now with bow tie

After Max's frightening visit to the hospital in April, I felt compelled to flee the state with kids in tow.  Don't ask me for details of the solo-parenting flights to Salt Lake (a frightening blur), but the memories I'm left with are these---

A month of reveling in familial goodness
A month of my parents mugging on Alice and Max
A month of playing with cousins and visiting with our nearest and dear
A month of checking in with our dear Winston, checking on his amazing recovery
A month of fun and backyard play

And also this, Max's blessing day, with every single one of my siblings in attendance.  All of the cousins except for one (we greatly missed Taylor).

I was the perfect reason for Max to don infant formal wear.  He was very dapper.

It felt like we were swimming in an ocean of love.  We can't thank mom and dad enough for opening their home to us.  And the hugest of thanks to Kimmie, Steve, Curtis and their families for everything. 

I do so love this group of crazy people.

a brief note of explanation

I am interrupting this week of 'Ber Love for an underlining note about my displeasure with late July/August.

It started when we were on the Epic Summer Trek through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado.  First there was the obvious discomfort from all that traveling: the constant pressing drag of the unpack / sleep / repack / drive long tedious distances in a car with a three-year-old who has developed the fine art of being entertained by something for exactly three minutes before insisting for sumfing else, sumfing else please.  On top of this hot mess was the day leading up to leaving for the trip, which should have been full of laundry and packing.  Instead, there was an emergency run to Alice's doctor and the fantastically-timed diagnosis of walking pneumonia (both lungs, y'all).  When the doc handed me the prescriptions for the nebulizer treatment and the antibiotic, I should have noticed her shaking hand.  Shaking because when I got those prescriptions filled, our bill was in the TRIPLE DIGITS.  After insurance.  I am convinced, to this day, that that antibiotic was made with melted gold and the nebulizer could only have been manufactured using bits of ACTUAL DIAMONDS, because seriously---DUDE.

By the time we got to my parents' place we were happy to sort of melt into the woodwork.  But that was not to be, because we got a call from Amanda who had bad news.  She and her six-year-old Zander were looking in on the cats while we were gone, and because of all the time we'd spent doing a doctor visit and having prescriptions filled (paid by SIGNING OVER OUR HOUSE)--- we hadn't had a chance to give Amanda an actual key.  To the house.  But not to worry!  Of course!  Brilliant Whimsy just said HERE IS THE GARAGE DOOR CODE!  YOU CAN GET IN SO EASILY!  NO KEY NEEDED!  

Amanda's phone call was along the lines of, Um--- I can't get into your house.  I've tried the garage code about five times and it doesn't seem to be working.

And of course, no one has a key to our house.  Not a soul.

There was some discussion of overnighting a garage door opener to Amanda, or even the key on Chip's key ring.  That option was denied because it was Friday night and nothing was open, and even in the best of circumstances it would have been Monday before she'd get the package - leaving the cats without water and food refilled in six days.  

We ended up calling a locksmith, who met Amanda at the house Saturday morning and then proceeded to explain that he would be charging us over $300 to drill through our locks and get inside.

Um.

Chip talked him down to half that and then we just hung up the phone and gulped.

Meanwhile, Amanda watched him drill through our deadbolt, rendering it unusable.  She made plans to have her husband come over later to install a new deadbolt.  You know, so no one else could get inside the house.

This is a really long story to illustrate something along the lines of how tired we were of those kinds of surprises.  But there were several more in store.

Ten minutes inside Arches National Park in Moab, Utah, dear Alice Bean threw up all over the backseat of the car.  I didn't know it could come out of a person's nose like that.  That one ended in a four-hour detour of washing every article of clothing, fabric, and upholstery in our hotel parking lot.

There was the time that I got sick, also in Moab--- my body had the good taste to wait until very late at night, when Alice was already asleep in our bathroom, of all places.  I had the pleasure of attempting to deal with my situation a little more discreetly.  Inside the public hotel bathroom, downstairs.  AWESOME.

Then there was the small matter of Chip getting laid off when we were only one day from returning home.

A week later, our house presented us with a belated welcome home present: a broken hot water heater.  Replacing it, the only option.  The plumber quoted us $1,300.  Luckily, our dear friends Kate and Abram came through (yet again) with the far cheaper solution of doing it ourselves--- we bought the water heater, and Abram and Chip spent that Saturday installing it.  We were only out hot water for about 36 hours, which left me feeling immensely grateful for Modern Conveniences and Very Good Friends.

