The Last Day of November

So today is the very last day of November. Can you believe that? Tomorrow is the start of Advent, my very favorite time of the year. Today is also the very last day for NaBloPoMo(FoSho). Which means that Woman of Many Thoughts better be blogging like crazy because it looks like it might snow this weekend! And Laura, what's the weather like over there in Germany? Do you have any snow yet? :)

Simon has been sick all week, poor boy. Last night he was the most miserable ever. He cried nonstop until about 3:30am, and nothing could get him to calm down. It was the "I am hurting and unhappy and I hate the world" cry. I tried everything short of giving him to the gypsies. From 3:30 to 5 though, he slept just fine, which seems to be the ritual on nights he doesn't sleep well. He gives us that little teaser right before the alarm goes off, just enough sleep to make you wish you had just stayed up the whole night. I don't do well with less than eight hours of sleep a night, and this is night three of much much less than that. I bet if I add the three nights together, it might be somewhere around eight hours. Maybe.
So, all of you people out there thinking of having kids, that thing that everyone tells you about not sleeping anymore...it's true!

Nalah's Big Adventure

We had an incident the other day where our cat had been missing for the better part of a week, and then, just after she was found we discovered that my mom's dog had to be put to sleep. After that our dog Neville ran away for the bazillionth time and we narrowly avoided freezing our goldfish to death. And thus, a month of pet drama was born. 

The story of the cat was the most interesting. She is probably the most vocal of any cat I have ever met. She will only stop meowing while she is eating, so when she had been gone for several days we were a bit stunned with the quietness of our house. It was only by chance that we found her. We were calling for her and walking around the neighborhood when my friend heard her meowing from inside a neighbor's old camping trailer. No one appeared to be home so we opened the door and coerced our kitty out. 

An Evening Out

We walked up to the hotel where the party was last night and directly in front of us was a woman wearing a satin evening gown and a fur shrug. She had diamonds sparkling in huge clusters around her neck and her wrists. Her blond hair in perfect curls framing her made up face. She was absolutely gorgeous and came on the arm of a man in a tuxedo with a perfectly aged white beard and balding head.  To enter we had to walk down a red carpet, and through lights kalidescoping off the walls. 

I begged and begged Nathan to just turn around and take me home. My snug pants and tossed on blouse felt embarrassingly underdressed. 

As soon as we entered, everything made a little more sense. There were a few overly dressed folks, but the rest of us, the non-costumed people, were all about at the same caliber. The party was a Night at the Oscars theme, and the couple in front of us were Marilyn Monroe and Sean Connery.  

Phew!

The hotel had recently been remodeled and it was a party to show off their new digs. As a supplier of their coffee, Nathan and his co-workers had been invited to the event. We had really tasty hors devours and free fancy martinis and tours of the new rooms. The hosts walked around with trays of chocolate cigars and flashy light up pens. We even got light up ice-cubes for our martinis. The evening ended with a raffle drawing for free nights at the hotel in their fancy pool side suits and free drinks at the Martini Bar adjacent to the hotel. 

We, being unlucky as always, didn't win. But Nathan's co-workers won twice, so they gave us one of their drinks for two. 

Which means, another night out sans-children is in our near future! If you feel a desire to watch our kids for us for a few hours in the evening, give us a call! They are cute and go to bed at eight and we have satellite HDTV! 

Sicko

I've been home all day today with a sick Simon. Tomorrow is looking to be more of the same. BUT, there is a slight chance that I'll get to go with Nathan to a party at a grand opening thing-a-ma-gig tomorrow evening. He was invited by some people at his work and it sounds kind of fancy and fun. It's at a hotel and bar in town, under new management, an invite only event. A grown-up only sort of event! With drinks! And other grown-ups!
In other news, oh who am I kidding, I have no other news.
Real posts coming soon, I promise.

Monday Again

How to start your week off with a bang.

1. Listen to your baby cough all Sunday night long instead of sleep.
2. Lose your keys.
3. Take spare keys instead.
4. Start towards work and realize you are almost out of gas.
5. Drop kids off and snag gas can (with a wee bit of gas) from parent's garage.
6. Realize that spare keys do not include the key to unlock the gas cap.
7. Call husband for help.
8. Realize cell phone isn't working.
9. Beg your mother to let you borrow her car for the day, thus leaving her strandand at home with your baby. Feel really guilty.
10. Arrive at work 10 minutes late to a scowling boss.
11. Don't even bother explaining why you are late and couldn't call.
12. Realize you left coffee in your car at parent's house.

Simon Nose Best

I don't think there is a nose that Simon has met that he hasn't honked. Here he is bestowing some nose love on his Papa Tony. Wouldn't you love some nose love too?

Honk Honk!

How many Scandinavian Men Does it Take...

...to install an espresso machine?

Well, one, but it takes that one Scandinavian:

4 days

6 trips to 

3 hardware stores

7 wrong parts purchased from 

3 hardware stores

15 wet towells

washed twice

and 1 realization that there is indeed 

a difference between metric system

and US standard pipe threading. 

They made up in the end.

Thanksgiving, A Recap

We ate turkey and gave thanks and then sat in the hot tub and drank wine.

