Kelly's Web Log

Yesterday a waitress followed me out of the eatery and told me, "I just have to tell you, every time you come in - your children are the best-behaved kids." I said thank you (surprised) and my mom and I waited until she'd returned inside and then stared at eachother wondering what kind of children this restaurant is used to since Nels' last act of the lunch date was to drink directly from the cream pitcher and I'd felt like choking him more than once.

Oddly this is the second time in a little over a week someone has told me our kids were "the best-behaved kids [they] know." It's nice to hear; we really do want the little beasts to mostly mind themselves.

And I'm the first to find fanvids creepy and off-putting, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit these images dance around inside my brain sometimes.

Labels: Nels, random, Sophie

The tag on my mom's bike handlebar claims, "6/30/07 - 1 week". It had a bad tube and (possible) wheel burr. So after ample repair time two weeks ago I went into the (shall remain nameless) bike shop to check on the bike; not yet. OK. So last week I called to ask if the bike was ready; it was not - but, "I'll have it done tomorrow. It's probably a ten minute job." OK.

This morning my parents, their dog, my children and I walked the family down to the shop, towing the bike trailer behind us and anticipating our first ride together in over a month, yay! (This neighborhood mongrel followed us half the way which really enraged my dad for some reason). We get to the shop and the bike is Still. Not. Done. This time the Goofy Bike Guy (I really need a good nickname for him) is very apologetic - he winces as he hears what bike I'm here for, because he knows it's overdue twice over. Meanwhile I notice the bike shop - a truly amazing building with more clutter than you can imagine including a 15 foot tall pair of functional display Lee overalls - has filled up with lots, and I mean lots of bikes. More than half the bikes are ones waiting for repair. There are only two employees in the shop, including GBG, and they both seem (understandably) busy.

GBG asks me to come back in a couple hours (that would be 3 PM); I tell him I'll be in at 4. I leave my trailer inside the shop and we haul our asses home. You know where this story is going, don't you? Because at 4 PM I once again walk the kids down and we ring in and guess what? The bike isn't done. Meanwhile, GBG is hurriedly doing a job for a customer who'd come in and said they had "immediate" needs. I have now officially noticed that to get your bike done you have to tell GBG you need it right now and literally stand in his shop while he does it - thereby arseing over the many people who were willing to wait a week or month (but in reality, will wait forever or until they themselves come inside the shop and stand there).

That's what ends up happening. The kids and I hang out in the shop for the (as promised) 10-minute job. It's taken up so much of my time today (not to mention the other trips), that by the time he's done I'm just kind of sad and not even pissed. The total is just $10. Somehow I would have liked to be charged more, maybe because it would have energized me in some way.

Anecdotally: after the first trip to the shop today my mom, kids and I left the shop to immediately encounter a HQX panhandler of sorts (rare here; more common in Aberdeen) who told us the buses weren't running and she needed gas money for a ride to Olympia to catch a train. "I don't have any money," I said (truthfully) and my mom demurred as well. The woman yelled abruptly, "NO! I mean I give YOU gas money and you give me a ride to Olympia!" "Oh," I said, "No, sorry." The woman half-stomped, half wandered into the street to flag down cars. Mom and I headed to the sandwich shop and my mom said, "She really did say it confusing," in almost a hurt tone of voice. We go inside the Sweet Shoppe, sit down. Have to move tables because the top of the table wobbles fiercely. "What's with this town?" I ask my mom and she laughs. I make a "root toot" farting clown sound with my mouth and jog my elbows up and down.

HQX was not in fine form today.

Labels: bike, Grazdma, HQX, the Ghost of Christmas Bastard

Roadtrip! Today my mom, brother, husband, children and I headed to Olympia - mostly for fabric and sewing purchases. My mom bought us lunch and post-shopping snack - how awesome is that? I didn't eat a snack but I did bring home some amazing cinnamon bread for Wagner's.


I just want to say that the only reason my mom took us on such a long trip - 11:30 AM to 6 PM - was that Billy was along. She likes spending time with him more than with me. Because they are dating.

I love hanging out with the FOO. Sometimes certain members are a right pain in my balls, but mostly, I like spending time with them daily if I can. Today my poor brother and I had to run and keep Nels and Sophie at bay in Music 6000 while Ralph was "grinding his axe" (i.e. playing a guitar out of tune, to try out a pedal) and headphoned. Why did we get Nels to monitor in such a valuable commodity shop? I was glad Billy was there, besides for his company.


