under the weather

bloomin' june

2011-06-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

not to be constantly griping about the weather, (the local news DID call the month we just had "mayvember" by the way, AND area billboards have taken to suggesting we take a break from the "sweltering 68 degrees" --with a beer, and that "who needs the sun?" because we already GLOW --when we drink vitamin water, just sayin'...) i thought it only fair to document that our struggling rose buds have finally opened. we used to have such gorgeous roses right outside our window; we quickly got used to the parade of legs, and the sight of people bending down, not to peek into our apartment, but to: stop and smell the roses. our yellow rose did not bloom at all, but there are thankfully a few others to spread the cheer...

i also tried transplanting my purple clover (that i have had for 13 years, and greg believes it is a weed simply by the fact that it is still alive). i was hoping it would take over the slim dirt garden that lines our building, but it is a struggling little patch.

in an effort to focus on the positive, i thought i would post some sunny pictures. i like to follow the sun around, so here we are catching some rays at greenlake...

around 4pm, the sun starts to dip behind phinney ridge, so it's the perfect time to catch "tea-time" at Perche No Italian restaurant (stone way and 50th). they've just opened, people don't show up for dinner til 6, so we've got the little patio and tinkling water fountain all to ourselves. the sun sticks around here til 6, so we're leaving just as the dinner crowd rolls in...

and many days, even cloudy days, the sun will tease with an appearance just in time for sunset. at home, it makes our bedroom especially inviting, and i love taking a cat-nap on our bed, with the sun full on my face. it starts at the pillow, and gradually moves across the bed...

family, friends, good food, sunshine.
and raindrops on roses.
just a few of my favorite things...

spring forward...

2011-06-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

it's been a long time, friends. this winter has been most dreary and i've been mostly hibernating. when it came time to change the clocks, (which we forgot about, again) i was so disoriented when i woke up, over which clock was right and what time it really was, that in my morning grog i thought we were at fall back. no joke! i had to google it to see where we were. (looking out the window does no good: my brain just tells my body it is winter.)

i literally cannot believe it is june, that May slipped by right under my nose; i've been meaning to write for ages. in anticipation of summer, (i am reminded it is indeed summer, everywhere else but here. yes, it is currently raining and 57 degrees, still) i feel the need for a catch-up, before i am once again gone for a stretch. so apologies for the length, and the newsletter feel, but these are just things i meant to jot down but never managed to do so previously, and things i want to remember. so grab yourself of cup of tea, (or iced! i forget, it's hot over there) and if you have the time, enjoy the read...

january was february was march, and our april roses never bloomed. but we've been, as usual, busy with family life. we've even managed to get out of town for a few trips. (which we must do next year! breaking up the seattle winter is a key to survival, i've discovered.) and i'm become aware that i am surrounded by two northwest boys who suffer the lack of sun much less than i. i joked i was getting my sunshine vicariously on-line as i spent a better part of the winterly spring researching and planning our 3rd family summer trip, again to florida. it would seem it is becoming a habit, but we take each year individually and see what we can do. and so far, each spring has found me so desperate for sunshine and heat, that come july, florida is where we happily find ourselves. but enough about the weather...

(here's a sneak-peak of where we'll be staying beach-side for 4 days, before we head to walt disney world for 3: the kid is getting a bit old, and this just felt like the last chance to check this off the childhood list! i can't wait!)

january saw me jetting off to my parents for a mini-getaway, a long weekend with sisters. snow and babies, tea and talk; it was wonderful. contrary to some people's opinion, i do not mind the cold --in winter! i just like my seasons to be seasons, and besides, it was sunny!

my parent's house in winter:

nephew luke with his auntie rebekah, doing his new favorite thing: "becca bounce."

luke with his new wake-up call: baby brother evan!

peter and laura also joined up with us for a day at the baltimore aquarium.
family needs to see each-other more than once a year, a janurary trip is perfect.

that same weekend, greg and francis flew south to palm springs, for a guy's weekend: dirt bikes and desert, at the invite of our good friend chris bowden, who retreats often to his grandfather's old house in the desert, that the family has kept for getaways. the boys had a blast and greg put up a bunch of photos here. sadly, the wonderful trip ended with a scare: giving francis his first major injury: a concussion from an atv accident. he went for "one last ride" around the block an hour before they were to leave for the airport. he got going too fast, t-boned another rider and flipped the atv, which landed on top of him. it was so scary for greg, and we are immensely grateful to God that he was not hurt worse. (or the other rider either!) but it has not marred the great time they had, and they will have memories to last.

francis missed a week of school and spent the better part of february with headaches and -dr.'s orders- banned from gym, band, and basketball. his chin was banged up nice and good, which gave him some proof of injury! he got a lot of sympathy at school!

for him, it was a pretty boring february, except for the major event of turning 13!

it just so happened that on his birthday night, there was a special double-feature screening of the Raiders of the Lost Ark in the theatre, followed by Raiders of the Lost Ark: an Adaptation, a teen-filmed shot-for-shot remake of the movie, from the 80's, which was amazing, clever and funny!) so we took him and his best buds to a night out: dinner, movie, and a sleepover. which was promptly followed by winter break, where all his friends went out of town and we did not. that was rough. he actually said by the end of the (rainy! of course) week that he was tired of playing video games. we vowed we HAD to get out and do something for the next break, in spring. (which we did.)

march saw francis well enough to resume activities, thankfully, just in time for baseball season. he is now in juniors little league, with greg coaching again. he continues to surprise us, in the little things. like being so excited for his new helmet that he just could not wait to wear it...

here's a shot of francis in the outfield, which is right next to the woods of woodland park. there is a family of bunnies i have spied, that have no fear of hanging out in the outfield.

also in march, greg and i managed to get away for our (sometimes) annual march madness reunion weekend with friends in laguna beach. it was a nice dose of sun and friends.

which brings us to april: spring break! i took a break from summer vacation planning, and researched some places to go for a week long road trip, with the hopes of blue sky and sun. we looked at what was "in the area" via google earth, and decided on yellowstone. 2 days driving. 3 days there. 2 days driving back. i'm glad i did my research, because i discovered the park actually closes for winter, and had only just opened the week before, with only 2 roads in the park plowed and open for driving. we hemmed and hawed and read reviews, and in the end, decided to go anyways, and just see what we could see. it was wonderful to get out on the open road, and see new things. very exciting! also: thrilling-- apparently, there are many ways to die in yellowstone, or get seriously maimed: you can get gored by buffalo, mauled by bears, scalded by hot springs, fall into lakes of boiling water, drive off a cliff in a blizzard. there are warning signs everywhere! who could have forseen i would become such a fearful nag? i was seriously freaking out about surprising a bear any foray too far from our car. we were on trails, yes, but we were in the WILDERNESS! (oh yeah, and i was also scared of getting charged by a buffalo.) (oh yeah, and we got stuck driving in some seriously scary blizzards!) but it was amazingly beautiful, well worth the trip, and i would love to do it again. i've posted pictures of the trip up on facebook and flickr, but greg's are the really good ones. he got all the colors and wildlife that my cell-phone just can't get. i'll let you know when he posts them.

this april was our 14th anniversary. our gift that's been a year in the making was to once and for all, and finally, get a new bed. after 14 years of marriage, our first bed. we shopped for mattresses most of the fall. it seemed like every date we had while francis was at youth group, was to go lay on beds. it was not anything i want to do again. so stressful! i'm totally content sleeping on an old hand-me-down bed, but once you're going to commit thousands of dollars on something, how do you choose?? so we chose. and it was too soft. i mean, sinky like a couch soft. we were "required" to give it the 3 month test, so we slept/sunk on this bed for most of winter. then we returned it and had to start the process all over again. and chose. and it was too hard. and we could not return it. aahhh! we went back in to talk to the salespeople after a few months, knowing we couldn't return it, but asking for some advice. the lady there suggested buying a foam topper, which we did. and to march around on the bed every day, to break it in. (that was a sight!) and to do this: for 6 months!! i've been a little ashamed that my mind has been so occupied with bed woes, while the world has been going thru so many devastating events, but it's the truth. our bed is just now getting comfortable, which is good news. but the main reason i wanted to write about the bed, was to share that our friend nathan haase built our bed frame, out of old reclaimed barn-floor fir, and if you're looking for some locally sourced and hand-crafted furniture, check him out! it's gorgeous and we love it. thanks, nathan! (cell-phone pics just don't do it justice.)

so with may sweeping by, june is proving to be even busier. my to-do list that's been neglected for so long is now rearing it's head urgently. why do i always wait til the last minute? i have a goal of so many things to get checked off by the time francis is out of school on the 23rd. and after that, it's just a short time til we fly east for vacation for a month! another week at wildwood, nj with my whole family this time, sibs and spouses and babies all! i can't wait and i've been counting down as a general rule of survival. also: a girls-getaway to nyc with 3 dear friends: we haven't all been in the same place at the same time since my wedding i think! and of course, the nyssen adventure to florida in the july heat. it's all coming up, and i'll try to write and post some while it's occurring and not make you wait til december! i've been on a bit of a health kick, too, in preparation for summer. i call it my pre-detox. (i couldn't commit to a full detox before trying it out first, in waves, so that's where i still am.) (danajill has been helping keep me accountable, she serves me green smoothies!)

so if you made it this far, cheers!
and i wish you all a wonderful summer! xo

a little office space...

2011-01-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

january always equals clean slate. a new year. a fresh start...

so i'm tackling my post-it note problem, my lack of creative progress, and my general "not having anywhere to put things" problem, with making greg's kitchen corner "office space" into MY office space. i have claimed a dusty little corner as mine, and i'm hoping that some inspiration strikes!

apparently, posting them all over the wall didn't result in actually getting things done. so now i have a pile of post-it notes that i have to work my way through. i'm thinking one a day? maybe one a week is more realistic? convert them all onto one long list? it will be a scroll! sigh...

also, just wanted to show off the poster by mark ovenden (--a small confession of fandom: i googled him, then emailed him via his website, saying we loved the design and asking if the poster was for sale in the usa. he responded as quick as the time difference would allow, a very kind and humble letter, and also informed me that it is only for sale at the london transport museum, for now...) that i bought greg for xmas, that was really a "for our hallway" present. i first noticed it in the book Transit Maps of the World, that, incidentally, i also got greg last xmas! haha. can't quite tell by the pic, but it's a re-imagining of the world map in the style of the london underground. so clever!

i'm also quite tickled by our new kettle. and by "our" i mean, the kettle i bought greg for xmas to replace the lovely red ceramic one he ruined a year ago, by heating the wrong burner and scorching it to death. i used to have an electric kettle years ago, so i am happy to return to it. plus, it's just so chipper, it can't help but brighten my day! tea, anyone?

ok. i'm off to tackle something on my list. i think the fridge is next...

and so it begins: another new year

2011-01-05T13:30:00.000-08:00

am i still eating boxing day meatballs? why, yes i am. and am i still drinking leftover mulled wine? happily so. (though not at this moment) and is it gray and raining outside? why, yes it is! (though to be fair, we just had some gorgeous rays that lasted for a few days.)

and so begins another year. we put away our decorations last night, the main reason being we are expecting the delivery of a new bed this week, and need all the space we can get. our place seems so much bigger when the tree and decorations are put away. (even if it was a little tree.) i do get so excited to have them up, but then, i do get so excited to take them down. start fresh. clean slate. we had a lovely relaxing christmas day, and my missing of my family was greatly appeased by skyping with the whole family, all at the same time! if you are wondering if a 6 party skype is possible, well, it is! and so much fun. the whole 2 week vacation was chock full of fun: (and i just posted some xmas pics on flickr) favorite movies old and new, (francis got to see his first gremlins!) making cookies, eating cookies, visiting friends, a trip to greg's brothers for an overnight with cousins, a very merry christmas day, our bi-annual boxing day party, some severe vegging, a harry potter marathon, games, and a new year's eve downtown with good friends. many late nights. monday morning's back to school was rough. on all of us.

and now it's a new year.

i do not make new year's resolutions because i do not need any reminders of how many times i fail. but i make lists continually, almost daily, so... on my list for things to do this week is: organize my list!! it has swamped me. i have little lists for things that need immediate action, then i have far-reaching lists of things to do someday, and lists of pertinent things to do at a later date. it is all rather out of hand. for our boxing day party, we cleaned up the "office" portion of the kitchen, meaning: put all my papers in a box to hide in the closet, and i took down all my post-it notes that were all over the kitchen. i have talked about this before. how they become so familiar a sight that the urgency drifts away. they become yellow checkerboard wallpaper in my kitchen. and how strange: things are not getting done!? so. that is top of my new list.

already in this new year, we are dealing with brand new things. one big thing is: the kid finally got his own set of digits! he got his first cell-phone for christmas. we held out for a long time, i do believe he is the last of all his friends. and already: we have had to tackle the discovery of his lacking cell-phone etiquette with -- rules--. no, you are not allowed to call your friend's parents (while they are working, mind you) to serenade them "don't stop believin'". (sorry, rob!) discussions on pranking. but, yesterday marked the first time he texted me: "the 5 just came" (he takes the city bus home from school and it was very late, the main reason we got him a phone in the first place!) and i texted him back and it struck me: we have entered a new form of communication. so i hope for good things.

and along with communication comes another big thing we are dealing with right now: R rated movies. alot of his friends are watching them. monster flicks. zombie flicks. horror flicks. it never even occurred to us. it was not even on our radar. we do not think we are especially strict, as he has been watching many PG-13 movies well before he was 13, and has been allowed, (albeit, begrudgingly) to play Halo for a long time now. but this caught us completely off guard. this is a whole new territory, he has no idea. with R comes language, of course, much more graphic violence, and very likely: sex scenes. how we found out about it is: remarkably, francis told us that while at a neighbor's house, the group of kids wanted to watch the new Predators and francis spoke up to the mom and said he wasn't allowed to watch R rated movies. so then the mom announced "sorry, kids, you're gonna have to pick another movie: francis isn't allowed to watch R rated movies." horror of horrors! needless to say, francis hasn't been invited over to watch any more movies. and now we are put on the spot with having to decide over his mental well-being vs. his social well-being. i would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this matter, for or against. are we being too harsh? isn't that the rite of passage for junior high? --sneaking adult content? i can still remember junior high slumber parties and leaving the room if they were going to watch a horror flick. i guess it's easier for a girl. i don't think it would go over so well with a room-full of boys. i've never liked gory movies and i still don't. but i have friends who love them. even as a kid. did your parents let you? did you sneak them? shoot me an email if it will be long(as i have personally discovered that blogger comments have limited space). so far our status is: we have made a pact: if he will come to us with the movies he wants to see, we will not just say no. he is to make a "movies i want to watch" list: we will assess each request, and if we can accommodate him with a tv version, we ask in return that he accept our judgment. (the list has already started, and at the top is Aliens.) we will try to be most fair, knowing what is at stake. and if we say no for now, it is because he is only 12 (ok, almost 13) and that we may be open to it in a few years, say, when he is 14 or 15. this all sounds so formal, but basically it came down to: let's keep the communication lines open, ok? and to kick it all off, as a show of good faith, we let him watch (the tv version of) Die Hard. he... loved... it...

so there's another thing added to my list: watch Predators. i guess it's time to see what all this hoopla is about...

wishing for a(nother) winter wonderland

2010-12-08T14:57:00.000-08:00

i gotta say it: christmas always comes too fast. i would like there to be 2 months between thanksgiving and christmas. there are just not enough days for me to prepare. and i am even more behind than i've been in previous years. christmas cards not even started yet! i do not like being stressed over xmas lists and shopping that needs to be done, because i actually do like that part. i like giving to the people i love. it's just that it always seems to come all of a sudden, and i am very bad at accumulating items over the year, or even starting in november. i wish there were more days also, because, simply, i just really love the xmas season. and added to the wonderful reason for the season, i confess i do like the material tokens of tradition as well: i love the carols, the decorations, the tv specials, the food. and plaid. and the christmas tree. i wondered/worried that we were robbing francis of the joy of hunting down the perfect tree with the fact that we are re-using the same tree from the past 2 years: we bought a little potted tree about 3 ft. tall, and it "lives" in the upstairs hallway, out of sight, off-season. but he was excited to bring it down and use it again. it had lost some branches, and is even more charlie brownish than last year, but... it seems to fit with our apt. and mood.

so i'm trying to embrace the beauty, amid the shortness of days. to indulge in all the christmas traditions we love. discovered a new favorite channel on pandora: swingin' christmas music. francis has again asked for gingerbread cookies, so we have baking days ahead. and movies to watch, for the 37th time. the only thing missing from this picture is my family. we spent last year's christmas at my parents in PA, with all my siblings, their spouses, and my grandma. so it's going to seem a little quiet here, on the homefront, on christmas day, our little family of three. (we are already planning to group-skype! that should be interesting, and nice. well, it will have to suffice)

so. since i never did get some pictures up here from our 3 days of snow before thanksgiving, here are some. it is hard to tell by the pictures just how steep our hill is, as i am standing on a little flat half-way down, acting as lookout, a necessary job: from the top -looking down- you cannot see past the dip 2 blocks down to tell if some fool is ignoring the "road closed" sign and trying to barrel up a hill of ice. this did happen a handful of times. we went out the first night because lessons have been learned that when you see the snow, you need to hit it; it'll very likely be melted by the following day. but the next day, it wasn't melted! and still below freezing. so francis called some friends to walk down, and they sledded all afternoon down 65th street. when night came, and they went home, i thought he'd be sledded out, but, i was wrong. after dinner he was dying to go out again. and again the thought it wouldn't be here tomorrow prevailed, so out we went a second night. by the third day, we were completely amazed it was still below freezing outside, the hill was still iced over, the road still closed, so the friends tromped over again and repeated it all over again. by thanksgiving, it was mostly all melted away. one of our friends has apparently misinterpreted my grumpiness at the seattle gray, and commented on seeing me all decked out in snow pants, hat, mittens, scarf: " how you holding up? i thought you didn't like all this cold." i said: "what?? i don't like gray. but i love seasons. i like my summers hot, with sun. and winter is supposed to be cold, with snow." so, my hopes might not be shared by many here, but i got a kid who wants to use his new sled (!) for more than 3 days this winter. and i'm crossing my fingers, saying a prayer, and hoping some returns for christmas... i'd like it to be white...

waking up looking down...

2010-11-19T12:48:00.000-08:00

not often does the song i hear on the radio send me scrambling to find it once i get home.

but last friday, i got a call from greg, could we pick him up from work? it was pouring outside, already dark out, and he wouldn't get home til after 8pm at this rate, so francis and i hopped in the car, with francis choosing his new privilege: riding shotgun.

there was crazy traffic. moving slow, we hopscotched around on the radio, he didn't want to listen to classic rock, i didn't want to listen to christmas music (already??!!), so when i finally heard the beastie boys, i breathed a sigh of relief and turned it up. LOUD. i looked over at francis and his little shoulders were already groovin' to the beat, and i asked him: do you know this song? he said no. i said -- THIS is the rap music of MY school-days. i think he was a little surprised that he could like something that was so old. it didn't sound old. it sounded, well, awesome.

and then, while we were sitting there stop-n-go in the rain, in the dark, music loud, with the red tail-lights glowing off the windshield, the song morphed into a song HE knew. arcade fire. i said: you know this song? he said yes. everybody knows this song. and then he was really groovin'...

sometimes, randomly, forces come together to make a moment truly memorable. i don't know if he realizes how special it was, but for me, we have -lately- few moments of true togetherness, where i'm not buggin' him, or he's not buggin' me, where we are just chill, enjoying one another's company. to be honest, those moments come more easily and often when we travel, when we can be surprised, and curious, and discover things together. when we are far from the grind of daily life. at home, it's trickier, but sometimes those moments can still slip in.

we've been singing the song for days...

p.s.
after my foray down the rabbit-hole of the world wide web, i was able to find no information on where to buy it, but i've put an inquiry into kexp. the song was a mash-up of beastie boys: looking down the barrel of a gun, and arcade fire: wake up. it was credited as: arcade boys: waking up looking down the barrel. if you play them side by side on youtube, you can almost hear it.

things that don't drive me crazy.

2010-11-17T11:18:00.000-08:00

i. love. wikipedia.
it is instant access to countless encyclopedias.
i was the child who was told to go "look it up in the dictionary" when i didn't know a word, and then would sit and read the whole page because i was curious. i try to encourage that curiosity in francis, who, thankfully, loves to read and discover. although he is growing up in a culture where trips to the library are getting fewer and far between, i'm finding all this new technology and instant access to information isn't decreasing the appetite for knowledge, but INCREASING it. when i was a kid, i was limited to my school, or my city's library. now we have at our fingertips cultures crossing cultures, and information that seems never-ending! we look up stuff on a daily basis. --did you know...? --did you know...?? we watch a movie, say: the secret of kells. then we go look up "the book of kells" because i can't really remember the details. and then we're like: "hmm... what's an illuminated manuscript?" and hopscotch over there. and then we're like: "what's Vulgate? and Vetis Latina? what's Insular Style?" and then before you know it, we've hopscotched across continents on the world wide web... another hour or so goes by with our brains just absorbing, busy, learning.
this is something i can't get enough of.
our children are lucky...

basketball diaries

2010-11-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

francis has been in sports most of his life, from soccer and tennis when he was little, many years of baseball and quite a few winters of city-league basketball. we have finally entered that especially charged time in childhood: being on your school's sport team. this is our (his) first. i have signed multitudes of parent release forms, medical forms, i-won't-sue-you forms... but i have NEVER seen a form quite like this one before. it really takes the cake. parents worry enough as it is, this one just spells it all out for you, so you can really worry much more effectively and specifically. francis has always been a bit of a cautious child, and also a literal one. i thought it best we paraphrase it for him,(and keep the worrying to us) or else he might change his mind about playing any sport again!

after a page of rules, the participant is informed of the following (copied exactly, emphasis theirs):

" I am aware that basketball is a high-risk sport and that practicing or competing in basketball will be a dangerous and unpredictable activity involving MANY RISKS OF INJURY. I understand that the dangers and risk of practicing and competing in basketball include, but are not limited to, death, serious neck and spinal injuries which may result in complete or partial paralysis, brain damage, blindness, serious injury to virtually all internal organs, serious injury to virtually all bones, joints, ligaments, muscles, tendons and other aspects of my body, general health and well-being. I understand that the dangers and risk of practicing or competing in basketball may result not only in serious injury, but in serious impairment of my future abilities to earn a living, to engage in other business, social and recreational activities and generally to enjoy life."

??!!

about a boy

2010-11-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

i love this picture, because, on a typical gloomy day in october, a ray of sunshine pierced thru the clouds, illuminating flowers outside our windows that should not still be blooming.

2 big events happened in october, if you don't count the usual trials of life that involve parenting a 7th grader daily big events --school, math homework, jazz trumpet lessons, fall baseball (what? very similar to regular baseball, except instead of being sometimes wet and cold it is always wet and cold...) youth group, sleepovers, endless discussions of video-game-time-allotment, chores.

many of you have already heard about this as it was talked up quite a bit on facebook,-- francis' opportunity to read his poem "ode to birds" as opening act for SAL event for poet Robert Pinsky at the Benaroya Hall. so i won't go into length here, except to say that i think this is something he will remember his whole life. the oddity and specialness of it. to have grown-ups, other than your parents, or your parents friends, come up to you and congratulate you on something you created. at the artist reception before the event, we mentioned to francis that we should go introduce ourselves to Robert Pinsky, and while we were still talking to someone else, looked up to see that he had already marched on over to him, and was engaging him in conversation. for quite some time. when we walked over, we introduced ourselves as the parents, and mr. pinsky threw his arm around francis' shoulder conspiritorally, and loudly whispered, with a wink at us, "parents just don't get us, do they?" and francis heartily agreed: "no, they do not!" and we laughed because it is true. of course we don't. but it only further illuminated the fact that francis is growing up, and we are quickly becoming "the parents". and try as hard as we might to be good stewards of this role, we, much more than we would like, (as francis likes to say:) epic fail.

we are feeling now more than ever the 3rd man out, in our little family of three. if greg and francis go off doing the many variety of sports that occupy their time, i feel left out. and when greg and i are occupied in talking to eachother, francis is left out. or if we're both talking to him, he feels ganged up on. there is no other sibling to get his back, or distract us from him. he has no one to share in his feelings that mom and dad are being a pain in the butt. it's getting harder and harder to drag stories of school out of him. "fine." "nothing happened." "nothing interesting." etc. etc. "can i go now?"

which is why this poem so surprised us.

it was a little window into his world, and when it was out in the open, he wasn't embarrassed to share it with us. he was embarrassed by the attention and the praise, because to him it was no big deal. he even told us he didn't think it was a very good poem, that he didn't get the chance to read it in class like all the other kids, because he "hadn't followed the assignment." it was "supposed" to be an ode to cloves. (?? really? seriously?) and if you didn't know that francis is a literalist and a perfectionist, well...i shudder to think how he would have internalized this, because we never knew about the poetry lesson in his class until we got the notice in the mail saying that his was chosen.

so you see, his failed poem won the prize.

he could have silently carried that "epic fail" with him for years. he possibly may have never attempted to write again. i am so thankful that this opportunity happened. it taught him lessons that he may not even realize right now, but has hopefully planted seeds. speak the truth. trust your gut. and that it's ok to question authority because authority is not always right. adults are not always right. that sometimes, many times, he's gonna have to stick to his guns... and this needs to be reinforced by people other than us. because we are: just the parents.

so Robert Pinsky buddying up to him, treating him like a peer, and congratulating him meant 10x any praise from us could ever have done. mr. pinsky even went so far as to give a shout out from stage "--how about that Francis Nyssen and that fabulous poem?" and the audience just ate him up. after-wards we watched as a very calm and collected francis was approached by very passionate patrons of the arts, just singing his praises and wanting his autograph. that self-esteem boost alone, i hope, will carry him through some tough times at school. he doesn't make friends easily, and doesn't have many.

he may never write another poem, but he got to see first-hand how our talent and creativity moves people in a positive way, and i hope that is something that he will want to be a part of, in any form. he may not understand that about me yet. my words of praise may get drowned out by my "no, you can't have a sleepover"s, and "no, you can't play more videogames"...and all my daily annoyances.

i have small, fleeting moments of encouragement.
he will go from not wanting to have anything to do with me, bored by my questions, or even by my mere presence, to inexplicably, quietly, holding my hand.

and that is a ray of sunshine on a gloomy day.

let's go to the movies (see the movies!) let's go see the stars...