 I am pretty sure that the hot tub sitting will be the new addition to our Thanksgiving traditions. It really helps the triptafene to take hold. It was startling to watch the frost form on the deck as we soaked in the tub, and realize that the rest of the world was freezing over for the night, while we held steady at 102 degrees Fahrenheit. I think it would be fun to sit in that thing while it snowed.

Nathan skipped out on the early morning sales today but we did go shopping for a little bit in the afternoon. Nothing too exciting this year. No LCD TVs, it's not like we need two (I'm sure Nathan would say otherwise). And all in all, It's been a really nice slow and relaxing day. 

Several times I caught myself thinking that it was Sunday, or maybe even Saturday, only to realize there were still two days left of my long weekend to enjoy. 

We still have a slow geyser in the kitchen though. A good size lake forms every few hours, traveling in rivers down the grooves in the tile grout of the floor. Back to the hardware store tomorrow! 

I have a few new pictures of the kids to post that I keep putting off, I promise to get those up tomorrow too.

The hardware store is full of very desperate people ten minutes before closing, on the eve of a holiday. We were two of them, courtesy of the geyser residing in the kitchen from the attempts at installing the New To Us Espresso Machine.  Appliance installation never goes well for us. Our history of dishwasher installation, washing machine installation, and any sort of plumbing repair never ends in happiness or pleasant words.  We had a dishwasher in Point Robert's that never fit quite right, and there is no way that you can sweet talk a repair man into driving through two border crossings to help you out. There was a bathroom sink explosion in the middle of one of Nathan's Turn Around night shift stints. On the eve of our wedding, a washing machine flooded our duplex with a foot of sudsy water. 

These sort of things just come to us like flies to tacky fly paper. So being at the hardware store for the third time last night, and staying until fifteen minutes after they were officially closed, was really nothing unexpected. We were in good company too. When we first walked in there were two men that definitely had it worse than us. They were holding a very large table leg. We saw them again as we were leaving. They had left the store and were already back again, their problem unsolved and begging to be let back in, gigantic table leg in hand. On the eve of Thanksgiving, that can't have been a good thing. 

Thwarted Intentions and an All Night Buzz.

My big plan for the day was to clean the house. 

Instead, I held a cranky Simon all day. Eventually I panicked with the lack of housework I was accomplishing so I put him in the baby backpack and cleaned some while toting him around. 

Essentially I got nothing done.

Now Nathan is in the kitchen installing our new espresso machine. He is hooking it up to our water and drilling holes and such into the cabinets. Don't worry, they are small and down by the floor. Mostly unnoticeable. And the pay off (a new to us commercial grade espresso machine) will be well worth it.   

So even though I didn't get any housework done during the day, I'm sure that I will soon have enough coffee in me to keep me up 'till dawn. I'll need something to do while I'm twitchy!

Happy Thanksgiving Eve!

Let the festivities begin

This is just to let you know that I don't have to go to work tomorrow.

Or the next day.

Or, the day after that. 

And not the day after that either!

AND! The day after that!!

That is a grand total of five days to clean my house, eat some turkey (and ox tail and all the other delectable things Nathan is cooking), do some shopping, and sleep!

Next, I'll fill you in on Nathan's Thanksgiving menu. We are testing out a few treats tonight. Yum!

Be Still and Know

I'm posting this picture because it makes me want to go fishing. Fishing is something that I used to do with my Dad. Since I was an only child and a girl, Dad didn't have much choice but to pass on his love for the sport to me. And pass it on he did. I have loved fly-fishing and all of the times he would take me out, just Dad and me, for a day of quietness and fun. To me fishing is more than the reeling in of a catch, it is an entire day's experience. It is the sun on the back of my neck. It is the river rippling around my knees. It is my line hissing in the air. It is the Cheetos for a snack every time and the laugh in the truck as we try to find a place we magically found years before and promptly lost again. But mostly, fishing is the alone-ness with a river as old as time. It is the vastness of the sky and magnitude of the mountains. It is a whisper in a breeze that says, "I made this for you, all of it, so you might come here and remember Me." And it never ceases to simply take my breath away.

