The New Kid on the Block

Well, at least for a few weeks.

My nephew is in town. He's still young enough to consider visiting his aunt in Minnesota a fun thing to do. I love having him out here. It's like I have someone to act my age with. Er, I mean, act young with. Plus, he's really good with kids and having a younger brother Adam's age means he's very well trained in the re-binkying technique and is quite good at wrestling, chasing, peek-a-booing, and other forms of toddler entertainment.

Adam is in love. Devin is the big brother Adam wishes he could have. We tried our best, but I guess the best we could do for Adam is a little sister. Not exactly what Adam had in mind, I think. Adam says at least 73 times a day "Hi Devin!". Understandably, Devin's enthusiasm has waned and it's noticeable in his now obligatory replies. Still, he's wonderful with Adam.

Desi is also quite taken with him since Devin gives Desi the most attention the poor dog has had since...well...September 21, 2003. So between Desi and Adam, Devin doesn't really get a rest. It's hard being popular.

Devin even managed to make a few friends on our block. Kids come over asking for him and he's been here less than a week. He went with a group to the movies yesterday, and according to my neighbor, her 11-yr old son is mesmorized with Devin. I think his Halo 2 skills impress him.

So not only do I have tons of help keeping Adam happy ("mommy! mommy!" 2oo times a day has been replaced by "devin! devin!"), but the kids also does yards. And feeds the dog and takes out the trash. All I have to do is supply soda, frosted flakes, and no rules. Hey, I'm the aunt. I can do that.

The Number One Thing I Don't Miss About Seattle...

How expensive it was to live there!

Well, maybe it's the traffic.

MSN Money posted their top ten list of the most overpriced cities in America and Seattle was at the top. No surprise, really. We pay less for a mortgage on our 3 bedroom house here than we paid for our 2 bedroom apartment in Seattle.

DH's commute time is barely in the double digits, while you could easily spend 2 hrs a day in your car if you lived and worked in the puget sound region.

Sadly, Rochester (MN) was not at the top of the best-places-to-live list compiled by Money magazine. If you come visit our fair city, you will see many signs boasting the title, which we held for several years. Interestingly, Bainbridge Island is on there, which would be a fabulous place to live, I agree, but how could you afford that?

Minnesota is, however, well regpresented in the coldest places category. Well duh!

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

...and chocolate pudding, and ketchup, and cherry popsicle, and spitup, and I hate to admit, baby poop...

This is what I'm wearing. What are you wearing, hot stuff?

Ok, I had completely forgotten about the baby poop until just now, to be fair. I had every good intention to change my clothes after I got Natatasha out of her poopy diaper, which exploded onto me, but in the midst of changing her diaper, Adam hit his head on the dining room table so one emergency faded into another and I got distracted and what was priority #1 (getting out of shorts that have poop on them) became priority #2 (helping Adam). By the time that was over, I had forgotten about the poop and went on my business of figuring out what the last priority was before the whole diaper emergency business happend.

Which happened to be finishing cleaning up the chocolate pudding smear on the table from where Adam got tired of eating and decided to get creative and finger paint. Which, of course, ended up on me when I picked him up out of his seat and failed to realize that he still had some pudding on him. I thought I had wiped it all off, but food ends up in the darndest places. In fact, his food almost always ends up on me. As does anything he suddenly realizes is sticky, wet, itchy, gooey, or dirty (despite having been playing with the sticky, wet, itchy, etc. substance for more than a few minutes). Once he realizes the substance is on him and declares it "gose" which is Adamese for "gross", he yells "wape it!?!" (wipe it) and then runs over to me and wipes himself on my leg or shirt. I would like to blame the ketchup on this, but it's actually from my own clumsiness when I attempted to steal one of his corn dog husks (he hates the corn part) and it fell apart after I failed to realize that its weight had increased triple from soaking in ketchup for 30 minutes. It fell apart and half of it hit my leg before splatting on the floor.

The cherry popsicle, though. That's all Adam.

