and so it begins: another new year

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

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...

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.

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...

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.

morning has broken...

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.

winter wishings...

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.

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...

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...

i've got sunshine on a cloudy day

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!

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...