Preparing for Black Friday

Today we skipped church so that we could go to the stores and see what might be on Sale on Black Friday, the famous day after Thanksgiving.
Ok, so we didn't really skip church for this reason, we had other reasons (cough cough, slept in, cough), but we did make our yearly purchase of a Sunday paper just for the ads. And we did go to the mall (yikes, that place is a lot scarier than I remember it being when I was young and a shopper). And we may have spent hours in all of Bellingham's technologically inclined stores.
BUT, we evened the day out with a trip to the movies, which was just about as much fun as we have ever had at the movies with kids in tow.
Yet, this isn't a post about movies, or taking kids to movies, or how you just can't take kids to movies if they don't watch TV at home and know how to SIT STILL for more than FIVE MINUTES.
No, this is a post about Black Friday. My husband's very favorite Day of Massive Irrationality. Black Friday is Nathan's day of forgetting about Logic, or any form of Logical Thinking, or Not Logically Thinking about anything Logically. Black Friday is the day that Nathan shops like a Man in his Finest Form.
Last year, in the wee hours of the day after Thanksgiving, Nathan spent the night outside of Circuit City with a handful of his work friends from the Refinery and several hundred other crazy souls. I use the words 'spent the night' loosely, since there was no sleeping but rather lots of coffee drinking and pipe tobacco smoking and ad reading and mental math calculating just how much money one could actually spend. Nathan and his friends were second in line for doors to open, and stood there from 6pm until they opened at 5am.
Now originally, the plan was for Nathan to go for a few hours to spend some time with his buddies, bring them some coffee and then come home. Because I was seven months pregnant and I told him to. Around 2am, I determined that this probably wasn't going to happen and began to worry. We had a nice chunk of money saved up for my maternity leave and I knew there was a good chance that a portion of it might now be transferred to the Bank of 4 am Black Friday Logic. I have never been so right. At about 4am (an hour before the store opened) I got a loud boisterous call from Nathan.
"Are you up? Go downstairs and get the ad for Circuit City and look at the front page and tell me what you think becauseIthinkIwanttogettheLCDTV but I wanted to see what you thought first..."
He didn't actually say LCD TV did he?
Sure enough, he stumbled into bed around 6am. An enormous box sitting in our living room confirmed the purchase.
I let him keep it though. Because I was seven months pregnant, and what could be better for a new mom than a brand new LCD HDTV to keep entertained while nursing? See, that Black Friday Logic, it gets you every time.

Bowling for Morgan

Since our Morgan turned Nine last Tuesday and it was our weekend for her to be with us we decided to spice the night up and do something fun. At first we were going to go ice-skating. We have gone ice-skating for Morgan's birthday for the last...oh, 4 years. She loves ice-skating. Nathan and I though, are not so fond of the torture chambers also known as rental ice-skates. So last minute, we changed our minds and decided to go bowling instead.

Bowling is something that Nathan and I have intended to do regularly since our very fist time at a bowling alley together (our first date?). However, since that one time we went bowling together, we have not gone again. This was somewhere around six years ago.

You should also know that Nathan and I are probably the worst bowlers on the face of the planet. The Worst. On that date six years ago when we last bowled, I don't believe that either of us got anything better than a 60. That's pretty bad people, and may be why we haven't attempted it again in so long. Six years later, we are now a family of five terrible bowlers. I believe there is such thing as strength in numbers.

I brought proof, watch below, Zoe vs. The White Pins:

Truth be told, we had a really fun time. I wouldn't be surprised if bowling became a regular family outing. Perhaps if we get him started young enough, Simon can become a Bowling World Champion. But with our bad-bowling-genes, your chances are slim Buddy, slim.

Can You Believe I...

I don't really like Mom Blogs. Even though I read a lot of them. Mostly, they just make me feel inadequate and like a Bad Mom. Mom Blogs post pictures of their kid's amazing theme rooms and immaculate kitchens. Mom Blogs talk about how little Timmy spilled milk on the carpet, and OMG they had to steam clean the whole house. Mom Blogs always have everything together and in the right places. I am so not together and so not anywhere near the right places.

BUT, I was reading a Mom Blogger today, and she posted this:

GO HERE AND READ IT.

And it wasn't just the post that made me happy, but the COMMENTS!

I mean, mom's were admitting to all sorts of Mom Crimes. By the dozens!

So my house is messy, my kids are pretty dirty, I don't cook very often or well, and I work full time in a refinery, but I am happy and a good mom. Just like most everyone else. Just ignore the fact that my kid's socks don't match, if they are even wearing any. And please overlook the mountain of laundry in the basement and the dog hair in the bathroom and the old gross bottles hidden under the sofa.
In fact, when Zoe was about two (and at the age where you really really really should be watching just about every move she made), I decided I wanted to sleep in past 7. She came in the bedroom declaring her hunger and "Mommy UP."
Only, instead of getting up, like a good mom, I taught her to go get the box of cereal out of the cupboard and bring it back to my bed and eat her breakfast straight out of the box while I napped a bit longer. She ate the whole thing.
What's your "Can you believe I...?"

LaLaLaaaaaaaa

We had Zoe's Parent Teacher Conference tonight.
She's doing really well as a kindergartner. She's also doing really well as a little miss socialite. But really, we aren't surprised at all about that. Zoe's been social since before she could walk. In public places we had to be super careful with her as she would toddle up to complete strangers and demand UP. I sort of wasn't ok with that.
Of all of the extroverted things that Zoe loves, her very favorite is singing. Our girl will belt out a tune at the top of her lungs for hours and hours and hours. And all of the songs that she sings are Zoe originals. She composes her own operas, and uses her very best five year old vibrato for dramatic effect.
Now, these aren't Carnegie hall ready quite yet. Her songs are mostly about her day or her favorite new toy, they usually sound something like this:
I loooooooooove myyyyyyyyy daddy's scoooooooter. Zoooom Zoom, yellow going faaaaaaaaaaast lalalalaaaaaaa. Scooter! Lalalala. mMMmmmm Mmmmmmm MMMMMmmmm.

I'll have to figure out how to record her singing and post it up on here sometime, get a little competition for the girl band, ZoeGirl.

Fire in the Sky

Remember how I was a little sad about the lack of a sunrise the other day?
Well, this morning on my way into work, there was a bit of a redemption:







It did good things to my heart. Thanks for note John, we miss you.


