letters to jakob and wavy

'fession

2012-01-07T13:14:00.001-08:00

Time to 'fess up:

2 pieces of pizza
+
a bunch of your kids' odds and ends of pizza scraps
____________________
does NOT = 2 pieces of pizza

A blessing and a curse

2012-01-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

Hey Wavy,

I've been home from work now for just over a week, recouping from my ass surgery. You've been home, too, cuz you're "between schools," as they say. You just started back to preschool on Tuesday, after three months off; it's only two days a week, but other than that, you're time is your own, as they say.

I think I may have had visions of my post-op period as a completely bed-bound invalid, my butt swaddled in gauze, you and Jakob held meticulously at bay by your daddy. But it is hard for an ass patient to garner much sympathy from a heart patient, and I think daddy saw this as a little vacation, a chance to take a kidlet break while I entertained you with my mere presence.

In other words, you and I have been steadfastly in each others' orbit, 24-7, for the past week. Jakob has had a break from me, as he has returned to school following his Christmas break, but you, dear heart, were stuck with me for the duration.

Today was the first entirely Percocet-free day, and we got out of the house for a bit and ran some errands. We dropped off four bags of books and a box of old toys at the thrift store, took about a million plastic grocery bags to the recyclers, took some more clothes to the clothes mailbox, and had lunch at Johnny Rockets. The last time I had lunch there with the two of you a couple months ago, I was in so much pain that I was nearly in tears the entire time. So this was a refreshing change. We even had a chance to stop at this sad little park for a few:

This depressing scene somehow reminds me of Steve Buscemi in "Con Air."

But the housebound days beforehand were pretty much just you and me, laying in bed watching tv, taking baths, doing crafts, laying in bed some more, mucking about on the laptop, reading books, eating snacks, doing each others' hair, doing our nails, cleaning out my desk and dresser drawers and laying in bed again.

I think it was the best Christmas present I could've gotten. Yes, I bled out a few times, I was high on narcotics for the most part and I think we both sniped at each other at least a couple of times, and even caught each others' colds for a couple days, but spending these days with you has maybe been the highlight of the past year, and I will be unspeakably sad to return to work next week.

You are smart and sassy and your razor-sharp wit has kept me in stitches (literally? figuratively?). You have this disconcerting way of stopping in the middle of a long, loud laugh to tell me that you love me. When you fall asleep in bed with me, your little hand blindly reaches out and pats me on the face. When I snag your hair when I'm braiding it, I say "sorry" and you always say, "that's okay." Same thing when I poke you in the eye with my fingernail, which happens more than you think it would.

Jakob is spending the night over at a friend's house tonight, so you and I made popcorn and watched one of the DVD's that you got for Christmas. Of course, you fell asleep before it was over, but I stuck it out and watched the whole thing. "Princess and the Frog." Meh. It was okay. I was never one for Disney princesses, but you seem to like them, probably because your Cali grandma force feeds them to you. But that's okay. Yesterday you asked if we could watch the last episode of Lost again. We only watched a little bit of it, but you told me what was going to happen before it happened. Weirdo. My little lovable weirdo, I love you so.

Good night and sleep tight, princess.

cleaning up 2

2012-01-06T02:27:00.000-08:00

Realized halfway through yesterday that I'm in manic mode. That my post-op week at home has coincided with a manic episode, and the result is -- since my last post a mere eight hours ago -- four more bags of books culled from the bookshelves to go to the thrift store; all the door jambs in the house wiped down with a magic eraser sponge, all my handbags arranged into two of these:

Plus, I gathered up all of the plastic shopping bags under the sink and they're in the car, awaiting tomorrow's trip to the bag station at the store. And two loads of laundry.

I know I should thin out my scarf collection, but at least now they're organized and in one place, instead of strewn all over the place and in at least four different drawers:

Okay. 2:26 a.m. and I'm crashing and burning. Off to bed so we can get up in few hours and get started again.

cleaning up 1

2012-01-05T17:04:00.000-08:00

It's been underway for a few days. Cleaning out my closet, my desk, my shelves in my office area. Today I took two grocery bags of pristine books to donate to the library. Still have a big bag of less-than-pristine books to take to the thrift store.

Kind of working in quadrants, with my area being the first. I'm slowly recovering from a surgery, so shambling about in this small corner of the house is just my speed for now.

Little things this afternoon, like taking a big pile of recipes that I've cut out from magazines, looking them up online and putting them into Springpad; clearing all the kids' crayons out of my desk and putting them in their own tupperware.

All just drops in the bucket, but I'm slowly making a difference.

Oh yeah, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and Happy Birthday and all that, kids! Hugs. Love you. Now stay out of my way.

"Operation Fall Color" Day 2

2011-10-21T22:49:00.001-07:00

Left the hotel at a decent hour, for me, anyway. 10 am is reasonable, no? and I only got out that early cuz I was trying to get out before the maid knocked on the door.

On the way out, I insisted that the desk clerk call me Kelly, and I found out that his name is John. We are one convo away from a dinner date. I will suggest the Thai place down the road.

Yosemite is nice, but even this late in the seaon, it is clogged with tourists. I've stopped at a little picnic spot on the Valley floor to write you guys some postcards, and eat my sandwich. It's not the most picturesque locale in the park, but it'll do.

I stopped at the mega gift shoppe a bit ago to buy the postcards and some souvenirs for you. Had every intention of buying Jakob a personalized Swiss army knife, cuz I am sure that I had one at seven years old. But I put it back. One more year, perhaps. So... T-shirts it is. And a money clip. That will blow your little mind. A gadget that keeps all your tooth fairy money folded neatly and in one place.

I think I'm starting to relax. I just need about three more months of this. You would join me in a week or two, of course.

Anyway, I drove around some more and found that classic Yosemite that I remember:

So I sat there on a stump in the meadow and gazed at the face of El Capitan for a bit before hitting the road again.

On the way out of the park, I finally found it -- exactly what this little getaway was supposed to be about.

A secluded little piece of real estate where I can just sit and be. I sat and ... be'd ... for a good couple of hours, savoring the sunset, breathing deeply and then being some more.

100 or so miles of driving today (Yosemite is HUGE), plus gas and a $20 park entrance fee, but it was all worth it to find this little piece of nirvana.

"operation Fall Color" Day 4

2011-10-21T21:09:00.001-07:00

This is what I should've been doing since Day 1. Fuck Yosemite and Mono and all that. I am so incredibly blissed out right now I could swoon dead away.

But it came at a price...

So... Momma takes this medication that makes me have to pee a lot in the morning. I stop at a restroom at the side of the road here in June Lake. It's pretty secluded. Find out it's closed for the season, but time and pee wait for no one, so I run around to the back to do my business. There are no cars coming from that direction. That I can see. So as I finish up, a car zips around from out of nowhere, and in my haste to pull up my pants, I stumble on a log and fall down. Hard. So I'm laying on the ground with my ass hanging out of my pants, writhing in pain, as a family drives by, the mom on the passenger side taking a peek then turning her eyes resolutely away as they slowly drive by. I can't be too embarrassed, right? I'll never see these people again, right? Nope, we're now sharing a beach together, enjoying a photo break down the road, on June Lake. It's just a matter of time before they come over and ask for me to take their picture, then realize who I am, and back away slowly.

Here's the damage:

I'm mostly alone here in my pretty little spot, though. People stop every once in a while, take a photo of the lake, jump back in their cars and move on. But mostly it's me and the ducks, a couple of horny sand flies that keep buzzing by, and a trout that swims back in forth in front of me.

Even though I am on my way home to you, it will be hard to drag myself away from my perch here.

So what is it that makes it more enjoyable to sit here on the edge of a lake and stare at the mountains than to sit on a curb and stare at traffic? What in our DNA makes this universally preferable? Obviously, the quiet and the encompassing views make it possible to see and hear approaching predators. But beyond that, why do I feel compelled to sit here all day? Well, besides utter laziness.

One more stop before I head home for good: the ghost town of Bodie, to return something that Jakob stole a while ago, activating an ancient curse that has plagued us in the intervening years.

Well, time to get moving, I guess. Another place on my list of places that I want to bring you back to soon, before it gets too cold.

After turning off the main highway, it is a 12-mile drive out to the ghost town of Bodie, some of it paved, some of it not. Regardless, it is quite a trek, especially when you don't even want to stop and see the sights, just drop something off, then turn around and head back to the highway.

We all came here for a visit a couple years ago, and Jakob, unbeknownst to me, committed a big no-no. He brought a piece of Bodie home with him in his pocket. A little piece of wood. The Bodie Curse is such that anyone who pilfers a piece of the town will be heaped with bad luck. In a small timeframe following the violation, we indeed had a string of bad luck, culminating in your daddy's most recent heart attack and the quadruple bypass -- all less than two weeks after our trip to Bodie.

I'm hoping that the artifact's delayed return will finally restore our family's good fortune, at the very least leading to some kind of super lotto win.

The ranger at the entrance to the town said she would see that the item is safely returned to an appropriate spot. So instead of paying a $7 entrance fee, I just handed over the wood, snapped a pic to prove that it's no longer in my possession, flipped a bitch and headed for home.

I can't even begin to imagine where that little piece of wood will actually end up, all I know is that it's no longer in our house.

Okay, so I fibbed. ONE more stop before home. Dinner in the little town of Bridgeport, an hour and change from G'ville.

This is the exact moment where Operation Fall Color 2011 ends and Project BBQ Bacon Cheeseburger begins.

All-or-nothing vacay...

2011-10-18T23:46:00.001-07:00

Is there any other kind? I have two weeks off from work to:

1) unwind, rest, sleep in, nap, decompress, relax, center, re-energize

2) reconnect with my children

3) clean and de-clutter the house

4) bake everything on my wish list

5) do something "vacation-y"

I'm in the middle of doing something vacation-y now; I've booked three nights at a motel in Mammoth Lakes, about two hours south of G-ville on Hwy 395.

I'm calling it "Operation Fall Colors 2011." I spent the couple of hours driving down here gawking at the reds and golds and listening to John Prine songs, the ones that make me cry.

A few miles before Mammoth, I switched gears and started listening to Les Baxter, and my whole mood changed. Much less morose. I took off on a side road into the June Lake area and imagined myself as an early-'60s era Vegas showgirl on the run from the Mob, an unwitting witness to an execution of a low-level city official in an abandoned warehouse. Hard to imagine yourself as anything else BUT a mob moll with a heart of gold when you're listening to Les.

Is it possible to plan a whole vacation around a chair? Cuz that's pretty much what I've done. I have this canvas chair with a clip-on umbrella, and all I want to do is set this chair up in pretty places, away from people and their noises and their talky-talky bullshit, plop myself into it and read books or stare at the scenery.

Rolled into town kind of late today to do any seriously hardcore lounging, but did manage to sit at a picnic table at a scenic overlook for about an hour and soak up some sun.

Doesn't it look like a giant spider emerging from the ground?

Finally got into Mammoth at about 4, checked into the motel and immediately fell for the desk guy. Woof. Asian, maybe about my age, rugged looking, insists on calling me Ms. Davis. Very nice.

Ventured out into town and got some pizza, then came back to the room and am now vegging in front of the tv. Wild woman, me, no?

Looking to do a casual loop around Yosemite tomorrow, search for the perfect spot to set up my chair, maybe get a sammich. Nothing strenuous. Nothing stressful. Just ommmmmmmmmmmmmm...

That's why!

2011-10-15T22:38:00.001-07:00

You know why I love you kids? Because today we each picked out some new scented wax melts for the candle warmer, and you both acted like it was the second coming of Christ. You both discussed the merits or shortcomings of each scent all the way home in the car. Jakob, you were practically vibrating with anticipation over which one we were going to pick for tonight: vanilla shortbread, pumpkin pie or blueberry muffin. And Wavy was in awe that the whole operation wasn't going to burn the house down, and if I didn't pick blueberry muffin, you were simply going to perish and die. We then lit the warmer up, turned out the lights and told elaborate stories about all the animals we saw at the park today.

Either I have to get you guys out of the house more, or -- your finely tuned sense of wonder at every little thing has not yet been obliterated by the inevitable jaded ennui that will eventually devour your precious little souls.

Five Things

2011-09-30T01:49:00.001-07:00

1) I've got a cold. The girl who sits next to me at work has had a sinus infection for a few days now, and I'm hoping all I've caught from her is a cold. My sinus infections last for weeks and weeks.

2) Discussed the feasibility of my upcoming vacation with my super at work. Is it reality? Is it fantasy? Spent a good portion of the day thinking about what kind of laid-back kind of things I'd like to do if it indeed comes to pass. Driving around looking at fall colors figured prominently in my thoughts.

3) Started designing the front page of the Tahoe paper tonight but had to pass it on to someone else because I was crying too hard to see my computer screen clearly. The cover story tonight was about a young army man from South Shore who had been killed Monday while serving in Afghanistan. I didn't know this person, of course. It's just unspeakably sad. He was only 21 years old and it was his first deployment.

4) I made pasta for dinner tonight. I sautéed a bit of salmon and dumped it on top, and crumbled some feta over the whole thing. This is only notable because I hardly ever cook something for myself anymore. It's gvçomusually leftovers from your dinner with daddy and nana and papa or something I pick up on the way home.

5) Jakob, you were still awake in bed when I got home tonight. I laid down with you for awhile to shoot the shit, cuz that's what we do if I'm lucky enough to get home while you're still up. We started talking about where we'd like to travel when we win the lotto. You mentioned Spain, and I thought that was a very fine idea. You got kind of ticked off that I don't make enough money working in newspapers to be able to take you there right now. You asked me why I don't pick another career. Actually, what you said was, "Why don't you ..." and I said, "What? What? Why don't I WHAT?" and you said, "Oh never mind," and that's when I said, "oh screw you" (well, okay, not in so many words, but you got the gist) and i got up to let you go to sleep. Someday you will read this and be sorry that you hurt my feelings. And i will re-read this someday and be bummed that I got my feelings hurt by a 7-year-old and got mad. But I forgive you. Do you forgive me?

Love you both. Good night.

Sunday

2011-09-04T12:19:00.001-07:00

My grand plans this Sunday: cleaning certain parts of the house. Yes, I know I don't deserve a medal.

I'm starting with the kitchen and defrosting the freezer. I gathered up all the disparate and lonely little bags of leftover frozen vegetables a consolidated them into one large bag, with thoughts of making a soup or stew tonight with them. Then images of that lady from "Hoarders" that hoarded rotten pumpkins popped into my head, and I threw all the vegetables in the Insinkerator and bid them goodbye.

KIDS EAT FREE

2011-08-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

Ah, the siren call of this modern life: "Kids Eat Free." More and more establishments are adopting this to lure cash-strapped parents out of their pantries of spaghetti and hot dogs and into the land of meals served with an actual (or at least a facsimile of actual) smile and a thank-you.

I took both the kids to Qdoba yesterday. Both of them ate and drank for free while I got a pretty tasty salad. Afterwards, with the money we saved, we went to Target and bought a Jenga set, took it to the park and played with it until it was too dark to see. Money well saved and subsequently spent, IMO.

Four-year-old Wavy is much better at Jenga than you would think a four-year-old would be.

What did Momma do on Saturday?

2011-08-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Since I don't get to see too much of you during the week, Saturdays are usually jam-packed with us-time. Running errands, lunch, movies, shopping, time at the park, generally anything and everything that gets us out of the house.

Yesterday seemed particularly manic. The following kind of reads like Henry Hill's coke-fueled "Helicopters and Tomato Sauce scene" from GoodFellas, right before he gets hauled in by the DEA.

Woke up at 8:30 a.m. and made you guys breakfast, then went back to bed to read the news and check my email for about an hour. Wavy and I took a shower together at about 9:30, Jake at 10.

We loaded up the car with about 100 lbs of old clothes for Goodwill and maybe about a metric shit-ton of old electronics for the computer recycle center.

First stop then, was Computer Corps computer recycle center. This is right next to where I work, so after a year of driving past it every day, I finally stopped last week to drop off an old printer and test the waters. Basically to see if they really do accept everything, working or not. They do. So now it is my life's mission to empty out the garage of all the old electronics that your daddy hoards. One load down, many more to go.

Lunch at Charley's Grilled Subs. It's our fast, easy, cheap go-to on Saturdays. Next we each picked out a tiny treat next door at Schat's Bakery.

I got a macaron and you guys got honeycomb dipped in dark chocolate (which is something I've always wanted to learn how to make). Lah-de-dah.

Then it was off to Borders. The entire store is 50-70% off. Jake got a book about sharks, Wavy got "Dora Goes to the Doctor," and I got a spiral-bound book of appetizers.

On to what I call the "Goodwill dumpster," and what Wavy calls the "clothes mailbox." It's one of the boxes in the store parking lot where you deposit old clothes donations.

Next up: Payless Shoes for some school shoes. Ran into an old friend there that I haven't seen since she got married some 10 or so years ago. Disconcerting to see her with her 9-year-old son.

WalMart. Not to shop, thank god, but just to drop off a ginormous bag of plastic bags in the recycle bin.

Too damn hot for more errand-y types of stuff, so we stop at 7-Eleven and get slurpees and retire to a shady spot at the park to read our new books for a while.

Back to the house to get ready for BBQ at Nana and Papa's. I slice up and marinate some acorn squash, pack a basket with brats and buns and load up the truck with bikes and cupcakes.

Then off to Nana and Papa's. While daddy fires up the BBQ, we take a bike ride around the property, and spy on the huge strip mining operation next door.

Stuff ourselves on brats, salad, berries, squash, corn-on-the-cob and cupcakes, then take another bike ride. We sit outside until it finally starts to cool off, while Nana and Papa ramble on with their endless stories (Papa calls them "sea stories") that we've all heard a million times before. I teach Jakob how to find the North Star (Follow the two stars that form the outer edge of the Big Dipper, which points to the North Star. Easy peasy.)

Daddy and I leave you two to sleep at Nana's so you can go to church with her early in the morning. It's about 10 p.m. and I have grand plans for the rest of my evening. I want to update my baking blog and get started on my felt sushi.

But I get home and lay in front of the fan and feel like doing neither of those things, so I hop back in the car and go to Redbox and rent The Beaver, with Mel Gibson.

But before I watch it, I sit down at the computer and am compelled to create this piece of cheez, for reasons still unknown:

After the movie (and a piece of toast and butter around 12:30 a.m.) I finally go to bed around 1:30.

Is that a lot in a day? It feels like a lot. And we only got in one fight today, when we were at Borders. You guys were enchanted by all the 50%-off toys and pestered me nonstop that you'd rather have toys than books. I was having none of it. NO MORE TOYS!!! OR WIRE HANGERS!!! But we all got over that rather quickly, after I threatened you with leaving with NOTHING. But other than that, a pretty good day.

When does it end, this childlike dorkitude

2011-08-19T19:57:00.001-07:00

I'm 43 years old. Let me re-iterate by saying... I am 43 years old. Yesterday at work, I tore the top off of my whipped chocolate yoplait yogurt, then slowly and repeatedly squeezed on the sides so that the yogurt oozed in and out of the top of the container. I turned to my co-worker and said, "Look, my yogurt is turtleheading."

I mean, wtf was that. I remember when my mom was 43. Never, ever would it have crossed her mind to think -- much less say -- something so stupid. But me... will I still be making fart jokes when I'm in my 70s?

Also, I am wearing temporary tattoos on the backs of both my hands today. I offered to put one on Wavy before school this morning, but she said no thank you.

What's in Momma's purse?

2011-08-08T14:12:00.001-07:00

This is my purse of the month. It's a large, boxy number by Nine West that I bought on a whim because the price was right. I didn't think that I would like it as much as I do. I was *hoping* that I wouldn't like it as much as I do, because it's not that attractive. But it's deceptively huge and holds all my regular stuff, plus all my extra stuff (full-size camera and my iPad and a bottle of water or three) when I need it to.

1. Prescription sunglasses that are about three prescriptions behind my regular prescription sunglasses.

2. My super-duper Card Cubby wallet. See below.

3. Checkbook. I almost never write checks anymore, but whenever I found myself in a situation where I need to, I never seemed to have it on me. So I resigned myself to allotting precious purse space to the damned thing.

4. Pens: A gimme from Half Moon Bay Comfort Inn and one from Flying Fish Grill, also in Half Moon Bay. I thought maybe when I used them, I would be transported back to our recent vacation there. No. Also, the black Sharpie Johnny Hickman used to sign a photo I took of him 17 years ago.

5. A comb. I have four of this same comb strewn about my house, because no other comb will do. I would rather not comb my hair than use a comb that is not this particular species of Goody comb.

6. First aid and sundries #1. See below.

7. Change purse. It's a purple cow, you see.

8. I've discovered Aleve and now use it in copious amounts.

9. My "smart" phone. If you know me, you know how much I hate phones. But this one is fun to take photos with and upload to that social networking site. You know which one I'm talking about.

10. Lip Medex by Blistex. Not Carmex. Not Burts. Lip Medex, which of course is harder to find than than any other lip aid.

11. Tiny tape measure. I never knew how much I would use it until I actually had one in my purse. I measure things all the time now. All the shit I buy now FITS where it's supposed to, yo! No more buying 9" pans when I meant to buy 8" pans.

12. First aid and sundries #2. See below.

First aid and sundries #1:

1. Bite ointment. I take the kids lots of places where they get bitten. It is what it is.

2. Nail file.

3. Tweezers.

4. Eyeglass kit. Perilously low on those maddeningly tiny screws.

5. Burn ointment. I try not to take the kids lots of places where they get might get burnt, but you never know.

6. Souped-up bite ointment for those souped-up bites that occasionally happen.

7. A dollar store multi-tool that will be the surgical instrument used to hack my arm off ála Aron Ralston when I eventually find myself between that rock and that hard place.

8. Cough drops.

9. Two doses of Benadryl for Jakob, if and when he ingests one of those myriad things that he is allergic to.

First aid and sundries #2:

1. Big bandaids. The bigger the kids get, the biggers their scrapes.

2. More cough drops.

3. Three days worth of my prescription meds. Meaning I will make it through three days of the zombie apocalypse before throwing myself at a pack of zombies and begging them to put me out of my misery.

4. Wet wipes and Shout It Out wipes. Can never have enough of these. I have small children. 'Nuff said?

5. Small bandaids.

6. Backup lip aids. Cuz the zombie apocalypse is gonna dry us up beyond all belief.

7. Allergy eye drops.

8. Airborne tabs, mixed in with Tums.

9. Discount store Neosporin.

10. Ventolin, sweet Ventolin, for my asthmatic moments. Thankfully they are few and far between these days, but I still gotta carry it. The thought of it *not* being in my purse makes me all angsty and asthmatic.

The vaunted Card Cubby. A godsend to organizational freaks like me. Freaks who take it upon themselves to document the contents of their purses. But really, I don't know how many times I didn't use my discount cards because I couldn't find them in my old wallet. But nowadays I'm all about the fro-yo punch cards and at least 5 different frequent flyer sandwich cards. Don't judge me.

Phone purge, part 2

2011-03-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

I don't really like to tell people my dreams, because I know how tedious it can be sometimes to listen about *other* people's dreams. But I'll tell you about this one I had this morning. Because you are a captive, sleeping audience.

This dream just went on and on, and I kept waking up a bit and thinking, my gawd, it must be time to get up, then looking at the clock and seeing that it was still quite early, and going back to sleep and back into my dream.

So, I dreamed I was a personal assistant to the actor who used to portray Ed on Northern Exposure. I have recently started following this actor's current activity on Facebook (now isn't that a hoity-toity way of saying "cyberstalking," or what), so I suppose that's how my dream-self came up with this particular dream character.

He took me to his home, which was an enormous, dilapidated houseboat parked in the harbor of an exceedingly seedy part of town, where he left me by myself while he went elsewhere. I explored the houseboat, found secret rooms, untied a little boat and rode around the dirty harbor a bit. Found a clean, sparkling patch of water back near the houseboat, where some dolphins as big as small cars were frolicking with manta rays as the tide went out.

When my boss returned and told me I could go home, I got on a bike and started riding, eventually realizing that I had no home to go to. I couldn't turn back, so I kept riding and riding, eventually riding onto a rocky beach and almost into the ocean. I had no choice but to call my boss and tell him that I had nowhere to go. His wife answered the phone, I told her my plight, and it turned into an interview to become their children's nanny. She asked me "what I considered myself to be." I told her I thought of myself first as a graphic designer, and second of all, a mother. My answer disturbed me in my dream, and continued to disturb me for the rest of my waking day. I mean... where exactly *were* my children in this dream. That's the last I remember of my dream, so I don't know if I got the job or not. Or if I ever found my home and my children.

So glad I got that out of my system here, and didn't unload that rambling mess on a real live, awake person. Tedious and boring indeed!

So anyway, a few more phone photos.

Daddy about 45 minutes after his quadruple bypass.

Daddy getting up out of bed and walking around for the first time after his quadruple bypass.

Nana and Papa flew out to be with us while Daddy recouped. This is you fascinated by Papa taking care of the RV.