Nels fell asleep on the drive home and still, about three hours later, is out.


Sophie napped too but, once home, stripped her shoes off and started coloring. She and Billy like taking pictures together.

(And just for my secret thrift-whore housewifery buddy - here are my recent thrift store purchases on Flickr - I really do love the inexpensive and fun thrifting to be had in HQX!)

Labels: birlo, consumerism, FOO, Grazdma, roadtrip

I can't get enough Jellineck, ever.

Today a minor, but it actually was major, milestone was breached and summited. I was due for my once-a-month bangs and brows treatment at the salon and - due to lack of planning on my part and a concomitant desire to spare my husband a late lunch date childcare surprise - I decided to bring the kids. I also decided this probably was a bad idea; but I was just too tired to beg for help from anyone else to wrangle my children. Echoing in my head as I hustled them up the front steps was a dear friend who recently reported to my husband that our kids were "the best behaved [he'd] ever seen." OK, a little confidence here.

You have to understand, to leave my kids about a salon for an hour - half of which was in a room getting hot wax applied to my face as I almost fall asleep in the hypnotic torture lamp - is something new. Sophie has been able to be trusted in rooms with knicknacks, sharp scissors, and hot curling irons for a couple years; Nels could not be trusted in a padded cell with a marshmallow. Still, I came prepared; a lunch (for the time I'd be out the room) and a few pointers before we got there as well as some good old fashioned, "If you eat your lunch and don't make a mess and play with toys only you will get pie" bribery.

It went off fine. My hairdresser T.- a very sweet, lovely lass who instead of children has three high-maintenance and well-loved dogs - even complimented the children as we left. My left eyeball hurt from having to dart it back and forth as I sat facing straight into the mirror for her benefit. But I agreed; they'd done well. And Nels' last-hour confession of "spitting salad on the floor" (his way to remove a bit of lettuce from his sandwich he didn't want) was both not understood by T. nor did she see the evidence of this Nottyness before I had a chance to discreetly clean it up.

Two days ago antique shop; today the frame shop and salon. Pretty soon these kids will be raising me.

Labels: family life, Nels, newness, Sophie

Labels: hilarity

From where our bed is we can look into our daughter's room and see her sleeping. At dawn I see she is in the same position she was when we settled her to bed the night before. Her hair spills out silky on the pillow in every shade of honey blonde. A couple hours later while at the computer I hear my son cry out in his sleep; when I pop into the hallway I see Sophie has slithered into my bed and is curled under the comforter.

Today is Wednesday which means - no, not that - it means I get to pick up eggs from the Market. These days I buy two or three dozen for the week (last week my husband erred and we had to make due with one dozen; I gave myself permission to use the last three for this morning's breakfast). Since I've moved here I've gradually shifted to a mindset where I won't buy other eggs. Now if my friend Abbi is reading this she has a little smirk on her ass right now because I used to give her a hard time for being an egg snob. I didn't and still don't notice a taste difference in farm eggs vs. storebought; however, I have begun to notice a color difference which I have now associated with a potential difference in freshness. As well, I'd rather support these eggs because I have a feeling these chickens live better lives than the egg layers whose products end in the store. And, they're as cheap as the store-bought variety I was buying anyway.

I know all of you were bored with my egg story except Abbi who's still feeling smug even as she reads this sentence.

Other to-do items today: finish Sophie's summer dress re-fashion. Fold and put away the huge pile of laundry. First order of business? Curtail Nels' morning nude romp.

Labels: food geekery

My life kind of swallowed me up just now. I'd like to write a bit about the camping trip - a trip where you get your rain-and-pine-needle soaked stuff cleaned up by the end of the weekend, yay! A chance to see friends you hadn't seen in months. A chance to learn what it's like to wash your hair and underarms at the public spigot (cold!). Running full-clothed into the ocean to join Sara only to hear my children crying out at my un-Mama-like behavior, my oldest wading in after me with her mouth open in an alarmed square and wailing, sure I'm to drown.

I am penning a new zine. I'll bet you are excited! No really, you are, perhaps you don't know it. Donations are accepted for a subscription - but if you want one and can't pay (or don't want to), I'll send it to you for free because I ruv roo!

And I've rediscovered an old album I had and I'm loving it dearly. One day I'll have some sort of stereo system and it won't sound so tinny as it does on my Mac.

And I am a writer, writer of fictions
I am the heart that you call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones
My bones

Labels: vacation, writing

News, news, news.

