A little bit ironic, don't ya think?

So I got my teeth cleaned this week for the first time in 3 yrs. Hey, don't judge. Grad school loans don't include dental coverage. As with most appointments of this kind, you kind-of prepare. Like when you style your hair before getting it cut or clean your house before the cleaning lady comes. So I flossed my teeth the night before, made them bleed and super sore the next morning since I obviously haven't been flossing regularly. Perfect condition for my exam. An exam where they take sharp needle-like instruments and poke them into your gums around every tooth five times to measure how recessed they are and how much blood comes out so they can tell you how close you are to getting gingivitis, gum disease and losing all your teeth. Honestly, when in the pre-exam interview I said I had a high tolerance level for pain, I was thinking of giving birth and stuff. You know they give you a local anesthetic for stitching you up after giving birth. So you feel one needle, not 60! Don't think I blame the hygienist, I think she did a good job. I blamed myself the whole time for not flossing regularly AND for flossing just that once the night before- such a mistake. The cleaning was state of the art with a high powered squirt of water that blasted the plaque away and cleaned under my gums. I laid there wishing I were just giving birth again.
Another irony this week. The Olympics. Like a lot of Americans, we have been staying up late to watch sports events we feel are important enough to miss sleep for. The result is being so tired the next day, the last thing I want to do is exercise. It's been an Olympic effort just to get through the day with the girls. When you watch these athletes, there is always a little pang of "wow, they are so fit, I wish I were in better shape" and then you feel like a slug the whole next day on account of watching them! (Anyone know why they broadcast so late? It's from 9pm to 1am here!) And isn't it ironic that I would skip out early on church volleyball to come home, sit on my can and watch the women's gold medal beach volleyball match?

Animal tendencies

We had a great time last week when my mom came for an impromptu visit. We visited Pike Place, Golden Gardens beach and Discovery Park. She had to endure our "heat wave" while she was here, but did a great job and kept the girls happy and tried to put me out of work with all her helping around the house. One day we were at a tiny park nearby when she noticed a large embankment of blackberries across the street. She immediately took the girl's sand castle bucket and loaded it up. The next night we sent Stephen over and he came back with almost a gallon of blackberries. They are some of the sweetest I have ever tasted.
Now I know where I got my "black bear" tendencies from. Turns out my dad is even worse than my mom, he can't pass by a wild bush without stopping and picking. When I was 6 months pregnant with Odessa, Stephen and I took a 10 day trip camping along the Oregon Coast in August. There were blackberries everywhere and I could never walk anywhere without stopping to pick. Even at historical sites and forts, I was picking berries rather than looking at the sights. Stephen nicknamed me his "little black bear". I always knew that I got my hoarding-food-tendencies from my mom. I feel like a squirrel sometimes. Now I feel part squirrel, part bear. Thanks to mom and Stephen, we made blackberry coffee cake, blackberry pie and a batch of jam while my mom was here. Although it wasn't the best weather to be heating up the house with all the baking, it was worth it in the end. And now I have freezer jam to last all year. Stephen and I decided we could eat most anything if it had that jam on it. Maybe if Stephen can pick some more, I can make jam for my friends for Christmas gifts!
She also cut Odessa's hair. I still have to shape it a little because of all the calicks Stephen bestowed on her, but it looks so much better. Thanks mom for everything!

Odessa-isms

Thanks to Kristyn for the inspiration behind this post. All toddlers say cute things. Although it's usually a lot more funny to parents and grandparents than anyone else, here we post for all to read and hope that some will make you laugh.

This picture is her being a dinosaur.


this is word for word:
Odessa had her toy phone to her ear, came up to Stephen and I (who were conversing) and said
"Shhhhh, I'm on the phone!" in a whisper.
Then, into the phone- "Oh, that's great." pause . . . " Sure, how're you doin'?" . . pause. . ." Are you kidding? No, don't worry about that".

On the playground as I attempted the swinging platform thingeys, she caught me totally off guard when I heard her call across the playground: "Try it Mommy, you can do it. C'mom Mommy!"
and when I had completed "Good job Mommy!"

A sweet moment: I was putting Ada down for a nap, had her laying across my lap and asked her if she wanted me to sing her a song. Odessa came into the room, and said "I wanna sing with you". Ada watched her, mesmerized, as Odessa sang along to "Hush Little Baby", every verse. It was so sweet in her baby voice, looking into Ada's face. She has never sung with me before. I didn't know she was listening so well all those times we sang it to her.