Photos courtesy of King5.com, since I was ill prepared.

Happy Birthday Morgan!

Today Morgan is nine. Nine seems so big. SO BIG. Nine seems like almost a little lady. But, we discovered that if you give a nine year old lots of cake and ice cream they resort to the  not as mature behavior you are used to. Phew.

We celebrated the evening with some homemade Teriyaki Chicken cooked by Aunt Becky, and a cake shaped like a barn with a "rock" path and farm animals scattered about. The front of the barn read "Morgan, est. 1998."

It was very cute and clever. 

After the cake, presents and ice-cream we all hopped into my parents new hot tub. The girls giggled and splashed and before we knew it the night was started and bed times missed. 

It was a fun night.

Happy Birthday Morgan!

I love you!

An Introduction

Fellow bloggers and countrymen (ahem, /women),
I would like to direct your attention to a fine fellow blogger of snark and intellect.
A dear friend with late entry into NaBloPloGloNoMoFoSho. I mean, NaBloPoMo (is that right?).
She is witty, hilarious, beautiful and uber fun. I can say that because she is living in Germany, and you have to say things like uber all the time over there. Trust me.
I met this gal when we were young and restless and found things like pickles and bacteria enormously funny. We also found running around on the track at lunch time enormously funny, and how I wish it was still so. Track running would do me wonders at this point in my life.
But I digress, without further ado, I bring to you...


LauraJerry!!

And may you never be the same because of her.

And by the way Laura, is it cold where you are in December? Because I'm throwing you into the contest with Man, Woman and me....

Super Dad

Nathan has a new job, and it's awesome and he is enjoying it. But after a whole lot of months with him home with the kids, we are in a bit of an adjustment period.
The adjustment period is that we all pretty much miss him a whole lot.
This weekend was not much help either. He got to go to this fun Coffee Fest in Seattle, while the rest of us (read: ME) went to a funeral.
As soon as he got home, this is what went down: He was attacked by two little girls and a baby boy. They're only demand was that they be tickled, chased, teased, wrestled with and then tickled some more. To oblige Nathan taught them all the art of the Electric Chair. This is where Nathan tickles them while making this great zip-zap sound. Somehow this makes just plain ol' tickling very boring, and the Electric Chair is the Funniest Thing Ever. Some of my greatest memories as a little girl were the times of being tickled by my Dad. I think this is probably something that a lot of girls can relate to.

Helmet Comparison

I'm having a hard time accepting that my baby is going to be a year old in a little over a month. So much so that I had to go look through some old photos just to see how much he has grown.

These pictures (although a bit blurry) were taken when Simon was three and a half months old.He fit nicely into Nathan's scooter helmet back then.And then, four months later, when he was eight and a half months, I crammed him back into the helmet. He didn't mind at first.
But after a few seconds, he thought the helmet was the funniest thing ever.I'm pretty sure he won't fit in the helmet any more, but I might just have to give it a try in a few days.

A year in a month, can you believe it?

Because They are so Beautiful

John, in the Paper Again

‘We’ve all been robbed of a master painter’

John Cole’s landscapes won wide attention

DEAN KAHN
THE BELLINGHAM HERALD

John Cole of Bellingham painted full time for only two decades, long enough to win acclaim as a landscape artist, short enough to add extra poignancy to his death Tuesday at age 71.

“We’ve all been robbed of a master painter,” said Linda Gardner, the owner of Lucia Douglas Gallery in Fairhaven.

Born in London, Cole showed stellar artistic promise as a child. His family moved to the U.S. when he was a teen. He served in the U.S. Navy, studied art at New York’s Pratt Institute, then became an electrical meter technician.

He returned part time to his passion for painting in the mid- 1970s when his 11-year-old daughter died and he got divorced. With support from his second wife, Lucille, and from local artists stunned by the quality of his work, he began painting full time in 1986.

“That creative force finally came through,” Gardner said.

Cole loved the outdoors, where he camped, fly-fished and painted landscapes.

A kind man, Cole was a mentor to younger local artists, sharing his knowledge, time and expertise.

“He had perfect color awareness,” said Tom Wood, a local painter who considered Cole a teacher as well as a close friend. “His luminosity isn’t just color; it’s intensity.”

Wood said Cole’s focus on regional landscapes dampened his renown at first, but in time his works won wide attention. The Whatcom Museum of History & Art presented a retrospective show in 2005, and Cole’s works sold quickly at Lisa Harris Gallery in Seattle.

Cole had won the recognition he deserved before he was stricken with Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disease.

“He should have gone on painting for another 10 or 20 years,” friend Mary Froderberg said, “but life isn’t fair.”

At Lisa Harris Gallery:

In Memoriam

John Cole - 1936 – 2007

Lisa Harris Gallery is saddened to announce the passing of John Cole, who was one of the Pacific Northwest’s premier landscape painters, and a gallery artist for 19 years. Cole died Tuesday evening in Bellingham at the age of 71. The artist had suffered from Lewy Body Disease, a degenerative neurological condition, for over three years. Cole’s work conveys the essence of the Northwest—its big trees, majestic waterfalls, rushing rivers, and unspoiled lake and mountain vistas. The artist was a central figure in the close-knit art community of Bellingham and the Skagit Valley, and his work has been collected nationally.