I must've taken a photo break, cuz this is a rather large leap in time to Jakob's birthday or thereabouts, at Chuck E. Cheese.

More Chuck E. Cheese.

How many children are maimed or dismembered on Chuck E. Cheese thrill rides every year?!!?

All right. Off to sleep. Perchance to dream again of Ed Chigliak. Love you. And yes, I am a mother first and foremost.

Phone purge

2011-03-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

I got a new phone last week. Had to de-activate my old phone, but there were more than 80 photos on it that I had to either toss or slowly and painstakingly send to my email for download. And, hoarder/sentimentalist that I am, of course I was going to keep them.

The old phone was almost three years old, and the photos were like a weird time capsule of random moments from the last three years that I thought worthy of a snapshot, for some reason or another. Here's a few, more or less in the order in which they were taken.

You look so young. It's you trying on your Lion King headwear for Halloween.

It's Neko Case at Hawkins Amphitheater in Reno. I can't believe this show was that long ago. Time flies.

It's you having lunch at Wendy's. This was the day that we drove to Truckee to stake out the Camper/Cracker venue and find our way around so that I wouldn't get lost when I went up there for reals on the day of the show.

This is some of the $150 worth of food that I bought for Camper and/or Cracker, laid out nice and symmetrically on a table.

You visiting my new office, before they took it away from me and sent me back to cube-land.

X at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. I went with Laurie. At the end of the show, I almost passed out and had to sit out on the sidewalk in front of the venue.

The waiting area at Carson-Tahoe hospital. Daddy had another heart attack and I had to bring you both with me to see him at the hospital, because I had no one to drop you off with.

Wavy sat outside with a nurse, but the doctor thought Jakob was old enough to come in and see his daddy for a bit.

On the way home from the hospital, we stopped at the grocery store. I think this was the very first time I had ever gone to a store with BOTH of you, by MYSELF. Up to that point, I had only ever gone to the store with you, one at a time, while one or the other of you stayed with dad. You were just slightly naughty, not the juggernaut of chaos that I thought you would be.

Maybe some more later. It's time for bed. Love you both.

Breaking news

2011-02-05T05:36:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

It's time for a Thursday 13 of breaking news items. But it's Saturday, and it's only 5:37 in the morning, so let's just do two, to start us out.

1) The Department of Homeland Security out of Alexandria, Virginia visited my site at 08:59:06 last night. WTF? Are all blogs routinely monitored for terrorist content, or have I been singled out as particularly subversive?

2) o.b. tampons: I thought it was just me standing in store aisles, glumly wondering where they all had gone. This week I dumped out all the contents of all my handbags and scraped together enough stray o.b.'s to get me through a couple of days, but they are gone-gone-gone from store shelves. An official statement from o.b. yesterday says they will be back on the shelves soon, but it's been a long couple of months without them. Meanwhile, people are making a killing on ebay.

Okay, back to sleep. This up-with-the-sun shit is for the birds. Love you.

Birthday: A Post-Mortem

2011-01-26T23:18:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

It's been forever since I last blogged, and guess what? I'm STILL sick with that damned sinus thing. Four days before Christmas was when all this started. Throat was infected, eyes were infected, sinuses were DEF-CON 4. I've gone through two courses of antibiotics and am just now (touch wood) on the mend. Still stuffed up, still coughing and wheezing a bit, still can't hear too good. But energy's up a bit, can sleep through the night without tossing up a lung.

I am paranoid that all the coughing has detached a retina. Seriously. All of a sudden I have a plethora of floaters in my right eye. Well... two or three. One appeared a couple of weeks ago, toward the bottom of my field of vision, and I thought it would drive me insane. Just when I thought I could possibly make peace with it, a second one appeared, three times as big and right in the middle of my vision. It's shaped like a seahorse, with a long stringy tail that curls up under it when I look to the left, and then the tail flows out behind it when I look to the right. So yeah, I can make it do tricks. Am I the only person in the history of the world to name my eye floaters? I've named this one Seabiscuit. Or Wilberforse. I can't decide yet. But don't worry about me yet, kids. I'm making an appointment later this week with my eye doctor. I need new glasses anyway, and our new vision plan has finally kicked in.

Enough about my ills. It was Jakob's birthday!

I mean, THIS is what I had kids for. You guys are finally old enough now for Momma's big payoff. The planning, the baking, the research, the spending, the spending. I LOVE THIS SHIT!

So Jakob had his first real birthday party.

Inspired/Ripped off by the following book cover:

I ran off a few of these at Kinko's and spray-mounted them onto blank cards. We reserved the party room at the bowling alley down the street, and I let you invite your four closest friends. I invited a couple of my friends, and then with me and daddy and Nana and Papa and your sister, plus your friends' parent/s, we quickly filled up our 16-person limit. After that, it would supposedly be an extra $10 per person.

The party room is pretty danged cool. There's four whole lanes that we got to ourselves, plus a disco ball and blacklights and crazy Top 40 music. The staff fed everyone a choice of corn dog or hot dog or chicken tenders with fries and soft drinks.

I made a cake, of course. It was my secret dream that the league bowlers that saw me bring the cake in from the street would inundate me with requests to make similar cakes for their league nights. I also went on to dream that I would charge them $250 each, and that I would quit my day job. But alas, I got a few friendly "hey, that's cool!"s from the leaguers and a "best birthday cake yet" from the bowling alley kitchen lady, but so far, no orders. Bah.

Upon review, it is a bit plain up top, but I will be honest with you. I simply ran out of steam. I was still pretty much sicker than a dog at that point, and a cake with cookies takes at least a week of after-work nights.

One night the previous week: make and refrigerate the cookie dough
Sunday: Bake the cookies
Monday: Make the fondant
Tuesday: Apply fondant and royal icing to cookies
Wednesday: Bake and freeze the cake
Thursday: I actually took this night off cuz I felt like utter crapola
Friday: Frost cake and cover with fondant and decorate, wrap up remaining cookies for favors

I had wanted to get all fancy with the top layer of cake, maybe with some fondant stripes in accent colors, something-anything, but what-ev. At this point I just wanted to send SOMETHING down the runway, even if my model was half-naked. Whoops. Sorry. Lapsing into Project Runway-ese. But for anyone keeping score, I used this devils food chocolate cake recipe, this fondant recipe and this chocolate frosting recipe. Oh dear GAWD, the frosting. So, sooo delicious.

Party favors: wanted to send kids home with something substantial, so I went to Borders and bought a bunch of fairly nice books from the cut-out bin on 50% OFF DAY. Then set them out and let each kid pick out which one they wanted to take home. I even accounted for the one uncouth mother whom I KNEW would bring the whole fam-damly, rather than just the one daughter who was invited. And I wasn't wrong... she brought all four of her kids. Which is fine... I'm not bitching. She's a nice lady. Plus, no bowling alley management ever showed up to do an official head count, so we got away with it.

And the bowling! Apparently, you and Wavy were the only two kids who had never bowled before. You loved it. Even Wavy, who I had figured would be all stand-offish and shy, really got into it, especially with the bumpers up and the special bowling ball ramp for kids and differently-abled adults:

I was worried and anxious that it would be hard to get kids organized enough to bowl, and then to stop bowling to eat and do presents and cake, and then to bowl again, and then to stop when we had to. But it all flowed pretty well with a bare minimum of poking and prodding and everyone seemed to have a great time, even me, after I unclenched my teeth and my butt cheeks and just let everything happen.

You enjoyed it so much that you are already hoping to go back this weekend to bowl some more. And then you mused for a bit, and asked me, "Isn't your birthday coming up in March, Mom? I'm thinking of a kind of birthday party that you might like..." Oh yeah? "A bowling party, Mom. Doesn't that sound like a good idea?" Yes, Jakob, it certainly does...

Daddy was in charge of the camera that day, so needless to say, ha ha, we didn't get a whole lot of quality photos of quality things. We did get a dozen shots of the back of your head while 20 people sang Happy Birthday to you, but zilch-o shots of 20 people singing Happy Birthday to you. And hardly any shots of you bowling. Go figger. I think the following is my favorite that daddy took:

Isn't that PRECIOUS?!?!?

So, final words about the whole process, this whole first birthday party thing. Even though I was at death's door the entire time that it took to throw this together, it was still thrilling and fun and just an overall hoot. I even had just enough steam left over the next day to make THESE for you and your classmates for your school birthday party:

Granted, it was 99¢ Duncan Hines cake out of a box, but it was that same sinful chocolate frosting that was on your birthday cake. And so pretty! Too pretty for you little animals.

Let's do this again! Throwing parties is fun! Why do we have to wait for a birthday to throw a party and unleash my inner Julie the Control Freak Cruise Director. Let's have a Welcome to Spring Party, and a Fourth of July party, and and and...

Good night.... Love love love you both.

And so 2010 becomes 2011, and I've officially been at this blogging thing for 7 years

2010-12-31T22:33:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

You came home to me today! You with your noises and smells and messes and metric shit tons of Christmas presents. My quiet little Zen sanctuary of the last week has returned to it's normal state of FUBAR and I guess that's okay with me. You actually seemed a bit glad to see me, Wavy especially. I just have the hardest time shaking the feeling that I could be lifted right out of your lives and you'd never even know that I was gone.

I realize now what I'm sick with. It's that damned sinus infection that I had trouble with back in February-ish. I can't get in to see my doctor 'til Tuesday, and I have absolutely no delusions that I will get any better before then. My toxic post-nasal drip is melting the back of my throat straight through to my spine. My eyes are bulging outward from the pressure and are going to blow at any second. The hacking cough has me swooning like Camille in her death throes.

So before I settle in with a glass of wine and ring in the new year with either "Eat Pray Love" or "The Other Guys," let's look back upon the non-event year that was 2010.

I mean seriously. Nothing of great import really happened. Besides my hellacious new job duties. But even that doesn't seem so awful now, now that I've learned to just "lay back and enjoy it," cuz it's going to happen to me no matter what anyway. Here's a cute story from work that made me realize that at least the core group of people I work with aren't half bad:

So we had the traditional office white elephant gift exchange a week or so ago. The price range for gifts was $15-20, standard stuff as far as this kind of thing goes. And not mandatory at all. Maybe about half the people on the second floor played along. My offering was an "Inception" BluRay-DVD combo pack, normally $29.99, but on sale at Target for about $20. At the exchange with 25 or so people gathered around the office tree, I chose a gift bag with a nice bottle of port and glasses and loads of novelty candies. A nice, witty presentation all around. I was devastated when, of course, someone stole it out from beneath me. I remember, trudging back to the pile of gifts to pick another one, I heard someone whisper, "Wow. She looks really distraught." I was!

So for my second round, I picked a gift bag that contained a crappy box of candy. Something that could be had at any Rite-Aid or CVS for about $4.99. Zero thought or effort whatsoever. But with a couple dozen people watching, I have to pretend that it was the coolest gift EVER. I mean... whatever. Dear Mr. or Ms. Crappy Box of Candy: Either play the game correctly or don't play at all, right?

So afterwards, my two cube-mates, with whom I work closely every day that I work, announce that they are going out to the empty parking lot next door to do donuts in the new snow. And they undoubtedly did many donuts but then they came back about an hour later with a bottle of port and a note that said simply, "Because you got hosed."

I cried. There were hugs all around. It was a beautiful day. Okay, maybe it's not that great a story, but I wanted it committed to cyber-paper so that I can return to it and re-read it when I hate my job again.

We saw a bear. Jakob learned to tie his shoes, whistle and blow up balloons. Wavy learned to sit nicely and quietly in the movie theater, buckle herself into her car seat and to chew gum without swallowing it.

I watched the entire series of The Wire over the course of the summer. Fantastic.

My parents moved to town. It's been purt-near painless. So far.

No big health crises or car meltdowns. No bankruptcies or court summons. Also, no winning lotto tickets or Publisher Clearing House visits from Ed McMahon. Which would be gross, seeing how he's dead and all.

So we made it through another one, not too much worse for wear. Let's aim for the same or better for next year. Now: wine, movies and maybe some leftover chicken salad as I listen to the neighbors blow up their yearly stash of illicit cherry bombs and M-80s. (Ummmm, note to self, don't google image search M-80s. There are more photos of burnt, fingerless hands than there are of actual M-80s.)

Tomorrow will be a day of firsts. First waffles of 2011 made with my brand-new waffle iron. First trip to Cali up the road to buy our first lotto tickets of 2011. First mini-Blizzards of 2011 at DQ.

Oh, let's get things started with my first non-sequitur of the new year:

Awesome box of "flatbread" for new years snacks. Look at that box! The little window affords a peek of these fantastically oversized crackers that will serve as giant vehicles for clam dip and slices of stinky cheese!

But no:

The glorified, outsized wheat thins are blatantly overpackaged and good for not much more than just ridicule and derision. Bah. And now I can say that I spent the first five minutes of 2011 exposing these shitty little crackers for what they really are. TAKE THAT, Nabisco!

So, good night, happy new year, should old acquaintances and all that. Love you.

Everybody Loves Kelly

2010-12-25T19:30:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

The nice single lady next door that I never, ever see but can hear occasionally seems to be vacuuming right now, at 7:32 on Christmas night. It could mean either she's got company coming over, and they're going to spike some eggnog and gather around the tree and sing and exchange presents, or for some perverse reason, I prefer to think she's alone like me, and taking advantage of a slow, dull night alone to get some chores done.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bitter. Daddy took you two to California Thursday and you've been rollicking with the relatives and inlaws and outlaws and steplaws for a couple days now. And I've been back here at home sick as a dog and puttering around the house by myself.

Well, I guess not exactly by myself. Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I decided to tackle the pantry in between fits of dry heaving and my fever building and breaking, building and breaking, like it has been for about four days now. I cleared out the two middle shelves, laid down new shelf paper and discarded a few expired can goods (oldest by far was the can of tomato juice with a 2005 sell-by date). But when I moved something on the bottom shelf and a black widow scurried out and hissed at me (not really, it just scurried but didn't hiss), I knew it was time to invoke the power of Nana. I've had fantasies of my mom coming over and helping me clean my house properly, but haven't yet shared these fantasies with her, for obvious reasons. But these were special circumstances, as deadly predatory arachnids were now involved.

I called her up, and she said sure, she'd be right over. She arrived with latex gloves and a positive attitude. We talked for a bit, but before it could become an endless chatfest, I stood up and started dry-heaving, and she said, 'Well, I better get started, then."

She dispatched two black widows with a broom and bug spray, and finished off the top and bottom shelves before leaving.

I settled in on the couch and began to plan my dinner. Something that I wouldn't normally eat when you guys are around. A piece of fish perhaps, and some wilted spinach. That last tiny glass of Southern Comfort that I had coaxed out of the bottle that I found in the back of the pantry.

But mom called in the midst of my foodie/alcoholic reverie and asked me if I had any sour cream. She was making chip and dip and she and dad were coming over sometime after six.

Oh god. What unholy door had I opened? Is my life turning into every sitcom that ever featured parents or inlaws that walk in through the kitchen door without knocking? Day in and day out? (I'm looking at you, Ray Romano, who, while annoying as hell in Everybody Loves Raymond, has turned into a mega-FILF in Men of a Certain Age...)

So they came over at six, with chips and dip and fish in tins and stuffed celery. And I enjoyed myself immensely. Sure, a sauteed salmon and a SoCo would've been nice, but I probably would've wound up feeling a bit sorry for myself, it being Christmas Eve and all.

Today, same thing. While it would've been satisfyingly martyr-like to putter around by myself all day, cleaning the fridge like I had planned and trying for day three without a shower, I knew I couldn't let it happen. So over they came, at around noon, bearing ham, baked potatoes, squash casserole, deviled eggs and more stuffed celery. How could I say no? I even whipped up an apple crumble in about 10 minutes after my dad called right before they were supposed to come over, telling me that mom had dropped the buttermilk pie face down on the kitchen floor.

Dinner was good, conversation was good, there was no fighting or futzing. I gave them their Christmas present, a Welcome to Nevada basket filled with moisturizers and heel-repair cream and lip balm for mom and IceMelt and a snowscraper for my dad, and winter gloves for both of them. Cute, no?

Streamed two Netflix movies afterwards, a weird mix: the new Joan Rivers documentary (excellent) and a slow-moving Jack Nicholson flick from 2001, "The Pledge."

They left, I did dishes, and now here I sit, nibbling on chocolate, drinking a glass of port and listening to the neighbor lady do chores. I'm still contemplating cleaning out the fridge tonight, but the longer I sit here and sip on this port, the more I just want to lay down and stream some more Netflix.

I miss you both very much, but I know you're having a great time where you are. I know this, because when I talked to you on the phone this morning, you could barely be bothered. Sounds like Santa was veddy veddy gooood to the both of you, and you'll be hauling back quite the truckload of crap when you come home. But *do* come home, sweeties. Soon. I love you love you love you. Merry Christmas.

Yay! You're still here! And ummm.... wow, you're still here.

2010-12-19T01:59:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

You were supposed to be gone by now, but the weather hasn't cooperated. It's supposedly the biggest dump since 2005, whatever that means. I don't remember 2005, but I guess there was a lot of snow. Nobody, most of all my own kids, belongs out on the mountain pass roads when the weather's like this, so you are home with me instead of with your Cali grandparents. According to the weather forecasts, this shit won't go away in the foreseeable future. Which is more than fine with me, I just wasn't planning on things turning out this way.

I haven't done any of your Christmas shopping yet, I don't have a Christmas dinner planned. This weekend I had planned on going to the movies all day and baking all night. Also, baking with all sorts of stuff that you are allergic to, Jake. Walnuts. Egg whites. Cherries.

You are sick. So sick. Daddy had to pick you up from school early on Friday because you puked all over the library. Don't feel too bad, though. Apparently you were the third kid that did that Friday and was sent home by the school nurse. High five!

So you've been laying about on the couch and on the living room floor all day, looking and sounding miserable. You watched Nick on tv all day, stuff like "iCarly" and "Drake and Josh." I eventually asked you if you wanted to watch something else, like something on Nick Jr. and you said that channel was just for babies, which almost made me cry. But when I saw that Backyardigans was on, I asked you if it was okay to watch that for a little while, and you relented, a little enthusiastically, I might add, which made me feel a little better.

And apparently, all you felt you would be able to keep down was freshly baked cookies. "I'm so hungry, Mom! Why did you put walnuts in the cookies, Mom? Mom!" you moaned.

Sorry, Pooh. You aren't even supposed to be here!

Hmmm. Christmas shopping. I'm going to gamble that there will be some kind of break in the weather and that you all will be gone before Christmas morning. But if I break down and actually do go shopping, what do you want?

The past few years, I have not really gotten you guys anything big for Christmas. You get more than enough crap from your grandparents and others that anything your daddy and I would get you would go unnoticed and unappreciated. I focus on whiz-bang stockings and stuffers, which is fun for me to put together and fun for you, too, for the most part.

Jakob is so easy to shop for. Anything science-y or arts-and-craftsy or... Certain things just say "Jakob" and I don't know why. I saw a headlamp the other day, y'know, the kind that miners or hikers wear, and I knew that you would be over-the-moon for it. Or a Mentos-Diet Coke explosion kit:

Or a digital weather station, or a potato clock or a 1000-piece colored pencil set.

But Wavy, you're a different story. Apparently the only thing that really floats your boat or gets you excited and giddy (besides "chock-lick" candy) is your brother. If I could put a big red bow on Jakob and set him under the tree, you'd be beside yourself with joy. But since I can't do that, what else do you want, baby?

The only thing you have expressed interest in is a dollhouse, which at this moment, is wrapped up and sitting at your grandparents house. You have a minimal interest in clothes and nail polish and lip balm and that sort of stuff. You do love your Spongebob DVDs, and all things Dora, so maybe I will start there. Hopefully when you are a little older, this will all be easier.

I saw this commercial today, and it made me kind of sad:

So it's some kind of electronic toy that plays hide-and-seek with your children. I mean, why can't your kids just PLAY hide-and-seek? It's like all those Leap Pad products that employ all sorts of computerized pens and pointers and buttons to read shit to your kids? Why can't kids just pick up an old-fashioned, analog BOOK and read the damned thing. Sorry for the unintended rant. But, c'mon. Really?

What I really wish I could give the two of you is time. More time. I'm spending less and less of it with you during the day-to-day, so I wish I could give you a big box of fabulous weekends away, doing fun stuff in unfamiliar locales. Looks good on paper, but not so much under the tree.

Okay, everyone get well and stay well. Love you both.

Final product, in case you two were worried

2010-12-12T23:21:00.000-08:00

I set the undecorated house out in the garage for a day, and the smell more or less dissipated.

In Regretsy parlance, we created these in our artistic abilities. Amen.

"Gross and disgusting? Or charmingly frugal? YOU make the call!" or... "Gawd, Mom, what's that SMELL?"

2010-12-11T23:55:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

I'm sitting here late at night, waiting for the above gingerbread house to set up a little before I add the roof pieces. I thought I'd get the grunt work over with, then tomorrow you kids can do the fun decorating part.

So I have a habit of picking up gingerbread house kits after Christmas, when they drop down to 99 cents or whatever. I figure, any ol' time is a great time to make a gingerbread house, Christmas or not. But then we never do. But I keep buying them anyway. So we have four or five kits in the back of the pantry, in various stages of decay. (Hoarder alert!)

But it's okay! It's not like we're going to actually EAT them or anything, right? When I broke this innocuous-looking kit open, I was knocked back on my heels from the ... aroma ... that hit me in the face. Rancid, and then some. You know that smell that you get when you find a 13-year-old canister of Crisco hiding in the cupboard? (No? You don't, you say? Another Hoarder alert, perhaps?) Well, it's kind of like a moldering cardboard smell, for those of you who don't know. I figure the smell will go away after it sits out for a day or two.

So how gross of a mother am I to not just throw the whole thing away and spring for a new one? Discuss. Or disgust?

But THIS, this is my very secret wish: that tomorrow you kids can decorate your endearingly sloppy, smelly little gingerbread house, but when you leave for grandma's, I will make my own, painstakingly overwrought gingerbread masterpiece that I will post on Facebook.

Anyway. Big day today:

Started the day out with some robot action.

Then to the park to get some scooter time. It's been in the 60s all week, so we better make hay while the sun shines.

While we were at the park, we found a bunch of acorns. So we brought home a handful, slapped some glitter glue and some googly eyes on them, and will hang them on the little Christmas tree in your room.

As a side note... we found plenty of acorns, but there was a dearth of the little "hats" that are supposed to be on them. We spent a good deal of time looking for hats, but could only find four, while we found dozens of the hatless acorn bodies. I had formed a little theory in the back of my head as to why this might be, but didn't want to bore you two with it. But then Jakob pipes up, "Mom, I think there aren't any hats because they're still in the trees. When the wind blows, the acorns fall down, but the hats are left behind." Okay, Dr. Science. Any random thoughts on this whole global warming mess?

Decorated the tree tonight.

Posed in front of said tree.

More practice tying shoes. You're both right on the verge of "getting it."

Not pictured: Dinner at Jethro's with Nana and Papa, a trip to the Dollar Tree for gingerbread house candy, and the long, satisfying nap that I took when you guys hung out over at Nana and Papa's house for a couple hours.

All this, and I get tomorrow off, too! I can't believe that I worked Saturdays for as long as I did. That was just stupid crazy.

Okay, back to the rancid gingerbread house. Stinky-ass thing needs a roof! Love you much. Be good. Santa's still watching you.

Next-mas

2010-12-04T23:19:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

Yes, I know. Nana and Papa are here. Moved in right down the street, they have. I know there's volumes and volumes I can write about, but let me be in shock (denial?) for just a wee bit longer...

This is the second year that we have done a Christmas calendar. A secular sort of thing, with little notes from Santa instead of a Nativity story. You both believe that every night, Santa magically inserts notes and tiny gifts into the little 24 boxes that fit into the Christmas tree-shaped container that holds them all. Kinda looks like this:

I had planned this year to put the whole thing together ahead of time, writing out 24 little notes and filling the boxes with tiny christmas ornaments that you can put on your special little tree in your room. Y'know... a fix-it-and-forget-it kind of thing, rather than laboriously writing out a little note every night for the next 24 nights. But when I started opening up the boxes to put things in them, I found they still had last year's notes from "Santa" in them.

They said things like, "Jakob, quit putting your hand down your pants! Love, Santa." and "Have fun this weekend taking your daddy out for cake!" and "Looks like you're making my favorite cookies!"

Each message was special and probably added to the magic, helping you believe that Santa really was keeping an eye on you and sending you mystical messages. The look on your face tonight, Jakob, when you read "Thanks for coming to see me at the parade tonight! Did you see me at Super Burrito afterwards? I saw YOU! Love, Santa," was pure gold.

But it's all a moot point. Ya'll are leaving me on the 17th and we will not be able to finish off the calendar every night leading up to Christmas. Your Cali grandma and grandpa are having a mini-family reunion over the holidays, and relatives from all over the country are convening at their house. And anytime great-grandma and great-grandpa, both in their 90s, show up for anything, well... you kinda have to treat it like it's the last time you will ever see them.

