the case of the missing slacks, and my kingdom for a camera

Our house is all a twitter.

Abuzz with energy!

A veritable hotbed of activity, as Mark struggles to find a pair of black dress pants.

The pants in question have not been spotted in the finc house, since July 2008, when they were yarded out for an evening; worn to Mark's sister's wedding.

God only knows where they are now, and he isn't telling.

It it that time of year, the time of year that we pull out the black suit, the suitcase, and the dress shoes, for work in New York.

Some how we managed to dodge the travel bullet last year.

There was only the teeniest amount of civilized west coast travel.

This year?

Not so much.

No, this year,
not only does Mark have to travel, his travel is overlapping with Rolf's travel, so that I am in a deep quandary over how I will get Maxwell to school at 8:45am, when I have to be at work at 7:00am.

At this moment, my life is feeling very much like a story problem.

a woman traveling west in a station wagon with a four year old must arrive at 7:00am, while a boy traveling north on foot with a giant backpack, must arrive at 8:45am

Lots of people struggle through with one measly additional adult, or none, in their house, and here I am, a glutton, up to my jowls, with help- with my usual two extra adults. I am sure I will come up with something. Co-housing really does have it's perks, though.

In the mean time, my attempt to be all healthful and outdoorsy really blew up in my face this evening.
After dinner I took the children out for a stroll, in the pitch blackness that is 6:00pm Portland November.

On we trotted, through the streets of "south Tabor", Freya singing in her loudest, most cheer filled voice, all devil-may-care, UNTIL, I was impaled by the sharpest rosebush in the history of the world.
My leg looks like something out of a horror film right now.
and me without a camera, dang.

Captain America

On the way to swimming lessons with Freyja...


"What language do they speak in Hawaii?"

English.

"English like Onkie speaks?" (she means with an accent)

No, just English. Hawaii is part of the US.

"Us? Us? Hawaii is part of us? (can spell, us, cat, yes...)

No, the US, The United States of America. America.

"Like Captain America?"

Yes, like that.

"Captain America lives in HAWAII?"

sigh,
yes, yes he does.

sometimes life drops a brick on your head, from a high place

The past two weeks have been harsh.

An emotional roller coaster.

Last week Maxwell went to ER and wound up in ICU for a night.

He is ok, but I was so shaken I couldn't talk, or tell anyone about it until now, or think about him being sick, it was just too much to bear.

I JUST. CAN'T. HANDLE. IT.

Weenie. I know

This week I was informed that my job, as it has been defined for the past six years is being eliminated, and that our management team is being restructured.

I will now be the financial manager. Which entails, payroll, customer billing, taxes and many other things that give me hives.

Those of you that know me, my perfectionism & my severe math anxiety, know how wrenching this news was for me.

I loved my job, and I was really proud of my work, this announcement came out of left field and I have not been able to process, or cope at all.

Life feels extremely unjust and shitty right now

I have not stopped crying...

yet.

Today, we attempted to get caught up on normalcy, and carved some pumpkins.
I felt like a rotten mom for waiting so long, because all the regular orange pumpkins at Trader Joes were sold out.
So we have two albino jack 'o lanterns and one tiny pumpkin from the school field trip, carved on our porch. I bought about a million bags of trick or treat candy to make up for my pumpkin faux pas.

Maxwell is going to China in March, with my mother. I have not taken him to get his passport, and my delinquency on taking care of this, may be another nail in my bad mother coffin.

Everyone cross your fingers and wish me a productive and uneventful next week.

Halloween- sorry no cute title available

I really like costumes, and dressing up.

If I had not married such a hip guy, I could totally see myself involved in something corny, like historical reenactments. Well, perhaps not, but I am not bothered by that sort of thing, where as Mark would be horrified.

Halloween was one of the best things in my childhood, since my mother really went all out to make good costumes for us each year.


The very best one being a gray, pinstriped, mouse suit.
She sewed the mousesuit from a pattern, which is a very big deal, since she was always had a very NO SEWING, NO COOKIE BAKING policy.