John Cole was born in London in 1936, the youngest of nine children. His home was destroyed during one of the first German bombing raids, and his early schooling was interrupted. As a youth he demonstrated a talent for drawing and painting, and remembers being influenced by visits to the Tate Gallery where he came under the spell of the Cubists, Matisse, the German Expressionists and such American artists as Marsden Hartley and Arthur Dove. When Cole was 15, his family immigrated to the U.S., preventing him from acting upon the Royal Academy scholarship he had been offered.

Cole finished high school in Long Island, New York, and attended nearby Pratt Institute where he took art classes and participated in open painting sessions. In 1962, after serving four years in the U.S. Navy, he lived briefly in Florida and in Southern California where he studied electrical engineering at Pasadena College and worked for the local public utility. He managed to resume painting in his spare time and joined the Laguna Art Society.

Cole discovered the Pacific Northwest on vacation in 1967 and eventually settled in Bellingham where he was employed at Puget Power. During these years he met Lucille McCarty, who he married in 1977. She accompanied him on many of his camping excursions in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. By 1985 he had become deeply fascinated by the Canadian Group of Seven whose work inspired him to delve deeper into more remote Pacific Northwest landscapes. Cole was an avid fly fisherman who sketched outdoors. In later years he also executed many of his small to mid-size paintings en plein air, often accompanied by Bellingham artists Thomas Wood and Mary Froderberg. Wood and Susan Bennerstrom, another Bellingham painter, together with Cole’s wife, encouraged John to quit his job at the age of 50 in order to paint full time.

From the late 1970s to mid 1980s, he had solo exhibitions with Magnolia Gallery, Blue Horse Gallery, and the Chrysalis Gallery at Western Washington University. His works were included in exhibitions at the Frye, Whatcom and Tacoma Art Museums in Washington and at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.

In 1988, Cole joined Lisa Harris Gallery, and in 1989 they mounted his first Seattle solo exhibition. Cole remained a beloved member of the art community in Bellingham contributing his work to local causes and participating in group shows at Lucia Douglas Gallery. In July of this year, Lisa Harris Gallery presented a group of the artist’s last paintings together with a 20-year survey of his lesser-known relief prints from wood and linoleum. Broadly applied opaque color, simplified shapes suggesting massive forms, and superbly constructed compositions are the hallmarks of Cole’s style. The artist’s black and white prints retain his fluid vision of nature as they powerfully delineate the raw landscape and archetypal figures. In 2003, Whatcom Museum of History and Art in Bellingham presented a major retrospective of the artist’s work. The exhibition catalogue, John Cole: The Enduring Northwest Landscape, is distributed by University of Washington Press.

The artist’s work is featured in The Pacific Northwest: a Painted History (Sasquatch Books, Seattle), and 100 Artists of the West Coast (Schiffler Publishing). His paintings are in numerous private and institutional collections throughout the United States and Canada.

John was preceded in death by his parents, daughter Katherine Cole, brothers Lionel, Reginald, and Maurice, and sisters, Mavis and Rennie. He is survived by his wife Lucille Cole of Bellingham, sisters Joyce and Violet of England, step-daughters Janet VanWieringen and Joyce Josephson (husband Jon), all of St. George, UT, step-son Earl Parrick of Red Vale, CO, and numerous grandchildren. Memorials may be made to Parkinson Disease Society, Lewy Body Dementia Association and/or St. Paul’s Youth Memorial Fund. A Memorial Service will be held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 12 noon followed by a reception in the Great Hall. You may view photos of John and share memories of the family at www.westfordfuneralhome.com.

Why We Are No Longer Allowed In Public Places

Last night, after an impromptu hair cut for Nathan, we decided on a quick-y dinner at a local Denny's. We don't go there often, but we were lusting after some burgers and good cheap kids menus. About fifteen minutes after ordering our food, we started to remember why we stopped eating out when Zoe was a baby.
Simon was cranky, hungry, wet-diapered, and loud.
All good things to be while in a restaurant.
To our left, with work computer and papers strewn about, was a business man, trying to conduct a meeting via his blue-tooth earphone (who does this in a Denny's?).
I watched Mr. Important Meeting Man scoot as far away as possible from our loud table, but Simon just kicked it up a notch.
Aaaaaeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiaaaahhhhh....sob..sob...aaaaAAAiiiieeehaaaaa!!
We ordered our screamer some apple sauce and he gobbled it up way before the rest of our food came, yet managed to resume crying between each bite. We let him have the whipped cream off of the top of my milkshake.
We transferred him from my lap, to Nathan's lap, to a high chair, back to Nathan's lap...round and round like a hot potato.
He cried the whole time and we were beginning to get desperate.
Zoe, sensing our weakening parental skills, tried to help out by ordering her own food.
"Pancakes with whipped cream and chocolate chips and a hot cocoa with extra whipped cream and a cherry." She ordered, matter-of-factly to our smiling waitress.
Nathan, remembering my uber-preparedness at our last outing, asked me if I still had a bag of cheerios stuffed in my purse.
Of course not, I ate them.
But! I remembered seeing some in Simon's car carrier seat when I last buckled him in! They had fallen from Simon's slimy grimy hands when we last fed him some.
Nathan plucked four very sad and stale cheerios from the bottom of Simon's seat.
He carefully took each old cheerio and broke them in half (eight pieces last longer than four!), giving them to our now jubilant cheerio loving boy, one by one.
We scarfed down our food in those few quiet minutes and left the restaurant (baby crying), never to be seen again.