2010-10-01T14:00:00.000-07:00

when i was growing up, we used to have Friday Night Movie Night. i was little; this was the era before vhs. i have tried to explain to francis, but we have media-saturated youth, tech-savvy kids: he does not really understand. the simplicity. the painstaking effort. it truly seems like we're telling him the stories our parents used to tell us, about walking to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways. how, exactly, did one have movie night before dvd's, (before vhs even) without actually going to the movies?

enter the film projector.

remember those? francis does not even know what this is, but in my youth this was the device that let the living-room become the cinema, (and, among other things, allowed us to see a whole 'nother side of my dad, the side which was usually reserved for fix-it-time in the garage, where we were not allowed to go when he was "working". hahaha) this was the age of super8, and the movies we watched were movies of us. the white sheet would be hung, the popcorn made, the lights dimmed, and we would all sit around and laugh at each other. we could do this for hours. my dad was the family photographer, movie-maker, engineer. laughter, then a jam, then silence. (dang nabbit!) then lights, splice, ok -we're rolling... and back for more.

sometimes, for a real treat, my dad would come home with movie shorts that he rented from his work. these were segments of a movie, about 10 minutes long. not a trailer, but a popular scene. i'm not really sure how available this was to the general public; he worked for Kodak at the time, so we all felt like this was really special. and it was.

the evening's entertainment might include:
the just a spoonful of sugar scene from mary poppins.
the soccer game sequence from bedknobs and broomsticks.
the archery contest and the rumble in the marketplace sequences from disney's robin hood. (Long Live King Richard!)
penny's escape, from the rescuers.

we watched these so many times, had them memorized. eventually, the super8 lost momentum, but we didn't lose movie night. vhs was introduced, we started compiling movies taped from the tv. we had a whole closet-full of choices. we grew up on the tv versions of a lot of good movies. also, movies that we would not normally have been able to watch. i am entering that dilemma now with francis, which is why it is on my mind. he is at the age (12) where he's ready for action movies, and sadly, many of them just have too much language. even the older movies. he has been begging to see the Terminator movies, and so greg and i re-watched them with him in mind. the first terminator? no way. the 2nd one? well, it's not too bad, except for all the f-bombs dropped. so, again, no way. i finally remembered to search for it on the tv, and we finally recorded a tv version for him. we had a movie night and he loved it! we've been big on the Family Night Movie Night, too, trying to keep it special. now it's making me wish i had a closet-full of movies for him to choose from, but even vhs doesn't work now. do i start burning movies onto dvd? (next up: ghostbusters!)

it's too hard to keep up, but one thing is certain: we do not have enough times where we sit around as a family, watch the movies of ourselves, and have a good laugh. we used to do that a lot when francis was little. this past christmas, greg converted a whole slew of francis' childhood from vhs to dvd. it took days and was the backdrop for most of our christmas break. so we got a good dose of little francis-isms then. fun memories! but i've been recording tons of stuff, so has greg, and it just sits on our computer. gathering dust. hard to find. what to do with it??

so: i've finally bit the bullet, grabbed a brief moment of inspiration, and created my very own vimeo site. (i've added it to my blog.) i've uploaded my first dose of family memories. these are, so far, only my cellphone videos from this summer, but it's a start. most people, unless they were there, won't really find them funny, or even care to watch. it's a public site, i don't care who watches it, but really, it's for us. (and you, if you were there!) i'm hoping to stay on task adding to it, and maybe even re-introduce the "home movie night." we may have traded in the large white sheet for a small white screen, but the memories shown are just as real and produce the same laughs. i'm hoping for more...

morning has broken...

2010-09-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

i had a goal this morning: to get out of the house and go downtown. but then, it started raining cats and dogs. drizzle i can handle. downpours not so much. my rain-boots are broken and they are on my list of "needs". my attempts at fixing them (even my dad tried when he was here!) have been no-good. they are just cute but old rubber rain-boots with orange shoelaces and i can't find anything i like to replace them, so i keep wearing broken ones. ones that let the rain in...

everything seems to be breaking at the same time.

our monitor is broken. it sends greg and i into road-rage every morning trying to boot it up. it's pre-historic. (not the monitor. the feeling. the waiting is so... un-modern.) it flickers off and goes black for about 15 minutes. you just have to turn it off and on until it sticks. i've adapted to trying to complete my business on the computer in 2 second-flicking-intervals. we're holding off on buying a new one because greg has to find a good one for his photography needs. not just any old monitor will do. and so our eyes glaze over with the pressing of the button; i feel like we're in the hatch on LOST. it's now a chore that we sometimes delegate to francis: "go boot up the monitor" and he sits there for ages, pressing the button on and off...

our video-camera is broken. gotta hold in the battery pack while filming.
the kitchen timer is broken. count to sixty in your head.
my face-powder compact is broken. store it in a baggie; it's a mess.
the green couch is unraveling.
the bed is killing our backs.

there are too many needs mixed in with too many wants.
but: these are just things.
there are other things more important...

last night, we were at the seattle art museum for the book launch party of
-YOU WILL NOT COME BACK UNCHANGED-
a book of poetry and prose from seattle area students K-12, thru the writers in the schools program. francis had one of his poems selected for this book, and he was to read it at the event. we were so proud i actually teared up when i first found out. he adamantly did NOT want to read his poem, but we pretty much forced him to. once he got there, though, he started to get nervous/excited. and when the other kids started reading their poems (he was #45 on the list, quite a long wait) he started to get more excited than nervous. he did great and didn't mess up, which was his worry. he even adlibbed a bit, adding a bit about a hummingbird that wasn't even in the text. !? i was pretty impressed with the poems these kids had written; i don't remember being taught poetry at such a young age. and afterwords, they had a book signing, and all the "authors" sat at a long table and signed books for their "fans". francis took this job very seriously and i about melted. he was totally in his element. i went down the line with our copy of the book and got all the signatures for francis to look back on. i remembered faces to go with each poem.

and then:

at the end:

francis said:
so, what do you think? should i just go tell that girl i think she's cute?

greg said:
why not? seize the moment. life is short.

so we watched him march up to the cute-poetry-reading-girl who sat next to him and say "by the way, i think you're cute", nod, and walk away.

he talked about her all night...
--------------------------------

ODE TO BIRDS: (by francis nyssen)

Birds, birds
are the most
colorful animals
green
brown
yellow
red
blue
turquoise
purple
neon blue--
I could go on.
The king of nests
has a fancy for huge
very decorated nests.
It's turquoise
and neon blue. It
sends you in a trance.
A yellow canary goes
black against the sun
on a sunny
day.
A rattle of leaves and sounds tell
you
the toucan hops
from branch to
branch, chirping.
It's beak shining, making
us see a blur of color.
A crow searches
endlessly for its
old feathers
of white.
The mimicker of
sounds mimics
the sound of its falling
forest. The king
of voice shines
its colorful feathers.
Red, blue
yellow, green,
it has a stubby
beak. It makes
you see a sea of
colors. Making
you smell fruit.
Cloves send a scent to me
making me think of birds.
A fresh
drink of chai
reminds me of when
I'm sitting in
the bird dome at
the zoo.
At night I can imagine
a vulture looks despairingly
jealous of all the color.
Starlings are
considered
good luck when
they live in your house.
A bird's color is what
the vulture
wants so badly.
Cardinal's red
makes it
look like a
streaking flame
of light across
the sky,
making fire
burn in your
eyes.

day after day

2010-06-11T12:34:00.000-07:00

...it has looked like this. i have to confess, it's gotten me down. i haven't accomplished much. not nearly what i've wanted to. it's june and i'm still wearing my winter puffy coat to francis's baseball games. occasionally we've had a sunny day, and all of seattle pours into the out-of-doors, and then gets sunburned. but it's raining today, rained yesterday, rained most of last week, most of last month, and the month before that... get the idea? it doesn't inspire much motivation in me, and my days go by with my "things to do" not getting checked off the list; my post-it notes that have overtaken the kitchen are not getting taken down. they are deciding to live there, right there on the wall. school gets out for francis in 7 days and he and i cannot wait. but i'm telling ya, seattle: you have 7 days to shape up, because i DO NOT want summer vacation starting looking like this! so please, do a girl a favor? i'm popping vitamin D everyday, but i could really use some the natural way...

once upon a time...

2010-04-05T12:24:00.000-07:00

there was a girl who...
just kidding, maybe you've noticed i've been gone awhile? i've just completed the 3 week intensive screenwriting class at the film school in seattle, a course that ran from 9-9pm, mon-fri, and most of the day on saturdays. my boys got a good long dose of no mom around, lots of video game time, and a consistent diet of cereal and macaroni and cheese apparently! ha ha! and i was in overdrive. i got three weeks of information input overload, a heavy dose of perspiration and inspiration, a notebook full of notes, friendships forged, lessons learned, emotions raked over the coals, oh yes, it was a bucket of laughs! (and tears.) now i'm sitting here, back in my usual quiet, trying to ignore the laundry and the dishes, and wondering how to implement all that i have learned. i'm gonna be sitting here for awhile, i'm thinking. we have been poked, prodded, implored: taught not to wait for inspiration to strike (which has always been my preferred method of composing) but to be dutiful in our writing habits: write everyday. practice practice practice. of course, easy advice can be handed out any day of the week, but after enduring 3 weeks of this onslaught to all the senses (i hear habits are formed in 2) one would hope we get the message. that artists don't become artists by picking up paint and splashing it onto the canvas. (alas, also my preferred method... what is this saying about me?) -that before you can break the rules and go all abstract, first you must learn the rules. there is a method to the madness. and there are is a TON of stuff to know about writing a screenplay, none of which involves just sitting at the computer with an idea and typing. ah, crap. "ideas are a dime a dozen, but execution is everything." it comes down to HOW to create and tell a good story, how to create interesting complex characters. process process process. hard discipline. acting is rehearsing. writing is re-writing.

now i have lots of little voices in my head.
let's see if i can get anything out on paper...

starting over

2010-01-09T15:44:00.000-08:00

apparently, i took a break.

when i look back, it shows i averaged about 3 blogs a month in 2007 and 2008. but in 2009, i only blogged 3 times. total. ugh.

i've made no resolution for 2010.
january is always a time of reflection for me anyways, without the stress of resolutions that i may not keep (that will only serve to bum me out later). but, i would like to get back into writing more, so with that, i will say: i'll try.

a lot happened in 2009 that i have not written about: francis' terrible end of 5th grade and his seeming never-ending bout with being bullied, his first camp experience in summer (which he loved), greg's and my little get-away trip to miami (unbeknownst to us at the time: the start of hurricane season), the start of middle-school for francis, greg being sent to beijing, china twice for work, the second time in november with us joining him, me flying home in october to be with my parents for my dad's (successful!) heart surgery, flying home for christmas in december, the first time in 3 years all the siblings and spouses and grandkids, and great-grandma were all together under the same roof! it was grand. and there was snow...

so yes, it's been a busy year.

and now i'm back home in seattle; it's been gray for days, and i'm looking ahead to this year. sadly, eagerly awaiting the end of 6th grade. francis isn't having the best of time making friends in his new school. he is often overwhelmed by his schoolwork. many boys his age are strutting, trash-talking, girl-watching, cussing fools, and thankfully, he's not quite there yet. which makes the fitting in tough. he does like band though, and practices his trumpet with gusto. i've already started off the year with some accomplishment: i ordered (finally) some prints on snapfish from our miami trip. starting off small. now all i have to do is china and our europe trip. hopefully before francis graduates. now there's a goal...

just listening to ella fitzgerald on pandora radio. had far-away friends over for coffee this morning. having nearby friends over for pizza and wine tonight...
really, i just try to get thru one day at a time. i know i grumble about the gray, but if i can laugh or smile at least once in the day, i'm doing pretty fine...

mooning over miami

2009-09-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

yes, i've been gone from here...just kind of living life. but today, after two cups of coffee and feeling a bit jittery, ( and francis at a friend's house), i just had the urge to put these photos up from summer. middle school starts for francis next week, so this last week of "summer" we'll try to live it up, if the sun could just come out again and maybe stay there for a little while...

so what happened was: the day after school got out in june, we flew out east: francis to go to camp for the first time, and greg and i to head to miami, for our first getaway sans the kid. we didn't quite know what to expect, the destination being a rather last minute decision. i did try to research up on the area for things to do, and hotels (which now with the reviews feature, you're left feeling like you have a 50/50 chance of having a great time, or a horrible time, no in-between!) one thing i did not think to look up was the weather. florida = sun, right? well, as luck with the nyssens would have it: june in florida is the beginning of hurricane season, and after the first day there (of 110 degrees), the storms rolled in and unleashed torrential rain, thunder and lightning, every single day. and then they'd roll out. so we did get our sun. just sandwiched in-between some of the most fantastic shows of thunder and lightning i have ever seen. greg (being a northwest boy, and thus not being used to storms like this, like i have) was at first, quite terrified, and then, once that wore off, quite dense. and i like an idiot, followed him out onto the beach numerous times, for: pictures. me all the while telling him: when the lightning strikes, do you think it will hit the lifeguard station, the beach umbrellas, or us first? (he didn't get the hint, and i think we got lucky!)

we stayed at this little boutique hotel one block from the beach, called the catalina hotel and beach club, which we found here. (again, according to the reviews, people either loved it or hated it, but i really think it depends on the kind of traveler you are, and the amenities you are looking for.) us? we loved it. it was a pretty romantic place to stay, good food, comfy beds, free beach chairs and bike usage, and..oh yeah...free happy hour!
(more photos on my flickr...)

we were north of south beach, the art deco district, by a few blocks, so every day we hit the beach and every night we got dinner and walked all over town. we enjoyed the hot nights, loud music pumping out of hotel bars, gelato, the old (and often crumbling)architecture, the many accents we heard along the way, and of course, people watching. we even designated our favorite restaurant: sibilla, eating here twice, coming back just for the pizza.

after arriving to miami a little nervous, truly not knowing what to expect, we were very pleasantly surprised. there was, of course, the heat.(yes!) and many europeans on the beach. it felt like the most tropical international place one could get while still being in the united states. and all the servers we encountered were friendly and very relaxed. the pool guy chatted to us while we collected our towels for the beach, exclaiming over the sheer beauty of hurricanes. there's danger, of course. but a spectacular thing to witness, he said. the power of mother nature. (i was ready to take his word for it!) all in all, we had a wonderful time, despite the rain, (or including the hot sheeting rain) and we would happily do it again.

i know, i know...

2009-04-09T13:03:00.000-07:00

i have not been around on this for quite some time, and i have been reminded and coaxed and urged. quite frankly, the days continue to be gray, and there's not much to write about, or rather, that i feel like writing about. i feel like the pictures i'm taking are the exact same pictures i took last year, and the things i wanted to accomplish by now (mainly: detailing our trip to europe and getting it in "blurb" book form) have not yet come to pass, and i disappoint myself in the lack of accomplishment and self-motivation. i feel like my creative bird has flown the coop. not to sound completely depressed, i'm not. just going thru a writer's block, actually, not even a block. "block" would imply the desire to write, but with no words coming. but lately there hasn't even been the desire to write. just to hibernate...
but spring is coming, trees are blooming, and i hope to crawl out soon.
thank you for the encouragement!
xo rachel

still a believer!

2009-01-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

here's a picture greg took of francis on christmas morning. i know it's a little late, but well, i haven't been blogging this whole christmas break. you see, we got snow! lots of snow! (for seattle, of course!) and it stuck around. so we played, and sledded, and tromped around in it, got cold all the way thru, then came inside and got warm, watched movies, played games, ate cookies... and it was wonderful! i've just now posted some pics of our days on my flickr. the rain has since washed it all away, and school has started again, and it has been hard making the switch from late nights, late mornings, to early nights and early mornings. both francis and i overslept today, and he was late to school! (sigh) it's back to regular life. with some wonderful memories thrown in for good measure...

winter wishings...

2008-12-10T14:04:00.000-08:00

while driving home from francis' basketball practice, in the steady rain, foggy windows, christmas lights blinking from neighborhood lights, radio playing christmas tunes: "it's the most wonderful time of the year" comes on the radio...
and francis pipes up from the back seat:

francis: you know what? i think they are right!
us: who's right?
francis: i think christmas IS the most wonderful time of the year!!

a good reminder for me to try to somehow slow down, because it seems this month is chocked-full, with something on every day, and the other day francis lamented that he was "too busy!" (with school, homework, basketball, trumpet lessons, piano lessons, etc etc) and we don't even have a tree yet!!!

so slow down and relish the joys of the season.

we've got to get our tree, decorate it, cut paper snowflakes, bake cookies, finish our christmas cards, and try to not feel rushed or stressed about all the ways we want to show our loved ones we love them, under the deadline of the 25th! (sigh)

so no photos lately.
i leave you with a picture by charles harper.
enjoy your winter and all the joys christmas brings.
share the Love.

london: day 4

2008-11-05T11:53:00.001-08:00

tuesday: july 1, 2008
all the queen's horses, and all the queen's men...

9:30am: the wake-up call this morning is just as alarming, and even more so, it's a half-hour late! i wake up francis, in the pitch black room, and throw back the curtains: it is bright and sunny and a glorious day in london. we rush downstairs to pile a breakfast on our trays just in time; they're already clearing it away as we sit down.

we check out, and leave our luggage at the hotel. the clerk is an elderly gentleman, who is tickled pink by francis and his exclamations, and starts chatting him up about castles, which is so cute, but unfortunately, we are rushing to try to catch the changing of the guard, so i have to cut it short.

at the russell square tube station, there is a crowd of people waiting to get into the tiny elevator, so i instinctively head for the stairs. we did not know that there would be sooo many stairs! luckily, it is all downhill, but still, i think we went down 7? 10? 12? flights of stairs! i had no idea the underground was so far underground! francis is in giggle fits of exasperation...when ARE we ever going to get to the bottom?

finally, the bottom. and we ride the tube to victoria station, and walk quick the many blocks to buckingham palace. it is very very warm already, (only 11am) and i'm too hot in my jeans. we are 10 minutes late and the fence line is entirely crowded, but we manage to worm our way to the front. we are on the side fence, not the front, so they are far away, but still. we get pictures, and francis can now say he saw the changing of the guard. it lasts a long time, and it is a little boring for kids, i think. (adults, too?) we have expectations of spectacular, but this is slow and methodical; this is tradition and ritual. there is honor in being the guard of the queen (even if it seems you're not doing much.) they conclude by marching out of the gates of the palace, past the victoria's memorial roundabout, and down the main street, which has been closed off to traffic. they do this every day? traffic must stop for the marching of the guard every single day?

we, of course, follow them, with the other tourists, and take pictures. francis is utterly fascinated. then we find a piece of shade in the grass and have a snack of buttered rolls (from breakfast). francis is falling asleep sitting up. another morning of rushing around.

we hit the gift shops and do some souvenir shopping. we head back to the train station to use the toilets (30p!) and then get egg salad sandwiches, apples, chips, chocolate, and smoothies at the store, and take it to a nearby park to eat lunch in the shade. after trying to figure out our afternoon plan, i decide the best bet is to head to ruth's for tea-time, to catch up on email and laundry, and to rest up a bit before our big night out on the town: catching shakepeare's "a midsummer night's dream" at the Globe! (a replica theatre)

back at the train station, i figure out a bus back to the british museum. (success!)unfortunately, it was a painfully long slow ride thru downtown london, and it was not a double decker bus, so we did not get much of a view. but still, we got to rest, and passed by picadilly circus, chinatown, and soho. this older lady was sitting in the row next to us, and chatted up francis the entire time. older people just really are delighted by francis, i don't know how, he just has this way about him. he will talk to anybody, (and keep on talking!)

we get off at the british museum, and walk the now familiar route back to our hotel. we stop in russell square one last time for francis to splash in the fountain, then back to the hotel to pick up our bags, then back down the tube station to get to ruth's by 5pm. we have tea and snacks and rest, waiting for ruth to get home from work. francis takes out all his souvenirs and lines them up on the table (in true francis-fashion.) ruth gets home, we have pesto pasta for dinner, and before you know it, we're rushing off to the tube station again, to get to the Globe theatre.

we get off the tube at Bank, and still have a bit of a walk to go, across the bridge, across the Thames. francis is absolutely bursting for a toilet. this is the financial district and everything is closed. no restrooms in the tube stations. no ubiquitous starbucks on every other corner. not even a fast food restuarant. dang it! all that tea and ribena! what do the brits do when they are bursting for the loo? does cold weather and lots of tea make their bladders stronger? ruth's advice was to "walk faster"; i was ready to let him pee in an alley, if only i could find an alley! francis was near tears, waddling as fast as he could, and i was very sympathetic to his pain. we finally made it there, and more importantly, HE made it, and was very much relieved!

while we were in the bathroom, ruth discovered that the Globe was sold out for the entire month of july, and that the long line outside the door was for people waiting for last-minute tickets to be made available by no-shows! but since we walked straight in to use the toilets, we bypassed the line and were already in the foyer when a lady decided to sell her tickets. so, hidden by the chaos of all the people, and the show starting in 5 minutes, ruth managed to get us exactly 3 tickets for the "poor people in standing room only" which are only 5 quid each. (following the tradition of the actual Globe of the times, poor people stand, rich people sit!) so yay! we got in!

and then stood. for three hours.

it was a long night, the roof was the open sky, with a floating suspended ball gradually illuminating as the moon. it was a warm and balmy evening, after being so hot today; we didn't even need our layers we had brought. the performance was amazing, and francis did really great. he is so full of wonder. it really is something special to see something like that live. the comedy kept him laughing, and he could actually, in spite of the old-fashioned speech, keep up with most of what was going on. (with me filling in a few blanks now and then.) the only bummer of the evening was a large group of teenagers behind us, a school group of foreign kids, who could care less about the performance, and chatted the entire time. the frequent "shhh!"'s from various people did not deter them, so at the intermission(francis called it "halftime") we decided to move to a spot right up against the side of the stage, which ended up better, as now francis could see perfectly with no heads in front of him. sometimes he got tired and wanted to sit down, which he did, but his curiosity of what was going on above his head (what were people laughing at?) would get the better of him, and he would stand up again to watch. i was amazed by how into it he was. by the end of the evening, he said that although his feet hurt, the show was good and he had fun. it's an event not to be missed and worth every penny, er, pence! (thanks so much, ruth, for making it happen!) if you are ever in london, make sure you make time for a trip to the Globe.

we came out to a dark night, people festive in the street, cafes along the water. we walked a non-rushed pace this time, across the millenium bridge, and got our sights in of st. paul's cathedral, lit up by night. francis steered the conversation to WWII, a favorite subject of his, but was a bit puzzled when his america-bred knowledge was not the same as a Brit's! world history and politics is not what i want to debate, not with a 10 year old, and not with a Brit! i tried to explain briefly the huge toll Britain weathered because of WWII. it happened on their soil. london was bombed. thousands of their men died fighting. it is a much more sensitive subject to them than it is to us. so out of respect, let's not go there. right now. it's ok. you can learn more. grow a little older... (and then question everything.) we changed the subject, and caught a bus back to ruth's, where, even though it was late, i quick caught up on email and laundry.

