San Francisco

A couple of year's ago D, E, and I took a great trip to San Francisco with N, H, & Ph. We stayed at the Nikko, a terrific, swanky hotel with a gigantic indoor atrium swimming pool where the kids played keep-away with whatever other kids happened to be in the pool for hours every evening.

By day, we touristed quite a bit. Here are E, Ph, and D in front of a tasty dim sum restaurant, one of the many we visited. This one, sadly, did not feature carts. Plates were just served up from a menu. Very weird.














At this point in time, as the eldest of the 3, D has the burden and delight of being group leader and most easily disgusted by overwhelmingly wild behavior he doesn't instigate. This was probably the first time D seemed seriously older than E & Ph. D had different interests, a different pace, would grow very tired of what he viewed as embarrassing and silly behavior. That said, it was not embarrassing or silly to sit in the passion chair at the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum to see how, like, much of a hot ticket you are. Ditto posing in front of wax fugures at the Wax Museum (Hey! These are good museums!). I'll track down some of those pictures. They're really nice. We ended up at these crazy places on a really rainy day when we had planned to go to Alcatraz but the boat wasn't running and there we were at Fisherman's Terminal in the rain. And Ghirardelli Square is a mall and obviously of no interest, all weird polished rock and driftwood shops, and faux galleries.

At the Muir Woods, we play in trees. It's one of the first time the boys are wowed by nature. Or maybe it's the gift shop that gets to them. But they are willing to walk about for hours looking at trees and clovers and whatever we happen to see.

What are they doing?

Featured here, E, A, D, and H all, I dunno, praying?

Great Signs I have Seen

Not Available for New Customer is posted on the door of a barber shop in the International District.


Patty Pullen Mind Your Own Business!!! is posted on the window of an upholstery shop in Waterville.

LAX

Here you see them, R, B, and D. Behind D, A. And I know the people over to the left as well, but we'll leave them be for now. We are all watching a great Lacrosse match on a blustery, shivery afternoon. You see A & D cleverly remembered that even though the day is overcast, sunglasses protect the eyes. As well, you see A remembered her coffee, which we all must do to make it through long, chilly afternoons.
Last week's game was in Tacoma, in my favorite treelined yuppified Tacoma neighborhood, Proctor. During the game, the heavens opened up and dumped an entire ocean on us, left us gasping for oxygen and wet to the bone. The day was not warm. The water did not stop falling. Umbrellas were purely decorative.
For me, D is why I brave the weather. He loves this game. He loves really all games played with balls that permit you to use your hands. He loves to absorb statistics about professional and top amateur players, and talk like a player.
So, for the moment, Lacrosse Über alles. And baseball. And then, when the seasons shift, basketball. And so on.
Noteworthy - in Lacrosse, gear matters. Not that your baseball glove or bat doesn't, but this is a whole other thing. D (& E in preparation for adding the sport to his roster next season) spend a lot of time tinkering with the heads, drilling holes in the sticks, taping the sticks, making the gear personal.
And, it turns out, drilling is permitted in the living room. Who knew?

20% off

I tried for weeks to get psyched to use my BBB coupons. I have a stack of them. And today was going to be the day. I need a medium sized saute pan since the last one i had started flaking off and became generally nasty. Yesterday, I stopped in at Vashon's own True Value, a classic hardware store with a little of everything hand selected for functionality and Consumer Reports ratings. I was about to buy a pan when I had a pang of reverse guilt. Usually, it's at a big box that the pangs swell up, shame on you for supporting big industry just to save a couple of bucks and for the vast and candylike selection. This time, I felt paralyzed by the thought that I was being antifrugal, spending so much on a pan when the very same one probably costs less to start with at BBB and plus I have the coupon sitting there on a shelf waiting for me to use it and my office is steps away from BBB. I put down the nothing-special saute pan and left True Value empty handed. So today I packed off to BBB with a coupon in hand, walked through the front door and felt instantly woozy. There was so much on the shelves. Product stacked 16 feet high as far as the eye could see and all but tumbling into the narrow aisles. I couldn't really make out what it was I wanted or needed, began wandering without purpose. The heady mix of scented candles, cleaning supplies and something like rubber made breathing a chore. I started to sneeze. The space grew oppressively warm and humid. I left the coupon for some lucky shopper to find on a stack of plastic salad dressing shakers and ran away. The end.

COLO - excuse me I am going to be sick - RADO

Perhaps now enough time has passed for me to begin to recall our trip to Colorado to visit M & Ph, and to hit the slopes at Copper Mountain. Winter break. D & E are eager to learn to ski, and even more so to see where cousin Ph lives and hang with him and cool aunt M. So right away, night one, things turn ghastly. D gets a stomach flu that sets the tone for the whole trip. Here's D sleeping it off and talking to dad describing his condition, which improves enough by mid afternoon for us to check out of the hotel at Denver airport and head to Boulder. Where we check in to our new hotel and the flu continues.
We hang out with Ph and M in our room. Ph wants to eat donuts from Tastefully Toasted Donuts, mainly, which becomes a little routine, Ph blissfully gobbling chocolate dipped donuts while D, E, & I sit queasily in the background, exhaling.
When D was well enough to move, we went off to Copper. I highly recommend Copper for an easy, fun ski trip. We stayed in a great condo at the base of the mountain, really a short walk to all the action. Plus, shuttles take you around if you don't want to walk. You park your car and never need it again. There's lots of good food, and you can do all your own cooking.
So, our first activity was tubing, which was great and easy - a gentle introduction to the mountain for novices. But my ears were ringing and the altitude was kicking me in the head.