Breathe Deeply, Friday's Nearly Here

This one is for my friend Man of Many Thoughts,

I would have let you post it yourself, but since you are under investigation of post stealing, I thought I would go ahead.

Enjoy!

Hope your day at work goes better!

Also in the Paper...

My Godfather:
John Dennis Cole
9/16/1936 - 11/6/2007

Birthplace: London, England
Last Resided in: Bellingham, Washington

Obituary
John D. Cole, one of the Pacific Northwest’s premier landscape painters, passed away in Bellingham on November 6, 2007 at the age of 71. He was born September 16, 1936 in London, England to William and May Cole and emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 15. He served four years in the Navy, studied art at New York’s Pratt Institute and electrical engineering at Pasadena College, and worked for many years at Puget Power. John married Lucille McCarty in 1977 in Enumclaw, WA. At 50, with Lucille’s support and encouraged by fellow artists, Cole quit his job to paint full time. Cole was considered “a painter’s painter,” and was a beloved member of the Bellingham art community. Yet he was also highly regarded beyond the region and had a national following. His recent exhibitions at Lisa Harris Gallery in Seattle were sold-out shows. The Whatcom Museum of History and Art mounted a retrospective of his work in 2005. John was preceded in death by his parents, daughter Katherine Cole, brothers Lionel, Reginald, and Maurice, and sisters, Mavis and Rennie. He is survived by his wife Lucille Cole of Bellingham, step-daughters Janet VanWieringen and Joyce Josephson (husband Jon), all of St. George, UT, step-son Earl Parrick of Red Vale, CO, sisters Joyce and Violet of England, and numerous grandchildren. Memorials may be made to Parkinson Disease Society, Lewy Body Dementia Association and/or St. Paul’s Youth Memorial Fund. A Memorial Service will be held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Saturday, November 10, 2007 at 12 noon followed by a reception in the Great Hall.

Ollie the Octopus and Friends

Zoe got to bring home the much anticipated Mystery Bag from school yesterday. The mystery bag is a bag that the kids get to put a show and tell item in and have the class guess what it is. This is a huge huge huge deal for our Zoe. Last time she got the mystery bag was a Friday so she had all weekend to pick and discard which favorite toy or item she was going to bring. It was agonizing to watch. She would select something, only to change her mind 32,987,437,548,594 times by the end of a day. Ten minutes before we had to be out the door she finally selected a book that plays songs of song birds.

This time, she only had one night to decide. She started out with a rock, moved to a hair tie, but by morning I saw her stuffing her giant stuffed octopus, Ollie, in the bag.

Turns out it was a rather fitting choice. One of Zoe's favorite places is the Marine Life Center, and the last few times we have been there she met, fed, and fell in love with Omar, the Octopus. Looks like he is off to a new home.

She's going to be so sad.

Omar the octopus ships out
Chance for romance lies in Seattle

Omar the octopus is headed for the big time, with some gentle encouragement from one of his caretakers at the Marine Life Center in Bellingham.
“Sorry, Omar, it’s time to go,” said center director Noel Larson as she reached her arms into his tank Wednesday and coaxed him into the bright orange basket before him.
Watching them was Roland Anderson, biologist for the Seattle Aquarium, who would drive Omar to his new home.
For a few seconds Wednesday, the giant Pacific octopus didn’t budge from his spot on the bottom of the tank. Then one orange-red tentacle touched the basket. Slowly, he swam in and was lifted out of the tank.
He was weighed, carried to a waiting van, put in a cooler filled with sea water and driven to his new home down south.
The octopus, which weighs 30 pounds and is 5 feet long when two tentacles are stretched out, is in bigger digs — a 3,000-gallon tank — at the Seattle Aquarium, where he is on display today.
On Valentine’s Day, he’ll have a chance to mate with another giant Pacific octopus.
“That will give him an opportunity to pass on his genes,” Larson said.
It was a quick send-off for Omar, the featured attraction at the Marine Life Center since the center bought him from a Canadian collector who captures the creatures for aquariums.
Larson believed that Omar was the 12th giant Pacific octopus at the center, which often gets them when they’re unexpectedly caught by commercial fishermen. Those caught in local waters are rehabilitated six to eight months at the center, then released into the wild.
Omar can’t be released to the wild, partly because he was caught off the coast of British Columbia by a collector.
“This octopus was definitely destined to be in an aquarium and wasn’t going to be released,” Larson said.
The center paid $300 for the octopus, which Larson said was basically just enough to cover the costs the collector incurred, including permits, for capturing the creature.
Larson said he gave the octopus to the center so the public could learn about it.
The center sold Omar to the Seattle Aquarium for $500.
Omar was a standout in several ways, according to Larson.
He was male. “Having a male octopus is a pretty special deal. They’re harder to come by than females,” she explained.
As a male, his third right tentacle is free of suckers. That’s the arm he’ll use for mating.
He had only seven tentacles when he came to them. It’s believed that a lingcod, which is the octopus’ natural predator, attacked him while he was out in the wild.
“It bit off one of the tentacles. He has been regrowing that while he’s been here. Having him in a protective place does allow him to have less stress while he’s trying to re-grow that arm,” she said.
And though Larson didn’t want to humanize the octopus, she did describe him as clever, curious and shy.
“He’s a very graceful animal. He can change color to express emotion, in a way,” she said, adding that the color change also allows him to blend into his background.
On Wednesday, Omar was a dark brown-red by the time he was put into the cooler. It’s the color he turns when he’s trying to blend in with rocks or when he’s trying to hide, Larson explained.
Then the van door was closed.
“I’ll be down soon,” Larson said, just before Omar was driven away.