The spitup, nope. Not from me. DH and I had a whole conversation where we wondered when it's no longer called spitup and is referred to as vomit. We thought we were pretty clever until I mentioned it to his sister. She put an anticlamactic end to our cosmic, formerly unanswerable question when she simply responded "when you eat solid food". So there we go. Anyway, Natasha is not yet into solid food (apparently, neither is Adam, come to think of it, unless you count ketchup, cherry popsicle, and pudding). So her spitup adorns my shoulders. That's how you spot a new mom in stores. Just look at her shoulders. There should be tiny white patches where she burped her baby and didn't have a spit cloth on hand. Chances are good it was the cleanest of all her clothes because she doesn't have time to do laundry.

It's no wonder I feel so sexy at the end of the day. All this running around, wiping up messes and fluids (and solids, oye). It makes a person sweat. Makes you feel like you burn a million calories and shouldn't even have to use your treadmill. Which I never get to, sadly. And to round things out, I actually did bleed on myself today when I cut my finger trying to clean my new food processor. I was dying to try a recipe for carrot soup, but only got as far as chopping up the celery before the priority shift happened again. And the tears, well, if a day ends where I don't end up with Natasha and Adam tears on me, my shirt would be soaked in my own tears of happiness.

And bourbon.

Top 5 Places I miss in & around Seattle

5. Olympic Athletic Club
I know this isn't representative of Seattle. You can't get a shot of the building with the space needle in the background. There are no tourists that visit it. It's not in a particularly hip part of Seattle (it's in Ballard, which I consider cool, but I'm not cool, so it doesn't count). But I used to visit the place religiously. All the people that worked there were super cranky and I never talked to anyone. Just went in, did my workout, and left. I loved it. It felt like church to me. I miss it.



4. Safeco Field
I never liked baseball until I saw it played in Safeco Field. It's a beautiful stadium. More importantly, it's an outdoor stadium unlike what we have here in Minnesota, where players lose sight of the ball because of the white rooftop. Its construction was voted down several times by Seattle voters but it got built anyway. I swore I would never step foot in it, but I loved the place. They had good garlic fries there, too. Sushi, Dixie's BBQ, you name it. Oh, and the Mariners, who were good when I lived in Seattle. Perhaps they wish I had not moved. Perhaps they can pay me a stipend to move back?




3. Eateries
I realize this is cheating by including several places under one category, but I cannot choose just one place. I love them all.

Monsoon: wonderful, delectable Viet Namese food. The best Sea Bass in the world.

Kingfish: Soul food. The place had crazy hours and people literally lined up an hour before it opened to get a table. Worth it!

Brownbag: Breakfast in Seattle on weekends was like a sport. You hunt down the restaurant with the fewest number of people standing outside waiting. Brownbag was a favorite, even though it was on the east side. I crossed the bridge for it almost monthly. They baked their own bread right there and had to bring your toast on a separate plate because their skillets were so packed full. MMMMM.....potato sausage skillet....I miss you.

LaVaca: A hole-in-the-wall Mexican lunch joint a block away from where I worked. I'm sure it wouldn't have passed food inspection, but I refused to try to find out because it was so good. The Chicken Verde burrito was the best. Eventually new owners bought it and tried to change how things were done. They stopped generously throwing in extra sauce and cheese and stuck to strict portioning. Changed recipes to save money, eliminated ingredients. I always laughed as I was gorging down my 8-pound burrito because I knew "La Vaca" translates to "The Cow", which I surely could become while eating off their menu!

5 Spot: If I had to pick one favorite, this would probably be it. They have a regular menu, which is small and a rotating menu. Each quarter they change the theme of the rotating menu. The "Chicago" theme sticks out in my mind as does something tropical where I had fresh rum-soaked banana bread with fruit salsa made of mangoes, pineapple, and papaya with a drizzle of caramel and mango sorbet.