Odessa gets 2 treats for going potty in the toilet. Sometimes when I get her treats, I help myself to one for going potty all day myself : ). One day as I was pulling up Odessa's shorts after going to get her treats (I hadn't given them to her yet), she caught a whiff of my breath and said in a disbelieving tone - "Hey! you're eating MY treats!"

Coming up to me, after she had gotten down from the dinner table, glancing at my empty plate: "Good job Mommy, eating your dinner all gone!"

We tried to persuade her to eat some raw spinach, she looked at the forkful with disdain and said "No, it's like . . . leaves!"

Trying to load a Sesame Street game for her on the computer:
"Try harder, you can do it!"
still loading . . .
"Try harder!"
"Odessa, I'm doing it as fast as I can."
pause . . . thinking
"No, I'm the rabbit and you're the tortoise". (it took me a moment to understand her Aesop Fable application)

We practice new words with Odessa a lot. She will try and copy our words, so we repeat them for her. Turning the tables on Dad at the park:
"Bumblebees are called flies. Say it. FLIES."
She has continued to do this with us. "Ada is asleep. Say it. ASLEEP."

At the breakfast table, the window is open.
Odessa: "what's that noise?"
Me: "what noise?"
Odessa: "Uh huh."
a moment later
Odessa: "What's that noise?"
Me: "cars?"
Odessa: "no"
a moment later
Odessa: "What's that noise?"
Me: "I don't know."
Odessa: "Hmmmm" (cupping her hand to her ear very dramatically) "sounds like a rooster".
"I have a cow and horse, I live on a farm. "
She went on to explain how to take care of animals on the farm. Looks like we need to head back to our rural roots.

the art of driving in Seattle

Warning: the following may contain disparaging remarks about the roads and driving skills of people in Seattle. While not wanting to give offense to my Seattle native friends, the following are my narrow-minded and passionate opinions about traffic in the Emerald City. Consider yourself warned.

Ever since moving here, I have made some keen observations about traffic, roads and driving here in Seattle- especially in comparison to Chicago. You would think as a transportation planner's wife, I would have some sympathies in that direction, but I have to say my views continue to exasperate and stupefy my husband.

Pedestrians: What the heck? They think they run the streets here, as if all cars are moving in subjection to them, like they are the ones that have given us permission to be on THEIR streets. You weigh 150 pounds, I am driving a 2 ton piece of metal. If my light is GREEN, it might be in your best interest to get the heck out of my way. Don't cross the street just anywhere and don't assume you can step off the curb just as my light is turning YELLOW!! I am coming from Chicago where the art of running yellow lights was born and perfected (especially in the burbs!!) You can ask witnesses- if there is someone in a non signalized crosswalk, I will be the first to come to a screeching halt and block all traffic my direction and yell and honk at traffic coming in the opposite direction to fight for the right of that person to cross in a crosswalk. But people here think they can cross anywhere and you will come to a screeching halt. This is because as a pedestrian, all you have to do is approach the curb and people will come to a screeching halt for you. I have had this happen to me and I try and embarassingly wave them on "GO you idiot, you have the right-of-way, you are setting a horrible precedence!"

Streets: I tried to give myself a couple of months to understand the layout of the streets in my common "routes". This is pointless. I have never seen a place made of so many crazy intersections, one way streets that turn into 2 way and then back to one way, streets broken into 10 fragments and all named the same, streets that curve and change names, then curve and change names again, streets you cannot turn off of or cross, streets that forbid left turns at one intersection, then at the next and the next. How am I supposed to turn left? How am I supposed to get anywhere without getting lost 4 times? I was told by a woman who is big into history and has lived here for more than 25 years: the 2 original city planners could not agree on a layout for the streets of Seattle. One was an alcoholic. They finally smashed the 2 plans together and that is what we got- a drunken, smashed-up system of roads that make you dizzy to look at on a map, let alone drive. I have to Google 2 separate trips- one to get there and one to get home because you can never just come back the way you went.

Driving: It has been said of Seattlites that they are passive aggressive. Wow, that's an understatement. In Chicago, everyone drives both aggressively and defensively. This means that traffic flows fairly well- in and out like a river that flows around obstacles like parked cars, cars turning left, cars merging into traffic, etc. A river of honking, cussing, speeding and swerving, but a flowing river nonetheless. Driving downtown Chicago is like playing a video game to me. All senses are on high alert, you need to poise your hand on your horn for needed communication, you have to watch every corner of peripheral vision for possible obstacles (pedestrians have to watch the heck out for you) and you must have excellent instant reflexes. In Seattle, no one uses their horns, not even if someone unknowingly pulls right out in front of you, nearly killing you and themselves. I find that I can't honk or communicate with other drivers or pedestrians without feeling like a great big schmuck. So I just swallow it and it smolders until we get a post like this (passive aggressive). The concept of merging seems foreign here. No one seems to get the idea that to keep traffic moving, they have to speed up or slow down and let people in. Instead, it seems to make sense to them to keep moving at your speed so you have to come to a screeching halt and stop all traffic behind you as well. I wouldn't even write this if it hadn't happened to me repeatedly, both on and off the freeway.