dad emailed to say that greg's Lufthansa flight was delayed (because of a strike in germany) and he's worried greg will miss his connection to london tomorrow. please, please, let him not miss it! (we need to fly to italy, at 6am thursday! not much room for delays!)

also, ruth looked at the weather report for tomorrow: it is supposed to rain...

october 31rst

2008-11-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

october skies

2008-10-30T13:32:00.000-07:00

whoa! october is almost over! the month has passed quickly and busily. time, what i have so much of, still eludes me, because i am a poor manager of it. neither am i very organized. hence, that still-rushing-around feeling of not having enough time.

here is something that wastes alot of my time:

we get a gazillion free magazines from random airlines for unused miles. i finally got the oomph and desire to toss all these into a huge pile for the recycling bin. i think it was literally hundreds that had been stacked into piles all over our apartment. and yes, i read thru, flip thru, or skim, whatever comes thru my door. ridiculous really. (and unfortunately, i probably have over twice as many in the storage unit. why do i save these?) but i will tell you that even after i made the gigantic pile, i still asked greg if he wanted to go thru it and rescue anything he wanted to read still. so the pile sat there for a few days with us stepping over it! (part of me was also waiting to change my mind.) but finally, it landed, with many trips, to the resting place it needed to go. recycled!

so along with weeding our apartment, i've been weeding (still) our europe photos. the other day it took me four hours to quickly glance thru each photo of only half of our files! yikes! there are soooo many photos, and my desire is for us to pick our favorites, of greg's, francis's, and mine, and make a book out of them. but the selecting of photos is going to take forever; it is mind-numbing. i hope to be done by spring. also very disturbing is the fact that all of francis' childhood is on this danged computer, and i don't have an actual real physical photo album for him since he was 2 years old. now THERE is another huge chore...

we finally managed to hit a pumpkin patch while it was still october. last saturday we went and joined up with our friends the fairbanks for some fun in the glorious sun. the kids had a blast in the corn maze, and all the other treats the farm had to offer: cider that burnt your lips off. candy apples that broke your teeth. pumpkins so huge you couldn't lift 'em. ahhhh... childhood memories! and we finally had the time to carve them last night. i have to say: carving is now an absolute breeze, now that we finally got ourselves some actual pumpkins carving tools. i used to mock them, like they were just marketed to sap your money when you have perfectly good utensils at home. so we would go home and labor with our butcher knife, and spend hours scraping with an ice-cream scoop. i hated it! can i just tell you how much i love that little plastic pumpkin scraper, and that tiny saw that looks like it wouldn't cut thru cardboard but slices a pumpkin like pie! oh my goodness! so francis can finally carve his own pumpkin without us fearing he's going to lose a finger. he hummed all the while he worked on his masterpiece. what is it? you ask? who knows! but it is "spooky-scary." (and now we can't get it out of our heads!)

francis is soooo excited to be what he has been wanting to be for ages: a star wars clone trooper. a real live store bought costume! my first gut reaction was "no way!" when i found out how much it was. i know, i know, my stingyness knows no bounds. but he wanted it soo bad. and every year we give him the speech about how much cooler it is to make your own costume. and he has been some really clever things. a WWII fighter jet pilot. or my favorite: the toucan.(?!) but greg decided this was the year we're buying his costume.(besides, how does one make a clone trooper?) he's been asking for so long and he deserves to be like the other kids for once. you know, plastic helmet, fake abs and everything. when we got home after buying it, he put it on immediately. he wanted to take out the trash with the helmet on. even though he could barely see out of it. he LOVES it. he has it laying out and looks at it every day, marvelling at how cool and "realistic" it is.

yet. walking to school the next day, he said: "my clone trooper costume is cool, but i probably won't get as many compliments on it as my toucan costume, because i didn't make it myself." and that made me sad that in our efforts to steer him from costly tacky plastic costumes, we somehow sent him another message. we over-emphasized the creative aspect and "coolness" of making your own, and this is what we get. i told him: don't worry, you're friends will think this costume is awesome. and then he said: "maybe i'll be the toucan again next year." (?! milk that sucker for all its worth!?) and i said: you know, we can always make something new and different. you don't have to be a toucan again just to get compliments.

and i found my efforts to console might just send wrong messages again.(sigh) i had no idea he was so looking for compliments. do we not give enough? we must not. i was reminded (again!) of how young he still is. he's 10 and he's a kid. and i feel a little sad that sometimes our efforts are to convert them over to our side of the argument, which they succumb to because they don't know any better, and hey, we're bigger. but they know what they want and sometimes, we're just being stingy. or impatient. or selfish. sometimes, maybe just sometimes, money does buy happiness. and for a kid, it goes a long way...

a night to remember

2008-10-16T13:53:00.000-07:00

so our computer has finally stopped throwing it's tantrum, (it did demand some dollar bills be thrown at it) and will now upload pictures. great! so here are a few from the wonderful night, the rest are on my flickr. i also added some to the previous post, as it was intended. enjoy!

now it's time for me to be keeping up with the jones's.
ha! i just really wanted to say that!
congratulations, rebekah and josh!

a chicago hoedown

2008-10-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

well, we're back from our whirlwind weekend in chicago, where my sister rebekah wed her love josh jones, wearing red cowboy boots. yup, you heard me right! it was titled "a chicago hoedown", and we were to come dressed in the best western digs we could come up with, and ready to square dance. it was so much fun, and a delight to see everyone get into the full spirit of the occassion: cowboy hats and boots adorning most the heads and feet. and the band! oh, the band! where did they ever find such a band? (well, as fate would have it, their real-estate agent just so happens to be a 3rd generation caller, a rancher's daughter, and sings in The Golden Horse Ranch Square Dance Band...) they had our feet tapping and skirts twirling all night... probably the most fun dancing since i can't remember when. everyone danced for hours. it was great getting to see all our relatives again, and our whole family stayed in these sweet apartments just 2 blocks from wrigley field. (of course, greg had to check out the stadium, and of course he had to flash his Dodgers belt buckle at some Cubs fans lingering outside just to get a rise out of them. oh yeah, that and the taunts. (boys!) it could have gotten ugly, but i wasn't even there.)

all i got was a snapshot out a car window, sights of chicago as i'm driving by. welcome to chicago! goodbye chicago! (sigh) some other time, we'll have to take in more of the sights. at least francis and greg got to tool around a bit and take the El around town. the wedding took place in a 3rd floor, corner loft space, with two story high ceilings...and had to be decorated the morning of.

poor rebekah was not relaxing at all the day of her wedding; she and josh were setting it all up with the help of a few friends, so that we could all enjoy ourselves that night. (and i do believe they were the last ones out that night as well, even tho we tried to kick them out earlier.) they hung a white parachute from the ceiling, giving it an "under the canopy" effect, with big bauble christmas lights strewn throughout. pumpkins and wildflowers. i would show you more photos, but flickr is currently rejecting my upload attempts and it's really frustrating. and, i'm getting over the cold i've had all week. so try back later. but for now, here are a few... ok. nevermind. even blogger isn't uploading photos. drat! ok, i'll post this for now. the pictures will have to wait. but for those of us who were there: the memory lives on.

**pictures finally added oct. 16th, 2008**

let the rains begin...

2008-09-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

i just knew that mentioning the sun would make it go away! (sigh) as soon as i posted, it turned gray and has been raining off and on for days. before i even packed away my summer dresses, i've been pulling out my wool socks. it's official. summer is over! but it's been a good run, i must say, and there are things to look forward to... fall has always been one of my favorite seasons. besides, our neighbor's plum and pear trees are finally ripe, and he's fond of francis and lets us pick. it really does give me a little twinge of the olden days, a rarity in this city life: picking only enough fruit that we can eat for that day. every day we walk inside with a little handful, and enjoy them fresh from the tree. wonderful.

francis and i walked to school today, in the morning gray... i mentioned that this is the last year that we will be walking this walk, for next year he is off to middle-school. (as yet to be determined where.) he is already extremely excited for middle-school, he can hardly contain himself. and then he went on to tell me how he and some friends were "googling in the dictionary" for the definitions of some words, during school, and i said: "hold up! did you just say "googling in the dictionary?" and he looked at me confused, like: yeah, duh! he totally didn't get it. googling, apparently, has jumped the ship of the internet, and become it's very own word. our children are growing up ultra-modern.

the sunday before last, it was scheduled to be sunny and hot. ( the last rays and days of sunshine...) in one of our many efforts to keep our kid a kid as long as possible, we took him to the puyallup fair. it really was just for francis. we haven't taken him there since the first time we took him, when he was 5, if that's saying anything. but i started to feel selfish, because the only reason we haven't gone is because we didn't really like it, or rather, the reality outweighed the nostalgia if you know what i mean. couldn't be bothered to go again. the long drive. the crush of people. the expensive rides. the noise. but this year, something hit me, maybe it's sinking in that we don't have much longer with him, where he actually wants to be with us; we have little of his childhood left.

so in a feeble effort to make up for past years, we bit the bullet, made the trek, and took him to the state fair. and he absolutely loved it! and i must confess, we had a blast too. dana jill came with us, the sun was shining strong, and we took delight in his delight. everything is still magical to him. his eyes and ears were dazzled by a monkey show, a draft-horse competition, a cannonball man, a crazy dangerous juggler, "mutton-bustin'" (our first time ever even hearing of such a thing, let alone seeing it firsthand! go ahead, google it! we were laughing our butts off, only francis was a little sad we haven't come to the fair earlier, when he was younger, so he could have done it too, because now he is too old) and then of course, all the farm animal exhibits, the rides rides rides, lemonade, elephant ears, and the futile games that suck up your money quicker than you can drop it on the ground. (more pics on flickr.) for a kid, a glorious day, you wish it would never end.

and then last sunday, (i know, i know, we're really cramming in these last ditch efforts of summer) we hit the race-tracks. it's end of the season for emerald downs and i've been meaning to go since last summer, but this was our first time ever going. i'm only bummed we didn't do it sooner. this was in the week of gray, but the rains stopped, and the sun came out for the afternoon. as soon as the races were over, i'm not kidding, we didn't even make it to our car yet, where we were hit with a torrential downpour, the likes of which seattle doesn't usually see. (i don't mind THIS kind of rain!)

and of course, back to school again. this month has been so crazy busy, stuff going on almost every single day... i'm already looking forward to october, because nothing's on the calendar, except: my sisters wedding! (we'll be flying to chicago the first weekend, and it's gonna be a blast!) and then...

curling up for the long hibernation...

september sun

2008-09-16T14:33:00.000-07:00

well, here's counting. a seattle record, i believe. it has to be. has it really been two weeks of daily sun? too good to be true! and "blazing hot" 72 degrees? oh joy! i would have preferred it in actual summer, (our summer was so gray) but i'll take it whenever i can get it. a good dose of vitamin D is always welcome... and it's making me a little lazy on the homefront. chores are being neglected in favor of a good book in the sun. or a walk. or a nap in the grass. or even indulging in happy hour with greg while francis is at soccer. anything! just anything! get it now, while it lasts!

london: day 3

2008-09-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

monday: june 30th, 2008
francis and i take on the city, or try...

9:30am: we've become so used to the tinny bling of cell-phone rings; we hardly ever hear the grating ring of a real land-line phone anymore. well, i heard one, right next to my ear, blaring like a fire-alarm, at 9:30 am, jolting me out of sound sleep. alarming! francis, on the other hand, not only didn't even blink, i could not rouse him. so i went downstairs to acquire our breakfast and bring it back up on a tray.

he was still hard to wake, and slow to rise. i realized we weren't going to make the 11am changing of the guards, so we slowed down a bit and decided to enjoy our meal and not rush it. i made tea, and we ate our breakfast of cereal and rolls with marmalade, and blackcurrant jam (francis' new favorite.)

we decided to hit the british museum first, only a stroll thru russell park and a few blocks away. the building itself is amazing, -huge, crowded, and daunting. the inside foyer alone, i could look up and stare for hours. i said: pick your favorites, we can't see everything. we spent a good two hours staring and gaping, francis full of wonder at all the ancient egyptian relics, truly fascinated, and taking pictures of everything.

we wandered the surrounding neighborhood, got a sandwhich to go, and i tried to figure out the bus system, determined, but, hot and frustrated, could not, so we ended up taking the tube only 2 stops (which, when i told ruth later, she had a good laugh about it. apparently, it was only a ten minute walk!)

we took the tube to charing cross for trafalgar square, only to find out it was closed off for a canada day celebration. so we sat down on the steps, hot, tired, and blank. where shall we go now? i looked down at our map to get our bearings and realized we were only blocks away from the thames and parliament, so we decide to walk down the thames. we passed a tesco (grocery store) and popped in to buy a snack: smoothies, bananas, and smarties (like m&m's), and then sat on a bench along the river to rest and watch the world go by.

we spent the afternoon in a slow meandering crawl, enjoying the sunshine and the sights. we crossed the jubilee bridge, with views of the london eye (ferris wheel) and big ben and parliament. francis wanted to sit and watch a street performer, (which we did) and he watched him, mesmerized for ages. then he saw a playground, and wanted to swing, so i rested for awhiled longer, while he played, a kid still, even when you're a tourist in the heart of london. i was glad to give him that time, because all we've been doing is walking and looking, for days. it was nice to just be somewhere, instead of going somewhere, and watch everyone else about their day.

we crossed back over the thames, this time by way of westminster bridge, to gape at big ben and the parliament buildings. i told francis the story of guy fawkes; we talk about government and the queen.

we looped back along the river to where we started, and beyond, to covent garden, to meet up with ruth for a dinner of fish and chips. i thought it would be a long walk, but this is where i finally realize it only took us minutes, and how close we are to our hotel. it was only a 10 minutes walk back, with ruth leading the way, and we sat in russell square for the sunset, and let francis play in the fountain, while we talked.

finally, cold to the bone, and francis wet thru, we parted ways: us to our hotel, ruth to bike home thru the streets of london, before it got too dark.

9:30pm: a much earlier night. no tv. baths. figuring out tomorrows plans. tidy up for checkout tomorrow (back at ruth's for 2 more nights), journal, bed...

francis can not wait for wednesday, for meeting up with greg.
neither can i!

go take a hike!

2008-09-04T13:07:00.000-07:00

you know, i just realized i never blogged in august what we actually did in august. oh well. too late now. i was too busy blogging about our europe trip, and haven't gotten very far. i think i'll have to make them a bit shorter, or it's gonna take me forever, or at least until next year. so for august, pretty much, if it was sunny, we were outside until the sun went down. greenlake. alki beach. baseball. reading. swimming (or trying to), hanging out with friends, etc... regular summer relaxing sort of things, taking it easy, just like everyone else. and it ends all too soon. now we've reached september: which means: back to school, and schedules, and soccer games...

but to kick it off, this year, we did something totally new and different: we got out of town with karen and kevin and friends for the whole long labor day weekend. rented two little cabins near the north cascade national park, and lemme tell you: that was a whole lot of fun!

we relaxed! reading in a hammock, playing badminton, cook-outs, capture the flag, staying up late, sleeping in, waffles and coffee, listened to old-time radio programs, played scrabble, baked and ate brownies... greg and francis did their first fishing together (which unfortunately i have no pictures of: cellphone died! but did take some with greg's camera), the sun came out, went away, rained, came out again,(which made me very happy!) we picked blackberries, K & K took us to the lake diablo overlook (spectacular by the way), and on the last day (monday) we all went for a hike. let me tell you a little bit about that. they, the other cabin, said it was just an "easy" hike, "only 3 miles" there and back, so-and-so's "60 year old parents did it", so, ok, fine, i thought. plus, francis really really wanted to go with them. he would not be left out! going around greenlake is 3 miles and takes about an hour. so i thought we might be gone a few hours...thought it might be a nice stroll thru the pretty forest, etc, etc, etc...

i think maybe i misunderstood their definition of the word "hike", which actually meant: UP THE SIDE OF A MOUNTAIN! TO THE TOP! TO SEE THE GLACIER ON THE OTHER SIDE! suffice it to say: i was dying! so out of shape and so out of breath, but francis was a little mountain goat and kept up with all the super-hiker-backpacker-people up front, while i labored and lagged behind at dead last. (however, i DID stop to smell, and take pics of course, of the flowers!) greg kept me company, and took a whole lot of pictures too. when we reached what i thought was the top, (you'll see, more pics on flickr) it was only the top of that part of the mountain,

and then the trail traversed the tip of the ridge into the distance where you could see it no more, and our friends were little specks on the horizon, and francis with them! which was fine for me, except that on the other side of the mountain we had just climbed up, was a very steep and very long rocky hill of death or severe maiming, awaiting you, if you fell down it.

so that was a little nerve-wracking. and it was very windy up there. and bitterly cold. i had a bit of vertigo and some real fear. i wondered how much i would embarrass greg if i crawled on my hands and knees, but the trail was too long. so i just walked VERY CAREFULLY and eventually got used to it. i was doing ok until the trail we were on DISAPPEARED into the mist. then i got a bit panicky and thought the view was sufficient from where i was. but greg wanted us to stick with the group, besides francis was with them, so on we went. and on and on... luckily the mist cleared a bit and on the other side we could see again, (which is always nice)and they were all parked at this outcropping, overlooking the glacier, which was even bigger close up. it was literally right below us.

so we quickly ate, and froze, and got all stiff, and then commenced the hike back down, which actually wasn't any easier--my legs were shaking before we even got off the ridge. i felt like my legs were pulling along the dead weights of my feet and was afraid i might trip on them, and perhaps induce the long long roll to my death. felt much better on safe ground, where grass grows on both sides of the trail, and again, was dead last, but karen was kind and kept me company. they had asked me "how was it?" when i had got to the top, and i said cheerfully: "you know, it kinda reminded me of that time i gave birth, when the doctor said "almost there!" and then i had to push for 2 more hours!" hahaha. so, it was pretty hard, but it was good, and very beautiful. we even saw marmots close up, both on the way up and back down, and could hear their whistles, calling and answering. it took 6 hours round trip, and francis was amazing. he had so much fun. he skipped along ahead of us, with the rest of them, all the way up and back; i barely even saw him on the hike at all. but, in the car ride down the mountain, it caught up with him; he was passed out before we even got out of the woods...

london: day 2

2008-08-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

sunday: 29th june, 2008
in which we take a trip to see a castle...

we wake at 9am: showers, breakfast, emails, but again, we are rushing. literally running, all the way to king's cross station, to catch the tube to paddington, to catch the train to windsor (changing at slough.) we just missed our train and had to wait a half hour for the next one, but i didn't really mind. we got to wander paddington station, show francis paddington's statue: "please look after this bear", and i tried to get cash out (failure, and on-going snafu and frustration) and also, i desperately needed the toilet (another failure: cost 20p and i had no coins!) i decided to wait for the train, but once on, discover to my dismay: OH NO! NO TOILETS! (sigh) bursting and miserable, i just have to hold it 45mins and wait...

on the train, francis is tired and slouchy. he keeps bumping knees with the man in front of him (seats facing together.) the more i correct him, the more exasperated and slouchy he becomes. (sigh) i miss greg...

we finally get to windsor, and i finally get to pee! ruth and i get lattes, and head for the castle. francis is gobsmacked as soon as we walk out of the station, because there it is, windsor castle, sitting right in front of you. something that i always marvel at in england, and europe: ancient sites may have the age-old respect of not being torn down, however, modernity didn't keep its distance, and crowds up right next to it, utilizing every inch of space. old...shoulder to shoulder with the new...

there's a queue, and a security check, and the guards now hold guns. we finally get inside, but somehow, it is already almost 2pm. and the castle closes at 5. oh well for our "early start"...

francis can't walk 10 feet without taking a picture. he is truly excited to the core seeing a real live castle! i decided this is HIS day, and let him stop and take all the pictures he wants. i've already been here. i am determined to not rush him.

windsor castle was built in 1165, and is one of the great surviving medieval castles, and not only that, has housed the british royal family for over 900 years, and still does, to this day. we asked a guard if the queen was in. he replied: " i can not answer you that. the queen is in residence when her flag is flying." we looked up: the flag was flying.

only too soon, i must confess, i am bursting for the toilet again. (damn that latte!) i inquire to discover there is ONE set of public toilets, and they are on the far other side, so there we trek. it's a blustery gray british day, and there's not too many tourists. guards march by, with stern faces, and real guns, and francis is overjoyed and takes about 300 pictures in one fell swoop. (we haven't gotten around to editing his yet, but mine i've started to narrow down to a few dozen a day: you can find the rest on my flickr.)

we succumb to the touristy must-see, and join the queue to see "queen mary's dollhouse", which is frankly, quite impressive, but what francis really wants to see is: the armour, the weapons, the coat of arms...it's so huge inside, it takes us 2 hours to tour the state rooms, and that's even without francis taking pictures (he was very sad they were not allowed. i, however, did not mind it.)

when we finally emerge to the light of day, we are famished, and crash on a bench to eat our packed lunch. i'm already guessing that we'll miss out on tea-time again, today. and i am right.

we find st. george's chapel closed, because it is a sunday, but discover you may attend an actual service, at 5:15pm, after the castle grounds close. i think that would be fantastic, and ruth agrees, so we stay: for church, in the castle chapel!quite an experience! beautiful ornate chapel, intricate stained glass. the service was sung by a boy's choir. francis reprimands me for sneaking a few pictures with my cell-phone...probably not a good example for my boy who obeyed the rules back in the state rooms.

with the castle now closed, and the rest of the shops in town following suit, (it is a sunday in england: shops close) we decide to head back to ruth's for supper, and to pack up; francis and i are heading to our free hotel for two nights, courtesy of a british airways special offer.

but by the time we get back, between packing up, emailing greg, etc...we don't get out until well past 10pm, and this is still without supper! we say good-bye to ruth, who is off to the pub with friends, and we head to the tube, for russell square. no mapquest. just an address and a london city map.

the station is clamouring with football(soccer) fans whooping and cheering, and i find out spain just won the euro cup. they're running, yelling, waving flags, and a whole group of them cram on the train, pushed up against us. we were standing just inside the doors with our luggage, as we only had 2 stops to go, and just before the doors closed, about 20 people rushed in and crowded around us, still singing their victory, and jumping up and down. the conductor came back and opened the doors and yelled to be heard: "oi! you can yell all you like, but no jumping up and down. you're rocking the whole train!" they apologize and stop jumping, but continue singing at the top of their lungs. francis, small, surrounded by all these yelling grown-ups: but they were smiling at him, and i was smiling too. maybe he will remember this in years to come?

the station we needed was closed for repairs! (just like in the board game: "miss one turn!") and so we hopped off in confusion at holborn. hmmm...now to walk back to russell square, with our luggage, in the dark deserted sunday night of london city streets. i ask directions and off we head.

this whole time i had been excited for our hotel experience. i saw the pictures and read the blurbs, and assumed it was a nice hotel. originally, it had been intended to be with greg; the plan was for us to meet up with him earlier, but things changed, and we kept the booking, besides, it was free. however, when we found it, i realized why they were giving rooms away for free, and it couldn't be to attract business: after staying there, i probably wouldn't have paid to stay there again.

it was like being in a motel, except on the 7th floor, and thru such a labyrinth of hallways, that i actually got lost and had to go down to reception and ask again. i was frustrated and tired and hungry. it was past 11pm. when we finally got to our room, there were two single beds. (where would we have all fit if greg was with us?)it was tiny. BUT: francis didn't seem to notice. he was so excited. he immediately claimed a bed and said: "isn't this nice?" could i really complain? we had a place to sleep in the heart of london. we even had a bathtub. he checked out our view from the window, of the courtyard below, and when we opened the window, we could still hear football fans chanting and whooping from victory: apparently many of them were staying here. he turned on the tv and immediately found "coming to america" with eddie murphy. he asked if he could watch it. as he has seen that movie on quite a few rainy sunday afternoons with greg, i said ok. besides, i still had to go hunt us down a supper.

my search for food ended with the hotel caferteria restaurant, apparently still open for a little while longer, take-out only. i paid &6.50 for an old dry fish and chips and roll. (sigh) passing the hotel bar, i decided it would go down much better with a gin and tonic, and happily paid the &3.50. took the tray back up to our room, and we gorged ourselves, supplementing it with an apple from my bag, and ribena (blackcurrant cordial you add to water) i had brought with us.

it seemed a shame to go to bed just yet, even tho it is so late, it is vacation after all, so i opted instead on: a bath, organizing our stuff, trying to figure out what to do the next few days, and then i sent francis to bed, to catch up in my journal after he fell asleep (which was promptly), by the light of the bathroom.

somehow, in the end, day 2 was still so rushed we didn't even get tea or supper. ??
this will not do!

this is our vacation and i want us to be relaxed and enjoying ourselves.

francis wants to go to a bookstore, to spend the british bookstore coupon that ruth's mum sent him. he wants to see the british museum. buckingham palace. he asked to see a toy shop. ride a cab. to go to elephant and castle to see the imperial war museum. (which he learned about, by the way, from an old british boardgame from my childhood called "the london underground". i first had to make sure it was still there! it is.)

we have two full days until we meet up with greg on wednesday. can't wait for that!
i need to go to bed now.
i called the operator to ask what time it was (2:10am!) and to ask for a wake-up call tomorrow morning...at least there's free breakfast...

london: day 1

2008-08-22T14:01:00.000-07:00

saturday: 28th june, 2008

it was very hard getting up this morning. i woke at 6am to the sound of the city waking, and the brightness. i used my british airways complimentary eye-mask and fell back asleep, til ruth came and got me at 10am. francis could not be wakened. so ruth and i had some lovely girl-time, catching up over coffee and pancakes, with me periodically trying to rouse francis. he could not be moved. finally, by noon, we forced him up; he was delirious. we packed a sack lunch and took off to catch the bus, for the zoo.

we got to ride a double-decker( still around in london, it was the old-fashioned "route-master" with the hop on/off the back, that was taken off the streets, --only to be replaced by what the brits call "bendy-busses" and not with fondness) and francis was so excited. we sat at the top, front row, and it looked like every time we turned, we were going to take a chunk out of a building, or knock over signposts, and every time we stopped, that we'd rear-end whoever was in front of us. it was quite a ride!

we walked thru regents park, to get to the zoo. francis, with his camera, already catching fountains, park benches, british squirrels...you get the picture. at the zoo, it got quite hot, and we were in jeans. after a while i noticed that francis kept sitting down every chance he got, and maybe the zoo wasn't the best first day choice; he was still too jet-lagged to really appreciate it. he did enjoy seeing animals he hasn't seen in our zoo, tho, like the pelicans.

by the end of the afternoon, he was a bit miserable, saying his legs hurt, he was too hot, and he wanted to sit down. poor guy! but we had a whole evening of sitting ahead of us: ruth had got us tickets to regent park's outdoor theatre, to see shakespeare's "twelfth night." we rushed home, packed a picnic supper, and rushed back to regents park, quickly thru the beautiful rose garden, found a patch of sun and green grass, and crashed outside the theatre, where brits were all about, picnicing in the grass too. we had: bread, cheese, proscuitto, wine, olives, sundried tomatoes... yes, wine! in the park! this is england!