The most extraordinary part of the whole suit was the feet. My mother with her amazing Goodwill karma, managed to find a pair of those Japanese toe/sock shoeish things, menat to be worn with thongs, that were a sort of soft gray suede! So the mousesuit had it all including paws!

Needless to say, I have big shoes to fill in the costuming department.

When Maxwell was four he wanted to be a bat, not a scary vampire, black bat, noooo, but rather some kind of barn bat, that is native to North America, that eats fruit.
I deferred to my mom, who made a fur bodysuit & fur hood, with pleather wings.

Three years ago, I made him an excellent Dracula costume, included a homemade black cape, with red satin lining, which still get a lot of use around the house.

Last year Freyja was Little Red Ridinghood, which mean me making a red cape with a big hood, not problem, except she somehow got it into her head that she always has to be Little red, each year, from here on out... and there is no dissuading her from this belief.
Last night I went down into the basement and unearthed a full body crocodile suit (one of those plush zip front ones for little kids, that my stepfather bought Maxwell, when he was obsessed with Peter Pan), which she wore around all night.
I tried to convince her that she could be a crocodile for Halloween, if she felt like it, but no, she was sticking to her guns.
My fear is that it will be pouring rain and the croc would provide much needed warmth.

Maxwell has decided to be Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.

Having never seen the movie, nor read the books, I was hard pressed to have a vision for this character, but I think we have something passable pulled together, with a big, black hooded cape, a brown rustic looking tunic, a big wide leather belt and a sword.

I will be a witch as usual.

speaking of big guns!

We are watching "generation Kill", another fine HBO product.

This show is about a troupe (platoon?) of marines invading Iraq. It is well done, thought provoking, irreverent and bawdy.

Perfect for me.

The actor that played the junkie, drug dealing son of the longshoreman union boss, from "the wire" plays one of the protagonists, and I love his character, a wise cracking, foul mouthed, whiskey tango (that stands for white trash, y'all) kid.

I loved the actor in the other part, with his comic/tragic vibe and pet duck and I love him even more in this, what can I say? I am a sucker for skinny wiseacres. His character cracks me up.
There is also the prerequisite blood thirsty, gun freak, a bad lieutenant that you are just waiting for someone to frag and a host of other predictable fellows, but all done very well There is an actor that I liked from OZ, that plays a Rolling Stone reporter that is embedded with the guys. He is also really excellently cast.

There are tons of great performances in this show, really worth a rental.

Don't watch it if you are sensitive to violence.

It is about war after all and violent.

I love netflicks so much!

pigging out

So I am obsessed with getting the H1N1 vaccine, but there is none to be had in the Portland metro area, so there you go.
I spend my days with snot covered children coughing in my face, so I am not feeling super empowered by my EmergenceC vitamin beverage. I need the big guns.

I think it is absurd that there is a vaccine shortage. All these out of work people? Can't we put them to work making flu vaccine? Huh? geez.

Why, YES, I am a total dumbass

So my dear friend Lily pointed out that I might have put TWO CD's into the player and that the other one, the missing one could be stuck in there, and by cracky she was right.

I am sooo not cut out for high tech.

or even middle tech. I totally suck.

no credit,

The spring of 1987 I went to a Beltane celebration at the home of a Wiccan witch.

Now, that might not seem that odd, but at the time it was very daring and a little scary.

I was dating a very sweet fellow that lived with his mother, who was very eccentric.

Looking back on things, I imagine that she was less eccentric and I was more provincial than I thought at the time, but for me, at 19, she was a bit of a kook, but i digress...

Let me set the scene.

Despite being very open minded and progressive, I come from a very conservative family, and in my heart of hearts I am a fairly square person, in many respects.

So imagine me dating this long haired, fey guy, with a super, kooky mother, attending college and meeting this Wiccan witch in a women's studies class.

I thought I was really out there.

