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Foolish risks

I saw something today that bugged me: a toddler sitting in a car alone at the grocery store. He looked about three and was strapped into his seat making faces and talking to himself. He seemed happy enough, but completely sans adult.

I turned around, hoping to see a mom or dad pushing a cart to its corral or otherwise hovering nearby. But, no. I thought about the begging meth mouths who'd approached me in that very parking lot a few years before.

Maybe the parent just ran inside for milk? And maybe the car doors were locked (not that a three-year-old wouldn't happily unlock them for a grown-up flashing a candy bar).

Believe me, I know the temptation well, to leave your child for just a few minutes. The car seats are so cumbersome and the kids so tedious. My rule, though, is that I have to be able to see Max and Claire from where I stand. So, I'll dash up the ATM machine and library book return, but won't actually disappear into a building without them. Not that I am perfect and without recrimination. But a toddler? Store in an okay but by no means super safe neighborhood?

I loitered for a minute, then went inside to get my chicken nuggets and wine. (Why yes, they do go beautifully together). I told myself that if the car was still there with the toddler alone when I came back, I was going to alert a store employee.

To my relief, five minutes later the car was gone.

Once, when I was in my twenties and a friend and I pulled up at a rural microbrewery, I noticed two little kids by themselves in a sedan. Okay, I thought, this is distressing, but maybe the dad just dashed in to grab a six-pack.

For at least an hour, my friend and I sipped hefeweizens (which would also be amazing with chicken nuggets. Or fish sticks!), and when we returned, the kids were still inside their own car.

I hemmed and hawed a little, and my friend started her engine and swung out of the lot. On the highway, though, I called the police. I can only hope the negligent non-parent was busted. There's really no excuse.

And I'm admittedly a half-hearted advocate. If I were nervier, I'd stay with the car until the parent returned. I wish I had today, actually.

I want to know...what do you think of leaving a three-year-old in a car alone? A foolish risk not worth taking or no big deal?

The cherry pudding of our discontent

Last June, when the kids and I were visiting family in Michigan, my aunt Betsy slipped me an envelope. Inside were jewelry, photos, and old recipes that had belonged to my grandma. Today, finally, I spread out the recipes and read through each one.

What I want to know is, how can my grandmother's handwriting, so loopy and familiar, be here while she is not? How is it that she isn't a phone call or plane ride away? That I'll never get another birthday card written in her arthritic, but still flamboyant, hand?

How can it be that she died one of those awful First World deaths through which she lingered and lingered in a hospital for half a year, unable, somehow to let go?

How can her life have been over for seven years now?

How?

Stardust in my eyes

I get all wigged out when I read stories about things that happen 300 or 2,000 light years away. 

Perhaps I've watched too many episodes of Blues Clues or The Wiggles or some other intellect and soul sucking kids' show, but light years just do. not. compute.

Last night I came across a Reuters story about two Earth-sized planets that astronomers believe collided. They think this because they see massive amounts of dusty particles orbiting a sun-like star. Presumably, the dusty particles are what's left of "Earth" and "Venus".

The story ends with one astronomer asking, Could this happen in our solar system?

Let's hope the hell not.

First of all: Fudge. Novels. Coffee. First kisses and sunny days, warm breezes. And Hawaii.

I don't like the idea of all that going away. One bit.

Although: Bailouts. Hurricanes. Cranky people. Failure.

The thing that sends me over the edge is the LIGHT YEARS.

Scientists are observing events that took 300 years to shoot through the universe and into our telescopes. That is, all the dusty particles they saw were floating around long before the US Constitution was written and ratified.

Surely, by now, another whole planet could've formed and sprouted new, intelligent life that knows how to make good soy lattes and creamy chocolate fudge.

Or maybe that is hoping for too much.

Pondering planet collision and light years makes me feel like a poodle chasing her tail around and around. So why do I try?

Why not just click over to Noggin while I wait for our solar system to explode?

See, you like me better when I talk eyeshadow and cat videos, don't you?

This simply cannot be

Fruit Bat awoke at 3 am again this morning. What did he arise at that ungodly hour to do, you ask? Did he wake up to go to the bathroom? Get a drink of water? Kiss my cheek and murmur PC, which is his code for I Love You?

Nope. None of those things.

He got up to vomit.

Yes, again.

I can't believe it. He just recovered from the last bout and was finally starting to eat again.

And I don't know what upsets me more, the beginning of another illness, one that keeps us quarantined and itchy, watching too much TV and gazing longingly at the outside world where there are trees and other people. Or the clumsy way that J. and I fumble and bicker in the middle of the night when confronted with a screeching, spewing child.

You'd think we'd have a system down by now. Or that, at least, I would keep my stupid mouth shut when I'm too tired to speak very coherently or kindly.

But, nope. None of those things.

On a happy note, Fruit Bat's preschool teacher wants to bump him up to her Pre-K program. A little late in the year it is. He'll be all kinds of challenged, though. And, I think, have more fun with kids closer to his own age.

The best part about the switch: afternoons. Five of them a week. Which means, until Kindergarten starts next fall (at which point I'm screwed) we're done with mornings where I'm dragging Kitty Cat to the car in her pajamas while stuffing an allergen-free granola bar into Fruit Bat, combing his hair and sniping at him to hurry up and choose a show-and-tell because we're late! Late again! Yesterday morning, with the time change and all, was so bad that I was in tears by the time we got buckled in and started rolling toward school.

Ah, life. Ain't it grand?

Pasties are filled with meat and potatoes

Pasties are a Northern Michigan delicacy.