8pm we went in for the performance, which was 3 hours long, and frankly, quite fantastic! the theatre had stadium seats, which was nice, and you were allowed to bring in food and wine, etc... but even still, francis had a hard time staying awake...he was still so tired! i tried to explain to him what was going on, and i think he understood most of it, and really enjoyed the jester and laughed outloud. i was thoroughly impressed and entertained-- it was set during the roaring twenties, with suits and long dresses and gangsters. it got chilly when the sun went down, but we had brought our layers.

back at home, tucking him in, i asked if he had fun today. he said it was too busy. i said: tomorrow we're only doing ONE thing: taking the train to windsor castle!

it feels like everything is going too fast, and it is only the first day! how can that be? so i am hoping for a not-rushed day tomorrow, and that francis is rested and enjoys himself fully.

and i would like a cup of tea...we missed ours today..

i see london (i see france)

2008-08-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

friday: 27th june, 2008
on the plane...British Airways to london...

francis is happily watching a movie. he was happy with our seat; he said: "look at all this stuff you get for only 2nd class! i wonder what 1rst class gets!" he's loving how fancy this is: luxuries you don't see in the US anymore. each seat has its own pillow, blanket, headsets, and comfort kit: eye-mask, socks, and travel toothbrush with mini-paste. he was in awe and very excited. "would you like a full british breakfast, luv?" said the steward. you get the accent already, and you're not even there yet. i said yes, even tho i didn't know what it was. we were then served a tray each, consisting of: scrambled eggs, potatoes, ham, sausage and mushrooms, OJ, yogurt, coffee, blueberry muffin, roll and butter, and fruit. it was too much to eat! and better yet, complimentary!

i am having trouble feeling excited. i'm on a plane to london, but my stomach isn't in turmoil. i mean, i am excited, i am looking forward to it, but i don't have the physical feeling of excitement. maybe it hasn't hit me yet? i am kind of in a daze. i am not nervous, i am not giddy. i am very tired. it's hard to explain. i have not planned what to do in london for 5 days (i've been so focused on france and italy) but that doesn't bother me. we will see what we can; i am just happy to be there, staying with our friend ruth. we will be meeting up with greg on wednesday. i am content to see familiar sights, eat british food, drink tea, hang out, and show francis 'round the town. but i consult my lonely planet london guide anyways, for some ideas...

we land and go thru customs: always a hassle. but we get thru ok, and follow signs to the underground. it's about 9pm british time, but francis can't keep his eyes open. we catch the picadilly line, and he promptly falls asleep on the tube, for our hour ride. i have trouble waking him up; he's delirious. we follow ruth's directions to her flat: "when you get out of the station cross the road and walk straight ....... you pass sainsburys supermarket on your left. turn left down the side of sainsburys till you get to a zebra crossing. cross the crossing and walk straight til you hit another zebra crossing, cross it and turn left. my building is at the end of that street on the corner. my door is red and on copenhagan st. buzz the 'flat' bell. it's about a 5-7 min walk". how do you like them directions! ruth wanted me to call her when we arrived, so she could run out and meet us, but i liked the challenge of navigating the city with just those directions. i wanted to see if i could find it, and find it i did!

francis' first sight out of the tube station was a double-decker bus and he got so excited! i'm happy watching him, all these sights, for the first time. i'm enjoying stepping back into a place that's familiar, a place with memories...

we buzz the buzzer to the flat, and ruth's calls out "hello" from the third floor. she says: "that's it?" to our luggage, a carry-on size wheely bag for each of us. we wanted to travel light, but it still feels like too much.

ruth shows us to our "quarters"; the nook she's made up for us. it's so homey and like camping out. it's late, but francis wants to read before bed; he is thoroughly engrossed in the lord of the rings. we say good-night to ruth, with plans to sleep in, have breakfast, and hang out with her tomorrow.

i think i'm starting to feel excited. i'm happy to wander and be, to hear the accents, and drink tea...

when in rome...

2008-08-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

stay in rome...as long as you can...you will not want to leave...

so anyways, this is us: in front of the trevi fountain, making our wish (can you guess what it is?) and what you can't see is the hundreds of people crammed in next to us, doing the same. i know, i know: i was that person!! can you believe it? i was a bit suprised at myself, and greg rolled his eyes, but i rolled with it, and had no shame in doing the touristy self-portrait with my cell-phone. hence, it is blurry and dark. it is not a great photo. there is even another person in it. but it still caught the rare moment of the three of us, together, and it captured the memory.

we can say: "remember that time when..." and we are all included in the inside joke. we can laugh at the memory, and we were all there. no one left out.

and now when francis complains it is hot outside, i can rightly say: "what??!! are you kidding me? this is NOT hot. you have seen hot. remember that time in rome when you clung to inches of shade, moaning: "how many degrees hot is it?" now THAT was hot!..." and then i freely laugh at him. (ok ok, WITH him!)

ah, rome: missing it already.

so that's it for now...
one photo, one snippet...
stay tuned, more to come...

home again home again jiggety jig

2008-08-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

can you believe it's august???

well, we nyssens are back state-side, for about a week now. francis and i returned and received a welcome home present of: the flu. puking and out of commission for about a week. greg came home during that as well, exhausted, and a little under the weather after his week in india, with spicy indian food, and lots of it, for three meals a day! but he survived it quite well, i should say, and we are slowly getting back on track to life as we know it in seattle.

there shall be stories, in snippets, and there will be photos, someday, but for now i will say that it was entirely wonderful and exhausting. and worth it. and we are glad to be home.(except for the fact that we'd rather be in rome!) if anyone's wondering how it was traveling with a 10 year old: francis was absolutely great! (despite the fact that we are going thru the "terrible 10's" right now, and have to deal with some wannabe-teenage attitude lately...on the trip he did very good.) he was old enough to keep up with us, often til midnight every night, he carried (er, wheeled) his own luggage, needing only our help up and down the many many subway stairs we encountered along the way. he didn't need naps, and often had more energy than we did by mid-day. he thought every single thing we saw was "AWESOME", and he's at an age where i'm hoping this trip lasts as a wonderful memory. also, not being a teenager yet, he was still entirely content with our company, except when he saw kids playing at the beach, or park, and would ask us: "how do i say: can i join you? in italian?" and we would look it up in our book, he would memorize it and run off, loudly announcing "non parlo italiano! posso giocare anch'io!" (i don't speak italian! can i join in?) and the kids would then either practice their grade-school english on him, or just play side by side, chattering away in italian, but play often needs no translation, when there's smiles and sandcastles...

we were totally content to not even try to do everything.

we went to: rome, venice, the cinque terre, marseille, paris, dover (that was francis' pick) and london. and even that, in 18 days, was alot. we wished we had stayed more days in rome. i think that was a definite favourite.

we stayed out late, and could not get up early, no matter how hard we tried. in italy, we ate paninis, gelato, and pizza every day and didn't tire of it. i really loved ordering cappucinos, and practicing my limited phrase-book italian, and the italians were very happy to watch us try. francis even picked up on the tonal influctions, and would announce "grazie mille!" with enthusiasm, and they got a kick out of that.

in france, i had a much harder time with the language, and left most of the communicating up to greg, seeing as he took french in high school. not one single word is pronounced the way it looks! and they weren't as happy as the italians to watch us try. but, despite their reputation, and some of our own experiences with rudeness, we encountered many friendly french that proved they can't be stereotyped. maybe it was traveling as a family? i don't know. but we had fun wandering the streets, eating crepes, baguettes, croissants, and "cafe cremas"...

we traveled on foreign trains, planes, busses, ferries, boats, subways...everything an adventure. i am sorry to report that i did not cope as well as i would have liked, i was not as easy going as i remembered either, and i became a bit of a frantic spaz when it came to making our connections. we had some frustrating moments, dealing with the "lost in translation" language barrier, and always winging it. but that should be expected i guess, and i remember the vacation being wonderful, so it must not have been that bad!

anyways, real life beckons at this very moment, the sun is shining, and i must get outside. more to come later...

au revoir

2008-06-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

it has been so very long since i've posted, and i thought that before i leave, i should tell you where we are going. the nyssens are embarking on their first ever, out of the country, family vacation. we are going to england, france, and italy for three weeks, and after that, greg is going on a week-long business trip to india. exciting! so, that is what i have been busy doing these past few months, and why i have not been blogging, or cooking, or cleaning (much!) i have been trying to plan a short-notice vacation, in the peak of summer, with the abysmal overseas dollar, and all that. i have reinforced how much i love, LOVE google. the world wide web truly is an amazing thing. if you have a question, surely someone else has had the same one. you type it in, and get all sorts of answers. it truly is a technological feat that connects the people of this big wide world and makes it a small one. how does one get to Nice, France from the Cinque Terre, Italy i wonder? i just plug it in and get results. it's truly amazing. i have been reading the lonely planet guide books. reading about cities, choosing destinations, researching train time-tables, booking B&B's with people who don't speak very good english, but better english than i speak italian. and on and on and on...

we leave in two days, and it really hasn't sunk it yet...still so much to do. but i am starting to let the excitement seep in, and hope to be fully relaxed once we touch ground on the other side.

so this is au revoir for now...

we wish you all a wonderful, hot and sunny july!

see you in august!

ready or not...

2008-06-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

what can i say? somehow the time has just flown, and francis is done with school in 6 days. crazy! and yes, he is counting down! i think we are ALL ready for a summer that will hopefully dole out some sunshine, because, let me tell ya: it's been scant around here!

we've had weeks and weeks of gray, and rain, and baseball games rained out, and then the make-up games rained out...i don't know if seattle knows that it's actually june, i think it thinks it's still april, and May wasn't much better. (sigh) but one good thing was we didn't feel guilty for all the movies we've been seeing! perfect for rainy days! iron man, prince caspian, indiana jones...all in one month, and summer not even officially here yet! what a summer for the kids! we thoroughly enjoyed these movies along with francis, who was literally on the edge of his seat, every time!

i'm trying to wrap things up before school is over, and that means: all my spring cleaning that i procrastinated on is now a mother-lode chore! i've got post-it notes cluttering up the kitchen, and when i get to take one down and throw it away: success! you'd think that with all these gray days we've been having, that i'd be done by now, but no: when it is gray outside, it does not inspire me to clean. it inspires me to read and drink coffee and be lazy, and so i did manage to finish the lord of the rings trilogy. but when it is sunny, and the apartment is bright, THAT is when i get the gumption(sp?), the energy, and the will to get some things done. strange, i know. most people like to go outside when it is sunny, and i do too. but i also like to clean when it is sunny. so, i finally cleaned our bedroom, where the dust had been forming a nice solid layer (so gross!) and it felt so nice to sit and read in a clean, and tidy room, with the sun shining. francis was in a reading marathon, and could not put down "the Hobbit" until he was done. that's been so nice to see: him getting so into reading a book that he doesn't want to do anything else. he is now halfway done with "the fellowship of the ring" and wants to finish all three books this summer!

francis helped me spray-paint a big iron outdoor coffeetable, that we collected for free off the side of the road. it was rusty, but we cleaned it, and sprayed it down with this rustoleum paint, and now it looks as good as new. when the sun shines in our "back yard", we like to sit back there and eat and drink and read and play... (more pics on flickr)

on memorial day, after a glorious sunny saturday and sunday (it was a 2 day special only) it was back to gray, so i thought going to the zoo would be a nice distraction. i naively thought it wouldn't be crowded; wouldn't everyone be at home, enjoying their families and having BBQ's? nope! everyone was at the zoo, too! not our cup of tea. we like the zoo all to ourselves, so we did not stay too long. too crowded. too loud. even francis commented on it. we must have tainted him with our own preferences, because pretty soon, he wanted to go home, too. but we did get to visit the new creatures at the zoo: the flamingoes. they cracked francis up. you'd think they'd be a nice, quiet, regal bird, as beautiful as they are, in their familiar one-legged stance. but no. we were shocked at how noisy and feisty they are (they honk like geese), fighting constantly for food, and their whole area stank like a cooped-up bird house, even tho it was a brand-new habitat, and outside. startling. but they were still beautiful. i think it must be God's sense of humor to give such a boorish, pushy bird hot-pink feet.

and maybe it's because he's an only child, or maybe it's because he's still really just a kid, francis really wanted a stuffed flamingo. huh? i was suprised because what 10-year old boy wants a pink stuffed animal? but i caved, because first thing that popped into my head was suprise, and then "he's probably not gonna be asking for stuff like this very much longer." so many times he can get under my skin, acting like a pesky wannabe teenager, trying out attitude to see what it does... that when he is acting like a kid: i just want him to be a kid! and do kid things.so i said yes. and of course, he carried that flamingo around all day. (someday: he's going to be really embarrassed by these pictures! haha! but thankfully, not yet...)

bright like yellow

2008-05-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

school days

2008-05-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

here's my little british schoolboy. for multicultural week at school, the kids gave presentations of their family heritage. we have no trinkets or traditions, sad to say, from greece and finland, (and other various scandinavian countries on greg's side of the family,) and were really at a loss for what to do. finally, last minute, i suggested to francis that he choose great britain: i spent a few years of my childhood there, and have trinkets and memories in abundance. greg has been there too, and has much fondness and memories as well. so francis was very excited to do that. he wanted to wear my school uniform's coat and scarf, (which hasn't changed) and chose black pants and a blue checkered button-up shirt, to look like the boys school uniform. very clever! we then scoured our house for british souvenirs, which was quite easy. he brought a ribena can (my favorite drink), a smarties pack, a toy double-decker bus, a london mug, a tote bag of the london underground, and some photographs of me in my school uniform from when i was about 7 or 8. but i sadly couldn't find any coins. (i know i have some somewhere.)he was very cute giving his presentation. he had interviewed me on things that are different in the UK, things that a kid would be interested in. the kids in his class were very surprised to hear that if they lived in england they would all be wearing uniforms, would most likely have tea-time at 4 o'clock, and their favorite drink would probably be black currant! they didn't even know what black currant was! also, francis shared the sad plight of the double decker bus, and the iconic telephone boxes, to also show that many things are indeed changing. (modernity! ever forwards and upwards!) strangely, top on his list of places to visit someday, next to london, is Dover! he saw on special on tv about it recently, and has been talking nonstop about it. (the WWII museum, the castles, the cliffs!) then i really surpised him even more by (serious digging this time) finding my chalk rocks from dover that i had stored in a jar, which i found way back under my bed. needless to say, he was very impressed. i do hope to take him there someday...we're workin' on it.

hoping for a brighter may

2008-05-06T13:07:00.000-07:00

well. my brain has been on overdrive these past few weeks, with no time to write. may day (the first of may) completely slipped past me without my usual celebration of waffles (in memory of the may day i celebrated in germany many many years ago.)many people in the world celebrate may day, but we americans do not, it would seem. for us, may day is an exclamation of danger: "may day! may day!" --where did that come from?

i realize i forgot to comment on our anniversary dinner at teatro zinzanni: let me say it was excellent, and well worth the money for a special night out. we were pleasantly suprised. i think we thought "dinner theatre" would be a little bit of comedy, a little bit of magic tricks, etc, trusting it to be entertaining, but really had no idea the grandness of it all. it was more moulin rouge-y than circusy, with only one american in the troupe, the rest hailing from russia and europe. people who have spent their lives in training. trapeze acts, contortions, illusions, mime, all very "old world european" and all following a thread of storyline. (my favorite was a girl who was the marionette puppet of the magician. amazing and endearing!) so yes: it was a very good time! and the 5 course meal was also delicious! we do highly recommend it!

i went and saw "baby mamma" with some girlfriends on opening night (VERY funny, by the way!) and it was filmed in philadelphia. in one scene, they're getting walk-up philly cheese steaks, and i don't know what came over me, but i got such a craving for philly cheese steaks like i have never had. in all my 6 years living here, i have not once ventured a philly cheese steak; call me a purist but i never saw any need to attempt seattle's version of a philly cheese steak. i guess that makes me a philly cheese steak snob. but this craving would not be subdued. it was all i was thinking about, so...on saturday night, our actual anniversary, (we did teatro zinzanni on sunday night) we decided to try and find some. the night was oddly balmy after a gorgeous warm and sunny day. i googled for seattle philly cheese steak, and decided to try this place: which claimed to be "most authentic philly-style cuisine west of south street" . but i will say this: i think i have satisfied my craving until i am ever in philadelphia ever again. i was talking to my sister on the phone, sharing with her my agitation and disappointment, and she said: "i mean, really, how hard is it to make a philly cheese steak right?" i mean, it's so easy. first you need a nice hardy roll, not a hot dog bun. then you fry up the thin meat, and ripple it onto the bread, do not hack it into tiny pieces! then top it with grilled onions and peppers, that are soft and succulent, and simmering in a nice tidy pile off to the side of the grill. do not dice them up and fry them with the meat, for the meat takes only minutes, and the onions take much longer. finally, the biggest no-no of all, do NOT place the cheese unmelted UNDER the meat, hoping the meat will melt it! what??? the crowning joy of the philly CHEESE steak, is all the wonderful melted cheese ON TOP of the meat, and is it's most best when the bun is toasted! i was so frustrated, i wanted to step behind the counter and show them how to really do it. and they called this sloppy joe of a cheese steak: "authentic"?? authentic what??? (sigh) so sad.

we walked off our meal strolling through the park, in capitol hill. it was unseasonally warm, and it reminded me of new york. we talked of life, summer, traveling, parenting, wishes for francis...

greg always manages to catch me making a funny face...

but that's ok. here is greg's version of a smile! haha

confession: i have started to excercise for the first time in many many many years. you may be shocked by this unless you remember that i am very very lazy. definitely too lazy to go to a gym. i do walk my boy to school everyday, but that doesn't really count because i don't think it actually burns any calories. jennifer informed me that i have free excerise tv on my cable channels, so now i have been "working out" when i get home in the morning.(i even dug out my "run,lola, run" cd to aid in this effort!) well, today was only my 8th day, but i am going to try really hard not to give up. i really want to stick it out until francis is out of school. my goal is sadly: vanity. i am thinking ahead to bathing suits & summer (sigh) so this is something to busy myself with.

francis is thoroughly enjoying our reading of "the fellowship of the ring" and i am, in my own reading, half-way thru book three: "the return of the king".

side note, and totally unrelated: i found my childhood school on the internet. (isn't the world wide web an amazing thing?) i still have my uniform, my little straw hat, my blazer... and the uniforms are still the same, almost thirty years later...

i've got sunshine on a cloudy day

2008-04-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

a little bit of sunshine this morning, with hope for more this weekend. maybe francis will get a rain-free baseball game?! that would be a nice change. and greg and i will be celebrating our 11th anniversary! (wahoo for us!) no party plans this year, but i was planning to suprise greg with tickets to teatro zinzanni (he's wanted to go for quite some time, especially after friends went and raved about it. when we got a coupon in the mail, for $25 off per person, only for the month of april, it seemed there was no other option but to seize the oppourtunity!) so i got the tickets, and prepared myself for a long week and a half of secret-keeping. alas! of course, he decided to balance our credit card statement, and freaked out with the charge, thinking someone stole our credit card! so...the cat is out of the bag. oh well. but greg is very pleased, he said "yes! you did surprise me! just earlier than you thought you would!" so that's that. i'll let you know how it goes.

francis is on a roll with his bizzare and literal thought processes and sayings. you gotta wonder what goes on in that brain of his! he called me from the shower to ask me about the head&shoulders bottle. i told him what it was. he said, "well, i had already washed my head, but i did use it to wash my shoulders."

april showers bring...more showers!

2008-04-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

well, i haven't been blogging lately, because i've been too busy reading. i have this problem when i discover a good book, and that is: i don't want to put it down. i also don't want to do anything that intereferes with the reading, like cleaning my house, or feeding my family!

however, these past few weeks have been good for reading, because, after that bizarre day of heat and sunshine we had, (april the 12th to be exact) it has been a cold and wet mess for days on end. we've had hail! we've had snow! we've had pouring rain! the weather just can't seem to make up it's mind. or remember what season it's supposed to be...

so i've been weathering out the storms of april, curled up on my couch.

i started reading the Lord of the Rings for the very first time, and i am still going. it took me all last week to complete the Fellowship of the Ring, and this week, i am almost done with the Two Towers.

it started like this:

a few weeks ago, on tv, all three movies were playing back to back. i decided to record them, for francis, because he hasn't seen them yet, and i thought the edited tv version might be less scary. but then, after he went to bed, we decided to watch what was left, and decided: hmmm. still scary!! he found out we had recorded them, and was begging to watch them. he said all his friends have seen it. so what were we to do? when the movies first came out in the theatre, we couldn't wait for francis to be old enough to get to see them with us. so now he's 10, and he's seen many of the superhero movies that are PG-13, so why not this? but something in me, and greg, still wanted to wait. we changed our minds. we deleted the movies from our dvr (what was i thinking? we'll want to have a party! we'll want to rent it in widescreen! when francis is finally allowed to see it, it will be a movie event!) we told francis we weren't ready for him to see it. he was bummed, but he accepted our answer without a big fuss. we told him that he was more than welcome to read the books, and that, in fact, the books are classics, and many many people count them among their favorites. he instantly bit: do we have the books? i seemed to remember acquiring the first book after the first movie came out, but somehow, even tho i got high recommendations, i never picked it up. (somehow, i never read these books in childhood, i don't know why...) so i hunted a bit, and found it, among one of our many piles of books. isn't it funny how something that is great, can sit unappreciated in your possession, waiting for you to discover it? maybe it's all in the timing. i am ready to read this book now. and so is francis. i started reading it, to get ahead of francis, to see if the language would be difficult for him, and once i got going, i couldn't put it down. then i went to half-price books, to get the rest of the them, and also the Hobbit. (i have already read the Hobbit, but my copy is old, from childhood, and i wanted to get francis his own copy.) once he saw the Hobbit, he said: wait! which one comes first? (you see, he likes to do things in order.) so he has decided to read the Hobbit on his own, for his school reading, and we have started reading the Fellowship of the Ring to him, for his evening story-time. so it's all good. he's got time, the movie can wait...

but i haven't been completely useless:

i still walk the boy to school, rain or shine...

and to us, our first signs of spring, are snail tracks!

i even got a hunkerin' for rice pudding,(or was it to make up for all my lame dinners this past week?) but i only know how to make a restaurant-sized batch (from my days at georgia's) so we had plenty to spare, and share:

francis' baseball game was cancelled (due to the snow) but it didn't stop karen's suprise birthday party down at the arcade on pier 57!

so, longer post than i meant to write, gotta get back to my book!

but i will end with another quote from francis: last saturday, with our day booked from morning til night, at 9pm we still had two more destinations. as we were driving into ballard, francis said: "what is it we have to do now?" and i explained we had to pop in on a friend's art show, and then hit another friend's going-away party, and said: " why? are you tired? cause i'm tired..."

and he said: "oh no! i'm not tired at all! i used my da's energizing face scrub in the shower, and i feel totally energized!"

however, by the end of the night...

back to school

2008-04-10T12:17:00.000-07:00

we've been a bit groggy this week. morning comes too early after a week of staying up late and sleeping in. francis is usually a morning person who is up and ready before i am, but this week: i am waking him up!

me: "good morning, sleepyhead!" (as he stumbles to the bathroom)

francis: " i am NOT a sleepyhead! i just can't open my eyes..."

all that cold cold wet day...