Little coffee stands everywhere: There's one 2 seconds away from anywhere you are in Seattle. It's a cliche, I know, but it's a cliche for a reason. Starbucks was ok, Seattle's Best better, Tully's slightly better, but the really good coffee was to be had at those little coffee kiosks on the corner. The one I happened to frequent...frequently was located on 4th and James, which is a nasty part of town, but it's where I worked. The coffee was so thick I almost needed a spoon. Happy Hour was at 3 right before the lady closed. She was there every day, rain or shine. And the beauty of the stand is, the same person that I gave my order to actually made the coffee and even took my money, reducing the chance of my order getting screwed up since it didn't have to get filtered through 8 different people (like that old game "telephone" where you whisper something into someone's ear, they whisper it into another's and so on...at the end, the last person says what they heard and compares it to what the original person whispered and hilarity ensues over how different the interpretation was from the original statement, except when you are jonesin' for a short Americano with two shots and a few ice cubes so you can drink it THIS CENTURY and you get a decaf iced Mochachino, hilarity does not ensue!).

2. Olympic Peninsula
Everything good was on the peninsula. Good motorcycle roads all twisty and hilly and super smooth with no radar guns pointing at you and little traffic. You have to take a ferry to get there from Seattle, but you are first on and first off with a motorcycle bypassing long lines of commuters. There's the Olympic mountain range, which is breathtaking. There's plenty of camping. Small, pastoral towns. One day I'm gonna own me a house there.

Here's DH and me 3 years ago up at Hurricane Ridge.


1. The Salish Lodge/Snoqualmie Falls
One of the most beautiful places on earth. The Lodge sits right atop the falls. You can hike down to the base of the falls which is worth doing a couple of times. Or, if you are lazy or have already done it, just hang out at the top where there is a small park. There's lots of facts I could look up and tell you about the waterfall (I don't have them memorized), but that's not what I care about. It's a place I visited regularly from the time I was 15 until I left. Twin Peaks was filmed there, which is what originally drew me to visit. After that, it was just its beauty that kept me coming. And once I became a teenager, my friends and I realized that we were basically alone there at night. We were always respectful of the place. Just basically hung out admiring the sound of rushing water without the background noise of lookie-loos.

Before DH and I were married we would stay at the Lodge regularly. It was a pretty upscale hotel with a quite upscale restaurant. Save for our impass with the snotty wine steward, the service made you feel like the queen (or king) of the world. They even had those little table duster thingies and cleaned your table cloth after you finished your main course! I just loved that. That was when we had disposable income, which we were quite good at disposing of. To add to the list of reasons I love this place, getting there was also quite a treat. It was at the top of a 2-lane highway, which meandered through beautiful forest down through the snoqualmie valley. It was one of the best motorcycle rides in the region.

The lodge also had the best spa and pool in the world. We loved it so much we got married there, which is almost as good as loving the lodge so much I married the lodge.

*Sniff*. I miss Seattle. Until I get stuck in traffic there upon visiting. Then I'm happy to return home!

Reading is Cool!

It's so cool that there's a guidebook on buying books. Nancy Pearl did an interview today on Minnesota Public Radio about her new book "More Book Lust". It turns out she is a librarian from Seattle, my hometown! And aren't I such a sleuth, I just found out that she inspired the Librarian Action figure from Archie McPhee.



She had lots of interesting suggestions for what to read and a lot of nerds called in to talk about various fantasy and sci-fi series, in which I have absolutely zero interest. Unfortunately, I have a ton of other books I am dying to read. Many of my favorite authors got together and decided they would all publish something this summer knowing that I wouldn't be able to read any of it!

Among the conspirators:

Sarah Vowell publishes another essay book, "Assassination Vacation"
John Irving, who publishes another novel "Until I Find You: A Novel"
Nick Hornby, the bastard. He puts out "A Long Way Down"
And then Melissa Bank puts out only her second novel, which I have been waiting for her to do for years now, "The Wonder Spot"

I still have two books sitting on my nightstand that might soon find their way downstairs so I will stop feeling guilty for not reading more of them. I was really enjoying Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct", a gift by my SIL, but you know..I have kids so I end up not reading very much. Unless it's a book about getting kids to sleep better so you can read more.