Which is all well and good for the sort of people with the sort of jobs that they can just up and leave for a few weeks at a time, or for retired people who don't have to worry about that sort of thing. And for kids who get a two-week Christmas break. And for your daddy, who, well... you know. But as for me, I have to work.

So ya'll are leaving me on the 17th and returning some time the week after Christmas. I won't be alone; Nana and Papa are here, so it'll be just me and them, like it was for the years and years before you two and daddy ever came along.

Now all of this would make me super-sad if I was the sort of person who actually enjoyed Christmas more than I do. My feelings have changed somewhat since the both of you have come into your own and have started to look forward to it.

But never ever in a million years will I learn to enjoy sitting in on a Cali christmas morning with grandma and grandpa and all the rest of the family as you tear into the world's biggest pile of presents, tons of toys that you neither want nor need. Everyone else gets a kick out of seeing the two of you swimming in discarded wrapping paper and Barbies and DVDs and cars and crapcrapcrap, but just thinking about it makes me break out in hives and sick to my stomach. All I can ever think while I sit there during this barbaric ritual is, "Damn. Where the hell are we going to put all that?" And all the photos ever taken of me on Christmas morning in Cali reflect this.

So, don't think badly of me for jumping at the chance to sit this one out. Go, and revel in all the attention and adoration (and gifts) that the relatives will shower upon you. You never seem to remember that your daddy and I exist when all those folks are around, anyway. Which is as it should be. They all love you very much, and you don't get to see them very often.

Let's celebrate the holidays every day until you leave me, and pick up again when you get back. I love you love you love you with all my heart, on Christmas day and every day.

Word of the day: FESTOON

2010-11-29T12:01:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

You watch Hoarders with me occasionally. You know when they interview the hoarder and he or she says, "Well, I wouldn't really call myself a hoarder. A 'collector' maybe. Yeah, there are a couple rooms in the house that I've let get a bit out of control. But overall, I'm a clean person. I keep the house as clean as the next person." And as the person's talking, the camera cuts to shots of rat droppings on a doll's face, and bloated magazines busting out of a rotted box, and heavy, dusty cobwebs festooning the silverware and the long-dead houseplants.

So maybe we're not THAT bad (I mean, we're as clean as the next person, right?).

But the past couple of months, and in the right light, I could see that cobwebs were slowly taking over everything about a foot above eye-level. But I didn't do a damn thing about it. I guess I was waiting for "The Big Clean-Up" that would magically take place while I was sleeping or at work. The clean-up that would take care of the rest of the house's ills, as well as cobwebs. Even though every time I saw a dusty web flapping lazily in the breeze, my mind's eye flashed on rat droppings and moldering basements (both of which we don't have, btw).

Well, your Nana and Papa will be moving to town, like, TODAY, so this past weekend, we took matters into our own hands and cleaned the damn house.

It didn't take that long. I mean, it's a small house. One evening, after ya'll went to bed, was all it took to de-clutter all your toys AND the front room. I watched a Deadliest Catch marathon while I did it. The next day, a couple hours, TOPS, was all it took to clean the rest of the house. Your daddy did the bathroom and the kitchen and you guys and I did the bedrooms and the other bathroom. Maybe a total of five minutes with the vacuum and a brush is all it took to dispatch the cobwebs.

Jakob, somewhere along the line you became the world's best vacuumer. And that is not just lip service. You actually hit every square inch, and then to my surprise, and without me saying anything, you put on the tube attachment and ran around and did the baseboards. What the WHAT?!??

And THEN! You made out a checklist of a few other things that needed to be done. Which in itself does not surprise me; you live and die by your lists, like your momma. At the bottom of the list -- which included things like "MY ROOM: PUT AWAY 6 THINGS THAT DON'T BELONG" -- were two items:

• Show Dad
• Show Mom

So after you completed the items on your list and checked them off, you showed Dad and me. WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT MOTHER BIRTHED YOU, cuz that kind of gumption certainly did NOT come from me.

Even Wavy got in on the fun by putting items where they rightfully belong. I'd hand you a fork from underneath the bed and you'd go and throw it in the sink. You helped me with the cobwebs by making sure the vacuum didn't fall over when I reached up high with the tube attachment.

I remarked to you afterwards, Jakob, that, "Aaaahhhh. Doesn't this feel nice? A clean house?" Then came the knife in the heart: "Yeah, mom! This is great! Why don't we do this every day?" I told you that maybe every day would get a bit tiresome, and you countered with, "Well every week then. Let's do it once a week." I agreed.

I did have to table a few items, for expediency's sake. There are a couple or three boxes of unsorted stuff to sort that were shoved into the backs of closets, the fridge still needs to be cleaned. The garage... well... that's a whole 'nother frightening story. But did I mention that your Nana and Papa will be here with a U-Haul truck TONIGHT? No? Well, some things can wait.

Oh what a horrible mother I am. Forcing you to live in filth and squalor. I'll understand, I guess, when I look out the window one of these days and see the half-dozen 1-800-GOT-JUNK trucks lining up in front of the house, courtesy of the both of you and the A&E channel.

Please forgive me, and let's clear an hour or so off of next weekend's calendar to do it again. Love you.

Baking, stewing...

2010-11-12T23:16:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

Sitting here baking sugar cookies and watching salaciously voyeuristic shows on the Discovery Channel. First a show about women with a syndrome that causes them to be sexually aroused 24/7, for years on end. Now yet another show about hoarding. They should change the name of this channel to the Freak Channel.

I plan to embellish these perfectly round sugar cookies similarly to the cupcakes that I'm making for Wavy's birthday, and wrap them up as party favors for her classmates.

Ohmigosh. Now a commercial for the Ronco Pocket Fisherman. It looks virtually unchanged since the days that I had one as a grade-schooler in Panama. Mine was brown and white like this one:

I can't remember if it was an effective fishing device or not, but I am closing my eyes now, and perhaps am seeing one in your near future, Jakob.

...

Nana and Papa, after Papa retired from the Navy, have made careers out of managing things, mostly yacht clubs, living and working on-premises. They haven't done this for some time, but for a 20-year stretch there, they were quite good at it, and I lived a large portion of my formative years on or around boats.

There is a storage facility a few blocks away, maybe about a 10- or 15-minute walk from the house, where my parents store the RV when they are not here. It's maybe a couple of acres where people store RV's, boats, trailers, etc. The current managers live on-site in a cute little house with a yard and garage and an office. For the past few years, whenever my parents stop by to futz with the RV, or take it out for a few weeks, they remind the managers to never hesitate to give them a call if they plan on leaving the job and need someone to replace them.

Well, last Monday, that day finally came. The owners of the facility, rather than the managers, called my parents and said that the current caretakers would be leaving soon, and the vacancy needed to be filled. By December 1. The lady that Papa talked to said she'd like to see a resumé. So that's what I've been doing for the past couple of days, trying to distill my own father's illustrious career into an 8.5x11-inch typewritten page. Especially when more than 25 years worth of it is highly classified and he's not even allowed to tell anyone about it.

Ooops. Just burned a batch. Ah well.

But, I think I did a pretty good job, and I put together a nice cover letter and sent it all out in the post yesterday.

I don't know how these people wouldn't hire them on. I think it's going to be just a matter of days when we all get the news that they will be moving out here, and quickly. Still processing how I feel about this. I haven't lived anywhere near my parents for nearly 22 years.

I'll keep you posted. I should get back to paying more attention to my cookies. Love you both. Sleep tight.

Getting old sucks.... well.... ass. It sucks ass.

2010-11-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

I've never been one for regular doctor checkups. I just go in on an as-needed basis, and since I usually need attention for one thing or another pretty often, I've never made an appointment to get checked out on a "just cuz..." basis.

Well, my doctor wouldn't renew any of my prescriptions unless I came in to get a thorough work-up, which I did a few weeks ago. Fair enough. But one little checkup has spawned a multitude of other things that need attention:

• My first mammogram (the girls are officially pretty healthy)

• An intra-uterine ultrasound (just to get a little glimpse into why I've been having such heavy periods the past couple years, and yes, this is the ultrasound that requires lube and a condom)

• Lots of bloodwork

• An endometrial biopsy (because the ultrasound revealted a cyst in my ovary, which the ob/gyn seems to think is pretty harmless, and because the lining of my uterus is "thicker than normal")

I had the biopsy yesterday. Prior to the appointment, I had made the mistake of googling "endometrial biopsy." Women around the world all seemed to want to chime in on how dreadful it was. "Worse than childbirth!" cried one. "I had never experienced such exquisite pain in my life!" lamented another. Even the ob/gyn, a very nice young lady whom I'd not met before, told me that she hated to perform these on patients the first time she sees them, because they usually never want to see her again, and this is after kicking her in the face or boxing her ears with their inner thighs.

But, fortunately, I was one of the rare few that hardly felt a thing. Speculum, numbing shot in the cervix, into and past the cervix with something sharp and pointy, scrape-y scrape-y, wash it down, swab it with something to stop the bleeding. Done. It actually felt worse once I was home, because there was a bit of residual cramping and spotting. I took the entire day off from work in anticipation of much moaning and groaning and pain and blood, but in actuality, I felt good enough to stop off at Michael's and Borders on the way home. I felt not an ounce of guilt about not going to work yesterday. Especially since there was an emergency message on my phone when I got home, and I wound up working a couple hours anyway.

But I managed to buy a cupcake caddy for Wavy's little in-class birthday get-together next week. I'm hoping to make these over the weekend:

We'll see. But that is neither here nor there....

So anyway, yesterday's doctor visit. I thought it was going to be bad news about the cyst, but the doctor dismissed those fears almost immediately. She was more concerned about my heavy periods, and outlined six different tacks we could take to get them under control, each more outlandish than the last, with the final solution being a hysterectomy. She asked me to think about all the different things she discussed, and we could re-visit them after the biopsy, or I could even schedule another appointment in a week or so to talk about it. At the end of our visit, I finally just asked her, "So besides being a little anemic, and the fact that it's annoying and inconvenient, what is the downside of heavy periods?" She looked a little surprised, but answered, "Well, nothing really. You can just double up on your iron and there really isn't a downside. You absolutely do not have to do anything at all about your heavy periods."

All righty. I think I've made my choice then, Dr. H! Seriously bummed that wasn't on the top of her list of solutions, but the gracious person inside me wants to believe it was just an oversight.

Whoa. Having another little wave of cramps. 36 hours later! Ugh.

Jakob, on most nights that I get home before you guys are asleep, I'll lay with you a while in bed, and ask you to name off two things you did that day. So I guess the least I can do is tell you guys two things about yourselves in this blog post that is supposed to be at least a little bit about you, and not entirely about me.

Jakob:

1) Another tooth fell out this week. You look like a jack-o-lantern. We really haven't done the tooth fairy thing since they've started falling out, and you haven't pushed the issue, so maybe there really *isn't* a tooth fairy?

2) You're a teller and a writer of fabulous stories. Tonight you wrote me a storybook and left it for me on the welcome mat outside the front door. It was about a couple of girls, Lisa and Dana, who took a cross-country trip through Nevada and Utah and back again, admiring the forests and mountains, complete with elaborate drawings.

Wavy:

1) You've decided that you don't like baths anymore, so you take a shower with me every morning when I'm getting ready to go to work. Very efficient and cost-effective, and just a few more precious minutes that I get to spend with you each day.

2) You've recently graduated to buckling yourself into your carseat all by yourself. And pouring the milk on your cereal. And putting away the towels and washcloths straight out of the dryer. The folding part leaves a little bit to be desired, but otherwise, perfecto.

I took this photo of you the other day when we were at the sandwich shop. You were sitting outside, and I was sitting inside. I imagined the two of you someday as grown-ups, meeting up for lunch, just the two of you. Something I can never in a million years imagine your daddy and Aunt L doing. You love each other so much now, and I hope it will always be that way. I mean, that is the way that's supposed to work, isn't it? I have nothing to compare it to. If I had a brother or sister, I'm sure that's how I'd want it to be.

Enough. More soon. There are changes afoot. Good ones, I assure you. Love you both, sleep tight.

Where to start

2010-11-07T21:18:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

The last few months have been hectic. I'm trying to put a positive spin on it and not say they've been AWFULLY FUCKING MISERABLE. Mainly because I want you to grow up with some sense that work and working and being a member of the work force is not sheer hell and something to be avoided. But there you have it. I'm not happy.

What was presented to me as an opportunity for a pleasant sideways shift in the company has turned out to be the invitation to dwell on the lowest rung of hell. Suffice it to say that it's just lots and lots more work, and whereas I am used to working by myself and self-sufficiently for years now, I now have to work with a team, which has its good sides and bad. The hours are the worst of it. Most weekdays, I go in late morning-noonish, and am lucky to be home by 9. I also work Saturdays. Yes, if you do the math, that is six days a week, with more than a few days where you are both gone to school before I get up in the morning, and asleep when I get home at night.

That's really about all I can say about it, without going over the deep end and dissolving in a puddle. So I'll leave it at that. It's hard to complain to anybody, because so many of my friends are either unemployed or under-employed, or right there in the trenches with me. So poor me, suffering in silence, except those times late at night, on the road home, exhausted, when I sob uncontrollably.

A bright spot: I took the week off last week because I'm maxed out on my vacation hours and didn't want to start losing them. Not a lot of money to go anywhere, so I mostly just did what I've been meaning to do since you guys started school, which is attend your classes and see what the hell you two do all day. Plus you both had Halloween parties, so I helped out with those as well. The week went by much too quickly, and my to-do list for the week went largely ignored. But I got to spend oodles of time with you both and I think you began to remember who your momma is. Going back to work the next week was torture.

What did we do this weekend. Yesterday we went to what was billed in the paper as a "Day of the Dead Festival" at the Nevada State Museum. It was a nice excuse to re-visit the quaint museum, with its antique slot machine exhibit, the random collections of dolls, buttons, tea services and money-printing paraphernalia. But the festival itself took place in just a couple of different rooms, with storytelling and some kind of audio-visual presentation in one room and crafts in the other. Very little signage, which just SETS ME OFF, cuz as a designer, I think everything should have pretty signs and logos and graphical stories pasted on it. But I digress. We had a great time decorating sugar skulls, and piecing together little Day of the Dead dolls and making crepe-paper flowers. But where was the food? And the dancing? And people shouting YIP YIP YIP! The Channel 4 news crew drove up right as we were leaving the parking lot, and Jakob, media whore that you are, started crying because I didn't turn around and go back so that you could be on tv.

Today we saw the Megamind movie. Well, not before some total sturm und drang. Call it a teachable moment, call it tough love, call it "momma going batshit crazy on your asses." But Jakob, you were not listening to me as we pulled into the movie theater parking lot. In fact, you were NOT listening to me, and then laughing about not listening to me, and then teasing your sister. So I flipped a bitch and drove straight back out of the parking lot and back through town and then home, Wavy sobbing indignantly the entire time, and you making mad faces at me in the rearview mirror. First demanding that I turn around and go back, and then pleading and apologizing, then finally realizing that I was indeed not going to go back. We pulled into the driveway as I gave you an earful and made you feel terrible. Wavy was miserable, and for that, sweetie, I heartily apologize.

The only reason that we actually went back was because I myself really really wanted to see the movie, and because we were so early the first time that we pulled up to the theater that we actually had time for me to drive us all the way home to sit in the driveway for a bit, but still get us back to the movie on time. You both were perfectly behaved for the remainder of the day's errands and chores. Mostly.

So there ya have it. I couldn't possibly relate everything since the last time I blogged, but it's a start. Love you both, sleep tight.

Junebugs on the last night of July

2010-07-30T23:44:00.000-07:00

The mother gingerly picked up the junebug carcasses from the floor of the motorhome. The night before, the brilliant and manic insects, large as small hummingbirds, had flown in the door, drawn inside by the lights above the motorhome's tiny dinner table. The grandmother had shrieked and the boy child had run for cover, ducking into the undersized loo, while the mother and grandfather had tried to shoo them back out into the night. The girl child sat silently, her eyes darting from junebug to junebug, wondering at the fuss. Satisfied that they had herded the umber- and honey-colored flyers back outside, the grandfather closed the door and the family set about getting ready for bed.

The next morning, however, a trio of junebugs lay strewn across the floor. Heartbroken to the point of expiring, perhaps, at their incarceration and the departure of their comrades. Laying in the middle of the mother's palm, it was hard to believe that these broken, dull little bodies had once been so vibrant and bright. She offered the bodies to the children, asking them if they wanted to hold one. The boy shook his head, said no thank you and took a step back. The girl moved in close, peering into the mother's hand. Do you want to hold one? The girl nodded and the mother tipped an insect into the girl's hand. The girl brought it up to eye level, studied it from different angles, offered it back to her mother, who took the little bodies out to the woods and tossed them into the pine duff, where they would most likely soon be food for ground squirrels or ants.

The mother returned to the motorhome, and presently caught the eye of the girl child, while the rest of the clan went about getting ready for the day ahead. You, the mother whispered, you're my little brave one. The girl smiled a secret smile and nodded. Yes. Yes, I am.

No, you can't have her! She's all mine!

2010-07-19T01:21:00.000-07:00

Here are more photos from our Saturday at Kiva Beach.

Eastbound and down...

2010-07-06T02:10:00.000-07:00

Eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin'
We gonna do what they say can't be done.
We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there
I'm eastbound just watch ol'Bandit run...

Hey kids,

Tomorrow (rather, later today... Momma's been in the caffeine again and is sitting here wide awake in the wee hours), you come home to me.

I've only cried once in your absence -- finally, three days ago, when I passed that statue of the Pony Express guy out at the intersection of 88 and 395. I remembered that time that you asked me, Jakob, how statues are made, that one in particular. I told you that I didn't know exactly, but that I would look it up on the computer and get back to you. And of course I didn't, even though you asked me if I had read up on it yet, every time we passed it on the road. But I've thought about you and missed you more every day. I just knock around by myself on weekends -- doin' stuff, sure -- but always thinking how much cooler things would be if you were there, too.

I visited last week and got my kidlet fix over a long weekend of fun stuff. We spent the night in Monterey and went to the aquarium, where I think you are both finally old enough to enjoy and appreciate the sea life on display, rather than being overwhelmed by the crowds and the sheer novelty of being away from home.

We had dinner on the wharf and ran into the Mythbuster guys:

Of course I didn't have my camera, but wouldn't that have been cool to get a picture of the two of you with them. Damn. We spent Saturday in Santa Cruz with your Aunt Laurie, taking a cruise around the bay in a boat:

And defying death hundreds of thousands of feet over the Boardwalk on the Sky Glider:

Here's a link to more photos, if you're so inclined.

Since then, I've returned home to my life as a model citizen, with my daily two-mile hikes and boring-ass You On A Diet fare. Discovered some places I want to take the both of you (swimming at Kiva Beach in Tahoe, splashing at the River Walk in Reno, Faye Luther Trail down the road on 88) and I want to start carting you around immediately, but sounds like Jakob is sick, so we want to get him home and well as soon as possible. We'll talk about why you're sick in another post. It warrants a rant all its own...

My master list of crap I needed to get done while you were gone was completed, save one item: the back yard. I finished up cleaning and decluttering my bathroom today, tossing a couple of large trash bags of stuff: old clothes, old toiletries, etc. A few items were painful to part with: a couple of bottles of leftover Domperidone from back in the ol' nursing days, the potty seat that fits over the regular seat that Wavy seemed to need for only a few days before she was big-girl enough to go without it.

Have watched a ton of redbox and netflix the past few days: The Crazies, The White Ribbon, The Last Station, The Story of Anne Frank, Season One of Party Down; have gone to the theaters to see Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and tonight, my last kid-free night, went to see the new Twilight movie.

Started this new summer blockbuster, and am enthralled, less than 30 pages in:

With all this other, more pressing, shit going on, just could not get it together enough to tackle the back yard, so hopefully you guys can help me with this line item this weekend before we head out for the funner stuff.

Hope coming home doesn't suck too, too much for you. I know Grandma and Grandpa can be fun as all get-out... but I will try my best. Love you, be safe on the road, and can't wait to see you when I get home from work tomorrow.

Whole latte nothin' goin' on

2010-06-19T22:27:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Well, squandering my weekend of cleaning and de-cluttering by resolutely NOT cleaning and de-cluttering. Slept in 'til 10:30 am, then -- my only nod today to anti-hoarding -- I picked five things out of my closet and took them to the donation bin and dropped off another one of your strollers at the thrift store. The orange $150 two-kid stroller that we maybe used half a dozen times cuz Jakob refused to sit in it.

Kept right on driving and wound up in Reno, where the Traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall is on display this week.

I held it together rather well. That is, until someone next to me murmured, "All these names. All this death. And for what?" Then I lost it and had to head out across the field as far away as I could get, to collect myself and rein in the tears.

The same thing happened to me, a thousandfold, at the original Vietnam Memorial in Washington 25 years ago, during a trip with the high school band. We toured all the regular tourist attractions that school trips normally tour. I had been looking forward to seeing the Vietnam Memorial for a while, because at that time it was rather new, and I had closely followed its progress in the news, from its controversial concept to its installation. The band toured that particular part of DC at night, and the mall and the memorials were all dramatically lit and beautiful.

When we made our way to the Vietnam Memorial, I was tense, probably from anticipation, but once I started making my way from one end of the wall towards the other, I became overwhelmed, by the enormous weight of the thousands and thousands of names before me, but mostly with the thought that my birth father must be on this wall somewhere, but I didn't even know his name. I became hysterical, and had to be carried back to the tour bus by parent chaperones.

When everyone else finally got on the bus and we took off for our hotel, I watched the bus's progress closely from the window, memorizing the route, because I was planning to return the next day on my own.

The next day, when everyone else went to the Air and Space Museum and other Smithsonian museums (I still regret that I missed that, and plan to return someday to finally see them), I snuck away and made my way back to the Vietnam Memorial. I honestly can't remember how I got there and back. I must have walked, because I don't remember taking a bus or a cab. And I know I didn't tell anyone except maybe my closest friend on the trip, but I do know that I was by myself. I spent a good part of the day there, walking up and down the wall, looking at all the names, which weren't quite as overwhelming in the daylight. I found a "Kelly Davis" and made a rubbing with pencil and paper, which I have managed to lose in the intervening years. I took pictures, explored the other nearby monuments, I think I even grabbed lunch somewhere, all before I somehow made my way back to the hotel.

What a little adventurer I used to be.

So anyway. Yesterday. I finally got ahold of myself and walked back to the wall, made my peace with it and left. You should know, kids, that your Papa did his part back in Vietnam, before I was ever born, and he was lucky to make it home. But 58,196 Americans were not so lucky, and we memorialize them by carving their names on that wall. I'll take you someday and show you.

The traveling memorial is installed at Rancho San Rafael Park, which is a beautiful place. Had lunch and read for a while at the very peaceful Labyrinth Garden:

Then, since no one was around to make me feel silly or self-conscious, I walked the Labyrinth, winding back and forth...

...until I finally made it to the middle:

You're supposed to spend a contemplative few moments when you reach the middle, maybe have an epiphany or two before re-tracing your steps and leaving. Well, I didn't have an epiphany, and I didn't re-trace my steps. I just galumphed back across all the lines and probably did irreparable harm to my kosmic karma.

Capped off my afternoon with a leisurely hour or so on the patio at the local Sbux, finishing up "The Perfect Storm," then followed up afterwards with a mile and a half power-walk around Lampe Park.

Today, Sunday, was a bit more mellow. Met with a friend and saw a community college production of "Footloose," then came home and cleaned up your room. Finally. De-cluttered a whole yard-sized garbage bag-full of broken toys, "paper goods" and other miscellaneous crap. And found all the spoons. Wavy's been hoarding all our spoons for some reason; there were hardly any left in the silverware drawer.

Which brings us to now. Back to work tomorrow. Boo. Hiss. But it's a short week. Will see you Thursday night! Love you and miss you. Sleep tight.

Meh...

2010-06-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Life forges on slowly without you. Not making as much headway with house stuff as I would've liked. I have gone through your toybox and thrown away a lot of broken stuff, a lot of paper goods (Okay, I call it paper goods, but it's really papers that you have drawn or painted on and deemed good enough to keep. If I call it "artwork" I won't have the wherewithal to throw it away. I can't keep *every* scrap of paper that you touch pen or crayon to. Forgive me?) I've made a pile of toys to take to the thrift store. So here's what's left:

1) Tidy up back yard
2) Tidy up your room
3) Declutter my bathroom/master closet

Maybe I'll get around to cleaning the carpets, who knows. If it's not on the Big Three above, it's not crucial. I mean... seriously... this coming weekend is really the last whole weekend I have to get this shit done. I am coming to see you the weekend after this one, then you will come home the weekend after that.

I've been leading an exemplary life while you've been gone. I've been following the "You On a Diet" diet to a T, taking long walks after dinner, going to bed and getting up at decent times, not spending a lot of money.