2008-04-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

those days of sun couldn't last forever, right? well, spring break is wrapping up, with alot of rain. on friday we received some serious rain, downpour rain, and even some hail. what do you do on a truly wet and gray miserable day?

go get coffee and cupcakes with some friends!

we hit trophy cupcakes for the unveiling of the new flavor. (the trophy owner had just been on the martha stewart show apparently, and luckily, we beat the crowd.) now, i'm not a huge cupcake fan. i usually can't eat a whole one by myself, but these were probably the best cupcakes i've ever tasted...delicious, warm out of the oven, and not too sweet if you can believe it. the one i split with francis wasn't enough; i got 3 more to take home with us (and i have to say: tasted just as good a day later.) francis and i caught a ride with jen and her kids, and met up with ann-krestene and stephanie and their kids, and together, we all whiled away some of the afternoon rain.

when greg got home from work at 3:30, we took francis to a matinee: nim's island, which was very enjoyable for him, and very tolerable for us. we then gave him the choice of dinner, and he selected chow mein, but we had some time to kill, so we drove down to golden gardens to look at the rain on the sea.

(at least, we did. francis didn't make it. it's nice to know a ten year old still isn't immune to the occasional nap.)

greg and i killed some time in the rain, taking pictures, until we were freezing and wet thru, and then headed to one of our favorite places, chef liao on phinney ridge, to get francis his chow mein and hot tea!

we then had just enough time to hit our friend vic's art show at the phinney ridge center, right down the street from us. vic did a show last year called "sushi is the bomb", (about nuclear arms, some of you may have seen it at the green bean cafe in greenwood), and this year she has new and just as thought-provoking work, titled: "catallactic converters: exploring value, choice and transformtion through salvaged materials". (dealing with the world-wide issues of slavery and human trafficking.) (photo does no justice, and was taken with permission)

come be challenged! see her pieces currently at the phinney center art gallery, thru april 25th, and then they move to the green bean cafe, for the month of may. artist reception on friday, may 9th, 6-8pm, during the annual greenwood phinney art walk.

i had just taken francis and one of his friends to the art museum the day before, and i have to say, i truly love taking him to see the things that people we know have created. it makes the arts that much more tangible and personal. it shows that it's something he could do, too, if he wanted to...

and it certainly gives us things to talk about...

have sun, will travel

2008-04-02T13:11:00.000-07:00

so, this week is spring break for francis, and i'm trying hard to make it "spring breaky", even though we didn't leave the city. today marks the second day in a row of sun, and he's at a friend's house, so i'd say today's a good day! as was yesterday! yesterday was sunny, and we hit the zoo, and then met august, hazel, jennifer, and tank (their jack russell terrier) at the park for some high energy play time(them, not us), then came back to our place for tea-time. tea for jen and me(the necessary 4pm pick-me-up), and the kids got ben & jerry's single-serving cookie-dough ice-cream, the kind with the little plastic spoons (so cute!) they remind me of those childhood days of scraping water-ice with a wooden spoon, and how the ice and that horrible scraping sound, could bring on goosebumps in the middle of a heatwave.

we are nowhere near a heat wave though. we are nowhere near summer. i really want it to be. these sunny days make me yearn for it, but when i walk outside, it's freezing! we're still in the 40's out here, and on monday, we got a flash hail storm that lasted for about 5 minutes. crazy!

on sunday, tho the gray skies loomed, we had friends that were going sailing on lake union, who invited us along. i was nervous it was going to dump on us as soon as we got to the middle of the lake, and we had no umbrellas. but i was excited for francis to have this experience, because we've never taken him sailing before. because: we don't know how to sail. the gray cleared to blue as we were over the water, but it was still bitterly cold. that didn't stop francis from trying to drag his hands in the water, and, as no one relished the idea of going in after him (kid overboard!) we had to make the rule: keep your seat in your seat! greg took tons of photos, and i hedged in on his territory: me and my cell-phone! hahaha! it was quite a sight! here are a few, with many more on my flickr.

i feel a bit like this blog has become "the life and times of sir francis". not really my intent, but so you have it. maybe it will be fun for him to read when he's older, documents of his childhood. i remember when francis was a baby, of being appalled by mothers who only ever talked about their children or their husbands, what they did or what they said, and i vowed i would never be like that. now i realize i was probably being overly critical and quick to judge, and it really is a slippery slope. i'm finding lately that given "free time", i'm at a loss for what to do! greg and francis will go out for baseball practice, and i'll say "have fun!" and they'll say: "you have fun too!" hmmm. what are the things i used to do for fun? oh yeah. go out to dinner with friends. go to movies. GO places. and these days, more often than not, if i have some minutes to myself, i curl up with a blanket and a book. i know that sounds boring, but at night, i'm usually so tired that curling up on the couch sounds just about right. but tonight, while the boys are away, i have a date with danajill and joy; we're going out for ethiopian! ta da! you caught me: out of the house! and last week, i went out with jen and a friend to see rosie at the triple door! good company, good food, good music! these things we used to do all the time take so much effort now. organizing your free-time to coincide with someone else's, or usually, making sure your husband can be home with the kid(s)so you can go out with some friends, these are hard things to juggle. even a "girl's night out" for a dinner and a movie once a month is a little miracle. but we gotta keep it up. get together. make the time. it's for your own good. (and theirs!) don't worry. i'm saying this especially to my homebody self...

when the sun shines

2008-03-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

when you have a weeks worth of rain in the forecast, it is imperitive that you get out when the sun is shining.

monday afternoon was sunny!

i dropped francis off at tennis lessons, and picked up greg from work; we now had an hour to kill together, which had a 2-part requirement: caffeine and sun.

many of you know: seattle has turned me into a sun-craver. at any time of the day, if it is out, i want to be where it is. this involves moving. following it around. where it is in the morning isn't necessarily where it is in the afternoon. i have learned that if you are on lake washington when the sun is shining, by 4 o'clock you will be in shade, as the sun slips behind beacon hill.

and if a restaurant is on the wrong (ie: shady) side of the street, i won't go there.

i want to be where the sun is. period.

so, off we go for coffee and our sunshine; we knew where to find it. at 4:30 in the afternoon, it is pouring onto rainier ave. south, on the east side of the street. we go to tutta bella, in columbia city. our initial plan to sit outside in the sun was halted when we saw there were no outdoor tables set out. oh yeah! it's only march! but there was a table for two inside, a little nook of an alcove, full of beaming sun. no one else wanted that table; it was waiting for us. the waiter went to draw the blinds for us (something else i've noticed in seattle: that when the sun shines, it's too bright, apparently!) and we said: no! no! we want the sunshine! this is why we're here.

so we sat, and talked, and enjoyed our coffees. a lovely little date. it was roasting in that corner. i was blinded by the sunshine and had to wear greg's hat. it was wonderful! now here's hoping it's sunny next monday...and we'll do it again.

easter weekend

2008-03-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

this photo was taken as francis and i walked towards our church for the good friday night service. it was 7 o'clock and the sky was hinting with sunset; the tree blossoms were radiant. not that you can really capture that with a cell-phone, but, still, i aim and click the buttons.

saturday arrived gorgeously bright and sunny. francis had a school dance performance downtown at mccaw hall.

it was a school assignment, basically. many seattle schools participated, and for the past few months, his school's 4th grade classes have had a dancer from PNB come every friday and teach them some basic dance steps, and then the kids in each class worked on a dance of their own to perform. each class picked their own song and theme. it was quite a production, and the kids had a really great time. francis said it was really fun to be on stage, and not as scary as he thought it would be. in between each school's performances, we were treated to real ballet performances from PNB dancers. and to end out the program, was a hip-hop number from REACH! Student Dance Group. after the show, when i collected francis, he excitedly told me: did you see that last dance? that was awesome! greg was very sad to have to miss it, and my sneaky cell-phone pictures (no photos allowed!) did no justice at all. i had to be content with pictures after the show.

after that, we wandered seattle center, got an elephant ear and chai teas, and enjoyed the sunshine. i had enough change for francis to enjoy a round of mini-golf, and i enjoyed people watching. and taking more pictures with my cell-phone. (more on my flickr page)

we took the monorail again (2 times in 2 weekends! and front row this time)

and then we hopped on the bus home. we had just enough time for a quick supper before we headed out again to see our friend chris bowden and his band: other desert cities, play a show at Q Cafe. francis cracked me up. he was very excited to see all his (grown-up) friends at the show, and wanted to stand by them. and talk with them. like one of them. fresh off his looney tunes kick, he's been saying: "what's up, doc?" to everyone. afterwords, karen and kevin came back to our place, to "watch" francis so i could go get greg at the airport at 11pm. rounding out a very busy day, francis went to bed (at 10:30pm mind you) entirely disappointed to be reminded that he was a child and needed to go to bed!

easter sunday arrived with pouring rain. such a departure from the day before! but the service was good, and i got tears in my eyes when i could hear francis deciding to sing along, his little chirpy voice scooping along, trying to follow the notes to songs he didn't know. there's just something about children singing whole-heartedly that just chokes me up. they are still so innocent.

we enjoyed a wonderful easter brunch with friends, hosted at the many's. and then, it stopped raining. the sun came out! the kids had in indoor egg hunt, and then we decided to head (quick! before the sun goes away!) to the university of washington campus, where the cherry blossoms were in full bloom.(if you haven't already, go check them out! they won't last much longer!) the bright sun was deceiving; it was bitterly cold with a whipping wind, but we lasted for about an hour. just long enough to get red noses and not feel guilty to go home and veg out for the remainder of the day.

good friday

2008-03-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

so this week has been wet. and rainy. and gray.

i haven't felt much like blogging, even tho i have pictures to post from last weekend and many varied thoughts swirling in my mind. i haven't been able to summon up any creative energy to do easter crafts with francis, even tho a week ago i really wanted to (envious of jennifer and ann-krestene!) and the best i can do is get down from the cupboard the eggs we made a few years ago. (don't worry, they're empty, not hardboiled!)
today is a no-school day, so i thought while francis was happily battling away on lego star wars, i would try to do an update. greg is gone for the weekend, to california, for his annual guys reunion that he's been doing since before we got married. i think it's pretty special that they still meet, once a year, here or there, even tho it's an effort to get away, with job, wives, kids... it doesn't usually happen the weekend of easter, tho, so this year they're cutting it a bit short, so the men can be home for sunday. my grand plans for easter projects with francis have been gradually losing its oomph this week, so we'll see what i can come up with. i still have a few days.

last saturday, it was raining (surprise, surprise!) and we had a planned excursion north, to the fairbanks residence, for the dinner party they were having to celebrate their soon-to-be adoption of two babies from ethiopia. it got sunny as we were preparing to leave, and i got excited for the bonfire. but then it started raining again on the drive there. and then it poured. and then it hailed. we had august and hazel with us for the evening; i hoped the weather would clear for them to get to explore outside, for the fairbanks have lots of woods, and the fairbanks have 5 kids! it did eventually stop raining, and the kids did indeed play outside all evening, and even into the night, with flashlights. forts in the trees, forts under the porch...it was kid heaven. sonora cooked up an amazing ethiopian feast for all of us, which was delicious, and it was a wonderful evening of celebration, with good food and good friends. ( more pics on flickr)

on sunday, greg went on a long bike ride with some friends, so francis and i caught the bus downtown to check out the irish festival, and see the irish dancers, for st. patrick's day. i think it was good for him, to hear music from another culture, to see even the littlest of girls dancing such intricate steps. he asked: why is it always the girls that dance? i said that's a good question. i don't know. maybe the men were out working. maybe the men were playing the instruments that supplied the music. (i'm not ready to say: because the men like to watch women dance?) but i did say, that back in the olden days, before tv and movies, people provided their own entertainment, by coming together, playing music, dancing, singing, telling stories... something you don't see too much of these days.

how interesting that a holiday to celebrate the life and deeds, of a missionary to an ancient God-less ireland, is celebrated now by wearing green, attending parades, and drinking beer. and how challenging it is to parent, to teach a child to question, that the world's ways aren't the only ways. or even the right ways, alot of the time. apparently, i was a child who questioned everything, wouldn't believe something until i researched it myself. i hear i drove my mother nuts. and now i have a kid who believes everything he sees, hears, or reads. even something another kid tells him is the gospel truth. and now, he drives ME nuts. i try to instruct him to not believe everything he hears, to come home and look it up for himself, or ask questions, ask us. but somehow, it still comes out like: "because i said so." it's the parent telling him to do something, and he doesn't want to do it. he doesn't want to question. because he thinks he knows. he just wants to believe. which is good when it's the right things. and not good when it's the wrong things. how do you teach discernment, without them disbelieving everything?

and this is the face i get alot of the time.

so here i am, approaching easter. i tell him, remind him: you know it's more than easter baskets and chocolate bunnies, right? we talk about jesus, the passover, the cross. (but he's got one eye on the clock. how do i talk to him, without talking AT him?) it's a fine line, a struggle. and even tho the commercialism bothers me, since it is here: i have to admit nostalgia exists. i love these things too. i can't wholly deny the culture i grew up with, and the excitement i remember as a child, dressing up extra special for church on easter sunday, the baskets with plastic grass, hunting for eggs, gifts of chocolate. they make easter sunday different from any other sunday. the preparation, the decorations, the gifts, (much like christmas) help a child recognize the specialness of the day, something to look forward to, and the symbolism, we hope, is not altogether lost on them. we hope that the words we teach them (love the Lord your God with all your heart), the stories we tell them (love your neighbor as yourself), will someday snag on their heart, and become life inside of them. that someday they will do these things on their own. and not because i said so.

this is the day, this is the day...

2008-03-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

today is one of those days, that i remember every year, and will probably remember forever, because i learned it in childhood, and it became part of my subconscious. it is maybe not as well-known as valentine's day or st. patrick's day, but the date is definitely more remembered than president's day or mlk,jr. day...
today is the Ides of March. and if you don't remember what it is: go look it up, i'm not gonna tell you.

but besides that, it is wet and gray out, and has been for the past three days. my boys are off at baseball practice, which has taken over a significant part of the month. baseball season has begun, with greg coaching, practices 2 nights a week, and on saturday afternoons. and after that, let the games begin! greg is a very good coach, (and that's not just my opinion); he loves the game, he loves being with the kids, he's a good teacher. and: i enjoy watching him coach. there's something in him that comes alive on the field...i remember crushing on him severely when we first met, in 1995: when i began to notice that i was watching him (and not the ball, incidently, haha), when our friends played baseball for fun, on these very same greenlake fields, so many years ago. his joy of the game was evident then, and is still evident now. he's just born in the wrong era. he's an old-fashioned baseball lover, of the kind of baseball that doesn't exist anymore...

our breakfast this morning: coffee, chocolate croissants, and scrambled eggs. when i was at trader joe's this week, i remembered that melissa mentioned getting these croissants in the frozen food section, so i decided to try it. i even remembered to put them out to rise last night, so this morning, we had hot croissants right out of the oven. you can't get much better than that.

on thursday, we had a "first" for francis. we dropped him off at the boys and girls club in wallingford. he has been asking to go to boys and girls club, oh, probably since the very first time he heard it mentioned, in kindergarten. i suppose he thought it was this fantastic thing that he was always denied. it was such a mystery. it's a CLUB! it's for BOYS! and GIRLS! it must be so much fun! you throw the word "club" onto anything, and kids want to be involved. and of course, we explained it to him, that it was really just hanging out afterschool, for the kids whose parents worked and couldn't come get them at 3. but i don't think he really believed us. and honestly, the boys and girls club at our school, is just a small portable, where the kids color or read, or play on the playground, until their parents come get them. not that big of a deal. BUT. when we had his birthday at the boys and girls club in wallingford (all completely random, and driven by necessity) he got to see what was happening HERE: ping-pong! basketball! air hockey! fussball! pool! joys above joys! when we dropped by to make our reservation and payment (for his birthday), we saw his eyes big as saucers; we saw him longing. so we asked the desk: what's the deal to go here? we took the membership packet home and read all the fine print, because it just couldn't be as good as it sounded. $15 a school-year? that's it? to drop your kid off after-school, every day if you wanted? yup! so francis' dream finally came true on thursday, and on wednesday night, after he was asleep, we noticed that he had already laid his clothes out for the morning. he was sooo excited. and when i dropped him off at school, he reminded me: "don't forget, mama, i've got boys and girls club afterschool." oh, i won't forget. greg and i had our own worries. he has a hard enough time at school, making friends, losing recess often for goofing in class, kids picking on him for not being good enough at football, etc etc...that the idea of throwing him to a very chaotic roomful of kids, all-ages, supervised by a few young 20-somethings, wasn't too enticing. but, we've realized we need to start letting go, letting him do things his own way, the way he wants to do them. so, this was one thing we felt we could accomodate. well, at least once a week, or so..

francis wanted me to drop him off at the street, but i said i had to sign him in for the first few times, til they're familiar with him. while there, i hear an adult yelling: NO HUNTING EACHOTHER WITH THE POOL STICKS!--as two teen-agers run past me. (sigh) i decided to hang out for a bit, and see if francis needed me, but he quickly joined a kid playing pool, and i could hear him chattering away. i waved goodbye, and he waved back; he was happy. the night before, in his bedtimes prayers, he had prayed that he would have fun at boys and girls club, and that he would make some new friends, and i almost cried right there and then.

so what did we do while our boy was at play? we realized we would have time to catch a matinee, so for the first time, (in a really long time) i met greg downtown, and we caught a movie together. hmmm... now why didn't we think of this before???

growing pains

2008-03-10T13:34:00.000-07:00

i am ready for winter to be over. if we're not going to get any more snow, then i am ready for sunshine and the shedding of coats. already the trees are budding, and crocuses are blooming. did the warm week we had a few weeks ago fool them? or is it really time for blooms? i learned: april showers bring may flowers, when i was a girl in school, but maybe that's not true in the northwest? also, since when did easter fall the weekend after st. patrick's day?? there was always one holiday a month (in school) and march was always a frenzy of green and four leaf clovers. now we're trying to cram in easter as well? when did that happen? and we also completely missed daylight savings, i had no clue, which meant we completely missed church. so, we had a very lazy sunday, which was nice: coffee, staying in pajamas all afternoon, vegging on the couch watching sunday matinee tv movies and reruns...we haven't had a lazy, do nothing day, in a really long time.

our fishes have survived the week, and our frog too, which means, somehow, when i'm not looking, he actually does find food. he still doesn't look keen on his new neighbors, and stays under his rock almost all the time. i'm not sure that's healthy, but not sure what to do on that front.

i am feeling a bit eccentric-hermit-lady lately, because i also bought francis a venus flytrap a little while ago, (and also one of these which i can't pronounce)and have so far succeeded in not killing them, and they have both produced a flower! yay! however, we are still stuck on the feeding-them-bugs part, as we have no bugs flying around in our apartment. (apparently, you don't normally need to feed them anything, because in the wild, bugs naturally get caught. however, we are indoor city folk,) so we'll see, i suppose...

speaking of growing things, my friend lynne has started a little blog-journal about her recent project: growing chicks! from eggs! it is very fascinating, check it out, and start with day 1 and work your way up. i wish we lived nearby to pop in and visit her eggs, and it got me a bit nostalgic, wishing francis could have a baby chick too. i know, i know, where would we put it? but i'm a sucker for cute, cuddly things, and besides, when they grow up, they can give you eggs! i've had random, crazy thoughts before, about owning a chicken or two, just to give francis some sense of responsibility, something to take care of, and also a dose of: "the olden days", if you know what i mean: taking a slower pace to life, and working to achieve a goal, working to eat, etc. i know that sounds a bit lofty or archaic, but, i think the kinda-country-girl in me, is sometimes at odds with our city-living, and the city-boy we have produced, who doesn't climb trees, play in ponds, and hunt for little living creatures in the fields. and that's sad to me.

this got me thinking on things i have wished for francis that i never followed thru on. things that are definitely more natural and easy to do, if you live in the country, but take lots of time and energy if you live in the city, and consequently, often do not get done. like going hiking, or at least exploring in the woods, on a semi-regular basis. learning to swim and liking it. going to camp. whittling things with pocket knives. all that rugged, woodsy, boy stuff. he's 10, so i guess i still have time. but i feel like i've missed alot of time already...

so, in a fit of wanting to actually DO something this spring, i started looking things up. i found this farm, that has a children's animal farm, but got completely sidetracked by this: learning to ride a pony! how fun would that be! and then i was looking up egg-hunts, since easter is just around the corner, but wondered if francis would be too old, until i found this: an evening family flashlight hunt!?? i have never heard of such a thing, but francis i know would got absolutely nuts, he would love it.
boys + night + flashlight + hunting things = delight!!

i really do want to give him more, in the department of: the joys of childhood. joys that don't include videogames or movies, joys that get him outside and excited about nature, animals, excercise. he really does enjoy these things, all it takes is the effort to get him outside, and he is immediately having fun, learning and discovering. and that is a joy to see...

all things bright and beautiful

2008-03-04T11:12:00.000-08:00

while cleaning out the frog tank on saturday, i broke the filter, or more accurately, the filter just crumbled in my hand. so, off we bundled to the pet store for a new one. two hours later, we came home with much more than a filter. (i am indeed a sucker, for most things that live and breathe...)

first, we looked at ALL the animals. (pet stores are almost as good as going to the zoo.) and then, francis begged me for a ferret, then a canary, then a lizard. (no. no. and no.) i said we came for a filter. but then we started looking at fishes. so cute. their wide eyes, their little lips. now francis wanted a fish. so i aksed: is there any kind of fish that can live in a small tank, with an aquatic frog? turns out there was only one kind of fish there that could live in an unheated tank, that didn't grow big, and that the frog wouldn't eat: a white cloud fish. they were only $1.29, (such a bargain!)so we got two. francis named them batman and robin. not my first choice. i was all worried that the frog might eat them, but as it turns out, i should've been more worried for the frog. we've had him for about a year now, and he's managed to not die yet, a very amazing feat. but now i've introduced these new excited beings to his home, and i'm not sure he likes it. they are flashes of color and they never sit still. they inspect every inch of the tank continually. and they greedily go for all the food. while they are stuffing their faces, i have to try to sneak the frog food past them, and i wonder if he's getting enough. he just sits under his rock, and he looks very grumpy. i don't know if frogs can get grumpy, but, if they do, i'm sure he is. unfortunately, i don't have the heart to take the fish out, because that would mean their death, and i can't do that. so hoppy(or is it floppy?) is just gonna have to deal with the cards that have been dealt him, and buck up. i did buy him a real live aquatic plant, and took out the plastic one. he does like to sit under it, but i think he's waiting for those annoying fish to swim away, and unfortunately, they never do. (that's the problem with tanks; i don't know if he's realized it yet. i'd hate to break it to him; he seems hopeful.)

we also got a beta fish. it's been a few years and we are trying again. francis named him rainbow. (?again with the names?) but i just call him beta. or sometimes fishy-fishy. he is currently sitting on the kitchen table, and i'm hoping he'll last longer than a bouquet of flowers. he hasn't taken to his food that the pet store clerk convinced me to buy: freeze dried blood worms (-which just get bloated and float on top of the water; gross.) beta comes up to the surface, sniffs them, and swims away. he's also very grumpy, with an underbite like a bulldog. he's like an old man. i spend far more time than one would think reasonable just watching him. i got him an aquatic plant as well, and he swims thru the leaves, in the sad little circle that is his life. if only he knew, he brings joy to a little boy...

in other news...