Cars: Pure amusement. For every Hummer I saw in Chicago, I see a Mini or Smart Car here. For every Lexus in Chicago, I see a Subaru. For every SUV, a compact car and/or hybrid. There are equal amounts of BMWs and Mercedes. I've had no Limo sightings here, a daily occurrence in Chicago. I had a Hummer sighting the other day for the first time. It was like spotting a black bear as you drive along through the mountains. I looked for obvious vandalism on it- I'm sure it's been keyed a few times. No clue how it fits into the parking spots at places like Safeway or the mini garages in the homes here.

For all the wonderful things about Seattle that I tell people, I have to stop short on the driving experience. So when you come to visit, just leave the driving up to us. Meanwhile, I am doing my best to convert the city to the speeding, swerving, honking river one passive aggressive driver at a time.

You can't sleep with cold feet

I've been camping all of 3 times in the last 3 years. But I've finally figured out that I have some sort of defunct vascular system and my feet are ALWAYS cold when I'm camping. This means I need to invest some energy and possibly money into keeping them warm on the next trip. I never sleep more than 20 minutes at a stretch b/c I assume the kids are freezing too. Stephen will be hot and tossing around, throwing off covers while I am hunched in a fetal position, trying to keep my feet touching his body somewhere. Maybe if we had arranged it so my feet were in his armpits or something . . .
Anyway, we went camping this weekend with the Goffs. (Thanks guys!) They have boys about the same age as our girls. The best part of camping is sitting around the fire, looking at stars, it's the best. We explored the nearby beach area where the Hood River flows into the Sound. There were a lot of people digging for clams and oysters. Our kids dug for hermit crabs and rocks (depending on age). It was a very dirty, fun outing. We stopped on our way back to Seattle at Port Gamble, a really cute little port town. They were having a Future Festival. The best part was a parade of art and people dressed in recycled trash. They were playing instruments made of trash too, it was all very loud, bright and fun. I forgot the camera of course.
We had to take our car on a ferry and cross 2 bridges to get to the State Park where we camped. We decided that even though the dense forest and trees can make you feel claustrophobic, there is almost always an open vista of water- a lake, a sound, a port to keep a contrast to the tangle of green everywhere. It really is a beautiful area of the country.
I just made a new Picasa web album and it includes some pics of our apartment (I kept waiting for a time when it was clean, but just gave up and took some photos). Our pics link is to the right.
Another topic . . .
Keeping it real: I've decided to always try and keep my posts real. I know it's easy to slip into a mode of just posting about happy things and how great our kids are and how much fun we have. I stopped reading blogs like that because they make me think there must be something wrong with my life because it's not like that.
Case in point: Last Thursday I was determined to do 3 things all within a mile of each other. Go to the library, go to the Farmer's Market (they have the only decent garlic around) and walk to Safeway and get the milk we desperately needed. After the library, we stopped at the park to play. While we were there, a crow/raven thing landed on the stroller and took off with the girl's bag of goldfish crackers in it's beak. NO JOKE. I chased him down, but only got back about half the crackers because he shook them out. Now I had very little snack to keep them happy. As we were leaving, it started to rain. I guess most of the time it drizzles here in Seattle, but this was actual rain. The girls had jackets and stroller shades, but were still getting a little wet. I was still determined to go to the Farmers Market. We got some peaches, but I know he overcharged me, so I was mad about that. We didn't find garlic until we had been up and down the market twice and were really wet. Now I had to push the stroller up the hills back to the car. The girls were really wailing. I was so tired and wet by the time we got there and Odessa was throwing all kinds of fits. Ada was genuinely miserable. We were out of snacks. After getting the kids in the car, I had to work for about 7 minutes to get the muddy stroller into the trunk, getting even more wet. Worst of all- we HAD to stop at the store for milk. We had absolutely none at home. Every mom's most dreaded moment is taking crying children into a grocery store. You want them to at least start out happy, because they will almost always be cranky by the time you leave. Well, we marched in, soaked as we were and got our milk and got out. We lived through it, but it was one of those mom moments where you think "I can't do this!". Moments like that make you stronger for the next one to come, I am sure.