Daddy and I went to a movie the other night, and took a six-hour drive up and down Hwys 4 and 88, stopping for Chinese food in Jackson, Calif. but that so far has been our only splurge.

The ants miss you, too. I don't think they were supposed to live this long. We've had them since... what... the first week of April or so. It's now getting on towards the end of June. So many of them dead, but a few still just hanging in there. I can't just turn them loose in the back yard, can I? It would be like setting a hothouse flower out in the middle of the desert and expecting it to make it through the day. I will never do an ant farm ever again.

Anyway. Am now looking for a room in Monterey in my other browser windows. Would love to stay in a four-star motel, but you know us, kids... we're one-star folk, two-star if it's on sale.

Love you, stay well. Can't take no sickies to the Aquarium!

Boring....

2010-06-11T00:28:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

You've been gone three days now and I've started chipping away at the to-do list. I'm trying to keep the list short and sweet, because if it gets unmanageable, I'll quit before I get started.

So far I have gone through your closets and made a huge pile of outgrown clothes, which I stuffed in the back of the car tonight after work and took to the Big Brothers Big Sisters bin in the Gottschalks parking lot in Carson.

Still eyeing your toybox and room. Very daunting. That's a weekend kind-of-thing, I suppose.

Finished this book the day after you left:

Started and finished this book yesterday and today:

Started this book tonight:

I'll have to slow down and pace myself. I'm almost done with my planned summer reading, and it's not even officially summer yet.

Went to lunch with my editor and my executive editor today. Yeah, it was about as fun as it sounds. Exec editor informed me that in all likelihood I will be transferred again in the near future, which makes me sick to my stomach, as I really really like where I am now, and I really really hate where I will probably be transferred to. It's supposedly "up in the air" at this point, but there is potential cost-saving to be had in transferring me, so that right there tells me that it is a done deal. Grrrrrrrr. Vomit.

Also went to Costco tonight. I'm not the Costco devotee that your daddy's mom is; she worships at the Kirkland altar two or three times a week. I can count on one and a half hands how many times I am there in a year. Probably not often enough to even justify the membership fee.

Made an appointment with the eye doctor (are Lenscrafters eye doctors REAL eye doctors?!?) I've been getting terrible headaches lately, and I figure it's my eyes, especially since I have not gotten new glasses since Wavy was six months old.

Made an appointment to get some bloodwork done tomorrow before work, so am trying tonight to find that tipping point between super-hydrated and peeing it all away.

Made some turkey and veggie wraps for the potluck at work tomorrow, as well as a big piece of fish and sauteed spinach for dinner tonight.

Stared longingly at photos of you periodically throughout the day.

So speaking of Costco, here is a Kirkland-related photo from the archives:

I have a vague feeling that I may have dragged this one up from the archives at least once in the past few years, but it's so diggity-danged cute that it deserves another go-round.

And here is an oldie-but-goodie of Wavy:

Ahhhh... I remember well the pain of those cute little teeth. Incisors. Yow.

See, I told you. Boring. Productive, but boring. Love you. Sleep tight, wherever you are.

Day 0?

2010-06-07T20:38:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Well, it's not really Day 1, technically. You left this morning for Grandma's, so I guess tomorrow will officially be Day 1. This is really "Day .5".

As we were getting ready for Grandma and Grandpa to show up and whisk you away, I chided you, Jakob, that last year you were so engrossed in being there in Cali that you wouldn't even talk to me on the phone. You responded with a puff of air and, "I'll TAKE your phone calls, Momma..." Great, son! Don't do me any favors!

We went to the Valhalla Renaissance Festival yesterday, in my attempt to stuff the weekend full of fun things. Probably my subconscious attempt to impress upon you that I will ALWAYS be more fun than Grandma. Or not.

Anyway, click here for more pix. Jakob said his favorite part was the Punch and Judy puppet show, and of course, after you said that, Wavy agreed that the puppets were her favorite, too. But I think she really enjoyed sipping off of Auntie F's coffee drink most of all. And the coins and stones and trinkets that random, oddly dressed folks would press into your hand.

So here is the prelim of my list of things to do while you are gone:

1) Clean out your toybox and room. At least two-thirds of your stuff has been outgrown or broken or you are just simply done with. Same with your clothes.

2) Declutter my bathroom and closet. Don't ask me why it's impossible to do that with you here. It just is.

3) Declutter the back yard. I can't throw away the things that need to be thrown away when you are here.

4) Clean the carpets.

That's all I have so far. I'm so imaginitive. I also plan to eat more fish and exotic vegetables.

Miss you already. Hope you're having fun and at least half-grudgingly give your ol' momma a thought before you go to bed tonight. Love you!

Hello, summer

2010-06-06T00:20:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

This is what it looked like a couple weekends ago. Driving snow and gale-force winds.

But the last two weekends have been relatively mild and sunny, and in the case of today, downright HOT. We took advantage and spent lots of time outdoors.

Last weekend was the weekend of errands. Jakob likes to count off all the things we did. Last Saturday, we did 15 things, fun stuff interspersed with errand-like activities:

1) Got gas at AM/PM
2) Got an oil change at Jiffy Lube
3) Went to Starbux
4) Went to the post office
6) Went to Target to buy patio chairs
7) Bought lunch at various places
8) Took lunch to Mills Park for a picnic
9) Played at playground
10) Went to train museum and rode train
11) Trader Joes for dinner items
12) Got Jakob a haircut
13) Went home to set up chairs and new patio table
14) BBQ'd dogs and salmon patties for dinner
15) Made s'mores

Yeah, I know, the list kind of breaks down there towards the end, but you kids get the idea. It was a busy day. Here you are riding the train:

Today wasn't quite so ambitious. We stopped at Borders first to take advantage of a 40%-off coupon that we forgot to bring, plus Momma wanted to get (oh deary me... so embarrassed...) a copy of the brand-new "The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner," another installment in the Twilight book franchise. Jakob, you got a workbook entitled "What Every First Grader Should Know: Reading" and you have already worked your way through about half of it. It is waaaaaay beneath you. And Wavy, you got another book about faeries. Plus I also picked up a couple copies of The Associated Press Stylebook. I'm going to keep one for myself, and surprise my editor with the other one; his current copy is about 10 years old.

We made it to Reno by 1 pm to catch a matinee of "How to Drain Your Dragon" at the Grand Sierra for only $3 apiece. It was easily the best movie I've seen all year. I laughed, I cried.

The Grand Sierra theater is located in the bottom level of the Grand Sierra Hotel Casino. It's like this whole 'nother world down there, with dimly lit corridors and useless shops like Starlight Mints by the Pound, overpriced shoe boutiques and endless convention rooms. (Today the lower level was filled with Jehovah's Witness and Tax Professional conventioneers. Whoot! Would love to see THAT afterparty!) But the theaters themselves have rows and rows of loveseats with endtables towards the back, with the regular, traditional seating up towards the front. We snagged a couple of the loveseats and spread out just like we were at home.

Wavy, this was your first full-on theater experience. You've gone to the planetarium numerous times, but never to a regular, feature-length movie. You did amazingly well, and were very well-behaved. (Unlike the ditz behind us, who actually TOOK A PHONE CALL during the middle of the movie and proceeded to ARGUE LOUDLY with whoever was on the other end. No amount of shushing from the other patrons got through to her. Gah.) You might have been just a wee more interested in the popcorn than you were in the movie, but still and all, We undoubtedly will be taking you to more movies from now on.

Afterwards, dinner at Denny's (kids eat free on Saturdays after 4 p.m.!) then a bit of a hike to work it all off.

We explored the Carson River up around Hope Valley, where the snowmelt runoff has the river topped up to near-record levels.

And you STILL hadn't had enough, so we stopped off at the playground for an hour before we finally came home. Actually, Wavy, YOU might have found your limit, because you puked up a goodly amount of your free Denny's spaghetti after one turn down the slide. But then you perked right back up again and went back for more.

So here we are now. You guys are asleep and I'm contemplating turning on the AC for a bit, because it's ungawdly HOT in the house right now. No matter how hot it is outside during the day, the house is relatively cool, but for some reason, once the sun sets, all the hot air stored in the attic seeps down through the rest of the house and slow-roasts us all night.

Anyway, tomorrow: Valhalla Renaissance Faire! Tarry not in the morn, my good lad and lady, for I desire to arrive before all Ye Olde Parking Spaces are frickin' filled up. Last year we wound up parking and walking a mile down the side of a busy highway.

And then the day after that... you go to Cali grandma's for a month. Boo. Hiss.

Love you. Sleep tight.

For obvious reasons...

2010-06-01T11:12:00.000-07:00

... this one won't be going up on Facebook.

Edited to add: I had to hide her car keys and call her a taxi. She slept it off for the most part, but preschool the next day was a nightmare of bright lights, finger paints and endless choruses of "I've Been Working on the Railroad."

Confession time

2010-05-26T22:14:00.000-07:00

Hey look, 'Lost' fans! It's Keamy! Hey look, 'ER' fans! It's Dr. Archie Morris! Hey, 'Mystery, Alaska' fans! It's all three of them together again! In a slightly crappy movie! But any movie that gets frickin' William Hurt riding through the forest on a horse is okay with me.

Hey kids,

My schedule at work changed last week. My deadlines have been mangled in such a way that I work 12 hours one day, and approximately 5-6 hours the next. Meaning that on that second day, I get off work at about 2 p.m. (Don't cry for me, kiddos, I've worked endless variations of wonky schedules for at least the past 15 years of my life...)

So today is the first day with the new deadlines and leaving the office at 2. I was naughty, and instead of going home, I went to a movie. I saw Robin Hood, because it was the least offensive-looking offering at either of the two theaters in the town where I work. It was incredibly mediocre, but a pleasant way to while away a couple hours before heading home.

Now. Here's the question. Does anybody really need to know about the whole leaving-early-once-a-week thing? Like... maybe it's okay that I drop off the face of the earth in the hours between 2 and 5 p.m. every once in a while? Get some shopping done, maybe some errands. Or god forbid... take in a movie.

Well, that's my big confession/dilemma of the day. Please don't grow up to write a scathing, unauthorized biography of your terrible mother. Love you, sleep tight.

Somebody didn't tell us it was Picture Day

2010-05-25T15:54:00.000-07:00

Hey Wavy,

I've always wondered what happens if you just send the photos back. You know... the ones that they send home from school, you look at them, then either pay up or just send them back. We've always ponied up at least $40 or so for the basic package or more. Because, really, who but a really callous and unfeeling mother would look at photos of her lovely spawn and reject them out of hand.

Well, me, apparently. If you click on this photo and go to the large version, you will see yellow stains all over this blouse, not to mention the poorly executed sleeves, and THEN you might get around to the forced smile. Tyra calls it "smizing" when you smile with your eyes, but this just might be a case of "smowning."

Daddy has a habit of misplacing paperwork that you bring home from school, dear heart, and he obviously lost the memo that warned us that this particular day would be Picture Day, when Momma usually takes the helm and dresses you herself. But, you were obviously dressed by an indifferent -- and possibly colorblind -- daddy and sent to school in THIS travesty.

I'm worried that the rejection of these particular school photos may pave the way for future rejections, for far less infractions, like a zit or maybe an unruly cowlick. It is indeed a kind of liberating feeling to say no. I will cheat a bit and scan this, then send the whole thing back. Of course I won't be able to get these printed out anywhere, by any scrupulous photo lab, anyway, but prints are sooooo last millennium.

So here, sweetheart. Above is the photographic proof that you attended class this particular day of spring in 2010. And HERE is photographic proof that Momma is a much better photographer than some who actually get PAID for it:

And modest, too! I love you so much, so please don't take this rejection personally.

O.B. FTW!

2010-05-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Momma just won another battle in the war on noisy tampons! What, you didn't know that we were in the midst of a bloody war on feminine hygiene products with decibel levels that put Who concerts to shame?

Last week, I had had ENOUGH. I have been using OB tampons since college 20+ years ago, and tout them to any and all who will listen. But within the last year, they have changed up the formula a bit, and now the tiny white missiles of absorbency are now encased in clear, bulletproof Tyvek jackets that are impossible to open without resorting to the use of sharp instruments. Which, when you are sitting on the toilet, usually means your TEETH.

I filed a complaint with the company's online contact page, outlining my basic grievance: that when trying to remove the plastic packaging from one of their products while in a public restroom -- a process that one usually hopes is quick and discreet -- rather, one sounds as if she is noisily tearing through and consuming a bag of corn chips.

I received this in my inbox today:

---------------------------------------------

Dear Kelly:

Thank you for contacting McNeil-PPC, Inc., makers of tampons. It is always important to hear from our consumers, and we appreciate the time you have taken to contact us.

Your feedback provides us with important information for our Quality Assurance department and we appreciate the time you have taken to let us know about this matter. The o.b.® Pro Comfort™ Super Plus is the only one with SilkTouch™ cover for ultimate comfort and protection. Noticeably easier to insert and remove. SilkTouch™ cover for smooth insertion and removal.

If you wish to buy the kind with the easy-off silk cover, buy the o.b.® Non-Applicator™ Super Plus. DO NOT buy the o.b.® Pro Comfort™ Super Plus.

Compensation for this product has been sent and should reach you within two weeks.

In addition, please do not discard the product you are contacting us about. We would like to have it returned to us, at no expense to you, for some Quality Assurance testing. You will be receiving a postage-paid, pre-addressed envelope for the return of the product. Please put it in the envelope and send it from any mailbox (there is no need to go to the post office). This will enable us to deliver the high quality products you should expect from Johnson & Johnson.

Again, thank you for your interest in our company. Should you have any comments or questions in the future, please contact us via our website WWW.OBTAMPONS.COM or by calling our toll-free number, 1877 454-7843. Our specialists are available Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m - 8:00 p.m. EST and will be happy to assist you.

The Information Center

---------------------------------------------

So, not only are they addressing my issue with a check for $4.99 plus tax, they are going to research and dissect the remaining unused product to try and see where the hell they went wrong.

I've been trying to picture in my head what this particular section of their R&D department must look like, and I'm sorry, this is all I can come up with:

You kids thought you'd be getting my post-Lost finale dissertation here? Not bloody likely. I am still chewing on the happy, sad, up-with-people ending and trying to decide if I am satisfied or not. Mostly yes, but I still need a wee bit more time to grieve for my Losties before coming up with my final answer. Period.

Less than two weeks until you leave me for Grandma. Remember that you will always love me best. Sleep tight.

But I make really great biscotti...

2010-05-21T23:52:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Momma's having a major inferiority complex tonight. I'm making biscotti to bring to the Lost party that I am attending on Sunday. The recipe is stored in my facebook notes, and while I was clicking around looking for it, I happened upon the page of a friend of a friend, a man I worked with briefly when I first moved to Nevada. He has since quit the company, ridden around the world on a bicycle, documented his travels and now makes a living giving lectures and slideshows about his adventures. I, meanwhile, am still toiling away with the same company, more or less making the same pittance of a salary, and have not traveled more than six or seven hundred miles from where I'm sitting right now. It was this picture of his that made me feel very sorry for myself:

Apparently this is a self-portrait from some remote area of Turkey.

Fine. I finally find my goddamned recipe and start making biscotti. As I'm waiting for the first batch to come out of the oven, I'm leafing through the latest issue of Newsweek. Yes, I know I should be boycotting it for the horrible things that the columnist wrote about gay actors, but it's a subscription, and I am too distracted on a daily basis to figure out how to unsubscribe. Anyway, I come to a certain article somewhere near the middle of the magazine, and I notice that the photo was taken by a friend of mine from college. Sigh.... that's okay. I've seen his name out there in several big publications, so I was not too terribly taken aback. THEN, as I continue to read the article, ANOTHER guy that I knew and disliked back in college was quoted as an expert on the article's subject matter!

Ferchrissakes.

I threw the magazine on the floor in disgust. A better woman than I would be delighted to see so many former associates doing so well for themselves. But I am not that better woman.

In other news, tomorrow we have a playdate with the boy from the post below this one, and his mother. I actually took the initiative on this one, and earlier this week sent a note via Jakob to give to his friend to give to his mother. His mother and I have been emailing back and forth ever since, and tomorrow we are all going to see Shrek in 3D. That whole process in itself was an adventure for me. It wasn't a trek across Pakistan or a soak in a hot springs in Timbuktu, but it was terrifying and thrilling all the same. Yay me.

Wavy, I met with your teacher today. She used to be Jakob's speech and language pathologist, but now teaches speech and language classes for preschooler kids who don't talk so good. Ha. She's been expressing concerns lately about episodes where you occasionally shut down and go into a zone that's hard to draw you out of. I've seen this a few times, but never really thought of them as "episodes." Just thought maybe you were tired or overwhelmed. Even underwhelmed. We discussed strategies to work on this, but other than that, she said you were doing fine and have progressed so much this year. But then, you and I already knew that, huh.

Another week and a half of school for both of you, then it's off to Cali grandma's for a month. I feel slightly guilty for looking forward to this. But not too guilty, as I have already made arrangements to visit mid-June to spend a long weekend with you guys. And I'm sure Jakob will hold me to my promise of a boat ride, since he was too sick to go whale watching with me and Wavy when we were in Fort Bragg.

Time to get to bed so I don't fall asleep during Shrek tomorrow. That'll be an impressive first playdate, me falling asleep in her lap and snoring.

Love you. Sleep tight.

A few notes before the Percocet kicks in

2010-05-15T21:11:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Sometime between dropping your daddy off at the cath lab yesterday morning and picking him up in the afternoon, I wrenched something in my back. It wasn't too bad this morning, so we went out and got Jakob signed up for soccer in the fall, and spent the rest of the day at the Carson City Multicultural Festival at the city college campus. But then we came home and I can't take a deep breath without stabbing pain in my mid-back, and I can't bend, twist, sit or lie down. Thankfully, I have an arsenal of painkillers at my disposal from the last few times I've been bad off enough to require meds.

Cath lab? Oh yeah. Daddy's heart is giving him problems again. He had some chest pain last week, and went in for some tests, resulting in getting cathed yesterday. They weren't sure if they were going to put in more stents or if they were going to have to crack him open again, so yesterday we were hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Luckily, they just went in, looked around a bit, didn't find any viable veins to stent, and sent him home, saying they will try and just remedy this with a change in meds and restricting his diet even more. More as this develops.

Signed you up for soccer today, Jakob. The mother of one of your teammates last year was at the registration booth; she's some kind of official with the regional soccer organization. She came over and was nice and chatted with us a bit, then walked over and talked briefly with the lady manning the registration desk right before we sat down and handed over our paperwork and our registration fee. Paranoid Momma of course just KNOWS that she was quickly whispering something to the lady at the desk like... "I don't want this next kid on my son's team. Put their paperwork in a different pile."

Isn't Momma awful?

Then we headed to Carson to see what Carson's version of "multicultural" is. I was thinking it might be a bunch of booths with various different shades of white people, but it was actually pretty cool. There was a mariachi band, Japanese taiko drummers, some martial arts demos, and lots of different ethnic foods, including Momma's favorite!!!

Indian tacos!!!

This is the real reason I drove us all here today. I had heard there would be Taiko drummers. I would LOVE to learn how to do this. Too cool.

Jakob's friend from school was there with his family, and they were running the Indian taco booth. We stole him away and spent the rest of the afternoon at the children's art area, where you all made Navajo sand paintings, dreamcatchers, Australian rainsticks, Chinese lanterns and Mexican bead bracelets.

Photo snapped at an off-moment. I think you guys actually had a lot more fun than this image indicates. Gawd, at least I hope so. Cheer up, guys!

Here's you and your friend. You guys had a really good time together today. I'm going to ask his mom if we can take him to a movie or something next weekend.

You guys with some of the stuff you made.

Well, the percocet's working and I'm feeling kind of muzzy. I'm sure I've got more to say, but it'll have to wait. Love you! Let's stay in tomorrow, 'kay!?!?

Another one from the vault. Just because.

2010-05-07T23:57:00.001-07:00

I should be more surprised than I am...

2010-05-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Today after dinner we went to the park, a different one than we normally go to. It's a small, pretty one, tucked away behind the movie theaters and near an older part of Minden. We discovered it last week, and the novelty of the new and different play equipment hasn't worn off for you yet.

On the other side of the park, there were a bunch of kids and parents practicing t-ball. When we decided to take a stroll all the way around the park before heading home, we passed closer to the group, and I heard someone shout out, "Hey! Hi!"

It was your soccer coach from last season, Jake. Her husband was out in the middle of the bunch of kids, coaching t-ball.

Fine.

Except that the last that we saw of the two of them was the end-of-season soccer party. When I had given her my email address and told them to get ahold of us when it was time to do t-ball.

Now I don't know if she genuinely forgot us, or if this was an intentional SNUB, but... what-EV. But I just remember getting a vague feeling from her husband last year that he was already mentally trashing our email addy even as I was talking to him.

Ah well, Jakob. You have better things to do right now than stupid ol' t-ball anyway. We chatted for a bit, I admired her new baby with the insipid, preppy name and blotchy face, and then she hurried away.

Anyway, young man, you, YOU, got to meet Willy Vlautin a couple of nights ago. We drove to Reno after I got off work on Tuesday, and went to the bookstore and listened to Willy read some stuff from his new novel, Lean on Pete, play guitar and sing a few songs and then sign books.

We stood in line for quite a while before we made it up to the front. When we finally did, you plopped your new kid's book that I had just bought you down in front of him, slid it towards him, and said, "My name's Jakob." He laughed, I blushed. He said, "Sorry, buddy, I can't sign that. But I sure wish I could draw like that." He signed my book and we chatted a bit about how much I had enjoyed it. He was really taken aback that I had already read it, and I told him how I had pre-ordered it at amazon a couple weeks earlier. He couldn't seem to thank me enough for doing that. I should've let him know that I actually bought another there at the signing that night, so that he wouldn't think I was stiffing the bookstore. Oh well. I told him how he hadn't written anything yet that didn't make me cry bitterly at the end of it. He shrugged and said, "Yeah, I guess I'm just a sad sack like that." I got the two of you to sit still for a sec so I could snap your pic.

I'll tell you two a little secret... I have a wee little crush on Willy. I mean, look how handsome he is. Even though he still dresses like it's the '90s. I *loved* the '90s! And his hair is all mussed up like that because he runs his massive hands through it all the time, which is really endearing.

That was my first cute celebrity run-in this week.

Second, I got to interview the Drive-By Truckers for the magazine cover story this week! Well, kinda. Originally my editor had wanted me to interview them by phone. I died a little bit inside, because, as you know, I don't do phones. Face to face I can do, but phones are RIGHT OUT.

But then their publicist got back to us and told us they couldn't do a phone interview anyway, as they are on tour in Europe at the moment. (Last I heard, they have phones in Europe, but that is neither here nor there...) But she asked if we were interested in doing an email interview. So I came up with a dozen questions that were passed on to the lead singer, Patterson Hood.

Although my questions were quite in earnest, his answers were a bit pat and snarky, but eminently usable and quotable, so the "interview" in its entirety appears in tomorrow's magazine. Along with my adorable full-page layout. Hey. I can do it all.

Hopefully you guys will let me sneak away on Sunday night (Mother's Day! Of course you will!) to see them at the Crystal Bay Club.

So tomorrow is Friday, your guys' last chance to painstakingly paste and staple together wonderful Mother's Day projects at school. I expect to be showered with gifts all weekend!

Love you and sleep tight. Did I mention that you both smell really awesomely fantastic tonight? No? You do!

Oh, my darling Clementine

2010-05-02T01:53:00.000-07:00

Hey Wavy,

I remember this song being in our grade school songbook. We sang it in music class many times, along with "16 Miles on the Erie Canal" and "A Few of My Favorite Things." And now you're obsessed with it. We watched a cheesy version of it on YouTube about a dozen times over the past few days. You ask me to sing it whenever we get in the car. Yesterday you thought you saw Clementine in the play structure at McDonalds. You kept asking me, where did she go, where did she go? I had to convince you that she had climbed down, went to the restroom and left with her parents.

This is a delicate time for both of us now. How can I impress upon you that you won't die if you get a splinter. I can see it in your eyes, how you hesitate before going out the back door with no shoes on. Or how do I answer you when you ask me, "Where did Clementine go when she died?"

There are questions you interject into the song, every time we sing it, so often now that they have become part of the song:

Oh my darlin' oh my darlin' oh my daaaaarlin' Clementine...
(You: Who is Clementine? Me: She was a girl who lived a long, long time ago.)

You are lost and gone forever...
(You: Did she die? Me: Yes. You: Because she got a splinter?)
..........
Hit her foot against a splinter, fell into the foaming brine.
(You: What's brine? Me: It's another word for ocean. You: She got a splinter?)

We were looking at books at the store today, and you were pointing at various books with girls on the covers, saying, "This one looks like Clementine!"