2008-02-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

alot has happened in the past two weeks, but most significantly, the boy has turned 10! he has lived on this earth for one decade now, and i have to admit, it does seem like a long time: ten years for him has also been ten years for me...

we have just completed a week off of school for spring break, in which my parents flew out to surprise francis for his birthday. the preceeding week, the week i was supposed to be cleaning and preparing, francis came down with strep and missed 4 days of school. needless to say, we watched alot of cartoons and i didn't get much done. but we managed, and luckily he was over his contagious factor so as not to interefere with all our guests and his birthday party. we had greg's brothers dave and brad, and brad's kids, all sleepover the night before the party, then francis had a whole day with uncles and cousins while i baked the brownies and picked up my parents from the airport. we surprised him at the party, which was at a boys and girls club that we had rented out last minute, when we were done deluding ourselves that we could fit everyone into our apartment. (well, we might have been able to fit everyone, but then no one would be able to move, so...it was a win-win situation for everyone. but mostly for me!)

his party was a blast: thanks to all of you who came out and made the evening so much fun! and then, in the following week, francis had a fun-filled vacation with his grandma and grandpa, and also us, which he didn't notice much. for his birthday, monday, greg took off work, and we were all trying to figure out what grand plans we would do for the day...take the ferry to port townsend? drive up to deception pass? but finally we realized we weren't giving francis his say on his special day, we were treating it more like a vacation day. so, francis, what do YOU want to do on your birthday? and instantly he said: museum of flight! so there we went. it's a boys paradise really. and my dad got a kick out of touring the concorde, which he actually has ridden on before, back in the 80's, for business. so of course we took all the necessary touristy pictures. (i'll post more on my flickr page).

i must mention this: it was sunny and bright EVERY SINGLE DAY they were here. a miracle of miracles! my dad said: "so what are you complaining about?" we were stripping off coats, had red mill burgers OUTSIDE! ON PICNIC TABLES! IN FEBRUARY! i had been preparing myself for what we could do in the rain. but as it was, we were lazy in the mornings, getting coffee and sun in my kitchen, then went out for the afternoons: downtown, pike place market, the zoo, the EMP and science fiction museum, and going out to eat for lunch or dinner to all our favorite places. we played card games, napped, watched movies, ate popcorn...truly vacationed without going anywhere. it was very relaxing, very fun, and now that my parents have returned to the actual winter that is morgantown, pennsylvania...we miss them very much.

and life has returned to its pace it was before: busy. normal. back to school and homework. ignored laundry is a towering mountain of mess, francis' room is an absolute disaster, as is our room, and my to-do list is so long that i decided if i got one thing done a day, i'd feel ok. so i make my coffee in the mornings, stove-top style, and slowly make a dent, to get myself back on track.

p.s. that birthday sign? my mother made. when we were growing up, she had made stuffed letters out of fabric, you know, the whole 70's thing, and the more kids she had, the more letters she made. i have never had the skill to do this, being i can't sew, but this year, she sent francis, in the mail, letters cut out of cereal boxes, and dollars, for him to put together. the first envelope were the letters H and A, with a dollar bill. he was confused. so i put them together and said: "HA HA, you get ONE dollar for your birthday!" and he sighed. but the next day, with a P and a P, and two more dollars, he started to get the hint. so then everyday, he ran to the mail box, predicting the next letters and eagerly awaiting the dollars. once he completed "happy birthday" there was a left-over F, and he yelped with joy! wahoo!! it wasn't just "happy birthday"; it was "happy birthday francis"!!! and he excitedly counted up the next letters and dollars he would receive. it was a wonderful plan, thanks mom and dad. and it led up to the final and best gift: you coming to spend time with us...we miss you already! and wouldn't you know it? it's back to gray...

rain, rain, go away

2008-02-07T11:21:00.000-08:00

well, i needed a new photo up, and this is one thing i do to combat the gray. i try to get my trader joes flowers to last as long as they can, so first there's the big bright bouquet, and then when it starts dwindling, i pull out the flowers that are dead, and put the survivors in smaller vases. even if it's just one flower. it'll do.

it's february now, and february always comes up on me quick and takes me by surprise. baseball tryouts are starting this weekend (already?!!) and then coming up next week, there's valentine's day, which, if you're a grown-up, and don't want to participate in, you don't have to, but if you've got a kid, then you must, because all the kids swap valentine's at school. so there's the mini-battle over that. oh, the things "they" market! francis wanted to buy this spiderman pack at safeway, and half of them had a very scary "venom" looking like it was going to bite your face off. oozing fangs and everything. i said: "this looks a bit too scary for valentine's day." and francis said: " of course he looks scary. he's VENOM. he always looks like that." and i said: "yeah, but for valentine's day?" and then i of course couldn't help but saying: " you know, just because some company makes these things, doesn't mean we have to buy it." and then i suggest we wait a little longer, and see what other options there are. and of course: "you know, you could always make them yourself." but lately we've been noticing more and more, the little slump of his shoulders, the glazing over of the eyes, and his quick agreeance with us over what was said. defeated. like "yeah, you're right, they are stupid." somehow we've steered off-coure and landed in the swamp. and then we have to say: "no no no! WE are making a parental decision, but YOU don't have to agree with us. you just have to say "ok". i'm not trying to get you to think they're stupid, and you don't have to change your mind if you like them. you can like them, but i just don't think they're appropriate, ok?" (sigh) somehow, there's this hair-thin line that gets crossed without even knowing it until you're on the other side. i definitely don't want to be the parent that says "no" all the time. it does seem like we say "no" alot. there's alot of things out there that we don't agree with, that are ridiculous, not necessary, extravagant, commercial, and we just want to live simply. is that cliche or trendy to say? we don't want alot of "stuff". but living simply makes you stand out. not going with the flow gets you noticed. it comes with alot of "no's". and francis is starting to feel it. it used to not bother him so much i think, but now it's starting to. and i know with kids some things you just gotta stand firm on, but how many things do we insist upon, that, at the end of the day, are just a battle that we want to win? a battle that really makes no difference, except it separates our child from us just a little bit more? if something as little as a valentine is that big to me, might it not be that big to francis? is letting him get those horrible spiderman valentine's selling out our principles, or is it wising up and stepping back, and just letting francis make the choice he wants? i definitely don't want it to be one of those things where, when he grows up, he thinks: my mother never let me get the valentines i wanted. stupid, little things that become big because we make them that way.

and then, on the tail of valentine's day, is his birthday, feb. 18th, which always seems to happen during his school's spring break. and if valentine's day was tricky, you should see us trying to plan his birthday! i don't even want to talk about it, because that was not what i was planning on blogging about. i wasn't even plannning on blogging on what i just wrote. i was going to blog about something boring, about repotting my plants because they're completely top-heavy and are practically bursting out of their pots. but now i've already written too much and spent too much time. i'm in the middle of laundry,(i'm switching out my winter duvets to my summer ones, already, because i just need a change of color. something bright and cheery!) and i'm also in the middle of cleaning, and finishing up my flaxseed pillows. it's kind of like: when it rains it pours. all of a sudden, i have 101 things to do! don't we all? but no big deal. all those things to do, don't bother me. they're just part of living. i just do them. but parenting. that bothers me. i just keep forgetting to think like a kid...

sleepless (in seattle)

2008-01-29T14:14:00.000-08:00

i couldn't sleep last night. and the night passed painfully slow.

we had had a lovely no-school day, with an added treat of snow. greg stayed home. we walked around woodland park; francis made snowballs, and snow angels. we came home and i made a pot of chai (decaf!) and popcorn, and snuggled down to watch "stardust" for francis' belated movie night. i caught up on some email. greg and i watched the new terminator: the sarah connor chronicles tv show.

and then i went to bed. and then i couldn't sleep.

midnight. i thought about alot of things. my mind was racing and couldn't stop. was there really caffeine in the tea i had bought? do four teacups (i should have known, greedy little me) of decaf tea equal one cup of caffeine? i started thinking stranger thoughts. i DID have a slice of peanut butter on toast before bed. i try not to eat before bed, but i cannot stand trying to sleep with a rumbling tummy. hmmm...does peanut butter have caffeine? (the thoughts one thinks at 2 in the morning...) maybe it was the sugar? or maybe it was the cloves and cardomom? i started thinking how sarah connor was way better than the bionic woman. she would beat jamie sommers butt and she wasn't even bionic. i started counting all the baby-blue things in my apartment. i couldn't stop. blue suitcase. blue coat. blue teapot. blue scarf. i started wondering why i liked blue so much. i never used to be into blue. and when did blue come to represent sadness? does looking at blue make you feel sad? and then i switched to green. no. i really do like green. all shades of green. olive green couch. old green desk. 50's green table. ivy green plants. why does green mean envy? envy sounds like ivy. green with ivy? because envy like ivy can overrun you if you're not careful? choke out the good thoughts? make you bitter? brittle? sigh. check the clock... 3 am.... sigh...

to sew or not to sew...

2008-01-21T12:51:00.000-08:00

the week went by with gray clouds, and almost continual rain, so i am thoroughly enjoying this burst of sun shining thru my window. i'd be tempted to go outside, except it's freezing out, and francis is (no school today) happily humming away in his room, contructing his newest star wars lego acquisition. on sunny days like these, i like to migrate around the apartment, following the sun like a cat: coffee in the kitchen, reading in the living room, and then sometimes just curling up for a mid-afternoon nap, just to feel the warmth beating on my face.

i've just had my coffee (in the sun!)and after this, i'll be on to my project: making flaxseed warming pillows, which i thought i'd share with you. i made these for christmas presents for the women in my family this year, and did not blog about it because i wanted the gifts to be a surprise. but i have alot of supplies left over, and i've decided to make some more. i thought i should also let you know: i am not a sewer. (according to webster, a "sewer" is: a person or thing that sews. a thing?!! alarmingly enough, a "sewer" is also: an underground pipe to carry off water and waste matter. hmmm...i am not either of these, but for the purposes of this blog, i will be referring to definition #1.) i am also not a knitter; i prefer the paper end of crafting: cutting and glueing, collaging, making my own cards,etc. about as handy as i have been regarding fabric in the past, has been to make iron-on t-shirts. and even they frustrated me.

i grew up with a mother who knew how to sew, made her own clothes when she was young, and then made alot of clothes for us when we were kids. she made all my prom dresses. she made my wedding dress. she is a very accomplished sewer.( person who sews!) so it made sense that i should learn, (and i assumed i could), and she DID try to teach me. she really did. she was really patient. however, i was not. i did not like all the steps: pre-washing the fabric, and then all the ironing; i just wanted to cut. and the pinning of all the pieces! i just wanted to sew. and then, when i was sewing, i had a problem with the pedal. (in drivers ed, my instructor called me "lead foot") i could not keep it from going too fast and zipping away with my fabric. grrrr! and then all the seam-ripping my mistakes and starting over. !!! it was really more than my 20-yr-old-self could bear. my mother, on more than one occasion, had to rescue her sewing machine FROM me, and i think my dad observed that if i COULD have lifted it, it might have been in danger of being thrown. i was a very angry sewer. it was not relaxing. i decided it was not for me. and i haven't done it since then. even sadder was the end result: it was not the heirloom piece i had been hoping for. unfortunately, the project that i was so laboring to complete was: first a quilt, that became, in one of my "genius" ideas, a quilt dress. i do not know whatever possessed me to make a quilt dress. and my mother let me! of course i didn't start with an easy project, like a pillow, or an A-line skirt. i HAD to make a quilt dress. piecing all the squares together to make the strips, sewing all the strips together to make a large enough block of fabric to cut the pattern out of. i must have been having a vanity trip, or going thru a very sad fashion phase, because the only thing that kept me going on this ridiculous project was: how awesome it was going to be when it was finally done. no one else would have anything like it! (ain't that the truth!) and i will tell you: i did finish it. i triumphantly put it on only to discover two things. two things that made me want to cry. 1.) it was ugly. (whose bright idea was it to make a quilt that was a dress?) however, in my vanity, i ignored this point, (afterall, i did not want to seem unappreciative of all my mother's time and labor spent with me) and instead, focused on 2.) it weighed about 80 lbs. my shoulders ached after wearing it for awhile. i think i forced myself to wear it a few times, so that all my efforts weren't a complete waste, but, it soon found it's way into my closet, never to again see the light of day. my mother rescued it many years later, and now it is stored in her closet. she tried to wear it once, out of nostalgia i think, but confessed later, in the kindest way possible, so as to not hurt my feelings, that it WAS a bit heavy. and i had to laugh. so we just laughed and laughed and laughed. and there it stays. in the closet. it stays there for a good laugh.

so, that is why, this undertaking of even making a pillow, was a bit daunting to me. my friend karen made us a warming pillow last year for christmas, which we use all the time. this year, i saw them at all sorts of places, selling for like $40! and i thought to myself (in my usual DIY fashion): i could make that. then, my friend melissa blogged about how to make them, and where she had gotten her idea from, and i thought: good. i'll just copy them. but: i couldn't copy them. they were sewers. i was not. i couldn't make fancy little pillow-cases for my flaxseed pillows; i just wanted to sew four straight lines and be done with it. so here it is: and they cost less than $10 a piece to make, so enjoy! now go make your own.

HOW TO MAKE A FLAXSEED WARMING PILLOW: FOR THE NON-SEWER:

1.) get your fabric. (i tried Jo-Ann's before a friend told me about this little gem of a shop in seattle, the quilting loft. very very cool fabric!)

2.) sad to say, you must then wash and iron it. a very boring step.

3.) determine your size, and cut, with fabric scissors. (remember, it needs to fit into a microwave, so you can't make 'em too big. i made mine 7.5 inches by 18.)

4.) place the outsides on the inside, and pin: a 1/4 inch in on all four sides. you don't need alot of pins. just enough to guide your eye when you're sewing. (and don't forget: remove them as you sew.)

5.) and now: to sew! there is hope if you do not have a machine. i do not own one, but have many friends who do. just ask a friend if you can come over for coffee and borrow their machine! (haha) if your friend does not trust your sewing skills, maybe see about trading something: they sew four straight lines, you bring a cake? or even, see if a local shop does what the quilting loft offers, a sewing lounge: machines available to use in the store, for $10.)

i sewed at my friend keri's house, and at my friend jennifer's. i got some tips i didn't previously know:

backstitch to start your sewing, and backstitch to end it.
start in the middle of one of the small ends: this will be your opening (to pull the pillow thru.)
sew all three sides, and finish the fourth with about a 2 inch hole. (my 1 inch holes were too small; i could barely pull my pillow back thru! much frustration!)

6.) cut the corners at an angle, and then pull your pillow inside out. now the outside fabric should be on the outside.

7.) iron it again.

8.) stuff it.

use the back of a cardboard cereal box to make a funnel, and pour in the flaxseed. mine was trial and error, and i ended up using 5 cups of flaxseed, and 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp. dried lavender, with a pinch of chamomile. (it does not need chamomile, only i had already bought it, and was trying to use some of it. my first try was way too much, and our apartment was reeking like a field of weeds, and i was sneezing for days, so you don't want to use chamomile if the person you're giving it to gets allergies easily. just using lavender is ok. and you could use more than i did. mine is a faint smell, not overpowering. and i used dried lavender, not the essential oil, because with the oil, you needed to make a pillow cover, which i did not know how to do. the dried lavender works fine. i also found flaxseed very cheap at the old weird fred meyer at 85th and greenwood (seattle) for only $1 a pound! half the price than at whole foods! so it can be found at reasonable prices...)

9.) sew your opening shut. by hand or machine. i tried the first one by hand, and it looked sadly as if a 5 yr. old had done it. so i machine-sewed not only the hole, but the whole end for uniformity. and it looked very nice.

10.) voila! you have a pillow!

to heat: place on a paper towel in the microwave and nuke for 1-3 minutes, depending on your microwave. do not overheat or it can scorch! for moist heat: sprinkle with a little water before microwaving. to chill: place in a ziploc bag and store in the freezer 2 hours or overnight, to use as a cold pak.

uses: fold in half lengthwise and use around your neck to relieve muscle tension and stress. fold in half width-wise and place behind your back for aches. lay it on your lap for warmth. stick it under your covers to warm up your bed at night. or sleep with it at your feet!

i made one for greg this christmas, because he saw me making them and said, "which one is for me?" i said: "oh. none. you want one?" luckily, i had gotten one kind of non-feminine fabric: a vintage-looking western print. so i made one for him. he uses it all the time. i use it all the time. francis tries to, when he can get a turn. there just isn't enough pillow to go around for the three of us. now, francis wants his own. i want my own. so, i'm off again to make some more: one for francis, one for me, and then some...

sunny day chasing the clouds away

2008-01-15T11:27:00.000-08:00

so, we woke up this morning to bright shining sun! yippee! and also: snow and ice! yesterday we had full-on east-coast-ish torrential rain, and last night's snow was totally unexpected. school unfortunately was not even delayed,(the scrooges!) even tho the roads were still completely icy. our car was buried under a sheet of ice, and francis had fun hacking at it with the scraper.

he threw some snow at me all excited, and of course, me having just woken up and pulled on clothes to take him to school, and greg to work, didn't take it very well. we may never get snow again for the rest of the year, and what do i do on this precious day? i snap at him some stupid lame-o vague guidelines like: "don't throw snow at someone unless they're ready, or are already in a snowball fight with you." (?) (sigh) so many times, our little parenting moments that we can set by example, or leave nice memories, are not big moments that we can prepare for, but those little moments that sneak up on us and catch us at our worst. my wish is that hopefully the good moments that i have will someday outweigh the bad moments, for i fear they are many. luckily for me at that moment, i had greg, who had my back. he told me afterwards that he rolled his eyes at me, and he and francis had a little secret boyish snicker behind my back. boys. he could say he was sorry, but it didn't stop him from still thinking that it was totally funny to smack your mama with snow. i need to lighten up.

greg has a phrase that we use in this house alot; it's called, simply: "guy/girl". we use it to point out to eachother things that, under the exact same circumstances, we react completely differently. we like to blame it on our gender. off the top of my head, a good example would be from the early days of the phrase: one time when our friends kevin and karen came over, i had just finished putting up an overhead shelf in our entryway the day before. karen came in, walked thru the hallway, paused, and looked around, and said: "something's different. did you rearrange the furniture?" i said no. she said confused: "huh. cause something feels totally different here. like the light is different or something...that's really weird." and i said: "well, i DID put a shelf up there yesterday" and she looks up, and exclaims: "oh my goodness! wow! you did that by yourself? kevin, look! she put a shelf up there!" and kevin said: "i know." and karen said: "how did you know? did they tell you?" and he said: "i noticed it first thing when we walked in." and karen says: "then why didn't you say anything?" and kevin said: "what for?" and then greg marched in, whooped, and said "guy/girl right there, folks! guy/girl!" and he and kevin hi-fived, and we all had a good laugh. and that's really about all it's good for. a good laugh at eachother. i wouldn't recommend using it in a real argument, though. i don't think-- "you know,hon, i didn't take out the trash because: i didn't remember! guy/girl! hahaha!"--would go over very well.

anyways. it's sunny outside, i have the car today, and i had planned to do more errands (i feel like all i've been doing these past few weeks is errands, errands, errands!) but on the way home, i was reminded of the side streets, which were still, at 9:30am, quite icy.

so i decided to come home, have a nice breakfast, make my coffee, and catch up on my blog, and do my shopping later this afternoon, when the sun has sufficiently melted the roadways some.

i haven't felt like writing lately. i've been doing alot of reading. alot of hibernating. it is still winter, afterall. i've just finished reading the first three books in a series that francis discovered, called percy jackson and the olympians, by rick riordan. mainly, i read the first one to see what he was reading. then i really liked it, and wanted to read the rest. we've had good discussions, and googled alot about greek mythology. the books cleverly throw the greek myths back into modern times by way of: since gods are immortal, they are not dead. just no one believes in them anymore. and the monsters are still alive and breathing, and trying to hunt down all the half-bloods: the children of gods and mortals. these half-bloods are recruited to a camp, where they are trained to be warriors, by none other than Chiron himself (immortal centaur who trained hercules and achilles). percy has to go on a quest, to retrieve zeus' stolen lightning bolt and stop the gods from going to war with eachother, and he also must venture into the underworld to save his mother. of course he encounters all sorts of (familiar) monsters of legend, but he has two friends at his side, and trusty weapons: gifts of the gods. and there is also the forboding prophecy. all kinds of heavy stuff, but it's told from percy, in his voice, and he's in the sixth grade. and boys have a way of dealing with things with a shrug of their shoulders, and a determination of will. guy/girl. i enjoy the books, for me, but i also find them useful, as a mother, in helping me understand francis better, a boy's point of view.
for example: book 2, the sea of monsters, chapter 14--we meet the sheep of doom:
..."when you think "monster island", you think craggy rocks and bones scattered on the beach like the island of the Sirens. the Cyclop's island was nothing like that. i mean, okay, it had a rope bridge across a chasm, which was not a good sign. you might as well put up a billboard that said: SOMETHING EVIL LIVES HERE. but except for that, the place looked like a caribbean postcard...

i've also just finished reading "the children's homer: the adventures of odysseus and the tale of troy." it is significantly shorter than the originals, only 248 pages. in my googling the story,(wikepedia fills in the gaps nicely)i discovered a tv movie called the odyssey, which we rented this weekend. i wanted to read him the book first, but we're already reading peter pan, and he's already in the middle of his second book of percy jackson. i wanted him to be familiar with more of the greek myths that he'll encounter in the book. there's not too many movies out there to familiarize yourself with them. there is "clash of the titans" which is embarrassingly bad, but sufficient story-wise. there is "jason and the argonauts" which is much better, even tho it's filmed in the 60's. we've seen them both. the odyssey movie was filmed in 1997, and i should have watched it first. we had to cover his eyes alot. the war scenes were gruesome, the monsters were gruesome, and the islands of calypso, and circe, were maybe too sexy for a 9 year old. so it wasn't really a kids movie. but then again, we watched "the nativity story" the week before, and the birthing scenes were a bit gruesome, the soldiers were abducting the jewish baby boys and killing them, and he covered his eyes there too. the stories of the bible are just as gruesome. war and death and evil are everywhere. it's all the moral of the story that's important, i guess. the thing i'm trying to expose francis to. the things we maybe don't see everyday, but can learn from, and store up, for the times that we need them. like courage. and love. and hope. having faith. choosing what's right, and following it, no matter what. i do try...

here we go again

2008-01-04T17:07:00.000-08:00

tommy two toes, his moll rae rae diamond cutter, and his sidekick lil' frankie, celebrated the new year at their friend's secret speakeasy. because of prohibition, they had to sneak past coppers, smuggle in moonshine, and be on the list, or the bouncers would bounce their sorry ol' bums to the curb. once inside, they ate spaghetti, played cards, and danced, while the dons kept trying to kill eachother.
it was a night to remember...

(go to flickr for more evidence and documentation.)

all i want for christmas is...

2007-12-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

well, it's been a busy weekend, as you can guess, but i'm happy to report, i'm feeling all caught up and finally ready for the big day tomorrow. cleaning house, and shopping, and seeing friends...and now i'm baking cookies, with francis sometimes helping. i wanted to get another post off before christmas, but as i have no time to write, i thought i would share with you some of francis' writings: his letter to santa this year. it's always a bit of a pickle, we never told him about santa, he just believes, but he's going on ten now, so how longer must we keep this charade? we're hoping he discovers on his own...but he's not easily swayed by doubters. he is a firm believer, even if others aren't. we're gonna have to break it to him someday, but until then...?

here it is: in francis' own words:

Dear Santa,

How are you doing in the North Pole. Are the penguins nice and freindly or are they being very defensive protecting their babys and poking you with their beaks. I want to know because I want to get a baby penguin for christmas. No no no just kiding that would be to much for my mom and dad having a squeaky penguin walking around and that would also get us in trouble in are apartment.
I wanted to ask you for some things. I want to tell you my christmas list. Here are the things I want for christmas: For Video games I want Empire at War for Xbox and Transformers The Game for Xbox. For Legos I want Tie Fighter colection and Tie Interceptor. For Toys I want LAAI\I Gunship Transformer and the AT-TE tank. For Trading cards I want pokemon. For Softwere I want the Microsoft Game Softwere. To help you out on picking Witch presents to get me. My favorite is Empire At War on the Xbox, My second favorite is the Tie fighter Colection, and Thats what I want for Christmas. Have a nice time in the North Pole.

Sincerely,
Francis James Nyssen.