Not to be confused with Pasties (of the long "a")

Cornish pasties are characterized by meat, potatoes and onions wrapped in a pie-like crust.

Tarty pasties are characterized by circles of fabric (or wood or metal) that contain the nipples without the use of straps or support.

Cornish pasties were introduced to the Upper Peninsula when miners immigrated in the 1800s hoping to earn a living in copper and iron.

Tarty pasties emerged in dance halls in the 1920s, possibly frequented by miners munching their pasties.

Legend has it that Cornish pasties were heated in the mine by putting the pasty on a shovel and holding it over a head-lamp candle.

Tarty pasties were heated on the breasts of burlesque dancers using gum arabic.

The Upper Peninsula pasty differs from the Cornish pasty in that the vegetables are usually diced rather than sliced and it has a thinner crust.

Tarty pasties, mostly worn in strip clubs and Fort Lauderdale, come in many different diameters and materials.

The Cornish pasty survived the collapse of the mining industry because it became popular with the major ethnic groups to remain after the mines closed - the Finns and the Swedes.

Tarty pasties survive every recession because there are always more miners where those came from.

Google says the cutest things

In case you were at all curious what website is number 1 for the Google search:

blowing nose after crying smells like diesel fuel?

It's me.

No chicks allowed

For any of you following my rant about Chicka Latte in Seattle, I found this totally rad sign outside a Fremont espresso establishment.

Submerged in meaningless words and pretty pictures

In the last two days we've gotten this many catalogues:

Hey, Lands End! You, Pottery Barn! Listen up, LL Bean. We don't need this freaking many of your catalogues. Nice try, slapping a pretty new cover on your ever-so-slightly reconfigured pages and passing it off as something unique and exciting, but I have news for you. We're wise to your tactics.

Do you think we have the memories of bars of soap? Do you think we'll spot your catalogue in the mail and ravage it excitedly, looking for the sweater we haven't seen since browsing your glossy pages two days prior? Don't you think that sending out, say, a single catalogue per season is sufficient? Imagine it. If we knew we were getting one and only one Sahalie or Coldwater Creek between September and Christmas we might be apt to actually SAVE it and reference it later. As it is now, we have to recycle the catalogues as fast as we get them lest we be buried alive.

Also, I know it's anything for a buck, but have you heard of our good friend, THE EARTH? Do you ever think about TREES? Or, perhaps, the toxicity of ink and the energy it takes to run printing presses?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Want to declutter by declining some your catalogues? Go here.

Chicka Boom Boom (or How I met a Coffee Pimp)

There's a new drive-thru coffee place that recently opened in North Seattle. (If you've ever been to Seattle, you're familiar with drive-thru coffee: little huts usually housing two women steaming milk, brewing drip and taking your money with their black-tipped fingernails.)

This new one is called "Chicka Latte" and the tagline is "Beautiful Coffee".

Upon first glance at their sign, I thought it featured mudflap girl. Kitty Cat and I took a closer look this morning, though, and found this:

Garumph. I'm prudish, I guess.

I think part of the problem is that I am familiar with the man who opened this place. I don't know him, really, or know his name, but he was getting his hair cut once when I took Fruit Bat in for a trim. He talked on his cell phone while the poor stylist tried to snip at the fringe wreathing his skull. He explained that he was starting a business, and loosely what it was, but didn't shorten (or, dog forbid, FOREGO) his call to accomodate the stylist or those of us in line behind him.

He came across as an arrogant fool, and I don't suffer those well.

When I first saw the Chicka Latte sign, I thought, Of course. Of course.

Next I wondered if the business name and sign were merely meant to catch the eyes of, well, anyone careening past, or if it was some gimmick, like Hooters, where the baristas would be dressed in shredded t-shirts and daisy dukes (not that I know what Hooters' waitresses wear, I'm only surmising).

Yes, indeedy, Chicka Latte is Seattle drive-thru coffee's answer to the Hooters of the world. Though they've twisted the premise a bit. The first woman I saw wore a tall, pink victorian wig, with Raggedy-Ann like spots of crimson on her cheeks, heavy eye makeup and (surprise!) a low-cut barmaid-ish dress. Her cohort was ragged out in something similar, only she sported pigtails and freckles.

I asked if the costumes were for Halloween or everyday. They said they wore them everyday. They said it was lots of fun. They were extremely friendly and helpful and even gave Kitty Cat a giant lollipop. I gave them a 50% tip.

It may be fun. It may be campy and even a little cool, but at the same time, I keep picturing that doofus baldy getting his hair cut and talking on his cell phone, continually referring to his girls, and I can't help think of a wannabe Hugh Hefner.

I can't help shaking my head a little and wanting to shield Kitty Cat's eyes everytime we drive that way to Target.

I cannot think

I'm trying to compose a semi-coherent blog post for today (ideas of all sorts are swirling around my brain), but Kitty Cat will not nap, she is, in fact, lounging on my bed, watching Mr. Rogers (she's trying valiantly to overcome her fear of Lady Elaine, and I think she's succeeding). Actually, she's not so much watching as commenting and asking questions and chasing my cat, Ollie, around the bed and singing Hokey Pokey.

And Fruit Bat is in his room, watching a DVD about school buses. So, we have two TVs going at once in the house. We've hit a new low.

I keep telling myself it's just until Kitty Cat recovers from having her pacifier pulled and resumes her naps (Please God), but still, TWO tvs. It's ludicrous really.

And so is having a cat lying on my stomach and Kitty Cat's head on his rump so that I can barely move my fingers across the keyboard.