Since then, Chip has found a new job and things have normalized a little--- but we have had to buy a new lawn motor, replace a light fixture, install new shelves in Alice's room, and buy a replacement laptop for Chip.

Then, last night we got locked out of our house.  Not because of a broken garage door code - but because of a broken door knob, the one leading from the inside of the garage to the house.  Try as we might, we couldn't get it unstuck.  We finally got back inside thanks to some masterful window climbing by yours truly (helped by Chip's sturdy back).  

Later, standing in line at Home Depot as we purchased a new door knob fixture thingie (technical term), Chip rolled his eyes as I reminded him that August hadn't killed us.

Yet.



Truth is, somewhere inside all this misery is humor.  I think it's pretty funny, how everything sort of just happens at once like that.  At least in my life, for some reason, the misery is always dumped together in one moldy heap.  I think it's that way because it forces me to keep moving through it, to never stop and fully digest one part of it.  If I hold on to a single bad thing for too long, it will poison me from the inside out.  But the Revolving Door of Misery has this Zen gist to it--- that things come and go, ebb and flow, even in darkness.  August didn't kill me.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that the cooling days of September have something really great in store.
 

    

and then you get up in the morning

The numbers run like this:

Twenty-three days.

Twenty-two nights.
Eight hotels.
Five states.
Two time zones.
Several dozen tanks of gas.
More fast food than a person should ever consume.
A pair of very happy grandparents.
One overjoyed Alice.
One brand new nephew.
Several family dinners.
One porch-viewed lightening storm.
A graveside visited and cried over.
Ashes scattered over one lazy curve of the Colorado river.
More hours than were meant to be counted in a car.
Precious handfuls of time spent with the parents.



How many memories were collected in the pages of my mind to be pored over when the sun is not so bright, when time has spent itself, when I am closeted away in the dark winter?



We are home, and so happy to be here. But just one day before reaching our dusty porch, in one last night spent away from familiar bed and roof, one last surprise waiting for us: dear Chip was laid off, part of a corporate restructuring of which Chip wasn't the only casualty--- there are a lot of fancy words used to describe it, words that have become far too familiar for so many of us of late.



But new challenges await us, this is something I know. We have each other, and we have faith. There is beauty to be found even in these pavement cracks. I've laid low for this many days, collecting my thoughts and coming to a place where I am able to share these words with you. In the meantime, life beckons. The days roll on. Alice is growing and wanting more of me to stretch her mind and lengthen the reach of her understanding. She reminds me that even when the daily foundation of my life seems destined to quake - even when I feel like the planet should stop spinning for an hour while I try to catch my breath - even when everything is changing and I can't hold on to a sliding bit of it---- the days still shift and turn, the sun goes down, night noises descend on the house and sleep--whatever small bit of it--comes. And then you get up in the morning.

everything that's lost will be found again

I've been losing things. My phone, multiple times. My handbag. Bottles of water around the house. I've managed to lose things that aren't even mine: Chip's phone, Alice's shoes, pieces of paper that I had no business relocating in the first place.

Chip tells me it's about patience, that these things aren't actually lost, just moved. He says I need to have the patience to retrace steps and remember more clearly where I put things. A suggestion to replace my current method of flailing around in a twirling dither on maniacal repeat: WHERE'S MY PHONE? WHERE'S MY PHONE? WHERE'S MY PHONE?

What's even harder is losing things in someone else's house, which is exactly what I've been doing since we're currently at my parents' house, Chez Winston---- mom and dad are making it perfectly acceptable to sigh every 15 minutes that I can't find that thing, that thing I just had 3 seconds ago. They tell me I'm joining the aged ranks. Maybe they're right, and maybe it's something else: a preoccupation with the things around me, giving meaning to who and what and where I am. I see it in Alice, how she gathers stuff around her - bits of ephemera that are just that: wings and fluff and bits of plastic, stuffed into handbags and backpacks and tiny boxes that fit into the palm of her hand. She seems incomplete unless she's carting around a knapsack full to the brim.

