bloomin' june

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...

about a boy

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...

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...

october 31rst

october skies

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

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

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...

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...

au revoir

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!