All Adither

For now

Max cannot eat the spaghetti because the sauce has cheese. We spent $75 to go to this damn dinner benefitting Little League and he won't be able to partake. I can make special concessions: cook spaghetti just for him with safe sauce and bring it. But, shit.

My legs are too long and my feet are too cold and Max can't eat this food or that food and I'm sick of rejection, of J. working until he gets migraines, of my friend's husband's health not improving and of the dirt and the paperwork.

But I'm no victim. I have as much fresh water to drink as I want. A soft bed and an iphone. Health. A blue sky for today.

Hanging in by a thread

I'd like to know what childless sadist invented daylight savings time. Because, for me, going off it doesn't mean an extra hour of sleep. It means an extra hour of entertaining kids. And even though my kids are adorable and fun, they are also exhausting. They are still full of want and need and want and need.

Though I don't think I'll ever tire of gazing at the freckles across my son's cheeks and nose, or the feel of Claire smoothing my hair back from my face with her chubby hands, I do tire of fetching, feeding, and nagging.

But then, I've covered this before on my blog, haven't I? Ad nauseum.

Let's talk about Kettle Corn instead. I posted the recipe here a couple days ago.

And, Imogen Heap, because I'm such a ridiculous fangirl. I just finished watching Everything In Between and loved it. I only let myself turn it on while huffing and puffing on the elliptical, hoping that would motivate me to exercise (it did). How can you not respect someone like her? Someone with such an amazing creative process, who blends music and tech into ethereal genius.

Then there's this:

Good night.

Elliott Bay Books in Pioneer Square xoxoxo

 

My favorite bookstore in Seattle is closing. Or, rather, moving. I'm sure the new location will be fine. Maybe even an improvement. But this spot in Pioneer Square...has sentimental value for me. It was one of the first places I visited when I moved to the Pacific Northwest and I instantly fell hard in love with the creaky wooden floors, the brick archways and the rustic, kind-of-crappy bookshelves.

Where the store is now, in Pioneer Square, represents a kind of hopeful expectation for me, the assumption that my life would unfurl nicely in a city with a bookshop like Elliott Bay.

I always thought I might do a reading here. When I was published.

 

I'll go see Elliott Bay Books in their new digs, of course. But I'll always favor this spot on South Main. I saw Anna Quindlen here and Nick Hornby and Jane Smiley and others. I spent happy hours wandering around the tomes. When I lived across the Puget Sound from Seattle, I would come over and it'd be the first place I'd hit when I jumped off the ferry. I adore this good bookstore.

 

Even if the love is unrequited.

In the place where I am right now

Long hallways carpeted in emerald green.

The smell–vaguely hospital. Like greasy vats of stew.

In the dining room, women with bright lipstick and powdered, downy faces. Necklaces that spell out, in rhinestones, Dolores. Or, sometimes, Betty. Earrings as large as poker chips.

Men with big bellies and large-framed plastic glasses. Booming voices asking how tall I am, joking that they were tall once, too.

Hollow eyes that see what is waiting a year or two out. Eyes that are accepting or afraid or some combination of the two.

Pot roast swimming in thick gravy. Hard rolls. Green Jello studded with pears.

The hum of a mini fridge in our room. Fake, dusty eucalyptus decorating the wall. Pressboard furniture. Thin strings to pull in case of emergency.

But then, red tiled roofs, bright blue swimming pools, rusty green hills rolling and peaking in the near distance. The coast not far with its huge tumbling surf, gray battleship coming into harbor. Poppies along the roadside just starting to bloom.

No having to evacuate this time. No burning embers framing a smokey highway like in 2007. No wall of flames over the hillside, coming at us. Drizzle, instead.

Escalades everywhere. The constant rush of traffic.

It's okay for a while.

But I could never live here.

The giant in me

There's this girl. She goes to Fruit Bat's school. She's in second grade, I think, but looks like she's in fourth. She's tall for her age. Tall like I was. She's big boned too.

A few days ago we passed her on the playground. Her arms were linked through the arms of a few friends'.

I heard her say, evenly, "I'm not a giant."

And as we walked by, my heart pulled in tight and held there. 

She spoke as if being called a Giant didn't hurt. But I wasn't fooled.

Now that I'm 40 (gulp), height questions and observations and jabs don't bother me much. But they used to. When I was in eighth grade, I was 5'11" and weighed 95 pounds.

And my skin, thin as curling jasmine leaves, rippled with every thoughtless comment.

I know we all suffered in junior high (not to mention before and after). I know our hair wasn't right and our clothes were all wrong and we said stupid things, things that made us want to crawl into lockers and hide under bleachers.

But when you tower so, you cannot fit in lockers or under bleachers. You cannot hide. You cannot hope to blend, even for a moment, with kids your own age.

Kitty Cat, who is three until March, is constantly mistaken for a kindergartner. She's going to get it too: The "How's the Weather up there?" and the boys standing conspicuously on tiptoe as she walks by and the stupid, unoriginal questions. 

I can only hope she finds it tedious rather than painful. I can only build her up now, tout the benefits of extreme height (you can reach things! you can see at concerts! when it comes time for dating, your being just shy of six-three separates the boys from the men quickly! there's no wasted time! you'll see! It's great!)