I think we may be just a few choruses away from you officially adopting poor Clementine as your imaginary friend. Oh dear heart, why couldn't you have just obsessed over some vapid Jonas Brothers song?

Oh, My Darling Clementine

In a cavern, In a canyon,
Excavating for a mine,
Dwelt a miner forty-niner,
And his daughter Clementine.

Chorus:
Oh my darling, Oh my darling,
Oh my darling Clementine,
You are lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry Clementine.

Repeat chorus

Light she was and like a fairy,
And her shoes were number nine;
Herring boxes, without topses,
Sandals were for Clementine.

Repeat chorus

Drove she ducklings to the water,
Every morning just at nine;
Hit her foot against a splinter,
Fell into the foaming brine.

Repeat chorus

Ruby lips above the water,
Blowing bubbles, soft and fine;
But alas! I was no swimmer,
So I lost my Clementine.

What we ate this weekend

2010-04-26T00:21:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Now that I have finally watched the last episode of the first season of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, maybe I can turn my attentions back to blogging. I've been streaming the 13 episodes of that damnable show on Netflix, and that is how most of my after-hours online time has been spent the past week or so.

Made an exciting discovery this weekend: Paul Schat's Bakery in Carson. Yeah, yeah, we've been driving back and forth past the signage for months now, but it never occurred to me to actually check it out until this weekend, when I promised Wavy a cupcake for the grief she incurred whilst getting inoculated against Hepatitis A at the community clinic held at the local high school. I also got you both fluorided, which you already had done at school, but I figured, hey, if fluoride is good for ya, double-fluoride is hella good for ya. I talked to the tech who painted Jake's teeth about why the hell they're so funky-looking (all gums and hardly any teeth) and she was pretty certain it's because you grind your teeth. Now while I *have* heard you grind your teeth at night (a sound akin to stabbing myself in the eyeball with a rusty fork), I had no idea that your grinding was extensive enough to actually wear your teeth down that much. Will have to confirm with your dentist.

There were also a couple of discount-rate clowns with questionable balloon-animal skills in attendance. Their balloons were constantly popping with a retort like a firecracker going off. Every time one popped, the help at the overwhelmed registration desks would pause and wince. It reminded me of the scene in Boogie Nights when the half-naked house boy is wandering around setting off firecrackers with "Sister Christian" blaring on the stereo. The clinic was a badly-organized madhouse. What should have taken half an hour at the most took up almost two and a half hours of our day.

Which finally brings me back to Schat's Bakery. Our original plan was to stop off at the clinic to get Wavy her shot (school had sent a notice that there was a gap in her vaccine history) and then to Reno with a stop at Mix Cupcakes before heading to the animal sanctuary to look at lions and tigers and bears, oh my.

But the cupcake place closes at noon on Saturdays, and the website says that the animals at the sanctuary don't care to mingle in the afternoons, so the two-hour delay at the clinic screwed up our day bigtime.

Too late to make a long story short, but we wound up at Schat's Bakery, which doesn't have cupcakes at all. When I whispered to the counter help through gritted teeth that I had promised you a cupcake, they offered up a lovely strawberry creme puff instead, and that seemed to appease you. You were nice and shared it with your brother, while I got a chocolate croissant [v.g.]. Granted, we needed to discover a decent bakery kinda like we need a hole in the head, but my dislike of Carson City was lessened just a bit by the air of civility that a bakery lends to the town.

Jake and his creme puff and his Avett Brothers t-shirt.

Wavy and the creme puff and her "Stupid Raisins Stay Out of My Cookies!" t-shirt.

The next day, we went to the Carson Valley Chili Cookoff, otherwise known as the Chili-less Chili Cookoff. It lacks chili the way that cheese shop in the Monty Python sketch lacks cheese.

The only chili to be had by the regular chili-consuming public is some sort of canned-tasting stuff at the one and only food booth run by the local Sertoma group. From what I can gather, the chilis prepared for competition are only available to the judges and their families and town officials. What-EV. But... you were both keen to go to the event to hear live music and get a chili dog from the Sertomas, so we went for lack of anything better to do on a Sunday afternoon.

I could go on and on about what else we ate this weekend (dinner specials at Fandango with Fran and Chris, cones at Baskin Robbins, clam strips at Red Robin, etc. etc.) but the hour grows late. Hopefully next weekend I'll be able to tell you all about the healthy stuff we made for ourselves at home. Love you both and good night.

Falling behind again already

2010-04-22T11:09:00.000-07:00

But maybe this will tide you over, kids:

Wavy sux at air hockey. But that's okay, cuz so do I.

Lake Marie

2010-04-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Went to see John Prine last night at the Pioneer Center in Reno. Just a beautiful artist, so many of his songs bring me to my knees. I'm counting myself lucky to have seen him before he decides not to take it on the road anymore. He sounded kind of old and frail for the first couple of songs, then he hit his groove and sounded strong and clear the rest of the night.

Anyway, I didn't take you guys with me, although I think you might have enjoyed it. Maybe. I got home after you two went to bed, so I didn't see you until this morning. Jakob, you woke me up by snuggling up with me in bed. You said, "Daddy said you went to a concert last night." Before I could resign myself to trying to assuage hurt feelings, you continued, "I didn't get to go, but can I go next time?" Well, sure sweetie. Of course. If by next time, you mean AFTER Sunday, when Fran and I go to see the Avett Brothers.

Then you asked me what my favorite song was that he sang last night. I didn't have to think long to come up with "Lake Marie." There were a few songs last night that I did not know, and this was one of them. It just crawled up under my skin and stayed there the rest of the night, and the entire drive home.

LAKE MARIE

We were standing
Standing by peaceful waters
Standing by peaceful waters
Whoa Wah Oh Wha Oh
Whoa Wah Oh Wha Oh

Many years ago along the Illinois-Wisconsin Border
There was this Indian tribe
They found two babies in the woods
White babies
One of them was named Elizabeth
She was the fairer of the two
While the smaller and more fragile one was named Marie
Having never seen white girls before
And living on the two lakes known as the Twin Lakes
They named the larger and more beautiful Lake, Lake Elizabeth
And thus the smaller lake that was hidden from the highway
Became known forever as Lake Marie

Chorus

Many years later I found myself talking to this girl
Who was standing there with her back turned to Lake Marie
The wind was blowing especially through her hair
There was four italian sausages cooking on the outdoor grill
And Man, they was ssssssssizzlin'
Many years later we found ourselves in Canada
Trying to save our marriage and perhaps catch a few fish
Whatever came first
That night she fell asleep in my arms
Humming the tune to "Louie Louie'
Aah baby, We gotta go now.

Chorus

The dogs were barking as the cars were parking
The loan sharks were sharking the narcs were narcing
Practically everyone was there
In the parking lot by the forest preserve
The police had found two bodies in the woods
Nay, naked bodies
Their faces had been horribly disfigured by some sharp object
Saw it on the news On the TV news in a black and white video
You know what blood looks like in a black and white video?
Shadows, Shadows that's exactly what it looks like
All the love we shared between her and me was slammed
Slammed up against the banks of Old Lake Marie, Marie

We were standing
Standing by peaceful waters
Standing by peaceful waters
Whoa Wah Oh Wha Oh
Whoa Wah Oh Wha Oh

Here's another one, for good measure. "Everything is Cool" from the early '90s. Maybe I'm PMS'ing this week. But I've been listening to John Prine for the past few days and crying.

I saw a hundred thousand blackbirds
Just flying thru the sky
And they seemed to form a teardrop
From a black-haired angel's eye
That tear fell all around me
And it washed my sins away

WTF. How can you NOT cry.

Enough. Hope the two of you find music in your life that makes you sad. And makes you happy. And makes you happy and sad at the same time. Love you.

Ever EVER!

2010-04-04T23:14:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Here's some Easter morning pictures for you. I had to try and make it a decent holiday for you two, as you usually stay with your Cali grandparents for Easter break, and hunt eggs in their enormous, meandering yard, but your grandma had to go to Arkansas to be with *her* parents (your great-grandparents) for the past few weeks, because her dad is feeling poorly. He's 95 years old! That's a helluva long time to be alive.

Anyway, camera-wise, I stayed pretty tight on you, as I don't need people to see just how un-pretty and junky our back yard looks right now. We are sooooo not ready for spring.

So yeah, I got you this ant farm, but I am returning it as soon as I can. After I bought it and brought it home, I looked up reviews of the darned thing on the internets. Hardly one person had anything nice to say about this particular model. In fact, many talked about how dag-nasty it is, how the ants are quick to die and get moldy, and how they are miserable and eventually become crazy and suicidal, and mostly how the ants refuse to build tunnels. So I bought you a different, more highly regarded model of ant farm on amazon.com which will hopefully be here by the weekend. Sorry, sweetie. My bad.

I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Real ones! Not out of a tube! I actually had to find a warm place for them to rise. Then it was time to start making dinner.

Easter menu that was deceptively simple looking, yet had me in the kitchen from the moment the breakfast dishes were done until dinner time at 5:30 pm:

1) Cranberry-mustard glazed spiral-cut ham
Of course this was the easiest part of the whole meal. Just a can of whole cranberry sauce mixed with a cup of brown sugar and approx. quarter cup of spicy brown mustard. Baste liberally. I've only made a couple or so hams in my life, but this was was hands-down the best. The glaze caramelized the outside of the ham and I jammed a bunch of glaze in between the spiral-cut slices and it was just divine.

2) Gruyere gratin potatoes
The most sinfully decadent potatoes ever. Can't go wrong when there are THREE cups of heavy cream involved. And Gruyere.

3) Deviled eggs
Wavy enjoyed the hell out of these.

4) Asparagus
Steamed in the microwave for a few minutes, dressed up with a bit of butter and lemon. I even got Jakob to eat the heads off of a few of them.

5) Cheesy garlic monkey bread
An amalgam of different monkey bread recipes, cuz I couldn't find just one that suited my needs. This one was thawed frozen bread dough divided into 24 balls, rolled in parmesan, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with cheddar and garlic and baked for 30 minutes. Daddy didn't believe that I didn't get this at the grocery store bakery. It was pretty damn good.

6) For dessert, individual sticky toffee puddings
They weren't as sticky as I would've liked them to be, cuz I didn't make enough of the toffee, but it was very good with a spritz of whip cream on it. The next day (tonight, that is) however, the toffee had a chance to soak through the entire puddings, and after about 15 seconds in the microwave, I think they tasted the way they were supposed to.

Yes, yes, I realize that this meal is a most righteous artery clogger, but it's a holiday, and we'll go for extra walks this week and eat a bit more carefully for a while.

I'm thinking this Easter might have been a success, because Jakob murmured as he was drifting off to sleep: "This was the best Easter ever!" Ever ever, Jakob? In all your six years you've never had a better Easter? Ha! Take THAT, grandma and grandpa! Heh.

Good night. Love you.

'twas the night/morning before [insert holiday here]

2010-04-04T02:31:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

I always seem to finish this kind of stuff way after midnight. I put together your easter baskets and got your eggs ready for the bunny to sneak in sometime tonight to do his thing.

I like this setting on the new camera, called Pinhole. It reminds me of a faded and poorly lit family portrait from the '70s. Like it should say "Olan Mills" in gold stamp down in the corner.

Anyway, this year you each get a present from the easter bunny: Jakob gets a space-age techno ant farm and Wavy gets a rainbow in her room.

I went to "It's Educational" school supplies store today. It's does a pretty bustling business due to all the homeschoolers in this particular area. I walk in the door, and everything seems to have your name on it, Jakob. I think, "He'd like that, and that, oh and he'd really like that. And that." You're obsessed with maps and geography and presidents and roadways and you're just so easy to shop for.

But Wavy, you're at that age where the only thing I can gather that you're obsessed with is ice cream and whining. And I can hardly buy you that for the various gift-giving holidays. I walked around the store, with an armload of stuff for Jake, but finally whittled it down to just the ant farm, but you... you took me forever. You enjoy flash cards and coloring books and paints, but I couldn't find something on par with Jake's gift, so I settled for the rainbow thingie.

Hope you guys like your stuff. We'll see.

In the baskets:

Shampoo
Bubbles
Tiny chocolate bunnies
Pez (Pooh for Wavy and Home Depot truck for Jake)
Inflatable globe for Jake
Hair scrunchies and lip balm for Wavy
Stapler and pens for Jake
Pens and watercolors for Wavy
Herbs for the window sill (Peppermint for Jake, lemon thyme for Wavy)

Okay, it's late and the easter bunny's got to get a couple hours sleep. Love you!

Sigh...

2010-03-31T22:41:00.000-07:00

Can I go back now? Please?

Full moon

2010-03-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Still on a vacation high. After so many years without one, I now think a person should have one every three or four months. Have been spending the evening looking up Alaskan cruises and plotting my next liquor store holdup.

Jakob, you told us all a great story during the car ride back from dinner in town tonight (Qdoba! Kids eat free on Monday and Tuesday nights!). The moon is full and you said it looked like a big saucer of milk. I asked you to elaborate, and you told us the story of the cat who thought the full moon looked like a saucer of milk and tried and tried to reach it so she could have a drink. She climbed up into a tree and still she couldn't reach it. She looked down and saw it in the lake and climbed down to try and reach it. Finally she gave up and went home and there was a big ol' saucer of milk waiting for her on the kitchen floor. Lovely!

You love to tell us stories at bedtime, some of them quite long and rambling. We take turns. Wavy, your stories usually consist of, "Once upon a time, there was a big.... DINOSAUR! He was too woggly boggly. Rowr! The end." Mine usually recount the daily adventures of Princess Waverly and Prince Jakob in the dark forest.

Can't see the moon now, as it is currently covered by snow and/or rain clouds. It's supposed to storm for the rest of the week. What happened to our spring? At least we had a perfectly perfect weekend.

Also perfectly perfect: your recent discovery of the Beatles catalog. Well, okay not the entire catalog; right now it's just Yellow Submarine. We've been listening to it every time we get in the car. Jake, your favorite song right now is "All You Need is Love." There's something deeply satisfying about driving down the highway, looking in the rearview mirror and seeing both kids singing along to Beatles songs.

I made the mistake of telling you that there is also an animated movie of the same name, and now you want to see it. I saw it when I was exactly your age, and it scarred me for life, or at least until my young adulthood. I am STILL uncomfortable when talk of Blue Meanies pops up. Evil creatures, they are.

ADDENDUM: Daddy downloaded the whole movie onto your computer, and now you won't stop watching it, AND you tease me about the Blue Meanies. Keep it up, young man, and I will show you the movie directly below...

How do I shield you guys, or do I even want to try to, from the things that will mess with your head for the rest of your life? Like THIS GUY, who ruined bedtime for me for YEARS:

Where were my parents then? How did they let me see this movie? What were they thinking? I'll never forgive them this transgression.

Or how 'bout this:

I specifically remember my mom sitting there with me, watching this on television. She said, "Gah, what is this. I can't take it anymore." And she got up and left the room. She left me there to watch it by myself! Haunted me for years.

Just sayin'... how am I to know what will and will not affect your tender minds for years and years TK. It's too much pressure on your poor momma. That's it. Nothing but Noggin and Sprout on tv until you are off to college.

That's enough free association rambling for now. Love you both. Good night.

Chocolate Bear Goes to Reno

2010-03-28T22:14:00.000-07:00

Reno was busy today. Traditionally, the first weekend of spring break is when all the area junkies and prostitutes and junky-prostitutes gather downtown for picnics and maypole dances.

I don't know why this downtown liquor store sign cracks me up. Oh wait, yes I do. It's frickin' hilarious. "If the wind knocks down the lettering on our sign, please see above."

Service at Josef's Bakery and Cafe is atrocious at brunchtime on Sundays, but by god, the wait is worth it. Tasty. But watch out, Jakob! That's a peanut butter cookie they're trying to slip by you.

Green Benedict = perfectly poached eggs wiggling and jiggling atop a bed of creamed spinach, topped with a light and tangy hollandaise. Wavy said they looked like BOOBS.

Wavy always has the pasta with butter, garlic and parmesan. Simple, yet sublime.

A line was forming behind us as Wavy tried to decide on ONE item from the bakery case. We eventually grabbed our goods and ran, as we were running a bit late for our movie.

We went to see a couple of films about the wonders of the universe and springtime night skies over at the Fleischmann Planetarium at University of Nevada, Reno. Jakob only fell asleep once. I don't blame him, the first feature was a bit of a snoozer.

We found a sunny spot afterwards to chow down on our baked goods. Wavy got the bunny in pajamas.

Mom and Jakob got petits fours. They got a bit crunched when I dropped them in the parking lot.

Yum.

Chocolate Bear needs a rest now. He drove hither and yon and spent a buttload of money this weekend, and just needs to get in his pajamas with a glass of port and a petit four, climb in bed and stream some Netflix. Dont'cha, Chocolate Bear. But he loves you both very much! Good night, he says!

Chocolate Bear Goes to Tahoe

2010-03-28T01:51:00.000-07:00

Timber Cove Pier.

Timber Cove Pier attitude.

Chevy's, where our server assumes that I am a single mom like herself, and I play along with it, and we talk at length about how hard it is to make ends meet. She gives us the bro (bra?) deal on our drinks.

Chocolate Bear chillin' at Sand Harbor.

Why exactly am I not here EVERY WEEKEND?

Wavy making sandcastles.

Jakob and CB play hide-and-seek.

Jakob finds CB.

In the background, Wavy looks like a teenager...

Jakob looks all grown up, too.

We cap off our adventure with a trip to Jamba Juice. Everyone looks like little kids again, thank gawd.

Coupla things, maybe three

2010-03-26T23:21:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Besides evil, bloodthirsty and murderous despots, there is no one more despicable in this world than rude cashiers. Several times in the space of just one week, I've come across a handful of them, and they just leave me shaking with rage.

Just tonight, on the way home from work, I stopped at Raley's for a few things. I have made Raley's my supermarket of choice, when there are two other supermarkets on that same block, at least one of them less expensive. Raley's just has a more pleasant clientele and nicer clerks. But the clerk I got tonight was chatting loudly with his buddy at the next checkout line about -- as far as I can tell -- some hilarious tv show in which a baby was being torn apart by a pit bull. He asked me curtly, "hey, how ya doin' tonight?" and cut me off before I could get half a word out of my mouth: "Fi--." He scanned the rest of my groceries, all the while chatting boisterously with his buddy, then handed me my receipt without looking at me and without a thank you.

Earlier this week, I completed an entire $150 grocery purchase at WalMart, and I didn't think it was possible, but the entire transaction took place without eye contact or one goddamned "hello" or "thank you."

A similar sale went down at the shoe store when I bought sneakers last weekend. I shouted over my shoulder as I walked out the door, "No, thank YOU! Have a lovely day!"

My outrage may be construed as an over-reaction, but I really and truly don't believe I am in the wrong to expect, if not warmth and congeniality, at least common frickin' decency. And here's why:

I've been there. I have worked retail. I have worked fast food. I have worked cash registers in the worst conditions imaginable. I have been yelled at, I have been called an idiot, I have been short-changed, I have been hit on, I have dealt with lines of customers that wind out the door and into the parking lot. And yes, dammit, I have even been threatened with a gun. And in every instance (except for maybe the gun thing), I have afforded every customer a "hello," a "thank you," a "come again" and a smile. Even when sick as a dog, or hung over, or mourning a love gone bad. There is no excuse.

I'm not expecting, and frankly do not enjoy, an extended conversation or any pleasantries beyond "Nice weather we're having..." But I do expect, at the very least, an acknowledgment that I am standing at your register and am about to hand you my hard-earned money, in the form of a hello or a nod or eye contact. And at the end of our business, we shall both conclude with a THANK YOU. That last part doesn't even have to sound sincere, it just has to EXIST.

So there are at least two things, maybe three, that I expect the two of you to learn how to do, and how to do WELL, before you go out there and get your fancy jobs as astronauts or doctors or cartographers or what have you. You need to learn how to cashier and you need to learn how to wait tables. Armed with those two well-honed skills and the empathy it engenders as everyday customers yourselves, you will be better, kinder, more likeable and responsible people.

And you also need to learn how to ride public transportation. But that's a post for another day.

So chew carefully on THAT. Good night. Love you both.

Chocolate Bear: Day Two

2010-03-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

We figured out yesterday that you get Chocolate Bear for an extra week because of the Easter break. So probably no need to document every minute little detail of his stay with us, as we now have twice the opportunity to do some fun stuff over the break.

That said, the photos above are of our spirited game of Crazy Eights last night. You and CB teamed up to kick my ass. You didn't even HAVE to cheat this time!

I've discovered a trick to get you to smile pretty and not smile like in the cupcake photos from yesterday. I tell you to "relax... relax your face... and smile.... relax..." That's what I did in the above, anyway. But you did turn out looking hella sleepy. Is there no middle with you, child?!??

Has your back ever hurt so bad that it makes your front hurt? I am fine if I sit a certain way, but if I bend or stretch wrong, it feels like someone has hurtled a gigantic spear at my back that bursts out through the front of my rib cage. Is this normal? Or am I on the verge of having a heart attack?

I'm going to take a percocet, go to bed and hope I get up in the morning. Good night and love you.

Chocolate Bear: Day One

2010-03-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Jakob has brought home "Chocolate Bear" this week, his kindergarten class's ongoing project in which each kid brings the stuffed bear home for a week and has adventures with him, which they are supposed to document with pictures and prose. He comes with a satchel full of outfits and a huge binder of all the previous students' pictures and writings about their weeks with the bear.

This is the kind of shit I live for. Chocolate Bear is going to have a helluva week and is going to be spoilt for all the rest of the poor kids who get him for the rest of the year.

Never mind that I listened to a show on NPR this morning about MRSA infections: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a bacterial infection that is highly resistant to antibiotics. God only knows how wretchedly dirty this thing is. In fact, I think I will tenderly wrench him from your sleeping grasp right now, Jakob, and spray him down with Lysol.

Tonight Chocolate Bear and you kids made chocolate cupcakes (natch).

First we went to the store for some ingredients, including chocolate chips.

Then we mixed up a batch from a Martha Stewart recipe. Yeah, bitches, you read that right: THREE STICKS OF BUTTER!!!

Wavy and her belly full of quesadilla help us check the batter.

Lookin' good. Looks like Chocolate Bear approves.

Chocolate Bear's first day with Jakob is a sweet success.

Apropos of nothing... my social studies teacher back in eighth grade had a dog puppet that he used sometimes to help teach class. His name was "Whitey." The puppet, not the teacher. I can't remember what the teacher's name was. ADDENDUM: I think his name was Mr. Yates. He was a tall, hearty dude with a buzz cut. I can see him in my mind's eye. I think he kind of reminds me of all the characters that Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs plays nowadays. Not Buffalo Bill-like, but the wry, homespun, cop-types that he plays currently. Never mind.

Sleep tight! Love you.

Our time in the sun

2010-03-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

I guess it's too late to do a blow-by-blow, day-to-day account of our vacation to the coast. If it had been a longer, more leisurely trip, a daily blog of the whole affair would've been fun, if a tad geeky.

So all I can offer is a compendium of lists.

Firsts:

• First vacation as an entire family that didn't involve visiting or putting up grandparents. And neither set of gp's didn't even bitch that much.

• Wavy's first multi-day outing that didn't involve diapers, pull-ups OR any accidental accidents. Didn't even think about this until we got back. Good for you!

• A world-wide first, I believe, in amount of vomit two small children can expel on any one trip. You guys have the immune systems of one of those pristine tribes of Amazonians that are felled by a common cold. Seriously guys, really?

• Directly correlated to the above first... the first time I have ever tipped the hotel housekeeping staff. Handsomely. I hope the fact that I have never tipped before does not reflect badly on me. There was an envelope in our room when we got there with a polite note from the staff saying that we were free to tip if we wanted to. I just had no idea whatsoever that such things were done, so I googled it, and yes, it's done. Growing up, I stayed in more hotels than you've had hot dinners, and my parents never once tipped the housekeeping. Ah well. These guys deserved it; they happily kept us in clean bedding and towels when a lesser hotel would've kicked us out and spat on us.

• First trip that your daddy and I didn't have some kind of argument. I tend to get pretty peeved when he gets us lost while driving, which he did on several occasions, but that's about it. Actually, for at least a couple days, it was like separate vacations while on the same vacation. As each of you got sick at different times, one or the other of us would chillax at the hotel with whichever kid was sick, while the other two of us would go out and have adventures. Ideally, no one would've been sick, of course, but at least you guys timed it so that you each managed to have lots of fun.

• First trip with the new camera. It was wonderful and comfortable to walk around all day with a camera that's not your daddy's piece-of-crap Kodak. No complaints so far. Well, just one: Not as Mac-friendly as the first version of this camera. I didn't take as many detail shots as I wanted. You know the kind of stuff I'm talking about... door knobs, peeling wood, shoes, rope... THAT kind of shit. Next time. But I got plenty of photos of the two of you.