Hello, IT? My computer won't turn on...

I got a call this morning from a highly trained operator asking for some help with a docking station. That right there on the left, that is a docking station. These are used by each operator every day to bump test or calibrate their personal gas detectors and the larger five gas meters (known here as "sniffers" which are used to detect different hazards in the field). The docks are pretty easy to use, you snap your little detector in and press "bump" for bumptest, or "calibration" to calibrate.

Easy enough, right?

Surprisingly though, these little docking stations are the current nightmare of my job. I get at least one call a day from operators saying that either the thing isn't working, or they've somehow messed up the settings. One time, I went out to a unit to see what was wrong and discovered that the operators had pushed enough buttons to set whole thing into Portuguese but then couldn't read the Portuguese to set it back into English.

Another time I went out to fix one and found that they had swapped the hoses for the calibration gasses. Where SO2 should have been plugged in, the Isobutylene was plugged in, and vise versa, thus causing the detectors to fail each bump and calibration.

But today, today took the cake. I walked into the unit with my big bag of fix it tools, ready for action. When I looked down at the docking station I saw that it simply wasn't plugged in. I plugged it in and turned it on.

Seeing the dock light up, the operator exclaimed,

"You fixed it! I've been trying to get that thing going for two days now!"

John

I waited for the sunrise this morning
driving slow and looking up, up
expecting magnificence of color
brush strokes from your hand
a secret note to say,
"I am here, it is beautiful, I love you"
but instead of paint, there was only rain.

and for a moment, I was lost in
a landscape only seen
in a river rushing
bending across polished rocks - worn smooth,
through autumn's empty bones and golden hair
vibrant blues blending into
cascading greens
in the corners
white rapids topped in perfect peaks

cresting behind my eyes
a blurred precision.

I know exactly where you are
no note is needed.

Excrement, meet fan

A wise man once said that you have not truly blogged until you have blogged about poop.

That was your chance to hit the back button, quick!

Last night, was a night to not be a mom. A night where I should have just opened the door after returning home from work, and gone straight to bed. Should have skipped dinner, not passed go, and certainly not collected 200 dollars. Wait, I must have missed that part.
Anyways, last night was the night of spectacular excrement. A rare evening knee deep in fine company with...there is no way to say it to make it sound nice...
Last night was full of shit.
How, you might ask, did such an evening come to be??
Well, I'll lay it out for you, follow these steps and you can have your own night of fun!
1. Have the Nana watching your baby boy feed him lots of things like prunes, peas, and cheerios.
2. Listen to him giggle and fart the whole way home.
3. Once home, have your little girl let the dog out to go to the bathroom.
4. Make sure she romps through the grass where he does his business.
5. Unbuckle baby and realize that #2 wasn't actually farts.
6. Glance out window and watch daughter yell at dog while he poops on the deck.
7. Let baby play on floor while you scrape poop off deck.
8. Watch daughter run (shockingly fast!) into the bathroom.
9. Change a poop explosion (use no less than five wipes!) diaper and hear daughter crying in the bathroom.
10. Check on daughter, find out she is crying because she stepped in poop and has tracked it all over bathroom floor.
11. In her hysteria, (she's nothing if not dramatic) she has also pooped her pants.
12. Clean up poop in bathroom and get daughter into bubble bath.
13. Throw poop shoes outside and do laundry.
14. Hear husband come home, pick up baby and say, "WOW! You have a stinky diaper!" as he passes the babe to you.
15. Change second poop explosion diaper.
16. Sit on couch and reconsider motherhood.
Enjoy!