It was certainly a time for change in my life, and some of my fondest memories are of that time, but once again I am getting off course.

I am in a women's literature class, and am invited to a Beltane celebration at the home of this witch.

My boyfriend had to work, so I invited his mother, in a misguided effort make her like me a bit more, since she liked me very, very little, due to the fact that I would clean her house, each time I visited, which she found declasse.

I think she also had some issue with blonds or perhaps with women that weren't ugly, austere and severe, but that part was sort of unclear, since she loved all things Scandinavian.

I was then, and continue to be very uncomfortable with people not liking me, so this was a fairly big deal.

She hated all traditional things, all things domestic and mostly she loved to revel in her bohemianness, read Ibsen plays, complain about her elderly mother who supported her and her three grown up children (grandma loved me- ha!), flip through Gardener's Art through the ages, drink sherry, plot ways to bust her mentally ill boyfriend out of the state hospital, where he was committed for thinking he was from Venus (no, really, he thought he was from Venus when medicated, and former CIA, when less medicated).

So, I thought this whole Beltane thing would score me major street cred, so I invited her.

Man, was she ever excited, just as I had hoped!

So off we went, into the night, to what at the time felt like the end of the world, but I realize now, was actually pretty close to where I live now.

Imagine our disappointment, when the witches house turned out the be a sort of tacky subdivision job, and the party was just a sort of regular old party, except for a few more lesbian couples than I was used to seeing.

No one howled at the moon.

No one danced naked.

The only saving grace was this fantastic dip served in a hollowed out loaf of bread.

It was so good, that for the next few years I made it for every special occasion, and even brought it to my dad's house, where my step mother asked for the recipe.

Not being really big on recipes, I had no good answer so I wrote down what I did, and guesstimated on the amounts, gave it a corny name, and VIOLA! Everyone is delighted.

Over the years I have encountered a million and one versions of this dip- my friend Dom used to make it cold with spinach and water chestnuts and sour cream.

I like to bake it with bay shrimp and artichoke hearts, garlic and spinach, and sometimes crab.

So imagine my amusement when my dad calls me up last week and tells me my niece is making Shepard's bread, which has become a sort of heirloom recipe in there family.

not quit autumnal

The weather continues to be hot.

I am starting to take it personally!

Maxwell had his first new acting class today, so Miss F & I headed over to Laurelhurst Park
for some playground action and some duck feeding.
I know, I know, you are not supposed to feed the ducks, but they LIKE IT!

That is the extent of the Saturday activity around here.

Last evening we did have something TOTALLY WEIRD happen to us, though.

I took the kids to a free concert at Music Millennium (Bela Fleck), and on the way there we were listening to a homemade CD of Cat Stevens. We were running a late, so when we pulled up, I just turned off the engine and left the CD in the player, with the cover, on the seat next to me.

Off we go to the concert, which was packed and hot, and not very fun.
Freyja demanded that I hold her the entire time, and some cranky old hippie shoved Maxwell (I KNOW! Can you believe some hag would shove a little boy, to get a better view for herself? SHOCKING!). So after 20 minutes or so we decide to leave.
We get back into the car and take off. The radio was turned OFF, which was weird, so I turned it back on, and Lucinda Williams comes on. For a minute I thought that perhaps, my brother burned that song onto the end of the CD when he made me the Cat Stevens, but then I ejected it, and saw that it was a commercial CD, not the homemade one that we had left in the player.
WEIRD.
So naturally I pull over because I suspect that the car was broken into.

Nothing was taken EXCEPT the homemade CD!
When I got home Mark searched the entire car and it was no place to be found.
The whole thing was just weird as hell, and I really don't cope with weird very well, but in addition to the missing CD, we started out morning on Friday with a flat tire, that turned out to have been slashed, all the way through. So all and all it was a day of weirdness for my car, and for me, and I hope that nothing else like that will happen for a long time. The blog keeps eating this post, so excuse the lack of flair in the writing, I am just trying to get it published before it evaporates again!