Last month I (in bullheaded fashion) decided I simply had to enter a SewUseful contest (sponsored by Etsy and Instructables). Part of the contest requirements was to put up a listing for the item along with an accompanying Instructable. OK, fine. Surprisingly, my "invention" (bike chaps) sold out in a few hours.

Sadly, on the last day of the contest I (and others) had mucho technical difficulties uploading image libraries and editing text. I almost gave up; my husband insisted I soldier on. Today they fixed the last of the bug and I uploaded the final pieces of my Instructable. I think I got one hand-clap so far so, if you view it and like it, comment on it. I think that involves you registering, which you likely don't want to do, unless you're some DIY dork that already is registered. Um, not that Instructable members are dorks. I mean, I'm one.

My other income this month were earned in zine form; my writing is featured in the new Aussie MixTape zine. Oooh! Oooh! They like me!

So yeah, this week I made like, $34.

Labels: sewing, writing

This morning as I was flossing my daughter's teeth and thinking in quasi-terror on the film I watched yesterday (it's actually the associated featurette Possibility of Hope that has me upset), I noticed one of my daughter's teeth was wiggling. At first I thought, What? Is she losing a tooth? But then thought, no no, that's too young, she's five. "Your tooth is loose!" I exclaim. "Did you hurt yourself?" trying to remember a recent headbonk with her brother. Damn. I know injured teeth can reseat. I gently wiggle the tooth again and Sophie backs up. "Don't touch it!" she says waspishly. I say, OK, brush some more, be gentle.

Five minutes later I sit down and look up treatment of a loose tooth and as I was reading the first paragraph Sophie (getting her shoes on in the foyer) says out of the blue, "I don't think I got hurt, Mama. I think that tooth is just loose." (in her duck-voice). And of course, she's totally right. The tooth location and the age are only a bit early to be lost.

Then she walked over to me and started reading the entry.

I am just not getting used to this whole, children growing up thing as fast as they themselves are growing.

Labels: Sophie

Our mini-vacation has come and gone. Ralph and I had a great time; our friends Cyn, Paige, and Chris came (along with two guest dogs) and we just ate, swam (yes, Ralph got a water fight - with only one opponent though), cooked (me only), and did dishes (sadly, a necessary evil of that last thing).

Sophie ran and jumped off the dock, swimming back to the end of the pier. She did this four thousand times, but each one I had to watch her swim back to the dock because her swimming still looks spastic and unreliable. I tried to look casual, not as if my heart was in my throat. Nels did not like the water so much; he mostly stayed inside, sometimes stripping nude and eating chips. Both kids got stung - Sophie by a wasp, Nels by a bee. Sophie helped me make Ralph's birthday cake and suggested pink frosting.

The drive home was easy and our newly-stung boy fell asleep before we reached the end of the driveway (I watched him carefully; he had the tiniest bit of swelling on his finger and it went down within 12 hours). We capped the weekend with only a brief stop home before heading to see Ratatouille. Then home to mountain of towels and vacation laundry.

Labels: birthday, film, friends, Nels, Ralph, Sophie

The locker room is hectic after swimming lessons. My son tends to get into the shower room with the naked little girls or get underfoot in some other way. So while I help Sophie get dressed I have taken to putting him up on this ledged table where he climbs about but stays in one place and out of people's way.

Today as I'm combing Sophie's hair I see out of the corner of my eye this woman R. pick my son up and hug him. This makes some sort of sense; she has been sitting next to me during swim lessons and she and my son have established a rapport. Today she stroked his back and kissed him once. So I see her pick him up and think, kind of odd, but nothing else. A moment later (preoccupied with thoughts of our packing, errands to do before our trip, my daughter's non-stop talking) I half-notice they are gone and I decide she must be out in the hallway with him, waiting for us as we are almost done. How nice of her.

Not two minutes later Sophie and I are ready and we start looking for R. and Nels. I can't find them. I think, OK, they're in the dining area. Not there. The swimming bleachers. Not there. Outside? The racket ball courts? The basketball courts? Back to the locker room the weight room the racket ball courts the daycare the bathrooms.

At this point I am not crying. I am frustrated and embarrassed this woman is somewhere with my child waiting for me and I can't find them. I ask up at the front desk. I am starting to have a hard time because it's hard for me to describe what R. looks like. It starts to occur to me someone could have taken him. R. could have taken him. Her physical affections towards my child become less impulsive and well-meaning but completely sinister. I don't know her, I don't know her at all, but I saw her pick up my child. I tell the front desk woman to please keep an eye out; this desk staff member who I've thought has moments of incompetency, does a great job asking for details and making suggestions. I am slowly starting to unravel because I just need to see my son. I start looking again. Locker room hallway raquetball dining area swimming area foyer front desk. I end up in childcare even though he's not there, I have to ask. This is when I start crying. "I think someone took him," I say, because I've simply looked everywhere.

