's wood!

This is the bathroom we recently gutted.  This is what it looked like two weeks ago --

Here it is now.  It's not finished but given the hellhole of chaos and despair it was just a couple weeks ago, I'd say we've made good progress --

The harlequin travertine floor gives even our most sure-footed of friends a serious case of vertigo.  They have to sit down immediately.  Luckily, the toilet is nearby and that's what they went in there to do anyway.

Seattle Mom and Dad invited us over for dinner Wednesday night.  Lucien wore his shoes without socks on the walk over.  By the time we arrived, he had blisters on both feet. The two Seattle daughters ran up to their rooms to each get Lucien a pair of socks.  They argued over whose socks he would wear.  Lucien, the greatest peacemaker in the world (HA!) solved the problem, and looked pretty snazzy to boot --

Later that evening, Seattle Mom saw Lucien grabbing himself and asked, "Lucien, do you have to go to the bathroom?"  Lucien shrugged and said, "Nope, I just like touching myself."

Aaaahhh, the honesty of youth.

I burned a layer of skin off the roof of my mouth on a very hot breakfast sandwich.  It hurt a lot and, even worse, made drinking coffee very difficult.  Both Contractor "Danger" God and Seattle Mom wandered into my house later to find me sipping coffee slowly and deliberately through a straw.

I explained to them my coffee delivery system -- I had to funnel the coffee directly into the side of my mouth to avoid the roof of my mouth.  It was the only way I could continue to consume my caffeinated beverage without excruciating pain.  Seattle Mom listened then said, "Whatever, you look ridiculous."

Aaaahhh, the honesty of friends.

Strip away, stripper,
MJ

The somethin' somethin' somethin' must change

Welcome to The Exciting World of Grout Color.  This episode is entitled, "Sh*t, I just wasted hours of my life debating between "bone" and "linen." 

It's hard to articulate what days are currently like over here.  There are people.  Everywhere.  Two days ago there were eighteen men climbing all over the house.  That sounds hot and sexy but in reality it was confusing, loud, and dusty.

Our fence started going up that day plus we ripped out a bathroom plus we got new gutters.  There were swarms of men crossing the yard, many with ladders.  Sometimes the guys would get confused in the middle of the man soup, forget what job they were doing, and wander off to do another job.  That's how we discovered gutter guys suck at fences.

On top of all that, I hired piano movers to move the piano from our old house.  When the piano movers arrived at Banister Abbey with the piano, there was nowhere to park within a two-block radius on account of all the trucks belonging to men at our house.

The piano movers said, "Errr.. we have a piano?  Move a truck, dammit?  Please?"  Someone did, of course, because we do not employ assholes.

Here's a side effect of having workmen all over your yard -- spending time in a tire repair shop thanks to that nail dropped on your driveway.

Yesterday I was standing ankle-deep in plaster dust and discussing some issues with three workmen when a bright-eyed young man with a passion for liberal politics came up the path and stood on my front porch.  He was raising money for his organization to change the something something something something because we can't be havin' that anymore! 

I knew out of the corner of my ear I agreed with his cause but I was distracted because of the electric saw sounds and the men talking to me and the two children tugging on my skirt, one of whom was also sitting on my foot and yelling "HORSIE."  The only thing holding up my skirt was a weak piece of elastic and the children were testing it mightily.  I hung onto my clothing in the desperate hope I would not be de-skirted in front of the three workmen and the young man with a passion for liberal politics.

(Actually, the workmen and I have been through so much together by now, including sharing the only working toilet in the house, all day, for weeks now, it probably wouldn't phase them too much.)

The political man attempted to give me his schpeel but I kept interrupting him to yell at someone, usually a child but the workmen get uppity from time to time, too.  The young man gave up trying to talk to me and stood silently, waiting for me to make the next move.

I apologized for being inattentive to his pressing political matter.  He nodded, then said the only non-political thing he could think of;  he said, "I think she has a poo-poo" and pointed at Coco.  I turned to look; Coco was inexplicably no longer wearing any clothes, just a diaper.  Hey, when the hell did that happen?

Her diaper was droopy so I can understand the young man's confusion but there's no way it was a poo-poo because we all would have known it without doubt, believe me.  So I said, "No, it's actually not a poo-poo, her diaper's just full of pee and needs to be changed." It occurred to me this was a strange thing to say to a stranger on my front porch but that's just where we were led in the moment. 

Coco, upon overhearing my explanation, did what any dutiful daughter who needs her diaper changed would do -- she ripped it off, threw it on the floor, and ran past the political man out into the front yard.  I chased her naked self outside for a full five minutes while she ducked and weaved and screamed, "MOMMY CATCH ME!"

I tackled and dragged her indoors.  On my way past, I told the nice young man I would like to hear what he had to say but now was not the best time and could he come back later?  He agreed to return in a couple hours when things were sure to be more calm.  Except they weren't.  A couple hours later when he was once again on the front porch, both children were naked and attempting to sled down the front stairs.  I'm not even kidding.

I just made a donation to his cause and let him escape.  We were both relieved it was over.

I'm stuck in a very unhappy blog place.  There are insane things happening daily but I lack the time, the peace, and the energy to write them all down.  I hate this, hate it a lot.  Here are a few pictures and I'll have to call it good.

Seattle Mom and I went to the Capitol Hill Block Party over the weekend where we saw The Lumineers, Phantogram, and Neko Case.  During the Lumineers performance, a large white man with dreadlocks who reeked of The Happy Weed pushed through the crowd and stood two inches in front of Seattle Mom's face.  When she tried to move over, she was accidentally smacked in the face by White Dred's girlfriend who didn't know how to keep her hands to herself when she danced.

When the crowd is that packed in -- JUST DON'T DANCE, PEOPLE.  Stand with your arms crossed and bounce up and down a little like all us normal people.

 

That's Seattle Mom's face staring at White Dred's back.  Seconds before she'd been staring at the gorgeousness of The Lumineers.  Life is unkind.

Two of my friends broke into the house for sale next door (oh come on, the back window was standing wide open) with one of my emotionally unstable neighbors.  It's a long story.  This was the creepy loot they returned with --

There's also a giant vagina leading into my parlor --

Every time a workman leaves the parlor I throw confetti and yell, "WELCOME TO THE WORLD!"  They may be getting sick of it, hard to say.

On the neighbor front, Angel and Dorita stopped by yesterday.  We chatted out front in the heat until Dorita looked down at her bag of groceries and said, "Oh sh*t, girl, my lettuce is wilting" and took off at a full run down the street.  I hope her lettuce is okay.

Widower Peter is thrilled Contractor God is a fellow Englishman so lies in wait for him.  Contractor God has therefore started slinking around the house behind the bushes to avoid being seen.  When Widower Peter catches him, he chats to him for hours while I stand at the window and mouth, "I'M NOT PAYING YOU FOR THIS."

I met an incredibly normal family who lives two doors down.  They have small kids.  They brought us dessert and a "Welcome to the Neighborhood" card.  They smile all the time.  There is definitely something wrong with them, and I'll let you know as soon as I find out what it is.

I chose "Bone!"
MJ