(this photo by greg.)

we miss you all, and wish you a very merry Christmas!
xo rachel, greg, and francis

wishing for a winter wonderland

2007-12-11T11:24:00.000-08:00

man, it's been many many days since i last posted, and i don't even really have the time now, except that if i don't squeeze it in, i'll be posting AFTER christmas about what i did BEFORE christmas, and that would be pointless. so i've just had my morning latte, and wrote my to-do list for today, which i will get to...after i catch up here. first, i go to all my friends and read up on what they're are doing, and therein lies some inspiration, because everyone is up to: much!

it always seems like december needs more days in it, and just like they tweeked our calendar for daylight savings, they should tweek it again and make december long, and january short (i mean, with all those resolutions, we just want january to be over and done with anyways, and move on to february) and they could call it "christmas savings". and instead of saving light and energy, it would be saving OUR energy, and the little light of our soul that just gets too crammed, crushed, and jostled, during this holiday season that is supposed to be about love, and giving, and thankfulness.

it's my fault really. because i refuse to get into the season until dec. 1. and this year, dec. 1 rang in the season with a beautiful day of snow all day long. (and of course, it lasted: one whole day long...) snow! and cold! and christmas music! and lights! THAT is when i try to come up with ideas for gifts, but then, when i look at the calendar, i realize: oh my goodness! i have to mail them in two weeks, and i don't even know what i'm mailing yet!!

so i've been busy. and i won't go into it, because they are presents, and they are a surprise...so, moving right along...

francis begs every year to do a gingerbread house, and every year i don't want to do it, and pawn it off: "that's something you can do at grandma's house", and he does get to do them, at grandma's house. but we aren't going to pennsylvania for christmas at grandma and grandpa's house this year. and after him asking again, my first thought was: for goodness sakes, he's almost ten and he's STILL asking for a gingerbread house! and then right on it's tail was my second thought, which was: for goodness sakes, he's been asking for ten years and what kind of lame mom am i that i refuse to do a gingerbread house with my kid? sooo, good new for francis, guilt won out, and i spied a gingerbread kit at trader joes for 7 bucks, and brought it home for him. he was so sweet! he was so happy for it, and wanted people to come over and make it with us! unknown to francis, assembling gingerbread houses does not top the list for many adults (including me) so we were very glad that eben agreed to come over, and the three boys (greg, francis, and eben) ended up having a heydey with it.(more photos on my flickr!)

i got too frustrated with the frosting and the pastry bag and the mess, and was asked to step aside, which i gladly did. but i did contribute the cinnamon stick chimney, and eben did the cotton ball smoke. and the rosemary on the tree. and the candy cane archway. and the direct-tv satellite dish. because even the gingerbread people need their must-see tv...

on sunday, we drove up to north bend with our friends karen and kevin, to go to a christmas tree farm. a first for us. it wasn't quite the wilderness i was expecting; still, francis had a blast running around in the trees, with mt. si looming in the distance.

it was 33 degrees, and we did get a few flakes of snow. he ran the whole farm over, looking for the perfect tree, and when we finally narrowed it down to two, greg and i favored the smallest one, and francis favored the other, the one not quite as small, but pretty much the same. the usual rule of domestic voting meant francis lost,2 to 1, and as his shoulders slumped and he slowly trudged away to the "other" tree, the "unwanted" tree, i looked at greg and sighed: "what are we doing?" he'd been having so much fun this whole time, and here we are getting short with him, trying to convince him that they were practically the same, over-ruling him, and i find i do this too much: over-rule him. saying: don't be silly, this one's fine. trying to convince him to my point of view, and because i'm bigger, i win out. sometimes, it's right: and it falls under "parenting" and "teaching", but all too often, it doesn't, and it falls under "lazy" and "bossy". my son is almost 10, and his childhood is slipping quickly past, and i need to remember that he's a kid, and LET him be a kid...to think those kid thoughts, and do those kids things.

so we realized our mistake, (sigh) and called to francis, who was halfway across the field by now, and called him back. when he got to us, i said: "francis, we're sorry for being so bossy and not letting you choose. we came here so you could pick out a tree, so which one do you want?" and he immediately broke into a grin and pointed to the tree he wanted: his tree. i said: "do you know WHY you want this one?" and he immediately had an answer: "well, you see, this one has a longer trunk, which means there will be more room for presents underneath."

you heard it here, folks. out of the mouth of babes. kids know what they want, and not too often do they know WHY they want something, but when they do, there's a reason. and it helps us, to remember that we wanted this too...when we were a kid.

so, thankfully, the day was not lost. he struggled to cut down his tree, with the hand saw they passed out. he did need a little help, as he was sawing and sawing and sawing and we realized we might be here all day. greg made some headway, then let him finish, and then francis wanted to carry it back to kevin's truck.

it was a fun adventure, and something i definitely recommend. francis worked hard for his tree...(and we learned a little lesson). that night, during his prayers, he thanked God: that his parents were "nice enough" to change their minds, and let him get the tree he really wanted, and that he was really happy for his tree. i kid you not. he said that in his prayers.

it's often those little things that make a big deal...

the good, the bad, and the ugly

2007-11-29T13:20:00.000-08:00

well, four days have passed since the thanksgiving weekend, and my house is still a mess. (and by house, i mean apartment, but it's always easier to just say house...) i've just been too tired and too lazy, and slowly picking away at it. but. i DID read two very good books, so i don't feel that bad about it.

thanksgiving went a little different this year, in that we didn't go to portland to be with greg's family, which is the usual. the usual also being 6 hours, in the rain, in bumper to bumper to traffic...which this year, with all that's been going on, (i'll get to that later) we just couldn't stomach. we decided to go up on friday, hoping that everyone would be at the malls and there wouldn't be any traffic. and we were right!

we spent thanksgiving with our family-less east coast friends: karen and kevin, stephanie, and stu, and it was really fun. we weren't meeting up with them til 4:30-ish, tho, and i wasn't going to start my cooking until 3, so we had some time to kill, in which we thought: what shall we do? we have no traditions, really, for thanksgiving, other than to be with family. so what do we do with our OWN family,when we are just us? our own traditions? well, first we had a big breakfast of waffles, scrambled eggs with cream cheese, and of course, my stovetop lattes. (that was to stretch our stomachs for the evenings feast. i have tried not eating, in preparation for the gorging, but it always ends up backfiring. i get too full too quick, so we've learned to eat a big brunch, and then we're nice and starving for the big meal.) it was gorgeously sunny outside, so after that, we decided to go walk around our neighborhood. maybe head to the park. what we didn't realize until halfway there, was that it turned winter overnight, and it was ab-so-lute-ly F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G!!! so the grand plan of frollicking as a family in the park was cut a bit short due the fact that i coudn't feel my ears and my teeth hurt all the way to my gums. francis didn't seem to mind, tho. he and greg played catch all the way to the park, until i almost got hit in the head, and then they had to stop. (it's always, always, the mom who gets hit with the ball.) the streets were deserted, but there was still plenty of local people walking about, walking their dogs, walking their selves...enjoying the sunshine. i hate to admit, i enjoyed it much better back inside the apartment. it's really cozy in there, especially when the sun is shining. (check out more photos on my flickr...)

we then met up with our friends at stu's new abode, for our thanksgiving meal. it was really fun, and yummy, and way too much food for the 7 of us. greg had dug out the atari and brought it for some laughs for later in the evening, only to discover that stu had no tv. apparently, there are people like that. so we were forced to get creative and play charade-like games, and karen and stephanie taught us some games too. hot-potato-like winking games, and another one where, you know, someone is the killer and you have to figure out who the killer is. without being killed. kind of like clue, but without the board. i have to admit, it was a bit slow going at first. we all looked and felt like what we really wanted was a nap (except francis of course) but felt bad about crashing at 7:30 at night. they apologized and said: "really, it's a fun game! just imagine it with like 17 people". i also imagined it with gin and tonic! (haha) but, in the end, we perservered, and ended up having loads of fun, laughing ourselves silly for approximately 4 hours, until we, the nyssens, unfortunately had to go. go to bed. getting up early. to drive to portland in the morning.

the drive to portland was a breeze. yay! and we spent the whole weekend with greg's brothers, dave and brad, and their families, just relaxing and hanging out. francis got major cousin time, which he just loves. sunday was sunny again, so we got all the kids outside and to the park only to discover that it was, yet again, unbearably freezing. (i guess it really is winter now!) but greg got a little baseball game going with the boys, and they were having so much fun (i think) that they kept saying: "one more inning!" whenever we suggested going back home. they were such troopers, and we got them all hot chocolate afterwords at the minimart across the street to warm up. such fun! then it was off to nickolas' 14th birthday party (crazy! i can't believe he's 14!) and then our drive home in the dark, with thankfully, no rain and no traffic. me driving, listening to "the life aquatic with steve zissou" soundtrack, (which is a really great soundtrack, by the way. especially for driving.)

so that was the end of our week. but i meant to tell you about the beginning of our week, where francis had no school, and the part where we bought a house. before you start jumping up and down--we changed our minds and said: no. basically, to make a long story short(er), we've been looking at houses. looking IN houses. for awhile now. we took the plunge and put an offer on this house, this cute little house, built in 1920's: one that's semi-still in our neighborhood, where i could still walk francis to school, and greg's commute wouldn't be that much longer.

the seller accepted our bid. we went to our loan officer and got the paperwork rolling. and then we got the house inspected. it was after this, where we said no. it's hard to say, when you're looking for a house, what will be THE factor that would make you say no. i mean, all the houses that we can afford are given fixer-uppers. so we start tallying the items the inspector is telling us... new pipes, since these ones are leaking and pre-50's? um...okay. new heating unit, since this is a forced air octopus downstairs in the crawl space that is pre-50's? yikes! new siding, because the steel siding is rusting, perhaps from the inside? perhaps covering up rotting wood? ummm... (add, add, add...numbers adding up) what number makes you draw the line? the line that says: this house is not worth the fix? well, our decision was made easy for us when the inspector came upstairs after a long visit to the crawl space under the house, and said the foundation was terrible. greg said: "by terrible, what exactly do you mean? on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being the worst?" and the inspector said instantly and without hesitation: "oh, 10, definitely. in fact, i haven't seen a house this bad in a long time." and went on in great detail, with pictures, about the beetle infestation the foundation crossbeams had that could collapse at any minute, the additions on the house where someone had put up the crossbeams on: stacked bricks and jacks. i kid you not. jacks. you know, the things with which you prop up a car when you're changing the tire. i'm pretty sure in the directions there is, or should be, a disclaimer that says "not for propping up houses". this house was resting on jacks. multiple jacks. rotting logs secured with jacks. a shanty on jacks. kind of put on new spin on that old hymn: 'on Christ the solid rock i stand, all other ground is sinking sand. all other ground is sinking sand...'

so, that was the deal-breaker for us. we got our money back, and are back to square one. looking at houses...looking IN houses. it is amazing, the things you see, when you are looking IN houses. for example, you might come across a completely empty house where someone had lined all the walls with "art" they were selling. for 10 dollars. to prove i am not kidding:

i especially liked the house that had posted these signs inside: (unfortunately i didn't get pictures, but greg and our realtor and francis are witnesses)
"INDOOR PLUMBING!!" and "ELECTRICITY IN EVERY ROOM!!"

it's like those motels that advertise: CLEAN ROOMS!!

so, anyways, that's where we are these days. and to end on a slightly sad note, i will tell you that one of our little froggies bit the dust. he went to froggy heaven. food for worms. he had been a bit sickly, and by sickly i mean, he was missing a foot and in its place was a ball of fuzz. mold? infection? bacteria? did the other one bite it off? i took them both out the other day and cleaned the tank, and francis and i googled: "frog leg fungus", hoping to come up with something, but nothing looked like what our little guy had. francis was speculating maybe he had a brand new disease. we did find out that little african dwarf frogs are pretty hardy and will usually recooperate with clean water, and time. either that, or they die. so, i told francis that. he was shocked! he said we needed to take him to the vet!! i tried to explain to him that things like frogs, and fishes, don't go to the vet. dogs and cats, yes. frogs and fishes, no. and he said: but MAMA! he is part of our FAMILY!!!

so, we did the best we could. we cleaned their tank. and francis prayed that night for God would make him all better. and the next morning? belly-up. (now how do you explain that to a kid?) i made parental mistake #571 when i informed him of little froggy's death in the night, driving on the way to school. (a car day for me means driving francis to school, driving greg to work, and then my errands. greg then takes the bus home...) i looked back and his lips were trembling, and tears were streaming down his face, and greg and i both (embarrassed to admit), tried our best to keep from laughing. it was just too cute. so when we dropped him off, we both got out and gave him hugs, and a tissue, and said froggy had been a good little frog. he lived a nice long froggy life. and then: have a good day at school!

after school, i decided that it seemed more fitting to bury froggy rather than the uncerimonious trip to the garbage can, and that it might do some bit of good for francis. some proper pet closure. it was pouring down rain, fitting. so we scooped him out of the tank (i had left him there all day, hoping maybe he wasn't really dead, but,...he really was dead.) francis said: "can we make him an R.I.P??" i was like: oh?!! so we got toothpicks, and fashioned him a little cross. we went outside, and francis picked out a spot under the hedgebush and dug a little hole in the dirt. we carefully placed little frog's lifeless body in the dirt, and carefully covered him up, and placed the cross on the mound. i said: "usually francis, one says some words, do you want to?" he said no, that i should. so i said: "here lies floppy..." and francis immediately cut in: "um..mama? that was HOPPY!" what?? how can you tell? he just rolled his eyes at me. very matter of fact. no more tears. all business. so i finished with something like: "God, take this creature of yours, back to the earth, back as nature intended, and may he rest in peace."

(and may his poor little diseased self not infect the creature that digs him up. amen.)

lookouts and cabins and yurts, oh my!

2007-11-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

when it's sunny out, you always get a little hopeful. like, it's sunny today, and even tho it poured rain yesterday, as i research possible getaway destinations, it's hard to keep in mind that it could just very well end up raining the whole time. in fact, it's very likely.

francis has the whole week off from school next week, a new thing this year, (to accomodate for parent/teacher conferences before thanksgiving) so we thought: maybe we could do a little family excursion somewhere. so i've been googling. i have to admit: i love googling. i had some friends stay in this treehouse rental near mt. rainier, and thought: that'd be fun! but, alas, no kids under 10. apparently due to insurance reasons and safety. oh well, maybe next year. i've heard of people staying in little rental cabins, yurts, and teepees. we're not really a camping family. we're into the "idea" of roughing it, but not actually doing it. hence, the cabin sounded perfect. until i realized it's just a glorified tent: a roof with a bed. cooking dinner? outside. bathroom? outside. fireplace? outside. running water? bring your own. and no coffee! not exactly what i'm looking for. especially in the end of november, where it could rain all weekend. i want all those things: inside!

when i was younger, i did alot of adventurous things, and i thought myself outdoorsy. greg also did alot of adventurous things, and when we met, we thought eachother quite adventurous! traveling thru europe, freeclimbing big giant rocks that you really shouldn't be, finding yourself on mountaintops in waist-deep snow...so i guess it was just assumed that these crazy antics would continue once we got married. but it wasn't so. and strangely, it wasn't a bummer. i realized that, left to my own motivations, i was lazy and preferred to be comfortable. sleeping in a warm cozy bed is important to me. so is my morning coffee. and so is indoor plumbing...

luckily for us both, greg has been discovered to be much the same way. and we're ok with it. we tried to summon all our enthusiasm last october for francis' cub scout camping trip. we decided to go because francis really wanted to, but mainly because we felt guilty that we didn't take francis camping more often.(ie: ever) we even went out and bought a bigger tent. i made a checklist of everything we needed to bring, which was long, and it took us hours to gather, buy, and load everything, and then more hours to get to our destination. and then more hours to unload everything, set up camp, and cook dinner. i think it took about an hour to boil a pan of water, because we only had a tabletop propane grill, and by the time we got our paltry mac and cheese and hot chocolate, everyone else was off exploring. that night in our tent, we remembered why we didn't do this more often: we froze. and francis woke us up about 15 times in the middle of the night in a panic of terror that the sasquatch was trying to get into our tent! he heard it!! trying to undo the zipper!!!( damn campfire stories. who's brilliant idea was it to tell scary stories to a bunch of 3rd graders??)

on the plus side, francis hasn't been begging us to do it again, so our guilt has been somewhat alleviated.

but that was last year, and this is this year, and again, i'm caught in the position of trying get my city-boy outside: something fun and outdoorsy and maybe not so rustic. and i had a new thought which i posed to greg: "hey, remember that fire lookout cabin we spent the night in way back when? i bet francis would love that! we should do that!" (way back when: was 1995, when we were just friends, or i should say, barely friends, because even in my tomboy-guy's-best-friend ways, i still managed to revert to girliness sometimes, and at that very moment, i wasn't speaking to him for some grand transgression, but he didn't know it. we went to the three fingers lookout cabin with matt snyder, his sister lisa, and brian glenney, and it was definitely a trip to remember, and completely a whole 'nother story: just ask me about it sometime.) greg, in answer to my grand idea said: "HA! are you crazy? that hike was over 9 miles! and have you forgotten the glacier we had to cross?" well, yes, i forgot about that, but i googled it anyways because i wanted to see if there was anything about it, and there was. (just click on the cabin to see the collection of pictures) and then i googled all fire lookout cabins in washington, because i thought, if three fingers was too hard and too high, maybe there was an easier one. but i had forgotten a few key things. one: they are high on mountaintops for a reason: they once really did contain people looking for fires. and two: they were mainly a summer residence. i forgot that in the mountains, in the winter, you get snow.

so right about now, a motel is looking mighty nice, and i'm back to square one for the next nyssen adventure. if you have any ideas, or places you've heard about or stayed in, i would love to hear about it and completely copy you.

thankfully, we're not so urban that francis doesn't get to experience the glories of fall right here in seattle. he asked me last week if i would make caramel apples, and i realized i never have. he's almost ten and i've never made caramel apples??!!what's the deal? so we did. and he loved them.

the leaves have been beautiful and our lawn covered with them, so my most recent idea to get my city-boy out into the great outdoors was to get him to rake them.

i posed it as a money-making venture, a chore of old: boys of every generation have had to do this, and as a double incentive, once he had a big enough pile, he could jump in it. as long as he raked it up again. i posed the idea to zoran, our former-neighbor/friend and current bldg. manager/friend and asked for the rake and if francis could do it. he was thrilled (saved him having to do it) and offered to pitch in money as well. so francis got to learn a lesson, earn money, and have fun all in one. he was a little disappointed at first that it took him a lot longer than he thought it would. also, that leaves kept falling as he worked and messed up his many organized piles. he thought he would be done in one shot. but it gets dark so early now, than he only had time to rake afterschool for one hour, and it took him three afternoons and he still wasn't done! (however: we did spy on him, and he did spend quite a bit of time looking at pretty leaves and setting them aside, and then a little raking, and then: oh! another leaf! and setting it aside, etc etc. it was a painfully slow process but we stayed out of it.) on saturday morning, it was sunny, and he had his friend august over (from a sleepover the night before) and greg was going to take them to the park. i said: why don't you ask if they want to rake and earn some money? they both chose earning money! apparently, you can still buy good manual labor these days for 2 dollars...and it's always more fun when you get a little help from your friends...

so, i posted some more pics of the raking on my flickr page, because i was just that tickled about it. and there's still leaves on the trees, and they're still falling, so lucky him! he'll get to do it all...over...again...

my mama ain't no gunslinger

2007-10-31T10:42:00.000-07:00

this past weekend, our calendar was so full with halloween-related commitments, that by saturday, i was starting to feel burned out and grumpy at the mere thought of them. francis was REALLY wanting to go to the pumpkin patch...which wasn't on the calendar. but it was a sunny day, and our last chance to go, and so... go we did. we thought maybe we could do a quick pumpkin trip this year, and get back in time for our other plans, but...well...have you ever tried to do a quick pumpkin patch trip? granted, francis did find the pumpkin he wanted within the first five minutes in the patch, but after driving for 45 minutes to get there, i said: why don't you look a little longer? go run around!... so we wandered and gathered such giant pumpkins, and got a little carried away; we ended up having to put back half of them because then we wouldn't have enough cash left to do the corn maze. so we sufficed with one large pumpkin, one medium, and one small: a nyssen-size family of pumpkins.

we entered the corn maze and were really glad we wore our boots, even tho it wasn't raining. the trails were oozing mud puddles ankle deep, and francis had a blast sloshing thru it. greg decided that if we were going to do the maze, we were going to do it right: no cheating and cutting thru, even tho by the end of october, the maze was quite a shambles, with corn splayed everywhere from people running amok in the maze. there were 12 "targets" to reach inside the maze, with hole-punchers to mark your tickets when you reached them. even if we could see the marker, but were on the wrong side of the corn, greg still insisted in following the map, (which, by the way, was a poor one) and taking the long but correct way to the markers. francis liked this way too. it was quite an adventure. i didn't mind it...but, after a few hours greg's resolve began to weaken. and well, we only cheated once! at the very end. we were trying so hard to be good examples, but, in the end...we thought, well, it is only a corn maze, after all. we can't stay in here all day!

after that, we dilly-dallied around the farm: francis and greg rode the zip-line, francis stomped in more mud puddles, fed the goats, shot 'em up in the fort (and by them i mean us), rode the tire-horses, and braved the scary "boo" barn. francis was having so much fun we didn't really want to stop and leave and rush to his school's harvest party. apparently, neither did francis. he volunteered to skip it; he said all he wanted to do was go home and carve the pumpkins. which was fine by us!
(i posted more pics on my flickr of the day's adventures...)

back home, greg emptied the pumpkins, and i set to work separating the seeds to roast them! ugh! i hate this part! anyone know an easier way to do this? all i know how to do is painstakingly separate them one by one in a sink full of water. it took me two hours! greg says: why do you bother? and i said: because. it's only once a year. and we like to eat them. it somehow makes the adventure come full circle. a day in the patch. a night of carving. and when we we are done and exhausted, we can relax, and eat freshly roasted pumpkin seeds...the fruit of our labors.

francis set to work drawing his design for his pumpkin. when he was done, he showed it to us. it was a very detailed drawing, quite small for his gigantic pumpkin. i said: hmmm...you want to put the angel of death on your pumpkin? he said: mama. it is NOT the angel of death! i said: is it the grim reaper? he said: NO! it is NOT the grim reaper! i said: WHAT is it? he informed us that is was a: masked man. and he wanted it on his pumpkin. greg shot me a look, so: far be it from me to stand between a boy and his pumpkin! too often i try to direct him: "but wouldn't you like to do this instead?" etc etc. i let greg take over, and greg did his best to carve it, per francis' very detailed instructions. and he was happy with it. greg and i were both pretty tuckered out by this time, it nearing 10 pm. our pumpkins do not display the creativity nor effort we put into them last year. i asked greg if his was hannibal lector. he said a bit disappointedly: no, it's supposed to be C3PO... and mine is simply singing the opera, but manages to look a bit scary...

on sunday, we went to our friend's annual halloween party, and francis had previously been planning on going as a toucan again (his grand idea from last year) but he changed his mind last minute, again, and wanted to go as: the masked man, the picture he drew for his pumpkin. i started to balk. "i'm not sure i'm comfortable with you going as the angel of death." "MAMA! I TOLD YOU: IT IS NOT THE ANGEL OF DEATH!" (and then he muttered: and anyways, the angel of death is still an angel.) greg convinced me that it was practically right out of lord of the rings, so... on sunday, after his soccer game, we hit the goodwill to look for black fabric with which to concoct a cape. francis had it all planned out: what he would wear, but most importantly, he would be carrying his sword. greg's costume this year was, specifically, luke wilson's character "anthony" robbing the bank, from the wes anderson movie "bottle rocket". i didn't know what to be. i told greg he should be paladin, from the 50's western "have gun will travel", which we've been watching alot of lately. but he didn't have a black shirt or black jeans. and then i realized: aha! i have a black oxford shirt and black jeans! and brown leather boots. and a western-ish belt. i stuck two of francis' cap guns into my pockets, and borrowed greg's big brown hat. the only thing missing was the mustache, which, frankly, i refused. greg said it was grand. francis said: "mama, i don't think you should be paladin. you should be paladin's secret twin sister, paladina." i said: no way! i'm being paladin. he brought it up again in the car, that i REALLY should be paladin's sister. and i said:"francis, do you have a problem with me being paladin?" and greg said to me: "i really think he has a problem with you being paladin."

it isn't that he doesn't have the imagination. the boy has imagination plenty. i thought about it a bit more, and tried to think of it from his perspective. dad dressed up like a bank robber? cool! your mama dressed up like a hero-gunslinger? might be a bit much to swallow. maybe...
i mean, after all, i'm having issue with my son wanting to be what he wants to be. (last year, a toucan: so cute! and this year? only nine and already: the-grim-reaper-who-is-not-really-the-grim-reaper-but-is-really-a-masked-man)

(sigh) so it's wednesday, and freezing, and tonight we will bundle up and go wander our neigborhood, ooh and ahh at clever pumpkins, and collect candy, in that strange american tradition. and he can be his medieval sword-carrying cape-wearing masked-man or whatever he is. and i will just be his mama...

gettin' over it, the weather, that is

2007-10-24T16:23:00.001-07:00

where does the phrase "under the weather" come from? when did it come to refer to someone being sick? these are questions i googled the other day and got some answers. i don't want you to think i named my site: "ill". when i was in highschool, the office lady, upon receiving my longwinded explanation for why i had been out-sick, would take my excuse form, and in big red marker, would write: I L L over what had been written. she was bored by excuses. she just wanted to know: sick? yes or no.

i thought of under the weather, because, simply and literally, i am UNDER it, the weather, every day. the clouds form a low ceiling, and i am under them. what i am trying to do: is get over it already. i got a chance to get literally OVER it this weekend...