• First crack at some of those games I liked when I was your guys' age. Before we left, I had bought Candyland and Don't Spill the Beans and Crazy Eights to keep you entertained in the evenings. Jakob, you like to cheat, but you both seemed to enjoy them, although Wavy is a bit fuzzy on rules and etiquette in general.

• Wavy's first trail pee. I thought we were screwed when were hiking and you said halfway through that you had to tinkle. But I asked if you wanted to pee behind a tree, and you surprised me by saying yes. You're normally very fastidious when it comes to toilet habits.

• Our first banana slugs. I've always envied my coastal friends their close associations with banana slugs, while I have never seen one. We managed to get up close and personal with myriad slugs during our hike in the redwoods right outside of Fort Bragg. So yes, they really do exist. I was starting to think they didn't.

• And of course, Wavy's first glimpse of the ocean.

Highlights:

Day one: Left the house at a sane hour, as we are supposedly only driving halfway to the coast. A half day in the car is kinder on you two, as well as kinder on my poor, aching ass. But daddy read the googlemap directions wrong, and we wound up driving three hours out of our way in apocalyptic rain, and taking a route that had zero to offer lodging-wise. We wound up driving 10 hours our first day, and spending our first night a half hour outside of Fort Bragg.

Day two: Our first trip to the ocean. We walked at least a mile or two down the Ten Mile oceanside walkway. Man, this is some cliff-y terrain. We saw lots of ocean, just couldn't safely negotiate our way down to actually touch it. Wavy starts to feel bad and pukes in the parking lot. And oh yeah! It's my birthday! We wind up having $10 Round Table in the room. I had planned to eat a nice birthday steak at the well-appointed downtown brewpub, but things change, and I wasn't too, too disappointed. Well, maybe just a little.

Day three: Jakob has puked all night. It was Exorcist-like. He's too messed up the next morning to go whale watching on the charter boat. But Wavy has perked up a bit, so she and I go while daddy and Jakob stay in the room and watch movies. Only saw a couple of whales from afar, but it is a beautiful day on the ocean. Huge swells, though, and it could've been ugly. You've never been on a boat before, and I didn't know how you'd react. But you enjoyed yourself, kept your breakfast down and said you would do it again. I'm already looking at Santa Cruz and Monterey area boat tours for this summer, as I have promised Jakob a boat ride on the ocean. We also go shopping a bit in downtown Fort Bragg, discover a quaint little ice cream shop on the main drag and have dinner at a divey local eatery. It is weird to be a tourist, as I am actually a townie living near and working in a tourist town, who spends a good deal of time yelling at slow-walking, slow-driving, clueless-seeming tourists.

Day four: Jakob is feeling much better. We drive up and down the coast north of Fort Bragg. Daddy says trips like this are bad for me, cuz I see and start thinking about how the other half lives. You know... the people that have mansions right on the frickin' OCEAN. I am determined to win the PowerBall and retire to one of these cute little artist-hippy enclaves that crowd the cliffsides. We ogle all the nice houses, have lunch at the divey local eatery again, retire to the room to collect ourselves. Later in the day, I take the two of you for a little hike in the redwood forest right outside of town. It's daddy's turn to feel a little unsettled, so it's just the three of us. It's a beautiful afternoon for a hike, but the trail winds on a bit too long, and I'm starting to fear that I have forgotten some of the turns that we have taken once I realize that the trail is not a loop and we will have to backtrack to get back to the car. My fear turns a bit breathless when I realize that we are within sight of a couple of low-slung, dirty tents tucked away, several yards from the trail. Homeless people! Junkies! I'm usually quite amiable with people less fortunate than myself, but when I am borderline-lost in the woods with my two small children, and confronted with what could potentially be a dangerous situation, I'd rather flee than sit down and break bread. Without alarming you (hopefully), I whip us around in the direction from whence we came, miraculously take all the right turns and eventually dump us back out at the trailhead. Ice cream at the quaint little ice cream shop again! Then back to pick up daddy and an easy, cheap dinner at a fast-food establishment that I had vowed we would not patronize during this trip.

Day five: This is the day that we explore the coast south of Fort Bragg. We drive to the ~~Marin~~ Mendocino Headlands, build sand castles on the beach there, explore a Pygmy Forest. We're trying to pack everything into this day that we have not been able to get to yet. We have our most satisfying and yummy meal yet: lunch at the Wharf overlooking the harbor. The day has turned blustery and winter-like, but we still have places to go: another trip to Glass Beach, our fourth so far, to snatch up beach glass for souvenirs, as we are not really t-shirt and fridge magnet types. Another trip to the ice cream shop, as daddy has not been yet. I promise never to eat ice cream ever again. Dinner is snacks back at the hotel.

Day six: Wavy has spent the entire night puking and dry-heaving and dozing off, then waking up and doing it all over again. At least she is a neater and more organized puker than Jakob, and will spew into the toilet, or a sink, or even into a cup when instructed to. Jakob on the other hand, will jettison his lunch wherever and whenever, and -- scarily -- will even puke in his sleep. But today is a travel day; we have to get going. Wavy insists that she is fine. We prop her up in her car seat, give her a cup to puke in and hit the road. She and daddy -- who stayed up with her most of the night before -- slept all the way through the Napa Valley route home, and Jakob played his PSP. I had plenty of time to contemplate the extraordinarily beautiful vineyards and landscape, and to figure out the name of my future winery: "Rowan Wolf." I also constructed a wine label in my head, which I will commit to paper one of these days. The plan was to drive as far as Fairfield and go to the Jelly Belly factory for their free tour and samples, but we got to Fairfield, checked into the hotel and crashed for the rest of the afternoon. Later that night, I took Jakob out to a nearby theater to see Alice In Wonderland in 3D, which he loved more than I thought he would. He recounted the entire movie to me, almost scene by scene. Good thing he liked it, the whole evening cost more than a weekend at Disneyland. IMAX 3D movies are insanely expensive, plus popcorn and drinks? Yowza.

Day seven: Everyone seemed pretty healthy, so we decided to give the JB factory a try. It went fine, we got plenty of samples, although at this point in the trip, I was starting to feel a bit queasy myself. Jakob and daddy decided that they wanted to go to the Air Museum, and we spent an insane amount of time getting lost trying to find it, and finally scrapped the whole idea and headed home, which was only about two and a half hours away.

So home now. Back at work. Planning on playing lotto a bit more frequently. Thanks for... well... for being you! Sorry you guys didn't feel better. I'll try to make it up to you. Love you, good night, and sorry this was so much longer than I had at first intended.

Thursday Thirteen

2010-03-10T22:34:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

Getting ready for our trip to Ft. Bragg. I stopped at the ubiquitous big box store on my way home tonight, and also at Trader Joe's, for hotel and road snacks, breakfast foods and soda. I vow never to spend $2 on a can of hotel soda ever again. For some reason, was also compelled to buy new underwear, board games, a new toothbrush and about 40 lbs of oranges.

Anyway, short and sweet Thursday Thirteen: Thirteen things that I want to make in the kitchen when we get back. A good portion of this list will include things that I have long ago bought the ingredients for, but just lost interest in, or was not in the mood for, or some other mundane roadblock.

1) Marshmallows

2) Hello Kitty cake pops

3) Tiramisu pancakes

4) Cookie Monster cupcakes

5) Cheater petits fours

6) Boston Market squash casserole

7) Red bean mochi

8) Boeuf Bourguignon

9) Chili Verde

10) Polenta Lasagna

11) Cocksucker!

12) A roasted turkey

13) An Easter butter lamb It used to be my job as a kid to make the Easter butter lamb for Easter dinner. I haven't made one in at least 30 years, but I resolve to make one this year, and to show you kids how to do it.

Horseshoes and hand grenades

2010-03-07T21:29:00.000-08:00

Gratuitous shot of Sawyer, thank you very much...

Hey kids,

Sick pow day today! Not really. I don't even know what that means. I imagine it's what the kids are saying about the snow and ski conditions in Tahoe today. But meanwhile, down here in the valley, we were wearing short sleeves and Crocs.

Woke up this morning to a severe milk-egg-butter-bread deficit, so wound up going out for breakfast. Afterwards, went to the park and, surprisingly, whiled away about three hours, soaking up the Vitamin D and pinking up your pasty-white winter complexions. We did a long, slow, lazy walk of the entire perimeter of the park, throwing rocks in the creek, chasing geese, half-heartedly doing the exercise circuit thingamabobs (we all can collectively do approx ZERO pull-ups). We watched a highly organized game of flag football (they had uniforms, refs and everything), swung on the swings, picked some litter up out of the creek. In general, just did a whole lot of nothing.

Jakob picked up a big feather and asked me why it wasn't on the bird anymore. Because it fell off. Why? I dunno. Well, how do feathers stick to birds? I dunno. What kind of leaf is this? A brown one. Why isn't it on the tree anymore? It fell off. How do leaves stick to trees? I dunno. Etc. Etc. You are going to grow up thinking that your mother is an idiot.

We spent a good deal of time hanging out in the horseshoe pits, throwing sticks and pretending they were horseshoes. You both seemed to enjoy our improvised game so much, that I resolved to go to Big 5 Sports that very day to price horseshoe sets. I mean, horseshoes are something that everyone needs, right? All the grandmas and grandpas would enjoy it when they visit over the summer. It's a great camping and backyard BBQ activity. Yes, yes, whatever. I talked myself into it.

So after a stop at Payless Shoes for school shoes ("Wizards of Waverly Place" shoes for Waverly. Never seen the show, but the shoes are super-cute, with a big "W" emblazoned on them. And Wavy, your feet are now officially one half size bigger than your brother's. Just sayin'...) it was off to Big 5. As luck would have it, the prohibitively priced $49.99 horseshoe set was on sale this week for half off, so I snagged it. We raced home to have lunch, check our email, and it was back to the park for an afternoon of honest-to-gawd horseshoes. With real horseshoes. Jakob was wicked stoked, and would've played all night if I had let him. Wavy, not so much. She chucked a couple of those heavy-ass shoes a foot or two down the lane (Do I sound like I know 'shoe jargon? Like I know what the hell I'm talking about? This is the first time I've ever played horseshoes in my life...), decided it wasn't for her, and went on to collect pine cones instead. Hopefully, though, this is one of those outrageous impulse buys that will pay off in spades as the weather continues to warm up. Or -- one of us will wind up with a concussion.

The mountains that ring our sunny little Carson Valley were topped with increasingly stormy looking clouds throughout the day, and sure enough, checking the weather forecast this evening, looks like rain and snow are predicted for the rest of the week. FEH!!!

Daddy gave me an early birthday present: a Wii game called "Endless Ocean: Blue World" which I had been crowing about ever since I read about its late Feb release date. I don't have the heart to tell him that after about ten minutes of game play, my carpal tunnel had gone completely aggro, and my entire arm from my thumb to my shoulder was burning. Damn.

And Oscars! Whoot! Everything went exactly the way I wanted it to. Haha, Avatar got almost nothin'. I liked and appreciated the movie, but it was like a piece of chocolate lava cake, compared to Hurt Locker's hearty prime rib. In my next life, I want to frickin' BE Kathryn Bigelow. She's in her late 50s but looks like she's in her 30s, is beautiful and talented and ... and... sigh... I heart Kath. Call me, sweetie! We'll do Thai!

Short work week this week. Friday is the first day of Birthday Bash 2010: The Fort Bragg Adventure!™ Can't wait. This week will be torture. Love you both. Sleep tight.

"Hey, where'd my nards go?

2010-03-06T22:53:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

We went to the Polar Bear Swim in Tahoe City today. Here's a link to more photos.

I have a hard time believing Wavy had a good time today. There was a huge crush of people, and it was noisy, and that is soooooo not your scene. Even though there were quite a few kids there, and Jakob seemed to have enjoyed himself, it's probably not the most kid-friendly SnowFest! event of the year. There was an awful lot of public drunkenness. The bead and party favor throwing from the top balcony of the bar where the event is held? The party favors were stick pins with flashing Bacardi logos and Bacardi-logoed tools of some sort used to muddle the mint in your mojitos. Awesome! You kids were like... "What the hell is this shit..."

But you did go to town on the free swedish meatballs and jalapeno poppers. Plus we got to see our friend Franny today, whom we haven't seen in a while. Although when we stopped to pick her up, her dog Lewey just about sent Jakob into an apoplectic fit. Lewey's an increasingly mean-ass sounding little dog, although all bark and no bite. You're leery of dogs in the first place, so when Lewey came tearing after you, barking and snarling, you backed up into a corner screaming in short, honking little blasts and waving your arms every which way. I've never seen a total freak-out like this. Franny's insistence that the dog means you no harm is absolutely unhelpful, but what else can she do? The dog *is* harmless, but from now on I will probably have to carefully ask her to put the dog somewhere behind closed doors before we walk in the door.

And then after all the nearly naked, doughy white guys were done and out of the water, it started to snow. But all in all, freak-out aside, a pleasant outing to occupy a day that would have otherwise been spent doing laundry and cleaning toilets.

Now that you guys are asleep, I do believe I am going to wad myself up in a blanket and fire up the DVD player. Latest on my Netflix queue is "Lars and the Real Girl." I hear good things. Good night, you two. Love you.

Oh, and just for the hell of it, here is an oldie-but-goodie:

Oh, and I guess I'll post this one, too. From the time of the "Great Blog Blackout of Oct. 2009 - March 2010."

Happy, Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me... and to You

2010-03-05T23:26:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

I don't know if the above claim is true or not, but it's the opening line of chapter 14 of Annie Proulx's "The Shipping News."

Don't know why that line set off a storm inside my head seven or so years ago when I was casting about for a name for the unborn Jakob. Maybe because I'm a Pisces, maybe because I've lived large portions of my life on or about the water and have ocean in my blood, no matter how high into the high desert or mountains I retreat.

So Jakob wound up being a Jakob, and I was sad that such a great name had to go to waste. But lo and behold, I got my girl, and named you Wavy. The whole "Waverly" thing is a cover story. Something palatable for the masses. Your real name is WAVY, and sad as it sounds, you have never been to the ocean.

That's all gonna change somewhere on or about March 12, 2010. My birthday is the 13th, and my present to myself is to take you for your inaugural trip to the ocean.

I'm taking my vacation that week, and we are all off to Fort Bragg, Calif. for a cold, foggy, relaxing week of beachcombing, whale watching, redwood hiking and other birthday mayhem. Oh, and Glass Beach.

It's a mecca for sea glass collectors. It's a wonder that there's any left; I've been there at least three times and have hauled away bags full of the stuff. Officially, visitors are not allowed to take anything away, but...

... this particular batch of sea glass from Glass Beach has been sitting on various desks or window sills of mine for 15 or so years.

Speaking of birthdays, Wavy, I never got to share your birthday photos from way back in 2009, so let me do that here real quick:

Your cake.

Grrrrl's Day Out began with lunch at Josef's Vienna Restaurant and Bakery. We got Raspberry Chocolate Mini-Cake to go and ate it at Bartley Ranch Park.

The cornerstone of Grrrrl's Day Out was a trip to the egregiously overpriced Build-A-Bear, where you Built-A-Panda and dressed her up suspiciously like yourself.

Anyway, to bed. Dreams of gyring and gimbling in the wabes. Love you. Polar Bear Swim tomorrow! As spectators, not participants.

Kodachrome: You give us those nice bright colors, you give us the greens of summer

2010-03-02T23:23:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

I really didn't want to unpack it and play with it until you went to bed, so the first photo I took tonight was one of you asleep. Pretty sweet... considering the room is pretty darn dark.

Jakob, remember that camera you drowned last summer when we were playing in the creek? I know you do, because I remind you of it on a regular basis, and talk of it still has the power to make you sheepish and apologetic. Anyway, I finally got around to replacing it this week.

It's the latest updated version of the one you flung into the water. It's still a point-and-shoot, which at this point in my life is just fine with me. I don't have $1000+ to spend on a DSLR right now, and frankly, I don't think I would trust you kids in the same house with it just yet.

It's a nice P&S, though, with all sorts of upgrades since the last version. Technical crap, mostly, but look how pretty! And I don't have to use that piece-of-crap camera of your daddy's anymore! Whoot!

And here just in time for our MOMMA'S BIRTHDAY VACATION planned for a couple weeks from now. More about that tomorrow.

G'night, guys. Love you.

And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert...

2010-02-28T22:10:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

Today was a stay-at-home day. I started a chicken curry in the slow cooker right after breakfast, so the house smelled foreign and exotic all day. Also made a batch of crinkle-top chocolate cookies around midday, and a batch of rosemary cheddar biscuits right before dinner. I meant to take photos of everything I made today, but the only thing that turned out to be even the least photogenic was the cookies, above.

Wavy, you and I were at odds most of the day. There seemed to be a read-only conduit in your head today, and no matter what I said to you today, or asked of you, or demanded of you, I couldn't get through. I explained to you a million times, patiently at first, then increasingly more impatient, why I can't just give you Tylenol because you ask for it. No matter how many times I asked you not to pick your nose, or to clean up your mess, or to not spill, blah blah blah... there was a huge disconnect between my mouth and your ears. Which made for a tense day. I apologize if things got out of hand today. I have to remind myself that you are only three. Sometimes you look and act older, and I forget. We do continue to bond in the kitchen, though. You helped me cut up veggies for the curry, and you sifted the ingredients for the cookies and the biscuits. You didn't much care for the actual curry, though, when it came time to eat it. Jakob didn't either. But sometimes grown-ups just have to say, to hell with what I think the kids will or will not eat... I am in need of a spicy curry. Here you are last weekend, in full-on chef regalia:

So I have stopped/started smoking a number of times in the past year. Currently I am about a month smoke-free. That last bout of bronchitis had me to the point where I didn't even want one, so I am trying to ride it out one more time and see if I can turn it into an official quit.

I've explained here a while ago that I don't smoke a lot. I don't smoke at work. I don't smoke at home. I don't smoke on weekends. The one and only place that I smoke is when I am in the car by myself, driving to and from work. So it is easy enough to go through a four-day holiday weekend and not even think about a cigarette, but as soon as that first work day rolls around, and I jump in the car to go to work, the urge is like a punch in the gut. Which of course means that the whole ordeal is less of a nicotine addiction, but more of a behavioral thing. I have tried to lessen the urge by making sure I have something cold to drink on the way up the mountain, or I even eat my breakfast while I drive. I'm actually trying and succeeding a bit with deep-breathing exercises when the craving is strongest, which I've always read about, but have always scoffed at. When I arrive at work, I am craving-free for eight hours plus, then I have to face the same ordeal as I drive back down the mountain towards home.

But... this may all be moot soon, as I can't see myself at this job much longer. I know I am being a fatalist, but over the past few months, I have seen much more useful people than me being let go. Especially, as one by one, the projects that I work on and the people that I support, have been yanked out from beneath me. I feel at this point that I am tap dancing on a very creaky bridge that may collapse at any time. We'll see. I can't even bear to think something like, "If it's gonna happen, I wish it would go ahead and happen," cuz then it just might. But gawd... this waiting is just torture.

My goal this week is to walk around the park twice before work every morning. That translates to about a mile and a half. I tried it one day last week, and it wasn't too bad, and I still got to work at a decent time. So as long as the weather isn't too awful, I have no excuses. My other goal this week is to get my damn seeds planted. I cleared off the workbench in the garage and located my grow-lights, so it's just a matter of putting seed to little cups of earth. Just do it already! Here is what we will be cultivating and eventually snacking on this year:

Baby Eggplant
Hanging Basket Cucumber
Japanese Bunching Onion
Miniature Red Bell Pepper
Miniature Yellow Bell
Miniature Chocolate Bell
Silver Fir Tree Tomato
Siberian Tomato
Tomato, Red Robin
Yellow Canary Tomato
Sugar Snap Pea, Sugar Ann
Wonderberry (Whatever that is! We shall see!)

Wavy is finally old enough this year to not snatch everything out of the ground, which she was prone to do at this time last year. Jakob, you had the same inclination when you were at that age. I had a tidy little garden when you were a harmless baby, skipped a year when you were Mr. Destructo, then had another nice one going the year after that. Then we threw Wavy into the mix and I had to skip another year. This year everyone is finally on the same page.

All right. Enough. Love you both, and good night.

And Glenn, I'm all self-conscious now that I know that I show up in your Google alerts whenever I press the "publish post" button.

Trying

2010-02-28T01:37:00.000-08:00

Hey kids,

It's just so daunting, this whole trying-to-blog-again thing. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately, so I guess I miss it, or need it, or something.

So instead of trying to bring us all up to speed, or trying to recap the last few months and scaring myself off this thingie yet again for another few months, I'll just write about today.

Maybe it's claustrophobia, or cabin fever, but weekends spent at home bring out the worst in all of us. My internal clock screams, "Weekend! Sleep late! Weekend! Sleep late!" but your little unformed clocks buzz you up at the same time as always -- about 6:45-ish. So we are off on the wrong foot from the get-go. Both of you peering intently into my prone, sleepy, grumpy countenance. Wavy with your, "I'm hungry! I want cereal!" and Jakob with your, "Can I play Wii?"

After I got us all breakfasted, wiped down and clothed (with a brief vomitous interlude onto the wall-to-wall, courtesy of Wavy), I hustled us all out of the house. Stewing in our own abode on Saturdays leads to fights, mess-making, slothfulness and general irritability.

First stop, Starbucks, with a hot chocolate for Jakob, a choco milk for Wavy and what was supposed to be a grande iced decaf soy mocha for me. Come to find out, it was not decaf, what-ev. We find a table where we can drink our drinks and plan out the rest of our morning. Wavy of course consumes most of her drink while Jake and I are still waiting on ours, so by the time we are all settled down in our seats, she is ready and able to sick her entire drink down the front of her, onto the table, onto her shoes, onto the floor. It is all so quick that I'm hoping, praying that anyone in the crowded store that happens to look over towards us will assume that she spilled instead of PUKED. About a hundred napkins later, it's all wiped up, and I quickly sneak us guiltily out the door. Yes, I do feel badly for the next customers to seat themselves in the infected area, but what am I gonna do.

Wavy has been under the weather for the past week, but the fever's gone, she's feisty and has her appetite back, the only symptom remaining is the occasional puking. But I thought she had gotten it out of her system, so to speak, with her episode before we left the house. You were chirpy and cheery as I dragged you out to the car, so I removed your sodden coat to reveal the somewhat presentable child underneath, and then we were off to the dollar store.

I picked up some cleaning supplies and you each picked out your "one thing" that I usually allow you to pick out when we go to the dollar store. You both picked out books, Jakob a mini-atlas of the world, and Wavy a sparkly book about mermaid princesses. Grrrrr.

I couldn't with a clear conscience keep Wavy out much longer, so we headed home, where we spent the afternoon engaging in the above-mentioned fights, mess-making, slothfulness and general irritability.

Finally at around dark, I took Jakob out for what I promised him would be "an adventure." But what it was really was errands. We drove around for quite awhile, cruising various parking lots in search of one of those Big Brothers Big Sisters dumpsters where I could unload about three large garbage bags full of clothes. We went to WalMart to do some grocery shopping, and I kept asking you, "Are you mad at me? Are you mad at me yet?" You kept replying that no, you weren't mad, but I could tell that you were slightly annoyed. But you got a dinner at Wendy's (your favorite) out of it, and a stop at the arcade for a couple dollars worth of Tokyo Drift (which you totally rock). Sorry Jake, maybe next weekend's "adventure" will be more adventurous and less, how you say... SUCKY.

Then back home to daddy and Wavy, where you promptly fell asleep for the night. I watched my latest Netflix, a movie called "Code 46," which is a slightly airier-fairier version of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Or maybe "Gattaca." It was better than okay; a painless way to pass 92 minutes.

Which brings me to here. You guys may read the above and decide that maybe in one long, boring, fell swoop I have already worn out my welcome back into the blogosphere. Whatever you decide, I love you both. Good night.

Apple-tastic and fun while it lasted...

2009-10-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

It was here and then it was gone. Like a flower blooming in the desert. Spurred by an unexpected late summer/early autumn deal on a flat of fragrant and redder-than-red strawberries at Raley's, for a very short while, I blossomed into that domestic doyenne that I've always dreamt of being.

I made strawberry shortcakes, I made a metric ton of strawberry jam that we are still, incredibly, not yet tired of spooning onto our morning toast and biscuits.

The following weekend, we spent the day touring the farms and markets at Apple Hill, where you kids picked a big, industrial-sized bucket of six different varieties of apples, and we came home with a flat of plums, some pies, and a bunch of pictures.

At one stop, a lady threw apples onto an old-fashioned looking contraption that peeled, cored and sliced the fruit in three seconds flat. The day was hot and the spirals of cool, crisp, not-too-sweet apples she handed us were like little bits of heaven. Even you kids, who I fight with on a daily basis to eat your fruits and vegetables, gobbled them down and asked for more. Apples.

The next day, I found one of those apple machines at Bed Bath and Beyond. For $19.99. I was thinking that any contraption that facilitates the both of you jumping up and down and fighting over apples is worth its weight in gold.