I watch her stop in the middle of the living room, contemplating mom's measuring spoons. She stuffs them into her pink backpack before moving on two yards to the left to pick up a tiny Altoid tin, a gift from Grampy. If I ask her why these things are important, she has no vocabulary to say these treasured wonders intrigue her into weighted meaning. She simply tells me that she wants them, wants them close.

If I let her, she'd sleep with empty packets of gum, red rubber balls, small tubs of lip balm. Instead, she places everything on a small table before bathtime, kissing each thing goodnight.

Being here with my parents creates an ache in me that can't be soothed, an ache of loneliness for the insubstantial lost things like holding Winson's hand while crossing the street or sitting on the countertop watching mom make chocolate chip cookies or the smell of Winston's workshop at the house on Raymond Avenue. It's the stabbing sense of the loss of my childhood, something that can't be rescued from beneath a couch cushion.

Instead, I watch them perform everyday tasks and memorize the turn of their heads, the angle of their hands in the sunlight. I watch mom water the backyard. I listen to Winston as he tells me about his childhood home. And I do my best to remember every inconsequential thing as they love Alice in the best ways they know how. Dad hands her some tiny Altoid boxes, and mom brings her cottonballs to put inside them. She brings these things to me, her eyes shining, "Treasures, mommy! Look at the treasures!"

And I answer her quietly, Yes. Exactly that.

the child you allow strangers to push around on a hotel luggage cart

Meet Alice.

I've been trying to teach her the name of the city we live in, a precursor to teaching her our address. After saying and repeating the correct answer about seventeen times on Monday I asked her, "Hey Alice, what city do we live in?"--- to which she responded,
"PANCAKE!"

She's more than a ham. She's the kind of child strangers want to have complete conversations with. We're in Portland with Chip this week, and yesterday had Alice and I riding the elevator to head down to the pool. On the journey down, we met Allison, a police officer staying at the hotel for some kind of conference. She and Alice discussed their similar names, the trials and tribulations of being three years old, and hair ribbons.

Later on, Chip asked me exactly how it came to be that he was sitting in the hotel lobby on a conference call when he looked up to see a perfect stranger pushing Alice around the lobby on a luggage cart--- a smiling and laughing Alice being pushed around the lobby on a luggage cart by an ecstatic smiling and laughing Alison, followed closely behind by me.

My answer was this:
Because Alice is the kind of child strangers want to push around on a hotel luggage cart.

And I guess I'm the kind of parent that lets it happen.

polandroid to the rescue

.

Yesterday in pictures, driving to Eastern Washington with Chip for a brief visit to Lake Chelan.

Apple orchards and rolling green hills.

A hotel right on the lake.

We've been promised 65+ degree days.

I'm thinking we're in for a nice time.

I'll let you be the judge.

black friday assault: the full story

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The Players:

The Plan:

Set the day before, after scouring the ads, making multiple lists, and setting priorities. A multi-prong approach was deemed most effective, since both Walmart and Shopko were opening at the exact same time. Striker would head up the solo Team Delta at Walmart. Lucky Lynda and MLB would doubleteam Shopko. Wary Winston would be responsible for homebase monitoring of the Sleeper Cell. Alarm clocks set and watches synchronized for 3:00am, out the door at 3:30.

The Approach:

Striker wore jeans, a t-shirt, his polar fleece, and called it good. Of course he'd be waiting for the electronics section of Walmart to open INSIDE THE STORE.

Mother Love Bone and Lucky Lynda, on the other hand, wore several layers of long underwear, gloves, fleece-lined jeans, wool sweaters, and down jackets. There was talk of heated hand warmers, but none were to be found at 3:30 in the morning. MLB also sported a jaunty hat.

The jacket belonged to Winston and was several sizes too big.

First Wave:

Lucky and MLB dispatched to Shopko while Striker headed out to the northern wilds of Walmart. From the field there were reports of people wearing several layers of jackets, wrapped in wool blankets as they clutched steaming cups of hot cocoa.

Mother Love Bone waited in line while Lucky took the first shift inside the car. MLB tried to text Striker but her fingers froze in the -6 temperature.

Attempting to keep her brain warm, Mother Love Bone composed possible post titles based on what she was witnessing on the pre-dawn frozen tundra. Biggest contenders were: The Largest Hat I've Ever Seen, Is There Really a Baby Under Those Blankets, No Wait You're Taking a Baby Shopping at 3am for Black Friday, and Seriously What Are You Going To Do With That Baby When People Start Stampeding.