All was well in the morning, and skiing was really wonderful and came easily to both boys. Our instructor taught with enthusiasm, confidence, and patience and within 45 minutes of preliminaries we were on our first lift. We skiid all morning and into the afternoon. On our last run, E was struck by the flu that had knocked the wind out of D So that, sadly, was that for us and skiing. A brief but reasonably successful introduction, chased by a nasty virus.

I basically forced the boys to stand for a minute in front of the Colorado sign just for the sake of one little picture saying we'd been there. But they were both a wreck. We tried to find Buffalo Bill's grave, which was right on our way back to Boulder, but gave up when everyone was moaning and crampy.

Lord. So, last but not least, back in Boulder I checked us into a really gorgeous hotel -- the St. Julien -- since I figured we would be doing time there for the rest of our trip, boys sick as they were. There was a deep, deep tub for soaking, which I did quite a bit while hanging about in the room. And now Ph convinces me, even though he's been sick all day, that he's well enough to stay over with us and in fact his appetite is back and he's hungry as a bear and M gets him this stunningly gigantic sundae for dessert at dinner. And that night, it's Ph's turn to be sick and so ends our trip.

Birthday Party

A little while ago we celebrated A's birthday. We tried to put some restraints on the general hooplah, A being a modest woman with little desire for center stage. Nonetheless, there was cake. E and I spent the afternoon baking and filling his favorite cake pan, which is an elaborate as-seen-on-TV product that creates a domed shell of cake and a separate base, and then you fill the dome with some luscious creamy filling. E followed the recipe and directions expertly, and we kept the kitchen pretty tidy as we worked. As always, baking together with E was a great success. For D, we can talk forever if we're playing catch or shooting baskets. For E, it's kitchen time that draws out conversation. We had time to reminisce about successful past birthdays, like the one last summer when he turned 10 and took over the movie theater with friends, a tradition for us by now and always a crowd pleaser. The best present ever was at that birthday, he recalled -- a knight's helmet, an utterly wearable, displayable replica, heavy as anything made from thick, shiny metal.
But getting back to the A birthday, one notable highlight, aside from all the presents and laughs, was the kick-off of spring cocktail season, featuring festive pink daiquiris with bright blue cherries.

Sugar Pucker

mmm.

candy.

D Fact: Cadbury Cream Eggs are the most delicious food in the world.

E Fact: The juice in wax bottles seems carbonated.

This happened today

It's been happening for days. They're playing catch. D could play all afternoon, pitch > catch > pitch > catch endlessly and effortlessly. And E? He stays with the program for a while, and then somehow his glove ends up tossed on the roof of the garage. From there, after a moment or two of false lament, all activity shifts to retrieving the glove, every day in a new way. It's like when babies toss things down from the highchair just to see how many times they can get away with it -- how long you'll play along. So. Apparently with this game and participants the answer is ... forever! Today's solution? A 9' bamboo pole. Sure. Why not? Note the flat basketball in the little nook by the garage wall. That's where we keep our flat basketballs. In the little nook. Also scattered under fruit trees and in the gardens. And take a look at the little red splotch on the garage door. That's where D affixed the duct tape to cover the hole smashed in the door with his lacrosse ball. It was an accident. Ok, back to the glove retrieval exercise. See how D's getting frustrated? Can you feel that? Just let me do it. That's what he's saying.
Ultimately, success. And with success, the victory bamboo spear toss game, gloves not included. Oh, so D asked me to play catch with him while E launched a one man water fight, threatening repeatedly to blast us. So D was horrified by my aim, my form, my launch, and excruciatingly found it simpler to reach out with his bare hand to stop the balls as they loped by him than to bother with the glove hand. Sigh. The boys used to think I could throw just fine.

Why do all these magazines come to my mailbox? This isn't even all of them. This is a subset of the unrequested, unwanted magazines I receive for free. Not pictured that I can think of, a car magazine, Met Home (that's a great magazine and fun to look through but the point is I didn't ask for it). I always read some of Gourmet when it comes, and Real Simple turns out to be a magazine I like, but seriously, what is the deal?

Rodeo

Impulsively, I reserved two rooms at a hotel in Ellensburg so the boys and I can go RODEO again this summer, they were so utterly into it when we went last year, and in a way that reminded me of their reaction to the wax museum in San Francisco, like all their reserves of too-cool-for-that fell away and they threw themselves into the experience. Both of them. And I can see the campy similarity between the two experiences, in a way, but I can't say I could pick out the *next* experience that will register the same way for them. Most activities they really get into seem to rely on the coolness factor (or the kid coolness factor), make them more self aware and in control. The rodeo? The Wax Museum? they were fans. (The Wax museum at Fisherman's Wharf double headered with the Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum -- hey, they said, those were GOOD museums! -- We were actually headed for a trip to Alcatraz but it started pouring down rain and suddenly we needed to activate plan B, indoor games at a seriously outdoor tourist trap.) They were little kids. They were all about dressing up in cowboy hats (!) and being a part of the scene.
So now I'll get us tickets for the rodeo itself. Specifically, the X-treme Bullriding competition Saturday night which just defies description. 30 or so young cowboys line up to be thrown from the backs of bulls raging and kicking to release their balls from a harness. I mean, the whole thing lasts 0-8 seconds per *ride* and the spectacle repeats itself until all have run dazed from where they've been thrown, scrambling up the protective fencing that surrounds the ring to avoid the crushing hooves, distracting clowns running about to draw the bulls away from the broken riders.
It's funny, but we really just happened to go RoRodeo deo, and it worked out so well, a surreal departure from our day to day. This year, we'll go tubing on the Wenatchee river by day, at night.