{anatomist}

holy yesterday

i've been pretty lazy all week, not wanting to leave the house, making macaroni for junior's lunch every day, with the exception of my insane drive to get the backyard cleaned up (forcing t to haul lumber until past midnight one night) i haven't been motivated to do anything.

so khya and i made plans to have a crafty slumber party on friday night. i was going to make a couple of butter chicken recipes (i'm on a search for awesome butter chicken and i think i might have found what i am looking for. of course i can't stand the smell of garam masala right now after 5 hours in the kitchen with it so i have to wait a while to make it again.)

friday morning my neighbor called me and asked if i wanted to go yardsaling with her and her son. we tossed the kids into the double stroller and hiked around for a couple of hours, found some great deals on things i've been looking for (mostly blankets for jack, just in time for summer!) and stopped for gyros and ice cream on the way back, bar stools pulled up to a newspaper box in the shade, enjoying the perfect greenwood day.

by the time we got home it was way past junior's naptime, so he wasn't awake yet when our friends showed up to play. i had just enough time to put together the marinade before everyone showed up and piles of toddlers ran around the yard, playing on the swings and watering the garden (i've found the only way to stop jack from pulling out the plants is by letting him overwater them.).

the afternoon was awesome, warm sun streaming in the windows, good food cooking, happy kids running around, fun people relaxing into the weekend, and we ate dinner in our new outdoor dining room while finn lay in the grass waiting for leftovers. 

it was idilic.

and then jack ran across the lawn and tripped in a hole and twisted his ankle and everything spiraled downhill. jack couldn't walk, he and sol were both overtired, the bath terrified sol, going to bed freaked jack out, and when we tried to put them in the same room, they both got hysterical and as far as i can tell, jack was so upset and then so concerned about sol being upset that he hyperventilated. short heaving breaths, his head twitching with each one, his eyes wide with fear. it was one of the worst moments of my life and i cannot imagine how he felt. 

so we gave up on that plan, jack spent some time outside, sol moved into jack's crib and fussed to sleep quickly. then tom and jack went to bed while khya and i tried to drink away the trauma.

of course, i should have gone right to bed because jack woke every hour crying from the pain in his foot.

it was one hell of a day.

jack and i are both feeling better now though since i decided to go thrifting while tom took a nap and i found one of these $300 bikes for $30 at our local clusterf*ck thriftstore!

this summer is going to rule.

a plea for help (from anyone who still reads this poor neglected blog)

(this post brought to you by my son's first exposure to sesame street. i think it is love.)

thing 1.

as you know, i've been learning to cook (i guess all my posts have been food or baby related for the last, oh i don't know, year? two years? damn, i really have to branch out.) we've got our repertoire of go-to meals, and i experiment based on my daily cravings, but since i started trying to cut down on the wheat in our diet i have run into a bit of a block. taking pasta and bread off the list really cuts down on the meals i can make, so i need your help.

as it stand i usually made: burritos/tacos/enchiladas, rice with beans and veggies and yumm sauce (imported from eugene, if anyone wants to open up a seattle franchise i would be a regular customer), eggs or (wheat free) pancakes for breakfast, phad thai, green curry and peppers (tom's speciality), chieken and rice, flank steak and peanut sauce, anything with peanut sauce, and when the weather is nice and i can't think of anything, tom makes meat on the grill and slices up some tomatoes and avocado. 

it is a pretty limited (albeit tasty) selection. please help.

thing 2. 

i am trying to find a job and have realized that i need to expand and specialize my skillset. i know that all you people have a wide variety of interests and expertise, what do you think i would be interested in and good at?what things do you wish you knew how to do? what skills do you see being most in demand right now? i am totally open to going any direction at this point so throw them at me. 

thing 3.

i planted a garden last week. we have lettuce and tomatoes and basil and cilantro and peppers and cucumbers and strawberries and mint and rosemary. i'm going to add lavender, more peppers, witch hazel (when i finally find one, i have feelers out though, apparently they are touch to get after st patricks day.) and i have a bed made of pressure treated wood that is going to be full of wildflowers, if i can find a decent native wildflower mix. i'll let you know how it all goes.

as usual, ending with a photo:

this is what happens when you take the camera away from junior.

getting older, warmer

the last one is a picture that jack took of me. i suppose this is how i look to him most of the time. interesting.

cinco de mayo

tonight i will drink a fancy peach flavored homebrew instead of tequila.

cinco de mayo is a strange holiday for me, i know very little about it really, but in my world it marks the anniversary of the day (11 years ago) when i left eugene in a pick up truck with my boyfriend's best friend and some stolen money and moved to colorado. none of the rest of that story turned out all that well, but that day was amazing and life changing and i am pretty sure at this point that i will never forget sitting in that shitty hotel room watching westerns and drinking warm coronas.

it is also the anniversary of the day that my ex-boyfriend's brother killed himself. 

every may 5th i think about those two boys from my past, the older one and that amazing day. and the younger one, and the horrible sadness i know he feels every year at this time.

tonight i will drink a toast to both of them.

on our own

jack and i had a rockin road trip to the eug last week. we picked up liam and raven and had toddler heaven in the backseat with some dvds and travel packs of snacks and then jack and i went out to camp on evilcat's porch in the woods to celebrate snowball's birthday.

jack is a rad partier. he likes dancing and making fools out of the normally (somewhat) self-respecting boys/men who did a little baby-dancing of their own. wobbling around with their heads bobbing and their hands in fists by their heads. i love what children do to people. little z was a charmer, hugging jack and demanding that he bring her things. just the exact sort of friend his highness needs.

now we are back and t is at a conference in some god-awful town elsewhere in washington. i don't really know anything about any of the towns outside of seattle (with the exception of olympia, but my knowledge of that place is pretty much limited to the evergreen campus and a dock where my father used to live). 

we miss t. jack signs for dada every few hours and runs to the window to watch for him along with the dogs. we will all be thrilled when he gets home, i'll be running away to hide in my room and nurse my wounds as jack has decided that biting is the best way to let me know he is tired/hungry/cranky/wanting down/up/in need of a hug/really enthusiastic about my choice of music/etc. luckily he bites mostly on my tattoo arm so i can still wear short sleeves without anyone seeing the tiny teeth marks. 

not that there is really the option to wear short sleeves as the weather here is f-ing awful. i get so excited when the sun comes out and then these rainy days are twice as devastating.

in any case, we are still managing to venture out, yesterday we took a sunset walk up the street to get ice cream and i shared it with jack while he rode in the ergo. he was pretty happy strapped to my back, smiling face covered in ice cream. today was starting to look pretty nasty when i lay down for a nap just in time for him to have an early wake-up from his nap, leaving both of us tired and cranky. i tried coloring, cartoons, snacks, juice, dog-wrestling. finally i just strapped him to my back and we ran some errands and when he decided he wanted to walk, i took a deep breath and let him walk. and shockingly, it went well. he walked all the way home from the library and we stopped at the pub for some chicken strips (for him) and a beer (for me) and he behaved exactly like the quiet, entertained, charming little toddler that you always hope to have when you take a toddler into a restaurant. people didn't realize there was a baby in the bar until i went to pay the tab. it was a miracle.

it was also a miracle that i remembered to feed the dogs this evening. the poor things. sidney is getting picked up tomorrow to move to his new pad in portland. he will be so happy. i'm trying not to think about how jack will react, but i have explained the situation to him a couple of times and i am hoping that part of that makes sense to him. we'll see.

now some pictures.

jack learned to hike a football.. sort of

on a sunny day at the beach.