The daycare woman is asking what he looks like and asking if I've looked X, Y, or Z (yes yes yes of course I've looked there) and telling me to go to the front desk (I'm going to, I think we'll have to call the police). I go to the front desk and I know I look insane, completely crazy. The front desk woman assigns a staff member to me and I (outwardly calm voice, crazy-eyed) say I'm going to take my bag to the car and make sure this woman isn't by my car (this would be nuts; she doesn't know what I drive).

Sophie is following me. "Where's Nels?" "Did someone take him?" I can't do anything but feel like I'm going to die if I don't see him soon.

As we go inside the Y I see him with my assigned staff member, gamely holding her hand and walking on the tile lines. He runs to me, "Mama!" R. is nowhere. I pick him up and press his body like clay to my face, my neck and he says, "Mama... you like me!" I can see the staff looking at me with that kind of fear like they think I'm going to yell at them or start screaming about the woman who picked him up but I am too, too overcome to even say thank you. I just turn around holding him and Sophie is next to me and the staff is saying, "We were looking for him!" to reassure me. In my heart I thank them so much that they'd help me when I thought my life was falling into a black hole.

By this time Nels has figured out the Mama he saw less has changed. I take them to the car and they get in their carseats and I let loose and cry and cry and cry.

From the YMCA staff's point of view, nothing happened. To the woman R. who picked my son up and deposited him wherever she did, nothing happened. For me, I thought I was going to die if he was gone.

I have never, ever been paranoid about stranger abduction in my life, and I don't think I'll be paranoid now. R. made a bad choice to remove Nels from my sight and put him who-knows-where. That's all that happened. He wandered around somewhere for a while during which time I briefly went out of my mind.

One thing that occurred to me later is that there are some people where this nightmare becomes true. I simply can't imagine the pain of that. For most of us, it's only a few moments in our lives that resolve in "back to normal".

I couldn't stop crying for about an hour after it happened. I feel OK now.

Labels: Nels

Tonight, oddly, our power went out. Middle of the evening. I was perplexed. At the moment it went out, my son woke up from a late nap and cried out; even the lawnmower outside halted.

I was disoriented. I went outside. Ralph was excited. I hung out in the living room with the kids as he finished the lawn. The power was out for about thirty minutes and abruptly came back on while people were still sort of "neighborhooding" it up. Just three minutes after our power came up as I stood outside my house I saw rolling billows of smoke, nasty smoke. People were once again stirring, talking in their lawns. I told Ralph to ride the bike and suss it out; in fact I begged him to remove his bike helmet, his shirt, and grow a mustache first, if he could (he declined).

I only heard one siren, and the smoke died out after about twenty minutes. It was an odd evening, for sure.

Labels: neighbors, Ralph, random

I have been dying to make my own laundry soap. Because I get ideas like that and they are like a fevered, psychotic brain-termite and my poor family has to deal with it.

So with this project in mind after swim lessons we rode the bus to Aberdeen. The bus driver dropped us off over a block early, a long city block. I got burnt to a crisp and had to carry Nels far further than I should have, and in bad shoes. I honestly did not realize how far this walk would be, because I am used to it by vehicle. Anyway, after one hundred million steps I fell inside my bank (instead of ATM, for a brief respite of air conditioning) to get cash out, and while there asked for water for my children - the teller said 'no'. We finally got to Rite Aid and they had ZERO supplies! I now have blisters and if it weren't for getting sunblock at Rite Aid, we'd all be burnt very badly.

I love that I totally tortured myself for a couple hot hours today by trying to be all low-cost and environmentally friendly - riding the bus and making my own soap. I am dumb.

I'm calling it my eco self-fuck.

On the other hand, on our final, last-leg-of-journey approach I finally got to meet the Queen of the Neighborhood. I've been seeing this large, kind of sassy-looking woman in an old bathrobe and dirty braids walking her dog. I'm not sure if she smokes but in my mind she's smoking and in the middle of the street, like she owns it. Not unfriendly or anything, just present.