I also got to work turning those apples into anything and everything. I made apple jam, apple crepes, apple pumpkin bread, baked apples, fried apples, caramel apples. Also plum jam, plum tart and plain plums and apples eaten out of hand. It's three weeks later, and Jakob still asks if he can peel an apple after dinner, and tonight, Wavy surprised the hell out of me by coming to bed with a half-eaten apple in hand. Crazy. Apples have even figured prominently in Jakob's recent artwork.

But, the last of the apples, maybe about four or five of them, are a bit sallow to look at, soft to the touch and sport a halo of fruit flies around them. I hate to see them go; as the apples disappear, so wanes my burst of fruit-tastic energy and creativity. There was something intrinsically GRATIFYING about making baked goods with fruit picked by the hands of my very own children.

Maybe next weekend's trip to the pumpkin patch and the resultant pumpkins and squashes will re-spark the mojo. Perhaps not. Regardless, I love you both, and I love that you love apples. How you like them apples?

The die is cast

2009-10-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

You've made your choices. Too late to turn back now. It *is* the 5th of October, after all...

Wavy has decided to be Super Martian Robot Girl for Halloween, and Jakob has decided -- after much deliberation -- that he wants to be an owl.

At first you wanted to be Plex, the yellow robot from Yo Gabba Gabba. That was when I planted the seed in Wavy's mind that perhaps she would like to be SMRG, also from Yo Gabba Gabba. Although I suspect Wavy doesn't really CARE what she is for Halloween, she seems to have warmed to the idea, and is looking forward to shopping for tights and Electric Lizard Green Manic Panic hair gel.

After you moved beyond your initial Plex idea, you said you wanted to be a bee. I don't know if I was wrong in trying to talk you out of it. You went through a bee phase over the summer, where you couldn't get enough of talking about bees, wanting to be a bee, watching bee sting videos on YouTube. But I gently convinced you that there will probably be a great many *babies* out there that are dressed up like bees, and that maybe you wanted to pick out something more "grown-up."

So then you came up with your owl idea. You were enamored of the owl that resided in our campsite this summer:

My sewing machine is out of commission, but I'm a whiz with fabric glue and fusible tape. And with daddy's latent talent as a makeup artist (see: last year's bitchin' tiger costume and makeup), I think we might be able to make you into a pretty decent owl.

But we've got to get busy. Like... immediately. And like I said... no changing your mind! Love you!

400th post

2009-10-04T02:58:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

It's almost 3 in the morning and it's dumping snow outside. The first of the season. I'm wallowing in sickness. I've never been able to tell the difference between a mild flu and a raging cold, but it's one of those. I've got a fever, cough, sore throat, the whole array of Hot Monkey Death symptoms. The hell of it is, Jakob and I are supposed to be at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Fest in San Francisco right now with some friends, but... I came down with ... THIS ... and now I am sitting here instead.

Here are some photos. All of these shoots were scheduled in the space of a week. That was a crazy week, trying like hell to keep you kids free of scars and rashes.

Jake's school photo. Sweetie, this isn't the smile that we practiced in the mirror all that morning. Sigh.

Neither daddy or the photog could get you to smile at all. But I like the flower. That's a nice touch.

Dare I say it? Of course I will. You are the most breathtakingly beautiful of all your classmates.

Soccer.

The coach didn't show up at picture day, so -- surprise -- assistant coach daddy had to stand in for the kid+coach photos. He is mortified that photos like this of him and all your other individual teammates are in everybody's picture packets.

Awwww! What a cute bunch of bruisers!

Sooooo... good to know for this time next year. With both of you in school now and doing activities and such, a small bank loan is in order to pay for the glut of photos.

Time to try and go back to sleep. It's hard, though, swine flu and all and knowing that each breath could be my last. Love you both.

Not much of a story, but it makes me smile

2009-09-28T22:43:00.001-07:00

Hey kids,

We went camping this weekend. Kinda. I told you kids that it was "camping," but there were no tents or sleeping on the ground involved. We left for home after a day of camping-like activities and a late dinner by the campfire.

So late that night, the lantern was attracting all sorts of moths while we ate. A giant moth the size of a dinner plate lands on Wavy and starts walking up her chest towards her face. She looks down at it, and with a look of pure delight on her face, says, "What's this?" Well, in Wavy's case, it comes out more like, "Wash ish?" I shoo it away.

Moments later, on the other side of the table, a much smaller moth lands on Jakob's soda can. He jumps into the air, flies into my lap and is whooping, "Momma! What's that!? What's that?!"

Also, I think you can tell in your guys' body language in the photo above which one of you has more of a chance at a career with animals.

Toldja... not much of a story. Or blog entry, for that matter. But it's a start. Love you.

PS: I think this weekend really was the end of summer, kids. Unofficial, official or otherwise. The joker on the radio on the way home tonight said there was a slight chance of snow in the higher elevations tomorrow. Sigh.

Put me in, coach!

2009-09-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Sorry about the hideous state of blog updates recently. I just feel plain NEKKID without my camera, and the awful pics that I take with your dad's sub-par camera just embarrass me. And without photos, I feel at a loss as to what to post. So yeah, I realize that the photos have become quite a crutch when it comes to me blogging.

So. Too much to catch up on, so I'll just call it a wash and concentrate on soccer. The above pic is soccer opening day, when you and your teammates took to the field to run your little victory lap. 700 soccer kids got to run the lap that day, and their respective families got to melt and ooze in the 90+ degree heat as they looked on. But yay!

Jakob, you're about a month into the season, and have played three real, honest-to-god games so far. And have lost two games and tied a third. But that's okay. You're a real go-getter, a champion dribbler, and you haven't cried once. You've even scored a GOOOOOAAAAAAL!

You're not exactly THE smallest boy on the team. You share that honor with another little boy who is exactly the same size as you, but you're both quick and lithe and sneaky. You're Wudy da Wabbit. Wudy da Wabbit. Say it: I'm Wudy da Wabbit.

Also keep this in mind: "It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter! It just doesn't matter!"

Meanwhile, the off-field drama is palpable. The coach, who is four months pregnant, is a darling gal, but she is already friends or acquainted with a couple of the other team mothers. And they have meetings and stuff WITHOUT ME. Hellooooo? How am I supposed to bust into THAT good ol' gal network without seeming desperate and lonely?

Plus, during the last game, one of the kids was horsing around and squishing you. I muttered loudly, "Hey, get off my kid!" and of course when I turned around, the kid's mom was standing right behind me, and she gave me the stink-eye and stalked off and gave me the silent treatment for the rest of the game. What-EV.

Oh, and there's this one kid on the team who's really good. He's a natural-born, talented soccer player, and the rest of the team pales in comparison. And of course his parents are aware of this. When he is rotated out in the course of the game, his dad kneels there with him at the sideline and points out the remaining players' foibles, and tells him, "See? There. What he just did. That's what you DON'T want to be doing." Nice. I shouldn't let them get to me, but THEY are the parents that make me edgy throughout each game.

You're an awesome player, Jakob, but you DO have a tendency to stand in the backfield, cross your arms, rock back on one heel and daydream up at the sky when the ball gets away from you. Normally, I would find this endearing and funny, but when I've got frickin' uber-soccer dad bellowing out orders from the sidelines beside me, I get angsty and start shouting at you to get with the program in a way I promised myself that I wouldn't.

Daddy can practice drills and such with you, but how do we practice "paying attention" and "focus." You know... without beatings and starvation and such.

Oh well. It's a whole new frontier for the both of us. We'll both get much better, I promise.

Nana and Papa are already back in town for the next couple of weeks. We'll talk about that next time. Interesting stuff.

Love you both! Sleep tight out there in the RV with them. Again, I pretty much cease to exist when they are here.

Cloudy with a chance of pancakes

2009-08-23T09:43:00.001-07:00

You sat at the dining room table this morning and sketched out my week in weather for me while I made breakfast.

....and I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky

2009-08-23T00:58:00.000-07:00

Wavy. Sweetheart. Sometime in the past week or so, you learned how to cry like a big girl. The silent sob, your pretty face contorted into a mask of sorrow, your rosebud little mouth turned down towards your trembling chin, the adamant little shake of your head: "no, no... I'm all right..."

For now, this devastating countenance is reserved for the sound of the industrial-sized lawnmower once a week when the landscapers invade our yard. But someday... someday, this def-con 4 weapon will be turned upon an unsuspecting male, and everything in this world that you desire will be handed to you on a purple, velvet pillow.

Summer goes, summer goes...

2009-08-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

Summer goes, summer goes
Like the sand between my toes
When the waves go out
That's how summer pulls away,
Leaves me standing here today,
Waiting for the bus.
--Some random "back to school" poem that I just googled

Hey kids,

So Jakob and I leave the house at about the same time these days. ("These days"... meaning yesterday and today). Me to work, Jakob to school. Kindergarten. I sat there at my computer today, working my ass off, and I finally get around to looking at the clock. I'm tired, I'm getting pissy, I can't wait for the day to end. And it's only 2 p.m. I almost melt into a puddle thinking that you still have an hour and a half left to go. I realize I've made an awful mistake. Six and a half hours is far too long for a five-year-old boy to be stuck at school.

I mean, isn't it?

You qualified for all-day kindergarten, cuz you need the extra time and attention to work on your speech and language, so when all the other kindergartners go home at lunchtime, all the other all-day kids condense into one classroom and you continue for another three hours of schooling.

It was explained to us at back-to-school night that the morning session was heavy on the academics (!) and the afternoon session was more laid-back and fun. For your sake, I hope so. I'm starting to second-guess myself here. Especially today, when you ALSO had a soccer practice.

I guess kids all over the world have schedules like this, but it seems pretty hectic to me.

The worst thing about all of this, is I'm not included in any of the fun. As I leave for work, that's when daddy and Wavy walk you to the bus stop to wait for the bus. When I came home from work today, the house was empty because you were all out at soccer practice. All I get is the stories of your masterful soccer derring-do out on the pitch.

I'm thinking I'll go into work a little later tomorrow, so I can walk you out to the bus. Why should daddy get all the fun?

You came home with a bunch of paperwork in your backpack that we have to sign and send back. One was a flyer telling us that you guys say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning (*that's* okay with me, I guess...) and then following that, you all observe 30 seconds of silence (per NRS 388.075).

Wha!?!?

I had to google that. I guess the rest of the outside world probably already knows about this NRS 388.075, but it's the first I've ever heard of it. Smacks of prayer, without out-and-out calling it prayer. Or at least a compromise, in case kids choose to use their 30 seconds to meditate or chant. (But this is Nevada. Nobody chants or meditates in Nevada!) So looks like between now and when *I* was mumbling my way through the Pledge every morning, the separation between church and state was eroded away to rotting cheesecloth.

I make noises like I'm some big radical, flag-waving dissident, but I'm not really. I just like to make noise.

All right. Project Runway is on. Kids are asleep. All is right with the world. Sleep tight, love you.

Wavy Jake's fat zebra had Mexican pig liquor.

2009-08-10T23:16:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Someone found my blog via the above phrase. It's a pangram, which is a sentence containing all the letters of the alphabet. Here are some others:

• By Jove, my quick study of lexicography won a prize.
• Crazy Fredericka bought many very exquisite opal jewels.
• Ebenezer unexpectedly bagged two tranquil aardvarks with his jiffy vacuum cleaner.

So, someday the two of you will be wondering just what your mother was up to during those few days during summer vacation while you stayed at Grandma's. Well, thank GOD you will have this blog to refer to. Aren't you just the luckiest?

Saturday I slept late. I don't usually get to do that. I had plans to get my hair cut and get some shopping done, but I wound up futzing around on the computer most of the day in my pajamas and taking a long, leisurely shower, which took me all the way up to the time I was supposed to leave for the John Doe and the Sadies show, with Richmond Fontaine opening.

I love John Doe. But I've seen him in various incarnations at least a half dozen times over the years, so I was really really excited to see Richmond Fontaine for the first time. RF's frontman is Willy Vlautin, a Reno native and UNR grad and an extraordinary writer. Of songs and of novels. He's written two so far, "The Motel Life" and "Northline," the latter of which made me cry pretty hard. He signed Motel Life for me a couple years ago at a reading at UNR, and I got to shake his hand and say something to him that I had rehearsed a dozen times in the car on the way over. I can't even remember now what it is that I said.

Another song that breaks my heart. Brilliant:

His dad was sitting next to me in the audience, and after RF's lovely set, Willy came out and sat with him to watch John Doe. I was way too shy to say anything to either of them. I wonder if his dad sitting there had anything to do with him cleaning up his language whilst performing the song posted above. Awwwwww.....

Sunday, then, was hair cut day. As I sat there getting my $12.95 haircut (plus I had a dollar-off coupon! Don't forget the dollar-off coupon!), I wished with all my heart that I had back all the money I had ever spent over the years on $60 haircuts. But I also sadly noted that $60 gets you a few perks: baklava and herbal tea in the waiting area while the receptionist hangs your jacket in an armoire. The previous client's hair is never, ever lingering on the floor when I am ready to sit. There's a shampoo and condition with expensive, exquisitely scented products, a scalp massage, flattering and mood-altering lighting conditions, a blow-dry and a quick run-through with a curling iron afterwards.

For $12.95 (plus a dollar-off coupon), I'm lucky if I get a blast of cold water in the face from a spritz bottle. But... the end result is the same. And at this price, I am able to get my hair cut a little more often.

From there, I headed to the theater to see "Julie & Julia." Director Nora Ephron has said that her goal was to have everyone leave the theater wanting to make a boeuf bourguignon. Well, put that on my list of things to do. Seriously. Stand by, because I will attempt this sometime in the near future. The movie was okaaaaaay, but Meryl Streep was wonderful. Overall, I felt about the movie pretty much the way I felt about the book. Here's a link to a 2005 blog post about trying to slog my way through it.

Four years later, I'm still trying to come up with a gimmick that will get me noticed and published, and eventually snag me a movie deal.

Shopped for groceries and a few school clothes items after the movie. Well, after the movie and lunch at Qdoba. Faux Mexican cuisine just isn't the same without you two.

RITE OF PASSAGE ALERT: This is the first time I shopped for you two entirely in the kid's departments. Precious little in the toddlers department fits Wavy anymore, so I forewent that entirely and shopped exclusively in the Hannah Montana department, otherwise known as Little Girls. And for Jake... I'm currently enamored of the whole Ed Hardy look. Yeah, I know, it can be totally greaseball guido shit, but for some reason I am in love with the t-shirts. And the hats and the bags. But until I can afford to buy you some genuine Ed Hardy shirts, Jakob, you're getting Penneys and Target knock-offs.

Also picked up Season Two of Mad Men. Which ruined my day today. I sat up watching episodes until about 3:30 a.m. then had to get up at 7 to go to work. I'm so stupid. Sitting at my desk today was torture.

And tonight? Tonight, I cleaned the top of the refrigerator. I've only been meaning to do it for about five or six years now. There was all sorts of crap up there. Takeout menus, kids art supplies, loose recipes, Jake's school artwork, vitamins, kids medicines, I even found a bottle of wine up there that I thought had gone missing about two years ago. Yeah. It was that bad. And grimy. That bad, yet it only took about 25 minutes to complete the entire task. I threw away a lot of stuff, wiped everything down, consolidated, arranged, disinfected. 25 minutes. And it took me five years to get around to it? Shame on me.

When I was done, I fought the urge to rouse your daddy from espn.com or whatever the hell he was doing, to show him my accomplishment. I was excited, and I felt everyone else should be, too. But then reality set in, and I realized that if I dragged him to the kitchen to show him, he would say most likely say, "Wha? I didn't even know it was dirty in the first place." Which would set me off. This is a script played over and over between your daddy and me throughout the years, and I wasn't in the mood tonight, so I gloated alone, told myself I was fabulous, and went on with my evening. I might have mentioned to him later in passing that I wiped up the top of the fridge a bit. No praise or validation or parade was forthcoming, and none was expected, so no feelings were hurt. Yay, me!

Anyway. That was my past three days. I gotta go to sleep now and try and recoup some of my brain cells that I lost last night. But first, just ONE more ep of Mad Men.

Love you. Come home to me. Soon.

I'm working. But on the other hand... I'm working.

2009-08-07T00:20:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

You left me yet again yesterday to stay at your Cali grandma's. What... is it me? Your Texas grandparents left on Tuesday, and you leave me the very next day.

Ah well. I wouldn't want to hang around me, either. I've actually kind of been a drag the past couple of days. I did something today that I haven't done in a very long while. I came home from work, trudged straight to bed and took a two-hour nap. I finally roused myself from bed for your daddy's chili dogs, then proceeded to lay on the couch and watch like, FIVE HOURS of television. I *never* do that.

Work has been weird this week. I'm now full-time in the one office, and don't have to drive all over hell and back during my work week. I've been making friends, and learning this particular office's culture and social history. It's lurid and fascinating.

I got to pick out a new workstation yesterday, which is usually a death knell. Whenever I get comfortable in an office, pin up pix of you kids, make friends, etc. I seem to get transferred. I hate to even talk about it, cuz that's just bad juju, but I think I might be here at the new place for a while. Last week, I was offered a position here, and I had been hoping all along that someone would eventually offer it to me. So yay. I have to leave behind some people that have been pretty good (and at times dreadfully shitty) to me along the way, but... onward and upward. Not money-wise, of course. Salary freeze and all that... but still. Yay.

But this new workstation. I've been sitting there for a day, and I'm starting to think I shoulda just stayed where I was on the other side of the office. I thought perhaps this work nook would be a bit more private and quiet. And by private and quiet, I actually mean better situated to be able to facebook and surf all day undetected. My lovely editor sits across from me, and I can hear him breathing. All day. And making little old-man grunts all day. Reminds me of noises that my dad makes. Do I really NEED to be reminded of my dad all day, every day? And I hate to say that he's an old man, cuz he's not. He's only eight years older than me. And I am the FURTHEST thing from being an old lady. But I don't make little old-lady grunts while I work. At least I don't think I do...

I have to mention one more work-related thing here, so that I don't forget. There's probably only one person in the whole damn company that I would give a shit if he said he liked my work. There's this other designer that I've admired for a long time, and I like his work and he's actually a pretty decent guy, as well, apart from being a bit on the gruff side. Earlier this week he said I was doing a really nice job on the magazines. Whoot! I've felt slightly warm and fuzzy ever since. Yes. I'm starved for attention and affirmation. Sad, eh? What am I... 12?!?!

Of course I feel bad nitpicking at all the little office bullshit, while good friends from all over have been laid off. The only reason I even have my pick of workstations is because most everyone in the office has been let go. It really is kind of like a ghost town there, and in other newsrooms all around the world. So please don't think I'm not thankful, but it is in my nature to kvetch. I only feel fully alive when I have something to bitch about.

Gah. Look how boring and tedious my posts are when I don't have a camera or kids in my life. Come home soon. And run down to Fry's since you're there close and all, and buy me a new camera. I only feel fully alive when my children are home and I can take glorious pictures of them all day long.

Love you and miss you.

So long and thanks for all the pix

2009-07-29T01:09:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

It really was my fault, I suppose.

Today the three of us went to the creek to hang out and play in the water and beat the heat. Of course I took the camera, cuz that's what Momma does.

So Wavy and I were sitting on the bank, legs dangling in the water, and Jakob, you were running around behind us in the grass. I asked you to bring me the camera, which was sitting a little farther downstream from us, with the towels and such. I specifically told you, "Put the strap around your neck! So you don't drop it in the water!"

As you ran back, you were yelling, "I can't find the camera, Momma! I don't have it!" But you were giggling, so I knew you were kidding. Then you charged straight into the middle of the creek, with one hand behind your back, and one empty hand extended towards me.

"Look, Momma! I don't have it!" Then, still giggling, you reached behind your back and extended your other empty hand towards me.

(Can you see where this is going?)

Horrified, I reached towards you, about to yell something. And then it happened. In slow motion. The camera behind your back fell from your hands and into the creek. My poor workhorse of a camera splashed into the water, bobbed twice and sank. Okay, it wasn't exactly the camera of my dreams, but it was kinda expensive (for me, at least) and I used it both professionally and for these priceless family pics that you see here.

Ah, man. I was mad. And I let you know it. You started crying. I finally calmed down just a bit, enough to give you a rough hug and tell you to go swim or something. But you weren't having any of it, and I was still mad enough to wring your neck. As I poured the water from the innards of my ex-camera, you hovered nearby, still crying and apologizing.

But it wasn't until you stood behind me as I was sitting on the bank, snuffling a bit myself, you laid your hand on my shoulder and uttered, "I am so sorry, Momma," that I finally got ahold of myself. You just sounded so grown up and so sincerely sorry, just because you threw that extra "so" in there, I guess. My cold little heart softened just a bit. Enough, at least, to realize that our little outing was over and we should head back to the campsite.

We called a truce of sorts, and we went on with our day. I've been online and have initiated a dialogue with the manufacturer to see if something like this is even fixable. I'm not hanging any hopes on it, though.

So without further ado, here are the last of the pics that I downloaded before what will forthwith be referred to as "the incident."

Wanderlust Festival at Squaw Valley this weekend:

Swimming at the creek in question, a couple of days before "the incident":

Despite anything I may have uttered earlier today (Remember? When Momma had smoke leaking out of her ears, and her left eyeball was twitching uncontrollably?), I love the hell out of both of you. Good night.

A week (or two) in pictures

2009-07-23T22:36:00.001-07:00

Hey kids,

Your nana and papa have been here for the past week and a half. It's been crazy busy around here and I haven't had much of a chance to get online. But here's some photos to tide you over.

I dragged Jakob with me to the Blues Festival. It was a work-related obligation, otherwise I would not have even thought of going. I will tell you both a secret... I hate the blues. Don't tell my editor! All the songs sound exactly alike to me: My woman done left me; I want my woman back; If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all; etc. etc. ad nauseum. Luckily, it was raining very hard and it was cold and miserable, so you and I could bow out semi-gracefully one quarter of the way through. My editor admonished me the following Monday: "Bring a raincoat and umbrella next time! You really missed out. They played until after midnight!"

::::SHUDDERING AT THE THOUGHT::::

Of course, as soon as we walked back out to the car, the clouds parted and the sun came out.

This is one of the old blues guys that we did manage to see. Jakob, you and I have our very first inside joke. I guess I asked you one too many times if you were enjoying yourself. I kept asking you if you liked the blues. You finally responded, "WHATEVER, MOM!!! How many times are you going to ask me if I like the blues??!?!" Now, a week later, when it gets quiet, you will nudge me and say, "I've got a question for ya... Do you like the blues?" And then you will laugh uproariously.

We decided to have breakfast for dinner at Denny's before heading home. Kids eat free on Saturdays! Whoot!

Oh my gosh.... Wavy. Your first day at school. We were all so worried that you would hate it, because you're so -- how can I put this delicately -- so anti-social? But after one day of a few tears (according to your teacher), you are enjoying yourself and making friends. Good for you, baby!

It's papa! These next few photos were taken by you, Jakob. Ya'll have been out camping since Sunday. I, of course, still have to work, so I have been driving out to the campsite every night after work to spend some time with all of you, have some dinner, get eaten alive by mosquitoes, ruin my work sandals and generally just hang out until the sun goes down. Then it's home to my nice comfy bed, a glass of wine and Tivo. If this is camping, then I'm all for it.

It's Wavy! Nice shot, Jakob.

So, when I tell people that our family owns an RV, I'm sure they are picturing something a bit more slick and shiny and new. With pullouts, racing stripes and modern amenities. Well, this gal was probably slick and shiny and new about four presidents ago. But she is homey and comfy, and we are not afraid to spill our Kool-Aid, or track mud or occasionally puke (Wavy... this means you...) and she actually runs really well.

Jakob camping. This is a relatively short time into the camp trip, as he is wearing a clean white shirt and his hair is semi-stylin'.

I will have to go through my files and find the companion photo to this one. I originally shot one almost exactly like this, with you and papa wading in the river, about three years ago, when you were Baby's age. Very cute.

Playing in the Class V rapids.

Papa rides my bike.

You guys ride your bikes.

You guys eating your very first S'mores. Quite possibly the world's most perfect food.

Okay, someday soon I'll put together a proper post. In the meantime, I'll just keep taking photos of life's minutae, and annoying the hell out of you with my camera and my "HOLD STILL DAMMIT FOR JUST 1/125th OF A SECOND DAMMIT!!!" Heh. Love you both.

Everyone knows its WINDY...

2009-07-13T16:39:00.000-07:00

... in Carson City.

Every day can't be frickin' Aquarium day...

2009-07-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

It's hard to keep you guys entertained every day of summer. Luckily, if I present a mediocre activity to you with excitement and enthusiasm, even a dull project like printable superhero masks (SUPERHERO MAAAAASKS!??!? Whoooot! All right! Superhero! MASKS!!!!) elicits at least a smile and a few minutes of studied industriousness.

Like tonight: After supper, we walked down to the shops and had a sweet. See? Doesn't that sound simply divine? When in actuality, what we really did was walk down to the 7-Eleven and get popsicles.