Attack of the Monday Zombie

Today is yet again a Monday.
Monday's bring with them their own set of difficulties, not known amongst other days. Monday's bring about cranky, tired children, used to sleeping in, and turns them into what I like to call "Zombies Who Prefer Nakedness and Refuse to Get Dressed."
After the first three years of Zoe's life of Mondays, I learned that sitting on her torso and tugging jeans onto flailing legs, got harder as she got bigger. Her flailing legs become weapons of assassin. And I was her target.
One morning, after finally getting her clothed I chased her with her shoes for the better part of fifteen minutes. After catching her, she was hysterically mad. Six in the morning is not her finest hour, and after being stuffed into her pants and zippered into her sweatshirt, she was adamantly against the shoes. She wanted to be carried to the car. Gentle reasoning wouldn't do. She could care less that I had three bags to carry and couldn't also tote her. I also couldn't trick her by saying if she didn't put her shoes on she wouldn't be able to jump up high (a favorite activity) or run fast. Finally I found that she would put her shoes on willingly, if I pretended that the shoes were monsters and they wanted to eat up her feet. She loved this. A deep growly monster voice was necessary, as well as a nicely refined burp to signify both shoes in place. She howled with laughter.
This has now been the shoe putting on process for two years, and has evolved into other areas of dressing. Monster pants, monster shirt, monster hair brush...they all bring giggles to the crankiest Monday Zombie.
Now that Zoe is five, she's a lot better at the morning routine. She can do most of the monstering herself, a growl as she zips up her pants, a roar as she slides on her shoes. The best though, I witnessed this morning, as she deposited some Halloween candy into her back pack and zipped it shut. The bag "Mmmm-Mmmming" delightfully, of course.
A monster has to have something yummy to eat after all that hard work.

Briskly comes the winter

Today was a beautiful fall day. We slept in, went to a later church service and  reveled in the wonder that is day light savings. 

The sun was out today, and the days of frost and early-winter were quickly forgotten. We shed our coats and took the kids to the park, where we met with a friend and her boys. 

It was as if the kids knew that this might be it. That this day of sun and warmth and outdoor frolicking might be their last until spring. They played with reckless abandon, running running running and chasing chasing chasing, as quickly as the leaves fell from the trees. 

We re-found an old geocache, simply for the thrill of taking friends on a treasure hunt, and ended the day with steak on the grill. A round steak, larger than a platter, more than enough for six. 

All in all, a perfect farewell to summer.

Ready, Set, Go!

We were driving down that favorite road of ours the other day and saw some signs posted for Farm Tours. Not knowing of any farms nearby we decided to go on a little adventure. Only instead of cows and pasture, the signs led us to water front and oysters. Taylor Shellfish Farms!
Taylor's is where we always go for really great, really fresh oysters and clams. In fact, for my mom's birthday two years ago we bought her a gigantic bag of fresh oysters from Taylor's. She was thrilled.

This day though, they had the place set up with booths and touch ponds. The kids really liked the touch ponds. Sort of like a petting zoo for sea life. 

We also got to eat some raw oysters, which Morgan claims she loved.

But the best part, by far, was the crab race.

 The kids each picked a crab and the Gloved Lady put them each in their places. They were held in spot by a chute door, which swung open to let them travel downward. Which ever crab reached the bottom first was the winner.

Doesn't he look thrilled?

The crabs had a tendancy to hang on for dear life, only to be flipped over when the chute door opened and scoot down the lane on their backs.

Weeee!

Winner takes all?

If you take a look at the lower left collumn of this blog you will notice a little badge with an ugly cat. It's a badge for National Blog Posting Month. Which is a spin off of National Novel Writing Month, where all sorts of crazy people sign up and agree to write 50 thousand words by the end of November. I tried that last year, and maybe got two paragraphs before giving up.
The goal of National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo, or if you are like me it's more like NaBloMooPoopPlop, or something) is simply to post every day for the thirty days of November.
My friends, Woman of Many Thoughts and Man of Many Thoughts, are doing it with me.
Wow, that is a lot of links.
To make it interesting, we've made it a contest.
We don't have any ideas for what to do for the winner, but
who ever blogs the least loses, and the loser has to frolic in the street while singing the song from The West Side Story, "I feel pretty, oh so pretty and witty..." and well, you know the rest.
This is going to take place, obviously, at the end of November. In anticipation of the nice chilly weather, the loser also is required to don no more than shorts and a tee shirt.
That's all we've got so far.
Any other ideas???

Weekend Agenda

I was planning on writing a post about work and my crazy busy last few days.
Something about work and employment.
After that I was going to tell you about what my next week is going to look like, with maybe a little whining.
Maybe a lot.
I was thinking of how I wanted to word it all with out sounding too boring or too overwhelmed.
Then I realized that today is FRIDAY.
So I really shouldn't blog about work again until Monday, right?
Instead, I'll fill you in on my big exciting weekend plans...
They are really riveting.

All day Saturday and Sunday, I am going to plant some kisses here:And then, I think I'll take my husband out for a ride on one of these before the winter really sets in:I also plan on doing a whole lot of this:
But first of all, I think I'll have to have one of these:

Happy Friday!!

A Man's Workplace

When I first started working out here (during summer breaks from university) there didn't seem to be a lot of women.
Maybe five.
The group of guys I worked with liked to toss around the phrase,
"This is a man's workplace..." in all sorts of variations;
"You gotta have balls," and the likes.
The women that are here are typically in roles like engineering, or nurses, or lab technicians. There are a few though, and more each year, that work here as operators.
There was a new woman operator in the unit I was working in today.
I was working on a broken meter in the same room as her, but kind of hidden around the corner. She was talking loudly and exuberantly, and I couldn't help but overhear.
She was conversing with three other male operators about the process of breast reduction and enlargement surgeries, going into great detail and weighing the pros and cons.
Another operator caught me listening in and secretly whispered in my ear, embarrassed,
"I hope you aren't offended, I wish they'd shut up!"
I laughed silently, and went on with my day.
I'll think she'll do just fine out here.