She also has this fabulous lawn. Flowers and blooms at random intervals and mini-beds, well-maintained and luxurious, in the front yard. The backyard has a decrepit-looking set of laundry lines that almost look neglected but every day, there's something different hanging there - a series of windsocks, a large old cotton throw. The house and lawn look so lived in, cluttered but in a very non-stagnant way that shows pride of ownership and a love of life.

So today as we passed her house I noticed she'd set up a large kiddie-pool with a floating blow-up armchair. I was thinking, "Cool", but also preoccupied because Nels was yelling and crying. He'd been disciplined two minutes earlier after the bus driver snapped at me for allowing him to pull the stop requested cord (he has only got away with this twice; I try my best to help him not be naughty on the bus). So Nels is mad and ashamed and crying and I'm talking to him calmly as we walk down the block (hot, hot, hot). Then I hear a voice saying, "Need a sprinkle?" and it's the Queen, talking to my son. My children look in the direction of this seemingly mysterious voice speaking out of the hedge. Their eyes are wide, Nels quiets, and they drift toward her property, which smells like good flowers and I can hear some classic rock and roll playing. She tells me she just set up her pool; there's a hose mister on. The kids and I put our hands under. Nels' foul mood is cured. We thank her and move on.

I'm going to make this woman a pie and bring it to her. She is exactly the kind of neighbor I want to know.

My feet still hurt, damn.

Labels: Aberdeen, bus, Mama's crazy, neighbors, Nels

So today we make a cake for my brother's birthday. I give a cake bowl to Nels; the spatula to Sophie. "Don't get chocolate on your clothes. Here's a napkin. Use it to wipe your hands. Don't get chocolate on your clothes."

"OK," Nels tells me, "I won't." He reassures me repeatedly. I check in every now and then. "Are you getting chocolate on your clothes?" "No." Ten minutes later, bowl squeaky-clean, Ralph brings The Boy to me:


P.S. it was in his hair and on his elbow.

Labels: food, Nels

For the fourth, we watched the recent Keith Olbermann's Special Comment.

We are also planning a family dinner and a party with friends. My children's first exposure to s'mores as well.

Happy Independence Day!

Labels: holidays

Now that their meager school schedules are suspended, my job is to keep the kids from going crazy, keep them active and off TV, and keep out of the house so it doesn't get totally destroyed by noon.

I look forward to getting my mom's bike out of the shop so I can bike the kids. We've been bus-riding exclusively and frankly, it's a lot slower going.


We wait at the most boring bus-stop ever. The kids look for mushrooms and I yell at Nels not to pick up garbage.


We had lunch with my mom and then walked home. Along the way we stopped at the 8th Street Landing which is oddly free of birdpoop.


Picture by my girl! She wants to take a rowboat into the River. I have literally never in my 20+ years since my family moved here set foot in a vessel on this river.


Our township derives its name from the Chehalis word "Ho-qui-upmpts". P.S. don't pronounce it Ho-kwim like even Wikipedia does, dammit! Ho-kwee-im, accent on the first syllable.


A beautiful summer day for railroad walking. What you can't see is that a few feet down the tracks we decided to cross a trestle. The trestle-crossing ended up being terrifying for me as I only had one free hand so the littlest kid was in the middle and I had to rely on the bigger kid not falling through the large gaps. I was pretty damned terrified.


Our "new", classy miniature golf park. What makes me laugh is the ass hand-painted business sign. The owner keeps painting more and more signage perhaps in attempts to pull the "look" together.


Living in a swamp for a hundred years is hard on a girl.


Another picture by Sophie, who said, "I can take pictures of so much flowers and garbage!"


And she did.

Today while relying on public transportation I was let down. As in, an entire bus went missing and the kids and I stood waiting for about forty minutes. Forty minutes isn't that long but forty minutes is a long time when you're expecting a bus any minute. Forty minutes lost meant I dressed in workout clothes for naught; when we got to the Y there wasn't enough time for me to get my exercise in before Sophie had her lessons. By the way, she's swimming quite well and today told me she wants to be a swimming teacher "when [she] grow[s] up".

After lessons it was a walk back to the bus stop; unpleasant and muggy. Then to my parents' where I am feeling oddly uncomfortable, never knowing if I'm showing up too much for my sewing work (isn't it nice with FOO you get to guess how the feel about you?).

On the happier side, my family has discovered "Spongebob Squarepants" (rented on DVD) - finally. We held out for a long time before checking into it, as most kid cartoons really irritate me. But it turns out the hype is earned. It's a funny show, reminiscent in many ways of old school "Ren & Stimpy" but non-violent and not nearly as gross. Impressive!

Labels: film, FOO