I have to believe this girl at Fruit Bat's school has a woman in her life who understands. Who can talk to her. Who will convince her that she's strong and capable and lovely.

Otherwise I may just have to pull her aside and do it myself.

I could. And I will.

I could write about:

1. How Fruit Bat turns into a horrific rendition of himself every week day at exactly 3:10 when he emerges from his small elementary school and into my waiting arms. And how that growling, thrashing alter ego of his lasts until he gets one hot dog, an allergen-free granola bar and some dried cranberries into his system. Then he is mostly okay.

2. How I'm about to get out the slow cooker again and am looking for decent recipes that do not involve cream-of-anything soup. Not that I am against cream-of-anything soup. I love it in all its forms (chicken, celery, asparagus and especially mushroom). But the dairy. It makes my hands itch. And it gives Fruit Bat some wicked hives. Not that he'd eat anything other than the foods listed above! And maybe some chicken nuggets. As long as they're not spicy. Oh, the spice. It is evil.

3. How I am capable of discussing things other than food allergies. Really!

4. How my Half Assed Kitchen blog is surpassing All Adither in traffic volume even though I treat All Adither like a fragile, gifted child whose hand I must hold while attending to Half Assed Kitchen in, well, a rather half assed fashion. The scrappy younger child who shrugs its shoulders and harumphs: Whatever. I'll take what I can get. I have no ads (which is FINE) or blogroll. But I am redesigning the banner. And am, in fact, planning an entire Half Assed empire (more polished and with a sister blog called Half Assed Home and better photography).

5. How a well-respected Seattle parenting publication has assigned me a story and, though I haven't done any reporting in a very long time, I'm excited and energized about getting out there and writing for print again.

6. How good hot tea tastes at 9:53 am PST.

7. How much I enjoyed the weekend. The sun! The husband who was around and who was helpful and sweet and who laughed so hard at Fruit Bat doing his 70s rocker arm wind up while Kitty Cat sang some unintelligible song that he almost cried (while I DID cry).

8. How you should go read these blogs because I think they're really good and because I've not done very well at promoting bloggers who I think deserve it (and because you're not on this list doesn't mean you don't deserve it. It means your turn is COMING).

Simply Nutmeg

Blissfully Caffeinated

Whopping Cornbread

Apathy Lounge

Derfwad Manor

Dear Seattle Weather: You Suck

Last weekend we were doing this:

I was stretched across the (dirty, rocky, Washington) sand snapping pictures of sea glass:

This weekend we are staring glumly at snowflakes, too winter-weary to catch them on our tongues or mold them into little men:

Seattle Snow in April from All Adither on Vimeo.

Ah well. We'll always have last Saturday.

My Day: illustrated

A lot of this

A little of this

Some, but not enough of this

Just a splash of this

My mind stirs

Another Kindergarten tour yesterday. More blah blah blah and mwha, mwha, mwha, test scores and the student is an individual and our parental involvement here is phenomenal.

No, it was good.

Though we had Kitty Cat with us this time and it was hard to focus on anything but shoving the vanilla sandwich cookies they provided into her chubby hands and eyeing the Starbucks (or maybe it was Tully's) and wishing I could get a cup but knowing I couldn't because I was carrying Kitty Cat's monstrous stuffed dog (aptly named Coffee), her coat, a visitor's badge and a school packet. All while wearing my puffy J Lo coat that allows about as much free movement as walking around wrapped in a featherbed.

And lo (J), last night I had my first web site building class. Guess what? My brain started waking from its five-year slumber. I could feel the snap of actual synapses firing and hear the creak of gears turning. It was fantastic. I was about to type some code to show off my new knowledge, but since I don't, in reality, know what I'm doing yet, am afraid I might transform my cherished little blog into a 1979 Volkswagen Rabbit.

Someone in my class is actually rebuilding one of these.

We had to introduce ourselves and announce what we like to do in our free time. I said that I like to Blog (of course) because I didn't want to explain that my new favorite hobby is setting up Kitty Cat's My First Dollhouse (which did not, by the way, cost a million dollars as Amazon suggests) while smacking away the grabby fingers of my children who want to PLAY with their new toy. Whatever. Step back, wee ones.

On the topic of Wee Ones, what is up with the age of four-and-three-quarters? Fruit Bat is living in a dark and dusky warehouse of fear. This morning I dropped a pile of laundry on the floor and he jumped. I was whipping my curly hair into sleek and straight submission (ha!) and he clung to my leg, whimpering about what might lay outside the bathroom door. Surely there's nothing more relaxing than getting yourself ready for the day with a preschooler attached to your thigh.

And since he's so emotionally stalwart at the moment, what did I do yesterday? I decided to drive him by the Fremont Troll.

I know. Bad decision. We'd been talking about it and he wanted to see it and the next thing I knew we were cruising on by the big googly eye and thick troll fingers and Fruit Bat was unconvincingly murmuring, "Cool" while inside he was dissolving into wet cement.

Then I took off for the jump-starting of my brain (and design career?) and left J. to deal with the bedtime repercussions of our Troll Drive By.