Mother Love Bone wondered if it was possible to ever feel her calves again. She felt her eyelids stick to her bottom eyelashes a couple of times.

Meanwhile Striker took off his fleece because he was feeling a little toasty inside Walmart. And then someone came by and gave him FREE DONUTS.

Countdown to Greatness:

After warming in the car for a bit, MLB joined Lucky Lynda in line. Lucky had lived up to her name and shopping prowess, and had befriended a few people ahead of her, thus enabling Lucky and MLB to move a bit closer to the door.

It was decided that MLB would head directly to electronics to pick up their number one shopping priority, a dual screen DVD player for the car. A stellar deal and also a life-changer for long car rides. Lynda would be heading straight back through the store to the toy section. Her aim wasn't anything specific, though a couple of items seemed like good deals. She and MLB would meet up again, luck willing, after acquiring their purchases.

In the Doors:

The rush! The madness! The pushing!

This is the only photo MLB was able to capture. It pretty much explains everything.

And Then:

Mother Love Bone ducked, weaved, bobbed, maneauvered, tried to run, and ultimately was unable to find the DVD player. They sold out in 1 minute. Defeated, she made her way back to Lucky.

Lucky's response to MLB's sad news: Let me see what I can do. Wait here, I'll be right back.

And so she waited.

And waited. Watching women run by with carts piled high with baby dolls and video cameras.

Her phone rang a few minutes later. Lynda on the line, "Where are you?"

When they met up again, Lynda handed Mother Love Bone a box. THE DVD PLAYER. Mother Love Bone's response, "HOW THE HECK DID YOU FIND THIS? YOU REALLY ARE SO LUCKY!"

Lynda explained that she just asked the dude behind the counter, if they had any more, and he just pulled this one from behind the counter. The last one. Someone must've put it back. She also held several digital music/video players saying, "Everyone was just grabbing these, so I thought I should too."

This is when Mother Love Bone hugged Lucky Lynda.

The rest of stop number one was a blur of line waiting (snaking through eight or nine aisles in the store). It was during this time that MLB grabbed the following incidental items: toothpaste, eucalyptus for Sleeper Cell's warm mist humidifier, and a pack of fruit mentos.

Piles and Piles:

The next stop was Joann Fabric, a few minutes after their initial opening. MLB's intended target was some flannel for the screaming deal of $1.29 a yard, and buttons, which were buy-one-get-one-free with an additional 20% off the top. Neither she nor Lucky Lynda were prepared for what they saw: wall to wall people.

People everywhere. In the aisles and in the walkway and snaking in a line towards the registers. And in every person's hands: fabric. Bolts of fabric towering high overhead, piled teetering in shopping carts. Tied to small floor-level luggage racks. Fabric fabric fabric. The line to have fabric cut was several hours long. Mother Love Bone told Lucky, "Let's just come back later. Let's get these buttons now, but come back a little later for the fabric. This is insane.

ONward:

After Joann's it was Old Navy. After Old Navy it was JC Penny.

Mother Love Bone ate the tube of fruit Mentos for breakfast. She wandered through the mall while Lucky shopped at Penny's.

MLB briefly pondered standing in this line at Bath and Body Works for buy 3, get 3 free.

Then she thought better of it.

Home Again:

And that is how they found themselves back at the house before 9am: eating cinnamon rolls and comparing receipts.

They offered Striker no sympathy when he said he'd been really bored and tired at Walmart, though he did successfully acquire his intended electronic purchase. Which, incidentally, they returned a day later after rethinking its value and necessity. So it goes with the Black Friday Assault Force: you win some and you return some and sometimes you eat free donuts.

But for the sake of this narrative, after eating breakfast, MLB and Lucky Lynda went out again.

Because they are crazy.

Really:

Which is how they came to be back at Joann's, marveling that the fabric cutting line was even longer than before. And when Mother Love Bone spied this in an aisle, she decided that $1.29 flannel just isn't worth it.

(In case you need translating: that is two full grown MEN sound asleep on the floor at Joann's. SOUND ASLEEP.

Then Mother Love Bone and Lucky Lynda hung up their shopping shoes for another year and went back home.

first snow

.