We enrolled Wavy in preschool today. And sorry, it's not Montessori, baby. There's a long wait for Montessori this year, so your SLP suggested another preschool in the area that you can go to on an Early Intervention scholarship. It comes highly recommended, the curriculum is robust, it's safe, clean, it's hideously expensive... but it's Lutheran. I have nothing against Lutherans, we're just not a very church-going clan. I'm slightly squeamish about sending you here. Every morning will begin with a prayer, and Jesus Time (whatever that means) is at 11:15. The registration questionnaire that we had to fill out asked questions like, "What does it mean to you to be a Christian?" and the following:

........................................................

Please check and fill-in:
____ We are active members of Tr1nity Luther@n Church
____ We are active members of another LCMS Church
____ We are active members of another Lutheran Church
____ We are active members of a Non-Lutheran Church
____ We are not active members of a church in the area
_____We are looking for a church home
_____We are not looking for a church home at this time

What was your previous church background?________________________________________________

Please check all that apply and fill-in.
____ My child has been baptized in the name of the Triune God. Church:______________________Date:_________
____ My child attends Sunday School: Church_______________________________
____ I/we would like to have our child baptized.
____ I/we have questions about:
baptism _____
the beliefs of the Lutheran Church____
Sunday School____
what is taught during Jesus Time at TLC_______

........................................................

I made the mistake of telling your Nana over the phone today that I was uncomfortable with some of this. She kind of let loose like this is something that's been bothering her for a while. I'm surprised it's taken this long for her to get around to it. She's upset that you kids don't go to Sunday school and that we're not raising you in any faith whatsoever. It broke her heart, apparently, when Papa told Jakob over the phone a while ago that they had just come back from church, and Jakob asked him, "What's church?" She said she bought you guys a DVD about going to church, but has held off on giving it to you because she didn't know how your daddy and I would feel about it.

I figured, this being her birthday and all, that I probably shouldn't tell her that I waver between being an outright atheist and on better, happier days, being an agnostic. I can hear it now... "Agnostic? What the hell kind of hippy shit is that?!?!?"

I hope to not have to breach the subject again when they come to visit next week. We're not really ones to confront each other, so maybe today's phone call will be the worst of it.

It's not for that long, after all. And it's only two days a week, three hours each day. When you turn 3 in November, you will transfer into one of two specialized (and SECULAR!) classes like your brother did. I guess I won't worry too much until you bring home your first little fistful of tracts to tuck in the neighbors' doorjambs, and condemn your daddy and me to hellfire and damnation. But I am looking forward to the church potlucks!

Anyway, you start on Monday. So that means this weekend, we get to go shopping for a backpack and lunchbox! I'm hoping they have more to choose from than Hannah Montana, Disney princesses and High School Musical. Yay! SHOPPING! (excitement, excitement) At TARGET!!! (enthusiasm, enthusiasm)

Love you both. Sleep tight.

Team Momma FTW!!!!

2009-07-05T23:55:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Busy weekend. I'm dead on my feet here at the end of it. It seemed like too much fun at the time, but now that I sit down to organize all of it into a post, I'm thinking maybe I'm just too old and worn out for more than one activity a week. The gals at the old folks home will LOVE me: "Miss Kelly went straight for her lie-down after the middle school glee club came and sang a few songs for the poor ol' ladies too infirm to play canasta in the sunroom."

I had Friday off, so we spent the day getting the un-fun stuff out of the way: car stuff, grocery shopping, etc. (Did I mention the truck needed work again this week? $850 for a new rack-and-pinion steering thingamacallit. When I break down, I break down BIG. No $350 starters or $20 fan belts for me. Noooooo...) Friday afternoon was our regular backyard playdate:

"Momma, momma! Look at me! Look at me! Get your camera! Take a picture! Momma! Momma! Look at me! I'm hugging the baby! Momma!" ...Sigh...

Friday night we made patriotic red-white-blue cupcakes. Do you know how hard it is to find blue candies for cupcake toppers? We looked all over for blue sprinkles or blue candy buttons or blue anything, and wound up buying a shit-ton of Laffy Taffys just so we could cut up the blue ones with scissors to make little blue stripes and stars. Even then, they were a gawd-awful baby blue.

BTW, I think maybe Wavy is a shoo-in for the future Food Network show, "Topless Cuties Do Baked Goods." Either that, or this photo will be on the back of the jacket of her extremely well-researched exposé of a long-term, all-sugar diet.

Saturday morning, daddy decided to take Wavy for a Reno adventure by themselves, so it was just you and me, Jakob, for the rest of the weekend. I was determined to have a way more interesting weekend than your sister and daddy. Obsessed, really. We started out going to the train museum in Carson for a ride on a circa-1905 steam train.

Afterwards, lunch at ... Wendy's. I'm going to quit asking you where you want to go for lunch. I don't think I can take another Wendy's Southwest Taco salad. Which is basically just a salad with a cup of chili dumped over the top of it. But only 8 WW points! The only thing that we did this weekend that you weren't too fond of was a stop at Gottschalks for their 80 percent-off-everything, going-out-of-business sale. The transients that they hire to stand on the side of the highway to wave the sale signs also drew us in with signage that promised an extra 30 percent off on certain items. According to my calculations, that meant that Gottschalks would be paying US a nominal fee to haul away their crap. The offerings were pretty well picked over, but I managed to spend $30 on a handful of tops that were maybe fashionable back in 'ought seven.

After that, it was back home for some more backyard time and more cupcake decorating before heading out for fireworks at the big park in Carson. We found some red, white and blue choco-covered sunflower seeds at Cost Plus, so we finished off the rest of the cupcakes with generous sprinklings of those, I think they worked out pretty well. Gave the cupcakes a really ... interesting... flavor. Birds would love them, at any rate.

We stopped at AM-PM for fireworks snacks and sodas and then headed for our secret little fireworks hidey hole that we found years ago. Minimal crowding, room to move around, easy access to the hella crowded highway that takes us home afterwards. It's the back parking lot of a strip mall on Hwy 50, and it backs up to the high school playing field where they light the fireworks. If we were any closer, we'd get our eyebrows singed.

We waited around for about an hour and a half, reading the paper, playing soccer and calling grandma. I let you man the camera for the actual fireworks, and you got some pretty decent shots:

Last day of über-weekend: an early matinee of "Ice Age III, Revenge of the Dinosaurs" or whatever it's called. You're really getting the hang of this moviegoing thing. Except it really bugs you when you discern something in the darkness that you can't identify. "Momma, what's that? And that? And that? What does it do? What do you call it? Spell it!" I had to identify wall-mounted speakers for you, and exit signs, the fire alarm. Oh, and once you spied the projector in the back of the theater, there was no END to the questions. But, um... good for you for being so inquisitive.

The topper to the whole weekend: THE BEACH!!! We went to Incline for an afternoon at the beach and a BBQ with our friends F&C. How fortunate to have good friends who possess resident cards that provide access to the nicest locals-only beaches on the Lake. Kidding! We love F&C.

All weekend you were making up stories about what daddy and Waverly could possibly be doing by themselves. You kept saying, "Waverly is lost in the desert!" and it only became alarming after you repeated it about a dozen times. Have you ever SEEN the movie "Babel" with its little kids lost in the desert? A quick phone call disproved this, but stop being so morbid. You missed her terribly, and so did I. We got home pretty late, so everyone was already asleep when you and I snuck in the door. We'll hear all about their exploits in the morning, but I'm sure they can't come close to OUR adventures. Love you!

2009-06-29T23:34:00.000-07:00

Part two:

8) Wilco last night! I'd love to say that I loved it, but keee-rist I'm getting too old to stand on concrete for four hours straight, waiting for the show, then watching an opening band, then the stage change, then the band itself. Plus they didn't play enough of their old songs for my liking. I kept thinking to myself... okay, if this next song isn't off one of the first four albums, I'm gonna go sit down in the bleachers. Which I didn't really want to do, as I had a primo spot up front with the geeky fanboys. But what could I do... my dogs were barkin' and they kept playing new shit off the last two or three albums. Of course as soon as I fought my way back through the crowd and found a bleacher seat, they finally played a whole string of songs that I wanted to hear. Good times, good times.

The pre-show BBQ was fun, too. I of course felt old enough to be everyone's MOTHER, but it really wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. At the show, I ran into one of the guys that was laid off on Friday. He gave me a big bear hug and he made me cry all over again, but I think he will be fine. He is a very talented man and a beautiful soul.

9) Random Michael Jackson memory: Hanging out with friends at Stef's house back in high school, waiting for the MTV premiere of the Thriller video. I think it was Stef's house. It might've been Bess's or Melissa's. I know it wasn't my house cuz I didn't have cable tv.

10) Random Farrah Fawcett memory: My grade-school friend Sheryl's brother had Farrah's poster in his room. I didn't even notice that the poster prominently features the poor girl's nips until maybe a couple years ago. I don't have a random Billy Mays memory.

11) Someone from my past friended me on facebook last week. Someone from my PAST past past. Like 30+ years ago. Amazing how stuff like this is becoming commonplace. Her family and mine met while we were on the same plane when we first flew into Panama when I was eight. My parents struck up a conversation with her parents (surprise surprise... your Nana and Papa are pretty sociable and boisterous, the opposite of ME), and our families became pretty tight for the whole four years we were there. The daughter (the gal who just now friended me) was about four years older than me, and at that age four years is an almost insurmountable gap, but we wound up hanging out quite a bit. We all lost touch when our family moved back to the states.

12) You know what? I don't have a #12 or 13 right now. Well, I do... but it's too soon to share. Too soon. Someday I will tell you why Cracker doesn't like me anymore. When the sting wears off. Which may be years from now.

Off to bed. Want to be bright-tailed and bushy-eyed when I get laid off tomorrow. I kid! I kid! I hope... Love you.

2009-06-28T00:51:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Just a very scattered week. True, my week started on Tuesday cuz I was still on (mini)vacay Monday, but then the rest of the week just DRAGGED. Can't sleep, but have nothing particularly coherent to say, so maybe I can organize this week's thoughts with a belated Thursday 13.

1) More layoffs at work yesterday. This round hit close to home. I think this is the only round so far that made me cry. Sucks sucks sucks.

2) Wilco tomorrow at the Harvey's Amphitheater. My musical tastes run such that I normally don't go to shows with more than one or two poor souls that I can drag along with me, or I just go by myself. But a goodly portion of the office is going to this one, and someone has organized a pre-show BBQ. This means I get to attempt to be sociable and charming with the people I work with, instead of my normal efficient and curt. Whoot. The last time I went to a work-related gathering, no one I knew showed up, and I wound up having a panic attack and leaving. God. Why am I like this.

3) You kids came home on Thursday, and it's like the sun has been restored to my life. The mundane seems fun again. I took you guys for a routine Wal-Mart run today, and it didn't suck. I went to the dump and Jakob tagged along. Again... not too sucky.

4) It's hot. Summer has arrived in full force. This is the first day that I've been home on an afternoon and it's been hot enough to hang out for hours in the back yard with you guys and the sprinklers. The first of many.

5) In regards to a couple posts below, I have decided to grill my Nana when she and Papa come to visit next month. I warned her during our last phone call that I was going to ask her a shit-ton of questions about my actual adoption and the abnormal circumstances surrounding it. Told her that I was going to start writing all this stuff down. The subtext being, of course, that she and Papa aren't getting younger, and I would regret it for the rest of my life if I *didn't* eventually pick their brains about this stuff. Her response: "Good for you!" So now I've pre-emptively breached what could've been a sticky subject, and now it sounds like it could be kind of fun, instead of daunting.

6) I bought a pair of pants that I really really really like. Sh. Don't tell anyone, but I wore them three days out of the four that I worked last week. Did I mention that I really love these pants? The first day I wore them straight out of the envelope (got them online). The second day I wore them because they managed to find their way into the one load of wash I did and -- ta dah! -- accidentally became one of the only pair of clean pants in the house. And I wore them again on Friday just because I was fuckin' lazy.

7) Gack. Since when are mohawks making a comeback? When did they become A THING again? At the Aquarium and then today at Wally World, we saw hordes of young men from toddler to post-adolescent sporting various degrees of 'hawks and faux-hawks. Again, as with your uber-ubiquitous name, JAKOB... I feel like the original "I wanna be the first to do that thing that everyone else is already doing" gal.

More later. Gotta try and sleep. Love you both.

Welcome home. Have an enchilada.

2009-06-25T00:36:00.000-07:00

Getting ready for bed in the RV at grandma's house

Hey kids,

Even though I spent a four-day weekend with you, and whisked Jakob away for a day and a night in Monterey by ourselves, I miss you horribly. Tomorrow (wait, it's after midnight, so .... later today), you come home to me.

Jakob, our weekend getaway was fabulous. Why the hell can't I just win the frickin' lotto so I can quit my job and spend my days just travelling around with you kids doing fun stuff?

I took you to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and managed to have a blast, even though it was wall-to-wall summer weekend/father's day crowded. I've been to the Aquarium at least a dozen times before, so there was nothing pressing that *I* needed to see. I let you set the pace, and let you linger over things that you wanted to linger over, and skip the stuff that bored you. You seemed most impressed by the big orange jellies and the tiny newborn seahorses. You grabbed my hand and made me stand there beside you as you watched them for the longest time. I bit my tongue when you briefly skimmed past the huge octopus and then the world's most beautiful seahorses...

...in favor of any interactive exhibit that featured anything vaguely videogame-like.

I gave you the camera for a while and let you take some photos:

Seahorse

Otters playing

People watching otters playing

Fish (imagine that!)

Here are more photos if you are so inclined.

We went back to our last-minute Hotwire.com find -- the Travelodge right off the freeway that I stayed in a couple months ago when I went to see Cracker in downtown Monterey -- and you laid down and took a two-hour nap. Of your own free will! So cute. You went around closing all the curtains, then you curled up in bed and went straight to sleep. When you woke up, I let you pick where we had dinner (Wendy's, your favorite) then we went to Seaside Beach to take some pictures of the ocean and watch people fly kites. Back at the hotel later, we watched the Simpson's movie on HBO, played hide-and-seek for at least an hour (amazing how many hidey-holes there are in one hotel room) and finally went to bed at around midnight.

When left to your own devices, you can cruise-direct a pretty fun and interesting itinerary. I'll have to remember that more often. I think we both have a much better time when I don't micro-manage you.

The next day we met up with Auntie L and went to Pescadero, where you started feeling kinda punk. One minute you were climbing rocks and running down the beach, the next you were huddled on my lap, saying, "Keep me warm, Momma...." You moaned and groaned your way through lunch in Half Moon Bay, and then we headed home to grandma's, where you succumbed to a pretty high fever and a sore throat.

Poor thing. That's how I had to leave you the next day when I had to drive home. I've kept in touch since Monday, and apparently you feel much better. When I call, I can hear you and Wavy in the background playing Wii Rock Band. And rumor has it that you Wii-bowled a 204 tonight. Daaaaang!

I made a pan of turkey enchiladas for dinner tomorrow night. You and daddy and baby will get home before I do, so just take 'em out of the fridge and stick 'em in the oven at about 5, mmmmkay? Love you both and can't wait to squeeze the stuffin's outta the two'a yas.

If you're reading this, Mommy, friend me on Facebook!

2009-06-17T20:02:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

Momma gets maudlin when you guys aren't around.

There was a short feature story on the local news last night about a Vietnamese woman who handed over her two-year-old son to a U.S. embassy official and his wife back in 1975 when everyone was scrambling to evacuate. Her son was fathered by an American G.I. who then abandoned the two of them. The woman feared for her son's life and her own, knowing the treatment they would both receive at the hands of the Communists, who would be forever in contempt of them both as American collaborators. So when the embassy official, who was a friend, was skedaddling out of the country following the fall of Saigon, she begged him to take her child with them. The couple agreed, and that was the last she ever saw of her son.

Cut to 35 years later, the Vietnamese woman now lives near Reno, and says she has been searching for her son in the intervening years. (I don't know how long she has lived stateside, but her heavy accent suggests that she is F.O.B., although I don't think that's the case.)

Here is a video of the news piece.

Her son's story is more or less my story. Minus all the shoving and helicopters and Communists and such. Seven years earlier, in the Philippines, my birth mother gave up her hapa newborn to a pleasant, white military man and his wife, never to be seen again.

I wonder if she looked for me. Or *is* looking for me. Or if she's even still alive. If so, she'd only be somewhere in her late 50's.

I consulted a psychic once. After reading me, he came up with this story: My birth mother was impregnated by an artistically-inclined Native American sailor, who was gone before he even knew that he knocked her up. Eventually she made her way to the States, married a white man in the Midwest, and had other children with him. Although she often wonders about me, she hasn't told her husband that I exist, and she does not want me to ever find her.

Makes as much sense to me as any other wild fantasy I've ever concocted about her.

Maybe she is one of the young ladies in the above photos, found randomly on the web, both purported to be taken near Subic Bay Naval Base, near my birthplace, Olongapo, in the late '60s.

Every time there is civil unrest back in the P.I., or whenever Mt. Pinatubo erupts, I envision my mother, fighting off insurgents, or fleeing a slow but relentless tide of lava flowing down the middle of a grimy city street.

I also wonder about siblings. I wonder that there are actually other 30-something or 40-somethings out there with slightly off senses of humor, tendencies toward lazy and addictions to Starbux and celebrity reality shows.

These very occasional thoughts don't consume me. My life has never been a made-for-Lifetime TV movie, where the main character grew up always feeling that there was "a piece missing from her life," or that she would "never truly know herself until she knew where she came from." They are just curious questions that will probably never be answered, like Did Lee Harvey Oswald Act Alone or Where Does The Universe End And What's On The Other Side Of It. Pressing questions, yes, but nothing to sit around obsessing about all your life.

The two of you will grow up knowing exactly where you came from, and will always be surrounded by people who all slightly look like you, and will not want for exchangeable innards, should that time (touch wood) ever come.

Love you both, come home to me soon, before this pervasive boredom leads me to pondering man's inhumanity to man or the fate of baby harp seals.

Fishin' accomplished

2009-06-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

What was that thing I said a couple days ago about not being a slug. Well, disregard that.

I did get a few things on my list crossed off, though. I made yummy fish tacos yesterday, pictured above. Little bits o' catfish, dredged in flour, dunked in egg and rolled in panko, and yes, dammit, I fried them. But isn't it more pleasant to say "pan-seared in a half inch of canola oil." Laid atop a bed of cabbage mixed with a bit of lime juice, mayo and cayenne sauce. I mentioned to my mom on the phone yesterday that I had made fish tacos, and she said, kinda sarcastically, "Mmmmmmmmm.... sounds good." I asked her if she had ever had one before, and she said, quite maddeningly, "Oh no, honey. We're in Tex-Mex country down here. We don't eat stuff like that."

"Stuff like that"?!?!?!? WTF. I should know better than to engage my mother in any sort of conversation about Mexican food. Her view of "decent" Mexican food is so razor-narrow, that we have almost come to blows talking about it. If it doesn't come from one of three restaurants that she frequents, it's absolute and utter garbage. Okay, so I refrained from telling her that as we were talking, I was googling "fish tacos corpus christi" and came up with about a gazillion restaurants that serve the damned things. I DO know better than to ever try and take her out for Mexican food. She sits there and complains and pushes the food around on her plate and doesn't eat it, and honest-to-god POUTS.

Anyway. I didn't meant this to turn into an indictment of my mother. Suffice it to say... I made fish tacos and they rocked.

I also cleaned out the fridge. And you know, once you throw out all the weeks-old leftovers, the condiments that have forever separated into watery layers, and emtpy out the soup that the veggie crisper has become, it's appalling how little food was actually in there. Wait wait wait! I'll go take a picture right now!

Pretty grim, eh? The bulk of what's there is actually an unopened jug of tomato juice that my mom had bought when she was last here six months ago, as well as her butter pickles and green olives. We don't eat "that kind of stuff," so it just sits there until she visits again. But it's squeaky clean in there now, and the first one of you that comes home and pastes a half-eaten lolly to the bottom of it (oh yes, Wavy... I found it...) gets banished to the back yard for the rest of the summer.

I did five loads of laundry, I waxed, I watched Jeopardy, I watched my two Blockbuster movies (both very slow-moving, but worth it). Basically all the stuff on my list that I could do without leaving the comfort of my house. What did I do with the balance of my weekend? Twelve (TWELVE!!!!!) hours of Big Love. The entire season on Tivo, back to back. What an awesome season I missed. Your daddy had been teasing me all season: "Wait'll you see who dies in the first episode! I don't know how they're going to keep doing the show with just the one wife!" Sheeeeeeesh.

It's almost 7 p.m. and I have been in my pajamas all day. I think I will take a shower and head out in search of something for dinner, cuz butter pickles smothered in tomato juice doesn't sound all that tasty. Stopping by the Redbox, too. I just now reserved Gran Torino and Vinyan online.

God, I am reading the above shite now, and how is it that I can write 650 words in nothing flat about a weekend in which I did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, but it takes me two weeks and much anguish to write a 400-word music review for work. Maybe if someone would start PAYING me to blog and giving me a deadline, you guys wouldn't be inflicted so frequently by my confused ramblings.

Love you, miss you, come home soon!

2009-06-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

You left for grandma's house yesterday and I miss you already. Grandma and your Aunt L drove up from Cupertino, spent the night, and hauled you away the next day.

Here's what I don't miss....

All week I had been dreading the inevitable moment when your grandma sits me down and very earnestly thanks me for letting you guys visit. This is invariably followed by the statement, "I would never have been able to let my babies go like that at that age. I would've missed them too much."

Why not just slap me with a cold fish and call me Susan Smith, GRANDMA!??! Grrrrrrr.

Anyway, I snapped a couple phone pics while you were getting ready to go, and I snuck peeks at them all day at work today. Sigh...

So I have the house to myself for a few days, cuz your daddy is out of town for a bit, too. I'm trying to not be a slug and laying around the house. It's tempting, though, sleeping in late, and watching a season's worth of Big Love on Tivo. Well, okay. Maybe just ONE day of being a slug-a-bed, but afterwards, here is my Thursday 13 list of things I would like to accomplish while I am alone.

1) Make fish tacos. I'm the only one who likes them, so I never make them.

2) Clean out the fridge.

3) Watch the two movies I rented tonight: "Let the Right One In" (a Swedish coming-of-age vampire movie) and "Wendy and Lucy" (dunno... think it's a road movie starring Michelle Williams and a dog. I liked the recent NPR interview with the director.)

4) Make a run to the dump and recycling center.

5) Laundry.

6) Use up the rest of my comp movie tickets to see "Angels and Demons" and "Terminator".

7) Cut Bernice's toenails.

8) Wax things that need to be waxed. Ahem.

9) Go for a bike ride near Camp Richardson.

10) Go for a hike up the Faye-Luther Trail.

11) Make a couple casserole dinners to freeze for when my parents come to visit next month.

12) Scrub the tub and wash the shower curtain.

13) Watch Jeopardy.

I know you little shits are having fun, because you won't come to the phone when I call. Ah well, that's okay. According to your grandma, I don't miss you.

Love you!

Fish on! Or not...

2009-06-07T23:27:00.000-07:00

Hey kids,

I'm so sorry you didn't catch any fish at the derby this year, Jake. It was cold and raining and frustrating to watch the hundreds of fish swim by, ignoring your line. For the hour and a half that we stood there waiting for a bite, seems like only maybe one in five kids caught a fish. Very different from last year, when you caught your limit within the first five minutes. But please take comfort in the fact that you were the coolest-lookin' kid out there on the creek this weekend.

To ease the sting a bit, after we reeled your line in for the last time, we went and had lunch, then caught a matinee of Up, which made me cry but amused you no end. This was your second moviegoing experience, and you sat through the entire show without one peep or fidget. Awesome! Now if only I can get you to enjoy rom-coms and killer robot movies, I will never want for a movie date ever again!

Next up this weekend was the Ren Faire with Wavy.

There was all sorts of stuff there for you to be leery of. Don't worry, I'm not a big fan of horses, either. I accidentally touched the damn thing, and rubbed my eyes before I got a chance to wash my hands, and wound up with red and puffy eyes for the rest of the day.

Here's you perusing Ye Olde Food Court. I thankfully passed up the tempting array of ye olde deep-fried everything on a stick, and you chose a watermelon slushie and a fresh-squeezed lemonade. It's good to stay hydrated.

Finally, you fell asleep while we sat and listened to some questionably medieval music. We ended the day with a sunset dinner at Zephyr Cove with friends F and C.

A fun weekend for us all before you head to Cali Grandma's house for a couple weeks, starting this Wednesday. Love you!

"Each night when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the apple juice off the back seat. Some nights, I clean off the Gummy Bears."

2009-06-06T03:04:00.000-07:00

With maybe a dozen swipes of the stylist's clippers, the transformation from mild-mannered, bookish worm to bloody psychopath with a heart of gold and a penchant for 13-year-old hookers is complete.