for how much i complain about the gray, i really don't actually mind the rain. i like the sounds that come with rain: the slurping of tires as they drive past my window, the patter of raindrops on windows, and the tinny pings on the roof i don't get to hear anymore because we have no roof above our heads...just our neighbor, snoring.

we experienced extreme rain as only the east coast can pelt out, this weekend on our whirlwind visit to pennsylvania for a friend's weddding. while still in the air, we flew over storms for the last half of our trip, and francis got to see the black night sky light up as if a giant flash-bulb had gone off, lightning illuminating the clouds as far as the eye could see. he said it looked like bombs were going off. he was thrown into full-on war mode, and proceeded to shoot down the nazi's for the rest of the flight. when we landed, we were in the lull of a tropical-like storm, complete with the humid 70 degree heat. i stepped outside the airport and gasped, and quickly peeled off my wool cardigan and tweed raincoat, quickly down to a t-shirt.

my parents picked us up, and we drove into downtown philly to drop greg off with the boys, where the bachelor party was in full swing. it was midnight, and the city was alive with people. my dad commented that he hasn't been to philly in awhile, that he should really come down some day...and he took us on the "scenic route" thru historic downtown, past independence hall, past the art museum and it's famous steps from "Rocky". he pulled over and asked francis if he wanted to run up the steps. i thought he might, but he didn't want to. maybe the dark? maybe too tired?

we got back to my parents, and ended up not getting to bed til 3am. (greg didn't get in til 5!) it's not actually so bad in the evenings, since they're 3 hours ahead. it's the mornings that feel like death...where 9am is really 6am...and "sleeping in" til 10 is still earlier than i get up for school! our morning hours were all we had for friends and family, from 11-3, (the rehearsal being at 3 and the wedding at 5 the next day) so we got up, coffeed up, and had nice frazzled rushed squeezed visits with friends and my parents and my two sisters.

friday, the day of rehearsal, torrential downpoured all morning, but was still very warm! just a t-shirt and rainboots! (i had checked the weather before hand, and had brought my boots). but by the time we were decorating the barn, most of the rain was gone for the day, only to come back strong once we got back home! saturday, it was sunny: our friends karen and kevin got married at sunset...in lancaster, at a historic little site, with a big barn, decorated with christmas tree lights, and lanterns, and bundles of fall leaves. it was truly beautiful. we danced the night away, courtesy of kris k, and then husband and wife rode away on a motorcycle, by candlelight, her white dress flowing, glowing in the night...

back at my parents, we had a houseful of friends crashing after the wedding. we had a bonfire out in the orchard, awake again til 3am. boys and fire make very happy companions! it was a fine time... another long leisurely breakfast in the tearoom next morning, with multiple pots of coffee, and donuts, and eggs, and sausages...

so soon we had to depart, too short was our visit.

we are home now, back to work and school on monday was a bit rough. slowly getting back to our real life. (i posted some new pics from our trip on my flickr.) for being only a weekend excursion, it felt like a week. it is good to be home tho, i guess even in the rain...

october skies and other things

2007-10-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

not much to report: after two weeks of gray and rain, today there is some sun, which throws me into delusions of hopefulness that it may last the weekend...

i finally faced reality and washed all our summer clothes and bedding and packed it all away; i normally relish the changing of the seasons, but this summer was so weak i was just really hoping for an indian summmer, but no...

however, i DO love fall, and having grown up on the east coast, it has always been a favorite season. here in seattle, you gotta catch it while you can, for the rain quickly turns the leaves to mush, and the gray dims the brightness of the colors falling to the ground. francis and i have collected a few leaves already, (it's tricky finding dry ones) and placed them into books stacked around the house. he still loves collecting leaves, and i find it so endearing. (i've posted some photos on my flikr page, if you want to check 'em out...)

yes, i do love the changing of the seasons! we finished eating the last of the summer plums, and now we're looking forward to: clementines! pomegranates! digging out the rainboots, and wool sweaters, tweed coats, and plaid scarves; making hot chai and hot chocolate... turning the radiator on "high"...

we're flying out to PA next weekend, to stay with my parents, to attend a friends wedding, and i very much look forward to seeing: friends and family, and the east coast october sky and colors, if only for a few days...

um...what else?

francis ran three and a half miles (!!)in his school jogathon fundraiser, and collected over $400 for his school! he ran a mile more than last year! i gotta say, we were very impressed!

i finished reading the sherlock holmes book and decided NOT to read it to francis; it ended up being a murder mystery, and a bit graphic, so now i'm reading to him "adventures of huckleberry finn" (after francis finished reading tom sawyer, loved it, and wanted whatever came next.) i got a couple chapters into huck finn before i realized... hmmm...i'm glad he's not reading this by himself, because there's a lot of language editing i need to do. so i did a little research. i find out it's been banned variously and continuously since its publication, but has also been, by some, considered one of the great american novels of all time. so. i guess i'm abrigding it as i go along, but- francis is really enjoying it. it has adventures, of course, however, it's heavier than tom sawyer, and it opens up discussion for the times, slavery, our country's history,etc. etc. which is good.
francis told me that if he lived in the times of martin luther king jr, that he would have "voted for him". i asked what he meant. and he said well, he was trying to get people equal, but some people who even went to church weren't trying to get people equal and didn't even want them equal, and that even tho he (francis) went to church, he would have voted for martin luther king jr. because he, too, wanted everyone to be equal.

and THAT just about sums up a good day...

my mother will be so proud

2007-09-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

i received a magazine in the mail the other day. (actually, i receive far too many magazines these days, thanks to airmiles, they're free.)i peruse them with my daily morning latte... conde nast traveler, harper's bazaar, W, anthropologie catalogs, jcrew. i don't really shop at jcrew. i usually idea-shop, but i did buy my wellies from there last year, and they've served me well. this catalog came with a girl on the back sporting a hot pink scarf. and i thought: "wow! i like that scarf." and then i thought it was a strange thought, because the scarf was pink. and to those who know me, i'm not really a pink kinda girl. more of a black and blue and brown and olive green kinda girl. my mother is the one who loves LOVES pink.

not many people would know this by looking at me, or my sister rebekah for that matter, but we spent our childhood surrounded by pink. drowning in pink, if you will. (no offense, mom, you know we love you!) we shared a room until 7th grade, and in that room: was pink carpet, bright pink walls, seer-sucker lampshades made by my mother with tiny pink polka-dots, british duvets covers with pink floral pattern, and pink floral curtains. i kid you not. my mother LOVES pink! my mother didn't have the whole reign of the house decorating wise, for my dad exuded a very masculine influence, lots of dark wood, and dark brown couches, etc, so i think she gave herself to full abandon in our bedroom. it's something we get a good chuckle over. good times! i wish i had an old photo to show you.

so, keeping this in mind, when i saw that pink scarf, i thought how my mother would be "tickled pink", (sorry about the pun, just had to use it) to know that her army navy daughter was actually desiring a pink object. and then, when i was brushing my teeth, i noticed: hey, i have a pink toothbrush. and then, in the living room, i noticed: hey, i have pink pillows! (not that their color escaped me when i bought them, but i didn't buy them because they were pink-- they were cheap ikea pillows that i used to cover with, yes, brown pillow covers) and then, wouldn't you know, i started seeing pink everywhere!! it was enough to make me smile...

so i thought i would share this journey with you, as you can see -if you go to my flickr page. and yes, this is what i have been doing instead of what i SHOULD be doing, like washing the summer clothes and packing them away, deep cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom, weeding out the closets, etc etc...all in all, being a better housewife. greg never dreamed that when he bought me a camera cell phone, it would aid in my tendency to procraste, like taking useless photos of all the pink things in our possession.

lest you think me totally lazy, i will say i was inspired to tackle the kitchen last week when i found -yuck! bugs in the cupboards. again! i just deep-cleaned last fall, and i found them again. so either i didn't clean well enough, or they are a pest problem related to the old building we live in. well, this time, i went a bit crazy, and took everything out of the cupboards, washed all the dishes, pots and pans, bleached the cupboards, and lined the food cupboard with that sticky paper that makes me want to scream (i lined it tops, sides and bottoms, and had the initial intention to do the whole kitchen, but after that one cupboard which took hours, i decided: doing the food cupboard was all i needed because we're not going to live here forever!)

then, i went about throwing away all old and opened food, about three groceries bags full, because i found a colony of these horrible horrible things thriving in the donut mix i bought over two years ago, when i made french beignets with my sister. (sigh) (was it really two years ago?) i then went out and bought containers, plastic and glass, for EVERYthing, and this is the new way we are going to live.

a new habit. it's a bit strange tho. i look at my cupboard and it doesn't look like mine. i've lived ten years of our married life, with the color of boxes... and now, everything in glass, uniform, organized, seems...i don't know, like it's some other woman's cupboard. so, i'm hoping it will grow on me.

in other habits...we have recently tried another go at water containers. after my son and husband kept losing our nalgeen bottles and our bicycle bottles, it seemed much easier to buy the 24-pack from safeway of water bottles and then not care if they got left behind. but i've recently become convicted by those news stories tauting how many billions of dollars americans spend on bottled water, when many countries don't even have good tap water. so we're trying the containers again. it's a pain, a new habit is...i feel like it's just one more thing i get on francis' case about: "do you have your water bottle?" "did you forget you water bottle?" "do you remember WHERE you left your water bottle?" jeepers! the poor kid! i had gotten myself a bottle from tully's, just for starters, and francis was so into it, that we decided it was time for him to have his own. we saw a klean kanteen in a store and bought it at 20 bucks a pop, and he was very proud, and we told him it take good care of it. so, we're trying. i don't mind reverting to the olden days, in fact, i like our bottles. so here's hoping they last a year...

well, enough of this rambling. i need to go wash the dishes. and tidy up. and get dressed. and go pick up francis from school (greg went in later today, and so took him to school. so i go walk and pick him up, and our new thing when i do that is: to stop by the market on our way home for a fresh french baguette and some fruit, and then we have that for tea-time afterschool) but now it looks like it's raining, so i also need to go dig out my wellies! oh, fall is here! i REALLY do need to wash my summer clothes, and put them away, and take out my winter ones, cause gray is here to stay...

and a little bit of pink actually does brighten the day...

why i walk my kid to school

2007-09-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

it's the fourth week into fourth grade and: time has resumed flying, 7:30 in the morning still feels VERY early, and walking to school has resumed it's routine. everyone who finds out that we walk to school is usually suprised, because it is quite far by city-standards. it takes francis and i about 25 minutes (or even 35 minutes, if he stops to collect leaves along the way.) i walk home much faster.

i can be found guilty of doing things not necessarily out of desire, but for the mere sake of the memory. walking to school may be one of them. if our grandparents did it (in snow! uphill both ways!) it's the least we can do. it has been a habit of the past few years, and last year marked the first year where francis didn't complain. this year he doesn't even balk; it has become expected. maybe even normal. the fact that we usually merge with other walking-to-school children a few blocks from the school reinforces this, and he knows he's not the only one, which helps; he doesn't realize (yet) that he is walking much farther. the fact that we have only one car, and that we live outside of the school-district-zone for bussing are actually the main reasons for this. (greg goes to work much earlier than school starts, so that he can be done in time to pick him up.) but i guess i've come to look on the whole thing as: enforced excercise. i need it. francis needs it. and so we bundle up, and we deal. i probably won't go quite so far as to say "i just love my morning walk", but there is a part of me that recognizes that the day goes by so fast, and the morning walk is the only slow part of the day, and the only truly one-on-one time i get with francis. afterschool is sports, or teatime, then homework, dinner, reading, bath, bed. there's just not enough hours in the evening to do all this it seems.

i used to walk quite a bit. when i used to live at home, i would walk down our hill (out of the tree line, and to the fields, about a half and hour) and then up again. to be alone, to get fresh air. before i was married, when i lived on stone way, but worked in the u-district, i would walk to work and back again. just because. nowadays, there's not much to walk to. i've never managed to make a habit of walking around greenlake, even though i can walk to it. i find it boring. it can't be just for the sake of excercise, or i find myself falling short of my goals. it must be that i HAVE to do it. i MUST take francis to school, so: no car and no bus leaves only feet. school has been a nice incentive. in the morning, it is usally gray, there are few people on the streets, and it is quiet. francis chatters undistracted. the leaves are changing. we looks for snails. even when it rains, in rainboots and umbrella, he seems completely unfazed. maybe even enjoys it. i know this may possibly last for only one more year; who knows where he or we will be when he reaches the 6th grade? but at least when he is old, he can regale his children and grandchildren with his very own "when i was your age, i had to walk to school, uphill both ways" stories...

reading a blue streak

2007-09-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

i had a friend comment "and what have you learned?" when i said i have been reading like crazy. i had no answer, not because i have learned nothing, but more, where to begin? it's not a list that can be numbered on a page; it is subtle changes of mind, and maybe even astonishing discoveries that can be discussed only with someone else who has read the same book, too. often, it's an unspeakable moving of the heart, and a sadness when the book is done, as if the characters were real and have moved away and i will see them no more. i feel that way now. i just finished, today, at 2:36pm (to which i had to hurry and change and go walk fast to pick francis up from school) "jane eyre" by charlotte bronte. oh. my. goodness. how have i never read this before? how have i managed to live 34 years and not even know the gist of the story? i knew absolutely nothing about it, other than it was a classic, and written and published at the same time as her sister emily's novel "wuthering heights". (which i read for the first time last summer.) that alone was curiosity enough for me to see how one sister's story would vary from the other's. i was in for a surprise! it continually amazes me how a story written in 1847 can be so pertinent today. it was an incredibly gripping and moving story, and such that i can't get it out of my head.
right before that i read (and by reading, i mean, all day, all night, whenever i can get my hands on it, for i am terrible at functioning in any other capacity when i am reading a good book; i can do nothing else...) "till we have faces";it was a re-read for me, and as greg had picked it up for bus reading, when he left it behind i thought i'd read it again and catch up to him so we could discuss it after. well i passed him and finished, but i haven't read this book since i was younger and single, and it struck me completely different reading it as a mother and a wife. themes of sacrifice and selfishness hit you differently when you are sharing your life with someone else, and not just living unto yourself. it is a greek myth, the story of cupid and pysche, retold by that excellent storyteller, c.s.lewis. i count it as one of my most favorites...
getting into more greek myths retold, i read "a wonder book for girls and boys" by nathaniel hawthorne, published in 1893, and now i have been reading them to francis, who really likes them too. we have much to talk about afterwords, especially since in so many of the stories can be found parellels in the bible...
somehow i must be stuck in a rut in the 1800's, because before that book, i read "sense and sensibility", and now, we are also reading, together, sherlock holmes (unabridged, original text, i know, i'm such a snob) and francis is reading "tom sawyer" for his afterschool reading homework.(and before that,i had re-read "sounder" and "old yeller" to see if they would be ok for francis, but i think i'll wait til he's older. )
enough of this dreary listing...
off i go...
to ponder more of jane tonight...

(and enjoying ripe itanlian plums, and pears, from our neighbors trees, which he kindly lets us pick from; we pick a handful daily when we come inside, and eat them fresh from the tree! oh yum!)

blink and you might miss it

2007-09-10T13:42:00.000-07:00

a whale, a tree, a thought, a boy.
a blur.
this is what my life feels like right now.

school started last wednesday and i was not ready. i am not ready to be over with summer, and with the sunny days we've been having, i have the tiniest scraps of hopes for an indian summer.
francis was very excited for school, and is glad for his teacher, Mr. Bauer, whom we have heard good things. he has familiar friendly faces in his class, and we have hopes that this year will be better than last.
soccer has started already, with the first day of school, so now i dig out my blankets and thermos' for another season of practices and games, and watching...
and today, monday, was the first day we resumed our morning walks to school.
oh, how very out of shape am i!

we have decided to take advantage of the sunny days, and be out and about as much as we can, before the gray and rain tempt us to remain indoors...
we spent labor day weekend in portland, visiting with greg's family and it was sunny and HOT, hotter than seattle, the whole time. greg was able to relax with his brothers, and by relax i mean, sweated and played tennis in the beating sun for hours, then sweated and played golf in the beating sun for hours the next day. francis loved getting to play with his cousins. i relaxed: i sat in the sun and read! we went to the water fountains of downtown portland to cool off, and i took francis to a local river for some swimming, people watching, and shell collecting. very fun. the drive home, as soon as we were out of portland, we hit pouring rain all the way home (not fun!) but, we did get a rare treat of heat lighting and a few lightning bolts, for the 3 hour drive home. it was an onslought of rain and lighting, very thrilling to say the least.

this past weekend, the forecast again said "sunny", so we decided to book a whale-watching trip in the san juans for saturday. we drove to anacortes in the morning, and our trip was at noon. i packed a lunch, and we brought extra layers, which we needed, for though it was sunny and warm on land, on the sea in the boat it was very chilly! whale-watching is hard on the patience of a child; it was a 5 hour trip, and the hours of scanning sea and sky under a beating sun turn quickly into a headache, but francis did very well, and his binoculars kept him very entertained. (thank you, dad!) he was just as excited for the sea birds as for anything else, and we did see harbor seals basking on the small rocky islands. we did see many sightings of minke whales, but sadly no orcas. the guides kept boasting the rarity of "minke whales! in these waters!" but we think they were extra chipper about it to divert the undercurrent of communal disappointment that the resident orcas were nowhere to be seen. we saw one "stinky minke" (they called them) come up out of the water once, his pointy nose, his white throat, but usually it was his small black dorsal fin dipping back into the water. francis missed alot by glancing away the second it would come up out of the water, and turned to see a small hump descending away, but he still got excited. all these fantastic nature shows haven't ruined him completely; he was still excited to see the whales first hand, and that was a gift.

after the tour ended, we were exhausted from beating sun and wind, and took a break in starbucks for frappicinos before heading to Deception Pass to view the bridge. the sun was setting, and it was so beautiful, but i was a bit dismayed to discover another sign of getting old: i was too freaked to cross the bridge! it had even been my idea: "hey, let's cross the bridge; it'll be fun" but as soon as my legs left land and i looked over the water, i started breathing really fast and got real tense real quick! the railing was also not very high for my comfort level and you could barely walk two people side by side, so i held on to the railing and to francis' hood and walked as quick as i could without even looking at the view til i got to the other side. very disappointing! (sigh) on the other side, there is a path down to the beach, where we went and my boys skipped stones til it was dark, then we had to trudge back thru the forest trail in the pitch black, and back across the bridge by the light of oncoming cars and holding my breath, with hopefully francis none the wiser...

good, good, good, good vibrations...

2007-08-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

i find it completely funny that seattlites call 80 degrees HOT. "oh, it's sooo hot" they'll moan, and the beaches are bare. people dotted here and there, but not packed in like sardines, the east-coast way.
two-in-a-row 80 degree days found francis and i at edmonds beach, where he found some local boys who would play with him, and they wave-jumped, rock-collected, and crab-hunted for hours...about as close to paradise as you can get around here...too bad the water gives you brain-freeze...

i wish we all could be california girls...

2007-08-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

apparently, it's not just me. even the Seattle Weekly commented that we're getting the shaft this summer when it comes to sunshine. i cut it out for validation. it's going on my fridge.

(just in case you're wondering, it's raining today, rained yesterday, and not lookin' good for tomorrow. but not to be a complete sourpuss, we got a whole two hot days last week (seattle's version of hot: 80 degrees) which found francis and i at the beach. it was lovely. i read, he played...i only wish it wasn't so rare... )

so pretty much, if it's nice out, we're outside. it's a given.
(and if it's not nice out, don't ask...)
we've hit up the beach, the zoo, the park.
we caught an outdoor cinema at seattle center and saw "the princess bride". francis loved it! he laughed the whole way thru. we've gone to baseball games, and the highlight earlier this month was Seafair, when the Navy ships come to town and you get to tour them, for free! and the Blue Angels do their thing...very exciting!

we've been staying up late, and watching baseball games and old tv shows: Buck Rogers, Wonder Woman, and our new favorite that we never watched as a child but my dad did and introduced us: Have Gun, Will Travel.

i just finished reading Sense and Sensibility. and we've been listening to a whole lot of the Beach Boys. we started listening to it to show it to francis, but he took off with it and now requests it all the time, and sings along...it is so cute.

he said: "mama, what's a teeter?"
i said: "i don't know what you mean, say it in a sentence."
he said: "and we'll have fun fun fun til daddy takes the teeter away!"

and so on and so forth...

sun yourself today, for tomorrow may be gray

2007-07-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

first Blogger eats my blog, then my cingular SmartPhone eats all my vacation pictures. stupid stupid phone! it didn't tell me my storage card was full, AND it let me keep taking pictures willy-nilly, and i was snapping away mightily, let me tell you. so i've been a little peeved at the computer and at my phone lately, and i've been giving them the silent treatment...but it's been awhile now and i should get over myself.

it's sunny today, (hurray! only the 3rd sunny day in the past two weeks) but it's only 66 degrees, and i'm sorry, but that is NOT warm enough to go swimming in, especially in a lake. the rare sun-show induces brain-malfunction that would not occur in the east coast. at my parents house, i headed to the deck for a bout in the sun, but could only last 10 minutes sitting there. you were so hot (steady 90's)you literally felt like you were cooking yourself: you just had to go back inside or in shade or in water or in somewhere else where the sun wasn't beating down so bright and so smotheringly warm. so...upon returning to seattle, after a week of gray and 3 days of rain, the sun came out and it was actually in the 70's; we rode our bikes to greenlake for our first day of summer-time sun and fun, and wouldn't you know, the next day was sunny too! so we rode our bikes there again for another day, and this is the day i thought: "surely, it can't go for three days in a row", so i opted to go sans sunscreen. you heard me. i chose potential cancer, that's how desperate i was. the wind blew, the water was chilly, i never actually got HOT hot, not enough to go in...but that's how sneaky seattle sun is: i got sunburned. not super red, enough for me tho, where it hurts to shower, hurts to sleep, but i kind of like it. i've been branded with proof of sun.

our vacation seems so long ago, that blogging about it seems pointless now. but i will say: we saw family, saw friends, my little sister got married! we got wonderful pennsylvania torrential rainstorms, complete with very exciting thunder and lighting, and warm warm rain. we had 90 degree weather that didn't cool down much at night. we went to an amusement park, with water rides, where you could get drenched, and the wet would cool you down for about 10 minutes, and then you were dry and hot again. we squeezed in our annual venture into NYC for a mets game, and introduced francis to the museum of natural history...(which, by the way, is cruel punishment to a kid to be there for ONLY 4 hours, this museum would take days...) and when we returned to seattle, my brother and his wife visited us for the weekend and it: rained. the. entire. time.(sigh) so we took in a movie (ratatouille, which was wonderful, went to the ballard locks, which is chock-full of salmon right now, um...got to EAT some very yummy salmon at IVARS down on lake washington, drove to west seattle for the city view, and got a round of golf in at the greenlake golf'n putt...between raindrops. oh yeah, and we introduced peter to his very first indian food experience at a favorite restaurant of ours: cedars, where we feasted on naan bread and chai, pakoras, somosas, coconut curry, and butter chicken. mmmmm... this is what we do on rainy days...)

so as i was saying earlier, when i took advantage of the sun the other day, for fear it might not last...the next day it was indeed gray. francis and i tackled the abandoned apartment. i played the beach boys loud. i washed 6 loads of laundry, and francis washed the dishes. (this is one of his new chores. he likes to wash the dishes but i used to not let him because he made a mess and took SO LONG TO WASH THEM. i don't know what i was thinking before. this is perfect because it takes him SO LONG TO WASH THEM. he scrubs each bowl about 20 to 50 times. this keeps him busy and occupied for quite some time, enough for me to get almost everything else done. and now, he's taken to singing along with the beach boys: it is very cute.)

so now, our house is clean (we even wet-mopped the floors cinderella-style: on our hands and knees with a bucket of bleachwater and some old rags, so now we can walk barefoot and feel no grit or dust...for a few days at least.) and the sun is shining, so we will go outside and do...something. anything. just be outside.

summer is for wearing flip-flops, eating as many blueberries as you want, staying up late, plugging in the fans (even if it's not hot enough to need them)- just the noise of them...sounds like summer...

up, up, and away

2007-07-02T19:05:00.000-07:00

planes. trains. automobiles...
baseball games and birthdays...
one could say we've been busy...

i blogged a few days ago in much more detail of what we've been up to, but the blogger "autosave" decided to eat it, and i was left with nothing, and without the heart to rewrite it. we're off to PA on wednesday for 10 days, but i wanted to get some updated pics posted on my flickr from our happenings these past few weeks. so there's a little visual blog you can check out now if you like...

i'll blog about our trip when we return, with more photos, too.

have a happy 2 weeks, and i hope the weather treats you kind!