(I couldn't just tell one story. Of course I couldn't just tell one story. So you're getting TWO. Second place today, first place tomorrow--- aren't you lucky?)

Childhood is so full of firsts, they pile up like leaves--- drifting underfoot, the colors of each lost in the jumble.

And then one first is pulled into focus, brought close to the face for careful examination.

How does it smell?

That first real touch of snow, a snow you can remember in your teeming nearly-three-year-old brain.

How does it feel?

The cold of it shocking your soft skin. There's a fresh zing of ice catching on your cheeks as I watch you run face-first into the flurries of white.

How does it taste?

Open your mouth, just like this. Catch the snowflakes on your tongue. Delicious.

This is how you do it: develop a taste for snow. It grows on you throughout the day, warm snug inside the house, watching the drifts gather on the porch steps. Until you decide you have to taste it again, bundled in fleece, hair in braids. Welcome to a winter tradition, little one.

a GAME for the tuesday-after-thanksgiving doldrums

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Well.

I come to you from the great city of Boise, Idaho--- and if I had stayed longer than a single evening, I would most definitely (and finally) meet up with Midnight Rambler and coo over her delightful city (because Boise is delightful, usually). But today it stands between me and my home. A home I want to be in by clicking my heels three times quick and POOF. Alas and alack, my ruby slippers are somewhere between Utah and Washington and so we face the slog with a Jeep full of luggage and a travel-weary husband and fruit snack flinging 2-year-old.

I had the very best of intentions to bring you the Full! In-Color! Excitement-Beyond-Measure! Black Friday detail post, but I left my power cord in the car. So before the laptop dies I propose a GAME.

I am going to post pictures from the past several days and YOU dear reader, get to vote on which picture should be detailed in story form here at The Creamery on Thursday. I promise that each picture holds behind it a veritable CORNUCOPIA of dish--- be it in the form of hilarity, sweetness, sauciness or otherwise.

Without further delay, shall it be:

#1:

#2:

#3:

#4:

#5:

(Each comment counts as a single vote - and because I'm feeling generous you may vote as many times as you want. That means that if Alicia decides to come in here six times to vote for her favorite, she darn well can. Voting will be open until 12:00pm Pacific on Wednesday.)

what i know

.


I know that I'm not alone in this, the comparing of myself to others. I know that because you've told me, and also because I do believe it is a hallmark of humanity --mostly female humanity-- but then again maybe the male set has their own version of comparison.

Anyway.

Yesterday afternoon found me in my parents' living room. (We sort of secretly commenced the Tri-State Drive of Crazy the other day and tucked ourselves in to my parents' place in Utah for the Thanksgiving Holiday. This trip was somewhat uneventful, in our repertoire of Tripping History, so it remained unblogged. Which wasn't so much a problem in itself except that now you have me writing a strange parenthetical that is far too long and far too run-on to be considered Good Writing. But now you know: Whimsy is blogging from the Great Land of Utah for the weekish -and change-. End parenthetical.)

So yesterday? I was sitting in my parents' living room while Bean amused herself by pretending that Chip's body was a jungle gym. Chip was trying to do some work on his computer while Bean rolled over his back again and again. The snow that had been falling off and on since Saturday night had gathering like white icing across the foliage. I was taking brief turns to watch Chip and Bean and then to read up on some of my favorite blogs (read: compare, compare, think, compare, laugh, compare). It made me tired to compare like that, to wonder how I might craft my writing to be more effortless, to pack more meaning in to short paragraphs (impossible), to encourage you to feel good - to share - to teach me how to be braver and stronger and more patient and above all to not be afraid to say This Is Who I Am.

But it was that last one that brought me up short. Because there are things I know for sure, and one of them is this: I may not always be eloquent, I may not say it using the right words every time, but I am not afraid to say that this is who I am. My voice may waver, shaking in the delivery, and I might even cry while I say it, but the words are here to read--- no matter who you are or how you decide to translate them--- the words are here. Sometimes I am grumpy. Sometimes I am short of patience. Sometimes I have too much to say. Sometimes I fumble for any words at all. But the words are here. I will not erase them or change them even if I look back and feel twinges of grief for things I've said before. They tell the story of who I was in that moment, even if it's terrible to behold.