Hence the pile of books on my other nightstand:
Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child (so far my favorite)
Baby Whisperer (don't get me started on this one!)
No Cry Sleep Solution
Mayo's Baby Book
The Baby Book (Dr. Sears)

I have decided to write my own book. I am just going to title it "Read this book and your baby will go to sleep" and I am positive it will become a best seller.

Other things I do get to read:
My Trucks
Mother Goose
Counting Kisses
Goodnight Moon

And speaking of reading, I will be doing lots of it this fall since I am registered for a full course load. All of them boring. Ethics, Honors English, Speech, and hopefully one that involves no reading: Jogging/Walking.

Go books!

Mama-Ha

Adam, of course, is very familiar with all motorized vehicles. Trucks, boats, cars, motorcycles, you name it. It's gotten to the point where I can now ID, by sight, over 40 different types of trucks, including a paver, a grader, giant front-end loader, and our beloved garbage truck and fire truck (Adam's new favorites).

He definitely knows a motorcycle. We took him to Toys R' Us one day and my heart nearly stopped when he hopped onto a little pocket sport bike, leaned forward, put his foot on the pegs and looked right at home. My Boy!

I lamented out loud how badly I missed having a sportbike when we went up north and drove on beautifully twisty, curvey, hilly roads. Apparently DH took it to heart because now he thinks we need a sportbike.

If this were a boat, car, or truck I would try really hard to talk him out of it.

But you know...I love those sportbikes.

He was thinking Ninja. I love me some Yamaha, though.

Here's me a few years ago testing out an R1 at a motorcycle show. I had one shortly after that then sold it when we moved to California. Not good planning.

If I had a hammer

I would end up hammering the crap out of the box new toys come in along with the toys contained within them because I CAN'T FOR THE LIFE OF ME GET A TOY OUT OF A BOX IN LESS THAN 37 HOURS!!!

AAAAHHHHH!!!!

When did they start making toys so damn difficult to get out of boxes? The Fisher Price Little People sets are by far the worst. Each little person is individually twist-tied to the box in at least two places. Then, to make sure that you don't get to the twist tie too easily, that is taped over. But of course, to get to the tape on the inside of the box, you have to remove the extra adhesive tape on the outside of the box, which is made out of a compound stronger than steel yet more malleable than rubber so that when you try to puncture it with your key or your fingernail, you never make any progress; you don't even damage the seal.

It would be less stressful, this toy-opening process if it didn't include an overly-excited toddler screaming impatiently "wussssat? wusssat?!? open! open! more, mommy open!". Then you have to run for the tool box and the toddler thinks you are abandoning him with his unopened toy, which is now just sitting there mocking you both. Of course, the hack saw, screwdriver, and blow torch you need to open the toy were not put back into the tool box from the last time you needed them and now you must search the entire house, garage, and shed for them. You try using your keys one more time, but this time you learn your lesson when the key slips off the box as you are stabbing it and into your leg. Now your toddler is just plain scared of you.

Sigh.

We went through this harrying ordeal again today when we came home from Wally World with a new tractor ("chakka") which pulls a wagon. Adam is obsessed with things towing other things these days. Ever since he saw us tow the boat and a camper, everything must tow something and I am inundated with requests to "hook it, mommy hook it" for things that won't hook to other things. So I knew we needed some more hooky things. He delightedly carried the box around in the shopping cart the entire shopping trip admiring the green, metallic beauty. And he was very patient when I told him we had to wait until we got home to open it. Of course, he had to hold the box in the car, and carry it to the house. I tried to open it as fast as I can, and I am getting faster now and outsmarting these complicated little contraptions. But man was I angry when I found out I actually had to get the screwdriver out to simply remove the tractor from the box. GRRR!

Someone please tell me when tools became a necessary part of opening a new toy? What happened to that blister packaging? Granted, you could never open it without tearing through 3 or 4 layers of flesh, but at least it only involved a knife, or lacking a knife, sheer will and pluck.

Life is so complicated. But a happy Adam is well worth it.