I may not know a lot of things, but I know that I have tried, to the best of my ability, to be true to you dear reader. And that's comforting, even in the midst of comparison shopping for a better self.

Tell me something you know.

el paso

.



This is El Paso at daybreak.

It is blue. Blue of midnight and distant mountains. Bruised blue, purple blue, inky blue that is almost black. Shapes of buildings against a blueberry syrup sky. That's what you'd say if someone asked you to describe it: shapes, shapes everywhere. There's the distinct feeling of dimension in the landscape even when you can't see it: the stretch of desert and its rolling bare hills reaching far beyond the city. El Paso reminds you of a dark garden neglected: shoots of buildings well past their prime, bolting into the sky, still dusted with stars.

You search for a car in the dark, hoping to find it quickly. And when you do, you lift a sleepy child into the waiting seat; tell her to go back to sleep--- we'll be driving for a long while.

Directions memorized and repeated in your head--- this is how you find the interstate, fingers holding tight to the steering wheel. It's this rolling into the open road that gives you a glimpse of the darkening line of the western horizon. At sunrise you are riding out of the city, heading west, and north.

Passing the border of Mexico--- how could you have forgotten this strange detail of El Paso?--- where the dirty trickle of the Rio Grande is cradled by a concrete bed, where you can peer off this side of the highway to see the rolling slopes of Juarez. At first glance in the pre-dawn gloom it's like fairy lights dancing off in the distance. The yellow glow of them is enchanting, even dear. But as your eyes adjust you see the cracker-box houses, tiny and square, sprinkled higgledy-piggledy on the hills. They are a patchwork of corrugated steel and cardboard, crumbling cinder block. If you could stop the car and throw a stone, you might hit a small bit of the broken glass windows or tap the metal siding causing the sleepy family inside to come tumbling out to welcome the light.

The light is pink. It is pink dusted everywhere, everything, from the tops of your knuckles where they first rays of morning sun are reaching into the car, to the balding hill tops of scrub brush and Texas desert sand. Pink and salmon, nearly orange with a popsicle blush. There is music that should accompany such a sunrise, music ethereal and huge - music to explain this foreign place that is both beautiful and stark with pain. You'd like to take your mind off the road, close your eyes to see if the pink will turn your eyelids orange, or red. You'd like to wander the distant horizon to test if the intensity of this color will warm your bones that feel so cold. You'd like to imagine yourself glowing gold in this, what must be the light of heaven.

But there are more vistas to pass, more miles to go, and a funeral at the end of the road.

ghost towns

They're called living ghost towns - the bits of civilization once bustling with people: miners and merchants and settlers and soldiers. Now the streets are empty, choked with thick tumbleweeds and scrub brush. Buildings fold in on themselves, their foundations crumbling.

It's hard to imagine anyone living out here, but they did--- they founded schools and stores, they lived out the drama of their lives under the New Mexico sun. And they still do--- those few brave souls who live in houses built 130 years ago. They plant gardens. They attend church. They drive two hours to Walmart.

It's quiet here. The kind of quiet that seeps into your bones--- has you slowing your pace, bending down to pick up colorful stones. You can hear someone whisper from several feet away. I know this because we tried it: Chip standing beneath a cottonwood tree, its leaves burning yellow in the fall sunlight. I walked down the road as he talked to me in a low voice. It was uncanny how clear our voices were in the whispered quiet.

And it was uncanny how clear our thinking, too, as we wandered the ruins. I wondered over a town of people once upon a time: a population rising into the thousands now gone. How families were made here and grew into the generations.

And in the quiet, I felt each of us surrounded by ghosts. The ghosts that accompanied me weren't those of coyboys and gunslingers from the old west, or grizzled miners eeking out a living under the New Mexico sun. They were the memory remnants of people gone in my lifetime: my father-in-law, my grandparents, Aunt Chris, my friend Carol, Uncle Reed, Jackie and Ralston, my birth mother, Buddy. I felt them trailing after me in the rising desert wind.

I wondered over the rise and fall of a town, and the rise and fall of the lives surrounding mine. Their ranks are growing with every moment that passes. My own personal ghost town.

Where do you go to find quiet?

On a sunny afternoon in New Mexico, I found it in a ghost town. And though there was nothing but empty desert, beautiful and stark rolling hills around us for miles, we weren't alone. We never are.